Review: Harvest Of Rage–Why Oklahoma City Is Only The Beginning

5 Star, Democracy, Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution

HarvestExplains Violence and Anger in Rural West,June 5, 2009

Joel Dyer

I have spent my life in government (30 years) and studying the causes of revolution and instability, and I would sum up the core insight as this: violent anger is spawned by unfairness and feelings of helplessness combined with a loss of faith in “authority” or existing mechanisms for conflict resolution.

This book joins a growing body of literature that I have been exploring that suggests that America is losing its mind as a nation, is fragmenting in multiple ways including states planning for secession, divides between rural and urban, increased ethnic violence especially among poor whites, and so on. There is also a growing literature on government ineptness if not actual mafeasance and betrayal of the public trust.

In terms of details, this book is persuasive in documenting either a federal cover-up or massive federal incompetence. The suspects not interviewed, the suspects blocked from testifying, it all adds up to the federal government having a story line that is not supported by the facts.

I just finished watching Gandhi for the 20th or so time as background to writing an article on Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and I fear for America. We have dumbed down the population and betrayed multiple demographic elements of the population is ways that will have consequences. The Obama Borg Administration being almost identical to the Bush-Cheney Borg Administration is certain to make the situation worse.

Other books I recommend:
Rage of the Random Actor: Disarming Catastrophic Acts And Restoring Lives
Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, New and Updated Edition
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids

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Review: Liberty and Tyranny–A Conservative Manifesto

5 Star, Democracy

LibertyArticulate, Intelligent, Relevant, June 5, 2009

Mark R. Levin

This is a fast read being double-spaced, but it has good endnotes and a logical structure with amply documented points.

A call to arms, the book ends with ten elements of a conservative manifesto, and I will list them here:

01 Taxation
02 Environment
03 Judges
04 The Administrative State
05 Government Education
06 Immigration
07 Entitlements
08 Foreign Policy and Security
09 Faith
10 The Constitution

Here are some of my notes, but I will not summarize this book, it deserves to be read in its entirety. It joins a robust literature that is emerging in which both fiscal conservatives and social liberals are beginning to realize that since at least Jimmy Carter, the two political parties have been fielding “fronts” for what I call the Borg–the Wall Street driven two-party monopoly that has betrayed the public trust for decades now.

+ Principles matter, the Constitution matters.

+ The conventional wisdom of the elites, both in the universities and the political parties, is not as good as the common sense of the people. He cited William Buckley in saying that the first 2000 people in the Boston phone book are a better bet than the 2000 academics at Harvard.

+ Federalism has created an Administrative State that not only costs the taxpayer billions of dollars, but that imposes additional costs at the local level and has become a fourth branch of government.

+ He spends time defining and discussing the “Statist” as the enemy of the individual, equates the Statist and Secularist to the one world order crowd (the trilateralists,but I do not recall seeing that exact term in the book), the crowd that wishes to subordinate US citizens to a concept of global citizenship.

+ He is very hard on Cass Sunstein, one of two really well known public advocacy lawyers (the other being Lawrence Lessig), and discusses Sunstein in the context of Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights which sought to create a permanent welfare state.

+ He spends multiple pages on four events that began under the Clinton Administration and led to the economic meltdown, but his overview is facile and leaves out much of what TIME Magazine provided in its “25 People to Blame” story and he appears to very deliberately ignore the fact that Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) is the government culprit of note, accepting 200 pages from lobbyists for insertion into a bill five minutes before the vote, while also ignoring the fact that it is the consistent lack of integrity on the Hill that has destroyed this country and allowed executive and judicial manfeasance to run amok.

+ I totally agree with his interpretation of the Fourth Amendment and believe that citizenship should not be granted to babies delivered on US soil to visiting foreigners or to illegal aliens.

+ His emphasis on the importance of the consent of the governed to the very expensive liberalization of immigration as well as welfare is valuable and with his legal background, I now consider his one of the voices that must be at the table as we navigate our way into a future that bodes ill for individual rights.

+ The chapter on the environment is one of the longest, and provides an excellent overview of conservative concerns while also doing some fact checking and fallacy exposing that is both fun and educational. As I write this, a story is breaking in which the global warming crowd is taking a big hit from NASA as proof that it is the sun's cycles, not just our own behavior, that is the primary cause of global warming this time around.

+ The author writes about Social Security as a regressive tax that is also a piggy bank for unchecked federal spending and not being managed as it should be for the future.

