Atrocities & Genocide – Page 21 – Public Intelligence Blog

2007/01/132009/12/04

Review: Palestine–Peace Not Apartheid

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Truth & Reconciliation

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Truth is the only thing that will save us,

January 13, 2007

Jimmy Carter

President Jimmy Carter does not have a malicious bone in his body, and is one of the most intelligent Presidents we have ever had. His scholarship is NOT off the mark. What is off the mark is the dogmatic refusal of Zionist Jews to listen to reason.

See my reviews of Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books) and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth' for a sense of just how crazy all these people are that are claiming anti-semitism. I have nothing but disdain for the Jews that resigned, for they are disgracing themselves and America by showing so vividly their monstrous disrespect for the truth, for dialog, and for one of the finest Presidents this Nation has ever had (I say this as an estranged moderate Republican).

Reality is not easy. Reality is constantly obscured by corporate media owned by the corporations whose mis-deeds they dare not report, and whose relations with the 45 dictators of the world are beyond cozy–they are self-serving partnerships to loot the commonwealth of nations and leave all publics, not just the Palestinians, in the dirt. See Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025

Reality is also obscured by a US Congress that now has 43 Jews and only 1 Muslim, a Congress that until very recently abdicated its role as the FIRST branch of government and failed to balance the powers of an imperial presidency run amok (see my reviews of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) and Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders. America must be very alert to the dual hijacking of its government by corporations and by Zionist Jews who forget that they used terrorism to win their freedom from England, just as our American founders used terrorism to win the War of Independence.

Terrorism is a tactic. Anyone that does not understand that is either stupid (less likely) or maliciously deceptive (more likely).

It is my rare privilege to be the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction (#48 over-all), and it is on that foundation that I stand today in praise of Jimmy Carter, and in demand of the immediate resignation of Dick Cheney, or his impeachment (see my list on books relevant to evaluating Dick Cheney, and on impeachment for those who cannot wait).

Reality is tough. Lying to ourselves is as good as bullet in our heads. See my varied lists for the reality that is the context for this good book by a good man.

Note: the Arabs are just as despicable as the Jews, for they have treated the Palestinians the way India and Japan treat their untouchables. Nothing in this book, or in my review, should be contrued as forgiving of the Arabs. It is my personal view that the US should disengage from the Middle East and also withhold our support to Israel until such time as it will listen to Jimmy Carter's sound advice, and agree to a shared state without walls–partition, as with India and Pakistan, breeds on-going violence. It is only tolerance and a common commitment to creating shared wealth that works. The Saudi ruling royalty are EVIL. See See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism and Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude. For a more elegant view, see Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life

Gandhi (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition) had it right: Palestine is to the Palestinians as France is to the French. Contrary to the dogma and lies that the rabid Jews (as opposed to rational Jews taking the long view) spread, the land *was* occupied by the Palestinians, and the Jews are genociding them the way the early American settlers genocides the Native Americans. No one has clean hands here, but it helps no one at all to demean an honest author and good man, and to falsely claim that this book is anti-semitic. This book is anti-stupid, and I am anti-stupid.

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2007/01/092019/09/06

Review: VICE–Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

7 Star Top 1%, Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Biography & Memoirs, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Privacy, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

7 Star Life Transformative Showing True Perfidy in White House = 23 Documented High Crimes That Should Put Cheney in Irons Immediately,

January 9, 2007

Lou Dubose

EDITED 5 September 2007 to add ten links to other related books.

This book is vastly more detailed, and covers more high crimes and misdemeanors, than either State of Denial, which misunderstands Bush as being in charge, or Crossing the Rubicon, which focuses primarily on Cheney's role in first permitting 9-11, and then working assiduously to cover up his malicious malfeasance. See also Ron Susskind's book, “One Percent Doctrine,” which crucifies Cheney, Rumseld, and Rice.

I take this book so seriously that I urge everyone to get the “Do It Yourself Impeachment” kit. He should be required to immediately resign or be impeached. He should not be allowed to serve another month in office.

