Best Insurgency Books

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T.X. Hammes:

The heaviest responsibility a commander will know is taking his soldiers to war. How can he arm their minds as well as their bodies? A former U.S. Marine Corps colonel and expert on insurgencies culls the best books from various military reading lists.
Thousands of years ago, the Chinese sage Sun Tzu wrote down one of the first known lessons on war, The Art of War. Somewhat more recently, Maj. Gen. James Mattis wrote in the Feb. 2004 Marine Corps Gazette, “We have been fighting on this planet for 5,000 years, and we should take advantage of the experience of those who have gone before us. . . . Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed the luxury of ignorance of their profession.” The study of books is one antidote to that ignorance. What books are military leaders recommending that U.S. soldiers read to gird themselves for today’s struggle in Iraq?

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Jay Rosen Pieces Together Rove/Plame

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Jay Rosen:

Lying to the press—though a serious thing—is what all administrations do. In Washington leaking to damage people’s credibility or wreck their arguments is routine, a bi-partisan game with thousands of knowing participants. I rarely see it mentioned that Joseph Wilson (who is no truthtelling hero) began his crusade by trying to leak his criticisms of the Bush White House. When that didn’t work he went public in an op-ed piece for the New York Times.

But business as usual is not going to explain what happened in the Valerie Plame case, or tell us why its revelations matter. For that we need to enlarge the frame.

My bigger picture starts with George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Andrew Card, Dan Bartlett, John Ashcroft plus a handful of other strategists and team players in the Bush White House, who have set a new course in press relations. (And Scott McClellan knows his job is to stay on that course, no matter what.) The Bush team’s methods are unlike the handling of the news media under prior presidents because their premises are so different.

Butman & Petersen Question SBC’s AT&T Acquisition

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TDS Metro’s Jim Butman and Drew Petersen raise many useful questions regarding the proposed SBC/AT&T merger:

The proposed purchase of AT&T by SBC has the potential to demonstrably alter the way a majority of our state’s commercial and residential telecommunications customers conduct their daily affairs. For most urban U.S. consumers today, especially residential and small business patrons, the communications market is rapidly deteriorating into a duopoly dominated by the Bells and cable operators. Wisconsin, however, due to a fledging economy and classic entrepreneurial spirit, is fortunate to have some very credible competitive alternative providers operating in the state’s more urban markets like Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Waukesha, Janesville, Kenosha and Racine.
Competition in the telecommunications industry has done wonders for consumers and businesses across Wisconsin, resulting in small business savings of roughly 30 percent annually. Competitors have led the way in accelerating the deployment of world-class technology such as high-speed Internet and the provisioning of outstanding services at value-based pricing. Competition benefits anyone that has selected an alternative provider and even those who have not.

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Ethanol: More Trouble Than It’s Worth?

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Mark Johnson:

Farmers, businesses and state officials are investing millions of dollars in ethanol and biofuel plants as renewable energy sources, but a new study says the alternative fuels burn more energy than they produce.
Supporters of ethanol and other biofuels contend they burn cleaner than fossil fuels, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and give farmers another market to sell their produce.
But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.

Slashdot discussion

Fossett Crosses the Atlantic in a Vickers Vimy

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Financier and adventurer Steve Fossett flew a replica of the first airplane to travel nonstop across the Atlantic recently. Aviation Week:

Pilot Steve Fossett and navigator Mark Rebholz took off from St. John’s, Newfoundland, on July 2 at about 7 p.m. in fog, heavy cloud cover and strong winds. They had a good tailwind until midway and made most of the trip under cloud cover, not seeing the Sun until about the last 5 hr.

Fossett and Rebholz expected the crossing to be completed by 4-5 p.m. the next day and, in fact, landed at 5:05 p.m. Irish time, setting down safely at the eighth hole of Connemara golf course. That was a slightly better result than the original June 14-15, 1919, crossing by Royal Flying Corps pilot Capt. John Alcock and navigator Lt. Arthur Whitten Brown. They ended up nose-down on soft ground after a 16-hr. crossing that included an ice storm.

More on Fossett

Lessons in The Art of Travel

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Tim Moore:

I always go straight to the nearest supermarket, to find out what the locals actually eat and drink, rather than what the guidebooks say they do. Essential for making informed restaurant decisions later, and a dependable entertainment in itself: there’s always some arresting indigenous twist on a theme, such as lobster-flavoured Walkers crisps, and you can usually count on spotting the likes of Frische Dickmilche or Fockink Anis on the shelves.

Fast Growing Companies Prefer a Flat Tax

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Matthew Phan discusses the obvious benefits of a simplified tax system. We waste hours and hours on our current tax morass:

Of the 341 executives interviewed, 48% preferred a flat corporate rate over the current tax system for businesses like their own, compared to 16% who supported the current system. 13% preferred a value-added consumption tax and 23% indicated that they were uncertain which was better.
The complexity of the current system could be one reason owners prefer a flat tax, at least from the CEOs that Inc. interviewed separately. “The simpler the tax structure and the more visibility you give it, the better,” said David Steinberg, founder and CEO of InPhonix, the No. 1 company on the Inc. 500 list in 2004. “The more complex a system, the more accountants you need to hire.”

Madison’s Advertising Climate

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Sandy Cullen takes an interesting look at local government, and perhaps public education’s willingness to support advertising. Advertising is everywhere and will be more so in the future. One of the reasons for this is the ongoing fragmentation of media. The internet provides many, many options for local, regional, national and international news, weather, sports and arts information.

Advertising is simply following eyeballs.

I have some other candidates for advertising:

  • Kenton Peters’ Blue Federal Courthouse and the WARF building – advertising can only help these eyesores
  • Camp Randall and the Kohl Center’s exteriors. I think we have enough grey, certainly during our winter months
  • The City/County Building, East Berlin architecture, circa 1960’s at its best.

Cullen interviewed a number of local advertising firms, but not the largest – her own publisher, Capital Newspapers. Capital (SEC 10-Q) reported six months revenue (through March 31, 2005) of $60,225K and operating income of 14,081K (23%!)