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"Globalization" means that capital can move where it wants, but labour (ie, you and me) are constrained in where we can emigrate to in order to follow the money flow. Borders restrain and impede people searching for better standards of living while being deliberately porous for capitalists.

What exactly is "globalization" all about? The IMF/World Bank/WTO knowingly bribe local officials to sell off national assets cheaply, deliberately push people into the poverty trap to inflame "social unrest" so that Western companies can buy assets cheaply during the ensuing panic, and "condemns people to death".

But it's not just me saying that. Or those rather smelly anarcho-crusties swinging their dreads forlornly. It's all in the words of Joseph Stiglitz, current Economics Nobel winner and former chief economist boffin at the World Bank. He seems to have done a Vadar and come back from the Dark Side.

Just how badly has globalized moneterism failed to achieve universal prosperity for all?

In the United States, the median real wage is about the same today as it was 28 years ago.This means that the majority of the labor force has failed to share in the gains from economic growth over the last 28 years. That is drastically different from the previous 27 years, during which the typical wage increased by about 80% in real terms. Trade has doubled as a percentage of our economy since the early 1970s, and there is no doubt that globalization has played a significant role in the worsening distribution of income here.

Now, international trade per se is obviously not the issue here, it's international trade under the deliberately poverty-inducing stategies of the IMF-led cartel. International trade could be defined and regulated in such a way as to promote prosperity of ordinary people within economic areas:

Globalization is no more natural or inevitable than the construction of skyscrapers. The globalization we have seen in recent decades has been driven by a laborious process of rule making. It is the establishment and enforcement of these rules that allows Timberland shoes, for example, to make their product in China at wages of 22 cents an hour, and then sell it at the local suburban mall. Advances in transportation and communications did not determine this result. Our leaders have rewritten the rules of the game in a way that has driven down wages for the vast majority of American employees. One may agree or disagree with this policy, but it should be understood as a conscious political choice.
...
The same thing could have been done to the salaries of doctors, for example. With much less effort and expense than it has taken to negotiate investment and trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO, we could license and regulate the training of doctors in foreign medical schools. By allowing these doctors to practice medicine in the United States, we could lower the salaries of doctors and greatly reduce health care costs, without any loss of quality. Interestingly, the savings to consumers from reducing American doctors' salaries to even those of Europe would be enormous: about $70 billion a year.

This is about a hundred times more than the gains from tariff reduction in our most comprehensive trade liberalization agreements, such as the one that established the WTO five years ago. Huge savings could also be achieved by introducing international competition to the practice of accountants, lawyers, economists, and other professionals. But it is unlikely to happen, because these professionals -- unlike the majority of the US labor force -- have enough political clout to protect themselves from international competition.

This Economist article is well-reasoned. But it ignores the underlying fact that globalization means the increasing freedom of movement of capital without complementing freedom of movement of labour, has led to a massive democratic imbalance in the world.

This is because Corporations have lobbyists and expense accounts whereas poor people can only throw rocks.

Corporations prosper while working people are denied freedome of migration and emigration and suffer and end up rotting in huge unemployed pockets of poverty. This is not right and leads to the kind of tensions that I see expressed as fundamentalism in Muslim countries and riots by rich Western kids in Genoa.

Apparently, "unbridled laissez-faire" has got us into this predicament. Maybe it's time to restructure international trade to prevent plunging so many countries into IMF misery?

This is not unprecedented. Before World War One the global economy was very tightly knited together. Unfortunately, this imperial, colonialist and racist system massively benefitted certain countries at the expense of others. What we call today's "laissez-faire" is in fact nothing of the kind but a complex regulatory system designed to perpetuate Western Hegemony.

I benefit greatly from this, getting to eat candies when I want and buy cheap shoes at Payless. But if I had to settle for less candies and knew this was in some way reducing the risk of a suicidal airliner dropping on my head then I'm all for it.

Maybe it's time for a Tobin Tax? Make all those currency speculators produce something worthwhile from their mindless machinations. Donate the proceeds to developing world educational programs....

"Globalisation is a great force for good. But neither governments nor businesses, Clive Crook argues, can be trusted to make the case... Far from being the greatest cause of poverty, globalisation is the only feasible cure "

There was an article in The Economist claiming that terrorist nuclear attacks are a serious threat. After Sept.11, this seems worryingly plausible. If this happens, it will make Sept.11 look like "small beer" as the French say.

Of all the reading I did on the terrorist attacks, there were only two articles that I thought did a genuinely good job. One of them was in Newsweek. I was surprised about this; the article, though, was written by a new editor, who seems to be good. So maybe Newsweek is changing.

(The other good article was, incredibly, a Slashdot comment.)

The article is here, but only if you have a subscription to The Economist. You can get the >60% academic discount by subscribing here.

Oddly, the subscription form doesn't ask if you're a student. Apparently, as far as The Economist is concerned, it's all academic.

For those of you with Economist subscriptions, you can view the article online (for free) here to avoid having to search through your printed issue.

For those without Economist subscriptions, you can either buy access for $2.95 to this article, pay $4.95 for a week of access to the online archives, or buy a subscription...FWIW it's the only magazine I still subscribe to in printed form, as it's the only one still worth my money (Rolling Stone and Newsweek having long since become virtually worthless).

That's because you spelled "Slovenia" wrong. When you search for its correct spelling, the article referred to comes up. But a subscription to the printed version of the magazine is required to view it freely. It's here.

FWIW, all articles from the print version of the Economist are available online.

On the Economist site searches for "Solvenia" or "e-government" give no results. Maybe this article was from the printed version.

Well, This Economist article argues that manned spaceflight is a boondoggle. The basic idea is that there's never been any benefit from putting men where machines are better suited to go. I tend to disagree, but its important to remember that the shuttle is now a 30 year old piece of technology. They're the DeHaviland Comet (the first jet airliner) of space vehicles. Its time to make a 777 to replace those guys, venerable though they are. They just aren't efficient, and they don't make as much sense as they used to. If privatization is the way to go, then that would be OK by me.

As for the loss of US prestige and vision, well, we aren't making Hoover Dams any more either. We found out that they were destroying the environment and Glenn Canyon was the last such dam. Those building projects were from an era gone past, but despite the fact that that era was past, America had not run out of tricks. As Lake Powell, the lake which has drowned Glenn Canyon, was filling with water, marking the last gasp of the big government construction projects, we were putting men on the moon for the first time. And even as we were reaching the pinnacle of our space flight technology between 1969 and 1980, when the Shuttle program was really getting going, other men were working quietly behind the scenes trying out this silly little idea to create a nationwide network of computers.

If the US does drop the manned space program, would that not put more impetus into the X-prize? NASA's monopoly on American space resources might be due for phasing out. Let NASA go to an oversight role. Let real people get out there and take risks on the final frontier.

It may turn out that this is a bad idea, but the reason will be a technical one, not because of lost pride or enterprising spirit. I think America still has plenty of both.

In this weeks issue of the Economist, there's an article about the departure of some heads of NASA: The search for intelligent life at NASA.
The story is basically that NASA, or the world, doesn't need the ISS, and that the money spent on keeping it there should be used on unmanned missions to various places. Economist goes as far to claim that there is no reason for men to be in space, and that all can be done by machines at a fraction of the cost and with more reliability.

Bye

Economist has a new survey with a "Near Future" topic where they discuss what the corporations are changing into, among other stuff.

JonKatz has an axe to grind; The Economist doesn't. JonKatz will certainly feed your paranoia that the big bad multinationals are out to get you, The Economist will provide a fairer, ballanced set of information.

An additional problem for Sun is with workstations, where Linux seems to be making headway against Solaris (whether on a SPARC or on a high-end PC).

Right now, Sun is in good financial shape, with lots of cash and revenues. As the above shows, though, in the long run, Linux could threaten Sun's survival.

An additional problem for Sun is with workstations, where Linux seems to be making headway against Solaris (whether on a SPARC or on a high-end PC).

Right now, Sun is in good financial shape, with lots of cash and revenues. As the above shows, though, in the long run, Linux could threaten Sun's survival.

Let's get real. A subscription that only removes ads will not be interesting to anyone. The kind of subscription that is interesting is subscription that adds content. Take for example The Economist where many of the interesting articles are reserved for subscribed users. I'm sure that they get a lot of subscriptions. But it would be hard for Slashdot to reserve content to registered users (and nobody here would like it). So my point is that Slashdot should add content/services to registered users, not remove it from unregistered users.

hmmm... *thinking*

I KNOW! SELL KARMA!

I never used to care, but WinXP really pisses me off and I'd love to see M$ get reamed right now.

A lot of people are having this reaction, for obvious reasons, including quite a few diehard Windows-only users that I know. Some of them are IT managers, too.

I think if there's ever a big movement to desktop Linux, it'll happen in the corporate world first, not amongst retail/home users. IT managers can, to some extent, dictate what their users run. In my experience, what stops even Linux-friendly IT managers from switching to Linux on the desktop in their companies is the perceived user dependence on, or familiarity with, MS Office etc. The install program is not much of a concern in this environment.

BTW, if you want a good explanation of why we all hate Microsoft so much more now than we once might have, I noticed this in the Economist article referenced in another /. article today:

When Microsoft launched Windows 95 in mid-1995, it had annual revenues of about $6 billion. The blockbuster program drove sales up by almost 50% in the following fiscal year--a feat that Windows XP is unlikely to repeat, given that group revenues are now $25.3 billion.

After September 11th, while every other media source was running the usual watered down stories presenting simplistic views of the situation (everything from the geopolitics of the situation to any possible bioterror threat), the Economist has been consistently running articles examining the situation in depth [economist.com] and not trying to present its readers with some beautified and doctored picture of what's really going on to give people a warm fuzzy fealing inside or capitalise on the shock-value *cough*CNN*cough*.

And you know what? It's nice having a publication which doesn't treat you like an idiot or a child. Or one which isn't 90% adverts. Or only tells you what you want to hear.

You can bash Microsoft, but you don't bash The Economist. :)

The Economist happens to be one of the most trusted publications around; they have a well-deserved repuation for being right. You can pretty much guarentee that any article by them is well researched and as accurate as they come.

To be brutally frank, the kind of articles you find in the Economist [economist.com] are far beyond what you typically read on /. in terms of complexity, subtlety and breadth of vision, without the usual journalistic bias and bullsh*t you find in a lot of other places - particularly online.

What I find most ironic about the Economist is they usually do a lot better job at picking the important (tech) stuff [economist.com] than most of the tech publications; best of all - they've usually picked it out months before it's mostly ignored by the likes of Wired.

After September 11th, while every other media source was running the usual watered down stories presenting simplistic views of the situation (everything from the geopolitics of the situation to any possible bioterror threat), the Economist has been consistently running articles examining the situation in depth [economist.com] and not trying to present its readers with some beautified and doctored picture of what's really going on to give people a warm fuzzy fealing inside or capitalise on the shock-value *cough*CNN*cough*.

And you know what? It's nice having a publication which doesn't treat you like an idiot or a child. Or one which isn't 90% adverts. Or only tells you what you want to hear.

You can bash Microsoft, but you don't bash The Economist. :)

The Economist happens to be one of the most trusted publications around; they have a well-deserved repuation for being right. You can pretty much guarentee that any article by them is well researched and as accurate as they come.

To be brutally frank, the kind of articles you find in the Economist [economist.com] are far beyond what you typically read on /. in terms of complexity, subtlety and breadth of vision, without the usual journalistic bias and bullsh*t you find in a lot of other places - particularly online.

What I find most ironic about the Economist is they usually do a lot better job at picking the important (tech) stuff [economist.com] than most of the tech publications; best of all - they've usually picked it out months before it's mostly ignored by the likes of Wired.

After September 11th, while every other media source was running the usual watered down stories presenting simplistic views of the situation (everything from the geopolitics of the situation to any possible bioterror threat), the Economist has been consistently running articles examining the situation in depth [economist.com] and not trying to present its readers with some beautified and doctored picture of what's really going on to give people a warm fuzzy fealing inside or capitalise on the shock-value *cough*CNN*cough*.

And you know what? It's nice having a publication which doesn't treat you like an idiot or a child. Or one which isn't 90% adverts. Or only tells you what you want to hear.

You can bash Microsoft, but you don't bash The Economist. :)

The Economist happens to be one of the most trusted publications around; they have a well-deserved repuation for being right. You can pretty much guarentee that any article by them is well researched and as accurate as they come.

To be brutally frank, the kind of articles you find in the Economist [economist.com] are far beyond what you typically read on /. in terms of complexity, subtlety and breadth of vision, without the usual journalistic bias and bullsh*t you find in a lot of other places - particularly online.

What I find most ironic about the Economist is they usually do a lot better job at picking the important (tech) stuff [economist.com] than most of the tech publications; best of all - they've usually picked it out months before it's mostly ignored by the likes of Wired.

Meanwhile Microsoft is speeding ahead with .NET, an ambitious project to create an alternative platform for online applications (a sort of Windows for the Internet). But the company's strategies for both .NET and Windows XP, Microsoft's newly released operating system, show heavy-handed tactics. Microsoft is also gearing up for battle against foes as diverse as open-source software and America Online. (Emphasis added)

Perhaps you should check your facts before slandering Uzbekistan. According to the Economist: "UN officials believe that 2,800 tonnes of opium, convertible into 280 tonnes of heroin, is in the hands of the Taliban, the al-Qaeda network of militant Islamists, and other Afghan and Pakistani drug lords" and "the current food shortage partly reflects a conscious decision by the regime to promote the cultivation of opium rather than wheat."

The economist is running an article about a anthrax detector at http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm? Story_ID=821937.

"A better solution would be to screen on the spot. And technology to do this is now available. It uses a test strip, costing $20, that looks like a pregnancy-detection kit."

May be useful it you (or your employer) regularly do(es) things to piss people off so much that they'd want to kill you....

Is anyone else out there sick of talking about 802.11b ( and 802.11a ) ?
It talks way too long to say. It needs a better name. In an interesting section on the wireless internet at The Economist they suggest the name Wi-Fi, which stands for Wireless fidelity or some such silliness. How do people feel about this? Personally as silly as the definition seems to be it seems better than talking of 802.11b. Also, is anyone using this name ?

SIR - You correctly identify one of the key challenges for governments in dealing with the threat of terrorism--how to respond to the terrible crime against humanity committed on September 11th without undermining the very freedoms and liberties that the terrorists sought to destroy ("Liberty v security", September 29th). The attack was against more than just buildings and people. It was an attack against fundamental values that now, more than ever, need to be protected and reinforced.

However, in asserting that civil libertarians need to accept a balance between security and liberty, you underestimate the true balance already built into the human-rights system. The drafters of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and similar provisions in other documents such as the European Convention on Human Rights, may not have anticipated the horrific events of September 11th but they did provide for them. Existing human-rights law addresses the issue of competing values and allows some limitation of certain rights to respond to pressing public or social needs, but not so as to jeopardise the essence of the rights concerned.

