Tuesday linkage

• China wants to build a high-speed rail network throughout Asia and to Europe.
• The International Crisis Group proposes a roadmap to end the separatist conflict in West Papua.
• Capital idea: 'In countries where the largest city is also the capital, it’s easier for mass movements to bring about populist reforms.'
• Denmark bailing on the JSF in favour of the Super Hornet?
• Computing is becoming a tradable commodity, much like electricity. (H/t Global Dashboard.)
• Crowdsourcing in aid and development: the NY Times reports on Ushahidi, a web platform that allows people to report anonymously via their mobile phone when they witness violence, corruption or a disaster.
• I liked this comment on the rhetoric of resilience:

Resilience implies action, as in “building resilience”. To be resilient suggests an inner toughness: the strength, as its etymology tells us, to “jump back” to a previous state. Sustainability, by contrast, suggests a defensive posture: a desire to stay the same, to resist change, without the attractive ability to push back against change and win out. Resilience also connotes a measure of risk, while sustainability suggests that systems are set: they simply need to be cared for and so carried forward.