On Mon. evening, Dec. 1, UFPPC's book discussion group will examine the just-released report of the National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025 — A World Transformed.[1]  --  This 120-page document is available on the NIC’s web site and is the fourth such report by the U.S. government — but the first to anticipates that it is likely that in the foreseeable future that U.S. power will decline to the point that U.S. forces will no longer be able to act unilaterally in the world.  --  Digging Deeper meets Mondays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Mandolin Café (3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma)....

On Monday evening, Nov. 24, UFPPC's book discussion group will examine Robert Baer's The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower (Crown, 2008).[1] -- Robert Baer was a case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997, and according to ace investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker was “considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.”  --  Thomas Powers has called Baer's new book the “most important and original book on the Middle East to appear in many years”; Kirkus Reviews says it is “studded with keen insights into a nation about which America remains dangerously misinformed.” -- In July 2006, Digging Deeper spent two weeks on Robert Baer’s earlier books, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (2002), the memoir that inspired the film “Syriana,” and Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Crude (2003), and we have already read many book about Iran and about U.S.-Iran relations.  --  Digging Deeper meets Mondays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Mandolin Café (3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma)....