New guidelines aims to stem the wave of pub closures and help an ailing industry

For regular pubgoers, it could be the investment of a lifetime. The public are to be given cash and advice on how to invest and buy pubs as part of a package of measures designed to stem the wave of closures. The proposals are due to be announced by the pubs minister, John Healey, on Friday.

The initiative has been prompted by the closure of around 40 pubs each week, resulting in losses of jobs and millions of pounds from the economy.

Healey will also change the planning rules so that councils have new powers to intervene before a pub is demolished, giving a period of grace for communities to have their say and to see if an alternative buyer can be found. The planning guidelines will also allow pubs to branch out into new commercial ventures, ranging from restaurants to gift shops, without the additional expense and time of seeking approval from the council.

Healey is worried that a key part of British culture is being destroyed without any collective discussion as to whether this is the way communities wants to develop.. "We need and can do more to support our pubs and broaden what they can offer to the local community and remain an important part of British culture," he said.

The government has faced intense lobbying from the pub industry and the all-party parliamentary Beer Group. In a 2008 report on community pubs, the group found pub takings had been hit by supermarket alcohol promotions and heavy regulation, such as the smoking ban."Community pubs are the catalyst for an array of local activities that simply wouldn't happen without them", said Greg Mulholland MP.

"It's time they received due recognition, and for government urgently to examine what can be done to remove some of the red tape and duty forcing so many of these struggling businesses to the wall."

According to figures from the British Beer and Pub Association, 2,365 pubs closed last year. The closure rate has slightly improved this year in parallel with the economic recovery but the association says the government is still on course to lose £250m in tax revenue from pubs.

• Pubs
• Recession

The Internet is huge but it's a hodgepodge of hundreds of thousands of smaller, private networks, connected through thousands of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and dozens of backbones operated by the large Telcos and service providers.

Moving data from one end of the Internet to the other can mean traveling across many different computers and different networks. Some of these computers and networks are old and inefficient while some are modern and very efficient.

They are all tied together into what we call the Internet, through a collection of standards. These standards determine how a packet of data can reach its destination, complete and undamaged.

Many large Internet companies own large chunks of the Internet through building their own data centers, networks, backbones, etc. This helps to keep their costs down.

Google is big...

Google is one of those companies that owns a large chunk of the Internet. It has more than 50 data centers around the world; it builds its own servers; it operates its own backbones that shuttle huge amounts of data across the world; it develops its own software for managing all of its data; it keeps banks of servers in the data centers of ISPs so that it can cache data closer to delivery; and more, much more.

How big is Google? asks Arbor Networks. It's a rhetorical question because Arbor knows, it sells network control and monitoring hardware used by the largest ISPs and corporations.

Arbor says that Google is very big:

I mean really big. If Google were an ISP, it would be the fastest growing and third largest global carrier. Only two other providers (both of whom carry significant volumes of Google transit) contribute more inter-domain traffic. But unlike most global carriers (i.e. the “tier1s”), Google’s backbone does not deliver traffic on behalf of millions of subscribers nor thousands of regional networks and large enterprises. Google’s infrastructure supports, well, only Google.

Based on data from 110 ISPs collected in the summer of 2009, Google was responsible for as much as 10% of all Internet traffic.

If a company wants to compete with Google on a large scale, the costs of shuttling data packets around, whether they be Twitter packets or video packets, starts becoming very important at these large scales.

Arbor says:

The competition between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other large content players has long since moved beyond just who has the better videos or search. The competition for Internet dominance is now as much about infrastructure — raw data center computing power and about how efficiently (i.e. quickly and cheaply) you can deliver content to the consumer.

And that's why Google has focused on building the most efficient, lowest cost to operate, private Internet. This infrastructure is key to Google, and it's key to understanding Google.

The cost of aluminum...

Google will locate its massive data centers where electricity costs are low, such as where there is hydro-electric power. There's a shortcut to finding these locations, look for places where there are aluminum smelters -- these use huge amounts of electricity.

[Back in 2005 I was tipped off by a source that Google was looking at places for new data centers, related to aluminum smelters. But I was unable to write about it directly. I put the scoop in the form of a cryptic sentence and called it a "Crypto-Scoop."

GOOG is prophetic, rather than superstitious,
about its interest in places of power,
associated with the 13th building block of the Original Design.

(Aluminum is the 13th element in the periodic table - a fundamental building block of the Universe.) I have no idea if anyone worked it out :)]

Power and computing costs...

Google knew back then that electric power costs would be important in determining the cost of data centers. Today, it is high on the list of priorities for all data centers. That's also why it has been investing in power generating technologies, such as wind, sun, and geothermal.

It has a key goal of generating electric power from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal-generated electric power. That would be an incredible achievement.

Always lower costs...

Google always focuses on finding the lowest costs even though it can easily afford to pay more. Google builds its own servers, made from off-the-shelf low cost components, with cheap hard drives. It has developed its own software that deals with component failure and moves work loads across huge numbers of servers. Managing failure is built into Google's data center operating systems.

It has bought up lots of "dark fiber," at a very low cost. This is optical fiber that hasn't yet been 'lit' but it is in the ground, in place, ready to be hooked up.

Because Google has so much fiber, it operates one of the largest backbones in the world. It also means that it can trade bandwidth with others.

Large Telcos and ISPs have peering arrangements with each other. This means that if they have the capacity, they will carry extra traffic for each other. These peering arrangements mean that Google's bandwidth bill for all that YouTube video is zero.

It's difficult to believe, but your bandwidth bill to watch a YouTube video is more than Google's. Because of bartering through peering agreements, its only cost is in maintaining its own networks and backbones.

Skipping the last mile...

Google still needs ISPs and Telcos for the last mile, to deliver its various services and products, to the end user/consumer. But it has been experimenting with going direct.

It has experimented with free municipal Wi-Fi, and more recently, it is setting up high speed bandwidth to communities with 500,000 people or less.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Google wants to become an ISP or a Telco. It is not a service organization and it doesn't want that headache, but it does want to spur ISPs and Telcos to develop high-speed data connections, so that it can deliver future products and services that require high speed data.

The Internet is becoming ever more Google's...

Googles growth means that it is building a much faster, and much more power efficient, and much greener Internet. And through peering agreements, it is carrying much more than just Google traffic, it is quickly, and quietly becoming an important carrier for all Internet traffic.

There are huge indirect benefits from Google's work that make the Internet a better service for every Internet user.

Essential facility...

What will this lead to? It's going to lead to regulatory scrutiny because Google will be increasingly seen as an 'essential facility' vital for the economies of regions, nations, and entire trading blocs.

Increased scrutiny by governments, and regulatory bodies, will make it more difficult for Google to execute on its business strategies. Combined with the increased scrutiny of Google's acquisitions by the Federal Trade Commission, Google's future ambitions will become ever more restricted.

Google sees the writing on the wall. It has boosted how much it spends on lobbying in Washington. [Antitrust Heat -- Google Spends Millions To Influence Washington - SVW]

A layer cake business...

Google might decide that its value lies in its incredibly efficient infrastructure, which is far more efficient and lower cost than the Internet as a whole.

Once you have the lowest cost infrastructure, you can layer and scale other business services on top. Such as payment systems, basic voice and data services, security systems, and commerce platforms (advertising).

Google might decide it doesn't need to own a Facebook, Twitter a Yahoo, or an Amazon -- when it can host all the data packets. It can carry and trace a data packet from source to destination and back again -- it can mine all that transactional data. That's extremely valuable.

It's a little known fact that Google keeps all of its data, all transactional data. It erases part of the identifiable meta data, but that can be reconstructed. [Google Keeps Your Data Forever - Unlocking The Future Transparency Of Your Past - SVW]

That transactional data is incredibly valuable, and even though we can't unlock it to its fullest value today, Google is working on it.

No umbrella...

By being able to build the most efficient, private Internet, Google makes it extremely difficult for any competitor to challenge it. There is no 'price umbrella' that competitors can use.

For example, there used to be lots of mainframe computer companies because IBM, the largest mainframe computer maker, used to charge very high prices. There was a substantial price umbrella set by IBM that sheltered competitors, and allowed them to sell IBM compatible mainframes and still make a good living.

You can see similar price umbrellas in other business sectors.

Google has made sure that by building the most efficient, lowest cost infrastructure, there is no price umbrella that could be exploited by competitors. It's more like a manhole cover, try to get under it, and you fall into a hole...

