NEW ERA IN WARFARE

Image via Wikipedia

------------------
SINGAPORE - The  portable flamethrower was considered the very latest in weapons technology during the First World War. The British developed the self-igniting device with a range of 100 yards (91 metres) specifically for torching German trenches during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

World War II saw the introduction of cruise missiles, jet-engine fighter planes and submarines as the Allies pitted their wits against the Third Reich in the battle to control land, sky and sea.

Now, missile strikes from unmanned drones have emerged as the breakthrough technology which has seen the West regain dominance in the war on terror.

For the United States government, robotic warfare rules, although critics say it has turned the conflict into a video game.

US President Barack Obama has upped the number of drone strikes on terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan from once a week to every day as the strategy begins to pay dividends.

When asked if warfare was entering a new era, US defence expert, Mr P W Singer, said: "You can compare the impact of this with the introduction of gunpowder."

The RQ-1 Predator drone (picture) has become the main unmanned aerial vehicle used for the offensives. It can fly 400 nautical miles (644 km) to a target and loiter overhead for up to 14 hours. It will then, if required, fire two Hellfire missiles before returning to base.

While the CIA has refused to share even the most basic data on the remote-controlled attacks, it has emerged that recent advances have come from US spies paying Pakistani informants to identify targets.

It is believed the agents on the ground are placing electronic chips at farmhouses occupied by Al Qaeda officials so they can be bombed by Predator planes.

The whole project is shrouded in secrecy and intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either a list of military targets of drone strikes or the actual results in terms of Al Qaeda or civilians killed.

Interestingly, military insiders say they are seeing higher levels of stress in the CIA officials who launch the drone strikes from the office, than soldiers in actual combat situations.

Mr Singer added: "Traditional bomber pilots don't see their targets. A remote operator sees the target upclose - the explosion and the aftermath. You're further away physically but you see more. Also the drone war takes place 24/7, 365 days a year."

But President Obama has continued to use the drones as a critical tool in the revised policy on Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, as well as militant hideouts in neighbouring Pakistan.

A report by the American think-tank, the New American Foundation, revealed that while there had been 45 drone attacks during President George W Bush's two terms, the Obama administration had launched 51 strikes in its first year alone.

They estimate the offensives have killed more than 1,200 people, including 20 Al Qaeda leaders. It is believed that at least one third of the dead were civilians. But despite the huge amount of collateral damage, US top brass clearly believe the strategy is paying off.

Last week, it was announced the Al Qaeda leader who masterminded the attack on the CIA HQ in Afghanistan was killed by a drone missile in North Waziristan, Pakistan. A counterterrorism official said Hussein Al Yemeni was killed outright in the strike and now the terror group's leadership have been forced deeper into hiding and are struggling to plan new operations.

In fact, so intense is the offensive in the area that it is said that people living there are developing psychological disorders because of the constant fear and anxiety. The drone strikes have attracted much criticism with international lawyers even questioning the legality of the programme.

Mr Gary Solis, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said: "CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war."

He added: "Even if they are sitting in Langley, the CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of distinction, a core concept of armed conflict, as they directly participate in hostilities." Paul Gilfeather

From TODAYOnline.com, Tuesday, 23-Mar-2010
----------

Related articles by Zemanta

• Five die in Pakistan drone raid (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Pakistan drone raid 'kills 12' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Drone Wars, Without Any Rules (huffingtonpost.com)
• Drone Attack Is Said to Kill a Senior Qaeda Leader (nytimes.com)
• US to escalate drone attacks on Pakistan (telegraph.co.uk)
• Drone Attack Is Said to Kill a Senior Qaeda Leader (nytimes.com)
• Pakistan drone raid 'kills five' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Pakistan drone attack kills three (news.bbc.co.uk)
• An aggressive Panetta at CIA (tech.bl0x.info)
• Rocket attack kills 1 at NATO base in Afghanistan (ctv.ca)

Mind your language

Image via Wikipedia

John Bittleston, succeed@mediacorp.com.sg

AN EXCELLENT way to destroy a society or an organisation is to drown it in jargon.

Over the past decade, there has been serious murder of the language.

As our technical ability to communicate quickly and efficiently has increased - exponentially in the last few years - so abuse by incompetently and unnecessarily invented language has grown to match it, in all languages. Pick up any official document, any terms and conditions, any contract between two organisations or people and you will see dozens of examples.

Many organisations want to confuse the customer. Did you read the small print on the last insurance or banking contract you signed? I doubt it. Even if you could see the 6-point font in which it was produced, it is unlikely you would have understood more than a fifth of the words. You were probably being urged to sign it quickly while the "special offer" lasted. This is theft, but don't try prosecuting.

