Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 102 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/04/162012/04/16

Review: Polarity Management – Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Information Society, Intelligence (Public), Priorities, Survival & Sustainment, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Barry Johnson

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Less Complicated Than Expected, a Great Workbook,April 16, 2012

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I bought this back in December 2011 when I was scrounging around for books on panarchy (see for instance, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. It stayed in my pile as other books moved because my first impression was that it was more complicated than I cared to deal with and might – shudder — even include mathematical formulas. I was wrong.

This is a very straight forward book that I recommend as a read-ahead or work book for any group seeking to radically evolve their internal decision making processes away from the current standard of “I talk, you listen; I decide, you obey.” It has clear charts, the right amount of white space, and I put it down thinking very well of the book.

Panarchy is an evolution of the whole systems approach to anything, with the clarity and integrity of FEEDBACK LOOPS among the elements being the core of any successful system. If everyone does not talk; if everyone does not listen; if everyone does not decide; if everyone does not act in harmonization with all others, system failure is inevitable.

Interesting to me, because Harrison Owen is a friend and mentor, this book is a restatement, in panarchic terms, of his path-finding work, Open Space Technology: A User's Guide–I also recommend his more recent Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World.

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2012/04/062012/04/06

Review (Guest): Conversations with Wall Street – The Inside Story of the Financial Armageddon & How To Prevent the Next One

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

cover conversations with wall street — Amazon Page

Peter Ressler, Monika Mitchell

5 Stars

Co-authors Peter Ressler and Monika Mitchell have been 20-year Wall Street insiders as partners in an executive search firm. Their book is a page-turning account of the 2007-8 meltdown and continuing unsolved issues that will inevitably lead to the next crises. Woven throughout their analysis are conversations with dozens of top executives from Lehman, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and many hedge funds and private equity firms.

Only the executives' first names are used (for obvious reasons), which makes their recorded interviews with the authors more revealing, with all the vivid expletives un-redacted. We hear first-hand of how Wall Street's culture actually worked based on the “buyer beware” treatment of sophisticated clients. Pension funds were considered “big boys” who should do their own due diligence and against whom it was OK to bet that the securities sold to them would blow up. These were the market makers who, unlike the partnerships of yore, regularly took both sides of deals with their often unsuspecting customers while pushing ratings agencies to stamp these toxic products as triple-A. The prevailing culture is reflected in their language: “eat what you kill,” “ripping the face off” clients and the jungle rule of “survival of the fittest” (often incorrectly associated with Charles Darwin rather than originally coined by Herbert Spencer, a British economist of that era who wrote for The Economist).

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2012/04/012012/04/01

Review: GLOBAL PREDATOR – U.S. Wars for Empire

6 Star Top 10%, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Stewart Halsey Ross

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Stars for Coherence, Simplicity, & Morality,April 1, 2012

I read a lot — over 1800 books (including some DVDs) here at Amazon, in 98 categories, all but one non-fiction. This book is by a self-taught historian and self-described contrarian revisionist, and I will observe with the utmost respect that this author writes in the same vein, with the same quality, as Howard Zinn in A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present, Chalmers Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project), and even Carroll Quiqley's Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.

What makes this book spectacular–and strongly recommended for anyone–student or adult–who desires to understand the history of the United States of America with intelligence and integrity–is the elegantly straight-forward but devastatingly disturbing blend of facts–with superb notes at the end of each chapter.

I am very disappointed that the publisher has not taken advantage of Amazon's absolutely priceless “Look Inside the Book” feature, so I will take the time here to list chapters and appendices.

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2012/04/012012/04/01

Review: Terror on the Tube – Behind the Veil of 7/7

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Intelligence (Public), Terrorism & Jihad

Nick Kollerstrom

5.0 out of 5 stars Depressing in the Extreme –,April 1, 2012

I received this book as a gift. Although I do not strive to focus on 9/11 and related terror (or false flag terror), because of my extensive reading that includes over 30 (out of 1800) books and DVD's on 9/11, I tend to get offered more free books from the alternative reality community. To access all my reviews of 9/11 and related terror materials, visit Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, and find the category 9/11 under Reviews.

Where my continuing interests intersect with the 9/11 and false flag world is with respect to “integrity” (or lack thereof) among all major institutions in the world today.

