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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers! From Nixon to Sarah Palin
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The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
From Nixon to Sarah Palin
What’s happened to the Republican Party? What’s happened to populism? Read Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair on the life and death of Nixonland, and the class politics of the war over Sarah Palin. ALSO in our new subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter, read Serge Halimi on how Russia gave Georgia and the U.S.a well-deserved black eye. PLUS Carrie Dann’s wonderful first-hand account of the fight of the Western Shoshone to reclaim their land. Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents.
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Today's Stories September 10, 2008 Conn Hallinan Peter Morici September 9, 2008 Michael Colby Chellis Glendinning Vijay Prashad Jeffery R. Webber/ David Michael Green Brian J. Foley John Ross Pierre M. Sprey / Nicole Colson Marc Gardner William S. Lind Website of the Day
September 8, 2008 Mike Whitney Tariq Ali Pam Martens Bill Quigley Malini Johar Schueller / Robert Jensen Uri Avnery Win McCormack Howard Lisnoff Maria C. Khoury Website of the Day September 6 / 7, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Linn Washington, Jr. Patrick Cockburn Gary Leupp Nancy Kurshan William Blum Michael Winship Fred Gardner Nikolas Kozloff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Karyn Strickler David Yearsley Richard Rhames James L. Secor Missy Beattie Eric Patton Ben Terrall Thom Rutledge Dan Bacher David Macaray Jane Stillwater Grady Harper Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend September 5, 2008 Elizabeth Walters Bill Quigley Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Ira Glunts Peter Morici Deepak Tripathi Manuel Garcia, Jr. Michael Donnelly Martha Rosenberg Website of the Day September 4, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Paul Craig Roberts Ron Jacobs M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Andy Worthington Osama Dawoud Stephen Lendman Fidel Castro Website of the Day September 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Sen. Mike Gravel Vijay Prashad Nikolas Kozloff Ralph Nader Howard Lisnoff Steve Early / Cal Winslow Shepherd Bliss Bill Quigley Website of the Day
September 2, 2008 Marjorie Cohn Jonathan Cook Robert Weitzel Corey D. B. Walker John Ross Eric Walberg Judith Scherr Richard Morse B. R. Gowani Michael Greenberg Website of the Day September 1, 2008 Nikolas Kozloff C. G. Estabrook Manuel Garcia, Jr. David Macaray B. R. Gowani Saul Landau Charles Orloski Gloria La Riva Website of the Day August 30 / 31, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Bill Quigley Jeffrey St. Clair Andy Worthington Deepak Tripathi Stanley Howard Dave Lindorff Wajahat Ali Robert Fantina Josh Schlossberg Benjamin Dangl Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Suzan Mazur Rev. Jim Rigby David Yearsely Serge Quadruppani B.R. Gowani Richard Rhames Poets' Basement Website of the Day
August 29, 2008 Mike Whitney Brian Cloughley David Ker Thomson Joanne Mariner Neve Gordon Chris Genovali Ron Jacobs Michael Donnelly August 28, 2008 Judy Gumbo Albert Paul Cantor Saul Landau / Andy Worthington Ben Terrall Leonard Peltier Niranjan Ramakrishnan Donna J. Volatile Website of the Day
August 27, 2008 Anthony DiMaggio Jordan Flaherty Ralph Nader Melissa Checker Bob Sommer Cynthia McKinney Ali Khan M. Junaid Levesque-Alam Dave Lindorff David Macaray Website of the Day
August 26, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Michael D. Yates Paul Craig Roberts Andy Worthington Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Huwaida Arraf Joseph Grosso Sheldon Richman Binoy Kampmark Website of the Day August 25, 2008 Patrick Cockburn Bill Quigley Jonathan Cook James McEnteer Uri Avnery Will Potter Robert Jensen Stephen Lendman Wajahat Ali Carl Finamore Website of the Day August 23 / 4, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Patty O'Grady Nicole Colson Steve Conn Deepak Trapathi Robert Fantina Jonathan M. Feldman Joshua Frank Osama Qashoo Howard Lisnoff David Michael Green Dave Lindorff Christopher Brauchli Alan Farago Michael Winship Richard Rhames David Rosen Patrick B. Barr Jamie Newlin Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend August 22, 2008 Boris Kagarlitsky Laura Carlsen Bob Barr Marwan Bishara Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. Charles Mostoller Sumbul Ali-Karamali Keith Rosenthal John F. Miglio Website of the Day August 21, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Dave Lindorff Loserville: How Obama Blew It Ralph Nader Joanne Mariner Wajahat Ali Ron Jacobs Rostam Purzal Anthony Papa Website of the Day August 20, 2008 Michael Neumann Ray McGovern Eric Walberg Fidaa Abed Daniel Haack Mike Whitney Website of the Day August 19, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Deepak Tripathi Marwan Bishara Saul Landau William S. Lind Martha Rosenberg James Brittain Pratyush Chandra David Macaray Website of the Day |
