Wikileaks and the Diplomacy of Secrecy

Wikileaks and the Diplomacy of Secrecy

Gareth Porter, Investigative Journalist and Ray McGovern, Retired CIA Analyst discuss Wikileaks



Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network, back at our live Real News Webathon. If you want to donate, the phone number is 1-888-499-6772. You can go to the Real News website and click the donate button, which is probably the fastest and easiest way to do it. Again, the phone number if you want to call--or if you want to send a check, you can also phone and get the information on where to send a check. Again, it's 1-888-499-6772. And for those of you just joining us, this is part of our $200,000 challenge. We have a generous donor who's going to match donations dollar for dollar to get us up to 200,000. And so every dollar you give us is going to be doubled. Now joining us to talk about WikiLeaks is Ray McGovern. Ray was a former CIA analyst for 27 years and briefed--he was part of the briefing process for several presidents. Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist who's been often a guest on The Real News Network, and writes also at--I'm sorry. You work with--you write with IPS, and Ray, you write at ConsortiumNews.com and often on The Real News. So, Ray, kick it off for us. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks was arrested today. So what do you know about this? And why was he arrested?

RAY MCGOVERN, CIA ANALYST (RET'D): Well, first of all, I have to say this trivializes the gargantuan battle that's going on here. We have David and Goliath. We have something really important that is being--is really up for grabs. We have the attempt by the powerful government of our country to stifle, to make sure that the Internet cannot be used to expose truth that it doesn't want. So what we have today is, you know, sort of of very minimal significance--except for Julian Assange [inaudible] part of this whole campaign. Going back to August, do you remember when he was--there was a public prosecutor who was going to have a warrant out? Well, all of a sudden, that same day [inaudible] no, no warrant because there's no evidence. Well, what evidence has there been since?
JAY: This is the prosecutor in Sweden?
MCGOVERN: Yeah, in Stockholm, okay? Well, that was when these women finally came forward, after having bragged of their conquest of Julian Assange, after exchanging tweets, you know, that this was really something, and after inviting him, after this alleged event, to come to a big party. Okay? So they go to the judge and say, well, you know, there was something really bad, and then--. So what happens is Julian Assange hangs around in Stockholm, tries to find out what it is, you know, for weeks, and nobody would talk to him. Then he goes abroad, and now they've got a warrant. They got a warrant, okay? And the British, you know, always standing up strong for liberty, caved as usual, and he's in prison. And, of course, the name of the game is to get him out of prison, get him extradited to Stockholm, where my former friends will extradite him to--what?--Algiers or Cairo, wherever they do the special treatment.
JAY: Oh, they'll have trouble doing that.
MCGOVERN: [inaudible]
JAY: No, they just have to put him outside in winter in Sweden. But--okay. Well, let's get back to some of the--I mean, the--I guess the issue in terms of his arrest is the attempt to close down everything to do with WikiLeaks without any--you can say, I guess, there's some kind of due process going on in terms of if there's real charges in Sweden, although it's rather dubious that anyone that wasn't Julian Assange right now would be held without bail on something like this in London. But the fact that Amazon pulls down WikiLeaks's material without any due process, just leaned on by the government, PayPal cuts down the ability to raise money, apparently, Assange's, I think, bank account was closed yesterday in Switzerland, using all these minor infractions, because clearly he's broken the rules on how diplomacy and how secrecy is supposed to work in this world. Gareth, your thoughts just on the whole process to begin with. I mean, there is one argument being made by some people who are in principle in favor of all this information having come out, but they talk about WikiLeaks as being a bit like the role an agent provocateur might play in a demonstration, that it's allowing a crackdown of access to information that might not have otherwise taken place.
GARETH PORTER, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Well, there is, of course, on the left a certain view of WikiLeaks, that it is in some sense a setup, that they're really manipulated by foreign intelligence agencies and so forth. But the reality that we're talking about here is that the political establishment in the United States is now striking back, and the premise that they are operating on is that we cannot allow people to interfere with the policymaking process and with US diplomacy. These are the magic words. I was on a program from Toronto this week, the beginning of the week--no, sorry, the middle of the week, which was based on the premise that this WikiLeaks phenomenon is a serious problem for diplomacy as an abstract process, an entity, that whether it was the United States or any other country, you would have to do something to stop this because, you know, a great power cannot function in terms of exercising diplomacy while subject to this kind of phenomenon of leaks of these diplomatic cables. And I tried to introduce the notion that the reality is that the United States is not practicing diplomacy, certainly not in the sense of conflict resolution diplomacy, in any of the conflicts that it is involved in anywhere in the world. Anywhere the United States is directly involved in the conflict or it has an interest, it doesn't practice, you know, peace diplomacy; it practices coercive diplomacy, which is not diplomacy at all; it's coercion.
JAY: One of the main issues in this three-nights program is to get viewers involved directly, 'cause we're not usually live and they don't usually get to ask questions. So we're going to go to a viewer phone call now. Joe from New York. Go ahead, Joe.
JOE, CALLER (NEW YORK): Good evening, folks.
MCGOVERN: Hi, Joe.
JAY: Hey, Joe. Joe, let me suggest something. You've got to turn the sound off on your computer, 'cause you're going to--otherwise we're going to get an echo, 'cause there's a delay in the way it goes out.
JOE: Alright. I got it down now.
JAY: Okay. Go ahead, Joe.
JOE: You're talking like you know the answers. Everything you fellas are saying is theory, just like--. How should I say this [inaudible] Mr. McGovern, the other day you ended your interview by saying everything in The New York Times was drivel.
MCGOVERN: Drivel, yeah.
JOE: That was correct, okay? And I believe this WikiLeaks, if you read my email, okay, is a diversion, okay, from the real problem that we should be discussing, the implosion of the world economy. And I believe this WikiLeaks is a means of them diverting our attention from that. So we should be concentrating on that, because the people in power are on the verge of losing control, and we have to find an alternative. And WikiLeaks hasn't released anything that we do not know. That's all I have to say.
JAY: Okay. Thanks, Joe. Well, your audio is a little broken up, but I understood your question and I'll pose it again to our guests. So Joe is saying that there's really nothing so--such great revelations in what Wikipedia [sic] came out with, and what it's actually been is a big diversion from how serious the economic crisis is right now. And I'll add some words to what he said, 'cause I know where he's going with this, I think, although he accuses us at the beginning of thinking we know everything. But anyway, Joe, I think what you're saying is that we're in such a serious moment historically right now and we're all talking about WikiLeaks, which wasn't such a big deal as what it was. So what's your take on this, Ray?
MCGOVERN: Well, I think that the thing has an inertia kind of dynamic of its own. I mean, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are the ones that are calling the shots with respect to timing. So fitting that into some larger purpose that would serve the US government is a little strained in my view. It is what it is. That's the strange thing about this. I mean, the guy is the real deal, in my view, and so is his effort, and so is the fellow that gave him the--if it is Private [Bradley] Manning, he said he wanted the world to know what's going on and to discuss it before it continues.
JAY: But does it concern you a bit--and it put some doubt in my mind, although in the end I believe this is what it is, but the reason why there isn't more transparency in "diplomacy"--and I'm putting quotation marks around it, Gareth, as you said--is because most foreign policy is, for the most part, banal, narrow-minded national interest, which means the interests of the elite of each country, and it's so much just about making money and defending their commercial interests? And if they actually said that it wasn't about democracy and it wasn't about defending freedom and it wasn't about all the high-minded things, for starters, it's pretty hard to get kids to volunteer in armies to go get killed in wars, you know, because you're going to make someone else either wealthy or something. So the heart of the secrecy is that they don't want to be transparent about the motive and the agenda. That being said, not that much of that came out of these leaks. It's not like you got--that veil didn't really come down. It was kind of if the veil is here, it was, like, up here. Go ahead, Gareth.
