Atrocities & Genocide – Page 20 – Public Intelligence Blog

Harder Read But Most Worthy, Start with the Other Book

September 3, 2007

Paul Findley

This book is a perfect counter-point to The Power of Israel in the United States. I review that book also, and recommend both books to every American, just as I also recommend the books that document how the Saudis have bought the Bush Family and the Republican and Democratic parties, neither of which represents We the People. Completely apart from the venal immorality of Dick Cheney (see my review of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency in which I itemized the 23 high crimes and misdemeanors documented by that book), the fact is that Congress has been bought by multiple parties, and no longer represents We the People.

This book is a harder, longer read, so I recommend you start with the other book. As with the other book, this book is a strongly documented and very lengthy catalog of the sins of the Zionists and the Israeli Government, not at all against the moderate Jews and their legitimate concerns. I have seen Gaza and Beirut, and what Israel has done to the Palestinians, to the former “Paris” of the Middle East, combined with their Assault on the Liberty, is unforgivable.

This book logically catalogs how the Zionists intimidate even such a person as Ted Turner, who was forced to back down when he said both sides were committing terrorism (there is in fact a UN Resolution that finds Israel guilty of genocide and racism, but then that is one of those “fog facts” that our totalitarian monsters choose to ignore.

The author organizes the book around how Zionists silence the small and the weak, while buying out the Oval Office, the Congress, the media, while also subverting academic freedon.

I especially like the author's conclusion, “What Price Israel?” The US taxpayer is subsidizing Israeli genocide and Israeli idiocy, and the US and Israel appear to be the last two countries to continue to believe in the value of force that is both unaffordable and unsustainable in an unconquerable world.

Congressman Tom Moran, who represents my district, has personally said that Zionish have too much influence on Congress, and I agree. Tom Moran has been a very good representative, and he speaks the truth.

Here are some books and a DVD that can put the totally unacceptable Zionist influence on the USA in a larger context:

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–And How We Take It Back
The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

2007/07/042009/10/16

Review: Imagery of Lynching–Black Men, White Women, and the Mob

4 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, DVD - Light

Erudite, Incisive, But Mostly Text and Few Photos, July 4, 2007

This is not the book I was expecting. For that, go to Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, which I rate at five stars and which so sickened me that I thought of Ike Eisenhower ordering that all those living near the death camps be ordered to march past slowly to see what they tolerated in their midst.

This is without question a very respected academic work, an one line jumps out from the first chapter “On Looking.” It captures the essence of this book perfectly:

“The power and seduction of specatacle lynching, and its social and moral legitimacy as the embodiment of communal values of law and order, white masculine affirmation, family honor, and white supremacy, depended on the crowd's act of looking.” (page 15).

My mind swirled around this, thinking of other books (listed below), of genocide, of eugenics (Henry Kissinger's favorite word), of injustice, of moral perversion and cowardliness, of those who allowed the Jews to be persecuted by the Nazis.

I am reminded of at least one other author, it may have been Francis Lappe Moore in Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life, who noted that “white supremacy” has been the death of democracy in America. To that I would add the perversion of the corporation, which stole a legacy intended for freed people of color, and turned into a lifetime license to steal from all.

Where this book lost me was in its emphasis in the remainder of the book on how lynching are depicted in art–the wood cuttings and other art images outnumber the actual photographs. All very worthy, to be sure, but at this point the book moves into the realm of the academic rather than the visceral, which is why if you buy only one book, I recommend Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America instead.

I won;'t even try to get into today's continued injustice, including red lining black districts to turn them into ghettos, then buying up the real estate at a fraction of its true value, before gentryfing it for resale and much higher prices.

My bottom line: we need two Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in America, the first to bring out in the open all of the evils that the white race has inflicted on people of color from the Native Americans to the black slaves to the Chinese slaves to the current dispossessed that now include a heavy leavening of poor whites. The second, with Nelson Mandela and Lee Kuan Yew as co-chairs, can examine the history of the UK and US as colonial powers, unilateral militarists, and predatory capitalists looting the commonwealths of all other lesser developed nations, with the consequence that we have five billion poor instead of seven billion billionaires.

2007/07/042009/12/04

Review: Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, DVD - Light

Does the Job–We All Need to “See” This Book's Pages

July 4, 2007

James Allen

There are enough reviews here so that my summative review is not necessary. I will only say that this is a powerful book, and it reminded me of General Eisenhower's order that all those living in the vicinity of the death camps be marched past the stacked bodies so they could see what their abdication of morality had allowed to happen.

