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Argos Media

'World leaders must drop their slogans' | Israel | Jerusalem Post - 0 views

www.jpost.com/...Satellite

Avigdor Lieberman Israel Iran Palestine

shared by Argos Media on 24 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • JPost.com » Israel » Article Apr 24, 2009 0:14&nbsp;|&nbsp;Updated Apr 24, 2009 13:54 'World leaders must drop their slogans' By DAVID HOROVITZ AND AMIR MIZROCH PrintSubscribe articleTitle = ' \'World leaders must drop their slogans\' '; showOdiogoReadNowButton ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566',articleTitle,'0', 290, 55); E-mailToolbar + Recommend: What's this? showInitialOdiogoReadNowFrame ('1002,1003,1005,1004,1006,1484,1560,1561,1562,1563,1564,1565,1566', '0', 290, 0); Talkbacks for this article: 117 &nbsp; | &nbsp;Avg. rating 4.61 out of 5</s
  • The international community has to "stop speaking in slogans" if it really wants to help the new Israeli government work toward a solution to the Palestinian conflict and help bring stability to the Middle East, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, in his first interview with an Israeli newspaper since taking the job.
  • "Over the last two weeks I've had many conversations with my colleagues around the world," he said. "Just today, I saw the political adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Chinese foreign minister and the Czech prime minister. And everybody, you know, speaks with you like you're in a campaign: Occupation, settlements, settlers..." Slogans like these, and others Lieberman cited, such as "land for peace" and "two-state solution," were both overly simplistic and ignored the root causes of the ongoing conflict, he said.
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  • Lieberman insistently refused to rule in, or rule out, Palestinian statehood alongside Israel as the essence of a permanent accord, but emphatically endorsed Netanyahu's declared desire not to rule over a single Palestinian.
  • The foreign minister spoke as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel on Thursday that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem's commitment to the peace process.
  • The fact was, said the Israel Beiteinu leader, that the Palestinian issue was "deadlocked" despite the best efforts of a series of dovish Israeli governments. "Israel has proved its good intentions, our desire for peace," he said. The path forward, he said, lay in ensuring security for Israel, an improved economy for the Palestinians, and stability for both. "Economy, security, stability," he repeated. "It's impossible to artificially impose any political solution. It will fail, for sure. You cannot start any peace process from nothing. You must create the right situation, the right focus, the right conditions."
  • Equally emphatically, he said no peace proposal that so much as entertained the notion of a "right of return" to Israel for Palestinian refugees could serve as a basis for negotiation. "It cannot be on the table. I'm not ready to even discuss the 'right of return' of even one refugee," he said. But he also made clear that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state was not a precondition for progress. "You know, we don't want to torpedo the process," he said. "But somebody who really wants a solution, somebody who really desires a real peace and a real agreement, must realize that this would be impossible to achieve without recognizing Israel as a Jewish state."
  • Lieberman said the new government would have no dealings with Hamas, which needed to be "suffocated," and that the international community also had to maintain the long-standing Quartet preconditions for dealing with the Islamist group.
  • The real reason for the deadlock with the Palestinians, said Lieberman, "is not occupation, not settlements and not settlers. This conflict is really a very deep conflict. It started like other national conflicts. [But] today it's a more religious conflict. Today you have the influence of some nonrational players, like al-Qaida."
  • And the biggest obstacle to any comprehensive solution, he said, "is not Israel. It is not the Palestinians. It's the Iranians."
  • Lieberman said the prime responsibility for thwarting Iran's march to a nuclear capability lay with the international community, not Israel, and especially the five permanent members of the Security Council. He was confident that stringent economic sanctions could yet achieve the desired result, and said he did not even "want to think about the consequences of a crazy nuclear arms race in the region."
  • He said it would be "impossible to resolve any problem in our region without resolving the Iranian problem." This, he said, related to Lebanon, Syria and problems with Islamic extremist terror in Egypt, the Gaza Strip and Iraq.
  • Nonetheless, Lieberman stressed that Israel did not regard stopping Iran as a precondition for Israeli efforts to make progress with the Palestinians. Quite the reverse, he said. "No, we must start with the Palestinian issues because it's our interest to resolve this problem. But there should be no illusions. To achieve an agreement, to achieve an end of conflict, with no more bloodshed, no more terror, no more claims - that's impossible until Iran [is addressed]."
  • Noting what he called Syria's deepening ties with Iran, Lieberman said he saw no point whatsoever in resuming the indirect talks with Damascus conducted by the last government. "We don't see any good will from the Syrian side," he said. "Only the threats, like 'If you're not ready to talk, we'll retake the Golan by military action...'"
Pedro Gonçalves

