Being Right or Making Money

If you don't know much about Justin Bieber's rise to superstardom, James Parker provides a good primer:

How did he do it? With YouTube, that’s how. Kissed in his cradle by the witch of the Web, Justin was throwing up little promo reels by the time he was 12. Singing a Brian McKnight song into the bathroom mirror. Or sitting on some municipal steps somewhere, busking mightily about the Lord: “You’re my God and my Fa-ther!” he bellows through the legs of passersby, the wooden body of his guitar reverberating with his shouts. ...

Bieber wasn’t from the Disney factory, and he didn’t have a show on Nickelodeon, so the marketing plan was skewed toward his already established constituency in social media: lots of Facebooking and YouTubing and sugary tweets to his millions-strong Twitter army.

Blogger Andrew Trench recently presented a theory on the threshold of when Internet penetration starts to matter, writing:

Social networks have also been given plenty of credit for the revolution unfolding in Egypt.

So I went and had a look at the numbers over on www.internetworldstats.com to see what they could tell us about these two scenarios. Well, fascinatingly, both Egypt and Tunisia have seen a massive growth in internet users and internet penetration over the last 10 years.

Both have now got internet penetration of over 20% and in Tunisia's case it was as high as 34%.

While it is clearly simplistic to over-state this factor and there must be many more drivers contributing to such a rapid political uprising, it is obviously a factor as evidenced by the Egyptian regime pulling the plug on the country's internet access to try and block the rising tide of revolt.

My back-of-napkin theory is this: that a rapid increase in internet penetration in a repressive regime does play an important role as it provides an unfettered channel of communication allowing disaffected citizens to share views - and more importantly - to rapidly organise and mobilise.

If Egypt and Tunisia are valid case studies, it looks like internet penetration of around 20% is the mark.

Geopolitics & Macroeconomics adds:

Internet penetration: Social networking sites were critical to sustaining the momentum in the recent protests. The internet penetration in Egypt is 16%. In Libya, it is a meagre 5% [1]. The unrest in Libya has thus far remained concentrated in regions that are geographically distant from the seat of ‘real' power (see more on this below). The dependence of momentum on internet communication is far greater in Libya than in Egypt where protests began in Cairo itself.

Taking the conversation to Pakistan, Sabene Saigol writes, on BrandRepublic:

Perhaps one reason for this is that we're still not that used to communicating via the ‘net - maybe we need greater broadband and internet penetration. Personally I think it is more to do with culture - while Pakistani internet users are savvy to using social media to connect with friends, I feel they have not yet ‘crossed over' to seeing SM as a means for professional communications - or even wider social communications that go beyond their immediate circle. Yes, there are no doubt savvy people - both within marketing and tech circles, and outside - however, these people are likely a tiny proportion of the total number of ‘net and social media users.

Surface Encounters

Maya Moore of Connecticut Huskies wins fourth All-America honor

Connecticut's Maya Moore joins select company as only the second women's basketball player honored as a four-time All-American by The Associated Press.

Surface Encounters

Japan Nuke Accident Seen From Seattle - Science <b>News</b>

Clues to events at crippled plant found in traces of radiation reaching Pacific Northwest.

Surface Encounters

New York Yankee <b>News</b>: Granderson, Chavez, Joe West and Barry Bonds <b>...</b>

All the Yankee news you need. ... New York Yankee News: Granderson, Chavez, Joe West and Barry Bonds. Dsc00073_tiny by jscape2000 on Mar 29, 2011 6:00 AM EDT in News � Tweet. 12 comments; Story-email Email; Printer Print. "I got it! ...

Surface Encounters

For Apple, the mobile market is a cash cow. The company’s iPhone and iPad are proving to be the top mobile companions for people around the globe. Apple has sold over 100 million iPhones. Its iPad sales have hit 15 million. The company understands the mobile market and it knows how to capitalize on it.

But what about the living room? It has the Apple TV, sure, and the Mac mini is often times connected to an HDTV, but what else has Apple done to push the envelope in the living room? It still hasn’t launched the long-rumored television we keep hearing about, and it seems that offering a game console — a hope for many Apple fans over the past few years — won’t happen.

I fully realize that Apple can’t be everything to every customer. It delivers computers, smartphones, tablets, personal media players, two operating systems, wireless routers, and much more. But I also realize that Apple is an entertainment company. It’s about trying to give people more opportunity to enjoy their lives through technology. And it would only make sense if it doubled down on the living room.

Let’s turn our attention to the Apple TV for a minute.

Prior to its announcement in September, rumors were running rampant over what the former “hobby” would offer. Folks thought it would deliver gaming, interface with DVRs, include Apple’s App Store, and much more. They thought it would be a sizable update over its predecessor.

Instead, Apple offered a stripped-down alternative.

The second-generation Apple TV comes with the ability for users to stream Netflix content. It has Flickr and Internet radio. And it allows users to stream their music over their home network to their televisions. It offers movies and television shows, as well, but most would agree that it’s slim pickings for now.

At that event in September, Steve Jobs said that Apple’s research showed customers didn’t want everything a company could pile into a device. They simply want the ability to consume the content they enjoy without the fuss that might come along with something like Google TV-based devices.

But by delivering the bare minimum, Apple did itself no favors. The company took the easy way out and pretended like it no longer views the living room as a hobby. The only issue is, the Apple TV is still a hobby. It’s a device that lacks all the functionality we’ve come to expect from Apple — a company that typically prides itself on offering the best value for the cash. And at least so far, it leaves me wanting more.

So, what am I looking for? I want to see Apple improve the Apple TV by bringing its App Store to the platform. I’d also like to see some kind of gaming component come to the device, either through the App Store or as part of a more-capable platform.

And perhaps most importantly, I’d like to see Apple think beyond its set-top box and deliver products that try something new. I’m not sold on the possibility of Apple offering a groundbreaking television, but if it can surprise me, I’m all for it.

Simply put, I’m looking for Apple to be Apple. Right now, it’s just like every other company in the living room; it’s content to have a presence but not dominate.

That needs to end.

No single company can stake claim to the living room right now. Steve Jobs just needs to take advantage of that void and do something special.

But first, he needs to take the living room — and its revenue potential — seriously.

I read an interesting article this morning that suggested Apple would change its mind and put Adobe’s Flash technology on its iOS devices within a year. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

In an open letter to users, Apple CEO Steve Jobs gave several reasons why he didn’t want Flash on the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. They are: Flash isn’t open; the full web; reliability, security and performance; battery life; and touch.

Adobe began shipping Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile last June, but even Laptop magazine admitted that “Steve Jobs was right,” and that “Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.” Granted, that report was from six months ago, but it still doesn’t bode well for the technology.

There is no doubt that Adobe is making advances with Flash on mobile devices, but I don’t believe future changes will be enough to get Apple to adopt the technology.

Jobs has been very clear that Apple supports HTML5, an open technology that is controlled by a standards committee, not one company. By building support for that technology into Webkit, Apple is ensuring that mobile Web browsers will be able to access what we’ve come to know as the “full web.”

Webkit is used by Google, Palm, Nokia and RIM, so it has a pretty solid base.

One of the arguments often bantered about when the discussion of the “full Web” comes up is video. There is no doubt that Flash made huge strides over the years in having sites like YouTube encode their videos in Flash. But that’s for the desktop.

As Jobs points out, almost all of this video is also available in H.264 format (a format Flash also supports), so it’s viewable on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

“Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video,” wrote Jobs.

You may ask why other companies adopted Flash for their mobile devices when Apple won’t. That’s easy, they are looking for something they have that Apple doesn’t. Considering how hard it is for tablet makers to compete with Apple, any perceived advantage will work.

I’m not an Adobe hater—I know quite a few people that work at Adobe and I think they’ve done some amazing things over the years. Flash for mobile devices isn’t one of them.

Chris Dawson said he gives “Apple a year until they cave [and adopt Flash]. Android tablets will just be too cool and too useful for both entertainment and enterprise applications if they don’t.”

I have been using my iPhone for years and my iPad for one year. I honestly can’t remember the last time I went to a Web site that wouldn’t load because I didn’t have Flash installed. I can load videos from YouTube and a host of other sites too, no problem.

Apple has sold more than 160 million iOS devices and there are no screaming, angry hordes of users breaking down the doors at 1 Infinite Loop demanding Flash on their devices.

In order for Apple to change its mind and adopt Flash, the technology has to be proven to be indispensable and that it will benefit its users. Apple has proven just the opposite is true.

