Category: Economics
“Among the Allied military, the better-smelling fleshpots of Cairo and Alexandria were not the exclusive preserve of headquarters staff. A field officer taking a well-earned break from the desert could share facilities with ‘the gabardene swine’ of GHQ, as many front-line soldiers called them, and, if so inclined, pick up one of the attractive Nicoles and Babettes—Frenchified daughters of the Greek, Armenian, Jewish or Coptic middle classes—who, for the price of a meal, a few drinks and a box of chocolates, were often willing to offer the lonely warrior an hour or two of sweet consolation. For Other Ranks, the attractions offered by Cairo were more basic. The rancid bars, live shows and urine-and-carbolic-reeking brothels of the Wagh el Birket red light district did a roaring trade, as did the official VD Centres that were set up by GHQ to ensure that pox and clap did not produce more casualties than enemy fire.” – John Bierman and Colin Smith, The Battle of Alamein
“Prime Minister to Minister of Agriculture, September 26, 1940: ‘I am far from satisfied at the proposal to reduce pigs to one-third of their present number by the middle of the autumn. This is certainly not what was understood by the Cabinet. . . . Meanwhile, what arrangements are you making for curing the surplus bacon that will come upon the market through the massacre of pigs?’ “ – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour
“We don’t think backgrounds mean anything. We don’t want to think that who your parents are should control your chances for success in life, but they do.” – Eric Asimov (interview by Meara Sharma in Guernica)
“Over 1,500 factories had been evacuated from the western regions of the Soviet Union to behind the Volga, particularly the Urals, and reassembled by armies of technicians slaving through the winter. Few factories had any heating. Many had no windows at first, or proper roofing. Once the production lines started, they never stopped, unless halted by breakdowns, power failures, or shortages of particular parts. Manpower posed less of a problem. The Soviet authorities simply drafted in new populations of workers. Soviet bureaucracy wasted the time and talents of its civilian people, and squandered their lives in industrial accidents, with as much indifference for the individual as military planners showed towards their soldiers, yet the collective sacrifice—both forced and willing at the same time—represented a terrifyingly impressive achievement.” – Antony Beevor, Stalingrad
“Although shelter was the first priority, civilians faced the virtual impossibility of finding food and water. Each time there was a lull in the bombardments, women and children appeared out of holes in the ground to cut slabs of meat off dead horses before homeless dogs and rats stripped the carcass. The chief foragers were children. Younger, smaller and more agile, they presented less of a target. They sneaked down at night to the badly burned grain elevator south of the Tsaritsa, which the Germans had finally captured. There, they often managed to fill bags of satchels with scorched wheat and scamper away, but German sentries, protecting the silos for their own army’s use, shot a number of them. Those who attempted to steal German Army ration tins were also shot on the spot.” – Antony Beevor, Stalingrad
“The Great Patriotic War, with its devastation and suffering, colored the strategic thinking of an entire generation of Soviet leaders. Postwar Soviet governments created an elaborate system of buffer and client states, designed to not only expand Soviet influence, but to insulate the Soviet Union from attack. Although the Warsaw Pact countries contributed to Soviet defense and to the Soviet economy, their rebellious populations were a recurring threat to the regime’s sense of security. Outposts such as Cuba and Vietnam might appear to be useful gambits in the Cold War struggle with the West, but these outposts represented further drains on the Soviet economy. In the long run, the Soviet government probably lost as much as it gained from the buffer and client states. In retrospect, therefore, the determination to preserve the fruits of victory and preclude future attacks was a dangerous burden for the Moscow government. This determination, accompanied by huge military spending and ill-conceived foreign commitments, was a permanent handicap that helped doom the Soviet economy and with it, the Soviet state.” – David M. Glantz, Slaughterhouse
“Safe wiring is not something to be learned after the fire trucks have left.” – ray2047, Forum Topic Moderator, “Extension cords – why do they need to be unplugged after each use?”