+ I find his comments on how Republican Hoover set up Roosevelt, and how Republican Bush set up Obama, most interesting. I've come to the conclusion that the two existing parties have both sold out to Wall Street and betrayed the public trust, and the time has come to flush Congress down the toilet and start over with Independents (real ones, not neo-cons like Lieberman that change parties for convenience).

+ He writes of the importance of faith as a balancing factor on science, I agree, this is true regardless of one's ideological persuasion, and all the more so if one can eschew partisan blinders.

Other books that I recommend, with the general observation that the federal government has now become ignorant, and that decisions are being made on the basis of ideologically-defined and financially-motivated views, not on the basis of real facts openly aired:

Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Bush Tragedy
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Republican War on Science
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right

I have posted an annotated bibliography of over 500 non-fiction books at oss.net/PIG (add the www), all leading back to Amazon, and hope that readers of this book will explore more broadly. The US Government is disconnected from reality, and the taxpayer dollar is disconnected from the public interest. It's time we put We the People back into government and I do not see that happening under the current Borg Administration — the Sequel.

Review: Dignity for All–How to Create a World Without Rankism

5 Star, Democracy

DignityExcellent Off-Site, Gift, or Personal Improvement Book,June 9, 2009

Robert W. Fuller

I had previously read and reviewed All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents (Hardcover)) and as much as I liked that first book, this is the one I recommend as a broad use item. It is ideal for any company or organizational off-set as a pre-arrival required reading, as a gift (including as an anonymous gift to the rankism-challenged, and as a personal easy to read book.

I myself have been terribly guilty of rankism, primarily in the customer service arena, where mediocre service has roused my fury and I have been less than stellar at realizing that it's not the person, it's the system, and so many others are responsible for the mediocrity that I am a fool for taking it out on the one person I can see.

Where this book renders a very useful service is in the naming of the anti-thesis to dignity, i.e. rankism. This is not a book about dignity, but rather about rankism in all its forms and how that robs all of us of dignity, but especially those least able to handle the inequalities including (new term for me) micro-inequalities–the subtle pecking to death by ducks, e.g. being interrupted constantly, not noticed, etc.

I have been focusing on integrity recently, on truth, and I confess that I have not given enough thought to the tact side of the equation. This book is persuasive in saying that truth by itself is not enough, truth must be accompanied by tact, or as I have it in my notes, “Integrity plus dignity = informed democracy.”

There are 24 sidebars, each a little gem, the key points are summarized at the end of each chapter, and I believe this book finally meets the need for a Citizen 101 Guide.

Among my fly-leaf notes:

1. Lack of dignity is a driver toward violence and unreason. This joins a mantra from elsewhere, that anger and violence generally stem from a feeling of being treated unfairly.

2. Dignity should be the first human right.

3. Costs of not providing dignity are enormous. The following is quoted from pages 3-4:

“The consequences of violating others' dignity are evident in widespread social problems such as high rates of school dropout, prison incarceration, violent crime, depression, suicide, divorce, and despair; in the business world in reduced creativity, lower productivity, or disloyalty to the organization. Even health and longevity areaffected.”

While the above is grossly simplistic, it is important and merits note.

4. Rnakism is the “root” “ism” e.g. for sexism, racism, etc, the one that fosters all other isms by artificially elevating one person over another.

5. Dignitarian intervention breaks the rankism cycle. John Steiner intervened with me one time in Denver, and I have to say that without having read this book, I did not quite see his point. Those intervening should anticipate not being understood the first several times.

6. HUMILITY in leaders signifies an open mind willing to listen to everybody. I have just finished giving up on the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community as they live in “closed circles” and are like Henry Kissinger when David Elsberg counseled him, becoming like morons in that they rely too much on narrow secrets and allow their “closed circle” to shut out all those who actually have ground truth real world experience. See my review of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

7. The vignettes are not to be skipped. As impatient a reader as I am, I realized after a few of them that they comprise in the aggregate a 360 degree repetition of the basic lesson in many more naunced ways.

8. Secrecy and silencing are part of the Borg as I have tekn to calling it, the “establishment” in which neither Bush nor Obama really controls anything, the “system” goes on with its Wall Street ubber alles and two parties doing the bidding of special interests. Snobbery (think Council on Foreign Relations), bullying (think clearances removed from whistle-blowers) and blackballing (think CIA never hiring anyone critical of their nonsense) are all part of the Borg.

