Nigeria to abstain in Palestine UN vote

Nigeria's President G. Ebele Jonathan, has said that the West African nation will abstain from the United Nations Security Council vote on Palestinian statehood. This decision represents a diplomatic success for Israel who want to prevent a Palestinian state attaining UN membership.

The office of the Isreali Defense Minister, Ehud Barak made this known to the press yesterday. According to Barak, Jonathan’s decision followed a meeting that was held in New York. Before the meeting, Nigeria was one of the Security Council members who was against passing the resolution, but was yet to take a decision on how to vote.

Barak had earlier updated his Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of his plan to meet with Jonathan as well as United States government officials who were also working against the Palestinian Authority’s statehood bid from passing in the Security Council.

The office further revealed that the meeting was held last week, adding that they also discuss other pressing matters, regarding the wave of international terrorism, which, the two countries worked out modalities on how to tackle.

The United States has the veto power to over rule whatever decision taken in respect of the passing, and has made it clear that it will not hesitate to make use of it as they also are against the bid.

The Security Council members that are against Palestine's UN membership are are the U.S, Germany and Colombia while China,India, Lebanon, Russia, and South Africa are in favour.

Early hours of yesterday revealed that many of the Security Council member states were still confused about the vote, includingGabon who made it known yesterday they are yet to make a decision.


Source: Daily Times of Nigeria

A war on Africa

Touted as part of a war of liberation, NATOs intervention in Libya aims to stymie moves to strengthen African unity and independence, writes Dan Glazebrook from London....

Africa the key to global economic growth: this was a refreshingly honest recent headline from the Washington Post, but hardly one that qualifies as news. African labour and resources, as any decent economic historian will tell you, have been the key to global economic growth for centuries.

When the Europeans discovered America 500 years ago, their economic system went viral. Increasingly, European powers realised that the balance of power at home would be dictated by the strength they were able to draw from their colonies abroad. Imperialism (aka capitalism) has been the fundamental hallmark of the worlds economic structure ever since.

For Africa, this has meant non-stop subjection to an increasingly systematic plunder of people and resources that has been unrelenting to this day. First was the brutal kidnapping of tens of millions of Africans to replace the indigenous American workforce that had been wiped out by the Europeans. The slave trade was devastating for African economies, which were rarely able to withstand the population collapse; but the capital it created for plantation owners in the Caribbean laid the foundations for Europes industrial revolution.

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as more and more precious raw materials were found in Africa (especially tin, rubber, gold and silver), the theft of land and resources ultimately resulted in the so-called Scramble for Africa of the 1870s, when, over the course of a few years, Europeans divided up the entire continent (with the exception of Ethiopia) amongst themselves. By this point, the worlds economy was increasingly becoming an integrated whole, with Africa continuing to provide the basis for European industrial development as Africans were stripped of their land and forced down gold mines and onto rubber plantations.

After World War II, the European powers, weakened by years of unremitting industrial slaughter of each other, contrived to adapt colonialism to the new conditions in which they found themselves. As national liberation movements grew in strength, the European powers confronted a new economic reality the cost of subduing the restless natives was starting to near the level of wealth they were able to extract from them.

Their favoured solution was what former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah termed neo-colonialism handing over the formal attributes of political sovereignty to a trusted bunch of hand-picked cronies who would allow the economic exploitation of their countries to continue unabated. In other words, the idea was to adapt colonialism so that Africans themselves would be forced to shoulder the burden and cost of policing their own populations.

In practice, it wasnt that simple. All across Asia, Africa and Latin America, mass movements began to demand control of their own resources, and in many places these movements managed to gain power sometimes through guerrilla struggle, sometimes through the ballot box. This led to vicious wars by the European powers now under the leadership of their upstart protégé, the USA to destroy such movements. This struggle, not the so- called Cold War, is what defined the history of post-war international relations.

So far, neo-colonialism has largely been a successful project for the Europeans and the US. Africas role as a provider of cheap, often slave, labour and minerals has largely continued unabated. Poverty and disunity have been the essential ingredients that have allowed this exploitation to continue. However, both are now under serious threat.

