Happy everyday

16th 04 - 2010 | no comment »

rlzu Chris Benz Fall 2010 – Runway Review_460

Chris Benz Fall 2010 - Runway Review


Photos: Chris Moore/Catwalking, Getty Images

DESIGNER: Chris Benz INSPIRATION:  The great outdoors meets renegade debutantes 

TOP LOOKS:  Camo-colored fur with mint green dress with embellished crystal detail; cheery plaid ensembles such as suits, coats and jackets; shiny lurex cropped jacked with warm blue mini-dress; tangerine day dress with matching vest and hoodACCESSORIES:  Fur! In the form of hats, hoods, and mittens. 

WHO WAS THERE: Susan Sarandon, Kelly Osbourne, editors galore 

WHAT WE THOUGHT: With almost entirely black collections so prevalent on the runways for fall, walking into Chris Benz's presentation on the West Side of Manhattan was a much needed breath of (colorful) air. The designer prides himself on utilizing bright palettes and did so with aplomb this season. Fabrics - such as shiny lurex, soft crochet knits, and plush furs - were as diverse as the assortment of colorful hues.

There was a silk tie-dyed gown in hues of peach, chartreuse, and blue; a nectarine orange day dress with matching vest and fur hat; an embellished lime green mini-dress with matching camouflage fur hoodie. Plaids were imagined in funky checked combos of yellow, purples, pinks and green and came in the form a suit, coat, and low-rise cropped pants. The latter was paired with a sleeveless floral print top with cutouts and worn under a super embellished matching plaid jacket. It was a look Benz's devil-may-care debutante would pull off glamorously in detention.

15th 04 - 2010 | no comment »

Aihl Backstage Beauty at Tuleh_1532

Backstage Beauty at Tuleh

Morning-after Marilyns at Tuleh's Spring 2010 runway show. Photo: Thomas Concordia, WireImage

MAKEUP: Polly Osmond for M.A.C.HAIR: Kevin Ryan for Rsession ToolsNAILS: PritiSNAPSHOT: Barbie Meets Marilyn

THE SCOOP: Tuleh's clothes are undeniably feminine, so a pink-makeup-plus-curly-volume look only made sense. "Our inspiration was a young Marilyn Monroe," said Ryan. "But with a downtown feel and kind of messed up. Like Marilyn, but the morning after."

GET THE LOOK - MAKEUP: All makeup by M.A.C. "I thought about how a teenager would do her version of 'adult' makeup," explained Osmond. That translated to lots of pink! Eye Shadow in Rosy Outlook and Perky, anchored with Fluidline in Dip Down (a chocolate brown) along the lashes. "The skin in very matte; I used Invisible Set Powder in the T-Zone." Lips got bubblegum pink in the form of a new color coming out this spring (it's not even named yet!) and the M.A.C. Pro Pink Lip Line.

GET THE LOOK - HAIR: Ryan said this 'do was a throwback to "true hairdressing. A stiff blowdry, curling irons, volume." He used Aveda Volumizing Tonic and Pure Abundance volumizing powder before blow drying, the curled the hair and pinned underneath into a faux bob. Aveda Air Spray kept it all in place. If you want a shortcut at home, Ryan's Rsession Tools Pinup Girl Kit includes everything you need to create Marilyn-esque updos at home.

GET THE LOOK - NAILS: NYC natural spa Priti has a new color coming out this spring: Crocus; a sheer, pearlescent gold/yellow that debuted at this show.

13th 04 - 2010 | no comment »

0fiu Zwangsversteigerungen bei Immobilien in 2009

Positive Meldung in Zeiten der Wirtschaftskrise: laut einer Studie des Ratinger Facherlags Argetra sank die Summe der angemeldeten Zwangsversteigerungen in Deutschland um insgesamt 2 Prozent auf nunmehr 86.617. Die Summe der Verkehrswerte der zu versteigernden Objekte nahm um 1,8 Prozent auf 15,11 Milliarden Euro ab.

Eine Prognose für 2010 wagte der Verlag allerdings nicht. Sollte sich die Wirtschaft 2010 erholen und wieder nach oben zeigen, k?nnte die Zahl der Zwangsversteigerungen auch im kommenden Jahr rückl?ufig ausfallen. Zeichnet sich hingegen ein negativer Trend am Arbeitsmarkt ab, k?nnten Menschen durch den drohenden Jobverlust durchaus Probleme mit der Finanzierung ihrer Eigenheime bekommen, so ein Sprecher des Verlags.

