The struggle goes on!
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Don't Hit the Children!
Here in Chilpancingo there is a hunger strike. The kids want to study medicine at the University of Guerrero; my institution. Right as I write this, they are a few blocks away waiting for the Rector to listen to them. Everybody went on a long holiday! Next week we celebrate in Mexico, since ten thousand years ago, the Day of the Dead.
Sixty days on a hunger strike!
Shame on us!
All they want is to be medical doctors for goodness sake!
As the kids in Colorado are hit by the police I am very sad.
:(
Sixty days on a hunger strike!
Shame on us!
All they want is to be medical doctors for goodness sake!
As the kids in Colorado are hit by the police I am very sad.
:(
Friday, October 28, 2011
Hilbert's and Feynman's Ordering
$$\mathbb{R}$$ is ordered, but $$\mathbb{R\times R}$$ is not.
Two twentieth century giants solved this. Hilbert invented the space filling curve, and Feynman invented the Path Integral.
The first construction fills the plane with an order. One knows, at a given order of recurrence, which way to go. The second invention uses time, by doing so, a contradiction appears between time as a special direction, and relativity's axiom, that space and time are indistinguishable.
Neat.
Two twentieth century giants solved this. Hilbert invented the space filling curve, and Feynman invented the Path Integral.
The first construction fills the plane with an order. One knows, at a given order of recurrence, which way to go. The second invention uses time, by doing so, a contradiction appears between time as a special direction, and relativity's axiom, that space and time are indistinguishable.
Neat.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Zeitgeist and The Real Deal: 147 TNCs in the core
"The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers."
"This means that network control is much more unequally distributed than wealth. In particular, the top ranked actors hold a control ten times bigger than what could be expected based on their wealth"
arXiv
I just watched Zeitgeist the movie. I believe that scapegoating is a symptom of bad times, really bad times. I remember Adolf Hitler, and the loonies around him, in my mind, he was not that much different from the Tripoli Rat and his honchos, who ended up, not killing himself like Hitler, but with a pipe up his ass.
Never again should a whole people be held responsible for the evils of society, neither then, nor now, the guilty party is just a small group of people, not the Mexicans, not the Jews.
On the other hand, it is perfectly within the reach of my imagination to understand the point of this important article: A small group of us, was given too much power and they are wreaking the ship. They have to be stopped: Occupy Wall Street!
147 TNCs in the core. Less than 200 TransNational Corporations CONTROL the world.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Digital Divide
I am so sentimental. Today I almost cried twice. Earlier today, in my Systems Simulation class, I introduced Nintendo's 3DS:
I showed them earlier the SimCity, and Animal Crossing entries in Wikipedia.
We are learning how to use SimPy to simulate systems this term.
All Children of the World are Equal!
I'll do my best for these two Mep'haa girls.
Later in the day, in my Modern World Analysis class, we discussed quotas for Indian admission to our University. Another Indian girl told me that her parents didn't agree with the government's decision to teach English to Indian children who don't speak Spanish.
We are occupying their land and have the gall to tell them what to learn or not. HUBRIS.
I hope this situation ends someday.
When I saw their eyes, I almost cried. My boy just bought one when it first came out. Immediately they asked that next time I go to Chicago, I should bring them one.
I showed them earlier the SimCity, and Animal Crossing entries in Wikipedia.
We are learning how to use SimPy to simulate systems this term.
All Children of the World are Equal!
I'll do my best for these two Mep'haa girls.
Later in the day, in my Modern World Analysis class, we discussed quotas for Indian admission to our University. Another Indian girl told me that her parents didn't agree with the government's decision to teach English to Indian children who don't speak Spanish.
We are occupying their land and have the gall to tell them what to learn or not. HUBRIS.
I hope this situation ends someday.
Robert Fisk: You can't blame Gaddafi for thinking he was one of the good guys
The West may be celebrating his death, but that's just an accident of timing
Friday, 21 October 2011
We loved him. We hated him. Then we loved him again. Blair slobbered over him. Then we hated him again. Then La Clinton slobbered over her BlackBerry and we really hated him even more again. Let us all pray that he wasn't murdered. "Died of wounds suffered during capture." What did that mean?
He was a crazy combination of Don Corleone and Donald Duck – Tom Friedman's only moment of truth about Saddam Hussein – and we who had to watch his ridiculous march-pasts and his speeches bit our lips and wrote about Libyan tanks and marines and missiles that were supposed to take this nonsense seriously. His frogmen flipped and flapped through Green Square in the heat and we had to take this rubbish at face value and pretend that it was a real threat to Israel; just as Blair tried to persuade us (not unsuccessfully) that Gaddafi's pathetic attempts to create "weapons of mass destruction" had been skewered. This, in a country that couldn't repair a public lavatory.
So he is gone, the colonel who was once beloved of the Foreign Office (after the coup against King Idris), then guarded as a "safe pair of hands", then loathed because he sent weapons to the IRA, then loved, etc, etc. Can you blame the man for thinking he was a good guy?
And did he perish so? Shot down while trying to resist? We lived with Ceausescu's death (and that of his wife), so why not Gaddafi's? And Gaddafi's wife is safe. Why shouldn't the dictator die thus? Interesting question. Did our friends in the National Transitional Council decree his demise? Or was this "natural", a death at the hands of his enemies, an honourable end to a bad man? I wonder. How the West must have been relieved that there would be no trials, no endless speeches from the Great Leader, no defence of his regime. No trials mean no accounts of rendition and torture and no cutting of sexual parts.
So let us not recall any grovelling to Gaddafi. More than 30 year ago, I went to Tripoli, and met the IRA man who sent the Semtex to Ireland and protected the Irish citizens in Libya, and the Libyans were quite happy that I should meet them. And why not? For this was a period in which Gaddafi was the leader of the Third World. We got used to the ways of his regime. We got used to his cruelty. We connived at it, once it became "normal". Thus it was important to finish the documentation of his viciousness on our behalf.
