Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work

Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work
Average customer rating:

Just keeps giving

Surprisingly helpful from an accidental reader

Pop-Psychology

Smart Advice

Disappointed

Working With You is Killing Me: Freeing Yourself from Emotional Traps at Work
Katherine Crowley , and Kathi Elster
Manufacturer: Business Plus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0446698490

Book Description

An authoritative manual that provides valuable insights for turning conflicts in the workplace into productive working relationships. The toughest part of any job is dealing with the people around you. Scratch the surface of any company and you'll uncover a hotbed of emotions -- people feeling anxious about performance, angry at co-workers, and misunderstood by management. Now, in Working With You is Killing Me, readers learn how to "unhook" from these emotional pitfalls and gain valuable strategies for confronting workplace conflicts in a healthy, productive way. Discover how to: - Manage an ill-tempered boss before he or she explodes - Defend yourself against idea-pilfering rivals before they steal all the credit - Detach from those annoying co-workers whose irritating habits ruin the day

Customer Reviews:

Just keeps giving.......2007-07-12

This is a book that just keeps giving. I bought it quite a while ago and really did not read it right away --- but ultimately I read the whole thing -- and I must admit I found myself appearing again and again in the descriptions.

But what really is great about this book is that if you just leave it on the coffee table or something like that, then you will find yourself picking it up and randomly looking at a chapter here and a chapter there -- and guess what -- it will all be relevant (if you are being honest with yourself). You will find yourself, your peers, coworkers, and your life.

Worth having.

Surprisingly helpful from an accidental reader.......2007-05-20

My wife bought the book and I was sceptical when I first saw it. I accidentally left it on a low table and our puppy picked it up and shredded most of the first chapter. I bought another copy from Amazon to replace the damaged copy. As I tried to repair the torn pages a few words caught my attention and after that I could not put it down. Take it from an initial sceptic that this book has very helpful suggestions and practical advice that you can readily apply. I highly recommend this book to anybody who is working.

Pop-Psychology.......2007-05-14

This book was assigned reading for a "Leadership" in business class. The first two chapters set the tone for the rest of the book. Read those, and the rest will be just variations on the same theme. I now use the book as a doorstop.

Smart Advice.......2007-05-12

As a veteran of the corporate world, I found the case studies and recommended solutions to common workplace snafus right on target. Best of all, the authors urge individuals to find out their options and own their decisions. In other words, no need to be the victim of an unhealthly work relationship. Hope is out there for those who can take a step back and not get tangled up in other person's bad behavior!

Disappointed.......2007-04-13

With all the glowing reviews, I thought this book would have something new and innovative, something I hadn't heard before. No such luck. Some interesting strategies and tactics for dealing with difficult people and see how you might be contributing to the problem, but nothing you won't find in other books on the subject.

I eventually gave up before finishing the CD because of the lack of anything new and I got tired of listen to the authors :-(

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (BK Currents)

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Hope Restored
The Great Turning
The Ideal of the Bodhisattva
A "Must Read" for Every Lover of Democracy
A MUST-READ

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (BK Currents)
David C Korten
Manufacturer: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1887208070

Book Description

The threat of continued warfare to the future of humanity has become dire. "The Great Turning explores that threat in detail and provides an equally detailed plan for meeting -- and overcoming -- it. Written in the author's trademark clear, compelling style, this timely book uncovers the roots of Empire in ancient Athens and charts the long transition from the institutions of monarchy to those of the global economy as the favored instruments of imperialism. Korten then discusses the promise of early America as a democracy dedicated to spreading liberty and freedom -- and the failure of the "American experiment" through the contemporary takeover of the U.S. government by corporate plutocrats, religious theocrats, and neoconservative militarists in pursuit of naked imperial ambition. Korten draws on sources as varied as evolution, developmental psychology, and the wisdom of religious mystics to make the case for "Earth Community" -- a people-centered, community-based future that is both possible and necessary.

Customer Reviews:

Hope Restored.......2007-08-07

David Korten has restored my hope that humanity can and will survive the upcoming collision with our own short sighted Hubris. Some, perhaps many of us will make it through and will have restored to us in the process a great deal more of our own compassionate humanity. Well researched, well written. A seminal work! Thank you David!

The Great Turning.......2007-06-12

This book should be read by anyone thinking about how to move toward a fair, just society. Korten talks about levels of maturity leading to understanding that enough people and groups have reached a level where a society based on the principle of community rather than that of domination is within reach. It undercuts struggling with all the forms injustice takes in our present society and considers joining with like-minded groups all over the world to form a bottom-up society concerned with the good of all rather than just looking out for what's good for the most powerful among us.

The Ideal of the Bodhisattva.......2007-05-13

The Great Turning masterfully traces the concept of Empire from pre-history to the present and states that the current world situtation has been shaped by the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few. The motivating actions of governments are to preserve their control over the forces of money and power. The democracies of the Western world are not true democracies as they maintain their control over the many by giving prevledge to the few. Korten goes on to relate various pardighms that our culture buys into and which perpetuate the rule of Empire. one of these views is related in the "Imperial Secular Meaning Story."
"Matter is the only reality. the whole of the cosmos is a product of the orderly playing out of physical forces amenable to description and prediction by mathematical equations. Life is the accidental outcome of material complexity. Consciousness and free will are illusions, nothing more. Because life has no intrinsic meaning, the only rational couse of the intelligent individual is to seek material gratification through the accumulation of wealth and power.
The evolution of the living species occurs through a competitive struggle in which the fittest survive and the less fit perish. Mammalian species, naturally organize themselves into heirarchies of dominance for mutual protection and breeding success.
Human progress likewise depends on competitive struggle in which the most fit triumph and those of second rank serve the most fit. the winners prove their superior worth and therby their contribution to the betterment of the whole by virute of their victory. They have a natural right to the rewards of their victory as their just due. Their is no reason for guilt or for concern for those whom the struggle destroys or leaves behind, as their loss is itself proof that they are the less fit. For the betterment of the whole, we must all accept that this their proper fate."
What makes the Great Turning a landmark book is that it exposes these myths for what they are-propaganda for maintaining control with power and wealth. The actions of governments rather than being for the well being of the people are for the maintaining of the myths which concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the few. Korten goes on to forge the strategy for removal of these myths and replacing them with the reality of a sustainable Earth Community.
The human and Divine potential of the sage, writer, artist, scientist cannot be fully realized without the move away from empire to Earth Community. The Bodhisattva's vow while at the threshold of enlightenment takes on the meaning for all of us to work out our daily lives in harmony with the forces that are attempting to bring about an Earth Community.

