Alternative Media - Books

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Table of Contents

• 1. Overview
• 2. Topical Books
  • 2.1. lovell2003 (2007-09-28)
  • 2.2. brock2004
  • 2.3. perkins04
  • 2.4. blum04
  • 2.5. phillips04
  • 2.6. hoffman98 (2007-09-28)
  • 2.7. ruppert04
  • 2.8. moore03
  • 2.9. palast04
  • 2.10. NCSTAR 1-1 through NCSTAR 1-8

1. Overview

Look for those books with sufficient details to be cross-checked with independent sources. Talk shows, blogs, and journal articles just don't do the job.

Look for books which draw the facts together in new and interesting ways. Often the facts are well known, and the "politics" is in the interpretation ("spin", "framing").

Remember, you are a US citizen, and thus responsible for thinking for yourself. I've tried to warn where I think a book goes off track, but the final assessment is yours. Remember also that the "opposition" is very good at psyops, and that includes "false flag" and "poison well" books. I may have been duped.

It is a good idea to start with History, to get a feel for how humans and societies operate (including slavery, mass murder, conspiracy, propaganda, psyops, true grass-roots movements vs "astroturf", etc.).

Next read these texts, taking the time to check for internal consistency, valid citations, and compatibility with what you already know of events and human nature.

2. Topical Books

2.1. lovell2003 (2007-09-28)

Simon Lovell. "How to Cheat at Everything: A Con Man Reveals the Secrets of the Esoteric Trade of Cheating, Scams, and Hustles". Thunder's Mouth Press, 2003. ISBN 978-1-56025-973-2.

Ok, so you don't care to learn how to palm cards, deal second cards, switch in loaded dice, win bar bets, or work carny games. You should still at least skim this book. It is about human nature. It works for cheating gamblers, and it works for cheating power blocs,.

Key insights

• The cheater is (or should be) extremely proficient in the game, and only cheat at those crucial moments when it makes a big difference.

  In gambling, if the marks are dumb enough, just win by skill. Otherwise, save the cheat until there is a big pot.

  In politics, send your children to prep schools and Ivy League schools so they can win on skill. Make sure the other kids get lousy schooling. Give Rhodes Scholarships to any that show promise anyway, in hopes of co-opting them. Given this setup, win on skill most of the time.

  Save the cheats for trillion dollar pots, like rigged presidential elections.

• The cheat is in business to get your money. He doesn't care what happens to you.

  The cheat genuinely doesn't care if you go home a broken man, Granny dies because you can't pay the heating bill, and little Johnny goes hungry and gets rickets. You made the bet and you have to live with it. If it was a foolish bet, that is your problem.

  In politics, this is known as "compassionate conservatism".

• If you think you are "in" on a scam (part of the team doing the hustle), you aren't. You may be the only one in the room who isn't. Also known as: It is hard to cheat an honest man.

  In politics, this is about folks who knowingly vote for crooks expecting to get a bit of the action themselves. Pretty much sums up anyone with net worth under $10M who votes for the GOP.

• If something unexpected happens and your attention is diverted for a moment, that is when the switch will be made.

  In gambling, it may be a beautiful woman accidentally dropping her bra strap. Or a gunman bursting into the room.

  In politics, it is (these days) more likely to be a "terrorist bomb", though hurricanes work too, as do bare boobs at halftime. All you need are plans to take advantage of natural and man-made excitements. Shock-and-awe.

• If you suspect a cheat, walk away quietly. Even if you can take the guys in the room, there are some really mean guys out in the parking lot waiting for you. They know where you live, and where your daughter goes to school.

  Perkins calls them the Jackles. Also known as goon squad, SWAT team, "wet ops", etc.

  The problem is that in politics, walking away is called "going off the grid". You may suffer hardships, and you will be watched even more carefully. Also, these days it is just too expensive to find enough land to do it.

  One possible alternative (besides staying in the game and being knowingly shorn) is to band with lots of other good guys and run the bad guys out of town. This is known as a reform movement, and is a hallmark of a true democracy. Unfortunately that means you know where they live, and where their daughters go to school. And that you can realistically protect your children from their best/worst efforts.

  Democracy isn't for sissies.

2.2. brock2004

David Brock. "The Republican Noise Machine". Crown Publishers, 2004. ISBN 1-4000-4875-5.

Traces the right-wing agenda of attacks and lies from Joe McCarthy through Nixon, Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, the neocons, Bush I, Gingrich, Bush II. Talking points honed at tax-exempt think tanks funded by Coors, Koch, Scaife, et al. "News" converted to "opinion", and converted again to direct channeling of press releases.