Indeed, the end of any juridical evidence of torture by Gaddafi's regime care of (of course) and on behalf of the UK government would be a good thing, wouldn't it? The UK woman who knew all about this torture – unnamed but I know her name, so make sure she does not misbehave again – will she be safe from prosecution (which she should not be)? And will we all make cosy with Muammar Gaddafi's mates in the aftermath of his demise?
Maybe. But let us not forget the past. Gaddafi remembered the Italian colonial rule in Libya, the repulsive Italian rule during which every Libyan had to walk in the gutter when confronted by an Italian, when Libya's heroes were hanged in public, when Libyan freedom was regarded as "terrorism". The oil men and the lads and lassies from the IMF are going to be treated no better with the same servitude. The Libyans are smart people. Gaddafi knew that; although, fatally, he thought himself smarter. The idea that these tribal people will suddenly "globalise" and become different is ridiculous.
Gaddafi was one of those Arab potentates for whom the moniker "crazy" was fitting, yet who spoke a kind of sanity. He did not believe in "Palestine" because he thought the Israelis had already stolen too much Arab land (correct) and he did not really believe in the Arab world – hence his tribal beliefs. He was, indeed, a very odd person.
We shall wait to find out how Gaddafi died. Was he murdered? Was he "resisting" (a good tribal thing to do)? Don't worry – La Clinton will be happy he was "killed".
The Independent
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Accountability and Corruption
Below you can read about white collar crime. At my university there is corruption also, and no accountability.
Today I remember one of my heroes, Ray Sawyer.
In the 70s he was the dean of graduate students when I got to UCSB; I dutifully reported to his office and we talked of his recent Physical Review Letters article, with Doug Scalapino on pion condensates. That was great, fresh from the Physics Department at CINVESTAV, in Mexico City, and talking to such great, and unassuming scientist!
He had me. What a man.
Later in the 80s, I went to visit UCSB again. Now the issue was politics. One of my Physics buddies, Martin Smith, told me that the Chancellor resigned because of a leak by Ray. The chief was improperly taking money to furnish the Chancellor's house on campus, or some such. At the same time Ray had predicted how many neutrinos would hit the Earth, if a nearby supernova were to exploit, and voilà, there came Supernova 1987a. Right on the spot a few neutrinos would hit, and indeed they did. I was awed!
I will have to be several times more powerful than that Wizard Dumbledore, from the Harry Potter world, to fix things around here.
Oh well.
Today I remember one of my heroes, Ray Sawyer.
In the 70s he was the dean of graduate students when I got to UCSB; I dutifully reported to his office and we talked of his recent Physical Review Letters article, with Doug Scalapino on pion condensates. That was great, fresh from the Physics Department at CINVESTAV, in Mexico City, and talking to such great, and unassuming scientist!
He had me. What a man.
Later in the 80s, I went to visit UCSB again. Now the issue was politics. One of my Physics buddies, Martin Smith, told me that the Chancellor resigned because of a leak by Ray. The chief was improperly taking money to furnish the Chancellor's house on campus, or some such. At the same time Ray had predicted how many neutrinos would hit the Earth, if a nearby supernova were to exploit, and voilà, there came Supernova 1987a. Right on the spot a few neutrinos would hit, and indeed they did. I was awed!
I will have to be several times more powerful than that Wizard Dumbledore, from the Harry Potter world, to fix things around here.
Oh well.
OWS?
Accused of Deception, Citi Agrees to Pay $285 Million
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: October 19, 2011
WASHINGTON — Citigroup has agreed to pay $285 million to settle a civil fraud complaint that it misled investors in a $1 billion derivativesdeal tied to the United States housing market, then bet against the investors as the housing market began to show signs of distress, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Wednesday.The S.E.C. also brought a civil action against a Citigroup employee who was responsible for structuring the transaction, and brought and settled another against the asset management unit of Credit Suisse and a Credit Suisse employee who also had responsibility for the derivative security.
The securities fraud complaint was similar to one the S.E.C. brought against Goldman Sachs last year, with one significant difference. Goldman Sachs was accused of misleading investors about who was picking the investments in a mortgage-related derivative.
It told investors that the bonds would be chosen by an independent manager, when in fact many of them were chosen by John A. Paulson, a hedge fund manager who chose assets that he believed were most likely to lose value, according to the S.E.C.’s complaint in that case. Goldman later settled the case by paying $550 million.
In the Citigroup case, however, it was the bank itself that chose assets for the portfolio that it then bet against. Investors were not told of its role or that Citigroup had an interest that was adverse to the interests of investors.
“The securities laws demand that investors receive more care and candor than Citigroup provided to these C.D.O. investors,” said Robert Khuzami, director of the S.E.C.’s division of enforcement. “Investors were not informed that Citigroup had decided to bet against them and had helped choose the assets that would determine who won or lost.”
The S.E.C. said the $285 million would be returned to investors in the deal, a collateralized debt obligation known as Class V Funding III. The commission said Citigroup exercised significant influence over the selection of $500 million of assets in the deal’s portfolio.
Citigroup then took a short position against those mortgage-related assets, an investment in which Citigroup would profit if the assets declined in value. The company did not disclose to the investors to whom it sold the collateralized debt obligation that it had helped to select the assets or that it was betting against them.
In a statement, Citigroup said: “We are pleased to put this matter behind us and are focused on contributing to the economic recovery, serving our clients and growing responsibly. Since the crisis, we have bolstered our financial strength, overhauled the risk management function, significantly reduced risk on the balance sheet, and returned to the basics of banking.” The S.E.C. action named Brian Stoker, 40, a Citigroup employee who was primarily responsible for putting together the deal, and Samir H. Bhatt, 37, a Credit Suisse portfolio manager who was primarily responsible for the transaction. Credit Suisse served as the collateral manager for the C.D.O. transaction.
Mr. Stoker, who left Citigroup in 2008, is fighting the S.E.C. case, his lawyer said. Mr. Bhatt settled, agreeing to a six-month suspension from association with any investment adviser.
