Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 291 – Public Intelligence Blog

2005/11/242009/12/04

Review: The Terror Timeline–Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11–and America’s Response (Paperback)

Goes as far as any team can go–missing digital tools,

November 24, 2005

Paul Thompson

This extraordinary compilation of honest objective research goes as far as any human team can go. Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research are national–nay, global–treasures.

The timeline is most useful if read in conjunction with David Griffin's two books, “The New Pearl Harbor” and also “The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.”

Here are the two bottom lines:

1) There is, beyond reasonable doubt, a case to be made that elements of the U.S. Government were actively complicit with the terrorists, with the Bush family security company controlling the World Trade Center, with certain Wall Street firms, and with the Saudi Royal Family, in permitting 9/11 to happen as a pretext for war to secure energy resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

2) The consequent “investigations” are a mockery of the American people and disrespect our concept of justice. There is no question but that the varied investigations have been both frustrated by an Administration in active denial mode, and by a Congress reluctant to confront the hands that feed them: the special interests.

It is clear to me that we need a People's Grand Jury that has access to the same level of technology that is represented by “Able Danger,” that is to say, we must be able to do data mining on all of this information, and create public intelligence reports–and public counterintelligence reports–that connect the dots for the people. We must do this before November 2006.

I believe that if such an endeavor is successful, it will demonstrate that the CIA and the FBI were both corrupt and incompetent prior to, during, and after 9/11; that the U.S. military was put on “stand down” to allow 9/11 to happen; and that Dick Cheney specifically, but the Bush Administration neo-cons generally, mis-led the President, Congress, the media, and the public with a web of lies intended to further their pre-conceived ideological fantasies.

We the People need to get our collective public intelligence enterprise going before November 2006. America is close to a tipping point. This author, and David Griffin, give us a slight taste of the power that can be restored to the public if we pay attention. That makes them national heros.

2005/11/242009/12/04

Review: India and the Knowledge Econom– Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities (Wbi Learning Resources Series) (Paperback)

5 Star, Economics, Information Society, Information Technology

These guys are creative and business geniuses,

November 24, 2005

Carl J. Dahlman

This is a seriously powerful volume. Published by the World Bank Institute, it lays out a strategy for leveraging strengths and opportunities within India's emerging knowledge economy.

This book is so well written and clearly organized that it could be a strategy document for any country, from China to Venezuela. Indeed, what I see in this book is the possibility of India becoming a knowledge “hub” nation, where its call centers make the leap up to becoming intelligence analysis centers, with Indians skilled in all languages, having access to all information all the time, and able to create distilled synethic knowledge–answers on demand–across all topics for all levels of users.

The six chapters, 12 appendices, and numerous figures and tables reflect the very highest quality of thinking, clarity, and purpose. This is an extraordinary reference, and I will read it again on my way to India in December, where we will be discussing the creation of a global Information Merchant Bank that builds on and exceeds what Google has been able to accomplish, by adding the human element–human translators, human finders, human analysts, human reporters.

2005/11/212009/12/04

Review: A War Against Truth–An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Iraq, Misinformation & Propaganda

The Anger is Justified–Listen to the Conscience,

November 21, 2005

Paul William Roberts

I have just posted a list of books relevant to citizen evaluation of whether Dick Cheney should be impeached for dereliction of duty and high crimes and misdemeanors (lying to everyone including his ward, the President), and this book is on that list.

I agree with those reviewers that are put off by the seething anger, but I would also hasten to add that seething anger is exactly the right emotion with which to view the thousands of US dead, the tens of thousands of US woundeded including more amputees than ever before in history, and the billions of angry Muslims who see America as a rogue nation.

I am, with all humility and perhaps the good fortune of timing, the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction about global issues and national security. I take this book very seriously, and believe that everyone else should as well. Viewing my list “Books Relevant to Evaluating Cheney” will provide some helpful perspective. Two US Senators, and three major league Republicans have written books against Cheney, and this should carry some weight with the public.

This is a good book, worthy of everyone's consideration.

