Category: Collaboration Zones

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NIGHTWATCH: China Spanks North Korea, Taliban Targeting Trainers in Middle of Kabul, Syria Continues to Pound Foreign-Sponsored Insurgents

02 China, 08 Wild Cards, Peace Intelligence

China South Korea: At the regular daily press briefing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry disclosed, “Upon the invitation of President Xi Jinping, South Korean President Park Geun Hye is to visit China at the end of June.”

Park's spokesperson Kim Haing also told reporters in Seoul. “South Korea and China plan to announce details, including the length of the visit, at an appropriate time in the future.”

Comment: Park's will be a formal state visit. The timing of this announcement is a diplomatic block buster that humiliates North Korea. It occurred on the same day that North Korean Vice Marshal Choe was receiving guidance from President Xi. Choe departed Beijing with no invitation for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has never been invited to Beijing.

China has “tilted” to South Korea in public.

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Afghanistan: Explosions and gunfire rocked central Kabul Friday as the Taliban launched an attack close to an Afghan intelligence facility and the headquarters of a government force that protects foreign firms. The Taliban said they were targeting CIA trainers. Two people died and 13 were injured in the attack. Six to eight attackers were killed in the firefight that lasted nine hours, according to press service reports.

Comment: This fighting occurred in the center of Kabul, indicating a major lapse in security. . It is another example of the ability of anti-government fighting groups to attack any target they choose at will. The damage and losses were not large, but the demonstration of the anti-government group's ability to strike at the seat of power and the international quarter is a significant terror effect.

Phi Beta Iota:  See correction from the field, DefDog: Kabul Update – Media Gets It Wrong … Again

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Syria: Syrian troops have captured much of the rebel stronghold of al-Qusayr, in central Homs province, squeezing opposition fighters into the north of the strategic town, a military officer said on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said regime forces supported by Hizballah fighters were attacking northern areas of the city, encircling rebel fighters there.

Comment: Capture of al-Qusayr by government forces cuts the main supply route to Homs, which is the next target in the government/Hizballah offensive. Loss of Homs would eviscerate the uprising.

The recent successes will strengthen the government's position in forthcoming talks. As the leader of a successful offensive, it will be difficult to persuade Asad that he must step down or even make many concessions.

See Also:

Syria’s failure to lose

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Marina Gorbis: The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class — Provided You Have a Hand-Held Device

04 Education, Cultural Intelligence
Marina Gorbis
Marina Gorbis

The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class

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Massive Open Online Courses might seem like best way to use the Internet to open up education, but you’re thinking too small. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

This probably sounds familiar: You are with a group of friends arguing about some piece of trivia or historical fact. Someone says, “Wait, let me look this up on Wikipedia,” and proceeds to read the information out loud to the whole group, thus resolving the argument. Don’t dismiss this as a trivial occasion. It represents a learning moment, or more precisely, a microlearning moment, and it foreshadows a much larger transformation–to what I call socialstructed learning.

Socialstructed learning is an aggregation of microlearning experiences drawn from a rich ecology of content and driven not by grades but by social and intrinsic rewards. The microlearning moment may last a few minutes, hours, or days (if you are absorbed in reading something, tinkering with something, or listening to something from which you just can’t walk away). Socialstructed learning may be the future, but the foundations of this kind of education lie far in the past. Leading philosophers of education–from Socrates to Plutarch, Rousseau to Dewey–talked about many of these ideals centuries ago. Today, we have a host of tools to make their vision reality.

Continue reading “Marina Gorbis: The Future Of Education Eliminates The Classroom, Because The World Is Your Class — Provided You Have a Hand-Held Device”

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Neal Rauhauser: National Defense University’s New Directions

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

National Defense University’s New Directions

I recently finished NDU’s Convergence, which is a collection of monographs on illicit networks. Queued up right behind it New Directions in U.S. National Security Strategy, Defense Plans, and Diplomacy: A Review of Official Strategic Documents, which I finished a first review of last night.

The book collects seven important strategic studies and provides some commentary on each. These include, in chronological order of release:

Quadrennial Defense Review Report – DoD, February 2010. 128 pages.

Ballistic Missile Defense Report – DoD, February 2010. 61 pages.

Nuclear Posture Review – DoD, April 2010. 72 pages.

National Security Strategy – White House, May 2010. 60 pages.

NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement – NATO experts, May 2010. 58 pages.

Quadrennial Defense Review Perspective Report – United States Institute of Peace, at the behest of SecDef, July 2010. 159 pages.

Leading Through Civilians Power: The First Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review – State Department, December 2010. 242 pages.

A broader context is required here. Barack Obama was elected in November of 2008. There is an end of year lull, then these reports are started in January of 2009, after Hillary Clinton was approved as Secretary of State. Obama left Robert Gates in place as Secretary of Defense. The QDR comes in first, closely followed by two companion reports. The White House then releases their National Security Strategy, advised in part by the DoD studies.

The NATO document involves the U.S. but it’s May release was timed to provide six months of review before the NATO summit that November in Lisbon. The July QDR Perspective was done at the behest of the Secretary of Defense in response to criticisms leveled at the QDR itself. The State Department issued it’s first Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review in December.

