4 Star – Page 31 – Public Intelligence Blog

By a Catholic for Catholics, May 2, 2008

Carl Anderson

Edit of 3 May 08: Just finished Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think and one point that jumped out at me was that the Pope heard from 100 Muslim scholars about basic mistakes in his reconciliation speech. We do NOT understand one another, and any civilization of love is going to have to start there, alone with tolerance.

This is a real gem. The author is learned, balanced, and other than managing to not recognize all the other religions in the world, has written an excellent testament for those of any faith who wish to follow in Gandhi's path, in Bonhoffer's path.

I am reminded of a Shi'ite that asked a question of me at the last Hackers on Planet Earth, he told me that Shi'ites in Saudi Arabia who seek to get government jobs, have to answer questions that put them into hell. We cannot go that route. Reconciliation at the community level, one man one bullet at the Dying to Win Logic of Suicide level.

The author provides reflective questions or suggestion actions for reflection at the end of each chapter, and these make the book worthy of more than one reading.

I like the other reviews so after a handful of notes I am going to do my duty by adding links.

+ Knights of Columbus an insurance business that is also committed to charity and unity

+ Vocation to love is the only power up to the tasks facing us. Here I want to link to The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People and A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

+ Human self-knowledge is not possible in the fullest sense without recognizing or receiving Christ. Here I would point to The Faiths of the Founding Fathers.

+ Popes have recognized that reconciliation is essential but from where I sit, the Catholic hierarchy in particular wants to have it boths ways: secret blood money from the Mafia, and Holier Than Thou on the pulpit.

+ The author explores the moral view of human dignity and I am totally with him. I like this book. As blatantly Catholic as it is, this is a thoughtful author who has done his homework can can hold his own with anyone.

Other books I recommend:
The Lessons of History
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

Am loading a few images from Earth Intelligence Network. There is plenty of money for peace and prosperity, we just have to eradicate government and Wall street and prison-medical industry corruption first.

2008/04/272009/10/30

Review: How We Missed the Story–Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Hijacking of Afghanistan

4 Star, Diplomacy, Information Operations, Stabilization & Reconstruction, United Nations & NGOs

Important Contribution with Some Errors and Omissions, April 27, 2008

Roy Gutman

I cannot second-guess the author's findings based on his extraordinary direct research, but I do question some of what he was told (Madeline Albright, for example, misled this author), and I also have some issues with how the book's findings over-state, under-state, and ignore other credible sources I have reviewed here at Amazon.

Up front, seven excellent insights from this book:

1. The U.S. in the 1990's had no idea that Information Operations (IO) was going to be important, and that the dissemination of deadly knowledge (e.g. from the Afghanistan wars, on how to create Improvised Explosive Devices, etcetera) was going to become a global threat. Tracking “dangerous knowledge” has now become one of my top “indicator & warning” elements. See my review of Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography

2. Small wars cannot be ignored, power vacuums cannot be allowed or they will be filled negatively. Non-state actors can hijack a state and we need to notice when they do. It is at this point I begin to feel the author is over-stating Bin Laden's reach, especially when compared to criminal states around the world. See my review of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy.

3. Successive administrations, from Bush Senior to Clinton to Bush Jr, had no clue about the importance of the “cultural roots” that Bin Laden was spreading with his financing of madrasses across Afghanistan (it is at this point I grow concerned that the author is ignoring the Saudi government's financing of both Bin Laden and the madrasses all over the world and especially in Indonesia). I have scheduled a book on CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE: Beliefs, Faiths, Ideologies, and the Five Minds for 2009. This is clearly an area where the US Intelligence Community and the foreign policy/national communities know nothing.

4. If journalists are not on the scene in every clime and place, then it is easier for the US Government to ignore problems that will inevitably ignore borders and come home to America. See A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The author ignores the fact that with the exception of The Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, and the Boston Globe, virtually every newspaper and journal is a paid huckster for their corporate owners.

