Crime (Organized, Transnational) – Page 6

2008/04/222011/10/22

Review DVD: American Drug War: The Last White Hope

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

This is a very serious movie and I volunteered to appear in it, April 22, 2008

Tommy Chong

I must disclose that I came into this movie at the very end when the brilliant producer realized I could provide a few bits that would bring it all together. I volunteered my time because I felt then–and I feel now–that this film was totally righteous. So I am listed as one of the “actors” but unlike some of them for whom file clips were used, I was taped speaking about this specific situation for this specific movie.

Our government is BROKEN. The civil servants and uniformed personnel are good people trapped in a bad system–a cesspool. Standing above them, hoarding the wealth, the power, and the personal privilege, are “elected” officials and their appointed cronies that have no business at all governing this great nation. They are inept and should be dismissed. We need a Constitutional Convention, an end to the Elctoral College, and deep Electoral, Financial, and National Security Reforms.

I have tagged this DVD with the word treason, because that is what CIA, DEA, the FBI, and the White House are guilty of when they protect drug wholesalers and allow entire neighborhoods to go down the crack drain, not because of Ricky Ross, but because of high crimes and misdemeanors all the way up the chain above him.

In my world, accountability is supposed to start and be enforced from the top down, not the bottom up. I hold John Deutch and later George Tenet accountable for failing to manage all five of the CIAs (the Wall Street CIA, the White House CIA, the front CIA, the paramilitary CIA, and the sodomy Safari Club CIA). I can only imagine the counterparts in DEA and the FBI and other elements of the government with the power to commit treason and get away with it while making a personal profit from the power We the People have assigned to them.

2008/03/162012/12/02

Review: Sign of the Cross

4 Star, Crime (Organized, Transnational), Fiction, Religion & Politics of Religion

Really great with disappointing ending, March 16, 2008

Chris Kuzneski

I agree with the thrust of the other reviewers, to wit, there is a lot of cleverness in this book, but ultimately it disappoints at the very end (GREAT book, the last page is a flop).

However, as I was desperate for a read at Fort Bragg this past week, and I read the book all the way through, it merits both a review and a passing comment.

First, the author has done his homework and also provides an epilog that points at several books I link to below. That raised him from three to four stars in my estimation. This was a great book right up to the end when it wimped out with a one-paragraph flop of a conclusion.

Second, I am persuaded that religions as now organized are a form of organized crime, and that we would all do better going with unitarian communitarian approaches in which we deal direct with God on a personal basis, and direct with one another on a community basis. With a handful of exceptions (Rabbi Lerner, Archbishop Tutu) most church “officials are in my view santimonious frauds, and any fictional book that helps portray that is inherently useful.

The author himself recommends the following books:
Holy Blood, Holy Grail Illustrated Edition: The Secret History of Jesus, the Shocking Legacy of the Grail
The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ
Rosslyn: Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail
Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians

Curiously, he does not mention The Da Vinci Code or the Gospel of St. Thomas (not a book, search for it).

I also recommend:
Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
DVD Gandhi (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition)

2008/02/052010/01/04

Review DVD: The Departed (Widescreen Edition)

5 Star, Crime (Organized, Transnational), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Reviews (DVD Only)

SPECATCULAR! Former Spy Loves This Movie, February 5, 2008

Leonardo DiCaprio

I have been trying to stave off insanity these past few weeks, as I have watched America ignnore the urgent need to exile Dick Cheney, send the village idiot home, and “get a grip” (see ten recommendations below).

I have watched this movie four times in the past year. Each time it gets better

First thought: Dicaprio is a world class actor, and the star in the Jason Borne series needs not explaining, except to note that he was a Southie and created the movie script for his first film as a Southie.

This movie is super at three levels:

Strategically: it shows how to penetrate organizations (crime ito police, police into crime) and how to reinforce and protect those penetrations with “back-ups.” CIA and FBI are both penetrated by everyone on the planet (including Guyana), but they are in denial and lie to us by pretending to be some sort of mythical “super” power. I deeply value my past as a spy beacuse it allows me to serve the public by saying IDIOCY AND DECEPTION.

