The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Continue reading “Water Overview from the Bottom of the Pyramid”
It is not as if the disaster described below, in the Afghan war logs released by Wikileaks to the Guardian, the New York Times, and der Spiegle, was not foreseeable. Here, for example, is an op-ed I wrote for Defense Week in April 2001, well before we began the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And I was hardly alone or invisible. Readers familiar with the work of reformers Colonel John Boyd, Pierre Sprey, Colonel James Burton, Colonel Mike Wylie, Colonel GI Wilson, Colonel Bob Dilger, and Tom Christie, among others, will know that they have been highly visible canaries in the high-tech coal mine since the late 1960s. For those unfamiliar with their critical analyses, I refer you to James Fallows' National Defense (Random House 1981), and Robert Coram's Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Little Brown, 2002), or The Winds of Reform, Time (7 March 1983). Emphasis below added. Chuck.
Afghanistan war logs: Shattering the illusion of a bloodless victory
Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 25 July 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/revolution-in-military-affairs-shock-awe
Real picture of a conflict longer than Vietnam, or either world war, refutes the idea of a ‘revolution in military affairs'
Afghanistan: Taliban militants said on 25 July they had killed one of two US military personnel captured on the 24th in Logar Province, south of Kabul, and that they are holding the other hostage, Reuters reported, citing an interview with a Taliban spokesman. The spokesman said the group has taken the living captive and the dead one's body to a “safe place” and that the group's leadership would decide the fate of the captive later.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: US authorities announced that two US Navy personnel have been missing since Friday. Taliban state they ambushed the two, killing one. The memory of Vietnam's handling of American prisoners of war is still fresh enough to revive horrible memories, but the Pashtun Taliban are more brutal and less organized than the Vietnamese and lack a French colonial-built prison system for hiding POWs. The leadership safe havens in Pakistan do not include access to provincial prisons or kidnappings would be much more frequent.
Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: Strategic Prisoners in AF…”
From US military computers to a cafe in Brussels, how classified papers found their way to online activists
Tour of the Horizon, the Smartest of Skeptics
July 25, 2010
Eli Kintisch
I bristled when I saw the title, but bought the book in association with my own talk to Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) on “Hacking Humanity.” I've put the book down glad I did not give up in the early pages, and thoroughly impressed by the author, clearly among the smartest of skeptics.
Although I was suprised to find no mention of HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) which is striving for openness but still appears to have an unnerving patina of weather change and earthquake triggering potential–in my uninformed view. I'd love the author's informed opinion on HAARP.
What the author does provide in this book is a totally superb overview with multiple drill-downs of what is now called “geoengineering.” Geo-systems are not in this book, and that is the greatest flaw with any contemplation of geo-engineering–you cannot engineer what you cannot understand.
The arrogance of those proposing “methods” to “hack” the Earth is truly outstanding, an arrogance I am glad to see that the author does not share. Among the long list of ideas:
Continue reading “Review: Hack the Planet–Science's Best Hope–or Worst Nightmare–For Averting Climate Catastrophe”
Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Detailed Counterinsurgency Case Studies
by Christopher Paul, Colin P. Clarke, Beth Grill
RAND 2010
and also
Reconstruction Under Fire: Case Studies and Further Analysis of Civil Requirements
by Brooke Stearns Lawson, Terrence K. Kelly, Michelle Parker, Kimberly Colloton, Jessica Watkins
RAND 2010
4.0 out of 5 stars An important book on our planet's future
April 13, 2009
Review by Future Watch Rider
Book by James Loveluck
Lovelock merits our attention because he has been proven right in predicting grim events. Indeed, Lovelock's grim views have in some ways been too optimistic in light of the speed with which the global environmental situation has been declining.
I think his views in this book are too pessimistic but Lovelock is a creative original thinker about science who does not fit into neat categories. He has infuriated a lot of his fellow environmentalists with his advocacy of nuclear power. He does so because he sees the huge size of the gap between what is needed and what exists. For example, President Obama has promised to “double” the percentage of renewable energy America uses in a few years. It sounds great….. until you realize renewable energy is less than one percent of America's energy now. (Meanwhile, renewable energy is being very badly hurt by the global economic crisis.) Optimistic predictions about a “boom” in renewable energy over the past 20 years by various environmental advocates have turned out to be pie in the sky. It hasn't happened. Hopefully, it will happen now. However, according to predictions of the International Energy Agency, the share of the world's energy coming from coal, the worst form of energy, is going to go up, not down by 2020. This is why Lovelock also supports research on making coal less disastrous although it's never going to be “clean” as claimed by the coal industry and its millions of dollars in advertising. (Some environmental purists have also attacked him for this.)
Continue reading “Review (Guest): The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”
