Saturday, December 5, 2009
Did Obama Lie About Afghanistan Troop Withdrawal?
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Commentary
It's Cenk's fault that he's in the hole he's in now. I warned against Obama before the election and during the "honeymoon period" where people said I was being unfair.
He has no record of changing laws or even attempting to fight them in congress, and now he's supposed to start it? He was against universal health care from the start. What you got was exactly what you paid for if you paid attention from the start. Now is the fun time to tell all my friends, I told you so.
Health care has been a no go, he had a second bush style bail out, and he is escalating a war that frankly I haven't bought and makes me wonder if we should be there at all.
Just because I'm not against it doesn't mean I'm for it and if he had good reasons to escalate the war then he should have laid them out logically and coherently and I would have been swayed easily.
We are paying the price of ignorance because of all the misinformed voters who went to the ballot box with their heart instead of their mind.
We wonder now why from Kindergarten all the way through College we're told to think critically and yet even with all those years we lack that component in us.
Blame the Media, Blame Education, Blame Economics, or Blame the strong political parties but at the end of the day we all have to blame ourselves. For what? For failing to stop others from manipulating large portions of our society.
Friday, December 4, 2009
US and Russia pledge nuclear missile treaty soon
US and Russia pledge nuclear missile treaty soon
 Russia and the US reached an outline arms agreement in July |
The US and Russia say they want a new nuclear arms treaty to enter force at soon as possible, after failing to agree a successor to the Start I pact.
The nations uphold the "spirit" of the 1991 Cold War-era treaty despite its end, the US and Russian presidents said in a joint statement.
Talks on a new accord are expected to continue after the treaty expires. at midnight on Friday.
Russia's foreign ministry said "intense efforts" were ongoing on a new treaty.
US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, agreed in July that a new treaty should bring deep cuts in nuclear warheads.
 |  It is confusing that Start and Sort run concurrently  Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent |
Washington has indicated it would like an interim agreement to come into force until a new treaty is negotiated.
The Start I agreement was signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush senior in the final days of the Soviet Union. It led to deep cuts in nuclear arsenals on both sides.
The BBC's Tom Esslemont, in Moscow, says that in spite of frenetic diplomatic activity and the "reset" of relations between the two sides it was always going to be difficult for a replacement arms control treaty to come into force before Friday's deadline.
Kremlin sources appear optimistic that something can be agreed while President Obama is in Europe next week to receive his Nobel Peace Prize.
But the details of the new, complex agreement have not been finalised. It will also need to be ratified in both parliaments, and that could take months, our correspondent says.
Under the joint understanding signed in July, deployed nuclear warheads will be cut to below 1,700 on each side within seven years of a new treaty - a huge cut on Soviet-era levels.
In a joint statement, the US and Russian presidents said on Friday: "We express our commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the Start treaty following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enter into force at the earliest possible date."
GOP Beg For Mercy From Al Franken
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Commentary
What a joke. This amendment is a nothing but pure justice, equality, and good. To fight against it is to fall to your own doom. Since when does America not protect half it's population from rape?
Our Justice System > Binding Arbitration.
Poll: U.S. Isolationism at Historic High
Posted by David Paul Kuhn | Email This | Permalink | Email Author
The United States has taken a turn toward isolationism likely unseen in the post War World II era, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center and historic Gallup polling.
For the first time in more than four decades a plurality, 49 percent, believe the United States should “mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,” Pew reported Thursday; only 44 percent of Americans' disagree.
Therefore, half the nation has turned inward at the very moment President Obama has ordered 30,000 more troops into the Afghan war zone.
A separate look at Gallup polling reveals how unique the Pew result is in the post-war era. Isolationism was the prevailing strain of U.S. thought following World War I. But Americans' views were reshaped with the United States rise as the world's dominate superpower following the second world war. In 1954, Gallup found that a majority, 53 percent, considered themselves an “internationalist” while only 13 percent said they were an “isolationist.”
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Commentary
I think isolationist is the wrong word to use here. That term seems more aptly applied when discussing people's ideas with restricting or diving groups of people up into groups.
That or isolating ones self from the world and not caring about their affairs.
Our issue seems to be that we care but we don't want to meddle. Meddling when unnecessary is a bad thing and we've been doing it for a while since Vietnam.