2005/11/112009/12/04

Review: The Future of Work–How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life (Hardcover)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Future

Light, Western-bias, but worthwhile,

November 11, 2005

Thomas W. Malone

The bottom line in this book is on page 33, with a table showing how the cost of moving a page of text around the world and to an infinite number of people has gone from astronomical to zero. In the author's view, this changes everything.

The book is somewhat shallow, written for undergraduates, and very western in bias–as I ranted to Interval in 1993 (“God, Man, and Interval” easily found via Google), until these benefits can reach every impoverished individual in the world, so that they can begin using information access to create wealth, then we are simply in isolation.

Interestingly, the zero cost of communications comes at the same time that we pass the “peak oil” point and the end of cheap oil, the end of free water, and the rise of pandemic disease.

In that vein, I give the author high marks, taking the book to 4 stars from 3, for his emphasis on values. There is an ethical underpining to this book that is helpful. There is a broad literature, some recognized by the author, others not, that suggests that we made a very serious mistake when we disconnected work from kinship, and commoditized the human employee. The gutting of the pension funds and the destruction of local production in the face of Wal-Mart using cheap oil to ship US jobs overseas are just the latest examples of how our loss of perspective and ethics at the top of the food chain has hurt our economy and our people.

I believe that the author is on target with his emphasis on communications, but he does not address the other half of the equation, “sense-making” or collective intelligence. For that aspect I recommend Howard Rheingold's “Smart Mobs,” and Tom Atlee's “The Tao of Democracy.” General Alfred M. Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, drove this point home to Congress in the late 1980's when he said that the Marine Corps, alone among the military services, had communications and intelligence under the same flag officer “because communications without intelligence is noise, and intelligence without communications is irrelevant.” You need both.

One important point the author does not cover since he avoids addressing the needs of the Third World is this: the Department of Defense has enormous stores of abandoned communications satellite “residual capability,” that last 10-20% of a satellite that has been junked in favor of a newer fancier model. My Air Force colleagues tell me that a national project to make that capability available free could support T-1 connectivity across Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Government is not yet in the information age, and not yet able to realize that it is Internet connectivity to all, not guns over all, that will bring peace and prosperity to the Earth. I do believe this author understands that, and I hope he expands his vision to embrace intelligence, and global access.

2005/11/062009/12/04

Review DVD War of the Worlds

3 Star, Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Reviews (DVD Only), War & Face of Battle

Gripping for Children, Annoying for Adults,

November 6, 2005

Tom Cruise

My ten-year old loved this movie and found it gripping. I found it annoying. A pale green overcast to the film, a general sense of staleness. The plot was so poorly developed that what really stood out in the first half of the movie was how stupid kids can be, not listening to adults when danger is present, and blowing it with childish screams at exactly the wrong moment. Perhaps this is Hollywood “fast food” and intended to be dramatic.

This comment may strike many as off-topic, but if you glance over my other 600 reviews (almost all of non-fiction about global issues), you might see the logic. Toward the end of the movie, with a bow toward Huntingon's “Clash of Civilization,” I saw the “aliens” as the U.S. and the humans as “everyone else.” The aliens crashed through, sucked blood (oil), destroyed everything in their path. In the end, they were undone by a suicidal terrorist (Tom Cruise) who was willing to go into the bowels of the beast to explode grenades, but was saved by a uniformed pal so we could have a happy ending.

I do not know if H.G. Well intended this (his book, “The World Brain” is one of the most important books anyone could ready right now as we prepare to create that World Brain and empower people), but all the reading I am doing is putting forward multiple world wars: between humans and bacteria; between individuals and corporations; between reality-based policy and zealot faith-based policy; between radicalized Islam and radicalized Judiaism that has merged with extremist evangelical Christianity.

At the end, I gave the movie four stars instead of three because it did cause me to think and reflect on the modern implications of man versus machine.

2005/11/062009/12/04

Review DVD Mad Hot Ballroom (2005)

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)

Why Dancing is Part of Growing Up,

November 6, 2005

Heather Berman

I got this on a whim, intending to help my 6th grader, and ended up loving it. There are some unusually good reviews by others, so I will not repeat them. The bottom line is that this movie is for grade school what E.O. Wilson's book “Consilience” is for adults. In that book he answers the questions, “why are the humanities vital to the sciences” and concluded that science out of context is not helpful to humanity.

