The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Panetta’s Phony Doomsday Scenario Two Questions for the Next Secretary of Defense by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY CounterPunch, 11 February 2013 EXTRACT Figure 1 places Mr. Panetta’s claim into the context of past defense budgets. I have aggregated these budgets into the four year totals corresponding to each presidential term since Harry Truman’s second term began …
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An excellently argued appeal to sanity. Time to Face the Truth About Iran by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett Agence Global, 07 Feb 2013 Fifty years ago, during the Cuban missile crisis, the United States faced what is frequently described as the defining challenge of the Cold War. Today, some argue that America is …
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Below is a two-part series of reports by Nicolas Pelham on the increasingly precarious situation in Jordan. The proximate causes of Jordan’s growing potential for instability and revolution derive from the spillover effects of the Syrian Civil War. But these effects are amplifying deeper demographic tensions that were already causing serious problems. As Pelham show, …
This is a very important report by highly regarded scholar of the region, especially Algeria. Call to arms will bring no peace to Sahel Region cannot be returned to Mali’s control militarily, says Hugh Roberts By Hugh Roberts, Financial Times, January 24, 2013 6:03 pm The writer is Edward Keller Professor of North African and …
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Into the Sahel Rabbit Hole….”
Don’t hold your breath: One impediment to understanding what works and what does not work in war is an out-of-control secrecy system that clogs up DoD’s own OODA loops with over-classified needlessly compartmented information. The barriers within this system work to stretch out our own decision cycles. But, as the American strategist Colonel John Boyd showed, one …
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Why we lose wars at ever increasing cost…”
The Legacy of Timothy Geithner By SIMON JOHNSON New York Times, 17 January 2013 Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and co-author of White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters …
The attached report by Greg Jaffe in the Washington Post (from 1 August 2012) is an excellent case study of the inside-the-beltway networking by the players in the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC). Jaffe shows these networks build a consensus to keep defense spending high when wars end and a terrifying peace dividend …
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Pivotng to China — Criminally Insane, Business as Usual”
