Technology is not a substitute for thinking. Memorize this sentence, the last sentence in Jim Bamford's book, BODY OF SECRETS: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (page 613, literally the last sentence in the book, note the last three words:
“Eventually NSA may secretly achieve the ultimate in quickness, compatibility, and efficiency–a computer with petaflog and higher speeds shrunk into a container about a liter in size, and powered by only about ten watts of power: the human brain.”
Superb Book, Shows what OPEN Sources Provided, Great Speaker,
January 25, 2004
Zachary Abuza
I have the advantage, in reviewing this book, of having heard the author present his views in a superb illustrated briefing that held 150 government intelligence professionals glued into their seats and fixated on the author's rapid-fire compelling presentation.This man is a brilliant scholar who has returned to the almost lost art of combining persistent field work with foreign language open sources (both printed and oral), and thoughtful analysis.
Across the board, from his narrative to his footnotes to his bibliography to his index, this book is as good as it gets. This is a world-class contribution to our understanding in three areas: 1) what can be known about terrorism and militant Islam from open sources of information (but is being largely ignored by the so-called professional intelligence agencies that are obsessing on secret sources and methods; 2) what governments in Southeast Asia are and are not doing about it (in many cases, abusing American naiveté or being put off by American arrogance; and 3) where militant Islam is going in this area–be afraid, be very afraid.
If all academics were this good, we would not need spies. This book and this author represent the very best scholarship that one could ask for. The author is the Program Director for East Asian Studies and associate professor of international politics at Simmons College. Goggling him yields a fine selection of interviews and Congressional testimony.
One of Several Valuable References, Misses the Gland Slam,
January 25, 2004
Joe Conason
This book is one of several (Hightower, Franken, Moore being among the others) that does a good job but not the best job of nailing extremist Republican lies and distortions.It is a great index, something the other books have tended to neglect. You can, for example, look up national security or minorities, or health care, and get right to the relevant lies. You can also look up individual names and see the specifics on both corporate cronies of the extreme right, or media manipulators.
Vote on Review
Although I have had this book in my possession for months, it kept slipping to the bottom of the pile because it is an excruciatingly detailed look at one very specific policy area–that of population. I was mistaken in thinking that the book was so detailed as to be boring or difficult to grasp.On the contrary, the author has done a superb job, in partnership with the publisher, in presenting a great deal of important information in a readable font size and form.
For me, the book is important in two ways. First, it tells me there is a person out there who really understands all this stuff in detail, and can help me rethink our national policy when the time comes that we have a sane White House willing to be serious about this vital long-term matter.
Second, it lists up front the various areas that impact on population policy (drawing on the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future) and is worth the price of the book for this superb list (each with a paragraph about the sub-policy area): Population Education; Sex Education; Child Care; Children Born Out of Wedlock; Adoption; Equal Rights for Women; Contraception and the Law; Contraception and Minors; Voluntary Sterilization; Abortion; Methods of Fertility Control; Fertility-Related Health Services; Personnel Training and Delivery of Services; Family Planning Services; Services for Teenagers; Population Stabilization; Illegal Aliens; Immigration; National Distribution and Migration Policies; Guiding Urban Expansion; Racial Minorities and the Poor; Depressed Rural Areas; Institutional Responses; Population Statistics and Research; Vital Statistical Data; Enumeration of Special Groups; International Migration; Current Population Survey; Statistical Reporting of Family Planning Services; National Survey of Family Growth; Distribution of Government Data; Mid-Decade Census; Statistical Use of Administrative Records; Intercensal Population Estimates; Social and Behavioral Research; Research Program in Population Distribution; Federal Government Population Research; Support for Professional Training; Organizational Changes; Office of Population Affairs in the Department of Health, National Institute of Population Sciences; Department of Community Development; Office of Population Growth and Distribution; Council of Social Advisors; Joint Committee on Population; State Population Agencies and Commissions; Private Efforts and Population Policy.
