[I am the submitter.] It is a long article, but worth reading. The suspicion of Chinese involvement in two major U.S. power outages is extremely worrying. Following are quotes on related aspects.
The Central Intelligence Agency's chief cyber-security officer, Tom Donahue, said that hackers had breached the computer systems of utility companies outside the United States and that they had even demanded ransom.
... many of the systems that [U.S.] utility operators use were designed by others. Intelligence officials now worry that software developed overseas poses another layer of risk because malicious codes or backdoors can be embedded in the software at its creation. U.S. officials have singled out software manufacturers in emerging markets such as, not surprisingly, China.
"Numerous computer networks around the world, including those owned by the U.S. government, were subject to intrusions [in 2007] that appear to have originated within" the People's Republic of China.... the [Chinese] Army is "building capabilities for information warfare" for possible use in "pre-emptive attacks."
The extra-terrestial impactor (i.e. asteroid/comet) hypothesis has been around for a long time. It has been questioned for several reasons. In particular, (i) there were bright/white nights before the event, and (ii) debris has been found in crash sites from meteorites 10000 times lighter, whereas there is none at Tunguska.
For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.
W. Kundt (2001), "The 1908 Tunguska catastrophe", Current Science, 81: 399-407.
Dr. Kundt is at the University of Bonn. Briefly, his hypothesis is that there was a days-long leakage of natural gas, from Earth; the gas rose up and was eventually ignited by lightning. This seems to fit the evidence better.
In an earlier discussion on Slashdot, someone posted a comment claiming that there was a similar explosion of natural gas in Texas in 1992. (I googled, but could find no evidence.)
I do not understand the geology well, but it does not seem that the Italian researchers (cited in TFA) have found evidence against Kundt's hypothesis.
Handling diacritics can sometimes be involved. As an example, consider the o-umlaut (ö). In German, this is the usual letter "o" with a diacritical mark. In Swedish, the same glyph is a separate letter of the alphabet—and comes after the letter "z" in the standard ordering.
English writers often omit the diacritical mark (they also sometimes transliterate "ö" as "oe", at least for German). Playing around with Google (via google.com, rather than google.de or google.se), it seems that they tend to handle such things when searching for German words, but not for Swedish words.
Some Slashdotter's might be thinking that they are not part of the political elite and that a phone call from themselves to an MEP won't do much good. Not so!
MEPs respect programmers on this issue. If you are an experienced programmer, a polite phone call to your MEP, briefly stating your position and the reasons for it, will be respected and could make a real difference. (For possible reasons to discuss, see other comments to this story.)
If you do call--and I hope you will--the main trick will be to explain things to someone who likely has little knowledge of computers. For example, one MEP told me that the proposed patent legislation is okay because it only pertains to "technical" software. So I then need to explain that all software can be considered technical, in some sense, and so this wouldn't be a restriction at all.
Some corporate lobbyists will say almost anything. Many MEPs are genuinely not understanding the issues because of that.
Here is the reply that I received from the Liberal Democratic party (in the UK).
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Thank you for your letter concerning the proposed Directive on the
patenting of computer-implemented inventions (CII).
The Council of Ministers adopted its Common Position on 7 March 2005.
This clarified the boundaries of what can and what cannot be patented
when software is involved and does not extend current practice; nothing
will become patentable that is not currently patentable. Importantly,
non-technical software, mathematical algorithms, and business methods
are all specifically excluded. EU legislation is needed to bring legal
certainty into what is at the moment a highly unclear and unsatisfactory
situation for firms of all sizes. This is not a case of big business
against small businesses.
On Monday 20 June the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee
adopted the Rocard report which will now go to the July plenary session.
The Liberal Democrats supported amendments to the Common Position which
sought to clarify definitions and to clarify further what is included
and what is excluded; specifically, to exclude software when not used in
conjunction with either a product or process.
This is the key point of the legislation. Pure software is covered by
copyright law. Computer-implemented inventions are as those used in
such fields as medical devices, LCD displays, bio-cellular imaging, data
compression, drugs testing, linguistic analysis, to name but a few areas
of application.
