Journal: True Cost–Cash for Clunkers

03 Economy, 11 Society, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Policy, True Cost

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Cash for Clunkers Actual Cost: $24,000 per Car

By Chip Hanlon | 11/02/09

Auto industry research firm, Edmunds, says the program actually cost $24,000 per car!

In summary: the administration loves to tout the 690,000 vehicles sold in July and August, but the Edmunds report says that only 125,000 (18%) of those sales were incremental, meaning the remaining 82% of sales would have happened regardless of the program.

In other words, 565,000 people were given free money for no reason at all, just as critics of this program predicted would happen.

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Journal: True Cost–Israel and Palestine

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, True Cost

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November 2, 2009

Clinton, Goldstone and true cost of the occupation

Hever: The Israeli government is hiding the true cost of the occupation even from itself

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported last Friday that at least 11 locations within settlement colonies in the West Bank are escalating construction in order to alter “facts on the ground.” In October, the joint Israeli-Palestinian organization, Alternative Information Center, organized a conference on the economy of the Israeli occupation in Bethlehem. The Real News' Lia Tarachansky attended and spoke to the AIC's Shir Hever about the real costs of maintaining Israel's occupation.

Cost estimated at US$9 billion to the governments of Israel and the USA, while profit is almost entirely privatized.

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Journal: Windows 7 as Virtual Wi-Fit Host

Autonomous Internet, Technologies

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Unfinished Windows 7 feature turns laptops into Wi-Fi hotspots

Ben Franklin-Funded Company, Nomadio, Finds a Windows 7 Niche

Free app lets iPhones, other devices connect to Internet via software-based router

By Gregg Keizer

October 29, 2009 06:22 PM ET

Computerworld – A Philadelphia developer has rooted out an unfinished feature of Windows 7 that turns any laptop into a wireless access point, allowing other Wi-Fi-enabled devices to share the connection without special software.

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Journal: Japan-America Fiber Cable

Technologies

Original Source
Original Source

“The 10,000 km (6,200 mile) long Unity fiber optic cable, funded by Google and five East Asian communication companies, left Japanese shores on November 1st to be laid along the northern Pacific Ocean floor. The Japanese end of the cable is expected to be fused to the American end sometime around November 11th. The cable, which was announced in February of 2008 at a cost of around $300 million USD, has the theoretical capacity of 7.68 Tbps, but will be set at a capacity of about 4.8 Tbps (supposedly equivalent to about 75 million simultaneous phone calls) during its initial use. When Unity begins full operation sometime early next year, it is projected to increase internet traffic capacity between the two regions by over 20%, a wonderful boost to transpacific relations!”

Phi Beta Iota: We've never understood the American obsession with satellites, absent the corrupt fascination with screwing the taxpayer while leaving all US communications open to being fried by the Chinese.  Latency matters.  From where we sit, for the cost of one Lockheed rocket exploding on the launch pad you can get a serious fiber line down.  That makes a lot more sense to us.

Journal: CINCPAC Slams IC on China

02 China, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Intelligence failures?

William C. Triplett II

Monday, November 2, 2009

On Oct. 21, the incoming commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, made a little-noticed but astonishing accusation to reporters in Seoul:

“I would contend that in the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity every year. They've grown at an unprecedented rate in those capabilities.”

Remainder of story no longer easily found online:

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Journal: Constant Technical Stare vs. Engaged Brain

05 Civil War, Methods & Process, Military, Real Time, Technologies

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Military Refines A ‘Constant Stare Against Our Enemy'

The rapidly increasing surveillance power of unmanned aircraft gives U.S. officials an option beside s troops

By Julian E. Barnes    November 2, 2009   Pg. 1

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles.

The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles.

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Search Tips

Searches

Don't search for <cliff notes for ….>.  Search instead for the title of the book, as much of it as possible, and ideally also including the author's last name.  Use Amazon for the full title and grab the last name only of the author (that's the part that gets into the tag cloud).

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

Part of the “delay” in getting to this (it came up about 20th when searching only for <unconquerable world>) is that once a book as priceless as this has been read, it is then listed as additional recommended reading for a whole lot of other books read afterwards.

You also get books read prior to “the” book that are recommended in that review.  So all told, for the really great books that are central to the intellectual architecture we have been creating for 20 years, expect to see 20-40 listings, all helpful to building a broader picture for you around “the” book's core theme.

What this means is that searching for any given title ALSO brings up all the other books that have been deliberately related to the first book–a form of citation analysis exclusively focused on our concern with creating a prosperous world at peace.  The point: be patient, and think about all the books you find on the way to “the” book.

Use the menu under Reviews to browse.  The 98 categories were devised in 2005 when we took the entire library and re-sorted it in logical units.  This is a library built for an iconoclastic strategist and decision-support professional.  Use it!

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