“There is no basis for the S.E.C. to blame Brian Stoker for these alleged disclosure violations,” said Fraser L. Hunter, a lawyer at WilmerHale representing Mr. Stoker. “He was not responsible for any alleged wrongdoing — he did not control or trade the position, did not prepare the disclosures and did not select the assets. We will vigorously defend this lawsuit.”
The derivative securities lost value remarkably fast. After the deal closed on Feb. 28, 2007, more than 80 percent of the portfolio was downgraded by credit-rating agencies in less than nine months. The security declared “an event of default” on Nov. 19, 2007, and investors eventually lost hundreds of millions of dollars, the S.E.C. said.
Citigroup received fees of $34 million for structuring and marketing the transaction and realized net profits of at least $126 million from its short position. The $285 million settlement includes $160 million in disgorgement plus $30 million in prejudgment interest and a $95 million penalty, all of which will be returned to investors.
The companies and individuals who settled in the case neither admitted nor denied the accusations in the complaint.
The settlement is subject to approval in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the charges were filed.
NYT
No Money
What if almost everybody around me is corrupt?
I remember Sabás Alarcón, he refused to cash his salary checks because he believed that peasants and workers deserved a better salary than he did. I am told that his sister came to claim those checks after some months. Was Sabás insane?
Today and yesterday we had a school meeting to reform the Autonomous University of Guerrero. I heard over and over again, that the university is riled with corruption. Supposedly my colleagues at the Law School, have some, should we call them imaginative?, ways to take advantage of their university ties.
These are sad news.
I am poor, and pure.
Is that insanity?
I remember Sabás Alarcón, he refused to cash his salary checks because he believed that peasants and workers deserved a better salary than he did. I am told that his sister came to claim those checks after some months. Was Sabás insane?
Today and yesterday we had a school meeting to reform the Autonomous University of Guerrero. I heard over and over again, that the university is riled with corruption. Supposedly my colleagues at the Law School, have some, should we call them imaginative?, ways to take advantage of their university ties.
These are sad news.
I am poor, and pure.
Is that insanity?
Monday, October 17, 2011
Lyrics: Something for Nothing (Rush)
Waiting for the winds of change To sweep the clouds away Waiting for the rainbow's end To cast it's gold your way Countless ways You pass the days Waiting for someone to call And turn your world around Looking for an answer To the question you have found Looking for An open door You don't get something for nothing You can't have freedom for free You won't get wise With the sleep still in your eyes No matter what your dreams might be What you own is your own kingdom What you do is your own glory What you love is your own power What you live is your own story In your head is the answer Let it guide you along Let your heart be the anchor And the beat of your own song You don't get something for nothing You can't have freedom for free You won't get wise With the sleep still in your eyes No matter what your dreams might beLyrics Freak
Something for Nothing?
There is a famous Law of Physics, you cannot get something for nothing. This is the Law of Conservation of Energy.
According to Alan Guth, Inflation is the biggest Free Lunch ever.
Here I bring another take on this very attractive idea.
While at LynkLabs (no patent here), I considered the possibility to harness radio waves to power small devices. Now some cell phone companies are pursuing this. Wikipedia.
Of course this is not something from nothing. What we mean is, that there is so much junk energy floating around us, that we might as well use it.
Today the NYT has a piece on spacecrafts with no human energy source, [link].
I am going to give a talk on Quasicrystals, so I was remembering the Fermi Acceleration mechanism for Cosmic Rays. Again, this is more playing the odds than violating the law of conservation of energy.
Even a simple minded kicked oscillator, related to the Zaslavskii map, shows this phenomenon.
Professor Lowenstein showed that the phase space points completely fill the plane, in a Stochastic Web.
In laymen's terms, this means, that one can start with a spring, then every fifth of a cycle one gives it a small kick, and it is possible to find the spring very hot after a long time. The kicks do not have to be big. A small one suffices.
Sure, if you want to go to the stars this way, be my guest. Unfortunately the first tries will be like the monkeys from the note below!
Data Driven World
The Infinite monkey theorem is part of the modern popular culture: Could it be that just by chance a monkey, or enough monkeys, given enough time, would ever write Shakespeare's ouvres?
On similar lines, Prof. Max Tegmark , proposes that all mathematics is "realized" somewhere.
Be it as it may, I say, that given the flood of data coming our way, we are past due to formulate a New Scientific Method, in the lines of Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".
Catastrophes are "pull" events for cities all around the world, to use these New Scientific Method, to be ready when the New Real Big Catastrophe, hits our city.
First, of course, one has to develop this method.
I'm working on it.
On similar lines, Prof. Max Tegmark , proposes that all mathematics is "realized" somewhere.
Be it as it may, I say, that given the flood of data coming our way, we are past due to formulate a New Scientific Method, in the lines of Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".
Catastrophes are "pull" events for cities all around the world, to use these New Scientific Method, to be ready when the New Real Big Catastrophe, hits our city.
First, of course, one has to develop this method.
I'm working on it.
On to the stars!
Cowards shoot for Mars.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Economist?
If I have the audacity to write poetry; then there is no surprise if I write on Economics.
The world is going through the biggest wealth transfer in the history of humanity. I do not mean that 1% owns all the money, as the kids in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement believe.
Explanation:
I was downtown Chilpancingo a few minutes ago. I ate at the San Francisco Market. On the wall hang an invitation for everybody to go at midnight, on October 27, Saint Jude's Day, to celebrate this, the saint for the hard enterprises in Mexico. He is one of the saints for the drug dealers' movement here.
Joaquín Chapo Guzmán, the ruler of the drug dealers' movement, has a third grade education.
Robin Hood, is safe and well, protected by Saint Jude, directing the biggest wealth distribution campaign in Mexico.
I assume something similar is happening in Afghanistan; and in many other places around the world.
There you have it: The Robin Hood Theory of Economics.
Neither ideology, nor rationality alone explains the world.
