Global Nation Organization

The abstract below is a reprint of the above titled article by Mark Avrum Gubrud of the Center for Superconductivity Research. The full article can be read at the Foresight Nanotech Institute website.

Abstract

Recent U.S. planning and policy documents foretell “how wars will be fought in the future,” and warn of new or re-emergent “global peer competitors” in the 2005-2025 time frame. It is generally appreciated that this period will be characterized by rapid progress in many areas of technology. However, assembler-based nanotechnology and artificial general intelligence have implications far beyond the Pentagon’s current vision of a “revolution in military affairs.”

Whereas the perfection of nuclear explosives established a strategic stalemate, advanced molecular manufacturing based on self-replicating systems, or any military production system fully automated by advanced artificial intelligence, would lead to instability in a confrontation between rough equals. Rivals would feel pressured to preempt, if possible, in initiating a full-scale military buildup, and certainly not to be caught behind. As the rearmament reached high levels, close contact between forces at sea and in space would give an advantage to the first to strike.

The greatest danger coincides with the emergence of these powerful technologies: A quickening succession of “revolutions” may spark a new arms race involving a number of potential competitors. Older systems, including nuclear weapons, would become vulnerable to novel forms of attack or neutralization. Rapidly evolving, untested, secret, and even “virtual” arsenals would undermine confidence in the ability to retaliate or resist aggression. Warning and decision times would shrink. Covert infiltration of intelligence and sabotage devices would blur the distinction between confrontation and war. Overt deployment of ultramodern weapons, perhaps on a massive scale, would alarm technological laggards. Actual and perceived power balances would shift dramatically and abruptly. Accompanied by economic upheaval, general uncertainty and disputes over the future of major resources and of humanity itself, such a runaway crisis would likely erupt into large-scale rearmament and warfare well before another technological plateau was reached.

International regimes combining arms control, verification and transparency, collective security and limited military capabilities, can be proposed in order to maintain stability. However, these would require unprecedented levels of cooperation and restraint, and would be prone to collapse if nations persist in challenging each other with threats of force.

If we believe that assemblers are feasible, perhaps the most important implication is this: Ultimately, we will need an integrated international security system. For the present, failure to consider alternatives to unilateral “peace through strength” puts us on a course toward the next world war.

http://www.foresight.org/conference/MNT05/Papers/Gubrud/

Shirley, Jack and neighbor’s Jim discover a strange rusty box on the old barn’s crumbling wall. Old tangled cables lead out from there, to nowhere near. Curious kids, they break the metal box open. Under several layers of cobweb and dust, there lurk a number of old porcelain fuses.

“Wow, this looks cool,” says Jim, and tries to unscrew the biggest fuse in the upper-left corner.

“Need a drop of oil,” asks Jack, who had found a can of lubricants, and is about to pour the viscous fluid.

“Hold, please hold on,” says Shirley, “we better understand first, what we are doing.”

I’ve been writing this little story as a metaphor for what’s going on our Planet Earth. All of the above standpoints are correct, all are needed, and very much in conjunction.

Our species has been gradually taking over the planet, to the point that many of its dynamics are the results of human action (or interaction), compared to physical forces, and non-human life that used to dominate the world.

Now, it seems, mankind is discovering, similar to the children in the tall tale above, some hidden command fuses that regulate world climate on a higher, and rougher level.  The clever monkey is finally learning how to cook. One might call these fuses: ocean temperature, Atlantic conveyer belt, atmospheric partial C02 pressures, and a few others.

The problem is that really nobody knows for sure what could happen, when these fuses blow. Some may have blown a long time ago, long before humans existed, turning the planet into Mars- Venus-, aquatic or snow-ball worlds.All models suggest extrapolated climatic developments could be dramatic, in particular for a larger-than-ever human (and already suffering) world population that requires very stable climatic conditions to remain sustainable. Even right now, habitat destruction is not only affecting wildlife, but human habitats, too. We’re burning our own house.

