5 Star – Page 107 – Public Intelligence Blog

First to Market, More to Come

September 3, 2008

Paul Palmer

The concept discussed by this book has been recently featured The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals And Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World, and I therefore anticipate a flood of books on this topic, but hopefully helping each specific industry get to its own understanding.

Other books I recommend include:
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage
Green Chemistry and the Ten Commandments of Sustainability, 2nd ed
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
The Future of Life

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2008/08/282014/03/28

Review: Reinventing Knowledge–From Alexandria to the Internet

5 Star, Communications, Education (General), Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology

Internet is NOT a Great Leap Forward in Reinventing Knowledge, August 28, 2008

Ian F. McNeely

Edit of 29 August 2008: Am adding a couple of images to help clarify the importance of actually understanding new ways of creating, sharing, and leveraging knowledge. YES, the Internet has led to an order of magnitude or more knowledge creation and sharing but NO, it has not led to a dramatic change in the definition of knowledge or the role played by knowledge.

With a tip of the hat to SALON and book reviewer Laura Miller, whose review can be found at the URL in the comment, I want to add this book to those I recommend for the growing body of citizens who are truly skeptical of the Internet as a panacea, and suspicious of Google and other “snake oil” vendors.

Use the “see inside the book” feature just under the book cover above to examine details provided by the publisher.

Bottom line: we are entering a period when the “wealth of networks” may reinvent knowledge, but having read and reviewed The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals And Organizations Are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World only to be stunned at the end with its discussion of how many non-human primates are learning 500-1000 human words in sign language, I am now convinced, from a system of systems perspective, that the next big leap in reinventing knowledge will be not the emergence of smart mobs, armies of davids, the power of us, but rather, when Pierre Tielhard de Chardin's noosphere becomes a reality, and all living things have co-equal standing “in communion” with one another.

The nicest thing I can say about this book, other than to recommend it, is to link to other books that support the thesis the book presents: the Internet is NOT the big leap forward.

Review: slide:ology–The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

5 Star, Communications, Decision-Making & Decision-Support

AMAZING–not about slides, about mind to mind communication, August 26, 2008

Nancy Duarte

I just destroyed this book with folded pages and ink annotations, so the perfectionists out there may want to order two copies, one for eating and one for sharing. The price is phenomenally reasonable, especially for something that is all color and totally elegant.

This is not about powerpoint slides. If anything, it is a very subtle but explicit critique of how retarded they still are (e.g. no separation between bullet groups). This is an utterly inspiring combination of wisdom, education, visual excitement, and plain fun that “lives” what it preaches.

When I get back to the office I am going to read this book again while I create a briefing on the Earth Intelligence Network and educating the poor one cell call at a time that respects the deep knowledge being imparted by this author and her team. Mills Davis, visualization and semantic genius (Project10X) called my presentation “dense” yesterday, and I needed this book to understand just how polite he was being.

Bottom line mechanically: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 font size MINIMJM. For the advanced audiences, 20 slides, 20 seconds each, 6 minutes and 20 seconds total.

I read and reread sections, and the recurring thought in my head was that this book may well be all one needs to run a semester long course on the communication of important complex ideas. The author does not just show a correct slide, the author breaks down every aspect (e.g. fonts, color, grid layouts, use of images, creating your own art) into separate chapters with very ably-illustrated palettes covering all the options. I have a note on this, “nuances are unpackaged and illustrated.”

I note the author's admonition that change across the presentation is a distraction, that animation should support the message and the continuity of understanding.

For large organizations, the author covers templates as a means of harnessing the diversity of knowledge of varied functions and employees, while maintaining a consistency of brand. BRAND is huge within this book, and in this book BRAND is not a legal term, it is a philosophical term. I am hugely impressed by a chart showing UK companies that treat BRAND as a design imperative being so much more competitive and profitable than those that do not. This book is not just asserttions and demonstrations, it is fact and case based and eminently authoritative.

I learn for the first time that powerpoint slides can be instantly made to be black and white to focus audience on the speaker, or made all white, by pressing B or W. Why didn't I learn that from Microsoft? Because their tool bar is not designed to teach….perhaps?

