Japanese investment in South-East Asia

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A weak domestic economy is spurring Japanese firms to expand abroad Nov 1st 2014 | 

Hun Sen is shopping, just like Japan Inc

IT IS not every day that the opening of a shopping centre attracts a prime minister, but then Aeon Mall in Phnom Penh is not any old shopping centre. The Japanese-built complex is Cambodia’s biggest, complete with an ice rink, television studio and bowling alley. For Hun Sen, the attending prime minister, it is a symbol of Japanese investment. Governments across South-East Asia are courting Japanese firms, and a torrent of yen is surging their way.

Japanese investment in the region doubled to 2.3 trillion yen ($24 billion) last year, the latest in a series of sizeable increases (see chart). Part of that is mergers and acquisitions by Japanese firms, which have skimped on investment at home and so have a cash hoard of some ¥229 trillion. SoftBank, a Japanese mobile carrier, just led a $100m investment in Tokopedia, an Indonesian e-commerce firm; Toshiba, a conglomerate, has pledged to invest $1 billion in South-East Asia over five years. A year ago Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan’s biggest bank, spent ¥536 billion to buy 72% of Thailand’s Bank of Ayudhya.

During the first wave of Japanese investment, in the 1980s and 1990s, money poured into Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, building up their automotive and electronics sectors. That flow largely ceased after the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, when Japanese firms began to focus on China’s vast, cheap labour force.

Russia Continues to Covertly Arm and Train Ukrainian Rebel Forces

Russia Continues to Train and Equip Ukraine Rebels, NATO Official Says

Michael R. Gordon and Andrew E. Kramer

New York Times, November 4, 2014

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of Russian troops are still training and equipping separatists in Ukraine, NATO’s top military commander said Monday, activities that are heightening tensions with the West and Ukraine’s government that were aggravated by Sunday’s elections in the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine.

As the Russian Foreign Ministry appears to be moving toward recognizing the results of the voting, which was dismissed by the United States as a “sham,” Western officials are increasingly concerned that the Kremlin may be taking the steps necessary to establish an enclave that remains outside Kiev’s control.

During a visit to the Pentagon, the commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, echoed those worries, telling reporters that “I am concerned that the conditions are there that could create a frozen conflict.”

Moscow followed that blueprint after the war with Georgia in 2008, establishing enclaves in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to ensure that the territorially compromised nation could not join NATO. It did the same earlier with Transnistria, a breakaway territory of Moldova where Russians have been stationed.

UKRAINE CRISIS IN MAPS

The latest updates to the current visual survey of the continuing dispute, with maps and satellite imagery showing rebel and military movement.

The concern now is that a buffer zone between Ukrainian and separatist forces, established as part of a September cease-fire, may become a de facto border of the new enclave. Meanwhile, the border between eastern Ukraine and Russia has remained open.

“We have seen a general trend towards a hardening of this line of demarcation and much more softening of the actual Ukraine-Russia border,” General Breedlove said.

The Difference Between Opinion and Sedition: Muslim Convert Tests German Anti-Terror Laws

November 3, 2014

http://www.matthewaid.com/post/101665288606/the-difference-between-opinion-and-sedition-muslim

Convert to Islam Tests Boundaries of Germany’s Terror Laws

Islamist preacher Sven Lau talks during a rally in July in Hamburg, Germany.AFP/Getty Images

WUPPERTAL, Germany—Fundamentalist Islamic preacher Sven Lau claims he has a simple test to separate undercover officers from passersby. He gives them the finger. If they don’t respond, he said, “they’re intelligence agents.”

German authorities have spent at least eight years monitoring Mr. Lau, a 34-year-old ex-firefighter from a Catholic family who now practices a strict form of Islam known as Salafism.

Officials say Mr. Lau is one of the most prominent Islamic preachers in Germany, with a charismatic message that lures young Germans into radical Muslim circles. The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency called Mr. Lau one of the country’s “best-known propagandists.” Authorities allege Mr. Lau inspired some of his followers to join Islamic militants in Syria and Iraq, and fear they will eventually spawn terror attacks in Germany and the West.

Mr. Lau, who has delivered sermons to hundreds of listeners at town squares across Germany, denies the allegation. Despite wiretaps and searches of his home and computers by authorities, he remains free. He denied any ties to terrorism or the extremist group Islamic State—“I’m not pro-IS,” he said—and described his past trips to Syria as humanitarian work.

The standoff between Mr. Lau and German security agents illustrates the difficulty of drawing a clear line between opinion and sedition at a time when European authorities face growing numbers of disaffected Muslims, some of them taking on radical views. Security officials say they monitor a wide range of Islamist proselytizing but only a small minority pass the threshold for prosecution on charges of supporting terrorism.

German authorities, who say they still watch Mr. Lau, acknowledge he seems to have found a safety zone.

Qatar Has Joined US-Led Coalition Against ISIS But at the Same Time Retains Its Secret Ties to ISIS

November 3, 2014

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Qatar Pares Support for Islamists but Careful to Preserve Ties

DOHA — Qatar has joined the American-led coalition to fight Islamic State, yet the emirate is a haven for anti-Western groups and foreign diplomats have reported seeing cars with Islamic State logos in an affluent bay district.

Such ambiguity runs through Qatari policy.

When the United States sought allies against Islamic State in Sept, Qatar was among the Gulf Arab states that sent its warplanes into action. But while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates welcomed media coverage, Qatar was silent.

There was talk among diplomats that Qatari planes merely flew a reconnaissance mission on the first night of the attacks.

In fact, a security source close to the government said, its planes did attack Islamic State targets in Syria later in the campaign, although that has not been officially confirmed.

