A lesson from the KGB

Yuri Andropov, KGB chief during the VN period, reportedly said their propaganda victory during the VN war was their greatest achievement. It was seamless in its strategy. On the one end, in VN toddlers would be set to walk to American soldiers with bombs set to detonate or women in distress apparently needing to give an infant with a timed explosive device to a new soldier. The infants might be shot and explode or thrown off a bridge and explode as the Americans defended themselves. This created a predicate for the charge that the soldiers were baby killers. As Andropov as General Secretary gave us Gorbachev who gave us the end of Russian communism, perhaps we could console ourselves and see VN as a Pyrrhic defeat leading to Russian hubris. This is not to say there were never crimes on our side, but this was part of the context, as a commenter noted, 'context' for a discussion on Bill Ayers.

An essay on Keynes by his admired biographer.

An essay called 'words of wisdom' by Greg Mankiw, Economics, Harvard.

How Dallas Got Its Name

Repairing obscured history reminded me of the interactive map of the 1860 Census in the NY Times. One of the icons in the map shows that Dallas County, Alabama was a 77% slave county in 1860. The soil there is described as a rich, black soil, good for growing cotton. This band of soil extends to an area of Texas called Dallas. Dallas, Texas was the second biggest collection point for cotton in the world in the 1880s. The reason for calling the Texas city and county Dallas is obscure but perhaps it was originally to signal that it was a good place to have slaves and grow cotton. In a twist of fate or, more honestly, public relations, Dallas subsequently may have found other explanations for its name.

Rod Stewart, via Brad Delong, covers 'Black Friday' music. Awesome!

Brad DeLong's post on Cuba, a cry with me for Cuba piece, reminded me of Luis Garrigo, M.D., a refugee from the Revolution, who landed in Dallas for a while. He was a psychiatrist who seemed not at all distracted by his work or responsibiliies to being open to others. In regard to criticism of pre-revolutionary Cuba he might considerately respond yes but the present state was worse and, on other occasions but it would apply there too, with the Latin phrase, 'Festina lente,' which he would translate as 'Hurry slowly.'

Currently Reading

The Jews and the Gospel, A Re-examination of the New Testament ( Inscribed By Au an amazing book. I got it for a few dollars as a used paperback, IS THE NEW TESTAMENT ANTI-SEMITIC . I see it is hard to replace.

Just Finished

Not quite as intersting as Gregory Baum's Book (above) but very interesting and a better cover, Kandinsky. I've got an extra copy.

Hugo Chavez

I've been doing my own private mourning, thank you. I had heard the Hugo took property he wanted when the deed records weren't complete. Ahem, big deal of course. But Hugo insisted that deeds go back through 1821 through an interval where records for some reason were far from complete. Now I don't now about the oil development except to read from the Economist, and he seems to have shown the same interest in oil production at the state run oil company as the communists did on news gathering in their staffing of Isvestia and Pravda. As for stealing from the future, you do know that Argentina was the richest country in the world, per capita income wise, at the turn of the century. Puzzled? I guess, like me, you really don't remember 1900. No, what I am mourning about is that these largely Catholic countries can be such a mess while Israel with a little sand and Palestinian only buses can have such a dynamic economy. To his credit though, and clowns seem to be more in favor these day, Chavez didn't kill his opponents.

The Atlantic if I recall correctly had an interesting graphic a year ago. It showed that the Roman empire hit a nadir bushel of wheat earned per hour of labor in the middle of the third century. One of the error dynamics of the Roman derived states seems to be a struggle between syndicalism in control of property and redistribution on a base of static development of resources or TFP to coin a phrase.