I've posted a few pieces on Nortel's GSM-R system along the Qinghai-Tibet railway & located a new tele-geography of security that parallels China's Western Development Strategy.

Lobsang Yeshi, takes up the theme; [“The only thing rising faster than China is the hype about China.”] . . :

The most precise location-tracking system GSM-R digital wireless communication network and surveillance system acquired from Canadian Nortel Networks Corp for the railway is believed to be meant for other strategic purposes.

Phayul had an article at the weekend that helps develop this theory:
Sabotage angst along Tibet Railway

Along the entire railway line, the Military Area Commands of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Qinghai Province have reportedly deployed a security safety net with a contingent of up to ten thousand soldiers and civilians patrolling day and night. The Head Quarters of Qinghai Armed Police Force has assigned several branches of its force to safeguard the train throughout its journey.

Communication for security forces along the railway has been stepped up so that conversations on walkie-talkie are now possible on long distance. To this effect, China Telecommunication Company and China Railway Communication Company installed adequate communication equipment and communication stations every 6 kilometres along the whole railway line.

The report suggests that Chinese paramilitary forces are directly benefitting from the GSM-R installation along the railway.

I'm very excited by Praxis' soon-to-be published book on Cyberwar, Netwar, and RMA:

The end of the Cold War ushered in a new phase of global security in which new threats and challenges emanate from non-conventional sources, and in which the weapons and means to prosecute war harness new technology. By the mid-1990s terms such as cyberwar and netwar were being used to explain a new way of thinking about war. The intervening years have seen the development of new defence policies, such as the US military Vision for 2020 and the Revolution in Military Affairs, whilst the threat of terrorism has become a painful and sad reality. The period has also seen the development and deployment of a range of new technologies for military operations ranging from new smart mechanisms to deliver weapons to surveillance and communications technologies that can change the very nature of warfare and security. This book attempts to consider this balance between the technologies and policies deployed to respond to terror and the need for human and civil rights.

The editors are Dr Eddie Halpin, Dr Philippa Trevorrow, Professor David Webb & Dr Steve Wright

Civiblog's China Activist Weekly runs a

one-stop resource for online activism related to China. (Petitions and email campaigns from the major NGOs, etc.) Each week I post an easy action that only takes you a minute.

This week its TCHRD's campaigns that are highlighted.

OpenDemocracy's Paul Rogers makes the case that the United States military is preparing for the "long war" by shifting its tactics and expanding its ambitions.

this tactical reorientation and the rapid evolution and newfound freedom of action of special-operations forces act as warning-signals of the manner in which the global war on terror – rebranded as the long war – will be fought.

They indicate a likelihood of a number of small, "dirty" wars fought in a range of countries where US security is considered to be affected, combined with larger-scale actions using the overwhelming firepower advantage held by US forces. The experience of the past four years – including the problems the United States faces in Afghanistan, Iraq and with the al-Qaida movement – suggests that the probable result is increasingly embittered opposition to the US and intensified conflict rather than security and settlement.

Its interesting that this mode of warfighting was developed in the early 90s. Take this RAND document, for example:

The information revolution is leading to the rise of network forms of organization, with unusual implications for how societies are organized and conflicts are conducted. "Netwar" is an emerging consequence. The term refers to societal conflict and crime, short of war, in which the antagonists are organized more as sprawling "leaderless" networks than as tight-knit hierarchies. . . . traditional notions of war and low-intensity conflict as a sequential process based on massing, maneuvering, and fighting will likely prove inadequate to cope with nonlinear, swarm-like, information-age conflicts in which societal and military elements are closely intermingled.

A PBS backgrounder on Ultrareach, a software program designed for Chinese citizens to circumvent their government's Internet censorship: transcript.