Obama’s win in November of 2012, then the nomination and approval of Secretary of Defense Hagel in February 2013 and Secretary of State John Kerry in March of 2013 are what set the stage for the next round of updates, due in the spring of 2014.

New Directions is just 178 pages and I chose to not read the nuclear and missile report portions, counting that as excess detail at this time. The seven reports themselves total 780 pages. I also noticed and curated the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, which was released concurrent with the QDR in February of 2010. Since DHS is internal their report has no place in the assessment of our outward facing strategy.

I have roughly a nine month window to read and understand 958 pages of dense, high level material before the next update begins to arrive. I immediately see the usual set of issues that arise with any of our strategic planning.

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NIGHTWATCH: China Putting Troops Into Africa, Middle East & Africa Unraveling — Truth Still a Casualty

01 Poverty, 02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence
Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

China-Mali: For the record. China has offered to send more than 500 soldiers to the UN force seeking to contain Islamist militants in Mali .  This would be China's largest UN peacekeeping contingent.

Iraq: An attack at a military checkpoint at Taji, north of Baghdad, on Thursday killed 11 people, including four soldiers, and wounded five.

Comment: The pause appears ended. The fighting has killed 420 people this month.

Lebanon: Fighting in Tripoli continued for a fifth day. Overnight clashes killed six people and wounded 40. .The Middle East is now destabilized from the border of Iran to the Mediterranean.

Niger: Islamic militants executed coordinated attacks at two locations in Niger, the country east of Mali. In one attack, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at a French-Niger owned uranium mine in the town of Arlit. Simultaneously and 125 miles south, another bomber detonated a car bomb inside a military camp in the city of Agadez. Other jihadists in vehicles attempted to overrun the base, but were stopped by a firefight with Nigerian soldiers. The bombs killed 5 bombers, 25 people and injured 29, according to the Ministry of Defense. No expatriates were killed.

During this Watch, a surviving bomber is holding several Nigerien soldiers hostage

These were the first terrorist attacks of this kind in Niger. The two towns are in central Niger. Some of the facilities for processing uranium ore were damaged at Arlit.

An affiliate of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, known as the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) claimed responsibility. They were also involved in the Mali fighting. Nigerien officials judge the fighters came from Libya. One said that Libyan instability is destabilizing the entire region.

Early this year one military analyst judged that Niger was even less prepared than Mali to cope with Islamic militants and terrorists. Nevertheless, a Nigerien unit participated in clearing operations in Gao, Mali.

The key points are that the jihadists have not given up their plans to establish a base in Sahelian Africa and all the countries are vulnerable. Their territory is enormous with poor infrastructure. They are poor and have small, poorly supported security forces.

The attacks might compel France to deploy some of the troops withdrawing from Mali to Niger. Niger is France's single most important supplier of uranium for its extensive nuclear and electric power industries.

France might need to re-evaluate its strategy for providing security assistance to its former colonies. The threat calls for an integrated regional approach to security.  The Sahelian nations and France will certainly need outside help.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: China Putting Troops Into Africa, Middle East & Africa Unraveling — Truth Still a Casualty”

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Neal Rauhauser: One World, Three Conflict Zones (Americas, Middle East/Muslims, Asia/Pacific)

Key Players, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Threats
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

One World, Three Reporting Domains

There are 249 sovereign territories, one sovereign military order, and a few bits of terra nullius that remain unclaimed for obscure reasons. The foreign policy challenges the U.S. faces can be separated into three broad geographic zones – Central & South America, The Muslim World, and the Pacific Rim & Southeast Asia.

I had a good reading background and I spent the first quarter of 2013 focused on The Muslim World. Having sorted out the good news sources and collected a bunch of maps in the process, I determined that simply staying on top of happenings is a full time job. I have not done the same with the other two regions, but I am going to assume that the Pacific Rim & Southeast Asia is roughly the same volume of work, while Central & South America is slightly less busy.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: One World, Three Conflict Zones (Americas, Middle East/Muslims, Asia/Pacific)”

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Berto Jongman: Tom Engelhardt on Terracide by Terraists — Legalized Crime Destroying Earth & Humanity — Beyond Genocide, Beyond Ecocide

Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Lessons, Officers Call, Threats
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Terracide and the Terrarists 

Destroying the Planet for Record Profits 

By Tom Engelhardt

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide.  And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide.  But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night.  A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth.  It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.

The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world.  Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific.  Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes.  And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either.  But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes.

In the case of the terrarists — and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet, giant energy companies  like ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell — you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing.

It wasn’t that complicated. In recent years, the companies they run have been extracting fossil fuels from the Earth in ever more frenetic and ingenious ways. The burning of those fossil fuels, in turn, has put record amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Only this month, the CO2 level reached 400 parts per million for the first time in human history. A consensus of scientists has long concluded that the process was warming the world and that, if the average planetary temperature rose more than two degrees Celsius, all sorts of dangers could ensue, including seas rising high enough to inundate coastal cities, increasingly intense heat waves, droughts, floods, ever more extreme storm systems, and so on.

How to Make Staggering Amounts of Money and Do In the Planet

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Tom Engelhardt on Terracide by Terraists — Legalized Crime Destroying Earth & Humanity — Beyond Genocide, Beyond Ecocide”

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