I bought this book in preparation for an advanced mariner's meteorology course, and could not have made this comment without having first gained that higher level of knowledge.
This is a suberb book. It provides superb information about the weather fax, including an excellent and easily portable manual for the various symbols. It has two areas for improvement:
1) It sticks to the two-dimensional depiction of weather that is common to the average person. Although there are a couple of illustrations showing altitude, the author could easily have put in a few pages on the rotation of the earth, the 500 mb level, and how weather on the surface cannot be understood without underestanding what is happening at the 18,000 level. As my instructor put it, the high-level troughs are the chicken that hatches the surface level (scrambled) egg.
2) It does not make the connection, at least that I could see, between the vital importance of making your own observations at 00 and 12 Zulu, so that when you finally receive the weather fax six or seven hours later, you can compare reality with what was provided. This also applies to forecasts–you can keep them, compare your own observations as the time passes, and get a sense of the difference.
Add the above, and read “Mariner's Guide to the 500-Millibar Chart” by Joe Stenkiewicz and Lee Chesneau, and Google for <Lee Chesneau> to find his web site, and you'll have all you need to move to the better three-dimensional interactive viewing of weather and weather charts.
EDIT of 19 March 2008 to reframe appreciation. My first evalution was written from a perspective one who reads a great deal and is angry about the limitations of those with narrow perspectives. In the past year I have become much more aware of the importance of appreciating the good in context, and reinforcing it. Although I do not normally go back and re-do reviews, in this one instance I choose to do so because I now see the book as a serioius contributor to the emergence of Conscious Evolution.
This book is a fine summary based on the author's own experience of ideas that are discussed in greater detail and more diversity by Tom Atlee, James McGregor Burns, Robert Buckman, Allison Fine, Robert Fuller, William Greider, Richard Moore, Bill Moyer, Steven Pinker, James Rough, and many others.
Here are the topics covered in a very easy to read fast book:
Four Stages of Political Evolution
1) Anarchy
2) Fear & Polarization
3) Silence & Resignation
4) Politics of Hope
Seven Practices for Beocming a Concious Political Leader
1) Finding Your Spiritual Center
2) Serving with Higher Motives
3) Sharing Your Unique Gifts
4) Cultivating Your Political Habitat
5) Communicating with Integrity & Trust
6) Trusting the Mystery
7) Answering the Call
This is not a book I would recommend for those deeply engaged with all of these processes, but I can no longer dismiss it as completely as I once did.
One of a Handful of Revolutionary and Liberating References,
May 12, 2007
Steven Pinker
This is a truly extraordinary book, some of the finest scholarship I have ever read, easily up there with E. O. Wilson's “Consilience” and other such works.
Four bridges from biology to culture: 1) cognitive science; 2) cognitive neuroscience; 3) behavioral genetics; and 4) evolutionary psychology. I am of course reminded of Stewart Brand, Howard Rheingold, and the long-standing views on Co-Evolution.
The author's primary and most adroitly presented view is that the human mind is NOT a blank slate, and that we must completely separate science from religion as well as politics, because in failing to recognize human nature, we are making bad decisions in many areas. He cites Chomsky as saying that children should grow a language, not learn it.
He sees culture and cognition as the essential “special sauce” for sustainable diversity and societal design. He sees culture as the means by which we construct and destruct.
I believe we are there, and the work of Tom Atlee (“Tao of Democracy”) and Jim Rough (“Society's Breakthrough), along with the other books on the transpartisan list, are the end of the beginning. We can now evolve properly. The author outlines how religious dogma and political ideology harm society and science and humanity most severely.
He lists four fears of the dogmatic: 1) fear of inequality; 2) fear of imperfectability; 3) fear of determinism; and 4) fear of nihilism.
He focuses on the costs and consequences of self-deception, and the important not only of leaning to learn, but of learning to learn collaboratively rather than competitively. He emphasizes that reciprocal altruism works and as a Nobel Prize certified in the 1990's, trust lowers the cost of doing anything.
On pages 220-221 he discusses our need for intuitive physics, biology, engineering, psychology, special sense, number sense, sense of probability, economics, mental databases and logic, and language. This is precisely what the Earth Intelligence Network plans to fund with Medard Gabel's EarthGame. EarthGame will displace rote learning and structured prison-like education for many.
Part V discusses hot buttons, with a chapter for each: Politics, Violence, Gender/Rape, Children; and the Arts. He says that reality-based theory and practice work better than dogma-based ideological biases. Of course they do, but the majority of the public has dropped out and left thieves and morons in charge. We can fix that.
The ends brilliantly. Suffering does NOT ennoble, there is no noble savage, we must understand and craft the culture of man. As Will and Ariel Durant tell is “The Lessons of History,” the only real revolution is in the mind of man. The author cites Richard Shweder and his trinity of autonomy, divinity, and community. There are 901 references over 43 pages and an amazing five-page list as an appendix, from Donald E. Brown, of Human Universals.
This is a transpartisan reference work of great importance.
Perhaps the Most Revolutionary and Liberating Book Going Into 2008,
May 12, 2007
Richard Moore
This book has jumped to the top of the transpartisan list. Together with All Rise and several of the other books on that list, it is an actionable practical formula for restoring the Republic and then spreading participatory democracy and moral capitalism–communal localized capitalism–to the rest of the world in a non-violent information-driven manner.
The “matrix” is the virtual unreality that governments and their corporately-owned media have manufactured to distract, imprison, enslave, and manipulate the majority of the public into dropping out of politics and failing to exercise their right to think, debate, vote, and oversee their representatives. I completely agree with Ron Paul when he says we need to dismantle this insolvent corrupt mess of a government, and reconfigure ourselves back to a Republic of, by, and for We the People.
Key themes in this world interconnectedness instead of separation; community sovereignty instead of federal sovereignty, distributed economics (no absentee landlords) instead of concentrated wealth, transformation and harmonization instead of adversarial, common sense judgments instead of special interest judgments, and finally, the reconstruction of social will to completely overpower, in a non-violent manner, the class war and globalized predatory looting of the commons that the central bankers have wrought on the planet.
This non-violent social transformation, according to the author, includes local empowerment, human liberation, participatory democracy, sensible economics, and cooperation on a global scale for mutual benefit of all.
The elite is fighting back, repressing dissent, even fully-funded logical dissent. ABC is deleting Ron Paul, who is winning his debates, and this is all I need to believe that we are winning. The revolution will not be televised, as Joe Trippi's book explains to well.
This is a transpartisan author who is quite correct when he says that history shows that we have a false manufactured reality being screened everyday, which is completely different from the real world. He also understands (see my list on Natural Capitalism) that predatory imperialism has deliberately kept the Third World poor and genocidal, with the explicit intent of looting their natural resources and getting as many of them as possible to die off–eugenics.
This author provides one of the finest summaries of how predatory capitalism has disenfranchised population, suborned governments, and “exploded the client” as Michael Lewis tells us in more detail in “Liar's Poker” and more recently, John Perkins' “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.”
He reviews the transition for competitive imperialism to collective imperialism, and has some very elegant detail on how the central banks have managed a succession of global “bait and switch,” successively destroying, at great profit, the gold standard, the petrodollar standard, and now the United States of America. The banks, he tells us, are “the house” and profit regardless of the misfortunes of others, indeed, because of the manufactured misfortunes, wars, stolen aid, botched humanitarian assistance, and so on.
He has two revelations in this book that for me, at least, are explosive. First, that FDR approved eight covert actions against the Japanese with the intent of forcing them to commit the first overt act of war against the US. Second, that Viet-Nam was a known “no-win” war with a known ten-year trajectory and a known 50,000 projected dead. It was used to militarize the US on a grander scale, while enriching a handful of banks and corporations, all as the expense of the individual tax-payer.
He offers fascinating perspectives of how WWI and WWII were deliberately started (I have read other books in this vein, I believe the author's analysis to be on target), and he accuses Henry Kissinger, a known war criminal, of being the cause of the Middle East problems in his constant mis-representation and manipulation of the views of different parties for whom he was supposed to be an honest broker.
Banking, Oil, Covert Action, and Overt Intervention are the four pillars of what Derek Leebaert called “The Fifty Year Wound” and Chalmers Johnson, “Sorrows of Empire.”
He tells us that in the 1970's the US elites concluded that managing consensus democracy was annoyingly complex, so they began moving toward police state capabilities with the use of big lies, among which I include 9-11, never investigated honorably. I believe that Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and Larry Silverstein should be indicted, arrested, investigated, and interrogated with the same techniques they approved for use on others. Drugs and especially marijuana have been used to create a prison complex while the US Government has deliberately, as a covert action, imported drugs into the US for profit, using the drug czar to control the criminal competition. I am told that Ollie North personally supervised the loading of cocaine on to U.S. Navy vessels in Colombia, and this one of many leads I would like to see brought before a Grand Jury.
He tells us that the core elements of the elite plan are five: US-UK control of oil; neoliberal economics; WTO/IMF as economic assassins; police state powers; and the Pentagon as a big stick; on which see General Smedley Butler, “War is a Racket.”
Key point by the author: culture (and social will) are the missing ingredient for activating the bottom-up Epoch B collective leadership and will of We the People.
He says that reform must be all or nothing. I agree. He says that representative democracy is an adversarial system that must be replaced by a fully participatory bottom-up collaborative system. Adversaries take their differences as a given, collaborators take them as a starting point for dialog.
