MY PERSPECTIVES
& THOUGHTS
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1910 Ford Model R
1910 Ford Model R
Show this to your friends, children and/or grandchildren!
THE YEAR IS 1910
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
************ ********* ***********
The year is 1910
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1910:
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The average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
Fuel for this car was sold in drug stores only.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower !
The average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.
The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year ..
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME ..
Ninety percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which
Were condemned in the press AND the government as ‘substandard.’
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
The Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars ….
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada , was only 30….About the same size as ST. PETERS, MISSOURI ….
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write and only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores.
Back then pharmacists said, ‘Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health’
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !
I am now going to forward this to someone else
without typing it myself. From there, it will be sent
to others all over the WORLD – all in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.
IT STAGGERS THE MIND
What America Does Best
What America Does Best
by Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online
November 17, 2011
We are in a fresh round of declinism — understandably, after borrowing nearly $5 trillion in less than three years and having very little to show for it. Pundit strives with op-ed writer to find the latest angle on America’s descent: We are broke; we are poorly educated; we are uncompetitive; we have gone soft; our political institutions are broken; and on and on. The Obama administration does its part, with sloganeering like “reset,” “lead from behind,” “post-American world,” and America as exceptional only to the degree that all nations feel exceptional.
This is not new. In the late 1930s, the New Germany and its autobahns were supposed to show Depression-plagued America how national will could unite a people to do great things. After all, they had Triumph of the Will Nuremberg rallies; we still had Hoovervilles. They flew sleek Me-109s; we flew lumbering cloth-covered Brewster Buffaloes. We, the victors of a world war, were determined never to repeat it; they, the losers, were eager to try it again.
In the 1950s, Sputnik and the vast spread of Communism through the postcolonial world were supposed proof of the efficiency and social justice of Communism and the rot of capitalism — the inevitable denouement of the 20th century. Sputnik soared, even as our ex-Nazi scientists could not seem to make our rockets work. They had Uncle Ho and Che; we had Diem and the Shah. Their guys wore peasant garb and long hair; ours, sunglasses and gold braid.
By the 1970s and 1980s, Japan Inc. was the next new paradigm of the post-American world. Even American “experts” lectured us on the need to adopt Japanese-like partnerships between corporations and government. They made Accords and Camrys; we made Pintos and Gremlins. We played golf at Pebble Beach; they owned it.
As Japan faded, the next great hope followed in the 1990s when the EU captivated the American Left. The Europeans’ loud moral declarations, their pacifism, cradle-to-grave entitlements, trains à grande vitesse — all of that was what a backward America should strive for. They crafted the Kyoto Agreement; we drove gas-guzzling Tahoes and Yukons. Their strong Euros bought in New York what our weak dollars could not in Paris.
Where are all those supposedly post-American systems now? Fascism was crushed; Communism imploded; Japan is aging and shrinking; the European Union is cracking apart. But, of course, there is China, which, we are told, is the next new replacement for America — a country with enormous demographic problems, a reputation for crude diplomacy and an outlaw approach to international commercial agreements, censored media and a complete lack of transparency, vast inequality, environmental catastrophes, and no stable political system to transition a rural peasantry into a postindustrial affluent citizenry. No matter — our jet-setting elites still whine that they have shiny new airports; we have grungy LAX and JFK. They have sleek bullet trains; we, creaking Amtrak.
In this era of American debt, rancor, pessimism, and declinism, we should reflect on what the United States still does far better than anyone else — and why that is.
Recently, the British magazine Times Higher Education rated the world’s top 400 universities. Seven of the top ten — Cal Tech, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Chicago, Berkeley — are American. Even a nearly insolvent California hosts four of the top 13 — more than any nation except the US itself. While American K–12 education cannot turn out students who achieve top rankings in math, science, and language, our university system still remains by far the best in the world, training a global elite in the American way of engineering, math, science, business, and medicine. In fact, the world’s diplomatic corps is beginning to look like an American college reunion. This week, the Greeks appointed a new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, a former Harvard professor. And the newly appointed Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, is a former electrical-engineering professor from the University of Alabama.
American petroleum engineers over the last decade have discovered radical new methods of recovering previously unknown or unreachable reserves of oil and gas. Contrary to all conventional wisdom, America’s natural-gas and petroleum reserves just keep growing. Suddenly, we have enough known natural gas to supply 100 percent of our domestic needs for the next 90 years — a huge window of opportunity in which to transition to competitive renewable energy. That is on top of trillions of dollars’ worth of new oil finds offshore and in Alaska, the Dakotas, and the West, which will create millions of new jobs and help pay down the deficit — if we have the will to extract such energy resources. The real story is not the pathetic machinations surrounding Solyndra, a statist, corrupt model that will never produce competitive power, but a quiet revolution in North Dakota, which is emerging as the new Texas. Within 15 years, North America could reinvent itself as completely independent from Middle Eastern gas and oil. Indeed, from Calgary to Argentina and Brazil, new petroleum and natural-gas finds may soon make the Western Hemisphere the world’s new Persian Gulf. That fact will change the entire global geostrategic and financial landscape in ways that are scarcely imaginable.