In the past, the need to oppose terrorism has sometimes been used to justify unacceptable actions by states. I endorse Colin Powell's reported comments to the effect that global action against terrorism does not constitute a licence to violate human rights. Not only can the eradication of terrorism and the defence of our most cherished values be pursued simultaneously, indeed they must.

--Mary Robinson, UN high commissioner for human rights, Geneva

I gave an example of pencils being banned. I told how the sanctions inspectors have repeatedly quit in disgust at the humanitarian misery they cause. I cited a UN report which concluded that sanctions caused the deaths of half a million children. You ignore all this and you provide nothing to support your claims.

One poster (in another thread) cited the relative success of the Kurdish (northern) part of Iraq, which is not under Saddam's control. He claimed this showed that it was Saddam, not sanctions, that caused the bulk of the misery. This is misleading, but at least the poster gave a reason and a reference.

I know of three reasons for Kurdish Iraq to be richer than the rest of Iraq. First, Kurdish Iraq gets about 40% more money, per person, from the UN than non-Kurdish Iraq. Second, Kurdish Iraq controls the flow of contraband between Iraq and Turkey, skimming off up to $1 million/day. Third, Kurdish Iraqi agriculture, being rain-fed, does not rely on the crumbled irrigation network (unrestored due to sanctions). For more details, see here and here.

I gave an example of pencils being banned. I told how the sanctions inspectors have repeatedly quit in disgust at the humanitarian misery they cause. I cited a UN report which concluded that sanctions caused the deaths of half a million children. You ignore all this and you provide nothing to support your claims.

One poster (in another thread) cited the relative success of the Kurdish (northern) part of Iraq, which is not under Saddam's control. He claimed this showed that it was Saddam, not sanctions, that caused the bulk of the misery. This is misleading, but at least the poster gave a reason and a reference.

I know of three reasons for Kurdish Iraq to be richer than the rest of Iraq. First, Kurdish Iraq gets about 40% more money, per person, from the UN than non-Kurdish Iraq. Second, Kurdish Iraq controls the flow of contraband between Iraq and Turkey, skimming off up to $1 million/day. Third, Kurdish Iraqi agriculture, being rain-fed, does not rely on the crumbled irrigation network (unrestored due to sanctions). For more details, see here and here.

To begin with, it is arguably good that this happened. The West is wide open to suicidal terrorist attacks, and if there were ever such an attack with a nuclear bomb, things would be a lot worse. Many people have been warning about this for some time. Now at least some preventative measures will be taken, and the risks will be reduced. Nuclear bombs are actually trivial to make if you have weapons-grade uranium (still a large "if"); so the risk is significant. Bin Laden has been trying to arm himself with nukes for years.

If we want to understand what happened, we should ask what the terrorists' motivations were for attacking. The terrorists seem to hate America for its actions against Muslims in Palestine and Iraq (see below), and Islam teaches that Muslims should aid other Muslims. So, what have been America's actions?

The Palestinians have been brutalized by the Israelis. Consider that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that rarely had a people been in so obvious need of international protection--last November, after seeing children whose eyes had been blown out by Israeli bullets and watching 40000 Palestinians kept under curfew so that 235 Israelis could go about their business (in Hebron). The Palestinians have repeatedly asked for international observers, but always had this blocked by Israel and America. Palestinians have long been tortured in Israel (this is government- sanctioned). The recent UN report headed by American ex-senator Mitchell made various recommendations, which were entirely accepted by the Palestinian Authority and rejected by Israel. Basically all other independent reports conclude that the Palestinians are treated abominably, including severe economic deprivations. (This is not to say that Israel does not have valid security concerns or grievances against Palestinians.)

Israel can only act this way because of American support. Indeed, America supplies advanced arms, gives Israel's six million citizens billions each year, and is often virtually the sole supporter of Israel in UN discussions-- such as discussions about Israel's violations of UN resolutions. So America is an accomplice. Even the British Foreign Secretary has now acknowledged that "One of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in [the Middle East] feel at events over the years in Palestine."

Some people have claimed that Bill Clinton tried to achieve peace, and so America should not be held to blame. But Israel only exists because of American support. And America, under Clinton, did not use this power. Under Bush Sr., things were different: Bush Sr. threatened to withhold $10 billion in loans (strictly, loan guarantees), if Israel remained brutal. This worked, and led to a viable peace process. The process could have remained on track if America had forced Israel to keep it signed word.

In Iraq, American-dictated sanctions ban anything that could conceivably be used for the military. For example, pencils contain carbon and carbon is often used in nuclear reactors; so pencils were banned. The sanctions are horrid. The sanctions regime is always supervised by a non-American (for political/PR reasons), and the supervisors have always quit in disgust after about a year, which says a lot. Iraq's infrastructure and economy are being crushed, at enormous cost. For example, according to UN estimates, the sanctions have resulted in the death of half a million children under five. (None of his is to suggest that Saddam is undeserving of a very tight leash, nor that this could be applied without the people suffering significantly.)

What does bin Laden say? Even if he was not directly involved in the attacks (which seems unlikely), he is a leading member of the terrorist network; so his words very probably count for something. And in the past he seems to have spoken more or less honestly about his intentions. Moreover, his words have motivated those who carried out the attacks. In a 1999 interview, he said he wanted to instigate "... jihad against the Jews and the Americans" and, citing the sanctions against Iraq, he added, "Our enemy is the crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel." And in 1998, he and four others signed the World Islamic Front Statement, which advocates killing Americans for three reasons: America's support of Israel, America's killing of over a million Iraqis (a figure consistent with UN estimates), and America's stationing its armed forces in the Arabian peninsula. Regarding the third reason, the complaint seems to be partly that America is using the peninsula as a base for aggression against Iraq--i.e. the second and third reasons are closely related--and partly that Muslims consider the peninsula holy and many do not want non-Muslims permanently residing there. (Bin Laden is Saudi Arabian, and first became a terrorist mainly for the third reason. Later, he drew many followers, and the other reasons became prime.)

So, this is not an attack on democracy and freedom per se, as George Bush claims. Nor is it a culture-based "clash of civilizations", as some commentators have tried to claim (alluding to a 1993 essay by Samuel Huntington). Nor is it an attack based on spiteful envy of American wealth and military might, as some others have groundlessly assumed. This is an attack by Muslim fanatics on non-Muslims who have been brutalizing Muslims.

(Some people point out that Muslims sometimes also brutalize other Muslims. This is true: any group of people will have internal conflicts, sometimes very severe--as here--but still often pull together when attacked from outside. This is generally true of families, for example. It is also true of Americans--as this September has shown. It is something to be proud of.)

The terrorist attacks appear to have opened an enormous well-spring of Muslim anti-American feelings. Muslim demonstrations against America have been widely reported. The demonstrators, though, have generally said that they are against the terrorist attacks. But they, and a great many other Muslims, share the hatred felt by the terrorists, for the reasons given above.

Many Americans seem greatly confused by widespread Muslim hatred. To them, the claim that America desires to control the world is ludicrous. Especially since the end of the Cold War, America has tended to interfere in the affairs of other countries only under extreme circumstances. The Balkans is a good example--where Europe fretted fecklessly while tens of thousands were killed or raped. Almost all Americans simply want the world to develop in peace and prosperity--and, incredibly, they ask for nothing in return despite being the world's greatest guarantor of this. But, for many Muslims, it does not look that way. America helps a state with which it is friendly--Israel--and tries to squash a state that is very threatening and sinister--Iraq--and it ends up looking imperialistic.

