Prosecutions of *actual* terrorists in America since 9/11/01 can be counted on one hand (Moussoui, Zazi, Shazad, Abdulmuttalab). All of the rest are bogus, with at least 50 being straight-up entrapment jobs by the FBI and their handsomely paid (by you) informants.
The next time some real terrorists plot to blow something up in America, the FBI will no doubt miss it, being too busy tricking the slowest kid down at the Islamic bookstore into praising Osama for the promise of $20,000.
Anyone who reads this and is still a bit unsure should read Yevgeny Zamyatin's book WE and Djilas' The New Class: An Analysis Of Communist System. If they are looking for the philosophical approach to the book, they should read Voegelin and any of his works that deal with the philosophical underpinning of what Billington is addressing in this fantastic work. Billington is a Rhodes Scholar. He is a visiting Professor to Harvard and Princeton. His works on Russia are definitive. This book being his best, is his dedication to Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground and Demons. It is scary and brilliant. It answers the question of the two opposing “secret” warring groups one the proponents of freewill the others proponents of the collective and or the secular super powerful state. All this and according to Billington's work, the most startling aspect, is that journalists are the very agents of this revolutionary activity. Puts a very scientism spin on things like global warming and afro-centrism.
“Deep politics” is scholar Peter Dale Scott's term for historical machinations such as drug-running and assassinations which form covert if systemic features of the contemporary state and which are all-too naively dismissed as “conspiracy theories.” A number of people who study such matters seriously have long suspected that the scandal centering on Omaha, Nebraska's Franklin Credit Union in the 1970s and `80s forms the conceptual linchpin to a truly critical understanding of the perverse, brutal and predatory nature of power in late-imperial America. Having read former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp's brave if somewhat desultory 1992 book on the subject, THE FRANKLIN COVER-UP, and watched the unaired British television documentary CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE on the internet, we have also sensed, with a certain despair, that the nature and details of this scandal were so shocking, ugly, confusing and strange as to forever defy broader public credulity and scrutiny. It is with a profound sense of relief, admiration and gratitude, then, that one reads Nick Bryant's THE FRANKLIN SCANDAL, which accomplishes the seemingly impossible: an eminently gripping, thorough and accessible account of perhaps the grimmest aspect of contemporary U. S. history.
It is amusing to see the sole negative reviewer on these pages (as of this writing) suggest that Bryant has gullibly relied only on the apparent victims of the scandal, when in fact the author has taken pains to bolster accusations voiced in his book with the testimony of law-enforcement, governmental, mental health, legal and social-service officials, as well as journalists and others whose professions and/or personal relationships brought them into the orbit of this lurid story.
5.0 out of 5 stars This is an Information Operations / Counterintelligence Hidden Gem, December 23, 2012
The cover does this book a dis-service. This is a SERIOUS book that should be used in serious courses of instruction for both Information Operations (IO) and Counterintelligence (CI). The book lacks an index, a terrible mistake on the part of the publisher, but I have to say the notes are world-class and this book earns my intuitive respect quickly.
This book is a bit rough but I put it at a solid five stars and even considered six (my top ten percent across 1800+ books) because this book does something extraordinary:
01 It makes the case for UFOs being a terrestial Information Operations (IO) Psychological Operation (PSYOP — never plural).
02 It connects US underground tunnel civilization (a possible explanation for the Pentagon's missing 2.3 trillion) and advanced technologies including “Nazi physics” versus “Jewish physics”
03 It connects the Rockefeller-Morgan Nazi-philes, Latin America, Switzerland, the Bank of International Settlements, and the drug cartels — in other words, this is also an excellent reading for Counterintelligence (CI).
01) The authors are connected, admired, and conversant with the great minds of Silicon Valley (Eric Schmidt offers a very strong blurb) and even more importantly, this book both represents the best from those minds, and has clearly had as positive effect in getting this particular meme (“intelligent governance”) considered.
02) The authors force attention to a fundamental flawed premise in the West, that any form of democracy (even if corrupted beyond recognition) is preferable to any form of dictatorship (the authors refer to China as a mandarinate). As someone who grew up in Singapore and has the deepest admiration for Minister-Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and the professionalism of the Government of Singapore (it employed my step-mother from New Zealand for many years, ultimately as head of the Department of English), I am among the first to suggest that the West falls short, but I would point to Singapore and the Nordics and BENELUX as my preferred alternative, not just hybrid, but rooted in ethical evidence-based decision-making. I would also note that the West has actively supported 40 of 42 dictators for the last fifty years — integrity is NOT a strong suit for our so-called Western democracies.
03) The book is strongest — no doubt as the publisher and the authors intended — in relation to the impact of social networks as feedback loops helpful to governments, whether democratic or mandarinate, that are capable of LISTENING. Chapter 4, “The New Challenges of Governmance,” is certainly suitable as a stand-alone assigned reading. The authors are heavily reliant on David Brin (I am a fan of his) but distressingly oblivious to Howard Rheingold, Tom Atlee, Jim Rough, Harrison Owen, and a host of others that have spent — primed by Stewart Brand — decades thinking about deliberation and consensus-building. Having said that by way of balance, this chapter strikes me as the heart of the book, and it gets high marks for pointing out that Google and all other options today are not facilitative of deliberative dialog.
3.0 out of 5 stars Shallow Book, Old Think, He Quit the Fight to Join the Worst of the Wall Street Manipulators,November 15, 2012
This book makes me very angry. My step-father and I both believed in Bill Bradley a decade ago, and today I feel about him the way I feel about Ron Paul: each betrayed the public trust by refusing to break with their side of the two-party tyranny, knowing full well that neither party represents the public or the public interest, while disenfranchising 50% of the public [the Independents, Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Reform, and Socialist parties, all but the first accredited at the national level and blocked from ballot access and debate access by two of the most corrupt parties on the planet] so corrupt they outdo the Soviet Politburu in avoiding turnover at the top.
As I go through this book — and of course I am better armed than most being the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading across 98 categories (visit Phi Beta Iota / Books to access all of my Amazon reviews by category) — I keep thinking to myself TIRED, TIRED, TIRED. This is a book that would have earned five stars from me in 2000. Today it is too little too late.
This book fails the authenticity test on three counts:
3.0 out of 5 stars TIRED — Out of Touch with Substance and Reality,November 10, 2012
I've gone through this book, it is a very fast read, in part because there is no real substance here. I list ten better books at the end. If you seek out my summary reviews you can get the gist of all that is not in this book by Jackie Salit.
After years of trying to understand Salit and her ostensible web site for IndependentVoting.org, I finally got it one day as I watched 30 non-profit and advocacy leaders struggle with the concept of transpartisanship.
In that moment I realized that they are all — and certainly including Salit — bound hand and foot to the concept of a two-party tyranny. They are comfortable with the corruption that they understand, and each limits themselves and their group to seeking a foot-hold within that very corrupt system.
Salit and Michael Bloomberg “made” each other, and this properly puts IndependentVoting.org, which does not stand for anything other than “give us a place at the table,” in the Bloomberg/Wall Street circus act that includes NO LABELS, Americans Elect, former Comptroller David Walker with his movie and bus tour, and now the Bloomberg PAC that buys influence on Member at a time. All of this is TIRED.
Salit has had multiple chances — as has Ron Paul and other third party presidents — to break away from trying to do the wrong thing righter, and in each instance has failed to rise to the challenge. A national Electoral Reform Summit concluding with a Statement of Demand and an Occupation of every home office of every federal Senator and Representative, is the WIRED approach to changing the rules of the game.
