Review: The End of America–Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Needs to Be Said, Needs to Be Read, A Solid First Step
December 10, 2009
Naomi Wolf
I disagree with those that criticize this book. This is PRECISELY the kind of book we need to see, at a reasonable price, being discussed in schools, clubs, and churches.

QUOTE page 27: “The Founders set out to prove that ordinary people could be entrusted with governing themselves in a state where no one could arbitrarily arrest them, lock them up, or torture them.”

This book resonates with me, in part because for the past ten years I have been reading heavily and observing the decline of America in all respects–see my chapter on Paradigms of Failure in Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography), both free at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog (as will all my books, but I do recommend the Amazon hard copies).

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Review: Understanding Knowledge as a Commons–From Theory to Practice

4 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Communications, Education (Universities), Information Society, Intelligence (Public)
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

4.0 out of 5 stars Almost a Three–Ambitious Title, Narrow Focus

November 29, 2009
Charlotte Hess
An MIT publication from 2007, this is actually knowledge from the 2000-2004 timeframe, and it is annoying narrow knowledge written from legal-economic point of view. Well-intentioned, no doubt, this is not the “inter-disciplinary” work that it claims to be, and I demonstrate restraint in not scoring it as a three. Despite references to Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom and Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, these folks are largely out of touch with Web 2.0 to Web 4.0, collective intelligence, wealth of networks, and tao of democracy concepts, authors, and works. This is not a substantive contribution to evolutionary anything (cultural evolution, evolutionary activism, conscious evolution). The index STINKS and there is no consolidated bibliography.

This is not a book that focuses on innovation as much as on structured processes and conventions.  I left it at four in part because this is a very good job on one part of the elephant (the anus or intellectual property of old part) and I really appreciated the six of the twelve contributions by Nancy Kranich, James Boyle, Peter Suber, Shubha Ghosh, Peter Levine, Charles M Schweik.

My fly-leaf notes (useful stuff from the book):

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Review: Going Rogue–An American Life

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Biography & Memoirs, Censorship & Denial of Access, Culture, Research, Politics, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
4.0 out of 5 stars No Index But a Proven Player in American Heartland
November 17, 2009
Sarah Palin
EDIT of 20 Nov 09. This is my final review.

The book consists of five parts.

Part I: Life up to the call from John McCain. The book I read and appreciated earlier, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down was instrumental in her selection, along with the heroic work of a band of bloggers, covers most of this ground so the first half will be old hat to those who followed Palin before she became VP. Stuff better told here includes Todd being the Big Man on Campus (BMOC) with TWO “rides” when others had none; beauty contests paid for college; eloped, terrible pain of pregancy, lost second child, Exxon Valdez killed fish prices down 65%, lost some bids for office, and very meaningful for me, with respect to Downes syndrome, she asked “why us” and Todd responded “why not us.”

Part II: Photos, very disappointing for pre-campaign, better for campaign but over-all TERRIBLE.

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Journal: Deep Secrets, Copenhagen World Government, the M-Fund, and the Future

Censorship & Denial of Access, Earth Intelligence, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Phi Beta Iota: Conventional minds cannot handle the esoteric, in part because they have been dumbed down by really rotten educational systems that emphasize rote learning, and in part by social conventions that reward loyalty to idiocy over self-discovery and “branching.”  We are seeing a convergence in “revelations” as more individuals achieve “hacker-like” open minds despite the Paradigms of Failure.  Today we bring together three stories:  Deep Secrets; UN use of climate change to achieve World Government “functionality (an oxymoron); and the M-Fund in Japan.

Abstract & Source Online
Abstract & Source Online

Deep Secrecy

David Pozen

Stanford Law Review, Forthcoming

This Article offers a new way of thinking and talking about government secrecy. In the vast literature on the topic, little attention has been paid to the structure of government secrets, as distinct from their substance or function. Yet these secrets differ systematically depending on how many people know of their existence, what sorts of people know, how much they know, and how soon they know. When a small group of similarly situated officials conceals from outsiders the fact that it is concealing something, the result is a deep secret. When members of the general public understand they are being denied particular items of information, the result is a shallow secret. Every act of state secrecy can be located on a continuum ranging between these two poles.  [Emphasis added.  Click on logo for rest of abstract and Keywords.]

Copenhagen World Government.

Here are two of the most troubling sections.

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Review: Hidden Truth–Forbidden Knowledge

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Censorship & Denial of Access, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Has Warts But On Balance, Best Available Overview

October 22, 2009
Steven M. Greer
I elevated this book from four to five stars in part because I know some of the people to whom the author refers (e.g. Admiral Mike Cramer, referred to by name; and John Petersen, author of Out of the blue: Wild cards and other big future surprises : how to anticipate and respond to profound change, who is not named but described in obvious terms), and because it is the best available review for the public.

This book will seriously annoy those who consider themselves scientific rationalists (e.g. Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West and those who tend to look askance, as I do, and the kum-ba-ya hand-holding crowd BUT–and this is a big but–I absolutely consider this author and this book to be totally credible, and as annoying as the inner spirituality conversations at the beginning and the cosmic spirituality conversations at the end are, this book is a MUST READ for any serious person who cares about the future of humanity and the Earth. I take some of this with a grain of salt, but I want to meet this person, learn more, and believe he is on a righteous path of truth for the good of the larger group, humanity.

Here are my fly-leaf notes:

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Review: Disclosure–Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Censorship & Denial of Access, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
4.0 out of 5 stars Available Free Online, Better in Hard-Copy
October 22, 2009
Steven M. Greer
I read this book online, where it can be found for free, and in retrospect, now that I have read Hidden Truth: Forbidden Knowledge, regret not buying it to have my notes and the physical book in my library.

The bottom line on this book is that it is a less than perfect but still incredibly valuable and serious effort to place before the public the testimony of individuals who have been involved in the government and contractror programs to both conceal from the public what we do know about extra-terrestial beings, vehicles, weapons, communications, and energy systems; and to impose on the public a fear of extra-terrestials that is completely unfounded and simply another “Big Lie” intended to perpetuate the military-industrial complex.

I strongly recommend the Disclosure Project, and especially its meetings when offered, such as the 24-26 October 2009 meeting in Arizona.

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Review: 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make A Difference

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Censorship & Denial of Access, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
Amazon Page
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal Overview, Reference, Exceeded Expectations
October 18, 2009

Glenn Croston

I bought and read this book along with Green Intelligence: Creating Environments That Protect Human Health and Careers in Renewable Energy: Get a Green Energy Job.

This book is everything I could have wanted and more–it exceeded expecations. For each of 75 “opportunities” sorted within eleven chapters it provides a summary table (Market Need, Mission, Knowledge to Start, Capital Rquired, Timing to Start, and Special Challenges, along with a multi-page discussion and a variety of “sidebar” elements that vary but generally address Related Trends, In the Long Run, Green Leader, Industry Information, Information Resource, Eco-Tip, or Eco-Issue.

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