Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

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Marcus Aurelius: Democratic Defense Play-Book — Truman Security Briefing Book Edition 5 — Idiocy Lite

Cultural Intelligence, Idiocy, Military
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

From Politico Morning Defense:

FIRST LOOK – THE STRONG-ON-DEFENSE PLAYBOOK: A leading national-security think tank is releasing the latest edition of its annual briefing book, which has become a kind of playbook for strong-on-defense Democrats. The Truman National Security Project, which spent more than $90,000 during the 2012 presidential campaign to help defeat Republican Mitt Romney, has been working to build a coalition of center-left members of Congress with strong records on defense – and its briefing book offers messaging strategies for countering Republican defense hawks.

The book, an advance copy of which was provided to Morning D, urges an increased emphasis on diplomacy and alliance-building and says the U.S. should remain committed to the international community as it withdraws from Afghanistan and cuts its defense budget. The group is scheduled to hold a launch event this evening in Washington attended by Doug Wilson, former assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs, who recently joined the think tank as a senior fellow. We've got the rundown, for Pros: http://politico.pro/1c226p4. And here's a first look at the full briefing book: http://bit.ly/18yag6a.

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Owl: High Social Class Predicts More Unethical Behavior

Ethics
Who? Who?
Who? Who?

Do These Studies Explain the “Success” of Many of Those in the 1%?

And all along we were taught to believe that poor people are the most unethical.

Abstract:
Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals
were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study3), take valued goods from mothers (study4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.

Full article:
Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior

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Stephen E. Arnold: English Majors Are Hot!

04 Education
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

English Major? You Are Hot and May Not Know It

I get quite a few laughs when I point out that my degree is in medieval Latin poetry. Hey, what can I say? The computer science departments at my undergraduate university did not want anyone using the precious mainframe to index Latin anything. The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Dr. William Gillis had a different view. So I know zero about poetry but I could in the early 1960s generate concordances and indexes. The rest, of course, is history. Halliburton Nuclear, Booz, Allen & Hamilton (now Snowdonized), and a couple of big companies into electronic information.

Imagine my thrill when I read the most amazingly wild and crazy article in the San Francisco Chronicle (July 14, 2013) on page E8 with the reassuring, almost baby-blanket comfortable title, “English Majors, Once Disdained, Back in Demand.” You may be able to find a version of this write up at http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx. No promises, however. I am following in the footsteps of universities which are craw fishing away from the notion that someone with a degree in law or art history will be able to find a job after graduating.

In my opinion, the main point of the essay is that English majors can look beyond standing in line for SNAP cards and unemployment benefits. English majors have the ability to “construct stories.” The passage which made me a true believer about the value of an English major was:

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Josh Kilbourn: BREAKING — Attempts to Set Activists Up with Porn Downloads Into Their Computers

07 Other Atrocities, IO Impotency
Josh Kilbourn
Josh Kilbourn

This has happened once before, and appears to be a rather sad attempt to discredit activists not realizing that all this exposure is discreting any future attempt to prosecute real child pornography violators — and the elite pedophiles that appear to be “untouchable” by the FBI.  There is no evidence this is being done by the US Government, only by those who believe that activists are fair targets for unethical, invasive, and criminal attack.

BREAKING: Attempted Set-Up of Stewart Rhodes & Dan Johnson With Child Porn

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Steven Aftergood: New from CRS

Congressional Research Service
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood

China's Currency Policy: An Analysis of the Economic Issues, July 22, 2013

International Illegal Trade in Wildlife: Threats and U.S. Policy, July 23, 2013

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Natural Resource Damage Assessment Under the Oil Pollution Act, July 24, 2013

Analysis of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), July 22, 2013

Proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP): In Brief, July 23, 2013

Hague Convention Treaty on Recovery of International Child Support and H.R. 1896, July 15, 2013

Kazakhstan: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests, July 22, 2013

CRS Reports (Index)

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David Swanson: Cost of Compensated Emancipation versus War Over Slavery

Civil Society, Commerce, Ethics, Government

 

David Swanson
David Swanson

What Slavery Cost

As I head off to a rally for Trayvon Martin, I notice a column by Bob Koehler in which he says the unpaid work of slaves in the United States is now estimated at $1.4 trillion.  Oddly, that's not terribly far from the $1.2 trillion or so, possibly more now, that we spend each year preparing for and fighting wars.  If we abolished war we could perhaps afford to compensate descendants of those victimized by slavery.  If we abolished prisons, we'd have at least another $100 billion.  And, of course, we'd have all those savings again the next year and the next year and the next year.

I wrote a review recently of a film called Copperhead, and I brought up the idea of compensated emancipation.  Wouldn't it have been wiser, I asked, to have compensated the slave owners than to have fought the Civil War.  Since then, a number of readers have been sending me information on the extent to which compensated emancipation was discussed, proposed, or attempted — some of which I was unaware of.

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