Military & Pentagon Power – Page 19 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/01/082010/01/08

Review: World Out of Balance–International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy

4 Star, Country/Regional, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Military & Pentagon Power, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), United Nations & NGOs

cover world out of balance — Amazon Page

Erudite, Itself Out of Balance, Secoond Tier Reading

January 8, 2010

Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth

This is one of three books I bought to reflect on the same generic topic, the other two are Power & Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threat and To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine, which I will read and review this week-end.

It is a substantive contribution, important, but second tier in terms of clarity and utlity and comprehensiveness.

The authors do a fine job of setting the stage for why this book matters in relation to policy, putting forth three overarching questions worth quoting:

1. Can the United States sustain an expansive range of security commitments around the globe?

2. Is the United States well positioned to reshape the international system to better advance its security interests?

3. What are the general costs of unilateralism?

I have mixed feelings about this book for three reasons:

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2009/12/262009/12/26

Review: Edward Lansdale’s Cold War (Culture, Politics, and the Cold War) (Paperback)

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Crime (Government), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Highly Recommended by James Gibney

December 26, 2009

Jonathan Nashel

James Gibney, one of my most respected sources for common- sense and integrity, posted a review of this book on 15 January 2006 in the New York Times. At Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, I have posted that three-page review along with some other original references on “Colonel” Landsdale, a journalism drop-out from UCLA and former advertising person, that document the role he played in making genocide and atrocities part of the “Made in USA” Cold War tool-kit.

“The truth at any cost reduces all other costs.”

Ten other recommended books:
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II-Updated Through 2003
Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage
The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back

At Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog it is possible to access all of my reviews via any of 98 categories 9e.g. Intelligence, Secret; or Pathology of Power; or Empire, etcetera, something Amazon has refused to make possible since I began suggesting it years ago.

2009/12/122011/10/22

Review: Threshold–The Crisis of Western Culture

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Five for the Voice, Four for the Substance

December 12, 2009

Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann is one of a handful of individuals that I consider to be true guides for the rest of us, and I consider two of his earlier books, Cracking the Code and SCREWED, to have been instrumental in my own transformation from recovering spy to intelligence officer to the public.

The book does cover a lot of ground lightly, but it is coherent, and because it is Thom Hartmann, whose voice is hugely important to all of us, I settle on a five instead of a four. Other books that complement this one include Tom Atlee's The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All, Jim Rough's Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People, and The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.

Here are my notes:

+ Book may be missing pages, mine starts at page xi (Preface) so I am left wondering, what happened to i through x?

+ Book opens with quotes from Einstein and Schweitzer with respect to the urgency of widening our circle of compassion to include ALL living things, and explicitly ALL humanity.

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2009/12/102010/08/18

Review DVD: The AMERICAN Ruling Class

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Reviews (DVD Only), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Truly Remarkable–Provokes & Entertains

December 10, 2009

Robert Altman, James Baker, Bill Bradley, Harold Brown, Hodding Carter, William Coleman, Walter Cronkite, Barabara Ehrenreich, Vartan Gregorian, Robert Hackney, Doug Henwood, Mike Dedavoy, Joseph Nye, Samuel Peabody, John Perkins, Pete Seeger, Lawrence Summers, Arthur Sulzberger, William Taft, Kurt Vonnegut, Howard Zinn

This DVD is superb and also subversive. I doubt that the “stars” in this movie, particularly James Baker, Bill Bradley, Howard Brown, and Larry Summers, really knew what they were getting into, since their words–and their bland denials–ring so false in this context.

I put the film in while trying to deal with Microsoft's latest “update” that cost me half the morning, and I recommend it very strongly as a Christmas present or for classrooms and book clubs.

My notes:

+ A Peabody, whose ancestors came on “the boat” and also founded Groton, laments that whereas all the leaders used to pass through Groton, now there is no real “source.” I am reminded of Lee Iacocca's Where Have All the Leaders Gone?.

+ Hedge fund visits basically boils all ownership in America down to four banks, and later in the film we learn that six multinational control almost all “content.”

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2009/10/102009/10/11

Review: The War After Armagedoon

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Culture, Research, Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion

Not Really a Novel, More Like a Wake-Up Call

October 10, 2009

Ralph Peters

Although I read mostly non-fiction, one of Ralph Peter's novels (his first in ten years, the last one I really liked was Traitor), is better than reality, for it portrays what we can expect when our delusional political, economic, and military acquisition practices play themselves out, and in the case of this book, what happens when we ignore the desperate need for religious counter-intelligence that I have been calling for since the 1980's.

The non-fiction foundations or complements to this book are American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America and Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror.

In a nut-shell, this a marvelous depiction of what happens in the future when enemies of the USA plant two small nuclear devices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, leading to a nation-wide call to arms with crusade overtones.

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2009/09/282009/09/29

Review: JFK and the Unspeakable–Why He Died & Why It Matters

6 Star Top 10%, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Stake in the Heart of National Security State

September 28, 2009

James W. Douglas

The premise is that JFK went against the national security establishment, notably the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military-industrial complex, and was assassinated by deliberate plan of the CIA, with Richard Helms, David Atlee Philips, David Sanchez Morales, and Desmond Fitzgerald specifically culpable for high crimes of treason.

As with 9/11 and the documented culpability of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Larry Silverstein, and Rudy Gulliani, there is insufficient proof in this book for conviction, but it is more than ample to demand a very intrusive and comprehensive investigation of the CIA, the Secret Service, and the FBI. I *want* to believe Helms when he says CIA did nothing not ordered by a President. However, if the premise of this book is proven, CIA should be abolished, its HQS demolished, and salt plowed into the earth at Langley.

The book's most positive account is of the back-channel dialog JFK developed with Khrushchev, Castro, and the Pope, dialog that not only defused the confrontations of the time, but also ended the Cold War. The theology of peace, the role of Monk Thomas Merton, the role of Norman Cousins (author of The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety), the role of the Pope and Pacem in Terris, and the strength JFK drew from a single meeting with Quakers are moving. This is in many ways a resurrection of JFK and both an epitaph worthy of his unsung accomplishments, and a call to arms for achieving closure–truth and reconciliation–with respect to his assassination by US Government personnel committing treason.

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2009/09/062009/09/06

Review: Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Corruption, Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Iraq, Media, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda

Work of Historic Value with Deep Meaning for the Future

September 6, 2009

John Pilger (Editor)

This is the middle book in the John Pilger set that I bought. The others that I am including in a review trilogy include:
2002 The New Rulers of the World
2007 Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire

Although the book is daunting at first site, at 626 pages, it is MUCH easier to read than Laurrie Garrett's Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, for the simple reason that it is a collection of twenty-nine stories by different investigative journalists and can be read in pieces.

Use “Inside the Book” provided by Amazon to see the range of the stories. This is mostly about government terrorism against its own people, or in a few instances (e.g. thalidomide, fast food) government complicity in corporate atrocities against the paying public.

Eight of the pieces center on Iraq from 2002 onwards.

I put the book down thinking along these lines:

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