We are worried that China may soon deploy one aircraft carrier. Yet the United States now has eleven enormous carrier groups, each one more powerful than all the other aircraft carriers in the world combined. In areas as diverse as drone and space technology, counterinsurgency, battlefield experience, air power, armor, and ship design, the American military is the best-armed, best-trained, and most lethal armed force around — and will be so for decades hence. The American soldier remains the most innovative, disciplined, and adaptive in the world — and surely after Iraq and Afghanistan the most veteran.
We forget sometimes that there are a host of small, vulnerable nations that apparently still assume that the United States, alone, can and will come to their aid. Without America, it is hard to see how Israel can survive, or that Kurdistan would ever have become autonomous, or that bankrupt and vulnerable Greece will have independence of action in a tough neighborhood, or that Taiwan will continue as we have known it. No one is talking about the defense of Europe as it implodes — apparently on the supposition that NATO is de facto American and will continue to protect the continent from outside threats and discourage historical tensions from within. The truth is that in the decades ahead, weak and vulnerable states will look to the US military as never before.
A billion adolescents worldwide are growing up with Apple iPhones, iPods, and iPads; with Facebook accounts, Amazon online ordering, Google searches, and Walmart discount purchasing. These are not Russian, French, Chinese, or Japanese companies, but American inventions that uniquely appeal to the human desire for economy, ease of use, wide choice, informality, and transparency. No other country could have invented them — or the next generation to come. The idea of a Chinese-invented Google is a paradox, a Russian Facebook a joke, a Japanese-inspired Walmart impossible.
Race, tribe, and religion tear many countries apart, notably in the Middle East and the Balkans. Yet at the other extreme, racially uniform nations like Japan and China seem clumsy when dealing with even tiny minorities, since they define their citizens not just by national allegiance, language, and locale, but by the way they look. America alone –albeit often in rancorous and messy fashion — has no particular national ethnic or racial profile. Even in postmodern Europe, the idea of a Barack Obama as president of France, or a Condoleezza Rice as foreign minister of Germany, is the stuff of fantasy. We will see no prime minister of China or Russia who does not look like the majority of Chinese and Russians — much less a Colin Powell. Most of the world will continue to have some sort of practical or romantic claim on America because of the fact that anyone can be not just an American, but a very successful American.
In one of the most amazing transformations in the history of civilization, a tiny East Coast community of predominantly white European Christian settlers developed a system whose natural logic of reform, self-critique, and reinvention over two centuries became the present melting pot of whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists. As the world is becoming more interconnected through globalization and high tech, it is following the model of a meritocratic America, which remains light years ahead of most nations in defining its citizens by their values and allegiance, not how they worship or the color of their skin.
To walk down University Avenue in Palo Alto is to see the world’s engineering talent united by a shared desire for career advancement and upward mobility, and the spirit of inquiry — on the assumption that the American “system” will reward talent and forget about most else. A European might inquire about these immigrants’ accent or background, a Chinese about their racial ancestry, an Indian about their class, a Middle Easterner about their religion. An American will inquire to what degree they can solve a problem, do business, and make a profit.
Statism the world over is crumbling. The Communist Soviet Empire is a distant memory. The redistributionist European Union is neither democratic nor economically sustainable. It will disappear soon, wrecked by the idea that utopians could unite vastly different nations from on high without constitutional democracy. China succeeds to the degree that its Communist rulers abandon their Maoist legacy. Massive redistributive bureaucracies have impoverished much of Africa and the Middle East. America alone values individual freedom and limited government under the rule of law.
The Obama experiment of the last three years did not bring prosperity, and is likely soon to prompt a sharp reaction and a return to the American devotion to individualism and choice that made us the wealthiest nation in history. The American model is the antithesis of the socialism, Communism, theocracy, and statism that have impoverished so much of the world — and the 21st century has brought that fact home in a way few imagined.
Why does the United States continue to reinvent itself, generation after generation, to adapt to a radically changing world? Our ancestral Constitution checks the abuse of power and guarantees the freedom of the individual — all in transparent fashion. And our habits and customs that have evolved over two centuries are grounded in the human desire to be judged by what we do rather than what we look like, or under what circumstances we were born — a fact that explains our vibrant and sometime crass popular culture. The essence of our culture is constant self-critique and reexamination — a messy self-audit that so often fools both ourselves and our critics into thinking that our loud paranoia about decline, rather than our far quieter effort to arrest it, is the real story of America
In short, the 21st century will remain American.
©2011 Victor Davis Hanson
Have we learned from 911?
Dr. L. Allan Austin
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| Orlando – Most people when asked have we learned from 911 have difficulty answering.
