5.0 out of 5 stars Original Solution Not Chosen by Club of Rome, They Blew It,March 4, 2012
This is a seminal work going back in time, integrating reflexive practice, what is now known as third phase science and dialogic design science. A major contribution within this book is A. N. Christakis, “A Retrospective Structural Inquiry of the Predicament of Mankind, Prospectus of the Club of Rome.”
The short story: the Club of Rome chose the Meadows/Randers top-down micro-management solution now famous as the Limits to Growth model. They rejected the reflexive / third order science solution that recognized that all humanity must be engaged, all humanity must comprehend and agree on solutions, or the solutions would never be implementable nor sustainable.
Other vital books that close the circle on where a few of us continue to try to make progress:
My own book that I cannot link to but am allowed to mention, is THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust. Find it here on Amazon. I believe Western “democracy” (largely a fraud) and Western capitalism (largely predatory and now gravely wounded by the legalized global financial fraud of Goldman Sachs, Morgan, Citi-Bank, and Bank of America, among others) are both going to implode in the near term (by 2014). Solutions are going to come from bottom up. All of these books are critical design-related texts for bottom-up holistic design, what Buckminster Fuller called “comprehensive architecture.” We need to future-proof our cities, one block at a time. This book is a fine starting point.
Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, is a propaganda windfall for the leaders and supporters of the U.S. imperial state, currently engaged in multiple wars, with over 800 military bases across the globe, asserting and using the right to kill untried “terrorists” any place on earth and still operating a torture gulag abroad and a record-breaking and abusive prison system at home.
It is not surprising that the New York Times greeted the book so warmly, with a flattering front-page Sunday book review by the philosopher Peter Singer, who called Pinker’s tome “supremely important” and a “masterly achievement” (October 9, 2011), along with other positive responses.
It reminds me of the welcome given Claire Sterling’s The Terror Network in 1981, a book that fit so well with the Reagan administration’s attempt to demonize the Soviet Union, with the Soviets allegedly behind the world’s terrorists (who included Nelson Mandela and his ANC, as well as any other resistance movements in the Third World). Sterling’s book was an intellectual disaster and fraud (see the critique in my Real Terror Network), but it was lauded by Reagan era officials and very respectfully treated in the mainstream media.
Pinker works the same track as Sterling. He swallows whole the old “containment” model in which U.S. policy from 1945 was designed to limit the expansionism of the Soviets and China (“The Cold War was the product of the determination of the United States to contain this movement [of the two great Communist powers] at something close to its boundaries at the end of World War II”). Even the huge Vietnam war death toll was, for Pinker, a result of the “fanatical” unwillingness of the Vietnamese to surrender to superior force. (“The three deadliest postwar conflicts were fueled by Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese communist regimes that had a fanatical dedication to outlasting their opponents.”) This is pretty crude apolo- getics for aggression and mass killing.
There is a major problem for Pinker in the brute facts of a massive postwar global expansion of the United States, its immense military budget, all those bases, NATO’s steady enlargement, and its taking on of “out of area” responsibilities, all despite the disappearance of the main power allegedly needing containment (the Soviet Union).
In three major books during the past decade (Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis) analyst Chalmers Johnson has featured, at length, our “continuous military buildup since World War II and the 737 military bases we maintain in other people’s countries”; the fact that “blowback,” including events like 9/11, is a response to imperial expansion and violence, and that “more than in most past empires, a well-entrenched military lies at the heart of our imperial adventures.”
Pinker deals with Chalmers Johnson and his ilk by the application of the “preferential method” of research, which is his modus operandi across the board. That is, he never mentions Johnson and never addresses his facts and arguments. He also never cites Andrew Bacevich, another outstanding and experienced analyst who gives a lot of weight to the power of the military-industrial complex (MIC), its costliness, blowback consequences, and its threat to a democratic order.
