Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 92 – Public Intelligence Blog

2012/11/152012/11/15

Review: We Can All Do Better

3 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics

Bill Bradley

3.0 out of 5 stars Shallow Book, Old Think, He Quit the Fight to Join the Worst of the Wall Street Manipulators,November 15, 2012

This book makes me very angry. My step-father and I both believed in Bill Bradley a decade ago, and today I feel about him the way I feel about Ron Paul: each betrayed the public trust by refusing to break with their side of the two-party tyranny, knowing full well that neither party represents the public or the public interest, while disenfranchising 50% of the public [the Independents, Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Natural Law, Reform, and Socialist parties, all but the first accredited at the national level and blocked from ballot access and debate access by two of the most corrupt parties on the planet] so corrupt they outdo the Soviet Politburu in avoiding turnover at the top.

As I go through this book — and of course I am better armed than most being the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading across 98 categories (visit Phi Beta Iota / Books to access all of my Amazon reviews by category) — I keep thinking to myself TIRED, TIRED, TIRED. This is a book that would have earned five stars from me in 2000. Today it is too little too late.

This book fails the authenticity test on three counts:

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2012/11/102012/11/10

Review: Independents Rising: Outsider Movements, Third Parties, and the Struggle for a Post-Partisan American

3 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Democracy, Politics

Jacqueline S. Salit

3.0 out of 5 stars TIRED — Out of Touch with Substance and Reality,November 10, 2012

I've gone through this book, it is a very fast read, in part because there is no real substance here. I list ten better books at the end. If you seek out my summary reviews you can get the gist of all that is not in this book by Jackie Salit.

After years of trying to understand Salit and her ostensible web site for IndependentVoting.org, I finally got it one day as I watched 30 non-profit and advocacy leaders struggle with the concept of transpartisanship.

In that moment I realized that they are all — and certainly including Salit — bound hand and foot to the concept of a two-party tyranny. They are comfortable with the corruption that they understand, and each limits themselves and their group to seeking a foot-hold within that very corrupt system.

Salit and Michael Bloomberg “made” each other, and this properly puts IndependentVoting.org, which does not stand for anything other than “give us a place at the table,” in the Bloomberg/Wall Street circus act that includes NO LABELS, Americans Elect, former Comptroller David Walker with his movie and bus tour, and now the Bloomberg PAC that buys influence on Member at a time. All of this is TIRED.

Salit has had multiple chances — as has Ron Paul and other third party presidents — to break away from trying to do the wrong thing righter, and in each instance has failed to rise to the challenge. A national Electoral Reform Summit concluding with a Statement of Demand and an Occupation of every home office of every federal Senator and Representative, is the WIRED approach to changing the rules of the game.

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2012/11/092012/11/09

Review: Making Friends Among the Taliban

6 Star Top 10%, Civil Affairs, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Humanitarian Assistance, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Jonathan P. Larson

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Eye Opener, Should be Mandatory Reading for War Colleges, Diplomats, and White SOF,November 9, 2012

I received this book as a gift. It is a bracing book and although short, at 130 pages, it merits slow and deliberate consideration. I got goose-bumps at multiple points and put the book down reflecting on how sad it is that our foreign policy and our military occupations are not better informed about the information peacekeeping (a term I coined in the 1990's) possibilities of low-cost humans who speak the language and understand the nuances of conflict at the individual level.

This book is in every possible way, the absolute counterpart, contrast, and nay-sayer to the CIA-managed drone program that kills indiscriminately, at great expense, from which we will reap a continuing harvest of hatred, fear, and enduring mistrust.

Although I have read other books, and list them with Amazon links below, that offer similar insights, this is a first-person story with specifics that I consider so provocative and so valuable that I recommend it as assigned reading for every Special Operations A Team member, for every Special Operations schoolhouse, for every War College where we fail to teach White SOF as an alternative, and for every diplomat and international development employee, both at entry level and mid-career. I would go so far as to suggest that a week could usefully be spent by every conference group and foreign affairs class, on this book and the others listed below.

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2012/11/042012/11/04

Review: American Healthcare A Moderate Approach

5 Star, Disease & Health

Kevin Ludlow

5.0 out of 5 stars Rock Solid Common Sense De-Politicizes Health Care & Health Insurance (Not the Same Thing!), November 4, 2012

I received this book as a gift since I am known for my interest in reform, including health care (my one really original slide on the topic is posted above with the book cover), and I was glad to have a chance to read it.

The author gets very high marks from me for, among other things:

01 Opening with a commitment to proper source citation, objective balance, and people-centered solutions

02 Documenting how the radicalization of politics has led to the most expensive and least capable health care system on the planet

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2012/10/302012/11/18

Review: Designing a World that Works For All: Solutions & Strategies for Meeting the World’s Needs

5 Star, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Economics, Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Public Administration, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean)

Medard Gabel

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolutionary Sequel, Second Book in Series,October 30, 2012

This is the second book in the series, the first was Designing a World That Works for All: How the Youth of the World are Creating Real-World Solutions for the UN Millenium Development Goals and Beyond. They are different books, not the same book. This book brings in new perspectives and new initiatives from the design labs that occurred after the first book was published.

I have known Medard Gabel for close to a decade, and while disclosing that he is one of the contributors to the non-profit Earth Intelligence Network that I funded when I had money, I consider him, as the co-creator with Buckminster Fuller of the analog World Game, and as the designer of both the digital Earth Dashboard for the UN and the digital EarthGame for all of us, to be in a class of his own. He is unique.

Medard Gabel is modest–the blurbs do not do justice to him or his work or the incredibly talented and imaginative individuals (not just youth, but mid-career professionals) that he attracts to this calling.

I have participated in two of his design labs and recommend them to one an all. Everyone enters with their own issue area (urban planning, energy, whatever) and halfway through they experience the “aha” moment (epiphany for Republicans)–everything is connected and NOTHING can be planned, programmed, budgeted, or executed without integrating everything.

As Russell Ackoff likes to say, what is good for one part of the system might be very bad for all the other parts. Comprehensive architecture and prime design–all threats, all policies, all demographics–are the future.

Other high-level books that I recommend with this one are:

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2012/10/222012/10/22

Review: The Race for What’s Left – The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources

4 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Corruption, Environment (Problems), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

cover race for what is left — Amazon Page

Michael Klare

4.0 out of 5 stars All the Negatives, None of the Positives,October 22, 2012

I know and admire Professor Michael Klare and have given his earlier books such as his first blockbuster, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author rave reviews. This book is valuable as a resource but I fear that it is the last beating of the dead horse Michael has been riding for the past decade. His other books also merit reading,

Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (American Empire Project)
Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy

but the theme remains the same:

01) We're at Peak Everything

02) Special Interests own Governments

03) Governments go to war for Special Interests

While Michael calls for changes in our consumption, this book is missing both the convergence of the evil extractive interests and the emerging good of collective intelligence aka crowd sourcing, and the astonishingly fast forwarding of information technologies and “Open Source Everything” as a meme that I anticipate the Pirate Party (a party that went from non-existent to 50+ countries in 3.5 years) may adopt.

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2012/10/202012/10/21