So right.
While it is reasonable to subject a reform agenda to the 2008 test, this should be at most a side issue. After all, it is virtually certain that our next crisis will not look our last crisis. Financial reform first and foremost is not about preventing the last crisis, but rather about designing a financial system that more effectively serves the rest of the economy.
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The F-35’s turbulent march to combat readiness is far from over — here’s everything that’s wrong with it
http://uk.businessinsider.com/f35-problems-2016
The US’s military procurement machine may be the single most successful system of wealth transfer ever devised – moving tens of billions of dollars every year from ordinary taxpayers into the pockets of big defense contractors and their allies in Congress. But as a provider of working equipment to defend the United States against realistic threats, it is becoming more and more dysfunctional with every passing year.
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The guiding idea at the heart of today’s political system is freedom of choice. The belief that if you apply the ideals of the free market to all sorts of areas in society, people will be liberated from the dead hand of government. The wants and desires of individuals then become the primary motor of society.
But this has led to a very peculiar paradox. In politics today we have no choice at all. Quite simply There Is No Alternative. …
It is about the rise of the modern Think Tank and how in a very strange way they have made thinking impossible.
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On Europe, Mr Carter said increased funds would allow greater numbers of troops to be deployed to European bases, as well as more training and exercises with allies.
“We’re taking a strong and balanced approach to deter Russian aggression,” he said. “We haven’t had to worry about this for 25 years, and while I wish it were otherwise, now we do.” …
The Pentagon’s proposed 2017 defence budget will include $3.4bn for its European Reassurance Initiative – up from $789m for the current budget year. Continue reading
Just over fifty years since this “Letter of Intent”, what can we learn from the history of British arms deals with Saudi Arabia?
1) “Bribery has always played a role in the sale of weapons”
2) The Saudi Kingdom can successfully intimidate British politicians and officials
3) The British arms industry has extensive political connections
4) British military equipment will be used
The central nuclear observation of the report is thatNATO nuclear forces do not have much credibility in protecting the Baltic States against a Russian attack.
That conclusion is, to say the least, interesting given the extent to which some analysts and former/current officials have been arguing that NATO/US need to have more/better limited regional nuclear options to counter Russia in Europe. Continue reading
However, alternatives to the dominant military-authoritarian paradigm – in which militarised notions of masculinity are also a prominent feature – are available. In the discussion paper, Dilemmas of Counter-Terror, Stabilisation and Statebuilding, Saferworld provided a review of global evidence on the impacts of existing approaches, and suggested a number of constructive directions for improved policy, including:
- Avoiding defining conflicts narrowly as problems of ‘terror’, ‘extremism’ or ‘radicalisation’, and instead adopting a more impartial, holistic and sustainable approach to resolving them
- Changing international and national policies and approaches that fuel grievances and undermine human rights
- Redoubling efforts for diplomacy, lobbying, advocacy and local-level dialogue to make the case for peace and adherence to international law by conflict actors
- Looking for opportunities to negotiate peace – balancing pragmatic considerations with a determined focus to achieve inclusive and just political settlements in any given context
- Considering the careful use of legal and judicial responses and targeted sanctions as alternatives to the use of force
- Taking greater care when choosing and reviewing relationships with supposed ‘allies’
- Supporting transformative reform efforts to improve governance and state-society relations and uphold human rights
- Choosing not to engage if harm cannot be effectively mitigated and no clear solution is evident.
“All of these questions have something to do with randomness, and the way to deal with them in the 17th century was to imagine parallel worlds representing everything that could happen,” Gell-Mann said. “To assess the value of some uncertain venture, an average is taken across those parallel worlds.”
This concept was only challenged in the mid-19th century when randomness was used formally in a different context—physics. “Here, the following perspective arose: to assess some uncertain venture, ask yourself how it will affect you in one world only—namely the one in which you live—across time,” Gell-Mann continued.
“The first perspective—considering all parallel worlds—is the one adopted by mainstream economics,” explained Gell-Mann. “The second perspective—what happens in our world across time—is the one we explore and that hasn’t been fully appreciated in economics so far.”
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The UK multinational G4S is now the world’s largest private security company, and no fewer than 14 companies are based in Hereford, close to the headquarters of the SAS, from whose ranks at least 46 companies hire recruits, says the report by British-based charity War on Want.
