Nando's "Last Dictator Standing" Pokes Fun at Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe

About time, too! A cute reminder to a dictator who has been in power since February 1980.

Via: http://bouffant.tv/welcome/
"The brand new entertaining spot directed by Dean Blumberg hits a funny nerve by tapping into the spirit of our times. Dean delivers a spot that surprises the viewer with unexpected twists by cleverly capturing the world’s most notorious dictators and making the viewer want to watch the ad again and again to see if they have actually seen and heard right."

The ad opens with a Robert Mugabe lookalike picking up a Muammar Gaddafi place card from an empty dinner table. In a dream sequence the Mugabe actor is seen sitting mournfully in a garden when the deceased Libyan dictator covered his eyes with white-gloved hands, then starts a waterfight with a golden AK-47. Next, he sings karaoke with the late Mao Tse-Tung of China, makes sand angels with Iraq's Saddam Hussein, pushes the swing with South African apartheid leader, Pieter Willem Botha, and in a scene parodying Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio from the Titanic film, he is seen riding on a tank with Uganda's Idi Amin, also deceased. Then the tagline -- "no one should ever have to eat alone so get a Nando 6-pack meal...."  The song in the video is "Those Were The Days" sung by Mary Hopkins.

As you can imagine, this was not received well in Zimbabwe.  BBC reports that Nando's South Africa has pulled the ad due to threats to its staff. Excerpts:

"We've noted with concern the political reaction emanating out of Zimbabwe, including perceived threats against Nando's Zimbabwe's management, staff and customers," Nando's South Africa said in a statement.

"We feel strongly that this is the prudent step to take in a volatile climate and believe that no TV commercial is worth risking the safety of Nando's staff and customers."

Nando's South Africa decided to axe its commercial after Mugabe loyalists from the Chipangano group had called for a boycott and other unspecified punitive action against the company.

"We condemn such adverts because it reduces our president to be someone without values," Chipangano leader Jimmy Kunaka told the BBC's Brian Hungwe earlier this week.

I learn something new everyday. Robert Mugabe has values. LOL!



Related posts:

• Arab Spring Not Done Yet, Who's Next Among the World's "Forever ...|Oct 20, 2011
• Where could #Gaddafi go if he were exiled? Somewhere where he ...|Feb 26, 2011
• Ambassador McGee Slogs on in Fruitcake Bob's Zimbabwe | Diplopundit Jan 29, 2009
• In Zimbabwe, Darkly | Diplopundit |Feb 03, 2009
• Shock and Awe: The Zimbabwe Edition | Diplopundit | Feb 10, 2009
• Where, Oh Where: Secretary Rice's Final Visit | Diplopundit |Dec 21, 2008
• The Zimbabwe Tinderbox | Diplopundit | Jun 06, 2008

Related articles

• Nando's drops 'last dictator' advert following Zimbabwe protest (telegraph.co.uk)
• Nando's axes Mugabe 'dictator' ad (bbc.co.uk)
• Mugabe grilled in South African chicken ad (csmonitor.com)
• Robert Mugabe's militia calls for closure of Nandos food chain (thezimbabwemail.com)

US Embassy Laos: Ambassador Karen Stewart Raps at StreetWave05, I dare you to look away

Video via The Vientiane Times:

See, it's hard to look away; stuck in my head forever now.  A blog pal worried, "Imagine her corridor rap....I mean rep.... now."  A longer and more more fuzzy clip from the US Embassy is here. Can't tell what she is rapping about, unfortunately, as the video in the embassy's YouTube channel contains no description of what this is about.

Ambassador Karen B. Stewart is a career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service.  In July, 2010, President Obama nominated her to be U.S. Ambassador to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, she was confirmed by the Senate on September 29, and presented her credentials to the President of the Lao P.D.R. on November 16.

A native of Florida, Ambassador Stewart joined the Foreign Service as an economics officer in 1977. Her last overseas posting prior to  Vientiane  was as Ambassador to Belarus where she was apparently disliked by Europe's last dictator, and had to return to the U.S. even before the mission in Minsk was shrunk to a skeleton crew.

No, I don't think she performed this rap in Belarus.

And yes, I am extremely worried that some other American ambassador elsewhere is going to try and top this.

Update:
Thanks to Kelly (see comments) for posting the translation of Ambassador Stewart's rap from the embassy's FB page:

"I am really happy and excited. I love music and singing. I rap all the time at the embassy. I've got a pen in my right hand, a mic in my left. Who would believe the Ambassador can rap? I'm the Ambassador, my name is Karen Stewart. My raps are all clean, so the police don't have to check. Who would believe I'm 59 years old? I've got mad rapping skills like a 14 year old!"

