It matters greatly who wins the war because the winners write the history and they rarely -- if ever -- characterize events accurately. That's what makes history fun. It's a puzzle and it's always changing. In this case I'm talking about Caesar, who in 58 A.D. destroyed the Celts in Gaul (France), killed and enslaved millions, took the gold, propagandized the history, and went on to rule Rome as Emperor. Nice guy. That is of you like vicious dudes running psychotic military dictatorships. But whatever. The point is that the Romans won, so their view of things survived throughout the ages. But I'm more interested in what was lost? What did the Romans conveniently leave out of their history?

For that, check out The Primitive Celts, an entertaining and fascinating look at the Celts, who the Romans say were mere barbarians. But were they? Seems some archaeologists are discovering the Celts actually had a highly developed society with the most advanced calender at the time and a sophisticated economy based on a variety of trades. They minded gold all across Europe, and they built a vast network of roads to facilitate international trade. Generally, the contrast to Rome was nearly total. Where the Celts decentralized things into a web and community-like structure, the Romans centralized them into a rigid hierarchy. And that proved a critical and fatal difference -- at least in ancient times. Centralization won. Big time, actually.

But I wonder if that distinction remains true today? What's the better concept around which to build a society in 2010? And who wins the war when these differences collide for whatever reason? How much has really changed in two thousand years? You can look at this from the perspective of a county or a company or even a project. It's just the management of resources to achieve a goal. Nothing more. But my question asks which is better. Who wins in modern times?

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Here`s a chilling excerpt from a new movie about Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, which Ellsberg leaked to Neil Sheehan of the New York Times exposing the lies about the Vietnam War (among other things). If you haven`t read the Pentagon Papers I can tell you it`s an enlightening experience to say the very least. It may shake your confidence in official leadership a bit, but that`s not necessarily a bad thing. Leadership should be questioned so power remains as distributed as possible and decision making processes remain as transparent as possible. More generally, those two concepts are core principles to keep in mind while building communities, especially if you want to create the circumstances where opportunities can spring from anywhere. Anyway, back to this film clip. There is one audio conversation between Nixon and Kissinger cited in the film offering a glimpse into the thinking of Richard Nixon. Here`s the exchange:

Nixon: I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: That will drown 200,000 people.
Nixon: Well, no, no, no, no, no. I`d rather use a nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?
Kissinger: That I think will just be too much, uh.
Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you? I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.

Absolutely. Insane. But instructive as well. This is what happens when leaders detach themselves from the reality of their decisions. Granted, this is an extreme case, but oftentimes even genuine leaders make bad decisions due to isolation. Lesson to would be leaders: get out of the office, get down in the grass roots, live like the people you lead.

Whistle-Blowers: A Conversation with Ellsberg and Dean

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That`s what Obama said yesterday as a couple of his political nominees went down in flames. From a communications perspective, this is a fascinating strategy delivered directly from the boss. First, because very few people use this strategy, and second because even fewer leaders use it. Asserting responsibility, I mean. It`s so rare it`s utterly refreshing. Sure, he spun a bit in there but not too much given the club from which he comes and the company he keeps. A more common strategy from those guys is to duck and deny and lie and spin till we think up is down and down is up. And after enough of that, of course, we eventually just give up. They win. We lose. But here this dude quite literally drags the top networks into the Oval Office and says "I Screwed Up" to them one right after another and he doesn`t even flinch once? Wild.

Will it work?


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I posted a "note" on my page on Facebook the other day. I don't know what a note is, but I did it anyway. I guess it's just, well, a note. I've been using FB a lot more lately, and I must say it has improved a great deal since last year. I used to hate all the garbage getting tossed at me on there, but things have cleaned up nicely. I like it. You can really keep in touch with multiple communities simultaneously, and if you do the work I do it's a pretty valuable tool. In general, there are a lot of places to engage in conversations now -- photo sites, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, mailing lists, project sites, etc. Where do you put stuff? Tough decision, actually. I think you have to be everywhere to a certain degree. Conversations are really massively spread out now across many platforms, and the flow all over the Internet. If you are centralized, you're dead. Yah, like there's not more important things in life going on right about now. Anyway ...

I tried to post this note on FB to see what happens, and I was happily surprised that I got some comments right away. Good stuff, too. But the entire conversation is taking place behind FB's log-in prompt. If you are on FB you can jump in here. I don't mind conversations being spread out across the net, but to be locked behind a log-in prompt seems silly. It's just a conversation. So, I thought I'd post the original entry here as well:

This is a remarkable statement from President Bush during his last press conference the other day: "If you were sitting there and heard that the depression could be greater than the Great Depression, I hope you would act too, which I did."