Special pages for me:

10-11 The Presentation Ecosystem (Message, Story, Delivery)
12-13 Time Estimate for world-class presentations (36-90 hours)
18-19 Rick Justice and 27 slides on eight topics (organization)
58-59 Making Diagtrams Work Together
64-65 Following the Five Data Slide Rules (Tell the Truth is Rule 1)
82-83 The (Financial) Value of Good Design
116-117 Lose the logo on every slide….
142-143 Dissecting a font (this section alone was HUGE eye-opener)
148-149 Typesetting a block of text (what powerpoint does not do)

The references are phenomenal, and comprise an instant library for any person, firm, or school of design. I only have ten links allowed, so below I list the reference categories, and link to a single book from the multiples identified–no disrespect intended for the others!

DESIGN
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)

BRANDING
The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design

VISUAL THINKING
Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands

INFORMATION GRAPHICS
Nigel Holmes On Information Design (Working Biographies)

DATA DISPLAY
Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

CONTENT
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

BUSINESS BOOKS
The E-Myth Manager: Why Most Managers Don't Work and What to Do About It

The index is very good, another manifestation of the utter devotion to quality of the publisher, O'Reilly (I dislike most of their book sets, this one very properly rose to a proper high level).

Lots of white space. There isn't an ounce of fat or irrelevance in this book. It is world-class in every respect, and most publishers are so crummy about price and color that I want to end with a tip of the hat to o'Reilly for getting this one “just right.”

2008/08/222010/01/05

The Rise of Global Civil Society: Building Communities and Nations from the Bottom Up

5 Star, Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, United Nations & NGOs

Superb Overview, A Bright Light Into the Future,April 22, 2008

Don Eberly

I would normally penalize the publisher one star for being lazy about providing basic information using Amazon's excellent digital loading dock.

Here's the part the publisher should have provided:

Foreword: Poverty Reduction in the Age of Globalization
01 Compassion: America's Most Consequential Export
02 Core Elements of Community and Nation-Building: The American Debate
03 The Great Foreign Aid Debate: Stingy or Generous
04 From Aid Bureaucracy to Civil Society: Participation & Partnership
05 Wealth, Poverty, and the Rise of Corporate Citizenship
06 Microenterprise: Tapping Native Capability at the Bottom of the Pyramid
07 The Great Tsunami of 2004 and America's Generosity
08 Conflict or Collaboration: Religion and Democratic Civil Society
09 Understanding Anti-Americanism
10 Civil Society and Nation-Building: Prospects for Democratization
11 Conflict and Reconciliation in the Context of Nation-Building
12 Habits of the Heart: The Case for a Global Civic Culture
13 Roadmap for Bottom-Up Nation-Building in the 21st Century

Although there are omissions and correspondences that are not addressed in this book, which relies on a handful of core readings, I have nothing but admiration for the author's talent, insight, and art in bringing this all together. This one book is easily a substitute for 10-25 other books, and the author communicates some key ideas with discipline.

Highlights for me:

+ Shift from vertical to horizontal power

+ 85% of aid is NOT from governments

+ Key trends include citizen-led development; provision of opportunity instead of charity; and use of electronic devices, notably the cell phone, to counter corruption and the abuse of power (while also increasing individual and group productivity)

+ Propaganda (public diplomacy or strategic communication or covert action media placements and influence operations) DOES NOT WORK. What works is good works for the right reasons.

+ We are in the midst of an association revolution at the same time that corporate citizenship and social responsibility is on the rise.

+ Local ownership and local innovation are the heart of success

+ There is an emerging role for religion and culture that is distinct from the negative role now played by extremists on both sides

+ Anti-Americanism is making US government aid ineffective at same time that door is being left open to non-governmental aid from US sources

+ Goal is to cultivate democratic citizens by creating civil society, which the author reminds us citing Tocqueville, is what actually nurtures citizenship–not state or government directives

+ Capital trapped in poverty far exceed all combined sources of aid

+ Third World is a hot-bed of innovation and small-scale experimentation, and the cell phone is playing a huge role in helping individuals climb out of poverty

+ Pushing democracy before civil society has been established, or before reconciliation and stabilization have been achieved, will not work

+ In next 25 years 31-41 trillion dollars in wealth will become available for philanthropy (or debauchery, but the author is an optimist)

+ In the age of networks collaboration, the concept of sound governance is one that needs development–I thought immediately of a sparse matrix in which various organizations have metrics associated with a specific project, and they strive to turn each from red to yellow to green.

