Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 310 – Public Intelligence Blog

Finds Legitimacy in Bin Laden's Strategic Goals, Ignorance & Ideology in Ours,

August 13, 2004

Michael Scheuer

Edited 18 Sep 07 to respond to comment and add links to other books.

The author, who has the advantage of being a senior CIA analyst with access to what secrets we do have, has produced what may well be the single most important book in terms of getting this country back on track in relation to the rest of the world. This is the second of three “must read” books I am reviewing today. The first, which sets the stage for this book by providing a truly inspired, informed, extraordinary, and nuanced review of the “just causes” for Muslim radicalization against the USA, is by Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror The third, best read last, is Paul L. Williams' Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You The latter books paints a compelling portrait, using only open sources of information, on how likely it is that Bin Laden not only has a number–perhaps 20 or more–nuclear devices of one sort or another–but is also receiving technical assistance from Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and certain Russians in refreshing and maintaining those devices for use within the US homeland to create a “nuclear hellstorm” (Al Qaeda's words).

This book, the second of two by the same person, but easily the most relevant to the salvation of the American dream and homeland, is a tour d'force. It is an incredibly thoughtful, well-ordered accounting of both our mistakes and both the rationality and inevitability of Bin Laden's victory over the US. The endnotes are world-class.

As Congress prepares to confirm a new Director of Central Intelligence, the author's frequent and articulate damning of the U.S. Intelligence Community leadership for its moral cowardice (specifically slamming George Tenet and also Richard Clarke, who is labeled “blusterer in chief”) must, in my view, require that the nominee for the position of DCI promise to clean house as a condition of his confirmation. Above the rank of GS-15, every Senior Intelligence Service officer should be put on probation by the incoming DCI, and half of them should be retired within 2-3 years. The author of this book knows what he is talking about.

The author very usefully slams (on page 175) Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institute, William Hawkins from the Army War College, and Anthony Davis of Jane's Intelligence Review for their absolute misreading of the situation in Afghanistan. it is helpful to emphasize that these and other so-called experts that Congress tends to rely on, are absolutely superb when they do their homework (O'Hanlon is top notch on the non-revolution in military affairs, for example), and very dangerous when trying to milk the issue of the day without doing their homework (on intelligence reform, for example).

I do not want to conclude without highlighting the author's praise for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). They appear, in this one instance, to have excelled at finding and translating every word uttered by Bin Laden and his key aides, in public and in Arabic, and the author–whom I respect completely–is profuse in his detailed thanks to FBIS. Although I and my leading military colleagues consider the FBIS model to be rotten at the core (marginal remote collection, not doing tribal languages or in-country gray literature, broadcasting generic reports largely useless in operational decision making) I do affirm that FBIS can and should be saved, if it can be re-oriented to do for all of its clients what it did for the Bin Laden task force.

In conclusion, I want to focus on what I believe is a misreading by many of the author's recommendation of a “scorched earth” campaign against Al Qaeda as a global insurgency (rather than a law enforcement challenge). Although the author is correct to suggest that such an approach is necessary if we wish to continue doing the six things that Bin Laden wants us to stop, I believe that most readers of this book go into instant denial and fail to see the author's logic, especially when he points out (page 17) that Bin Laden has explicitly stated that he does not desire to expand Islamic dominance beyond existing Muslim countries, and that he will follow us in DE-escalation just as quickly as he is following us in escalation.

What we need to do, according to Bin Laden:

1) End US aid to Israel and support a Palestinian state
2) Withdraw US/Western military forces (not business) from the Arabian Peninsula and all Muslim countries worldwide
3) End US engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq
4) End US support for oppression of Muslims by Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments (e.g. Philippines)
5) End US manipulation of oil prices through corrupt dictators
6) End US support for corrRogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentionsupt Muslim regimes

I think this all makes sense, especially when you add the insights from the other 479+ books that I have reviewed, books such as Clyde Prestowitz's , Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People Derek Leebaert's “The Fifty Year Wound” and on and on and on. If our policy makers were willing to read and think for themselves, and not spend endless hours trying to leverage their perks and manipulate their more honest constituencies, it seems to me that we could a) get ourselves out of this mess; b) redirect half the national security budget toward global stabilization instead of selective occupation; and c) restore morality to both our global business practices and our global foreign policy.

