Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 272 – Public Intelligence Blog

2006/08/092011/10/22

Review: The Broken Branch–How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Politics

Amazon Page

Helpful to Anyone Planning to Vote in November 2008,

August 9, 2006

Thomas E. Mann

I have long understood the original terrible sin of Congress, the obscene corruption. I did not understand party line corruption (forcing Members to vote the party line instead of for their constituents until I read Tom Coburns Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.

This book helped me understand that the third sin is that partisan politics have turned Members into (the author's term) “footsoldiers for the President” and thus a complete abdication of their role as the Article 1 (i.e. first) branch of government.

This book helped me understand that it is the long-serving Members who are often shaking down lobbyists and extorting funds from people, not the other way around, where bribes are offered by the lobbyists.

I read this book after reading David Broder's article in the 8 August 2006 issue of the Washington Post, an article entitled “Contempt for Congress” and summarizing the utter disdain that the Governors–both Republican and Democratic–have for most Members. The Congress is indeed broken and dysfunctional. There is a tide sweeping against all incumbents, regardless of party, in this year.

Hence, as Congress reconvenes on 5 September for one last session ending in early October, it could be quite fruitful for as many voters as possible to read this book and Tom Coburn's book, and demand of Congress two things in this next session: Electoral Reform, and a Public Intelligence Agency independent of both the President and Congress. We have a window for reform. This book is one of two pillars for those who wish to “raise the roof.”

It is vital that the 100 million voters who have “dropped out” of the broken partisan political scene come back in 2008.

2006/08/092009/12/04

Review: Fiasco–The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Hardcover)

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Amazon Page

Extraordinarily Good Review, with Sadness of Deja Vu and Silence of the Lambs,

August 9, 2006

Thomas E. Ricks

There are other vital books to read, not least of which is James Risens State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration and Jim Bamford's A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies and Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq as well as The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. There are lesser books as well, such as Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. On balance, of all the books I have read, this is the best and easiest to read chronicle and teaching device.

Everyone preparing to vote in November for the gutless Congress that betrayed America and failed to maintain either the power of the purse or the power to declare war, should read this book.

And when future politicians who were military commanders that failed to speak up (“the silence of the lambs” as the author notes) ask for your vote, laugh in their face.

There are leadership heros in this book–General Zinni of the Marine Corps, General Shinseki, who told the truth to Congress and was fired for his trouble (as was General Clapper, who said that the national agencies could be cut free from defense). Garner and the Army generals were on the right track, until Garner was fired for doing the right thing (trying to accelerate the turnover of authority to the Iraqis and the exit of Americans).

There are also villains. Chalabi gets his due share but in my view the author underestimates Chalabi's influence on Cheney, and Chalabi's treasonous representation of Iranian interests.

Rumsfeld is documented over and over as one massive ego completely uncaring of inter-agency effectiveness or accomodating to reality.

Edit of 10 Sep 06: the author appeared on a Sunday talk show today, and pointed out that it was Paul Bremer who gave the Iraqi insurgency everything they needed: 1) leadership, with his order to ban Bathists from responsible positions; 2) guns and volunteers with his order to disband the Iraqi military and police; and 3) finances, providing Iran with exactly the right opportunity to further its interests. It can be said that Bremer has done more damange to America than Bin Laden–what an obituary that makes!

This is a superb chronicle of who shot John, when, and how. The headings for each section of text are brilliant. When I first got the book I flipped through it and read only the headings, and they were as compelling and concise of summary of our botched endeavor in Iraq as one could want.

If you buy and read only one book from among all those I have mentioned, this is the book to buy.

2006/08/082009/12/04

Review: The End of Faith–Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (Paperback)

5 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion

Amazon Page

Very Important, Objective, Valuable, Relevant to Peace,

August 8, 2006

Sam Harris

Of the 3000 or so books I have read in the past decade, 750 or so them reviewed here at Amazon (almost all non-fiction) this is perhaps the single most important work that declares, and then documents, the “naked Emperor” of religion.

