John Richard Pilger (born 9 October 1939) is an Australianjournalist and documentary maker. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US.[1][2] Based in London, he is known for his polemical campaigning style: “Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job, who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.”
Below is a slam on “Brand Obama” as a continuation of Empire as Usual that is being heard around the world. It is rocketing through the YouTube circles, being Twittered, and could well be the first real articulation of the left waking up to the fact that Wall Street owns the White House. The Brzezinski/CIA backdrop is touched upon–we anticipate Bob Gates being “sacrificed” and John Hamry replacing him in January, all as part of Washington “theater for the masses.” John Hamry is of course Zbigniew Brzezinski's caretaker or ward, take your pick. “Junk Politics” and “Empire of Illusion” are touchstone phrases.
Three for Lacking an Index, Beyond Five Stars for Content
July 25, 2009
Webster Griffin Tarpley
This extraordinary work, first developed in the mid-1990's and updated recently for a second edition, would normally receive 3 stars from me for lacking an index. I know the author and I admire Progressive Press, but to put out a book of this quality in terms of content, without taking the week needed to create an index, is to me as a professional utterly unforgivable. I urge the publisher to create an index online and modify the description here at Amazon to alert readers to the availability of an index. Without an index for looking up Greenspan, Rubin, Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley, this book loses half its value.
OK, that's the end of the rant. The content of this book–given that it was written a decade before Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) was bribed by lobbyists to put 200 pages of deregulation into a bill five minutes before it was to be voted on (and all Senators voted knowing this)–is beyond five stars. This is precisely the kind of knowledge that many, not just this author, have been putting before the public without effect since at least the 1970's.
At $26 this book is a gift and I urge one and all to buy it as both an education and as a keepsake. The author, whose books on Bush, on Obama, and on 9-11 I have found to be superbly researched and ably presented, is one of the modern greats in historical fact-finding and investigative history.
Up front he lays out a five point program for overcoming the world depression, and I am pretty sure that the Goldman Sachs executive now in charge of the US Treasury has absolutely zero interest in this public intelligence. The plan:
2. Nationalize the Federal Reserve System and re-start lending and the credit system generally. [I stand with Ron Paul in calling for its elimination after an interim period of public control, I am certain the audit that is being planned will reveal high crimes and misdemeanors such that I would keep Guantanamo open just to hold the Fed and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and City-Bank executives, among others, until we reclaim their stolen wealth from the public. The author includes here zero interest loans for real physical production and construction.
3. Restart borrowing for production with a vast program of infrastructure development and science drivers for the modernization and recovery of the economy.
The author itemizes $12.8 trillion in gift money from the taxpayer to the bankers at our expense, and this is a debt that I hope we not only renounce, but follow up with a confiscation of the overseas accounts where all of our money has been converted into foreign currencies so that the bankers can literally double their money–I am not making this up–when Obama declared a bank holiday and federalizes the police in late August or early September, and the US dollar devalues to half its current value (which is in turn half its value in the early 1970's).
Most of us do not need to read this book in its entirety, especially those of us on heart medication. This is a thoughtful balanced book that will make any intelligent person with integrity ANGRY. America remains a great Nation in its people and its land, but its leadership is criminally corrupt and has committed treason against the public since at least 1974 when Peak Oil was first briefed to the Senate and Exxon/Esso and the banks persuaded the U.S. Government's political leadership to ignore the research and carry on with Empire as Usual.
The re-issuance of this book validates and vindicates the author's research and integrity, and I for one, as the top Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, am more than pleased to stand alongside Webster Tarpley, pledging my sacred honor to the Republic–the sovereign people of American who created the federal government as a SERVICE. The federal government is NOT in charge, Goldman Sachs and the Fed are. It's time for a non-violent revolution, and I believe that books like this need to be in circulation among the two thirds of the eligible voters planning to kick the two-party tyranny out of office in 2010.
Webster Tarpley is an American hero in the tradition of Paul Revere.
I love the book, not least because it reiterates the Secretary of Defense view that the military cannot win this Long War alone.
What this book does NOT address is the raw fact that we are our own worst enemy, and that as long as we make policy based on delusional fantasies combined with rapid profiteering mandates from Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, as long as we lack a strategic analytic model, and as long as we are completely opposed to actually creating a prosperous world at peace, then the USA is destined for self-immolation.
