5 Star – Page 167 – Public Intelligence Blog

Finds Legitimacy in Bin Laden's Strategic Goals, Ignorance & Ideology in Ours,

August 13, 2004

Michael Scheuer

Edited 18 Sep 07 to respond to comment and add links to other books.

The author, who has the advantage of being a senior CIA analyst with access to what secrets we do have, has produced what may well be the single most important book in terms of getting this country back on track in relation to the rest of the world. This is the second of three “must read” books I am reviewing today. The first, which sets the stage for this book by providing a truly inspired, informed, extraordinary, and nuanced review of the “just causes” for Muslim radicalization against the USA, is by Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror The third, best read last, is Paul L. Williams' Osama's Revenge: THE NEXT 9/11 : What the Media and the Government Haven't Told You The latter books paints a compelling portrait, using only open sources of information, on how likely it is that Bin Laden not only has a number–perhaps 20 or more–nuclear devices of one sort or another–but is also receiving technical assistance from Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, and certain Russians in refreshing and maintaining those devices for use within the US homeland to create a “nuclear hellstorm” (Al Qaeda's words).

This book, the second of two by the same person, but easily the most relevant to the salvation of the American dream and homeland, is a tour d'force. It is an incredibly thoughtful, well-ordered accounting of both our mistakes and both the rationality and inevitability of Bin Laden's victory over the US. The endnotes are world-class.

As Congress prepares to confirm a new Director of Central Intelligence, the author's frequent and articulate damning of the U.S. Intelligence Community leadership for its moral cowardice (specifically slamming George Tenet and also Richard Clarke, who is labeled “blusterer in chief”) must, in my view, require that the nominee for the position of DCI promise to clean house as a condition of his confirmation. Above the rank of GS-15, every Senior Intelligence Service officer should be put on probation by the incoming DCI, and half of them should be retired within 2-3 years. The author of this book knows what he is talking about.

The author very usefully slams (on page 175) Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institute, William Hawkins from the Army War College, and Anthony Davis of Jane's Intelligence Review for their absolute misreading of the situation in Afghanistan. it is helpful to emphasize that these and other so-called experts that Congress tends to rely on, are absolutely superb when they do their homework (O'Hanlon is top notch on the non-revolution in military affairs, for example), and very dangerous when trying to milk the issue of the day without doing their homework (on intelligence reform, for example).

I do not want to conclude without highlighting the author's praise for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). They appear, in this one instance, to have excelled at finding and translating every word uttered by Bin Laden and his key aides, in public and in Arabic, and the author–whom I respect completely–is profuse in his detailed thanks to FBIS. Although I and my leading military colleagues consider the FBIS model to be rotten at the core (marginal remote collection, not doing tribal languages or in-country gray literature, broadcasting generic reports largely useless in operational decision making) I do affirm that FBIS can and should be saved, if it can be re-oriented to do for all of its clients what it did for the Bin Laden task force.

In conclusion, I want to focus on what I believe is a misreading by many of the author's recommendation of a “scorched earth” campaign against Al Qaeda as a global insurgency (rather than a law enforcement challenge). Although the author is correct to suggest that such an approach is necessary if we wish to continue doing the six things that Bin Laden wants us to stop, I believe that most readers of this book go into instant denial and fail to see the author's logic, especially when he points out (page 17) that Bin Laden has explicitly stated that he does not desire to expand Islamic dominance beyond existing Muslim countries, and that he will follow us in DE-escalation just as quickly as he is following us in escalation.

What we need to do, according to Bin Laden:

1) End US aid to Israel and support a Palestinian state
2) Withdraw US/Western military forces (not business) from the Arabian Peninsula and all Muslim countries worldwide
3) End US engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq
4) End US support for oppression of Muslims by Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments (e.g. Philippines)
5) End US manipulation of oil prices through corrupt dictators
6) End US support for corrRogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentionsupt Muslim regimes

I think this all makes sense, especially when you add the insights from the other 479+ books that I have reviewed, books such as Clyde Prestowitz's , Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People Derek Leebaert's “The Fifty Year Wound” and on and on and on. If our policy makers were willing to read and think for themselves, and not spend endless hours trying to leverage their perks and manipulate their more honest constituencies, it seems to me that we could a) get ourselves out of this mess; b) redirect half the national security budget toward global stabilization instead of selective occupation; and c) restore morality to both our global business practices and our global foreign policy.

Probably will not happen until two nuclear devices go off in America–one will be in a shipping container, the other in a Central Park. Just how stupid can America get? We'll have to wait and see–I don't see us getting any smarter.

The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

2004/08/132009/12/04

Review: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim–America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Religion & Politics of Religion

Inspired, Disciplined, Nuanced, Nobel-Level Thinking,

August 13, 2004

Mahmood Mamdani

This is an inspired, disciplined, nuanced, Nobel-level book, and if it ends up saving America from itself, then it would surely qualify the author for the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is the first of three “must read” books that I am reviewing today, and it is first because the other two are best appreciated after absorbing this one. The other two books are “IMPERIAL HUBRIS” and “OSAMA'S REVENGE.”

The main weakness of this book is the author's lack of strong criticism of Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and of other states that are corrupt, repressive, and therefore a huge part of the problem. Having said that, here are some of the key points:

– “West” pioneered genocide, expulsions, and religious wars, with Spanish genocide of Indians in Americas, and Spanish expulsion of first the Jews and then the Muslims as critical starting points in understanding Muslim rage today
– America adopted terrorism as a preferred means of fighting proxy wars in both Central America and Africa, when Reagan began “rollback” with the same neo-conservative advisors that guide Bush II today.
– West has four dogmas as summed up by Edward Said (who is admired by the author): 1) that Orient is aberrant, undeveloped and inferior; 2) that Orient is inflexibly tied to old religions texts, unable to adapt; 3) that Orient is inflexibly uniform and unable to do nuances; and 4) Orient is either to be feared (Green or Yellow or Brown Peril) or controlled.
– Fundamentalism actually started in the US among the Christians seeking to insert religion into the state's business and ultimately demanding faith and loyalty as the litmus tests for acceptance.
– Earlier generations of Islamic reformists disavowed violence, but ended up adopting violence after being in state prisons (e.g. Egypt).
– Earlier incarnations of a Muslim revival were in the open literature in the 1920's and then in the 1960's, and lastly in the 1980's to date–our national “intelligence” agencies appear to have missed the importance of all three
– Viet-Nam, Africa, and Central America all fostered extremely unhealthy connections between CIA covert operations and the drug trade, with CIA routinely condoning and often actively enabling massive drug operations and related money laundering, as the “price” of moving forward on covert operations.
– The obsession with winning the Cold War at all costs essentially destroyed U.S. foreign policy and set U.S. up as the enemy of the Third World [see Derek Leebaert's “The Fifty-Year Wound”].
– Morality in the US has been perverted, as the extreme right, joining with extreme Zionists, has “captured” the U.S. government in both Congressional and Executive terms. Orwellian “spin” together with the labeling of all dissent, made possible by media corporations “going along”, has destroyed any possibility of informed, objective, or actually moral dialog.
– The Central American campaign pioneered the privatization of terrorism and proxy war by the US, with secrecy and deception of the US public being the principal role of the US government.
– The US Government is explicitly accountable for introducing bio-chemical weapons into the Iraqi arsenal, and thus accountable for the genocide and war crimes attendant to their use.
– US (AID) sponsored textbooks, such as those created by the University of Nebraska, routinely used terrorism against Russians as examples in the mathematic and other textbooks being distributed in Afghanistan.
– CIA's main contribution to the destabilization of the world has been in its Afghan-related privatization of information about how to produce and spread violence, and its training of tens of thousands of jihad warriors from all over the world who have now returned home and are teaching and leading others.
– Under US leadership, Afghanistan has gone from providing 5% of the global opium production in 1980, to 71% in 1990, and even more today–much of which comes to the US.
– America not only accepts massive drug activities as part of the “cost of doing business”, but also ignores human rights in its rush to cozy up to corrupt dictators.
– From an Iraqi point of view, the 1.5 million or so children that died in Iraq due to the sanctions, must be seen as a major war crime and a form of terrorism, together with the air war with its indiscriminate murder of thousands if not tens of thousands civilians including women and children. The US has killed more civilians in Iraq than it did in Japan with two atomic bombs. Napalm and depleted uranium are disabling US troops as well as Iraqi civilians long after their use in the field.
– Economic sanctions, when they have the impact they did in Iraq, must be considered weapons of mass destruction, their application terrorism, and their results war crimes.
– The US Government's general disdain for the rule of law, but the incumbent Administration's particular focus on ignoring treaties and refusing accountability (e.g. for war crimes) sets a new low standard for immoral behavior by nation-states.
– The UN Secretary-General was forced by the US to ignore the Rwandan genocide because of a US desire to keep everyone focused on Sarajevo, and continues to us its veto power to prevent UN from being effective against racist Zionism, which is routinely committing crimes against humanity with its Palestinian campaign.

The author concludes, without sounding inflammatory, that America was built on two monumental crimes: the genocide of the Native Americans, and the enslavement of African Americans. His point: the US is in denial over this reality, while the rest of the world is completely aware of it. He agrees with Jonathan Schell, concluding as Schell does in “Unconquerable World,” that the challenge of our times is in “how to subdue and hold accountable the awesome power that the United States built up during the Cold War.” The last sentence is quite powerful: “America cannot occupy the world. It has to learn to live in it.”

2004/08/082009/12/04

Review: The Path of Least Resistance for Managers

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation

Not Just For Managers–Presidents and Teenagers Also,

August 8, 2004

Robert Fritz

I read this book because it is one of those recommended to the Commanding General of the U.S. Special Operations Command. After reading it, I think the Cliff Notes version would be useful to any President, and I have marked a number of pages for my teenager.

Sadly, the precursor to this book, written in 1984, was largely ignored by mainstream managers, just as proposals for intelligence reform were defeated in 1992 because the Pentagon was unwilling to give up budget authority for the good of the Nation. My point: better late than never. Grab this book and go with it.

I get two core points out of this reading: first, strive to balance opposites rather than going to one extreme or the other; and second, don't focus on resistance, but rather on opportunities. In the military this known as “going for the gap”–instead of pouring your reserve forces into the weakest point in *your* line, that is at risk of collapsing, you focus instead on finding the “gap” in the enemy line, you pour through that, and whip their ass from behind.

Much of this book is critical of both our current educational and our current managerial systems—both spend too much time teaching people what NOT to do, and very little time empowering people to think for themselves and create new “impossible” dreams.

The book has direct application to today's national security environment, when it points out that “pre-emptive strikes” are a form of avoiding reality and being reactive in advance rather than proactive and integrative, or transformative.

The emphasis on starting with the current reality (what my world would call “commercial intelligence”) may not be fully understood by most middle managers. When I started my company to do global commercial intelligence, our evaluation of the “competition” produced a surprising result: fully *half* of our competition came from our clients themselves, middle managers who thought they knew everything there was to know about their business, and were absolutely oblivious to the out-sourcing, privatization, plastic for steel substitution and the myriad of other threats that the Internet, Federal Express, tax laws, and Dutch and Chinese investment represented. Any manager reading this book who does not have a corporate “intelligence” capability (visit the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals for a fast read in), should be shocked into starting one immediately.

Visualization of perfection is in direct competition with rote performance and old metrics. Managers today are still largely “Cold War” managers focused on the traditional metrics of cash flow, cost reduction, short-term profit margins, and so on. Imagine what a difference it might make if the metrics could change, to include a focus on the health and knowledge of the individual employees, the health and knowledge of the community being supported and supporting the company, on changing the industry with standards and shared best practices, etc. In order words, managers need to move from a bunker mentality, where there is only one winner, to a network mentality, where multiple winners actually increase the totality of the profit over all and across previously unrelated communities of interest.

The last point that really struck me was the emphasis on transcendence (alluded to above) but interpreted by me, at least, as “born anew.” Whatever cost cutting measures we may have condoned in the past, whatever unethical practices including reductions in employee health benefits, etc. there is nothing standing in the way of any company's rebirth or any manager's resurrection and “rebirth” as a decent human being who can factor in human and ecological economics values (see my reviews of Herman Daly's various books).

We're killing America by killing our workers, and we are killing the world with predatory and immoral capitalism. This book is a valuable wake-up call for all managers, both in business and in government.

2004/07/282009/12/04

Review: Losing America–Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Democracy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform)

Spine of Iron,Brain to Match–Voice Against Theft of Power,

July 28, 2004

Robert C. Byrd

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This author has a spine of iron and a brain to match. What I see here is a unique combination of Senatorial seniority (seen it all), an acumen with regard to Constitutional history, a deep burning angst over the failure of the Senate to honor its heritage in the run up to the unjust and unjustified war on Iraq, and a relatively careful documentation of specific lies and misdeeds carried out by the Executive in its evidently unprecedented campaign to rob Congress of both the power of the purse and the power to declare war.

The book offers up some real gems, including a devastating “character” analysis of George W. Bush (p. 19, p. 107, p. 146), a useful comparison between Herbert Hoover who helped bring on the Great Depression, and George W. Bush (pp. 30-31), a helpful comparison of how Congress tries to balance the Executive while having only 31,033 employees versus 2,673,100), a brutally accurate comparison of how John Ashcroft chose to spend his time, avoiding testimony, substituting news conferences calling on Congress to pass the law without review (p. 47), the return of the multi-billion dollar Presidential slush fund (p. 68), the importance of independent information to Congress in confronting deceitful Executive officers (p. 70), a troubling catalog of the billions in funding for homeland security that the Executive has refused, seemingly wanting to “starve the beast.” (pp. 10-114); special reference to Eisenhower, his warnings of the military-industrial complex, and a very troubling page of what the trade-offs are, such as buying a single destroyer versus building new homes for 8,000 people (pp. 141-142), an examination of Don Rumsfeld's prevarication when being questioned about the bio-chemical weapons that Rumsfeld helped supply to Iraq during the Reagan Administration (p. 149), and an absolutely BRUTAL, RIVETING comparison of the billions the current Administration has asked to spend in Iraq, where Halliburton can steal it, versus in the US for the same kinds of things: $4.6 billion for Iraqi water and sanitation, only $3.1 billion for the USA–the list goes on and it is DAMNING (p. 202).

Despite the author's clear fury over the misbehavior of the Executive, he gives George W. Bush credit where credit is due, and particularly in relation to the inaugural and the national appearances in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.

The end of the book offers several speeches from the eighty that were delivered on the floor of the Senate, and I remember watching them on C-SPAN and thinking to myself that this was one of the only real men left in the Senate–truly a man of integrity and gravitas.

The book is well put together, and integrates in a very important fashion a deep understanding of the separation of powers and how the Constitution relates to our liberty; a deep understanding and ability to articulate and document the “shell game” that has been placed by the Administration with its tax cuts for the rich, deficits for the poor and unborn, and “transfer authorities” for stealing money approved for one thing in order to do another, and finally, a devastating dissection of the naked boy that would be Emperor yet in comparison with ten other Presidents known to the author, the senior Senator from West Virginia, is but “ineptitude supreme” (p. 107).

Senator Byrd saw the future. The other Senators were cowards and fools.

2004/07/282009/12/04

Review: Stealing the Network–How to Own a Continent

5 Star, Information Operations, Information Technology

A Real Hoot, Way Better than Spy Stories–Be Afraid…,

July 28, 2004

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links and a comment.

I picked this book up at Hackers on Planet Earth, and got Kevin Mitnick to sign a poster at the same time. The book is a hoot. I've done the spy stuff, it's boring compared to the persistent intelligence shown by these cyber-spooks, a couple of whom I am pleased to know.

I suppose the disclaimer is necessary: this is a novel, for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you want to be cyber-spy, this book strikes me as a great way to start getting hooked. If you are a security manager, be afraid, very afraid…you need to read this book.

20 Dec 07 Comment: The US Government does not want you to know that all of the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems are totally open to the Internet. These are the computers that control power, natural gas, water and fuel pipelines and storage tansk.

For a great idea of exactly what this book talks about, watch:
Live Free or Die Hard (Full Screen Edition)

2004/07/142009/12/04

Review: Gag Rule–On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy

5 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Democracy

Elegant Essay, Among Best of 475+ Books on Future of America,

July 14, 2004

Lewis Lapham

This is an elegant essay, possibly the best single individual work I have read within the 475+ non-fiction books on national security and global issues including the future of America. It absolutely must be read in conjunction with Peter G. Peterson's “Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can do About It” as well as Tom Atlee's “The Tao of Democracy” and Bill Moyers' “Doing Democracy.”Steeped in history and the relationship of dissent to democracy, the author provides a down-to-earth yet erudite condemnation of the ease with which America was led to war on Iraq by a small group of individual who were able to silence Congress, the media, and all other public interest organizations. From the first chapter to the last, the author follows the Will and Ariel Durant method of balancing easy to read general comments with equally easy to read detailed footnotes. Early on he singles out Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd as being among the few that stood up to the falsehoods and were grounded in reality, speaking out with integrity and courage.

Two comparisons are drawn by the author between the Bush Administration's abuse of the law and their control, and the past: the American past, when the Sedition Act was used to jail dissenters and subvert new immigrant voters; and the German past, when Hitler and Goering pulled off a gradual castration of free voice and vote with incremental steps, all done gradually, incrementally, inconspicuously, until suddenly a state of totalitarian rule existed. As the White House officially considered postponing the Presidential election of 2004, perhaps canceling it all together, one's bones can only feel the chill of these two examples, both discussed calmly and carefully by the author.

There is a solid strain of economic thinking woven throughout the book, and one can only conclude that the concentration of wealth and the crimes against the working poor now being perpetuated, can only lead to a Great Depression as the labor economy collapses and the technology economy is attacked by the combined ills of overdue break-down, deliberate sabotage, and a withdrawal of foreign credit. The author makes the point on page 85 that America has elevated capital above humans–capital votes in America, humans do not, in the one place where it really matters: the crafting of legislation that transfers wealth from the individual working poor to the privilege elite that own the military-industrial-prison complex.

Gifted ideas and turns of phrase abound. The author is consistent with others I have read in lamenting the continuing decline of our educational system, designed to create conformist factory workers, and goes beyond the norm in suggesting that perhaps 70% of our national potential intellectual capacity is being “killed” by the mediocrity of our existing educational institutions. I agree with that. Our children survive school, much as we survive hospitals and corporations–our institutions are no longer about humanity and emergence, but rather about docility and conformity.

The author is eloquent on the rise of politics as ignorance aggravated by a sublime arrogance that confuses a commitment to a narrow elite with “God's will,” and regards laws as means of “crowd control.”

Sadly, the majority of America does not read books. If they did, this book would be motivating people to take to the streets and demand that the core issue in the election of 2004 be that of restoring the integrity of politics, from counting every vote to refusing every bribe. Absent an awakening of the upper middle class that does read and think for itself, the author has written the epitaph of democracy in America.

2004/06/292009/12/04

Review: Shake Hands With The Devil–The Failure Of Humanity In Rwanda

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Biography & Memoirs, Diplomacy, History, Humanitarian Assistance, Insurgency & Revolution, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Genocide is SYMPTOM–Lack of Public Intelligence is CAUSE,

June 29, 2004

Romeo Dallaire

I read this book with the eye and mind of a professional intelligence officer long frustrated with the myopia of national policy constituencies, and the stupidity of the United Nations Headquarters culture. General Dallaire has written a superb book on the reality of massive genocide in the Burundi and Rwanda region in 1994, and his sub-title, “The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda” is where most people end up in reading this book.

I see things a little differently. I see this book as a massive indictment of the United Nations culture of “go along gently”, as a compelling documentary of how ignorant the United Nations is about impending disasters because of its persistent refusal to establish a UN intelligence secretariat as recommended by the Brahimi Report, and as a case study in how the Western nations have failed to establish coherent global strategies–and the intelligence-policy dialogues necessary to keep such strategies updated and relevant.

According to the author, 15 UN peacekeepers died–over 800,000 Rwandans died. The number 15 is not larger because Belgium, Canada, and the US explicitly stated that Rwanda was “irrelevant” in any sense of the word, and not worth the death of a single additional Western (mostly white) soldier.

Although there has been slight improvement in the UN since LtGen Patrick Cammaert, NL RM became the Military Advisor to the Secretary General (see General Cammaert and other views in Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future, the reality is that the UN is still unintelligent and unable to muster the strategic intelligence necessary to get the mandate right; the operational intelligence necessary to get the force structure right; and the tactical intelligence necessary to achieve the mission on the ground. Just about everything General Dallaire writes about in this book with respect to UN culture and UN lack of intelligence remains valid today: they still cannot get decent maps with which to plan a campaign or execute the mission; UN administrators are still anal-retentive bureaucrats that will not issue paper and pencils, much less soft drinks for diplomatic encounters; UN “seniors” still like the first class lifestyle on the road (they pretend to be austere only in NY); UN civilian mission leaders still misrepresent military reporting, as Booh-Booh did to Dallaire; and the UN is still ineffective in creating public intelligence with which to communicate directly to national publics the reasons why humanitarian operations must take place early and in force.

General Dallaire concludes his excruciatingly detailed book, a book with enormous credibility stemming from the meticulous manner in which he documents what happened, when it happened, and what everyone knew when (including advance warning of the genocide from the “third force” that the UN leadership refused to take seriously), with two thoughts, one running throughout the book, the second in the conclusion only:

First, and perhaps because of the mental toll he himself paid for this mission, there are frequent references throughout the book to the urgency of understanding the psychology of groups, tribes, and cultures. This is not something any Western intelligence agency is capable of today. The closest I have seen to this is Dr. Marc Sageman's book on Understanding Terror Networks We urgently need a global “survey”, with specific reference to the countries plagued by ethnic conflict and other sources of instability, and we need to start taking “psychological intelligence” very seriously. We need to UNDERSTAND.

Second, he concludes the book by emphasizing the urgency of understanding and then correcting the sources of the utter RAGE that characterizes hundreds of thousands if not millions of young men around the world, all of whom he says have access to guns and many of whom he says will ultimately and unavoidably have access to weapons of mass destruction.

As I contemplate the six-front hundred-year war that America has started by attacking Iraq instead of addressing the social networks and sources of terrorism, I cannot help but think that this great solider and statesman has hit the nail on the head: Rwanda is coming to your neighborhood, and nothing your policy makers and military leaders are doing today is relevant to avoiding that visitation. Remember the kindergarten class in Scotland? The Columbine shootings and Oklahoma disasters? Now magnify that by 1000X, aggravated by a mix of angry domestic militants, alienated immigrant gangs, hysterical working poor fathers pushed into insanity–and the free availability of small arms, toxins, and simple means for collapsing the public infrastructure….

The complexity of society, which has lost its humanity, is leading to unpredictable and difficult to diagnose and correct collapses of all the basic mechanisms of survival. General Dallaire's book is not about Rwanda–it is about us and what will happen to us if we persist in being unintelligent about our world and the forces that could–if we were wise–permit billions to survive in peace.

In addition to this book I recommend the PKI book mentioned above, Jonathan Schell's book on The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People Bill Moyer's on Doing Democracy, and Tom Atlee on The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All. If we do not take back the power and restore common sense to how our nations behave and how our nations spend our money around the globe, the plague of Rwanda will visit our neighborhoods within the decade.

Category: 5 Star

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror