Review: The Military Industrial Compex at 50

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), History, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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5.0 out of 5 stars America Desperately Needs More Illumination Such as This January 16, 2012

I received a review copy of this book [note to publishers: always ask first] and was glad to be offered a chance to read something as important as this. America desperately needs more illumination on the corruption in our government, and the evil done in our name without our permission but very much at our expense.

As a career veteran of the national security community–the Marine Corps and the Central Intelligence Agency–followed by seventeen years teaching 90 governments — 66 directly — how to get a grip on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) that provides 95% of what we need to know at 2% or less of the cost of what we spend now on secret intelligence–I am well-qualified to read this book from a patriot's point of view.

A strong national defense capability does NOT exist in the USA today. Posturing fools such as Senator Rick Santorum have no idea what they are talking about when they seek to discredit those of us who do. The infantry, four percent of the force, takes eighty percent of the casualties and receives ONE PERCENT of the Pentagon budget. Within the other 99%, half–at least–is fraud, waste, and abuse that makes America weaker, not stronger.

This book, edited by David Swanson, is a very good deal at $25. Its 368 pages include chapters from thirty other authors besides the editor, and include contributions from Ray McGovern and Karen Kwiatkowski, whose work I have admired in the past. If there were one flaw in the book, but not so serious as to lose a star, it would be its isolation from the pioneering work done by Pierre Sprey, Chuck Spinney, and Winslow Wheeler, with a genuflection toward John Boyd, the real pioneer of smart sufficient national security.

What is uniquely valuable about this book, something I have not seen elsewhere, is its provision of a holistic examination not just of the military-industrial process and fraudulent, wasteful, abusive bad design, bad performance, and bad cost, but of the costs that the military-industrial complex imposes on all of us and our economy and our society. This is a world-class book that should be translated into other languages to help others avoid our long-running mistakes.

Here are the blinding flashes of solid insight that stayed with me and merit the broadest possible public understanding:

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Review: Britain’s Empire – Resistance, Repression and Revolt

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Environment (Problems), History, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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Richard Gott

5.0 out of 5 stars Preliminary Review: Understanding the Trade-Offs & True Cost of Empire,December 8, 2011

I have ordered this book and am very much looking forward to providing readers (and myself, this is how I keep notes) with one of my more detailed reviews. The publisher is to be scolded for not using Inside the Book, one of Amazon's best features, and for failing to provide the best possible use of the Book Description and Editorial Reviews section. While the existing review is good and I have voted for it, it does not do this book justice. My decision to buy was based on the easily found review in The Guardian (UK) by Richard Drayton, “Britain's Empire: Resistance, Repression, and Revolt by Richard Gott — review,” published 7 December 2011.

Where I am going to go with my review is toward an in-depth articulation of what has never been done before that I know of, an examination of the trade-offs of Empire and the opportunity costs of Epoch A hierarchical “rule by secrecy.” I have reviewed many books on Empire, Class War, Elite Rule, all easily found in master list online, Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Negative). I also recommend the observe, Worth a Look: Book Review Lists (Positive).

Russell Ackoff would say that Empire represents centuries of doing the wrong thing righter–and at greater expense across the political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, and natural-geographic domains. As we approach the Mayan calendar's start date for Epoch B, 12 December 2012, many of us are conscious that we must abandon old ways and rethink how we organize society. Occupy is a sympton of this – organized people against organized money, organized consciousness against organized violence.

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Reference: The Privatization [Corruption] of Democracy – Honoring & Documenting the Work of Eva Waskell

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Gordon Cook

I am honored that Eva Waskell has entrusted me to present The Privatization of Our Democracy, a work that I regard as her Profile in Courage. For 25 years she has labored to correct what is possibly the most significant public policy failure of the computer age—the privatization of vote counting carried out under the rationale that computers are simply automatic calculators that can tabulate votes more cost effectively than old analogue machines. I have known her for 19 of those years.

. . . . . .

People think they know that something is wrong with the way elections are conducted in this country.  They are correct. There is. But readers only now will get access to a full history of the abuse of public trust by the elected politicians of the United States of America. That’s a large claim to make, but see for yourself.

Click on Image to Enlarge

I believe that there are multiple publications here in what Eva has to say. The scholarly monograph. An Elections for Dummies paperback. A paperback of humorous tabby cat photos where the kitties are running elections.  Eva is a national treasure and I am proud to be able to use the Internet to make her story known. Fortunately, there are many, many public spirited citizens left.

Full Report (PDF 160 Pages)

Cook Report Home

Table of Contents and Selected Quotes Below the Line –

A SPECTACULAR Piece of Work

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Review: Gods of Money – Wall Street and the Death of the American Century

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Economics, Electoral Reform USA, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

William Engdahl

5.0 out of 5 stars Before Griftopia, There Was Liar's Poker and Gods of Money,November 1, 2011

This book deserves a much more detailed review that illuminates the author's early connection of Wall Street fraud and Washington neo-conservative lust for looting the world….a bi-partisan (never mind the 63 parties that don't get to play, or the 43% of the US voters who are independent). Liar's Poker by Mark Lewis blew the cover of Wall Street's practice of “exploding the customer” and Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History later followed on John Bogle's The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism and William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, but William Engdahl is the one who nailed down the Trilateral Commission and Wall Street cabal focus on looting the world way beyond what John Perkin's discusses in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

Now the world is noticing. He appeared on Russia Today TV, which has eclipsed BBC as the English-language trusted source (and also excels at migrating its TV shorts to the web and to print), and here are some of his own words that illuminate how important his book is:

He says:

The ultimate goal of the US is to take the resources of Africa and Middle East under military control to block economic growth in China and Russia, thus taking the whole of Eurasia under control, author and historian William F. Engdahl reveals.