They want to say yes but images of attacks come into their mind’s eye. 1. The attempted al Qaeda related car blow up in Times Square that mercifully failed. 2. The controversy surrounding the Park 51 community center in New York. 3. The Qur’an burning launched by the Pastor Florida, which in turn generated violence in Afghanistan. 4. The “underwear” bomber’s attempt by a Nigerian Muslim with al Qaeda ties to blow up a Northwest flight into the US. When we explore and talk the following emerges: 2. The Park 51 community center project enjoys the wholehearted support of the Manhattan Community Board 1 – a New York City community board which represents the people of lower Manhattan – and September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. 3. The Florida Pastor is today a lonely man abandoned by most of his parishioners for his extremism. A recent New York Times feature on Jones reported that in front of his church, signs that declare “Islam Is of the Devil” have been edited by outsiders to say “Love All Men.” 4. The bomber’s father a prominent Nigerian banker actually formally notified the US authorities far in advance of his son’s intent. The past decade has been challenging, frustrating AND inspiring. It is a decade of turbulence from many fronts, literally the weather and conflicts and figuratively financial and political turmoil. It seems for every act of intolerance, hatred and terror, there has been corresponding acts that captured and raised our spirits and showed us a much more enlightened path forward. Like a furnace forages strength into steel perhaps the surprising unintended consequence of horrific acts are triggers that spark the best of humanity. The head of al Qaeda spent 23 years trying to use terrorism and anything else he and his devotes could think of to overthrow the Egyptian Government. A youth group accomplished it in three weeks. The nation with the most powerful military and all its leading technologies spending trillions has still not proven to have been successful after a decade trying to overthrow the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. How can this be? The answer may lie in their shared immigrant experience. Both arrived largely unwelcomed. Both often used education as the way to gain headway. Muslims are the second most likely group to attain at least a college education. Ironically they both perceive the problems of the Muslim American community similarly. While 60 per cent of Muslim Americans polled by Gallup say that they experience prejudice from most Americans, a remarkable 66 per cent of Jewish Americans say that most Americans exhibit prejudice against Muslims. This means that Jewish Americans are aware of anti-Muslim prejudice more than any other religious group. The potential for collaboration is clear, while the narrative of conflict has been significantly debunked. We could all take a page from the playbook of Princess Mayasa of Qatar. She is building a large group of Museums in her country celebrating Islamic Art and Culture. Her mission is to bridge Islam across all the faiths across the world using the mediums of art and culture. To counter religious bigotry, interfaith events are more common than ever and are being carried out by low-profile but highly effective religious practitioners. In Omaha, Nebraska, deep in America’s heartland, a tri-faith initiative is planning to build an interfaith campus, slated for completion in 2014, consisting of a synagogue, a mosque and a church on a 37-acre tract of land. Returning to New York: Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles. Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter. But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone. On Christmas Eve 1806, two decades after the church was built, the building was surrounded by Protestants incensed at a celebration going on inside — a religious observance then viewed by some in the United States as an exercise in “popish superstition,” more commonly referred to today as “Christmas.” Protesters tried to disrupt the service. In the melee that ensued, dozens were injured, and a policeman was killed. Lest you think this was an isolated incident; during the 1830s, 40s and 50s many Catholic churches and even convents were burned to the ground across the US by Protestants. A convent of Roman Catholic Nuns was burned down by a Protestant mob. The event was fueled by the rebirth of extreme antic-Catholic sentiment in New England. Anti-Catholic animus in the United States reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the influx of Catholic immigrants. Some American Protestants, having an increased interest in prophecies regarding the end of time, claimed that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation You might be shaking your head at this point trying to understand what exactly is being described. It’s NOT the Park 51 Mosque and Community Center Project. BUT it could well be. The Park 51 project has been approved and will most likely get built right where it should be next to ground zero, what could be more fitting than putting a Community Center open to many Faiths next to the towers that were destroyed by terrorists who killed thousands of people of many faiths in the misguided support of one. blog: www.allanaustin.com/blog website: www.allanaustin.com email: allanaustin@gmail.com Skype: uneducator twitter: uneducator Facebook: whuppi |
Memristor Technology Fabrication
In the journal Nano Letters, researchers have published a paper that details a novel way to manufacture memristor integrated circuits. Memristors are a recently developed technology that has the potential to power future electronic devices and create neuromorphic hardware. Last year HP scientists demonstrated another technique that had a 20% yield for functional memristors on a circuit. The newer method reduces the complexity of the manufacturing process and facilitates a higher throughput. These types of innovations are critical in order to enable the production of microchips that can be competitive with currently existing technology.
We demonstrate a technique to fabricate memristor cross-point arrays using a self-aligned, one step nanoimprint lithography process that simultaneously patterns the bottom electrode, switching material film and the top electrode.
The critical interfaces are exposed to much less contamination and thus under better chemical control. With this technique, we fabricated arrays of TiO2-based memristive devices (junction area 100 nm by 100 nm) that did not require electrical forming and were operated with nanoampere currents.
Neuromorphic tech is one of the more intriguing possibilities that may eventually come to fruition based on recent work in this field. Simulating a brain on a supercomputer via software is currently not a cost effective way of creating an artificial intelligence. A large amount of computational strength may be needed to perform such a task (perhaps 100′s of petaflops). Currently the top supercomputer in the world is only in the 8 petaflop range, so there may be a long way to go before it would even become possible. Even when that needed number crunching milestone is reached, the machine will require an enormous amount of electricity to maintain the model. It is also not clear that von Neumann-based computers could sustain consciousness in the way biological tissue does. The manner in which a CPU processes information from random access memory is very different than the electrochemical signaling of the mind. This kind of model may merely interpret what a brain does instead of mimicking it exactly. Memristive nanodevices on the other hand could potentially overcome the obstacles to synthesizing an artificial mind.
