Tag Archives: Rubicon

Osama bin Laden’s books. They could do you more good than they did him.

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Last week the CIA decided
Crossing the Rubicon, The New Pearl Harbor, Imperial Hubris, Obama's Wars, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy... to declassify the list of books found in Osama bin Laden’s last hideout when Seal Team Six made their raid. There were 39 titles, which the press has categorized as heavy on conspiracy theory. That’s true, untrue, and unsurprising if you consider the official White House line is that the US does not support illegal coups. These authors beg to differ, including the unimpeachable Noam Chomski. Other investigative standouts include William Blum, Greg Palast, John Perkins. The list did not include publication dates or editions, just author and title. A closer inspection of the list is revealing.
 
(This is part one of a continuing series.)

It would be more accurate to describe Osama bin Laden’s bookshelf as history, mostly contemporary with notable exceptions. For example, bin Laden’s reference on Christianity and Islam in Spain 756-1031 was published in 1889 with the full title “The Relations and Mutual Influences of Christianity and Mohammedanism During the Khalifate of Cordova.” In 1889 European perspectives on the Moorish occupation appear dramatically antisemitic.

The history of The US and Vietnam 1787-1941 begins with Thomas Jefferson’s first interests in trading for rice with “Cochinchina”. Written by a former ambassador, it was published in 1990 by the National Defense University Press. The Best Enemy Money Can Buy is about the symbiotic relationship between the US military industrial complex and Russia’s.

Some of bin Laden’s “books” such as Michael O’Hanlon’s Unfinished Business were staple-bound publications from US policy think tanks. I’ll review those and the various intelligence agency exposés in subsequent posts.

Here are the 39 titles listed alphabetically:
The 2030 Spike by Colin Mason; A Brief Guide to Understanding Islam by I. A. Ibrahim; America’s Strategic Blunders by Willard Matthias; America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ by Michel Chossudovsky; Al-Qaeda’s Online Media Strategies: From Abu Reuter to Irhabi 007 by Hanna Rogan; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast; The Best Enemy Money Can Buy by Anthony Sutton; Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century by Bev Harris; Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier; Bounding the Global War on Terror by Jeffrey Record; Checking Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions by Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson; Christianity and Islam in Spain 756-1031 A.D. by C. R. Haines; Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies by Cheryl Benard; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins; Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Committee of 300 by John Coleman; Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert; Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance (only the book’s introduction) by C. Christine Fair and Peter Chalk; Guerrilla Air Defense: Antiaircraft Weapons and Techniques for Guerrilla Forces by James Crabtree; Handbook of International Law by Anthony Aust; Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky; Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer; In Pursuit of Allah’s Pleasure by Asim Abdul Maajid, Esaam-ud-Deen and Dr. Naahah Ibrahim; International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific by John Ikenberry and Michael Mastandano; Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II by William Blum; Military Intelligence Blunders by John Hughes-Wilson; Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification. Joint hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session, August 3, 1977. United States Congress Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky; New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin; New Political Religions, or Analysis of Modern Terrorism by Barry Cooper; Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward; Oxford History of Modern War by Charles Townsend; The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy; Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum; The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall (1928); Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins; The Taking of America 1-2-3 by Richard Sprague; Unfinished Business: U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21stCentury by Michael O’Hanlon; The U.S. and Vietnam 1787-1941 by Robert Hopkins Miller; “Website Claims Steve Jackson Games Foretold 9/11,” article posted on ICV2.com.

American caesars who want to cross the Rubicon with a Rubicon need a map

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I just came across one of these in a parking lot yesterday, apparently the Jeep Rubicon has been out for a few years. This uber-alles thrillcraft sort of defines America’s sorry state of cultural illiteracy, wouldn’t you say? Julius Caesar didn’t violate Rome’s Posse Comitatus prohibition riding IN A Rubicon. Bad-ass as you wanna be, if your Rubicon is like the average off-road vehicle, it will never leave the pavement. Your Rubicon logo is just to remind one and all that you could cross it, if you knew where it was. The sorrier irony is that Caesar’s defiant act militarized the empire’s civil society and curtailed its democracy.

MoveOn flexes non-electoral muscle at last

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Yesterday the Democratic Party’s liberal appendage, MoveOn.org, organized around 500 demonstrations throughout the US to express opposition to the War Against Iraq. There was one even in Pueblo, Colorado, not to mention the activities here in Colorado Springs, that got excellent TV coverage last night!

What caused them to finally get off their butts and show their real strength? After all, MoveOn claim to have 3,000,000 supporters (Democratic Party voting) in the US, so why ‘move on’ now at long last, when they have all the while pretty much sat around doing much of nothing for so very long? In short, the answer is that some Democratic Party politicians are beginning to panic at continuing to follow the Republican Administration into continuing The Petrol Wars, from Iraqi and Afghanistan occupations into launching an extension of this war into Iran, Syria, Africa, Pakistan, and Lebanon. This disaccord represents a beginning fracture within the US ruling stratas over whether united they can actually pull off this neo-con megatheft of the world’s most important natural resource, or not.

From the point of view of some of them, the consequences of military failure to successfully recolonize the Middle East petrol producing region and totally monopolize world oil resource supply, will be far more cataclysmic than even an Iraqi pullout at this time would be. Bush’s speech was a Rubicon crossed, of sorts. Is it better to pull out now, or go for broke? Many think it better to pull back instead of continuing to charge into disaster.

In short, some of America’s elite are beginning to think that throwing more bad money after all the bad money already looted from the American treasury by the Pentagon, Lockheed, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, Boeing, and others of the same ilk, is total suicide for the country, and even its super rich, too. Still, there is nothing to make us think that this fracture within US elites at this point can stop the upcoming Bush escalation into a major US government attack on Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. The dominant sector of the US elites think that it is now the only option that willl work, so the rest of us should not be surprised when this new and higher level of violence is begun. In fact, it already has been.