Watchman Newsletter

Report: Breakthrough achieved towards Israel-Syria talks

YNet News (Link) - Roee Nahmias (January 1, 2011)

A Kuwaiti newspaper reported Saturday that there is “unprecedented Syrian willingness” to enter back into negotiations with Israel.

The report, which is based on US sources among others, stated that Washington is engaged in secret talks with Syrian senior officials regarding peace talks with Israel. The report has not been confirmed by any other source.

According to the report, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem signaled the US two weeks ago that “the Syrians are ready to reopen direct talks with Israel and achieve peace.” Moallem is in close contact with US government official Dennis Ross.

US President Barack Obama believes, based on such sources, that peace between Israel and Syria would help advance the region. There are no further details regarding the Syrian messages to the US, however Ross has informed the administration that he has “discerned unprecedented Syrian willingness to distance itself from Iran, cool off relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and cooperate with the US on the war on terror.” The report also noted that Israel has shown willingness to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

Universal Translators in the Next Few Years?

Singularity Hub (Link) - Drew Halley (December 29, 2010)

The universal translator is a sci-fi staple: Star Trek made it infamous. Star Wars had C3PO. Hitchhiker’s Guide had the babel fish. Stargate and Dr. Who both had some variation of a voice-to-voice translating device. In some ways, the future is already here: Google Translate can turn around a workable text translation almost instantly (automatically in Chrome), and it’s letting the multilingual web talk to itself. Word Lens will even translate text you see in real time as augmented reality on your smartphone. Text translation is all well and good, but when will the holy grail arrive? When will voice-to-voice translation become a reality? When can you finally toss your Rosetta Stone software?

Actually, it’s already here – it’s just not as smooth as you might have hoped (yet). All the basic pieces of software necessary to a universal translator have already arrived: speech recognition (voice-to-text), language translation (text-to-text), and speech synthesis (text-to-voice). In fact, it’s already being employed in a number of sectors using current technology. Granted, the process is pretty clunky, but it’s here and it works.

In 2011 The Baby Boomers Start To Turn 65: 16 Statistics About The Coming Retirement Crisis That Will Drop Your Jaw

The American Dream (Link) (December 29, 2010)

Do you hear that rumble in the distance?  That is the Baby Boomers - they are getting ready to retire.  On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turn 65.  Millions upon millions of them are rushing towards retirement age and they have been promised that the rest of us are going to take care of them.  Only there is a huge problem.  We don’t have the money.  It simply isn’t there.  But the millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire are counting on that money to be there.  This all comes at a really bad time for a federal government that is already flat broke and for a national economy that is already teetering on the brink of disaster.

So just who are the Baby Boomers?  Well, they are the most famous generation in American history.  The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Baby Boomers as those born between January 1st, 1946 and December 31st, 1964.  You see, after U.S. troops returned from World War II, they quickly settled down and everyone started having lots and lots of babies.  This gigantic generations has transformed America as they have passed through every stage of life. Now they are getting ready to retire.

If you add 65 years to January 1st, 1946 you get January 1st, 2011.

The moment when the first Baby Boomers reach retirement age has arrived.

The day of reckoning that so many have talked about for so many years is here.

Today, America’s elderly are living longer and the cost of health care is rising dramatically.  Those two factors are going to make it incredibly expensive to take care of all of these retiring Baby Boomers.

Solar Max Could Spell Trouble

Discovery News (Link) - AFP (December 29, 2010)

2011 is going to be a key solar weather year as the sun starts to become more active.

The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.

Many people may be surprised to learn that the sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.

But two centuries of observing sunspots -- dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces -- have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behavior.

The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.

Now, though, there are more and more signs that the sun is shaking off its torpor and building towards “Solar Max,” or the cycle’s climax, say experts.

“The latest prediction looks at around midway 2013 as being the maximum phase of the solar cycle,” said Joe Kunches of NASA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

Next Year’s Wars

Foreign Policy (Link) (December 28, 2010)

Across the globe today, you’ll find almost three dozen raging conflicts, from the valleys of Afghanistan to the jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the streets of Kashmir. But what are the next crises that might erupt in 2011? Here are a few worrisome spots that make our list.

Scientists unveil chip which could make desktop computers 20 times faster

Daily Mail UK (Link) (December 28, 2010)

Scientists have created an ultra-fast computer chip which is 20 times faster than current desktop computers.

Modern PCs have a processor with two, four or sometimes 16 cores to carry out tasks.

