30 June - Reflections

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Flock 3.0: The Social Browser Gets a Reboot

Social browser Flock gets revamped in an attempt to compete more squarely with Google Chrome and Mozilla

Threat of Microfinance Defaults Rise in India as SKS Plans IPO

“Globally, microfinance is showing characteristics of the western financial markets before the collapse,” said Sanjay Sinha, managing director at Micro-Credit Ratings in New Delhi. “In the U.S., homeowners were given loans at 120 percent of the value of their properties. In rural India, people are being lent to at 150 percent of the value of their enterprises.”

Three privacy initiatives from the Office of Management and Budget

The U.S. government's Office of Management and Budget, which is the locus of President Obama's drive toward transparency and open government, popped out three major initiatives that combine to potentially change the landscape for online identity and privacy, not only within government but across the Internet.

In this blog I'll summarize the impacts of all three documents, as well as the next steps that I see necessary in these areas.

Why social networks don't protect privacy

A certificate-backed OpenID system

Why the OMB is taking on identity and privacy now

 The OMB has invested a lot of time and engaged in a huge amount of consultation in the development of its identity strategy. The result is breath-taking in its scope of proposed activity: setting standards, encouraging private companies to use the resulting technologies (and even providing financial incentives to do so), educating the public to their benefits, setting an example by deploying the technologies across the federal government, and working with other government bodies across the country and internationally.

Related:

• OMB updates rules for cookies and privacy on U.S. government websites
• Putting Online Privacy in Perspective
• My contrarian stance on Facebook and privacy
• Can privacy, social media and business get along?

Are You a Social Networking Mutant?

Some older people respond to Facebook in exactly the same way that younger people respond to not using Facebook. Plunk a high school student in a classroom with no phones, no electronics and no interaction, and tell them to simply pay attention to the teacher talking. Like older people on Facebook, they squirm, feel disoriented and can't focus.

What's going on here? What is it about Facebook that makes it such an effective generational marker?
.........
Young people will use Facebook at work. Period.

Telling someone right out of college that they can't use Facebook at work is like your boss telling you that you can't talk to coworkers. Imagine sitting right next to a friend and colleague, but company rules say you can never talk to them. There's no technical reason why you can't talk. It's just that the company doesn't want you to.
You and I would never work at such a place. And today's young people will never accept company rules that prevent constant social networking. They believe that the only reason such rules are in place is that the people who made those rules entered the workforce before Facebook existed. And they're exactly right.

Skimmers Are AWOL, But Unskilled Workers Are Plentiful

Local Fishermen Watch As Clueless Out-Of-Staters Take On Cleanup Duties:

Then there is the Federal Government’s mishandling of the spill. We know they stopped the sand berms from being built in Louisiana, which is bad enough. But there is another factor that is as egregious as they come, and that is the lack of oil skimmers being pressed into service, as this article by Karen Nelson highlights,
No Skimmers In Sight As Oil Floods Into Mississippi Waters:

 “I’m having a Katrina flashback. I haven’t seen this much stupidity, wasted effort, money and wasted resources, since then.”

From Comments

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/06/it-took-obama-1-day-to-fire-mcchrystal-but-after-70-days-hes-still-refuses-to-allow-cleanup-equipment-into-gulf/

The Pentagon's Threat to the Republic - Melvin A. Goodman

The imbalance in civilian-military influence is far more threatening to the interests of the United States than any developments in Afghanistan. President Nixon’s ending of the draft has created a professional military, which has fostered the very cultural behavior that General McChrystal demonstrated in his contempt for civilian leadership.

Upon arrival at the National War College in 1986 to join the faculty after a 20-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I assumed that the major threats to U.S. security emanated from the Soviet Union, China, and various Third World trouble spots. I soon learned that the typical U.S. military officer believed the major threats to U.S. security were the media, the Congress, and liberal Democrats.

Key congressional figures and influential journalists are already calling for the resignation of the president’s representative in Afghanistan, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who provided the White House with two important cables in November 2009 warning against any additional military deployments to Afghanistan. Eikenberry’s advice was lapidary: he warned that Karzai was not an "adequate strategic partner" and that his government lacked the "political will or capacity to carry out basic tasks of governance;" he said that we have "overestimated the ability of Afghan security forces to take over by 2013…and underestimated how long it will take to restore or establish civilian government;" and he argued that "more troops won’t end the insurgency as long as Pakistan sanctuaries remain…and Pakistan views its strategic interests as best served by a weak neighbor." He bluntly argued against a premature decision regarding a troop increase, favoring "alternatives beyond strictly military counterinsurgency efforts within Afghanistan."

Even McChrystal has said that there’s no way we can kill our way out of Afghanistan. And there is no way that U.S. forces will be able to build a civilian government in Afghanistan and then mediate between the government and the Afghan people, objectives that are central to the Petraeus-McChrystal counter-insurgency strategy.

Payvand Iran News..

