The news so far concerning the turn-out in the Iraqi elections appears to be positive.

I have seen estimates of anywhere between 60% and 72% which, under the violent circumstances, is a great tribute to the courage of the Iraqi people. The results will, of course, be declared unrepresentative by many Sunnis who were under far more pressure and influence not to vote, and the violence will without doubt continue unabated, but the political will of the Iraqi people to govern themselves democratically has been demonstrated unequivocally today.

The election is important not so much in terms of the way votes have been cast at this stage, but in showing to the outside world that the Iraqi in the street wants to vote not bomb their way out of their current predicament. Unfortunately the media's focus on the shock-and-awe media stunts of the bombers and kidnappers does not clearly give this impression.

Today's turn-out demonstrates clearly to the outside world which direction the Iraqi people want to go. This does not mean that they necessarily love their occupiers. They may not have welcomed the invasion which has given them this opportunity. However, regardless of their feelings about the past, the Iraqis have demonstrated today that they see the pursuit of the democratic process as their best option for the future.



I love this photo. It says so much about today's vote, but hang on, I hope that doesn't say Pepsi Cola in Arabic on the banner behind her!

Man pees his way out of avalanche

Slovak Richard Kral found himself the victim of an avalanche in the Tatra mountains. He had opened the car window, to try to escape, but then realised that if he tried to dig himself out he risked a further snow-fall engulfing him inside the car.

Just like in one of those lateral thinking survival games where you can employ an inventory of everyday items to help you get through, Kral's thoughts went to the large store of beer he was taking on holiday with him. Ananova continues the story:-

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there."

Is this a piss-take? (via Monkeyfilter)

there are notes in boxes that are empty

every room has an accessible history

every place has emotional attachments you can open and save

you can search for sadness in new york

people within a mile of each other who have never met stop what they are doing and organise spontaneously to help with some task or other.

in a strange town you knock on the door of someone you don't know and they give you sandwiches.

paths compete to offer themselves to you

life flows into inanimate objects

the trees hum advertising jingles

everything in the world, animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, has thoughts attached

So runs the intriguing introduction to the Headmap Manifesto, a document conceptualising the integration of internet technology with GPS mapping and wide wireless networks.

The idea of cyberspace acting effectively as an additional dimension to real 3-dimensional space creates almost limitless possibilities, and the more one considers it the more it becomes seemingly inevitable that compelling applications of this sort will become part of our daily lives in the not-so-distant future.

Through such technology, context and information could be tagged to physical locations which can be filtered and browsed by the user at their discretion.

One can imagine public service information such as live public transport information, or information on traffic jams, sightseeing information on monuments or art exhibits.

Private networks could provide "friends only" info - notes left on recommended pubs or restaurants or messages left following a missed rendez-vous.

Those on the look-out for new friends or romance could leave a public profile open, stimulating communication between like-minded people who would otherwise pass without comment.

These ideas are just scratching the surface. As with the internet, the real killer-apps are beyond our conception at the moment and will be developed over time. I had an internet connection in the early days of the web but abandoned it due to a lack of imagination, both on my side and by that of those developing applications for the new medium. It was not long before cyberspace had developed to such a point that I was compelled to return. The possibilities of the medium made it just a matter of time.

Security is also bound to be an issue. Internet grooming could become real-life stalking in such a world. As with every new media a number of challenges will need to be overcome to ensure the largest amount of wheat with acceptably little chaff, but we will have to face these obstacles as we have with the current, tethered internet.

I close with the final paragraph from an article from the Social Issues Research Centre website, which does a good job of summarising the possibilities and risks.

The Headmap manifesto covers a bewildering range of possibilities made real by developments in location aware wireless internet technology. It also seeks to explore our understanding of architecture, social responsibility, public space and the limitations of a manufactured spatial environment. Location aware computing devices may not provide solutions to the many problems raised by the issue of human attitudes towards, and use of, physical space, not least the idea that we are all, often unknowingly, shaped by the built environments that surround us. Yet such devices offer a way of interpreting space which is radically new, and which throws up a myriad of beautiful possibilities. This comes alongside a myriad of banal and unpleasant possibilities, which is the necessary counterpart to any Utopian scheme. We can only hope that the more interesting aspects of the Headmap manifesto can become reality while maintaining an element of that original idealism, and that the enterprise of spatial computing avoids being entirely swallowed up by advertising and corporate use. As the authors of the manifesto would themselves put it:

"The Internet has already started leaking into the real world. Headmap argues that when it gets truly loose the world will be new again."

Daniel Ockrent's column in yesterday's New York Times takes a refreshing look at the misuse and misinterpretation of statistics in journalism. His examples make for a cautionary tale for any reader.

He talks of the often cited "X is suing Y for £1 million", pointing out that the amount is meaningless outside of indicating the greed of the lawyer - only final settlements provide meaningful figures, but are normally not so headline-grabbing.

