Google, Trolltech and Globalisation

Eirik Chambe-Eng of Trolltech on China:

"At first we started out in Oslo with one other small office in Palo Alto, but our business is increasingly moving towards Beijing today. One of our biggest clients, Motorola, now tests its products out in China before anywhere else in the world - a massive strategic change from only a few years ago."

The quote from this presentation, which is taking place today at the Norwegian School of Management, illustrates perfectly how markets shift with incredible alacrity. Once large organisations move the key operations of their businesses in different directions, the small ones whose revenues are more sensitive shift their locations of operations too.

Think about that from an economic perspective and it's difficult not to defend globalisation as a means to greater global economic prosperity. The recent move by Google may well be their greatest - albeit inadvertent - philanthropic move yet: by entering China, they have encouraged a whole series of businesses whose revenues depend crucially on their own to inject a range of new jobs into this developing economy who would have otherwise kept operations warpped up in highly developed and saturating markets.

More From Iraq

Turmoil seems to be subsiding in Iraq:

"Life is coming back to normal in Baghdad and marketplaces and offices are open again after being shut for 4 days. Although there were a few security incidents today people are mostly looking at these as part of the usual daily situation and not related to the latest shrine crisis.

"But, what can we learn from this lesson and how can we make benefit from it in avoiding similar problems in the future."

The blog where this is from, called Iraq The Model, is written by a resident citizen inside Baghdad. In almost every way, it is more concise, informative and dramatic than anything any national journalist has so far written home about. Newspeople should think hard about their industry when they see new media journalism like this.

A Republican Apology For Iraq

RJ Elliot from Blog Critics offers an apology over Iraq:

"Bush, and his supporters (myself included), had the best of intentions. We were going to topple a cruel dictator and bring democracy and freedom to a land and a people that had been brutalized and oppressed for decades. We were going to help the Iraqi people, by golly, and all we asked for in terms of repayment was their gratitude.

"What to do from here? I don't know. All I know is this: It Didn't Work.

"Sorry..."

I sympathise. If only more people in politics were demonstrating such humility right now, some credibility might be restored back at the White House. You don't have to go as far as saying you're wrong, but saying sorry never hurts: something the political PR have still to learn.

At Last Some Smart Thinking On Google In China

Bill Thompson from the BBC on Google in China:

"Forgive me if I refuse to go along with the knee-jerk consensus on this one.

"Millions of people may now be turning away from Google in disgust, but I've just reinstated them as the default search for my Firefox toolbar, because I think it should be supported for its brave decision.

"Even if the primary motivation for going into China is that it makes commercial sense for the company - as indeed it must do, since US law is quite harsh on boards that take actions which could damage shareholder value - it also makes political sense.

"Supporters of free speech and open societies should be supporting Google rather than lambasting it.

"But if we in the West, with our liberal political culture and our attempts to build open societies, do not engage with China then we lose the opportunity to influence them and convince them of the benefits that this brings. If the Chinese government fears instability then we should offer help and advice and support, not closed borders and locked doors."

Finally, someone who is using their head on this one. This is precisely what I've been saying all along.

Blogging From The Top

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of the Instituto De Empresa on blogging:

"Blogging has saved me time, made me more efficient and opened my eyes to a changing media, communication and management education landscape. It has been said that a complaint is worth its weight in gold and I could not afford to let this opportunity of having an open channel to customer feedback go past- you could say it is free CRM

"...  I jot down potential ideas for posts, or sources of information, which helps me better shape and clarify my own ideas and hence makes them easier to communicate. In fact, I use many of the posts and comments published in the blog -and their background research- later in meetings, speeches or presentations.

"Furthermore the discipline of finding newsworthy management education articles each morning means that I am more up-to-date with the sector and better able to react ... Blogging has also been an immense opportunity for networking. Interestingly, my experience is that most of the networking does not happen openly through participation in the blog but many of the readers contact me via email to address the discussed issues or to deal with other particular concerns."

I have personally had the priviledge of some personal exchanges with Professor Iñiguez, and I have always found him extremely couteous and generous with his time.

The potential for weblogs is far greater than just gratuitous self-promotion, which many still think to be the case with this medium of communication: blogs are fantastic marketing tools and can help readers delve into areas of life (such as Iraq) that otherwise are personally inaccessible, even for the most hardened journalist. Like the Dean, I too find the process of gathering and generating thoughts and ideas very helpful - certainly, as a naturally disorganised person it helps me to keep my thinking more efficient.

The overall benefits of weblogs are so tremendous, I wouldn't be surprised if this was standard practice in higher education pretty soon.

Is Technology Working In Today's World?

Wired Magazine on technology in the workplace:

""Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly released research.

"Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers, an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.

"The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.

""Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

""We never concentrate on one task anymore," Challenger said. "You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing. It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something.""

This sounds more like a call for different working skills than it does for less technology. Whining about how technology provides disractions and blaming it for poor performance is just ridiculous: for decades, there have been numerous distractions, most notably the drinking lunch. I have yet to meet anyone who still regularly drinks alcohol at lunch on a working day these days, and yet twenty years ago it was the norm.

Trends and social habits change: the pace or momentum of change, however, has little to do with whether one can aptly focus or not. That's down to education, and this is where the problem lies: most of Generation X and before were educated without technology and have had to adapt it into their working habits - for tomorrow's executives, however, combining the two with maximum effectiveness won't be an issue at all.

Jersulam's Verdict On Foreign Affairs

The Jerusalem Post on modern International Relations:

"If the US wants to deal effectively with anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world, for instance, the question of political boundaries is less significant than that of regional and cultural ones. More important, placing the dialogue between America and the world in the hands of the leaders now seems to be an archaic practice that lacks effectiveness. In dealing with the Arab world, it makes much more sense for American diplomats - whether in Riyadh, Cairo or Baghdad - to talk directly to the people, not to their leaders or politicians."

For the strength of relationship that the United States and the U.K. have with Israel, she is not called upon nearly enough for council when it comes to solving the problems of the Middle East. Israel is perfectly placed - geographically, culturally, and politically - perhaps not to communicate the message of the west to the Arab world, but at least to understand the region's potential reaction to it and advise accordingly out of that.

The Admirable Stance of Los Angeles

The L.A. Times today on the ownership of American ports by Dubai Ports World, a U.A.E.-based company:

"WHEN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TAKE homeland security seriously, it's a welcome development. Unfortunately, Tuesday's bipartisan hissy fit over the Bush administration's approval of a Dubai company's $6.8-billion deal to manage six important U.S. ports is neither serious nor welcome.

"... The problem is that blocking the Dubai deal wouldn't do a thing to change any of that. It only provides members of Congress an opportunity to talk tough and pander to the terrorism-rattled xenophobe in us all."