Cyber Blitz Hits U.S., Korea - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...SB124701806176209691.html

US South Korea North Korea Cyber Security Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jul 09 - Cached
  • U.S. and South Korean computer networks were besieged for days by a series of relatively unsophisticated attacks, possibly from North Korea, that were among the broadest and longest-lasting assaults perpetrated on government and commercial Web sites in both countries.
  • South Korean officials are investigating whether the attacks originated in North Korea, and a senior U.S. official said the U.S. also is probing North Korea's possible role. U.S. officials noted that the attacks, which appear to have started primarily in South Korea on July 4, coincided with North Korea's latest missile launches and followed a United Nations decision to impose new sanctions.
  • The senior U.S. official said the attacks seemed to have come from South Korea, but it was possible Pyongyang was using sympathizers there. "We're trying to assess whether this is some random attack or the North Koreans might be working through a proxy," said the official.
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  • If a North Korea link is found, it would mark a new turn in Pyongyang's attempts to lash out at the U.S. North Korea has been building up its capability for cyberattacks in the past couple of years, computer security specialists said. North Korea recently increased the number of people in a cyber-warfare unit, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported last month.
  • U.S. government Web sites attacked included those of the Defense Department, National Security Agency, Treasury Department, Secret Service, State Department, Federal Trade Commission and Federal Aviation Administration, according to the cyber-security unit of VeriSign Inc., a computer-security company, and others familiar with the attacks. The attacks appear to have occurred roughly from Saturday to Tuesday.
  • Private sites attacked, according to a cyber-security specialist who has been tracking the incidents, included those run by the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, the Washington Post, Amazon.com and MarketWatch.
  • Most U.S. federal Web sites appeared to be running properly Wednesday. In South Korea, several government sites were down late Tuesday and early Wednesday but many were back to normal by Wednesday afternoon. "There is a connection between what is going on here in the states and what is going on in [South] Korea," said Richard Howard, director of intelligence at VeriSign's iDefense cyber-security unit.
  • Those responsible used a method similar to attacks in recent years on the governments of Estonia and Georgia, called a "distributed denial of service" attack. It is a maneuver in which many computers act in concert to overwhelm Web sites.
  • At the White House, spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said the attacks over the weekend "had absolutely no effect on the White House's day-to-day operations." The only effect, he said, was that some Internet users in Asia may not have been able to access the White House's Web site for a time.
  • President Barack Obama has made bolstering cyber-security a priority. He said in May he would create a new White House cyber-security post, though it hasn't yet been staffed. People familiar with the process say the White House has had difficulty finding someone to take the job.
  • Defense officials confirmed Pentagon networks were struck but said the intrusions were detected quickly and did no real damage. Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's top military officer, said Pentagon networks are under near-constant attack. "I grow increasingly concerned about the cyber-world and the attacks," he said.
  • James Lewis, a cyber-security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of the attack, "It's really a test of which U.S. agencies are ready and which aren't."
  • The New York Stock Exchange's parent company, NYSE Euronext, announced at 12:35 p.m. Wednesday that its Web site, but not its trading systems, had been targeted. Exchange officials weren't aware of the attack until notified by the government on Tuesday, said a person familiar with the events. An NYSE spokesman said the exchange's systems detected zero impact either on the Web site or on the separate trading operations. An official of Nasdaq said there wasn't any impact on its business.
  • North Korea turned more antagonistic after the illness of dictator Kim Jong Il last August and September. The country had done little to prepare for a successor, and Mr. Kim's illness triggered an internal shuffle that apparently raised the influence of hard-line military figures.
  • The cyberattacks came as Washington's point man on North Korea sanctions, Ambassador Philip Goldberg, concluded a weeklong trip to China and Malaysia aimed at tightening the financial screws on Pyongyang. Last week, the Obama administration announced sanctions on two North Korea-linked arms companies. The U.S. Treasury last month listed 17 North Korean banks and businesses that it is seeking to constrict financially.
Pedro Gonçalves

On Eve of Nuclear Security Summit, Faster, Broader Global Effort Needed to Secure All N... - 0 views

belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/...r_materials_in_four_years.html

