6 Star Top 10% – Page 31 – Public Intelligence Blog

2005/01/152009/12/04

Review DVD: Tibet – Cry of the Snow Lion (2003)

6 Star Top 10%, Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Liberation through Knowledge: Absorbing,

January 15, 2005

Shirley Knight

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add other significant DVDs.

Halfway through this probing, sensitive, sharp, spiritual documentary film I thought to myself, “wow, this is what CIA covert propaganda *should* be able to produce” and then instantly corrected myself: David Ignatius of the Washington Post has it right: overt action is vastly superior to covert action, and in this instance, a loose coalition of kindred spirits have come together in time and focus to produce something remarkable, something much more threatening to Chinese behavior in Tibet than any military armada: a collage of truth-telling.

This is a world-class documentary, full of vivid images, well-blended historical and modern footage, and extremely good production planning and voice over editing. Early on I was struck by the similarity between the Tibetans, the Native Americans, and the Guatemalan Indians, all of whom share some basic moral precepts.

The portrait painted of Tibet as a nation committed to the concept of spiritual education, is a compelling one. One analogy offered up by one of those interviewed I found especially compelling: Tibet was spending 85% of its budget on spiritual development, with 10% of its population in monasteries–this being the equivalent of America redirecting its entire defense budget toward education.

The documentary will clearly infuriate the Chinese, for it carefully itemizes the many ways in which Tibet is uniquely Tibetan, including in its language, greatly distant from Chinese. Shown are Chinese torture instruments, including electrical cattle prods used in the vaginas of nuns and the mouths and throats of monks. The photographs are graphic.

Also covered are the genocide, the torture, imposed by the Chinese, as well as the loss of morality–625 brothels to serve the Chinese garrison.

The documentary carefully covered the death of 30 million Chinese and half the Tibetan population that resulted from Mao Tse Tung's order that Tibet grow wheat instead of barley–shades of the Soviet Union and its failed socialist agriculture.

6,200 monasteries destroyed–as one Tibetan government official in exile notes, this is not just places of worship, but places of scholarship and cradles of a specific civilization.

A section of the documentary focuses on CIA training of the Tibetan resistance, the conclusion of the Tibetans themselves that CIA was not serious, only providing enough support to enable harassment but not victory, and then the coup de grace–Henry Kissinger selling Tibet out for the sake of engagement.

A very powerful section points out that the US, with its 89 billion dollar a year trade imbalance with China, is in fact subsidizing Chinese repression and genocide, not only against Tibet, but against Muslims in China and other separatists elements. US business, according to this documentary, has sold democracy out in favor of profit.

As the documentary drew to an end, I found myself asking again: is this CIA propaganda, as the Chinese would have us believe? Or is the Dalai Lama is fact the representative of a group that may well be the soul of the world, a kernel of hope for non-violent resolution to all that ails us? I found myself wishing that we did indeed have a more effective People's Intelligence Agency (PIA), one that I could trust, one that we could all trust, to actually get the facts right, without political, economic, or cultural manipulation and distortion.

I was educated by this documentary. I had never really thought about Tibet as other than a spiritual oddity. This documentary very effectively points out that it can and should be a zone of peace, not least because it is situated between China and India, two of the most populous nations on earth, between them holding one half of the earth's population, and both of them nuclear *and* poor.

The documentary ends on a high note. It explicitly calls for liberation through knowledge and compassion, and one educator is very effective in pointing out that no one expected apartheid to end in South Africa, or the Berlin Wall to fall, yet both came to pass. Tibet, by this telling, is next.

This is an eye-opening, intelligent, visually-stimulating, and spiritually unnerving documentary. These people–both the observers and the observed–have served us all well.

2004/11/192009/12/04

Review DVD: Bonhoeffer (2003)

6 Star Top 10%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only)

Beyond 5 Stars–Gripping Good Stuff,

November 19, 2004

Eberhard Bethge

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

My short notes on this incredible film:

* Possible for 1 man to detect evil early on, and to resist evil

* Bonhoeffer excelled at pointing out that for any man or nation to presume that God takes sides or endorses any particular position is very pretentious

* God is *community* — God is present to the extent that community of man thrives

* If the working poor turn away from the church, it is failing; if the petty bourgeoisie flock to the church it is failing and pretentious

* In times of economic crisis, fascism can be attractive to BOTH the industrial leaders AND the forlorn working poor

* New York fellowship focused him on social ethics, energized him with exposure to writing by black authors, pious singing within black churches

