Eideard

Fishing in a seawater canal that leads to the desalination plant

Towering over the Bohai Sea shoreline on this city’s outskirts, the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.

There is but one wrinkle in the $4 billion plant: The desalted water costs twice as much to produce as it sells for. Nevertheless, the owner of the complex, a government-run conglomerate called S.D.I.C., is moving to quadruple the plant’s desalinating capacity, making it China’s largest.

“Someone has to lose money,” Guo Qigang, the plant’s general manager, said in a recent interview. “We’re a state-owned corporation, and it’s our social responsibility.”

In some places, this would be economic lunacy. In China, it is economic strategy.

As it did with solar panels and wind turbines, the government has set its mind on becoming a force in yet another budding environment-related industry: supplying the world with fresh water.

The Beijiang project, southeast of Beijing, will strengthen Chinese expertise in desalination, fine-tune the economics, help build an industrial base and, along the way, lessen a chronic water shortage in Tianjin. That money also leaks away like water — at least for now — is not a prime concern.

“The policy drivers are more important than the economic drivers,” said Olivia Jensen, an expert on Chinese water policy and a director at Infrastructure Economics, a Singapore-based consultancy. “If the central government says desalination is going to be a focus area and money should go into desalination technology, then it will.”

The government has, and it is.

You needn’t be as old as me to remember when we did things like this in the United States. Even apart from nuclear weapons.

Since the days of Reagan – nada, nuttin’ honey. Think we have the politicians, nowadays, to regain that kind of international and national competitiveness?

Google’s bids for a pool of wireless patents were based on mathematical constants, say sources.

The portfolio of 6,000 patents was auctioned to realise some value from the assets of bankrupt telecoms firm Nortel. During the sale, Google’s bids were based on pi, other constants and the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Google lost the auction as a consortium including Apple and Microsoft made the winning bid of $4.5bn…

The sale of the patent portfolio started as a five-way scrap between two separate consortia and individual firms including Google and Intel. Initial estimates suggested the portfolio would attract around $2bn but the four days of intense bidding saw the total rise sharply.

During its bids, Google picked numbers including Brun’s constant and Meissel-Mertens constant that were said to have “puzzled” others involved in the auction. When bids from rivals hit $3bn, Google reportedly bid pi, $3.14159bn, to up the ante.

“Either they were supremely confident or they were bored,” Reuters’ source said.

It is not clear what inspired Google to draw on obscure mathematics for its bids. However, Google co-founder Sergey Brin is widely acknowledged to be a maths prodigy and the bids may reveal his influence…

Ultimately the portfolio was being fought over by two groups: Google and Intel on one side and the Microsoft/Apple-led consortium on the other.

Reuters completely missed the Third Force analysis, which is – Google is often guided by a sense of humor reflecting the attitudes of the founders.

Click photo for video – about 9 minutes long. Sorry for the commercial.

John Taylor visited CNBC the other morning to discuss currency trading – a topic guaranteed to give you an ulcer if you do it for a living – or bore you into a greenback coma.

As an ingredient of his analysis, he makes the point that the Republican Party is using their majority in the House of Representatives to send our economy into another recession. We have left the boundaries of the Great Recession caused essentially by greedy investment banks and criminal mortgage procedures – aided by Republican policies obscuring and inhibiting oversight. They have decided to trigger another – deliberately.

He says this is a strategy decision by the Republican Party. Cause another recession – blame the Democrats and President Obama for it. Run for office as the alternative which will save the world.

I wonder if the Democrats and Obama have enough smarts, enough power to prevent this from happening?

The new head of Britain’s armed forces, Gen Sir David Richards, has warned that the West cannot defeat al-Qaeda and militant Islam.

He said defeating Islamist militancy was “unnecessary and would never be achieved”. However, he argued that it could be “contained” to allow Britons to lead secure lives.

Gen Richards, 58, said the threat posed by “al-Qaeda and its affiliates” meant Britain’s national security would be at risk for at least 30 years.

