Events Books

In vivid, engaging prose uncommon among attorney authors, Clive Stafford Smith offers a startling first-hand account of America's most well-known gulag: the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay. Smith's volume places the U.S. Government's hypocrisy in the Bush II era on full display, with the prisoners there -- very few of whom, it appears, guilty of any crime at all (let alone legitimate involvement in Islamist terrorism) -- tragic protagonists in a prolonged tour through hell. Despite assiduous compliance with strict military classification and censorship requirements, Smith gives a stark account of torture, rendition, legal tricks, and a relentless war on due process -- by the same folks supposedly spreading "democracy" to the Middle East. With new precision details and personal prisoner histories, Smith's book is shocking even to those who never believed the news coverage. Read it with anger; the outrage is still going on.

This is not an anti-American book. What it is against is torture, injustice, false imprisonment, inhumanity, and the betrayal of American core values and fundamental beliefs.

This book (previously published in the UK as "Bad Men") discloses that a considerable number of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were at the time of their capture, and of course still are, totally innocent, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time were sold into captivity by locals greedy for the bounty offered by the US. Amnesty International has published a finding that "hundreds of people" were arbitrarily detained, after the US offered cash payments, in leaflets dropped by American aircraft, for information on Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. This "rewards programme" resulted in a frenetic market in abductees. It is the reason for the false imprisonment of uncounted men and boys in American secret prisons, in secret locations around the world, and at Guantánamo Bay. In an earlier article [in Index on Censorship, "The Archipelago of Gulags," February 2006] Stafford Smith wrote: "The majority of prisoners I represent were not seized in Afghanistan, but purchased in Pakistan for the bounties offered by the US - starting at $5,000." In Pakistan, the per capita annual income is $720.

Torture by US proxies, the book shows, was carried out to obtain confirmation of the alleged status of these purchased captives as terrorists or enemy combatants. One victim of rendition was the 16-years-old Hassan bin Attash, who was rendered to Jordan "for sixteen months of torture" because the US government wanted information about his older brother. He is still imprisoned at Guantánamo.

On the basis of the evidence in this book, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied, in December 2005, that the US had sent so-called enemy combatants to countries where they would be interrogated under torture, she was lying - a lie to which Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British Foreign Secretary of the day repeatedly lent their support at the time.

Guantánamo is "the mother of all mistakes." Fifty-five per cent of those in captivity at Guantánamo Bay are not even alleged to have ever taken part in hostilities; 95 per cent of them were not taken into custody by US troops, but were turned over by Pakistanis or Afghans - usually in exchange for cash; 92 per cent were not even accused of being al-Qaeda fighters. In answer to the question, why are patently innocent non-combatants still being held as prisoners by the Bush administration? it seems the answer is, in effect, moral cowardice. No one wants, or is able, to take responsibility for making the decision and signing the release order.

There are quite a few prisoners in US mainland prisons being held in solitary for life, and their being driven insane as a result of prolonged confinement is an expected outcome. Whether such cruel punishment is constitutional is a good question. Indefinite imprisonment in solitary confinement is undeniably cruel, and in Guantánamo, according to Stafford Smith, it is driving prisoners insane.

Guantánamo Bay is a prison where the US has disallowed constitutional rights (to which non-US citizens are, under US law, not entitled) and infringed or withheld habeas corpus and other fundamental human rights without fear of judicial oversight - but it is not the only one. There are secret prisons in scattered locations worldwide, and there are fourteen thousand prisoners of the US in them - the largest number in Iraq. Locations have been deliberately selected so that there can be no recourse to judicial process for those incarcerated without limit of time. Meanwhile, the US is still taking prisoners. If the Guantánamo Bay prison is ever closed, Clive Stafford Smith will have done more than anyone to achieve that result. The secret prisons around the world are a more difficult and sinister matter.

Stafford Smith writes well and with humour, but his narrative is consistently depressing. The bravery and spirit shown by some of the wronged prisoners in the face of adversity is an occasional upbeat note. The charges against the US now amount to an overwhelming tally of incompetence, arrogance and overkill. The British government, too, is guilty of having betrayed important principles, and of callously abandoning individuals entitled to government help. "Bush and Blair", the author believes, "have contrived to make the lives of every person on this planet vastly less secure."

As a consequence of the War on Terror, and to give itself a free hand, the US decided to put aside the rule of law in dealings with its supposed enemies. Thereby, arguably, it forfeited its claim to stand as the world's primary upholder of freedom and justice. This policy decision must go some way to explaining the significant growth of anti-Americanism during the presidency of George W Bush, as the administration over-reacted to the events of 9/11.

This book is more than a chronicle of fantastic injustice. Its final inference is that the War on Terror has resulted in a defeat for traditional western values. "We ceded our claim to the moral high ground," Stafford Smith concludes. Led by people deficient in good sense and decency, the US and Britain have betrayed the standards of justice and freedom which enabled our nations to occupy the moral heights as defenders of humanity's claim to believe in its own goodness.

Imagine that you have been swept away to a prison, kept in solitary confinement and when taken out for questioning you are continually asked about the tomatoes you were carrying ( the translators don't always have a full command of dialects )and you have no idea what your interrogators want or if they are totally insane. Because this book is written from a lawyer's point of view and lays out only the facts ( only what he has been able to ascertain and what he is allowed to make known ) it takes some reflection and imagination to put yourself in the place of the detainees and savour the experience that they have had and continue to have.
In other words this isn't "Midnight Express", but a look at guantanamo, its rules, the U.S. military, the stories of a few of the detainees and the constitutional and humanitarian issues involved.

If you haven't read Robert Conquest's seminal work The Great Terror about the purges, the show trials, law, and justice under Stalin, you might want to consider reading that first. Perhaps visit the Amazon site which has a quote from Harrison Salisbury saying the book is "an odyssey of madness, tragedy, and sadism". Then read Smith's eloquent book. Much is different, of course, but there is a lot that seems eerily similar. In Russia it was a crime to be suspected of anti-Soviet activities. This did not mean that you were actually guilty of such activities--it just meant that someone thought you might possibly be guilty, and being thought possibly guilty was a crime in itself, worthy of torture, a one-way trip to the cellars, or death in the labor camps. Evidence of guilt seemed to take a back seat to suspicion of guilt. Then read Smith's book.

The Russian show trials were carefully scripted, and designed to give the mostly leftist press in attendance and the rest of the world through media coverage the impression that the rules of law were being followed and that justice was indeed being carried out. Much of the world wanted to believe that the deviationist wreckers were truly guilty and deserved the ultimate punishment for trying to sabotage the workers' paradise. Reading Smith's book will show that the Stalinists were not the only ones who loved carefully scripted show trials before handpicked judges.

There is, as I've said, much that is different. In Russia, a popular sentence was "exile, without right of communication", a hypocritical euphemism for being shot in the cellars. In Guantanamo, as you'll see in the book, "detention, without right of communication", is not a sentence from a judge at a two-minute hearing, as in Russia. The criminal isn't taken to the cellars and shot, at least not at Guantanamo. Prior to some Supreme Court decisions, a prisoner could be held without right of communication for the duration of the war on terror, and since terrorism has been going on for thousands of years, there is no reason to think that many of the prisoners would have ever had a hearing or seen a lawyer for the rest of their life.

In Russia, family members could wait in long lines outside the Butyrka and other prisons with packages of food and clothing for their loved ones: if the package was accepted, it meant the spouse, brother, etc, was still alive there. If refused, they had been taken to the cellars or sent to a labor camp. No such bleeding-heart tenderness at Guantanamo.

