Culture, Research – Page 58 – Public Intelligence Blog

2007/11/272010/07/27

Review (Guest): Kiss the Boys Goodbye–How the United States Betrayed its Own POWs in Vietnam

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

To the right is the current mass paperback cover that is available. Below is the cover of the original hard-copy, and a guest review (Amazon is deleting top reviewer's old reviews to make room for new reviewers, we missed this one when creating this web site to counter that “lost history”).

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning Expose Of Government DesertionOf Its Vietnam Vets!

May 20, 2002

William Stevenson, Monika Jenson-Stevenson

Review by Barron Laycock “Labradorman”

This is a book that should make ordinary American citizens exceedingly sad and angry. Although some may argue that its message is old news, and certainly very dated information, the horror and outrage it should occasion is neither old nor dated. For what the authors contend, and go on to impressively prove, is that our national government deliberately and maliciously betrayed its own soldiers trapped as Prisoners Of War (POWs) in Vietnam, abandoning them in favor of a quick and otherwise painless exit from the war in Southeast Asia. This, as the authors argue, is a truly devastating indictment of the Nixon administration, and one for which they cannot be forgiven.

However, it is more than that. It is also a bizarre story of men left behind for the sake of political expedience and due to a number of highly classified clandestine operations, which were purposely kept from the American people. The story line begins with the sad saga of a young ex-marine who escaped from Vietnam on the late 1970s and claimed to have seen a large number of fellow American servicemen still being held by the Vietnamese. However, he was quickly charged with desertion and collaboration with the enemy, in what seemed to be a desperate effort on the part of governmental officials to bury both him and his story of American prisoners as deeply as possible from public view. From here the plot takes a number of bizzare twists and turns.

As the authors began to investigate the young marine's story, layers of deception, half-truths, and active censorship began to emerge. What they finally uncovered was an amazing tale of official deception from the highest levels in government, and also a very well organized and relentless abuse of official governmental power. This book reveals convincing evidence of American soldiers and sailors deliberately abandoned for political expedience, and of families torn apart by these acts. It also raises quite provocative questions concerning the very nature of democracy, and the corruptibility of ordinary men given such power. Similarly, they show how the use of claims of national security were used to derail efforts to learn the truth, and of an active conspiracy to keep the public from discovering the truth.

There are many of us who have long believed that Nixon and Kissinger made a pact with the devil himself in order to to extricate the United States fro the ongoing horror of Vietnam. What is truly mind-boggling is to discover just how right we were to suspect that they, and many others in the government since that time, would take such drastic action as they have to conceal these facts and to evade the truth. This is a worthwhile book, and one that demands to be read. I hope you can approach it with an open mind. Its arguments and the evidence associated with it are, in my opinion, very convincing. Enjoy!

2007/11/062009/12/27

Review: A Foreign Policy of Freedom–Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship (Paperback)

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Strategy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

30 years of speeches, straight common sense

November 6, 2007

Ron Paul

I would normally give a book like this four stars because it is a collection of speeches entered into the Congressional Record over a 30-year period with no overview. I give it five stars because of the integrity and consistency of the author, and because he is the only person now running for President that has a completely serious book available for review.

I was disappointed that there was no strategic overview touching on each critical foreign policy region or each of the high-level threats to humanity such as depicited by the Earth Intelligence Network in support of the Transpartisan Policy Institute, but my disappointment is tempered by the realization that the author, in citing Thomas Jefferson on the dedication page, to wit: “Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship with All Nations–Engangling Alliances with None” (First Inaugural Address, 1801) makes it clear that it can indeed be “that simple.”

Throughout the book the author touches on truly fundamental themes:

1) Restoration of the Constitution as the fouindation for all Congressional and Executive policies, budgets, and decisions.

2) The importance of avoiding the cost of foreign adventures while investing in domestic needs for education, infrastructure, energy independence and so on.