European SMEs are at the heart of innovation and they need to be able to
protect their inventions by patents if they are to recoup money invested
in research and development. SMEs are the engine of economic growth in
the EU and create both wealth and jobs. In 2004, European SMEs were
awarded over a thousand CII patents in a growing trend over the last six
years.
Liberal Democrats have voted in support of defending innovation legally
as it will help to boost European competitiveness, particularly with
respect to the USA and China.
Your views have been a helpful contribution to the advice we have
received on the potential impact of the Directive and we will take them
into account. I wish to assure you that Liberal Democrat policy is
clearly against allowing the generalised patenting of software and that
this principle is guiding our consideration of these matters.
I can assure you that the Liberal Democrats will continue to fight for a
fair and legally sound outcome on this very important issue.
Following is a copy of the letter that I sent to my MEP yesterday. I'm going to be doing some follow-up on Monday-Tuesday. If anyone has any recommendations for improving the the letter (especially if you see any technical/factual errors), please let me know.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Dear ______,
In the first week of July, the European Union Parliament will vote on the patentability of computer software. The outcome of this vote has great implications for European freedoms as well as large implications for European businesses--implications that, moreover, have been sometimes overlooked. I ask you to consider the following.
A patent grants the holder a monopoly on the use of an idea. (It is thus very different from a copyright, which covers the expression of an idea; copyrights for computer software are not in dispute.) Until now, the idea for a patent has had to be expressible in some physical form. With computer software, though, such physical expression is not possible.
A computer is like a chef who does not know how to cook anything on his or her own, but who can follow a recipe perfectly. Software is a recipe. The software that you probably have on your computer does things like send e-mail, word processing (e.g. with Microsoft Word), and Internet browsing. The computer cannot do those things on its own, but it can follow recipes (i.e. software) that tell it how to do them. Software makes computers useful.
A recipe obviously does not have a physical form in the way that, say, a machine invention has. Hence software has, so far, not been patentable. The purpose of the proposed legislation is to make software patentable. (The EU Parliament voted against a version of this legislation on 24 September 2003, by 364 to 153. The EU Commission, questionably, then made the legislation more extreme: it is this that Parliament is now to vote on.)
The proposed legislation, as written, will allow the patenting of almost any ideas that can be used in software. As an analogy, if this approach were adopted for recipes, it would allow the patenting of things like "cut the food into small pieces and then boil" and "wrap the food in aluminium foil and bake at 200 C". No one could develop a new recipe that did either of those things without the permission of the patent holders. This is clearly absurd; yet that is just what is now being proposed for patents on computer software.
There are a few very large companies, though, that would benefit from this. Large software companies, e.g. Microsoft, would hold many software patents. Those large companies would have cross-licensing agreements with each other, agreeing not to sue each other for patent infringement. Ultimately, only such companies could produce computer software. Small and medium-sized enterprises would be almost entirely shut out.
The business implications of software patents are thus reasonably clear. The largest technology companies would be favoured, while all others would be severely harmed. And Linux, Firefox, etc.--i.e. most open-source software--would likely become extinct. The resultant reduction in competition in software would likely lead to higher prices and lower quality for software consumers--including other, non-technology, businesses.
The enclosed article from yesterday's Financial Times makes a similar point: it concludes that software patents are "anti-innovative". The article's analysis is based on experience in the USA, where software patents have existed for several years. The analysis, though, overlooks a crucial factor. Some large companies in the USA have built up portfolios containing thousands of software patents, but they have not been enforcing those patents. Microsoft is one such company. Yet Microsoft has been lobbying extremely heavily for making software patentable in the EU. This makes no sense: why would Microsoft lobby heavily for software patents if it was not going to enforce its patents? I beli
Everything that can be invented....
on
Cebit 2004 Coverage
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· Score: 4, Informative
Remember the quote from the patent office in 1899, something along the lines of 'Everything that can be invented has been invented'?
This letter to The Economist gives different perspective on that old story:
It is an historical myth that the commissioner of America's Patent Office recommended it be abolished in 1899. Rather, he asked for a funding increase because of the heavy load of applications, arguing that anyone who would deny him additional funding must believe that "everything that can be invented has been invented."
It's interesting, too, to see how little times have changed since then--the patent office saying that it was overloaded and needed more resources.