This strategy means that Google leaves money on the table, it could make more money over the short-term by creating a price umbrella. Instead, it has chosen a long term business strategy which doesn't give competitors any toehold, let alone an umbrella.

Its stock ownership is set up so that founder's stock has ten times the voting rights of public shares, this allows it to avoid shareholder pressure to pursue short-term business goals.

This all adds up to make Google into a truly formidable force, and one that continually amasses greater powers and influence. 'Do no evil' is the very least it can do.

The Federal Communications Commission issued the long-awaited National Broadband Plan this week, a 376-page document that makes clear the agency accepts the reality of the current wireline duopoly — and as such, has decided to put the burden of competitive pressure on mobile broadband.

There are many consumer-friendly aspects of the plan, such as opening up set-top boxes (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d) and creating an easy-to-understand label that shows people what their broadband connections are capable of (see image). But the FCC has clearly decided against a plan that requires a new infrastructure buildout when the current infrastructure will suffice. If only the agency had moved to tackle this issue back in 2002, when the telecommunications providers were thinking about how their fiber rollouts were going to occur, and implemented policies that could have resulted in a shared nationwide fiber network.

When Life Gives You Lemons …

But now that Verizon is spending $19 billion to push fiber to the home for 80 percent of its footprint (although that push may be slowing) and cable providers have pushed fiber out closer to the home in their networks and are deploying DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, the FCC needs to work with what ISPs have in the field. So the bulk of the wireline reform coming out of the plan consists of regulatory tweaks to address predatory special access charges, inter-carrier compensation rules, set rates for access to underground conduits and utility poles, and in-depth proposals for universal service fund reform.

Yes, the FCC is proposing that wireline networks will be faster if the 2020 goal of 100 Mbps speeds down and 50 Mbps speeds up are met, but that’s a goal, not something I’m sure the FCC can and will enforce. Another goal is 1-gigabit connections to community centers and schools, which depending on how it’s implemented could help drive faster networks as well. But again, those are 2020 goals.When it comes to ensuring competition between the duopoly in the short term, the FCC will rely on data. The plan proposes changes to both the type and amount of data the FCC collects, and also asks the Bureau of Labor Statistics to collect information on how people use broadband.

The FCC says it will watch for price discrepancies and inequalities as newer networks are deployed and the types of services available to consumers diverge in speeds from wireless broadband’s 1 Mbps downstream speeds to fiber’s 100 Mbps downlink speeds. However, it doesn’t lay out how such inequalities — if they do emerge — will be addressed. Rather, mobile broadband is the star of the plan, both because it offers hope of a third broadband competitor in many areas, and also because of the potential for future growth and innovation of the U.S. economy.

Airwaves Are The Key

I’ll write more in the coming weeks on the spectrum aspects of the plan. The details as to how the FCC plans to go from having 50 MHz available for mobile broadband today to 500 MHz in 10 years will result in a pretty big legislative battle as the FCC tries to nab broadcaster spectrum and incumbents and tech firms position to own large chunks of those valuable airwaves.

But the real benefit of mobile broadband as a competitive stick is threefold: it can cover the entire country relatively cheaply, existing operators are already moving to all-IP networks that the FCC sees as the future of its regulatory jurisdiction (the airwaves will always be part of the FCC oversight even if Internet applications and services are not), and the infrastructure is easily upgradable without tearing up streets and installing gear into people’s homes.

So to push the mobile broadband envelope the FCC wants to take actions to free up 300 MHz by 2015. The chart lays out the spectrum bands and the timing for this FCC airwave grab, and I offer a bit more context below.

WCS — This spectrum is contentious because Sirius Satellite is worried about interference from any cellular operators deploying service in this band. The plan proposes to resolve that issue this year.

AWS 2 and 3: These 60 MHz should be relatively easy to get to auction or to allocate for mobile broadband once the government makes some decisions. At issue with some of this spectrum is whether it will be paired with spectrum the FCC will have to carve out from other federal holdings. The agency hopes to figure this pairing issue out with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration by Oct. 1. Paired spectrum is useful for deploying the more common, forward division multiplexing-type of networks.

D Block: These 10 MHz were too much trouble during the last spectrum auction because they were burdened with huge public safety network rules. The goal, to which the plan dedicates an entire chapter and $6.5 billion, is to build out a nationwide public safety network so all local, state and federal first responders can communicate in case of an emergency. These 10 MHz will have to connect with spectrum set aside for the National Public Safety network, and will have to be deployed to work with commercial handsets using LTE network technology. This makes such spectrum a good bet as a safety valve or a backup chunk of spectrum for an existing provider.

MSS: Mobile satellite service providers such as Terrestar, SkyTerra, and Inmarsat own spectrum in this band because they’ve promised to build a combination satellite-and-terrestrial network. So far they’ve failed to make good on that promise, and I have huge doubts that they ever will. The FCC appears to be relaxing some of the more stringent requirements on satellite providers to see if they can deliver a credible mobile broadband service with devices consumers will buy. If the FCC eliminates some of the satellite requirements, the MSS spectrum holders hope their spectrum becomes more valuable.

Broadcast TV: The FCC hopes to pry 120 MHz away from broadcasters in urban areas, where cellular providers have the most need for spectrum, which will pit the FCC and carriers against big broadcasters and over-the-air television watchers in big cities. Oh. My. God. It’s going to be a showdown. But I’m glad the FCC isn’t going for a token spectrum grab from rural broadcasters, which would be easy but wouldn’t alleviate network congestion.

The FCC isn’t making friends in Congress (or with over-the-air television buffs) with this plan, but as the final arbiter on how televisions have to send out their signals, it has the ability to squish some channels together and dictate how broadcasters use their 6MHz channels. To ease the pain of the FCC flexing this power over broadcaster’s spectrum allotments, it’s asking Congress to change the way spectrum auction proceeds are shared so as to let broadcasters have a piece of the pie. To bolster its controversial move, the FCC points out that cellular companies have valued each megahertz of spectrum per person covered at $1.28 while the television spectrum is currently valued at 11-15 cents. Why? Because mobile broadband is the future and over-the-air television is on its way out. Heck, the FCC even notes that poor consumers could get their broadcast through subsidized IPTV instead.

Getting more spectrum is the biggest aspect of expanding mobile broadband, but rules to make it easier to deploy microwave backhaul are also in the queue for 2010. And the FCC pledges to allocate a band for unlicensed wireless, although it doesn’t specify where this band might be. It also touches on the white spaces broadband the FCC approved in 2008, basically saying it wants to see devices and networks using white spaces broadband soon. We do, too. We thought we’d have more than a few trial networks by now. For folks watching and waiting for this flood of spectrum, the FCC and the NTIA set a deadline of Oct. 1 of this year to identify additional spectrum for use.

Since mobile broadband is the lynchpin of our federal broadband plan, we’d better get this right.

Filed under: Government/Legal, Japan, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Earnings/Financials, South Korea

We can't even pretend to know the first thing about currency manipulation, so we won't bother trying to explain how artificially depreciated currency can help imports into the U.S. market. But American manufacturing groups have long accused the governments of China, Japan and South Korea of manipulating their currency to gain an bigger foothold in the U.S. market, and domestic automakers say Japan and South Korea in particular have been artificially depreciating their currency for years. Earlier this month, The American Automotive Policy Council, which represents General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, met with Obama Administration auto task force head Ron Bloom about the manipulation of the Japanese yen and Korean won, and now the AAPC is talking with members of Congress.

A report from The Detroit News shows that Japan added $56 billion to a "currency interventions fund" last week - a fund that apparently has a substantial cash reserve. Further, Japanese Finance Minister Naoto Kan told the Japanese Diet that his government is ready to manipulate currency by depreciating the yen. The AAPC claims that the actions of the Japanese and Korean governments put American manufacturing jobs at risk, adding:

The DetNews claims representatives from the Japanese government were not available to comment on the group's claims. For its part, AAPC says that the goal of meeting with Congress is action:

Another area of concern for the AAPC is what they allege is the inherently closed nature of Asian auto markets. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development claims that the two countries are currently the most closed out of the 30 markets with auto industries. The ECOD also notes that domestic automakers in those countries account for 95.5 percent of all auto sales.

