Power (Pathologies & Utilization) – Page 16

2014/01/222014/01/22

Worth A Look: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion

Gareth Porter

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Manufactured Crisis provides unique and timely background to the ongoing diplomacy around Iran's nuclear technology program. In it, award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter offers a well documented critique of the official ‘western' account of what the Iranian government has been doing, and why.

In Manufactured Crisis, Porter brings together the results of his many years of research into the issue–including numerous interviews with former insiders. He shows that the origins of the Iran nuclear “crisis” lay not in an Iranian urge to obtain nuclear weapons but, rather, in a sustained effort by the United States and its allies to deny Iran its right, as guaranteed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to have any nuclear program at all. The book highlights the impact that the United States' alliance with Israel had on Washington's pursuit of its Iran policy and sheds new light on the US strategy of turning the International Atomic Energy Agency into a tool of its anti-Iran policy.

Praise for the Book:

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2014/01/18

Review (Guest): Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law That Transformed America

5 Star, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, True Cost & Toxicity

Douglas Stuart

5.0 out of 5 stars From National Interests to National Security April 24, 2011

ByKenneth J. Dillon

Many observers recognize that the U.S. Government has for decades placed too much emphasis on military might to the detriment of other interests. This book provides a sobering explanation of how such a skewed approach emerged. Stuart is an historian at Dickinson College and also adjunct professor at the U.S. Army War College. He shows how the 150-year tradition of peacetime pursuit of national interests headed by the State Department gave way to the “Pearl Harbor System” of viewing the world through the perspective of potential threats to national security.

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2014/01/182014/01/18

Review (Guest): Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), War & Face of Battle

Nick Turse

5 of 5 stars. I was there, he is right on some things. By George James Kalergis on September 8, 2013

There is some evidence for his proposition. He greatly overstates the incidence of rape and deliberate murder of civilians however. He makes it sound as if this was a routine/daily occurrence. In my year there in combat, I did not see one incident such as this.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my experience in Vietnam as a result of reading this book. It has some elements of truth to it, especially concerning the inflated body counts and influence from the chain of command for bodies. However, from my experience he has looked for (and found) many individual instances of abuse of civilians in that war and made it seem that was much more of a regular occurrence than it was.He doesn't point out the danger we were in from women and children who would set booby traps or shoot at us. It was a nightmare scenario and I'm sure many soldiers lost their lives because they were not cautious enough with women and children. Continue reading

2014/01/132014/01/13

Worth a Look: No Place to Hide – Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Privacy

Glenn Greenwald

No Place to Hide is a groundbreaking look at the NSA surveillance scandal, from the reporter who broke the story

Investigative reporter for The Guardian and bestselling author Glenn Greenwald, provides an in-depth look into the NSA scandal that has triggered a national debate over national security and information privacy. With further revelations from documents entrusted to Glenn Greenwald by Edward Snowden himself, this book explores the extraordinary cooperation between private industry and the NSA, and the far-reaching consequences of the government’s surveillance program, both domestically and abroad.

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2014/01/102014/03/25

Review (Guest): Goliath – Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

5 Star, Corruption, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Max Blumenthal

When tribalism trumps democracy, January 10, 2014

Herbert L. Calhoun

In the Middle East, another war of biblical proportions is taking place. It is the war between Judaism and democracy. This book tells us that the most famous outcome in the bible, the tale of David slaying Goliath, is now being reversed. This time around, David (Israeli democracy), loses, and loses badly to the Middle East's new conservative run, nuclear-armed Goliath of Israeli neocolonialism, tribalism and racism.

Whatever else this book does, it forces us to face straight up, one of our worse hidden fears about that besieged little middle eastern nation: Right before our eyes, little brother Israel, has become the 21st Century's first full-bred racist and fascist state. But how is it that in our life time, the collective guilt and heart-felt dreams for a Jewish homeland come true — one free of the evils of the kind of racism and anti-Semitism imposed on European Jewry by Adolph Hitler, has now been turned completely on its head?

This author tells us that it is happening because Israeli's demographic and racist fears about neighboring Arabs has metastasized into wanton crimes and embarrassing politically motivated violence against the Palestinians and other Arabs under Israel's occupation. The Israeli predilection for violence, coupled with justifications rooted in visceral racial fears, is systematically turning Israel into a modern-day race-based dystopia.

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2014/01/052014/01/05

Review: Occupy: Reflections on Class War, Rebellion and Solidarity

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Noam Chomsky

5.0 out of 5 stars Explosive Opening, Less Satisfying Conclusion, January 5, 2014

The book explodes on page one: no bankers arrested — none, zip, nada, rein — 7,762 Occupiers arrested from the first 80 in NYC on 24 September 2001 to the two arrested in SF on 15 June 2013. Talk about GRIFTOPIA — the police work for the thieves and arrest the owners!

There are a number of key insights within this book, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wishes to pulse the state of the union — Chomsky, who eulogizes Howard Zinn throughout, brackets our current situation with two trenchant observations early on:

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2013/12/012014/03/25

Review (Guest): Who Really Killed Kennedy? 50 Years Later – Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination

5 Star, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Jerome R. Corsi

The New Bush/Dulles Free Trade World Order and the Assassination of JFK, December 1, 2013

Herbert L. Calhoun

Introduction

On page 317, of this book, “Who Really Killed Kennedy 50 years later: Stunning new revelations about the JFK assassination,” the author, Jerome R. Corsi, summarizes the consequences of a nation willing to sit idly by and accept as a permanent fait accompli, having their elected leader shot down in cold blood, as follows:

“After fifty years of US government disinformation and deliberate stonewalling, researchers are just at the edge of discovering the truth about how and why JFK was assassinated in one of the greatest crimes in US history — a coup d'etat in which rogue groups, including the highest intelligence services in the land, conspired to remove JFK from the presidency and to place LBJ in the White House. The consequence of this conspiracy are immeasurable, if only because a group of traitors successfully flouted the constitution and got away with it.”

Corsi goes on to say that: ” … History will need to be rewritten to condemn those responsible as traitorous criminals. While prosecutions may no longer be possible simply because so many of the involved parties have already died, justice can be served by setting the historical record straight. At this late date, any attempt by the US government to withhold from the public documents pertaining to the JFK assassination should be deemed by Congress to be a continuation of the traitorous act that killed JFK.”

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