He is at one with the author of “All Rise” and with Reuniting America's transpartisanship vision of dignity for all, and inclusion of all. An opinion can be debated but a person is always valid and not to be denied or excluded.
We can do this. He concludes with the best annotated bibliography I have seen, as relevant to our challenge in 2008.
This is a very good book. There are some extremely important nuggets in here that essentially put the final nail in Dick Cheney's coffin while certifying the importance of holding Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Cambone accountable for their high crimes and misdemeanors. Condi Rice continues to be depicted, in this book and others, as a zero in the sense of having been ignored, sidelined, or run over by Dick Cheney and his minions.
The book loses one star for a lack of prior context. George Tenet was Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) for many years, and then Intelligence Director for Bill Clinton. He avoids any mention of his long-standing role in helping dismantle the very IC he ended up leading, and he is terribly deceptive when he says he asked for more funding for anti-terrorism, but fails to mention his inability to redirect funds within the $35-40 billon he had at the time. Today the IC has $60-70B and we are no safer–these clowns cannot even put together a consolidated accurate terrorist watchlist five years after 9/11.
The bottom line on the author is that he is a big-hearted staffer, not a leader and not a strategic thinker. He was a place-holder in a job that two presidents saw fit to relegate to losers–a mouse, a pit-bull, and a turtle.
He takes credit for months of redesign dialog but fails to point out that there was no substantive contact with iconoclasts, published author-practitioners. I am especially angry that he placed Buzzy Krongard in as Executive Director. In my view, Krongard was there to look out for Wall Street interests and ensure Brown and Root did not get caught smuggling drugs into the USA through New Orleans and heavy equipment being returned to the USA “for repairs.” I've come to the conclusion, after thirty years in this business, that there are four CIA's: 1) White House sychophants; 2) Wall Street support via Carlyle Group and a small network of retired intermediaries; 3) the “front” of earnest people working out of official installations, incapable of actually doing serious spying (I was part of this group); and finally, a multinational “dirty deeds” arm that does terribly immoral and illegal things with Saudi money, Egyptian sodomy of children (photographed so as to force them to spy on their fathers), and so on.
In many ways, this book is a capstone account of the death of US secret intelligence. It's gone. The DNI, DCI and USDI are earnest men, but they will fail because they simply do not comprehend the “paradigms of failure” (essay online) and are not willing to contemplate a clean-sheet fresh-start. On page 26 the author confirms that “time and technology [have] passed us by.”
As fascinating as his claims are of ramping up on Bin Laden, I go with Michael Sheuer's damnation as published by the Washington Post. Condi Rice blew off warnings, Dick Cheney focused on energy conspiracies with Enron and Exxon, and the plain truth is that the CIA refused to read the book by Yossef Bodansky or view the PBS broadcast in 1994 by Steve Emerson. They closed themselves off from open sources (called “Open Sores” within the now near-moronic secret world).
The middle of the book is sensational. Chapter Thirteen on “The Threat Matrix” and the succeeding chapters in Part II of the book are superb and contain many nuggets that restored much of my respect for the author.
The author damns Cheney on page 138 for taking over the National Security Council and it is clear that if there is one person to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, it is not the President, but rather the Vice President.
On page 317 he tells us that “Policy makers have a right to their own opinions but not their own set of facts.”
He slams Rumsfeld for blocking several 737's full of State people and language-qualified individuals specifically trained and organized to get the post-war reconstruction off to a good start. He does not mention Rumsfeld's idiocy in allowing Pakistan to evacuate 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda people from Tora Bora, but he does mention that General Tommy Franks refused to put the Rangers in Bin Laden's path, claiming he needed weeks to set it up (this is of course baloney, they could have been air-dropped in 24 hours with a 3-day resupply 24 hours after arrival).
He defends himself on the “slam dunk” as applying to the presentation plan for the UN, not the intelligence. I want to believe this, but the fact that he took imagery and other materials to the first NSC meeting, significantly on Iraq rather than terrorism, gives me pause. I certainly do believe that Dick Cheney hijacked the White House and closed out the entire policy process, but George Tenet, Colin Powell, and our generals all failed us by not resigning and screaming out at the top of their lungs against the high crimes and misdemeanors they witnessed Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Steve Cambone commit, day after day.
He lays bare Cheney's misbehavior in stating on 26 August 2002 that “there is no doubt” on Iraq's having weapons of mass deception but very strangely does not mention that both Hussein's son-in-law who defected to the US, and every one of the 25+ line crossers that Charlie Allen sent in, all said the same thing: kept the cook books, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional ego's sake.
He slams Paul Bremer for de-Bathification and confirms that “Iraq came at exactly the right time for Al Qaeda.”