What I’m getting at is that the world urgently requires a global resources management system. The times, where everybody can pollute at will or catch as many fishes as possible from the ocean are over – but not everybody is realizing this apparent fact.

Yet before a common platform of action can be developed, there needs to be a common platform of human ethics. Our planet can only be successfully managed, if fundamental agreement is reached on practical issues such as “right of drinking water,” “right of clean air,” “right of food, ” “right of sex and reproduction,” for humans and other living beings, including plants.

Like Jim, the boy with the oilcan, we need to pave the road, and to iron-out the many (often unnecessary or theoretical) controversial standpoints that have developed during human history.

We cannot just say: “ this is what the holy book says,” but instead all efforts have to aim at generating an acceptable model of human fellowship, that includes element of religion, Law, and most important perhaps: science.

Only with a united model, mankind could possibly embark on her finest task: rescue and ecologically balance the natural forces of planet Earth. I do recognize an urgent need for action, yet, like Shirley, one top priority should be to understand the complexity of human interaction with our planet. Hence our efforts must target four issues at the same time:

• Address the most urgent issues, “extinguish the fires;”
• Bundle all available research to clarify questions of human-planet-interaction;
• Create a platform of universal ethics, and Law;
• Develop a long-term plan to sustain the biosphere.

Needless to mention, that these are high goals – yet our human race, plus the planets biosphere may depend on their fulfillment.

© 2007 by Franz L Kessler

While the above statement is quite true, it isn’t always easy to accomplish. Through time, true visionaries have appeared infrequently. Men like Isaac Newton, Nicholas Tesla, and Leonardo da Vinci. Sometimes though, it is people or ideas that exact change on a smaller scale. And it is with the combined effort of the millions of scientists and designers around the world that we can improve our lives on a daily basis.

Last night I watched an interesting news story from Holland on a home developer who doesn’t work against the sea, but with it. Thirty percent of Holland’s land mass is fill-in, wetland that was reclaimed from the sea called polder. This land is below sea-level. To protect the land from the sea Holland uses tens of thousands of pumps to pull the water out. Also, as many people know, Holland has an elaborate dyke system that is constantly being built higher and higher to hold back the ocean. Despite man’s best efforts, nature will do what nature does, ever change.

In the story on the CBS Evening News they showed the homes Mark Van Ommen is constructing ON the waterways of Holland. Beautifully crafted homes designed to float. What a simple idea. If the sea rises, so goes the home with it. If you want to move to another part of Holland, hook your home up to a tugboat and move it.

In looking further into this idea, I found architect Koen Olthuis of Waterstudio.nl who has been designing amphibious houses.

A cross between a house built on piers and one that floats, the amphibious house rests on piles when the water level is low. When the water rises, the buoyant foundation lets the house come loose from the piles and float. When the water level recedes, the house slowly sinks back onto the piles. Source: Washington Technology

Floating homes are not a new idea. We’ve had houseboats moored to piers for many years. The amphibious homes are more than houseboats. They are built on a concrete and foam platform in a factory, allowing the homes to be mass produced by skilled artisans. Because of the concrete platform the homes can be built much larger than your typical houseboat. By building the homes in a factory, materials and construction skills can be controlled with total quality management.

They say necessity is the mother of invention. How true, how true. Floating or amphibious homes might not be revolutionary, but they are certainly innovative. And it will be these kinds of innovations, ones that work with - rather than against nature, that will secure our future.

The other day while flying through Chicago O’Hare, I heard an announcement over the public message system: “Department of Homeland Security has determined we are in an Orange alert. Any bags left unattended will be removed.” The message, which was broadcast repeatedly every few minutes, was in a very loud and pitchy voice, designed to catch everyone’s attention. Even the most jaded of road warriors such as me, could not help but take notice. It affected me the same way TV or newspaper stories on terrorist (which despite what George Bush wants to believe, does not rhyme with tourist) attacks do. It made me want to spend some time on the gun range.