The only good that has ever come of it was the fall of the Soviet union, but that would have likely happened anyways thanks to Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Learning to love forest fires in Yosemite National Park
Learning to love forest fires in Yosemite National Park
| By Peter Bowes BBC News, Yosemite National Park |
Peter Bowes met Cpt. Steve Shoemaker, who is in charge of a water-dropping helicopter in San Diego.
When southern California is consumed by fire, the state employs an arsenal of equipment and manpower to battle the inferno. The key priority is to save lives and homes.
An increasingly familiar image of America's Golden State is of water-bombing aircraft dousing the flames as they lick around million-dollar mansions on the hillsides.
But in Yosemite National Park, in central California, fire is viewed differently. The forest needs to burn to survive, although fire was once thought to be an enemy of the region's giant sequoia trees.
People used to think that the park's beautiful trees needed to be protected from fire, according to Gus Smith, a fire ecologist.
|  I think that we need to see more fire and the benefits of fire Gus Smith |
"Fire looks destructive and dangerous and would kill organisms made out of wood," he says.
For decades, through public service messages, people were encouraged to believe that all fires were bad.
Aggressive measures were taken to fight fires, since the perception was that the flames were a wholly negative force in the national park.
The Smokey Bear campaign, which started in 1944, promoted the message: "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires."
Using colourful posters, it was an attempt by the US forest service to educate Americans about the dangers of forest fires.
'Decades of fuel'
But scientists have come to realise that years of suppressing fire in Yosemite prevented the trees from reproducing.
Excluding fire from the ecosystem allowed leaves and other vegetation to build up around the trees. The litter stopped seeds from germinating in exposed soil and a dense canopy of foliage blocked the sunlight from reaching the forest floor.
 Some of the forest's plants benefit from the regular burn |
"I think that we need to see more fire and the benefits of fire," says Mr Smith.
"Without fire we already know the forest gets too dense with trees. When they get too dense, as the litter builds up more and more, you end up with more and more fuel, decades and decades and of fuel.
"We know that the longer period of time between fires, there's more fuel, fires are burning hotter these days, but if we have frequent fires, it consumes those fuels, and then fire can never be this great destructive force."
Forest management techniques have changed in recent years.
Fires are often deliberately started, under controlled conditions, to burn away the excess debris on the forest floor.
Thinning out the vegetation also means that when a fires does break out, it cannot turn into a massive inferno.
When fires burn in Yosemite they are usually started by lightning strikes. The flames are rarely above a metre high and they move relatively slowly through the forest.
"In the lower elevations, where we have excluded fire for decades, we have started fires ourselves under very tight controls - prescribed conditions to try to mimic the natural fire regime," explains Dr Jan van Wagtendonk of the US Geological Survey's Yosemite Field Station.
|  We have smoke in the valley, but without that smoke, we don't have a healthy forest Gary Wuchner |
"We do that under those very tight prescriptions of air temperature, relative humidity, moisture content and wind speed.
"But also, because we're dealing with decades of accumulated fuels, very often the fires that we set are not as hot or as intense or severe as the natural fire regime.
"Our goal is to bring back the fuels and forest structure to the point where we can allow natural fires to burn," says Dr Wagtendonk.
Whether or not to set fires poses a dilemma for the forest's managers. It also highlights the competing values of visitors and ecologists.
"We have smoke in the valley, but without that smoke, we don't have a healthy forest," says Gary Wuchner, fire information and education manager for Yosemite National Park.
They are constantly balancing the needs of nature to what visitors expect, he says.
"It's tough for our public affairs office to say; 'I understand you're having a wedding today but we're also burning the meadow today.' We have a balance there and it's a tough one to strike," explains Mr Wuchner.
Limited resources
In 2001 Smokey Bear's message was modified to: "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires."
 Scientists say they are learning how to preserve that vasts forests |
The new mantra makes the distinction between wildfires, which are unwanted, unplanned and damaging, and forest fires which can often be beneficial.
Fine-tuning the message can be difficult when images of southern California burning are so frequently seen in the media and resources are stretched to the limit.
All methods cost money but Mr Smith believes the key is using a variety of methods to tackle and prevent the fires.
"I believe we need a toolbox that's bigger than just protection and suppression," he says.
Michael Moore & Feingold Slam Obama's Afghanistan Plan
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Commentary
The fight comes to Obama after his big decision. Again I'm still unsure what the right choice is to make but Michael makes an amazing case for not escalating the war. Plus all the drone attacks that killed innocent people completely tainted America's name in Afghanistan.
Senator Sanders Unfiltered: Where's the Fed?