US Nuclear Proliferation Nuclear Weapons Belfer Center

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 13 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Securing the Bomb 2010 highlights impressive progress: the United States has helped remove all highly enriched uranium (HEU) from nearly 50 facilities around the world; security and accounting upgrades have been completed at 210 of the weapons-usable nuclear material buildings in Russia and Eurasia of an estimated total in the range of 250; 19 countries have removed all weapons-usable nuclear material from their soil - with four countries having done so between President Obama's Prague speech and early 2010.
  • Still, the threat looms large. Terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons, and the materials needed to make them are still housed in hundreds of buildings and bunkers in dozens of countries -- many in urgent need of better security.&nbsp; There have already been 18 documented cases of theft or loss of plutonium or highly enriched uranium, along with incidents that provide striking evidence of security weaknesses -- including a 2010 break-in by unarmed peace activists at a Belgian base where U.S. nuclear weapons are reportedly stored and a 2007 armed attack on a South African site housing hundreds of kilograms of HEU.
  • According to the report, the greatest risks are in Pakistan, whose small and heavily guarded stockpile confronts immense threats from both insiders theft and outsider attack; Russia, which has the world's largest nuclear stockpiles in the world's largest number of buildings and bunkers, security has improved dramatically but still has important weaknesses, and which faces substantial threats, particularly from potential insider thieves; and HEU-fueled research reactors around the world, which often have limited stocks of nuclear material, but generally have the weakest security measures in place.
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  • As part of meeting the President's important four-year goal of securing nuclear weapons and materials globally, the report argues, it may be possible to cut in half the number of countries with weapons-usable nuclear material and all remaining countries could have clear and well-enforced rules requiring operators to protect nuclear stocks against a robust set of insider and outsider threats.
  • While these gains are possible, they can be accomplished only by expanding and accelerating current efforts. The report recommends several essential steps: Build a sense of urgency. Only if policymakers around the world become convinced that nuclear theft and terrorism are real and urgent threats to their countries' security, the report argues, will the four-year nuclear security effort succeed. To make that case, the report calls for joint threat briefings, outreach to intelligence agencies, nuclear terrorism exercises, and realistic tests of a country's ability to defeat insider and outsider threats. The nuclear security summit is an important step in building this sense of urgency.
  • Upgrade nuclear security to higher standards in more facilities in more countries. Achieving effective security for all nuclear material worldwide will require going well beyond the former Soviet Union and Pakistan, and ensuring security measures will be effective against a broad range of insider and outsider threats. The four-year deadline cannot be met with lengthy negotiations for U.S.-funded upgrades at every site - it will be essential to combine U.S.-funded upgrades with steps countries are convinced to take on their own. These efforts must include not just equipment but training, exchange of best practices, steps to strengthen security culture, and measures designed to ensure security will be maintained for the long haul.
  • Take a broader approach to reducing the number of sites where nuclear weapons, plutonium and HEU exists. Consolidating sites is essential; it can be cheaper, faster, and more effective to close down a nuclear site than to secure it. The four-year effort should seek to consolidate more types of nuclear material, using different incentives and a broader range of policy tools.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | UK | MI6 boss in Facebook entry row - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8134807.stm

MI6 John Sawers Facebook

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Personal details about the life of the next head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, have been removed from social networking site Facebook amid security concerns. The Mail on Sunday said his wife put details about their children and the location of their flat on the site. The details were removed after the paper contacted the Foreign Office.
  • Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme: "Are you leading the news with that? The fact that there's a picture that the head of the MI6 goes swimming - wow, that really is exciting. "It is not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks, for goodness sake let's grow up.
  • Sir John is due to replace Sir John Scarlett as head of the overseas Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He has been the UK's Permanent Representative to the UN since 2007. Before that he was political director at the Foreign Office, an envoy in Baghdad and a foreign affairs adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was in that post from 1999 to 2001 and was involved in the Kosovo conflict and Northern Ireland peace process. Elsewhere overseas he worked in the British embassy in Washington, as an ambassador in Cairo and to South Africa from 1988 and 1991 when apartheid was ending. Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable version Print Sponsor BBC.adverts.write("storyprintsponsorship"); BBC.adverts.show("storyprintsponsorship"); bbc_adsense_slot = "adsense_middle";"pt" == "us" ? bbc_adsense_country = "pt" : bbc_adsense_country = "rest"; google_protectAndRun("ads_core.google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);Ads by GoogleZON TVCABOAdira já ao 3Play ZON TVCABO e veja os seus canais preferidos!www.ZON.pt/Pacotes_ZON3Spanish Lessons For YouStep-By-Step Audio Lessons. Get Them Now! Learn Fast.www.How-To-Speak.com/SpanishUK Embassy Visa ServicesFast track your visa application. Appoint Migration Expert today.migrationexpert.com/UK BBC.adverts.show("adsense_middle"); BBC.adverts.write("mpu");Advertisementhttp://ad.doubleclick.net/adj/bbccom.live.site.news/news_uk_content;sectn=news;ctype=content;news=uk;adsense_middle=adsense_middle;adsense_mpu=adsense_mpu;rsi=J08781_10008;rsi=J08781_10
Pedro Gonçalves