Follow the money!
The world is going through the biggest wealth transfer in the history of humanity. I do not mean that 1% owns all the money, as the kids in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement believe.
Explanation:
I was downtown Chilpancingo a few minutes ago. I ate at the San Francisco Market. On the wall hang an invitation for everybody to go at midnight, on October 27, Saint Jude's Day, to celebrate this, the saint for the hard enterprises in Mexico. He is one of the saints for the drug dealers' movement here.
Joaquín Chapo Guzmán, the ruler of the drug dealers' movement, has a third grade education.
Robin Hood, is safe and well, protected by Saint Jude, directing the biggest wealth distribution campaign in Mexico.
I assume something similar is happening in Afghanistan; and in many other places around the world.
There you have it: The Robin Hood Theory of Economics.
Neither ideology, nor rationality alone explains the world.
Follow the money!
Saturday, October 15, 2011
I am a Prophet and a Poet.
Dennis M. Ritchie is dead, Cornell West took the side of the people. This is my prophecy:
We the people have found our voice
Understand and transform
We the people have found our voice
Understand and transform
There is tomorrow only if we understand today
Everybody must get understoned
We the people have found our voice
Understand and transform
We the people have found our voice
Understand and transform
There is tomorrow only if we understand today
Everybody must get understoned
America’s ‘Primal Scream’
¶The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.
¶The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
¶In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.
Nicholas D. Kristof
General Assembly Starting Right Now.
I am following the live stream.
Occupy Wall Street
This is how democracy looks like.
Protesters have the legal help phone number written in their bodies. They already memorized the number.
Occupy Wall Street
This is how democracy looks like.
NYT Where are You?
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
What Can Intellectuals Do in Times of Change?
Paul Krugman is doing a superb job in his New York Times pulpit.
When voices against reasons take over the airwaves, it feels as a breadth of fresh air, to listen to REASON.
Thanks professor Krugman!
And what about me?
I do not have a Nobel prize, but I am trying!
In These Times Intellectuals can help the historical actors. Now they are the educated and unemployed twenty somethings.
Go kids, go!
I am with you. You are right, and THEY are wrong.
Who are THEY? That is easy: THE PLUTOCRATS.
When voices against reasons take over the airwaves, it feels as a breadth of fresh air, to listen to REASON.
Thanks professor Krugman!
And what about me?
I do not have a Nobel prize, but I am trying!
In These Times Intellectuals can help the historical actors. Now they are the educated and unemployed twenty somethings.
Go kids, go!
I am with you. You are right, and THEY are wrong.
Who are THEY? That is easy: THE PLUTOCRATS.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Where are We Going, and How to go About It?
Could it be that all that matters is already spelled out somewhere, and all we have to do is find it?
I am reading two or three books at once, and all is coming together. I guess the weirdest idea, is the Many Worlds Interpretation of Hugh Everett, now spearheaded by David Deutsch.
Daniel I. Fivel derives Quantum Mechanics from Information Theory. Bogdan Mielnik had started along similar lines, years ago.
B. Mielnik, Commun. Math. Phys. 15 1-46 (1969).
I just saw a movie, where Lev does the art, and also helps directing, which I find insightful. Brain Trust.
Spell it out, they tell Brian, and he chooses to write it for his son (maybe is not really his), still in the wife's womb, instead. He even hides it from God!
That is how I feel about my Great Idea.
We are turning into cyborgs, and the sooner a good fraction of us learns how to program computers, the better.
I've seen the Promised Land, and even if I don't get there, I know we are going to be saved.
There is truth, and progress, and we have the scientific method to guide us there.
For now, everybody should get connected online.
Everybody must get connected!
I am reading two or three books at once, and all is coming together. I guess the weirdest idea, is the Many Worlds Interpretation of Hugh Everett, now spearheaded by David Deutsch.
Daniel I. Fivel derives Quantum Mechanics from Information Theory. Bogdan Mielnik had started along similar lines, years ago.
B. Mielnik, Commun. Math. Phys. 15 1-46 (1969).
I just saw a movie, where Lev does the art, and also helps directing, which I find insightful. Brain Trust.
Spell it out, they tell Brian, and he chooses to write it for his son (maybe is not really his), still in the wife's womb, instead. He even hides it from God!
That is how I feel about my Great Idea.
We are turning into cyborgs, and the sooner a good fraction of us learns how to program computers, the better.
I've seen the Promised Land, and even if I don't get there, I know we are going to be saved.
There is truth, and progress, and we have the scientific method to guide us there.
For now, everybody should get connected online.
Everybody must get connected!
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Jerry Brown
""Steve Jobs was a great California innovator who demonstrated what a totally independent and creative mind can accomplish. Few people have made such a powerful and elegant imprint on our lives. Anne and I wish to express our deepest sympathy to Steve's wife, Laurene, and their entire family.""
Thoughts
I am touched.
The Modern World is changing fast. I cannot imagine what is coming in detail. In general I expect good things.
Thanks to:
Alexei V. Filippenko
Steve P. Jobs
David E. Deutsch
The Modern World is changing fast. I cannot imagine what is coming in detail. In general I expect good things.
Thanks to:
Alexei V. Filippenko
Steve P. Jobs
David E. Deutsch
Alex Filippenko
10/5/11
I have received many inquiries regarding the significance
of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and what my role may
have been in the research for which the prize was awarded.
Let me explain here briefly.
Yesterday (Oct. 4), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
announced that the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics is being
awarded to Dr. Saul Perlmutter (UC Berkeley), Dr. Brian
Schmidt (Australian National University), and Dr. Adam Riess
(Johns Hopkins University), for their discovery of the
accelerating expansion of the Universe. By measuring the
expansion history of the Universe through observations
of exploding stars known as a "Type Ia supernovae," they
found that the expansion is currently speeding up with time,
rather than slowing down as would have been expected under
the influence of attractive gravity alone! The phenomenon
has been confirmed by other techniques, and there is now
little doubt that it's true. But the cause is unknown;
either mysterious, repulsive "dark energy" pervades all
of space and makes up 73% of the total matter/energy content
of the Universe, or there's a problem with Einstein's general
theory of relativity on large scales. Many scientists
think this is currently the number-one observationally
motivated problem in all of physics, and it provides
crucial clues to the long-sought quantum theory of gravity.