2.3. perkins04

John Perkins. "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". Bernett-Koehler Publlishers, 2004. ISBN 1-5765-301-8.

Inside story of using hyped economic forecasts to sell megaprojects to political entities. Halliburton and Bechtel get the contracts, the locals get eco-disasters, the banks get massive govt-backed loans, and the "corporatocracy" gets perpetual control of the forever-indebted entity. (Snohomish County, are you listening???)

The book is not particularly well written, the raw data was more or less reported in The Economist, Business Week and similar sources over the past couple of decades, and the WTO protesters knew the basic outline. But Perkins provides the insider's perspective. Yes, the system really does work that way...deliberately.

I recommend the book because it gives in a nutshell the grand strategy of 20th Century world affairs. This is a story of multinational corporate wealth-and-power conquering nation states and non-assimilated cultures. You have to understand this context before you can understand anything else.

Remember as you see George Schultz pop up now and again: Schultz was the one who vetted George "W" Bush very early on as someone who would be useful in politics.

2.4. blum04

William Blum. "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II". Common Courage Press, 2004. ISBN 1-56751-252-6.

The author's thesis is that the US has repeatedly intervened in democratic struggles, on behalf of US corporate interests. Well researched and cited.

2.5. phillips04

Kevin Phillips. "American Dynasty". Penguin Books Ltd, 2004. ISBN 0-670-03264-6.

Solid research on the Bush/Walker/Prescott family. Perkins was a bit player. The Bushes are the real McCoy.

2.6. hoffman98 (2007-09-28)

David Hoffman. "The Oklahoma City Bomb and the Politics of Terror". Feral House, 1998. ISBN 0-922915-49-0.

This one qualifies as a genuine "conspiracy theory" book. Plenty of typos, several key items not cited or cited with "private communication with author", and lots of innuendo and arched brows. Why include it? Because it is a good source of a) hypotheses, and b) details and citations to be confirmed independently. It is also startling in that it foreshadows the 9/11 events almost perfectly. 3 years before they occurred.

It is nominally about the McVeigh bombing of the Murrah Building. Yet as it peels back the onion, we meet FBI agents and informants, ATF agents and informants, CIA cutouts, neo-Nazis and their funding sources, Mafia connections, Iran/Contra, drug cartels, Iranian/Iraqi/Palestinian/Israeli intelligence services, and Texas oil money (as in Bush family).

Far more importantly, we meet witnesses not otherwise involved. All they have to offer is their personal observations of specific events at specific times. Which is important when you see that these reports repeatedly contradict the "official" story.

The author eventually touches on the JFK assassination, the MLK assassination, the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 bombing, the Waco firestorm, ATF efforts to destroy the "militia" movement, and finally the Murrah bombing.

The author's thesis is that it was a sting gone bad. The ATF, FBI, and CIA were watching (and participating in) an Iraqi bombing plot. Or maybe it was actually a Mossad plot, intended to make Iraq and Iran look demented. Anyway, the FBI/ATF/CIA intended to defuse the bomb at the last moment, and thus get great headlines but no damage. They understood the Iraqis were using neo-Nazis as the patsies -- which was Ok, because that would tar the whole militia and thus the "Patriot" movement. They lost control of the operation... something to do with 2 Ryder trucks and several John Doe 2's.

That was the author's message. What I took from the book, from the vantage point of post-9/11, is a pattern:

• Operate through one or more layers of patsies -- each one of which can be publically attacked as its role is exposed.

  Militia groups, neo-Nazis, PLO, generic terrorists, "liberal press", defense wimps, etc.

• Use agent provocateurs to run a sting. Make clear to the support team that the stakes are national security and that "we are the big boys who do things the normal citizens don't want to know about". This justifies putting those normal citizens lives at risk without their knowledge or consent.

  There is a claim that *all* militant groups in the US are being watched and infiltrated. Which makes sense, because apparently the peace groups are.

• But let the sting go through, so the full public revulsion is maximized.

  This will require deliberate high-level manipulation of the normal public safety mechanisms, at the last minute. Shock and Awe applied to our own infrastructure.

  NORAD stand-down comes to mind. Also failure of Pentagon missile defense to down the "airplane".

  You know, a few stings-gone-bad would be Ok, but it sure seems like there have been an awful lot of them with Bush family members in the neighborhood.

• Perhaps even enhance the damage with professional demolitions.

  There are mixed stories on this. Very few people are munitions experts, or capable of investigating a bomb scene. They work for good guys or bad guys and don't talk to anyone else. So it is unlikely I or any other private citizen can be fully confident of telling a jury or the public "The ATF bomb expert witness is bullshitting you."

