1-7 Star Rating – Page 229 – Public Intelligence Blog

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Right Up There With Mein Kampf, But Less Sensible,

November 12, 2006

Bill O'Reilly

Edited 24 Oct 07 to add links for those that actually read books. My reviews of the last two books listed itemized the 25 documented high crimes and misdemeanors of Dick Cheney as covered by the two books together. I reiterate my challenge to O'Reilly: one hour, live, no notes, no cell, no laptop, moderated by an adult, on the ten high-level threats to humanity and what to do about them. He can't do it. It's that simply. The guy is a phoney, a bully, and woefully ignorant.

There is a certain class of pundit in today's age of directed communications who can pretend to be educated without ever reading a real book. O”Reilly's “analysis” is nothing more than opinion, spewed forth in a segmented “organized” stream of vitriol and ignorance.

He does not appear to be familiar with anything the Founding Fathers actually wrote, including the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and most especially, the importance of having a God-fearing secular state in which TOLERANCE for all religions was a signal attribute.

He does not appear to be familiar with any of the literature of the dangers of intolerant fundamentalist religions (nor their hypocisy), nor does he seem to have a clue about the immoral predatory nature of modern “bandit” capitalism that is killing the working poor (see my review of the book by that title) and middle class, importing poverty, destroying pensions, devaluing the dollar, and on and on and on.

If you are one of those that used to say there is only one book that has to be read, the Bible, and then graduated to the “Left Behind” religion fiction series, this is your next read, taking you to third grade, where the bombastic articulate bully can hold court in the corner at recess.

On the other hand, if you want to actually get a grip on reality and have something to say about the future of both America and the world (which we are destroying, consuming one third of the energy and creating one third of the waste on the planet), then consider doing one thing and one thing only: spend two hours, free, reading my reviews of 800 non-fiction books about emerging threats, strategy & force structure, domestic politics as the destroyer of sane sustainable foreign policy, and the emergence of Collective Intelligence, which is what you get when people like O'Reilly are shunted off to the looney bin where they belong, and the rest of the world starts to think for itself and be open to dialog across all boundaries. [Note: my reviews are a pointer to the thoughts of others, intended as a map, not as a substitute for actually reading the books or thinking for yourself.]

Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly are the poster children for uninformed idiocy, and sadly, the incumbent President is their most avid reader. There you have it in a nutshell (pun intended).

Read, think for yourself, and get engaged. This book is a waste of time for anyone with a brain, and a vigorous reaffirmation for those without.

I confess to watching Fox News when Lou Dobbs, the new American hero, is not on air with CNN, but even in the intellectually sterile environment of Fox News, O'Reilly stands out as a street-corner idiot.

Postcript: Books with 200 reviews, most of them 1-2 lines with no substance, are a sure indicator of cult-like symbiosis. I meant also to point out that there *are* people who have progressive holistic solutions, just Google the web for <ten threats, twelve policies, eight challengers>. There is PLENTY OF MONEY to save the planet, it is simply too concentrated and protected by too many circles of corrupt politicians both Democratic and Republican. We can fix that in the near term.

The Lessons of History
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11

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2006/11/092009/12/04

Review: Hard Power–The New Politics of National Security

5 Star, Military & Pentagon Power, Strategy

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Great Minds, Good Intentions, *Very* Incomplete,

November 9, 2006

Kurt Campbell

I know Michael O'Hanlon, whom I consider to be one of the most insightful and honest policy analysts in America–his one line in “A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar” pointing out that the single best investment in foreign assistance is in the education of women, is a benchmark for all that ails US foreign policy–we simply do not know how to wage peace. He's the best. I do not know Kurt Campbell, but I respect the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). I give this book five stars instead of four because of the caliber of the authors and the terribly difficult task they took on. The book is, however, *very* incomplete.

The authors are strongest on the politics of national security–there is nothing wrong with the substance where they address it, but I will end with my observation on how incomplete the book it.

