NIGHTWATCH: China Leads Multinational Intelligence and Operations Initiative within Mekong River Basin

02 China, 03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, 12 Water, Commerce, Military
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China-Mekong River Nations: Chinese press reported that joint security patrols with Thailand, Laos and Burma/ Myanmar will begin along the Mekong River. At a ministerial meeting in Beijing, the four countries agreed to begin the first patrol before 15 December and that the operation's headquarters be located in China. The patrols will allow shipping to restart and guarantee security with China to help train and equip police in Laos and Myanmar.

Comment: Many younger Readers might not know that the Mekong River originates in southwest China and flows southwards through Southeast Asia to the South China Sea. The omission of Cambodia from the joint agreement indicates the security problems are in the upper reaches of the river. Thus, the security problems are in effect, inland waterways security issues along navigable waterways.

The interesting dynamic is the Chinese success in moving southward, by exploiting lapses of local security along a key waterway, to extend the Chinese sphere of influence. The Chinese have not had Chinese patrol boats or river security advisors on the Mekong along the Laos, Burma and Thai borders in centuries.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota:  Viet-Nam, long a co-equal and counter-weight to China in Southeast Asia, is not mentioned.  As the map illuminates, Cambodia and Viet-Nam control the entry points to the Mekong River.  Viet-Nam's control of the eastern coast also precludes–absent an agreement–an obvious option for future commerce, a major canal or rail cut from the Mekong east to Vinh, one of four Grade 1 cities in Viet-Nam, a major ground transport hub, and a notable port.

#USConstitution USA Rolling Update

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
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Our veterans in particular, but all citizens generally, are beginning to realize that the US Government as well as State and local governments, are in violation of their constitutional charters more often than might be imagined.  Today we begin a new Rolling Update focused on the Constitution of the United States of America, and also start a new Twitter tag.  It is our view that respect for the Constitution, and the demand for Electoral Reform, go together.

9 Dec 2011

Saving Our Democracy (Bernie Sanders)

A Petition to Support the Saving American Democracy Amendment

Ignoring The Constitution

Congress Violates Constitution with New Law

A National Defense Act or how to undermine the US Constitution?

Obama is ignoring the U.S. Constitution

Below the Line Past Entries & Websites

Continue reading “#USConstitution USA Rolling Update”

David Swanson: Stop the Circus, See the Two Evils

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government
David Swanson

Try Not to Think of a Newt

By David Swanson

The current President and Congress are destroying our Constitutional rights, our planet's climate, and the vestiges of a social safety net, and you are obsessing over a freak show of self-hating homosexuals and anti-intellectual intellectuals jumping through hoops in a corporate media circus with Ringmaster Donald Trump. Is this a good use of your time?

The “Bush tax cuts” are still called that, while Bush has been gone for years. The corporate trade agreements are rolling through at a pace Bush couldn’t have managed. While Social Security was protected by anti-Bush agitation, it now has its neck on a chopping block and the progressive position is that the taxes that pay for it should be cut — rather than expanded to apply equally to large incomes. President Obama has repeatedly blocked serious global efforts to address climate change. And you're concerned about which Republican buffoon doesn't know the difference between Iraq and Iran, or which other one thinks the United States has an embassy in Iran. Are you kidding me?

President Obama, the United States Congress, and the Federal Reserve are united in their generosity toward Wall Street and the war machine — both financial generosity and the equally generous provision of immunity from legal prosecution. In the Bush era we were locked in free-speech cages, and we raised hell about it. Now we're locked in jails, beaten, tear gassed, pepper sprayed, and otherwise brutally assaulted, and . . . wait! Look over there! Is that a presidential candidate who wants to publicly declare his desire to secretly murder Iranians? How outrageous!

For the love of everything decent, the current president is right now murdering Iranians, and it's not very secret. What in the hell is the matter with you people?

Illegality is over, says Harold Koh (“the good John Yoo”). This is the same guy who claims massive slaughter by bombing of foreign nations is neither war nor an act of hostility as long as no significant number of U.S. citizens die immediately in the process.

How can illegality be over, when the crimes have not been prosecuted and have in fact been legalized? The current Department of Justice, at the direction of President Obama, has radically expanded claims of state secrets and made greater use of the Espionage Act to punish whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. The current president has formalized, legalized, systematized, and normalized warrantless spying, lawless imprisonment (Bagram is booming!), prisoner abuse, assassination (including of members of the 5% of humanity we're supposed to care about), war making in direct violation of the will of Congress (Cf. Libya), and the radically expanded use of drones to do much of this dirty work. And you want me to care that some house-broken elephant who's been trained to parrot platitudes is in favor of child labor? Really?