I understand that the video uploaded to the QDDR site is actually titled "u-s-ambassador-to-laos-raps-to-teens-about-counterfeit-medicines."

Related articles

• Chicken head - Vientiane, Lao Peoples Dem Rep (travelpod.com)
• let there be laos (mashmollusc.wordpress.com)

First Ever Byte vs. Brain Jeopardy! Competition

To air February 14, 15 and 16


After seven years of research and planning, thousands of hours of testing and over fifty champion-level sparring matches, IBM's Watson is finally ready to face the two greatest Jeopardy! champions in history - Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.  The first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition will air today and the next two days. The grand prize for this competition will be $1 million with second place earning $300,000 and third place $200,000. Rutter and Jennings will donate 50 percent of their winnings to charity, and IBM will donate 100 percent of its winnings to charity. 

IBM's Watson page says that preparing Watson for the Jeopardy! stage posed a unique challenge to the team: how to represent a system of 90 servers and hundreds of custom algorithms for the viewing public.


The result? A dynamic visual avatar based on the smarter planet icon. A speaking voice that clearly pronounces a vast vocabulary. And an answer panel that reveals the system’s top responses and confidence levels. Watch the video IBM - The Face of Watson to find out more about each of these elements.


Last week, PBSNewsHour's science correspondent Miles O'Brien   challenged the machine to a JEOPARDY! duel. Watch Miles, Watson and David Gondek, one of Watson's many creators, face off over unusual animal phobias, presidential tongue twisters and ... laundry detergent ... here.

Related articles

• IBM's Watson To Smash Its Human Opponents On Jeopardy Tonight (crunchgear.com)
• Humans had a good run: Watson to debut on Jeopardy tonight (engadget.com)
• Tonight: Man vs. Machine in Jeopardy Showdown (datacenterknowledge.com)
• Human-Cyborg Matchup on Jeopardy: Ken Jennings vs. The Supercomputer (wired.com)
• IBM's Watson Supercomputer Set to Take on Jeopardy Champs (wired.com)

US Embassy Africa Bombings: ONE guilty verdict out of 286 counts spectacularly sucks!

A case from 12 years ago.  224 murder counts. One guilty verdict. Not for murder. Not for destruction of US property.  The conviction was for "one relatively minor charge of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property by means of an explosive device," according to Reuters.

US Embassy Nairobi Memorial
(used with permission)
Photo Copyright © 2010 Derek Brown

"After deliberating for five days, a jury of six men and six women found Ahmed Ghailani, 36, guilty of conspiracy to damage or destroy U.S. property but acquitted him of multiple murder and attempted-murder charges for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa," according to WaPo.

ABC news has a push back from a senior Administration official saying:

"So, we tried a guy (who the Bush Admin tortured and then held at GTMO for 4-plus years with no end game whatsoever) in a federal court before a NY jury with full transparency and international legitimacy and -- despite all of the legacy problems of the case (i.e., evidence getting thrown out because of Bush-Admin torture, etc,) we were STILL able to convict him and INCAPACITATE him for essentially the rest of his natural life, AND there was not one -- not one -- security problem associated with the trial."  

One guilty verdict is better than none, thank you. But it sucks! DOJ says Ahmed Ghailani faces "a possible life sentence," but heck, with 20 years minimum mandatory sentence, he could also like -- walk in 2030 when he's 56. Or sooner. How does that "incapacitate" him?  He'll be middle age and would still be able to, pardon the bad cliché,  smell the roses. Unlike the 224 folks whose names are carved in marble slabs.

How is it possible to get away with 224 murders? Some days justice just sucks, and spectacularly so.


DOJ's New York Office is out with a press release that must have been hard to write:

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani Found Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court of Conspiring in the 1998 Destruction of United States Embassies in East Africa Resulting in Death
Al Qaeda Terrorist and First Guantanamo Detainee to be Tried In Civilian Court Faces Possible Life Sentence In January

NEW YORK—U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara announced that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was found guilty today for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that took the lives of 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani, 36, a Tanzanian national, and the first detainee held at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba to be tried in a civilian court, was found guilty of conspiring to destroy property and buildings of the United States, following a five-week trial before U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan. Ghailani faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life on this count. Ghailani was acquitted of the remaining counts against him.

“Ahmed Ghailani was today convicted of conspiring in the 1998 destruction of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, causing death as a result,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “He will face, and we will seek, the maximum sentence of life without parole when he is sentenced in January. I want to express my deep appreciation for the unflagging commitment, dedication and talent of the agents who so thoroughly investigated this case and the prosecutors who so ably tried it.”

