I do not understand Craig's List. It is the biggest mess I have ever seen, like some teenager's MySpace page.
I just don't understand what is so cool about Craig's list. Seems like most of the postings are spam - the kind "Make Money Fast" junk your email filters are built to kill.
I don't get it.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Sickening
I just read an article that describes how the senior management of AIG, after securing a government bailout, took a spa vaction for themselves at a high end resort.
They spent over $400,000 on their getaway.
Doesn't this piss you off?
They spent over $400,000 on their getaway.
Doesn't this piss you off?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Great book
I just finished reading a great book called "A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath" by Truong Nhu Tang.
The author was one of the founders of the South Vietnam revolutionary movement, of which the VietCong was the military arm. Truong was never a warrior; he was a member of the Saigon aristocracy, French educated and destined for a great future.
He became politically aware while in France and returned to Vietnam to fight for independence. He operated undercover as a senior member of the NLF, while outwardly serving as a senior executive with the national sugar exporting company.
Eventually he was discovered and imprisoned, ultimately being released in a prisoner exchange, and spent 8 years in the jungle and became a member of the PRG, a government in waiting, allied with the North Vietnamese. He was named Minister of Justice for the government they assumed would take over control once the war was won.
The book describes in detail living in the jungle, the horrors of the B-52 attacks that killed many compatriots, and the political machinations and tension between the southern revolutionaries and the northern communists.
One thing I found very interesting was the description of how aware the PRG officials living in the jungle were of the American political scene and how important the US antiwar movement was to the the NLF and PRG.
Another interesting fact: the Vietcong hiding in the jungle were given forewarning of B-52 attacks, by receiving reports from Russian spy ships in the Pacific that tracked bombers taking off from Guam. They would compute the flight paths, and radio the information to Hanoi, which relayed likely target areas to the VC so they could move away from the target areas. This saved many lives over the years, and it is not clear if the Americans ever realized this was happening.
The book ends quite sadly when it becomes more and more obvious that the northerners never intended to share power with the southerners. Immediately after the war, the southerners were edged aside in favor of rapid socialization. Many people were rounded up and put in reeducation camps. In one very tough event, the author drives his own brother to a prison camp, assuring him it would be only 30 days of reeducation. 9 years later the brother was still imprisoned.
Eventually Truong engineered an escape from the country and has lived in exile in France ever since.
I found this book extraordinarily interesting, opening complex aspects of the war I had never realized.
Link to Amazon
The author was one of the founders of the South Vietnam revolutionary movement, of which the VietCong was the military arm. Truong was never a warrior; he was a member of the Saigon aristocracy, French educated and destined for a great future.
He became politically aware while in France and returned to Vietnam to fight for independence. He operated undercover as a senior member of the NLF, while outwardly serving as a senior executive with the national sugar exporting company.
Eventually he was discovered and imprisoned, ultimately being released in a prisoner exchange, and spent 8 years in the jungle and became a member of the PRG, a government in waiting, allied with the North Vietnamese. He was named Minister of Justice for the government they assumed would take over control once the war was won.
The book describes in detail living in the jungle, the horrors of the B-52 attacks that killed many compatriots, and the political machinations and tension between the southern revolutionaries and the northern communists.
One thing I found very interesting was the description of how aware the PRG officials living in the jungle were of the American political scene and how important the US antiwar movement was to the the NLF and PRG.
Another interesting fact: the Vietcong hiding in the jungle were given forewarning of B-52 attacks, by receiving reports from Russian spy ships in the Pacific that tracked bombers taking off from Guam. They would compute the flight paths, and radio the information to Hanoi, which relayed likely target areas to the VC so they could move away from the target areas. This saved many lives over the years, and it is not clear if the Americans ever realized this was happening.
The book ends quite sadly when it becomes more and more obvious that the northerners never intended to share power with the southerners. Immediately after the war, the southerners were edged aside in favor of rapid socialization. Many people were rounded up and put in reeducation camps. In one very tough event, the author drives his own brother to a prison camp, assuring him it would be only 30 days of reeducation. 9 years later the brother was still imprisoned.
Eventually Truong engineered an escape from the country and has lived in exile in France ever since.
I found this book extraordinarily interesting, opening complex aspects of the war I had never realized.
Link to Amazon
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