PORTER: And there are two points about that. There are two reasons why that is true. I think it is the case that that message has not--certainly not come out as a result of the diplomatic cables. And I think there are two reasons. One is that obviously most of the diplomacy is routine conversations about things that do not raise those issues, and certainly do not do so in a way that allows for that transparency, for on understanding of the motives behind US policy, for the most part. There are exceptions, however, of course. And those--one of the exceptions is some of the cables that have to do with Iran, specifically. This is the case that we've talked about on The Real News Network, which is the revelation that the United States was pushing this idea of Iran acquiring long-range missiles from North Korea which could menace the cities of Europe. Why? Why was this being pushed by the United States, a year ago or so, in a meeting with the Russians? Because they were trying to justify missile defense for Europe. Why missile defense for Europe? Not because Iran was threatening Europe; nobody really believes that. It was because this is really big money behind missile defense. There are huge, huge amounts of money to be made in this. And that's why there's such momentum behind it bureaucratically and politically in this country.
JAY: There was also an argument at the time that while this was said to be about Iran, a lot of people thought this was more about an encirclement of Russia. And so that--there could be other reasons for this.
PORTER: Right. But the Iran angle is--you know, clearly the only reason for it was to push missile defense in Europe, so that a lot of people in this country who are arms manufacturers can make a lot of money, and so that the bureaucrats who are pushing the programs within the military and Defense Department could have [inaudible]
JAY: Now, you did some specific work on this issue, looking at some of the leaks that were not published in The New York Times on the question of Arab regime support for--.
PORTER: Right. And--.
JAY: What did you find?
PORTER: But let me just make--the larger point here is the second reason that the message about the real motives in US policy does not become clearer because of WikiLeaks is that where there is an exception here, and where the documents do shed light on it, The New York Times has the franchise on saying what they really mean, and they tell the world--the Washington Post follows them--saying, oh, yeah, this is showing that Iran really is a menace to Europe. And therefore it's exactly the opposite message of what is in the documents.
JAY: Why? What did you find that's the opposite?
PORTER: Well, in the case of this, of course, what I found was that the Russians, who really were very well informed about this issue of the phantom missile, said, no way. I mean, we've been following this for years. There's no evidence whatsoever that this missile even exists, let alone that it's been tested.
MCGOVERN: I saw its picture.
PORTER: Exactly. I mean--.
MCGOVERN: It's a dummy.
PORTER: It's a dummy. Yeah. So, anyway, I mean, the evidence was very powerful in this document. Had it been covered, you know, accurately, honestly by The New York Times, that message should have gotten out, but it didn't.
MCGOVERN: There's another aspect here, and that is we're dealing with secret and confidential messages. There are a couple of top secret, but not very many. The real deal happens at the top secret: no diss, no dissemination, executive dissemination, and so forth, or in codeword traffic. And so you wouldn't expect to see any allusion to the objective to build permanent military bases in Afghanistan or Iraq or how much natural gas really lies in Turkmenistan.
JAY: Yeah. I mean, I don't think we saw any cables about the issue of pipelines through Pakistan and the issues of China's influence in Pakistan and these sorts of things.
MCGOVERN: But what you do see, and, you know, there are a myriad subjects--bear in mind, we've got 1 percent of the latest released now. But even so, when you talk about how it reflects on what the United States has become, we used to be real big on rule of law, right, and things like torture were beyond the pale, and we would pursue torturers. And here we have the United States leaning very hard on the government of Spain, the government of Germany, saying, look, okay, we know we tortured your citizens, but you take that to a judicial proceeding and our bilateral relationship will be seriously affected. Well, that's pretty darned blatant, you know? And the worst, of course, is that these governments, old European governments, if you want, according to Rumsfeld, they just cave, and they tolerate the interference in their judicial process and the picking judges and squashing cases. It's really--so there's a lot you can get through [inaudible] and we're only just begun, as the song says.
JAY: Right. We have another caller, Ahmed from Toronto. Go ahead. Ahmed, are you there?
AHMED, CALLER (TORONTO): Yes. Hi.
JAY: Yes. Go ahead.
AHMED: Hello?
JAY: Yes, go ahead with your question.
AHMED: Yes. My question was, what seemed before, the United States was creating wars before, since Vietnam to Korea, whatever, what have you, and even started in the Second World War, and this was all for the United States to go and to be the only superpower of the world. But now we've seen new modern wars. It's not fighting communists anymore or to be the only superpower, because the United States evidently they're only superpower in the world. So now we're seeing different wars, like Iraq and Afghanistan, which is oil and gas and Middle East governments. So [inaudible] from the escalation, the United States, of the problem between North Korea and South Korea now?
JAY: Alright, so the question's about North Korea and South Korea. I mean, this is an interesting thing.
AHMED: Yeah. Why--what's the reason behind all this escalation?
JAY: Alright. Okay. Thanks, Ahmed. We're going to cut off now, but I'm going to re-pose your question here, 'cause that may have been a little difficult to hear. So the question is about US policy in North Korea and South Korea. But if you take it back to the WikiLeaks issue, this is again something I find a little interesting, or something which is--like, when it comes to the Middle East, most of the leaks somehow help the US and Israeli position. When it comes to Korea--.
PORTER: The way they were covered. The way they were covered.
JAY: The way they were--. Exactly. Okay, the way they were covered.
PORTER: It's a key point, the key point.
JAY: Yeah, you're right. That is a key point, yes. When it comes to Korea, though, it's somewhat similar, 'cause, I mean, it's not bad, I would think, for the US position to make it clearer to the North Koreans that--at least according to these cables, that maybe China's ready to bail on them. But at any rate, talk about WikiLeaks in the Koreas.
PORTER: Well, I mean, that's the only one, as far as I know, that has really come out that has any significant, you know, substantive bearing on the question of the policies of the major players in the Korean conflict. It seems to me--I think there must be more to come in the future about this, because there has been such an absence of documentation on that issue, on that set of issues surrounding Korea, its--North Korea and its nuclear program, as well as the North-South relationship and the role of the United States in all this. And, you know, what I'm going to be looking for, frankly, from the diplomatic cables is something that helps to understand why the North Koreans since the beginning of 2010 have been so aggressive in trying to, you know, take initiatives militarily, assuming that the Cheonan sinking really was North Korean. I don't know the truth, but let's assume for the moment that that was the case.
JAY: And there is dispute about it. But--.
PORTER: There's dispute about it, and, you know, I don't claim to know the truth, but assuming for the moment that that was the case, and then you have the use of force, you know, shelling an Island enough to really rile the Americans as well as the South Koreans, it begs the question of what's going on here. And the American news media again have done the thing that they always do, which is to analyze the problem or report on the problem as--exactly the way Washington, the State Department, and the Pentagon, and the White House would want them to report on it.
JAY: That's--which is your point is that whatever the existing narrative was, WikiLeaks is playing into that narrative.