According to the evidence presented at trial, previous court proceedings in this case, and documents filed in Manhattan federal court:

Ghailani was first indicted on Dec.16, 1998, by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York. In that indictment and subsequent superseding indictments, Ghailani was charged with conspiring with Usama Bin Laden and other members of al Qaeda to kill American nationals and with several related crimes in connection with the twin bombings of Aug. 7, 1998, that destroyed the American Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Ghailani was also charged with 224 individual murder counts for each of the victims of the two embassy bombings.

The evidence at trial showed, among other things, that each of the embassies was attacked by suicide bombers driving large truck bombs packed with approximately 1,000 pounds of TNT. Ghailani purchased the truck as well as tanks of oxygen and acetylene gas that were used in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. He also stored explosive detonators that were used in the bomb at his residence.

The evidence also showed that the day before the bombings, using a fake passport in an assumed name, Ghailani flew from Nairobi, Kenya to Pakistan in a coordinated escape from Africa. Two other al Qaeda operatives, a senior operations leader and an explosives expert who had traveled between Kenya and Tanzania in the weeks before the bombings departed Africa for Pakistan on the same flight as Ghailani. Those operatives were also involved with the bombings.

Ghailani is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 25, 2011, at 11:00 a.m. EST.

Mr. Bharara praised the FBI and the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for their extraordinary work in the investigation of this case. He also thanked the Tanzanian Police for their assistance in the case.

This case is being handled by the Office's Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit with assistance from the Justice Department’s National Security Division. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Farbiarz, Harry A. Chernoff, Nicholas Lewin and Sean S. Buckley are in charge of the prosecution.

Active links added above. The original press release is here.

Related articles

• Detainee Guilty on 1 of 286 Charges (abcnews.go.com)
• Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani cleared of 284 terror charges (guardian.co.uk)
• Gitmo Detainee Guilty on Single Count (online.wsj.com)
• Guantánamo prisoner Ahmed Ghailani cleared of 276 charges (telegraph.co.uk)
• First Guantanamo detainee to face trial is acquitted on all but 1 of 285 terror charges (dailymail.co.uk)
• Ex-Detainee Acquitted on Most Counts in Embassy Attacks (nytimes.com)

Our favorite "Senator from France" Chuck Hagel: still telling it like it is

Image via WikipediaIt's not everyday that we find a politician who is able to keep his/her reputation of candor in office or out.  Hard to keep in office, because politicians pander to their constituents and are afraid to lose their votes; and outside, because they may be after a position here or there and presumably does not want to compromise their appointment prospects with the administration of the day.  But we are happy to see that Chuck Hagel still wear the same stripes, still own the same spots, and have not exchanged his views for political convenience.  And god bless the guy, he still makes sense.

Michael Coleman did an interview with the former Senator for The Washington Diplomat. Quotable quotes below:

“I think we’re in a mess in Afghanistan and I think we’re in a mess in Iraq,” said Hagel, who voted in support of the war in Iraq based on the intelligence assessments and later admitted he regretted his vote.

“Our military has been more valiant and done a better job than we could have ever hoped. But we have put the military in an impossible situation.”

“Look at the facts: No government, less electricity and people want us out,” Hagel pointed out. “Anyway you measure Iraq today I think you’re pretty hard pressed to find how people are better off than they were before we invaded. I think history is going to be very harsh in its judgment — very, very harsh. And I think we’re headed for a similar outcome in Afghanistan if we don’t do some things differently.”

“We are where we are today — going into our 10th year in Afghanistan, our longest war — because we did take our eye of the ball,” he said. “It’s becoming clearer and clearer. We really made some big mistakes during that time. I have never believed you can go into any country and nation build, and unfortunately I think that’s what we’ve gotten ourselves bogged down in.

“You can dance around that issue any way you like, but the fact is that there are billions and billions of dollars we’ve spent and are still spending, over 100,000 troops, and all the assistance we’ve got going in there,” Hagel continued. “It’s nation building. We should not nation build. It will always end in disaster.”

“We became completely disoriented from our original focus,” Hagel charged. “That problem in Afghanistan isn’t going to be solved with 100,000 American troops.”

“We’re sinking down further and further into the bog,” he lamented. “We’re going to have to unwind this because politically it’s not sustainable in the United States.”

“It’s the most combustible area of the world,” Hagel, a former senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained. “You’ve got three nuclear powers [China, India and Pakistan] that all come together at the same border and on the other side you’ve got Afghanistan and Iran. The worst thing we can do is continue to stay bogged down in those areas where we continue to undermine our own objectives.”

“I’ve been called the senator from France and all this stuff,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But I’ve never thought that engagement was appeasement.

 “I’ve always found that engagement is critically important to statecraft,” he added. “That doesn’t mean that engagement is giving things away or appeasement. Engagement is a long way away from negotiation. But it will allow you some time and give you some high ground, some optics, some support worldwide and a dimension to try to assess things from as close to the scene as you can.