Zwangsversteigerungen bei Immobilien in 2009 leicht gesunken

Im Jahr 2009 wurden weniger Immobilien als 2008 zwangsversteigert. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt der Fachverlag Argetra. So lag die Zahl der an deutschen Gerichten angemeldeten Versteigerungstermine bei 86.617 und somit 2 Prozent unter dem Vorjahresniveau.

Auff?llig dabei sind die regionalen Unterschiede in der Erhebung: gingen in der Bundeshauptstadt Berlin die Gerichtstermine um fast 17 Prozent zurück, zog der Wert in der Hansestadt Hamburg um nahezu 18 Prozent an. In den neuen Bundesl?ndern konnte sich der rückl?ufige Trend aus 2008 best?tigen. Um ganze 6,4 Prozent ging die Zahl der Zwangsversteigerungen im ehemaligen Osten der Republik zurück. In Nordrhein Westfalen wurden mit rund 18.500 angemeldeten Gerichtsterminen die meisten Zwangsversteigerungen bei Immobilien verzeichnet.

3rd 04 - 2010 | no comment »

2hff Darfur- The Other Anniversary_456

This explains why three years (and counting) after pronouncing Darfur a genocide, Washington has failed to lead the world in ending the catastrophe.

Until last month, Nii Akuetteh was the Executive Director of Africa Action in Washington DC. He is an analyst for Foriegn Policy In Focus. Recommended Citation:

“Three years after Powell had first declared that genocide was taking place in Sudan, hundreds of people every month continued to die in the camps of Darfur — mute evidence of the policies that failed to save them.”
–Glenn Kessler; pg.119 in The Confidante, 2007

And yet, these two beliefs leave a persistent and irritating puzzle: Why has the genocide festered for so long? Why has Washington not taken even stronger action? It cannot be because Darfur has happened in secrecy. Nor has it happened quickly as Rwanda did. And it certainly is not because the American people have been silent about Darfur.

If China is Sudan’s most influential enabler, the Bush administration has proven the cleverest, pulling off a brilliant slight of hand. On the one hand it has convinced virtually every observer that because of the Darfur atrocities, Khartoum is firmly on Washington’s list of untouchable pariah regimes — on par with Iran, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Venezuela. Washington accomplished this feat through both rhetoric and action.

Having failed to resolve Darfur’s simmering grievances, the current Bashir government failed a second critical responsibility — protecting innocents and noncombatants once the grievances boiled over into violence. Instead, Khartoum poured its energies and resources into brutal ethnic cleansing. When a conscience-stricken Western public opinion forced its politicians to address the issue, Khartoum cynically exploited the Iraq catastrophe by crying, “Western imperialism against another Muslim country.” Fortunately, the AU and ordinary Africans have been neither amused nor impressed by this charge. And since the UN and the AU refused to sweep Darfur under the rug, Khartoum has back-pedaled and broken its word countless times.

The multiple culpabilities of Sudan’s central governments for the Darfur tragedy cannot be exaggerated. By their repressive, chauvinistic, exploitative, and undemocratic governance, Khartoum regimes sowed the seeds of the many regional rebellions that have plagued Sudan since independence in 1956.

9/11 is not this week’s only grim anniversary. We also mark Darfur being labeled genocide. It has been over a thousand days and over one hundred thousand additional lives snuffed out since the world’s sole superpower loudly and publicly blew the whistle on genocide in progress. Significantly, it is being committed by the military dictatorship of a poor African country. So why has it not been stopped even after three years? Because our leaders have cynically failed to walk their talk. And the reason for that? Because we, the people, have not done our job.

But the puzzle gets solved when you uncover other facts that Washington and Khartoum strive to keep secret. Consider just a few. In 2005, long after announcing that Sudanese leaders were committing genocide, the United States ignored its own anti-genocide obligations to arrest such leaders. Instead, it secretly flew one of those very leaders, Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh, into Washington, met with him and then flew him back out. Since that meeting, Sudanese and American intelligence officials have exchanged secret “liaison visits everyday.” And in a May 2007 report to Congress, the Bush administration heaped praise on Sudan, calling it “a strong partner.”

