Useful study of wealth and power in the USA - Rated 
The American author Peter Dale Scott shows how the richest 1% control key covert parts of the US state, including the Pentagon and the CIA. The private power of this military-financial complex has been secretly growing ever since President Truman founded the CIA. The US state serves the class interests of Wall Street's owners, not the national interest.
The US state is becoming more repressive: in 1970, 31% of California's budget went to higher education and 4% to prisons, by 2005, 12% and 20% respectively.
Scott shows how the US state built up fundamentalist Islam. From the 1950s, the CIA, allied with MI6, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, used the mullahs and the Muslim Brotherhood against secular nationalism across the Middle East. Later the CIA outsourced its operations to MI6, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the Saudis, the Shah, the French intelligence service, Egypt and Morocco. In Latin America, the US state backed the fascist Operation Condor run by the military dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay, funded by South Korea, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia.
Scott describes how the US and British states have fomented wars across Asia. From 1986, the CIA, MI6 and Pakistan's intelligence service launched guerrilla attacks from Afghanistan into Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 1988 the US and Pakistani states promised to end military aid to the mujehadin when Soviet forces left Afghanistan; Thatcher and Bush ensured that they broke that promise.
Scott shows how the drive for oil determines much of US foreign policy. For example, in 1997, the Wall Street Journal stated, "The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. Moreover, they are crucial to secure the country as a prime trans-shipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources."
In sum, Scott shows how the US state is not a force for peace and progress, as Gordon Brown fondly believes, but backs war and reaction. Its ruling class wants to continue their disastrous attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan: it believes what Kissinger said in 2005, "Victory over the insurgency is the only meaningful exit strategy."
Overworld - Rated
In this extremely well documented book, P.D. Scott lifts the veil on a secret overworld, a small clique op people, who apparently control the US political decision making process. It is, what he calls, the `deep State' (the private State) within elected governments (the public State), which makes top-down decisions possible if necessary. The deep State represents super wealthy private interests who finance the political parties.
The aim of the deep State is global dominance at any price and with any means: direct or indirect military interventions (ex. `the US military is being converted into a global oil-protection service'), the killing of détente (ex. the fall of Nixon after his overtures to China and the USSR), the financing by covert off-the books operations and drug trafficking (ex. Iran-Contra scandal), support of the opposition against secular Arabic (ex. Nasser in Egypt, Saddam in Iraq, Afghanistan) and democratic regimes (the fall of the Awami League of Sheikh M. Rachman in Pakistan).
For the author, the power of the private State is a major threat to democracy.
It created the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and COG planning (Continuity of Government) which should be installed in `any national security emergency'. Those plans call for a suspension of the Constitution (civil rights and liberties) and national government (to be replaced by secret parallel institutions) and sequestration of `alien citizens' and dissenters (even environmental activists.
This plan was apparently partly implemented during and after the 9/11 attack, the largest homicide in US history. For P.D. Scott, there is a serious possibility that a global meta-group (overworld), which had the necessary resources and the deep connections to make the plot successful, was implicated in the attack. The role of an alleged member of this group is meticulously scrutinized in this book.
The author complains all too rightly that the corporate media have become less a vehicle of information than of mind control. True democrats are saved by the internet, but internet itself is under threat. As one former intelligence officer said: `Access to the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who take security seriously.'
Ultimately, what is the result of all these secrets cabals? An aggravation of all security threats.
This book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world we live in.
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