Editor’s Note: Jim Dalrymple has been writing about Apple for more than 15 years. You can follow him on Twitter @jdalrymple and on his Web site at The Loop.

Surface Encounters

Surface Encounters

• 
  NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
  29
  



• 
  Full List - 140 Best Twitter Feeds - TIME
  28
  



• 
  The 4th Annual Mashable Awards - Nominations and Votes
  28
  



• 
  Leading Digital Journalist Jim Brady Joins Journal Register Company » Journal Register Company -
  26
  



• 
  The Shorty Awards - Honoring the best of Twitter and social media
  25
  



• 
  Leading Digital Journalist Jim Brady Joins Journal Register Company » Journal Register Company -
  23
  



• 
  A 2.5 Year-Old Uses an iPad for the First Time
  23
  



• 
  50% of Tweets Consumed Come From Only 0.05% of Twitter Users [STUDY]
  21
  



• 
  Welcome to Facebook
  21
  



• 
  NYTimes.com's Plan To Charge People Money For Consuming Goods, Services Called Bold Business Move | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
  18
  

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

THE QUAKE IN JAPAN, A GOOFBALL IN VENEZUELA Japanese earthquake damage is estimated at $310 billion and could be the costliest natural disaster ever. Japanese exports suffer. Kate Rogers of Fox revisits how to protect your business from catastrophe. “Small-business owners can determine if they should be seeking disaster coverage by weighing their investment in the business itself, among other factors. If the business is the sole form of income, the risk is much greater than if it is a hobby or part-time project.” Elsewhere around the world, the war industry gets a boost in Libya. And Hugo Chávez of Venezuela says capitalism may have destroyed life on Mars.

REAL ESTATE FALLS, JOBS RISE Mark Thoma says commodity prices are increasing because of world demand. A small-business owner in Georgia is trying not to pass on the cost of high gas prices. Detroit’s population declines 25 percent. Existing-home sales fall to the lowest on record. Meredith Whitney, an investment adviser, says, “Unless the government comes out with a 50-year mortgage, this market is in trouble longer term.” Gallup’s job-creation index is the highest since September 2008. Durable goods orders fall.

ANNE HATHAWAY AND WARREN BUFFETT The Fed earns $79 billion and predicts that the recovery is taking hold. Nonetheless, one of its officials warns that the United States is approaching insolvency. Meanwhile, Warren E. Buffett predicts growth but some think his company’s stock is buoyed by Anne Hathaway. Household balances sheets continue to improve. Scott Grannis says “the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey came in very strong. It hasn’t been this strong since the economic boom times of the early 1980s. It’s very difficult to ignore the mounting evidence of a strong economic recovery.” Architect billings increased slightly in February.

DEFICIT THRILLS The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is thrilled to see 64 senators calling for comprehensive deficit reduction. But Stan Collender, a budget expert, isn’t thrilled at all: “Does a letter that is so vanilla that it could have been written at any time over the past 40 years really indicate any movement on the current budget debate?” James Pethokoukis of Reuters says he thinks President Obama’s budget is wildly dangerous.

A NEW DEFINITION OF SMALL BUSINESS Timothy F. Geithner says that American small businesses need greater access to capital to spur innovation. The Small Business Administration, facing even more cuts, is for the first time in more than 25  years proposing to change the way it defines small businesses. JPMorgan Chase says it will cease its debit card rewards program because of new legislation that would restrict fees. Missouri gets $27 million in incentives for small-business growth. The Small Business Savings Account Act makes its way through Congress.

TAKING CREDIT The health care legislation celebrates its first anniversary and Ezra Klein defends it by saying, “Is it a perfect piece of legislation? Not even close. Will everything work as expected? Almost certainly not. But for all its flaws, it’s a good law. And it’s worth trying.” Many small businesses are still not taking advantage of the health care tax credit.

TECHNOLOGY UPGRADES A Google project manager pitches cloud computing: “Web-based software is much less costly for buyers than traditional software, and programmers can be so much more innovative, that it’s worthwhile for an entrepreneur to say, O.K., let’s start from scratch.” Paul Mah, an information technology expert, gives us eight reasons to upgrade to Internet Explorer 9. Firefox 4 is released. Microsoft jumps to second in video search and introduces a new PC tool for small business. Netflix suffers an outage. BlackBerry’s tablet is scheduled to arrive in April. AT&T buys T-Mobile but not for the reason you think. And boy. has computer technology come a long way in 10 years.

THE GROWING APPS MARKET Information Week reports that 38 percent of small- and medium-size businesses depend on mobile apps. Amazon introduces an Android app store, and Apple is not pleased. Minda Zetlin of Inc. asks if you should make a tablet app for your business: “The answer is likely a yes if one, your product or service is one where having tablet access could benefit customers; and two, your customers are the type who use tablets.” Just in time: a flood of royal wedding apps.

SPEAKING OF THE BIG WEDDING General Electric releases a much-needed William and Kate refrigerator. Jack Daniels introduces a new product — perhaps to help us forget the royal wedding. Danny Wong gives us three winning ideas to consider. A dating site features a new single man every day. Score plans an e-business learning Web site for small business. Small Business Television is rebranding itself and has introduced a new Web site. Small Business Opportunities magazine is doing the same. A small business introduces its first electric car. Sales of e-books have doubled. The group buying industry is projected to grow to $2.7 billion this year.

TWITTER’S TAX BREAKS Casey Hibbard explains how one company used social media to make $300,000 in a weekend. Robert Scoble discovers the future of work: “Just when we thought we figured out the new ’social enterprise’ market along comes Convofy.” Twitter shows San Francisco’s businesses how to save a bundle on taxes. A one-legged wrestler shows us how to become a national champ.

IT’S GOOD TO BE GREEN A woman in Canada gets a standing ovation for being green. The Manhattan Chamber of Commerce holds its green marketing event on Wednesday. The Clinton Global Initiative holds its university conference this week with a focus on entrepreneurship and a live webcast.

ADVICE FOR SXSW: HAND OUT PILLOWS The Global Entrepreneurship Congress meets in Shanghai this week. April 2 is International Pillow Fight Day. The South By Southwest conference: as seen from a bunch of social media video bloggers — which is yet another reason I won’t attend next year. American Airlines offers a big promo for California business travelers. John Jantsch wants to know the worst business advice you ever received. A third-base coach gives life advice.

SEARCHING FOR HELP WITH SEARCH An American Express survey finds that more than half of small-business owners say they need help with search-engine marketing. A video about why it’s not important to go viral goes viral. Dharmesh Shah shares a few low-cost advertising ideas for start-ups and cautions readers to “think of advertising not as a long-term traffic strategy but as a testing tool to improve your Web site and find out more about your ideal visitor.” An advertising blog discusses how to develop a relationship with the media. Lucy Thornton comes up with a few good marketing themes for April.

A 100-MILLION-MEMBER NETWORK LinkedIn officially reaches 100 million members. Seems like a good time to read the co-founder’s 10 rules for entrepreneurial success.

TRIED TALKING? Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker gives us his top 10 tricks for working while on the go. Example: “Whether it’s that old, dead iPod or the smartphone you’re already carrying with you, you probably have gigs of unused storage lying around waiting to be filled with portable apps, files and other digital travel necessities.” Melanie Brooks of Workawesome.com explains why she uses a leather day planner instead of a smartphone. Greg Schinkel warns against hiding behind our keyboards: “Before you hit ‘reply to all’ and send back a zinger to someone who maligned you, stop and go talk to the person.”

THIS WEEK’S AWARDS

BEST WAY TO GET YOUR CUSTOMERS TO LOVE YOU Ben Yoskovitz talks about the benefits of delighting your customers: “The rewards are immense. Loyal, rabid fans tweet shamelessly about how incredible you are, how valuable your Web application is and how successful your start-up will be.”

BEST WAY TO MARKET WITHOUT A BUDGET Shisha Dublin-Green explains how to market without a marketing budget: “Form an alliance: if you have a hair salon that’s mostly frequented by women with young children and elderly women, you can offer a service whereby you arrange to do their grocery shopping whilst they’re in the salon. You may decide to form an alliance with a local reputable grocer or delivery service to provide this for your customers. This could also be a way to reach out to new customers via your local grocer.”

BEST ADVICE FOR BOOTSTRAPPERS The Smart Bear says that the things money cannot buy are still the most valuable things: “Show proof of your ability to master the things money cannot buy — your ability to learn, change and improve.”