[Source: The Detroit News]

Report: Detroit automakers head to Congress to talk Japanese, Korean currency manipulation originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Every generation thinks that they are the first. The first to feel this way or that, the first to make this or that revelation, the first to do and make things that we find later have been done and made since before we could record their doing and making. But while these illusory and fleeting firsts are common to every generation, there are true firsts being achieved constantly, though they are often subtle enough that they are not noticed even by those in their midst. My generation has been lucky enough to be part of a very important first.

The personal computer (in all its forms) has grown to be, I would say, the single greatest potential source of prosperity in history. It has enabled the internet and a consequent democratization of all sorts of arts and information, as well as the ongoing destabilization of financial institutions via distributed money transfers. The revolution, and it really is one, is ongoing. How unlike the world of 2000, of 1990, is the present day? And 2020 will be doubly, triply removed. As technology further enables itself, the positive feedback creates a greater rate of advance, and thus our acceleration; if this interests you, you should probably go talk to Mr. Kurzweil, since he’s done a bit more work on the idea. I’m not concerned with the singularity, however: my object is the generation to which I belong. I propose that this generation, which I am going to call Generation I for a number of reasons, is the only one to which the rate of advancement of technology was exactly fitted. At no other time in history, and perhaps never in the future, will there be a group of people whose own growth and maturation is so perfectly reflected in the principal technological and cultural advancement of the age.

It’s a serious claim, but I hope to show that it’s founded in observation and not egomania. And let me remark further before I begin, that I am not claiming any special merit for this generation, only a special situation. Lastly: I will speak of “advancement” or “progress” as if they were objectively measurable, when clearly there is much to be said on what those concepts actually consist of. But for the purposes of this article, let us consider them to be, say, the progressively sophisticated bending of the natural world to our needs and wants.

As even a casual student of history (read: a grade-schooler) can see, the rate of technological and cultural advancement has ever accelerated, of course with some interruptions due to warfare and subjugation. This is first observable in the length of “ages” — the stone age, 40,000 years. The bronze age, 2000 years. The iron age, 1000 years. There are too many books written on this topic for me to spend many words on this, and at any rate this acceleration is palpable to those of us living in the modern first world. Moore’s Law was once a simple prediction; now it’s practically a force of nature.

Let us look at recent history, to prime our minds for the idea of what I would call a “generational technology.” The car is a perfect example. Prototyped in the late 19th century, manufactured widely in 1915, increasingly affordable and common over the next 30 years, then producing a “car culture” in the 50s and 60s, followed by an increasingly consumerized nature as the automobile was integrated completely into civilization, and cities and lives began to be designed around it. Today the integration is complete, and perhaps we are on the verge of another change, to a post-car world. I don’t know. But the divisions in the car’s history, you see, are a lot like generational periods. The specific dates and years aren’t important, as generations are a sort of rolling concept, and the lines are wherever the historian finds them convenient to be. So let us look at the stages of the car, which I have also given names (I’m a coining machine today):

Hammer stage: During this time, the concept and platform of the automobile were being determined by the founders and inventors. Things like setting down how many wheels a car will have, which method of propulsion it will use, the materials it will be built from, and so on. There was surely some bickering here, as there was between AC and DC when prototyping electrical devices, but one fundamental form is almost always selected, and for the car it was four wheels, front engine, and internal combustion. This stage is performed entirely by an older generation of inventors, investors, and engineers.

But is there another stage? I don’t think so. The cycle is complete: the changing world births a new technology, the technology is popularized, refined, and eventually fuels the next change. I chose the car as a representative because it is familiar and its effects clear, but with a little work I think that the model I’ve just suggested can be applied to pretty much any technology, from aqueducts to longbows. But this isn’t a longbow blog — so let’s move on.

Note that, in the example of the car, each stage is relegated roughly to a generation. The inventing generation sells to the adopting generation, which brings up the integrative generation. Furthermore, the inventing generation cannot be the adopting generation, and the rate of progression in this case prohibited the adopting generation from being the integrative generation; for the car it took around 50 or 60 years, arguably more, for it to reach its Mirror stage. My belief is that Generation I (born roughly between 1975 and 1985) is the first generation, and possibly the last, to see and be a part of every stage: to be a part of the genesis, popularization, refinement, and counter-refinement of their age’s defining technology.

Now, I don’t claim we invented the personal computer; nor, I’m sure, would those who are cited as inventing the computer. Like the automobile, the computer was a long time coming and was enabled by advances in many other technologies and disciplines. Early computing was as an exercise in logic, mathematics, and electrical engineering, and its early advances academic. What defined the automobile, and what has defined both the computer and the age in which it has proliferated, was not in fact the creators (brilliant though they were), who were the implements of history, but the people who used them and guided their use. For the car, that definition was stretched out over long decades, and people grew old while automobile technology remained young. For the personal computer and the internet, the infancy of the technology coincided with the infancy of my generation, its adolescence with our adolescence, its growth with our growth, in such a pas-de-deux as has no precedent in history and, for all we know, may have no equal in futurity.

Our readers will probably remember that computers around 1980 were ugly, limited, and expensive machines. They performed a few of the functions will still value today (word processing, calculating, games) but had no GUI and little connectivity. I don’t want to overstate the parallels, but just for clarity in what I am driving at, consider that an apt comparison might be to a young child, able to see and crawl, or walk totteringly — fundamentally intact, you see, but encumbered with limitations that can only be changed with time and effort.

I remember learning just enough of my dad’s old work computer to find tic-tac-toe and play it on the flickering amber screen. A few years later, primitive UIs are emerging, so primitive that the command line is still unarguably the more powerful tool. Just as Generation I begins to learn to read and to speak, the PC can be communicated to in what we understood as plain language. The first truly popular computers proliferate, running DOS, and a few of us were lucky enough to play with one of the later Apple II models.

In 1990 the GUI and the more complex tools it enables begin to flourish and become fundamental to the PC experience, as Windows 3.0 and the Mac Classic hit the market. Shortly after that, the first affordable modems. BBSes, AOL and its chatrooms and fake internet, and then the revelation of the true web with Mosaic, Internet Explorer, and so on. I won’t waste your time with further details you’re almost certainly familiar with (having lived through them), but you must see the way things are not moving at the rate of a stage per generation like the car. No – they moved more quickly, but not so quick that we lost track. This particular speed of maturation (from “infancy” to “adulthood,” which we may define as, say, Windows XP or OS X; after that I believe the core functionality of the PC OS has not been substantially altered), which is roughly the same as the speed of maturation for a human being, and Generation I has the privilege of being the computer’s twin sibling, if you will.

Though the virtue of being born at the right time is not ours to claim, nor is it simply a novelty that Generation I has grown up in tandem with a world-defining technology. As we grew up with it, we have seen and participated in all the stages of generational technology. We witnessed as children the squabbling between Atari, Microsoft, Amiga, and all the others as the beat the raw metal of computing technology into a shape the world could use. We knew it when it was young, and then we helped it become a household technology by simply being in the household, the way baby boomer kids grew up around cars and ended up knowing cars better than any generation before them. However, cars as a technology practically stood still for the car kids’ formative stages. Not so for us: every year the computer was changing its case, its OS, its capabilities, its interface — everything changed about it, but we still recognized it, the way we’d recognize an old playmate year after year who, though changing in size, aspect, and ability, we still know. That is how Generation I knows the computer, the internet, the smartphone, and whatever comes next. Not as a series of devices, but as the natural progression of a friend whom we know by sight in spite of the changes wrought by time and culture. Perhaps it is best expressed that we know the ghost in the machine, that which has informed and guided the progression of the technology from household appliance to a tool as fundamental as the wheel.

Captain Nemo took pride in the Nautilus “moving through a medium of movement.” He meant the ocean, of course, a place that is never the same one instant to the next, but which he nonetheless knew and navigated freely because… well, because he had a submarine. The metaphor doesn’t extend that far. But the idea of moving in a moving medium is a powerful one. To truly understand the way that the world changes around you, and to not only be able to survive in it but to thrive, to navigate, to direct that change, that is the privilege of a generation born into movement.

I see in my flight of fancy I’ve really built up Generation I into quite a ridiculously grand thing, and in doing so made the same mistake that I described in the first sentence of this article. I did not mean to do so, but the simple boon of being born alongside a world-changing technology is not minor: it matured with us and has shaped us as much as we have shaped it, and that means that we are on the front line for the Mirror Stage of the information age. Can you forgive me for being excited to be a part of a sea change in civilization, a change in infrastructure perhaps more fundamental than the integration of the automobile? Few events in history are the equal of this impending shift, if I’m not mistaken. I of course don’t claim it for myself or my generation; it is a glory we will share in, but which we may be able to uniquely enjoy. Imagine being the childhood friend of the first man to set foot on Mars. It’s no credit on yourself exactly, but you just may understand him more fundamentally than anybody else.

