Ever had someone try to undercut your position by alluding to “secret” information whose details, alas, cannot be shared but allegedly trump your arguments. How much worse when it is the government who is seen to bully its own citizenry in this way?
The hallmark of our free society is the First Amendment, which stipulates that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” Had it occurred to the framers that the Executive Branch would acquire equivalent law-making powers–Executive Orders with the “force of law”–they likely would have constrained that branch of government similarly …and perhaps an activist judiciary, as well.
5.0 out of 5 stars Tough reading, desperately needs charts and graphs and a proper web site,August 4, 2011
I sat down to write a review and realized that the top review is a very good summary, and has a number of comments that provide specific new information and also recommend two other books, so what I have decided to do, as a direct complement to the top review by Richard Cumming, is provide links to the other books mentioned in the comments, and then add some of my own. I strongly recommend all the comments on the review be read.
The book desperately needs social networking graphics and its own web site. Although the author, who sent me the book, has a web site by the book's title, it is focused on video clips and is not an extension of the book. Public intelligence is now at a point where all that needs to be known is large known, but it cannot be aggregated and made sense of for lack of a public intelligence ability to do data mining and data visualization in a very structured continuous manner.
5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular Integrative and Pioneering Work, July 27, 2011
This is a pioneering work that not only explains the true worth of open source intelligence, but also illuminates the institutional bias against it and the pathologies of a culture of secrecy. The use of primary data from interviews makes this an original work in every possible sense of the word. I strongly recommend the book to both professionals and to faculty seeking a provocative book for students.
The book opens with a Foreword from Senator Gary Hart, who cites Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's point that secrecy is used against the US public more often than it is used to withhold information from the alleged enemy. He also makes the observation that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the web occurred almost simultaneously (1990-1991). See Senator Hart's three most recent books, The Thunder and the Sunshine: Four Seasons in a Burnished Life; The Shield and the Cloak: The Security of the Commons, and my favorite The Minuteman: Returning to an Army of the People. The concept of an “intelligence minuteman” is at the foundation of the Open Source Intelligence movement, and highly relevant to this book by Dr. Hamilton Bean.
In his Preface Dr. Bean makes the point that his book is about institutional change and resistance, and the open source intelligence story is simply a vehicle for examining both the utility of his methods with respect to the study of communications and discourse, and the ebbs and flows of institutional change.
Being a proud fifth-generation Southerner, I thought that I fully understood why the Civil War was fought. Most of my understanding was based upon the influence of society and culture within which I grew up. Although none of my family were flag flying Confederates, there was very much pride in being a Southerner and having ancestors who fought for the Confederacy.
After reading this book, I honestly believe that I better understand why the Southerners did what they did. Within my lifetime I have been told over and over that the war was fought over the issue of slavery. As this book shows, slavery was at the root of the war. The primary issue of the war, however, was pure economics.
This is a pioneering work, easily a decade ahead of other world-class efforts, my favorite being that of (then) World Bank Vice President for Europe, J. F. Rischard, High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. It has been largely over-looked, but should gain additional importance, along with the author's additional book, Critical Choices. The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance, now that George Soros is sponsoring the Central European University (CEU), and within that university, the author Wolfgang Reinicke has been appointed the inaugural dean of CEU's School of Public Policy and International Affairs. In the context of the essay by George Soros, the first 57 pages of The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies, and the now hardened disenchantment with the nation-state system for being ignorant, biased, and non-agile (these and other deficiencies are marvelously articulated by Professor Philip Allot of Cambridge in The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State, one can surmise that Dean Peinicke will seek to focus on integrationist endeavors that demand transparency and accountability for multiple stakeholders in return for stability and mutual gain.
6 Star Special–Soros Out-Grows Broken System, June 24, 2011
On its own merits, without the Foreword from George Soros, this book is a solid five. With the most extraordinary Foreword, a Foreword that draws the lines of battle between a totally dysfunctional global governance and financial system of systems all lacking in integrity–where truth is not to be found–and the need for transparency, truth, and trust, the book goes into my top 10%, 6 stars and beyond.
The essay is a *major* part of the book, the first 57 pages out of just over 335. The essay is available free online and is a “must read” item for any person who wishes to be part of restoring the Republic and laying the foundation for creating a prosperous world at peace. Searching for <George Soros My Philanthropy> will lead directly to both the New York Review of Books and the GeorgeSoros.com offerings–select the latter to get the full article without subscription nonsense from the New York Review of Books.
I confess to having lost faith in George Soros–he fell for the Barack Obama Show and wasted a lot of time and money on what ends up being the Goldman Sachs Show–to the point that Goldman Sachs not only continues to own the Secretary of the Treasury, but now has installed its own man in the role of National Security Advisor. The irony does not amuse me.
This essay is phenomenal, and bears on the book at large, because Soros has finally put his finger of the sucking chest wound that I, John Bogle, William Grieder, and most recently Matt Taibbi have been sounding the alarm on: the lack of intelligence and integrity in the system of systems. Soros is halfway there; he is now outside the system looking in, and that is good news for all of us.
“I am looking for novel solutions in order to make an untidy structure manageable.”
Brilliant Detailed Exposure of Power Killing Intelligence, July 30, 2011