The book can be summed up–and questioned–on the basis of its eight chapter headings–the book's focus is in capital letters, my alternative focus in lower case:

NATIONAL SECURITY AS PRIMARY ELECTORAL ISSUE–not so, electoral reform and the integrity and legitimacy of government is the primary issue

MYTH OF REPUBLICAN SUPERIORITY–quite so, but what about Peter Peterson's view in “Running on Empty,” to wit, BOTH political parties are inept and two sides of the same coin–they represent corporations, not the people.

MANAGING THE MILITARY–is not enough. Must manage ways and means, must manage the inter-agency matrix (Cheney ignores the policy bureaucracy, and the only agency actually fighting in Iraq is the military–everyone else is going through the motions).

HOMELAND SECURITY–TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL–physical security is not enough, even if private sector is willing to cooperate. The next level is about immigration control, tracking non-citizens, revoking citizenship as appropriate for those who do not adopt our values, tracking sermons by hostile imans, and rejecting visitors who are not bonded by their home government.

WINNING THE LONG WAR–strong on understanding next generation, weak on how to actually stabilize and reconstruct the world. The authors are too focused on terrorism, which is a tactic, not an enemy, and while they boldly propose approaches to stabilizing the Islamic nations, with a positive emphasis on education, they do not address the fundamentals of virtual colonialism, unilateral militarism, and predatory immoral “bandit” capitalism–our greatest enemy is within, not without.

THE REAL TRIPLE THREAT; ENERGY & SECURITY, GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, AND TERRORIST FINANCING. Simplistic, conventional wisdom. Sure, we have to have energy independence, start doing real-time science and climate stabilization (changes that used to take 10,000 years now take three), and focus on terrorism financing, but these are a *fraction* of the national security challenge, and out of context, they are not realistically achievable.

COPING WITH CHINA–all well and good, but what about Brazil, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards such as Turkey and South Africa?

PROLIFERATION–fine on the bio-chem and nuclear weapons, what about small arms, the real weapons of mass destruction that make the 17 genocides real (I am sick and tired of hearing about Darfur in isolation–it is ONE of 17 genocides now on-going).

Most useful to me was the authors' knowledgeable identification of four competing Democratic constituencies focused on national security: the “hard power” elite; the “soft power” globalists; the “modest power” Democrats seeking a partial pull back; and the labor-environmental Democrats profoundly troubled by global capitalism (which I and William Greider and Clyde Prestowitz among others have found to be pathologically predatory and our own worst enemy in terms of long-term global stability).

In short, this is a book that is excellent in its narrow focus–getting the Democrats some traction in the national security arena, growing beyond Iraq, and setting the stage for an expanded dialog.

Now here is what is NOT in this book:

1) The ten high-level threats identified by the United Nations High-Level Threat Panel, Dr. LtGen Brent Scowcroft participating, and taken *together*: poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities (kidnapping starlets for Saudi debauchery, kidnapping others for body parts), proliferation, terrorism, and transnational crime.

2) The twelve policies that must be balanced in a transpartisan fashion: Agriculture, Diplomacy, Economy, Education, Energy, Family, Health,Immigration, Justice, Security, Social Security, and Water–using scarce water to produce subsidized agriculture or to flush heavy tar oil is nuts–but no one is managing the country across the board; and finally

3) The eight challengers or challenges that *must* be enlightened and assisted in avoiding our mistakes while we also learn from them: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards.

One final note: Jock Gill, who served President Clinton as a communications specialist, taught me this: we have to abandon the war metaphor–war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terrorism. IT DOES NOT WORK! I would add that we have to abandon the secrecy practice as well. In my view, the next government must be a Coalition Government because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats can govern competently without the common sense of the Libertarians, Greens, Reforms, Independents, and others; and the next government must redirect half the secret intelligence budget toward national and global education free in all languages, and half the heavy-metal military budget toward waging peace in all possible forms, to include using residual capabilities in abandoned DoD communications satellites to provide free Internet connectivity to Africa and Latin America.

O'Hanlon and Campbell are as good as it gets inside the beltway. I praise them as being the first step in a long march back to sanity, but only the first step. We cannot proceed nor succeed without them, but they need a dirty dozen iconoclastic outsiders to actually get us to an AFFORDABLE implementable Grand Srategy for a sustainable prosperous peaceful future going out seven generations.

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2006/11/082009/12/04

Review: The Audacity of Hope–Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Politics

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Passes the Smell Test & the Brain Test–But Only as a Preamble,

November 8, 2006

Barack Obama

This book gets five stars from me because it is much more thoughtful and much less platitudinous than the standard run of the mill “getting to know me” books that every politician with any ambition puts out.

The author understands all the key points including how broken government is, how uncivil Congress is, how out of touch we are with reality. He understands that government does have important safety net roles to play, that education and investment in science & technology are the foundation for the future, and so on and so on. This down-to-earth yet explicit and integrated perspective puts him head and shoulders above the even the best of the best from the past.

Bottom line: this book confirms the author's status as a first-rank leader (I don't insult him with the lesser term of politician) of great promise. The promise is implicit in this book, not explicit.

Now I want to see a book that addresses the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers, and how he proposes to create a common-sense trans-partisan government that ends the winner take all nature of both the Cabinet and the Congress, and integrates real world information with real world budgets to get us to where the Comtroller General of the USA, the Honorable David Walker, says we need to be: providing for the future.

A for effort. The first book finished elementary school. This book finishes high school. I wait with bated breath for the serious book with all the details.

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2006/11/082009/12/04

Review: The Conservative Soul–How We Lost It, How to Get It Back

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Politics of Religion

Philosophical, Practical, Gifted Turns of Phrase, Starting Point,

November 8, 2006

Andrew Sullivan

This is a philosophical essay, not a political diatribe. This is a very educated, articulate, thoughtful, and practical book. It is so good it probably needs to be read more than once.

As an estranged moderate Republican who believes in a balanced budget, smaller government, and minimalist interference in state, local, and individual rights not assigned to the federal government by the Constitution (and also the elimination of central banks that are NOT authorized by the Constitution), I found provocation, solace, and humor in this book (the discussion of the role of the penis and its eternal sperm, in relation to fundamentalist strictures and fears, is alone worth the price of the book).

Gifted turns of phrases as well as erudite references to both ancient and modern philosopher-kings abound. I especially likes “Immoral decisions, in other words, are like environmental pollutants” (page 125), and on page 209, “In this nonfundamentalists understanding of faith, practice is more imporant than theory, love more important than law, and mystery is seen as an insight into truth rather than an obstacle.”

The author's real life as a gay man who has survived AIDS no doubt infuriates the fundamentalists and the less hypocritical evangelists, but this is part and parcel of his qualifications–he completely trashes both the incumbent President and the Christian extremist fundamentalists that have substituted dogma for dialog.

This is a personal essay. It is neither a summary nor a substitute for the many other books I have reviewed on both the left and the right, and so I end by saying that the book gets five stars for its extra leavening of philosophical reasoning, but I urge those who find favor in this book to throw a wider net, or at least read my reviews of the last 25 books on ideology, religion, faith, Iraq, and the impeachable offenses of Bush-Cheney.

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2006/10/292019/09/06

Review: Rule by Secrecy–The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

7 Star Top 1%, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

7 Star Life Transformative insights – Bankers, Politicians, Spies, Patsies, and Secret Societies, October 29, 2006

Jim Marrs

This book is extraordinarily interesting, broad, and paradigm-altering.

The table of contents provided enough detail to be an executive summary. The book is somewhat deficient on sources (heavily reliant on superficial “encyclopedic” references) but the alternative explanation of history and reality is not to be missed.