China orders PC makers to install blocking software | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...web-blocking-software-china

China Great Firewall Green Dam Youth Escort Censorship

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 09 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Computer makers in China have been instructed to pre-install blocking software on every PC hard drive from next month, under a government push to control access to the internet.The new software, which has been developed by companies working with the Chinese military, is specifically aimed at restricting online pornography, but it could also be used to strengthen barriers to politically sensitive websites.
  • China's authorities currently block overseas-based sites they disapprove of, such as those relating to Tibetan independence, or the Falun Gong spiritual movement, with a mesh of filters and keyword restrictions, widely known as the Great Firewall.
  • The new software – called Green Dam Youth Escort – potentially adds a powerful new tool at the level of the individual computer. It updates a list of forbidden sites from an online database, much as network security programs automatically download the latest defences against new worms, trojans and viruses.The software, designed to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, also collects private user data.
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  • A separate instruction on the ministry's website obliged schools to install Green Dam on every computer in their institutions by the end of last month.
  • Optional programs that allow parents to restrict internet access by their children have existed for some time, but this is the first time the government has instructed that every computer be installed with a single centralised system.
  • China's ministry of industry and information technology issued a notice to personal computer-makers on 19 May that every machine sold from 1 July must be preloaded with the software. Last year 40m PCs were sold in China, the world's second biggest market after the US.
  • The software was developed by Jinhui Computer System Engineering in Henan under a 21m yuan (£2.2m) deal with the government.
  • Bryan Zhang, the founder of Jinhui, told reporters his company was compiling a database of forbidden sites, all related to pornography. He claimed users would have the option of uninstalling the software, or choosing to unblock sites, though they will not be permitted to see the list.
  • China periodically launches campaigns against online porn. In the latest drive more than 1,900 websites have been shut down and search engines, such as Google and Baidu, have been castigated for failing to self-regulate. Rights groups say the same techniques, along with cruder methods, are used to stifle websites that embarrass, irritate or threaten the government.Last week the authorities blocked Twitter and Hotmail in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Pedro Gonçalves

U.S. Steps Gingerly Into Tumult in Iran - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...17media.html

Iran Iran Elections 2009 US Twitter E-diplomacy Iraq

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 17 Jun 09 - Cached
  • on Monday afternoon, a 27-year-old State Department official, Jared Cohen, e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran.
  • “This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’&nbsp;” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.
  • Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.
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  • The episode demonstrates the extent to which the administration views social networking as a new arrow in its diplomatic quiver. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks regularly about the power of e-diplomacy, particularly in places where the mass media are repressed.
  • There were also suspicions that some pro-government forces might be using new-media outlets to send out misinformation. One popular opposition site, Persiankiwi, warned its followers on Tuesday to ignore instructions from people with no record of reliable posts.
  • Last month, he organized a visit to Baghdad by Mr. Dorsey and other executives from Silicon Valley and New York’s equivalent, Silicon Alley. They met with Iraq’s deputy prime minister to discuss how to rebuild the country’s information network and to sell the virtues of Twitter.
  • Tehran has been buzzing with tweets, the posts of Twitter subscribers, sharing news on rallies, police crackdowns on protesters, and analysis of how the White House is responding to the drama.With the authorities blocking text-messaging on cellphones, Twitter has become a handy alternative for information-hungry Iranians. While Iran has also tried to block Twitter posts, Iranians are skilled at using proxy sites or other methods to circumvent the official barriers.
  • Mr. Cohen, a Stanford University graduate who is the youngest member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, has been working with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other services to harness their reach for diplomatic initiatives in Iraq and elsewhere.
  • In addition to Twitter, YouTube has been a critical tool to spread videos from Iran when traditional media outlets have had difficulty filming the protests or the ensuing crackdown. One YouTube account, bearing the user name “wwwiranbefreecom,” showed disturbing images of police officers beating people in the streets. On Monday, Lara Setrakian, an ABC News journalist, put out a call for video on Twitter, writing, “Please send footage we can’t reach!”
  • Journalists were told on Tuesday that they could not cover protests without permission. The restrictions “effectively confine journalists to their offices,” a spokesman for the BBC said.
Pedro Gonçalves

Iran may be struggling with new nuclear machines | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...richment-idUKTRE81Q0WI20120228

