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Officials: Afghanistan strategy formed with great deliberation

President Obama announces anti-terror strategy on Friday with top administration policy makers present.
President Obama’s unveiling Friday of a new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan was made only after a thorough interagency review of the region with input from several sources, administration officials said.

“The president wants to make sure that this mission has a focus and a clear, concise goal,” said Bruce Riedel, who served as chairman of the review. “And that goal, as he spelled it out, is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda, and to ensure that their safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot threaten the United States anymore.” Riedel said al Qaeda has regenerated over the past seven years, “and it is again a threat to the United States homeland and to American influence around the world and to our allies around the world.” Earlier Friday, Obama said that his plan called for more 4,000 more troops, new legislation, improved troop training and added civilian expertise to defeat the “terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks.” Riedel told reporters the review had been a “very intense and ambitious and aggressive 60-day effort to reach out and to make sure that we’ve gotten everyone’s views into it.” Riedel, co-chairman Richard Holbrooke and co-chairwoman Michelle Flournoy said the White House last month hosted separate delegations from Afghanistan and Pakistan for intense conversations regarding U.S. policy in the region. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later hosted trilateral talks with representatives of both countries, they said.

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In addition, Vice President Joe Biden traveled twice to Europe to meet with NATO members and leaders in Brussels. Riedel said Obama’s aim was to ensure that U.S. planners set clear, concise goals for what they want to accomplish in the region. Together, Pakistan and Afghanistan represent a single region and a single challenge for U.S. policy, said Riedel, a former CIA officer. Part of the U.S. strategy is to “engage intensively with the Pakistan government” economically. “We’re also looking at what we can do on the military side,” he said. Efforts in Afghanistan will be made militarily and through civilian support, followed by “very intensive regional diplomacy,” Riedel said. U.S. troops can depart Afghanistan “as the Afghans can deal with their own security problems,” he said. He said he hoped the “synergy” from aggressive military action in Afghanistan and economic support in Pakistan would lead to the destruction of terrorist safe havens in the region. Holbrooke said Afghan President Hamid Karzai had watched Obama’s speech on television in Kabul “and was extremely grateful and will give his statement of support soon.” But in a rare official U.S. acknowledgment of the widespread corruption in Afghanistan, he likened it to “a cancer eating away at the country” and said, “It has to be dealt with.” As for Afghanistan’s planned election in August, Riedel said the United States “will neither support nor oppose any candidate.” He added, “We believe the election should be free, fair, open, and the candidates should operate from a level playing field.” Intense diplomacy will follow in coming weeks, with Obama headed to the NATO summit next week in Strasbourg, France, to meet with U.S. allies, and Clinton to The Hague on March 21 to attend a U.N. meeting. Holbrooke said the United States has received commitments from “many countries” to contribute troops during Afghanistan’s election. He said even more countries have agreed to help train Afghan troops and police. One big promise came from Japan, which has agreed to pay the salary of Afghanistan’s national police for the next six months, a “huge” commitment, Holbrooke said. Watch Obama’s news conference » The officials said success in Afghanistan would be determined based on the levels of violence, casualties, suicide bombings and moves against corruption. But Riedel said the benchmarks and strategy needed to be flexible. For that same reason, he said, no timeline has been set.

Asked whether Obama would move on actionable intelligence without Pakistan’s approval if the United States were to find a high-value target like al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden in the country, Holbrooke stopped cold. “I just don’t think we can answer that question,” he said. “It’s speculative, it’s hypothetical, and it would be deeply injurious to our national interest to speculate.” He noted that the United States is but one of many countries with a stake in bringing peace to the region. He cited Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, Russia, Iran, UAE and Afghanistan’s neighbors. “All those who have a real influence, all involved [with Afghanistan and Pakistan] whether we like it or not,” Holbrooke said.

Saudi king appoints successor’s successor to throne

Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz currently serves as Saudi Arabia's interior minister.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Friday appointed Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz to be the nation’s second deputy prime minister, making him second in line to the kingdom’s throne, the state-run Saudi Press Agency said.

