Capitalism (Good & Bad) – Page 35 – Public Intelligence Blog

2005/06/252009/12/04

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

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

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

June 25, 2005

Thomas A. Stewart

EDIT of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2005/06/252009/12/04

Review: Intellectual Capital–The New Wealth of Organizations (Paperback)

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial)

Ref A for Buidling Value in the Information Age,

June 25, 2005

Thomas A. Stewart

I read the same author's The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization first, and then went back to get this earlier book (1998), and I actually feel that reading them in that order is better. This book has a lot of detail that is well served by the context that can be found in the later book.

For those who really wish to get a deep look at the future of building value in the age of distribution information in all languages, I recommend that both of Stewart's books be read in conjunction with the following three Nobel-level books: Margaret Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World Robert Buckman, Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and Christensen & Raynor, The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials) My reviews of these books are both evaluative and summative, and could be helpful as short-cut, but they are no substitute for actually buying and reading the books.

The most important point in this book is that the value is no longer found in collecting just in case knowledge, but rather in connecting dots to dots, dots to people, and (the highest value) people to people. It's about connecting, not collecting. Based on this book I drew my own value triangle, VALUE appearing in the middle of the triangle, with Context being the lower left corer, Content being the lower right corner, and CONNECTION being the apex of the triangle–further refined as connecting customers, connecting contributing talents, and connecting sub-contracted sources, softwares, and services. No one is doing this today in the manner that meets the emerging needs of the marketplace.

Most interesting to me is the author's early emphasis on the Chief Financial Officer being the point of sale, not the CEO, the CTO, or the production divisions. Intellectual capital is a value-creation and profit-building exercise, and it needs to be presented as a financial campaign plan, not a technology plan, not a human resources plan, and not a sales and marketing plan.

Although the author focuses on intellectual property, and provides compelling anecdotes and links that suggest that any company in the knowledge business can increase its bottom line earnings by 20-40% if it does a better job of managing its intellectual property, I see two other emerging marketplaces in this book that the author may not have intended but certainly contributes insights to: managing shared access to external sources, to reduce the cost and increase the knowledge that companies can use to increase their competence in a global environment; and managing customer understanding and relationships in the aggregate–it is possible to take cross-selling to new heights if companies in different industries that are not competing with one another, will share customer information in new ways, thus leading to the invention of new3 offerings and new value.

A major point in this book that I believe everyone misses is that the management of intellectual property, or knowledge management, or external open source information acquisition and exploitation, is totally and utterly without value in the absence of a strategy. Collection or connecting is of the greatest value when it is done with strategic purpose, operational efficiency, and tactical effect.

There is a lot more in this book that will impact on my strategic business planning, and that I choose to not summarize here, but will instead end with three points the author makes that I consider to be important:

1) In the information age, only investments in knowledge building are really investments–traditional investments in capital goods are costs, not to be confused with investments intended to generate new value.

2) Knowledge value grows on a logarithmic scale, while goods value grows arithmetically.

3) In today's environment, careers are defined by personal skills and networking, not traditional jobs and corporate positions. The corollary of this is that individuals must self-manage their continuing education and skill acquisition, and any job that fails to provide for continuing upgrading of skills is not worth keeping.

I consider this a seminal reference.

2005/02/272009/12/04

Review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Immoral Capitalism Is Costing Us the Republic….,

February 27, 2005

John Perkins

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to reduce links to ten.

This book should be read simultaneously with two others books: David Callahan's The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead and also William Greider's, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.

The alter ego of this book, in this case from Latin America, is Alvaro Vargas Llosa's “Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression (Independent Studies in Political Economy) As populism sweeps across Latin America, and Western corporations are expelled, as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela works to extend European concepts of Social Democracy and egalitarian distribution of wealth, this book (“Confessions”) can be said to be the equivalent of Martin Luther's posting to the cathedral door–it outlines all the reasons why Americans–US citizens–must heal themselves and retake control over their own economy, ceasing the transfer of its plagues to others.