The huge increase in the number of private military and security companies, with contracts running into billions of pounds, signals the return of the “dogs of war” (mercenary) era that followed the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, said John Hilary, executive director of War on Want. Continue reading
It is very worrying that the Armenian army, having committed aggression and invasion against Azerbaijan, has access to the British and French sniper rifles, the spokesperson noted. “Despite the Foreign Ministry’s expression of concern regarding the export of these sniper rifles to Armenia back on 25 April 2015, the manufacturing states have not clarified this issue,” he said.
However, France and the UK always state their compliance with the arms embargo imposed on both Armenia and Azerbaijan under the relevant decision of OSCE, stressed Hajiyev. “At the same time, there is a strict arms export control regime within the EU,” he added.
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The Sunday Telegraph reported that the Government plans take away the right of local council to decide on future shale gas production in their area.
Wasn’t this an attack on local democracy and devolution? Absolutely.
Charity Friends of the Earth, which leaked the letter show that the Tories plans to haveindustrial-scale shale gas fracking production in Britain “within 10 years”.
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Tests of how Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 will perform in combat won’t begin until at least August 2018, a year later than planned, and more than 500 of the fighter jets may be built before the assessment is complete, according to the Pentagon’s test office.
“These aircraft will require a still-to-be-determined list of modifications” to be fully capable, Michael Gilmore, the U.S. Defense Department’s top weapons tester, said in his annual report on major programs. “However, these modifications may be unaffordable for the services as they consider the cost of upgrading these early lots of aircraft while the program continues to increase production rates in a fiscally constrained environment.” Continue reading
“It’s a great airplane and very dangerous, especially if they make a lot of them,” one senior U.S. military official with extensive experience on fifth-generation fighters told me some time ago. “I think even an AESA [active electronically scanned array-radar equipped F-15C] Eagle and [Boeing F/A-18E/F] Super Hornet would both have their hands full.”
The Syrian deployment will allow the Russian air force to gain valuable operational experience on the Su-35 — even if four warplanes don’t add a decisive material value to the fight.
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The code delay is the latest—and possibly most damaging—setback for the Pentagon’s ambitious and controversial plan to replace almost all of its Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighters with three different versions of the F-35 at a cost of more than a trillion dollars over the next 50 years.
Damaging, because the military and F-35-maker Lockheed Martin have increasingly sold the F-35 as a sort of “flying computer” whose software can outthink enemy pilots even when the enemy’s own planes fly faster, maneuver better and carry more weaponry than the F-35 does.
The stealth fighter’s software is its last possible claim to being a first-class warplane. If the F-35’s code doesn’t work, then neither does the F-35. Saddled with thousands of dysfunctional F-35s, the Pentagon could lose command of the air. Continue reading
Now the 2013 Report Card grades are in, and America’s cumulative GPA for infrastructure rose slightly to a D+. The grades in 2013 ranged from a high of B- for solid waste to a low of D- for inland waterways and levees. Solid waste, drinking water, wastewater, roads, and bridges all saw incremental improvements, and rail jumped from a C- to a C+. No categories saw a decline in grade this year. …
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In this web extra, Hans Blix, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supports Corbyn’s call, saying Trident is “a tremendous cost and very little gain”.
The former IAEA chief also says he does not think it adds to British security. “I think it’s more a question of sentimental status seeking,” Blix says, “They will keep their seat in the Security Council even if they do not continue Trident.”
Many civilians continue to live in Saada, northern Yemen, despite almost daily airstrikes in the area. Michael Seawright from Auckland, New Zealand, was recently Project Coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) projects in the war-torn region.
“I’ve worked in war zones for the past 11 to 12 years, in some of the worst conflicts like Syria, but I have never seen such destruction conducted in such a short period as in Yemen. I was based in Saada, in the north, in a Houthi-controlled area that was experiencing almost daily attacks from Coalition air forces. These air strikes were often close to our facilities and we clearly felt their effects.
… but sometimes a concept drawn from such discussion points to an overlooked and fundamentally better way to approach such decisions. Such a concept is offshore balancing, which involves the United States not trying to do everything itself but instead exploiting rivalries between other states to prevent any one of them from acquiring hegemonic power and regional dominance. Scholars such as Christopher Layne and Stephen Walt have elaborated on the concept, and in the not-too-distant past the principles involved were applied to some actual U.S. policies with major regional import.
In an email seen by the BBC, a serving Royal Navy officer wrote that “total electric failures are common” on its fleet of six £1bn Type 45 destroyers.
The Ministry of Defence said there were reliability issues with the propulsion system and work to fix it would be done to ensure “ships remain available”.
One Royal Navy officer said the cost could reach tens of millions of pounds. Continue reading
Tipping Point North South 