PORTER: That's right. And so what they're reporting is, well, I mean, this is just North Korea being North Korea: they're aggressive; nobody understands them; they're mysterious; we have to--you know, we now have to go to our hard posture, because otherwise we'd be rewarding the North Koreans, and so we can't have any diplomacy with the North Koreans. And the point I want to make is this, that there is only one source that I've seen that really shed some light on this, by bringing up the history of the North Korean policy with regard to the diplomacy of the conflict. What North Koreans have always wanted, of course, is a peace agreement with the United States, an end to the state of war, which has never ended since 1953, since the armistice. And the North Koreans have come back to this from time to time. In January of this year, the North Koreans again formally proposed to the United States to negotiate a peace treaty, and they said, if you negotiate a peace treaty, we will then stop our nuclear weapons program. They simply put it that way, that--. So there is a reason, there is a set of reasons for what we've seen in recent months, but it has not been apparent, you know, from the news media. And I would hope that the WikiLeaks cables would shed light on this. We'll have to see.
JAY: Ray.
MCGOVERN: You know, there's an aspect here that needs to be emphasized with respect to what you could expect to get out of these diplomatic cables. These are written by foreign service officers who want to get promoted, okay? So are you going to see something in cables from Middle Eastern countries that will reflect poorly on Israel or on our policy toward Israel or Israel's influence on us? No, you won't find that. Similarly with respect to Korea, if there's some doubt, which there is great doubt about whether the North Koreans sunk that ship earlier, are you going to find a cable that says, you know, this is rather plausible scenario here with this mine that could have gone--? You're not going to find any of that, because these people want to get promoted, and they don't want to tell any bad news to--.
JAY: David from Los Angeles writes a question over Skype to us or an email, which is: is there any proof that the US government is directly leaning on these foreign governments to crack down on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange? Any evidence of that? Or are they simply doing it for their own reasons?
MCGOVERN: Well, if you accept that Ann, whatever her last name is, the primary complaint person there,--
JAY: This is one of the two women in Sweden that has instigated these charges.
MCGOVERN: --that she's tied in with CIA front organizations, to include Luis Posada Carriles, the fellow who really downed a Cuban airliner with a sports team on it. You know, there's some reason to believe that she's got what we call a 201 file in the agency, and that when it was learned or when she was put up to going to bed with Assange, that there was a plan there where they could get him. It's--you know, it's classic. It's--they call it a honey trap, okay?
JAY: It's classic and it's possible. We don't know for sure.
MCGOVERN: Yeah. Well, we've got--.
JAY: But we don't--what do we know about her connection to--. She was in Cuba for a while.
MCGOVERN: Well, she worked with this organization, Cuban exile sort of organization. She was thrown out of Cuba. She--and she--one of the companies sort of run by who knows whom, but could be my former colleagues, was one that Posada Carriles is connected with. So she's got a record, you know, of contacts with some folks that don't always tell the truth. Let me put it that way. So we have to take this all into account. And, you know, this is so classic.
JAY: But the other thing, part of this is that the elites in either--whether it's in England or in Europe, they're all involved in the same kind of machinations. Maybe they're not the superpower, but none of them want transparent diplomacy. So they have their own reasons not for--to not like what WikiLeaks is doing. I mean, someday it could be them.
MCGOVERN: But they all keep their condoms on. I'm sorry.
JAY: Okay. JD from Toronto has joined us. JD, go ahead.
JD, CALLER (TORONTO): Oh, hi, Paul. I speak fairly [inaudible] so you may [inaudible] rephrase the question I put to you for your panel. I'm fairly technical, and I follow your show quite carefully. I'm a supporter [inaudible] donator [inaudible] I watched [Zbigniew] Brzezinski on the PBS show with Judy Woodruff on November 30, and Brzezinski said that given the materials [inaudible] materials coming out of the WikiLeaks currently, really it looked like some agency was feeding WikiLeaks those materials. And that's one question [inaudible] the panel to think about.
JAY: You said that it was Brzezinski had said that?
JD: [inaudible] with regard to--. Sorry?
JAY: I'm sorry. That was Brzezinski, you said? Zbigniew Brzezinski, you said, said this?
JD: Yes, November 30, 2010, PBS interview.
JAY: Okay. Yeah, go ahead.
JD: It's on YouTube. So the second question was with regard to ownership of [inaudible] domain names. And quite by accident, a year and a half ago I determined that The Globe and Mail's Web servers are not in Canada; they're in Chicago. As I said, I'm technically competent. So when you go to a .ca Globe and Mail website, it's going to Chicago. And there was a recent ruling in the US that suggests that the location of the server depends upon the ownership of the transactions into that server. Now, if [inaudible] in Canada, you find that they guarantee ownership of or control of Canadian transactions to .ca domain names. So that's a question I'd like, again, to put to your audience [inaudible] issue there for Canadians in going to The Globe and Mail, for example?
JAY: Well, I'll tell you what--yeah. We're going to have a really knowledgeable panel tomorrow night--I'm not sure if my guests know the server law and that kind of issue. But tomorrow night we're doing a panel about the Amazon takedown of WikiLeaks, and the three people on that panel are real experts in this area. So let me pose this question tomorrow night. Your first question about Brzezinski and the possibility that deliberately leaks [sic], let me take that up now. Is that okay?
JD: I'd like to add one more because Ray McGovern's there.
JAY: Okay. Go ahead.
MCGOVERN: Yeah.
JD: You know, again, I follow the Canadian academics and 9/11 quite carefully, and--don't smile, Paul.
JAY: Oh, no, I--not at all. I was smiling 'cause I put my hand up to Ray to just hold a second. I was not smiling at what you said. Go ahead.
JD: Okay, because, you know, there are credible people with credible credentials risking their careers speaking to this issue. And, you know, I've got, you know, a degree in science. And, you know, you can't get freefall [inaudible] World Trade Center Number Seven [inaudible] doesn't happen in freefall. So my question is more with regard to why is Fox News, and specifically Geraldo Rivera, speaking about 9/11 as an inside job? [inaudible] to speak about this.
JAY: Okay. Well, let me--let me start--okay, well, so we're going to do with question one and question three, and question two we're doing tomorrow night. Alright. So let's start with question one. Brzezinski and some others have suggested that--I didn't hear the interview, but let me pose it the way I've heard it that makes the most possible sense, not that necessarily the whole WikiLeaks dump is some maneuver or it was deliberate, though some people have said that, but more that they knew it was happening, they knew it might happen, and in the context of all that, there might be some deliberate misinformation established. And there is another piece to this, which--I'm not sure everybody's heard this point, which is that--if I'm--SIPR Network, I think it's called.
MCGOVERN: M'hm. SIPR.
JAY: SIPRNet, which was the database network all this was on, and apparently as many as 2.5 million people had access to this.
MCGOVERN: That's right.
JAY: You've got to figure, if there's going to be leaks when 2.5 million people--maybe not a leak the size of WikiLeaks, but you've got to figure, if you put out some cable, there's a good likelihood somebody's going to say something to some journalist about it or something. So what do you think about the possibility of deliberately planted information within the context of this?
MCGOVERN: Well, SIPRNet's first. Who was responsible for that?
JAY: I believe--I think it's--was the--Condoleezza Rice wasn't it?
MCGOVERN: His last name was Powell and his first name was Colin.
JAY: I--is that right?
MCGOVERN: Oh, yeah. Yeah [inaudible] right after 9/11.
JAY: Wilkerson told me it was under Rice's watch.
MCGOVERN: Yeah, well, Rice was responsible for other indignities, but this was Powell caving in. He knew better. He knows better than to put 2.5 million people on that kind of thing. But, well, getting back to Brzezinski, you know, there's this whole saying: old soldiers never die; they just fade away. Well, old national security advisers never die either, and they don't fade away; they always show up at these things. He revealed a complete ignorance with respect to the mechanics of how this happened. In answer to these questions, he was just completely at sea in terms of figure out how this could've been inserted [inaudible] He didn't realize that what Bradley Manning, if he's the guy, did was to take an empty CD and put it in there and take it out. And there's no way you can ask Bradley Manning go back to his tent and--. You know. I mean, let's--. So my caution is that, you know, PBS really ought to find somebody a little bit younger or somebody who reads this stuff. You know?
