Activists from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) women's wing shout slogans against the Congress-led government during a protest against an increase in milk, vegetables and food prices in New Delhi on April 1, 2010. The BJP activists protested against the price hikes of essential commodities. Food inflation is still at 17 percent according to official figures.
Global food chain stretched to the limit
Soaring prices spark fears of social unrest in developing world
Strained by rising demand and battered by bad weather, the global food supply chain is stretched to the limit, sending prices soaring and sparking concerns about a repeat of food riots last seen three years ago.
Signs of the strain can be found from Australia to Argentina, Canada to Russia
Phi Beta Iota: Absent a radical break-through in energy that enables water desalination and purification, the combined collapse of the global financial system and the global food system could mark the beginning of a quarter century of “tribulation.”
It's a good think Ike is dead… else he would realize his nightmare survived. Chuck
Newsday January 13, 2011 Pg. 34
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
Eisenhower warned against the influence of arms production, but did we listen?
By Bob Keeler
EXTRACT: Now, the deficit has caused some unexpected voices to say, ever so softly, that everything is on the table – including defense cuts. Last week, Gates talked about plans to slow the defense budget's growth by $78 billion over five years. That dainty nibble is a start, but we need big bites. A group called the Sustainable Defense Task Force has laid out ways to cut $1 trillion in 10 years. That's better.
I have read the released Odom interview MFR. Odom is not kind (perhaps not fair) to CIA or Gen Mike Hayden. Interview, like all others in extensive series, was done circa 2003-2004. Some prominent military SO names, such as Schoomaker and Boykin are among the interviewees. Extent of redaction ranges from fairly light to very heavy. Pre-sanitization/release original classification of interview MFRs ranges from U to TS//SCI (multiple caveats). As documented, little/no evidence that 9/11 Commission interviewers operated in hostile/coercive manner. Even through sanitization, knowledgeable readers can glean some interesting opinions.
The CIA is “out of control” and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.
“The CIA currently doesn't work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn't and it's out of control,” says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.
Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.
. . . . . . .
While deeply critical of the CIA, Odom also had harsh words for other NSA directors, including Adm. Bobby Inman, whom he accused of “playing games” in Washington. He also said that Gen. Michael Hayden, then the director of the NSA, was “destroying” the agency and didn't know his “intellectual limits.”
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Netflix tests everything. They're very proud that they A/B test interactions, offerings, pricing, everything. It's almost enough to get you to believe that rigorous testing is the key to success.
Except they didn't test the model of renting DVDs by mail for a monthly fee.
And they didn't test the model of having an innovative corporate culture.
And they didn't test the idea of betting the company on a switch to online delivery.
The three biggest assets of the company weren't tested, because they couldn't be.
Sure, go ahead and test what's testable. But the real victories come when you have the guts to launch the untestable.
Phi Beta Iota: If your Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) process is non-existent or replete with flagrant fraud, ignore this Blog Wisdom–both testing and leaps of faith require absolute integrity to be all they can be.
The Obama administration's $78 billion cut to US defense spending is a mere “pin-prick” to a behemoth military-industrial complex that must drastically shrink for the good of the republic, a former Reagan administration budget director recently told Raw Story.
. . . . . . .
The ‘Ponzi scheme' of ‘artificial prosperity'
Stockman, who described himself as a libertarian during a recent interview with Reason.tv, told Raw Story that the economy got into this mess because of the public and private sectors' addiction to “guns and butter Keynesianism,” an economic policy that amounts to a Ponzi scheme that has ballooned since 1990.
“If we see what's going on carefully, we've reached the final unmasking of the Keynesian illusion, that Keynesianism is really nothing but borrowing, stealing from the future to induce consumption today,” he said. “There are no multipliers. Every one of these programs we've had from ‘cash for clunkers' to housing purchase credits have disappeared as soon as they expired and simple shifted activities in time by a few months.”
Stockman explained that before 1980, it took about $1.50 of new borrowing — public or private — to generate $1 of GDP growth. By the mid-1990s, it was $2.50 or $3 of borrowing for a $1 of GDP growth. By 2007, before the big collapse and meltdown finally came, $7 of public and private debt was added to the national balance sheet in order to get $1 of GDP growth.
“When you get to the point of $7 of borrowing to get $1 of income, you're obviously on an unsustainable path and pretty close to hitting the wall, which more or less we have,” he said.
Phi Beta Iota: Drawing down the military-industrial complex will immediately produce two highly undesireable masses of unrest: pissed off unemployed veterans who own a gun and know how to use it; and pissed off pasty-faced short fat bald white guys with no marketable skills who either own a gun or know where to buy one. We agree that the military budget needs to be cut by $200 billion or more–however, it must be done strategically, with clear-cut plan for both assuring every veteran of a job, with priority to amputees, and for redirecting our energies into homeland development before we spent another dollar on foreign development. We've blown it for nearly three-quarters of a century. This is now about strategic design–do it, or lose what's left of the Republic.
Many people are aware of the growing gap between rich and poor, and the struggles of the American middle class. But few people realize the vast extent of this gap. The monumental wealth held by the top 20% — and even of the top 1% — of Americans beggars description. The existence of this vast resource side by side with the erosion and collapse of human and natural communities — and the increasing vulnerability of both the Earth and humanity's future — should give us pause. Real pause. Pause for reflection.
Activists from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) women's wing shout slogans against the Congress-led government during a protest against an increase in milk, vegetables and food prices in New Delhi on April 1, 2010. The BJP activists protested against the price hikes of essential commodities. Food inflation is still at 17 percent according to official figures.