3) The importance of having a currency backed by real wealth, not the fabricated wealth used by the banks to enrich themselves at our expense.

4) The importance of civil liberties, sound decision-making, and ethics

I'd like to see this honest man win and be President. His integrity and intelligence are absolute, something no other candidate can claim. However, unless he can pick a transpartisan Cabinet in advance of the election, and guide that Cabinet in producing a balanced budget that eliminates our multi-trillion unfunded future obligations, he will be no better than the others, and even at a disadvaantage, because voters hear platitudes. They need to see real policies with real budget numbers, or they will not see the difference between this author and the others in tangible terms they can appreciate.

2007/10/282011/01/09

Review: Thank God for Evolution–How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Truth & Reconciliation, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Michael Dowd

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful Bridge, Provokes Reflection

October 28, 2007

It was my good fortune to receive a copy of this book in galley form, and then again when published, because the author was scheduled to speak at one of my conferences. Having read a number of books on religion in politics (bad) and religion in diplomacy (good), as well as a number of books on science in isolation (bad) and science in relation to the humanities (good), I was most intrigued by this author's daring–and ultimately successful–endeavor to combine the accuracy of a scientific textbook with the inspiration of religious faith and gospel (good).

Yes, for some this may be a stretch, and some of it may annoy those who like their religion dressed in dogma and ritual and “no humor allowed,” but on balance I found this book totally worthwile. See others I recommend along these lines at the end of this review.

The author does not address, nor does he need to, the extremes of religion or of the politicization of science. Instead, he reconciles perspectives that have been allowed to claim they are in contradiction when in fact they are not. He builds bridges and makes important distinctions, such as between private and public revelation, facts as God's native tongue, and contrasting faith-based views on evolution.

The book is full of quotes from many of the most respected evolutionary thinkers of all time – both living and dead–as well as dozens of personal anecdotes. There is a separate list of Highlighted Stories, just after the Table of Contents.

Drawing on evolutionary brain science and evolutionary psychology, the author reframes and “makes real” traditional Christian concepts such as “Original Sin” and “The Fall”, but does so in a way that anyone, regardless of their religious or philosophical worldview, can embrace and benefit from. I am reminded of Conversations with God in that sense.

Part IV: “Evolutionary Spirituality” is a collection of exercises, practices, and “self-help” and “relationship-help” tools. Although I have not seen any other “self-help” books, this section struck me as provocative (of reflection) and therefore helpful to anyone.

Overall the author offers us all a “big picture” understanding of life's most important and persistent questions such as: “Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here? How are we to live?”

The bottom line: this book addresses concerns many Christians have about evolution, yet also communicates a universal “gospel” (good news message) that will speak to people of all religious traditions, and even those hostile to religion.

From now on, no discussion of how science and religion or evolution and creation relate can ignore this book. The index is excellent, as are the concluding offerings, a “Who's Who” section and a Resources section.

The Complete Conversations with God (Boxed Set)
The Celestine Prophecy
Left Hand of God, The: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis
Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Faith-Based Diplomacy: Trumping Realpolitik
Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
To Govern Evolution: Further Adventures of the Political Animal

2007/10/192009/10/17

Review: Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Superbly Crafted Primer on “The Next Step”

October 19, 2007

Steve McIntosh

My first note is: “the next step.”

The two Appendices are, in my view, a better starting place for the book as a whole.

The author synthesizes natural sciences, developmental psychology, political thought, philosophy, and spiritual traditions. I have a note later in the book on “this helps to understand the DNA of the body-mind-soul.”

The author tells us that integral philosophy can and should be used to design a world federation Constitution, and later on in the book tells us that philosophy should be the bridge between science and religion and later on suggests that philosophy, science, and spirituality (the opposite of rote religion) should retain their distinct values, and not be “blended” inappropriately.