In a biological brain, neurotransmitters allow neurons to communicate with one another via synaptic connections. Synaptic inputs can increase or decrease the likelihood that a neuron will fire an action potential. The signaling strength of a synapse can change over time by method of LTP or LTD. The properties of memory resistance are suited to copying the functioning of these connections. They have the capacity to alter and “remember” their resistance as a result of electrical inputs. Thus they can mimic to a certain extent neuronal processes. Previous neuromorphic chips have been been shown to decrease the necessary power consumption considerably, enabling them to overcome CPU or GPU type bottlenecks to neural simulations. The analogue nature of memristors may support qualia on an alternate substrate.
Neuromorphic circuits might need to have fundamental features around one tenth the size of today’s average transistor in order to compete with organic neural configurations. So there’s still a long way to go before we see their true potential. There is certainly a lot of hype that may never live up to sky high expectations. However many researchers are focusing intensely on advancing this radical science, so there may be many more breakthroughs yet to come.
Nanoscale resistive switches: devices, fabrication and integration
Hottest New Technologies
As predicted, tablet mania ensued at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. At least 75 were introduced at the annual Las Vegas gadget extravaganza. The tablet with the most buzz was Motorola Mobility’s XOOM. It’s the first tablet to run onGoogle‘s ( GOOG - news - people ) highly anticipated Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. XOOM, which is expected to launch in the first quarter, supports Flash for easy and fast video viewing and includes 3G wireless access that can be upgraded to 4G LTE. Motorola’s tablet also has a 10.1-inch screen, front- and rear-facing cameras, a camcorder andNvidia ( NVDA - news - people ) Tegra dual-core processor.
In spite of the tablet avalanche, a number of other gizmos and technologies were able to rise above the din and capture attention. The Samsung SUR40 forMicrosoft‘s ( MSFT - news -people ) Surface, the next generation of the software giant’s table-top computer, wowed the CES crowd. True, it might be theworld’s biggest iPad, but it’s still impressive, boasting a 40-inch HD 1080p touch-screen for optimal Web surfing and info sharing, and the top is coated with Corning‘s ( GLW - news -people ) rugged Gorilla glass. Samsung SUR40 also has something called PixelSense, technology that gives LCD panels the power to see without the use of cameras,” Microsoft says. Uh huh.
Samsung SUR40, however, is aimed at businesses, not consumers. Fujifilm ( FUJI - news - people ), Red Bull, Royal Bank of Canada ( RY - news - people ) and Sheraton Hotels & Resorts Worldwide are some of the companies that will take delivery of the table-top computer later this year.
Peek Inside the Lamborghini Factory
From its carbon fiber monocoque to its pushrod suspension and proprietary 7-speed sequential gearbox, the Lamborghini Aventador 700-4 is a textbook example of what comes forth when nothing but the most radically aggressive design will do.
At the embryonic stage of any car, an irreconcilable disconnect can form between the creative spark of an inspired design and the real-world demands of its implementation. As a result, the Centro Stile (Style Center) at Lamborghini headquarters enabled CAD files of the Aventador to be shared between the artists (i.e., the designers) and the geeks (i.e., the engineers), ensuring the technical department could stop a design if its proportions were too wide, low or outlandish for reality.
Three-dimensional renderings were altered for different colors and lighting environments, and scale models “printed” from those files using a device that uses lasers to cut plastic. Computational fluid-dynamic calculations were enacted to finesse aerodynamics and engine cooling, and the whole car was essentially assembled on a virtual level before it took physical form.
Above: A robot “feels out” a fine optimization mockup of an Aventador, in order to measure fitment of various parts and create a virtual model of the physical structure. Photo: Lamborghini
Above: This mockup of an Aventador LP700-4 is used for “fine optimization,” a process in which pre-production parts are checked against each other to ensure a perfect fit before they go into production. Photo: Lamborghini
Diamond Find Could Aid Zimbabwe, and Mugabe
JOHANNESBURG — New mining in Zimbabwe has quickly yielded millions of carats of diamonds and could help catapult the nation into the ranks of the world’s top diamond producers, according to the head of a group of experts for the United Nations-backed effort to stop the trade in conflict diamonds.
“This is a world-class deposit, no doubt about it,” said the expert, Mark Van Bockstael. He described the concentrations of diamonds in the Marange fields in eastern Zimbabwe as among the highest in the world: “The deposit is a freak of nature.”
Other experts agree it is an important find, while awaiting more data to gauge its full magnitude. But the steady accumulation of stones has already emboldened PresidentRobert Mugabe, 86, to consolidate control over the Marange fields to prolong his 30-year grip on power, members of his inner circle said.