Then there's one of my favourites - the figures relating to the size of the black economy or the drugs trade, which roll off the tongue or onto the page with little or no explanation of how these figures have been calculated. The margin of error on such calculations surely makes them all but worthless.

Other examples include the historical comparison of figures which ignore inflation (Shrek II is the 3rd biggest grossing film of all time!) and/or population growth.

Ockrent's best example exposes the crassness of that sacred indicator of the US's business fortunes, the Dow Jones Index.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is no more meaningful than a hiccup. If I were Dow Jones & Company, I’d be thrilled to have my brand name repeated daily in hundreds of newspaper columns, broadcast reports and web mentions, but I’d also keep my fingers crossed, knowing that someday the press will no longer be so easily suckered.

There are three key problems with the Dow: its tiny selection of 30 stocks (a number established three quarters of a century ago, in an infinitely less complex market era) can’t begin to represent the variety of investment instruments sold on American exchanges; it specifically excludes transportation and utility companies, which Dow Jones tracks separately; and it’s mathematically preposterous.

Daniel Gross explained why in an article published two years ago on Slate.com: “Every time one of the stocks in it moves up one dollar, the Dow moves up a set number of points. In the real world, a dollar move in a $100 stock has an entirely different meaning than a $1 move in a $10 stock—but the Dow regards them as equal.”

That’s sort of like saying a $1.50 tip on a ten dollar breakfast is the same as a $1.50 tip on a hundred dollar dinner. The Standard & Poor’s 500 not only incorporates a much larger number and a much broader range of securities, it weights its elements logically. Times editors would be wise to execute a permanent “replace all” in their skulls and in their stories, forever banishing the Dow to the same attic where Wall Street keeps the ticker tape.

It makes one wonder whether certain statistics should have the equivalent of cigarette health warnings ("Warning: this statistic may seriously damage your perspective!")

Perhaps we could do with agreed SI units of measure for certain commonly quoted figures (per capita, per day, as a % of GDP etc.).

Then all we'd need to do is get the politicians to sign up...

On the Spiked website Josie Appleton summarises well the links between the reality TV culture and torture photos from Iraq, using Susan Sontag's On Photography as her touchstone.

She points out our desensitisation to humiliation as it has taken hold as the major theme of entertainment on our prime-time television screens, and links this to the increasing importance of the camera as purveyor of reality.

The growth of photography, said Sontag, was about taking a 'chronically voyeuristic relation to the world'. With camera in hand, the world and its occupants become prey for our amusement, with our subjects expected to pose, to expose themselves on film. The effect, said Sontag, 'is to convert the world into a department store or museum-without-walls in which every subject is depreciated into an article of consumption, promoted into an item for aesthetic appreciation'. What Sontag saw in surrealist photographers who went around collecting images of freaks, we can see in the baiting of McCririck on Celebrity Big Brother, or the video Bumfights, featuring tramps beating each other up for food and liquor.

There is no particular reason for the violence and intimidation - it is just staged for the camera. As Sontag wrote in the New York Times after the photos came out from Abu Ghraib, 'There would be something missing if, after stacking the naked men, you couldn't take a picture of them'. Soldiers prove themselves not by fighting war, but by staging mock-torture photo shoots to show to their friends.

The photographic image or video image becomes the trophy, something tangible, a pornographic symbol of the triumph of the voyeur over the victim. Whether in our armchairs or in an Iraqi prison, having the privilege of watching the humiliation of others has the power to make us feel superior, to feel in control. A photograph or video can create the illusion of ownership of that relationship.

Leading neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz delivers some telling words in February's Commentary Magazine.

In an analysis of those pitching themselves against George Bush's second term neo-con agenda, he turns to a group he calls the "Superhawks":-

With no mass audience to lose, no such worry bothers the exponents of another line of attack on the Bush Doctrine that has emanated from a neighborhood on the Right where utter ruthlessness is considered the only way to wage war, and where the idea of exporting democracy is thought to conflict with conservative political wisdom. On the Right though it obviously is, this neighborhood of superhawks is as distant from the precincts of paleoconservatism as it is from the redoubts of the anti-American Left.

The most prolific member of the group is Angelo M. Codevilla who, in a series of essays in the Claremont Review of Books, has accused the Bush administration of "eschewing victory" by shying away from "energetic policies that might actually produce" it, and who makes no bones about his belief that we are losing the war as a result. In the same vein, and in the same magazine, Mark Helprin writes that we have failed

adequately to prepare for war, to declare war, rigorously to define the enemy, to decide upon disciplines and intelligent war aims, to subjugate the economy to the common defense, or even to endorse the most elemental responsibilities of government.