The story in the Telegraph claims that the original paper about
the possible impact crater appears in the current issue of
Meteoritics &
Planetary Science. Tables of contents for that journal
are online: the paper has not appeared there. Rather, the
journal only mentions that the paper was presented as a poster
at the last Annual Meteoritical Society Meeting.
A POSSIBLE HOLOCENE IMPACT STRUCTURE IN THE AL 'AMARAH MARSHES, NEAR THE
TIGRIS-EUPHRATES CONFLUENCE, SOUTHERN IRAQ.
S. Master
Impact Cratering Research Group, Dept. Geology, Univ. Witwatersrand
P. Bag 3, WITS 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa.
A ~3.4 km-diameter near-circular, slightly polygonal, structure is found in
the Al 'Amarah marshes, at 474'44.4"E, 318'58.2"N, ~17 km NW of the
Tigris-Euphrates confluence, in southern Iraq. Prior to the
militarily-inspired draining of the marshes in 1993 [1], the structure was
filled with a lake enclosed by an elevated rim, surrounded by a ~500 m-wide
dark annulus. After the partial draining of the marshes, the lake has
shrunk, and it now appears as a light coloured spot, due to salt
encrustations following evaporation of the surface waters.
Geological setting
The alluvial plains of Iraq occupy a structural trough related to active
orogenic processes in the Zagros mountains [2]. Near the Tigris-Euphrates
confluence, marine sediments of the Miocene-Pleistocene Dibdibba Fm [2] and
Holocene Hammar Fm [3] are overlain by Recent delta plain and delta front
deposits of the Mesopotamian Plains, in which there are numerous marshes and
permanent lakes [2]. The Recent sediments of the Tigris-Euphrates plains
were deposited in the last 5000 years, during which 130-150 km of seaward
progradation has taken place [2].
Formation of the Al Amarah structure
The strikingly circular shape of the Al 'Amarah structure, contrasts
markedly with the highly irregular shapes of the other marsh lakes in the
region. Because of the extremely young nature of the sediments in the
marshlands, an origin of the structure by karst solution, salt doming,
tectonic deformation or igneous intrusion can be ruled out. The structure
predates the Iraq-Iran and Gulf wars of the 1980's to 1991, since it is
present on satellite imagery from 1984. It is postulated that the structure
was formed by a Recent bolide impact in the marshlands of southern Iraq,
thus accounting for its geometry, and the apparent rim and annulus visible
in pre-1993 imagery.
Quasi-historical reference?
The formation of such a young impact structure may have had a catastrophic
effect on the people living in the region, and there is a possible
quasi-historical reference to such an event in the account of the Deluge
from the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating from ~2000 BC: "...and the seven judges
of hell, the Annunaki, raised their torches, lighting the land with their
livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm
turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup. One
whole day the tempest raged, gathering fury as it went, it poured over the
people like the tides of battle." [4] Could this be a reference to a bolide
impact which triggerred a tsunami?
References:
[1] North, A. (1993). The Middle East, London, No. 227, Oct. 1993,
22-23.
[2] Larsen, C. E. and Evans, G. (1978). In: Brice, W. C. (Ed.), The
Environmental History of the Near and Middle East Since the Last Ice Age.
Academic Press, London, 227-244.
[3] Hudson, R. G. S. et al. (1957). Geol. Mag., 94, 395-398.
[4] Sandars, N. K. (1960). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth, 128 pp.
This looks extremely interesting. Plainly, though, on-site investigation is
needed. In particular, the date is very rough, and the cause is unconfirmed.
Attributing the site to a cause of a major climatic change is very speculative.
The stony-asteroid hypothesis has been around for a long time. It has been questioned for several reasons. In particular, (i) there were bright/white nights before the event, and (ii) debris has been found in crash sites from meteorites 10000 times lighter, whereas absolutely none has been found at Tunguska.
For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.
Dr. Kundt is at the University of Bonn. I don't know enough to comment on his paper in detail. It seems, though, that the Italian researchers, whose work is reported by the BBC, have not considered things as well as they should have.
Apologies for the delayed reply and Thank You for the commendation.
