Ramblings & ephemera
From Charles Glass’ “The New Piracy: Charles Glass on the High Seas” (London Review of Books: 18 December 2003):
Ninety-five per cent of the world’s cargo travels by sea. Without the merchant marine, the free market would collapse and take Wall Street’s dream of a global economy with it. Yet no one, apart from ship owners, their [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, law, security | No Comments »
From James B. Stewart’s “The Real Heroes Are Dead” (The New Yorker [11 February 2002]: 58):
… he was simply following the “Eight P’s,” a mnemonic that had been drummed into them in the military: “Proper prior planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance.”
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Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, Writing Ideas | Comments Off
From Laura Miller’s “Rent-a-coup” (Salon: 17 August 2006):
In March 2004, a group of men with a hired army of about 70 mercenary soldiers set out to topple the government of the tiny West African nation of Equatorial Guinea and install a new one. Ostensibly led by a political opposition leader but actually controlled by the [...]
Posted on August 20th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
Kissinger, then secretary of state, was certain he detected the odor of communism in the election of Salvador Allende Gossens to the presidency of Chile. …
Chile was one of the most stable countries in South America, with a high literacy rate, [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
At roughly the same time Secretary of State Dulles was destroying democracy in Iran, he was also busy destroying democracy in Central America, and once again it was on behalf of a renegade industry: United Fruit Co. …
“Few private companies have [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Sherrill’s “100 (Plus) Years of Regime Change” (The Texas Observer: 14 July 2006):
In 1953 the brutal, venal shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was pushed into exile by Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister. …
Iranians loved Mossadegh. He made clear that his two ambitions were to set up a lasting democracy and [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
Sam Cohen might have remained relatively unknown, troubled by ethical lapses in government and the military but unable to do anything about them, if he had not visited Seoul in 1951, during the Korean war. In the aftermath of bombing sorties he witnessed scenes of intolerable devastation. [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, history, politics | Comments Off
From Noam Chomsky’s “Why It’s Over For America” (The Independent: 30 May 2006):
… the fear, which cannot casually be put aside, that, as Gar Alperowitz puts it in America Beyond Capitalism, “the American ’system’ as a whole is in real trouble - that it is heading in a direction that spells the end of its [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):
For there is a precedent in modern Western history for a country whose leader exploits national humiliation and fear to restrict public freedoms; for a government that makes permanent war as a tool of state policy and arranges for the [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):
Historians and pundits who leap aboard the bandwagon of American Empire have forgotten a little too quickly that for an empire to be born, a republic has first to die. In the longer run no country can expect to behave [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):
The unrepublican veneration of our presidential “leader” has made it uniquely difficult for Americans to see their country’s behavior as others see it. The latest report from Amnesty International - which says nothing that the rest of the world doesn’t [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):
[Andrew] Bacevich is a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative Catholic who now directs the study of international relations at Boston University. He has thus earned the right to a hearing even in circles typically immune [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Rebecca Ulam Weiner’s “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing” (Legal Affairs: January/February 2006):
YOU WON’T FIND THE WORD “MERCENARY” on the homepage of the International Peace Operations Association, the trade group for the private military industry. While many of the IPOA’s member companies are staffed by elite former soldiers of the United States military who now make [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (399):
No wheeze was too old for [John Bankhead] Magruder to employ it. One morning he sent a column along a road that was heavily wooded except for a single gap in plain view of the enemy outposts. All day the gray files swept past in [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: InfoSec Management, history, security | Comments Off
From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (384):
When [Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard's men] stole out of the intrenchments [at Corinth] after nightfall, they left dummy guns in the embrasures and dummy cannoneers to serve them, fashioned by stuffing ragged uniforms with straw. A single band moved up and down the deserted [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: InfoSec Management, history, security | Comments Off
From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (347):
[At the Battle of Shiloh,] Governor Harris, still a volunteer aide, sensed this feeling of futility in the soldiers. Shortly after 2 o’clock, he expressed his fear of a collapse to the chief of staff, who agreed and went to Beauregard with the question: “General, [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history | Comments Off
From Wikipedia’s “Battle of Shiloh“:
The evening of April 6 was a dispiriting end to the first day of one of the bloodiest battles in U.S. history. In the Civil War, medics were not sent into the field to collect and treat wounded soldiers. Hence, many soldiers were abandoned to bleed to death, or in the [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (337, 347):
[At the Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing,] The Orleans Guard battalion, the elite organization with Beauregard’s name on its muster roll, came into battle wearing dress-blue uniforms, which drew the fire of the Confederates they were marching to [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From “Operations of the Western Flotilla” by Henry A. Walke, Commander of the Carondelet, describing the Battle of Island Number Ten:
Having received written orders from the flag-officer, under date of March 30th, I at once began to prepare the Carondelet for the ordeal. All the loose material at hand was collected, and on the 4th [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (287-288):
[At the Battle of Pea Ridge,] they saw the rebels coming, yelling and firing as they came, hundreds of them bearing down to complete the wreckage their artillery had begun. As the Federals fell back from their shattered pieces an Iowa cannoneer paused to toss [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: InfoSec Management, history, security | Comments Off