Operationally, this movie is a cut above the average in showing how gangs work, how gang leaders are extremely intelligence and running operations against the police (the movie does not cover this, but most police departments across America are constantly monitored by criminal gangs that have used the back door to the police voice and radio communications systems to route a complete copy of every transmission or conversation to a third site. Cops are on the payroll and do not care about operational security. Criminals understand the value of couter-intelligence and intelligence.

At the tactical level, from wide beaches for executionn to marshes with the unexpect banker getting laid, the movie is fully satisfactory.

I have come to the conclusion that governments and religions are a form of “legal” organized crime that We the People need to “shut down.” ENOUGH.

I have been an undercover officer, in a combat zone as well as more normal locations, I have felt the terror of being exposzed, helpless, and subject to immediate execution (in El Salvador, a direct threat to execute me from the Colonels in charge of the country), and I consider this movie to be, easily, in the top ten alltime great movies about law enforcement, honor, and so one.

One nit: real spies, and the traitors they handle, do not use cell phones. Imagine a web cam following you everywhere. A cell phone can be turned on remotely to become a microphone recording non-cell phone conversations. That is the only unrealistic aspect of this otherwise superb movie.

A Real Pleasure!!!!

Botttom line: plot A+ actors A+ script A+ Execution A+

WOW. This is a GREAT MOVIE. See also:

Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Breach (Widescreen Edition)
Serpico (Widescreen Edition)
The Informant: A True Story
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption

2007/06/092015/04/26

Review: Dark Alliance–The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

CIA Case Officer from Central American Era Validates This Book, June 9, 2007

Gary Webb

I am probably the only reviewer who was a clandestine case officer (three back to back tours), who participated in the Central American follies as both a field officer and a desk officer at CIA HQS, who is also very broadly read.

With great sadness, I must conclude that this book is truthful, accurate, and explosive.

The book lacks some context, for example, the liberal Saudi funding for the Contras that was provided to the National Security Council (NSC) as a back-door courtesy.

There are three core lessons in this book, supported by many books, some of which I list at the end of this review:

1) The US Government cannot be trusted by the people. The White House, the NSC, the CIA, even the Justice Department, and the Members of Congress associated with the Administration's party, are all liars. They use “national security” as a pretext for dealing drugs and screwing over the American people.

2) CIA has come to the end of its useful life. I remain proud to have been a clandestine case officer, but I see now that I was part of the “fake” CIA going through the motions, while extremely evil deeds were taking place in more limited channels.

3) In the eyes of the Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, and Honduran people, among many others, the US Government, as represented by the CIA and the dark side Ambassadors who are partisan appointees rather than true diplomats, is evil. It consorts with dictators, condones torture, helps loot the commonwealths of others, runs drugs, launders money, and is generally the bully on the block.

I have numerous notes on the book, and will list just a few here that are important “nuggets” from this great work:

1) The CIA connection to the crack pandemic could be the crime of the century. It certainly destroys the government's moral legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

2) The fact that entrepreneur Ricky Ross went to jail for life, while his supplier, Nicaraguan Blandon, was constantly protected by CIA and the Department of Justice, is a travesty.

3) Nicaragua, under Somoza, was the US Government's local enforcer, and CIA was his most important liaison element. As long as we consort with 44 dictators (see Ambassador Palmer's “The Real Axis of Evil,” we should expect to be reviled by the broader populations.

4) I believe that beginning with Henry Kissinger, the NSC and the CIA have had a “eugenics” policy that considers the low-income blacks to be “expendable” as well as a nuisance, and hence worthy of being targeted as a market for drugs to pull out what income they do have.

5) I believe that CIA was unwitting of the implications of crack, but that Congress was not. The book compellingly describes the testimony provided to Congress in 1979 and again in 1982, about the forthcoming implications of making a cocaine derivative affordable by the lowest income people in our Nation.

