5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond 5 Stars, Quick & Dirty Bright Light of Convergence,March 20, 2012
This book was brought to my attention by Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation and chief editor of its wiki. I follow him through Scoop.it and act instantly on his suggestions.
The ideas in this book are not new. Stewart Brand (mispelled in the index) and Paul Hawkins / Lovins were 40 years ahead of us all on co-existence, then Howard Rheingold, then Kevin Kelly and Tom Atlee, and finally J. F. Rischard and myself among many others. I link to relevant books by them below. The foundation for this book is C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, perhaps combined with Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor's The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth –the intersection of the five billion at the bottom having four times the aggregate annual income of the billion at the top, and five times the brainpower and entrepreneurial energy, is a convergence point.
Where the author gets such high marks from me is in the timing and the melding. If the rest of us have been piling up kindling ever so slowly, trying to spark a fire the hard way, one spark at a time, this author and this book are an entire matchbox cast into the middle of the tinder.
This book provides readers with the fundamentals of the Constitution by analyzing the legitimate basis for government, and the circumstances that lead to its ratification. Mr. Badnarik starts with fundamentals, identifying the difference between rights and privileges. He discusses the critical- and needed- distinction between republican and democratic systems of government, arguing that freedom can survive in America only if we return to our republican roots. He also illustrates the forgotten tenets of federalism and states' rights, arguing that federal usurpation of state power has accelerated the loss of our freedoms. The author then provides a detailed explication of the true meaning of major constitutional provisions and amendments.He does an excellent job of demystifying our founding document, demonstrating that ordinary Americans can and should understand the Constitution and how it applies to their lives.
Michael was born in Hammond, Indiana, and attended Indiana University in Bloomington. A computer programmer and technical trainer who lives in Austin, Texas, Michael was nominated in May, 2004 as the Libertarian Party's Presidential Candidate for the November national election.
Phi Beta Iota: Out of print at this time, used copies are available at outrageous prices. We are working on getting the author connected to CreateSpace for producing the book on demand at a reasonable right.
5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Five Stars-A Liberating / Empowering Book,December 6, 2011
1. On first impressions the book is a major slam. The author and publisher have collected some of the most serious testimonials possible–better than any I have seen on a book of this type.
2. Ten chapters, each chapter at least five segments, means over 50 “snapshots, each easy to digest–my only disappointment with this book is that it fails to provide maps at key points. My favorite book in this regard is Nelson's Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts, 3rd Edition.
3. I cannot do this book justice. The first and most positive impression I get halfway through the book is that this is a Cliff Note's for smart busy people, boiling down history, philosophy, and putting everything in a sensible context. I dismissed the religion requirement in college, now I am finding that religion is “core” to everything I encounter and if I had to do it over again, would take multiple religion courses as part of my liberal arts education. Certainly this book is a phenomenal offering for any student of any age, as well as adult continuing education.
4. Put bluntly, this book skewers the Zionist hypocrites by name, by government, by time period, by deceptive “offering.” This is not a book that does the same for the Palestinians, I certainly would like to see such a book that could also in passing skewer the Arab dictators as well as the European “enablers” that have made it possible for so much genocide and so many other atrocities to occur for so long in Palestine.
5. The book ends with six strategies, a deeply spiritual and totally practical final chapter on values and emancipation, a section on questions and answers, and an appendix on resources for peace.
6. What I had NOT expected at all, was the RADICAL itemization of ideas from the Bible that are not radical as much as they are FUNDAMENTAL, and including to my enormous surprise, both the seventh year sabatical with debt forgiveness, and the fifty year jubilee with total debt forgiveness across the board. These two–and everything else about this book–make it as timely as one could wish for dealing with the global financial crisis that boils down to corrupt banks eating corrupt governments.
7. I have to read this book again. Being nagged (comment below) led me to rush this out, mostly to honor the author and the spirit of the ideas in this book, but this review is shamefully inadequate–I need to do for this book what I did for Daniel Elsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, create a table with key points, keywords, do a sort, and then write a summary. I fear I will not get to that anytime soon, so this is my best for now.