Phi Beta Iota: The intellectual impoverishment of both the media world and the academic world is illuminated here. This book defines the intellectual impotence of the day. Failed states have gone from 25 to 175 in the last three US Administrations; the violence of poverty, disease, unilateral militarism, predatory capitalism, and virtual colonialism are dismissed by this book and this author. We have moved all too far from the Founding Fathers' vision of educated citizenry as a Nation's best defense. We have met the enemy and he is us.
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Time and Effort- A Transformative Journey, October 17, 2010
Carol Liane Brouillet “9-11 activist” (Palo Alto, CA, USA)
Earth into Property is the second book in a series, the first being The American Empire and the Fourth World: The Bowl With One Spoon, which together are the magnum opus of Professor Hall, coordinator of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Both books are epic journeys, odysseys into world history, but especially the history of the Americas, after Western contact and conquest. There are stories within stories, themes within themes that weave the immense tragedies, details, lives, narratives, ideas into comprehensible patterns, in the hopes of sorting fact from fiction, truth from deception, wisdom from insanity, possibility from despair.
I am awed by the research and thought that has gone into both volumes, the discoveries, treasures unearthed by Professor Hall. At the same time, these are not just an accumulation of facts, lost history for students trying to understand the complexities of modern life, and how we came to this moment in time. “Tony” inserts himself, his life, his journey, into his quest. He unites the past with the present, forgotten ordeals with the current battles and struggles for truth, justice, survival, in a world increasingly dominated by corporate forces, backed by military might, cloaking themselves in a veil of legality, as they continue to plunder mental, physical, financial, geographical, cyber-space frontiers.
4.0 out of 5 stars Lacks Visualization and Genealogy, A Good Start,March 3, 2012
I eagerly anticipated receipt of this book, but when it arrived I had two immediate reactions:
01) A serious work that offers new information about American corporations betraying the public interest; and
02) Totally lacking in visualizations and “trees” showing both the family trees of those like the Bushes that started out and stayed Nazi sympathizers; and those who entered the USA under CIA sponsorship after the war, and spawned multiple generations of neo-Nazi mind-sets with assets able to influence public policy.
Then I noticed Howard Zinn's jacket blurb (“A valuable history…shocking and sobering…deserves to be widely read”) and I mention that to make the point that my four star grade is one of disappointment at what could have been, NOT disappointment at what is. This is a very useful serious book, it needs to be redone.
I totally agree with another reviewer who expresses a desire for footnotes rather than endnotes. For works of this kind that are both controversial and revelatory, the notes needs to be as close to the text as possible.
This entire book strongly reinforces my long-standing view that every nation needs to have a very strong counterintelligence cadre to guard against both religious and corporate treason. The US was clearly infected with Nazi ideology, sympathy, and corruption, and this has clearly carried over into today's corporate immunity from government regulation, and the achievement of the virtual corporate state in the USA — in a word, neo-fascism.
The book is an excellent mix of material I was not familiar with, and material I have have encountered before. The latter tracks with what I have read from others, thus in my lay view authenticating the mew material.
For myself, the most interesting materials covers corporate treason in refusing to provide materials or allocate man-hours and machine-hours as requested for the war effort — this is another side of the corporate face, complementing the side that gains great profit from war.
What is missing from this book that would have fascinated me — apart from the visualizations and timelines — is the deeper story of how US corporate nazi sympathies and international banking zionist sympathies eventually converged into the 1% against the 99%.
The CIA is a constant in this book, but having worked for the CIA myself, I have to remind the reader that there are at least five CIAs: the White House CIA, the Wall Street CIA, the “nice” CIA that really does try to do good intelligence, the covert operations CIA (paramilitary, influence operations) and the rendition and torture CIA. A future President might well wish to break up the CIA and start over — I absolutely consider 90% of the CIA to be earnest and honest. A proper counterintelligence agency (what the FBI is supposed to be but is not) would be nailing down government, corporate, and religious traitors.