5. IMPORTANT: Administration must not only HAVE a grand strategy, but within that strategy must craft BOTH a domestic message for the US public and an inter-agency foreign policy campaign plan for achieving OUTCOMES, not just “messages.” This was the book's strongest point.

6. American indifference reinforces instability enablers and formentors. I know for a fact that Madeline Albright repressed INR reporting on terrorism becoming a real problem. She chose to accept Iran's attack on Khobar Towers and the Al Qaeda attacks on two embassies and the USS Cole as “acceptable losses.” That alone disqualifies her from advising Hillary Clinton on anything.

7. UN and UN negotiated for the Soviet pull-out but not for a stable follow-on regime. Deja vu in Iraq. Over-all the author does an excellent job of depicting a generally blase, sometimes naive, and often inattentive US foreign policy establishment across all three administrations. See my review of Running The World: the Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power for a sense of the clowns our Presidents tend to appoint for lack of a stronger TRANSPARTISAN bench.

Without regard to how the author may have been led by those telling their story as they would have it come out, there are a number of “dots” that I found worthy of note:

+ Bin Laden is reported to have forecast Iraq's attack on Kuwait and eventually on Saudi Arabia.

+ Over-emphasis on Bin Laden's anti-Americanism and I have noted, “a hit job of Clarke and Scheuer.” It was the US keeping bases in Saudi Arabia that set Bin Laden off, together with the Saudi refusal to allow him to attack Hussein directly.

+ US reliance on Pakistan and failing to deal direct with the Afghan regimes and principal tribes was a fatal error

+ Author avoids any mention of the fact that it was the Saudi regime that funded Bin Laden and global spread of virulent Wahabbism from 1988 onwards.

+ Although Cheney appears in the Index several times, the book and the author, rather astonishingly, fail to to report:

– Cheney was given the mandate for terrorism from day one under Bush Junior, and it was Cheney who first, failed to take terrorism seriously, and then allowed it happen in order to justify an invasion of Iraq. See, among MANY other books, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition among many other works.

– Both the Clinton and Bush Junior Administrations were actively negotiating with the Taliban over oil and natural gas pipelines. See Crossing the Rubicon, The Long Emergency, and many other works along these lines.

+ Senator Jesse Helms not only destroyed the US Information Agency, the only US agency with a clue on foreign cultures and belief systems, but he also castrated the Agency for International Development (AID) at precisely the time it was most needed.

+ Karzai flagged the Taliban as a group worthy of supporting.

+ US Intelligence had astronomical sums for “getting” Bin Laden but almost nothing for fostering stabilization and reconstruction in Afghanistan, including support to nationalists like Moussaud.

+ In 1999 Pakistan and Iran cut a deal–THAT IS THE SECOND STORY WE MISSED. [We know have a great deal of reporting in the open on Iranian funding of Pakistani nuclear program, and in my view, likelihood that the quid pro quo was an Islamic nuclear warhead for the Russian Sunburn missiles (carrier killers, 3.0 mach straight, 2.2 mach zig-zag).

+ The author is naive or poorly informed or duplicitous in his stating that Bin Laden was outraged at the illegitimate Arab rules, stating it in such as way as to question Bin Laden's sanity. Michael Scheur and I are agreed on this point: Bin Laden has had good cause to condemn US presence in the Middle East. See my review of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 as well as Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror.

+ He reminds us that Ambassador Bill Richardson accomplished nothing in his mission to Afghanistan.

+ He reminds us that Khalizad, the darling of Bush Juniors regime, was part of the problem within the Clinton Administration.

+ He tells a very good story over-all of how conflicted the Department of State was in on the one hand, considering the Taliban not bad over all (what does not come out is the oil and gas deals in the background) and their record on human rights, which included mass murders and atrocities against women and children.