Diplomats and analysts said the episode showed two things:

First, Qatar’s decision to join the hostilities was a pragmatic response to pressure from fellow Gulf Arabs, who have rebuked Qatar for backing Islamists during Arab Spring revolts.

Second, diplomats say, Qatar’s reticence about its role suggests that it is also being careful to preserve influence with Islamist forces it believes are the long-term future.

Three years after the start of the Arab Spring, the Middle East is experiencing a backlash against political Islam, and Qatar is trimming its policies. In so doing, the contradictory nature of those policies is being exposed.

Qatar hosts the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, owns swathes of Western real estate and is an enthusiastic customer for Western weaponry.

ISIS Reported to Have Captured Another Gas Field Outside Syrian City of Homs

November 3, 2014

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Islamic State Says Seizes Second Gas Field in Syria

BEIRUT — Islamic State fighters in Syria said on Monday they had taken control of a gas field in the central province of Homs, the second gas field seized in a week after battles with government forces.

The hardline Sunni Islamist group posted 18 photos on social media showing the Islamic State flag raised in the Jahar gas field as well as seized vehicles and weaponry, according to the SITE jihadist website monitoring service.

Reuters could not independently confirm the events due to security restrictions.

Islamic State fighters, who now hold up to a third of Syria as well as swathes of Iraq and have declared a ‘Caliphate’ on the territories they control, took the larger Sha’ar gas field on Oct. 30.

"So after the (Sha’ar) company and the (positions) surrounding it became part of the land of the Caliphate, the soldiers advanced, conquering new areas, and all praise is due to Allah," Islamic State said in the message.

"Yesterday they tightened control over Jahar village and the Mahr gas pumping company, and nearly nine (positions) supported by heavy weaponry such as tanks, armoured vehicles, and heavy machine guns of various calibres," it added.

The report said Islamic State had seized two tanks, seven four-wheel drive cars and several heavy machine guns.

A U.S.-led coalition has conducted air strikes against Islamic State since September. The United States says it is not coordinating with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to combat the Islamist group.

The Roots of the Islamic State's Appeal

SHADI HAMID

OCT 31 2014

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ISIS's rise is related to Islam. The question is: How? 

Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

In a long, rambling statement in September, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani expounded on his group’s inherent advantage: “Being killed … is a victory,” he said. “You fight a people who can never be defeated. They either gain victory or are killed.” In this most basic sense, religion—rather than what one might call ideology—matters. ISIS fighters are not only willing to die in a blaze of religious ecstasy; they welcome it, believing that they will be granted direct entry into heaven. It doesn’t particularly matter if this sounds absurd to most people. It’s what they believe.

Political scientists, including myself, have tended to see religion, ideology, and identity as epiphenomenal—products of a given set of material factors. We are trained to believe in the primacy of “politics.” This isn’t necessarily incorrect, but it can sometimes obscure the independent power of ideas that seem, to much of the Western world, quaint and archaic. As Robert Kagan recently wrote, “For a quarter-century, Americans have been told that at the end of history lies boredom rather than great conflict.” The rise of ISIS is only the most extreme example of the way in which liberal determinism—the notion that history moves with intent toward a more reasonable, secular future—has failed to explain the realities of the Middle East. It should by now go without saying that the overwhelming majority of Muslims do not share ISIS’s view of religion, but that’s not really the most interesting or relevant question. ISIS’s rise to prominence has something to do with Islam, but what is that something?

The End of Pluralism ISIS draws on, and draws strength from, ideas that have broad resonance among Muslim-majority populations. They may not agree with ISIS’s interpretation of the caliphate, but the notion of acaliphate—the historical political entity governed by Islamic law and tradition—is a powerful one, even among more secular-minded Muslims. The caliphate, something that hasn’t existed since 1924, is a reminder of how one of the world’s great civilizations endured one of the more precipitous declines in human history. The gap between what Muslims once were and where they now find themselves is at the center of the anger and humiliation that drive political violence in the Middle East. But there is also a sense of loss and longing for an organic legal and political order that succeeded for centuries before its slow but decisive dismantling. Ever since, Muslims, and particularly Arab Muslims, have been struggling to define the contours of an appropriate post-caliphate political model.

Obama’s Quagmire

By Fred Kaplan

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America’s campaign against ISIS has already lost its way. 

Kurdish refugees from Kobani watch as thick smoke covers their city during fighting between ISIS and Kurdish peshmerga forces on Oct. 26, 2014.

America’s war against ISIS is quickly turning into a quagmire.

A few signs of progress have sprung up in recent days. U.S. airstrikes have slowed down the Islamist group’s onslaught against the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria. A much-cheered caravan of Kurdish peshmerga fighters is making its way from Iraq to join the battle.

Fred Kaplan is the author of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War and 1959: The Year Everything Changed.

But even if the Kurds push ISIS out of Kobani, what does that signify in the larger struggle? What happens next? And what is the Obama administration’s desired endgame and its path for getting there? These questions have no clear answers, and that speaks volume.

When President Obama delivered histelevised address on Sept. 10, announcing that he would now pursue ISIS throughout Iraq (not just where they threatened U.S. diplomats) and even into Syria, he clarified that the focus would remain on Iraq. To the extent he launched airstrikes in Syria, they would be clustered along the border, to keep the jihadists from moving back and forth between the two countries or seeking safe haven. And at first, the bombs dropped on Syria did fall along the ISIS cross-border paths.

But by early October, Obama was dropping more bombs on Syria than on Iraq. What happened? Kobani. ISIS launched an assault against this town on the Turkish border. Intelligence indicated the town would soon fall. Local Kurds were running out of ammunition. Turkish President Recep Erdogan lined up tanks, but refused to roll them forward; he also blocked Turkish Kurds from crossing the border to help their Syrian brethren. So, to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, Obama sent in the drones and the fighter planes.