I know from conversations with people in my personal and Internet life, this is a shared sentiment. Recently though I speculated on just how useful a firearm would be under an actual terrorist attack. Would there be enough time to actually shoot off a few rounds at the perpetrators before they blow themselves as well as others up? So I’ve come up with an additional proposal: Send our pet dogs to bomb-sniffing or biological and chemical-agent-detection school.

You might be thinking, there must be equipment out there already doing this work. Well, you are partially correct. Mechanical detectors are available, capable of detecting biological and chemical agents, but they are very costly and have limitations.

Biological detection systems are currently in the research and early development stages. There are some commercially available devices that have limited utility (responding only to a small number of agents) and are generally high cost items. Because commercially available BW detection systems and/or components exhibit limited utility in detecting and identifying BW agents and are also costly, it is strongly recommended that first responders be very careful when considering a purchase of any device that claims to detect BW agents. This is a very different situation when compared to chemical detection equipment; there are various technologies for detection of chemical agents and toxic industrial materials (TIMs) that can be purchased by the emergency first responder. One reason for the lack of available biological detection equipment is that detection of biological agents requires extremely high sensitivity (because of the very low effective dose needed to cause infection and spread the disease) and an unusually high degree of selectivity (because of the large and diverse biological background in the environment).

Another reason for the lack of biological detection equipment is that biological agents are very complex systems of molecules compared to chemical agents, which makes them much more difficult to identify. For example, Ionization/Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS), an excellent (though expensive) system for collection, detection, and identification of chemical agents, cannot detect or discriminate biological agents in its present form. In fact, the need for high efficiency collection and concentration of the sample, high sensitivities, and high selectivities make all chemical detectors in their current form unusable for biological agent detection.

However, Detection Support Services claims a properly trained bomb dog is considered superior to current machine technology, especially in areas of sensitivity, mobility, and user friendliness (Institute for Biological Detection Systems, 1999). Adding, “Law enforcement and military bomb dogs were in very short supply before the devastating terrorist attack on 11 September 2001. Subsequent to 11 September, the requests for bomb dogs have out stripped all available resources.” Meanwhile there are 73 million pet dogs in the United States, all of which could be pressed into service.

Imagine every time you walk your dog, particularly if you live in an inner city, your pet companion could be on guard duty, helping to save a nation. Or what about those of you, who fly with your little dogs, wouldn’t their bomb sniffing skills make you feel more secure, knowing they would alert you to danger. Better yet, how about putting a trained dog on every flight? Certainly that would be less costly than an Air Marshall. Of course, an Air Marshall could shoot a terrorist dead, but what if they never get a chance to fire off a single round? Wouldn’t a dog on board be a visible cue not just to the passengers, but to terrorists as well? A dog could even work in conjunction with an Air Marshall; as a double team. So instead of just sending our dogs to obedience school, why not also train them in the fine art of bomb or chemical detection.

Did you ever wish to know more about earthquakes? It used to be a cumbersome exercise, with the need to delve through books and strangely worded articles.

Not anymore! The reign of the Internet has started, the reign of the book is doomed!

Just click on:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

and you will be presented with a world-map showing earthquakes of the last week, the last day, and the last hour. Click on any of the colored squares, and you’ll see smaller-scale maps, with the exact quake location, and the depth of quakes. Looking through it you’ll realize the very uneven global distribution of earthquakes.

In same places, the earth quakes every month. These are the major and minor plate boundaries. Most common are the extensional quakes (plates moving apart) occurring at a depth of some 10 km.

- In some zones, earth-quakes occur every week. These are so called active plate margins, were young tectonic processes are shaping the earth. The plate margins of the Pacific and of some Atlantic plates fall into this category, and also the compressive belt leading from the Alps to the Himalaya.

- In some zones, there is a quake on every day, or even every hour. These ‘hotspots’ are located in very specific zones, such as Kuril Islands offshore Alaska, Kamchatka, Sulawesi, the southern-most Atlantic, the Lesser Antilles, and a few more.

When you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the distribution of earthquake depth is profoundly skewed.

- Most common quakes occur at a depth of 10 km or less. These quakes can stem from extension (= lateral pull), compression (= push), or (more rarely) shear along plate boundaries, and characterize areas of active volcanism.