 “We say, ‘We’ll show you — we’re not going to talk to you. We’ll penalize you,’” he continued. “Well, it really doesn’t penalize anybody but us because we can’t make good judgments on just what we think. We have to engage.”

“The consequences of the blunder we made and the extenuation of the disaster in Afghanistan is going to play out in a number of ways that will affect our country,” he said. “Start with the Pentagon. Does anybody not think that these two wars have ground our people down? Our generals are saying it — record divorces, record suicides, not to mention the equipment — anyway you calibrate it. Quite frankly, I think there has been so much damage done to the infrastructure of our military and our force structure that it’s going to take a generation to build back.”

He pointedly added: “You can’t run people like machines  — even machines break down.”

Some quarters have actually cited his candor as "biden-nisque" that could cost him a possible position in DOD or DOS.  We don't mind it if he'd suffer from occassional foot in mouth disease -- somebody's gotta tell it like it is. 

Keep going, Chuck! Maybe one day, the somebodies will listen.





Read the whole thing here.

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Mission Accomplished: Iraq gets a $52.1 billion surplus and all we got was a lousy $13.4 trillion debt

A new Government Accountability Office report says that its analysis of Iraqi government data showed that Iraq generated an estimated cumulative budget surplus of $52.1 billion through the end of 2009.

Since 2003, the United States has reported obligating $642 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq and provided about $24 billion for training, equipment, and other services for Iraqi security forces.


GAO believes that Congress should consider Iraq’s available financial resources when reviewing the administration’s fiscal year 2011 budget request and any future funding requests for securing and stabilizing Iraq. Also, GAO recommends that the Departments of State and the Treasury work with the Iraqi government to further identify available resources.

There's more:

According to State and DOD officials, the United States and Iraq have not yet defined their longer-term security relationship. However, the United States and Iraq signed two bilateral agreements in November 2008 that set the stage for Iraq to assume a greater role in providing for its own security and for cooperation between the two countries. The U.S.-Iraq Security Agreement requires the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq by December 31, 2011, and governs their presence in the interim. Within the security agreement, the Iraqi government requests the temporary assistance of U.S. forces to support its efforts to maintain security and stability in Iraq.

According to DOD and State officials, the U.S. and Iraqi governments may amend the security agreement by mutual agreement. Such amendments could include an extension of the withdrawal timetable or an authorization of a residual U.S. force to continue training the Iraqi security forces after 2011.

Excuse me -- I had to this  or I'd be weeping silly here.

Dan Froomkin from HuffPo adds some more details, in case, we suffer from short term memory:

The report makes a direct link between U.S. government spending -- including $642 billion on U.S. military operations there and $24 billion for training and equipping the Iraqi security forces -- and Iraq's cumulative surplus of $52.1 billion through the end of 2009.
[...]
For comparison purposes, Iraq's annual gross domestic product is $65.8 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt has soared from $6.4 trillion to $13.4 trillion since former president George W. Bush invaded Iraq and decided to borrow the money for wars and slash taxes.
[...]
Days after the invasion began, Bush-era deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz famously told Congress that Iraq could "really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."
[...]
The GAO now reports: "Iraq's large oil reserves offer the government the potential to contribute to the country's current and future security and stabilization requirements. Oil revenues account for over 50 percent of the country's gross domestic product and about 90 percent of the government's revenues."

Meanwhile, Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning professor at Columbia University, and Harvard public policy expert Linda J. Bilmes, estimate that the true cost of the Iraq war to American taxpayers is more than $3 trillion.

Active links added above. Continue reading Iraq Posting Massive Surplus Thanks To U.S. Taxpayers

In related news, McClatchy is reporting that "The Obama administration, which has asked Congress to approve $2 billion for training and equipping Iraqi military and police in the 2011 fiscal year, said carrying out the GAO recommendation could put Iraq at financial risk and jeopardize U.S. interests in a country where it's spent, by the report's calculation, $642 billion in military operations since 2003."

Read more here:

Waaaa!   

Related item:
OIG: Iraq Has a Cumulative Budget Surplus, Offering the Potential for Further Cost-Sharing | Sept 13, 2010

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• Iraq has budget surplus, can pay for more of its own defense, GAO report says (latimes.com)
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Dis disturbing summer, so hot and more and it's not even over yet ....

Image via Wikipedia

On June 6, Wired's Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter reported about the arrest of an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks.

"SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged."

Wired also quoted Manning in its report:
“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

A day later, Wikileaks on Twitter writes:

Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.
9:44 AM Jun 7th  via bit.ly

On June 8 , The Daily Beast's Philip Shenon reported about The State Department's Worst Nightmare:

The State Department and American embassies around the world are bracing for what officials fear could be the massive, unauthorized release of secret diplomatic cables in which U.S. diplomats harshly evaluate foreign leaders and reveal the inner-workings of American foreign policy.