+ The THIRD BIG STORY WE MISSED was the Arabization of the Taliban, to include their changing to the Arabic calendar, the Arabization of libraries (which is to say the burning of most books), and the destruction of Hindu and other religious antiquities, something Pakistan tried to stop. This is new to me, I have not seen reference to it before, and I consider Bin Laden's influence over the Taliban to be seriously over-stated, but I accept this as useful perspective and certainly a good example of how the US simply does not “do” cultural intelligence.

The book ends with a focused chronology (focused instead of incomplete–the author did not set out to do a global review on this missed story, one is still needed) and a generally good index.

I put this book down thinking once again how desperately we need a private sector or public ABLE DANGER able to connect all the dots across all the books. I have tried for years to get Jeff Bezos to realize he can monetize micro-text for micro-cash and also sense-making across literatures, but he is in denial on World Brain possibilities, at least for now.

This is a solid four-star book, certainly worthy of buying and reading if you are responsible for South Asia, Central Asia, terrorism, or understanding why US foreign and national security policy continue to be managed by cronies with little deep knowledge of the real world and no holistic strategic model for addressing threats, policies, and state and non-state partners in a coherent sustainable manner.

My final three links:
Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the 21st Century
Security Studies for the 21st Century
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

2008/04/252010/01/05

Review: State of the World 2008–Toward a Sustainable Global Economy

4 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Superb Primer for Any Level, Needs Two Missing Pieces, April 25, 2008

Worldwatch Institute

This a superb edited work that melds chapters (with notes at the end) from world-class authors on a broad range of topics.

I kept this at five stars until the end and then I could not stand it anymore. There are at least five reasons to reduce it to four. Here are the first two.

1. As someone who grew up with Banks & Textor and have created four analytic models in my lifetime, I am growing increasing impatient with the continued fragmentation of research and writing. There is a model available: ten threats (from the UN High Level Threat Panel), twelve policies, eight challengers. We need to start fusing, analyzing, visualizing and discussing all ten threats in relation to all ten policies. I am no longer content to read about water in one chapter, meat in another, and so on. Stop putzing around and create the EarthGame with all information, all languages, all the time–geospatially grounded of course–and let's get on with the task of identifying with precision the global range of gifts table down to the household level, from $1 to $100 million.

2. I am increasingly irritated by the little cabals that strive to cite only themselves, and furthermore, have their own language to distinguish them. “Get the price right” instead of “true cost”? Get over it. Enough already. I am also increasingly of the view that the Notes must be indexed. The notes are good, but when the lead chapter talks about “Adjust Economic Scale” and fails to cite Small Is Beautiful, 25th Anniversary Edition: Economics As If People Mattered: 25 Years Later . . . With Commentaries or Human Scale I growl.

Together with Plan 3.0 and Vital Signs, both linked by another reviewer, this book represents a fine stand-alone study set if you want to limit yourself to the WorldWatch oracles and dismiss all others.

Here is what grabbed me about this book:

+ Opens with utterly sensational four pages of “timeline” for 2007 with little blocks that are priceless. I really like this.

+ Chapter 1 does a fine job of listing:

– Four flawed economic assumptions:

– 1. Independence of economic activity from “infinite” nature

– 2. Growth should be the primary economic objective

– 3. Markets are always superior to governments at allocating resources

– 4. Humans are economic maximizers and place no value on community

This may sound simple but I admire it.

– The seven big ideas for economic reform:

– 1. Adjust economic scale

– 2. Shift from growth to development

– 3. Make prices tell the ecological truth [note: for World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility–WISER–to not be in index irritates me so much I almost take the fifth star again).

– 4. Account for nature's contributions [I am infuriated by a second hand citation. I am not familiar with more than a couple of books, but to not mention Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications or The Future of Life moves this book, as very good as it is–toward Classic Comics book shallowness.

– 5. Apply the precautionary principle. [Cites a San Francisco Chronicle opinion piece, what happened to the real books on this subject, such as Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing The Precautionary Principle

– 6. Revitalize commons management

– 7. Value women [here I am irritated by the isolation of these authors and their citations from a broader understanding of why we should value women: because it is a proven fact that there is no better investment, dollar for development dollar, than a dollar spend educating women. That ripples through society and impacts on the men big time.]