A "Must Read" for Every Lover of Democracy.......2007-03-08

This is the most important book I have read in years! There is hope. The people can take back America and truly make it a land of freedom, liberty and justice for all.

A MUST-READ.......2007-02-20

This book has changed the way I think about the world and the challenge we face in avoiding "the great unraveling." After reading it, I want to stand up and start making a difference.

Average customer rating:

Informatively frustrating
Insight into an Ad-driven culture
Anti-Corporate Handbook
NO LOGO will fundementally alter the way you think about the world.
The Third World has always existed for the comfort of the First

No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs
Naomi Klein
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312421435

Amazon.com

We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."

In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?

Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.

But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan

Book Description

With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition. No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.

As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today’s schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald’s workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how “culture jammers” utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in “Joe Chemo” for “Joe Camel”).

No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.

“This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable.”—Naomi Klein, from her Introduction

Download Description

Once a poster boy for the new economy, Bill Gates has become a global whipping boy. The Nike swoosh is quickly losing its cachet, equated now with sweatshop labor. Teenage McDonald's workers are joining the Teamsters. What's going on? NO LOGO explains why some of the most revered brands in the world are finding themselves on the wrong end of a spray-can, a computer hack, or an international anti-corporate campaign. NO LOGO uncovers a betrayal of the central promises of the information age: choice, interactivity, and increased freedom. Instead, job security and consumer choice have been swallowed whole by companies who enlist us as their human billboards and spokesmen. Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic expose, NO LOGO is the first book that both uncovers the sins of corporations run amok and explores and explains the new resistance that will change consumer culture in the 21st century.

Customer Reviews:

Informatively frustrating.......2007-08-17

It was well written exploring many aspects of branding, culture jamming, and production.

This book will leave you with frustration and questioning how you change change something, and what CAN you buy that isn't made from Export Processing Zones.

It does give great information but yet leaves you frustrated and feeling helpless that you can't change the current conditions or avoid buying products made in places like china, el salvador, indonesia where they treat their workers worse than dirt.

Insight into an Ad-driven culture.......2007-07-14

This book offers a deep insight on how advertising are creeping into our lives, even conveyed to us in a subliminal way. If left unchecked, the corporations would be the authors our culture. It also showcases the exploits of major corporations in employment.

However, one must be critical when reading the book, as some of the things Naomi bashes on, such as the Starbucks expansion strategy, are genuine business strategies. In some cases, we have to be realistic and not blindly adopt and anti-corporation stance.

The first 3 chapters, No Space, No Choice, and No Jobs are exceptionally informative, but the last chapter, No Logo, falls short and descends into a boring rant on countermeasures that in my opinion, are far from effective and often, impractical.

Buy the book, read the first 2, skip the last.

Anti-Corporate Handbook.......2007-05-20

What are the effects of multinational corporations in the Branding Age? Naomi Klein tackles that in this seminal work on the subject. While somewhat dated (published in 2000), it gives the most comprehensive picture of the transition corporations have undergone from providing competent products and services to providing ubiquitous branding and advertising to produce loyalty and sell peripherals. This book gives the total picture of the devastation left in the wake of total corporate dominance in the U.S., Canada, and worldwide.

As she details, what has emerged in the last half of the 20th century is a new kind of totality - an economic imperialism spearheaded by Nike, The Gap, McDonalds, Shell, and Microsoft and their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies. As they break open markets, crush competition, and lower wages across the globe they've gotten so powerful as to dictate to scores of countries what their trade and economic policies are going to be. These policies are always anti-Union and terrible for workers, leaving nations worse off than before they were Industrialized and Advertised - creating massive wealth gaps and uneven distributions across the board.

The four major sections of the book: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo, each show in example after example, case study upon study that advertising is the product now and the more money spent in that avenue, the more profitable the corporation can be while taking every opportunity away from the poor and disenfranchised, forcing horrible conditions and worse jobs on them, and decreasing their access to health care and nutrition. This is not an accident. This is a concerted policy foisted upon the world through the corporate enforcement arm of the WTO, World Bank, and U.S. Military.

Is it hopeless? Well, civil disobedience is one way to combat the trends and takeover and Klein offers many suggestions and examples in this book. However even she admits that the situation is bleak.

Good luck . . . and good read.

- CV Rick

NO LOGO will fundementally alter the way you think about the world........2006-11-04

Naomi Klien's treatise on the anti-corporate movement of the last decade provides tremendous insight into the philosophies behind today's anti-corporate culture, and more importantly, the "branded" society that has spawned it. Well written and intelligent on every level, NO LOGO carefully tracks such disturbing phenomenons as the disappearance of public space, the rise of corporate censorship, and the transformation of living wage jobs for Americans into sweatshop labor in the third world. If you are completely unfamiliar with today's cultural rebellion against corporate control, NO LOGO serves as an excellent introduction, clearly outlining the dubious marketing trend of promoting "brands not products" such that you will never be able to watch commercials the same way again. If you are a seasoned WTO protester or billboard adbuster, NO LOGO will provide you with all the philosophical and factual ammo necessary to start converting your friends away from their unthinking materialistic lifestyle. This book is a must read for anyone who considers themselves and independently thinking consumer, as well as anyone who is interested in the latest cultural rebellion taking place among today's young and disenfranchised.

The Third World has always existed for the comfort of the First.......2006-11-03

Naomi Klein sketches perfectly the major shift in corporate strategy today: transnational companies are not interested in production anymore, only in branding: products are made in factories, brands in the mind. Branding creates big margins, production in home countries meager earnings.

This strategy causes monstrous layoffs in the First World and creates EPZ (Export Processing Zones) in the Third World.
In the First world, corporations transformed themselves in `engines of wealth growth' for their shareholders, instead of `engines of job growth'. `CEO's of the 30 companies with the largest announced layoffs saw their total compensation increase by 67%.'
The jobs they need are predominantly outsourced, or are McJobs (no `adult wages') and temporary stop-jobs.
The First World stirs fierce competition between Third World countries in order to get rock-bottom prices for their `branded' products, creating colossal margins in the home countries.
Wages in EPZs are so low that most of the money is spent on shared dorm rooms and basic food. Workers cannot afford the consumer goods they produce.

