The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep
Russia's Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin
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Narrated by:
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Victor Bevine
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By:
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David Satter
About this listen
In December 2013 David Satter became the first American journalist to be expelled from Russia since the Cold War. The Moscow Times said it was not surprising he was expelled; "it was surprising it took so long". Satter is known in Russia for having written that the apartment bombings in 1999, which were blamed on Chechens and brought Putin to power, were actually carried out by the Russian FSB security police.
In this book Satter tells the story of the apartment bombings and how Boris Yeltsin presided over the criminalization of Russia, why Vladimir Putin was chosen as his sucessor, and how Putin has suppressed all opposition while retaining the appearance of a pluralist state. As the threat represented by Russia becomes increasingly clear, Satter's description of where Russia is and how it got there will be of vital interest to anyone concerned about the dangers facing the world today.
©2016 David Satter (P)2016 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In the closing days of the 30-year Sri Lankan civil war, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, according to UN estimates, as government forces hemmed in the last remaining Tamil Tiger rebels on a tiny sand spit, dubbed "The Cage". Gordon Weiss, a journalist and UN spokesperson in Sri Lanka during the final years of the war, pulls back the curtain of government misinformation to tell the full story for the first time. Tracing the role of foreign influence as it converged with a history of radical Buddhism and ethnic conflict, The Cage is a harrowing portrait of an island paradise torn apart by war.
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Tragic and sobering
- By Tarindu on 10-28-15
By: Gordon Weiss
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A Narco History
- How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”
- By: Carmen Boullosa, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: James Conlan
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The term Mexican Drug War misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the US role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from and sell weapons to Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the US prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer - with increasingly deadly consequences.
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Interesting book, tricky pronunciation
- By Enrique on 12-24-18
By: Carmen Boullosa, and others
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A Savage Order
- How the World's Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security
- By: Rachel Kleinfeld
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From Georgia to Colombia to Ghana and Italy - crime exists in every democratic nation on earth, but in some places, it runs rampant, shaping all aspects of civic life. A Savage Order investigates why and how some places, riddled by inept government and states, are able to recover. Drawing on fifteen years of both academic and firsthand field research, Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld documents the unambiguous measures that societies have taken to empower the strong civic movements, governments, and institutions that protect countries and mitigate atrocities that damage people's lives.
By: Rachel Kleinfeld
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Winter Is Coming
- Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
- By: Garry Kasparov
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.
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A polemic against Putin
- By David on 05-27-16
By: Garry Kasparov
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Overthrow
- America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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"Regime change" did not begin with the administration of George W. Bush, but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years. Starting with the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and continuing through the Spanish-American War and the Cold War and into our own time, the United States has not hesitated to overthrow governments that stood in the way of its political and economic goals.
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Looking at the dark side
- By Stanley on 08-02-06
By: Stephen Kinzer
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Harpoon
- Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism's Money Masters
- By: Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Samuel M. Katz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A revelatory account of the cloak-and-dagger Israeli campaign to target the finances fueling terror organizations - an effort that became the blueprint for US efforts to combat threats like ISIS and drug cartels. ISIS boasted $2.4 billion of revenue in 2015, yet for too long the global war on terror overlooked financial warfare as an offensive strategy. "Harpoon", the creation of Mossad legend Meir Dagan, directed spies, soldiers, and attorneys to disrupt and destroy money pipelines and financial institutions that paid for the bloodshed.
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Riveting!!!
- By Treavor on 12-11-17
By: Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, and others
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The Plot to Scapegoat Russia
- How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin
- By: Dan Kovalik Esq.
- Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence. And now the specter of a Russian Menace has been raised again in the wake of Donald Trump's victory.
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A Great Listen!
- By Mark Andreadis on 12-29-17
By: Dan Kovalik Esq.
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Muqtada
- Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq
- By: Patrick Cockburn
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Whatever else the United States intended when it invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003, it was not to hand the country over to a 32-year-old militant cleric who fought against the U.S. presence from the start and was described by former Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer III as a "Bolshevik Islamist".
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truth in an era of lies
- By NF ironman on 11-29-17
By: Patrick Cockburn
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ISIS
- Inside the Army of Terror
- By: Michael Weiss, Hassan Hassan
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Initially dismissed by US President Barack Obama, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has shocked the world by conquering massive territories in both countries and promising to create a vast new Muslim caliphate that observes the strict dictates of Sharia law. In ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, American journalist Michael Weiss and Syrian analyst Hassan Hassan explain how these violent extremists evolved from a nearly defeated Iraqi insurgent group into a jihadi army of international volunteers who have conquered territory equal to the size of Great Britain.
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Dunce Hat, Please...
- By Mel on 02-16-16
By: Michael Weiss, and others
What listeners say about The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Grigory
- 04-05-17
David understands Russia better than Russians do
This is not just a collection of facts and anecdotes, this is a narrative that has a lot of predictive and explanatory power, that is richly illustrated with events from Russia's post-Soviet history that are often forgotten or misrepresented in Russian state controlled media and largely unknown in the west. What impressed me the most was the accuracy of details that i can confirm, and clearness of interpretations unaffected by Russian propaganda tropes that affect most attempts at such work. My only peeve is with the reader, who while doing mostly stellar job with the text pronounces some of the Russian names in such a way that it took some effort to figure out who or what is he talking about.
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2 people found this helpful
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- M. Nye
- 06-30-17
I am now sleeping worse
A compelling, internally-consistent narrative that makes me despair for the future of Russia and her former satellites.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jack Carlson
- 11-28-18
The largest Terror attack you've never heard of...
Everyone who is interested in the Post-Soviet collapse and Putin's rise should have a listen.
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- Mark Landsbaum
- 11-04-22
Gruesome reminder
Satter has keen insight and has gathered the evidence: ridding Russia of communism simply freed its thuggish controlling classes to pillage and kill under the faux banner of democracy and capitalism. It's neither but criminality will wear whatever cloak is needed to cover its true nature.
Satter holds out hope Russians, who peacefully overthrew communism, can do the same to their oligarchies and new breed of billionaires now calling the shots. Judging from what Satter has reported so well, I'm not as optimistic.
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- Jackson
- 03-28-24
Reality of modern Russia
Putin’s Russia is a criminal hydro carbon kleptocracy. Capitalism is no insurance of democracy. The FSB, Russian mafia, Putin’s politicians and oligarchs comprise an evil empire that will not stop after Ukraine. A mob state with nuclear weapons.
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- Nathaniel
- 10-28-16
Narrator
You could hear the narrator swallowing his saliva into the microphone. Constantly. I wish he would have turned his head away. It was distracting and took away from an otherwise informative, although not shocking, book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- John Newquist
- 10-21-21
well organized book on long timeline
I read the bombing of Moscow and this was much better and had more references.
I am surprised the author was not kicked out earlier.
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- Howard
- 01-19-23
Great!
Enjoyed all of it! The content and the narration were both great in my opinion!
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