Smith's book shows that there are some truly dangerous prisoners at Guantanamo--but there are too many who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. 11-year-old boys, 93-year-old men, goatherders (how do you prove that while herding goats you didn't meet with Bin Laden?),etc. Pakistan was happy to show it was doing its part in the war on terror by turning in Arabs and collecting nice bounties no questions asked. Kafka's novel The Trial is appropriate reading here. In Russia, the populace, as a whole, heartily endorsed Stalin's war on the wrecker saboteurs: someone, after all, must be to blame for all the problems, and an alternative obvious source to blame was not conducive to good health and long life. The people were not concerned about the rights of the accused, or legal niceties. In America, there is not widespread concern about legal niceties for a bunch of Moslems in Guantanamo and other places of detention. So if you read Smith's book, you'll find it quite depressing, especially if you've read The Great Terror. There's too much in Smith's book that most of us would prefer not to hear about or think about: we'd rather turn on the TV and see Happy News or a nice patriotic CSI TV show or something. It's a fine book, but not a fun one.

From various newspaper articles, I had heard that many of the people in Guantanamo Bay were innocent and that torture happens there. But all of that seemed very abstract until I read this book. I was frequently upset by the things I read in this book. It is difficult to read about torture, as well as your own goverment's ability to waste time, tax-payer money and other people's lives for information that bears no fruit, or worse, fruit that meets their pre-conceived notions. I think that is the saddest aspect of reading this book. Why is the government still detaining people for which there is hard evidence of their innocence? How can we be spending bllions of $$ on the war on terror, yet not get the detainees' ages and names correct?

Highlights of the book:

- How politically-charged the words 'terror' and 'torture' are.
- The account of Binyam Mohamed's 18-month torture abroad and his military trial.
- The discussion of the 'ticking time bomb' scenario, which is often used to justify torture, and why the detention and torture of people held longer than a day, let alone 3+ years, will likely give obsolete or false information.
- The discussion of how the US has given far more dangerous enemies of the past the benefit of a public trial, and our part in ensuring fair trials for Nazi war crime criminals.
- Portraits of people in Guantanamo, both detainess and Americans stationed there.
- Arguments for fair trials and open society versus the current policy of secrecy, torture and secret prisons, even for the baddest of the bad.

The last chapter, where Mr. Smith talks about the effect of the US's decisions on terrorism recruitment, reads more like political rant. I am sympathetic to the argument, but it is speculation. And frankly, not needed. The preceding chapters are powerful on their own. I would encourage people to read this book.

Every one with an interest in toppling this socialist status quo, from laissez-faire economists and philosophers to activists in the liberatian political and militia movement should study this outstanding work. Mr. Benson lays down the framework for a true capitalist system as Adam Smith, Ayn Rand and Milon Friedman envisioned. I support radical reform but when it happens, what do we replace it with? This book is a good start.

This book, especially the last 3 chapters, may just possibly be one of the top 5 most important non-fiction works every written. When claptrap like Marx's "Das Kapital" and Keyne's "The General Theory" eventually find their way into the dustbin of history, Benson's brilliant, yet understated work will give freedom-loving individuals much to dwell upon concerning the uselessness of the forced monopoly of force we euphemistically call government. Goes way beyond even Murray Rothbard's outstanding "Power and Market."

Despite the impression one might draw from the other reviews here, this is not an overtly political tract. But some background on the author would be in order.

Benson is an economics professor at Florida State. Generally, his research interests involve law enforcement, the drug war, private security alternatives, arbitration, and the history of arbitration and privately-produced commercial law (the law merchant). I have never seen a writing by him in which he explains all of his personal views and opinions, but he's obviously a pretty serious libertarian and he's had some involvement with the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. Amazon discourages linking websites in reviews, but those interested could easily find his academic webpage by doing a google search for "Dr. Bruce L. Benson."

Benson is probably every bit the political extremist that I am, but this book doesn't really argue politics (mostly). It has a very fascinating history of the evolution of law in England, which forms the basis of modern American law, also. The presentation is mostly dry and academic, but the subject matter is completely fascinating, and Benson does a better job than any other writer in tying it all together to show the reader a picture of the historical origins of law, and the relationship between law and the state.

We have all been taught that the administration of law and justice is one of the purposes of government. Benson shows that this bit of conventional wisdom just doesn't fit the history. Courts and laws originated from communities and their customs, not from any governmental body. Benson shows that, historically, legal institutions precede the state, but monarchs eventually usurped most of the functions of privately-created law in order to raise revenue and concentrate power in the crown. Eventually, law becomes a government monopoly, and all throughout the process, the government has a strong tendency to corrupt the law into something other than a tool of justice.

There are a couple of different forms of private legal institutions that are important in this book. The earliest Benson explains are the customary English legal practices and the community institutions that made them work. These early legal institutions originated concepts and practices that are still echoed in today's modern courts, about 1000 years later. But this early approach to justice didn't really survive the constant encroachment by kings. Another source of private law has been the law merchant (lex mercatoria), a set of medieval laws that developed among purely private, profit-oriented traders. Like community-based law, the law merchant was a phenomenon that lacked a central authority or lawmaking body, and developed to protect people, in contrast to the king's courts which were created to concentrate power. The law merchant system developed as a private alternative to state law, and was successful because in comparison to state courts, it was fairer, faster, and better able to cope with the transnational nature of some of the disputes. Ultimately English common law courts ended up having to adopt most of the key features of the law merchant, because they risked being superseded and deprived of revenue and influence. An echo of the medieval law merchant lives on in the modern arbitration industry, which is actually extremely popular in America today, especially in the commercial world.

Not all of Benson's history focuses on England - the most entertaining part of the book concerns incidents in America in which citizens had to overthrow crooked lawmen and take justice into their own hands. (Most of these stories come from the old West.) This includes a very fascinating episode in San Francisco in which the entire law enforcement body was supplanted by vigilante justice. The result was a dramatic sustained drop in the murder rate, and an end to the corruption and abuse of the authorities. The reader will be surprised to find that, contrary to Hollywood, the "vigilante" groups were often moderate, judicious, and almost eager to relinquish power, in order to restore peace.

The book is not just about history. Benson makes a careful and convincing defense of the benefits of privately produced law and justice. He engages the arguments of some of the most important legal thinkers of our time, and picks their arguments apart. The decentralized, private justice of the past is not just a curiosity of history; it's a human achievement that lives on in some form today, and is considerably more fair and effective than the government monopoly we're subjected to.

If think today's legal system system is slow, inaccessible, expensive to work with, and unfair, read this book to find out why, and what the alternatives are.

I don't give 5 stars lightly. Yes, this book really is that good, and that important.

Do we need the State to produce law?

There are libertarians aplenty who believe we do. Some of them have actually thought carefully about the issue, and some of them are merely Objectivists who have accepted Ayn Rand's oracular dismissal of anarchocapitalism in her (thoroughly statist) essay on "The Nature of Government." Both of these groups will benefit from a reading of Bruce Benson's fine volume.

Benson picks up the argument where Murray Rothbard and David Friedman left it, and carries it forward by several miles. Here he provides a short history of market-based law, from its rise to its near-demise at the hands of "authoritarian" law; a public-choice analysis of the political market for law; an overview of recent trends toward reliance on private sources of law and justice; rebuttals of common arguments for the necessity of State law; and a short summary of what a private, non-State system of law might look like.

There are treats throughout. Some of my favorites are Benson's replies to Landes and Posner -- e.g. their argument that "private" law is parasitic on legal standards developed in the public sector, and their claim that such "private" law would be less efficient than public law. (In general I am of the opinion that Richard Posner is one of the most overrated legal thinkers of the past century or two.)

