Getting Repetitious, A Tiny Bit More Direct This Time Around, March 21, 2008
Michael Scheuer
The author was not a “spook.” He was an analyst. Analysts do not work under cover and they very rarely if ever go in harm's way.
What I admire most about this author is that he kept his integrity, as did Dick Clarke. Both stand in sharp contrast to Tony Lake and Sandy Berger and Madeline Albright in the Clinton Administration, and Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Condi Rice in the Bush Administration.
Folks have been reluctant to understand that from the first book by Anonymous, this author has been practically shouting from the rooftops:
BIN LADEN IS RIGHT. BIN LADEN HAS LIMITED OBJECTIVES.
The fact is that the US armed presence in the Middle East, first off remaining in Saudi Arabia, a violation of the promise Dick Cheney made, and second of all being loyal to the despotic, debauched Saudi “Royal” family that is consuming the national commonwealth at the expense of the people, are both legitimate grounds for any well-educated revolutionary and patriot to say ENOUGH.
I only give this book four stars because as right as the author is, the end of the book and its varied prescriptions are the only really new ground (from this author) and they are basically no more or less than any well-schooled PhD would tell you: put your own house in order, do no harm, support no despots, and mind your own business.
Bottom line: Bush is a village idiot with a semblance of integrity. Cheney is a nakely amoral war criminal who should be run out of town–he's not worth impeaching. The well-intentioned managers of the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the US Intelligence Community do not have a clue about how to create a long-term global strategy to create a prosperous world at peace. They are trapped in pyramidal organizations and have all–without exception–lost the ability to think for themselves. Thus does the Republic stagger to its demise.
Merits Reprinting and Slight Updating, March 20, 2008
Joel Garreau
I thought I had reviewed this long ago, but evidently not. It is still very relevant to understanding and nurturing America today, and I would be very glad to see the publisher commission a slight update and then reprint this superb work.
As America strives to migrate from a disasterous and nearly fatal two-party spoils system and an Executive that is both corrupt and delusional, those who seek to lead America into a brighter future need to understand America in a new and more nuanced way. It is not about left or right. This book has been on continuing value to me as a point of reference, and I recommend it very highly in its existing state, more so if renewed.
The nine nations, each unique, are:
1. The empty quarter (which global warming will open up)
2. Quebec
3. Ecotopia (a model for the rest of us)
4. The breadbasket (which wastes water on excess foot and grows corn for fuel and cattle that is inedible and wastes more water)
5. New England
6. The Foundry (mid-Atlantic coast)
7. Dixie
8. MexAmerica
9. The Islands (of the Caribbean, where Cuban sugar cane sap could power 30-35 million cars, while Cuban health care would inform our own).
Available Free Online, Hard-Copy 12 April 2008, March 20, 2008
FREE ONLINE: http://www.oss.net/CIB
Mark Tovey (ed)
This book is the first of a series of books from the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity incorporated in Virginia. As with all our books, it is available free online for inspection, digital search, and Creative Commons re-use at no cost.
We are of course very proud of the hard-copy and of being able to offer it on Amazon, and the 55 contributors, all volunteers, hope you will buy a hard-copy both for its ease of hand-eye coordination and exploitation, and to support our work in creating public intelligence in the public interest.
Here are ten other books I as the publisher personally admire, that lend credence to our proposition, hardly original in concept but uniquely documented in this book, that We the People are now ready to self-govern at the zip code and line item level.
Something May Be Missing, But World-Class Original Merits Appreciation, March 19, 2008
Barbara Benedict Bunker
I agree with the reviewer who notes that something may be missing (other slices of large group imagination and so on) but what I see in this book is a 5 star original updating the first original work. I am also impressed by the manner in which the author-editors have engaged a total of 49 collaborators.
Despite its size this is an easy to read and appreciate book, and in my own limited experience within this literature, stands in a class by itself.
Key Point: Must recognize and engage ALL stakeholders, including those that may be “external” to “the system” but are either inputs or outputs or victims, etc.
Key Point: This literature has developed from the 1960's focus on the social psychology of organizations, to the social psychology of networks.
Key Point: Many Small Groups = a Large System (susceptible to whole systems methods) = Future Search and Shaping.
