This is a great piece of work, and I found it very worthwhile. The author has studied two liberal democracies, the USA and the UK, and tried to correlate the rising or waning power of specific economic blocks with US foreign policy.
He finds that material intersts consistently trump cultural or ideological interests, and that humanitarianism can play a surprisingly strong role in some cases (of course, today, we are ignoring not just Darfur but 15+ other genocides, poverty, infectuous disease, and so on).
The author concludes the the fortunes to be made on the periphery will continue to encourage America as a nation of varied interests, to pursue the fortunes on the periphery, and he therefore anticipates that spending on the military, and the use of the military, will continue into the future.
He ends rather delicately by pointing out that no theory can explain the manner in which Bush-Cheney took America to war in Iraq–this is no doubt his elegant way of saying that when you have thieves and liars in the White House, all bets are off.
7 Star Life Transformative Very Satisfying, Will Take Time to Fully Appreciate – Collective Intelligence Primer
August 1, 2007
Laurence G. Boldt
This has to be a preliminary review. This elegant offering has a ton of useful ideas and concepts and comparisons. My first time around I drew the following out of it:
1) System is the Ego. Escape the matrix by escaping ego.
2) Trust the innate intelligence of nature in harmony.
3) Money should not cost you your soul or everything else.
The best contribution I can make at this point is to point readers to a few other books that have inspired me as I expect this book to continue to inspire me, and a couple of DVDs.
One last thought: Michael Hinton and Jean-Francois Noubelle have pioneered Open Money, and that is one of the things I talk about in my forthcoming opening presentation at Gnomedex in Seattle. My slides and notes can be seen in advance by finding “Open Everything” at my web site in the Archives, EIN Library. In my view, Open Money could be the single most revolutionary idea that is liberating immediately and scales without a problem. Combined with distributed search (Grub) and CISCO AON individually-controlled sharing of both information and CPU power, I see a world well beyond Google in which our brains and our information are under our control and no one can loot that abundance.
Truly Brilliant, Reflects a Sea Change in Scholarship
July 31, 2007
Donald E. Schmidt
There are some fine reviews, so my primary purpose in posting this review is to flag it for the folks that keep an eye on what I read.
My one complaint is the tiny font size. I had to get special glasses from the supermarket to read this book, a $15 cost that should not have been necessary. The publisher made a serious mistake on the font size and I urge that all future printings be at least 11 font. This entire book is in a font normally used for obscure notes, and it takes dedication to get through this. Such valuable material should NOT be so parsimonesouly treated by a publisher, who should have known better.
I am among those that believe that war is a racket and that we live in an unconquerable world where the only possible positive outcome comes from combining the wealth of networks with the new craft of intelligence and free distance learning as well as on demand answers via cell phone, in order to empower the five billion at the base of the pyramid. Only they can create infinite wealth that stabilizes the entire planet in a sustainable fashion.
This author has ventured where few have had the imagination, persistence, or integrity to go. He has taken on the military-industrial establishment, the banks, the rule by secrecy and scarcity mandarins, and he has nailed it. This is a Nobel Prize level effort and I for one am deeply impressed.
His organization is superb, and even his fanciful conversation among all our Presidents is provocative. This is not “turgid text,” this is the fabric of history restored and rewoven.
Shortly Medard Gabel will have a book come out entitled “Seven Billion Billionaries,” and I urge one and all to buy that book along with this one. They are two sides of the coin. This book is focused on the folly of war (which today costs $900 billion a year across all nations, with the USA being the most spendthrift), while Medard's focuses on the inexpensiveness and achievability of peace and prosperity–in his carefully documented manuscript, every bit the equal of this author's, he shows how $230 billion a year–LESS than a third of what we spend on our varied militaries, could resolve every single one of the high level threats to mankind identified by LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret), and the other members of this United Nations panel.
I hope this book is put into the digital domain prompty, for the wealth of information it contains will be made all the more valuable as we move to an era of transparent budgets, digital democracy, and constant oversight from the people whose money has been wasted so cruelly all these years.
It's a stormy day and the boat I crew on (as a grinder, the lowest of the low) is in for warranty work, so I spent the afternoon with this DVD.
It grabbed me right off by pointing out that many races are won or lost before the boat ever hits the water, and then going over a stem to stern list of all the warps and unevenness along the hull that could significantly reduce the boats symmetry and consequently, speed.
