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Mike Lofgren: War as a Business Model

Corruption, Government
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Mike Lofgren
Mike Lofgren

Operation Rent Seeking

How the war on terrorism became a business model.

By Mike Lofgren

Washington Monthly, March/April/May 2015

EXTRACT

The syndrome the Bush administration created in Iraq was what former Pentagon critic Chuck Spinney has called a “self-licking ice cream cone”: the measures to fight the war on terrorism guaranteed more terrorists, which in turn guaranteed the agencies more money to fight the war on terrorism. The same process was at work with respect to torture and drone strikes. It is a great business model for contractors and bureaucratic empire builders, but far less favorable as a national survival strategy.

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Berto Jongman: Oil and Military Intervention – Once Again, “Conspiracy Theorists” Are Right On Target

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Peace Intelligence
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Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Oil and Military Intervention: Are the Conspiracy Theorists Right?

The probability that an “oil-thirsty” country will intervene in a civil war in an oil-producing country is over 100 per cent greater than the probability that an oil-exporting country will intervene in a civil war in a country that lacks oil resources.

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Antechinus: Australian Indigenous Oral Tradition – Back 10,000 Years

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
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Antechinus
Antechinus

The longevity of Australian Indigenous oral tradition

Anthropologists led by Dr Duane Hamacher of the Indigenous Astronomy Group at UNSW find Australian Aboriginal oral traditions record events such as a 4,700 year old meteor impact, volcanic eruptions and post-glacial sea level rise that started 10,000 years ago.

 

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Review: On Marx

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
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Amazon Page
Amazon Page

EDIT: I have placed in bold the paragraph everyone is missing.

Alan Ryan

5.0 out of 5 stars Gem of a Book, Author's Synthesis is Priceless, March 6, 2015

I picked this up at Powell's Bookstore in Portland (10 times bigger than Tattered Cover in Denver, both worth going out of your way to visit) and it is a GEM of a book in two ways: the author provides a summary overview of Marxism that is hugely beneficial to anyone looking for a sound critique of capitalism as we know it today; and the author has selected a few pieces by Marx to be read in the original.

Peter Linebaugh's Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance (Spectre) is what forced me to reconsider Marx's critique of capitalism and I recommend that 2014 publication to anyone who wishes to think critically about capitalism today, with this book as a very fine follow-on.

QUOTE (64): “The modern republic attempts to impose political equality upon an economic inequality it has no way of alleviating.

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Review: Reform or Revolution and Other Writings

4 Star, Economics, Insurgency & Revolution, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)
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Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Rosa Luxemburg

4.0 out of 5 stars Tedious, Some Valuable Provocative Original Thinking, March 6, 2015

I bought this book along with On Marx: Revolutionary and Utopian (Liveright Classics) at Powell's in Portland, one of the truly great bookstores in the USA along with the Tattered Cover in Denver (which is a tenth the size of Powell's). I bought it largely because of its focus on the general strike versus the partial strike as a tactic that might or might not be possible depending on the country and where it is in its economic degeneration.

Although I received a very good education in political thought from Charles Bednar at Muhlenberg, I confess that it is only now at 63 that I have realized that most of what our government, media, think tanks, and even universities offer in the way of commentary on “political economy” is ideological crap — they do not do their homework, they really have no clue, and they get away with it because everyone else has no clue either.

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Marcus Aurelius: America’s Military Power in Decline with a Blood-Letting Commentary from Robert Steele

Corruption, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

America’s Military Power in a Steep Decline

EXTRACT

If you want to know what is wrong about the entire approach to our nation’s military needs, consider that since 2009 when Obama took office, the Pentagon’s civilian workforce has grown about 7% to almost 750,000, while active-duty military personnel have been cut by approximately 8%. At the same time, dozens of military-equipment and weapons programs have been canceled, including a new Navy cruiser, a new search-and-rescue helicopter, the F-22 first-generation fighter, the C-17 transport aircraft, missile defense and the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. We are not prepared to fight a war and now you know why.

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