But the central processing unit (CPU) developed by the researchers effectively had 1,000 cores on a single chip.

The developments could usher in a new age of high-speed computing in the next few years for home users frustrated with slow-running systems.

And the new ‘super’ computer is much greener than modern machines - using far less power - despite its high speed.

Scientists used a chip called a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) which like all microchips contains millions of transistors - the tiny on-off switches which are the foundation of any electronic circuit.

But FPGAs can be configured into specific circuits by the user, rather than their function being set at a factory.

Russia’s ‘Islam Problem’

Big Peace (Link) - Ned May (December 27, 2010)

When discussing the Islamization of the West, France is usually cited as being the worst-off of the Western democracies. It has an estimated Muslim population of 10%, perhaps as high as 15%, and the demographics of the situation — a very low birthrate among the native French, and a baby boom among the Muslim immigrants — do not bode well for the future of France.

If we expand the definition of “the West” a bit, it becomes necessary to add India and Russia to the list of Most Islamized Western Nations. India has the largest, oldest, and most intractable “Islam problem” of any Western democracy. The Muslim minority in India is over 150 million (13+% of the population) and is growing relative to the Hindu population. India lives under the constant threat of terror attack. Its citizens experience deadly bombings and other forms of violent jihad with mind-numbing regularity.

Russia is a special case. Its Muslim population is estimated at 10% to 12%, and its demographic situation is worse than that of France, so that Russian Islam is expected to grow rapidly. If present trends continue, Muslims will comprise a majority of the Russian military within a couple of decades.

Former Oil Exec Predicts $5-a-Gallon Gas by 2012, Energy Shortages by Decade’s End

Fox News (Link) (December 27, 2010)

The former president of Shell oil is predicting that the United States will face 1970s-style energy shortages and rationing by the end of the decade, accusing the federal government of turning its back on the country’s domestic oil supply.

The dire prediction comes as energy analysts toss out a string of frightening predictions about the rising price of oil in the short term. Oil has topped $90 a barrel, and JP Morgan Chase & Co. earlier this month predicted oil could hit $120 a barrel by the end of 2012. At the same time, the national average gasoline price is about $3 a gallon for the holiday season.

But former Shell executive John Hofmeister offered a more aggressive estimate, saying Americans could be paying $5 a gallon in two years. And he predicted that sometime between 2018 and 2020, supply and demand will become so out of balance that gas stations in several regions of the country will simply start to run out.

Bailed-Out Banks Slip Toward Failure

The Wall Street Journal (Link) - Michael Rapoport (December 26, 2010)

Nearly 100 U.S. banks that got bailout funds from the federal government show signs they are in jeopardy of failing.

The total, based on an analysis of third-quarter financial results by The Wall Street Journal, is up from 86 in the second quarter, reflecting eroding capital levels, a pileup of bad loans and warnings from regulators. The 98 banks in shaky condition got more than $4.2 billion in infusions from the Treasury Department under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

When TARP was created in the heat of the financial crisis, government officials said it would help only healthy banks. The depth of today’s problems for some of the institutions, however, suggests that a number of them were in parlous shape from the beginning.

Seven TARP recipients have already failed, resulting in more than $2.7 billion in lost TARP funds. Most of the troubled TARP recipients are small, plagued by wayward lending programs from which they might not recover. The median size of the 98 banks was $439 million in assets as of Sept. 30. The median TARP infusion for each was $10 million, federal filings show.

Israeli foreign minister: peace is ‘impossible’

Yahoo! News (Link) - AP - Daniel Estrin (December 26, 2010)

Israel’s foreign minister said Sunday a peace deal with the Palestinians is impossible under current conditions and that Israel should pursue a lesser deal instead — a concept the Palestinians swiftly rejected.

The latest diplomatic spat between the two sides came as violence along the Israel-Gaza border simmered. After days of accelerated Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel and Israeli airstrikes in response, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians on the border early Sunday.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, told a conference of Israeli diplomats that instead of a full peace deal, Israel should seek a long-term, interim agreement on security and economic matters. Palestinians have consistently rejected that approach.

“It’s not only that it is impossible” to reach an overall agreement, he said. “It is simply forbidden.”

Lieberman said the West Bank Palestinian Authority — with whom Israel has pledged to negotiate — is “not legitimate” because it has postponed elections. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas remains in office though his term expired almost a year ago, and there is no date for a new election.

Lieberman is known for expressing hard-line views that don’t always represent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who says he seeks a negotiated, final peace deal with the Palestinians but has declined to give specifics.