Crowdfunding for a Satellite to Widen Net Access to Help Benefactors to Help Themselves
01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 04 Education, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Technologies, Videos/Movies/DocumentariesJournal: China’s View on China’s Role in the World
02 China, IO Sense-Making, Peace Intelligence, Strategy
China says does not want to “replace” U.S. as world power
Reuters 6 December 2010
China does not want to “replace” the United States from its dominant role in the world, and the world should not fear China's rise, the country's top diplomat wrote in an essay.
State Councillor Dai Bingguo said that China would not engage in an arms race, as the country's resources were better spent on development and ensuring its people had enough to eat.
“The notion that China wants to replace the United States and dominate the world is a myth,” Dai wrote in the essay carried on the Foreign Ministry's website (www.mfa.gov.cn) late on Monday.
“Politically, we … respect the social systems and development path of the different peoples of the world,” he added.
Rest of Reuters short report….
NIGHTWATCH Comments: Dai's essay has a defensive tone that suggests the international community expects too much of China. If that is the case, the Chinese nurtured those expectations by their world-wide economic offensive, infrastructure projects in central, south and southeast Asia, port developments in the Indian Ocean and aggressive actions to assert Chinese territorial sea claims in East and Southeast Asia. In promising to be a “responsible participant” in the international system Dai is trying to lower expectations. He is disavowing any pretense to leadership with respect to North Korea and Iran, both of whom are Chinese clients and beneficiaries. Chinese actions, arms sales and investments contradict the self-effacing theme. Nonetheless, the modern successor to the Central Kingdom appears to be trying to tutor the rest of the world on how to look on and behave towards China.
Phi Beta Iota: Colin Gray, in Modern Strategy, reminds us that time is the one strategic variable that can not be replaced nor purchased. China understands this, the USA does not. China has made some very serious mistakes, notably with respect to water and energy, but on balance, on a per capita basis, it has been much more intelligent than the USA, and absent a radical change in how the USA is governed, we expect that to continue. Similarly, Brazil, India and Indonesia, the demographic powers of the future, appear to be less corrupt in their strategic leadership, more thoughtful in their operational campaigns, and less likely to self-destruct as the USA is doing.
Review: The Search for Security–A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Review: Strategy–The Logic of War and Peace, Revised and Enlarged Edition
NIGHTWATCH Extract: China-Iran Rail + China ReCap
Review: Charm Offensive–How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World
Opening Beijing’s Seven Secrets
1975 MA Paper: An Outline of the Structure and Strategy of the Foreign Affairs System of the People’s Republic of China
Journal: Barack Obama, Colin Powell, and National Security
Budgets & Funding, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Will Colin Powell become Barack Obama's next Pentagon chief?
Toby Harnden, The Telegraph UK
4 December 2010
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Obama's most important decision you haven't heard about — Pentagon leaders
Richard H. Kohn, Christian Science Monitor
6 December 2010
Breaking Down Obama's Cabinet Contenders (2008)
Brian Montopoli, CBSNews
6 November 2008
Phi Beta Iota: The most important decision Barack Obama faces is the fundamental one of whether he wants to lead a government that works for all, or continue to be a meaningless placeholder in the theater of the absurd. Electoral Reform is the only thing that matters at this point. Absent Electoral Reform, his mid-term Cabinet appointments will be meaningless–business as usual. Colin Powell is as good as it gets if he can reframe his sense of loyalty back to the Constitutional Oath and actually down-size the Pentagon program by a third or more, while shifting $200 billion a year to State, where Senator Chuck Hagel would be well qualified to get the place back to evidence-based policies and coherent strategic planning. Commerce is a big one–Clyde Prestowitz would be our recommendation, along with Joseph Stiglitz to Office of Management and Budget–see our Virtual Cabinet at Huffington Post. However stellar the appointments, nothing they do will matter absent fundamental Electoral Reform and a restoration of the integrity not only of the US executive policy process, but of the legislative deliberation process as well. Only Electoral Reform can create an honest representative Congress. There are many other critical changes to be made at the highest levels, but ONLY in the context of a restoration of the government being Of, By, and For We the People. Obama is one single piece of paper away from greatness. We observe with interest.
