5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Strong Spanish-Language Text, 31 Oct 2011
I know the author personally, have followed his work over many years, and consider him to be one of the top authorities on intelligence writing in the Spanish language. I recently worked with him in Spain on an initiative he has been developing, to help the Spanish government and Spanish commerce make better use of open sources of intelligence while also refining their methods in relation to data integrity, product integrity, and system or behavioral integrity.
Although I am not familiar with all the publications in Spanish on intelligence, people I trust tell me that this is one of the top books in Spanish. I do not look for it to be translated soon, but would certainly recommend to any publishing house that they consider doing so, as we are all [except the Western governments] moving toward M4IS2 hybrid eight tribe governance, and this is something the author is helping to explain to all governments and business and academic and non-governmental communities that work in the Spanish languages.
M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making
Rather than list specific books I also recommend here, I want to point readers to my full list of most intelligence books that I have reviewed for Amazon, just search for intelligence (most and get right to it with links to the Amazon pages for each book.
5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely important Spanish-language future-relevant book on intelligence, 31 Oct 2011
I know the author personally, have followed his work over many years, and consider him to be one of the top authorities on intelligence writing in the Spanish language. I recently worked with him in Spain on an initiative he has been developing, to help the Spanish government and Spanish commerce make better use of open sources of intelligence while also refining their methods in relation to data integrity, product integrity, and system or behavioral integrity.
Although I am not familiar with all the publications in Spanish on intelligence, people I trust tell me that this is one of the top books in Spanish. I do not look for it to be translated soon, but would certainly recommend to any publishing house that they consider doing so, as we are all [except the Western governments] moving toward M4IS2 hybrid eight tribe governance, and this is something the author is helping to explain to all governments and business and academic and non-governmental communities that work in the Spanish languages.
M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making
Rather than list specific books I also recommend here, I want to point readers to my full list of most intelligence books that I have reviewed for Amazon, just search for intelligence (most and get right to it with links to the Amazon pages for each book.
5.0 out of 5 stars 5 for Original, 4 For Density, October 25, 2011
The primary author of this book was closely associated with Dr. Jan Warfield, one of the giants of reflexive practice and cybernetic coherence, along with Dr. Russell Ackoff, and that alone makes this book a special read for me.
Warfield never got the recognition he merited, and George Mason University blew a decade long lead in this area, and today they are still failing to create the integrative and pro-active inter-disciplinary programs that reflect the the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller, Jan Warfield, and Russell Ackoff, among others. I know from personal experience that GMU refused to consider the World Brain Institute and EarthGame, both of which would have made them unique in the world, so I can appreciate to a personal degree how lonely Jan Warfield must have felt there.
5.0 out of 5 stars Forward-Thinking, Relevant to #OWS, Brilliant Sparks, October 22, 2011
This book is one of at least four that I would suggest are essential reading for any citizen in the aftermath of #OccupyWallStreet (now shortened to #OWS). The other three are:
This book is a spin-off from Reality Sandwich, an online creative blog founded by one of the contributing editors of this book. Billed as evolving consciousness one bite by bite, it offers a melange of forward thinking. Since I am a book person by nature (a digital immigrant), I particularly appreciate “best of the best” rendered in a value-added book form.
Twenty-two contributors focus on transforming currency and community with consciousness being the implicit third leg of the stool.
Everything here was written well in advance of #OWS, but as with the other three books I recommended above, could easily be adopted by #OWS as its own.
This could quite well be the best book ever written about Gandhi's philosophy of conflict: satyagraha. Bondruant's book is systematic and thorough. She lived in India for years and even got a chance to interview Nehru and many of Gandhi's other colleagues about the nonviolent action they were mutually involved with, which eventually brought about Indian Independence. This book was first written either in 1953 or 1958. But this edition was revised in 1988 and includes new, important commentary and afterthought by the author.
The book is everything the other reviewer said, and more. Because the author takes such a systematic approach, I can't imagine a better introduction to Gandhi's philosophy of conflict. But the truly unique and most vitally important aspect of this book, in my opinion, is due to the author's orientation. Her field is political science. She was a researcher who held a high position at the University of California at Berkeley. And she claims that Gandhi's philosophy made a contribution to political science that no system of political theory has ever adequately dealt with before. In that sense, she says, that Gandhi's greatest contribution to the world may have been overlooked. And this, I think, is what makes this book one of the most important books of the 20th century. Continue reading “Review (Guest): The Conquest of Violence – The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict”
“Shaxson’s story of offshore banking is nothing short of Shakespearean, a drama full of secrecy, treachery and corruption in which wealthy countries, companies and individuals collude to horde wealth in a complex global network of largely unregulated tax havens. To realize this end, they install corrupt leaders, exploit indigenous populations and, ultimately, deny both developed and developing nations of vital tax dollars. There is much here that should generate outrage…An admirable job of both arguing the consequences of offshore banking and providing a succinct history of the practice.”–Kirkus
“A blistering account of the role that tax havens play in international finance. . . brilliant.”—London Review of Books
“Far more than an exposé, Treasure Islands is a brilliantly illuminating, forensic analysis of where economic power really lies, and the shockingly corrupt way in which it behaves. If you're wondering how ordinary people ended up paying for a crisis caused by the reckless greed of the banking industry, this compellingly readable book provides the answers.”–David Wearing, School of Public Policy, UCL, London’s Global University
“The real challenge to America’s economy comes not from China – but from the Caymans, the Bahamas, and a whole hot-money archipelago loosely under the control of the City of London. If only as a civics lesson, read this astonishing book to find out the true political constitution of the world.”– Thomas Geoghegan, author of Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?
