Agencies

I came to this topic nearly a complete newcomer. Rieff's book was my introduction to humanitarianism at a deeper level than what Americans get from popular media. I had a lot to learn.

First of all, I didn't realize that there is a large difference between humanitarianism and human rights. It seems subtle and puzzling for much of the book, then comes into sharper and sharper focus. Humanitarianism means helping victims of wars, famines, and natural disasters without regard to larger issues, especially political ones. It is a pure offer of help without judgment or agenda. Human rights is by definition a judgmental term-- it means defending a group's dignity, sovereignty, or health because they are deserving of such rights. It implies that others may not be deserving. It is totally different from humanitarianism.

Humanitarians may find themselves giving aid to murderers, as they did in Rwanda when the same Hutus who had slain so many Tutsis became victims themselves in a reverse genocide. Humanitarians may also act to prop up dictators by giving aid to the people the dictator is repressing, making the situation look less dire (and giving him little reason to throw scraps to his subjects to avoid revolution). Applying the concept of human rights in these situations might change the way aid is distributed. Pure humanitarians would be unconcerned with the political details.

A Bed for the Night chronicles the slow but inexorable creep of the humanitarian movement from the early, "pure" form to a much more politicized form that became mixed with human rights, military peacekeeping, and even government agendas. Rieff makes a fairly convincing case that this shift was nearly inevitable. Humanitarianism could not have remained in its original form given the pressures and realities of our world.

Why not? Because humanitarians want to do good, and hence had no choice but to pursue paths that empowered them to do better than they were doing. Ignoring such paths amounted to a shirking of duty. The problem was that these paths coincided with a corruption of their basic mission. Humanitarians found themselves collaborating with soldiers and trying to exert influence at the level of the UN. In pursuing more funding for their projects, NGOs found themselves deploying slick marketing techniques and then becoming beholden to their largest donors in ways that were not objective. It is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

And then the humanitarians began to be manipulated by others who had no pretenses of purity. When NGOs began consorting on the world stage, governments could use them as excuses for taking action, or for not taking action. They became pawns in issues of power and, yes, human rights. Now the two terms-- humanitarianism and human rights-- are used so interchangeably that even a somewhat intelligent citizen like me did not realize there is a difference.

Rieff shows in excruciating detail how this process was a slippery slope. At each step, with each new crisis, the new entanglements seemed logical and even necessary. No one set about this decades-long transformation as a grand plan. It simply happened-- probably with a lot less effort than if it had been a grand plan. That is not to say it didn't bring resistance, division, bitter words, and disillusionment with it; far from it. But changing NGOs from neutral to politically involved was easier than many would have guessed.

Rieff tries to come to a positive conclusion about how these transformations are just normal signs of changing times. But he even fails to convince himself of this, and consequently ends on a down note, a hanging question mark about the future of humanitarianism. As the cover said, "A withering, thought-provoking study."

My main complaint is that A Bed for the Night could have been much shorter. Rieff is not concise. He says the same thing many times over, which, although it hammers the point home soundly, gets tedious early on. And his writing is floppy in the sense of exploring a point by taking a random walk across it rather than laying out the issues logically. The impression is that Rieff is writing a long tirade in his diary.

If you can plow through the writing, this book contains many useful lessons. If you can't, just read the Introduction. That will give you 75% of the content. Because more people should understand the history Rieff lays out, it rates high on the "need to know" list for intelligent people.

Yet these NGOs are barely accountable to their donors and may never reveal the truth about the extent, scope and definitions of their activities. They compromise the "sovereign" status of several nations, are patronising, neo colonial and missionary in scope and don't help a great deal of the time. They are also handmaidens to rich Western countries giving them plenty of excuses not to be decisive or reasons to justify covert operations dressed as humanitarianism.

David Rief exposes all this with passion and gusto speaking as a journalist who has lived through the situations he describes and has had first hand contact with the UN and some of the aid organisations emanating from the USA and Europe he mentions.

Academics and others will disagree but this book is shocking, illuminating and deeply revealing. It is a first step in making NGOs accountable under rigorous standards to donors and receivers. More, much more is needed in this vein and this book is the tip of an iceberg.

This pioneering work has confirmed some of my worst fears, particularly about one or two named organisations. A must for all those who support charities and wish to be informed about how your aid may be used or abused and how to stay skeptical of the claims humanitarian relief organisations make for themselves.