For the sake of brevity, here is a list of impeachable offenses documented by this book:

1) Secret meetings in violation of the law to include exclusion of government experts
2) Refusal to honor demand from Congress for a list of participants
3) Lies to the public about Iraq, while holding maps of oil fields and already having in mind a US-only domination of those oilfields (he first focused on Iraqi oil while serving Secretary of Defense Brown)
4) Over-ruling of the Environmental Protection Agency on very important matters including its concern over Halliburton's reliance on hydraulic fracturing that uses chemicals that contaminate aquifers–Cheney personally ensured that the EPA's wording was replaced with Halliburton's wording.
5) Consistent and pervasive usurpation of Congressional authorities and consistent and maliciously deliberate avoidance of appropriate disclosure.
6) Fostered attacks on Sy Hersh, and considered authorizing a break-in on his home.
7) From the 1970's, see also Ron Susskind's One-Percent Doctrine, subverted the authority of the Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, and teams with Justice Scalia (then an assistant attorney general) to increase executive privileges and push back reforms.
8) As a Congressman personally blew off Russian offer in 1983 for arms cuts, and subverted the authority of the President and the Secretary of State then serving.
9) As an extremist Republican, supported Ollie North and the White House in violating the Congressional prohibitions on aid to the Contras, and obstructed justice thereafter.
10) Page 78 has a lovely discussion of how Cheney and North were “in the zone” in deceiving the public and Congress during the televised hearings.
11) Adopted as his own the lunatic report by Khalizad (who is a very lazy scholar, see my review of his rotten RAND book on revolution) and Libby, on how the US as a superpower should be able to do ANYTHING.
12) Attempted to undermine due process and keep tactical nuclear weapons in the Army inventory.
13) Subverted the authority of the Secretary of State (Colin Powell) by allowing his daughter to overrule Ambassadors and meet privately with various heads of state.
13) Lied repeatedly to the public about his continuing financial equities with Halliburton, and was so involved in giving Halliburton up to 16 billion in no bid contracts.
14) Shut both foreign competitors and more cost-effective indigenous contracting solutions, severely harming the national security of the United States by fostering an environment of unproductive looting by Halliburton, Bechtel, and others.
15) Ignored his dual mandates on terrorism and intelligence. The book suggests that Bush was not briefed on Al Qaeda for the first eight months he was in office (the Vice President's priorities were energy and missile defense).
16) Personally impeded negotiations with North Korea after they proved amenable to diplomatic engagement.
17) Personally rejected Iranian overtures for negotiation conveyed by the Swiss in 2003
18) Personally reinforced Rumsfeld on use of torture, by-passing the President's more measured restrictions.
19) Conspired with Speaker Hastert to subordinate the House of Representatives, using a special office of his own (first time in history) so that Representatives could be brought to him rather than his calling on them.
20) Manipulated the President into numerous “signing statements” inconsistent with the will of Congress that ignored legislation then in force.
21) “Bureaucratically emasculated” the President (page 177–if the President has a friend that reads this review, PLEASE get the book and the review to the President–he really may have no idea his balls have been cut off)
22) Contemptuous and manipulative of the CIA, refusing to accept their best professional judgments based not only all source intelligence, but on a extraordinary effort by Charlie Allen in running line crossers into Iraq to document beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were no weapons of mass destruction there.
23) Lied repeatedly, over and over, to the public, to Congress, to the President, to foreign leaders, even after the lies were exposed he continued to repeat them.

The book does not discuss the 9-11 situation and emerging findings that place the Vice President at the center of our deliberately inept response.

Two gems apart from the impeachable offenses:

1) The search for a Vice President was a complete fraud, he was picked from day one, and made a fool of every serious candidate, while also personally leaking to destroy Keating just to ensure the only real rival would not be considered at the last minute.

2) The discussion of Joe Lieberman's refusal to confront Cheney with all that was known to be wrong with him was explained at the time as “taking the high moral road.” I am not so sure. I speculate that Lieberman is actually a neo-con and has been playing the Democrats for fools while minding the interests of his Wall Street masters.

On page 147 the authors discuss how Cheney accused Clinton and Gore of “extend[ing] our military commitments while depleting our military power.” Lovely. And now?

The authors conclude that Dick Cheney is “nakedly amoral.” I agree.