  However, I do have trust in repeatable science. If we build another Murrah Bldg and set off a bomb exactly as the ATF says it was done, we should get comparable results. Similarly , a repeat of the WTC 1, 2, 7 efforts would tell us a lot.

  These experiments would take less than one billion dollars -- far less than we have shipped to Big Oil and Big Defense as a result of those "terrorist events". I consider it an investment in Liberty. I'm sure that any movement to do so would be attacked with ads of poor starving orphans who need the money for school lunches. Gee, if only the GOP had thought of that leading up to the Gulf War II.

• Sequester the bomb site immediately, contaminate, and bulldoze to eliminate forensic evidence.

  This is the absolutely crucial part of the pattern. It is what struck me first in comparing Murrah to WTC. With untouched crime scenes and trusted (not FBI) CSI analysts, most of these plots would start to unravel. Science works when you use it.

• Run a whitewash investigation

  The 9/11 Commission was an embarrassment to the American people. It was the feds way of saying "You are so stupid, we can sell even this lame circus."

• Use mass media to attack anyone who suggests there is more to be learned.

  Did you know about Key and Wilburn? I didn't either. Did they have the facts needed to convict someone? No. Did they have enough evidence to warrant further investigation? Yes. Same with the 911 "Truth" groups.

• When all else fails, kill witnesses.

  Death is natural. A pattern of deaths just days before expected testimony is not. A pattern of suicides where the victim managed to bludgeon himself, drag himself off into the bushes, and shoot himself from an awkward angle, is a stretch.

  Again, the perpetrators would need to immediately destroy the evidence ("to protect the grieving families") so that teams of forensic analysts cannot challenge each other's findings.

2.7. ruppert04

Michael C. Ruppert. "Crossing the Rubicon". New Society Publishers. 2004. ISBN 0-86571-540-8.

Ruppert arrays his facts re 9/11 as if before a jury in a homicide case. Motive, means, opportunity. Small (and large) pieces of evidence dovetailing with meticulous timelines to reach the conclusion.

Eventually he comes to conclusions re the perpetrators. However, the value of the book is not in the conclusions but in the detailed research, and the tieing-together-of-threads. Particularly in the context of perkins04 and phillips04, the weight of evidence is compelling.

Some of his material (e.g., in the chapter on PROMIS) is pretty farfetched. My working hypothesis is that he generally is on the right track, and got parts of PROMIS right, but was misled on the technical stuff he does not have the background to evaluate. If the misleading was intentional, it sure does give an opening for critics to exclaim, "See, he is a total crackpot." (I have since learned this is known as a "poison well" operation. Dan Rather was booted via such an operation.)

Therefore I reserve judgment on the full text and just recommend it as a source of data and hypotheses. As Norman Davies said in "Europe, A History", not all conspiracy theories are correct...but some are.

2.8. moore03

James Moore and Wayne Slater. "Bush's Brain". John Wiley and Sons, 2003. ISBN 0-471-42327-0.

James Baker has been called the Bush family consiglieri. He certainly earned that when he smoked the Democrats in the courts in 2000, to say nothing of his role in Carlyle Group.

Here is Karl Rove as "W"'s Machiavelli. In the context noted above he is a tool for getting the corporates into power and keeping them there.

2.9. palast04

Greg Palast. "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". Penguin Group, 2004. ISBN 0-452-28391-4.

Article after article exposing the stuff we don't see in the US corporate media. Bitesized analyses. Palast is touching the same topics noted above, but with reference to very specific events.

2.10. NCSTAR 1-1 through NCSTAR 1-8

NIST reports on WTC collapses. Sept 2005 final report. (Not including WTC 7)

http://wtc.nist.gov/reports_october05.htm

I am just beginning to study the engineering of structures, impact analysis, explosions, crashes , thermal insulation for structural steel, etc., so it will take a while to understand and validate in my own mind these NIST studies. In fact I may never reach an adequate skill-base to comment usefully on the NIST work.

I can usefully say there are red flags. The forensic evidence was contaminated and then destroyed very early. Subsequent work has been via simulations, which presupposes an experience base -- but we have no experience of one building collapsing this way, much less three. Further, the heart of scientific inquiry requires open investigation of candidate hypotheses, butNIST focused only on proving that the airplane crashes did the job:

"The structural analyses were guided, and where possible validated, by observations made from the review of thousands of photographs and video recordings." (http://wtc.nist.gov/oct05NCSTAR1-6index.htm)