The second chapter has a prices Figure showing that computer diffusion is growing arithmetically while cell phone diffusion is growing logrithmically plus. My comment: Nokia is slowing beginning to grasp what I told their Chairman a year ago: give the cell phones to the poor free, sell the call, not the phone (and my other idea, educate the poor one cell call at a time, starting with call centers in India and China, and then monetize the transactions. Having six farmers call in asking about the same animal disease is PRICELESS! How governments cannot understand this simple logic is beyond my comprehension.

Across the book the tables and figures are powerful but they are not integrated into a total model (e.g. you should not grow grain with water you cannot afford to create fuel instead of feeding a family when you could run 35 million cars a year on Cuban sugar cane sap).

I was pleasantly surprised to see meat and seafood in its own chapter, but as an avid admirer of everything by Francis Moore Lappe
, see for example Diet for a Small Planet and her most recentDemocracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life.

Toward the end are two very important chapters, one on the financial implications of sustainability (i.e. what alternative vehicles can be used to push back on predatory lending, absentee ownership, and wasteful food practices) and on harnessing human energy (e.g. to plant trees).

I put the book down with irritation–Open Money, Collective Intelligence, even the word Citizen are not in this book–and I again harken to the need for an EarthGame in which all knowledge, all budgets, all citizens, can come together to game, understand, dialog, and decide.

I've come to the conclusion that the fragmentation of the “academy” is now just as dangerous as the desperate failure of our political system in America (see Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It for the simple reason that if the academy would get its act together and “make sense” to the public, the public will take care of the political fix.

We knew most of this stuff in the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's–at the academic level–but the politicians were able to ignore us because a) the people were unwitting and b) low gas prices and high Exxon bribes were great for the smokey room crowd. That's over. It's time for the academy to start producing explicit recommendations and budgets, at the zip code level, that we can use to beat politicians into submission or out of office.

Please have it online by 4 July 2008, and thank you for all the wonderful work up to this point. Time to bring this program home.

Two more links that are action oriented:
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2008/04/202009/10/30

Review DVD: National Geographic–Human Footprint

4 Star, Environment (Problems), Reviews (DVD Only)

Brilliant, Tedious, Needs a Study Guide or Booklet, April 20, 2008

Elizabeth Vargas

The intelligence that went into creating this movie, and the artistic creabtivity and sheer industry in amassing visual depictions of what goes into making and using things, is absolutely top of the line world class.

Unfortunately, viewed in one sitting this movie becomes tedius and also suffers from throwing out so many numbers that none of them are memorable. I suspect the following terms were uttered sometime during the movie, but the fact that I cannot remember for sure is troubling:

Virtual Water
Carbon Footprint
True Cost

This DVD, if used in a classroom, should be broken up into at least five sessions, no more than three chapters at a time.

I actually think this would be better as a book, the movie aspect is too fleeting for the best possible absorbtion and retention.

Chapters cover:
Human Presence
Diapers and Milk
Meat, Eggs, and Carbs
Sweets, Fruits, and Vegetables
Plastics and Metals
Cleansing and Beauty Products
Water and Solid Waste
Clothing and Textiles
ASlcohol
Housing, Furnishing, and Apppliances
Entertainment Consumption
Transportation
Consumption of Natural Resources
Cell Phones
Shrinking Wildlife

National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World is the better of two, all things considered. This movie I would like to see National Geographic re-issue with a little booklet of facts for each chapter, and also a website in which the complete true costs for all items discussed are presented, and volunteers shown how to do the research to post “true costs” for any given product or service.

I see real value in National Geographic becoming the hub for “true cost” information, something they could easily do in partnership with the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER).

