John Pilger

"John Pilger's television film The New Rulers of the World was, among much else, a debunking of the myth of globalisation. Reporting from Indonesia, he revealed how General Suharto's bloody seizure of power in the 1960s was part of a western design that was just the beginning of the imposition of a 'global economy' upon Asia." "Now, he has collected both original work and expanded versions of his recent essays on power, its secrets and illusions in a book that illuminates the nature of modern imperialism. He discloses how up to a million Indonesians died as the price for being the World Bank's 'model pupil', and the price paid by the people of Iraq for the West's decade-long embargo on that country. He returns to his homeland, Australia, to look behind the hype that led up to the Millenium Olympics in Sydney and to reflect on Australia's continuing subjugation of its Aboriginal people. And, following the September 11 attacks on America and the bombing of Afghanistan, he describes the new thrust of American power and its goal of 'world order', as well as the propaganda that justifies and drives it."--BOOK JACKET.

Two young Britons are offered the opportunity to house-sit a property located near Malaga, on the Costa del Sol coast whilst the owner returns to England for an operation. They jump at the offer and young Jonno hopes that Posie will appreciate the trouble he has gone to, and that their relationship will get more intimate in the anticipated elaborately furnished retirement property. The young couple discover that the property is not the mansion they were expecting but in fact it is rather dowdy and in need of a good spring-clean, which is the first thing they decide they had better do before they feel able to start to relax. The story keeps switching from the back-story of the young couple, to a team from MI5 in London who have been sent unofficially to the Costa del Sol property to observe the Russian Mafia that are living in the adjacent property. The unofficial team of current or retired MI5 staff ('the outsiders') hope to avenge the death of a former colleague who died at the hands of Russian Mafia mobsters. The team are headed up by a lady named Winnie Monk who has a long experience in the field particularly with Russian mobsters but they are very surprised when they discover that the observation post that they have set up in the loft of the Costa del Sol property now has to share facilities with the young couple who were hoping to have an isolated romantic holiday. Another theme explored of this multi-faceted book is the access by MI5 to a young Russian computer geek employed by extremely dangerous and cruel Mafia bosses, who is disillusioned with his employers, who use his skills to subvert and penetrate their competitors' bank accounts and access police databases and there are worries that his attempts to pass information about his employer to the British Secret Service may be uncovered with disastrous and dangerous results. The Secret Service decide to substitute the photography skills of Sparky, one of the watchers of the Russian Mafia, with his previous expertise of assassination. However, they have not brought a sufficiently appropriate gun with them and spend much time arranging to smuggle a suitable high powered marksman's weapon in from a British base in Gibraltar. The novel is a very powerful slow burner that kept me gripped until the final page. The highly detailed plot is softened with some humour. The author writes with an articulate polish that makes descriptions of even very banal things seem almost poetic in their intensity. The author describes the economic shambles of modern Spain and the apparently corrupt mañana, mañana attitude of the authorities in their desire to cope with it; the huge amount of EC funding that built new construction on the Costas that preceded the economic crash and the subsequent abandonment of those sites; the huge amount of money laundering and the population explosion consisting mainly of expatriate gangsters from many countries including the UK, but mainly Russia. [EuroCrime Reviews]

The New York Times bestselling author lays down the laws.As a rebellion brews among the vampires of Vegas, the dissidents target three visiting Enforcers of the Nighthawk line. And only their mortal companion can save their immortal souls.

In this book John Pilger strips away the layers of deception, dissembling language and ommision that prevent us from understanding how the world really works. From the invisible corners of Tony Blair's New Britain to Burma, Vietnam, Australia, South Africa and the illusions of the 'media age', power, he argues, has its own agenda. Unchallenged, it operates to protect its interests with a cynical disregard for people - shaping, and often devastating, millions of lives.