I considered this book, and found the reviews so very informative, as well as negative on what the “next steps” should be, that I enter this contribution not as a review of the book, but as a pointer to other books that go beyond this book. Epoch B Swarm B Leadership, Transpartisanship, and bottom-up Citizen Wisdom Councils is what comes after civilization deconstructs and the nation-state model is finally devolved to tighter regional alliances and the end of predatory immoral capitalism (in favor of moral green capitalism).
My thanks again to the reviewers. I buy and read a great many books, and the reviews help me make tough choices within my limit of five books a week. I hope the links above are considered helpful.
Possibly the Most Important Book to America's Future, March 23, 2008
Philip Dine
I chanced upon this book at an airport bookstore, and after a long flight and several more hours at home with it, have put it down with an enormous sense of the righteous and epochal importance of this work. I have not trimmed my review to 1000 words because of the importance of this book, and the removal of the 1000 word limit from Amazon's current guidelines. This is IMPORTANT!
In the introduction to the book, Congressman Gephardt laments that union membership is down to 8% from 35%, for two reasons: good employers whose workers do not feel the need to unionize, and intimidation by bad employers who will stop at nothing to squelch any attempt to unionize.
He emphasizes the direct relationship between the health of the unions and the health of America's economy and its linch-pin middle class.
He is most provocative in suggesting that unions can and should displace employers as the providers of life-long benefits.
He concludes the introduction by lamenting the reality that employers pursue micro-profits instead of macro-benefits, and points out that in the absence of rules of law and fair trade, globalization will inevitably push the USA to labor conditions akin to those of the lowest common denominator–a return to sweatshops, no benefits, and despair across the land.
The book itself is phenomenal. The author, a very rare journalist who not only cares about labor issues but has also won the trust of labor leaders, has written what is in my mind the single most important book relevant to how every American should perceive the 2008 election. No candidate is serious about labor at this time. Our job is to change that, and to help labor, notably the AFL-CIO and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), change that by putting labor issues in the forefront of the economic discussion. John McCain, featured in the DVD Why We Fight, condones the impoverishment of regions to stimulate enlistments in the military-industrial complex of which he is a tacit leader. Hillary Clinton does not now and never will understand the working class–she set the standard for “bitch in residence” in the White House, according to my secret service colleagues, and she is as elitist and arrogant as it gets. Barack Obama remains surrounded by advisors who do not have a clue about Generation Y, collective intelligence, or how to create a holistic strategy that can address the ten threats with the twelve policies while helping the eight challengers avoid our self-induced The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World, the loss of the The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism and the rise of the two political parties that are a form of organized crime and Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It. It is in this context that I am simply blown away by extremely balanced, well-told, important review by a journalist uniquely qualified to provide us with a book-length review of where labor has failed, where labor shows promise, and how labor is America's bottom line: as he concludes the book, Labor defines who we are as a people.
+ Labor has unraveled, which harms America and its economy because Labor is historically the only force apart from honest religions and selected civil society elements that truly represents the moral imperatives of both social value and economic value. Decades of progress have been rolled back by Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Clinton in particular sold out Labor with NAFTA and the ease with which he allowed corporations to export entire programs to sweatshop countries at the same time that he reduced barriers to the dumping of both cheap and unsafe toys and other products whose “true cost” has not been properly calculated or presented.
+ Middle class, professionals, and women are going bankrupt, along with skilled blue collar workers, because the balance of power among labor, business, and government is gone–business rules.
+ 53% of Americans favor unionization.
+ Reagan's dismissal of the air traffic controllers was the signal act that destroyed decades of labor progress, and unleashed illegal, unethical, and unconscionable business repression of unions.
+ Service jobs are difficult to unionize because of high turnover, transient elements, low pay, high proportion of immigrants that can be intimidates, PLUS a lack of government penalties against business violators.
+ The above, combined with the government's enthusiastic support for exporting jobs, and poor labor leadership, have creating a sucking chest wound in the American economy. It could yet be fatal.
+ The author excels at recounting labor successes that have not been covered by the mainstream media, and he manages to do this in a way that is inspiring, objective, and not at all preachy or pontifical.
+ I am deeply moved by his account of how the IAFF, two lights down from my own office, used five methods to win Iowa for John Kerry:
– Turned out the residents (each bringing five citizens to caucuses)
– Used local presence EVERYWHERE to carry caucuses ignored by the other candidates
– Able to use local knowledge to recruit those whose candidates failed to pass the viability test
– Never gave up in darkest of times
– High public credibility and visibility
+ I am reminded that “Change to Win” started in 2005, John Kerry and his boffo haircut just could not communicate the need properly.