Chinese investment in Africa over the past ten years has been building up African industry and infrastructure in a way that may begin to tackle the continents poverty. In China, these policies have brought about unprecedented reductions in poverty and have helped to lift the country into the position it will shortly hold as the worlds leading economic power. If Africa follows this model, or anything like it, the Wests 500-year plunder of Africas wealth may be nearing a close.

To prevent this threat of African development, the Europeans and the USA have responded in the only way they know how militarily. Four years ago, the US set up a new command and control centre for the military subjugation of Africa, called AFRICOM. The problem for the US was that no African country wanted to host them; indeed, until very recently, Africa was unique in being the only continent in the world without a US military base. And this fact is in no small part thanks to the efforts of the Libyan government.

Before Gaddafis revolution deposed the British-backed King Idris in 1969, Libya had hosted one of the worlds biggest US airbases, the Wheelus Air Base; but within a year of the revolution, it had been closed down and all foreign military personnel expelled.

More recently, Gaddafi had been actively working to scupper AFRICOM. African governments that were offered money by the US to host a base were typically offered double by Gaddafi to refuse it, and in 2008 this ad hoc opposition crystallised in a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union (AU).

Perhaps even more worrying for US and European domination of the continent were the huge resources that Gaddafi was channelling into African development. The Libyan government was by far the largest investor in Africas first-ever satellite, launched in 2007, which freed Africa from $500 million per year in payments to European satellite companies.

Even worse for the colonial powers, Libya had allocated $30 billion for the African Unions three big financial projects, aimed at ending African dependence on western finance. The African Investment Bank, with its headquarters in Libya, was to invest in African development without charging interest, which would have seriously threatened the International Monetary Funds domination of Africa a crucial pillar for keeping Africa in its impoverished position.

Gaddafi was also leading the AUs development of a new gold-backed African currency, which would have cut yet another of the strings that keep Africa at the mercy of the West, with $42 billion already allocated to this project again, much of it by Libya.

NATOs war is aimed at ending Libyas trajectory as a socialist, anti- imperialist, pan-Africanist nation in the forefront of moves to strengthen African unity and independence. The rebels have made clear their virulent racism from the very start of their insurrection, rounding up or executing thousands of black African workers and students. All the African development funds for the projects described above have been frozen by the NATO countries and are to be handed over to their hand-picked buddies in the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) to spend instead on weapons to facilitate their war.

For Africa, the war is far from over. The African continent must recognise that NATOs lashing out is a sign of desperation, of impotence, of its inability to stop the inevitable rise of Africa onto the world stage. Africa must learn lessons from Libya, continue the drive towards pan-African unity, and continue to resist AFRICOM. Plenty of Libyans will still be with them when they do so.

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly

Carol Bartz finally resigns from Yahoo board of directors

Carol Bartz, whose role as Yahoo CEO ended abruptly last Tuesday, has resigned from the Yahoo board.

Having been abruptly ousted from the position she had held for less than three years, Bartz had initially stated that she would not step down from the Yahoo board, but now she seems to have changed her mind.... and rightly so.

There is no question in the minds of many neutral industry watchers that Bartz was treated unfairly (she was more graphic in her own assessment).

After all, we are talking about the same Yahoo board that blew a Microsoft acquisition deal of $40+ billion dollars.

That was obviously not Carol Bartz's fault and the fact that the same incompetent board has now set-up an "Executive Leadership Council" to replace Bartz, again shows the board itself ought to be fired.

As would be the norm, in terms of making sound business sense, a succession mechanism should have been in place to ensure a smooth transition, as we've seen with the likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple, more recently.

Yahoo has indeed become a dinosaur in its space and the bitter truth may indeed surface sooner rather than later.... that Carol Bartz was not the problem.

In closing, I only have one small issue with Bartz; she should have taken the high road as her behavior in the after-math of her firing, may have doomed her career as a Chief Executive in the industry.

But then again, you never know.

