The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
CONVERSATIONAL LEADERSHIP: THINKING TOGETHER FOR A CHANGE
by Thomas J. Hurley and Juanita Brown
Feature The Systems Thinker Vol 20 No 9 November 2009
India: The Chandigarh Tribune reported the results of last Wednesday's bi-annual naval conference, at which Minister of Defence Antony spoke. Antony said the government approved the construction of two new naval bases in the Bay of Bengal, opposite the Malacca Strait and Sri Lanka. At present, the only Indian naval base in Bay of Bengal is the huge naval establishment at Vishakapatnam, the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command.
The northernmost base will be built at Paradip in Orissa State, closer to Bangladesh and opposite the Malacca Strait. The southernmost base is at Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu State, opposite Sri Lanka.
The Tribune commentator assessed that the two new bases are a counter to China's increased naval presence in the Bay of Bengal, including in Burma and Bangladesh. The Navy has smaller stations in the eastern Indian Ocean, but no full-size bases capable of providing all logistics support, supplies, replenishment, repair and maintenance. A third base for nuclear powered submarines also will be built at a separate location in the Bay of Bengal. The bases will take at least three years to build.
Comment: Chinese naval interest in the eastern Indian Ocean is spurring the expansion of India's naval infrastructure. China has announced its intention to build a deep sea port at Sonadia near Cox Bazar, Bangladesh. It is also building ports in Burma/Myanmar. All are in the Bay of Bengal.
Most major Indian naval infrastructure construction has been focused against the threat from Pakistan. The new bases represent a shift in Indian strategic thinking — to counter the threat from Chinese poaching in the Indian Ocean, without reducing vigilance against Pakistan. A new naval base in western India was announced in April 2010.
Phi Beta Iota: The maritime environment may well displace the space environment in the 21st Century, as offshore cities and factories come into being (including water desalination plants away from the brown water), and a portion of the population takes to permanent ocean-going residence. As with outer space, the “Outlaw Sea” are not charted in the sense that most vessels do not have transponders and there is rotten “situational awareness” overall including close-in. We we re-writing the 450-ship Navy piece today, we would place even more emphasis on getting the 75-ship Expediter into existence, and we would create a surface and air breather arm to the Ocean Surveillance Information System (OSIS) as a new command with global reach and very tight multinational information-sharing and sense-making networks centered at each of the regional multinational decision-support centres that China may fund if the USA does not get its act together. Whoever owns and operators those regional centers is going to be in the cat-bird seat–they will completely displace the unaffordable ineffective secret C4I grid that DoD and the US IC have now.
See Also:
Modular Computer Simplifies Electronics Recycling, Reduces Electronic Waste and Disassembles in Two Minutes
SAN RAFAEL, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK) has named a class of Stanford University graduate students as Autodesk Inventor of the Month for October for developing a prototype of the recyclable Bloom laptop.
The Bloom laptop is the project of a team of students from Stanford and Finland’s Aalto University who were given the task to create a recyclable consumer electronics product that makes electronics recycling a simpler, more effective and engaging process for consumers. The students used Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Inventor Publisher software to help develop and refine the innovative laptop during the school year. Creating 3D digital prototypes of the hardware components inside the laptop aided in creating a readily accessible laptop design that is also easy to disassemble.
Phi Beta Iota: Ben Gilad, one of the top commercial intelligence analysts around, has a point, but he forgets that the modern looting of the USA began in 1981 and reached a cresendo with the Phil Gramm (R-TX) deregulation of the financial “services” industry. For the most recent and most superb story on the axis of crime from Wall Street to the two political parties sharing the power of the public purse, see Matt Taibbi's book, Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America.
Barcelona is known as one of Spain's most vibrant cities, but when Pope Benedict XVI touches down there Sunday, he'll be greeted with something extra colorful: a massive “queer kissing flashmob.”
According to the event's Facebook page, organizers have invited same-sex couples from all over Spain to congregate in front of the city's cathedral Nov. 7 and start kissing as soon as the pope emerges from the building at 10 a.m. Organizers say that though the event will last for a mere two minutes, over 300 people are planning to attend.
Police, Public Vigilance Foiled 80 Percent of Terror Plots
Homeland Security Today
by Anthony L. Kimery Tuesday, 02 November 2010
Citizens, state and local law enforcement play vital role in uncovering attacks More than 80 percent of foiled terrorist plots between 1999 and 2009 resulted from observations by citizens or law enforcement officials or from law enforcement investigations, according to a new report by the Institute for Homeland Security Solutions (IHSS) that reviewed open-source information on 86 foiled and successful terrorist plots against US targets from 1999 to 2009.
“Since 2001, the Intelligence Community has sought better ways to detect and prevent domestic terrorist plots, said Kevin Strom, senior research scientist and the report's lead author. “What this report reveals is the vital role played by citizens as well as state and local U.S. law enforcement agencies in uncovering such planned attacks.”
Years ago, Robert David Steele, a noted veteran intelligence officer, told HSToday.us that “fifty percent of the ‘dots’ that prevent the next 9/11 will come from bottom-up [local] level observation” and unconventional intelligence from “private sector parties.”
Squeezing the Working Class
By VINCENT NAVARRO
Counterpunch
Europe is seeing some of the largest demonstrations since World War II, with labor agitation being the major trademark. The reasons for this labor unrest are easy to see. Let’s look at several facts, starting with unemployment. Europe has always had lower unemployment than the United States. No longer. Since 1982, unemployment (as an average of the EU-15) has been higher in the European Union than in the United States. Actually, unemployment had already started to rise in Europe by the late 1970s, coinciding with the first steps by the EU-15 countries to construct what they later called the European Union. One consequence of forming this Union was higher unemployment, and from that time, unemployment has increased, eventually exceeding that in the United States.
