Category: 4 Star

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Review: Using Data Sharing to Improve Coordination in Peacebuilding: Report of a Workshop on Technology, Science, and Peacebuilding

4 Star, Civil Affairs, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Diplomacy, Information Operations, Intelligence (Public), Stabilization & Reconstruction, United Nations & NGOs
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Andrew Robertson and Steve Olson (eds.)

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent First Step, Four Disappointments, January 2, 2013

This is one of the more useful reports to come out of the US Institute of Peace and its collaborative effort with the National Academy of Engineering and I highly recommend it for either free reading online at the National Academies Press (individual) or for library purchase for the information, intelligence, diplomacy, civil-military, stabilization & reconstruction, and decision-support sections.

The goals are worthy but overly scientific & technical (the cultural part always comes first): to apply science and technology to the process of peacebuilding and stabilization; to promote systematic communications among organizations across political and other boundaries; and to apply science and technology to pressing conflict issues. La di dah. I just want to know if there is a dead donkey at the bottom of this particular well.

Secondary and equally ambitious goals that their current staffing model cannot support:
1. Adopt the agricultural extension services model to peacebuilding
2. Use data sharing to improve coordination in peacebuilding
3. Sense emerging conflicts (at least they realize the secret intelligence world does NOT do this)
4. Harness systems methods for delivery of peacebuilding services.

FOUR STRONG THEMES MAKE THIS BOOK VALUABLE:
1. Data sharing requires working across a technology-culture divide
2. Information sharing requires building and maintaining trust
3. Information sharing requires linking civilian-military policy discussions to technology
4. Collaboration software needs to be aligned with user needs.

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Review: The Volunteer The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

cover volunteerMichael Ross and Jonathan Kay

4.0 out of 5 stars 50% Authentic, 25% Disinformation, 25% Unwitting, December 22, 2012

For those that do not know my background, I am a former clandestine case officer (spy) who has published widely on the craft of intelligence.

I received this book as a gift from the author, whom I have met, and whose talents in creating non-official cover and in teaching naive Americans how to create unofficial cover (something CIA cannot do), I believe in.

The book is 50% authentic and for that reason alone I recommend it be required reading for those being trained in the clandestine service. Although sometimes tedious, the level of detail that is provided is for me fully satisfactory and useful as a “drill” for appreciating the nature of a life under cover.

The emphasis on creating cover and sticking to cover even if you are certain you are going to die or be sent to a secret jail to rot for all eternity, is the key take-away from this book — with happy endings for those that stick to their cover.

Mossad is different from the clumsier Western services that live immunity rather than cover. Mossad is much more about direct action, from street-level surveillance and orientation photographs of specific human and organizational and potential sabotage targets, to placing beacons on ships smuggling arms so they can be sunk by unmarked aircraft or an Israeli submarine, or explosives on a car known to be enroute to a terrorist leader.

The observations on how the CIA and FBI cannot work together, even in counter-terrorism, are useful confirmation that little has changed since 9/11. The book first published in 2007, was updated in 2011.

From a counterintelligence perspective, the book provides a wonderfully clear picture of how long and how hard it would be to penetrate the Mossad with a false flag volunteer under control from the age of 18.

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Review: Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Complexity & Resilience, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Harvey Molotch

4.0 out of 5 stars Theatrically Naive in Its Own Way But Recommended, December 15, 2012

I'm the former spy and honorary hacker who sounded the alarm on cyber-security in 1994 and who questioned every aspect of the Department of Homeland Security, pointing out that the joint fusion centers would be a waste of money and that, I quote “50% of the dots will be bottom up dots and we have no way of ingesting them.” I am also an arch critic of the National Security Agency, which processes less than 5% of what it collects and is generally incompetent at 163 of the 183 languages that matter–it's also largely useless and very late on out of the way threats like Benghazi.

What the author does not realize is that DHS and especially the TSA are not about security. They are a combination of employment programs to reduce the stress of 22.4% unemployment, and an alternative pork fest now that Pentagon pork is starting to wind down. “Top Secret America” is less about invading the privacy of all US citizens, or theater, and more about continuing to spend money in insane ways that reward the industrial complexes and the banks at our expense. The leadership of DHS is not stupid — they simply do not have a mandate to actually perform in the public interest. The US Government spends money the way the RECIPIENTS of our tax dollars want it to spend money, NOT on what is in our best interests.

The author may also not realize that there are rogue elements within the ultra-secret side of the US Government that are out of control and willing to kill Americans on American soil (as well as overseas) to further perpetual war. There are also evangelicals and pentecostals who are in alliance with Israel, itself famous for false flag attacks on US aircraft and barracks as well as the occasional really outrageous act such as their attack on the USS Liberty. The FBI appears to have done some spectacular work clamping down on a handful of military officers who have been trying since 2007 to fake an attack by Iran on a US naval vessel.

