Video was on Frontline last night and you can watch it online. It is in depth and very good.

Bush's War

So why is technology flat? Do you have to ask?

To be honest, I cannot see any of the three (or four) setting a clock without help from a 12-year-old. This does not bode well for technology, a sector that in other countries gets a lot of government support and attention.

In India, China and Japan as well as many European countries, the sector and the business in general are seen as an important element of prestige and prosperity. They see the light; we don't.

Blame Washington that tech will remain flat

Long article, but a really great read.

Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them. Maybe the best way to understand how quickly history happens is to look just a bit ahead.

New York Times: Waving Goodbye to Hegemony

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Chavez: Pull Reserves From US: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Even as stocks ended five days of losses with a surprising recovery on Wednesday, officials began moving to defuse another potential time bomb in the markets: the weakened condition of two large insurance companies that have guaranteed buyers against losses on more than $1 trillion of bonds.

Next on the Worry List: Shaky Insurers of Bonds - New York Times

PARIS — A French bank announced Thursday that it had lost $7.2 billion, not because of complex subprime loans, but the old-fashioned way — because a 31-year-old rogue trader made bad bets on stocks and then, in trying to cover up those losses, dug himself deeper into a hole.

French Bank Says Rogue Trader Lost $7 Billion - New York Times

By piecing together multiple signals the technology can achieve as much as 326 megabits per second in downloads on a 20MHz slice of the wireless spectrum; uploads peak at 86MHz, says the standards body. The finished version of LTE also cuts latency down to 10 milliseconds between the tower and the user, allowing relatively time-sensitive activities such as video calls or games.

News of the approval comes after Nokia has already demonstrated the 4G cell service in action, reaching 173Mbps in real-world tests that involved an interference-prone downtown environment and several users connected to a station at once. Practical use may see a further drop once service is commercially available and more users are present on a single network.

Electronista | 3G group finalizes 326-megabit 4G spec

A decade of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo is continuing to kill about 45,000 people each month - half of them small children - in the deadliest conflict since the second world war, according to a new survey.
..
The majority of deaths have been due to infectious diseases, malnutrition and neonatal- and pregnancy-related conditions. Increased rates of disease are likely related to the social and economic disturbances caused by conflict, including disruption of health services, poor food security, deterioration of infrastructure and population displacement. Children ... are particularly susceptible to these easily preventable and treatable conditions," the IRC survey says.

War in Congo kills 45,000 people each month | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

The five largest Wall Street banks doled out a record $39 billion in bonuses last year, according to data collected by the Bloomberg news service. After driving hundreds of thousands of families into foreclosure, causing a financial crisis affecting hundreds of millions, and pushing the US and world economies closer to recession, it appears Wall Street is rewarding itself for a job well done.

All in all, Wall Street wrote off more than $90 billion in bad debt for the year, and the five largest banks saw their profits drop more than 60 percent. Three of the five firms posted losses in the fourth quarter.

Amid record losses, Wall Street awarded itself $39 billion

HERZLIYA, Israel (AFP) — Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Monday that Israel may have to take military action to prevent its archfoe Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb.

Bolton also said that further UN sanctions against the Islamic republic will be ineffective in stopping Iran's controversial nuclear programme which Israel and the US believe is aimed at developing a bomb -- a claim denied by Tehran.

AFP: Israel may have to take military action against Iran: Bolton