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION: How do you bring in customers without spending a lot? We do free webinars every month.

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group PC, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Surface Encounters

New York Yankee <b>News</b>: Granderson, Chavez, Joe West and Barry Bonds <b>...</b>

All the Yankee news you need. ... New York Yankee News: Granderson, Chavez, Joe West and Barry Bonds. Dsc00073_tiny by jscape2000 on Mar 29, 2011 6:00 AM EDT in News � Tweet. 12 comments; Story-email Email; Printer Print. "I got it! ...

Surface Encounters

Surface Encounters

Surface Encounters

Japan Nuke Accident Seen From Seattle - Science <b>News</b>

Clues to events at crippled plant found in traces of radiation reaching Pacific Northwest.

Surface Encounters

Making Fast Money

The second wave of e-commerce is coming, buoyed by a flood of fresh cash. European flash-sales site operator Privalia, which offers short-term, steeply discounted fashion deals in Spain, Italy, Brazil, and Mexico, is expanding to Germany with a $280 million acquisition of rival Dress-For-Less.

The deal is funded in part by $123 million in fresh cash from General Atlantic, Highland Capital Partners, Index Ventures, and Insight Venture Partners, as well as debt and newly issued shares.

Those are big numbers, and they come on top of a $95 million round just last October from General Atlantic and Index.

Privalia is a private-sales site that offers members deep discounts on apparel and other items for a short period of time. Others in the flash-sales category include Rue La La, now owned by GSI Commerce; Gilt Groupe, which offers deals in apparel and travel; and One Kings Lane, a home-décor site. The limited time horizon for offers, combined with a curated array of merchandise and new social tools, serves to drive demand from consumers looking to buy something new.

That customer base — those who view shopping as entertainment and largely made up of women — is potentially much larger than the hardcore online shoppers who became loyal online shoppers a decade ago.

The first wave of e-commerce, transactional and efficient, did catalogs one better by offering a nearly limitless array of merchandise and selling it cheaply and quickly. It satisfied demand, rather than creating it.

Private-sales sites, daily deals purveyors like Groupon, and other new forms of e-commerce promise to do something much bigger and more difficult: create demand. Successful traditional retailers excel at this, turning their stores into showcases of consumer delight and convincing people to reach for their pocketbooks for something they had no intention of buying when they walked into the store.

Privalia seems to have an edge in fast-growing overseas markets. Gilt currently operates in the U.S. and Japan. GSI, which is publicly traded, spent $350 million acquiring Rue La La and could expand quickly. A lot of capital is flowing into the sector. But unlike earlier waves of e-commerce, which required building and stocking warehouses to guarantee the availability of those vast virtual shelves of merchandise, the new e-commerce tends to move products quickly, making it an appealing investment to venture capitalists who might shy away from plowing their capital into inventory.

Instead, the money in this second wave of e-commerce is going into customer acquisition, technology, and some financial maneuvers — like Privalia’s rollup of Dress-for-Less.

Next Story: On the GreenBeat: PlugShare app finds car chargers, Suntech beats First Solar in panel production Previous Story: Global LED market surges, doubling last year

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

Talking about secretaries of defense...

Oh, we weren’t?

Well, let’s.  After all, they’re in the news. 

Take former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who, on leaving government service -- and I hope you don’t mind if I mangle a quote from General Douglas MacArthur here -- refused to die, or even fade away.  Instead, he penned Known and Unknown, a memoir almost as big as his ego and almost as long -- 832 pages -- as the occupation of Iraq, which promptly hit the bestseller lists (making the American reader a Known Unknown). 

Now, Mr. Known Knowns, etc., is duking it out on Facebook, Sarah-Palin-style, with “the chief gossip-monger of the governing class,” the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward.  Amusingly enough, Woodward has just savaged Rumsfeld for pulling a Woodward in his memoir by playing fast and loose with reality.  He posted his review at the Best Defense (as in, you know, a good offense), the war fightin’ blog of former Washington Post reporter and bestselling author Tom Ricks.  Small world down there in Washington!

It’s enough to make you nostalgic for... well, I have no idea what. 

Meanwhile, present Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, officially preparing to fade away later this year, hit the news as well.  His much-hinted-at retirement now seems like the Titanic looming on the military-industrial horizon.  (Take note, New York publishers and literary agents: Gates wrote a memoir the last time he faded away as CIA Director.  That was back in the Neolithic Age of the elder Bush.  It came out in 1996 and was titled From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War.  Still, chalk that effort up to another century and start preparing the contracts for Into the Shadows, The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Two More Presidents and How They Didn’t Win Much of Anything.)

To be exact, Gates made news by going to West Point to speak to the cadets in what was plugged as the first of a number of “farewell” addresses.  (The second came a week later at the Air Force Academy.)  In the process, he made the headlines for quoting -- somewhat oddly -- General Douglas (the original fader) MacArthur.

Now, give Gates credit.  The man has superb speechwriters who channel both his obvious intelligence and his sometimes-mordant sense of humor.  (Hint for Hillary: When he leaves the scene, you should grab any wordsmiths he lets loose.  It would help if you laced some self-deprecating humor, however borrowed, into those statements of yours that ­blank [fill in the country, tyrant, or protest movement] must do what you say and then that you just repeat when whoever or whatever predictably doesn’t...)

Examined Heads

...Oh sorry, I dozed off.  What was I saying?

Something about old soldiers?

Anyway, here was the eye-popping quote that everyone picked up and highlighted from Gates’s address:  “But in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

“Have his head examined”: strong words indeed, not to say strong advice for his successor!  As quoted, it did sound like a late-in-term awakening on America’s wars.  After all, the Secretary of Defense had to know that it would be the money paragraph, the one reporters would carry off, in a speech significantly about other matters. 

Quoted by itself, it also had to seem like a mix of a mea culpa, a j’accuse aimed at his former boss, President George W. Bush, and his predecessor Rumsfeld, and a never-again statement about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan he’s been overseeing since 2006 and, in the case of Afghanistan, expanding since 2008. 

Those four words from MacArthur seem to tell the only tale worth telling.  Supreme Commander, southwest Pacific area, during World War II, “emperor” of occupied Japan, and commander of United Nations forces in the Korean War until cashiered by President Harry Truman, MacArthur later urged President John F. Kennedy not to get involved in a “land war on mainland Asia” -- that is, in Vietnam.

As Christian Science Monitor reporter Brad Knickerbocker typically wrote, Gates’s “recollection of Gen. MacArthur’s famous warning -- given to President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as the U.S. buildup in Vietnam was beginning -- was a sober message for the young men and women about to become the next generation of U.S. military commanders.”  Gates, in other words, was citing a “famous” example of how MacArthur used his hard-won experience in a terrible, stalemated war in Asia to try to stop another disastrous war a decade later.  A flattering analogy, one might say.

There's only one problem: it just wasn’t so.  MacArthur’s “famous warning” came not in 1961, but in 1950.  As Michael D. Pearlman explains in his book Truman & MacArthur: Politics, Policy, and the Hunger for Honor and Renown, MacArthur made that comment soon after North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea.  He believed they were only conducting a “reconnaissance-in-force.” On June 26th, 1950, MacArthur, writes Pearlman, “was ‘astonished’ to receive directions to resist the invader.  ‘I don’t believe it.  I can’t understand it.’  John Foster Dulles, who favored a prompt military response, recorded him saying that anyone thinking of throwing American forces into the breech ‘ought to have his head examined.’” 

MacArthur’s urge, then, was prospective, not retrospective -- a gut reaction that has, in the last decades, Gates’s decades, been notably absent in Washington.  There’s no way of knowing whether this was clear to Gates or his speechwriter, but under the circumstances it was an odder phrase to quote than the reporters covering his address imagined, for it highlighted an essential problem with Gates and the rest of Washington’s global wrecking crew.  For them, the idea of going in has seldom been an alien one.  It’s going in the wrong way that bothers them -- and the problem (as Gates essentially admitted in his speech) is that you only know it’s the wrong way afterwards.

That striking quote of his, read in the context of his full speech, leaves a somewhat different taste behind.  Even the assumed prohibition against future Iraq- and Afghan-style wars is more cryptic than you might imagine.  The best Gates can do is this: “The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq -- invading, pacifying, and administering a large third world country -- may be low.”  Low, but not evidently nil in a world where all options always remain “on the table.”

