The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Shlomo Sphiro is a lecturer at the Department of Political Studies and a Fellow of the BESA Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He specialises in intelligence, security, communications and media. Previously he has conducted research and taught at universities in Britain and Germany, and led a NATO project on improving intelligence co-operation with Mediterranean countries.
Intelligence, Peacekeeping, and Peacemaking in the Middle East
Beyond Five Stars for Content, Zero for Unjustified Pricing,
Loch K. Johnson
I am the author of the chapter in volume 2, “Open Source Intelligence,” which is freely available as a pdf at OSS.Net forward slash OSINT-S.
Neither Dr. Johnson, the editor and the deal of the intelligence scholar-practioners, nor any of the other authors, ever suspected that the publishers would dishonor our work, virtually for free (we each received $300 and a set of the books).
As a professional, I can certify that this set is spectacularly valuable. It is the best of the best at a time when the USA is wasting $60 billion dollars a year on secret sources and methods that yield only 4% of any policy-makers “relevant” decision-support.
As a publisher, I can start with certainty that it cost the publisher roughly a penny a page to print this book. This set of five books should under no circumstances cost more than $250.
Amazon holds the key, but Jeff Bezos has blown me off. Despite the fact that 300 of his people were inspired by my lecture on Amazon as the World Brain, he is choosing to ignore the desperate need of libraries, scholars, and practioners everywhere for a new form of micro-cash for micro-text digital exchange.
I personally believe that micro-text, like DVDs did for the movie industry, with double the gross revenue of the publishing industry without increasing the cost. What we need is for all the libraries to get together and go on strike–no purchases of a single book–until the publishing industry demands that Amazon host a summit, where I would be glad to lay out the plan personally. If you visit The Transitioner's GLobal Challenges page, you can access by briefings and videos speaking to Amazon, to Hackers, and to Bloggers (Gnomedex).
The publishing industry is about to get eaten by Google, at the same time that Google is demanding ownership of anything it digitizes. Wrong answer. Kudos to the Boston libraries for throwing Google out of town. Amazon and micro-cash are the answer, as well as an increase in publishing efficiency and a clear open statement of actual costs of production.
This five book series represents the very best of the industry (valuable content) and also the very worst (seriously unethical pricing).
Click Here to Vote on Review at Amazon,
on Cover Above to Buy or Read Other Reviews,
I Respond to Comments Here or There
Robert David Steele (Vivas) is the founder of OSS.NET, a web site dedicated to international intelligence reform including improved use of open source intelligence (OSINT). He has served in three of the four directorates of the Central Intelligence Agency, as a clandestine case officer, an all-source requirements and collection manager, and as project leader for advanced information technology applications. He was the senior civilian responsible for founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Command. Mr. Steele holds a BA in Political Science with a thesis on multinational corporation operations and home-host country issues; an MA in International Relations from Lehigh University with a thesis on predicting revolutions; and an MBA in Public Administration from the University of Oklahoma with a thesis on strategic and tactical information management for national security. He is a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College, and has earned a certificate in Intelligence Policy from Harvard University. Mr. Steele is the author of On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA International Press 2000 and OSS International Press 2002) and The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political (OSS International Press 2002) as well as many monographs, chapters, and articles on information and intelligence strategy and operations. He is the ranking reviewer on Amazon for non-fiction books about national security, information, intelligence, and related ethical issues. Reach him at robert.david.steele.vivas@gmail.com.
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Leadership Digest 1.0
Jan-Inge Svensson is a colonel (now retired) in the Royal Swedish Army. In 2002 he was the Commanding officer of the Swedish Armed Forces Intelligence and Security Centre. In 1995 he was Head of the G-2 section (intelligence) of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Zagreb. In 1996 he developed and implemented a Swedish National Intelligence Cell in Sarajevo. Since retirement he has been the lead Course Director and strategic planner for Multinational Information Sharing and Sense-Making at the Folke Bernadette Academy, and is among those in the senior ranks of the Nordic countries who have been asked to create the United Nations Peacekeeping Intelligence curriculum. He is also the Editor of the follow-on book, INTELLIGENCE FOR PEACE: Multinational, Multifunctional Information-Sharing and Sense-Making [free online].