JAY: Well, what's your take, Gareth? 'Cause--.
PORTER: I absolutely agree with what Ray is saying. I--he couldn't have put it better. I think this is an absolutely perfect putdown--takedown, I think, is the more correct term, of Zbigniew Brzezinski. I mean, he's said a few intelligent things in his life, but, you know, he has said a lot of things that are not intelligent, and this is perhaps the least intelligent thing, apart from his advocacy of the jihadism in Afghanistan the 1980s.
JAY: No, but I--let me put it as a way that I think might make some sense, which is, without any foreknowledge there would ever be a WikiLeaks leak, some of this stuff is written in cables thinking it might leak in some way, because you just figure 2.5 million people on this thing, something's going to get out. So if you want to put out some misinformation, it's a way to do it, make it look [inaudible]
PORTER: Well, I mean, Zbig did not come up with any specific item that he thought was a plausible candidate for that. I'm waiting for him to do that before one can take seriously [inaudible]
MCGOVERN: Yeah, I wouldn't buy that, Paul. That's just--you know, who--how many of those 2.5 million people knew that that there are 2.5 million people on there? They probably all felt, you know, that it would be a little difficult to do that, in my view.
PORTER: I mean, the real problem, of course--or not a problem, but the reality is that the White House, the Pentagon, at mid to high levels, leak diplomatic cables all the time for their own--
JAY: Well, that was actually a question that we had coming in.
PORTER: --for their own political purposes. And that's--you know, that's worth talking about. But the idea that somebody at some point slipped some, you know, material into a cable that they thought might be leaked, well, that's not very important and it's really not very significant.
JAY: Okay. In terms of what you've seen so far, and we know it's just a fraction of, I mean--what?--a quarter million cables, what has jumped out at you the most, you said, okay, I didn't know that, that's astounding, that really reveals something?
PORTER: Well, I mean, I think there--in terms of absolute numbers there's quite a few things that are worth really delving into. When we talked the first time about this, one thing that struck me was that the cable that was written from Baghdad about Iranian influence in Iraq was a substantial departure from the kind of rhetoric that has been used in the past to discuss the problem of Iranian influence there. I mean, it's usually presented as some conspiratorial thing, subversion, essentially, by Iran, whereas this cable laid it out in a way--at least 95 percent of the cable was laid out in a way that was reasonably rational; in other words, it was saying, look, Iran's influence is based on its proximity to Iraq, the cultural similarity, the affinity of the Shia in Iraq with Iran, and not the least of the problems or aspects of this, that Iranian trade is of absolutely vital importance to Iraq.
JAY: In fact stuff [David] Petraeus said when he was in front of Congress. When Petraeus was testifying in Congress, he said more or less the same thing. It was actually an interesting [inaudible]
PORTER: Well, that's not the way I recall. You know, I mean, he was talking about Iranian subversion, not Iraq.
JAY: No, no, no. We did a whole story on this. It's very interesting is that there is a portion, his first Q&A back and forth, I think it must've been, I think, with McCain, but his first Q&A, Petraeus gave an argument why it's in Iran's interest to collaborate, to have a constructive solution in Iraq, and gave very similar reasons. Then he gets pushed by McCain, and I'm not sure who the other Republican hawk were, trying to get some rhetoric out of him about Iranian killing American soldiers and all this, and then he finally gave them what they wanted.
PORTER: So maybe you're talking about later than 2007, which is what I was talking about. I was talking about his rhetoric in 2007.
JAY: Yeah, no, I'm talking--yeah, I'm talking about--well, I--yeah, this would've been about a year and a half ago.
PORTER: Alright. [inaudible]
JAY: Go ahead: what jumped out for you, something that you said, okay, that's a revelation?
MCGOVERN: Okay. On November 29, 2005, there was a bizarre press conference at the Pentagon: General Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Donald Rumsfeld. What had just been discovered was that Iraqi prisoners were being tortured, okay, and some US soldiers came upon this. Question from a lady: General Pace, what are your instructions to soldiers who encounter a torture done by the Iraqis? Pace: Ma'am, our instructions are to stop it; they need to do everything in their power to stop the torture whenever they see it. Rumsfeld: Well, I don't think you mean stop it; I think you mean report it. No, ma'am, it was stop it; we need to stop it. The only time in the whole--my experience that a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has deliberately contradicted the secretary of defense, November 29, 2005. What do we know now from the WikiLeaks? We know there was a frag-o order, a fragmentary order. It was June 2004. So do your subtraction there: June 2004, November 2005. Okay? That order told American soldiers that when these prisoners get dumped into Iraqi--in prisons, if there's violence or if there's torture, as long as it's Iraqi on Iraqi, just ignore it, just report it to the Iraqi authorities who were doing the torture, okay? That is unconscionable, but it came directly from Rumsfeld. What's my point? My point is that General [Antonio] Taguba did not misspeak when he told Sy Hersh, you know, I thought I was working for the U.S. Army, but I realized I've been working for the Mafia the last couple of years. That's what it's become. And the Army has become not only completely politicized and willing to do torture and that kind of thing, but they've become sacrosanct. Why is it that nobody makes fun of General Petraeus? Look, he's got so many medals on here, ten rows of medals. That's more than Westmoreland had. He had only had nine. And they're so heavy that he falls over on his face on his desk.
PORTER: Sort of like all those Soviet generals, right?
MCGOVERN: And nobody laughs. You know, give him water and--yeah, like the Soviet generals. I mean, I think that's telling. I mean, the guy needs his medals. And--.
PORTER: And don't forget the star on his cap, right? That's the largest star of any general ever.
MCGOVERN: Oh, he does. Yeah. I thought you meant the Soviet [inaudible]
PORTER: No, Petraeus.
MCGOVERN: Now--you know, so this is really not what our founders had in mind. First of all, they spoke out against a standing army, because you have a standing army, you're going to find wars to fight. And, of course, what we have here is a very, very different army from the one I served in. And what happens when they come home? You know, what happens when they come home not having won a war? Okay? And who are they going to look to, take orders from? Well, Cheney, presumably, may not be around anymore, but Petraeus will be around. We've got the prospect of a possible Napoleon coming home, okay?
JAY: Yeah, it's--they--what happened seemed to be--in Vietnam it was oppose the policy, but also there was critique about the soldiers and the generals. Well, in these wars it was: you should oppose the policy, but don't--but support the troops. But that support the troops has turned into support the generals--
MCGOVERN: That's right.
JAY: --without any kind of criticism, and that's created this kind of nationalist envelope around the generals.
PORTER: Just bear in mind, though, that you're talking about the WikiLeaks from the War Logs. The War Logs were much richer in that sort of material.
MCGOVERN: Yeah.
PORTER: Much harder to find that in the diplomatic cables, for obvious reasons, for the reasons that you gave.
JAY: Well, this is a taste of what we're going to do more of, which we're going to do more live interviews, and viewers are going to have more chance to ask questions and get involved. After the break, Daphne Wysham's going to be joining us, and we're going to be talking about climate change policy. The issue of donations, of course, is why we're all here. So if you want to donate, please, you can do it on our website TheRealNews.com, which I assume you're on or you wouldn't be listening to what I'm saying. There's a donate button here or there. We're trying to reach our $200,000 challenge. If you're having any trouble on the website, or you just prefer, you can do it by phone, you can call 1-888-499-6772. If you want to send a check, you can phone that number and they'll give you the information on where to send the check. We'll be back in just a few minutes, and we're going to talk about climate change policy, especially what's happening in Washington now with the Republicans taking the House. Is there actually--is climate-change policy even on anyone's agenda anymore? So please join us in just a few minutes.
End of Transcript

