Archive for October 11th, 2008
November 13, 2007
Note: A lot of political turnaround happened since 2007 but the sword is still held high over world stability since the carrot is not offered seriously to Iran. It could still happen if the crash of Wall Street is stabilized and the inner circle of the next President of the USA does not believe in serious political alternatives.
Will the USA attack Iran? Yes, the duo Bush Jr-Cheney would have!
The question is no longer if the USA will attack but when. Why the USA administration wants to attack Iran? It is not necessarily because Iran has acquired nuclear facilities thanks to the USA aid that delivered that technology to the Shah of Iran and would have gladly supplied him with nuclear arsenals if he were not deposed. Pakistan has nuclear capabilities with large virulent Moslem extremists. India has nuclear capabilities with millions of Moslem extremists (India has the highest number of Moslems of around 200 millions). Israel has nuclear capabilities with large virulent Jewish extremists.
The USA has tried every conceivable kinds of arm of mass destruction on live populations just to validate their effectiveness; it is a fact that it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan even after the Emperor of Japan had actually surrendered a week prior to the testing of these bombs.
Why the current US administration needs to attack Iran militarily? It is not because Iran is a threat to the survival of Israel as the efficient US watchdog in the region: Hezbollah, a local Lebanese resistance movement, was enough to check any further expansionist goals of Israel toward south Lebanon. The Palestinian Hamas faction in Gaza is already a handful to the persistent Israeli and Western schemes to thwart, destabilize, and neutralize any democratic transfer of power that does not match their perspectives.
The hard fact is that the USA has been waging an uncomfortable low-level war in Iraq for four years and is stuck in this quagmire and not able to retreat without losing face as a superpower capable of re-shaping the World, single-handedly, according to its geo-political strategies.
The Bush administration has been draining the US Treasury of $1,600 billions, so far, and showing nothing in return: the reconstruction of Iraq never started, the Iraqi police force is turning militia; Iraq is even lacking oil, and 120,000 civilians died within 18 months after the fall of Saddam, and the largest US Embassy is a dud, a shell, since the members of the civil service personnel have to live in the Embassy as prisoners for safety and security reasons, and the private security companies are in the limelight for disorderly conduct and brutality and acting lawlessly.
The Bush administration is consistently losing credibility on all fronts. Its ideology of pre-emptive wars against concentrations of “Moslem terrorists” has generated the reverse effects: the Taliban in Afghanistan is recovering lost grounds, the infusion of billions of dollars by Saudi Arabia to transplant the US military bases on its soil to Iraq or elsewhere, in order to remove excuses of the supporters of Ben Ladens to recruiting heavily among the Wahabi caste of the Saudi Arabia theocratic Monarchy, has failed; the Janjaweed in Sudan’s Darfur are ever more active; Pakistan is experiencing a resurgence of Moslem extremism; and even Lebanon witnessed a war of attrition in a Palestinian camp run by fundamentalist Sunni Fatah Al-Islam extremists.
The proclaimed “crusade” to saw the seeds of democracy in the Greater Middle East has resulted in the strengthening of the dictatorial regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria; it has empowered the oligarchic theocratic Monarchies in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Jordan to act as moderate States and permitted further re-destabilization of Algeria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, and Yemen.
The Bush administration has experienced the disintegration of its coalition in Iraq and the UN is unable to fill the void and replace the lost partners. The repeated denials by the Bush administration that the war in Iraq was not for control of strategic oil fields is falling on deaf ears; it didn’t even benefit of any material success in controlling the oil fields, their production, or the taming of the oil price dramatic increases. In fact, China has been investing heavily in oil fields in many parts of Africa and taking advantage of the US disarray for expanding its economic hegemony in the Far East.
The US citizens gave the Bush administration a low-grade for achievement and the Democratic Congress is tightening the squeeze on the military budget, and the military is experiencing a low-level of recruitment for its war in Iraq. Consequently, what other alternatives does this administration has in its sleeves to get out of this predicament?