Though Mr. Mugabe now officially governs under a tenuous power-sharing agreement with his longstanding rivals, the diamond fields are overseen by a ministry run by his party, ZANU-PF, and guarded by an army that reports to him and gives him and his allies lopsided control over a desperately needed economic boon.
“This is ZANU-PF’s salvation,” said one of Mr. Mugabe’s closest confidants, on the condition of anonymity because his conversations with the president were supposed to be confidential. Diamonds are being sold on the black market for partisan and personal gain, he said, with some party leaders gaining and others being cut out: “The looting has intensified over the past six months.”
Whether Zimbabwe will be able to sell the Marange diamonds on international markets as vetted stones that do not finance conflict faces a pivotal test this week. At a meeting that began Monday in Tel Aviv, the Kimberley Process — an effort by governments, the diamond industry and advocacy groups to stem the illicit diamond trade that has fueled wars in Angola, Sierra Leone and Congo — will consider whether the Marange diamonds should be cleared for export. More than 70 countries have committed to not trading with nations that do not meet the effort’s standards.
Investigators for both the Kimberley Process and human rights groups have gathered what they call credible accounts that the military used extreme violence in its 2008 operation to seize the Marange fields, employing dogs, AK-47s and even strafing from helicopters to attack miners engaged in a diamond rush. Officers then set up their own smuggling syndicates, the groups said.
“Nobody imagined that governments would be shooting their own people to get a grip on the diamonds,” said Ian Smillie, an architect of the Kimberley Process.
Shallowly deposited by a river system, the stones are found in an area of about 265 square miles. Of that, about 46 square miles are thought to have diamond potential.
Mr. Van Bockstael estimated that only 5 percent of the stones found were of gem quality, while about 90 percent were of low quality, useful only for industrial purposes. They look like pebbles or chips of broken beer bottles, tinted black, brown or green.
“If you found one on the street, you probably wouldn’t even pick it up,” he said.
Late last year, two companies in joint ventures with the state-owned mining company began mining Marange concessions and had already amassed 4.4 million carats of diamonds by May.
Mr. Van Bockstael, a geologist, says he is waiting for Zimbabwe’s promised geological report on the fields. But from interviews with officials and other data, he says they could yield $1 billion to $1.7 billion a year, earnings that would put Zimbabwe in the world’s top half-dozen diamond producers.
Those are huge sums for a country whose gross domestic product was only $4.4 billion in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund. Zimbabwe sorely needs new money to combat hunger, disease and poverty.
Some questioned the fields after De Beers, the mining giant, let its Marange concession lapse in 2006. But Andrew Bone, the company’s director of international relations, described the diamonds there as “an important find. It’s bigger than most people anticipated.”
Mr. Bone said De Beers was worried about the country’s worsening political crisis when it withdrew. “We didn’t perhaps do as much surveying as we could have done,” he said.
Others in the industry are taking the deposit seriously. Ernest Blom, chairman of the Diamond Dealers Club of South Africa, said it contained mostly low-quality diamonds, but “yielding enormous carats per ton. It’s huge.”
Views on whether Zimbabwe should be certified to sell its diamonds are polarized. Mr. Mugabe has depicted efforts to block the country from diamond trading as part of a Western plot to topple him. Officials in his party deny all accusations of state-sponsored violence against miners and say the government has met the required international standards, securing its diamond fields.
Advocacy groups that are part of the Kimberley Process disagree, saying Zimbabwe should be suspended for continuing human rights violations.
But this month, Abbey Chikane, a South African businessman assigned by the Kimberley Process to monitor the Marange fields, recommended that the diamonds be certified and that the military continue guarding the fields until the police — also answerable to Mr. Mugabe —could take over.
“The government of Zimbabwe has demonstrated its commitment to meet the minimum requirements,” Mr. Chikane wrote in his confidential report to the Kimberley Process, which was provided to The New York Times by a participant. “A great deal of hard work has gone into their efforts.”
The Zimbabwe case poses challenges to the Kimberley Process itself. Its mission is defined as stemming the trade in conflict diamonds used to finance rebel movements. But in Zimbabwe, elements of the government itself have been accused of violence against people who flooded the Marange fields to sift for stones during a diamond rush that began in 2006.
The deliberations are likely to be contentious. Farai Maguwu, the most outspoken Zimbabwean advocate on diamond issues, was supposed to attend the meeting in Tel Aviv, but is instead jailed in Harare after providing information to Mr. Chikane.
Analysts and civic leaders fear that rather than bringing hope for Zimbabwe’s long-suffering people, this new wealth will reinforce authoritarian rule. They say it could finance more of the patronage and repression that have kept Mr. Mugabe in power, and possibly infect the Movement for Democratic Change, the junior partner in the power-sharing government, with what Eldred Masunungure, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe, called “the predatory virus.”
“The gravy train is not likely to be one that leads to a democratic destination,” Professor Masunungure said.
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era.
Multimedia
GraphicThe previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.
“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.
American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.
So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.
Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.
The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.
Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.
At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.
Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”
With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”
The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.