It is not pleasant to face, but our children are done for if we proceed down either of the paths you are obsessing over the choice between. Behind curtain A is increased plutocratic militarization. Behind curtain B is the same damn thing. It's an evil choice. Choose which of your children should be shot. This one. No, wait. This one. It is not a choice we have time to dignify with our attention. It is not something we should waste 10 months of inaction and misdirected resources on.

We must do what has finally, finally, finally been begun. We must occupy public space.

We must move the entire culture. We must reshape this society. We must drag both political parties and everybody in them and the majority of the population which has long since grown sick up to the eye balls of both of them, we must drag everyone kicking and screaming to a better place, to a place where we do not choose between putting 65% or 62% of discretionary federal spending into war preparation without an enemy in sight. What kind of a range of options is that?

This government will halt the foreclosures only after we have halted the forclosures. This government will forgive student debt only after we have blocked its payment. This government will regulate Wall Street only after we have divested from it. And this government will stop dumping our hard-earned pay into wars we don't want and cannot survive only when we have made that path (that running of the gauntlet of K Street's opposition) easier for every type of misrepresentative than continuing on the current trajectory.

Self-government is not a spectator sport. Elections are not reality shows. There is much more at stake than a soap opera. The first step, and it is a more difficult step than sleeping in a tent in the ice cold rain, is to cease giving a damn what some individual who is stripping away your rights and the fruits of your labors really feels in his heart of hearts. Stop it. We do not have the time. Politicians who make speeches opposing everything they do must be pushed to match action to words, not treated as if words speak more loudly than actions. That attitude is what leads us to focus on what a gaggle of misfits with no power and less wisdom have to say about each other, just because they're on the teevee screen.

Get serious. Get independent. Get principled. And stay nonviolent toward everything in the world except your television.

Robert Steele: Twitter Burns Google / Facebook

03 Economy, 04 Education, 11 Society, Commerce, InfoOps (IO), Strategy, Technologies
Robert David STEELE Vivas

This is fascinating at multiple levels.  Neither Google nor Facebook have been effective at helping humans “make sense,” now it appears that Twitter–perhaps combined with Hypothes.is–just might be a hair away from creating the skeleton of the World Brain.

Twitter Just Fired A Cannonball At Facebook And Google+

Matt Rosoff

Business Insider, 8 December 2011

Twitter is revamping the service with personal Twitter profile pages, a new timeline that includes rich media and other related informationembedded into tweets, and easier search for information based on @ symbols (usernames) and hash tags.

Talking at Twitter's unfinished new headquarters building in San Francisco, founder Jack Dorsey and CEO Dick Costolo explained that the changes are meant to make Twitter more accessible to everybody.

Their three goals:

  • Expose the “universe within every tweet.” Tweets aren't just 140 characters — there's also context like retweets and replies, and embedded content like videos, images, and songs. Today, accessing this material still feels like opening a “side drawer,” said Costolo.
  • Make Twitter less obscure to use. Today, the @ and # symbols are too obscure — people don't know what they mean. This contributes to a lot of people visiting Twitter but not really participating actively. The redesign surfaces these symbols and makes them the gateway to find out more infrmation about people and topics on the surface.
  • Share it with everybody. The world has 7 billion people. Most of those people are “not yet on Twitter,” said Costolo. The redesign will roll out to mobile devices simultaneously, and is streamlined to load up to 500% faster.

The trick is doing this without adding too much complexity. As Dorsey put it, “simplification is the key here.”

 

Owl: Internment Camps for Isolating Unemployed in Federal “Work Camps”?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, DHS, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call
Who? Who?

Al Martin, former Navy intelligence officer and former Wall Street broker, former Iran-contra co-conspirator with Ollie's Follies, is starting to write about the possible use of the many civil unrest internment camps built in the US by Halliburton and related contractors. In his view, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), makes it possible for expanded use of the US military and expanded powers for law enforcement to “contain” the unemployed in work camps–which might be a good thing, in his view. [The bill passed the Senate but has not passed the House at this time.]

Here are some fragments about these camps.