This is the first and only really sensible, imformed opinion piece I have yet read coming out of the United States on the Dubai Ports issue. Most of them, typically enough, show little understanding of the region and the economies of the U.A.E. like this one.

Leaders of The Future

One of the interesting things about having your own website is seeing all the different search terms that lead people your way, and in some cases, noticing patterns and trends amongst them.

As I am studying for my MBA at BI in Oslo, and as such tend to write about the experiences here on 'The Global Perspective', if you type in anything to do with MBA's into a search engine, chances are this weblog will be pretty high on the list.

The following are some real examples of MBA and organisation-related searches that have led users here:

• how does an MBA degree help in personality
• about organizational behaviour of any organization
• does mba make a good manager
• current affairs for m.b.a.
• google, mba hungry
• organizational behaviour
• humbler, kinder people are going to be the future business leader
• humbler and kinder managers should be mbas

What is curious about all of the above searches - and they represent only a scattering of many - is that they all originated from Google India. What this seems to imply is very revealing - a deep interest in personal development to become leaders of the future.

Compare this with the following MBA and organisation-related searches returned from Google's webpages in the U.S.A., U.K. and Europe that again, led to this weblog:

• Does MBA make higher income
• MBA millionaire??
• how can i make millions with MBA
• MBA's and income

Not one of the 'Western' searches related to the above contained any terms about bettering leadership or managerial ability - equally, none of the Indian searches have so far mentioned money, salaries, or income.

The comparison is startling: while the Indians seem to be focusing on education as a form of leadership training and bettering the organisation per se, Western countries appear to be focusing on the bottom line. Without reading too much into such limited data, it's hardly surprising so much business is being outsourced.

The trends should be at least wake-up-call as to where business is to continue to be headed over the next few decades unless Western business education and practice can adopt a less selfish form of thinking - after all, such immediate focus on profit maximisation has led to the ruination of many a once-great organisation.

The Online Tabloid Effect

More insightful news from Editor's Weblog:

The famous financial daily, The Wall Street Journal, may be thining itself from a width of 15 to 12 inches and the globetrotting newspaper designer Mario Garcia may be pushing for a compact, but it doesn't appear that the Dow Jones' flagship will be cut down to tabloid size.

Garcia is currently working on a redesign after having helped the Journal add color to its front page in 2002.

But despite having switched its European and Asian editions to a compact format, it is doubtful the Journal itself will adopt the design that Garcia predicts will soon be standard.

"In five years, you will hit a generation of readers who don't remember life without the Internet," said Garcia. "People who are coming from . . . the screen of the Internet are used to reading within the confines of a smaller place and transfer more quickly to the tabloid.""

This should be required reading for anyone who still claims that newspapers are going to be the dominant medium for news distribution in twenty years time. Once printer developments catch up with the pace of online and software developments too, it is difficult to believe that anyone will make the trip out to purchase a newspaper or magazine when they can stay in and print their own at home.

Garcia's observation that the next generation will think differently is prescient: far too often, businesses tend to think in terms of the habits of today's customer base, and when they do talk about tomorrow's, they do so without thinking of the habits and practices of those customers now.

Long-term business effectiveness depends upon thinking about what everyone who is not your customer is doing instead.

The famous financial daily, The Wall Street Journal, may be thining itself from a width of 15 to 12 inches and the globetrotting newspaper designer Mario Garcia may be pushing for a compact, but it doesn't appear that the Dow Jones' flagship will be cut down to tabloid size.

Garcia is currently working on a redesign after having helped the Journal add color to its front page in 2002.

But despite having switched its European and Asian editions to a compact format, it is doubtful the Journal itself will adopt the design that Garcia predicts will soon be standard.

"In five years, you will hit a generation of readers who don't remember life without the Internet," said Garcia. "People who are coming from . . . the screen of the Internet are used to reading within the confines of a smaller place and transfer more quickly to the tabloid.""

The 'Intelligent' Press

An interesting perspective on the success of The Economist on Editor's Weblog:

""I think we have been left a bit of space," said Emmott (former Chief of the paper for thirteen years). "(Dailies) have had a hard task of how to deal with and preserve a mass market in an age when their market has been eroded by television on the one hand and the internet on the other.

""But I think they have left us some space by continuing to play in the mass, almost entertainment market. Very few have come in our direction of analysis. There's a choice - more entertainment or more information, and the numbers that have taken the more information route are very few.""

I expect the same thing will happen online next, particularly when it comes to weblogs.

In Defense of Newspapers

Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff offers an interesting defense of newspapers today on his weblog Loose Wire, written from Jakarta:

"People love great writing, and it’s rare to find it on blogs, where by definition writing is fast and, usually and unlike this post, brief ... people love great reading — as in, laying back with a coffee, sitting on a train, by the pool/sea/prison wall, reading something they enjoy. No technology has replaced paper for this, nor is it likely to ... people love good editors. Editors are not there just to put all the stories together. They’re there to decide what may make interesting reading, from commissioning articles to laying them out on the page and deciding a headline ... people love to get their newspaper wet/dirty/crumpled/folded/annotated/left behind/eaten by the dog. A newspaper is a very flexible device, and it’s cheap enough so I don’t mind that I drop it in the bath."

Whilest there is a lot of truth to these arguments, it does not take into account the fact that laptop computers will over time undoubtedly become less delicate, cheaper and more versatile mediums for the type of regular use described above.

Where the argument does hold up is in Wagstaff's claim that news will not just be distributed by being delivered straight to a reader's e-mail inbox:

"When we buy a newspaper we’re paying in part for the editor’s choice of stories on the page. We’re effectively saying to the editor: You have a better idea of what is out there, and I trust you. Tell me. Inform me. Entertain me. (Today’s front page of one of my regular newspapers today had three great stories I would never have found had I just confined myself to my regular newsfeed: on reclassification of U.S. documents, on a failing Hong Kong plan for a cultural centre; on East Timor trying to avoid the pitfalls of an oil bonanza.)"

I have argued here before the importance of the role of editors in the entertainment medium. Quite simply, editors are a different breed to most other professional people in that they are pathological content junkies - as such, their endless lust for the latest news, song, or book results in a recycling of material that most of us would simply find too exhausting to perform ourselves.

Whilest the essential medium will be replaced, the process will not.

Bureaucratic Demands

Google's response to the U. S. Department of Justice demanding disclosure of two full months’ worth of search queries that the company received from its users, as well as all the URLs in Google’s index:

"Google is, of course, concerned about the availability of materials harmful to minors on the Internet, but that shared concern does not render the Government's request acceptable or relevant. In truth, the data demanded tells the Government absolutely nothing about either filters or the effectiveness of laws. Nor will the data tell the Government whether a given search would return any particular URL. Nor will the URL returned, by its name alone, tell the Government whether that URL was a site that contained material harmful to minors.