Of course, his real focus at West Point was on quite a different kind of conflict.  He was there, in a sense, on a business trip to the future as the deliverer of prospective bad news to the future officers of the U.S. Army.  Their leaders, he wanted to tell them, were about to lose an intra-service struggle for the fruits of the still-growing but increasingly embattled Pentagon budget in economically fierce times.

In terms of future funding, and so future war-fighting, their service, he was there to tell them, was not well positioned.  “The Army,” he said, “also must confront the reality that the most plausible, high-end scenarios for the U.S. military are primarily naval and air engagements -- whether in Asia, the Persian Gulf, or elsewhere.”

(Note to journalists in a collapsing industry: it’s not often that a long-gone beat comes back, but that’s the case here.  In the 1950s, the services fought bitterly for shares of a far more limited military budget.  In fact, for a funds-starved Army in the early 1960s, Vietnam was, in budgetary terms, its breakout moment.  Now, budgetary war in Washington, missing-in-action for decades, is back, so the Secretary of Defense insisted.)

At West Point, but not at the Air Force Academy, think of Gates, then, as the Grim Reaper of military careers, telling the cadets that their future wouldn’t be in giant, never-to-be-used tank forces and that he was worried about just how they would indeed be employed.  As if to emphasize his point, on the very same day, another fading warrior, retiring Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey, Jr., was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, even though dreaming of a future “sipping Coronas [and] watching sunsets on the beach in Scituate [Massachusetts].”  There, he was to give his own valedictory to the Association of the U.S. Army and the “Defense Industry,” while making a most un-Gatesian plea for that same pot of gold. 

Wielding an infamous Vietnam-era phrase, the general worried that unnamed government types already “think they see the light at the end of the Afghanistan tunnel” and so were clamoring to cut the Army’s budget, even though the U.S. remains in an “era of persistent conflict.” He then issued this warning:

A Nation weary of war, struggling to get its domestic economy going again, looks to cash in on a ‘Peace Dividend’ and drastically cut back on defense. But, we've seen time and again that a ‘Peace Dividend’ is, at best, a mirage and, at worst, a danger to the long-term security of our Country, our allies and our interests... [W]e simply cannot afford to dismantle this incredible Army that we have so painstakingly built over the past decade.

“We Have Never Once Gotten It Right”

Let’s assume that, after so many years overseeing the Afghan War, Gates may, in fact, be a somewhat chastened man.  Perhaps there is evidence of this in his carefully articulated reluctance (as well as that of Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen) to do the American thing and throw the U.S. military at any problem -- in this case, a no-fly-zone over Libya. It’s certainly evidence that General Casey and the Secretary of Defense agree on one thing: They are dealing with a “stressed and tired” force.  After two wars in a single decade, with a Global War on Terror thrown in, the thought of launching yet another campaign “in another country in the Middle East” might well leave any Secretary of Defense feeling sour.

Of course, given the twin disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, who on Earth would want to repeat them?  Gates does seem, however provisionally, to be sidelining the recent Holy Grail of the U.S. Army and its key commander, General David Petraeus: counterinsurgency, or COIN.  If there are to be no more major land wars in Asia, then evidently U.S. soldiers won’t be spending much time “protecting the people” and “nation-building” either. 

However briefly, Gates offered the cadets a glimpse of a different war-fighting future (one that sounded eerily reminiscent of Donald Rumsfeld’s once bright and shiny vision of a faster-than-lightning, “net-centric” Army lite). “The strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces, be they Army or Marines, airborne infantry or special operations,” Gates said, “is self-evident given the likelihood of counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, or stability or security force assistance missions.” 

In other words, instead of “shock and awe,” “regime change,” and long-term occupations, he now imagines “counterterror” as well as air force and naval operations against “terrorists, insurgents, militia groups, rogue states, or emerging powers” that would be so decisive and effective as to “to prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly -- and controversial -- large-scale American military intervention.”

It sounds brilliantly un-Afghan, doesn’t it?

In other words, Gates seems to have a better idea of how, in the future, to go in.  What his speech lacked was any suggestion, no less analysis, of how to get out of the war that remains, for the months to come, his responsibility. 

Recently, journalist Dexter Filkins wrote a review of Bing West’s new book, The Wrong War, in the New York Times.  As much as anything else, it offered a devastating portrait of counterinsurgency (“a new kind of religion”) in Afghanistan as a failed faith.  Filkins, who covered both Iraq and Afghanistan for the Times, concludes that counterinsurgency has failed big time in the Afghan context, creating only a “vast culture of dependency: Americans are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them.”  Gates may well agree.

Filkins also seems unconvinced that slipping more COINs in the Afghan slot machine will improve the situation significantly.  (“[N]othing short of a miracle will give [Americans] much in return.”)   For all we know, Gates may agree with this, too.

Here’s the catch: Nearly 10 years into our second Afghan War, Filkins simply can’t seem to imagine a way out of the failed effort, or much else but more of the same.  It’s there that the discussion simply ends for him, as it does for the Secretary of Defense, as it does, generally speaking, for Washington. 

Gates himself is now preparing to depart (some might say jump ship) with his war still at a boil.  At West Point, he had advice galore for the next Secretary of Defense, and yet it’s striking that his speech avoided a serious look at Afghanistan and how to end his war.  He was perfectly willing to offer the cadets a window into the future on a range of subjects -- on almost anything, in fact, but that war. 

When it came to his primary responsibility, however, all he offered was this fragment of a sentence, a reference assumedly to American contingency-based drawdown plans to remove “combat troops,” but not tens of thousands of trainers and other forces by the end of 2014: “...after large U.S. combat units are substantially drawn down in Afghanistan...”  (In his subsequent address to the Air Force Academy, he denied that anything he said at West Point was an attack on "the wisdom of our involvement in Afghanistan.")  

The Secretary of Defense was clear on one thing: it's a joke to imagine that you can predict the future trajectory of war, American-style.  “And I must tell you,” he said in his second most quotable set of lines, “when it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect.  We have never once gotten it right, from the Mayaguez to Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Balkans, Haiti, Kuwait, Iraq, and more -- we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged.”

And yet he still dreams of those future “swift-moving expeditionary forces” heading towards places which will surely maintain that “perfect record.”

Of course, it’s worth remembering that not everybody got everything wrong.  In response to most of those wars, there were antiwar movements, large or small, that said: wrong place, wrong time, wrong idea, get out.  And not all of this happened retrospectively either.  In the specific case of Iraq, for instance, an enormous antiwar movement preceded the war and offered this piece of clear advice in no uncertain terms: don’t do it!

That movement was right.  The war-makers were wrong.  Yet no one from that movement is taken seriously in the mainstream media or in Washington to this day.

Here’s something important to remember: Vietnam did not start out as “Vietnam,” nor Iraq as “Iraq,” nor Afghanistan as “Afghanistan.” The fabulous dreams of doing it right always precede the horrific wars and, time after time, those in power never seem to feel MacArthur’s urge not to do it.  Somehow, they never imagine that, sooner or later, disaster and blowback will be in the offing, though based on recent history that’s the only reasonable prediction to make in such circumstances.

Almost a decade after we invaded Afghanistan and “triumphed,” our latest “wise men” -- in Washington and in the media -- are still at a loss.  The inability to win or be reasonably successful over so many years has, by now, penetrated almost, but not quite, never quite, to the core, leaving them bereft of solutions, except for continuing without serious hope.  And when it comes to this, too, for those who remember Vietnam, there’s nothing new under the sun.

Unexamined Heads

The problem isn’t that no one can predict the next war.  It’s that so many heads in Washington go unexamined.  As a result, our leaders are desperately behind the learning curve of Americans generally. 

Perhaps this is the moment to offer a simple future lesson for the Secretary of Defense -- if not the one who will leave office in 2011 with the Afghan War still roaring along, then the next one -- and here it is: it doesn’t really matter whether you go in big with tanks and counterinsurgency-style nation-building on the brain or small with a counterterror-lite footprint backed by air power. 

The issue Gates, like his peers, still focuses on is how to go in better.  The issue that needs to be focused on isn’t the “how to” but the going in. 

The lesson that Washington still seems incapable of drawing from its endless experience of such wars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is this: don’t go in, because the Age of Intervention is over.