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Commentary
Speak the Truth Senator, Speak the truth. No commentary needed my friend, you've said everything I needed to and then some.
Break the banks, make them too small to care instead of too big to fail.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
US approves 13 embryonic stem cell lines for research
US approves 13 embryonic stem cell lines for research
 Many scientists believe stem cells hold great promise for new treatments |
US regulators have approved 13 new lines of human embryonic stem cells for use in scientific research.
They are the first batches of embryonic stem cells - the building blocks of the body - that have been made available to US researchers in almost a decade.
The move comes after President Barack Obama eased restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.
Another 96 lines could soon be approved if they meet the ethical guidelines unveiled in July, US scientists said.
Scientists hope to harness the cells to treat a variety of diseases, including injuries, cancer and diabetes.
Ethical tests
"I am happy to say that we now have human embryonic stem cell lines eligible for use by our research community under our new stem cell policy," said Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health.
Embryonic stem cells come from days-old embryos and can morph into any type of cell in the body.
Each embryo yields one stem cell line - a family of cells which can be replicated indefinitely in a laboratory.
But their use in scientific research is controversial. Opponents say culling the cells is unethical, as it destroys the human embryo.
Under former President George W Bush, federal funding was limited to about 60 stem cell lines created from embryos destroyed prior to August 2001.
Scientists say the new lines were created in ways that made them far better candidates for successful research.
The US government unveiled ethical guidelines for the research in July, requiring full parental consent and limiting scientists to using existing embryos that would otherwise be destroyed.
In keeping with the guidelines, the 13 newly-approved lines were created using private money from leftover embryos at fertility clinics.
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Commentary
With IPS cells available no one really needs embryonic stem cells anymore.
Here is the problem with them, and before we continue, I have no ethical issues with using them.
Scientifically there are some problems:
- 1) Whatever you build with these stem cells, "building blocks", will be rejected eventually by the recipient who received these cells from a donor.
- 2) The main test for an embryonic stem cell is their ability to create tumors. This is an inherent problem and can not be eliminated. It increases the risk a patient will one day be given cancer using embryonic treatment.
- 3) IPS cells, also known as Induced Pluripotent Stem cells, do exactly what stem cells do without any of the above problems.
Embryonic stem cells are a thing of the past. If I honestly felt we needed them, I'd use them. I.P.S cells on the other hand are the wave of the future. With less problems and more solutions, I.P.S cells will be more helpful in medicine and treatments as a whole.
Pioneering money management in Bangladesh's slums
Pioneering money management in Bangladesh's slums
| By Caroline Bayley Producer, In Business, Radio 4 |
Ishrat Jahan picks her way deftly through Geneva Camp, a Dhaka slum housing former refugees from the war of independence - supporters of Pakistan who were left behind when Bangladesh gained its freedom in 1971.
Avoiding festering open sewers and impatient rickshaw drivers, she leads the way along the path between rows of tiny shops, selling eye-catching fabric, garish decorations and fried food.
Ishrat Jahan is a collector for SafeSave, a small microfinance organisation offering savings and loans to people in Dhaka's slums.
For the last 10 years, she has visited her 240-odd clients every day except Fridays. She turns into a small alley, festooned with washing strung between the one-roomed huts, and pulls back a tatty pink curtain.
Rani has lived here for 20 years, and today is paying the equivalent of just under 10p into her savings account.
So far, she has saved about £25 in Bangladeshi taka, and will use the money to buy new clothes for the Eid religious festival.
The transaction is entered into a handheld computer and Rani's passbook updated.
Pioneering
SafeSave was started by Stuart Rutherford 13 years ago.
A former British aid worker, he had watched the emergence of pioneering microfinance organisations such as Grameen Bank, founded by Nobel Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus.
| LISTEN TO THE PROGRAMME  In Business Radio 4, Thursday 3 December at 2030 GMT and Sunday 6 December at 2130 GMT. Or download the podcast. |
Its priority has always been to lend small amounts of money to poor women in rural villages who wanted to set up small businesses.
This is the concept on which microlending has been built and imitated around the world.
However, Mr Rutherford believes that the very poor should not be forced to borrow solely to set up a business.
"We're perfectly happy if people use their loans to deal with health problems, to deal with other kinds of emergencies, to invest in education, to buy a sack of rice to keep eating," he says.
"Because we recognise that if you are poor, you have severe money management problems."
