Books Vaguely Related to George W. Bush

• Corporate interest
• Deliberate disinformation
• Emotion

Carmen bin Laden’s father was a Swiss and her mother an aristocratic Iranian. She married Osama’s older brother Yeslam.

There is not much about Osama, other than the family, even in secret, asserted that Osama did not orchestrate 9/11.

However, there is a tremendous amount about what life for woman in Saudi Arabia is like.

The author paints a very unflattering portrait of herself as naïve, self-centred, shallow and petty. This lends authenticity since the important things she says in passing as she focuses on the trivial.

The first theme of the book is the fanatical segregation of the sexes. Women are virtual prisoners. I would say a prisoner in the USA has more freedom than a Saudi woman.

Bizarre as is sounds, she did not even attend her own wedding. A male relative served in proxy, holding the groom’s hand.

That black abaya (head to toe black covering) actually makes it impossible for women to see. It is like walking around at night. Even in the sweltering heat of Saudi Arabia, they wear gloves and thick black stockings to hide every inch of skin.

A woman is allowed to be seen by only other women, her husband and her brothers. So a family restaurant works like this. There are locked rooms for each family. Each time the waiter comes, he knocks on the door. The women all cover their faces. He pours the water. He leaves. Then they take off the veils to eat. This ritual is repeated for every dish he brings.

A man may not help his wife who has fainted up off the ground since embracing in public is not permitted. If he does so, religious police will beat him.

The author insisted on going shopping for some Similac canned breast milk when servants failed to find it. But women were not permitted in a store run by men. So they had to empty the store of all males before she could shop. There are special all female shops.

Women get no education, have no access to books. The rich ones entertain themselves memorising the Koran and shopping by having stuff delivered.

A man may have four wives at a time. He can divorce her just by saying I divorce thee three times. Adultery in women in punishable by death, but beatings and adultery by males are not grounds for divorce, only some obscure religious violations.

You’d think the females would be up in arms at this oppression, but they are the ones who work hardest to keep other females in line. This is the most important revelation of the book.

The other theme of the book is the belief you can’t be too religious. These people are puritans on steroids. Ashcroft and his $8000 robes for naked statues would be right at home.

At the same time they are big on hypocrisy, with rampant promiscuity and homosexuality, never acknowledged. Appearances are everything. Anything denied does not exist.

She only hints at some of the decadence of the Saudi Princes (e.g. Prince Bondar). She hints it is just too decadent to be believed but gives scant detail other than a comment about importing planeloads of call girls for parties. Bush of course attended many of these parties (not discussed in the book).

Osama himself is fanatically religious. Non Islamic people are not supposed to sully the Holy Ground in Saudi Arabia. That truly is the bee in his bonnet, just as he claimed. After reading about what religious fruitcakes ORDINARY Saudis are, it all makes perfect sense. Saudis spend their entire lives obsessing about minor sins.

One of the amusing things is the Saudi snobbery. If you aren’t Saudi, you’re a nobody. I thought only Americans thought that.

