Review: Leadership Lessons of Jesus

5 Star, Leadership, Religion & Politics of Religion
Jesus Leader
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5.0 out of 5 stars Worth keeping in the briefcase

September 7, 2007

Bob Briner

I normally shy away from the platitudes and punditry of self-help and business “rules, tools, & tips”, but I saw this book in the uniform sales shop that serves the US Special Operations Command,right next to War of the Flea: The Classic Study of Guerrilla Warfare, and I could not resist.

This little volume will join The Astonished Universe, a French-English side by side poetry book that celebrates life, in my travel briefcase.

I write this sitting by the window of an old estate in Provance, France, while attending a retreat with four others active in the Collective Intelligence movement. I bought it primarily because it was on sale in the bookstore that serves the U.S. Special Operations Command.

Written by a sports writer and producer in partnership with a pastor, it provides the reader with 52 segments, each consisting of a quotation from scripture, and then a two page double-spaced discussion. I found this book over-all to be thoughtful and practical and not at all “preachy.”

The authors immediately drew me in, non-practicing believer that I am, by stating up front that this little guide was a means of discovering and/or reintroducing Jesus to your life. That did it for me, I'm ready.

The book opens with an emphasis on truth as the most important element of both faith and performance, then surprised me by emphasizing that how a leader is perceived is something the leader can never hear too much of.

The authors are at one with Peter Drucker is saying that the best lives are those in which the person is deeply enmeshed in a “calling” and striving to please and serve God while being faithful to their own talents and visions, accountable to others, but never subservient to others.

They distinguish between management, which pays people to follow orders, and leadership, which inspires others to work selflessly in harmony with others. They emphasize that leadership is personal, not at all removed or elitist. One segment stresses the importance of breaking bread with those you seek to lead. At this retreat that I am on, the food–vegetarian and the basics–bread, oil, fruit–is being treated as a spiritual celebration in its own right, so I would add that it is not just breaking bread, but doing so in communion with the Earth that gave us the food, and with one another who seek to save the Earth for future generations.

Among the many bullets that I noted:

* Leaders are disciplined in time management
* Leaders use prayer as reflection
* Leaders are teachers, and can teach under all circumstances including hostile
* Enduring leaders are compassionate
* Diversity is good for team building
* Core values are enduring, but in practice adaptation is essential
* Speak to the masses but nurture an inner core of future leaders
* Understand the importance of strategic withdrawals and pauses
* Setting for major announcements or intense dialogs are important–airport hotels are pedestrian, retreats with memorable environments enhance and nurture the intentions and goals
* Chapter 23 was special for me, after 20 years of dealing with opponents who refused to acknowledge the importance of open sources of information that could be shared: the chapter tells us that visionaries *will* be considered lunatic, even within their own families. This is precisely what happened to me in 1992 when I published an article in Whole Earth Review on the need to create a new national intelligence paradigm that was ethical, ecological, evolutionary, and based on open sources of information instead of stolen secrets. The chapter tells us that the price of leadership (whether direct, of men, or indirect, of ideas) is the willingness to bear with persistent pain and rejection in the face of disbelief and constant attack.
* In a separate chapter, the authors tell us that many will know *of* the leader, but very few will really know who the leader truly is.
* Expect to be unappreciated, but avoid sharing too much too soon.
* Know when to move on, and prepare your successors, encouraging them to move into the world “two by two” so they can reinforce one another and learn from one another.

The book ends with the observation that to be strong is to be in faith, and that in praising God, we should be all we can be within his larger framework.

There are many other lessons and anecdotes in this volume, and I recommend it highly.

Other leadership books I have read and reviewed:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization
The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
Leading Minds: An Anatomy Of Leadership
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

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Review DVD: March Or Die

5 Star, Reviews (DVD Only), War & Face of Battle
DVD March Die
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5.0 out of 5 stars Military Honor and Cultural Understanding in Face of Political Treachery

September 7, 2007

Gene Hackman

This is one of the movies I turn to when I am in dispair over the nakedly amoral and utterly treasonous behavior of Dick Cheney.   Gene Hackman excels in this movie made very early in his career, as an honorable Foreign Legion officer whose men respect him, an officer given what today we would recognize as an illegal order, to go into Morocco and steal antiquities.

