Where Should Americans Be Shopping During the Holidays

Sears Responds to the Needs of Deployed Associates
Sears has once again extended the time period for its military pay differential and benefits continuation policy.

Sears salaried and full-time associates who have been called to active duty since September 11, 2001, are now eligible for continuing pay and benefits for up to 60 months, an increase from the previous 36-month policy.

Under the policy, Sears pays the difference between the associate’s Sears pay and military pay. Sears military absentees can continue to participate in the company’s life insurance, medical and dental programs for themselves and their dependents for up to five years. While deployed, associates are also eligible for annual merit increases, incentive pay and stock options. The company also will hold a comparable position for up to five years.

As an employer, Sears has been recognized for its generous military leave policy. By law, companies are required to provide deployed employees access to 18 months of continued medical coverage at the employee’s expense. Sears’ policy goes well beyond the law’s requirements and is part of its long-time historical support of the military. As far back as 1917, Sears records reflect that associates were paid their normal wages when they were absent on military duty during certain military engagements.

Cf. Sears Policy

I recently became aware of Sears policy from a friend's email. By shopping at this establishment Americans can practically, and helpfully, support service personnel which sounds like a great idea to me.

The Chinese Burden in Africa

When the West was colonizing Africa the world agrees that this is indicative of their imperial, jingoistic misadventures.

So, what if China creates a misadventure?

Catumbela, in Angola, is the abandoned site of a group of Chinese railway engineers and laborers. The team attempted to build a railroad but without success. The $2 billion project washed out like so many African roads hampered by flash floods, mud, and land mines.

About the Chinese, one Angolan soldier guarding the abandoned site stated: "They're gone. . . . I don't know when they're coming back—they ate their dogs and left."

The railroad stalled in a high-level dispute between the Angolan and Chinese governments, along with a $2 billion contract to build an oil refinery. The American Embassy reports that the project will most likely be awarded to American company, Bechtel.

However, China's has had a good run in Africa. To wit,

*oil from the Sudan

*timber from Guinea

*mining copper and zinc from the Congo

*a major stake in South Africa's Standard Bank

*the Chinese are far out pacing their Western rivals. China has opened more embassies in Africa than the United States

*in 2006, trade between Africa and China topped $50 billion. By 2010 it's projected to reach $100 billion.

On the negative side though China has had kidnappings, killings, and death threats that plague its workers. 17 Chinese oil workers were slaughtered last year. Angola is China's biggest supplier of crude oil, but the land is a hazardous, corrupt country as well.

There is no fraternization between Chinese and Angolans. If a worker becomes romantically or sexually involved with a local, he's on a slow boat to Shanghai.

Racism is common, both sides refer to the other as monkeys or pigs.

Beijing may express an interest in Angola, but that move may only attract rivals. American firms Bechtel, KBR, ExxonMobil, and Chevron have moved in as well.

Other nations are making their presence felt. The Brazilian firm Odebrecht competes with the railroad as they are building a highway. South African companies are repairing the electrical grid, and the Portuguese are involved in construction projects.

The Chinese are finding a Chinese Burden all of their own.

Its Not Just the Money

Cyber Monday is not just about the money but consider the investment of time that working people devote to buying online, and at work.

This year, U.S. online sales could top $700 Million.

This is a new record for online spending, according to comScore Inc.

If comScore's prediction proves correct, the figure for Cyber Monday would be a 15% increase over last year's sales of $608 million.

ComScore said the hottest product category was video games, consoles and accessories, which was up 134% from last year.

Internet performance analysis company Keynote Systems Inc. said that one-third of the 30 major brick and mortar retail sites it monitors for its holiday retail index showed significant slowdowns. Site outages caused purchasers at sites such as The Buy.com and Lowe's Home Improvement to abandon their purchases. The extensive day long outages of years past, such as when I managed online sites in the '90s and into '01 seem to be passe.

The conclusion seems to be that people are more loyal to their purchases and that they wait to use their faster online experience at work to buy.

Ian Hunter Slide Show

Anti-Insurgent Graphic Creations

The anti-insurgent sentiment in the U.S. has spawned graphic creations as a response.

 

 

 

Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, An Excerpt

 

The central theme of this book is that culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilization identities, are shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration, and conflict in the post-Cold War world. The five parts of this book elaborate corollaries to this main proposition.

Part I: For the first time in history global politics is both multipolar and multicivilizational; modernization is distinct from Westernization and is producing neither a universal civilization in any meaningful sense nor the Westernization of non-Western societies.

Part II: The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their economic, military, and political strength; Islam is exploding demographically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming the value of their own cultures.

Part III: A civilization-based world order is emerging: societies sharing cultural affinities cooperate with each other; efforts to shift societies from one civilization to another are unsuccessful; and countries group themselves around the lead or core states of their civilization.

Part IV: The West's universalist pretensions increasingly bring it into conflict with other civilizations, most seriously with Islam and China; at the local level fault line wars, largely between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate "kin-country rallying," the threat of broader escalation, and hence efforts by core states to halt these wars.

Part V: The survival of the West depends on Americans reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies. Avoidance of a global war of civilizations depends on world leaders accepting and cooperating to maintain the multicivilizational character of global politics.

Not a Politically Correct Music Site

This is not politically correct music but Age of Liberty portrays itself as an alternative to the usual Hollywood and left-leaning entertainment industry.

"Stupid in America," a Report by John Stossel

A report by John Stossel entitled "Stupid in America" is sobering, and scary.

About This Video

20-20 investigation by John Stossel entitled "Stupid in America" highlighting some of the flaws with the education system in the United States.

The story started out when identical tests were given to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid", which gave the piece its name.

Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved. We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."

Lebanon in Chaos

In a development straight out of how not to elect a leader the Lebanese presidency ends in chaos. President Emile Lahoud leaves office refusing to recognize the Prime Minister's government.

There is now no elected successor and a bitter dispute looms over who is in power.

The pro-Syrian and anti-Western Lahoud left the presidential palace and he issued an order that the army should take over control.

However, pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora rejected the move and says that under the constitution he and his cabinet are in temporary power.

The president is elected by parliament, but a vote was scuttled by the pro-Syrian opposition who did not allow the necessary quorum to be achieved.

The election of a president requires a two-thirds majority, which means that the pro-Western ruling bloc--with only a slim majority--could not force its preferred candidate through parliament.

The streets reflected the chaotic mood with the army deployed in force and schools closed.

The US, Russia, Syria and Iran have all been intensely involved.

Russia should provide regional leadership and the U.S. should take a step back.

New Far Rightist Party Gains Ground in Germany

 

The National Democratic Party (NPD) is a neo-Nazi German entity that is gaining ground.

According to some Social Democrats, the Party is anti-Semitic and racist. It opposes a multi-party system and is undemocratic.

The NPD is prone to weekend demonstrations involving radical, violence-prone neo-Nazis.

In fact, the NPD was created in West Germany more than 40 years ago, mainly by Nazi war veterans. It lost members and direction until German reunification in 1990. As unemployment and unhappiness increased in the old east, the NPD gained ground.

Maybe the Party should look up how that whole unemployment and ill-will thing worked out in 1930s Germany.

