Deforestation and the true cost of Europe's cheap meat
Cheap meat has become a way of life in much of Europe, but the full price is being paid across Latin America as vast soya plantations and their attendant chemicals lead to poisonings and violence. From the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Phi Beta Iota: “True Cost” of anything cannot be established without a holistic strategic analytic framework such as is shown below. No one does this. Until they do, no political policy and budget will be sensible or sustainable.
Golda vs. Goldstone: A Cultural Evolution of Getting Away With Murder
The date when the United States became Israel's unquestioning benefactor can the fixed with precision: June 8, 1967, the fourth day of the six-day 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
It was on this day that Israel's air and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 US Navy sailors, in what is still the worst loss of naval personnel due to hostile fire since the end of WWII. It was on this day that the Johnson Administration aborted a rescue mission in the process of being mounted by aircraft of the US Navy's 6th Fleet. With the cooperation of the US Congress, the Johnson Administration put into motion a series of responses and non-responses that cumulatively resulted a complete whitewash any serious investigation into the question of whether not Israel deliberately chose to attack a neutral US naval vessel sailing in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. To date, the Liberty incident is the only major naval disaster that has not precipitated an in-depth investigation by the US Congress.
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. ignored warnings before deadly Afghan attack…Three intelligence reports dismissed days before eight U.S. soldiers killed
Bill Gertz, October 16, 2009
Army Maj. T.G. Taylor, a spokesman for the Army's Task Force Mountain Warrior, told The Times that the three reports did not stand out among hundreds of others and that the intelligence was deemed to be not specific and uncorroborated.
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The Economist October 17, 2009 Cover Story
Obama's War: Why the Afghanistan war deserves more resources, commitment and political will
The coalition, however, lacks three essential components of a successful strategy. It needs a credible, legitimate government to work with, the resources to do the job and the belief that America’s president is behind this war.
Many Afghans find it bizarre that the West should devote so much money to Mr Karzai, yet be unable to hold him to account over something so basic as stuffing ballot boxes on an industrial scale. For most, however, the local and provincial leaders matter more than the distant central government.
Why Hewlett-Packard Must Articulate Its Enterprise Strategy
The challenge right now for HP is that the whole is not yet greater than the sum of its parts. For all of the operational-excellence strides Mark Hurd and his team have made, HP has yet to reveal an equally compelling externally facing strategy to the world: what is HP's core strength? What does HP do best?
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HP transforms from printers to diverse tech business
The Palo Alto company, which had $118 billion in sales last year, now draws its biggest profit from a unit that provides tech services to other companies and public agencies. But in the PC segment, Bradley “has been able to do some incredible things with a division that most people thought, before he came on board, couldn't be fixed,” said veteran tech analyst Rob Enderle. “He appears to be on a fast track” among company executives, Enderle added. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hurd is considering a plan to fold the printing business into Bradley's division.
‘Not Evil, Just Wrong’: What’s really at stake with global warming
Point of View By CHARLES COLSON
BreakPoint October 15, 2009
Global warming is a fact of life. Not a fact in a scientific sense. Far from it. But a fact in that it is an issue—an issue that will shape public policy, international relations, and the economies of the world for decades to come.
An eye-opening documentary called Not Evil, Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria is being released this week by the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation—an outfit I endorse.
I dare say the film will be controversial because it tackles head on the sacred cows of the man-made global warming crowd.
The film points out that the British High Court ruled in a lawsuit that Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, “is scientifically flawed and has nine significant exaggerations and factual errors.” Among those exaggerations are the claims that sea levels could rise 20 feet by the end of the century, and that polar bears are disappearing because of global warming (in fact, they are not).
Not Evil, Just Wrong also presents a number of scientists and a founding member of the radical environmental organization Greenpeace, who are unafraid to challenge the chief scientific claims behind global warming.