Be Very Skeptical—A Lot of Your Open-Source Intel Is Fake

Governments plant propaganda in social media

Soon after the chemical weapons attack on residents of Ghouta, Syria in August 2013, analysts, journalists and policymakers scrambled to understand who was responsible. The prospect of American intervention hinged in part on what they discovered.

U.K.-based Eliot Higgins had made a name for himself among reporters and conflict analysts for his ability track weapons in the Syrian civil war using open sources—that is, news reports, social media postings and amateur videos that anyone can access.

Higgins was also looking for answers in the Ghouta attack. It seemed likely the regime of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad was to blame. But then one of Higgins’ correspondents forwarded him some compelling videos. They appeared to implicate Syria’s rebels as the perpetrators of the gas attack.

The videos depicted men with gas masks and flags bearing the logo of Liwa Al Islam, an Islamist militant group in Syria. The men made a point of showing off a specific kind of rocket reportedly used in the chemical attack.

“I’m giving you a heads up, these videos appear to be new and you will have to deal with them,” the correspondent wrote in an e-mail. “I will not speak to the authenticity of this video, but what it shows is obvious.”

But the videos were a hoax—one meant to deflect blame away from the Syrian regime. And that kind of disinformation is becoming more common, and more dangerous, as powerful entities increasingly hijack open-source information.

As Higgins documented, the weapons, timing and publication didn’t line up with known facts about the chemical attacks or Liwa Al Islam’s media outlets. Someone, in other words, was trying to trick Syria-watchers into absolving the Al Assad regime.

The proliferation of cell phones and the Internet has made the work of analysts like Higgins a lot easier. It’s put cameras in the hands of people in virtually every country in the world and given them the means to distribute their videos and pictures.

It’s created a wealth of freely-available data about events across the globe, making conflict analysis at a distance possible like never before.

But it’s not just reporters and analysts who have noticed the power of open sources to shape the public’s understanding of war. More and more, participants in those conflicts are aware of what open sources like social media reveal about them.

Of course, the proliferation of forgery is hardly a recent development. Back during the Cold War, spy agencies such as the KGB used to drop fake letters in friendly dead-tree newspapers in order to get the ball rolling on a disinformation campaign. Maybe you’ve heard about a few.

But today’s media environment has added a new dimension to the fakery game. Using faked pictures and videos on social media, sometimes laced with malicious software, some are trying to piggyback on the popularity of open-source analysis in order to muddy the waters.

Case in point—the July shoot-down of Malaysian jetliner MH17. In the wake of the disaster, eagle-eye open-source analysts including Higgins and others managed to trace the Buk missile system responsible for destroying the jet from Russia, into the hands of Russian-backed rebels, to the site of its fateful launch and its quiet slink back into Russia.

Mechanism against terror still missing

ByJagdish N Singh

03 Nov , 2014

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/mechanism-against-terror-still-missing/

Terrorism is a crime against humanity. It threatens most the lives and rights of ordinary citizens, whom every modern state must serve best to justify its legitimacy. Given this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy of “zero tolerance” against terrorism is only natural. He has been stressing this tirelessly since he assumed the office of Prime Minister.

…the net effect has been a big zero. India has continued to suffer at the hands of terrorists from time to time. According to authentic studies, since 1980 the terrorists have claimed 1.5 lakh lives in India.

In his speech at the United Nations General Assembly session in October 2014, he lamented India had suffered a lot at the hands of the terrorists for the last four decades and declared it would not be tolerated any more. Modi has also carried the theme of zero tolerance to his recent parleys with several world leaders, including Chinese and American Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama. In fact it is expected, following his ‘successful’ summit diplomacy in Washington, that the process of ongoing Indo-US cooperation on counter-terrorism, will acquire a new momentum; Prime Minister Modi and President Obama having agreed “on several ways to enhance cooperation on terror.”

One, however, wonders if the Prime Minister’s stress on zero tolerance against terrorism and some mere word of international support alone would serve the purpose. The Prime Minister’s predecessors, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, had been preaching the same doctrine of zero tolerance. They too, had had agreements with important world powers on intelligence cooperation. But the net effect has been a big zero. India has continued to suffer at the hands of terrorists from time to time. According to authentic studies, since 1980 the terrorists have claimed 1.5 lakh lives in India.

The Pentagon May Finally Have a Plan to Keep America on Top

Bill Sweetman

11.03.14

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After years of strategic drift, the U.S. military may finally have a path to maintain its edge over countries like China. Will the defense-industrial bureaucrats stand in the way?

Nowhere other than inside the Pentagon will you find more truth in Machiavelli’s warning about the hazards of change: “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage … For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new.”

Which was why my response to Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work’s arrival involved a reference to Raymond Chandler’s Big Willie Magoon, a vice cop who “thinks he’s tough.” The arrival of someone with genuine strategic and technical chops at the upper level of the Defense Department was such a good idea that a lot of people were guaranteed to respond with equal parts rage and terror.

Work’s co-thinkers have now run the pirate flag up the mast with the publication of a concise and hard-hitting report by the Center for Strategic and BudgetaryAssessments that details Work has called Third Offset strategy for towing the Pentagon out of the strategic quicksand into which it is steadily sinking today.

My compressed version of the CSBA report is here, along with an explanation of the innocuously wonkish “Third Offset” name by which the new strategy is known. But to be even briefer, this is the gist of the strategy.

Widely available weapons—this is not all about China—are threatening the U.S. ability to project power and influence events worldwide. Those weapons include guided missiles, satellites and drones that can track ships in mid-ocean, and long-range surface-to-air missiles.

Rather than wading into a symmetrical fight against those weapons, the Third Offset strategy exploits U.S. and allied core competencies—not just the things we do well, but areas where we can maintain our lead for a long time, and without adding to the defense bill. Think advanced unmanned vehicles, all-aspect, broadband stealth, and undersea warfare.