我的學校是夢工廠：美國頂尖學府的教育革新

【採訪：李雪莉】你知道遊戲是最好的學習方式嗎？當強調感性的戲劇系遇上重視理性的資訊系，會創造出什麼教育新可能？麻省理工學院、卡內基美隆大學等美國頂尖名校，又在進行什麼樣的教育革新？

World Press Freedom Day 2010

Hosted at Australia's University of Queensland. The university's School of Journalism and Communication is organising the conference on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of May 2010. Great is Truth, And Mighty Above All Things is the wording above the main entrance to the Forgan Smith Building at The University of Queensland. These words fit well with the theme of this year's conference, which is Freedom of Information: the Right to Know.

wpfd2010 on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Glenn Lurie on Dropped Calls and iPhone Exclusives

Glenn Lurie on Dropped Calls and iPhone Exclusives
Here's the video highlights from AT&T President of Emerging Devices Glenn Lurie's interview with Walt Mossberg, who drills down on AT&T's reputation for dropped calls and what will happen once its iPhone exclusivity expires.

A Hands-On History of the Cellphone by Greg Harper

A Hands-On History of the Cellphone by Greg Harper
Gadget freak Greg Harper drops by the D: Dive Into Mobile to show off...gadgets, of course. Check out the All Things D archives for a trip down gadget memory lane.

People in Taiwan(Business, Entertainment)

EMBA高峰論壇

EMBA高峰論壇
後ECFA時代教學大挑戰
台灣EMBA教育邁入第15年，經過金融
海嘯衝擊，面臨中國熱與國際化潮流，
台灣EMBA教育將有哪些新思維？

RealNetworks Unifi's Media in the Cloud

RealNetworks Unifi's Media in the Cloud
RealNetworks is releasing and demoing live onstage its newest product-named Unifi. The cloud media service automatically catalogs your collection (a la iTunes) and lets you stream it to any device, on demand.

Dive Tech-OnLive Now More Than Just a Game

Dive Tech-OnLive Now More Than Just a Game
Way back in June, OnLive demoed its cloud-based mini gaming console in front of a packed house at D8. Today, it is attempting to level-up, announcing a new extension of the OnLive cloud service platform-one that turns just about any device into a console for their cloud system.

Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley at D: Mobile

Foursquare Founder Dennis Crowley at D: Mobile
If Dodgeball was, as founder Dennis Crowley claims, the perfect storm of bad timing, then his latest venture Foursquare is a sunny day. In this video Crowley talks about the mechanics of merchant relationships, valuations and frothiness and the difference between Dodgeball and Foursquare.

Google's Susan Wojcicki at D: Dive Into Mobile

Google's Susan Wojcicki at D: Dive Into Mobile
You'd have to search a long time to find someone who's been closer to the evolution of Google than Susan Wojcicki. It was in her rented garage that Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched the company, which she joined in 1999. Now, as one of only eight senior vice presidents, she runs Google's most important business units.

Video And Screenshots Of Android 3.0′s Surprise Appearance

The video of Andy Rubin’s talk at the Dive Into Mobile event is up, and you can watch the juicy bit above, where he takes out the prototype Motorola tablet and toys with it for all to see, demonstrating the new Google Maps and “accidentally” teasing video chat capability and some other things.

The pad looks bigger than 7″, the size we heard about, but I can’t swear to it. If I had to take a guess at the screen resolution, I’d go with 8-9″ at 1024×600. It looks thin and rather unadorned right now, but this likely isn’t the final industrial design, so let’s just not worry too much about that. He seemed proud that it had no buttons on it, though, so I’m guessing that’s final.

Rubin mentions toward the beginning of his Maps demo that it’s running a dual-core NVIDIA GPU. So there’s that. I wonder what the CPU is — not an ARM SoC, since the graphics wouldn’t be discrete like that. A new dual-core Atom? Or something new, something custom? He does say a “new” processor, and for that matter a “new” screen, so it could be anything, and the screen might be different from the current crop. (as commenters point out, it’s likely that this it is running a Tegra 2 and Rubin was simply not describing it well)

Here are a few screenshots from the video. Sorry they aren’t very clear, but they’re better than the blurry ones from before.


As for the price? TBD. Unless you want to buy the prototype, about which Rubin said “literally, this thing is probably like ten thousand dollars.”


******************************



The Google Map App on Android phones will soon get a major upgrade which will allow it to render map images a lot faster, incorporate 3D buildings, offer offline caching, and use the compass to orient the map. In a talk this evening at the D Mobile conference, Android chief Andy Rubin gave a sneak peak of the new app.

At the heart of the new app is a dynamic map rendering engine which draws maps as you use them, and offers smoother transitions when zooming in and out of different levels. The dynamic rendering will also make it possible to start to show 3D buildings as you zoom into the street-level view. The touch screen will allow you to tilt and rotate the map and buildings.

The new maps load faster because they require 100 times less data each. Instead of downloading the entire map image for each level, the app downloads meta data which describes the entire map at all different levels and then renders the appropriate sector on the fly. This will start to give Google Maps offline capabilities on mobile phones. It may be possible to cache a map of an entire city on the phone. And for people who use the turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, when the new app comes out it will be able to recalculate the route even without a data connection.

The Google Maps app will also use the built-in compass on Android phones to automatically flip the orientation of the map to the person holding the phone. That orientation feature will come in handy when you are coming out of a subway station in an unfamiliar stop, or exiting a building.

Nexus S

Meaningful Work through Passion, not Genius

At the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and the upcoming "Outliers," gives two examples of hard work that later looked like genius. Bill Gates got up at 2am to program as a teenager, while the Beatles played together 1200 times, far more than most bands, before they ever got famous. Success, he believes, is the result of putting your heart and mind into something to create successful, meaningful work.







Are you doing what you were made to do?

Everyone has a passion and something that drives them. What is yours? Are you doing what you were made to do? Watch Joel Comm discuss how to find your passion and live your life to the fullest.

Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook,

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-yr.-old founder and CEO of mega-social media site Facebook, talks to Lesley Stahl about his life and his business, now worth an estimated $35 billion.