Another aspect of our branded world is the sheer size of the (trans)national corporations created by relentless mergers and acquisitions. Their size permits them to decide what items (also magazines, DVDs) should be stocked in a store, in other words, they create a new kind of censorship.
Big mergers in the media landscape allow conglomerates to produce their own news and in this sense jeopardize basic civil liberties.

While Naomi Klein's analysis of our consumer planet is very revealing, the remedies she proposes are rather innocent, epidermic, symptom healing or too general: ad and brand busting, radical ecology (Reclaim the Streets), anti-globalization and anti-corporate mass protests, boycott, building greater critical social consciousness. Individual actions like attacking in court (Shell in Nigeria), revealing Nike's sweatshops or denouncing McDonald's food are ultimately not more than temporary needle pricks in elephant skins.
What the world needs is a global vision, which we can find in the works of Joseph Stiglitz or (for a view from the South) Walden Bello.

Highly recommended.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions)

Average customer rating:

Great theory, but not always an easy read
Value edition for the budget minded
A Very Standard Economic Postulate
Don't buy the Dover edition of this book.
great idea, little proof

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions)
Max Weber , Talcott Parsons , and R.H. Tawney
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
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Binding: Paperback

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From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
Suicide

ASIN: 048642703X

Book Description

This brilliant study opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through the conflict of opposites. Instead, Weber relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately encouraged capitalism.

Customer Reviews:

Great theory, but not always an easy read.......2007-07-30

Max Weber's thesis that the Protestant work-ethic helped give rise to the spirit of modern capitalism is well known, but how true is it? Weber goes into an impressive review of historical details on how Luther's concept of the calling became the Calvinist concept of labor to glorify God, and finally the Puritan concept that is applied to business as well as anything else. In short, the Protestant hard-work ethic, intended to be a sign of election and to glorify god, inadvertently (at least in part) gave birth to the spirit of capitalism, of sustained, planned, methodical profit-making. Though capitalism is no longer dependent upon religion for maintaining its ethos (we are all caught in the rat race), it is fascinating how Weber makes a compelling case that a once anti-materialist Protestant Christianity came to affirm the capitalist spirit by way of a hard-working ethic. Many of Weber's themes are persuasive, if also controversial. Weber has by no means isolated the final or full cause of the take-off of capitalism in modern times, but he has made a good case for one contributing factor. Would that his style of writing had been a bit more direct - Weber's insights are at least worth careful reading.

Value edition for the budget minded.......2007-06-06

The "reviews" about Weber's thesis could fill libraries. Ooops! They actually have!

So let's ignore that.

The focus here is on value, and this Dover value edition is perfectly fine for the thrifty college student on a limited budget who needs to read this work for an assignment but doesn't want to be at the mercy of the University Library.

This is a seminal work that reaches far into other fields of inquiry, so it is likely you will need it no matter what your field.

The binding is an el-cheap-o slab of glue, so it won't lie flat on your desk when you are transcribing a quote for a citation.....but since you've downloaded the text file you'll just cut and paste anyway.

Academic citations to this edition are perfectly acceptable in scholarly papers and under MLA, ASA, APA, ACS, APSA, "Turabian" and MHRA style guidelines (and perhaps others).

A Very Standard Economic Postulate.......2007-04-15

Assuming Max Weber's thesis to be true proves useful. By assuming it as a postulate, one gains a potential way of understanding the beliefs of the western-world's upper pareto boundary and the typical ressentiments / bad faith (bad-tempered, difficult mental traps everyone who tries to create something can't help but fall into from time to time, mea culpa!) of the lower.

Max Scheler (who advised Karol Wojtyla as a Ph.D. student) seems to have done something similar to what Max Weber describes the upper pareto boundary (somewhere over the rainbow as the song goes) as having done. Max Scheler "attempted to reconcile Nietzsche's ideas of master-slave morality and ressentiment with the Christian ideals of love and humility."

Anyway, just projecting a few of my other readings onto this one a bit. L8R.

Don't buy the Dover edition of this book........2006-10-26

The Dover edition of the book has been bound so tightly that it's difficult to turn the pages--and to read the words, which are nearly swallowed up by the binding. It feels like if you force it at all, the whole binding will come unglued.

It may be cheap, but it *feels* so extremely cheap that it's just not worth the money saved. Buy yourself another edition--or for that matter, just get the text free online. Anything's better than trying to read this edition.

great idea, little proof.......2006-09-26

As part of my enquiry into the forces that the Reformation unleased, I decided to at last read this classic.

Alas, it was disappointing in that Weber makes the assertion - that reformation-spawned ideologies were the foundation of the capitalist revolution - and then offers little historical explanation as proof of his thesis. Instead, what he does is to painstakingly describe the ideologies in question, to show that they are compatible conceptually with his definition of capitalism (the rise of an urban bourgeoisie that created wealth by investing in industry as a major new economic actor, eventaully leading to the eclipse of the old land-based aristocracy). As Hannah Ardnt said, so long as you are far enough from reality, you can make almost any ideas appear compatible. As such, I was unconvinced that a) the feeling of being among the elect made people work harder to prove it by material success and b) that a heightened sense of individuality that arose with separation from the papist ideologies augmented this pursuit of self-development via the massing of personal capital. While the protestant ideologies may conform vaguely to these notions, that does not in the slightest prove a direct causal connection. Indeed, one might argue that it was the repression by the Inquisition - against the bourgoise's challenge to traditional aristocrats - that may have delayed the development of capitalism in Catholic countries for a few centuries. (That capitalism did develop in many Catholic countries also undermines the book's prinicpal thesis.)

This essay is interesting as a pioneering attempt at sociological determinism from a rather existentialist perspective, but reading the whole thing was a bit much for me. Weber was a great and innovative thinker, however out of date his modes of reasoning have become - they are strictly qualitative. Not recommended except asof historical interest.

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil

Average customer rating:

Poisoned Wells

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil
Nicholas Shaxson
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Oil Wars

ASIN: 1403971943
Release Date: 2007-03-20

Book Description

Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.

Customer Reviews:

Poisoned Wells.......2007-06-11

Of the current crop of "what is wrong with Africa" books including "The Shackled Continent", "The White Man's Burden" and "The Trouble with Africa", Nicholas Shaxson's analysis and prescriptions for change are the most radical and on-the-money. Shaxson's book should be widely read and discussed. Unfortunately, too much invested in the status quo by all concerned to see much likelihood of change within the next few decades.

Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations (Basic Books Classics)

Average customer rating:

Very good. It defines some concepts which are absolutely essential in wartime and even before someone decides to go to war
What is just and what is unjust
As a required text book, it fits my MA degree program.
All Is Not Fair in Love and War
This book is ultimately not very instructive about just war

Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations (Basic Books Classics)
Michael Walzer
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0465037054

Book Description

A classic treatment of the morality of war written by one of our country's leading philosophers, with a new introduction considering the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. Just and Unjust Wars examines a variety of conflicts in order to understand exactly why, according to Walzer, "the argument about war and justice is still a political and moral necessity." Walzer's classic work draws on historical illustrations that range all the way from the Athenian attack on Melos to this morning's headlines, and uses the testimony of participants-decision makers and victims alike-to examine the moral issues of warfare.

Customer Reviews:

Very good. It defines some concepts which are absolutely essential in wartime and even before someone decides to go to war.......2007-06-28

This book is one of the most significant modern restatements of just war thinking and also a passionate defense of the old principle of noncombatant immunity. The author is both thorough and persuasive in his exploration of a very intricate subject, although some times he loses his objectivity, especially when he's treating the Israeli military responses to various challenges from state and non-state actors. Some other times he takes some sharp legalist turns whish are really difficult to follow. Of course there are many points which really impressed me with their clarity, fine logic and moral soundness: "The state that goes to war is, like our own, an enormous state, governed at a great distance from its ordinary citizens by powerful and often arrogant officials. These officials, or at least the leading among them, are chosen through democratic elections, but at the time of the choice very little is known about their programs and commitments. Political participation is occasional, intermittent, limited in its effects, and is mediated by a system for the distribution of news which is partially controlled by those distant officials and which in any case allows for considerable distortion". "Soldiers, it might be said, stand to civilians like a crew of a liner to its passengers". " I have argued that soldiers in combatcannot plead self-preservation when they violate the rules of war. For the dangers of enemy fire are simply the risks of the activity in which they are engaged, and the have no right to reduce those risks at the expense of other people who are not engaged".

In his afterword, Mr Walzer gives a chilling idea of how a population (even an unarmed one) can tear down and defeat an occupying force. "Nonviolence has been practiced (in the face of an invasion) only after violence, or the threat of violence has failed. Then its protagonists aim to deny the victorious army the fruits of its victory through a systematic policy of civilian resistance and noncooperation: they call upon the conquered people to make themselves ungovernable... They treat the aggressor in effect as a domestic tyrant or usurper, and they turn his soldiers into policemen". If you add to this recipe some dozens of IEDs daily, you have the nightmare of Iraq!

What is just and what is unjust.......2006-11-04

This is a very legalistic look at history. It helps one understand many of the words used in talking about wars.

As a required text book, it fits my MA degree program........2006-11-03

It is the best book sold by the Amazon and at a cheaper price

All Is Not Fair in Love and War.......2006-06-16

Walzer's historical approach to examining just war theory is, I think, the most useful way to understand morality in war. That is so because empirical facts back up all the philosophical evaluations. Walzer describes experience and draws conclusions here; he is laying a philosophical foundation and implying, if not prescribing, moral norms from which the rules have been extracted. Be forewarned, he does not cut the reader any slack. This book requires some serious attention to the author's train of thought.

Just war theory has two categories: the justice of going to war, and the justice of fighting once in a war. Walzer's discussion usefully and clearly separates the two and examines via historical events what we regard as right and wrong within each sphere. In doing this he has done the modern world a tremendous service. His logical breakdown speaks to thousands of years of tradition about what thinkers have considered right and wrong in war. One of the best outcomes of this landmark work is the complete debunking of the notion that "all is fair in love and war." That is the path of least moral resistance (or as Clausewitz would say, "friction"), yet we all know that soldiers are honored for fighting well and loathed for behaving like armed thugs and murderers. What is amazing from the discusion is the realization that Walzer knows he has to attack that age-old notion, something our collective sense of justice has historically always rejected. Yet it remains a prevailing idea for many. Originally coined by the Romans it seems (Walzer quotes them, "In war the laws are silent"), they themselves were self-consciously contrite over the fates they inflicted on the Greeks and Carthaginians. The book rates five stars for rigorously addressing this issue alone.

Some make the mistake of thinking Walzer is a pacifist--far from it. On the otherside some critics find his argument about "supreme emergency" a moral failure and a cop-out. The case of Nazi Germany is his paradigmatic case of supreme emergency, one where normal rules may be relaxed, if ever so little, because of the especially pernicious nature of state-sponsored genocide. In contrast Walzer does not see Imperial Japan, for instance, as having represented a supreme emergency, and so the atomic bombings and the fire bombings of cities could not be morally justified. Readers may want to compare his view to Paul Fussell's perspective in the essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb." Walzer's argument here has lent unintended tacit support to many ideas about torturing terrorists at Gitmo and elsewhere. It's pretty obvious Dick Cheney, for instance, thinks the same relaxation of restraints would apply to Islamic terror (but the analogy seems weak). I recommend readers to Tim Challans' book Awakening Warrior for a critique of Walzer's idea of supreme emergency and a very impressive logical attack upon the recent trend toward torturing POW's in prisons outside the USA.

Significantly for current events, readers interested in the distinction between pre-emptive and preventive war will find a well articulated argument in Just and Unjust Wars. The US attack on Iraq was and still is often justified as pre-emptive. That impulse on the part of the neo-conservatives who devised or whipped up the casus belli reflects, I think, a need to cloak a morally questionable war in the robes of legitimacy. There is no way that attack can be justified under the historically accepted norms of "pre-emption." Michael Walzer's well-thought distinction between pre-emption and prevention makes sense even in the milieu of asymmetric warfare against terror and Islamic radicalism, and it clearly shows why the Iraq war was a moral mistake from the start, regardless of its practical success down the road, if we are fortunate enough to see that. The moral precedent of engaging in preventive war will continue to haunt America long into the future. The fact that Iraq was not even on the spectrum where the fine line between pre-emption and prevention exists is a telling aspect of the overall ongoing strategic fiasco. Where one fails to recognize the moral high ground, one is doomed to moral failure. Walzer was vocal about the run-up to war in 2003, and those who read his book would do well to find his comments about the Iraq invasion; they are edifying in terms of understanding the overall argument in this book and, not coincidentally, where we are going in this role as the world's police force.