The end result is that the mission unites the Arab tribes, something no Arab leader could every have done on their own. I am reminded of how the lies and misbehavior of the Cheney-Bush Administration have united the Islamic tribes while emboldening transnational criminal gangs and indigenous poor who now see that the global class war, corruption, dictators that we love (42 out of 44 anyway), are all imperial, evil, and not at all worthy of public support.

Other inspiring military-related movies in my collection:
Lawrence of Arabia (Single Disc Edition)
The Last Samurai [Blu-ray]
We Were Soldiers
Braveheart
The Patriot (Special Edition)
A Man Called Horse
Dances with Wolves (Full Screen Theatrical Edition)
U-571 (Collector's Edition)

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Review: The Infernal Machine–A History of Terrorism

5 Star, Electoral Reform USA, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Terrorism & Jihad, Truth & Reconciliation
Infernal Machine
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5.0 out of 5 stars State Terrorism Vastly Worse, Individual Terrorism Logical

September 6, 2007

Matthew Carr

This is a superb book that should be read in conjunction with Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Terrorism is nothing more nor less than individual and small group asymmetric violence that breaks the state's monopoly on violence.

THe author is to be commended for stating in blunt and ably-documented terms that terrorism is a logical asymmetric response and it is not senseless nor cowardly but rather coherent and calculated.

I share the author's view that most Western analysts of terrorism are witness, uninformed, and devoid of historical, cultural, or contextual analytic skills and knowledge. Most on the right, including the Zionists, push their ideological beliefs rather than the empirical evidence. As the author notes, Israel has genocided the Palestinians and out-terrorized their opponents time and again (while also attacking the USS Liberty, a war crime that will never be forgotten by our men and women in uniform).

There are other books that have documents the use by the extreme right of fake leftist terrorist actions that are actually extreme right and fascist actions intended to increase the totalitarian and fascist nature of the state. 9-11 certainly enabled Dick Cheney to do that. See American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.

In the author's view, the CIA created the conditions for the Islamic jihad with its over-turning of the Iranian election results and restoration of the hated Shah to the throne–as we learn in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, CIA has been all too fond of dictators and secret police as their proxies; its presence in Saudi Arabia (ably covered by Robert Baer in Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, and of course providing billions in aid (see Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times that the Pakistani's used to create jihad with close ties to Afghan drugs, guns, and global logistics.

The author makes three key points in his conclusion:

1) USG ignores and does not publicize the thousands of acts of civil dissent, including hundreds (as many as 900) bombs a year across America;

2) The government consistently lies to the public and covers up larger group anger by claiming that major incidents are “a lone wolf” operation. This has since been proven untrue for the JFK assassination (see Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History and A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, And the Case That Should Have Changed History, and in the Oklahoma City bombing and most certainly in the 9-11 case where CHeney, Gulliani, and Silverstein and Rumsfeld are clearly more culpable than Bin Laden or the Pakistanis for the bulk of the deats (see Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory among many other books and DVDs.}

The author ends by calling the US Government, essential, a persistent liar, with hollow propaganda and specious claims that–in combination with the destruction of civil liberties–do vastly more damage to the national fabric than any small band of terrorists might. As one reviewer notes, what 19 alleged terrorists have done is nothing compared to the state terror that Bush-Cheney have unleashed on Iraq, Iran, around the world in secret renditions and secret torture, and of course here at home, where a “state of fear” and grotesque abuses of executive privilege are used to avoid justice and liberty for all, reducing both dignity and accountability.

