Category: 2 Star

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Review DVD: Left Behind – The Movie

2 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only)

Left BehindBanal, Pathetic, Out of Touch,

January 30, 2007

Kirk Cameron

I have always had a morbid fascination with that segment of the population that believes that the Bible is the only book one has to read, and that great literature consists entirely of the Left Behind series. I bought this movie to get a sense of this group.

Banal is the kindest word I can find for this tripe. Third rate actors, low-rent science fiction backdrops, and completely out of touch with reality. The movie opens with the Israeli agricultural “miracle.” What it does not tell the audience is that Israel would be a dead state if it were not for the 20% of the Israeli government's budget funded by US taxpayers through the US Government's very unwise investment in this apartheid regime (see Jimmy Carter's new book) and if it were not for the blatant Israeli underground pipes that are literally looting the Arab aquifers at long range and from way beneath the earth. Israeli agriculture is not a miracle, it is a travesty–it consumes 50% of all the water used in Israel, and produces less than 5% of the Gross Domestic Product.

The movie goes downhill from there. Just to place it in a proper religous movie context, if the “Ten Commandments” was a perfect 10, this movie is no more than a 1 and certainly not even close to a 2.

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Review: The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, Volume 23

2 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, History

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5 Stars to Author, ZERO to Publisher, Available for $15,

November 24, 2006
Paul Zarembka

At 344 pages, I can produce this book in hardcover, with a color jacket and flags, for $3.44 a copy. Amazon pays publishers 40% of the retail price, so I propose to publish this book for $34.40, should the author desire to actually have people buy the book.

I regard this over-pricing as both unnecessary and unprofessional. It is certainly NOT going to increase the chances of this important knowledge actually reaching all those who might wish to avail themselves of an honestly-priced book.

Am wondering if the price might be a type. See first comment for how to get the book from the publisher for $15 (fiteen).
This kind of pricing directly invites copyright violation by incentivizing the placement of a copy of the book on the Internet, anonymously, never to be eradicated.

I have reviewed most of the books on 9-11 and its aftermaths, and if you visit my lists, you can find over ten books and some DVDs there that can all be bought for the outrageous and completely unjustifiable cost of this book. As I write this, the Senate is hearing testimony on the thermite found in the rubble pile. The Senate will probably hush this up. The is ample evidence to suggest that Dick Cheney “let it happen” and that Larry Silverman, owner of the complex, was tipped off in time to implant controlled demolitions and take care of his “unaffordable” asbestor problem–receiving $7 billion in insurance [one wonder how much he kicked back to the insurance companies to avoid their serious investigation, and to Guliani for scooping and dumping to destroy the crime scene).

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Review: Culture Warrior

2 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Culture, DVD - Light, Politics

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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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Review: Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity–Get Out the Shovel — Why Everything You Know is Wrong (Hardcover)

2 Star, Misinformation & Propaganda

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Long Dribbles of Goose Poop,

June 16, 2006
John Stossel
In comparison to David Sirota's Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government–And How We Take It Back which discusses the serious issues of taxes, wages, jobs, debt, pensions, health care, prescription drugs, energy, unikons, and legal rights, and for each provides well-footnoted myths, lies, and half-truths, concluding with several proposed and very sensible solutions for each, this book is a long string of pieces of goose poop.

It is just chock full of trivial stuff from the supermarket to the home to the government, and frankly, most of this is unadultarated crap. Example: his discussion of school vouchers addresses the “myth” that vouchers won't help troubled children, while ignoring the fact that at $1000 voucher won't buy anything unless you are already paying the $15,000 for a private school, in which case it is a couple of really nice dinners for the rich mom and dad–in other words, one more hand-out for the rich.

This book is what you get when Bill O'Reilly, who endorses it, goes completely senile and starts drooling old memories. Yuck. Not worth the money, and worse, not worth the time.

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Review: American Foreign Policy in a New Era (Hardcover)

2 Star, Diplomacy

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2.0 out of 5 stars Narrowly Focused on Critique of Bush and Iraq,

April 30, 2006
Robert Jervis
This would have been a three-star review, but as the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction about global issues, I have decided to begin penalizing publishers for low-rent publications that are poorly presented on Amazon–for this book there is no description, no table of contents, no cover (low rent, no jacket hence no cover art, and small print to boot), and so on. This is essentially a 138 page essay with a lot of notes thrown over the transom.

The greatest deficiency, for one who was waiting breathlessly for this great man's appreciation of “American Foreign Policy in a New Era,” is that the book turned out to be poorly titled and narrowly focused. This book is essentially a very thoughtful discussion of why the Bush Administration has acted very unwisely in attacking Iraq and failing to pick up on the terrorism warnings from the Clinton Administration.

Unfortunately, the book fails completely to address the *other* nine threats to global stability, within which terrorism falls ninth, just above organized crime. The other global threats that we must address, as identified by LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft and other members of the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (A more secure world: Our shared responsibility, United Nations, 2004). They focused, in this order of priority, on: Poverty; Infectious Disease; Environmental Degradation; Inter-State Conflict; Civil War; Genocide; Other Large-Scale Atrocities; Nuclear; radiological; chemical; biological weapons; and (after Terrorism); Transnational organized crime.

