Consciousness & Social IQ – Page 47 – Public Intelligence Blog

2002/05/292010/10/16

Review: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Electoral Reform USA, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Greg Palast

Let Freedom Ring–Truths the Corporate Thieves Can't Hide

May 29, 2002

The most distressing aspect of this book, written by an American expatriate publishing largely through newspapers in the United Kingdom, is that all of this information should have been published in U.S. newspapers in time to make a difference–to inform the voting public–but was not. One can only speculate how corrupt our media have become–how beholden to their owners and advertisers–if we cannot get front page coverage of the Florida government's disenfranchisement of over 50,000 predominantly black and democratic voters, prior to the presidential election; or of the raw attacks on our best interests by the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and others linked in a “trigger” network where taking money from one demands all sorts of poverty-inducing and wealth theft conditions.

Even more timely are his stories about the current Administration continuing a practice of the former Administration, spiking, curtailing, forbidding intelligence investigations into Saudi Arabian government funding of bin Laden's terrorism as well as Pakistani production of the “Islamic” atomic bomb.

His exposes of corporate misdeeds, some criminal, some simply unethical, all costing the U.S. taxpayer dearly, are shocking, in part because of their sleaziness, in part because our own newspapers do not dare to fulfill their role as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, of informing and educating the people of this Nation upon which the government depends for both its revenue and its legitimacy.

Although I take this book with a grain of salt (wondering, for example, why he did not ensure that Gore's campaign had all that he could offer in time to challenge the vote disenfranchisement as part of the Supreme Court case), there is enough here, in very forthright and sensible terms, to give one hope that investigative journalism might yet play a role in protecting democracy and the future of the Republic.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2002/05/292010/09/14

Review–The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics, Priorities

Hard Truth–Left, Right, or Independent, It Is The Truth

May 29, 2002

Patrick Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan has impressed me enormously with this book. For one thing, he has his facts right. The English-speaking peoples, as Churchill called them, and the Caucasian peoples, as our Russian colleagues as well as Europe might be inclined to describe them, are not replenishing their populations. Immigrants have been a blessing to this country (my mother, for instance), but in the absence of a judicious combination of repopulation, immigrant integration, and sustained civic duty by the larger population, we become hollow and fragmented.

Most interestingly to me, Patrick Buchanan and Lee Kuan Yew, former Premier of Singapore, perhaps the most intelligent man in Asia, are in total–and I do mean total–agreement on the vital importance of the family as the foundation of civilization and continuity. I grew up in Singapore, and have extremely deep feelings of respect for Lee Kuan Yew, and what I see here is two men, as far apart as the earth and philosophy might separate them, who agree on the one core value apart from religion (it does not matter which religion, only that one respect within a religion): FAMILY. Family is the root of cultural continuity and civil sustainability, and if we allow the traditional nuclear family to enter into minority non-replenishment status, we are in fact destroying the Nation.

Patrick Buchanan speaks of how we are no longer one nation under God–or one nation, period. There is a great deal to what he says. For one thing, Mexico has reclaimed American territory all the way up to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty line, and the at least one major Republican family seems to be an active element in support of Mexico's illegal as well as legal immigration subversion of America. For another, and Joel Garreau did this in his book by this title, very intelligently, America is geographically, culturally, and economically really NINE nations in terms of geophysical and cultural separation.

The author also alludes to the growing separation between the federal government, which is agreeing to supra-national deals that hurt the states and the population at large–or refusing to sign off on deals (e.g. the Kyoto Treaty) that would actually benefit future generations. One is left with the feeling that we have three different Americas–the federal bureaucracy, the state-level authorities, and the people, and somewhere in here our methods of governance are failing to reconcile the behavior of the first two with the values of the third–in part because the people are all over the lot in terms of values, and we have lost our social cohesion.

Bottom line: he may never be President, but Patrick Buchanan speaks to the core of American values, and he must always be respected and listened to at the high table of American politics.

2002/02/272009/12/04

Review: The Future of Ideas–The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World

5 Star, Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Education (General), Future, Information Society

Public Warning of looting and Destruction of the E-Commons,

February 27, 2002

Lawrence Lessig

I struggled with this book, in part because I really dislike the manner in which the law has been complicated to the point of unreason–beyond the ken of normal people. Having concluded the book, however, I have to say this is really worth the effort. The author is laying bare the raw threats to the future of the electronic commons. He discusses in detail how very specific government policies to sell and control bandwidth, and very specific corporate legal claims being backed by “the people's” lawyers within government, are essentially “fencing” the Internet commons and severely constraining both the rights of the people and the prospects for the future of ideas and innovation.I am not a lawyer and I cannot speak to the points of law, but I am a voter and I can speak to that; what is happening to the Internet through legal machinations that are largely invisible to the people is a travesty, a crime against humanity even if permissible by law, and perhaps grounds for a public uprising demanding the recall of any official that permits and perpetuates the theft of the commons by corporations and their lawyers.