September 10, 2008 Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King GeorgeCan Obama Put Down the Brie and Opt for Real Change?By CHUCK SPINNEY Chaliventures, lying in Fethiye, Turkey. It is trite to say that madness occurs when the mind governing decisions and actions becomes systemically disconnected from the real world. But in the Versailles on the Potomac, where madness has been taken to a high art form, reinforced by pseudo science, ideology, and greed, all neatly packaged in compelling powerpoint briefings, transformative visions, and amplified by an adoring mainstream media, it is difficult to know what the real world really is. To this end, in the 1980s, the military reformers led by Col John R. Boyd found it necessary to develop a more precise working definition of madness: We concluded that madness occurs when the decision maker's Observation - Orientation - Decision - Action (OODA) loop becomes increasingly distorted and disconnected from its environment by the existence of Incestuous Amplification. Incestuous Amplification is a common phenomenon in Versailles. It occurs when the preconceptions in the decider's Orientation (which is his/her repository of ideology, belief systems, cultural heritage, previous experiences, education, genetic heritage, etc) misshape the Observations feeding that Orientation. Note that the key word is misshape: there is no question that one's Orientation always shapes everything that is apprehended in the environment, or that one's orientation evolves and changes overtime in response to changes in the interaction between the organism and its environment. The measure of merit is whether that Orientation produces Decisions and Actions that improve the match up between the decision making organism and its environment, as it marches along the one-way arrow of time. But when the decider's Orientation becomes infected by Incestuous Amplification, the opposite occurs -- his Orientation distorts observations in a way that drives the interaction to toward an ever-increasing mismatch between the organism and its environment. Viewed abstractly, here is how it happens. Incestuous Amplification, in effect, hijacks the Orientation of decider's OODA loop by overriding Observations to a point where his Orientation induces the Decider to see and Act on what he wants to see rather than what is. (BTW ... when a self-styled decider or change agent uses the words like "vision" and "transformation" in the same paragraph, it is sure warning sign that such a hijacking is well underway.) It follows that the Decisions and Actions flowing from this kind of Orientation must be disconnected from reality, except by accident or chance. But this initial disconnect is only the first order effect, subsequent effects remove any significant possibility of a lucky break. That is because the disconnect between the Actions and the environment those actions purport to cope with pumps dysfunctional behavior back into the entire OODA loop, which then folds back on itself to magnify the mismatch. How this happens becomes clear when one realizes that the consequences of the first-order actions (which, as discussed above, are already disconnected from the exigencies of the environment) create changes or external effects that are then fed back into the OODA loop as subsequent Observations. These new Observations are distorted again by the highjacked Orientation of the decider, who sees again what he wants to see. This produces new Decisions and Actions, which, in turn, are even more disconnected from reality. And so the cycle not only repeats itself but mutates by amplifying itself -- the effect is a little like placing a microphone next a speaker when recording, only much more dangerous. That is because, as any student of nonlinear dynamics in control theory or the theory of evolution by natural selection can tell you, this kind of positive feedback loop, if not corrected by some form of selection (natural or otherwise), must produce an explosive spiral of ever increasing mismatches, leading to confusion and disorder that inevitably degenerate into chaos or death or extinction. Left uncorrected, the organism exhibiting an incestuously amplifying OODA loop becomes evermore disconnected from its environment, but nevertheless blunders forward to the tune of its internal dynamics. Without a correction, there can be but one outcome: the environment eventually intrudes to make the irrevocable decision. Put another way, all living systems can be viewed as open (thermodynamic) systems that must process a flux of matter, energy, and information to maintain their coherence. To do this, they must communicate effectively with their environments. Incestuous amplification has the effect of closing off the system from its environment, and any activity in a closed system always generates entropy, thereby making it impossible to maintain that system's coherence. So, without a correction or change that opens the decider's OODA loop to an effective communication with the real world, the only uncertainty in the outcome is how long an OODA loop driven mad by incestuous amplification can last before it degenerates into chaos and is selected out. Now, with this working appreciation of Madness in mind, I urge you to read carefully this recent essay by Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel and professor at Boston University. Then ask yourself (1) whether or not the OODA loops of President Bush and his neocon henchmen have been highjacked by Incestuous Amplification and (2) whether or not the real world has intruded to such an extent that a sharp correction to the Decider's OODA Loops is now desperately needed . If the answers to questions 1 and 2 are both yes, examine the list below and ask yourself you think is a Decider who is truly least prone to incestuous amplification and therefore most capable of injecting reality into the America's OODA loop? McCain (True or False) Franklin "Chuck" Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon who became famous in the early 1980s for what became known as the "Spinney Report", criticizing what he described as the reckless pursuit of costly complex weapon systems by the Pentagon, with disregard to budgetary consequences. Despite attempts by the his superiors to bury the controversial report, it eventually was exposed during a United States Senate Budget Committee on Defense hearing, which though scheduled to go unnoticed, made the cover of Time Magazine March 7, 1983. Chuck Spinney retired from the Pentagon after 33 years and currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean.
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