The royal decree “was issued with immediate effect,” SPA said. The appointment of Abdullah’s powerful half-brother to the post means that Nayef is now the country’s crown prince in waiting and second in succession to be king. Nayef, who currently serves as the interior minister, is considered more conservative than Abdullah, viewed by some as a liberal reformer. Nayef’s appointment appears to reverse a trend that began in February, when Abdullah announced a major cabinet reshuffling in which many hard-line conservatives were dismissed and replaced with younger, more moderate members. Those replaced included the minister of justice and minister of information. The appointments, which represented the largest shakeup since Abdullah took power in 2005, were welcomed in Saudi Arabia as progressive moves by the king. The current crown prince and deputy prime minister, Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, left Saudi Arabia a few months ago to undergo medical tests and surgery in New York. His health has been the subject of intense speculation in Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi government maintains his health has improved. Last week, media reports quoted Nayef downplaying the rumors about Sultan’s health. Watch report on Saudi succession »

“I would like to assure you that the crown prince’s health is very good,” he told reporters, according to the Arab News. “God willing, after the medical vacation he will return to the kingdom in full health.” Thursday’s announcement answers a long-standing question regarding the country’s plan for royal succession and represents the latest in a line of moves by the Saudi king that could have a long-lasting impact on the direction of the kingdom.

Three Mile Island at 30: Nuclear Power’s Squandered Potential

Three Mile Island at 30: Nuclear Powers Squandered Potential

If the Three Mile Island atomic reactor near Harrisburg hadn’t melted down 30 years ago this Saturday…well, there probably would have been an accident somewhere else. The entire U.S. nuclear industry was melting down in the 1970s, irradiated by spectacular cost overruns, interminable delays and public outrage. Forbes later called its collapse “the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.”

The TMI fiasco was a scary cultural moment, coming just two weeks after the release of the movie The China Syndrome, but there was nothing particularly tragic about it. It didn’t kill people. It didn’t kill nuclear power, which still provides 20% of U.S. electricity. It didn’t even kill TMI; the plant’s surviving reactor is about to receive a 20-year extension of its operating license. If anything, the core meltdown did some good, prompting desperately needed upgrades of nuclear safety standards.

No, the real tragedy was the dysfunction of the fledgling U.S. nuclear industry, which was already canceling new reactors all over the country before TMI, and has not ordered one since. That’s a shame, because nuclear reactors produce no carbon emissions. If we got 80% of our electricity from nukes today, as France does, we’d emit nearly a third less carbon. It would be the greenhouse-gas equivalent of taking all our cars off the road. So it would be nice if we could turn back the clock.

The other tragedy is that we can’t. There’s huge hype these days about a “nuclear renaissance,” since the industry now has its act together, fossil fuels are frying the planet, and solar and wind are only intermittent electricity sources. But nuclear energy is still paying the price for the disastrous era that ended with TMI. And it’s too high a price.

The story of the original collapse of the American nuclear industry has been told many times. It is basically the story of an immature industry that grew way too fast, quintupling the size of its plants in just a few years, even as it was struggling with dangerously complex new technologies and an understandably onerous regulatory process, buffeted by plummeting electricity demand and soaring interest rates. The last nuclear plant ordered by a U.S. utility broke ground in 1973 and took 23 years to finish. The average cost overrun for a reactor approached 300%; the Washington Public Power Supply System—known as “whoops”—walked away from three plants mid-construction, triggering the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history. Even the reactor that failed at TMI was $500 million over budget and five years behind schedule.

After TMI, the industry became radioactive. A famous NRC study found the potential for hundreds of thousands of deaths from a catastrophic meltdown. The federal government hasn’t met its responsibility to store nuclear waste, despite pouring billions of dollars into a hole in Nevada. Nuclear energy got caught up in the nuclear freeze, even though that was supposed to be about nuclear weapons, and the spread of terrorism and rogue states has lent some credence to fears of proliferation. After Chernobyl,which was much worse than TMI, nuclear power seemed like way more trouble than it was worth.

The good news is that today’s nuclear industry is no longer dysfunctional. It’s not perfect—an Ohio reactor nearly melted down in 2002, and the lead operator of a Florida plant recently quit after accusing his bosses of unsafe practices—but it has learned from its mistakes. Its reactors ran at a record 92% capacity last year. It’s doing a better job of storing its radioactive waste at its plants. It has standardized designs for new reactors, which should enhance safety, and it has successfully lobbied to streamline its regulatory process, which should reduce delays.

And thanks to the climate crisis and a 30-year stretch without serious accidents in the U.S., no-nukes sentiment has faded; a Gallup poll this month found that 59% of Americans now support atomic power. The industry has an even broader base of bipartisan support in Congress, which continues to funnel it billions of dollars worth of loan guarantees, tax breaks, insurance benefits and direct subsidies; the latest goodie is “risk insurance,” which will reimburse the industry for regulatory delays. States are devising even more creative incentives for new plants; Florida has promised to pay utilities for nuclear investments even if they never complete any reactors, and may allow nuclear to qualify for renewable energy subsidies—even though it’s not renewable.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has now received applications for 26 new reactors. If all goes well, the first could come online around 2016. The first problem is, scientists believe we need to slash emissions now, in order to get back to 1990 emissions levels by 2020, and there’s no way new nuclear plants can even make a dent in the problem. Even if the industry’s backers got their wish of 45 new plants by 2030, that would barely replace the aging plants that are scheduled for decommissioning.

