Public Intelligence Blog – Page 3886 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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John M. Barry

5 Stars Classic Detailed Study of Both Corruption and Abusive Power, September 18, 2008

This is the book whose account of what it takes to be a “Member” that so turned my stomach (i.e. the book is phenomenal) I concluded that no sane and honorable person should seek election.

On the one hand, it recounts in excruciating detail the degree to which then Speaker of the House Jim Wright had to be constantly on the go to collect (“raise”) funds for his future campaigns (every two years), while also illuminating the pathologies of House leadership processes.

On the other hand, it recounts in equal detail the deliberate and malicious manner in which future Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich set about to destroy Jim Wright–his reputation, his position, his office, his personna.

I am not sure which turned my stomach more–the two together are quite depressing.

I have since learned that the Democrats are much more practiced at electoral fraud and other connivances, and that the Republicans are now learning to match the Democrats and “level the playing field.” We need to take back the power, get the money out of politics, eradicate the rule by secrecy and information asymmetries between elites and the voters, and get our Republic back.

From a Constitutional point of view, this book also charts how Newt Gingrich destroyed Article 1 of the Constitution, and turned all Members into “foot soldiers” for the party — they vote the party line as bought by billionaires, or they get no nice offices, staff numbers, etcetera. He destroyed what was left of the bi-partisan balance of power aspect of the US Constitution.

This is a SUPERB reading for any university or college class studying the real world of politics as it is still practiced today on the Hill.

More recent books, also recommended:
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Tribes on the Hill: The United States Congress–Rituals and Realities, Revised Edition

2009/07/032012/12/16

1998 Open Source Intelligence Executive Overview (Handbook)

Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), OSINT Generic

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Handbook Free Online

2004	US	Training	Steele	OSINT Executive Overview (Contents) in RTF
2004	US	Training	Steele	OSINT Executive Overview (Cover) in RTF
2004	US	Training	Steele	OSINT Executive Overview (Contents) in Word Doc
2004	US	Training	Steele	OSINT Executive Overview (Cover) in Word Doc

2009/07/032009/12/26

Review: A Consumer’s Dictionary of Household, Yard and Office Chemicals: Complete Information About Harmful and Desirable Chemicals Found in Everyday Home Products, Yard Poisons, and Office Polluters

5 Star, Environment (Problems), True Cost & Toxicity

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One of several great books, only dictionary I could see, September 21, 2008

Ruth G Winter

This needs to be accessible via bar code scanback and cloud look up.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Biomimicry–Innovation Inspired by Nature

5 Star, Environment (Solutions), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean)

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Book End for Zero Waste, Brilliant Introduction, September 23, 2008

Janine M. Benyus

I was introduced to this concept at BIONEERS, an annual event with satellite nodes convenient to all, and was just blown away. This book is a superb introduction to the common sense recognition that nature has over all the billions of years, figured out how to not only do stuff with energy efficiency, but also with a zero waste footprint.

Check out World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) for many other leads.

Other books that I recommend outside the standard ones that Amazon points to:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
The Age of Missing Information
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations
Getting to Zero Waste
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them
The Future of Life

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Indexed

4 Star, Decision-Making & Decision-Support

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Over-Priced, Under-Whelming BUT Entirely Acceptable, September 27, 2008

Jessica Hagy

This is a niche book for people with time, money, and curiosity about unconventional visualization simplified. Although it is overpriced (probably cost $1 to actually produce), there are no page numbers, and half the diagrams are quasi annoying (e.g ground chuck chart with cannibals on one axis and clumsy butchers on the other), there is just enough here to leave me okay with having paid for this to be sent to me.

A handful of the charts are clever and another handful are inspiring. That is what took this tiny little book from three to four stars.

The booklet is completely lacking in structure, another reason it almost dropped to a three. This was a fast print job with zero editorial brilliance. A brilliant editor would have divided the book into a matrix, sorted the sketches in relation to human, technical, global, local, whatever, and then presented them with a table of contents and pagination.

The author's website is provided on the back cover of the book (and I provide it in the comment), it may be that this was the sole intent of the book, to draw people there, in which case the book succeeds and with my comment below you don't have to buy it to achieve the book's purpose.

See these other books:
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: The Practical Progressive–How to Build a Twenty-first Century Political Movement

3 Star, Democracy, Politics

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Industrial-era directory with little added value, September 27, 2008

Erica Payne

I eagerly anticipated this book's arrival, believing from the title that it might actually contribute to my thinking on how to build a twenty-first century political movement (I support Reuniting American and the Transpartisan Alliance with public intelligence in the public interest).

Nope. This is an industrial-era directory with almost no added value. Seventy nine organizations are profiled in small print in hard copy, followed by snapshot bios of some of the activists.

Organizations that are NOT on the left (which has hijacked the term “progressive”) but rather centrist, postpartisan, transpartisan, or nonpartison are NOT included here, for example, The New America Foundation, World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility, Reuniting America, the Liberty Coalition, and on and on and on.

I checked the website, hoping for an interactive online version of the book that might be useful, but found it to be merely an advertising site.

In brief: a lot of work went into this book, the editor and those involved in the book got a lot of face time with many good people doing important work in isolation from one another and from the rest of us, but the book does NOT advance participatory deliberative democracy in any significant way.

Other books that might be more satisfying:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Doing Democracy
The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics
The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)

Both of the last two are free online.

I recommend the editor urge every organization listed in this book to join the rest of us at World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER). That online resource is connnecting dots to dots, dots to people, people to people, and dollars to outcomes.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Global Reach–The Power of the Multinational Corporations

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

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Seminal Work, Foundation for Studying the Roots of Global Class War, October 11, 2008

Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Muller

This was one of the more important books I studied during my first graduate endeavor, and it summed up my earlier undergraduate studies of the multinational corporation and home as well as host country issues with this relatively new post-industrial era construct.

Today we can appreciate the foresight, the wisdom, and the correct value judgements that this earnest author sought to share with us. Where we failed was in attending to his warnings, and allowing these corporations to relegate their human charges to commodity status. From this ensued the fiction of “Free Trade,” and the Global Class War that has broken the back of the American middle class and the upper third of the blue collar workers that are our spine–a spine that has been broken ever since Ronald Reagan made the fundamental mistake of using the military against the Air Traffic Controllers Union.

There are many works that I could link to here, but I will limit myself to a handful:
The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back