Category: Reviews (Books & DVD)

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Worth a Look: National Security & Double Government

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
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Michael J. Glennon

Why has U.S. security policy scarcely changed from the Bush to the Obama administration? National Security and Double Government offers a disquieting answer. Michael J. Glennon challenges the myth that U.S. security policy is still forged by America's visible, “Madisonian institutions”–the President, Congress, and the courts. Their roles, he argues, have become largely illusory. Presidential control is now nominal, congressional oversight is dysfunctional, and judicial review is negligible.

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Review: Rebuttal – CIA “Leaders” Double-Down on Lies

1 Star, Crime (Government), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
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Bill Harlow (Editor), George Tenet (Introduction), Porter J. Goss (Contributor), Michael V. Hayden USAF (Ret.) (Contributor), John McLaughlin (Contributor), Michael Morell (Contributor), Philip Mudd (Contributor), John Rizzo (Contributor), Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. (Contributor)

1 Star Authors Double-Down on Lies Told Previously

I am a co-signer of the below letter to the President of the United States of America from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), as delivered yesterday and also posted in ConsotiumNews.com by Robert Parry. A better more truthful book, albeit fiction to avoid the legal bru-ha-ha, is Broken!, a story of torture and treason far closer to reality than the version offered by the perpetrators themselves.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Veteran Intelligence Professionals Challenge CIA’s “Rebuttal” on Torture

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Review: Die Duetsche Karte (The German Card)

5 Star, Crime (Government), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
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Gerd-Helmut Komossa

5 stars World-Changing Book

Needs to be translated into English, Russia, and French as soon as possible. He details a 1949 agreement that subordinates Germany as a vassal state to the USA and blindly loyal to any NATO initiative however insane. The agreement supposedly runs for another 90 years. The book needs to be translated into English, Russian, and French as soon as possible. It could and should lead to the fall of the German government, the cancellation of the agrement, the expulsion of all US forces and headquarters from Germany, and the de-Americanicanization if not the complete eradication of NATO. Even if the agreement does not exist — I am inclined to belief the author, that some such agreement does exist — Germany has been acting as an extension of the USA, and the book is a foundation for a national conversation in Germany that could end that state of abject subordination and contributory financial, political, and social crimes against the German people as well as other publics.

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Review (Guest): Broken! A true story of terror, torture, and treason, in fictional form to avoid legal retaliation against those who were there

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Philosophy, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Michael Kearns, Ronald Solomon

5 Stars. Classic thriller: how a nation was “broken” by torture and drone policies gone beserk

By Jeffrey S. Kaye on September 19, 2015

Michael Kearns and Ronald Solomon have written one of the most important books of the year, and one of the most entertaining. Drawing on Kearns' experience in the military, especially his years training military personnel, intelligence agents, and other government employees in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, or SERE, program for the Pentagon's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, Kearns and Solomon have constructed a thriller about a high-tech, drone-enabled takeover of America that seems all too real, chiseled out of the headlines we read every day. And just as scary!

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Review (Guest): All the Presidents’ Bankers – The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)
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Amazon Page

Nomi Prins

Essential reading on the deep, dark history of crony capitalism in America

By John Butler on March 29, 2014

Nomi Prins has done it again. With All the Presidents' Bankers, she shows in exhaustive detail how Wall Street has captured the US political and regulatory process: Left, Right, Up, Down, Sideways. Indeed, as she demonstrates convincingly in the book, the entire left-right paradigm of modern US politics is completely irrelevant to a proper understanding of what really goes on in the long, dark tunnels of power linking Wall Street in New York with K Street in Washington, and their deleterious impact on what some still purport to call ‘democracy'.

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Review (Fiction): BROKEN!

5 Star, Fiction, Intelligence (Government/Secret)
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Amazon Page

Michael Kearns and Ron Solomon

5.0 out of 5 stars TRUTH About Treason, Torture, and More, July 21, 2015

This book nails the reality of torture as both deeply pathological and unproductive. However it goes much further, and shows just how out of control our country is, where 70% of the secret budget is spent on contractors without a clue and without ethics. As Americans contemplate the future, Broken! is a helpful overview of just what “out of control” can mean, not only abroad, but right here at home where internment camps actually exist ‘in waiting.'

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