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.