Capitalism (Good & Bad) – Page 37 – Public Intelligence Blog

2003/08/162009/12/04

Review: The Manufacture of Evil–Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Corruption, Justice (Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Helps Understand the Lack of Ethics Behind Blackout,

August 16, 2003

Lionel Tiger

Edit of 22 Dec 07 to add links.

The recent black-out that plunged Canadian provinces and many US states, notably New York, into darkness, while producing disturbing pictures of millions exiting New York on foot across its automotive bridges, can be understood by reading several books, among them this book. Others include Charle's Perrow's “Normal Accidents: Dealing with High Risk Technologies”, Norman Cousins, “The Pathology of Power”, and the variety of books that focus specifically on corruption and deception by electrical utility companies around the world, but generally in the US, UK, and Australia.

Summing the book up in one sentence: the industrial system disconnected the ethics of kinship and community from the production process. It allowed “objective” industrial management to devise complex processes in which each individual plays a functionalist role with minimalist information, and no one person can see the relationship between their “objective” task, and the massively dysfunctional, pathological, and corrupt outcomes of the total industrial system.

This is an erudite, well-documented, well-reasoned book. It carefully addresses the manner in which sociopathological organizations–including militaries and the corporations that create them in their image–undermine national security and the national commonwealth. It concludes on a positive note: restoring group governance, and restoring the connection between kinship, community, ethics, and the manner in which national security and national economic decisions are made, can reverse this destructive evil trend, and restore mankind to a state of grace among men and between men and nature. This is an inspiring important work.

More recent books bearing out this author's original message:
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
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas
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
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart

2003/07/292009/12/04

Review: Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Compelling Condemnation of Crude Corruption,

July 29, 2003

Robert Baer

Edit of 22 Dec to add links. Book is available in paperback.

Former spy Robert Baer, author of See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, makes the leap from intelligence reformist to national mentor with his new book, “SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude.” Indeed, his last sentence has the White House laying in the moonlight with its legs spread, lustfully eyeing the Saudi wallet on the bureau.

This is an extraordinary compelling work, not least because it provides detailed and documented discovery not previously available, of how the U.S. government has over the course of several administrations made a deliberate decision to a) not spy on the Arab countries, b) not collect and read open sources in Arabic, c) not attempt to understand the sub-state actors such as the Muslim brotherhood, despite a long history in which these groups commit suicide to achieve their objectives, including the murder of several heads of state.

Baer's most brutal points should make every American shudder: it is America itself that is subsidizing terrorism, as well as the corruption of the Saudi royal family. Baer's documented estimate is that $1 dollar from every barrel of petroleum is spent on Saudi royal family sexual misbehavior, and $1.50 of every barrel of petroleum bought by America ultimately ends up funding extremist schools, foundations, and terrorist groups.

Baer has “gone back in time” to document how all of this terrorism began in the 1970's, but despite its terrible local consequences (including the assassination of heads of state), was ignored by Washington as “a local problem.”

In one lovely real-life account, Baer, then duty officer at CIA while Iraq poised to invade Kuwait, found that the $35 billion per year system was useless, impotent. It came down to his calling the chief of station in Kuwait, who called a border guard, who lifted his binoculars and described the Iraqi tanks stopped for lunch. Baer says: “As I waited, I wondered: Is this what all that money for intelligence is buying us? A pair of binoculars?”

Baer joins with Robert Kaplan in concluding that democracy in Arabia would be an out and out disaster. The decades of Islamic extremism and anti-Americanism run amok cannot be resolved by democratic elections because the very people who most hate America will be elected. Baer observes that “strongman tactics” such as used by Saddam Hussein and by the Syrian leadership–including a “scorched earth” campaign against the internal terrorist groups–are a more stable “rule of law”. One can conclude that the US has made a mistake in destabilizing Iraq, and that the imposition of a democratic solution in Iraq will turn out to be vastly more difficult, and vastly more expensive, than the naive neo-conservatives understood when they set forth without bothering to establish who was in the majority within the population being “liberated.”

Saudi Arabia has bought and paid for all the White House and Congressional influence it needs. This is why the recently released 9-11 report contains no mention of the secret documentation of Saudi Arabian complicity in the terrorism that took 3,000 American lives. As Senator Shelby noted on PBS NewsHour recently (he has read the secret report), 93% of the blanked out pages, and specifically those on Saudi sponsorship of terrorism against America and other nations, is a “con man's” effort to avoid “embarrassment.” As the families of the 9-11 victims have said, “we need to know.”