Basically, there are two drastic options; either Bush decides to withdraw abruptly from Iraq and repeating the Vietnam fiasco or starting a mini Third World War. How this scenario can unfold? The US will attack a few installations in Iran hoping to generate a violent reaction from the mullahs; for example destroying a major US naval unit or sending a few missiles at an American base in the Arabian Gulf or Iraq. Bush will be able to recall Pearl Harbor of an unjustified sneaky attack on the US then, declare war on Iran and whoever supports Iran, re-institute the military draft service, force Congress to open its purse without limit, and start another wave of blackmailing partners to side with the democratic forces against the Evil terrorist forces of Islam. Japan will have no choice but to reconsider its openness policy toward China; disgruntled Europe of its virulent Islamic immigrants will join wholeheartedly; Russia might opt for a neutral stand, and India will side against “terrorism”. The persistent and inevitable nibbling of China hegemony on the US dominion will be slowed for a while in order for the US to hold on its World domination strategy and exhaust its financial resources.
The administration of crazy George Bush Junior is capable of every Machiavelli evil. For one thing, Iran is completely encircled: the USA has installed military bases in almost every Central Asian Republics. This fact points to long-term planning targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran. Furthermore, the US might be endeavoring to catch in its nets the Ben Laden’s recruits who are recruiting heavily in the Central Asian Republics.
The scariest part of this scenario is that this Administration has proven not to analyze properly the aftermath of its drastic decisions. Most probably, there would not be any land incursions because even the sparsely populated Afghanistan has shown stark evidences to the exorbitantly expensive and fruitless land attacks. Instead, the US war would revert to a systematic destruction of this vast Persian Nation to give a vivid image to the Pakistani President Musharraf what Bush meant by bringing his country to the Middle Ages if he refused to cooperate against the Moslem extremists.
One thing is certain; oil prices will shoot to the roof and most Nations will suffer immeasurably for a long time and famine will devastate the least prepared nations, except the USA for the initial phase of the war. The end result is that this pre-emptive war policy fill fail again and China will resume its inevitable ascent at the detriment of the emerging superpowers, economically and militarily.
The Western civilizations didn’t yet grasp the fundamental problem of the Moslem societies; it is not so much Islam the major factors in the inability of the Moslem World to unshackle the freedom of its population but the caste structure that has been firmly consolidated by the Central Asian Moslem tribes who dominated the Middle East for ten centuries and expanded to India, Turkey, and even China. These Central Asian Empires whose tribes converted to the Sunni Islam adopted the code of living but didn’t care about the spiritual content of Islam and decreed that any one who attempts to interpret the Koran will be prosecuted as heretic.
Our closed religious sect system with autonomous Personal Status Laws is the main cause for our population failing to interact internally and communicate freely their opinions. The proof is that the first three centuries of Islam’s expansion was beneficial to World civilization in all matters of philosophy, medicine, sciences, translations of classical Greek works, and active rational interpretations of the Koran.
What is needed is a long-term patient diplomatic and political pressures by the West to transforming our political systems to alternatives that permit the citizens to feeling encouraged to communicate freely and oppose the system with a fair chance for success within the internationally recognized codes of human rights.
Note one: Why the USA is investing so much time and effort on destabilizing tiny Lebanon? Most likely, it is because the USA wants Hezbollah to get immersed in a civil war and then the US will contract out Israel to keeping a low-level war in south Lebanon so that Iran becomes completely isolated and unable to rely on any military support to burden the US rear troops and supply lines. It is within this strategy that the US is putting the squeeze on Syria, its covert ally, to start distancing its policies from Iran.
Note two: Recently, Bush has allowed the CIA to publish its report saying that Iran has stopped its military nuclear program in 1993. This comes in conjunction with the lower level of terrorist attacks in Iraq due to Iranian cooperation. The US is managing the European disinclination to an open war against Iran but is winning on all fronts now: Iraq is more manageable for the time being, the economic pressures on Iran are still applicable and the Iranian regime might feel more lax in expecting an US attack. However, the war scenario is still on the back burner and might be executed at any moment.
Article 25, September 11, 2005
“My pet project for undergraduate engineering curriculum”
My aim is to produce hybrid scientists or engineers with Human Factors background in undergraduate curriculum. Undergraduate university students must enjoy a comprehensive curriculum initiating them to methods applied in both hard and soft sciences. Basically, students must be knowledgeable in the various ways of designing experiment, which is the common denominator methods, taught implicitly but never satisfactorily because the logic is not that straighforward unless exposed explicitly and trained.