Peacekeeping and Intelligence Experiences from United Nations Protection Force 1995
Damns the Man, Ignores the Dead and Wounded,
Andrew Cockburn
Having read most of the books about the last eight years and the various debacles imposed on the world and on America by Cheney-Bush (see my lists on Iraq After-Action Reports and on Evaluating Dick Cheney), much of this book was not a surprise, but I would also be quick to say that there are a number of gems here not found elsewhere.
Of special interest to me were the reality that the lies and fantasy on the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq were a replay of the Team B lies about Soviet weapons successfully carried out under Reagan. This cabal has a clear pattern of believing that any lie is acceptable, that Congress is to be ignored, that there is no constraint on Executive power.
Gems:
Rumsfeld started talking about bombing Iraq before 3 pm on 9/11.
Rumsfeld built the force that he fought with, back when he was first secretary of defense.
Sadaam Hussein was the only Arab leader that welcomes Rumsfeld in the 1990's.
Novak was a willing accomplice in destroying CIA under Reagan with Team B lies, and again in destroying Plume today.
Rumsfled liked Doug Feith *because* of Feith's notorious stupidity.
Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff was widely viewed as an “abused puppy” avoiding confrontation with Rumsfeld.
CIA won the Afghan war, but Rumseld claimed it for himself. No mention that I noticed of Rumsfeld's disterous mistakes in allowing Pakistan to evacuate 3000 Tlaiban and Al Qaeda, and in refusing to but a Ranger battalion in Bin Laden's path when CIA had “eyes on” for four days (see my reviews of “First In” and “JAWBREAKER” as well as various books on my Iraq After Action list).
After a while I tired of this book. I thought to myself that the author has done a good job on destroying Rumsfeld, but there is a great deal of context that is missing, including Cheney's more active role behind the scenes, and virtually no mention of the thousands of US dead and 75,000 amputees that Rumsfeld created for no good reason.
My bottom line: Rumsfeld was put at Defense because the first candidate irritated the President, the President was a fool and wanted to appoint someone his father hated, and Dick Cheney was happy to have his former mentor over at Defense, which Cheney, as a more recent Secretary of Defense, no doubt felt he could manage from the White House. America chose to allow this cabal to steal two elections in a row, and to go to war on a web of lies denounced in advance by General Zinni,at OSS.Net, and in many other places. SHAME ON US. Rumsfled is our child, and we have to live with what we have wrought on the world.
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
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
Click Here to Vote on Review at Amazon,
on Cover Above to Buy or Read Other Reviews,
I Respond to Comments Here or There
Information Operations (IO) is improperly defined by most as being technical in nature. It is not. Properly understood, IO should cover the totality of information in all its forms, and Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is the primary player. Below is a fine CRS report on this topic from an electronic point of view.
The Special Operations Command (SOCOM) gets it. They like to say:
“Secret intelligence is 10% of all-source intelligence; and all-source intelligence is 10% of Information Operations.”
Below are links to our HUMINT article and to the book on INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time.
Last Call for Sanity in Face of Christo-Fascism,
Chris Hedges
Of all the books I have read, inclusive of a good number on religion, on knowledge, and on the pathologies of power, this book is perhaps the single clearest, most up to date, and most compelling definition of the extreme right in America as the world's new fascists.
I created the image that I am uploading with the review several years back, when Condi Rice and others had the temerity to call General Tony Zinni a traitor when Zinni, the most recently retired Command-in-Chief of the US Central Command, made a clear public case for NOT invading Iraq. Collin Powell was more subdued, saying “if you break it, you own it,” but Bush-Cheney do not compute nuances, and were not listening. They both reflected this book's basic premise, that when dissent is considered treason, one is dealing with a neo-fascist regime.