It seems like everyone was waiting for the shoe to fall ... and then nothing happens and summer continues to rattle on ...

Rattle ....rattle ...the sprinklers beckon...

• Tea-party hearthrobs.  Heatwaves all over America 
  
• BP's top kill, static kill, and the oil mess in the Gulf 
  
• Russian spy swaps ...
  
• Lindsay Lohan gets jail time.
  
• ShakesPalin's "refudiate" threatens record of GWBush's "strategery" 
• Lebron moves out
  
• Levi and whatshername get back together, reportedly to try on abstinence once more....
  
• Meanwhile, one general gets out and another one goes into Kabul
  
• One ambassador gets out and another waiting to go into Baghdad ....
  
• Packouts ... packouts in the four corners of the globe...
  
• R&Rs up in full swing, homelessness abound while visiting the homeland.....
  
• Damn the airline embargoes, pets and owners not happy-campers...   
  
• Al Qaeda jailbreakers get chance a week after jail was turned over to the Ministry of Justice in Iraq... State Department plans own army, hilos and more...
  
• Unemployment runs out for a bunch of folks.
  
• Congress goes on vacation presumably to places far away from unemployed crowd
  
• Shirley Sherrod loses job one day, gets job offer the next.
  
• Chelsea Clinton's wedding, causes heart burns to non-invitees. Tums still cheaper than shrink.  
  
• Clinton in Pakistan; $7.5 billion Dale Carnegie's aid to win friends and influence people makes the news again  

Another day, another suicide of another returnee from the war.

And July moves morbidly along as one of the highest month for casualties in Afghanistan ....  


Then -- Dana Priest and William Arkin threatened to ruin the rattling summer with their much anticipated investigative piece "Top Secret America"in WaPo.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambiner posted a copy of a memo sent out by Art House, director of communications for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to public affairs officers in the intelligence community about the Washington Post's upcoming series on contractors.

On July 16, The Cable's John Rogin writes that the State Department is bracing for a potentially explosive new feature on the Washington Post website that would publish the names and locations of agencies and firms conducting Top Secret work on behalf of the U.S. government. He reported that "The Diplomatic Security Bureau at State sent out a notice Thursday to all department employees warning them to protect classified information and reject inquiries from the press when the new web feature goes live." The Notice from DS/EX was published in full here.

Despite the headless chickens running around, Top Secret America appeared on July 19, with two other installments to less than shocking reception. Were you surprised to learn about the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or that contractors make a big part of that operation?  The new use of web tools in the presentation of the investigative piece probably grabbed more attention.

That's that.  Folks sigh. Folks go back to barbecue and summer sales ... until ...

Sunday.  Just when we thought the summer heat wave has finally receded, Wikileaks dumped online 75,000 apparently "secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004-2009."  This from about 91,000 documents it reportedly possessed.

Wikileaks was perfectly accessible Sunday but Monday, it was down.  The dedicated page for the documents are available at the Kabul War Diary -- http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/

The website says:
"We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually, in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits."


Are these part of the allegedly 260,000 documents/cables reported earlier or is that the other shoe that is yet to fall?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Whether or not SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland is the source of these documents remain to be seen. That is, if his case/hearing will be opened to the public. The Help Bradley Manning website has already sprung up as well as a Facebook pages here and here.

There is even a Facebook page in 中文(简体) to Bring Home Bradley Manning. In Chinese. 

Now, what do you make of that?

The HBM website includes the charge sheet which cited among other things -- unauthorized disclosures of more than 50 classified United States Department of State cables, exceed authorized access on a SIPRNET on more than 150,000 diplomatic cables and exceed authorized access on a SIPRNET on a classified United States Department of State cable titled “Reykjavik 13" -- at least one cable posted in the WikiLeaks website is allegedly from US Embassy Iceland and titled as such.

Today, the Christian Science Monitors reports that the former chief of Pakistan’s spy agency has derided as “malicious, fictitious, and preposterous” the leaked United States military documents implicating him in a string of attacks against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan: 

Hamid Gul’s name appears no less than eight times in documents leaked Sunday by the online whistle-blower WikiLeaks. In the reports, the retired general and former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from 1987 to 1989 is accused of ordering IED attacks against Afghan and international forces in December 2006 and of plotting to kidnap United Nations staff to use as hostages in exchange for militant prisoners.

