India-Russia: India will buy 250 to 300 advanced stealth fighter aircraft from Russian, according to Defence Minister A.K. Antony, as he announced the deal worth nearly $30 billion. Antony and Russian Defense Minister Serdyukov said Russia would supply the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) as well as 45 transport aircraft. India also will jointly manufacture the fighters under license for ten years.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: The future of the Indian Air Force appears to be linked primarily to Russian rather than US firms. This agreement thinly hides an Indian strategic judgment about the threats it faces from China and Pakistan, about the US as a supplier for coping with those threats compared to the Russians.

India is making long term preparations to be ready for a major war after ten years that will require fifth generation fighters because the most likely enemy – presumably China – also will have those air capabilities. The Russians are willing to sell India the aircraft and to license the technology. The US is not building significant numbers of fifth generation fighters and will not sell them even to Israel.

The Indians, Russians and Chinese do not share the US strategic outlook favoring small wars and counterinsurgency forces.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: Since the mid-1990's, when the best minds associated with the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute turned decisively away from the two-major theater war model, and we presented the 1+iii (One Plus Triple Eye) strategy, the US has been incoherent with respect to strategic policy, acquisition, and operations. Ideology is not a substitute for intelligence, and technology is not a substitute for thinking.

2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective

2001 Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security

2000 Presidential Leadership and National Security Policy Making

1998 JFQ The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1993 On Defense & Intelligence–The Grand Vision

and some graphics….

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extract: East Prepares for Big War”

2010/10/07

“Program or Be Programmed,” Remaking Our World

04 Education, Civil Society, Technologies

http://shareable.net/blog/program-or-be-programmed

Shareable presents an excerpt from Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age, Rushkoff’s introduction to his bold-yet-accessible work. On Tuesday, October 12, Shareable will run an exclusive interview with Rushkoff, followed with an online discussion on October 13 and 14 between Rushkoff and the entire Shareable community. We invite you to take part in the discussion of these provocative and compelling ideas.

When human beings acquired language, we learned not just how to listen but how to speak. When we gained literacy, we learned not just how to read but how to write. And as we move into an increasingly digital reality, we must learn not just how to use programs but how to make them.

In the emerging, highly programmed landscape ahead, you will either create the software or you will be the software. It’s really that simple: Program, or be programmed. Choose the former, and you gain access to the control panel of civilization. Choose the latter, and it could be the last real choice you get to make.

For while digital technologies are in many ways a natural outgrowth of what went before, they are also markedly diﬀerent. Computers and networks are more than mere tools: They are like living things, themselves. Unlike a rake, a pen, or even a jackhammer, a digital technology is programmed. This means it comes with instructions not just for its use, but also for itself. And as such technologies come to characterize the future of the way we live and work, the people programming them take on an increasingly important role in shaping our world and how it works. After that, it’s the digital technologies themselves that will be shaping our world, both with and without our explicit cooperation.

2010/10/07

Event: 9-11 Oct, New York City, Re:FormSchool

04 Education

RE:FORM SCHOOL is a high profile group art exhibition, event series and public awareness campaign taking place in New York City, that brings together the creative community in a call for the reform of the American Public Education System.

RE:FORM SCHOOL is a REDU project. REDU stands for rethinking, reforming and rebuilding US education. Powered by people and technology, REDU is a movement designed to expand and encourage the national conversation around education reform by providing information and resources to learn, a community platform to connect, and the tools to act. Get involved at letsredu.com.

RE:FORM SCHOOL will be open to the public, Saturday, October 9th, 2010 through Monday, October 11th, 2010 between the hours of 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM and is located at 233 Mott Street, New York City, NY 10012.

2010/10/072010/10/07

Event: 30 Oct Restoring Sanity Rally with Jon Stewart, Keep Fear Alive Rally with Stephen Colbert

11 Society, Civil Society, Reform, Worth A Look

UPDATE: 7 Oct 10 Rally Point Identified for 30 Oct Sanity Rally

sanity rally map — Sanity Rally (Inside the Red Dotted Lines)

face jon stewart — Jon Stewart Full Story Online

Jon Stewart Plans ‘Restoring Sanity' Rally to Counter Glenn Beck Event–October 30

“We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat, who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard, and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on some is when that person is actually Hitler,” Stewart says on his Daily Show website.

