5 Star – Page 162 – Public Intelligence Blog

Restores Man-Nature Values When Technology Fails,

July 23, 2005

This is not your run of the mill boy meets girl from other side of the tracks, they live happily ever after (or not). This is an extraordinarily deep and pleasing look at what happens when technology fails, and man's only salvation is another person who is still in touch with nature.

I was moved by this movie, and found it to be nuanced and elegant. Not only does the pilot survive, but in doing so, he returns to the land, he returns to “the people of the land” (the Eskimos), and he overcomes the falsely-rooted prejudices of those who fall prey to the fools' gold that is found in technology, and scorn those who remain close to the land.

At all levels, this is an extraordinary movie.

Books that support this theme include Lionel Tiger's “The Manufacture of Evil,” Jean Ralston Saul, “The Dictatorship of Reason in the West,” Clifford Stoll, “Silocon Valley Snake Oil,” and Norman Cousins, “The Pathology of Power.”

2005/07/192009/12/04

Review DVD: Bride and Prejudice

5 Star, Culture, DVD - Light, Reviews (DVD Only)

Brilliantly Clever at All Levels–Remakes US View of India,

July 19, 2005

Naveen Andrews

This movie is so extraordinarily clever, at all levels, that I have watched it twice with undivided attention, and have it playing on background now. It does nothing less than remake US views of India. As I read the full page advertisements in the Washington Post saluting the visit of the Indian Prime Minister, and reading about the White House agreeing to sponsor nuclear information exchanges while India sponsors a second green revolution, I cannot help but think that this movie, in a unique way, captures both the beauty of India, and its arrival as a world power equal to the US.

I spend a lot of time thinking about both reality and perception. The US has blown it when it comes to the billions of poor–not just the Arab fundamentalists, but the non-violent individuals who see us occupying their countries and looting their natural resources. If America could produce a movie like this, one that reflected the best of America, the ideals of the original Republic, it would have more of an impact than the billions of dollars we are spending on a heavy-metal military.

This movie is extraordinary. It is brilliant. It is worth buying, viewing multiple times, and as a gift idea.

2005/07/122009/12/04

Review: Dying to Win–The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Hardcover)

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Terrorism & Jihad, Truth & Reconciliation, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Original–A Major Contribution to Understanding,

July 12, 2005

Robert Pape

The University of Chicago is an extraordinary institution–the author, employed there, lives up to their reputation for methodical, scholarly, useful reflections grounded firmly in the facts. This work significantly advances our understanding of terrorism and of the three forms of suicidal terrorism: egotistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. The author documents his findings that most suicidal terrorists are altruistic, well-educated, nationalistically-motivated, and fully witting and dedicated to their fatal mission as a service to their community.

Of the 563 books I have reviewed–all in national security and global issues, and all but four among the best books in the field–this new work by Professor Pape stands out as startlingly original, thoughtful, useful, and directly relevant to the clear and present danger facing America: an epidemic of suicidal terrorism spawned by the “virtual colonialism” of the US in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and now Iraq as well as other countries.

I will not repeat the excellent listing of facts in the Book Description provided by the publisher–certainly that description should be read carefully. If you are a Jewish zealot, don't bother, you will not get over the cognitive dissonance. Everyone else, including Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic contributors to Congressional and Presidential campaign funds, absolutely must read this book.

There are many other books that support the author's key premises, all well-documented with case studies and the most complete and compelling statistics–known facts. I am persuaded by the author's big three:

1) Suicidal terrorism correlates best with U.S. military occupation of specific countries that tend to be undemocratic and corrupt, where the U.S. in collusion with dictators and one-party elites are frustrating legitimate national aspirations of the larger underclass and middle class;

2) Virtually all of the suicidal terrorists comes from allies of the U.S. (at least nominally–they actually play the U.S. as “useful idiots”) such as Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran;

3) The three premises shared by Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and now the Iraqi insurgency, are all accurate and will continue to be so if the U.S. does not pull its military out of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other locations:

a) Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and virtual colonialism everywhere else, demand martyrdom operations;

b) Conventional inferiority mandates self-sacrifice (not only suicidal terrorism, but other asymmetric attacks including the death of a thousand cuts against key energy, water, and transportation nodes in the USA; and

c) The US and its European allies are vulnerable to coercive pressure. The withdrawal of the Americans and the French from Viet-Nam and then Lebanon, of the Israelis from the West Bank, and other concessions itemized by the author, have all made the case for suicidal terrorism. It works and it will explode.

I will mention several other books to support this author, but wish to stress that alone, his work is spectacularly successful in documenting the fallacies of the U.S. national security policy.

Among the books that support him are
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods
Understanding Terror Networks
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

This is a core reading for every officer at STRATCOM and SOCOM, and for anyone who wishes to be effective at either Public Diplomacy or Strategic Communication or Information Operations. This author should be an invited distinguished funded speaker at every single war college in the Western democracies. We cannot win without listening to him. Military withdrawals, combined with energy independence, are essential. Without them, we not only will not fully defeat the current crop of suicidal terrorists, but we will, in attempting to deal with the current threat with old counter-productive and heavy-handed means, give birth to hundreds of thousands in the next generation of suicidal terrorists.

There are not enough guns in the world to win this one, even if we had competent intelligence at the neighborhood level, which we do not. In keeping with the author's recommendations, it is clear that moral capitalism, informed democracy, equanimity toward bottom up movements for national liberation and an end to corruption, an honest policy process in Washington, D.C.–these are the keys to victory.

This is a towering accomplishment and a major contribution to strategic thinking.

2005/07/042009/12/04

Review: 1776

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation)

Elegant, Deep Detail on the Year and the First Battles,

July 4, 2005

David McCullough

Somewhere between Honors American History in high school and a solid political science degree, I never really understood the historical importance of the crossing of the Delaware and the first battles in 1776. Today, as a 53-year old, I finally do, thanks to this brilliant author.

This is a moving book with exactly the right amount of white space, easy to read, yet deeply detailed about key personalities and key battles. For the first time, I understand with awe the degree to which tens of thousands of mixed Americans were able to mobilize, fight, move cannons weighing over a ton along hundreds of miles, construct earthworks (British General Howe on the works at Dorchester Heights: “these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”), survive disease, drink a bottle of rum per day per man, and on balance, make the miracle of the Republic.

The author tells the story with a light hand, and among the points I found especially noteworthy were his comparison of the speed with which good ideas from the ranks made their way to General Washington, unencumbered by the bureaucracy of the British military; and Washington's appreciation for intelligence and Washington's constant focus on the mind of his counterpart and what that counterpart might be thinking.

It also merits comment that the original revolution sought only to be afforded the rights due an Englishman, not Independence, and it was the heavy-handed actions of King George that led the original American leaders to take the final step of full treason (which, if you win, is not treason, but cause for celebration).

The acknowledgements and the notes are themselves worthy of careful study, for the author appears to have meticulously combed through every possible archive, and hence, he not only provides a walk through a year of American history–*the* year–but also a record of where the pages of that history are archived and honored around the world.

I started this book yesterday afternoon and finished it this afternoon, at 1600 on the 4th of July 2005. There is no finer manner in which I could have spent the eve and the day on which we celebrate the ideals that led to Independence. I only pray that we cast off the immoral capitalism and support for 44 dictators around the world–many of them practicing genocide–and return to the ideals of these great early Patriots.

2005/07/012009/12/04

Review DVD: What the Bleep Do We Know!?

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Reviews (DVD Only)

Truly Extraordinary, Absolutely Worth Buying and Absorbing,

July 1, 2005

Marlee Matlin

EDIT of 20 Dec 07 to add links and one line at end.

This DVD is truly extraordinary. I have nine note cards on it. Here is my very positive summary of key points in this very serious DVD that pulls together credible useful thoughts from some real professionals. This movie held my counter-culture teen-agers attention for a full 45 minutes, which is quite extraordinary in and of itself.

1) Multiple realities exist side by side across time and space.

2) You can move outside “your” reality to see yourself from outside or from another reality.

3) Major problem in our culture today is that children are not learning to think or imagine broadly.

4) Much of what we are taught to think is not true.

5) Modern materialism and most religions have stripped individuals of their ability to see that they are both responsible, and capable, for affecting their environment.

5) Quantum physics opens new ways for individuals to grab responsibility and *live* life to its fullest.

6) New model says that internal reality is more important that external reality, and it does impact on the environment.

7) Brains do not know difference between what one sees and what one imagines.

8) Natives upon Columbus' arrival could not “see” the ships–one cannot see what one has not learned to imagine.

9) Sub-atomic world is beyond current physics–it is not about the matter, but rather about the empty space between the matter. It is not matter that is a live but rather the empty space (as in a basketball) that is full of information.

10) Nothing material exists without interaction with a thinking being. Material is NOT independent, on the contrary, it is totally dependent on perception. Perception is about possibilities, not absolutes.

11) Consciousness drives material reality; perception activates signatures.

12) 4000+ meditators dropped crime in Washington DC by 25%. The Chief of Police was a skeptic, and then a believer. People, and their thoughts, DO affect reality.

13) Water is responsive to thinking, more so than other materials. Photographs of water crystallization after good thinking (e.g. thank you written on side of water bottle) are quite amazing.

14) If thoughts can crystallize water, imagine what the collective intelligence and good will of all mankind could do?

15) There are different levels of truth but the deepest level of truth is that we are all one. We are at one with the larger whole that is God (community) and with one another, but religions have become corrupt and prescriptive rather than enlightened and inclusive. Control of God's image is the height of arrogance.

16) Emotion is a memory enhanced by chemical addition (internal). Problem for most is that they are operating as if today were yesterday, applying old mindsets, rather than working as a part of a larger integrated whole.

17) Mind DOES influence the body. Emotional toxins and habits are as powerful as heroin.

18) We must learn to dream better, and to dream bigger dreams.

19) Definitions of beauty and valor (like definitions of crime and insanity) are illusory, false, and have no authority. There is more to life than the definitions, you simply need to seek it and see it.

20) Change your choices, change your life. Be ready for a chemical withdrawal as you abandon bad old habits.

21) It's not about good or evil, black or white. Life is nuances, to be *experienced*. You are you own pilot, you are your own priest.

22) You co-create your future by your thinking, imagination, wanting, your choices. PAY ATTENTION and you will get what you wish.

23) You can influence your body, others, the environment, and the future.

24) We are all one; we are not alone; we are connected; we are collective intelligence; we are, in the whole, both God and Heaven on Earth.

I buy into this. This is serious good stuff.

I used to turn off when people talked about the paranormal, even through CIA spent a lot of money on “remote viewing” and I have two books in line waiting to be read; here are a few links:
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace

2005/06/252009/12/04

Review: Three Billion New Capitalists–The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East (Hardcover)

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Strategic, Economic Fundamentals, Compelling, Cannot Ignore,

June 25, 2005

Clyde Prestowitz

Before writing this review, I reflected carefully on the thoughts of those who say that the author, who is known to me, was wrong about Japan, that he emphasizes the best points of the new competitors (China and India) while neglecting our best points. There is certainly something to what they say, but as one who studies the entire world for our US Government clients, with a special familiarity with Chinese operations in Africa and South America, and a business familiarity with what is happening in India, I have to say that on balance, the author is more correct his critics will admit, and this is a book that we simply cannot ignore.

His most important point is made in one line: America does not have a strategy. America does not have a strategy for winning the global war on terror, it does not have an energy strategy, it does not have an education strategy, it does not have an economic or competitiveness strategy. The government is being run on assertion and ideology rather than evidence and thought–a media cartoon has captured the situation perfectly: as the VP tells the President that we are “turning the corner” the two walls behind them are labeled Incompetence and Fantasy. As a moderate Republican and a trained intelligence professional with two books on the latter topic, I have to say that this book by this author, a Reaganite businessman and senior appointee in the Department of Commerce is right on target. We *are* out of touch with reality, and we do not appreciate, at any level from White House to School House, the tsunami that is about to hit us.

The author makes two important points early on in the books: first, that information is the currency of this age, replacing money, labor, and physical resources; and second, that the best innovation comes from the right mix of sound education across the board, heavy investment in research & development, and a co-located manufacturing bases that can tinker with R&D and have a back and forth effect. America lacks all three of the latter, and is not yet serious about investing in global coverage of all languages, 24/7.

There is a great deal of commonality between this book and Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century both written and published in the same time frame. Both authors agree that the Internet has put an end to time and space constraints, and both agree that American labor is very much at risk because our basic education is flawed and we have no strategy for demanding continuing education from employers. The author excels at drawing the connection between poor education, “it's been twenty years since anyone at Bell Labs received a Nobel Prize,” and the massive increase in outsourcing of knowledge work, not just scut work.

I do have to say, having called Friedman's latest book a massive Op-Ed in my review of that book, that this author is more thoughtful, provides more historical context, and delves into more basic important detail that Friedman–put bluntly, his book is more serious and more valuable than Friedman's, as in this is the meat, where Friedman is the sauce. Prestowitz addresses the core issues of the value of the dollar, the central place of energy, the role of demographics, and the fundamental macro-economic and structural imbalances that will weaken America, that are weakening America, over the passage to of a century of time–this is not a “snap-shot,” this is a *deep* look into the soul of America.

Chapter 12, the author's recommendations, is alone worth the price of the book and should be required reading in every comparative economics and national security policy classroom. I won't list these recommendations but will highlight just a couple that struck me as immediately actionable: declaration of energy independence; DoD as a catalyst for socio-economic recovery by taking the lead in energy, education, and intelligence, learning how to wage peace; end to subsidies (the author uncharacteristically fails to note that we can increase government revenues by $500B a year if we not only eliminate subsidies, but stop import-export tax fraud and demand that corporations pay taxes on the profits they declare to their shareholders rather than the falsified and manipulated balance sheets they present to the IRS); join Japan and India to NAFTA–this is an outrageously brilliant idea.

Clyde Prestowitz is one of the most insightful, balanced, *sane* voices on national competitiveness today. He would make an excellent Secretary of Commerce in the transpartisan Administration.

2005/06/252009/12/04

Review: The Wealth of Knowledge–Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organisation (Hardcover)

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

One of three best books on creating value in the InfoAge,

June 25, 2005

Thomas A. Stewart

EDIT of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

Too many people will miss the core message of this book, which is about paying attention to truth and seeking out truth in the context of networks of trust, rather than about managing the process of internal knowledge.

When the author says “It's time to gather the grain and torch the chaff,” his book over-all tells me he is talking about brain-power and a culture of thinking (the grain) and counterproductive information technology and irrelevant financial audits (the chaff).

This is one of those rare books that is not easily summarized and really needs to be read in its entirely. A few items that jumped out at me:

1) Training is a priority and has both return on investment and retention of employee benefits that have been under-estimated.

2) All major organizations (he focused on business, I would certainly add government bureaucracies) have “legal underpinnings, ..systems of governance, ..management disciplines, ..accounting (that) are based on a model of the corporation that has become irrelevant.”

3) Although one reviewer objected to his comments on taxation, the author has a deeper point–the government is failing to steer the knowledge economy because it is still taxing as if we had an industrial economy–this has very severe negative effects.

4) As I read the author's discussion of four trends he credits to John Hagel of I2, it was clear that “intelligence” needs to be applied not only to single organizations, but to entire industries. In my view, this author is quite brilliant and needs to be carefully cultivated by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, all of the industry associations, and by governments. There are some extremely powerful “macro” opportunities here that his ideas could make very profitable for a group acting in the aggregate.

5) This is one book that should have had footnotes instead of end-notes, for while the author is careful to credit all ideas borrowed from others, it is difficult in the text to follow his thinking in isolation. One idea that is very pertinent to national intelligence and counterintelligence as well as corporate knowledge management is that of the reversal of the value chain–“first sell, then make,” i.e. stop pushing pre-conceived products out the door and get into the business of just enough, just in time knowledge or product creation that is precisely tailored to the real time needs of the client.

6) The author excells at blasting those corporations (and implicitly, major government bureaucracies such as the spy agencies that spend over $30 billion a year of taxpayer funds) that assume that if they only apply more dollars to the problem, they can solve any challenge. “Too often ‘dumb power' produces a higher-level stalemate.” One could add: and at greater cost!

7) The bottom line of this truly inspired and original book comes in the concluding chapters when the author very ably discusses how it is not knowledge per se that creates the value, but rather the leadership, the culture, and infrastructure (one infers a networked infrastructure, not a hard-wired bunker). These are the essential ingredients for fostering both knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, something neither the CIA nor the FBI understood at the management level in the years prior to 9-11.

Final note: I missed the pre-cursor to this book, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1997) and just read it. I recommend both books, and in some ways, it is better to read this book first. I also recommend Robert Buckman's Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization, and the book, The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth as ideal companions to this path-finding work.

Recently published (2006 and on), see also, with reviews:
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)

Category: 5 Star

Review DVD: The Snow Walker