This discovery was made by two teams in 1998 -- the Supernova
Cosmology Project (led by Perlmutter) and the High-Redshift
Supernova Search Team (led by Schmidt). I was initially on
Perlmutter's team, but later switched to Schmidt's team, and I
was the only person to have been a coauthor of both of the
discovery papers. My main role on both teams was to obtain
spectra of the supernova candidates with the mighty Keck
telescopes in Hawaii, verifying that they really were Type Ia
supernovae and determining their "redshifts" (i.e., how much
the light has stretched on its way to us). Adam Riess was a
young postdoctoral scholar working with me at UC Berkeley in
1996-1999, as part of Schmidt's team; he led the analysis
of our data, and was the first (on Schmidt's team) to
realize the implications of our observations.
All together, the two teams had 51 scientists, each of whom
contributed significantly (and in some cases, a large amount)
to the research. But according to the rules of the Swedish
Academy, the Nobel Prize can be shared by at most 3 individuals.
Thus, the two team leaders were recognized (Perlmutter and
Schmidt), as well as Adam Riess (who was the lead author on
the research paper announcing the results of Schmidt's team).
This isn't entirely fair, because it doesn't give credit
to the many other hard-working scientists, and it gives the
misleading impression that science is done largely by
individuals... but that's the way it goes.
I am enormously happy that our work led to fundamental
breakthroughs in physics that were worthy of the Nobel Prize, and
I wholeheartedly congratulate the three winners. I'm very proud
that much of the work was done at UC Berkeley, by both teams;
the Nobel Prize brings great honor and recognition to our
University. And I could not have imagined, decades ago, that
I would be involved in such important research; it has truly
been a rare and amazing privilege, and I feel extremely
fortunate.
With best wishes,
Alex
ps. For the UC Berkeley press release on the 2011 Nobel Prize
in Physics, see
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/10/04/saul-perlmutter-awarded-2011-nobel-prize-in-physics/
I have received many inquiries regarding the significance
of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and what my role may
have been in the research for which the prize was awarded.
Let me explain here briefly.
Yesterday (Oct. 4), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
announced that the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics is being
awarded to Dr. Saul Perlmutter (UC Berkeley), Dr. Brian
Schmidt (Australian National University), and Dr. Adam Riess
(Johns Hopkins University), for their discovery of the
accelerating expansion of the Universe. By measuring the
expansion history of the Universe through observations
of exploding stars known as a "Type Ia supernovae," they
found that the expansion is currently speeding up with time,
rather than slowing down as would have been expected under
the influence of attractive gravity alone! The phenomenon
has been confirmed by other techniques, and there is now
little doubt that it's true. But the cause is unknown;
either mysterious, repulsive "dark energy" pervades all
of space and makes up 73% of the total matter/energy content
of the Universe, or there's a problem with Einstein's general
theory of relativity on large scales. Many scientists
think this is currently the number-one observationally
motivated problem in all of physics, and it provides
crucial clues to the long-sought quantum theory of gravity.
This discovery was made by two teams in 1998 -- the Supernova
Cosmology Project (led by Perlmutter) and the High-Redshift
Supernova Search Team (led by Schmidt). I was initially on
Perlmutter's team, but later switched to Schmidt's team, and I
was the only person to have been a coauthor of both of the
discovery papers. My main role on both teams was to obtain
spectra of the supernova candidates with the mighty Keck
telescopes in Hawaii, verifying that they really were Type Ia
supernovae and determining their "redshifts" (i.e., how much
the light has stretched on its way to us). Adam Riess was a
young postdoctoral scholar working with me at UC Berkeley in
1996-1999, as part of Schmidt's team; he led the analysis
of our data, and was the first (on Schmidt's team) to
realize the implications of our observations.
All together, the two teams had 51 scientists, each of whom
contributed significantly (and in some cases, a large amount)
to the research. But according to the rules of the Swedish
Academy, the Nobel Prize can be shared by at most 3 individuals.
Thus, the two team leaders were recognized (Perlmutter and
Schmidt), as well as Adam Riess (who was the lead author on
the research paper announcing the results of Schmidt's team).
This isn't entirely fair, because it doesn't give credit
to the many other hard-working scientists, and it gives the
misleading impression that science is done largely by
individuals... but that's the way it goes.
I am enormously happy that our work led to fundamental
breakthroughs in physics that were worthy of the Nobel Prize, and
I wholeheartedly congratulate the three winners. I'm very proud
that much of the work was done at UC Berkeley, by both teams;
the Nobel Prize brings great honor and recognition to our
University. And I could not have imagined, decades ago, that
I would be involved in such important research; it has truly
been a rare and amazing privilege, and I feel extremely
fortunate.
With best wishes,
Alex
ps. For the UC Berkeley press release on the 2011 Nobel Prize
in Physics, see
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/10/04/saul-perlmutter-awarded-2011-nobel-prize-in-physics/
Steve Jobs, Apple’s Visionary, Dies at 56
Steve Jobs introduced the new iPhone 4 in San Francisco in 2010.
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: October 5, 2011
Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then did nothing less than lead a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday in Palo Alto, Calif.. He was 56.
The death was announced by Apple, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage.
Mr. Jobs had waged a long and public struggle with cancer, remaining the face of the company even as he underwent treatment, introducing new products for a global market in his trademark blue jeans even as he grew gaunt and frail.
He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer. When he left, he had still been engaged in the company’s affairs, negotiating with another Silicon Valley executive only weeks earlier.
“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”
By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and an array of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet. He had also become a very rich man, worth an estimated $8.3 billion.