“We don’t force bankruptcy debtors to give up every asset they own in order to get a bankruptcy discharge, recognizing that people need means to live after bankruptcy and need some way to get back on their feet. There is no societal benefit (in fact there is a great cost) in making people homeless or taking all of their clothes.” – Nathalie Martin and Ocean Tama, Inside Bankruptcy Law
“We do not allow people to file for bankruptcy and discharge most of their debts to be nice. The philosophy is that relieving people of their debts allows them to get back into and contribute to the economy once again. This is considered good for our overall economy, though this theory is not without some controversy.” – Nathalie Martin and Ocean Tama, Inside Bankruptcy Law
“You can do anything if you’re not in a hurry.” – Fani Papageorgiou, “Bergmann’s Rule”
“Technology equals Globalization equals Empire, isn’t that the way the equation goes? Everyone on the same page at the same time is the progressive dream of many, but it is not mine.” – Mary Ruefle (interview by Bradley Harrison in Denver Quarterly)
“anyone with
sense wants
madness to end wants
Canada to invade the
United States of
the Americas
bring us to our knees
dissolve our military
imprison our leaders
distribute our wealth
insist we live in peace”
– Caconrad, “the nerve for honey must prevail”
“In the end, it all comes down to thirst.” – Sharon Dolin, “Istanbul Diary”
“Some of the marble from the Great Temple of Artemis built the Blue Mosque, some St. John’s Basilica. From the walls of Allah to the walls of Jesus: the goddess.” – Sharon Dolin, “Istanbul Diary”
“Determined to make an example of the capital that would bring the war to an end, the Japanese achieved a climax to the carnage already wrought in the delta below. Fifty thousand soldiers hacked, burned, bayoneted, raped and murdered until they had killed, by hand, according to the evidence witnessed and collected by missionaries and other foreigners of the International Relief Committee, a total of 42,000 civilians in Nanking. Groups of men and women were lined up and machine-gunned or used alive for bayonet practice or tied up, doused with kerosene and set afire while officers looked on. Reports by missionary doctors and other dazed with horror and helplessness filled church publications in America. Much of the photographic evidence that later reached newspapers abroad came from snapshots taken by the Japanese themselves which they gave for developing to ordinary camera shops in Shanghai, whence copies made their way to the correspondents. In the Yangtze delta whole towns were devastated with acres of houses left in smoldering ruins or in rubble from bombing. In deserted streets the only living creatures were dogs unnaturally fattened by feasting on corpses or a few starving humans wandering like ghosts among the debris. The population that survived disappeared from the area in a mass migration. Rice crops rotted in the fields. Along the roads past blackened ruins and burned-out farms, Japanese troops moved, driving stolen donkeys and water buffaloes, artillery wagons tied with pigs and chickens, and carts loaded with loot pulled by peasants lashed between the shafts.” – Barbara Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China
“Familiar with the plight of the Chinese peasant and unfamiliar with Marxism, Stillwell regarded the Communists as a local phenomenon and a natural outcome of oppression. ‘Carrying their burdens of famine and drought, heavy rent and interest, squeezed by middlemen, absentee landlordism,’ he wrote of the farmers, ‘naturally they agitated for a readjustment of land ownership and this made them communists—at least that is the label put on them. Their leaders adopted the methods and slogans of communism but what they were really after was land ownership under reasonable conditions. It is not in the nature of Chinese to be communists.’ “ – Barbara Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China
“[Stillwell] had been struck by the Taoist motto on the virtues on inaction which he had copied down from an example in the Great Audience Hall of the Forbidden City. Only the first two characters for Wu Wei, or ‘Do nothing,’ were given there, leaving the Chinese viewer to add mentally, ‘and all things will be done.’ Deciding that ‘Do nothing’ exemplified the Chinese character, Stillwell concluded, ‘They are constitutionally averse to influencing events.’ Though there were increasing exceptions to this proposition, his finding represented a fact of life in the Orient that made for infinite impatience among Westerners, as Kipling noted when he wrote the epitaph, ‘A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.’ By contrast, Europeans and their American descendants had been driven by the impulse to change the unsatisfactory, to act, to move away from oppression, to find the frontier, to cross the sea. They were optimists who believed in the efficacy of action. The people of China, on the other hand, had stayed in one place, enclosed by a series of walls, around house and village or city. Tied to the soil, living under the authority of the family, growing their food among the graves of their ancestors, they were perpetuators of a system in which harmony was more important than struggle.” – Barbara Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China
“Dislike or outright hatred of insurance companies is not a recent phenomenon. In may ways, this industry could qualify as the business most people love to hate. Statutes governing the insurance industry have existed since the 1800s, but the second half of the twentieth century saw the largest growth in insurance legislation. Much of the early insurance regulation was a direct response to outright corruption on the part of some insurance companies. For instance, a company might collect life insurance premium payments from an insured for years and then refuse to pay when she dies, leaving her spouse and children in financial straits. Part of this resentment of insurance companies was based on the perception that these large, faceless corporations cared more for profits than their responsibilities to their insured customers. One could argue that this sentiment is still prevalent.” – Neal R. Bevans, Tort Law for Paralegals
“All living generations are responsible for what we do and all dead ones as well.” – Joseph Stillwell (as quoted by Barbara Tuchman in Stillwell and the American Experience in China)
“A home mortgage is the most common example of secured debt in our society, but practically any valuable possession can secure a loan. We really do mean anything, tangible or intangible—a car, a collection of tattered law books, a debt that a third party owes to the borrower, the borrower’s rights under an esoteric contract (such as a musician’s right to receive royalties from a song each time it gets downloaded to an iPod), or a plaintiff’s rights to collect money from a lawsuit. Even a tenant’s interest in a lease or a farmer’s grazing rights on land can be pledged as collateral for a loan. Once you learn the legal power that a lender gets from having collateral, you’ll wonder why lenders ever loan money without taking a security interest.” – Nathalie Martin and Ocean Tama, Inside Bankruptcy Law (emphasis in original)
“To succeed we must go fast and to go fast we must go where the going is good.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle
“I am guilty of the most serious crimes you can be guilty of in America: I was born poor and black” – Ralph Poynter (as quoted by Jean Stevens in “In Defense Of”)
“The original judicial approach [to products liability law] had favored the corporation under the theory that fledgling manufacturers needed time and resources to develop their products. The theory was that this ‘breathing space’ would help the United States develop economically, and this increase in overall economic health would essentially work its way down to every member of society. In practice, exactly the opposite occurred. The manufacturers and corporations, like spoiled children, indulged themselves and failed to apply their profits toward improved safety and better design of products. In an environment in which profits are the only yardstick, all other considerations, even those concerning injuries to consumers, take a back seat.” – Neal R. Bevans, Tort Law for Paralegals
“The rescue doctrine is a rule of law holding that one who sees a person in imminent danger caused by the negligence of another cannot be charged with contributory negligence in a non-reckless attempt to rescue the imperiled person. The doctrine was developed to encourage rescue and to correct the harsh inequity of barring relief under principles of contributory negligence to a person who is injured in a rescue attempt which the injured person was under no duty to undertake.” – Justice Murray, Ouellette v. Carde
“In the end, for military people, it’s the family that makes a lot of the sacrifices. They are intrinsic to military members being successful.” Admiral Michelle Howard, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, United States Navy
“Regardless of the occasional exception, the fact remains that planless action is an open invitation to disaster.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle
“Texas common law is fundamentally premised on individuals’ responsibility for their own actions.” – Justice G. Alan Waldrop, Carter v. Abbyad
“Even if information be lacking, the leader must produce decisions. In most cases a poor decision will be better than no decision at all. Negligence and hesitation are more serious faults than errors in choice of means. No rule can tell us how to time decisions correctly.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle
“At law, an ‘accident’ refers to some event that did not involve human fault. When a bolt of lightning strikes a house, that is an accident. When a car rolls down a hill because the parking brake was not set and the car hits a pedestrian, that is not an accident; that is negligence.” – Neal R. Bevans, Tort Law for Paralegals
“As a general rule, it is not duress to threaten to do what one has a legal right to do. Nor is it duress to threaten to take any measure authorized by law and the circumstances of the case.” – Judge McCord, Spillers v. Five Points Guaranty Bank