Third Offset calls for some new weapons, none of them miraculous, some of them a little more specialized than those that have been planned in the last decade or two.

‘They Don’t Call It SEAL Team 6-Year-Old for Nothing’: Commandos Clash Over Tell-All Book

Kimberly Dozier

11.02.14

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The author of the inside story of the Bin Laden raid is back with a new book, and after the Pentagon and his former teammates spurned him, he’s calling them ‘SEAL Team 6-Year-Old.’

Former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette is sorry for publishing a tell-all book about the raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden—without first seeking a government security review.

He wants you to know that’s a mistake he did not repeat with his new book, No Hero.

“Yeah, it was my bad,” a contrite Bissonnette said multiple times in multiple ways in an interview with The Daily Beast of his failure to submit No Easy Dayto be checked for classified information because of what he called “bad legal advice.” With a criminal investigation ongoing, he could still face prosecution for it.

“Do I have regret? Yes, but I gotta look at this as a lesson,” he said. “In our community, you’ve got to learn from your mistakes.”

And that’s why he said he wrote the new book, to share hard lessons learned on the battlefield, this time with the Pentagon’s permission—and to prove that he would have done it this way the first time, had he known better.

That’s still not likely to win back many of his former comrades in arms, like his former SEAL Team 6 commanding officer, whom Bissonnette was told kept a mock tombstone in his headquarters office with the shunned SEAL author’s name on it.

“They don’t call it SEAL Team 6-Year-Old for nothing,” Bissonnette said bitterly of the rejection by a man who up until then had given him top performance reviews and tried to persuade him not to leave the Navy after the Bin Laden raid in 2011.

Bissonnette believes it was some of his own former teammates who revealed his real name to Fox News, which first reported it after the release of No Easy Day. (Other reporters, including this one, named him after that.)

He said he still wishes the media would stick to his author pseudonym Mark Owen, as he has gotten death threats online and tries to keep his real face off-camera.

But he said he now understands the Pandora’s box he opened that made him a public figure when he penned an unauthorized account of the raid, together with his co-author, Kevin Maurer.

The End of the Middle East?

By Robert Kaplan

October 30, 2014

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2014/10/30/the_end_of_the_middle_east_110774.html

Because geopolitics is based on the eternal verities of geography, relatively little in geopolitics comes to an end. The Warsaw Pact may have dissolved following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, but Russia is still big and it still lies next door to Central and Eastern Europe, so a Russian threat to Europe still exists. Japan may have been defeated and flattened by the U.S. military in World War II, but its dynamic population -- the gift of a temperate zone climate -- still projects power in the Pacific Basin and may do so even more in the years to come. The United States may have committed one blunder after another in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, yet through all of these misbegotten wars the United States remains by a yawning margin the greatest military power on earth -- the gift, ultimately, of America being a virtual island nation of continental proportions, as well as the last resource-rich swath of the temperate zone to be settled at the time of the European Enlightenment.

So we come to the Middle East, which, despite all its changes and upheavals in the course of the decades and all the prognostications of a U.S. "pivot" to the Pacific, remains vital to the United States. Israel is a de facto strategic ally of the United States and for over six decades now has remained embattled, necessitating American protection. The Persian Gulf region is still the hydrocarbon capital of the world and thus a premier American interest. Certainly, officials in Washington would like to shift focus to the Pacific, but the Middle East simply won't allow that to happen.

And yet there is an ongoing evolution in America's relationship with the region, and attrition of the same can add up to big change.

For decades the Persian Gulf represented a primary American interest: a place that was crucial to the well-being of the American economy. The American economy is the great oil and automotive economy of the modern age, with interstate highways the principal transport link for an entire continent. And Persian Gulf oil was a key to that enterprise. But increasingly the Persian Gulf represents only a secondary interest to the United States: a region important to the well-being of American allies, to be sure, and to world trade and the world economic system in general, but not specifically crucial to America itself, the war to defeat the Islamic State notwithstanding. However much oil the United States is still importing from the Persian Gulf, the fact is that America will have more energy alternatives at home and abroad in future decades.

The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally Unleashed AI on the World

BY KEVIN KELLY 

10.27.14 

A few months ago I made the trek to the sylvan campus of the IBM research labs in Yorktown Heights, New York, to catch an early glimpse of the fast-arriving, long-overdue future of artificial intelligence. This was the home of Watson, the electronic genius that conquered Jeopardy! in 2011. The original Watson is still here—it's about the size of a bedroom, with 10 upright, refrigerator-shaped machines forming the four walls. The tiny interior cavity gives technicians access to the jumble of wires and cables on the machines' backs. It is surprisingly warm inside, as if the cluster were alive. 

Today's Watson is very different. It no longer exists solely within a wall of cabinets but is spread across a cloud of open-standard servers that run several hundred “instances” of the AI at once. Like all things cloudy, Watson is served to simultaneous customers anywhere in the world, who can access it using their phones, their desktops, or their own data servers. This kind of AI can be scaled up or down on demand. Because AI improves as people use it, Watson is always getting smarter; anything it learns in one instance can be immediately transferred to the others. And instead of one single program, it's an aggregation of diverse software engines—its logic-deduction engine and its language-parsing engine might operate on different code, on different chips, in different locations—all cleverly integrated into a unified stream of intelligence. 

