The Long Journey to Dallas Texas, October 31, 2013
Herbert L. Calhoun
The Long Journey to Dallas Texas
Spoiler alert: This is neither the shortest version, nor the shortest route to understanding the JFK assassination. But it is as close to the complete canonical text and understanding of the assassination as there is ever likely to be. It is told by an insider, the high priest of understanding about the JFK assassination if you ask me (or Oliver Stone), one who has been around long enough, and has resided deep enough inside the bowels of the US government to know where all the skeletons are buried.
Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty was also a member of “The Secret Team,” which he wrote a very revealing book about, of the same name. It has proven to be a critical part of the unfolding of the 50-year old drama of the JFK assassination. (Read my Amazon review of it.)
5.0 out of 5 starsSIX Stars — A National Enema with Champagne, October 17, 2013
Ten percent of the books I have reviewed here at Amazon make it into my six star group. This is such a book. I have been a fan of Lee Camp's outrageously spirited, funny, and profane social commentaries for years, through his videos. This book was given to me as a gift, and I have been laughing all morning with occasional tears of sadness for society.
Amazon's Look Inside the Book provides the Table of Contents, look at that if you have any doubt.
HUGE PLUS: Each short chapter has the YouTube URL at the top. Amazon also sells two audios for Lee, great for the car, but personally I value the combination of Lee's face and live delivery with his words, for now found only on YouTube.
The subtitle says it all: Lee is a stark raving sane man. Others have compared him to Carlin, I would go a step further, Lee is Carlin with class (smile). He's like a giant-sized Irish elf armed with an intelligence flame thrower capable of skewering any lie, any pretense, any crime against humanity — his book covers most of them.
I would certainly like to see a Lee Camp: The Movie but until that comes available, this book is a sane person's salvation. We who are sane are labeled crazy by the 1% and the sheep that listen to the 1%, this book is life-affirming, mind-altering, soul-strengthening righteous good stuff.
God Bless Lee, God Bless America, and as Winston Churchill once said, NEVER GIVE UP.
Radical idea: buy as many of these books as you can, and either put the books in toilets where the willing might still be saved, or cut the spine off and sprinkle Lee's individual stories around. This book is pixie dust for humanity.
Ten books, none funny, that reinforce Lee's sanity parade:
REF A — 12 Years of Lessons Learned in Time for 2014, October 13, 2013
This is an extraordinary book that required a great deal of time, not in the reading, but in the reflection. This will be a longer review than usual, even for me, because this book contains all of the insights that the US and the Coalition have refused to embrace for the past twelve years. It is never too late to learn.
The author opens with a well-known quote on the dangers of drawing a line between fighting men and thinking men, lest one end up with the fighting being done by fools and the thinking by cowards. To this I would add another group, the “deciders,” who in the absence of any familiarity with fighting or access to intelligence with integrity, end up making decisions whose true cost in blood, treasure, and spirit crosses the line dividing legitimate actions “in the national interest” from “crimes against humanity.
Positive up front: US under Obama has given more of everything and progress has been made across both military (stronger Afghan army, degraded Taliban) and socio-economic (education, health, media) domains. To that I would add elections. Afghanistan is about to experience the most extraordinary election cycle it has ever been my privilege to observe.
In contrast, the author finds that Pakistan has worsened in every possible manner, in large part because the US has not understood Pakistan, has lacked a strategy (or the intelligence with which to devise a coherent sustainable strategy), and in failing, the US has allowed Pakistan to drag itself down and Afghanistan to be a regional albatross – a cancer on all others.
The author is quite blunt in describing an incoherent even infantile US decision-making environment characterized by “contradictory policies, intense political infighting, and uncertainty.” In being inept, the US opened the way for regional players to manipulate, exploit, and exacerbate.
Chapter 1 on the Bin Laden raid is utter nonsense, this may be the price the author pays to maintain access and avoid being assassinated. See instead The Bin Laden Story 00-90 at Phi Beta Iota.
The author points out that by 2014 the Coalition engagement in Afghanistan will have been longer than WWI and WWII. In my own mind this highlights the fact that the US in particular, but the Western nations in general, have lost their integrity. They are incapable of collecting and analyzing the truth, thinking holistically, evaluating true costs over time, or devising a sustainable strategy that ultimately achieves the desired end-state: peace and prosperity. A churlish skeptic would point out that no, the West has achieved precisely what it wants, public theater at home, a massive transfer of wealth from the individual taxpayer to the military-industrial complex, and personal enrichment of most policymakers, at least in the USA. Either way, the larger publics lose at home and abroad.
Pakistan and Afghanistan matter not only to Central Asia, where other countries such as Uzbekistan are beginning to implode, but to the Middle East and India. At the very end of the book the author ponders how Afghanistan might follow the Turkish example of Islamic/secular regeneration, and I cannot help but wish that 12 years ago the Coalition had had the brain to leave the British home and make Afghanistan a collaborative effort among Muslim nations led by Turkey.
QUOTE (19) “After a decade, NATO has achieved none of its strategic aims – rebuilding the Afghan state, defeating the Taliban, stabilizing the region – so what assurances can it now plausibly give that it will do so by 2014?
