Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (War and Peace Library)

Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally developed in the late 1940s to contain communist China; it has since been used to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias associated with it_a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. Scott argues that covert operations almost always outlast the specific purpose for which they were designed. Instead, they grow and become part of a hostile constellation of forces. The author terms this phenomenon parapolitics_the exercise of power by covert means_which tends to metastasize into deep politics_the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. We must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority, Scott contends, but also in so-called soft power. We need a 'soft politics' of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

History

Scott University of California, Peter Dale

Military

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through al liances with drug-trafficking proxies. The result has been a staggering increase in global drug traffic. Thus, the author argues, the exercise of power by cover t means, or parapolitics, often metastasizes into deep politics - the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy ini tiators. Scott contends that we must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded n ot just in military and economic superiority but also in so-called soft power. W e need a soft politics of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is e mbroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

This provocative, thoroughly researched book explores the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott marshals compelling evidence to expose the extensive growth of sanctioned but illicit violence in politics and state affairs, especially when related to America's long-standing involvement with the global drug traffic. Beginning with Thailand in the 1950s, Americans have become inured to the CIA's alliances with drug traffickers (and their bankers) to install and sustain right-wing governments. The pattern has repeated itself in Laos, Vietnam, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan—to name only those countries dealt with in this book. Scott shows that the relationship of U.S. intelligence operators and agencies to the global drug traffic, and to other international criminal networks, deserves greater attention in the debate over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. To date, America's government and policies have done more to foster than to curtail the drug trade. The so-called war on terror, and in particular the war in Afghanistan, constitutes only the latest chapter in this disturbing story.

American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library)

Asia

Now in a new edition updated through the unprecedented 2016 presidential election, this provocative book makes a compelling case for a hidden “deep state” that influences and often opposes official U.S. policies. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott begins by tracing America’s increasing militarization, restrictions on constitutional rights, and income disparity since World War II. With the start of the Cold War, he argues, the U.S. government changed immensely in both function and scope, from protecting and nurturing a relatively isolated country to assuming ever-greater responsibility for controlling world politics in the name of freedom and democracy. This has resulted in both secretive new institutions and a slow but radical change in the American state itself. He argues that central to this historic reversal were seismic national events, ranging from the assassination of President Kennedy to 9/11. Scott marshals compelling evidence that the deep state is now partly institutionalized in non-accountable intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA, but it also extends its reach to private corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton and SAIC, to which 70 percent of intelligence budgets are outsourced. Behind these public and private institutions is the influence of Wall Street bankers and lawyers, allied with international oil companies beyond the reach of domestic law. Undoubtedly the political consensus about America’s global role has evolved, but if we want to restore the country’s traditional constitutional framework, it is important to see the role of particular cabals—such as the Project for the New American Century—and how they have repeatedly used the secret powers and network of Continuity of Government (COG) planning to implement change. Yet the author sees the deep state polarized between an establishment and a counter-establishment in a chaotic situation that may actually prove more hopeful for U.S. democracy.

THE AMERICAN DEEP STATE: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy, Updated Edition (War and Peace Library)

Business & Money

Education & Reference

Poetry and Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming to Jakarta (AsiaWorld)

A study at many levels of Scott’s long poem Coming to Jakarta, a book-length response to a midlife crisis triggered in part by the author’s initial inability to share his knowledge and horror about American involvement in the great Indonesian massacre of 1965. Interviews with Ng supply fuller information about the poem’s discussions of: a) how this psychological trauma led to an explorations of violence in American society and then, after a key recognition, in the poet himself; b) the poem's look at east-west relations through the lens of the yin-yang, spiritual-secular doubleness of the human condition; c) how the process of writing the poem led to the recovery of memories too threatening at first to be retained by his normal presentational self, and d) the mystery of right action, guided by the Bhagavad Gita and the maxim in the Gospel of Thomas that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.” Led by the interviews to greater self-awareness, Scott then analyses his poem as also an elegy, not just for the dead in Indonesia, but “for the passing of the Sixties era, when so many of us imagined that a Movement might achieve major changes for a better America.” Subsequent chapters develop how human doubleness can lead to an inner tension between the needs of politics and the needs of poetry, and how some poetry can serve as a non-violent higher politics, contributing to the evolution of human culture and thus our “second nature.”The book also reproduces a Scott prose essay, inspired by the poem, on the U.S. involvement in and support for the 1965 massacre. It then discusses how this essay was translated into Indonesian and officially banned by the Indonesian dictatorship, and how ultimately it and the poem helped inspire the ground-breaking films of Josh Oppenheimer that have led to the first official discussions in Indonesia of what happened in 1965.

Lexington Books

A study at many levels of Scott's long poem Coming to Jakarta, a book-length response to a midlife crisis triggered in part by the author's initial inability to share his knowledge and horror about American involvement in the great Indonesian massacre of 1965. Interviews with Ng supply fuller information about the poem's discussions of: a) how this psychological trauma led to an explorations of violence in American society and then, after a key recognition, in the poet himself; b) the poem's look at east-west relations through the lens of the yin-yang, spiritual-secular doubleness of the human condition; c) how the process of writing the poem led to the recovery of memories too threatening at first to be retained by his normal presentational self, and d) the mystery of right action, guided by the Bhagavad Gita and the maxim in the Gospel of Thomas that "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you." Led by the interviews to greater self-awareness, Scott then analyses his poem as also an elegy, not just for the dead in Indonesia, but "for the passing of the Sixties era, when so many of us imagined that a Movement might achieve major changes for a better America." Subsequent chapters develop how human doubleness can lead to an inner tension between the needs of politics and the needs of poetry, and how some poetry can serve as a non-violent higher politics, contributing to the evolution of human culture and thus our "second nature." The book also reproduces a Scott prose essay, inspired by the poem, on the U.S. involvement in and support for the 1965 massacre. It then discusses how this essay was translated into Indonesian and officially banned by the Indonesian dictatorship, and how ultimately it and the poem helped inspire the ground-breaking films of Josh Oppenheimer that have led to the first official discussions in Indonesia of what happened in 1965.

Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope (World Social Change)

Ecstatic Pessimist addresses several topics and strands in the literary production and life of Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize Polish-language poet and American citizen. It is also a personal history of the relations between Milosz and the author of the book, himself a poet who worked on translations with the Polish poet in 1960s.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Review\nOf all the great poets of the late Twentieth Century, Milosz is the most multifaceted, even self-contradictory. Peter Dale Scott knew him personally. And he partly shares some of his subject's less fashionable attitudes: a certain sympathy for rural and conservative, as opposed to "neoliberal," values; and a utopian hope that poetry can "save nations or peoples." Scott's own dialectical thinking makes him a perfect guide to Milosz, especially to the texts less well known in American.\n-- Alan Williamson, University of California, Davis\nWhen Czeslaw Milosz began his California exile in 1960, poet and former diplomat Peter Dale Scott worked alongside him as a scholar, translator, and fellow poet. Ecstatic Pessimist is the culmination of decades of their thought, study, and friendship. "I have tried to be true to the Milosz I knew and loved," he writes. He has succeeded. We are fortunate to have Scott as a guide to one of the greatest poets of our times, offering us a wise, insightful, and deeply learned journey through Milosz’s poems and life in these pages. Scott has waited sixty years to share this rich legacy. 
-- Cynthia L. Haven, author of Czesław Miłosz: A California Life\nCzelaw Milosz, with his unblinking witness to horror and his insistence on hope for humanity, has never seemed more relevant. To meet this moment, Peter Dale Scott bring his more than fifty years of personal and critical engagement with Milosz. Ecstatic Pessimist simultaneously illuminates the arc of Milosz’s oeuvre and narrates a passionate reader’s lifelong engagement. A major contribution to Milosz studies. -- David Shaddock, author of Poetry and Psychoanalysis\nCzeslaw Milosz is that rare poet whose work has crossed seemingly impassable boundaries of place and time. Peter Dale Scott and Milosz were colleagues at Berkeley, and Scott, who had been a Canadian diplomat in Poland, became one of Milosz’s first translators into English. From the unique perspective of a complex friendship, Scott is able to show us, as almost no one else can, the vatic, prophetic role Milosz had in Poland, how it was transformed by war and decades in the United States, and emerged again triumphant in his late years. Learned and beautifully written, Ecstatic Pessimist takes us on a journey to the heart of Milosz’s poetry, vibrant with the contradictions that make him a prophet of the post-modern age. 
-- Robert Faggen, Claremont McKenna College\nFor English language readers of Czeslaw Milosz, nothing could be a richer addition to the critical literature than Peter Scott's Ecstatic Pessimist. Scott is a distinguished poet, knows Polish, has a diplomat's knowledge of Polish politics in the twentieth century. collaborated with Milosz on translation projects, and has written a brilliant and illuminating book on the complex and essential poet.\n-- Robert Hass, former US Poet Laureate and principal translator of Czeslaw Milosz’s poetry into English\nEcstatic Pessimist is a timely book about the Central and Eastern European experience of the mid 20th century, as told through the poetry and experiences of Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate for literature, who wrote on the horrors of war and the human experience. Written by a colleague and friend of the poet, it is part literary criticism and part memoir. 
This biography/memoir of Czesław Miłosz is a first hand account of the poet’s life and his relationship to the author, beginning in the 1960s. Milosz was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts".

Reading the Dream: A Post-Secular History of Enmindment (World Social Change)

This book is at once a sweeping work of intellectual history and an intimate exploration of the human spiritual psyche. It covers the enduring development of social, cultural, and spiritual values that underlies the superficial rise and fall of political structures -- and provides an inspiring basis of hope for the future of humanity. Appropriate for courses in Philosophy or Religion courses.

Religion & Spirituality

This book is at once a sweeping work of intellectual history and an intimate exploration of the human spiritual psyche. It covers the enduring development of social, cultural, and spiritual values that underlies the superficial rise and fall of political structures — and provides an inspiring basis of hope for the future of humanity. Appropriate for courses in Philosophy or Religion courses.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Scott University of California, Peter Dale. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Scott University of California, Peter Dale

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Scott University of California, Peter Dale. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (War and Peace Library)

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina (War and Peace Library)

American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library)

THE AMERICAN DEEP STATE: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy, Updated Edition (War and Peace Library)

Poetry and Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming to Jakarta (AsiaWorld)

Poetry and Terror: Politics and Poetics in Coming to Jakarta (AsiaWorld)

Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope (World Social Change)

Ecstatic Pessimist: Czeslaw Milosz, Poet of Catastrophe and Hope (World Social Change)

Reading the Dream: A Post-Secular History of Enmindment (World Social Change)

Reading the Dream: A Post-Secular History of Enmindment (World Social Change)