Product Description

What do CNN, your history teacher, and the White House have in common?

All of them have kept some important facts from you:

• The US military faces a huge a rape crisis.
• The most popular kind of antidepressants can cause suicide.
• The nation of Panama was created as a get-rich scheme by Wall Street.
• The Atlanta child-killer was convicted of only two murders—of adults.
• Islamic groups are censoring critical material in America.
• Corporations have claimed the “right” to lie. • The US and other Allies massacred German POWs and civilians during and after WWII.
• The food drops in Afghanistan were a complete fiasco.

In these pages, a stunning line-up of investigative reporters, media critics, independent researchers, academics, ex-government agents, and others blow away the smoke and smash the mirrors that keep us confused and misinformed.
You’ll learn the hidden facts about the diamond trade, child protective services, government-sponsored anti-drug ads, the Orwellian PATRIOT Act, fluoridation, the Resurrection story, Mormon racism, the CIA’s nuclear dreams, the malleable definition of “terrorism,” the forgotten personal lives of great scientists, the murky death of a leading microbiologist, and more. After reading these articles, you’ll be ready to

Abuse Your Illusions

* Daniel Ellsberg talks about turning himself in for leaking the Pentagon Papers, and he reveals what rehabilitated Nazi Albert Speer can teach government officials about accepting responsibility

* Investigative reporter Greg Palast catches the news media telling blatant lies

* The Sunshine Project exposes the United States’ illegal, treaty-busting bioweapons programs (the New York Times knows about this but refuses to report it)

* Pulitzer-winner Gary Webb details the racial profiling of Operation Pipeline, a program that pulls over minorities on the pretext of minor traffic violations

* Howard Zinn unearths the stories of civilians killed during the attacks on Afghanistan

* April Oliver lays out the facts behind her hugely controversial CNN report on Operation Tailwind

* Jim Hougan looks at the surprising recent trials concerning Watergate (it might have been about a Democratic call-girl ring after all)

* Stephen Schlesinger, director of the World Policy Institute, breaks the real story about the founding of United Nations—the US spied on its allies, using this knowledge to shape the UN to its liking

* Former federal agent Michael Levine describes first-hand how the Drug War is designed to fail

* Stephanie Nolen tells the story of America’s forgotten female astronauts

* Danish artist Jakob S. Boeskov crashes a Chinese arms bazaar with a rifle that doesn’t exist

* Editor Russ Kick digs up neglected information regarding the September 11 attacks, including:
• Some of America’s highest officials have admitted that the attacks could’ve been prevented
• A Senator has said that at least one foreign country actively aided the 9/11 terrorists
• Even more hijackings were planned for that day
• A Taliban emissary warned the US and the UN about the attacks
• Four cameras filmed the plane hitting the Pentagon, but none of these videos has been released

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #306282 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
"This book could blow your mind. It's filled with stuff you ought to know but may not want to know." -- The Oakland Press, September 28, 2003

From the Publisher
"Abuse Your Illusions" contains newsworthy information that has never before been published or that has appeared only in obscure sources (such as small-circulation journals or self-published books). Below you will find pointers to some of the most startling and important revelations.

Illegal US Bioweapons Program. Under international treaty and federal law, it is illegal for the US to make biological weapons for offensive purposes; they can only be created in order to study ways to defend against them. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the Sunshine Project has unearthed documents which show that the military is proposing—and is already working on—bioweapons for use in warfare. These declassified documents are the smoking guns that prove the military is violating an international treaty and federal law. The Sunshine Project discusses what they’ve discovered, how they discovered it, and what it means. "Abuse Your Illusions" reproduces two of the documents in question. According to Edward Hammond, one of Sunshine’s cofounders, a New York Times reporter interviewed him about this for 45 minutes and was eager to do a story on it, but the Times’ editors killed it.

Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. When he leaked a massive classified study of the Vietnam War, former State Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg earned a place in history books. In "Speer," he writes about the day he turned himself in to the authorities for giving the Pentagon Papers to the media. He also discusses how Albert Speer—the number-three Nazi, whom Ellsberg believes was rehabilitated—became the only member of the Third Reich to accept full responsibility for not only his own actions but the actions of the entire government. It’s something that no other government official has apparently ever done. In a second article, "Are Secrecy Oaths a License to Lie?" Ellsberg looks at the troubling aspects of the secrecy oaths that many government employees must sign.

Rape and Sexual Harassment in the US Military. Rapes at the Air Force Academy have caused a scandal in the past few months. The authorities assure us, though, that sexual assault of service members by other service members is only a problem in this one institution of this one branch of the service. Terri Spahr Nelson knows better. The author of a book on the subject, this Army veteran’s article "The Enemy Within" exposes the rape crisis in all branches of the military. According to the Defense Department’s own studies, 55 percent of women and 14 percent of men on active duty experienced unwanted sexual attention at work in the year prior to the surveys. And 4 percent of active-duty women experienced rape or attempted rape in the preceding year. This is an average across all branches; members of the Army and the Marines experience even more sexual harassment and violence. Spahr Nelson uses the military’s own findings to blow the lid off of this disturbing situation, and she shows why it’s happening.