Probably will not happen until two nuclear devices go off in America–one will be in a shipping container, the other in a Central Park. Just how stupid can America get? We'll have to wait and see–I don't see us getting any smarter.

The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

2004/08/132009/12/04

Review: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim–America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Religion & Politics of Religion

Inspired, Disciplined, Nuanced, Nobel-Level Thinking,

August 13, 2004

Mahmood Mamdani

This is an inspired, disciplined, nuanced, Nobel-level book, and if it ends up saving America from itself, then it would surely qualify the author for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is the first of three “must read” books that I am reviewing today, and it is first because the other two are best appreciated after absorbing this one. The other two books are “IMPERIAL HUBRIS” and “OSAMA'S REVENGE.”

The main weakness of this book is the author's lack of strong criticism of Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and of other states that are corrupt, repressive, and therefore a huge part of the problem. Having said that, here are some of the key points:

– “West” pioneered genocide, expulsions, and religious wars, with Spanish genocide of Indians in Americas, and Spanish expulsion of first the Jews and then the Muslims as critical starting points in understanding Muslim rage today
– America adopted terrorism as a preferred means of fighting proxy wars in both Central America and Africa, when Reagan began “rollback” with the same neo-conservative advisors that guide Bush II today.
– West has four dogmas as summed up by Edward Said (who is admired by the author): 1) that Orient is aberrant, undeveloped and inferior; 2) that Orient is inflexibly tied to old religions texts, unable to adapt; 3) that Orient is inflexibly uniform and unable to do nuances; and 4) Orient is either to be feared (Green or Yellow or Brown Peril) or controlled.
– Fundamentalism actually started in the US among the Christians seeking to insert religion into the state's business and ultimately demanding faith and loyalty as the litmus tests for acceptance.
– Earlier generations of Islamic reformists disavowed violence, but ended up adopting violence after being in state prisons (e.g. Egypt).
– Earlier incarnations of a Muslim revival were in the open literature in the 1920's and then in the 1960's, and lastly in the 1980's to date–our national “intelligence” agencies appear to have missed the importance of all three
– Viet-Nam, Africa, and Central America all fostered extremely unhealthy connections between CIA covert operations and the drug trade, with CIA routinely condoning and often actively enabling massive drug operations and related money laundering, as the “price” of moving forward on covert operations.
– The obsession with winning the Cold War at all costs essentially destroyed U.S. foreign policy and set U.S. up as the enemy of the Third World [see Derek Leebaert's “The Fifty-Year Wound”].
– Morality in the US has been perverted, as the extreme right, joining with extreme Zionists, has “captured” the U.S. government in both Congressional and Executive terms. Orwellian “spin” together with the labeling of all dissent, made possible by media corporations “going along”, has destroyed any possibility of informed, objective, or actually moral dialog.
– The Central American campaign pioneered the privatization of terrorism and proxy war by the US, with secrecy and deception of the US public being the principal role of the US government.
– The US Government is explicitly accountable for introducing bio-chemical weapons into the Iraqi arsenal, and thus accountable for the genocide and war crimes attendant to their use.
– US (AID) sponsored textbooks, such as those created by the University of Nebraska, routinely used terrorism against Russians as examples in the mathematic and other textbooks being distributed in Afghanistan.
– CIA's main contribution to the destabilization of the world has been in its Afghan-related privatization of information about how to produce and spread violence, and its training of tens of thousands of jihad warriors from all over the world who have now returned home and are teaching and leading others.
– Under US leadership, Afghanistan has gone from providing 5% of the global opium production in 1980, to 71% in 1990, and even more today–much of which comes to the US.
– America not only accepts massive drug activities as part of the “cost of doing business”, but also ignores human rights in its rush to cozy up to corrupt dictators.
– From an Iraqi point of view, the 1.5 million or so children that died in Iraq due to the sanctions, must be seen as a major war crime and a form of terrorism, together with the air war with its indiscriminate murder of thousands if not tens of thousands civilians including women and children. The US has killed more civilians in Iraq than it did in Japan with two atomic bombs. Napalm and depleted uranium are disabling US troops as well as Iraqi civilians long after their use in the field.
– Economic sanctions, when they have the impact they did in Iraq, must be considered weapons of mass destruction, their application terrorism, and their results war crimes.
– The US Government's general disdain for the rule of law, but the incumbent Administration's particular focus on ignoring treaties and refusing accountability (e.g. for war crimes) sets a new low standard for immoral behavior by nation-states.
– The UN Secretary-General was forced by the US to ignore the Rwandan genocide because of a US desire to keep everyone focused on Sarajevo, and continues to us its veto power to prevent UN from being effective against racist Zionism, which is routinely committing crimes against humanity with its Palestinian campaign.