The date, Oct. 30, “has no significance whatsoever,” Stewart says gleefully. “Ours is a rally for the people who've been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) — not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority. If we had to sum up the political view of our participants in a single sentence . . . we couldn't. That's sort of the point.”

. . . . . . .

And lest anyone think it's just about answering Tea Party conservatives and the Beck-a-palooza last Aug. 28, Comedy Central's other wild and crazy news satirist, Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report, says he'll hold a competing rally the same day, called “The March to Keep Fear Alive” to combat “creeping reasonableness.” Stewart's people “want to replace our fear with reason,” Colbert wrote. “But never forget ‘reason,' is just one letter away form ‘treason.'”

Phi Beta Iota: These two individuals are making a huge contribution. The is no underestimating the common sense of the American people BUT they have to be engaged, their voices heard, and integrity maintained in the three branches of government.

2010/10/072010/10/07

Journal: 10% Foreclosures, 1-2% Mortgage Default

06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government

The Huffington Post is doing a very fine job of raising key issues, but in isolation and out of context. Here is one story they have brought forward. As Cleveland found out when they had to raze to the ground 11,000 abandoned units, foreclosures come with very heavy social and financial costs. It is not to late to stop all foreclosures and evictions as we recommended in October 2008, to no effect. America is going through a multi-dimensional crisis without any leadership whatsoever. One way to understand the crisis is to study the Revolution Matrix and the Negative Book List. The Positive Book List requires some semblance of leadership and legitimacy, at this time not to be found in America, outside of the Virtual Cabinet at The Huffington Post, which does not really exist–it could, but it does not.

2010/10/072010/10/07

Journal: The Fix (for the Banks) Is (Delayed)

03 Economy, 11 Society, Corruption

UPDATE 7 Oct 10 3 pm
Obama Will Not Sign Bill Seen As Cover For Bank Foreclosures

Little-Noticed Bill Could Make It Harder To Challenge Foreclosures

Challenging foreclosures could become more difficult for homeowners if the president signs a bill that passed through the Senate last week. The little-noticed bill comes at a time when the validity of foreclosure proceedings across the nation have been called into question.

The House passed the bill in April, and its brisk journey through the Senate has drawn scant attention, Reuters reports. If signed into law, it would require courts to accept certain documents that have been notarized out of state, streamlining foreclosure proceedings and stripping homeowners of one legal method of challenging a foreclosure. The legislation would come just as a foreclosure validity crisis is mounting: GMAC, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have admitted to not properly reviewing some of their foreclosure documents.

The foreclosure controversies that have emerged in recent weeks throw doubts on the larger foreclosure system. A non-bank entity, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, has been initiating foreclosures, the Washington Post reports, exercising an authority that judges have ruled it does not have. In response to the mounting scandal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called on Tuesday for an investigation into foreclosure fraud. “This is a very big deal,” she told HuffPost.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner told Reuters the timing of the bill's passage was “suspicious,” implying that mortgage companies might have engaged in behind-the-scenes lobbying.

2010/10/072010/10/07

Journal: MoveOn, Neighborhoods, & Democracy

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), Methods & Process, Open Government

Foglio's Field Notes

Leif Utne's random rants, musings and meditations

Why MoveOn Should Introduce Me to My Neighbors

with 4 comments

Recently, my dad proposed in his back-page column in the May/June Utne Reader, titled “An Open Letter to MoveOn,” that the nation’s premier progressive organization should go beyond issue-driven campaigns and “lead a community organizing movement across America.” (Yes, in case you’re wondering, my dad founded Utne Reader, and I worked there as a writer and editor for eight years.)

I couldn’t agree more. I especially like his suggestion that MoveOn stage a series of large revival-style cultural events designed to introduce members to each other:

MoveOn could kick off the movement by hosting stadium-sized events, harking back to 19th-century chautauquas and tent shows. Attendees would sit together according to particular affinities: parents of young children, schoolteachers, health care workers, clergy, small-business owners, elders. Like-minded participants could share their ideas about particular issues, like clean, green energy and single-payer health care. Or, if seating were assigned based on zip code and postal route, people would meet their neighbors in a positively charged environment.

Read rest of blog….

Phi Beta Iota: We are hugely impressed by the combined convergence and emergence we see all around us. The Internet is moving into phase 3, where it optimizes human collaboration including face to face encounters. We will begin to follow Leif Utne.