Operation Tailwind. In pack-dog fashion, the media excoriated April Oliver’s CNN report on Operation Tailwind after the Pentagon and veterans screamed that it wasn’t true and CNN subsequently withdrew it. In "Unanswered Letters," Oliver mounts a hard-hitting defense of her story about an operation to kill American defectors with nerve gas in a North Vietnamese prison located in Laos. She reveals exactly who has lied about the incident and her reporting of it. She discusses the unpublicized results of lawsuits in her favor, and she digs up hard documentary evidence to back her up. "Abuse Your Illusions" contains this previously unpublished evidence, including a Kissinger email and an uncut interview with Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Tailwind occurred.

The Creation of Panama. We know that certain Wall Streeters and political operatives will go to great lengths to make money, but would they create a nation just for that purpose? Yes, they would, and they did. Panama-born Ovidio Diaz-Espino has discovered the roots of his home country by digging through crates of old newspapers, evidence from Congressional investigations, the memoirs of participants, and other contemporaneous sources. The plot is pretty complicated, but it boils down to this: A group of powerful businessmen and political insiders found a way to make an outrageous fortune through the building of the Panama Canal. The problem was that Panama was a part of Colombia, and the Colombian government was starting to balk. So this group of powerbrokers engineered a revolution in which Panama seceded from Colombia, and the new Panamanian government allowed the building of the canal. This is hidden history at its more important and amazing best.

The Creation of the UN. Once again the Freedom of Information Act has proved indispensable in liberating forgotten truths. Former reporter Stephen Schlesinger, now head of the World Policy Institute, got his hands on intelligence documents that show in graphic detail how the United Nations was really created: The United States intercepted and decoded the encrypted diplomatic cables of almost every country involved. Using this purloined knowledge, the US was then able to manipulate the proceedings to its advantage. This important article was published in an obscure cryptology journal eight years ago; "Abuse Your Illusions" is bringing it to a much larger, wider audience.

The CIA’s Radiation Weapons. John Kelly is one of the world’s foremost experts on the CIA, having produced and/or written numerous documentaries on the Agency, including a six-part series for the BBC. In "The Agency and the Atom," he breaks new ground by revealing the CIA’s attempts to create radioactive and atomic weapons for use by saboteurs and assassins. He also examines the CIA-funded experiments in which unwitting citizens were subjected to radioactivity simply to see what would happen. Based on interviews, newly-released documents, and articles in dusty medical journals, Kelly has recovered a forgotten aspect of the CIA’s misdeeds.

Watergate. More than 30 years later, the central question of Watergate remains unanswered: What was the purpose of the break-in? Two recent trials provide some important clues. Jim Hougan—author of the Watergate classic Secret Agenda—took part in the defamation trials of G. Gordon Liddy, and in "Watergate Redux," Hougan provides fascinating, previously unreported accounts of what happened. The evidence strongly suggests that the "plumbers" were trying to dig up dirt on a call-girl ring run out of Democratic National Headquarters.

High-ranking Doubters of the Warren Commission. Everyone knows that only ridiculous conspiracy theorists don’t believe the official version of President Kennedy’s assassination. To doubt the Warren Commission’s findings is the height of paranoid lunacy. If that’s the case, then there are some very powerful people on the roster of lunatic conspiracy nuts. William W. Turner—the first FBI agent to publicly blow the whistle on J. Edgar Hoover—has assembled, for the first time, quotes from Presidents, Senators, and other uppermost political officials who say that the lone-nut, single-shooter theory is bogus. Their numbers include President Johnson, President Nixon, Robert Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, two of Kennedy’s assistants who were in Dealey Plaza, and two members of the Warren Commission. Even Chief Justice Earl Warren—the head of the Commission—never ruled out the possibility of a conspiracy.

About the Author
Russ Kick is the editor of "Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies"; "You Are Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths"; and "Hot Off the Net: Erotica and Other Sex Writings From the Internet". He is also the author of "Outposts" and "Psychotropedia", and publisher-editor of The Memory Hole.

Customer Reviews

The other side of the story - the part you weren't told
Similar to their previous publications "Abuse Your Illusions" by The Disinformation Company, Ltd. is a collection of articles from various sources. Each source is well documented as to their background and why their information and opinion should be seriously considered. Although it follows quickly on the heels of "You are Being Lied To", which we gave a high recommendation last year, this book far better. It contains much better written articles with a great deal more evidentiary matter presented for each article.

A fine example is the article "Pieces of the 9/11 Puzzle". While it does not attempt to reach a conclusion, it does point out several very interesting facts that have generally not been released to the public. There are so many strange coincidences that it caused Senator Richard Shelby to remark in November of 2002 that "The American people must know the full story has yet to be told". The article includes photographs from CNN of WTC Building 6 that appears to explode before the twin towers fell on it. The photograph of it afterwards also shows that it blew apart in the middle and apparently did not collapse as the result of the Twin Towers debris falling on it. The author also brings up the myriad problems with Mohamed Atta's luggage, the request by President Bush to Tom Daschele to limit the investigation into September 11, the lack of black boxes from the planes, the fact that for a few weeks before September 11 the employees of the towers were evacuated several times, the fact that the head of the independent probe, Thomas Kean, has had many business deals with Osama bin Laden's brother in law, Khalid bin Mahfouz who is suspected of financing al Qaeda, and many other problems.