One final scary note: in the many doomsday drills that Cheney participated in across his career and inclusive of his Vice Presidency, they always failed to reconstitute Congress.

Dick Cheney has done more damage and is a greater threat to our Republic and others, than Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined.

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
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
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
9/11 Mysteries Part 1: Demolitions
9/11: Press For Truth
9/11 – The Myth and the Reality
Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11

For those wondering why Congress failed to do its Article 1 job (hence all Members are impeachable for dereliction of duty as well):
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)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

2007/01/042009/12/04

Review: The True Cost of Conflict/Seven Recent Wars and Their Effects on Society

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Misinformation & Propaganda, True Cost & Toxicity, War & Face of Battle

Amazon Page

Ten Years Ahead of Its Time, Now Part of “True Cost” Meme,

January 4, 2007

Michael Cranna

This book was ten years ahead of its time in relation to the emergent “true cost” meme that is exploding as the public acquires access to more information and the tools to make sense of that information.

The author has done a first-rate job of looking at seven conflicts and their costs or (rarely) benefits. This is precisely the kind of analysis that is needed if Congresses and Parliaments are to be educated and weaned away from the bankers fondness for war and credit for war as a profit harvesting opportunity.

I recommend that in addition to this book, the reader consider General Smedley Butler's book, “War is a Racket,” and the superb book by Cees Wiebes, “Intelligence and the War in Bosnia” (see my review for lessons learned).

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2006/10/042010/05/31

Review: State of Denial–Bush at War Part III

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Stake in the Heart of the W Presidency

October 4, 2006

Bob Woodward

Here are the highlights I drew out that make this book extraordinary and worth reading even if it leaves one with a political hang-over:

1) The Federal Government is broken, and was made worse by a President who knew nothing of foreign policy, a Vice President who closed down the inter-agency policy system, and a Secretary of Defense who was both contemptuous of the uniformed military and held in contempt by Bush Senior.

2) My opinion of the Secretary of Defense actually went UP with this book. Rumsfeld has clearly been well-intentioned, has clearly asked the right questions, but he let his arrogance get away from him. Given a choice between Admiral Clark, a truth-telling transformative person, and General Myers, an acquiescent warrior diminished to senior clerk, Rumsfeld made the right choice for his management style, and the wrong choice for the good people in our Armed Forces. I *like* Rumsfeld's Anchor Chain letter as it has been described, and wish it had been included as an Appendix. Rumsfeld got the control he wanted, but he sacrificed honest early warning in so doing.

3) This book also improves my opinion of the Saudis and especially Prince Bandar. While I have no tolerance for Saudi Royalty–the kind of corrupt debauched individuals that make Congressman Foley look like a vestal virgin–the Saudis did understand that Bush's unleashing of Israel was disastrous, and they did an excellent job of shaking up the President. Unfortunately, they could not overcome Dick Cheney, who should resign or be impeached for gross dereliction of duty and usurpation of Presidential authority.

4) Tenet's visit to Rice on 10 July is ably recounted and adds to the picture. It joins others books, notably James Risen's “State of War,” “Hubris,” FASCO” and “The End of Iraq in presenting a compelling picture of a dysfunctional National Security Advisor who is now a dysfunctional Secretary of State–and Rumsfeld still won't return her phone calls…..

5) The author briefly touches on how CIA shined in the early days of the Afghan War (see my reviews of “JAWBREAKER” and “First In” for more details) but uses this to show that Rumsfeld took the impotence of the Pentagon, and the success of CIA, personally.

6) The author also tries to resurrect Tenet somewhat, documenting the grave reservations that Tenet had about Iraq, but Tenet, like Colin Powell, failed to speak truth to power or to the people, and failed the Nation.

7) Rumsfeld recognized the importance of stabilization and reconstruction (and got an excellent report from the Defense Science Board, not mentioned by this book, on Transitions to and From Hostilities) but he vacillated terribly and ultimately failed to be serious on this critical point.

8) This book *destroys* the Defense Intelligence Agency, which some say should be burned to the ground to allow a fresh start. The author is brutal in recounting the struggles of General Marks to get DIA to provide any useful information on the alleged 946 WMD sites in Iraq. DIA comes across as completely derelict bean counters with no clue how to support operators going in harms way, i.e. create actionable intelligence.

