Two French journalists held hostage in Iraq have urged their government to lift a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools to save their lives. In a new video shown on Arabic TV station al-Jazeera, the men also called on French people to protest against the law, due to come into force this week.
If this one plays out badly we will see videos released on Islamist websites showing the journalists being beheaded. I do hope they return safely.
Another curious Sep 11 story, I do not either fully believe or fully disbelieve these stories, but I find them interesting nonetheless.
An FAA memo written on the evening of 9/11 suggests a man on Flight 11 was shot and killed by a gun before the plane crashed into the WTC. [See the leaked FAA memo]
The “Executive Summary,� based on information relayed by a flight attendant to the American Airlines Operation Center, stated “that a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in seat 9B at 9:20 A.M�[since Flight 11 crashed at 8:46, the time must be a typo, probably meaning 8:20].
The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, shot by passenger Satam Al Suqami. The FAA claims that the document is a “first draftâ€? and declines to release the final draft, calling it “protected information.â€? A report in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on September 17 identifies Lewin as a former member of the Israel Defense Force Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s most successful special-operations unit [UPI, 3/6/02].
Sayeret Matkal is a deep-penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations, the theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry. Sayeret Matkal is best known for the 1976 rescue of 106 passengers at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. [New Yorker 10/29/01] Officials later deny the gun story and suggest that Lewin was probably stabbed to death instead (which would still be very interesting). [UPI, 3/6/02, Washington Post, 3/2/02 (B)]
Lewin co-founded Akamai, a successful computer company, and his connections to Sayeret Mat’kal remained hidden until the gun story came to light. [Guardian, 9/15/01]
Dan Drezner links to an informative article in the New York Times.
Drezner sings her praises, perhaps correctly, she notes:
American military supremacy remains unquestioned, regional officials say. But the United States appears to be on the losing side of trade patterns. China is now South Korea’s biggest trade partner, and two years ago Japan’s imports from China surpassed those from the United States. Current trends show China is likely to top American trade with Southeast Asia in just a few years.
China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, as much as threw down the gauntlet last year, saying he believed that China’s trade with Southeast Asia would reach $100 billion by 2005, just shy of the $120 billion in trade the United States does with the region.
Mr. Wen’s claim was no idle boast. Almost no country has escaped the pull of China’s enormous craving for trade and, above all, energy and other natural resources to fuel its still galloping expansion and growing consumer demand. Though the Chinese government’s growth target for 2004 is 7 percent, compared with 9.1 percent for 2003, few are worried about a slowdown soon.
Wired have an interview with Stephen Toulouse, Microsoft’s security program manager. He admits to using Mozilla Firefox. At least he has some balls I guess. Does anyone with sense use Internet Explorer anymore anyway?
I have taken the plunge and put my WordPress installation on my frontpage. I hope everyone likes it!
Thanks to all that left comments after the post last week, I now have an idea how many regular readers there are. And it’s much more than I expected. 33 comments in 7 days, who would have thought?
Posting has been lacking lately – but back to normal now.
Quantum computing another step closer: error correction.
Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and the University of Heidelberg in Germany have entangled five photons. “Our experiment demonstrated for the first time the ability to manipulate five-particle entanglement,” said Jianwei Pan, a physics professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and a fellow at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
Error correction uses mathematical codes to detect when a bit has been accidentally flipped, and is widely used in classical computing because electronic and magnetic bits occasionally switch accidentally from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa. Quantum bits are more delicate and require an error correction method to be feasible.
Quantum computers have the potential to be blazingly fast because a string of quantum bits, or qubits, that store the ones and zeros of computer information can represent all the numbers possible within that string at once. This would make it possible for a quantum computer to check every potential answer to a problem with a single set of operations.
Qubits take advantage of the quantum phenomenon of superposition. A photon can be polarized in one of two orientations, but when it is in superposition it is in a mix of both orientations at once.
The challenge in building computers to take advantage of the phenomenon is that superposition is a fragile condition, and interactions with the environment can knock a particle out of superposition and into one definite state. Interactions with the environment can also have more subtle effects that can result in the equivalent of a qubit being flipped from a 1 to a 0 or vice versa.
Philip Bobbitt wrote a very good criticism of the current system of terror warnings a couple of weeks back. Have a read.
The PBS program Frontline has linked to my US-EU relations category archive. I am in there with the Dissident Frogman, Iberian Notes and Almost A Diary.
I shall have to start adding more to that archive now.
This one via An Oasis. Some good tips on writing, on more of the creative side it seems. Worth a look.