Hangzhou, China is hosting the World Buddhist Forum over the next three days. China's 'Panchen Lama' defended China's record on religion, but the other delegates are reported to have ignored him. Neither the Dalai Lama, nor the Karmapa were invited. There are, however, some interesting glimpses of future policy in articles & speeches available on the forum's website

An Husheng, for example: A Brief Discussion on the Dissemination of Buddhism in the Internet Age

The Internet Age has arrived; it has accelerated the process of globalization. The Internet is not only the most important technology in contemporary society, but also the most important way of culture dissemination in this society, and it will certainly become the new century's major cultural competition occasion. Whoever grasps the dominance of the network will be able to more effectively influence society and guide the public and can thus gain strategic advantage in the field of culture. Internet as the most effective new way to popularize and spread Buddhism, has realized our aspirations of showing the Buddha's land at the end of a hair and turning the wheel of the dharma in an atom as described by the Avatamsaka Sutra (Sk.), 華嚴經/Huayan Jing (zh). The age of Internet Buddhism has quietly arrived.

China's Huayan school is based on the Avatamsaka Sutra, which contains the famous vision of Indra's Net:

The Hindu myth of Indra's Net provides an allegory of this interdependent organization. This net exists in Indra's palace in heaven and extends infinitely in all directions. At each node of the net where threads cross there is a perfectly clear gem that reflects all the other gems in the net. As each gem reflects every other one; so are you affected by every other system in the universe.

As the threads of Indra's net bind the gems to the net so do our physical bodies bind our minds and other physical entities bind other systems to the universe. Through the threads we reach each other, passing information across the expanses of space. Yet how did this ballet of information ever come about? You see new systems constantly spring to life, arising out of near chaos creating a small pattern that presents a new random twist to that thread of existence.

Capra uses this metaphor in The Turning Point

The similarity of this image to the hadron bootstrap is indeed striking. The metaphor of Indra's net may justly be called the first bootstrap model, created by the Eastern sages some 2,500 years before the beginning of particle physics." Fritjof Capra --Chapter 8 of The Turning Point - Fritjof Capra (1982) via Metaphors

If it is the case, as An Husheng argues, that "whoever grasps the dominance of the network will be able to more effectively influence society and guide the public and can thus gain strategic advantage", then Hangzhou's most famous son, the rocket scientist Tsien Hsue-shen, & his disciples work on complexity and social systems - fused with Buddhism could be central to that objective. But, compare the sophistication of senior Tibetan lamas understanding of science, dialogues with India and the West -- with the Chinese technocracy's understanding of Buddhism. . if Beijing is serious about the Middle Way, isn't it about time the Dalai Lama was invited to the table?

I got hold of a copy of People Power and Protest since 1945 last week. Really recomend this compendium. Writing in openDemocracy, Prof. Paul Rogers describes what

could well be one of the most significant books to be published in this decade. It reviews over 900 sources of information on non-violent social change, covering a huge range of movements across the world and bringing together a wealth of experience that will be an eye-opener for many people.

Jim Schuyler (blog) is CTO of the Dalai Lama Foundation and founder and CEO of Red7. Jim picked up on AFMP, (The Game of Non-Violent strategy) - not suprising, since he's been developing 'Serious Games' long before the buzz. Red7s Full-Immersion Technologies (FITs) for example,

make it possible to integrate a learning process, a game, or hands-on support for a complex technology, into your customer's real life. . . Create real-world games where participants find their clues in the cityscape, and interact by calling in for phone messages that take them to new places.. . . Each scenario may contain emails, video (presented online on the salesperson's computer), intranet and other web sites, phone messages, wireless text (SMS-to cellphones or PDAs), and simulated voicemail. These scenarios are implemented as sets of states and rules. A participant will always be in a single "state" within the scenario, and the FIT system is paying attention everything the participant does that's pertinent to that state. It may be sending an email from an in-game "character" to a participant, or waiting for the participant's response to that email. It may have several timers set - and when one expires it may send a reminder to the participant. It examines each incoming email from each participant, and analyzes it against the rules for the current state of the scenario.

The DLF hosts other blogs worth mentioning here. The One Village Foundation, which

Promote ecologically and socially responsible development in emerging markets through a comprehensive and synergistic set of programs called the oneVillage Foundation Initiatives (OVI).

The Study Circles blog - (you can download the Ethics for a New Millenium guide in English here, or in Chinese here). And for those of you who have been asking about this photo of a wifi antenna in the Himalayas have a look at Dharamsala Information Technology Group blog, and the Tibetan Technology Centre:

a charitable organization dedicated to harness modern technology for helping the Tibetan community in India. The center is located at the Tibetan Children's Villages School (TCV) which host and supports it. The center is managed by a board of directors who work closely and consult with a large group of local and International technology experts. The center aims to become financially self-sufficient and generate income to be re-invested in the center and donated to TCV schools.

