artdiamondblog.com – Page 40 – Art Diamond's web log

Miracle Drugs Should Not Lead Us to Ignore Nutrition as a Driver of Health

(p. A15) More than 100 years after the miraculous discovery of insulin to treat diabetes, how are things going? More people are getting the disease. (Between 1959 and 2021, the number of Americans diagnosed with diabetes increased from 1.5 million to 29.7 million, according to federal government surveys.) Patients are doing worse. (Fewer than 1 in 5 Type 1 patients are achieving blood-sugar goals established by the American Diabetes Association.) Diabetes intensifies America’s economic and racial divide. (Type 2 diabetes disproportionately affects the poor, the undereducated and minorities.) And the epidemic is global. (According to the World Health Organization, diabetes is the ninth leading cause of death worldwide.)

If any disease needs to be rethought, it is surely diabetes, and that is the premise of Gary Taubes’s latest book.

. . .

The hero of “Rethinking Diabetes” is Dr. Richard Bernstein, an engineer-turned-doctor who also has Type 1. In the 1970s, he became the first person to use a home glucose meter; looking at his data, he realized that a low-carb diet minimized his glycemic swings. For the past 40 years, in his books, academic papers and other advocacy, he has been the leading low-carb evangelist for people with diabetes.

But Dr. Bernstein is also a controversial figure, and not just because his nutritional guidance defied the medical establishment. I interviewed Dr. Bernstein and wrote about him in 2007. He’s prone to hyperbole and absurdities, such as his claim that insulin-pump patients “all have complications.” More important, his low-carb diet is uncompromising, and his advice is not realistic for everyone. When I interviewed him, he hadn’t eaten an apple since the Nixon administration. Nonetheless, I believe that Dr. Bernstein’s insights about diet and diabetes—and Mr. Taubes’s central argument—are correct. Imperfectly, I follow Dr. Bernstein’s guidance, and I’m far healthier because of it.

Mr. Taubes’s larger point is that we have allowed pharmacological miracles in the treatment of diabetes, insulin being one of them, to supplant food and nutrition as the foundation of good health. He concurs with Dr. Arnoldo Cantani, a 19th-century Italian physician, who said that the remedy for diabetes “is not in the drugstore but in the kitchen.”

For the full review see:

James S. Hirsch. “BOOKSHELF; Beyond Insulin.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Jan. 8, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 7, 2024, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘Rethinking Diabetes’ Review: Beyond Insulin.”)

The book under review is:

Taubes, Gary. Rethinking Diabetes: What Science Reveals About Diet, Insulin, and Successful Treatments. New York: Knopf, 2024.

Cleaning Pigeon Poop Off Their Antenna to Rule Out a Cause of Static

(p. B11) Arno A. Penzias, whose astronomical probes yielded incontrovertible evidence of a dynamic, evolving universe with a clear point of origin, confirming what became known as the Big Bang theory, died on Monday [January 22, 2024] in San Francisco.

. . .

In 1964, while preparing the antenna to measure the properties of the Milky Way galaxy, Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson, another young radio astronomer who was new to Bell Labs, encountered a persistent, unexplained hiss of radio waves that seemed to come from everywhere in the sky, detected no matter which way the antenna was pointed. Perplexed, they considered various sources of the noise. They thought they might be picking up radar, or noise from New York City, or radiation from a nuclear explosion. Or might pigeon droppings be the culprit?

Examining the antenna, Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson “subjected its electric circuits to scrutiny comparable to that used in preparing a manned spacecraft,” Walter Sullivan wrote in The New York Times in 1965. Yet the mysterious hiss remained.

The cosmological underpinnings of the noise were finally explained with help from physicists at Princeton University, who had predicted that there might be radiation coming from all directions left over from the Big Bang. The buzzing, it turned out, was just that: a cosmic echo. It confirmed that the universe wasn’t infinitely old and static but rather had begun as a primordial fireball that left the universe bathed in background radiation.

. . .

. . . Dr. Penzias’s path to stumbling onto the answer to one of humanity’s most central questions started . . ., when he joined Bell Laboratories as a member of its radio research group in Holmdel.

There, he saw the potential of AT&T’s new satellite communications antenna, a giant radio telescope known as the Holmdel Horn, as a tool for cosmological observation. In teaming up with Dr. Wilson in 1964 to use the antenna, Dr. Wilson said in a recent interview, one of their goals was to advance the nascent field of radio astronomy by accurately measuring several bright celestial sources.

