4 Star – Page 33 – Public Intelligence Blog

Formula Book with Limited Sources, March 6, 2008

John McCain

Edit of 10 November 2008 to lament the betrayal of John McCain.

The election is over. Obama fooled most of the people, and the Democrats out-frauded the Republicans with at least $300 million in illegal campaign contributions and double voting between New York and Florida and varied other states. McCain did himself in, allowing Bush staffers to destroy any attempt to address the substance of governance, and less the staffer that helped create the first speech by Governor Palin, Vice Presidential Operations was staffed by inept has-beens from spin-land, none of them with any deep knowledge about governance.

Sadly Obama, himself a talented individual, has been bought and paid for by Wall Street, and his transition team is totally committed to keeping the two party spoils system alive. He is, in short, a fraud. I am deleting fivce of the HOPE books below, and herewith provide five books that should give any citizen pause–Obama will be Cheney lite, seeking to pursue Abraham Lincoln's treasonous expansion of Executive powers with the active connivance of a treasonous Congress unfit to represent the United STATES of America.

Obama – The Postmodern Coup
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
Constitutional History of Secession

Bernie's review is great and I have voted for it. I am going to stop buying formula books that combine a politician's name with a staffer's library browsing. I was especially distressed to not find the world “intelligence” or its commercial equivalent, decision-support. There is nothing wrong with the content, but as someone who writes and reads broadly about intelligence and decision support under conditions of ambiguity, this book could not hold my attention.

Five books that ignore the criminal parties and focus on We the People:
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2008/03/032010/01/05

Review: The Big Switch–Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google

4 Star, Information Society, Information Technology

Very Worthwhile, One Major Flaw, March 3, 2008

Nicholas Carr

This is a very worthwhile easy to absorb book. The author is thoughtful, well-spoken, with good notes and currency as of 2007.

The one major flaw in the book is the uncritical comparison of cloud computing with electricity as a utility. That analogy fails when one recognizes that the current electrical system wastes 50% of the power going down-stream, and has become so unreliable that NSA among others is building its own private electrical power plant–with a nuclear core, one wonders? While the author is fully aware of the dangers to privacy and liberty, and below I recap a few of his excellent points, he disappoints in not recognizing that localized resilience and human scale are the core of humanity and community, and that what we really need right now, which John Chambers strangely does not appear willing to offer, is a solar-powered server-router that gives every individual Application Oriented Network control at the point of creation (along with anonymous banking and Grug distributed search), while also creating local pods that can operate independently of the cloud while also blocking Google perverted new programmable search, wherer what you see is not what's in your best interests, but rather what the highest bidder paid to force into your view.

The author cites one source as saying that Google computation can do a task at one tenth of the cost. To learn more, find my review, “Google 2.0: The Calculating Predator” and follow the bread crumbs.

The author touches on software as a service, and I am reminded of the IBM interst in “Services Science.” He has a high regard for Amazon Web Services, as I do, and I was fascinated by his suggestion that Amazon differs from Google, Amazon doing virtualization while Google does task optimization (with computational mathematics). Not sure that is accurate, Google can flip a bit tomorrow and put bankers, entertainers, data service providers, and publishers out of business.

I completely enjoyed th discussion of the impact of electrification and the rise of the middle class, of the migration from World Wide Web to World Wide Computer, and of the emergence of a gift ecnomy.

The author also touches on the erosion of the middle class, citing Jagdish Bhagwati and Ben Bernake as saying that it is the Internet rather than globalization that is hurting the middle class (globalization moved the low cost jobs, the Internet moved the highly-educated jobs).

I was shocked to learn that Google can listen to my background sound via the microphone, meaning that Google is running the equivalent of a warrantless audio penetration of my office. “Do No Evil?” This is very troubling.

Page 161: “A company run by mathematicians and engineers, Google seemsx oblivious to the possible social costs of transparent personalization.” Well said. The only thing more shocking to me is the utter complacency of the top management at Amazon, IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. Search for the article by Stephen E. Arnold, the world's foremost non-Google expert on Google, look for <Google Pressure Wave: Do the Big Boys Feel It?>.

