The Florida Sun Sentinel has for many years been rather unique, as a corporate newspaper with a regular columnist who's actually good, and I don't mean just good for the context, but actually worth reading even if the masses of South Florida weren't reading along. Happily, they are.
Stephen L. Goldstein has just published a book, also worth reading, called Atlas Drugged (Ayn Rand Be Damned!) It's fiction, often hilarious fiction, aimed at debunking the notion that Ayn Randian “free-market” trickle-down crapitalism can coexist with basic human decency. “This is a work of fiction,” says the back cover. “But any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional. The names have been changed but, hopefully, not enough to protect the guilty.”
In fact, while the book takes rightwingerism to an extreme, it blends in plenty of elements from reality. Imagine the most outlandish carrying of so-called conservatism to its logical conclusion, and abandoning New Orleans to a hurricane, or watching a fire department stand by while a house burns (because the owner didn't pay the proper fees) fits right in.
Chris Hedge's and Joe Sacco's new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, is a treasure. Hedges wrote the plain text. Sacco produced the text-heavy cartoon sections and other illustrations, which even I — not a big fan of cartoon books — found to enrich this book enormously.
Hedges and Sacco visit Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to examine the misery of the Native Americans who remain there. It's nice to think that we've corrected our crimes through political correctness, and yet they continue uninterrupted — unconscionably, intolerably, tragically. Here the human stories are told, and told by those affected and by those resisting and struggling to set things right. Ironically, the victims of the United States' first imperial slaughters are now disproportionately suffering the pain common to veterans of recent U.S. wars. That same pattern of widespread military experience is found in each of three other sections of the book as well, while other communities in this country have virtually no participation in the military.
Hedges and Sacco go to Camden, New Jersey, to examine the world of impoverished and ghettoized African Americans, whose lives have worsened by many measures over the past generation, despite the successes of the civil rights movement. Poor whites and others figure into the story as well, with special attention to those struggling to improve the world, whether on a small or large scale. Michael Doyle's voice is one of those from Camden residents that tell the story of decline and devastation that city has experienced:
5.0 out of 5 stars Capstone Work–Light in Places, Super-Deep in Others, June 1, 2012
I read a lot — across 98 categories (access my Amazon reviews via category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog). WITHOUT HESITATION, this book is easily a solid five. Early in the book I have it as a four, annoyed by the shallowness of some of the pieces and the error on Jonathan Pollard–this treasonous scum-bag went to other countries before he got to Israel, in no way is he a Jewish hero, only a traitor–but by the time I finish the book I am tempted to go with a six (10% of my reading). It is a solid five. Those that think less of this book are missing the knowledge foundation necessary to appreciate what the author has done in 300 pages covering the last hundred years.
I mention those up front to frame my view of this book as a serious combination of scholarly research and investigative journalism. Had the author included a who's who of key individual players as an appendix, this would have been a six.
I grew up during the Vietnam War. I was seven years old when General William Westmoreland was sent to Vietnam by LBJ to take charge of things there. I was eleven when he lost his job and by then, had lost us the war. Vietnam was in the news the entire time, on TV, in the paper, in Time Magazine – as was Westmoreland's iconic chin. Being the son of military parents I'd early gotten the history bug and I was fascinated by what was taking place over in Southeast Asia, even if I didn't understand it well. As I grew older, and things over there grew worse, I began to wonder how we could possibly lose such a war (as I thought it was) against such a small country.
Lewis Sorely's “Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam” will tell you how. Sorely has the credentials for this book. He is himself a graduate of West Point. He served in Vietnam. He even served in the office of the Army Chief of Staff, General William C. Westmoreland, and taught at West Point. This isn't just a book by some journalist trying to get at the bottom of things. Sorely has been “at the bottom of things” and he has done the leg work over a period of years, talking to 175 people in his search for the events he here recounts.
5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Starting Point for National Counterintelligence Outing of Zionist Traitors in US Government and Industry, April 29, 2012
I hate electronic books for many reasons, including being an old guy that still thinks in hand – eye – brain terms, so let me start by saying this is the first e-book that for me has been a pleasure to read. Plenty of white space, clearly separated chapter, a great inter-spersal of photographs, and finally — my most important touch point — really superb sources at the end of each chapter, with many of them actively linked.
As the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, I read a lot — over 30 books (with a leavening of DVDs) on 9/11, but to put that in context, that is just 0.016 of my reading in the last decade. Do not for a moment think of me as a conspiracy theorist or anti-Semite. I am an intelligence professional, with integrity.
This particular book, unlike all the others I have read in relation to 9/11, does four things no other book has done:
01) Connects the dots of all the dual Israeli-US citizens in the US Government and US commercial circles (mostly in NYC) that were active participants in the 9/11 false flag operation. The role of the owners of the 81st floor and the massive bank of “batteries” that were never used but are precisely where the airlines hit, impressed me.
02) Integrates, for the first time, the history of Israeli false flag operations, the 1980 recognition by Israel that an attack on NYC and specifically against the tallest building in NYC whatever that might be, and the total complex context of 9/11 as both a catalyst for forcing the USA into a “war on terror” and a cover-up for the most massive financial crimes in history, including a special role for AIG and its specifically-identified Zionist leadership.
03) Introduces me for the first time to the facts about the Estonia that the Swedish government evidently covered up–it was carrying Russian contraband to Estonia, and two explosions blew off the front loading doors, dropping the ferry and 800 Swedes into a point almost halfway between Estonia and Sweden, as planned in a previous exercise. The author also covers NATO, the NATO presence that night, and the confounding combination of NATO being “asleep” the whole time, with the outage of the regional telephone networks for the duration.
04) Clarifies the depth of Israeli involvement in the drug trade — not just laundering the money in NYC and elsewhere, but actively nurturing the drug trade and drugs toward the US in particular — as a budget item. What comes out clearly is that Israel is not just bribing the US Congress, controlling the US White House, and castrating US intelligence and counterintelligence, but that Israel is using the USA as a two-track piggy bank — stealing all that it can from the US Treasury (Goldman Sachs provides the Secretary of the Treasury), while earning all that it can from running drugs into the US with the active collaboration of elements of the US Government and the Texas crime families including the Bush Cartel.
For some time I have been concerned about US false flag operations and corruption within the US government and US commercial circles. Although I have from time to time recognized that Israel treats the USA as a “shicksa” (as in gentile girls don't count, they are “fair game before and after marriage to a Jewish princess”), and I have been as outraged as any at the USS Liberty–the point at which I realized Israel is actually the enemy of the USA, a parasitic animal sucking the life out of the USA–I must say that this book moves me to place Israel and American citizens who are more loyal to Israel than to the Republic and the Constitution, in first place as the primary target for the emerging national counterintelligence network.
For years I have been talking about the need for religious counterintelligence. Originally I was concerned about Mormon penetration of the CIA and FBI, and with Mitt Romney being rumored to be the banker for at least one major drug cartel, one has to ask, when do we stop being an Idiot Nation? Then my focus shifted to Opus Dei, which has done quite well in US Navy circles and elsewhere. It is only in the past ten years, with the USS Liberty, the USS Cole (almost certainly another Israeli false flag operation), 9/11, and then a series of truly idiotic plots including the underpants bomber and the print cartridges on UPS, that I have realized that apart from political and appointed officials committing treason every day, Israel is the #1 enemy of the United States of America.
This is not anti-Semite. We are all Jewish in one way or another, and I have had the operation. This is about a Zionist cabal in Israel marrying up with the neo-con and rabid-Christian cabals in the USA, leveraging the global drug and arms trade to do evil to others all in the sake of saving Israel. The atrocities against the Palestinians, and the walls that out-do Hitler (there is one excellent picture of an Israeli wall with watchtower, three times higher than any prison wall), in combination with all that Israel and its embedded traitors have done to undermine the US and UK and to disgrace us all while stealing from us all, bring me to the line. ENOUGH.
I ran for President in the USA, accepted by the Reform Party as a candidate, for two reasons: 1) to put in one place (BigBatUSA.org) the four core ideas necessary if we are to restore the rule of law in the US; and 2) to be able to write to all other presidential candidates urging them to unite with Occupy, the Tea Party, Independents, and one another (six of the eight parties in the USA are treated as if they were shicksa Palestinians–of no account, access blocked) to restore the integrity of the electoral process, to create a coalition cabinet and a balanced budget, and to present America with a legal, ethical, non-violent revolutionary choice. I failed. From Ron Paul to Dennis Kucinich to Jill Stein, Buddy Roemer, Rocky Anderson–I reached all of them and all of them were, to the man, egotistical selfish deer in the headlights candidates, playing their own personal game with no thought of how to actually rescue America.
Zionist Israel (not Jews) is a cancer. I am glad to see the Arab dictatorships begin to fall, they are as responsible as Israel and the USA for the plight of the Palestinians, but Israel is hypocritical — it has cut deals with every dictator on the planet — as has the US — to its own ends. In a nutshell, the era of government Of, By, and For We the People is over. Governments have failed to maintain their integrity. We the People now need to create public intelligence in the public interest; to engage in massive non-violent tax revolts; and to begin using open source information to empower hybrid networks that route around corrupt governments, corrupt banks, corrupt media, corrupt universities, corrupt religions, corrupt labor unions–and reconstitution society from the bottom up. George Soros to his credit has finally recognized the Enlightenment Fallacy. I now recognize the Israeli Terror.
At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, halfway down the middle column, you can find a single link to all of my 9/11 reviews, all leading back to Amazon, but please do not stop there. I am the proponent for the third era of national intelligence, the era of Smart Nations, World Brain, Global Game, and connecting all people to all information in all languages all the time — only such a tsunami of public consciousness will overcome the evil that is done in our name and at our expense. I am optimistic.
Co-authors Peter Ressler and Monika Mitchell have been 20-year Wall Street insiders as partners in an executive search firm. Their book is a page-turning account of the 2007-8 meltdown and continuing unsolved issues that will inevitably lead to the next crises. Woven throughout their analysis are conversations with dozens of top executives from Lehman, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and many hedge funds and private equity firms.
Only the executives' first names are used (for obvious reasons), which makes their recorded interviews with the authors more revealing, with all the vivid expletives un-redacted. We hear first-hand of how Wall Street's culture actually worked based on the “buyer beware” treatment of sophisticated clients. Pension funds were considered “big boys” who should do their own due diligence and against whom it was OK to bet that the securities sold to them would blow up. These were the market makers who, unlike the partnerships of yore, regularly took both sides of deals with their often unsuspecting customers while pushing ratings agencies to stamp these toxic products as triple-A. The prevailing culture is reflected in their language: “eat what you kill,” “ripping the face off” clients and the jungle rule of “survival of the fittest” (often incorrectly associated with Charles Darwin rather than originally coined by Herbert Spencer, a British economist of that era who wrote for The Economist).
What makes this book spectacular–and strongly recommended for anyone–student or adult–who desires to understand the history of the United States of America with intelligence and integrity–is the elegantly straight-forward but devastatingly disturbing blend of facts–with superb notes at the end of each chapter.
I am very disappointed that the publisher has not taken advantage of Amazon's absolutely priceless “Look Inside the Book” feature, so I will take the time here to list chapters and appendices.
