Graphic: Islamic Sunni and Shia Areas of Influence
Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Graphics, IO MappingGordon Cook: Highly Recommended Video “Modern Money and Public Purpose – The Historical Evolution of Money and Debt” – Partial Transcription
Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Culture, Economics/True Cost, Ethics, Government
An hour and three quarters, hugely relevant to our problems today, strongly recommended.
Modern Money and Public Purpose: The Historical Evolution of Money and Debt
L. Randall Wray and Michael Hudson present at the Modern Money and Public Purpose seminars. L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Michael Hudson Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri (Kansas City), and President of the Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET).
This video is an hour and three-quarters long — Wray begins, then Hudson takes over at 43:00 — so I suggest you listen to it over your Sunday morning coffee
instead of NPR. (And if you’ve been taking note of all the “tally stick” jokes in the threads lately, I’m guessing this video is where that comes from…)
Click for Source Page, Video Embedded There
Transcribed portion below the line.
Chuck Spinney: US Support for Jihadists in Syria
Government, Ineptitude
Below is a brief but excellent overview of the tragic Syrian civil war. The US has allowed itself to become allied with the Sunni Jihadis, some of whom are connected to Al Qaeda. Much of what Seale writes below is a summary of a recent report Syrian Jihadis (published by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs). The report's author Aron Lund explains how the Syrian rebellion is mutating into an an Islamist colouring, among other things.
Syria's Long War
Patrick Seale, Agence Global, 28 September 2010
The pitiless, vengeful, blood-thirsty battle now being waged in Syria is not something new or unexpected. Nor is it a mere by-product of the Arab Spring, although events in Tunisia and Egypt have undoubtedly contributed to creating an insurrectionary atmosphere in the whole region. Rather, the Syrian uprising, as it has gradually evolved over the past eighteen months, should be seen as only the latest, if by far the most violent, episode in the long war between Islamists and Ba‘thists, which dates back to the founding of the secular Ba‘th Party in the 1940s. The struggle between them is by now little short of a death-feud.
This is not to suggest that the present rebellion is driven only by religious motives and sectarian hate. Although these are real enough, other grievances have piled up over the past decades: the ravages of youth unemployment; the brutality of Syria’s security services; the domination of key centres of economic, military and political life by the minority Alawi community; the blatant consumerism of a privileged class, grown rich on state patronage, in sharp contrast with the hardship suffered by the mass of the population, including in particular the inhabitants of the ‘poverty belt’ around Damascus, Aleppo and other cities. These deprived suburbs are largely the result of inward migration from the long-neglected countryside, which in the past decade has suffered catastrophic losses from a drought of unprecedented severity.
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Gold Transformer: Screw the 99% – Let’s Shift Inflation to Medical, Rent, Education, Food, and Communications – QE3 Of, By, and For the 1%
Commerce, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Knowledge
When it costs more to be poor – Fed and government shifting inflation onto rent, medical care, and food. QE3 to widen the gap between the poor and the wealthy.
Inflation has been picking up since the recession ended in 2009. The problem with the CPI increasing year over year with no rise in household incomes is that the standard of living for most Americans erodes every year that incomes do not keep up. Household incomes are back to levels last seen in the mid-1990s while the cost of necessities has gone up. This brings us to our article today that examines the nuts and bolts of what constitutes the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI attempts to measure the changes in price for consumer goods and services. Overall it did a very poor job of measuring the housing bubble because of the owner’s equivalent of rent metric.
Today, it is understating inflation because of the excess spending on “wants” that occurred in the 2000s has now shifted to spending on “needs” but is being dragged down by the amount of family spending on needed goods. We will dig deep into this data but suffice it to say that the Fed is creating inflation in items most Americans actually need to live their daily lives and the burden on the poor is actually increasing.
DefDog: SecDef “Normal” is Two-Star Generals Approving Individual Patrols
Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military
Amazing….just amazing. Reality out-does bad fiction.
Whatever Pentagon Says, U.S. Patrols With Afghans Aren’t ‘Normal’ Yet
By Spencer AckermanEmail Author
WIRED, September 27, 2012
EXTRACT:
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters on Thursday that “temporary adjustments” to low-level joint U.S.-Afghan patrols, enacted in the wake of widespread protests over an anti-Islam video, had mostly come to an end. “I can now report to you that most [U.S. and allied] units have now returned to their normal partnered operations at all level,” Panetta said.
The shift was intended, as Panetta said, to “protect our forces” — not just from anger at the video, but from a broader problem. Afghan forces have killed at least 52 of their American mentors this year. The NATO military command in Afghanistan isn’t totally sure why, and blames a mix of specific Afghan grievances and Taliban infiltration. So last week, the command decreed that the two-star generals at regional headquarters have to approve all joint U.S.-Afghan operations below the battalion level — which accounts for most of them.
DefDog: IAEA Veteran’s Letter “No Iran Bomb” Being Ignored
05 Iran, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Knowledge, Peace Intelligence, PoliticsI know nothing about the science, but this seems credible–certainly worth considering.
World Renown Nuke Expert Nails Bibi to the Wall on Iran Bomb Threat
EXTRACT (Letter Only, Editorial Hyperbole Detracts)
Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu:
Iran may be in your red zone, but can not score.
Sure, Iran could divert a few tons of 3.5% or a ton of 20% enriched uranium hexaflouride gas for enrichment to 90+%. But what then?
No one has ever made a nuclear weapon from gas. It must be converted to metal and fabricated into components which are then assembled with high explosives.
Iran lacks experience with and facilities for these processes which are very dangerous because of potential for a criticality accident or nuclear explosion. Iran would not jeopardize its important, fully safeguarded nuclear programs by an attempt to have a deliverable, one kiloton yield nuclear weapon ten to fifteen years later.
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DefDog: Living Under Drones – Outcomes in Pakistan
07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Economics/True Cost, Government, Ineptitude, Knowledge, Military, Peace Intelligence, PoliticsLiving Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan
This report is the result of nine months of research by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School (Stanford Clinic) and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law (NYU Clinic). Professor James Cavallaro and Clinical Lecturer Stephan Sonnenberg led the Stanford Clinic team; Professor Sarah Knuckey led the NYU Clinic team. Adelina Acuña, Mohammad M. Ali, Anjali Deshmukh, Jennifer Gibson, Jennifer Ingram, Dimitri Phillips, Wendy Salkin, and Omar Shakir were the student research team at Stanford; Christopher Holland was the student researcher from NYU. Supervisors Cavallaro, Sonnenberg, and Knuckey, as well as student researchers Acuña, Ali, Deshmukh, Gibson, Salkin, and Shakir participated in the fact-finding investigations to Pakistan.
EXTRACT (One Sentence from Each Summary Paragraph):
First, while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians
Second, US drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accounted-for harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury.
Third, publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best.
Fourth, current US targeted killings and drone strike practices undermine respect for the rule of law and international legal protections and may set dangerous precedents.
Summary Recommendations:
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