Cloud Security Is Looking Overcast

By Aaron Ricadela

Eran Feigenbaum knows a thing or two about risk. He moonlights as the TV and stage magician “Eran Raven,” known for stunts involving snakes, scorpions, and razor blades. He once played Russian roulette with nail guns on the NBC show Phenomenon, and in August he did a five-day run at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. That pedigree serves him well in his day job as director of security for Google’s (GOOG) business applications, where he’s responsible for convincing corporate risk managers of the safety of cloud computing. Working in computer security requires “a hyperawareness” of risk, he says, “the same as when you’re on stage performing with nail guns.”

Cloud computing has become one of tech’s biggest buzzwords. These services, offered by Google, Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon.com (AMZN), and dozens of others, offer computing power over the Internet as an alternative for companies that have traditionally bought their own fleets of giant server computers. The approach has won fans among corporate software developers and rank-and-file employees who like having access to documents and programs from any device at any time.

Corporate policymakers, though, have yet to fully embrace the cloud, fearing that the services may compromise proprietary data. A survey by researcher IDC found that fewer than a third of IT executives feel the benefits of cloud computing outweigh its risks. Nearly a quarter of the 500 executives surveyed said they don’t fully understand the regulatory and compliance issues in cloud computing, and 47 percent say cloud services present a security threat. Companies that don’t understand the risks “just shouldn’t use cloud computing,” says IDC analyst Phil Hochmuth. “The potential for a security breach or a compliance violation can be high.”

David Bodnick is seeing the change firsthand. “The risks of the cloud have been particularly salient for a few of our clients,” says Bodnick, president of WebIntensive Software, a New York company that develops online applications for dozens of customers such as LexisNexis, the United Nations, and Columbia University. One WebIntensive client, a search engine called Startpage, didn’t want to use a cloud service because it feared its data might remain on remote servers, and Startpage promises customers that it won’t store their Web-search history. A health-care information company let WebIntensive incorporate cloud storage into its application, but only if patient information were encrypted, which boosted the cost by 15 percent. “We are now getting questions that we didn’t before about the safety of hosting applications in the cloud,” says Bodnick.

Information technology managers say cloud computing lets employees skirt policies meant to keep viruses and hackers out of corporate systems and ensure compliance with regulations governing e-mail communications. At SF Bay Pediatrics in San Francisco and Mill Valley, Calif., doctors can collaborate on informational pamphlets for patients using Google Apps and online file storage service Dropbox, and can e-mail photos of conditions taken with their iPhones, says Chief Information Officer Andrew Johnson. But they’re forbidden from recording diagnoses or other information about patients because online services can’t guarantee adherence to federal privacy regulations. “We don’t store any of that in the cloud,” Johnson says.

Some managers who have tentatively adopted cloud computing fret that it may not be as reliable as their own systems. In April and in August, Amazon Web Services suffered crashes that took down sites including Netflix (NFLX) and smartphone app developer Foursquare. Online services from Microsoft and Google have had similar disruptions, cutting off users of Web-based e-mail, document sharing, and other applications. That has led to fears about buying too many essential programs from cloud services, says Sanjay Poonen, president of global solutions at business software maker SAP (SAP). Although SAP in May struck a deal to run some of its applications on Amazon’s service, Poonen says, “Nobody’s ready to move their entire business process, end-to-end, to the cloud.”

Cloud companies say they understand the worries. “When enterprises move to the cloud they are embarking on a fundamentally different way of doing computing,” says Adam Selipsky, vice-president of Amazon Web Services. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google all say they undergo a battery of risk audits of a host of factors such as access to data centers, safeguards on personal information in credit-card transactions, and firewalls to ward off hackers. Furthermore, they say, their services can be more reliable than many corporate systems. Gmail, for instance, was operational 99.984 percent of the time in 2010, and is at 99.99 percent uptime so far this year, Feigenbaum says. “That’s less than five minutes of downtime a month. Not too many organizations can do that internally.”

The bottomline: Tech companies want corporations to adopt cloud computing, but nearly half of CIOs view such services as a security threat.


Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

Nigeria to diversify up-to 10% of its foreign reserves into Chinese yuan

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is diversifying its foreign exchange reserves away from the U.S. dollar and will hold between 5 to 10 per cent of them in Chinese yuan.
CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi, stated this on Monday while on a visit to China. “We are looking at anything to start with from 5 to 10 per cent of our reserves,” he said. 
However, Sanusi added that the bulk of the country’s reserves would remain in dollars. “The dollar and the euro are not going to disappear,” he said. “They are going to remain an important part of our holdings.”

Nigeria's satellites return first pictures

Nigeria's latest Earth observation satellites have returned their first pictures.

The spacecraft, launched on 17 August, give the African nation a powerful new capability to map its own lands and other parts of the globe.

NigeriaSat-2 and NigeriaSat-X will also assist the Disaster Monitoring Constellation.

This UK-managed fleet of spacecraft is used to picture regions of the Earth gripped by natural calamities.

These might be catastrophic floods or a big earthquake. Images sent down from space will often be critical to organising an effective emergency response.

The first picture released from the Nigerian pair is of New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.

It was acquired by NigeriaSat-X, and reveals the buildings and the landscape surrounding this major urban centre.

It is just possible to see the wakes of ships passing under the harbour bridge that joins downtown Auckland with North Shore City.

The satellite is equipped with a multi-spectral imager for general mapping, agricultural monitoring and disaster relief work.

The resolution in this picture is 22m per pixel. Vegetation is picked out in red.

Both NigeriaSat-X and NigeriaSat-2 were designed and built by Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford, UK.

What is interesting about NigeriaSat-X is that the work was undertaken by Nigerian engineers themselves. The skills they have learnt will now be taken home so that they can build future spacecraft in their own country.

It is a model previously followed by Turkey. Its engineers received their education at SSTL as well, and the same rocket that launched the Nigerian platforms also launched Rasat.

This remote sensing satellite (7.5m resolution) is the first to have been developed and manufactured in Turkey by Turkish engineers.

SSTL Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting, commented: "NigeriaSat-X is the product of Nigeria's training and development programme here at Surrey.

"It is a great credit to NASRDA (National Space Research and Development Agency) and their engineers that this satellite is performing well and its operations are progressing so quickly.

"These highly skilled engineers will not only help Nigeria to manage its resources, but also bootstrap its fledgling high-tech economy alongside a growing nucleus of highly trained people."

A first picture should be released from NigeriaSat-2 in the coming days. This is a much more powerful platform, able to resolve details on the Earth's surface just 2.5m across.

Few countries in the world have access to such a capability.

Source: BBC Science & Technology News

Apple shares fall as Jobs quits

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has resigned as chief executive of the technology giant and will be replaced by chief operating officer Tim Cook.

Mr Jobs, who underwent a liver transplant following pancreatic cancer, said he could no longer meet his chief executive's duties and expectations.

The Silicon Valley legend will become chairman of the firm.

The 56-year-old has been on medical leave for an undisclosed condition since 17 January.

In a short letter to the board of Apple, Mr Jobs wrote: "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's chief executive, I would be the first to let you know.

"Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as chief executive of Apple.

"I believe Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

"I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you."

Apple board member Art Levinson paid tribute to Mr Jobs' contribution to the company: "Steve's extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world's most innovative and valuable technology company."

Apple shares have fallen 4.1% in the secondary listing in Frankfurt, having dropped more than 5% in after-market trading on New York's Nasdaq.

Analysts said the resignation was not unexpected, and would have little impact on the day-to-day running of the company.

"Steve is [still] going to be able to provide the input he would do as a chief executive," said Colin Gillis at BGC Financial.

"But Tim has been de facto chief executive for some time and the company has been hugely successful. The vision and the roadmap is intact."

Nor will customers see any real difference, analysts said.

"At the end of the day, consumers don't buy products from Apple because they're from Steve Jobs, they buy them because they meet their needs and they're good products, and they'll continue to do that," Michael Gartenberg from Gartner reiterated.

The company has some big products on the horizon such as the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3.