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Review: Someone Would Have Talked–The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History

5 Star, Crime (Government), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

 

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5.0 out of 5 stars Superb History, Highly Relevant to 9/11 and Lies by Cheney & Other Neocons

September 5, 2007

Larry Hancock

EDIT of 7 Oct 09:  MUST READ Review: JFK and the Unspeakable–Why He Died & Why It Matters

I've read one other book that led me to conclude that I had to read this one, both in relation to what is now known about the Warren Commission Report. I consider these important because precisely the same kind of cover-up happened with the 9-11 Commission, and I strongly believe that Dick Cheney should be impeached and then indicted along with Rudy Gulliani and Larry Silverstein and Donald Rumsfeld for the murder of thousands by controlled demolitions and a missile into the Pentagon that destroyed all the computers needed to understand the missing 2.3 trillion that Donald Rumsfeld was being grilled on by Congresswoman McKinney on 10 September.

This is a phenomenal piece of work that makes superb use of social network analysis (who knows who) to connect the dots.

The bottom line: Kennedy was killed by Cuban exiles who set Oswald up as a patsy. Oswald was at his usual lunchroom place in the library where he had reason to be, and the Chief of Police of Dallas is on record as saying they could never connect Oswald to either the window from which the shots were a llegedly fired, or the gun that was claimed to be the assassination weapon. The first officer to enter the building minutes after the shooting placed Osxwald at his usual place in the lunchroom, and Oswald tested negative for gunpowder residue.

Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City, including a staged call to the KGB specialist in assassination, and other trails were left with the intent of proving that Castro had Kennedy assassinated, and hoping to both punish Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs betrayal and for cracking down on Cuban exile missions at the same time that he was authorizing 13 sabotage missions to Cuba.

The evidence is compelling. Robert Kennedy was worried about Castro retaliating against him and his brother. It is now clear that CIA training of Cubans to assassinate Castro was in fact turned against Kennedy.

Three CIA employees are featured: David Philipps who specialized in the big lie; E. Howard Hunt, and David Morales, Operations Chief of JMWAVE under Ted Shackley.

The conspiracy to point the finger at Castro failed, but the true assasins were allowed to go undiscovered because Lyndon Johnson and the Presidents physician began am immediate cover-up, as did the FBI, CIA, and the Secret Service.

The book is compelling in demonstrating that ample warnings had been received by the Secret Service, to the point that the President was personally briefed by Bobby Kennedy, but JFK went ot his death on his own volition–he blew off the warnings.

The cover-ups by the three agencies bear a stricking resemblance to the cover-up of the Oklahmoa City bombing, where unexploded thermite bombs were found on some pillars, and the “loner” theory simply does not stand up. Similarly, Cheney, Gulliani, and Silverstein pre-arranged for the scooping and dumping of the evidence of controlled demolitions from 9-11, and Rumsfeld covered up the fact that a missile, not an airplane was targetted on the Pentagon by our own treasoous officers willing to obey an illegal order and murder their own for the Zionist-NeoCon cause, while also destroying the computers holding evidence of where the “lost 2.3 trillion dollars had gone.

The exiles boasted privately of having been promised additional new funding by the mafia, including the Jewish mafia with casino interests in Cuba, provided they took care of Kennedy and incited an invasion of Cuba.

It is not clear from the book if other US leaders sanctioned the killing. I am inclined to think not. Hoover had all the blackmail material he needed to keep his job. Johnson does not come into the picture until after t he fact, when it became clear that if Bobby Baker talked, Johnson would go to jail for blatant contacts with organized crime and for blatant use of his office to obtain bribes from military-industrial corporations.

In this book Ruby is a patsy paid to murder Oswald when Oswald is arrested and unable to make the theater meeting where he would probably have been subdued and transported to Cuba or Mexico to die under circumstances incriminating Castro. Ruby was probably told he would be freed or pardoned, and money was his primary motivation.

A series of key witnesses who were willing to talk were murdered, and Johnson personally immunized FBI agent Regis Kennedy, Oswald's handler, to keep him from talking.

