China's Two Face Policy

China, China, China. With over 5 millenniums years worth of experience in the political arts, yet the lesson seems lost again about saying one thing and doing another. The Peoples Republic of China's political wunderkinds are having a collective communist mind melt over being exposed in a Pentagon report to Congress detailing their military aims and growing capabilities. China wants a more flowery emphasis placed on their economic prosperity and growing private sector. In light of their boom and owning the loan papers on a multitude of US debt, China is making a loud case to increase their role in the International monetary Fund (IMF). Popcorn & MRE's all around, this is going to take armies of diplomats to hash out between two nuclear superpowers with space satellites. (Reuters)

After 5 Chinese ships hemmed in a US warship, USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, plowed through A Tibet-belongs-to China annex anniversary without the number killed last year by the military and rolled over the Dalai Lama's freedom rhetoric, more joint military exercises with Russia, obligatory perennial warnings to Taiwan & an interfering USA that they will backup a One China policy at the point of really big guns and missiles, now with the cyber warfare the Canadians caught from deep inside the land of one time zone happening to 1295 computers in over 100 countries, pulling the camouflage over a hypersensitive world's eyes is tough to brazen out. Canada's report from The Information Warfare Monitor, "Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network" does not attribute the malware directly to the Chinese state. The US military already had suspicous hacker activity attributed to the Chinese at the Pentagon almost eighteen months ago. Those magisterial moments during the 2008 Olympics are over. It leaves China unencumbered by world community threats to showcase its military might on center stage. Only the US military preemptively released their annual assessment on the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Dalai Lama's office raised suspicions about being hacked.

Computers -- including machines at NATO, governments and embassies -- are infected with software that lets attackers gain complete control of them, according to the reports. One was issued by the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies in conjunction with the Ottawa, Canada-based think tank The SecDev Group; the second came from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Researchers have dubbed the network GhostNet. The network can not only search a computer but see and hear the people using it, according to the Canadian report.

"GhostNet is capable of taking full control of infected computers, including searching and downloading specific files, and covertly operating attached devices, including microphones and web cameras," the report says. (Internet map - portion)

Tuesday, President Obama leaves Washington DC for the G-20 Summit hosted in a protest-ready and poorer London after already having words with China's Ambassador to the US over US Naval ships in international waters. The Chinese ambassador made sure the press knew there were concerns about the US currency amidst a global crisis. Warfare, cyber and otherwise, is definitely practiced economically. China is spreading the wealth around and making more inroads and cyber tracks in the Western Hemisphere. France & China have a frosty relationship after President Sarkozy took a meeting with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, Thailand is pretty pissed about their computers while Austrailia is defending its ties at home with China. This summit will be like a giant Hollywood party where people were married to each other, divorced and married former friends while everybody is ensuring all is truly cordial because the cameras are on.

President Hu Jintao will warmly greet President Obama. The pictures will be pretty and the words carefully chosen to convey maximum strength on both sides as they speak as if at a tennis match. China will hear about the lack of government safety control in their manufacturing and food production environments, the US will get slammed over the health of the Dollar, return serve on the artificial price pegging of the Yuan with a volley back on the stupidity of Iraq, followed by the human rights issues in Burma and Darfur with pointed questions about China's designs on Latin America, followed by talks about climate change with the US saying new rules. And that's just Secretary Hillary Clinton's part in the meeting. President Obama will hear much mutterings on the scale and scope of the US military industrial complex's sales of armaments and delivery systems. China claims they are nowhere near able to keep up on that military scale. Um, yeah... just the end user better hope they have some quality control in the stuff they get from a booming China.



Mixing modernity with the mastery of the ancient eastern tradition makes for compelling reading about China's geopolitical growth spurts. Ralph D. Sawyer chronicles the inside political gamesmanships Chinese generals do on each other and other nonconventional means of projecting military might. China is not adverse to using every tool at their command and this China expert shows us how many means and methods they have already used in The Tao of Deception: Unorthodox Warfare in Historic and Modern China.

An Obama National Security Council

Since 1947 amidst Harry S Truman's presidency, the National Security Council (NSC) was born out of the military and intelligence interagency disorganization post WWII. In 1949, the NSC became the sole province of the president. By law, the National Security Act, this creature exclusive to the White House the NSC remains unmonitored by Congress and operates as a president chooses in matters pertaining to national security and foreign policy with some mandated participation. A National Security Adviser (NSA) is appointed by the president. The role oversees portfolios of regional or specific interest depending on the president's choice and mitigates between major cabinet officers (principals) and ideas that may have jurisdictional overlap. The real power is the Deputies meetings or the surrogates sent by the main principals to get into the fine detail in the conference rooms allocated off the White House's semi-secret Sit Room.