6) The Administration and Congress, in close partnership with the “mainstream media,” consistently lied, slandered witnesses to the truth, and generally made it impossible for the truth to be “heard.”

7) The ignorance of the CIA managers about the “ground truth” in Nicaragua and Honduras, and their willingness to carry out evil on command from the White House, without actually understanding the context, the true feelings of the people, or even the hugely detrimental strategic import of what they were about to do to Los Angeles, simply blow me away. We need to start court-martialling government employees for being stupid on the people's payroll.

8) CIA officers should not be allowed to issue visas. When they are under official cover they are assigned duty officer positions, and the duty officer traditionally has access to the visa stamp safe for emergencies (because the real visa officers are too lazy to be called in for an emergency).

9) I recently supported a movie on Ricky Ross, one that immediately won three awards in 2006 for best feature-length documentary, and I have to say, on the basis of this book, that Rick Ross was clearly not a gang member; was a tennis star and all-around good guy, was trying to make school grades; was disciplined, professional, and entrepreneurial. He did not create the cocaine, he did not smuggle it into the country, he simply acted on the opportunity presented to him by the US Government and its agent Blandon.

10) There is a connection between CIA, the private sector prison managers in the US, and prisoners. This needs a more careful look.

11) Clinton's bodyguards (many of whom have died mysteriously since then) were fully witting of Bill and Hillary Clinton's full engagement in drug smuggling into the US via Arkansas, and CIA's related nefarious activities.

12) CIA not only provided post-arrest white washes for its drug dealers, but they also orchestrated tip-offs on planned raids.

13) Both local police departments, especially in California, and the US Government, appear to have a standard “loot and release” program where drug dealers caught with very large amounts of cash (multiple millions) are instantly freed in return for a quit claim on the money.

14) CIA Operations Officers (clandestine case officers) lied not just to the FBI and Justice, but to their own CIA lawyers.

15) DEA in Costa Rica was dirtier than most, skimming cash and protecting drug transports.

The book ends with a revelation and an observation.

The revelation: just prior to both the Contra drug deals and the CIA's ramping up in Afghanistan, which now provides 80% of the world's heroin under US administration, the CIA and Justice concluded a Memorandum of Understanding that gave CIA carte blanche in the drug business.. The author says this smacked of premeditation, and I agree.

The observation: here is a quote from page 452: ” …the real danger the CIA has always presented–unbridled criminal stupidity, clouded in a blanked of national security.”

Shame on us all. It's time to clean house.

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition
The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War : An Undercover Odyssey
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA
From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)

2007/01/292009/12/04

Review: How The World Really Works

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Religion & Politics of Religion

Best Insight into Organized Crime-Vatican-Wall Street Collaboration,

January 29, 2007

Alan B. Jones

I am going to put my reputation on the line, and the 850+ non-fiction books I have read that make me the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction (and to my great surprise, today #49 over all fiction, movies, music, and software as well as non-fiction) for the simple reason that too many people discuss books such as this by labeling it “conspiracy theory.”

It's not a conspiracy theory if it is true. I will try to be brief as well as illuminative.

First off, the author has culled a handful of books that support his case against a global financial elite, and these tend, with the exception of the Quigley book, to be left of left of center. I am however happy to add a number of books that support his essential theses that a handful of banking families control the central banks which are NOT government banks, and through loans, control governments, impoverish the middle class, and harvest profit without conscience from the “working poor.”

Try these on for size:

1) Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. 85% rock solid, 15% flakey, but in my view, a perfectly reasonable slam on the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund as instruments for impoverishing lesser developed countries, not empowering them.

2) The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs, another slam on the WTO/IMF, which he relegates to third rate out-dated economist ranks, not at all focused or able to achieve what he calls “developmental economics.”

3) The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back by Jeff Faux, a fine discussion of how our elites bribe the elites in other countries, and the both screw the public by looting the commonwealths of gold, oil, etcetera, without returns to the people whose families have lived on top of these resources for centuries.

4) Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, by Paul Peterson of the Council of Foreign Relations (which the author hates, in my view it has two types of members–one manipulative like Henry Kissinger, another honest, like Paul Peterson), in which both the Republican and the Democratic parties are lambasted for being the ignorant slaves of the ultra-rich elites, and hopeless out of touch with reality and unable to represent We the People.

5) War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It by General Smedley Butler, the highest decorated Marine of his time, who complained about being an enforcer for banks and businesses that lent money to the Third World then sent the Marines to get it back for them.

There are many other books that support this author's book reviews in great detail and from many varied perspectives. I refer you to my various lists, including the list on “Screwing the 90% that do the work.”

The author has some pretensions and some slop, his arguments are not always consistent, but then neither are mine. On balance I regard this book as a first rate personal effort that should be read by every middle class person wondering, as Lou Dobbs on CNN has wondered, why we are exporting middle class jobs and importing poverty in the form of illegal aliens.

The author wraps up his varied reviews with a focus on the relationship between organized crime and the super-elite as well as their political elite (e.g. the Bush family, the best of the servant class), and on the relationship between drugs, covert operations, and Wall Street. Here again the author draws on a very tiny sub-set of books while not listing many others that support his thesis so I will mention a few here.

Having been through both Viet-Nam as a youth and the Central American Wars as an adult, I am quite certain that there are at least four different slices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where I served for ten years as a clandestine case officer:

A small slice does what the White House wants, including black bag jobs.

A small but more important slice does what Wall Street wants, and helps Wall Street with access to financially relevant information that the public which pays for the CIA does not get. Buzzy Krongard, until recently Executive Director of the CIA, comes to mind as the most recent leader of this section.

A larger slice, that does covert action off the books with funding from Saudi Arabia and others, sometimes called the Safari Club, sometimes having off-shoots like Ted Shackley's Southern Air Transport, and so on. This slice can provide the intersection between criminal activities, white collar crime profits, illegal White House activities, and plain profiteering.

Finally, 90% of the CIA, folks like me that did not realize they were simply going through the motions and giving the local counterintelligence service a full-time rabbit to follow while the commercial clandestine boys and girls looted the bank in bright daylight.

I have two intelligence lists that can be helpful here, but I have not focused on creating crime lists. I'll just say that between the books on the The Working Poor: Invisible in America and on being Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Americaand books on immoral predatory capitalism and unilateral militarism of the Dick Cheney variety (I have compiled a list of 25 specific impeachable actions by Dick Cheney based on three books:

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

There is a very clear-cut and direct relationship between dictators, transnational organized crime and terrorism, and Wall Street as well as the Republican and Democratic National Committees (see Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It)

That reminds me: there is an entire literature on petroleum, peak oil, petrodollars, and so on. Americans have been betrayed by their government since at least 1975, and more likely, back to the 1950's when naiveté about international affairs was replaced by active complicity.

Good news. 1) Internet leveled playing field. 2) Not enough guns to kill us all. 3) A few of the really rich have realized they need to help us create infinite wealth for ourselves, or lose all they have to locusts. Read, be vocal, be active, we're going to get a grip on our commonwealth soon.

Tip of the Hat to Jere for the following added links:
When Corporations Rule the World
The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. a. Hayek)
Money Masters of Our Time

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2006/01/052009/12/04

Review: Under and Alone–The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America’s Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (Hardcover)

4 Star, Crime (Organized, Transnational), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Over-Sold, Interesting but on the Margins,

January 5, 2006

William Queen

In a global economy of perhaps $5 trillion a year, fully another $2 trillion a year is illicit (see the book by Moises Naim of that title). This means not only that there is $2 trillion a year in illegal activities that include murder, rape, trade in women and children, and so on, but also that this $2 trillion is not taxed and therefore does not contribute to the social programs that are essential to keep a nation strong. Since motorcycle gangs are now global, vicious, and largely “out of control,” the book struck me as helpful and worth reading.