Benson is also exceptional among libertarian writers in his familiarity with the relevant legal literature. One of the other exceptions -- the altogether brilliant Randy Barnett (whose book _The Structure of Liberty_ belongs on your shelf next to this one) -- is credited by Benson for drawing the latter's attention to such literature and making some specific recommendations. The result, however achieved, is something all but unheard of in the libertarian world: a volume on liberty that actually acknowledges the existence of such legal theorists as Lon Fuller.

That's a nice feature in a book on law. I would like to see Benson's book (and its excellent sequel, _To Serve and Protect_) read by both libertarians and lawyers, and I'm happy he's written a book that the latter group won't toss away in disgust at the childish ignorance of the author. We have enough of those books already (and I think Rand wrote or influenced most of them).

In general, the more people that read this book, the better. If nothing else, this book will shake an assumption that badly needs shaking: that there must be a State in order for there to be law.

(By the way, you'll find Benson referring occasionally to George H. Smith's fine essay, "Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market." Originally published in the _Journal of Libertarian Studies_, that essay is reprinted in _Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies_.)

At one stage in my education as a libertarian I had come to believe that most human needs (including for instance streets, education, and even fire protection) could be satisfied best by private companies. But I still thought that probably law must be provided by the government. It was hard for me to imagine how justice could be provided without the state.

Then I read this book. With compelling historical evidence it shatters the myth that government must have a monopoly in administering law.

Well written. Clear. Thorough.

I have always thought that we Americans believe that we are a peace loving country slow to anger and only going to war rarely and with the very best of reasons. We always take the high ground, lending assistance to the weak, beating up on the bullies.

Then I look around the world. Sweden, I don't believe, has been at war since the Great Northern War in the 1770's. Switzerland's last war was the Wars of Kappel, an internal religious war in about 1530. Both Sweden and Switzerland maintain standing armies, in Switzerland virtually every male spends time in the Army. And their armies are quite advanced in terms of weapons and electronics. These tend to keep people from attacking them, and they don't go out to attack others.

Why then does the US seem to go to war frequently? In this book Schmidt argues that U.S. foreign policy has been driven by the public's desire to 'do good.' As in we had to destroy Hue in order to save it. Schmidt analyzes the wars the US has fought in the 20th century. The biggest war was World War II. In his discussion of WW II he leans pretty hard on Roosevelt, he seems to take the theory that FDR maneuvered Japan into the attack at Pearl Harbor. He quotes John Toland's book 'Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath,' where Toland claims that Roosevelt knew the attack was coming. This is, however, something that we will never know for sure. Yes, there was a lot of intelligence pointing to the attack. But most people believe that these various bits of information were submerged in a sea of data points and not put together until afterward. Monday Morning Quarterbacking is a lot easier than putting it together before hand.

This is a very interesting view of the wars the US has fought. My one real complaint is that the type is too tiny for my old eyes. More, bigger pages and larger type would have suited me better.

I would recommend this book to anybody who seeks a deeper understanding of American foreign policy. The open minded reader will find the book quite refreshing, as it diverges from the standard vanilla treatment of history, however, some readers will find the book disturbing because it challenges deeply held beliefs that America is always right. Each chapter is logically developed with facts to substantiate claims. I strongly agree with Schmidt's assertion that American foreign policy went awry with devastating effects when our "leaders" decided to abandon the neutrality policies of the founding fathers and instead decided to institute a policy of interference and favoritism.

I think the chapter on World War I is the most important because it illustrates exactly why the founding fathers desired a neutral foreign policy. The Germans did not sink the Lusitania out of so-called naked aggression. They sank the ship because America was secretly supplying war material to Britain and they rightly or wrongly believed that the Lusitania was transporting such material. Had America remained truly neutral, innocent peoples lives would have been spared and History, quite possibly, would have pursued a different course-one without the harsh and punitive Versailles Treaty and one without Adolph Hitler.

Schmidt also emphasizes the pathetic lack of geopolitical knowledge of many of our leaders with President G.W Bush as the most prominent example. Bush never even had the desire to travel to Europe before becoming President. Note, Bush alone is not singled out for criticism nor is this a partisan treatment of foreign policy.

The chapter on the War on Terrorism is important because it illustrates the deception of the Bush Administration regarding the threat of Saddam Hussein. No clear unambiguous evidence has been produced linking Saddam with 911. International Law, in which United States is a signatory, forbids the invasion of any sovereign nation that is not an aggressor. It also should be noted that a declaration of war is required to invade a sovereign state.

There are many other important topics discussed in this chapter including the role of influential Zionists such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and others who years earlier argued for the overthrow of the Hussien regime.

The Folly of War provides a much-needed critique of American foreign policy as well as serving as an accurate and concise historical reference. It may very well be one of the most important books of our time as it serves as a much-needed wake-up call for all Americans who believe in the Republic. In Schmidt's view, the terrorist threat of today is directly related to foreign policy "follies" that are in direct opposition to the views and writings of the founding fathers. I for one, agree.

Before a democracy engages in war, government leaders must convince the citizenry that the cause is just - spread freedom, enhance national security, right wrongs, overcome evil. The virtues of the country and its cause must be extolled and the enemy demonized. Citizens must be aroused to support the war effort with their votes, their financial resources, and their lives.

In this book Professor Schmidt takes a critical look at American wars from the 1898 Spanish American War to the 2003 Iraq War and the continuing War on Terror in terms of how they were sold to the American people and what their costs were to the nation - human, financial, national security, foreign relations, and others. It is presently obvious to all but extreme partisans that the Bush administration used deceit and misrepresentations to sell the Iraq War to the American people. It may come as a bit of surprise to many that the selling of this war is not unique in American history. Schmidt thoroughly documents the lies, distortions, misrepresentations and hidden motives that were involved in the selling of all American wars during this period of time.

Schmidt sees the American people's motives for going to war, in general, as good. They want to make the world a better place - more economically secure, more democratic, more moral, more peaceful, more like America. American presidents have the same good motives for going to war as the people. In addition, however, they are subject to enormous pressures from economic and foreign interests. They have the temptation that comes from commanding the world's greatest military machine. Also, they have great interest in their place in history. War presidents get more attention from historians. Whatever the threshhold-crossing reason for going to war, the citizenry must be convinced the war is necessary and that it will be fought for a good cause.

Professor Schmidt is a dispassionate historian. War by war he examines the influences that led to the war; how, by whom, and why the war was promoted; the opponent's perspective on the war; how the war was conducted; and the costs and consequence of the war to all combatants - especially to America. In each case, including World War II, his carefully reasoned analysis leads to the conclusion that the war accomplished few of its stated goals, did not serve the nation's long-term interests, was a vast waste of human and material resources, and set the stage for future national problems.

The reader will learn a lot of 20th century history by reading The Folly of War. It is not light reading, but it is one of the most interesting, well-documented, well-reasoned, thought-provoking, and informative books I have read. I highly recommend it to anyone who values a critical and honest examination of America's 20th century wars.

There are some fine reviews, so my primary purpose in posting this review is to flag it for the folks that keep an eye on what I read.

My one complaint is the tiny font size. I had to get special glasses from the supermarket to read this book, a $15 cost that should not have been necessary. The publisher made a serious mistake on the font size and I urge that all future printings be at least 11 font. This entire book is in a font normally used for obscure notes, and it takes dedication to get through this. Such valuable material should NOT be so parsimonesouly treated by a publisher, who should have known better.

I am among those that believe that war is a racket and that we live in an unconquerable world where the only possible positive outcome comes from combining the wealth of networks with the new craft of intelligence and free distance learning as well as on demand answers via cell phone, in order to empower the five billion at the base of the pyramid. Only they can create infinite wealth that stabilizes the entire planet in a sustainable fashion.