Journal: WikiLeak’s Doomsday Files
Civil Society, IO Secrets, Peace Intelligence, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
If this report is accurate, Assange may have created a cyberwar war equivalent of the unbreakable “one time pad” — all Assange needs to do is post the key and doomsday bomb goes boom. Perhaps the Pentagon ought to hire him to teach DoD how to wage the net centric warfare it loves to talk about.
WikiLeaks Ready to Release Giant ‘Insurance' File if Shut Down
Published December 05, 2010
Sunday Times
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.
One of the files identified this weekend by The Sunday Times — called the “insurance” file — has been downloaded from the WikiLeaks website by tens of thousands of supporters, from America to Australia.
Reference: The Walk from “No” to “Yes” (William Ury)
Cultural Intelligence, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence
Finding the 18th camel….
15,000 tribes in touch with one another
The secret to peace is not easy, not new, but it is simple: We are the secret to peace, Us acting as a surrounding community.
The circle revisited…
The third side of any conflict is those not party to the conflict.
TEDX Presentation on Abraham's Walk (Unity & Respect)
William Ury is a mediator, writer and speaker, working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars. He's the author of “Getting to Yes.” Full bio and more links
Tip of the Hat to John Steiner.
Phi Beta Iota: This is kum-ba-ya hand-holding at a world-class level. Utterly brilliant on the process, totally lacking on the facts and how to use them, pooling of resources and how to use them, etcetera.
Journal: Wikileaks Exposes How NYT and Washington Post Shill for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Peace IntelligenceIranians (Persians) have viewed Russia (Soviet Union) with distrust and as a menace or outright threat for hundreds of years, at least since the Russian Tsars cemented their expansion into Turkestan (or the Turkic countries in what is now called Central Asia). The fact that Iran sits on top of one of the world's largest reservoirs of oil and gas adds to their fears. Russia is also much closer to Iran than the United States. So from a Russian perspective, the emergence of an Iranian nuclear delivery capability would be a far more dangerous ramifications for Russia than for the US, at least in raw geopolitical terms.
With this in mind, the attached report by Gareth Porter begs the question: Why are the Russians less concerned about the so-called Iranian ballistic missile/nuclear threat than the United States? Why would the Washington Post and New York Times bias their reporting in a way that downplays the Russia's more moderate view?
To ask this question is to answer it. (hint: Simply ask what other country is most obsessed by Iran?) Chuck
December 1, 2010
Documents Show NYT and Washington Post Shilling for US Government on Iran Missile “Threat”
Wikileaks Exposes Complicity of the Press
By GARETH PORTER
A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.
In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea.
But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.
The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles – supposedly called the BM-25 – from North Korea. Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.
Citizen Command Center Humanitarian Relief Database for Action
02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, International Aid, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence
http://www.citizencommandcenter.org/quick/start
The purpose of this site is to provide a central location to find resource status information for disaster zones and to help regions prepare for disaster.
- Disaster Response
- Disaster Preparedness
- On-going Human Services
We aim to enter command & control information for regions IN ADVANCE of a disaster, AND immediately following, so as to help relief groups hit the ground running, and to help survivors immediately locate services and supplies in the event of a disaster in their region. This command & control information might be as simple as entering the name and cell phone for groups that are prepared to be first responders in a region. Or if a region's disaster community chooses, it can mean entering a list of disaster response units and/or facilities that are on “standby” for disaster response activity. There are many disaster response “command and control” systems in use by VOADs and EMA organizations. We hope to compliment what these established systems offer and we hope to offer unaffiliated groups a method for tracking their own needs and resources.
