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Marcus Aurelius: Pentagon Fiscal Chief “Nervous” + DoD Transformation RECAP

Pentagon fiscal chief Robert Hale: ‘I am nervous’ “Frankly, I am nervous,” says Robert Hale, the Pentagon’s comptroller. And with reason. A month and half into the new fiscal year, Congress can’t seem to decide between what are three, wildly different scenarios for Hale’s world in 2014. The House endorsed most of President Barack Obama’s …

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Marcus Aurelius: Five Takeaways from a Decade of War [Defense One] Plus Blistering Alternative View from Phi Beta Iota Editors

Five Takeaways from a Decade of War Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, in a keynote address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies this week, signaled to military commanders that they should assume the across-the-board, automatic spending cuts imposed by sequester over the next decade will remain in place indefinitely. “We do not have …

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Marcus Aurelius: SecDef – Six Points, No Bench, No Plan, No Joy — Can CSA Mobilize Carlisle and Re-Invent the US Army in 6 Months?

Attached is a SECDEF speech from two days ago — six main points and the major thrust is things are not going to get better any time soon. PDF (10 Pages): (U) SecDef Six Points 5 NOV 13 Six priorities: First, we will continue to focus on institutional reform. Second, we will re-evaluate our military’s …

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Stuart Umpleby: The Triple Bottom Line & Current Challenges

The triple bottom line — people, profits, planet — is a recent business concept.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line. We are now facing major issues on all three: 1.  People.  The safety of people is threatened by a)  vulnerable cyber infrastructure.  See the National Geographic video American Blackout; and b) inequality leading to lower standards of living for …

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Steve Aftergood: CIA’s Mind-Set of Misadventure & Impunity

The CIA “Family Jewels,” Then and Now EXTRACT: In 1973, the Director of Central Intelligence ordered CIA officials to prepare a descriptive account of all CIA activities that were “outside the legislative charter of this Agency,” which is to say unauthorized or illegal.  The purpose of the exercise was to identify operations that had “flap …

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Parag Khanna: The End of the Nation-State?

The End of the Nation-State? New York Times, 14 October 2013 Singapore — Every five years, the United States National Intelligence Council, which advises the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, publishes a report forecasting the long-term implications of global trends. Earlier this year it released its latest report, “Alternative Worlds,” which included scenarios for …

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Review: Theodore and Woodrow – How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom

Andrew P. Napolitano 7 Stars — Documents Presidential Perfidy – Life Transformative for This Reason I broke with the Republican Party over Iran-Contra and belatedly, the one trillion a year that Reagan started shamelessly borrowing to fund the dual welfare system — a dysfunctional military-espionage-industrial complex for the right, and a dysfunctional regulatory myopic and …

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