• Arizona has about 20 years left till they completely run out of water. Yet development continues, with swimming pools, giant lawns etc. as if there were no problem. Arizona will become a state of ghost towns.
• The USA gets about 1/2 of its water from non-renewable aquifers. They mine it. They are spending their capital at the same rate as their income. These are draining at an alarming rate to do very water wasteful things like beef production.
• The countries of the middle east have 20 to 50 years left before they run out of water. (This is why Israel is so desperate to invade its neighbours. Water is the key limit to Israel’s economic growth. Iran is a lush verdant country. Israel is essentially a desert.)
• In many countries 90% of the ground water is too polluted to use. Clearly cleaning up water is the most efficient way to replenish water supplies.
• Privatisation of water has deprived many people in the third world of their traditional water sources. They have either died or had to abandon their lands. India is fighting back, stopping Coca Cola (who now provides 10% of the world’s consumed fluids (soft drinks, Dasani bottled water, Minute Maid), aiming for 20%) from drying up ground water.
• Privatisation has usually been a bust. Typical is what happened when Atlanta hired the European Suez company (the people who built the Suez canal and how have half a million employees), to look after its water supply. They let the water system deteriorate. Brown sludge came out the taps. Suez bailed taking the money and leaving the taxpayers to clean up the mess. Privatisers usually get a foot in the door doing sewage treatment, then moving to water, then they turn the screws. Capitalism does not work in a monopoly situation without careful regulation and monitoring.
• We think of energy as the limit to economic development, but the water crunch will come even sooner, within 20 years. We have to stop polluting our water with industrial waste, human waste and waste from feedlots. There are more pigs than people in North America and each pig exudes as much excrement as eight people. This mountain of muck (along with the cow pies) is treated by US law as landfill and is dumped into rivers untreated. We need to enforce new agricultural practices that make more efficient use of water. We need to enforce new industrial processes to make more efficient use of water. One new consumer of water is tar sands oil extraction where steam is pumped underground. It never comes out again. It is permanently removed from the recycling water supply.
• An American named T-Boone Pickens has been cornering the market in water. He has bought up water rights all over the USA. Forbes Magazine recommends investing in water because people have an absolute requirement for it and hence will pay anything to get it once artificial shortages can be created. It is rather distressing when Coca-Cola and like companies have a vested interest in increasing pollution to help sell their products.
• Bottled water does not come from glaciers or mountain springs, but from local tap water. It goes through an osmosis process to clean some of the crud out of it, but then it adds crud by packing in cheap plastic bottles and sitting around warm on shelves. It is slightly worse for your health. It also adds billions of non-recycled plastic bottles each year to landfill.

Terrorism: killing civilians with the intent of changing their political affiliation.
~ Caleb Carr, military historian

Carr is a conservative military historian. He never once questions the need for war. He believes it is utterly inevitable. He completely fails to notice the success of the European Union at ending centuries of non-stop warfare within Europe. He completely swallows the Bush party line about what happened on 2001-09-11, the Gulf War, the necessity of the war on terror and the right of American to wage war on anyone it pleases, including pre-emptive wars on those it things might cause trouble in future. However, he makes a number of important points:

1. Terrorism, killing civilians to try to change their political allegiances never works, at least not in the long run. He uses examples all though history starting with the Roman Empire. It fails because it is a waste of time and materials as far as military objectives go. Further, it unifies the victims with a desire for revenge that inevitably springs forth at the first opportunity, even if generations later. Terrorism is an emotional indulgence, motivated by revenge and sadism, not by any practical progression of war toward victory.
2. It is dangerous to use mercenaries. As soon as you discard them, they often turn on you using the very training and materials you furnished them with.
3. The CIA should be abolished. It overlaps other agencies. It is not accountable. Its main mode of action is terrorism, which always backfires. It has done nothing but give the USA a black eye. It has failed time and time again to provide crucial intelligence.
4. You must treat terrorists as if they were an army, not as if they were civilian criminals.

If a man is slain unjustly, his heirs shall be entitled to satisfaction, but let him not carry his vengeance to excess, or his victim is sure to be assisted and avenged.
~ The Qur’an Al Isra 17:33

If an unjust and rapacious conqueror subdues a nation and forces her to accept hard, ignominious and insupportable conditions, necessity obliges her to submit, but this apparent tranquility is not a peace, it is an oppression she endures only so long she lacks the means of shaking it off and against which men of spirit arise on the first favourable opportunity.
~ Emerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations

The history of chemical and germ warfare mostly from WW I to the Reagan era. It covers chlorine, phosgene, mustard gas, hydrogen cyanide, tabun, sarin, soman, vx, yellow fever, anthrax, brucellosis, BZ, agent orange and yellow rain. It documents US use of such agents in the Korean and Viet Nam wars. What is of most interest is getting inside the minds of the fiends who design and promote these agents.

I toiled whole-heartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun fun. Where else could a red-blooded American lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?
~ George White of the CIA drug and research program.