HOWEVER, if you recognize as I do that those in power are completely divorced from reality, having become “like morons” as Daniel Ellsberg lectured Henry Kissinger in Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and that both Congress and the White House consist of good people trapped in a bad system that robs each and every one of them of their integrity, then no happy ending is possible.
The power and common sense of the Average American (see the book by that title, I am out of authorized links) can still be brought to bear, but first we have to stop this nonsense of thinking that if we only have the right strategy, we can evil and force not just the emerging powers, but Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards like the Congo, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Turkey into their “role” as playthings of the American Empire.
Please. We have gone from a village idiot to a major domo that gives good theater, and books like this are still being written? Get a grip!
Phi Beta Iota, the new honour society committed to public intelligence in the public interest, is now publishing the free online Journal of Public Intelligence. There are no costs or qualifications save one: have a brain and use it in the public interest.
Although a bit over-hyped and not the complete picture, I consider this a valuable book that is the equivalent of a Social IQ primer for an organization instead of an individual.
What concerns me especially that is NOT covered by this book is the inability of organizations to “hear” the frustration of their high-performers. Looking back over twenty years what I see is a two-way failure: I have been screaming and shouting about organizational pathologies and the failure of leadership, and those affected have refused to engage–they “shut out” both critics and those offering alternative views. The US National Security Council, to take one specific example, is filled with brilliant people who, in the words of Daniel Elsberg lecturing Kissinger (see my review of his book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers “are like morons” who limit themselves to their Top Secret tid-bits and close out all those who actually have “ground truth” to offer.
The bottom line for me on this book is two-fold: first, we all need to recognize personality traits that may be good in isolation but are toxic when “unheard” or unchecked, and second, We the People, the “stockholders” in our dysfunctional government, must demand that it modernize away from the rigid hierarchical bureaucracy and toward the open space democracy that is now possible (see the books below).
Similarly “social IQ” of a corporation, beginning with a rational “not to exceed” multiplier for CEO salaries versus lowest-paid employee salaries, must become a feature of stock evaluations. Not only must corporations now embrace “Green to Gold” and “Cradle to Cradle” “Natural Capitalism”, but they must achieve “Integral Consciousness,” grow “The Knowledge Executive,” and LISTEN to their “Exemplary Performer(s).” All quotes are book titles.
Toxicity begins in the White House and Congress as well as the Boardroom. When they shut themselves off from the public interest and instead pander to special interests, they are poisoning democracy and strangling the Republic. ENOUGH!
This book is well-titled, well-organized, and just right for our times.
For myself, after two decades of feeling both attacked for being right in 1988 about the future of both intelligence and warfare, and angry over the incapacity of leaders to lead in all that time, the core point in this book that resonates with me and is also consistent with the twelve spiritual principles adopted by Phi Beta Iota, the new honor society for public intelligence, is this: do not interpret attacks as anything other than a mixture of ignorance, fear, and concern. Respond to attacks (or their obverse, sullen silence) with respect, clarity, integrity, and an offer to have a SAFE dialog. I've been very strong on integrity, and very weak on offering safety, and for that alone, this book is helpful to me.
Early on (page 20) the authors' assure my attention by stating that the core “one thing” that results from all that they preach and teach is this:
“When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information (from themselves and others) out into the open.”
There you have it. The book covers obstacles to getting all the information on the table, and skills to overcome the obstacles and create safe environments for fulsome candid exchanges.
The essentials of the book are found in Chapter 7, where STATE is the acronym used to memorize
Share your facts
Tell your story
Ask for others' others' paths
Talk tentatively [others have told me I sound so assertive they hesitate to question my point of view or bring forward other views)
Encourage testing
The bottom line on this book, which is a simplified easily absorbed distillation of a great deal of research that was properly credited by the authors in their earliest work, is:
Learn to look (for signals from others and one's own signals)
Make it safe. This is the key, especially in a command and control environment where rankism prevails and the Peter Principle sees too many rise on the basis of time in grade rather than integral consciousness.
The authors pay special attention to “clever stories” that are used to cover-up what they call sell-outs and I call cop-outs, stories that allow for conflict and substance avoidance while playing out a story that justifies incivility, counter-attack, shunning, and so on. As one who was called a lunatic and an “agitator” for seeing the future in 1988, I can certainly say, while confessing my own sins, that the US Government is chock full of people at all levels who are in denial about reality and going through the motions of doing their jobs. They desperately need the kind of leadership this book discusses.