I can barely remember all the good stuff covering every position on the boat, but I know now that I am going to have to watch this DVD at least twice more this season, and then annually thereafter.
I'm a big fan of Gary Jobson and have his book; I dsicovered his DVD by wrting this review and will buy it. In the meantime, this specific DVD is a world-class opportunity to improve your racing sailing, at a price that so low that buying this could be the best $30 bucks you ever spend.
See my list of great sailing books, adding this DVD to it.
This is a brilliant elegant work. If you agree with its premises it is a fast read, ending with an appendix on how to recycle electronic waste, and a truly superb bibliography. This is a serious book, a PhD level accomplishment, and totally objective and meritorious.
I am particularly impressed that Apple accepts its computer back for recycling in Japan, something we need to demand here. Indeed, if Apple and CISCO (for its routers and hubs) were to commit to total recycling, what is called for in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming and described in more detail in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things I for one would immediately switch my business and my office to iPhone, MacIntoch, and Open Office from Sun (on verge of being fully implementable within Apple's operating system).
I spent an enchanting evening with this move. Having lived all over the world as the son of an oilman, an infantry officer, and a clandestine case officer (spy), everything here resonated with me. This was a wonderful way to spend the evening.
See also my list of Transpartisan Books. We are at a rare stage in history, when the elites are collapsing and We the People are re-emerging as soverign common sense for the common wealth.
While I am not quite prepared to say the US should be a white, Christian nation, in part because the Native Americans and the people of color we brought here in slavery have every bit as much right as we do to the place, I *am* prepared to say that we need to emulate the Spanish and issue an expulsion edict for all Muslims who refuse to adopt our customs. Any Muslim that continues to beat their wife and demand that she dress in Muslim fashion, should be shown the way out of here. Any Muslim that speaks or hears without protest the advocation of the murder of Americans on American soil should be immediately evicted with all property confiscated. Indeed, I am beginning to believe that we should outlaw foreign ownership of anything and especially land, as well as absentee landlords, and of course revoke corporate personality.
I am going to list some books at the end of this review because while the author is utterly brilliant and on point, he overlooks all the evil things the US Government is doing “in our name,” and I will be the first to say we cannot restore our Republic unless we first restore both our moral compass and the sovereignty of We the People, demanding that the Constitution and Electoral Reform be the only two issues that matter henceforth.
The authors table of contents says it all, and I have never seen a better more organized laydown of content than this one, so good that I am spelling it out here because for many, the table of contents alone is sufficient (but I urge buying the book, it is very readable and thought-provoking).
An Economy in Hock
La Reconquista (the Reconquering, Mexico has gotten all the way back to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo line)
Absolishing Self-Defense
Subordinating Ourselves
Subordinating Our Culture
Subordinating Our Country
An Ideology of Submission
Enforcing the Ideology
Disabling Americans
Spreading the Ideology
Can America Be Saved?
Reclaiming the Individual
Reclaiming the Economy
Reclaiming the Government
If All Else Fails
This is an enormously important book that speaks to the heart and mind of every person of any race or faith who believes in America the Beautiful, in dignity, justice, and liberty for all. That's not what we stand for today, and that is a travesty of epic proportions.
One final observation: the author is completely correct in all that he says, but we have to recognize that it is the virtual colonialism, unilateral militarism, and predatory immoral capitalism (a class war on both our workers and middle class and those of other countries) that are the foundation for the mass immigration toward America. There is plenty of money for peace–for just one third of the $900 billion a year military budgets of all nations, we can resolve every single one of the ten high-level threats to humanity identified by the United Nations (with LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft representing America) and created infinite stabilizing wealth, what Medard Gabel calls in his forthcoming book, “Seven Billion Billionaries.” We know what needs to be done, we have to take back control of the US Government from the corrupt politicians and crooked Wall Street gangs that have legalized the marginalization of the majority of all citizens.
The blind support for an Israel that is both fascist and genocidal, combined with the idiocy of hundreds of billions of dollars for Egyptian arms purchases and total subservicen to the depraved and desposit Saudi regime are signs of a government that is totally out of touch with both reality, and the possibilities of peace and prosperity. No one in Washington cares about us, only about their next bribe or paycheck or lunch hour.
Excellent Contribution