Soon after they started their measurements, however, they heard the hiss. They spent months ruling out possible causes, including pigeons.

“The pigeons would go and roost at the small end of the horn, and they deposited what Arno called a white dielectric material,” Dr. Wilson said. “And we didn’t know if the pigeon poop might have produced some radiation.” So the men climbed up and cleaned it out. The noise persisted.

It was finally Dr. Penzias’s fondness for chatting on the telephone that led to a fortuitous breakthrough. (“It was a good thing he worked for the phone company, because he liked to use their instrument,” Dr. Wilson said. “He talked to a lot of people.”)

In January 1965, Dr. Penzias dialed Bernard Burke, a fellow radio astronomer, and in the course of their conversation he mentioned the puzzling hiss. Dr. Burke suggested that Dr. Penzias call a physicist at Princeton who had been trying to prove that the Big Bang had left traces of cosmological radiation. He did.

Intrigued, scientists from Princeton visited Dr. Penzias and Dr. Wilson, and together they made the connection to the Big Bang. Theory and observation were then brought together in a pair of papers published in 1965.

For the full obituary, see:

Katie Hafner. “Arno A. Penzias Is Dead at 90; Confirmed the Big Bang Theory.” The New York Times (Thursday, January 25, 2024): B11.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Jan. 22, 2024, and has the title “Arno A. Penzias, 90, Dies; Nobel Physicist Confirmed Big Bang Theory.”)

Communist Dictators Tremble When Their Subjects Lose Their Fear

(p. 13) It all began with a beauty pageant. There were multiple outfit changes, from evening gowns to bathing suits to national costumes. There were behind-the-scenes looks at the contestants’ lives. There were question-and-answer periods. And by the end of the 2023 Miss Universe competition last month, Sheynnis Palacios of Nicaragua emerged victorious.

People celebrated in Nicaragua’s streets, singing the national anthem and waving the country’s blue and white flag. It was the first time a contestant from the Central American nation of nearly seven million people had claimed the Miss Universe crown.

“It was as if someone had won the World Cup,” said Gioconda Belli, a well-known Nicaraguan poet and novelist.

Then came the government crackdown.

In what has felt like a script from a television drama, the authoritarian government claimed that the director of the Miss Nicaragua contest, which had chosen Ms. Palacios to represent the country at the global competition, was part of an “anti-patriotic conspiracy” to overthrow President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo.

. . .

“Ortega has a problem,” said Arturo McFields Yescas, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the Organization of American States who resigned and denounced the Ortegas last year.

“What he can’t control, he robs or destroys,’’ he said. “The baseball or boxing champions, for example, have to pay tribute to the regime. If they don’t, they become targets. Sheynnis has something — she came from the bottom, she doesn’t owe anything to the dictatorship — and that makes her someone dangerous.”

Ms. Palacios, who grew up roughly an hour south of Managua, the capital, was raised by a single mother. While at college — which was closed by the Ortega government this year — she helped her mother make buñuelos, fried dough treats, to sell to help pay for school.

The day after Ms. Palacios won Miss Universe, the Nicaraguan government said the country was celebrating “its queen” with “legitimate pride and joy.”

But the authorities shifted their tone soon after large numbers of people took to the streets, waving the Nicaraguan flag. Public demonstrations are effectively prohibited and the government promotes the red and black Sandinista flag over the blue and white national one.

“People lost the fear,” Mr. McFields said, “and that’s the part that scared the dictatorship the most.”

For the full story, see:

James Wagner. “Once She Won Crown, Nicaragua Saw Her as a Threat.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, December 17, 2023): 13.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 16, 2023, and has the title “She Was Crowned Miss Universe. Then Her Government Cracked Down.” The online version says that the title of the print version is “Nicaragua Sees a Threat Behind a Beauty Pageant” but my national edition of the print version had the title “Once She Won Crown, Nicaragua Saw Her as a Threat.”)

Reagan’s “Dogged Support for Human Rights” Helped Advance Freedom and Peace

(p. C7) Reagan’s confidence that the Cold War could be won made him unusual. At the time, both Republicans and Democrats believed that America was in decline. Communism was on the march in Afghanistan, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Then, in 1980, President Jimmy Carter seemed hapless and ineffectual after he failed to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. The CIA mistakenly believed that the Soviet economy was growing. The policies of arms control and détente —or direct negotiations—were ascendant.

William Inboden’s masterly diplomatic history “The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink” reveals the qualities that made Reagan an extraordinary president who established the conditions for the collapse of Soviet communism. . . .

