Power (Pathologies & Utilization) – Page 23

2012/10/102012/10/10

Review: Empowering Public Wisdom – A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Spiritual), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

cover empowering public wisdom — Amazon Page

Tom Atlee

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Tom Paine of Our Generation,October 10, 2012

I first met Tom when I sought him out after discovering his first book The Tao of Democracy: Using co-intelligence to create a world that works for all and invited him to speak to an international gathering of information and intelligence professionals. In my view, his words to that group were as powerful as those of Howard Rheingold and John Perry Barlow, themselves speaking to the same conference a decade earlier. Since then I have read Tom's second book Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change, and written my own manifesto, the second book in this series (Tom's is the third, the first was Manifesto for the Noosphere: The Next Stage in the Evolution of Human Consciousness (Manifesto Series). To the extent that I have been constructively radicalized toward open everything and the core principles of transparency, truth, and trust, I owe a great debt to Tom and the Seattle wizards that I met because of him, not least Jon Ramer, Susan Cannon, and Sheri Herndon.

By way of contextual appreciation, I would also mention Harrison Owen, whose first book tom cites but whose most recent book I am compelled to present here, Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World, and Peggy Owen, whose most recent book is Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity. I am delighted that he also honors Jim Rough (Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People) and the team of Juanita Brown and David Isaacs (The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter among many others.

Tom provides both an appendix of key concepts with links for each that I have remixed and posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, and an excellent list of books that I am also posting with links. The triad is easily found online by searching for Tom Atlee Public Wisdom Trilogy.

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2012/10/082012/10/08

Review: Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Michel Chossudovsky

4.0 out of 5 stars Five for Detail, Three for Bias, Solid Four for the Serious Reader / Researcher, October 8, 2012

Michel Chossudovsky is a known researcher and writer who is easily left of center; his greatest value lies in his presentation of truth in detail, something the neo-conservatives (far right of center) are incapable of doing. Anyone who demeans this author or his work is evidently incapable of understanding that Dick Cheney led the telling of 935 now-documented lies in taking the US to war on Iraq and in Afghanistan.

The book is NOT easy to read, with small print and 70 distinct separately titled pieces, all well-organized but reading like an op-ed book. The author also over-states, in my view the threat of a global nuclear war, while very pragmatically outlining the many ways in which the US and NATO are giving all indications of both tolerating an Israeli attack on Iran, perhaps with an Israeli nuclear bomb into Iran so they can pretend that they destroyed a nuclear facility that was no nuclear at all.

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2012/09/122012/09/12

Review: Who Stole the American Dream?

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Hedrick Smith

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Narrative–Could the Book Tour Spark a Revolution?, September 11, 2012

EDIT of 12 Sep 2012: I spent the night thinking about this book. Directly below [and now also loaded as a graphic to this Amazon page] are a graphic showing the preconditions of revolution in the USA, and the short paper on revolution from which the graphic was drawn Here's the deal: ample preconditions exist for a public overthrow of the two-party tyranny, but a precipitant (such as the fruit seller in Tunisia) has not occurred. Even though 18 veterans commit suicide day after day after day, this is hushed up. Occupy blew it–they should have occupied the home offices of every Senator and Representative and demanded the one thing Congress could deliver that would energize the public: the Electoral Reform Act of 2012. This book by Hendrick Smith, and the book tour, could be a first step toward mobilizing a complacent public. [search for phrases below to get right to them]. Don't miss all three graphics above with the cover.

Graphic: Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today

1992 MCU Thinking About Revolution

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I received this book as a gift today (I am unemployed and can no longer afford to buy books very often), and a most welcome gift it was. The author's earlier books were in my library, now resting peacefully at George Mason University, and I was quite interested in seeing what he makes of the mess we are in.

The book is a solid five. I would have liked to see a great deal more outrage, a lot more calling of a spade a spade (abject corruption on the part of all concerned), but that is me. The author has created a very compelling narrative that manages to avoid offending anyone in particular, and I can only feel inadequate in admiration for his balance. If I were to re-write this book, most readers over 40 would be dead of a heart attack by chapter four. On second thought, not killing the reader with truth may have its own special merits!

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2012/09/042012/09/04

Review: The Principles of Representative Government

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Bernard Manin

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Wake Up Call – The Democracy That Never Was….,September 3, 2012

It is a telling sign of the ignorance across the USA and elsewhere that there is no other review of this book, a book that was brought to my attention recently when I made it known that I was beginning to question the US Constitution's sanctity, having already concluded that the USA is as Matt Taibbi puts it so well in Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, a merger between criminal corrupt complicit government and criminal corrupt financial gangs whose crimes are either legalized or ignored (“control fraud”).