Anyway, many of the new plants will never be built, and shouldn’t be built, because of a second problem: Once again, nuclear power is turning out to be way more expensive than originally advertised. The plants are cheap to operate, but unbelievably costly to build; estimates for new plants have doubled and even tripled over the last year or two. One recent study priced new nuclear generation at 25-30 cents per kilowatt-hour; new wind power comes in around 7 cents, about the same as coal, and investments designed to reduce electricity consumption through more efficient appliances, lighting or buildings cost about 1 to 3 cents per kilowatt-hour saved. This is why nobody on Wall Street or Main Street or any private-sector street will make real investments in new nuclear generation; U.S. utilities rely on ratepayers and taxpayers, while France and China rely exclusively on public funds. A Warren Buffett-owned company was involved in an Idaho project, but scrapped it once costs began to escalate.

And why are costs spiraling out of control again Yes, the global credit crunch has increased the cost of borrowing, and oil spikes have increased the costs of materials. But ironically—tragically, really—the main problem has been the 30-year hibernation of the nuclear construction industry, the legacy of the incompetence that led to TMI. The specialized workforce of nuclear engineers, welders and other reactor-builders has withered, which means higher labor costs and more delays. Our nuclear industrial base has atrophied as well; for example, the world’s only steelworks capable of forging containment vessels is now a Japanese monopoly, forcing utilities onto a three-year waiting list to pay exorbitant prices.

It’s too bad that nuclear plants make so little sense to build, because they’re great things to have once they’re up and running. If the nuclear industry hadn’t been so screwy before TMI, we might not be so dependent on filthy coal plants today. But we are. Now we have to make fresh choices about where to spend our energy dollars, and we don’t have the trillions of dollars it would take to solve our energy problems with a nuclear renaissance. As President Obama has said, nuclear power will remain part of our energy mix, but wind and efficiency are where we need to expand.

Thirty years after TMI, nuclear power has turned out to be the Mickey Rourke of the U.S. energy industry — or maybe the Darryl Strawberry, a story of spectacular potential wasted by self-inflicted wounds. It got its act together in time to salvage a decent career, but oh, what it could have been.

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Without Bush ‘millstone,’ GOP can mount comeback, leader says

Despite crushing defeats in the last two elections, Senate Republicans have new "energy and enthusiasm" for winning back the majority, according to their leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

“President Bush had become extremely unpopular, and politically he was sort of a millstone around our necks in both ’06 and ’08,” McConnell told reporters Friday. “We now have the opportunity to be on offense, offer our own ideas and we will win some.” Many of those ideas get presented as amendments to Democratic bills, and even though they’re usually defeated, they can draw attention to GOP policy alternatives and force Democrats to take difficult votes. “They become the way you chart the course for a comeback, which, in this country, always happens at some point,” McConnell said. “The pendulum swings.” McConnell said many of the ideas for amendments come from conservative think tanks and other Republican thinkers off Capitol Hill. “Newt Gingrich, for example, has an idea a minute. Many of those are quite good. Many of those become amendments,” he said. McConnell also said he doesn’t mind the “party of no” label Congressional Democrats and the White House give Republicans.

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“I don’t feel anyone should be apologetic for opposing a bad idea,” McConnell said. “I’m not fearful of an effort to demonize dissent.” After being labeled by Democrats the “party of no” for criticizing the budget without offering solutions, House Republicans said Thursday that they have come up with a plan B — though were later criticized for a lack of details. “Two nights ago, the president said, ‘We haven’t seen a budget yet out of Republicans.’ Well, it’s just not true, because here it is, Mr. President,” House Minority leader Rep. John Boehner said Wednesday as he held up a booklet that he said was a “blueprint for where we’re going.” Watch GOP leaders unveil their ‘leaner’ budget » The details of the GOP budget will be presented on the House floor next week, said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. “We’re going to show a leaner budget, a budget with lower taxes, lower spending and lower borrowing,” Ryan said. The blueprint includes familiar Republican proposals to limit “wasteful” government spending, cut the size of government and provide incentives to private entities to expand access to health care. It also includes a major overhaul of the tax code, proposing a marginal tax rate of 10 percent for income up to $100,000 and 25 percent for any income above that level. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs laughed off the Republicans’ proposal Thursday, joking that their blueprint has more pictures of windmills than charts. “It’s interesting to have a budget that doesn’t contain any numbers. I think the ‘party of no’ has become the ‘party of no new ideas,’ ” he said at the daily briefing. CNN contributor Paul Begala says that Republicans are simply out of ideas — and have no one to blame but themselves.