- A large number of quakes occur at a depth of 10-100 km. These quakes are almost entirely related to plate subduction (=pushing one beneath the other) processes. Alaska and the Caribbean are good examples. These are commonly associated with volcanism, often parallel to the quakes at a distance of some 100 km or less. Areas located next to a subduction zones (Lima, Peru, for example) are earthquake and damage-prone, as the quake centers tend to be shallow, and the shaking is violent.

- Lateral movements (strike-slip) and the related quakes are common in a few specific areas around the Pacific margin: California, Oregon, Taiwan, Philippines, New Zealand. These zones can spark very violent quakes, too.

- Deep quakes (100-700 kms of depth) occur in a very few selected areas only. These are: Below the eastern cordilleras of South-America; in the Sulawesi Sea; the Western Pacific, such as near the Mariana Islands; in the Mediterranean, such as in the area of the Lipari Islands. Deep quakes relate to areas, where cold slabs of rigid crust have been submerged into the semi-liquid mantle, without haven smelted-up completely yet.

The damage originating from these quakes is normally small, compared to the others.

More practically, would you like to check-out the site of your domicile for dangers resulting from earthquakes? Very easy! Look for the button ‘historical earthquakes.’ Earthquakes do always come in groups. If an area has been completely quiet for 20 years, it highly suggests that such an area is relatively stable, and chances for major earth-quakes are extremely low. In many ways, earthquake-prone areas are smoking guns, and shine up in your earthquake statistic. To obtain that one, select your area of interest in latitude and longitude coordinates, and get your earthquake listing or plot from that area.

Earthquakes not only come in groups, they are mostly aligned on linear features such as fault lines. These are also often seen in the landscape (the many romantic stepping flanks and bents in places like San Diego or San Francisco, are fault lines). If several earthquakes line up, and your property is located on such alignment, better consult an expert!

Dear readers, I hope I have wetted your appetite. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we are now today truly empowered to do our own quake research. Good luck! I’ve attached a few USGS quake maps to farther illustrate the issue.
© 2007 by Franz L Kessler

Video: Bow Wow Wow - I Want Candy

Recently I had a short exchange with a friend regarding the reality of humans affecting global temperatures. Thinking humans could not manipulate nature without nature’s permission, or rather without its assistance. Regardless of whether humans are causing global warming, or are just active participants in the natural cycle of global climate change, we are in the midst of severe changes. Rather than seeing this as a cause for a panic attack, it would be wiser to view this as an opportunity.

My initial contention with my friend regarded dinosaurs. Thinking, even with their enormous size, enormous appetite and equally enormous fecal and urine output, they did not impact global climate, and in fact thrived over a hundred and sixty-five million years. Humans on the other hand have only been around for around 1.5 million; one hundredth as long as the dinosaurs. And while dinosaurs did eventually die off after either global warming brought about from an extremely volatile volcanic period or an asteroid impact, humans have an adaptability dinosaurs did not which could protect us from extinction. We can, through the application of science and technology, overcome the impact of global climate change.

Think about it, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, they ate enormous amounts of vegetation. Possibly devouring large swaths of cycad forests in short spans; leaving behind enormous amounts of excrement in their wake. If you have ever visited an area with a large bird or seal population, you would know what it must have smelled like. You would understand just how polluting dinosaur waste must have been to air and water. So here we have, humans, little teeny tiny creatures relative to dinosaurs, wrecking the environment. Polluting, devouring natural resources, and dumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Okay, if you say so.

Anyway, you are probably wondering how I can call global warming the opportunity of the century. Simple. First, its advantage is already evident to Northern European and Canadian areas that were previously covered in ice. Areas now exposed, ready for exploration.

The second opportunity will come from other benefits to global warming. Such as fewer cold weather related deaths; fewer traffic fatalities from icy roads; shorter and milder winters; higher crop output from both warmer weather and increased CO2.