The author concludes, without sounding inflammatory, that America was built on two monumental crimes: the genocide of the Native Americans, and the enslavement of African Americans. His point: the US is in denial over this reality, while the rest of the world is completely aware of it. He agrees with Jonathan Schell, concluding as Schell does in “Unconquerable World,” that the challenge of our times is in “how to subdue and hold accountable the awesome power that the United States built up during the Cold War.” The last sentence is quite powerful: “America cannot occupy the world. It has to learn to live in it.”

2004/08/082009/12/04

Review: The Path of Least Resistance for Managers

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation

Not Just For Managers–Presidents and Teenagers Also,

August 8, 2004

Robert Fritz

I read this book because it is one of those recommended to the Commanding General of the U.S. Special Operations Command. After reading it, I think the Cliff Notes version would be useful to any President, and I have marked a number of pages for my teenager.

Sadly, the precursor to this book, written in 1984, was largely ignored by mainstream managers, just as proposals for intelligence reform were defeated in 1992 because the Pentagon was unwilling to give up budget authority for the good of the Nation. My point: better late than never. Grab this book and go with it.

I get two core points out of this reading: first, strive to balance opposites rather than going to one extreme or the other; and second, don't focus on resistance, but rather on opportunities. In the military this known as “going for the gap”–instead of pouring your reserve forces into the weakest point in *your* line, that is at risk of collapsing, you focus instead on finding the “gap” in the enemy line, you pour through that, and whip their ass from behind.

Much of this book is critical of both our current educational and our current managerial systems—both spend too much time teaching people what NOT to do, and very little time empowering people to think for themselves and create new “impossible” dreams.

The book has direct application to today's national security environment, when it points out that “pre-emptive strikes” are a form of avoiding reality and being reactive in advance rather than proactive and integrative, or transformative.

The emphasis on starting with the current reality (what my world would call “commercial intelligence”) may not be fully understood by most middle managers. When I started my company to do global commercial intelligence, our evaluation of the “competition” produced a surprising result: fully *half* of our competition came from our clients themselves, middle managers who thought they knew everything there was to know about their business, and were absolutely oblivious to the out-sourcing, privatization, plastic for steel substitution and the myriad of other threats that the Internet, Federal Express, tax laws, and Dutch and Chinese investment represented. Any manager reading this book who does not have a corporate “intelligence” capability (visit the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals for a fast read in), should be shocked into starting one immediately.

Visualization of perfection is in direct competition with rote performance and old metrics. Managers today are still largely “Cold War” managers focused on the traditional metrics of cash flow, cost reduction, short-term profit margins, and so on. Imagine what a difference it might make if the metrics could change, to include a focus on the health and knowledge of the individual employees, the health and knowledge of the community being supported and supporting the company, on changing the industry with standards and shared best practices, etc. In order words, managers need to move from a bunker mentality, where there is only one winner, to a network mentality, where multiple winners actually increase the totality of the profit over all and across previously unrelated communities of interest.

The last point that really struck me was the emphasis on transcendence (alluded to above) but interpreted by me, at least, as “born anew.” Whatever cost cutting measures we may have condoned in the past, whatever unethical practices including reductions in employee health benefits, etc. there is nothing standing in the way of any company's rebirth or any manager's resurrection and “rebirth” as a decent human being who can factor in human and ecological economics values (see my reviews of Herman Daly's various books).

We're killing America by killing our workers, and we are killing the world with predatory and immoral capitalism. This book is a valuable wake-up call for all managers, both in business and in government.

2004/07/312009/12/04

Review: Joystick Nation–How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds

4 Star, Culture, Research

1997 Look, Still Relevant, Deeper Than Some May Think,

July 31, 2004

J. C. Herz

This is a rich-kids/rich-parents book, in the sense that those who buy it probably will not think for an instant of the fact that 90% of the world will never, ever, play a video game or have a computer. Having said that, I give the book a solid four stars on three planes:

1) Believe it or not, this book is in vogue within Army training circles and has even been recommended to the Commanding General of the Special Operations Command.

