Nathan A. Allen Six Star Pre-History Ignored Until Now, July 17, 2011
This is a BARN-BURNER of a book! This book is a PhD dissertation that is being published quickly to aid the cause of liberty in 2012. The academic detail would normally make it a four-star read, but the relevance, the originality, and the appendices-both within the book as it will be published, and online-carry it to six stars. Depending on one's interest, this can be a quick read to confirm that we need a second American revolution-or a slow read to savor the loneliness, the persistence, the integrity of one man called a lunatic and a traitor for one reason only: he was twenty years ahead of his time. It is on the shoulders of James Otis that the Founding Father stood, and this author, Nathan Allen, has performed brilliantly in identifying a slice of American history here-to-fore overlooked, and in deeply investigating and then publicizing what can only be appreciated as both one man's cross to bear, and one nation's long lead-time in the gestation of liberty.
6 Star Special–Soros Out-Grows Broken System, June 24, 2011
On its own merits, without the Foreword from George Soros, this book is a solid five. With the most extraordinary Foreword, a Foreword that draws the lines of battle between a totally dysfunctional global governance and financial system of systems all lacking in integrity–where truth is not to be found–and the need for transparency, truth, and trust, the book goes into my top 10%, 6 stars and beyond.
The essay is a *major* part of the book, the first 57 pages out of just over 335. The essay is available free online and is a “must read” item for any person who wishes to be part of restoring the Republic and laying the foundation for creating a prosperous world at peace. Searching for <George Soros My Philanthropy> will lead directly to both the New York Review of Books and the GeorgeSoros.com offerings–select the latter to get the full article without subscription nonsense from the New York Review of Books.
I confess to having lost faith in George Soros–he fell for the Barack Obama Show and wasted a lot of time and money on what ends up being the Goldman Sachs Show–to the point that Goldman Sachs not only continues to own the Secretary of the Treasury, but now has installed its own man in the role of National Security Advisor. The irony does not amuse me.
This essay is phenomenal, and bears on the book at large, because Soros has finally put his finger of the sucking chest wound that I, John Bogle, William Grieder, and most recently Matt Taibbi have been sounding the alarm on: the lack of intelligence and integrity in the system of systems. Soros is halfway there; he is now outside the system looking in, and that is good news for all of us.
“I am looking for novel solutions in order to make an untidy structure manageable.”
Six Stars for Ron Paul's Consistent Constitution–50 one liners, May 10, 2011
I have read and reviewed earlier books by Ron Paul, such as The Revolution: A Manifesto and A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship. This book moves into a higher class (only 10% of the books I read and review get 6 Stars, see all my reviews in 98 categories at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog). I decided in this instance, thinking of Ron Paul as a viable Presidential candidate for the first time, to deconstruct the book down to 50 one liners. I offer these as a short form of the book, not a substitute for the real deal, but intended to help inspire more people to either buy the book, or absorb this free summary as we all try to break free of the corrupt two-party tyranny that fronts for a neo-fascist state.
Bottom line: liberty is a human condition diminished by a leviathan state.
Below: one line summary of each of the 50 chapters. See also the review by A. Maheshwari that I liked so much I cross-posted it to Phi Beta Iota for others to appreciate.
Paul's Greatest, Most Daring Book Yet A. Maheshwari April 19, 2011
Ron Paul continues the noble tradition of founders and thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, James Burnham and Patrick Buchanan in social-political conditions of the 21st Century. The book is written in lucid, vital and free flowing style without any convoluted jargon. I purchased the kindle edition and finished the book in 3 hours with several re-readings of some chapters/paragraphs.
The stage is set in contemporary America, and the intended audiences are likely the young indoctrinated subservient Americans, victims of Washington DC. This book could be the conservative bible for next two decades to effect political renewal of a tired, beaten and declining America. It deals with Paul's unique approach as a practicing Christian, a conservative libertarian and a citizen statesman. The amoral and utopian aspects of left-libertarianism are absent in this book.
Indeed the word libertarian has been mentioned only 6 times in the text. In comparison, the word moral has been mentioned a good 109 times, and “liberty” occurs 191 times. The book emphasizes the true essence of Christianity and Christ as the prince of peace, not a messenger of aggressive/deceitful secular wars.