At root, this book is about what we teach in our schools and practice in our daily lives: values, or a lack there-of. Together with other related books, such as Clyde Prestowitz' Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions this book makes crystal clear the fact that we have abandoned our original morality and focus on a Republic offering hope to all mankind, and instead created an Empire, by, of, and for the 1% of the American population that is now in super-sized wealthy elite status.

Most upper middle class and wealthy elite Americans will be made uncomfortable by this book. Having been educated by largely marginal educational systems where cheating is tolerated and rote learning pays lip service to the concept of developing independent intellects, most will find this book shocking to the point of wondering if it is false. Instead, I would join the author in suggesting that it is we who are living the lie, we who have lost faith with our Founding Fathers.

According to the author, there is a clear and present danger to all Americans, and to the rest of the world, of continuing a system of “off the books” national security practices which revolve around “independent” corporate activities that seek to subvert and impoverish Third World nations for the enrichment of a narrow elite in America, and a narrower elite within each of the countries being targeted.

One cannot help but be impressed by the commonality of themes between this author, and the fatwa's of Bin Laden and the charismatic populism of Hugo Chavez. Indeed, the author goes so far as to suggest, obliquely but clearly, that Bin Laden and others who oppose US multinational imperialism are closer to the spirit of Tom Paine than those who claim to represent America. Reading Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency and Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It I must agree.

What I see, having specialized in predicting revolutions many years ago, is that we have reached a tipping point. The author treats 9-11 as his own tipping point, an event that caused him to overcome a vow of silence and bring forth his story for public consumption. On a larger scale, what I see, both at home, where cheating is epidemic across all the professions and in all walks of life, and abroad, where legalized looting of countries takes place in the guide of “free trade” rather than “fair trade,” is an impending spontaneous combustion of populations and economies.

Three side notes:

First, the author highlights the role of the Department of Treasury as a national security and foreign affairs actor. Those who have read Sterling and Peggy Seagrave's Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold will have an easier time understanding how Treasury might maintain “off the books” national security funds that can be used to corrupt foreigners and fund covert action campaigns so secret even the CIA is not privy to them-truly a form of White House influence that needs to be better understood.

Second, the author underscores how little Americans actually know about what is going on overseas, in part because the capital city newspapers overseas, the mainstay of what the US government and US media read, ignore the provincial papers, and in part because we have no truly independent objective Open Source (Information Agency that can collect and integrate “ground truth” on behalf of the public. His depiction of the differing perspectives in Latin America-those we call terrorists consider themselves patriots fighting immoral actions to dam rivers and destroy forests as well as entire tribes-is provocative.

Third and finally, the author illuminates the unholy alliance between corporations intend on taking over foreign territory with unexploited gold, oil, or other riches, and certain religious organizations, chief among them the mis-named Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), that use a variety of dirty tricks, including laxative-laden food gifts and duplicitous “land grabbing” techniques, to move tribes away from the riches and to obtain land grants under false pretenses.

As China and India woo Latin America, along with Iran, Pakistan, and Russia, I anticipate a clear and present danger to America: our immoral carpet-bagging is setting the stage for us to be thrown out of the region, with consequences for our economy that are staggering. Morality does matter. This book drives a stake into the heart of the devil we have allowed to dominate our global relations, to pillage and loot “in our name.”

Published since this was reviewed:
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions – and What to Do About It
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy

2005/02/272009/12/04

Review: The Cheating Culture–Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Ethics, Justice (Failure, Reform), Philosophy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Gets Right to the Point: Cheating Destroys the Commonwealth,

February 27, 2005

David Callahan

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

I recommend that this book be read together with John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and William Greider's, The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. As a pre-amble, I would note that a Nobel Prize was given in the late 1990's to a man that demonstrates that trust lowers the cost of doing business. Morality matters–immorality imposes a pervasive sustained, insidious, long-term, and ultimately fatal cost on any community, any Republic, and that is the core message of this book that most reviewers seem to be missing.

Any student of national security can tell you that one of the most important sources of national power is the population, followed by the economy, natural resources, and then the more traditional sources of national power: diplomacy, military, law enforcement, and government policies generally.

