The Ones That Get It: Government Security Advances

The flagrant missteps that the government has taken with security make the headlines and permit us bloggers to kick back laugh at yet another example of governmental ineptitude.

Whether to mollify critics or to frustrate bloggers some in public service have actually gotten it right.

As reported by Computerworld the SANS Institute released a list of the more successful security efforts within the federal government.

The successful initiatives in the SANS list were selected based on actual evidence of having made substantial and measurable improvements in one or more of three areas. Those three areas are the ability to prevent cyber attacks against critical infrastructure targets, reducing national vulnerability to cyber attacks, and minimizing damage and recovery time from attacks that do occur.

The Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) initiative

The FDCC effort helps government agencies reduce procurement costs and bolster security of their desktop environments by requiring agencies to implement standard baseline security configurations on all their Windows XP and Vista desktops.

This program seems to save the taxpayers money; I like it.

The US-CERT Einstein program

The Einstein Program is an initiative to improve cybersecurity-related situational awareness across the civilian federal government.

This initiative promotes cross agency data sharing and is in keeping with the spirit of the 9/11 Commission. Kudos.

The National SCADA Test Bed and Control Systems Security Program

This effort was spurred largely by post-9/11 fears of cyberattacks against the nation's power utility infrastructure. This is the one that is perhaps scariest of all because it impacts the average person so immediately and seems particularly vulnerable to attack.

The Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) testbed program is designed to help identify vulnerabilities in the control systems that manage power plants, electric distribution systems, oil and gas pipelines, water systems, transportation systems, and dams. Vulnerabilities, when found, are reported to the vendors for remedial action, and become part of the required procurement checklist for future purchases. Cf. Computerworld.

I'd like to see this instituted on my block because my local power can not supply power on an annual basis without losing power all too often.

The Department of Defense's Common Access Card (CAC) program

The two-factor authentication supported by the DoD's common-access smart card identity credentials has greatly strengthened access controls to non-classified defense systems.

Well, that's it. I'd like to see more but at least there is progress and that is hwat we will be getting for now.

Chinese Chips

China is on the move in the chip market as in other field and its market has grown 15% in 2007. The market research firm iSuppli Corporation released these figures which marked the first time a maturing Chinese market exceeded $50 billion in revenue.

The increased numbers arose largely from sales of chips for industrial control systems like motor controls, security and surveillance systems, and automotive electronics. Communication equipment markets are also robust.

The latest released indicates how the Chinese market benefits from American sluggishness. Chinese growth is expected to slow somewhat though.

Firefox Equals Explorer Amongst College Students

Eduventures, an eLearning company, issued results from a survey of college students which showed that Firefox and IE are neck and neck for popularity. Firefox has a college and student addition which may indicate why the browser can obtain allegiance amongst younger people.

The 18-to 24-year-old students students are enrolled full-time at a four-year college or university via a Web survey.

Both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are tied for most preferred Web browser at 45 percent. The other browsers, AOL, Avant, and Camino, also received some lesser support.

33% of respondents enjoyed Mozilla Firefox and its “tabbed browsing” feature. That preference is not hard to understand as a reason for their preference. Tabbed browsing makes for a better experience. The survey also pointed out that 31% who prefer Explorer also use Firefox, while 65 percent who prefer Firefox also use Explorer.

The relationship between the two browsers seems to be symbiotic.

Cf. "Snapshot: Firefox, IE Vie for Popularity Among College Students," Campus Technology, 12/10/2007, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=56608.

Graphic source: Eduventures

Iran Needs a Supercomputer to Predict the Weather, Hmmmm, Hot?

Graphic source: Computerworld Farsi version

Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau broke a story in which the Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center claims to have now enough Opteron processors to build a 216-core supercomputer.

Apparently according to the official Iranian sources, they need a computer like this for weather and meteorological research.

Uhhh, sure.

The computer is the fastest to have been produced in Iran.

Thibodeau is to be commended for his investigative reporting in that he uncovered information that indicates how Teheran circumvented U.S. trade restrictions. The processors moved through the United Arab Emirates state of Dubai.

AMD, and their Opteron processor, is key to the computer and AMD is cozy with the UAE. Last month AMD received $622 million in funding from an investment firm in Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital.