Iran Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 28 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • contrary to some Western media reports in the run-up to Friday's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, Iran does not yet seem ready to deploy advanced enrichment equipment for large-scale production, despite years of development work, experts told Reuters.Instead, the IAEA document showed Iran was preparing to install thousands more centrifuges based on an erratic and outdated design, both in its main enrichment plant at Natanz and in a smaller facility at Fordow buried deep underground.
  • "It appears that they are still struggling with the advanced centrifuges," said Olli Heinonen, a former chief nuclear inspector for the Vienna-based U.N. agency."We do not know whether the reasons for delays are lack of raw materials or design problems."Nuclear expert Mark Fitzpatrick said Iran had been working on "second-generation models for over ten years now and still can't put them into large-scale operation."
  • In mid-February, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had a "fourth generation" centrifuge that could refine uranium three times faster than previously."Iran unveiled a third-generation model two years ago and then never said more about it," said Fitzpatrick, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank."Now it says it has a fourth-generation model, which is probably a variation of the problematic second-generation machines."
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  • The IAEA, which regularly inspects Iran's declared nuclear sites, has little access to facilities where centrifuges are assembled and the agency's knowledge of possible centrifuge progress is mainly limited to what it can observe at Natanz.Asked whether Iran may keep more modern centrifuges at a location which U.N. inspectors are not aware of, an official familiar with the issue said: "That is, of course, the million dollar question."
  • Iran has for years been trying to develop centrifuges with several times the capacity of the 1970s-vintage, IR-1 version it now uses for the most sensitive part of its atomic activities.Marking a potential step forward, Iran last year started installing larger numbers of more modern IR-4 and IR-2m models for testing at a research and development site at the enrichment facility near the central town of Natanz.But last week's IAEA report suggested Iran was encountering problems testing them in interlinked networks known as cascades, said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) think tank.
  • The IAEA said Iran had informed it in early February of plans to install three new types of centrifuge - IR-5, IR-6 and IR-6s - as single machines at the Natanz R&amp;D site.When so many models are tested simultaneously, "it indicates that Iran has not yet reached a point where it can decide which would be the next generation centrifuge to be deployed," Heinonen, now at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said.Fitzpatrick said: "Sooner or later Iran will probably crack the code on advanced centrifuges and introduce them in larger numbers, but so far that hasn't been possible."
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC News - Israel adds West Bank shrines to heritage list - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8527532.stm

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 22 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Israel's prime minister has announced a controversial plan to add two major religious sites in the West Bank to the country's national heritage list.
  • Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem would now be included in the $107m restoration plan. Israeli media said the two sites had been included on the list only after pressure from nationalist ministers. The Palestinian Authority warned the decision would "wreck" peace efforts.
  • Israel's West Bank barrier juts far into Bethlehem so that the tomb is located on the Israeli side, ostensibly for security reasons. However, Palestinians say it impedes their access and represents an illegal land grab.
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  • Jewish settlers and nationalists, who oppose giving up control of any of the West Bank, said they were pleased with Mr Netanyahu's announcement and that they would press for additional biblical sites to be added to the list.
Argos Media

Web News Guru Jeff Jarvis on Death of Papers: 'This Year Will Bring a True Sea Change' ... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,623013,00.html

Journalism Journalism 2.0 Newspapers Media Jeff Jarvis

shared by Argos Media on 06 May 09 - Cached
  • The online generation thinks: If the news is that important, it will find me. My son who has never subscribed to a print newspaper, gets his news from Facebook, Twitter or from friends. He no longer treats traditional media as a magnet. People now get their messages by relying on other people they trust.
  • SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what role, in your opinion, can newspapers still play?
  • arvis: They certainly no longer want to be in the paper business because that is dying out. The information business might be fine but there is no scarcity of information and news online. They could, however, be very effective in the collection business -- just find the best of the stuff that is out there online. They could also use their strong brands to compete in the business of elegant organization by creating information platforms or venturing into new markets. The New York Times has just started a new local program in New York enlisting my journalism students to collaborate online with them to report on their communities. That is the right approach. News outlets need to think distributed, they must collaborate with bloggers or social networking sites. On my blog, I have links to Google News or Google Maps. Innovative newspapers like the Guardian in Britain are equally open to cooperation. They make all their content available free online, they link to all sorts of sites, and in turn they receive more links in return.
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  • tremendous efficiencies can be found in the online revolution. Publishers no longer have to pay for expensive presses or trucks. They can operate with a much smaller staff. Start ups can create news and entertain communities at a much smaller cost by forming the kind of networks I described. There are many other new options: A hyperlocal journalism approach, for instance. Or platforms with a whole of networks consisting of bloggers, next to foundations, next to publicly supported reporting, next to volunteers. But we will also investigate whether a paid content model can still work in the digital age.
  • Jarvis: There is simply no scarcity of news online, so it is hard to return to old monopolies from the print era. In discussions, I often hear from media executives that readers should pay for content online. We need to get past such emotional debates. It is not about what should be done, it is about simple economics. When the New York Times stopped charging for content online, visits to its site increased by 40 percent. You will never get the ad rates you got in the past for print for those links. But media outlets can use them to generate other income. In Germany, Axel Springer is making a lot of money from merchandising online. BILD.de just sold 21,000 video cameras to readers who are then using them to take pictures that they send to the newsrooms. Also, news organizations could target smaller advertisers more aggressively for online ads.
  • SPIEGEL ONLINE: Some are calling for government subsidies for print outlets. Others suggest a fee for computer and mobile phone sales because without free media offerings, these devices would be a lot less attractive to consumers. Jarvis: To me, such proposals seem like waiting for the new knight to bail out the industry. Get over it. It won't happen. Media outlets need to face the new economic competition. The same is true for the possibility of government intervention. How should a government decide what outlet deserves support and what does not? The idea is absurd.
  • Jarvis: I like print, but the economics don't add up. I believe this year will bring a true sea change: The one size fits all approach is coming to an end. More and more papers will either close or go solely online. Legendary investor Warren Buffett just said: I would never invest in newspapers. That is coming from a man who sits on the board of the Washington Post. Why should anyone throw money after a dying business model?
Pedro Gonçalves

