Hijacking Catastrophe
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1566565812/qid=1127869550/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-0617316-9994353?v=glance&s=books&n=507846You might consider buying this one and giving it to everyone you can think of. It's preaching to the choir of course: most of us who see it understand that the NeoCon group's approach to foreign policy is horrifyingly similar to that of Gary Cooper in HIGH NOON (the quintessential go-it-alone guy.) It's amazing to watch this film and realize how long the propaganda has been coming at us, manipulating us through our fears. If you're worried about the Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld/Bush triumverate and their quest for empire, this will only make you worry more. It's a very unsettling movie. At times, you might find yourself wishing you could turn off the background music, which is a bit melodramatic. But all told, this is an urgently important film - I only wish we could figure out how to get the Bush supporters to watch it. Any suggestions?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1576753018/qid=1127869550/sr=8-5/ref=pd_bbs_5/104-0617316-9994353?v=glance&s=books&n=507846http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1576753018.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpgJohn Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. "Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002T7YWQ/qid=1127869550/sr=8-6/ref=pd_bbs_6/104-0617316-9994353?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846In Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, journalist Greg Palast argues persuasively that George W. Bush was allowed into the Air National Guard ahead of other applicants due to his political connections; paints a damning portrait of how over 90,000 Florida voters, predominantly black, were prevented from voting in the 2000 election; discusses the number of government contracts handed out to large corporate donors to Bush's campaign--and that's just the first half-hour. Palast doesn't have the cinematic savvy of Michael Moore, but Bush Family Fortunes acts as a valuable corollary to Fahrenheit 9/11, exploring certain facets of the same argument--specifically, that the Bush family is detrimentally tied to both the Saudi Arabian ruling elite and the American oil industry, with whom they trade influence and money for mutual benefit. Palast's investigations will stir the blood of any Democrat and may raise doubts in some Republicans. -- Bret Fetzer
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805070044/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_f/104-0617316-9994353http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0805070044.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpgIn his prescient 2000 bestseller, Blowback, East Asia scholar Johnson predicted dire consequences for a U.S. foreign policy that had run roughshod over Asia. Now he joins a chorus of Bush critics in this provocative, detailed tour of what he sees as America's entrenched culture of militarism, its "private army" of special forces and its worldwide archipelago of military "colonies." According to Johnson, before a mute public and Congress, oil and arms barons have displaced the State Department, secretly creating "a military juggernaut intent on world domination" and are exercising "preemptive intervention" for "oil, Israel, and... to fulfill our self-perceived destiny as a New Rome." Johnson admits that Bill Clinton, who disguised his policies as globalization, was a "much more effective imperialist," but most of the book assails "the boy emperor" Bush and his cronies with one of the most startling and engrossing accounts of exotic defense capabilities, operations and spending in print, though these assertions are not new and not always assiduously sourced. Fans of Blowback will be pleased despite Johnson's lack of remedies other than "a revolution" in which "the people could retake control of Congress... and cut off the supply of money to the Pentagon."
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