9) Despite WMD as the alleged basis for war, the military had no unit trained, equipped, or organized to find and neutralize WMD sites. A 400 person artillery unit was pressed into this fearful service.

10) General Jay Garner is the star of this story. My face lit up as I read of his accomplishments, insights, and good judgments. He and General Abizaid both understood that allowing the Iraqi Army to stay in being with some honor was the key to transitioning to peace, and it is clearly documented that Dick Cheney was the undoing of the peace. It was Dick Cheney that deprived Jay Garner of Tom Warrick from State, the man who has overseen and understood a year of planning on making the peace, and it was Dick Cheney that fired Garner and put Paul Bremer, idiot pro-consult in place. Garner clearly understood a month before the war–while there was still time to call it off–that the peace was un-winable absent major changes, but he could not get traction within the ideological fantasy land of the Vice Presidency.

11) Apart from State, one military officer, Colonel Steve Peterson, clearly foresaw the insurgency strategy, but his prescient warnings were dismissed by the larger group.

12) General Tommy Franks called Doug Feith “the dumbest bastard on the planet,” –Feith deprived Garner of critical information and promoted Chalabi as the man with all the answers.

13) The author covers the 2004 election night very ably, but at this point the book started to turn my stomach. The author appears oblivious to the fact that the Ohio election was stolen through the manipulation of 12 voting districts, loading good machines in the pro-Bush areas, putting too few machines in the pro-Kerry areas, and in some cases, documented by Rolling Stone, actually not counting Kerry votes at all on the tallies. Ohio has yet to pay, as does Florida, for its treasonous betrayal of the Republic.

Today I issued a press release pointing toward the Pakistan treaty creating the Islamic Emirate of Waziristan as a safehaven for the Taliban and Al Qaeda as the definitive end–loss of–the war on terror, which is a tactic, not an enemy. As Colin Gray says in “Modern Strategy,” time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced. As a moderate Republican I dare to suggest that resigning prior to the November elections, in favor of John McCain, Gary Hart, and a Coalition Cabinet, might be the one thing that keeps the moderate Republican incumbents, and the honest Democrats–those that respect the need for a balanced budget–in place to provide for continuity in Congress, which must *be* the first branch of government rather than slaves to the party line.

It's crunch time. This book is the last straw. The American people are now *very* angry.

2006/06/152011/10/22

Review: The Global Class War –How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win it Back (Hardcover)

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Amazon Page

Borrowed Title, Missing Bits, Worthy Restatement of the Threat to Labor,

June 15, 2006

Jeff Faux

The title appears borrowed from Sam Marcy's original work in 1979 on “The Global Class War and the Destiny of American Labor,” but then, no one wanted to listen in the 1970's, when I did my first master's degree, to the three major themes in the political science literature:

1) Limits to Growth and need for Ecological Economics (Club of Rome, Herman Daly);

2) Global Reach of Multinational Corporations and the Home-Host Country Issues and Threats to Domestic Labor and Social Welfare (Barnett)

3) Need for World Government to address global issues (Falk).

This book is valuable for its one main point reiterated and documented over and over again: the American elite has joined with other elites world-wide to reach accommodations that favor the investors and the ruling elites over the individuals that are employees.

If I had not also read William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy as well as John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and (over two decades ago), Lionel Tiger, Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System I might have seen this book in a different light. In the larger context of the 700+ books I have reviewed at Amazon, this book sums up a key factor that the public must consider when going to elect its leaders over the next few years.

As the author documents and discusses, the combination of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism has led to government being in the service of corporations and the wealthy, rather than the public and especially the working public. The author suggests, citing another author, that the working class is 62% of America, the middle class 36%, and the ruling class 2%. He also notes that America is no longer a mobile society, with 77% of the people “stuck” in their parent's rut, and with wages now BACK to where they were in the 1970's–in other words, no real gains in quality of life or purchasing power across the land.

