Review: Twilight of the Elites – America After Meritocracy

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Christopher Hayes

4.0 out of 5 stars Strongest on Collapse Part, Very Weak on What Next…,July 1, 2012

This is one of two books I read on the plane back to DC from Seattle, the other was Van Jones' Rebuild the Dream

This is a light book with a poor bibliography, more of an essay turned into a book than a book proper. The author focuses on the “near total collapse of every pillar institution of our society.” Yes, this is not news. Many of us have been saying this for some time, my own 2008 version is easily found by looking for < Paradigms of Failure >, free online.

The author loses one star for being so oblivious to the reality of 9/11 such as any informed citizen can determine (see the 30+ Amazon reviews easily found as a group at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog).

He touches on three themes generally, in a useful juxtaposition:

1) The ignorance of the elites

2) The end of upward mobility in the US economy

3) The evaporation of trust, the collapse of trust

While I find his essay interesting, I am continuously disappointed by the narrowness of his reading. Matt Taibbi's brilliant Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, a work I consider seminal and of lasting value to future generations, is not noticed by this author.

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2012/06/24

Review (Guest): The Open Source Everything Manifesto – Transparency, Truth & Trust

#OSE Open Source Everything, 5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Affairs, Civil Society, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Electoral Reform USA, Environment (Solutions), Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Manifesto Extracts, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Privacy, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secession & Nullification, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Robert David Steele

PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!,June 24, 2012

B. Tweed DeLions “B.T.”

If there's a single Founding Father of the Open Source movement, Robert D. Steele is it. Everyone else has been playing catchup. And if you don't know what the Open Source revolution is, you need to read this book. You don't even need to know why! You need to buy it, read it, and then you'll *know* why. No other book on Open Source can open your eyes the way this one can. That's because there's no potential use of Open Source intelligence that Steele hasn't anticipated. Collective Intelligence is coming! It's an unstoppable force. And it will change everything. So if you like to know about things like that in advance, you need to buy this book.

The information age that was created by personal computers was just a kiddie car with a squeaky horn. By comparison, the open source revolution is a freight train. Its potential to change your world is orders of magnitude greater. This is not hyperbole. In fact superlatives can't begin to express the ground-shaking potential of this next wave of human evolution.

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2012/06/162012/06/16

Review (Guest): Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Stephen Goldstein (Author)

5 Stars, often hilarious June 15, 2012

By David Swanson

The Florida Sun Sentinel has for many years been rather unique, as a corporate newspaper with a regular columnist who's actually good, and I don't mean just good for the context, but actually worth reading even if the masses of South Florida weren't reading along. Happily, they are.

Stephen L. Goldstein has just published a book, also worth reading, called Atlas Drugged (Ayn Rand Be Damned!) It's fiction, often hilarious fiction, aimed at debunking the notion that Ayn Randian “free-market” trickle-down crapitalism can coexist with basic human decency. “This is a work of fiction,” says the back cover. “But any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional. The names have been changed but, hopefully, not enough to protect the guilty.”

In fact, while the book takes rightwingerism to an extreme, it blends in plenty of elements from reality. Imagine the most outlandish carrying of so-called conservatism to its logical conclusion, and abandoning New Orleans to a hurricane, or watching a fire department stand by while a house burns (because the owner didn't pay the proper fees) fits right in.

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2012/06/082012/06/08

Review (Guest): Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Civil Society, Complexity & Catastrophe, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Impeachment & Treason, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

The Spread of Sacrifice Zones

By David Swanson

Chris Hedge's and Joe Sacco's new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, is a treasure. Hedges wrote the plain text. Sacco produced the text-heavy cartoon sections and other illustrations, which even I — not a big fan of cartoon books — found to enrich this book enormously.

Hedges and Sacco visit Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to examine the misery of the Native Americans who remain there. It's nice to think that we've corrected our crimes through political correctness, and yet they continue uninterrupted — unconscionably, intolerably, tragically. Here the human stories are told, and told by those affected and by those resisting and struggling to set things right. Ironically, the victims of the United States' first imperial slaughters are now disproportionately suffering the pain common to veterans of recent U.S. wars. That same pattern of widespread military experience is found in each of three other sections of the book as well, while other communities in this country have virtually no participation in the military.

