Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Chuck Spinney: Afghan Disaster…Rooted in Western Ignorance and Western Lies

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

The Afghan adventure is ending in a disaster.  The outsiders are again leaving with their tails between their legs.  This will be the fourth time for the Brits.  For the U.S. Afghanistan is just another disaster in what what is becoming a dreary pattern of military failures at ever higher costs.  Predictably, President Obama's surge in 2010 failed to stem the downward spiral, largely because its central premise: namely the plan to rapidly build up competent professional Afghan security forces was a logically flawed.  Now, according to recent polls, a larger percentage of Americans oppose the war than was the case in VietNam.  Yet in contrast to Vietnam, the American people are not angry — they seem to be disinterested, tired, and want to move on; one thing is clear, however, they show no sign of energizing a political desire to hold the military accountable for the Afghan or Iraq disasters.

Today, Versailles on the Potomac is far more lathered up by former defense secretary Robert Gates attempt to protect the Bush clan and to distract attention away from the Pentagon's culpability by fingering Obama for the Afghan failure.  To be sure Obama deserves a great deal of blame for the debacle, particularly the consequences of his bungled decision to escalate what he said was the “good war.”  Moreover, Obama can not say he was not warned about the dangers of escalating well before the fact.  On the other hand, as Patrick Cockburn explains below, the roots of the Afghan mess go back to the failure to defeat the Taliban in 2002 and the toxic mix of corruption and warlordism in the regime we imposed on the Afghan people — and those are problems Obama inherited.  In short, there is plenty of blame to go around, not to mention the warmongers in Congress, like John McCain and his infantile sidekick Lindsey Graham.
Cockburn' essay  gives the reader an idea of the dire state of affairs in Arghanistan.  He summarizes a devastating 30 December 2013 report written by Thomas Ruttig of the esteemed Afghan Analysts Network, also attached in PDF format [below the line after the article] for your convenience.  I urge you to read Ruttig's report.
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Jean Lievens: Peter Gruber on Internet Immersion – Trillions of Feed-Back Loops

Advanced Cyber/IO
Jean Lievens
Jean Lievens

From Peter Gruber:

Someone walked into my UCLA class a year ago and three hours later I realized that the business of media and the business of business itself was about to be turned inside out.

Internet of Things: From Stadium Pouring Rights to Washing Machine Pouring Rights, a Revolution is Coming

EXTRACT:

Mickey walks in and says that first and foremost a new mountain is on the horizon of not billions but trillions of connected devices. He plays a short film (Link: https://vimeo.com/7395079 ) and quizzes us about how big trillions even is–for those that aren’t math majors, a trillion seconds is over 30,000 years. He makes the point that this isn’t far off in the distant future but happening within the next five years. “For instance,” he says. “We just reached over four to six billion cell phones, effectively super computers in our pockets, but as early as 2010 the world had manufactured over ten billion microprocessors a year and now makes more transistors than grains of rice, cheaper.” He continues, ‘but a trillion smart devices isn’t even the biggest challenge, it’s that connectivity will act like a seed in that super saturated solution and suddenly we won’t see information any longer as being “in” our computers, but instead the sock will turn inside out and we’ll be living “in” the information.’

. . . . . .

A student asks, “So are your clothes all going to gang up and lobby for a change in detergent when they fade too fast, or don’t fade fast enough?” Yes. This is the first time in history where we’ll have a true feedback loop of not just the social media anecdotes that drive today’s recommendation engines, but facts.

Read full post with additional links.

Phi Beta Iota: Missing from their concept — but very easy to integrate into their vision — is the foundation concept of true cost economics.

See Also:

True Cost Economics @ Phi Beta Iota

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Robin Good: Filter Tool -Rather

IO Tools

 

Robin Good
Robin Good

Filter Out Anything You Don't Want To See Again with Rather

Rather is a browser extension which allows you to easily filter out (mute) or replace any keyword appearing in your information streams. Filter out cats, funny pics, Christmas and other popular events as well as any content coming from Instagram, Vine, Buzzfeed and other platforms. Rather works across Facebook, Twitter and with any RSS feed you submit to it. You can also see what other 200,000+ users are blocking in real-time. In an age of information overbaundance this is a sweet handy tool to easily filter out info you don't want to see from your main incoming news streams. Try it out now: http://getrather.com/ FAQ: http://getrather.com/faqs.php

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Owl: Welfare for the Rich & Corporations

Commerce, Corruption, Government
Who? Who?
Who? Who?

For those who have right-wing extremist friends who complains about welfare for the poor, especially for the dark-skinned ones, share this article with them. Here's the first three:

“There are actually thousands of tax breaks and subsidies for the rich and corporations provided by federal, state and local governments but these ten will give a taste.

One. State and Local Subsidies to Corporations. An excellent New York Times study by Louise Story calculated that state and local government provide at least $80 billion in subsidies to corporations. Over 48 big corporations received over $100 million each. GM was the biggest at a total of $1.7 billion extracted from 16 different states but Shell, Ford and Chrysler all received over a billion dollars each. Amazon, Microsoft, Prudential, Boeing and casino companies in Colorado and New Jersey received well over $200 million each.

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SchwartzReport: Truths …

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

This is likely to change all our lives, and is an appallingly bad decision. The American courts are now so stacked in favor of corporate interests they are warping the culture in profound ways. Let us hope this decision is appealed and over-turned, or that Congress changes the laws to assure net neutrality, or the FCC gets enough public pressure to overcome the industry and serve the interests of the people . It ! requires a significant public outcry. And since the corporate media is hardly covering the story, since it so powerfully affects their corporate masters few even seem to know this has happened.

Federal Appeals Court Strikes Down net Neutrality: What's Next?
GRANT GROSS – PC World

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