The general, who will tomorrow lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in Whitehall in memory of Britain’s war dead, said the West’s war against what he described as a “pernicious ideology” had parallels with the fight against Nazi Germany in the Second World War…

He said the British military and the Government had been “guilty of not fully understanding what was at stake” in Afghanistan and admitted that the Afghan people were beginning to “tire” of Nato’s inability to deliver on its promises…

The general said: “In conventional war, defeat and victory is very clear cut and is symbolised by troops marching into another nation’s capital. First of all you have to ask: do we need to defeat it [Islamist militancy] in the sense of a clear cut victory? I would argue that it is unnecessary and would never be achieved.

“But can we contain it to the point that our lives and our children’s lives are led securely? I think we can.”

He also said the real weapon in the war against al-Qaeda was the use of “upstream prevention” as well as “education and democracy”. The problems that gave rise to militant Islamism were unlikely to be solved soon, he added.

On the issue of future wars, the general said he could see no case for military intervention in other countries “at the moment” but added that he would be “barmy to say that one day we wouldn’t be back in that position”.

I’d love to see discussion with the general more detailed than that contained within the short attention span of the Telegraph. Not a bad newspaper for conservatives; but, sorely lacking in thoroughness and detail providing information for truly thoughtful analysis.

Still, there’s more truth here than you could expect from what passes for popular conservative media in the United States.

The video speaks for itself. General McChrystal is confident the surge he has set into motion in Afghanistan is providing results. Click on the photo. Watch the video. Reflect upon what you know, what you see, where this is going.

Meanwhile:

U.S. forces have driven the Taliban from most towns and villages in the strategic Helmand province of Afghanistan, leaving incoming troops with the mission of holding key areas and rebuilding the economy, Marine commanders say.

“They’ve taken on the Taliban, the insurgency, right in the heartland and they’ve defeated them,” said Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Mills in an interview with USA TODAY.

Much of the Taliban’s leadership and support comes from the mostly Pashtun province and nearby Kandahar. Helmand, the country’s largest province, also produces most of the country’s poppy crop, which has helped fund the insurgency.

Recent attention has been focused on President Obama’s orders to send about 30,000 reinforcements to Afghanistan this year. But an influx of Marines to Helmand province last year has produced dramatic results, raising hopes that the gains can be consolidated and spread elsewhere, Mills said.

“I see us moving away from the clear phase and moving into the hold and build” phase, Mills said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The top military commander in Afghanistan warns in a confidential assessment of the war there that he needs additional troops within the next year or else the conflict “will likely result in failure.”

The grim assessment is contained in a 66-page report that the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, submitted to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30, and which is now under review by President Obama and his top national security advisers…

In his five-page commander’s summary, General McChrystal ends on a cautiously optimistic note: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”

But throughout the document (.pdf), General McChrystal warns that unless he is provided more forces and a robust counterinsurgency strategy, the war in Afghanistan is most likely lost…

Mr. Obama and his advisers have said they need time to absorb the assessment of the Afghanistan security situation that General McChrystal submitted three weeks ago — a separate report from the general’s expected request for forces — as well as the uncertainties created by the fraud-tainted Afghan elections…

General McChrystal has publicly stated many of the conclusions in his report: emphasizing the importance of protecting civilians over just engaging insurgents, restricting airstrikes to reduce civilian casualties, and sharply expanding the Afghan security forces and accelerating their training…

When you walk in through the door of foreign intervention after 8 years of incompetence and arrogance, 8 years of Republican lies and deceit – you’re not surprised to find a disaster made worse by dollars wasted on a biblical scale.

If you have a conscience, if you care to try to repair the sleazy work done by the Bush-Cheney cohort, then gird your loins for another couple years of war mixed with civil investment that the Pentagon has known how to achieve all along – but, was not allowed to do. As crass as it sounds, even this second half-assed solution leaves the White House in a position to claim “victory” before the 2004 elections – with more of our troops back on American soil than there has been since Bush was elected.

Sec’y Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman, Gen. James Cartwright
Daylife/AP Photo

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has announced a major reshaping of the Pentagon budget with deep cuts in many traditional weapons systems but new billions of dollars for others, along with more troops and new technology to fight the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decisions are expected to set off a vigorous round of lobbying over the priorities embroidered into the Defense Department’s half-trillion dollars of annual spending. They represent the first broad rethinking of American military strategy under the Obama administration, which plans to shift more money to counterterrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan while spending less on preparations for conventional warfare against large nations like China and Russia.