American Students: As Good As Slovakia and Estonia

Students in Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan significantly outperform American students on math and science tests.

The study's author is Gary Phillips, chief scientist at the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit independent scientific research firm.

Eighth-grade students were compared with peers in 45 countries.

American students trailed the top students and were comparable to pupils in Slovakia and Estonia, but they were well above those in countries like Egypt, Chile, and Saudi Arabia.

The highest-performing state in math was Massachusetts; in science, it was North Dakota. The new study shows that average math achievement in Massachusetts was lower than in the leading Asian nations and Belgium.

Mississippi was the lowest-performing state in both math and science.

Is this really where the U.S. should be?

There Must Be 50 Ways . . . To Tell a Story With Web 2.0 Tools

There are so many more possibilities to tell a story; and, Web 2.0 Web 2.0 tools have increased the promise of the Web to relate stories in an effective manner.

Excellent Free Cleaner

An excellent and helpful (did I mention free!) tool is linked here.

Paul Berman Biography, Terror and Liberalism

Paul Berman is an American author and journalist who writes on politics and literature. His articles have been published in The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review and Slate, and he is the author of several books, including A Tale of Two Utopias and Terror and Liberalism.

Berman received his undergraduate education from Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1971. He has reported on Nicaragua's civil wars, Mexico's elections, and the Czech Republic's Velvet Revolution. Currently he is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, a professor of journalism and distinguished writer in residence at New York University, and a member of the editorial board of Dissent.

Totalitarianism and Islamic Fundamentalism

In Terror and Liberalism, Berman suggests that the appeal of totalitarian movements emanated from liberalism's apparent failure in the aftermath of the First World War. Movements like Fascism, Nazism, Falangism, and Communism all share, according to Berman, two essential similarities. Firstly, they envision themselves as a force being attacked by barbarians who can only be defended by the internal purification of the movement. Berman sees the Communist striving for ideological purity, the Falangist pursuit of religious purity, and the Nazi pursuit of racial purity as being related efforts in this regard. Together with this purifying impulse, Berman argues that these totalitarian movements share a similar nihilist strand.

Berman then tries to trace these commonalities between the various totalitarian ideologies into the modern Islamic world. He splits Islamic thought into two broad categories: Pan-Arabism and Islamic fundamentalism. Pan-Arabist movements like the Ba'ath Party, he suggests, was influenced by traditional European totalitarian thought. In the Islamic fundamentalist movement, Berman sees the re-emergence of the nihilist strand in the form of suicide bombings and the celebration of martyrdom.

History of the 1968 Generation

Berman's A Tale of Two Utopias and Power and the Idealists are the first two parts of a history of the so-called Generation of 1968 (of which he was a member). He argues that packaged together with the liberal ideals in this movement were decidedly disturbing elements. Joschka Fischer, for example, the 1968 activist who would later become the leader of the German Green Party and Foreign Minister, decided that there was in fact the presence of anti-Semitic impulses in this movement when he saw a fellow activist participate in the Entebbe hijacking. The hijackers split the passengers by religion, with Jews on the one side and non-Jews on the other, with the intention to kill all of the former. Similarly, Berman tracks major figures like Bernard Kouchner - the later founder of Doctors Without Borders - a member of the 1968 Generation who would later marry active improvement of human rights to established political goals.

At the close of the book, Berman considers the effect of the war in Iraq on these graduates of '68. He suggests that the war split the movement greatly, with many now deeply aware of the dramatic excesses of the regime of Sadaam Hussein, as well as the potential negative consequences if such a dictator remained in power. Nonetheless, they were deeply concerned by the arguments offered by the Bush Administration. Though his fellow activists were split, Berman argues that the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq were justified by the doctrine of "liberal interventionism" - intervention to safeguard and promote liberal democratic freedoms. Some have grouped Berman with neo-conservatives for these positions. Others believe he is more closely aligned with traditional liberal internationalism because of his disdain for the neo-conservative policies of George W. Bush.

Are Palestinian Kids Really Suffering Most From Outsiders?

If a recent report is to be believed, 93% of Palestinian kids suffer domestic violence and this would indicate that outsiders are the least of their problems.

New Family, a pro-family rights organization, reported these disturbing statistics in its annual 2007 report.

Their sources included the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO). According to these sources, 93.3% of Palestinian children have experienced domestic violence. Only 52.2% of Palestinian families feel they can provide a safe environment for their children.

Undernourishment causes 10% of these Palestinian children to suffer impaired development. These people are poor; I'm not sure you can blame all this on Israel. The leading cause of infant deaths in Gaza is low body weight. The infant mortality rate is three times greater than that of Israel, and also higher than the rate in the Western world.

The study revealed that 95.1% of Palestinian girls spend the majority of their free time at home, in contrast to 80.5% of Palestinian boys, making the home the only place where female children suffer more violence than males. Because of family poverty, 73.4% of these children work for their families without pay.

Palestinian suffering sparks conflict and Israel opens a window into Middle Eastern Islam, abusive and poor.

Iranian Censors At It Again

The Iranians are out to get the latest damaging reading, this time a novel by Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Marquez almost got away with the dastardly deed--until censors actually translated its title for what it is.

The actual title is: Memories of My Melancholy Whores but this initially slipped by the censors and thus was published in Farsi as Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts which is a horse of a different color.

The uncensored first edition of 5,000 had sold out before the authorities corrected their mistake and banned the work.

Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

The violent oppression of women according to the dictates of Islam has no correspondence in the West.

UK Preachers from Saudi Arabia and the UAE: Undercover Report

The deception is real because numerous of these groups are praised for their inter-faith efforts. However, British journalists went undercover to report the actual radical preaching done by Saudi and UAE imams.

On Janet Murray's work Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Janet Murray's work Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, asks whether the computer can provide the basis for an expressive narrative form, just as print technology supported the development of the novel and film technology supported the evolution of movies. I don't believe it can.

In fact, I think the future of the computer is impossible to predict due to the innovative uses the computer is being used for. Murray, on the other hand, provides an optimistic answer. Murray’s analysis rests on an understanding of the computer as a medium of representation with a distinct set of properties. I don't think it does.

The computer is not procedural, as she argues, but dispersive. The computer is often participatory, as she argues, but it is also just as easily isolating. One of the most interesting points of the work is the connection between research and artificial intelligence (AI) with cultural forms such as games, movies, literature, and television. The most promising of her connections is that between AI and games.

Nonetheless, Murray’s main point is that the new computer formats expand the possibilities of expression available for storytelling which has not been proven true as indicated by the failure of any major computer work to gain literary acceptance. Indeed, one of the major literary contributions of the computer age is one that for all intents and purposes predated computers. In 1984, William Gibson contributed Neuromancer which depicted the developing human-machine interface created by the widespread use of computers and computer network.

French Detain 7 Suspected Islamists

French authorities detained seven suspected Islamic militants who allegedly trained to fight in Iraq. Six of the men are French nationals of Bosnian origin, while the seventh is Algerian. They ranged in age from their early 20s to mid 40s. At least one was a student: another a teacher.

Islamic State: Against Democracy

The Islamic State of Iraq released a graphic video decrying the failures of democracy in Iraq. The production advocates the return to tribal warfare as an improvement over the imposed attempt to bring democracy to Iraq. The strident tone and the impassioned speakers on the video denounce their opponents and advocate violence against. them.