While I agree with the reviewer that sums it up as saying that religion in the form of blind faith does more harm than good, I would hasten to add that faith is an essential part of the American value system, and can do a great deal of good when channeled in partnership with a tolerant secular state. See my reviews of “The Left Hand of God,” “Faith-Based Diplomacy,” and “American Gospel.”

The alternative sub-title of this book could be “The Cost of Intolerance.” However–and I strongly recommend this book to the Information Operations and Public Diplomacy or Strategic Communication professionals–the author is brilliantly on point when he suggests that the third world war now happening is about beliefs–about good beliefs versus bad beliefs, about a need for a morality order of battle. As Robert Garigue sums up in his own original work offered as a technical preface to my book on Information Operations, war has moved to the semantic level, and we have to focus on identifying, containing, and then eradicating belief systems that are totally set against our once-balanced (not now) combination of secular state and diversity of belief.

It merits comment, as discussed in Howard Bloom's “Global Brain,” that belief systems, once embedded in a person older than 30, are not changeable. World War III is a war for the minds of those in elementary and secondary school. We have to contain or kill the adults who believe that martyrdom awaits those who kill “unbelievers.” On a positive note, the disciplines of psychology and neuroscience are now coming together (see my review of “Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of the Mind” by Eric Kandel). At the same time, the discipline of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) is finally about to be funded properly, and we are within arms reach of being able to make sense of all information in all languages all the time.

Over-all the author agrees with those who say we are engaged in a clash of ideologies rather than civilizations. He notes that democracy can NOT be seen as a precursor to changing beliefs, for as we have found in Iraq, given a vote, most rabid Muslims would vote to give up their public liberties in favor of their blind and intolerant faith.

The author is compelling in also noting that poverty, among other high-level threats, is not the source of the conflicts that should frighten us with the prospect of being wiped out. It is about belief systems. He suggests that energy independence is actually a pre-requisite to gaining the economic leverage we need, while depriving the radical Muslim states of oil revenues they have consistently used to finance Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, among others.

Among the varied insights offered by the author I especially appreciated these:

1) Discussion of how evangelical Christians are penetrating the federal and state governments and subverting secular policy to fight “reasoned policy” and channel tax-payer funds to specific evangelical missions and churches.

2) A fascinating review of our skewed priorities, where we spend $4 billion annually to eradicate marijuana, which kills no one, while refusing to spend $2 billion one time to secure our ports, meanwhile ignoring the fact that alcohol kills hundreds of thousands.

3) Priceless quote, on page 165: “And yet, religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty manifestly exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the patently false to achieve primacy over facts.”

4) The author provides a very comprehensive review of both the Koran and the Bible, citing many specific passages, and concludes that even “moderate” Muslims are inherently trained to believe that “unbelievers” are to be converted or killed. This is, incidentally, the first stage of genocide, where the one to be killed is put into a class with vermin to set the stage for acceptable massacres.

The book concludes with a brilliant and provocative call for a science of good and evil, an ethics and science of the mind. The author states that truth is NOT just a matter of consensus or belief, and that some truths, in a human or reality sense, must be absolute. He calls for common sense and a sensibility of tolerance for others, while stating quite clearly that we must identify and kill those who threaten us “blindly.” He concludes that both torture and pacifism are wrong, and that principled moral engagement, one for all and all for one, is what is right. He supports non-violence where it works, but force is still needed for the greater evils that will respond to no other means.

The author documents the origin of the yellow star to “mark” Jews as having been in Baghdad, and only much later adopted by the Nazis.

The paperback version has a Question & Answer section that is not in the hardback original.

This is an extraordinary book, and should be–but of course is not–influencing those who would lead their Nation into a future of peace and prosperity. We have no strategy, no policy, only predatory capitalism fueled by militant unilateralism, and a Vice President who has usurped power from the President to pursue cheap oil at the expense of longer-term prosperity and peace. If ever there was a book to help us understand all that is wrong with America and the Muslims today, this is it.

