"If one seriously desires … to deeply understand the lurid details and the frightening karma and dark arts of US empire, read this book! The author has seriously documented the extreme dangers of the inseparability of US politics, economics, and organized crime. The CIA and military propaganda have led to a serious dumbing down, enabling popular political corruption and neo-fascism." —S Brian Willson, author, trained lawyer, activist, Viet Nam veteran "Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire is a riveting book by a great investigative journalist that sheds important insights into the working of the CIA and on the underlying ideology guiding the U.S. empire and its bad karma that has resulted in the country’s dangerous lurch to the right.” —Jeremy Kuzmarov, Managing editor of Covert Action Magazine and author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century (2012) "In a beautifully written, idiosyncratic memoir-travelogue, a blend of Graham Greene and Rick Steves, Doug Valentine recounts his adventures in Vietnam and Thailand in 1991. Doug caught the BBC in bed with the CIA, whitewashing its opium and heroin trafficking around the world and the slaughter of millions it unleashed across South-East Asia." —Nicolas Davies, British investigative journalist, writer, and documentary maker
"Douglas Valentine is our most unflinching chronicler of the Central Intelligence Agency’s bloody and sordid history. In this book, Valentine unfolds his vast and detailed knowledge of the Agency, and its twisted subculture, in the context of a first-person recollection of a long and surreal research trip through South East Asia. Filled with dingy bars, broken men, humid cities, and slabs of corrupt, covert, and violent history, the landscape comes alive; and the world of the Central Intelligence Agency emerges as even more deranged than you had recalled. Compelling yet tragic, Pisces Moon is compulsive reading."—Dr. Christian Parenti, professor of political economy at John Jay College, CUNY; author of Tropic of Chaos and Radical Hamilton “Doug, I just finished recording your book today, so it’s in edit now. It’s brilliant! At the same time informative, shocking, emotionally compelling. Thank you for writing it! Reading it has been an honor.” –Stefan Rudnicki, award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer.
Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
Douglas ValentineUnabridged — 13 hours, 28 minutes
Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire
Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki
Douglas ValentineUnabridged — 13 hours, 28 minutes
Overview
Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire is a sweeping critical analysis of Western colonialism, its foundational beliefs in militarism, patriarchy, Christianity, and white supremacy; and its destructive impact on the nations of Southeast Asia and, ultimately, America.
Valentine focuses on the “dark arts” of empire: the black bag of CIA covert operations, including bribery, right-wing coups, assassinations, disinformation, and intimate relationships with drug, sex, and artifact traffickers. He pays especially close attention to the CIA's use of psychological warfare to play upon the beliefs of people to shape their political and social movements. Pisces Moon shines a light on the central role played by missionaries, academics, writers, and filmmakers in assisting and promoting Western imperialism.
In the mid-1990s, based on his book The Phoenix Program, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) hired Valentine as a consultant to a documentary series it was making about the CIA's activities in South Vietnam. Valentine embarked for London in February 1991 as the sun was about to enter Pisces, the astrological sign which rules deception, espionage, foreign things, prisons, and religion. The month-long trip began with five days in London, where Valentine was asked to carry ten thousand dollars in cash to the BBC crew in Vietnam. After a memorable week in Vietnam, Valentine spent two weeks traveling around Thailand interviewing expat CIA officers for his books on CIA drug smuggling. Unique in every respect, Pisces Moon features many prominent, historically significant CIA officers with whom he has interacted with while conducting his original research.
Throughout the narrative, Pisces Moon explains how decades of propaganda and disinformation directed against them by war planners, religious leaders, and corporate institutions have made it nearly impossible for Americans to distinguish fact from fiction; a descent into mass delusion that William Burroughs called “the backlash and bad karma of empire.”Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire will grab you from the beginning and won't let go.
Editorial Reviews
Bad ‘karma’ indeed. And Douglas Valentine is one of our best chroniclers of this grand ‘karmic’ collapse. Pisces Moon gives ample context to the US’s moral, ethical, and material tumble. It is an essential read.”
"A riveting book…Sheds important insights into the working of the CIA and on the underlying ideology guiding the US empire and its bad karma that has resulted in the country’s dangerous lurch to the right.”
To deeply understand the lurid details and the frightening karma and dark arts of US empire, read this book…The author has seriously documented the extreme dangers of the inseparability of US politics, economics, and organized crime.”
Valentine recounts his adventures in Vietnam and Thailand in 1991. Doug caught the BBC in bed with the CIA, whitewashing its opium and heroin trafficking around the world and the slaughter of millions it unleashed across South-East Asia.”
Douglas Valentine is our most unflinching chronicler of the Central Intelligence Agency’s bloody and sordid history…Compelling yet tragic, Pisces Moon is compulsive reading.”
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940160056302 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/16/2023 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,124,932 |