#log

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camus #communism #czechoslovakia #david-szmulevski #east-germany

So the ideology was that: use sounds as instruments, as sounds on tape, without the causality. It was no longer a clarinet or a spring or a piano, but a sound with a form, a development, a life of its own. ↗

— Luc Ferrari

#clarinet #development #form #ideology #instruments

I've led a school whose faculty and students examine and discuss and debate every aspect of our law and legal system. And what I've learned most is that no one has a monopoly on truth or wisdom. I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other, across every apparent political or ideological divide. ↗

— Elena Kagan

#apparent #aspect #debate #discuss #divide

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs. ↗

— Herman Kahn

#budget #defense #defense budget #first #get

A total nuclear freeze is counterproductive - especially now, when technology is rapidly changing and the Soviets have some important strategic advantages. ↗

— Herman Kahn

#changing #counterproductive #especially #freeze #important

Because of new technologies, new wealth, new conditions of domestic life and of international relations, unprecedented criteria and issues are coming up for national decision. ↗

— Herman Kahn

#coming #conditions #criteria #decision #domestic

It's clear that policymakers and economists are going to be interested in the measurement of well-being primarily as it correlates with health; they also want to know whether researchers can validate subjective responses with physiological indices. ↗

— Daniel Kahneman

#clear #economists #going #health #interested

The idea that you can ask one question and it makes the point - well, that wasn't how psychology was done at the time. ↗

— Daniel Kahneman

#done #how #idea #makes #point

Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported? ↗

— Abdul Kalam

#everything #foreign #imported #legacy #nation

Twitter is so short, it's safe. I don't want my bosses to be like, 'Hey, your script is due and we saw you wrote four blog pages.' ↗

— Mindy Kaling

#bosses #due #four #hey #i