This author has ventured where few have had the imagination, persistence, or integrity to go. He has taken on the military-industrial establishment, the banks, the rule by secrecy and scarcity mandarins, and he has nailed it. This is a Nobel Prize level effort and I for one am deeply impressed.

His organization is superb, and even his fanciful conversation among all our Presidents is provocative. This is not "turgid text," this is the fabric of history restored and rewoven.

Shortly Medard Gabel will have a book come out entitled "Seven Billion Billionaries," and I urge one and all to buy that book along with this one. They are two sides of the coin. This book is focused on the folly of war (which today costs $900 billion a year across all nations, with the USA being the most spendthrift), while Medard's focuses on the inexpensiveness and achievability of peace and prosperity--in his carefully documented manuscript, every bit the equal of this author's, he shows how $230 billion a year--LESS than a third of what we spend on our varied militaries, could resolve every single one of the high level threats to mankind identified by LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret), and the other members of this United Nations panel.

I hope this book is put into the digital domain prompty, for the wealth of information it contains will be made all the more valuable as we move to an era of transparent budgets, digital democracy, and constant oversight from the people whose money has been wasted so cruelly all these years.

See my many lists for other recommended readings. Below are a handful of books that complement this one.
War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Designing Web-Based Training: How to Teach Anyone Anything Anywhere Anytime
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

The author, an experienced teacher of diplomatic history, has given us a very useful survey of US foreign policy from 1898 to 2005. He shows how all America's wars, except World War Two, have been corrupt in origin, vicious in execution, and disastrous in effect.

He has great knowledge of the various ploys that have been used to embroil states in wars and to persuade the gullible that the wars were just.

For example, in 1915, the British Admiralty gave the Cunard passenger liner Lusitania no destroyer escort. British government agents had illegally loaded her with explosives and other munitions. The week before she sailed, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, wrote to the President of the Board of Trade that it was `most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany'. When a German U-boat sank the Lusitania, it was a big step towards the US entry into the war.

Schmidt denounces the US state's wars, against Korea, Vietnam and Iraq as colonial and genocidal. He shows how the US state has used its assets to start wars, as in 1980 when US Secretary of State Brzezinski used Saddam Hussein, telling him that the US government would not object to `an Iraq move against Iran'. Saddam attacked, starting an eight-year war that killed 1.5 million people.

At the end of the 1990 war against Iraq, the US government assured Iraq that its "withdrawing troops would not be attacked." Then, after the ceasefire, USAF and RAF planes carried out the massacre at Mutla Ridge, the infamous `turkey-shoot' on the `Highway of Death', killing thousands of soldiers who had already surrendered, a major war crime.

Quiz questions: who described the First World War as this `glorious delicious war'? Kaiser Bill? Lenin? Or Churchill? Who first used poison gas on Iraqi people? Saddam Hussein? Ayatollah Khomeini? Or Churchill? Clue - the answer to both questions is the same.

Dempsey's Fool's Errands is brilliant. He methodically recounts the pitfalls of an indiscriminate nation building policy. Anyone who is serious about shaping or understanding America's foreign policy should read this.

Fools Errand is an extraordinary account of failed attempts at "nation building" during the Clinton Administration. Gary Dempsey's expertise is evident as he guides the reader through a maze of disturbingly flawed policy, astonishing bureaucracy, arrogance and stupidity that doomed nation building attempts to failure. Dempsey's analysis is brilliant, and he relates complex events with remarkable clarity.

Dempsey's Fool's Errands is brilliant. He methodically recounts the pitfalls of an indiscriminate nation building policy. Anyone who is serious about shaping or understanding America's foreign policy should read this.

Fools Errand is an extraordinary account of failed attempts at "nation building" during the Clinton Administration. Gary Dempsey's expertise is evident as guides the reader through a maze of disturbingly flawed policy, astonishing bureaucracy, arrogance and stupidity that doomed nation building attempts to failure. Dempsey's analysis is brilliant, and he relates complex events with remarkable clarity.

~Fool's Errands: America's Recent Encounters With Nation Building~ is a terse analysis and overview of Clinton foreign policy maladministration. It succinctly captures his sad legacy of nation building efforts in the 1990s. Driven by naïve Wilsonian idealism, perhaps rosy views of human nature, and a quixotic fixation with seeing "democratic enlargement," the Clinton State Department presided over one foreign policy boondoggle after the other. Nation building efforts in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo were all entered with the best of intentions. Nonetheless, the end results were spurious victories with limited successes and arguably outright failures in some cases where intervention caused more harm than good. Some contests deemed triumphs are perhaps Pyrrhic victories at best. In such cases, US/UN/NATO babysitting (i.e. peacekeeping) has been deemed semi-permanent, political tripwires are everywhere, and an uneasy peace ensues.

(1) SOMALIA was an emerging crisis duly noted by Bush Senior after a coup d'état toppled the government in Mogadishu. Bush Senior sponsored increased humanitarian aid following instability and a famine, but withheld a more direct presence. After the coup, the vacuum of power was filled by rival warlords. Thereafter, Clinton soon came on the scene and pushed for more direct intervention. Dempsey and Fontaine paint a startling sketch of war torn nation and give cogent reasoning why well-meaning foreign policy goals led to disaster. Powerful warlords in the cities plundered the spoils of humanitarian aid for their own gain to buy weapons and buy off cadres of foot soldiers to do their bidding. The Somali animosity towards Westerners intensified amidst the chaos; humanitarian workers became victims of warlord violence and street crime. The Western world took note of the stark aforesaid events. The U.S. intervened under U.N. auspices. They were in the precarious position of picking allies from the warlord factions and protecting unarmed U.N. personnel. The thorn in their side was Mohammed Farah Aideed, a dominant urban warlord who pilfered foreign humanitarian aid rather than distribute it equitably. He used the spoils to buy and arm his own armies and finance his criminal syndicate. Aideed was bold and flagrantly attacked UN peacekeepers and killed foreigners. The U.S. responded to these hit-and-run attacks by targeted strikes that summer. In October 1993, 18 U.S. Army Rangers were tragically killed in fighting while hundreds of Somali causalities fell. That conflict drew ominous parallels to Beirut and the quagmire touched a nerve in Washington. Thereafter, many in Congress demanded withdrawal. Clinton lashed out at isolationist "poison" and lack of U.S. commitment in the aftermath of sharp criticism. Further scandal erupted as millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars were lost to misappropriations, corrupt contract practices and embezzlement at the behest of UNOSOM. The U.S. eventually would relent and for the most part curtailed its presence. Aideed has died in fighting in 1996. Though Somalia is not a happy ever after story, the situation has marginally improved. Having endured Marxist despotism and anarchy, markets have since started to develop in the 1990s. Neighboring Djibouti helped broker a peace conference of Somali factions while an election brought President Hassan to power. Somalia is slowly emerging from the backwater Third World and all without a significant U.S. presence in the nation.