The author touches on Internet utility to terrorists, and our military's vulnerability, but he does not get as deeply into this as he could have. The fact is the Chinese can take out our telecommunications satellites anytime they want, and they are not only hacking into our computers via the Internet, they also appear to have perfected accessing “stand-alone” computers via the electrical connection. See <Chinese Irregular Warfare oss.net>.

The portion ofthe book I most appreciated was the authors discussion of lost privacy and individuality. He says “Computer systems are not at their core technologies of emancipation. They are technologies of control.” He goes on to point out that even a decentralized cloud network can be programmed to monitor and control, and that is precisely where Google is going, monitoring employees and manipulating consumers.

He touches on semantic web but misses Internet Economy Meta Language (Pierre Levy) and Open Hypertextdocument System (Doug Englebart).

He credits Google founders with wanting to get to all information in all languages all the time, and I agree that their motives are largely worthy, but they are out of control–a suprnational entity with zero oversight. I can easily envision the day coming when in addition to 27 secessionist movements across the USA, we will hundreds of virtual secessions in which communities choose to define trusted computing as localized computing.

The book ends beautifully, by saying we will not know where IT is going until our children, the first generation to be wired from day one, become adults.

A few other books I recommend:
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Age of Missing Information
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2008/02/132010/01/05

Review: The Keys to a Successful Presidency

4 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Leadership

Published in 2000, Essential Reference but Outdated and Incomplete, February 13, 2008

Alvin Felzenberg

I am spending most of my time, in the course of publishing three edited works and my own on “War & Peace: Seventh Generation Intelligence,” thinking about how to radically redirect the organization of both the Presidency and Congressional jurisdictions. I consider David Abshire to be one of the top thinkers on this subject.

The book covers, in fast easy to read fashion:

1) Achieving a Successful Transition

2) Running the White House

3) Staffing a New Administration

4) Turning the President's Agenda into Administration Policy

5) Enacting a National Security Agenda

6) Working with Congress to Enact an Agenda

7) Managing the Largest Corporation in the World

8) Building Public Support for the President's Agenda

Each of the above chapters has between three and five sub-chapters, none long, all drawing on substantive past performers.

Now here is what is NOT in this book:

1) How to achieve a deep understanding of a complex world in which nation-states are devolving and new assemblages including social business, social entrepreneurship, and bottom-up citizen social networks are self-governing, creating wealth, and policing corporations. In other words, there is not INTELLIGENCE chapter in this book. (search for <New Rules of the New Craft of Intelligence Chapter 15> for a free answer.

2) Chapter 4 neglects to discuss the role of the Office of Management and Budget, which dropped the Management part of its role sometime back in the 1970's as best I can tell. Since the Comptroller General has declared the US insolvent as of 2007, and the Bush-Cheney regime has put the country into a 9 trillion debt and a 40 trillion future unobligated deficiency, this should be the most important part of the next President's staff, and it better have someone at the top that understands the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers, and the spine to redirect money from secret satellites to open education; from a heavy metal military to waging peace; and from corporate subsidies to infrastructure and other homefront priorities. I recommend Colin Gray's book (or see my review), Modern Strategy and Tony Zinni's latest book, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose. Free online are my Army War College presentations and chapters on “Presidential Leadership” and “An Alternative Paradigm for National Security.”

3) The national security chapter is very disappointing. I will just list a handful of books that must be already in the mind of the National Security Advisor before Inauguration:

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone

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

The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

There are so many other books that could be usefully distilled for a new president. Only Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama, in my personal judgement, have minds open enough, and willing to consider that national security is, as Thomas Jefferson taught us, to be found in an educated citizenry. We need a transpartisan sunshine cabinet NOW, one that can propose a balanced national budget by 4 July 2008, and from there, We the People can have a national conversation about restoring America the Beautiful

I will, on the basis of all I have read, put this bluntly: McCain and Clinton are the last vestiges of the industrial-era spoils system that makes decisions in backrooms, by, of, and for the elite. The only way this country is going to resurrect itself is if we get a President who knows how to harness the collective intelligence of We the People, how to uncomplicate and sharply reduce the federal government, and how to create a national strategy that eradicates the ten threats within ten years (including an end to all dictators and our support for them( by harmonizing the twelve policies. This is not rocket science. All it requires is the framework, integrity, an open mind, and an ability to listen. We do NOT need a “war leader.” We need an Epoch B Swarm Leader.