Small Business Optimism Index Continues Downward Trajectory
For the fifth consecutive month, NFIB’s monthly Small-Business Optimism Index fell, dropping 0.9 points in July—a larger decline than in each of the previous three months—and bringing the Index down to a disappointing 89.9. This is below the average Index reading of 90.2 for the last two-year recovery period. Expectations for future real sales growth and improved business conditions were the major contributors to the decline in optimism. With the repercussions of the debt compromise yet unknown, next month’s report will provide a more complete picture of the reaction on Main Street
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“Given the current political climate, the protracted debate over how to handle the nation’s debt and spending, and the now this latest development of the debt downgrade, expectations for growth are low and uncertainty is great,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. “At the two year anniversary of the expansion, the Index is only 3.4 points higher than it was in July 2009. And considering the confidence-draining performance of policy makers, there is little hope that Washington will stop hemorrhaging money and put spending back on a sustainable course. Perhaps we might begin referring to the ‘Small-Business Pessimism Index’ from now on.”
The percent of owners citing poor sales as their top problem—the long-time primary complaint of firms—has faded a few points, and reports of sales trends are much better than a few months ago. However, the July survey anticipates slow growth for the remainder of the year, high unemployment rates, inflation rates that are too high and little progress on job creation
Some other highlights of July’s Optimism Index include:
- While the national unemployment rate dipped marginally, for the nation’s small businesses, the employment story is not a positive one. Twelve percent (seasonally adjusted) reported unfilled job openings, down 3 points. Over the next three months, 10 percent plan to increase employment (down 1 point), and 11 percent plan to reduce their workforce (up 4 points), yielding a seasonally adjusted 2 percent of owners planning to create new jobs, 1 point lower than June, leaving the prospect for job creation bleak.
- The net percent of all owners (seasonally adjusted) reporting higher nominal sales over the past 3 months lost 1 percentage point, falling to a net negative 8 percent. Currently, there are more firms with sales trending down than there are with sales trending up, however, this indicator is the third best reading in 42 months. The unadjusted numbers are: 29 percent of all owners reported higher sales (last three months compared to prior three months, up 2 points) while 28 percent reported lower sales (down 3 points).
- Reports of positive earnings trends were unchanged at a net negative 24 percent of all owners, while not high, is the best reading in 43 months. Not seasonally adjusted, 20 percent reported profits higher (up 2 points), and 38 percent reported profits falling (down 3 points). Corporate profits are at a record high level as a share of GDP, but these increased have not translated to Main Street, where even among the most optimistic of sectors, small manufacturing firms, only 23 percent reported higher earnings while 37 percent reported lower profits (not seasonally adjusted).
- The frequency of reported capital outlays over the past six months was unchanged at 50 percent of all firms; a stubbornly weak reading throughout the recovery. Low interest rates and expensing incentives do not appear to be enough inspiration to spur investment. The percent of owners planning capital outlays in the next three to six months fell 1 point to 20 percent, a recession level reading that has typified the recovery to date. While money is available to borrow, most owners are not interested in a loan to finance the purchase of equipment they will not need until there is marked economic improvement.
- The net percent of owners expecting better business conditions in six months was a negative 15 percent, down 4 points and 25 percentage points lower than January. A path to economic recovery is clearly not visible to many small-business owners.
Today’s report is based on the responses of 1,817 randomly sampled small businesses in NFIB’s membership, surveyed throughout the month of July.
(Seasonally Adjusted 1986=100)
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
| 2005 | 103.7 | 103.7 | 102.5 | 99.8 | 100.8 | 100.8 | 101.1 | 100.9 | 100.0 | 103.7 | 101.2 | 101.4 |
| 2006 | 101.1 | 101.5 | 98.0 | 100.1 | 98.5 | 96.7 | 98.1 | 95.9 | 99.4 | 100.7 | 99.7 | 96.5 |
| 2007 | 98.9 | 98.2 | 97.3 | 96.8 | 97.2 | 96.0 | 97.6 | 96.3 | 97.3 | 96.2 | 94.4 | 94.6 |
| 2008 | 91.8 | 92.9 | 89.6 | 91.5 | 89.3 | 89.2 | 88.2 | 91.1 | 92.9 | 87.5 | 87.8 | 85.2 |
| 2009 | 84.1 | 82.6 | 81.0 | 86.8 | 88.9 | 87.9 | 86.5 | 88.6 | 88.8 | 89.1 | 88.3 | 88.0 |
| 2010 | 89.3 | 88.0 | 86.8 | 90.6 | 92.2 | 89.0 | 88.1 | 88.8 | 89.0 | 91.7 | 93.2 | 92.6 |
| 2011 | 94.1 | 94.5 | 91.9 | 91.2 | 90.9 | 90.8 | 89.9 |
Index Components
| Index Component | Seasonally Adjusted Level | Change from Last Month | |
| Plans to Increase Employment | 2% | -1 | |
| Plans to Make Capital Outlays | 20% | -1 | |
| Plans to Increase Inventories | -3% | 0 | |
| Expect Economy to Improve | -15% | -4 | |
| Expect Real Sales Higher | -2% | -2 | |
| Current Inventory | 0% | 1 | |
| Current Job Openings | 12% | -3 | |
| Expected Credit Conditions | -11% | -1 | |
| Now a Good Time to Expand | 6% | 2 | |
| Earnings Trend | -24% | 0 | |
| Total Change | -8 |
SUMMARY
LABOR MARKETS
Last month, 12 percent (seasonally adjusted) of the owners added jobs, but 14 percent reduced employment, leaving us with a net negative 2 percent of firms adding jobs in July. The remaining 74 percent of owners made no net change in employment, suggesting that firms are holding steady but not planning to grow any time soon. While an improvement from June, job creation still remains solidly negative. Twelve percent (seasonally adjusted) reported unfilled job openings, a disappointing 3 point decline from June. Over the next three months, 10 percent plan to increase employment (down 1 point), and 11 percent plan to reduce their workforce (up 4 points), yielding a seasonally adjusted net 2 percent of owners planning to create new jobs, down 1 point from June. The poor recovery in the jobs numbers is a result of very low housing starts activity and lagging expenditures on ‘services’, both labor intensive industries dominated by small firms. Housing starts show little hope for much job creation in construction in the near future and the most recent reports on consumer spending show continued weakness, with retail sales falling. Without sales, there is little reason to expand. And with Washington politics being as they are, there is plenty of reason to remain uncertain.