(2) HAITI is another horror story of good intentions gone awry. Haiti has a sad history of being mired in poverty, instability, corruption and economic stagnation with a paltry $250 per capita income. Clinton insisted on making democracy a grandiose cause in trying to strong arm a military junta out of power, and seeking the return of a democratically elected Marxist named Jean Aristide. The consequences of a naïve insistence on making the world safe for lofty democratic platitudes are well documented. The Clinton Administration made a fundamental mistake of economic sanctions to expedite a regime change. Clinton only succeeded in cutting the Haitian GDP by fully one-third after the nominal foreign businesses that were there packed their bags. In the end, U.S.-U.N. sponsored sanctions only hurt the Haitian people. The effects of sanctions will likely have repercussions for decades. Clinton sent in Marines to restore Aristide to his palace in Port-au-Prince which was simple enough. Afterwards came massive aid packages and troops that were deemed necessary to train Aristide's security forces and maintain order. The Haitian markets and economic development remained stagnate. Aristide only proved himself to be a corrupt kleptocrat who plundered the lion share of humanitarian aid to line his pockets while buying off protection for himself and his cronies. Haiti has since been mired in more crime and poverty as the corrupt Aristide rigged subsequent elections. Aristide was eventually toppled at dawn of this century, and many observers welcomed it. The present Bush Administration refused to restore him to power much to chagrin of the Fidel-coddling Rep. Charles Rangel of New York. Clinton's policies in Haiti spelled a disaster, and rested on naïve insistence on bringing a corrupt, avowed Marxist back to power in the name of democracy. It was also part of a politically correct agenda since Haiti in the early 1990's was being lead by a French Haitian in an essentially black republic. This was a touchstone of intervention for a Democratic administration obliged to defend political correctness over our vital security interests.

(3) BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, that is a multi-ethnic Bosnian democracy, can be surmised as wishful thinking. The malfeasance in the nation-building campaign by the U.S. and NATO is Bosnia is captured by the chapter's subtitle, the Potemkin State. Potemkin, of course, alludes to the illusory idyllic village settings that were fabricated by Gen. Potemkin in eighteenth century Russia to awe Catherine the Great's courtesans from a distance as they toured her ostensibly idyllic kingdom. The artificiality of the Potemkin Villages came to embody the superficial and halfhearted attempts to reform and liberalize Catherine's kingdom. Happy peasants and happy villages were all a façade. Likewise, Bosnia remains an illusory farce, a state that exists merely on paper. It is deeply divided into mono-ethnic regions with separate standing armies and security forces. Germany helped foment the problem by recognizing the Bosnian State amidst a Civil War. By recognizing a independent Bosnia, Germany and NATO gave a carte blanche to the Bosniacs to wage war against the Serbs. The brokered peace at the Dayton Accord and negotiations came far too late. Germany and NATO exacerbated the crisis and the death toll by their intervention. Thereafter the Albright State Department decided that political correctness and the need for "multiethnic democracy" trumped the rights of Croats and Serbs. Croats abdicated their Croat settlements in Bosnia as are the Serbs in the New Bosnia. Technically, there really isn't such thing as an ethnic Bosnian. The so called Bosniacs are merely Muslims who live in Bosnia. The conflict in Bosnia was a proving ground for radical Islamists who trained and fought there, and networked with Mujahideen and Al Qaeda. War crimes committed by those other than Serbs are downplayed if not ignored, though all sides have unclean hands. I'm not a Serb apologist nor do I dismiss their atrocities in pointing out that Croats and Bosniacs committed their share as well. The difference is the outside world turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the later two nationalities. Serbs didn't initiate hostilities and something has to be said about the fact that the first refugees in 1992 were 40,000 Serbs. Not surprisingly, the prospects for ethnic reintegration are bleak and a multiethnic, cooperative, democratic Bosnia is an illusory farce and a modern Potemkin State. Bosnia is a veritable powder keg ready to go off.

(4) KOSOVO is a quagmire, and perhaps the biggest failure of any nation-building scheme the Clinton Administration contrived. Historically, Serbia has the strongest ties to Kosovo with more than a millennium of ties to the region. The battle of Kosovo against the Ottoman Turks was fought there. Moreover, it is home to innumerable sacred Serbian Orthodox shrines, many of which have been desecrated by Muslim militants. Nonetheless, the policies of the internationalist overseers are inherently philo-Albananian. While the occupiers and the Western media sensationalized accounts of Muslim victims of Serb aggression, many Serbs, Macedonians and Gypsies in the region have suffered immensely and many refugees of the later three nationalities have fled Kosovo. For all the hue and cry about ethnic cleansing, the unintended consequences of NATO policy was the massive ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians. War and terror atrocities only seem to get reported though when Serbs are the culprits. The West-NATO-US aligned itself with the Albanian KLA, which was nothing more than a corrupt, narco-terrorist group involved in illegal drug and arms trafficking as well as white slavery. The CIA, in fact, has long classified the KLA as a terrorist group. The KLA has little interest in the aims of the internationalist cadre behind KFOR, preferring instead a Greater Albania including Kosovo purified of non-Albananians. Kosovo will likely remain in the economic doldrums since its political status remains in limbo. The only foreign investment seems to be in security forces, building and maintenance of support structures for occupying peacekeepers. The economic prospects of Kosovo are in limbo, and international controls greatly hinder prospects of burgeoning markets or foreign investment. Investors simply lack confidence in an unstable region that is locked in political limbo for perpetuity.

President Bush said prior to his election in 2000, "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building." I tend to agree, but I have not changed mind on the subject. This book is vitally requisite for addressing the contemporary issues as the issue United States continues to be naively obsessed with reckless intervention in the name of "democratic enlargement," furtherance of Wilsonian idealistic ideology and international human rights agendas. If we want lessons from history, we have to look no further than the last decade of the last century. Nation building takes more than imperious regime changing by superpowers and copious amounts of foreign aid. Free governments cannot be simply imposed. Nations must be built from within from slow cultural and political transitions. The Clinton foreign policy gurus act as though democracy is some tangible commodity for export abroad, and ignore how fragile the institutions of free government really are. They misread cultural, historical and strategic considerations before inaugurating their campaign of reckless interventionism and nation building. Bombing a region or country into the ground and whimsically rebuilding it into a free democracy seldom goes as planned. Gunpoint democracy has proven itself to be an illusory farce; the four major attempts at nation building in the 1990's were dismal failures. Dempsey and Fontaine substantiate this assertion in their book with sound reasoning and a trenchant analysis.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana

I received this book promptly. It was well-packaged and in excellent condition.

I absolutely loved this book! I read it when I was in the process of a divorce. It helped me so much!! Michelle Hammond is my girl, she really allows the Lord to use her in her writing!

When life is not going the way it was planned what is one to do? A few people turn to outside counseling, some turn to family and friends and many turn to their faith. GET OVER IT AND ON WITH IT is composed of all three elements. Michelle Mckinney Hammond is an inspirational speaker and author of many faith-based self-help books. In GET OVER IT AND ON WITH IT, using the life struggles of biblical characters, Ms. Hammond shows the reader how to overcome their own personal struggles. When reading this book, one has the benefit of outside counsel, the familiar and comforting language of friends and family, and last but not least, the teachings of the Christian faith.

To receive the most benefit from the author's counsel in, GET OVER IT AND ON WITH IT, it should be read at a time when the reader has a need for guidance and perspective. With chapter titles such as "Absorbing the Blow, Getting Back on Your Feet and Standing Firm," the book shows the reader how to be victorious in the fight of and for their life. GET OVER IT AND ON WITH IT gives the reader a warm directional approach to keeping the faith and holding on to hope.

Reviewed by Aiesha Flowers
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

This book is perfect. Whether you're going through something huge or something small. All struggles seem huge to us at the time and this book gives a breath of fresh air and a little break from what you are going through. Michelle (as always) takes a very Biblical perspective on the struggles and hard times that we face in life. The hard times will not stop coming as long as we are living, so we might as well get used to getting back on our feet. She allows time for grief and helps make sense of things that seem senseless. She also gives simple reminders like eating and resting and taking care of your temple during these hard times. God is good and I'm so glad to have authors like Michelle out there who can really offer wisdom. A great book. I'll read it again the next time life knocks me down and do the questions after each section for deeper understanding.

This book is full of excellent advice. I don't usually read this genre and still I found this book very useful it uses the bible to help solve today's problems. This book gave me a new prospective on the way I was looking at certain situations in my life. The author was brief and to the point, always reminding the reader to look for the answer in God's Holy bible all though the men and women who lived in a day when people took a closer walk with God. The author also showed that the men and women in those day went through similar situations as we do today. The book discusses every thing from financial trouble to death, I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to cope with the everyday stress that life brings.

