I would normally rate this book a four because of its lack of reference to Buckminster Fuller (see Critical Path; the Open Money movement; or the literature on wealth of networks, fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, and collective intelligence, but I make it a solid five for three reasons:
I read a lot, and I confess to have been among those who “bought in” to the celebrity alarmism of Al Gore, but I never displaced the totality of the threats to Earth for an obsessive focus on carbon emissions. Among the three books I have always recommended that are far more balanced than anything by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are:
This book does something I was not expecting: it directly relates, in a tight DNA-like spiral, the use of open space technology (process is really a better word) to the practice of peace. This is not a book on Quakerism–the author has made an original contribution that has moved me further down the road toward Evolutionary Activism (focus on connecting all humans to all information, not on arriving as specific answers)-but I better understand the value of such books as Practicing Peace: A Devotional Walk Through the Quaker Tradition as a result of this reading.
ALSO unexpected, I found this book to be a handbook for a “Whole Systems” approach to peace and prosperity. The author writes of “Multi-Factorial Development” attempting to do that, but i have the margin notation that putting a bunch of singular discipline experts (one from each discipline) in a room together does not create in any of them the ability to *do* systems thinking (or sustainable design). See Critical Path and The Philosophy of Sustainable Design.
Edit of 9 Jan 11 in light of shooting of gentle lady of Arizona, a judge, and others. I am leaving the original rhetoric intact, but I want to emphasize two things: 1) my enthusiasm was rhetorical, never anticipating the two-party tyranny blessing the the triple fraud (mortgage clearinghouse, Wall Street derivatives, and Federal Reserve) bankrupting all of us less the top 1%; and 2) many of us–millions of us–have been sounding the alarm for over a decade. We're not as stuck as we think we are–those speaking of adding security for all elected officials are fools–the only security for elected officials is to be found in their being perceived as LEGITIMATE. Neither do I believe that the ill-gotten wealth of the 1% that own America is threatened–but it will be if they do not take this terrible event in Arizona as a strong signal. All that is required to get America the Beautiful back on track is Electoral Reform–restoring the integrity of a government Of, By, and For We the People. Arizona is a “tipping point.”
Edit of 25 Nov 09 to complete review.
This book is a HOOT. It deserves to become a CULT CLASSIC. Nothing would please me more than to see 10 million copies of this book being shared across the land.
The author know Washington, knows the bureaucracy, and certainly understands the high crimes and misdemeanors that are so characteristic of Congress and the partisan White House (regardless of which party). Although a book of fiction, this book could well be a cultural prediction of the revolution that is brewing. Personally I support a General Strike that quite simply demands the same conditions as the author outlines at the end of the book, but for a fun thriller, a fast read, and a strong sense of the power of We the People armed with both knowledge and weapons, this book CANNOT BE BEAT.
Send a copy of this book to every public official whose blatant corruption you cannot stand. If you cannot afford to buy and mail the book, print the cover of the book and this review and mail them that.
A suggestion for further action comes to mind in a recent book of fiction called Tyrannicide, by Evan Keliher, which offers the improbable scenario of the Second American Revolution, which opens, sometime in the near future, with the slow, careful, systematic assassination of the members of the US Senate for their complicity in the sell-out of the old republic. In Keliher’s fantasy, “It was big business and corrupt politicians against everybody else in a scenario that grew ever worse for average citizens and ever more prosperous for the rich, and it was now going to change even if it meant shooting every last one of the larcenous pricks.” Right. Down goes one senator after another, popped between porcine eyes with a .22 cal. bullet fired by experts. Soon, select representatives follow to the grave. The federal government freaks out with martial law and the iron fist and the boot on the throat, the citizens respond with full-scale armed revolt – a delightful vision, as sepia-tone and strange as that of a citizen musketeer on Bunker Hill fighting the injuries from a distant king.
Now if I was to imagine this kind of thing – and I’m not saying I am – as the proper justice for the most treasonous and scheming and syphilitically whored-out figures in our legislature – shoot the diseased little shits, why not? – I think the plan should certainly extend to their friends and co-conspirators on Wall Street.