Your question is a hard one though. The details of the bargaining at Camp David were not made public, and they have since been at the mercy of spin doctors. Barak went further than domestic politics really allowed him to go. If Arafat had met his terms, however, the Palestinians might have revolted.
As I understand things, the problem was allocating pieces of Jerusalem.
Why should I believe you and not the information cited in my original post?
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.
The West is taking strong actions against mass terrorists. How well do we understand what we are about to do and what we have done in the past?
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.
The West is about to take strong actions against mass terrorists. How well
do we understand what we are about to do and what we have done in the past?
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.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a long article, but worth reading. The suspicion of Chinese involvement in two major U.S. power outages is extremely worrying. Following are quotes on related aspects.
The extra-terrestial impactor (i.e. asteroid/comet) hypothesis has been around for a long time. It has been questioned for several reasons. In particular, (i) there were bright/white nights before the event, and (ii) debris has been found in crash sites from meteorites 10000 times lighter, whereas there is none at Tunguska.
For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.
W. Kundt (2001), "The 1908 Tunguska catastrophe", Current Science, 81: 399-407.
Dr. Kundt is at the University of Bonn. Briefly, his hypothesis is that there was a days-long leakage of natural gas, from Earth; the gas rose up and was eventually ignited by lightning. This seems to fit the evidence better.
In an earlier discussion on Slashdot, someone posted a comment claiming that there was a similar explosion of natural gas in Texas in 1992. (I googled, but could find no evidence.)
I do not understand the geology well, but it does not seem that the Italian researchers (cited in TFA) have found evidence against Kundt's hypothesis.
Handling diacritics can sometimes be involved. As an example, consider the o-umlaut (ö). In German, this is the usual letter "o" with a diacritical mark. In Swedish, the same glyph is a separate letter of the alphabet—and comes after the letter "z" in the standard ordering.
English writers often omit the diacritical mark (they also sometimes transliterate "ö" as "oe", at least for German). Playing around with Google (via google.com, rather than google.de or google.se), it seems that they tend to handle such things when searching for German words, but not for Swedish words.
MEPs respect programmers on this issue. If you are an experienced programmer, a polite phone call to your MEP, briefly stating your position and the reasons for it, will be respected and could make a real difference. (For possible reasons to discuss, see other comments to this story.)
If you do call--and I hope you will--the main trick will be to explain things to someone who likely has little knowledge of computers. For example, one MEP told me that the proposed patent legislation is okay because it only pertains to "technical" software. So I then need to explain that all software can be considered technical, in some sense, and so this wouldn't be a restriction at all.
Some corporate lobbyists will say almost anything. Many MEPs are genuinely not understanding the issues because of that.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Thank you for your letter concerning the proposed Directive on the patenting of computer-implemented inventions (CII).
The Council of Ministers adopted its Common Position on 7 March 2005. This clarified the boundaries of what can and what cannot be patented when software is involved and does not extend current practice; nothing will become patentable that is not currently patentable. Importantly, non-technical software, mathematical algorithms, and business methods are all specifically excluded. EU legislation is needed to bring legal certainty into what is at the moment a highly unclear and unsatisfactory situation for firms of all sizes. This is not a case of big business against small businesses.
On Monday 20 June the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee adopted the Rocard report which will now go to the July plenary session. The Liberal Democrats supported amendments to the Common Position which sought to clarify definitions and to clarify further what is included and what is excluded; specifically, to exclude software when not used in conjunction with either a product or process.
This is the key point of the legislation. Pure software is covered by copyright law. Computer-implemented inventions are as those used in such fields as medical devices, LCD displays, bio-cellular imaging, data compression, drugs testing, linguistic analysis, to name but a few areas of application.
European SMEs are at the heart of innovation and they need to be able to protect their inventions by patents if they are to recoup money invested in research and development. SMEs are the engine of economic growth in the EU and create both wealth and jobs. In 2004, European SMEs were awarded over a thousand CII patents in a growing trend over the last six years.
Liberal Democrats have voted in support of defending innovation legally as it will help to boost European competitiveness, particularly with respect to the USA and China.
Your views have been a helpful contribution to the advice we have received on the potential impact of the Directive and we will take them into account. I wish to assure you that Liberal Democrat policy is clearly against allowing the generalised patenting of software and that this principle is guiding our consideration of these matters.