In then piling a commensurate heap of scorn on the idea of transforming "the entire Islamic world into a group of peaceful democratic states" (Helprin), these two eloquent and fiery polemicists are joined by the more temperate Charles R. Kesler, the editor of the Claremont Review. If democratization is to succeed in the regimes of the Islamic world, a necessary precondition is to beat these regimes into "complete submission" and then occupy them "for decades—not just for months or years, but for decades" (Kesler). Even then, our troops may have to "stay and die . . . indefinitely on behalf of a mission . . . concerning the accomplishment of which there is little knowledge and less agreement" (Codevilla).

Of all the attacks on the Bush Doctrine, this set of arguments is the only one that resonates with me, at least on the issue of how to wage war. I have no objection in principle to the ruthlessness the superhawks advocate, and I agree that it would likely be very effective. The trouble is that the more closely I look at their position, the more clearly does it emerge as fatally infected by the disease of utopianism—the very disease that usually fills critics of this stripe with revulsion and fear.

When these critics prescribe all-out war—total mobilization at home, total ruthlessness on the battlefield—they posit a world that does not exist, at least not in America or in any other democratic country. To the extent that they bother taking account of the America that actually does exist, it is only its imperfections and deficiencies they notice; and these, along with the constraints imposed by the character of the nation on its elected leaders, they wave off with derisive language, as when Codevilla refers sarcastically to "the lowest common denominator among domestic American political forces."

Yet while Codevilla, writing in his study, is free to advise ruthless suppression of these limiting conditions, no one sitting in the Oval Office can possibly do so. And even so, the wonder is not, contrary to Mark Helprin, how "irresolute" and "inept" Bush has been but how far he has managed to go and how much he has already accomplished while working within those constraints and around those imperfections.

It is interesting to note that Podhoretz is not against the idea of "pounding the regimes into complete submission, occupying them for decades, and troops having to stay and die on behalf of a mission concerning the accomplishoment of whish there is little knowledge and less agreement" on the basis that this is the wrong thing to do, but on the basis that it is "utopian"! The implication is that ideologically the neo-cons would love to get as far towards this Utopia as possible - only political expediency limits how close to they can get to this, their ideal world.

I have been surprised to see how many are predicting a softer, more diplomatic approach from the Bush regime in the second term, as if their policy is driven by political pragmatism rather than extreme ideology. Of course Bush will talk up negotiation and discussions with allies, and military action as the last resort. Regardless of his goals, what exactly do people expect him to say? Nothing can be read into these words other than normal diplomatic protocol. As Podhoretz himself points out:-

These signals, however, such as they are, surely amount to nothing more than diplomatic politesse, no more portending a second-term retreat than the President did when, late last November, he declared that "A new term in office is an important opportunity to reach out to our friends," or announced that the first "great goal" of his second term was to build "effective multinational and multilateral institutions" and to support "effective multilateral action." That Bush was here practicing a little diplomatic politesse of his own was acknowledged by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. The President, Milbank reported, "made clear that such cooperation must occur on his terms, and he did not retreat from the first-term policies that angered some allies."

In Bush's second term we should expect nothing other than a continuation of the first term's agenda. His home agenda will be to dismantle Government obligations to the welfare state to pay for further aggression against Iran, Syria and whoever else fits the ideological agenda of this most extreme of regimes.

On January 17th Jeffrey Sachs issued his practical plan for how to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals, a set of targets for 2015, including halving the number of people in extreme poverty and hunger, introducing universal primary education and reversing the spread of AIDS and malaria.

The Economist summarises Sachs's approach:-

To realise the goals, he calculates, rich countries must dedicate about 0.5% of their combined GDP to aid (0.44% in 2006, rising to 0.54% in 2015). This is about twice what they currently offer, but less than the 0.7% of GDP they long ago promised to set aside for development. Redeeming that dusty pledge, the report argues, should be a minimum requirement for any rich country, such as Germany or Japan, that aspires to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
...
Mr Sachs applauds a new generation of more pragmatic, responsible African governments, ready to put extra resources to good use. He wants rich countries to pick at least a dozen winners to receive a massive infusion of extra aid this year—including perhaps Ghana, Senegal, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique.

Sub-Saharan Africa, his report argues, is caught in a “poverty trap”. Markets are too small, transport costs too high and farm yields too low. Disease spreads quickly, technology only slowly. Africa cannot lift itself out of this trap. To escape, it needs a “big push”: large, co-ordinated investments in infrastructure, health, agricultural productivity and education.

Mr Sachs can also think small, however. The report advocates a series of relatively simple, inexpensive interventions that place a low burden on state machinery but yield high returns. Among these “quick wins”, he suggests eliminating school fees, including fees for school uniforms, and providing free school meals. Poor African farmers should be given affordable ways to replenish soil nitrogen, he says. Mosquito nets, treated with insecticides, should be given free to children wherever malaria is endemic.

The timing of the issue of this report could not be better. If any good has come from the Asian tsunami, it is the demonstration that the developed world can muster incredible efforts and funds to help those in the Third World when the circumstances are right.

