The author has achieved extraordinary synthesis and summation, with gifted straight-forward language.This book is not only a capstone reference, but demonstrates why we need to LISTEN–none of us could learn–in a lifetime–all that this author has in his head. That's why multinational engagement is a non-negotiable first step toward the future.
Key notes and quotes:
+ Bush Senior should not have left Saddam Hussein off the hook in Gulf I, should have finished off the regime while we had enough troops on the ground to make the peace.
+ US blew Gulf II from the moment of victory onward. “Incoherent” is a word the author uses frequently in describing virtually every aspect of US operations in Iraq. The one element that gets high marks from him is the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) but the fact that the bulk of the “reconstruction” money was mis-managed by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) makes AID's excellent a footnote in this sorry tale.
+ Book covers 2003-2006; the author was Minister of Defense and then Minister of Finance during the reconstruction period.
+ “Too few Americans actually cared.” Fred Smith (parent agency not clear) gets high marks from the author for caring and competence as the CPA-appointed advisor to the Ministry of Defense in the 2004 timeframe.
Thom Hartmann is one of a handful of individuals that I consider to be true guides for the rest of us, and I consider two of his earlier books, Cracking the Code and SCREWED, to have been instrumental in my own transformation from recovering spy to intelligence officer to the public.
+ Book may be missing pages, mine starts at page xi (Preface) so I am left wondering, what happened to i through x?
+ Book opens with quotes from Einstein and Schweitzer with respect to the urgency of widening our circle of compassion to include ALL living things, and explicitly ALL humanity.
Product Description: America is on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions. Over 125 minutes of bonus materials, including exclusive interviews with Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan and others.
I.O.U.S.A. educates people about the very real and very dangerous financial problems our government is facing. The producers of the film pull no punches here and they don't sugar-coat it; and that was the right thing to do. The way Americans live today is essentially “living for the moment” without thinking of the importance of saving money for a rainy day; and the film goes into great, great detail highlighting that the American government does the same. I will tell you just some of the points made by this movie; although it will seem as if I've given it all away I assure you that I haven't. Continue reading “Review (Guest) DVD: I.O.U.S.A. DVD on US Bankruptcy”
Beyond 6 Stars–Could Help Destroy Strong, Gore, & IPCC
December 4, 2009
This is a preliminary review as there are no others. I will spend the week-end creating a timeline, sorting out the good guys and the bad guys, and charting the costs real and projected.
Short version: bad science, bad media, bad politics, bad finance.
I list these–and point to others at the end of this preliminary review–to make the point that this author's stellar and very complete work with very good notes is the coup de grace–the final bullet in the head of the IPCC, a mercy killing long over-due. [Disclosure: I funded the first three years of the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity that accepts the ten high-level threats to humanity for action, and places climate change within priority #3, Environmental Degradation–we also place a very high priority on clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability of effort.
I received this book in pre-publication form so as to offer a blurb for the jacket. Below is my take on this book.This book will simultaneously tease your brain, arouse your emotions, and motivate you as it probes deeply into the soul of man, society, and capitalism as the engine of Western civilization.
The author gifts us with a counter-culture manifesto that resurrects the goodness of capitalism while also connecting to the roots of humanity, of the human soul as a microcosm of the soul of society.
Be patient, the first third of this book will amuse, enlighten, & provoke, at which point it will grab you by the throat and shake your fundamental perceptions of life. The author is compelling in both a scientific sense, weaving psychology, biology, economics, and sociology together; and in an artistic sense, delivering theater of the mind, new visions, poetic turns of phrase page after page, and a massive amount of purpose-laden provocative minutia, all of which culminates in blinding flashes of insight that explain the mind-expanding role of circuses, the failure of religion, and the natural cycles of fission and fusion, splintering apart and coming together.
5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely a Core Reference, August 21, 2009
I am so very glad to see this book at least available from some sellers in second-hand form. I still have my orginal hard cover from 1976 and took it down from my military shelf to appreciate it once more. I urge the publisher to re-print this book, and I would be deeply honored to be asked to write a foreword to the next edition. Norman Dixon has made a signal contribution that will long out-live all of us.