Battle Over Azad University Deepens Iran's Divisions

A dispute over control of one of the world's largest universities has turned into a fight between government bodies that is exposing deep fissures within the Iranian establishment. At the center of the tug-of-war is Azad University: its leadership, board, 1.4 million students, and tens of billions of dollars in assets.

Earlier this week an Ahmadinejad ally, former government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham, made it clear how hard-liners view the university. Elham said Azad University is "the financial continuation of the sedition," a term Iranian officials use to describe the opposition Green Movement. 

Colour-Coded Revolutions and the Origins of World War III

3 Nov 2009 ... The “colour revolution” or “soft” revolution strategy is a covert political tactic of expanding NATO and US influence to the borders of ...
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15767 - Cached - Similar

Wise Up Journal - » Colour Revolutions, Old and New *

Belgrade was the prototype for Washington-instigated color revolutions to follow.... He favored NATO and EU membership and waged a campaign with the color ...
www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=987 - Cached

Learning from color revolutions « what's left

16 Mar 2009 ... (3) Color revolutions have relied heavily on funding from imperialist... and signing up to integration into Nato to please the Pentagon. ...
gowans.wordpress.com/.../learning-from-color-revolutions/ - Cached - Similar

Rafsanjani criticizes Iran's political milieu - Rafsanjani described the current political atmosphere of the Islamic Republic saying that in this milieu "divisiveness is called honesty, insult is called candor, lies are called tact, slander is called boldness and slogans are called insight." -Zamaneh 6/28/10

( Don't those sound like fascist/corporate tactics any day of the week ? )

3 tons of drugs seized in Iran every day: police - Tehran police chief said on Sunday that every day three tons of drugs are seized across the country, 56 percent of which in Tehran province. -MNA 6/27/10

Congress Passes Sweeping Sanctions Against Iran - The House and Senate voted Thursday to impose sweeping new sanctions against Iran, sending the legislation to the President's desk for approval. Proponents have called the legislation the "toughest Iran sanctions ever proposed," while critics argue it will do nothing to halt the Iranian nuclear program and that Congress should have eased sanctions that punish innocent Iranians. 6/25/10

Analysts Say Iran-Russia Relations Worsening - The conventional wisdom is that Russia's economic interests in Iran have led Moscow to be a strong supporter of that country, opposing any tough United Nations sanctions against Tehran over its alleged nuclear weapons program. -VOA 6/26/10

Eutelsat: Explain Efforts to Counter Censorship by Iran - The French satellite operator, Eutelsat, should share any policies and procedures it has in place explicitly to safeguard freedom of expression when dealing with governments that systematically engage in censorship, Human Rights Watch said today. 6/26/10