"But, the Government's request would tell the world much about Google's trade secrets and proprietary systems."

This response exemlifies all the types of things government departments get wrong when they issue subpoenas towards institutions that operate in technical niche industries. By being so general in stating the reasons why they need the subpoena, government ministers play into the hands of the employees who spend twenty hour days and six day weeks operating the intricacies of the industry.

The same thing has happened a number of time in obscure areas of the financial markets: bureaucratic departments bark out demands which highly-paid quantitive employees of the banks cooly refute, phrase by phrase, until it is legally irrefutable that any of those demands be met.

Asia Analysis

Leo Lewis of The Times today on Japanese media deregulation:

""84% support standard prices for newspapers" bellowed the front page of a major Japanese newspaper yesterday, before plunging triumphantly into a drawn-out explanation of why monopolies are so important.

"You see, there are some who might think that Japanese newspapers should take their fourth estatey duties seriously.This is, after all, a country where special interest groups, crime syndicates, poorly regulated businesses and authority-ravenous bureacrats have a somewhat chequered relationship with unchecked power and could often do with the odd word of criticism from the ladies and gentlemen of the press."

Such observations could hardly have come at a more prescient time. Had the media in Japan been a little more scrupulous about the hard facts in the 1990's, instead of towing the national line and pandering to the egos of Chief Executives, perhaps it might have unearthed some of the dubious accounting methods their organisations were employing rather earlier on and prevented the economic debacle from which the country is only just beginning to recover.

One of the central issues with development of the Asian economies is that the culture - unlike the United States or Europe - does not encourage criticism of its superiors, which tends to lead to an inefficient regulatory and auditing process: even when such measures are required by law, in practice they are often half-hearted. This is one argument for the centralisation of Beijing's power that few in the western world fully understand: when officials are sent from the highest possible post to regulate ethical practice, the extent of the government's authority often gives such officials the incentive to dig properly into the areas where they would never do so otherwise. Take away the centralisation of power, and corporate CEO's tend to get pretty much what they want, how they want it. This is exactly what happened to Japan in the last decade after she embraced American culture so whole-heartedly in the 1980's.

The challenge now the Far Eastern economy is booming again is to keep this essential centralisation of power in tact whilest supporting competitive anti-trust practices. To do that, governments need to start thinking like economists, and not just as politicians.

What Happened To American Optimism?

An erudite but ultimately exhasperating piece on Google in China yesterday appeared on the Becker-Posner blog:

"Last week a congressional committee questioned representatives of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco concerning Chinese censorship and surveillance of Internet services (and in the case of Cisco, equipment) provided by these companies.

"... In general, U.S. companies, including Internet companies, are required to comply with the laws of every country in which they operate. Thus, for example, they have agreed to block access, in France and Germany, to Nazi Web sites, pursuant to those countries' laws against Nazi advocacy ... Of course there is a difference between foreign laws that we regard as defensible, including some laws, such as those forbidding Nazi advocacy, that would be unconstitutional in the United States (which has by international standards an extravagant conception of freedom of speech), and laws that we regard as contrary to fundamental human rights, which is an accurate description of Chinese laws designed to suppress political freedom and, in the case of persecution of the Falun Gong and of some Christian sects, of religion as well.

"If China were a small, poor country, its violations of human rights might induce international sanctions, such as were imposed on Rhodesia and South Africa before the fall of their racist regimes. But because China is an enormous country, rapidly developing, soon to be--perhaps already--the second largest economy in the world, and very much open to investment by foreign, including U.S., companies, sanctions are out of the question as a practical matter.

"... The deeper question is whether it is in the U.S. national interest either to promote Chinese democracy, religious freedom, etc. or to impede Chinese economic growth by inducing it to curtail its people's access to the Internet beyond the current censorship. The answer probably is "no" ... A possible intermediate solution, however, would be to forbid U.S. economies (or for them to agree under pressure of American public opinion) to assist the Chinese government in surveillance of their customers."

Let me try and put some of this beligerant - ableit intelligently written - rhetoric into perspective for Judge Posner. I have argued here before that Google's entrance into China is a positive step in the right direction as far as implicating the spread of democracy by western standards is concerned, and for a very good reason. If His Honour cared to take a quick glance at Chinese history, he might begin to notice a pattern that has been emerging over the last three decades: that namely, the political structure of China has become increasingly capitalist in its modus operandi.

This is not down to any coincidence - one of the central reasons Deng Xioaping was able to begin the process of opening specialised regions of China (Special Economic Zones) to foreign investment in the early 1990's was precisely because the environment had been created by the gradual infiltration of capital that had already been coming from outskirting territories such as Hong Kong and Malaysia for years before. Those investors who initially placed capital in the hands of former Mao-Xedong's China most certainly had to accede some personal ethical issues, but the point is, the accession has proved worth it in the long run: over a very short space of time, China has become a more liberal, more democratic environment than any pundit could have ever reasonably speculated twenty years ago.

Posner misses the point supremely in even contemplating the idea of sanctions: it is precisely the opposite effect of having not talked of sanctions whatsoever, but constinually excercising patience with regard to China's liberalisation of Communism which has brought about the phenomenal changes that can be witnessed today.

The simple, undeniable truth is that the more Western companies that enter China, the more China accepts by default a western political modus operandi. This is the most basic-level sociology: organisations the size of Google have two critical components of influence - a culture, and lots of capital. What has been so disheartening in all the recent fuss the United States has been making over the entrance of its national institutions into China is that the constitution was founded on principles by Adam Smith, the father of the ideology around this governing capitalist principle.

If Posner and Congress are still unconvinced, they should take a trip to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not the great capitalist power-house and pearl of democracy in the Far East it is because of the hesitance of Western corporations in the twentieth century to enter it: it is precisely the way it is because these organisations embraced concessions and in doing so were able to make progress in changing cultural trends. Sure, Hong Kong is a former colony of Great Britain, but in an actual sense, this didn't translate into much of a competitive advantage - western organisations had to persuade their Chinese consumers - who came from a completely alien culture - that what they were selling was worth the price they were asking.

If, after all of the above, Congress is still so concerned with the entrance of its national institutions into China then maybe it should ask itself why it has allowed Beijing to store all her national capital reserves in U.S. government bonds. Posners suggestion is just untenable: the U.S. can hardly forbid her economies to assist the Chinese government in surveillance of their customers whilest using all her excess capital to prop up its own growing national deficit.

The irony is that it is the same right-wing religious contingency that allowed this capital surplus to develop in its coffers in the first place that now wants to stem the tide - unfortunately for them, as the old Wall Street addage goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

High On Punditry, Low On Accuracy

The Daily Pundit on David Irving in Austria:

"... the fact that one can be jailed in Europe for speaking or writing unpopular or even incorrect information only goes to demonstrate how far Europe has fallen from once-lofty ideals of liberty, and what a sinkhole of politically correct depravity it has become today.