2006/08/072009/12/04

Review DVD: The Libertine (2006)

4 Star, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only)

Amazon Page

Deep Vulcan MindMeld for Intelligent Adults,

August 7, 2006

Johnny Depp

Wow! Johnny Depp, whom I first got to know when I took my kids to Pirates of the Caribbean, is a SHAKESPEARE level actor.

This is a supremely intelligent movie for very smart people that appreciate nuances. It is NOT an X-rated movie in disguise. A few (very few) exposed breasts, but some of the human choreography is reminiscent of Leonardi da Vinci, extremely tasteful and NOT pornography in any way.

This movie held my attention. It aroused a passionate empathetic appreciation of loyalty to life, liberty, wife, love, king, and country. Johnny Depp plays a very complex man, and the nuances of this movie have to be seen to be appreciated.

A keeper. I plan to buy it now that I have rented it.

2006/08/022009/12/04

Review: The Marketing of Evil–How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom (Hardcover)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Amazon Page

Ideologically biased with useful information, other books recommended,

August 2, 2006

David Kupelian

Edit of 26 Oct 06: for two excellent books that show there are two sides to any argument, see Mel White's Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right and Reverend Barry Lynn's Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.

I have a taken a strong interest in immoral predatory capitalism and the cheating culture (see my reviews of Grieder The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy and Callahan, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead among others) so when I saw this title, I was not only reminded of Lionel Tiger's path-finding work, Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System but also quite taken by the sub-title.

The book loses one star because it is an evangelical Christian tract that lacks depth (each of 10 chapters on 10 evils appears based on 1-2 key sources, with some “ibids” running over ten times in a row), and it is oblivious to a much larger serious literature such as Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography which makes this book look like a high school rant, or John Paul Ralston's Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West.

There is a lot of good in the book, and it fully merits reading and reflection. Seen in its best light, the author has brilliantly compiled “conventional wisdom” within the hard-corps Christian right, and neatly packaged screeds against gay rights, church-state separation, violence, sex, multicultural madness (i.e. mixed marriages and the loss of the white majority), family meltdown, bad schools, media as myth, abortion, and of course white American Christianity as the last best hope for America.

In comparison with Thomas Frank's One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy, this book is both lightweight and oblivious to larger strategic realities, but it is never-the-less quite a good means of understanding the filter through which white Christians on the hard right see the world.

The author loses credibility with well-read readers when he lambastes the gays and ignores biological evidence that we all start as women and evolve toward being men in the womb. Those that make it three quarters of the way are gay men; those that make it one quarter of the way are gay women. That is of course of grotesque simplification of a complex scientific and medical literature, but the point is that being gay is biological, and we can no more prosecute gays that we can prosecute people with diabetes or cancer.

The author is also overly dependent on the extreme right and evangelical Christian literature, and much too quick to accept “statistics” that are articulated as facts, for example, that 45% of America attends church regularly. Not in my world. In my world, they are sleeping late, out driving their Harleys (in Middle America nice normal people drive Harleys, not gangs), playing golf, or mowing the lawn.

The greatest weakness of the book, but not sufficient to take it down to three stars, is that while the author rails against radicals, elitists, and pseudo-experts, he fails to identify them by name. This is the politics of fear, the politics of creating a boogey-man to blame our problems on. To really understand this weakness, see the other book I review today, Frank's One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy where I detail that author's more compelling and more authoritative discussion of how Wall Street and the evangelical right came together to destroy labor unions, baseline government, and informed media, all in the name of a “free market” that ostensibly promotes democracy in passing.

Of the two books, Frank's is the better value, and receives five stars.

2006/08/022009/12/04

Review: One Market Under God–Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (Paperback)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Amazon Page

Solid thoughtful, nails our national policy failures in a big way,

August 2, 2006

Thomas Frank

This is a very serious book, one that any candidate for President would do well to read, especially so the centrist candidates willing to announce that both the Democratic and Republican parties have sold the public into slavery to corporate fascism.