Report: Iran blocks Facebook ahead of presidential election - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

Iran Facebook Mir Hossein Mousavi

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 24 May 09 - Cached
  • The Iranian government has blocked access to the social networking site Facebook amid political jockeying for the June 12 presidential elections, according to the semi-official Iranian Labour News Agency.
  • Reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi -- a former prime minister considered a threat to current hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- created a Facebook page for his campaign that has more than 5,000 supporters on the site. Those attempting to visit Facebook received a message in Farsi saying, "Access to this site is not possible," according to CNN personnel in Tehran.
  • Iran's population -- estimated at more than 66 million by July 2009, according to the CIA World Factbook -- has a median age of 27. The Financial Times, which put the country's population at 70 million, said 47 million Iranians have cell phones and 21 million have Internet access.
Argos Media

Storm of Violence in Iraq Strains Its Security Forces - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...25iraq.html

Iraq Islamic State of Iraq Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia Abu Omar al-Baghdadi

shared by Argos Media on 25 Apr 09 - Cached
  • A deadly outburst of violence appears to be overwhelming Iraq’s police and military forces as American troops hand over greater control of cities across the country to them. On Friday, twin suicide bombings killed at least 60 people outside Baghdad’s most revered Shiite shrine, pushing the death toll in one 24-hour period to nearly 150.
  • The bombings on Friday ominously echoed attacks like the one at a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006 that unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed and pushed the country toward civil war.
  • The latest bombings — there have been at least 18 major attacks so far this month — so far have not prompted retaliatory attacks, but they have strained what remains a fragile society deeply divided between Sunnis and Shiites.
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  • Two suicide bombers struck within five minutes of each other on streets leading to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim and his grandson. One of the attacks, and perhaps both, were carried out by women, witnesses said.
  • Nearly half of those killed were Iranians making a pilgrimage to the shrine, a golden-domed landmark in the predominantly Shiite Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad that is devoted to 2 of the 12 imams of Shiite Islam. At least 125 people were wounded, many of them also Iranians.
  • A loose coalition of Sunni militant forces, the Islamic State of Iraq, has claimed responsibility for carrying out many of the recent attacks.
  • The deadliest of the three bombings on Thursday struck a restaurant filled with Iranian travelers in Muqdadiya, a town in Diyala not far from the border. The toll in that attack rose to 56, with Iranians making up the majority of the dead. Over all, at least 89 people were killed in the bombings on Thursday, and more than 100 were wounded.
  • After the attacks on Friday, angry Iraqis who gathered amid the bloody debris blamed lax security and corruption of the police and government officials for what had happened. Some of their anger had a strongly sectarian cast.“They have been ruling us for 1,400 years,” said a Shiite army soldier who identified himself only as Abu Haidar, referring to the Sunni domination of Shiites in Iraq. “We took it over for four years, and they are slaughtering us.”
  • The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgent group that includes Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, says the recent attacks as part of a campaign called Harvest of the Good, which it announced in March.
  • In a statement distributed on extremist Web sites at the time, the group’s leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, ridiculed President Obama as “Washington’s black man” and called his plan to withdraw American forces by 2011 an “implied avowal of defeat.”
  • On Thursday, Iraq’s military claimed to have arrested Mr. Baghdadi, but what was touted as a major success appeared to be in question. Extremist Web sites denied his arrest, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors claims and other statements by terrorist and extremist groups. The American military command also said in a statement that it could not confirm “the arrest or capture” of the leader, who the American military believes to be a fictitious Iraqi figurehead of a movement that includes many foreign fighters.
  • A senior national police official on Friday bluntly cited the limitations of Iraq’s security forces and their equipment for detecting explosives, typically hand-held wands used at checkpoints that the official described as fakes.
Jerry Chavez

