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Karl Denninger
STRONG FIVE – Original, Award-Winning, Major Contribution, February 5, 2012

On the very last page of the book I learn that the author received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award for Grassroots Journalism, for his coverage of the 2008 market meltdown. This confirms my own already formed very high estimation of the author and his work. In fact, although I normally do links at the end of the review, let me open with some other books that are world-class and within which I place this work as comparable:

The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
SAVAGE CAPITALISM AND THE MYTH OF DEMOCRACY: Latin America in the Third Millennium
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New in Paper)

Here is the author’s three-line conclusion to the longer chapter that ends the book (my own notes in parenthesis):

01 Federal and state governments KNEW what was going on, and are COMPLICIT. (This introduces me to the reality of “control fraud,” where the government commits impeachable acts that are not sanctioned; I also learn in this book that when Congress passes laws it does not include sanctions for failure by the GOVERNMENT to uphold those laws.)

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Jose Arguelles

5.0 out of 5 stars Baseline Reading, VERY Dense, A Long Study,January 29, 2012

I read this book in galley form and forgot to post a review after the pre-order period ended. This book was a direct inspiration to my own forthcoming book from the same publisher that I am evidently not allowed to link to here at Amazon, The Open Source Everything Manifesto:Transparency, Truth, and Trust.

From the author:

It [noosphere] is a whole-systems paradigm that melds prophecy and analysis of current world trends. It is a perception that the transformation of the biosphere is inevitably leading to a new geological epoch and evolutionary cycle, and it is due to the impact of human thought on the environment that this new era — the Noosphere — is dawning.

This is a capstone work that integrates all the author’s past works, each linked here.

The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology
Earth Ascending: An Illustrated Treatise on Law Governing Whole Systems
Time and the Technosphere: The Law of Time in Human Affairs
Surfers of the Zuvuya: Tales of Interdimensional Travel
Galactic Meditation: Entering the Synchronic Order
Mandala
The Transformative Vision: Reflections on the Nature and History of Human Expression
Book of the Transcendence: Cosmic History Chronicles Volume 6
The Arcturus Probe: Tales and Reports of an Ongoing Investigation
The Call of Pacal Votan: Time is the Fourth Dimension

and more. One could spend a lifetime on this author’s reflections.

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David Swanson

War and Being and Nothingness

The best book I’ve read in a very long time is a new one: The End of War by John Horgan. Its conclusions will be vigorously resisted by many and yet, in a certain light, considered perfectly obvious to some others. The central conclusion — that ending the institution of war is entirely up to us to choose — was, arguably, reached by (among many others before and since) John Paul Sartre sitting in a café utilizing exactly no research.

Horgan is a writer for “Scientific American,” and approaches the question of whether war can be ended as a scientist. It’s all about research. He concludes that war can be ended, has in various times and places been ended, and is in the process (an entirely reversible process) of being ended on the earth right now.

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The war abolitionists of the 1920s Outlawry movement would have loved this book, would have seen it as a proper extension of the ongoing campaign to rid the world of war. But it is a different book from theirs. It does not preach the immorality of war. That idea, although proved truer than ever by the two world wars, failed to prevent the two world wars. When an idea’s time has come and also gone, it becomes necessary to prove to people that the idea wasn’t rendered impossible or naïve by “human nature” or grand forces of history or any other specter. Horgan, in exactly the approach required, preaches the scientific observation of the success (albeit incomplete as yet) of preaching the immorality of war.

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Jeffrey D. Clements

5.0 out of 5 stars It’s Worse Than We Thought But More Easily Fixed Than We Imagined,January 8, 2012

David C N Swanson (Charlottesville VA United States) – See all my reviews<

This book should mainstream the campaign to end corporate personhood.

Clements traces the development of the legal doctrine of corporate personhood back long before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision two years ago this month, in particular to President Richard Nixon’s appointment of Lewis Powell to the Supreme Court in 1972. Led by Powell’s radical new conception of corporate rights, Clements shows, the court began striking down laws that protected living breathing persons’ rights in areas including the environment, tobacco, public health, food, drugs, financial regulation, and elections.

In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that corporations had speech rights that prevented banning their money from an election, a conclusion that might have been nearly incomprehensible a decade earlier before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and various corporate foundations began filling our public discourse with phrases like “corporate speech.” In 1980 Congress forbade the Federal Trade Commission from protecting children or students from junk food advertising and sales. In 1982 corporate speech rights in the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a state law that had attempted to block energy companies from promoting greater energy consumption. In the 1990s, the Monsanto corporation, whose genetically engineered drug was banned in many countries, won the right to include it in milk in the United States and the “right not to speak,” thereby overturning a law requiring that milk be labeled to indicate the drug’s presence.

Decision after decision has extended corporate rights to a position of priority over actual human rights on everything from food and water and air to education and healthcare and wars. The ground has shifted. In 1971 Lewis Powell argued on behalf of the cigarette companies that they had a corporate person’s right to use cartoons and misleading claims to get young people hooked on nicotine, and he was laughed out of court. In 2001, the Supreme Court struck down a state law banning cigarette ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds. The reason? The sacred right of the corporate person, which carries more weight now than the rights of the people of a community to protect their children … er, excuse me, their “replacement smokers.”