Sadly, I was expecting a learned discussion of each of these threats, potential inter-agency and coalition approaches to each of these threats, and a proposed plan of attack such as J. F. Rischard provides in High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them

I do not regret buying the book–anything by grand master Robert Jervis is important and worth reading–but he missed a larger opportunity here. Joe Nye's books Understanding International Conflicts (6th Edition) (Longman Classics in Political Science) and The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (you can skip the more plebian Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics) are better. I also recommend the monograph, available at the Army War College Strategic Studies Institute web site, “Preventive War and Its Alternatives: The Lessons of History,” by Dan Reiter, and the recent monograph by Collin Gray, “Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt?” Both are free, concise, and brilliant.

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Review: Our Plan for America–Stronger at Home, Respected in the World

2 Star, Politics

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2.0 out of 5 stars Shallow Undocumented Platitudes with No Budget Math,

November 12, 2004
John F. Kerry
This is an extraordinarily shallow–even glib–book, one obviously written by a committee that combined the worst of all worlds: the intellectual runts from the Clinton Administration who allowed terrorism to flourish on their watch, and the last gasp “spinmeisters” of the Democratic campaign staff. Kerry (more so than Edwards) failed the smell test during this past election, and this book documents how he failed on substance.

It consists of 123 double-spaced pages of shallow material, 16 pages of photographs that range from the goofy to the staged, and a remaining two thirds of the book reproducing old speeches with little in the way of substance and nothing in the way of math (as in a balanced budget).

Kerry's writing committee opens the book by claiming his plan is rooted in values-obviously a majority in America did not buy that, and I do not either.

The book is organized in three sections (not counting the old speeches), on Security, on Opportunity, and on Family. All three consist of so-called “policy” points that cannot be called anything other than platitudes. They are completely lacking in coherence and they have no budgetary or documentary basis in fact.

Within the security section, the four new “imperatives” are alliances, modernize an already over-funded military, deploy soft power (diplomacy, intelligence, economic, values and ideas), and free America from its dangerous dependency on Middle Eastern oil. There is nothing about environmental security and the book displays absolutely zero understanding of the points made by such distinguished commentators as J. F. Rischard in HIGH NOON: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, or E. O. Wilson in The Future of Life. The security section is pedestrian and incredibly ignorant. It fails to mention even the most basic redirection of resources toward peacekeeping and preventive investments in aid. The section on energy (as a security issue) fails to discuss hybrid cars, solar power for neighborhoods, or meaningful conservation.

The section on opportunity focuses on the middle class and is disrespectfully oblivious to the working poor-indeed, I suspect that neither Kerry nor any of his advisors have read Barbara Ehrenreich's “Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” or David Shippler, “The Working Poor: Invisible in America.”

Finally, and this is where I believe the Democratic Party really lost it this year, there is not a word in this book about electoral reform-about measures that are needed in order to make every American's vote count, such that we might one day aspire to having a government where Independents, moderate Republicans, Greens, Reforms, Libertarians, and agnostics all have a “fair share” of elected representation. As a moderate Republican, I was prepared to vote for an alternative to the Bush regime, but as a common sense person, I ended up rejecting this option because Kerry-and the decrepit isolated Democratic Party-failed the smell test. This book documents their shallow insularity and the breadth of their inadequacy.

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Review: The CIA at War–Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror

2 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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2.0 out of 5 stars Not Helpful, Will Mislead Ignorant and Disappoint Pros,

October 30, 2003
Ronald Kessler
Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add comment and links.

New Comment: terrorism is a tactic, and one cannot make war, or carry out covert actions, against a tactic.

The only thing worse than Bill Gertz making money on a sensationist pseudo-journalism book that does no serious research (i.e. does not read nor recognize any of the tens of books written about the shortfalls of the U.S. Intelligence Community), is re-cycled material and hyped-up glory tales that will mislead the public and irritate professionals. There are many good people working counter-terrorism at CIA, but they are trapped in a grostesquely malformed enterprise with bad management, bad mindsets, and bad methods. As one of the first case officers assigned the terrorist target in the 1980's, I recently came across a letter I wrote to the NIO for terrorism (unclassified), and as I went down all the things I said we were doing wrong in the 1980's, what struck me with great sadness was how many of them are still extant today. While the Director of Central Intelligence may get some satisfaction from sponsoring a silly TV series about a female spy (hint: the most important skill in spying is typing of encounter reports, operational reports, intelligence reports, and expense accounts) and this book, I think his time would be better spent being candid with the American people about all that is wrong with the larger community across all its functions. This book is a borderline “PSYOP” on the American people, something CIA is not supposed to be doing. My bottom line: John Le Carre's fiction is better than this stuff.

Better more current books (the first two very positive):
Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander
First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

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