This is mostly a book of photographs. If you want deeper text, including a spectacular (unintended pun)chapter on “Looking” and how it was the crowds that validated “spectacle lynching,” then you must also buy Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob. The title is misleading, but the content of that book is not–that is the deep academic and psychological review that complements this book.

If yoy only wish to buy one book, of lasting value for generations, buy this one. If you can afford two and want to study the underlying social and psychological environments that allowed whites to treat blacks as if they were animals, buy both.

2007/06/272009/12/04

Review: Buried in the Bitter Waters–The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide

Goosebumps, Passing Darkness, Wish to See Light

June 27, 2007

Elliot Jaspin

I wish I could say that I cried over this book, but the truth is that I am so accustomed to America's legacy of genocide, social injustice, and external fraud, regime change, and invasion that I simply sighed and thought, “wow, about time this came to light.”

This is a stunning book that should be read by every American of every race, creed, and class.

I previously reviewed a book today that discussed how white supremacy views were one of the causes of the downfall of democracy after the Civil War. I believe this. As a Marine, I learned there are only Marines, some dark green, some light green. That lesson has NOT been learned by all Americans, and that is one reason I favor a restoration of universal national service (including two years for any immigrant granted citizenship, at any age), with the option of armed, peace, or homeland service.

I am Latino by culture, white by race, intelligent by design (pun intended). I believe that America genocided the native Americans, genocided the people of color, and is now in the process of disenfranchising the Latinos while making commons cause with the Asians. None of this bodes well for a Republic that is supposed to offer Liberty & Justice for all as the foundation for collective intelligence and the sovereign We the People.

The Constitution has been trashed by Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative and Christo-fascist supporters, and it is high time someone stood up and said ENOUGH–we must make common cause with the people of color, embrace their leaders, both self-selected and elected, and MOVE ON beyond the corporate socialism and the corrupt political party environments that have broken the middle class and impoverished the working ppor–which the author of the book by that title points out, should be but is not an oxymoron.

This is an important book. I hope it shames some, causes dispair in others, and that overall, it rises to be a liberation manifesto, a starting point for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission within America, to reveal, curse, and forgive all that has been done to the people of color on the assumption, the grotesque assumption, of white supremacy.

I share Martin Luther King's dream, and I am committed to seeing it fulfilled.

Semper Fidelis,
Robert Steele

Bonhoeffer
Improper behavior
The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books)
Al On America
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States

2007/06/222011/10/22

Review: In the Name of Democracy–American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Iraq

June 22, 2007

Jeremy Brecher

I confess to being uncomfortable when I bought this book, which addresses in a very comprehensive way the degree to which the US Government and the US military as well as intelligence, mercenary, and corporate personnel, are committing war crimes.

I want to say up front, that as best I can tell; our brave and professional troops are in fact making lemonade from lemons, and doing the best they can. However, they all realize that they and all the world was lied to by the Bush Administration, that this is about oil, and that they are killing civilians and many children for no good reason, due to the horrible circumstances that we have created by remaining there. According to this book, suicides are up 40%, there are 6000 deserters, and seamen recruits are *winning* when court-martialed for refusing to obey illegal orders to go to Iraq.

The editors have done a superb job of bringing together a collection of proven individuals including President Jimmy Carter, Senator Robert Byrd, Daniel Ellsberg, Sy Hersh, a group of US Generals (retired) protesting the White House mandated torture, and a wide variety of individual experts on war crimes.

The book opens with a discussion of three kinds of war crime:

1) Wars of aggression, i.e. unprovoked, pre-emptive, unjustified

2) Violations of humanitarian law

3) Crimes against humanity

You can read the book for the details. Suffice to say that they set the stage with objective factual discussion, and then proceed to document, most ably, the reality that the United States of America is now a war criminal in the larger context of humanity. What is being done “in our name” is immoral, reprehensible, unconstitutional, impeachable, and–to my great dismay–largely ignored by the majority of our adult population.

A few highlights from this easy to read collection of relatively short (2-4 page) pieces:

Ellsberg: Loyalty to the Constitution must take precedence at all levels. Like Viet-Nam, we are now realizing that the current regime cannot be trusted and can blunder strategically because the balance of power is out the door. Only We the People can demand a restoration of liberty & justice for all, with respect for the Constitutional limits to federal power.

Carter: Iraq war is an unjust illegal war. He says this as a President and as a Christian and as a loyal American who reveres the Constitution.

