Rating: 
Summary: Who Pays the Fare for Hijacked Jets?
Review: On April 19, 1995, I was making photocopies of an article I had written about AIDS research as a science writer at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. As I stood at the copier, rereading my story on the advances made in fighting the plague of the century, I heard what sounded to me like someone slamming a door.
"Who the hell slammed that door?" I yelled from the copy room.
Soon I became painfully aware that a door had not been slammed in my office, but an entire office building had been brought down a few blocks away by terrorists. A different kind of plague erupted in my city and, like the first few cases of AIDS, an attempt to treat the symptoms was ultimately defeated until the true cause was discovered. Only now has the true cause of the viral nature of the world terrorist economy been reported.
The seeds of discontent with the ruling class, governments or even an autocratic boss have, since humans became "civilized", served as impetus for the disgruntled, disaffected and even psychotic to lash out with acts of terrorism. But acts of terrorism cost money. They are organizations with payrolls, "benefits" and material needs. Terrorists need dollars, and stopping the flow of dollars to the balaclava-clad "revolutionaries" could effectively end large-scale terrorism. Unfortunately, it could also send the world economy into a spiral of depression and even collapse.
Dr. Loretta Napoleoni sheds light on the global "economy of terror" in Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks (Pluto Press, October 2003, $24.95). In this well-researched, painstakingly-footnoted book, Italian economist and author Napoleoni identifies a $1.5 trillion "fast-growing economic system" comprised of illegal businesses such as arms and narcotics trading, diamond smuggling, charitable donations, profits from illegal businesses and yes, oil.
In Modern Jihad, Napoleoni reveals the interdependency between autocratic state-shell economies run by armed groups and "democratic" western economies, ranging from consumption of narcotics to the production of arms to laundering money and even to stock speculation, as occurred prior to Sept. 11, 2001.
Modern Jihad is a detailed examination of how the terrorist network is financed by an intricate economy that, like a parasite which has burrowed into the vital organs of the host, cannot be removed without serious risk of killing the patient. The revelation that terrorism on the Al Qaeda scale is not really about Islamic fundamentalism-as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair would have us believe--but what economist George Magnus describes as a "growing tension between a dominant western capitalist system and a populous Muslim nation in which an emerging class of merchants and bankers is finding development checked and frustrated." This fact is quietly excised from most "in-depth" examinations of the current "War on Terrorism."
The book is broken down into chapters which explain in detail the history of the modern terror economy, including a look at the politics behind the terrorist activities of the PLO, Chile, Iran-Contra, "Operation Mongoose" in Cuba and the long history of the United States' "quiet" manipulation of governments around the globe for the past century. Napoleoni supports this assertion with many disturbing examples and anecdotes, including evidence which could indicate that former American "Green Berets" trained the Libyan-based terrorists who brought down the Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The blockbuster revelation in Modern Jihad has to be the thorough examination of the bearing oil brings on the economics of terror, as well as the influence and perhaps criminally negligent behavior of the Bush family.
Napoleoni traces the historical and economic significance of the oilfields of the region, and we see clearly why Halliburton's Dick Cheney, the ideological bulwark behind Bush, is drooling for control of the region.
Unocal has been for years a major player in creating this eventuality. The idea is known in Washington as the 'Strategy of the Silk Route.' This strategy pursued the exclusion of Russia from the Asian pipelines and establishes a strong presence in these areas to effectively lock Iran and China out of the energy business in the region. The hiccup was, of course, the "squabbling warlords" of Afghanistan. They knew that this pipeline would never happen until a stable puppet government came to Afghanistan-one amendable to the Bush family friends of Unocal.
One need only look at the credentials of the new leader of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, a former lobbyist for Unocal, to see where this is going. Bush's envoy to the new Afghan government is Zalmay Khalilzad, another former Unocal employee.
Napoleoni details Bush family and friends' involvement in the whole plan through ties to Unocal, Enron and CentGas-ironically all tied to the bin Laden family of Saudi Arabia.
In Napoleoni's final analysis, however, there is a grim prognosis for the world economy. Even if there suddenly was an end to the global terror economy, the interdependence may already be too great, and the end of a yearly cash injection of $1.5 trillion dollars, along with the cheap Muslim-controlled oil, could wreck U.S. supremacy and hegemony. But something should change: "As long as we invest in corporations which meddle in the politics of independent states and take profit without regard to human cost, we engage in our own destruction."