He wants to encourage savings, as well as loans, and says the way to do this is to visit clients daily because their incomes are so irregular.
"Unless you have a frequent opportunity to set aside a sum of money, no matter how small, you won't be able to maximise the amount you save," he argues.
Likewise, the daily collector's visit encourages clients to make regular small repayments on their loans.
Innovation
The interest rate on SafeSave's loans is high by Western standards - 36% - and slightly above the Bangladeshi Grameen Bank rates. Daily visits add to administration costs, although labour is cheap in Bangladesh, and, like Ishrat Jahan, most collectors live and work alongside their clients.
 Mamata Rani has saved £230 to help support her business |
But 70km north-east of Dhaka, across the river from the town of Kaparcia, SafeSave's management team is pioneering a new product at its rural equivalent, known as "Shohoz Shonchoy", or "easy saving".
Here, they offer clients an interest-free loan with built-in savings. It may sound too good to be true, but in the village of Hrishipara, loans are paid back more quickly than in the city.
Mr Rutherford says they found people in the slums still struggled to build up large sums for emergencies, so with the interest-free loan, they insist that the client immediately sets aside one-third of the amount in a savings account.
"If your main constraint to saving is lack of liquidity," he says, "then we will give you the liquidity out of which you can save."
The loan provides money to cover immediate spending needs and a lump sum to start saving. As long as the client has an outstanding loan, no interest will be paid on the savings.
Interest
Once the loan has been paid off, interest is paid on the savings balance.
"The problem if you are very poor is finding big sums," says Mr Rutherford.
"So we give them a big sum which they put into savings as a big sum, and they pay off the loan in tiny sums - two taka, five, ten, 20 taka until the loan is paid off and then they take another one."
 Millions of Bangladeshi women have benefited from microfinance loans |
Mamata Rani has a Grameen Bank loan and savings account.
Two years ago, she also took out an interest-free loan with savings from Shohoz Shonchoy.
She has used the money to build up her business making cardboard boxes to sell to local sweet shops.
Cartons dry on the green flood-plain below her mud hut, while inside, finished boxes are stacked ready to be taken to the town. She has now paid off the loan and accumulated savings of almost 23,000 taka, about £230.
There are millions of Mamata Ranis, poor Bangladeshi women benefiting from microfinance projects.
And within Bangladesh, there are hundreds of microfinance organisations, from the giants such as Grameen to minnows like SafeSave, which has just 15,000 clients.
SafeSave started with donor money, but can now finance its loan book from its deposits. Others have copied its model in the slums, but Stuart intends to keep the organisation small.
His interest-free loan and savings product will soon be piloted by another organisation in Kenya.
Risk
Micro-lending has grown sharply since its inception in Bangladesh in the 1970s, and with so many organisations offering poor people loans, some fear it could lead to over-indebtedness.
 Muhammad Yunus says microfinance has benefited the wider economy |
Another microlending pioneer, Fazle Hasan Abed - who runs BRAC, the biggest microlender in Bangladesh with eight-and-a-half million borrowers - worries about the multitude of lenders.
"You will find the same person is probably borrowing from three organisations and getting themselves into over-borrowing," he says.
He compares it to the credit card debt problems faced in the West, and wants microfinance organisations to set up credit bureaux, so they know exactly how much clients are borrowing from other lenders.
"It could become problematic - the kind of problems you have faced in your societies with credit cards," he adds, "so this can happen in Bangladesh too."
But Grameen Bank founder Prof Yunus is confident that the benefits of growing access to microfinance outweigh the risks:
"You can say they're hooked. At the same time, you say you have reached them for financial services," he says.
"So if financial services are something they need, they keep coming back so that they can change their world, change their life, change their children's lives."
He argues that the microlending boom has had positive benefits for the wider economy.
"In Bangladesh, it is the bottom people who are bringing dynamism into the economy.
"It is a dramatic change in Bangladeshi society in the last 25 years."
In Business will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, 3 December at 2030 GMT and repeated on Sunday, 6 December at 2130 GMT. Or download the podcast.Source
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Commentary
I read about Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen bank a while ago. He shows the power of the bottom and how it rewards you if you reward it.
Micro-finance is the empowering of the impoverished. If you give them power they will return it back 10 fold. A thankful customer who feels indebted is a faithful one.
