Danish investigative author Henrik Kruger set out to write a book about Christian David, a French criminal with a colorful past, and wound up writing a book that spans all continents and names names all the way up to Richard Nixon! The same names keep popping up here and in other books of its type, like Howard Hunt and other various CIA spooks and gangsters. A few of the characters have even been named in connection with the JFK assassination. This is not some bizarre conspiracy theory book, however, as everything is thorougly researched and annotated.
The basic premise is that the Nixon administration/CIA wanted to eliminate the old French Connection and replace it with heroin from the Golden Triangle, partly in order to help finance operations in Southeast Asia. He also goes into the relationships between French and US intelligence services and organized crime.
5.0 out of 5 starsResponsible and Compelling — Avoids Some of the Darkest Facts, October 16, 2014
A more timely relevant book for US citizens could not be imagined, at least by me. By the sheerest coincidence, I have also recently read two books that in my view form a tri-fecta of perspective that could help launch an abolishment of the present government of the USA, a two-party tyranny in service to the legalized crime families of Wall Street.
I won't repeat my summary reviews of those two books, here I will only say that while Tom Engelhardt is ably laying out the criminal insanity of what we have now in the way of a secret government that has become a “lockdown state” toxic to all forms of life everywhere, Micah has documented why the progressive and activist civil movements are dead in the water without a clue, and Darrell has documented how there are at least 25 billionaires out there who want to get it right but have no one to work with.
5.0 out of 5 starsOK to Challenge Racism and Poverty — NOT OK to challenge militarism and the national security state, September 12, 2014
The publisher has done a rotten job of summarizing this book. Here, paraphrasing the author as he just spoke on the John Stewart show, is the bottom line:
The minute that Dr. King turned against militarism and denounced the USA as the greatest purveyor of violence upon the world, he was first marginalized and then assassinated. “The System” was fine with Dr. King focusing on racism, and even poverty, but it would not tolerate for one moment his questioning the military-industrial complex and the national security state.
The author — whom I found to be very inspiring, coherent, and concise — a brilliant articulator of the key points in the book — goes on to have a conversation with Jon Stewart about how the USA simply cannot handle truth-tellers in relation to “big money” matters such as elective wars (racism and poverty being “little money” matters, and deliberately so).
Dr. King was ultimately assassinated by a US Army sniper on detail to the FBI and under the personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover. The story is told in An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King and has also been documented and validated in a judgment by a federal court awarding the King family the single dollar in damages they requested.
5.0 out of 5 starsTitle Short-Changes Value — This is One of the Most Important Books of Our Time, July 12, 2014
I'm not thrilled with the title because it implies to the browser that the book is about the 935 now-documented lies that led to the war in Iraq, and that is not the case — those lies are simply one of many evidentiary cases spanned a much broader spectrum. As the author himself outlines early on, the book is about a retrospective review of the struggle for truth from the lies that led to Viet-Nam to date (less 9/11); a concurrent review of the corruption and diminuition of commercial journalism; and finally, the future of the truth.
4.0 out of 5 starsTrying to Do the Wrong Thing Righter — It's Not the State, Stupid!, June 2, 2014
I am reading Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better, a gift from a former naval officer who shares my outrage over the US Government being 50% waste across the board. This book looks interesting but insufficient. As most of us now know, government is one of eight major action and information tribes (the other seven are academic, civil society including labor and religion, commerce especially small business, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental/non-profit organizations (NGO).
Trying to fix the state in isolation is a classic example of what Buckminster Fuller said we should never do (don't try to fix a dysfunctional system, instead create a new system that displaces it) and what Russell Ackoff would label another attempt to do the wrong thing righter, instead of doing the right thing.
4.0 out of 5 starsDouble-Spaced Essay of Value, April 30, 2014
This is an excellent double-spaced essay without notes or index, on how the state is a pathological encumberance on society, enabling all manner of waste in large part because it is incapable of dealing with the nuances of complexity. I quite agree with the author's central premise, that 90% of what the state does and how it does it is antithetical to the peace and prosperity of society at large.
The book was first published in 1998, see the excellent comment from the author below as to its provenance and intent. My belief that this is new work, encouraged by slick mis-representative marketing including a new YouTube and no mention anywhere that this is a reprint that is 16 years old, is in error. I hold the author blameless, this was a publisher too distant from crowd ethics.
Among the best features of the book are numerous quotes from others collected by the author, and many examples from him time in the 1970's through early 1990's dealing with health food and natural cures.
The author's major failing is in assuming that government is anything other than an organized crime family (the Nordic, BENELUX, and Singapore governments excepted). For the longest time I could not understand the US tax code and its purpose. One day, after considering the Tobin Tax and the efficacy of having a single Automated Payment Transaction (APT) Tax that included currency and stock transactions, I realize that the US tax code is actually a blackmail scheme. It's purpose is not to raise revenue — witness the one trillion a year the US borrows in the name of future generations — it's purpose is to blackmain businesses into paying for tax exemptions and loopholes, the point being that the money extorted by blackmail goes to the political campaign funds, not to the public.
I have a number of margin notations, and find much to agree with in this book, I am so dismayed with the false presentation of this book by the publisher as “new” that I am ending my review here. Watch any of the YouTube offerings to get the gist free.
For those that would like to explore many of the themes that the author raises in his personal essay, I offer the four following lists of lists of book reviews — over 400 books sorted into over 40 categories — each easily found online with links back to all Amazon pages embedded.
5.0 out of 5 starsDavid Bollier's Review is Better, This Is My Attempt, April 21, 2014
I was very impressed by David Bollier's review of this book at his web site (look for < “Stop, Thief!” – Peter Linebaugh's New Collection of Essays > and am encouraging him to port that excellent review here to Amazon. Indeed, after working my way through the book myself, I consider myself unable to do proper justice to this deep work that integrates history, poetry, political economy, anthropology, and sociology among other disciplines. Hence I hope others will write substantive summary reviews and I again recommend Bollier's review above.
Three thoughts keep recurring as I went through this book of original current essays and presentations:
01 Holy Cow. This guy is DEEP and BROAD in terms of arcane as well as popular sources, delving down into little known poems, essays, public statements, etcetera. This book is the one book version of the Durant's Story of Civilization applied to one topic, the commons.
02 Holy Cow. This is what my top political science professor was trying to explain when I was in college in 1970-1974 – yes, a half century ago — and I was just not smart enough, patient enough, to appreciate it.
03 Holy Cow. This book is not just subversive, it does a magnificent job of head slapping every politician, economists, talking head, and other pretender who presumes to talk about public welfare without for one instant understanding that wages are a form of slavery and disconnection of humanity from everything else. Lionel Tiger makes related points in The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System but this book — if you focus and do not get lost in the poetry and minutia of exemplar citation — beats the commons versus capitalism drum along every possible note on the musical scale.