At almost every juncture, Reagan rejected the advice of former president Richard Nixon, whose realist worldview privileged China over Japan, geopolitics over economics, equilibrium over victory, and stability over human rights. Reagan envisioned a future where high technology, a universal commitment to freedom and dignity, and a willingness to risk confrontation with the enemy resulted in a global democratic revolution and the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

. . .

Reagan’s horror of nuclear war led him to envision a world where nuclear weapons would be obsolete. Woven into Mr. Inboden’s story are the many times that Reagan saw the potential for nuclear catastrophe. In 1979 the commander of the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD, told him that the U.S. had no defense against a Soviet missile strike. In 1981 he took a flight on a special Air Force One called the “Doomsday Plane” that had been made to withstand nuclear fallout. In 1982 he became the first president to participate in a continuity-of-government exercise, codenamed “Ivy League.” Reagan watched helplessly as a simulated nuclear exchange destroyed his beloved country.

The following spring Reagan proposed the development of technology that could intercept nuclear missiles before they hit their targets. Both his secretaries of defense and state were against his plans for a Strategic Defense Initiative. They were not alone. The many critics of Reagan’s antiballistic missile shield followed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in calling it “Star Wars.”

Scientists said SDI wouldn’t work. Arms controllers said it would increase the chances of nuclear escalation. None of them understood that Reagan had redefined the arms race to America’s advantage. “It put the Soviets on the defensive,” writes Mr. Inboden, “fueling the Kremlin’s perennial fear of America’s technological prowess.”

. . .

Reagan’s opponents said that his dogged support for human rights and missile defense was both counterproductive and a distraction from good relations with the Soviets. Rather than conform to the accepted interpretation of reality, he sought to establish new facts on the ground that favored the expansion of freedom.

For the full review, see:

Matthew Continetti. “We Win and They Lose.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022): C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 25, 2022, and has the title “‘The Peacemaker’ Review: Ronald Reagan’s Cold War.”)

The book under review is:

Inboden, William. The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink. New York: Dutton, 2022.

Nazis Allowed Charitable Feeding of Enslaved Camp Inmates, to Increase Their Productivity

(p. A13) The remarkable story of Janina Mehlberg almost didn’t see the light of day. A Holocaust survivor and a mathematics professor in Chicago, Mehlberg stood out for making her way in an academic field dominated by men. But while teaching her students and giving conference papers, she was privately writing an account of her life’s most remarkable episode: her daring impersonation of a Polish aristocrat in World War II, a deception that allowed her to aid Poles who had been imprisoned by the Nazis.

. . .

The Majdanek camp held Polish prisoners forced into slave labor, Russian prisoners of war, and Jews who would be murdered either by being shot at close range or poisoned by gas. . . . As “the Countess,” Mehlberg served as the head of the Polish Main Welfare Council, visiting the camp regularly. The haughty, demanding countess negotiated ways to bring soup, bread, medicine—and hope—to a great many Polish prisoners. Betraying little emotion, this hidden Jew became a sort of patron saint by appearing again and again to witness their suffering and alleviate it as best she could. “Janina’s story is unique,” the authors assert. “She was a Jew who rescued non-Jews in the midst of the largest murder operation of the Holocaust.”

“The Counterfeit Countess,” too, is unsentimental. The writing is matter of fact; the authors include data about the numbers of meals served, the details of negotiations with Nazi officers, the changes in camp conditions as the war unfolded. Mehlberg recognized that the Germans were making trade-offs within their sick paradigm of racial superiority. Would it be more efficient to murder Poles or starve them while they worked? She persuaded Nazi higher-ups to let her organization provide thousands of tons of food to prisoners so that they could do the work that would feed the Nazi war machine. German commanders decided it served their interests to allow “the Countess” to continue providing food and medicine to enslaved workers.

For the full review see:

Michael S. Roth. “BOOKSHELF; Fake Title, Real Courage.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Jan. 25, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 24, 2023, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘The Counterfeit Countess’ Review: Fake Title, Real Courage.”)

The book under review is:

White, Elizabeth B., and Joanna Sliwa. The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024.

Biologists Surprised That Marine Animals Are “Having a Blast” in “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”

(p. A3) Biologists who fished toothbrushes, rope and broken bottle shards from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch found them studded with gooseneck barnacles and jet-black sea anemones glistening like buttons. All told, they found 484 marine invertebrates from 46 species clinging to the detritus, they reported Monday [April 17, 2023] in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

. . .