This book is ultimately not very instructive about just war.......2006-06-11

At a lecture at West Point United States Military Academy April 6, 2006, Naom Chomsky argued, "Just war theory" literature "deserves special attention but is ultimately not very instructive about just war". "Just war theory" is "declarations of personal preference", which "never tells you anything. It doesn't tell you when it is proper to intervene, what it tells you is 'I think it is proper to intervene'...there is a big gap between assertion and argument, between surmise and evidence." "We learn very little about just war from 'Just war theory'" what we do learn is "mostly about the prevailing moral and intellectual climate in which we live." Walzer's book relies crucially on such premises as "Seems to me entirely justified, or I believe, or no doubt." Chomsky then discusses scientific studies on human behavior which is noticeably absent from Walzer's book.

Walzer uses the term "I think" at least 52 times in the book. "I don't think" 7 times. "I believe" twice, "no doubt" at least 41 times, and "seems to me" 12 times (I write "at least" because the same phrase twice on one page would be counted once.)

Walzer's hypocricy

In a book which suffers from terribly bad organization, on page 62 Walzer finally systematically lays out his arguments, stating that "Once the agressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished."

On December 29, 2005, in an interview on NPR Morning Edition ('Just and Unjust Wars' Author Critical on Iraq.) Walzer stated that the Iraq war was not a just war:

"If you are going to use military force in someone else's county...There has to be a cause of some urgency, a massacre in progress. A massacre in memory is not a just cause."

Therefore, if you follow Walzer's assertions to its obvious conclusion, the Iraq war was not a just war and therefore "the agressor state", the US, should "be punished."

But Walzer signed and endorsed The Euston Manifesto, which states in part:

"We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country's infrastructure...rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention."

Therefore in Just and unjust wars, Walzer argues that "agressor states" should be "punished" but yet Walzer signs a document which criticize those who "pick through the rubble of the arguments over intervention."

Although the Iraq War is not covered in this book, Walzer's inconsistent views on the Iraq war should give serious students of International affairs pause before subscribing to his arguments. It is one mans opinion, full of statments such as "Seems to me entirely justified" "I believe" or "no doubt."

Walzer's arguments are unscientific rablings of one intellectual which are "ultimately not very instructive about just war".

Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers

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bibliographic data :
Objective, sad, but true
A Cynical Autopsy
Throughly depressing but an absolute must read

Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers
Robert Jackall
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195060806

Book Description

Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. Jackall reveals a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might. Cheerfully-bland public faces mask intense competition in this world where people hide their intentions, and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional truths. Moral questions become merely practical concerns and issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managers find themselves wondering how to act in such a world and still maintain a sense of personal integrity. This brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality presents compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the businesses of America. It will interest anyone concerned with how big organizations actually function, or with the current moral malaise in our public life.

Customer Reviews:

bibliographic data : .......2005-11-06

Author: Jackall, Robert.
Title: Moral mazes : the world of corporate managers / Robert Jackall.
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 1988.
Edition Date: 1988
Language: English
Notes: Includes index.
Physical Details: ix, 249 p. ; 25 cm.
Subjects: Business ethics--United States.
Executives--Professional ethics--United States.
Corporations--Corrupt practices--United States.

Objective, sad, but true.......2002-05-06

"Moral Mazes" is an extensive, award-winning and highly accurate sociological portrait of life in the modern corporation, an academic precursor, so to speak, of the "Dilbert" cartoon strip. Unlike many other writers on this topic, Jackall doesn't resort to Marxist rants, but rather, compares modern corporate culture to the "Protestant" work ethic most Americans are raised into.

Jackall's inquiry, based on in-depth interviews with managers themselves, is broad in scope, and it is hard to generalize. Within about 200 pages, he covers the social circles of the corporation, cronyism, bad decisionmaking and public relations, to name a few. He discovers that corporations, at the upper levels at least, resemble a king's court more than a meritocratic organization. The essential work of a manager is not "management" or "leadership," but constantly making the right friends and adopting the correct posture. Anyone who has worked in such a setting, or knows people in such a field, will be able to relate instantly, although it can be argued that Jackall did not need to spend years of ethnographic research to reach this conclusion.

This book is not for everyone, as Jackall must conclude that "ethics" as practiced by managers is nothing more than "survival" and ambition for one's own "advantage." While such a diagnosis may seem harsh, it is difficult to rationally explain recent events in the marketplace, such as the Enron scandal, without concluding that corporate executives have a moral compass that differs from that of the everyday person.

Contrary to what a layman may think, Jackall makes no moral judgments of his own, although readers most certainly will. The title itself can be misinterpreted by people not familiar with sociology. The "morals" Jackall discusses are not ethics (which he attacks in his intro), but Durkheim's "occupational morality." While he does study corporations, he calls the focus of this study the "bureaucratic ethos" (not "corporate ethos"). Anyone who's read history (or the local newspaper) already knows bureacracy can create its own rules, from governments (i.e., the Nazis and the Holocaust) to religions (i.e., Catholicism and child molesters).

Surprisingly, by portraying executives' lives as frought with anxiety, guilt, "senseless" work and no reliable means to measure their self worth, Jackall may cause an intelligent reader to actually feel sorry for them. Reading though his interviews with executives, there's little question that many executives began to regard him as a "Father Confessor" to admit their deeds.

At the same time, Jackall offers an alternative theory for why the American work ethic has all but vanished: if people are promoted based soley on their manipulative social skills, why would anyone want to subscribe to the old work ethic?

A Cynical Autopsy.......2001-02-23

Robert Jackall strings together a series of worse-case scenarios gleaned from a very limited control group of corporations. He skillfully manipulates language (e.g., calling loyalty to one's boss 'fealty') in order to deliver what he thinks is an indictment of bureaucracy. He does have some interesting things to say about the press, but this occurs near the end and comprises less than a page of material. Save your time. Read something worthwhile like Thomas Sowell's classic "A Conflict of Visions." Jackall's book is not worth the read.