3/10/06
What Really Happed to the Shah of Iran
By Ernst Schroeder My name is Ernst Schroeder, and since I have some Iranian friends from school and review your online magazine occasionally, I thought I'd pass on the following three page quote from a book I read a few months ago entitled, "A Century Of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order", which was written by William Engdahl, a German historianm .  This is a book about how oil and politics have been intertwined for the past 100 years. I submit the below passage for direct publishing on your website, as I think the quote will prove to be significant for anyone of Persian descent. order from amazon "In November 1978, President Carter named the Bilderberg group's George Ball, another member of the Trilateral Commission, to head a special White HouseIran task force under the National Security Council's Brzezinski.  Ball recommended that Washington drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the fundamentalistic Islamic opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini.  Robert Bowie from the CIA was one of the lead 'case officers' in the new CIA-led coup against the man their covert actions had placed into power 25 years earlier. Their scheme was based on a detailed study of the phenomenon of Islamic fundamentalism, as presented by British Islamic expert, Dr. Bernard Lewis, then on assignment at Princeton University in the United States.  Lewis's scheme, which was unveiled at the May 1979 Bilderberg meeting in Austria, endorsed the radical Muslim Brotherhood movement behind Khomeini, in order to promote balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. Lewis argued that the West should encourage autonomous groups such as the Kurds, Armenians, Lebanese Maronites, Ethiopian Copts, Azerbaijani Turks, and so forth.  The chaos would spread in what he termed an 'Arc of Crisis,' which would spill over into Muslim regions of the Soviet Union. The coup against the Shah, like that against Mossadegh in 1953, was run by British and American intelligence, with the bombastic American, Brzezinski, taking public 'credit' for getting rid of the 'corrupt' Shah, while the British characteristically remained safely in the background. During 1978, negotiations were under way between the Shah's government and British Petroleum for renewal of the 25-year old extraction agreement.  By October 1978, the talks had collapsed over a British 'offer' which demanded exclusive rights to Iran's future oil output, while refusing to guarantee purchase of the oil.  With their dependence on British-controlled export apparently at an end, Iran appeared on the verge of independence in its oil sales policy for the first time since 1953, with eager prospective buyers in Germany, France, Japanand elsewhere.  In its lead editorial that September, Iran's Kayhan Internationalstated: In retrospect, the 25-year partnership with the [British Petroleum] consortium and the 50-year relationship with British Petroleum which preceded it, have not been satisfactory ones for Iran � Looking to the future, NIOC [National Iranian Oil Company] should plan to handle all operations by itself. London was blackmailing and putting enormous economic pressure on the Shah's regime by refusing to buy Iranian oil production, taking only 3 million or so barrels daily of an agreed minimum of 5 million barrels per day.  This imposed dramatic revenue pressures on Iran, which provided the context in which religious discontent against the Shah could be fanned by trained agitators deployed by British and U.S. intelligence.  In addition, strikes among oil workers at this critical juncture crippled Iranian oil production. As Iran's domestic economic troubles grew, American 'security' advisers to the Shah's Savak secret police implemented a policy of ever more brutal repression, in a manner calculated to maximize popular antipathy to the Shah.  At the same time, the Carter administration cynically began protesting abuses of 'human rights' under the Shah. British Petroleum reportedly began to organize capital flight out of Iran, through its strong influence in Iran's financial and banking community.  The British Broadcasting Corporation's Persian-language broadcasts, with dozens of Persian-speaking BBC 'correspondents' sent into even the smallest village, drummed up hysteria against the Shah.  The BBC gave Ayatollah Khomeini a full propaganda platform inside Iran during this time.  The British government-owned broadcasting organization refused to give the Shah's government an equal chance to reply.  Repeated personal appeals from the Shah to the BBC yielded no result.  Anglo-American intelligence was committed to toppling the Shah.  The Shah fled in January, and by February 1979, Khomeini had been flown into Tehran to proclaim the establishment of his repressive theocratic state to replace the Shah's government. Reflecting on his downfall months later, shortly before his death, the Shah noted from exile, I did not know it then � perhaps I did not want to know � but it is clear to me now that the Americans wanted me out.  Clearly this is what the human rights advocates in the State Department wanted � What was I to make of the Administration's sudden decision to call former Under Secretary of State George Ball to the White House as an adviser on Iran? � Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me and ultimately my country.[1][1] With the fall of the Shah and the coming to power of the fanatical Khomeini adherents in Iran, chaos was unleashed.  By May 1979, the new Khomeini regime had singled out the country's nuclear power development plans and announced cancellation of the entire program for French and German nuclear reactor construction. Iran's oil exports to the world were suddenly cut off, some 3 million barrels per day.  Curiously, Saudi Arabian production in the critical days of January 1979 was also cut by some 2 million barrels per day.  To add to the pressures on world oil supply, British Petroleum declared force majeure and cancelled major contracts for oil supply.  Prices on the Rotterdam spot market, heavily influenced by BP and Royal Cutch Shell as the largest oil traders, soared in early 1979 as a result.  The second oil shock of the 1970s was fully under way. Indications are that the actual planners of the Iranian Khomeini coup in Londonand within the senior ranks of the U.S. liberal establishment decided to keep President Carter largely ignorant of the policy and its ultimate objectives.  The ensuing energy crisis in the United States was a major factor in bringing about Carter's defeat a year later. There was never a real shortage in the world supply of petroleum.  Existing Saudi and Kuwaiti production capacities could at any time have met the 5-6 million barrels per day temporary shortfall, as a U.S. congressional investigation by the General Accounting Office months later confirmed. Unusually low reserve stocks of oil held by the Seven Sisters oil multinationals contributed to creating a devastating world oil price shock, with prices for crude oil soaring from a level of some $14 per barrel in 1978 towards the astronomical heights of $40 per barrel for some grades of crude on the spot market.  Long gasoline lines across America contributed to a general sense of panic, and Carter energy secretary and former CIA director, James R. Schlesinger, did not help calm matters when he told Congress and the media in February 1979 that the Iranian oil shortfall was 'prospectively more serious' than the 1973 Arab oil embargo.[2][2] The Carter administration's Trilateral Commission foreign policy further ensured that any European effort from Germany and France to develop more cooperative trade, economic and diplomatic relations with their Soviet neighbor, under the umbrella of d�tente and various Soviet-west European energy agreements, was also thrown into disarray. Carter's security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, implemented their 'Arc of Crisis' policy, spreading the instability of the Iranian revolution throughout the perimeter around the Soviet Union. Throughout the Islamic perimeter from Pakistan to Iran, U.S. initiatives created instability or worse." -- William Engdahl, A Century of War:  Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, � 1992, 2004.  Pluto Press Ltd. Pages 171-174. [1][1] In 1978, the Iranian Ettelaat published an article accusing Khomeini of being a British agent.  The clerics organized violent demonstrations in response, which led to the flight of the Shah months later.  See U.S. Library of Congress Country Studies, Iran.  The Coming of the Revolution.  December 1987.  The role of BBC Persian broadcasts in the ousting of the Shah is detailed in Hossein Shahidi.  'BBC Persian Service 60 years on.'  The Iranian.  September 24, 2001. The BBC was so much identified with Khomeini that it won the name 'Ayatollah BBC.' [2][2] Comptroller General of the United States.  'Iranian Oil Cutoff:  Reduced Petroleum Supplies and Inadequate U.S. Government Response.'  Report to Congress by General Accounting Office.  1979.

Copyright 2006 Netnative

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