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Hailbrunn reviews 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization' by Thomas Friedman and 'False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism' by John Gray.

This collection is a speech given by Raymond Nakai at a Boosters Club, it is not dated. This particular club is involved with the extra-curricular activities of the youth. Nakai commends the efforts of the organizing participants in building relationships with the youth in the community. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Raymond Nakai, a Navajo Indian, was born in 1918 in Lukachukai, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. Raymond Nakai is noted as being the first modern Navajo political leader serving as Chairman of the Navajo Nation from 1963-1971. As chairman, the issues most important during his tenure were self determination in Navajo Education, reservation unemployment, developing Navajo economy, further development of the tribal government and improving relations with the federal government and surrounding states. Nakai had much unprecedented success as Navajo Tribal Chairman: In 1967 the Navajo Nation Bill of Rights was created, in 1968 Navajo Community College opened being the first tribally controlled community college, the Tribal Scholarship Trust was developed, relations with off reservation natural resource companies began, he was supportive of religious freedom of the Native American Church on the Navajo Reservation. Raymond Nakai led an active personal and political life and was an innovative leader for the Navajo People. The Raymond Nakai Collection contains material documenting his activities as Chairman of the Navajo Nation from 1963 - 1971.

Owing to environmental and health concerns, tetraethyl lead was gradually phased out from the early 1970's to mid-1990's in most developed countries. Advances in refining, leading to more aromatics (via reformate) and iso-paraffins such as iso-octane, along with the introduction of (bio) oxygenates such as MTBE, ETBE and ethanol, facilitated the removal of lead without sacrificing RON and MON. In recent years, however, legislation has been moving in the direction of curbing aromatic and olefin content in gasoline, owing to similar concerns as was the case for lead. Meanwhile, concerns over global warming and energy security have motivated research into renewable fuels. Amongst which are those derived from biomass. The feedstock of interest in this study is lignin, which, together with hemicellulose and cellulose, is amongst the most abundant organic compounds on the planet. Contrary to (hemi-) cellulose, however, which is an important constituent of feed for livestock, lignin falls completely outside of our food chain. This study was motivated by the need for renewable octane boosters of low toxicity, which improve both anti-knock quality and fuel economy under modern engines conditions. The goal of this study is to investigate on a Volvo T5 spark ignition engine whether or not the lignin derived aromatic oxygenates, benzyl alcohol, 2-phenyl ethanol and acetophenone, adhere to such requirements. It was found that these aromatic oxygenates have a low toxicity and improve both knock resistance and volumetric fuel economy under modern engine operating conditions.

