“Domhoff presents a network theory of social power and new empirical findings on key policy issues of the 20th century.”

Publisher: Aldine de Gruyter
Paperback: 315 pages

Handy hints for starting—and sustaining—your very own princedom, from the famous Florentine envoy to the courts of France and the Italian principalities. In continuous use since 1513, this “calculating prescription for power” has been well-thumbed by history’s despots and charlatans, like this century’s Hitler, Mussolini, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Peron, Khadaffi and Hussein. “And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved… a prince should inspire fear in such a fashion that if he does not win love, he may escape hate… Since his being loved depends on his subjects, while his being feared depends on himself, a wise Prince should build on what is his own, and not on what rests with others. Only, as I have said, he must do his utmost to escape hatred.” GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 71 pages

Miscellaneous methods of both general and advanced surveillance carried out upon the private citizen by employers, credit bureaus, law enforcement and various other intruding tentacles of 20th-century life are explained by a security consultant. Unfortunately, the results read more as a series of essays attempting to gain clients for the author by instilling paranoia in the reader, rather than a serious source of information that can be utilized to counter such surveillance. Some of the sociological implications are touched upon, as well as an outline sketch of the history of modern surveillance methodology, with examples of recent infringements which made the news. But ultimately, although this book is an adequate introduction to the everyday infringements on personal liberty and the basics of surveillance techniques, the serious researcher is best served elsewhere. BW

Publisher: Black Rose
Paperback: 155 pages

Toward “a new global police state, made up of the FBI, KGB, CIA, DEA, DIA, NSA, IRS, EPA, OSHA, NCIC, USDA, FDA, NRO, BATF, FINCEN, INS, DOJ, WTO, Europol, Interpol, Mossad and the MAB.” All secretly reporting to a faceless American “SS establishment,” or “Central Gestapo.”
“The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System has been designed and is being implemented in America and throughout the world. We knew it was coming. Now it’s here, and soon there will be no place to hide. By the year 2000, Big Brother’s evil, octopuslike tentacles will squeeze every ounce of lifeblood out of the people. A nightmarish, totalitarian police state is at hand.
“That is the thoroughly documented message—and momentous warning—sounded in this book. Do not for an instant think that you and your loved ones can escape the monstrous behemoth which lies in our path. Once Project L.U.C.I.D. (Lucifer’s Universal Criminal Identification System) is fully operational, and every man, woman and child will fall under the power of its hideous, cyberelectronic grasp.
“Consider the unbelievable magnitude and dimensions of Project L.U.C.I.D. First, it mandates that every adult and child—even newborn babies—be issued a universal biometrics ID card. A “Smart Card” with an advanced computer microchip, this powerful, reprogrammable ID card will store millions of bytes of information about the recipient—his or her photo, fingerprint, footprint, iris (eye) scan, DNA genotype, human leukocyte antigen data, financial status, and personal history.
“Oh yes, the ID card will also be coded with numbers. One will identify the individual cardholder. Another, I believe, will eventually constitute the number 666. The number 666 will signify the hellish master responsible for the devilish invention of this Universal Biometrics Card and its interlocked, computer network.” GR

Publisher: Living Truth
Paperback: 224 pages

The truth behind Subproject 68 of the CIA-sponsored MK-ULTRA mind-control project, by a psychiatrist who was there—his father was one of the victims. The author, as a boy, watched his father deteriorate physically and mentally for unknown reasons, all while under a doctor’s care. Years later, formerly top-secret government documents told him the gruesome story: A series of sadistic experiments had been carried out on selected patients by a Canadian doctor, Ewen Cameron. The crackpot Cameron, seemingly inspired by North Korean tortures, drugged at least 100 patients in a “depatterning program,” tying them down in isolation and bombarding their brains with taped messages, 12 to 16 hours a day, a process called “psychic driving.” This could go on for more than 60 days. Then months of drugged sleep would be induced. Results? Tragic. In the end, the CIA admitted to itself that MK-ULTRA “had not yielded any results of real positive value to the Agency… “ Shocking and painful. GR

Publisher: American Psychiatric
Hardback: 304 pages

Investigative research into the likes of electromagnetic and biotelemetric mind control; Nutrasweet and its role in the dumbing of America; the use of cults by intelligence organizations as “cover” for child abuse, arms sales, mind-control projects; The Children of God and the use of the cult by South American dictators and Reagan and Bush; and how the CIA funds covert operations through art looted by the Nazis. AK

Publisher: Feral House
Paperback: 320 pages

An exposé of U.S. foreign policy, separating the myth of an “international terrorist conspiracy” from the reality. Tours the state-sanctioned bloodbaths of U.S.-sponsored dictatorships.

