1-7 Star Rating – Page 227 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Brilliant Work, Foundation for the Future of the Republic,

December 10, 2006

Michael J. Sandel

I picked this lovely book up on a whim while visiting the Harvard bookstore, and let it lie fallow for months. It was not until I read Paul Hawken's “Ecology of Commerce,” that this book demanded to be read. I had no idea how well the two would go together.

Published in 2005, it is a balanced collection of essays written over the previous decade, and I found it to be better than any textbook or more labored treatise. This book really worked for me. Here are the highlights that made this book vital reading for any adult concerned about where we are going in the aftermath of the Bush-Cheney debacles.

Liberalism–root word liberty–has lost its moral voice. It has no compelling vision just when public philosophy is most needed. The author is quietly passionate about how values–enduring values–both enable localized self-governance and come from localized communities where everyone knows one another.

According to the author, individual knowledge of public affairs, and a sense of belonging to a larger commonwealth, are the underlying foundation for the Republic as our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us–“a Republic, if you can keep it,” as Benjamin Franklin told us all.

This author is most powerful in making the case that “laissez faire” on values is to NOT have national values. The author uses the early portion of the book to make the case that the larger question on anything is this: what strategy or policy will most support the nurturing of self-governance at the local and state levels? This connects DIRECTLY to the current focus in Ecotopia (British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington State) on resilience and on the equivalent focus by the global public health intelligence network on the same word: resilience!

I was moved, almost to tears, to read this author quoting and discussing Thomas Jefferson and Justice Brandeis, who were both certain that concentrated power is threatening to liberty and self-governance. Think Wall Street–Goldman Sachs, Carlyle, Wal-Mart, Exxon.

The rise of big government, led by Teddy Roosevelt, was intended to be an answer to big business, but it did not work. Of course, carried to its logical conclusion, global business demands big government (that will not work).

The author tells us that we went astray in the 1960's. We focused on economic growth and federal justice instead of the larger issue of what “political economy” would reinforce rather than diminish citizenship. We focused on economic outputs rather than either the cost of inputs (see Herman Daly and Paul Hawken) or the goal of nurturing community.

This is really quite a brilliant thoughtful book. In the middle section it explores the conflict between the concepts of rights of individuals versus the common good being imposed. One has to ask (see George Will) should soulcraft be imposed or nurtured?

The book/author also drives a stake in the heart of globalization and corporations–it's about the economy, stupid, BUT not as Bill Clinton used it. It's about decentralizing economic power, the collision between capitalism and community.

The author touches on impeachment (which is on the minds of many as citizens rally all over America today to demand that Congress impeach Bush-Cheney) and can not be more explicit: impeachment is warranted when the President (or the Vice President in his name) undermines the system of government–the separation of powers. [I would note, as an estranged moderate Republican, that we should at the same time impeach every Republican serving in Congress for abdicating their role as the FIRST branch of government (see Coburn).

From this book we are reinforced in our belief that corporate money is impacting on the political system in ways absolutely not anticipated by our Founding Fathers. Money has supplanted reasoned dialogue.

The book closes with a marvelous review of Dewey as the greatest American philosopher, focusing on pragmatism as well as an openness to experimentation, a love of tolerance, and an avoidance of the absolute. For Dewey, democracy was not about giving every individual what they wanted but rather about drawing the greatest good from the greatest number of diverse individuals.

In passing the author notes that the use of nuclear weapons, genocide (and one might add, ecocide) are global wrongs, for they destroy entire multi-generational cultures in all their history and diversity.

The author chooses to end with a salute to Rabbi David Hartman's interpretative pluralism (room for varied interpretations) and ethical pluralism (room for varied faiths). The author and Hartman conceive of religion as a means of making sense of the world and of one another.

The last bit focuses on John Rawls, and the three debates he inspired: utilitarian versus rights; what rights? and should the government be neutral?

There is a breath-taking finish, describing how a judge approved Martin Luther King's march on public highways, despite George Wallace's objections, because the enormity of the wrongs being protested warranted such a significant granting of privilege.

I am in awe of this author, of this book, and of the Republic for which it stands.

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2006/12/082010/02/14

Review: The Ecology of Commerce–A Declaration of Sustainability

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Commercial), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Foundation Reference for Future of Business Without Waste,

December 8, 2006

Paul Hawken

This is easily one of the top ten books on the pragmatic reality of what Herman Daly calls “ecological economics” (see my list of Environmental Security).

The author excels at painting a holistic view of the realities that are not being addressed by the media or by scholars in anything other than piecemeal fashion.

The bottom line: what we are doing now in the face of accelerating decay (changes and losses that used to take 10,000 years now take three years) is the equivalent of “trying to bail out the Titanic with teaspoons.” On page 21-22 the author states that we are using 10,000 days of energy creation every day, or 27 years of energy each day.

This is a practical book. In brief, we can monetize the costs of the decay, we can show people the *real* cost of each product and in this way inspire both boycotts (of wasteful products) and boycotts (Jim Turner's term) of solar energy and long-lasting repairable products.

The author appears to be both pro-business and very wise in seeing that the cannot save the environment by destroying business, but rather must save business so it can save the environment–we must help business understand that doing more with less is what they must do to survive.

The author includes a recurring theme from the literature, that diversity is an option generator, and hence one of the most precious aspects of life on Earth. Diversity is the ultimate source of wealth, and anything that reduces diversity is impoverishing the planet and mankind. In a magnificent turn of phrase, the author states that the loss of a species is the loss of a biological library.

At its root this book is about missing information, needed information, about the urgency of making all inputs, processes, and outputs from corporate production transparent. He quotes Vaclav Havel on page 54 as saying that this is an information challenge, a challenge of too much (or too little) information and not enough actionable intelligence supporting sustainable sensible outcomes.

This is also a financial problem that has not been monetized properly. Although E. O. Wilson takes a crack at the strategic or gross costs of saving the Earth in his book “The Future of Life,” this author looks at the retail level and describes the waste inherent in our military system. He reminds me of Derek Leebaert's “The 50 Year Wound” when he notes that the US and the USSR spent over 10 trillion dollars on the Cold War, enough to completely re-make the entire infrastructure of Earth, including all schools. As I myself like to note, for the half trillion we have spent on the war against Iraq, we could instead have given a free $50 cell phone to each of the 5 billion poor people, and changed the planet forever.

The author is compelling in pointing out that conservation alone would save more energy than drilling in Alaska, and that President Reagan not rolled back gasoline mileage expectations, we would today be free of any dependency of Middle Eastern energy.

A good part of the book focuses on the need to eliminate waste, what some call “cradle to cradle” (waste must be fully absorbed of other pieces of the system), and where waste cannot be eliminated, to include the cost of its storage in the price of the product, requiring producers of products to take them back (e.g. refrigerators).

I am inspired by the author's view that not only is technology NOT a complete solution, but that full employment is possible if we REDUCE our excessive acquisition of technology that not only replaces humans, but also consumes energy and produces pollution.

This is an extraordinarily clever and useful book that fully integrates discussions of feedback loops and especially of financial and legal feedback loops that are now misrepresentative. One example the author uses is the GATT demand that there be no discrimination of “like” products based on methods of production. This is code for blocking labor laws by imposing high tariffs on products made by slaves or under sweatshop conditions.

I completely agree with one of the author's most important opinions, that we must end corporate claims of “personality” and the rights of a person. This has had two pernicious effects, the first allowing corporations to dominate the public debate; and the second of exempting managers from legal liability and transparency.

The book emphasized the restoration of human and natural capital as vital foundations for evaluating investments–this would dramatically reduce the financial criteria's dominance and emphasis on short-term returns that do not reflect the cost of natural resources and lost jobs to the future and the community.

Distressingly but importantly, the author notes that a major component of the cost of goods is in advertising, where corporations spend more on advertising than the government spends on all secondary schools, and on packaging, much of which is designed to last vastly longer than the contents.

I especially liked the author's suggestion that insurance costs be included in the price of homes and of gasoline, essentially making universal insurance affordable for all. I also liked his idea for indexing Nations by their sustainability, i.e. Most Sustainable Nation (MSN).

The author ends with a restatement of his three fundamentals:

1) End waste
2) Shift to renewable power (solar and hydro)
3) Create accountability and feedback

Although this book was published in 1993 and the author has now published “Natural Capital” (next on my reading list), I did not discover it until recently and am now very enthused about the author's newest project, the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER). I am certain in my heart that a bottom up Earth Intelligence Network is forming, and that end-user voluntary labor–social networks–are going to place enough information in the hands of individuals to restore participatory democracy and moral communal capitalism. This author is extraordinary in his understanding and his ability to teach adults about reality and the future.

2006/12/072009/12/04

Review DVD: 9/11 Mysteries – Part I: Demolitions

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only)

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Nails It!,

December 7, 2006

Avatar

Edit of 11 Jun 09 to fix Tarpley and add links.

I read a lot, but lately I have been discovering the real value of non-fiction DVDs. This is one of the best, one of the most important DVDs that I have ever seen. I recommend it without reservation.

Although I am a very conservative person, my views have been radicalized by the superb non-fiction coming from Webster Tarpley, Jim Marrs, and Michael Ruppert, among others.

This DVD systematically and logically covers the power blackout that turned off the security camaras and access devices, the withdrawal of the bomb-sniffing dogs, the heavy dust each morning in the days preceeding 9-11, the secondary explosions that strongly suggest a planned demolition of three buildings (one of them, WTC 7, not hit at all), and–quite interesting–the asbestos problem that made the buildings, built in the 1960's–a real loser unaffordable to fix or take down. 9-11 was literally a $7 billion bonanza for its owners, at one stroke destroying the bulk of the complex to be cleaned up at taxpayer expense, and paying a DOUBLE insurance premium (in court, the claims that the two airplanes were two separate incidents rather than one coordinated attack, doubled the money paid out by the insurance companies). Bottom line: I think the US Government “let it happen” for its own reasons, and Larry Silverman was tipped off and it was Larry Silverman, not the US Government, that brought the buildings down. If this is obvious to me after a cursory examination of public materials, I have to ask myself: 1) how much did Rudy Guliani get for scooping and dumping to destroy the crime scene? and 2) is the insurance company part of the scam, or just stupid?

I have to say, on the basis of all my reading and my own past experience as a professional intelligence officer, that I am certain of one thing: this has not been properly investigated; and I am fairly certain of a second thing: 9-11 was known to be happening by a handful in the US Government and a handful in Israel as well as Pakistan, and it was welcomed as a cataclysmic event that would also be financially profitable to another handful. All of the suspicious activity began when Larry Silverman took possession of the complex.

Although I am less inclined to believe–without a proper investigation–that 9-11 was in fact made to happen at the instigation of Dick Cheney among others, I do believe there is enough evidence about neo-conservative views that such an event was needed, to *demand* a public investigation. The 9-11 Commission was a whitewash, actually criminal in its negligence.

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2006/12/042009/12/04

Review: State of Fear

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

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Fiction in the Public Service,

December 4, 2006

Michael Crichton

Edit of 27 Jan 07: I've just watched the author on C-SPAN Book Channel, and am very impressed by his focus on demanding that all scientists reveal their data or be cut off from public funding. I realize some have voted against this review because they misunderstand the author as saying that environmental skeptics are correct. That is not the case. He is in fact calling for complete transparency and open exchanges of information, and I find that quite compelling.

This is one of the few fiction books that I read and review, but I certainly endorse it and value it as a very fine means of educating the public with respect to both the absence of good reliable hard science on the entire issue of the environment, and as a primer on what can be done by man to either destroy the planent by staging events that leverage the underlying vulnerability, or to do constructive research and global remediation.

Many of the reviewers have reacted viscerally to this book, or not read it all the way through to include the author's superb non-fiction series of statements about the environment and the science or non-science of the environment, and the author's final statement on why the politicization of science is bad. I recommend the books (and/or my reviews) of the books on the Republican War on Sciencee and on Climate Change.

