5 Star – Page 151 – Public Intelligence Blog

Superb Easy to Understand Itemization of the Fraud Inherent in Any Corporation,

May 2, 2006

Jane Akre

I admire a number of the reviews that have already been posted, and am doing this one primarily as a personal record and for those that follow my reading in non-fiction about national security and national competitiveness (690+ reviews).

This is a superb DVD. I did not realize there was a book by this name, but all things being equal, the visuals that come with the DVD, and the shorter time to absorb the message that can been carefully crafted, make this a great value.

For those that were not around or students in the 1970's I have to say that Barnett and others did a lot of study on the topic of out of control ungovernable unregulatable multinational corporations, and a lot of this was anticipated thirty years ago. However, this DVD provides a wonderfully coherent and fresh look at some key points that need to be understood by the general public.

* Modern corporation is today's dominant institution, with global reach and global impact, yet it is ungovernable by national or state or local governments, has limited liability, and seeks to maximize internal profits by externalizing all possible costs including environmental degradation, the importation of poverty, spread of disease from lack of health benefits, etc.

* “A few bad apples” (e.g. Enron, Worldcom, Exxon, etc) is a “jingle” that has been used to cover up the fact that a lack of ethics is a predominant characteristic, not an exception. See my reviews of Lionel Tiger (The Manufacture of Evil), The Informant, The Cheating Culture, etc.

* The corporation is a paradox–it creates great wealth, and it also does great harm. It is, however, an ARTIFICIAL creation, and we have it in our power to reverse its limited liability status.

* The corporate agenda does indeed compete with the public interest agenda, and can be likened to the damage that occured with the loss of the commons–while the corporation has done much good, the concept of the people belonging to and being at one with the land was lost forever when the land could be “owned” by an artificial person as well as a real person.

* Corporations can and tend to be psychopathic. The definition of a psychopath includes callous unconcern, unable to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for tohers, deceitfullness, inability to experience guilt, failure to conform to social norms–gosh, this defines the Bush White House, not just corporations. It also defines the media, religions, and some labor unions. No wonder we have problems!

* The corporate mind-set is divorced from the good of the group–only a corporation would develop the concept of a terminator one time use seed, or throw away goods.

* 9-11 was capitalized on by traders, as was the war in Iraq. I am reminded of General Smedley Butler's recommendation in “War is a Racket” when he suggested that when the US goes to war, everyone in the private sector be absorbed into the government at enlisted and junior officer ranks, and not allowed to carry out war profiteering.

* The DVD does a good job of examining the sophistication of marketing, describing it as a smart bomb in comparison to early day “bb guns.” The DVD discusses the seduction of the consumer and the use of branding as an invasive form of producing customers almost against their common sense (because of this DVD I am buying the book NO LOGO).

* Corporations today are allowed to patent life, which is wrong and was always excluded, until a court did not realize that a microbe was life, and considered it a chemical formula instead. From that mistake, hundreds of cases have been filed by corporations under the laws intended to protect the life and property of former slaves.

* The DVD expresses concern over who might protect the public interest when information is controlled and filtered by the corporations. Monsanto is troubling case study, with good coverage in this DVD of how they were able to deceive EVERYONE in the US from academics to reporters to regulators, but only because they did not do their homework. In Canada, Montanto was stopped in its tracks by effective food safety regulators.

* The DVD is somewhat inflammatory in attempting to make the case that corporations not only helped fascism in Germany but are a form of fascism themselves. There is something to that, just as the is something to the reports that the major Nazis resettled in the USA and produced Karl Rove and Otto Reich as well as some really really bad covert operations and regime changes against democracy and in favor of dictatorships.

* The DVD ends on two notes, one troubling and one positive. The troubling note is that corporations are now trying to take over water, privatizing water, to the ridiculous point that in Bolivia the natives were not allowed to collect rainwater–this is not only obscene, but radicalizing. On a positive note, the DVD ends with an interview of a person describing in Spanish how many small battles are being won, and the corporations are being beaten back.