Watching this movie, I found myself really admiring New York City for understanding how dancing could contribute to social IQ and to human interactions. As my own teen-ager (145+ IQ) rejects rote learning in high school, I am compelled to believe that we need to drastically change education, and do more of this social interaction, learning to learn, learning to find people who know, learning to exchange ideas rather than memorize old ideas, etcetera.

As a suburban New Yorker from the 1960's, I also found that this movie considerably enhanced my appreciation for New York, and the school system, in the aftermath of 9-11. Over-all this movie is a credit to kids at their best, to the idea that dancing matters, to the NYC school systems and its teachers, and to the “Big Apple” itself.

Super, worthy of any adults time, and a definite pick for family nights in over pizza.

2005/10/302009/12/04

Review: Illicit–How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy (Hardcover)

5 Star, Crime (Organized, Transnational)

Definitive Volume–$2T/Year and Growing, Lost Government Revenues,

October 30, 2005

Moises Naim

I have known Moises Naim for many years, and admired his pragmatic approach to managing the content of Foreign Policy, as published under the auspices of the Canegie Endowment for International Peace. He has been Minister of Trade and Industry in Venezuela, a dean and professor of business administration, executive director of the World Bank, and an accomplished thinker and author. Above all he has been moral. He gets it: morality in politics and morality in business are priceless.

This book is important in two very big ways: the first, the one that most are noticing, is that it documents very ably the fact that crime pays–the author has done a superb job of itemizing the global illegal trade industry in a manner that could be understood by anyone, and the bottom line is frightening in that illicit trade is perhaps $2 trillion a year, while legal trade is between $5 trillion and $10 trillion. Off-the-books bartering and immoral invoicing within corporations are additional reducers of government tax revenue–import export tax fraud in the USA is known to be $50 billion a year ($25 rocket engines going out, $10 pencils coming in).

The second reason this book is important, the real value of this book, is in documenting the revenues lost to government. Legalizing prostitition has economic as well as public health implications. Reducing the arms trade, where the US is the greatest exporter of violence and bribery, has implications across ethnic conflict, stability, water and oil conservations, and so on. Eliminating counterfeiting and illegal immigration would have enormous implications for positive constructive government revenue. I personally know where $500 billion a year can be found in additional tax revenue for the US, mostly from eliminating pork barrel subsidies and corporate fraud, and by restoring the traditional share of corporations to the tax fund–when Halliburn pays $15M on billions in profit, when Exxon makes $3 billion in profit in a single quarter with no requisite tax bite, the system is broken. Eliminating crime, and corporate crime, provides the financial foundation for restoring the democratic contract, the social contract, with the working class and the middle class.

Moises Naim has, in brief, delivered the seminal work on one of the five factors that will determine how the human species does in its World War with itself and with bacteria. The other four factors are the end of cheap oil, the end of free water, the virulent re-emergence of infectuous diseases accompanied by the mutation and migration of new diseases from animal hosts to humans; and the promising but by no means assured emergence of collective democratic intelligence, perhaps aided by real-life decision support games such as those produced by BreakAwayLtd.com.

I consider Dr. Naim to be one of the most precious intellects now active–as penetrating but more pragmatic than Joe Nye, as strategic but more pragmatic as Zbigniew Brzezinski, as articulate but more pragmatic than my all time favorite strategist, Dr. Colin Gray from the United Kingdom.

Naim is a giant. He also represents, if I may be permitted an observation from my decades in Latin America and my Colombian-born mother, why Latin America is the future and why the US ignores the Chinese takeover of Latin American lands and resources, the Iranian penetrations, and the related Brazilian, Indian, Pakistani, and Russian incursions, at its peril. Latin America is both the source, and the solution, for most of the illicit trade that undermines the Republic. It's time we recognize that morality matters, crime is a greater threat than isolated terrorism, and Latin America is part of the Americas–the part that may achieve informed populist democracy before the USA recovers from the neo-conservative coup d'etat and ethical misadventures of a White House owned by Halliburton and dismissive of both the domestic and international publics.