As we begin winding down in Iraq, many years after General Garner had us lined up to exit without destroying the Golden Hour, and as we reflect on Afghnaistan, which we also lost by refusing Charlie Wilson's urgent pleas to continue the money after the Soviet left, but earmarked for schools, water, and other necessary infrastructure, we once again return to the topic of “the Golden Hour” and the matter of inter-agency planning, programming, budgeting, and campaigning.
Winston Churchill likes to say that “The Americans always do the right thing, they just try everything else first.”
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, news outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post to The Today Show created lists that aggregated the Twitter feeds of, among others, national breaking-news sources (CNN, the AP), official sources (the U.S. Army, the Red Cross, the office of Texas governor Rick Perry), local news organizations, and local individuals.
Twitter lists were tempering conjecture with the wisdom-of-crowds brand of mediation that is built into their multi-channel approach.
“The Internet” is, in its way, a one-stop news shop; and through, in particular, the deceptively simple innovation that is the hyperlink, news outlets are increasingly defined by connection rather than separation. (Thus, the “Web.”) And that, in turn—fundamentally, if not completely—topples the competitive underpinnings of newsgathering as a profession. Do what you do best, and link to the rest.
Obama's policies are making Democrats the party of Bloated Plutocracy.
November 8, 2009 OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down
Frank Rich
The Obama administration does not seem to understand that this rage, left unaddressed, could consume it.
The system is going back to the way it was with a vengeance, against a backdrop of despair. As the unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold at week’s end, we learned that bankers were helping themselves not just to bonuses as large as those at the bubble’s peak but to early allotments of H1N1 vaccine. No wonder 62 percent of those polled by Hart Associates in late September felt that “large banks” had been helped “a lot” or “a fair amount” by “government economic policies,” but only 13 percent felt the “average working person” had been. Unemployment ranked ahead of the deficit and health care as the No. 1 pocketbook issue in the survey, with 81 percent saying the Obama administration must take more action.
As someone who has lived in Turkey for most of the last two years, I have watched the development of her foreign policy with great interest, not to mention a good deal of confusion
It is hard to make sense out this rapidly-emerging, vibrant country of 70 million, increasingly well-educated, industrious people. While its remote interior is still very traditional, Turkey's coastal regions are already beginning to blossom into an outward looking, modern multinational consumer society, and the effects of rising incomes and education are very visible. In the coastal regions, I would say that living standards are now higher than those of Portugal, about the same as those of Greece, and somewhat lower than those of Spain. To be sure, the interior is poorer, especially as one travels east, but even in the east, there is growing modernity. Everywhere, markets are chock a block with high-quality healthy food and vast quantities middle income consumer goods, and there is fresh water galore, especially in the coastal regions.
The attached op-ed by Patrick Seale is a good summary that brings clarity to much of what is going on with Turkey's foreign policy and is well worth reading.
But there is more. Not mentioned are Turkey's bilateral overtures to Russia, Georgia, the Ukraine, and the various Turkic countries in great swath of Central Asia (including the Uighurs in NW China), as well as a bewildering variety of multilateral environmental and economic initiatives in the Black Sea region (involving Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Greece, and Turkey).
Phi Beta Iota: We'll figure out the troop balance, probably by getting serious about Of, By, and Through IQ forces between now and July 2010–we do that or both the Democrats and Republicans are toast in November 2010. What merits deep reflection below is the mental health angle that ties in with the Fort Hood massacre. And while we're on that topic, RUSH AND CRUSH is the new paradigm for surviving armed attacks. See, Shout, Rush & Crush. Absent a gattling gun, no one should be able to hit more than three people with this strategy, and two of those will almost certainly live. From Virgiia Polytechnic to Fort Hood, citizens standing like sheep waiting to be murdered, is an indictment of our culture, education, and lack of leadership.
Full Story Online
New Afghan War Headache: Not Enough Troops Available?
David Wood, 11/6/09
Just to maintain the 16 current brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan is, let's see, three times 16 is 48 and – oops! We're already out of BCTs! And here's the White House blithely batting around numbers like 40,000 more troops. That's roughly eight BCTs, which do not exist.
Below the fold: two key paragraphs on stress, battle performance after multipe tour, and suicides.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is a collaboration of some of the world's top investigative reporters. Launched in 1997 as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, ICIJ globally extends the Center's style of watchdog journalism, working with 100 journalists in 50 countries to produce long-term, transnational investigations.
The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business today, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product. Drawn by profits rivaling those of narcotics, smugglers move cigarettes by the billion, making tobacco the world's most widely smuggled legal substance.
Post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and military aid and assistance had a huge impact in nations around the world — and at home. This award-winning project includes 20 articles from four continents.
A year-long investigation of President Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS abroad finds that conservative ideology hinders its real benefits by insisting on abstinence-only programs over promoting condom use.
A comprehensive examination of companies that won contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan — and of their campaign contributions, led by General Electric and Vinnell Corporation (the former Northrup Grumman).