You have already signed away your rights to honest dealing, competence, promptness and redress. You have been changed from victim into perpetrator.

Then there is self-aggrandisement. Spouting a lot of words or mnemonics that others don't understand makes some people imagine they are successful and important. They are merely making themselves appear ridiculous and insecure.

A more complex slaughter of the language is caused by the widening gap between the sound-bite and the so-called research paper.

The fact that the world is becoming a more complex place is surely a signal for simpler, clearer communications.

We cannot avoid soundbites, and relevant ones have been with mankind since the dawn of civilisation. The warning grunt of Neanderthal Man alerting others to the arrival of hostile creatures and the sigh of the lovelorn for knowledge they are denied are both useful and expressive soundbites. But a soundbite is to communication what a peanut is to dinner: Titillating but unsatisfying.

At the other extreme is the Research Paper. Deep studies of our world are vital and welcome. They have been the basis of our longevity, our increasingly fulfilled and pain-free lives and our material well-being. Without them, progress would be slow, sporadic and uncertain.

However, truly good papers are well-researched, intelligible, devoid of unnecessary complexity and brief. World War II was won by the Allies because they insisted that all paper submissions be restricted to one page. Long, tortuous documents allowing the author to cover his posterior were forbidden.

It is widely agreed the world is becoming a more complex place. It has certainly been so in my lifetime. This should surely be seen as the signal for simpler, clearer communications, not for increasingly confusing ones. I wish it were practical to impose a word tax; alas, it is not.

Easy and cheap access to communication of every sort offers the possibility of more widespread appreciation of the arts and a deeper understanding of man's true spirituality - the beauty he creates himself with the tools he was given at birth.

Do any of the communications degrees so ardently studied today provide this kind of appreciation? Have these courses contributed to the real quality of life?

But this is what communication is about. Increased years of life are wasted if, at the end, we cannot say that we have had, within the limits imposed by our genes and the environment in which we were raised, a fulfilled life. Any education that does not contribute to all aspects of fulfilment is not education but training. Any communication that fails to enhance the quality of the precious gift we are given at birth is not informing but selling.

A good education and true communication together make life wonderfully fulfilled.

John Bittleston mentors people in business, career and their personal lives at www.TerrificMentors.com.

From TODAY, Business – Monday, 27-Jul-2009

Related articles by Zemanta

• Did Humans Kill Neanderthals? (time.com)

Survey shows big Japanese firms less pessimistic

Posted: 22 June 2009 1324 hrs

File picture of a share prices board in Tokyo

TOKYO: Japan's large companies were less pessimistic about the economy in the year's second quarter than they were during the previous three-month period, a government survey has shown.

The large company business sentiment index on current conditions was at minus 22.4 in the second quarter against minus 51.3 in January-March, according to a joint survey by the Ministry of Finance and the Cabinet Office.

The index is calculated by taking the percentage of companies that see an improvement in the economy and subtracting from that the percentage of companies that say the economy is getting worse.

The outlook index for big companies stood at minus 2.6 for July-September last year, and at plus 8.7 for the October-December period.

The recent improvement raised expectations that the Bank of Japan's closely watched "Tankan" business confidence survey, due on July 1, may also point towards a bottoming-out of Japan's worst recession since World War II.

The Nikkei financial daily reported on Sunday that the Tankan survey by the central bank would likely show the first improvement in sentiment in two-and-a-half years among major manufacturers.

The index in January-March slumped to a record low of minus 58, as the world's second biggest economy slid deeper into recession.

But it is forecast to recover to minus 41 for the April-June quarter, the daily said, citing estimates by 25 private research bodies.

Official data have shown Japan's economy, Asia's biggest, shrank at an annualised 14.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2009, its worst rate on record.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Decline in world economy moderating: IMF (financialpost.com)
• Pedometer Makes You a Character in a Samurai Storyline [Fitness] (gizmodo.com)
• Iceland at risk of a 'junk' credit rating (telegraph.co.uk)

‘China won’t be a superpower... yet’

by Esther Ng

05:55 AM Jun 09, 2009

Professor Wang Gungwu

HIS first love was literature, but if his professor had not returned to England, Wang Gungwu would not have become a historian, much less a distinguished one.

On Friday, Prof Wang, now 78 and the chairman of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, will receive an honorary doctorate of letters from Cambridge University for his contribution to Chinese history and culture.

As a historian, Prof Wang has seen it all - from the Second World War, the Cold War, 911, right up to the present. But never in his 78 years did he predict the 1949 takeover by the Communists in China, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nor China's present mercurial rise to the world stage.