Now that both political parties have seemingly settled upon their respective candidates for the 2024 presidential election, we have an opportune moment to ask a rather fundamental question about our nation's defense spending: how much is enough?
Back in May, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, penned an op-ed in the New York Times insisting the answer was not enough at all. Wicker claimed that the nation wasn't prepared for war — or peace, for that matter — that our ships and fighter-jet fleets were "dangerously small" and our military infrastructure "outdated." So weak our defense establishment and so dangerous the world right now, Wicker pressed, the nation ought to "spend an additional $55 billion on the military in the 2025 fiscal year."
Echoing Cold Warriors of a bygone era, the senator espoused the need for "overwhelming military superiority." But how to gauge when such superiority had been achieved? Would $55 billion ensure this martial dominance? Would $50 billion, or far less, not do?
Too few policymakers and potential voters today are asking these vital questions, relying instead on well-worn tropes about deterrence, strength, and credibility to sustain the Pentagon's massive budget. (The current 2024 fiscal year budget is $825 billion, with the 2025 DoD request sitting at $849 billion.) But with the presidential race now set, it behooves Americans to think more deeply about their spending on defense and national security. They have an example to follow.In 1971, with the American war in Vietnam still raging, Pentagon analysts Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith published a strategic decision-making primer titled "How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program." The two Defense Department officials worried that frustration over Vietnam had caused the public mood to shift and that spending was no longer adequate against contemporary communist threats. "People are choosing sides," they argued. "The middle ground seems to be eroding."
But they also weren't convinced that "the nation's military needs" were "necessarily what the Joint Chiefs of Staff" said they were. To them, "pure" military requirements didn't exist, especially when it came to grand strategy. Defense spending choices incurred both costs and risks. Thus, it was the principal task of the secretary of defense to "shape a defense program in the national interest." Of course, biases and intuitional pressures affected how one defined "national interest." Not surprisingly, in their role as analysts — and because they had worked for Robert S. McNamara — Enthoven and Smith advocated for a quantitative-heavy, systems analysis approach to "rational decision making."
While much of the book is heavy with dense, analytical prose, "How Much Is Enough?" still asks useful questions that remain relevant for us today. How well are DoD budget practices aligned to U.S. foreign policy objectives? Are spending ceilings logical or "arbitrary"? Are some military services "entitled" to a certain percentage of the defense budget, and, if so, why? What is the relationship between spending on social programs versus national security?
Perhaps most importantly, Enthoven and Smith argued for a "central plan" to drive resource requests and avoid duplication of effort. Once more, they encouraged spending criteria that supported the "national interest." In evaluating forces structures and strategic mobility, weapons systems and nuclear stockpiles, analysts always had to keep in mind a central question: "for what purpose?"
Such queries raised ire within hawkish circles, especially as American troops were withdrawing from what seemed a losing war in Southeast Asia. With South Vietnam teetering, the specter of falling Asian dominoes still held purchase in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, talk of engaging with the Soviet Union over nuclear arms limitations elicited harsh rebukes from those claiming the Nixon administration was pursuing a dangerous policy of "appeasement."
But the questions Enthoven and Smith posed mattered then and they matter now. At the national policy level, ends and means are supposed to interact. But in our current environment, calls from Senator Wicker and the like simply ask for more means with little attention paid to the ends they intend to serve. In short, we haven't been very good at asking if our ever-increasing defense budgets are linked to any tangible, practicable grand strategic objectives.
A recent report from the Stimson Center notes that "US defense spending has increased nearly 50% since the start of the 21st century." Contrary to Wicker's fear-mongering, the report suggests that this "permanent war economy" is only serving to "hamper US military readiness."
It seems crucial, therefore, that we question the strategic rationale for the amount of money we are spending. Is pursuit of global hegemony and dominance — what some call "primacy" — to allay our fears, in fact, an achievable objective? Will spending billions of more dollars offer us the security guarantees for which some pundits advertise?
The problem here is more than just bipartisan budget inertia, of spending more because we seemingly always spend more. Rather, as Enthoven and Smith insinuated, our track record of "balancing military objectives with other national objectives," a difficult task for sure, has been spotty at best. Policy elites still struggle to devise appropriate "yardsticks of sufficiency" that measure capabilities against security objectives. Worse, when it comes to our national security strategy, voters don't appear all that inclined to ask the hard question "how much is enough?"
With the 2024 electoral field apparently established, now is a good time for Americans to ask that very question. Interrogating policies of U.S. primacy underwritten by massive military spending may appear, to some, politically infeasible. No political candidate likely believes they could win at the polls by arguing that Americans don't have the right to pursue primacy on the global stage. But, in an election year, voters actually are well-placed to ask tough questions when it comes to defense spending. In the end, they're paying for the answer.
In 1971, Enthoven and Smith were asking similarly hard questions because they believed it served the nation's best interests. Undoubtedly, Senator Wicker feels similarly. But it's worth voters engaging in this moment when the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East seemingly demand more, more, more. Of course, we shouldn't underestimate the threats we face. But surely now is the time to ask both our presidential candidates, "how much is enough?"

AbstractUnder what conditions can artificial intelligence contribute to political processes without undermining their legitimacy? Thanks to the ever-growing availability of data and the increasing power of decision-making algorithms, the future of political institutions is unlikely to be anything similar to what we have known throughout the last century, possibly with parliaments deprived of their traditional authority and public decision-making processes largely unaccountable. This paper discusses and challenges these concerns by suggesting a theoretical framework under which algorithmic decision-making is compatible with democracy and, most relevantly, can offer a viable solution to counter the rise of populist rhetoric in the governance arena. Such a framework is based on three pillars: (1) understanding the civic issues that are subjected to automated decision-making; (2) controlling the issues that are assigned to AI; and (3) evaluating and challenging the outputs of algorithmic decision-making.

""Stick it, Canada! Buy more Victory Bonds!" The First World War demanded deep personal sacrifice in the field and at home--even when home was far from the front. It also made unrelenting financial demands on both the governments and populations of Canada and Newfoundland. Boosters and Barkers is a highly original examination of the drive to finance Canadian participation in the conflict: Ottawa's calls for direct public contributions in the form of war bonds; the intersections with imperial funding, taxation, and conventional revenue; and the substantial fiscal implications of participation in the conflict during and after the war. Canada's six bond-selling campaigns received an astounding response, generating revenue that covered almost a third of the country's total war costs, which were estimated at 6.6 billion. This amount was modest in comparison with the burdens placed on European countries, but it was still a dramatic contribution from a dominion so distant from the front. This story is one of inexorable need, shrewd propaganda, resistance, engagement, and long-term consequence. Boosters and Barkers mines a wide range of sources in Canada, the United States, and Britain to reveal how bond campaigns used coercive, modern marketing techniques--encompassing print, images, and music--to sell both the war and wide public participation."--