The articles are sometimes very conservative and sometimes quite liberal, but they are all interesting and pose many, many questions about dozens of media mirages and official establishment positions. Some articles may go too far with a sort of conspiracy theory approach, but most of them present solid evidence complete with thorough documentation. While you will probably not agree with the positions of some of the authors, you can't take an informed position without at least being aware of the information presented in this book. For those who want to know the other side of the story so you can get a whole picture it is a highly recommended read.

The Finger-Pointing Self-Aggrandizement Club
We have reached the bottom of the Disinformation barrel. While editor Russ Kick says in this book's intro that it's easy to locate enough covered-up stories to fill out these compilations for years to come, I beg to differ. I am a big fan of the Disinfo team and all their efforts to bring the necessary attention to issues that have been whitewashed by the establishment. That makes this whiny and sarcastic collection all the more disappointing. To show I'm not a reactionary who automatically disagrees with the Disinfo political stance, you can see my reviews for this book's two superior predecessors: You Are Being Lied To (four stars on 01/01/02) and Everything You Know Is Wrong (five stars on 10/27/02).

This volume does bring to light many important issues, but articles that are not sunk by pretentious or self-aggrandizing writing are few and far between. Some of the best levelheaded entries here include "US Homeland Security..." by Ritt Goldstein, "The Lilly Suicides" by Richard DeGrandpre, or "The Flouridation Fraud" by Robert Sterling. Sadly, there are a great many articles that deal with incredibly important topics but lose their impact with atrocious writing. The terrifying "Invasion of the Child Snatchers" is sunk by Diane Petryk Bloom's sarcastic implications that the entire child protection establishment is corrupt, while most of the entries in the *Not on the Nightly News* section are swamped by flimsy conspiracy theories that could be debunked by a preschooler. This is a depressingly common pattern in this book, indicating a lazy selection process by the Disinfo folks.

By far the most annoying articles here are from writers complaining about how their books or essays have been rejected by major publishers, with the predictable conspiracy claims followed by sales pitches. A horrific example is "Unanswered Letters..." by April Oliver, who courageously revealed Operation Tailwind from the Vietnam War era, but here complains about her letters on the subject not being answered by major newspapers. Daniel Ellsberg, who was greatly persecuted after his hugely important reporting on the Pentagon Papers 30 years ago, is still complaining about it in two different articles here. Then there are some articles that make so little sense that they appear to be merely filler, like "Inside Science's Closet" by Richard Zacks, and the useless conspiracy theory attempt "How I Crashed a Chinese Arms Bazaar..." by Jakob Boeskov. And at all costs avoid the insulting "The Man Who Invented Normal" by Lucy Gwin, who claims that the battle against human disease is a forced conformity project by white males, and that Dr. Kevorkian (regardless of his other questionable ethics) is a eugenicist.

If you've enjoyed the previous compendiums by the Disinformation folks, there are still very important issues covered here, but these writers usually sink their own efforts. A bigger crowd of self-important and sarcastic finger-pointers will be hard to find. It's time for Disinfo to end this book series or get new editors.

Eye-opening reading
This is another in a series of books containing articles on subjects that will not be covered in the mainstream press. Spanning the political spectrum, the independent researchers, media critics and other experts behind these pieces (many written especially for this book) blow away the fog that keeps us confused.

Greg Palast catches the news media in several blatant lies; not just misinterpretation, but actual, black and white, lies. The most popular antidepressants can cause suicide. The Watergate break-in may have been all about a call girl ring after all. The producer of the CNN report about Operation Tailwind (asserting that America used sarin nerve gas in Vietnam) gives her side of the story. A former federal drug agent describes first-hand how the Drug War is designed to fail. The New York Times knows about, but refuses to publicize, America's illegal bioweapons program. Howard Zinn brings the US bombing of Afghanistan down to the individual level, looking at some of those who suffered and died. Operation Pipeline is a racial profiling program in California that pulls over minorities on the pretext of minor traffic violations. The editor digs up more neglected information on September 11, including: some of the highest US officials admitted that the attacks could have been prevented, a US Senator has said that at least one foreign country actively aided the terrorists, and one of the warnings received by the US was from the Taliban.

Also covered in this book are the diamond trade, child protective services, fluoridation, the Resurrection story, government sponsored anti-drug ads, the US military faces a huge rape crisis, the flexible definition of "terrorism," and corporations that have claimed the "right" to lie.

As with its two prequels, Everything You Know Is Wrong and You Are Being Lied To, this is a must read of a book that has something to upset or offend everyone. I learned a lot from these eye-opening articles. This isn't a "liberal" or "conservative" book, but it is very highly recommended.