* Purpose of ethics and theology is to change the world for the better

* Adam Clayton Powell Senior made the black church in New York into a political and social force

* Black Christ has rapturous passion, contrasts sharply with white didactic Christ

* Friendships with pacifists taught him that “nothing in scripture permits man to destroy the body of Christ” (the community)

* For every person that is unemployed, 2-5 go hungry

* Hitler called on God, claimed God, Quoted God. For Hitler, God was a “completely ideological God” according to Bishop Wolfgang Huber, one of those interviewed

* Church in Germany was guilty of preparing the way for Hitler, setting the stage for an authoritarian or “acceptance” state

* At 27, Bonhoeffer addressed nation via radio, suggested that the leader as “idol” was sacrilegious. His broadcast was cut off.

* Bonhoeffer brought the Bible alive–taught his student to read the Bible as if God were *here and now* speaking to *you* personally.

* Hitler called on God, but he was actually in competition with God for the role of SAVIOR of the German people.

* Hitler legalized church prejudices against Jews going back to Martin Luther

* Must distinguish between anti-Judaism (conflict of faiths) and anti-Semitism (racism)

* According to Bonhoeffer, Church has three options in times of crisis and state abuse:

1) Ask the State if its actions are legitimate

2) Support the victims (Bonhoeffer is specific in saying Church must support all victims, even if not part of the Church)

3) Oppose the State

His work focused on the ease with which false loyalty (e.g. to a President rather than a Constitution), false Church is a easy path for most.

Catholic Church signed a Concordat with Hitler, agreeing not to resist.

Others did resist–Pastors Emergency League, claimed 7,000 members out of a possible 27,000

Bonhoeffer was so exceptional that he was invited by Gandhi to visit him

“Peace is the opposite of security” (one is actual, the other is enforced)

* Study, service, prayer.

* Oppressed people of color have piety and also have something to teach to all Christians.

* What cost oppression? The cost is the loss of God.

* War, and the persecution of Jews, are injustice incarnate. “One is not true to God when one has a lax conception of war or of justice,” This according to Bishop Albrecht Schonherr

* Bonhoeffer was a double agent, engaged in plot to kill Hitler

* Ethics is situational–will of God has infinite variations. Ethics is less about principles and more about flexibility. Ethics is an act of faith–every minute, every day.

* Hitler dominated Germany for over a decade.

* Bonhoeffer was marched naked to the gallows and hung. His last words, “For me this is the beginning of life.”

* His message: live completely in this world–thus do we throw ourselves into the hands of God–take ALL suffering seriously.

This was a moving DVD. It offers superb organization, superb visuals, and superb choral music in the background. This DVD was so thoughtful I found myself replaying sections 3X to 5X.

This was so good it has focused me on my next book–instead of national security (forced peace)–I am going for INFORMATION PEACEKEEPING: Ethics, Theology, and Collective Intelligence (inherent peace).

If you've gotten this far, you need to see this DVD. Available at Blockbuster and also well worth buying as a recurring reflection piece .

2004/08/252009/12/04

Review DVD: Gandhi (1982)

6 Star Top 10%, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, DVD - Light, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Leadership, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only)

Basic Introduction to Achieving World Peace,

August 25, 2004

Ben Kingsley

Edit: The core point below is that clashes of millions of adherents of different religions, i.e. Catholic versus everyone else, Muslim versus Hindu, are not new, and the past does indeed demonstrate that force of arms is an ineffective means–indeed a pathological means that makes it worse–for addressing such schisms. Gandhi, and Gandhi alone, has shown the way with proven success at the level of Nations and Peoples.

9-11 focused some of us, but not enough of us, on the monumental issues of war and peace such as have not occurred since World War II–the Cold War being, as Derek Leebaert documents so well in “The Fifty Year Wound”, a false war, one with enormous costs to all mankind.

I bought this video recently–having seen it many years ago–to refresh my memory on the essence of Gandhi and his proven concept of non-violent resistance. The DVD capped several years of reading in the non-fiction national security arena (see my other 470+ reviews on war and peace), and has proven to be the ultimate primer as well as the ultimate Master's Seminar.

This is the movie to watch if you want to get down to fundamentals; Gandhi's three basic lessons of war and peace as shown so beautifully here are these: 1) the only devils are in our own minds; 2) the separation of Pakistan and India, like the separation of Palestine and Israel, violated the civil order between Muslims and Hindus, and destroyed all that Gandhi had achieved: peaceful coexistence of peoples within a single nation; and 3) in the end, after great pain, truth and love inevitably triumph.