“The Republicans are like an arsonist who complains that the fire department is wasting water. Obama is trying to handle an immediate crisis while also laying the foundation for long-term growth. The Republicans are doing neither,” Begala said. “They have no plan to stop the loss of jobs or to get capital markets functioning properly — and they certainly have no plans for health care, education or energy, which are the keys to both long-term economic growth and long-term deficit reduction.” Begala added: “If this were ‘Sesame Street,’ the announcer would be saying, ‘This program brought to you by the letters G, O and P … None of the crises the president is addressing were of his creation. All of them were created or worsened by the Republicans who ran the House of Representatives, Senate and White House for years.”

Owners drop Freedom Tower name for new WTC skyscraper

The One World Trade Center skyscraper is expected to be completed in late 2013.
The agency that owns the space where the World Trade Center towers stood is freeing itself of the term "freedom" to describe the signature skyscraper replacing the buildings destroyed on September 11, 2001.

The change from Freedom Tower was revealed Thursday at a news conference where the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced the signing of the first commercial lease in the building to a Chinese company. The building is expected to be completed in late 2013. “We’ve referred to the primary building planned for the site as One World Trade Center — its legal name and street address — for almost two years now, as well as using the name the Freedom Tower,” said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority, in a statement released to CNN. “Many will always refer to it as the Freedom Tower, but as the building moves out of the planning stage and into full construction and leasing, we believe that going forward it is most practical to market the building as One World Trade Center.” Ten of the building’s planned 108 above-ground floors have been built. “The fact is, more than $3 billion of public money is invested in that building, and, as a public agency, we have the responsibility to make sure it is completed and that we utilize the best strategy to make certain it is fully occupied,” Sigmund added. He noted that the agency lost 84 colleagues in the September 11 attacks. Mary Fetchet, founding director of Voices of September 11th, a group that commemorates the lives of those killed in the attack, said she was not familiar with the decision made by the Port Authority and was not willing to make a statement. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on the John Gambling radio show taped Friday morning, said he was not upset by the Port Authority’s decision. “It’s up to the Port Authority,” he said. “I have no idea what the commercial aspects are, and we can say, ‘Oh, we shouldn’t worry about that,’ but of course you have to, particularly now. “I would like to see it stay the Freedom Tower, but it’s their building, and they don’t need me dumping on it. If they could rent the whole thing by changing the name, I guess they’re going to do that, and they probably, from a responsible point of view, should. From a patriotic point of view, is it going to make any difference” He added, “one of the things is, we call things what we want to call them. So, Avenue of the Americas is a good example, for it’s Sixth Avenue to most people. Very few people use Avenue of the Americas. If they name this One World Trade Center, people will still call it the Freedom Tower.” The building was named the Freedom Tower in the first “ground zero” master plan. Officials said at the time that the tallest, most symbolic of five planned towers at the site would demonstrate the country’s triumph over terrorism. Representatives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Vantone Industrial Co. announced Thursday the signing of a lease that will create the China Center, a 190,810-square-foot business and cultural facility, to be on portions of the 64th floor and the entire 65th through 69th floors of One World Trade Center. Hailing it as a great day for the Port Authority and its partners in the China center, Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward added, “this is the first step in a long journey as downtown is finally rebuilt.” The lease is for 20 years and nine months, beginning when the building is completed, with rents starting at $80 per square foot and escalating afterward. The China Center also will have the right to lease up to two additional contiguous floors under the same terms, an option that expires at the end of 2009. The Port Authority also has commitments for more than a million square feet of leased office space in One World Trade Center from the U.S. General Services Administration and the New York State Office of General Services. Leases for these two public agencies are being finalized. These commitments, coupled with the China Center lease, represent nearly 50 percent of the office space in the building. The China Center at One World Trade Center is expected to represent the elite of China’s business and cultural communities and serve as a hub for Chinese firms developing United States operations, as well as for U.S. companies that wish to conduct business in China or expand operations. One World Trade Center will include 2.6 million gross square feet of office space on 70 office floors, a public lobby with a 50-foot-high ceiling, an observation deck 1,265 feet above ground, a skyline restaurant, a wide array of shopping and parking. The building itself will be 1,368 feet tall, and a spire at the top will bring the total height to 1,776 feet. Beijing Vantone Industrial is one of the first private corporations established in China. Today, the company is one of China’s largest private real estate investment companies with 13 subsidiaries, including one publicly traded company, Beijing Vantone Real Estate Co.

