Penguin: General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, USMC, on Why “Too Busy to Read” Is a Moron’s Cop-Out on Leadership Responsibility

A model for all of us. General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis Email About Being ‘Too Busy To Read’ Is A Must-Read Geoffrey Ingersoll In the run up to Marine Gen. James Mattis‘ deployment to Iraq in 2004, a colleague wrote to him asking about the “importance of reading and military history for officers,” many of whom …

Penguin: Chinese Pick-Up Trucks with Gun-Mounts “Off the Shelf” — Affordable, Low Maintenance, Fast, Stable….

Law of unintended consequences — destabilize Libya, promote Chinese pick-up trucks with gun mounts. Now You Can Buy A Machine Gun-Ready Pickup Truck Ever fancied owning your own “technical” – the sort of pickup truck fitted with a heavy machine gun that rebels careering around the streets from Somalia to Libya have made notorious? Come to the Shanghai Auto Show and …

Penguin: Commercial Co-Optation (Corruption) of Civil Rights & Non-Profits Across USA — and Mayor Bloomberg Did the Right Thing?

This trend is about to continue and we can expect more and more technological solutions that are tailored to the HLS needs. In many cases the industries, especially in Israel, “teach” the market what it needs. This may look a twisted process, but it is not. On the contrary, This is a very healthy trend …

Penguin: The CIA About To Sign $600 Million Deal With Amazon — Six Years After Robert Steele Proposed Amazon as the Hub for (an Open) World Brain

Have no idea what this means: The CIA Is About To Sign A Game-Changing $600 Million Deal With Amazon The CIA is on the verge of signing a cloud computing contract with Amazon, worth up to $600 million over 10 years, reports Frank Konkel at Federal Computer Week. If the details about this deal are true, it …

Penguin: Banks Confiscating Percentage of Depositors Cash in Cyprus, Collapse of Banking Across Europe Possible

Facing Bailout Tax, Cypriots Try to Get Cash Out of Banks ATHENS — In a move that could set off new fears of contagion across the euro zone, anxious depositors drained cash from automated teller machines in Cyprus on Saturday, hours after European officials in Brussels required that part of a new 10 billion euro …

Penguin: US Drones, US Ignorance of Tribes, & Endless War in the Briar Patch

A template for the story of our mis-steps as it will be told for generations. Phi Beta Iota:  The complete story has been posted below.  Technology is not a substitute for thinking.  US policymakers, driven by the arm sales imperative and its 5% kick-backs, have refused to be educated by intelligence professionals that do know …