Although I was tempted to fast-forward to the current six-front 100-year war between radicalized Islam and militarized America on the one hand, and between impoverished billions and corporate America on the other, I paused to reflect on the past first. It was the Spanish who first committed genocide against the American Indians, who expelled the Muslims and then the Jews, who sponsored the Inquisition and the Crusades. It was the British who stupidly pitted Muslim against Hindu in their attempts to assert their imperial will–nothing makes them look as stupid as the movie's coverage of how the “Empire” forbade the locals to take salt from their very own sea: the Indian Sea.

Now I fast forward to our current circumstances, with special reference to Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World,” perhaps complemented by Clyde Prestowitz' “Rogue Nation” (the US), and Chalmers Johnson “Sorrows of Empire”–and the other 470+ books relevant to war and peace today. Bottom line: boy, have we screwed this up. First off, invading Afghanistan made Al Qaeda stronger, not weaker. Second off, invading Iraq has made America weaker, not stronger, and inflamed the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Africa, the Pacific Rim, and the Muslim populations in the Americas.

We need a Gandhi. I cannot think of any modern leader who is even close, although the current Pope has certainly tried. This movie depicts, in terms stark and relevant, the opposite of 9-11–the clash of mobs driven by ideology or religion, completely oblivious to the core facts that Gandhi tried to teach: non-violence, love, truth, the Golden Rule. All else is evil.

If you have time for just one serious DVD, this is it.

2004/06/212009/12/04

Review DVD: The Fog of War – Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

6 Star Top 10%, Biography & Memoirs, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), War & Face of Battle

Every Miltary Person, and Ideally Every Citizen, SHould View,

June 21, 2004

Robert McNamara

This is the only documentary film to make it on to my list of 470+ non-fiction books relevant to national security & global issues. It is superb, and below I summarize the 11 lessons with the intent of documenting how every military person, and ideally every citizen, should view this film.As the U.S. military goes through the motions of “transformation” while beset by the intense demands of being engaged in a 100-year war on six-fronts around the world, all of them against asymmetric threats that we do not understand and are not trained, equipped, nor organized to deal with, this film is startlingly relevant and cautionary.

LESSON 1: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. We must see ourselves as they see us, we must see their circumstances as they see them, before we can be effective.

LESSON 2: RATIONALITY WILL NOT SAVE US. Human fallibility combined with weapons of mass destruction will destroy nations. Castro has 162 nuclear warheads already on the island, and was willing to accept annihilation of Cuba as the cost of upholding his independence and honor.

LESSON 3: THERE'S SOMETHING BEYOND ONESELF. History, philosophy, values, responsibility–think beyond your niche.

LESSON 4: MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY. Although this was McNamara's hallmark, and the fog of war demands redundancy, he has a point: we are not maximizing how we spend $500B a year toward world peace, and are instead spending it toward the enrichment of select corporations, building things that don't work in the real world.

LESSON 5: PROPORTIONALITY SHOULD BE A GUIDELINE IN WAR. McNamara is clearly still grieving over the fact that we firebombed 67 Japanese cities before we ever considered using the atomic bomb, destroying 50% to 90% of those cities.

LESSON 6: GET THE DATA. It is truly appalling to realize that the U.S. Government is operating on 2% of the relevant information, in part because it relies heavily on foreign allies for what they want to tell us, in part because the U.S. Government has turned its back on open sources of information. Marc Sageman, in “Understanding Networks of Terror”, knows more about terrorism today than do the CIA or FBI, because he went after the open source data and found the patterns. There is a quote from a Senator in the 1960's that is also compelling, talking about “an instability of ideas” that are not understood, leading to erroneous decisions in Washington. For want of action, we forsook thought.

LESSON 7: BELIEF & SEEING ARE BOTH OFTEN WRONG. With specific reference to the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as the failure of America to understand that the Vietnamese were fighting for independence from China, not just the French or the corrupt Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, McNamara blows a big whole in the way the neo-cons “believed” themselves into the Iraq war, and took America's blood, treasure, and spirit with them.

LESSON 8: BE PREPARED TO RE-EXAMINE YOUR REASONING. McNamara is blunt here: if your allies are not willing to go along with you, consider the possibility that your reasoning is flawed.

LESSON 9: IN ORDER TO DO GOOD, YOU MAY HAVE TO ENGAGE IN EVIL. Having said that, he recommends that we try to maximize ethics and minimize evil. He is specifically concerned with what constitutes a war crime under changing circumstances.

