Review: The Hidden Wealth of Nations

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Education (General), Education (Universities), Games, Models, & Simulations, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Security (Including Immigration), Survival & Sustainment, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page
5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond 5 Stars, a Cornerstone Book, Most Extraordinary Strategic Depth
June 30, 2010

David Halpern

Amazon has recently been allowing longer reviews by inserting a “Read More” line and I hope this entire review is allowed to stand. It will also be posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, with links back to Amazon.

This is a Beyond Five Stars book. Although there is a fine literature emerging on collective intelligence and wealth of networks–and there is an increasingly robust Open Money movement that also includes local communities currencies that keep the wealth local–this book does something no other book has done–it connects economics to humanity and reality and the intangibles in all their forms.

This is not a book about underground economies, barter systems, alternative currencies, etcetera. It is one of the most profoundly relevant, erudite yet easy to read books I have ever read, with a direct bearing on every aspect of human life, and in particular the role of government as it should be.

The author specifically quantifies the financial and intangible value of “getting along” and being part of deep interconnections that define, drive, and develop (or not) the hidden wealth of nations.

The author has provided an extraordinarily well-organized book with a well-presented series of chapters that left me with so many flyleaf notes I fear I will not do the author and the intellectual tour de force he has provided, quite enough justice. Buy and read the book. Tell elected and appointed leaders about it–or send them a copy of this review. [I am stunned that there are no other reviews as this book was published in 2009.]

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Review (DVD): Unthinkable

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Crime (Government), Democracy, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), Secession & Nullification, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Survival & Sustainment, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
Amazon Page

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Sheen Director: Gregor Jordan

And Carrie-Anne Moss (Amazon stinks at listing all authors and actors)

5.0 out of 5 stars

Astonishing–Riveting–Thought Provoking–Beyond Five Stars

May 28, 2010

EDIT of 27 August 2010: The Intelligence Science Board, the top advisory board to the Director of National Intelligence, has just come out with firm documented conclusions against coercive interviewing and absolutely demanding non-coercive interviewing. People like Col stuart Harrington and I have known this for decades, but it is nice to have the following (full links at Phi Beta Iota):

The ISB study notably dissected the “ticking time bomb” scenario that is often portrayed in television thrillers (and which has “captured the public imagination”). The authors patiently explained why that hypothetical scenario is not a sensible guide to interrogation policy or a justification for torture. Moral considerations aside, the ISB report said, coercive interrogation may produce unreliable results, foster increased resistance, and preclude the discovery of unsuspected intelligence information of value (pp. 40-42).

Bottom line: all of you that hate this review (shoot the messenger) have the best of intentions but you have absolutely no clue about real-life. Intelligence, not ideology, should be restoring America the Beautiful. That will not happen until We the People wake up and recognize that there is a two-party tryanny owned and operated by Wall Street, and we are being treated as expendable pigs.

Edit of 28 June 2010: the voting on this review appears to mirror the divide in America between left of center and right of center, with no dialog. I encourage a dialog in the comments section and will respond on a daily basis. The world is NOT “win-lose,” it is only “lose-lose” or “win-win” or what one author calls “Non-Zero.” We can either die as a species, or live as a species, there is no “eugenics” possible as much as Henry Kissinger (who can never return to France) might like the term. There is only one “we.” What we lack right now is educated leaders with open minds who have integrity. This topic–torture–and this review–against torture of Americans by Americans–and these votes–American against American–are a window into our soul and what I am seeing is no basis for happiness.

– – – – – – –

I am 57 years old, been a spy, did Viet-Nam (63-67) as the son of an oil man going through ten coups d'etat, did El Salvador where I was personally threatened with assassination by the guys running the country who did not like me talking to leftists, and so on. I am also one of the handful of Americans who signed the letter to Senator John “POWS in VN? What POWs” McCain against torture. The thousand five hundred non-fiction reviews I have done all serve as a foundation for saying that this movie is a MUST SEE for every American.

For some time now I have felt that the US Government is out of touch with the American public, out of touch with reality, and out of touch with ethics. Ethics is a really important word that has been central to my life these past twenty years as I along with a number of others have realized that most of what the US Government does in the way of both secret intelligence and global military operations is unethical, unprofessional, unrealistic, predatory, and generally a waste of the taxpayers' money.

