The Wikileaks Files

The Wikileaks Files is a book on/of history using primarily primary sources that one can't usually find in the mass media. Actually the first 141 pages are an intro by Assange and the remaining part of the book a global breakdown by region of the implications of the material.

My first response to it is that it is one very chilling read.

More later, but for the moment I find it gives an entirely new meaning to the term Realpolitik and much more. Of course Realpolitik is many things to different people....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik

Proving what Michael Moore said about capitalists, "the will sell you the rope you are going to hang them with", the book is available on Amazon.

I imagine that the money from the sales goes to WikiLeaks, even though the US government has twisted bankers arms to stop contribution going to the organization in one of the most blatant abuses of "anti-terrorist" powers since Chaney's torture machine.

re: "the first 141 pages"

Would someone please teach me how to read the history laid out in "the first 141 pages" with out becoming totally and seriously depressed as to how the average citizen can affect a change in how the US govt continues act?

Here's realpolitik for you . Thomas Jefferson getting fed up with corsairs of Tripoli kidnapping American sailors and holding them for ransom. I'll say one thing for old Tom Jeff, for a simple, small government republican, he sure knew how and when to use whatever power he had to change circumstances on the ground. Negotiations be damned. I'm sorry, and I will check out the 141 pages of Julian's history, but relations and lack thereof between nation states is like making sausage, it looks ok when its on the grill but no one wants to see how its made.
The mistake Americans make is supposing the American exceptionalism somehow prevents us from acting more like Frederick the Great than Gandhi. Alexander Hamilton understood this critical aspect of the modern (1787) nation state and he made it his life's work to prepare the US to compete in the big leagues. I'm thinking its worked out pretty good for us in the intervening 235 years.
By the way, the Monroe Doctrine was a farce and a fake and Monroe knew it. We no more had the ability to prevent Europe's move into South America at that time than we do travelling to Mars today, Matt Damon notwithstanding.

Would be most grateful to anyone getting back to me re those "check out the 141 pages of Julian's history."

LamSon could probably answer this but I imagine he is off reading other stuff.

The best answer for Americans hoping to have an effect on their current slow motion Civil War between the forces of economic power and the bulk of the population is to organize a new truly centrist party, far to the left of the two survivor parties, and take it to a position of power. It's been 150 years since the new Republican Party came along, and the USA needs a truly centrist power, not the current struggle between the Right and the farther right.

>6 DinadansFriend: I finally find myself agreeing with you 100%.

The Democrats used to be a party of big ideas and risk taking. Its been reduced to the current spectacle of Hillary v Bernie. A more useless exercise in debate is hard to imagine. As a radical centrist I have no great hope for any great change in our political culture. Pipe dreams of a "third way" or party or "movement", are just that. The left is intellectually bankrupt and the right is just mean and stupid. Both parties would like to revisit the past of their former glory or hide behind fantasies of their own creation to make their bases feel better about their lack of effectiveness. The Roman Republic finally gave out over its complete and utter moral and legal bankruptcy leading to the up and done brilliance of the Empire. Not to say that's where we are headed; its hard to imagine a modern day Octavian , Trump notwithstanding, but as an eternal optimist and great believer in Madison's unique genius, this too shall pass.

As long as we are going classical, Donald Trump could well be the Marius in the American regression to one man rule. I don't feel the Roman Empire was "Brilliant", as a place for improving the intellectual or domestic life of the Romans or their subjects. It did tidy up the geography lessons for Roman children who get some kind of organized education.

A "radical centrist"? This is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

Terms like this — I recall a fad for the Radical Middle — strike me as desperate or forlorn, like the old catchphrase "Stop the world, I want to get off."

I agree with DF that the center of public opinion (when not filtered through the hot-button issue of the moment) is far to the left of the salon consensus. Also convinced that change starts low and moves up. All the hopeful changes I see are happening at the local level.