The author makes a very strong case for how, as his subtitle suggests, US population policy has been doomed by a lack of political will and the inappropriate influence of the Catholic Church and Mexico, in addition to strong private sector interests seeking low-wage workers while avoiding any associated social costs that are put on to the taxpayer.
I consider this book a primary reference that will be needed soon as America becomes more thoughtful and participatory democracy is restored. Population policy is fundamental. Missing from the official documents are serious discussions about citizenship, civics, ethics, morality, the restoration of the one-income two-parent family as the foundation for a strong nation, and the role that taxation policy can play in strengthening families while holding employers accountable for not making illegal immigration sustainable by hiring undocumented aliens.
This is tough reading, in part because the publisher's choice of paper and font are not the best. As one who has previously recommended such books as Lionel Tiger's “The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System”, Norman Cousins “The Pathology of Power”, and many other books on the pathologies of treating man as a “good”, of scientific objectivity as “value neutral” and therefore bad, of secrecy as counter-productive to “precautionary principle” decision-making, I immediately recognized this book as an integrative work, possibly supplanting all those other books by bringing the various arguments together in one place.This is indeed a brilliant product by a towering intellect, and it has the bibliography and index that one would expect from a world-class endeavor. I recommend it together with Philip Alott's “The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State”, Stewart Brand's “Clock of the Long Now”, and John Lewis Gaddis “The Landscape of History”.
The author's bottom line: not only must we come to grips with how power is managed in every nation and organization, but also we must manage at the *global* level if we are to succeed in optimizing fulfillment at the *individual* level.
Sobering, Makes an Important Case, Rough Around the Edges,
January 24, 2004
Chalmers Johnson
This double-spaced book is an indictment of American militarism and unilateralism, and it merits reading by every citizen. It loses one star to a lack of structure and sufficient references to a broader range of supporting literature, and to the author's tendency to go “a bridge too far” in blaming the CIA for everything and in assuming that our troops and their families are somehow enjoying their “luxurious” overseas deployments.It may be best to begin the review where the author ends, by agreeing with the case he makes for the potential collapse of America if the people fail to take back the power and restore integrity and participatory democracy to the Congress. Absent a radical reverse, four really bad things will happen to America: 1) it will be in a state of perpetual war, inspiring more terrorism than it can defeat in passing; 2) there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights; 3) truthfulness in public discourse will be replaced by propaganda and disinformation; and 4) we will be bankrupt.
It merits comment that today, as I read and reviewed the book, which documents over 725 US bases around the world, many of them secret, there is a public discussion in which the Pentagon is acknowledging only 400 or so bases to exist.
There is a considerable amount of short-hand history in the book that can be skimmed rapidly–from the roots of American militarism in the Spanish-American war, to the non-partisan efforts of both Clinton and Bush fils to establish a military base structure in Arabia and in Central Asia.
The author provides a number of worth-while commentaries on war crimes and associations with genocidal acts and repressive dictators on the part of Henry Kissinger, Wes Clark, James Baker, Dick Cheney, and other mostly Republican “wise men” associated with the oil companies of America.
On pages 100-101 he draws on a number of authoritative sources to note that the casualty rate for the first Gulf War was close to 31% (THIRTY-ONE PERCENT) due to the exposure of the 696,778 veterans serving there being exposed to depleted uranium rounds and other toxic conditions *of our own making*, with 262,586 of these consequently falling ill and being *officially* declared to be disabled by the Veteran's Administration. I have no doubt that there will be an additional 100,000 or more disabled veteran's coming out of Gulf War II. These disabilities are multi-generational. Veterans disabled in the Gulf have higher possibilities of spawning children with deformities “including missing eyes, blood infections, respiratory problems, and fused fingers.”
The author excels, I believe, in bringing together in one book the combined costs and threats to the American Republic of a military that on the one hand is creating a global empire that is very costly to the US taxpayer and very threatening to everyone else; and on the other hand, is creating anti-democratic conditions within the United States, to include frequent and expensive preparations for dealing with “civilian disorder conditions” here at home.
