Author: Olivier Schmidt
ISBN: 0932863426

This is a collection of articles from a European online journal called
Intelligence. They deal with that netherworld where national and international
politics, the military and the spy business intersect.

It sounds like a good thing for developing countries to put aside large tracts
of land for "nature." Such a practice has now become required to receive Western
aid. The poorer a country is, the more land they have to take out of production.
How can a country dig itself out of poverty if large portions of their territory
are no longer available for farming or livestock? To give one example of this
new form of empire, 40 percent of the territory of Tanzania is now within
strictly protected zones.

An extremely sophisticated radar system, called Have Stare, is being installed
in Norway, its official purpose being to monitor space junk. Its actual purpose
is as part of the Star Wars missile defense system. Ever since a passenger plane
crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, in the late 1980s, the whole world has blamed
Libya. They recently "admitted" responsibility, even though the evidence to
prove it was flimsy, at best.

If any one event can be said to have started "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland,
it was the shootings of more then 40 unarmed protesters by British troops in
1972 in Londonderry (Bloody Sunday). A government inquiry, which became
dismissed as a whitewash, absolved the soldiers of responsibility, declaring
that they fired in self-defense. An independent inquiry came to the conclusion
that the protesters really were unarmed, and that the British troops fired
first.

I totally enjoyed this book, and learned a lot from it, but I am something of a
foreign politics lover. More than the usual amount of knowledge of world affairs
would help when reading this book, but it is very highly recommended.

The above review was contributed by:  Paul Lappen: CLICK TO VIEW Paul Lappen's Reviews