Group items tagged

Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress. Frontpage of sample CRS report, RL31555: China and Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles: Policy Issues, dated January 7, 2009. A full listing of reports is available here.

The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to the financial collapse.

The Federation of American Scientists, in pushing for the reports to be made public, stated that the "CRS is Congress' Brain and it's useful for the public to be plugged into it,"[2]. While Wired magazine called their concealment "The biggest Congressional scandal of the digital age"[3]. Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.

Needles in a haystackThe problem of sifting through vast amounts of data was highlighted by the US 9/11 Commission, which concluded that the American intelligence community knew in advance that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were in the offing, they just didn't know they knew it. The pieces were all there for anyone who knew to look for them, needles buried in a haystack of irrelevancies. The answer in both America and Britain has been to collect more haystacks: useless, indiscriminately acquired information onpeople who've done nothing to arouse suspicion. We even inveigle our citizens to become amateur curtain-twitchers and pecksniffs, demanding that they report "suspicious" activity to the authorities.

Maidan was a group of tech-savvy pro-democracy activists who used the Internet as a tool to support their movement. Maidan in Ukranian means public square and Maidan’s website features the slogal “You CAN chnage the world you live in. And you can do it now. In Ukraine.”

The main activity of Maidan was election monitoring and networking with other pro-democracy organizations around Eastern Europe.

“websites cannot produce an activist organization.”

In July, 2001, after arriving in Beijing, Adelson and Weidner saw Olympic banners flying along the streets. They soon learned that the country was waiting to find out whether it would be selected as the site for the 2008 Summer Games. In addition to seeing the Vice-Premier, Adelson and Weidner met with the mayor of Beijing, who asked Adelson for help with a matter pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he believed was threatening China’s chance to host the Olympics. (In the United States, China was widely perceived as the frontrunner, and it is not clear that Congress’s position would have had any impact on its chances.) Adelson said in court that he immediately made calls on his cell phone to Republican friends in Congress—including Tom DeLay, then the majority whip—who had received generous support from Adelson. DeLay told him that there was indeed a resolution pending about China and the Olympics. (Representative Tom Lantos, then the highest-ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, had introduced a resolution opposing China’s Olympic bid, saying, “China’s abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games and should disqualify Beijing from consideration.”)

Rebecca McKinnon reports on 27 year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang, aka "Zola," whom the Chinese government have banned from leaving the country as a "potential threat to state security." Snip:

In 1972, the seminal book Limits to Growth by a group called the Club of Rome claimed that exponential growth would eventually lead to economic and environmental collapse.

Yet Turner reckons his report [pdf format] shows that a sustainable economy is attainable. "We wouldn't have to go back to the caves," he says.

"The heavy presence of Chinese (People's) Liberation Army officers throughout the proceedings left many wondering exactly what image the hosts were intending to project to the international community...," the newspaper said. "At a time when Tibet, Darfur and China's broader human rights record are proving delicate issues for Beijing organizers, the move to present thousands of drilled, sobersided army officers ... was surprising for its brazenness; a none too subtle projection of strength," it said. Asked about the military theme, Zhang Jigang, chief of the People's Liberation Army dance troupe, told reporters there were "excellent performers and directors" in the military. "I think this is a Chinese characteristic," he said. "All of the military arms have ... have wonderful acrobats and opera troupes. We should make use of such resources."

中科院《国家健康报告》从裁减军备、消除贫困、发展援助、资源节约和保护环境等方面，对全球45个样本国家的国家责任进行评估，结果中国、墨西哥、巴西、泰国、菲律宾居前五名，排最后五位的分别是英国、意大利、以色列、新加坡、美国。

在全球“国家责任指数”排行榜中，除北欧国家外，发达国家的国家责任排名普遍靠后。中科院国家健康课题组指出，发达国家不负责任导致联合国“千年发展目标”难以实现，因此，各国尤其是发达国家，应切实履行相应国家责任，更好地加强合作，推动并保证“千年发展目标”得以如期实现。

中国科学院国家健康研究课题组还以国家健康指数（NHI）为序，对全球45个样本国家的国家健康状况进行分类排行，中国居第13位，属“健康达标型”国家。45个样本国家按NHI排序，芬兰以0.655高居榜首，中国以0.576名列第13，尼日利亚以0.387垫底。

Could a mainland paper run a satirical opinion piece saying that Hu Jintao was doing a bad job? "No, because it would be untrue," he said. "But what if the article was all factually true? There were no false statistics, no misspelled names, no wrong dates. But an opinion that Hu was handling things badly?" "But he IS doing a good job," my Chinese friend said. The point was not whether he or I personally thought Hu was doing a good job; but whether someone could express the opinion that he wasn't. "No," my Chinese friend said. "If, hypothetically, Hu really did something factually, provably wrong -- like he was being tried for corruption -- that could be reported."