Admiral Burkley, JFK's personal physician, handicapped and stopped most of the atopsy process, and concealed and manipulated evidence to support the lone gunman theory. The Navy hospital staff received a gag order similar to the one given the crew of the USS Liberty after they were deliberatedly attacked by Israel and many of them murdered by our so-called ally.

There are several take-away bottom lines relevant to today, as Dick Cheney seeks to attack Iran in the same illegal way he ordered the attack on Iraq using lies and his secret authority:

1) We cannot trust our elected politicians. They lie to us.

2) We cannot trust the FBI, CIA, or Secret Service. They lie to us.

3) We cannot trust government commissions, neither executive nor legislative, they are exercises in deception and lie to us.

The author is meticulous is documenting the long list of unsung heros whose personal research has over time brought out the truth. Similarly, I am quite certain that within five years Cheney, all the neocons, Gulliani, and Silverstein will be meticulously impeached and indicted and covicted in the public eye. They may escape to Dubai, but the truth will be known.

The book documents Johnson's offer of a $1 million bribe to Bobby Baker to keep quiet and allow the investigation to go down the path that Johnson orchestrated, of a Warren Commission brow-beaten into validating an FBI conclusion that was known to be false by all conceerned.

The books comes with great note and appendices. The author has made superb use of telephone records, diaries, and known social and professional connections. The only thing I missed from this was a two page diagram of the network as it is described.

The book is also exceptional for clearly identifying additional paths for further investigation.

I put the book down with the strong feeling that We the People need to reject every sitting member of Congress and every current candidate for President. We need to elect a transpartisan Executive team with a Cabinet announced beforehand that also publishes a balanced sustainable budget before election day, and we need to demand that every piece of legilsation henceforth be published in full one week prior to its being voted on, with no secret earmarks. The military-industrial complex is not our enemy–they are simply doing what they have been incentivized to do. Our enemy is the complete corruption of the Democratic and Republican parties, the complete corruption of our election system, and the lack of transparency on how all taxpayer funds are spent. We can fix this. A good start would be the redirection of half the Pentagon budget toward waging peace, ending our ties with all 42 of the dictators Dick Cheney embraces with such fervor, and the elimination of two thirds of all existing secret programs, using the funds instead to stand up a Multinational Information Sharing Activity that supports stabilization, reconstruction, and peacekeeping everywhere, and completely free connectivity for the five billion poor to a global network of 100 million volunteer tutors who can teach the five billion “one cell call at a time.”

Some other books I recommend that tie this one to today's events and the pattern of lies, lies, and more lies:
A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, And the Case That Should Have Changed History
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)

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Review: Auras–See Them in Only 60 seconds

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ
Auras
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars This Author Sees the Side of Knowledge I Do Not…

September 3, 2007

Mark Smith

This book is off the beaten track for me, but came to me at a very good time, when I am exploring collective intelligence and group consciousness, and wisdom-driven communities of practice.

I have met the author, and consider him to be an extraordinary human being, completely credible. I consider his insights into the voice that is not a voice, into the utility of integrated prayer, touch therapy and bio-energy feedback and therapy to be extremely valuable complements to my area of strength, reality-based decision support.

I totally buy-in to the author's core concept that auras are the core of the human mind and spirit, and that we have lost the ability to use that form of feedback, communication, and hoarmonization.

The book recommended daily self-examination of ones own aura, and documents how to see your own aura and those of others. I consider it an important work relevant to alternative and natural healing, to channeled bio-energy, and to creating propserous and peaceful communities across the Earth.

The author really got my attention when he told me that Amazon has now put everyone within ONE degree of separation, instead of the more traditional six to seven degrees of separation that were characteristic of the industrial era and anolog communications. I continue to labor to get Amazon to officially form ExpertWiki for every topic for which they have expert authors, and to also help stimulate the emergence of localized Wisdom Councils among readers known to read in the areas of the ten high-level threats to humanity, perhaps using MoveOn.org's OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) ground that is moribund at this time.