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Review: Poor Economics – A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty

4 Star, Economics, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

4.0 out of 5 stars Serious Economics Poorly Presented, December 14, 2012

I have no doubt that among economists this book merits all the praise it has received; I do NOT recommend it for the general reader, indeed, I do not recommend it at all unless it is assigned reading, in which case my recommendation is moot. The book is neither as radical as its title pretends, nor as detailed as I was hoping for–how, exactly, do the one billion poor spend their 99 US cents a day? I bought the book because I am thinking about how to persuade Sir Richard Branson that he should sponsor “The Virgin Truth” [one pager concept has been posted online]; go “all in” on all the Opens including Open Base Transceiver Station, Open Spectrum, Open Software, etcetera [topic of my most recent book], and give each of the five billion poor free cell phone access and free education “one cell call at a time” as conceptualized by the Earth Intelligence Network. For me, this book is a four and not light reading. All text, few charts, no lists, no comparatives, no visualization.

The authors take one really brilliant idea and then talk around it, and that is why they lose one star. The brilliant idea is that we really do need to understand at a micro level how the just under one billion extreme poor spend their 99 cents a day (the other four billion less poor live on $2 to $20 a day), and how they make their choices, choices that often reject tiny investments in prevention (chloriating their water, for example) with the result that they end of losing work and spending more on remediation after the fact. YES! I agree. They then proceed to answer, at best, 20% of the question.

The big take-away for me–I was absolutely delighted to see this smessage repeated throughout the book–was how a tiny bit of information can make a world of difference, both in the choice that an individual poor person makes, and in the eradication of corruption once detailed numbers are published about what *should* have reached each schoolhouse in any given district. In other words, and this is NOT the key point of the book, but rather my key point: without changing a single institution, without redirecting a single dollar, the simple implementation of an information transparency regime changes everything. Now THAT is a book I hope these two authors will write soon, and that book will probably join my 10% “Beyond 5 Stars.” [I read in 98 categories, just one of them fiction, access all my reviews and their Amazon pages by category at Phi Beta Iota, here are just two: Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design (206); Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class (253).

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Review (Guest): The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Complexity & Catastrophe, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Terrorism & Jihad, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page

Jeremy Keenan

Phi Beta Iota:  See Berto Jongman: Algeria Fronting for US in Fabricating Al Qaeda Threat and Legitimizing US Military Occupation of Sahara? for a short-hand version of the book.  On balance and sight unseen we give the book four stars for provocation, while respecting the guest review below as being meritorious in its own right.

2.0 out of 5 stars Could be so much better, good premise, but unfortunately not based on too much fact, November 12, 2011

By Andrew Wasily

I like the premise of this book, that is basically why I bought it and read it. Unfortunately, Dr. Keenan has not based his book on much fact, but more conspiracy, and a belief that the United States is smart enough to enter into a grand conspirarcy with Algeria to dupe the region. I would have liked more of a cultural analysis about the threat of the United States military entering into the Sahara and Sahel.

The argument seems to me that the United States created the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and has focused much more military attention on Africa and African terrorist threats. The U.S., especially the military, can be very naive and see national interest in a fight against terrorists such as AQIM in the Sahel, Boko Haram in Nigeria, or al Shabaab in Somalia. If you look closer, these “terrorist” groups are very small, have little traction among the local population, and are hoping that the U.S., French, UK, give them some military attention so that they can become stronger (make this a war against the U.S.). A direct attack on these groups by the U.S., can only cause more conflict. There is very little the U.S. can do against these groups as terrorists. Africans and the international community likely needs to see these groups as criminal networks, insurgencies, and on the brink of losing legitimacy. It would seem to me that the U.S. and international community has to invest in police training, rule-of-law and court system reform, building new jails and training staff to properly treat inmates. The response to a supposed “terrorist” threat is what AFRICOM senior leaders know will be funded by Congress . . . you cannot justify programs by building capacity and working on rule-of-law.

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Review: The Race for What’s Left – The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources

4 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Environment (Problems), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Amazon Page

Michael Klare

4.0 out of 5 stars All the Negatives, None of the Positives,October 22, 2012

I know and admire Professor Michael Klare and have given his earlier books such as his first blockbuster, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author rave reviews. This book is valuable as a resource but I fear that it is the last beating of the dead horse Michael has been riding for the past decade. His other books also merit reading,

Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (American Empire Project)
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

but the theme remains the same:

01) We're at Peak Everything

02) Special Interests own Governments

03) Governments go to war for Special Interests

While Michael calls for changes in our consumption, this book is missing both the convergence of the evil extractive interests and the emerging good of collective intelligence aka crowd sourcing, and the astonishingly fast forwarding of information technologies and “Open Source Everything” as a meme that I anticipate the Pirate Party (a party that went from non-existent to 50+ countries in 3.5 years) may adopt.

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Review (Guest): State of the World 2012 – Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity

4 Star, Atlases & State of the World
Amazon Page

Lester Brown, Erik Assadourian, Michael Renner et al

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspiration for both policy makers, negotiators and me as “normal” civilian  August 3, 2012

By H.J. van der Klis

In the 2012 edition of its flagship report, Worldwatch.org celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the Rio de Janeiro 1992 Earth Summit with a far-reaching analysis of progress toward building sustainable economies. Written in clear language with easy-to-read charts, State of the World 2012 offers a new perspective on what changes and policies will be necessary to make sustainability a permanent feature of the world's economies. The Worldwatch Institute has been named one of the top three environmental think tanks in the world by the University of Pennsylvania's Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program.

The first part consists of 15-20 page articles reviewing recent sustainability developments, such as:

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