Publisher: South End
Paperback: 252 pages

By 1974, everybody in aviation knew about the DC-10 cargo door problem. It was an accident waiting to happen. And it did. “The cockpit voice recorder showed the sequence: Klaxon sounded as the plane exceeded the never-exceed speed. Captain Berkoz: ‘What happened?’ Captain Uelusman: ‘The cabin blew out.’ Berkoz shouts: ‘Are you sure? Bring it up, pull her nose up. ‘During the next 16 seconds, Berkoz sings the catchline from a famous Turkish TV commercial: ‘Acaba, nedir (Wonder what it is, what it is?)… We have lost it… Ooops, oops… We’ve lost it.’ Sound of impact signifying the brutal end to 346 lives.” A passionate account of the scandals behind more than 30 years of air crashes in America and around the world that were perpetrated by airline malpractice, design flaws, low-budget training, stupid pilot errors and the ignorance of wind shear. Do the words cover-up, conspiracy and corruption come to mind? A pre-deregulation United Airlines fares the worst. After deregulation, it’s Delta. The FAA is dog meat throughout. GR

Publisher: Diablo Western
Paperback: 656 pages

“Beneath the media world lies our perceptual framework, and digital media may change how we know what we know.” So insists Chris Carlsson in “The Shape of Truth To Come,” one of the more accessible of the 21 essays and political tracts anthologized within this book. And therein, in the theme “political,” lies the biggest problem with this book. Everything revolves around postmodern socialist/Marxist philosophy.
Resisting The Virtual Life is very much a classic university textbook with its own jargon, esoteric knowledge and politically correct jockeying for status. As dull, verbose, self-referential, opaque, presumptuous and complex in its structures and concepts as Scottish Freemasonry. Don’t get me wrong, please, I myself am absolutely on the side of an immense skeptical suspicion of the “World Wide Web.” What a horrible title. Are we all the innocent little insects unwittingly trapped in a gluey binary Armageddon of telephone lines? Who is the spider? Well, control, of course. Corporations, of course, increasingly insipid and acceleratingly effective bureaucratic governments.
The themes of enforced apathy and mobility of labor really circle each other like sumo wrestlers here. And it’s scary. Which makes this the right time to reassess the malignant cancer of personal computers; the intrusion into intellectual privacy and inner space; the surrender of autonomy; the detached Prozac miasma of virtual passivity and loss of identity that comes with all this dull gray plastic.
Look at it this way, simplistic though it sounds: If “Virtual Life” is supported, proselytized and applauded by your worst enemies, and it is profitable for them, then why consent of your own volition to partake of this “cure-all.” No way is this medium benign! Far from it. It’s the greatest chance to survey all you can see from a great height, just like Jesus in the desert, and who was offering HIM that illusory empowerment?
Uh, uh. Please plow through this, despite the turgid and user unfriendly style and semantics. Because it will do you good! The digital revolution is not benign. Don’t kid yourself, or your self. You are as much fodder for this new economic miracle as your ancestors were when they were forced from the arable land to become a disposable raw material for the iron mills and cotton mills of the 19th century.
Worse still, once uprooted, they were trained to consume the surplus they were enslaved to produce. Now, with less need in the West for covert slavery, the primary purpose of the majority of the population is conveniently reduced to overt and insatiable consumption, in and of itself. Oh, in case you wondered where the slaves are now… Well, occupied Haiti, Korea, Thailand and, when the time comes, Africa once again.
It’s the perfect scam. Hell, they don’t even need a semieducated and minimally healthy immigrant workforce anymore. Why else did you think education and medical services are being encouraged to disintegrate? A mediocratic middle class have unwittingly become the “new serfs.” They integrate enthusiastically with the insatiable “virtual life.” They are compelled to consume this quixotic future. They have even been trained to measure their success by their acquisition of its artifacts and their access to an ever-increasing amount of its software. Like lemmings they bless and feed the hand that signals the route to the final cataclysmic cliff. As the introduction succinctly reminds us, mobility of labor is the capitalist dream and computers realize the ultimate exploitative nightmare. All labor can now travel anywhere without physically moving. Much cheaper and more efficient. Everything piped down a phone wire. Perfect! I don’t think so. Count me out. I unplugged my modem ages ago. Best thing I ever did for my creative mind. Unplug yours too. Read this book, privately. Think hard about it, privately. Practice talking, privately. GPO

Publisher: City Lights
Paperback: 278 pages

“Once it was the ‘revolt of the masses’ that was held to threaten social order and the civilizing traditions of Western culture. In our time, however, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy, not the masses. This remarkable turn of events confounds our expectations about the course of history and calls long-established assumptions into question… Today it is the elites, however—those who control the international flow of money and information, preside over philanthropic foundations and institutions of higher learning, manage the instruments of cultural production and thus set the terms of public debate—that have lost faith in the values, or what remains of the values of the West.”

Publisher: Norton
Paperback: 276 pages