+ 75% of US individual taxpayers did not itemize deductions, this is a huge untapped source of charity–however, while the author focuses on increasing individual donations to intermediaries like the Red Cross, we at Earth Intelligence Network would much prefer to create global range of gifts tables that allow all individuals to opt in at any level ($10 and up) and start peer-to-peer giving on a global scale at the household level of precision.

+ Key trends: from the giant to the small; from the remote to the local; from the bureaucratic to the non-bureaucratic; from the impersonal to the personal; from the compartmentalized to the holistic

+ More key trends: from clientelism to citizenship; from giantism to human scale; from credentialism to capacity building (see EIN's idea for teaching the poor one cell call at a time using global virtual networks of volunteers–they do not need diplomas, they need knowledge on demand); from fragmentation to integration (e.g. must harmonize all twelve policies to eradicate any given threat); from aid bureaucracies to civil society

+ Bottom-line: empower the indigenous and do not pretend you know what they need. It is NOT “on us” to do anything other than practice the Golden Rule and be compassionate and generous.

+ The final section of the book needs to be read in detail but includes ideas such as government becoming a catalyst rather than a supplier (steer not row); achieving a means of tracking (and we hope, orchestrating) government, private and NGO giving, and remittances, which the author feels must be counted.

+ He speaks of a third way that combines conditionality (give us a good legal environment) with anti-corruption (on this point his focus is on mis-direction of aid, not on the Canadian gold company paying a single Colonel to move a village so they can loot billions in gold from the Peruvian commonwealth)

+ Corporate strategic or venture giving is a favorable emerging trend, along with social entrepreneurship and I would add, hybrid enterprises

+ Web-based giving is in its infancy (and still gives control of the money to large organizations with huge staffs–EIN wants to get to P2P Web 3.0 giving that is both point to point and on the record for all to see

The book concludes with 26 suggestions spanning the full eight tribes as I call them (government, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, NGOs, and civil society) and for this alone you must buy the book or check it out of the library. Solid common sense.

Amazon does not provide a capability to link to lists, so I can only offer a couple of examples in several literatures. If I point to a book you can read my review and find 10 more links there.

Poverty Potential
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

Capitalism 3.0
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage

Civilization Building
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition

Tao of Democracy
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Failure of Government and the Two-Party Spoils System
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It

2008/08/152009/10/30

Review: Participatory Budgeting (Public Sector Governance)

5 Star, Budget Process & Politics, Democracy, Public Administration

The Best Book on the Topic, with a CD-ROM, Totally Rich,April 15, 2008

Anwar Shah

This is the very best book on Participatory Budgeting I could find (other than those on Puerto Alegre specifically, I will review one of those later) and once in hand, it has fully satisfied. The higher than normal cost for a book of this type is fully justified by the CD ROM.

Use the Search Inside This Book line under the book cover to see the Table of Contents and other elements of the book. I did not do that but if you have any doubts at all, reading the Table of Contents should be more than enough to overcome them.

For my purposes the two most important parts of the book were overview by the editor Anwar Shah (top expert with the World Bank); the guide to participatory budgeting by Brian Wampler; and the concluding appendix by Alan Folscher, on Citizen Participation and State Effectiveness, and also–very important–Preconditions and Enabling Factors for Citizen Engagement with Public Decisions. The rest of the book is regional case studies, and the CD ROM is country case studies.

From the Overview

+ Participatory Budgeting is direct democracy
+ It empowers citizens to deliberate, debate, and influence
+ It is a tool for educating, engaging, and empowering citizens
+ Transparency can reduce inefficiency as well as corruption
+ It strengthens governance by including the marginalized
+ It comes with significant risks (this was the new stuff for me)
– Process can be captured by interest groups
– Can cover up existing injustices
– Tyranny of group dynamics can overpower good intentions
– Tyranny of method can exclude other democratic means (much as the fine print in many legal agreements excludes access to courts and juries by including a concealed agreement to abide by arbitration)

Introduction to Participatory Budgetng

+ Four factors for success
– Strong mayoral support
– Civil society willing and able to engage in the debate (harder to find that I realized)
– Supportive policy environment that can withstand legislative pressure\
– Financial resources to actually fund programs sponsored by citizens

Guiding Tenets Include:

+ Division of municipality into regions for easier discussion and implementation
+ Government-sponsored meetings throughout the year
+ Quality of Life Index is created to weight program toward less well off
+ Deliberation and negotiatiion is public
+ Bus caravan visits all the proposed projects before voting on them
+ Elected representatives vote on all the projects (open or secret)
+ Municipal councel is elected with two representatives from each region
+ Year end report is published
+ Everything in monitored publicly year round

The above cannot possibly capture the nuances and complexities of each individual case study, so that is where ethnographic specificity must be applied.