This is a very fine DVD, which joins Lords of War and Ghandi among others in my serious collection. Very worthwhile.

2006/05/012011/10/22

Review: Off Center–The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (Hardcover)

5 Star, Democracy, Politics

We Have to “Go For Broke” in 2008,

May 1, 2006

Professor Jacob S. Hacker

This is a tremendous book. It joins The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World; The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics and Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders (by Tom Coburn, about how the “Party” turns elected representatives into slaves to the party line and against their constituencies). When combined with the latter books and Ralph Nader's long-standing complaints about “the system,” these authors can take credit for adding useful new insights as to how extremist Republicans (who can indeed be likened to Hitler's movement in the efficacy of their take-over of a Nation with limited numbers–and I say this as a moderate Republican furious over the loss of MY party's reason) have pulled off the theft of a Nation and the looting of the middle class through the working poor.

I am especially taken with the authors' examination of how the extremist Republicans have been able to systematically lie to the public and get away with it. Their discussion of “backlash insurance” and how they have managed to coerce the moderate Republicans (such as my favorite moderate Republican, Congressman Rob Simmons, R-CT-02) into going along is a very helpful contribution to public understanding of how we got so far off center.

The authors conclude with a fine review of the four major obstacles to political reform.

Where they fall short is in failing to develop a solution. A number of us in the Greater Democracy movement have in fact developed a solution, and in the next three lines I hope you will see our solution as a fitting epilogue to this five-star book:

1) Accept that the Democrats cannot beat the Republicans base on base, issue on issue, or even on leadership, nor do we want them to. Instead, we need to create a Citizens Party that is a non-rival (this is important–NON-RIVAL) “second home” or “dual membership” party with wings for each of the existing parties–Democratic, Republican, Green, Reform, Libertarian, etcetera. This coalition of moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats, and all others can indeed beat the extremist Republican base if it aligns with the left of center but at least not lunatic Democratic base.

2) Accept that there is one issue and one issue ONLY where we can all agree: that the government is out of control and we need to restore representative democracy through a National Electoral Reform Act of 2007.

3) Finally, focus in 2008 on getting every incumbent and every challenger to join the Citzens Party and testify in writing that they will support the National Election Act of 2007 or face recall. Agree, or retire.

This is not rocket science. With the Internet where it is now, and the ground-breaking work of Joe Trippi (see also my review of his book, of Bill Moyer's Doing Democracy, and of Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics), we can do this.

The authors help make the case for WHY we have to go for broke this time around–it's all for one and one for all time. We stick together on this one, this time, or we surely will go nuclear, fascist, and broke.

2006/04/282009/12/04

Review: Revolutionary Wealth (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

TIME as translated into wealth, fouir-part anti-poverty plan,

April 28, 2006

Alvin Toffler

Their first key focus is on TIME and its relation to space, knowledge, and effectiveness as translated into wealth. Innovative businesses are going 100 mph; civil collective groups at 90 mph; the US family at 60 mph, labor unions at 30 mph, government bureaucracies at 25 mph, education at 10 mph, non-governmental organizations including the United Nations at 5 mph, US politics and the participation process at 3 mph, and law enforcement and the law it enforces at 1 mph. This is really quite a helpful informed judgment as to the relative unfitness of all but two of the groups.

The TIME section of the book has some very interesting insights including the fact that anything that requires time, like filling in a form, or that adds time to a process through regulation, is in fact a TIME TAX that is more costly than an old money tax.

The Tofflers note that vice is globalizing faster than virtue. This is very important from a taxation and social goods perspective.

They spend a great deal of time discussing the intangible economy that consists of non-rival knowledge that can be shared and bartered; volunteer time that produces economy value (notably parents who teach their children sanitary habits, how to speak, and discipline or social IQ); and alternative forms of capital–social, moral, whatever. They point out that 60% of the value of the industrial era companies is intangible knowledge, while almost 100% of the new economy is intangible.

