Shadows

It is probably the most intense, best researched and  most revelatory book about how governments do the subversive things they want nobody to know about.  

It’s the book Understanding Shadows,The Corrupt Use of Intelligence”  by Michael Quilligan (Clarity Press Inc. Atlanta,Georgia, 2013.

Michael Quilligan is a journalist born in Dublin, long time resident in Holland, expert and much published writer on what governments do with information and what lessons they consistently refuse to learn. And what decencies they violate.

Readers will first  turn to those parts of it that satisfy their particular interests  or curiosity - what really  happened in Ireland, whose interests were served by Kennedy’s assassination, what  lies were told by the Blair administration in its frantic determination to have its very own war, and by what alliances was it ensured that it would be very difficult to have any  war now without the  United States administration either causing or  manipulating it?

To answer these questions, or rather in our  intellectually polluted world , to see more clearly with  the real problems lie Michael Quilligan has devoted years of research in which he shows that intrigue is a matter of everyday governance, not a sudden outbreak of a few people,s bravado, or villainy. Dishonest use of nearly everything is a normal method of government. Dishonest , cynical or cruel use of knowledge is among governments’ greatest sins.

Some might think in such a  world where politicians like Mr Blair are  not politely refused admission to membership of a  Church but rather are welcomed , arms and all, by a Pope, many people would be aghast and would say so, but the success of governmental dishonesty is made possible by the silence of others which implies consent. The pollution of knowledge , or as here , the Corruption of Intelligence, is consented to and therefore thrives in all the countries which have most influence on our lives, the United States of America, Britain, France for example. What Michael Quilligan is doing is revealing the mechanics of where how and by whom it is done.

In Ireland it took a long time to convince even those who were sceptical of British government intentions that the war being waged there was as dirty as it really was. Even yet many people either do not believe it or refuse to discuss whether it was or not. Our world may seem to fall apart when we learn that the  assassin  paid or given immunity for assassinating is really an “unofficial” branch of one’s  own police force through whose falsely labelled activities  governments can claim it was not involved in killing its enemies or even its fellow citizens. But that  is only part of what the corrupt use of intelligence has been about. This book deals  with the rest of it as well in so far as the diligent and honest researcher can manage it. 

For those who want to know in detail how governments create, foster and fight both sides in crises , Understanding Shadows should be read and we should be thankful for it. There are many crimes but one of the greatest is the corruption of knowledge, a sin which some enlightened theologians believe is the only sin named by Jesus Christ as the unforgiveable.

Readers who like sampling a chapter or two to find out whether the author is thorough and informed would do well to select  the chapter Without Grace or Favour . In it they will meet the enigma of people who being good do  what is bad, and how an institution can hang  much materialistic policy on the twin spikes of hidden information and false information and how political and financial interests may be served thereby.

Having done that,  readers will probably peruse  the rest of the book with increasing determination to start their every study of government with the presumption they may well be  telling lies.