What’s that I hear you saying? That we haven’t actually contributed much to the progress of the personal computer and the internet? Very true! If I’ve claimed otherwise I’m very sorry, because Generation I, like the baby boomer generation in the 60s, isn’t quite ready to make our mark. The fact is we’re just starting out. What was the work of the baby boomers? Was it driving cars around fast and knowing how to clean a carburetor? Hell no. Their task wasn’t just to know the technology that would shape their world, but to shape their world. And that’s our job as well. What changes the world will know in the next 20 years are impossible to predict, but you better believe that Generation I are going to set their shoulders to it. The Mirror Stage awaits.

Generation I reflects the burst of technology which in the last decade (as we ourselves have made our real-world debut), has become commonplace, and the prefix “i-” has become a universal indicator of tech. Yes, it’s a bit of a capitulation to Apple, but let’s not fool ourselves: the iPod and iMac immediately became so synonymous with personal technology that i- became generic almost overnight. So we’ve got Generation i. To be honest, I’m not sure if I prefer i or I. I think that, like other instances of the letter, capitalization may vary.

Generation I is also Generation Me: the increasing independence and compartmentalization of the social order that is the result of the personal computer and the internet, our totem technologies. It’s the paradox of instant connection and constant isolation.

And Generation I is Generation One. This is the most important of all. The coincidence of timing that resulted in us being born with silicon in our mouths also charges us with a serious responsibility — though what it may be is yet unknown. No generation is warned of the tribulations ahead, though with luck our task will be suited to our unique position. But why the One? If, as I suspect, we are in fact the first wave of a new, tech-integrative sort of people, then surely the kids born after us, into a world already possessing high-speed internet, Wikipedia, and GPS smartphones, are Generation II. What better than to start giving version numbers to our offspring? Seems like something Generation I would do.

It is probably true that every distinct generation is born into a confluence of circumstances that is consequential in its own way. Too often, though, I have felt that people my age have been maligned as a passive generation, one of consumption and luxury. That’s actually true as far as it goes, but there is much beneath the surface; who would have thought that the boomers, flower children and hot-rodders in the 60s, would be galvanized by the civil rights movement and Vietnam, emerging to become the most powerful demographic in the country, and perhaps the world, for decades running? It is toward such heights that Generation I must drive itself. We must show ourselves equal to the special favor we have been granted, and do our part to carry the world into the next age, whatever it asks of us.

Note: if you comment about how this article was too long for you to read, your comment will be deleted. Who cares?

New guidelines for operatives released as Foreign Office says it cannot reduce risk of torture to zero

The role of ministers in sanctioning activities by security and intelligence officers abroad which could be unlawful if carried out in Britain will be highlighted in guidelines published for the first time tomorrow, according to Whitehall officials.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, composed of peers and MPs handpicked by the prime minister, will release guidance drawn up for officers from MI5, MI6, and military intelligence.

The move comes amid growing evidence of their knowledge of the torture and inhuman treatment of British citizens and residents, notably of Binyam Mohamed, held as a terror suspect in Pakistan and tortured in Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay.

The Foreign Office warned tonight that Britain had to continue to work with foreign agencies in the fight against terrorism, even if they do not share UK standards on human rights. It said in its latest annual report on human rights that the UK could not afford the "luxury" of co-operating only with agencies in countries which did not abuse or torture detainees.

It said British agencies tried to minimise the risk that detainees held overseas were mistreated, but it was not always possible to "reduce the risk to zero".

The report said it was ultimately for ministers to decide whether the needs of national security outweighed the concerns of possible mistreatment.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, said the report revealed a "noticeably different strategy to the one the government have used to date".

He said: "All previous statements from ministers say we have confined ourselves to using any information we receive from foreign agencies known to use torture, not to actively seeking information. It is frankly not good enough to slip this out in two paragraphs of a 200-page report. If this is the change of policy it should be presented as such by the foreign secretary in the House of Commons, not smuggled out at five o'clock."

NThe new guidelines for intelligence officers come a year after Gordon Brown first promised to release them. However, ministers have refused guidelines in use after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US – which led to many of the cases of abuse – or those revised in 2004.

An MI5 officer, known only as witness B, is being investigated by the Met for "possible criminal wrongdoing" in connection with the Mohamed case. An MI6 officer is also being investigated by police over unconnected, but unknown, allegations.

The extent of ministerial knowledge of their activities remains unclear.

According to Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, it is unlikely that British intelligence officers would have been involved in the abuse of terrorism suspects in the recent past without first receiving ministerial approval.

Asked by the human rights lawyer Philippe Sands QC, during an interview at the Guardian Hay festival last year, whether mounting evidence of British collusion in torture meant that MI5 and MI6 had received a ministerial green light, Dearlove replied: "That's a speculative question, [but] there should have been."

He added that the intelligence community was "sometimes asked to act in difficult circumstances," and that "when it does, it asks for legal opinion and ministerial approval ... it's about political cover".

A system for providing ministerial cover for criminal acts committed overseas was incorporated into the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, the same piece of legislation that created the ISC. Section seven of that act offers indemnity in UK criminal and civil law for crimes committed overseas, as long as a secretary of state has signed a warrant authorising that crime.

The section states: "If, apart from this section, a person would be liable in the United Kingdom for any act done outside the British islands, he shall not be so liable if the act is one which is authorised to be done by virtue of an authorisation given by the secretary of state under this section."

According to the Cabinet Office, the foreign, home or defence secretaries can sign such a warrant.

This clause has been described by some MPs as a "James Bond get-out clause". But according to those former ministers involved in the drafting of the act, it was never intended to facilitate torture.

ends

• Torture
• Binyam Mohamed
• Terrorism policy

Fox News' Marc Siegel said he believed the findings of a 3-month-old email survey which found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes despite the survey's questionable methodology because its findings were similar to a September 2009 Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll. However, Fox News previously acknowledged that the IDB/TIPP poll was also "not scientific," and statistician Nate Silver stated that the poll was "simply not credible."

From the March 17 edition of Fox News' America Live:

MEGYN KELLY (ANCHOR): Well, the health care survey conducted back in December is getting some new attention today. It shed some light on how some medical professionals feel about the president's plan to reform the health care system. According to the survey which was conducted by The Medicus Firm, which is a national physician search firm, almost half of doctors who participated say they will either be forced to leave or will want to quit the medical profession if this bill actually passes. Joining us now for a fair debate, Dr. Kathleen London, a family practician, and Dr. Marc Siegel, a member of our Fox news medical a-team. Good afternoon, doctors.

[...]

So this, we're just being told that actually the New England Journal of Medicine, which was originally responsible for posting, not publishing, not conducting the survey, but for posting it on its web site later removed it. It's not a scientific poll, it's a survey, but does it bear any truth in your experience?

[...]

KELLY: Dr. Siegel, do you accept -- do you agree that this survey probably doesn't represent how most doctors feel about this overhaul?

DR. MARC SIEGEL: No, Megyn I don't agree. First of all, there were 1,200 physicians that were surveyed here, and it also reflected what was found in an IBS/TIPP poll that was done back in September where Investors Business Daily also surveyed over a thousand physicians.

Siegel was referring to a September 2009 IBD/TIPP poll which found that 45 percent of practicing physicians would consider leaving their practice if health care reform were passed.

Nate Silver: Poll is "simply not credible." In a September 16 post to his blog FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver listed five reasons why the IBD poll should be "completely ignore[d]":

1. The survey was conducted by mail, which is unusual. The only other mail-based poll that I'm aware of is that conducted by the Columbus Dispatch, which was associated with an average error of about 7 percentage points -- the highest of any pollster that we tested.

2. At least one of the questions is blatantly biased: "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and th quality of care will be better?". Holy run-on-sentence, Batman? A pollster who asks a question like this one is not intending to be objective.

3. As we learned during the Presidntial campaign -- when, among other things, they had John McCain winning the youth vote 74-22 -- the IBD/TIPP polling operation has literally no idea what they're doing. I mean, literally none. For example, I don't trust IBD/TIPP to have competently selected anything resembling a random panel, which is harder to do than you'd think.