Although I despise Amazon for pre-emptorily deleting over 350 of my shared images to get rid of 12 copies of Bush-Obama sharing a face, I think so highly of this book that I have taken the time to scan and load my own original book cover. You can find all of my uncensored work at the Public Intelligence Blog.
This is nothing less than an essential reference in the leadership arena, and particularly in the national security arena. The author is a deeply original speaker of truth to power, and his work on the characteristics of incompetence, his chart on the role of “bull,” his discussions of the reactions to criticisms, the concept of “efficiency” in the armed forces, and his examination of both the kinds of relationships and the interplay among the authoritarian personality and “group-think” are all very very important.
Most of our military officers (in the USA) have for decades forgotten that they swear an Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and instead they translate that oath into blind obedience to the chian of command, no matter how illegal, idiotic, or illogical those orders might be.
Three for Lacking an Index, Beyond Five Stars for Content
July 25, 2009
Webster Griffin Tarpley
This extraordinary work, first developed in the mid-1990's and updated recently for a second edition, would normally receive 3 stars from me for lacking an index. I know the author and I admire Progressive Press, but to put out a book of this quality in terms of content, without taking the week needed to create an index, is to me as a professional utterly unforgivable. I urge the publisher to create an index online and modify the description here at Amazon to alert readers to the availability of an index. Without an index for looking up Greenspan, Rubin, Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley, this book loses half its value.
OK, that's the end of the rant. The content of this book–given that it was written a decade before Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) was bribed by lobbyists to put 200 pages of deregulation into a bill five minutes before it was to be voted on (and all Senators voted knowing this)–is beyond five stars. This is precisely the kind of knowledge that many, not just this author, have been putting before the public without effect since at least the 1970's.
At $26 this book is a gift and I urge one and all to buy it as both an education and as a keepsake. The author, whose books on Bush, on Obama, and on 9-11 I have found to be superbly researched and ably presented, is one of the modern greats in historical fact-finding and investigative history.
Up front he lays out a five point program for overcoming the world depression, and I am pretty sure that the Goldman Sachs executive now in charge of the US Treasury has absolutely zero interest in this public intelligence. The plan:
2. Nationalize the Federal Reserve System and re-start lending and the credit system generally. [I stand with Ron Paul in calling for its elimination after an interim period of public control, I am certain the audit that is being planned will reveal high crimes and misdemeanors such that I would keep Guantanamo open just to hold the Fed and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and City-Bank executives, among others, until we reclaim their stolen wealth from the public. The author includes here zero interest loans for real physical production and construction.
3. Restart borrowing for production with a vast program of infrastructure development and science drivers for the modernization and recovery of the economy.
The author itemizes $12.8 trillion in gift money from the taxpayer to the bankers at our expense, and this is a debt that I hope we not only renounce, but follow up with a confiscation of the overseas accounts where all of our money has been converted into foreign currencies so that the bankers can literally double their money–I am not making this up–when Obama declared a bank holiday and federalizes the police in late August or early September, and the US dollar devalues to half its current value (which is in turn half its value in the early 1970's).
Most of us do not need to read this book in its entirety, especially those of us on heart medication. This is a thoughtful balanced book that will make any intelligent person with integrity ANGRY. America remains a great Nation in its people and its land, but its leadership is criminally corrupt and has committed treason against the public since at least 1974 when Peak Oil was first briefed to the Senate and Exxon/Esso and the banks persuaded the U.S. Government's political leadership to ignore the research and carry on with Empire as Usual.
The re-issuance of this book validates and vindicates the author's research and integrity, and I for one, as the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, am more than pleased to stand alongside Webster Tarpley, pledging my sacred honor to the Republic–the sovereign people of American who created the federal government as a SERVICE. The federal government is NOT in charge, Goldman Sachs and the Fed are. It's time for a non-violent revolution, and I believe that books like this need to be in circulation among the two thirds of the eligible voters planning to kick the two-party tyranny out of office in 2010.
Webster Tarpley is an American hero in the tradition of Paul Revere.