Lastly, I see global warming as an opportunity because it will create demand for products and services developed specifically to either combat global warming or make its inevitability more bearable. Global warming is already fueling the largest economic boom of humanity either through legislation (an interference if you ask me to the invisible hand of supply and demand) or from isolationist, racist, bigoted reasons. Not to mention plain old desire for the latest, greatest, and coolest anything.

You are probably wondering what the hell am talking about. You think the world is coming to an end and I’m talking about global warming as if it were something beautiful. Well, the world is not coming to an end. It is only going to be different from what we have become accustomed to. The world, whether warm or cool, is beautiful.

However, change will require management. It will require many new industries, new ways of thinking about old technologies and of technologies that might not exist yet. Engineering positions will be in high demand in the future of global warming as the world seeks out ways to meet or exceed reduced engine emissions on motor vehicles; or as people start coveting more energy efficient appliances; newer, better types of home insulation; and more highly efficient thermal windows.

Then there will be a demand for economically alternative and renewable energy sources, such as solar energy for more than just water heaters; moderately priced windmills that might make it possible to be mounted on every roof or in every backyard; geothermal energy, which is already being used as geothermal heat pumps for heating or cooling air and water; and of course we cannot forget the big baddy, construction and maintenance of dozens, perhaps even hundreds of nuclear power plants.

Really, the list is endless. So don’t panic. Just get to work because the future needs you. Opportunity is an impatient lover, it will find some other willing partner should you fail to become captivated by her.

One objective at Global Nation is to uncover unscrupulous business practices. Our primary focus is on those who profit from dangerous or inferior goods; with a good being defined as a product or service. How we do this is quite simple: through exposure. Today, all eyes are on China, whose “states secrets system is dangerous to the health of people not only in China but also worldwide, and undermines healthy governance and rule of law.” It is apparent, China is not just poisoning American pets out of greed, but the entire planet.

As most of the world knows, this past March millions of cans of pet food was recalled from North American pet stores when thousands of animals died from kidney damage after eating tainted food. According to the FDA, the food contained the chemical melamine. In a statement on ChemNutra’s website: “We are concerned that we may have been the victim of deliberate and mercenary contamination for the purpose of making the wheat gluten we purchased appear to have a higher protein content than it did.” In fact, the wheat gluten may not have had any protein at all.

What is more frightening, this practice, which to me is fraud, is customary in China. According the the New York Times,

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.” from the New York Times

Last year nearly 1,000 people in Panama were killed from cough syrup and other anti-allergy medicines. It was found that additives used in the compounding process were imported from China which contained diethylene glycol (DEG), more commonly known as anti-freeze. “Exposure to large amounts of DEG can damage the kidneys, heart, and nervous system.”

This week, toothpaste has been banned for the same reasons; it was found to contain DEG. It is further insulting to learn the types of stores buying this toothpaste are not regular supermarkets, but low priced dollar and discount stores; businesses that appeal to low income people. Chasing after the lowest price appears to come at a high price, loss of life.

What we don’t know yet is whether toothpaste not sold in the retail environment, but distributed to hospitals, nursing homes, schools, airlines, hotels and other places where the product is supplied unbranded and unlabeled, is also contaminated. Keep in mind, people in hospitals and nursing are already fragile. If they become exposed to these toxic chemicals the potential for disaster increases.

Most likely this is only the tip of the iceberg. China has never been highly regarded for respecting human or animal rights. So, at the very least we can expect to see these tainted products, products now banned in western nations, to not be destroyed, but to get dumped into third-world and emerging nations. In the end, will this fraud harm their GDP? Will China’s reputation be sufficiently damaged to result in a change to food safety policy? I don’t know. Hopefully, this will be their wake-up call. If not, I am sure another emerging nation has their eye on the prize; becoming the world’s most favored manufacturer.

“Welcome to the jungle…”

What’s news on the Global front? Well, currently the annual G8 Summit is wrapping up three days of talks on the global economy. However, I am not going to spend time recapping the events and agreements at this time; preferring to leave it for future discussion. You can click on the link I’ve provided for in depth information on the G8 Summit. Right now I would like to draw attention to my current favorite print magazine: The Economist.

