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Chuck Spinney: Wallerstein on China-Russia Grand Strategy

The self-referencing chattering class is up in arms about the $400 billion Russia-China gas deal, seeing it and the associated Russia-China alliance as a threat to the grand strategic ambitions of the United States to remain, in the words of President Obama at West Point, the world’s “indispensable”* power.  Taking place against the immediate backdrop of the prevailing US narrative** …

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Marcus Aurelius: CSA Reflects on Whole of Government Deficiencies — Military Best for Strong on Strong, Not Strong on Weak

Dempsey Wants to ‘Rebalance the Use of Military Power’ By James Kitfield Defense One, May 12, 2014 At the top of the United States military’s vast, global bureaucracy sits the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer in the land and the president’s senior military advisor. The chairman sits between the four-star …

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Berto Jongman: US National Security Achilles Heel – Electromagnetic Spectrum’s Vulnerability to Being Fried

U.S. National Security’s Achilles Heel – The Electromagnetic Spectrum Over the past four years bills on cybersecurity, Electromagnetic Pulse threats, and other forms of “purposeful interference” with U.S. cyberspace have been introduced only to go nowhere. By now it has been well established that EMP, whether in the form of a Carrington Event of solar origin or the …

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Berto Jongman: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) — Useful Failures

Never mind the 4% completion rate, still a useful starting point. Take college and university courses online completely free In recent years massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become a trend in online education. The term was coined in 2008 by David Cormier, manager of web communications and innovations at the University of Prince Edward …

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Review (Guest): The Tyranny of Experts – Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor

5.0 of 5.0 Stars Why development takes place (or doesn’t) By Mal Warwick on April 3, 2014 This book is full of surprises. In The Tyranny of Experts, the author of the seminal book The White Man’s Burden drills down into the history of economic development around the world in search of its causes. What …

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WInslow Wheeler: An Inadequate Defense Budget? Or Incompetent Authorization & Appropriations Personalities?

An Inadequate Defense Budget?    Compared to Whom?   Compared to When? Many Republicans and numerous Democrats, especially on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, have been characterizing the US defense budget as inadequate.  They propose to release the Pentagon from the statutory spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011 and its “sequestration,” …

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John Maguire: Baby With the Bathwater – The Wrongful Rejection of Cold Fusion — Part I

Baby With the Bathwater: The Wrongful Rejection of Cold Fusion — Part I 2014 is upon us, and progress in the field of Cold Fusion (aka LENR) marches steadily on. Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC), currently operating out of California and working in collaboration with Stanford Research Institute (SRI), recently signed a multi-million dollar deal with …

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