CAPITAL SPENDING
The frequency of reported capital outlays over the past six point months was unchanged at 50 percent of all firms, an historically weak reading that has persisted for most of the recovery. The percent of owners planning capital outlays in the next 3 to 6 months fell 1 point to 20 percent, a recession level reading that has typified the recovery to date. Six percent characterized the current period as a good time to expand facilities (seasonally adjusted), up 2 points but 2 points lower than January. The net percent of owners expecting better business conditions in six months was a negative 15 percent, down 4 points, and 25 percentage points lower than January. Twenty-three (23) percent report “poor sales” as their top business problem. Uncertainty is the enemy, and there is plenty of it to convince owners (and consumers) to be cautious (consumer confidence measures weakened in July).
INVENTORIES AND SALES
The net percent of all owners (seasonally adjusted) reporting higher nominal sales over the past three months lost 1 percentage point, falling to a net negative 8 percent, more firms with sales trending down than up, but still the 3rd best reading in 42 months – a sign of how difficult the recovery has been. The net percent of owners expecting higher real sales fell 2 points to a net negative 2 percent of all owners (seasonally adjusted), 15 points below January’s reading. This is bad news for hiring and inventory investment. A net negative 13 percent of all owners reported growth in inventories (seasonally adjusted), a 1 point improvement from June but double the March reading. Although overall firms are reasonably satisfied with stocks, there are still a large number of firms in “liquidation” mode. For all firms, a net 0 percent (up 1 point) reported stocks too low, a “satisfied” reading based on survey history. Stocks are not excessive, but with rather pessimistic sales expectations, no need to order more. Plans to add to inventories remained unchanged at a net negative 3 percent of all firms (seasonally adjusted), consistent with weak sales expectations and a poor economic outlook.
INFLATION
Eighteen (18) percent of the NFIB owners reported raising their average selling prices in the past three months (up 2 points), compared to 24 percent who reported price reductions (down 1 points). Seasonally adjusted, the net percent raising selling prices was 7 percent, down 3 points and half the rate observed in May. The push on prices from Main Street is apparently easing but is still positive. Seasonally adjusted, a net 19 percent plan price hikes, up 4 points. If accomplished, the inflation measures will rise.
PROFITS AND WAGES
Reports of positive earnings trends were unchanged at a net negative 24 percent of all owners, not a pretty picture, but the best reading in 43 months. Profits are getting some support from rising prices and some improvement in sales trends, but it isn’t much. Six percent reported reduced worker compensation and 16 percent reported gains yielding a seasonally adjusted net 10 percent reporting higher worker compensation, a 2 point gain. A seasonally adjusted 6 percent plan to raise compensation in the coming months, down 1 point from June.
CREDIT MARKETS
Four percent reported financing as their #1 business problem, so for the overwhelming majority, “credit supply” is not a problem. Ninety-two (92) percent reported that all their credit needs were met or that they were not interested in borrowing. Eight percent reported that not all of their credit needs were satisfied, and 51 percent said they did not want a loan (13 percent did not answer the question and might be presumed to be uninterested in borrowing as well). Thirty (30) percent of all owners reported borrowing on a regular basis, up 1 point and only 2 points above the record low.
COMMENTARY
It is hard to think of anything that happened in July that would make owners more optimistic. The second quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth report was abysmal (1.3%) and Q1 was revised from 1.9% to 0.4%. Indeed, the government reported that the entire recession period was even worse that we thought. The decline in GDP was revised to -5.1%, one full point worse than previously estimated.
Congress did not come up with a budget plan by the time the month ended, and the likes of Paul Krugman (NYT July 30) continued highly partisan assaults on the Republicans. His claim that high tax rates were responsible for the surpluses in the late 1990s is pure political bunk (many Democrats claim this). I thought it was the outrageous levels of capital gains tax revenues from the DotCom bubble and the record employment levels that resulted from the Y2K/Telecom investment boom, along with a Republican controlled Congress that yielded the surpluses. Maybe the Administration can magically concoct another Y2K event in the calendar. Even small business capital spending hit record levels in that investment boom.