With eye opening revelations, Treasure Islandsexposes the culprits and its victims, and shows how:
*Over half of world trade is routed through tax havens
*The rampant practices that precipitated the latest financial crisis can be traced back to Wall Street’s offshoring practices
*For every dollar of aid we send to developing countries, ten dollars leave again by the backdoor
5.0 out of 5 stars Priceless Content Tediously Presented – Merits a Big House Re-Issue, SEE YOUTUBE!, October 15, 2011
Bottom line: there is an enormous amount of priceless information in the book that is the equal of Abu Ghraib but against an American citizen who was by all evidence a source if not an agent for a non-official cover officer of the CIA based in the DC area. From being ignored to being locked up without any due process to being declared mentally incompetent by people lacking all integrity to being held without trial for years, the mind just boggles. What especially troubled me was the degree to which the prisons the author was exposed to used drugs to turn prisoners who refused to confess into drug-stupored vegetables.
I remove one star because this book has not been fully developed and the author as well as all associated with the book have failed to present compelling visualizations, a timeline, snapshot biographies of the key players, etcetera. I strongly believe that this book should be reissued by a major house, with a major foreword, and tied to the Occupy Wall Street concerns about institutionalized corruption.
I RESTORE the star to a full five because the YouTube videos featuring the author are nothing short of sensational. Together with the short film Hypocrisy, this could be the “story” that breaks the back of the Empire. The author is engaging and authentic in her video appearances, I do not believe any American can understand the deep corruption in the US Government without absorbing what she has to share.
The book is TEDIOUS. It is a stream of consciousness account by the author leavened with direct quotations from testimony. If it were not so tedious it would make my blood boil with outrage, but sadly, for such an important story, what we have here is just over 450 pages of run-on text including appendices with copies of some documents and depositions.
From where I sit as a former spy who has also done counterintelligence, published books on intelligence, and generally been the leading critic of fraud, waste, and abuse in the secret intelligence and counterintelligence worlds, the following stay with me from this book:
1 CIA is using non-official cover officers to run operations within and against the Congress. Congressional staffers are both targets and sources, some may be agents (paid).
2 The author clearly had advance warning of 9/11 and communicated that warning to the intelligence community (I have written elsewhere of how nine nations warned us in advance, the FBI blew off two walk-ins in Orlando and Newark, Dick Cheney scheduled the national counter-terrorism exercise for “the day” three months in advance, etc etc.
3 Where the book excels and is easily a five star book if the publisher had shown more creative commitment, is in documenting the lengths to which the government will go to lie, cheat, and otherwise abuse the Constitution, individual citizens, and the public at large. This book is an indictment of the Department of Justice (which we have recently learned claims the right to lie to the Court when it and it alone thinks it appropriate), the FBI, the CIA, and the White House consider it useful, which turns out to be most of the time.
4 The “wild card” in this story is Andrew Card, then Chief of Staff at the White House, and a direct family relation of the author. The smoking gun in this book is its documented evidence that the White House knew full well that 9/11 was coming, and leveraged that event, overlooking the 3,000 murdered (most of them in my view by controlled demolitions planted by Larry Silverstein in a massive insurance scam that was convenient to both the political government and to Wall Street (destroying all SEC files in WTC 7, never hit by anything).
I am not at all sure why the author did not get murdered while in prison with an overdose of whatever drug of choice they use these days. I have often reflected on the schizophenic nature of some of my colleagues, honorable people who try to do their best, while also playing drone or gerbil to out and out war criminals like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, to name just three.
I recommend readers buy the book, and also search for various web options including her April 2001 YouTube (1:36:12), and the book's website. My counsel to the author would be to post the book immediately online in full text by the chapter for ease of automated translation by Google Translate. Certainly I would be glad to do that at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog. What this book desperately needs is the application of “cognitive surplus” such that timelines, visualizations, and other value-added sense-making can be integrated. I'd like to see a sharp two page executive summary of findings and implications.
We now know that Obama feared a coup if he prosecuted CIA officials and others including political appointees for their various high crimes and misdemeanors, and while this is understandable, it does not negate the need to return the US Government to the rule of law, a rule that has been so flagrantly violated so many times more under Obama than under Bush. I write this review in the aftermath of the first ever PUBLICIZED murder of a US citizen by drone without due process. We now know that the President (Obama) and the national security apparatchiks (led by Goldman Sachs lobbyist in the role of National Security Advisor) claim the right to kill anyone anywhere, including Americans, if they are deemed to be a threat to national security, where national security is left open-ended and can include any threat to the First Lady's vegetable garden. That pretty much makes all 99% of us a threat.
I salute the author, and the publisher, for getting the book out, and below list some other books that are advancing our understanding of the depraved nature of the US Government as now owned and controlled by Wall Street through the two-party tyranny (there are 65 parties in the USA, only two gets to loot the US Treasury at will, taking 5% political payoffs for taxpayer-funded programs).
Certainly I hope that the author prospers and that over time she and the authors of the books below are recognized as righteous and more in harmony with the Constitution than the executive or legislative branches of the US Government are today.
