5 Star – Page 92 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/10/102009/10/11

Review: The War After Armagedoon

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Culture, Research, Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion

Not Really a Novel, More Like a Wake-Up Call

October 10, 2009

Ralph Peters

Although I read mostly non-fiction, one of Ralph Peter's novels (his first in ten years, the last one I really liked was Traitor), is better than reality, for it portrays what we can expect when our delusional political, economic, and military acquisition practices play themselves out, and in the case of this book, what happens when we ignore the desperate need for religious counter-intelligence that I have been calling for since the 1980's.

The non-fiction foundations or complements to this book are American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America and Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror.

In a nut-shell, this a marvelous depiction of what happens in the future when enemies of the USA plant two small nuclear devices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, leading to a nation-wide call to arms with crusade overtones.

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2009/10/092009/10/09

Review: Green Intelligence: Creating Environments that Protect Human Health

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions)

Excellent Overview Book, Great Price, Nice Emphasis on Public Information Gaps

October 9, 2009

John Wargo

I like this book. It is not as detailed as any of the following but does a super job of blending together in a very easy to read manner coverage of five areas: nuclear testing, military contamination of training areas, pesticides, vehicle emissions, and plastics.

Among the books I recommend (and have reviewed) for more detailed insights:
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power
The Blue Death: The Intriguing Past and Present Danger of the Water You Drink
Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Ind
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications

This book would normally have been a four on the substnace of the five domains, especially if one is looking for more in-depth appreciations, but I found the Notes and the Index satisfactory, and the intelligence-information perspective that this author makes a special effort to address carries the book most easily to a solid five.

Highlights from my fly-leaf notes:

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2009/10/082009/10/08

Review: COOL IT–The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming

5 Star, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Science & Politics of Science, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Excellent for the General Reader, Nicely Slams the Hystericals

October 8, 2009

Bjorn Lomborg

I must acknowledge that I appreciated this book all the more for first having read Global Crises, Global Solutions as edited by Lomborg (37 contributors), but I do NOT recommend the latter book–read my summary review instead. This book I most definitely recommend for anyone of any age. By the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, this is now the most current and fluid means of coming up to speed on the relative importance of climate change versus other global crises such as infectious disease and a lack of access to clean water.It is the best available critique of why cutting carbon emissions is NOT the best focus for remediation of global crises, and most certainly not the best way to spend our money. The cost benefit is simply NOT THERE.

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2009/10/062009/10/07

Review: Waiting for Lightning to Strike–The Fundamentals of Black Politics

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Essays, Fundamentals, a Corner Stone

October 6, 2009

Kevin Alexander Gray

I was truly delighted to have this book arrive today, along with Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, which I will write up tomorrow morning.

Although the essays date back to 1994 this book (and the one above) are both published in 2008 and I will first testify that this is a fresh book, very ably strung together, and it does indeed address the fundamentals.

I totally share the author's conviction that the war on drugs is a fraud that is in fact both a war on blacks and a means of populating the prison-slavery complex. I appeared in the DVD American Drug War: The Last White Hope testifying against the CIA for precisely this reason–the author does not discuss, but I am aware of, the close relation between laundered drug money and Wall Street liquidity, and I absolutely one hundred percent support both the legalization of drugs beginning with marijuana, and the eradication of SWAT teams and other forms of excessive militarization across America.

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2009/10/032011/02/24

Review: The Resilient Earth–Science, Global Warming and the Future of Humanity

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Science & Politics of Science

Pushes the Re-Set Button on Both Gore and Lomborg

October 3, 2009

Doug L. Hoffman and Allen Simmons

The more I read, the less I know and the more frustrated I grow with the insanity of academic, government, corporate, and non-governmental stovepipes of knowledge in isolation.

Right up front this book, read crossing the Atlantic from Madrid with a bad case of bronchitis, forces me to go back and downgrade my reviews of everything by Al Gore, and insert an update with apology and revisit for the work of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World whose new book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) I am buying today as part of my apology. In the process of just doing that, I discovered Lomborg's edited work, Global Crises, Global Solutions and the first two words I saw, “Copenhagen Consensus,” sold me. Denmark is one of a tiny handful of “smart nations” and pioneered the citizen wisdom council concept that Jim Rough writes about in Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People.

Opening quote on page 5: “Fedor Dostoevsky once said, `A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.” What an epitaph for partisan governance based on lies.

Before I lay out my fly-leaf notes, a comment spanning all the books I have read:

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2009/10/022009/10/02

Review: The Sword of the Prophet

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Much More Than a Novel, This Is the Real Deal

October 2, 2009

Phillip Oliver Otts

As a recovering spy who has published and agitated for intelligence reform over the years, I generally have little patience for spy novels less the George Smiley series by John Le Carre. Been there, done that. This book is nothing short of sensational, and at $9 a huge value.

This book is so very good that I am making it one of THREE books I recommend to future spies and those who wish to understand the human side of the spy world today (or course there are many others but this one is special). The other two are still:

1. The Craft of Intelligence: America's Legendary Spy Master on the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World

2. Without Cloak or Dagger : The truth about the new espionage–

I liked this book on multiple levels. It does for the clandestine service, where we were obscenely proud of having the highest alcoholism, adultery, divorce, and suicide rates in the US Government, what James Webb did for the abuse of military forces by craven politicians in Fields of Fire.

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2009/09/252009/09/25

Review: State of the Future 2009

5 Star, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Future

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal Reference with a Priceless CD,

September 25, 2009

Jerome Glenn, Theodore Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu

This book, which includes a CD with a ton of additional information and visualization, is worth every penny of the asking price. It brings together global statistics, illustrations, and expert depictions of alternative scenarios.

Although it focuses primarily on Energy & Economies, it is closely tied in with achieving all of the Millenium Goals set by the Member Nations of the United Nations, and cacn easily be scaled up and out as more resources are applied.

I get this book as a core reference, along with Lester Brown's State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World (State of the World). When combined with High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them and the UN High Level Threat Panel report (also free online), A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change one has an instant core library for the bottom line: the future of life on Earth.

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