Of course. Any responsible leader would act and act boldly. But can we get to the point where we act before someone bursts into the freaking Oval Office screaming the entire system is melting down to the point of taking us back to a situation worse than the 1930s? My goodness. The incompetence of the United States Government is stunning. The only thing our leaders deserve is our contempt. Why do we keep electing these people? Was there any follow up from all the reporters in the room? No. Will anyone ultimately be held accountable? No. Who will end up paying? We will. Who'll skate free with the cash? They will.

The comments that came afterwards were pretty good, and I responded in kind. I appreciate when people comment on my stuff, and I found responding on FB vastly easier than responding on my blog. I'm way, way behind responding to comments in my blog. Some of the comments to this piece were a bit partisan for my tastes, but that's to be expected. The issue is extremely divisive. Personally, I don't take a partisan view of this. Politicians of all shapes and sizes and parties have been stealing my money and wasting it ever since I earned my first dollar. I treat them all pretty much the same. With contempt. This latest pol is probably the wost of the lot, but I feel relatively certain he'll not be the last.

I'm off to the pool and then back home for another late night of meetings in the U.S. I seem to be doing my 22 hour days multiple days of the week now. That can't last. I know. Working on it.

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Here`s a good article about how some Chinese and Japanese view the word "normal" as it relates to Japan`s role in the world -- China wary of a 'normal' Japan. The Japanese tend to view the term as enabling Japan to participate in international peacekeeping activities around the world in collaboration with the UN, but some in China worry that normal means militarization. It turns out that both sides need to cut each other some slack. It`s a difficult issue given the history here in East Asia, but this article deals with it quite calmly and rationally.

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Check this out: Cambridge University report links the new Japanese craze for getting up early with nationalist revival.

It's a press release. It's selling some so-called research from Dr. Brigitte Steger at Cambridge University about how the Japanese are waking up early these days to revive their nationalism. I'm not making this up. And the language used in the release is overtly hostile and blatantly irresponsible: "nationalism, fad, craze, countrywide preoccupation, conscious and coordinated attempt, feeding a nationalist revival not seen since World War II" -- all terms and phrases designed to aggressively provoke. I asked a bunch of people I know (Japanese, Americans, Europeans) about this since I may have missed the 1930s style nationalist revival going on in Tokyo today, but they responded just as I had expected: they laughed. They describe no such craze, and I certainly see nothing approaching anything in Steger's press release. Here's a totally uncritical UPI story repeating the press release, and another view throughly gutting both.

Actually, the Japanese people are remarkably understated about life and their place in the world. It takes a lot to get everyone worked up here, and many people are especially sensitive to nationalism. Sure, politicians make dumb comments from time to time, but Japanese pols are absolutely nothing compared to their Western counterparts when it comes to whipping up the masses. I've never seen politicians here giving grand speeches in hockey arenas or football stadiums filled with tens of thousands of adoring fans waving flags and screaming wildly right on que and just as directed. Have you? Talk about nationalism, my goodness.

However, I do think this Cambridge University press release documents real nationalistic propaganda. But the question is this: whose nationalism does it point to and whose propaganda does it reveal?

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I`ve always felt the phrase "speaking truth to power" was a waste of time. I mean, really, who in power listens? It`s not in their interest to listen to us, right? We may think they listen because we have the right to speak openly and many people around the world have no such freedom. But I`ve always had my doubts that the powerful even know we exist, let alone listen to us. Anyway, I finally tripped over someone who agrees. Check out the 58:48 minute mark of this Google video of Noam Chomsky clips. He also describes speaking truth to power as a waste of time but because "power already knows the truth ... they don`t have to hear it from us ... you have to speak truth to people." I hadn`t thought of it quite that way, but it`s clearly a good lesson in community building. It`s a way to focus your efforts. Why waste your time speaking to the powerful who won`t help you? Instead, talk to regular people who will. It`s in their interest to listen, isn`t it? Simple. I`ve seen Chomsky speak a couple of times when I lived in Boston. Agree or disagree, he`s a guy who can really stretch your mind, that`s for sure.



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With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise. The audacity here is impressive. Incompetent politicians fail the people in spectacular fashion (could that be more obvious?), and the pols go out and reward themselves with a pay raise? Sorry, guys. You don`t deserve a pay raise. You deserve a pay cut. And a big fat one at that. Oh well, I suppose I shouldn`t be surprised. The American people love their politicians, and they elect the same ones over and over again at incumbency rates of over 90%. Great gig the pols have, eh?