Modern Jihad is well-researched, backing its disturbing and chilling assertions with detailed attribution. It provides a balanced and careful examination of the issue of financing world terrorism and gets very close to making the case for an independent counsel investigation of the Vice President of the United States at the very least.
Modern Jihad could be the "door slamming" on the ignorance of the American public about the actions their government is and has taken. Action which, in the long run, make them far less safe, far less secure from the plague of the twenty-first century: terrorism.
Rating: 
Summary: Maze of less than amazing facts
Review: One purpose for this book. Provide as much evidence as possible to support Loretta's antiwar views. The book is a mess in its details. Her 1.4 trillion dollar criminal economy is bogus and not substantiated by government organizations or other researchers.She doesn't feel wars are necessary in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should wage an economic war on Al Queda. Woo Hoo. That makes great sense. While Al Queda runs airplanes into buildings, she is going to try and make the world a nice place and simply cut off your funds. Get real. While an economic war as a tool with other tools makes sense, that is not what she argues or wants. And she exagerates the facts in a way no different from George Bush exagerating the WMD in Iraq that she thinks was wrong(as most do). Except two wrongs don't make a right. Poor exectution of a bad plan. Bad writing. Bad hypothesis. Exagerations.
Rating:
Summary: Antiwar Agenda
Review: One purpose for this book. Provide as much evidence as possible to support Loretta's antiwar views. The book is a mess in its details. Her 1.4 trillion dollar criminal economy is bogus and not substantiated by government organizations or other researchers. She doesn't feel wars are necessary in Iraq and Afghanistan. We should wage an economic war on Al Queda. Woo Hoo. That makes great sense. While Al Queda runs airplanes into buildings, she is going to try and make the world a nice place and simply cut off your funds. Get real. While an economic war as a tool with other tools makes sense, that is not what she argues or wants. And she exagerates the facts in a way no different from George Bush exagerating the WMD in Iraq that she thinks was wrong(as most do). Except two wrongs don't make a right. Poor exectution of a bad plan. Bad writing. Bad hypothesis. Exagerations.
Rating:
Summary: Maze of less than amazing facts
Review: There are better books written on this subject. Impossible to the see the forest through the trees. She tries to show how to fight terrorism with economics, but all she shows is that she knows nothing of how the world works. In order for her theories to work, all crime must stop. All smuggaling must stop. Everyone in the world needs to be nice to each other basically. And when everyone is nice, bad guys like al queda will not have any friends and will not be able to operate. She proposed this because she doesn't like war. War is bad. So even with Al Queda we need find no violent means to fight them back. This doesn't make sense. A multipronged targeted approach is required. Get as many of them off the street as possible, dry up there direct funding, stop hard line islamic schools from teaching jiahd. We only have so many resources, and obviously we don't have the means to solves all the worlds problems so that terrorists have no sources of money. Her indirect approach is misguided and feeble. Nice guys finish last.
Rating:
Summary: Liberal Bent on Terrorism and War
Review: This book was and is disappointing. I hate it when I pick up a book with all the potential to be an enlightening endevour and find that I have wasted a lot of my time. The book is awash with overwhelming detail that clouds Loretta actual purpose of showing that war is not neccessary, period. I was quite interested in a balanced, well documented book, but was thoroughly disappointed by having to read between the lines to figure out what was truth or fiction, fact or exageration, becuase she is squarely anti-war. I wish the book was just about tracing the dollars behind the terror networks, but she has her hidden agenda. Disappointing, disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Liberal Bent on Terrorism and War
Review: This book was and is disappointing. I hate it when I pick up a book with all the potential to be an enlightening endevour and find that I have wasted a lot of my time. The book is awash with overwhelming detail that clouds Loretta actual purpose of showing that war is not neccessary, period. I was quite interested in a balanced, well documented book, but was thoroughly disappointed by having to read between the lines to figure out what was truth or fiction, fact or exageration, becuase she is squarely anti-war. I wish the book was just about tracing the dollars behind the terror networks, but she has her hidden agenda. Disappointing, disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent and honest
Review: this is a masterpiece, it is a honest look at 50 years of history. I recomment it to everybody, especially to those one who do not know so much about our involvement in wars by proxy and terror sponsor in the war. I know a lot about the Middle East and I can say that Loretta Napoleoni Book is
excellent, well written and extremely well researched. It is well above the average production of books on terrorism which has flooded out bookshops since 9 11.
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