Gordon Brown recognises the key position he is in this year, with the UK chairing the G8 and the EU, and is clearly adamant on using his influence to introduce his Marshall Plan of aid for the Third World.

This conjunction of global popular support, political will, along with agreed goals and practical plans for their achievement creates the best opportunity the world has ever had to address this issue with the priority it deserves. Failure is no longer an option.

Craig Robinson has built up a cult following for the Minipops illustrations on his Flip Flop Flyin' website. These are tiny portraits which uniquely identify famous people with an unfeasibly small number of pixels. The popularity of the feature led to Craig publishing a book featuring 800 of his most popular Minipops,

He has now added a great new feature to his website, a What If... version of his life. It consists of two charts, the first showing the various paths his life could have taken in the past, and the second speculating as to the possible directions it could take in the future. It is illustrated with (slightly larger than) Minipop portraits of himself in each alternative reality, each of which can be clicked upon for background text.

The venture is typically ambitious, compelling and very funny. Highly recommended.

Seymour Hersh's New Yorker articleThe Coming Wars is more than worthy of the attention which has been given to it.

He makes clear that the Iraq debacle has done nothing to spoil the Bush regime's appetite for military action. Quite the contrary.

Iran's nuclear brinkmanship has put it directly in Bush's sights, and it seems likely that the military card will be played early in the second term. As with Iraq, the decision to take action seems to have been taken way before diplomatic solutions have been exhausted, thus making the failure of negotiations almost an inevitable self-fulfilling prophecy once again. This time, however, it seems likely that Britain will be on the 'against' side of the fence, aging gracefully into the fold of its 'Old Europe' friends.

Highlights of Hersh's piece:-

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

Rumsfeld will become even more important during the second term. In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.”

One Western diplomat told me that the Europeans believed they were in what he called a “lose-lose position” as long as the United States refuses to get involved [in negotiations with Iran]. “France, Germany, and the U.K. cannot succeed alone, and everybody knows it,” the diplomat said. “If the U.S. stays outside, we don’t have enough leverage, and our effort will collapse.” The alternative would be to go to the Security Council, but any resolution imposing sanctions would likely be vetoed by China or Russia, and then “the United Nations will be blamed and the Americans will say, ‘The only solution is to bomb.’”

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids. “The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” the government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon told me.

The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans’ negotiated approach cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act. “We’re not dealing with a set of National Security Council option papers here,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “They’ve already passed that wicket. It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it.”

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.”

Rabbi Marc Gellmann in Newsweek this week makes a lot of sense in his piece Harry Windsor and the Prisoners of Ignorance. Many have pointed out Harry's ignorance (or disdain) of history in wearing the Swastika, but have failed to draw the link with the large number of people who wear symbols without any thought for their original meanings.

Much is made of our children’s insufficient knowledge of science and math. However I believe the greatest casualty of this era of videogames and iPods is the pathetic knowledge of history among our children. As a result, the symbols of history—both positive and negative—are stripped of their original connection to a set of ideas. In our symbolically confused time, Nazi helmets can easily adorn the empty skulls of patriotic bikers, and Confederate flags can appear in the rear windows of pickup trucks owned by people who have no desire to own slaves.

Recently a survey of Orlando kids and parents revealed that more than 60 percent of the folks living in the shadow of the Magic Kingdom could not identify Auschwitz, which, for all the friends of Harry reading this, was the Nazi death camp in Poland where more than 1 million Jews and other “undesirables” were starved or worked or gassed to death. One out of every three Jews who were alive on planet earth in 1933 had been murdered by 1945 and they were murdered by people wearing the same swastika Harry wore to get drunk and get laid. So if a majority of American 20-year-olds can identify Adventureland but not Auschwitz, Pamela Anderson but not Andersonville prison, what hope do we have to prevent the past from being replicated in the future? Symbols like the swastika and the Confederate flag connect to ideas, and those ideas must be understood and purged from our dwindling collective consciousness.

I feel the same way about the desiccation of positive symbols. When I see a cross being worn in the deep exposed cleavage of some rock-music bimbette or hanging amidst the gold chains of a rapper pleading for oral sex or the death of the police, I am not just offended. I am saddened for my Christian brothers and sisters who must endure such desecration—yes that is the proper term of opprobrium for the coring out of all meaning from a powerful symbol. For Christians, the cross is the most powerful symbol of salvation, sacrifice, humility, service, compassion, resurrection, hope and love. The cross is not bling!

Great closing sentiment. BTW, Dahr Jamail, the subject of my post yesterday, was woken this morning by the sound of a car bomb detonating across the road from his hotel room. His report is well worth a read.