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Nice to see there's still plenty of money in the economy for buying politicians -- In Fine Print, a Proliferation of Large Donor: NY Times. But they are expensive these days. What recession, right? No one at that level feels it. They never do. I can't imagine giving such sums to these guys, but I guess if you're running a large business with political or governmental ties it's necessary. If you've got it, you give it. I remember back when we were in the construction business in New York. Campaign season meant getting your checkbook out. Democrats. Republicans. Didn't matter. Same crowd. The pols would come around to the offices of the local businesses and contractors and shake everyone down -- especially if the big guys were coming to town. It was all very nice and professional and all that. For the good of the party or something. Right. Not paying was not an option, by the way. It's amazing how fast your life got complicated if you didn't participate in their little community. Anyway, that was tiny cash back then and at least you got a really nice dinner and speech out of it. Lots of suits and limos and special people all over the place. It was all very important. And the events were great fun, too. A touch on the immoral side, but good fun nonetheless. Oh, well. It's just a cost of doing business. Nothing more. I'm far too judgmental for my own good. Pay up.


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Stuck in the Muck -- Washington Post. A version of this article is printed every four years, usually toward the end of a long, exhausting, and bitter election cycle. Attack politics has been around forever in the U.S.

The politicians start out talking about how they want to bring people together, how the American people are tired of attack politics, and all such silliness. Then they proceed to violently gut each other privately and publicly over the course of two years. It's predictable. Just as the inevitable kissing and making up, which is probably the funniest part of the whole sorry process. Two things: first, the American people (the partisans, anyway) seem to enjoy this extreme rhetoric, and second, this has been going on for a couple of hundred years. Those two points are obvious. However, what I don't get is probably just as obvious to all except me: why? I know that's a dumb reaction, but since running for office has very little to do with governing once you're actually in office, why do we do it like this? Isn't there a better way to qualify a presidential candidate? And are the candidates as important as the people in the back room?

Anyway, the Stuck in the Muck article is pretty humorous.

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Rescue the Rescue: "Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome." -- Tom Friedman, New York Times

Correct. The politicians we Americans have so generously voted into office have no stake in this financial crisis because they live on a different planet, they are totally insulated from their employers (us!), and they represent other interests far more powerful than the American people. Ultimately, we are responsible, though. The politicians are only doing what is in their personal self interest. We should do the same.

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A Political Meltdown: "But for the next president and the next Congress, whatever its makeup, Monday's performance should be looked at as an example of what it was, a performance designed to undermine public confidence in its elected leadership." --  Dan Balz, Washington Post

Of course. The country is virtually leaderless at this point. This crisis is so clearly bigger than the little politicians we have running the place. They have no idea what to do because they are partially responsible for the problem in the first place, and the only time they think about the people they supposedly represent is during campaigns. And even then it's a stretch because the lobbyists buy and sell politicians like chips in a private poker game. As a result, the only thing politicians can do during times like this is spit at each other using extremist partisan propaganda. That's all they are capable of, sadly. Their performance these last few weeks has been pathetic. At best. But most of them will be handsomely rewarded with reelection next month. And the few that get toasted in the process will be replaced by more little politicians. But we don't need more politicians. We need responsible civil servants, managers, and policy makers. We need serious operations people -- not actors and used car salesmen.

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A Professor and a Banker Bury Old Dogma on Markets. Fascinating article about Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury. Well worth a read. It's not that long. But a few bits jumped out at me. First, Bernanke had been warning the politicians in Washington about this current mess for some time. Second, Bernanke is an expert on the US Depression of the 1930s and Japan's decade long recession in the 1990s. Third, the politicians didn't listen (probably because they are politicians and far too many of them are clueless). Fourth, Paulson had been talking to Bernanke and coming to support his view. And fifth, both guys are outsiders. They are Republicans, but they were not part of the Washington establishment prior to their respective jobs. Interesting mix.

So, check out some specifics in the article. Start here with the two of them reacting rapidly to a breaking crisis ...

The improvisational nature of their effort has turned President Bush and Congressional Democrats into virtual bystanders, sometimes uncertain about what comes next and left to wonder about the new power dynamics in the capital. Seemingly every time lawmakers tried to get a handle on what was happening and what role they might play with elections around the corner, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke would show up again on Capitol Hill for another evening meeting with another surprise development.