On the other hand, this is the same group which has issued the ideal establishment of their state. Their statement reads:

Anyone thinking that Islam can gain power through videos, books, appeals, parliaments and election leaflets is an ignorant [?] who does not know how this religion was established. Cf. The SITE Institute.

The Islamic State establishes itself as a non-democratic entity but criticizes the failures of democracy in Iraq. I guess that's clear.

And, meanwhile, roadside attacks against U.S. troops is down to the lowest levels in two years.

Musharraf, One of Our Thirty Tyrants

President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of a state of emergency is regrettable, inevitable, and a harbinger of ill times to come.

The U.S. is too closely allied with a repressive regime and one which we should have severed ties to a long time ago. He may be a draconian but he is one of our hoi triakonta, Thirty Tyrants, seems to be the thinking in Washington.

Musharraf's inability to rein in the Pakistani Taleban is part and parcel of his danger of being swarmed by a deep structural crisis at the heart of Pakistan.

The flaw is an over reliance on the army to sustain the constitution, the independence of the judiciary, the bureaucracy, a collapsing economy, and the dichotomy between army elites, the political parties, and civil society.

I've advocated that a greater regional stability is to be found in the combined efforts of India, Russia, and China. It is, after all, in their background that the Taleban is rising and it is their issue more immediately than it is of concern to the U.S. India's traditional hostility may be offset by the Russians and the Chinese.

News Reports All Muslims are Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

The British publication Guardian ran a story about a survey which shows a 'demonisation' of Muslims. I wouldn't want to suggest that Muslims did anything negative so as to be newsworthy but maybe it is implied in the study.

The research reflected one week's news coverage that showed 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative; only 4% of the 352 articles studied were positive.

Journalists will have to spend more time finding positive, uplifting newsy stories about Muslims.

Wait, that's not what they do for anyone, including other religions.

India the New Player On the Block

India is making its presence known in the exclusive group of supercomputing nations. This is the arrival of India in the HPC crowd.

The U.S. leads supercomputing by a significant margin but India-based Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd., which is actually part of a conglomerate itself, has just built the world's fourth most powerful supercomputer.

The supercomputer was built with Hewlett-Packard Co. servers using Intel chips with 14,240 processor cores. The system achieved a performance of 117.9 TFLOPS. The fastest system is quite a bit faster, with a 213,000 processing core, is IBM's BlueGene/L System, a joint development of IBM and the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. It achieved a benchmark of 478.2 TFLOPS.

India's supercomputers make up only nine, or just under 2%, of supercomputers. he U.S. houses 283 of the systems, or nearly 57% of the total. The U.K. is second best with 48 or nearly 10% of the supercomputing systems.

The question to wonder is India just a new player or will the nation be poised to make even more significant gains.

Russia and India: Just Like Old Times

In a singularly good move for regional stability Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in key talks. The goal of the meeting is to cement economic and military ties between the two countries. The two nations were close during the Cold War and although India has liberalized its economy the pair has remained close. India has traditionally been a heavy buyer of Russian weaponry. Russia is bidding to broker more than 120 fighter planes to India. Russia and India are discussing collaborating on the next generation of fighter jets and medium-range transport aircraft.

On the energy front, Russia is also bidding to build four nuclear reactors in India.

The West should stay away from interfering between the two which may lead to more regional cooperation and supervision of Middle Eastern rogue states. The alliance might lead to regional leadership thereby freeing the U.S. from wasting its resources and manpower in a troubled region.

Upcoming Research

Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations; Terrorist Hunter
The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America, Anonymous; Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism, Norton.

And, a quote: Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
. . . I must say, it [the Koran] is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, incondite; — insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran . . . It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words . . . We said "stupid:" yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of Mahomet's Book; it is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature himself into fit speech . . . The man was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must take him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart . . . we will not and cannot take him. Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild Arab men . . . Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradition, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, pp. 64-67.

Tracking Terrorists in the Dark Web

While there are those who do not see terrorist web sites as a threat a project seeks to track the posts.

One such page is entitled: "A guide to kill Americans in Saudi Arabia."

Programmers can often leave digital clues as to their identity: in their greetings and terms, punctuation and syntax, and the coding they employ for multimedia attachments and links.

Accordingly, a University of Arizona project is developing a tool that uses these clues to automate the analysis of online jihadism. The project is entitled The Dark Web Terrorism Research project which scours Web sites, forums, and chat rooms to find jihadists and learn how they reel in adherents.

Lab director Hsinchun Chen calls the project "al-Qaida University on the Web."

The massive amount of data is a huge issue which makes the project all the more valuable. There has been a tenfold increase in the last two years in jihadist content appearing online.

One other existing computer-generated research of terrorist Web sites is at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

A $1.3 million grant the National Science Foundation gave Chen's group will focus on who produces IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices); Chen started the project with about $3 million from other Artificial Intelligence Lab programs.

The AP carried a story about how the project works:

Dark Web's software, Writeprint, samples 480 different factors to identify whether the same people are posting to multiple radical forums. It can analyze everything from a fragment of an e-mail to videos depicting American soldiers blown up in Humvees and fuel tankers.

Writeprint is derived from a program originally used to determine the authenticity of William Shakespeare's works. It looks at writing style, word usage and frequency and greetings, and at technical elements ranging from Web addresses to the coding on multimedia attachments. It also looks at linguistic features such as special characters, punctuation, word roots, font size and color.

Dark Web compares writings it finds to others in its logs of about 500 million pages of jihadist-produced content.

Most of the material is in Arabic, but the terrorist network has expanded to include Chinese, Spanish, and French sources, soon, others will be added.

The methods used here are unproven but data collection and analysis is common in enterprise applications and I see no reason to doubt that their efforts could lead to breakthroughs. One of the best sites of violent postings collected by a group that tracks jihadists is at the Search for International Terrorist Entities. One shocking fact to consider is how many of these violent sites are housed on U.S. ISPs.

The End of Faith

I'd like to compare Sam Harris with some other recent reading. Harris has controversially, but correctly I think, identified recent movements in Islam as representative, but incompatible, with notions of Western freedom.

The End of Faith can be compared with other thinkers about the battle between Western ideas and Islamic thought. There are no spokespersons for genuine Islamic moderation. All Muslims, by definition, adhere to the House of Islam or the House of War. There is no middle ground.

Have You Seen Alicia?

You may not have seen Alicia Keys like this but interesting information is included about her. Her MySpace web page was hacked and was infected with exploits. Exploit Prevention Labs blogged about the incident.

Lyrical Terrorist Takes a Fall

 

Samina Malik, the so-called "Lyrical Terrorist," became the first Muslim woman in Britain to be found guilty of terrorism charges. She worked air-side for WH Smith, posted a series of poems on websites across the internet about killing non-believers, pursuing martyrdom and raising children to be holy fighters.

Malik is 23 and was born and raised in Southall, West London. Another nom de plume was "Stranger Awaiting Martyrdom."

Her poems were filled with death and destruction by writing about killing heathens, adding: "Kafirs your time will come soon, and no one will save you from your doom."

In one writing, "Raising Mujahideen [holy fighter] Children," she advocated the indoctrination of children from the age of seven.