4. They say, somewhat ambiguously: "Responses are still coming in." This is also highly unorthodox. Professional pollsters generally do not report results before the survey period is compete.

5. There is virtually no disclosure about methodology. For example, IBD doesn't bother to define the term "practicing physician", which could mean almost anything. Nor do they explain how their randomization procedure worked, provide the entire question battery, or anything like that.

Silver added: "There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent, and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept. IBD/TIPP is one of the few exceptions."

Fox News itself acknowledged that the poll is "not scientific." During Neil Cavuto's discussion of the IBD/TIPP poll on the September 16 edition of Fox News' Your World, the on-screen graphic indicated that the poll was "not scientific":

The Medicus Firm - a medical recruiting firm -- conducted the survey in December 2009. The Medicus Firm, a Dallas- and Atlanta-based firm that recruits and places physicians in jobs, was responsible for conducting the survey. It issued a press release about the results on December 17, 2009. A report written by the Medicus Firm subsequently appeared in Recruiting Physicians Today, an employment newsletter produced by Massachusetts Medical Society, "the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine." The report also appeared on the NEJM "CareerCenter" website, but was taken down on March 17.

Methodology consisted of emailing doctors in the Medicus Firm's database. The NEJM CareerCenter article indicated that "[t]he survey sample was randomly selected from a physician database of thousands. The database has been built over the past eight years by The Medicus Firm (formerly Medicus Partners and The MD Firm) from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, public directories, purchased lists, practice inquiries, training programs, and direct mail responses. The survey was conducted via emails sent directly to physicians."

Survey write-up was essentially a promotional document for the firm. After discussing the results of its survey, Medicus touted the importance of physician recruitment firms "[a]fter health reform is passed and implemented":

What does this mean for physician recruiting? It's difficult to predict with absolute certainty, but one consequence is inevitable. After health reform is passed and implemented, physicians will be more in demand than ever before. Shortages could be exacerbated further beyond the predictions of industry analysts. Therefore, the strongest physician recruiters and firms will be in demand. Additionally, hospitals and practices may be forced to rely on unprecedented recruitment methods to attract and retain physicians. "Health reform, even if it's passed in a most diluted form, could be a game-changer for physician recruitment," said Bob Collins, managing partner of The Medicus Firm in Texas. "As competitive as the market is now, we may not even be able to comprehend how challenging it will become after health reform takes effect."

Fox pushed Medicus survey, falsely attributed it to New England Journal of Medicine. Several Fox News personalities highlighted the dubious survey and falsely attributed it to the credible New England Journal of Medicine. 

Fox ran wild with "not scientific" IBD poll.  Numerous Fox News media figures highlighted the IBD/TIPP poll, even after Fox News had described it as "not scientific."

'These cattle are softening the ground for planting. I stripped down, got muddy – they thought I was a hoot'

This was taken in Madagascar, earlier this year, along the south coast. It was rice-planting season. The farmers have a traditional way of softening the ground: they hire their neighbours to come for the day with their zebu [humped cattle]. They all dress in these crazy outfits, and they drive their zebu over the irrigated patch of land.

It's almost like a rodeo, and it goes on for hours. To photograph it I had to strip down, roll my pants up, and get covered in mud. The herdsmen thought I was a hoot; people appreciate it when you get involved, rather than just stand way away, observing.

Often, I don't even hold the camera to my eye while I shoot. With an event like this, there's so much going on that if I stopped to frame the image, I wouldn't be in the right position. Or I'd have been trampled by cattle. When you're running around in the mud trying to find imaginative angles and capture the energy of what's going on, you get much more dramatic images.

I hope I've become good at shooting, literally, from the hip. It's a technique derived from working in places where security issues make it tricky to shoot in the conventional way. It's a bit hit and miss, but I've been doing it so long that I've turned it into a kind of science: I call it "precision chaos". I have a good idea of whether the elements in the frame are lining up – but, of course, there can be terrible mistakes at the edges of the image, and it often doesn't work out. When it does, it's magical.

I was in Madagascar on a commission for [the photography prize] Prix Pictet; they work by matching you up with an NGO with an environment-related mission. I was with Azafady, a charity dedicated to sustainable development in Madagascar. It was a very illuminating experience, but also disturbing: the problem there has not been caused by some big mining corporation like Rio Tinto, or by a government scheme raping the land. It's the fact that the people who are still farming in the ancient way have reached a point where there are just not enough resources left. They are a beautiful example of people living in connection with the land – but now only 10% of the island's forest remains, water is running out in some places, and they are overfishing. It's a wake-up call: sadly, these people are part of their own destruction.

Ed Kashi: Curse of the Black Gold is at Host (020-7253 2770), London EC1, until 3 April. Ed Kashi: Madagascar is at Diemar/Noble (020-7636 5375), London W1, 20 April to 1 May.

CV

Born: New York City, 1957.

Study: Degree in photojournalism at Syracuse University, New York.

Influences: "Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Gilles Peress and Salgado."

High point: "Right now."

Dislike: "The need to market yourself. I just want to make pictures and tell stories."

Top tip: "Find a subject you can be passionate about. Develop an in-depth, long-term body of work, and a vision. Without that, you can't make it today."

• Photography

Paper and card, food, garden waste and plastics on proposed list of items that would have to be recycled

Black bins for household waste could become a thing of the past under proposals to be published tomorrow to ban almost everything thrown away by households from being sent to landfill.

Paper and card, food, garden waste and plastics are all on a list of items that would have to be recycled, composted, or burned for energy. The move would represent a transformation in England and Wales, where about half of what people put in the bin at home or at work ends up in holes in the ground.

The announcement – to be put out for a 12-week consultation – is likely to raise fears about how difficult it will be for householders to manage their bins, and how councils might enforce the new rules, especially following claims that council officials have searched bags and fined people for mixing the wrong items.

Tonight, Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, said the ban would have both financial and environmental benefits. It would cut greenhouse gas emissions from landfill sites and from manufacturing new products such as cans and bottles from virgin materials.

It would also save councils money on the landfill tax charged for every tonne of waste, and allow them to make money from selling recycling materials. As existing landfill sites fill up, there is also a looming problem of finding new locations.

Recycling rates have increased dramatically over the last decade or so, from about 8% to more than one third, but the rate of growth has slowed in the last two years.

"We have made good progress, but we can go further," said Benn. "We're sending a lot of waste currently to landfill which really doesn't make sense, one because it's costing money because of the landfill levy, two because it produces emissions ... and three, there are people out there prepared to pay you for materials."

Bans on most items could be introduced in five years, with food waste taking longer, perhaps 10 years, said Benn, who cited the success of similar policies in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria.

Councils appeared concerned about how a strict ban on items going to landfill could be met. While various methods are being developed to separate "dry" items such as glass or plastics, the question of who will pay and how to separate out food waste seems to be a particular worry.

"[The government] needs to think carefully about where the money to pay for a landfill ban will come from and how the ban will be policed," said Gary Porter, chairman of the Local Government Association environment board. "Councils do not want to be put in a position where they have to fine people for putting their leftovers in the wrong bin."

Under the proposal published tomorrow [THUR] , the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will propose a ban on sending a list of common items to landfill: paper and card; food; textiles; metals; wood; garden waste; glass; plastics; and electrical and electronic equipment. Together those items represent 84% of waste collected, said the government's waste advisers, Wrap.

Earlier this week,Wrap published its biggest-ever study of what should be done with waste, following claims that households were wasting their time separating their rubbish because many items were sent to landfill, exported, or were a waste of energy to recycle. It found that in more than 80% of cases recycling was the best option, followed by incineration, and composting and anaerobic digestion.

The Conservative party has pledged to "work towards zero waste", using policies including a voluntary arrangement with producers to cut back on the production of waste and improve its disposal, setting a minimum price "floor" under the landfill tax to give businesses long term certainty to invest in new forms of waste disposal, and encouraging councils to reward families that recycle.

• Waste
• Recycling
• Incineration

A Saudi man who was arrested in January on charges of homosexuality, a “general security” offence, and impersonation of a police officer has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes, plus a fine of 5,000 rials (US $1,333) and a year in prison.

Authorities say their attention was drawn to his behaviour after a video he made was circulated locally via SMS, and later uploaded to YouTube. In the lighthearted video, the man is in a car, dressed as a Saudi police officer. He is seen dancing to club music, rubbing his chest, and flirting with the man holding the camera.