GM’s Saturn, Apparently Doomed, Still Pitching Hard

GMs Saturn, Apparently Doomed, Still Pitching Hard

One month after General Motors announced that it was preparing to spin off or drop Saturn as part of the effort to regain viability, the beleaguered
automaker is now spending millions of dollars on ads for Saturn during the
telecasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.
“We’re Still Here,” one ad emphatically says, as if to squash rumors to the contrary. “It was an odd
thing to see because it’s a short-term fix. It’s obviously part of a holding
action,” says Alan Baum, an analyst with The Planning Edge in Birmingham,
Mi.

GM Chairman Richard Wagoner said in February that as part of the company’s
ongoing restructuring the automaker was withdrawing its support from Saturn at the end of 2011 model year. Vice Chairman Robert Lutz told reporters at the North American International Auto Show in January that GM had mounted
an expensive overhaul of Saturn by adding a new sedan, a new crossover and a new hybrid. Saturn sales, however, have fallen by more than 40% during the first two months of 2009, and appear to have tumbled again during
March. “Everyone is hurting, but Saturn is hurting more,” says one dealer.

GM lost $31 billion last year and it withdrew its advertising from the
Super Bowl and the Masters Golf Tournament next month, but it is spending an
estimated $64 million on the NCAA Tournament, where a 30-second spot runs $1
million, according to Nielsen Media. The spots will promote many GM brands,
including Pontiac, a nameplate that is slated to be downsized to just one
model over the next few years.

However, Saturn spokesman Mike Morrissey insists that the expensive ads
for brands on the chopping block do make sense. “We had been holding back on
our advertising. We thought the time was right,” says Morrissey, adding the
NCAA Tournament has long delivered a young, affluent audience favored by
carmakers. “We’re very much alive,” he says.

Of course, many Saturn employees and dealers hope for more than a sales
boost. They want a white knight. “I’ve felt for more than a year that GM
could not support the Saturn brand the way it should be supported,” says Jay
Cimino, a Saturn dealer who operates five Saturn Dealerships around Denver
and Colorado Springs. “If we were spun off to the right people, it would be
great,” he adds.

So who could possibly buy or adopt Saturn Private equity firms are facing
big losses, and the painful experience of Cerberus, which bought Chrysler,
has not gone unnoticed. But Morrissey insists there are still options: “We
think we have some very interesting opportunities for Saturn,” he says.
GM’s critics have argued for years that the company had too many brands and
the return on the investment was negligible. However, Saturn did succeed in
proving car dealerships could have friendly customer relations and a good
reputation for customer service. Because of that, Cimino says, the Saturn
dealer network could serve as ready made platform for an ambitious Chinese,
European or Indian company.

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A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. If you want to reduce citizens’ exposure to dangerous and illegal activities online, why not gather up all the URLs for sites that promote such acts — child pornography, extreme violence, weapon-making and so on — and have Internet Service Providers simply block them? Wouldn’t that make the internet safer for families and children?

Actually no, as the Australian Communications and Media Authority is finding out the hard way. The ACMA, Canberra’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, put together such a list and sent it to more than a dozen companies. It was part of a trial program to develop software that would allow Australian ISPs to block the sites. But to ACMA’s evident surprise, at least one person who received the list handed it over to Wikileaks, an online clearinghouse for anonymous submissions of sensitive material. The ACMA “blacklist”, as it became known, was promptly posted online, becoming a handy compendium of internet depravity in one convenient package — courtesy of the Australian government. After it was posted, a surge in traffic caused Wikileaks to crash temporarily.

“It’s the most ill-conceived pile of stupidity by the biggest bunch of cretins that I’ve ever seen in my life, ” says Ross Wheeler, CEO of Albury.net.au, a regional ISP, referring to the web-filtering plan. “Every ISP that I know of has either publicly or privately said it’s technically and practically impossible.” The leak was further black icing on the cake. Among its more than 1,000 entries were URLs for child porn, rape and bestiality sites as well as online gambling and gay and straight pornography. But many sites appeared to have been blacklisted almost at random. A dentist from Queensland, whose website had once been hacked into by a Russian purveyor of pornography, was on the list. So was pet care facility MaroochyBoardingKennels.com.au and canteens.com.au, a site belonging to a school cafeterias consultant. “The only thing I can think of [that got me on the list] is that I have e-mailed schools telling them about my book and CD resource How to Have a Healthy and Profitable Theme Day,” owner Jocelyn Ashcroft told the Sydney Morning Herald.