But while Apple shares slid, shares in two of Apple's main Asian rivals gained. Taiwan-based phone maker HTC rose 4.1%, while South Korea's Samsung Electronics gained 3.2%.

The firms compete with Apple in the smartphone and tablet-PC sector, and have been involved in legal battles with Apple over patent rights.

The boss of another rival in the phone market paid tribute to Mr Jobs' work.

"Steve Jobs is a visionary in the computing industry," said Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia.

"We look forward to both Steve and his team having a positive impact on our industry for many years to come."

Mr Jobs is widely seen as the creative force that has driven Apple to become one of the world's biggest companies.

Thanks to innovative and hugely popular products such as the iPod, the iPhone and more recently the iPad, Apple has become one of the most sought after brands in the world.

In the three months to the end of June, the company made a profit of $7.3bn on revenues of $28.6bn. It sold more than 20 million iPhones in the period and 9.25 million iPads.

The company recently became the most valuable US firm after its market capitalisation overtook that of oil company Exxon Mobil.

Mr Jobs co-founded Apple in the 1970s with Steve Wozniak, and its Macintosh computers became hugely popular in the 1980s.

In 1985, Mr Jobs left the company after falling out with colleagues, only to return in 1997 and begin Apple's transformation by launching the colourful iMac computer.

The iPod, which revolutionised the personal music-player market and spawned myriad copycat devices, was launched in 2002 and laid the foundations for the company's success over the past decade.

Next came the iPhone, which similarly revolutionised the smartphone market, while the iPad confounded some initial scepticism to prove hugely popular.

Many versions of these products have been launched while Mr Jobs has been on medical leave, and new versions that have been planned for months will not be affected by his departure, analysts said.


Source: BBC Business News

Oil prices should fall with Gadhafi overthrow

Oil prices are expected to fall, with the potential overthrow of Libyan strongman, Muammar Gadhafi, looming.

As the rather undisciplined rebels launch an offensive within the Libyan capital, Tripoli, even with the expected ressistance of pocket forces of the Libyan dictator, the overwhelming force of NATO's air support should aid the rebels in finally breaking the back of Gadhafi's ressistance.

Gadhafi's overthrow is virtually now a matter of when, not if, particularly in light of the news that his son Saif al-Islam, who was widely viewed as his heir-apparent, has been captured and is currently being held by the rebels.

Saif al-Islam was educated in the West (has a doctorate from the London School of Economics) and has been the de-facto face of the Libyan government all through the six-month civil war. 

Prosecutor Louis Moreno-Ocampo of the much maligned International Criminal Court (ICC), confirmed that Saif al-Islam was in custody of the Libyan rebels. 

The rebels also stated earlier today, that another of Col. Gadhafi's sons, Mohammed Al-Gadhafi, had been captured and was also in their custody. Col. Gadhafi's whereabouts are however unknown and it has been reported that he may have fled into neigbouring Algeria.

The immediate impact of the fall in global oil prices may not be felt for months, particularly with the uncertainty that still surrounds the identity of the rebels and the expected chaos, that is sure to follow their overthrow of Gadhafi.

Independent analysts expect oil markets to respond by Monday, with oil prices trending downwards in anticipation of an end to the Libyan crisis.

Although Libya traditionally contributes less than 2% of the world's oil supply, much of which has been cut-off since the conflict started, its loss affected prices due to its high quality and its apparent suitability for European refineries.  

If the expected overthrow of Gadhafi is followed by a smooth transitional period, then we may see oil production resume sooner from the Libyan oil reserves and that should help stabilize the markets, beginning with the European markets, analysts say.

NATO, the United States and indeed the international community, can however help in the process of ensuring that Libya does not become another IRAQ.

This is where the leadership of the United States will be paramount and one can only expect that the White House will not cede this role to either France or Great Britain, two nations (France in particular) that are deeply mistrusted in that part of the world. 

Texas Governor Rick Perry speaks to massive crowd at "The Response....."

Could he be the next President of the United States....?

Look out! Here comes Rick Perry....

