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Economics
The Shock Doctrine: The evil of “Disaster Capitalism”, a book report video was posted to the Crooks and Liars  blog on December 1, 2007
Income Inequality Gap Widens By GREG IP October 12, 2007; Page A2 of the Wall Street Journal
Who has the Oil from the Energy Bulletin
Help Not Wanted, Congress is doing its best to lose the global talent war from The Economist Magazine of April 8, 2008

The War
The Economist, November 3-9,2007, page 17 of A special report on religion and public life.
" One great irony of the war on terror is that although George Bush has declared war on jihadism, his enemy devote very little energy to fighting him. The jihadists' main war is not against the West but against apostate Muslim regimes [those that reject the faith]: where they do battle with outsiders, it is mainly against occupying powers--Russia in Chechnya, America in Iraq, India in Kashmir, and Israel in Pakistan."

Some Facts from Wikipedia
A Concise 20th Century History of Iran
A Concise 20th Century History of Iraq
Sunnis and Shiites at War
Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Muslim Fundamentalism
Militant Hamas versus Moderate Fatah in Palestine
Book Reviews from the New York Times, Crooks and Liars, and The Economist
Blackwater The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
Book Review-- American Dynasty  Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush
Book Review-- HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD
 The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties from the New York Times
Book Reviews-- Presidential Courage summary of the first eight chapters from
How jihad went freelance is a review of three recent books. Al-Qaeda has evolved from a single group to an amorphous movement. Does that make it less dangerous or more so? Jan 31st 2008 of The Economist.
Book Summaries from 21st Century Learning Products
American Dynasty Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, by Kevin Phillips
Second Chance Three Presidents and the Crisis of America Superpower, by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Presidential Courage Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, by Michael Beschloss

Social Security
To Improve Social Security, "Follow the Money"
  by Walter Antoniotti

From The Center For Retirement Research at Boston College
Effects of long-term care on Medicaid costs.
The recent trend towards
later retirement
.
Will people be healthy enough to
work longer
?

Education
Book Summaries from 21st Century Learning Products
Education and Income Inequality, chapter 21 of The Age of Turbulence,
Adventures in a New World, by Alan Greenspan


From the Department of Labor
A bachelors degree or higher will be required by 13.9 million( 25%) of  the 54 million job openings to be filled by workers entering an occupation for the first time between 2004 and 2014. Only 6.9 million(12.8%) of the openings will be for "pure college graduate" occupations, "... those where at least 60 percent of current workers aged 25-44 have a bachelor’s or higher degree, fewer than 20 percent have a high school diploma or less education, and fewer than 20 percent have taken college courses but do not have a bachelor’s degree." For economic analysis by different occupations read No Bachelors Degree and College Graduates from the Fall of 2006 Occupational Outlook Quarterly.

From the Washington Monthly
 "Is Our Students Learning?"

From Forbes Magazine
Five Reasons To Skip College
Click here to see the five more reasons not to go to college.

 


 

 

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From the National Center on Education and the Economy
Tough Choices’: Radical Ideas, Misguided Assumptions
is a good summary with an incorrect conclusion. Do no harm means take no risks and "Creative Destruction' requires we take risks.

From
Walter Antoniotti,
Every Child Employable, not  "No Child Left Behind", should be our educational slogan.

Governors Wrong, College Prep Not For Everyone provides information on how many need a college degree.

Education is Up For All, Wages are Up For Some Women

Education Reform explains why educators, not academicians should design our educational system.

Investing In Education, An Economic View is provided by leading economists and managers.

Not All College Majors Are Created Equal

Interesting Thoughts Concerning Education from Business Experts


A little humor?

The 5 Minute University

 

Health

Avoidable deaths | Where do all the dollars go? | Economist.com

America lags behind its peers in preventing avoidable deaths.
www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10499177 - Similar pages

 


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Who has the Oil from The Big Picture blog of December 22, 2007 For more info read the Energy Bulletin.

The Shock Doctrine: The evil of “Disaster Capitalism”

Posted: 01 Dec 2007 06:40 PM CST

video_wmv Download (1076) | Play (1167)  video_mov Download (610) | Play (657)  (h/t Logan)

There has been no shortage of books chronicling the dystopia that is the Bush Administration.   And in this job, I’ve read quite a few of them.  None of them have made as powerful an impact as Naomi Klein’s The Shock DoctrineI promise you, it will change how you look at government policy and responses.  It also finally sealed forever, for me at least,  the coffin of the utter bollocks of Friedman economics.  Listen to me carefully, you free market fanatics: FRIEDMAN. POLICIES. DO. NOT. WORK. PERIOD.  His version of ‘free market economics’ STIFLES democracy.  They create an oligarchy that is the opposite of democracy.

Don’t believe me?  Author Naomi Klein gives compelling examples in history proving  that “Disaster Capitalism” has been the foundation of government’s actions and how none of it has been done for the benefit of the populace.   