EFF's Danny O'Brien has released a memo calling for A Code of Conduct for Internet Companies in Authoritarian Regimes that includes 'Support for Technologies that Innovate Around Censorship and Surveillance':

Censorship of foreign sites by oppressive regimes is a limitation of free trade and free expression. The Internet benefits from technology that lets communication pass unhindered from one end to end. And citizens everywhere deserve the right to privacy. Free governments benefit from sponsoring anti-censorship and anonymizing software, such as those supported by the United States' International Broadcasting Bureau. But companies, too, stand to gain from investing in development that might lead to an opening of previously closed societies. If U.S. companies find that oppressive governments block or impede their Internet services, they should not simply give in to the threat. By working together on ways to surmount Internet control they will not only be providing wanted new products to 1.3 billion new customers, they will help open trade and communications between all countries, and all citizens.

EFF's Cory Dotcorow commenting last year on Google's proxy accelerator in BoingBoing[links to post 'Harsh words for US tech firms from House at China 'net hearings']

It would be great to see Google setting up a Tor node with similar resources to this, though, and enabling some more robust anonymity.

EFF's memo is clear on where to draw the line on relevant export controls:

Don't Do Direct Business with Forces of State Oppression Companies should be prohibited from providing intentional ongoing support and assistance to those who abuse human rights in foreign countries. While many products such as filtering software, Internet monitoring programs and programs to unlock protected data can have multiple uses, American companies should not be actively and knowingly providing services that facilitate censorship or repression.

Some apprehension communicated to me relating to this brief post the other day - Cybersatyagraha ... Gandhi needs to be reinvented in India today. ..er, no - not a call for "cyberterrorism" or "eJihad". Just what Nagarjunawould make of DDoS I'm entirely unsure, but even the most basic reading of Gandhian thought highlights an overriding commitment to communication - and to keeping channels of communication open: Basic Concepts of Satyagraha: Gandhian Nonviolence: (from the APT Nonviolence Trainer's Manual).

II. "Ahimsa" --- refusal to inflict injury on others.
A) Ahimsa is dictated by our commitment to communication and to sharing of our pieces of the truth. Violence shuts off channels of communication.

You'll find that same commitment in discussions around hacktivism: Hacktivism and Human Rights: Using Technology to Raise the Bar (July 14, 2001, DEF CON 9, Las Vegas).

. . I think it's important to make that clear right from the start. That we're not talking about cyberterrorism, we're not talking about information warfare, we're not talking about taking down the Chinese backbone. We're talking about more constructive, positive ways of dealing with human rights abusers. I think that's something we all agreed on, straight away.

der Derian's concept of Infopeace describes it beautifully:

Information peace (infopeace) is the production, application, and analysis of information by peaceful means for peaceful ends. Starting with Gregory Bateson's definition of information as 'any difference that makes a difference', infopeace seeks to make a difference in the quality of thinking about the global contest of will, goods, and might. Measuring information in terms of quality rather than quantity, and assessing quality by the difference it makes in the reduction of personal and structural violence, infopeace opens up possibilities of alternative thought and action in global politics. Unabashedly utopian and pragmatic, it counters a 'natural' state of war with a mindful state of peace.

A mindful state of peace posits the eventual abolition of violence as a global political option. Peace-mindedness ranges from the prevention, admonition and mediation of violence, to the outright disavowal of violence as a political option for the resolution of problems in the international arena. It draws on a long tradition of peace-thinking, exemplified in early Christian pacifism and Eastern philosophies, in which the need for peace begins internally and proceeds outwardly. It starts by embracing a wholeness of the individual, and expands to families, communities, countries, and beyond. The notion of Gaia, as a self-regulating biosphere, contributes to the rhetoric of peace thinking; but it is the networked reality of an expanding infosphere which makes peace an attainable and evermore vital necessity.

Infopeace seeks to prevent, mediate, and resolve states of war by the actualization of a mindful state of peace. Following Gilles Deleuze's insights about the virtual possessing a reality that is not yet actual, infopeace stresses the actualization of peace through the creative application of information and technology. Critical imagination is the best antidote to the kinds of technological determinism that increasingly circumscribe human choices.