Mr. Gates announced cuts in missile defense programs, the Army’s expensive Future Combat Systems and Navy shipbuilding operations. He would kill controversial programs to build a new presidential helicopter and a new communications satellite system, delay the development of a new bomber and order only four more of the advanced F-22 fighter jets.

But he also said plans to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, while halting reductions in Air Force and Navy personnel, would cost an additional $11 billion. He also announced an extra $2 billion for intelligence and surveillance equipment, including new Predator and Reaper drones, the remote-controlled vehicles currently used in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq for strikes against militants, and more spending on special forces and training foreign military units.

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Daylife/AFP/Getty Images

If you thought being governor of Alaska and a new grandmother would be enough to fill the cold, dark nights in the Arctic state, you underestimate Sarah Palin, the failed vice presidential candidate.

Palin has reportedly enlisted the services of Robert Barnett, the Washington lawyer who represented President Obama, would-be President Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in their multimillion-dollar book deals.

Barnett declined to comment. But a variety of published sources, including the Hollywood Reporter, said that Barnett was on board in helping to sell a Palin book. Presumably, the book would tell her side of the 2008 presidential election, when the GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, plucked Palin out of relative obscurity and offered her the vice presidential spot. Though she was a darling of conservatives and ignited the Republican base whenever she appeared in public, Palin has made it known that she had a difficult time with McCain’s strategists…

Sources close to Palin today rejected the reports of the $11-million figure and said the governor had not talked to any publisher or given any number…In any case, there is more than money at stake. Palin has been trying to stay in the spotlight, presumably with an eye on 2012, and a book could help her extend her reach beyond Alaska.

Poisonally, I hope she stays in the forefront – along with all the other rightwing populist-pretenders – in control of the Republikan Party through the 2012 elections. Should help Obama get a second term – and hopefully clear out more R&D deadwood along the way.

Thank, Mr. Justin

I hate to be one of those people who forwards links to “hilarious pictures” or “brilliant games” to half their contacts database. You know the ones. The hilarity or brilliance of a forwarded link is inversely proportional to the number of people it’s sent to.

So it’s been something of a trial to me this week to discover a link that I really do want to send to at least half the people I know: the wonderfully simple, sublimely intelligent little online game Oiligarchy. It combines so many fascinating elements: it’s part strategy game, part political statement, part chilling near-future narrative. It’s charmingly designed, and yet so slyly educational that I’ve been thinking a little differently about the world ever since I played it…

Oiligarchy makes no claims to be an impartial guide to the oil industry. As the designers say in their fascinating postmortem document, “Software does not constitute…documentary footage or a journalistic report…”

Of course, not everyone will agree with Oiligarchy’s politics and with the assumptions it makes about the world. But that’s not the point. The point is that there’s no more powerful way to understand the world than by stepping into someone else’s shoes. And games are an incredibly effective way to do that.

Cripes. Might even get me to play games some day or other.

The internet is widely accepted to have played a huge part in the election of Barack Obama. Now one of Obama’s web team is setting up business in the UK. Could the same thing happen in the UK?

If you did not look at Barack Obama’s website in the run-up to the US election, you might like to do so now before the excitement dies down. Not only will it tell you much about the man who is going to be president, it will also tell you much about how he did it.

It also happened because of the internet, according to Thomas Gensemer.

He is the founder of Blue State Digital, the strategy and software company which spearheaded Obama’s online strategy – and he says the knocking on doors, donations and talking to family and friends were all underpinned by the web.

Labour…is developing its web strategy, through a digital company called Tangent.

Its executive director Greg Jackson says there are big differences between the US and Britain – not least, that Americans know exactly when their elections will be held and can plan two years ahead.

He says online campaigning needs that long-term planning.

The article tells us a bit about Thomas Gensemer and his operation and what it brought to the Obama campaign. He’s in England offering to sell the same services.