Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class – Page 38

Tour of the world in concise but precise terms,March 30, 2008

Parag Khanna

This is an extraordinary book, a tour of the “real” world where the future is being defined. While I respect the reviewer's that have difficulty with inaccuracies or inconsistencies, on balance, in all of my reading as reviewed on Amazon, I would rate this one of the top 20 books, perhaps even one of the top 10 (let's go with that, making it one of the top 10 on reality, while my other “top ten” would encompass world changing, social entrepreneurship, the Tao of democracy and other solution-oriented writings).

My notes must of necessity be cryptic. I will start with the bottom line and urge the Amazon reader to take my notes as a strong incentive to buy and read the book cover to cover.

Bottom line: US has screwed up big time, and is taking third place to China's achievement of globalization on its terms, using consultation, incentives, and efficient/effective agreements to propel itself past Europe, which has consensus model that has displaced the US but cannot compete with China's global juggernaut. The US is gently tarred with confusing “security” for prosperity or legitimacy, with preferring single-party strong-arm partners, and with being generally clumsy, inept, ignorant, and hence losing on all fronts.

+ Second World is internally divided between rich and poor sectors

+ Second World is the tipping point domain that will determine the tri-polar (China, Europe, US) outcome

+ Author covers five regions 1) east of Europe including Russia and Turkey; 2) Central Asia; 3) South America with little attention to Caribbean; 4) Middle East; and 5) Asia and the 4 Chinas.

Early on the author states that the Americas are terribly ignorant of both the old and new geography, and I would agree while emphasizing that the “expert” advisors to Presidential candidates are themselves as ignorant (or biased)–from those that are state-centric to those that are ideologically unbalanced to those that believe their ego and social network are sufficient in and of themselves. Not a single one of them knows how to lead a nation-wide conversation, much less a regional or international conversation–they are the “walking dead” of the pyramidal era, and any contender that listens to them and allows them to exclude the iconoclasts and the avant guarde is destined to be neutered, so to speak, before their time.

+ According to the author, America is now viewed as destabilize, in an era when the Second World judges legitimacy on the basis of proven effectiveness (one could also add: sustained effectiveness, not a US forte). Further on the author drives this point home by saying that success trumps ideology, and across the Second World, democracy is not considered practical (nor credible as a US claim for access).

+ European Union is the standard bearer for both technology and regulation (another book I have reviewed pointed out that USA has become a “dumping ground” for products from China Europe will not admit–thank you, Dick Cheney).

+ USA, EU, and China have no common culture, and (combined with the distinct cultures of the other four emergent regions), this is cause for concern about future misunderstandings and over-reactions.

+ The world is demographically blended and so increasingly inter-dependent that the day of major war is indeed likely to be a thing of the past.

+ In the early focus on Europe, the author quotes a European to the effect that Europe is expanding, each time getting poorer, but each time delivering and buying priceless stability. This is one reason why Eastern Europe is skyrocketing and at the same time, displacing the USA as a source for many exports to Europe.

+ He tells us that Europe is confident, incentivizes its partners, has a generation in charge that is transcendent, and is disdainful of the US for its ineptness.

+ Russia is described as a “Siberian Saudi Arabia” but with an insecure nuclear arsenal. ¾ of the wealth is centered in (controlled from) Moscow while 2/3 of Russians are living at the poverty line or below.

+ Russia is being emptied of Russians as they vote with their feet and move west, at the same time that Chinese are moving north into Siberia, which global warming is making more hospitable.

+ In the Balkans instability threatens Europe, but European agro-technology is making a huge difference, as is the European penchant to support multiple parties rather than any single dictator. Still, “lurking tribalization” is of concern.

+ Turkey is a key player in saving the Balkans, and in the author's view, is powerful, democratic, secular, and Muslim, and also responsible for ten times more trade with Europe than with the US.

+ Black Sea is creating its own unified region.

+ Georgia does not have a single decent road.

+ Caucasian Corridor is a Balkans waiting to happen.

+ While Brussels is central, London, Ankara, and Moscow each have their own key role in the region.

+ Central Asia benefits from the re-creation of the Silk Road for East-West trade, while also suffering from being the “laboratory” for imperial excess seeking to play the Great Game (not something the US is at all qualified to “play”)

+ The author points out Central Asia is at the intersection of Russia, China, Europe, and the US, to which I would add Iran as well.