The video has since been blocked in Saudi Arabia.

Comments on the video and reactions to the punishment have been spreading throughout the blogosphere.

Saudi blogger Qusay, on the English version of his blog writes:

Most people have now seen the video or read the news of the guy dressed in an officer’s uniform and acting “homosexual” whatever that may be.
Now I am not a gay rights advocate, but I see no basis for charging him with a criminal offence…

He goes on to mention a different video he has viewed on YouTube which depicts Saudi men showering a dancer with money, which would also be forbidden behaviour. He points out that certain minorities are targeted over others, as well as commenting on the futility of policing the internet, stating:

What I want to say here... if they are arresting people for what they do on YouTube, they should not stop on those that they want, or do not conform to their standards, but go on a spree and arrest those that do everything illegal... good luck with that

Saudi blogger Majid mentions on his blog that when he viewed the video he thought it was funny- and indeed in many people's opinion it is a rather humorous and lighthearted clip, as some of the comments left on YouTube will highlight.

The maximum theoretical punishment for homosexual acts in Saudi Arabia is death. As such, sometimes the accused bring up certain mitigating factors. Here, some sources [AR] have stated that the man's family have claimed he is suffering from a hormone deficiency, others such as the Arab News article covering the story that the man has mental problems:

One newspaper interviewed the man’s father, who claims his son is mentally unstable and was seduced by his friend to perform for the camera.

Majid concurs, stating:

I see most homosexual acts in Saudi are all “mentally unstable”

-but here it is not because he condemns homosexuality, but because to behave in a homosexual manner is to invite trouble in Saudi Arabia. He says:

…the thing that is sad, no right what so ever will be considered for the Homosexual… What is even sadder is the fact the Homosexual is dealt with as sick people in the media and the society. if they are sick why put them in Jail where the WILL be abused further put them in a hospital.
drug addicts go to hospitals, Homosexual go to jail to be further abused.

Egyptian blogger Zenobia writes a post with the title incorporating a cynical “Why are you so shocked!!??“, and wonders:

But I will speak or rather wonder why a gay man who lives in a country like Saudi Arabia post a suggestive video online like that on YouTube !!??
I just want to understand what they were thinking when they uploaded this video !!?? Did they believe that this vice supervision authority or whatever is called will let them go !!??

However, the video, of course, may not have been uploaded by the man himself. As Majid points out in his piece, it is more likely uploaded through malice by someone else, given that the authorities' reactions and subsequent punishments are so predictable.

Sadly, equally as predictable are the knee-jerk reactions of certain Western blogospheres, who are often quick to condemn a whole people for the actions of their leaders (whilst simultaneously forgetting the errors of their own governments).

A commenter on Towleroad's post regarding this matter, states:

Every time this happens there's one of several predictable reactions from the gay peanut gallery here in America:
(1) Go back to your Middle Eastern, African, or Asian “hellhole”
(2) Cut off all foreign aide to these “barbaric” Middle Eastern, African, or Asian countries
(3) Cut off diplomatic contact with these “sub-human” Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries
(4) And in some extreme cases, there's even a suggestion that we should resort to military action.

The next time a Republican named Schultz, Kruger, or Metzger comes out in favor of criminalizing homosexuality, I want to see our activist friends demand that we lob a few bombs at Munich. Or suggest that we deport all German Americans to their backward, wretched homeland. I would really like to see that. Nobody's saying what's happening in Saudi Arabia is acceptable. What angers me isn't the anger itself. It is the blatant double standard that treats some human rights “offenders” as individuals and others as mindless automatons. You want to wage holy war on a billion Muslims over the bad behavior of the Saudi regime?

Introduction

Offstumped’s post attempts to chart a course for the future of what he calls the “broad political space opposed to Left Liberalism.” As laudable and difficult the endeavour is, the ideas he espouses in the piece leave many gaps in clarity, ignores crucial areas, and casually dismisses many vital points that need to be accounted for.

A few words about some specific items on the recently-concluded online debate before getting into a detailed response of the post. I don’t really have any view on that debate except for what Offstumped says here:

Untamed Internet Activism remains a sore point [.] There is no clear intellectual leadership visible on the horizon for taming this Activism and for taking it beyond the Internet

I’m not sure I agree with the usage of “untamed Internet activism.” He probably means well, but to “tame” generally means “to control, to rein in.” Used in the context of the Internet, this lends itself to the conclusion that we need to come up with ways to control what he calls “Internet activism.” If this taming is what is called for, it’s self-defeating, and it directly contradicts his general principle of upholding the right to free speech. This is not to argue for having the freedom to abuse/insult somebody without provocation but it does smack of censorship. However, in the absence of more information/complete context, I’m not aware what the said activism implies.

I’m all for having clear leadership but everything has its own place. The idea of creating a common platform is good but “taming” something by trying to bring in some sort of standardization doesn’t bode well. It could eventually degenerate into toeing some line—however good or bad the line maybe.

The Future can’t be Separated from the Past

The section titled Its about the future stupid says:

First time voters in 2019 will be a generation born in 2001 around or after 9/11 who are right now studying in 4th grade

The past maybe an inspiration and a guide, the West maybe a case study, but end of the day this exercise has to be about the future. Standing where we are today, if we are not thinking ahead on the challenges, opportunities and the sense of history with which todays 4th grader and the many who probably are not even in school will be making political choices 9 years from now, then we will be irrelevant even before 2002 makes it to History text books [...] We must draw a line to

• #2 make this about the challenges and opportunities of the future and not about righting history’s wrongs

I broadly agree about the challenges etc that the future presents. However, the “past as an inspiration” and “sense of history” present some problems. If you want to look to the past for inspiration, you need to know it thoroughly. Also, a sense of history means that we know our history really well. What percentage of this broad political space know it, and more importantly, can understand its impact on the future? Apart from a vocal fringe, nobody really is interested to avenge (or “right”) historical wrongs. A sense of history therefore, also means understanding the past accurately so we can discard the wrongs and vow to never repeat it. Yet, what’s the kind of history that these 4th graders are being taught?

Also, framing this in terms of votes/voters is shortsighted. The idea is to create an intellectual climate where everybody is unafraid to openly debate everything without attaching labels and trying to figure out “which side somebody is on.” And this has to shorn of concerns such as getting votes. The Nehruvian Congress party—and later, the Left—created precisely this sort of “intellectual” climate with eyes always on the ballot box. I’m unsure if this is the approach Offstumped recommends.

Essentially, this approach—mindshare, 2014 generation, etc—falls in the realm of strategy, not ideology (a term I’m both queasy and careful to use) for want of a better word. This note about generational/age/franchise aspect makes eminent sense if Offstumped was talking about an electoral strategy. Unfortunately, he seems to mix this up with other things I’ve noted above.

Denouncing Hindutva without understanding it

After this, interestingly, Offstumped characterizes “political” Hindutva thus.

#1 at its core was the product of deep insecurity and victimhood

This is quite easy to say offhand but I’d rather Offstumped had given irrefutable evidence in support. Can he deny that the Indian state actively discriminated (and continues to do so) against Hindus for the better part of post-Independence India? Can he deny the fact that Hindu institutions and value systems were systematically derided by the state? Can he deny the fact that the Indian state spawned an education system that showed Hindu history in unflattering light? The said insecurity and victimhood are real. The words are not “insecurity” and “victimhood” but threat and discrimination. But for this kind of state-sponsored discrimination against Hindus, what was the need for a movement like “political” Hindutva, where Hindus felt they needed a political voice?

#2 has been tainted by Adharma committed in its name.

I’d be more careful before using words like “Adharma” without understanding its complete meaning. Adharma is not merely the English equivalent of “injustice” or “crime.” If you look at the history of violence perpetrated by Hindus, it has always been in retaliation to an attack/provocation. Plus, Hindus have taken to the streets because the Indian state has proved beyond doubt that it is incapable of both preventing original offenders from hurting Hindu sentiments, temples, etc as well as proved ineffective in punishing the original offenders. Characterizing this as Adharma shows an ignorance of the meaning of Adharma. This is not to defend violence committed in the name of Hindutva/Hinduism but there is such a thing as spontaneous, natural retaliation. A group of citizens picketing and stoning an MLA’s house for his misdeeds after it has tried all peaceful and legal methods is not Adharma.