Chossudovsky is a brilliant economist and a burning torch for the truth that people are unable to see, hear, or accept due to the propaganda schemas that are embedded in their minds (like a microchip programming) by the global media cartel and the political demagogues.
Chossudovski analyzes the past and the present in relation to debt, globalization, and international financing. He dispels the myth of the good samaritan (like the IMF, the World bank, and the Federal Reserve, etc) that destroys economies of other countries, and impoverish them under the guise of capitalism (actually corporate socialism) and freedom, in order to own them. He clearly elucidates the dollarization process and its role in the New World Order. This book makes a powerful reading that sheds the light on a vanishing truth. I would highly recommend this volume to anyone who is interested in world finance as well as their future, and the future of their children.

Although it saddens me to see a strong literature emerging today that was largely anticipated and ignored by people like David Barnett with his Global Reach work in the 1970's, it is a good thing that strong voices like those of this author are now making very comprehensive documented cases for how corporate power and privatized wealth are collapsing nations, bankrupting economies, and impoverishing more and more people unnecessarily.

The table of contents of this book is extraordinarily details and brilliant in its organization. Although the book is mostly case studies that one can read through rapidly if accepting of the author's key points, this may well be one of the finest itemizations of the ills of the 21st century: corporate power run amok, privatization and concentration of wealth (which is, incidentally, one of the precondition for revolution), the collapse of national and local economies (e.g. Wal-Mart), the dismantling of the welfare safety net in most countries, and the outbreak and spread of famine and civil war.

The author is probably the foremost scholar and commentator on how the "free" market is not so free, and how the existing capitalist system is predatory, aided by locked in privileges that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank impose on nations foolish enough to accept their intervention. In this the author is consistent with Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) who has put forward the need for a complete make-over of developmental economics, to include an end of the normal business practices of the IMF and the World Bank.

I was tempted to remove one star for lack of sufficient reference to the works of others, but the personal insights and comprehensive review caused me to leave the ranking at five stars. I see a clear pattern emerging in the literature (see my other 700+ reviews) and what I am waiting for is for someone to cut the spines off all these books and "make sense" of the total picture in a manner comprehensible to the indivdual voter.

If we are to restore informed democracy and moral capitalism, this book is one of the foundation stones.

See also:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War onthe American Dream and How to Fight Back
Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class - And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents)
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

M. Chossudovsky attacks head on the New World Order imposed by the World Bank (WB0), the IMF and the WTO, calling their economic 'reforms' enforced on countries in distress not less than genocides.

Their 'free market' system is rigged. The WTO agreements grant entrenched rights to the world's largest financial and industrial conglomerates, derogating the ability of national governments to regulate their economies. The IMF programs enforce governments to privatize big chunks of their national economy, liberalize their markets and downsize social provisions (education, health, social security).
Their 'free' market system is synonym of human poverty, destruction of the natural environment, social apartheid, racism and ethnic strife, undermining of women's rights, economic dislocations, forced displacements, landless farmers, shuttered factories and jobless workers.
More, he accuses the IMF of supporting the appropriation of global wealth by speculators through manipulation of currency and commodity markets. It even manipulates itself its economic statistics in order to show that its policies work. Finally, it cooperates with warmongerers and 'peace keepers'.

He illustrates his verdicts with a host of examples.
Somalia: the entire social fabric of the pastoralist economy was undone through duty-free beef and dairy products from the EU.
Rwanda: the restructuring of the agricultural system precipitated the population into destitution, leading to a genocide.
Ethiopia: the Structural Adjustment Programme caused starvation.
Bangladesh: a devaluation and price liberalization exacerbated famine. Deregulation of the grain market meant dumping of US grain surpluses.
Brazil: enhancement of social polarization by supporting the land-owning class.
Peru: after liberalization, the price of bread increased more than 12 times.
Russia: helping the oligarchs.
India (Andhra Pradesh): repeal of minimum wages and support of caste exploitation
Yugoslavia: serving the strategic interests of Germany and the US by cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics.
Korea, Thailand, Indonesia: the vaults of the central banks (100 billion $) were pillaged by international speculators. The bail-outs of those countries were underwritten and guaranteed by the same Wall Street banks involved in the speculative assaults.

The author proposes a solution which will be extremely difficult to implement in our actual world, where media and governments are controlled by the powerful: democratization of the economic system and ownership structures, disarming of speculation, redistribution of income and wealth and rebuilding the Welfare State.

Michel Chossudovsky's book constitutes a devastating denunciation of an inhuman system sold by economic strangulating wolves clad in sheepskins.
It confirms the forceful analysis of globalization by Joseph Stiglitz.

A must read.

I also recommend a voice from the South: Walden Bello.

With the North American governments and their media flacks noisily championing "economic liberalisation", dissenting voices are muted. The voices of those most directly affected by "globalisation" are fainter yet. Michel Chossudovsky attempts to overcome the raucous proponents of "international free trade" with an examination of just what it does and how it impacts civil societies. The picture he provides isn't pleasant. However, turning away will not cause it to fade from lack of our attention. In fact, reading this book is an eye-opening, if not eyebrow raising experience.

Among the rare critics of globalization Chossudovsky has "on-site" credentials beyond his academic base. He's been on the scene of several nations subjected to International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies. He examines the results of these and other international financial agencies' policies. From Chile through Rwanda to Somlia and Korea, he shows how a new form of warfare is under way. Conquest no longer requires bullets to occupy a nation nor suppress a people. Conquerers now wield position papers, American dollars or Euros and trade impositions. Surrender agreements come in the form of "conditions" accompanying loans and investments. These dicta result in the stripping away of social programmes, alienation of subsistence farm holdings and displacement of vast numbers. These people, deprived of income, traditions and opportunity have become a new breed. They are the hopeless poor for which no amount of "aid" can provide succour.

As he demonstrates repeatedly, the mechanism is simple. The formation of the IMF gave financiers, chiefly North American, a cudgel to change governments, force farmers and pastoralists to convert to cash crop economies, and reduce or eliminate government services. The initial steps were instituted by the Bretton Woods conferences designed to restore nations devastated by World War II. Private financial institutions imposed conditions on loans granted to recovering countries. "Recovering" countries rapidly expanded into "developing" countries as these institutions recognised the value of cheap labour in them. Accepting "foreign investment" led to indebtedness difficult to repay. Defaulting was unacceptable to both borrower and lender, leading to new rounds of loans. These, however, rarely reached the borrowing nation since the new funds were set against the older debt. "Servicing the debt" meant imposition of stringent conditions, ranging from privatisation of services, amalgamation of small land holdings to produce crops to be purchased cheaply, but sold at inflated prices. The consumers of these goods are you and your neighbours.

Each of the nations Chossudovsky examines suffers the same schedule of "structural adjustment programmes" imposed by the IMF. These SAPs outline the changes a nation must endure to receive the "benefits" of globalization. Restrictions on outside investment must be eliminated, with the concomitant privatisation of state-owned facilities and services. Where workers aren't laid off, their wages are frozen or reduced. Local currencies must be adjusted to American dollars, which has the impact of intense inflation spirals almost overnight. The result is a populace under increasing pressure, marginal or famine-stricken and powerless. Civil unrest isn't an option, since disruption brings reprisals - often, of course, the withdrawal of investment, failure to renew loan guarantees or simply real military action.

