Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy – Page 8 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/06/242013/06/24

Review: The Assassination of JFK – Who Really Did It and Why

4 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), History, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)

Craig Newman

4.0 out of 5 stars I hate electronic books, but worth considering, June 24, 2013

I've reviewed the major books on the JFK assassination and list them at the end of this review.

First off, since the table of contents is not in Look Inside the Book, where it should be, here is that bit:

Preface
1. The 1960 Campaign and Election
2. Vietnam and the CIA
3. The Conspiracy and the Global Elite
4. Oswald and his Part in the Conspiracy
5. Why Johnson was only a Part of the Conspiracy
6. The Real Reasons
7. Repercussions
8. Conclusion

The book asks and tries to answer a few questions about the Kennedy assassination that haven't been asked often enough even after nearly 50 years.

Questions like, “Why?”, “Who benefited?”, and “Why the major cover-up?”.

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2013/05/042013/05/04

Review (Guest): Classified Woman-The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)

Sibel Edmonds

5.0 out of 5 stars Sibel Edmonds Finally Wins, April 30, 2012

David Swanson (Charlottesville, VA) – See all my reviews

This review is from: Classified Woman-The Sibel Edmonds Story: A Memoir (Paperback)

Sibel Edmonds' new book, “Classified Woman,” is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as “page-turners” and “gripping dramas,” but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell. This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

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2013/04/30

Review (Guest): Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Censorship & Denial of Access, Communications, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Susan Landau

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive text on the topic July 8, 2011

Ben Rothke

Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies is a hard book to categorize. It is not about security, but it deals extensively with it. It is not a law book, but legal topics are pervasive throughout the book. It is not a telecommunications book, but extensively details telco issues. Ultimately, the book is a most important overview of security and privacy and the nature of surveillance in current times.

Surveillance or Security? is one of the most pragmatic books on the topic is that the author never once uses the term Big Brother. Far too many books on privacy and surveillance are filled with hysteria and hyperbole and the threat of an Orwellian society. This book sticks to the raw facts and details the current state, that of insecure and porous networks around a surveillance society.

In this densely packed work, Susan Landau, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University details the myriad layers around surveillance, national security, information security and privacy. Landau writes that her concern is not about legally authorized law enforcement and nationally security wiretapping; rather about the security risks of building surveillance into communications infrastructures.

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2013/04/072013/04/07

Review: Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry

Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Marc Ambinder and D. B. Grady

3.0 out of 5 stars Mish-Mash — Superficial, Avoids Ethics, Corruption, and Cost Issues, April 7, 2013

This is a seriously disappointing book. As another reviewer has noted, and I concur, it is a hodge podge. Worse, it avoids the serious issues of ethics, deep corruption, and the opportunity cost of continuing to spend $70-100 billion dollars a year (depending on how much of the black special operations intelligence world you count) a year to produce what General Tony Tinny has said provided him with “at best” 4% of what he needed to know.

I carefully examined the endnotes and the index first, and rate this book at three stars at best. All ten of the books below are vastly better than this one. While the authors strive to conclude on an intelligent note — when everything is secret nothing can be protected and the cognitive dissonance between real and false secrets will inevitably spawn leaks — there is no substance in this book. It is mish-mash, perhaps useful if integrated into a giant trash can of everything that can be known from open sources, but even there the authors are utterly oblivious to all of the sources that are listed in my own master list, easily found online:

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Intelligence (Most)

As one of those who testified to the 1993 presidential commission on secrecy, and to the Aspin-Brown Commission and to the Moynihan Commission, I would have expected much more from these authors. Not only have they barely scratched the surface and presented a mish-mash, but there is no substance to this book. Looking at the authors “credentials” what I find is a big fat zero. This is a C-level (A-F) book written without much thought, simply to sell the book.

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2013/03/082013/03/08

Review: The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams

5.0 out of 5 stars Please Appreciate the Difference — Much Misunderstanding Here, March 8, 2013

I notice the stark conflict between 30+ 5 star reviews and 30+ 1 star reviews.

I humbly offer a clarifying comment based on my broad reading.

There are two kinds of gays and lesbians that I know of:

The “good” kind are those associated with the normal gay and lesbian liberation movement who strive to make gay and lesbian an open, loving, accepting and accepted way of life that is biologically rooted and culturally stable — not seen as a threat by anyone, appreciated the way one appreciates a genius or an artist or someone with a special gift. To the best of my knowledge, this larger movement does NOT reject God, and just as we separate church and state, we should separate biology and theology.

The “bad” kind are those associated with the Nazi Brown Shirts who wanted to make their form of “manly” gay, including pedophilia and sadism against other men, women, children, and animals, what Mrs. Kay Griggs calls the “existentialists” that arose out of a mix of Nazi and French sadists who believe they are above the law, that murder is a form of precision war, and that only those that accept the macho gay cult should be fully trusted and promoted. The really scary part about this group is that they demand that their condition stay in the closet, unknown to others, and this cult appears to have infected the highest ranks of the US Marine Corps, the US Army, the Joint Special Operations Group, the NATO Gladio special channel rooted in Italy (the Vatican Church and very young Italian orphans have played a very special role in the Naples, Milan, and other Mediterranean all male party houses frequented by these people, and in the NY-NJ-CT crime and cloth circuit with Yale's Skull and Bones and Princetons Cap and Gown secret societies as the axis of evil in America.

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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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2012/06/24

Review (Guest): The Open Source Everything Manifesto – Transparency, Truth & Trust

#OSE Open Source Everything, 5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Budget Process & Politics, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Affairs, Civil Society, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Cosmos & Destiny, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Education (Universities), Electoral Reform USA, Environment (Solutions), Games, Models, & Simulations, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Manifesto Extracts, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Privacy, Public Administration, Science & Politics of Science, Secession & Nullification, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Robert David Steele

PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN!,June 24, 2012

B. Tweed DeLions “B.T.”

If there's a single Founding Father of the Open Source movement, Robert D. Steele is it. Everyone else has been playing catchup. And if you don't know what the Open Source revolution is, you need to read this book. You don't even need to know why! You need to buy it, read it, and then you'll *know* why. No other book on Open Source can open your eyes the way this one can. That's because there's no potential use of Open Source intelligence that Steele hasn't anticipated. Collective Intelligence is coming! It's an unstoppable force. And it will change everything. So if you like to know about things like that in advance, you need to buy this book.

The information age that was created by personal computers was just a kiddie car with a squeaky horn. By comparison, the open source revolution is a freight train. Its potential to change your world is orders of magnitude greater. This is not hyperbole. In fact superlatives can't begin to express the ground-shaking potential of this next wave of human evolution.

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