With the right conditions in place — education, entrepreneurialism, and environmental awareness among them — a young, eager, educated workforce can be the key to prosperity.
When conditions are right, large numbers of young workers can drive a nation’s growth to remarkable levels. This theory is known as the “demographic dividend,” a phrase coined by demographer David Bloom. He proposes that when young working-age adults comprise a disproportionate percentage of a country’s population, the national economy is affected in positive ways.
Reform or Go Home (David Kilcullen) End Suicide Attacks (Robert Pape) If You Can’t Beat Them, Let Them Join (Linda Robinson) Pump Up the Police (Anthony Cordesman) Kick Out Corruption (Nader Nadery) Learn to Tax From the Taliban (Gretchen Peters) Polls Have the Power (Merrill McPeak) Take a Risk (Andrew McDonald Exum) Don’t Believe That We Can Afford to Lose (Frederick Kagan) Pakistani Patronage (Paul Pillar)
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4 Broad Strategies Weighed — From Pullout To Boosting Troop Level
Getting out Scaling back
Staying put Ramping up
Integrated Analytics
Phi Beta Iota: In the context of holistic strategy and integrated analytics as depicted by the two thumbnails (click on each to get to the larger graphic), we are stunned by the mediocrity and myopia of the “conventional wisdom.” It's all connected. Absent a coherent world view and strategic analytic model with integrity, this Administration is toast. The Republic has no strategy, no mature threat construct, no Whole of Government planning, programming, and budgeting system (PPBS), and zero integrity in the sense of being honest about the totality of the substance of governance.
Obama, according to Wall Street people who regularly deal with his economic and budget officials, is acting as if he has a blank check to do what he wants, while ignoring the longterm costs of his policies.
When I was working on my book Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift, I read a work that Walter Lippmann, the co-founder of The New Republic, published in 1937. In it, with an eye to the New Deal, he observed that, while
the partisans who are now fighting for the mastery of the modern world wear shirts of different colors, their weapons are drawn from the same armory, their doctrines are variations of the same theme, and they go forth to battle singing the same tune with slightly different words. . . .
Ron Paul – “Warmongering” On Iran Sounds Like Lead-Up to Iraq War
Congressman Ron Paul says the neo-conservative “warmongering” on Iran sounds suspiciously like the talk leading up to the war in Iraq. He also says sanctions against Iran for their nuclear ambitions would not help to alleviate the situation. Click on logo to watch short video.
Phi Beta Iota: The “paradigms of failure” discussed in ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig extend particularly from government to the media, which consists of “courtiers” and newshole fillers, most, not all, without any resources for investigative journalism, and most, not all, forbidden to actually question “the party line.” Below is an illustration of the standard information pathologies that prevent the public from achieving public intelligence in the public interest.
There are at least two organized gangs in cloud computing, with several more emerging in the wings. This is a first cut at what we have in play.
Below the fold are a list of members of the Infrastructure 2.0 Gang and the Cloud Connect Gang, followed by a number of headlines from 2007 to date that comprise a rapid read-in.
As with the origin of computers, when librarians were not consulted, the focus on these gangs is on technical connectivity and related issues (e.g. authentication, security), and NOT on information-sharing and sense-making as the ultimate objective.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski wants to expand and codify the FCC's four network neutrality principles and to utter horror of wireless carriers, make them apply the mobile Internet. It all adds to one of greatest policy battles at the FCC in years.
The entire story is strongly hostile to the FCC and a “must read.”
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See also: Net neutrality fight begins. Not unexpectedly, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski this week issued a call for an “open Internet,” and wireless networks are not immune. Most wireless operator executives aren't happy.
Meanwhile, we're focusing on Open Spectrum and Bottom-Up Clouds.
Over 200 Marines died in the barracks by the beach in Beirut, in their sleep, because the White House failed to understand that the strategic situation had changed; because chicken hawk staff approved the launching of battleship salvos (think really pissed-off Volkswagons in flight) that certified the US was “taking sides” rather than seeking to preserve the peace; and because the “rules of engagement” imposed on Colonel of Marines Tim Gerrity required that his Marines not have rounds in the chambers and not fire as approaching vehicles that failed to stop–at the same time, intelligence sucked then as it sucks now.
The photos are our own, from Beirut in August 2007. We grieve for our Marines, who sought to serve their country while being used as an expendible tool by the White House. Today the same thing is happening in Afghanistan and Ralph Peters has unleashed his own volley against the insanity of asking our troops to allow themselves to be killed whenever a civilian is in the area. Click on the collage for today's deja vu.
