The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
How does Afghanistan compare to the world's other conflicts?
Numbers released today analyse trends in civilian casualties, including which of the world's conflicts are the deadliest for non-combatants.
Panel V – State Sponsored Crime and Non-State Actors: Gangs, Guns, and Graft
Chair: Dr. Stephen Blank, SSI, U.S. Army War College
Panelists: Edward Lucas, The Economist; Karen Saunders, Forum Foundation for Analytic Excellence; Douglas Farah, International Assessment and Strategy Center
See Also: “Many Dangers, Little Money: Strategic Choices During the Interwar Years” The first panel of the 2013 Army War College Strategy Conference- Panelists – Dr. Conrad Crane, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center; Dr. Robert Citino, University of North Texas; Dr. Michael Neiberg, U.S. Army War College; Dr. Tami Biddle, U.S. Army War College
Economist: Sharing Economy
All Eyes on the Sharing Economy
Collaborative consumption: Technology makes it easier for people to rent items to each other. But as it grows, the “sharing economy” is hitting roadblocks
By The Economist, March 9 2013.
WHY pay through the nose for something when you can rent it more cheaply from a stranger online? That is the principle behind a range of online services that enable people to share cars, accommodation, bicycles, household appliances and other items, connecting owners of underused assets with others willing to pay to use them. Dozens of firms such as Airbnb, which lets people rent out their spare rooms, or RelayRides, which allows other people to rent your car, act as matchmakers, allocating resources where they are needed and taking a small cut in return.
Phi Beta Iota: The Economist is the first mainstream media source to open up to the emergent possibilities. There are three major changes being facilitated by the Internet and the related applications, generally those that are NOT proprietary, NOT owned by a major corporation, and NOT predatory:
01 Collaborative Sharing of products, services, and places
02 True history of products, services, and places (e.g. “my fish today”)
03 True cost of products, services, and behaviros.
It is the last one that is awaiting a major breakthrough that combines the open source crisis making and global diaspora translation and posting, with the still missing heavy lifting of research such as was done for a single cotton T-shirt.
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I believe that historians will look back on the era that began with Reagan, and reached its peak during the administration of the second Bush, and his evil wizard, Cheney, and mark that as the beginning of the decline of America. We traded prosperity, and greatness, for the tainted pottage of elective war, and the privatization of our social order to the be! nefit of the few and to the cost of the many. Here is an example of what I mean.
For the Price of the Iraq War, U.S. Could Power Half of the Country With Renewable Energy
David Roberts – Grist
Phi Beta Iota: It is much, much worse than this, especially when considering the human cost of all nations. It has long been established that peace and prosperity can be had for one third of what we spend on war — the key difference is that war is profitable for banks in unethically extraordinary ways, while peace and prosperity are profitable for the 99% in relatively mundane ways. The only good news is that Generation Truth is rising, and will use open information and open deliberation to put the relics of the Industrial Era away.
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Someone smarter than me wrote this in an email. Scary stuff, seems to be right on target.
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The freight train bearing down on us is the Millennials – 80 million strong, 15% unemployment, that's 6 million 18 to 34 males who are fucked. How many have hardcore urban combat experience from Iraq or open country insurgency skills from AfPak?
Oklahoma City & D.C. Sniper came from 38 days of ground combat during Desert Storm. Now we get TBI guys who've done three tours and get screwed out of benefits with a PDO discharge because the VA doesn't want to deal? Ticking bomb, size XXXXL, and it's all around us.
So when does it flip from an edgy theory into a “holy shit how do we stop THAT?” Can't say for sure, but it'll be like trying to un-tornado a house once it gets moving …
Phi Beta Iota: The truth at any cost lowers all other costs.
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Since the defense budget roll out on Wednesday, April 10, Pentagon budget geeks all over Washington have been popping Ibuprofen trying to unscramble the mess that DOD and OMB have made out of the 2013 and 2014 defense budgets. My take on this dysfunction is explained below.
By the way, I don't blame Secretary Hagel for this junking of budget ethics and smarts; he's too new to the job, but his time for using that as an excuse is fast running out.
Obama's Useless Budget Data.and Improbable Budget Strategy
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, unveil the Pentagon's 2014 budget request Wednesday.
Budgets are important documents: they are the ultimate expression of policy by a President or Congress.
Budgets are also a useful revelation of the character and competence of those who put them together.
President Obama's budget presentation for the Department of Defense and national security-related activities outside of the Defense Department is useless for understanding what he and Congress have enacted for the current 2013 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
The budget material for 2014 also shows there is no new thinking in the Obama Administration for putting U.S. national security spending on a constructive path. Given the dysfunctional Congress that's getting the new budget, we should expect the worst: delay, chaos and decisions to increase, not control, costs.