+ Mongolia is militarily aligned with the US (and from my own knowledge, has one of the finer peace keeping training programs as well as an ideal pre-Afghanistan mobilization training environment)

+ According to the author, China, in sharp contrast to the US and Russia, is making huge gains in Central Asia because of “swift settlement” of all outstanding border issues, its promotion of shared development strategies, its “massive charm offensive” and its role as a “consultative leader,” and its being the “standard bearer for business practices” which is code for no-strings attached loans nearing one billion. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is now called the “NATO of the East.” China is winning Central Asia through strategy, trade, and co-development. [See also my online memorandum “Chinese Irregular Warfare oss.net”]

+ Kazakhstan has energy and retained its own language, shows promise.

+ Kyrgystan a mess, Tajikistan a bridge for revival of Sino-Iranian trade routes.

+ Uzbeckistan and Tajikistan are Islamic targets.

+ American failure to reconstruct Afghanistan has left Karzai neutered, perhaps soon to go.

+ South America has been suffocated by US hegemony, and US sponsorship of 30 years of “Dirty War” pitting authoritarian rightists against [liberation theology and populist] leftists.

+ Unlike other regions, South America simply wants US to live up to its rhetoric about free trade and democratization, “without exceptions.”

+ US threatened by crime, drugs, migration from the South, does not seem to appreciate the value of South American integration and self-sufficiency in energy and food sectors.

+ Four Mexico's–northern, central breadbasket, indigenous destitute isthmus, and very poor Mayan Yucatan.

+ Chaves in Venezuela is a spendthrift and has quadrupled Venezuela's debt, but he actually has a serious strategy that includes China to offset US, a pipeline to Argentina, state to state barter of commodities, modernizing Caribbean energy sector, and welcoming Iran and Europe.

+ Colombia is the key to the future of the region, unique for having Pacific and Caribbean coasts while also being the entry point for a Pan-American highway of greater potential.

+ US is losing the drug war and screwing up the alternatives of trade and economic accelerators.

+ Brazil is the USA of South America, and has formed a trade axis with China. It is multiracial, with the largest populations of Arabs outside Nigeria, Lebanese outside Lebanon, Italians and Japanese outside their own countries. Crime is the wild card, the Achilles' heel.

+ Argentina is a basket case (the author does not tell us that Argentine is also being seduced by Chinese men and is likely to be majority Chinese by 2025).

+ Chile, despite US mis-deeds, benefited from German farmers and is today's success story, focused on stability, pragmatism, and profit.

+ Arabs are redefining themselves in the Middle East in a manner not seen in the past 1000 years. They remain central, and the author anticipates Arab economics will triumph over Islamic radicalism. Later in the book he concludes that the Arabic opinion and sense of self is solidifying.

+ North Africa is Europe's southern shore, and part of the Mediterranean culture, but suffers a massive disconnect between unemployable poorly educated youth and jobs without qualified applicants.

+ Libya (I learn for the first time) is a huge success, with major gains in education, advancement of women, and per capita income over $7000 a year.

+ Egypt as the Arab cornerstone and the difficult blend of Arabia and Islam. This government, the author tells us , “provides neither moral leadership nor public services” and therefore is “a perfect target for Islamist groups well-equipped to provide both.” He believes an Iranian-style revolution is possible.

+ The Mashreq–Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, he sums up as “Iranian interference, Syrian intransigence, Lebanese weakness, Israeli aggression, and Palestinian desperation.” I was surprised to not see “American idiocy” in there, since my taxpayer dollars are funding the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.

+ He anticipates the death of Iraq and the emergence of Kurdistan, and here I quote two gifted turns of phrase: “Wars are like a geopolitical reset button.” and “The Iraq war exposed the United States as a superpower whose intelligence does not match its aspirations.” As an intelligence professional, I must clarify this: both the Army leadership and the CIA professionals, that is to say, Charlie Allen, got it exactly right–no weapons of mass destruction, kept the cook books, bluffing for regional sake. It was George Tenet who parked his integrity on the same shelf as Colin Powell and Mike Hayden, who allowed Dick Cheney to hijack the US Government and send the US military to war on the basis of 935 explicitly documented lies to the public and Congress and the UN, and 25 explicitly documented high crimes and misdemeanors.

+ Iran does not get enough coverage, but that is insufficient to undermine my very high regard for this book.