Darfur’s trail to success and normalcy is blocked by a second obstacle. Its presence warns that we dare not be sanguine — the real heavy lifting in Darfur, is only beginning. What must be done is a massive, three-phase, multi-year initiative. As Secretary General Ban outlined them on August 28, the three phases are: protection and peacekeeping; political negotiations; and humanitarian assistance and development. By itself, each phase is mind-boggling in complexity, scale and difficulty.

It also explains why the genocide will be prolonged until caring Americans develop the tough attitude needed for change. Once developed, that tough attitude must be used to force the U.S. government to change its priorities and make ending genocide a greater concern than secret cooperation with Sudan’s brutal regime.

Combined, the three phases almost constitute a mission impossible. The protection and peacekeeping phase — during which UNAMID must protect innocents — must keep the peace and maintain law and order in vast, semi-desert, strife-torn Darfur. The political phase, which Mr. Ban announced will begin in Libya on October 27, will be even tougher. That will require Sudanese warlords, politicians, activists and community leaders to hammer out political compromises, while the AU and the international community provide crucial support, incentives and disincentives. Like most political negotiations, this one, which is the bedrock foundation on which a healed and normal Darfur must be built, will be wrangled, protracted and long. We must expect frequent disagreements, setbacks, disappointments and delays. The final, development, phase, when de facto ethnic cleansing must be reversed by resettling refugees and IDPs back on their own lands, when sustainable development projects must be carried out, when perpetrators must be punished, and when political agreements must be painstakingly implemented, will be the toughest and most protracted of all.

These well-publicized Washington words and actions, and Khartoum’s loud reactions, make it easy to believe what both capitals want you to believe — that because of Darfur, Washington is hostile to Khartoum. There is a second, even more disturbing belief — that Washington is once more bullying a weaker Muslim country, and an African country at that. Khartoum has evangelized this second belief shamelessly. Sadly, the Arab League and a tiny segment of the African-American community have bought Khartoum’s pitch. They therefore show greater concern for the sensibilities of the Sudanese regime than for the lives of the millions suffering in Darfur.

Before leaving, Mr. Ban specified his concerns during an August 28 press conference in New York,:”I am deeply concerned about the recent escalation in violence in Darfur that has caused the death of hundreds of people in the last few weeks alone. Attacks such as the one on the Adilla police on August 1, the repeated bombardments of villages in Southern Darfur that followed, including just three days ago, and the attack on Kilkil Abu Salam in Northern Darfur on August 18 are simply unacceptable.”

How do we correct the situation? We must start with a tougher attitude. Words and promises–whether by Khartoum and its murderous Janjaweed allies, or by the rebels, or by the UN, or by China or by the United States–count for very little. We must demand action. And we must show outrage that politicians have dallied for four years, allowing hundreds of thousands innocent Darfuri lives to be snuffed out, not to mention the millions more who have been violently uprooted and terrorized. Some might label this the attitude of an impatient skeptic. I would not disagree.

Six days later, The New York Times splashed on its front page a disturbing account of a new escalation: The Arab “Janjaweed” ethnic groups that Khartoum armed are now massacring each other in a fight over land from which they have ethnically cleansed African groups.

These facts lead to one conclusion: The Bush administration regards secret intelligence provided by Sudan as much more valuable and important than saving hundreds of thousands of African lives and ending the suffering of millions more, as much more valuable and important than ending genocide.

The rhetoric has been impressive. In 2004, President Bush, Colin Powell and other officials firmly insisted Darfur constituted genocide. They mouthed many other impressive words. In fact Mr. Bush recently revealed that he once considered U.S. military intervention in Darfur but decided against it.

As formidable as the first two obstacles are, the third may be the most daunting. That obstacle is a composite — consisting in equal parts of Khartoum’s impunity and of the cynicism of its enablers, especially Beijing and Washington and to a lesser degree, the Arab League and Russia.

Two recent Khartoum actions prove that not much has changed. Last month, on Friday, August 24, Amnesty International provided photographic proof that Khartoum is still secretly sending banned arms into Darfur. And in the past few weeks, the regime expelled the Director of CARE, an organization feeding hundreds of thousands of Sudan’s own citizens!