This book contains materials on the US 9/11 that I was not aware of, for example that the FEMA emergency response vans arrived in NYC on the night before 9/11.

It is a shame that Look Inside the Book is not available for this book, as that is one of Amazon's best features. This book has 19 chapters as well as an Introduction and Conclusion, and 10 excellent appendices. This is a reference book. It is a fact book. It is a book that represents the very best of citizen investigative journalism.

Here are the chapter titles:

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2012/03/312012/04/01

Review: Cyber-War – The Next Threat to National Security and What To Do About It

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War

Richard Clarke

4.0 out of 5 stars Clarke is Always Worth Reading–and Always 20 Years Behind, March 31, 2012

I wrote the original letter to Marty Harris at the National Information Infrastructure, it–and the attachments developed with Winn Schwartau, Jim Anderson, and Bill Caeli–are easily found by searching for < 1994 Sounding the Alarm source=phibetaiota >. The US Government, in its ignorance and arrogance, refused to listen and continues to be dangerously corrupt in its business practices.

This book is worth reading and buying–anything Richard Clarke writes about has the benefit of deep experience and broad access. I've been on this stuff since 1992 and have neither the time nor the money to indulge in this book, but I certainly recommend it to all who are new to this issue.

Here's the bottom line: the US Government is corrupt at the top — the elected and appointed officials and the senior flag officers and civil servants that “go along” in violation of their Oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies domestic and foreign. We who have striven to inform the public all these years face many obstacles, not least of which include a corrupt Supreme Court bought and paid for through the campaign led by Lewis Powell; a Congress that betrays its Article 1 responsibilities every day of the year; a national media that is owned by five legalized crime families; and a school system including universities that have lost their integrity and no longer even pretend to search for the truth.

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2012/03/252012/03/25

Review: 9-11 On Trial – The World Trade Center Collapse

5 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs

Victor Thorn

5.0 out of 5 stars Latest Version — One of the Most Intelligent & Elegant Books on 9/11,March 25, 2012

I've read or viewed over 30 books and DVDs on 9/11. This book is the more recent edition. It is one of the most intelligent and elegant contributions to the 9/11 public intelligence search for truth that I have read. Easily in the top three along with Webster Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, the latest version of which also has a full review of all the “drills” that Dick Cheney used to control the day, and anything by David Griffin, he has been a real patriot and real professional citizen intelligence officer–his latest is 9/11 Ten Years Later: When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed.

What really charms me about this book is the huge amount of pre-work that went into it. The author has distilled, in an extremely elegant and utterly compelling manner, the essence of why the US Government, the government of New York City, and various other elements including the co-conspirator insurance companies, can easily be indicted and then convicted of crimes against the Republic.

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2012/03/242012/03/24

Review (Guest): Find, Fix, Finish – Inside the Counter-Terrorism Campaign that Killed Bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Terrorism & Jihad, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation

Aki Peritz and Eric Rosenbach

Ways of making men talk

Alan Judd

Spectator (UK) Book Club, 24 March 2012

Eric Rosenbach is a former academic who is now deputy assistant secretary of defence in Washington. Aki Peritz used to work for the CIA and now advises the Third Way think tank. Their book, therefore, is not a breathless account of terrorist-hunting nor the sensational inside story of how, in Obama’s words, ‘We got him’ (bin Laden). Rather, it is an exposition of legal, bureaucratic, political and military developments within the US following 9/11, illustrated by summaries of how various terrorists were killed or captured. If you want thrills and spills, go elsewhere, but if you are a student of counter-terrorism or are interested in the legal limbo of rendition, detention and targeted killings, you should probably read it.

The title refers to the process of finding terrorists — establishing who they are — then fixing their whereabouts, then finishing them off. The first two are generally intelligence tasks, the last military, and for the process to work it requires careful co-ordination. This may seem obvious but it wasn’t always so; the book usefully catalogues missed opportunities pre-9/11 for killing or capturing bin Laden and other leading terrorists. It also points out that there were around 70 renditions — US seizures of wanted terrorists from third countries with the agreement of host governments — before 9/11, under Clinton. ‘Extraordinary renditions’ are seizures without the consent of the host, most if not all of which have taken place post-9/11.

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