­The crisis with the US economy and the dollar system, the conduct of the US foreign policy is all a part of breakdown of the entire superpower structure that was built up after the end of WWII, claims Engdahl.

“Nobody in Washington wants to admit, just as nobody in Britain a hundred years ago wanted to admit that the British Empire was in terminal decline,” claims the author, noting that “All of this is related to the attempt to keep this sole superpower not only intact, but to spread its influence over the rest of the planet.”

William F. Engdahl believes the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa is a plan first announced by George W. Bush at a G8 meeting in 2003 and it was called “The Greater Middle East Project”.

While I personally do not believe that Washington is behind the Arab Spring – the Department of State has always been incompetent at public diplomacy and CIA places dictators about the public (losers there go to counterintelligence and covert action staffs) – what matters here is that the Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power have created an Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

The US Government is out of control, and it is out of control because a two-party tyranny (less turnover than the Politburo, in Peggy Noonan's great line for use by Ronald Reagan) has nurtured a combination of Wall Street legalized greed and neo-con military-industrial complex that has sold out the US taxpayer — 5% earmarks “buy” a 95% corporate hand-out, one third of that money borrowed in our name.

I take this book and the author's views with a small grain of salt, but the evidence is over-whelming. From Michael Kalre's Blood and Oil : The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, we now know all we need to know about who is the greatest threat to the Republic and the Constitution: the two-party tyranny and their financial partners.

Occupy Wall Street is incoherent right now – when they get their act together, it is my hope they will focus on an Electoral Reform Act of 2012 – in my view, there is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful — all these enormous crimes against humanity not-withstanding – that cannot be fixed quickly by restoring integrity to our electoral system, hence our govenrment, hence our society and economy.

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Review (Guest): Treasure Islands – Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Diplomacy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)
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Nicholas Shaxson

Selected Editorial Comments:

“Shaxson’s story of offshore banking is nothing short of Shakespearean, a drama full of secrecy, treachery and corruption in which wealthy countries, companies and individuals collude to horde wealth in a complex global network of largely unregulated tax havens. To realize this end, they install corrupt leaders, exploit indigenous populations and, ultimately, deny both developed and developing nations of vital tax dollars. There is much here that should generate outrage…An admirable job of both arguing the consequences of offshore banking and providing a succinct history of the practice.”–Kirkus

“A blistering account of the role that tax havens play in international finance. . . brilliant.”—London Review of Books

“Far more than an exposé, Treasure Islands is a brilliantly illuminating, forensic analysis of where economic power really lies, and the shockingly corrupt way in which it behaves. If you're wondering how ordinary people ended up paying for a crisis caused by the reckless greed of the banking industry, this compellingly readable book provides the answers.”–David Wearing, School of Public Policy, UCL, London’s Global University

“The real challenge to America’s economy comes not from China – but from the Caymans, the Bahamas, and a whole hot-money archipelago loosely under the control of the City of London.  If only as a civics lesson, read this astonishing book to find out the true political constitution of the world.”– Thomas Geoghegan, author of Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

With eye opening revelations, Treasure Islands exposes the culprits and its victims, and shows how:

*Over half of world trade is routed through tax havens

*The rampant practices that precipitated the latest financial crisis can be traced back to Wall Street’s offshoring practices

*For every dollar of aid we send to developing countries, ten dollars leave again by the backdoor

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Review (Guest): Democracy Incorporated – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Censorship & Denial of Access, Civil Society, Communications, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Information Operations, Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Sheldon S. Wolin

Editorial Review:

Of the many books I've read or skimmed in the past seven years that attempted to get inside the social and political debacles of the present, none has had the chilling clarity and historical discernment of Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy Incorporated. Building on his fifty years as a political theorist and proponent of radical democracy, Wolin here extends his concern with the extinguishing of the political and its replacement by fraudulent simulations of democratic process. — Jonathan Crary, Artforum

4.0 out of 5 stars Managed Democracy, Superpower, and alas, even, “Inverted Totalitarianism”, June 17, 2008

ByJohn P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) – See all my reviews  (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a seminal work which “tells it like it is” concerning the current power arrangements in the American political system, as well as the political leadership's aspirations towards global empire. Prof. Wolin sets the tone of his work on page 1, with the juxtaposition of the imagery of Adolph Hitler landing in a small plane at the 1934 rally at Nuremberg, as shown in Leni Reifenstahl's “Triumph of the Will,” and George Bush landing on the aircraft carrier “Abraham Lincoln” in 2003. Certainly one of the dominant themes of the book is comparing the operating power structure in the United States with various totalitarian regimes of the past: Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Prof Wolin emphasizes the differences between these totalitarian powers, and the softer concentration of power in the United States, which he dubs “inverted totalitarianism.”

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Review (Guest): Fixing the Facts – National Security and the Politics of Intelligence

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Censorship & Denial of Access, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Joshua Rovner

5.0 out of 5 stars It Takes Two: Strategic Intelligence and National Security Policy, September 30, 2011

By Retired Reader (New Mexico) – See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In the U.S., the relationship between strategic intelligence and the formulation of national security policies has been to say the least complex and often confusing. This book provides what has long been needed, an objective and scholarly review of this relationship.

Rovner provides an excellent theoretical background to guide his examination of specific case histories that he has chosen to illustrate the relationships between strategic intelligence and policy. Ideally intelligence analysts should be able to operate without interference to produce strategic intelligence reports that are honest, objective, and supported by the best information available. Again ideally policy makers should be free to challenge such reports. Finally both analysts and policymakers should be able to hold rational discussions over differences in interpretation and conclusions in which the supporting evidence is considered objectively. Unfortunately this ideal is often thwarted by what Rovner calls “the pathologies of intelligence-policy relations.” He has identified three such `pathologies':

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