Alleged Gulag Regions

Alleged KBR Memo with Details for Rapid Construction of Camps for 300-1000

List of Alleged US Internment Camps (12 Pages)

Exclusive: Government Activating FEMA Camps Across U.S. [Prison Planet / Alex Jones / Substance]

Concentration Camps for US Citizens

Our government, under a program called REX 84 (Readiness Exercise 84) runs over 800 detention camps nationwide. They are all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners should the US government institute martial law.


Theophilis Goodyear: Disposable Hero Body Parts — When Blind Collectives Run Amok

07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Military
Theophilis Goodyear

Remains of 274 US troops dumped in landfill: report

Agence France Press, 8 December 2011

The US Air Force dumped the cremated, partial remains of at least 274 troops in a landfill before halting the secretive practice in 2008, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Read full article.

Theophillis Goodyear Comments:

No matter who is specifically to blame here, this story is certainly a powerful metaphor for what's wrong with worldwide society. Our systems have taken on a life of their own. They've become massive machines that no one is steering. And we've become fodder for them. Some people have more power than others. But mostly these machines are blind collectives that are beyond the control of any single individual or group. According to the article, senior Pentagon officials never authorized this decision and were unaware of it. But anyone who's ever been in the military knows that the culture tends to force underlings to get creative when it comes to fulfilling objectives. Orders are not always doable but they must be done anyway. And the culture is a collective entity.

What's likely is that the person in charge of the US Air Force mortuary at Dover Air Force Base was facing a dilemma created by his superiors. And the bottom line must have been money. I'm guessing that budgetary pressures, time deadlines, and political correctness (not calling attention to piles of body parts) were the motivating forces here. These conflicting forces probably left the head of the mortuary with only one option: dump the remains as quickly and cheaply as possible.

The article goes on to say that “an additional group of 1,762 remains . . . were also disposed of in this manner.” Knee-jerk reaction tends to drive us to search for an individual to blame. The Tea Party will want to blame Obama. The Democrats will want to blame Bush policies. The military will want to blame the lowest man on the totem pole. And the officer who applied all the pressure to the man who actually made the decision, probably has an airtight defense; because he probably never told him exactly how to solve the problem, and he probably said that he didn't want to know, or need to know (all discussed verbally and in private, no doubt); because the military also trains people to cover their asses at all costs! It's a basic survival skill.

The real culprit here is likely to be the collective. And collectives tend to dilute the responsibility of individuals. That's what makes collectives so dangerous. We would become extinct as a species without them, but they have grown so massive and powerful that top-down management no longer works. The solution, of course, is open-source intelligence.

We are no longer driving these collectives. No one is. They are driving us! Even the most powerful leaders are disposable. But the collectives that they manage go on and on without them. And if they try to reform them, they will be quickly ejected and replaced. Our collectives have become blind machines. And only truly open collective intelligence, collective wisdom, and other open-source systems can save us from them.

But we must remember that although this incident can be used as a metaphor for the problem, the incident itself is not a metaphor but a reality. Our collectives have become giant meat grinders. That too is a metaphor. But the networks of cause and effect it describes are all too real. Who did the heroes who were unceremoniously dumped in a landfill serve? Ultimately they served a blind collective and were discarded by the same.

A blame game or a witch hunt can't save future heroes from a similar fate. If the Pentagon wants to do justice to these men and their families, they must blame their own military culture, which is what led to this disgraceful and undignified end. They must start openly challenging the blind aspects of the collective they serve. And citizens (in whose name the collective operates) must support them in the effort.

A good model might be truth and reconciliation, which waives individual culpability in order to get at the truth of the matter. And in this case I think the truth will liberate everyone. The collective can't be tried and sentenced and sent to prison. The collective can't be embarrassed or humiliated. The collective has no need to avoid responsibility or defend itself, because the collective is an abstract entity with no life other than what we give it.

Put the collective on trial.

David Swanson: History of Corporate Personhood — How Lewis Powell & US Chamber of Commerce Bought the US Supreme Court

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
David Swanson

The Real History of ‘Corporate Personhood': Meet the Man to Blame for Corporations Having More Rights Than You

The real history of today's excessive corporate power starts with a tobacco lawyer appointed to the Supreme Court. 

By Jeffrey Clements, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, AlterNet

The following is an excerpt of Jeffrey Clement's Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It.

In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America.

Complete excerpt below the line — real history killing real people.

Continue reading “David Swanson: History of Corporate Personhood — How Lewis Powell & US Chamber of Commerce Bought the US Supreme Court”