Word: underground
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Afghanistan, the agency's prison was once located in an old brick factory near Kabul's airport, nicknamed the Salt Pit by the CIA and the Darkness Prison by inmates. Detainees who have escaped or been released from the prison claim they were kept in cold, dark cells underground, fed once every three days and sometimes chained wet and naked to the wall overnight...
...write about playing an underground card game with Jay-Z. What does Guts have to do with making it in business...
...turn Rabin needed the Chairman. Like Arafat, Rabin had not intended to make a life of soldiering; he too wanted to go to the U.S. to become an engineer. But he had earned a reputation as a gifted military commander in the Palmach, the commando unit of the Haganah underground army. On the eve of his country's war for independence in 1948, Rabin was persuaded by his military superiors to abandon his study plans and join the battle. He was charged with helping to break the Arab blockade of Jerusalem and to keep the road to Tel Aviv open...
...That's the question Na?m, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, takes up in this valiant attempt to organize into a coherent picture the kaleidoscopic shards of information on underground trading, from music piracy to nuclear smuggling. The result is like a photo negative of Thomas Friedman's books (most recently, this year's The Earth is Flat) focusing on the happier aspects of globalization. The usual suspects are back in the spotlight: expanding free markets, the Internet, and the geopolitical fragmentation that followed the end of the Cold War. But in Na?m's version of the story, these changes...
...erudition and scope, Illicit has one vexing flaw: its lack of substantial original research. Na?m is an armchair tour guide, relying mostly on well-worn news stories and official reports. For a book on the underground trade in sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, Illicit is disappointingly dry. The climax is not a memorable glimpse inside a smuggling ring, but a raft of policy suggestions such as better coordination among government agencies and improved international cooperation?hardly page-turning stuff. Still, Na?m succeeds in presenting a clear account of how illicit commerce works and what its consequences are. In doing...