+ Gulf will provide 40% of the energy for the foreseeable future. Oil windfalls were mis-directed by the leaders, who funded luxuries for themselves, and militaries, rather than seeing to the public good.

+ Wahhabist reckoning is coming–they teach selected elements of the Koran by rote, not Islam. However, they correctly evaluate the Saudi Royals as the near enemy and the USA as the far enemy, joined at the hip.

+ United Arab Emirates is where Las Vegas meets Singapore, with Dubai as the icon. He notes with studied understatement that Chinese goods and Chinese whores are half price to any competing goods or whores, and the former “designed to disintegrate.”

+ Malaysia and Indonesia have huge Chinese Diasporas. Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam not as well covered as I would have liked, especially Vietnam which is totally independent of China.

+ There are four Chinas–the southeast quadrant with Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (I was surprised to see no mention of Macau, through which China is aggressively wooing all former Portuguese colonies including Brazil); the Beijing centered northeast, and the far edge of Tibet and Xinjiang, which the author tells us earlier in the book are as vital to China as the Rockies and West of the Rockies are to the US.

+ He says that China is “blending” Asia, and that from Malaysia and elsewhere there is broad recognition that a form of Chinese “Monroe Doctrine” is being established. He specifically points out that US offers of “security” are losing out to European offers of “capacity” that nurture prosperity (as well as Chinese offers of co-development).

+ I grew up in Singapore, finishing high school there, and I am in total agreement with the author's admiration for Lee Kuan Yew and the manner in which communitarian trumps democratic when it comes to producing more stability and prosperity. I recently learned from my step-mother, who just left Singapore after decades of being the leader of English education for the government (and Chinese teachers) that one cannot run for Parliament in Singapore without first earning a Masters in Business Administration.

+ Uniquely, Asians want to stay in Asia while visiting everywhere else.

+ He plays down India and I completely disagree with his dismissal of them. India has made more progress than China when one considers the totally divergent and conflictive situations they must handle across tribes, religions, classes, and environmental challenges.

In his conclusion, the author suggests that a tri-polar world now exists, but one read what can only be a list of indicators of USA suicidal tendencies: lousy education, no investment in technology, as many gang members as there are policemen (roughly 750,000 he tells us). The USA can learn to co-exist and co-develop with the rest of the world, and abandon its military “big stick” paradigm, or it can be relegated to third place forever, and gradually go down even further.

I am very worried. I see no one that has strategic perspective, a holistic understanding of the ten threats and twelve policies, nor an appreciation of the urgency of creating an alternative development model for Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, among others.

2008/03/292009/10/30

Review: Superclass–The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Does Not Name Names or Illustrate Networks, March 29, 2008

David Rothkopf

I grew up in the 1970's studying multinational corporations and inter-locking directorates, reading Richard Barnett's Global Reach, and so on. I am also familiar with the $60,000 a year special database that charts the top dogs and every membership, association, investment, etc.

The two major deficiencies in this book that left me disappointed are:

1. Does not name names nor show network diagrams such as you can pull from Silobreaker.com (Factiva is not even close).

2. Shows no appreciation for past research and findings. This is a current overview, closer to journalism than to authorship or research.

The book earns four stars instead of three for two reasons:

1. There is a very subtle but crystal-clear sense of goodness, ethics, and “good intention” or “right thinking” by the author. As diplomatic as he might be, he clearly sees the insanity of Exxon refusing to think about anything other than maximizing petroleum while externalizing $12 in costs for every $3.50 gallon that they sell–they did NOT “earn” $40 billion in profit this past year–they essentially stole it from the population at large and future generations).

2. Each chapter has a serious point or series of points, and I especially liked the author's constant presentation of tangible numbers on virtually every page.

Having said all that, I will list two books below that I found more interesting than this one, and then list a few notes that made it to my flyleafs.

Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make–and Spend–Their Fortunes

Notes from the book:

6,000 top people (in total of 6 billion, I think that's .0001–the author, who's no doubt better at math, says each is 1 in a million)

Top 1,000 rich own as much or earn as much as the bottom 2.5 billion poor.

Early on he says he decided not to do a list because it changes. I believe him, but I was truly disappointed to not find a lot of meat in this book–it has facts, anecdotes, a story line, but one does not get the “feeling in the fingertips” or the raw feel.