9. The book ends with comments on truth and reconciliation, of which I am a huge fan, believing the USA needs at least two–one for what has been done to We the People including our Native Americans and people of color, another for what has been done around the world “in our name” and at our expenses. Appreciative inquiry is discussed, as well as shared governances and shared evaluation.

Bottom line: this may well be the one book and the one idea that We the People cannot do without.

I also recommend:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The New Golden Rule: Community And Morality In A Democratic Society
Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life
Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
We the Purple: Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Review: We the Purple–Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter

5 Star, Democracy

We the PurpleMore Religion Than I Expected, But Totally Righteous, June 9, 2009

Marcia Ford

This is one of the books that I bought at a transpartisan event (the Republican term is post-partisan. It is one of the books,I list ten others below, that have persuaded me that 2008 is the tipping point year for burying the two parties that have been in breach of the public trust, and restoring the Constitution, the Republic, and the sovereign We.

This is a small book, a serious book, with a wonderfully educational gloassry, very serious endnotes, and a list of ten web sites that I am immediately adding to the home page of Earth Intelligence Network.

The author introduces herself as a voter without a party and a Christian without a church, and having myself been so very angry with the parties and the churches this immediately grabs me.

She credits Barney Frank early on with being the originator of the “purple states” term from which is derived “purple voter,” and as a military person I am further impressed because “purple” is the color we use to define truly joint integrated operations that are not corrupted by inter-service rivalry.

The author discusses how from 2006-2009 the polls consistently have shown that 33-39% of America is neither Democratic nor Republican, and I observe a Pew poll just in the last two weeks that puts self-defined independents at 39%, the Democrats at 33%, and the Republicans at 26% or so and falling.

I have a note to myself, this book is a pre-cursor and companion to both Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny and Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

Page 9-10 (after a long preface) have a list of citizen grievances, I will quote just the first one:

“We're tired–tired of two parties whose main priority is self-preservation and self-promotion rather than serving the people who voted them into office.”

This is of course correct, and I would add that it is the loss of integrity across the government–executive as well as within Congress–that is responsible. See among other books Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.

The author discusses a number of electoral reforms that are needed, including non-partisan elections, universally-available write-in options, the instant run-off (and variations I was unaware of), term limits, getting rid of the money, an end to gerrymandering (tightly drawn distrcits), and an end to party registration as part of the voting process. All good stuff, see my comments for the list of eight reforms in the Electoral Reform Act that a number of us have press pressing on since the year 2000 while Al Gore sold his integrity for what we now know has become a $100 million pay-off. See The Best Democracy Money Can Buy for the back-story, all known to Gore three months in advance of the election.

I am much taken with the author's brief discussion of how Independents are NOT “undecideds” and are not “swing” voters either. The discussion of how the media ignores (disenfranchises) independent voters, and how the Internet is now empowering ordinary people, is worthy.

I like the author's conclusion that mixing religion and politics is a huge mistake.

Finally I have a note on the author's view that abortion and gay rights are two issues that divide us, and although I did not see this in the book, my own conclusion inspired by others is that we are wasting all of our time arguing about the 20% where we cannot agree, instead of focusing on the 80% where we can make gains: education, family, health, etcetera.

Here are six other books that support and bracket this one:
Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE: The Transpartisan Imperative in American Life
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)

There are so many books I wish I could link to, especially with respect to betrayal of the public trust by government and the inappropriate insertion of religious ideology into both domestic and foreign affairs. See the comment for a link to my reviews of 500+ non-fiction books, all organized to empower individual citizens with knowledge not available to them from any political source.

Review: The Deepening Darkness–Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy’s Future

5 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Civil Society, Democracy, Education (General), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

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Epic Work, Small Blinders, Over-All a MAJOR Integrative Work

June 28, 2009
Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards
I only recently learned of the literature on voices of women, and this is the first of several books I ordered to explore the subject. At tempted as I have been to take away one star for small blinders (notably the gross over-selling of anti-Semitism, and the complete oblivion to the fact that Dick Cheney used 9-11, even if he is a cross-dresser our response to 9-11 was NOT some deep psychic rage stemming from our humiliation–Cheney sent 1% of the country to war, and Bush asked the other 99% to go shopping.

Having said that up front, I stayed with five stars because this is an epic work, and I am deeply impressed by the rigorous documentation in notes, the spectacular bibliography, and the deliberate mention of names of minds being quoted in the body of the book, a certain mark of integrity that I always look for. Hence, while some of the points below in my notes come without the cited source, be assured that the authors have been meticulous.