Dahr Jamail was born and raised in Houston, Texas. After finding himself increasing politicised by the circumstances of Bush's first election, the response to 9/11 and the resulting invasion of Iraq, and most of all his perceived failure of the media to honestly report the stories, he decided to go to Iraq and report independently on what was really happening. His posts can be found on his website.

In today's post he reports on the US militaries strange activities in Fallujah. Large tracts of soil from the most heavily bombed areas are being scooped up and taken away, while high pressure hoses are used to wash down certain areas. Not unsurprisingly, Jamail speculates about the possibility of a range of unpleasant weapons being used in the area. Depleted uranium could be a possibility I guess. Jamail also suggests poison gas and napalm.

Poison gas would be unlikely to be used during the assault at least I would think. There would be too much risk of danger to US troops, who I don't recall being seen in gas masks during the attack. It could have been used before, I guess, although I don't think the military would risk exposure of using such weapons. The political risks would be too great, particularly with the links which would undoubtedly be drawn with Halabja.

The US have already had to admit using napalm in Iraq, so it would hardly be a surprise, although I am unsure whether they would need to wash away the evidence of such a substance.

Whatever has been used, it would seem that the US military are very keen to wipe away all traces of its use.

Jamail's articles present a unique (if not wholly objective) perspective on the conflict which is both enlightening and indicative of how new media is providing enriching alternative sources of information on today's world.

Jamail's position also puts him ahead of the more established media on some stories. I found an article on Aljazeera from 28th November quoting the same eyewitnesses as Jamail word-for-word on the use of napalm in Fallujah, and thought at first that Jamail had filched them from a major news source. Checking back I found that Jamail had quoted the sources in a post on 17th November. By fair means or foul, Aljazeera had lifted the quotes (without acknowledgment) straight off Jamail's site.

Following a link from the blog Agoraphilia I came to a page entitled Spelling Reform - arguments against and for from the Simplified Spelling Society's website.

The arguments on the site are nothing if not thought-provoking, and a strong case is made for simplifying the spelling of English words, principally with a view to helping those trying to learn English, and protect them from that long list of cautionary tales of those trying to apply any particular kind of law to English spelling.

In the end though, I find it difficult to have sympathy with those who would impose a change such as this on the English language. The reason for the varieties of spelling rules come from the very success of the language in absorbing and assimilating other tongues, rather than being assimilated into them. English has fought against the odds to survive against a number of languages across the centuries and has won through by taking in the best from its rivals. To throw away this richness in the interest of uniformity has an element of the Khmer Rouge's flavour about it to me.

The argument about accent is the clincher for me. Any such system could only be based on an agreed master pronunciation. This would immediately militate against anyone under the misapprehension that the rules could be applied phonetically to them. At a time when we are finally used to hearing a welcome selection of regional accents throughout the broadcast media, any such step would be likely to be accompanied by a return to an elitist 'standard' English.

Such thinking, while good for exercising the grey matter, should be kept firmly under the category of interesting academic exercise.

The LA Times has a very amusing and well put-together mock-up Circus advertisement for Bush's second term in office, courtesy of JibJab. Well worth a quick perusal (as is the JibJab website if you're not familiar with it).

Newsweek highlights the challenges faced by the province of Aceh in the wake of the tsunami. Like a mass extinction, the chaos in the aftermath of the disaster has opened up niches ready to be exploited by all manner of opportunists, while the Indonesian army is keen to regain control as soon as possible.

Before the tsunami hit, Aceh had become, in essence, a fiefdom of the Indonesian Army. Commanders ran business empires and oversaw smuggling, illegal logging, protection rackets and extortion. GAM exported drugs, kidnapped for ransom and taxed villages under its control. Each side benefited from the status quo. "Both the [military] and GAM are happy to keep the war going because they're making money," says one senior religious leader in Aceh. Both sides accused the other of provoking skirmishes late last week.
...
At the same time, the chaos has opened up the space for change in Aceh, for good and ill. On one end of the spectrum, women's groups, human-rights organizations and Indonesian journalists previously bullied out of the province are back to stake claims on Aceh's future. Take Radio 68H. The public-service broadcasting network had its top journalist in Aceh threatened at gunpoint and brutalized by soldiers in 2003. But in the days since the tsunami it has helped rebuild four radio stations in the province.
...
Sinister figures have also set up shop. Pemuda Panca Marga, a Jakarta-based youth group known to be thugs for hire, put on a show of force in Banda Aceh last week. The group, which is linked to the Indonesian Army, gained notoriety in 2003 after it ransacked the offices of a prominent human-rights group. The Islamic Defenders Front, famous for smashing up nightclubs in Jakarta as affronts to Islam, rushed in hundreds of volunteers to "guard Muslim society because there are so many infidels here" for the international relief effort, one member told reporters. A third incoming extremist group is Hizbut Tahrir, which supports establishing a global Islamic state and is allegedly linked to terrorists. And U.S. forces involved in relief operations are reportedly keeping an eye on dozens of members of Laskar Muhajidin, a radical Islamic group that has set up a relief camp in the province.