Al-Qaeda

How jihad went freelance

Jan 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

Al-Qaeda has evolved from a single group to an amorphous movement. Does that make it less dangerous or more so?

Panos

TERRORISTS are a bit like you and me, or so Marc Sageman suggests. It might be comforting to think that angry young Islamists are crazed psychopaths or sex-starved adolescents who have been brainwashed in malign madrassas. But Mr Sageman, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, explodes each of these myths, and others besides, in an unsettling account of how al-Qaeda has evolved from the organisation headed by Osama bin Laden into an amorphous movement—a “leaderless jihad”.

Mr Sageman is a leading advocate of what is called the “buddy” theory of terrorism. He has spent much time asking why well-educated young men, from middle-class backgrounds, often with a secular education and wives and children, become suicide bombers. He suggests that radicalisation is a collective rather than an individual process in which friendship and kinship are key components.

The process has four stages. The initial trigger is a sense of moral outrage, usually over some incident of Muslim suffering in Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya or elsewhere. This acquires a broader context, becoming part of what Mr Sageman calls a “morality play” in which Islam and the West are seen to be at war. In stage three, the global and the local are fused, as geopolitical grievance resonates with personal experience of discrimination or joblessness. And finally the individual joins a terrorist cell, which becomes a surrogate family, nurturing the jihadist world-view and preparing the initiate for martyrdom. Many Muslims pass through the first three phases; only a few take the final step.

Mr Sageman has unusual credentials: a former CIA officer, he is also a forensic psychiatrist and a counter-terrorism consultant. He published the first version of his theory three years ago in an influential book, “Understanding Terror Networks”. His aim, to put the study of this new kind of terrorism on to a scientific footing, has not changed. But al-Qaeda has, and the task of analysing it has become more complex.

In his new book Mr Sageman's sample of militants has grown from 172 to 500. He gives more prominence to Europe, where, after the London and Madrid bombings and other thwarted attempts, a new front-line has opened up. He devotes a chapter to the internet. Crucially, he argues that most of today's suicide bombers have little or no link with the original al-Qaeda (dubbed “al-Qaeda central”) but are part of a broader, more amorphous phenomenon which he calls the “al-Qaeda social movement”. Mr Sageman is sceptical of the view, which gathered weight last year, that “al-Qaeda central” is resurgent. Rather, it is the mutual attraction of freelance jihadists, outraged by the Iraq war and increasingly mobilised online, which should worry us most.

Like others, Mr Sageman believes the Iraq war, which appeared to legitimise the idea of a rapacious West in conflict with Islam, was a spectacular own-goal for America. Unless that idea can be successfully countered, he says, America may find itself confronting not just a terrorist fringe but a substantial segment of the Muslim world, which would intensify and prolong the conflict to disastrous effect. A successful hearts-and-minds campaign, on the other hand, would stiffen moderate spines and help take the glory out of jihadism; eventually, “the leaderless jihad [would] expire, poisoned by its own toxic message.” It is an optimistic conclusion, given all that has gone before.

There is much common ground between Mr Sageman and Daniel Byman, a counter-terrorism expert at Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution who was at one time on the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission). He too laments the Bush administration's lack of a coherent strategy, the needless alienation of allies, the failure to win Muslim hearts and minds, and the deadly fall-out from Iraq. Both authors believe that in the war of ideas Americans should focus on jihadist brutality rather than trying to burnish their own image. Both regard Europe as the main battleground, and they also question just how useful democratisation can be as a tool of counter-terrorism; indeed Mr Sageman believes it is entirely irrelevant.

Mr Byman argues that America must do better on five fronts: the military, the war of ideas, intelligence, homeland defence and, in a nuanced way, democratic reform. Many of his policy proposals are eminently sensible, though some people will decry his advocacy of Israeli-style targeted killings. But where Mr Sageman is plain spoken, Mr Byman is often hesitant and diffuse. He has a disconcerting knack of undercutting his own arguments. Moreover, his remorseless concentration on prescription, with a minimum of explanatory background, will put off all but the most dedicated experts.

Counter-terror specialists are seldom knowledgeable about the intricacies of modern Islam, and vice versa. Those looking for a reliable guide to the currents of political Islam, of which al-Qaeda-style jihadism is but one, could do worse than turn to a young American scholar, Peter Mandaville, an associate professor at George Mason University, near Washington, DC. Mr Mandaville's primer, “Global Political Islam”, is a well-informed account of the origins of mainstream Islamism, the strategies of Islamisation, the emergence of the radical fringe, the competition for authority among Muslim elites and the impact of globalisation on Muslim politics. This is a study which sets out to transcend the “narrow moment” of al-Qaeda. Given our current obsession with global jihad, this book is a welcome companion to Mr Sageman's work.