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"Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes, not need just feed
the War canibal animal, I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
line up to the mind cemetary
now... What we don't know keeps the contracts alive and movin'
they don't gotta burn the books they just remove em"
-Zack de la Rocha |
 | Reading List |  |
 Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn
added to the Reading List: Jan.01.2004
Ishmael is about a gorilla named Ishmael who teaches a man about humanity in a historical context. He challenges and teaches how we can all make a difference. A good inspiration of social justice, and spiritually uplifting.
Ishmael discusses how there is a break between this idea of "Takers" & "Leavers". He goes on to describe Genesis, the idea of Cain and Abel, and how the Takers were Cain, and the Leavers are Abel. The Takers are agriculturists (though not necessarily) who force the Leavers to change their way of life.
It also goes on to show how people can change their perception of how we see things. It also talks about this idea of "Mother Culture" and that we need to step aside from the brainwashing we receive in our daily lives.
| Excerpt:
http://www.cs.org
http://www.ishmael.com |
|
 Best Business Crime Writing of the Year (2002)
by James Surowiecki
added to the Reading List: Jun.08.2003
James Surowiecki has compiled a very informative collection of articles. I highly recommend this book to anyone that would like to know the details and specifics behind Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, etc. It also focusses heavily on the accounting industry and how they were complicit in the corporate greed that whalloped the economy.
The book is packed with specific details and compelling profiles of corporate CEOs and CFOs. I enjoyed the first two parts of the book emensely. The 3rd part of the book seemed, to me, to be an attempt to throw in some conservative slanted articles in an attempt to make the book more politically neutral. The book draws some conclusions that I don't necessarily agree with. Still, it's well worth reading, and drawing some conclusions of your own.
| Excerpt:
Business crime is nothing new. Commerce necessarily brings with it the possibility of fraud, and from the beginning con men have found America a congenial place to operate. The kind of scandalous behavior that corporate CEOs engaged in at the end of the 1990s is, in fact, new only in its magnitude, which is orders greater than anything in the past. When you look at these stories that dominated the headlines over the past year--Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia, ImClone--what you see at their core is the same fundamental misdeed: self-dealing. |
|
 The Divine Right of Capital
by Marjorie Kelly
added to the Reading List: May.01.2003
Marjorie Kelly's book encourages a new way of thinking about the relationship between corporations and employees. She asserts that corporations are every bit as much their employees as they are their stockholders.
This book is a bit slow in spots and repetitive in others. But the point is well made. Investors in a corporation are treated as though they are the corporation while in actuality they put very little in, and in fact have been a drain on corporations in some cases. Employees on the other hand posess the know-how, the experience that make the corporations run. She advocates for more employee governance for corporations and asserts that corporations should be run with other responsabilities beyond just maximising profits. Worker safety and the safety of the communities where the corporation resides should be just as important.
| Excerpt:
...it shifted the definition of the corporation from an artificial entity created and controlled by the states to a natural person with independent existence. And it allowed corporations to seek shelter under the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the states from taking property without due process.
Though this amendment was enacted on behalf of slaves, it was used far more often on behalf of corporations. In 1938, Justice Hugo Black noted that, of all the cases in which the Supreme Court applied the Fourteenth Amendment in the half-century following Santa Clara, "less than one-half of 1 percent invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations." Using this constitutional sheild, the Court from 1905 to the mid-1930s invalidated some two hundred economic regulations.
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 Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!
by Michael Moore
added to the Reading List: Apr.01.2003
Michael Moore has written a good book about the Stupid White Men who run our government, our economy and our lives. Easy to understand and pretty entertaining too.
| Excerpt:
[to president Bush]
You're one of us--a boomer, a C student, a partier! What the hell are you doing with that crowd? They're eating you alive and spitting you out like a bad pork rind.
They probably didn't tell you that the tax cut they drew up for you to sign was a swindle to take money from the middle class and give it to the super-rich. I know you don't need the extra money; you're already set for life, thanks to Grandpappy Prescott Bush and his smart trading with the Nazis before and during World War II.
But all those dudes who gave you a record-breaking $190 million to run your campaign (two-thirds of which came from just over seven hundred individuals!), they want it all back--and more. They're going to hound you like dogs in heat, making sure you do exactly as they say. Your predecessor may have been renting out the Lincoln bedroom to Barbra Streisand, but that ain't nothin': before you know it, your pal, Acting President Cheney, will be turning over the keys of the West Wing to the chairman of AT&T, Enron, and ExxonMobil.
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 Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Damned Lies and the Public Relations Industry
by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
added to the Reading List: Mar.01.2003
Easily one of the greatest books I've ever read. It has changed my perception of the world and filled in a lot of blanks.
The book is about the Public Relations Industry. It was wriiten by two editors of the magazine PR Watch put out by the Center for Media & Democracy: John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.
http://www.prwatch.org
The book is a wealth of information about how the Public Relations industry is instrumental in building concent for corporations to continue ravaging the Earth. Everything from Toxic Sewer Sludge being used to fertilize our food supplies to the cigarette industry's deliberate cover up of smoking hazards to the Energy Utilities working to convince the people of Nevada that there's nothing wrong with being the nuclear waste dump for the rest of the country.
This book gets the highest recommendation I can give. I think everyone should own a copy.
| Excerpt:
The PR Industry is a little like the title character in the 1933 Claude Rains movie, The Invisible Man. Rains plays an evil scientist who attempts to rule the world, committing crimes such as robbery and murder and using his invisibility to evade detection. The Invisible Man was an early special effects film, using hidden wires and other tricks to make ashtrays, guns and other objects float in mid-air as though they were manipulated by an invisible hand.
Instead of ashtrays and guns, the PR industry seeks to manipulate public opinion and government policy. But it can only manipulate while it remains invisible.
We like to think of this book as the literary equivalent of a nice big can of fluorescent orange spray paint. We are spray-painting the Invisible Man in order to make him visible again. We want the public at large to recognize the skilled propagandists of industry and government who are affecting public opinion and determining public policies, while remaining (they hope) out of public view.
In a democracy, everyone needs to know who is really in charge, who makes the decisions, and in whose interest. Democracy functions best without Invisible Men. |
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