Review (Fiction): Hell or Richmond

5 Star, Fiction, War & Face of Battle
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PRINTABLE DOC: (2 Pages) Review Peters Hell or Richmond

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

Ralph Peters

5.0 out of 5 stars Equal to Cain at Gettysburg, Takes Fact-Based Fiction to New Level, May 13, 2013

I started this book, having given a rave review to Cain at Gettysburg convinced that the sequel would disappoint, as most sequels do.  Although I counted only five goosebump moments in this new book (Cain had six, The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War By Michael Shaara only had one), I have to rate it the equal of the earlier book, and also the linch pin book in what should be a series of at least four books, each – as the first two have been – a detailed study of men at war at all four levels (strategic, operational, tactical, technical). The concluding sentence in this book is brilliant, and it left me with precisely the sense of angst and anticipation for the next campaign as the author no doubt intended. If Cain was the thunderclap of divine providence, then Hell is the tough hard slog through mud during which the North adapts and learns lessons while Lee's health worsens substantially, his weakness all the more grave because Longstreet is wounded and Stuart killed, leaving Lee with no bench, less Gordon as a late bloomer too easily ignored by his elders.

There is little doubt that with this book Ralph Peters has established a nearly impregnable position as the leading practitioner of historical fiction, taking it to a new level of accuracy and relevance to the military and political professionals who wage war, setting the gold standard for factual historical fiction that reveals the soul of those making history.

If I were to sum up the book in three words it would be leadership, logistics, and learning.

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Stephen E. Arnold: Principles of Open Source and Social Media Align

#OSE Open Source Everything
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Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Principles of Open Source and Social Media Align

One of the newest major paths of technology, social media, owes much to a well-established model, open source. Giovanni Rodriguez draws many similarities between the two technologies (and ways of thinking) in his article for Forbes, “What Social Media (And the World) Owes to Open Source.”

Rodriguez finds some application:

“First, the principles of open source are not just restricted to technology projects; they can be applied — and have been applied, even before the OS movement got its name — to almost any market that depends on an ecosystem of different players.  Second — and this is something that so many tech-marketers and non-tech social media marketers ignore, forget, or never quite got:  the principles don’t just apply to online engagement, but offline as well.”

At the beginning of the article, the author states he was inspired to write the piece after attending a conference. The event that the author references is Lucene Revolution hosted by LucidWorks. LucidWorks is a great example of how these two worlds collide. Their value-added software is based on open source Apache Lucene/Solr, and their devoted developers and users form a strong social community. These types of value-added solutions are strongest when reinforced by the principles of both social networks and open source innovation.

Emily Rae Aldridge, May 13, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

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Stephen E. Arnold: Bloomberg Exposed for Surveillance & Two-Way Exploitation of All Bloomberg Terminals

Commerce, Corruption
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Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Bloomberg and Alleged Two Way Systems

Just a small thing, the Bloomberg privacy breach allegations. There are far weightier matters in search; for example, are evaluations and ratings of search vendors objective? Someone on the LinkedIn Enterprise Search Engine Professional Group even raised the possibility that vendors “pay” for coverage in some consultants’ evaluations of technology.

Well, on to the smaller thing which is labeled this way in the New York Times: “Privacy Breach on Bloomberg’s Data Terminals.” You can located the story in the May 11, 2013, edition of the newspaper. If you look online at http://goo.gl/oeMqA you may be able to view the news story. (Google, no promises because I know how you want every blog post to have continuously updated links, but that’s another issue.)

The main idea seems to have originated with a real journalism operation called The New York Post. This point appears in paragraph six, so it is definitely a subordinate point.

As I understand the allegation, Bloomberg tradition terminals had a function which allowed “journalists to monitor subscribers were promptly disabled.” I think that Bloomberg terminals generate some sort of report which allegedly allowed a journalist to determine if someone had used the terminal. The idea is that no use of a terminal suggests that the person has either moved on, lost his or her hands, or experienced an opportunity to find his / her future elsewhere.

image

How secure are secure systems. Image source: Sandia.gov at http://goo.gl/NaEBE. Modern methods for accessing digital information are difficult to depict. Paper is tangible. Digital data are just “out there.” Humans assume that if it cannot be seen, the problems associated with what’s “out there” are no big deal. Is this an informed viewpoint?