The author also excels in discussing both the collapse of US diplomacy (today the Pentagon manages 93% of the international relations budget, the Department of State just 7%), and the rise of private military companies that he carefully lists on page 140–Halliburton, Kellogg Brown and Root, Vinnell, Military Professional Resources, DynCorp, Science Applications Corporation, BDM (now TRW), Armor Holdings, Cubic, DFI, International Charter. There are more–they are all “out of control” in terms of not being subject to Congressional oversight, military justice and discipline, or taxpayer loyalty.
In the middle of the book the author examines the change in the roles of the military from its World War II and post-Cold War missions to five new missions that have not been cleared with the American people: 1) imperial policing; 2) global eavesdropping; 3) control of petroleum fields and channels; 4) enrichment of the military-industrial complex; and 5) comfortable maintenance of the legionnaires in subsidized compounds around the world, such that numbers could be justified that could never be maintained in garrison within the USA.
On page 164 the author notes most interestingly that China is among the greatest purchasers of fiber-optic cable in the world (thus negating much of NSA's 1970's capabilities), and on page 165 he discusses, with appropriate footnotes, how the US, UK, Canada, and Australia are circumventing the prohibitions against monitoring their own people by trading off–the Canadians monitoring British politicians for the British, the British monitoring US politicians, etcetera.
Among the strongest sections of the book is the detailed discussion of America's love affair with ruthless dictators (and Muslim dictators at that) in Central Asia, all in pursuit of cheap oil our privilege elite think they can control. Of special interest to me is the author's delicate dissection of the vulnerability of any Central Asian energy strategy, and his enumeration of all the vulnerabilities that our elite are glossing over or ignoring.
Summing it all up, the author attributes US militarism and the Bush fils “doctrine” to “oil, Israel, and domestic politics”, and he bluntly condemns it all as “irrational in terms of any cost-benefit analysis.” Quoting Stanley Hoffmann, an acclaimed international relations theorist, he condemns Bush's “strategy” (as do I) as “breathtakingly unrealistic”, as “morally reckless”, and as “eerily reminiscent of the disastrously wishful thinking of the Vietnam War.”
This is a fine book. Read widely enough, it has the potential for constructively informing the popular debate that is emerging despite all efforts by the Administration and its corporate cronies to suppress discussion [e.g. MoveOn.org's $2M in cash for a Superbowl ad has been rejected by CBS on the grounds of being too controversial]. Despite a few rough edges, I believe the author represents a body of informed scholarly and practical opinion such as I have tried to honor with my many non-fiction reviews, and I hope that everyone who reads this review decides to buy the book.
A Former Spy Myself, I Found This Book Generally Lacking,
January 20, 2004
John le Carre
John Le Carre writes two kinds of books: truly riveting and gloriously accurate depictions of the spy world, and more labored pseudo-literature that over-reaches and disappoints. This book falls into the latter category.As one who has both read much of what Le Carre has written, and also had the privilege of being a clandestine case officer (spy under official cover), I was initially taken with the concept of the book, despite its obvious intent to resurrect the genre in the aftermath of 9-11, but soon found myself bored beyond belief. It is closer to “The Naive and Sentimental Lover” side of Le Carre, than to the more deservedly riveting Tinker, Tailor, Drummer Girl, or Smiley's People, Looking Glass War side of Le Carre.
There was a time, absent good non-fiction on the spy world, when Le Carre's work, his George Smiley work especially, not only delighted but informed. Now, with so many truly top-notch non-fiction books about intelligence (for instance, those by Milt Bearden, Robert Baer) one is really much better off reading non-fiction for fun. See my short and long lists of intelligence books (as well as emerging threats and blowback/dissent in foroeign affairs) for a sense of what non-fiction can deliver these days in the way of compelling and disturbing real-world spy reading.