Consumers can tap into that always-on intelligence directly, but also through third-party apps that harness the power of this AI cloud. Like many parents of a bright mind, IBM would like Watson to pursue a medical career, so it should come as no surprise that one of the apps under development is a medical-diagnosis tool. Most of the previous attempts to make a diagnostic AI have been pathetic failures, but Watson really works. When, in plain English, I give it the symptoms of a disease I once contracted in India, it gives me a list of hunches, ranked from most to least probable. The most likely cause, it declares, is Giardia—the correct answer. This expertise isn't yet available to patients directly; IBM provides access to Watson's intelligence to partners, helping them develop user-friendly interfaces for subscribing doctors and hospitals. “I believe something like Watson will soon be the world's best diagnostician—whether machine or human,” says Alan Greene, chief medical officer of Scanadu, a startup that is building a diagnostic device inspired by the Star Trek medical tricorder and powered by a cloud AI. “At the rate AI technology is improving, a kid born today will rarely need to see a doctor to get a diagnosis by the time they are an adult.” 

AS AIS DEVELOP, WE MIGHT HAVE TO ENGINEER WAYS TO PREVENT CONSCIOUSNESS IN THEM—OUR MOST PREMIUM AI SERVICES WILL BE ADVERTISED AS CONSCIOUSNESS-FREE. 

Medicine is only the beginning. All the major cloud companies, plus dozens of startups, are in a mad rush to launch a Watson-like cognitive service. According to quantitative analysis firm Quid, AI has attracted more than $17 billion in investments since 2009. Last year alone more than $2 billion was invested in 322 companies with AI-like technology. Facebook and Google have recruited researchers to join their in-house AI research teams. Yahoo, Intel, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter have all purchased AI companies since last year. Private investment in the AI sector has been expanding 62 percent a year on average for the past four years, a rate that is expected to continue. 

Amid all this activity, a picture of our AI future is coming into view, and it is not the HAL 9000—a discrete machine animated by a charismatic (yet potentially homicidal) humanlike consciousness—or a Singularitan rapture of superintelligence. The AI on the horizon looks more like Amazon Web Services—cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness running behind everything, and almost invisible except when it blinks off. This common utility will serve you as much IQ as you want but no more than you need. Like all utilities, AI will be supremely boring, even as it transforms the Internet, the global economy, and civilization. It will enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century ago. Everything that we formerly electrified we will now cognitize. This new utilitarian AI will also augment us individually as people (deepening our memory, speeding our recognition) and collectively as a species. There is almost nothing we can think of that cannot be made new, different, or interesting by infusing it with some extra IQ. In fact, the business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI. This is a big deal, and now it's here. 

Pep Montserrat for The National

Jack Shaheen

November 1, 2014

Seeing the wide-variety of first-rate films being screened at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival warms my heart. We have come a long way and although there’s still a long way to go, we are getting there.

Vibrant film offerings are providing audiences with a better understanding of the Arab world and are also helping to shatter Hollywood’s stereotypical Arab images.

In the US, Arab film festivals are more popular than ever before. Inaugurated in January 1996, Washington DC’s Arabian Sights Festival and San Francisco’s Arab Film Festival are the longest running events of this type. Taken together, they screen films emerging out of the Arab world to thousands of viewers in the US, as well as films directed by Arab Americans.

What the Arab and Arab American festivals have in common is this: the films they show shatter myths, whether by seeing a teenage girl riding a bike in Saudi Arabia, or an Arab American couple courting one another in Dearborn, or watching the impact of the occupation on Palestinians. Arabs and Arab Americans and others are at long last defining themselves rather than having others define them.

They offer more realistic, humane Arab portraits and eradicate stereotypes. And, there are more and more films being directed by young image-makers than ever before. Arab filmmakers have created fresh films dealing with topical issues, which have been screened around the world.

For example, several recent films view Palestine and how the Israeli occupation impacts Palestinians, young and old. Films such as Imad Burnat’s Five Broken Cameras (2011), Susan Youssef’s Habibi (2012) and Hani Abu Assad’s Omar (2013). To their credit, some Israeli filmmakers have also exposed the occupation’s telling effects on Palestinians: films such as Yuval Adler’s Bethlehem (2013). The Israeli Film Council provided funding for Suha Arraf’s Villa Touma (2014), a film that takes place after the 1967 war, and focuses on three Christian women living in their once elegant home in Ramallah.

In the early 1960s, when I was working in West Berlin, I watched East Germans construct the Berlin Wall.

Since then, the wall has surfaced in many films, most notably The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965). And yet, to date, no feature film has focused on Israel’s separation wall.

Given the success of up-and-coming Arab and Arab American filmmakers, I ask festival organisers around the world to encourage and support image-makers who want to produce a major feature film exploring how this barrier blocks the road to meaningful peace.

Other stories continue to tumble from the region. Palestinian-American Ziad Foty is working on a documentary, Return to Ramallah: A Palestinian-American Story. The film follows his father, Fuad, on his return to Ramallah after 40 years of life in America.

Abe Kasbo’s soon-to-be- released documentary, A Thousand and One Journeys: The Arab Americans, tells the story of 200 years of the Arab American experience. It is told through the eyes of prominent figures such as Senator George Mitchell, Jamie Farr, Ralph Nader, Anthony Shadid, General John Abizaid and more.

I have been friends with Axis of Evil comedians Maz Jobrani, Dean Obeidallah and Ahmed Ahmed since we first met at a Washington DC conference in 2006. Back then, they were young men struggling to make a name for themselves. Directors and agents warned them that unless they changed their names they would be relegated to playing three types of roles: terrorists, sleazy princes and greedy oil sheikhs. But all three men refused. They would never change their names, they said, no matter what.

All three comedians have had thriving careers at stand-up venues around the world. And all three have made impressive independent features and documentary films. The first was Ahmed’s thoughtful and entertaining documentary, Just Like Us (2011). The film shows him and his fellow stand-up comedians being well received by audiences from New York to Dubai.

Iranian-American Jobrani produced Shirin in Love (2013), a romantic comedy about the relationship between the Iranian protagonist, Shirin, and her non-Iranian mate.