The Atlantic Wire covered the alleged breach in a story called “Why Billions Are at Stake in the Bloomberg Terminal Privacy Problem.” What I found interesting was that the Atlantic Wire pointed out that the breach allegedly allowed a journalist to determine the “news habits” of Bloomberg terminal users. Is this similar to the type of information which online services extract from users’ Web search histories?

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David Swanson: Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
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David Swanson
David Swanson

Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet

It's not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas.  Of course it is.  And if we had direct democracy, polls suggest we would be investing in green energy.  But saying the right thing to a pollster on a phone or in a focus group is hardly the extent of what one ought sensibly to do when the fate of the world is at stake.

Nor do we get a complete explanation by recognizing that our communications system is in bed with our political system, cooperatively pushing lies about our climate and our budget (defunding wars and billionaires is not an option, so there's just no money for new ideas, sorry).  Of course.  But when the planet's climate is being destroyed for all future generations, most of which will therefore not exist, the only sensible course of action is to drop everything and nonviolently overthrow any system of corruption that is carrying out the destruction.

Why don't we?

Misinformation is a surface-level explanation.  Why do people choose to accept obvious misinformation?

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4th Media (Wayne Madsen): USA-CIA-Soros-NeoCons vs Russia in Caucasus

06 Russia, IO Deeds of War
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Wayne Madsen
Wayne Madsen

The Other Tsarnaevs in Waiting: The US CIA, Soros NGOs, & the Neocon- Salafist Interference in Russia, China, Sudan, …

EXTRACT:

It is clear that Jamestown and its CIA bosses are stoking Salafist radicalism in Russia in the same manner as the CIA’s «Al Qaeda» spurred the radical revolts that led to the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya and that are currently attempting to oust Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Jamestown has also called for Russia to accept thousands of Circassian refugees from Syria into the North Caucasus, clearly an attempt to infiltrate additional «Al Qaeda» elements into the volatile region.

One goal of the neo-cons and Salafists is the creation of a Commission of Inquiry led by a globalist – Zionist South African Judge Richard Goldstone has been mentioned as a possibility – to investigate human rights abuses in Chechnya. Of course, the end game is to seek International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments against Chechen and Russian government officials.

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Sheila Casey: Photographic Essay on False Flag Theater — Boston bombing involves clearly staged carnage + Boston False Flag Meta-RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Media
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Sheila Casey

False flag theater: Boston bombing involves clearly staged carnage

 “Does a compelling description of a terrorist attack, replete with ‘eyewitness accounts’ of the terrifying scene, and official pronouncements, constitute an actual event?”Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy.

 By Sheila Casey (Special to Truth and Shadows)

The mainstream media story of the Boston Marathon bombing is of Chechen terrorists who unleashed weapons of mass destruction, killing four and wounding 264 in an unthinkable scene of “bodies flying into the street”, “so many people without legs” and “blood everywhere.”

Everyone ignores the man who just lost his legs.
Everyone ignores the man who just lost his legs.

A massive police response followed, with 9,000 federal, state, FBI and Department of Homeland Security troops conducting door-to-door searches to find and subdue the “armed and extremely dangerous” suspects. Cops unceremoniously ousted residents from their homes to set up impromptu battle stations, and one aimed a gun at a resident who was snapping his picture from a window.

For the vast majority of the American population, this is the truth and they feel no need to look further. Yet those who are willing to question the narrative we’ve been sold and take a hard look behind the curtain may be in for a surprise. Based on the video and photo record, it seems clear that the lead actor in this production—the most grievously wounded, as well as the man who fingered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as the bomber—was faking his injuries, as were most of those allegedly hurt by the first bomb.  We were told his name is Jeff Bauman, but since that can’t be verified and his survival is unbelievable to the point of being miraculous, we’ll simply call him Miracle Man.

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