"It's a truism because it is true: if unpopular views enjoy no rights to free expression, no views do. The right does not exist, or, rather, it exists, but is ignored."

This shows such enormous cultural, political and historical naivty it is amazing to think it was written by Bill T. Quick, the Publisher and Editor of one of the America's most popular weblogs.

Europe has never claimed to have posessed "lofty ideals of liberty": she has a predominantly social democratic ideology but this is something quite separate. Ideals of liberty are on the other hand very American obsessions, primarily due to the fact that they are imperative in a nation that is so racially diverse - and thus implicitly politically divided - and which posesses a written constitution.

Political correctness has come to Europe, and continues to do so, via the United States, and is  distinctly un-European. The reason Austria has a law forbidding holocaust denail is not because of any kind of potential political impropriety - it is because the country has suffered from repeated denials of this very kind since 1945 by a not inconsiderable contingency of neo-Nazis: the law is in place to stop a repetition of the dreadful events that led to the Auschwitz and mass-persecution of its people and the Jews. In addition to this, only eight of the twenty-five EU member states have a law in place pertaining to holocaust denial. One is by all means welcome to speculate on the severity of Irving's punishment, but all this hardly makes Europe a "sinkhole of politically correct depravity" given the context.

Talking of rights is all very well too, but it wasn't as if Irving was'nt aware of his rights when he gave the talk in Austria in 1989. Analysis like Quick's is just plain misleading and misinformative.

The New "Idols"

From TheStreet.Com:

Published reports indicate that Amazon is close to launching its own digital music service that would compete with Apple's industry-leading iTunes store. In conjunction with the move, Amazon also will apparently offer its own line of Amazon-branded digital music players that would work hand-in-hand with the service, according to the reports.

As the leading e-tailer with lots of experience in selling music online, Amazon has significant advantages that could help lift its service above other digital music also-rans such as RealNetworks' Rhapsody service.

Include Myspace, and it is clear that traditional record companies are conspicuously absent from all the talk about developments in the digital music market. What has happened, of course, is that record labels have found that, since they make the bulk of their cash on in-store retailing, they would be leaving too much money on the table by abandoning that business model in favour of an online strategy. In the meantime, technology companies and web sites have found that they are perfectly positioned and have nothing to lose by trying to start out the first kind of real online record company, and it's starting to pay dividends.

In 20 years time, EMI, Sony Music and the rest of the traditional record company camaraderie may well be a thing of the past. The hardest loser so far, however, has been Time Warner, which with subsidiary AOL, should have taken much better advantage of its market positioning in rolling at least a Beta module out.   

Environmental Data

Ordinary Gweilo, another excellent Hong Kong-produced blog, highlights something many readers will be familiar with: the curious behaviour of Lotus in its almost anti-user design of Lotus Notes.

“I remember that when Lotus Notes was released, it seemed that no-one knew quite what to do with it.  Everyone agreed that it was clever stuff, but maybe too clever for its own good, and what is was actually for, anyway?” the piece, titled “Lotus Notes – what is it good for?” starts. After some deliberation, and an atribution to website Lotus Notes Sucks, he concludes:

“I know that everyone hates Microsoft, but you have to give them credit for making most of their software reasonably intuitive to use.  I appreciate that it's not really an option for other vendors to slavishly copy Microsoft's standards, but designing a willfully eccentric user interface is equally daft.  The really amazing thing is that Notes is still around and hasn't gone the way of Word Perfect, Lotus Smartsuite, etc. etc.  Maybe soon...”

The irony is that the whole reason Lotus was incorporated in the first place was because the initial built-at-home data-management applications were the only highly sophisticated, easy-to-use packages available to corporations and the demand was eventually too strong to support the previous mail-order business model. This is often the case with a market entrant: it doesn't seek to make its architecture any more user-friendly, even as competitors are making it a "do or die" policy to do so. Just as for some entrepreneurs, some companies are better at getting a movement off the ground than sustaining its market share.

When is a company like Lotus going to roll the dice and focus its technically excellent resources on designing solutions for markets where there is no competition and massive need, as it did in the early days? Environmental and energy management, for instance, will pay huge dividends for the dominant entrant, and the logic behind it is not that far away from the logic of any data organiser – the commodity is just physical rather than virtual.

Old Media On New Media

The FT this weekend published an interesting oppinion piece denouncing blogging as being a potential "crock of virtual gold - a meretricious equivalent of all those noisy internet start-ups that were going to build a brave “new economy” a few years ago."

The article, written by Geoge Butterworth and entitled "Time For The Last Post", posed the question "Would George Orwell have made a good blogger? Maybe. But it still would have been a waste of his time, as it is for a lot of others..." and suggested that we should "just be a tiny bit sceptical of another information revolution following on so fast from the last one - especially as this time round no one is even pretending to be getting rich ... the problem of the media right now (is) that we barely have time to read a newspaper, let alone traverse the thoughts of a million bloggers?"

The postulation carries an element of truth, but ignores some key considerations. For one, the reason newspaper ciculation is going down is not, as Butterworth suggests, because "we barely have time" to read one, but because most former print newspaper readers are going online to read the news: the former suggestion is classic old-Fleet Street ignorance. Secondly, for sure, there is much out there that is not of a particularly high quality, but there is also a lot out there in the traditional print media that is of low quality (think the "free" advertising-choked local tabloids). In every trend there are inevitably going to be high-profile and low-profile providors: to suggest that there are the latter does not exonerate the possibility that there is not a substantial place for the best in society.

Lastly, Butterworth ignores the trends of "disruptive technologies" - but he can always find a reasonable summary here on yesterday's post. 

Going Green?

An interesting piece appeared in last week's Reason Online about corporate environmentalism. Poignantly, it pointed to how companies are using environmental regulations to establish a new form of competitive advantage:

"By exceeding expectations a little—and then making a big deal out of it—BP avoids getting singled out as a bogeyman. If environmental groups are going to choose someone to target, why not encourage them to choose your competitor? And if shareholders question the money spent “mobilizing Malaysians,” they’ll be glad enough when the next protest against the oil industry is held outside Exxon’s headquarters instead of BP’s."

Enironmental standards for corporations are all very well and undoubtedly beneficial, but as with every industry cycle, for real effect changes have to come from consumer behaviour patterns. Corporations are only the supply side of the traditional supply-demand equation.

"Deconstructing" The Holocaust

British historian David Irving's denial of the holocaust in Austria in 1989 bears all the hallmarks of the intellectual genre "deconstructionism".