Hedges and Sacco go to Camden, New Jersey, to examine the world of impoverished and ghettoized African Americans, whose lives have worsened by many measures over the past generation, despite the successes of the civil rights movement. Poor whites and others figure into the story as well, with special attention to those struggling to improve the world, whether on a small or large scale. Michael Doyle's voice is one of those from Camden residents that tell the story of decline and devastation that city has experienced:

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2012/06/062012/06/06

Review (Guest): Ralph Peters on The Open Source Everything Manifesto – Transparency, Truth & Trust

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Diplomacy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Robert David Steele

Brave, provocative and valuable June 6, 2012

By Ralph H. Peters

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Read this compact book in an evening–and think about it for a year. Robert Steele long as been one of our most interesting and challenging thinkers (although his writing is clear–a reflection of clear thought), and this book is a cri de couer, his “Give me liberty, or give me death!” demand that our government, our system and our citizenry rethink the far from benevolent disorder into which we have lured ourselves.

My review cannot do justice to the richness of thought compressed in this book. Nor do I agree with every proposition the author raises–that's not the point, which is to spur us to liberated, creative thought. But I very strongly recommend this book to every citizen, no matter his or her political hue, who is unafraid of facing the future and who dares to embrace change.

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2012/06/062012/06/06

Review: How Wall Street Fleeces America – Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Impeachment & Treason, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

cover how wall street fleeces america — Amazon Page

Stephen Lendman

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star (My Top 10%) Primer for Every Citizen,June 6, 2012

I've had this book in my stack of “to be read” books for some time now, and now that I have read it, I deeply regret not getting to it sooner. Although I have read and reviewed a number of vital serious books in this field, and list ten of them below, I have to say this is easily the single best book of the lot, and I put it into 6 stars and beyond — out of the 1,800 plus books I have reviewed at Amazon, fewer than 10% get this rating.

Perhaps because I had already read the ten books below, I was absolutely floored by the clarity, organization, precision, simplicity, intelligence, and general integrity of this book and its author. Please do take advantage of the Look Inside the Book feature that Amazon offers (click on book cover above). In seventeen chapters, the author has brought to the public a work of elegant explosive yet balanced and measured, FACTS with CONTEXT.

If you read only one book on the destruction of the US economy, the destruction of the US Republic, the destruction of legitimate governance in the USA, this is the one book I recommend. It should not only be read, but also shared. As I go back over the table of contents thinking about what to highlight (I no longer mark up books now that I donate them all as I finish reading them), I am just blown away by the medticulous, sensible, systematic, intuitively coherent manner in which the author starts with the fraud and treason of the Federal Reserve (neither Federal nor a reserve), and ends with his prescription for public banking that I heartily respect.

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2012/06/032012/06/04

Review: Honeycomb Kids – Big Picture Parenting

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atlases & State of the World, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Education (General), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Public Administration, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Anna M. Campbell

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, Endearing, Inspiring, Useful, Rooted in Reality, June 3, 2012

The author asked me if I would review this book, and sent me a PDF version. I've just gone through it and it earns a solid five. If you have any doubts, use Amazon's great Look Inside the Book feature, and read the specifics in the Table of Contents.

It was the table of contents that first impressed me. I've been an intelligence professional most of my life, and in the process of getting to 60 years of age, have developed four strategic analytic models that remains best in class today. I also read a lot — across 98 non-fiction categories, with the last 1,800+ books reviewed here at Amazon (and accessible by category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog).

I say all of that by way of saying that the author's selection and articulation of the core issues facing humanity — immediately followed by the author's even more inspired outlining of key values, key behaviors, key perspectives — all with citations interspersed and talking points for parents or mentors or teachers and children — impressed me enormously.

Over 30 books are offered as recommended reading, all of them relevant, one in particular catching my eye: The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature.

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