I can assure you that the Liberal Democrats will continue to fight for a fair and legally sound outcome on this very important issue.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Dear ______,
In the first week of July, the European Union Parliament will vote on the patentability of computer software. The outcome of this vote has great implications for European freedoms as well as large implications for European businesses--implications that, moreover, have been sometimes overlooked. I ask you to consider the following.
A patent grants the holder a monopoly on the use of an idea. (It is thus very different from a copyright, which covers the expression of an idea; copyrights for computer software are not in dispute.) Until now, the idea for a patent has had to be expressible in some physical form. With computer software, though, such physical expression is not possible.
A computer is like a chef who does not know how to cook anything on his or her own, but who can follow a recipe perfectly. Software is a recipe. The software that you probably have on your computer does things like send e-mail, word processing (e.g. with Microsoft Word), and Internet browsing. The computer cannot do those things on its own, but it can follow recipes (i.e. software) that tell it how to do them. Software makes computers useful.
A recipe obviously does not have a physical form in the way that, say, a machine invention has. Hence software has, so far, not been patentable. The purpose of the proposed legislation is to make software patentable. (The EU Parliament voted against a version of this legislation on 24 September 2003, by 364 to 153. The EU Commission, questionably, then made the legislation more extreme: it is this that Parliament is now to vote on.)
The proposed legislation, as written, will allow the patenting of almost any ideas that can be used in software. As an analogy, if this approach were adopted for recipes, it would allow the patenting of things like "cut the food into small pieces and then boil" and "wrap the food in aluminium foil and bake at 200 C". No one could develop a new recipe that did either of those things without the permission of the patent holders. This is clearly absurd; yet that is just what is now being proposed for patents on computer software.
There are a few very large companies, though, that would benefit from this. Large software companies, e.g. Microsoft, would hold many software patents. Those large companies would have cross-licensing agreements with each other, agreeing not to sue each other for patent infringement. Ultimately, only such companies could produce computer software. Small and medium-sized enterprises would be almost entirely shut out.
The business implications of software patents are thus reasonably clear. The largest technology companies would be favoured, while all others would be severely harmed. And Linux, Firefox, etc.--i.e. most open-source software--would likely become extinct. The resultant reduction in competition in software would likely lead to higher prices and lower quality for software consumers--including other, non-technology, businesses.
The enclosed article from yesterday's Financial Times makes a similar point: it concludes that software patents are "anti-innovative". The article's analysis is based on experience in the USA, where software patents have existed for several years. The analysis, though, overlooks a crucial factor. Some large companies in the USA have built up portfolios containing thousands of software patents, but they have not been enforcing those patents. Microsoft is one such company. Yet Microsoft has been lobbying extremely heavily for making software patentable in the EU. This makes no sense: why would Microsoft lobby heavily for software patents if it was not going to enforce its patents? I beli
It's interesting, too, to see how little times have changed since then--the patent office saying that it was overloaded and needed more resources.
and was baffled as to why it was rejected.
I suppose now it will be duped?
Likely the cowed populace will ask for even more disenfranchisements.
For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.
Dr. Kundt is at the University of Bonn. I don't know enough to comment on his paper in detail. It seems, though, that the Italian researchers, whose work is reported by the BBC, have not considered things as well as they should have.Your question is a hard one though. The details of the bargaining at Camp David were not made public, and they have since been at the mercy of spin doctors. Barak went further than domestic politics really allowed him to go. If Arafat had met his terms, however, the Palestinians might have revolted.
As I understand things, the problem was allocating pieces of Jerusalem.
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:a nscript_binladen1_990110.html w a.htm n dex.html t /newsid_1552000/1552900.stm
The 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden-- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tr
The 1998 World Islamic Front Statement-- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fat
Some insights into Afghanistan-- http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/i
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_eas
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:a nscript_binladen1_990110.html w a.htm n dex.html t /newsid_1552000/1552900.stm
The 1999 interview with Osama bin Laden-- http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/tr
The 1998 World Islamic Front Statement-- http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fat
Some insights into Afghanistan-- http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/i
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_eas