Early on he reviews and dismisses conspiracy theories, and returns to this in the final chapter where he reviews the Masons, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, all in a cursory manner (for example, there is no table, a single page would do, of top Skull and Bones power figures today).

Power is shifting away from Nations. This is true. The author focuses on those who have money and live globally. He is not focusing on those who control their own spending, global assemblages. For that see
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

Human interactions are the glue connects the superclass members–corridor meetings that take place on the periphery of “big events” where the important stuff is not the event, but the encounters–Davos, World Cup, Grand Prix, Allen & Co, Geneva Auto Show, Winter Olympics, the Chinese meeting on Hainan Island (the Boao Forum).

Corporate/Finance the top of the barrel, 2000 top organizations control $103 trillion in assets, do $27 trillion in annual sales.

Access/time is the most precious asset, one reason the Gulf Stream is really a solid indicator of top of the top–it provides time saved, mobility, flexibility, privacy, security, work en route, sleep well, etc.

The author tells us he is focusing on influence, not just wealth or accomplishments, but very candidly, while the book is coherent and there is nothing wrong with its facts or sequence of observations, one simply does not come away with a clear picture. This is like a verbal description of a trip around the world, which it is, but without the photos, smells, tastes, etc. It also avoids any substantive (as opposed to discreetly moral “in passing” commentary) attention to costs and consequences–a balance sheet showing choices being made (e.g. by Exxon) and who benefits, who loses, would no doubt terminate this author's welcome on the fringes of the super-elite as it would be devastatingly negative.

20-50 people control any given sector, worldwide

In the book the author seeks to discuss six central issues:

1. Nature of the superclass power

2. Link if any (ha ha) between concentrated wealth and the five billion at the bottom of the pyramid

3. Whether the superclass calls into question the sufficiency of our global legal and governance institutions

4. Whether the division in interests between the rich and the poor will be the central conflict of our time

5. Would we choose this superclass?

6. How is the superclass evolving

General conclusions:

Markets not working fully, need some non-market “controlling authority”

Elites are not taking responsibility for the poor in their own countries

Meritocracy is no longer–same merit, one becomes a billionaire from connections, the other a mere millionaire

Private equity is where its at in terms of starting salaries in the $300,000 range.

Globalists versus nationalist

Anti-globalists include leaders of Iran, Russia, and Venezuela

Tottering institutions–International Monetary Fund may not be funded by countries much longer

Global military-to-military relations work, political-diplomatic do not, and the money is mis-spent (billions here and there, and no money for spare parts to keep air forces flying, much cheaper good will spending)

Criminal elite a part of this (read Moises Naim's book Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy

USA has a power vacuum in that both the President and Congress have taken power that is not theirs and abused it, but the US voter has ceded power by failing to understand and deliberate on the issues.

He surprises me by bing familiar with General Smedley Butler's book, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

Two coolest sentences in the book for me:

“Most dangerous mind-altering substance on earth is oil.”

“Cost is simply not caring.” (Corporations that enrich dictators while ignoring the billions whose commonwealth is being stolen). For more on this evil and how the USA supports 42 of 44 dictators, see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025

There is nothing in this book, published in 2008, on Sovereign Wealth Funds, nor does the author focus on dictators and “royalty” as part of the superclass. As Lawrence Lessig has noted, end corruption, end scarcity, begin a true harvesting of the common wealth for the common good. Right now we are all where “Animal Farm” put us–fodder for the wealthy.

The publisher's choice of ink colors for the jacket flaps and rear cover is terrible, those portions of the book are difficult to read.

The book is over-sold: “draws back the curtain on a privileged society.” Not really. This is a solid book of facts that is as close to bland and generic and inoffensive as one can get–but then, that was probably the author's intent since he wants to be able to see these people again…..

For a direct opposite of this book, seek out books on Collective Intelligence, Wisdom Councils, World Cafe, Social Entrepreneurship, All Rise, Power Governments Cannot Suppress, and so on. We live in interesting times.

2008/03/152018/07/12

Review: The Three Trillion Dollar War–The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict

6 Star Top 10%, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Iraq, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Priorities, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, War & Face of Battle

March 15, 2008

Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes

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.

BRAVO!

I also recommend:
DVD Why We Fight
DVD The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush

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.

2008/03/092009/10/30

Review: Chasing the Flame–Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Civil Society, Diplomacy, Disaster Relief, Insurgency & Revolution, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, United Nations & NGOs

Primary Research Well Done, Lacks Synthesis

Samantha Power

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.”