Herbert: Pentagon is “shopping for wars” even as Iraq hollows it out. They have even discussed surprise unprovoked military attacks whose only justification is the possibility of collecting intelligence. As an intelligence expert, I can afford that the secret intelligence community is largely worthless and costs over $60 billion a year, but I can also assert that for less than $5 billion a year, I can not only provide 96% of all the intelligence we need from open sources in 183 languages, but I can also provide free online education and free cell phone answers from reachback help desks in India.

Hersh: we and Israel plan to invade Iran regardless of what the facts are and regardless of what the American people believe or desire. Talking to Pentagon sources, Hersh sees us funding and training death squads around the world, turning the world into what one senior official called a “global free fire zone.”

Retired Generals: Torture was “top down” decision and command, not a few bottom up “rotten apples.”

Various: US using illegal weapons, including depleted uranium and napalm, in Iraq and elsewhere.

FBI emails (redacted): Military interrogators practicing torture impersonated FBI special agents, meaning that the FBI instead of DoD would be nailed in the public eye. FBI appears to have honored its own higher standards and not followed the idiot Gonzalez (then White House Counsel).

Center: detailed case against Donald Rumsfeld for ordering, funding, and knowing of war crimes at all levels of command. Why they did not go after Bush and even more so, Dick Cheney, whose 25 high crimes and offenses have been itemized in my reviews of ONE PERCENT and VICE.

Roberts: No one left to stop them (within the government)

Falk speaks about accountability.

The book ends with four recommendations:

1) Halt the war crimes

2) Bring the war criminals to justice

3) Draw the lessons (the most obvious: don't throw stones if you live in a glass house)

4) Establish barriers to future war crimes.

A one-page appendix lists 22 relevant substantive web sites containing additional information.

Sadly, as good as this book is, it is a cry in the wilderness. It is not being used by any major transpartisan organization (such as Reuniting America and its members Moral Majority, the ACLU, MoveOn, and others totaling 110 individual members in all).

I truly grieve over how low our Nation has gone. The Republic no longer exists–every politician–every single one–is in violation of the Constitution and impeachable for their dereliction of duty in allowing Cheney and his puppet Bush to wreak havoc on the world and on our own citizens, whose loss of moral standing, national treasure, and an assured future will take at least a quarter century to remediate.

See my lists for a fast survey of books relevant to impeachment, to judging Cheney, to the good and the bad of religion within affairs of state, on why they hate us, and so on. If there is one slim chance for our future, it is that on this 4th of July we will all declare our independence from this illegal White House, demand the immediate resignations of these two war criminals (who, not incidentally, stole two elections in a row), and reconstitute the government by forcing all those now in Congress to either pass Electoral Reform prior to November 2008, or be recalled and “ordered home.”

The monkey is now on our backs. What are we going to do?

EDITED 4 Sep 07 to use new link capability to add other recommended books and DVDs.
Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
9/11 Mysteries Part 1: Demolitions
9/11: Press For Truth
Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11

2007/06/092015/04/26

Review: Dark Alliance–The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

CIA Case Officer from Central American Era Validates This Book, June 9, 2007

Gary Webb

I am probably the only reviewer who was a clandestine case officer (three back to back tours), who participated in the Central American follies as both a field officer and a desk officer at CIA HQS, who is also very broadly read.

With great sadness, I must conclude that this book is truthful, accurate, and explosive.

The book lacks some context, for example, the liberal Saudi funding for the Contras that was provided to the National Security Council (NSC) as a back-door courtesy.

There are three core lessons in this book, supported by many books, some of which I list at the end of this review:

1) The US Government cannot be trusted by the people. The White House, the NSC, the CIA, even the Justice Department, and the Members of Congress associated with the Administration's party, are all liars. They use “national security” as a pretext for dealing drugs and screwing over the American people.

2) CIA has come to the end of its useful life. I remain proud to have been a clandestine case officer, but I see now that I was part of the “fake” CIA going through the motions, while extremely evil deeds were taking place in more limited channels.

3) In the eyes of the Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, and Honduran people, among many others, the US Government, as represented by the CIA and the dark side Ambassadors who are partisan appointees rather than true diplomats, is evil. It consorts with dictators, condones torture, helps loot the commonwealths of others, runs drugs, launders money, and is generally the bully on the block.

I have numerous notes on the book, and will list just a few here that are important “nuggets” from this great work:

1) The CIA connection to the crack pandemic could be the crime of the century. It certainly destroys the government's moral legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

2) The fact that entrepreneur Ricky Ross went to jail for life, while his supplier, Nicaraguan Blandon, was constantly protected by CIA and the Department of Justice, is a travesty.

