For new and used cars
Reference: UK MoD Futures
DoD
Berto Jongman recommends…
The Future Strategic Context for Defence (UK 2007)
Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future (UK Guardian 9 Apr 2007)
Phi Beta Iota: C4I is the only “revolutionary” technology–Michael O'Hanlon said it first inTechnological Change and the Future of Warfare (2000). Other highlights: private sector, not defense, is now the lead for technological change–gets climate change right (100 years and further out). Morality is coming back into demand. Defense operations in the future will be predominantly multinational in nature (which suggests that how urgently we need to get multinational sharing and sense-making ginned up).
Reference: Study of Islamic Theology
03 India, 04 Indonesia, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, DoD
Marcus Aurelius Transmittal Comment and Phi Beta Iota Comment:
Journal: Twitter Aggregation Way Cool
Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence
Fort Hood: A First Test for Twitter Lists
In the aftermath of violence, lists suggest the benefits of collaboration
By Megan Garber
In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, news outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post to The Today Show created lists that aggregated the Twitter feeds of, among others, national breaking-news sources (CNN, the AP), official sources (the U.S. Army, the Red Cross, the office of Texas governor Rick Perry), local news organizations, and local individuals.
Twitter lists were tempering conjecture with the wisdom-of-crowds brand of mediation that is built into their multi-channel approach.
“The Internet” is, in its way, a one-stop news shop; and through, in particular, the deceptively simple innovation that is the hyperlink, news outlets are increasingly defined by connection rather than separation. (Thus, the “Web.”) And that, in turn—fundamentally, if not completely—topples the competitive underpinnings of newsgathering as a profession. Do what you do best, and link to the rest.
Journal: Empire as Usual–and Then Collapse
Cultural Intelligence, Government, Reform
Chuck Spinney sends….
Obama's policies are making Democrats the party of Bloated Plutocracy.
November 8, 2009 OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down
Frank Rich
The Obama administration does not seem to understand that this rage, left unaddressed, could consume it.
The system is going back to the way it was with a vengeance, against a backdrop of despair. As the unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold at week’s end, we learned that bankers were helping themselves not just to bonuses as large as those at the bubble’s peak but to early allotments of H1N1 vaccine. No wonder 62 percent of those polled by Hart Associates in late September felt that “large banks” had been helped “a lot” or “a fair amount” by “government economic policies,” but only 13 percent felt the “average working person” had been. Unemployment ranked ahead of the deficit and health care as the No. 1 pocketbook issue in the survey, with 81 percent saying the Obama administration must take more action.
Continue reading “Journal: Empire as Usual–and Then Collapse”
Journal: DNI Describes Losing Hand
Director of National Intelligence et al (IC)
Phi Beta Iota: Speaking to the World Affairs Council on 6 November 2009, Admiral Dennis Blair, USN (Ret), now the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), offered up a faint-praise indictment of a national intelligence community that is pedestrian and mis-directed.
Drawing on Global Trends 2025 and the National Intelligence Strategy, both of which are lacking (see our comments at links), here is what he said and did not say.
Top five prognostications:
Climate change accepted as a given top priority; state system still the foundation for analysis; technology search still focused on extraction of fossil fuels; potential for conflict grrowing; in 2025 the US will still be #1 power on Earth.
He stated that the goal of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is to help policy-makers make wise policy; to provide effective actionable intelligence to the Whole of Government (WoG); and to move the IC toward the cutting edge of technology.
Here is what he did not say, and our critical comments:
Journal: The Rise and Rise Further of Turkey (Along with the Collapse of Israel and the NeoCons)
02 Diplomacy, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Peace IntelligenceChuck Spinney Sends…
As someone who has lived in Turkey for most of the last two years, I have watched the development of her foreign policy with great interest, not to mention a good deal of confusion
It is hard to make sense out this rapidly-emerging, vibrant country of 70 million, increasingly well-educated, industrious people. While its remote interior is still very traditional, Turkey's coastal regions are already beginning to blossom into an outward looking, modern multinational consumer society, and the effects of rising incomes and education are very visible. In the coastal regions, I would say that living standards are now higher than those of Portugal, about the same as those of Greece, and somewhat lower than those of Spain. To be sure, the interior is poorer, especially as one travels east, but even in the east, there is growing modernity. Everywhere, markets are chock a block with high-quality healthy food and vast quantities middle income consumer goods, and there is fresh water galore, especially in the coastal regions.
The attached op-ed by Patrick Seale is a good summary that brings clarity to much of what is going on with Turkey's foreign policy and is well worth reading.
But there is more. Not mentioned are Turkey's bilateral overtures to Russia, Georgia, the Ukraine, and the various Turkic countries in great swath of Central Asia (including the Uighurs in NW China), as well as a bewildering variety of multilateral environmental and economic initiatives in the Black Sea region (involving Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Greece, and Turkey).