– Second “Etat” doctorate: “Civitas Maxima; Origins, Foundations, and Philosophical and Practical Significance of the Supranational Concept.” Those wishing to learn more about the failure of the nation-state and the mistakes of Westphalia can begin with The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State with Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush as the aperitif, and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health as the strong finish.

+ 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.

The Epilogue is bland.

+ UN is a broken system.

+ SVM said “the future is to be invented.”

+ Legitimacy matters

+ Spoilers must be engaged

+ Fearful people must be made more secure

+ Dignity is cornerstone of order

+ Outsiders must bring humility and patience.

Two other books (see also my many lists):
High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition

2008/02/232009/07/15

Great Peacemakers: True Stories from Around the World

6 Star Top 10%, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Beyond 5 Stars–Marks Beginning of Era of Peace

February 23, 2008

Ken Beller

This book was brilliantly conceived and executed. I like it so much I am adding it to my travel series for recurring selective reading.

I am very impressed by the research and the creative analysis that paved the way for this book to be truly in a class of its own. Indeed, I think the authors are on to something that could and should be a multilingual series used in every classroom on the planet.

While the table of contents is impressive, with twenty great souls selected for concise review, what really got my attention was the Introduction, where the authors observe that after much research, they found five distinct groups or “paths to peace:”

choosing nonviolence,

living peace,

honoring diversity,

valuing all life, and

caring for the planet.

There is one other, public intelligence (a topic on which I have written four books, published a fifth, and have just commissioned three new edited works (Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace; Peace Intelligence: Assuring a Good Life for All; and Commercial Intelligence: From Moral Green to Golden Peace).

Each of the chapters is short, easy to read, relevant, and concluded by a page of thoughts from the person in their own words, and that is the primary reason this book made the extraordinary leap into permanent travel with me.

Two from Martin Luther King, Jr. represent all that I live to correct:

“The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide.”

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

See my varied lists and my many non-fiction reviews for additional reading.

Amazon allows me to add ten links to any review. Here are nine more, six books and three DVDs, on the subject of Peace. I praise God every day for Dick Cheney–only the presence of such a nakedly amoral war criminal could have sparked the revolution in human affairs that is about to take place. Peace is the only winnable war, and the Earth Intelligence Networki, co-founded by 24 leading-edge minds, strives to empower every person on the planet with public intelligence in the public interests.

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Tibet – Cry of the Snow Lion
The Snow Walker
Peace One Day

I am *very* pleased to have read this book, and I do not plan to put it away. This volume is not just a keeper, it is a travel companion rich with good intentions that are contagious. Well done!

2008/02/222009/10/30

Review: The Bottom Billion–Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Humanitarian Assistance, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction

Elegantly brilliant, incisive clarity, quite extraordinary, February 22, 2008

Paul Collier

I read a lot, almost entirely in non-fiction, and this book is easily one of the “top ten” on the future and one of the top three on extreme poverty, in my own limited reading.

The other three books that have inspired me in this specific area are:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

There is an enormous amount of actionable wisdom in this book, which is deceptively easy to read and digest. The author's bottom line is clear early on:

A. The fifty failing states at the bottom, most in Africa, others in Central Asia, are a cesspool of misery that is terribly dangerous to all others, exporting disease, crime, and conflict.

B. The responsibility for peace to enable prosperity cannot be expected from within–it must be provided as a common good from outside. In support of this point, toward the end of the book, the author posits a 15:1 return on investment from $250M a year in investment and aid, mostly technical assistance.

This book is a superb guide for regional authorities and international coalitions with respect to the value of non-military interventions.
The author provides compelling yet concise overviews of the four traps that affect the billion at the bottom:

A. The Conflict Trap
B. The Natural Resource Export Trap
C. Landlocked in a Bad Neighbors Trap
D. Poor and Corrupt Governance

The author describes the need for a “whole of government” approach, both among those seeking to deliver assistance, and those receiving it.
I have a note, a new insight at least to me, that AIDs proliferated so quickly across Africa because of the combination of mass rape followed by mass migration. There are many other gifted turns of phrase throughout.
A study on the cost of a Kalashnikov is most helpful. The author tells us that the legacy of any war is the proliferation of inexpensive small arms into the open market.

Across the book the author points out that the gravest threat to governance and stability within any fragile economy is a standing army.
Each of the traps is discussed in depth.

The middle of the book outlines nine-strategies for the land-locked who suffer from being limited to their neighbors as a marketplace, rather than the world as a whole.

1. Work with neighbors to create cross-border transport infrastructure
2. Work to improve neighbors' economies for mutual benefit
3. Work to improve access to coastal areas (the author points out that the sea is so essential, that landlocked countries should not* be* countries, they should be part of a larger country that borders the sea)
4. Become a haven of peace, providing financial and other services.
5. Don't be air-locked or electronically-locked (the first study of the Marine Corps that I led in 1988-1989 found that half of the countries of concern did not have suitable ports but all had ample C-130 capable airfields).
6. Encourage remittances
7. Create transparent investment-friendly environment for resource prospecting
8. Focus on rural development
9. Attract aid

Toward the end of the book I am struck by the author's pointed (and documented) exclusion of democracy and civil rights as necessary conditions for reform. Instead, large populations, secondary education, and a recent civil war (opening paths to change), are key.
$64 billion is the cost to the region of a civil war, with $7 billion being the minimal expected return on investment for preventing a civil war in the country itself.

Bad policies come with a sixty year hang-over.

Asia is the solid middle and makes trade a marginal and unlikely option for rescuing Africa UNLESS there are a combination of trade barriers against imports from Asia, and unreciprocal trade preferences from richer countries. In the context of globalization, only capital and people offer hope.

In the author's view, capital is not going to the bottom billion because:

A. Bottom of the barrel risk
B. Too small to learn about
C. Genuinely fragile

In terms of human resources, after discussing capital flight, the author concludes that the educated leave as quickly as they can. I am inspired by this discussion to conclude that we need a Manhattan project for Africa, in which a Prosperity Corps of Gray Eagles is incentivized to adopt one of the 50 failed states, and provided with a semblance of normal living and working conditions along with bonuses for staying in-country for ten years or more. As I reflect on how the USA has spent $30 billion for “diplomacy” in 2007, and over $975 billion for waging war, (such that the Comptroller General just resigned from a fifteen year appointment after telling Congress the USA is “insolvent”) this begs public outrage and engagement.

As the book makes its way to the conclusion the author's prose grabs me:

“We should be helping the heroes” attempting reform

We are guilty in the West of “inertia, ignorance, and incompetence.”

The “cesspool of misery….is both terrible….and dangerous.”

Several other noteworthy highlights (no substitute for buying and reading the book in its entirety:

Aid does offer a 1% growth kick

Aid bureaucracy, despite horror stories, adds real value in contrast to funds that vanish into the corrupt local government

Misdirection of unrestricted funds leads to militarization and instability.

The author touches briefly on the enormous value that industry can offer when it is finally incentivized to do so. DeBeers and its certification process are cited with respect, perhaps saving diamonds from going the way of fur.

The author stresses that top-down transparency enables bottom-up public scrutiny and the two together help drive out corruption (something Lawrence Lessig has committed the remainder of his life to).

There is an excellent section on irresponsible NGOs, notably Christian Aid, feared by the government and not understood by the public.
I put the book down with a very strong feeling of hope.

Other books I recommend, in addition to the three above:
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition

2008/02/132009/10/30

Review: Creating a World Without Poverty–Social Business and the Future of Capitalism

5 Star, Change & Innovation, Future, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Other Side of C. K. Prahalad's Fortune at the Bottom, February 13, 2008

Muhammad Yunus

I realized close to two years ago, after reading C. K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks), that I wanted to be intelligence officer to the poor instead of to a president, and that I needed to create the field of public intelligence (decision support for everyone at no cost). I strongly recommend that the two books be read together. See my review of that book. See also John Bogle's The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism as well as William Grider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. Natural Capitalism, Capitalism 3.0, Green to Gold, Cradle-to-Cradle, all book titles, are converging with Social Entrepreneurship and Social Business as well as unconventional Global Assemblages.

This book, the last that I read during a power outage lasting most of the day, really rocked me. Apart from the fact that the author has labored anonymously for three decades before being propelled into the public consciousness with his well-served Nobel Peace Prize (a prize that Prahalad should be considered for as well), everything in this book resonates with the path the 24-founders of Earth Intelligence Network have chosen.

The author's Nobel presentation, “Poverty is a Threat to Peace,” is at the back of the book, and has since been validated by the UN High-Level Threat Panel in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.

