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Journal: Out of Troops, Strategy, & Leadership

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Military
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Phi Beta Iota: We'll figure out the troop balance, probably by getting serious about Of, By, and Through IQ forces between now and July 2010–we do that or both the Democrats and Republicans are toast in November 2010.  What merits deep reflection below is the mental health angle that ties in with the Fort Hood massacre.  And while we're on that topic, RUSH AND CRUSH is the new paradigm for surviving armed attacks.  See, Shout, Rush & Crush.  Absent a gattling gun, no one should be able to hit more than three people with this strategy, and two of those will almost certainly live.  From Virgiia Polytechnic to Fort Hood, citizens standing like sheep waiting to be murdered, is an indictment of our culture, education, and lack of leadership.

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

New Afghan War Headache: Not Enough Troops Available?

David Wood, 11/6/09

Just to maintain the 16 current brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan is, let's see, three times 16 is 48 and – oops! We're already out of BCTs! And here's the White House blithely batting around numbers like 40,000 more troops. That's roughly eight BCTs, which do not exist.

Below the fold: two key paragraphs on stress, battle performance after multipe tour, and suicides.

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Worth a Look: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Earth Intelligence, Media, Worth A Look
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Home Page
Home Page

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is a collaboration of some of the world's top investigative reporters. Launched in 1997 as a project of the Center for Public Integrity, ICIJ globally extends the Center's style of watchdog journalism, working with 100 journalists in 50 countries to produce long-term, transnational investigations.

  1. Tobacco Underground Tobacco Underground

    The illicit trafficking of tobacco is a multibillion-dollar business today, fueling organized crime and corruption, robbing governments of needed tax money, and spurring addiction to a deadly product. Drawn by profits rivaling those of narcotics, smugglers move cigarettes by the billion, making tobacco the world's most widely smuggled legal substance.

  2. Collateral Damage Collateral Damage

    Post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and military aid and assistance had a huge impact in nations around the world — and at home. This award-winning project includes 20 articles from four continents.

  3. Divine Intervention, U.S. AIDS Policy Abroad Divine Intervention, U.S. AIDS Policy Abroad

    A year-long investigation of President Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS abroad finds that conservative ideology hinders its real benefits by insisting on abstinence-only programs over promoting condom use.

  4. Windfalls of War, U.S. Contractors in Afghanistan & Iraq Windfalls of War, U.S. Contractors in Afghanistan & Iraq

    A comprehensive examination of companies that won contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan — and of their campaign contributions, led by General Electric and Vinnell Corporation (the former Northrup Grumman).

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Journal: Global Climate Change Lobby Intent on Copenhagen Stalemate

Earth Intelligence
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Online Home Page

Starting in July 2009, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists fielded a multinational team of reporters to uncover the special interests attempting to influence negotiations leading to the pivotal December talks on a climate change treaty in Copenhagen. The project built upon the Center’s previous reporting in Washington on efforts to influence the U.S. Congress in The Climate Change Lobby. The ICIJ team involved reporters in eight of the major economies deemed essential to a successful treaty: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, and the United States.

November 04, 2009, 11:01 pm
Washington — Toward a Stalemate in Copenhagen

Phi Beta Iota: Governments are incompetent at global Earth Intelligence (although the Earth Science Initiative under Bush-Cheney showed real promise), and corporations lie. It is not helpful to have the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Honorable Al Gore also play very loosely with the truth.  The one public interest solution, and one alone that will enable humanity to achieve conscious evolution: creation of a World Brain with an embedded EarthGame.

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Worth a Look: UFO’s Known & Obscured

Intelligence (Extra-Terrestrial), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Worth A Look
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Amazon Page
Amazon Page

UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, 1941-1973

Amazon Reviewer M. Packo: Mr. Dolan's perspective on how a better understanding of UFOs has been obfuscated and frustrated by agencies within our government, as well as much of our national media, conjoined of course, is presented efficiently and without distortion or cant. His summary of 25 years' worth of global UFO sightings alone makes this a valuable reference book. Combined with other developments related to the elaboration of our national security apparatus – domestic and international – this study achieves truly authoritative status. This is a book that every student of American history should read, regardless of their opinion about UFOs.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 (UFOs and the National Security State, Vol. 2)

Amazon Reviewer Juan Ordonez: The second volume of the planned trilogy of “Ufo's & The National Security State” follows the methodical coverage of the UFO events in America and other parts of the world between 1973 to 1991. As in the first volume, the narrative is fluid and well organized, making it a page turner. The cases and reports exposed are not just interesting but also well referenced. Dolan clearly delineates when a case is fully supported or is just unproven (but suggestive). In addition, Dolan presents a parallel account of world wide events that might have been affected by the narrative of the UFO cases covered by the book. Although the book follows the chronological account of cases as in the first volume, this volume hints at a possible evolution of the UFO narrative (or folklore, depending on the reader) in consonance with the rise of corporate power as the main factor of power in the developed world. This second volume, as the first does not look for a direct and simple answer to a multifaceted issue such as the UFO's, instead presents the existing evidence about the most relevant cases and allows the reader to shape an informed opinion.

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Worth A Look: System Vulnerability Approach to Climate Change

03 Environmental Degradation, Methods & Process, Worth A Look
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Berto Jongman Recommends:

Impacts of Climate Change: A System Vulnerability Approach (2007)

By Nils Gilman, Peter Schwartz, Doug Randall

Over the past two decades, and especially in the last few years, climate change has become one of the most heavily researched subjects in science. Yet climate change impact studies remain at the low end of usefulness for policymakers and others; they are not predictive enough to be actionable because the exact nature of the events that will jar the planet in the near- and long-term future—the wheres, whens, and hows of climate change—remains both unknown and unknowable. This paper offers policymakers an alternative approach to thinking about climate change and its impacts. Instead of starting with climate change and working out toward impacts, we focus on systems that are already generally vulnerable first, and then consider what the geophysics of climate change may do to them. This approach has two benefits. First, it limits the number of logical steps necessary for thinking about the impacts of climate change, enabling more confident insights and conclusions. Second, it cuts across analytic stovepipes and gives regional specialists a framework for thinking about what climate change will mean for their particular areas, based on expertise they already have. Download PDF
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Journal: Fort Hood Cognitive Dissonance

Ethics
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Following provided by a retired Marine colonel now serving in Afghanistan:

“That I have read by Jerry Pournelle, a Scifi writer posted the following on his Blog

THOUGHTS ON FORT HOOD FROM JERRY POURNELLE: “The politically correct spin is coming like a tidal wave. He is a crazy guy who happens to be a Muslim. All of that misses the point: he was disloyal to the United States, and said so openly and many times; yet he remained a commissioned officer of the United States. That is the point that is being overlooked. Whether the disloyalty is due to a psychotic episode or some other cause is not important.”

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Journal: Obama-Clinton Implode Middle East

02 Diplomacy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Ethics, Government, Peace Intelligence
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Obama Fails in Middle East

Robert Dreyfuss on 11/06/2009

Chuck Spinney Sends…..

The announcement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he will not run for reelection is the exclamation point on the utter collapse of the Obama adminstration's Middle East policy. Launched to great expectations — the appointment of George Mitchell, Obama's Cairo declaration that the plight of the Palestinians is intolerable — it is now in complete disarray. It is, without doubt, the first major defeat for Obama's hope-and-change foreign policy.

Here's how it unraveled.

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