The author spends a great deal of time on NAFTA, and his views are all negative. He is passionate on the topic of Mexico being a socio-economic bomb waiting to explode, and on how NAFTA and the deliberate tolerance of illegal immigration have essentially served as a pressure value, where the US imports poverty from Mexico in order to keep it from a worse explosion.

The author is quite provocative when he examines the “rescue” of Mexico by Secretary of the Treasury Rubin. He “follows the money” and discovers that the U.S. taxpayer did not bail out Mexico per se, but rather Goldman Sachs and all the other investors in Mexico, investors who were supposed to evaluate risk and take risk and accept the consequences, but instead used their Goldman Sachs brother in arms to bail them out at taxpayer expense. Today of course President Bush has just appointed another Goldman Sachs leader to be Secretary of the Treasury (after the more honest Paul O'Neil resigned when he discovered that Vice President Dick Cheney was making all the policies without regard to the Cabinet process (see my review of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill)

The author is compelling in discussing how the Reagan Revolution broke the backs of the labor unions and also broke up the postwar social safety nets. The author discusses how there is no corporate mind-set that puts the home country, the USA, first. He discusses at length how we are coming off decades during which multinational corporations, aided and abetted by their class collaborators in government and the media, have essentially broken the social contracts with each country's public, and disconnected their global investments from any social benefit for labor.

The author is very illuminating when he points out that it is NOT China that is flooding the US with cheap goods, but rather Wal-Mart and Wall Street, investing US dollars in China to leverage low-cost Chinese labor while off-shoring jobs and driving both salaries and quality down across the board within the USA where Wal-Mart has been proven to destroy small businesses for 50-100 miles around any one of its main stores (see my review of both the DVD Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and the book The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works–and How It's Transforming the American Economy).

The author is an optimist and an idealist, and I will end my review with a quote that I hope a future enlightened President will support. The author says on page 246:

“To this end, a conference, or congress, of North American civil society, state and local officials and representatives of labor, and small businesses, should be held every year. One of its functions would be to do a public review of the state of continental integration and to discuss, debate, and make proposals for the future.”

I am reminded of Falk's genius in knowing in the 1970's that we would one day need global council for both religions and peoples. Government has failed to be just or to represent the public. This book comes at a good time. In America, November 2006 is a necessary pre-requisite to electoral reform and getting an honest wise President and a Coalition Cabinet in 2008. To do that, enough people have to vote so as to defeat the extremist Republican skill at stealing elections that are close. It has to be a landslide.

I venture to say tha there is a very tight connection between Congress being broken and corrupt, and the global class war. Labor unions and the middle class have been rolled back, standards and protective regulations have been rolled back, and on every front, “We the People” have been abused by those we have entrusted.

EDIT of 10 Dec 07: As I write this, Lou Dobbs on CNN is urging every American to register as an Independent, and Jim Turner, #2 Naderite, is telling me he hopes 100 million Americans will come back to vote the two broken parties out of office. Amen!

2006/06/042009/12/04

Review: Tiger Force–A True Story of Men and War (Hardcover)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, War & Face of Battle

Amazon Page

In Context, a Shameful Story with Two Sides,

June 4, 2006

Michael Sallah

EDITED 16 Jun 06 to add heat stress hypothesis below.

I ordered this book when I first heard that the Marines had gone bezerk and killed several families in cold blood in Iraq, an action that caused me as a former Marine to weep silently for a time.

I certainly recommend that the reviews titled War Crimes and WAR CRIMES, and Hatchet Job, be read, for they have at least two good points that must be remembered and respected:

1) Indiscriminate air strikes are vastly more of a war crime than isolated incidents of ground forces going bezerk.

EDIT of 16 Jun 06. I met a really fascinating individual in Louiseville, Kentucky, H.C. (Bud) Meyer, ex NASA, now Advanced Systems Integrators, who in a very active retirement is doing everything he can to help fire fighters not die at an average age of forty. It turns out that heat stress on their hearts over the course of twenty years is killing them. He developed a new suit that uses the backback (lessned in weight) to both feed them oxygen and to cool their suits, and the preliminary results are nothing short of sensational. I'be been a Marine and seen combat but never had to “do” combat with a full load and all the body armor, in the desert. I am absolutely convinced that a “heat stress defense” would be plausible. As much as I believe that Marines should be punished for indiscriminate murder of civilians, I also believe that Bud had brought forward an objective factor that is both relevant to to ground troop war crimes evaluation, and relevant to national-level leaders looking for ways to increase discipline by lessening the stress of combat in heat with a full load.