A new piece of information that I have to add at what I have already seen at the other sites, that no one else has covered, is that I recently was sitting in a clients office when their HR person gave us some bad news Anyone born after 1983 can no longer get a Z visa. What struck me about this was that if true this would represent the first real change in policy. After all, working on an F visa was always outside the rules, and even extending a Z visa to rep office employees was a poorly enforced rule… but but restricting Z visas to those older than 25… THAT IS NEW Surely, if true, we are going to see a bunc of China bashing, but where I would like to frame this is that when there were economic downturns in Asia circa 1997 and the US circa 2000, there was almost an immediate visa restriction that came along with it. Leadership looked to save jobs for citizens, and those firms who wanted to import labor had to jump a lot of hurdles to prove that doing so was a last report… .that they could not find someone locally.

Here was a report that really delivered a blow to the BBC’s solar plexus. Peacock began to foresee the possibility of digital diversity on an unimagined scale, it also put forward the ideas of a consumer-led, market driven broadcasting world, one in which the very principles of a licence fee funded public service broadcasting system would naturally be seen as obsolete. This suited the tenor of the times: deregulation, privatisation and a rigorous dismantling of the frontiers of the state – it was happening in the city and in industry and the utilities, why not broadcasting? The BBC, long seen as harbouring tendencies and personnel that were socialistic at best, Marxist at worst, was suddenly no longer a secure and unassailable acropolis. It was no secret that Norman Tebbit and some of the more fundamentalist free-marketeers and red-baiters of the administration would have been very happy indeed to dismantle the entire structure of the BBC. Peacock prevaricated and the charter appeared safe, but at a great price. Nothing would ever be the same again, the old certainties were dead and the harsh realities of capitalism arrived at Wood Lane and Portland Place. Whole departments were razed and working practices abolished, and something called an internal market was put in place. Radio Times was outsourced, the permanent make-up staff went, engineers, editors and set-designers were suddenly out of a job. Twenty-five percent of the BBC’s output was commanded to be produced from outside sources and a whole new independent sector was born. Companies like Hat Trick and Talk Back achieved almost instant success.

堆着那么多尸体，到处都是血

政府所谓的供应食物就是一人一碗白粥，那些惊魂未定的小孩，连一点有营养的东西都吃不上。

镇子几乎不是移平就是陷落，政府部门的楼却好好的，最先倒的都是中小学教学楼，这些基本是因贪污而产生的豆腐渣工程。

老爷子的手臂受伤出血了，他把要给他包扎的医务人员推开了

现在所有的国外记者都在关注号称中国最精锐的特种部队首次公开亮相

总理说，我就一句话，是人民在养你们，你们自己看着办。

Central bank purchases of traditional reserve assets still dwarf sovereign wealth fund purchases of riskier assets -- as well as central bank purchases of equities. But over time, it is reasonable to expect that many over-reserved sovereigns will diversify their portfolios. The recent decision to increase the share of the CIC's initial $205-210 billion in capital that it can invest abroad and SAFE's increased willingness to purchase equities as well as bonds are examples.

A far more challenging issue is how the huge increase in financial assets managed by potentially non-economic agents will affect the efficiency of the global capital market and the allocation of risk and resources. ….

And then there is China. China enormous foreign asset growth in the first quarter implies that it might be able to add more to its reserves and sovereign fund in 2008 than all the oil-exporters combined even if oil stays at its current levels.

Bloggers can be journalists (and journalists can be bloggers) - We're battling for legal and institutional recognition that if you engage in journalism, you're a journalist, with all of the attendant rights, privileges, and protections. (See Apple v. Does.)

Bloggers have the right to political speech - We're working with a number of other public-interest organizations to ensure that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) doesn't gag bloggers' election-related speech. We argue that the FEC should adopt a presumption against the regulation of election-related speech by individuals on the Internet, and interpret the existing media exemption to apply to online media outlets that provide news reporting and commentary regarding an election -- including blogs. (See our joint comments to the FEC; [PDF, 332K].)

Another challenge could be a shallow pool of local Chinese translators, production assistants and helpers available to foreign reporters because of the potential for arrest for aiding foreign journalists on sensitive stories.

美国联邦政府加入Twitter革命

Twitter使我们与民众沟通的又一管道。”

去年3月，GSA就签署过一份协议，允许政府各部在4个社交类网站：YouTube、Flickr、Vimeo和blip.tv上发布可共享的内容。