This is an easy to read book, and similarly to the “no lose” proposition that one should believe in God, I believe that one should get in touch with their own aura and the auras of others.

Other material of possible interest:
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
The Lessons of History
The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Tao of Abundance: Eight Ancient Principles for Living Abundantly in the 21st Century (Arkana)

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Review: The Power of Israel in the United States

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics
Israel Power
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars 80% on Target

September 3, 2007

James Petras

This book is a perfect counter-point to They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby. I review that book also, and recommend both books to every American, just as I recommend the books below that document how the Saudis have bought the Bush Family and the Republican and Democratic parties, neither of which represents We the People.

I would normally remmove one star because the author is a bit over the top in blaming everything on the Zionists and the Neo-Conservative servants, but I went with five stars to offset the mindless rapid Zionists (I hold moderate Jews in total respect). The same week that WIRED Magazine had a cover story on a new two way sustainable energy grid, Dick Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon. Iraq happened because Dick Cheney wanted it to happen, the Zionists provided the lies, and the Congress and the media both were intimidated into ignoring General Tony Zinn, General Shinseki, and others including myself, who said quite clearly that this was an insanely bad thing to do with an incalculably high cost.

Over-all this is an extremely welll-researched, well-written presentation of fourteen chapters that are logical and thoughtful and absolutely meritorious of full consideration.

I was very surprised to read, very carefully, two chapters dissecting two of my personal heros, Sy Hersh and Noam Chomsky, and must confess that the author provoked in me thoughtful concern and reflection. I trust Sy and Noam, but the author is so well-organized that he causes me to realize that everybody has multiple levels of agenda, and that we must all take greater care in discriminating our sources of information.

Congressman Jim Moran, who represents my district, has personally said that Zionish have too much influence on Congress, and I agree. Tom Moran has been a very good representative, and he speaks the truth.

Here are some books and a DVD that can put the totally unacceptable Zionist influence on the USA in a larger context:

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–And How We Take It Back
The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Why We Fight
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

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Review: They Dare to Speak Out–People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Politics, Religion & Politics of Religion
Speak Out
Amazon Page

Harder Read But Most Worthy, Start with the Other Book

September 3, 2007

Paul Findley

This book is a perfect counter-point to The Power of Israel in the United States. I review that book also, and recommend both books to every American, just as I also recommend the books that document how the Saudis have bought the Bush Family and the Republican and Democratic parties, neither of which represents We the People. Completely apart from the venal immorality of Dick Cheney (see my review of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency in which I itemized the 23 high crimes and misdemeanors documented by that book), the fact is that Congress has been bought by multiple parties, and no longer represents We the People.

This book is a harder, longer read, so I recommend you start with the other book. As with the other book, this book is a strongly documented and very lengthy catalog of the sins of the Zionists and the Israeli Government, not at all against the moderate Jews and their legitimate concerns. I have seen Gaza and Beirut, and what Israel has done to the Palestinians, to the former “Paris” of the Middle East, combined with their Assault on the Liberty, is unforgivable.

This book logically catalogs how the Zionists intimidate even such a person as Ted Turner, who was forced to back down when he said both sides were committing terrorism (there is in fact a UN Resolution that finds Israel guilty of genocide and racism, but then that is one of those “fog facts” that our totalitarian monsters choose to ignore.

The author organizes the book around how Zionists silence the small and the weak, while buying out the Oval Office, the Congress, the media, while also subverting academic freedon.

I especially like the author's conclusion, “What Price Israel?” The US taxpayer is subsidizing Israeli genocide and Israeli idiocy, and the US and Israel appear to be the last two countries to continue to believe in the value of force that is both unaffordable and unsustainable in an unconquerable world.

Congressman Tom Moran, who represents my district, has personally said that Zionish have too much influence on Congress, and I agree. Tom Moran has been a very good representative, and he speaks the truth.

Here are some books and a DVD that can put the totally unacceptable Zionist influence on the USA in a larger context:

Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–And How We Take It Back
The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

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