2) The failure of Pentagon, theater, and service leadership to investigate and prosecute may be understandable from a total force morale perspective, but is unconscionable in the larger global hearts and minds or “Information Operations” perspective. We have lost the moral high ground in the Middle East for many reasons, but Abu Grahib and the indiscriminate Marine executions of several families shame America and make it more likely that more America soldiers will die than otherwise.

A few things jumped out at me:

1) Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, then serving as President Ford's Secretary of Defense, refused to investigate and prosecute this matter. We should not expect him to be morally aggressive with respect to atrocities committed by Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.

2) There are clear signs when troops are beginning to “lose it” and are more likely to go bezerk, including body mutilation, and bodies without weapons (and very little bodies, such as the beheaded baby featured in this book). It should be possible for our generals to keep a pulse on the troops by having medical forensics and simply “paying attention.” Just as genocide has eight stages and can be predicted, I believe that ground force war crimes can be anticipated and personnel rotated and calmed.

3) Finally, I share the author's concluding view, that writing this book and bringing these atrocities to light, is valuable as a vaccination for the future. I believe in retrospective indictment and retospective impeachment, not necessarily in the serving of sentences past the statute of limitations (although war crimes have no such limitation). There are in my view three levels of war crime: strategic (elective wars, lying to the public); operational (indiscriminate air campaigns, focusing on nuclear proliferation instead of the control of small arms); and tactical–indiscriminate murder without honor, especially of women and children.

It merits comment that this book could not have been written without the emergence of a new file following the death of a key person. I believe that we will see a great deal of historical information come out in the next ten years that will, with the power of distributed processing, allow the people to judge their elected and appointed officials, in detail. I sense a new passion for justice and accountability being made possible by books such as this, and the Internet, and it is my hope that this will overtime reduce the “culture of cheating” as well as the likeliness of “going bezerk.”

The war crimes in this book were isolated, and are vastly surpassed in evil by things we are doing now and are planning to do, but I cannot shake the feeling that the men in this book are “us.” This is not a war story for wanna-be warriors (some of the reviews really cause me sadness, as if this book were entertainment)–it is an ethics lesson for future and present leaders of all ranks, because there but for God's grace go I, or you.

2006/05/062009/12/04

Review: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order (Paperback)

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Free Market Not Free, Ills of the 21st Century, Brilliant,

May 6, 2006

Michel Chossudovsky

Although it saddens me to see a strong literature emerging today that was largely anticipated and ignored by people like David Barnett with his Global Reach work in the 1970's, it is a good thing that strong voices like those of this author are now making very comprehensive documented cases for how corporate power and privatized wealth are collapsing nations, bankrupting economies, and impoverishing more and more people unnecessarily.

The table of contents of this book is extraordinarily details and brilliant in its organization. Although the book is mostly case studies that one can read through rapidly if accepting of the author's key points, this may well be one of the finest itemizations of the ills of the 21st century: corporate power run amok, privatization and concentration of wealth (which is, incidentally, one of the precondition for revolution), the collapse of national and local economies (e.g. Wal-Mart), the dismantling of the welfare safety net in most countries, and the outbreak and spread of famine and civil war.

The author is probably the foremost scholar and commentator on how the “free” market is not so free, and how the existing capitalist system is predatory, aided by locked in privileges that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank impose on nations foolish enough to accept their intervention. In this the author is consistent with Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) who has put forward the need for a complete make-over of developmental economics, to include an end of the normal business practices of the IMF and the World Bank.

I was tempted to remove one star for lack of sufficient reference to the works of others, but the personal insights and comprehensive review caused me to leave the ranking at five stars. I see a clear pattern emerging in the literature (see my other 700+ reviews) and what I am waiting for is for someone to cut the spines off all these books and “make sense” of the total picture in a manner comprehensible to the indivdual voter.

If we are to restore informed democracy and moral capitalism, this book is one of the foundation stones.