Review (Guest): American Coup – How a Terrified Government Is Destroying the Constitution

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Censorship & Denial of Access, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

cover american coupWilliam M. Arkin

4 out of 5 Stars. We Live in “Forever-War”

By Amazon Customer on September 22, 2013

Essentially: We now live in a time of “forever-war.”

The worry about the government instituting martial-law is sooo 1990's because we now truly live a martial life. And we've accepted it. There is no “over there” anymore when it comes to the militarization of our lives. Over there is here. We live to assist the government in everything. See something, say something. And the bottom-line of everything that the government does in the name of national security is not to serve, protect, or assist you but to preserve itself. It's all part of the Continuity of Government (COG) and it's been in place for many years but it spectacularly grew into the multi-headed hydra immediately after 911.

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Review (Guest): Lords of Secrecy – The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
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Amazon Page

Scott Horton

5 out of 5 Stars.

Excessive control that is out of control . . .

By Still Singin' on February 16, 2015

LORDS OF SECRECY is one of the finest books I've read on national security “creep.” Scott Horton manages to retain at least some distance from obvious bias, but some of the information he lays out would cause any legitimate American citizen clenched teeth and a few well-placed emphatic comments.

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Review: Occupy the Economy – Challenging Capitalism

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Richard Wolff with David Barsamian

5.0 out of 5 stars SIX STAR Primer on the Necessary Socio-Economic Revolution, February 28, 2015

SIX STAR (my top 10% across 2000+ non-fiction book). This is an extraordinary book full of straight talk and common sense that sets the stage for a socio-economic revolution, first in the USA and then elsewhere. It does not address the many isolated incidents of collaborative capitalism and the commons that are in motion around the world — for that look up Michel Bauwens and the work of others on the economic commons — and it neglects the coincident need for a political revolution which is what my latest book on Open Power is about — but on balance this is easily a six-star offering.

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Review: Beyond the Fracking Wars – A Guide for Lawyers, Public Officials, Planners, and Citizens

4 Star, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Amazon Page

Erica Levine Powers and Beth E. Kinne (editors)

4 stars. Useful contribution badly marketed and badly priced

The authors, being from New York, know what the NYT and Mother Jones both missed in their stories on Governor Cuomo banning fracking in New York: that it was a legal couple Helen and David Slottje that went village by village educating townships that then passed anti-fracking ordnances. Search for this headline to get to the photo essay: Dryden: The Town That Changed The Fracking Game. To everyone's delight, the Appeals Court upheld those local decisions instead of doing what they usually do, yield to federal and corporate corruption. Today fracking has been banned in Quebec, many US states at various levels of governance, and world-wide (search for List of Franking Bans Worldwide) for the simple reason that it uses clean water we cannot spare, contaminates what is left of the clean water in rapidly falling aquifers, and creates earthquakes — a new CRS Report is just out, free, Human-Induced Earthquakes from Deep-Well Injection: A Brief Overview, easily found online.

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Review (Guest): The American Deep State – Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on US Democracy

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Amazon Page

Peter Dale Scott

5 Star  Connecting the Dots

By The Peripatetic Reader on December 13, 2014

Peter Dale Scott has written many books about the Deep State at work in the U.S. government. Scott depicts American society as structurally and inherently schizophrenic. Just as there is the public government and the deep government, and ordinary events and deep events, there are two dominant forces permeating United States history: One egalitarian, believing in fairness, inclusion, and free expression, and the other militaristic and exclusionary, which is only interested in social control.

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Review: Convergence: Illicit Networks and National Security in the Age of Globalization

4 Star, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Information Society, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)
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Amazon Page

Edited by Michael Miklancic and Jacqueline Brewer

4.0 out of 5 stars First Class on the Illicit Networks Not Legalized by US Congress, December 15, 2014

This is a first-class book on the convergence of many illicit networks that Congress has not legalized. A sure sign of the book's very high value and inherent quality is the Foreword provided by Admiral James Stavridis, whose own book, The Accidental Admiral: A Sailor Takes Command at NATO I just reviewed most favorably.

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Review: Revolution

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Russell Brand

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Intricate, Non-Violent, and Optimistic, November 4, 2014

In relation to the 2,000 plus non-fiction books I have reviewed here at Amazon, this book is brilliant. Normally I would consider giving it four stars for lacking an index and endnotes, obviously needed for the poorly educated morons that cannot grasp the many (many) direct references to top authors and thinkers. For crying out loud, Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century is received by the author in his home and cited in this book, as are so many others. So a solid five stars for impact and self-made erudition.

Let me state very clearly that the publisher has sodomized this author by not including an index, a bibliography, or endnotes. As the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reviewing books across 98 distinct non-fiction categories, I am blown away by the clever, poetic, and pointed manner in which the author has integrated a vast (vast) range of reading and personal conversations into this book.

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