She saw herself as doing "anything in defence of Islam."

She promoted her ideas on a website called Hi-5 which is similar to social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace.

Her favourite TV shows were videos by "Muslim brothers in Iraq," in particular, the beheading ones.

She enjoyed "videos which show massacres of the kaffirs."

In this way, she was advertising her availability for marriage.

I can't help but wonder if she liked long walks on the beach and romantic dinners at home.

Sarkozy Cozy?

Bush and Sarkozy are indeed just that, cozy over Iran but I have my doubts.

Sarkozy and Bush speak warmly of French-US relations but I remember not too long ago a certain French nation denouncing the U.S. over Iraq.

Sarkozy is the first French leader in a decade asked to address a joint session of Congress.

Sarkozy also pledged to US lawmakers that France would support the US in Afghanistan.

I wonder where he has been the past four years while American troops have been committed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Sarkozy were sincere there would be tangible action taken and not just the empty words spoken to Bush.

Is Sarkozy hinted that he expects a Republican victory next year?

Shouldn't he be cozying up to the leading Democratic nominees in anticipation of an anti-Bush, diplomacy-hinged Democrat in the White House?

Sarkozy did state: "The idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon is dangerous and therefore now is the time for us to work together to diplomatically solve this problem."

He added: "I want to tell you that whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France."

If he would think harder, he would commit French troops and monetary support. With none forthcoming, his diplomacy falls on deaf ears.

In any case, Sarkozy is attempting to be much warmer than his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.

Is Sarkozy to be believed when he says: "Let me tell you solemnly today, France will remain engaged in Afghanistan as long as it takes, because what's at stake in that country is the future of our values and that of the Atlantic alliance."

Sarkozy will bring France back into NATO's military command structure after several decades outside which is a step in the right direction. But, what role should NATO take in a post-Soviet world is the more important, but unspoken, question.

Sarkozy's promise is to "reconquer America's heart" but frankly the man leaves me cold, the nation even more so. I want to figure out what his angle is.

Sarkozy is identified as the most pro-American French leader in some time and indeed his own background seems like a typical, mixed bag of types: he is the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French-Greek woman whose father was Jewish. He enthusiastically endorses the American work ethic and popular culture. On the other hand, maybe he should be taken at his word. He stated in Testimony, his 2006 campaign book: “If I was in love with the American model, I’d go and live there. This is not the case." 'Nuff said.

What should be kept in mind in all this mutual admiration sentiment is the actual 2003 position of France which opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, we have shed our blood and paid the price. What has France done for the cause?

The mystery player is the former Soviet power in the form of Russia which more recently has been cozying up as well, to Iran.

Too Much Jihadist Web Spew?

 

Who would want the West to stop Web radicals?

Radicals on the Web open themselves up to refutation which is a good thing and is what usually works in person. The Web should be no different.

In London, student Younes Tsouli used the Internet to spread al-Qaeda propaganda, recruit suicide bombers, and promote Web sites that encouraged the killing of non-Muslims. In person, one could use reason, argument, or discussion to oppose Tsouli.

Fortunately, the Moroccan-born student and two accomplices, one of whom he had never met in person, became the first to be jailed in Britain for inciting terrorism over the Internet. I do think the offense is similar to those nations that prohibit hate speech intended to incite a reaction.

The Internet contributes to spreading extremist propaganda and recruiting sympathizers to Islamist militant causes but so does ordinary speech in Hyde Park and no one wants to censor free speech in traditional discourse sites.

The European Commission urged the EU's 27 states to crack down on militant sites.

A report by New York's police chief in August described the Internet as "the new Afghanistan." U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has stated that potential recruits no longer needed to travel to al-Qaeda camps.

As in so many enterprise examples, jihadists train themselves over the Internet.

Web sites are difficult to censor because they can simply keep moving or Islamists can use chat rooms because of their transitory nature.

Chinese censorship has resulted in clever "work arounds," stated Johnny Ryan, senior researcher at Dublin's Institute of International and European Affairs, and author of the book Countering Militant Islamist Radicalisation on the Internet.

Akil Awan, of the Royal Holloway, University of London, states that it would be morally questionable to censor jihadist Web sites that presented an alternative world view.

He is wrong. People who oppose jihadists, or anyone, have an obligation to denounce what they understand as wrong-headed. The tangible difference between the jihadist, and Web material that is skewed, tendentious, and indoctrinating, is that much of the dross of the Net is harmless.

Jihadists are not harmless, or blameless.

Radical preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed, was banned from Britain after the government ruled that he was not "conducive to the public good." Syrian-born Bakri thought that jailing would be seen as part of a campaign against Islam.

The Islamists should be opposed, directly and consistently, by Western authorities.

He stated:

They should open debate, discussions, dialogue with the Islamists. There is no need to censor. If you think it is bad, why do you not debate it and destroy it in national media?

Bakri stated:

They should open debate, discussions, dialogue with the Islamists. There is no need to censor. If you think it is bad, why do you not debate it and destroy it in national media?

Islamists should be debated in the media.

Bakri claimed that the 09/11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19," has continued to communicate with followers in Britain via Internet chat rooms.

The Royal Holloway's Awan said, adding it is estimated there are more than 5,000 extremist Web sites.

Let them spew their rot. Those who are committed to open and free discourse should engage the Web jihadists.

I only wonder if there are enough Western academics committed to the idea of confronting specious ideas.

And, in the meantime, the serious business of tracking down and eliminating al-Qaeda threats in Iraq continues.

 

Yahoo is Evil

I've been advocating a hard line in the Yahoo vs. Chinese human rights issue. The advantage for human rights advocates will increase as Beijing gets to host the prestigious Olympics soon. Now is the time to put the squeeze on the Chinese government for tangible results while they are in the world's limelight.

In a related story, Yahoo's General Counsel, Michael Callahan, states that he regrets testimony in a China human rights case.

Well, hello, Michael, what did you think? These are not folks who are fooling around with any rights nonsense.

Callahan provided testimony to a congressional committee about the company's role in the jailing of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist.

Shi, a reporter, was arrested after posting material about a government crackdown on media and democracy activists on Democracy Forum, an overseas Web site.

Yahoo caved in to Chinese authorities demands as they asked Yahoo to hand over information about Shi's e-mail account, including his IP address, log-on history and the contents of his e-mail over several weeks. Yahoo complied. Using Yahoo's duplicity, Beijing police tracked Shi and arrested him.

Shi got 10-years; thanks Yahoo.

Callahan was blasted by House Committee on Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.). Lantos stated:

Let me be clear -- this was no misunderstanding. This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst. I wish to repeat this: This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst. ... Either Yahoo has little regard for providing full and complete information to a duly constituted committee of the Congress, or it has little regard for the issue of protecting human rights.

Yahoo has been lambasted for its corporate behavior.

Lantos continued:

When he first appeared before this committee, I asked Mr. Callahan whether he had reached out to Shi Tao's family to offer an apology and to provide assistance," Lantos said. "The answer was a resounding 'No.' Fifteen months later Yahoo has yet to provide any aid to Shi Tao's family. Mr. Yang, Mr. Callahan: Shi Tao's mother is sitting in the first row right behind you -- I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars due to Yahoo's actions.

