Review: The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Religion & Politics of Religion, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle
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Amazon Page

Akbar Ahmed

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star (My Top 10%) — The Book Susan Rice Should Read First, June 6, 2013

I received and read this book today, and while I am troubled by the author's buying into the Bin Laden story and the official 9/11 cover-up, this is a six-star book that easily provides one stellar concept that must be integrated into the fabric of every foreign policy — understanding the failures of the centers in each state with respect to the more traditional peripheries — and a deep broad articulation of why the US “war on terror” has actually been a thoughtless unnecessarily expensive and harmful war on tribes.

Ignore those who demean this book or this author. I generally consider Brookings to be expert at publishing dumbed down talking points for loosely-educated policy makers, but this book is easily in the top tier, a book Cambridge or Oxford would be comfortable published, and a book that ties in perfectly with Philip Allot's extraordinary book The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State. Read my review of that book as a pre-quel to reading this book, which I certainly recommend in the strongest possible terms.

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Worth a Look: The Promise and Limits of Private Power: Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy

Worth A Look
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Amazon Page

This book examines and evaluates various private initiatives to enforce fair labor standards within global supply chains. Using unique data (internal audit reports, and access to more than 120 supply chain factories and 700 interviews in 14 countries) from several major global brands, including NIKE, HP, and the International Labor Organization's Factory Improvement Programme in Vietnam, this book examines both the promise and the limitations of different approaches to actually improve working conditions, wages, and working hours for the millions of workers employed in today's global supply chains. Through a careful, empirically grounded analysis of these programs, this book illustrates the mix of private and public regulation needed to address these complex issues in a global economy.

Forum:  Can Global Brands Create Just Supply Chains?

A forum on corporate responsibility for factory workers

Boston Review, 21 May 2013

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Koko: Mushroom-Based Packaging Replacing Plastics or Styrofoam

Design, Economics/True Cost, Innovation
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Koko
Koko

Ecovative Web Site

Ecovative’s environmentally responsible products can replace materials ranging from petroleum based expanded plastics (like Styrofoam™) to particle board made using carcinogenic formaldehyde. Our materials are 100% renewable, and primarily made from agricultural byproducts. These low-embodied energy materials can be home composted when they’re no longer needed.
Many of the materials and chemicals that are commonly used come from non-renewable fossil fuel resources. However, cheaply extracted petroleum and gas supplies are a thing of the past. Our landfills are filling up, and even when we recycle things properly, it requires a lot of energy only to yield a lower grade material. The future lies in using rapid renewables that can also be returned to the earth at the end of their use.

Form and Fungus

Can mushrooms help us get rid of Styrofoam?

The New Yorker, May 20, 2013

Berto Jongman: US Attacking Iran and China — While Living in a Glass House

02 China, 05 Iran, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency
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Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Silent War

On the hidden battlefields of history’s first known cyber-war, the casualties are piling up. In the U.S., many banks have been hit, and the telecommunications industry seriously damaged, likely in retaliation for several major attacks on Iran. Washington and Tehran are ramping up their cyber-arsenals, built on a black-market digital arms bazaar, enmeshing such high-tech giants as Microsoft, Google, and Apple. With the help of highly placed government and private-sector sources, Michael Joseph Gross describes the outbreak of the conflict, its escalation, and its startling paradox: that America’s bid to stop nuclear proliferation may have unleashed a greater threat.

Read full article (5 screens).

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Mini-Me: Matt Drudge Was Right? Citizen Journalism a Pre-Cursor to Citizen Intelligence…

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Crowd-Sourcing, Media
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Who?  Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Matt Drudge was right

By Chris Cillizza

Washington Post, June 6, 2013

Say the words “Matt Drudge” to any political junkie and you will get one of two responses.

Matt Drudge

The first will be strong disdain for Drudge’s eponymously-named news site and its tilt toward outrageous headlines and conservative viewpoints.

The second will be sheer awe for Drudge’s continued ability to pull in massive amounts of web traffic using a site that any teenager with an affinity for the Internet could make in under 15 minutes.

No one — and we mean no one — lacks an opinion when it comes to Drudge and the Drudge Report. The combination of the controversy surrounding Drudge and his legendary reclusiveness makes it difficult to have a conversation about his influence on the culture of web journalism that doesn’t devolve into a shouting match within seconds.

But, Drudge did — and does — have an impact. So, it’s worth going back 15 years this week to a speech Drudge gave at the National Press Club in which he outlined his vision of the future of journalism.

. . . . . . . .

It’s hard to argue that the vision Drudge had for the news business is what the news business has, in large part, become. It’s worth watching his whole speech, which is below, not only for his remarks but for the obvious and not-at-all-disguised disdain that Doug Harbrecht, the president of the Press Club at the time, has for Drudge.

Read rest of article.

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GO ARMY: War College Speaker Videos on YouTube Channel

04 Education, Military, Officers Call
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Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Even if you can’t make it to the Army War College you can still take advantage of its world-class faculty, wide breadth of guests speakers and internationally attended conference via our YouTube page.

Located at www.youtube.com/usarmywarcollege the site boasts nearly 400 videos and is updated regularly with new content.

Want to know the best part? You don’t need an account to access the site and watch the videos. Simply click the link above and scroll down the selection of videos available.  You can even watch these on your mobile devices.

If you do want to be notified when a new video is posted it’s easy. Simply log-in YouTube using a Google or YouTube account and click the “subscribe” button on the top of the page.  Now each time we add

Berto Jongman: Deviant Globalization + Legalized Crime Meta-RECAP

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Academia, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental
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Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Not new, but now becoming more transparent to the public.

Book: Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (2011)

Criminals of the World Unite: A smart member of the global warrior elite “discovers” the next big threat

Myths of Terrorism

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