AMOLED

pesent Fri. Chinglan Chin03 December 2010

pesent Fri. on Prezi

ITI第 23期商英B班開訓式Brian老師介紹課程

RedLaser: How A Company That Nearly Died Sold To eBay – with Reddy and Powers

RedLaser: How A Company That Nearly Died Sold To eBay – with Reddy and Powers
Posted on Dec 2, 2010 - 2:59 PM PST




How could two guys whose company nearly died end up selling millions of apps and changing the way people use their mobile phones?

That’s the seemingly impossible feat that Vikas Reddy and Jeffrey Powers, founders of Occipital, achieved. They created an app called RedLaser that made the cameras on people’s mobile phones into smart barcode scanners. With their app, users can, for example, scan items in stores and see if you can buy those items cheaper online.

They sold RedLaser to eBay for an undisclosed amount and now they’re working on 360 Panorama, which offers real-time panorama creation.

Canada-Israel: The other special relationship

Canada-Israel: The other special relationship

Seen as an honest-broker in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Canada has become one of Israel's most fervent supporters.

THE ENGADGET SHOW

FUTURE OF SCREENS – EXPERIENCE VIDEO

Capacitive screens has now become a commodity for touch screen devices. Screen technology is now taking the next leap and the coming years imagination is the only thing stopping us. We will soon have dual screens, malleable screens, screens built into wifi connected mirrors, desks or backside of gadgets clothed with e-ink screens, tactile feedback, color screens with great contrast in sunlight, holographics/stereoscopic screens, color e-ink touch screens, or screens actually knowing where they are in relation to other screens thanks to ultrasonic emitters and microphones.

We want to show some of these things in an “experience video”, that shows a normal day in a couple of years when all these technologies are affordable enough to be used everywhere. This video is the result of our experiment with open innovation, read more about our experiment here. Big thanks to all the people from TAT and around the world who helped out and sometimes shared their ideas and sometimes gave us homework on our own ideas.





The video of Paul Blomdahl showing off some of our demos on episode 13 of The Engadget Show on September 17th is now available. They start talking about the Future of Screens concept video that is shown just before we come in, and then they look at and discuss the Horizon demos.

Zuckerberg , Bush At Facebook HQ [Video]

Watch live streaming video from facebookguests at livestream.com

Looks like President Obama isn’t the only one resorting to Facebook as a way to reach the American people. In a first for a U.S. President past or present, former President George W. Bush will hold a discussion and Q&A live from Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. The event will start in about 20 minutes at 2 pm PST.

Bush will be talking to Facebook employees about his new book Decision Points, and those of us not employed by Facebook will have the opportunity to watch it on Facebook Live and the Livestream above. According to The Next Web, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself will in fact moderate the discussion along with Facebook General Council Ted Ullyot. Ullyot also happens to have been an attorney for the Bush White House, which might explain why the former President’s only Bay Area appearance is at the social network.

Bush belatedly joined Facebook over the summer primarily to promote Decision Points through his fan page. W. currently has 619,516 fans as opposed to the 16,889,927 people “liking” the decidedly more web savvy Barack Obama.

We’re hoping the Q&A will also extend to the folks at home, or that some Facebook employee will muster up the courage to ask Bush what he thinks about Wikileaks. Stay tuned!

Boxee CEO To Big Media: “Resistance Is Futile”

With all the new Internet TV boxes and services sprouting this holiday season—from Google TV and Apple TV to the Boxee Box, Shufflr, and beyond—there is a lot talk about people cutting their cable cords and just getting all of their TV from the Internet. That is not going to happen anytime soon until the best TV shows and movies become available online at the same time as on TV, but the direction is clear. Today at the SAI Ignition conference in New York City, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen declared, “Resistance is futile.”

Ronen was responding to the question of when will there be something worthwhile to watch on the Web. Getting Web video to your TV is becoming increasingly easy, but there are so many restrictions on the best video (network TV shows and Hollywood movies) that it is still not worth watching on the Web for anybody but geeks. Ronen himself admits that his modest goal is to get “from geeks to early adopters.”

Clicker CEO Jim Lanzone, who was also on the same panel, argued that quality isn’t really the issue. “At some point, 80 percent of major network TV content was online.” The problem is that “it doesn’t stay there.” As a viewer, you have to know when to catch the shows, because unlike all other content on the Internet, TV shows and movies don’t stay online. They get placed online and then plucked off based on the different licensing windows the media companies adhere to in order to squeeze more profits from their shows and movies by making them available at different times through different distribution channels (theaters, DVDs, pay-per-view, cable, and now online).

Internet TV, however, doesn’t really fit into this distribution model because the generation of viewers who are growing up now on Youtube and Hulu want t watch TV or videos whenever they want to, not when the media companies tell them they can.

“The Internet is just a distribution model, it does not dictate business models,” argues Ronen. The existing media companies may not like the new competition that the Internet is bringing, but if consumers move there they won’t have a choice but to follow suit. He predicts that 50 percent of households in the U.S. will have Internet-connected TVs in five years and that “Netflix is going to have more paid video subscribers in two years than Comcast.” People will pay for broadband from one provider and pay for content from others (perhaps Netflix or Hulu or Boxee). Resistance is futile because over time, the Internet will prevail.

Below is a video interview I did with Avner a couple weeks ago on the same topic:

Real time monitoring of your energy consumption

Would you conserve energy if you could monitor your consumption by the hour? Lucid Design Group has developed new software that provides users with instant feedback on how much energy they're using. SmartPlanet visits the start-up to see their dashboard up close.



TED Featured on Ignite OTC by David Glover.

Stroke victims: Tiny coil saves lives by pulling blood clots from the brain

A device known as the Merci Retriever is a potential life saver for stroke victims, but it must be used within 8 hours. The device looks like a tiny corkscrew and it is used for blood clots that occur in large arteries where clot busting drugs are not effective.

San Francisco water meters get smart

In the future, San Francisco residents will be able to monitor and track their water usage via Web software on the hour instead of monthly, which is the case now. The new automated water meters will be connected to a little gray box that houses a low radio frequency signal and collects data. SmartPlanet visits the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to see how it works.

The Future Of... Hospitals

Hospital stays are rarely relaxing - but at Mountain View's El Camino Hospital, robots run errands, communication devices keep noise to a minimum and patient beds help translate doctors' orders. SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das takes a tour of one of the most technologically advanced medical facilities in the world.

Berkeley tele-immersion lab developing 3D video conferencing

New tele-immersive technologies could be the future of video conferencing. The technology allows users to share a 3D environment with other individuals from a remote location. SmartPlanet talks to University of California at Berkeley's Gregorij Kurillo about how the system is being used to create virtual spaces for users to interact and manipulate 3D objects.

Honig Winery applies pressure bombs for better vineyard irrigation

SmartPlanet visits Honig Vineyard & Winery in Napa Valley and sees their 'green' practices up close, which include a solar array that produces energy for 100 percent of the winery's operations and a pressure bomb--a device they use to improve irrigation practices.










Groasis, the company that makes the Waterboxx, calls it an "intelligent water incubator." Simply put, the device captures rainwater in a round plastic container and then feeds plants steadily. SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das talks to Daniel Bosch, head of viticulture at the Robert Mondavi Winery, about how the winemaker is using the Waterboxx to reduce traditional irrigation practices at its vineyards.

Travel gadgets go green

With air travel and hotel stays, business trips can be taxing on the environment. There are ways to conserve, though. SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das shows you some travel products that have an eco-friendly spin.