The genocidal behavior of Sudan raises a question. Sixty years ago Hitler, dictator of a world superpower and possessed of the greatest military of the time which had conquered and was ruling a global empire, was confronted and taken down, in part for committing genocide within secret concentration camps; how then is it that today, Sudan, a destitute African country, is getting away with slow-motion genocide in front of our eyes? The blunt answer: Sudan enjoys the tacit support and protection of a cynical cabal of international enablers. Each nation within this nefarious coalition regards its own concerns as more important than stopping genocide and crimes against humanity, more important than defending the principles of human rights, self-determination and democracy, and more important than saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Africans.

Nii Akuetteh, “Darfur: The Other Anniversary” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, September 7, 2007)

Beyond words, President Bush has taken some action on Darfur. He helped broker the 2005 cease-fire; provided millions of dollars to the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS); supplied most of the humanitarian aid; punitively sanctioned Sudanese perpetrators; encouraged Save Darfur rallies; assisted the AU in winning the Abuja peace agreement; and pushed the Security Council to start the accord’s convoluted implementation. Later he persuaded Congress to allocate an additional $60 million for expanded peacekeeping. After Robert Zoellick quit the State Department, Mr. Bush appointed Andrew Natsios his special envoy on Darfur. Most recently, he banned key Sudanese firms from using the dollar and added more individuals to the sanctions list. Finally, it has just been estimated that the United States will provide a quarter of the $2 billion a year that UNAMID will cost. No other world leader has done as much.

But even skeptics must admit Darfur has seen some recent progress. On July 31, the Security Council finally authorized UNAMID, the robust hybrid protection force that must prepare the way. African countries have quickly pledged all the warm bodies that UNAMID needs. Most rebel leaders participated in the August common strategy session in Arusha, Tanzania. On Monday, August 27, the Security Council favorably considered a second international force–joint EU-UN troops who will be stationed in Chad and CAR to protect refugees. And political negotiations have just been scheduled to begin on October 27 in Libya.

Of Sudan’s current enablers, China has the greatest clout. Oil remains Beijing’s top priority in Sudan. However, concern about its image before 2008 Olympics has trumped its desire for oil temporarily. After a long record of protecting Khartoum in the UN while showering aid, investment, trade and arms on Sudan, Beijing recently relented slightly, allowing watered down Security Council resolutions that authorized robust peace keeping in Darfur. What got China’s attention? Activists. China feared that a boycott Beijing movement was gaining speed.

Do these positive developments mean that we have turned a corner? Not by a long shot. To appreciate why, think of success in Darfur as an arduous journey along a difficult, unfamiliar trail. More importantly, there are three big obstacles blocking that trail.

The first obstacle is the fact that atrocious behavior still continues in Darfur, threatening the limited progress that has been made. Wary of continuing violence, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon rearranged his September schedule and traveled to the region, principally to talk to the leaders of Sudan Libya and Chad.

Darfur: The Other Anniversary

2nd 04 - 2010 | no comment »

Dxqd Danger in South Asia_869

The Bush administration has ratcheted up the tension with its proposed nuclear deal with India. Under the so-called 1-2-3 Agreement, the United States would supply India with nuclear fuel for its civilian program, although India refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The deal would allow India to divert its own meager domestic uranium supplies to its nuclear weapons industry. Although civilian factories in this industry will be open to inspections, the ones that India deems military would remain off-limits.

Afghan Challenge

Pakistan’s General Mirza Aslam Beg, former Pakistani army chief, said that Pakistan can make a first strike, and a second strike, or even a third.

Even Washington’s allies recognize that the increasingly strident calls by Washington and the Afghan government to close off infiltration from Pakistan are impossible. You cannot seal borders, says British Defense Minister Des Browne. We could not seal 26 miles of border between the north and south of Ireland with 40,000 troops. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is over 1,000 miles, much of it consisting of formidable mountains.

While the White House and NATO are pushing for a military solution in Afghanistan, a recent study by the RAND Corporation, a think tank associated with the U.S. Navy, found There is no battlefield solution to terrorism. Military force usually has the opposite effect from what is intended.

At the heart of this crisis is a beleaguered Pakistan, wracked internally by economic crisis and deep political divisions. Islamabad is simultaneously fearful of New Dehli’s burgeoning military power and pressured by Washington’s growing alarm over the deteriorating situation in Kabul.

