Online worlds such as Second Life will soon become training grounds for artificial intelligences.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Online worlds to be AI incubators

Fair use exceptions to U.S. copyright laws account for more than $4.5 trillion in annual revenue for the United States, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

"Much of the unprecedented economic growth of the past ten years can actually be credited to the doctrine of fair use, as the Internet itself depends on the ability to use content in a limited and nonlicensed manner," CCIA President and CEO Ed Black said in a statement. "To stay on the edge of innovation and productivity, we must keep fair use as one of the cornerstones for creativity, innovation and, as today's study indicates, an engine for growth for our country."
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"Copyright was created as a functional tool to promote creativity, innovation, and economic activity," said Black. "It should be measured by that standard, not by some moral rights or abstract measure of property rights."

Fair Use Worth More to Economy Than Copyright, CCIA Says -- Copyright -- InformationWeek

As members of Congress mull what to do next in Iraq, they might glance at a League of Nations report of July 16, 1925, on the new Middle Eastern state then being carved by the British from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire.

The report said that despite “the good intentions of the statesmen of Iraq, whose political experience is necessarily small, it is to be feared that serious difficulties may arise out of the differences which in some cases exist in regard to political ideas between the Shiites of the South and the Sunnites of the North, the racial differences between Arabs and Kurds, and the necessity of keeping the turbulent tribes under control.”

The Ottoman Swede - New York Times

The Green Zone is a little America embedded in the heart of Baghdad. It is the former preserve of Saddam Hussein and his favored associates—an uncrowded district of villas, palaces, and monuments set in a parklike expanse that spreads for four square miles inside a meander of the Tigris River at the center of the ruined city. During the thirty-five years of Baath Party dictatorship it was neither gated nor strictly delineated, and it did not need to be, since the public's survival instincts were well honed, and people just naturally understood that special unwritten rules applied there. The Green Zone was the seat of Saddam's power. You could cross it along the three or four grand boulevards that were open to traffic, and you could reflect on the glory of the regime, but you could not safely linger or gawk. If you had a car and happened to blow a tire, you kept driving on the rims, and made a good show of it too. I know of one young man, the son of a high official in the former regime, who made a U-turn there, and was arrested for the indiscretion; he was held and questioned until his father intervened, and explained that he was innocent and just a bit feckless. Ah, youth.

thus starts a wonderful piece written back in Nov 2004
the world in depicts will make a fantastic movie
"the American bubble in Baghdad"

Welcome to the Green Zone

It took political Washington a good six months to catch up to the fact that something significant was happening in Iraq's Anbar province, where the former-insurgent Sunni tribes switched sides and joined the fight against al-Qaeda. Not surprisingly, Washington has not yet caught up to the next reality: Iraq is being partitioned -- and, like everything else in Iraq today, it is happening from the ground up.

ahh so right-wing thinking now is that US forces shepherd in partition which may be the best solution I agree but thus Balkcanization with Baghdad playing the role of Sarajevo and so further one wonders who destiny has its eye on to revisit the role of Archduke Ferdinand and spark the next conflagration (let's look towards decaying empires and autocrats -- the Saudis would seem to be the prime candidates)

Charles Krauthammer - The Partitioning of Iraq - washingtonpost.com

It's like encountering a long-lost, legendary uncle, away a long time at the wars. At first there is almost a stab of disappointment, as the mythic stranger turns out to be just human-scaled after all. But then, as you look at the slight smile, the long elegant fingers, and get the unique measure of him, the old fixed image gives way to something richer, warmer, funnier than you ever expected. What was revered, marvelled at, becomes intimate and human and ... lovable.

In the old pictures, he was just a face in a regimented rank of grey warriors. Now he stands separate and close to you: an infantryman, a charioteer, a general, an archer and - it is impossible not to feel as you look into those gentle eyes - a father, a son, a husband.

So, here they are, and this is it. I am looking into the eyes of one of the terracotta warriors from the tomb complex of China's First Emperor, a part of the most famous archaeological discovery of recent times.
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This exhibition does the opposite of what it promises, and is the better for that. It begins with "wonderful things" that Howard Carter would be greedy for, with cups of jade and jewellery of gold, and shining sword blades. Yet its true wonders consist of mere fired earth, the stuff of China's soil turned into masterpieces of realist art. What survives of the First Emperor? Nothing but what his people gave him; nothing but the passion of the artisan who cared enough to put every little ribbon on that suit of armour. The emperor is gone. The human endures.

New model army | Art, Architecture & Design | Guardian Unlimited Arts

IT has become conventional wisdom that the decision to disband Saddam Hussein’s army was a mistake, was contrary to American prewar planning and was a decision I made on my own. In fact the policy was carefully considered by top civilian and military members of the American government. And it was the right decision.

the buck stops where?

How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army - New York Times

n February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing the UN Security Council, ... many people in the political and media establishments swooned: They admired Powell, and because he said it, they believed it.

Powell's masters got the war they wanted, and it soon became apparent that none of his assertions had been true.
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The administration, this time relying on General David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the "surge" is succeeding, even though there's not a shred of verifiable evidence to suggest that it is.
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But, say the usual suspects, Petraeus is a fine, upstanding officer who wouldn't participate in a campaign of deception - apparently forgetting that they said the same thing about Powell.

First of all, Petraeus is now identified with the surge; if it fails, he fails. He has every incentive to find a way to keep it going, in the hope that somehow he can pull off something he can call success.

Snow job in the desert - International Herald Tribune

Have you noticed the change in the Iraq debate?

Most American experts and policy makers wasted the past few years assuming that change in Iraq would come from the center and spread outward. They squandered months arguing about the benchmarks that would supposedly induce the Baghdad politicians to make compromises. They quibbled over whether this or that prime minister was up to the job. They unrealistically imagined that peace would come through some grand Sunni-Shiite reconciliation.

Now, at long last, the smartest analysts and policy makers are starting to think like sociologists. They are finally acknowledging that the key Iraqi figures are not in the center but in the provinces and the tribes. Peace will come to the center last, not to the center first. Stability will come not through some grand reconciliation but through the agglomeration of order, tribe by tribe and street by street.

The big change in the debate has come about because the surge failed, and it failed in an unexpected way.

Center First Gives Way to Center Last - New York Times

It’s that month again, and when the New York skies are clear, as they have been and were then, you gaze at the proud prow of Manhattan and still feel the absence, and perhaps you see once more those papers from the crumpled towers fluttering out across the East River to strange landings in Brooklyn.
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That was a breaking point, dividing our lives into before and after, and the world into pre- and post-, and we’ve all had to succumb to the awful 9/11 shorthand that compresses the loss of almost 3,000 lives into a couple of digits, and the wider loss of America-as-sanctuary into a date.
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The United States was not previously a homeland, it was just our land, and that unhappy neologism with its Orwellian echoes, its sense of exclusion rather than inclusion, its faint fatherland-like echoes, seems to capture the closing and the menace and the terror-terror refrain with which we have all learned to live.

That refrain, for Americans, but not only them, has a pursed-lipped face called Bush-Cheney, and the braggadocio-smirk of the bring-it-on duo has come to form yet another shorthand for a certain grimness, one as relentless as the U.S. national debt clock.

a nice essay
you can feel the humanity

The Breaking Point - New York Times