The authors stab at stakeholder issues by identifying four key questions:
Who cares?
Who knows?
Who must agree?
How many people is it worth involving?
On balance, I believe this book was very well chosen. It is perfect for rising executives who come to the class annoyed at being taken away from front line work in a time of war, simple enough to get the message across, and just right as a foundation for facilitated group discussion.
I published the last one myself, contributing two chapters. I have removed one star from this book because it presents itself as an immaculate conception. Our Native American forbearers were practicing Seventh Generation Leadership centuries ago, a style of leadership focused on achieving sustainable consensus that took the long view. Epoch B bottom-up (multi-cultural) leadership, appreciative inquiry, deliberative dialog, and human scale leadership have all been pioneered by Tom Atlee, Juanita Jones, Paul Ray, Peggy Holman, and many others, as have the literatures on integral consciousness and hearing the voices of the dispossessed while pursuing a pedagogy of freedom.
This book is perfect for facilitating a crucial conversation among rising leaders at any level.
As a publisher who is also an author, I continue to be outraged by the prices being charged for “trade” publications. This book is properly-priced–other books on GIS I would have bought are priced at three to four times their actual value, thus preventing the circulation of that knowledge. Those publishers that abuse authors and readers refuse to respect the reality that affordably priced books are essential to the dissemination of knowledge and the perpetuation of the publishing industry.
The book loses one star for refusing to address Google Earth and elements of the Google offering in this industry space. While Google is predatory and now under investigation by the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice, to ignore Google and its implications for cloud management of data in geospatial, time, and other cross- cutting contests, is the equivalent of poking one eye out to avoid seeing an approaching threat.
Having said that, I found this book from ESRI charming, useful, and I recommend it very highly, not least because it is properly priced and very well presented. Potential clients of ESRI can no doubt get bulk deliver of this volume for free.
Return on Investment factors that ESRI highlights up front include:
+ Cost and times savings
+ Increased efficiency, accuracy, productivity of existing resources
+ Revenue generation
+ Enhanced communications and collaboration
+ Automated workflows
+ More efficient allocation of new resources
+ Improved access to information.
The book consists of very easy-to-read and very well-illustrated small case studies, most previously published in Government Matters, which appears to be a journal (there are a number listed by that title).
Here are the highlights of this book for me personally:
+ Allows for PUBLIC visualization of complex data
+ Framework for “seeing” historical data and trends
+ Value of map-based dialog [rather than myth-based assertions]
+ Allows for the visualization of competing perspectives past and future
+ Illuminated land population dynamics, I especially like being able to see “per capita” calculations in visual form, especially when per capita can also be sliced by age, sex, income, religion, race, and so on.
+ Mapping derelict vessels underwater is not just a safety function, but opens the way for volunteer salvage and demolition
+ GROWS organically by attracting new data contributors who can “see” the added value of contributing their data and then being able to see their data and everyone else's data in geospatial terms. This is a POWERFUL incentive for information-sharing, which more often than not receives lip service. GIS for me is the “key” to realizing sharing across all boundaries while also protecting individual privacy
+ Shows “pockets” of need by leveraging data gaps in relation to known addresses (e.g. immunizations, beyond 5 minute fire response, etc.)'
+ Gives real meaning to “Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB)” and–not in this book–offers enormous potential if combined with a RapidSMS web database that can received text messages from hundreds of thousands of individuals across a region
+ Eliminates the time-energy cost of data collection in hard copy and processing of the individual pages into an aggregate database.
The book discusses GIS utility in the routing of hazardous materials, but avoids the more explosive (pun intended) value of GIS in showing the public as well as government officials where all the HAZMAT is complacently stored now. For a solid sense of the awaiting catastrophe, see my review of The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters.
The book also avoids any discussion of the urgency as well as the value of GIS in tracking and reducing natural resource consumption (e.g. water usage visible to all house by house), and the enormous importance of rapidly making it possible for any and all organizations to channel their data into shared GIS-based aggregations. For a sense of World Brain as EarthGame, see my chapter in Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace the chapter is also free online at the OSS.Net, Inc. website forward slash CIB.