Although the repetitive nature of the manipulations of the financial institutions on national sovereignty leads Chossudovsky to some redundancy, the reader should understand we are dealing with a global crisis. "Bitter medicine" and "bitter irony" recur, because the circumstances he describes are redundant. An imposing and sometimes intimidating account, he is careful to shift the responsibility to institutions rather than consumers. It is, however, the developed country consumer that provides motivation for many levels of the problem. Chossudovsky's analysis is thorough, well-founded and expressive. He shows why social unrest in "developing" countries is the result of imposed conditions, not unstable populations and environments. That he offers little in the way of solutions for the predicament the world now suffers is only testimony to the immensity of the task ahead. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I was originally born in Uganda and I can assure you that Africans have always been suspicious of the so-called "aid" they receive since it almost always comes after a crisis that they can't quite explain (like how did a bunch of poor, illiterate preteens get the money to buy those fancy weapons, or why won't aid agencies buy food from the local farmers and distribute THAT).

Suspicions and rumors are insufficient to counter what appears, on the surface, to be international generosity. That is why I am grateful for Chossudosky's contrarian masterwork. It confirms the fears and suspicions regarding a return to colonialism and economic slavery. The fact that Chossudosky was willing to put his career on the line to write this hard-hitting book is worthy of our attention. He shows, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is a deliberate and systematic campaign of "economic genocide" against Africa and all other resource-rich regions. Neoliberalism have mastered the British colonial-era double-speak of "liberty", "democracy", "markets", etc. "Market liberalization" is nothing more than armed robbery. And "investment" is really nothing more than "asset stripping". The Adam Smith phraseology of free-trade and free markets is used, much like their British predecessors, to recolonize the world. Chossudosky shows how the "Washington Consesus" has embarked on a foreign policy strategy of economic sabotage and "strangulation." As Kissinger famously ordered, in the now declassified National Security Memorandum 200, Africans should be kept from becoming consumers of their own raw materials.

Chossudosky does an enormous favors to us neophytes by decoding the neoclassical econo-babble. His brilliant deconstruction of IMF structural adjustment policies is worth the price of this book alone. But he goes beyond that. He shows how nations can be brought to their knees through currency devaluations and speculative attacks. The whole cynical process of creating the crisis then blaming it on the victims, i.e. the "Asian" Crisis which is in fact an American Crisis, or the excuse used to maintain Odious Debt on impoverished nations: "their corrupt leaders are to blame for the Odious Debt". Yes but those "corrupt" leaders were trained at American military bases (much like the 9/11 hijackers), and are killing us with American made weapons (thanks again Kissinger). Besides, everytimes Africans (or Latin Americans) try to put a reformer or socialist democrat in power, he develops a nasty habit of being assisinated.

This book will make you angry at how long and how often you've been lied to. Everything you thought you knew about economics will be tested as the Machiavellian machinations of international creditors, grain companies, and financial "investors" is revealed in page after riveting page. I also recommend Michael Hudson's Super Imperialism and Horowitz' Emerging Viruses. If it's not out of print then get The Merchants of Grain. Some publishing companies are refusing to publish some of these books because of their controvesial nature so get them before they're made "out of print".

Rauch's book exposes the sad truth about interest groups and their impact on the federal government.

He makes two basic arguments. First, that each interest group is only concerned about their survival and prosperity. And second, that the federal governemnt in unable to get rid of these groups due to their expansive powers as a whole. The fed he says is unable to fight these groups because there are too many to fight at once and because so many of these groups have powerful friends on the other two rungs of the iron triangle.

The consequences of these actions is that the federal government is forced to fund outdated/ineffective organizations that do no good for the public. Also, worthwhile programs are under-funded. And lastly, the problems that have yet to be addressed have a small chance of being solved because too much of our resources are spent on these entrenched dinosaurs.

I recommend this book to anyone trying to learn about what's really going on in the federal government beneath the non-analytical levels of todays news reports. Rauch provides many examples to back up his claim but doesn't get bogged down in political/economic jargon. The only critique I have abotu the book is that he tends to repeat his sub-arguments a little too much but it may help in underscoring the main points to his claim as a whole.

I've always been a big fan of Demosclerosis and I'm also a big fan of this book, which is a heavily revised version. The revision is heavy enough that I felt I got my money's worth with this new edition. If you haven't read Demosclerosis, buy this book. If you have, you may want to buy it anyway for the new content. Rauch puts his finger on the reason why special-interest gridlock creates a polity that is considerably less than the sum of its parts. There are also some brutally effective graphics -- my favorite being the (declining) confidence in government as a near-perfect reciprocal of the (increasing) number of pages of federal statutes. Buy it, read it, send copies to your friends.

It is hard to express how good a job Rauch does at putting forward his view of Wahington. He paints a vivid, believeable, coherent picture; he is fair-minded and nonjudgmental to a fault (truly - he is much too kind to many people); his pronouncements on, and advice for the future are measured and realistic, and not completely unconvincing; and on top of this the book reads very quickly. Greider's "Who Will Tell the People" is comparable in message, but, while very well done, that much larger book fails to present as clear a testament to what has happened to Washington in the last 40 years. Though people who are interested in politics should already have come to grips with Rauch's thesis, the fact is that most have not, while the average, relatively apolitical American would no doubt find this book quite an eye-opener. As the other reviewers note, Rauch is a consistently fine writer; here is a good place place to start reading.

If you're trying to understand why the federal government is deaf to the needs of its citizens, this book will tell you why. Further, if there is any question why John McCain strikes such a chord with the American people, the answer will be found in here. Yes, the economy is doing great (and the polls say Americans agree). Yes, our position in the world is dominant (and Americans agree). But when it comes to the performance of the government, you can see the vein bulging on the average American's forehead. Washington has "stopped working," in Mr. Rauch's words and in his book, he explains why. The culprit is an explosion of special interests who seek to exploit political and finiancial gain from our nation's capital. The myth of the "national interest" has been quietly put to rest. In its place is the roar of special interests who sap the nation's economy, stifle legislation, and stir public cynicism. Mr. Rauch is a bit too cynical about the prospects for reform; I do not share his belief that government has "ended." Hopefully, the next generation of political leaders, heeding Rauch's warning, will prove him wrong.

Read this book in an American Government class my first semester of college, and to this day it remains one of the most informative and influential books I've read.

After reading John Lotts, "More Guns Less Crime,"(which I highly recommend) I then picked up this one, and found that this book also suggests gun control solutions which at least make some sense. "Guns: Who Should Have Them", struck a chord with me here, because the suggested solutions don't affect law abiding citezens nearly as much as current and proposed legislation, and focuses on the criminals. I would ask anyone on one side or the other of the gun debate to at least be knowlegable about what the effects of waiting periods, and permissions laws really are. This book covers it all.

Each chapter in this powerful volume will help the readers cut through the rhetoric and sensationalism that frequently surrounds the gun control debate.

Written by the leading experts in law, criminology and medicine, this volume includes such headings as "Arms and the Woman"; "Doctors and Guns," further rebutting the arguments that guns are a public health menace; and "Children and Guns," dissecting the contentious and timely issue of guns and violence in our schools. It compliments David Kopel's previous masterpiece, The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? honored as the 1993 Book of the Year by the American Society of Criminology's Division of International Criminology.

This expertly written book should occupy a place in the library of all citizens genuinely interested in the topic of gun and violence research and in understanding the fallacies of gun control as a public health issue.

Attorney, scholar and criminologist, David Kopel, should be commended for editing and compiling this comprehensive yet highly readable masterpiece.

Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and author of Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine.

I can't stress it enough - this book may be one of the most important books for all voting Americans to read today. This slices right through the rhetoric that the news media employ to confuse Americans about gun control and stir up hysteria about guns. This book thoughtfully and thoroughly dismantles every major argument for gun control and reveals the dangerous flaws in all recent federal gun-control legislation. Whether you're a gun lover, gun hater, or something in between, you should read this book!