In summary, the author documents in detail how the Reagan Revolution, and especially the firing of the air traffic controllers and the wrongful use of military air traffic controllers as “union busting” scabs, eliminated the counter-vailing force of labor unions, at the same time that government deregulated and abdicated its responsibility for a social safety net, the media converted into advertising with a “news hole,” and corporations lost all moral and social standards.

He deconstructs the “New Economy” in persuasive detail and caused me to re-evaluate some of my earlier readings, especially of Kevin Kelly and others in the WIRED generation who articulate with blind faith the democratic value of the network, but fail to see, as Robert Samuelson and this author would have us understand, that outsourcing is union busting, and the actual effect of the network has been to make it possible for corporations to outsource middle class jobs while importing poverty through illegal immigration. The net loser is the Nation, because one of its most important sources of national power, an educated engaged citizenry, is being sold short.

The author is brutally on target when he points out that corporations have achieved a slight of hand in disconnecting labor from the value of created wealth, claiming much more management value (to the point that CEOs make 400 to 1000 times what their workers make, up from 25 times long ago). He also points out that the democratization of the stock market is code for what Mark Lewis called, in “Liar's Poker,” “exploding the client. The smart money rides the early surge and then sells out to the middle class dreamers, who end up losing 80-90% of their value over time.

I have a note in the flyleaf that this book is “quite extraordinary, almost breathtaking in scope, with a compelling array of well-ordered facts.”

Overall, while many will not like the term “corporate fascism” and the author prefers to use “extreme capitalism” while others discuss immoral and predatory capitalism, or “class war” (see my review of Faux's “The Global Class War” and, somewhat less solid but still good, Pabast's “Armed Madhouse” (dispatches from the front lines of the global class war). The sorry reality is that Americans have been lulled to sleep like sheep for a slaughter, and do not seem to appreciate the fact that there has been a MASSIVE theft of public capital through what this author calls “the Wall Street tax” on America.

The greatest strength of the book is how the author documents the calculated and comprehensive manner in which Wall Street and the evangelical right came together to turn reality on its head, and persuade everyone including blue collar workers that it was okay to break the social contract with labor, and that what is good for Wall Street is good for America and its workers. In fact, as the author points out repeatedly, when workers get laid off, Wall Street stocks go up. His entire review reminds one of Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's classic “Manufacturing Consent.” Public relations has been used in a classic manner by American corporations, to include penetration of teen-age sub-cultures and the manipulation of teen-age desires. In Europe they consider public relations to be, according to this author, advanced corporate lying.

The author draws an excellent connection between the “blind faith” that keeps the corporate illusion of free trade on the table, and the “blind faith” that led Dick Cheney to depose George Bush and invade Iraq without regard to the policy process, accountability, or reality. America is in the grip of a very destructive combination of corporate ideology, religious ideology, and political ideology.

The author is properly and comprehensively critical of the media for failing to do its job. Journalists, a few exceptions aside, have become “filler.” The author excels at picking Tom Friedman apart, and at mocking the Wall Street Journal for idiocy in print.

The book ends on a sobering note, where the author points out that reality has a way of unmasking ideological pretensions in a most painful manner. He specifically suggests that George Bush Junior (he does not mention Cheney) will go the way of Herbert Hoover in the history books. Reality–that's what one White House staffer is reported to have said had no relevance, because this White House “creates its own reality.” Yes it does–a reality of greed and theft and immorality at the top, poverty and disease at the bottom, and a loss of American honor around the world.

First class thinking and writing. A really strong book.

2006/07/222009/12/04

Review: Free Software, Free Society–Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (Hardcover)

6 Star Top 10%, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

Amazon Page

Essential Reading for any Intelligent Adult Favoring Social Progress,

July 22, 2006

Richard M. Stallman

I bought this book at Hackers on Planet Earth 6, and then after reading it in the morning, had the double benefit of hearing the author as keynote speaker in the afternoon. He is everything the book's contents suggest, and more. The author is one of the original MIT hackers (pick up a used copy of Shirley Turkle's “My Second Self, Computers and the Human Spirit” and/or Steven Levy's “Hacker's” which the author himself recommends.