The author avoids major criticism of Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, but he reveals the DoD operations against Iran. He tells us about Chalabi hoaxing DIA for millions, and that President Bush ordered Chalabi off the payroll.
He confirms Paul William's view on Al Qaeda having nuclear capabilities.
Pre 9/11 air travelers believed “be calm, see Cuba” when hijacked. Pre 9-11, and today still, our senior government executives are still confusing loyalty with integrity. We can do better. We need, right now, a “Smart Nation.”
I chose this movie for reflection, as I have come to the conclusion that the U.S. Government, at the policy level (Cheney & top political appointees) is insane, criminal, and destroying the Republic. Like Lee Iacocca, I keep asking myself, “where is the outrage?”
John Lennon, whatever his warts, got it right. Give peace a chance indeed (see the image I have uploaded, it represents the rest of my life's work and illustrates what Lennon was hinting at).
I believe the Dick Cheney, Rudy Gulliani, and Larry Silverstein murdered most if not all of the victims of 9/11 in NYC, and that Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld put a missile into the Pentagon and separately orchestrated the murder of those on the airplane that crashed. I cannot prove it, but I can certainly say with authority that 9/11 has not been properly investigated; that Iraq was done on a web of lies and that Iran has played Cheney like fiddle, using US power and money and lives to get rid of Iran's two arch-enemies, the Talban and Saddam Hussein.
We have gone NUTS as country. Martin Luther King, John Lennon, even “Hanoi” Jane Fonda were on target. Civil disobedience in long overdue in this country, and this film reminds us why individual morality and individual passion for justice matters.
It also reminds us of the lengths that entrenched power will go to silence and intimiate its legal ethcial opponents. The federal government, at the political appointee level, has no honor.
This book earns my vote for top transpartisan book of the decade, along with “All Rise” (see link below). This great man is saying things that I and others have been saying since 2000, but because of his stature, we now finally have the national enema that we all need. Lee Iacocca, in my personal view, should link up with Reuniting America, and volunteer to form a Sunshine Cabinet of transpartisan retired leaders (corporate, military, law enforcement, education, and others). We need to show America that it is possible to create a balanced sustainable budget, and to have common sense priorities.
The book opens with a discussion of the nine C's of leadership: Curiosity, Creativity, Communicator, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competency, and Common Sense. In evaluating the current crop of candidates for President, all fail with the exception of Joe Biden for President and John Edwards for Vice President.
He stresses people and prioities, and for the first time in any book I have read, he calls for all presidential candidates to appoint their Cabinet BEFORE the election so the people can evaluate the team and not just the Man. This is something I have advocated since 2000, see the original documents at Citizens-Party.org.
His comments on Bush-Cheney cronism are devastatingly on the mark. He points out that the insider game excludes top talent.
He finds Congress to be failing at the five top issues for all Americans: Iraq, Jobs, Health Care, Education, and Energy.
He is critical of the Executive for telling lies to get a war with Iraq, for condoning torture, and for being reactive instead of proactive.
To make his point, he notes that for what we have spent in Iraq, we could have instead hired 8 million teachers, 8 million police, fire, and medical support specialists; funded 25M college scholarships, and given every citizen a year of free gas and health care.
In criticizing the Iraq strategy, he points out that unlike Gulf I, there are no Arab nations in the coalition this time, and that is the truth-teller. He specifically laments the loss of “America the Good” in the eyes of the world.
Among the top issues he personally focuses on in the book are Energy, Fair Trade vice Free Trade, restoration of moral capitalism and an end to the CEO looting of companies at the expense of workers; the protection of the middle class, the reduction of medical (and I would add, educational) bureaucracies, and the US brain gap–South Korea, Japan, and Singapore are getting a reverse brain drain from the US, as well as training their own better than we are.
He slams James Carville for representing the worst of the structured political process, where a candidate is told what their policies will be based on political consultants and focus groups.
The book closes with a discussion of four traits he learned from others: Optimism; Common Sense; Discipline; and–from his mother–Love.
At the end, he calls America to action, asking each of us to give something up, put something back in, and elect a LEADER.
I do NOT agree with those who are critical of either the author or the book. This is an easy to read totally straight-up book that is now, along with “All Rise” and “The Tao of Democracy” among my top-rated Transpartisan books. See my varied lists on Transpartisan, democracy, immoral capitalism, impeachment of Cheney, etc.
If he will help form a Sunshine Cabinet, and Reuniting America can raise $500M a year ($20 from 25 million Americans, or $100 from 5 million Americans) we can close down the Republican and Democratic partisan machines that have corrupted our democracy, and we can restore informed engaged democracy. We need this man's common sense now more than ever.
Really great book, part of the whole picture,
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