Baer is extraordinary. He was a success as a case officer (a clandestine representive of America dealing with traitors and terrorists under conditions of extreme risk), and he has now become a sort of “Patrick Henry” of the modern era, warning us in clear and compelling terms that White House corruption (a non-partisan recurring corruption) and Saudi Arabia are the twin swords upon which this great Nation may yet impale itself.

Other books Americans need to read (or at least read the reviews):
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
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
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

2003/07/062009/12/04

Review: Reefer Madness–Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market

3 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics

Three Articles, Lightweight Sequel to Fast Food Nation,

July 6, 2003

Eric Schlosser

Although the author is gifted, this is a very light-weight sequel to Fast Foot Nation and the author's next book on prisons is therefore already suspect. This could have been a great book–indeed it could have been three great books–but in the rush to publish a second book in order to profit from the justifiable applause for his first one, the editor and publisher and author have all failed.There are three articles here: the first is about the inconsistencies of the drug versus the murder laws, the number of people in jail for marijuana, and the social implications of all this; the second is on the underground economy of illegal workers and profiteering abusive corporations (McDonald's is especially evil in this depiction); and the third is about pornography but with a twist, focusing on how hotels and other major corporations are profiting.

The books ends with a very short but thoughtful observation regarding the need to change the law and punishment so as to back away from life-ending punishments for individual behavior that is merely self-destructive or distastement, and focus the heaviest punishments on those who commit economic crimes against society and entire sub-sections of society.

In each of these three cases, there are other books that are better–Deep Cover by Michael Levine on the futility of drug enforcement and the corruption of Drug Enforcement Agency “suits”; Forbidden Knowledge by Roger Shattuck, on pornography among other things; and The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald, on the sweetheart triangle between national-level white collar corporate criminals, big law firms, and a compliant Department of Justice that lets the richest bad guys off easy.

I would caution the author to not do this again–the next book had better be as good as Fast Food Nation, or he will fall into the second rank of serial writers rather than culture-changing authors, where he deserves to stay.

I would also encourage anyone considering buying this book to do so–it does have useful information–but more importantly, if you have not read Fast Food Nation, go to that page and think seriously about buying and reading it now–as McDonald's gets blamed overseas for being the epidemy of all that is hateful to Islamics, as Kraft Food pays lip service to healthy food in its realization that Oreo cookies are killing kids, what Eric Schlosser did in Fast Food Nation is being appreciated more and more each day–with that book, he did indeed change national consciousness, an achievement that will stand in history as a turning point in creating a healthier America.

2003/07/062009/12/04

Review: Fast Food Nation–The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Consciousness & Social IQ

A *Nation-Changing* Book of Extraordinary Value,

July 6, 2003

Eric Schlosser

Edit of 22 Dec 07 to add links.

This is an utterly extraordinary book, and I am going to review it not from the point of view of fast food as a vice, like tobacco, with individual health consequences, but rather from a national security point of view, with obesity and the loss of the warrior ethic, of fitness, of the ability to run down and kill terrorists in your neighborhood. Strategically, in both political and economic terms, this book is a *major* contribution to how politicians, corporate chiefs, university and school administrators, religious leaders, and individuals themselves should think about their national diet.

In combination with “Pandora's Poison” by Joe Thorton (a book about how chlorine-based chemistry is killing both America and the Earth), this book cuts to the very innermost corners of the national soul.

It is also more timely, in 2003, than when first published in 2001 to such acclaim, because a book called “Why People Hate America” has ably documented the Islamic and general foreign perception of how McDonald's embodies the “hamburger virus” of capitalism run amok, and Kraft Food, among others, had just recently (July 2003) announced that it is completely revisiting its edibles, now that folks are realizing that Oreo's kill kids and sodas have ten tea-spoons of sugar in every can. Food has become a fighting matter! Food has become a cultural litmus test, and America is failing the test.

We have also seen SARS, monkeypox, and multiple re-emerging infectuous diseases since this book was published. Infected fast food is a clear and present danger to the American nation.

What I find so dazzling about this work is its thoughtful integration and explanation of how fast food not only increases the gap between the rich and the poor by killing family farms and skilled labor as fast food corporations take over both farms and animal food chains so as to de-skill them and extract every penny of profit possible, but it is increasing the prospects for deadly disease entering the national bloodstream. If Microsoft is a “Dutch Elm disease” threat to national security in cyberspace (a view published in ComputerWorld by Paul Strassman recently after leaving his post as Director of Defense Information), then McDonalds and the other fast food companies are a threat to national security in multiple ways–by destroying diversity among farms and in eating habits that support unique food chains, by increasing the numbers of people in poverty, by creating massive means by which several different nation-wide epidemics could occur.

Obesity is actually the least threatening outcome of a political economy that permits fast food (and still does not regulate and enforce healthy meat processing).