QUOTE p. 19: “…patterns of injustice and moral slavery are supported by the repression of resisting voice and to show how such resisting voice is rooted in the human psyche and preserved in cultural forms that preserve and maintain it. …What patriarchy precludes is love between equals, and thus it also precludes democracy.” For the political science version of this, see The modern state.

Part I starts with Roman Patriarchy and if you are not a cultural studies ancient literature obsessive, you can skim most of this. I have a note: “marvelous handbook for teaching literature as culture & psyche.” See The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, and On the Psychology of Military Incompetence for the modern equivalencies…and other books I have reviewed.

Part II covers resistance across time and culture and is a brilliant survey in detail–while leaving much for others to cover in follow-on works–of religion, psychology (notably a wonderful chapter on Freud first embracing women's voices and then rejected them), the artists, and politics. The Catholic Church comes in for its fair share of condemnation as a patriarchal organization as well as a criminal and hypocritical organization, but it is here that I note the immaculate conceptions the authors both portray of Jews and Israel–“can do no wrong” gets annoying after a while.

Part III, the shortest part, provides a once-over on western colonialism, the war on terror, and where we are going wrong now in seeking to turn back the progress made from the 1960's. All good stuff.

Here are my fly-leaf notes and a couple of quotes.

+ Gender and how gender equality and sexual tolerance are handled is both the foundation for democracy (dignity and equality for all) and the canary in the coal mine for failing democracy such as we have in the USA.

+ Resistance, once it acquires critical mass, is the pre-condition for being able to achieve transformation. This is a very important point and merits its own book. See my review of Responsible History for supplementary insights from another author.

+ Over-all this is a fascinating holistic view of cultural relations and why the matter. I particularly appreciate the focus on how important “feelings” are and how the repression of feelings, including sexuality, cuts off half the soul-brain for the questionable desire to assert control.

+ I could not stand the “femi-nazis” in my own era of learning (1970's) but now they have come of age. It is no longer about aggressive women trying to fight men on men's terms; what we have here is brilliant women making a well-documented case for how stupid men are to fall for the patriarchy propaganda, and THAT I can respect. This book, for those of us not familiar with the Voices literature, is a milestone.

+ I completely buy-in to the author's view that patriarchy supports racism, Puritanism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism, the latter with a grain of salt. As “Responsible History” documents, way too many charges of anti-Semitism are defamation and no longer have standing in court.

+ The author's make a compelling case that a Republic in which the people are sovereign, equal, and entitled to equal voice, is completely anti-thetical to a top-down command and control patriarchy. Others have made this case and described Epoch B leadership, bottom up inclusive deliberative democracy. I cannot do justice to the originators, but see All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents (Hardcover)) and Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace for a taste.

+ They discuss how repression imposes disassociation that blocks ethical development as well as resistance.

+ They discuss the contradictions in laws that force women to disassociate their intelligence from their sexuality. I am moved by their citation of the work of others in which young girls learn they cannot have BOTH voice (honesty) AND relationships (steeped in patriarchy).

+ I am sympathetic to their discussion of fascism as over-compensation for male humiliation that becomes a psychological basis for violence, and I am even more in turn with the varied observations that fear feeds violence.

They conclude: “The corruption of manhood has been our theme.” They discuss the tension between voice and violence, and reiterate that the demonization of pleasure requires a split in consciousness–put another way, the USA has lost its mind.

QUOTE p. 266: “As we have found the roots of intolerance–whether racist, sexist, or homophobic–in the traumatic rapture of intimate relationships that marks the initiation into patriarchy, so the splits between mind and body, thought and emotion, self and relationships signal a disassociation that keeps us from knowing what we otherwise would know. It impedes the voice of experience, grounded in the body and in emotion and fostered by relationships, that would speak to the voices of authority, thus posing a threat to democracy in the same ways that totalitarianism targets the functions of the human mind.”

We're there.Ā Ā  See Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

See also:
Radical Man
Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House

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Review: Glenn Beck’s Common Sense–The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Philosophy, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

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Minus 1 for Fluff, Plus 2 for Bringing Us Back to Paine: 6 Over-All,

June 27, 2009
As annoying as this book obviously is for so many, it is not only squarely on target, but merits great respect for bringing all of us back to the more developed wisdom of Thomas Paine.