Key Point: Real time strategic change is now known as whole-scale change (I am reminded of Kirkpatrick Sale's seminal work, Human Scale
Five methods for planning the future:
+ Search Conference
+ Future Search
+ Whole-Scale Change
+ ICAA Strategic Planning Process
+ Appreciative Inquiry
Large Group Methods (LGM) is very ably presented by the authors and collaborators as being ideal for working with diverse groups that have different cultures, structures, and priorities. I am reminded that we live in a world dominated by pyramidal organizations that still believe in top-down elite “command and control,” and this book is therefore a revolutionary handbook for enabling bottom-up sense-making and localized social resilience.
Key point: whereas the first book focused on methods, this book focuses on challenges, the challenges rather than the methods are driving the practices.
Here are my fly-leaf notes. Some books I read to learn in depth, others I read to learn what I do not know and persuade myself the authors are essential future consultants. This is such a book. In my lifetime I cannot learn what these 49 collaborators articulate so capably.
WIDELY-DISPERSED ORGANIZATIONS
+ Defining and holding the vision
+ Tolerance for Ambiguity
+ Relationship-building
WHOLE-SYSTEM ENGAGEMENT WITH COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGY
+ 10% technology, 90% human interaction
+ Higher quality goals and strategies result
+ Faster decision making
+ Rapid global stakeholder alignment
+ Enhanced organizational readiness for implementation
+ New model for governance as well as participation
POLARIZED AND POLITICIZED ENVIRONMENTS
+ LSG methods are more respectful of differences
+ Trust & Transformation
+ Multiple competing interests accomodated
+ Clearing the air
+ Working with tensions
+ Seven Principles
– Focus on common ground
– Rationalize conflict
– Manage conflict
– Expand individuals' view of the situation (beyond egotistic)
– Acknowledge history of group conflict and feelings
– Manage public airing of differences
– Reduce hierarchy as much as possible
COMMUNITIES WITH DIVERSE INTEREST GROUPS
+ Different from organizations, less structured, more ambiguous
+ Need sponsorship and sustainability of effort
+ Need representative planning groups from across the community
+ Skilled facilitators are essential
+ Conclude by recognizing, recording, and tracking commitments
WORKING CROSS-CULTURALLY
+ Be aware of what you do not know
+ Relationship-oriented, NOT “USA Work Before Pleasure”
+ Respect desire to maintain distance and privacy
+ Pace of decisions can be very slow
+ Respect desire to be part of a collective voice instead of an individual on the spot
+ Four Worlds
– North = intellect
– South = feeling
– East = intuition
– West = pragmatic
+ Conversations are for:
– Relationships
– Possibilities
– Action
EMBEDDING NEW PATTERNS
+ Patience
+ Respect self-organizing tendencies
+ Keep it simple
The resource section contains three additional contributions. The middle one, on graphics, captured my attention.
GRAPHICS:
+ Engage participants
+ Focus and ground energy of group
+ Provide space where participants feel heard
+ Bridge cultures
+ Surface unheard voices
+ Provide summative and integrative function
+ Provide continuity and enhance sustainability
I have personally witnessed the effectiveness of graphics at Nexus for Change and Bioneers. It is a hugely impressive technique for eliciting, capturing, and visualizing the disparate contribution of many individual minds. Those who are able to execute this function are gifted.
My eye was also caught by Covision's fast feedback cycle (bottom to top):
+ Ambivalence
+ Awareness
+ Understanding
+ MUTUAL Understanding
+ Alignment
+ Buy In
+ Commitment
The book ends with a reading list (part of what persuaded me it is better to engage these talents than try to replicate their knowledge), short bios of the very impressive collection of 49 collaborators, and a first-class index.
I am limited to ten links. See also Group Genius, Five Minds, Smart Mobs, Wisdom of the Crowds, Wealth of Networks, Revolutionary Wealth, Infinite Wealth, Wealth of Knowledge, Army of Davids, etc.
Extraordinary–Elegant in Concise Inisights and a Holistic Appraisal, March 18, 2008
Steven Waldman
This is a very special book. The author has done an utterly superb job of original research and elegant concise representation of the nuances in belief, practice, and circumstances with respect to the matter of religion as confronted by the Founding Fathers, and especially Ben Franklin, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
We learn early on that freedom of religion was originally designed to apply only at the federal level–only later, when the North pushed through the Fourteenth amendment, did this get grandfathered upon the states.
We learn throughout the book that the original evangelicals wanted separation of the church and state, and made common cause with the rationalists, both groups believing that individual liberty and freedom of personal conscience were the core values.
Midway through the book we are confronted by the author with the reality that the diversity of faiths existent today in the USA render meaningless and unachievable any thought of America being a Christian or even a Protestant nation–pluralism rules.
Religion was appreciated by the Founding Fathers for its generally good impact on civic morals. George Washington especially, in the Continental Army, demanded religious tolerance, authorized chaplains, encouraged officers and men to attend religious services, and generally communicated a sense that the American Revolution was a “holy war” with God standing firmly with the colonies against England and the Church of England.
The author provides concise but no less shocking accounts of the early religious wars in America, with torture and execution and jail being imposed on Quakers and Baptists, Protestants against Jews and Catholics.
We learn that both Jefferson and Franklin doubted divinity but respected Jesus for his moral code.
Adams considered Catholics the “whore of Babylon” and this resonates with more than one modern US evangelical who has endorsed John McCain.
We larn that the Great Awakening and the revivals spawned a general practice of questioning authority.
The author draws a clear connection between political liberty and religious freedom–the two were intertwined from the beginning of the revolutionary impulse.
George Washington was spiritual but not theological.
There are many gifted turns of phrase throughout the book. One that stayed with me: Jefferson saw God not as devine, but as a “brilliant wise reformer offering a benevolent code of morals.”
Madison held a dispassionate faith in contrast to the others. He also felt that one should err on the side of separation.
From page 192 the author lists and discuonts four liberal and four conservative falacies. Buy the book.
The conclusion is as elegant as the rest of the book: Separation is the root condition for nurturing the fullest possible religious diversity and vitality.
I put this book down with an intellectual, spiritual, and civic “WOW” in mind. Truly an extraordinary work, a very important work, a lovely piece of scholarship that is meaningful to every American and every immigrant would would be an American citizen.
Really great with disappointing ending, March 16, 2008
Chris Kuzneski
I agree with the thrust of the other reviewers, to wit, there is a lot of cleverness in this book, but ultimately it disappoints at the very end (GREAT book, the last page is a flop).
However, as I was desperate for a read at Fort Bragg this past week, and I read the book all the way through, it merits both a review and a passing comment.
First, the author has done his homework and also provides an epilog that points at several books I link to below. That raised him from three to four stars in my estimation. This was a great book right up to the end when it wimped out with a one-paragraph flop of a conclusion.
Second, I am persuaded that religions as now organized are a form of organized crime, and that we would all do better going with unitarian communitarian approaches in which we deal direct with God on a personal basis, and direct with one another on a community basis. With a handful of exceptions (Rabbi Lerner, Archbishop Tutu) most church “officials are in my view santimonious frauds, and any fictional book that helps portray that is inherently useful.
This is one of those very rare endeavors that is a tour d'force on multiple fronts, and easy to read and understand to boot.
It is a down-to-earth, capably documented indictment of the Bush-Cheney Administration's malicious or delusional–take your pick–march to war on false premises.
As a policy “speaking truth to power” book; as an economic treatise, as an academic contribution to the public debate, and as a civic duty, this book is extraordinary.
Highlights that sparked my enthusiasm:
1) Does what no one else has done, properly calculates and projects the core cost of war–and the core neglect of the Bush-Cheney Administration in justifying, excusing, and concealing the true cost of war: it fully examines the costs of caring for returning veterans (which some may recall, return at a rate of 16 to 1 instead of the older 6 to 1 ratio of surviving wounded to dead on the battlefield).
2) Opens with a superb concise overview of the trade-off costs–what the cost of war could have bought in terms of education, infrastructure, housing, waging peace, etcetera. I am particularly taken with the authors' observation that the cost of 10 days of this war, $5 billion, is what we give to the entire continent of Africa in a year of assistance.
3) Fully examines how costs exploded–personnel costs, fuel costs, and costs of replacing equipment. The authors do NOT address two important factors:
+ Military Construction under this Administration has boomed. Every Command and base has received scores of new buildings, a complete face lift, EXCEPT for the WWII-era huts where those on the way to Iraq and Afghanistan are made to suffer for three months before they actually go to war.
+ The Services chose not to sacrifice ANY of their big programs, and this is a major reason why the cost of the war is off the charts–we are paying for BOTH three wars (AF, IQ, GWOT) AND the “business as usual” military acquisition program which is so totally broken that it is virtually impossible to “buy a ship” with any degree of economy or efficiency.