What this author makes clear is that our population has become a cheating population, one that cheats in school, cheats their employer, and cheats their clients (lawyers, accountants, doctors, all cheating). Such a population is literally undermining national security by creating false values, and undermining true values. Some simple examples: an estimated $250 Billion a year in individual tax avoidance; an estimated $600 Billion a year in theft from employers; an estimated $250 Billion a year in legalized corporate tax avoidance and investor fraud; and an additional $250 Billion a year in legalized theft form the individual taxpayers through Congressional support for unnecessary and ill-advised “subsidies” for agriculture, fishing, and forestry, as well as waivers of environmental standards that ultimately result in long-term external diseconomies…

At root, the author observes that pervasive cheating ensues from the perception by the majority that “everyone does it” and that the rules are not being enforced–that “the system” lacks legitimacy. In other countries, illegitimacy might lead to revolution, a revolt of the masses. In the USA, still a very rich country, the poor are cheating on the margins while the rich are looting the country, and we are not yet at a “tipping point” such as a new Great Depression might inspire.

This is a thoughtful book, and it does not deserve the negative comments from those whom the book most likely is describing all too well. Cheating diminishes trust and reduces value. America has become corrupt across all the professions, within Congress, within the media, within the political level of government (the civil service remains a bastion of propriety).

What price freedom? What price the Republic? You may or may not choose to agree with this author's diagnosis and prescription, but in my view, he gets to the heart of the matter. It's about integrity. We've lost it.

2004/12/182009/12/04

Review: Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Change & Innovation, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Public)

Superb book, my choice for gift to colleagues,

December 18, 2004

Robert H Buckman

Every once in a while airport bookstores carry something truly extraordinary. This is such a book. It is so utterly perfect, sensible, readable, and on target that Monday I am buying copies to give to colleagues I know are interested in making more of our global information accessible and actionable.

I am sure this book will alter the perceptions of any management team in any domain. At a larger level of international information sharing, what the Swedes are calling M4 IS (multi-national, multi-agency, multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional (or multi-domain) information sharing), this book is the single best and most practical book for turning Industrial era organizations into Information era organizations.

There have been other great books that captured some of these ideas early on, from the popular (Alvin and Heidi Toffler's POWERSHIFT, Paul Strassmann's Information PayOff) to the inspired (Thomas Stewart's Wealth of Knowledge, Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth : A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era), but this is the one that I think absolutely must be read by every flag officer and every colonel aspiring to be a flag officer, and their counterparts across all industries.

Heavily marked up, this book is already a classic. The author is brilliant in an elegant understandable manner in making several key points in an action-oriented implementation-facilitating fashion:

1) Technology is the easy part–changing the culture is the hard part (from information hoarding to information sharing)

2) Command and control stovepipes are a big part of the problem–we have to nurture trust and responsibility in all levels by giving all levels access to all information (within reason).

3) Communications, computers, and library services as well as external business intelligence services all have to be rolled together under one executive that has “direct report” relationship with the CEO–it is the networking of humans and their knowledge that has value, not the hardware and software and hard-wired comms lines

4) If you are not rolling over half your software and hardware each year, with nothing in your C4I system more than two years old at any one time, then you are losing capacity, productivity, and profit

5) 85% of what you know cannot be captured in structured knowledge archives–only a living network can allow employees to provide just enough, just in time articulation of answers that can be created in real time–this allows a *dramatic* shortening of the business information answer cycle, from months to hours.

6) If the CEO does not get it, live it, and enforce it, it will not happen.

The author shares with us practical real-world experience that makes this book a real-world manifestor rather than just a visionary proposal. His practical suggestions lead directly to the possibilities of global issue networks such as J.F. Rischard recommends in his HIGH NOON: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them, but this book by Robert Buckman is the real deal, a true “revolution in business affairs.”

We've reached a tipping point. The day this book reached airport bookstores, the world changed. From this point forward, we are either implementing this author's wisdom and gaining value, or not.

