5 Star – Page 28 – Public Intelligence Blog

Hew Strachan

5.0 out of 5 stars Greatest Book Ever — But Misses the Core Point, March 14, 2014

I love this book — absolutely required reading the war colleges as well as the civil service colleges. Perhaps its greatest value is in setting the stage for professionals to refuse illegal orders and begin the long hard process of ending the corruption of our Western elites, particularly those in the US and UK. The author is to be saluted for correcting Samuel Huntington's various mistakes of interpretation, and for generally finding a place for moral generals in the larger scheme of things.

HOWEVER the book misses the core point underlying modern war, which is that the imperial powers do not fight wars to win anything in particular, but rather to “use up” their militaries, reduce their population of angry young men, and foster opportunities for corruption among the elite and their particular servants (e.g. CIA revitalizing the Golden Triangle around Viet-Nam, and Afghan poppy production for Wall Street liquidity).

Continue reading “Review: The Direction of War – Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective”

2014/03/122014/03/30

Review (Guest): This Republic of Suffering – Death and the American Civil War

5 Star, Culture, Research, War & Face of Battle

Drew Gilpin Faust

Closure, or does the Suffering just still go on … ?, March 12, 2014

By Herbert L Calhoun “paulocal”

Quietly, this is an amazing book about the back side of war — the side we pretend not to know is really there at all — the ugly side, the painful side. It is a stunning academic treatise about that side of the “so-called” Civil War that the history books do not speak openly about: what happens once the glorification and breast-beating heroism of war ends?

What happened in the Civil War when that war ended — when the “real work of war” began — is that there were no bands playing; no protocols on how to respect the dead, no systematic way of identifying the bodies. Gawkers and wives were roaming the battle fields together in search of trinkets they could sell, or looking for their loved ones. The lucky dead had a letter or a picture in their breast pockets that would later identify them. That way, at least then their loved ones would be allowed the minimum level of closure, but this was not to be the case for most of the dead. Nor, arguably, was it to be the case for a nation that is still in need of closure from the Civil war.

This author tells us that the “real work of war” began when the flesh and stench of 5 million pounds of 620,00 death men and 1 million pounds of the flesh of 3,000 dead horses, all laying out in the hot sun stinking up the “land of the free and home of the brave,” had to be disposed of.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): This Republic of Suffering – Death and the American Civil War”

2014/03/112014/03/11

Review (Guest): Not-Two Is Peace

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Spiritual), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy

Adi Da

5.0 of 5.0 Stars infinitely more than idealistic philosophy

By Terry Cafferty on February 25, 2009

I was initially drawn to this book by the unusual title and cover, and bought it on the basis of the many praise-filled endorsements by many different kinds of people, some of whom are known and respected from previous study. I had recently read Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest, which presents very powerful evidence that the single living being that is this entire planet (or even the entire Universe) is now exercising its total immune system to right itself. And Adi Da's book, Not-Two Is Peace, fundamentally verifies the truth of Hawken's claims.

The core message of this book is not limited to the literal meanings in what is written, which can easily be mistaken for more (unrealistic) idealistic humanistic philosophy. The core message of this book is in the felt reality or intuited ‘ground', or fundamental, pre-verbal truth which it somehow mysteriously communicates.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Not-Two Is Peace”

2014/03/042014/03/04

Review: Real-Time Diplomacy – Politics and Power in the Social Media Era

5 Star, Diplomacy, Intelligence (Public)

Philip Seib

5.0 out of 5 stars Major Contribution Leaving a Great Deal More to Be Discussed, March 4, 2014

Diplomacy is a third-rate practice at this time, largely because the governments representated by diplomats lack intelligence with integrity and are also not held accountable for making grand mistakes with consequencies measured in trillions over time. The diplomats are messengers, nothing more. Indeed, I question the author's assumption that diplomacy has ever been carried out with methodical deliberation — rather I believe that great power “diplomacy” has been imperial in nature, and is best represented today by Henry Kissinger and his immortal quotes:

Henry Kissinger: Military men are `dumb, stupid animals to be used' as pawns for foreign policy.

Henry Kissinger: “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

What is most interesting about this book is its recognition that social media makes possible real-time intelligence (thinking, understanding, decision-support) and that social media now also makes possible real-time counterintelligence — the rapid detection of lies by the mandarins and their media submissives.