By Michael Tomasky | The Daily Beast
Now comes Rick Perry into the crowded GOP White House race. He will surely be an instant co-front-runner along with Mitt Romney. In fact I would argue, and will one paragraph down, that he’s basically the instant front-runner  So for the sake of argument, let’s go ahead and think about a Perry-Obama race. Such a race would be about, yes, the economy first and foremost, and deficits and health care and all the rest. But an Obama-Perry race would be something else, too: a war between the two Americas, each side represented by its respective cultural standard-bearer, each side’s foot soldiers absolutely smoldering with contempt for everything the other guy stands for and indeed the way he looks. We’ve never quite had that before, not in this way, so it’s worth thinking about.

First, I think Perry becomes the frontrunner, even ahead of Mitt Romney, for three main reasons. No. 1, he fires up large chunks of the base in a way Romney does not. Romney has “default candidate” written all over him, but evangelicals and other hard-shell conservatives are never going to love a Massachusetts Mormon. They’ll love Perry. No. 2, Perry can quickly become the “establishment” candidate because the establishment of today’s GOP is not based on Wall Street or the heartland but in Texas—Karl Rove, the oilmen, the various billionaires who prime those GOP pumps. No. 3 is speculation rather than fact, but I believe Perry will demonstrate pretty quickly that he’s a better campaigner than Romney. It won’t be hard.

It will take some time, probably, for the polls to reflect all this, but they will. Republicans don’t want a posh, well-spoken Yankee who works at a place with a name like Bain Capital. In their deepest souls, they want a Texas governor. They want a shit-kicker. And here, we circle back to culture.

When my friends and I looked at George W. Bush in 1999, we shuddered like people who’d turned a street corner and stumbled across a dog’s corpse. We knew and had contempt for his beliefs, but it had nothing to do with them, really. It was just the way he presented himself. That puffed-out chest. That self-satisfied smirk. All that Jesus talk—even in the event that it was sincere, which we never quite bought, it was to a liberal deeply inappropriate to haul it into the public square like that. He represented Southern country clubs and Dodge Durangos and Browning bolt-actions and homes with no books in them (putting Laura to the side, since she wasn’t the candidate). He was the kind of man who, if I ran into him at a hospitality tent at a tailgate party, I’d make an effort to avoid. Liberals just couldn’t stand the sight of the guy. And that was before he ruined the country.

I understand that conservatives feel similarly about Obama. They look at him and see wine-and-cheese parties where people have jazz playing in the background and where talk turns to the merits and demerits of Jonathan Franzen, who drive Priuses (or is it Prii?) and buy espresso machines and live in homes with far too many books in them. And worse than that: for much of Red America, Dr. Frankenstein himself could not have stitched together a more perfect Other: urban, urbane, sophisticated, intellectual. “Black,” of course, may no longer be a deal breaker in this day and age, but it doesn’t help. Many conservatives clearly can’t stand the sight of him.

Perry, on this scale, is chillingly Bush-like. I saw a clip the other day of him saluting—an off-screen soldier, perhaps, or a flag. It was a small thing. But he looked exactly like Bush. The chest pumped up with self-regard. The overly aggressive way he thrust his saluting hand out from his forehead. He even, I swear, was smirking. I shuddered all over again.

During an Obama-Perry contest, millions of Americans on both sides would be shuddering constantly for four months. We’ve never had quite this kind of showdown culturally. Our present Kulturkampf dates only to the 1980s. There’s never been a cultural showdown of the sort Obama v. Perry would represent. Yes, Republicans hated Clinton, but he was Southern and enough of a good old boy that he cut across those lines to some extent. Gore was painted as an egghead, and was, but again Southern-ness diluted the cocktail a bit. Bush versus John Kerry is probably as close as we’ve come, but Kerry was never really quite threatening enough to Bush America to merit serious hatred. And John McCain, mostly because he was not Southern and partly because he was so old, was not nearly as perfect a foil for Obama as Perry would be.

I don’t relish this. We’re divided enough, thanks. To invoke one of Bush’s most degrading moments of smirky chest-puffery, I say don’t bring it on.