That same year, Dean Obeidallah, along with Negin Farsad, produced, directed and starred in the documentary, The Muslims Are Coming (2013). Familiar names like Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow appear, offering insightful commentary that exposes and contests discrimination.

Shaheen scholarship recipients, Annemarie Jacir and Jackie Salloum, have directed outstanding films that offer viewers much needed insights about Palestinians in exile.

In Salloum’s second award-winning documentary, Slingshot Hip Hop (2008), she traces rap from its origins to the present.

Critics also applauded Jacir’s second feature-length film, When I Saw You (2012). Here, Jacir depicts the plight of a people through the actions of an 11-year-old boy, Tarek, who acts decisively in order to return to Palestine and find his missing father.

Not so long ago these up-and-coming young filmmakers and many others were struggling artists, just beginning their careers. Some were only thinking about making films, others had just written rough drafts.

Despite all the obstacles they faced, Arab American and Arab image-makers went on to direct and produce inventive independent films that challenge racial, gender and religious stereotypes – films that make us laugh and think at the same time.

The Abu Dhabi Film Festival and the raft of other similar events focusing on this region’s films are providing much needed opportunities to dispel stereotypical images of their own culture before audiences, worldwide, enabling them to offer insights drawn directly from their heritage, and to bridge gaps in understanding between the West and the Arab world.

Jack G Shaheen is the author of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs After 9/11

Five Futuristic Weapons That Could Change Warfare

J. Michael Cole

November 1, 2014

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Predicting which five weapons will have the greatest impact on the future of combat is a problematic endeavor, as the nature of warfare itself is fluid and constantly changing. A system that could be a game-changer in a major confrontation between two conventional forces—say, China and the United States—could be of little utility in an asymmetrical scenario pitting forces in an urban theater (e.g., Israeli forces confronting Palestinian guerrillas in Gaza or Lebanese Hezbollah in the suburbs of Beirut).

The world’s best fifth-generation stealth combat aircraft might be a game-changer in some contexts, but its tremendous speed and inability to linger makes it unsuitable to detect and target small units of freedom fighters operating in a city, not to mention that using such platforms to kill a few irregular soldiers carrying AK-47s is hardly cost effective. Special forces equipped with hyperstealth armor and light assault rifles firing “intelligent” small-caliber ammunition would be much more effective, and presumably much cheaper.

Another challenging aspect is choosing how we define revolution in the context of weapons development. Do we quantify impact using the yardstick of destructiveness and casualty rates alone? Or conversely, by a weapon’s ability to achieve a belligerent’s objectives while minimizing the cost in human lives? What of a “weapon” that obviates kinetic warfare altogether, perhaps by preemptively disabling an opponent’s ability to conduct military operations?

Keeping in mind the scenario-contingent nature of warfare, we can nevertheless try to establish a list of weapons systems, most of which are already in the development stage, that will, if only for a brief instant, change the nature of warfare. By trying to strike a balance between conventional warfare and irregular operations, our list is inherently incomplete but shows trends in the forms of warfare that are likely to affect our world for decades to come.

5. ‘Hyper Stealth’ or ‘Quantum Stealth’

Using naturally occurring metamaterials, scientists have been designing lightwave-bending materials that can greatly reduce the thermal and visible signatures of a target. The science behind it is relatively straightforward, though skeptics remain unconvinced and say they will believe it when they don’t see it: The “adaptive camouflage” renders what lies behind the object wearing the material by bending the light around it.

The military implications of such developments are self-evident, as “invisibility cloaks” would make it possible for fighters—from ordinary soldiers to special forces—to operate in enemy territory undetected, or at least buy them enough time to take the initiative. Such capabilities would reduce the risk of casualties during military operations while increasing the ability to launch surgical and surprise attacks against an opponent, or conduct sabotage and assassination.

The Single-Engine Global Economy

OCT 31, 2014 

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TOKYO – The global economy is like a jetliner that needs all of its engines operational to take off and steer clear of clouds and storms. Unfortunately, only one of its four engines is functioning properly: the Anglosphere (the United States and its close cousin, the United Kingdom).

The second engine – the eurozone – has now stalled after an anemic post-2008 restart. Indeed, Europe is one shock away from outright deflation and another bout of recession. Likewise, the third engine, Japan, is running out of fuel after a year of fiscal and monetary stimulus. And emerging markets (the fourth engine) are slowing sharply as decade-long global tailwinds – rapid Chinese growth, zero policy rates and quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve, and a commodity super-cycle – become headwinds.

So the question is whether and for how long the global economy can remain aloft on a single engine. Weakness in the rest of the world implies a stronger dollar, which will invariably weaken US growth. The deeper the slowdown in other countries and the higher the dollar rises, the less the US will be able to decouple from the funk everywhere else, even if domestic demand seems robust.

Falling oil prices may provide cheaper energy for manufacturers and households, but they hurt energy exporters and their spending. And, while increased supply – particularly from North American shale resources – has put downward pressure on prices, so has weaker demand in the eurozone, Japan, China, and many emerging markets. Moreover, persistently low oil prices induce a fall in investment in new capacity, further undermining global demand.

Meanwhile, market volatility has grown, and a correction is still underway. Bad macro news can be good for markets, because a prompt policy response alone can boost asset prices. But recent bad macro news has been bad for markets, owing to the perception of policy inertia. Indeed, the European Central Bank is dithering about how much to expand its balance sheet with purchases of sovereign bonds, while the Bank of Japan only now decided to increase its rate of quantitative easing, given evidence that this year’s consumption-tax increase is impeding growth and that next year’s planned tax increase will weaken it further.