The author is confident that a global self-governance network, while moving some powers up from the national level, will also result in moving many more powers *down* to the local and provincial levels, and this struck me as a point that needs to be developed further if we are to reunite the 27 secessionist movements in the US and the 5,000 secessionist and indigenous splinter groups around the world. That could be a second book in the making!

The author posits (and provides) a universal declaration of human rights, and suggests that tiered membership in a World Federation could start with the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and gradually absorb others who are at differing levels of consciousness.

If I had one criticism of the author's work, it is his ready confusion of American and European consciousness and the naked amorality of American policy-makers, including an abjectly dysfunctional and corrupt Congress, with the 50 million plus cultural creatives or the 80-110 million members whose parent organizations belong to Reuniting America. This needs more dissection and remediation.

He tells us that most institutions are artifacts, and this is consistent with the view in Conversations with God and other works about how religions as intermediaries have become false gods, while government and economic and media institutions have become corrupt and mis-representative.

The Wilburian distinction of the it, the I, and the we–nature, self, and culture–is helpful, and the author takes this a step further with his discussion of a cross-cultural spiral.

He provides superb tables and text describing each of the different levels of socio-cultural consciousness, and I now begin to see his view of how integral consciousness can embrace, welcome, and deconflict among differing levels of consciousness, including warrior consciousness among the Islamic fundamentalists, and the modernist and post-modernist consciousness of more developed societies (again, he neglects to address the sharp imbalance between the American people and their terribly retarded government).

He discusses cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and values intelligence, and stresses that science without values is not complete. He acknowledges E. O. Wilson's contribution of Consilience, but does not cite John … who gave us Voltaire's Bastards.

Importantly, he outlines how “what is truth” changes at each level of consciousness, and I find this to be among his most important insights. This is one of the author's most vital contributions, and one that future Administrations would do well to recognize: reality really is socially-constructed, and one must not only see reality as the other person sees it, but see it as a parallel universe that must be respected if one is to engage constructively.

The book works toward a conclusion by noting that integral politics transcends the schism between left and right, and here he cites Paul Ray's work reported out in 1995 on the distinctions in America between the traditionals, moderns, and cultural creatives. He says the degree of transcendence is determined by the scope of *inclusion* and that our challenge is to harmonize and integrate distinct cultures, not subdue them!

Integral consciousness finds *new* solutions via “vision-logic” centered in volition (good intention) rather than cognition, and this is very consistent with the spiritual literature that puts being (action) before planning (cognition). This is a 100-year path of value metabolism equal to the 100-year path since the last Enlightenment.

The author furthers my belief that religions should be rejected as we all adopt direct spiritual relationships with ourselves, others, our societies, and God expressed as the community of man. Beauty, truth, and goodness are the commonalities across cultures and consciousness, windows on the divine, and the place where we examine how values impact on evolution.

A rapid survey of past pioneers if offered:
* Hegel: dialectic of consciousness
* Bergson: intuition, unmediated knowledge
* Whitehead: philosophy as mediator between science and religion
* Teilhard de Chardin: evolutionary thresholds, physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere
* Gebster: coined term “integral consciousness”
* Baldwin: development psychology and genetic logic
* Graves: bio-psycho-social
* Habermas: founder of integral philosophy
* Wilbur: framer of integral philosophy, “big picture”
* McIntosh: need to distinguish, not blend, science, philosophy, spirituality

The author goes on to address the integral reality frame, the spiral of development, and the evolutionary goal of global (but not natural) governances. I was reminded of the “Salmon Nation” and wondered how species representation would play here.

VALUES are what link and nurture the inner and the outer, while making visible previously invisible structures of consciousness and culture across societies and civilizations.

Toward the end the author brings up the Koestner concept of holons, and the view that individual organisms and their social networks co-exist and help define one another in ways that cannot be isolated.

The bottom line: we are moving toward increased complexity and increased unity, and I would add that the author posits a new solution that addresses the reasons why complex societies collapse, when their institutional artifacts fail to rise to the higher consciousness and social network “community mind and soul” that is necessary to scale.

