Journal: Vermont Commons, Secession, & Collapse

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Ethics, Reform
Vermont Commons Home Page
Vermont Commons Home Page

Secession is Constitutional, Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional pillaging and looting of the South not-with-standing.   Few are sufficiently educated to actually know that Lincoln did not free the slaves of the north and west and did not have the Constitutional authority to suspend habeas corpus, conscript men of the north, borrow money to wage war on peacefully seceeeding members of the Union of STATES that voluntarily entered a compact, or to occupy the south by force of arms for twelve years.  In Canada the Supreme Court has found for Quebec on the matter of secession, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories are both acutely aware of the options they have.  Further North Greenland has declared independence from Denmark.  Alaska remains a wild card–Sarah Palin could have been President of the North, but got sucked into the ideological maelstrom of an imploding Republican Party.  All that by way to introduction to the Vermont Commons.  Maine and Vermont are two of the states most likely to actually seceed from the Union if the US Government does not heal itself fairly soon.  The only way to preserve the Union going into the next decade is to rapidly restore the legitimacy and efficacy of governance–this can only be done by getting a grip on reality and devising policies, programs, and budgets in harmony with reality.

Below are some Reviews that bear on the above subject.

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Journal: Spinning Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military, Peace Intelligence
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Recommends:

Karzai Aides, Tribal Leaders Say Surge Is Wrong Strategy

KABUL — Some powerful Afghan politicians and tribal leaders have expressed doubts that more U.S. troops can turn the tide of the war, as President Barack Obama prepares to unveil a new Afghanistan strategy Tuesday.

Army Researchers Warn Against Tribal War in Afghanistan

U.S. Army’s own specialists in Afghanistan’s culture and society are warning that relying on the tribes there may be a waste of time. “Most of Afghanistan has not been ‘tribal’ in the last few centuries,” notes a recent report from the Army’s Human Terrain System at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. “In fact, many scholars are reluctant to use the word ‘tribe’ at all for describing groups in Afghanistan.”

Clear, Hold And Duct Tape

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Journal: Afghanistan

05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Civil Society, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Pentagon preparing to send 34,000 troops to Afghanistan, official says

CNN   November 24, 2009

Pentagon planners expect orders to send about 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan, a defense official told CNN, a day after the president's final meeting to decide the next moves in Afghanistan.  The military has planning under way to send three U.S. Army brigades, totaling about 15,000 troops; a Marine brigade, about 8,000 troops; a headquarters element, about 7,000 troops; and between 4,000 and 5,000 support troops — a total of approximately 34,000 troops, according to a defense official with direct knowledge of Pentagon operations. CNN reported last month that this was the preferred option within the Pentagon.

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Cynthia McKinney Letter to the President

Please bring our troops home now.

A peace demonstration is being organized for December 12, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally, also known as the End US Wars Rally, is scheduled for 11am at Lafayette Park at the White House. I wholly endorse this rally and encourage all who can to participate in Washington, DC or to help a local peace organization committed to ending U.S. wars on that date.

Worth a Look: Berto Jongman Recommends….

05 Civil War, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Worth A Look

Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Researcher Berto Jongman recommends 6 monographs, 5 articles, 3 books.

EDIT of 24 Nov 09: 6 monograph recommendations added.

Russia: A Promising Market for Islamic Finance
21/11/2009By Lahem al Nasser

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- There are around 47 million Muslims in Russia, which means that Muslims make up around one third of Russia's overall population. This figure is expected to rise to 50 percent by 2050 due to the high birth rate among the Muslim community, the decrease in the non-Muslim Russian population which is decreasing at a rate of 1 million people per year, as well as the immigrations of Muslims from central Asia into the Russian Federation. The Islamic presence in Russia is centered in the Caucasus, Siberia, and Moscow.

Survey of Pakistan’s Young Predicts ‘Disaster’ if Their Needs Aren’t Addressed
By SABRINA TAVERNISE,   November 21, 2009

LAHORE, Pakistan — Pakistan will face a “demographic disaster” if it does not address the needs of its young generation, the largest in the country’s history, whose views reflect a deep disillusionment with government and democracy, according to a report released here on Saturday.

Crime and Terrorism Small Wars Journal
4 November 2009 by Colonel Robert Killebrew

According to a panel of experts at a recent conference sponsored by the Center for a New American Security, terrorism and crime have now merged, to such an extent that all terrorist movements – all of them — have become partly criminal organizations to fund their operations, expand their reach – and incidentally make the people on top extremely rich, while lower-level zealots continue to be recruited for suicide missions.

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Journal: Common Sense on Palestine & Israel

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Peace Intelligence

Gershon Baskin
Gershon Baskin

Encountering Peace: Getting serious about ‘economic peace'

More than 10 months have passed since President Barack Obama entered the White House and seven months since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took over the reins in Jerusalem and there is still no peace process worth mentioning.

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

Phi Beta Iota: Imagine an “Information Wall” available online and projected on walls around the world, showing the stark contrast between the day to day conditions of the Palestinians and of the Israelis.

Reference: Berto Jongman Recommends

05 Civil War, 09 Terrorism, Media Reports, Monographs
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Today's recommendaitons:

Who's who in the Somali insurgency: A Reference Guide

Interview with Maajid Nawaz:Becoming a Muslim Radical

New Quilliam report: British prisons are incubating Islamist extremism

Selected Translation of the LIFG Recantation Document

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field. Antonio Giustozzi gathers a renowned cast of journalists, experts, and academics to answer the most pressing questions regarding the Taliban today. Each contributor possesses extensive knowledge of the insurgency's latest developments, decoding its structure and organization as it operates within specific regions and provinces. They analyze the new Taliban as it expands, from the mature south, where they hold sway, to the southeast, where they struggle to penetrate, from the west and northeast, now in the initial stages of infiltration, to the provinces surrounding Kabul, which have been unexpectedly and quickly occupied.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Empires of Mud: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007. Warlords are charismatic leaders who exploit weak authorities to gain control of subnational areas. Nevertheless, warlords do in fact participate in state formation, and this book considers the dynamics of warlordism within the context of such debates. Antonio Giustozzi begins with aspects of the Afghan environment that are conducive to the fragmentation of central authority and the emergence of warlords. He then accounts for the phenomenon from the 1980s to today, considering Afghanistan's two foremost warlords, Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum, along with their political, economic, and military systems of rule.

Journal: Sarah Palin Loses the Lipstick

05 Civil War, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online & Video
Full Story Online & Video

A guide to who gets whacked

Andy Barr, Jonathan Martin Tue Nov 17

Sarah Palin may claim to scorn elites, but her new book will ring familiar to its Beltway readership.

Getting even with those who crossed her, praising her allies and generally putting a self-serving sheen on last year’s presidential campaign, “Going Rogue” is typical of the political memoir genre of recent vintage. It’s the sort of book that will send the political class scurrying to bookstores, eager to see how they fared in what’s known as “the Washington read.”

With no index, though, Palin’s book has made that ritual more difficult.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

So POLITICO, having obtained a copy of the book before its Tuesday release, has created a reader’s guide to “Going Rogue,” grouping the many characters into three categories: Friends, Foes, In Between.

Below the Fold we provide a commentary and links to a number of books about the prospects for honest independent government in 2012 and beyond.

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