I bought the book thinking it was about government secrecy. Not so. Much more importantly, this book is about the secret societies used by the 300-500 wealthiest individuals in the world, the ones that own the central banks that can cause financial panics, move inflation or deflation, all to the end of profiting, while “exploding the client,” the individual “patsy” whose hard-earned wages are nothing more than a supermarket shelf from which these elites pluck extra funds to buy another castle. See my review of Mark Lewis's “Liar's Poker” to understand Wall Street use of individuals as *disposable* sources of cash, and my review of John Perkin's “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” to get a sense of the larger global methods being used to loot the commonwealths. Also relevant is Jeff Faux, “The Global Class War : How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win it Back” and many of my other reviews of books by others on the loss of government legitimacy and credibility with the people, combined with the predatory immorality of corporations that now own government.

Much of what the author attributes to a grand master plan can also be explained by the natural tendency of wealth to create wealth (compound interest) and for wealth to influence politics, but this book is deeper than that.

The author begins with an introduction of the Rothchilds, and gradually builds up a detailed picture of how they funded “barons” around the world, and in America, where the Morgans and the Rockefellers were their chosen instruments. The Bush family is second tier but right up there. Special attention is given to the Federal Reserve, which is NOT controlled by the government and has NEVER been audited in its history, and to the ease with which bankers make money from advance knowledge of changes in domestic and foreign policies that they often simply mandate.

The USA was until around 1837 a “value-based” economy in which real assets–gold, silver, land, labor–paid in full. There was no debt, no interest. From Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson, bankers from Europe were rejected and considered “more dangerous than armies, swindling the future.” Jefferson also believed central banks to be unconstitutional, since the right to create a national currency is reserved to the U.S. Treasury. The author notes that both Lincoln and Kennedy were unique for issuing debt-free currency, and for being assassinated. Reagan was shot by Hinkley, whose relative was dining with a prominent member of the Bush family the night before, and he suggests this was intended to move Bush, a member of the secret society world and leading pawn, into power years sooner.

An extensive discussion is provided of bankers themselves causing financial panics, wars, and other confrontations. The author refers to the Rothschild Formula as being to spawn wars and finance both sides. The book discusses the bank-rolling of Hitler, Trotsky, the US Civil War, the French Revolution, the Boar War, and on and on.

Credible evidence is provided that the terrorism in Italy, as part of a “Strategy of Tension” described in a captured document, was intended to create enough of a perception of leftist terrorism to justify a shift in the government toward fascism. The P2 Lodge behind the terrorism was a secret society on the right, not the left, and is said to have been guided by the Alpine Lodge in Switzerland, the “Gnomes of Zurich.” George Bush senior is alleged to have been an honorary member of this lodge, while Henry Kissinger is said later in the book to be a member of the Alpine Lodge. Most interesting for me is the CIA connection. The “Strategy of Tension” was first devised by James Angleton to prevent a communist take-over in Italy following WWII, and is STRICKINGLY apt in considering the allegations that 9/11 was allowed to happen if not made to happen. See my review of “Crossing the Rubicon,” of “9/11: Synthetic Terror Made in the USA,” among other books (use my lists).

Summing up this book early on, I found it to be 1/3 wealth begets wealth; 1/3 corruption begets wealth, and 1/3 conspiracy begets wealth. However, once I entered the secret society segment of the book, I reverse the above order.

This book gave me a completely new perspective on Cheney and Rove as front men rather than the prime movers, intended to take the heat and be “sacrificed” without the public every realizing that it is Citi-Bank (the same bank said to have secretly received Yamashita's Gold from Douglas McArthur, as told in “Gold Warriors” by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave), and Chase Manhattan, the two owned sufficiently by the Morgan and Rockefeller families to be the hubs for their power. The author also discusses the 40,000 tax exempt organizations that serve as fronts for banks and foundations and corporations, all manipulating the individual citizen-voter without paying a cent in taxes.

On page 408 the author says “Whatever the truth may be, we must be wary of leaders who attempt–whether by force, manipulation, or deceit–to move whole populations in directions they may not wish to go and might not be beneficial to all.”

On page 409 the author says “Knowledge is indeed power. It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves–to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity [enabled by secrecy.” The author notes that there are more of us than of them (see my review of Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World.”)