If you have never read The Economist, and are interested in global affairs as they impact business and politics (two sides of the same coin), then I highly recommend you get a copy of the magazine. At the very least, please visit their website.

What I like the most about The Economist versus similar magazines, (such as, The Weekly Standard, Newsweek, Time, Business Week, et. al.) is that The Economist is not U.S centrist. I am sure this is because it is a U.K. publication. I know many people perceive the United States as the center of the universe, but it isn’t; it is only one player on a planet of around 194 countries.

The quality of the writing is outstanding and clearly stated; the content is thorough and topical; the opinions are in line with my thinking (what I like to call right-thinking); and they believe in free-trade and free-markets. When you read the magazine, or as they call it, their newspaper, you might not notice it at first, but the articles are written anonymously. “The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it.”

Each week I will try to bring attention to one or more articles from The Economist that I believe reflect the work we do here at Global Nation.

The following is an article from the May 24, 2007 issue on Mo Ibrahim. Here, instead of charity, he uses courage to radicalize life in Africa; proving “the way forward for Africa is investment.” What is most remarkable is how he was able to establish wireless telecommunications in Africa without having to give out bribes. His vision for Africa, a continent ripe for investment, is to promote good governance in Africa with a system of rewards. His plan is “to award an annual prize of $5m to retired African leaders who rule well and then stand down, rather than trying to cling to power.” I believe his political model, rooted in good business practice will be successful.

Africa calling
May 24th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Mo Ibrahim helped to bring mobile phones to Africa. Now he has bigger plans

IN 1998, as the telecoms boom was under way, Mo Ibrahim was amazed that big companies were rushing into the mobile-phone business around the world, yet not in Africa. There they saw only problems: poverty, unrest and corruption. Mr Ibrahim, a veteran of the telecoms industry in Britain and Sudan, was at the time running a consultancy he had founded in London. Amid the cigar smoke and snifters that followed its directors’ dinners, an idea formed. Might it be possible to set up a pan-African mobile operator—and to do so without paying bribes?

This was the genesis of Celtel, which is now one of Africa’s largest mobile operators, with some 20m subscribers in 15 countries.When Mr Ibrahim sold Celtel in 2005 to MTC, a Kuwaiti operator, for $3.4 billion, it demonstrated that the continent was open for business. Rather than charity, he insists, “the way forward for Africa is investment.”

Building businesses in Africa is important to Mr Ibrahim, who had to leave the continent as a young man in order to pursue his career. Born in Sudan and raised and educated in Egypt, he started off as an engineer at Sudan’s national phone company. After further study in Britain he went on to become technical director at Cellnet, the wireless arm of BT, Britain’s biggest telecoms operator. (Cellnet was subsequently sold, renamed O2 and is now owned by Telefónica of Spain.) He left in 1989 to set up an engineering consultancy that designed mobile networks, and sold the firm for just over $900m to Marconi in 2000.

These experiences paved the way for Celtel’s emergence. The consultancy enabled Mr Ibrahim to peer into the business models of dozens of mobile operators, from which he concluded that an African operator would work. His time at BT was also informative: big companies, he says, teach a fellow everything he ought not to do in order to be successful. “Later on in life I was not worried about taking on the big guys, because you know they are not efficient,” he says. And Mr Ibrahim’s previous success meant that the motivation behind Celtel’s establishment was not solely commercial. He and his co-founders had already made their fortunes and regarded Celtel as a political and intellectual test. That is why they happily ventured into risky African markets and refused to pay bribes.