It really doesn’t matter whether ours is “the finest military in the world,” as Gates assured the cadets, or "the finest fighting force that the world has ever known" as our presidents have taken to saying.  It doesn’t matter that the U.S. Army is battle-hardened and that it has years of counterinsurgency experience under its belt.  It doesn’t matter whether we favor the Navy and the Air Force over the Army in our future wars.  What matters is going to war.  What matters is the illusion that military power is our key problem-solver, our go-to position of choice.

It’s time, once and for all, to lock the gates.  It’s time to use the U.S. military only in the genuine defense of this country. 

It doesn’t seem like the hardest lesson in human history to grasp, but it has been: don’t go in.  This isn’t a utopian’s recipe, but a realist’s.  You just have to remind yourself that your intervention will never turn out the way you fantasize or plan, no matter what your fantasies or plans may be.

Let me say it one more time because I know no one’s listening: don’t do it. 

Afterward, write your 832-page books, enjoy your honors, duke it out with journalists, but when you’re Secretary of Defense, your job is to defend America against the urge to intervene.  Intervention doesn’t work.  Not in the long run, often not in the short one either.  Not these days.  Not at all. 

Your job is somehow, in a Washington that can’t imagine such a thing, to turn ever again into never again.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com.  His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books). To listen to a TomCast audio version of this post, read by Ralph Pochoda, click here or download it to your iPod, here.

[Note of thanks to: Jim Peck for helping spark this one, Ralph Pochoda for reading the TomCast audio version so sonorously, and the indispensible Christopher Holmes for applying his remarkable proofreading eye not just to this piece but to every TomDispatch piece.  A deep bow to all three.  In addition, for those of you eager to keep up on American war and fast-moving events in the Middle East, be sure to check out three sites that I find invaluable and visit daily: Juan Cole’s Informed Comment website, Paul Woodward’s War in Context website, and of course Antiwar.com.]

Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt

bench craft company reviews

How to create a Facebook <b>news</b> feed for a journalist (or anything <b>...</b>

I've been enjoying The Independent's individual Facebook feeds for journalists, football teams and other 'entities' of their news coverage. So much so that.

REPORT: <b>News</b> Corp. In Talks To Hand Over Control Of MySpace To <b>...</b>

News Corp. is in preliminary talks to give control of Myspace to Vevo.com, the site partly owned by top record companies, including Universal Music and Sony Music, according to a Bloomberg report. News Corp. has been looking to unload ...

<b>News</b> Budgets Busted By Cost Of Covering Disasters

From Japan to Libya, disasters and political upheavel around the globe are wreaking havoc on the already-skeletal budgets of cable and broadcast news organizations. "We've already had a year's worth of breaking news coverage, ...

Search engine optimization Vancouver For A Better Marketing Solution

 

When you start your personal website there are lots of ways you will have to market it and one of the best ways is by using Search engine optimization Vancouver if you happen to maintain that area. The SEO or seo services will be the top way of getting more visitors to your website and therefore making more sales.

 

Now, you need to know that you won't use SEO service if you're no internet business - however, if you do not have an online presence if you are a offline business, then you'll not make it very far.

 

It is a popular proven fact that if you are going to really make it within the offline world you must have an online business. This really is something which all business people are learning the hard way. One thing that you should also know is that it is not as easy as just establishing the website and leaving it to do its things.

 

This can be done in all types of ways, but these companies usually take advantage of multiple techniques to create the perfect marketing technique online. It is possible to hire them to write articles for you personally, post on forums and blogs, create meta data and meta descriptions, clean up the code, add alt tags to the images plus much more.

 

It is crucial that you do this because otherwise the company that you have worked so hard for could end up losing the money. When you have an internet site you want to create, then you'll also use the services of a search engine optimization company, which stands for search engine optimization company. What the corporation does is basically take the best parts of your site, check the code, create keywords and write various articles and documents to ensure that your website is placed close to the the surface of the list for that major search engines.

As a result the SEO company cannot only increase your traffic, but also make sure that your website is fully optimized for the internet search engine spiders that'll be introduced to it. These spiders are used to analyze your website and put it in certain positions determined on certain keywords.

 

If you want to make use of the Search engine optimization Vancouver then all you have to do is find the top companies. It's through these that the SEO gets done effectively and efficiently. With so many SEO companies to choose from you need to be certain the main one you're going for is reliable. You should be in a position to ask for a failure of what you want, and also the company also needs to have the ability to let you know know long they've been operating for. This will narrow down the list to reveal the very best ones.

 

Search engine optimization Offered by Different Vancouver Web Companies

The Vancouver SEO company services are very good for business growth because they provide quality services. If you are planning to create a website for your online business, then you have come to right article as I is going to be explaining below how Web optimization Vancouver company services can increase your website ranking and make it popular.

Before that, you need to know what Search Engine Optimization is. It's not that complicated and i am sure you're going to get a grasp from it after reading my article. The primary goal of SEO is to get more traffic to your website and target audience. It is a good decision to choose a Vancouver SEO company that are experts in this sort of work, which means that your website could be indexed by search engines like google.

There is no point in you having a website without any website ranking at all while you won't have any business and profits to survive. It is a very tough atmosphere available because there are a lot of online business people just like you, who want their share of pie. You have to be familiar with the truth that nearly 85% of world-wide-web traffic could be got from web sites.

Whenever a user types in a keyword or keywords for what he/she wants to know in various sites, these use crawlers to get web sites with the relevant content and index them according to algorithms. It's not necessary to worry about the algorithms which these sites use as that isn't important.

To appear within the first page of the google listing, you will need to hire professionals and experts who can perform the needful to keep your website among the good books in these websites. These professionals can optimize your site content to ensure that your website gets more traffic.

When the traffic gets high, it's a sign that you are getting a service which will get you more revenues. SEO Vancouver company do the next to make your website appear within the first page of search engine results.

Use keywords which are popularly utilized on search engines in your website content.
Have a website design for your website that is simple because top sites are allergic to flash and weird designs.
Submit your site to directories.
Submit your site to directory websites.
Postings on blogs and forums with back links for your websites. This is regarded as an effective way to get more traffic to your website as numerous internet users use blogs and forums.

SEO Vancouver company also perform site diagnostics that is a significant part in online optimization as research and analysis on finding keywords may be the way to start a SEO campaign. So, make sure you select the right SEO Vancouver service company.

Are you looking for more info regarding SEO Vancouver? Visit http://www.seo4vancouver.com/seo-services.asp today!

 

What to anticipate When Hiring a Roofing Contractors

When it comes time to repair or replace your homes roof, it's really a challenging job to find someone who is qualified to do the job. There are many roofing contractors out there, but the ones who will do a congrats for a reasonable cost aren't often easy to find. If you are in the marketplace for the service provider, make use of the tips below for meeting with and hiring the right one.

Job interview and Discussion

Most roofing companies offer free consultations. This is especially important, since it gives them a chance to assess what your homes roof requirements, and it gives you an opportunity to evaluate them. As with all of companies, believe in intuition concerning the people a person allow up onto your roofing. No issue exactly how great a contractor's reputation or recommendation, he ought to start by presenting a person having a business card. If a service provider occurs looking as well as talking in an less than professional method, most likely the task he is going to perform may also be less than professional. This is not to say that you ought to anticipate contractors to arrive in fits. They is going to be hiking in your roofing, so the majority of is going to be dressed in denim jeans and work footwear or even athletic shoes. If the actual service provider seems to be interested in speaking on their mobile phone during your homes roof compared to he's within analyzing your own roof's requirements, which may be an additional indication that he is not the one to do the job. For your lawful safety, make sure that the contractor has sufficient legal responsibility insurance coverage.

Roof Evaluation

Anticipate the contractor will be rising on your roof. In fact, any contractor who does not want to increase in your roof to judge the problem ought to be immediately reduced. Those who are seriously interested in their function may either create a sketching of your roof's surface as well as mark trouble spots on it because they undergo their own evaluation, or even they will take pictures or even video from the surface while they're up there. This is a very essential step, since it enables you to see just what the problems are as well as understand how they will be set.

Estimation

The next step would be the written estimation. The contractor will take out his loan calculator and come up with a written estimation. Some companies goes to their own vehicle or even truck as well as write down the proposal, while others will crisis the amounts to do the job prior to you. Once you're given the proposal, ensure that you comprehend which products will be utilized, how long the job will require and if there are any additional or even hidden costs that may occur during the restore of the roof. The service provider should be able to answer all of these questions with ease and forewarn a person of any extra costs that could be sustained should the roof's integrity be damaged inside.