Eight years after founding Apple, Mr. Jobs led the team that designed the Macintosh computer, a breakthrough in making personal computers easier to use. After a 12-year separation from the company, prompted by a bitter falling-out with his chief executive, John Sculley, he returned in 1997 to oversee the creation of one innovative digital device after another — the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. They transformed not only product categories like music players and cellphones but also entire industries, like music and mobile communications.
During his years outside Apple, he bought a tiny computer graphics spinoff from the director George Lucas and built a team of computer scientists, artists and animators that became Pixar Animation Studios. Starting with “Toy Story” in 1995, Pixar produced a string of hit movies, won several Academy Awards for both artistic and technological excellence, and made the full-length computer-animated film a mainstream art form enjoyed by children and adults worldwide.
Mr. Jobs was neither a hardware engineer nor a software programmer, nor did he think of himself as a manager. He considered himself a technology leader, choosing the best people possible, encouraging and prodding them, and making the final call on product design.
It was an executive style that had evolved. In his early years at Apple, his meddling in tiny details maddened colleagues, and his criticism could be caustic and even humiliating. But he grew to elicit extraordinary loyalty.
“He was the most passionate leader one could hope for, a motivating force without parallel,” wrote Steven Levy, author of the 1994 book “Insanely Great,” which chronicles the creation of the Macintosh. “Tom Sawyer could have picked up tricks from Steve Jobs.”
“Toy Story,” for example, took four years to make while Pixar struggled, yet Mr. Jobs never let up on his colleagues. “‘You need a lot more than vision — you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course,” said Edwin Catmull, a computer scientist and a co-founder of Pixar. “In Steve’s case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward.”
Mr. Jobs was the ultimate arbiter of Apple products, and his standards were exacting. Over the course of a year he tossed out two iPhone prototypes, for example, before approving the third, and began shipping it in June 2007.
To his understanding of technology he brought an immersion in popular culture. In his 20s, he dated Joan Baez; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party. His worldview was shaped by the ‘60s counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had grown up, the adopted son of a Silicon Valley machinist. When he graduated from high school in Los Altos in 1972, he said, ”the very strong scent of the 1960s was still there.”
After dropping out of Reed College, a stronghold of liberal thought in Portland, Ore., in 1972, Mr. Jobs led a countercultural lifestyle himself. He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.
Decades later he flew around the world in his own corporate jet, but he maintained emotional ties to the period in which he grew up. He often felt like an outsider in the corporate world, he said. When discussing the Silicon Valley’s lasting contributions to humanity, he mentioned in the same breath the invention of the microchip and “The Whole Earth Catalog,” a 1960s counterculture publication.
Apple’s very name reflected his unconventionality. In an era when engineers and hobbyists tended to describe their machines with model numbers, he chose the name of a fruit, supposedly because of his dietary habits at the time.
Coming on the scene just as computing began to move beyond the walls of research laboratories and corporations in the 1970s, Mr. Jobs saw that computing was becoming personal — that it could do more than crunch numbers and solve scientific and business problems — and that it could even be a force for social and economic change. And at a time when hobbyist computers were boxy wooden affairs with metal chassis, he designed the Apple II as a sleek, low-slung plastic package intended for the den or the kitchen. He was offering not just products but a digital lifestyle.
He put much stock in the notion of “taste,” a word he used frequently. It was a sensibility that shone in products that looked like works of art and delighted users. Great products, he said, were a triumph of taste, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”
Regis McKenna, a veteran Silicon Valley marketing executive to whom Mr. Jobs turned in the late 1970s to help shape the Apple brand, said Mr. Jobs’s genius lay in his ability to simplify complex, highly engineered products, “to strip away the excess layers of business, design and innovation until only the simple, elegant reality remained.”
Mr. Jobs’s own research and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: “None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
Early Interests
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on Feb. 24, 1955, and put up for adoption by his biological parents, Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a graduate student from Syria who became a political science professor. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs.
The elder Mr. Jobs, who worked in finance and real estate before returning to his original trade as a machinist, moved his family down the San Francisco Peninsula to Mountain View and then to Los Altos in the 1960s.
Mr. Jobs developed an early interest in electronics. He was mentored by a neighbor, an electronics hobbyist, who built Heathkit do-it-yourself electronics projects. He was brash from an early age. As an eighth grader, after discovering that a crucial part was missing from a frequency counter he was assembling, he telephoned William Hewlett, the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard. Mr. Hewlett spoke with the boy for 20 minutes, prepared a bag of parts for him to pick up and offered him a job as a summer intern.
Mr. Jobs met Mr. Wozniak while attending Homestead High School in neighboring Cupertino. The two took an introductory electronics class there.
The spark that ignited their partnership was provided by Mr. Wozniak’s mother. Mr. Wozniak had graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley when she sent him an article from the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine. The article, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” by Ron Rosenbaum, detailed an underground hobbyist culture of young men known as phone phreaks who were illicitly exploring the nation’s phone system.
Mr. Wozniak shared the article with Mr. Jobs, and the two set out to track down an elusive figure identified in the article as Captain Crunch. The man had taken the name from his discovery that a whistle that came in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal was tuned to a frequency that made it possible to make free long-distance calls simply by blowing the whistle next to a phone handset.
Captain Crunch was John Draper, a former Air Force electronic technician, and finding him took several weeks. Learning that the two young hobbyists were searching for him, Mr. Draper appeared one day in Mr. Wozniak’s Berkeley dormitory room. Mr. Jobs, who was still in high school, had traveled to Berkeley for the meeting. When Mr. Draper arrived, he entered the room saying simply, “It is I!”
Based on information they gleaned from Mr. Draper, Mr. Wozniak and Mr. Jobs later collaborated on building and selling blue boxes, devices that were widely used for making free — and illegal — phone calls. They raised a total of $6,000 from the effort.