Undergraduate engineering disciplines must require courses in experimental research and statistical analyses training and drawn from multidisciplinary social sciences so that they can be better positioned to handle research involving mathematical modeling of theories in sciences.
I believe that at least 6 courses should be included in any engineering field involved in system design, which are: “Human Factors” in 2 courses, “Design for inferential experiments” and “Structural linear equations modeling applying the statistical analytical package LISREL”, “Human performance”, “Systems risk assessments”, and “Occupational safety and health”.
It is advisable that engineering departments, architecture and any field involved in designing systems or subsystems, with the avowed mission of reducing errors committed by end users in the application and maintenance of their tasks, need to offer 3 required courses and three elective courses related to the factors that affect the performance of end users.
These courses are meant mainly to designing interfaces between systems and end users, whether the latter are engineers, operators, workers, technicians or consumers, but they are also important for the designers of the systems to be cognizant of the problems related to the capabilities, limitations and behavior of end users who will ultimately break or implement any well-intentioned and best designed systems from textbook standards and processes.
The first required Human Factors course would be an introduction to the basics in designing for people, the physical and cognitive capabilities and limitations of end users, the environmental and organizational factors that may affect performance and the physical/mental applications and methods for designing interfaces between systems and end users.
The second Human Factors course, which could be elective, would initiate designers to actually design an interface with the needed experiments relevant to validating the requirements and guidelines that foresee the compatibility of the system performance with the level of skills and training required by the end users. A designed interface would be accompanied by facilitating aids, procedures and functional booklets to enable end users for ready application.
The third course called “Design of experiments” is to initiate designers on efficient designed experiments that would save time, effort and money with the additional result of accounting for the interactions among all the factors under study and providing designers with facts that they could readily apply in their design endeavors. This course is not meant to dwell heavily on the mathematical basis for the statistical analysis, which requires another follow-up course, but to form scientific minds which can critically analyze research papers and the experimental procedures that encourage designers to start reading research papers and appreciating the materials that would form the basis for their continuing education.
The fourth course called “Systems risk assessments” would initiate designers to the trade-off decisions of the safety and health risks on the users, environment and organizational structures in societies and the financial cost from the adoption of technologically complex alternative designs.
The fifth course called “Occupational safety and health”, in addition to initiating the engineers on the laws and processes for a safe work place, will also encompass the concept of consumer’s product liability and forensic engineering. A designer needs to be familiar with the problems and consequences of his designs to the end users, their idiosyncrasies and cultural differences in using any product or manufacturing process design in an occupational setting. The knowledge of the standards and applicable laws and guidelines for a safe and healthy manufacturing or processing plant can make a substantial difference among graduating engineers not only in their people communication skills and designing performance but also for later promotions in any administrative or organizational positions.
The sixth course “Human performance” is designed to providing the skills and training necessary to designing and evaluating the performance of interfaces. Examples of these skills include the development of written instructions, designing relevant questionnaires to assess the characteristics and training skills of target users and how well the interface is performing, designing performance aids to helping the short-term memory of operators, formatting instructions and information, input data display formats, output formats, coding design, personnel selection, determining qualifications and any written or verbal technique or method necessary to testing, evaluating and quantifying operators’ performance.
An informed engineering designer, who can define the limitations, skills and needs of the target users for his interface and who is trained early on in his academic years to the consequences of his tasks, may save end users from committing many foreseeable errors, greatly alleviate their physical and mental anguish, suffering, pain and inefficiency and thus save his sponsors time and money for later redesign undertaking.
The afore-mentioned courses, if offered in the first 2 years of the curriculum, might provide the undergraduate students with a different perspective toward the remaining core courses that enhance the seriousness of his responsibilities and the importance of his profession.
I frankly cannot conceive of an engineer pursuing higher graduate studies without being exposed to the fundamental necessity of designing to target users. Engineering is an applied science for practical human needs and not knowing the needs and behavior of target users then the engineer’s design endeavor might be flawed from the start.
Adonis Diaries 