Mr. Krugman also blames people who want government spending curtailed for holding us hostage in raising the debt ceiling. More likely the reverse is true, it is those who will not consider curtailing the reach of government that will not agree to a deal. They are holding sensible people hostage to their view of a larger government at the expense of small business owners. There is no limit to the amount of private income Congress will spend on its pet project – mostly designed to keep them in elected office.
The July survey anticipates slow growth for the remainder of the year, high unemployment rates, inflation rates that are too high and little progress on job creation. It seems for all the activity in Washington, D.C…they have done nothing but create a sizeable helping of anxiety, exactly what we don’t need.
The Coming Arab Renaissance
Arabs are learning to solve their own problems. For the first time in more than 500 years, the convulsions rippling across the Arab world cannot be blamed on Ottoman conquest, European imperialism, American hegemony, or Israeli bullying. As unpredictable as the current situations in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and other Arab states remain, we must remember that having had perhaps the worst possible leaders, their societies will very likely be better off in the medium and long term because their governance is for the first time becoming an inclusive arena — both nationally and regionally. The smartest thing the West can do is to help them help themselves.
From the time that Gamal Abdel Nasser took hold of Egypt in 1954 to Muammar al-Qaddafi’s charismatic coup in Libya in 1969, a generation of leaders came to power riding the wave of anti-colonial Arab sentiment. But decades of post-colonial entropy and decay have culminated in collapse. The Arab world is now graduating from anti-colonial to anti-authoritarian revolutions.
Beyond the toppling of corrupt regimes and the formation of new political orders, a new Arabism is coalescing, one that is truly pan-Arab in that it has little need for the insecure nationalism of the
Nasserite era. It derives its strength instead from genuinely trans-Arab phenomena such as satellite television channels and the younger generation’s demand for more accountable governance. These movements are truly borderless, with Al Jazeera largely equal opportunity in its shaming of Arab autocrats — with the notable exception of Bahrain’s — and young activists training together across the region to successfully foment the current uprisings. As Al Jazeera director-general Wadah Khanfar declared at the recent TED conference in California, “The youth … are guarding the transformation.… These people are much more wiser than not only the political elite, [but] even the intellectual elite.… The youth in the Arab world are much more wiser and capable of creating the change than the old — including the political and cultural and ideological old regimes.” Indeed, Al Jazeera, long shunned in the West, is finally being acknowledged as a force for openness, debate, and progress. American households are demanding, and getting, the channel via DirecTV.
The Arab League’s backing of a no-fly zone in Libya and its ongoing consideration of peacekeeping forces for Palestine and Lebanon are striking examples of a meaningful transnational Arab political sphere coming into being. Even ruthless intrusions like Saudi Arabia’s sending of forces into Bahrain to suppress the swelling street protests are evidence that Arabs cannot continue simply to rejoice in their neighbors’ suffering and instead see their collective stability on the line.
The next great step toward a new Arab renaissance will come through physically overcoming the region’s arbitrary political borders, most of which derive from European colonial callousness. As the European Union itself demonstrates, the only way to achieve genuine collective security and a political-economic order greater than the sum of its parts is to physically build it.
The Arab realm’s last period of borderless coexistence was under Ottoman suzerainty, but despite their inchoate rule the Ottomans also built vital infrastructural linkages such as the Hejaz Railway, which traveled from Istanbul to Medina and even had an offshoot to Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea. Today, the Hejaz rail line lies in tatters due to lack of investment and rigid border policies.
Yet no greater step could be taken to alleviate Arabs’ economic and political woes than investment in cross-border infrastructure. A new pan-Arab rail network could connect Tripoli to Cairo to Amman to Baghdad, and Damascus to Dubai. Remember that the stunningly massive granite columns and marble baths of the majestic Roman port city of Leptis Magna (just east of Tripoli in present-day Libya) were largely imported overland on roads all the way from Aswan in ancient Egypt. (There was, then, something sensible to Qaddafi’s symbolic bulldozing of Libya’s border fence with Egypt in 1974.) More pipelines and canals could connect oil-rich and low-population states with poor, heavily populated ones. Where borders are straight and arbitrary, these fluid and deliberately curvy lines — railways, pipelines, and water channels — will be the necessary and natural consequence of the opening of Arab societies to the logic of globalization.
The recent launch of the New Palestine Party — whose explicit platform is to implement the Rand Corporation’s proposal for an infrastructure “Arc” to unite the West Bank and Gaza into a viable and independent state — is a visceral reminder of how fundamental territorial realignments must be made to overcome political division and economic stagnation. Independence without infrastructure is futile.
About Me
Allan Austin is a business and strategic development executive consultant. His latest challenge is making social media mainstream. The physicist, Neils Bohr said, “A mind stretched to new dimensions never snaps back.” Allan stretches minds. Read more...
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