Other books I have reviewed and recommend along with this one:
2. What characterizes all books with sensible implementable solutions is one word: INTEGRITY. When politics, intelligence, or commerce lose their integrity, they become corrupt, and as I wrote in my January 2011 letter to The Most Holy Father, “corruption in the secular world is an obstacle to spiritual harmony” and later in the letter, “we need a faith-based global intelligence exchange.” To my enormous surprise, many months later the Vatican pumped out a declaration along these lines (search for Vatican, Ethics, & Truth).
3. There are in my view three “ground-zeros” today for anyone contemplating how to create a prosperous world at peace. The first is Palestine (remember Gandhi: “Palestine is to the Palestinians as France is to the French,”) and what has become an Israeli Zionist plague of genocide and other atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinian people against the wishes of moderate ethical Jews and all others who wish to see a prosperous safe Israel that is not a caricature of Nazi Germany in how it treats “the other.” The second is the global financial system that the Rothchilds and Goldman Sachs [and the Chinese-Indonesian gold masters] have managed to dominate to the point of its–and our–near-death experience. I am a huge fan of Truth & Reconciliation and seek no retrospective vengeance, but it is time for the Rothchilds and Goldman Sachs to go out of business and be absent from the affairs of men. The third is water. I have reviewed twelve books on water here at Amazon and for UNESCO, any my essay containing all reviews can be found by searching for Reference: WATER-Soul of the Earth, Mirror of Our Collective Souls.
I am honored that Eva Waskell has entrusted me to present The Privatization of Our Democracy, a work that I regard as her Profile in Courage. For 25 years she has labored to correct what is possibly the most significant public policy failure of the computer age—the privatization of vote counting carried out under the rationale that computers are simply automatic calculators that can tabulate votes more cost effectively than old analogue machines. I have known her for 19 of those years.
. . . . . .
People think they know that something is wrong with the way elections are conducted in this country. They are correct. There is. But readers only now will get access to a full history of the abuse of public trust by the elected politicians of the United States of America. That’s a large claim to make, but see for yourself.
Click on Image to Enlarge
I believe that there are multiple publications here in what Eva has to say. The scholarly monograph. An Elections for Dummies paperback. A paperback of humorous tabby cat photos where the kitties are running elections. Eva is a national treasure and I am proud to be able to use the Internet to make her story known. Fortunately, there are many, many public spirited citizens left.
5.0 out of 5 stars SIX STAR #OWS Primer Wow Wow Wow,October 20, 2011
I bought this book in October 2010 because I was getting to know both Mitch Ratcliff and Jon Lebkowsky better, but at first pass through it did not really draw me in. Then OccupyWallStreet happened. I read the book on the flight from the US to Spain where I am talking about commercial intelligence and integrity in the messed up new world, and this time around, the book grabbed me.
Because #OWS has brought to life the ideas the co-editors and various contributing authors understood well before 2004 and articulated in 2004, now I can absorb this book as much more meaningful and inspirational. Anyone associated with OccupyWallStreet in any way from direct to indirect, should read this book. I am donating my copy to the George Mason University Library as I do all my new books (they took over my entire library when I joined the UN back in 2010).
5.0 out of 5 stars Six Stars & Beyond–Open Heart Surgury on a Corrupt Ignorant Government,September 29, 2011
FINAL REVIEW
The author himself begins the book with a reference to Dispatches (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) followed by Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition, to which I would add A Rumor of War. This is a great book, an important book, and I salute the Department of State people with integrity that approved it for publication, while scorning the seventh floor craven autocrats that have bullied the author for telling the truth. This book is the real deal, and I have multiple notes along the lines of gifted writing, humble *and* erudite, quiet humor, ample factual detail, gonzo-gifted prose, an eye for compelling detail, *absorbing,* a catalog of absurdities and how not to occupy a country.
Late in my notes I write “Reality so rich it stuns. A time capsule, priceless deep insights into occupation at its worst.”
And also write down an alternative subtitle: “The Zen of Government Idiocy Squared.”
This is a book, from a single vantage point, of the specifics of “pervasive waste and inefficiency, mistaken judments, flawed policies, and structural weakness.” Speaking of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), the author says “We were the ones who famously helped past together feathers year after year, hoping for a duck.”
5.0 out of 5 stars Six Stars & Beyond–Open Heart Surgury on a Corrupt Ignorant Government,September 29, 2011