After you have obtained a few written estimations from roofing contractors, evaluate exactly what each company or service provider would like to provide for the cost. Do not always low cost the highest bid, simply because sometimes the highest bet will in reality be the contractor who the task correctly. Also, be wary of bids which are not nearly as expensive others. They might be using substandard products or be unethical concerning the chance of hidden costs. Above all, trust your intuition and go with the service provider who makes you feel quite comfy regarding handing more than your hard earned money.

 

Seven Uyghurs Sentenced to Death

2011-03-23

Critics of the sentences say China has politicized the robberies as acts of terrorism.

 

AFP

A Uyghur man walks past armed Chinese security forces in Urumqi, July 17, 2009.

Chinese authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have ordered the executions of seven ethnic minority Uyghur men convicted of "violent" crimes, official media said on Wednesday.

 

The death sentences were handed down by the Supreme People's Court in recent days, according to state media in the regional capital, Urumqi.

 

The men were accused in connection with three separate attacks late last year in the Silk Road city of Kashgar, according to the news website Urumqi Online.

 

According to another website, the Xinjiang-based Tianshan news site, Aimaiti Tuheti, Yiming Dawuti, and unnamed "others" killed a security guard at a pedestrian mall as part of a failed Aug. 7 robbery attempt.

 

In a separate incident on Oct. 12, it said, Nuermaimaiti Aobulikasimu and 11 others broke into a house, bound and killed the couple living in it, and took their possessions.

 

It said the group also broke into the homes of two brothers, robbed them, and killed six people in a Nov. 11 attack in Kashgar.

 

The report gave no information about the victims or the schedule for the executions.

 

Three of the men were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, a sentence that is normally commuted to life imprisonment in China's judicial system.

 

They were convicted of deliberate homicide and armed robbery by the Kashgar Intermediate People's Court in the first instance.

 

'Strike hard' campaign

 

A Han Chinese resident of Urumqi surnamed Yang said a reference to "terrorism" in official news reports on the case showed that it was being politicized by the authorities, who have launched a series of "strike hard" campaigns in Xinjiang following deadly ethnic violence in July 2009.

 

"There is an implied political meaning; that they were somehow engaged in separatist activities or ethnic divisions," said Yang.

 

Exile Uyghur groups said the trials had been conducted behind closed doors, with scant opportunity for public scrutiny.

 

"The entire process against these men, from the trial through to the judgment, was opaque," said Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress.

 

"There was also very little reasonable evidence to convict them on a legal basis, because all the evidence came from one side of the case," he said.

 

"We strongly condemn the Chinese government for continuing to pursue their policies of ethnic division," said Raxit.

 

"We are also strongly opposed to the death penalty in this case."

 

Earlier cases

 

Last month, the Supreme Court sentenced four Uyghurs to death for alleged involvement in an Aug. 19 bomb attack in Xinjiang’s western Aksu city.

 

The World Uyghur Congress pointed to concerns over lack of transparency in those cases too.

 

The Aksu blast left eight people dead, including two of the bombers, and 15 wounded after a man riding a three-wheeled vehicle threw explosives at a group of uniformed patrolmen. Four Uyghurs were arrested shortly after the attack.

 

State media characterized the cases as acts of terrorism and unrelated to longstanding ethnic tensions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese in the region.

 

Exiled Uyghur dissident Rebiya Kadeer has warned that attacks like those in Aksu will continue to occur until Beijing addresses the underlying source of tension in the region.

 

Millions of Uyghurs—a distinct, Turkic minority who are predominantly Muslim—populate Central Asia and Xinjiang.

 

Uyghurs say they have long suffered ethnic discrimination, oppressive religious controls, and continued poverty and joblessness despite China's ambitious plans to develop its vast northwestern frontier.

 

Those frustrations erupted in July 2009 in deadly riots that left nearly 200 people dead, by the Chinese government's tally.

 

At least 26 people, mostly Uyghurs, were sentenced to death in the aftermath of the riots, many of whom have been executed, according to state media.

 

China is believed to execute more people each year than the rest of the world’s countries combined, although the government does not publish official figures.

 

Rights groups say Beijing may execute as many as several thousand prisoners annually.

 

Chinese authorities blame Uyghur separatists for a series of deadly attacks in recent years and accuse one group in particular of maintaining ties to the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

 

New training scheme

 

China on Wednesday also announced a training scheme which places ethnic minority graduates from Xinjiang in work elsewhere in China.

 

Governments of the destination cities will spend 450 million yuan (U.S.$ 69 million) for the program, while Xinjiang will spend 400 million yuan (U.S.$ 61 million), the official Xinhua news agency reported.

 

The program targets some 60,000 jobless college graduates in Xinjiang, around 80 percent of whom are from ethnic minorities, and 60 percent of whom are women.

 

However, some commentators see the move as an attempt to assimilate non-Han Chinese into mainstream Chinese culture.

 

"From the point of view of ethnic minorities, the graduate work scheme is really taking the cream of youth from the minorities and using them to 'further cultural development,'" wrote one ethnic minority user on a popular microblogging service.

 

"In fact, the culture that is being advanced is Han culture, and this group of young people will have been totally brainwashed," the microblog update said.

 

An Urumqi resident surnamed Li agreed.

 

"They have run senior high school schemes like this before during the past few years," he said.

 

"Whether it's high-schoolers or graduate training programs, these are measures that are aimed at thought control and brainwashing, and the 'Partification' of their education," he said.

 

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

Copyright © 1998-2011 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

 

Wikileaks and also the Uyghur People

through henry upon Dec 20, 2010
Henryk Szadziewski, Manager, Uyghur Human Rights Project

If it had been ever in doubt, info obtained through the whistleblower web site, Wikileaks, offers confirmed Chinese government fears more than it's ongoing charge of the location this calls Xinjiang, also is referred to as Eastern Turkestan. The leaked wires through Ough.Utes. diplomats show the actual extent that Chinese government bodies attempt to persuade governments worldwide to consider its position upon problems affecting Uyghurs. The cables additionally show the actual United States' concerns as well as views regarding the ongoing repressive measures in the area.

The majority of lighting of Chinese language federal government pressure would be the cables directed to Chinese anger, or even the specter associated with Chinese language ire, over the release of Uyghur detainees within Guantánamo to third nations. A Dec Twenty nine, 08 cable television relates how Chinese language Assistant International Reverend Liu Jieyi fulfilled with the Ough.S. Ambassador to China to voice Beijing's powerful competitors associated with release in order to any nation other than China, which if the Ough.Utes. did indeed accede to this request it might "avoid harm to bilateral relations and also to co-operation ‘in important areas'". Furthermore, a Feb '09 cable television explains how the Chinese Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Zhang Yannian, regarded as the actual feasible discharge of Uyghur Guantánamo detainees as "an unfavorable behave toward us" along with a "slap in the face". That the U.S. government was firm within not really releasing the detainees in order to The far east illustrates the degree of the politicized nature of the Chinese language judicial system. Legitimate issues over terrorism are understandable, however in the Ough.S. government's view the detainees would probably face torture and delivery when they returned in order to China

Chinese federal government pressure regarding the Uyghur Guantánamo detainees wasn't just put on the U.S. federal government, but also to Brand new Zealand and a number of Western government authorities which were thinking about resettlement. Albania, Indonesia and Finland, as well as Eu fellow member says just about all appear to have borne the actual brunt associated with Chinese language government disappointment. In the case of Germany, which was at first willing to consider two Uyghurs on solely relief grounds, Uyghur Guantánamo cases were less preferable to other detainees because of the negative effects accepting Uyghurs would have on relations along with China. A Might 8, '09 cable television applies exactly how "German Ambassador Michael Schaefer reported that Indonesia experienced informed The far east from the U.Utes. request to accept some Uighur detainees kept from Guantánamo and had already been subsequently warned by The far east of ‘a large load on bilateral relations' if Germany were to simply accept any kind of detainees".

The actual diplomatic wires also talk about the unrest within Urumchi, the actual local funds, in This summer '09. The July Thirteen, '09 cable talking about bulk incidents in China states:

"Ethnic riots such as those who work in Xinjiang This summer 5-7 and in Tibet in March of 2008 differ markedly in origin and character through bulk incidents, XXXXXXXXXXXX emphasized to PolOff [Political Officer] upon XXXXXXXXXXXX. Each existing serious problems for the Party, XXXXXXXXXXXX said, however the Party management would not hesitate to open fire on Uighurs or Tibetans when they deemed it necessary to recover order. Bulk occurrences present another kind of risk, he said, as the leadership is ‘afraid' to fire on Han rioters for fear of sparking huge open public outrage that would change against the Celebration."

