1-7 Star Rating – Page 150 – Public Intelligence Blog

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.

Continue reading “Review: State of the Future 2009”

2009/09/202010/10/05

Review: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail

6 Star Top 10%, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Six Star Special

September 20, 2009

Paul Polack

This book is a “beyond five stars” book and will be so rated at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog where I can do things Amazon does not provide for, including reader access to my 1400+ non-fiction reviews via any of 100 different categories.

This single man, this author, has lifted 17 million people out of poverty by focusing on the needs of the one-acre and below subsistence farmer living on $1 a day. I get goose-bumps just thinking about the magnitude of both the accomplishment, and the implications of the accomplishment.

2009/09/192009/09/19

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (Universities), Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Potential Straw to Break the Camel's Back

September 19, 2009

Chris Hedges

I disagree with those who dismiss this book, however erudite their claims. The author first impressed me with American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

Reading this book on the heels of Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny and Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling, on top of my own cry of the heart in the preface “Paradigms of Failure” in Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography), I have to say in the strongest possible terms that this is a capstone book of great service to both those who know it all and those who know little at all.

My flyleaf notes:

Continue reading “Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle”

2009/09/122009/09/14

Review: Secession, State, and Liberty

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Electoral Reform USA, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secession & Nullification

Phenomenal Overview, Timely, the One Book to Buy If…

September 12, 2009

David Gordon

I read in threes and fours on any given topic, and in some ways I regret getting to this book last, but on the other hand, having read the other books below first, it makes me appreciate, and be willing to certify, that this one book is the one to buy if you only want to read one book on the topic.

2009/09/082009/09/08

Review: An Enemy of the State–The Life of Murray N. Rothbard

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Biography & Memoirs, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Gfited Author Summarizes Gifted Libertarian Mind

Justin Raimondo

September 8, 2009

I was so impressed by the AUTHOR of this book and the manner in which he so ably presented in summary form the very complex economic, philosophical, and consequently political reflections of Murray Rothbard that I immediately looked for “About the Author” and did not find it. So let me start with the author rather than the subject.

Justin Raimondo an American author and the editorial director of the website Antiwar.com. He describes himself as a “conservative-paleo-libertarian.” In addition to his thrice-weekly column for antiwar.com, he is a regular contributor to The American Conservative and Chronicles magazine. Raimondo also writes two columns a month for Taki's Top Drawer. He has published three other books, the last one only available from Google Books:
Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (Background: Essential Texts for the Conservative Mind)
The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection
Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (AFPAC, 1996) via Google Free Online

As someone who appreciates complexity in all its forms, I found the author's intellectual endeavor in this book to be stunningly formidable. Of the over 24 books by Murray Rothbard, the author presented a coherent account of the high points, and particularly of these that merit further study:
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market – Scholars Edition
Economic Depressions
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (2 Vol. Set)
The Case Against the Fed
Wall Street Banks and American Foreign Policy

From my nine-pages of notes, respecting the 1,000 word limitation on reviews:

Continue reading “Review: An Enemy of the State–The Life of Murray N. Rothbard”

2009/09/062009/09/06

Review: The New Rulers of the World

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Integrity Takes This to a Full Five–Part of a Review Trilogy

September 6, 2009

John Pilger

John Pilger was brought to my attention recently. I have known a few really great investigative journalists such as Robert Young Pelton, David Kaplan, and John Fialka, but John Pilger was new to me, and I am *very* glad to have been pointed in his direction. I found in all three books a combination of integrity, insight, and optimism that is heartening and bodes well for the “average” person getting a grip on their out of control governments and corporations who are as criminal in their own way as transnational crime networks.

I bought this book along with:
2005 Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World
2007 Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire

Published in 2002, it gripped me from beginning to end. Although I studied Multinational Corporations (MNC) in the 1970's and more recently, and am a fan of such books as Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations; The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System, and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, what was new for me in this book and in other readings I have undertaken this past decade is the collusion between governments and corporations, both profiteering at the expense of the individual taxpayer.

The author is compelling in labeling politicians as criminal tyrants, and here in the USA I am happy to see the beginning of the end of the two-party tyranny in such books as Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny.

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2009/09/062009/09/06

Review: Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Corruption, Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Iraq, Media, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda

Work of Historic Value with Deep Meaning for the Future

September 6, 2009

John Pilger (Editor)

This is the middle book in the John Pilger set that I bought. The others that I am including in a review trilogy include:
2002 The New Rulers of the World
2007 Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire

Although the book is daunting at first site, at 626 pages, it is MUCH easier to read than Laurrie Garrett's Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, for the simple reason that it is a collection of twenty-nine stories by different investigative journalists and can be read in pieces.

Use “Inside the Book” provided by Amazon to see the range of the stories. This is mostly about government terrorism against its own people, or in a few instances (e.g. thalidomide, fast food) government complicity in corporate atrocities against the paying public.

Eight of the pieces center on Iraq from 2002 onwards.

I put the book down thinking along these lines:

Continue reading “Review: Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World”