In the present book Snepp describes the ways in which his former employers, the Central Intelligence Agency, used its considerable influence, powers, and resources to derail his effort to publish the book, and upon the failure of that effort ("Decent Interval" was published in 1977), to then punitively pursue confiscation of all of the monies earned by Snepp in association with the book's overwhelming sales success in order to punish Snepp for his trangression of the rules forbidding publication of any materials by former employees without express permission by the CIA. The law suit subsequently filed by the CIA went through all of the appropriate venues, finally landing in the Supreme Court and, according to Snepp, an audience that was quite sympathetic to the Agency's argument. Thus, although he was defended well by a then little-known Harvard lawyer by the name of Alan Dershowitz, Snepp lost the case to the CIA.

Of course, given his personal involvement and the loss of a substantial sum of money as a result, one suspects Snepp is less than objective in his analysis of the case. He admits as much by way of an extended critique of himself and his own actions, which he readily admits may have had the inadvertent and ironic effect of increasing the degree of governmental restrictions on information, acting to further bias the government's restrictions on free speech, open government, and secrecy itself. This is a very interesting read, although it hardly for the faint of heart. I recommend it for anyone interested in the ways in which the bureaucracy works and operates. Enjoy!

What did Mikhail Sergeevich do for this award? Deceiving the West with his 'glasnost' concept, he managed to convince many leaders that the Soviet Union started to move in the direction of the open, democratic society. At the same time, the CIA suffered the heaviest blow of all times duting the 1985 Year of Spy with most of its officers ambushed and expelled, and secret agents arrested and shot. Surprisingly, the number of Soviet moles within the CIA and the US government did not decrease after Senator McCarthy's fierce anti-Communist campaign. Names are well known, but I would like to stress that the most recent case dates back to 2002!

So since the Soviet Union under Gorbachev-Yeltsin-Putin started its ideological attack, the number of officers at the Soviet/Russian desk of many Western intelligence services had been dramatically reduced. The budgets allocated for balancing KGB-SVR operations in Europe and Americas were either cut or withdrawn. RFE/RL was moved to Prague, and its staff now consists of only a fistful of journalists. It is virtually unoperative and is being justfully criticised by both American and Russian politicians.

In 1983 Burton Gerber, then head of the CIA's SE division, started secret cooperation with the KGB, authorised by his bosses. In the 1990s first writers and journalists 8late John Costello, as an example), and then the CIA officers started to queue to be nominated Soviet KGB collaborators in "bashful projects of unseen openness". David Murphy, former head of the CIA's SR division, notoriously known for his multiple faux pas (take Nalivaiko and later Nosenko cases, for example) co-authored this book, which gives no credit at all to American intelligence, but fully acts in the interests of Soviet propaganda. I was very much surprised to see such respectable analysts and archivists as Hayden Peake and Oleg Gordievsky praising the book in their earlier reviews. Maybe, it was fashionable in 1997, but then followed Bearden's production in 2003 (Milton Bearden is another former CIA's Soviet/East European chief), so the suit became dangerous. I guess the only way to stop it will be to publish Rem Krasilnikov's book, recently appeared in Moscow. Former Soviet KGB General claims: 'the Cold War will never be over!'

There's also a tendency to self-aggrandize. Several time, the authors take a few moments to criticize other works, and then say "here for the first time" is the real story. While undoubtedly they do have some never before seen information, I think they spend a little too much time beating their chests.

Somewhat interesting, but certainly not spellbinding. Reads like a textbook.

The wild imaginings of a lunatic author, at best.

Dubya's stolen election, lies to start a war and the rampant cronyism plaguing our government today give all the more credence to this awesome work and further demonstrate just how desperately ruthless and vicious the Bush family is. For those of you who dismiss this tome as fiction - there's a reason the first few publishers wouldn't touch it. Here we go again - this time it's global!

I felt the book (although only 65 pages in all) did have some really great tips and info packed into those 65 pages. Although not a thick book, it's a good beneficial read - and at a very fair price compared to some other modeling books:) I hope this review helps some of you.

I particularly like the fact that the model/author is not a "supermodel" and gives a unique and realistic perspective. A good book...read it:)

Among the known activities these city bosses profited from was gambling, prostitution, bootlegging and the sale of favors from public office. Austin's book adds adoption through secret courts to the list of criminal activities.