After enrolling at Reed College in 1972, Mr. Jobs left after one semester, but remained in Portland for another 18 months auditing classes. In a commencement address given at Stanford University in 2005, he said he had decided to leave college because it was consuming all of his parents’ savings.
Leaving school, however, also freed his curiosity to follow his interests. “I didn’t have a dorm room,” he said in his Stanford speech, “so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.”
He returned to Silicon Valley in 1974 and took a job there as a technician at Atari, the video game manufacturer. Still searching for his calling, he left after several months and traveled to India with a college friend, Daniel Kottke, who would later become an early Apple employee. Mr. Jobs returned to Atari that fall. In 1975, he and Mr. Wozniak, then working as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard, began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist group that met at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif. Personal computing had been pioneered at research laboratories adjacent to Stanford University, and it was spreading to the outside world.
“What I remember is how intense he looked,” said Lee Felsenstein, a computer designer who was a Homebrew member. “He was everywhere, and he seemed to be trying to hear everything people had to say.”
Mr. Wozniak designed the original Apple I computer simply to show it off to his friends at the Homebrew. It was Mr. Jobs who had the inspiration that it could be a commercial product.
In early 1976, he and Mr. Wozniak, using their own money, began Apple with an initial investment of $1,300; they later gained the backing of a former Intel executive, A. C. Markkula, who lent them $250,000. Mr. Wozniak would be the technical half and Mr. Jobs the marketing half of the original Apple I Computer. Starting out in the Jobs family garage in Los Altos, they moved the company to a small office in Cupertino shortly thereafter.
In April 1977, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Wozniak introduced Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. It created a sensation. Faced with a gaggle of small and large competitors in the emerging computer market, Apple, with its Apple II, had figured out a way to straddle the business and consumer markets by building a computer that could be customized for specific applications.
Sales skyrocketed, from $2 million in 1977 to $600 million in 1981, the year the company went public. By 1983 Apple was in the Fortune 500. No company had ever joined the list so quickly.
The Apple III, introduced in May 1980, was intended to dominate the desktop computer market. I.B.M. would not introduce its original personal computer until 1981. But the Apple III had a host of technical problems, and Mr. Jobs shifted his focus to a new and ultimately short-lived project, an office workstation computer code-named Lisa.
An Apocalyptic Moment
By then Mr. Jobs had made his much-chronicled 1979 visit to Xerox’s research center in Palo Alto, where he saw the Alto, an experimental personal computer system that foreshadowed modern desktop computing. The Alto, controlled by a mouse pointing device, was one of the first computers to employ a graphical video display, which presented the user with a view of documents and programs, adopting the metaphor of an office desktop.
“It was one of those sort of apocalyptic moments,” Mr. Jobs said of his visit in a 1995 oral history interview for the Smithsonian Institution. “I remember within 10 minutes of seeing the graphical user interface stuff, just knowing that every computer would work this way someday. It was so obvious once you saw it. It didn’t require tremendous intellect. It was so clear.”
In 1981 he joined a small group of Apple engineers pursuing a separate project, a lower-cost system code-named Macintosh. The machine was introduced in January 1984 and trumpeted during the Super Bowl telecast by a 60-second commercial, directed by Ridley Scott, that linked I.B.M., by then the dominant PC maker, with Orwell’s Big Brother.
A year earlier Mr. Jobs had lured Mr. Sculley to Apple to be its chief executive. A former Pepsi-Cola chief executive, Mr. Sculley was impressed by Mr. Jobs’s pitch: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?”
He went on to help Mr. Jobs introduce a number of new computer models, including an advanced version of the Apple II and later the Lisa and Macintosh desktop computers. Through them Mr. Jobs popularized the graphical user interface, which, based on a mouse pointing device, would become the standard way to control computers.
But when the Lisa failed commercially and early Macintosh sales proved disappointing, the two men became estranged and a power struggle ensued, and Mr. Jobs lost control of the Lisa project. The board ultimately stripped him of his operational role, taking control of the Lisa project away from, and 1,200 Apple employees were laid off. He left Apple in 1985.
“I don’t wear the right kind of pants to run this company,” he told a small gathering of Apple employees before he left, according to a member of the original Macintosh development team. He was barefoot as he spoke, and wearing blue jeans.
That September he announced a new venture, NeXT Inc. The aim was to build a workstation computer for the higher-education market. The next year, the Texas industrialist H. Ross Perot invested $20 million in the effort. But it did not achieve Mr. Jobs’s goals.
Mr. Jobs also established a personal philanthropic foundation after leaving Apple but soon had a change of heart, deciding instead to spend much of his fortune — $10 million — on acquiring Pixar, a struggling graphics supercomputing company owned by the filmmaker George Lucas.
The purchase was a significant gamble; there was little market at the time for computer-animated movies. But that changed in 1995, when the company, with Walt Disney Pictures, released “Toy Story.” That film’s box-office receipts ultimately reached $362 million, and when Pixar went public in a record-breaking offering, Mr. Jobs emerged a billionaire. In 2006, the Walt Disney Company agreed to purchase Pixar for $7.4 billion. The sale made Mr. Jobs Disney’s largest single shareholder, with about 7 percent of the company’s stock.
His personal life also became more public. He had a number of well-publicized romantic relationships, including one with the folk singer Joan Baez, before marrying Laurene Powell. In 1996, a sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, threw a spotlight on her relationship with Mr. Jobs in the novel “A Regular Guy.” Both brother and sister had been adopted, but by different families, and the two did not meet until they were adults. The novel centered on a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who bore a close resemblance to Mr. Jobs. It was not an entirely flattering portrait. Mr. Jobs said about a quarter of it was accurate.
“We’re family,” he said of Ms. Simpson in an interview with The New York Times Magazine. “She’s one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.”
His wife and Ms. Simpson survive him, as do his three children with Ms. Powell, his daughters Eve Jobs and Erin Sienna Jobs and a son, Reed; another daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a relationship with Chrisann Brennan; and another sister, Patti Jobs.