3) Nicaragua, under Somoza, was the US Government's local enforcer, and CIA was his most important liaison element. As long as we consort with 44 dictators (see Ambassador Palmer's “The Real Axis of Evil,” we should expect to be reviled by the broader populations.

4) I believe that beginning with Henry Kissinger, the NSC and the CIA have had a “eugenics” policy that considers the low-income blacks to be “expendable” as well as a nuisance, and hence worthy of being targeted as a market for drugs to pull out what income they do have.

5) I believe that CIA was unwitting of the implications of crack, but that Congress was not. The book compellingly describes the testimony provided to Congress in 1979 and again in 1982, about the forthcoming implications of making a cocaine derivative affordable by the lowest income people in our Nation.

6) The Administration and Congress, in close partnership with the “mainstream media,” consistently lied, slandered witnesses to the truth, and generally made it impossible for the truth to be “heard.”

7) The ignorance of the CIA managers about the “ground truth” in Nicaragua and Honduras, and their willingness to carry out evil on command from the White House, without actually understanding the context, the true feelings of the people, or even the hugely detrimental strategic import of what they were about to do to Los Angeles, simply blow me away. We need to start court-martialling government employees for being stupid on the people's payroll.

8) CIA officers should not be allowed to issue visas. When they are under official cover they are assigned duty officer positions, and the duty officer traditionally has access to the visa stamp safe for emergencies (because the real visa officers are too lazy to be called in for an emergency).

9) I recently supported a movie on Ricky Ross, one that immediately won three awards in 2006 for best feature-length documentary, and I have to say, on the basis of this book, that Rick Ross was clearly not a gang member; was a tennis star and all-around good guy, was trying to make school grades; was disciplined, professional, and entrepreneurial. He did not create the cocaine, he did not smuggle it into the country, he simply acted on the opportunity presented to him by the US Government and its agent Blandon.

10) There is a connection between CIA, the private sector prison managers in the US, and prisoners. This needs a more careful look.

11) Clinton's bodyguards (many of whom have died mysteriously since then) were fully witting of Bill and Hillary Clinton's full engagement in drug smuggling into the US via Arkansas, and CIA's related nefarious activities.

12) CIA not only provided post-arrest white washes for its drug dealers, but they also orchestrated tip-offs on planned raids.

13) Both local police departments, especially in California, and the US Government, appear to have a standard “loot and release” program where drug dealers caught with very large amounts of cash (multiple millions) are instantly freed in return for a quit claim on the money.

14) CIA Operations Officers (clandestine case officers) lied not just to the FBI and Justice, but to their own CIA lawyers.

15) DEA in Costa Rica was dirtier than most, skimming cash and protecting drug transports.

The book ends with a revelation and an observation.

The revelation: just prior to both the Contra drug deals and the CIA's ramping up in Afghanistan, which now provides 80% of the world's heroin under US administration, the CIA and Justice concluded a Memorandum of Understanding that gave CIA carte blanche in the drug business.. The author says this smacked of premeditation, and I agree.

The observation: here is a quote from page 452: ” …the real danger the CIA has always presented–unbridled criminal stupidity, clouded in a blanked of national security.”

Shame on us all. It's time to clean house.

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition
The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War : An Undercover Odyssey
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA
From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)

2007/01/232009/12/04

Review: Hannibal Rising

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Philosophy

Amazon Page

More than Satisfies, Ignore the Nit-Pickers,

January 23, 2007

Thomas Harris

Having read “Silence of the Lambs” first, and then the other two books by this author, I was skeptical but interested when I saw this book at an airport. It is excellent. Having fully engaged me with his earlier books, I was absolutely delighted to have this book fully occupy my flight from Denver to Dulles. It is carefully crafted and completely credible.

Future readers will benefit from being able to read the Hannibal series from start to finish. I am quite eager to see the author craft a book in which Hannibal takes on Wall Street and selectively culls the herd of greedy lying cheats that manage the Enron clones so proud of “exploding the client” (see my review of Michael Lewis' “Liar's Poker” and also “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” as well as “Cheating Culture” and “The Manufacture of Evil.”

Although I normally do not read or review fiction, this author has joined John Le Carre (the George Smiley series) and is one of handful of “must read” authors of fiction that is to my personal taste as a former spy and infantry officer.

This author has found his niche. Hannibal must live and love and kill with elegance. Bring on the next one!!!

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Category: Atrocities & Genocide

Review: They Dare to Speak Out–People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby