I was watching David Walker as he served nine of his fifteen years at Comptroller General, with light-weight whimpers to Congress until he finally got Peter Peterson to bail him out of government and give him a chunk of cash for making movies and writing a book and creating a web site that very few serious under 40 pioneers pay attention to.
I was thrilled to see him tell Congress in 2007 that the US was bankrupt–both Senator McCain and Senator Obama could have cared less–and so he walked quietly back to his holding cell at the General Accountability Office (GAO). His “loyalty” to impeachable masters is just as troubling to me as the loyalty of our military leaders during the neo-con rampage.
This book loses one star for the publishers arrogance and ineptitude in failing to use all of the tools Amazon provides, so that readers like myself who read a great deal and do not buy books on whim, can actually look at the table of contents. If you want a sense what the author has to say, see the Wikipedia page on the US Federal Budget where the author's fingerprints are elegantly visible.
If and when the publisher acts more responsibly and provides Look Inside the Book information as well standard entries via Amazon Advantage (about the book, about the author, editorial reviews), I will buy the book, read it, and review it.
The book loses a second star for being wildly praised by all the unethical losers that got us into this mess in the first place by sacrificing their ethics and selling the two party system out to Wall Street. Bill Bradley in particular is a major disappointment, he slunk off to Allen and Company where George “Slam Dunk” Tenet is also in hiding, and they have profited handsomely for betraying the public trust for over a decade. Edumund Burke said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Even better is the following from Chief Justice Louis Brandeis:
Amazon: O’Brien turns to accredited research conducted in Europe that confirms the toxicity of America’s food supply, and traces the relationship between Big Food and Big Money that has ensured that the United States is one of the only developed countries in the world to allow hidden toxins in our food–toxins that can be blamed for the alarming recent increases in allergies, ADHD, cancer, and asthma among our children. Featuring recipes and an action plan for weaning your family off dangerous chemicals one step at a time, The Unhealthy Truth is a must-read for every parent–and for every concerned citizen–in America today.
Via Email: Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It is a remarkable, readable, galvanizing book about the effect of unhealthy food on our kids.
Robyn O¹Brien has been called the Erin Brockovich of the food industry. Some of this information is not new, but Robyn has brought it together in a credible (she¹s has an MBA), comprehensive (she¹s a gifted researcher), compelling way that includes her own personal story.
She has also started Allergy Kids Foundation, whose mission/goal is to create universal food allergy awareness and to inspire parents to learn to identify the existence of and protect the health of their children with food allergies.
As the first independently funded food allergy organization, AllergyKids highlights previously undisclosed research addressing the recent introduction and engineering of allergens, proteins, food additives and dyes into our food supply and the impact that these novel proteins, chemicals and allergens have on the health and well being of women and their children.
In the last twenty years, the new childhood epidemics of allergies, asthma, autism and ADHD (also obesity and cancer) have increased dramatically:
+ 400% increase in allergies,
+ 300% increase in asthma,
+ 400% increase in ADHD
+ and an increase of between 1,500 and 6,000% in the number of children with autism-spectrum disorders.
Strongly Recommended by BGen McMaster in Talk at ODNI
January 20, 2010
Paul Rexton Kan
This is one of two books strongly recommended, with deep admiration, by BGen McMaster, USA (Ret) speaking to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on 19 January. The four page trip report on his remarks about improving intelligence in support of the multinational mission in Afghanistan has been posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
I have bought this book and will review it within two weeks. CIA got its start in drug running and money laundering in Viet-Nam, and has at best facilitated the expansion of the drug zone and at worst financed it–at least half of the billion dollars a year that were channeled into Afghanistan by CIA via the Pakistani Intelligence Service are assumed (by me) to have been stolen, and today Pakistan is the primary site for the processing of Afghan opium into #4 heroin for onward shipment to Europe and elsewhere.
General McMaster also recommended Organizations at War in Afghanistan and Beyond. In my own review of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 From that review pending my doing a complete proper review of this book:
The most important point in the book is not one the author intended to make. He inadvertently but most helpfully points to the fact that at no time did the U.S. government, in lacking a policy on Afghanistan across several Administrations, think about the strategic implications of “big money movements.” I refer to Saudi Oil, Afghan Drugs, and CIA Cash.
The greatest failure of the CIA comes across throughout early in the book: the CIA missed the radicalization of Islam and its implications for global destabilization. It did so for three reasons: 1) CIA obsession with hard targets to the detriment of global coverage; 2) CIA obsession with technical secrets rather than human overt and covert information; and 3) CIA laziness and political naiveté in relying on foreign liaison, and especially on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
My bottom line: the $75 billion a year for secret intelligence is not producing intelligence, only waste and profit. We are killing our troops in the field by being incompetent at intelligence. That breaks my heart.
Fast Read, Ground Truth, Moral Truth, Priceless Insights
January 5, 2010
Michael Hogan
I received this book as a gift from the author after I reviewed Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, and I am very glad to have accepted his offer. At 218 pages double-spaced it is a fast read and perhaps even more valuable for that–this is the book that every US CEO and professional having anything to do with Latin America should read. I do not mention politicians because they are all uniformly corrupt and have been castrated by the two-party tyranny. This book holds special meaning for teachers who wish to restore their role as speakers of truth rather than as cogs in the Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling.
The book opens with a spectacularly cogent list of the damages caused to Latin America by the USA:
1) Military interventions followed by abandonment (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti)
2) Undermining of the democratic process (Guatemala, Chile)
True Story, Part of the “Made in USA” Atrocities r' US
December 26, 2009
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
I first met the authors after reviewing Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold and then traveling to Europe to interview them–they are in self-imposed exile–for a DVD that was shown at one of my earlier international conferences. [My rendition of this review at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, has live links Amazon does not allow here.]
This is a great read. I attended boarding school and later served as a Marine Corps infantry officer passing in and out of the Philippines; I have been inside Japanese tunnels and have a great regard for the Filipino people. Because the US has been so asidious in writing (and fabricating) the history of the Cold War, few know that the Huks were originally a loyal resistance to the Japanese occupiers–the US, despite its tolerance for out of control atrocity mongers like Landsdale, has managed to “occupy” with a softer touch, but one no less detrimental.
As a former spy–a recovering spy–for the Central Intelligence Agency I would certify that 90% of the CIA is good people trapped in a bad system with no blood on their hands. Our problem is the 10% that does renditions, tortures, helps train and arm those who would do genocide and atrocities (including the Israelis, who now teach us rather than learn from us).
RED SKY has no endnotes, but is based on solid evidence. [I provide others supporting references at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, as live links within this review there.] I consider Gold Warriors (with its CD containing 60,000 pages of maps and supporting documentation) to be the better book, but for some readers, this book will be much more fun and memorable. Here are the highlights from this most truthful account
+ Landsdale was never in combat–he spent WWII in San Francisco writing propaganda for the OSS.
+ When Truman closed down the OSS (he later regretted every starting the CIA) OSS people were scattered around to hide them, Lansdale was sent to Manile to work a desk for Army G-2.
+ Landsdale's bright shining moment came when he recognized the value of a captured driver (Major Kojima Kashi) to General Yamashita, and bribed him to reveal treasure locations. That treasure became the basis for the USA's covert post-war Black Eagle and Golden Lily slush funds used to restore Nazis in Germany and fascists in Italy and Japan, and to do those things Congress would never agree to pay for.
+ Santa Romana, a Vatican agent and member of Opus Dei, was Landsdale's co-conspirator (fast forward to the Opus Dei penetration of the US Government today, every bit as good as the Mossad's sayonim and the Mormon network).
+ Landsdale–the model for the book The Ugly American and also featured in Edward Lansdale's Cold War (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War)–became a “big shot” in OSS-CIA circles because of this success at finding and secretly harvesting the Japanese thefts from China and all across Asia that were hidden in the Philippines when US dominance of the seas prevented onward passage to Japan.
+ Landsale–whom all the books I've seen describe as an opportunist and con artist at heart–saw that anti-communism was the wave of the future in Washington circles (even then CIA was busy importing 100 Nazis a year), and he came up with the idea of demonizing the Huk's, who were freedom fighters, as part of the “Communist Menace.”
+ The book also covers the Chinese diaspora that the US Government has never understood and never taken seriously. The Chinese “High Cabal” is easily as powerful as the European “High Cabal,” they just work more discreetly and make better use of local fronts.
+ Landsdale needed to invent evidence of Russian support for the Huks, so he focused on Russian exiles living in Manila or enroute through the Philippines to other locations including the US.
+ The heart of the story is how Landsale personally destroyed one innocent person and their family, ultimately making the person disappear after five years of surveillance, prison, and torture were brought to an end by a crusading attorney. Some sources have suggested that Landsdale ordered the murder of his trumped up Russian spy, who is believed to have been thrown from a helicopter into the South China Sea.
+ The book ends with Landsdale being rewarded by being sent to Viet-Nam to support Diem (a Catholic mandarin hated by the Buddhists, with a sister that makes Idi Amin look like a wimp) and I have seen other reports that suggest that Landsdale led an effort to plant bombs in the 1950's and early 1960's to achieve the US end of creating a local civil war that would demand US intervention.
There is also a happy ending, despite all the ills that befall the patsy, the source of much of the information in this book escapes and lived happily every after.
I still believe in America the Beautiful and the righteousness of The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen but I am disgusted and alienated by all that has been done “in our name” over the years, ultimately impoverishing the many to benefit the few. I earnestly believe that the public is a populist power that cannot be suppressed, and that information and communications technologies have changed the balance of power to favor the possibility of creating a prosperous world at peace.
This book is one of the many nails in the coffin of Cold War “irrational exhuberance” that has clearly been repeated in the failure to keep capitalism moral and the failure to keep government honest at home and abroad. We can do better.
Rather than provide links here, see the 98 categories of Reviews at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
Vote on Review
The authors provided us with the following additional supporting reference:
James Gibney, one of my most respected sources for common- sense and integrity, posted a review of this book on 15 January 2006 in the New York Times. At Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, I have posted that three-page review along with some other original references on “Colonel” Landsdale, a journalism drop-out from UCLA and former advertising person, that document the role he played in making genocide and atrocities part of the “Made in USA” Cold War tool-kit.
At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog it is possible to access all of my reviews via any of 98 categories 9e.g. Intelligence, Secret; or Pathology of Power; or Empire, etcetera, something Amazon has refused to make possible since I began suggesting it years ago.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars INTEGRITY: easy to lose, hard to restore
February 4, 2008
He was a Navy officer serving on the USS Yorktown by the age of 22, in law school at 26, a staff assistant to the counsel to the president at 29, and Undersecretary of Transportation at 33. At 34, he was in jail. How could this happen to a man raised in a highly moral family, with an excellent education, with Christian Middle American values and a strong sense of patriotism? Yet here was Egil “Bud” Krogh at 33, starting a prison sentence for violating the civil rights of Dr. Lewis Fielding, a California psychiatrist. Bud says the principal cause was the collapse of integrity of those members of the White House's Special Investigative Unit (SIU) who conspired, ordered and carried the break-in of the doctor who had been consulted by Dr. Daniel Ellsburg, the “leaker” of the Pentagon Papers” to the New York Times in early 1971.
Ten Years Late, More Whimper than Roar
Strongly Recommended by BGen McMaster in Talk at ODNI
