Keys Corner

The Observer claims to have obtained a confidential report commissioned by the Pentagon:

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents…

...Already, according to Randall and Schwartz [the authors of the report], the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 ‘catastrophic’ shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Update (2007-02-27):
Ahem – as Andrew pointed out, this article is from 2004! I found it while reading the Observer online on Sunday – how I stumbled across such an old article and didn’t notice the dateline is beyond explanation…

Maybe, one day, it will be possible to run Palm applications on an iPhone. Style Tap have produced a proof-of-concept demo. It may seem strange to want to do that, but some people have Palm applications which they would like to continue to use. You can use Parallels or Fusion to run Windows applications on a Mac, so why not run Palm apps on you iPhone?

(via TUAW)

When I read this in today’s Guardian, my first reaction was “but it’s not the 1st of April yet”. One the one hand data privacy experts in the EU has been fighting tooth and nail over the last years to prevent the USA getting a pile of personal data each time someone flies to or from the USA; on the other hand, the EU is considering similar measures, which the UK is lobbying to extend to track EU citizens traveling within the EU:

Passengers travelling between EU countries or taking domestic flights would have to hand over a mass of personal information, including their mobile phone numbers and credit card details, as part of a new package of security measures being demanded by the British government. The data would be stored for 13 years and used to “profile” suspects.

Brussels officials are already considering controversial anti-terror plans that would collect up to 19 pieces of information on every air passenger entering or leaving the EU. Under a controversial agreement reached last summer with the US department of homeland security, the EU already supplies the same information [19 pieces] to Washington for all passengers flying between Europe and the US.

But Britain wants the system extended to sea and rail travel, to be applied to domestic flights and those between EU countries…

In fact, according to a recent article by John Lettice, some of the protest from the EU against the USA’s data collection is caused because the EU bureaucracy has been unable to coordinate an agreement with the USA fast enough to stop the USA forming bilateral agreements with some EU-states which don’t have a visa waiver agreement in place with the USA, thus undermining the EU’s position when negotiating deals with the USA. Given that the UK government has been regularly involuntarily leaking data about millions of its citizens recently (lost DVDs and CDs have become a regular topic in the British press in the last 2-3 months), this enthusiasm for collecting even more data really can’t be considered a good idea.

Unfortunately, the Brits don’t write communiques like these any more - if they ever did:

Dear Citizens of America,

In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from Monday next…

(Found in a comment on vowe dot net)

The USA wants to introduce “democracy” in Iraq, but not in Pakistan:

The US and Britain are pressing Pervez Musharraf’s victorious opponents to drop their demands that he resign as president and that the country’s independent judiciary be restored before forming a government.

In a strategy some Western diplomats admit could badly backfire, the Bush administration has made clear it wishes to continue to support Mr Musharraf even after Monday’s election in which the Pakistani public delivered a resounding rejection of his policies…

No further comment needed, I think.

The British education system has been hopeless at teaching foreign languages for years and the number of pupils taking a foreign language at school has dropped by around 10% since the government in its wisdom decided to make it optional to study languages in school last year. Now, the BBC reports that:

Oral tests could be dropped from language GCSEs because they are “too stressful”, according to a report…

...Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove told the Sunday Telegraph: “After being told they could get a pass without writing a word in a foreign language, now pupils are being told they can pass without speaking it.

“Once again, this government is moving the goalposts on examinations and instead of proper rigour we have got a watering down of standards.”

Don’t they realize the main point of learning a language – apart from latin, perhaps – is to be able to use it to speak to people?

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a stark warning on Sunday to Europeans, saying that their safety from terrorist attack by Islamic extremists is directly linked to NATO’s success in stabilizing Afghanistan. After weeks of calling on NATO governments to send more combat troops and trainers to Afghanistan, Mr. Gates made his case directly to people across the continent in a keynote address to an international security conference here…

Well, I disagree with the implied criticism that some countries are not pulling their military weight. The US-lead wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have encouraged terrorism in Europe and alienated moderate Muslems. The answer is to supply aid to the citizens of these countries and not charge around their countries acting like Rambo. For a different view, take a look at Marc Sageman’s article in last week’s New Scientist. Sageman is a forensic psychiatrist, sociologist, former CIA case officer and a consultant for various US government agencies – so I think he is as qualified to talk about fighting terrorism as Gates, yet he comes to a completely different conclusion (subscription required to view full article):

...The key to the modern terrorist network is the collective discourse on internet forums, which provides general guidance and tactical instruction to the participants in the absence of the command hierarchies of traditional terrorist organisations. It also fosters a true conversation among the participants – it is impossible to anticipate where a given discussion will lead. The result is that each small local terrorist network pursues its own activity for its own local reasons, and in doing so promotes the overall goals and strategy of the Al-Qaida terrorist social movement far more effectively than any central command could. This explains why governments’ bureaucratic and ideological approach to tackling terrorism – pursuing high-value targets in the hope the movement will implode – is bound to fail.

What, then, should governments do? Their strategy should be twofold. First, they should continue to seek to eliminate violent networks, and ensure the fair prosecution of captured terrorists in a transparent way in order to regain the trust of Muslim communities worldwide. Any campaign against terrorism must be focused exclusively on the perpetrators, and not on racial or ethnic groups in general. It is when Muslims are indiscriminately censured that they become angry. It is also worth remembering that the most effective way to rob terrorism of its glory is to reduce the terrorists to common criminals. There is no glory in being taken to prison in handcuffs.

The second strategy is to contain the threat and wait until it disappears for internal reasons. Young people follow fashions and define themselves in contrast to their elders. They worship fashionable “jihadi heroes”, but fashions come and go. If we have the good sense to allow the leaderless jihad to fade away, it should do so in years rather than generations. The aim should be to accelerate the process of internal decay by avoiding any action – such as the invasion of Iraq – that could prolong and invigorate this violent movement. A military strategy, for example, is completely counterproductive because it creates more terrorists than it eliminates.

While I was at University, I had the chance to work in Umeå in northern Sweden for 13 weeks, which was long enough to get a taste for learning about a different culture and to find learning a foreign language actually useful. Although I did pick up enough Swedish to get by, it has been dormant for about 35 years now and I had never realized there is a system to how many of IKEA’s products are named – for example:

• Sofas, coffee tables, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs are named after places in Sweden (Klippan, Malmö)
• Chairs and desks are Swedish men’s names (Roger, Joel)
• Beds, wardrobes and hall furniture after places in Norway (Tromsö, Hopen)
• Carpets after places in Denmark (Egeby)

For a little more information on the naming system and how it came about, visit today’s Guardian.

And the heading for this post? It means “Do you speak IKEA?”.