Reliable Business Directory Site - 2 views

I have a small business that I have been trying to market online. I also tried posting my business profile for free at Business Directory Philippines. And you know what? Availing their free busines...

started by Jerry Chavez on 06 Dec 12 no follow-up yet
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China says Tibet video is 'a lie' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7962717.stm

China Tibet

shared by Argos Media on 25 Mar 09 - Cached
  • China says video footage that purportedly shows Chinese security personnel violently beating Tibetans last year is "a lie". The video apparently shows protesters being beaten with sticks, and kicked and choked by China's security forces. The Tibetan government-in-exile says the footage shows China's "brutality".
  • a Chinese government official said many of the images and voices in the video had been pieced together from different sources. The video-sharing site YouTube has recently been blocked in China, which could be because the site had been carrying the contentious video.
  • The Tibetan government-in-exile says that about 220 Tibetans were killed and nearly 1,300 seriously injured following the unrest last year. The Chinese government says at least 18 civilians and one policeman were killed, mostly in riots in Lhasa on 14 March.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | UK | Online networking 'harms health' - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...7898510.stm

Web 2.0 Health Social Web

shared by Argos Media on 11 Mar 09 - Cached
  • People's health could be harmed by social networking sites because they reduce levels of face-to-face contact, an expert claims.
  • A lack of "real" social networking, involving personal interaction, may have biological effects, he suggests. He also says that evidence suggests that a lack of face-to-face networking could alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance. This, he claims, could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia.
  • Dr Sigman maintains that social networking sites have played a significant role in making people become more isolated.
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  • And he claims that interacting "in person" has an effect on the body that is not seen when e-mails are written. "When we are 'really' with people different things happen," he said. "It's probably an evolutionary mechanism that recognises the benefits of us being together geographically.
  • Dr Sigman also argues using electronic media undermines people's social skills and their ability to read body language. "One of the most pronounced changes in the daily habits of British citizens is a reduction in the number of minutes per day that they interact with another human being," he said. "In less than two decades, the number of people saying there is no-one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled."
Pedro Gonçalves

2 Chinese Schools Said to Be Linked to Online Attacks - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...19china.html

China US Cyber Warfare

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 20 Feb 10 - Cached
  • A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
  • the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed.
  • Computer security experts, including investigators from the National Security Agency, have been working since then to pinpoint the source of the attacks. Until recently, the trail had led only to servers in Taiwan.
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  • The Chinese schools involved are Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School
  • Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.
  • Within the computer security industry and the Obama administration, analysts differ over how to interpret the finding that the intrusions appear to come from schools instead of Chinese military installations or government agencies. Some analysts have privately circulated a document asserting that the vocational school is being used as camouflage for government operations. But other computer industry executives and former government officials said it was possible that the schools were cover for a “false flag” intelligence operation being run by a third country. Some have also speculated that the hacking could be a giant example of criminal industrial espionage, aimed at stealing intellectual property from American technology firms.
  • Independent researchers who monitor Chinese information warfare caution that the Chinese have adopted a highly distributed approach to online espionage, making it almost impossible to prove where an attack originated. “We have to understand that they have a different model for computer network exploit operations,” said James C. Mulvenon, a Chinese military specialist and a director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis in Washington. Rather than tightly compartmentalizing online espionage within agencies as the United States does, he said, the Chinese government often involves volunteer “patriotic hackers” to support its policies.
  • Google’s decision to step forward and challenge China over the intrusions has created a highly sensitive issue for the United States government. Shortly after the company went public with its accusations, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton challenged the Chinese in a speech on Internet censors, suggesting that the country’s efforts to control open access to the Internet were in effect an information-age Berlin Wall.
  • A report on Chinese online warfare prepared for the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission in October 2009 by Northrop Grumman identified six regions in China with military efforts to engage in such attacks. Jinan, site of the vocational school, was one of the regions.
Alex Jhon

Web site Hosting - 0 views

www.netlawman.co.nz/...website-hosting-agreement.php

website hosting agreement web site form template

shared by Alex Jhon on 12 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Alex Jhon on 12 Sep 11
     
    Net Lawman provides best quality website hosting agreement form to use in New Zealand. DIY website hosting agreement written in plain English.
  • Alex Jhon on 10 Oct 11
     
    Net Lawman provides best quality website hosting agreement form to use in New Zealand. DIY website hosting agreement written in plain English.
Argos Media

BBC NEWS | Europe | Anti-government clash in Georgia - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8036942.stm

Georgia Nino Burjanadze Russia Tbilissi NATO Dmitry Medvedev

shared by Argos Media on 07 May 09 - Cached

  • Site Version
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    Page last updated at 00:22 GMT, Thursday, 7 May 2009 01:22 UK
    E-mail this to a friend Printable version

    Anti-government clash in Georgia

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    Tensions appear to be rising in Tbilisi

    Anti-government protesters and police have clashed in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, amid rising national tensions.

