/8lounge/ - The "8" Lounge

>>4387

I would recommend The Magic Of Thinking Big or Psychocybernetics if you intend on staying the course of self-betterment.

Should be read back-to-back to understand what this Quixotic war on terror has done to us.

>Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War

>by James Risen

>Ever since 9/11 America has fought an endless war on terror, seeking enemies everywhere and never promising peace. In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany of the hidden costs of that war: from squandered and stolen dollars, to outrageous abuses of power, to wars on normalcy, decency, and truth. In the name of fighting terrorism, our government has done things every bit as shameful as its historic wartime abuses — and until this book, it has worked very hard to cover them up.

________

>Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare

>by Scott Horton

>Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country’s vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan. National security issues have increasingly faded from the political agenda, due in part to the growth of government secrecy.

>In lucid and chilling detail, journalist and lawyer Scott Horton shows how secrecy has changed the way America functions. Executive decisions about war and peace are increasingly made by autonomous, self-directing, and unaccountable national security elites. Secrecy is justified as part of a bargain under which the state promises to keep the people safe from its enemies, but in fact allows excesses, mistakes, and crimes to go unchecked. Bureaucracies use secrets to conceal their mistakes and advance their power in government, invariable at the expense of the rights of the people. Never before have the American people had so little information concerning the wars waged in their name, nor has Congress exercised so little oversight over the war effort. American democracy is in deep trouble.

>>2069

Got this for my birthday and making nice progress.

I like to listen to audiobooks while I do other things. I enjoy sitting down and reading a book, especially really dense stuff, but I find it to be a waste of time with modern technology enabling me to multitask.

I often find this limits my reading selection, many things do not come in audiobook format. Does anyone here have an excellent TTS program they might recommend that doesn't have an irksome voice, or another solution for my problem?

Pic related, something I want to listen to but I can't find an audiobook for.

Burgess, the author of "A Clockwork Orange", wrote this book as a personal response to Orwell's "1984". It comes in two parts, a nonfiction exploration of 1984 (including an analysis of the historical context in which it was written, an exploration of the nature of evil, and an interpretation [imho misguided] of the text as a satirical comedy.

The second part is a novella, set in an alternative world in which Orwell never published 1984. As a result, trade unionism and political correctness have overwhelmed Britain. Mass muslim immigration, and the sexualization of the naiive youth, pose an existential threat to the white race in general, and the British nation in particular.

While the "unionpocalypse" was averted by Maggie T. and her "drys" in the late '70s through the '80s; the themes of Islamic immigration, national self-hatred and pathological altruism were prescient in the extreme.

Criminally unknown and underappreciated book. Should sit on your shelf right next to "1984", "The Camp of The Saints" and John Tyndall's seminal "The Eleventh Hour".