+ The author explains how Kerry earned fire fighter love and respect in his turning around mid-way to Asia to come back to a major fire that killed numerous fire fighters in his state, and then worked aggressively to pass fire fighter equipment and safety laws.
+ There is no other union that has a firehouse, fire trucks, uniformed personnel that are unarmed, and is able to sponsor chili feeds at the firehouses while handing out leaflets in uniform on every street corner, doing retail politics to all non-union voters.
+ Having set the stage with successes, the author then moves into a very important middle ground in which he anticipates the continued decline of labor (and of the American economy) unless labor can reassert its influence on the national agenda.
+ He is critical of labor for focusing only on “get out the vote” and not on putting its issues–all of which have moral authority–into the national dialog.
+ He points out that labor spent close to $100 million in the 2004 election across 32 states, and was a key factor in the democrats taking back both Houses of Congress.
+ He is forceful in discussing how the Republicans have made “cultural values” a smokescreen within which individuals vote for candidates that are inherently bad for the public wallet and public benefits. I have a note, “religion and ‘values' have trumped facts and consequences.”
+ He damns both parties: the Republicans for trying to eliminate minimum wage rights in the aftermath of Katrina, and the Democrats for taking labor for granted.
+ He says that the debate has not taken place regarding:
– deindustrialization of America
– dumping of unsafe and cheap products into our marketplace
– local impact of globalization (and of course Wal-Mart as a cancer)
– toll on families of reduced benefits
+ He is articulate in pointing out that labor must work at two levels:
– at a national level, constant forceful attention to legislation, regulation, and the filling of oversight posts
– locally on compliance and alerts
+ The author slams the Democrats for barely winning on the basis of Republican mistakes, while being completely lacking in any strategy, message, or coherent program of their own.
+ He is devastatingly effective in evaluating the failure of labor leaders to communicate to the public that wages are at the lowest point in history as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while profits are at the highest point ever in history as a percentage of the GDP.
+ He is eloquent in pointing out that most Americans have forgotten (or never learned) that strong labor equates to the greatest prosperity for the greatest number.
+ He recommends these two books as antecedent works:
+ He documents how labor has failed to impact on trade agreements, the migrations of good jobs with benefits to overseas sweatshops, and the loss of entire segments of community economics.
+ The author describes a wide range of illegal and unethical business practices that repress unionization, while also describing the ineptness of the government, with the National Labor Review Board taking an average of 889 days to make a ruling–that is almost three years and in my mind is an ATROCITY.
+ Illegal firings that we know of amounted to 31,358 in 2005. Business enjoys a “culture of impunity” fueled by loopholes, ease of long delays, and feeble enforcement.
+ Labor hurt itself with its own repression in earlier decades of dissent, and its compulsion to demand strict obedience for a unified front (at the same time that businesses had similar practices)
+ The author believes that the country hungers for a renaissance of labor and its community-oriented values and benefits. I hope so, but right now, not a single candidate has a clue how to jump into this with both feet, a heart, and a brain.
+ I am totally inspired by this author, and have a note to myself: firefighters, cops, teachers, ambulance drivers and nurses: public servants driving public policy and benefits.
+ The author is sympathetic but very critical of labor's refusal to engage with most journalists, and he provides a superb overview of how badly labor deals with media and how badly media ignores labor issues that are fundamental.
+ He is most impressive in giving modern labor a relatively clean “bill of health” with most mafia connections and most strong-arm bosses now giving way to the empowerment of individual union members, open elections, and greater accountability.
+ He calls on labor to humanize, regionalize, and think big.
+ Labor should tell the story of its role in East European democratization and carry that creative role to the Second World.
+ Labor should compare and publicize the grotesque profits and compensation packages of industry, with those of the workers on whose backs those profits are unjustly earned.
I put this book down with a sense of wonder, a hard-eyed sense of the possibilities, and a very strong conviction that this author and this book have nailed the future of America as a Republic: Labor can be the king-maker at the national and state levels in 2008, and I pray that Labor will first learn the difference between transpartisan and bi-partisan (code for preserving the two party spoils system, something both McCain and Clinton absolutely want).
In that vein, I imagined a month national “open house” across police stations, fire stations, hospitals, and schools, in which Video-Teleconferencing was used to sponsor a national town-hall meeting to consider the ten threats and twelve policies, to elect a People's Cabinet, and perhaps funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation under the leadership of David Walker (former Comptroller General who told Congress USA is insolvent and quit when they would not act responsibly), a Public Budget Office capable of producing a balanced budget by 4 July 2008, and demanding that each candidate do the same (both appoint a Cabinet and produce a balanced budget for online examination before November 2008).