“This is utter nonsense,” Mr. Gul says in a telephone interview. Asked to respond to the various WikiLeaks reports in which his name appears, he replied: "Malicious, fictitious, and preposterous – and if this is the condition of US intelligence, then I am afraid it is no wonder they are losing in Afghanistan, and they will lose everywhere they try to poke their nose."
[...]
Gul, however, says that the US itself has orchestrated the latest WikiLeaks exposé to shift attention away from its own failings in Afghanistan. Speaking in an elevated tone and at times furious, he says he believes the US may now use the exposé as a way to force Pakistan's hand on policy in Afghanistan.

Oh, dear ---what's the world coming to?

National Security Advisor General James Jones released a statement on Wikileaks here strongly condemning "the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security."

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) also released the following statement in response to the New York Times story on the leak of classified documents concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan:

"However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent."

And now we have a problem.  There's still a few weeks left of summer.  But the Russian spies are back in Russia singing patriotic songs with Vlad, Lindsay Lohan is still in jail, the BP's thingy seems to be working miles under the sea...

And we're left with dat Mel and Oksana train wreck show. And this leaky mess.   

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• U.S. Soldier Arrested in Wikileaks Probe After Tip From Former Hacker (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)
• The State Department's Worst Nightmare (thedailybeast.com)
• Wikileaks is endangering lives says White House (independent.co.uk)
• Pentagon Says Bradley Manning a Possible Suspect in Afghan Leak (wired.com)
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Ushahidi Haiti: Impressive, Inspiring Effort

Image from Ushahidi Blog

I first posted about Ushahidi in July last year when I was captivated by the TED presentation of Erik Hersman. Ushahidi was used in the Kenyan post-election crisis of 2007-2008 where it became a place online to report incidents of violence via the web and cell phone text messages.

In August, Ushahidi stood up “Alive in Afghanistan” and crowdsourced the elections in the country. 

 Less than 24 hours after the Haiti earthquake struck, Ushahidi Haiti, a quad-lingual site is up and running (English, Spanish, French, Kreyol). An impressive and inspiring effort.  When it was 3 a.m. in Boston and the work was still unfinished, the Nigerian team took over.  The initiative is a joint effort between Ushahidi, UN OCHA/Colombia and the International Network of Crisis Mappers (CM*Net).

According to Ushahidi:  “OCHA/Colombia recently deployed Ushahidi for an earthquake response excercise so we're very grateful for their invaluable contribution to this Haiti deployment. We're completing the customization of the platform as fast as we can. Please follow @Ushahidi on Twitter for updates and help spread the word, especially to colleagues inside Haiti. Please do contact us if you want to help. Our thoughts are with the people of Haiti and with our humanitarian colleagues on the ground.”

There are currently 141 reports in Ushahidi Haiti with a good number looking for Haitian American family members. Some reports require medical assistance like a distressed 80 year old American with broken leg; addresses and phone numbers are provided but very few have been responded to so far. The website has verified several reports on hospitals that are operational, as well as the international airport.

Ushahidi is an open source project that allows users to share information during crises. Ushahidi Haiti tracks the current crisis with a map that can be filtered using the reported locations of emergencies, threats, vital lines/logistics (road blocks, water shortage, power outage), response (medical, search and rescue, shelter, others). It also features a filter for mapping survivors and deaths.  It aggregates tweets, and streams from You Tube and Flick. Ushahidi has previously done 4 major alpha deployments, including the War on Gaza, Vote Report India (to monitor the recent local elections) & Pak Voices (to map incidents of violence in Pakistan).  Ushahidi was also used to track crime in the Atlanta metro area in Atlanta Crime Maps.     

The Huffington Post reports NPR and the New York Times are both looking for ways to integrate the Ushahidi platform to cover the unfolding disaster after the Haitian earthquake.  Check out haiti.ushahidi.com. The Ushahidi team also blogged about their work in Our Efforts in Response to Haiti’s Earthquake. 

I hope the brainiacs at the Consular Affairs Bureau would take a look at this platform for the next crisis which could happen anywhere in over 200 posts worldwide. Note that OCHA/Colombia recently deployed Ushahidi for an earthquake response exercise. This could be an extremely useful addition to post-specific crisis management or table top exercise. Ushahidi could also be used to track incidents in high crime posts like South Africa, El Salvador, or Papua New Guinea.  

Please pass this on to the Secretary’s Sounding Board.

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Huh News! The Man Who Conned the Pentagon

Image via Wikipedia

Aram Roston writes in Playboy.com about The Man Who Conned The Pentagon. I tell you, this is like watching a really bad, bad comedy movie. It’s funny if only it were not too painful to laugh at taxpayer’s money down the drain. Quick excerpts below.