4) The authors excel at illuminating the faulty accounting, the subversion of the budget process, and they offer ten steps to correction that I will not list here, but are alone worth the price of the book. What they do not tell us is:
+ Congress rolled over and played dead, abdicating its Article 1 responsibilities–the Republicans as footsoldiers, the Democrats as doormats.
+ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not done the “M” since the 1970's and is largely worthless today as a “trade-off manager” for the President.
5) I am blown away by the clear manner in which the authors' show the skyrocketing true cost up from a sliver of the “original estimate” out to a previously unimaginable 2.7 trillion (cost to US only, not rest of world). The interest cost in particular is mind-boggling.
6) They note that the costs the government does NOT pay include:
+ Loss of life and work potential for the private sector
+ Cost of seriously injured to society
+ Mental health costs and consequences
+ Quality of life impairment (I weep for the multiple amputees)
+ Family costs
+ Social costs
+ Homefront National Guard shortfalls needed for Katrina etc.
7) The authors go on to discuss the costs to other countries and to the globe, beginning with the refugees and the Iraqi economy. They do NOT mention what all US Army officers know, which is that Saddam Hussein ordered all the nuclear and chemical materials dumped into the river, and the mutations, deaths, and lost agricultural productivity downstream have yet to be calculated.
8) They touch on three delusions that John McCain and others use to demand that we “stay the course” and this also merits purchase of the book. I was in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, and I well remember exactly the same baloney being put forth then. We ought to apologize to the Iraqi people, and instead of occupying the place, give them the billions they need to restructure after our devastating occupation.
They conclude the book with 18 recommended reforms, each very wise, and these I will list–the amplification provided by the authors in the book is stellar.
1. Wars should not be funded through “emergency” supplementals.
2. War funding should be linked to strategy reviews (and guys like Shinseki should kick morons like Wolfowitz down the steps of Capitol Hill when they contradict real experts and lie to Congress and the public)
3. Executive should create a comprehensive set of military accounts that include all Cabinet agency expenditures linked to any given war.
4. DoD should be required to present clean, auditable financial statements to Congress, for which SecDef and the CFO should be accountable (let us not forget that Rumsfeld was being grilled on the Hill on 10 September about the missing $2.3 trillion, and the missile that hit the Pentagon rather conveniently destroyed the computers containing the needed accounting information)
5. Executive and CBO should provide regular estimates of the micro- and macroeconomic costs of a military engagement (over time).
6. [simplified] Congress must be notified by any information controls that undermine the normal bureaucratic checks and balances on the flow of information.
7. [simplified] Congress should reduce [or forbid] reliance on contractors in wartime, and explicitly not allow their use for “security services, while ensuring all hidden costs (e.g. government insurance) are fully disclosed.
8. Neither the Guard nor the Reserve should be allowed to be used for more than one year unless it can be demonstrated the size of the active force cannot be increased.
9. [simplified] Current taxpayers should pay the cost of any war in their lifetime via a war surtax [rather than imposing debt on future generations]
These next reforms address the care of returning veterans:
10. Shift burden of proof for eligibility from veterans to government
11. Veteran's health care should be an entitlement, not for adjudication
12. Veteran's Benefit Trust Fund should be set up and “locked”
13. Guard and Reserve fighting overseas should be eligible for all applicable active duty entitlements commensurate with their active duty.
14. New office of advocacy should be established to represent veterans
15. Simplify the disability benefits claims process.
16. Restore medical benefits to Priority Group 8 (400,000 left out in the cold)
17. Harmonize the transition from military to veteran status so that it is truly seamless
18. Increase education benefits for veterans.
I put this book down totally impressed. Completely irrespective of one's political persuasion, strategic sagacity, or fiscal views, this book is a tri-fecta–a perfect objective combination of wise policy, sound economics, and moral civic representation.
Afterthought: David Walker, Comptroller General, has resigned from his 15-year appointment after failing to find adult attention within Congress when he briefed them this summer to the effect that the USA is “insolvent.” His word. Our government is broken beyond anyone's wildest imagination. [Note: Mr. Walker is now running the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with the objective of providing to the public the factual budget information that Congress is ignoring, concealing, or manipulating. As Mr. Walker says, the public is now ahead of the politicians in its understanding, and all that remains is to flush all the incumbents down the toilet in 2008.