Regarding the terrorists' motivations, it is interesting to compare the reports given by American and British mass media. Broadly, the American media has portrayed the terrorists as crazies who are against economic modernization and Western culture. Broadly, the British media tends to say that the terrorists are at least rational and that America partly inspired the hatred that they feel by its support of Israel. (Of course British media still strongly condemn the attacks and support the American people.)

Britain has not really supported America's actions in Israel/Palestine. In fact, the previous Foreign Secretary (Robin Cook) was fired in part because he was too blatant in his support for Palestinians. But Britain has--almost alone (to my knowledge)--both aided and supported America's actions against Iraq. The British media thus cites the main Muslim grievance in which Britain is blameless and largely ignores the other. The American media ignores both. Even considering some criticism is unacceptable, it seems.

The media made a lot of sacrifices when the terrorists struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising were lost as commercials were pulled from TV to make way for more news. And it was clear that many commentators very much had their hearts in their work. I still believe, however, that the media has done a disservice to people by failing to present the terrorists' true motivations--even if they disagreed with them.

The big question now is what can/will be done to make things safer. Despite all the hype, suicide bombers are rare. But, there are about a billion Muslims in the world; so even if only one in a 100000 becomes a bomber, that's 10000 overall. More people will now want to become bombers, though, for three reasons: the success of the attacks on America, the hero status often accorded suicide bombers (in Palestine as well), and the continuing despair that many Muslims feel about the plight of Palestinians and Iraqis.

One obvious way to increase Western safety is to inspire less hatred and give Muslims some hope for a better future. It was the crushing of hope by Israel that led to the recent spate of suicide bombers there. America is plainly well aware of this. Thus, although in the first week Israeli PM Sharon was stating that he still wanted to conquer the Palestinians, on September 18th he did an about-face--obviously under great American pressure. Real peace needs to be brought to Palestine. Arafat wants it, but with land; Sharon only wants victory, but might give in; and there are extremists in both Palestine and Israel who will try hard to derail peace. So lasting peace will hard to get, but maybe ... maybe. As for Iraq actions, this is under American control; so sanctions should ease rapidly ... maybe.

In addition to these diplomatic efforts, there is going to be a military effort. The one purely-American purely-military option that I've seen that might potentially do something is to nuke Afghanistan. This would be politically very difficult. It would also inspire so much hatred in the Muslim world that for each terrorist killed, several more would be spawned.

Some people have suggested heavy (non-nuclear) bombing of Afghanistan, to force the Taliban into expelling the terrorists. There are no substantial military or political targets, however, and the Afghan economy is now virtually nonexistent, thanks to international sanctions and an extended drought. The UN estimates that by November (after snow starts falling), over five million Afghans will be dependent on food aid--out of a population of 20 million. So if the objective is to crush Afghans economically, stopping food aid would do more than any bombs. In fact, this is now happening, as relief agencies flee the country out of fear of military action. Actual bombing seems pointless, then, except perhaps as PR. Will a famine (induced by bombing or threat thereof) compel the Taliban into expelling the terrorists? This is dubious: the Taliban apparently shelter the terrorists because of an Islamic custom--if someone seeks refuge in your tribe, you have to protect him, regardless of the cost (the Taliban actually have little interest in the world outside Afghanistan.) Inducing a famine is also risky: if a million die, it will fuel more Muslim hatred. Would it be moral? You decide.

Some commentators have suggested that a large-scale military operation against Afghanistan might trigger so much popular anger that it destabilises some other Muslim countries. I cannot comment on this, but it should be clear, in any case, that such operations will do vastly more harm than good. Most senior people in the American government now apparently agree.

There has been much discussion about sending special forces into Afghanistan (likely supported by small-scale bombing). This requires intelligence on where the terrorists are hiding. Indeed, by now many of the terrorists will be dispersed among the population: good intelligence from the ground is essential for successful special-forces action against them. America apparently does not have this intelligence itself. It might try to bludgeon the ruling Taliban into supplying such intelligence, but it is very unlikely that the Taliban could be relied upon to act in good faith, if they acted.

The Taliban, however, are very close with Pakistan (see below). So if America were to work with Pakistan for intelligence, it might get somewhere. The president of Pakistan has pledged full support, but this might mean little. The support has to come from the people on the ground, and there have been many demonstrations in Pakistan against helping America. I know of three reasons for these demonstrations. First, Pakistanis are Muslims (95%) and they blame America for what is happening to Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. Second, they don't like being bullied by Westerners generally. The third reason is more involved; briefly, it's as follows.

The current border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is actually just a line of control (the Durand line), from a treaty that expired about five years ago. It was never clear what was to happen when the treaty expired: likely Pashtoonistan--an area overlapping both Pakistan and Afghanistan--was to be made into a state. The Pashtoon people make up nearly half of all Afghans, and they control Afghanistan; so likely Pashtoonistan and Afghanistan would become one. The effect would thus be to have Pakistan cede territory to Afghanistan. (A rough analogy might be how Britain ceded Hong Kong to China after the expiration of a 100-year treaty/lease. The Durand treaty was drawn up in the 1890s, when Pakistan was still a part of India.)

Pakistanis, especially in the military, are very reluctant to cede a large part of their country to Afghanistan. That's why Pakistan created the Taliban. The Taliban were given both military and religious training in Pakistan. They also got lots of arms and money from Pakistan, which is why they were able to conquer (most of) Afghanistan. They were largely controlled by Pakistan, though. And under Pakistani control, they did not force the issue of Pashtoonistan. (Lately, Pakistani control has weakened.) Additionally, having some Afghan territory partially under its control gave Pakistan some extra security from the threat of neighbouring India.

America has addressed this by telling Pakistan that unless it helps, America might rid Pakistan of its nuclear installations and support India militarily: in effect, saying that Pakistan would be liable to lose a majority of its territory (to India) rather than a minority (to Afghanistan). The president of Pakistan has made a televised speech warning people "bad results could put in danger our territorial integrity." This should help to focus the minds of those in the military, especially since Pakistan has a military government. Yet, it has had little effect on the populace, who are more motivated by sympathy for fellow Muslims. Will the low-ranking Pakistani soldiers on the ground go along and will they get enough intelligence from Afghanistan with little help from the populace?

My guess is that Pakistan will pretend to go along, and perhaps even help find a way to get bin Laden--which is good for PR, but not for really eradicating the terrorist network. Maybe America will eventually help to formalize Pakistan's borders, which would facilitate greater Pakistani support. I have not, however, seen this discussed publicly.

There also seems to be a common view that the Taliban should be removed from government. Indeed, it would be very difficult to eradicate the terrorist network without doing this. One approach would be to strongly support the anti-Taliban forces that currently control under 10% of (northern) Afghanistan. (This support might include bombing, but only on a small scale.) Starved of external military support, the Taliban should crumble quickly. A complicating factor is that any large military campaign in the Afghan winter is very difficult, and winter arrives in about October. Most likely, though, all this will be unnecessary: the Taliban should fall on their own, now that they are no longer propped up by Pakistan. What is in any case important is to avoid making it seem that this is American imperialism, which would unite the populace and draw wide Muslim anger.

The military action, whatever form it takes, will make it difficult for the terrorists to train or actively maintain their network in Afghanistan. Capturing many terrorists, though, seems unrealistic. The threatened mass bombing has made this even more difficult, since many Afghans have fled population centres for safety: there seems no good way to find a terrorist, who looks and acts ordinary, in their midst. If the Taliban are removed from government, though, perhaps more Afghans would then supply intelligence.

There is also a lot of detective work underway. Within America, and some other countries, this seems to be on track for some success, for identifying terrorists and also for hindering their financing. There appear to be many suicidal Islamic terrorists in the network that attacked America, though. Estimates are rough, but there could be several hundred who have deeply infiltrated the West. As an example, one of the highjackers had spent several years in Germany getting a technical degree. The network has supposedly spread to roughly 40 countries, which will hinder tracing it. Also, there is no real command structure: there is only a network (like the Internet is a network) with some people more influential than others; so even if someone like bin Laden is caught, the network would hardly be eradicated (a bit like taking out a few major nodes of the Internet would do little). Tracing the network is thus going to take a long effort, but should succeed.

Diplomatic, military, and detective efforts could also be supplemented with religious efforts, though I have not seen this discussed much. Bin Laden has claimed that he is instigating a jihad. Jihads were fought many centuries ago, against the crusaders. The jihad concept was then largely forgotten. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA looked for ways to help motivate the Afghans to fight (this was during the Cold War; so the CIA was arguably justified). One of they ways the CIA came up with was the revival of the long-abandoned notion of jihad. It worked (although the defining event in the Afghan-Soviet war was probably America's decision to supply the Afghans with shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles).

The Koran, though, teaches that a jihad should not harm women and children. And bin Laden himself said (in 1999) that "God ... has prohibited the killing of women and children unless the women are active fighters." Fighting the Soviet army fits with this. Crashing planes into the World Trade Center does not. Of course, religious fanatics can twist anything ("America is a democracy; so the people are directly responsible for what their government does; so the women killed in the World Trade Center were active fighters."-- maybe?). But I believe that it should be possible to use the Koran, and perhaps even Muslim clerics, to motivate Afghans against the terrorists.

What are the overall conclusions? In the short term, there is small, but real, risk of another terrorist assault, against America or perhaps Britain (or Israel). In the medium term, the terrorist network will be attacked and largely eradicated, and America's resolve will make all countries very hesitant about sponsoring other terrorist networks. Additionally, there will be widespread, permanent, increases in security measures and both domestic and international intelligence operations. Individual terrorist incidents, however, do not require a sophisticated network or large resources (remember Oklahoma City). It is not realistic to expect to be able to prevent them all. In the long term, then, we also need to lessen the causes of Muslim grievances, even if it means facing up to our past mistakes.

Douglas J. Keenan

Some sources:
The 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden-- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tra nscript_binladen1_990110.html
The 1998 World Islamic Front Statement-- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatw a.htm
Some insights into Afghanistan-- http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/in dex.html
The home page of the Palestinian Authority, with many more related links-- http://www.pna.gov.ps/
Links to insightful news stories on Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, etc.-- http://www.economist.com/countries/
A UNICEF news release on child mortality in Iraq-- http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm
A BBC report entitled "Explaining Arab Anger" [September 19th]-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east /newsid_1552000/1552900.stm

Those about to invest in iris-scanning security technology will be disappointed to learn of recent developments in the treatment of glaucoma.... Prostaglandin analogues are rapidly gaining popularity in the treatment of this blinding eye condition that affects 1% of the population. An innocuous side-effect of this drug is to cause a change in both iris colour (a darkening) and morphology. This change in susceptible people, usually Europeans, occurs over one to two years. Apart from rendering iris scanning potentially useless for these people, unscrupulous types without glaucoma may be tempted to use the drugs to "change" identity.

--Simon Longstaff, Consultant ophthalmic surgeon, Sheffield

To begin with, it is arguably good that this happened. The West is wide open to suicidal terrorist attacks, and if there were ever such an attack with a nuclear bomb, things would be a lot worse. Many people have been warning about this for some time. Now at least some preventative measures will be taken, and the risks will be reduced. Nuclear bombs are actually trivial to make if you have weapons-grade uranium (still a large "if"); so the risk is significant. Bin Laden has been trying to arm himself with nukes for years.

If we want to understand what happened, we should ask what the terrorists' motivations were for attacking. The terrorists say that they hate America for its actions against Muslims in Palestine and Iraq, and Islam teaches that Muslims should aid other Muslims. So, what have been America's actions?

The Palestinians have been brutalized by the Israelis. Consider that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that rarely had a people been in so obvious need of international protection--last November, after seeing children whose eyes had been blown out by Israeli bullets and watching 40000 Palestinians kept under curfew so that 235 Israelis could go about their business (in Hebron). The Palestinians have repeatedly asked for international observers, but always had this blocked by Israel and America. Palestinians have long been tortured in Israel (this is government- sanctioned). The recent UN report headed by American ex-senator Mitchell made various recommendations, which were entirely accepted by the Palestinian Authority and rejected by Israel. Basically all other independent reports conclude that the Palestinians are treated abominably, including severe economic deprivations. (This is not to say that Israel does not have valid security concerns or grievances against Palestinians.)

Israel can only act this way because of American support. Indeed, America supplies advanced arms, gives Israel's six million citizens billions each year, and is often virtually the sole supporter of Israel in UN discussions-- such as discussions about Israel's violations of UN resolutions. So America is an accomplice. Even the British Foreign Secretary has now acknowledged that "One of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in [the Middle East] feel at events over the years in Palestine."

Some people have claimed that Bill Clinton tried to achieve peace, and so America should not be held to blame. But Israel only exists because of American support. And America, under Clinton, did not use this power. Under Bush Sr., things were different: Bush Sr. threatened to withhold $10 billion in loans (strictly, loan guarantees), if Israel remained brutal. This worked: the Oslo peace process. The process could have remained on track if America had decided to force Israel to keep it signed word.

In Iraq, American-dictated sanctions ban anything that could conceivably be used for the military. For example, pencils contain carbon and carbon is often used in nuclear reactors; so pencils were banned. The sanctions are horrid. The sanctions regime is always supervised by a non-American (for political/PR reasons), and the supervisors have always quit in disgust after about a year, which says a lot. Iraq's infrastructure and economy are being crushed, at enormous cost. For example, according to UN estimates, the sanctions have resulted in the death of half a million children under five. (None of his is to suggest that Saddam is undeserving of a very tight leash, nor that this could be applied without the people suffering significantly.)

What does bin Laden say? Even if he was not directly involved in the attacks (which seems unlikely), he is a leading member of the terrorist network; so his words very probably count for something. And in the past he seems to have spoken more or less honestly about his intentions. In a 1999 interview, he said he wanted to instigate "... jihad against the Jews and the Americans" and, citing the sanctions against Iraq, he added, "Our enemy is the crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel." And in 1998, he and four others signed the World Islamic Front Statement, which advocates killing Americans for three reasons: America's support of Israel, America's killing of over a million Iraqis (a figure consistent with UN estimates), and America's stationing its armed forces in the Arabian peninsula. Regarding the third reason, the main complaint seems to be that America is using the peninsula as a base for aggression against Iraq--i.e. the second and third reasons are closely related--though it is also true that Muslims consider the peninsula holy and many do not want non-Muslims permanently residing there.

The leader of the Taliban has also said why America was attacked: because America's cruel foreign policies perpetrated atrocities in Muslim countries.

So, this is not an attack on democracy and freedom per se, as George Bush claims. Nor is it a culture-based "clash of civilizations", as some commentators have tried to claim (alluding to a 1993 essay by Samuel Huntington). Nor is it an attack based on spiteful envy of American might, as some others have claimed. This is an attack by Muslim fanatics on non-Muslims who have been brutalizing Muslims. Many Muslims around the world have stated that they share the hatred felt by the terrorists, for the reasons given above, even if they strongly condemn the terrorist attacks.

(Some people point out that Muslims sometimes also brutalize other Muslims. This is true. Any group of people will have internal conflicts, occasionally very severe--as here--but still often pull together when attacked from outside. This is generally true of families, for example. It is also true of Americans--as this month has shown. It is something to be proud of.)

The terrorist attacks appear to have opened an enormous well-spring of Muslim anti-American feelings. Muslim demonstrations against America have been widely reported--even though demonstrators, when interviewed, have said they are against the terrorist attacks. In Indonesia (85% Muslim), gangs of extremists have been going into hotels searching for Americans.

Many Americans seem greatly confused by widespread Muslim hatred. To them, the claim that America desires to control the world is ludicrous. Especially since the end of the Cold War, America has tended to interfere in the affairs of other countries only under extreme circumstances. The Balkans is the prime example--where Europe fretted fecklessly while tens of thousands were killed or raped. Almost all Americans simply want the world to develop in peace and prosperity--and, incredibly, they ask for nothing in return despite being the world's greatest guarantor of this. But, for Muslims, it does not look that way. America helps a state with which it is friendly--Israel--and tries to squash a state that is very threatening and sinister--Iraq--and it ends up looking imperialistic.

Regarding the terrorists' motivations, it is interesting to compare the reports given by American and British mass media. I've spent many hours watching CNN and BBC World, and looked at several major newspapers in both America and Britain. Broadly, the American media has portrayed the terrorists as crazies who are against economic modernization and Western culture. Broadly, the British media tends to say that the terrorists are at least rational and that America inspired the hatred that they feel by its support of Israel. (Of course British media still condemn the attacks.)

Britain has not really supported America's actions in Israel/Palestine. In fact, the previous Foreign Secretary (Robin Cook) was fired in part because he was too blatant in his support for Palestinians. But Britain has--almost alone (to my knowledge)--both aided and supported America's actions against Iraq. The British media thus cites the main Muslim grievance in which Britain is blameless and largely ignores the other. The American media ignores both. Even considering some criticism is unacceptable, it seems.

The media made a lot of sacrifices when the terrorists struck. Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising were lost as commercials were pulled from TV to make way for more news. And it was clear that many commentators very much had their hearts in their work. I still believe, however, that the media has done a disservice to people by failing to present the terrorists' true motivations--even if they disagreed with them.

The big question now is what can/will be done to make things safer. Despite all the hype, suicide bombers are rare. But, there are about a billion Muslims in the world; so even if only one in a 100000 becomes a bomber, that's 10000 overall. More people will now want to become bombers, though, for three reasons: the success of the attacks on America, the hero status often accorded suicide bombers (in Palestine as well), and the continuing despair that many Muslims feel about the plight of Palestinians and Iraqis.

One obvious way to increase Western safety is to inspire less hatred and give Muslims some hope for a better future. It was the crushing of hope by Israel that led to the recent spate of suicide bombers there. America is plainly well aware of this. Thus, although in the first week Israeli PM Sharon was stating that he still wanted to conquer the Palestinians, on September 18th he did an about-face--obviously under great American pressure. Real peace needs to be brought to Palestine. Arafat wants it, but with land; Sharon only wants victory, but might give in; and there are extremists in both Palestine and Israel who will try hard to derail peace. So lasting peace will hard to get, but maybe ... maybe. As for Iraq actions, this is under American control; so sanctions should ease rapidly ... maybe.

In addition to these diplomatic efforts, there is going to be a military effort. The one purely-American purely-military option that I've seen that might potentially do something is to nuke Afghanistan. This would be politically very difficult. It would also inspire so much hatred in the Muslim world that for each terrorist killed, several more would be spawned. So I don't believe that America will do this. (On the other hand, Russia wants to help generally. And Russia has an enormous grudge against Afghanistan for beating it the 1980s and even more now for Afghan support of the Chechnya rebels. Russian TV has recently been reporting that Russia plans to nuke Afghanistan. I've no idea what to make of this, but suspect, or hope, that nothing will actually happen.)

Some people have suggested heavy (non-nuclear) bombing of Afghanistan, to force the Taliban into expelling the terrorists. There are no substantial military or political targets, however, and the Afghan economy is now virtually nonexistent, thanks to international sanctions and an extended drought. The UN estimates that by November (after snow starts falling), five million Afghans will be dependent on food aid--out of a population of 20 million. So if the objective is to crush the economy, simply stopping food aid would do more than any bombs. In fact, this is now happening, as relief agencies flee the country out of fear of military action. Actual bombing seems pointless, then, except perhaps as PR. Will a famine (induced by bombing or threat thereof) compel the Taliban into expelling the terrorists? This is dubious: the Taliban apparently shelter the terrorists because of an Islamic custom--if someone seeks refuge in your tribe, you have to protect him, regardless of the cost (the Taliban actually have little interest in the world outside Afghanistan.) Inducing a famine is also risky: if a million die, it will fuel more Muslim hatred. Would it be moral? You decide.

There has been much discussion about sending special forces into Afghanistan. This requires intelligence on where the terrorists are hiding. Indeed, by now many of the terrorists will be dispersed among the population: good intelligence from the ground is essential for successful special-forces action against them. America apparently does not have this intelligence itself. It might try to bludgeon the ruling Taliban into supplying such intelligence, but it is uncertain, at best, that the Taliban should be relied upon to act in good faith, if they acted.

The Taliban, however, are very close with Pakistan (see below). So if America were to work with Pakistan for intelligence, it might get somewhere. The president of Pakistan has pledged full support, but this might mean little. The support has to come from the people on the ground, and there have been many demonstrations in Pakistan against helping America. I know of three reasons for these demonstrations. First, Pakistani's are Muslims (95%) and they blame America for what is happening to Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. Second, they don't like being bullied by Westerners generally. The third reason is more involved; briefly, it's as follows.

The current border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is actually just a line of control (the Durand line), from a treaty that expired about five years ago. It was never clear what was to happen when the treaty expired: likely Pashtoonistan--an area overlapping both Pakistan and Afghanistan--was to be made into a state. The Pashtoon people make up nearly half of all Afghans, and they control Afghanistan; so likely Pashtoonistan and Afghanistan would become one. The effect would thus be to have Pakistan cede territory to Afghanistan. (A rough analogy might be how Britain ceded Hong Kong to China after the expiration of a 100-year treaty/lease. The Durand treaty was drawn up in the 1890s, when Pakistan was still a part of India.)

Pakistanis, especially in the military, are very reluctant to cede a large part of their country to Afghanistan. That's why Pakistan created the Taliban. The Taliban were given both military and religious training in Pakistan. They also got lots of arms and money from Pakistan, which is why they were able to conquer (most of) Afghanistan. They were largely controlled by Pakistan, though. And under Pakistani control, they did not force the issue of Pashtoonistan. (Lately, Pakistani control has weakened.)

America has addressed this by telling Pakistan that unless it helps, America might rid Pakistan of its nuclear installations and support India militarily: in effect, saying that Pakistan would be liable to lose a majority of its territory (to India) rather than a minority (to Afghanistan). The president of Pakistan has made a televised speech warning people "bad results could put in danger our territorial integrity." This should help to focus the minds of those in the military, especially since Pakistan has a military government. Yet, it has had little effect on the populace, who are more motivated by sympathy for fellow Muslims. Will the low-ranking Pakistani soldiers on the ground go along and will they get enough intelligence from Afghanistan with little help from the populace?

My guess is that Pakistan will pretend to go along, and perhaps even help find a way to get bin Laden--which is good for PR, but not for really eradicating the terrorist network. Maybe America will eventually help to formalize Pakistan's borders, which would facilitate greater Pakistani support. I have not, however, seen this discussed publicly.

