The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Chuck Spinney Sends…. Last night President Obama crossed the Rubicon and made the Afghan War his war. Will this decision come back to haunt him? Juan Cole argues that this is likely to be the case, because Obama’s escalation decision is based on a flawed analogy. Reasoning by analogy is powerful albeit particularly dangerous form of …
Continue reading “Journal: Flawed Analogies Bush the President?”
Chuck Spinney Sends: Viewed at the level of epistemology, the distinction be the search for truth in science and religion is stark: In science the structure of the world view — i.e., the brain’s interior model of reality — is evolved to match observations taken from the external world, whereas in religion, observations are evolved …
Continue reading “Journal: ClimateGate Ideology, Theology, Science”
Phi Beta Iota: ClimateGate has outraged us for two reasons–first, the lack of integrity among the scientists and the selected United Nations officials concerned; and second, the naivete, ignorance, or corruption of government officials all too eager to create a new Global Warming Complex that profits from carbon trades (another form of phantom wealth) while …
Continue reading “Journal: ClimateGate Meets Yamal Divergence”
Obama as LBJ: Domestic Politics, Escalation and the Descent Into Chaos There have been many comparisons of the Afghan escalation question to its equivalent question in Vietnam 45 years ago, but I think the most ominous similarity lies in the way each escalation debate devolved into intellectual incoherence and confusion, mutating into an exhausted disorder, …
Continue reading “Worth a Look: Various Recommended Articles”
Chuck Spinney sends… The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem By BINOY KAMPMARK In 1987, the conservative author Midge Decter described her association with Israel and those willing to place it above conventional judgment. ‘We know ourselves to be bound by ties so deep, so essential, so unconditional, that they are beyond daylight examination. To …
Chuck Spinney sends…. The Afghan debacle is becoming a case study of how political debate in Versailles drips in a naturally self-organizing way to protect the dysfunctional status quo. As I indicated yesterday and in September, the fundamental flaw that set the stage for the current policy making fiasco was the unexamined analytical hole in …
Continue reading “Journal: Versailles on the Potomac Implodes…Again”
Obama and the Triumph of the Will The Afghan War Question By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY November 12, 2009 In the opening lines of the oldest treatise on the conduct of war, Sun Tzu said that the question of war is vital to the state, and therefore, it is imperative to study it. This timeless advice …
Continue reading “Journal: Chuck Spinny on Collapse of Reason”
