The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Keen: Government should print money to pay off our debts
Economist Steve Keen is one of the few economists to have predicted the global financial crisis and now he says we are already in a Great Depression. He says the way to escape it is to bankrupt the banks, nationalise the financial system and pay off people's debt.
He admits what he is advocating is radical but says it is time governments gave money to debtors to pay down debt instead of to creditors such as banks who have held onto it.
WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 25-27, 2011
The Good, the Bizarre and the Ugly
AF-PAK Sitrep
by FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY, Counterpunch
It is becoming increasingly clear that the AF-PAK war will end in yet another grand strategic defeat for the United States. To date, President Obama, has been able to distract attention from this issue, but given the stakes in 2012, that dodge is unlikely to last. Get ready for an ugly debate over “who lost the Afghan War.”
To those readers who disagree with my opening line, I urge you to study Anthony Cordersman’s most recent situation report on the AF-PAK War, THE AFGHANISTAN- PAKISTAN WAR AT THE END OF 2011: Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)? It was issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on November 15. Reading the report is heavy slogging but I urge readers to download and examine it — at the very least, take a few minutes to read the executive summary.
Now compare Cordesman’s systematic, detailed, and workmanlike analysis to the bizarre obscurantism peddled one week later, on 22 November, co-authored by Michael O’Hanlon (Brookings Institution) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (American Enterprise Institute) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, entitled Defining Victory in Afghanistan.
O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz posit the bizarre thesis that the admittedly less than successful outcome against the FARC guerrillas in Columbia is a favorable model for justifying continuing business as usual in Afghanistan. Viewed through the refractions of their Columbian lens, O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz conclude, “Our current exit strategy of reducing American troops to 68,000 by the end of next summer and transferring full security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014 is working. In a war where the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable strategic patience, we need to stay patient and resolute.”
Are O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz living on the same planet as Cordesman or do they live in some kind of parallel universe?
I submit it is latter. Here’s why –
Patrick Seale is one of the finest and most experienced writers now reporting on the Middle East
by Patrick Seale
Agence Global, 22 Nov 2011
Syria is heading for a bloody sectarian civil war. The mutual kidnappings, torture, beheadings and displacement of populations taking place between the Sunni and Alawi communities in the central city of Homs — often described as “the capital of the revolution” — send a fearsome signal of what might be in store for the rest of the country.
To avert this descent into hell must surely be the immediate priority of Arab leaders and the international community.
The Iraqi example next door is there for all to see. The Anglo-American invasion destroyed a major Arab country. The country’s institutions and infrastructure were shattered; sectarian demons were released, triggering a civil war. Hundreds of thousands died and millions were displaced from their homes or forced to flee abroad. The country was dismembered as the Kurds established their own semi-independent statelet.
Syria needs the intervention of a high-powered, neutral, contact group to stop the killing on both sides.
Phi Beta Iota: This article, written in 2007, remains the standard in the field for both brevity and authoritativeness.
Business Intelligence is data mining, not intelligence. Competitive Intelligence focuses on competitors and does not do 360 degree holistic analytics.
The modern term for a full service program is Commercial Intelligence, which uses only open sources and ethical methods. It should not be confused with secret government intelligence or with illegal industrial espionage.
Mr. Herring is also the creator of the now globally-recognized “Herring Triangle” graphic of four levels of commercial intelligence and their relative costs.
Herring Triangle as Published in New Craft of Intelligence
Full Text Below the Line for Google Translate
‘Months of public sector strikes' loom: Wednesday's walkout is just the start, warn unions
The Daily Mail, 25 November 2011
Union bosses have amassed a fighting fund of tens of millions of pounds to bring the country to its knees with waves of strikes.
The rolling programme will begin – but not end – next week with the biggest walkout since the General Strike of 1926.
In a chilling warning, union barons said it was fantasy to think the action on November 30 would be a one-off.
Invite your attention to pages 5 thru 7 of attached which outlines in very clear terms the likely FY 2013 and longer term impacts on the Department of Defense and the Joint Force of the impending sequester brought about by this week's dereliction of duty on the part of the Senators and Representatives making up the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.
SecDef Panetta to Senator McCain on Sequester (PDF 2 pages)
Phi Beta Iota: Panetta-McCain may be the toxic replacment to Cheney-Warner. The letter is without merit. The acquisition system is so broken now the Navy and Army cannot build anything coherently–the Navy still lacks Naval Gun Fire and the Army still lacks an infantry weapon able to out-gun the Taliban, while the Air Force continues to stink at close air support and lack both an intra-theater adequacy of lift and a long-haul heavy lift capability (or the ability to be effective above 6,000 ft). DoD, in short, is a mis-managed mess and Panetta has no idea how to go about fixing that, nor does he want to. Lockheed Martin and others are quite happy with the way things are, where 50% of every dollar is waste but that waste is profit for them because it includes their overhead. It is true that the current laws mandated by Congress make it difficult for any Cabinet Secretary to cut waste–this is the same Congress that mandated we pay 100% asking price for Medicare drugs instead of the more common global standard of 2% for generic wholesale. As long as Congress remains corrupt, and the SecDef remains corrupt, there is no fixing this problem. The FACT is that we have to cut one trillion a year (what we are borrowing), not one trillion over ten years. The FACT is that DoD would be much stronger if it could combine both intelligence and integrity and actually create the four forces after next, at a much reduced cost, that those with intelligence and integrity have been discussing for decades, and with greater intensity, since the mid-1990's.
See Also:
#OWS => New forms of Nonviolence and Leadership emerging??
Something remarkable has been going on out there – especially at UC Davis. I have a hard time figuring out how to articulate it. I haven't yet seen anyone talk about quite what I'm seeing, so I'll give it a try.
Here's what it looks like to me: Nonviolent activism is evolving rapidly right before our eyes. The level of spot-on – and often spontaneous – nonviolent creativity that's showing up exceeds what I've seen before, to an extent that I wonder if a fundamentally new and more powerful form of nonviolent action is emerging.
. . . . . . .
While my initial response was to appreciate the students' powerful use of silence, I realized today another significant aspect was the speed with which this innovative response was born and implemented: It happened just one day after the incident that triggered it.
Then I saw an 8 minute video that showed what happened IMMEDIATELY after the pepper spray incident