This one has been sitting around waiting to be blogged for a while now. Steve A. Yetiv, professor of political science at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and author of the forthcoming book “Crude Awakenings: Global Oil Security and American Foreign Policy”, writes about the price of oil.
He points out:
All this brings us to market psychology, which is affected by supply and demand but is its own animal as well. Unlike in the past, oil is now traded like other commodities. When traders believe that the price of oil will rise, they go “long the market” or buy into oil, thus pushing the price higher. The more buyers, as with any traded good, the higher the price.
Part of their action is driven by the fundamentals of supply and demand, and part of it is speculation. Speculation can vary in rationality. The stock market bubble that sent U.S. Nasdaq index above 5000 was driven by irrational speculation, not real fundamentals.
Speculation is affected by many things, including fears about oil-supply disruptions in the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria. Today, these fears may well add 20 percent to the price of oil.
Just grin and bear it:
Such fears have always been around, but today they seem to represent a perfect storm of angst. This is despite the fact that there may well be enough supply out there to meet demand and that the Saudis could add about 1.4 million barrels per day if need be, albeit not of the most desired low-sulfur crude.
So there we have it. Yes, things look a bit grim today. But the global oil market can change quickly. In the short run, at least, we may well have to hold onto our hats, grin and bear it.
Will Pfaff believes the Marines are largely to blame for current problems in Iraq, not sure I agree with him on that one, interesting point of view nonetheless.
Randall Stross in the New York Times [Reg reqd] tells of the other IPOs this year that went unnoticed. He points out that it is only the trendy tech industry gets all the press comment while other bigger IPO’s receive scant attention.
Some readers may have missed the news. Genworth’s was only the biggest initial public offering so far this year, raising $2.8 billion in May. It and the second biggest – Assurant, which went public in February – did not draw nearly as much attention as A Certain Other Company’s $1.67 billion offering for a simple reason: boring ZIP codes.
Companies in financial and insurance services, however well they perform, lack the cachet of the most-envied corner of the economy: tech land. No other sector, year in and year out, receives such disproportionate attention from prospective investors and the news media alike. The computer industry is good. Software is even better. A company name already familiar to nontechnical computer users is best of all. This has been the case ever since the initial public offering of Microsoft nearly two decades ago.
He asks and answers appropriately in relation to market hype:
Will Google have a halo like Microsoft’s, benefiting the many other hopefuls in tech? This is a question of pure psychology, nothing more. Experience suggests that “halo” is a euphemism for “investors turning bullish en masse for no substantive reason.”
Will Pfaff muses on the situation developing in Iran. There seems to be increasing media comment on a likely intervention by US forces in Iran – prompted in part by stories that Iraqi Shia militias are being armed with advanced weaponry by the Iranian government. Worries over their nuclear facilities are also making headlines, while Israel considers its position. Pfaff notes:
Israel reportedly contemplates a unilateral attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. It would want America’s permission, so it needs to get it while it is sure Bush is president.
The recent decision in Israel to distribute antiradiation kits to people living in areas that might be contaminated by “an accident” at its own nuclear weapons facility is aimed at American opinion. The indirect message is that Israel is preparing for an Iranian attack on Israel’s nuclear weapons manufacturing installations; hence, pre-emption is necessary.
Israel’s basic position is forthright and simple to understand. Iran, like Iraq before it, is a major – and hostile – neighboring Islamic state. If the danger it potentially presents can be removed without disproportionate political or military costs, Israel – under Ariel Sharon – will probably do it.
The American case against Iran is entirely different. Its rests on the neoconservative notion that every society instinctively yearns to become an American-style democracy, and would do so if its despotic leaders were removed, by force if necessary. As the world’s leading democracy, the United States has an obligation to propagate democracy. Overturning despots is therefore a duty, and the result will be a better world. The argument, of course, is familiar: It is why the United States invaded Iraq.
Another piece by Martin van Creveld goes into more detail on the Israeli position.
Uncle Anthony with another letter in the Irish Times from last Friday:
Madam, – It is grotesque in the extreme that the organisers of Dingle Regatta continue to honour Mr Haughey for his so-called services to the town (The Irish Times, August 26th). During his self-serving career Haughey was a tax cheat; he felt that the heavy burden of funding essential services and development was for the little people.
The monies allocated by Haughey for the development of Dingle came from the pockets of hard-pressed, compliant taxpayers. It is those citizens, who did such great service to the State, who should be honoured in Dingle. – Yours etc.,
ANTHONY SHERIDAN
« Rock City » is the example of a collaboration between two gifted Detroit rappers: Eminem and Royce da 5.9. « Rock City » sounds like an ode to Detroit. People who have enjoyed the song have probably also liked the « Rock City » video.
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