Two Worthwhile Enlightenment Quotes

“My trade is to say what I think.”

Voltaire

“No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.”

—Denis Diderot

Whole Lotta' Releasin' Goin' On

Nixon and Elvis meeting

Graphic source: The National Archives

I had hoped to post at least summaries of what the Nixon Presidential Library released as new materials arose from the National Archives but so far I only know what I read in the papers.

The papers noted tantalizing releases though.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum released approximately 122,800 pages of historical materials from the Nixon presidency at the National Archives in College Park, MD.

The last time I visited the Nixon Library it was well worth the time and I would have had a chance to purview the materials if they had been released. College Park looks like a better site to access the materials now.

Some of the highlights of the materials include national security documents on U.S. policy towards Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Soviet Union, and the Kurds. Also included are documents on the Vietnam War, on dealing with the terrorist Black September Organization, on producing the CIA’s Presidential Daily Brief, and on U.S. covert action in Chile. Last, but not least, the documents also include information on Elvis Presley and Nixon's famous meeting with him.

A selection of 15 documents from the release were posted on the Nixon Presidential Library.

This is the largest release of Nixon-related materials under mandatory review: over 10,000 pages of documents were previously withheld from public access, and that were re-reviewed for release and/or declassified under the provisions of Executive Order 12958, as amended, or in accordance with 36 CFR 1275.56 (Public Access Regulations). The documents are from file segments for the White House Special Files, Staff Member and Office Files; the National Security Council File series including the Henry A. Kissinger Office Files and the National Security Council Institutional Files.

Also released are around 4,800 pages of documents from the White House Central Files, Name Files. This system was used for routine materials filed alphabetically by the name of the correspondent. Included in the release are files on Mark Felt (Deep Throat), Robert Byrd, Bob Hope, Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan, Richard Cheney, and Frank Sinatra.

In addition, there are approximately 83,000 pages of White House Central Files, Staff Member and Office Files, and White House Press Office Files. The files contain materials created by the Press Office for distribution to the media including White House press releases and press conference transcripts.

Finally, 25,000 pages of documents from Records of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards, Records of the Cabinet Committee on Education are now available. The Cabinet Committee on Education served as a Federal Government point of contact for states undergoing school desegregation.

The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum is one of 12 Presidential libraries operated and maintained by the National Archives.

Griefers, Terrorists, and Second Life

Whereas the first impetus for this blog post arose from a December/January 2008 article in CSO: The Resource for Security Executives I found out that a stimulating discussion about the topic went back to at least 4 March 2005. At that time an online discussion reported on a griefer, the term for a player in an online computer game who deliberately sets out to discomfort other players.

Where have I been? This is a new term for me to learn; I know it now.

The consensus of the 2005 discussion is that griefers are more dissimilar than familiar to real-world terrorists, yet, they do share specific aspects in common. Both types seek to disrupt, annoy, and harass legitimate authority. To be annoying they ferret out weaknesses, loopholes, and the cracks in security provisions.

Witness the online blogger Will Wright's statement in September 2004:

We’ve been talking to people in homeland security that want to know if we could simulate a terrorist network. I keep telling them they don’t have to; they just need to come study the griefers in a multi-player game, because they are exactly that. They always figure out how to get by every little loophole, they hide in the cracks, they respond very fast to whatever new policies you put in place. It is like the perfect simulator for a terrorist organization. So the answer is yes, unfortunately.

The online discussion from 2005 pointing out differences between griefers and terrorists may be missing the point.

The main point is not that there is something in common about the goals or the motives or the moral worth of griefers or terrorists. Rather the key insight is that there is a common meta-strategy to the way both terrorists operate and griefers and gangs operate. All of the above exploit loopholes in the rules and finding unanticipated ways to do damage to the system. They seek soft targets with the capacity to swarm and attack inter-dependently, in particular against targets such as buildings and game servers.

It is to this latter point that David F. Ronfeldt, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, addresses in "Al Qaeda and its affiliates: A global tribe waging segmental warfare?"

Ronfeldt states:

Continuing to view Al Qaeda mainly as a cutting–edge, post–modern phenomenon of the information age misses a crucial point: Al Qaeda is using the information age to revitalize and project ancient patterns of tribalism on a global scale.

