Larry Cretul, Florida's new House speaker, rises out of obscurity (Orlando Sentinel - February 8, 2009) Legislators don't expect Cretul to give fiery speeches or push a heavily ideological agenda. "He's just an extremely thoughtful person," said veteran lobbyist Ron Book. Cretul said last week he'd spent the weekend reading favorite passages from books like former Georgia U.S. Sen. Zell Miller's Corps Values: Everything You Need to Know I Learned In the Marines and Sun Tzu's The Art Of War. He made clear he didn't feel he was entering the job indebted to anyone.

A Spy’s lament: Former R&AW chief Vikram Sood on what ails Indian Intelligence (Sify News - February 7, 2009) It is possible that had the state paid any attention to Sun Tzu’s principles, our systems might have been better equipped to handle events that led to and occurred on 26/11. In India we have violated all these principles, more or less consistently but especially in these last few years, since after the time of Rajiv Gandhi. In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, and even before that, throughout 2008 questions about intelligence failures have been raised after each major terrorist act.

Theories on the winner? Talk to coach Sun Tzu (The Desert Sun - January 31, 2009) It might be unfair to compare the Super Bowl to military strategies and tactics, but the lessons learned from great minds such as Sun Tzu are never wasted when understood and applied.

Change the ground rules (Milwaukee Small Business Times - January 23, 2009) Here’s a superb illustration of a change-the-ground-rules strategy from the world of management consulting. Several years ago, the then consulting firm Coopers & Lybrand placed a series of print ads that showed a large picture of an ancient Chinese sword. The ad’s caption read, “Does your consultant quote ‘The Art of War’ but shy away from battle?” (“The Art of War” is a popular ancient book about warfare that is commonly referenced, even today, in business settings).

Penn v GSP breakdown (The Sun - January 22, 2009) The two men could not be more different. St Pierre quotes Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' and seems happiest with an understated self-belief, while Penn has given the media all they could ask for and more by serving up the 'I'm going to kill you' pre-fight rhetoric. [Update: St. Pierre won the bout on January 31, 2009.]

New champ Frank Mir: misinformation an effective strategy (MMA Junkie - January 1, 2009) Mir, no stranger to Sun Tzu's definitive military-strategy classic The Art of War, discussed the pre-fight strategy and the importance of misinformation this week.

Where Policy Makers Are Born (Wall Street Journal - December 20, 2008) Mr. Hertog was present as an enthusiastic admirer of Yale's Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, the conference's host. The yearlong course -- which is capped at 24 students a year -- combines rigorous study of classical texts by Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and others with high-profile summer internships, intensive immersion in the craft of policy making and an elaborate crisis simulation exercise that tries to give students a sense of what it feels like to make political decisions in real-time.

No rest in Europe for tired Scolari (Electric New Paper - December 10, 2008) Wilkins is Chelsea through and through and would never have deliberately hurt his manager, which only makes his comments even more unfortunate. Scolari, famously, is a student of Sun Tzu and will know that revealing weaknesses to the enemy only invites attack.

The Obama Modernism Mode (The Atlantic - December 4, 2008) Sun-Tzu-t-ian? Gen. James Jones disagrees with Obama about a date-certain withdrawal from Iraq' Jones has the top foreign policy staff job in the land. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama differed profoundly about the tone of diplomacy; she's now the nation's chief diplomat. George Bush's Defense Department represented Iraq; its chief is staying about. Potential enemies are kept closer than some allies.

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