Yahoo's Callahan has not provided any aid or comfort to Shi's family following this debacle.

"Do No Evil," indeed.

Ready for a Serve?

HP is the first major manufacturer to team up with Microsoft Windows Home Server (WHS) software and will release its MediaSmart Server.

MediaSmart will ship towards the end of the month is priced at $599 with 500GB of storage, or $749 with a terabyte of disk space.

MediaSmart Server features automatic backup, data restore, file and printer sharing, and remote Web-based access for up to 10 Windows XP or Vista PCs on an Ethernet or wireless network.

Some estimates have been made of the home server market and it has been suggested that there are enough people who are ready to move up to a server. The households with multiple PCs and home networks are estimated to contain 24 million U.S. households that are equipped with home networks and more than one computer.

Microsoft sells WHS separately only as a system-builder edition, but the company has also talked up other partners' products, including servers from U.K. vendor Tranquil PC Ltd. and Richmond, Va.-based Velocity Micro Inc., as well as future releases from Iomega Corp., Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Medion AG next year. Other servers with the new OS will ship at the end of this year and into early 2008 which includes boxes from Iomega Corp. and LaCie Ltd.

Who 'Ya Gonna' Call?

In an emergency, can you call Grandma on your cell phone?

The real question of course is can network overload be prevented?

All of us who have lived through California's earthquakes, such as Tuesday's 5.6 magnitude earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, realize quickly that all services go awry. In this last earthquake, the number of cell phone calls on the Verizon Wireless network skyrocketed.

The normal load is 300,000 calls between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. in an area of Santa Clara County, however, post-earthquake, the call volume soared to 2.3 million.

People were trying to reach their loved ones, but most calls did not go through.

Can our communications systems be re-engineered so that all calls are completed?

It is not an easy answer.

The wireless carriers could solve the problem but at a hefty price. The network would be huge and only used a few times in the case of emergencies.

Local communities can increase their capacity, allowing of course for those places where the required increased number of towers are acceptable and the community will absorb the added expense.

In the San Francisco example, Verizon had all systems back to normal within 30 minutes and none of its cell phone towers were damaged or lost power.

One work-around in an emergency is to send short text messages, which use less capacity on the networks because they pass through in bits and bytes instead of requiring a dedicated circuit as an actual phone call does.

Emergency first responders have cell phones that use codes to automatically route their calls to the highest priority to ensure they get through. They are not using the same call waiting system as regular users.

The days are past when regular users could be relegated to play second fiddle. Users are dependent on cell phones for business and steps should be taken so that work more effectively during emergencies. If not, this is a huge gap in our communications systems, and is subject to attack as a vulnerable point.

Alternatives should be explored. Several have been suggested, such as metering cell phone use in emergencies so that all users can get some time to make their important calls. A second option is a callback service, like those used in the 1950s, where if a circuit is busy, the customer gets a phone call back when the circuit is available to make a call.

If the government can be kept out of an intrusion oversight posture, communities and businesses with critical interest in the service and continuity should take the lead. Emerging areas and companies can show others how it is possible, and necessary to make phone use ubiquitous.

Government Open to Open Source

 

Open source is increasingly attractive to decision makers in the U.S. government. 55% of all U.S. government executives have implemented open-source software at their agencies, and 71% believe their agency can benefit from the software.

These statistics may still obscure the fact of when the agencies rolled an update out. And, the statistics may not reveal that open-source runs unobtrusively on back-end operations.

A recent survey, commissioned by the Federal Open Source Alliance, a group pushing the use of open-source software in government, allied with Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Red Hat.

A summary by ComputerWorld noted:

The survey of 218 IT decision-makers in the U.S. government found that 88% of those in intelligence agencies said that their operations can benefit from open source. That may not be surprising, given that the U.S. National Security agency has been supporting a secure Linux project, called Security Enhanced Linux, since 2001.

On Islamofascism

Stephen Schwartz, who claims to have coined Islamofascism, describes American Muslims offended by the term. According to Schwartz, "the only American Muslims offended by the term “Islamofascism” are those to whom it is best applied, i.e. the “Wahhabi lobby” centered on the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)."

He states that the term refers to present-day jihadists. These individuals and "movements should be treated as Islamofascist, first, because of their congruence with the defining characteristics of classic fascism, especially in its most historically-significant form – German National Socialism.”

Schwartz continues: “Islamofascism [like Nazism] pursues its aims through the willful, arbitrary, and gratuitous disruption of global society, either by terrorist conspiracies or by violation of peace between states."

He believes the analogy holds true in that the resentful middle classes, frustrated in their aspirations and anxious about loss of their position characterized the Italian middle class and the German middle class. He is on good historical grounds here but he continues that the frustrated middle class is congruous with Al-Qaida based on it is in the Saudi, Pakistani, and Egyptian middle classes. I don't know enough about these middle classes to make a comparison with pre-World War II Italy and Germany but I can suspend judgment for the moment. Hezbollah is said to be another parallel because the growing Lebanese Shia middle class believes itself to be the victim of discrimination. In all four examples, this is grist for the mill, I simply don't know if the claim is credible.

Both fascism and Islamofascism are imperialistic: granted.

Both are totalitarian: granted.

Both are paramilitary: granted.

Schwartz states: “I do not believe these characteristics are intrinsic to any element of the faith of Islam.” I believe this is the case.

He rightly points out where the largest contingent of pro-Islamofascist forces are to be discovered in: "the army of apologists for radical Islam found in Middle East Studies departments on American campuses." American campuses are inundated with apologists, that much is true. Rarely will an American academic be heard denouncing violent Islam.

However, Schwartz writes optimistically:

I believe Islamofascism will be defeated by Saudi Sufis, Shias and other non-Wahhabi Muslims, who are pressing King Abdullah to break the official links between the Wahhabi clerics and the monarchy; anti-Wahhabis in other Gulf states; Iranian reformist intellectuals and Sufis; Iraqi Shia opponents of the Khomeinist state system in Iran, and Iraqi Sunni enemies of Al-Qaida; Algerians and Egyptians who survived Islamist terror; Balkan Sufis and traditional Hanafi Muslims confronting Wahhabi infiltrators; Turkish Alevis opposed to the Sunnicentric AK party regime; Sufis and traditionalists in West Africa, Sudan, Kurdistan, Central Asia, and southeast Asia, and the brave opponents of Wahhabis, other takfiris, and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Western help is crucial in this war, as in earlier wars against tyranny.

Islamofascism will not survive due to grass-roots oppositional forces. The West is crucial to this war against tyranny.

There are native forces against Islamofascism, Western sources are secondary. He writes:

The left and liberals long ago ceased to advocate for such people, and instead placed all their confidence in the Western academic elite, i.e in themselves and those who aspire to become like them. Academic leftists, yearning for the ‘60s, are as repellent as old rock stars; they are to politics what Mick Jagger is to pop music – pathetically believing they are immortal. I am sorry, but I do not eat that bread.

Stephen Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism in Washington, DC and author of the bestselling The Two Faces of Islam: Saudi Fundamentalism and Its Role In Terrorism (Doubleday).

Egypt Appoints the Same Authoritarian

Egypt is going to stick with its ruling party and will keep Hosni Mubarak in power.