Appendix on Citizen Participation

+ Types of participation
– Information sharing
– Consultation
– Joint decision making
– Initiation and control by citizen stakeholders

+ Preconditions and Enabling Factors
– Openness and democratic depth of the political and governance systems
– Existence of enabling legal frameworks
– Capacity for participation inside and outside government
– Existence of functional and free media institutions
– Willingness and capacity of government to make budget information open

What most surprise me as a lay reader (i.e. I claim no expertise at all, I simply believe to direct democracy) was the MANY OBSTACLES to participatory budgeting. I have heard that WikiCalc is coming along, which would along for budget information to be commented on and then different perspectives aggregated from the individual to the neighborhood or political preference level; and I hope that EarthGame will become a reality in which each person plays themselves and has access to full information, but in the context of populations that struggle day to day, it is going to take much more than an “invitation” to achieve participatory budgeting. In a nutshell, we know now that it can work, but getting it to work anywhere is going to be a real challenge.

Great book. A solid academic endeavor that if I were repeating my MPA this year, should certainly be in the Budgeting Course.

2008/08/142009/10/30

Review: Losing the Golden Hour–An Insider’s View of Iraq’s Reconstruction

5 Star, Diplomacy, Iraq, Stabilization & Reconstruction

Unusual Primary Source on Stabilization & Reconstruction, April 14, 2008

James Stephenson

I heard the author speak at the Army War College Strategy Conference organized by the Strategic Studies Institute (8-10 April 2008) and was so impressed I ordered his book on the spot. As a person, this man strikes me as supremely professional, competent, worldly, down-to-earth, and above all, without ego. This is a courageous individual that has specialized–only a handful can say this–in delivering aid into combat environments.

The book is relatively short–under 150 pages–well written and easy to read. Here are the highlights from my flyleaf notes:

1) 28 years experience in stabilization & reconstruction, seven failed states behind him that he tried to help

2) Foreword of the book is by Rich Armitage, a former Navy Seal that I have found to be a speaker of truth to power (one reason why the Bush Administration hated him)

3) Pentagon (Rumsfeld) blew it Part I. They closed the Department of State and the Agency for International Development (AID) out during the critical year before and year after the elective invasion and occupation of Iraq.

4) Pentagon (Rumsfeld) blew it Part II. They created a Pentagon version of AID run by a General that had no clue about the more nuanced community based assistance program, who blew his whole wad on heavy duty infrastructure projects instead of the community water, electricity, food, and sewage treatment and health security needed.

5) Pentagon (Rumsfeld) blew it Part III. Instead of embracing skilled experts from AID and elsewhere, the Pentagon staffed their program office with ideologically-pure puppies, enfants terrible whose only qualification was a resume at the Heritage Foundation and the ability to chant the mantra, “God Blesses Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney IS God.”

MOST IMPRESSIVE to me was the author's elegant discussion of how stabilization must be secured BEFORE reconstruction can begin.

The author points out that at 18 billion and up this was the largest RECONSTRUCTION project since the Marshall Plan (explicit throughout the book is the fact that the US Army, handicapped by Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz, never, ever, achieved sztabilization.

The author is kind to Wolfowitz. In his words, Wolfowitz was a decent man who fell sway to the “swan song” of Chalabi and the other knaves representing Iran and one slice of the Iraqi exiles.

The author is also careful to point out that he saw no villany, only incompetence and hubris, during his time in Iraq. [There is a superb recent memo, look for it at Earth Intelligence Network, on the utter incompetence of Foreign Service Officers and Pentagon “temp hires” to manage any kind of program.

Early on we learn that the Pentagon's program office for Iraq is totally dysfunctional, mockingly called the “Jonestown” of Iraq (where everyone drank the poisoned kool-aid).

The author slams Paul Bremmer as a good man who paid his dues in traditional diplomacy and had absolutely no clue how to manage an occupation presence. The author is careful to note that Bremer was an enigma, personable and competent but not right for the job, and to be faulted for allowing DoD to foist off on him an army of incompetent puppies, each a minor-league ideological hack.

The author is clearly a world-class expert in identifying stabilization first, then reconstruction, and in the latter, focusing on the urgency of domestic security, border control, and accommodating neighbors.

He is devastatingly critical of Admiral Nash (a Sea Bee) focusing on big engineering projects dealing with big infrastructure reconstruction, while completely missing out–not having a clue–on the importance of the less expensive but necessarily more pervasive and localized community reconstruction–rule of law, water, electricity, food, and don on.

He points out that because of ignorance at all levels of the Pentagon “chain of command” that completely excluded State and AID during the critical pre and post “Golden” years, agricultural reconstruction was not funded at all.

He returns to the theme of hundreds of US advisors whose only qualification was ideological insanity, each capable of doing great harm as long as they were within Iraq.

I am VERY impressed by the author's recounting of the logic behind ensuring that AID personnel received hardened cement residences instead of trailers–the cement could be done faster, provided more protection, and was cheaper. The idiot general in charge of housing, on the other hand, went with trailers because he was not a combat general that understood the dangers of loose shrapnel in the night (in Viet-Nam, after each of 10 coups, I would pick shrapnel out of those wonderful French roll-down windows that could stop anything short of an RPG).

Kudos go from the author to, among others:

David Wall of International Resources Group

General Peter Chiarelli of 1st Cav gains huge face here, to the point that he could be a real star at the four-star level in the near term. This is a general that understood and demanded community-level assistance to prevent the need for deaths and bullets.

Fernando Cossich is described as heroic and clearly merits his own Wiki page at Wikipedia.

Ambassador Negroponte gets very high marks from this author, who describes Ambassador Negroponte as forceful in demanding everyone recognize that his arrival represented the END of the occupation, and the beginning of US representation to the Iraqi sovereign government. I was deeply impressed by this portion of the book.

In dealing with rumors and morale, the author found, based on his experience, that transparency and constant accountability was the best.

USAID kept 30,000 young men from insurgency by employing them via various means that did not cause them to be targets.

The military, up to and including General Abizaid, had no clue what AID did or was capable of doing. A Capt as permanent liaison to AID proved to be worth his weight in gold.

During the darkest days, the author discovered that the Pentagon has no evacuation plan, a mandated requirement.

The Pentagon was considerd so very blind, reliant on sources that told them what they wanted to hear, that the CIA Station challenged and mocked the “good news blinders”. The author elaborates that the Pentagon wanted to pretend everything was fine, and did not understand that security in a non-permissive environment was something to be managed, not pretended.

The author concludes that we missed the Golden Hour by persisting in occupation and allowing looting and then allowing contractors to spend on security that should have been the precondition for contractors entering the country at all.

The author is careful to praise the contractors. They did what they were asked to do, in a non-permissive environment that the Pentagon allowed to exist when General Shinseki, General Zinni, and so many others had warned in advance, as did Mr. White of the Department of State, of the insanity of going it at all, much less “Rumsfeld Lite.”

The author concludes that Iraq cannot remain whole. The Kurds and the Shi'ites have their act together and are already independent, while the Sunnis self-immolate in chaos aided and abetted by US incompetence.

The author himself recommends the following two books:
Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (Vintage)

I put this book down with a sense of reverence and admiration. I knew AID people in Southeast Asia, in Viet-Nam, in Thailand, and elsewhere, including AID people that died in the line of duty. I am now convinced we need a Vice President for Foreign Affairs with complete oversight of State, AID, a restored US Information Agency with the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Open Source Agency as the two main divisions, and Defense as a reduced power.

Of all the books I have read on Iraq, this is the one that I take most seriously. It is a first-person account, focused on the good side of America. The author is clearly qualified to be director of AID under a sane president and a legal vice president, and I for one think he is one of the very best men in public service.

2008/08/072009/12/04

Review: The Way of the World–A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics

Forgery is old news–focus on the loss of morality, August 7, 2008

Ron Suskind

EDIT of 3 Sep 08 to add CIA published denial and attack, and comment from Association of Former Intelligence Officers, as a comment.

I have reviewed all the books linked to below, and my reviews of those books will add depth to this review.

Ron Suskind's first book on the current Administration, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 was extraordinary for its deep look at Dick Cheney and how since his Ford days, he has always favored unfettered Executive power and has never, in every Continuity of Government exercise, NEVER, given any thought to Congress. He ALWAYS went for an Executive dictatorship that used “war powers” to overturn the Constitution and every single civil liberty. However, the better books on Cheney (25 documented high crimes) and Bush (a tragedy within a farce) are these:

Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Bush Tragedy

The media and the other reviewers are placing excessive emphasis on the forgery. This is old news. Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia, personally said that the White House claims that Iraqi intelligence met Al Qaeda in his country were false. The son in law of Sadaam Hussein who defected asserted, very credibly (and without torture) that the regime kept the cookbooks, destroyed the stocks (Army intelligence tells me they poured so much stuff into the river the future of those downstream is very scary), and were bluffing for regional influence's sake). The fact is that in addition to Cheney's 25 high crimes, there were 935 documented lies told by the White House, and their lack of ethics, integrity, and respect for the Constitution is now beyond repudiation. See for example:

State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

I continue to be astonished that citizens of the US are not burning tires in the streets and surrounding the White House demanding the immediate exile of Dick Cheney and the appointment of a care taker Vice President, at a time when open source intelligence (OSINT) is telling all of us, and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that Dick Cheney has promised Israel the US will nuke the Iranians between November 2008 and January 2009.

The core value of this book is NOT in the forgery, which is old news, but in the broad picture it paints of a Republic that has become a Third World dictatorship in which Cheney calls the shots, Congress is complaint (both parties be damned, the Republicans for being collaborators, the Democrats for being doormats), the war loots the individual taxpayer for Halliburton's financial benefit, and brave Americans die for an illegal, immoral war justified by a cadre of liars: Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Feith.

I read a a great deal–an almost fruitless attempt to remain sane in a time of mass insanity–and what I admire most about this author and this book is his broad focus on morality, civil liberties, and the values that differentiate true conservatives who read and value philosophy–and liberals who parrot phrases they do not understand. This is SERIOUS stuff!

In support of this author's “brief” to We the People, who should all be absorbing and then acting upon his message of paradise lost, I can only point to four more books within my Amazon limit, but urge all to look at my lists of books on evaluating Dick Cheney, on the case for impeachment, and on strategy, emerging threats, and anti-Americanism for good reason.

Will and Ariel DurantThe Lessons of History, a capstone volume on their 10-volume History of Civilization, tell us that MORALITY is a strategic asset that is priceless. Ron Suskind is right on target when he points out that it is this aspect–the loss of our national morality–that distinguishes the Bush-Cheney regime. Other Presidents have lied, cheated, and stolen, but this is the first in modern history to combine BOTH global imperialism AND domestic subversion on a scale that makes Richard Nixon look like a novice.

Max Manwaring, contributing editor of The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, and his distingusihed authors, make the point that LEGITIMACY is the single most priceless asset for any government, for it empowers citizens and enables commerce, innovation, and civil society.

Ambassador Mark Palmer, author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025 points out that the US is not respected nor trusted in part because the Bush-Cheney Administration has chosen to be best pals with all but two of the 44 dictators in the world. Rendition, torture, warrantless wiretaping at home (including Guantanamo); deep secret and financial relations–at our expense–with 42 dictators busy looting and terrorizing their publics. Go figure….

Much of what the author has brought together is not new for those of us that continually monitor and agonize over crimes against the Republic, but I have to give him credit for crafting an elegant presentation that makes his book a moving and hence essential wake up call for the Republic. The people are NOT sovereign today, the people are sheep whose civil liberties, freedom of expression, right to bear arms, even their right to assemble, are all under attack.

With my final link, choosing from over 1,000 candidates, I conclude with a strong recommendation for the book Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. America is a failed state, and it is not just Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson that are saying this, but also true conservatives steeped in thinking and integrity who are aghast at both the crimes of this Administration “in our name,” and the two clowns we have running for President, neither of whom can produce a strategy to restore America in the face of the ten high-level threats to humanity, a coherent policy matrix (twelve policies from Agriculture to Water), or a draft balanced budget and notional Cabinet proving they have a clue. They do not.

The USA has become a Third World nation. We let it happen by abdicating our moral and civic responsibilities as citizens of a Republic. Right now, regardless of who “wins” in November, we all lose. THAT is the point of this great book. The Republic is adrift and sinking fast.

Learn how to do public intelligence in the public interest at Earth Intelligence Network. It's time we take back the power.

Category: 5 Star

Review: Getting to Zero Waste