At every level, from the philosophical architecture of the book, with its concern about the targeting of children as both direct clients and intermediaries in getting parents to accept bad food for their whining children, to the selection of the topics to be covered by the individual chapters, to the earnest and richly-developed sources that are quoted, this is one of the finest books among the 375 plus that I have reviewed here on Amazon.

This book is beyond five stars. In relation to poverty, corporate corruption, government ineffectiveness, fast food as a disease vector, and in relation to obesity as a symbol of a nation in decline, this book is about as important as a book can get. Totally, totally awesome. It's not about diet–its about the health of the American Republic in every way conceivable.

2003/06/182009/12/04

Review: Universities in the Marketplace–The Commercialization of Higher Education

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Education (Universities)

Excellent Structured Look at University Prostitution,

June 18, 2003

Derek Bok

Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University and author of two useful books on “the state of the nation”, has done a very fine job of examining the commercialization of the university, with separate chapters on athletics (the golden goose tends to cost more to maintain than most realize, both in financial terms and in terms of negative impacts on scholarship); scientific research; and customized executive education offered on a for-profit basis.While the author concludes with some recommendations, the book is best for its reasoned discussion of the problems. The prostitution of the universities, and the blandness of undergraduate education, are issued that will not be solved by any one community, any one state, or even by Congress. This is going to require a President committed to national education and public health as the “first plank” of any national strategy to united and nurture what I think of as the “seven intelligence tribes”: national (spies and counterspies), military, law enforcement, business, academic, non-profit and media, and religions-clans-citizens.

As we have seen in time since 9-11, all of these tribes appear to be failing–national on 9-11, military in Afghanistan and Iraq, law enforcement on Hamas and Pakistani terrorists still active within the US, business in general (Boeing being had by Airbus, for example), now in this book, the universities, the failure of the media to support the debate on going to war with Iraq, and of the New York Times in ethics specifically, the self-indulgent failure of the Catholic Church to police its own priests–this is not a pretty picture. In all of this, the university is central to the creation of a public that should be fully versed in “civitas” and electing public officials who are liberally educated as well as scientifically trained. That does not appear to be happening. This book helps explain why.

2003/05/292009/12/04

Review: World on Fire–How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Unconventional Wisdom, Strong Chinese Element,

May 29, 2003

Amy Chua

This book is a solid five stars in part because the author ably bring forward a well-documented (solid notes, good index) case for suggesting that both Western democracy and unbridaled (that is to say, uncontrolled) capitalism, are not only harmful to lesser developed countries, but also ultimately, through their creation of instability and the export of terrorism, harmful to the very proponents of unbridled democracy and capitalism.She is on strong ground. Robert Kaplan has written many books examining failed states and lower tier nations and come to the same conclusion with respect to democracy, while George Soros has published “The Crisis of Global Capitalism.” More subtly, Thomas Stewart, in “The Wealth of Knowledge”, slams much of what passes for effective industrial and corporate organization as archaic and inappropriate to the new environment.

What I found most intersting, having spent much of my life in Asia and Latin America, and been close to some Chinese elements in Singapore, was that much of the author's case is based on Chinese examples, not American. This makes the book especially valuable to Americans, because when she speaks of a world on fire and the dangers of ethnic conflict coming out from under market-dominant minorities, she is speaking about Chinese examples, not American examples. As the Godfather would say, “This is not personal, this is business.”

The author ends with a number of recommendations that appear sensible, but that at this point have no hope of every being considered by the US or other Western powers–or in China. The author's recommendations require an educated public exercising its political power in the pursuit of both global stabilization and national prosperity as seen through a long-term lens. It may take another 9-11, the meltdown of Arabia, and several more genocides in Malaysia and Indonesia, the utter chaos in the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Sudan, and Burundi, to name just four failed states that are testing the United Nations, before the public ultimately realizes that what is exported overseas “in their name” ultimately comes home on fire. The book is well-titled, the author's thesis is important, and those who do not like this book are well-qualified to represent the problematic organizations that the author is discussing.

2002/12/132009/12/04

Review: The Fool’s Run

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

Integrates Several Plots in an Enjoyable Manner,

December 13, 2002

John Sandford

I do not share the disappointment expressed by some of the earlier reviewers, perhaps because I do not read many novels and this was my first exposure to John Sandford. In any event, I found this “airplane book” so interesting that I made time to finish it once I got home.The integration of several sub-plots, the detailed portrait painted of the primary character, the ins and outs of planning the destruction of a corporation, and the final surprise ending, very much an “out of the box” solution for an impossible situation, gave me great satisfaction, to the point that this author joins Robin Cook, Dick Francis, and Michael Creichton as a trusted provider of light entertainment.