On Sunday, Cuban President Raul Castro promised to step down at the end of his 5-year term in 2018. Analysts say he's seeking gradual change, without Cuba's old revolutionaries losing control.
Cuban President Raul Castro made the strongest statement yet that the island nation is preparing for a post-Castro era in announcing yesterday that he will step down in five years with plans to institute term limits.
He also replaced his No. 2 with a younger Cuban who would be poised to rule if something were to befell Mr. Castro before his second term ends in five years – the first time the nation would be led by someone who did not directly fight in the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Castro himself told lawmakers the nation was at a moment of “historic transcendence.”
IDEN A: How the devil does the big lie survive in the face of so much contrary evidence?
IDEN B: In the recent movie about FDR (Bill Murray), FDR tells the King of England that people want to believe their view of the world, not to have their views be disturbed by reality. We have made some progress. The public seems to be getting used to politicians having affairs. Some people can handle conspiracy theories (e.g., the movie JFK), but my sister and her husband say that if JFK was killed by a conspiracy, the world would fall into chaos. Nothing could be believed. There is a fear of conceptual instability. It seems that small lies can be refuted, but big lies …. not so easily. Perhaps truth needs to be dispensed in small doses. Too much overwhelms people. And everyone has a different tolerance for information that disconfirms their present conceptions. What to do? Well, one answer is to not challenge the big lie. I suspect this is where the media are. Why risk loosing access to news sources and giving one's competitors an advantage?
IDEN C: Another way of looking at this is place-related. It may be that the truth — and the ability to discern, appreciate, and leverage the truth — has to be a bottom-up campaign, one town hall, one neighborhood, at a time. Trying to transform an entire nation or government in the face of very well-funded resistance is futile — tilting at windmills. Find one village, and help it shine….the spike theory of change.
Was Christopher Dorner a true Community Folk Hero of the downtrodden, a Rambo seeking Racial Justice, or was he actually the First American Kamikaze?
A detailed examination of all such claims made in the mass media about Chris Dorner and the actual evidence so far available (even though scant) shows major contradictions.
Phi Beta Iota: There is quite a bit of repetition and incoherence in the long piece, but it does bring forth multiple contradictions and it does successfully call into question the official narrative.
Front Material
0.1 Preface
0.2 Foreword Roméo Dallaire
0.3 Introduction Walter Dorn
Part I: The UN’s First “Air Force”: Congo 1960-64
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Dropping Bombs and Firing Missiles: The United Nations Mission in the Congo Walter Dorn and Robert Pauk
1.2 Organizing the Air Effort in the Congo, 1960 William K. Carr
1.3 A Fine Line: Use of Force, the Cold War, and Canada's Air Contribution to ONUC Kevin Spooner
Part II: Airlift: Lifeline for UN Missions
2.0 Introduction
2.1 Humanitarian Relief in Haiti 2010: Honing the Partnership Between the US Air Force and the United Nations Robert Owen
2.2 Procurement of Aviation Support and UAVs Kevin Shelton-Smith, Chief Aviation Projects, UN Headquarters
2.3 UNHAS: The UN Humanitarian Air Service Walter Dorn and Ryan Cross
2.4 Aviation’s Role in Global Aid and Social Development Andy Cole
Part III: Surveillance: Eyes in the Sky
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Aerial surveillance: Eyes in the Sky Walter Dorn
3.2 UNOGIL Walter Dorn
3.3 UN Military Observation on the Roof-top of the World: Canadian Air Operations in Kashmir Matthew Trudgen
3.4 UAVs Supporting UN Operations: The MDA Service Model Dave Neil
Part IV: Combat: Enforcing the Peace
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Air Operations in Somalia William Dean III
4.2 UN Attack Helicopters in the Heart of Africa, 2004 onward Walter Dorn
Part V: No-Fly Zones
5.0 Introduction
5.1 UN Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission and the Southern No-Fly Zone, 1992-2003 James McKay
5.2 Touched by Air Power: Unarmed Military Observers in Sarajevo, 1993-94 F. Roy Thomas
5.3 Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia 1995: Humanitarian Constraints in Aerospace Warfare Robert Owen
5.4 Air Operations in Operations Unified Protector (Libya) Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Centre study [TBC]
5.5 Libya and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Paul Mitchell [TBC]
Part VI: Conclusions
6.0 Introduction
6.1 Peace from Above: Envisioning the Future of UN Airpower Robert D. Steele
6.2 Conclusion Walter Dorn et al.
The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC is now accepting applications for the position of 2013-2014 Yahoo! Fellow in Residence. The fellowship is supported by the Yahoo! International Values, Communications Technology, and Global Internet Fellowship Fund, which was established in 2007-08 at the School of Foreign Services (SFS) at Georgetown University with the help of a $1 million gift from Yahoo! Inc. Every year, the fund supports one fellow attached to the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) and two junior fellows from the MSFS graduate program at SFS to do research on how international values apply to the development and use of new communications technologies. Additional information can be found on the Institute's website using the following links:
Each session has a Cisco WebEx link for remote participation: enter your First Name, Last Name (surname), e-mail address, and the password: wsis – For technical problems, send a message to: assistance.wsis@gmail.com or call or text +33 (0)7 88 56 94 00.
Yahoo Business & Human Rights Program, Friday, September 28th, 2012
Change Your World (Cambia Tu Mundo), Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Summit that took place on September 12th and 13th in Mexico City is an excellent example of what I mean. For a day and a half, women from different countries, backgrounds and experiences in Latin America shared their dreams, lives, challenges and proved that new technologies and the Internet are incomparable tools of empowerment.
I won´t go over the event’s program nor the participants. (Links to them are available here and here). What I want to do is highlight the wonderful lessons I learned after participating in Change Your World.
1. Women are a driving force towards equality in the world. Yes, women represent not only 50% of the world population, they represent half of the idea and proposal creators. Many don´t know it, but new technologies can help them be heard and allow their proposals and ideas to be included in the development and prosperity of their communities, countries…. and therefore… of the planet.
2. Digital literacy of women in Latin America must be considered a priority for policy makers. Even though Spanish is the third most important language on the Internet with 182,379,220 users, there is lack of content created and written in it. If you add the lack of women´s voices as content creators in the region, the figures are worrisome. We cannot allow nor permit the addition of this marginalization to the many other kinds of marginalization women face (education, health, financial, justice and so on).
3. Women and the Internet can be a creative explosion. Throughout the sessions one thing was absolutely clear: the participants demonstrated in various and creative ways how the Internet can be used to support not only good causes, but very practical economic, social and political outcomes. The Internet can be a democratization tool to help build and consolidate new realities where women´s interests and needs can be not only expressed but included.