A faithful customer is worth their weight in gold.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Harry Potter actors look to the future - My Take on the Series and Movies as a Whole
Harry Potter actors look to the future
Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint talk Half-Blood Prince, Hallows and the future
| By Tim Masters Entertainment correspondent, BBC News |
With filming on the final two parts of the Harry Potter series under way, the young actors who have grown up on the set and become global superstars are now considering their next steps.
We asked them whether it would be a case of deathly silence after the Deathly Hallows...
 The child actors were cast in the summer of 2000 |
As you might expect, Daniel Radcliffe - who has kept busy on both film and stage projects in between playing Harry - laughs off the idea that the rest of his life might be an anti-climax.
"No man, I've got kids to have yet!" he says excitedly, despite nursing a sore throat on the cold, cavernous film set at Leavesden Studios in Hertfordshire.
"They're going to keep me busy if I do - which I hope I do at some point. I'm not planning on it soon - that's one of the things I'm really looking forward to doing."
The 20-year-old adds: "What's been cool is that I've been here when a lot of people here have had kids while on the film, and I've seen the change it's made in their life and how amazing it is."
His co-star Rupert Grint, 21, who plays Ron Weasley, says he has no doubt that Harry Potter will be the "biggest thing" he will be involved with.
"I make the most of it and enjoy it," he says.
Tom Felton on filming the saga's final films, what his future holds and how he has never seen Star Wars
"It is quite scary when this all ends because we're stepping out into the real world - it is quite a bubble I suppose, we've had these films to do every year and it's become quite a routine.
"I'm definitely going to miss it. It's been a great 10 years. I am quite keen to move on and see what else is out there."
Grint, speaking at the launch of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince DVD, says he is interested in more parts like the "bad boy" role he gets to play in his forthcoming movie Cherrybomb.
The coming-of-age drama premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, but failed to find a distributor.
Fans set up an online petition for its release, and producers now say a distribution deal has been signed, and the Belfast-set movie should be in cinemas in 2010.
|  I think it's just because I'm ginger they throw me into the frame Rupert Grint |
"It's nice because it's so different," says Grint. "That's what attracted me to it - it wasn't really a conscious thing to move away.
"It was really fun to be on a different set and experience a whole different budget - it was quite a shock. I really enjoyed it and hopefully I will get to do more films like that."
He dismisses press speculation that he's in the running to play Prince Harry in a film called The Spare that's due to shoot next year.
"I think it's just because I'm ginger they throw me into the frame, but I haven't really heard anything about it," he says.
Actress Emma Watson, 19, who plays Hermione Granger, began studying at an American university in September, though she hasn't ruled out acting projects out of term-time.
Fellow actress Bonnie Wright, 18, has just begun a degree course in film and TV in London. She has played Ron's sister Ginny Weasley since the first film in 2001.
|  Personally I think a greater project is out there Bonnie Wright |
Speaking on the set at Leavesden, she points out that she's spent more than half of her life working on Harry Potter.
"Although it has been massive," she says, "personally I think a greater project is out there. That's what makes me keep working, knowing that there's this project out there that I'm yet to do."
David Heyman, who has produced all of the Harry Potter films, is confident that the global stars that he's helped create will go on to further success.
"They've had a good structure here and at home, they are pretty solid kids," he says.
"They are going to go and have great fun - they are going to have great success. I'm sure they will thrive."
He adds: "I think they all know I'm here to support them, and if they ever want a chat I'll be there for them.
"Ultimately they've got to leave the fold and take flight - and I know they will."
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is out on DVD on 7 December
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Commentary
I loved the books and re-read the 3rd, 4th, and 5th books to get ready for the 6th and 7th ones. What's funny is i started by reading the 3rd book after seeing the first 2 movies. Then I read the 4th book and then the 5th. After a while I went back and read the first and second book and decided to reread the series continuing onwards to prepare for the newest 6th book.
The movie that is truest to the books is probably the 2nd one, Chamber of Secrets, which follows the book almost to the tee. My favorite book is probably the 4th one, Goblet of Fire. That's really the climax of the story and where it becomes an adult book.
My favorite movie was probably the 3rd one because of the overall feel and the creepiness we really don't witness again in any of the other movies.
The actors are great and the best actor hands down is the one who plays Ron; Rupert Grint I think his name is. He feels so natural on camera and everything seems so unscripted.
My favorite character in the series is probably either Hermione or Hagrid. Snape was definitely the most interesting one.
I hope all these actors do really well in the future and I wish them all the best. I also hope the writer of Harry potter starts up a new series that has nothing to do with Harry or magic.