Conn Hallinan is a Foreign Policy In Focus columnist. Recommended Citation:

Pakistan’s newly elected and deeply divided government is also confronting intense U.S. pressure to halt the cross-border movement of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan.

In a July letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, Pakistan warned that the 1-2-3 Agreement threatens to increase the chances of a nuclear arms race in the subcontinent. It would also likely unravel the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Pakistan in the Middle

Some in Pakistan’s current government seem to have reached the same conclusion. We have to talk to the Taliban, says Asif Ahmed, a member of parliament from the secular Pakistan People’s Party, the largest vote getter in the last election. There is no peace in Pakistan or Afghanistan without it.

The United States has sent dozens of armed robots across the Pakistan border to attack Taliban leaders, many times killing civilians in the process. According to Pakistani officials, U.S. helicopter-borne commandos crossed the border on September 3 and killed up to 20 people.
The current Pakistani government was elected on a platform of making peace with the Taliban, and, in any case, attempts by the Pakistani army to occupy the frontier have failed disastrously. That is hardly surprising. As British General Andrew Skeen noted during the colonial period, When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat.

Islamabad also worries about increasing Indian influence among Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun groups, and the possibility that Pakistan could lose its strategic depth in the region, a place to fall back to if they are overwhelmed by an Indian conventional attack.

Pakistan simply can’t match those figures. Its economy is smaller, and it has been hard hit by rising fuel and food prices.

Many Pakistanis worry that war in the tribal areas could ignite a movement among Pashtuns on both sides of the border for an independent Pashtunistan. Pashtuns make up 15%-20% of Pakistan’s 165 million people.

The United States has long tried to rope India into its efforts to offset growing Chinese power in Asia. Washington has stepped up arms sales to New Delhi, increased joint military training, and is willing to help India increase its stockpile of nuclear weapons. But an India powerful enough to help offset China looks very threatening from Islamabad’s point of view.

Danger in South Asia

If most Americans think Iran and Georgia are the two most volatile flashpoints in the world, one can hardly blame them. The possibility that the Bush administration might strike at Tehran’s nuclear facilities has been hinted about for the past two years, and the White House’s pronouncements on Russia seem like Cold War déjà vu.

Rather than escalating another war, arming India, and pressuring Pakistan, the United States should be pushing for the de-nuclearization of South Asia, peace talks with the Taliban, and a stand-down in Afghanistan.

India has a no first-use policy. But Pakistan refuses to sign such a pledge, in large part due to the superiority of the Indian military, a superiority that grows day by day. India will import over $30 billion in arms over the next five years, including modern fighter planes, helicopters, tanks, and warships. The Indian air force is currently the world’s fourth largest.

When the Indian government accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) of being behind the recent bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, it revealed what journalist J. Sri Raman calls a secret war between the two nations’ intelligence agencies. The Indians charge the ISI with being behind a string of bombings in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur, while the Pakistanis accuse India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW), of encouraging a separatist movement in Baluchistan and undermining Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan.

Conn Hallinan, “Danger in South Asia” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, September 10, 2008)

Elements in both countries have long considered the unthinkable — nuclear war — quite thinkable. When Pakistan-sponsored Kashmiri separatists attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001, it set off a round of Armageddon saber-rattling.

But accelerating tensions between India and Pakistan, coupled with Washington’s increasing focus on Afghanistan, might just make South Asia the most dangerous place in the world right now, a region where entirely too many people are thinking the unthinkable.

The two countries have fought three wars since the 1947 partition, and came perilously close to going nuclear during the Kargil incident in 1999. In the latter flare-up, separatist guerrillas backed by the Pakistani Army attacked Indian troops in Kashmir, leading to a bitter 11-week war.

The situation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border presents a clear and present danger to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West in general, and the United States in particular, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden told Congress in March.

But Islamabad has been increasingly unwilling to play spear-carrier for the Bush administration’s war on terror. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told the Guardian that it is unacceptable that while giving peace to the world we make our own country into a killing field.

Every few years the U.S. military conducts war games that play out a war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Every game ends the same: nuclear war. It is a scary scenario, Col. Mike Pasquarett, who runs the games at the U.S. War College, told the Wall Street Journal.

The most immediate flashpoint is Kashmir, where Indian troops have killed more than two dozen people and injured hundreds. A miscalculation by either side could be disastrous. The flight time for nuclear-armed missiles between the two countries is from three to five minutes.