As for fiscal policy, Germany continues to resist a much-needed stimulus to boost eurozone demand. And Japan seems to be intent on inflicting on itself a second, growth-retarding consumption-tax increase.

Furthermore, the Fed has now exited quantitative easing and is showing a willingness to start raising policy rates sooner than markets expected. If the Fed does not postpone rate increases until the global economic weather clears, it risks an aborted takeoff – the fate of many economies in the last few years.

If the Republican Party takes full control of the US Congress in November’s mid-term election, policy gridlock is likely to worsen, risking a re-run of the damaging fiscal battles that led last year to a government shutdown and almost to a technical debt default. More broadly, the gridlock will prevent the passage of important structural reforms that the US needs to boost growth.

Major emerging countries are also in trouble. Of the five BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), three (Brazil, Russia, and South Africa) are close to recession. The biggest, China, is in the midst of a structural slowdown that will push its growth rate closer to 5% in the next two years, from above 7% now. At the same time, much-touted reforms to rebalance growth from fixed investment to consumption are being postponed until President Xi Jinping consolidates his power. China may avoid a hard landing, but a bumpy and rough one appears likely.

Counter-Terrorism: The Chechen Chronicles

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20141101.aspx

November 1, 2014: Russia recently commemorated the 15th anniversary of their return to Chechnya in 1999. In the previous five years the Russians had left Chechnya alone. That did not work out as expected and the area had become a base for gangsters and Islamic terrorists who were increasingly showing up in southern Russia. There the Chechens created a major and constantly increasing crime wave. This prompted Russia to go back in. 

Russian military and police forces, over the next fifteen years, conducted over 40,000 raids, sweeps and combat patrols. This resulted in the discovery of over 5,000 hideouts or supply and weapons caches. About 10,000 Islamic terrorists, gangsters and assorted rebels were killed and 30,000 weapons and 80,000 explosive devices (roadside bombs, mines, booby traps, suicide bombs and so on) were seized. Government losses have been about half what the enemy suffered and many Russians fear that the death toll will ultimately equal the 15,000 deaths Russian forces suffered during the 1980s in Afghanistan. 

The Chechen fighting was most intense during the first five years and had been declining ever since. While most of the nationalist rebels are gone and the local gangsters have learned to cooperate or simply stay out of the way, there are still enough Islamic terrorists around to keep the security forces busy. The corruption down there makes efficient government difficult and that keeps producing more angry young men willing to fight. 

Despite this seeming success Russia is suffering a major ethnic shift in the Caucasus. Russians, and other people not native to the Caucasus, are being driven out of the region by terrorism, corruption, and a bad attitude towards outsiders. It’s been worst in Chechnya, where Russians comprised 25 percent of the population in 1989, but only two percent today. The decline has not been as great in the rest of the Caucasus, but it has been massive, with more than half the Russians who were living in the Caucasus having left in the since the 1990s. Actually, this trend began in the 1950s, right after tyrant Josef Stalin died in 1953 and Russia began to trim the power of the secret police. The departure of ethnic Russians from the Caucasus simply accelerated after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. 

Russia has been able to suppress Islamic and nationalist terrorists in Chechnya, and their half of the Caucasus in general (the rest is occupied by newly independent Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan). What Russia has not been able to suppress is the hostile attitudes towards outsiders. This is a problem with peacekeepers everywhere. In effect, Russia has been peacekeeping in the unruly Caucasus for several centuries. Until the Soviet Union (and the ancient Russian empire) collapsed in 1991, the Caucasus was more peaceful than it had ever been. This, however, was accomplished via decades of using state-sponsored terrorism, including killing anyone who became troublesome and shipping off many people, who seemed like they might become troublesome, to prison camps. It was brutal, unfair, and it worked. But these policies were unpopular throughout Russia. Ethnic Russians disliked this sort of thing as did all the “others.” So the new government got rid of the terror apparatus (prison camps, secret police, and the nasty attitudes that made it all work) in the 1990s. 

Russia: Why The Neighbors Are Nervous

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/russia/articles/20141031.aspx

October 31, 2014: In eastern Ukraine over 160 people have been killed in Donbas since the September ceasefire. Over 3,700 have died in Donbas since Russia began military operations (via pro-Russian rebels or Russian soldiers) in April. Russia has been warned by the West that if the pro-Russian rebels hold their election on November 2 nd (to establish a separate state) and Russia recognizes it, this will be a violation of international law and will bring more sanctions. Russia used the same tactics to annex Crimea from Ukraine earlier this year and parts of Georgia in 2008. Russia blames the United States for all the anti-Russian attitudes among its neighbors. President Putin and many Russians see America as continuing the Cold War by conspiring to weaken Russia. Many Russians, however, note that their neighbors don’t agree and see Russia returning to its traditional paranoia about all foreigners. These Russians realize that there are bad habits in Russia (aside from tolerance for corruption and outlaw behavior) that need to be changed before Russia can move forward. But at the moment the traditionalists are in charge and it’s paranoia as usual. The average Russian feels the impact of all this with shortages and high inflation, all brought on by the sanctions. 

The Donbas rebels demand independence for the five million people in Donbas areas that the rebels control. The Ukraine government refuses to allow that and is willing to negotiate some autonomy. Most Ukrainians, and many Russians believe the Russian government wants to annex Donbas and nothing less will do. Russia quickly discovered that seizing Donbas was going to be a lot more difficult than anticipated. Part of the problem was the unexpectedly robust resistance by Ukrainian forces. In particular the Ukrainian volunteer forces fighting in eastern Ukraine were particularly effective against Russian sponsored troops and Russian regular forces. These volunteer units comprise about 20 percent of the 50,000 armed personnel Ukraine has sent to the Donbas. 