Now that mobile telephony is booming in Africa, Mr Ibrahim has other plans. Not for him the typical rush into private equity. Instead he set up a foundation last year with the novel (and, say critics, utopian) mission of promoting good governance in Africa. It plans to award an annual prize of $5m to retired African leaders who rule well and then stand down, rather than trying to cling to power. The foundation is working with Harvard University to establish a scoring system with which to assess potential candidates. The prize committee is chaired by Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations. The first award will be presented in October, though the prize will be presented only in years when a worthy winner can be found. By that point Mr Ibrahim plans to have stepped down as the chairman of Celtel to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

Meanwhile Mr Ibrahim has also put up $150m to establish a fund to invest in African businesses. From its newly opened offices in London, the Africa Enterprise Fund will seek out promising companies in financial services, consumer goods, energy and agricultural processing. The aim is to focus on established businesses that need cash and experienced management to grow, and the average investment is expected to be around $20m. Only companies that can expand their operations regionally or throughout Africa will be considered. Mr Ibrahim has appointed Tsega Gebreyes, Celtel’s former strategy chief, to help run the fund. This is because the fund’s approach is to apply the Celtel formula in other fields: identify inefficiencies, consolidate fragmented operations, go pan-continental and develop a respected brand. The goal is scale. A large company that operates in several African markets can attract a higher calibre of managers than a gaggle of local ones, and can have more political clout when demands for bribes crop up.

Politics, philosophy and economics

Though there are no direct links between the foundation and the fund, the two are symbiotic. Business and investment in Africa can succeed only if there is good governance, which is what the foundation is intended to promote. And economic development is necessary in turn to give people a stake in improving the political process. The foundation’s $5m prize is a pittance, it is true, when compared with the spoils that can be extracted by staying in power. But the initiative may not be totally futile: given the impotence of Africa’s intergovernmental bodies it will do no harm at all to produce an annual public ranking of African governance. And the foundation will offer a carrot where other non-governmental organisations carry sticks.

The investment fund is also tiny when set against the magnitude of Africa’s problems. But as Celtel shows, some businesses can have a powerful ripple effect, promoting economic activity and generating new investment. Celtel employs around 8,000 people directly, for example, but it and other mobile operators indirectly provide jobs to around 170,000 people in Africa who resell prepaid airtime. More broadly, mobile phones also promote entrepreneurship and economic activity by widening access to markets and making up for poor or non-existent transport infrastructure. Similar ripple effects ought to be possible in other fields such as financial services and energy.

Thirty years ago Mr Ibrahim had to leave Africa for Europe in search of education and professional success. He hopes that fostering indigenous African companies will help ensure that tomorrow’s engineers and entrepreneurs can find their opportunities closer to home. (source: The Economist)

I want to thank my good friend Ted Sheridan for agreeing to post his work on the Global Nation blog. Ted is a prolific writer on many subjects, but for this space I’ve asked him to concentrate on issues involving freedom, justice, democracy and the impact of globalization on humanity. I hope you, the reader, will be as moved by his writing as I have been for the past four or five years. Please feel free to leave comments as discussion is encouraged.

I would also like to thank my webmaster, Dan Kinchen for building the new Global Nation website. Dan, you have created a wonderful site. I am very proud to have both you and Ted on my team.

To the other people I have asked to join me here, I hope you will accept my invitation to post your philosophies on how to build a global union for the society of man. Our goal is to create the blueprint for the benefit of all mankind and not just one specific ideology.

Thank you,

   Sara Coslett    

What could be more convenient than downloading an e-book to your computer? The only drawback is it forces you to read it on a computer. If you want to use it like a traditional paperbound book, by slipping it into a purse or backpack, you would have to either print it to paper or load the file into a pocket device; such as a Blackberry, an iPod, a PDA, or a mobile phone. Unfortunately, doing so makes the text so small it becomes nearly impossible to read. But, now with the advent of flexible active-matrix displays from Plastic Logic, reading electronic documents like you would read a book will be possible.

“Plastic Logic is the outstanding leader in plastic electronics manufacturing, a revolutionary new technology for printing electronic devices. The company will be the first to apply the new technology to a fully commercial application: flexible active-matrix displays.”

Below is information from their website on how the process works.

PROCESS

Plastic Logic’s backplanes enable thin, light, robust and flexible electronic reader products.