In the aftermath of 9-11, when our secret national intelligence and counterintelligence capabilities failed us, there is a need for a restoration of the people's intelligence in the aggregate as our first line of defense against enemies both foreign and domestic. I regard this book as a very serious, thoughtful, and well-intentioned “public intelligence estimate” and warning, of the harm to our security and prosperity that will ensue from a legal system that is now “out of control” and not being audited by the common sense of the people.

This book makes it clear that if the people are inert and inattentive, they will be enslaved, “virtually speaking.” If you thought Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky was scarcy, or Norman Cousins' The Pathology of Power, then this book is for you.

Along with Internet standards acceptable to the people, we now appear to need a public advocacy group, funded by the people, to fight these corporate lawyers at every turn, whilst helping our less than stellar government lawyers cope….

2002/02/272009/12/04

Review: The Future and Its Enemies–The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress

4 Star, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Future

Freedom without Restraint–Please Don't Eat the Daisies,

February 27, 2002

Virginia Postrel

This is a quick read, in part because it is a series of essays that are loosely connected. It is a reasoned attack on both government regulation and imposed technical standards. To the extent that it seems to deny the value of any standards, any oversight, any structure, it is unreasonable.Indeed, while I whole-heartedly agreed that government regulation has gotten completely out of control, I am much more concerned about corporate corruption (Enron simply being the latest case), and so I would say this book is valuable and worth reading but it is missing the bridge chapter to “what next?”

However, I like the book and I recommend it. Its value was driven home to me by an unrelated anecdote, the tales from South Korea of my data recovery expert. Bottom line: they are so far ahead of the United States, with 92% wireless penetration in urban areas, and free-flowing video and television on every hand-held communications-computing device, in part because they have not screwed up the bandwidth allocations and reservations as badly as we have. I was especially inspired by the thought that we should no longer reserve entire swaths of bandwidth for the exclusive use of the military or other government functions–let them learn how to operate in the real world rather than their artificial construct of reserved preference.

The book is well footnoted but the index is marginal–largely an index of names rather than ideas.

2001/09/222009/12/04

Review: Voltaire’s Bastards–The Dictatorship of Reason in the West

4 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Science & Politics of Science

Heavy Going But the Deeper Thinking is Worth It,

September 22, 2001

John Ralston Saul

There is much in this book, depending on one's particular interests, that can be skimmed or skipped. With patience, however, the book in its entirety is a rewarding experience for it calls into question much about how we organize ourselves politically, economically, and socially.
The bottom line, and very consistently with other great books such as “The Manufacture of Evil” on the low end and “Consilience” on the high end, is that Western thinking has been corrupted to the point that the West has become, as the inside flap says, “a vast, incomprehensible directionless machine, run by process-minded experts….whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality.”
As my own interests run toward public intelligence and public effectiveness in guiding the polity, I found his several chapters related to secrecy, immorality, and the “hijacking of capitalism” to be especially worthwhile.
He concludes that secrecy is pathological, undermining both public confidence and the public dialog. Intelligence in his view is about disseminated knowledge, not secrets.
Throughout the book the author discusses the contest between those who feel that the people cannot be trusted–the elites who strive to remain in power by making power appear an arcane skill with rites and formulas beyond the ken of the people–and those who feels that the people–and especially the larger consciousness of the people–are more in touch with nature and reality and the needs of the people than these elites.
This is a difficult book to absorb and enjoy, but I recommend because it sets the broad outlines for the real power struggle in the 21st Century–not between terrorism and capitalism, but rather between the government-corporate elites with their own agenda, and the larger body of people now possibly ready to turn every organization into an employee-owned and managed activity.

2001/09/152009/12/04

Review: Wilson’s Ghost–Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Truth & Reconciliation

Strategic Context for Understanding 11 Sep Attack on America,

September 15, 2001

Robert S. McNamara

Of all the books I have read or reviewed in the past two years, this is the only one that comes close to addressing the bitter truth about the fundamental disconnect between our perception of ourselves as “the beacon of truth”, and the rest of the world's perception of us as “interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic, and hypocritical.” Those that would seek to understand just how long our Dark Ages will last would do well to start with this book while also buying a copy of the map of “World Conflict and Human Rights Map 2000” available from the PIOOM Project at Leiden University. Beyond that, selected portions of the Shultz et al book on “Security Studies for the 21st Century”, where detailed comments are made about both knowledge gaps among our policymakers and non-traditional threats, are recommended.

