Great quotes...

"... Western countries would never allow their officials to be detained on the order of an African judge. We live in a world where some people are more equal than others. I think this is true when it comes to Africa and the developed world ..."

- Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, after Kagame's chief of protocol, Rose Kabuye, was arrested on Sunday in Germany on an international warrant issued by a French judge for her alleged role in the Rwandan genocide.

Des mandats d'arrêt contre des Français / Arrest warrants issued against French

Le parquet général rwandais s'apprête à émettre des mandats d'arrêt contre des responsables civils ou militaires français mis en cause dans un rapport rwandais sur le rôle présumé de la France dans le génocide de 1994 au Rwanda, a-t-on appris, mardi 11 novembre, de source judiciaire rwandaise.

The Rwandan general prosecutor is preparing to issue arrest warrants against French civil and military persons blamed in a Rwandan report for the supposed role of France in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, it has been learned from Rwandan judicial sources, Tuesday, November the 11th.

La justice rwandaise est en train de mettre la dernière main aux actes d'accusation contre 23 des 33 responsables civils ou militaires français mis en cause dans le rapport rendu public le 5 août, a déclaré mardi à l'AFP sous couvert d'anonymat une source au parquet général du Rwanda. "Les actes d'accusation sont en train d'être finalisés, les mandats d'arrêt peuvent être lancés à tout moment dès maintenant", a ajouté cette source.

Rwandan justice is in the final stages of putting together charges against 23 of the 33 French civil and military persons blamed in a report made public on August 5, announced AFP, quoting an anonymous source in the prosecutor's office, "The charges are being finalized , arrest warrants could be issued any moment," added the source.

Dans ce rapport, Kigali avait accusé la France d'avoir "participé à la mise en exécution" du génocide perpétré dans ce pays en 1994, et réclamé que 13 hauts responsables politiques et 20 militaires français soient poursuivis. Le génocide au Rwanda a fait, selon l'ONU, environ 800.000 morts au sein de la minorité tutsie et des Hutus modérés.

In this report, Kigali accused France of "having participated in the planning" of the genocide that was perpetrated in this country in 1994, and claimed that 13 political high ranking officials and 20 French soldiers would be pursed. The Rwandan genocide resulted in approximately eight hundred thousand deaths among the Tutsi minority along with Hutu moderates, according to the United Nations

La France a reconnu des "erreurs" dans sa politique rwandaise, mais a toujours récusé les accusations lui faisant porter une responsabilité dans les massacres. Cette annonce survient alors que des manifestations se déroulent depuis lundi à Kigali pour protester contre l'arrestation dimanche en Allemagne de la directrice du protocole d'Etat rwandais, Rose Kabuye, en vertu d'un mandat d'arrêt émis par la France.

France has recognized making "errors" in its Rwandan policy, but has always challenged the charges of having had any responsibility in the massacres. This announcement occurred during demonstrations which have have been taking place since Monday win Kigali to protest against the Sunday arrest in Germany of the director of the protocol Rwandan state, Rose Kabuye, pursuant to an arrest warrant issued by France."

It's true that the French have never been fully called to account for the role they played in Rwanda... This blogger doesn't believe that the French were actively complicit or had a direct role in the genocide, but it is unassailable that a number of the measures that they took delayed some of the international intervention, while a number of things they didn't do allowed the Hutu massacres to continue... (e.g. see Operation Turquoise)

Illustrative...

The No Happy Ending entry on the Slope of Hope blog is a good illustration of two things:

• The point of the blog entry i.e. evidence that the market and economy were at a frothy "top" was well evident in advance of the collpase (the accompanying chart of GOOG prices in great...)
• Then, if you move to the comments, you get a perfect illustration of a point made in the 'All atwitter about something' entry i.e. "... Many of the new communication technology improvements that have come along have 'democratized' communication and made it much easier to do. Unfortunately, as it becomes easier for everyone to use the latest technology to communicate, it becomes harder to separate the wheat from the chaff! ... It just seems to this blogger that the percentage of chaff that one has to dig through to get to the few scattered wheat grains is now up to over 99% plus ..."

Parting words...

"... I am greatly concerned that OSD (Ed note: OSD Office of the Secretary of Defense) processes have often become ad hoc and long established conventional processes are atrophying. Specifically, there are areas that need your attention as the ad hoc processes often do not adequately consider professional military judgment and advice. First, the JROC (Ed note: JROC Joint Requirements Oversight Council) process has largely supplanted the traditional role of the Tank and members of the JCS (Ed note: JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff) are not given the opportunity to express their best military judgment as often as they should. A failure to do so does not serve the President or the Nation very well. Second, there is a lack of strategic review to inform our day-to-day issues. A comprehensive, strategic framework is required to provide consistency and long-term perspective. Otherwise, decisions tend to be made piecemeal and are often internally inconsistent. Third, there has been a lack of explicit discussion on risk in most decisions. Without this explicit discussion, there is opportunity to miscalculate with unacceptable consequences. For those of us who consider risk assessment to be part of our core responsibilities, it is much easier to execute decisions aggressively once risk has been quantified. Fourth, I have seen a tendency to compartmentalize analysis, both within OSD and then between OSD and the Services. All would be better served through a process where data and analysis is more easily shared so that decisions can be reached in a more transparent and cooperative fashion. Finally, I find it unhelpful to participate in senior level decision making meetings without structured agendas, objectives, pending decisions, and other traditional means of time management ..."
- General Eric K. Shinseki, 34th Chief of Staff of the United States Army (1999-2003), in his "End of Tour Memorandum" to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

General Shinseki was best known for being on the receiving end of SecDef Rumsfeld's wrath by saying (when testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee and pressed on the number of American troops necessary to stabilize a post-war Iraq) "... I would say that what's been mobilized to this point -- something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably, you know, a figure that would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground-force presence ..."

Reading the memo most of the issues seem to boil down to ' a failure to communicate'

In Memoriam: Jacques Piccard

Jacques Piccard, Swiss oceanographer and underwater explorer passed away this month. From the family web site "... Born in Brussels on July 28, 1922, Jacques Piccard initially studied economics. His contacts with the business world helped to raise funds for his father's second bathyscaphe. Jacques then changed his career and worked with his father to build what was to become the bathyscaphe Trieste. Diving with Auguste, he broke numerous records before himself capturing the World Record for the deepest ever dive... Founder and Chairman of the Foundation for the Study and Protection of Seas and Lakes, based in Cully, Switzerland ..."

As mentioned, as part of 'Project Nekton,' Piccard set the world record for the deepest dive, when in January 1960 he descended to a depth of over 35,000 feet (almost seven miles deep) in the bathyscaphe Trieste. This occurred in the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, and he was accompanied by Lt. Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy. Their discovery that there were living organisms at that depth was one factor that led to the prohibition of nuclear waste dumping in ocean trenches...

Jacques Piccard - Wikipedia
Jacques Piccard - The Guardian
Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean
Intrepid explorer went to greatest depths
Savage Seas - Trieste animation

WWI

Photo credit: Hans Hildebrand

The World of Trench Warfare in Color - new color photos of World War One taken by photographer Hands Hilderbrand have now been published. View a number of them online for the first time. Also view some black and white images here.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the armistice that ended WWI (1918 - 2008)

Photo credit: Getty Images

BBC: Ninety Years of Remembrance
Europe Commemorates 90th Anniversary of World War I
World marks end of 'war to end all wars'

Vive le Roi!

Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!

"... given the daunting challenges that we face, it's important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one ..." - Valerie Jarrett, the co-chair of Barack Obama's Transition Team to Tom Brokaw on Meet The Press.

Dane-Elec Zpen

The Dane-Elec Zpen is an electronic pen and receiver that "... allows you to

• WRITE with the pen, on any kind of paper
  (with the receiver on top of your page)
  
• DOWNLOAD your handwritten notes on your PC
  and view them on screen
  
• FIND keywords back on your handwritten notes
  
• CONVERT your handwritten notes in digital text,
  to use it on your standard word processing ..."

Clip the receiver at the top of the page, turn it on, and then start writing. The pen beams the writing to the receiver which stores it on the included flash memory. When done, pop off the cap and plug the receiver's connector into a USB port on your computer. The Pen and Ink software is installed on the flash memory and launches to reads the .ELI files. The software allows you to save them as PDF files.

The included flash memory also has an OCR software package, MyScript Notes, that can be installed on your PC. It allows you to convert the writing to text or a Word document. How good is it? See below for some samples - the first image is an actual written note, the second is the .ELI file received/saved by the Pen and Ink software, and the third is the OCR'd text. It must be noted that the OCR output below is without doing any "training" of the software, (which should greatly improve the conversion) and is rather good considering the poor penmanship!

Check out the link below for an extremely thorough review that goes into much greater detail re the features of this gadget.

Oh, approximately USD 95 from Amazon...

Zpen FAQ
OhGizmo! Review - EPOS Digital Pen USB Flash Drive