These extremist carpetbaggers might sound scary, but the most ominous force in Aceh remains the Indonesian military. It's unclear whether it will surrender its lucrative fiefdom without a fight. Suspicious generals believe that their GAM adversaries support peace initiatives only to buy time to regroup; they think the arrival of foreigners, naive to the intricacies of Acehnese politics, could bolster the rebels. There are rabid nationalists within the ranks who suspect the West harbors a secret agenda to break up Indonesia.

Let us hope that sufficient aid can be administered to the people of Aceh to resume some level of normality and resumption of institutions before troops and aid agencies are forced to choose between abandoning the province and becoming mired in the conflicts of the region.

The 2nd century BC Greek Hipparchus is credited with being the greatest astronomer of antiquity. Among many other discoveries, he was the first to accurately model the motion of the sun and moon, to develop the knowledge to predict solar eclipses, and to notice the precession of stars across the sky over time. He also was the first to compile a catalogue of the stars he could see in the sky and their locations. This was an invaluable reference work for subsequent ancient astronomers, and serving as a source for Arab scholars in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, along with most of Hipparchus' writings, the work has not survived, and we only know of it from secondary sources.

However, a remarkable link back to the original document has been discovered through the study of an ancient Roman scuplture. The Farnese Atlas, on display in the National Archeological Museum in Naples, depicts Atlas holding a 2-foot wide globe, inscribed upon which are 41 constellations of stars.



Astronomer Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University decided to study the locations of the constellations on the globe, and found that their positioning was extremely accurate. Using the concept of precession he was able to work out when the stars would have beein in exactly these positions in the night sky.

It turned out that the dating of approximately 150BC tied in accurately with the date when Hipparchus would have made his observations for his star catalogue. It therefore seems that the lost catalogue has been accurately inscribed upon the globe, preserving the data from the original catalogue.

The BBC reports on North Korea's TV campaign to smarten up the appearance of its citizens. The show is snappily titled "Let us Trim our Hair in Accordance with Socialist Lifestyle".



During the racy show individuals are stopped in the street, named and shamed, and castigated for not keeping their hair in accordance with the "socialist lifestyle of the military-first era". The BBC reports:-

Stressing hygiene and health, it showed various state-approved short hairstyles including the "flat-top crew cut," "middle hairstyle," "low hairstyle," and "high hairstyle" - variations from one to five centimetres in length.

The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to cover balding.

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.

RoboCup 2004 was recently held in Portugal. This is a soccer tournament for robots, where 346 teams from 37 countries competed for the prize. The skills required in soccer are being used as a benchmark for state-of-the-art robotics.



The latest generation of robots are able to independently recognise the ball, go towards it and kick it, as well as shield the ball from opponents. Although the speed and dexterity of the robots may leave much to be desired in relation to human soccer, technology is developing fast:-

"By 2050, our aim is to beat the winners of football’s World Cup and we are very confident that we will be able to do that," said Shu Ishiguro, who heads Robot Laboratory in Osaka. "When we have accomplished that, we will have a society in which humans and artificial intelligence are completely in harmony."

Surely this is missing the point. Robo-players are one thing, but killer app will be robo-refs. I can imagine the abuse from the terraces ("Who's the tin can in the black","Is one of your scanners defective Ref?" etc. etc.).

A lleader column in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is harshly critical of the European response to the Tsunami disaster.

While U.S. service members were busy dropping supplies over Indonesia and Australian doctors were treating people immediately after the disaster, the Europeans were debating - or, even worse, looking for a date to debate on. The French health minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, finally said Europe was acting badly.
That is a telling comment. One widely known fact of European life is that its well-intentioned fixation on concerted action - preferably in tandem with the United Nations - does not always produce quick and consensual results. But now Europe is revealing a weakness where it always considered itself to have a strength: in humanitarian aid.

It is striking that the US chose to team up with Australia, India and Japan rather than its erstwhile European partners in the immediate aftermath of this catastrophe. Many have pointed out the relative success in the world over the past 12 months of Europe's 'soft' approach, compared to the US's 'hard' strategy. However, there are times such as these where 'soft' doesn't cut it. An approach which relies upon consensus and prior discussion is appropriate in many situations, but not in cases such as this.
Europe owes it to the world and it's own citizens to be up at the front of any such humanitarian effort. Failure to accomplish this essential goal will speak volumes to others about the EU's relevance as a power in the world today.

