Saturday Reading

For those who wonder how to cope with the collapse of our economy and political system,the latest edition of the New Yorker (January 26, 2009) delights us with Ben McGrath's American Chronicles "The Dystopians". an account of the best and brightest of our doomsayers. One of my favorite is Dmitry Orlov, who travels the seas on his boat The Hogfish, which is outfitted with solar panels and bicycles. He plans to establish a trading network along Lake Champlain for transporting Vermont apples and marple syrup to farmers' markets in New York City. James Howard Kunstler, known for his weekly blog column Clusterfuck Nation,outlines the sickness of our society but claims he's not a "complete collapsitarian". And he joins former Duke economic professor Thomas Naylor at the meeting of the Vermont Republic Movement, which envisions the creation of a new country named Arcadia, composed of Vermont,New Hampshire, Maine and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Attending was Lynette Clark, the chair of the Alaska Independence party, to which Todd Palin belonged. A U.S. Air Force veteran, Clark calling herself "an Alaskan, not an American", will support Sarah Palin's presidential run in 2012, if Alaska is not independent. The other dystopians are actually hestitating now, hoping somehow that Obama can prevent the total social collapse.

The New Yorker also features probably the most rational article on health reform I've read--Atul Gawande's "Getting There from Here". Dr. Gawande specializes in cancer surgery and outlines the various options for health care reform with the existing systems we currently have. The value of Gawande's article lies with its historical overview of the development of the British, French and Swiss systems and how these were grown out of the historical necessities in those countries. Since his solution of marrying what we have is too sensible, it's doubtful it will make its way down to Washington. But read it. A national health system really is possible.

James Bamford's The Shadow Factory: the Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (Doubleday ,$27.95) has surfaced on MSNBC recently. Bamford specializes in the National Security Agency and has written three previous books on perhaps the most secret of our secret agencies. Bamford is mesmerizing with his account of the technology behind modern-day surveillance. Our favorite eavesdropper,Gene Hackman is now permanently out of work,an anachronistic character compared to the new wave, wholesale sweep of data about every American. The least of our worries is spying on journalists. The second half of the book describes the legal antics of people like David Addington in the Bush Administration to create a universe of warrantless eavesdropping. What is clear and has become clear is that the NSA staff were far removed from any understanding of the policy changes under Michael Hayden, who put the agency at risk. The book ends with a number of court cases starting in 2006 that challenged this whole eavesdropping regime. For all the recent flap over Obama dismantling the whole apparatus erected by Bush for the alleged purpose of fighting terrorism, its unravelling started three years ago as courts started pushing back. One question does remain--What explains the primitive state of the White House's computer systems? The Obama staff claims "It's like going from Iphone technology to Atari."