This entire book is an Information Operations reference. They discuss global battles to manage our minds in multiple domains–religious, cultural, economic, moral. We need to pay more attention to what filters the target audience uses to determine the truth, and what filters the hostile groups are using to try to shape the local perception of truth to fit their wishes.

The book moves on to discuss what the Tofflers call the “outside brain” or the sum aggregate of knowledge that is available for individual exploitation. By one account, this consists of 12,000 petabytes.

They then begin the heart of the book on “prosumption” and the economic and social value of what they believe can no longer be called capitalism in the traditional sense.

The authors spend a sufficient amount of time exploring the implications of information technology on knowledge creation and capitalization, to include cell phones or other microchip devices that serve simultaneously as identity devices, bank accounts, and knowledge devices (as WIRED said in one issue, point the phone and read the bar code, and see if this product will kill you or if someone else was killed or abused as part of the product's development)

Having explored the emergence of the new economy, they then return to their opening discussion of time, and point out that America's infrastructure and institutions are imploding. Our energy, transportation, health, and educational infrastructures are 50 years out of date and cannot be converted or upgraded fast enough. So we have two Americas, an old industrial era poor America, and a new knowledge age rich America. They articulate a battle raging between decay and revolutionary birth, noting that micro-cash and the Internet are empowering social entrepreneurs who use the Internet to mobilize both volunteers and contributions. Micro finance is liberating small innovators from the death knell of merchant banks and venture capitalists with old mind-sets.

I learned two big things relevant to government tax fraud. Although I knew of import-export tax fraud ($50 billion a year in false pricing, an advanced form of corporate money laundering) Major corporations and most nations are heavily engaged in barter or counter-trades (e.g. billions of dollars in vodka for equivalent value in Pepsi BUT the US corporation can manipulate the valuations). They say many corporations are now moving to a form of internal corporate money so that their subsidiaries can do off the books trades that do not require either taxation or foreign exchange transactions.

The final third of the book is an absorbing discussion of how knowledge can eliminate extreme poverty, which the authors believe is more important than closing the gap between rich and poor. They emphasize that both India and China are leap-frogging the industrial era, with India focusing on connectivity to reduce poverty as well as urbanization, while China is focusing on setting standards that will allow it to “own” future information technology architectures. Africa and Latin America are being lost to Chinese immigrants, language, trade, and aid.

The Toffler's articulate a four part anti-poverty plan that makes sense to me: 1) Use knowledge to wipe out subsistence agriculture, which is the foundation for extreme poverty. They discuss how bio-technology can impact on crop yield, include medical vaccinations, convert crops into fuel, allow precision farming which dramatically reduces water and seed and fertilization costs, and improve sales while sensing disease or other threats to the crops. 2) Empower women, as this one focus leads to advances across the board. 3) End corruption by using knowledge and technology to make it next to impossible and largely transparent–the carrot side of this is that knowledge and technology can lower costs and increase government salaries. 4) Avoid industrial poisons, e.g. do not go with chlorine and oil based industry

The book concludes with a review of China, India, Japan, and Europe as either threats (the first two) or potential disasters (the last two). The authors, while extolling the possibilities of Chinese capitalism, are careful to point out the many things that could go catastrophically wrong for China, and do a similarly balanced presentation on India.

The Tofflers come across as cheerleaders for the future, accepting of the decay and disaster that will be required to dismantle dysfunctional systems including (my observation) the U.S. Government. They see real possibilities of eliminating poverty and stabilizing the world.

If you like this book, bookmark my review page, 1000+ non-fiction books that underlie and expand on this superb work by the Tofflers.

2006/04/142010/12/20

Review: The Battle for Peace–A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose (Hardcover)

5 Star, Diplomacy, Strategy

THE Common Sense “Primer” for Everyone Including Bozo,

April 14, 2006

Tony Zinni

I was initially inclined to give this book four stars because it does not “name names” and have footnotes or a bibliography, but as I got deeper into the book I realized that what Tony Zinni has produced is a world-saving “primer” that ANYONE can appreciate, including Bozo the Clown. This is not a dumbed down book as much as it is “straight talk” with no gobbly-gook.

I have known over fifty flag officers in my time, and only a handful have actually been world-class, including Zinni, Gray, Stackpole in the USMC, Clapper and O'Lear in the USAF, Studeman in the Navy, and of course Schoomaker in the Army. No doubt there are others, but in my experience most flag officers have simply won a beauty/etiquette contest, and they do not acquire any additional strategic vision upon being promoted from the lower ranks. Zinni is incontestably the one general we have that has done three things brilliantly:

1) been a foxhole Marine with grievous wounds and innovative leadership at the company and field grade levels (see my review of his book “Battle Ready”);

2) been a general deeply experienced in Operations Other than War (OOTW–what a stupid former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once said of “Real men don't do OOTW–which is about as stupid as the DNI still saying (we paraphrase) “we're in the business of secrets for the President, the hell with open sources and everyone else”); and

3) been a true inter-agency Commander-in-Chief (CINC) able to make full use of *all* the inter-agency capabilities, not just the military, and done so diplomatically and personally. He is the George Shultz (himself a former Marine) of the current warrior class.

With that as pre-amble, here are the highlights of the book that demand its reading by every citizen in time to challenge their light-weight (and generally corrupt) Members of Congress prior to casting a vote in November 2006:

1) Chapters 1-7 are essentially an overview of reality and why global reality impacts on America's security and fortune. This is required reading for all but a handful, and needs to be read very slowly and carefully by those encumbered with ideological filters. As the author notes, very often perception is reality, and when an ideologically-biased perception conflicts with actual multi-cultural reality, what you get is a catastrophe such as Iraq.

2) The heart of the book is the author's prescription for achieving both an unbiased view of the real world, and the ability to fully plan for and leverage all the sources of national power as represented by the varied agencies, through three simple and elegant “hubs”:

2a) At the national level, a National Monitoring and Planning Center (NMPC) that is able to integrate both intelligence (less than 20% of the relevant information) and operational inter-agency information (the other 80%), and to then plan, coordinate, and guide the execution of long-term inter-agency campaign plans.

2b) At the operational level, the modification of the currently planned Joint Intelligence Operations Commands or Centers (JIOC) to turn them into more of a Joint Inter-Agency Collaboration Center (JICC) such as SOCOM has developed in concept. Although JFCOM's Joint Inter-Agency Coordination Group (JIACG) is the example used by the author, I believe that we actually need to bring together the JFCOM and SOCOM concepts with those emerging in the NORTHCOM inter-agency directorate under Bear McConnell, and the Global Innovation and Strategy Center (GISC) at STRATCOM, which not coincidentally also has the lead for getting a grip on all open source information in all languages all the time, something the DNI cannot provide.

2c) At the tactical level the author is right on target when he proposes the civil affairs model (as does Congressman Rob Simmons, R-CT-02 from the HASC and Homeland Security Committees) as the focal point for inter-agency application of resources in-country. The author does not dismiss the U.S. Embassy, which was supposed to play that role, but his book is a clear demarche with respect to the incapacity of the Department of State to provide a leadership role, a planning role, or an inter-agency management role in-country. The Embassies are simply not working the way they are supposed to our could be made to work.

3) The author concludes his work with an analogy of cobras being killed by the death of a thousand stings from bees. Exactly right. The threat to America is NOT Iranian nuclear power (just as it was NOT Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction) but rather a global concerted effort to destroy Americas economy through the simple expedient of putting oil prices up to $300 a barrel, something that can be achieved very inexpensively with tiny but potent attacks on key oil pipelines and pumping stations in Nigeria, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

Tony Zinni is one of my heroes. He not only understands asymmetric warfare and the urgency of getting serious (that is to say, professional, which we are not at this time) about global instability in the intangible non-military dimensions, but he is a clear-headed diplomat and warrior-philosopher who knows how to make big bureaucracies do his bidding.

I hope the day comes when we have a chance to work together to save this great Republic from the morons that have broken the piggy bank, cost us all moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world, and started a 100 year six front war we did not need and were not ready for.

BRAVO ZULU and GUNG HO.

Admin Note: If you select “see my other reviews” and bookmark that page, you can, over the course of several hours, receive a free graduate education in reality and non-fiction about global issues. If Zinni *had* had footnotes, most of the books I have reviewed would have been in his book as supporting elements for his personal and professional essay.

2006/04/142009/12/04

Review: The Big Wedding–9/11, the Whistle Blowers, and the Cover-up (Paperback)

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs

Fifteen Distinct Instances of FACT–a Major Contribution,

April 14, 2006

Sander Hicks

This is one of a number of 9-11 truth movement books that I have reviewed. The bottom line is clear and supported by other books: the U.S. Government had fore-knowledge of 9-11; the FBI and the CIA are a combination of inept and corrupt; and the 9-11 Commission was a deliberate cover-up.

Two of the facts the author cites, while brought out by others, have a special cachet in this particular book:

1) John Ashcroft stopped flying commercial in June 2001; and

2) The 9-11 Fund for victims was managed by a quasi-compromised individual whose task was to get them all (at least 90%) to sign up, because the acceptance of compensation came with a quit claim against the US Government and any further legal action, a compelling indicator, in my mind, of guilt by implication.

Here are a few things that stayed with me from this author's worthy effort:

1) Summary of what we lost on 9-11 from Dr. Hecht: “3000 New Yorkers, half the Constitution, and most of the Republic.”

2) Key people like Dave Frasca at FBI that blocked all efforts to stymie the 9-11 attacks, and Francis Taylor at Department of State, director of security (with Ambassadorial rank) and party to special deals with Pakistan, were never forced to testify in detail.

3) 9-11 Commission deliberately started its review in 1996 to leave out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing where evidence exists that the FBI built the bomb and it was all part of an operation that went bad.

4) Both the 9-11 Commission and other reviews have failed to go back to the BCCI Bank scandal, where the BCCI was a joint Pakistani-CIA bank to channel funds to Afghanistan (and not incidentally, to jihad terrorists in the making)

5) The BCCI was the bank that bought George Bush II's stock in Harkin when he was a failure and needed help.

6) Sixteen (16) reporters and investigators died under mysterious circumstances while investigating the BCCI story.

7) Mueller may have been rewarded with FBI Director post for his role in blocking BCCI investigation.

8) 9-11 may have originally been planned as a nuclear attack under the direction of the Pakistani nuclear genius now allegedly under house arrest, and “downgraded” to the WTC [note: there are numerous allegations that all the gold and other valuables in the WTC were evacuated in advance, and the most important allies of the Administration were not in the building that morning–it was, in other words, expendable, and also valuable as pretext for war (Jim Bamford's term, see my review of that book). NOTE: The author suggests that the Pakistani's not only made the point to the Bush Administration that an attack would be good for the Administration, while relieving some pressures in Pakistan, but also negotiated the down-grade, receiving in turn further assistance toward their nuclear arms race with India. Lest anyone doubt this, please note that Zbigniew Brezinski specifically gave the Pakistanis a nuclear bye in return for help against the Soviet in Afghanistan. Regardless of the party in party, the political leadership in America is clearly willing to sell its soul and sacrifice American lives for what it perceives to be strategic gains for its own selfish elite).

9) Israel and Egypt warned the US in strong terms, as did Germany and Russian, within weeks prior to the actual attacks. The US Government chose not to act on those warnings, perhaps because it wanted the attacks to succeed.

10) Al Qaeda and the Neo-Conservatives actually share some viewpoints and have a symbiotic relationship.