This can be a chilling viewpoint, particularly when one views the evidence offered by 50 percent reviews released this year by the Uyghur Individual Rights Project (UHRP) as well as Amnesty International that fine detail eyewitness company accounts of the utilization of lethal reside fireplace towards Uyghur protestors in This summer '09. In addition, the declaration which fire wouldn't be used against Han Chinese protestors has resonances for that different approach taken by Chinese language protection forces within Urumchi in order to Han Chinese language direct orders in Sept '09. During those direct orders, then Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, addressed protesters, that experienced required he inform them regarding government responses to security issues. An identical ask for to meet with the Celebration Assistant by Uyghur demonstrators in This summer was not fulfilled.

The actual wider repercussions of the unrest additionally noticed a short dialogue on the impact it would have upon Iran-China relationships, and on relationships along with Australia following Globe Uyghur Our elected representatives Leader, Microsoft. Rebiya Kadeer, talked in the National Press Membership in Canberra in July 2009. In the second option case, the Chinese government "privately warn[ed] a significant Aussie bank that sponsors the National Push Club to make use of its influence to bar a Kadeer speech there".

The actual U . s . States' concerns concerning the scenario in the Uyghur area also come through in the cables. Inside a discussion on policy path in Tibet, Ough.S. officials explain that it'll end up being impossible for Chinese language leaders to adopt the softer line "if they appear like they are doing so under worldwide pressure". The actual cable dated 04 Sixteen, 08, one month after the outbreak associated with unrest in Tibetan areas, additionally relayed the observation "that household stability remains the leadership's main concern most of all, which means there will ‘almost surely' end up being no relaxation from the current hard collection on Tibet or perhaps in places like Xinjiang." The info contained in the cable also sheds light on the extreme sensitivity with which the Chinese federal government sights territorial ethics, and the possible drip over associated with unrest through Tibet.

The chance of methods to tensions in Tibet as well as Xinjiang arising from civil culture are debated inside a February 24, 08 cable. While suggesting which China's economic success increases it's potential to deal with democratic reform, the cable also talks about exactly how Chinese leaders see the usefulness associated with "a restricted expansion associated with civil society, including improvements in the guideline of law along with a stronger role for authorized beliefs, NGOs, charities along with other actors in areas that contribute to social balance and don't problem Communist Party guideline." This is a notable alternation in thinking, that has seen Ough.Utes. officials promote the idea which Chinese economic improvement, as well as economic relations along with The far east brings about a progressively democratic society; however, more faith appears to be placed in the grassroots motion compared to one which begins in the top levels of the Chinese federal government. Nevertheless, the cable television concludes that "[i]n places such as Tibet as well as Xinjiang, the fear of separatism results in tight restrictions about the development of municipal culture." This method is viewed as counter-productive by the official, that shows that the Ough.S. government "should continue to express...serious issues over Beijing's human rights record and appeal to China's growing consciousness which higher respect for human rights, spiritual independence and also the rule associated with regulation will serve to advertise the development as well as sociable balance which China looks for in addition to to enhance China's international picture." Such a strategy might take substantial diplomatic abilities considering "China's paranoid concern that the United States secretly promotes routine change and ‘separatists' within Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang".

The cables offer insight into the actual every day company associated with diplomacy that's hardly ever afforded to everyone, which is fascinating to notice the quantity of function carried out nowadays upon Uyghur problems. The importance of the actual role of the United States like a keep track of associated with Uyghur individual rights problems within personal discussions is made clear, as well as contrasts with its tactful open public stance. Employees from the Uyghur Individual Rights Task is well aware of the pressure the Chinese government exerts upon Uyghur activists; nevertheless, the details associated with Chinese language government stress on its counterparts is illustrative from the diploma which Chinese officials make an effort to control contradictory narratives. With more revelations to come from Wikileaks, concerns over Uyghurs might not grab the actual head lines, but the wires possess shed brand new light about the paperwork of human rights problems within the Uyghur region.

 

Wikileaks and the Uyghur People

through henry upon December Twenty, 2010
Henryk Szadziewski, Supervisor, Uyghur Human Rights Project

If it had been actually in doubt, info obtained through the whistleblower web site, Wikileaks, offers confirmed Chinese government fears over it's continued control of the location it calls Xinjiang, which is also known as Eastern Turkestan. The actual leaked wires through Ough.S. diplomats demonstrate the actual degree to which Chinese language authorities make an effort to convince governments globally to consider its position upon issues affecting Uyghurs. The actual wires also display the United States' concerns as well as views concerning the ongoing repressive steps in the area.

Most lighting of Chinese government pressure are the cables pointing to Chinese language anger, or the specter of Chinese language ire, over the discharge of Uyghur detainees in Guantánamo to 3rd countries. A Dec 29, 08 cable relates exactly how Chinese language Assistant Foreign Reverend Liu Jieyi met using the U.Utes. Ambassador in order to China to tone of voice Beijing's strong competitors associated with launch to any kind of country apart from China, which if the Ough.S. did indeed accede for this request it might "avoid harm to bilateral relations and also to cooperation ‘in essential areas'". In addition, the February '09 cable television explains how the Chinese Ambassador in order to Kyrgyzstan, Zhang Yannian, regarded as the possible discharge of Uyghur Guantánamo detainees as "an unfriendly act towards us" and a "slap in the face". The Ough.S. federal government was firm in not really releasing the detainees to The far east illustrates the extent of the politicized character from the Chinese language judicial program. Legitimate issues over terrorism are understandable, however in the actual Ough.Utes. government's observe the detainees would probably face torture as well as execution when they returned in order to China

Chinese language government stress in regard to the actual Uyghur Guantánamo detainees wasn't just applied to the actual U.Utes. federal government, but also to New Zealand along with a number of Western governments which were thinking about resettlement. Albania, Germany and Finland, as well as Eu member states just about all appear to have borne the actual brunt of Chinese federal government unhappiness. Regarding Germany, which was initially prepared to consider 2 Uyghurs on solely humanitarian reasons, Uyghur Guantánamo cases had been less better than other detainees because of the unwanted effects taking Uyghurs would have upon relationships along with China. The Might Eight, 2009 cable television applies exactly how "German Ambassador Erina Schaefer documented that Germany experienced informed The far east from the Ough.Utes. request to accept a few Uighur detainees kept from Guantánamo and had already been consequently cautioned by The far east of ‘a heavy burden on bilateral relations' if Indonesia had been to accept any kind of detainees".

The diplomatic wires additionally talk about the unrest within Urumchi, the local funds, in This summer '09. The This summer 13, '09 cable discussing bulk incidents within China states:

"Ethnic riots like those in Xinjiang This summer 5-7 and in Tibet in 03 associated with 2008 vary markedly in origin as well as nature through mass occurrences, XXXXXXXXXXXX stressed in order to PolOff [Political Officer] upon XXXXXXXXXXXX. Both present serious trouble for the Party, XXXXXXXXXXXX stated, but the Party leadership wouldn't wait to open fire on Uighurs or even Tibetans when they deemed it essential to recover purchase. Bulk occurrences pose a different type of threat, he explained, since the management is ‘afraid' to fireplace upon Han rioters for anxiety about causing huge open public outrage that would change against the Celebration."

This is a relaxing viewpoint, especially when 1 views evidence presented by 50 percent reviews launched this season by the Uyghur Human Privileges Project (UHRP) as well as Amnesty International that detail eyewitness accounts of the use of deadly reside fireplace against Uyghur protestors in July 2009. Additionally, the observation that fire would not be used against Han Chinese language protestors offers resonances for the various approach taken through Chinese security forces within Urumchi in order to Han Chinese protests in Sept '09. During individuals protests, after that Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, addressed demonstrators, who had demanded he let them know about federal government responses to security issues. A similar ask for to meet using the Party Secretary by Uyghur demonstrators in July was not met.

The wider repercussions from the unrest additionally noticed a brief discussion about the impact it would have on Iran-China relations, as well as on relations with Sydney following Globe Uyghur Congress President, Ms. Rebiya Kadeer, talked in the National Push Club in Canberra in August '09. In the second option situation, china government "privately warn[ed] a major Australian bank that vendors the National Push Club to use it's influence to block a Kadeer speech there".