LESSON 10: NEVER SAY NEVER. Reality and the future are not predictable. There are no absolutes. We should spend more time thinking back over what might have been, be more flexible about taking alternative courses of action in the future.

LESSON 11: YOU CAN'T CHANGE HUMAN NATURE. There will always be war, and disaster. We can try to understand it, and deal with it, while seeking to calm our own human nature that wants to strike back in ways that are counter-productive.

For those who dismiss this movie because McNamara does not apologize, I say “pay attention.” The entire movie is an apology, both direct from McNamara, and indirect in the manner that the producer and director have peeled away his outer defenses and shown his remorse at key points in the film. I strongly recommend the book by McNamara and James Blight, “WILSON's GHOST.” In my humble opinion, in the context of the 470+ non-fiction books I have reviewed here, McNamara and Bill Colby are the two Viet-Nam era officials that have grown the most since leaving office. He has acquired wisdom since leaving defense, and we ignore this wisdom at our peril.

2004/01/252009/12/04

Review: The Life and Death of NSSM 200 –How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy

6 Star Top 10%, Budget Process & Politics, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Intense, Well-Structured, Mind-Glazing, Valuable,

January 25, 2004

Stephen D. Mumford

Although I have had this book in my possession for months, it kept slipping to the bottom of the pile because it is an excruciatingly detailed look at one very specific policy area–that of population. I was mistaken in thinking that the book was so detailed as to be boring or difficult to grasp.On the contrary, the author has done a superb job, in partnership with the publisher, in presenting a great deal of important information in a readable font size and form.

For me, the book is important in two ways. First, it tells me there is a person out there who really understands all this stuff in detail, and can help me rethink our national policy when the time comes that we have a sane White House willing to be serious about this vital long-term matter.

Second, it lists up front the various areas that impact on population policy (drawing on the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future) and is worth the price of the book for this superb list (each with a paragraph about the sub-policy area): Population Education; Sex Education; Child Care; Children Born Out of Wedlock; Adoption; Equal Rights for Women; Contraception and the Law; Contraception and Minors; Voluntary Sterilization; Abortion; Methods of Fertility Control; Fertility-Related Health Services; Personnel Training and Delivery of Services; Family Planning Services; Services for Teenagers; Population Stabilization; Illegal Aliens; Immigration; National Distribution and Migration Policies; Guiding Urban Expansion; Racial Minorities and the Poor; Depressed Rural Areas; Institutional Responses; Population Statistics and Research; Vital Statistical Data; Enumeration of Special Groups; International Migration; Current Population Survey; Statistical Reporting of Family Planning Services; National Survey of Family Growth; Distribution of Government Data; Mid-Decade Census; Statistical Use of Administrative Records; Intercensal Population Estimates; Social and Behavioral Research; Research Program in Population Distribution; Federal Government Population Research; Support for Professional Training; Organizational Changes; Office of Population Affairs in the Department of Health, National Institute of Population Sciences; Department of Community Development; Office of Population Growth and Distribution; Council of Social Advisors; Joint Committee on Population; State Population Agencies and Commissions; Private Efforts and Population Policy.

The author makes a very strong case for how, as his subtitle suggests, US population policy has been doomed by a lack of political will and the inappropriate influence of the Catholic Church and Mexico, in addition to strong private sector interests seeking low-wage workers while avoiding any associated social costs that are put on to the taxpayer.

I consider this book a primary reference that will be needed soon as America becomes more thoughtful and participatory democracy is restored. Population policy is fundamental. Missing from the official documents are serious discussions about citizenship, civics, ethics, morality, the restoration of the one-income two-parent family as the foundation for a strong nation, and the role that taxation policy can play in strengthening families while holding employers accountable for not making illegal immigration sustainable by hiring undocumented aliens.

2004/01/132009/12/04

Review: The Lessons of History

6 Star Top 10%, History, Philosophy

A once-in-a-lifetime foundation reading, get it used,

January 13, 2004

Will Durant

Edit of 20 Oct 08 to use new feature to add links.

This is the first book that I discuss in my national security lecture on the literature relevant to strategy & force structure. It is a once-in-a-lifetime gem of a book that sums up their much larger ten volume collection which itself is brilliant but time consuming. This is the “executive briefing.”

Geography matters. Inequality is natural. Famine, pestilence, and war are Nature's way of balancing the population.