Infopeace integrates a strategy in which difference, conflict, and antagonism are recognized as essential aspects of human relations. It aims to develop an awareness of how these aspects can be addressed by non-violent means. Infopeace accepts the Augustinian paradox that the actualization of peace might entail (limited) violence, yet seeks to apply alternatives means of securing the self, the group, or the state. In short, infopeace is utopian in intention, pragmatic in application.

Following revelations concerning evolving U.S. Information operations doctrine, Andrew Koch Contributing Strategic Editor for Jane's forsees computer network attacks as tomorrow's WMD (subscription required).

Biogenetically engineered super viruses, deadly chemical agents specially designed to hang in the air for hours and armies of autonomously operated malicious software programmes called 'Cyber Bots', represent only a handful of potential threats that will be technologically possible within a decade, say US intelligence and defence officials.

While attacks by every type of tomorrow's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) may not kill hundreds of thousands of people, each has the ability to cause catastrophic damage and disruption, whether through the destruction of economies, infrastructure or human life.

Hacking

Cyber attacks are far from what has traditionally been considered a WMD, yet with both civilian and military infrastructures increasingly reliant on computer networks to perform even basic functions, defence experts warn that terrorist and enemy states alike will have the ability to cause massive disruption if they can hack these networks.

"I worry we are creating an Achilles heel in our military structure. As we move toward the Global Information Grid and network-centric combat, what vulnerabilities are we creating that we are not protected against?" one defence official asked.

By some accounts, the development of cyber warrior tools is already well under way, with government-sponsored hackers in countries like China and North Korea preparing for a 'digital Pearl Harbor' if push ever came to shove in a conflict with the US military.

Hackers, who many US officials believe work for the Chinese government, have launched numerous cyber attacks against US military, defence contractor and other sensitive facilities in the past few years, with the aim of pilfering information.

These attacks, called 'Titan Rain' by US investigators, are likely the product of cyber spying by the Chinese military, Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, an information security research and education organisation in the US, said in December. He noted that "we have a problem that our computer networks have been terribly and deeply penetrated throughout the US ... and we've been keeping it secret".

A secret Pentagon "roadmap" on information opeartions, personally approved by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for "boundaries" between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but provides for no such limits and claims that as long as the American public is not "targeted," any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter. Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University and posted on the Web, the 74-page "Information Operations Roadmap" admits that "information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa," but argues that "the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of U.S. government intent rather than information dissemination practices." Several press accounts have referred to the 2003 Pentagon document but today's posting is the first time the text has been publicly available. Sections of the document relating to computer network attack (CNA) and "offensive cyber operations" remain classified under black highlighting.

Adam Brookes, BBC Pentagon correspondent comments,

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone. It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system. "Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads. The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap. The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence. "Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum". US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". Consider that for a moment. The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet. Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon. And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

I'm sure I've been on about this for a while -- the more precise timekeeping system planned for Galileo could prove to be a major competitive advantage for the system over GPS:

the US must now recognize that it is in a “chronographical arms race” with the EU, and it cannot be passive.

On the flight from Paris I read an International Herald Tribune article by Nicolai Ouroussoff (As Israeli barrier goes up, views harden on all sides). The article focuses on Eyal Weizman's critique of the concrete barrier that is encircling Palestinian terriroty:

on a fundamental level, it is also a piece of architecture. And its construction has generated an architectural debate as charged as any in the political realm.

That debate has pitted strategists who mine the leftist architectural theories of the 1960s for ideas on contemporary urban warfare against architects who see the barrier as a perversion of those ideas, along with the utopian visions of Modernists who believed society's problems could be solved with concrete, glass and steel. It is not only unfolding in the halls of academia but in Israeli and American military circles. And it presents a vision of the wall as a system of complex, interweaving spaces - some concrete, some invisible - that is far from our normal perception of an international border.

At the center of this debate is Eyal Weizman, an Israeli architect and activist who has been a controversial figure in his homeland since 2002, when he published a report for a local human rights organization that essentially accused Israeli architects of being collaborators in colonizing the West Bank.

Building is never a neutral act, of course, and Weizman, 35, makes no distinctions between architecture and politics.