The latter remind me that GIS will not blossom fully until it can help the humanities deal with emotions, feelings, and perceptions across tribal and cultural boundaries. Right now, 23 years after I first worked with GIS in the Office of Information Technology at CIA, GIS is ready for the intermediate leap forward: helping multinational multiagency data sets come together. ESRI has earned deep regard from me with this book and I will approach them about a new book aimed at the UN, NGOs, corporations, and governments that wish to harmonize data and in so doing, harmonize how they spend across any given region, e.g. Africa. This will be the “master leap” for GIS, enabling the one billion rich to respond to micro-needs from the five billion poor, while also increasing the impact of aggregated orchestrated giving by an order of magnitude.
On balance, I prefer the workbook to the text. It was much easier to read, it provided for the development of dialog among participating team members, and in general struck me as more likely to produce the desired outcome.
Having said that in no way demeans the value of this primary text discussing the five dysfunctions:
01 Absence of Trust
02 Fear of Conflict
03 Lack of Commitment
04 Avoidance of Accountability
05 Inattention to Results.
I read this book a bit more critically than Crucial Conversations, in part because I have a continuing concern about the context within which we hire and manage people in the US Intelligence Community and the US Government at large–the hypocrisy, duplicity, and lack of strategic coherence at the top (see my article, “Fixing the White House and National Intelligence”).
I do not wish to lead–or mislead–individuals who work 60 hour weeks and more, only to be told that the Quadrennial Defense Review has already been sketched out by the Undersecretary for Policy, it will focus on China (space), China (maritime), and China (infowar), and no all-source intelligence is needed, thank you very much.
This books emphasis on individual accountability is one of its strengths, and long overdue in both government and the private sector Not only do we have too many employees going through the motions, but with all the money that has been invented since 9-11 and the financial crash of 2008, we now have TWO contractors for every government employee, and “the Borg” just keeps on growing.
Of the two books, this is harder to read and also the more rewarding if you believe that by leading your patch properly, this kind of open, effective leadership will spread upwards. I am not so sure.
There are several other reviews (be sure to read the reviews for the workbook as well) that go into detail, for me, even with the remediation provided by over a decade in the appreciative inquiry, deliberative dialog circles (see my recommended books below), the elements this book defines that I lacked in my days of seeking to slay dragons include:
01 Who you are is impacted by where you sit. Don't make it personal. Good people do bad things for reasons that have nothing to do with you personally, or their inherent nature.
02 Fear of conflict is natural, especially when rankism prevails, and it will be very hard, but by taking the first step in offering civil “full and open” dialog, you can change the game for everyone to the better. The opposite of this–my own mortal sin–is to seek and create conflict as a means of flushing the issue, which I now realize is counter-productive.
03 The book talks the talk about “cascading communications” but it lacks the information technology savvy to make this practical. It has been shown that Wikis reduce meeting times by half and email by two thirds (roughly). I see this as three things that must be managed in harmony: the top bosses must actually value openness and diversity as a foundation for effectiveness; the IT infrastructure must be geared to this (IntelWiki is far removed from the totality, and employees still spend a quarter of their time logging in and out of disparate systems, most of which are not geospatially-rooted for ease of access).
04 Accountability makes me crazy. We lack strategic coherence (what is our mission?) operational connectivity (who is doing what across the Whole of Government), and tactical effectiveness (do we really need to carpet bomb civilians instead of one man – one bullet precision?) I admire the various strategic plans that exist, but the higher you go the more surreal they get. Accountability for me means that the QDR will be intelligence-driven; that OMB and GAO will be full-partners; and that we will recognize that our own misbehavior is costing us vastly more than anyone attacking us could hope to achieve with kinetic weapons; and that we lack global situational awareness because we have over-invested in technical collection while neglecting human intelligence and processing. Yes, we need to hold individuals accountable, but I shy away from crucifying individual Marines for a handful of civilian casualties “mano a mano” when the Air Force takes out entire city blocks without a second of remorse.
I guess the highest compliment I can pay this book is that it set me off. It is a righteous book, and it is a superb book for getting rising leaders to think about leadership fundamentals: integrity, clarity, education, empowerment. The context in which our rising leaders do that is troubling, and so I put this book down with a sense of despair. Good people, all, trapped in a bad system. Who teaches “the system?” Can a “system” learn? These are my questions.
