5 Star – Page 17 – Public Intelligence Blog

2015/07/112015/07/10

Review (Fiction): Twilight’s Last Gleaming

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Civil Society, Complexity & Catastrophe, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

John Michael Greer

5.0 out of 5 stars Goosebumps — very very real — the playbook for taking down the USA, July 9, 2015

I first read Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America, that was the serious book, and then this book and I have to say that the both go very well together.

This book is the playbook for how a hollow US military over-reliant on satellites for location and communications, over-reliant on carriers that are too easily killed by supersonic wave-hopping missiles, over-reliant on a very mediocre US air force that cannot maintain air superiority or long air-based supply lines, is smashed by the Chinese when an amoral thoughtless US presidency goes one regime change oil field hijacking too far.

Continue reading “Review (Fiction): Twilight's Last Gleaming”

2015/07/102015/07/10

Review: Decline and Fall – The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Complexity & Catastrophe, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Politics, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

John Michael Greer

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Primer, July 8, 2015

I come at this book with something most readers do not have, over 2,000 non-fiction book reviews here at Amazon, and I mention it only because there are some negative reviews that I think are lacking in the larger context one gets from very broad reading. From my perspective, this book is an extraordinary primer and the author is gifted — truly gifted as a teacher and an explainer of complex ideas in simpler captivating terms.

There are many other books that go into greater detail on specifics, and I will begin by listing just four of them:

Continue reading “Review: Decline and Fall – The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America”

2015/07/072015/07/06

Review: Base Nation – How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

David Vine

Fundamental Work, Narrow, Understates Total True Cost

This is a five-star academic work, a superb up-to-date compilation of what can be known legally and ethically about US military bases in all forms from the formal to the undeclared and covert, around the world. It's inclusion in the American Empire Project puts the author in the company of such great scholars and iconoclastic observers as Andrew Bacevich, Noam Chomsky, Robert Dreyfuss, Chalmers Johnson, and Howard Zinn.

The author provides a compelling combination of history, anthropological-sociological narrative, and political-economic calculation as to the cost of what some estimate to be as many at 1,000 bases around the world.

Continue reading “Review: Base Nation – How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World”

2015/07/042015/07/03

Review: Killing Hope – US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

5 Star, Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), War & Face of Battle

William Blum

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reference on the Toxicity of US Military at Direction of Political Criminals, July 3, 2015

This is the UPDATED edition bring this long-standing historical tour de force up from the last edition that ended in 2008, to 2014. This means that it includes the newest elective wars and the “swath of destruction” we have created from Central Asia down through the Middle East and North Africa to Western Africa, where we now lust for oil in Niger and Nigeria.

Over-all, this is a very precious book, and an essential reference on the history of US intervention, both military and clandestine or covert.

Continue reading “Review: Killing Hope – US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”

2015/07/022015/06/29

Review: Bare Feet, Iron Will

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Military & Pentagon Power, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

James G. Zumwalt

5.0 out of 5 stars Oral History at Its Best — Relevant to Future Strategy, Policy, Acquisition, Tactics, June 29, 2015

I received this book as a gift from the author, a fellow Marine retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, sometimes mistaken for his father, Admiral Zumwalt. I have gone through it twice. It is immediately in my top five books on Viet-Nam from an intelligence point of view, the other four books being:

Continue reading “Review: Bare Feet, Iron Will”

2015/06/282015/06/27

Review: Change the Story, Change the Future – A Living Economy for a Living Earth

5 Star, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

David Korten

5.0 out of 5 stars Brings Us Full Circle — Valuable as Remedial Education for All, June 27, 2015

David Korten has been one of my heroes and indirect mentors through his books for over a decade. His book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community resonated deeply with me, and I completely agree that the premise of that book, to wit, people are the new (restored) super-power actualized through local resilience and global community.

This book takes on great importance as we reflect on the United Nations and its Sustainability Development Goals (SDG), combined with The Most Holy Father agreeing to visit the UN in September to deliver and encyclical that has been leaked, on climate change. This book can be considered the middle book, the book that brings a largely unconscious public, generally poorly read, up to speed with “the new story.” It is not a new story, as one reviewer archly observes, it is in fact the original story harking back to a time when our indigenous ancestors respected the Mother Earth, observed plants and animals as co-equal intelligence, forgot nothing through oral history, and generally acted as stewards of the earth. One of the best books showing before (Mayan, Aztec) and after (guns, germs, steel) is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

Continue reading “Review: Change the Story, Change the Future – A Living Economy for a Living Earth”

2015/05/222015/05/22

Worth a Look: Beyond Data Monitoring – Achieving the Sustainability Development Goals Through Intelligence (Decision-Support)

5 Star, Decision-Making & Decision-Support

A bargain at 99 cents, with live links. 42 pages representing a lifetime of reflection and contributions from hundreds of other subject matter experts devoted to the idea that we can create a prosperous world at peace, a world that works for all.

As the United Nations (UN) contemplates its most important new economic and social initiative, the seventeen new Sustainability Development Goals (SDG), to be manifest in the Global Sustainable Development Report and related UN System activities, it is essential that the Secretary-General be afforded an opportunity to recognize the radical changes that are taking place in the external environment – and how the UN can capitalize on them to accelerate achievement of the SDGs.

Continue reading “Worth a Look: Beyond Data Monitoring – Achieving the Sustainability Development Goals Through Intelligence (Decision-Support)”