#4 was intellectually hollow in its failure to evolve an Intellectual Political Tradition geared for the challenges of this Century drawing on the rich tradition of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and others who followed him

In a post that approvingly talks about drawing from Kautilya’s rich tradition, it is surprising that there’s not a single mention of what that tradition is. Supporting Kautilya is a double-edged sword for I can show a host of material in the Arthashastra that’d qualify Kautilya for the selfsame label of the “political” Hindutva brand that Offstumped asks us to abandon.

In essence, the “political” Hindutva of the 1990s didn’t arise from a vacuum. Hindutva as I suppose he’s aware, has a long history. Ignoring this history and coining a new term “political Hindutva” is not a good approach. However, because he has called upon us to abandon it, the burden of proof lies on Offstumped to show us—by tracing this history—why it makes sense to abandon Hindutva. Instances of demolishing buildings, disrupting lovers on Valentine’s Day, burning posters, etc don’t count. I shall respond to him where I stand on this once I get his response.  

And then in a most interesting (and startling) paragraph, Offstumped lays down this prescription:

Just as Rajadharma as articulated over the Centuries was the Constitution for the State,  the Indian Constitution is the Rajadharma in this day and age. The only “Warrior Spirit” to protect Dharma is that which the has Constitutional sanction. The only Right to bear Arms is that which is sanctioned by the Constitution. Even the Kshatriya of yesteryears had no blanket immunity to use their arms but for the protection of Dharma which in today’s context is the Indian Constitution.

For the record, Rajadharma was not the Constitution for the State. The Indian kingdoms of the time Offstumped speaks about had no Constitution in the sense we understand it today. The definition of a Raja is Ranjanaat iti Rajah (He is the king who entertains/keeps his subjects happy). The closest equivalent to the word “Constitution” is Smriti. Till date, we have 40 Smritis, the earliest dating some thousands of years ago. We can vaguely liken the Indian Constitution to the 41st Smriti but only after it passes some tests as we shall see.

Rajadharma is an entire subject in its own right and very simply, it involved the king to always uphold Dharma and ensure that his subjects were always happy and that his coffers were always full. In the times of the Ramayana, it was to uphold this Rajadharma that Rama had to forsake Sita. The King had sanction to employ any and every means to achieve these twin objectives and relied on the smritis and his council of ministers to guide him. The smritis in turn dealt with every conceivable aspect of Dharma in minute detail including giving us such things as the kind of bodily ailments caused by excessive gambling. Space doesn’t permit me to elaborate further but equating Rajadharma with the Constitution of the State is wholly incorrect.

Equally, the Indian Constitution is not the Rajadharma of today. It is one thing to say that the Constitution is a noble document and one of the pillars of our democracy and other nice things. However, superimposing Rajadharma upon it is misleading to say the least. One of the first tests of whether the Indian Constitution is indeed the Rajadharma of today is to find out whether the Constitution itself upholds Dharma.

A marked feature of a Smriti (I’m using the term very loosely here) is its fluidity, its adaptability to changing times because Dharma varies from age to age. There have been pitched battles to amend whole portions of the Indian Constitution to accommodate the changing needs, and aspirations but such portions have remained in a time warp. However, amendments that injure both the Constitution and Dharma are passed nonchalantly. The other test is how a Smriti treats other/minority groups/religions. The Indian Constitution places minority institutions almost beyond the scrutiny of law. A fourth test is how it treats the cultural icons, symbols, and literature of the nation. The Indian Constitution makes it illegal to kill the peacock and the tiger and also punishes an insult to the national flag. Yet, it doesn’t accord the same status to our epics, which are now reduced to literary lab pieces for anybody to maul at will. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are not merely Hindu epics—they are Indian epics. They define the Indian way of life and continue to influence people of all major religions in the country. Neither can you argue that a secular/democratic nation has nothing to do with religion because as we see, there’s nothing secular about Indian democracy. Additionally, the word “secular” itself was an ugly aberration that Indira Gandhi introduced and hasn’t been erased till date. This is the nature of Adharma. I can cite several other instances but the point remains that the Indian Constitution doesn’t entirely adhere to Dharma. If Offstumped argues that this is the Rajadharma, we all need to follow, I have nothing further to say.

Besides, there’s another aspect to this. A king who fails to perform his Rajadharma properly faces the prospect of his own subjects rebelling against him—in other words, of taking the law into their own hands. Pretty much what’s happening today. Successive Indian governments have failed to carry out their Rajadharma properly, and worse, in many cases, actively encouraged Adharma—votebanks, subverting the Constitution, the Emergency, etc. If they had discharged their Rajadharma properly, we wouldn’t have had the “violence unleashed by the political Hindutva” people.

Offstumped leaves me with no choice except to say that equating Dharma and Rajadharma with the Indian Constitution stems from a deep ignorance of the concept of Dharma. As a friendly note, anybody who wishes to talk about Dharma and make sense needs to invest serious time and effort to understand its basics. Merely being well-intentioned and supportive of Dharma isn’t enough.

...Continued in Part 2...

Continue reading Is Canada's iPod tax back? And if so, will BJ Snowden get her cut?

Is Canada's iPod tax back? And if so, will BJ Snowden get her cut? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There’s a battle looming in California over smart meters and energy prices. Google says the state should require its big utilities to give near real-time pricing information to every smart meter-enabled customer by the end of next year. California’s big three utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric — have raised plenty of objections to that deadline, and the California Public Utilities Commission is holding a workshop in San Francisco on Friday to talk about it.

The debate, which could influence smart grid policies across the country, underscores an important difference between the two things Google wants utilities to provide — energy “usage” data versus “pricing information.” Electricity usage is a real thing that can be measured in real time with magnets and wires, either by a smart meter or lots of other devices. Electricity prices, on the other hand, are contrived, during or after the fact, by a convoluted market that has to keep demand and supply perfectly balanced at all times. Delivering pricing data in real time will be challenging for smart meter networks as they’re currently being deployed. So in other words, for utilities, delivering power comes first, figuring out who pays for it (and how much) comes later.

Most utility customers pay steady, regulated rates, and don’t get to see these complex price fluctuations — at least, not yet. But even getting slightly more complex tiered or time-of-use prices to customers through their smart meters could be problematic for current utility networks, given that most smart meter deployments today aren’t set up to handle that. As Lee Krevat, director of smart grid initiatives at San Diego Gas & Electric, put it in an interview this week, “We didn’t put in an Internet to each meter, or broadband to each meter — and ‘real time’ really implies broadband to give near real time pricing data.”

Most smart meter networks, including those being deployed by California’s big utilities, are lower-bandwidth and designed to be read every 15 minutes or hourly, not in real time. While there are ways to get faster or more current price information to homeowners, Krevat doesn’t see such a network being the best, or most cost-effective, way, to do it.

After all, “The rates exist on our Web site. The rate schedule doesn’t change very often,” he said. “Do you want to spend your bandwidth transmitting something that could be figured out at a customer end point based on their consumption data?”

Or, to put it another way, would utility customers support paying for the ability to see pricing data? The customers are the ones who pay for utilities’ smart meter system upgrades through increased rates. That certainly differentiates the utilities’ incentives from Google, which wants usage and pricing data opened to third party systems like its PowerMeter home energy management platform. Google promises PowerMeter will be free, but building a system that can provide it with data may still cost customers in one way or another.

SDG&E is working with Google’s PowerMeter and has about 125 customers testing it out — but right now they’re using day-old energy usage information, and currently PowerMeter doesn’t deliver any real-time pricing information. Eventually, California’s three big utilities plan to turn on their smart meters’ home area network (HAN) connections, but they’re doing a lot of testing first. Krevat said that’s an important first step in designing a system that’s both cheap and effective — “Understanding the model for how the customer wants to use it is the first step,” he said. “Then you can decide the technical solution.”

Ted Reguly, SDG&E’s smart meter program director, said customers mainly want some kind of current bill calculation, as well as some kind of pre-set alert when that monthly tally gets too high. Someday people will want to hook up smart appliances and other in-home energy controls to the smart meter via the HAN. But as SDG&E noted in its comments to the CPUC filed in March, “the Smart Meter system as currently designed requires more than HAN to provide customer access to near real time information on prices.”

Beyond these issues, it will be important to clarify what Google means by “pricing information,” Reguly said. Does Google mean the flat rates homeowners are scheduled to pay, or the actual prices that they end up paying after the bill is finalized? “You might think the cost of electricity is X, but it’s really Y because of bill settlement two or three days later,” he said — and getting the more accurate figures to customers in real time would require utilities to completely overhaul the batch processing-based back-office billing systems they now use.