None of that is in this book. What is in the book is first class. What is not in the book is fatally absent.

Two DVDs just for grins:
Why We Fight
The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

2008/02/122010/01/05

Review: Liberal Hearts and Conservative Brains–The Correlation between Age and Political Philosophy

4 Star, Philosophy, Politics

Comes at a Good Time, Worth Considering, February 12, 2008

Ron Lipsman

What I like most about this book is its side by side comparisons of liberals and conservatives, as well as its chart of where they agree.

The author is a self-professed devout Jew who converted from liberal young heart to conservative older mind as he grew older, aided by time in Israel.

Published in 2007, the book is unusual, almost a personal cry of the heart and brain. I agree with the other authors, there are some gaps here, not least of which is the work described in The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World and in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. See also Reuniting America and its definition of transpartisanship (bipartisanship is code for the continuation of the two-party organized crime/spoils system that excludes Independents, Libertarians, Naderites, Greens, Reforms, and others). The “new progressives” are not in this book.

So, to put it mildly, the book does a good job of exploring what it means to be a liberal or a conservative, and how that correlates with age, but it is not a sweeping nuanced view of all the alternatives.

On page 25 the author tells us that Liberals and Conservatives share:

+ Patriotism/Love of Country
+ Respect for the Law
+ Devotion to Family
+ Optimism/Faith in America
+ Prosperity/Economic Progress
+ Love Thy Neighbor
+ Tolerance
+ Civilian Control of the Military
+ Don't Tread on Me
+ Your Home Is Your Castle
+ Veneration of Education
+ Leisure

The author–and no doubt much of the books was written years ago–has been slow to see the rise of extremism on both sides, the dismissal of the law by Dick Cheney and Mike Hayden among others, and the general collapse of our society, now a The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.

Although the book can be criticized for being “one man's view,” it is never-the-less to be admired for being offered to us, and I for one found parts of it helpful.

Early on the author has two columns that capture his view of where liberals and conservatives differ:

+ Government spending
+ Taxes
+Regulations
+ Welfare
+ Military spending
+ UN versus US leadership
+ Multilateral versus unilateral
+ Abortion versus pro-life
+ Marriage
+ Diversity
+ Protectionism versus Free Trade (no mention of fair trade)
+ Wages
+ Environment
+ Animal versus Human Rights
+ Church & State
+ Illegal Aliens
+ Social Justice versus Rugged Individualism
+ Treatment of Criminals
+ Capital punishment
+ Gun Control or not
+ Constituionality
+ Group versus Individual Rights
+ Broadening versus Preserving “American Culture”

The author then goes on to describe and evaluate at length.

This is an excellent book for a political philosophy course.

Other books I recommend to complement this one:
Statecraft as Soulcraft
Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics
Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World
All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)

2008/01/272009/10/30

Review: Misquoting Jesus–The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus)

4 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion

101 Myths Better, But This is Solid Back-Up, January 27, 2008

Bart D. Ehrman

See my review of 101 Myths of the Bible for both extended comments and a list of two DVDs and several books that capture my history of reading of about religion.

With so many other reviews, this one is primarily to highlight and summarize the book for those that use me as a surrogate browser of non-fiction.

What struck me most about this book and its learned “born again” Christian was that it deconstructed the Bible so ably, but strives to retain the immutability of the Bible.

The author excels at telling his personal story of discovery, and doess a better job than 101 Myths at capturing and explaining:

+ We have no originals

+ The Bible is copies of copies over centuries

+ The Bible is a human book, full of mistakes

+ The Bible has been consistently revised by generations inserting their own historical contexts and agendas

+ Radical (the aurhot's word) alterations abound.