2004/09/032009/12/04

Review: Exporting America–Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Provokes, Overlooks, Inspires, Read Reviews First,, Then Buy,

September 3, 2004

Lou Dobbs

Edited 20 Dec 07 to add links.

I've said for some time now that Amazon is a virtual university, and that I consider the reviews of any book to be at least the equal of the book as educational material. This certainly applies to the reviews inspired by this provocative book by Lou Dobbs, and I give both the book, and the reviews, high marks when taken together.

It is clear that Lou Dobbs is both an intelligent patriot, and somewhat simplistic in his presentation. This does not diminish the value of what he has offered us, but we have to frame it in the right way: this is a one hour read, from Boston to DC, and needs to seen in the context of my other 1000+ reviews of national security non-fiction.

Dobbs does take on added importance, together with Stephen Flynn's book, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism, because Dobbs helps us understand that we do not have a proper trade strategy nor a related demographic and employment strategy. To those who would say “let the free market do its work” I would point out that the free market would not raise national armies, collect taxes, or provide social security. Some things have to be done by the Nation and its State governments, and one of those “duties” is to conserve and enhance national power from “the bottom up”, meaning the population's ability to produce and to fight.

There is a related concern: when goods are created by foreign workers earning $1 per hour, instead of US workers earning $15 per hour (as discussed on page 11), two bad things happen: the first is that the goods tend to be less lasting in nature–more throw-away products that thus consume precious metal, plastic, etc (this is less applicable in IT, where Indian programmers cost 1/10th and are as good or better than US programmers); and second, they have to be transported, using tons of oil and other fuels. These are called “trade-offs.” I'm not an economist, but I do believe that in a limited growth natural environment, and in an unstable world, it makes sense to localize or regionalize as much of your agricultural, light manufacturing, and energy production as possible. Sustainable environments range from local to global, but they start with the local.

The author spends some time identifying and negating twelve “myths” associated with outsourcing jobs, and I for one find these valuable, and would consider any politician unable to address the points that Dobbs makes to be unqualified to be President (I am mindful of the possibility that no one qualified to be President might actually be able to earn the nomination).

Finally, and this is a criticism of Dobbs, I think he misses the main point, and it is one that is made very ably by Peter Peterson in “Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It as well as others writing about democracy: there is no single issue or challenge facing America that could not be more ably addressed if the people were informed and engaged and actually had the power to vote on the matter. Although Dobbs notes, as does Peterson (who is Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, and hence no liberal), that corporate America, and the two “main parties”, no longer represent America or American labor or the American voter, he does not focus on this as the core issue. This in my view *is* the key issue. When Dobbs asks America to vote on CNN, as he did last night, and the only issues he presents are a few foreign/defense versus economic/health issues, I ask myself: what doesn't he understand? These are dog on dog issues. The “dog-catcher” issue in America is this: does our vote count, not only in politics, but in the workplace? The answer is NO, and around that answer, we should be building a popular revolution that demands a Constitutional Convention and a completely open election in 2006. We need to churn Congress, join labor unions, and take back the power.

Newer books by Lou Dobbs, with reviews:
Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit
War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War onthe American Dream and How to Fight Back

Other books that complement his earnest populist investigative journalist campaign to be an advocate for We the People:
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism: How the Financial System Underminded Social Ideals, Damaged Trust in the Markets, Robbed Investors of Trillions – and What to Do About It

2004/04/292009/12/04

Review: The Bubble of American Supremacy–Correcting the Misuse of American Power

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Honest, Pointed, Handicapped, Mis-Spending His Money,

April 29, 2004

George Soros

If there is one person who brings together global knowledge, moral capitalism, an appreciation for open society principles, an understanding of how dangerous supremacist ideologies can be, and the money with which to save the world by leading the broader public to have an “aha” experience, it is George Soros. I try to read and review everything he writes.I take one star off because he is not putting his money where his books says it needs to be. I begin with this comment, actually my last observation, to set the stage for the other comments below, all of which revolve around the point he makes in the beginning, but a point that he is doing nothing to fund the correction of: “The gap in perceptions between America and the rest of the world has never been wider.” This is correct, but the $15M plus that he has donated to ACT and other minor organizations is not funding the re-education of America, it is funding minor-league politicization and mobilization likely to fail given the 20 year neglect of the Democratic precincts, and the fact that neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties are capable of assembling a true informed majority.