This movie is not like Sum of All Fears or Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated Edition) or any of the other good guys win in the end movies. This movie focuses on our soul as seen in torture, and it very ably calls into question the idiocy of US foreign policy these past fifty years.

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Review (Guest): Government of the Shadows–Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty (Paperback)

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, History, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

Review by Guido G. Preparata (Rome, Italy)

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovative and courageous social science

June 8, 2009

Eric Wilson and Tim Lindsey (eds)

In this recent volume by Pluto Press, Eric Wilson (Monash University) has assembled an all-stars team of politologists with the objective of changing the face of social analysis. This effort stems from the urgency to redefine the conceptual spaces within which we perforce corral our daily experience as citizens of what has become, in fact, an international polity of overwhelming, as well as highly disquieting, complexity. This is not at all to say, however, that the project limits itself to adding “epicycles,” as it were, to the Ptolemaic vulgate of British constitutionalism–i.e., the standard model of the “Liberal State”–which has imposed itself as the sole lens through which one is to contemplate the social dynamics for every single political reality of this world.

Government of the Shadows (GOS) represents in this regard an honest and brave swerve away from the mainstream in two fundamental respects.

First, it wishes to rethink political science entirely, by rejecting definitively the puritanical dichotomization of society into its predominant and “clean” edifice versus the latter's more or less corrupt “covert netherworld” (p. 228)–the prescriptive implication of conventional analysis being that delinquents need only be jailed, and their activities repressed, as the given regime is in the meantime steered (hopefully) toward the eventual and complete assimilation of Liberal institutions, which will naturally cure it of the criminal deviancy.

Second, and no less important, this project seeks to re-endow the movement for social justice of a unity of intent and of thought, which has lately been shattered by an excessive methodological preoccupation with multiplicity and diversity. By denouncing with reason and cogency the inequities suffered by a majority of innocents–throughout our recent history and all over the world–at the hands of identifiable, responsible parties within the power apparatuses in connivance with the world's mafias, and by ordering all such phenomenological mass into theory, this book, as a collective endeavor, acts as a vigorous reminder that realistic sociological analysis is also very much an instrument of pacific dissent. In this sense, GOS stands as a first and decisive installment of a modern anti-oligarchic theory.

To compass the reality of modern power games in its full spectrum, GOS innovates by proposing the new discipline of “parapolitics,” defined in Robert Cribb's introductory as “the study of criminal sovereignty, of criminals and sovereigns behaving as criminals in a systematic way” (p. 8).

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Review: Endless War–Middle-Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Geography & Mapping, History, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

27 March 2010: Full spread sheet and optimal links added below Amazon review.GOT TO RUN, Links later today.

Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Five Stars…Gifted Mix of Intelligence, Integrity, Insight Deeply Rooted in History and Firmly Focused on Today's Reality

March 21, 2010

Ralph Peters

I do not always agree with Ralph Peters, but along with Steve Metz and Max Manwaring, both at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army, I consider him one of America's most gifted strategists whose integrity is absolute. He simplifies sometimes (e.g. Iraqis turned against Al Qaeda because of the demand for marriage that was refused followed by the bloodbath execution of the family by Al Qaeda, not because of anything the US did) but that aside, Ralph is the ONLY person that reminds me of both Winston Churchill–poetry and gifted turns of phrase on every page–and Will Durant, historian extraordinaire. Ralph has a better grasp of history, terrain, and the military than Robert Kaplan, and deeper insights into our failed military leadership (no longer leaders, just politically-correct administrators out of touch with reality) than my favorite journalist-adventurer, Robert Young Pelton.

I have read and reviewed most of Ralph's books, and am proud to consider him a colleague and a fellow Virginian. Ralph is the only author whose books jump to the top of my “to read” pile, and I absorbed this masterpiece over the course of moving my own flag from Virginia to Latin America. US national and military intelligence have completely given up their integrity, and it resonated with me that the key word that Ralph uses throughout this book–a word I myself adopt in my latest book in carrying on the tradition of Buckminster Fuller on the one hand, and most respected mentor-critic Chuck Spinney on the other–is that very word: INTEGRITY.