The author is uniquely qualified as both a graduate of a top-level divinity school, and a world-class investigative journalist, to make this case.
He opens the book with an annotated list of fourteen features of fascism that set the stage, and I list them here because of their importance–buy the book to get the whole picture:
1. Cult of Tradition
2. Rejection of Modernism
3. Action for Action's Sake
4. Critics are Modernists
5. Dissent is Treason
6. Fueled by Frustration
7. Lacking Identity, Contrives Birthright
8. Humiliated and Delusional vis a vis external enemies
9. Pacifism is evil
10. Elitist contempt for weak (similar to poorest of whites contempt for hard-working blacks)
11. Cult of Hero, Cult of Death
12. War as Sexual Sublimation
13. Selective Populism (generally White versus All, but Colored can “Become” White)
14. Newsspeak, Hijacking of Language
This very educated and quietly balanced author cites Karl Popper's seminal work on Open Society and its Enemies on the pathological outcomes from faith in excess, faith that is intolerant of others. It is clear throughout this book that America is under siege from two faiths in excess–the external far enemy of violent intolerant Islam, and the more subversive internal danger of neo-Nazi fascists in waiting, mobilizing the dispossessed whites who do not read a lot, and get “all they need to know” from Pat Robertson's 700 Club and other similar self-serving channels whose primary role is to raise cash for the Hitler's in Waiting.
Blinding insight from this author: the extreme right does not limit it's cherry-picking to intelligence–it routinely cherry-picks from the Bible, which contains ample violence and bigotry and hatred for the ends of the extreme right: channeling fury into funding.
The author discussed “dominionism” as the fascist rendition of the Christian faith.
Key intellectual and patriotic contributions in this book include a study of the evangelicals and the number that take the Bible literally, the naming of names at the top who are a danger to American democracy, and in three pages of damning indictment, the manner in which neo-fascist Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State for Ohio, stole that state's electoral votes for Bush by manipulating and disappearing voting registrations and actual votes.
Chisto-Facism is a closed system that demands total obedience and indoctrination into a culture of hate that demonizes all who do not “believe.” Holy Cow! This is not just fascist, it's a cult!
As the book draws to a conclusion, the author compares totalitarian regimes and their elaborate spectacles for the masses, with the Christo-fascists in America. The similarities are compelling, especially when the author discusses how Hitler used homosexuals as an early target group to test drive his extra-judicial witch-hunts.
A very helpful description of the conversion process, which is scripted, deceptive, and akin to “love bombing” as practiced by the Moonies, shows that individual are being recruited into a closed system that labels all “non-members” to be outside the circle. As the author sums it up, this system divides families, friends, and communities.
The author frightens me when he discusses how the non-profit (i.e. not taxed) extreme rightist religion fuehrers favor unrestricted capitalism, the elimination of all taxes, while paradoxically including international bankers with Muslims and others who will be “Left Behind.”
On that note, the author says that the Left Behind series is a window into the souls of the blindly faithful.
My two take-aways from this superb book:
Labor unions and the progressives need to get back into the fight for America's soul. See also my review of “The Left Hand of God.”
School Boards are the weak link in the entire infrastructure of government. The extreme right has adherents from School Boards to State Legislators to Congress. On the one hand, this leads to a complex range of decisions in which our Constitutional separation of church and state is undermined every single day; and on the other, it leads to the unholy alliance of these extremists, who help elect neo-conservative extremists, even if they do not receive the promised concessions after the election (See also my review of “Tempting Faith,” and of “American Theocracy”).
This author is a brave and intelligent man. He is calling it as it is: a fascist is a fascist. I am reminded of the number of white Nazi's admitted to the US after WWII under special intelligence exemptions. Otto Reich, Karl Rove, and the Bush Family are the current manifestation of American fascism. It's time we run them out of town.
Click Here to Vote on Review at Amazon,
on Cover Above to Buy or Read Other Reviews,
I Respond to Comments Here or There
