Adel Ziani

Concise and gentle effort, but breaks down towards the end

Revisado: 02-04-25

The book is quite dense and offers good value in terms of the wealth of ideas, it needs and deserves several re-listens. It’s a refreshing departure from self help often forceful approach. The book starts breaking down towards the end, when it starts preaching secularism and therefore limiting the listener to the narrow beliefs of the author. Apart from the few final chapters, the book is an excellent resource for self care and inwards compassion.

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A bullies’ guide to verbal harassment

Revisado: 07-09-23

The book tries to equip the morally bankrupt, with a set of shallow, and I mean shallow, methods of argumentation and ways to score cheap shots. It is targeted towards those who lost their humanity, but want to assault those who chose to keep it. It could be used by AI in order to subjugate human beings to their machine logic. Other benefactors, could be alien invaders, from a galaxy without warmth, light, or love.
As a bonus, readers get a glimpse at the authors’ inner void, as they casually, and in the most condescending tone, spread seeds of malevolent arrogance and hateful intolerance.
However, it stops short of giving any resources to those who would end up winning arguments, whilst losing themselves. Maybe it can add a chapter or two, on what what to do when they run out of people to bully.
The only redeeming factor, is a rare glimpse into the superficially eloquent, sociopathic mind.

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A merchant of hate repackages his failed product

Revisado: 03-09-23

After a brief retreat, forced by heroic resistance, Francis Fukuyama is back. He opens with alternative truths, such as “end means goal and intent, rather than what it actually means”. This book is a systematic dehumanising of muslims. This book is an ideological prologue for simmering genocidal endeavours. His dreams of a “pure” identity, are thus revived. He still believes in the elimination of any idea that he judges inferior, and the actual end of history. Fukuyama’s new assault, may result in some impotent rage, but ultimately, it will crush against the rock of courage, resilience, and faith. His legacy is; self righteous arrogance and tyrannical stupidity.

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A convoluted road to nowhere

Revisado: 12-08-22

The first three quarters of the book, are a summary of old school evolutionary social sciences. It takes ages to get to the predictable point, the writer appropriates “the scientific truth”.
The book then takes a brutal right turn, into 1700s colonial territory, In which the heroic western white man, armed with his “science”, “logic” and “innate noble purpose”, battles irrational savages.
In the final chapters, the writer pulls no punches. The xenophobia, Islamophobia, and supremacist intolerance, are let loose in a hysterical rant.
This book is the inarticulate spasms of a dying world view.
“Global brain” is a pathetic attempt to revive “the end of history and the last man”. Decades of bloodshed have not satisfied the thinly veiled hatred to anything different.

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Shameful grafting and ironic misinformation

Revisado: 01-22-21

It is easy to dismiss this book as money-grabbing collection of google search results. Every paragraph seems to contradict the previous one, as the authors enlist every stereotype concerning mass media in the age of the internet, without any effort coherence or purpose. This journey to nowhere becomes dangerous when it nudges the reader to xenophobic view of the world. When it comes to the internet discourse, there are inherently good people: western governments, Facebook, the US army and their psychological operations, mainstream media such as Fox News.. And, according to the book, there are bad people: anyone who dares to differ with those who hold power. Th author enlists no other then: Michael Flynn, who’s job description was deception, the author thought him credible, even after he was convicted of MANIPULATION OF INFORMATION AND LIYING TO THE CONGRESS. It was particularly revolting to read the chapter about military drills that try to deal with the image of “collateral damage”. The book approaches war crimes as a PR issue, not a crime against humanity. The flaccid attempt at philosophical thinking, in the final chapter, is depressingly hilarious, the author regurgitates a number of often conflicting concepts and the tedious journey concludes in nothingness. In conclusion: If you cannot be bothered to google “social media” and press print, this book might help. If you’re self-righteous and averse to critical thinking, this book will reinforce your prejudices. If you’re still undecided about xenophobia, islamophobia, and bigotry, this book will push you in wrong direction. The depressing thing is that I’m an educator who was looking for a useful resource for those who want to get some media literacy, and this is what I found.

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Sickening

Revisado: 08-31-19

As I listened to ‘anatomy of evil’, I first thought it was a regurgitation of gory tales, for a shameless money grab. But, as I persisted through, I realised it was much worse.

The book follows a calculated marketing formula:
- Put a shocking vile picture on your cover.
- Find a misleading title with wide appeal.
- get a collection of newspaper cuts.
- glue them together with a some convoluted rating system.
- tickle emotions with gory detail.
- as inhibition is lowered: insert prejudice. - the pointless emotional journey will leave you wondering in a tunnel of dark fear and looking for a source of light.
- publish book two: the new evil! Which will take you deeper into the tunnel.
- at this point, listeners are a trapped cash cow and a vessel to the author’s self righteousness. Prepare for book three..

Such ‘formula books’ are usually written by journalists or a collaboration of sensational storytellers. Which might forgive the cynical nature of such endeavour. But this book is supposed to have an academic merit!? I honestly cannot say if the book is academia at the service of sensationalism, or, sensationalism at the service of academia. It tries to both. From one paragraph to another, it jumps from scientific claims to opinion to anecdotal mumble. This constant shifting of rhetorical stance, leaves the listener at the mercy of the authors’ whims.

However, the book goes from shameful to troubling, when the author gives a glimpse of they view of humanity. The author vilifies a whole continent with a single anecdote! Apparently, South America is ok with jealousy murders, because the author “remembers” reading an article in Columbia, where a judge shot his wife because he suspected she flirted with another man in a party “that’s normal in this country” the author says! He then goes into another rant, worthy of the most vile bigot, about honour killing in Palestinian society. He uses another anecdote of a parent murdering his daughter because she took a boyfriend. And arbitrarily assigns the crime to “cultural reasons”! I would comprehend such ignorance if it came from a far right radio host, but a university professor?

When addressing hate crimes, the author seems to be allergic to the word: racism. He amazingly manages to glide through the issue without mentioning the word, let alone the culture that begets racism. The last chapter, was especially sickening, as the author addresses war crimes, genocide, torture, and other crimes against humanity. The selective sampling of such crimes is flabbergasting. He either have selective amnesia or is a manifestation of an disconnected and arrogant establishment.
I don’t mean that every single crime against humanity should have been listed, but the sample should at least try to hide the writers’ prejudices.
The criminals and mentally sick serial killers, murderers, torturers, and rapists, have a collective tally in the hundreds. Evil, on the other hand, decimates, starves, and holds billions in perpetual misery.

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esto le resultó útil a 28 personas