The writing is universal in its appeal so that a person from China, India, Africa, Islamic World or Europe will naturally relate to its contents. It defines the true meaning of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the three principles of humanity. It is applicable to all human societies and aggregates, not just America. It shows the essence of conservatism and social order and extensively deals with liberty's relationship with morality, religion and ethics.
The book is tabulated in 50 chapters and covers 5 principal themes:
In the introduction the complex approach is stressed. When someone is doing a research he should look at the system as a whole one. Some definitions: Biology is the science of life, which in turn requires the definition of science and life. To avoid that the biology is defined as science of living organisms or science of living systems.
1. Theories and hypotheses.
The aim of science. The aim of science is to gain knowledge of the world. Knowledge has many forms. Science concerns only with scientific knowledge, which is expressed in singular and general propositions. Singular proposition is also called facts, whereas general propositions are referred to as hypotheses, models, rules, laws, and theories. Laws are also well-confirmed general propositions, yet they are less comprehensive than theories. Thus any general proposition within the framework of a theory may be called law. There are two kinds of laws: deterministic and probabilistic. Most of the biological laws are probabilistic.
Scientific methodology or how do we gain scientific knowledge.
As a former direct report to John Guenther, who served along the same lines for many years in Marine Corps counterintelligence in Europe and elsewhere, I have to admire what this author has done and certainly agree that it is useful and important perspective from a ground-level point of view.
I like the names, the photos, the details. HOWEVER, there are two contextual issues that are not well-represented in the book, which is a historical account.
First, the author was and remains unwitting of the fact that the US was funding the Red Brigades and creating a false terrorist threat within Italy in order to further consolidate the power of the fascist government in the post-war period. Only recently has all of this been exposed in the aftermath of the CIA renditions out of Italy, and testimony finally elicited from several participants in the earlier cover operations . In that context then, this book has to be seen as a partial unwitting account. For the tip of the iceberg, see Journal: Nato's Secret Armies (It's Not Terror if CIA Pays and Locals Do the Dirty….) at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
6 Star and Beyond–the Essence of Fuller, the Future of Humanity
November 28, 2010
I did not truly begin to understand the breadth and depth of Buckminster Fuller's thinking until I read this book as it deserves to be read, with full attention and detailed notes. This is one of those books that merits–and received from me, a Work Table of core concepts, definitions, obstacles, and solutions, posted online at Work Table [link live at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog].
Although I heard Fuller speak personally at Muhlenberg College and distinctly remember him saying that a housing foundation could support the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner, it was not until this book that I understood in detail exactly what he meant: that we are wasting 90% of what we put into buildings. I have previously read and reviewed Critical Path as well as Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and it is my great privilege to know Medard Gabel, co-creator of the analog World Brain and sole creator of the new digital EarthGame (in concept pending funding).
CORE POINT: True wealth is cosmic energy and the creation of means to deliver to humanity unlimited free energy. Among many other things this creates the possibility of applying energy to create self-contained homes that are lightweight, fully self-contained in water and sewage, and totally green.
CORE CONCEPT: Capitalism and democracy have been perverted by money–those who manage money manage those who manage politics, and they both concentrate on optimizing the false God of money, an abstract concept hardly worth its paper representation, while ignoring–even subverting–the possibility of achieving infinite cosmic wealth on behalf of all of humanity.
CORE CONCEPT: Predatory capitalism on the one hand, and controlled socialism on the other, are both extremes and both fail to meet the needs as well as the possibilities of humanity. Fullerism is at root a non-zero equation.
PERSONAL POINT: This book answers the question I could not answer when a senior executive asked me “what do you do?” Now I know. I am a Comprehensive Global Architect whose objective is Prime Design: From Waste to Wealth (the title of my next book, inspired by this core reading from Buckminster Fuller). All my prior works, including my most recent, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty, have been a preamble to what I now recognize is my life's work…I will try to earn another 25 years (I am 58, 58 + 25 is 83 — my family history suggests I will make it.). I am still looking for a country or global organization that wants to profit from doing this.
A few definitions up front:
QUOTE (142): WEALTH [is] the measurable degree of forwardly organized environmental control, in terms of quickly convertible energy, capacities and performance ratioed system capabilities, per capita, per diem.
Advertising destroyed public trust by pre-empting “industrial design” as code for airbrushing superficial changes to move products to market, rather than seeking integral improvements that could be shared with the consumer.
Design-improved livingry increases wealth.
Synergy is the delta between the sum of the parts and their anticipatable outcomes, and the actual outcome not anticipated.
CORE CONCEPTS
Architects deal with the externalities of man.
“At rest” science and understanding (Newton's paradigm) have been replaced by “constant change” (Einstein's paradigm).
Bad housing breeds bad humanity and bad science–the time/energy costs and the materials costs are too high, housing is the socio-economic “runt” of all the professions.
Challenge is IRREDUCIBLE.
Design is innovative re-assembly that adds value.
Design-preventable includes illumination and prevention of corrupt exploitation of materials for inefficient or unjustifiable applications.
Energy mass, energy radiation, energy gravitation (E3) times Intellect (E3I)
Good design would reduce the per capita consumption of building materials from nine tons per person to one ton per person [this is in the developed world–these reductions would allow the extension of the lower tonnage home designs to nine times more people and more–with mass consumption come mass efficiencies.]
Industry is *supposed to be* the organization and application of collective knowledge and action that produces synergy (added value) over the sum of the parts in isolation.
Individual freedom is ESSENTIAL to the expansion of diversity needed to enable collectives to see the whole.
Total Thinking is the intelligent acquisition, ingestion, processing, and exploitation of all relevant information in order to produce efficiencies and effects beneficial to the mission objective.
Wealth is intellect plus energy combined to create capacity [with more free energy making more refined capacity possible].
Worldwide commonwealth credit is both needed and achievable to provide mass-produced sustainable housing for all. That in turn frees up the five billion poor to create “infinite wealth” by combining their intellect with infinite free energy to advance civilization.
OBSTACLES to advancing humanity include:
Advertising in place of genuine progress [should not be a tax-deductible expense in my own view]
“Credit” fueled the perpetuation and expansion of rotten housing at great cost.
Housing is the works of design, the worst of materials, and the worst of applied engineering
Housing as the sucking chest wound in economics [mortgages should not be tax-deductible, this both encourages waste of materials on housing, but also enables the growth of financial fraud]
Managers lack the over-all philosophical discernment to be effective at seeing the whole and building to the whole.
Politics is VERY wasteful, perpetuating inefficient industries.
Specializations are attracting the most gifted, and this leaves the less gifted dealing with integration if they think about it at all. [I always thought this was what business and public administration programs were supposed to do, but having graduated from such a program realize they do not.]
A HANDFUL OF QUOTES
p. 25 “My envisioned transcendental world design plan would be inherently nonpolitical, because it would be utterly independent of any need for authority beyond that to-self-by-self for initiation of its study and development.”
p. 95 In relation to the waste of heavy materials in housing, “…that in this war crisis it is technically treason to allow ourselves to be short sixty-five thousand freight cars weighing fifty tons of steel each, which shortage is equivalent to the number of cars required exclusively to transport the solid foundation and flooring materials unscientifically employed as frozen compression elements to structurally support the tiny weights of one-tenth-of-a-ton load of men who comprise the negligible working loads of housing, or to support machinery from below that could better be suspended, etc.”
p. 246 “The efficiency of the industrial equation is directly proportional to the numbers consuming.” [In other words, capitalism focused on the needs of the one billion rich is long overdue for a redirection of focus to the needs of the five billion poor.]
p.247 “Serve one hundred per cent will involve a world design revolution, not just design of end-products, but of the comprehensive industrial network equations including world-around-livingry-service systems, at regenerative occupancy rentals, mutually installed in anticipatory facilitation of total world enjoyment of individually respected total man.”
p. 249 “Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet, who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his coordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.”
SOLUTIONS
Energy investments will define the future.
Need a world housing industry. We do NOT need water, sewer, and electrical infrastructure. Distributed housing and small cities connected by high-speed rail should be the norm.
Harvesting of scrap is the next needed Manhattan Project/Marshall Plan.
Six Star Pre-History Ignored Until Now, July 17, 2011