The author's brilliant bottom line is quite clear throughout the book: software copyright prevents people from improving or sharing the foundation for progress in the digital era.

The author's social-technical innovation, which appears now to be acquiring tsunami force around the world, and is manifested in the Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) movement that is being nurtured by governments worldwide from Brazil to China to Israel to the United Kingdom to Norway, is to modify copyright to a term he credits to another, copyleft, meaning that copyright in the new definition grants ALL permissions EXCEPT the permission to RESTRICT the enhancement and sharing of the software.

The author is also very careful to define the term free as meaning freedom of movement and growth, not free of price. GNU, his invention, removes computational obstacles to competition, and levels the playing field for more important innovations. In his view, the core issue is not about price, but about eliminating restrictions to freedom of sharing and enhancement.

On page 37 he sums up his life's purpose: “Proprietary and secret software is the moral equivalent of runners having a fist fight (during the race)” — they all lose.

The author carefully distinguishes between the free and open source software, citing the first as a movement with values, the second as a process.

His candidacy for a Nobel Prize is captured in the sentence on page 61, “Free software contributes to human knowledge, non-free software does not.”

Across the book, a collection of essays put into a very well ordered (not necessarily chronological) form, this book is a history of GNU (not UNIX) by its creator and co-founder of the Free Software Foundation. It is replete with concise useful discussions of terms, conditions, and cultures relevant to the future of mankind as a thinking forward looking species.

Section two, on copyright, copyleft, and patents is very helpful, and likely to become a standard in the field as the public fires elected representatives who sell out to Mickey Mouse copyright extenders, and demands a return to the original Constitutional limitation of copyright as an artifact of government, not a natural right, focused on nurturing knowledge. It means mention that Lawrence Lessig (see my reviews of his books) writes the introduction–the two authors together, along with Cass Sunstein, may be the most important trio of thinkers with respect to the future of man in the context of science, copyright, risk, and software as a human global contributor to sanity.

The author's keynote address at HOPE 6 is discussed toward the end of the book, where he lists the Four Freedoms:

Freedom 0: Run a program as you wish, for any purpose you wish, not limited to any narrowly defined application.

Freedom 1: Help yourself by improving the program (which requires access to source code).

Freedom 2: Help your neighbor by sharing a copy of the program with them.

Freedom 3: Help community by sharing the improved copy at large.

There is no question in my mind but that this manifesto of a single man's life's work is as important as Tom Paine's Common Sense treatises. There is a war now emergent between the classes (US elites bribing foreign elites, both screwing their publics over for private gain), and between corporations and the people, corporations long having abused the independent legal personality that was granted to promote business, and ended up being a legal barrier to holding corporate managers accountable for grand theft and social irresponsibility.

Toward the end the author offers thoughtful suggestions on how to “drop out” of the proprietary software world, and his thinking resonates with “No Logo” and its recommendations on selective purchasing.

This book is not a technical book although it offers up many understandable insights to technical matters underlying the social philosophy of the author. It is not a legal book either, but offers important informed commentary vital to getting the law focused again on human progress. Finally, in no way does the book dismiss the importance of capitalism–the author clearly states that it is entirely appropriate to charge a fee for one's contributions–this is about the “how” not the “how much.

Absolutely superb collection of essays, extremely important to where we go in the future. The author is not only an original hacker, he represents hacking as it should be understood by the authorities (see my review of Bruce Sterling, Hackers at the Edge of the Electronic Frontier), and as I see them–as people who have the “right stuff” and are testing the edge, pushing the frontier. In a world of drones, these are the libertarian spirits that may well keep us out of perpetual prison.

For reference: DARPA's STRONG ANGEL program, empowered now by DoD Directive 3000.cc. specifically seeks to create a suite of collaborative sharing and analytic tools that can be provided free to any non-governmental organization and any state and local government. Support costs have to be shared. It is now understood at the highest levels of the US military that we cannot make peace without sharing all information in all languages all the time (my third book), and this is progress.