The New York times prints a letter from the Vatican recently discovered in France dating from 1946 dealing with the fate of Jewish children sheltered by Catholic families during the war. The contents of the letter are as follows:-

Concerning Jewish children who were entrusted to Catholic institutions and families during the German occupation and are now demanded by Jewish institutions to be handed over to them, the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has made a decision that can be summarized in this way:

1) Avoid, as much as possible, responding in writing to Jewish authorities, but rather do it orally.
2) Each time a response is necessary, it is necessary to say that the Church must conduct investigations in order to study each case individually.
3) Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that would not be in a position to guarantee their Christian upbringing.
4) For children who no longer have their parents, given the fact that the Church has responsibility for them, it is not acceptable for them to be abandoned by the Church or entrusted to any persons who have no rights over them, at least until they are in a position to choose themselves. This, evidently, is for children who would not have been baptized.
5) If the children have been turned over by their parents, and if the parents reclaim them now, providing that the children have not received baptism they can be given back.

It is to be noted that this decision of the Holy Congregation of the Holy Office has been approved by the Holy Father.


The letter is extraordinary in many ways. The style is particularly bureaucratic considering the subject matter. The third clause is particularly startling. The prioritisation of religious dogma (ie. anyone who is baptised is part of the Church of Christ) over the welfare of these children and their families accounts for the struggle many Jewish families had in recovering their loved ones after the war.

The letter is drawing particular attention because the "Holy Father" referred to is Pope Pius XII, who is being put forward for Sainthood by the current Pope, but whose failure to condemn Nazism has been criticised by many commentators.

Michael Berube recaps on Colin Powell's comments in the immediate aftermath of the exposure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. He was quoted at the time as saying:-

Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing.

At the time Berube limited his comments to a send-up of the "See Spot Run" nature of the quote. In the light of all that has happened since, he is no longer in such playful mood, and extends Powell's comments with the benefit of hindsight:-

Watch America. Watch how we deal with this. Watch how America will do the right thing. You’ll see, you foreign leaders. We will take the civilian administrator in charge of Iraq by the scruff of his neck, and we will force him to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We will haul the Secretary of Defense out into the open, and, ignoring his natural shyness and disdain for the limelight, we will tell the world that he is the best Secretary of Defense this country has ever had. And just you wait until we get our hands on the little creep who came up with the rationale for torture in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib in the first place! When we find this guy, we won’t hold back-- we will display him in public for days on end, all in the course of promoting him to the highest law-enforcement position in the United States!

The Canadian magazine The Walrus has an article on namesakes, and the results of googling for them online.

When I tried this exercise I was unsurprised to find that one man was exclusively the subject of the first fifty or so hits that I examined. The man in question is a renowned television and film producer, who thus has many links on Internet Movie Database and similar websites.

The paths of this particular imposter and I have crossed on one memorable occasion in the past, when I received a curious email to my hotmail account. The email was from Universal Studios and asked me to review the contract for the director of a forthcoming blockbuster. Attached was a large Word file, the file name of which was that of a (fairly) well-known director.

Being of a particularly cautious disposition, I did not open the attachment for some time, thinking it may contain a virus. There was also the ethical question of opening an email not meant for me.

Finally, curiosity got the better of me and I opened the attachment. The complexity of the agreement was staggering, running to around fifty pages, mostly of impenetrable legalese. I was able to ascertain that the director was set to receive around $4 million. The most interesting aspect was the details of what was required in terms of on-location accommodation and associated luxuries.

The movie went on to gross over $60 million worldwide. I am still amazed at the carelessness of the person who sent this highly sensitive document to a hotmail account without a password. I would never have disseminated the contents, but I am sure there a plenty of people who would have. I was happy enough with just having a (cautionary) tale to tell.

The Economist evaluates the state of income distribution and social mobility in the US. It comes to the conclusion that the American Dream is increasingly becoming no more than dream for the majority of the poor.

Firstly, a look at income distribution:

The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues that between 1979 and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184%—and that of the top 0.1% or 0.01% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth.

Thirty years ago the average real annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was $1.3m: 39 times the pay of the average worker. Today it is $37.5m: over 1,000 times the pay of the average worker. In 2001 the top 1% of households earned 20% of all income and held 33.4% of all net worth. Not since pre-Depression days has the top 1% taken such a big whack.

Then, on the chances of the little guy becoming top dog:-

The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America's elite—and its growing grip on the political system—is how little comment it arouses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics raises so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout American society. Everywhere you look in modern America—in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts—you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.

It is interesting to note that since the Thatcher era in Britain, the country has largely been run by self-made politicians rather than the grandees and old-school ties of previous times. At the same time, the reverse trend can be observed in the US.

The Economist examines two potential factors behind the reduction in social mobility. Firstly, education:-

Upward mobility is increasingly determined by education. The income of people with just a high-school diploma was flat in 1975-99, whereas that of people with a bachelor's degree rose substantially, and that of people with advanced degrees rocketed.

The education system is increasingly stratified by social class, and poor children have a double disadvantage. They attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries (school finances are largely determined by local property taxes). And they have to deal with the legacy of what Michael Barone, a conservative commentator, has labelled “soft America”. Soft America is allergic to introducing accountability and measurement in education, particularly if it takes the form of merit pay for successful teachers or rewards for outstanding pupils. Dumbed-down schools are particularly harmful to poor children, who are unlikely to be able to compensate for them at home.