And while the list in many cases appeared arbitrary at best, some selections appeared politically motivated at worst. Sites advocating legal euthanasia, Satanism and even Christianity were blacklisted. Initially, the minister for communications, Stephen Conroy, denied that the list on Wikileaks and the ACMA blacklist are the same, a denial that rang a little hollow when one of its partners, the Internet Industry Association , publicly condemned the release and posting of the list. “No reasonable person could countenance the publication of links which promote access to child abuse images, irrespective of their motivation, which in this case appears to be political,” said IIA chief executive Peter Coroneos.

More recently Wikileaks updated the list and the Minister acknowledged the similarities, but stood firm on proceeding with testing the internet filtering software. “Does the [leaked blacklist] mean we are going to stop blocking access to the sites No. People can continue to put up the lists if they are proud to do that,” he told a press conference in Sydney. “It is completely untrue that the leaked blacklist contains political content. This is a list which contains sites that promote incest, rape, child pornography and child abuse.”

As a result of the scandals, several of Australia’s biggest ISPs have now pulled out of the filtering software trials and urged the government to drop the plan. “It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes,” said Michael Malone, Managing Director of iiNet, an Australian ISP. He added that his company only agreed to participate in the trial to demonstrate that the policy was “fundamentally flawed, a waste of taxpayers’ money and would not work.” Critics of mandatory Internet filtering point out that in some countries, including China and Thailand, it’s not only used to block morally objectionable content but those that are critical of the government. More to the point, many internet providers say blacklists don’t work anyway: most illegal activity online happens via peer-to-peer networking, which Web filters can’t block. “It’s almost trivial to get around the filters,” says Wheeler. “But I can’t tell you how, because the government has now made that illegal.”
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Tough task: Designing a game about your ‘first time’

Two women won a contest this week to create a concept for a video game about losing one's virginity.
In an industry dominated by men, leave it to women to come up with the winning idea in a contest to create a concept for a video game about losing one’s virginity.

On Wednesday, at the Game Developers Conference here, the two-woman team of Heather Kelley and Erin Robinson won the Game Design Challenge with just 36 hours of preparation, while their competitors had weeks to come up with concepts for a game about “your first time.” This was the sixth straight year of the design challenge, hosted annually by New York-based game developer Eric Zimmerman. The contestants are generally top-tier game designers like two-time winner and Spore and The Sims creator Will Wright, Deus Ex lead designer Harvey Smith, or 2008 winner and Leather Goddesses of Phobos creator Steve Meretzsky. The contestants are generally given several weeks to come up with a concept for a game based on some sort of unusual challenge posed by Zimmerman. Past themes have included a game about love, a game based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and a game that could win the Nobel Peace Prize. “We are in a medium that is just incredibly plastic,” Zimmerman said. “We can put anything up on the screen…Still, we find every year that most of the money being put into games is put into a relatively narrow (set of) genres” that tends to include monsters, dragons, and the like. Zimmerman added that the purpose of the challenge is “to think about how we can create games that really break away” from what’s been done so many times before.