The author is to be commended for integrating truthful real-world footnotes with the fictional text. This is a book that is educational and meritorious. It could and should be both a movie and a serious game for change. While the author suggests that much of the fear-mongering about the environment is just that, he does help us understand that making the case for remediation and conservation now must be based on the most rigorous study possible.

I would be quite pleased if the author chose to create a series keyed to the ten threats identified by the United Nations High-Level Threat Panel. Apart from Environmental Degradation (threat #3), the others are Poverty, Infectuous Disease, Inter-State Conflict, Civil War, Genocide, Other Atrocities, Proliferation, Terrorism, and Transnational Crime.

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2006/12/032009/12/04

Review: Class 11–Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class

1 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Beneath Contempt and Stupid as Well,

December 3, 2006

T. J. Waters

I am a former spy, with three clandestine tours and three Headquarters tours behind me, and I consider this book to be beneath contempt. Indeed, I believe that individuals such as this author do the Nation a grave dis-service, and should be shunned.

Being a spy is both challenging and enervating. It is not a game and it is not for diletantes who quit when the going gets tough. This is an immature book, an opportunistic book, and it is largely worthless…beneath contempt (as is the similar book by that silly little girl with a cartoon book cover).

The book has many inaccuracies. The one that stands out is the class size. The class size was NOT an increase over the norm, but rather a return to the norm from the period before a series of Directors of Central Intelligence including Woolsey, Deutch, and Tenet, destroyed the clandestine service, finishing the job started by Stanfield Turner.

For those who wish to consider applying for the clandestine service I continue to recommend Miles Copeland's “Without Cloak or Dagger,” and Allen Dulles timeless “The Craft of Intelligence.” See my two lists for serious books about intelligence as a global craft focused on decision support and the health and death of Nations.

Books like this dishonor the brave men and women who are actually good enough to make it to the field where they risk their lives as well as their marriages to serve the Nation. The author is not among them for very good reasons, and should be ignored on this topic about which he knows nothing. CIA “training” actually starts in the field, the “farm” is simply a means of weeding out the mis-fits.

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2006/11/292009/12/04

Review: The Best Intentions–Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power

5 Star, United Nations & NGOs

Timely, Relevant, Useful, Incomplete, Well-Presented, Lacking Notes & Larger Context,

November 29, 2006

James Traub

I give this book five stars instead of four, which I would normally assign, because the shortfalls in the book, most especially a lack of context, notes, and additional detail, are out-weighed by the timeliness, relevance, utility, and able original presentation.

This is an important book for our time. Indeed, I put it down thinking that the author has presented us with a meal of worms–and only those visible at the top of the planter box–but when you are starving–when there is no other viable alternative for peacekeeping–worms can be appetizing.

Before I present some details that made it to my fly-leaf notes, a few “big points” that stayed with me:

1) UN is a grotesque failure in many many ways, but also the closest thing we have to a viable global enterprise, hence, a good starting point for all its flaws.

2) Not addressed at all in the book, spoken of only in passing, the rather important point that most UN agencies are not at all subordinate to nor responsive to the Secretary General and his Secretariat.

3) The UN suffers from two major impediments: first, that the contributing or Member nations do not really want it to be effective, and ham-string it, particularly the Security Council members, although the author is vitriolic on China and Russia vetoing votes, while strangely silent on the US and its constant veto; and second, that personal relations built over decades far out-weight actual job titles and responsibilities, and can be blamed for many things including the Oil for Food corruption nightmare.

4) The author gently explores three major alternatives to the current situation:

4a) the division of the UN into a global body for mobilizing resources and consensus; and a separate global police or gendarme force. I would note, with a genuflection toward Oakley et all in “Policing the New World Disorder,” that this needs to be standing force or at least an earmarked force, ideally led by the Dutch, which trains together and has inter-operable concepts, doctrines, and equipment. See also the edited work, “Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future.”

4b) a Democracies body, one that purportedly brings together democracies and ends the domination of the UN by third-rate third-world countries, many managed by dictators and corrupt leaders who loot their commonwealths far more aggressively than Wall Street loots America and the rest of the world. This fails when one realizes that most democracies really are not…

4c) Regional networks that bring to bear regional concerns and resources in the context of the varied global agencies. This has some real possibilities, especially if information is shared broadly to provide a “ground truth” that is undeniable. I am reminded of J. F. Rischard's excellent recommendations in High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them

There is a useful history of key Secretary Generals, one that makes the point that Dag Hammarskjöld was an anomaly, and Annan, for all his flaws, may be one of the few to rise to the Hammarskjöld level of effectiveness..