    Riot police used batons on protesters trying to enter a police compound where three people were being held over the alleged beating of a local journalist.

    The clashes were the first major unrest since anti-government demonstrations began in early April.

    They come a day after the authorities said they had thwarted an army mutiny at a base outside the capital.

  • Later in the evening, opposition leaders and supporters gathered outside parliament for a rally, as they have daily since 9 April.
  • On Tuesday, Mr Saakashvili claimed his government had put down a brief mutiny among a tank battalion. Tbilisi had said it was part of a Russian-linked coup attempt to kill Mr Saakashvili. But opposition parties said the alleged mutiny was a deliberate attempt by the government to distract attention from the new phase of anti-government protests.
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  • The latest unrest comes as Georgia hosts a series of Nato training exercises amid angry condemnation from Russia. They are taking place close to areas where Russian troops are stationed in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev said the drills, involving more than 1,000 soldiers from 18 countries, were "an overt provocation".
  • Anti-government protesters and police have clashed in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, amid rising national tensions. Riot police used batons on protesters trying to enter a police compound where three people were being held over the alleged beating of a local journalist. The clashes were the first major unrest since anti-government demonstrations began in early April. They come a day after the authorities said they had thwarted an army mutiny at a base outside the capital.
Argos Media

Pakistan Strife Raises U.S. Doubts on Nuclear Arms - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04nuke.html

Pakistan Nuclear Weapons US

shared by Argos Media on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.
  • The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.
  • Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said. Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites.
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  • The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security. But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.
  • Mr. Zardari heads the country’s National Command Authority, the mix of political, military and intelligence leaders responsible for its arsenal of 60 to 100 nuclear weapons. But in reality, his command and control over the weapons are considered tenuous at best; that power lies primarily in the hands of the army chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the former director of Inter-Services Intelligence, the country’s intelligence agency.
  • Several current officials said that they were worried that insurgents could try to provoke an incident that would prompt Pakistan to move the weapons, and perhaps use an insider with knowledge of the transportation schedule for weapons or materials to tip them off. That concern appeared to be what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was hinting at in testimony 10 days ago before the House Appropriations Committee. Pakistan’s weapons, she noted, “are widely dispersed in the country.”
  • “There’s not a central location, as you know,” she added. “They’ve adopted a policy of dispersing their nuclear weapons and facilities.” She went on to describe a potential situation in which a confrontation with India could prompt a Pakistani response, though she did not go as far as saying that such a response could include moving weapons toward India — which American officials believed happened in 2002. Other experts note that even as Pakistan faces instability, it is producing more plutonium for new weapons, and building more production reactors.
Pedro Gonçalves

Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran - Times Online - 0 views

www.timesonline.co.uk/...article6638568.ece

Saudi Arabia Israel Iran Nuclear Proliferation

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 05 Jul 09 - Cached
  • The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.
  • Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility.
  • “The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.
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  • John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace. Bolton, who has talked to several Arab leaders, added: “None of them would say anything about it publicly but they would certainly acquiesce in an overflight if the Israelis didn’t trumpet it as a big success.”
  • Referring to the Israeli attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Bolton added: “To this day, the Israelis haven’t admitted the specifics but there’s one less nuclear facility in Syria . . .”
  • The Israeli air force has been training for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear site at Natanz in the centre of the country and other locations for four years.
Pedro Gonçalves

Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...04confess.html

Iran Iran Elections 2009

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 04 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.
  • Reports on Iranian Web sites associated with prominent conservatives said that leading reformers have confessed to taking velvet revolution “training courses” outside the country. Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”
  • Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public.
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  • Fars, a semiofficial news agency, reported the confession of a Newsweek reporter, Mazaiar Bahari, that he had done the bidding of foreign governments, as well as a confession by the editor of a newspaper run by Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader. And at Friday Prayer, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the government planned to put on trial several Iranian employees of the British Embassy — after confessions were extracted.
  • In addition to Mr. Abtahi, other prominent reformers being held include Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, Mr. Khatami’s spokesman, and Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister.
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