I first understood Eyal Weizman’s extraordinary cartography of Israeli control over the West Bank through a series of essays in openDemocracy and it really allowed me to see the Israel-Palestine conflict in a new way. What is rather interesting is that IDF's Operational Theory Research Institute has been reading into Deleuze:

Among the most provocative counterpoints for Weizman's analysis is Shimon Navez, a retired brigadier general in the Israeli Army. Navez, who revels in the kind of jargon heard in architecture studios, directs the Israeli Defense Forces' Operational Theory Research Institute, which trains senior military staff in innovative war tactics.

"We were looking for new modes of thinking that could be suitable to military strategy," he said. "The Americans were looking for technological solutions; we wanted to understand the whole depth of the problem. It struck us that architecture could be a very helpful metaphor."

Navez has little faith in the barrier, which he called "too simplistic, too vulgar" to accomplish its task. "It is a tragic regression in terms of strategy," he said. "It derives from a necessity, but in the longer range it will create a lot of damage - a lot of antagonism. It is a huge violation of space that will be hard to remove."

Navez speaks of "striated" and "smooth" spaces - of a world shaped by solid walls and a more fluid one virtually without boundaries. In his view, the West Bank is an example of smooth space.

It is segregated into carefully defined zones, some of them controlled by the Israeli military and others jointly with the Palestinian Authority. Satellite and aerial surveillance has become ubiquitous.
And an Israeli company is developing a handheld thermal-imaging machine that will let soldiers detect human figures through concrete.

Navez does not direct Israeli military policy. But his views have exerted an influence over a small group of Israeli generals whom he refers to as his "disciples."

He has also met with officials at the Pentagon and American military research groups like Rand to discuss urban warfare in the Middle East, where "swarming" - the idea that soldiers infiltrate enemy space like "clouds" in small, loosely coordinated groups - has become a catch phrase. In such a scenario, the traditional command structure does not apply. Urban soldiers communicate directly with one another in a fluid, amorphous world, free to react to whatever situation arises.

Compared to such a dystopian vision, a concrete barrier erected to separate Israelis from Palestinians can seem like an apparition from antiquity, a counterpart to the crude wooden barrier Trajan built to keep out warring tribes - to separate civilization from barbarity.

Yet to Weizman, these are simply two forms of the same evil. Navez, he said, "is simply trying to replace one form of control with another that is less visible."

The Go lounge at CCC   more »

The 22nd Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) in Berlin, a four-day conference on technology, society and utopia.   more »

Security experts have revealed tantalising details about a group of Chinese hackers who are suspected of launching intelligence gathering attacks against the US government.   more »

'France is paying for its arrogance' : What the French papers say about the spreading urban unrest   more »

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, York Zimmerman Inc. and BreakAway Ltd. have been collaborating on A Force More Powerful � The Game of Nonviolent Strategy, set for release in early 2006.   more »

Paul Mason reports on Flock on Newsnight at 10.30pm on BBC Two   more »

From nuclear weapons to climate change, the Vietnam war to urban segregation, the prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling�s leaps of lateral thinking are weapons of enlightenment, says The Undercover Economist.   more »

Here�s an opportunity to participate in peacekeeping work in Sri Lanka!   more »

www.chinaview.cn 2005-09-23 13:26:18: BEIJING, Sept. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- A Paris-based media watchdog released a free guide Thursday to help bloggers and cyber-dissidents avoid political censorship in countries as far apart as Iran, Vietnam and Cuba.

The guide, published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and partly financed by the French Foerign Ministry, identifies bloggers as the "new heralds of free expression" and offers advice on how to set up a blog and run it anonymously.

"Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure," wrote Julien Pain, head of RSF's Internet Freedom Desk.

"Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest."

The 87-page "Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday. It can be downloaded from the RSF website (www.rsf.org), and is available in English, French, Chinese, Arabic and Farsi . . .

As part of the BBC's Who Runs Your World? series, Mark Almond, Lecturer in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford University, assesses the myth and reality of "People Power".   more »

The Beijing Olympics are shaping up to be the most technically advanced in history, writes Tang Yuankai

A bullet proof transparent window sheeting, a multi-directional surveillance camera and iris recognition ...   more »