The author provides a useful history of UN ineffectiveness and UN successes. I certainly recommend that this book be read in tandem with William Shawcross's Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict Interestingly, Shawcross and US diplomat Holbrooke were the only two personal guests at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony.

This book is severely lacking in two ways:

1) It really does not communicate the complexity of the over-all UN archipelago of fiefdoms, most of which are not responsive to the Secretary General, nor does it adequately describe the many problems for the UN created by Third World and other blocs. In this book, China, Russia, and to a much lesser extent than it merits, the US, are the evil doers.

2) It completely misses the role that multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information sharing, what the Swedes call M4IS, can play in bringing disparate groups to the table. The word “intelligence” does not appear in the index nor as far as I can tell, in the book itself. Overall the book focuses excessively on the Oil for Food scandal, and on Darfur, correctly making the point that Darfur was anticipated, that the Member nations chose to pay lip service to the problem through UN “deliberations,” but the book fails to point out that Darfur is one of 17 genocides on-going, and it fails to put the Secretary General's mission in the larger context of what I call the [ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers]. See The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption for large context.

The author concludes that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq have weakened the UN; and that most of the world does not see terrorism as a threat. Indeed, since this was written, the High-Level Threat Panel places terrorism as ninth on a list of ten high-level threats.

Throughout the book the role of the US as the 900 lb bully is the subtle and sometimes not so subtle sub-text. My own view, formed by my actual experience as well as my broad reading in non-fiction, is that the US, for all its good, is also the single most negative force on the planet, simply because it persists in virtual colonialism, unilateral militarism inclusive of 750 secret and not secret bases world-wide, and its tolerance for predatory immoral capitalism that has created a class war in which US financial and corporate elites bribe foreign elites, and they both destroy their own middle classes while looting all relatively defenseless economies. See the books Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy; and Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions.

There is PLENTY of money to address the ten high-level threats with twelve intelligent inter-related policies that help the eight challengers avoid American mistakes that today produce a third of the waste on the planet while consuming a third of the energy. What we need now, in support of our new Secretary General, is a commitment to implement ALL of the Brahimi Report recommendations, inclusive of a Director of Global Intelligence (Decision-Support), perhaps sponsored by the UN Foundation, so that every Member nation, and every non-governmental organization, might operate in a transparent, accountable, sensible context. See Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future and my essays on “Virtual Intelligence” and on “Information Peacekeeping: The Purest Form of War.”

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2006/11/272009/12/04

Review: The Trial of Henry Kissinger

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Truth & Reconciliation

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Beginnng of US Truth and Reconciliation with Rest of World,

November 27, 2006

Christopher Hitchens

This extraordinary book is the “first word” about Henry Kissinger's culpability for war crimes that may yet see him hanged (highly unlikely but worth mentioning for “awakening” value); but it also brings together a number of themes discussed in more detail by other authors, and I want to start with those before detailing the author's superb and very studied denunciation of Henry Kissinger, a denunciation all the more timely as Donald Rumsfeld is charged with war crimes where a US general officer is testifying against him.

First off, there is the matter of the end of sovereign immunity. This trend could be perceived when the United Nations established that human rights and human security were sufficient to warrant INTERVENTION, and is detailed in the most amazing intellectual and legal review of Philip Allott of Cambridge, in his book HEALTH OF NATIONS: Society and Law Beyond the State, in which he explicitly calls for the overturning of the Treaty of Westphalia, and the re-examination of borders carved by the colonial powers and against hundreds of years of tribal distinction.