The author not only lent to the poor, he lent to beggars at no interest with no schedule, and proved conclusively that the poor and beggars are “credit worthy” by virtue of “being alive.” He also pushed technology to rural areas.

By page xvii I have goosebumps and a glorious feeling that good stuff is happening faster and bigger than most realize.

The author notes early on that unfettered capitalism creates sccial problems rather than solving them. He suggests most compellingly that social business fills a gap left by government, foundations, and multilateral institutions.

While the book is missing a sense of shared information and a global Range of Gifts Table that anyone, from individual to foundation, can use to make precision contributions and interventions, it is very easy to see how this book and Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom as well as How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition and all come together with Prahalad's vision and my own of public intelligence in the public interest.

The author recognizes, as Alvin Toffler and others have pointed out, that all of our institutions are failing. I recommend books I have listed and reviewed on how complex societies collapse. I would venture to say that the US Government, with 27 secessionist movements, is collapsing from a mix of political and economic corruption compounded by cultural arrogance, but most importantly, because the government is stuck in the top down elite driven secret information Weberian model, and the government has failed to empower all local communities and all individuals with bottom up resilient adaptable information sharing capabilities.

The bookm draws a stark contrast between the World Bank which measures loans given out, and the Grameen Bank, which measures outcomes at multiple levels including kids staying in school.

As I read about a social business, I envision every village as its own business.

The author addresses and dismisses Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as insufficient. He calls for proactive collaborative engagement with potential customers in the five billion poor, and I am instantly reminded of the Business Week cover story of 20 June 2005, on the power of mass volunteer collaboration.

The author focuses on women, mothers, and their children. This tallies with Michael O'Hanlon and Ralph Peters, both of whom regard the education of women as the single best investment bar none.

The author took several steps beyond his pioneering micros-cash loans. He created social networks of those being helped, and he froze payments or interst and did whatever necessary to get defaulters back on track without penalty. This guy is the Mother Teresa of micro-economics!

Today self-help groups of around 20 can apply to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development for group loans.

His integrity is without peer. Interest over the life of the loan would never exceed the loan itself.

He prefers social business to charity because charity encourages corruption (in my own experience, 50% of every AID or contractor dollar goes toward corruption or fraud).

He observes that social business does not have conventional metrics, but it provides meaning and opportunity, and I observe in my own note, it lowers the “true costs” of virtually everything it touches.

Featured in this book, the middle half, is the French company Danone, and the joint venture to create a yogurt for the poor children, ultimately being delivered in a bio-degradable cup that converts into fertilizer.

The last chapter is on information technology for the poor. I personally envision free cell phones for each village, then for each neighborhood, and finally for each household, monetizing the transactions and the real-time knowledge.

The author concludes that we need new social value metrics and even a Social Dow Jones Index. This is the opposite of what I have been thinking about ever since Paul Hawkins taught me about “true costs.” Now that Scanback allows a person at the point of sale to photograph a bar code and send it to Amazon to get their price, the channel is open to send back water content (4000 liters in a designer shirt from Bangladesh cotton), fuel content, child labor hours, and tax avoidance status).

The last note is one I want to present to a Fortune 50 Assets Management firm. Danone is to be admired and respected for committing to a sccial business, and it found a solution that permitted it to engage without letting down its investors: it created a new fund explicitly advertised as 90% traditional and 10% social business, and it was over-subscribed instantly.

On page 25 are listed 25 distinct Gameen companies. On pages 58-59 are Sixteen Decisions that alone warrant the Nobel Peace Prize. What these sixteen decisions do for the beneficiaries of micro-cash loans is nothing less than a socially-inspired form of the Ten Commandments, focused on creating health people in a healthy family within a healthy community.

A few other exceptional books:
The leadership of civilization building: Administrative and civilization theory, symbolic dialogue, and citizen skills for the 21st century
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

I am increasingly uncomfortable with the fact that all the books I am reading and reviewing are in English. I have read a few in English stemming out of India and elsewhere, and I am beginning to feel a very deep vacuum that needs to be filled. I envision 100 million volunteers using Telelanguage.com to educate the poor one cell call at a time, but I now also see an urgent need to translate and make available non-fiction literature in other languages, easily retrievable in micro-text for micro-cash.

Category: Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Review: The Second World–Empires and Influence in the New Global Order