Category: Key Players

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Opening Beijing’s Seven Secrets

02 China, 07 Other Atrocities, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Open Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Waiting for Wikileaks: Beijing's Seven Secrets

by Perry Link (Aug 18, 2010)

While people in the US and elsewhere have been reacting to the release by Wikileaks of classified US documents on the Afghan War, Chinese bloggers have been discussing the event in parallel with another in their own country. On July 21 in Beijing, four days before Wikileaks published its documents, Chinese President Hu Jintao convened a high-level meeting to discuss ways to prevent leaks from the archives of the Communist Party of China.

In emails, tweets, and web postings, Chinese bloggers, both inside China and overseas, began listing key episodes in recent Chinese history that have remained shrouded in mystery and for which they would love to see archives opened:

1. The famine during the Great Leap Forward in 1959-62. Somewhere between 20 and 50 million people died because of bad policy, not “bad weather.” What exactly happened? What policies caused the famine and what policies suppressed information on it? How much grain was in state granaries while people starved? Is it true that Mao sold grain to the Soviet Union during those years in order to buy nuclear weapons?

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Journal: General McCrystal Wins, US Troops Lose

08 Wild Cards, Government, Military, Officers Call
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

New York Daily News
August 17, 2010
Pg. 18

Fired McChrystal Gets Yale Grad School Gig

WASHINGTON — Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the too-outspoken Afghan commander sacked by President Obama, picked up a consolation prize yesterday from the Ivy League.

Yale announced McChrystal would teach a “ leadership seminar” for grad students. McChrystal said he was looking forward to “ sharing my experiences and insights as a career military officer.”

McChrystal, 56, was forced into retirement in June after dissing the chain of command in a Rolling Stone interview.

FULL STORY ONLINE

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Journal: Nuclear War Against Iran…Again

05 Iran, Corruption

UPDATED 17 August 2010 to add:

NIGHTWATCH Extract:

Iran: Ali Shadmani, head of the armed forces Department of Operations, outlined three plans that Iran could carry out in the event of an act of aggression from the United States, Iranian news website Tabnak reported 17 August.

First, Shadmani said Iran would take over complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Second, he said Iran is closely monitoring U.S. military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq and would “paralyze the forces in these bases” and “not let them make any moves.”

Third, the last plan Shadmani articulated is to “destroy the peace” in Israel.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: These are a sample of Iranian options for retaliation. All are within Iran's capabilities to at least attempt.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: The illustration above is from earlier plans to destroy US ground forces in Iraq if it appeared they were being successful.  The USA still has not learned that prolonged occupations where they are not wanted costs the US much more than those who oppose the US.  It has also not learned that the one thing that unites the Arabs on covert extremism is the US-Israel “axis of evil.”  Iran is winning on all fronts because the US political-policy apparatchiks suffer from “strategic decrepitude.”  Putting a carrier in the Gulf of Hormuz is right up there with putting a battalion of Marines in a single building accessible to a suicide truck bomber.  The US confuses enemy restraint in taking away the low-hanging fruit (usually long ground supply lines and undefended rear area C4I nodes) with effective strategy.  Not so.  The picture here depicts the ROOF of the building that came down on the Marines.

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Worth a Look: Engaging Emergence

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Consciousness & Social IQ, Ethics, Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Strategy, Threats, Worth A Look

Amazon Page

Phi Beta Iota: Previously recommended in Worth a Look: New Book Engaging Emergence, we reiterate our regard for Peggy Holman, arguably one of a handful of leaders shaping our collective intelligence capacity today–Tom Atlee, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Harrison Owen, Thom Hartman, Jim Rough, Robert Fuller, Mark Tovey, are others, all helping shape community Open Space Open Source Collaborative Information-Sharing and Sense-Making.

See Also:

Review: The Handbook of Large Group Methods–Creating Systemic Change in Organizations and Communities

Review: The Change Handbook–The Definitive Resource on Today’s Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems

From the Author

At long last, it is available.  I am delighted to say that Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity is now for sale from Amazon, Berrett-Koehler, Barnes and Noble, or through local bookstores.

I have a confession. I have an ambitious goal for the book: to meet today's needs in the way The Fifth Discipline did 20 years ago.  And you can help make that happen.

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Dept of Homeland Sec Dogs for “Bed Bugs?”

03 Economy, 03 India, 07 Health, 08 Immigration

Cimex lectularius

Bed Bug Infestation Is Scaring Millions Of Americans

By  Anneli Rufus

Outbreaks of bed bugs, soaring in the most unexpected places — like CNN's headquarters — stoke some of our deepest fears.   Virtually eradicated nationwide sixty years ago thanks to superpowered pesticides such as DDT, bedbugs are back — largely because those chemicals are now banned, but also thanks to what experts quoted in news reports call “increased foreign travel.” (Claims a rise in bed bugs of 80% since year 2000).
Comment: This article at times rises into exaggeration but is useful overall. In the comments section after the article, solutions to get rid of bedbugs mentioned were Food Grade Diatomaceous Earth and Borax.|

A Wake-Up Call on Bedbugs

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Journal: Wikileaks, the US, the UN, & The Rule of Law

08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Ethics, IO Secrets

Role of the IG

WikiLeaks to shift base to friendly Sweden

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Aug. 15 (UPI) — The founder of WikiLeaks says he will seek a publishing license for his controversial operation in Sweden where whistleblower protections are strong.

Phi Beta Iota: The Nordic nations have consistently been “smarter” and more ethical than the US and all others.  Wikileaks has made many mistakes of judgment, as our esteemed colleague Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News has noted in “Wikileaks Fails Due Diligence Review,” but it can safely be said that the US, the UN, and all others are too easily found to be in violation of the “rule of law” they claim to represent.  In our own experience, US Ambassadors spend too much time sweeping dirt under the rug and lying for their government (not their country–America the Beautiful does not want liars as Ambassadors), and the UN is an incestuous bog of little fiefdoms that “live and let live” without the ability to police the integrity of its own professionals.  Wikipeaks exists–and is gaining traction–precisely because those who object to its leaks have failed to maintain their own integrity.

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: China – North Korea Law Enforcement…the Hybrid Model Advances

02 China, 08 Wild Cards, Collective Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Reform, Strategy

China-North Korea: China offered to help North Korea control cross-border crime and build law-enforcement forces, according to a report by Agence France-Presse on 12 August. A spokesman also said China provided military equipment to North Korea's National Defense Commission during a visit by China's Deputy Public Security Minister Liu Jing on 8 August.

North Korea's Security Ministry staff and a Chinese public security delegation met on 12 August, according to the Korean Central News Agency.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The reports are intermittent in the public media, but cumulatively they establish a pattern of China using economic and law enforcement linkages to tie North Korea more tightly. When North Korean leadership has been strong, it strongly and successfully has resisted Chinese initiatives. That does not appear to be the case at this time.  China's admission of providing “military equipment” is unusual and rare. The actors mentioned in the report suggest the reference is to crowd control equipment.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: Hybrid and M4IS2 (along with bottom-up self-governance) will be the defining attributes of local to global governance in the 21st Century.  The USA has consistently made the mistake of selling arms and withholding information sharing and intelligence capacity building (providing stealable funds does not count).  A mix of hybrid bi-lateral (such as Australian-Cambodian task forces on human trafficking) and hybrid multi-lateral (e.g. a regional intelligence centre for Central America) will flip the international relations and national security paradigms.

See Also:

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