Purpose
Sexual violence prevention programs on college campuses have proliferated in recent years. While research has also increased, a number of questions remain unanswered that could assist campus administrators in making evidence-based decisions about implementation of prevention efforts. To that end, the field of prevention science has highlighted the need to examine the utility of booster sessions for enhancing prevention education. The purpose of this paper is to examine how two methods of prevention delivery – small group educational workshops and a community-wide social marketing campaign (SMC) – worked separately and together to promote attitude change related to sexual violence among college students.


Design/methodology/approach
The two-part study was conducted at two universities. Participants were from successive cohorts of first year students and randomly assigned to participate in a bystander based in-person sexual violence prevention program or a control group. Participants were later exposed to a bystander based sexual violence prevention SMC either before or after a follow-up survey. Analyses investigated if attitudes varied by exposure group (program only, SMC only, both program and SMC, no prevention exposure).


Findings
Results revealed benefits of the SMC as a booster for attitude changes related to being an active bystander to prevent sexual violence. Further, students who first participated in the program showed enhanced attitude effects related to the SMC.


Originality/value
This is the first study to look at the combination of effects of different sexual violence prevention tools on student attitudes. It also showcases a method for how to investigate if prevention tools work separately and together.

An open letter released Wednesday signed by more than 100 veterans of the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, ex-military officers, and former Republican lawmakers and activists called for fellow conservatives and congressional Republicans to support increased military aid to Ukraine and criticized President Biden for "seem[ing] more concerned about the prospects of a Russian defeat than of a Russian victory."The letter, initiated by the "nonpartisan" Vandenberg Coalition, a "network" of hawkish foreign policy think tankers and former officials convened by long-time neo-conservative Elliott Abrams, was directed primarily at "conservative" lawmakers and their constituents who have appeared increasingly resistant to providing more aid to Kyiv."Abandoning America's friends while they are falling victim to aggression is a pattern associated with the American left, from Vietnam to Afghanistan," according to the letter."Conservatives should not be rushing to lock arms with progressive isolationists. The security of Asia and of Europe are linked, which is why the elected leaders of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia have all sent aid to Ukraine. We support urgent, robust additional American aid to Ukraine," it concluded.Published in The National Review, the letter comes in the immediate aftermath of "the House GOP's decision not to include further funding to support Kyiv and its war effort" in the stopgap government funding bill that was passed last weekend and the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who had allegedly quietly agreed with the Biden administration to push for additional funding for Ukraine in the coming weeks.According to a September 7-18 poll released Tuesday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll, about 50% of self-identified Republicans nationwide support continued military aid to Ukraine, while 45% or Republican respondents said the aid to date "has not been worth the cost." Overall, Republican respondents were significantly more skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine than self-identified Democrats or independents.The Vandenberg Coalition was created by Abrams — who served as "special representative" for both Venezuela and Iran under Trump and deputy national security adviser with particular responsibility for Middle East policy under Bush — in April, 2021 with the evident intention of reuniting predominantly neoconservative "Never Trumpers" with other hawkish Republicans who had served under or otherwise supported the former president behind a policy of confrontation with Russia, China, Iran, and other perceived U.S. adversaries. The initiative took its name from Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, a conservative Michigan Republican who, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, worked with the Truman administration to gain congressional backing for the Marshall Plan and NATO after World War II.The Coalition appears to model itself in part on the Project for the New American Century (1997-2006) and its successor, the Foreign Policy Initiative (2009-2017), as a mainly neoconservative network for hawks of various ideological backgrounds, including primacists, aggressive nationalists, such as Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton and prominent leaders of the Christian Right, to exchange information and analysis and publish "open letters" signed by dozens of former senior national security officials, retired military brass, Republican lawmakers, and analysts from various think tanks.In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, PNAC's letters and their signatories based in key think tanks — notably the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Foundation for Defending of Democracies (FDD), and the Center for Security Policy — played key roles in building public and elite support for the Bush administration's "war on terror," especially in the Middle East.The new Vandenberg letter appears to follow that playbook, although it is directed more at "conservatives" and Republicans rather than a more general audience.Among the more than 100 signatories, many of whom were identified by their former official positions in the Bush and Trump administrations rather than their past or current non-governmental affiliations, a number of individuals based at several of the same think tanks that played such a prominent role in promoting the Iraq war, including Danielle Pletka, Gary Schmitt, and Michael Rubin at AEI; Clifford May and at FDD, and Kenneth Weinstein at Hudson, not to mention Abrams himself, who is currently based at the Council on Foreign Relations, stood out.Remarkably, the list also included Randy Scheunemann, who directed the high-powered White House-sponsored Committee for the Liberation of Iraq in the run-up to the war at the same time that he headed a public relations and lobbying firm that promoted Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, a major source of fabricated intelligence and disinformation that the Bush administration used to rally public opinion in favor of the invasion.In the letter, its signatories stressed the likelihood of disastrous outcomes across the world if Ukraine did not receive more U.S. military assistance and stressed that Kyiv is "not asking for American troops, only American weapons and equipment.""Efforts to stop our aid to Ukraine could lead to a Russian battlefield victory, with catastrophic effects for American security," it warned. "Putin would eye the next stage of the Russian empire's restoration, and China would have a green light to take Taiwan."The Coalition has published two other letters signed by multiple individuals. In February 2022, it published an open letter signed by more than three dozen mainly neoconservative former Bush administration officials and think tankers that called a major Amnesty International report that concluded that Israel was practicing a form of apartheid in its treatment of Palestinians "untruthful, deceptive, and antisemitic."In January, it published a letter directed to the "editors, authors, and contributors to major scientific, medical and journalistic publications worldwide" that called for "accountability for those scientific and news publications that actively sought to censor voices investigating the origins of COVID-19."The Coalition's most recent letter and its focus on "conservative" reservations about supporting Ukraine recalls to some extent a 1996 Foreign Affairs article, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," by leading neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan who were concerned that conservatives would be unable to "resist the combined assault of [then-presidential candidate Pat] Buchanan's 'isolationism of the heart" and the Republican budget hawks on Capitol Hill." The article argued in favor of a U.S. foreign policy designed to maintain a "benevolent global hegemony."One year later, the two authors jointly founded PNAC with a Statement of Principles signed by, among others, key architects of the Iraq invasion and its aftermath, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Abrams.