His early analysis in the book, on the dangers of supremacist ideologies and the curious alliance between religious fundamentalists (zealots who know nothing of the real world) and market fundamentalists (immoral capitalists who care nothing of the real world) is spot on. He is articulate and effective in writing about the manner in which this extremist ideology, “we are always right, they are always wrong”, in endangering not just American ideals, but American survival.

He touches on but fails to capitalize on the urgency of splitting the moderate Republicans (I am one of them) from the extremist base, perhaps by funding the foundation of a new party, the Fiscal Conservatives (moderate Republicans and Southern conservative Democrats).

His chapter on the “war” on terror and his condemnation of treating terrorism as a war, with the wrong tools, wrong approach, and wrong effects from our well-intentioned but uninformed behavior is also powerful in its common sense. He notes that this “war” (I have called it a six-front hundred-year war that *we* started in reaction to 9-11, without thinking strategically) has killed more civilian bystanders than the attack on the World Trade Center, and simultaneously super-charged anti-American sentiment around the world–including among the British!

He is subtly but scathingly critical of Congress for abdicating its responsibility to balance the power of the Executive, and documents the careless manner in which the Patriot Act was brought about (Bush can also confiscate pleasure boats with Cuban charts on thsm).

The middle of the book examines, with a capitalist's critical eye, the wasted hundreds of billions on Iraq, and how that money might have been better used to address the complex emergencies in Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia (one might also add the tri-border region in Latin America, which is about to explode).

Soros is, I believe, in error, when he concludes that the forthcoming election provides an opportunity to deflate the bubble of American supremacy. First off, the Republicans are taking the election seriously, the Democrats are not. Second off, the Kerry team has proven completely incapable of devising a shadow government, a coalition cabinet, and a balanced budget within which to make policy deals with moderate Republicans and others such as Independents and Greens.

In the next section Soros illuminates with a mix of previously state ideas, i.e. the political institutions needed to protect the common good have not kept up with the marketplace (Kissinger agrees), and new thoughts, among which I found the emphasis on restoring the definition of sovereignty to mean sovereignty of the people, not the state, to be the most compelling and also the most consistent with the many other books I have reviewed for Amazon, among which Jonathan Schell's book, “Unconquerable World” stands out.

Soros' other remarkable idea, which I think he should seek with $10M if he can spare the change, is that there is an urgent need for a D6 of developing countries to counter the G8 of First World industrial powers. He identifies Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa. I would add China and Argentina and make it D8 instead.

Finally, he concludes with a strong indictment of how foreign aid is administered today, less than 45% of it actual reaching needy recipients (versus 85% for his own programs), he touches on the importance of ensuring that the people, not the corrupt elite, get the benefits of any nation's natural resources, and that only an open society, in which citizens can and *must* (are *required to*) think for themselves, is a potentially prosperous and secure society.

So, concluding this review, I have to say, Bravo, Soros, but why isn't your money where your book suggests it should be? Let's Talk, America, for example, or the National Budget Simulation Project, or the Co-Intelligence Institute, or any of hundreds of bottom-up efforts to shed light on public policy, to create public intelligence that can both inform citizens and hold officials accountable for betraying the public trust–why are they not being noticed by Soros?

American has been radicalized by the Bush Administration, which will probably win in 2004 and further radicalize both America and the world. There will be multiple variations of 9-11, including at least one hijacked Pakistani submarine firing a missile into Australia. We don't need mobilization, we need education. We need a National Intelligence Council in the “seven tribes, seven standards, seven issues” sense, one that relies on open sources of information to ensure that every American understands what is at stake here, and how their ignorance not only feeds terrorism, it feeds the supremacist ideology of neo-conservativism that is terrorism's best friend.

Soros has come full circle, and now stands with Thomas Jefferson, who said “A Nation's best defense is an informed citizenry.” So, when does school start?