(Part 3) Top products from r/europe

Want to hear an unfortunate truth ? Assholes succeed in life precisely because they are assholes.

Jeffrey Pfeffer is ranked as one of the best business school professors in the United States. He has studied political parties, large corporations and powerful politicians for decades. He is an expert on power. He is a professor at Stanford University.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/jeffrey-pfeffer

According to Pfeffer, all the talks about corporate social responsabilities are lies. All the talks about nice guys are lies. Complete assholes suceed all the time with women and in the business world. However, anybody proclaiming that reality in public will get attacked by society because society hates to hear it. He wrote an entire book on that :

https://www.amazon.com/Power-Some-People-Have-Others/dp/0061789089

This is how he described Donald Trump :

>For the most part, real-world success comes from behaviors that are precisely the opposite of typical leadership prescriptions. Trump actually embodies many of the leadership qualities that cause people to succeed—albeit they are pretty much the opposite of what leadership experts tout. Trump takes liberties with the facts. No, he did not write the best-selling business book of all time, as he claimed. And some aspects of his business acumen and success are clearly exaggerated—after all, Trump-named casinos went into bankruptcy. No matter. Telling the truth is an overrated quality for leaders.

>Leaders lie with more frequency and skill than others. Some of the most revered and wealthiest people mastered the skill of presenting a less than veridical version of reality. Larry Ellison, like many people working in software, exaggerated the availability and features of products. And then there’s Steve Jobs. The phrase “reality distortion field” says a lot about Jobs’ fabulous ability to make things that weren’t true become true through his assertions of their truthfulness, a widely known process called the self-fulfilling prophecy.

>Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s recent call for servant leaders is well intentioned. But at a time when CEO salaries have soared to more than 300 times that of their companies’ average employees, there’s not too much servant leadership going on.

>Another piece of the puzzle: most leadership talks, books, and blogs describe aspirational qualities we wish our leaders possessed. So we tell stories about unique, heroic, unusual people and situations—not quite realizing that the very uniqueness probably makes such tales, even if they are true (and they are often not), a poor guide for coping with the world as it exists.

>My recommendation? First, understand the social science that speaks to the qualities that make people successful, at least by some definitions: the economic penalties, particularly for men, from being too nice; research that shows that lying in everyday life is both common and mostly not sanctioned; and the evidence that narcissistic leaders in Silicon Valley earn more money and remain longer in their CEO roles. The only way to change the world is first understanding how it really works.

http://fortune.com/2015/08/07/donald-trump-leadership-lessons/

There's a lot of useful stuff on the European Union (which I'll get to in a minute) but if you're looking for any kind of synoptic overview of European Governance in general, then you're going to come up empty handed because there's almost no unifying characteristic of European governance.

T hammer this point home, here's a brief overview of the variety: Some practice civil law, some practice common; many are monarchies, even more are republics; most of codified constitutions, one doesn't even have that (UK); Some grant diplomatic immunity to elected representatives, some don't; some practice presidential systems, and others parliamentary. You can find all different forms of democratic governance in the EU, which makes having some kind of basic overview impossible, because there's no overriding similarities between this diverse group of nation states.

Now, they do at least all have one thing in common. They're all members of the EU and so they all participate in most areas of EU legislation. If you want a nice introduction into the immediate history and functioning of the European Union and then I'd recommend the Oxford Press's A Very Short Introduction series, which has an edition on the European Union. It really is very short (only a hundred pages, smaller than notebook sized) but crams a lot in with very concise language. I think it's the only kind of book on the market which will give you such a good grounding of all the fundamental elements of the European Union without becoming long and convoluted. If you want something more specialised, I recommend reading it after you've read this.

This is a great question--here is a great book about the modern history of money (19th century and later)

https://www.amazon.com/Money-Mischief-Episodes-Monetary-History/dp/015661930X

People here are couching it in pretty facile, simplistic terms. The world's flow of currency and credit is actually quite complex and there is no actual "reserve currency" by decree. The US dollar just happens to be a claim on the world's largest economy and is therefore most often used for international transactions (that and the fact that the Saudis use oil dollars to buy American weapons in vast quantities).

But as for why it is not gold, it was gold, in effect, for a long, long time--that is, export and import flows (as well as international investments) were balanced by physical transfers of gold and what we think of today as currencies were just fixed claims on gold (if you go back far enough, they were literal claims, e.g. a "pound" was literally exchangeable for a pound of silver)

Then after WW2, the major powers adopted the Bretton Woods convention, whereby the US dollar would be pegged to a fixed quantity of gold and other currencies would float off the dollar. Bretton Woods was abandoned in 1972 for a floating fiat money system. This was unstable for a while (with high inflation rates in the US and elsewhere) until 1982, when the US figured out how to limit the supply of dollars to match its own economic growth rate

Today, the dollar is thus very stable and is in effect a substitute for gold, though you can of course freely buy gold wholesale in your etrade account, if you prefer to park your money there (which ironically used to be forbidden when the world was on the gold standard/Bretton Woods)

I don't see how its relevant to the topic at hand, but here you go some good books on the topic, let me know if want any other suggestions.

A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide

Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide

A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

Fall of the Ottomans:The Great War in the Middle East

Introduction to Econometrics, Update (3rd Edition) (Pearson Series in Economics) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0133486877/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_TT8KybNYH52K9

Am I doing good? 😊

Lucky for you, I made a sticky at my sub:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/comments/6gne0u/sources_about_active_measures_you_should_follow/

Those are, IMO, the best sources to follow.

If you want specific authors like Pomerantsev, I'm afraid there are very few who talk about this stuff. Actually, I seem to have forgotten a few people in my sticky, so I'll mention them here:

• A pair of Russian journalists have written an excellent book about the Russian internet and its loud inhabitants - paid bloggers/trolls. A must read, one of the few books that discusses the Russian internet in the early 2000s, when this activity first began:
  
  
• The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries
  
  
  
• Ion Mihai Pacepa, the single highest defector from the Eastern Bloc. This man may be the most knowledgable person in the world regarding Active Measures, considering he was intimately involved in disseminating them.
  
  
• He is the author of several must-read (IMO) books. But the one that stands out above all is this one: Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism
  
  
• He's also written several articles about the KGB's disinformation campaign to spread conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, code name Operation Dragon.
  
  
  
  
• Finally, for some historical stuff, the Mitrokhin Archives, smuggled out by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin. Most of the archives are accessible in person, but there are some on the internet pertaining to Active Measures: KGB Active Measures In Southwest Asia in 1980-82. A book was also co-written by Mr. Mitrokhin and a historian.
  

I read "The Jewish War" by Josephus and it was very interesting how the radicalization and terrorist acts of his day mirrors that of today. It was particularly interesting to see how fundamentalist jews brought upon themselves the destruction of their capital but also their countryside (lots of people died of course) by continually aggravating the moderate and quite accommodating Romans whom they had absolutely zero chance of winning against. For years the Romans endured various attacks but made no retribution against the Jews as a whole, favoring peaceful co-existence and making allowance for their religion until it came to the point that the Romans just had enough. Despite some voices among the jews saying that they must make peace, simply because they couldn't possibly win against the Romans, the rebellion proceeded. In their hubris the Jews celebrated victory and even as the Romans were winning against them they continued to believe that they had a chance to win until it became painfully evident to them that they were facing crushing defeat. The terrorists died horribly, along with civilians of all ages.

What I took away from it was that the main complaint that the radicals had was that the Romans dictated how their country was run, which they did to a large extent although the Jews had some freedom of decisions. This didn't mean the Jews were made to live bad lives in oppression, simply that they weren't their own masters, and apparently this was enough to really enrage some people. Also the Romans made use of their resources. But all in all, people lived and did business like people normally do and nothing was terrible, daily life was trotting along as it customarily does.

With that in mind, I don't think you can appease the muslim radicalists in any way, because they're enraged simply because the west has the upper hand. Ok fine, maybe the west shouldn't impose on their oil/resources, but in the end of the day the west isn't making their people starve, they seem to be good at arranging that for themselves. They have this belief that with the west gone they will be better off, but in reality they won't, because they will still have problems. I really don't think you can reason with them. They have an idealistic view of how great it would be if the west weren't there but it's not like their own governments are all rainbows and unicorns.

Or what do you think?

The I.R.A by Tim Pat Coogan is really good. It covers the history of the predecessors to the original IRA, the post Irish independence IRA, and the provisional IRA.

>‘A very sensible and fair-minded assessment of a uniquely controversial organization’

-The Times

>‘Remarkably comprehensive’

-Economist

Synopsis

An updated edition of this unique, bestselling history of the IRA, now including behind-the-scenes information on the recent advances made in the peace process. Tim Pat Coogan's classic The IRA provides the only fair-minded, comprehensive history of the organization that has transformed the Irish nationalist movement this century. With clarity and detachment, Coogan examines the IRA's origins, its foreign links, the bombing campaigns, hunger strikes and sectarian violence, and now their role in the latest attempt to bring peace to Northern Ireland. Meticulously researched, and backed up by interviews with past and present members of the organization, Tim Pat Coogan's book is an authoritative and compelling account of modern Irish history from the point of view of one of its most controversial major participants.

I'd recommend the Christopher Clark book 'Iron Kingdom' a history of Prussia from the 1600's to WW2 where he makes a pretty strong case that the whole 'Prussians=proto-nazi's' argument is a lazy generalization, showing for example how Prussia state ideology was the antithesis of National Socialism, and how anti-semitism was much stronger in Bavaria and Austria (where more High ranking Nazi's were found) Its just a good read for German history in general, specially on how such a tiny shitty region (the Brandenberg mark) was able to survive and become a major power.

Np. If you like this kind of stuff, you should look into the books by Bart Ehrman. He's a New Testament scholar that writes about this stuff in a very easy to understand way. Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted are the two books he became known for, and they have ruffled a lot of feathers, but his other books are very readable too.

It's mostly a problem in medical research. I can't explain it all how and why but a good introductory read is Ben Goldacre's book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0007350740/ref=nosim?tag=bs0b-21

You never retire from GRU.

There is a quite interesting autobiographical book, Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy, written by Viktor Suvorov, a GRU officer who defected in the '80s. If you have a chance, read it.

One reviewer wrote:

>In the opening pages of "Inside the Aquarium" the narrator, ex-Soviet agent Viktor Suvorov, describes his first memory as a member of Soviet Military Intelligence: watching a film of an execution of a would-be defector. The officer in question was strapped into a coffin with an open lid, elevated slightly so he could see what was coming, and then traversed slowly down a conveyor belt into a blast furnace, screaming all the way.

>

European weighing in is one of the main causes of their inefficient governance.

Rwanda is developing precisely because Kagame kicked out the European "good governance" consultants dangling aid money in front of them. At least in part because of that.

Africa must solve its own problems and European meddling needs to end. This causes nothing but dependency culture.

are you implying only the lives of citizens in NATO countries are worth caring about?

in case you've missed the lesson about America's crimes, you could check these links out :

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

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/

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

for some of America's internal problems, check out this good introduction http://www.amazon.ca/A-Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

> But we shouldn't consider ourselves, cityzens, unable to be well-informed and responsible enough to make smart choices.

There have been and currently are people who work to undermine the democratic process in ways that have never been possible before the information age. Just as an example, Cambridge Analytica has analyzed people's internet use to show them advertisements (read: propaganda) in order to direct them to different communities (online AND in real life) that would manipulate those people in just the way they are most susceptible into carrying out political action that would suit the benefactors of those communities. They have done this to millions of people. This is not just "stupid people voting against their own interest" anymore, based on your data, they can know you better than you know yourself and exploit any psychological weakness to convince you to work for their cause and they can do this en masse.

This is terrible for all democracy but especially for relatively smaller communities like California or Switzerland with strong direct democracies that have been designed for 20th century mass communication at the most, this is fucking terrifying and what is worse, this is just the beginning.

If you want to read more, you can check out the CA whistleblower's book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Development-as-Freedom-Amartya-Sen/dp/0192893300/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421402550&sr=1-1&keywords=development+as+freedom

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Globalization-Its-Discontents-Joseph-Stiglitz/dp/014101038X/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1ZRWJ8XME98XZNBDWXKF

http://www.amazon.co.uk/White-Mans-Burden-Efforts-Little/dp/0199226113/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421402498&sr=1-1&keywords=the+white+mans+burden

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Global-Economic-History-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0199596654/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421402576&sr=1-5&keywords=why+africa+is+poor

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Bottom-Billion-Poorest-Countries/dp/0195374630/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Tyranny-Experts-Economists-Dictators/dp/0465031250/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=17T4V9R8T66RAVY46VXY

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AFRICA-Africa-developing-needs-develop-ebook/dp/B00NF29XD0/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421402576&sr=1-3&keywords=why+africa+is+poor

That is bullshit. At least since the 1860s till the 1940s Germany was a scientific power house and was arguably one of the biggest science hubs in the world. I can recommend you a book about this topic.

It's called The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century by Peter Watson.

Actually that was exactly the reason. The German projections showed that the German army will be overtaken by France in the 20s. So the decided to take the chance given by the Austro-Hungarian overreaction and escalated the situation. Germany wanted that war because it was losing the peace.

Source: The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pity-War-Niall-Ferguson/dp/0140275231

Same article

>The German resistance consisted of small and usually isolated groups. They were unable to mobilize political opposition. Save for individual attacks on Nazis (including Hitler) or sabotage acts, the only real strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup against the regime: the 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup.

German Résistance sadly was political irrelevant, because Hitlers regime was never endangered by a considerable amount of opponents. This is particular true for the last months of the war, even-though it was already obvious that the war can't be won anymore. I recommend you to read [The End by Ian Kershaw] (https://www.amazon.de/End-Germany-1944-45-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0141014210/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493118993&sr=8-1&keywords=the+end+ian+kershaw)