Review (Guest): Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Stephen Goldstein (Author)

5 Stars, often hilarious June 15, 2012

By David Swanson

The Florida Sun Sentinel has for many years been rather unique, as a corporate newspaper with a regular columnist who's actually good, and I don't mean just good for the context, but actually worth reading even if the masses of South Florida weren't reading along. Happily, they are.

Stephen L. Goldstein has just published a book, also worth reading, called Atlas Drugged (Ayn Rand Be Damned!) It's fiction, often hilarious fiction, aimed at debunking the notion that Ayn Randian “free-market” trickle-down crapitalism can coexist with basic human decency. “This is a work of fiction,” says the back cover. “But any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely intentional. The names have been changed but, hopefully, not enough to protect the guilty.”

In fact, while the book takes rightwingerism to an extreme, it blends in plenty of elements from reality. Imagine the most outlandish carrying of so-called conservatism to its logical conclusion, and abandoning New Orleans to a hurricane, or watching a fire department stand by while a house burns (because the owner didn't pay the proper fees) fits right in.

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2012/06/082012/06/08

Review (Guest): Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Civil Society, Complexity & Catastrophe, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Impeachment & Treason, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

The Spread of Sacrifice Zones

By David Swanson

Chris Hedge's and Joe Sacco's new book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, is a treasure. Hedges wrote the plain text. Sacco produced the text-heavy cartoon sections and other illustrations, which even I — not a big fan of cartoon books — found to enrich this book enormously.

Hedges and Sacco visit Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to examine the misery of the Native Americans who remain there. It's nice to think that we've corrected our crimes through political correctness, and yet they continue uninterrupted — unconscionably, intolerably, tragically. Here the human stories are told, and told by those affected and by those resisting and struggling to set things right. Ironically, the victims of the United States' first imperial slaughters are now disproportionately suffering the pain common to veterans of recent U.S. wars. That same pattern of widespread military experience is found in each of three other sections of the book as well, while other communities in this country have virtually no participation in the military.

Hedges and Sacco go to Camden, New Jersey, to examine the world of impoverished and ghettoized African Americans, whose lives have worsened by many measures over the past generation, despite the successes of the civil rights movement. Poor whites and others figure into the story as well, with special attention to those struggling to improve the world, whether on a small or large scale. Michael Doyle's voice is one of those from Camden residents that tell the story of decline and devastation that city has experienced:

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2012/06/062012/06/06

Review: How Wall Street Fleeces America – Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Impeachment & Treason, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

cover how wall street fleeces america — Amazon Page

Stephen Lendman

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star (My Top 10%) Primer for Every Citizen,June 6, 2012

I've had this book in my stack of “to be read” books for some time now, and now that I have read it, I deeply regret not getting to it sooner. Although I have read and reviewed a number of vital serious books in this field, and list ten of them below, I have to say this is easily the single best book of the lot, and I put it into 6 stars and beyond — out of the 1,800 plus books I have reviewed at Amazon, fewer than 10% get this rating.

Perhaps because I had already read the ten books below, I was absolutely floored by the clarity, organization, precision, simplicity, intelligence, and general integrity of this book and its author. Please do take advantage of the Look Inside the Book feature that Amazon offers (click on book cover above). In seventeen chapters, the author has brought to the public a work of elegant explosive yet balanced and measured, FACTS with CONTEXT.

If you read only one book on the destruction of the US economy, the destruction of the US Republic, the destruction of legitimate governance in the USA, this is the one book I recommend. It should not only be read, but also shared. As I go back over the table of contents thinking about what to highlight (I no longer mark up books now that I donate them all as I finish reading them), I am just blown away by the medticulous, sensible, systematic, intuitively coherent manner in which the author starts with the fraud and treason of the Federal Reserve (neither Federal nor a reserve), and ends with his prescription for public banking that I heartily respect.

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2012/06/012012/06/01

Review: Postmodern Imperialism – Geopolitics and the Great Games

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Complexity & Catastrophe, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity

cover postmodern imperialism — Amazon Page

Eric Walberg

5.0 out of 5 stars Capstone Work–Light in Places, Super-Deep in Others, June 1, 2012

I read a lot — across 98 categories (access my Amazon reviews via category at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog). WITHOUT HESITATION, this book is easily a solid five. Early in the book I have it as a four, annoyed by the shallowness of some of the pieces and the error on Jonathan Pollard–this treasonous scum-bag went to other countries before he got to Israel, in no way is he a Jewish hero, only a traitor–but by the time I finish the book I am tempted to go with a six (10% of my reading). It is a solid five. Those that think less of this book are missing the knowledge foundation necessary to appreciate what the author has done in 300 pages covering the last hundred years.