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Review : Global Shift–How A New Worldview Is Transforming Humanity

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Cosmos & Destiny, Culture, Research, Environment (Solutions), Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal Integration of Ideas–Superb “Once Over”

February 10, 2010 [final review 21 February 2010]

Edmund J. Bourne

I have sent INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty to the printer and it is on that foundation that I highly recommend this book for a simple easy to understand overview of the fifteen converging forces that the author lists and then discusses in superbly-crafted very easy to read overviews. He covers:

01 A conscious universe

02 Multidimensional reality

03 Interconnection of all minds

04 Complementarity of science and spirituality

05 Radical empiricism [revalidation of intuition and visioning]

06 Consciousness has a causal influence

07 Natural ethics [I really like this, hugely beneficial for all]

08 Reverence for nature and earth [in my book, diversity rocks]

09 A sense of inclusiveness toward all humanity [diversity again]

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Review: SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa

6 Star Top 10%, Associations & Foundations, Autonomous Internet, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Communications, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Democracy, Economics, Education (General), Environment (Solutions), Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public), Media, Mobile, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Public Administration, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Six Stars–Hugely Important Useful Collection

February 20, 2010

Edited by Sokari Ekine

Contributing authors include Redante Asuncion-Reed, Amanda Atwood, Ken Banks, Chrstinia Charles-Iyoha, Nathan Eagle, Sokari Ekine, Becky Faith, Joshua Goldstein, Christian Kreutz, Anil Naidoo, Berna Ngolobe, Tanya Notley, Juliana Rotich,Ā  and Bukeni Wazuri

This book will be rated 6 Stars and Beyond at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where we can do things Amazon refuses to implement here, such as sort useful non-fiction into 98 categories, many of the categories focused on stabilization & reconstruction, pushing back against predatory immoral capitalism, and so on.

When the book was first brought to my attention it was with concern over the price. The price is fair. Indeed, the content in this book is so valuable that I would pay $45 without a second thought. I am especially pleased that the African publishers have been so very professional and assured “Look Inside the Book”–please do click on the book cover above to read the table of contents and other materials.

This is the first collection I have seen on this topic, and although I have been following cell phone and SMS activism every since I and 23 others created the Earth Intelligence Network and put forth the need for a campaign to give the five billion poor free cell phones and educate them “one cell call at a time,” other than UNICEF and Rapid SMS I was not really conscious of bottom-up initiatives and especially so those in Africa where the greatest benefits are to be found.

I strongly recommend this book as a gift for ANYONE. This is potentially a game-changing book, and since I know the depth of ignorance among government policy makers, corporate chief executives, and larger non-governmental and internaitonal organization officials, I can say with assurance that 99% of them simply do not have a clue, and this one little precious book that gives me goose-bumps as I type this, could change the world by providing “higher education” to leaders who might then do more to further the brilliant first steps documented in this book.
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Review: Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, History, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Read Fire Side Chat Review–This is Supplemental

February 20, 2010

William Greider

Very rarely do I find reviews as lengthy as my own. Please read and appreciate the Fireside Chat review that is deservedly popular with readers. I first encountered William Greider while managing the international conference on “National Security and National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions,” and I realized that the way the US Government was mis-managing our democracy and our public commons was central to the demise of America. The two books I have most appreciated by him are Who Will Tell The People? : The Betrayal Of American Democracy and The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy but I have to remind myself that before I knew him personally I had also read and appreciated Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country as well as One World Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (Hardcover).

I like the “fireside chat” description of this book and am providing my own summary primarily for my own benefit and the benefit of those that follow all of my non-fiction reviews at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog where all of my reviews, in 98 non-fiction categories, are more easily exploited than here at Amazon (but they all lead back to Amazon.

QUOTE (1): We live in a country where telling the hard truth with clarity has become taboo.

QUOTE (7): From the birth of our nation, it was always ordinary people, pushing from the bottom against an entrenched status quo, that led to the most momentous changes in American life.
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