Book Review:
Suburban Spies, by Anthony Brina
Reviewed February 6, 2007
by Eleanor White
SUBURBAN SPIES - A true story of one innocent
Canadian caught in an unsolved international mystery
Author: Anthony Brina
ISBN: 141209386-4
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Copyright: 2006
Paperback, 160 pages
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ....................................... 1 1 Fortune 500s .................................... 3 1995 cover up Secret weapon Global audience 2 Espionage ....................................... 22 National Security Workplace snooping Threat on my life Corporate secrets My father and my son Back to my hometown My family 3 Japan ........................................... 44 Kyoto Downtown Osaka Nara Nova Group & surveillance Collusion & harassment in Kobe 4 Back to Canada then Italy ....................... 55 One month of duplicity Le Marche in Italy University of Perugia Coworker harassment in Italy Police escort Fabriano to Rome with lookalikes Rome 5 People's Republic of China ...................... 69 The Great Wall of China Tian'an men Square Yichang Wuhan SARS Collusion and scams in Tianjin Lookalikes in Tianjin Beijing 6 Good spies ...................................... 101 Secret passion Intercept 7 More Espionage and Corrupton .................... 107 Ontario Government & RCMP (Beijing) US Department of Homeland Security (Beijing) United Nations (Beijing) Chinese 8 Back to Canada with a Spy ....................... 127 A Suburban Spy 9 Canada Still Immoral ............................ 152 United Nations (Canada) Supreme Court of Canada Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) 10 Your Future ..................................... 156 Free countries become police states Can you solve the mystery?
"The author is a dual citizen of Canada and the European Union Community. He was raised in Canada and attended university in Toronto. He held management positions for 12 years in large multitnational companies.
"He is well travelled and speaks a second language fluently, with basic speaking of four additional languages. He is divorced from his first and only marriage and is father to one child."
" ... Imagine going to work every day on public transit to have people follow you. Imagine lookalikes of people you know or had known showing up at places you go, giving you signals with hidden meaning about the person they represent. Imagine talking with government representatives amount routine matters only to have them give you false information and mislead you about government procedures. ... Imagine your coworkers, girlfriend, family and friends, all knowing of your private and personal matters as they have been provided recordings of your conversations. Imagine all these people repeating your own words back to you, causing meaningless, confusing and mind-boggling conversations. Imagine these people telling you that you're crazy when you go to them for help or confront them."
" ... In other words, a perfectly normal and law abiding person can be made a target of these methods for the simple reason there is something different about them."
[Eleanor White commenting: Or NOTHING different about them. The experience of many targets of organized stalking is that there need be nothing "different" about a target, to become a target. When there is nothing different, LIES are created, including fake police records, to MANUFACTURE a "difference" which can be used to motivate harassment groups to target the individual.
The methods of organized stalkers have been reported in a book by private investigator David Lawson, who infiltrated these groups for 12 years. That 2001 book is titled: Terrorist Stalking in America.]
I haven't read the book from cover to cover, wishing to put my available time with strength to do productive things on other matters. However, I've read incidents throughout the text, and for me, this book is VERY well written, and most importantly, reports objective experiences of target Brina.
No exaggerated claims, no blaming the harassment on groups for which the author has no proof are responsible. And he does relate instances where people he has contacted have acknowledged some familiarity with the problem of organized harassment.
As you can see from the table of contents, Brina's story shows that the harassment crime syndrome many targets call "organized stalking and electronic harassment" is a WORLD WIDE phenomenon.
My interest in books about organized stalking and/or electronic harassment (which normally happen together) is strictly this one question:
"Can this book be used for activism?"With this particular book, my answer is, one would have to be rather creative to use this book for activism. The reason can be seen by looking at the table of contents. Anthony Brina's life and career are very far removed from the life and career of the average Joe (or Jane.) His life has been lived in the upper circles of corporate life, and has included a great deal of globe trotting. His work in positions of elevated responsibility give, unfortunately and unfairly, the average Joe an excuse to write his experiences off as "nothing like mine [Joe's]."
Targets of organized stalking and electronic harassment know all too well that one easy way people in a position to help brush us off is to ask us "Why would anyone go to all that trouble over YOU? You are a nobody."
A highly placed, globetrotting executive is NOT a nobody, therefore, a naysayer asking "Why YOU?" would not accept his experiences as "like yours."
Remember - this real-life horror story is something that no one wants to be involved in, in any way. So the difference between Brina's life and most of the rest of ours may reduce the usefulness of this book for establishing our credibility.
Having said that, there is a way this book CAN be useful to us. That is, we can EXTRACT certain of Brina's experiences, without referring to his book or his status in the business world, to back us up. For that reason, and for using this book in that fashion, this book is worth having if you can comfortably cover the price, which for me in February 2007 was around $32 Canadian INCLUDING shipping and taxes.