Marine ecologists said they would expect most coastal species to struggle to survive outside their shoreline habitats. On the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, animals were found growing and reproducing.

“They’re having a blast,” said study author Matthias Egger, head of environmental and social affairs at the Dutch nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup. “That’s really a shift in the scientific understanding.”

Anemones like to protect themselves with grains of sand, Dr. Egger said, but out in the garbage patch they are covered in seed-like microplastics. Squeeze an anemone and the shards spew out, he said: “They’re all fully loaded with plastic on the outside and inside.”

. . .

The patch is also a haven for animals that are at home on the open ocean. Such species—sea snails, blue button jellyfish, and a relative called by-the-wind sailors—gather more densely where there is more plastic, Dr. Helm and her team said in a study posted online ahead of peer-review.

Removing the plastic would mean uprooting them, Dr. Helm said: “Cleaning it up is not actually that simple.”

For the full story, see:

Nidhi Subbaraman. “Ocean Garbage Patch Hosts Critters.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Apr. 18, 2023): A3.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 17, 2023, and has the title “Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Is Bursting With Life.” The 7th, 8th, and 9th sentences quoted above, appear in the online, but not in the print, version of the commentary. Also, the online version of the sentence on being able to handle switching, contains seven added words of detail.)

The published version of the “posted online” article mentioned above is:

Haram, Linsey E., James T. Carlton, Luca Centurioni, Henry Choong, Brendan Cornwell, Mary Crowley, Matthias Egger, Jan Hafner, Verena Hormann, Laurent Lebreton, Nikolai Maximenko, Megan McCuller, Cathryn Murray, Jenny Par, Andrey Shcherbina, Cynthia Wright, and Gregory M. Ruiz. “Extent and Reproduction of Coastal Species on Plastic Debris in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 7, no. 5 (April 17, 2023): 687-97.

Hamas Murdered Israeli Peace Activist at Music Festival

(p. A8) Maya Mizrachi grimaced at the group of eight Israelis calling for peace with Palestinians in front of Israel’s military headquarters this month in Tel Aviv.

A year ago, Ms. Mizrachi, 25, had protested alongside them, carrying a sign that called for Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank. Now, she had bumped into them by accident, on her way home from a nearby rally calling for the return of Israeli citizens held hostage in the Gaza Strip.

“I don’t think there are more than eight people in all of Israel who would protest against the army right now,” said Ms. Mizrachi, who is a student. “I can’t even bring myself to do it.”

. . .

According to polls conducted in the two months since Oct. 7 [2023], Israelis have moved decidedly to the right on a number of political issues, including support for settlers in the West Bank, endorsements for far-right politicians, and even the re-establishment of a military occupation of Gaza.

“The trauma of what happened on Oct. 7 shifted Israeli society. It made them question the most basic tenets of whether they were safe in their homes,” said Tal Schneider, a political columnist for The Times of Israel. “They are calling now for more — more military, more protection, more hard-line policies.”

. . .

The towns and agricultural communities that line Israel’s border with Gaza were once bastions of the left. Many villages there were founded as kibbutzim, socialist agricultural communities. Over the years, many residents used their proximity to the Palestinians in Gaza to help deliver aid and run solidarity campaigns.

On Oct. 7, the closeness of those communities to the border made them vulnerable to the attack by Hamas terrorists. Well-known peace activists, including Vivian Silver, a founder of Women Wage Peace, were among those killed. The attack made the survivors rethink policies they had previously championed.

Before Oct. 7, Larry Butler, 73, a resident of Nir Oz, considered himself a leftist. As a member of Peace Now, he participated in rallies calling for the evacuation of Israeli settlements in Gaza, which were disassembled in 2005.

Now, displaced in a hotel in Eilat, a resort town on the Red Sea, Mr. Butler has questioned his beliefs. “I guess I’m somewhere in the middle,” he said, “but I’m definitely not left and I’m definitely not right.”

In Tel Aviv, Ms. Mizrachi’s turn against the left came soon after Oct. 7, when she discovered that a high school friend was among those killed at the Tribe of Nova music festival.

“The irony is that she was the biggest peace activist I knew,” Ms. Mizrachi said. “She was the one who got me involved in the movement to begin with,” she added. “I used to joke that she made me a leftie. Now I can’t say that I am.”