Return to Apple
Beginning in 1986, Mr. Jobs refocused NeXT from the education to the business market and dropped the hardware part of the company, deciding to sell just an operating system. Although NeXT never became a significant computer industry player, it had a huge impact: a young programmer, Tim Berners-Lee, used a NeXT machine to develop the first version of the World Wide Web at the Swiss physics research center CERN in 1990.
In 1996, after unsuccessful efforts to develop next-generation operating systems, Apple, with Gilbert Amelio now in command, acquired NeXT for $430 million. The next year, Mr. Jobs returned to Apple as an adviser. He became chief executive again in 2000.
Shortly after returning, Mr. Jobs publicly ended Apple’s long feud with its archival Microsoft, which agreed to continue developing its Office software for the Macintosh and invested $150 million in Apple.
Once in control of Apple again, Mr. Jobs set out to reshape the consumer electronics industry. He pushed the company into the digital music business, introducing first iTunes and then the iPod MP3 player. The music arm grew rapidly, reaching almost 50 percent of the company’s revenue by June 2008.
In 2005, Mr. Jobs announced that he would end Apple’s business relationship with I.B.M. and Motorola and build Macintosh computers based on Intel microprocessors.
By then his fight with cancer was publicly known. Apple had announced in 2004 that Mr. Jobs had a rare but curable form of pancreatic cancer and that he had undergone successful surgery. Four years later, questions about his health returned when he appeared at a company event looking gaunt. Afterward, he said he had suffered from a “common bug.” Privately, he said his cancer surgery had created digestive problems but insisted they were not life-threatening.
Apple began selling the iPhone in June 2007. Mr. Jobs’s goal was to sell 10 million of the handsets in 2008, equivalent to 1 percent of the global cellphone market. The company sold 11.6 million.
Although smartphones were already commonplace, the iPhone dispensed with a stylus and pioneered a touch-screen interface that quickly set the standard for the mobile computing market. Rolled out with much anticipation and fanfare, iPhone rocketed to popularity; by end of 2010 the company had sold almost 90 million units.
Although Mr. Jobs took just a nominal $1 salary when he returned to Apple, his compensation became the source of a Silicon Valley scandal in 2006 over the backdating of millions of shares of stock options. But after a company investigation and one by the Securities and Exchange Commission, he was found not to have benefited financially from the backdating and no charges were brought.
The episode did little to taint Mr. Jobs’s standing in the business and technology world. As the gravity of his illness became known, and particularly after he announced he was stepping down, he was increasingly hailed for his genius and true achievement: his ability to blend product design and business market innovation by integrating consumer-oriented software, microelectronic components, industrial design and new business strategies in a way that has not been matched.
If he had a motto, it may have come from The Whole Earth Catalog, which he said had deeply influenced him as a young man. The book, he said in his commencement address at Stanford in 2005, ends with the admonition “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”
“I have always wished that for myself,” he said.
My Son and I
Lev grew up watching Toy Story. He and Andy went to College at the same time. I cried when I saw the last movie, and thought of my little boy going away.
I saw the first one while I was in Mexico, and he in the US. I felt very touched by the movie, because I remembered my toys.
Thanks, Steve for all you did.
Jobs, Apple Co-Founder and Visionary, Is Dead
SAN FRANCISCO — Steven P. Jobs, the visionary co-founder and former chief executive of Apple, has died at 56.
Apple said in a press release that it was “deeply saddened” to announce that Mr. Jobs had passed away on Wednesday.
“Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives,” the company said. “The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
Mr. Jobs stepped down from the chief executive role in late August, saying he could no longer fulfill his duties, and became chairman. He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, and received a liver transplant in 2009.
Rarely has a major company and industry been so dominated by a single individual, and so successful. His influence went far beyond the iconic personal computers that were Apple’s principal product for its first 20 years. In the last decade, Apple has redefined the music business through the iPod, the cellphone business through the iPhone and the entertainment and media world through the iPad. Again and again, Mr. Jobs gambled that he knew what the customer would want, and again and again he was right.
The early years of Apple long ago passed into legend: the two young hippie-ish founders, Mr. Jobs and Steve Wozniak; the introduction of the first Macintosh computer in 1984, which stretched the boundaries of what these devices could do; Mr. Jobs’s abrupt exit the next year in a power struggle. But it was his return to Apple in 1996 that started a winning streak that raised the company from the near dead to its current position. This summer, Apple briefly exceeded Exxon Mobil as the most valuable United States company.
Bill Gates, the former chief executive of Microsoft, said in a statement that he was “truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’s death.” He added: “The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”
Mr. Jobs’s decision to step down in August inspired loving tributes to him on the Web and even prompted some fans to head to Apple stores to share their sentiments with others.
NYT
Of Warlords and Governments
Jeremy Scahill was at DN! today. He talked about Blowback in Somalia. I have a few points to make.
Humanity started around Lake Victoria. Why the cradle of humanity is in bad shape today?
Maybe the people that stayed there did not change, i.e., they are primitive humans. We immigrants do change.
In Mexico we had the dirty war period in the 70s. After that terrible period in Mexican History, a similar solution was taken by Mexicans on the mountains of Guerrero, as in Somalia. People's Courts and People's Armies.
The CIA is fighting these bottom up movements.
The Occupied Wall Street Movement, must also be carefully monitored by the CIA, as they monitor Al Shabab.
Who are them, and who are we?
Which side is Chapo Guzmán in?
Humanity started around Lake Victoria. Why the cradle of humanity is in bad shape today?
Maybe the people that stayed there did not change, i.e., they are primitive humans. We immigrants do change.
In Mexico we had the dirty war period in the 70s. After that terrible period in Mexican History, a similar solution was taken by Mexicans on the mountains of Guerrero, as in Somalia. People's Courts and People's Armies.
The CIA is fighting these bottom up movements.
The Occupied Wall Street Movement, must also be carefully monitored by the CIA, as they monitor Al Shabab.
Who are them, and who are we?
Which side is Chapo Guzmán in?
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