The National Democratic Party congress voted to keep Mubarak as party head and was uncontested.

Party delegates voted overwhelmingly to retain Mubarak for another five years in an uncontested secret ballot.

His son was speculated to possibly be in contention for the top spot, but he congress did not see fit to promote the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, to head the party.

This is the first time the party has held a leadership vote since Mubarak took over after the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat.

Egypt is just as authoritarian as ever although Gamal has been credited with economic reform.

Whichever Mubarak is chosen, neither is likely to lead Egypt to genuinely democratic elections.

Egypt continues its interest in developing its nuclear program.

I've Met Nurse Ratched

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest addresses the issue of how authorities control individuals through subtle and coercive methods.

Nurse Ratched is the memorable foil who controls the denizens of the mental ward through a twisted synthesis of rewards and shame.

She is despicable because her actions unfairly exploit the less gifted.

The primary thrust of the novel is as a critique of the conformity inherent in post-war American consumer society.

There is an echo of the analysis, and with the mental ward an analogy can be drawn to instruments of oppression, comparable to the prison analysis developed by French intellectual Michel Foucault at roughly the same time.

Bullets for Bullies

Gulf states are pitching the idea of offering Iran uranium. Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that the plan was meant to stop a nuclear arms race. The Gulf states would set up a Middle Eastern organization to provide enriched uranium to Iran.

In a way this idea seems like giving Hitler a gun and the bullets but I like the idea that the U.S. is not involved.

The body is a Middle Eastern solution, and coupled with Russia's 2005 to do much the same thing, this may be a way out of the impasse with the U.S. In addition, this is something that Middle Easterners need to deal with, an armed and dangerous state in their area, but that the U.S. need not be committed with troops and funding.

The six states that are involved in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, would form the body.

The basic premise is set up in a collective manner through a consortium that will distribute according to needs, give each plant its own necessary amount, and ensure no use of this enriched uranium for atomic weapons, according to Saud.

In a related development, the five permanent UN Security Council members--the US, China, Russia, France and Britain--along with Germany would meet on Friday in London to discuss the next step on Iran's nuclear programme.

Linux Hot on the Trail of the OLPC

I've blogged about the inexpensive OLPC but it looks like Wal-Mart and Linux may be the next entry in the low-end laptop field. The company plans to sells a $199 Linux Computer

The "Green gPC"is made by Everex of Taiwan.

The computer does not come with a monitor so there is an additional expense.

Many of us know and love Linux on server computers, and stories of its reliability are not exaggerated. I know people who have set up a web site, and literally forgotten about Linux because it needed no maintenance. On the other hand, a desktop Linux is a rare commodity, I've tried Ubuntu but that is about it.

Comparatively, Linus is not well-represented on the desktop, surveys usually estimate its share of the at around 1 percent, far behind Windows and Apple Inc.'s OS X.

This unit is not barn buster: the gPC has a low-end processor from VIA Technologies, 512 megabytes of internal memory, an 80-gigabyte hard drive, and a combination DVD drive and CD burner.

Is the U.S. the Tortoise or the Hare?

 

While I consider imperial overreach on the part of the U.S. I wonder if we are not getting stung by our success.

Other countries have faster and cheaper broadband connections while more of their population is connected to a faster Internet.

Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved legislation that would develop an annual inventory of existing broadband service--including the types, advertised speeds and actual number of subscribers--available to households and businesses across the nation.

This move by the Committee means that entrepreneurs better move fast before the government slows down progress.

If bright people start applying themselves, before the government begins to thwart progress, broadband would help spur job growth, access to health care, improve education, and promote innovation.

Faster countries include: South Korea, where the average apartment can get an Internet connection that's 15 times faster than a typical U.S. connection, and in Paris, a "triple play" of TV, phone and broadband service costs less than half of what it does in the U.S.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) puts the U.S. at 15th place for broadband lines per person in 2006, down from No. 4 in 2001.

Although the statistics may be criticized by some, and they are, the OECD numbers are in line with other international measures. The numbers are confirmed by British research firm Point-Topic Ltd. which concluded that the U.S. had only 55 percent of its households connected, in short, in 17th place for adoption rates. In comparison, Canada has 65 percent of its households connected to broadband.

As an additional confirmation, Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime newsletter, stated: "We're now in the middle of the pack of developed countries," during a recent debate at the Columbia Business School's Institute for Tele-Information.

In 2004, President Bush called for nationwide broadband access by 2007, to be characterized by a lack of taxes and little regulation. The U.S. is close to Bush's goal.

The Internet is comparatively expensive and slow. Moreover, people are not necessarily plugging in.

One promising area is a new cable modem technology called Docsis 3.0 could allow U.S. Internet speeds to leapfrog those in countries dominated by DSL.

In addition, the country's second largest telecommunications company, Verizon Communications Inc., is spending $23 billion to connect homes directly with super-fast fiber optics.

Even though the new network can match or outdo the 100 megabits per second Internet service widely available in Japan and Korea, Verizon isn't yet selling service at that speed.

We have to do better than 15th.

Islamic "Wall of Separation"

Three groups noted here: No to Political Islam, Institution for the Secularization of Islamic Society, and the International Coalition Against Political Islam, seem to be working along lines that are compatible with Jefferson's "wall of separation" between politics and religion. What is more unusual is that they are attempting to de-politicize Islam, examine the faith critically, and object to having political Islam thrust on people. These seem like groups that could be helpful in opening up dialog between Muslims and non-Muslims. At the very least, it is an alternative to the world's best known Muslim, Osama bin Laden who seems to have his hands full right now pushing an agenda of political Islam.

Africa Wired to the World, Soon

 

Africa is not waiting, it is exploding into the Net.

More than a third of Africa's citizens should have access to broadband internet by 2012.

Only about four in 100 Africans currently use the internet, and broadband penetration is below 1%.

One of the high-profile technology leaders active in such moves to increase African access to the Internet is Intel's chairman Craig Barrett.

Africa has experienced the highest growth in mobile use globally, in fact, twice the global average over the past three years.

The result in connectivity will be that ideas can be shared with students in other parts of the world.

The resulting interactions can be exciting and this move has profound implications for education. For the first time, Africans, many of whom have never had a textbook, will be wired to the world.

More MRAPs On the Way

A Mine Resistant Ambushed Protected (MRAP) prototype vehicle is displayed on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., July 26, 2007. The MRAP is designed to help protect military troops from mines and improvised explosive devices in Iraq. This prototype is currently being tested in Aberdeen, Md. Defense Dept. photo by William D. Moss

Chalmers Johnson and Blowback

Graphic source: Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Henry Holt, 2000.

The term "blowback," which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of "terrorists" or "drug lords" or "rogue states" or "illegal arms merchants" often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations (p. 8).

The term is useful and should be retained, even if Professor Johnson over reaches in his attempts to portray every world situation involving the U.S., where he has no expertise, as blowback.

I can agree with him on certain points, even outside of his expertise though, the Chilean coup of 1973 is a clear example. The U.S. had no right to intervene in a Chilean internal situation.

The crucial question, now that the U.S. has wrongfully expanded into an empire that intervenes in the domestic policies of other nations, is how it will retract into a defensible position.

