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Sunday, April 03, 2005 |
 Afghanistan. The combination of government threats/promises and the potential (after last year's glut) of much lower opium prices has worked. There is less opium production this year than last. The problem is that unless incomes can be stabilized quickly, these idle farmers are going to become guerrilla entrepreneurs.
8:33:01 PM 
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Abu Ghraib. Al Qaeda is now officially in Iraq. This is classic Al Qaeda:
Guardian. The attack started at 7pm when a car bomb rammed one corner of the complex, followed by rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small-arms fire. It appeared to be a feint because when guards scrambled to respond a second car bomb blew up at an opposite corner, again followed by a hail of bullets and bombs.
Let's hope that they don't attempt an assault like this on major infrastructure. The damage to high value equipment (special high capacity turbines and pumps) would be catastrophic.
8:11:38 PM
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Cringely. Serving the long tail market for old TV shows through Wi-Max (although it could, and should, include Radio programs too).
Imagine every PBS affiliate as a WiMax broadcaster, pumping 45 megabits-per-second or more of archival material into its local service area and another 45 megabits through a regular Internet connection. All the local users are truly local and some or all of them are running Bit Torrent, which would effectively double again the effective bandwidth. The effect would be stunning. Never again could you say that there was nothing worth watching on TV.
This is the perfect application for high-altitude bandwidth zeppelins (that defense contractors are currently working on for the US military). Podcasting can boil down into a long tail market for new talk radio programs.
1:06:15 PM
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AJ. Another sign of "democracy" on the march. An anti-government strike (on the heals of substantial demonstrations) shuts down parts of Pakistan. The country is a dictatorship in the Egyptian model. In response, Musharraf cracks down: On Friday, police arrested hundreds of MMA activists, including five lawmakers, in southern Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital.
12:41:03 PM
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Haaretz. The protection of Sharon. With enemies of the outside and the inside, the task is nearly impossible. This is interesting:
In the 1960s, when the CIA was planning the assassination of Fidel Castro and many others, they studied the means by which Czech exiles succeeded in planning and killing the Nazi governor of occupied Czechoslovakia, Reinhard Heydrich, despite the precautionary measures he took. That operation has since been cited as a model, albeit with tragic results for the population for which it was carried out. The assassins were selected from a paratroop brigade, trained in conditions of compartmentalization and field security, warned not to make contact with the local underground, which was exposed to enemy intelligence, were infiltrated into the area, blended in with Heydrich's travel route and waited for many weeks until his car slowed down, at a bend in the road, and allowed them to attack it with firearms and an explosive charge. The study reads as though it was written this year, after the assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut.
12:30:43 PM
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© Copyright 2005 John Robb.
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