I have one word for what I plan to work toward: TRANSPARENCY. Collective public intelligence is going to survive and prosper. The times, they are a'changing.

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2006/10/262009/12/04

Review: Piety & Politics–The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom

5 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion

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Solid Case for Keeping Church and State Separate,

October 26, 2006

Barry W. Lynn

Judging by his enemies, the author is a giant. His book tends to harp a bit, with a recounting of his many appearances on broadcast media, how the extreme right hates him, and how separation is good. I would normally drop it to four stars for the harping, but the substance is the best I've seen. This is a solid five-star review of both the massive fortunes being accumulated by the evangelical right, all tax free and completely absent any government oversight or audit. The author is responsible for documenting 56 cases where the religious right has broken the law by supporting specific candidates, for which they should lose their tax exempt status.

The author provides a clear and thoughtful discussion of the intent of our Founding Fathers, and why a theocracy, which is what we have in effect (but see my review of Tempting Faith, which may destroy the blind faith of the right in the Bush-Cheney regime), reduces religious freedom and tolerance.

Indeed, the author blasts Senator Lieberman (I-CT) for his constant use of religion to justify laws and positions. I believe the author would concur with Rabbi Michael Lerner's “Left Hand of God,” to wit, we should strive to be people of faith, and live by our faith's tenets, but NOT mingle state funds and church funds, state regulations and church rites.

In historical context, the author discusses how protestant conservative churches grew and then tried to use the state to resist the influx of Catholics and other non-Protestant minorities.

The author discusses the hypocricy of the faith-based charities that want to be exempt from both taxation and regulation (e.g. hiring minorities), while taking money from the government under fomulas that are best questionable.

If there is a luducrous side to the nutty right-wing evangelicals, it can be seen in their fear of Harry Potter films as promoting the occult. The author goes on at length to describes how “family friendly” is code for censorship of schools, libraries, and communities. By calling anything at all “lewd and obscene” the nutty right is censoring virtually all non-fiction and a great deal of science (see my review of Roger Shattuck's “Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography.”)

The author's bottom line is that the religious right is hateful and intolerant. On page 234 he states that the extreme right fears information while sensitive people of faith welcome information.

This is a really fine book, it says what needs to be said about the tax evasion and inappropriate political activities of the extreme right.

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2006/10/262009/12/04

Review: Religion Gone Bad–The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right

5 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion

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Twin to Reverend Lynn's “Piety & Politics”,

October 26, 2006

Mel White

I like to read in twos or threes, and in this case the two books I read on the religious right were Reverend Barry Lynn's “Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freeedom,” and this one. Lynn's comes in first by a nose, but they are both excellent primers on everything going wrong both within the extreme right, and between the church and the state.

The author is a gay Christian minister who was uniquely privileged as a ghost writer for the heavy hitters on the extreme right from Jerry Falwell to Pat Robertson, work done prior to his realizing he was gay.

The author provides a useful distinction, one I often forget, between fundamentalists who are driven by fear and focused on imposing their strict version of faith on others, and evangelicals who are more reasonable and tolerant.

This book is richer in historical content than Lynns, and for that reason alone should be considered a “must read” along with Lynns' book. In addition to history the author describes a broad concern over two Americas emergent, one fundamentalist and one normal. The author takes care to discuss how Bible-based fear and loathing come from the fundamentalists, themselves, not from the Bible.

The author ends the book compassionately and intelligently. I am beginning to see a convergence between the literature on Collective Intelligence, and the literature on non-violent resistance as well as secession from the Union. I see a real possibility of the USA breaking up into at least four pieces (see my review of Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America; Tom Atlee's The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All; and Thomas Naylor's The Vermont Manifesto.

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Category: 1-7 Star Rating

Review: Culture Warrior

Review: Hard Power–The New Politics of National Security

Review: The Audacity of Hope–Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Review: The Conservative Soul–How We Lost It, How to Get It Back

Review: Rule by Secrecy–The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

Review: Piety & Politics–The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom

Review: Religion Gone Bad–The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right