The general direction of truth is the way forward and the transcendent purpose, evolution is sacred (I am reminded of Michael Dowd).

My last comment: “WOW.”

2007/10/182009/10/17

Review: What We Say Goes

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

5.0 out of 5 stars Dick Cheney Pulls Noam Chomsky to the Center (Relatively Speaking)

October 18, 2007

Noam Chomsky

Edit of 15 Jun 09 to correct factual error in original review (nuclear deal with Iran under Gerald Ford, not Ronald Reagan, in 1974).

Chomsky is actually starting to win over the balanced middle with his common sense. I have long respected him, but it took Dick Cheney and his merry band of nakedly amoral and obliviously delusional henchmen to really bring home to America how much his straight talk and logical thinking can help us.

There is virtually no repetition from past works. This series of interviews took place in 2006 and early 2007, and I found a great deal here worth noting.

* In 70 New York Times editorials on Iraq, not once did they mention international law or the United Nations Charter. He uses this and several other examples to show how pallid, how myopic, how unprofessional our mainstream media has become.

* A wonderful section talks about how civil *obedience* of immoral and illegal orders is our biggest challenge in this era, and I agree. The “failure of generalship” in the Pentagon resulted from a well-meaning but profoundly misdirected confusion of loyalty to the civilian chain of command, however lunatic, with the integrity that each of our senior swore to the Constitution and to We the People in their Oath of Office.

* His knowledge of Lebanon, a country I have come to love as representative of all that is good in the Middle East, is most helpful. His many remarks, all documented, make it clear that Israel has been abducting people for decades, and that the Lebanese have quite properly come to equate US “freedom” with the “kiss of death.” I am especially impressed with his discussion of Hezbollah as having legitimacy based on providing social services to those ignored by past governments, and as having a significant strategic value to Iran as a flank on Israel. His observations on how the US consistently refuses to recognize honest elections that do not go as the policymakers (not the US public) wish, are valid.

* He reminds us that the US made an enormous strategic mistake in using Saudi Arabian extremist Islam as a counterpoint to Nasser's natural Arab nationalism. As Robert Baer puts it, we see no evil and slept with the devil like a common whore lusting for oil.

* His comments on China and the Shi'ites who sit on most of the reserves (including Saudi reserves in one corner of that country, are provocative. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the USA needs to cede the oil to China and execute a Manhattan Project to leverage solar power from space, tidal power, air power, and–for storage–hydrogen power made with renewable resources.

* Chomsky's comments on Chavez track with my own understanding. Chavez is a serious and well-off revolutionary who is sharing energy with his Latin American brethren, and leading the independence of Latin America from the overbearing and often hypocritical and predatory US government and US multinational corporations.

* He offers compelling thoughts on how India is sacrificing hundreds of thousands of poor rural people who now commit suicide or migrate to cities after losing their lands, for the sake of the high technology investments. I wonder why India is not doing more to teach the poor “one cell call at a time.”

* His observations on US electoral fraud are brilliant. He points out that the fact that elections are stolen is much less important than the fact that the entire electoral process in the US is fraudulent, without substance, only posturing and platitudes.

* He discusses how the US public is completely divorced from the policy choices of the dual tyranny of the US (political) government and the US corporate sector.

* At every turn Chomsky offers common sense observations, for instance, Pakistan, not Iran, is vastly more likely to leak nuclear capabilities to jihadists. In passing, he points out that it was the US that gave the Shah of Iran an entire MIT nuclear program and substantive assistance that is now being harvested by Iran, in 1975. Kissinger, Cheney,Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz as well as Gerald Ford are mentioned by name.

* He observes that Israeli influence is vastly larger than the lobbying effort, because the entire US intellectual network has “bought into” the Israeli myths and lies. The American fascists (see American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America), the Christian fundamentalists, are actually anti-Semitic, but support Israel because of their belief in the apocalypse.