Andy Tang, PG&E’s smart grid chief, said during a recent energy symposium in Berkeley, Calif. that asking utilities to replace their batch-based systems with real-time systems was “impossible” in such a short timeframe, at least not at costs that regulators would be willing to pass on to customers. Tang also expressed some frustration with Google’s push for deadlines for delivering real-time pricing, given that the federal government is still working on standards for all the smart grid systems to make this possible, he said. As PG&E wrote in its comments to the CPUC, “No amount of cajoling or wishing by one vendor or another that it happen by an arbitrary date can change the need for development of such uniform standards.”

Emerging Standards

Just how those standards will emerge remains to be seen. ZigBee, the wireless technology that’s taken a lead in smart meter-HAN connectivity, is working on a second iteration of its Smart Energy Profile specification for energy data that will include some pricing information, Reguly said. For commercial and industrial customers, open demand response technologies like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s OpenADR or EnerNOC’s PowerTalk, are expected to embed price signals as part of an automated system to turn down devices to help utilities reduce peak loads.

Perhaps broadband could be the solution. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal entity setting smart grid standards, has asked the smart grid industry to comment on whether some or all of the customer’s smart grid connections should come through broadband connections independent of the smart meter. There’s a long list of companies looking at selling energy monitoring gear directly to consumers, either as stand-alone products or bundled with home broadband offerings or security systems. Google is working with utilities and smart meter maker Itron, but is also partnering with in-home energy devices from Energy Inc. and AlertMe with its PowerMeter.

All three California utilities have asked CPUC to avoid any hard deadlines in favor of looser policy guidance. But the issue COULD comE to every state. The Federal Communications Commission’s new U.S. National Broadband Plan includes some strong words for state utility regulators to encourage utilities to deliver real time pricing data to consumers. To wit:

Just how the CPUC decides to take up Google’s deadline — as well as how it comes to define pricing data in the process — will be closely watched topics in the smart grid industry. Stay tuned for more details later this week.

Filed under: Car Buying, Government/Legal, Ford, GM, Mercury

Report: Congressmen spending thousands of dollars a month to lease ordinary vehicles originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

· Borrowers 'should be forced to save for a deposit'
· Fears that lending at high loan-to-value ratios may return

The City's top regulator has called for curbs on 100% mortgages and a return to mortgage rationing to prevent another boom and bust in the housing market.

Lord Turner, in a wide-ranging critique of financial markets, some of whose activity he has previously described as "socially useless", said policymakers needed tough new tools to prevent the mortgage market getting out of hand in future.

In remarks that might be interpreted as a call for credit controls such as those seen in the decades after the war, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority spelt out the need for a wide range of policy options, but said that one should be to force borrowers to save for a deposit before they are granted a mortgage. "We need new tools to take away the punch bowl before the party gets out of hand," Turner said.

While mortgage providers have been restricting the size of loans they are prepared to offer as a result of the banking crisis, the authorities are concerned that, once more benign economic conditions return, lenders might again grant loans that are larger than the value of a customer's home.

In an hour-long lecture to the Cass Business School in London, Turner sent a message to the next government that more needs to be done to make banks focus on activities that provide value for the real economy, rather than simply doing deals in trading rooms.

While he admitted that he should have used the phrase "economically useless" rather than "socially useless" in his Prospect magazine interview that made headlines last summer, he said his aim was to spark debate about the role banks should play in the real economy. He highlighted the fact that 75% of all bank loans in the UK are made to the property sector and are motivated by expectations that prices will rise sharply rather than by ideas of "productive investment".

Authorities in Canada and Hong Kong already use tools to restrict credit. The City regulator has also been asking the industry whether there should be restrictions on loan-to-value ratios – the size of the loan as a proportion of the value of the property – and could disclose as early as next week the responses it has received.

Turner said: "We need a new set of macro-prudential policy tools which enable authorities more directly to influence the supply of credit and ... these tools may need to be able to distinguish between different categories of credit – for instance real-estate versus others."

He highlighted four such tools:

· Introducing borrower-focused policies, such as limits on loan-to-value ratios;

· Increasing interest rates (although he accepted small businesses would be hurt by the use of this measure long before it would deflate a property bubble);

· Requiring banks to hold more capital in boom years (although he warned this could affect the price of loans);

· Requiring banks to hold more capital against certain types of lending (although he warned this might impede competition unless introduced Europe-wide).

Turner said: "There are no easy answers ... but some combination of new macro-prudential tools is likely to be required." He added: "A crucial starting point ... is to recognise that different categories of credit perform different economic functions, and that the impact of credit restrictions on economic value added and social welfare will vary according to which category of credit is restricted."

In his lecture, he asked whether the increased trading activity in the financial sector in the last 30 years had delivered economic value by reducing transaction costs and making markets more liquid. Admitting that he did not know, he said: "We certainly need to have the debate rather than accepting as given the dominant argument of the last 30 years, which has asserted that increased liquidity, supported by increased position-taking, is axiomatically beneficial."

• Financial Services Authority (FSA)
• Regulators
• Mortgages
• Banking
• Financial crisis
• Credit crunch

Our friends at GottaBeMobile recently had a talk with Kapil Wadhera, ODM Director at Intel, concerning the latest Classmate PC 2.0. A lot of governments have already decided to spread love for this netbook all around to students courtesy of its natural rugged design that ought to be able to stand up to the rigors of everyday use by active kids, resulting in less repairs as well as lower occurences of downtime. Most educational institutions prefer the non-convertible Classmate since the convertible version isn't exactly solidly built.

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Angela Merkel becomes most senior politician to speak out over abuse by priests as pope to release pastoral letter on subject

The crisis gripping the Catholic church deepened today, with calls for national inquiries to be held in Germany and Ireland to fully disclose the detail and extent of sexual abuse by priests.

With hundreds of allegations surfacing in Germany since the start of the year, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the scandal of abuse in the country's churches and schools posed a "major challenge" that could only be resolved through a full and frank inquiry into all cases.

Addressing the Bundestag in her first public statement on the subject, she called the sexual abuse of minors a "despicable crime". She added: "The only way for our society to come to terms with it is to look for the truth and find out everything that has happened."

She warned, however, that "the damage suffered by the victims can never fully be repaired". Her remarks, the most outspoken to have come from a head of government on the issue, came on the eve of a pastoral letter from the pope.

It will be published on Friday and addressed to the "Irish faithful" and he referred to it in his general audience at the Vatican today. Turning to the Irish who had travelled to celebrate St Patrick's Day, he said he hoped the letter would "help in the process of repentance, renewal and healing".

Speaking in English, he said: "In recent months the church in Ireland has been severely shaken as a result of the child abuse crisis.

"As a sign of my deep concern I have written a pastoral letter dealing with this painful situation. I ask all of you to read it for yourselves, with an open heart and in a spirit of faith."

The Catholic church in Ireland has been the subject of devastating criticism in two reports detailing collusion, cruelty and endemic abuse throughout its institutions.

Last weekend, in a further blow to its reputation, the most senior Irish Catholic admitted attending meetings where two 10-year-olds were forced to sign vows of silence over complaints against Father Brendan Smyth, who continued abusing children for a further 18 years.

Cardinal Sean Brady used his St Patrick's day sermon to apologise for his role in the cover-up of child abuse by Father Smyth, one of the country's most notorious paedophile priests.

His revelation and continued public anger led the Archbishop of Dublin to say that a national inquiry, examining all cases of abuse in the country, may be the only way for the church to close the door on its shameful past.

Although the pope has taken an active interest in Irish church affairs – summoning its bishops to an emergency meeting – his letter may not be enough for victims and their families.

It was confirmed earlier this week that the pope will not visit Ireland this September in his first official tour of the UK. At a press briefing to discuss the historic event, government and church officials ended speculation that his tour may include the Irish Republic. They also said it was unlikely that he would discuss clerical sexual abuse because it was not the primary purpose of his visit.

• Catholicism
• Religion
• Germany
• Ireland
• Children
• Child protection

Laura Rozen / Laura Rozen's Blog:
Admin, Dems move to put dispute with Israel in perspective  —  As a key pro-Israel House Democrat Howard Berman (D-Cal.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, voiced sympathy for the Obama administration's sense of frustration with an Israeli government settlements announcement last week …