Abstract
In recent years, online digital distribution has drawn attention to the myriad ways in which games exist as a dynamic and transitory object. Previously, genres such as the massively multiplayer online game had carved out a unique space in game studies in which version numbers, expansions and changes in player behaviour over time had to be methodologically accounted for. However, today even the relative stability of the single-player game has begun to dissolve as a logic of constant becoming overtakes staid notions of games as singular, fixed historical texts. This article examines this increasing temporal instability of games by turning to bug-exploiting tactics within the player community of the massively popular building game Minecraft (Mojang, official release 2011). In a focused case study, I will analyse the fate of 'minecart boosters', an emergent bit of folk exploit-engineering that allowed players to create perpetual motion machines in the game, with help from widely circulated knowledge about a specific bug in the game's simulated physics during its alpha and beta stages. Given that the effectiveness of Minecart boosters was abruptly put to rest when the game's beta version 1.6 finally patched this physics bug, it presents an excellent opportunity to discuss how fans of digitally distributed and updated games navigate the volatility of the objects they are devoted to, especially when this volatility can lead to the sudden and unexpected endings of cherished practices and modes of engagement. Here, bolstered by a close examination of fan discourses on message boards, the official Minecraft Wiki, and YouTube comment sections of tutorial and 'let's play' videos, I argue that Minecraft encourages a fan logic of 'upkeep' as communities struggle to maintain stability of practices even when attached to a fluid, transitory object.

The present study intended to investigate the use of boosters in the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). It examined whether native and non-native speakers of English differed from each other in boosters' use based on Hyland (2005) across academic divisions, levels of interactivity, genders, and academic roles in academic spoken English. The results of the UNIANOVA inferential test revealed that not only did native speakers of English utilize boosters more frequently than non-native ones across the four variables, but they also employed boosters in a way that was specific to academic divisions, levels of interactivity, genders, and academic roles. Besides the influence of culture and proficiency on boosters' use, this corpus analysis study found that native English speakers put their statements under focus so that they sound convincing to the audience in soft sciences more than the hard ones. It also indicated native speakers' greater attempt to convince their audience of the truth in their propositions, show new pieces of information as true, and back their own manipulative or persuasive purposes in highly interactive speeches more than the other levels of interactivity. Furthermore, it was shown that female native speakers exceeded to express opinions, state a suggestion with confidence in their knowledge of the topic, and minimize the possibility of accepting other options in academic spoken English of the MICASE. Ultimately, it illustrated that native academic speakers of English of faculty role rated higher to strengthen their existence, position, argument, claims, and commitment to their speech.