Deconstructionism is the discipline coined by Jacques Derrida and most widely attributed to Milton scholar Professor Stanley Fish, which taken to its most controversial application claims the actual reality of an event is less important than the social consequences which arise out of its interpretation. Initially applied as a form of literary and legal criticism, the genre has led to some controversial debates in wider academia, particularly in the field of the sciences and history, where absolute truth is imperative to the subsistance of the the disciplines.

Whatever one's take on the trial of Irving, who is being tried in Austria at the moment where holocaust denial is illegal, it is an interesting comment on the social power that academic institutions and obscure intellectual trends still hold over society that the claims are being taken so seriously.

Disruptions In The Fourth Estate

When new, low-cost, highly-convenient subversive architectures reach out to encompass the practices of dominant ones and start feeding consumer demand in the same place, it’s usually a clear sign that an industry is being disrupted. Such has been the purpose that technology has served over recent decades – a phenomenal amount of usurping has taken place across vast genres, everywhere from international steel manufacturing to Microsoft’s once ambitious dream to link the world with one standardized multi-purpose lifestyle package. The features all these subversive architectures have in common are resolutely the same: they’re cheaper, they’re more convenient, and they are market-share carnivores on two types of consumer: those who are ambivalent and those who are ignorant.

This is jist of the hypothesis of “disruptive technologies” coined by Dean of Harvard Business school and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen, who I was fortunate enough to see speak at the Oslo Business Summit last month. To witness live examples of these types disruptions in a market-place is both an exciting and terrifying experience – exciting in that the future suddenly looks so different, and terrifying for the same reason.

Nowhere have such examples been more prescient recently than this week in the field of journalism, when two high-quality, equally highly acclaimed weblogs published well-written, erudite and startlingly professional pieces of investigative journalism.

 

The first piece to break waves this week was a thorough report on a terrorist training camp inside New York State founded by Sheik Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, the Islamic cleric Daniel Pearl was attempting to interview when he was kidnapped. Daring, provocative, and written with the type of considerable elegance New York Times staffers would be envious of, The Politics of CP’s “Jamaat ul-Fuqra Training Compound Inside the United States” was an admirable feat of journalism by the highest standards and even brought local insights and testimonies into the investigation, quoting one anonymous witness with catchy, breathtaking prose:

“We see children – small children run around over there when they should be in school. We hear bursts of gunfire all of the time, and we know that there is military like training going on there. Those people are armed and dangerous. We get nothing but menacing looks from the people who go in and out of the camp, and sometime they yell at us to mind our own business when we are just driving by. We don’t even dare to slow down when we drive by. They own this mountain and they know it, and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can’t even do that. Who wants to buy property next to that?”

The result was that the exclusive report was ultimately picked up by “World Net Daily”, one of the largest internet news sites around and the findings are being followed up by official investigators.

Flagrant Harbour, a stylishly written, on-the-pulse weblog written from the exotic sub-equatorial mania of Hong Kong this week followed up some excellent research into a local businessman by the name of Jonathan Hakim. Late last year, the author of Fragrant Harbour spotted that Hakim, former scion of the Hong Kong internet industry and founder of Boom.com, was involved with a company offering cheap and quick transplants from a military base in China. Hakim this week contacted the author and had an in depth conversation with him about the nature of his naivety of the dubious ethical dimensions to the enterprise, all of which was well reported with gripping linguistic alacrity in this week’s edition of the weblog.

Disruption

The reaction from The Fourth Estate to this new form of media has been nothing short of hysterical: the responses of professional media pundits have been everywhere from embracing to abusive.

Professor Glen Reynolds however, founder of Instapundit, sees weblogs potentially changing the landscape of journalism; “I think that blogging is the wave of the future, and consequently, I think we’re going to see journalism moving from a profession, back to being an activity,” he writes on his newly formed weblogging organisation, Pajamas Media. “We used to say that a journalist was somebody who wrote a journal, and a correspondent was somebody in a distant city who wrote you letters, and corresponded. Now it means somebody with good hair and a microphone. But I think that the traditional meaning of journalism is what it’s going to be like again … It’s more a case of who’s on the scene and who can report — or journal — what happened, as opposed to somebody who makes a profession out of reporting and opining. So it’s driven by the activity; it’s driven by the nature of events, rather than by your paycheck, if that makes sense.”

The answer is, it’s increasingly starting to make sense to a of people, and it especially makes sense given Professor Christiansen’s model of technological disruption in industries.

 

In the illustration (click to enlarge), extracted from a seminar given by the professor at the Oslo Business Summit, low-end technological disruption feeds on both markets where there is no current demand and markets where customers are already over-served by too much supply. What is most disturbing for industry professionals about the above model is that ‘sophistication’ has little to do with it once more convenient architectures enter the game.

Now in that light consider the above pieces of journalism: passable for material which might be featured in any national broadsheet, it’s free, and it is more accessible than any of the traditional newspapers, meaning that people who don’t currently read investigative reports in high-end print or online subscription journals are perfectly happy to assume the habit. In other words, the whole package above is just more convenient for readers who are trying to get a sense of what is going on in the world.

So what will news services of the future look like? Perhaps the Korean phenomenon “Oh My News” has the answer. Part news site, part blog, it is the quintessential epitome of hybridised new media: written by citizen journalists, most of whom are college students but a good number of whom are professionals, Oh My News has been the first to break a flurry of major international stories, most recently the Paris riots. The site is manned by a small team of editors, but otherwise costs are kept to an absolute minimum: no expensive deployment of editors, no turnover and hiring costs – and faster transmission of news. Reynolds hopes one day that his pioneering activities will one day translate into hard cash, and by all accounts, this is not too far off. The news industry is changing as fast as it can be reported, and those who are at the forefront of it now stand to make a fortune.

When new, low-cost, highly-convenient subversive architectures reach out to encompass the practices of dominant ones and start feeding consumer demand in the same place, it’s usually a clear sign that an industry is being disrupted. Such has been the purpose that technology has served over recent decades – a phenomenal amount of usurping has taken place across vast genres, everywhere from international steel manufacturing to Microsoft’s once ambitious dream to link the world with one standardized multi-purpose lifestyle package. The features all these subversive architectures have in common are resolutely the same: they’re cheaper, they’re more convenient, and they are market-share carnivores on two types of consumer: those who are ambivalent and those who are ignorant.

This is jist of the hypothesis of “disruptive technologies” coined by Dean of Harvard Business school and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen, who I was fortunate enough to see speak at the Oslo Business Summit last month. To witness live examples of these types disruptions in a market-place is both an exciting and terrifying experience – exciting in that the future suddenly looks so different, and terrifying for the same reason.

Nowhere have such examples been more prescient recently than this week in the field of journalism, when two high-quality, equally highly acclaimed weblogs published well-written, erudite and startlingly professional pieces of investigative journalism.

