Censorship & Denial of Access – Page 8 – Public Intelligence Blog

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

2006/11/122009/12/04

Review: Wild Fire

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

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Fiction Maybe, Reality, Very Much So,

November 12, 2006

Nelson DeMille

I generally only read non-fiction, but increasingly in the past fifteen years I have found that fiction of a particular type can be stunningly effective as a truth serum. Winn Schartau's TERMINAL COMPROMISE in the 1990's, about an electronic Pearl Harbar ultimately found to have been set in motion by the National Security Agency, is one such book. This is another.

For a NON-FICTION preview of what the Neo-Cons *thought* they were going to be able to do (out of touch with reality as they are), buy this book and ALSO buy (or at least read my review of) “Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror” by Thomas McInerney and Paul Vallely. These two seriously overweight generals, in retirement, and well prior to the elective war on Iraq, laid it all out–Iraq, then Iran, then Syria, then Egypt and Jordan, all by force of arms. They are NUTS, but they are also very very representative of the kind of ignorant lunacy that is accepted currency–indeed a qualification for appointment–in the Bush-Cheney regime. With Goldman Sachs in charge of the U.S. Treasury, and Paul Wolfowitz, a proven immoral liar in charge of the World Bank, do not think for a minute that Rumsfeld's being replaced by a more gracious clone (Bob Gates, who is NOT an intelligence professional, but rather a White House staff professional), is going to change anything.

Wild Fire is on target. I used tobelieve that the Kennedy's were both assassinated for planning to interfere with the extreme right, and especially the Wall Street extreme right that is close to Israel.

EDIT of 10 Dec 07: With the publication of Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History we must acknowledge that the Warren Commission was indeed a cover-up, but that Cuban exiles trained by CIA (a form of extreme right, but not from Texas) did the assassination. CIA and the Secret Service knew it was going to happen, Bobby Kennedy informed JFK, and the latter very foolishly chose to ignore the warning.

The author might just as easily have included a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear plants by Israel, something that many expert observers expect will happen before December 2006 unless the Congress makes it clear that ALL financial support for Israel will be cut off, ALL military assistance for Israel will be cut off, if they do this. You can be certain that the extreme right is egging Israel on and promising American complacency in the face of such an attack.

This book, like the movie Enemy of the State [Blu-ray] is most helpful to those who wish to understand what Norman Cousins tells us in The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety Absolute power really does corrupt–where the author does not venture, and perhaps he will honor us with these thoughts in the next book, is that the U.S. Government–both Republican and Democratic–is nothing more than “the best of the servant class.” Behind the U.S. Government are a select handful of bankers and a select inter-locking group of corporate boards that are more than happy to harvest profit from the hapless individuals who continue to believe that America is a democracy and that capitalism as practiced today is moral. Not so.

Fiction of this caliber is often a pre-cursor to a “coming out” of non-fiction, such as one can see in the growing 9-11 Truth movement, and the emergent demand by select Senators for complete transparency in government funding. I strongly recommend this book as an eye-opener. It is very very real.

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2006/10/292019/09/06

Review: Rule by Secrecy–The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

7 Star Top 1%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

7 Star Life Transformative insights – Bankers, Politicians, Spies, Patsies, and Secret Societies, October 29, 2006

Jim Marrs

This book is extraordinarily interesting, broad, and paradigm-altering.

The table of contents provided enough detail to be an executive summary. The book is somewhat deficient on sources (heavily reliant on superficial “encyclopedic” references) but the alternative explanation of history and reality is not to be missed.

I bought the book thinking it was about government secrecy. Not so. Much more importantly, this book is about the secret societies used by the 300-500 wealthiest individuals in the world, the ones that own the central banks that can cause financial panics, move inflation or deflation, all to the end of profiting, while “exploding the client,” the individual “patsy” whose hard-earned wages are nothing more than a supermarket shelf from which these elites pluck extra funds to buy another castle. See my review of Mark Lewis's “Liar's Poker” to understand Wall Street use of individuals as *disposable* sources of cash, and my review of John Perkin's “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” to get a sense of the larger global methods being used to loot the commonwealths. Also relevant is Jeff Faux, “The Global Class War : How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win it Back” and many of my other reviews of books by others on the loss of government legitimacy and credibility with the people, combined with the predatory immorality of corporations that now own government.