Birth control (or not) has *strategic* implications (e.g. see Catholic strategy versus US and Russian neglect of its replenishment among the higher social and economic classes).

History is color-blind. Morality is strength. Worth saying again: morality is strength.

They end with “the only lasting revolution is in the mind of man.” In other words, technology is not a substitute for thinking by humans.

See my various lists. Other books I recommend:
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Age of Missing Information (Plume)
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2003/11/302009/12/04

Review: Breaking the Real Axis of Evil–How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025

6 Star Top 10%, America (Anti-America), Congress (Failure, Reform), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Single Most Important Work of the Century for American Moral Diplomacy,

November 30, 2003

Mark Palmer

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links and new comment,

New Comment: In my view, this is the single most important work of the century with respect to American moral diplomacy. I note with concern that under Bush-Cheney “Failed States” have increased from 75 in 2005 to 177 in 2007. We've lost our mind, and our morals, as a Nation.

Ambassador Mark Palmer puts to rest all those generally unfair stereotypes of Foreign Service Officers as “cookie pushing” softies who fall in love with their host countries and blame America for any flaws in the bi-lateral relationship. With this book he provides an inspiring model for precisely what every Foreign Service Officer should aspire: to understand, to articulate, and then to implement very great goals that serve democracy and help extend the bounty of the American way of life–moral capitalism and shared wealth–to every corner of the world.

This is a detailed and practical book, not just visionary. It is useful and inspiring, not just a personal view. It is also a damning indictment of fifty years of US White House and Congressional politics, where in the name of anti-communism and cheap oil America–regardless of which party has been in power, has been willing to consort with the most despotic, ruthless, murderous regimes in the history of mankind. Still alive today and still very much “friends” of the U.S. Government are dictators that think nothing of murdering millions.

There has been some improvement, offset by an increase in partly free countries. From 69 countries not free at all in 1972 we now have 47. From 38 countries partly free in 1972 we now have 56, many of those remnants of the former Soviet Union. Free countries have nearly doubled from 43 to 89, but free and poor is quite a different thing from free and prosperous.

The level of detail and also of brevity in this book is quite satisfying. On the one hand, Ambassador Palmer provides ample and well-documented discussion of the state of the world, on the other he does not belabor the matter–his one to two-paragraph summative descriptions of each of the dictatorships is just enough, just right.

He distinguishes between Personalistic Dictatorships (20, now less Hussein in Iraq); Monarch Dictators (7, with Saudi Arabia being the first in class); Military Dictators (5, with US allies Sudan and Pakistan and 1 and 2 respectively); Communist Dictators (5); Dominant-Party Dictators (7); and lastly, Theocratic Dictators (1, Iran).

Ambassador Palmer makes several important points with this book, and I summarize them here: 1) conventional wisdom of the past has been flawed–we should not have sacrificed our ideals for convenience; 2) dictatorships produce inordinate amounts of collateral damage that threatens the West, from genocide and mass migrations to disease, famine, and crime; 3) there is a business case to be made for ending U.S. support for dictatorships, in that business can profit more from stable democratic regimes over the long-term; and lastly, 4) that the U.S. should sanction dictators, not their peoples, and we can begin by denying them and all their cronies visas for shopping expeditions in the US.

The book has an action agenda that is worthy, but much more important is the clear and present policy that Ambassador Palmer advocates, one that is consistent with American ideals as well as universal recognition of human rights. Ambassador Palmer's work, on the one hand, shows how hypocritical and unethical past Administrations have been–both Democratic and Republican–and on the other, he provides a clear basis for getting us back on track.

I agree with his proposition that we should have a new Undersecretary for Democracy, with two Assistant Secretaries, one responsible for voluntary democratic transitions, the other for dealing with recalcitrant dictators. Such an expansion of the Department of State would work well with a similar change in the Pentagon, with a new Undersecretary for Peacekeeping Operations and Complex Emergencies, my own idea.

This is a very fine book, and if it helps future Foreign Service Officers to understand that diplomacy is not just about “getting along” but about making very significant changes in the world at large, then Ambassador Palmer's work will be of lasting value to us all.

Forthcoming on Amazon in February and also free at OSS.Net/CIB:
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace, edited by Mark Tovey with a Foreword by Yochai Benkler and an Afterword by the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada. I have high hopes for all of us finally getting it right (Winston Churchill: “The Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.”) Now is our time to get it right. We can start by electing Senator Barack Obama as our forward-thinking always listening open-minded President.