 

The first piece to break waves this week was a thorough report on a terrorist training camp inside New York State founded by Sheik Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, the Islamic cleric Daniel Pearl was attempting to interview when he was kidnapped. Daring, provocative, and written with the type of considerable elegance New York Times staffers would be envious of, The Politics of CP’s “Jamaat ul-Fuqra Training Compound Inside the United States” was an admirable feat of journalism by the highest standards and even brought local insights and testimonies into the investigation, quoting one anonymous witness with catchy, breathtaking prose:

“We see children – small children run around over there when they should be in school. We hear bursts of gunfire all of the time, and we know that there is military like training going on there. Those people are armed and dangerous. We get nothing but menacing looks from the people who go in and out of the camp, and sometime they yell at us to mind our own business when we are just driving by. We don’t even dare to slow down when we drive by. They own this mountain and they know it, and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can’t even do that. Who wants to buy property next to that?”

The result was that the exclusive report was ultimately picked up by “World Net Daily”, one of the largest internet news sites around and the findings are being followed up by official investigators.

Flagrant Harbour, a stylishly written, on-the-pulse weblog written from the exotic sub-equatorial mania of Hong Kong this week followed up some excellent research into a local businessman by the name of Jonathan Hakim. Late last year, the author of Fragrant Harbour spotted that Hakim, former scion of the Hong Kong internet industry and founder of Boom.com, was involved with a company offering cheap and quick transplants from a military base in China. Hakim this week contacted the author and had an in depth conversation with him about the nature of his naivety of the dubious ethical dimensions to the enterprise, all of which was well reported with gripping linguistic alacrity in this week’s edition of the weblog.

Disruption

The reaction from The Fourth Estate to this new form of media has been nothing short of hysterical: the responses of professional media pundits have been everywhere from embracing to abusive.

Professor Glen Reynolds however, founder of Instapundit, sees weblogs potentially changing the landscape of journalism; “I think that blogging is the wave of the future, and consequently, I think we’re going to see journalism moving from a profession, back to being an activity,” he writes on his newly formed weblogging organisation, Pajamas Media. “We used to say that a journalist was somebody who wrote a journal, and a correspondent was somebody in a distant city who wrote you letters, and corresponded. Now it means somebody with good hair and a microphone. But I think that the traditional meaning of journalism is what it’s going to be like again … It’s more a case of who’s on the scene and who can report — or journal — what happened, as opposed to somebody who makes a profession out of reporting and opining. So it’s driven by the activity; it’s driven by the nature of events, rather than by your paycheck, if that makes sense.”

The answer is, it’s increasingly starting to make sense to a of people, and it especially makes sense given Professor Christiansen’s model of technological disruption in industries.

 

In the illustration (click to enlarge), extracted from a seminar given by the professor at the Oslo Business Summit, low-end technological disruption feeds on both markets where there is no current demand and markets where customers are already over-served by too much supply. What is most disturbing for industry professionals about the above model is that ‘sophistication’ has little to do with it once more convenient architectures enter the game.

Now in that light consider the above pieces of journalism: passable for material which might be featured in any national broadsheet, it’s free, and it is more accessible than any of the traditional newspapers, meaning that people who don’t currently read investigative reports in high-end print or online subscription journals are perfectly happy to assume the habit. In other words, the whole package above is just more convenient for readers who are trying to get a sense of what is going on in the world.

So what will news services of the future look like? Perhaps the Korean phenomenon “Oh My News” has the answer. Part news site, part blog, it is the quintessential epitome of hybridised new media: written by citizen journalists, most of whom are college students but a good number of whom are professionals, Oh My News has been the first to break a flurry of major international stories, most recently the Paris riots. The site is manned by a small team of editors, but otherwise costs are kept to an absolute minimum: no expensive deployment of editors, no turnover and hiring costs – and faster transmission of news. Reynolds hopes one day that his pioneering activities will one day translate into hard cash, and by all accounts, this is not too far off. The news industry is changing as fast as it can be reported, and those who are at the forefront of it now stand to make a fortune.

Enfants Terribles

A curious article from the infamous Boing Boing this afternoon:

"A recent study suggests that unattractive individuals commit more crime than people who are average or good looking. Researchers from the University of Colorado and Georgia State University determined this based on a survey of 15,000 teenagers interviewed in 1994 and again in 1997 and 2002.

"... Other studies have shown that unattractive men and women are less likely to be hired, and that they earn less money, than the better-looking. Such inferior circumstances may steer some to crime, (the researchers) suggest. They also report that more attractive students have better grades and more polished social skills, which means they graduate with a greater chance of staying out of trouble."

If there is any truth to the studies I expect too that the results have something to do with the fact that less attractive people suffer from less flattery, more bullying and much less social acceptance from an early age.

What is most worrying is translate this same treatment onto a global scale - such as an entire nation - and the results are potentially horrifying. What this tends to indicate is the absolute necessity for immediate reinvestment in countries that have suffered from heavy wars, such as Iraq. For just as with the children who are socially sidelined from an early stage in their lives, if nations are left to pick up the pieces of their own misfortunes without any help and encouragement from richer neighbours, it's no surprise they end up coming back to bite the very societies that left them there. 

Superpower Whining

Here is an interesting piece about an editor in China taking advantage of the internet, picked up this morning from the Washington Post by Hugh Hewitt and Instapundit.

Hewitt's claim that "The Party ought to require every member read "An Army of David's" (Reynolds of Instapundit's new book) is just childish however. America - even left wing America - has been on nothing short of a rampage over Beijing since Google decided to self-censor in entering the market: they ought to read this article that appeared on The Global Perspective this week instead and think again.

Constant bickering won't change the Chinese political landscape, but some initial co-operation might well do.

More European Resolutions

The EU has a habit of passing knee-jerk legislative orders as a reaction to crises. The European Parliament have this week adopted a resolution stating that "freedom of expression should always be excercised with responsibility and with respect for human rights, religious feelings and beliefs", according to an announcement on Editors Weblog.

This is another classic European resolution: well-meaning, but almost impossible to effectively legislate as is so heavily contingent upon the perception of the party interpreting how far "with respect for" is actually taken. Jilliandsposten, for example, would have presumably contravened that resolution by European standards in the strictest sense by the publication of the recent offending cartoons, yet the likelihood of the newspaper being prosecuted in an official European trial is negligable. The new resolution also gives the misleading impression that the outrage expressed by Moslems the world over and the subsequent pro-Danish campaigns that stemmed out of them was created as a result of lack of respect for another party's spiritual and political feelings, when in effect it was more down to the lack of understanding on either side's part of the issues being presented.

Passing resolutions pertaining to people's rights is all very well, but one can't help but feel that more time spent by members of the European Parliament working on ways to implement cultural education on a wider scale in the continent might not be a rather more productive use of time.

Perceptions of Precision

Here is a cute and elegant take on punctuation in the English language, with in particular, emphasis on the use of the comma:

"Optimists see the apostrophe as comma in transcendence; pessimists see the comma as apostrophe condemned to earthly life.

"Her comma is a brief moment of peace, a time to recollect thoughts scrambled by loud words and louder silence, an unspoken armistice.

"My comma is an obstacle, a rage-inducing eternal pause, undoubtedly illogical -- why, every sentence must end in a period, an exclamation, a question! I want to get my point across, clean up the mess, and settle the matter. My comma is my foe."

Depspite being perhaps a little over-laboured, the analogy illustrates quite well how the very same punctuation methods in speech can irritate one and placate another equally.

When I finshed one course on my MBA here at the BI in Oslo, I received the following feedback over my class participation; "As for the relation to the rest of the class - be mindful that British English speakers, often unintentionally, can irritate others not with their precision of languge, but their belief that everyone else has as discerning a sense of it as theirs. I have a number of Brit friends who can drive their German and US colleagues up the wall with finely tuned sentences ."

I have also foud it to be the case that sometimes what I say to my Norwegian colleagues is not believed to be made in all earnesty, simply because of the way I am saying it. It raises an interesting question: surely this is one discipline that should be mandatory for Business Schools to teach: how to communicate with different cultures, accross international parameters? It can, after all, mean the difference between success and failure when it comes to dealmaking.

Smoking Can Kill But Non Smoking Policies Can Kill Business

Pundit David Aaronovitch speculates today on the smoking ban in the U.K.; "The smoking decision has the same kind of feeling about it as the hunting business," he writes on his Times Online weblog. "Despite the obvious and predictable stuff about nanny governments (ironic, since this wasn't a decision that the government originally wanted), it is something else - another consequence of social change."

Aaronovitch hits the nail on the head in pointing to "social change" as the momentum behind the bn on smoking in public places, though with that in mind it's not difficult to see another E.U. debate coming on.

Since social trends develop as a result of the cultures that embody them, one of the central difficulties with implementing standardised policy over the region for European policymakers so far has been reconciling political consensus in what ultimately amount to vastly different cultures with equally opposing ideas on what is worthwhile and what is not. Smoking is, at its deepest level, a cultural phenomenon, embraced more by some than by others. What makes Britain's ban so interesting is that - unlike Greece or Sweden (two European countries with vastly different but ultimately crystal clear perceptions over the benefits of the habit) and so much of Europe - there is no clear national consensus on what should have been done. One half of the culture is preoccupied by government intervention over what even non-smokers perceive as a basic human right (as Aaronovitch puts it, over the 'nanny state governments'), while the other has firmly made up its mind that smoking is an antisocial and insinuating form of drug abuse.

A good friend of mine who owns a bar in the south of Spain recently told me on a visit here to Oslo how refreshing it was to walk into a bar and not breathe in any passive smoke, while complaining about the health hazard of his profession back home (smoking indoors in public places in Norway has been strictly forbidden for some time now). He went on to explain to that even though the town had passed a mandate permitting the owner of the establishment to choose whether he or she permitted smoking or not, the law was in effect pointless, since if you didn't let people smoke inside your bar you wouldn't get any customers, either.

European legislators face even tougher calls of this kind with the host of new countries - and as a result, cultures - scheduled to join the Union over the next decade. Not for the first time it appears that a crucial factor in the long term viability of the E.U. will be in its ability to peacefully transit what on the surface of it seem like superficial social trends, but in reality effect consumer behaviour and economic prosperity of real business models.

Media Trends of the Future

Ever wondered how the blogging phenomena started (and it was surprisingly long ago, in 1994 by Swarthemore student Justin Hill, but you wouldn't think it - type the word 'blog' into Microsoft Word and it goes unrecognised)?

This excellent piece in the New York Magazine astutely picked up by Tom Peters yesterday on his own webblog is about as detailed a chronicle of the boom as they come. Unusually for the urban tabloid, this is absolutely thorough and precise in research, and it ought to challenge convential thinking about the future of the mass media.

A poignant excerpt:

"Links are the chief way that visitors find new blogs in the first place. Bloggers almost never advertise their sites; they don’t post billboards or run blinking trailers on top of cabs. No, they rely purely on word of mouth. Readers find a link to Gawker or Andrew Sullivan on a friend’s site, and they follow it. A link is, in essence, a vote of confidence that a fan leaves inscribed in cyberspace: Check this site out! It’s cool! What’s more, Internet studies have found that inbound links are an 80 percent–accurate predictor of traffic. The more links point to you, the more readers you have."

Often, a remedy crops up before a problem is presented, and so it is with the increasing trends of online self-publishing. In many ways media is going full circle back to what it was in the days of original newspaper publishing and Joycean self-promotion: word-of-mouth and personalised advertising. My guess is that advertisers will immediately substitute the words "PR" and "Endorsement" for the word "Advertising", but this is still too short sighted.

The phrase "Stay Close To Your Customer" has been around for decades. The challenge that brands and organisations now face is how to take that policy onto a whole new level.

And as for publishers themselves? Quality - not reachability - will be the end verdict. 

More on China

This article by John Louis Swaine (of the notorious Swaine family in Hong Kong) is probably the best summary I have so far found of the problems Beijing is facing with Hong Kong in trying to manage the two very opposite political ideologies.

In short:

"Universal Suffrage is a basic human right.

"Why are China so intransigent on this matter? It’s because they have no other choice.

"If they had let Patten’s political reforms continue in Hong Kong post 1997 they would have probably been able to salvage the 1 country 2 systems principle. Hong Kong would have probably been democratically sound by now and China could at least stem the proliferation of Democracy. They could point to Hong Kong and say, ‘they’re different, that’s why they’re treated different’.

"But they didn’t. They treated Hong Kong like another provincial township and basically put it in the same basket as every soiled, downtrodden, urban Chinese city. The message has been clear - You’re a part of China, you’re the same as every other province in the People’s Republic, there’s nothing particularly special about Hong Kong which would allow it the right to Universal Suffrage.

"So when eventually Universal Suffrage does come, the mainland towns might just raise an eyebrow. China has swept any differences between Hong Kong and Shenzen under the carpet, so if Democracy is good enough for Hong Kong why isn’t it good enough for Shenzen?"

Change in China

Recent emotional outbursts like this one by Glen Reynolds of Instapundit to Google’s decision to self-censor in entering the Chinese market are not only naïve, they show a complete lack of understanding of how global trends work. The infamous blogger and author of “An Army of David’s: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths” quotes a recent Wall Street Journal Article: “Executives from Google Inc. and other Internet companies head to Capitol Hill next week, where they will become feature players in an awkward debate: Are U.S. companies giving in to China too easily? Last month, Google announced an agreement with the Chinese government to censor search results from its Chinese site. It was the latest Internet company to accede to the Chinese government's censorship restrictions, following Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.”

Reynolds concludes: “I hope they find the eperience (sic) embarrassing.” This kind of paranoia is somewhat reminiscent of the days of the petty U.S.A./U.S.S.R. disputes, all which ultimately proved destructive and futile. Perhaps the law professor and the members of this week’s Capitol Hill committee should attend a quick history class and think about what the title of the former’s new book is saying, for if they did, they might notice how frequently self-censorship by organisations who in the past have tried to enter politically controversial markets results usually not in the ethical aberration of the organisations, but actually in changes to that nation’s marketplace. Supporters of the spread of the Western policies of free speech and low censorship should welcome actions like Google’s in entering China with some constraints, because they are the best real attempts that can be made to change the political landscape of emerging economies.

Take a recent New York Times article picked up by Hong Kong website “Simon’s World”, entitled “Ex-officials protest censorship by China”. “A dozen former Chinese Communist Party officials and senior scholars, including a onetime secretary to Mao Zedong and the retired bosses of the country's most powerful media outlets, have denounced the recent closing of a prominent newspaper supplement and helped fuel a growing backlash against press censorship in the one-party state,” reports Joseph Kahn. “Propaganda officials are also facing rare public challenges to their legal authority to take such actions, including a short strike and a string of resignations at one newspaper and defiant open letters from two editors singled out for censure.”

The piece concludes; “Those protests suggested that some people in China's increasingly market-driven media industry no longer fear the consequences of violating the party line.”

Reynolds is not the only one to be making such a fuss over the Chinese issue: almost unanimously the media have cried foul over what they perceive as mal intent by “the worlds’ most philanthropic company,” but the critics miss the point. Changes like those described above are brought about because of organisations like Yahoo! And Google, who are willing to concede on the grounds of some preliminary home-country moral issues in order to make progress in implementing their wider philosophies onto the global stage. Only by “doing as one does in Rome” can one reasonably expect to make progress in implementing policy and cultural change there.

Betting On Enron Again

Typically enough, bookmakers are looking to cash in on the results of the infamous trial of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling.

Whatever one's oppinion of the ethical dimensions of this, odds on the trial set by bookmakers will probably be the most accurate gauge of the result. This was the case with the last two U.S. elections: in both instances, odds on Bush Jr. were significantly tighter than on his rivals.

This is an excellent example of microeconomic theory triumphing over perceived professional reality: where the bookmakers have hard cash at stake, pundits, even if they are trained legal and political experts, have very little to lose by making the wrong call, and as such, the risk translates into accuracy. Even if a pundit does lose some credibility by being badly wrong, what is lost in terms of reputation is usually by far over-compensated in terms of publicity - and after all, pundits (even when they are professional experts) are not paid to be right, they are paid to sell papers.

The lesson to be learned: read the pundits for entertainment, watch the odds for the outcome.

Trading Weapons Is Just Like Trading Corn

Omar, a writer at the controversial war-scenario weblog “Iraq the model” today picks up on an article written by Abid Battat in Azzaman titled “Weapons smuggling booms in southern Qurna”, about a contraband trade mafia working in arms dealing in the small town, seventy-four kilometres northwest of the city of Basra.

“I've been to Qurna many times during my internship in the northern suburbs of Bsara and I heard a lot from the locals about the huge weapon business in the area”, notes Omar. “Those weapons are certainly remnants of the Iraq-Iran war. Says who? Says the dealers themselves … (except) some former military personnel think that's not the case.” Omar concludes: “So the question is, if those were weapons sent by Iran to the militias to help them carry out attacks on coalition forces like many of us already think, why would the militias sell the weapons? The only explanation I can find is that Iran is sending enough weapons and munitions to the extent that the militias can feel well armed and at the same time make some good bucks. (sic)”

Wherever the weapons are coming from, the Unites States can expect much more of this type of headache in the process of rebuilding of Iraq, and if she is to learn the crucial lessons from September 2001, she would be well advised to take them seriously this time round. For one of the reasons that the Taliban were able to build up such an arsenal of ideological and military power was precisely because of neglectful U.S. foreign policy to the region: coupled with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., illegal weapons trading was ironically being greatly facilitated at exactly the same time as Washington was busy popping corks and celebrating the demise of its ideological communist competitor.

For the U.S. to implement effective regional stabilisation however, global consensus from in particular international political regulators such as the United Nations and anti-war governments is going to have to be given liberally. Such bodies will also have to exercise some degree of trust and patience, and not come down on the next Commander-in-Chief every time the U.S. steps in with counter-trafficking measures.

The approach stems from seeing the situation from an economic rather than from apolitical perspective. The trading of contraband goods is much the same as trading in any legal goods – if effective regulatory bodies are not put in place to oversee market activities, all hell tends to break loose, and you end up with a few monopolising mass-ownership of market share. In artillery parlance, this means that one very small undetected corner of Iraq – such as Qurna – may end up amassing a sizeable arsenal without being detected on any radar. The irony may well end up coming undone however, as the very parties who contested a war with Iraq prevent any supervision of this kind of black market dynamic, but it wouldn’t be the first time well-meaning peacemakers have shot themselves in the foot by the failure in all their best intentions to understand market dynamics.

All The News That's Fit To Study

National American journalist turned celebrity-blogger Michelle Malkin picks up on an article in The Boston Globe about how a conservative student newspaper at Harvard has become one of the first in the mainstream media to publish the Danish cartoons.

“A conservative student newspaper at Harvard University has become one of the few media outlets in the country to show inflammatory Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, angering students on campus and prompting a forum to discuss the controversy,” she reports. “The four cartoons appeared in the Feb. 8 issues of The Harvard Salient, a conservative, biweekly newspaper, under the headline, ‘A pox (err, jihad) on free expression.’ The student editors called the cartoons, including a sketch of Mohammed carrying a bomb in his turban, “relatively innocuous.””

This is not the first time Harvard or indeed any educational institution is going to face tough ethical calls over the publication of the pictures that have caused so much violent outrage. One of the central problems for Islam academics now with the Moslem reaction is that it has made what might have otherwise been a fairly trivial bit of prejudicial humour a crucial, highly photographic demonstration of Middle Eastern outrage at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and as such has inadvertently earned the debacle – and the cartoons themselves – a place in History, Political Science, Ethics and numerous other disciplines.

The consequence is that the incident is going to be taught from now on in a whole host of subjects, and that the prohibited cartoons themselves become a crucial part of that teaching. This conundrum will leave many academics once again wondering just how to reconcile political and religious correctness with the accurate pedagogical representation of their disciplines.