Then there is the matter of government integrity. It is now undeniably established that the US Government and the Executive in particular, lies to Congress and the public as a matter of routine. These lies tend to be exposed in the ten-fifteen year time frame (some sooner, as with CIA and other whistle-blowers four years into the war on Iraq), but at the twenty five year mark, there is a clear “explosion” of illumination. Robert Parry, LOST HISTORY: Contras, Cocaine, the Press, & Project Truth” is one book in this vein; while Larry Beinhart's FOG FACTS: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin addresses a different aspect.

Finally, one has the general matter of whether the US as a Nation is represented overseas as America the Good, which most US citizens would like to believe, or America the war-mongering, predatory, immoral “rogue nation.” The books documenting the latter are legion, from Derek Leebaert's THE FIFTY YEAR WOUND to Chalmers Johnson SORROWS OF EMPIRE to my fellow moderate Republican Clyde Prestowitz's ROGUE NATION: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions. On the corporate side, one has many many books, among which John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and William Greider's THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, stand out.

My point is that this author's crucification of Henry Kissinger on the basis of documented facts, in a historical context, is NOT a “hit job” or by any stretch of the imagination anything less than a sensible legal document that is a precursor to Kissinger inevitably being brought to justice.

Now to the specifics. The author focuses on the manner in which Kissinger specifically helped Nixon undermine the Paris peace discussions that could have brought Hubert Humphrey to office, with the result that fully 20,000 additional Americans were killed in Vietnam, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, over the next four years. Henry Kissinger stands indicted–personally indicted–for the totally unnecessary and immoral death of 20,000 US and 100,000+ others (closer to millions, actually, but how many life sentences can he receive…)

The author:

1) focuses on the manner in which Kissinger explicitly supported specific dictators in their genocidal endeavors, violating the U.S. Constitution and a variety of laws both domestic and international.

2) excels at discussing details, such as the indiscriminate nature of B-52 bombings, and points out that we put twice as much tonnage of bombs on Vietnam as were fired during our entire World War II campaign.

3) lays out the manner in which Kissinger managed “two track” policies in which the State Department and the Ambassador were kept in the dark, and covert illegal operations were carried out by the CIA and the defense attaches. Chile, Indonesia, and Greece are featured.

4) is careful to note that in this book he is covering only four specific major documentable aspects of Kissinger's high crimes–he lists many others that do not make the cut but are equally reprehensible, such as the betrayal of the Kurds, the support for apartheid in South Africa, the Central American games, and the tortured regime of the Shah of Iran

5) suggests hat Kissinger pioneered US sponsored–state sponsored–terrorism in the modern era; he also pioneered rendition, that nasty little word that means “kidnap people so they can be tortured by others”.

The author does not prove nor claim that Kissinger profited from his public position, but draws out compelling relationships between Kissinger, his private gain, and his political interventions. Much information remains to be revealed, I have no doubt that it will reveal Kissinger to be a world-class criminal guilty of betraying the American public and helping many dictators abuse their own populations.

The author closes with a concise legal summary that I suspect is as good a description as one can achieve of Kissinger's living nightmare. This book inspires, this book justifies, this book DEMANDS a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate both what has been done against Americans by their own government “in our name,” and what has been done against the publics of the world, again “in our name.”

I will close with three snippets.

The author suggests that now that international law has turned a corner, Kissinger must shudder with every dictator's arrest, fearful of what their testimony will disclose.

The author quotes General Taylor, reflecting on Vietnam in 1971, as saying that in comparison with the accusations and judgments of the Nuremberg trials, the White House and the senior generals serving in Vietnam clearly qualified for similar accusations and judgments.

Finally, the author suggests that Kissinger is not in fact an example of power as the ultimate aphrodisiac, but rather of power as the ultimate pornography. Norman Cousins, in The Pathology of Power, would certainly agree.

I concur with this author, and suggest that he has been too kind. America cannot afford any more pathological monsters in the White House. It's time we returned to America the good.

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Category: 1-7 Star Rating

Review: Public Philosophy–Essays on Morality in Politics

Review: The Ecology of Commerce–A Declaration of Sustainability

Review DVD: 9/11 Mysteries – Part I: Demolitions

Review: State of Fear

Review: Class 11–Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class

Review: The Best Intentions–Kofi Annan and the UN in the Era of American World Power

Review: The Trial of Henry Kissinger