Helping Haitians access safe drinking water

LifeGivingForce CEO Jim Chu demonstrates one of the solar-powered water purification systems the foundation is sending to Haiti to combat cholera and provide safe, clean and accessible water to people there.

MIT using sunrays to make clean water

MIT researchers Steve Dubowsky, Amy Bilton and Leah Kelly have created a solar-powered portable desalination system that could make clean drinking water available in countries that need it most. Using a process called reverse osmosis, the solar panel powers different pumps in the system that then force the seawater through a permeable membrane that filtrates the salt from the water. SmartPlanet shows you a time-lapse video sequence of the process.

Animation: Honda's new plug-in hybrid platform

Honda unveils its plug-in hybrid platform at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The goal is to allow for all-electric short trips and longer commutes with a 2.0-liter, i-VTEC inline 4-cylinder gasoline engine tied to a CVT, or continuously variable transmission. It has three modes: all-electric, gasoline-electric and engine direct-drive. SmartPlanet goes under the hood and shows you animation of how it works.

Xbox E3 Media Briefing - Kinect for Xbox 360

William Ury: The walk from "no" to "yes"

About this talk

William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.


William Ury is a mediator, writer and speaker, working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars. He's the author of "Getting to Yes."
Why you should listen to him:
William L. Ury co-founded Harvard's Program on Negotiation and is currently a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project. He is the author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No & Still Get to Yes, and co-author (with Roger Fisher) of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, translated into 30+ languages. He is also author of the award-winning Getting Past No: Negotiating with Difficult People and Getting To Peace (released in paperback under the title The Third Side).

Over the last 30 years, Ury has served as a negotiation adviser and mediator in conflicts ranging from corporate mergers to wildcat strikes in a Kentucky coal mine to ethnic wars in the Middle East, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union. With former president Jimmy Carter, he co- founded the International Negotiation Network, a non-governmental body seeking to end civil wars around the world. During the 1980s, he helped the US and Soviet governments create nuclear crisis centers designed to avert an accidental nuclear war. In that capacity, he served as a consultant to the Crisis Management Center at the White House. More recently, Ury has served as a third party in helping to end a civil war in Aceh, Indonesia, and helping to prevent one in Venezuela.

Ury has taught negotiation to tens of thousands of corporate executives, labor leaders, diplomats and military officers around the world. He helps organizations try to reach mutually profitable agreements with customers, suppliers, unions, and joint-venture partners.

Birke Baehr: What's wrong with our food system

About this talk

11-year-old Birke Baehr presents his take on a major source of our food -- far-away and less-than-picturesque industrial farms. Keeping farms out of sight promotes a rosy, unreal picture of big-box agriculture, he argues, as he outlines the case to green and localize food production.




Birke Baehr wants us to know how our food is made, where it comes from, and what's in it. At age 11, he's planning a career as an organic farmer.
Why you should listen to him:
At age 9, while traveling with his family and being "roadschooled," Birke Baehr began studying sustainable and organic farming practices such as composting, vermiculture, canning and food preservation. Soon he discovered his other passion: educating others -- especially his peers -- about the destructiveness of the industrialized food system, and the alternatives. He spoke at TEDxNextGenerationAsheville in 2010.

Baehr volunteers at the Humane Society and loves working with animals.


Transcript:


Hello. My name is Birke Baehr, and I'm 11 years old. I came here today to talk about what's wrong with our food system. First of all, I would like to say that I'm really amazed at how easily kids are led to believe all the marketing and advertising on TV, at public schools and pretty much everywhere else you look. It seems to me like corporations are always trying to get kids like me to get their parents to buy stuff that really isn't good for us or the planet. Little kids, especially, are attracted by colorful packaging and plastic toys. I must admit, I used to be one of them. I also used to think that all of our food came from these happy, little farms where pigs rolled in mud and cows grazed on grass all day.

What I discovered was this is not true. I began to look into this stuff on the internet, in books and in documentary films, in my travels with my family. I discovered the dark side of the industrialized food system. First there's genetically engineered seeds and organisms. That is when a seed is manipulated in a laboratory to do something not intended by nature -- like taking the DNA of a fish and putting it into the DNA of a tomato -- yuck. Don't get me wrong, I like fish and tomatoes, but this is just creepy. (Laughter) The seeds are then planted, then grow. The food they produce have been proven to cause cancer and other problems in lab animals. And people have been eating food produced this way since the 1990's. And most folks don't even know they exist. Did you know rats that ate genetically engineered corn had developed signs of liver and kidney toxicity? These include kidney inflammation and lesions and increased kidney weight. Yet almost all the corn we eat is altered genetically in some way. And let me tell you, corn is in everything. And don't even get me started on the confined animal feeding operations. called CAFOS.

(Laughter)

Conventional farmers use chemical fertilizers made from fossil fuels that they mix with the dirt to make plants grow. They do this because they've stripped the soil of all nutrients from growing the same crop over and over again. Next, more harmful chemicals are sprayed on fruits and vegetables, like pesticides and herbicides, to kill weeds and bugs. When it rains, these chemicals seep into the ground, or run off into our waterways, poisoning our water too. Then they irradiate our food, trying to make it last longer, so it can travel thousands of miles from where it's grown to the supermarkets.

So I ask myself, how can I change? How can I change these things? This is what I found out. I discovered that there's a movement for a better way. Now a while back, I wanted to be an NFL football player. I decided that I'd rather be an organic farmer instead. (Applause) Thank you. And that way I can have a greater impact on the world. This man, Joel Salatin, they call him a lunatic farmer because he grows against the system. Since I'm home schooled, I went to go hear him speak one day. This man, this lunatic farmer, doesn't use any pesticides, herbicides, or genetically modified seeds. And so for that, he's called crazy by the system.

I want you to know that we can all make a difference by making different choices, by buying our food directly from local farmers, or our neighbors who we know [unclear]. Some people say organic or local food is more expensive, but is it really? With all these things I've been learning about the food system, it seems to me that we either pay the farmer, or we can pay the hospital. (Applause) Now I know definitely what one I would choose. I want you to know that there are farms out there -- like Bill Cainer in [unclear] Farms in Tennessee -- whose cows do eat grass and whose pigs do roll in the mud, just like I thought. Sometimes I go to Bill's farm and volunteer, so I can see up close and personal where the meat I eat comes from. I want you to know that I believe kids will eat fresh vegetables and good food if they know more about it and where it really comes from. I want you to know that there are farmers' markets in every community, popping up. I want you to know that me, my brother and sister actually like eating baked kale chips. I try to share this everywhere I go.

Not too long ago, my uncle said that he offered my six year-old cousin cereal. He asked if he wanted organic Toasted O's or the sugar-coated flakes -- you know, the one with the big striped cartoon character on the front. My little cousin told his dad that he would rather have the organic Toasted O's cereal, because, Birke said, he shouldn't eat sparkly cereal. And that, my friends, is how we can make a difference one kid at a time.

So next time you're at the grocery store, think local, choose organic, know your farmer and know your food. Thank you.

(Applause)

TEDxTokyo - TEDx Youth Day - 05/15/10 - English

TEDxYouthDay is a series of TEDx events happening over a 24-hour period all around the world. Dreamed up by a group of TEDx organizers, the events are designed to empower and inspire young people.