Allen Dulles is made out to be a traitor in this book. For me this is a useful teaching point. If one takes every major leader across the public and private sector, and examines their actual decisions, what are the criteria for establishing the degree to which they are loyal to the Constitution, what are the sources one must develop to make that determination, why are those sources not in use? To this one must add the deeper question of how education, intelligence / counter-intelligence, and research should be managed to achieve the highest possible ethics and avoid “contamination” by authoritarian and genocidal mind-sets.
So I suppose my bottom line on this book is that it is an eye-opener, but it does not go far enough in “processing” and in “visualizing” the information to help us lay people understand with greater precision the degree to which our public and private sectors are corrupted by the Nazi orientation – to which one must add today the Zionist orientation, the “new world order” orientation, the neo-Nazi eugenics/Forced Population Reducation orientation, and so on. Who actually represents “We the People” appears to be unclear and dangerously distant from the public interest.
5.0 out of 5 stars Common Sense, Great Virtue,March 3, 2012
This is a *very* nice book, easy to read, well-ordered, full of common sense and a totally righteous contribution. The sadness is that there is nothing rational about how the Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, and intervening (or abdicating) great powers are approaching the entire matter. The best book on the insanity of the artificial boundaries creating by Western colonialism / imperialism remains The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.
I have an inherent sympathy toward the Palestinians, being genocided day by day by an out of control Israeli government that does not, in my own experience, truly represent the majority of the Jewish people. Just as we have a two-party tyranny in the USA that has sold us all out to the banks while excluding Independents and third parties (Constitution, Green, Libertarian, Reform) from the entire process, Israel appears to be under the control of a minority that has lost its mind and become all that they claim to abhor.
The book is noteworthy for presenting, in addition to its own arguments, the full gamut of alternative views and opposing points of view. In other words, this book has integrity.
I do not see this book — or the problem it confronts — being solved in my lifetime for the simple reason that corruption characterizes all but a few governments, and war is a racket — a means of profiteering. What is being done to the Palestinians is profitable for the few who control the agenda. I fully expect some form of neutron bomb or special gas poisoning of Palestine to occur one day, to be rapidly “covered up” as a fatal epidemic — the word Henry Kissinger likes to use is “eugenics.” The formal policy term is “Forced Population Reduction.”
As I look back at the history of the land, see for instance Nelson's Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts, 3rd Edition, it is clear the Palestinians merit half of Israel including full access to the sea. It is equally clear that Israel will never agree to this while it has the arms and the financial support from the USA.
It pains me to contemplate this, but I fear that the common sense and virtue of this book will be sidelined. There is no hope for any of the parties in the near term.
4.0 out of 5 stars Bleak – a Righteous Personal Effort,March 3, 2012
I am a huge fan of photographic books, and I find this one to be very worthwhile, but not quite a five star offering because it does not have quite the diversity — or reading clarity — that I would have liked.
Never-the-less, it is a vital contribution to the literature on Afghanistan, and what does come out from the book, a mix of photographs by one man and short novella stories by a number of invited authors, is the bleakness of what has been wrought in Afghanistan, and most especially, the human toll in “collateral damage” of children and men (mostly) who have lost one leg and all too often both legs to land mines.
Recently, the New York Times (4 February 2012) published a story, “U.S. Plans Shift to Elite Units as It Winds Down in Afghanistan”, and the Washington Post (5 February 2012) followed with “U.S. to elevate Special Operations forces’ role in Afghanistan.”
From the Washington Post version, I noted the following salient points.
“The U.S. military is planning to elevate the role of Special Operations forces in Afghanistan as it shifts away from a combat focus to a mission that places greater emphasis on advising Afghan forces and raids to kill top insurgent leaders, senior U.S. officials said.”
“As American troop levels drop, U.S. commanders will by necessity have to rely more heavily on Afghan units to operate with minimal support from big, conventional Army and Marine units.”
“The new focus could rely on American Special Forces soldiers to fill out some of the advisory teams in the most violent areas of Afghanistan. The Special Forces troops would continue to advise and mentor elite Afghan units and the Afghan local police, a program in which villages form units to defend themselves. The primary mission of the Army’s Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, is to mentor, train and fight alongside indigenous forces. The Special Forces teams also have the ability to marshal firepower from American warplanes for Afghan forces.”
