Sorry I have been off the net for a month…

I have been very busy travelling, teaching workshops and lecturing. I have been very blessed. I have posted some new items of interest.

Don

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No One Cares

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_one_cares_20100503/ Posted on May 3, 2010

By Chris Hedges

We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more Afghans and Pakistani civilians have been killed. Millions have been driven into squalid displacement and refugee camps. Thousands of our own soldiers and Marines have died or been crippled physically and psychologically. We sustain these wars, which have no real popular support, by borrowing trillions of dollars that can never be repaid, even as we close schools, states go into bankruptcy, social services are cut, our infrastructure crumbles, tens of millions of Americans are reduced to poverty, and real unemployment approaches 17 percent. Collective, suicidal inertia rolls us forward toward national insolvency and the collapse of empire. And we do not protest. The peace movement, despite the heroic efforts of a handful of groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Green Party and Code Pink, is dead. No one cares.

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All you never wanted to know about counter insurgency and the American military mindset

The following spaghetti diagram has been making the round of Versailles … it purports to summarize the strategy for winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans.  But this is just the tip of the systems dynamics iceberg.  This diagram is based on an attempt to model the non linear feedbacks implied in General Petraeus’s Counter Insurgency Manual, FM 3-24.  I do not know whether this is the product of a contractor or the military, the author of the technique was a Navy officer in 2008, but this is 2010 and the graphic has a contractor logo.

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Politicans are more dangerous than Terrorists

Politicians: Far More Dangerous than Terrorists   Written by Becky Akers

Wednesday, 12 May 2010

So the dictatorial Attorney General of a dictatorial administration has opined that keeping the homeland secure requires “ modifying” the Miranda warning read to criminal suspects (“You have the right to remain silent…”).His excuse is the usual one: “We’re now dealing with international terrorism,” Eric Holder announced last weekend. “And if we are going to have a system that is capable of dealing in a public safety context with this new threat, I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying [the laws surrounding Miranda]… That’s one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress to do, to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our time and the threat that we now face.”

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Training Revolution from the Association of the United States Army (AUSA)

Today’s Training and Education (Development) Revolution: The Future is Now
by Donald E. Vandergriff (Land Warfare Paper No. 76, April 2010) 
Discusses the changes the Army is making to its educational system to provide Soldiers with the best tools for success on the battlefield. Today’s highly complex operations have emphasized the importance of quality decisionmaking at junior levels. Even with modern command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities, the noncommissioned officer or junior officer on the ground sometimes has the best situational awareness and thus is likely to make the best decision—but only if he or she is equipped, intellectually and culturally, to properly assess the situation and creatively arrive at the best solution. Adaptability, critical thinking and creativity have become critical skills for modern Soldiers. The Army’s new approach, Outcomes-Based Training & Education (OBT&E), is an educational philosophy that teaches both basic skills and aids the development of leaders, using the Combat Applications Training Course (CATC ) and the Adaptive Leader Methodology (ALM). These new training and education tools will produce the kind of flexible, adaptable Soldiers and leaders the modern battlefield demands.

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