Glenn Beck is not Thomas Paine. He's not even an average American, cf.
The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen. What he has going for him is a bully pulpit, the right instincts (no pun), and the ability to reach some, but not all and certainly not a majority, of conscious Americans.

The book is squishy, a moderately well-organized rant against “Progressives”; I myself have done better with 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). However, I honor this book, I really do. Below are five books that have the substance this book lacks, without the heart that Glenn Beck delivers:
Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

My review of that last one (I review all books I link to) itemizes 23 of the 25 high crimes and misdemeanors that make Dick Cheney long overdue for retrospective impeachment and negotiated exile.

My notes from the first half of this double-spaced book (the second half is the original work of the original Thomas Paine, and I loved having a chance to reread that):

+ Principles must displace the two political parties
+ Creative extremists are needed–non-violent *armed* extremists better
+ Government is imposing both sacrifices and intrusive conditions on a public that has been sacrificing since the 1960's
+ Shortcuts have consequences, national debt IS bad
+ Political leaders are parasites (Amen, Brother!–I would add, “and prostitutes uncaring about the public interest.”
+ Social Security and Medicare are a scam because the money is being spent and an IOU put in its place–close to $10 trillion in unfunded future obligations (but see my review of Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
+ “Smiley-faced fascism” is the order of the day
+ Tax code is a weapon and a scam
+ Election manipulations anti-democratic, need term limits and an end to gerrymandering (see my review of Grand Illusion linked above)
+ “Green Government” is a scam that is radically increasing federal government powers to intervene and impact negatively on private property

Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFL) are the poster child for Congressional and Executive idiocy and hypocrisy, and I give this its own paragraph to emphasize how much I admired this example and the way in which the author presented it. He lines up his facts and I am shocked to learn that they contain six times any “safe” level of mercury and when they break there is a complex clean-up procedure that is required, and they are *seriously* hazardous to children, pets, and adults.

I totally welcome and agree with the author's view that politicians are disdainful of citizens and overly enamored of secrecy for the sake of avoiding oversight.

I learn for the first time that lawful armed citizens were unlawfully disarmed in the wake of Katrina, and I believe the day will come when law enforcement officers are gunned down by citizens resisting unlawful disarming–our government is out of control, is going to issue illegal orders including “martial law” for the “common good,” and they will not be ready for the Harvest Of Rage: Why Oklahoma City Is Only The Beginning.

The author does a fine job of pointing out how the two-party tyranny uses international treaties to end-run common sense and impose addition deprivations on citizens.

A few quotes I especially admired:

p6: “The fastest way to be branded a danger, a militia member, or just plain crazy is to quote the words of our Founding Fathers [about the right to abolish the government].

p6: “It is not time to dissolve the bands that connect us to one another, but it is time to dissolve the ‘political'bands that *separate* us from one another.” I totally agree–look up the Unified Independents, I believe they will capture a third of the seats in 2010 and if Obama does not pass the Electoral Reform Act of 2009, he will be a lame duck President kicked out in 2012 in favor of an Independent President who demands Cabinet level selections and a balanced budget proposal be presented to We the People *prior to* Election Day.

p9: “Through legitimate 'emergencies involving war, terror, and economic crises, politicians on both sides have gathered illegitimate new powers–playing on our fears and desire for security and economic stability–at the expense of our freedoms.” Absolutely right, see the images I have loaded above, Obama is a CONTINUATION of Bush and Goldman Sachs is still helping Wall Street loot the Treasury.

p19: “This isn't a debate aout money, it's a life-and-death struggle for personal freedom and national liberty.

Between the book and the origina Tom Paine materials is a 9.12 project that does not do much for me, I'm sticking with the Boy Scout principles.

See my review of the following books for modest hope:
Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change (The Changing Face of War)

My online annotated bibliography at my corporate web site (OSS.Net, Inc.) provides direct links to 500+ of my reviews of relevant non-fiction books organized into groups.

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Review: Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

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Not What I Expected But Hugely Satisfying,

June 27, 2009

R. Buckminster Fuller

I was actually expecting an Operating Manual. Although what I ended up with is a 136-page double-spaced “overview” by Buckminster Fuller, a sort of “history and future of the Earth in 5,000 words or less, bracketed by a *wonderful* introduction by grandchild Jamie Snyder, an index, a two-page resource guides, and some photos and illustrations including the Fuller Projections of the Earth.

First, the “core quote” that I can never seem to find when I need it:

OUR MISSION IS “To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Inside front cover.