Historian Paul Kennedy, in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, wrote that the U.S.:

cannot avoid confronting the two great tests which challenge the longevity of every major power that occupies the "number one" position in world affairs: whether, in the military/strategic realm, it can preserve a reasonable balance between the nation's perceived defense requirements and the means it possesses to maintain these commitments; and whether, as an intimately related point, it can preserve the technological and economic bases of its power from relative erosion in the face of the ever-shifting patterns of global production. This test of American abilities will be the greater because it, like Imperial Spain around 1600 or the British Empire around 1900, is the inheritor of a vast array of strategical commitments which had been made decades earlier, when the nation's political, economic, and military capacity to influence world affairs seemed so much more assured (p. 31).

The U.S. is in a similar situation that challenged Imperial Spain around 1600 and the British Empire around 1900. In neither case, did unfolding events work out well for their Empires.

One of our over-stretching areas is the Persian Gulf region, as Johnson notes:

maintaining access to Persian Gulf oil requires about $50 billion of the annual U.S. defense budget, including maintenance of one or more carrier task forces there, protecting sea lanes, and keeping large air forces in readiness in the area. But the oil we import from the Persian Gulf costs only a fifth that amount, about $11 billion per annum (p. 87).

It is more expensive for the U.S. to be fighting in the Persian Gulf than it is to simply import the relatively small amount of oil we receive from the region.

There is a dearth of fresh thinking or preparation in the region and the U.S. seems stuck in military solutions. Johnson opines:

Ten years after the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon monopolizes the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy. Increasingly, the United States has only one, commonly inappropriate means of achieving its external objectives-military force. It no longer has a full repertoire of skills, including a seasoned, culturally and linguistically expert diplomatic corps; truly viable international institutions that the American public supports both politically and financially and that can give legitimacy to American efforts abroad; economic policies that effectively leverage the tremendous power of the American market into desired foreign responses; or even an ability to express American values without being charged, accurately, with hopeless hypocrisy. The use of cruise missiles and B-2 bombers to achieve humanitarian objectives is a sign of how unbalanced our foreign policy apparatus has become (p. 93).

The U.S. has only military actions to offer while long-range solutions are to be found in cultural and educational knowledge.

Bring Putin in From the Cold

Putin should be brought in from the cold and the Russians should be investing in regional defense.

I've promoted this view consistently but I understand that today Putin compared the US shield to Cuba and said that the distance between the two countries is similar to the Cuban missile crisis.

The crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear destruction.

Fortunately for the world, `the other guy--the Russians--blinked."

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the bases in return for guarantees that Washington would not attack communist Cuba.

Khrushchev had cause for alarm, the Bay of Pigs fiasco for instance.

Kennedy may not have been inclined to support such a foolhardy mission in any case so this was not a major concession, it did however, ensure peace between the two superpowers.

Bush has said there is a "real and urgent" need for a missile shield in Europe as a defense against possible attack by Iran and countries in the Middle East.

Bush is wrong.

And, so wrong in fact, he is missing a major opportunity for the Russians to provide regional security, cut down on U.S. foreign commitments, and, save American tax dollars to boot.

If the rhetoric of the two leaders is to be believed, Bush and Putin, are friends and partners.

EU leaders at a Portugal summit were hoping to settle issues with Russia concerning energy supplies.

The EU depends on Russia for a third of its energy needs and has seen gas supplies disrupted for two successive winters.

The EU is dependent on Russian supplies.

Russia is also surreptitiously exporting illicit drugs but at the conference one issue was settled on raising the quota for Russian steel exports to the EU.

Russia dismissed concerns over human rights in that Russia's envoy to the EU warned that Moscow didn't "want to listen to any lectures".

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have considered the Kremlin guilty of a worsening human rights record.

The Kremlin also opposes the position of several EU members by opposing independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo. Russia has also criticized moves to impose sanctions on Iran.

Pandemic Scenario is Grim Reading

The coming pandemic may be worse than many thought originally.

In a test performed by financial services the potential scenario is more dire than initial estimates.

The statistics are chilling: if a pandemic strikes the U.S., it will kill about 1.7 million people, hospitalize 9 million, and exhaust antiviral medications and reduce basic food supplies.

The financial services disaster scenario informed nearly 3,000 banks, insurance companies, and security firms in a recently concluded largest pandemic test of its kind.

All the scenarios are available for download.

I would think that this makes sobering reading.

The NComputing Alternative

Graphic source: NComputing Inc.

Readers of this blog should be familiar with the OLPC since I've discussed it enough; however, NComputing Incorporated deserves a look.

NComputing is a 30-children-per-desktop solution.

In the past 21 months, the start-up provided low-cost computing to half a million students in 70 countries.

Cost-conscious American schools are NComputing's largest market but more than 60% of its customers are in overseas developing countries such as Brazil, China, India, Thailand and the Philippines.

Macedonia announced plans to provide every one of its 420,000 K-12 students using a combination of PCs running Ubuntu Linux and NComputing's PC-sharing devices.

PCs remain at about the same price as ever but today's desktops are yesterday's mainframes in the NComputing business model.

NComputing provides computer access, or at least it claims to, Windows XP, Linux or Mac boxes for as little as $70 per student. The price of the OLPC has crept up to about $200 in its latest incarnation.

Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing, failed at several ventures as most start-up founders tend to do while paying their dues. Coincidently, and Dukker is not paying me to say this, but one of his previous ventures, as the co-founder and CEO of eMachines Incorporated, put out a great little project, the first sub-$400 PC. I know from personal experience because I have one of those inexpensive but reliable PCs.

At one time eMachines became the third-largest seller of PCs in U.S. stores but the business model did not sustain itself and the company was sold to Gateway Incorporated in 2004.

NComputing was co-founded by a former eMachines colleague of Dukker's.

The trick behind the firm's product is to combine ports for mice and keyboards, as well as installing some NComputing-written management software, and the company produced a device that could take advantage of all the unused processing power in a desktop PC and divvy it up among as many as 30 users.

The NComputing device is inexpensive; it can be manufactured for just $11 for its X300 model, which can support up to seven users, and $35 for the L200 model that can support up to 30 users.

The low-cost allows NComputing to mark up its devices while still keeping prices low and still offering generous margins to distributors and resellers.

NComputing's PC-sharing box is really a thin client or a PC blade device but these items are ordinarily associated with expensive, hard-to-manage devices such as those sold by Wyse Technology Inc., ClearCube Inc., Hewlett-Packard, and IBM.

NComputing sells two basic types of devices. The L series uses Ethernet to support up to 10 users connected to a Windows XP PC, and up to 30 users connected to a PC running Linux or Windows Server 2003. The more popular X series device can connect between four to seven users to the host PC.

The drawback is that in practice the more users are connected, the slower the boxes run, and if one student crashes a machine, they all crash together.

Thanks to a respondent, "John," whose school uses the X300s, I made a corrections because he states that: "Only if the shared computer crashes will the X300s crash" which of course is a big distinction. I appreciate the comment and correction.

Even with NComputing, schools still need software, a keyboard, monitor, and computer mouse for each student. The frugal can scour unused monitors and peripherals to recycle.

NComputing makes a compelling alternative to the altruistic but long-delayed and much bally hooed OLPC.