There also seems to be a common view that the Taliban should be forcibly removed from government. The likely approach here will be to strongly support the anti-Taliban forces that currently control under 10% of (northern) Afghanistan. (This support might include bombing, but only on a small scale.) Starved of external military support, the Taliban should crumble quickly. One complicating factor is that any large military campaign in the Afghan winter is very difficult, and winter arrives in about October. What is also important is to avoid making it seem as if this is American imperialism, which would unite the populace and draw wide Muslim anger.

The military action, whatever form it takes, will make it difficult for the terrorists to train or actively maintain their network in Afghanistan. Capturing many terrorists, though, seems unrealistic. The threatened mass bombing has made this even more difficult, since many Afghans have fled population centers for safety: there seems no good way to find a terrorist, who looks and acts ordinary, in their midst. If the Taliban are removed from government, though, perhaps more Afghans would then supply intelligence.

There is also a lot of detective work underway. Within America, and some other countries, this seems to be on track for some success, for identifying terrorists and also for choking their financing. There appear to be a large number of suicidal Islamic terrorists in the network that attacked America, though. Estimates are rough, but there could be a thousand who have deeply infiltrated the West. As an example, one of the highjackers had apparently spent several years in Germany getting a technical degree. The network has supposedly spread to roughly 40 countries, which will hinder tracing it. Also, there is no real command structure: there is only a network (like the Internet is a network) with some people more influential than others; so even if someone like bin Laden is caught, the network would hardly be eradicated (a bit like taking out a few major nodes of the Internet would do little). Tracing the network is thus going to take a long effort, but should succeed.

Diplomatic, military, and detective efforts could also be supplemented with religious efforts, though I have not seen this discussed much. Bin Laden has claimed that he is instigating a jihad. Jihads were fought many centuries ago, against the crusaders. The jihad concept was then largely forgotten. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA looked for ways to help motivate the Afghans to fight (this was during the cold war; so the CIA was arguably justified). One of they ways the CIA came up with was the revival of the long-abandoned notion of jihad. It worked (although the defining event in the Afghan-Soviet war was probably America's decision to supply the Afghans with shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missiles).

The Koran, though, teaches that a jihad should not harm women and children. And bin Laden himself said (in 1999) that "God ... has prohibited the killing of women and children unless the women are active fighters." Fighting the Soviet army fits with this. Crashing planes into the World Trade Center does not. Of course, religious fanatics can twist anything ("America is a democracy; so the people are directly responsible for what their government does; so the women killed in the World Trade Center were active fighters."-- maybe?). But I believe that it should be possible to use the Koran, and perhaps even Muslim clerics, to motivate Afghans against the terrorists.

What are the overall conclusions? In the short term, there is small, but real, risk of another terrorist assault, against America or perhaps Britain (or Israel). In the medium term, the terrorist network will be attacked and largely eradicated, and America's resolve will make all countries very hesitant about sponsoring other terrorist networks. Additionally, there will be widespread, permanent, increases in security measures. Individual terrorist incidents, however, do not require a sophisticated network or large resources (remember Oklahoma City). It is not realistic to expect to be able to prevent them all. In the long term, then, we also need to lessen the causes of Muslim grievances, even if it means facing up to our past mistakes.

Some sources:
The 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden-- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tra nscript_binladen1_990110.html
The 1998 World Islamic Front Statement-- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatw a.htm
Some insights into Afghanistan-- http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/in dex.html
The home page of the Palestinian Authority, with many more related links-- http://www.pna.gov.ps/
Links to insightful news stories on Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, etc.-- http://www.economist.com/countries/
A UNICEF news release on child mortality in Iraq-- http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm
A BBC report entitled "Explaining Arab Anger" [September 19th]-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east /newsid_1552000/1552900.stm

The Econimist recently had an artical about new research in solar activity found here They mention how this sort of forcast would have been very difficult before SOHO (mentioned in the orig. post). Good ancilary reading...

Researchers are indeed working on long distance quantum cryptography. See this economist article from June this year.
Basically, a team at Los Alamos in New Mexicio are hoping to send quantum photons accross 10 Km of dessert. If that works, it shouldn't be much more difficult to send secure data to and from a satellite in orbit (since most of the 'thick air' is below 10Km, if you can get it that far, the rest of the way is fairly easy)
All this was discussed in an old slashdot thread

john

Sorry for being a carma whore:

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?s tory_id=773106

Salon
Cnet
The Economist
Washington Post
National Post (Includes trial timeline)
NY Times
Globe and Mail
and heh.. MSNBC

• To those hinting at the high costs of pharma research: recently an article in The Economist or was it in the Financial Times, none of which are particularly anti-corporate, stated that a substantial slice of pharma research, especially the most risky research in terms of return on investment (like the research into anti-AIDS medicine), is government funded.
  
• To those thinking free/cheap provision of AIDS drugs is effective:
  1. there is still no cure for AIDS. The drugs discussed just postpone for the sero-positive the outbreak of AIDS. But it disease and subsequent death remains unavoidable.
  2. subsequently, and especially if you consider the bad financial situation of many a developing country in which AIDS is sweeping entire generations (Brazil is still well of in this aspect; take a look at [South-]Africa!), SPENDING MONEY ON TEACHING SEXUALLY SAFE BEHAVIOUS AS WELL AS PROGRAMS OF FREE NEEDLE EXCHANGE FOR DRUG ADDICTS ARE THE ONLY FINANCIALLY AS WELL AS PRACTICALLY EFFECTIVE CURES!
  

  
  Drashcan

"Dr Cory says that the program for factorising large numbers [400 digits] will require about 1,000 qubits simply to store the problem. But each of these qubits will require dozens of extra qubits for error-checking. That means that a useful computer will need tens of thousands of qubits to come up with a reliable answer. At seven and counting, that goal is a long way off. "

Whether this distrust will result in the company being constrained to operate consistently with its monopoly status is - unfortunately - another matter entirely. It looks as though MS's top management has decided to construct new facts on the ground which will make current court rulings irrelevant; unfortunately the US justice system appears unable to cope with this strategy.

Whether this distrust will result in the company being constrained to operate consistently with its monopoly status is - unfortunately - another matter entirely. It looks as though MS's top management has decided to construct new facts on the ground which will make current court rulings irrelevant; unfortunately the US justice system appears unable to cope with this strategy.

Such installations are very good for customers who already have a mainframe: they save energy, floor space, and staff--and get mainframe-level reliability.

Such installations are very good for customers who already have a mainframe: they save energy, floor space, and staff--and get mainframe-level reliability.

But Dmitry did no wrong

... Mr Sklyarov, working in Russia, where, as in most countries, such things are not illegal, had written a program that circumvented some of the limits ... a piece of software ... made by Adobe Systems. His talk in Las Vegas was about the weaknesses in Adobe's software that made such tricks possible.

Mr Sklyarov did not ... [do] the kind of activity forbidden by copyright law.... But the DMCA makes it a crime merely to create the tools that can violate copyright--even if those tools have other, legitimate uses (such as the making of a copy of a book by its owner for his own "fair use").

... support for the DMCA is strong in Congress, where the entertainment industry has lobbied hard. ... at www.freesklyarov.org, the schedule for more protests is getting longer. And rightly so.

I think that citing support from The Economist would be beneficial.

But Dmitry did no wrong

... Mr Sklyarov, working in Russia, where, as in most countries, such things are not illegal, had written a program that circumvented some of the limits ... a piece of software ... made by Adobe Systems. His talk in Las Vegas was about the weaknesses in Adobe's software that made such tricks possible.