Throughly depressing but an absolute must read.......1998-10-07

This book ought to be required reading for all MBA candidates and would be corporate middle managers as an intro into the sad and dysfunctional but real corporate world. In numerous scenes that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has worked at a Fortune 200 firm the book recounts numerous instances of failed and misdirected management. Depressing because it reveals the underbelly of corporate America and capitalism but readable in its accurate portrayal. Occasionally at times slow (particularly towards the end when he presumably is tired of writing) it does a clinical autopsy on management. Like watching a train wreck you are compelled to keep reading even as you realize the denouement. If you think that ignorance is bliss - give this a miss - on the other hand, if you are a frustrated idealist and need proof that in order for evil to overcome good, good only has to do nothing, it is worth the investment. An excellent primer on why we need ethics courses but more importantly ethical actions.

Police Ethics: The Corruption Of Noble Cause

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Review
An excellent introduction/overview
Police ethics are much more than this
A must read for all future employees of the Criminal Justice

Police Ethics: The Corruption Of Noble Cause
Michael A. Caldero , and John P. Crank
Manufacturer: Anderson Publishing Company (OH)
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ASIN: 1593459637

Customer Reviews:

Review.......2007-09-24

I enjoyed this book very much. I also learned through reading it the many different ways that officers can become coppupt and how to notice corruption before it even starts. This is an excellent book and I do recommend it to anyone who is interested in corruption of police and their departments.

An excellent introduction/overview.......2007-02-04

This book does an excellent job of introducing the reader to corruption, particularly what seems like inane and harmless corruption such as accepting free food from locals on your beat. It explains and expands on human nature, the desire to receive special treatment from those responsible for our protection or admnistration. I have also taken a class from Dr. Caldero, and I can say that a majority of the students in the class didn't understand his book at first, because they failed to see the danger in small or seemingly trivial corruption.

Police ethics are much more than this.......2003-06-13

After reading this book, I wondered whether the authors are or were cops themselves. At least one of them (Crank) isn't, and never has been. This makes sense, because the ethics cases presented in this book are bland and barely skim the surface of what we (cops) go through every day. On the face of it, the ethics questions seem reasonable. To those of us in the profession, they are laughable. Sorry, but this book is another one of those written by college professors who don't really understand the world of the cop.

A must read for all future employees of the Criminal Justice.......2001-05-12

Excellant Book! A must read for all future employees of the Criminal Justice System. This reminds me of another book I just read and recommend, U.S. Customs Badge of Dishonor. Both of these books demonstrate just how tuff it is to be a cop.

Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business

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An intriguing, eye-opening discussion
A pantheon of predators
A book about corporate and state power without responsiblity
Solid research and first-hand observations

Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business
Madelaine Drohan
Manufacturer: The Lyons Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1592285775

Book Description

A dramatic and compelling journey into the dark heart of globalization.

Customer Reviews:

An intriguing, eye-opening discussion.......2005-02-07

What happens when multinational corporations decide that the use of armed force is really business? When companies line up with warlords and armies to make a profit? When corporate interests dictate war or peace? Madelaine Drohan's meticulously researched and impressively wrfitten expose, Making A Killing, shows just what happens in a world of multinational power, drawing important connections between corporate armed forces and history and providing food for thought for corporations, policy makers and national leaders alike -- the result is an intriguing, eye-opening discussion.

A pantheon of predators.......2004-01-20

Resource control is the core of Madelaine Drohan's book. Where the image of empire was once faceless armies, religious zealots or expanding trade, modern conditions have changed this view. Instead of governments launching empires, suit-clad businessmen now decide where the action lies. Decisions to exploit resource areas are not made in ministry offices, but in corporate boardrooms. Businessmen, "and they are almost always men", choose locations, make investments, recruit workers and begin operations. Until there is unrest. Then they call in governments to support their enterprise. If governments cannot or will not respond, the entrepreneur's answer is the "private army". Mercenary professional military men act as "security" teams, policemen or replacement armies. And they are accountable to no-one but the firm that has hired them.

Drohan's account begins with the rule of Cecil Rhodes "who stands head and shoulders above" the ranks of those applying military solutions to "corporate problems". Rhodes built an immense resource empire in Southern Africa. He also set the standard for controlling workers as firmly as he did markets. By the expedient of raising a battalion of "pioneers" to deal with reluctant African peoples and recalcitrant workers, Rhodes expanded his holdings to an unprecedented degree. Attributing his goals to the furtherance of the British Empire, he also ensured the continuation of profits to his own pocket. Belgium's king Leopold followed Rhodes' example by keeping the Congo as a personal fief. The Belgian government was simply shunted aside on imperial affairs for decades. The rape of the Congo is a glaring example of imperialism run rampant, yet it set the stage for what followed.

Drohan's narrative is dominated by personalities. Like a gaggle of rapacious ravens, men prominent in resource enterprise descended on Africa after Rhodes. Some of these were British, some Canadian, but others arose from among Africa's own peoples. These last were flexing political and economic muscle as former colonies became independent. These new nations, with their artificial boundaries laid down irrespective of tribal or ethnic limits, became caught up in internal regional disputes. Resource firms played off these rivalries to their advantage where possible. If contests for power became too heated, the companies had the option to withdraw or find ways of protecting their investments. Protection was provided by "security forces" available for hire. Among the most notorious of these was the South African firm, Executive Outcomes. Staffed by disaffected South African soldiers, it offered services directly or through hidden subsidiaries. Executive Outcomes emerges frequently, if often vaguely, as Drohan valiantly tries to unravel the machinations the firm and its customers perpetrated as gold, diamonds and other resources were sought and exploited. Legality is an elusive term in these activities.

These are not distant and unrelated events. We tend to cling to the image of investment benefiting all - the theme of "globalisation". Drohan demonstrates how firms, pursuing resource wealth in Africa, have followed the Rhodes formula for success. Whether hiring private armies or simply requesting local government forces to act in their interests, resource firms are steadfastly ignoring the impact on local people and their economy. Of all Drohan's examples, the most glaring is the Talisman Energy story. Her chapter on this operation is at once the worst and the best example in the book. Talisman, a latecomer to Africa, seems to have learned nothing from previous resource history in the region. As Drohan describes it, Jim Buckee, Talisman's head, followed a sinuous path trying to keep his firm active in the resource field. With one eye open to profits and the other closed to government activities done in the name of "security" for his operations, Buckee brought his firm close to disaster. On the other hand, the case demonstrated the power of the public in bringing such firms to judgment. Various large stockholders, chastened at the thought of supporting a firm blind to the impact of its operations, withdrew investment. It's a fine example of what individuals can achieve in acting collectively.