Meanwhile, in an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post on 9 February 2012, George F. Will wrote “the drone war is being waged more vigorously than ever….”.
The evolutionary development that is most impressive is evolving from using the firepower of American piloted warplanes to the use of unmanned drones mentioned by George Will.
In my book, “Cash on Delivery: CIA Special Operations During the Secret War in Laos” (www.rosebankpress.com), I wrote, “At the beginning of the “Global War on Terrorism”, which began in September 2001, the American military’s subsequent actions in Afghanistan brought new publicity to the use of special operations in denied areas. The use of small teams consisting of Rangers, Seals, Delta Force or others of this type of specially trained soldier in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy’s advanced smart bomb technology may turn out to be an advancement in warfare equivalent to the long bow, gunpowder, the machine gun, the tank or the airplane. The combination of global positioning systems, laser guidance, detailed maps, radar, J-Stars, and moving target indicators make the delivery of bombs by the United States Air Force and the United States Navy the most deadly and accurate ever.”
This early 2000s use of special operations forces and advanced technology for bomb delivery were precursors to the “drone war” we see today. The earlier advanced technology, mentioned above, was improved and eventually augmented by the drone for the delivery of missiles and even the missiles have evolved into more accurate and deadly munitions.
It is a simple calculus on the surface. Intelligence is collected by using technology, i.e., aerial surveillance, intercepts, etc, or by using human sources, i.e., informants, prisoners, and/or captured documents and equipment. The intelligence is analyzed and targets are developed. Action is taken in the form of drone attack or perhaps ground attack. If ground attacks are made, more intelligence may be gained from prisoners, captured documents or captured equipment, such as computers or cell phones.
Ground attacks might be made by all-American units, hybrid American-Afghan units or by all-Afghan units. In special operations in other countries, merely substitute the local participant from the country in which the special operations are taking place.
The special operations formula might be expressed this way, intelligence (technical and/or humint) + action (technical and/or human) = terrorist elimination. There is nothing new in this formula. What is new is the technology that can be used for intelligence collection or for action, i.e., drones.
Stephen Aftergood wrote in “Secrecy News”, 21 February 2012, “USSOCOM [U.S. Special Operations Command] and the CIA currently coordinate, share, exchange liaison officers and operate side by side in the conduct of DOD overt and clandestine operations and CIA’s covert operations, said Michael D. Lumpkin, acting assistant secretary of defense.”
“Our activities are mutually supportive based on each organization’s strengths and weaknesses and overall capabilities. Whichever organization has primary authority to conduct the operation leads; whichever organization has the superior planning and expertise plans it; both organizations share information about intelligence, plans, and ongoing operations fully and completely. Whether one or both organizations participate in the execution depends on the scope of the plan and the effect that needs to be achieved. Currently all USSOCOM and CIA operations are coordinated and deconflicted at all levels.”
The Osama bin Laden raid is a successful application of the special operations formula, with emphasis on all-American air and ground units.
The technical intelligence collection part of the formula can continue to be all-American for quite a while, but what we need to see, as soon as possible, is all-Afghan human intelligence collection and all-Afghan ground action units. Actually, I hope we never hear the details. Call me old school, but I prefer that the details remain secret. However, I would really love to believe that one day the special operations formula will be Afghan intelligence collection + Afghan action = terrorist elimination. We should all hope that all-Afghan special operations will result in the capture of terrorists and the seizure of equipment leading to significant new intelligence, thus contributing to a continuing cycle of intelligence + action = terrorist elimination.
Since evocations of the Vietnam War seem to rile so many, one hopes there is never an inclination to call it “Afghanization”.
The goal of worldwide special operations must be evolution from al-American to hybrid indigenous-American to (finally) all-indigenous action units with, at most, American participation as program managers who never participate “on the ground” but only in advising and providing support.