"As historians, we learn from history - not predict it," he said.

Still, he dismissed the notion that China will replace the United States as a superpower in the foreseeable future, even as the financial crisis brings America to its knees while China's influence continues to grow through its trade ties, especially in places such as Africa.

"China has too many problems - the environment, social equity, justice - to deal with."

On criticism from human rights groups that China was fuelling the war in Darfur with its arms sales, Prof Wang said: "China's policy is not to interfere in another country's sovereignty. Yes, they do sell arms, but they sell to everybody. But so do the French, the Americans and everybody else."

Come Friday, Prof Wang will join Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen in receiving their honorary doctorates.

From TODAY, World – Tuesday, 09-Jun-2009

Related articles by Zemanta

• Jaime Pozuelo-Monfort: Words Apart (huffingtonpost.com)
• James Warren: This Week in Magazines: The "Test Madness" of Our Medical Lives (huffingtonpost.com)
• If sturgeon could talk (crosscut.com)
• Manufacturing Insider Exposes the Problems in the China Production Game (wileyptnews.com)
• May 7, 1959: Can't We All Just Get Along? (wired.com)
• Worries Voiced Over Economy (nytimes.com)
• The City of Brotherly Love I: Everything is History (designmind.frogdesign.com)
• Doubts about democracy (stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com)
• Shoe protester cleared after protest at Chinese premier (telegraph.co.uk)
• Chinese PM shoe-thrower goes on trial (guardian.co.uk)

UN to study security threat of climate change

A move to save the Earth – and its inhabitants. Have any thought on how to do this?

-----------

06/04/2009 | 09:24 AM

UNITED NATIONS — With glaciers melting and oceans rising, the UN General Assembly on Wednesday expressed deep concern at the adverse impact of climate change and urged U.N. bodies to consider the possible security implications for all countries.

The nonbinding resolution, adopted by consensus, was the first ever sponsored by the 12-nation group of Pacific Small Island Developing States whose homelands are threatened by rising sea levels, and the first to raise the possible security threat from global warming.

It calls for a report by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon next year "on the possible security implications of climate change," based on the views of the 192 UN member states and regional and international organizations.

For the Pacific island nations, the implications are clear.

"The Pacific Ocean in which we have lived for centuries will eventually leave little of our homelands behind if urgent action is not taken," Ambassador Marlene Moses of Nauru, the world's smallest island nation covering only 21 square kilometers, warned the assembly.

Speaking on behalf of the group, she said, small islands are already grappling with the inundation of coastal areas where the majority of their population live, the submergence of islands, the loss of fresh water supplies, salt water intrusion, flooding, drought and damaged crops.

"In many cases, these impacts will ultimately render Pacific island nations uninhabitable, destroying our unique and ancient cultures," Moses said.

"As the rest of the world continues to debate the security implications of climate change, for our peoples the problem is astoundingly real," she said. "Communities on drowning islands throughout the Pacific are faced with a looming homelessness crisis due to rising sea levels. For some, the only viable option is to migrate. While many have already relocated, more are expected to follow as more of our islands eventually submerge."

Moses told the assembly before the resolution was adopted that the adverse effects of climate change could lead to the disappearance of many UN member states for the first time in the organization's history.

"The adoption of the resolution will not only prove that we are seriously concerned about the global environment but more importantly that we are seriously concerned about the survival of whole populations and the existence of their lands, from which they derive their sense of belonging and identity," she said.

Palau's deputy UN ambassador Joan Yang stressed that for the Pacific islands and other countries, climate change is a security threat.

"When we are told by scientists to prepare for humanitarian crises, including exodus, in our lifetimes, how can it be different from preparing for a threat like war?," she asked. "When we face the potential for economic and political disruption on a scale not seen since World War II, we must move to action."

The Pacific island states "are among those nations least responsible" for the harmful greenhouse gases, blamed for global warming, "yet will be among the first to disappear," Yang said.

She urged the UN Security Council to address the security threat posed by climate change and chart the way forward.

Ambassador Phillip Muller of the Marshall Islands said there is "a very small window for urgent international action, perhaps as little as 10 years, to best avoid irreversible and abrupt climate impacts."

"The people of the Marshall Islands pray that we shall not reach this point of no return," he said. - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Report: Climate change killing 300,000 a year (cnn.com)
• Refugees Join List of Climate-Change Issues (nytimes.com)
• Leaders called to special climate talks (independent.co.uk)
• Simply symbolic or smart environmentalism: Earth Hour approaches (sciam.com)