2) As a parent of three boys, 15, 12, 9, this book helped me appreciate the “new” knowledge that they have which offsets my annoyance at their being online too much. Every parent of young teens who have at least one computer in their home should read this book or one of the alternative recommended books–it will increase your appreciation for them. On page 117 the book makes it clear that kids have *better* judgment than their parents in evaluating high-tech as well as in navigating cyber-space, because they have different metrics, different patterns that they apply.

3) For my young teen himself, I marked pages 94-97, 102, 105, 109, 118, 123-124, and 129-130. He read those, liked them, and agreed that he would like to read the book. Super!

The book's opening is packed with insights–we're entering third generation of kids, six generation of videogaming, 50 million adults have now been “programmed” by earlier gaming, it is moving us from passive watching to interactive manipulation, and–well before Microsoft got this–it is creating an adult generation (at least in the US and Japan) that is juggling sixteen different information streams at once, with a result that most adults–including US general officers–are in what is called “constant partial attention” mode all of the time.

The author touches upon but does not discuss the offsets of millions (more like billions) in lost-time cost to those who play at work, versus how it changes our productivity. A very nice timeline of game evolution from 1962 to 1996 is provided early on. Somewhat interesting to me is the author's observations that the games and the new computer power have not changed the “basic plots” which tend to pursue the same enduring patterns that Shakespeare and others did…

Relevant to Department of Defense and Homeland Security: on page 35 there is a discussion that confirms my long-held belief that while DoD investments in very expensive earlier generations of computers helped spawn the consumer industry, the time has come for DoD to get out of the unilateral C4I business, and concentrate on improving security and functionality for the generic whole. We must depart from secret unilateral expensive C4I systems, toward open (but secure) generic inexpensive systems that can be thrown away easily while the data is ported over. This merits emphasis–on page 77 the author emphasizes that as hardware and software get fancier, they actually make it *harder and more expensive* to port data forward, and the author suggests that the true test of a new system should be FIRST, its ease of “reach back” to old data, and ONLY then, its ability to excel with new data. This is an extremely important point that I am fairly certain neither CIA nor DoD nor JFCOM take seriously.

Page 41 is helpful in discussing the “wife/whore” mindset that prevents the US in particular from merging tools–one complete set for “work”, one complete different set for “play”, leading to the obvious point that lots of money could be saved, and functionality cross-migrated, if we could break out of this mindset trap.

Page 89 sums up some really excellent coverage of how the earlier games rocketed in both sales and sophistication because of their commitment to giving out free simplified samples and the open source code. If we are ever to stabilize the world, we need to learn from this: generic open source software, open source intelligence, and open spectrum are the heart of 21st Century peacekeeping and capitalism, and anyone that does not get this is part of the problem. Open source (3) is the key to harnessing COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE (great Google search).

Unexpectedly for me, the author covers the “model Prisoner of War” or gulag/sweatshop of the modern videogame industry, and for those aspiring to working in this field, absolutely worth the price of the book.

Three final points that many will miss:

1) The book does a good job of noting that most games represent a form of cultural imperialism, value-free games that promote dominance through violence, and are not nuanced at all.

2) Boy games and girl games are different because boys and girls are different–boy games focus on violence and take-over, girl games focus on problem solving and peacekeeping. Obvious thought to me: use them to cross train boys and girls with one another's strengths.

3) Games are limited in both possible outcomes, and in terms of who is able to create them. THEY DO NOT PROVIDE FOR THE FOG OF WAR–while useful in terms of improving *technical* skills, they are NOT a substitute for real-world training with respect to *judgment*, *nuance*, and *situational awareness*. These games are lacking INTELLIGENCE in the combat sense. I was reminded by this section of an old Isaac Asimov short story, in which the world evolved to where everyone had to qualify to run an “expert system” and those that did not were “executed.” In the conclusion we learn that the ones executed were actually exported to a moon where they WROTE the expert systems, keeping the fiction alive that everything was okay with the machines back home. DoD is in that trap right now.

I liked this book–of the 10 or so recommended to the Special Operations leadership, this book and Marc Sageman's book on Understanding Terrorism are the only two that have been really worth my while.