The author, in my opinion, is long overdue for recognition and promotion as the voice of labor, serving a new virtual Labor Congress that sets aside the fiefdoms and irrationality of the labor archipelago, and speaks to America with one voice and one practical agenda to restore America the Beautiful.
Book loses one star–perhaps unfairly–for not integrating secondary sources and using the *combination* of this extraordinary biography and the Brahimi Report and other core documents, to illuminate why the UN desperately needs a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN).
+ Sergio Vieira de Mello (henceforth SVM) spent forty-years as a UN gad-fly, and his resume of tens of short assignments interspersed with a handful of 2-3 year assignments is a testimony to all that is wrong–not with him, but rather–with UN recruitment, training, continuity of operations, and lack of decision support.
+ The book opens with the observation that Paul Bremer (the ultimate US dilettante who set us back five to ten years while losing tens of billions of dollars) refused most of SVM's suggestions, especially on setting timelines (the same ideas General Garner adopted before he was fired by Dick Cheney and replaced with Bremer). We are told his last words were “Oh shit” and I somehow doubt that.
+ Vague mandates were a constant problem (see Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future for a full discussion of why the Brahimi Report still needs to be implemented, so the mandate can be informed, the force configured based on ground truth, etc.)
+ UN got into “governing” for the first time in Kosovo, and was completely ill-equipped for the task.
+ SVM reflected with the author that the world was too big to ignore but too complex to manage quickly or cheaply. Later in the book he is cited as recognizing that the UN is so dysfunctional that governments work around it (while foundations beg for effective focal points for their giving totaling $500B a year), but that governments are not prone to support long term interests in eradicating the ten high level threats as lain out in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
+ SVM was an impressive scholar. He finished first out of 198 at the Sorbonne in Philosophy. He did a Masters in moral philosophy (a tautological redundancy I would have thought) and then a doctoral in two levels, one in 1974 and one in 1985. It was here that he understood that governments are not adept at preventing crises nor as rebuilding failed societies.
– First level doctorate: “The Role of Philosophy in Contemporary History,” with key line “Not only has history ceased to feed philosophy, but philosophy no longer feeds history.”
+ He composed his speeches on hotel note pads, observing that if he could not fit his argument to a hotel pad, he probably did not know what he was trying to say.
+ At this point I have a note, overall a very good use of biography to offer a “sense” of the UN, but lacking in synthesis, recommendations, or secondary sources.
+ Early in the book and throughout, one senses that Lebanon is the UN's modern birthplace, and where it has been permanently hospitalized if not euthanized.
+ SVM is quoted as saying that constructive change required “a synthesis of utopia and realism.” I urge the reader to visit Earth Intelligence Network to see this being implemented.
+ Pages 87-89 provide a marvelous condemnation of satellite surveillance as a panacea. SPOT Image which does ten meter or 1:50,000 multispectral imagery, identified land “suitable for resettlement.” Actual ground inspection failed the satellite findings, which did not see the land mines or the malarial mosquitoes.
+ SVM valued local staff, actively cultivated their inputs regardless of rank or function, and he is described as having a keen eye for symbolism.
+ We learn from this book that UN “teams” are assembled in an ad hoc fashion reflecting the whims and past good relations of the ubber boss, and I for one recognized what chaos and discontinuity this represents for all elements of the UN System.
+ We learn that when the UN arrives the cost of everything skyrockets, not least because UN employees get $140 a day, which in the specific instance of Cambodia or Kosovo, I forget, was the average ANNUAL income for any given person. I point to William Shawcross's unforgettable Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. Read my review of that book to see the relevance.
+ SVM proves clever in one instance, suggesting that smugglers not only be hired to get around a blockage against blankets, but that they be given dignity in the form of a UN consultant certificate. From many such accounts the author excels at painting a portrait of a complex and very intelligence UN official.
+ It is at this point that I check the index to discover that neither the word “information” nor the word “intelligence” nor the compound word “decision-support” appear.
+ The author cites SVM as saying that he was fed up with American bullying–I can certainly understand that–and that the hardest part of peacekeeping was internal peacekeeping (within the UN's dysfunctional family).
+ It is here I note: “At every turn: ‘We don't know; ‘We don't have the information; ‘We are too few to certify….'”
+ Then I see the golden nugget, on page 219, in his words: “We are so remarkably ill-informed. We go into a place, we have no intelligence, we don't understand the politics, and we can't identify the points of leverage. See the PKI book cited above, and also the forthcoming book, PEACE INTELLIGENCE: Assuring a Good Life for All, with a Foreword by MajGen Patrick Cammaert, who with this book and a decade of effort, got many at the UN to understand that Brahimi had it exactly right: intelligence is decision support using legal ethical open sources, and it has nothing to do with espionage. The raw book is at OSS.Net/Peace, just add the www. at the beginning.