Drohan's book is a much needed exposure of business morals left unscrutinised. In her final chapter, "Perfectly Legal, Perfectly Immoral", she shows the path to justice for people under oppressive regimes shored up by rapacious businesses is long and difficult. Yet, if readers pay attention, she shows how they can be effective in making change. With a federal election looming, it would benefit electors to read this book and reflect on its message. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

A book about corporate and state power without responsiblity.......2003-12-29

This is an excellent book about how specific corporations, individuals and both European and African rulers have plundered Africa for profit and the accumulation of private fortunes on the backs of millions of Africans who have been slaughtered over the centuries. Some of the individuals have passed into the history books, but some of the corporations and individuals are still very much in the news today and the world still waits for their atonement. Madelaine Drohan has provided a very courageous addition to the literature in the area by in-the-field research in some of the most dangerous places in Africa and written in most detailed and compelling manner.

Solid research and first-hand observations.......2003-12-06

Drohan cover a number of specifc cases of corporations using violence to further their interests - dedicating a chapter to each case. She makes no effort to be a comprehensive compendium of all the ills perpetrated by corporations, instead choosing to focus on a few prime examples in detail where her experiences as a journalist can bring some perspective to each case.

My own particular interest is around the role of Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. in Sudan. The chapter on Talisman was solid and insightful, with Drohan drawing from her own experiences in Sudan and interviews with key players, as well as the volumes of research and reports available.

The book is a telling study of the irresponsible extremes corporations can go to in their simple-minded focus on profit as the only goal.

Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future

Average customer rating:

The Death of Capitalism
The book is very idealistic/ unrealistic
If Everybody Believes Something, It's Probably Wrong
Take critical thinking one step further...
Beware of "Experts" -- Follow the Money!

Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future
Sheldon Rampton , and John Stauber
Manufacturer: Tarcher
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Amazon.com

Fearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping exposé of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action.

Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist. --Lesley Reed

Book Description

The book that unmasks the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts.

"Finally a long-overdue exposé of the shenanigans and subterfuge that lie behind the making of experts in America." (Jeremy Rifkin)

"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer." (Bill Moyers)

"Meticulously researched . . . Rampton and Stauber's documentation of PR campaigns proves that they are the real 'experts.' " (Brill's Content) AUTHOBIO: John Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Sheldon Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch: Public Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry.

Customer Reviews:

The Death of Capitalism.......2007-09-04

Capitalism - market economy - free enterprise - these are the jewels in the crown of civilization which, since the renaissance, have brought unprecedented wealth, prosperity and freedom to large parts of the world. Capitalism has struggled and eventually triumphed over its historical adversaries; in earlier times, popes and kings and in our time socialism and communism. In the 21st century, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, international corporate capitalism is bursting, like fireworks, in triumph; merging, globalizing and buying governments. What puny opposition remains is easily dispatched with a broad range of powerful weapons which have been developed over the years. Today the only real threat to capitalism is capitalism!
Socialists may practice socialism and Christians may practice Christianity but if by capitalism we mean a competitive market driven economic system, then capitalists do not practice capitalism. Theorists notwithstanding, capitalism is not an ideology, it is merely a description. Capitalists are not trying to implement some philosophy, they are only trying to make a buck any way they can. To a capitalist the biggest enemy is not socialism or labor unions or liberals or environmentalists, or even big government, the biggest enemy is risk. Risk of not making money. Risk of losing money.
Making money and avoiding risk in doing so is what capitalism is all about. But it is precisely in the risk taking that society draws its benefits from capitalism. That is the dilemma. Risk promotes wise investment resulting in efficiency, innovation and the creation of wealth, not just for the capitalist but for society as a whole. But a lot of capitalists fall by the wayside in the process. It is in the capitalist's interest to eliminate risk and society's interest to prevent them from doing so. The way to avoid risk is to control the market and to do that they must also control the government. This struggle has been going on for hundreds of years: capitalists forming monopolies, oligarchies and trusts and society breaking them up.
So long as society can keep pace with all the tricks and turns that capitalists take to avoid risk, the world would continue to reap the blessings of capitalism. But for the capitalists to succeed in eliminating risk, they would have to eliminate competition resulting in a monopoly of corporations with as much efficiency and innovation as any government bureaucracy. The ultimate risk-free climax would be monopoly and oligarchy and the corporate-run government necessary to keep it that way -- functionally indistinguishable from a Mafia run state or a Stalinist one. Capitalism, instead of an engine which pumps wealth to society and makes some capitalist wealthy in the process, would become an engine which sucks the wealth out of society, making a handful wealthy by impoverishing the rest.
We see this process going on in third world countries today and we are seeing the beginnings of it at home, in America. All three branches of government are increasingly under the control of corporations. Both political parties are addicted to corporate financing. Mergers, acquisitions and globalization, all techniques for eliminating risk, are rampant. The media is being merged and taken over by corporations and increasingly being used as public relations outlets for the corporations.
Right now society is not keeping pace. The tricks and turns that corporate capitalists use to avoid risk have gotten trickier and twistier. Just as a mosquito injects an anesthetic so that you will not feel it is sucking your blood, corporations are coopting the very processes by which people recognize what is going on so that more and more we are living in a virtual reality without realizing it. Sort of like a Potemkin village or like the movie The Truman Story where a boy is born and raised on a television set without knowing it. And as corporations merge and grow larger, they have even bigger budgets to build even more elaborate and convincing "sets". But this is not science fiction. The "sets" are being built around us as you read this.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media & Democracy have been documenting this process for years. Their publications include a quarterly newsletter, PR Watch, and several books including: Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, and now Trust Us, We're Experts. While flippant and amusing, these books and articles tell a very chilling story of corporate public relations manipulation and spin control growing exponentially in size, audacity and sophistication.
The "father of public relations", Rampton and Stauber point out in Trust Us, is Edward L. Bernays, son in law and disciple of Sigmund Freud. By following Bernays' philosophy one can see the road map to the future. Here are some of his ideas [pp 42 - 44]:

** scientific manipulation of public opinion is necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society
** In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
** while most people respond to their world instinctively, without thought, there exist an intelligent few who have been charged with the responsibility of contemplating and influencing the tide of history
** public relations is an applied science, like engineering, through which society's leaders could bring order out of chaos
** being herd like also made people remarkably susceptible to leadership.

Of course that "leadership" can only be exercised by those who can afford the price of the Hill & Knowltons and APCOs of this world.
Here are some cases of virtual reality cited in their latest book. Big contributions, free junkets and the promise of future jobs are the more obvious ways of corrupting legislators but less obvious and more subtle is the use of public relations to actually manipulate the "facts". A typical example of how this works is illustrated on page 14.
"In the Fall of 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Lobbyists for bank and credit card companies seized on the study as they lobbied Congress for changes in federal law that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times opinion column, offering Georgetown's academic imprimatur as evidence of the need for `bankruptcy reform'. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry. The study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc. Bentsen also failed to mention that he himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist."
Coopting and distorting the very sources of knowledge and information which informed people, legislators, scientists, government officials, the press, etc. rely on as being objective and scientific is one of the most clever and the most egregious techniques for creating virtual reality. As an EPA employee I have seen many examples of self-serving corporate sponsored "scientific" studies being foisted off on EPA and used to justify weak ineffective regulations or no regulations at all. The fraud, if discovered at all, is rarely discovered by EPA. In the absence of high level support there is very little incentive for science bureaucrats to look closely at studies with powerful backers.
From p. 199: If you want to know just how craven some scientists can be, the archives of the tobacco industry offer a treasure trove of examples. Thanks to whistle-blowers and lawsuits, millions of pages of once-secret industry documents have become public and are freely available over the Internet. In 1998, for example, documents came to light regarding an industry- sponsored campaign in the early 1990s to plant sympathetic letters and articles in influential medical journals. Tobacco companies had secretly paid 13 scientists a total of $156,000 simply to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician, Nathan Mantel of American University in Washington, received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer researcher Gio Batta Cori received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal - nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing. All the scientists really had to do was sign their names at the bottom."
If the virtual reality created by public relation firms were only limited to selling toothpaste and deodorant we might not get too concerned about it. Falsifying medical research to defend harmful and dangerous products is a troublesome escalation. But there appears to be no limits to the uses of PR and no concern by the users of its ultimate impact. The issue of global warming, which could possibly plunge humanity into a new dark age, is being surrounded by the fog of virtual reality by the practitioners of PR as if the stakes were no more important than the selling of mouthwash.
Rampton and Stauber point out in pp 267-288 of Trust Us that PR firms hired by the major industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses have created dozens of influential sounding front organization such as "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition", "The Global Climate Information Project", "The Information Council for the Environment" and "The Greening Earth Society" which have saturated the media, Congress and the public with industry spin so as to make their case by sheer volume and noise. Since the facts and the scientific community are so overwhelming against them, the object of the public relations onslaught has been to slow down, confuse and defuse public clamor for resolute action. Friends of the Earth International calls this "lobbying for lethargy".
There is legitimate scientific debate about the source and rate of global warming and a lot of the spin addresses that, but a lot doesn't. Some of the dirtier tricks played are:

** An attempt to stimulate anti Kyoto Treaty email to President Clinton by promising to enter writers' names in a $1000 sweepstakes drawing.
** Appealing to anti-abortion activists with the claim that "Al Gore has said abortion should be used to reduce global warming."
** Touting phoney petitions of scientists discrediting the theory of global warming.
** Circulating phoney "scientific" papers made up to look like they had appeared in reputable peer reviewed scientific journals.
** Some industry flacks claim the Earth is actually cooling while other claim that global warming is a good thing.

The scary thing is that lobbying for lethargy is working.

The book is very idealistic/ unrealistic.......2007-04-13

One thing that the authors don't think about is that: Most people are not only not educated enough to understand the specialist jargon that goes with many industrial products, but that if they did try to interpret it *based on their limited information/ understanding* disaster would result.

The authors also don't get into what happens when a well meaning government agency overregulates an industry SO MUCH that it ends up being of benefit to no one. Examples abound-- that were not dealt with in the book.

1. The FDA has such tight regulations on drugs that they end up costing 2-3 times more to produce/ sell to the American public than what they should. And much of this cost is legal fees, excessive testing, and clinical trials.

2. The trucking industry is also something that is heavily regulated. There is a chronic shortage of truck drivers in the industry because there are so many regulations that many people who would be perfectly competent truck drivers can't get a chance at working. (For reference, automobiles kill 40,000+ Americans per year, and trucks kill about 900. An average truck driver might drive 55 hours per week compared to the single digit hours that are driven by a passenger car.)

3. Everyone is whining about the price of gas, but no one knows whether the high cost is because of refineries operating at peak capacity or because of insufficient existing oil supplies. No one will ever be able to test this, since a single refinery has not been built in the last 30 years in the United States.

If people were able to regulate industries by the political process (say, by referenda or voting for candidates that would pass strict legislation), whatever came along after what currently exists would be FAR WORSE.

These authors need to pick up some books on Economics-- specifically ones that deal with information asymmetry (as in, how corporations have a better idea of what they are doing than third party observers).

Other than that, the book is very well written with lots of good examples. It's worth picking up-- in spite of my low rating thereof.

If Everybody Believes Something, It's Probably Wrong.......2006-12-29

If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong! We call that Conventional Wisdom. "Trust Us We're Experts" is one of the few books that I recommend to all of my patients that enter my office. The information in this book has the power to potentially save your life, since it provides the reader with the tools to spot propaganda that's regularly disseminated to the masses.

Americans are the most conditioned, programmed beings on the planet. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased! It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. I feel that Stauber and Rampton do an excellent job at guiding the reader through the PR industry and expert deception that is propagated daily. My recommendation is to buy this book today then kill your TV!

Dr. Matthew J. Loop

- Author of "Cracking the Cancer Code"

Take critical thinking one step further..........2005-11-19

...and use the techniques in this book on the book itself. Sadly, a book with so much promise falls victim to its own PR machine all too often. Face it, if you're going to use critical thinking, use it consistently. If you use it against what you don't like, but cast a blind eye on things you are passionate about, how critical is that, really?

Beware of "Experts" -- Follow the Money! .......2005-07-02

John Stauber tells it like it is, and I wish this book were a bestseller. Readers who can accept these truths may also want to read a highly detailed yet fascinating expose of a huge and profitable industry that has been manipulating science and gambling with your health -- "The Whole Soy Story:The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food" by Kaayla Daniel, The fact that you are probably thinking, "No, we all know that soy is healthy for us" is proof of how thoroughly you've been conned. I was too, but no longer. "Fluoride Deception" by Christopher Bryson is another good one. Thanks to John Stauber, I'm wary of experts and now know enough to follow the money.

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