[T]there were no real intercepts, no new informants, no increase in chatter. And the suspicious package turned out to contain a stuffed snowman. This was, instead, the beginning of a bizarre scam. Behind that terror alert, and a string of contracts and intrigue that continues to this date, there is one unlikely character. The man’s name is Dennis Montgomery, a self-proclaimed scientist who said he could predict terrorist attacks. Operating with a small software development company, he apparently convinced the Bush White House, the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies that Al Jazeera—the Qatari-owned TV network—was unwittingly transmitting target data to Al Qaeda sleepers. […] Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte weighed in. What secrets—what embarrassments—could be exposed if Montgomery and Trepp were to depose intelligence and military officials? Negroponte issued a declaration that warned of “serious, and in some cases exceptionally grave, damage to the national security of the United States.” He invoked the state secrets privilege. The judge in the case issued a protective order; the secrets of eTreppid’s government business would remain untold.

Active links added above. Read the whole spectacular story here.

Video of the Week: Pranav Mistry's Trilling SixthSense Technology

The Minority Report comes to life! Spectacular and smashingly exciting - imagine dialing a phone using your palm, or checking out the time in a clock you've just drawn on your wrist! At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop." In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. (Video duration 13:51)

Pranav Mistry is a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT's Media Lab. Before his studies at MIT, he worked with Microsoft as a UX researcher; he's a graduate of IIT. Mistry is passionate about integrating the digital informational experience with our real-world interactions.

Some previous projects from Mistry's work at MIT includes intelligent sticky notes, Quickies, that can be searched and can send reminders; a pen that draws in 3D; and TaPuMa, a tangible public map that can act as Google of physical world. His research interests also include Gestural and Tangible Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, AI, Machine Vision, Collective Intelligence and Robotics.

• Homepage: Pranav Mistry
• Project: Sixth Sense
• Project: Quickies
• Project: TaPuMa
• Project: Inktuitive

From ted.com. The interactive transcript of talk is here.

Updated: 11/23: See Fareed Zakaria’s clip on TED, SixthSense, and India as Innovation Nation.

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Barack Hussein Obama: Nobel Peace Prize 2009

President Barack Obama visits Sunset Lake in Yellowstone National Park on Aug. 15, 2009 (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Oslo, October 9, 2009 –

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges."

* * *

President Obama is the third sitting American President to be awarded the Nobel Peace prize, following Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was awarded the prize in 2002.

See the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates from 1901-2009 here. The video of the announcement is here.

And here is what President Obama says on winning the Nobel Prize:

Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added, "Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective.

I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.

To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century.

Read the full statement here.

US Embassy Jakarta's "Ocean in Focus"

Spectacular Underwater Photos!

"Ocean in Focus" entry entitled "Alien"

via US Embassy Jakarta/Facebook

US Embassy Jakarta’s Facebook page (with fast-growing fans currently at 6,191) has posted the entries to the National Underwater Photography Competition, "Ocean in Focus". Gorgeous underwater photographs! Check them out here.

Video of the Week: Janine Benyus on Biomimicry

Janine Benyus has a message for inventors: When solving a design problem, look to nature first. There you'll find inspired designs for making things waterproof, aerodynamic, solar-powered and more. Here she reveals dozens of new products that take their cue from nature with spectacular results.

In the world envisioned by science author Janine Benyus, a locust's ability to avoid collision within a roiling cloud of its brethren informs the design of a crash-resistant car; a self-cleaning leaf inspires a new kind of paint, one that dries in a pattern that enables simple rainwater to wash away dirt; and organisms capable of living without water open the way for vaccines that maintain potency even without refrigeration -- a hurdle that can prevent life-saving drugs from reaching disease-torn communities. Most important, these cool tools from nature pull off their tricks while still managing to preserve the environment that sustains them, a life-or-death lesson that humankind is in need of learning.

As a champion of biomimicry, Benyus has become one of the most important voices in a new wave of designers and engineers inspired by nature. Her most recent project, AskNature, explores what happens if we think of nature by function and looks at what organisms can teach us about design.

From ted.com

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Getting to know Afghanistan ...

Don't you just want to jump into this?

Photo from US Embassy Kabul/Flickr

On June 18th, Ambassador Eikenberry joined Governor Sarobi, Second Vice President Karim Khalili, Director General of the National Environmental Protection Agency Mostapha Zaher, and Bamyan provincial leadership to celebrate Band-e-Amir National Park. Long known among Afghans as a place of great natural beauty and cool respite during the summer, the park opened in April for tourists.

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Video of the Week: Hans Rosling on HIV

New facts and stunning data visuals

Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions -- not drug treatments -- is the key to ending the epidemic.