The director of the Children's Home, Georgia Tann and the judge of the juvenile court, Camille Kelley were appointed and controlled by Crump. Evidence indicated that these people made millions from baby selling in the guise of adoption. The baby selling was exposed in 1950 by the late Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver.

Kefauver was subsequently appointed by the United States Senate to head a national investigation on organized crime. As late as 1964 Kefaufer's committee was making recommendations for changes in adoption law that would eleminate the crimianl element. The changes were never "adopted."

Austin's book is a fascinating look at how government can be run by criminals for their own profit. This book sheds light on the nature of secrecy in government. Secrecy in adoption is all criminals need to profit from a criminal activity.

Perhaps knowing that no one picking up a novel ostensibly written by an actor without a literary background will care whether the material is up to snuff, the editors of PSI/NET have let the manuscript slip through their grasp without smoothing out its bumps. There's good stuff here, to be sure. The idea of "remote viewers," trained psychics with the ability to see anyone and anything simply by focusing their minds, is a fairly creepy, X-FILES-ish concept. The book is at its best when the hero, retired government psychic Trent Calloway, struggles to use his erratic abilities to track down the cabal of baddies that populate the story.

Unfortunately PSI/NET doesn't maintain this atmosphere of foggy mystery, with bits of an ESP-driven puzzle slowly falling into place. PSI/NET is a fairly slim book, and it becomes rapidly clear that the author(s) have little interest in dragging things out. By the end Trent and his allied psychics are engaging in high-powered mental warfare with their enemies, and all the flavor of the early "remote viewing" elements are lost. PSI/NET quickly becomes a sort of action story where psionics replace guns.

PSI/NET seems hurried overall. The prime rule of "show, don't tell" is regularly violated, with undigested chunks of exposition passing through the narrative on a regular basis. There's hardly any time taken to define the characters as people, and by the end the reader will still have questions about key moments in Calloway's background. The villains barely get any space to develop, and remain ciphers to the last. The narrative gets tangled up in itself about two-thirds of the way through.

Despite all its problems PSI/NET isn't a terrible book. In a way its brevity works to its advantage, as the reader is too occupied turning pages to be genuinely bothered by the shortcomings of the author(s). By the time the plot begins to irritate with its confused knot of plot threads, the story is over.

There's definite potential in PSI/NET but, like the latent powers of its psychic heroes and villains, it remains largely untapped. What could have made for a dark and paranoid tale devolves into gunfights, car chases, and last-minute machinations by powerful forces. Whether it was Williams or MacGregor who came up with the basic ideas behind the book, it's clear neither possessed the skill to bring out the best their story had to offer.

The plot - save the president of the usa - therefore save the world - is not particulary new. I've seen it in countless movies and thriller novels before.

The novel's characters aren't badly written, but not terribly involving either. I can't say I'd be bothered if I never picked up this book again, but I also finished it quickly which proves it's not too bad. Enjoy this book, but don't expect a how-to psycic manual or anything too original.

Do yourself a favor, this is the book to buy.

The author is clearly no believer in the efficacy of covert action, but even here he fails to make a strong case why it should be rejected as a foreign policy instrument, concluding that as long as power politics reign, Presidents and leaders of the intelligence community will resort to what they see as a "third option" between diplomacy and the use of force.

The book is riddled with error beginning with crediting Gen Gehlen with covert action in the Baltics and the Ukraine under CIA control. It is, as a previous reviewer has noted, flawed by a lack of documentation. Nutter, for example, insinuates that the CIA was somehow involved in stealing Jimmy Carter's briefing books in preparation for the 1980 Presidential debates.

There is nothing here on a host of covert actions which have long been known to insiders, ranging from the hostage escape in Tehran to prominent agents of influence. Covert action should be a subject of serious study and debate, but this is a useful compendium of failures and abuses in the Cold War. It says little about how --- or whether --- covert action should be used to combat current anhd future threats.

BTW this is not to say that this is a poorly written book. It is very engaging especially for those unfamiliar with the subjects and the history behind various operations. But be aware that this is more of a book aimed at a college level course - ie provoking discussions - than being semi-sensationalistic.

And finally there's the price of this "deluxe" edition. The 1978 code book was $8, the 1996 book was about $35. There is simply no justification for the 1999 book, a virtual requirement for every informed electrician, to be scraping the $50 level. Will somebody please check the NFPA's grounding?