5 Star – Page 31 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/01/29

Review: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

5 Star, Crime (Government), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Gareth Porter

5.0 out of 5 stars Does for Iran What Truth Dig Did for Iraq, January 29, 2014

I *strongly* recommend this book to every citizen concerned about a government that lies all the time. The NSA debacle of recent time, on top of the CIA debacles (rendition, torture, assassination by drone) on top of the various other White House led debacles are all deeply disturbing.

I have a copy of the book on the way and will provide my usual detailed review as soon as it arrives. In the meantime, here is a snippet from a really superb review by Peter Jenikins at Lobelog:

BEGIN QUOTE:

Porter concludes: “US and Israeli policies have been driven by political and bureaucratic interests, not by a rational, objective assessment of available indicators of the motives and intentions of Iranian leaders”.

Another central theme, one that complements the hidden motive theme, is that intelligence material and intelligence assessments have played a baleful part in this saga.

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2014/01/292014/01/29

Review (Guest): A Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Gareth Porter

Review By Peter Jenkins @ Lobelog

The subtitle of Gareth Porter’s new book, The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, is well-chosen. Large parts of A Manufactured Crisis are indeed untold till now. They amount to what the author terms an “alternative narrative”.

But don’t be misled by “alternative”. This is not the work of some crank who imagines conspiracies where none exist. One senses, rather, from the author’s meticulous sourcing and the extent of his research that what motivates him is a fierce hunger for truth and aversion to deceit.

Porter has been investigating the Iranian nuclear case for the best part of a decade. The result of his researches is both a fascinating addition to a growing corpus, unlike any previous work on the issue, and a disturbing indictment of US and Israeli policies.

One central theme is that hidden motives have coloured these policies. On the US side, Porter explains, the end of the Cold War led to a federal bureaucratic interest in exaggerating the WMD and missile threat posed by Iran (and other emerging countries) to justify funding bids. During the presidency of George W. Bush some senior administration members also sought to exploit nuclear fears to “delegitimize” the Iranian government and engineer a pretext for enforced regime change.

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2014/01/262014/01/26

Worth a Look: Toxic Psychiatry — Fatal Drugs, Idiot & Corrupt “Doctors” and the Mental Illness Epidemic

5 Star, Culture, Research, Health, Misinformation & Propaganda, Science & Politics of Science, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Worth A Look

2011: In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nation’s children. What is going on?

Anatomy of an Epidemic challenges readers to think through that question themselves. First, Whitaker investigates what is known today about the biological causes of mental disorders. Do psychiatric medications fix “chemical imbalances” in the brain, or do they, in fact, create them? Then comes the scientific query at the heart of this book: During the past fifty years, when investigators looked at how psychiatric drugs affected long–term outcomes, what did they find?

1994: Prozac, Xanax, Halcion, Haldol, Lithium. These psychiatric drugs–and dozens of other short-term “solutions”–are being prescribed by doctors across the country as a quick antidote to depression, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other psychiatric problems. But at what cost?

In this searing, myth-shattering exposé, psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D., breaks through the hype and false promises surrounding the “New Psychiatry” and shows how dangerous, even potentially brain-damaging, many of its drugs and treatments are. He asserts that: psychiatric drugs are spreading an epidemic of long-term brain damage; mental “illnesses” like schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety disorder have never been proven to be genetic or even physical in origin, but are under the jurisdiction of medical doctors; millions of schoolchildren, housewives, elderly people, and others are labeled with medical diagnoses and treated with authoritarian interventions, rather than being patiently listened to, understood, and helped.

2014/01/252014/01/25

Worth a Look: Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality – Russell’s Republic Revisited

5 Star, Cosmos & Destiny, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Worth A Look

This book has been ordered and will be reviewed shortly. There are no guest reviews to be drawn from.

Amazon Book Description:

The difference between cause and effect seems obvious and crucial in ordinary life, yet missing from modern physics. Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell called the law of causality ‘a relic of a bygone age'. In this important collection 13 leading scholars revisit Russell's revolutionary conclusion, discussing one of the most significant and puzzling issues in contemporary thought.

Look over the Table of Contents.

2014/01/232014/01/23

Worth a Look: Beyond Transparency – Open Data and the Future of Civic Innovation

5 Star, Data, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Worth A Look

by Brett Goldstein (Editor) , Lauren Dyson (Contributor)

The rise of open data in the public sector has sparked innovation, driven efficiency, and fueled economic development. While still emerging, we are seeing evidence of the transformative potential of open data in shaping the future of our civic life, and the opportunity to use open data to reimagine the relationship between residents and government, especially at the local level. As we look ahead, what have we learned so far from open data in practice and how we can apply those lessons to realize a more promising future for America’s cities and communities?
Edited by Brett Goldstein, former Chief Data Officer for the City of Chicago, with Code for America, this book features essays from over twenty of the world’s leading experts in a first-of-its-kind instructive anthology about how open data is changing the face of our public institutions.Contributors include:

Michael Flowers, Chief Analytics Officer, New York City
Beth Blauer, former director of Maryland StateStat
Jonathan Feldman, CIO, City of Asheville
Tim O’Reilly, founder & CEO, O’Reilly Media
Eric Gordon, Director of Engagement Game Lab, Emerson College
Beth Niblock, CIO, Louisville Metro Government
Ryan & Mike Alfred, Co-Founders, Brightscope
Emer Coleman, former director of the London Datastore
Mark Headd, Chief Data Officer, City of Philadelphia

2014/01/222014/01/22

Worth A Look: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion

Gareth Porter

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Manufactured Crisis provides unique and timely background to the ongoing diplomacy around Iran's nuclear technology program. In it, award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter offers a well documented critique of the official ‘western' account of what the Iranian government has been doing, and why.

In Manufactured Crisis, Porter brings together the results of his many years of research into the issue–including numerous interviews with former insiders. He shows that the origins of the Iran nuclear “crisis” lay not in an Iranian urge to obtain nuclear weapons but, rather, in a sustained effort by the United States and its allies to deny Iran its right, as guaranteed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to have any nuclear program at all. The book highlights the impact that the United States' alliance with Israel had on Washington's pursuit of its Iran policy and sheds new light on the US strategy of turning the International Atomic Energy Agency into a tool of its anti-Iran policy.

Praise for the Book:

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2014/01/18

Review (Guest): Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law That Transformed America

5 Star, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, True Cost & Toxicity

Douglas Stuart

5.0 out of 5 stars From National Interests to National Security April 24, 2011

ByKenneth J. Dillon

Many observers recognize that the U.S. Government has for decades placed too much emphasis on military might to the detriment of other interests. This book provides a sobering explanation of how such a skewed approach emerged. Stuart is an historian at Dickinson College and also adjunct professor at the U.S. Army War College. He shows how the 150-year tradition of peacetime pursuit of national interests headed by the State Department gave way to the “Pearl Harbor System” of viewing the world through the perspective of potential threats to national security.

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