Nexus - 1802 - New Times Magazine-pages

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GLOBAL NEWS WIKILEAKS CABLES EXPOSE MUSLIM NATIONS' HYPOCRISY Areyainery review of the US diplomatic cables released so far by! WikiLeaks reveals the duplicity of many Arab nations in foreign policy, especially in the case of Iran. For example, in the past few years, Arab nations have publicly countered Israeli propaganda that Iran is a bigger hreat to the world than the resolution of the Palestinian issue, with claims hat the failure to bring a just solution to the Palestinians is the number- one issue for Arabs and Muslims. But privately, these same nations have been repeatedly asking the US to bomb Iran and even invade it with ground roops. The same cables also reveal that, even now, the main financiers of Al- Qaeda are Saudi donors. American Presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama have identified Al-Qaeda as the biggest threat to the US, and ye’ hey've colluded with the nation whose citizens are its biggest financiers. While the US is worried that the latest revelations from WikiLeaks wil undermine its relations with its allies, Muslim governments are worried tha hese same leaks will expose the extent to which they routinely lie to their own people. Nation after Muslim nation has been exposed as supporting and collaborating with the United States and lying to its public about the extent of its support for US foreign policy. For example, the President o Yemen acknowledged that he would continue to lie to his people and claim that American military operations in Yemen are Yemeni operations; and the Pakistani government does not want its people to know the extent to which it cooperates with the US on nuclear issues. (Source: TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 January 201, http://tinyurl.com/25x2pwy, TUNISIA'S REFORMATION: THE "FIRST WIKILEAKS REVOLUTION" Tr drastic changes brought about in Tunisia, which ultimately forced President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country, have been described as the "first WikiLeaks revolution" because the whistleblower website played a major role in stirring up public anger against the corruption of their leader. According to The Scotsman, the revolution is virtually unprecedented in modern Arab history and has already led to experts predicting that other countries in the region could follow suit. After Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia on Friday [14 January], protesters in Cairo chanted: "Ben Ali, tell Mubarak a plane is waiting for him, too!" US diplomatic cables released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks called the President and his siblings "The Family", comparing them to a Mafia crime organisation. The cables also revealed that Ben Ali's wife, Leila, had made huge profits out of building an exclusive school. One cable was banned in Tunisia, but its contents became widely known. “Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, first lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her," US Ambassador Robert Godec wrote. The cables further claimed that, in 2006, two nephews of Ben Ali had seized the yacht of a French businessman. "Although the petty corruption rankles, it is the excesses of President Ben Ali's family that inspire outrage among Tunisians. With Tunisians facing rising inflation and high unemployment, the conspicuous displays of wealth and persistent rumours of corruption have added fuel to the fire," the cable added. (Source: TheAfricaNews.Net, 16 January 2011, www.theafricanews.net/story/ 732193) fight bacterial infections; rather, producers most likely administered them in continuous low dosages through feed or water to increase the speed at which their animals grew. And that has many public health experts and scientists troubled. The growing threat of antibiotic resistance is largely due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in people and animals, which leads to an increase in "super-bacteria". (Source: Center for a Livable Future, 23 December 2010, http://tinyurl.com/4svn6gk) LIVING EARTH SIMULATOR WILL ANALYSE ENTIRE PLANET AM international group of scientists is working on a simulator with the goal of replicating everything that happens on Earth. It will track everything from weather patterns to disease spread to traffic congestion to financial transactions all over the globe. The Living Earth Simulator, LES, as it is nicknamed, is being created to advance scientific understanding about everything that is happening on the planet and to attempt to figure out what "human actions shape society" and how everything changes the world. The scientists plan to build a number of supercomputers to crunch the numbers. They will likely also use processing power from all across the Internet, asking mobile phone and computer users to donate a small portion of their processing to the project. The data will be easier to come by. Websites and services like Wikipedia, Google Maps and government databanks make up a few of more than 70 already existing sources of moving data. NASA's Planetary Skin project will also feed data into LES. The scientists hope to integrate real-time feeds from social networks like Facebook, stockmarkets, medical records, mobile devices and more. (Source: Digital Trends, 28 December 2010, http://tinyurl.com/4uzp739) NEXUS ° II FEBRUARY - MARCH 2011 www.nexusmagazine.com