Ivanoe Quote: Sir Walter Scott

Graphic source: Brooklyn College Core Curriculum.

"My heart broke long ago. But it serves me still." Ivanhoe

Whose Your Mama?

GeneTree, a new genealogy, site uses DNA and social networks to trace ancestors.

The site is initiated by several companies owned by Salt Lake City-based Sorenson Companies. One of the companies operates a genetic database that contains DNA samples from 80,000 people in 170 countries.

GeneTree will expand that database as users send in cheek swabs to be analyzed. The site will use digital video compression technology to let users share pictures and video clips to create interactive digital family trees.

Once an individual submits their DNA it is compared against the database and the company will show people how they connect in he past and the present."

For a cost between $99 and $149, users can submit DNA samples to be matched against dozens of subgroups of DNA. It will then be used to map the global origin of a person's ancestors and digitally show the migration of relatives throughout the world to discover a family's history that may predate written records.

GeneTree will analyze only a piece of a the mitochondrial DNA, which traces a person's family history on his mother's side.

GeneTree does not reveal the names of people born in the past 100 years, to ensure that only the names of deceased people are available

All the information on the site about a person is visible only to that user, unless they opt to share information with family members.

This can potentially be an exciting adjunct to historical investigation and personal family history. The site is worth a look.

Bin Laden Whines: Upcoming Celebration of Law

Osama bin Laden whined about his al-Qaida followers in Iraq by stating they have "been lax" for failing to overcome their fanatical tribal loyalties. The enemy may seem to be the U.S. troops but you wouldn't know it from the insurgents.

The obvious disarray among Sunni Arab insurgents and bin Laden's group, both of which are under serious U.S. military pressure, and an uprising among Sunni tribesmen, are troubling Bin Laden.

The insurgents seem incapable of uniting under one banner.

Bin Laden employed the word "ta'assub" — "fanaticism" — to chastise insurgents.

Analysts are still studying this latest released tape but first reports seem to suggest that the tape is authentic.

Bin Laden warned the disunited "against hypocritical enemies who are infiltrating your ranks to create sedition among mujahedeen groups."

Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for Strategic and International Studies, stated bin Laden's message appeared to be note "that al-Qaida needs to be less arrogant and moderate its conduct."

Al-Qaida's attempts to impose Taliban-like Islamic laws in controlled areas as well as its killings of rival tribal figures alienated Sunni Arabs and led them to join a movement opposing al-Qaida.

U.S. troops, led by Major Lee Peters, a military spokesman, said a celebration is planned to include at least 200 Sunni sheiks and hundreds of other dignitaries to commemorate Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the founder of the anti-al-Qaida group who was assassinated by a bomb September 13.

The sheik's brother stated: "The people felt weak and afraid because of al-Qaida. Now there is a feeling of strength," Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha told The Associated Press. He continued: "This year I want to have a good parade to show that we support the law."

Friedman's Flat World & Education

Graphic source: Wikipedia, original artwork for 1st edition.

In Thomas Friedman's work, the convergence of advanced technologies, new ways of doing business, the removal of economic and political obstructions, and the rapid introduction of millions of young Chinese, Indian, and East European professionals into the world economy has dramatically leveled, or “flattened,” the global playing field.

Into this landscape, Americans with the knowledge, skills, and adaptability to compete in this newly flattened world can look forward to a brighter future, as long as they strive to be knowledge workers, who can then look forward to fulfilling work and a rising standard of living.

But those Americans without a command of higher-level skills, or those whose work can be easily digitized and outsourced, similar to many good-paying manufacturing jobs that went offshore in the 1970s and 1980s, will be in dire straits. Work is outsourced to India, China, Poland, and other countries where labor is cheaper and, perhaps most troubling for American educators, quality is often higher.

Are American children ready to compete and succeed in this new flat world?

Friedman tells his own daughters, “Girls, when I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ‘Tom, finish your dinner—people in China and India are starving.’ My advice to you is: Girls, finish your homework—people in China and India are starving for your jobs.”

Most revealing are the results of the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS): 44% of 8th graders in Singapore scored at the most advanced level in math, as did 38% in Taiwan; only 7% in the United States did.

The key is to focus on the basics, reading, writing, mathematics, coupled with rigorous national standards and tests. This will never happen but I can dream.

One of the most telling quotes is:

“The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics … we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is, quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don’t start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock.”

Although Friedman did not intend a work on education, it should give pause to educators. Schools are rule-bound, lack innovation, and simply falling behind the rest of the world.

Friedman's work should be a wake-up call for educators to sound the clarion call for reform.

Confucius on Learning

"Learning without thought is labour lost," Confucius.

Necessity of Academic Tenure

I have never been a big fan of academic tenure because I think it can be abused to encourage sloth but I do understand the necessity of the device.

Academic tenure is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: it protects respected teachers and researchers when they dissent from prevailing opinion, openly disagree with authorities of any sort, or spend time on unfashionable topics.

When tenure was institutionalized in German universities there was a genuine need. The danger of governmental interference in thinking was too great to leave to chance. The system seems to have declined since then and it can be a disincentive to promote ground-breaking work.

Without the security of the position, an academic would usually favor tepid topics and safe ideas to pursue. Tenure encourages iconoclastic and original ideas by providing scholars the intellectual autonomy to investigate the problems and solutions about which they are most qualified, and to report their findings in an open, academic setting.

Updating Turkey

An update on the Turkish-Kurdish border situation still seems ominous. I have been following this story because the prospect of the war spilling over and creating greater regional instability. But Pelosi has argued that settling the genocidal issue in Ottoman history is correct. In addition, 70% of supplies enter Iraq for our troops through Turkish bases. The Pelosi crowd is endangering our supply lines to settle questions of Ottoman history.

Good News: Bad News

In the there is some good news, and there is some bad news department, most of the fake bombs smuggled in by plainclothes investigators got through security, but most of the loopholes have been closed by now.

Investigators successfully smuggled 75 percent of the fake bombs through checkpoints at Los Angeles International Airport, and 60 percent through Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. From late 2005 until last fall was the danger period but conditions have changed since then.

The TSA now conducts daily testing, which has led to improvements at airports, as a response to the bad news.

At San Francisco International Airport, where a private company conducts inspections, 20 percent of the contraband made it through security.

None of this really makes me feel any safer.

Let's Settle That Old Ottoman Genocide Thing

In what I feel is an ominous move and a situation that is likely to create more instability the Turkish Parliament approved an Iraq mission.

Ankara overwhelmingly approved, by a vote of 507-19, a possible cross-border offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. The Turkish government seems willing though to allow diplomatic pressure to be applied as well by the U.S.-backed Iraqi administration.

If the Turkish military enter Iraq, they will have a one-year time-table.

The rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, has provoked the incursion by Turkey because they have killed Turkish troops and Turkey maintains that the PKK has entered Turkish territory.

President Bush opposes Turkish plans to possibly send a massive number of troops into Iraq.

Bush said Turkey has stationed troops in Iraq "for quite a while."

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan opposed Bush's comments by stating: "What's important is the parliament's decision, not what people say."

Last week the U.S. Congress agreed to a resolution labeling the World War 1-era killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks as genocide

Bush stated: "One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire."