Osama Bin Laden Killed

Reports of Osama Bin Laden’s death this week have been cause for celebration and much relief for many around the globe this week. Bin Laden was reported as having been found and killed by US Ground Forces in a mansion in Northern Pakistan this week. The search for the architect of the 9/11 bombings has spanned over 10 years and cost the US thousands and thousands of dollars and manpower in the ‘war on terror’. His vendetta against the West historically transformed US Foreign Policy and international security across the world for over a decade. Bin Laden’s capture ends a tireless search in what President Obama calls ‘A significant achievement for the US’ in the war on terrorism.

Bin Laden’s death raises many questions about the Pakistani government’s involvement with Taliban leaders and their connections with Al Qaeda, something that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had publicly commented on, this time last year. Strained relations between Pakistan and the US will now be thrown into the spotlight, as inquiries will be launched to investigate who has been responsible for concealing Bin Laden’s whereabouts for the entire duration of the manhunt. Although many have been quick to turn Bin Laden’s death into a Republican/Democrat partisan trophy, the fact remains; a impassioned unit of believers now without their leader are quite unlikely to give up on their ‘great commission’ without him. Certainly nurtured by their founder, there is no doubt that over the last decade for it’s insiders, Al Qaeda’s belief system has taken on a life of it’s own. As evidenced by ethnic population waves in Europe, such expressions of jihad and religious extremism are no longer limited to membership with Al Qaeda, having decentralized itself geographically and organizationally. Global Jihad has gained more followers since the turn of the millennium than at any other time previously since the group’s inception; it should shock no-one that Al Qaeda’s motives are not to disband but to simply change tactics. The question remains, how will the West recalibrate it’s plans to defeat Al Qaeda and on a wider scale, extremist terrorism as a whole?

No Americans were killed in this week’s reported mission to capture Bin Laden at the Abottabad compound.

Freund, Oder Feind? All Eyes On Germany

In just a few days EU leaders meet in Hungary for the March 2011 EU summit to discuss a multitude of pressing issues, amongst which concern the Libyan unrest and the ongoing Eurozone recession. Forecasted for discussion by Germany’s deputy finance minister Joerg Assmunsen, will be financial lending programs like the European Financial Stability Facility, which currently require a review on interest rates to assist countries to return to capital markets.  In the wake of the disaster-stricken Japanese market, it goes without saying that European currency would do well to make gain of the volatility of the Yen. Inevitably, Head of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet will be one of the key influential figures factoring further economic movement for Europe’s 2011 financial agenda. This is a crucial time for Europe and it would certainly seem that Germany, historically Europe’s financial control centre,  holds the keys to the entire continent’s future. And if one person could tilt the decision one way or another, it is Angela Merkel.

Over decades of economic and political change in Europe, Germany has played a centrifugal role in keeping Europe together in spite of it’s differences. The overwhelming fear of a cannibalistic single Euro currency underlies so much of recent European history and for those who have pressed against it, Germany has, until now, actively ensured that economic independence remained an effective counterweight to the introduction of the Euro. The trouble now comes as only 17 of the original 27 leaders will be meeting for the summit, bringing (once again) accuracy of representation into question. One of the most controversial topics the 17 will be discussing is the proposal of a streamlined tax rate, an idea supported by both Sarkozy and Merkel. If these talks are found to be the root cause and foundation of a future unified economic governing body, it could spell trouble for the very countries Germany sought to protect over the Maastricht Treaty.

Germany currently has several cards in it’s hand. As Europe’s cultural, political and economical thermometer, the world looks upon Germany as the forecaster for both unanimous and dissenting shifts in European momentum. It currently stands as the central spokesperson for the failure of 21st century ‘multiculturalism’, a country famous for it’s pragmatic approach. It refuses to bail out weaker countries afflicted by the recession, such as Greece and Portugal. However, on closer inspection it would appear that Germany is also holding a hidden card. One has to question why Merkel has not taken a firmer stand against a summit that does not include representation for all 27 EU countries. Her position of advocacy appears to go against everything Germany has sought to achieve up until now. Britain, whose royal history with Germany has cousined the two countries for centuries, should carefully start to wonder about the actions of it’s bedfellows. Of all countries disadvantaged by a unified economic governing body, Britain stands in the most awkward place, having the most to lose and the most conflicted position to remedy. As the world waits to hear the final outcome of the summit, countries like Britain and Denmark would be well advised to come up with something more substantial than to plan more future vetoes. Irrespective of the opinion of Germany’s voters, Merkel may well wake up too late, something Denmark nor Britain cannot afford to wait around to find out.

The Internet Is Full. Sort of.

 

Our daily lives are punctuated by it, modern businesses depend on it; the average person born within the last 20 years has never known a world without the Internet. Realistically it should come as no surprise to anyone that the Internet is about to reach its full capacity; many have known this for a while.  Yet, when the Internet Address and Naming Agency announced a few weeks ago, that the last seven blocks of addresses would be distributed in February 2011, many were shocked. Naturally, for some in this hand-to-mouth technological age, it’s just a case of, “Sorry—bus is full, another one will be along shortly.” Perhaps so, but for thousands of businesses the world over, this will be a harsh and unforgiving financial lesson in complacency.

Many businesses built on IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4)—the last version of the Internet the world has been running on for the last four decades—have been aware of the emergence of IPv6 for the last ten years but failed to see the urgency to upgrade. This may have rung true for the first few years, but change is unavoidable; delaying the inevitable past the point of profitability starts to do more harm than good. IPv6 is currently unreadable by thousands of devices designed only for IPv4; the resulting impact will cost businesses thousands of dollars in replacing hardware that will be rendered useless within the next few years. As a consequence, our inability to successfully dispose of hardware waste is about to quadruple on a global scale.

As ugly as it is to imagine and realize that there are hundreds of small, local businesses still running on MS-DOS this side of the millennium, economics and technology are co-dependents for growth.  It only takes the average business owner to consider the approximate profit Apple reaped with the exponential growth of the iPod and it’s evolutionary offspring. Not wishing to fail, major corporations won’t think twice to dig deep to fund the conversion. Many businesses will still risk being prudent and seek to perform difficult reconfiguration procedures to enable old hardware to support IPv6. This further delay will only be of benefit for as long as it takes the cost of new hardware to decrease. Depending on whom you speak to of course; the old mind Vs new mind debate centres on the fact that the ISP have been performing sleight-of-hand tricks between IPv6 and v4 for a while. The fact that the ISP have thus far, successfully used these strategies in the shadow of change, comforts many into believing there is little need for conversion or redevelopment at this stage. Of course, there is the school of thought that those strategies will become more redundant as change brings more sophisticated software to the helm, at which point the question will be whether or not time-poor strategizing will be the most cost effective option.