This book is a scholarly work that respects the contributions of a number of key scholars, but strangely makes no reference I could find to 101 Myths.

I value the book for the above, but if you buy only one book, I recommend you consider The Complete Conversations with God (Boxed Set) and ideally also 101 Myths.

Religion has been fradulent and abusive. I agree with Rabbi Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right, on the importance of reintegrating a culture of compassion back into our social and political lives, but I am now inclined to reject all organized religion as a form of organized crime, cult, and theater.

2008/01/192010/01/04

Review: The Culture of National Security

4 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Culture, DVD - Light, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Security (Including Immigration)

Great from an academic point of view, missing some pieces

January 19, 2008

Peter J. Katzenstein

I confess to some impatience with this book, published in 1996. It is very much state-centric, although to its credit in the conclusion it postulates a need to focus more on non-military resources and objectives, and on non-state actors.

The book opens with the statement that the key to understanding is to focus on how people view their interests and how that changes, but I searched in vain for any differentiation among the eight tribes that define my own study of international and internal relations: government, military, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-governmental and non-profit (and in the US, especially, foundations), and finally, civil including religion, labor, and advocacy groups. This book may well be one of the last gasps of “state uber alles” literature.

I have a note, bridge between the European literature of the 1980's and the new view emerging in the post 9-11 environment, where most of us now recognize that security in all its forms, including human, food, and water security, are easily as important and often more important than military security.

The editors themselves recognize that all the theories were wrong, and that academia slept through the revolution, failing to foresee or explain.

I am amused by the discussion of identity, and how this presents the academics–poor dears–with moral issues.

I love footnotes, and this book has many of them, but as I went on and on I felt two things: 1) holy cow, the best of the best talking to themselves; and 2) where is everything else? This book strives to examine the fault line between Kennedy's focus on resources and Fukiyama's focus on ideology, while missing the impact of technology on the rise of indigenous peoples. In some ways, this book marks the end of the state-centric academic era, and the rise of the practitioner non-state actor era. There is now more to be learned outside the university than inside.

On balance, I would recommend this book as torture for aspiring PhD's who need to be steeped in the arcane debates among the varied schools of international politics and the effect of domestic politics on foreign policy, but very candidly, I find the books listed below to be a better investment of time and more accessible to broader minds.

Modern Strategy
Security Studies for the 21st Century
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the 21st Century
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

2008/01/192010/01/04

Review: Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change

4 Star, Diplomacy, Information Operations

Too general for modern application, January 19, 2008

Judith Goldstein

+ Ideas as roadmaps.

+ Ideas embedded in institutions “take over” in the absence of innovation

+ Decolonialization was an example of new ideas taking over (this really set me off, since I have a passing familiarity with wars of national liberation, CIA's legacy of ashes in Africa and elsewhere, blood diamonds, mercenary and gutter rats using war as their only path to wealth, women and wine, and of course the proxy wars and the rush by the US, UK, and Russia to sell arms indiscriminately to anyone [US sells three times more than UK and five times more than Russia].

+ Better example would be Yale and apartheid. When sub-state actors started shunning South African stock, *and* the white minority realized they could be over-run and exterminated by the black majority, the two in combination led to the release and rise of Nelson Mandela and the somewhat conniving and less than convivial collaboration of De Klerk.

+ Ideas can be especially strong in times of crisis.

+ Ideas create culture; culture defines truth (social construction of reality) and truth as it is perceived defines policy and behavior.

On balance this book disappoints. I raise it from three to four stars to provide for the possibility that I am at fault in failing to appreciate the totality of the book. It is not a five because for over a decade OSS.Net has been operating at the neighborhood and tribal levels of granularity, and for the past five years, pioneering the monitoring of sermons by province, and family beliefs and networks across tens of nations. Domestically we follow “the new political compass” of Paul Ray, and observe the nuanced changes as left-right agree on civil liberties, and Walll Street=0Ecotopia begin to agree on green chemistry, beneficial bacteria, and green to gold operations.

Other books I recommend:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

Category: 4 Star

Review: Hard Call–The Art of Great Decisions