Obama 'to lay out Afghan exit plan for US troops'
Obama 'to lay out Afghan exit plan for US troops'
 Support for the Afghan mission among the US public has been falling |
President Barack Obama is to tell the American people that US troops will start to leave Afghanistan within three years, a senior official has said.
He will outline the rough withdrawal plan in a speech to the nation, when he will also announce a rapid six-month deployment of 30,000 extra troops.
Mr Obama has also asked Nato allies to send up to 10,000 more combat soldiers.
But France has refused, while Germany postponed any decision. The UK has agreed to send 500 more soldiers.
In Tuesday evening's much-anticipated speech at West Point military academy, Mr Obama will outline how his troop surge will take on the Taliban.
| MARDELL'S AMERICA  The danger for the president is that this middling figure will annoy hawks, while annoying those who think any new build-up is undesirable  |
A senior administration official told AP news agency President Obama would tell the American people that US troops will start leaving Afghanistan "well before" his first term ends in 2012.
The US currently has 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, with foreign forces overall totalling more than 100,000.
A senior Pentagon official told the BBC the new troops would be made up of 9,000 Marines and 21,000 regular soldiers, including trainers.
Mr Obama has reached his deployment decision after more than three months of deliberations and 10 top-level meetings with advisers.
The BBC's Paul Adams in Washington says for all the sense of deeper engagement, this hugely important speech will also be about how the US president intends to get out of Afghanistan.
The rising violence - more than 900 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan - and the chaos that followed August's discredited elections have fanned mounting American opposition to the eight-year-old war.
| OBAMA's SCHEDULE 2100 GMT: Meets Congressional leaders at White House 2230 GMT: Departs for West Point, New York 0100 GMT Weds: Address to the nation 0340 GMT Weds: Arrives back at the White House |
Earlier this year, the US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, warned America risked failure unless troop numbers were increased. He requested 40,000 more soldiers.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told MSNBC on Tuesday: "This is not an open-ended commitment, what we are doing is putting forward a comprehensive strategy and an end-game in Afghanistan."
He said the deployment would be accelerated to "deliver a punch quickly".
The US president has outlined the new military strategy to Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai. He is also thought to have briefed the leaders of Russia, France, Britain, Germany and China.
The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says that while the speech will probably receive a cautious welcome from the Afghan government, many people in the country do not want any more foreign forces.
They say every time America sends more troops the security situation gets worse, and some question why the US is spending billions of dollars on the military - and not on aid and reconstruction.
An unnamed Nato diplomat told AP news agency on Tuesday that President Obama had asked European allies to contribute between 5,000 and 10,000 new troops to Afghanistan.
But President Nicolas Sarkozy's special envoy to Afghanistan told AFP news agency that France had ruled out sending more troops, although he said Paris might send military trainers.
In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference Germany would wait until after a 28 January conference in London on Afghanistan before deciding on any troop increases.
Italy has also said it will increase its force, although without saying by how much.
On Monday, Britain confirmed it was sending 500 more troops, taking the UK's total deployment there to 10,000.
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Commentary
I honestly don't know what the right decision is. On one hand the Afghans don't want us there and believe us to be bullies. On the other hand, realistically we're all that stands in there way between actual anarchy.
On one hand we've bombed hundreds of innocent people with drone attacks and enraged large parts of the country. On the other hand we've helped to stem the tide of the Taliban and train thousands of Afghan security forces.
But one of the most important facts here is that America can not afford the bill for Afghanistan, plain and simple.
So what do we do? Leave a country we're hated in and save billions of dollars we can invest in Healthcare? Stay in a country where we keep order and stability and reap the benefits of our labor maybe 2 decades or more onward?
As my friend once told me, "You don't have to have a position on everything." He's right. You assume you have all the facts in every case which I obviously don't.
On Afghanistan I'm completely clueless as to the answer and steps we should take. Obama's middle of the road approach seems proper and seems to support the Hawks and the Peace lovers.
At least in 2012 we'll be out of both wars and back in our country. Lets hope Iraq and Afghanistan can stand strong like Vietnam did.
