The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Major General Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for General Stanley McChrystal's headquarters in Kabul, warned that the number of insurgents in Afghanistan (many of whom were from other countries) was now between 19,000 and 27,000, a ten-fold increase since 2004. “I wouldn't say it's out of control right now,” Flynn explained, “but this is a California wildfire and we're having to bring in firemen from New York.”
Phi Beta Iota: Our most trusted alter ego flagged this for attention, and we love it. We have ordered the book on Visual Language and hoping the author will soon publish on Information Mapping. This is sheer genius, not least for its human sensitivity and its grasp of the brain-eye-hand-touch loop. We are blown away by this, it buries the visual design phenoms of the past, while clearly being relevant to Collective Intelligence and Conscious Evolution.
Boston Globe
By H.D.S. Greenway
November 3, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA is doing the arithmetic of fighting in Afghanistan and figuring the odds of Pakistan pulling through. He must not only add up the numbers of soldiers he wants to hand over to his generals, but must also measure what is achievable against what his country has to spend in money and blood. General Stanley McChrystal?s requests echo those of Marshal Akhromeyev, who begged the Soviet Politburo for more soldiers for his war 20 years ago.
Continue reading “Journal: Afghanistan–The Arithmetic of the Frontier”
The Detritus of Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear:
A Metaphor for Contemporary Politics
The vast Mississippi Delta in Louisiana is sinking as sea water from the Gulf of Mexico seeps in to destroy its fresh water marshlands. The Army's Corps of Engineers says it can not protect New Orleans from the inevitable storm surges caused by hurricanes (see the Guardian report attached below).
Some may dismiss this warning as alarmist hype, and the Army's Corps of Engineers certainly does not have an enviable track record in this regard. That said, the Corps' warning does make evident the political-economic detritus left over from Hurricane Katrina. Inferentially, the warning also highlights the hollowness in the scare tactics used by global warming advocates to raise money for their far more costly ambitions, not to mention the paralyzing political-economic consequences posed by the politics of fear practiced by the Pentagon.
The reality of the Delta thus becomes a metaphor for the larger emptiness that now pervades American politics.
Below the Fold: Balance of Spinney Comment, Full Article with Highlight, Books
Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinney Sends–Katrina & Fear”
November 2, 2009
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.
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:
Reid, Herbert G. and Taylor, Betsy, :John Dewey's Aesthetic Ecology of Public Intelligence and the Grounding of Civic Environmentalism” in Ethics & the Environment – Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2003, pp. 74-92
This paper argues for the importance of John Dewey's aesthetic philosophy to recent efforts to cultivate civic environmentalism while critiquing narrowly conservationist environmentalisms. We call for a strong version of civic environmentalism oriented towards holistic integration of ecological concerns into all aspects of social, political, economic, and cultural life. Such a civic environmentalism argues that it is not enough to strive to preserve enclaved ‘wilderness' or ‘biodiversity' (as important as that is). It argues also for fundamental changes in the political and economic status quo, because ecological havoc is understood to be integrally linked with the structural forces that are increasing inequality and weakening democratic.
Continue reading “Journal: Environmental Lip Service vs the Real Deal”