11) The Muslim Brotherhood is close to the CIA, and goes back many decades with the neo-Nazis. as both share an abiding hatred for the Jews and Israel (this suggests that the many stories about US skin-heads supporting Al Qaeda terrorists are plausible).

12) Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff is dirty as sin. He defended terrorist financier Dr. Magby Elamir, is a “dishonest bastard” who went along with Vince Foster suicide cover-up, and was fast-tracked to the top and via the judge's circuit as part of the overall deal between those who sin and those who condone.

13) Governor Jeb Bush PERSONALLY showed up to confiscate flight school records in Florida days after 9-11, and then took action to make them forever irretrievable.

14) Florida is called by some in the know as “Terrorland” where two Floridas co-exist–a normal Florida (that is to say, the walled city/golf courses with water features of the well to do, and the slums of the poor), and a second Florida consisting of CIA training camps, banks approved by the Government to launder drug money for Wall Street, and flight schools and airports for discreet arms-drugs-money transfers–and even Miami International Airport, where world-class assholes can be “pre-cleared” for entry to the US “at the convenience of the U.S. Government.” Indeed, the connection between Florida, drugs, and the U.S. Government is so strong that in one uncoordinated inter-agency assault on an arriving Lear Jet loaded with drugs, DEA senior executive Mike Brasseltine was in the co-pilot's seat. [Ugly side note: Henry Kissinger is on record as supporting Third World eugenics or “depopulation,” there is mounting evidence that the white wealthy elite consider drugs an excellent albeit totally racsist means of “de-colorizing” of America.

15) In passing the author points out that the 9-11 Commissioners, with one exception, did not meet the Congressional mandate that they all be free of any association with the Bush Administration.

The author also does magnificently in discussing “suppressed histories” as a “standard” U.S. Government operating procedure. Lest you think this is fanciful, see my reviews of Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'. The FACT is that the U.S. Government and its corporate partners and its international criminal allies is routinely deceiving the American people and mis-serving We the People.

I have reviewed a number of 9-11 books and DVDs, and I stake my personal integrity on the following statement:

We cannot prove conclusively that Dick Cheney, Rudy Gulliani, and Larry Silverstein conspired to not only let 9-11 happen, but use a missile on the Pentagon and controlled demolitions to murder thousands, destroy evidence (of missing 2.3 trillion in Pentagon, SEC investigaions in NYC), and commit multiple counts of insurance fraud. I am however convinced beyond a shadow a doubt that America needs a Truth and Reconcilation Commission, a Public Invetigation, and that all those who were not properly interviewed (most) or interviewed at all (even more) must be brought into the open. I believe this to be the crime of the century, treasonous in every respect, and I do not want Dick Cheney to have the pleasure of dying before we can investigate and if proven, convict and incarcerate.

In DVD's, “Loose Change” is an absolute must but not offered on Amazon.
See also:
9/11 Mysteries Part 1: Demolitions
9/11: Press For Truth
9/11 – The Myth and the Reality
Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11
Improbable Collapse: The Demolition of Our Republic
The Toxic Clouds Of 9/11: A Looming Health Disaster
Fahrenheit 9/11

2006/04/122009/12/04

Review: The Vermont Manifesto (Paperback)

5 Star, Democracy

Leading Voice for Non-Violent Secession from the Union,

April 12, 2006

Thomas H. Naylor

The US federal government is failing to serve the people, and according to the precepts of the American Republic, that gives the people the right to abolish the government. In the case of the Second Vermont Republic, the author and his very thoughtful colleagues are proposing instead to succeed from the Federal Union that is not Federal anymore–the federal government is now a “hired hand” for Wall Street and a servant to dictators of Saudi Arabia as well as the Israeli lobby.

Professor Naylor, also a successful software businessman many years ago, is a citizen-philosopher and by no stretch of the imagination could he be labeled “fringe.” In his case, radical is the opposite of reactionary, and exactly where we need to be.