And why do corporate rights carry so much weight? One reason is that, as Clements documents and explains, “transnational corporations now dominate our government” through election spending. This is why a civilized single-payer health coverage system like those found in the rest of the wealthy nations of the world is not “practical.” This is why cutting military spending back to 2007 levels would mean “amageddon” even though in 2007 it didn’t. This is why our government hands oil corporations not only wars and highways but also massive amounts of good old money. This is why we cannot protect our mountains or streams but can go to extraordinary lengths to protect our investment bankers.

“Since the Citizens United decision in 2010,” Clements writes, “hundreds of business leaders have condemned the decision and have joined the work for a constitutional amendment to overturn expanded corporate rights.” You might not learn this from the corporate media, but there is a widespread and growing mainstream understanding that abuse by oversized mega-corporations has been disastrous for ordinary businesses as well as communities, families, and individuals. Clements’ turns out to be a pro-business, albeit anti-U.S. Chamber of Commerce, book.

And what can be done? We can build an independent, principled, and relentless Occupy movement and include as a central demand the amending of the U.S. Constitution to end corporate personhood. Clements’ book offers a draft amendment, a sample resolution, a collection of frequently asked questions (and answers), a list of organizations, websites, resources, books, and campaigns.

This is doable, and it is what we should do this election year so that in future election years we might actually have elections.

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Walter Pater, Matthew Beaumont

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Literary Minutia–Not At All What I Expected,November 20, 2011

I bought this book on the basis of a rave mention of it in one of the other books I reviewed, it might have been a year ago. It’s been sitting in my airplane pile for a while.

At a professional level of erudite literary dissection and amplification, this is clearly both a supreme professional accomplishment and a labor of love. From the note to the bibliography to the chronology, this is one of the best constructed and presented “packages” I have ever held in my hands.

It leaves me cold. I simply do not see, feel, or comprehend the bru-ha-ha over this being a clarion call to flagrant abandon, an ode to homosexuality, a challenge to the ruling class, etcetera.

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Paul Krassner

5.0 out of 5 stars Less Funny, More Provocative–Price is a WOW,November 20, 2011

First, a confession. I am 59 years old and had no idea who Paul Krassner was/is. The more I read through the book the more I marveled at his pioneering endeavors and their continuing relevance as Occupy struggles to find its voice and focus. So for all the folks that don’t know who Paul Krassner is, at under $3.00 this book is a WOW value, and I recommend it for that alone.

This is NOT a funny book. There are a few places here and there where one can see the deep tragic comedy possibility, but more than anything this is a very provocative book that beats a single theme: the obscenity of all that we allow to be done in our name, to our bodies and our environment, to our families, schools, economy, and the Republic itself. Obscene, they name is a two-party tyranny and a Congress so corrupt they shame every dictator (all 40+ of them, all but two “best pals” of the US Government) in their craven greed and lack of democratic integrity.

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Mitch Ratcliffe, Jon Lebkowsky

5.0 out of 5 stars SIX STAR #OWS Primer Wow Wow Wow,October 20, 2011

I bought this book in October 2010 because I was getting to know both Mitch Ratcliff and Jon Lebkowsky better, but at first pass through it did not really draw me in. Then OccupyWallStreet happened. I read the book on the flight from the US to Spain where I am talking about commercial intelligence and integrity in the messed up new world, and this time around, the book grabbed me.

Because #OWS has brought to life the ideas the co-editors and various contributing authors understood well before 2004 and articulated in 2004, now I can absorb this book as much more meaningful and inspirational. Anyone associated with OccupyWallStreet in any way from direct to indirect, should read this book. I am donating my copy to the George Mason University Library as I do all my new books (they took over my entire library when I joined the UN back in 2010).

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John Buchanan

Gets to the very crux of our nation’s ills.,September 27, 2009

John Buchanan understands the true spirit of our nation and puts his finger smack on all the ways we’ve strayed away from that spirit. This is the first social studies volume every high school kid should read. This book is so right on it hurts. Get this book; read it; then go out there and save your nation — these United States — from those greedy insiders who have high jacked it for their own evil gains.

Phi Beta Iota:  The Occupy movement in the USA that has emerged in Sep-Oct 2011 is a manifestation of the ideas in this book, and the urgent needs identified but not assimilated in 2005 and earlier.

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John Lenczowski

5.0 out of 5 stars Long Needed Treatise, But Too Expensive,September 21, 2011

EDIT of 11 December 2011: Gene Poteat, President of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) has an excellent review of this book in the Summer/Fall 2011 issue of Intelligencer. The following quote is from his review, it captures the essence with perfection:

“The weakness and deteriorating standing of America in the world today is the failure to take into account the role of information, disinformation, ideas, values, culture, and religion plays in the influence and conduct of foreign and national security policy.”

While the above glosses over the corporate capture and abject corruption of all three branches of the Federal government, it certainly summarizes and recommends the book in question. See also my graphic, “Information Pathologies,” loaded above next to cover.

End Edit

In the midst of an economic depression, it is a real shame to see a book that is so very relevant to unscrewing the Republic, and also see the same book terribly over-priced. At 230 pages this book should be offered at 24.95, and a donor should be found to permit the author to speak to the Department of State via the Secretary’s Open Forum, with a free copy of the book to every person attending.

Click on Image to Enlarge

The author is the founder of the Institute of World Politics, a rather unique institution that offers three Masters programs and that strives to do what no other university can claim: to teach a mastery of all of the instruments of national power, and to teach how culture, ethics, strategy, and philosophy can come together to drive Whole of Government planning, programming, budgeting, and execution so as to advance both the prosperity and the protection of the Republic.

This book came to my attention after I found and truly enjoyed another book out of the Institute of World Policy, by Cultural Intelligence for Winning the Peace by Juliana Geran Pilon. Everything I read about the Institute, or by those associated with it, offers a very strong, coherent, culturally-compelling vision of how to advance positive values inherent in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America.

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Juliana Geran Pilon (Author)

EDIT of 10 Sep 2011 to add more specifics and a concluding judgment.

I am delighted to see that Look Inside the Book has been activated and urge one and all to look over the table of contents and then buy the book. This is a preliminary review, mostly because it causes me pain to see no review at all on this important work. A copy of the book is on the way to me from the publisher. I will insert my substantive additional comments in a few days.

The book is in the Ada Bozeman tradition, and brings back to mind my continuing recommendation that no one be allowed to graduate from any serious international studies or international security course without reading at least the 25-page introduction, but ideally the full work:

Strategic Intelligence & Statecraft: Selected Essays (Brassey’s Intelligence and National Security Library)

She is to intelligence and statecraft what Will and Ariel Durant are to the study of history.

It distresses me to observe that we have not come far since this book was published, with many failures across the fifteen slices of human intelligence (HUMINT) among which are included the Human Terrain Teams (HTT) that I believe should be absorbed into the new active duty Civil Affairs Brigade with regional battalions. This would be an excellent time to hold a conference and do a follow-on book, this time integrating both the full spectrum of HUMINT capabilities, and the new meme, Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2).

Within this book, several of the chapters stand out for me:

“Hybrid Wars” by Col John J. mccuen, USA (Ret)

QUOTE (75): “Hybrid war appears new in that it requires simultaneous rather than sequential success in these diverse but related ‘population battlegrounds.’”

“Avoiding the Cookie Cutter Approach to Culture: Lessons Learned from Operations in East Africa,” by Maj Christopher H. Varhola USAR and LtCol Laura R. Varhola, USA

QUOTE (156): Inadequate preparation and planning (today) “Despite the lessons learned in Iraq, operations like those ongoing in Kenya and Tanzania are marked by high personnel turnover. Moverow, most of the personnel desployed there have received little or no training on the region, have no Swahili language ability, and do not have a chain of command insisting that they learn the indigneous language in situ [which would not matter since they rotate out so quickly."

Key lessons not learned in Africa Command (AFRICOM):

01 Mistaking the power of tribal identity
02 Overlooking cultural complexity
03 Dubious public affairs efforts
04 Misunderstanding religious influence
05 Ignoring economic and power relations

I am stunned--stunned beyond belief--that military commanders desperate for a culture belly-button have tended to appoint the predominantly Christian chaplains to that position. Talk about the blind leading the deaf.

"Fourth Generation Warfare evolves, Fifth Emerges," by Col T. X. Hammes, USMC (Ret).

QUOTE (312): Fifth-generation warfare will result from the continued shift of political and social loyalties to causes rather than nations."

Col Hammes provides a very tight opening on how most of the US Government refused to take 4th Generation warfare seriously (even after Al Qaeda stated that this was their focus), and does a nice job of showing how all generations of warfare continue to be present while fifth generation emerges in which the emphasis is on a global strategic narrative (information operations) with supporting violent actions.

The book ends with an all too short piece from Antulio Echevarria II, one of the top scholars at the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), on "Wars of Ideas and the War of Ideas, and that is perhaps the irony of this superb work brouight together by editor Juliana Geran Pilon: despite the excellence of this specific book, and the coherence of the contributions from all of the authors, the US Government generally, including the Department of State, and the Department of Defense more specficially, are in the toilet when it comes to recognizing the cultural nuances of confrontation in the 21st Century.

I am reminded of Tony Zinni's brilliant distinction among the six different wars that were waged in Viet-Nam all at the same time depending the geographic and demographic terrain, this author takes the concept a step further to posit something that does not exist but should: Whole of Government Multinational Multifunctional War-Peace Spectrum Operations--full court press on all fronts, not just the military front.

Here are a tiny handful of books that I respect along with this one, on this topic. The US Government is massively ignorant about reality and especially about cultural nuances, so all of these books are vital to anyone who has aspirations of public or private service in the international arena, who wishes to display integrity in all respects. Any fool can lecture the "other," understanding them is quite another matter.

Solving the People Puzzle: Cultural Intelligence and Special Operations Forces
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition
Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq
One Man, One Cow, One Planet
Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order
God and Science: Coming Full Circle?
Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution
Anthropologists in the Public Sphere: Speaking Out on War, Peace, and American Power
Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War

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