In Its Niche Beyond a Six–In Larger Context a Four
October 11, 2009
Roger Martin
First off, what got me to buy this book does not appear in the book at all–the author on record as saying that Wall Street was not designed to make money for its investors, only for its mandarins–the same is true of how universities are designed, businesses, etc. but that one observation really got my attention. I bought the book before BusinessWeek featured it as one of four in the October 5th edition (Europe version), and after looking the others over, chose this one.
In the larger context of changes to the Earth that now take three years instead of ten thousand years, as an entire literature flourishes on The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, the book is a four for narrow-casting and lack of context, but you can use Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, to search and sort among my other 1,400 reviews, so no penalty is warranted, This book will be scored Beyond 6 Stars at PBI/PIB for the simple reason that it addresses the core need of all eight tribes of intelligence (academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, and non-governmental organizations), to re-design away from the Industrial Era waste (where Six Sigma stops), and to instead envision how the world could and should be, and set out to achieve that–a prosperous world at peace.
Three for Lacking an Index, Beyond Five Stars for Content
July 25, 2009
Webster Griffin Tarpley
This extraordinary work, first developed in the mid-1990's and updated recently for a second edition, would normally receive 3 stars from me for lacking an index. I know the author and I admire Progressive Press, but to put out a book of this quality in terms of content, without taking the week needed to create an index, is to me as a professional utterly unforgivable. I urge the publisher to create an index online and modify the description here at Amazon to alert readers to the availability of an index. Without an index for looking up Greenspan, Rubin, Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley, this book loses half its value.
OK, that's the end of the rant. The content of this book–given that it was written a decade before Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) was bribed by lobbyists to put 200 pages of deregulation into a bill five minutes before it was to be voted on (and all Senators voted knowing this)–is beyond five stars. This is precisely the kind of knowledge that many, not just this author, have been putting before the public without effect since at least the 1970's.
At $26 this book is a gift and I urge one and all to buy it as both an education and as a keepsake. The author, whose books on Bush, on Obama, and on 9-11 I have found to be superbly researched and ably presented, is one of the modern greats in historical fact-finding and investigative history.
Up front he lays out a five point program for overcoming the world depression, and I am pretty sure that the Goldman Sachs executive now in charge of the US Treasury has absolutely zero interest in this public intelligence. The plan:
2. Nationalize the Federal Reserve System and re-start lending and the credit system generally. [I stand with Ron Paul in calling for its elimination after an interim period of public control, I am certain the audit that is being planned will reveal high crimes and misdemeanors such that I would keep Guantanamo open just to hold the Fed and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and City-Bank executives, among others, until we reclaim their stolen wealth from the public. The author includes here zero interest loans for real physical production and construction.
3. Restart borrowing for production with a vast program of infrastructure development and science drivers for the modernization and recovery of the economy.
The author itemizes $12.8 trillion in gift money from the taxpayer to the bankers at our expense, and this is a debt that I hope we not only renounce, but follow up with a confiscation of the overseas accounts where all of our money has been converted into foreign currencies so that the bankers can literally double their money–I am not making this up–when Obama declared a bank holiday and federalizes the police in late August or early September, and the US dollar devalues to half its current value (which is in turn half its value in the early 1970's).
Most of us do not need to read this book in its entirety, especially those of us on heart medication. This is a thoughtful balanced book that will make any intelligent person with integrity ANGRY. America remains a great Nation in its people and its land, but its leadership is criminally corrupt and has committed treason against the public since at least 1974 when Peak Oil was first briefed to the Senate and Exxon/Esso and the banks persuaded the U.S. Government's political leadership to ignore the research and carry on with Empire as Usual.
The re-issuance of this book validates and vindicates the author's research and integrity, and I for one, as the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, am more than pleased to stand alongside Webster Tarpley, pledging my sacred honor to the Republic–the sovereign people of American who created the federal government as a SERVICE. The federal government is NOT in charge, Goldman Sachs and the Fed are. It's time for a non-violent revolution, and I believe that books like this need to be in circulation among the two thirds of the eligible voters planning to kick the two-party tyranny out of office in 2010.
Webster Tarpley is an American hero in the tradition of Paul Revere.
A Four Pumped to Five to Stave Off the Ideologues