To address the market opportunity for flexible active-matrix displays, Plastic Logic has developed the first process for printing electronic circuits on plastic substrates to be ramped-up to an industrial scale. Not only is the process capable of making incredibly thin, light and robust displays, it is considerably simpler than conventional amorphous silicon based processes.In an active-matrix display, each dot on the display is controlled by an active switching element, usually a thin film transistor (TFT), and by the signals on an array of intersecting row and column electrodes. Up to now, the TFTs have been fabricated with amorphous silicon deposited at high temperature on a rigid glass substrate. This requires a complex process of multiple mask-based photolithography steps.

The array of switching elements and the row and column electrodes are fabricated on a substrate to create an active-matrix backplane. The backplane can be combined with many display frontplane technologies such as LCD, OLED or electrophoretic ‘electronic paper’ to make a display.

In the case of electronic readers, the most attractive frontplane technology is electronic paper. This has the appearance of paper and is bi-stable so that it only uses power when the image changes. A number of electronic reader products have been launched using electronic paper such as the Sony Reader and the iRex Illiad which both use electronic paper laminate from E Ink (E Ink Imaging Film® ).

Even though electronic paper is typically thin and flexible, a rigid display results when it is combined with a glass-based amorphous silicon backplane. Plastic Logic’s flexible backplane technology enables the display, and therefore the reader device itself, to become flexible, thin, light and robust so that it feels much more like a sheet of paper.

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From their January 3, 2007 press release:

New volume manufacturing facility to ramp-up in 2008

Cambridge, UK – 3rd January 2007 – Plastic Logic announced today that it will build the first factory to manufacture plastic electronics on a commercial scale. The facility will produce flexible active-matrix display modules for ‘take anywhere, read anywhere’ electronic reader products. It will utilize Plastic Logic’s unique process to fabricate active-matrix displays that are thin, light and robust; enabling a reading experience closer to paper than any other technology.

To fund this comprehensive commercialization program, Plastic Logic has completed a first closing of $100 million of equity finance led by Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation. Existing investors Amadeus, which led the seed financing of Plastic Logic, Intel Capital, Bank of America, BASF Venture Capital, Quest for Growth and Merifin Capital also participated. The financing is one of the largest in the history of European venture capital.

Bandel Carano, Managing Partner at Oak, said “Plastic Logic has created a pioneering technology that will revolutionize the way that people interact with their media on the move. This investment is a perfect fit with Oak’s vision of future media interaction through handheld devices.”

Rob Broggi, Vice President and Director of Technology, Media and Telecommunications Equity Research at Tudor, added “This investment meets our objective to find and participate in the most exciting investment opportunities globally, particularly in mobile and nanotechnology sectors.”

Hermann Hauser, Director of Amadeus commented “Having backed Plastic Logic from day one, I am delighted that the first full commercialization of plastic electronics is now firmly in our sights. With this investment we are not only scaling up a great company - we are also creating a new electronics industry that will become a significant addition to silicon.”
The facility will produce display modules for portable electronic reader devices – a product category that is predicted to grow to 41.6 million units in 2010. It will have an initial capacity of more than a million display modules per year and production will start in 2008. Dresden in the ‘Silicon Saxony’ region of eastern Germany has been chosen as the facility location following an extensive worldwide site selection process.

“Our displays will enable electronic reader products that are as comfortable and natural to read as paper whether you’re on a beach, in a train or relaxing on the sofa at home.” stated John Mills, Chief Operating Officer at Plastic Logic. “Wireless connectivity will allow you to purchase and download a book or pick up the latest edition of your newspaper wherever you are and whenever you need it. The battery will last for thousands of pages so you can leave your charger at home.”

“Even in this age of pervasive digital content, our research shows that consumers are very reluctant to read on laptops, phones and PDAs,” said Simon Jones, Vice President of Product Development at Plastic Logic. “We still carry around enormous amounts of paper. However, people are making less room in their lives for the weight and bulk of paper and are becoming more sensitive to the environmental impact of printing to read. We believe there is a substantial unfulfilled need that Plastic Logic can meet by making digital reading a comfortable and pleasurable experience.”

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To learn more about electronic readers visit:

http://www.plasticlogic.com/company.php