December 2009

Does the Detroit Incident Mean We Need New Security Measures?After what happened over Detroit, how worried are you about it happening again? In the aftermath of September 11 we watched Congress rush through the Patriot Act, and people were more than willing to give up on a lot of their civil liberties to gain what seemed like advantageous safeguards against terrorist threats from both outside and inside the country. Since then there have continued to be terrorist threats form both, and there probably will continue to be.

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Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas since 2006Israel and Hamas are negotiating over the release of a single Israeli soldier who has been prisoner for over 3 years. Hamas is asking for the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. While negotiations have been going on for as long the prisoner, Gilad Shalit, has been held by Hamas, negotiations have been ramping up in recent weeks.

Egypt is hosting a fresh round of negotiations and talks between Israel and Hamas, notable for the fact that someone besides the U.S. is doing the work of mediating between the two groups, and for the fact that Hamas, largely considered a terrorist group, is actually leaving their own territory to take part in the negotiations.

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Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas since 2006Trading prisoners is one of the stranger deals that happens in the world of international diplomacy. It seems somehow not legal in anyone’s book and somehow very old- like something that happened when we were primarily riding around on horses.

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Google- As Ubiquitous as the Morning CoffeeAs if we didn’t know already, Google is taking over. Google's mission? According to them, it’s “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Fair enough- but of course, they are a business as well, and a good one at that. They reported $5.94 billion in revenue for 2009 Q3, up 7% from 2008. So they are doing well. And making investments in everything from YouTube to AOL to ClearWire. Basically, they know what they are doing and are doing it aggressively.

I’ve noticed 3 things lately that speak to another expansion that Google is going for, I would say in a big way:

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French Farms like this one are feeling the financial pinchWhen you think about farming difficulties, what country do you think about? Somewhere in Africa? Maybe- possibly South America? Southeast Asia? Somewhere that is dealing with the effects of climate change? You can tell by my tone that this article isn’t about that- what it’s about are the rising food costs in France that have caused one of the more intense protests I’ve heard of in recent years.

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How much is it worth anymore? Will it be?Bernake is back, not making reassurances that things will be ok this time but sticking his neck out and saying that the U.S. is not in danger of inflation because of the weak dollar.

Seriously? It’s tough to feel confidence in this kind of declaration- it’s a weird feeling- it would have been tough to switch to another Fed chairman in the middle of all of this, to get someone else to learn all about what is going on and identify the problems, but it is just as tough to trust the word or the assessment of the guy who showed up and didn’t do anything to stop what was going on, right?

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When will it flow?The Oil Ministry in Iraq (Orwell, anyone?) just concluded a second auction for contracts for developers to go to work on Iraq’s oil fields. The last auction created 10 deals and this new one created the same- if all of these deals come to fruition, Iraq could be churning out 12 million barrels of oil per day, around what Saudi Arabia does. The new Iraqi government thinks that this is where the money for the reconstruction is going to come from- and not just that, but the money for Iraq’s citizens to live better lives as well.

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The senate sends a holiday card to earth...3 Senators have released a “framework” agreement showing that they agree on the basics for what will constitute a decent climate change agreement in the future. And, in a nod toward the kind of consensus that will be necessary to make anything actually happen of substance, the framework comes from one Republican, one Democrat, and the one Independent we have in the senate- Mr. Joe Lieberman. "The movement for climate change legislation in the United States Senate is alive and well," said Lieberman, somehow thinking that he is the spokesperson for a movement.

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How do we value what we value?What should we do about the economy?

That is the question that every American is thinking about- the government, the media, the folks sitting at the diner because they lost their jobs. Sometimes it’s what we should do, others it’s what we can. It comes down to what we will.

Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary, announced that the $700 billion in bailout money will be extended through next October. He described the economy as having “significant challenges.” Man, I could be the treasury secretary if that’s all the more specific you have to be about it. The move is a nod to Republicans who feel that it is necessary- as does Geithner, apparently.

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Embryonic stem cells promise much innovation and much debateStem cells. With so much else going on right now, it’s easy to gloss over the fact that more than a dozen lines of embryonic stem cells have been cleared for use in publicly funded research. Yes, the federal government does outlaw publicly funded institutions from creating embryonic stem cell lines, but it permits federal funds to be used for research that uses stem cell lines that were developed with private money in private institutions.

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How many countries have similar issues to Afghanistan? And similar strategies for solutions?Somalia hasn’t had a functioning government since the early 1990’s. 19,000 civilians have been killed since 2007. 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes. In short, things are not going well there and it is well known as one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.

Now, Somalia’s Prime Minister has sent a letter to The Times in Britain saying that a plan similar to the one Obama is pursuing in Afghanistan could go a long way toward helping to repair his country. Not only would it be more effective than what everyone is currently doing, it would cost less, he says, than trying to treat the symptoms of piracy off the coast.

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History become part of ComcastI do a lot of typing and tweeting, blogging and facebooking, IM’ing and texting, favoriting and commenting. In short, I spend a good deal of time on the internet- I read a lot of the articles that say we are in a new time when old media is withering up like the faces of baby boomers and you’re missing the boat already if you’re not tweeting your child’s first step and web-cam broadcasting their smile to grandma right afterward. I saw some guy update his facebook status at the altar, between being pronounced man and wife and being told he could kiss the bride-

I mean, whatever.

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We are not obliged!...Back when Bush was president of the United States and terrorism was a new thing for the media to feast on, there was something that Bush drummed up called the Axis of Evil. Remember that? North Korea, Iran and Iraq. While the term Axis of Evil is no longer in use, the names of those three countries continue to show up on the news stories and debates around every political issue that crops up internationally.

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