The elements of the Vermont Manifesto are ten in total: political independence; grass roots democracy; nonviolence; environmental integrity; sustainable development; regional trade; sustainable agriculture; rail revitalization; quality education; and wellness.

The premises of the Vermont Manifesto, apart from recognition of the corruption and immorality that prevail on Wall Street and the energy industry and their servants in Congress and the White House, is that big is bad and small is good. This is totally consistent with the end of Peak Oil and the need to get back to localized sustainable energy and food production that does not need to be transported great distances. The Vermont Manifesto also recognizes that evil done by the American Empire “in our name” ultimately comes back to pillage and loot the state-level commonwealths.

Lest anyone think this book is “fringe” I would point to my many other reviews (I am the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction about foreign policy–I would not be reviewing this book if it were not fundamental), but especially to my review of, and the book itself, Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America and more recently, a swath of books on the Iraq blunders and the immorality of George Bush and Dick Cheney, such as:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage

It is clear to me that sanity is re-asserting itself in the Pacific Northwest and the far Northeast. This specific book would be useful to every single state in America, and I have a specific question that every single state should put on its 2008 ballot:

“Should we join a Constitutional Convention to discuss the abolishment of the present government and the reconstitution of the Americas as a new Republic that restores representative democracy and moral capitalism?”

There are 27 secessionist movements in the USA, among which Vermont and the Pacific Northwest are the strongest and most reasoned. No President can take office in 2009 without fully understanding the legitimate grievances represented by this book and the varied secessionist movements.

There is another angle from which to appreciate this book as well. The federal government has failed to adapt, as Katrina and other disasters have shown us. The some of the following books on how a combination of Ron Paul's restoration of Jeffersonian diplomacy and a regionalization of America might increase our resilience, especially if combined with an end to absentee landlords and a greening of America.

The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)
Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series)

2006/04/102009/12/04

Review: Spying on the Bomb–American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (Hardcover)

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Best of Intentions, As Flawed as Its Subject,

April 10, 2006

Jeffrey T. Richelson

The author does good work, within the limits of what can be known, and I have to recognize his diligence with five stars, but this is one of those books that is maddening in three ways:

1) It documents how bureacratically pedestrian the U.S. Intelligence Community has been. Spying on the bomb has not been a “calling” it has been a routine job using pedestrian means, and with zero accountability for faliing to be successful.

2) The book is maddening in other ways. In 2004 the CIA gets a walk-in with a thousand pages on the Iranian nuclear program, and two years later they are still trying to determine if the documents are fake–or is it that they provided the documents in the first place (see my review of “State of War”) and are now confronted by their own returning paper?

3) Most maddening of all is the complete failure of this book, and its subject the US Intelligence Community, and the policy leadership of the USA, to come to grips with reality. The nuclear bomb or nuclear power in the hands of North Korea or Iran are about as great a threat to the USA as Fidel Castro deciding to invade Miami with 10,000 doctors. 1000 car bombs in the right places (most overseas, such as in Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela), 1000 det cords with C-4 around the right choke points (port cranes, bridge struts, railroad loading yard circles) are vastly more threatening to the US. A nuclear bomb might take out a city–an asymmetric attack by highly motivated suicidal terrorists will not only bypass all of our defenses, but it will take out our economy. Our wages are already back where they were in 1962 (sixty two). Hurricane Katrina had the force of a nuclear exploision and not only is the White House ignoring that disaster, but it has not impacted on the rest of the country. The USA has no strategy and no grasp of reality–our policies right now are a combination of ideological fantasy, deep insider corruption, and pedestrian bureaucratic “going through the motions.” Shame on all of us.

By way of example:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security

Incidentally, terrorism is #9 on the list of high-level threats to humanity, poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation are 1-3, above war. Our government now resembles the DVD Idiocracy. The only good news is that CIA discovered its integrity on Iran and many of us appear to have stopped the lunatic intentions of Dick Cheney to carry on with the Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror.

Category: 5 Star

Review: The Corporation (2004)