David Kopel's second major book on the efficacy of gun control laws is an extensive and objective review of research both supporting and denying the basic premises of gun control in preventing crime and accidents involving firearms. Kopel takes an even-handed approach that is greatly missing in most compilations on this subject. Kopel takes great care to examine the merits of the existing research, almost always providing extensive analysis and reference to each work. Just as in his previous award-winning book, "The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy", Kopel's analyses (in the chapters he writes) are complete, to the point, and well-written. Kopel's writing is clear and effective. The strongest and weakest chapters of the book, however, are contributed by other authors. The chapters on feminist theory (by Mary Zeiss Stange) and race control and guns ( by Robert Cottrol and Raymond Diamond) provide some good background on the subject but fail to deliver the knockout blow that they could. The chapter on doctors and guns, however, delivers not as much the knockout blow as takes a sledgehammer to the medical community, AMA, American Association of Pediatriacs, and Center for Disease Control. Don Kates, Henry Schaffer, John Lattimer, George Murray,and Edward Cassem expose the intellectual dishonesty and horrendous scholarship in the medical literature concering firearms, violence, and safety. All accustations are well-documented and examined. This chapter should be must reading for every single medical school student in the United States. It may make you fear your doctor.

This book should take its place among the other outstanding, intellectually honest works in the literature of the gun control efficacy genre, including Gary Kleck's "Point Blank". the previously mentioned Kopel work, and John R. Lott, Jr.'s "More Guns Less Crime".

An added feature of this book is not only the brilliant analyses and conclusions Kopel makes on the ineffectualness of gun control laws on preventing crime and accidents, but Kopel provides analyses on REAL causes of these social ills and suggests REAL solutions. You should buy four copies of this book: one for you, one for your doctor, and send the other three to your senators and congressman.

Far and away the best book on the subject. Balanced, thorough, and comprehensive -- and refreshingly free of the knee-jerk sound-bite approach usually associated with this subject.

Irreverent, funny, witty. Confirmed my suspicions about what the technical writing occupation was all about. If you're a Dilbert fan, what are you waiting for? Rush to the book store. If you're unfamiliar with Dilbert, then please read on. For those unfamiliar with Dilbert-type humor, hi-tek presents an un-politically correct observation of work and the high tech industry. Hi-tek can also be acerbic and cutting, yet with a clear understanding of the dreams and aspirations we all keep hidden. Clearly displays an underlying understanding, regard, and empathy for the everyday worker. Just like Dilber, it functions on several levels-- succeeding in giving a true representation of the high technology environment and the technical writing occupation in particular. But don't take my word for it--rush off to the bookstore and buy it.

What a great "tongue in cheek" view of work life in the high-tech world. The characters, the situations are so "real"!! A great read!!

I loved this hilarious satire of the Tech environment. The characters were described with irreverance and wit. The off-color humour delighted me, as ANON portrays, as only an insider can...the inner workings of the Tekkies and their culture. Not for high techers only, I enjoyed the psychologically amusing characters, well developed and joyfully politically in-correct. I see Kevin Kline as the narrator in the future movie based on the book.!

Before I begin, I must say that I worked with the author at one time, so use that fact as a guide when reading my review.

The bottom-line is that this book was extremely funny, in a totally twisted sort of way. Having known the author from a previous work experience, I had an idea of what to expect, but that idea was quickly reached and surpassed.

The story and characters are partly based on fact, although many things are exagerrated. Yet, it is the exagerration of many things that sheds the comic light on the participants and events of the story.

Working in the high tech industry, I know first-hand that there are some strange characters that you will meet in your travels. But this bunch of folks that are described in the book are ones that you will encounter maybe once in your life time.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants some comic relief from their daily grind. It does a good job of showing the reader how to find humor in the seemingly tedious tasks that face us all every day.

This book represents very good entertainment and is also a stinging satire of our scary times. The author mercilessly exposes the high tech culture with Swiftian satire and Rabelaisian wild humor.
With razor sharp wit and bawdy narrative, the author describes a dehumanized world were people communicate by emails and acronyms
and became more and more disconnected from those around them.

If you want one authoritative work about Saudi Arabia and its history, this is the book that you should buy and read.
Vasiliev not only thoroughly documents the history of the kingdom since ancient times and through the rise of preaching radical Wahhabi Islam in 1745, he couples this puritan movement with the socioeconomic trends of the Arabian peninsula resultant of its unfriendly desert weather.
Even for readers familiar with the history of the region, the author makes striking remarks saying that people should understand the Saudi modern history as the function of a unique event in history. Saudis had the most archaic society on the face of earth at the time they received the biggest fortune ever.
Readers might be also surprised to learn that the ruling Saudi family is almost exclusively composed of the sons of the founder and their sons. Another surprising remark the author makes is that, even with the huge budget this kingdom manages, it still has no treasury department.
Not very surprising, however, is the typical third world behavior of Saudi rulers who squandered their suddenly generated fortunes either to buy political loyalties or for self luxury.
The reader might be amazed at how many chances the Saudis have missed to modernize their country and make use of their once unparalleled wealth. Instead, they protected anti-modernization fundamental groups on which the stay of the regime itself depended.

I've never come across a text on the History of Saudi Arabia as comprehensive as this one. the author starts in the middle of the 18th century with an analysis of the forces that heleped to unite the house of Saud with the Wahhabi movement of Mouhammad abd-al-Wahhab. Vassiliev - who uses a wide variety of Arab, Russian and Western sources - skillfully analyszes economic and social developments. He shows that there are many divisions in Saudi Arabia and that dissent is widespread in many fractions of society. There is an excellent account of the impact of the Iranian Revolution on the Shia of the oil rich Najd and the wahhabi purists who emerged violently on the world scene in an uprising in Mecca in 1979. Saudi Arabia will become a primary focus of world attention as the conflict in Afghanistan ends and exposes the hitherto little revealed dissent and support for radical islamists that exists at many societal levels in Saudi Arabia. Ochin Khorosho, Dr. vassiliev. Tayyib Jiddan

That's for the moment the best available book on Saudi Arabia. Exceptionally documented, it stages the history of the most mysterious country of the Middle East from the beginning of the eighteenth century until 1998, coping with the socio-economical backgroung of that ideology which is named "wahhabism". It reverses the usual order of analyse, deniyng "islam" to be the only cause of the current shape of Saudi Arabia. A great work.

The biggest fault in the book is the absence of maps and pictures. It is annoying to have to open an atlas in order to follow a campaign that is otherwise described in such detail. The section on the last decade and the conclusion are generally anemic and provide no great insights into what the future may hold. But if you want to gain some idea of how Saudi Arabia came to be, what tremendous obstacles were overcome (or what great opportunities were lost, depending on your point of view) this is the book to own.

P.A. Seslavin and Jana Gough did a superb job of translation.The English syntax is impeccable But the pricipal value of the book is its completeness: A masterly review of the literature, in my opinion more thorough than any previously compiled, supplemented by a bibliography and keyed reference notes is followed by an excellent summation of early Saudi history and the governance of the restorer of Saudi hegemony, Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Faisal al Saud,(the main object of my own study) and his sons. The great changes in the mores of the tribes in the decades following the discovery and development of the oil resources of Saudi Arabia is covered only piecemeal by other authors, but summarized very well here and the threats to the existence of the current regime are discussed in some detail. The reasons for Saudi dependence on US support are given, but there could not be a discussion the post 1998 revelations concerning radical clerics and their support of terrorism.
Only one minor error regarding the number and leadership of the two forces sent to Asir in 1921-22 came to light in my first reading of this monumental book.