Even the most worldly and well-traveled among us will have their perspectives shifted by Hans Rosling. A professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, his current work focuses on dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world, which (he points out) is no longer worlds away from the west. In fact, most of the third world is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west did. What sets Rosling apart isn’t just his apt observations of broad social and economic trends, but the stunning way he presents them. Guaranteed: You’ve never seen data presented like this. By any logic, a presentation that tracks global health and poverty trends should be, in a word: boring. But in Rosling’s hands, data sings. Trends come to life. And the big picture — usually hazy at best — snaps into sharp focus. Rosling’s presentations are grounded in solid statistics (often drawn from United Nations data), illustrated by the visualization software he developed. The animations transform development statistics into moving bubbles and flowing curves that make global trends clear, intuitive and even playful. During his legendary presentations, Rosling takes this one step farther, narrating the animations with a sportscaster’s flair. Rosling developed the breakthrough software behind his visualizations through his nonprofit Gapminder, founded with his son and daughter-in-law. The free software — which can be loaded with any data — was purchased by Google in March 2007. (Rosling met the Google founders at TED.) Rosling began his wide-ranging career as a physician, spending many years in rural Africa tracking a rare paralytic disease (which he named konzo) and discovering its cause: hunger and badly processed cassava. He co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden, wrote a textbook on global health, and as a professor at the Karolinska Institut in Stockholm initiated key international research collaborations. He’s also personally argued with many heads of state, including Fidel Castro. From TED.com. Hans Rosling was one of the speakers during TED@State but videos of that talk has not been posted online yet.

Related Items:

TED@State on Flickr

TED Blog on TED@State

Don't Leave the Press Pissed and Puzzled Next Time...

Ian Pannell of BBC News writes about his One-way flight to Afghan outback courtesy of the US Embassy in Kabul who invited BBC to go on a trip to Balkh Province in the north, for briefings and interviews on counter-narcotics. “The plane arrived in good time but it became immediately clear that the US team were less keen on briefings and more on palming us off on the Afghan officials. Our luggage was unceremoniously dumped on the runway and we were told the plane would leave at 2.30pm. The US team was whisked away by beefy special agents driving super-sized armoured trucks.”

Uh-oh, you know that's only for starters.

He reports that one of the American vehicles broke down en route and unknown to them, the embassy folks reportedly decided to “cancel the trip and beat an unseemly retreat to the airport.” And it does not get any better after that.

Tsk! Ouch! Ugh! I know, I know… there are always two sides to every story; it’s just that we probably won’t hear the press officer's side. In any case, the Press Office folks are supposed to be our professionals; and that’s how everyone will look at this. They could have handled this alot better (and have not). The folks were stranded -- apologies are in order. I just think it's not useful to get the press pissed and puzzled at the same time. That’s how you end up with this headline: US Embassy Officials Abandon BBC Reporter In Remote Afghanistan.

On a side note, Ambassador Eikenberry is not in Kabul yet but looks like Ambassador Wood is no longer COM. When you click on “Ambassador” in the About Us page, it takes you to Deputy Ambassador Ricciardone’s page. Would he be happy waking up to these headlines? I bet not.

Video of the Week: Why people believe in strange things?

As founder and publisher of Skeptic Magazine, Michael Shermer has exposed fallacies behind intelligent design, 9/11 conspiracies, the low-carb craze, alien sightings and other popular beliefs and paranoias. But it's not about debunking for debunking's sake. Shermer defends the notion that we can understand our world better only by matching good theory with good science. Thus, in order to explore a conspiracy theory that pre-planted explosives caused the World Trade Center towers to fall on 9/11, the magazine called on demolition experts. Shermer's work offers cognitive context for our often misguided beliefs: In the absence of sound science, incomplete information can powerfully combine with the power of suggestion (helping us hear Satanic lyrics when "Stairway to Heaven" plays backwards, for example). In fact, a common thread that runs through beliefs of all sorts, he says, is our tendency to convince ourselves: We overvalue the shreds of evidence that support our preferred outcome, and ignore the facts we aren't looking for. From www.ted.com

Video of the Week: Kiteflyer's Hill

Singer/songwriter Eddi Reader performs "Kiteflyer's Hill," a tender look back at a lost love. With Thomas Dolby on piano. Scotland-born Reader was an '80s pop star in the UK, where her band Fairground Attraction had a #1 hit with the supercatchy "Perfect." Now, as a solo artist, her sounds has matured; quiet acoustic arrangements and gentle harmonies put her lush voice front and center. TED Music Director Thomas Dolby calls her his favorite singer of all time. Albums such as Candyfloss and Medicine and Angels & Electricity established her as a thoughtful songwriter and interpreter, with an affinity for wistful songs of longing and loss -- and a nice sideline in what used to be called "message" songs, which call to the listener to think about war and peace, the Earth and our place in it. Reader has also become a noted interpreter of the poems of Robert Burns. Her latest album, Peacetime, offers a compelling mix of Burns lyrics, traditional folk tunes and new songs written by Reader and her longtime songwriting partner, Boo Hewerdine. Video from www.ted.com