I find it very sad that I had to reach the age of 60 and have several years of unemployment on top of my life experience and multiple graduate degrees before I could ingest the reality that the USA is a democracy but that this does not mean popular self-rule, nor did the Founding Fathers every intend for it to be a direct democracy. The USA is a republic of, by, and for the wealthy, and I consider it quite timely and helpful that this book may be making a comeback in the consciousness of the avant guarde that always sets the stage for a revolution–and I do believe a revolution is coming in the USA.

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2012/08/282012/08/28

Review: The Invention of the Jewish People

6 Star Top 10%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Misinformation & Propaganda, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Shlomo Sand (Author), Yael Lotan (Translator)

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 for Intelligence & Integrity, 4 For Lacking Visualizations,August 28, 2012

As an intelligence professional constantly dismayed by the lack of both intelligence and integrity in the profession, and as someone who has specialized in “Information Pathologies” for the last 20 years, I have to rate this book into my top 10% across over 1800 books reviewed here at Amazon, it is beyond a 5, it is a six. This is a profound, provocative book that re-establishes the gold standard in ethical, holistic analytics.

The book is too important to leave it as is, a bland 300+ pages of text. While the index and footnotes are world-class, there is no annotated bibliography and not a single visualization (I am loading three images above but they barely scratch the surface). This book needs to be republished and to include a series of at least ten but ideally closer to twenty visualizations of both the reality of Jewish communities over time, and the intellectual genealogy of the Jewish myth.

As the leading Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories (access my Amazon reviews by category and star rating at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog), and as an academic, government, and commercial intelligence professional who obsesses on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I put this book into not just my top 10% (roughly 200 books in past decade) but in my top DOZEN books across my lifetime. The methodical, ethical, integrative, holistic, balanced manner in which this author has carried out his work is in my view the GOLD STANDARD for what any intelligence professional should be capable of aspiring to. Certainly this book is ideal as a foundation for a critical analytics course in which the students–including especially mid-career students that have gotten by on cutting and pasting and regurgitating crap by others–are forced to confront the multiple realities that include every Information Pathology known to man, including history books that are fiction, political statements that are outright lies, and a recurring pattern of war crimes that regardless of what they are called (e.g. settlements, isolation by ghettoization, etcetera) are war crimes.

As I went through this masterful work, the phrase “render unto Ceasar” kept popping into my head. The author develops his arguments, his proofs, and his critique of the historiography of others in a most compelling manner (but absent the visualizations which drove me crazy throughout).

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2012/08/122012/08/12

Review: The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Mike Lofgren

4.0 out of 5 stars 6 on Republicans, 3 on Democrats, 0 on the Other 50% of America's Voters,August 12, 2012

I read this book is in original incarnation, “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult,” (truthout, 3 Sep 2011), and have to give the author high marks for fleshing out his original litany of Republican felonies against the public. For that he gets a 6 — beyond five stars and long overdue. He is especially strong on showing how hypocritical, unintelligent, and generally unethical my former party has become. He barely earns a 3 on the Democrats, and this is a pity because his success on the Republicans really calls for a similar indictment for the Democrats by an insider.

Where I was most dismayed by the book is in the author's complete failure to grasp that the REASON the Republican and Democratic parties are so corrupt is precisely because they have excluded the Independents, Constitutionals, Greens, Libertarians, and Reforms from ballot access, while also disenfranchising them through gerrymandering–our corrupt Congress chooses its voters, not the other way around, which is why Peggy Noonan was able to supply Ronald Reagan with the killer saying, “there is less turnover in the US Congress than in the Soviet politburo.”

I've read the other reviews and decided the best thing I can do to encourage the general direction of this book (corrupt parties, corrupt government, time to flush) is list other books I have reviewed that strongly support this one but with more coherence in their chosen area of focus.

I begin with the two party tyranny. My own book I cannot link to but Amazon allows me to list it under my signature.
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

On the corruption of Congress:
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

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2012/07/012012/07/01

Review: Homeland Earth

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Environment (Solutions), History, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern

5.0 out of 5 stars Six Star Keeper – Joins Durant, Fuller, Ackoff,July 1, 2012

This is a PHENOMENAL book, a joint effort by Edgar Moron, whose life's work includes Method: Towards a Study of Humankind, Vol. 1: The Nature of Nature (American University Studies Series, No. 5, Philosophy, Vol. 3). Today I am ordering Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future (Education on the Move). The translators Sean M. Kelly and Roger LaPointe merit recognition — this is as fine a translation of a complex mind's work as I have ever encountered.

I donated my entire library to George Mason University when I joined the United Nations in 2010 (little realizing the depth of the corruption I would encounter — and soon leave in the same year). Among all my books, I kept back three: Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition, Lessons of History 1ST Edition, and Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure. This book joins that august group.

If I were president of a university, these four books would be required reading, along perhaps with High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them and 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.

Since Look Inside the Book is not provided for this extraordinary work, I will list the 9 chapter here (each with over ten sub-titles not listed here):

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