A six foot five inch four star combat tested former marine commandant, Jim Jones, is the President Obama selection. The President-Elect has authorized Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Greg Craig as Counsel to the president and Lawrence Summers in his capacity as Assistant to the President fon Economic Policy to participate in the 2009 United States National Security Council. In spite of being part of Bush's war council, Robert gates remains atop the military industrial complex as the SecDef and a top spot on the NSC battling Clinton among others for resources and policy supremacy. General Jones is the lead arbitrator before it gets to the president's desk.

Sometimes the president is forced to "redo" his NSC in the middle of a term. Why? Because they have usually committed a terrible wrong that leaves the nation and the world aghast. Not likely one might say in Obama world -snicker. In sixty years, NOT one president escaped unscathed from not watching the NSC more closely. The bet is when, not if, Obama gets into trouble with his. History beckons and Obama's name will either be in smaller font or writ large depending on what the issue is he wrangles with and gambles on the wrong person. That's when he's going to need all the political friends he made because he will build up a reservoir of Goodwill. He is smart like that.

In the White House there are 5,000 square feet of first rate technology including cell sensors in the cieling and the best military minds dedicated to crisis management and day to day intelligence activities. CNN's show The Situation Room is named after this collection of rooms inside the White House. The Sit Room is where the president discusses domestic emergencies, planning for pending military action or response to a global crisis. Those familiar with Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing TV show will immediately recognize the room. It was beautifully rehabbed during George W. Bush's 2nd term in 2007 with wainscoting lower on sliding padded walls to receive better transmission of secure communications than the prior mahogany covered walls did during the Clinton administration. Three secure conference rooms, plastic phone booths for calls and direct communication with Air Force One increase the Sit Room complex's functionality and capabilities. There are over 33 LCD monitors and 32 hookups that allow multiple simultaneous conference call capability. All that fancy hardware is needed to manage the threats and the fast growing cyber security incursions.

The NSC has a collection of people considered principals. Getting on the permanent principals list is at the sole discretion of the president. One ofthe layers below the principals is made up of their second in commands or in DC parlance, Deputy blah blah Undersecretary of the Molehill region.Usually, the presidents are the Main Man, Vice president, Secretary of Defense,Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence or the CIA Director, and the National Security Adviser who chairs the meeting and directs traffic. Condoleeza Rice was George Bush's 1st term NSA and she was awful. Regan's second term guy who waded in and cleaned up the Iran Contra mess, was Colin Powell. Whoever gets that chair in an Obama Administration needs to be the consummate professional that cannot be pushed around by the big guns on the NSC.

Richard Clarke, the upstanding hard edged intel NSC guy sets the scene here:

On the ground level of the West Wing of the White House, a dozen men and women trickle into the wood-paneled Situation Room. They balance thick briefing books and cups of hot coffee from the White House Mess next door. The meeting's chairman, a member of the National Security Council staff, brings to order this gathering of the Counterterrorism Security Group, the committee that coordinates U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Behind and above his chair is the seal of the president of the United States.


"All right, let's get going," the NSC man intones. "President Obama wants a high-level game plan for counterterrorism efforts in 2009. First, we need the intelligence picture." The NSC staffer turns to the woman sitting to his left, who works in the National Counterterrorism Center.

"Well, as we said in the recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, we had a break for a while after we smashed the al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan after 9/11," she begins. "But now al-Qaida has reconstituted itself in the Pakistani tribal areas, right along the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani army tries every once in a while to rein them in, but essentially, they're just too weak to gain control of the Wild West border areas. Al-Qaida is busy training terrorists up there, including Europeans and Asians, people who could slip into the United States without arousing suspicion. And al-Qaida is also developing another sanctuary in Somalia, where their local allies have been taking over Somali cities. It's not a soothing picture. We could see al-Qaida attacks in 2009 on the Arabian Peninsula, in Europe, even here at home. But of course, we have no actionable intelligence pointing to a specific plot."

Back to the trouble president's get in. Nobody likes telling a president no. Harry Truman Korea, Dwight Eisenhower is the best to date that pulled together an NSC that was stellar, but a certain pilot was shot down while spying over Russia and trainers were parachuted into Indochina in a former French colony. There was the NSC's fingerprints all over the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Kissinger & Pol Pot among others, China, Iran Contra, WHIG or Bush's White House Iraq Group an off shoot of the NSC that set up to market the war. Time will tell whether the error will be a combination of haste and sloppiness or a personal hubris on the part of his team or horrible circumstance that will bring the NSC to the public's attention in an Obama administration.

The only expert to write a book with scholarly dimensions but wickedly funny asides on the NSA came in a truly fascinating 2006 book from David Rothkopf. Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power traces the NSA from gestation to now with a look at the internecine connections amongst those who serve the public good (usually) inside the NSA.

This part of The Transition Series to the presidency of Barack Obama. (please not the posts at the link above are stored by date)

An Epic Primary Season for Democrats

US presidential primaries are fought for the right to contest a general election to become America's head of state and live in a giant white house.

First, there were so many Democrats on the stage it took on the sobriquet of Hillary and the Seven Dwarves. Elderly Alaskan, MikeGravel, embraced YouTube by throwing a rock in a pond and calling it a whimsical campaign commercial. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden had the best send up of their natural forms from Saturday Night Live canonizing their run as twin costumed SpongeBob SquarePants for Halloween. Meanwhile, Dennis Kucinich perfected the best political rhetoric bar none on health care while sending people into 360 head whirls with his discussions of his personal UFO sighting. Son of a mill worker guy, John Edwards, had two Americas resident in his own life being a millionaire lawyer who had the world's most discussed $400 haircut and a house that includes an inside basketball court while his campaign had to go on the public financing dole. The Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, is a master international negotiator who went so far as to threaten to import the Great Lakes water to the drought stricken southwest. Starting out with the most painful uh, uh, uh problem on a national stage came Barack Obama, turning up some of the most sage and soaring rhetoric heard from an American politician.

Debates 22 of them in all were a microcosm of political journalism that mainly sucked. The final debate with ABC news albatross anchor Charlie Gibson and toadying George Stephanopolous caused 22,000 people in less than 24 hours to emphatically state the horrendous degree of their suckitude because of their focus on issues pertinent to about a dozen millionaire "journalists" without a clue. Hark back to Lois Romano's Washington Post wasted space article dedicating column inches to Hillary Rodham Clinton's cleavage and later the passions of the pantsuit. In premature rhetorical spasms of needing relevance, press punditry scraped the bottom of the Velveeta vats declaring they found melting journalistic gold in gotcha questions and gross distortions as they pandered to the press operations of various campaigns rather than befouling themselves with being truthful and objective. CNN's YouTube debate had interesting questions from snowmen about the perils of global warming, singing questions and regular citizens that were more insightful.

Then the crowds showed up in numbers never seen before for primaries. They also turned out in massive numbers to vote. In one case, students at Prairie View A & M marched for seven miles as the registrar decided an early voting booth would no longer be on campus. Students organized and walked the seven miles in a hot Texas sun shutting down the highway as they then stood in line for hours to exercise their American right to vote under circumstances reminiscent of the 1960's. (Photos Courtesy of Ken Basart)

Enter the constant vigilance courtiers, some extremely powerful surrogates and regular people ants from the cracked sidewalks of life. Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, had basked in Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's characterization as the First black president. He got his status stripped from him unceremoniously for comments equating Barack Obama's tidal wave win in South Carolina as equivalent to Jesse Jackson, notorious civil rights leader with an outsized me me me complex equal to Bill's. Grand entrance from Chelsea Clinton after her Mom's stunning third place loss in Iowa when everybody on the stage behind her who had gray hair remembered Sputnik or Eisenhower as adults. There were surrogates that said monster, others insinuated madrassa educations and drug issues and being black was an advantage, while Bill Clinton resorted to fairy tales. It got U-G-L-Y.

Most powerful woman on the planet with a communications empire, Oprah Winfrey, risked a fair bit by endorsing and stumping for the junior senator from Illinois. Michelle Obama got the ball rolling in Iowa wearing a navy blue headband, no makeup and declaring fear should not be a motivating factor. Notable in all this hoopla is Al Gore's silence, except to castigate them all equally for not bringing climate change to the forefront of the debate.

Then, the children started speaking to their parents from every socio-economic stripe. Many gave the gift of books, especially the Audacity of Hope to persuade them. One private mom and another public mom did something for Barack Obama after insistent consistent hectoring from their children. Missouri senator, Claire McCaskill, was on her couch with tears streaming down her face after a speech by Barack in the coldness of New Hampshire and was told by her teenage daughter to do something - now is the time. Decades passed participating in politics as another private mom was thunderstruck by her kids being steadfast in their support of Barack Obama. She decided to write a powerful piece in support of him for the New York Times. Her name is Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. On Hillary's behalf, legions of feminists of a certain age came out in full throated support, Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong and Maya Angelou.

The battles raged from primaries to caucuses with Super Tuesday being a Clinton line in the sand. Campaign strategic planning would decide the way forward. Hillary's camp doubled down on going negative with Mark Penn in the Patton PR role leading a media air war. Barack's camp focused on delegates and ground troops going from state to state. Hillary would have won with this campaign in 2004. Barack took the lesson of 2004 and rattled off a dozen straight wins while collecting wheelbarrows of cash. Hillary went broke and busted open her personal piggy bank for millions of dollars while demanding to hang in there until the bitter end. Part of her millions went for a 3 am ad that said she was ready to answer the red phone and Barack was not.

The word bitter resonated as Barack explained why elections turned on wedge issues. His twenty year association with black liberation theology within Trinity United Church of Christ came to an end amidst Jeremiah Wright being seen by more Americans on an endless loop without context from the mendacious media. At first, Barack withstood pressure by predominantly white media to disassociate himself from his church and its controversial pastor.

Obama delivered a complex speech on race from a multitude of perspectives to build a more perfect union. This was right before the Pennsylvania Primary that heavily favored Hillary with her advantages of having the patronage machine behind her efforts. Barack fed a baby cow, went bowling for a couple gutterballs and asked for orange juice rather than coffee, which outraged elitist pundit, Chris Matthews. Rev. Jeremiah Wright went on a resurrection/destruction tour starting with Bill Moyers broadcast on a Friday evening , on to preach in Dallas flying the same day to Detroit for a NAACP dinner and BAM - on Monday went over the edge and into hubris and hostility towards the press for a Q & A filled with rowdy and provocative answers from him.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile repeatedly told a great story of a corkscrew landing under sniper fire in Bosnia where she rushed off in her helmet. Except, she was met at the airport by a little girl with a poem and her traveling companions were Sinbad, Sheryl Crowe and her teenage daughter. Oops and the lie kept mushrooming. Hillary got into a spat saying she was telling the truth - Sinbad said their biggest decision on that trip was when to stop to eat. Bill tried to rescue her by stating she was 60 and forgot a few things undercutting her red phone 3 am ad.

The eventual delegate, popular vote winner, Barack Obama had his head immortalized in butter, been to church to meet folks with the most amazing architectural milliner offerings, and kissed a multitude of burping, smiling and sleeping baby cherubs. There is a wonderful pick of Sasha and Dad are mowing down Malia and Michelle on bumper cars at the Iowa State Fair in August of 2007.

Some of the most amazing images of Barack from the campaign are of him with children, including his own.

On Saturday, 31 May, Hillary's forces staged a hissy fit as they demanded that Barack not get credit in the Michigan primaries as he took his name off the ballot. Hillary's forces wanted to say she was the winner of a popular vote that had 0 meaning in a primary. The guy who had voted to sanction Florida & Michigan, Harold Ickes, became a contortionist and an extortionist reserving the right to challenge the results in Denver at the convention in late August.

And On Tuesday, June 3, 2008 Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party and the first man of color to ever do so in the industrialized western world. Hillary's wilting finance campaign chairman announced her as the next president of the United States in a bunker room two levels below street in New York City. Barack & his wife come out with a dap that confounded the older watching public - because it was hip and cool.
Saturday, Hillary graciously came out and put her historic exclamation point on the obvious. Congratulations to all who participated in this race of historic and yes, epic battles worthy of a Homeric treatment. Fabulous reading ahead. Gail Sheehy chronicled Hillary from behind the scenes and will fill in several gaps in her upcoming writing.
Obama's story is still being crafted. Woe betide any author that cannot live up to Barack's gifts with a pen or keyboard. It is our time and we have as MLK put it - the fierce urgency of now. May the sun shine on Barack & family's faces and the wind be at his back as he is elected the 44th president of the United States of America.

The Super Delegate March to Inevitability

The Democratic 2008 race for president started in December 31, 2006 with a neo-populist mega millionaire son-of-a-millworker lawyer digging up a black lady's Katrina damaged yard in his attempt to put poverty forefront in the political soup line. A stunning 2004 speech shifted the presidential race and flashbulbs to a buzzworthy bi-racial lawyer in his first term as Senator from the Land of Lincoln who made a few million from two books written while capturing third place in the polls in the Ethanol State upon announcing. Last to enter and first to jet to the top of the poll charts was a world famous white lady with mega millions - hers and everyone else's, an iron grip on the lead and a man that had the affection of hardworking and elite Democrats.

Media pundits, pollsters and professionals adopted the press releases and trite observances of the staff of Hillary Rodham Clinton as their beacons of light to foist upon American voters as the only possible adult reality-based outcome of the Democratic presidential nomination. Her majesty did not need to develop a ground game - she was soaring on the wind beneath her wax wings of Bill Clinton and the tried and true Clinton style of pricey television ad wars. In a nod to the times, she decided to embrace YouTube for a Sopranos video and her announcement of a listening to the people gig. Hillary had her attack pigeons perched in the swivel chairs at all the networks, she rocket launched Bill Clinton to become the talking wall paper of her campaign and learned the art of the Miss America wave, elbow, elbow, wrist-wrist-wrist in the shape of a figure eight and the point - point - clap, clap for large groups.

Opinion columns written from the templates of the past with blindness towards the future echoed the selfishly unaware mantra of her woefully wrong chief strategist Penn, SHE WAS INEVITABLE and even the tiniest of numbers proved it, look at the national polls or in the signs of the remains of your Cheerios. A lock with no key. Celestial skies opened and hosannas rained down from pundits and politicians racing to get on the lesser beings gravy train and snag a window seat to watch her perform aerial maneuvers in the presidential Heavens.

Black folks were saying not gonna happen for him, but isn't he cute trying so hard - but we have all seen the science fiction movies where the lone black person perennially faces obliteration by some sort of alien monster. The Clinton campaign spurred the White media elites and they watched with the glee of reporting on their first fatal car wreck as black folks debated amongst themselves the degree to which Barack Obama was actually b-l-a-c-k as opposed to a Morrison-anointed Black president Bill Clinton along with fearing and decrying the level of security needed to protect this American Rorschach test dummy. And then the Benjamin Franklin lightening strike happened. Barack became hickory HRC smoked and charred enough round the edges to be really Black and Hillary turned as white as a sheet.

From the ground to curbs in hog hamlets and Des Moines day spas, the candidate with grit and grime in his slightly larger than normal ears from wallowing on the ground while petting a pig at the Iowa State Fair to eating same day pork chops, smiled and dialed undecided people, asked for votes from farmers and fledgling students finally won a smashing, game changing, history making victory based on two words, Hope & Change in a state that was as white as an ungilded lily. Say What - Inevitability cried and tantrums were had on camera by a former president that lost his electoral mojo binky. A first class volunteer army and ground game built by Americans of every hue and wallet size was just kicking the pant suited ass of the superior B-52 strategic bomber candidate/pilot.

An out of touch Media caught woefully short on the telly and with its fact pants down around their wide stance ankles had to learn the ABC's of proportional delegate distribution and who these anachronistic Super Delegates were, now in a front loaded primary season - and who was the idiot that put this in place? Look no further than Hillary Clinton's supposedly superior finance wizard who had been chairman of the DNC. Super Delegates took provisions and ran for the undisclosed Bunker Hills to escape the carpet bombing and strafing-by-surrogate when the Inevitability Express Shuttle came around every 15 minutes demanding Super Delegates get on board or be left behind in every sense of the Revelations word.

In February, Obama ground troops moved across the United States feeding and strengthening his supply lines with food, fuel, phones and small amounts of folding money. The candidate of Inevitability treated much of America as an insignificant no-fly zone filled with hairy Idaho activists, frothing Mississippi latte sippers, stupid Hawaii 5-0 and unseemly Washington logrolling caucuses, isolated St. Louis eggheads with an extra Volvo, Wisconsin Facebookies and the average Georgian Birkenstock shopper. The math locked in on the ground. Nobody saw it except the truly political astute and Obama supporters. Furiously dog-paddling MIA Super Delegates belly flopped and jumped sans parachutes from the bomber bay splashing into Florida's Keys, deciding it was a better hiding place to secure freedom freedom from the Two Sirens' May Day, May Day radio calls for money.
Super Delegates wanted the WAR of the primary Worlds to be definitive in a quantum mechanics grand unified theory way. Make the remaining states walk the gauntlet under the booming guns of the mad bomber in the sky trying to reach the cool-as-a-cucumber arugula gardener on the ground was the plan while they bit their manicures and occupied the space time continuum bubble warp in federally protected DC. No candidate was going to be in DC anyway. POW Clinton Delegates made a break for enemy lines under sniper fire and announced the Underground Railroad still worked. More are chirping that they are undeclared, not uncommitted, and shall wait to see that the plane with a president and co-pilot husband is actually enshrined in the Clinton Presidential Library like Reagan's before they rush into the sunlight to announce that they were for the Inevitable candidate all along.


Here is where to learn about Barack Obama's life with books and his youthful quest started with books.



The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama and the First Lady, Michelle Obama!