The actual United States' issues concerning the scenario within the Uyghur area are available through in the cables. Inside a discussion on plan direction within Tibet, Ough.S. authorities clarify that it'll end up being not possible with regard to Chinese frontrunners to consider the softer line "if they look like doing this under worldwide pressure". The actual cable out dated 04 Sixteen, 08, 30 days after the episode of unrest within Tibetan regions, additionally relayed the actual declaration "that household stability continues to be leadership's top priority most of all, which means there'll ‘almost surely' be no relaxation from the present difficult line upon Tibet or perhaps in locations like Xinjiang." The info contained in the cable television additionally storage sheds light about the severe level of sensitivity with which china federal government sights territorial integrity, and the possible drip more than associated with unrest through Tibet.

The prospect of methods to tensions in Tibet as well as Xinjiang as a result of municipal society tend to be debated in a Feb Twenty-four, 2008 cable. Whilst suggesting which China's financial achievement increases its potential to deal with democratic reform, the cable television additionally talks about how Chinese leaders begin to see the effectiveness of "a limited growth of municipal society, such as improvements within the guideline of regulation along with a more powerful role for authorized religions, NGOs, non profit organizations and other stars in areas which bring about sociable balance and do not problem Communist Celebration guideline." This can be a notable alternation in thinking, which has observed U.S. officials market the idea which Chinese financial improvement, and economic relationships along with China will bring about a progressively democratic culture; however, more faith seems to be placed in a grassroots motion than one that starts in the best quantity of a Chinese language government. Nonetheless, the actual cable concludes which "[i]n areas for example Tibet and Xinjiang, driving a car associated with separatism leads to tight limitations on the growth of civil society." This method is viewed as counter-productive through the official, that shows that the actual U.S. federal government "should continue to express...serious concerns more than Beijing's human privileges report and appeal to China's developing consciousness that higher regard for human privileges, religious freedom and also the guideline associated with law assists to promote the improvement and social balance which China seeks as well as to improve China's international image." This type of strategy would take considerable diplomatic abilities thinking about "China's weird concern that the Usa privately promotes routine change and ‘separatists' within Taiwan, Tibet as well as Xinjiang".

The wires provide insight into the every day business associated with diplomacy that's rarely owned by everyone, which is fascinating to note the amount of function done nowadays upon Uyghur issues. The significance of the actual part of the us as a monitor associated with Uyghur individual privileges conditions in personal conversations is created obvious, as well as contrasts with its sensible public position. The staff from the Uyghur Individual Privileges Task is well aware of pressure china federal government puts on Uyghur activists; still, the facts of Chinese federal government pressure on it's alternatives is illustrative of the degree which Chinese language officials attempt to suppress contrary narratives. With more revelations in the future from Wikileaks, concerns more than Uyghurs might not get the head lines, however the wires possess get rid of brand new light about the documentation associated with individual rights problems within the Uyghur area.

 

Seo And Article Marketing Will Place You On Page 1

Seo and article marketing are two of the strongest strategies which you can use promoting your website and get the revenue and success that you need for your internet business. Both of these everything has been around to get a really long time already however they still still be really effective. Actually, these have helped many people free themselves from your traditional means of money-generating options of society.

In this article, I will be showing the ways how you can properly execute search engine optimization and article marketing for the betterment of your small business website. Furthermore, I will be also discussing the different points that you must consider when you're using these two internet marketing strategies to market your website and obtain customers. Despite the fact that marketing with articles and Search engine marketing have been in existence for a long time already, you need to know that the trends and preferences concerning how they are performed are continually changing, which explains why you need to keep yourself up to date with these things through the help of Seo forum sites to enable you to quickly adjust and learn how to make your strategies more effective.

In the past marketing with articles to different websites was once so simple the effects that they produce for web sites really was powerful. However, things have changed a great deal today. Nowadays submitting the same article to different websites is no longer a good idea because search engines have now changed to some huge extent in the manner they rank pages. They no longer rank contents that are identical like they used to in the past. This really is one of the best samples of changes that exist in internet marketing trends. This change has given birth to wide plethora of methods that online marketers are using today. The majority of web marketers now produce articles and submit them in really popular article submission sites and wait for targeted traffic to make their pages. This is perhaps that most reliable Search engine optimization strategy that you can use. Aside from being effective, this also delivers favorable outcomes regularly. The only problem with this technique is the caliber of traffic you will get from this defintely won't be so good unless you do proper market and keyword research beforehand and use in-links. You need for attending these two things prior to deciding to submit your posts so that you won't end up losing considerable amounts of targeted traffic. This means that you must practice good levels of diligence if you want your advertising initiatives to be effective.

Aside from articles, you can also use operating a blog, which is another really powerful form of online marketing strategy today because it's highly popular with the major search engines. On this technique, it is possible to choose to produce a single blog site that specifically targets your chosen market or else you can give rise to other weblogs that are called experts within your niche.

Learn effective Vancouver search engine marketing techniques in the Vancouver SEO website.

Roofing Companies Vancouver WA

There are numerous things to take into account when looking for a new roofing contractor. Value, experience, as well as referrals are some of the things you'll probably be concerned about. Please read on for even more ideas.

• Finding a Roofers

Before looking for a roofing contractor, make sure you have a general idea of the work that you need to have inked. By no means is it necessary to be a specialist. If you have any Roof Certification, read it carefully to find the information about your active roof. If you do not have a Top Certificate, refer to documents signed during shutting to locate your Roof Inspection linen. These files should provide you with everything you need to find out about your roof. Prior to contacting the roofing contractor, you have to have a list of demands and specs to help you decide exactly who would work for your roofing project. Make sure you write down each and every potential roofer contractor's answers along with check them against one another. If you'll find any mistakes, be sure to note this as well as take this into consideration when coming up with a final determination. There are no guaranteed ways to choose a roofing contractor, but when you take pay attention to to the info provided, your odds of a successful roofing project are greatly enhanced.

One of the best methods for finding a roofing contractor is by word of mouth marketing. Try requesting a friend or relative who may have had roof covering work performed, and had been satisfied with the work. Get the title of the organization and their particular contact data. If you have not sure of mouth area referrals, test first seeking in the mobile phone book and internet-based. A large ad or expensive website isn't necessarily indication of the quality of work, but could be a great tool for measuring just how long and devotion they have used in their individual profession. In addition, try locating current worksites and appearance at the roofer work that may be done or perhaps in the process of getting finished. If you're visually pleased, ask the property manager to the name in the roofing contractor and also their make contact with information.

• Research

When looking for a new roofing contractors, it really is imperative to 1st do your own background research. Costly in the yellow pages or on the Internet is a suitable destination to find a contractor, finding relevant information on most of these businesses will probably be found in several other areas. Very first, check with places like the Better Business Bureau, city, state, and local public records, and local licensing agencies. Question your roofer if they are a member of any roofer associations. These types of precautions may mitigate your own risks. Additionally ask them what forms of roofing they specialize in. Additionally ask your current roofing contractor concerning any guarantees they offer on their installed roofing. Find out what safeguards they decide to try avoid destruction done to the rest of the home by simply workers. Things such as gutters, siding, and chimneys are close in proximity and therefore susceptible to unintended damages.

Be sure all of this info is included in your composed contract. Find out if you need a covering permit and/or agreement from your house owners association ahead of time. These organizations will let you know who is responsible for getting these permits and authorizations. If it is the obligation of the roofing contractor, also have it included in your contract. When it is your obligation, get stated permits and permissions collated while using estimated roofing project and still have it obviously posted or even readily available.

• Licensing and Recommendations

Roofing Contractors are not needed to be qualified in all states. Contact nearby licensing agencies that rule general construction contractors for a list of specifications. Once you have acquired the requirements, make a list of detailed questions to ask the potential roofer. This simple listing should instantly help you to weed out the qualified from the not qualified roofing installers. Qualified building contractors should be able to effortlessly answer questions as well as tell you that they must do additional research prior to giving a definitive solution.

Even if a roofing contractor has all needed licensing, you should ask to determine pictures involving completed roofer jobs and speak to fulfilled clients. Possess a list of questions handy to ask recent consumers, such as the dynamics of the work, timeliness, and total satisfaction. Make certain these are recent clients along with cross reference if possible. When it comes to commercial roofer, make sure that the roofing contractor will be bonded. Checking these referrals is another additional measure of stability to limit the list associated with potential roofer contractors.