+ The book continues with many vignettes where the UN elements are uninformed, therefore they do poor planning (lousy mandates, crummy force structures, no tactical combat charts for landing zones, etc) and hence they are often over-whelmed.
+ SVM saw a need for and proposed that the UN address the constant law enforcement gap by maintaining a roster of pre-trained and available multinational police, judges, lawyers, and prosecutors. See Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, my review includes notice of the fact that most UN “police,” e.g. those from Nigeria, can neither read nor drive.
+ We learn that SVM was acutely aware of how the UN's reputation for competence plummeted in the 1990's and how he learned in East Timor was that Legitimacy was Performance Based. As a side note, when East Timor went down I led one of 40 different efforts to answer the same three questions: 1) where are the bodies; 2) where can we land; and 3) who is is coming when, and what are they bringing. That was when I realized the need for a Multinational Decision-Support Center. On legitimacy, see The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
+ The book comes to a close with several useful notes.
– Law and order gap a constant recurring theme.
– SVR saw Iraq as a peer nation meriting respect rather than patronizing from the US
– Excellent discussion of the days leading up to the attack on the UN headquarters; to the dismissal by the US of all UN requests for information or security, and the realization, too late after the attack on the Jordanian embassy, that the UN HQ was a “soft target.”
– KUDOS to LtCol John Curran, whose foresight and rehearsal to include identification of all relevant helicopter med-evac landing zones, ensured that no one died for lack of very rapid medical evacuation. I certainly hope the UN put him for a Legion of Merit, at the very least.
Validates my choice to oppose Cheney & attack on Iran
September 3, 2007
Howard Zinn
Earlier today I reviewed The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America by Peter Dale Scott, and coined a new term of praise, “erudite patriot.” That was one of many reviews from my long recent trip to the Middle East that I could finally post.
I would never have anticipated that in reading this book today, I would not only encounter a second “erudite patriot,” but that my somewhat anxious decision to directly and repeatedly focus public attention on the high crimes and misdemeanors of Dick Cheney, would be so elegantly validated with a firm grounding in public resistance to tyranny and amorality.
The author, an eminent historian, is the people's historian. He alone has documented the many times in which public resistance brought odious government programs to a stop.
Although a collection of past essays, this book actually reads fast and well as a survey of the fundamentals empowered by historical example and accuracy. I was strongly reaffirmed in my beliefs by this book, reinforced in my relatively recent commitment to bringing Cheney to justice.
The author, unique qualified to do so, informs us that people have resisted before, that the osmosis of truth ultimate swings the public, and as the book title suggests, no government can resist an aroused public.
The author suggests, and I agree, that impeachment of Cheney first, is essential. Our government has lost all legitimacy in my eyes, and I would resist arrest by this goveernment to the death of them or I, after first attempting to persuade the good-hearted people sent to arrest me that they should disobey the illegal order to arrest me, and live to see their families that night.
Every single essay in this book is moving, intelligent, cogent, and relevant to the greatest crisis our Republic has ever faced. The author's review of our greatest betrayal, of the wounded from Gulf I and Gulf II (he does not mention that unlike Gulf I, Gulf II produced 16 instead of 6 wounded for every death, and we have 75,000 amputees across the land, lives shatted by Dick Cheney's lies, by Paul Wolfowitz's lies, by Donald Rumsfeld's idiocy and arrogance).
The author is compelling in stating that war is the enemy, and one is reminded of the outcome of War Games: the only winning strategy is not to play at war for profit or any other reason.
The author is compelling in cataloging the litany of lies by our Presidents, and the manner in which our Founding Fathers designed the government to protect the rich and enslave the poor.
The author is compelling in pointing out that we must all question authority, and that the one thing we should all recognize now is that we can unite and be invincible, non-violently invincible, in demanding dignity, justice, and liberty for all–not just all Americans, but every person on the planet and especially those repressed by the 44 dictators, 42 of whom are Bush-Cheney “allies.”
The author is compelling in damning the hypocrisy of this Administration, and I will tell everyone for a fact that below the White House level, most political appointees are shocked, scared, scared, angry, and hopeful that America will impeach the idiot-in-chief and the thief-in-chief. I am an estranged moderate Republican, and I never, ever, imagined that the Republican Party would become the runner up to global crimes so grotesque and extensive that only Hitler and his genocide against the Jews rate above it.