For the full story, see:

Sheera Frenkel. “After the Oct. 7 Attacks, Israelis Are Becoming More Politically Conservative.” The New York Times (Wednesday, December 20, 2023): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 19, 2023, and has the title “Israelis Abandon Political Left Over Security Concerns After Oct. 7.”)

Britain’s Socialized National Health Service (NHS) Stripped Parents of Control, Leaving Indi No Choice but to Die

(p. A13) Indi was born with mitochondrial disease, a degenerative condition that prevents cells from producing energy. When her parents and the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, England, disagreed over whether she should be kept on life support, the NHS turned to the courts to strip the parents of decision-making authority. The U.K. High Court agreed, overrode the parents’ wishes, and ordered life support removed.

. . .

While the NHS thought continued treatment would be futile, other experts disagreed, including at the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital. As part of its religious mission, Bambino Gesù specializes in treating children with rare diseases. Doctors there offered a treatment plan they thought could help Indi, free of charge. The Italian government even made her a citizen so that she could be airlifted from England.

. . .

For the U.K., the offer of free treatment by willing doctors ought to have been the end of the story. The government didn’t have to pay another penny. The grateful parents simply wanted the freedom to take their daughter to the experts in Rome.

Instead, the NHS went back to the same court and judge to insist it remained in Indi’s best interests to die in the U.K. The court again agreed and overrode the parents’ desire to take Indi to see the experts in Rome. The judge ordered that they could take her only to one place: to the hospice to die.

The parents had no choice but to comply. Lest they try anything else to save their daughter, the parents were sent to hospice with a security escort and police presence.

Deprived of treatment and with her parents forbidden to help her, Indi died within two days, under the watchful eye of the government that said all along it was looking out for her best interests.

For the full commentary, see:

Mark Rienzi. “Britain’s NHS Left Indi Gregory to Die.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2023): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 20, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

“The Aggressions of Brutes and Incompetents Brandishing Governmental Authority”

(p. C7) The story of David Koresh and the siege of the Branch Davidians’ compound near Waco, Texas, is by turns gripping, harrowing and nauseating. The initial raid of the compound, called Mount Carmel by its residents, resulted in the deaths of six Davidians—two of them finished off by a fellow cultist after they were badly wounded—and four federal agents. After a 51-day standoff, the FBI tried to flush out Koresh and 85 remaining Davidians with tear gas. The compound, built haphazardly of plywood, caught fire. A government report later claimed that the fire had been set deliberately, though the few Davidians who fled in the final assault deny this. Seventy-six people died in the conflagration, some with bullet holes in their skulls. The dead included 25 children and two pregnant women.

The initial raid, conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, occurred on Feb. 28, 1993. Two accounts of the event—Jeff Guinn’s “Waco” and Kevin Cook’s “Waco Rising”—mark the 30th year since the catastrophe. Another book, “Koresh” by Stephan Talty, will appear in April from HarperCollins to memorialize the standoff’s fiery conclusion on April 19, 1993.

All three books are impressively researched and written with storytelling verve. Each account, though relating the same sad tale, is distinctive. Mr. Guinn has interviewed an array of ATF and FBI officials. Mr. Cook tells the story mostly from the Davidians’ viewpoint. And Mr. Talty delves the deepest into the history and twisted personality of David Koresh.

. . .

. . . the ATF and the FBI—and by extension Attorney General Janet Reno and the Clinton administration—managed to make the word “Waco” a symbol of governmental violence and persecution.

. . .

(p. C8) The details of what happened when the agents arrived can’t be fully known, but we know that Koresh came out, unarmed, to meet the ATF contingent and asked to speak. Rather than arresting him as ordinary police officers might have done, the agents stormed the place with shouts of “Search warrant! Lay down!” The first shots appear to have come from the raiders: They shot the dogs, Alaskan Malamutes, penned outside the compound.

The Davidians had vague expectations of apocalyptic violence from Babylon—their term, drawn from the Book of Revelation, for the outside world. Evidently some drew the not unreasonable conclusion that the time had come. Hearing shots fired, they shot back. So began an hours-long chaotic gunfight that left 10 dead and scores wounded.

. . .

Agents outside the compound shouted curses at the Davidians and mooned them—a fine enticement to come out. ATF deputy director Daniel Hartnett led Reno to believe, wrongly, that the Davidians were heavily invested in illegal narcotics. FBI officials convinced her, based on the slenderest evidence, that Koresh and others were “beating babies” inside the compound. That the U.S. attorney general bought this unlikely story, and indeed relied on it in approving the FBI’s half-baked tear-gas-raid proposal, is among the rankest instances of ineptitude in the whole shameful episode.

When at last the FBI penetrated into the compound with tanks—all the while announcing over a loudspeaker, “This is not an assault”—agents fired “ferret rounds,” plastic tear-gas canisters, into the compound. The vast majority of Davidians would not leave, even when the fires ignited. The FBI called for assistance from the fire department, but bureau agents had long since cut off the flow of water to Mount Carmel; restoring it would probably take hours. When fire engines arrived at a checkpoint half a mile from the compound, the FBI official in charge directed the checkpoint agents to “keep them there.”

Did the ferret rounds start the fire? The government classified these devices as “nonflammable” and alleged, with inconclusive evidence, that the Davidians started the fire. Both Mr. Cook and Mr. Guinn note significant evidence that ferret rounds are often combustible. In 1999, the Dallas Morning News revealed that “pyrotechnic” ferret rounds, specifically designed to combust, had been used hours before the fires began—a fact that several government lawyers and an FBI agent omitted to disclose in 1993. A government report released in 1999 concluded that those rounds didn’t cause the fire, but the details were far too murky to change anyone’s mind.

. . .

The opinion makers of America’s media and political class frequently bemoan the existence of antigovernment radicals and right-wing conspiracy theorists as if such people are motivated exclusively by irrationality and delusion. But although Mr. Jones and a thousand other paranoid fulminators may be tragically wrong about many things, their anxieties often stem from the aggressions of brutes and incompetents brandishing governmental authority.

For the full review of three books see:

Barton Swaim. “Agents of Armageddon.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 28, 2023): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 27, 2023, and has the title “Three Books on the Siege at Waco.”)

The three books under review are:

Cook, Kevin. Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America’s Modern Militias. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2023.

Guinn, Jeff. Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023.

Talty, Stephan. Koresh: The True Story of David Koresh and the Tragedy at Waco. New York: Mariner Books, 2023.

Zuckerberg Praises Musk for Not Being Too Shy to Reduce Staff at X

(p. R3) At the beginning of the year, many were quick with predictions of X’s demise, in part because of the dramatic staff cuts made by Musk.

. . .

Perhaps the biggest impact of Musk’s staff reductions was provoking a broader conversation about staffing needs and overall productivity throughout Silicon Valley.

Even rival Mark Zuckerberg praised Musk for removing layers of management. “I also think that it was probably good for the industry that he made those changes because my sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that those were good changes but who may have been a little shy about doing them,” the Facebook co-founder said.

For the full commentary, see:

Tim Higgins. “Elon Musk as Technoking? More Like DramaKing.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Dec. 18, 2023): R3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date December 16, 2023, and has the title “In the Year of a DramaKing: Elon Musk.”)

“Sí Se Puede”

(p. 21) A center-right candidate appeared headed to victory in Venezuela on Monday in a primary election to choose an opposition candidate to compete in presidential elections next year — a vote that could prove pivotal to the fate of a country that has endured a decade of economic crisis and authoritarian governance.

. . .

At a polling station in a parking lot in Catia, a poor neighborhood in Caracas, voters began lining up at 7 a.m. only to encounter a problem: a group of pro-government civilians was threatening to burn the cars in the parking lot if voting proceeded.

But a woman who lived nearby, Margarita Fuenmayor, offered a solution: She would lend her house as a makeshift voting station.

“My parents died without medical attention in this country,” said Ms. Fuenmayor, 52, as a crowd of voters pushed and shoved to try to enter her home. “I think we need a change.”

All the while the line of voters outside grew. As voters left, they shouted “Sí se puede” or “Yes we can.’’

In another Caracas neighborhood, tables ordered by election volunteers never arrived. Instead the workers set voting boxes on chairs that neighbors had brought out from their houses. Hundreds of people stood in line, holding umbrellas against the rain.

Jesús Abreu, 68, voted and then stayed on as a volunteer. He said he lived on a pension of about $3.70 a month.

“I am here today because we are agonizing in life,’’ he said. “The government is slowly killing us.”

Ms. Machado is a veteran politician nicknamed “the iron lady” because of her adversarial relationship with the governments of Mr. Maduro and Mr. Chávez. She is viewed by some supporters as courageous for staying in Venezuela when many other politicians have fled political persecution.

. . .

“I ask you to remember how many people believed that this was impossible and we have overcome all the obstacles, overcome the hurdles and here we are,” Ms. Machado said as she voted Sunday morning in a middle-class Caracas neighborhood.”