Predictions

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 16 -- The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan predicted Saturday that the Taliban militia would collapse as a viable fighting force over the next several months as rank-and-file members accept a reconciliation offer from the Afghan government.
Lt. Gen. David W. Barno warned, however, that remaining Taliban extremists financed and trained by al Qaeda allies may attempt to compensate by staging a high-profile attack in Afghanistan within the next six to nine months.
"As these terrorists' capabilities grow more and more limited, the hard-core fanatics will grow more and more desperate to try and do something to change the course of events in Afghanistan," Barno said at a news conference in Kabul, the capital. "I expect they will be looking . . . to garner media publicity and to try and score some type of propaganda victory."
Barno said he did not have specific intelligence as to where the Taliban might strike.
Earlier Saturday, a senior Taliban official said in an audio tape released to the Reuters news agency that militia leaders were planning to shift from guerrilla warfare to terrorist-style attacks.
Maulvi Abdul Kabir, who is considered second in the Taliban hierarchy, said the group was training suicide bombers to target government officials, foreign forces and aid workers in major cities and to infiltrate various security forces.
"The change of tactics is an easy way for us to have a longer-term war of attrition and would also not cost many lives for us," Kabir reportedly said on the tape.
Since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, Afghanistan has largely been spared the sort of insurgent attacks common in Iraq that have resulted in high death tolls. The Taliban had also threatened to disrupt Afghanistan's first direct presidential election last October, but voting proceeded relatively peacefully.
But Taliban attacks on Afghan and foreign military forces and government officials have increased in recent weeks following a winter lull, Barno said, and are at the same level as in the spring of 2004 and 2003.
Several incidents have also been reported in Kabul in the past several days, including the discovery of a small amount of TNT on a trash truck attempting to enter the U.S. military headquarters compound Thursday.
Lt. Cindy Moore, a military spokeswoman, said the explosive material, which was stuffed in the well of a headlight and detected by a bomb-sniffing dog, was very degraded and not attached to a detonating device. Moore said she did not know the driver's nationality or whether that person had been detained.
Foreign workers in the capital have been on edge since last Sunday, when armed assailants seized a U.S. citizen and forced him into the trunk of a car. According to U.S. Embassy officials in Kabul, the man used a lug wrench to unlock the trunk from the inside and jumped out of the vehicle while it was speeding away. Afghan investigators have arrested three suspects in the incident.
Neither Barno nor Afghan officials would disclose how many Taliban members have accepted President Hamid Karzai's reconciliation offer, which seeks to bring in members hiding in Afghanistan or in other countries. Under the arrangement, Taliban members must recognize the legitimacy of the elected government in exchange for assurances that they will not face arrest by foreign or Afghan forces.
Human rights groups and some Afghans say they fear the offer will enable many former Taliban members to escape justice for past wrongdoing.
Members of Karzai's administration have stressed that the offer does not constitute a permanent amnesty program and does not extend to roughly 100 top Taliban leaders implicated in serious crimes. A commission charged with determining the exact details of the program has progressed slowly, but some Taliban members have already begun negotiating with U.S. military commanders and Afghan officials.
The U.S. military has reportedly issued identification cards to several dozen former Taliban militiamen stating that the bearer had been vetted and should not be arrested.
Barno said he believed that large numbers of the Taliban force, which once numbered in the thousands, would eventually accept the offer.
"More and more Taliban realize they don't want to be in this fight that goes against the tide of history here in Afghanistan any longer," he said.

By N.C. AizenmanWashington Post Foreign ServiceSunday, April 17, 2005; Page A17

No comment, just wish i knew how many idiots like Bardo are around...

Murdoch rings a bell

Mr Murdoch said in a speech to American editors in Washington that the internet was "an emerging medium that is not my native language".
He issued a stark warning to the industry, arguing that the web was "a fast-developing reality we should grasp".
"Editors too often ask 'do we have the story?' rather than 'does anyone want it?'
He said consumers wanted "control over the media, instead of being controlled by it", pointing to the proliferation of website diaries, known as "blogs", and message boards.
Article

I think his main concern is the mass of billions dollars he and the others can gain as ads, or loose if they don't hook the net.
The language of the net is the language of real people so i wonder where the guy was born.
About bloggers, well the cool ones, those who write from Iraq, Iran, Cuba, China, give what they see: the real thing.
Is he ready to do the same and pay the price?
Don't think so, he is and will always be, slave to the money, slave to power, slave...

An important sms

Thembek Shole is part of the Cell Life project, run by researchers at the University of Cape Town.

She works as a counsellor for people living with HIV/Aids in Gugulethu, one of the former township areas of Cape Town, where potholed streets and bare concrete homes stretch as far as you can see.
The residents in Gugulethu are exclusively black and almost all poor - unemployment runs at 60% and some estimates put the number of people with HIV at three out of every 10 people.

Thembek knocks on the front door of Noxola Hans, where she's greeted like an old friend with hugs and kisses.
Noxola has been HIV positive for four years; she's frail and can hardly talk. She's being looked after by her parents because she is too weak to work.
Thembek visits Noxola and more than 100 other people like her every week.
She asks some basic questions, in the local Xhosa language: "How are you feeling? Have you been taking your drugs? Are there any new side effects?"

Each category of question has a separate entry in the phone's menu, once one's filled in Thembek just scrolls down to the next question.

It all appears a bit intrusive, having someone check up so strictly on your behaviour, but Noxola doesn't mind.
"I trust Thembek and the other counsellors," she tells me as we wander round her tiny front room looking at photographs of her five-year-old son.
"Often I forget to take my medicine so it's good to have someone to remind me and find out when I'm feeling bad," she says.

Article

I know as i have a friend with this disease, how much pain is added, apart being aware of a dark future, from taking many medicines at different timings, though actually it can be reduced using new ones but these are very expensive and i think is difficult having them in African countries.
So, this collaboration with Cape Town University is very important both for collecting data and to help patients.
Some will argue that it can become a business, well sometimes life is full compromises but if done to help people then is fine.

Cell Life

Cape Town University

Hoo-ah and the Berlin wall

“The Iraqi people know the sacrifices you are making. They're grateful to you. They are grateful to your families,” he said.
Some 140,000 US soldiers are still in Iraq.
“You are making possible the peace of Iraq, and you are making possible the security of free nations. Yours is noble work, it's important work, and I thank you for assuming your duty,” said the president.
“This weekend we marked the two-year anniversary of the liberation of Baghdad,” he said.
“The toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad will be recorded, alongside the fall of the Berlin Wall, as one of the great moments in the history of liberty.”

Article

Who wrote the speech had a good intuition in this comparison, just forgot that the end of the cold war was really the end: in Iraq a silent war ended, a bigger one started.


Cold war in history

My home humanoid

A small walking man-shaped robot for home security and entertainment is going on sale in Japan for 588,000 yen (about Rs. 2.4 lakhs.
The 39 cm tall, 2.5 kg robot, called nuvo, from ZMP Inc. also comes in a fancier 888,000 yen version with the same functions and a design inspired by lacquer-ware painted on its body.
The robot can walk, get up and respond to voice commands such as "turn right." It links to mobile phones so that people can check on images of their homes taken on a digital camera inside the robot's head. It can be controlled by a remote and is programmed to do a dance. It also makes musical sounds.

Article

Well the buddy has not many functions, and the price is quite reasonable.
What scares me is the day in which they'll give us "true humanoids", to walk with, talk, sharing our lives, thoughts, fears.
I wonder if we'll be able to distinguish who's the human and who the humanoid...