The author is compelling in calling for new new ways, for waging peace instead of war, for undertaking a general strike (I even thought the time has come to make all our tax payments to an escrow account instead of to the existing hijacked government).
I stand with the author in commiting to non-violent opposition to this totalitarian and amoral White House. Non-violence works. All that We the People need to do is withdraw our obedience. I really like the idea of a general strike, and I respectfully suggest to one and all that if America attacks Iran with Israel, that is the day when we should all go on indefinite general strike, and not return to work, nor pay taxes, until all US forces are withdrawn from the Middle East.
Under existing law & regulations, the above statement could be interpreted by Bush-Cheney as giving comfort to the enemey, and I could be arrested and all my property confiscated. That is how low this Republic has gone.
I must say, Howard Zinn's brilliance and integrity have bathed me with a warm glow of confidence in We the People. I feel protected, reinforced, encouraged, renewed, heartened by his wisdom. With such great minds as his speaking out, I am confident We the People will prevail.
You must, absolutely, buy this this book, read it, and recommend it to others. Other books that I have reviewed and recommend:
One of a Handful of Revolutionary and Liberating References,
May 12, 2007
Steven Pinker
This is a truly extraordinary book, some of the finest scholarship I have ever read, easily up there with E. O. Wilson's “Consilience” and other such works.
Four bridges from biology to culture: 1) cognitive science; 2) cognitive neuroscience; 3) behavioral genetics; and 4) evolutionary psychology. I am of course reminded of Stewart Brand, Howard Rheingold, and the long-standing views on Co-Evolution.
The author's primary and most adroitly presented view is that the human mind is NOT a blank slate, and that we must completely separate science from religion as well as politics, because in failing to recognize human nature, we are making bad decisions in many areas. He cites Chomsky as saying that children should grow a language, not learn it.
He sees culture and cognition as the essential “special sauce” for sustainable diversity and societal design. He sees culture as the means by which we construct and destruct.
I believe we are there, and the work of Tom Atlee (“Tao of Democracy”) and Jim Rough (“Society's Breakthrough), along with the other books on the transpartisan list, are the end of the beginning. We can now evolve properly. The author outlines how religious dogma and political ideology harm society and science and humanity most severely.
He lists four fears of the dogmatic: 1) fear of inequality; 2) fear of imperfectability; 3) fear of determinism; and 4) fear of nihilism.
He focuses on the costs and consequences of self-deception, and the important not only of leaning to learn, but of learning to learn collaboratively rather than competitively. He emphasizes that reciprocal altruism works and as a Nobel Prize certified in the 1990's, trust lowers the cost of doing anything.
On pages 220-221 he discusses our need for intuitive physics, biology, engineering, psychology, special sense, number sense, sense of probability, economics, mental databases and logic, and language. This is precisely what the Earth Intelligence Network plans to fund with Medard Gabel's EarthGame. EarthGame will displace rote learning and structured prison-like education for many.
Part V discusses hot buttons, with a chapter for each: Politics, Violence, Gender/Rape, Children; and the Arts. He says that reality-based theory and practice work better than dogma-based ideological biases. Of course they do, but the majority of the public has dropped out and left thieves and morons in charge. We can fix that.
The ends brilliantly. Suffering does NOT ennoble, there is no noble savage, we must understand and craft the culture of man. As Will and Ariel Durant tell is “The Lessons of History,” the only real revolution is in the mind of man. The author cites Richard Shweder and his trinity of autonomy, divinity, and community. There are 901 references over 43 pages and an amazing five-page list as an appendix, from Donald E. Brown, of Human Universals.
This is a transpartisan reference work of great importance.
This book, and the much more detailed book by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, “Made to Stick” are perfect partners in putting really actiionble public intelligence in the hands of social activitists and transpartisan political reformers. I have added both books to my list of transpartisan books.
This book focuses on digital tools for social change, on creating connected activism, on addressing the listening and communicating deficits.
The author provides a checklist of 12 points for evaluating how connected your activist organization is, another checklist of 8 points on powering the edges, and a final 95-point summary of the “Cluetrain Manifesto,” another book I have reviewed. All of these are useful.
The author points out that hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, and I could not agree more. Epoch B leadership is a form of swarm leadership, and the connected collective can easily bring the hierarchical authority down.
I especially liked the author's focus on all of us being content managers. Sharing information, as Vint Cerf has said recently, is how we get a Return on Information.
The book ends with some hard-earned “Do's and Don't's” and a chapter on the future of funding for social activism.
Over-all a quick read with plenty of substance, and an excellent complement to “Made to Stick.”
Pointer to Other Relevant Works, April 13, 2008
