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Pastimes : Book Nook -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (254)	5/7/2001 7:25:37 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 443

Do you ever use Amazon.com? Once you sign in, there is some kind of software that keeps track of what you look at on the site, and makes recommendations. I sort of wandered off looking at conspiracy theory books, by which I mean books written by conspiracy theorists, and then Amazon showed me a slew of books written about conspiracy theory as a concept, basically why are these guys so nutty? My husband, who seems to be perfectly sane - well, mostly sane, he married me - used to belong to the John Birch Society when he was a teenager - he really hates it when I tell people that. I think there's an element of truth to the fear that some aspects of international commerce and cooperation are antithetical to our concept of sovereignty - e.g., US troops fighting for the UN wearing UN uniforms and taking orders from non-US commanders is exactly the type of thing the John Birch Society used to warn us about, and we thought they were nutty then. Similar type of thing to reading party platforms for the Socialists and even the Communists back in the 20's and 30's and realizing pretty much everything they wanted, we now have. At the same time, capitalism has continued to triumph. Just picked up a copy of Gregory J. Millman's The Vandals' Crown. Looks like a pretty good book about international currency traders and speculators - it promises to explain derivatives. (I've been thinking I should encourage my genius boys to consider this as a future line of work - they are good with numbers and like to play games. But what I want them to do is work for financial institutions - after all, "where are the customer's yachts?") I digress. The nutty thing about most conspiracy theorists is that they think there are people planning what happens, some kind of masterminds. Many of the things they think are happening are actually happening. Central bankers do meet quietly in Switzerland, for example. It's the "why" that makes conspiracy theorists nutty.