The talk on the Indian side was no less hair-raising. George Fernandes, India’s defense minister at the time, said that India can survive a nuclear attack, but Pakistan cannot.
A U.S. intelligence analysis of a war between India and Pakistan found it would kill up to 12 million people immediately and injure seven million more.

Deal, No Deal

Kashmir Flashpoint

2nd 04 - 2010 | no comment »

Tqcq CNET News Daily Podcast- The case of the miss

U.K. Net watchdog backtracks on Wikipedia ban

Psystar shifts course, says Apple abusing copyright

CNET News Daily Podcast: The case of the missing Web movies

Some movies previously available for streaming on iTunes and Netflix are disappearing from those sites’ libraries. Reporter Greg Sandoval drops by the podcast studio to explain why (hint: it’s about money) and whether we can expect it to change anytime soon.

Listen now: Download today’s podcast

Today’s stories:

Jennifer Guevin is assistant managing editor of CNET News. She focuses on science and green tech. But she also makes the occasional contribution to CNET’s kitchen gadgets blog or writes about the latest Web distraction. Once a week, she takes the mic as host of CNET’s Daily News Podcast. E-mail Jennifer.

Small is beautiful for green-tech newbies

Report: Google Chrome ‘coming out of beta’

Yahoo pink slips issued, recruiters circling above

Bebo launches Social Inbox aggregation service

Also in this podcast: We knew layoffs were coming to Yahoo, and today, they finally happened;Mac clone maker Psystar uses a new argument in its legal fight against Apple; AOL makes it easy to track your friends’ social-network movements; and how Web users in England got their Wikipedia back.

TV has license to kill movies at iTunes, Netflix

Yahoo investor urges Microsoft search deal

31st 03 - 2010 | no comment »

Wfpv Book Review- Wired for War_1002

Book Review: Wired for War

I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was in sixth grade. Fresh off my first viewing of Top Gun, I decided to serve my country by learning to fly an F-14. Fifteen years later, I’m a civilian with no flight experience whatsoever. This is hardly surprising. Childhood dreams don’t always become adulthood realities. What’s truly astonishing is that even if I had joined the military, and even if I were an accomplished pilot today, I might still lack any meaningful flight experience.

Singer illuminates these problems with great clarity. What’s less clear is what we can do about it. America may be wired for war, but are we wired for weighing the consequences? The military is by far the most respected institution in American culture. As long as politicians — whether plausibly or cynically — can claim that robots will save the lives of U.S. soldiers, they’ll favor leaping without looking.

Frankie Sturm, “Book Review: Wired for War” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, February 13, 2009)

As the ground shifts beneath our feet, far too many important thinkers — from national security experts to human rights activists — have failed to recognize the implications of the robotics revolution. Yet in the words of military roboticist Robert Finkelstein, who is featured prominently in the book, the rise of military robots could end up causing the end of humanity, or it could end war forever. Our future is a game of Russian roulette with a cyborg.

More pressing than eschatological speculation is the near-term effect of military robots on warfare. Analysts from widely divergent backgrounds agree that handing off military tasks to robots will lower the perceived cost of conflict and make war more likely. This not only threatens the lives of civilians the world over, it could actually make the United States less safe. To some, the use of robots is an admission of cowardice, an unwillingness to fight with honor. This could embolden extremists, alienate restive populations, and convince terrorists that one more 9/11 is needed to drive the cowardly Americans into retreat.

Frankie Sturm is communications director at the Truman National Security Project and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. Recommended Citation:

On the bright side, Wired for War is selling well and Singer recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, so word is getting out and Americans are starting to think the issue through. And therein lays the book’s greatest accomplishment. Written in highly accessible prose, it may not give us all the answers, but it certainly gets us asking the right questions. And that’s at least half the battle.

That is, unless flying an unmanned aerial drone via remote control counts as flight experience. But does it? Such is one of the many themes Peter W. Singer explores in his new book, Wired for War (Penguin Press, 2009). In a wide-ranging study that moves seamlessly from science fiction and pop culture to engineering and entrepreneurship, Singer immerses the reader in a world in which robots are revolutionizing our military and changing the nature of conflict in the 21st century.

12th 11 - 2009 | comment closed

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12th 11 - 2009 | comment closed

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11th 11 - 2009 | comment closed

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