It is worth reading, and there is no question but that the author risked his life, perhaps even ruined his life, by spending a long time penetrating the Mongols, arguably the most vicious (and unwashed) of the motorcycle gangs.

I put the book down with three thoughts:

1) There has got to be a better way to put gangs like this out of business. Cities have sanitation codes, there ought to be a way to keep people like this in remediation without having to risk officer's lives penetrating their gangs.

2) An awful lot of taxpayer dollars and a lot of very high-quality officer time went into this, at great personal risk, with relatively marginal results.

3) Gangs share a couple of similarities with terrorists: they have access to very high-powered lawyers and a great deal of money when they need it; and law enforcement is ham-strung by out of date laws and conventions that insist on treating out and out ruthless “Mongols” with the same rules used for more civilized members of society. I cannot but help conclude that we ought to have a “no holds barred” option on gangs in the same way that we now have a no holds barred option on terrorists.

2005/12/182009/12/04

Review: The Outlaw Sea–A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (Paperback)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Replays Atlantic Monthly But Pleasantly Surprising,

December 18, 2005

William Langewiesche

This is not the book I was expecting. Normally it would only have gotten three stars, for recycling three articles, only one of which was really of interest to me (on piracy), but the author is gifted, and his articulation of detail lifts the book to four stars and caused me to appreciate his final story on the poisonous deadly exportation of ship “break-up” by hand. It is a double-spaced book, stretched a bit, and not a research book per se.

Two high points for came early on. The author does a superb job of describing the vast expanse of the ungovernable ocean, three quarters of the globes surface, carrying 40,000 wandering merchant ships on any given day, and completely beyond the reach of sovereign states. The author does a fine job of demonstrating how most regulations and documentation are a complete facade, to the point of being both authentic, and irrelevant.

The author's second big point for me came early on as he explored the utility of the large ocean to both pirates and terrorists seeking to rest within its bosom, and I am quite convinced, based on this book, that one of the next several 9-11's will be a large merchant ship exploding toxically in a close in port situation–on page 43 he describes a French munitions ship colliding with a Norwegian freighter in Halifax. “Witnesses say that the sky erupted in a cubic mile of flame, and for the blink of an eye the harbor bottom went dry. More than 1,630 buildings were completely destroyed, another 12,000 were damaged, and more than 1,900 people died.”

There is no question but that the maritime industry is much more threatening to Western ports than is the aviation industry in the aftermath of 9-11, and we appear to be substituting paperwork instead of profound changes in how we track ships–instead of another secret satellite, for example, we should redirect funds to a maritime security satellite, and demand that ships have both transponders and an easy to understand chain of ownership. There is no question that we are caught in a trap: on the one hand, a major maritime disaster will make 9-11 look like a tea party; on the other the costs–in all forms–of actually securing the oceans is formidable.

Having previously written about the urgent need for a 450-ship Navy that includes brown water and deep water intercept ships (at the Defense Daily site, under Reports, GONAVY), I secure the fourth star for the author, despite my disappointment over the middle of the book, by giving him credit for doing a tremendous job of defining the challenges that we face in the combination of a vast sea and ruthless individual stateless terrorists, pirates, and crime gangs collaborating without regard to any sovereign state.

I do have to say, as a reader of Atlantic Monthly, I am getting a little tired of finding their stuff recycled into books without any warning as to the origin. Certainly I am happy to buy Jim Fallows and Robert Kaplan, to name just two that I admire, but it may be that books which consist of articles thrown together, without any additional research or cohesive elements added (such as a bibliography or index), should come with a warning. I for one will be more alert to this prospect in the future.

Having said that, I will end with the third reason I went up to four stars: the third and final story, on the poisonous manner in which we export our dead ships to be taken apart by hand in South Asia, with hundreds of deaths and truly gruesome working conditions for all concerned, is not one of the stories I have seen in article form before, it is a very valuable story, and for this unanticipated benefit, I put the book down a happy reader, well satisfied with the over-all afternoon.