There is no question but that the Attack on America of 11 September 2001 has awakened and even frightened the American public. It has elicited conventional assurances from other nation states. What most Americans do not understand, what this book makes brilliantly clear, is that two thirds of the rest of the world is glad it happened. I quote from page 52: “…at least two-thirds of the world's people–Chinese, Russians, Indians, Arabs, Muslims, and Africans–see the United States as the single greatest threat to their societies. They do not regard America as a military threat but as a menace to their integrity, autonomy, prosperity and freedom of action.”
Whether one agrees with their depiction of two-thirds or not (or whether they see the Attack as a well-deserved bloody nose or an atrocity beyond the pale), the fact is that the authors paint–together with the PIOOM map–a compelling picture of billions–not millions but billions–of impoverished dispossessed people suffering from failed states, crime, slavery, starvation, water shortages–and an abundance of media as well as propaganda showing the US fat and happy and living the consumer society dream on the backs of these billions.
Of all the policy people I have followed over the years, Robert McNamara and Bill Colby are the two that have in my view matured and broadened the most after leaving the halls of power. The deep insights that I find throughout this book-a partnership expert between McNamara with the global reality and power game insights, James Blight with the scholarly underpinnings-are extraordinarily applicable to the challenges that we face in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 Attack on America. In particular, their dissection of the United Nations-what works and what does not-and their recommendations for future initiatives that are multilateralist and focused on the prevention and amelioration of the root conditions that are spawning our terrorist challenges, are vital reading for policymakers, diplomats, warriors, and financial magnates.

I am very concerned by any effort to militarize our response to the terrorist challenge-this is a long war that requires a fundamental restructuring of national intelligence and counterintelligence; a $100 billion a year effort to address the root causes of instability worldwide and a redirection of US foreign and defense policy away from unilateralism (for instance, we must now support the International Tribunal and an international island prison for those convicted of war crimes as well as acts of terror). Our military is still needed, but it too must be restructured to provide for four major capabilities all equally capable: CINCWAR, CINCSOLIC, CINCPEACE, and CINCHOME. I can only hope that this book, which I recommend highly, is read and understood before we start to throw money at the problem in counterproductive ways.

2001/09/042010/02/18

Review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball–A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace

4 Star, Change & Innovation, Consciousness & Social IQ

Over the Top on Cute, Profound Insights, No Solutions

September 4, 2001

Gordon MacKenzieI would never have bought this book off the shelf, because it is way over the top with cutesy child-like drawings, hard to read type, and other affectations–it goes beyond charming toward excessive cosmetics. It was, however, recommended by someone I trust, and I am glad I read it.

The two most profound insights, insights every teacher and CEO should be required to repeat every day, are that our schools beat creativity out of our children, and our corporations suppress individual ideas and any attempts at diversity.

I read this book twice. The first time, like a cat circling a mouse, I would pick it up and read just one of the stories, expecting to collect enough evidence to discard it completely, and instead being drawn back for another story at random. The second time, more sequentially, looking for the meat to review.

Unfortunately, absent a major revolution in how we manage our organizations, this book does not suggest solutions. Very few can survive on their own unless they are willing to drop down to subsistence living. The sad fact is we have a school system designed over 100 years to deskill people to the point they could work in assembly line jobs (including white collar “company man go along” jobs), and in the same 100 years have focused on building companies in which everyone is replaceable, and no one person can hope to do the business development, product development, service, and billing for any given offering.

Certainly the Internet offers some prospects–say 20 years down the road–for networks of “virtual corporations” to take effect, but in the meantime, I have to judge this book as a really excellent pate de foie gras, just the thing with which to torment the corporate slaves who want to dream of freedom.

Great book, something we can use in another 40 years or so, if we have managed to get a grip on campaign finance reform, neighborhood cottage and networked industries, and radically restructured schools that get away from rote and celebrate the process of learning. Until then, most people are going to have to focus on keeping the job they have, however distasteful it may be, because the harsh reality is that in this day and age, it is the large inefficient organization that provides gainful employment for the majority of us that have not been schooled to be anything other than drones.

I'll end on a positive note: there is something called the Davies J-Curve, a political science finding that suggests that people do not revolt to acquire greater freedom or anything else, but rather when they have experienced all that they wish, and then it is taken away from them. If we have a major recession that decapitates government and cleans out a good third of the small businesses and corporations that are hanging on by a string now, it may just inspire groups of people to revisit how they relate to one another.

One more positive note: if you are a realist, and you know that you have to accept drone status, but want to be cheered up and contemplate little ways around the margins where you can exercise some freedom muscles, this is the book for you. I enjoyed reading this book, and it may be unfair to evaluate it at the strategic level-there is no question that the author is an inspired original thinker, and I hope the day comes when he is the norm, rather than the exception.