zenpundit.com

Sean finds Dr. Barnett briefing on youtube:

One of these days, I have to catch Tom doing his brief live. Perhaps there will be a “ Great Powers: 2009” tour hitting Chicago. 🙂

Globalization and Its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz

A partially wrongheaded book but an interesting one.

I say “partially” because Stiglitz intermixes sophisticated and nuanced understanding of market function and evolution with – at times, intellectually comical – bromide level asides for the anticapitalist yahoos who never took Econ 101 but want to lean on the intellectual authority of his Nobel Prize as they argue across the kitchen table. The second aspect that I find intriguing with Stiglitz so far, is that his (admittedly one-sided) description of the IMF is of an insular, stovepiped, hierarchical, rigidly dysfunctional institution that ignores empirical results of it’s policies and actions. That part I can well believe.

Stiglitz, who has an overriding leftish political agenda, blames IMF institutional culture on “market fundamentalism” of the Chicago school of economics, but he’s describing an organizational-informational behavioral pattern common to most second wave, industrial era bureaucracies. One shared by the US military, the IC, academia and (formerly) by IBM and most institutions of the decidely non-free market Soviet Union. The IMF simply isn’t the home for P2P networks and it acts like the lumbering dinosaur it is – large, brutish, powerful but slow on the uptake and oblivious to much of what goes on around it.

In a sense, though I’m sure Stiglitz never thought of it this way, he’s calling for economic COIN for developing nations rather than the 2GW version of market liberalization practiced in post-Soviet Russia. That’s a meritorious point but I inclined to think that the heavy left politicking Stiglitz sprinkes in his writing will prevent that message from reaching ears that might otherwise be receptive.

The choir he’s preaching to is in no hurry to open up markets anywhere.

Skilluminati featured a SSI PDF on drugged out paramilitary fighters by Paul Rexton Kan:

“ DRUG INTOXICATED IRREGULAR FIGHTERS: COMPLICATIONS, DANGERS, AND RESPONSES“

From SS Einsatzgruppen to Bosnian Serb paramilitaries to Indonesian brush gangs, intoxicants have frequently been given to erode irregular fighters’ moral constraints and facilitate atrocities.

For readers who are not aware, blogfriend Shlok Vaidya also publishes the excellent Naxalite Rage site dedicated to the analysis of that particular insurgency in India. Shloky has been getting well-deserved VIP attention of late – check out Naxalite Rage and find out why.

Read the basics of the Pushtunwali (PDF). Hat tip to Jedburgh.

More excellent links about Pushtunistan here at The Small Wars Council.