America's great universities are increasingly reinforcing rather than reducing these educational inequalities. Poorer students are at a huge disadvantage, both when they try to get in and, if they are successful, in their ability to make the most of what is on offer. This disadvantage is most marked in the elite colleges that hold the keys to the best jobs. Three-quarters of the students at the country's top 146 colleges come from the richest socio-economic fourth, compared with just 3% who come from the poorest fourth (the median family income at Harvard, for example, is $150,000). This means that, at an elite university, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich student as a poor one.

The other factor examined is the change in employment culture:-

America's great companies are also becoming less successful agents of upward mobility. The years from 1880 to 1960 were a period of great corporate behemoths. These produced a new class of Americans—professional managers. They built elaborate internal hierarchies, and also accepted their responsibilities to both their workers and their local communities. But since the 1970s the pressure of competition has forced these behemoths to become much leaner—to reduce their layers, contract out some activities, and shift from full-time to part-time employees. It has became harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement. And it has also become harder for managers to keep their jobs in a single company.

Brad DeLong also touches on this theme here, arguing that the post-War boom acted as an engine of social mobility in the States, with the US reaping the dual benefits of insatiable consumer demand and sparse competition. The momentum of this boom is now put in jeopardy by the rise of the large low-wage economies of Asia:-

The coming generation will be one of massive downward mobility for many Americans. The political struggles that this generates will determine whether America will move more closely to the social-democratic norm, or find some way to accept and rationalize its existence as a country of high economic risk and deep divisions of income and wealth.

Congratulations to Canada for their victory in the World Junior Hockey Championships yesterday. With the country's dominating position as world men's, women's and junior world and olympic reigning hockey champions, hockey has truly come home. Now all that's needed is a Stanley Cup win for a Canadian team (last achieved in 1993) rather than a Canuck-stuffed sunburnt US franchise. I guess that first, though, we need a hockey season...

The Christian Science Monitor takes a timely look at trends towards democracy in the world in the light of the forthcoming elections in Palestine and Iraq, and the recent events in Ukraine. They provide appropriate caution (often lacking in the blase idealistic pronouncements of politicians) of the fact that the seed of democracy is unlikely to flourish on stony ground without a considerable amount of support and attention. It is worrying in this context that the US seems to be taking a 'let's get it over with as soon as possible and get out' approach. To stretch the 'you broke it, you fix it' analogy, hastily heaping a few broken shards together in a semblance of the original does not really count.

The Monitor goes on to use the figures of Freedom House to show the growing number of "free" countries in the world. Freedom is measured according to an index of a country's democratic and civil liberties. Any such organisation examing such a nebulous context is bound to show some political or cultural bias. They are criticised by the Left for their definition of Cuba as an "unfree" country, for example. Interestingly, Russia has recently also had its status revised to "unfree" due to Putin's tinkerings. A look at the directors and those making donations, however, reveals that the organisation's supporters come from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds.

With all the appropriate caveats, the data publiched by Freedom House still makes very interesting reading. The 2003 report suggests, for example, that 89 countries are free in 2003 compared with 43 in 1973. Part of this may be accounted for by the fall of the Berlin Wall, but by no means all. In terms of population, 44% were defined as free in 2003 compared with 33% in 1973. The link between prosperity and freedom is strongly underlined by the fact that 89% of the world's GDP resides in free countries, compared with 6% not free.

However skeptical one may be about the derivation of the information, it is difficult to argue with the conclusions. The governments of the world are, with the exception of some local anomalies, tending towards increasing democracy and libertarian societies. It provides considerable solace that in spite of the prevailing tendency of our leaders to underplay the difficulties of manually imposing democracy on a country lacking a predisposed culture, history or appropriate institutions, there is a inaxorable prevailing tendency in the world for people to strive for, and inevitably achieve, unprecedented degrees of political and social choice and liberty.

The BBC quotes a recent report on the during growth of blogging in 2004. The Pew Internet and American Life Project published the survey of 1324 internet users.

Interestingly, blogs are growing much quicker as a spectator sport than as one in which people are participating. I anticipate that there may be a lag factor here, and 2005 may become the year when the voyeurs put their toes in the water in great numbers.

A critical mass of bloggers could well push blogging over the tipping-point and into the mainstream, even if only through secondary sources. For example, events like the recent tsunami were witnessed by millions of potential local correspondents around the world, all with their own stories to tell, and increasingly they will have access to digital and video cameras.

There would become a point where news organisations would have a significant motivation to look for reports and footage from the best of the bloggers, at least as a supplement to their numerous high-expense reporters and camera crews who chase around the globe in the wake of the big stories.