And most fascinatingly, Al Qaeda and its ilk combine tribalism and cutting-edge technology to advance their cause and to disrupt network activity. Not surprisingly, the earlier discussions of disruptions occurred in Second Life activities. The online site offers all sorts of attractive possibilities to griefers, and terrorists: soft targets, vulnerabilities, and the possibility of anonymous, difficult to trace, online meetings but then possibly coupled with physical, real-world swarm attacks by dedicated jihadists.

Philadelphia (Wi-Fi) Freedom

Philadelphia schools, at least to all 268 public ones, may be reaping Wi-Fi benefits but the road has not been totally smooth.

The schools benefit from a $40 million Wi-Fi project that puts wireless Internet access within reach of 170,000 students, and an upgrade to the new 802.11n technology is being contemplated for next fall.

The Wi-Fi deployment is considered one of the largest Wi-Fi projects in the world, according to Meru Networks, and their associates, Avaya Incorporated.

The 802.11 a/b/g specifications have been key in providing "functional 1 to 1" access of computing to all students using mobile laptop carts.

The Wi-Fi foundation allows for a bandwidth intensive online curriculum, a curriculum management system, digital libraries, and a parent-teacher collaboration portal.

Avaya originally worked with Proxim Wireless Corporation but the pairing did not go smoothly which led to Meru's technology eventually being employed.

Similar Wi-Fi projects have stalled nationwide which has led to speculation that not all of these municipal projects will come to fruition. Philadelphia's has been less than rosy but it is a project whose time has come. Unless Rust Belt cities such as Philadelphia implement such projects, it will be passed over in the global economy.

A Positive Outlook on Iran

So they didn't have a nuclear program after all.

This is good news. Now, Russia and China can cooperate, and control if necessary, Iran. The U.S. can let well enough alone, Iran's loose cannon of a President can derail his support amongst Iranian youth and Iran can slowly fade off the screen.

It won't happen but it is pleasant to consider.

The biggest threat from Iran is in conventional weapons, gun-running, and embarrassing itself in world affairs, but, we already knew that.

This is business as usual.

I find that it is a relief to discover that Iran did not develop nuclear weapons for some time. In the rush to laugh at Bush the world can breathe a bit easier and continue to oppose the Iranian regime.

MIT: Opening a Satellite Campus in Asia?

MIT has finally placed their entire curriculum online following an initiative in this direction that began with OpenCourseWare in 2001. MIT has 1,800 undergraduate and graduate courses now freely available.

On the site there are syllabuses, lecture notes from about 15,000 lectures, about 9,000 homework assignments, 900 exams, reference materials, and when available, video lectures.

An estimated 35 million people have accessed the course materials.

Even more interesting is to consider where the traffic is being generated from: China, India, and South Korea, in fact 60% of users are from outside the U.S.

Since the MIT initiative began the project is suggestive of the openness with which leading Universities are approaching the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, the brains that want to tap American knowledge arise from Asia.

The openness of MIT is quite a sea change from the restricted 19th century notion of exclusive, restrictive knowledge as practiced by elites. And importantly, those most hungry for the knowledge, in Asia, are indicative that the balance of world power is shifting Eastward.

Three Essential Works on Terrorism

Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, and Thomas P.M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, are the three most important books written on contemporary affairs and international terrorism.

In their own way, each frightened and enlightened me in ways that I believe most Americans need to hear. None of them sit well with their opponents and other political ideologies but they share a certain refreshing pragmatism.

No one really knows what to do about terrorism but these three books more than others articulate from a military, intelligence, and political science perspective how to understand Islamo-fascism, the most important issue of our day.

Huntington, Summary of Criticisms

The Clash of Civilizations

The thesis of the challenging and important “Clash of Civilizations” is that the growing threat of violence arising from renewed conflicts between cultures and countries that base their traditions on religious faith and dogma. Samuel P Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University and foreign policy adviser to President Clinton, argues that policymakers should be mindful of current developments, especially when they interfere in other nations' affairs.

The clash of civilizations is a controversial theory in international relations. I will review in particular some of the criticisms of the work.

He states:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Huntington divided the civilizations in following way: Western Christendom, centered on Europe and North America, including Australia and New Zealand; the Muslim world of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Malaysia, and Indonesia; the Hindu civilization, located mainly in India, Nepal; the Sinic civilization of China, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan; Sub-Saharan Africa; the Buddhist areas of Northern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Buryatia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Tibet; and Japan is considered as an independent civilization (Huntington 1993, 26).

Huntington suggested that the world is returning to a civilization-dominated world where future conflicts would come from clashes between “civilizations”. Nevertheless, this theory has been largely criticized for over generalization, disregarding local conflicts and for improperly predicting what has happened in the decade after its publication.

Huntington's theory draws a future where the “great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural” (Huntington 1993, 22). He predicts confrontation between countries from different civilizations for control over international institutions and economic and military power (Huntington 1993, 29). Examining the evidence for adoption of Western ideas, such as Western values concerning human rights, supports the ideas that they very often are the least important values to other civilizations (James Graham, 2004).

The clash of civilizations thesis as every theory has its flaws. James Graham considers that Huntington's thesis somehow distorted the reality, although they are original and persuasive. He also points the advantage that this theory made people look at non-Western cultures more seriously and with greater interest. Huntington also is criticized for being too vague and indistinct addressing many specific issues (James Graham, 2004). Many specialists say that Huntington's anecdotal style is simply not suitable enough to account for the rationalizations and arguments he represents in such a serious work (Fox 2002, 423). A comprehensive analysis accomplished by Jonathon Fox for the period 1989-2002 concluded that the precise contrary of what Huntington predicted occurred in fact (Fox 2002, 425). In addition, James Graham says that civilization conflicts were less widespread than non-civilization conflicts and the end of the Cold War had no noteworthy impact on the relation between them (James Graham, 2004). Most confusing of all was the observation that where civilization conflict did occur it was more likely to take place between groups that were culturally similar, that is in the frame of the same civilization and not between them. These conclusions openly contradict Huntington's thoughts.

Many say that Huntington's thesis ignores culture's tendency to be fast changing and multi-dimensional (Herzfeld 1997, 116). Most of the Western countries are becoming multi or bi-cultural now. From this statement, we may conclude that they are somehow a part of multiple civilizations, a situation he outlines is characterized by religion as the crucial factor. “A secular Arab immigrant living in an Arab community in England is just one example where this designation is inappropriate. Really, situated in a highly religious country with a considerable number of Christian fundamentalists he states confidently that the world is becoming un-secularised. His data to support this claim is circumstantial” (James Graham, 2004).

Despite the criticisms, and Huntington's relationship to Francis Fukuyama's "end of history," he was the first to foresee that civilizations will ultimately come to clash. Huntington replaced conflict between Marxist class struggle by conflict between civilizations, actually religions.

The rise of terrorism and fundamentalist Islam makes Huntington essential reading and it is not surprising that Huntington's original article along these lines in Foreign Affairs created more responses than any other work ever published within that journal.

Some specialists commented that his identified civilizations are very split with little unity. For example, Vietnam still keeps a massive army, mostly to guard against China. The Islamic world is rigorously fractured in terms of ethnic lines with Kurds, Arabs, Persians, Turks, Pakistanis, and Indonesians, each culture possessing specific, unlike world views.

However, post 9/11 Huntington appeared prescient and attacks by Western states upon Afghanistan and Iraq accelerated the perception that Huntington's “Clash” was well underway. Moreover, the 1995 and 2004 enlargements of the European Union brought the EU's eastern border up to the boundary between Huntington's Western and Orthodox civilizations.

Many of Europe's historically and traditionally Protestant and Roman Catholic countries were now EU members, while a number of Europe's historically Orthodox countries were outside the EU. However, the strong EU candidacies of Bulgaria and Romania, as well as the dominating ascendancy of pro-Western powers in Ukraine's 2004 presidential elections, and the NATO membership of Romania and Bulgaria (since 2004) represent a challenge to some of Huntington's analysis.

Huntington has been criticized for his presentation of “new paradigm.” He argues that the prevailing Cold War model of state-centric realist model can no longer be useful to analyze the post-Cold War era. He claims that civilizational dissimilarities will be key source of regional and global conflicts (Huntington 1993, 22). On the other hand critics suggests that Huntington's “civilizational conflict theory” is deterministic since there are manifold causes of conflict, in which civilizational factors do not play a considerable role. Others say that in particular “clash of interests” rather than “clash of civilizations” will continue to be real cause of conflict. For example, Shireen T. Hunter opposes Huntington and states that relations between the West and the Islamic World are hardly arise from civilizational discrepancy but from structural-political and also from economic inequalities between the two worlds.(Shireen, 19). In addition, there are critics that Huntington overestimates cultural differences between civilizations and at the same time underestimates the power of the West in the hostile relations with the Muslim World. Many criticize Huntington for paying too much attention to the West's technological and military superiority. Overall, Huntington has received several criticisms because of his “new paradigm."

Another kind of criticism is about Huntington's “monolithic” conception of civilizations and disregarding of intra-civilizational differences and home conflict. Some say that the idea of West has undergone a considerable transformation in turn of the 21st century, and the actual clash will happen not between the West and the rest, as Huntington predicted, but it will arise between pro-Western conservatives and post-Western liberal multi-culturalists in the US-West World. On the other hand, the critics assert that Huntington takes no notice of internal developments and complexities of Muslim World. Critics say that there is no single Islamic culture as Huntington meant, moreover, there are different types of political Islam (Edward W. Said 2001, 20). Furthermore, there are numerous conflicts within civilizations. Overall, a second sort of criticism focuses on diversity and dynamics of each civilization and intra-civilizational differences.

Huntington has met so many criticisms because of the alleged inconsistencies, methodological flaws, and over generalizations in his thesis. For example, Robert Marks points that Huntington chiefly uses secondary sources in his book and his research of Islam, China, and Japan is rather weak (Marks). He proposes that Huntington's speculation is methodologically flawed because of his frequent over generalizations in the examination of civilizations. Many have also criticized the data, which Huntington uses to support his thesis. For example for many of Huntington's critics, the Gulf War was a case for “clash of state interests' and not a case for “clash of civilizations”. Therefore, we may say that in this respect, the critics have focused on vast generalizations and inconsistencies.

Huntington is also very often is blamed for orientalism. Islam turns to be a problem and even a threat to the West. He always privileges the Western World and ignores the other: Islam. As such, the clash thesis distorts and de-humanizes Muslims.

One more category of criticism is about Huntington's policy recommendations on the basis of his understanding of post-Cold War global politics. Huntington looks for new enemies, which replace the rival of the Cold War, the Soviet Union. There are arguments that Huntington's theory is an ideological and strategic theory that aims at influencing the US foreign and defense policy (Edward W. Said 2001, 20). Huntington's scenario of World War III that stems from a clash of civilizations interestingly fits best into military and representatives of the arms industry. In this respect, it is possible to claim that the “clash of civilizations” is considered as a determined thesis aiming at guiding U.S. foreign and security policy. What is more, some scholars criticize Huntington's advice to pursue an Atlantic policy, by means of strengthening relations with Europe to counteract Islamic-Confucian civilization.

There are some studies challenging the “clash of civilization thesis. It is interesting to review few of them: e.g., Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. In their study they have compared political and social values of the Muslim and Western societies. What is interesting, they have found that Muslims have no less democratic ideals than the West and the West is not so distinctive from Islam in terms of faith in democracy (Pippa Norris 2002, 12). In this regard, this study has significantly undermined Huntington's theory that Islam and the West are poles apart on political values based upon leading religious cultures. These authors demonstrate the availability of similar political attitudes in the Muslim World as well as in the West. Others criticized Huntington for his pessimistic vision of future and unawareness of the fact that collaboration and dialogue among civilizations are possible and even useful.
In summary, the basic problem with Huntington's theory is the conviction that all cultures aspire to imperial power. Huntington is not only inaccurate but his thesis has the potential to be extremely dangerous if taken as a prescription for making policy. Huntington's thesis maximizes the significance of cultural factors and minimizes the importance of nationalism. The problem is that most Islamic countries do not see themselves to be in conflict with the United States. Huntington paints an aggressive picture of the non-Western civilizations, Islam in particular, while ignoring the misdeeds of the Western civilization whose dominance is being challenged.

In Part V of the book, The Future of Civilizations, Huntington points out that civilizations can reform and renew themselves. The central issue for the West is whether it can meet the external challenge while stopping and reversing the process of internal decay. He paints a scenario for a major war of civilizations and points out that the great beneficiaries will be those who abstain and closes by saying: "If this scenario seems a wildly implausible fantasy to the reader, that is all to the good. Let us hope that no other scenarios of global civilizational war have greater plausibility."

References:

1. Fox, Jonathon. Ethnic minorities and the clash of civilizations: A quantitative analysis of Huntington's thesis. British Journal of Political Science. 32(3). 415-435.

2. Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Anthropology and the politics of significance. Social Analysis. 4(3). 107-138.

3. Huntington. Samuel, 1993. The clash of civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72(3):22-49.

4. Graham, James. May, 2004. Samuel P. Huntington's Clash of Civilisations. www.HistoryOrb.com

5. Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 43.

6. Shireen T. Hunter, "The Future of Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations or Peaceful Coexistence?", Fouad Ajami, M.E Ahrari, "The Clash of Civilizations: An Old Story or New Truth?", Yuksel Sezgin, "Does Islam Pose A Threat to the West?" Perceptions: Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 5, No. 2, (June-August 2000)

7. Edward W. Said, "The Clash of Ignorance", The Nation, October 22 2001 and Mahmood Monshipouri, "The West's Modern Encounter With Islam: From Discourse to Reality".

8. Robert Marks, "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" (Book Review).

9. Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, "Islam and the West; Testing the Clash of Civilizations Thesis", John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Faculty Research Working Papers Series (RWP02-015), April 2002, p.14 (http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP02-015/$File/rwp02_015_norris_rev1.pdf)

Where are Pakistan's Nukes Tonight?

The U.S. is spending $100 million to secure Pakistan's nukes.

Since Musharraf can not be trusted, nor can anyone assure that he will remain in power, this amount is money well-spent.

The $100 million has been spent over the past six years to train Pakistani security personnel in the U.S., begin construction on a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, and supply equipment such as fencing and surveillance systems.

Pakistan has about 60 operational nuclear weapons, and for comparison's sake, the Nunn-Lugar program, which works to secure roughly 6,000 operational nuclear warheads in Russia, has historically had a budget of about $1 billion a year. Relatively speaking then, in terms of money spent per weapon, per year on nuclear security, the U.S. has been spending about 65% more on securing Pakistan’s arsenal than on securing Russia’s.

The alternative is costly and chilly to consider. Imagine the Pakistani nuclear arsenal falling into the wrong hands. The Pakistani hands are frightening enough.

Emotionally Moving Video of Islamic Submission

Quran: 8:12: “I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers; smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them.”

The emotionally moving video of submission, such as the tales of murdered Theo van Gogh and the Dutch exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali who has to remain guarded because of death threats, are shown in a first-person account and statement.

Internet Evolution

A plethora of opinion can be found on Internet Evolution.

Declassified Papers Show Lebanon Asked Nixon to Attack Syria

 

Is it any wonder?

Jordan asked Nixon to attack Syria according to 10,000 papers released by the Nixon Library in recently declassified papers. We have heard so much of how the U.S. is recently intruding into the Middle East but as these recently declassified papers show, the U.S. was more intimately involved, and more reluctant to commit troops to the Middle East, than the pundits would allow.

King Hussein urged a U.S. strike on invading Syrian troops in 1970 but Nixon did not agree and the attack was never launched.

Nixon, ever the "realist" in foreign affairs wisely cautioned the Saudis to distance themselves from the PLO's Fatah organization. All the Saudis have done in the meantime is to foster their own brand of financial fanaticism in the form of Wahabism.

Nixon apparently had concerns about some of the terrorist issues which plague us today.

One of the things revealed in the documents is that there was a move to get the Saudis more involved in solving the growing terrorist problem.

A 1973 diplomatic cable cites this objective: "isolate and undermine terrorisms [sic] and commandos [sic] by establishing another, more stable and respectable Palestinian political entity and political personality."

Nixon accepted the fact that Israel possessed nuclear weapons in 1969.

And in these troubled days, a telegram from Hussein reveals that he contacted the U.S. at 3 a.m. to ask for American or British help. "Situation deteriorating dangerously following Syrian massive invasion...," the document said. "I request immediate physical intervention both land and air ... to safeguard sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Jordan. Immediate air strikes on invading forces from any quarter plus air cover are imperative."

The documents reveal American involvement at a deeper level and during a time when the world was unaware that Middle Eastern leaders appealed to the U.S. for assistance. It becomes clearer that Bush hardly can be accused of jumping in too quickly in Iraq. The Eisenhower Doctrine initiated the principle and reason for U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Nixon was asked to be involved in Jordan. Bush the First led the U.S. in Persian Gulf I. In this light, the Iraq War is more of a continuum, rather than an exception.

On Improving Research and Alternatives to Google

On improving research, use search engines and Wikipedia to lead you to better sources. Try other search engines like GeniusFind and Beaucoup to categorize topic-specific databases. Blogs are filled with experts in Web topics. To search blogs QuackTrack is a large browsable blog index, listing more than 11,000 blogs. Technorati aggregates user-generated content like blogs but it does have ads as well so you have to tune them out. Anther website that helps locate blogs is Blogdigger. For example, Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge, which is a forum for business innovation conversations, can assist a search as well. BizSeer is a free online database of academic business literature that reveals the impressive amount of data that "B" schools produce. Last but not least, a few more sites can be mentioned. Zuula is a search tool that lets users send the same query to a number of well-known and not-so-well-known search engines. A resource for locating relevant blogs: http://www.blogcatalog.com. And finally, you can search social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us.

How To Harm Children. Brought to You By the Wonderful Folks at Lancor

Let me try to help you says the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Association. Well, fine then, I'll sue you for patent infringement.

In one of those stories of the nattering nabobs of negativism (thank you Spiro Agnew, wherever you are), a A Massachusetts company has sued the OLPC Association, charging the project with stealing its designs for a multilingual keyboard.

Lagos Analysis Corporation, or Lancor, filed the lawsuit in the Federal High Court, Lagos Judicial Division in Nigeria.

The OLPC is accused of illegally reverse-engineering the company's patented keyboard, which, with its four shift keys, allows computers to better handle multiple languages. A settlement would award "substantial" damages and issue a permanent injunction to prevent OLPC from manufacturing and selling its XO laptop.

OLPC released a statement, "To OLPC's knowledge, all of the intellectual property used in the XO Laptop is either owned by OLPC or properly licensed."

The goal of the nonprofit OLPC, founded by MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, is to donate laptops to children in developing nations, such as Nigeria, so the irony is that Nigerian children and others would be stymie the OLPC project.

Lancor should be ashamed of themselves. The patent is a simple idea that others can easily emulate and the goal of the OLPC is humanitarian. Even the XO laptop has gradually crept up in price although the Foundation made a sincere effort to keep costs down. Other companies have similar products, such as Encore's Mobilis and Intel's Classmate PC, so the cynicism of filing an infringement on the patent is, well, patently obvious.

Swimming or Sinking in Annapolis?

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders committed themselves to negotiate a peace treaty by the end of 2008. Will it happen? My guess is that it will be difficult and it may tie in quite directly with who is in, or appears to be in, the White House.

The most optimistic aspect of the negotiation is that the peace process is revived from the past seven years of dormancy.

The key issues:

*the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank

*the borders of a Palestinian state

+the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees who left, or were forced to leave, their homes in Israel.

It remains to be seen if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, can settle their differences while the regional struggle against extremism seems to be raging in the Middle East.

Interesting, the conclave brought about the highest-level official contacts yet between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which do not have diplomatic relations. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, vowed that he would not shake Mr. Olmert’s hand.

According to news reports, Olmert looked directly at Prince Saud and said that Israel aspired to “normalization” with the Arab world.

Olmert stated:

you know that religious fanaticism and national extremism are a perfect recipe for domestic instability and violence, for bitterness and ultimately for the disintegration of the very foundations of coexistence based on tolerance and mutual acceptance.

Prince Saud was less diplomatic in response as he stated: "the time has come for Israel to put its trust in peace after it has gambled on war for decades without success.” He asked that Israel withdraw from the West Bank.

Bush waved his magic wand and stated that this was an opportunity to advance democracy in a region torn by conflict, not to mention filled now with United States troops. Bush said: “And when liberty takes root in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza, it will inspire millions across the Middle East who want their societies built on freedom and peace and hope.”

If only that were true. It is more likely that any voting in most of the Middle East would be a vote against liberty.

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.