Only one big negative: the DVD pupports to be about the average person but is actually about the average within the billion rich that have an aggregate annual income of one trillion. It teaches us nothing at all about the five billion at the base of the pyramid who have an aggregate income of four trillion. I'd like to see National Geographic rethink its plans, and ultimately come out with short videos on each of the ten high-level threats to Humanity, each of the twelve core policy areas, and each of the eight demographic definers of the future. Somewhere in there they could teach citizens to demand responsible transpartisan policies and balanced transparent budgets.

Books that I recommend include:
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beau
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2008/04/082009/11/01

Review: Lost Promise

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Deepest look inside a broken secret analysis system,

April 8, 2000

John A. Gentry

John has written a very personal book, somewhat vitriolic in its attacks on both Bob Gates for politicization and Directorate of Intelligence managers in general for being both ignorant and lacking in courage. It is essential reading for anyone considering improvements in how we do intelligence analysis, and includes an eighteen-point program for reforming both the process of intelligence and the management of intelligence analysis. The figure on page 226 comparing the Traditional, Opportunity-Oriented, and Opportunism-Oriented “Schools” of intelligence analysis is alone worth the price of the book. Includes a number of interesting original internal documents from his fight with DI management.

2008/04/022010/01/05

Review: RV Owner’s Handbook, Revised

4 Star

Disappointing in Contrast to Trailer Life's Manual, But Still Useful,April 2, 2008

Woodall Publishing Corp

My wife inherited a 1988 Winnebago (31 foot, no slide-outs) and we've decided to bring it up to speed for beach trips. This is one of two books I have bought to get started, it is the lesser of the two but still useful.

RV Repair and Maintenance Manual: Updated and Expanded (RV Repair and Maintenance Manual) is absolutely one the best car maintenance books I have ever had the pleasure of using (I also have a 1964 MGB and related maintenance books). This other book is brilliantly organized, crystal-clear, and I especially appreciate the full-page trouble-shooting guide with symptoms and fixes in two columns.

If you want only one book, buy the other book. I am not unhappy with this Owner's Handbook, I use it for overview reading, but it is not anywhere near as good as the Trailer Life book in terms of detail and trouble-shooting.

2008/03/292009/10/30

Review: Superclass–The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Does Not Name Names or Illustrate Networks, March 29, 2008

David Rothkopf

I grew up in the 1970's studying multinational corporations and inter-locking directorates, reading Richard Barnett's Global Reach, and so on. I am also familiar with the $60,000 a year special database that charts the top dogs and every membership, association, investment, etc.

The two major deficiencies in this book that left me disappointed are:

1. Does not name names nor show network diagrams such as you can pull from Silobreaker.com (Factiva is not even close).

2. Shows no appreciation for past research and findings. This is a current overview, closer to journalism than to authorship or research.

The book earns four stars instead of three for two reasons:

1. There is a very subtle but crystal-clear sense of goodness, ethics, and “good intention” or “right thinking” by the author. As diplomatic as he might be, he clearly sees the insanity of Exxon refusing to think about anything other than maximizing petroleum while externalizing $12 in costs for every $3.50 gallon that they sell–they did NOT “earn” $40 billion in profit this past year–they essentially stole it from the population at large and future generations).

2. Each chapter has a serious point or series of points, and I especially liked the author's constant presentation of tangible numbers on virtually every page.

Having said all that, I will list two books below that I found more interesting than this one, and then list a few notes that made it to my flyleafs.

Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make–and Spend–Their Fortunes

Notes from the book:

6,000 top people (in total of 6 billion, I think that's .0001–the author, who's no doubt better at math, says each is 1 in a million)

Top 1,000 rich own as much or earn as much as the bottom 2.5 billion poor.

Early on he says he decided not to do a list because it changes. I believe him, but I was truly disappointed to not find a lot of meat in this book–it has facts, anecdotes, a story line, but one does not get the “feeling in the fingertips” or the raw feel.

Early on he reviews and dismisses conspiracy theories, and returns to this in the final chapter where he reviews the Masons, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, all in a cursory manner (for example, there is no table, a single page would do, of top Skull and Bones power figures today).

Power is shifting away from Nations. This is true. The author focuses on those who have money and live globally. He is not focusing on those who control their own spending, global assemblages. For that see
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

Human interactions are the glue connects the superclass members–corridor meetings that take place on the periphery of “big events” where the important stuff is not the event, but the encounters–Davos, World Cup, Grand Prix, Allen & Co, Geneva Auto Show, Winter Olympics, the Chinese meeting on Hainan Island (the Boao Forum).

Corporate/Finance the top of the barrel, 2000 top organizations control $103 trillion in assets, do $27 trillion in annual sales.

Access/time is the most precious asset, one reason the Gulf Stream is really a solid indicator of top of the top–it provides time saved, mobility, flexibility, privacy, security, work en route, sleep well, etc.

The author tells us he is focusing on influence, not just wealth or accomplishments, but very candidly, while the book is coherent and there is nothing wrong with its facts or sequence of observations, one simply does not come away with a clear picture. This is like a verbal description of a trip around the world, which it is, but without the photos, smells, tastes, etc. It also avoids any substantive (as opposed to discreetly moral “in passing” commentary) attention to costs and consequences–a balance sheet showing choices being made (e.g. by Exxon) and who benefits, who loses, would no doubt terminate this author's welcome on the fringes of the super-elite as it would be devastatingly negative.

20-50 people control any given sector, worldwide

In the book the author seeks to discuss six central issues:

1. Nature of the superclass power

2. Link if any (ha ha) between concentrated wealth and the five billion at the bottom of the pyramid

3. Whether the superclass calls into question the sufficiency of our global legal and governance institutions

4. Whether the division in interests between the rich and the poor will be the central conflict of our time

5. Would we choose this superclass?

6. How is the superclass evolving

General conclusions:

Markets not working fully, need some non-market “controlling authority”

Elites are not taking responsibility for the poor in their own countries

Meritocracy is no longer–same merit, one becomes a billionaire from connections, the other a mere millionaire

Private equity is where its at in terms of starting salaries in the $300,000 range.

Globalists versus nationalist

Anti-globalists include leaders of Iran, Russia, and Venezuela

Tottering institutions–International Monetary Fund may not be funded by countries much longer

Global military-to-military relations work, political-diplomatic do not, and the money is mis-spent (billions here and there, and no money for spare parts to keep air forces flying, much cheaper good will spending)

Criminal elite a part of this (read Moises Naim's book Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy

USA has a power vacuum in that both the President and Congress have taken power that is not theirs and abused it, but the US voter has ceded power by failing to understand and deliberate on the issues.

He surprises me by bing familiar with General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

Two coolest sentences in the book for me:

“Most dangerous mind-altering substance on earth is oil.”

“Cost is simply not caring.” (Corporations that enrich dictators while ignoring the billions whose commonwealth is being stolen). For more on this evil and how the USA supports 42 of 44 dictators, see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025

There is nothing in this book, published in 2008, on Sovereign Wealth Funds, nor does the author focus on dictators and “royalty” as part of the superclass. As Lawrence Lessig has noted, end corruption, end scarcity, begin a true harvesting of the common wealth for the common good. Right now we are all where “Animal Farm” put us–fodder for the wealthy.

The publisher's choice of ink colors for the jacket flaps and rear cover is terrible, those portions of the book are difficult to read.

The book is over-sold: “draws back the curtain on a privileged society.” Not really. This is a solid book of facts that is as close to bland and generic and inoffensive as one can get–but then, that was probably the author's intent since he wants to be able to see these people again…..

For a direct opposite of this book, seek out books on Collective Intelligence, Wisdom Councils, World Cafe, Social Entrepreneurship, All Rise, Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and so on. We live in interesting times.

Category: 4 Star

Review: A Civilization of Love–What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World