The introduction is a treat–I note “impressive” and appreciate the many insights that could only come from a grandchild of and lifelong apprentice to Buckminster Fuller.

Highlights for me:

Founder of Design Science, a company by that name is now led by Medard Gabel who served as his #2 for so long. I just attended one of their summer laboratories and was blown away by the creativity and insights. It is a life-changing experience for those with a passion for Earth.

He imagined an inventory of global data. I am just now coming into contact with all of this great man's ideas, but my third book, Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time, also online at the Strategic Studies Institute in very short monograph form, is totally in harmony with this man's vision for a global inventory of global data.

“Sovereignness” was for him a ridiculous idea, and a much later work out of Cambridge agrees, Philip Allot tells us the Treaty of Westphalia was a huge wrong turn in his book The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

“Great Pirates” that mastered the oceans as the means of linking far-flung lands with diversity of offerings was the beginning of global commerce and also the beginning of the separation between globalists who knew the whole, and specialists whom Buckminster Fuller scathingly describes as an advanced form of slave.

He was frustrated with the phrases “sunrise” and sunset” as they are inaccurate, and finally settled for “sunsight” and “suneclipse” to more properly describe the fact that it is the Earth that is moving around the sun, not the other way around.

In 1927 he concluded that it is possible for forecast with some accuracy 25 years in advance, and I find this remarkably consist with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's view that it takes 25 years to move the beast–see for instance Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy.

He has an excellent discussion of the failure of politics and the ignorance of kings and courtiers, noting that our core problem is that everyone over-estimates the cost of doing good and under-estimates the cost of doing bad, i.e. we will fund war but not peace.

He described how World War I killed off the Great Pirates and introduces a competition among scientists empowered by war, politicians, and religions. He says the Great Pirates, accustomed to the physical challenges, could not comprehend the electromagnetic spectrum.

He states that man's challenge is to comprehend the metaphysical whole, and much of the book is focused on the fact, in his view, that computers are the salvation of mankind in that they can take over all the automaton work, and free man to think, experiment, and innovate. He is particularly forceful in his view that unemployed people should be given academic scholarships, not have to worry about food or shelter, and unleash their innovation. I am reminded of Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era as well as Thomas Stewart's The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization.

There is a fascinating discussion of two disconnected scholars, one studying the extinction of human groups, the other the extinction of animal species, and when someone brings them together, they discover that precisely the same cause applied to both: over-specialization and a loss of diversity.

Synergy is the uniqueness of the whole, unpredictable from the sum of the parts or any part individually.

On page 87 he forecasts in 1969 when this book was first published, both the Bush and the Obama Administration's ease in finding trillions for war and the economic crisis, while refusing to recognize that we must address the needs of the “have nots” or be in eternal war. I quote:

“The adequately macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive solutions to any and all problems never cost too much.”

I agree. I drove to Des Moines and got a memo under Obama's hotel door recommending that he open up to all those not represented by the two party crime family, and also providing him with the strategic analytic model developed by the Earth Intelligence Network. Obviously he did not attend, and today he is a pale reflection of Bush. See the images I have loaded, and Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate.

Early on he identified “information pollution” as co-equal to physical pollution, I am totally taken with this phrase (see my own illustration of “data pathologies” in the image above). I recognize that Buckminster Fuller was about feedback loops and the integrity of all the feedback loops, and this is one explanation for why US Presidents fail: they live in “closed circles” and are more or less “captive” and held hostage by their party and their advisor who fear and block all iconoclasts less they lose their parking spot at the White House.

Most interestingly, and consistent with the book I just read the other day, Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change (The Changing Face of War), he concludes that wars recycle industry and reinvigorate science, and concludes that every 25 years is about right for a “scorched earth” recycling of forces.

He observes that we must preserve our fossil fuels as the “battery” of our Spaceship Earth, and focus on creating our true “engine,” regenerative renewable life and energy.

He joins with Will Durant in Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers: education is our most formidable task.

I am astonished to have him explain why the Pacific coast of the US is so avant guarde and innovative (as well as loony). He states that the US has been a melting pot for centuries, and that the West Coast is where two completely different cultural and racial patterns integrated, one from Africa and the east, the other from the Pacific and the west.

I learn that he owned 54 cars in his lifetime, and kept leaving them at airports and forgetting when and where. He migrated to renting, and concluded that “possession” is burdensome.

See also:
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)

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