While Israel has expressed sympathy for Ukraine in their confrontation with Russia, when Ukraine asked to purchase some Israeli UAVs, the Israeli government intervened and blocked the sale (which Israeli manufacturers were willing to make). The reason was because Israel needed good relations with Russia, especially when it came to persuading the Russians to refrain from selling Iran modern weapons or the technology that would enable Iran to do so. This was a rare win for Russia in its diplomatic and media campaign to justify their Ukraine aggression. With Israel the Russians have not won over Israeli public opinion (which sees Russia as the bad guys) but they have managed to use their diplomatic muscle to foil Ukrainian efforts to get needed military equipment. 

While Russian aggression in Ukraine gets most of the headlines, there’s plenty of Russian misbehavior against other neighbors as well. Finland reports growing Russian military activity on the border and against Finnish ships in the Baltic. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (the “Baltic States” that were long part of Russia) are receiving similar harassment, as well as Russian offers of a large discount on what they pay for Russian natural gas if they will leave NATO. None of the Baltic States sees this as a good deal and consider NATO their only real protection from Russian aggression. 

Russia’s neighbors also agree that there has been a lot more activity by Russian “diplomats” posing as spies since the Ukrainian crises began in late 2013. East Europeans have been openly comparing Putin’s aggression to that of Stalin and Hitler before World War II. Russians get very upset at these comparisons, insisting that they are only seeking to regain territory that is really theirs’ and lost due to foreign conspiracies. At that point Russian logic introduces imaginary plots by NATO and the United States which strike Westerners as absurd but appeal to a lot of Russians. That’s what makes Russia’s neighbors nervous because it is a repeat of previous instances of Russian aggression. Russian neighbors, particularly Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are increasing defense spending and getting their military forces ready for Russian aggression. 

Procurement: For Old Friend Iraq, Russia Delivers

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htproc/articles/20141103.aspx

November 3, 2014: Responding to appeals from Iraq for more rapid delivery of military equipment Russia has, as of early November, delivered 12 of 28 Mi-35M armed transport helicopters and three of fifteen MI-28NA helicopter gunships. Some self-propelled rocket launchers were also sent early. Less urgently needed, but delivered early anyway, were some twin launchers for SA-16/18 anti-aircraft missiles (which were also delivered) and several of the Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft vehicles. 

All this is part of a large order that was originally expected to take several years to deliver. In late 2012 Iraq agreed to buy $4.2 billion worth of Russian weapons and military equipment. The deal was later cancelled for several months because of corruption allegations but by early 2013 the deal was back on and that some of the major items, like 30 Mi-28NE attack helicopters and up to fifty Pantsir-S1 (SA-22) mobile anti-aircraft systems will be delivered before the end of 2013. Iraq favors Russian equipment for several reasons. There is the obvious one that the Russians are “corruption friendly”. But Iraq has been using Russian weapons for decades and there are many Iraqis familiar with it. Most importantly Russian gear is simple to use and more tolerant of poor maintenance. While Western gear is safer to use and more reliable, it is also more expensive and requires more skilled operators and maintainers. 

The Mi-28N "Night Hunter" is an all-weather, night attack version of the 1980s era Mi-28A, with added FLIR (night vision sensor), night fighting optics, and a two man crew. The basic Mi-28 is an 11.6 ton helicopter that can carry 1.6 tons of rockets and missiles. The aircraft also has a 30mm cannon. The cockpit for the two man crew is armored and the helicopter has missile countermeasures (chaff and flares), GPS, head up display, laser designator, and other gadgets. The Mi-28N has a top speed of 300 kilometers an hour and a one way range of 1,100 kilometers. Sorties usually last two hours or so. It can carry up to 16 anti-tank missiles (with a range of up to eight kilometers). The helicopter can also carry 80mm rockets, bombs, or fuel for additional range. The Mi-28 has been around in small quantities for two decades but the Mi-28N is the most advanced model, on par with the American AH-64D gunship (which is a little lighter). The first version of the Mi-28N was shown in 1996, although the manufacturer, Mil, wasn't ready to offer for sale until 2004. 

The Mi-35 is the export version of the most recent version of the Mi-24 helicopter gunship. This is a twelve ton helicopter gunship that also has a cargo area that can hold up to eight people or four stretchers. The Mi-24/35 can carry rockets, missiles bombs, and automatic cannon. It is used by over thirty countries and has a pretty good reputation for reliability. The design is based on the earlier Mi-8 transport helicopter. 

Also delivered were several TOS-1 mobile rocket launchers. These are armored 220mm rocket launchers mounted on a T-72 tank chassis. The 24 rocket armored box for the 220mm missiles replaces the turret. Max range of the 220mm missiles is 6,000 meters and these rockets can carry high explosive or FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) warheads. TOS-1 has a crew of three. For every two or three TOS-1s there is a TZM-T resupply vehicle that is similar to the TOS-1 but carries 24 rockets and 400 liters (100 gallons) of fuel with which to resupply a TOS-1, using an onboard crane. The TZM-T also has a crew of three. 

The Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft system entered service in 2008 after more than a decade in development. Pantsir-S1 Development began in the 1990s, but was sporadic for nearly a decade because there was no money. Meanwhile, several Arab nations have been persuaded to order over 200 Pantsir-S1 vehicles. Pantsir-S1 is a mobile system, each vehicle carries radar, two 30mm cannon, and twelve Tunguska missiles. The 90 kg (198 pound) missiles have a twenty kilometer range, the radar a 30 kilometer range. The missile can hit targets at up to 8,400 meters (26,000 feet). The 30mm cannon is effective up to 3,200 meters (10,000 feet). The vehicle can vary but the most common one carrying all this weighs 20 tons and has a crew of three. Each Pantsir-S1 vehicle costs about $15 million. 

Iraq hopes to have the helicopters in action by the end of the year, along with the rocket launchers.