Presented by Lara Stein and Patrick Newell.

http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/418

About TEDx, x = independently organized event

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Looking back:




Looking ahead:


TEDxYouth Amsterdam 
20 November 
2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z46vZdiWTk4&feature=related


Trailer - Challenge 'Ideas Worth Doing'






Rules of the challenge
It's pretty simple: TEDxAmsterdam is about 'ideas worth spreading,' and our TEDxAmsterdam Challenge is about 'ideas worth doing!' We challenge you to do something good in your local community, your city, the Netherlands, or the world. Take your pick.

Your chosen project has to be undertaken in the period between 29 June until the 19 October.
To verify the project, you must document it with some authentic proof. We're looking for a newspaper or published article, clear photos, a short movie clip, or testimonials on film. Be creative.
The TEDxAmsterdam Challenge is free for everyone of every age to join. Our event is international, so entries must be in English.
Entries must do good for someone, some place or something in your local community, city, the Netherlands or the world.

Sound good? Full of ideas? http://www.tedxamsterdam.com/register...

Made by: Bonafide Binky (www.bonafidebinky.com),

Aad Duineveld (Illustrations),
Arriën Molema (music),
Ivana Kowsoleea (direction, concept, production),
Laurens Hebly (Voice-over),
Milan van den Bovenkamp (direction, concept, production),
Sasha Naod (copy)

About TEDx, x = independently organized event 

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Mobile Games App Store Strategies, Business Models & Forecasts 2010-2015

http://www.juniperresearch.com/reports/mobile_games

Overview

- Unique In-depth Forecast Suite
- High Value Strategic Assessment
- Board Level Planning Tool

This sixth edition of the mobile games report investigates a number of mobile games business models considering the opportunities for freemium content, including in-app purchases, as an alternative to the traditional pay-to-download approach.

Key forecasts include the number of users downloading mobile games, the number of downloads (both offstore and onstore) as well as end-user revenues (pay-per-download and in-game purchases) and mobile advertising expenditure revenues (adspend).

As part of a detailed strategy assessment the report analyses the decline in Java and BREW platforms in relation to the mass deployment of app stores, as well as considering the positive impact of handset development, and highlights challenges to further development of the market, such as, discoverability, and OS fragmentation.

Web 2.0 Summit 2010: Frank Quattrone, "A Conversation with Frank Quattrone"

Frank Quattrone (Qatalyst Partners),
Bill Gurley (Benchmark Capital),
"A Conversation with Frank Quattrone"

Sharp也趕Tablet尾班車 Galapagos專攻日本書市場

筆者無意歌頌蘋果如何改變世界、如何改變大家的生活，卻無法否認這間公司的產品完全改變他的科技界同行。自IPAD 推出後，多家公司已先後仿傚其設計陸續推出產品，先是內地的廠商包括漢王及一眾山案廠，及後如Ausu及HP均先後宣佈或傳出Tablet 產品，較知名的公司則有Toshiba的雙面Tablet、DELL 的Streak，另外韓國三星亦來勢洶洶，準備推出Galaxy Tablet七吋及十吋版以對抗蘋果。
繞了一圈後，今日連日本的Sharp也要在Tablet 市場上一分一杯羹，宣佈推出自家的Tablet──Galapagos。GALAPAGOS分為5.5吋的「Mobile type」及10.8吋的「Home type」，前者LCD顯示屏解像度為1,024 × 600，後者則為1,366 × 800，同樣內置了無線上網Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b/g功能。「Mobile type」備有紅色及銀色兩種外殼選擇，外型與iPhone相近，不過在Home Button位置崁入了一個trackball作揭頁之用。至於「Home type」則只有黑色，外型近似iPad，兩者同樣對應並預載自家開發的「Social App」。

由於Galapagos的定位為一部連結網絡多媒體服務的電子書閱讀器，故此Sharp刻意在閱讀體驗上下功夫，該公司指5.5吋的大小正是為了迎合大眾讀書的習慣(大概因為此面積與日本的文庫本相近)，而10.8吋則是遷就了大家翻雜誌的習慣，該公司更聲稱其獨有的XMDF格式針對了日本的書寫風格設計，能為讀者帶來最優質的閱讀體驗(相信若其所指是直行書寫的話，應該對廣大的華文社會亦有幫助，不過未知該公司會否計畫發展華文市場)

在發怖會上，SHARP的重點在於其推出的雲端多媒體服務及網上書店，對GALAPAGOS的規格沒有作詳細著墨，甚至連發售日期及售價等皆沒有公怖。該公司表示其網上書店將於12月正式運作，目前已肯定有三萬本讀物及雜誌於首日運作時同步推出。

對此機有興趣的朋友不妨到Sharp公司的官方網頁研究一下。

Teamsnap - Cool service for managing sports teams.

Bloomberg to America: Lay Off The Chinese

Mayor Michael Bloomberg in Hong Kong.
By Peter Stein

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on a visit to Hong Kong and the neighboring city of Shenzhen, had some harsh criticism for his own fellow Americans: Stop blaming the Chinese for their problems.

As the debate rages over China’s trade and currencies policies, the 68-year-old Bloomberg, now in his third term as mayor of New York, was tough on China’s critics in the U.S. He spoke to reporters Saturday in Hong Kong after addressing a meeting of leaders from top cities around the world, dubbed the C40, focused on climate change and environment.

“I think in America, we’ve got to stop blaming the Chinese and blaming everybody else and take a look at ourselves,” he said.

A day earlier, Mr. Bloomberg visited several businesses (incluing a solar panel maker) in Shenzhen, a manufacturing hub that borders Hong Kong.

China’s big push into solar and other environmentally friendly energy technologies has begun to attract negative attention. Last month, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office said it would investigate China’s policies over complaints that the country was using tactics that violated its World Trade Organization commitments to shut other countries out of the burgeoning market for clean energy.

Mr. Bloomberg attacked the notion that using Chinese-made technology to promote green energy in the U.S. was politically objectionable. “Let me get this straight: There’s a country on the other side of the world that is taking their taxpayers’ dollars, and trying to sell subsidized things so we can buy them cheaper, and have better products, and we’re going to criticize that?”

Earlier, in an interview, the mayor was deeply, undiplomatically critical of provincialism and populism in U.S. Congress.

“If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate—they can’t read,” he said. “I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here,” he warned, “only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is.”

The mayor said his biggest impression from meeting his mayoral counterparts from China (the C40 includes about a half dozen heads of major cities in China) was their focus on environmental issues.

In the past, he said, “they have focused on jobs, jobs, jobs, economic development at all costs. Now all of a sudden they are realizing their rivers are becoming undrinkable, their air is killing people.”

China’s growing concern for the environment was good for Hong Kong, he noted, given how much of the city’s pollution problem wafts in across its border with the rest of the country. He recalled many years ago renting a helicopter (he’s a certified pilot) and flying it into the city’s mountainous New Territories district, only to get lost in the pollution.

“At one point I had to go down almost to tree level to figure out where I was, just to get out.”

Bloomberg, whose past business experience frequently took him to Asia, spoke highly of prospects for Hong Kong, where the stock exchange has dominated the global market for initial public offerings for a second year.

“The future of Hong Kong as a financial center is not going to be challenged by anybody else in Asia,” he said. Going in its favor were widespread use of English; a family-friendly, low-crime environment that attracts workers; and ease of commuting.

“The only other city that has the potential of doing that, of course, is Singapore,” he added, but not Tokyo. “I love Tokyo, but unless you speak Japanese, you can’t survive.”