Review: The Idea that is America–Keeping Faith With Our Values in a Dangerous World

Best of Intentions, Good Individual Effort, February 20, 2010 Anne-Marie Slaughter Now that my own book INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty is at the printer am back into reading and really looking forward to catching up with the 25 books on my “to do” shelf. This one jumped to the top of …

Search: how much is al-qaeda worth?

Very cool question.  We don’t have the answers, but here are a few thoughts. Who benefits? There is only one beneficiary of Al Qaeda as a virtual actor: the US Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Congressional Complex whose outrageously wasteful funding and excessive (70%) obligations to contractors are bankrupting the US economy, but who cares as long as the corporate …

Journal: Potential End to Two-Party Monopoly

Disillusioned Bayh advocates electoral “shock” to broken system In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system “dysfunctional,” riddled with “brain-dead partisanship” and permanent campaigning. Flatly denying any possibility that he’d seek the presidency or any other higher office, Bayh argued that the American people needed to …

Review: The Bhagavad Gita–A Walkthrough for Westerners

Speak the Truth, Lose the Anger, Be Part of the Whole February 10, 2010 Jack Hawley It took me fifty years to recognize the deficiencies of the command and control or top down elite-dominated model of governance, and to discover the spiritual and practical integrity of collective intelligence, openness, appreciative inquirty, deliberative public dilaog, and …

Journal: Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) as a Metaphor for a Predictable Defense Meltdown

The recent publication of the 2010 QDR reveals once again, in typically leaden and mind-numbing prose, how the Pentagon is incapable of coming to grips with the mismatches among strategy, programs, and resources that its decision makers create for themselves, even when budgets are at the highest levels since the end of WWII.  The F-35 …

Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating

Pentagon Shifts Its Strategy To Small-Scale Warfare By August Cole and Yochi J. Dreazen Wall Street Journal  January 30, 2010  Pg. 4 The shift in strategy sets up potential conflicts with defense contractors and powerful lawmakers uneasy with the Pentagon’s growing focus on smaller-scale, guerilla warfare. In particular, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has come to …