The author defines Afghanistan today (2012) as a corrupt and incompetent government, a dysfunctional bureaucracy and inoperable justice system, high on drugs and illiteracy, with a police force that has the highest desertion rate in the world.
The sucking chest wound: no indigenous economy. Bush specifically refused to invest in roads, dams, water, and power. Karzai has been a complete failure [the author gives Karzai credit and cause across the book, outlining the many ways in which the US failed to develop a relationship of trust with him.]
Pakistani military is out of control and the deal breaker. Nothing the US or other can do will overcome an arrogant ignorant Pakistani military continuing to support extremists and their violence within Afghanistan.
QUOTE (22): “If the west is to depart Afghanistan by 2014 and leave behind relatively stable regimes in Kabul and Islamabad, it will need a multidimensional political, diplomatic, economic, and military strategy.”
Answering this challenge is the purpose of the book.
My nine page detailed summary for professionals coping with Afghanistan and not having the time to read this excellent work, is posted at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog.
01 All of these big names write great stuff, but I have to ask myself, who are they writing for? Who, if anyone is listening? Among all these great ideas, there is not a single one that has been implemented, funded, sustained, or effective. So why do we have smart people and think tanks? Are they a form of public entertainment, of public self-stroking, completely removed from the reality that the White House and Congress are so lacking in moral and intellectual fortitude as to be a constant danger to both the Republic and all other nations?
Anabel HernĆ”ndez, journalist and author, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the ‘war on drugs' is a sham. She's had headless animals left at her door and her family have been threatened by gunmen. Now her courageous bestseller, extracted below, is to be published in the UK
Book to be Released 10 September 2013 — Can Pre-Order Now
Amazon Page
The product of five yearsā investigative reporting,Ā the subject of intense national controversy, and the source of death threats that forced theĀ National Human Rights Commission to assign two full-time bodyguards to its author, AnabelĀ HernĆ”ndez, NarcolandĀ has been a publishing and political sensation in Mexico.Ā The definitive history of the drug cartels,Ā Narcoland takes readers to the front lines of the āwar on drugs,ā which has so far cost more thanĀ 60,000 lives in just six years. HernĆ”ndez explains in riveting detail how Mexico became a base forĀ the mega-cartels of Latin America and one of the most violent places on the planet. At every turn,Ā HernĆ”ndez names namesānot just the narcos, but also the politicians, functionaries, judges andĀ entrepreneurs who have collaborated with them. In doing so, she reveals the mind-boggling depthĀ of corruption in Mexicoās government and business elite.
HernĆ”ndez became a journalist after her fatherĀ was kidnapped and killed and the police refused to investigate without a bribe. She gainedĀ national prominence in 2001 with her exposure of excess and misconduct at the presidentialĀ palace, and previous books have focused on criminality at the summit of power, underĀ presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe CalderĆ³n. In awarding HernĆ”ndez the 2012 Golden Pen ofĀ Freedom, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers noted, āMexico has becomeĀ one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, with violence and impunityĀ remaining major challenges in terms of press freedom. In making this award, we recognize theĀ strong stance Ms. HernĆ”ndez has taken, at great personal risk, against drug cartels.ā
5.0 out of 5 starsAuthentic, Credible, Legitimate, and Damning of All Who Betray the Public Trust, August 24, 2013
I have this book in front of me, and will be doing a detailed review over the next week or so. I have already gone through it quickly, and concluded that it offers the single best compilation or literature review of all of the psychological and social reasons why military “leaders” end up being treasonous gerbils, combined with the deepest direct field research I know of to buttress the author's speculative hypotheses and proven conclusions.
I swung by here to check what others have said, and am quite disappointed by the shallow ignorance of the only review present. Here are a couple of quotes that capture my philosophy and hence my valuation of this book:
When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it. Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York)
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. George Orwell
This book is a tad hyper-critical (of Dick Cheney for example — certainly a traitor but by no means stupid) and too close in format to the original thesis, or it would be a six star book. If I were Czar, every person responsible for the public interest would receive the wisdom and ethical instruction in this book, in one form or another, to include comic book form if necessary.
My detailed review will be posted within the week. I could not let the first review stand uncontested.
5.0 out of 5 stars6 Star Authentic World-Changing Book , July 20, 2013
EDIT of 19 AUG 2013: Finish book, adding my new remarks at the top, dropping the preliminary review to the end.EDIT OF 13 AUG 2013: I have a 17 hour aviation trip coming up Friday-Saturday, will try to get the detailed review posted sometime in the days after I reach my destination. I regard this book as one of a half dozen essentials for hybrid public governance in the 21st Century — for participatory panarchy in which the public achieves consensus using collective intelligence methods that leverage ethical evidence-based decision-support that is transparent, truthful, and that produces TRUST as the “glue” for holistic ecologically and socially sound decision-making.
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My last comment first: this book ends beautifully, and I am personally deeply inspired. Rickard Falkvinge has been and will continue to be a change agent, and this book is a form of persistent, ubiquitous sharing of insight that could help accelerate and broaden the emergent public bottom up demands for clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability.
The Long Journey to Dallas Texas, October 31, 2013
