Penguin: Is the Pentagon Completely Corrupt? Yes — F-35 Totally Vulnerable to Electromagnetic Neturalization

The New F-35 Fighter Jet Can Be Taken Down Without A Bullet Ever Being Fired The F-35, the latest fighter jet being developed for the U.S. Armed Forces, has hit another potential snag.This time, it’s not questions of the jet’s structural integrity or even questions of relevance in combat. It’s the plane’s vulnerability to hackers. The …

Winslow Wheeler: Who Really Runs the Pentagon?

It’s not Chuck Hagel.  I explain in a commentary at Foreign Policy at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/13/the_men_who_really_run_the_pentagon_chuck_hagel, and below. The Men Who Really Run the Pentagon Bob Gates wrestled the defense budget back from the Joint Chiefs. Chuck Hagel is handing it back. Winslow Wheeler Winslow T. Wheeler is the director of the Straus Military Reform Project at …

Reflections on the Ecuador Initiative — Open Source Everything Combined with Ethical Evidence-Based Decision-Support 1.1

Michel Bauwens, founder of the Peer to Peer (P2P) Foundation and one of my personal pioneer heroes, is deeply engaged in Ecuador with a Presidential initiative. This endeavor could be world-changing, first in Ecuador, then across South America, and ultimately around the globe starting with the BRICS and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere. I …

4th Media: The Year of Iran – Challenging US Hegemony

The Year of Iran: Tehran’s Challenge to American Hegemony in 2014 This strategy aims to replace American hegemony, regionally and globally, with a more multi-polar distribution of power and influence. The United States is not the first imperial power in decline whose foreign policy debate has become increasingly detached from reality—and history suggests that the …

Chuck Spinney: Two Evaluations of Middle East After Arab Spring

Attached below are two very important reports by two of the most astute observers of conflicts in the Middle East.  The first is a precisely-focused report by Rami Khouri, editor at large of Lebanon’s Daily Star.  Khouri analyzes how the recent assassination of Mohamad Chatah needs to be interpreted in the context of complexities of …

Chuck Spinney: Risks of EU’s Blowing Up Ukraine on the Cheap

Included in this interesting essay about the situation in Ukraine is a useful reminder of how the West succumbed to the short-term temptations of triumphalism when Gorbachev ended the Cold War in the early 1990s. The Risks of the EU’s Geopolitics on the Cheap in Ukraine by Vadim Nikitin, Agence-Global Released: 09 Dec 2013 A …