The two men have been working early and working late, tracking Asian markets and fielding calls from their European counterparts, then reconnecting with each other by phone eight or nine times a day, talking so often that they speak in shorthand. Mr. Paulson has powered through the long days with a steady infusion of Diet Coke. Asked twice to testify by the Senate last week, he begged off.

I love it. Paulson blows off Congress. You have to just love that. And why not? The politicians are only interested in themselves, and they are a side show, or "bystanders" as the article says, just like the current Presidential campaign is a side show with the participants looking even more foolish now than they did before. Besides, Paulson was working. Congress can wait. And to top it off, Congress is planning to leave town on their "recess" for the rest of September. Good. We should let them go and then change locks on the Capital so they can't get back in. We own the building, after all. Remember that.

Next ...

On Thursday afternoon, the two men, along with Christopher Cox, the S.E.C. chairman, went to the White House to explain their plan. "The president said, 'Let?s do it,' " an official said. "There was no hesitation."

Within hours, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke were in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, briefing Congressional leaders on how bleak the situation was. Lawmakers were shaken but offered tentative support. Torn by conflicting imperatives to take action and to go home to campaign, they seemed alternately grateful and resentful of the new power couple in Washington. Some referred to "President Paulson" and others groused about an unelected central bank chairman doling out hundreds of billions of dollars.

Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke came under fire for being too aggressive and for not being aggressive enough. Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said they were killing the free market. R. Glenn Hubbard, former chairman of Mr. Bush?s Council of Economic Advisers, said they should have acted sooner.

Ok, so Bush, who had been sitting on his butt all week, agrees to the bailout plan, which dumps the problem on taxpayers. Thanks, George. You may be able to afford the additional taxes, but some of us can't because you and your friends spent the country broke in the last eight years. Anyway, checking in with Bush, the guys rush up to the Capital to meet with the other half of our fearless leadership: Congress. By all accounts, Bernanke told them that the county was now in extremely serious financial trouble. The reaction of the pols? The article suggests they were "torn by conflicting imperatives to take action and to go home to campaign ..."

Absolutely. Unbelievable.

We are heading off a financial cliff because of obvious incompetence in multiple sectors, the taxpayers will get stuck with the bill, and our wealthy and well insulated Democratic and Republican leaders want to go home and campaign. Is it possible for these people to sink any lower?

Contemptible.

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Capital Feels Its Way on Huge Rescue Plan, Eyes on Nov. 4: "All of which has left Washington in the midst of a political convulsion that both parties are struggling to understand and turn to their advantage -- or at least keep from turning against them." -- New York Times.

How obnoxious can these people get? Turn to their advantage? My goodness. Both parties should struggle. They should struggle and be worried to death. They are both incompetent and deserve nothing more than unemployment. Jail would be better, but I'd settle for simply kicking them to the street for playing with our lives like this. Yet what will Americans do in a few weeks when they go the polls? They'll dutifully vote right back into office more Democrats and Republicans -- the clowns who put us in this situation in the first place. And they mock us by promising "change" like they so obviously think we are fools. Amazing. Who wins here? The politicians and the billionaires. Who loses? We do. The people who pay the bills. You know, The Founders of the United States wouldn't be filling football stadiums to see actors or cheering hockey moms dressed as pols in a cult-like attempt to abdicate their responsibility. Instead, they'd be planning the next revolution.


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If you are an American citizen and living outside the country, you can still vote in the presidential election. But time is rapidly running out to register, so watch the clock. You really only have a few weeks left.

You are basically registering to vote via the state in which you last lived. But state registration deadlines vary (although most seem 30 days or so prior to the election). Also, the ability of state election officials to email ballots back after you register varies, too. I find most states just drop paper in the mail -- the single slowest possible mechanism imaginable in 2008, especially when you consider international communications. Sigh. How utterly modern. And why can Florida and Oregon email a ballot back and not California? My goodness. Figure that one out. Anyway, in most cases you have to mail your registration application, receive a ballot back in the mail, and then mail the ballot back. And there are deadlines associated with each of the legs in that back-and-forth.

So, as our fearless future leaders toss hairy spit balls at each other and generally act like five-year-olds gossiping and fighting on the playground at recess, get your paperwork done so you can vote for one of them. One of those guys gets to be president -- as amazing as that sounds at this point.

There are many sites on the net to help, of course, but here's one from the Federal Voting Assistance Program. I got this link from the American Embassy in Tokyo.


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