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Sex and autobiography have been constant themes in literature, film, and theater, Zimmerman argued, pointing to “Lolita,” the work of Henry Miller, Chaim Potok’s novel, “My name is Asher Lev,” and the films of Fellini and Woody Allen. But while Zimmerman touted the widespread historical acceptance of the theme of autobiographical sex, he noted with some dismay that veteran game designer Kim Swift, who works for Valve and who created the award-winning Portal, had originally been slated to be among the contestants but had eventually been pressured by Valve to withdraw due to the theme. “I’m saying this as a fan of Valve,” Zimmerman said, “but I do find it frustrating and disturbing that Kim would be pulled from the panel.” Still, he said, after word got around about Swift’s withdrawal, Lapis designer Kelley and independent developer Robinson volunteered to step up and compete. The two ended up facing off against Meretzsky, on hand to defend his crown, and Habbo Hotel lead designer Sulka Haro. And in the end, while all three submissions were well-received, the duo of Kelley and Robinson were judged by the audience to have very closely beaten out Meretzsky. The two women came up with a concept for “Our first times,” and presented it as a two-level game, one level for Kelley’s experience and the other for Robinson’s. They imagined a series of mini games that could be played on Nintendo’s Wii, or possibly on Apple’s iPhone. Kelley began by explaining that her game would commence with the player having to pick an outfit for a date that was intended to conclude with their deflowering. It would have to be the least complicated outfit possible, she said, nothing with zippers that get stuck, or too many buttons or ties. Then, there would be a mini game in which players would have to shave their legs, making especially sure not to miss the all-important spot “by the knees.” Next up, dinner, and making sure to remove all the garlic from the meals, something the main character–clearly a female, since the game was presented from a woman’s perspective–would have to do because of the general cluelessness of the boyfriend in question. The next mini game would revolve around choosing the proper mood music from a selection of LPs–yes, records, since the game would be set in the timeframe of Kelley’s first time. And clearly, she said, Miles Davis would have to be the choice. The penultimate mini game would task the player with “not falling off the top bunk” in a college dorm room,” while the final task would involve flicking off the smirking roommate. The Robinson level also involved a series of mini games that commenced with “driving home from ultimate-Frisbee practice” and setting the radio station in a car–perhaps using the Wiimote dial, she said–to anything except country music. Next would be a stop at a drug store to buy a brand of condoms that doesn’t terrify you, and then going “back to his place,” and grappling with adjusting the tracking on his “antiquated” VCR. Being a game concept presented from the woman’s perspective, the next mini game would revolve around “making the first move. Poor guy.” And then, afterward, calling the best friend to tell the tale. “But you have to be careful,” Robinson said, “because she’s next to mom and grandma on the speed dial.” Perhaps given their short notice, the mini-game concepts created by Kelley and Robinson weren’t very fleshed out, something that was a shame since they seemed to be onto something. But the crowd appreciated how much effort they had put into the storyboards they’d created, and forgave the rudimentary fleshing out of the details. Meretzsky’s concept–which came in a very close second–ended up revolving around the idea of moving beyond the awkwardness of fumbling high school attempts at romance. But before explaining his final design, he talked at length about the challenges of coming up with a game idea when every possible title was too overtly sexual. He said he tried out “Where’s dildo,” but discarded it because “it had nothing to do with my autobiography.” And then, he thought “about the almost too obvious genre of first-person shooters.” He also threw away “Call of Booty”–because it would have “problems that would keep it off the shelf at Wal-Mart”–and then almost settled on a beat-matching idea called “Hump Hump Revolution.” And, playing off the title of Swift’s hit game, as well as a popular 2008 film, he said he nearly ended up with “Zack & Miri make a Portal,” but “my business people tell me paying licenses for two different (intellectual properties) is a non-starter.” In the end, he said, he came up with a three-act structure for a game based in the virtual world, Second Life, where act one involves the awkward era of high school, the second act is the more promising college years and finally, act three, happiness in the form of a series of vignettes including dates, a wedding, and then, home life. The game, he said, would be called, “Wait, time passes.” “No matter how picked on you are,” Meretzsky said, “this too shall pass. Your time will come, and you will find happiness and your place in the world.” Of the six Game Design Challenges, this year’s felt the most wanting for detail and working game mechanics. That may have been because the contestants’ task of building something autobiographical didn’t meld well with game design. Still, the crowd, which was heavy with game designers, appreciated the efforts and shouted out their support for all three contestants. After all, in the end, the point was to take a particularly challenging game design topic and create something that could plausibly be a working title. And who would know better the difficulties of doing so than a room full of game designers

India Vindicated by Pakistan Charge

It should come as no surprise that India is feeling vindicated: The United States has finally come around to endorsing India’s view of the nefarious regional role of Pakistan’s intelligence service. Reports in recent days that the CIA has confronted Pakistan with evidence that its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence , had a hand in last month’s suicide terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul echo India’s long-held conviction that Pakistan is backing terrorism in the region.

Five days after the July 7 bombing that killed nearly 60 people, Indian National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had claimed India had a “fair amount” of intelligence to prove Pakistan’s complicity. There may have been nothing new in New Delhi accusing Islamabad of using jihadist terrorist groups as proxies to strike at India. But Indian intelligence and security experts are unaccustomed to seeing that charge being echoed by Washington, which has embraced Pakistan as a crucial ally in its “war on terrorism” despite concerns over the long-standing relations between the ISI and the Taliban and other extremist groups. Still, the Indian intelligence circuit is only raising two cheers to the news of Pakistan, which Friday vehemently denied the accusations of its involvement, getting a rap on the knuckles. Reactions among analysts range from a weary “I told you so” to a cynical “So what”

Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, controlled by the army rather than the civilian government, has for years been accused of covertly intervening in the affairs of its neighbors. The government of Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has accused the ISI of aiding the Taliban and has blamed it for the recent wave of bloody unrest in the country, including a July 13 attack on a military outpost in which nine U.S. soldiers were killed. In June, Afghan officials had accused the ISI of plotting a failed assassination attempt on Karzai.

India’s list of grievances runs longer — it has accused the ISI of inciting trouble on its territory ever since its alleged involvement in the bloody Punjab insurgency in the late 1980s. In the years since, Indian intelligence and security agencies have accused the ISI of arming, funding, training and providing a safe haven in Pakistan to a variety of militant groups fighting the Indian government: Kashmir terrorist groups such as the Hizbul-Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammed; the insurgents in India’s northeast such as the United Liberation Front of Assam; and Islamist organizations such as the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Toiba, which have been accused of plotting a series of bombings across India over the past five years. Unofficial reports have alleged links between the ISI and the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed more than 250 people, and Indian officials have claimed to have evidence that the mastermind of those attacks, Dawood Ibrahim, is living in luxury in Pakistan. Officials have also hinted at suspicions that the recent bombings in Bangalore and Ahmadabad were aided by the ISI.

Still, the U.S. has continued to ply Pakistan with weapons and funds despite protests from India, which President Bush has hailed as a “strategic partner.” Many Indian experts believe the CIA has known of the ISI’s complicity all along and has decided to act now only because its own interests in Afghanistan are at stake. “So what’s new” asks G. Parthasarathy, a former diplomat and foreign-affairs analyst. “The Americans have all along known about the ISI’s collaboration with the Taliban. They knew the political leadership of the Taliban, including Mullah Omar, were in Quetta; they knew when [Jalaluddin] Haqqani was in Pakistan. Earlier it didn’t suit their interest to admit this, but now that the fellows trained to fight in Kashmir are fighting in Afghanistan and killing American soldiers, they’re feeling the heat.” Vikram Sood, former chief of India’s external intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing, agrees: “We’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for years. Now, given the situation in Afghanistan, there is growing frustration within the U.S. about Pakistan’s two-timing. But there’s no telling whether this is a one-off scolding or will translate into longer-term action. Hopefully, there will be more trouble for the ISI ahead.”

While the CIA confronting the ISI is seen as good news in New Delhi, particularly if it leads to greater U.S. pressure on Pakistan to rein in its intelligence arm, India may not gain much from the new development. Sood points out that the CIA’s intervention concerns the U.S. and Pakistan, not India and Pakistan. Indo-Pak relations, tricky at best, have been strained by the Kabul attacks, recent bombings in two major Indian cities and skirmishes just this week along the border in Kashmir. Starting July 28, soldiers on both sides of the border exchanged gunfire for 16 hours in what was termed the most serious violation of the fragile cease-fire in place since 2003. Following routine security talks on July 21, Indian foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said the peace process between the two countries was “under stress.”

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to meet his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani, on Saturday on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Sri Lanka — the highest-level talks between the two countries in 15 months. And the role of the ISI is sure to be discussed. But some believe India is unlikely to take a sterner stance with Pakistan, as it lacks the political will and consensus to come down heavily on foreign-sponsored terrorism. “India’s problem is internal,” says security analyst Brahma Chellaney. “India’s problem is its weak leadership and lack of a coherent counterterror strategy. It is not an accident that according to the U.S., after Iraq, India is the biggest victim of terrorism in the world.”

Russia ready to help bring peace to Afghanistan

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov read the statement promising help from Dmitry Medvedev.
Russia said Friday it is ready to help normalize the situation in Afghanistan, where U.S.-led forces are battling the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban for control of the country.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov read a message at a conference on Afghanistan from President Dmitry Medvedev in which the Russian leader pledged his support to bring peace to the Asian nation, said the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. “For its part, Russia is ready for active joint steps aimed at normalizing the situation in the country and ensuring its peaceful and creative development,” Medvedev was quoted as saying. Speaking about helping to repair Afghanistan’s economy, Medvedev said, “In our view, here Afghanistan needs help and support like never before. … Russia is ready for active, joint steps aimed at stabilizing the situation in this country and securing its peace and progress.” The key challenges in Afghanistan are “the fight against terrorism, illicit drug trafficking and transnational crime,” Medvedev’s message said. The summit was held in Moscow by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a regional security organization consisting of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Lavrov will attend a U.N. international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

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“The minister will outline the main results of the conference on Afghanistan in Moscow,” the ministry said, according to RIA Novosti. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will represent the United States at the United Nations meeting. A Chinese official said at Friday’s conference in Moscow that China will give $75 million in non-repayable financial aid to Afghanistan over the next five years, the Interfax news agency reported. “To date, China has given over $180 million to Afghanistan and has completely written off its debts,” said Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Sung Tao. The conference was held on the same day that U.S. President Barack Obama announced a “comprehensive” new strategy for the growing threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama’s plan calls for putting 4,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, passing legislation that would help the economies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, providing more training to bolster Afghan security forces and increasing civilian expertise to help develop Afghanistan’s economic, social and governmental institutions. Russia has a history of involvement in Afghanistan. It invaded the country in December 1979 and got bogged down in a bloody and costly guerrilla war with mujahedeen fighters. Russia started withdrawing its troops in May 1988 and the last soldier left in February 1989.