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.