Two foundation books for appreciating this work include Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time and The Naked Capitalist. Current books that bracket this one, the first cited by the author, include Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids.

I mention those up front to frame my view of this book as a serious combination of scholarly research and investigative journalism. Had the author included a who's who of key individual players as an appendix, this would have been a six.

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2012/05/182012/05/18

Review (Guest): Westmoreland – The General Who Lost Vietnam – Includes Second Review With Contextual Detail on Failure of Intelligence (Including Soviets Owning US Crypto)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Biography & Memoirs, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

Lewis Sorley

A Man Promoted Above his Ability September 12, 2011

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson VINE™ VOICE

I grew up during the Vietnam War. I was seven years old when General William Westmoreland was sent to Vietnam by LBJ to take charge of things there. I was eleven when he lost his job and by then, had lost us the war. Vietnam was in the news the entire time, on TV, in the paper, in Time Magazine – as was Westmoreland's iconic chin. Being the son of military parents I'd early gotten the history bug and I was fascinated by what was taking place over in Southeast Asia, even if I didn't understand it well. As I grew older, and things over there grew worse, I began to wonder how we could possibly lose such a war (as I thought it was) against such a small country.

Lewis Sorely's “Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam” will tell you how. Sorely has the credentials for this book. He is himself a graduate of West Point. He served in Vietnam. He even served in the office of the Army Chief of Staff, General William C. Westmoreland, and taught at West Point. This isn't just a book by some journalist trying to get at the bottom of things. Sorely has been “at the bottom of things” and he has done the leg work over a period of years, talking to 175 people in his search for the events he here recounts.

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2012/05/152012/05/15

Review (Guest): I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Complexity & Catastrophe, Consciousness & Social IQ, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Future, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Survival & Sustainment, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Mark Dery

Bad Thoughts, Great Book March 27, 2012

By Supervert<

I find it impossible to discuss Mark Dery's I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts in anything other than the first person. The book speaks so eloquently of its time that, uncannily, I can't help but feel it speaks of me. So many of my own interests and obsessions rise from its pages — death, deviance, intellect. I recognize my iTunes library in Dery's tours de force on David Bowie and Lady Gaga. I recognize my bookshelf in Dery's essay on Amok Books, whose productions were once textbooks in the éducation sentimentale of the counterculture. I recognize my own rhetorical strategies in the move Dery makes in “Toe Fou,” updating George Bataille's meditation on the big toe by riffing on a picture of Madonna's bare feet. Weirdest of all, I recognize what I thought was my own obscure fondness for “invisible literature” in Dery's essay on the New York Academy of Medicine Library — a place I too have plundered in quiet hours of mad and horrible research. Was I sitting across the table from you, Mark? I feel as though you, like Baudelaire, have addressed your book to “mon semblable, mon frère.”

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2012/03/19

Review: WORM – The First Digital World War

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Mark Bowden

Huge Story, Most Readers are Not Getting the Point,March 19, 2012

I've been a fan of Mark Bowden's since I was asked to investigate how he got parts of his story for Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw. Speaking with him directly, already knowing he was a gifted writer, I added patriot and truth-teller to my short list of his attributes. This book would normally be a four for lack of an index, schematics, and perhaps some photographs of working spaces to achieve some contextual sense, but given all the negative reviews that are in my view off the mark, I am going with a five.

Most of the reviews of this book are in my opinion missing at four HUGE points:

01) Microsoft is the source of most of our problems because they build sloppy code and do not do due diligence. Apart from the fact that Microsoft is exceeded in evil only by Google, both of them holding third party developers hostage to mutating APIs and neither of them being at all interested in helping empower human cognition with tools for thinking, Microsoft sells second-rate software backed up by first-rate legal and marketing. The word is long over-due for dumping not must Microsoft, but Apple as well. India just followed Richard Stahlman's advice and pushed Microsoft out of their universities, they are creating the open source alternative, and as I like to paraphrase that world, “put enough eyeballs on it, no bug is invisible.”

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