Alvin Toffler started this conversation with Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. An entire literature has been created in the past decade centered on collective intelligence, with low-brow titles focusing on wisdom of the crowds and armies of davids.

Continue reading “Review: Real-Time Diplomacy – Politics and Power in the Social Media Era”

2014/03/03

Worth a Look: Reset – Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future

5 Star, Diplomacy

The bestselling author of Overthrow offers a new and surprising vision for rebuilding America's strategic partnerships in the Middle East

What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the twenty-first century: Turkey and Iran.

Besides proposing this new “power triangle,” Kinzer also recommends that the United States reshape relations with its two traditional Middle East allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. This book provides a penetrating, timely critique of America's approach to the world's most volatile region, and offers a startling alternative.

Kinzer is a master storyteller with an eye for grand characters and illuminating historical detail. In this book he introduces us to larger-than-life figures, like a Nebraska schoolteacher who became a martyr to democracy in Iran, a Turkish radical who transformed his country and Islam forever, and a colorful parade of princes, politicians, women of the world, spies, oppressors, liberators, and dreamers.

Kinzer's provocative new view of the Middle East is the rare book that will richly entertain while moving a vital policy debate beyond the stale alternatives of the last fifty years.

2014/03/022014/03/25

Review (Guest): The Empire of Necessity – Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Country/Regional, Culture, Research, History, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Greg Grandin

The complexity of the moral landscape during America's founding generation, March 2, 2014

Herbert L Calhoun “paulocal”

The reader is unlikely to find a book that better contextualizes or sharpens the focus of the moral issues confronting America's founding generation than this book. Using the metaphor of “empires of necessity,” the author shows how America's westward expansion made it the advance-guard of the world, beating a path through the wilderness. But America has never acknowledged that it was enslaved peoples who were in fact beating that path called Manifest Destiny: cutting down forests, turning the wilderness into plantations and into marketable real estate, and picking cotton and cutting the sugar cane that drew more and more territory into a thriving atlantic economy. Slavery alone was the issue at the top of the world's agenda throughout the era of the founding of America. The evils of slavery and the slave trade was the constant refrain of sermons each Sunday from Connecticut to Montevideo; and from Seville to London.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): The Empire of Necessity – Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World”

2014/02/26

Worth a Look: Real-Life Fiction, Spying Outside the Wire and Beyond CIA’s Capabilities

5 Star, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Worth A Look

Who is fighting the war in Afghanistan? Did you know that 52% of people fighting in Afghanistan are contracted to do so? Contractors operate far beyond the borders of Afghanistan, they operate globally. Real people. Real missions. Real wars. After the United States was attacked and the President vowed to search and destroy the enemy, the government formed a secret unit comprised of civilians. Paid civilians. Contracted civilians. Many of these people left their jobs, families, and friends to voluntarily serve alongside their military brethren. They did it out of love, passion, and deep patriotism. Declan Collins is one of those men. Just another patriot you have never heard of working to keep America safe. A former member of the US Armed Forces trying to make it in the civilian world as a newlywed, Declan quickly found himself working for one of America's most secretive organizations. He fit the role of what they needed perfectly. This novel is about what happened after Declan received a mysterious phone call, was paid and given two weeks to get into Afghanistan all the while placing his life on hold to preserve and protect America. Find out about the fighting force rarely ever spoken of, those who were Contracted–America's Secret Warriors. Inspired by true events.

Contracted: America’s Terror Trackers takes readers into the very real world of covert and clandestine operations. These operations aren’t always conducted abroad; oftentimes they occur deep inside the United States. Those who conduct these missions are not always government employees. In fact, most of America’s government fails to recognize these patriotic warriors willing to sacrifice everything for this nation. They are contractors. Like Contracted: America’s Secret Warriors, the first of the Contracted trilogy, this novel was inspired by true events, real people, and real operations. It takes readers on a journey with contractor, Declan Collins, who recently returned from operating as an unconventional human intelligence collector in Afghanistan. A severely injured Collins, who refuses to allow his injuries to stop him from protecting America, accepts a challenge to hunt the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization–Hezbollah. With Hezbollah’s global footprint, Declan Collins travels throughout the United States and several locations abroad ranging from Jordan, Jamaica, Mexico, and of course Lebanon as he collects intelligence with hopes to take down the world’s number one evil. What he uncovers through his journey is overly alarming and makes him begin to dig deeper into his own faith as a modern day Christian Crusader.