2004/07/282009/12/04

Review: Losing America–Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Spine of Iron,Brain to Match–Voice Against Theft of Power,

July 28, 2004

Robert C. Byrd

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This author has a spine of iron and a brain to match. What I see here is a unique combination of Senatorial seniority (seen it all), an acumen with regard to Constitutional history, a deep burning angst over the failure of the Senate to honor its heritage in the run up to the unjust and unjustified war on Iraq, and a relatively careful documentation of specific lies and misdeeds carried out by the Executive in its evidently unprecedented campaign to rob Congress of both the power of the purse and the power to declare war.

The book offers up some real gems, including a devastating “character” analysis of George W. Bush (p. 19, p. 107, p. 146), a useful comparison between Herbert Hoover who helped bring on the Great Depression, and George W. Bush (pp. 30-31), a helpful comparison of how Congress tries to balance the Executive while having only 31,033 employees versus 2,673,100), a brutally accurate comparison of how John Ashcroft chose to spend his time, avoiding testimony, substituting news conferences calling on Congress to pass the law without review (p. 47), the return of the multi-billion dollar Presidential slush fund (p. 68), the importance of independent information to Congress in confronting deceitful Executive officers (p. 70), a troubling catalog of the billions in funding for homeland security that the Executive has refused, seemingly wanting to “starve the beast.” (pp. 10-114); special reference to Eisenhower, his warnings of the military-industrial complex, and a very troubling page of what the trade-offs are, such as buying a single destroyer versus building new homes for 8,000 people (pp. 141-142), an examination of Don Rumsfeld's prevarication when being questioned about the bio-chemical weapons that Rumsfeld helped supply to Iraq during the Reagan Administration (p. 149), and an absolutely BRUTAL, RIVETING comparison of the billions the current Administration has asked to spend in Iraq, where Halliburton can steal it, versus in the US for the same kinds of things: $4.6 billion for Iraqi water and sanitation, only $3.1 billion for the USA–the list goes on and it is DAMNING (p. 202).

Despite the author's clear fury over the misbehavior of the Executive, he gives George W. Bush credit where credit is due, and particularly in relation to the inaugural and the national appearances in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.

The end of the book offers several speeches from the eighty that were delivered on the floor of the Senate, and I remember watching them on C-SPAN and thinking to myself that this was one of the only real men left in the Senate–truly a man of integrity and gravitas.

The book is well put together, and integrates in a very important fashion a deep understanding of the separation of powers and how the Constitution relates to our liberty; a deep understanding and ability to articulate and document the “shell game” that has been placed by the Administration with its tax cuts for the rich, deficits for the poor and unborn, and “transfer authorities” for stealing money approved for one thing in order to do another, and finally, a devastating dissection of the naked boy that would be Emperor yet in comparison with ten other Presidents known to the author, the senior Senator from West Virginia, is but “ineptitude supreme” (p. 107).

Senator Byrd saw the future. The other Senators were cowards and fools.

2004/07/282009/12/04

Review: Stealing the Network–How to Own a Continent

5 Star, Information Operations, Information Technology

A Real Hoot, Way Better than Spy Stories–Be Afraid…,

July 28, 2004

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links and a comment.

I picked this book up at Hackers on Planet Earth, and got Kevin Mitnick to sign a poster at the same time. The book is a hoot. I've done the spy stuff, it's boring compared to the persistent intelligence shown by these cyber-spooks, a couple of whom I am pleased to know.

I suppose the disclaimer is necessary: this is a novel, for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you want to be cyber-spy, this book strikes me as a great way to start getting hooked. If you are a security manager, be afraid, very afraid…you need to read this book.

20 Dec 07 Comment: The US Government does not want you to know that all of the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are totally open to the Internet. These are the computers that control power, natural gas, water and fuel pipelines and storage tansk.

For a great idea of exactly what this book talks about, watch:
Live Free or Die Hard (Full Screen Edition)

2004/07/282009/12/04

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

4 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Crime (Organized, Transnational), Environment (Problems), Geography & Mapping, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Threat From the Sea–75% of the Planet,

July 28, 2004

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.

Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror

Review: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim–America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

Review: The Path of Least Resistance for Managers

Review: Joystick Nation–How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds

Review: Losing America–Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency

Review: Stealing the Network–How to Own a Continent

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