* The Internet is having a pernicious effect on dialog and debate and compromise, because it creates little cul-de-sacs for lunatics of like mind to find and reinforce one another, divorced from larger realities.

* Avian flu (and our lack of preparation for it) is vastly more dangerous than a nuclear event. (See my review of the DVD Pandemic).

* Missile “defense” is actually code for allowing a first strike by the US on Russia or China, as a means to moderating their counter-strike. This is the first time I have heard it put this way, and I agree. All Americans should oppose “missile defense.”

* State secrecy is about keeping our own citizens ignorant of the crimes being done “in our name” not about keeping secrets from the enemies we a re covertly screwing over time and again.

* Darfur is being dumbed down, at the same time that the *millions* being genocided in the Congo are being ignored.

* He ends on two good notes. Like Thomas Jefferson (A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry”) he says that “educating the American people is the main thing to be done,” and love of the people is fundamental.

Great book, completely fresh and absolutely worth reading for the mainstream that might have in the past written Chomsky off as a perennial leftist, which he is not. Chomsky is what we must all seek to be: an educated engaged citizen.

2007/08/012019/09/09

Review: The Tao of Abundance–Eight Ancient Principles for Living Abundantly in the 21st Century

7 Star Top 1%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Philosophy

7 Star Life Transformative Very Satisfying, Will Take Time to Fully Appreciate – Collective Intelligence Primer

August 1, 2007

Laurence G. Boldt

This has to be a preliminary review. This elegant offering has a ton of useful ideas and concepts and comparisons. My first time around I drew the following out of it:

1) System is the Ego. Escape the matrix by escaping ego.
2) Trust the innate intelligence of nature in harmony.
3) Money should not cost you your soul or everything else.

The best contribution I can make at this point is to point readers to a few other books that have inspired me as I expect this book to continue to inspire me, and a couple of DVDs.

Books:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution

DVDs
What the Bleep Do We Know!?
The Last Samurai (Full Screen Edition)
Peace One Day

One last thought: Michael Hinton and Jean-Francois Noubelle have pioneered Open Money, and that is one of the things I talk about in my forthcoming opening presentation at Gnomedex in Seattle. My slides and notes can be seen in advance by finding “Open Everything” at my web site in the Archives, EIN Library. In my view, Open Money could be the single most revolutionary idea that is liberating immediately and scales without a problem. Combined with distributed search (Grub) and CISCO AON individually-controlled sharing of both information and CPU power, I see a world well beyond Google in which our brains and our information are under our control and no one can loot that abundance.

Peace! Prosperity! Power in us, not above us.

2007/02/172009/12/04

Review: The Seventeen Traditions

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Civil Society, Communications, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Diplomacy, Education (General), Leadership, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

A Gift to Newlyweds of Decency and Traditional Values,

February 17, 2007

Ralph Nader

This is an absolute gem of a book, and the PERFECT GIFT for newlyweds.

I read it in an afternoon, and I confess to it's being a long afternoon of nagging dismay, as I reflected on how many of these lessons we have not taught our three cyber-era teenagers.

The seventeen lessons cover listening, family table, health, history, scarcity, equality, education, discipline, simple enjoyments, reciprocity, independent thinking, charity, work, business, patriotism, solitude, and civics.

While very heavily leavened with autobiographical reflections, this absolutely beautiful, moral, intelligent, well-written book is a gift to us all. For many of us it is too late–if I were starting over my kids would be banned from computers much of the time, and I would have refused the grandparents gifts of a personal TV to each child.

Bottom line: this is a keep-sake book with an enormous amount of common sense and tranditional values with none of the pontifical sanctimony usually found in such books. This is a first rate piece of work and reflection, ably presented in elegant language, and the absolutely perfect gift for all newlyweds you know. Buy ten copies. This kind of decency does not come available very often.

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