Information goes out to play
Information goes out to play | |||||||||
 SOURCE: David McCandless | |||||||||
| Serious information used to be relayed in words, graphs and charts - pictures were just pretty window dressing. That's all changing, says David McCandless. E-mails. News. Facebook. Wikipedia. Do you ever feel there's just too much information? Do you struggle to keep up with important issues, subject and ideas? Are you drowning in data? In this age of information overload, a new solution is emerging that could help us cope with the oceans of data surrounding and swamping us. It's called information visualisation. The approach is simple: apply the rules of visual design to information - make information into images, rather than text. So, instead of listing the mind-boggling billions spent by governments, show them graphically - like The Billion Dollar O Gram image at the top of the page. The image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. They're reported as self-evident facts, when, in fact, they're mind-boggling and near incomprehensible without context. Or, in another example, instead of explaining the connection between say, mercury and the influenza jab, depict it visually.  SOURCE: David McCandless And instead of leaving your data just sitting in a spreadsheet, let it out to play - use it to structure a visual image.
I've spent the last year exploring the potential of information visualisation for my website and a book. I've taken loads of information and made it into simple, colourful and, hopefully, beautiful "visualisations" - bubble charts, concept maps, blueprints and diagrams - all with the minimum of text. I don't just mean data and statistics. I love doing this with all kinds of information - ideas, issues, stories - and for all subjects from pop to philosophy to politics. Personally, I find visualisations great for helping me understand the world and for sifting the huge amounts of information that deluge me every day.
I love information. I want to stay current. I don't want to be under-informed. But I'm busy. Sometimes, I need an instant overview of a situation that I can grasp in a second. But this is not a new subject. Information Design has been around since the 1970s. Pioneers like Yale University design guru Edward Tufte and design agency Pentagram have long known and used its power. But now with the rise of the internet, it's having something of a second birth.
Today, there's huge amounts of data out there. Visualisation helps spot important patterns in this data that might otherwise be missed. Already governments are seeing the potential. The American and Australian governments are fast democratising their data and releasing it for free to the public. As an added incentive, they're offering massive cash prizes for the best visualisations. The UK government plans to follow this example in December by opening up all its data for public perusal. They feel it could improve accountability and transparency.
It may also just be enjoyable to see information, rather than read it. In an endless jungle of websites with text-based content, a beautiful image with a lot of space and colour can be like walking into a clearing. It's a relief. So how is it done? A wide variety of online tools are emerging which can help those without design experience to start playing with visualisation. Wordle is a popular tool [See internet links, above-right, for this and other links]. It allows you to make 'word clouds' out of the most frequent words in a document.
ManyEyes, from IBM, is another great site which auto-generates bubble charts, semantic maps and other types visualisations out of spreadsheets and data that you upload. Beyond the internet, artists and programmers are using information as an artistic material to create amazing pieces of art, films and even real life objects. Leading the charge of this "information art" movement are people like Aaron Koblin who directed Radiohead's generative video House Of Cards, visualisation guru Ben Fry and Marius Watz who creates real life objects out of financial data. Simultaneously, on an even more experimental level, companies are beginning to use information visualisations to overlay or "augment" reality. Data from the web can now be graphically superimposed over a view of a real life space via your phone's camera. When performed in real-time, this creates a mixed or augmented reality. Games companies are already using the technique to hide virtual worlds on top of reality. It's all getting a bit sci-fi, I think all this is a sign of the times. In a subtle but steady way we're all becoming visualisers now. Daily exposure to the internet is creating an incredibly visually literate generation. We're looking at visual design and information visualisation every day. (Or, if you're like me, every minute of every day). So we're used to having, and we're demanding, information in colourful, designed, visual forms. In comparison, reading text like this, in linear paragraphs and columns, can seem pretty dour. Like watching black and white TV. There can be a directness and clarity to visual information that cuts through the noise, the smoke, and the walls of information around us. It can help us zoom in and see what really matters. Or what might be being hidden from us. And that, I think, is beautiful. Information is Beautiful will be published in the UK by Collins in February. It is published as The Visual Miscellaneum in the US by HarperCollins. | |||||||||
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Commentary
I've been looking at visual Data for a long time now and I've enjoyed it tremendously. Here are some great sites to check out if you love visual Data:
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/
http://chartporn.org/
http://www.mint.com/blog/
http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/
http://www.wallstats.com/blog/visualizing-one-billion-dollars/
Wallstats is a very good site and the links above goes to their greatest charts. One shows you where your taxes are going and the other helps you visualize a billion dollars.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/
Gapminder is an AMAZING site where tons of amazing videos of interactive working charts are on display. They even offer their interactive chart for free!
Here is the interactive chart: http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/
Enjoy those sites and keep your eye on the look out for more like the above.
Visual data is the wave of the future.