Berto Jongman: New book about Fukushima reveals details on the radiation disaster

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Environment (Problems), Health, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost & Toxicity, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

New book about Fukushima reveals details on the radiation disaster

The Union of Concerned Scientists has published a new story about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant catastrophe that took place in 2011. Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster (The New Press) was written by David Lochbaum, head of the UCS's Nuclear Safety Project; Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist in UCS's Global Security Program; and journalist Susan Stranahan, who led the Philadelphia Inquirer's coverage of the Three Mile Island Accident in Dauphin, Pennsylvania.

Learn more.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Review (Guest): Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atlases & State of the World, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Culture, Research, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Pepe Escobar

5 out of 5 stars Tour de Force!

By Donald L. Conover

Tour de Force! That's the only way to describe Pepe Escobar's remarkable achievement with Globalistan: How the Globalized World Is Dissolving into Liquid War. In page after page, Mr. Escobar demonstrates his remarkable erudition gained in a peripatetic career, spanning the caves of Tora Bora to the slums of Sao Paolo and Mumbai; from the halls of venality to the palaces of the gluttonously wealthy; from conversations with forgotten Pentagon warlords to raps with Brazilian gang lords.

Our Neocon leaders seem to think the rest of the World is frozen in situ, waiting for them to hatch their nefarious schemes. Globalistan shows us the consequences of such a blindered [or should I say “blundered”] attitude.

Producers for the talking heads of “mainstream” media will have to have this book. It is the one volume necessary to make sense of our churning humanity in the 21st Century. A quick scan can provide the background on every crisis from Iran to “Chindia”; from Shiiteistan to the Gazprom Nation; from PetroEurostan to the Bush White House.

Escobar demonstrates why it is true that if we don't find ways to spread our prosperity around the World, the have-nots will come and take it away from us with guns and bombs and box cutters. All of the walls and fences cannot protect the United States, Europe, and Saudi Arabia from overwhelming illegal immigration. Weapons and fences doom us, like the Texans at the Alamo. Eventually they will be overrun by 3 billion human beings living in abject poverty, but with access to the latest episodes of “24” and “Sleeper Cell,” unless we help the Mexicans achieve their dreams of Texas in Mexico.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving Into Liquid War”

Worth a Look: SINGAPORE Central to Great Convergence

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Diplomacy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Future, History, Leadership, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Public Administration, Strategy, Worth A Look
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

The twenty-first century has seen a rise in the global middle class that brings an unprecedented convergence of interests and perceptions, cultures and values. Kishore Mahbubani is optimistic. We are creating a new global civilization. Eighty-eight percent of the world's population outside the West is rising to Western living standards, and sharing Western aspirations. Yet Mahbubani, one of the most perceptive global commentators, also warns that a new global order needs new policies and attitudes.

Policymakers all over the world must change their preconceptions and accept that we live in one world. National interests must be balanced with global interests. Power must be shared. The U.S. and Europe must cede some power. China and India, Africa and the Islamic world must be integrated. Mahbubani urges that only through these actions can we create a world that converges benignly. This timely book explains how to move forward and confront many pressing global challenges.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Political genius is never without controversy, or without mystery. This is what makes it so interesting and so rare. Is Lee Kuan Yew the feral, authoritarian figure that Western critics claim? Or a stoic pioneer in new approaches to developing a nation—uncorrupt, modern, almost scientific?American journalist Tom Plate first interviewed the founder of modern Singapore in 1996 in a continuing back-and-forth with LKY that led to the summer of 2009, when the former prime minister agreed to sit down for two days of unprecedentedly informal but intense conversations that led to this special book. This new edition includes fascinating excerpts from prior interviews, as well as the author’s assessment of the man who goes down in history as the world’s longest-serving prime minister—and as one of the most unforgettable political figures of modern times.

Review: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

5 Star, Crime (Government), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Gareth Porter

5.0 out of 5 stars Does for Iran What Truth Dig Did for Iraq, January 29, 2014

I *strongly* recommend this book to every citizen concerned about a government that lies all the time. The NSA debacle of recent time, on top of the CIA debacles (rendition, torture, assassination by drone) on top of the various other White House led debacles are all deeply disturbing.

I have a copy of the book on the way and will provide my usual detailed review as soon as it arrives. In the meantime, here is a snippet from a really superb review by Peter Jenikins at Lobelog:

BEGIN QUOTE:

Porter concludes: “US and Israeli policies have been driven by political and bureaucratic interests, not by a rational, objective assessment of available indicators of the motives and intentions of Iranian leaders”.

Another central theme, one that complements the hidden motive theme, is that intelligence material and intelligence assessments have played a baleful part in this saga.

Continue reading “Review: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare”

Review (Guest): A Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

5 Star, Crime (Government), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Gareth Porter

Review By Peter Jenkins @ Lobelog

The subtitle of Gareth Porter’s new book, The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, is well-chosen. Large parts of A Manufactured Crisis are indeed untold till now. They amount to what the author terms an “alternative narrative”.

But don’t be misled by “alternative”. This is not the work of some crank who imagines conspiracies where none exist. One senses, rather, from the author’s meticulous sourcing and the extent of his research that what motivates him is a fierce hunger for truth and aversion to deceit.

Porter has been investigating the Iranian nuclear case for the best part of a decade. The result of his researches is both a fascinating addition to a growing corpus, unlike any previous work on the issue, and a disturbing indictment of US and Israeli policies. 

One central theme is that hidden motives have coloured these policies. On the US side, Porter explains, the end of the Cold War led to a federal bureaucratic interest in exaggerating the WMD and missile threat posed by Iran (and other emerging countries) to justify funding bids. During the presidency of George W. Bush some senior administration members also sought to exploit nuclear fears to “delegitimize” the Iranian government and engineer a pretext for enforced regime change.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): A Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare”

Worth A Look: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Gareth Porter

Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare

Manufactured Crisis provides unique and timely background to the ongoing diplomacy around Iran's nuclear technology program. In it, award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter offers a well documented critique of the official ‘western' account of what the Iranian government has been doing, and why.

In Manufactured Crisis, Porter brings together the results of his many years of research into the issue–including numerous interviews with former insiders. He shows that the origins of the Iran nuclear “crisis” lay not in an Iranian urge to obtain nuclear weapons but, rather, in a sustained effort by the United States and its allies to deny Iran its right, as guaranteed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to have any nuclear program at all. The book highlights the impact that the United States' alliance with Israel had on Washington's pursuit of its Iran policy and sheds new light on the US strategy of turning the International Atomic Energy Agency into a tool of its anti-Iran policy.

Praise for the Book:

Continue reading “Worth A Look: Manufactured Crisis – The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare”

Review (Guest): Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law That Transformed America

5 Star, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, True Cost & Toxicity
Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Douglas Stuart

5.0 out of 5 stars From National Interests to National Security April 24, 2011

ByKenneth J. Dillon

Many observers recognize that the U.S. Government has for decades placed too much emphasis on military might to the detriment of other interests. This book provides a sobering explanation of how such a skewed approach emerged. Stuart is an historian at Dickinson College and also adjunct professor at the U.S. Army War College. He shows how the 150-year tradition of peacetime pursuit of national interests headed by the State Department gave way to the “Pearl Harbor System” of viewing the world through the perspective of potential threats to national security.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law That Transformed America”