Much of what the author attributes to a grand master plan can also be explained by the natural tendency of wealth to create wealth (compound interest) and for wealth to influence politics, but this book is deeper than that.

The author begins with an introduction of the Rothchilds, and gradually builds up a detailed picture of how they funded “barons” around the world, and in America, where the Morgans and the Rockefellers were their chosen instruments. The Bush family is second tier but right up there. Special attention is given to the Federal Reserve, which is NOT controlled by the government and has NEVER been audited in its history, and to the ease with which bankers make money from advance knowledge of changes in domestic and foreign policies that they often simply mandate.

The USA was until around 1837 a “value-based” economy in which real assets–gold, silver, land, labor–paid in full. There was no debt, no interest. From Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, bankers from Europe were rejected and considered “more dangerous than armies, swindling the future.” Jefferson also believed central banks to be unconstitutional, since the right to create a national currency is reserved to the U.S. Treasury. The author notes that both Lincoln and Kennedy were unique for issuing debt-free currency, and for being assassinated. Reagan was shot by Hinkley, whose relative was dining with a prominent member of the Bush family the night before, and he suggests this was intended to move Bush, a member of the secret society world and leading pawn, into power years sooner.

An extensive discussion is provided of bankers themselves causing financial panics, wars, and other confrontations. The author refers to the Rothschild Formula as being to spawn wars and finance both sides. The book discusses the bank-rolling of Hitler, Trotsky, the US Civil War, the French Revolution, the Boar War, and on and on.

Credible evidence is provided that the terrorism in Italy, as part of a “Strategy of Tension” described in a captured document, was intended to create enough of a perception of leftist terrorism to justify a shift in the government toward fascism. The P2 Lodge behind the terrorism was a secret society on the right, not the left, and is said to have been guided by the Alpine Lodge in Switzerland, the “Gnomes of Zurich.” George Bush senior is alleged to have been an honorary member of this lodge, while Henry Kissinger is said later in the book to be a member of the Alpine Lodge. Most interesting for me is the CIA connection. The “Strategy of Tension” was first devised by James Angleton to prevent a communist take-over in Italy following WWII, and is STRICKINGLY apt in considering the allegations that 9/11 was allowed to happen if not made to happen. See my review of “Crossing the Rubicon,” of “9/11: Synthetic Terror Made in the USA,” among other books (use my lists).

Summing up this book early on, I found it to be 1/3 wealth begets wealth; 1/3 corruption begets wealth, and 1/3 conspiracy begets wealth. However, once I entered the secret society segment of the book, I reverse the above order.

This book gave me a completely new perspective on Cheney and Rove as front men rather than the prime movers, intended to take the heat and be “sacrificed” without the public every realizing that it is Citi-Bank (the same bank said to have secretly received Yamashita's Gold from Douglas McArthur, as told in “Gold Warriors” by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave), and Chase Manhattan, the two owned sufficiently by the Morgan and Rockefeller families to be the hubs for their power. The author also discusses the 40,000 tax exempt organizations that serve as fronts for banks and foundations and corporations, all manipulating the individual citizen-voter without paying a cent in taxes.

On page 408 the author says “Whatever the truth may be, we must be wary of leaders who attempt–whether by force, manipulation, or deceit–to move whole populations in directions they may not wish to go and might not be beneficial to all.”

On page 409 the author says “Knowledge is indeed power. It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves–to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity [enabled by secrecy.” The author notes that there are more of us than of them (see my review of Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World.”)

I have one word for what I plan to work toward: TRANSPARENCY. Collective public intelligence is going to survive and prosper. The times, they are a'changing.

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2006/06/262009/12/04

Review: Speaking Freely–Trials of the First Amendment (Paperback)

5 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Civil Society, Democracy, Information Society

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From Pentagon Papers to NSA Wiretapping: NYT and Freedom of the Press,

June 26, 2006

Floyd Abrams

As I write this revieThe One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11w, CNN is reporting that the Bush Administration is threatening the New York Times with prosecution for revealing the NSA wire-tapping program that by-passed the FISA court, which has the EXCLUSIVE mandate to review all such intrusions. The Bush Administration is evidently ungrateful about the fact that the NYT stupidly held back on the story until after Rove could steal the election from Kerry by encouraging the Ohio State Secretary committing criminal acts in twelve districts. At the same time, there is also a moronic proposed amendment to the Constitution to prohibit the burning of the American flag in protest.

“Speaking Freely” is an extraordinary book that documents, over and over again, why our national security lies not only in force of arms but also in, quoting Judge Murray Gurfein (June 1971), a “cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitious press (that) must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”

The Cheney-Bush Administration is moving toward totalitarianism, and appears seriously stupid (another of those ideological fantasies) in believing that they can cover up their ineptitude by censoring the press.

See my reviews of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11; How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok and The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office to better understand what other authorities are saying about the lunacy of this position. These two guys are a combination of impeachable (mostly Cheney) and laughingstock (mostly Bush) who have leveraged the extremist Republican machine to steal two presidential elections and violate so many international and domestic laws as to be richly eligible for a public tarring and feathering.

This book, “Speaking Freely,” is a massive vaccination for the public against the disease of “state secrecy” that is used to cover up incompetence, inpropriety, and high crimes and misdemeanors richly deserving of impeachment.

Please note that the law suit of the New York Times for “blowing” NSA's capabilities is actually a cover-up for the fact that we are going deaf and blind because Al Qaeda is not stupid–they have been moving “offline” since 9-11, and the Administration is preparing to pretend that their failure to be effective against Al Qaeda is the fault of the New York Times.

Floyd Abrams may well be one of the most valuable Americans in modern history. He defended the NYT in the Pentagon Papers, and won. Today, the NYT should rely on the sensibility of the people to defend them. Deep in his book, Counselor Abrams makes the point that journalists MUST have the freedom to listen to sources “off the record,” and he places the burden for protecting secrets on those who choose to leak them for whatever reason.

I am reminded that the incumbent President is the “leaker in chief” who seems to make the law suit his needs. As one Constitutional lawyer has stated, he has the power neither to interpret the law nor make the law. It is George Bush, and his string puller Dick Cheney, who are “out of bounds” and richly deserving of impeachment.

For additional perspective:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: A Farewell to Justice–Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History (Hardcover)

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Sufficient to Impeach the Warren Commission; CIA Now Proven Complicit,

April 4, 2006

Joan Mellen

Edit of 11 Dec 07: Since I wrote this review, another book has come out, Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History and it conclusively documents two points:

1) JFK was assassinated by a Cuban exile team trained by CIA to assassinate Castro, that used their training against JFK, ostensibly for the Bay of Pigs mess. CIA then covered this up.

2) JFK was warned by Bobby that there were strong indications of a plot to kill him, and JFK himself blew it off, entrusting his safety to a Secret Service with no idea a professional CIA hit team was coming in.

As a former clandestine case officer for the CIA who served in Latin America and also lived in Viet-Nam during the ten coups, one of which killed Ngo Dinh Diem, I picked this book up with some trepidation.

It is an exhausting review, a truly incredible accomplishment for a single human being without any visible corporate resources for doing machine processing or visualization of all of the information.

Here's my bottom line as a 54-year old with over 30 years government service:

1) The Warren Commission, like the 9-11 Commission, blew it and mis-served the nation. They are retrospectively impeachable for dereliction of duty.

2) The Central Intelligence Agency, and Ted Shackley in particular, have a lot to answer for, and continue to lie and withhold key documents from the American people. We need the moral equivalent of a truth & reconciliation commission on covert action–I thought the Church Commission had done some of that, but clearly there is more to be done.

3) We clearly do not have a government that is capable of being consistently honest, at the same time that we have thousands of dedicated government employees who have no idea what the “cowboys” are doing. The recent outrage over CIA renditions and torture are all too familiar for those who have studied the Phoenix assassination program in Viet-Nam, or the JMWAVE efforts against Castro that blew back against John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy.

4) The time has come for the people to arm themselves with open source intelligence. I want to cut the spines off all these books that are creating new revelations and new detail, put it all in a machine, and makes some sense out of it. We are a few years away from that point, but the day is coming, and when that day comes, we need to hand down some public indictments, including posthumous indictments, and begin to set the stage for honorable governance and ethical intelligence.

This book may not be completely accurate–it tends to assume the worst of CIA at all points–but it is assuredly enough to persuade me that US intelligence has much to answer for, and the Warren Commission *should* be retrospectively impeached.

For those who under-estimate the value of history, see Robert Parry on Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'(Ted Shackley played a big role there as well, allegedly running guns to Central America, drugs back through America to Europe, and cash from Europe home), and also the complaints of the official Department of State historians, who are outraged that the CIA will still not release documents from the 1960's without which we cannot properly evaluate our foreign policy misadventures in retrospect.

2005/10/252009/12/04

Review: The War On Truth–9/11, Disinformation And The Anatomy Of Terrorism (Paperback)

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Censorship & Denial of Access, Misinformation & Propaganda

Tars CIA & FBI, US, UK, France, with Supporting Terrorists, 9-11 a Pretext,

October 25, 2005

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

While there is certainly something to be said for this book painting a “worst case” conspiracy theory scenario, I have to say that it is consistent with both my years of experience as a clandestine case officer, anad my extensive reading on national security misadventures. I do agree with one reviewer's observation that we should not over-estimate the competence of the U.S. Government, but I also believe that we cannot under-estimate the incompetence of the bureaucracy nor the lack of ethics of the political ideologues.

Academically, objectively, this book is about as carefully laid out and sourced as one could want. The quotes that it offe

rs from official State Department officers complaining they were ordered to give visas to clearly unqualified terrorists being trained and supported by CIA stand out, as do the retrospective quotes on everything the FBI failed to do against the first World Trade Center bombing. This book is, in brief, everything the 9/11 Commission was not. The two taken together, along with the Aspin-Brown Commission, give us a good sense for reality.

Having been a part of the CIA when it was committing high crimes and misdemeanors in Central America, and having been a youth in Viet-Nam when CIA was in charge of the Phoenix assassination program and learning how to fly drugs and launder money for its warlords, and based on my extensive reading, I am persuaded of the three core propositions in this book:

1) That CIA and FBI managed clandestine relations with those who blew up the World Trade Center for years, and generally concealed and obstructed Justice investigations after 9/11 because of their antecedent mis-behavior;

2) That both the Clinton and Bush White Houses actively supported the Taliban and the secret Enron negotiations with the Taliban to build energy pipelines, not realizing at the time (as we know today) that the extraction and transportation of the energy as envisioned then is actually not supportable; and

3) That the Bush White House was already planning to invade Afghanistan, with all of the operational plans drawn up as early as July 2001, and 9/11 was treated as a Pearl Harbor pretext.

Having read most of what has been written by Brzezinski, Kissinger, and others I find the author's speculation that the U.S., the U.K., and France, among others, have been actively using terrorists, nurturing terrorists, as part of a geopolitical and economic strategy, and that in their naivete, they nurtured a force they cannot control today, to be completely credible.

I recommend this book be read together with Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin by Larry Beinhart, and The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century by James Kuntsler. The first examines information that can be known, as in this book, but that is ignored if not over-shadowed by “spin”; while the second examines the pathological implications of cheap oil and all that cheap oil has made possible, including the creation of huge cities that are unsustainable into the future; the transport of vast quantities of water over long distances to places that will be dry in the near term; and the shipping of very cheap goods over very long distances from China by Wal-Mart.

Bottom line: cheap oil is the fool's gold of this century, only it is toxic and radioactive. The White House, Enron, and a cast of rather poorly-read bureaucrats came together to create a toxic mold called sub-state terrorism. The bureaucrats were following orders or had good intentions–the politicans and their corporate cronies were and are out and out thieves who are looting the Republic for their own selfish gains, firm in the belief that enough people will be fooled until they are out of office and laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands. They are probably right.

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: See also, with reviews:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

and of course the 9-11 DVDs, which I find compelling.

2005/10/232009/12/04

Review: Fog Facts –Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books) (Hardcover)

5 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Education (General), Education (Universities), Information Operations, Information Society, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda

Makes the case for a People's Bank-Union-Intelligence Agency,

October 23, 2005

Larry Beinhart

This is quite an extraordinary book, one of five I picked up while browsing at Barnes & Noble today. It gets a full five stars for elegant writing, logical presentation, and a lovely index. I read it together with Noam Chomsky's Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) interviews, and the two complement one another.

“Fog facts” are facts that are out in the open, but “invisible” in the sense that no one acts on them. The stolen Florida election–30,000 plus disenfranchised blacks *and* “overcount” votes where Al Gore was both checked and written, rejected as invalid instead of returned for verification–the specious claims against Iraq; the 9-11 Commission apologia; the list goes on. For myself, the most interesting fog facts dealt with the number of terrorists caught and jailed by France and other nations, as a tiny fraction of the cost of invading Afghanistan and Iraq, and with little to show for it excepts casualties, including significant numbers of US amputations being concealed from the public.

The author “outs” Judith Miller as an agent of Karl Rove in the run-up to the war in Iraq, earnestly selling the Administration's line on weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps one reason she was both favored by Rove in the current Valerie Plume case, and also sought to protect Rove.

THe author gets the jump on the current scandal of the disappearing billions in Iraq–not just the billions for Halliburton in sole source contracts, but the outright theft and squandering of the $19 billion in Iraqi bank credits that Paul Bremer managed to fritter away–and they still do not have running water or electricity.

THe author quotes several times from Mein Kamph in discussing the extremist Republican use of “the big lie” and the comparisons are disconcertingly clear. He weaves a tale of draft-dodging hypocrisy among the Bush Junior and Cheney gang that is all too distasteful when combined with their corruption in favoring Halliburton–his listing of Cheney's ignominious failures as CEO of HAlliburton are fun–and also a sign that Halliburton knew what it was doing in suffering the fool that would deliver the people's treasure. His accounting of Bush Juniors many failures in business, each time living on his father's name and getting bailed out by the forgiving rich that he has repaid many times over with tax cuts and exemptions from asbestos claims, among other loopholes, is dismaying in the extreme. We “know” these things, but we do not act.

On page 82 he repeats what is now perhaps the most famous quote to come out of the Bush Junior White House, where an arrogant aide dismisses a “reality-based” person and says that the U.S. is an empire now, and makes its own reality. That the reality we are making is one of our own destruction escapes this witless aide to the President, so full of himself is he.

The books adds to my understanding of the current Social Security arrangements as a pass through system (each generation funds the next) as opposed to the Administration's proposal for privatization, which converts it to a pension fund that dies with each generation. I am persuaded that we must defend Social Security, it is present form, to the death, and that we must remove the caps and make the wealthy contribute for every dollar, not just up to $90,000.

The author concludes that there is a war today, not between civilizations, but between faith-based and reality-based communities.

I put the book down reflecting to myself that it is time for the American labor union pension funds to lead a revolution. It is time for the people to form their own bank, their own credit card company, their own intelligence agency, and their own media. Although this is happening in fits and starts with the Internet, it is disjointed. We need to marry up money, willpower, and honest information, and we need to out these carpetbaggers and regain control of the commonwealth.

Truth and morality are here to be found, but the question that remains is: will the people act? This is a very fine book for anyone who cares about future generations and resents being robbed.

Ten Other Recommended Books (Five Bad News, Five Good News):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom