Insights into Workplace Terrorism and Network Corruption,
December 1, 2001
Bill O'Reilly
Novels by authoritative figures are a proven way of telling shocking truths without having to deal with lawyers. Richard Marcenko did this to U.S. Navy Special Operations with “Rogue Warrior”, Winn Schwartau did this for American's vulnerability to anonymous electronic terrorism with “Terminal Compromise.”O'Reilly was written a fascinating novel, one that is not only a first-rate thriller in its own right, but that also lays out some of the really outrageous manipulative and corrupt behavior that is common among senior network managers. He introduces the concept of workplace terrorism (by managers), of “bigfooting” (the theft–plagarism–of good work by field reporters so that the pretty face names (both male and female) can be reinforced); and the falsification of market surveys for the purpose of slandering and firing really good people who refuse to be cowed by bad and unethical network managers.
This novel has it all–engaging truths, a solid plot, a sentimental love story, good police thread, and a dramatic climax. I ended up buying a used copy and am glad I took the trouble. If you ever wondered what traitors to our national intelligence community and some senior network managers have in common, read this book–O'Reilly has put a stake through their hearts.
Puts It All Together–Vastly Superior to State Department,
December 1, 2001
Jay Spaulding
I read this book at the same time that I read the quasi-official story on Sudan (“Inside Sudan: Political Islam, Conflict, and Catastrophe”) and I have to say, not only is this collection of edited articles–and the editorial summary–quite pleasing in its professional grasp of history, its depth, its coverage of the core issues in a comprehensive and actionable way–but it also causes me extreme anguish when I compare it to what can only be described as a self-centered mediocre State Department memoire.This is good solid stuff. It is especially helpful in setting aside the superficial views that ethnic conflict or European-drawn borders are the root of Sudan's internal conflict issues, and it cuts to chase: “it's about wealth, simpleton!”.
The history of Sudan is well-drawn out, with the bottom line being that the southerners and their especially rich territory have been constantly besieged and ravished by the northern elite. The only time of peace in the 200 year war has been when the British imposed that peace, and there is a suggestive air about that finding.
The varied discussions of genocide and “cultural cleansing”, including the forced rape of the women in the groups being eradicated, and the use of famine to kill two million, are dismaying in the extreme.
“Ecology and economics provide controlling metaphors.” This is an excellent summary of the book.
Also helpful is the book's coverage of the relations between Egypt and Sudan (both historical and current), the explicit (northern) Sudanese sponsorship of terrorism and hosting of many Islamic and other terrorist groups within its territory, and the general references to the varying influences of the Turks, the British, and the missionaries.
This is a serious book, by serious people, and it does the Sudan issues full justice. One puts the book down feeling somewhat aghast at the ignorance of the U.S. government, the incapacity of the United Nations, and the blatant malevolence of the northern Sudanese predators. This book is strongly recommended for any person who wonders about their government's competence and compassion. Sudan is a cancer, not just within Africa, but within the larger world, and the continued acceptance of the genocide and slavery and related plagues that characterize this place call into question the legitimacy, the ethics, the accountabilty, of all Western governments.
This will not be a long review. There is a similarity to Robert Kaplan's books, and my reviews of his other books will suffice for additional detail.Having said that, I will also say that this book continues an excellent pattern of combining prior reading of history, a solid understanding of geography, and a gift for drawing out from an astonishing diversity of individuals, those little details that may bore in the aggregate but are priceless when endured and absorbed.
He seems to have missed the genocide against the Tatars, but perhaps that was hidden from him.
There is one huge gem, at least for me, in this book, and that is his assessment of the potential for a new schism between Western and Eastern Christianity, and how that must be avoided at all costs. This one sentence and the surrounding text is alone worth the price of the book.
This is it! The opening document for citizen-governance,
November 15, 2001
Ted Halstead
Those who have bought “The Cultural Creatives” by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, or “IMAGINE: What America Could be in the 21st Century”, will not only be thrilled by this book, they will understand that the “citizen-centered” system of governance is finally achievable and imminent–we should all try to buy, read, discuss and relate this book to the Congressional elections in 2002 and the Presidential election in 2004.This book is *loaded* with common sense. It is absolutely not a political spin manual, a manifesto for revolution, or a ponderous think tank “blue sky” prescription for curing all the ills of the world. This book has three simple focal points and they are powerful:
1) More Americans identify themselves as Independents than as either Republicans or Democrats, and the way is open for a new “radical centrist” choice of leadership;
2) The original social contract that placed highly educated experts in charge of everything (government, corporations, even non-profits), taking care of the largely ignorant masses, is *history*. The people are smart, the people are connected, and the people want *choices* rather than ideologically-contrived menus.
3) Young adults are the key to the future and will decide the next few major elections, but only (a huge caveat) if leaders of vision and charisma can come forth with truthful options grounded in reality–the authors are carefully critical of political “triangulation” that seeks to manufacture false representations of common interest, only to betray those the moment after election.
The bottom line in this book is that the artificial trade-offs imposed on the people by menu- and elite-driven party politics are no longer acceptable nor enforceable, and the opportunity now presents itself for the voting public to remake the government from the outside in.
They focus on the core segments and core values that make America great: the market with its liberty; the state with its equality of opportunity; and the community (including religions) with its solidarity and nurturing of civic virtues.
Among the core negatives they identify where citizens could and should be free to choose rather than accept imposed combinations, are:
1) Elections tied to rigid political parties that have veto rights over candidates, and selections that allow minority winners where more than two candidates split the majority vote.
2) Pension and health care programs tied to organizations rather than individuals–trapping individuals and constraining innovation.
3) Educational systems tied to mass conformity rather than individual customization–with gross inequalities across counties and states because property taxes fund education, rather than a national normalized program with equal investments for every child.
4) Tax systems tied to loopholes, patronage, and earnings, rather than to consumption and savings (tax breaks for savings).
5) Immigration policies tied to old needs for low-skilled labor instead of new needs for high-skilled labor and the protection of the nation from dilution, disease, and excess demands on our tax-payer funded safety nets.
There are many other gems in this well-written and self-effacing book. The authors come across as very sensible, very devoted to America and its values, and very much ahead of the curve.
They conclude that major renovations of our society usually result from a combination of three factors: an external shock to the system; the emergence of new political alliances, and the availability of compelling new ideas for social reform.
They specifically note that an obstacle to innovation is the lack of a well-formed political worldview among both the new generation of young voters, and the new elites (most of whom have eschewed politics).
While they say that realignments are not excepted in the next presidential or congressional cycle, but rather over the next ten to twenty five years, I believe they underestimate the power of the Internet and self-organizing groups such as represented by the Cultural Creatives.
I hope the authors consider launching a “Journal of Citizen Governance” and a web-site where citizens' can self-organize, because unlike the cultural creatives and the imaginative individuals who focus in niche areas, these two authors have finally “cracked the code” in a common sense manner that anyone can understand and anyone can act upon.
This is a unique and seminal work that could influence the future of national, state, and local politics, and hence the future of the Nation. This is *very* well done.
Bigger Picture Thinking–Good Foundation for Policy,
November 12, 2001
David Keys
The ending is meant to be a surprise, so care must be taken, but this book is really extremely worthwhile to anyone who wants to have their thinking stretched.It starts with an examination of the Dark Ages (literally) and how the loss of sunlight and all the related catastrophes, from drought and famine followed by flooding and plagues and epidemics, impacted on each continent in turn–including the Islam and Turkish and Jewish dimensions.
This is humbling book, for its grasp of time and the movement of history–in stretches of hundreds of thousands of years–does tend to call into question any human anxiety over current events.
Yet, at the same time, and in keeping with other books reviewed in this series pertaining to the decline of the state (nation) and the environmental situation, the author takes great care to make this sweeping work relevant to today's concerns.
Without revealing the details, I will just say that the way in which this books links cause and effect and new cause and new effect, across many continents,over decades and then centuries and then tens of centuries, provides an excellent foundation for putting everything else in perspective.
Two aspects stand out: the degree to which natural causes of catastrophe lurk within the Earth and are predictable yet taken with enormous complacence because they seem so remote until they actually occur; and the degree to which an established well-organized state (nation) can dramatically reduce the effects of drought, famine, or other disasters if it has planned ahead.
When a recurring catastrophe is known to occur every 600,000 to 700,000 years, and the last occurence was well into the middle of this period, one can ignore it, or ponder our readiness for an imminent recurrence.
Edit to revisit Kissinger's role and add book links.
Revisitation: We've always known Kissinger is brilliant, and there is no reason to revise that view. However, in light of what is now known about Viet-Nam, we must find Kissinger guilty as a war criminal (first link below).
The book begins with a lamentation that foreign policy has been neglected in the last three Presidential campaigns; that the American public is terribly apathetic about foreign affairs; and that Congress is overly interventionist–he refrains from adding the obvious caveat regarding most Members lack of knowledge of the world. In brief, we have a long way to go as a Nation before we can devise and sustain a credible foreign policy.
The core point in this entire work is that both economics and technologies, including Internet and communications technologies, have so out-paced politics that the world is at risk. Globalization, terrorism, and other threats cannot be addressed with our existing international, regional, and national political constructs, and new means must be found–new political solutions must be found–if we are to foster security and prosperity in the age of complexity, discontinuity, and fragmentation.
There are some useful sub-themes:
1) Each region must be understood in its full complexity, with special attention to both emerging powers and to the subtleties of relations between regional actors–we should not confine ourselves to simply addressing each actor's relationship to the United States.
2) We must take great care to never interpose ourself or allow ourselves to become a substitute for a regional power, e.g. in the dialog between North and South Korea, or India and Pakistan.
3) We must strive at all times to ensure that the historic context is clearly appreciated and underlying every policy formulation, at the same time that we must recognize and define the vast cultural differences between US approaches to foreign policy, and the approaches of others, such as China.
4) Military compromise, whether in the Gulf War, Bosnia, or Kosovo, leaves a strategic vacuum that will inevitably require attention.
5) Africa is the true test for whether a world community can be devised and new solutions found for addressing the severe conditions in Africa that ultimately threaten the well-being of the rest of the world.
6) Our foreign service officers and the political leaders they serve must have history and philosophy restored to their diets, or they will fail to devise long-range concepts, global strategies, and sustainable policies.
Dr. Kissinger ends with what some might overlook and what I found to be absolutely core: no economic system can be sustained without a political basis. However much major multinational corporations may care to buy their comforts and their arrangements of convenience, at root, they prosper only because some set of political arrangements among great nations is providing a safety net, including the financial system with one major node in New York.
The books ends with an appeal for American humility and discretion as it makes it way forward–we must act as if we are one of many co-equal nation-states, while recognizing that our pre-eminence demands more of us than might be expected from others.
There is one major gap in this book, and I suspect it was deliberate: there is no discussion at all of the means by which American foreign policy is to be devised. As America moves into the early months of the “war on terrorism”, it would have been helpful to have a really well-qualified rant on how it is impossible for this great Nation to have a foreign policy when we have gutted almost into extinction what passes for a Department of State today. Our Foreign Service, our Embassies, our foreign assistance programs, our Peace Corps, our external research, our sponsorship of international conferences on topics of vital importance to the US, have all faded into decrepitude. If ever there was a time when Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Powell should come together and champion a major restoration–at least a $10 billion a year increase–in Program 150 (our soft power), this is that time. That they have all failed to do so troubles me–that Senator Biden was castigated publicly for speaking the plain truth about how the world perceives us–troubles me. The attacks of 11 September represent, primarily, a failure of our ability to monitor and understand the world. That failure must lie heavily–and equally–on the shoulders of the foreign service (State), the clandestine service (CIA), and the counterintelligence service (FBI).
Historical Pessimism Absent Recommendations for Change,
November 12, 2001
Martin van Creveld
Anything Martin van Crevald writes is a five, and this book, although over-priced (…), is as as good as history can get. His notes are world-class, including a highly relevant note in the final chapter, to wit, that according to Soviet General Lebed's 1997 public statement that, “out of 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs manufactured for the Soviet Union's special forces, two-thirds could no longer be accounted for.”To begin with, Van Crevald damns the state for its consistent increase of taxes and its decrease in public services. The state has become, in a word, incompetent and archaic–its grossly over-funded militaries are increasingly helpless in the face of covert and guerrilla violence, at the same time that states are spending more and more on police forces and less and less on a rapidly growing politically deprived disenfranchised underclass.
He ends, as a historical purist, without making recommendations for change. Indeed, he quotes Mao Tse Tung, “The sun will keep rising, trees with keep growing, and women will keep having children.”
In many ways Van Crevald's book serves as a capstone to the fifty or so books I have reviewed in the past year, most of them about strategy, threat, intelligence, and the so-called revolution in military affairs, for what I take from this work is that the state does have an extremely important role to play in assuring the common security and prosperity of the people, and we abandon the state at our own peril.
Every nation, but especially the most prosperous nations that have allowed virtually out of control immigration and set no real standards for citizenship, must very carefully examine its policies and premises, both with regard to what constitutes citizenship and loyalty, and what services it must offer to preserve and protect the commonwealth.
I am told that the FBI was prevented from searching the homes of several of the suspects in the weeks prior to the 11 September attacks, because we have granted to our visitors–illegal as well as legal–all those rights that might better be reserved for proven citizens. Van Crevald's work is not, as some might take it, the death knell for the state, but rather the bath of cold water for the statesmen–and for those citizens who care to instruct their politicians on our demand for renewed focus on resurrecting the connection between citizenship, taxation, representation, and security.