Mr Sklyarov did not ... [do] the kind of activity forbidden by copyright law.... But the DMCA makes it a crime merely to create the tools that can violate copyright--even if those tools have other, legitimate uses (such as the making of a copy of a book by its owner for his own "fair use").

... support for the DMCA is strong in Congress, where the entertainment industry has lobbied hard. ... at www.freesklyarov.org, the schedule for more protests is getting longer. And rightly so.

I think that citing support from The Economist would be beneficial.

More info about the DataGrid...

• Computing Power on tap - Economist - June 21, 2001.
• The Globus Toolkit:
• The Information Power Grid at NASA.
• The EU DataGrid

The most conspicuous victim of the war on drugs has been justice, especially in America, ...

The attack on drugs has led to an erosion of civil liberties and an encroachment of the state that alarms liberals on America's right as well as the old hippies of the left. At the Cato Institute, a right-wing think-tank in Washington, DC, Timothy Lynch is dismayed by the way the war on drugs seems to be corrupting police forces. ...

Civil liberties ... suffer because there is usually no complaining witness in a drugs case: both buyer and seller want the transaction to take place. The police, says Mr Lynch, therefore need to rely on informants, wire-taps and undercover tactics that are not normally used in other crimes. The result is "a cancer in our courtrooms", as he puts it, that proponents of America's drugs war rarely acknowledge as one of the costs of prohibition.

I'm not sure that I agree with all this, but it's an interesting perspective.

The most conspicuous victim of the war on drugs has been justice, especially in America, ...

The attack on drugs has led to an erosion of civil liberties and an encroachment of the state that alarms liberals on America's right as well as the old hippies of the left. At the Cato Institute, a right-wing think-tank in Washington, DC, Timothy Lynch is dismayed by the way the war on drugs seems to be corrupting police forces. ...

Civil liberties ... suffer because there is usually no complaining witness in a drugs case: both buyer and seller want the transaction to take place. The police, says Mr Lynch, therefore need to rely on informants, wire-taps and undercover tactics that are not normally used in other crimes. The result is "a cancer in our courtrooms", as he puts it, that proponents of America's drugs war rarely acknowledge as one of the costs of prohibition.

I'm not sure that I agree with all this, but it's an interesting perspective.

The most conspicuous victim of the war on drugs has been justice, especially in America, ...

The attack on drugs has led to an erosion of civil liberties and an encroachment of the state that alarms liberals on America's right as well as the old hippies of the left. At the Cato Institute, a right-wing think-tank in Washington, DC, Timothy Lynch is dismayed by the way the war on drugs seems to be corrupting police forces. ...

Civil liberties ... suffer because there is usually no complaining witness in a drugs case: both buyer and seller want the transaction to take place. The police, says Mr Lynch, therefore need to rely on informants, wire-taps and undercover tactics that are not normally used in other crimes. The result is "a cancer in our courtrooms", as he puts it, that proponents of America's drugs war rarely acknowledge as one of the costs of prohibition.

I'm not sure that I agree with all this, but it's an interesting perspective.

In case you come back to read replies: would an article in the Economist work for you? Try this link. Hope that works for you...

Overall I agree with the concepts, but I would like to clarify a few points. We need to convince people we know what we're talking about, which means keeping the hand waving and tongue-clucking moralizing to a minimum.

I am a degreed scientist (I'd like to know what you are)...

I am reminded of Troy McLure's famous line, "Just ask this 'science-ologist!'" Simply claiming 'I am a scientist so I know more than you' won't cut the mustard. 'Degreed scientist' is not necessarily credentials that make you even as knowledgeable as an educated layman. What kind of scientist? Computer scientists might or might not know environmental issues. The same with a psychologist, or social scientist. I, for example, am a geophysicist, who specialized in environmental work for my thesis. But even there, my thesis work was aimed more at landfill remediation, and not climate issues. Still, I have kept up with the literature, and talked now and again with guys who were doing climate work, so I probably know a little more than your average man-on-the-street.

The disparity between surface and upper air trends in no way invalidates the conclusions that surface temperature has been rising.

Well, this is true, but does this support your implication that climate change is related to anthropogenic (fancy-talk for man-made) effects? The same climate models that predict that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to warming via the greenhouse effect also predict that surface and upper-level temperatures should rise together. If the data does not support the theory, then the theory is wrong, and we need to know why. You imply in this statement that since we have one data point that supports your theory, we should ignore the one that doesn't fit.

That being said, I believe that the upper-atmospherics were based on a satelite measurements. If I recall correctly, a couple of years ago, I heard a report saying that they had figured out a slight error in the calculations they were using to calculate the temperature from whatever remote-sensing method they were using (remember, these are not direct measurements of the temperature). Once they went back and corrected for that glitch, the upper-level measurements seemed to bear out the global warming models. However, before you go quoting me on this in a letter to your senator, I'd like somebody who knows a bit more about it to back me up. I remember hearing this, but I couldn't tell you the source, and I could be wrong.

...and conservative wackos like yourself. Practice what you preach and leave science to the scientists...

Thanks! Name calling will really win people over to our side! And really, telling people not to get involved in the scientific debate, and to wait for us scientists to come tell the masses what they should do is SUCH a convincing argument!

Educate yourself... Ozone depletion (yes, it IS linked to global warming) is worsening.

Once again, if you're going to lecture people on science, get it straight. First, while it is now thought that ozone recovery will take longer than previously believed, the level of ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere has been dropping steadily since the introduction of CFC limits and the like, and the ozone layer is projected to heal itself eventually, although the rate of recovery is not yet known for certain. Second, ozone depletion is only secondarily related to global warming in that some of the ozone depleting chemicals are also greenhouse gases. However, CO2, the biggest component in most greenhouse models, is NOT an ozone depletor, and a healthy ozone layer does nothing to stop global warming. The ozone hole will effect skin cancer rates, and possibly bio-diversity (UV may damage amphibian eggs, and so forth) by allowing more UV into the atmosphere, but this is a fairly small portion of the actual energy budget which won't cause a rise in temperatures. And with a personal history of skin cancer, I pay attention to this stuff. Vested interest, and all.

Your post god modded up to a 5, which is sad considering what a poor job it does of actually stating our case. This post was based more on venom aimed at people you don't like, which makes you and your fellow environmentalists feel better, but does little to actually convince anyone that you are right. You state the alternate opinion that you express is so phenomenally unsupported, so completely discredited... yet you do little to support yourself except for some URLs that you didn't even bother to tag, and some of which have spaces, so even if you copy them to your browser they won't work.

Here's a link that will be more convincing when you're talking to these guys. The Economist (respected by people you dismissively refer to as consrvative wackos) has an article stating that Bush will probably have to come to some compromise over Kyoto (although it probably won't have the name Kyoto so Bush can save face). This one will have more impact than all the quotes from policy wonks you throw out, since no one can claim the source is biased against business or the US. This is how to win the debate and actually build a concensus.

But seriously I just read in the Economist how Tesco is teaming with Safeway to build a profitable grocery delivery service. It's based on picking the groceries out of existing stores and not expensive new warehouses. It's been very successful (profitable) in Britain. Unfortunately the article requires a paid online subscription to the magazine, but it shows there is hope.

Furthermore, "Grid Computing" != SETI@Home. Grid Computing is quite a bit more than just donating your spare CPU cycles to something like SETI@Home, distributed.net and such. Grid computing is going to happen. It may not include everyone and their grandmother's desktop machines as cycle providers.