7 years old, and don't feel a day over 60

Well we are 7 years old this year ( March 2nd ) But we were too busy to note it. So we are having a party Don Geraldo Cigars for everyone. and we must have some good wine and cold beer here somewhere. Send birthday gifts via donation button/link. Here is a copy of my first ENTRY.

Friday, March 02, 2001
These will be my interactive field notes.
Today I lost another artist, and discovered blog.
Genius concept.
My home page is http://www.day7.html
Music research at : http://www./stations2.htm
SOCIAL CHANGE ENGINES & the THIRD WORLD
It used to be one had to know almost a specific computer language just
to get a program to run, now it is point and click.
Even the Bushmen are helping in a conservation project with 'palm pilots',
which have had a Global Positioning System added. When they see an animal
the push a icon
key that relates to that animal that they can recognize, they are
able to track herd movements, sizes, directions etc. even though they
don't know any computereese.

New process. And there are many translation programs available that automatically
translate
a document or web page on the web. My OLD Intro page in GERMAN


# ) Arbitrage. Arbitrage used to be used only in financial and commodity
markets. But it now applies to labor markets Lucent Technologies and Consolidated
Edision turn to India and Ireland for software testing, cheaper labor.

Just these two points present a potential new process, for (in the future)
a capitalistic motive to place Internet backbone and computers in third
world countries for Free because of a profit motive.
Icon oriented programs or translation programs and labor arbitrage opens
the door for the possibility of profit to outfit the third world with computers.
Which also allows the third world to market finished products world wide
via the Internet not just export raw goods with the help of IMF and the
World Bank.

And also places in their hands tools for their own concepts in 'social change
engines'. I have heard Bill Gates has plans to orbit 300
satellites for world wide wireless Internet.

Stock MARKET AND THE BREAKING OF THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND.
New uses and discoveries for the INTERNET will center on "PROCESS" &
"ORGANIZATION".

There are many examples of new Internet processes. Lets look at a few.
The "Wall ST. Journal", January 1, 2000 had an extensive Issue on 'So
long Supply and Demand' and 'the New Economy'.

As a veteran stockbroker I feel the laws of supply and demand are eternal,
but are they? Are these laws slipping?

#1) The Industrial companies of the S&P 500 during the 1990's created
$245 BILLION dollars of new wealth by converting atoms to bytes as in
software. They send copies of the program over the Internet and rearrange
the bytes on your computer. There is almost an unlimited source of atoms
& limited demand, and as the software improves it becomes more valuable
($). Almost a reverse of Supply and Demand, isn't it. The Internet is
presenting us with new paradigm a New Process.

#2) Free. Computer programs given away free over the Internet, (winamp,
equal to a $200 stereo system, Free) because they make more money selling
cheap but great UPGRADES, or from advertising.

Giving away , Internet service,
100 megs bytes of computer space, because they make more from the
advertising they sell on these pages, than if they charged for their products.


Once you write a computer program each additional copy is almost costless.
A new process, to make money by giving away your base product.

These Internet companies carry very little inventory like General
Motors or a manufacturing corporation, they just move bytes on your

computer into the form of their program via the Internet.

Corporations with unlimited product supply, no inventory, instant delivery,
and potential world wide market.

We will have market corrections, but we are playing with a new economic
paradigm, in the Tech market, up is very HIGH.

And we have not seen the new mega Internet corps. yet, only the seeds
of germination of their forms and concepts.

FROM 2001

IT SEEMS IT WEARS WELL WITH TIME.

tHANKS TO ALL MY READERS.

Gerald

Talk With a Suicide Bomber

A Talk With a Suicide Bomber

Friday, Jul. 20, 2007 By ROBERT BAER

A vehicle destroyed by a suicide bomber in the Logar province of Afghanistan.

Frazana Wahidy

Last week, at the Directorate of National Intelligence in Kabul, I met a failed suicide bomber. Arrested two weeks before in Jalalabad, preparing to assassinate the governor of Nangahar Province, Farhad was setting outside of Pakistan's Waziristan Province for the first time.

Only 17, he was terrified. Not only because of an uncertain fate, but perhaps more so because the world was not as the Taliban had described it. The Taliban indoctrinated him well, convincing him the Americans were stealing the faith of Afghan Muslims. Turning them into kafirs. I asked him if he hated the governor. No, it was simply that in working with the Americans he'd fallen away from Islam. He deserved to die.

It was immediately clear this kid was ignorant of the world; the boundaries of his village were his world. I asked him if he'd heard of Iraq. He had, but when I asked him if he could point it out on a map, he said he couldn't. The same with Palestine. I doubt that he'd ever seen a map.

That raised the question what he knew about Islam. When I asked he said he'd read the Quran. I asked it him if he understood it. He shook his head. It was then it became apparent his education went no farther than the madrassa—he was taught to recite the Quran in Arabic but did not understand a word. Other than what he was told.

And this is where the Taliban came in. Spotting him in the village mosque, they invited him to attend what can only be called an indoctrination course in Waziristan. There he was taught that suicide bombers go directly to heaven, where they're met by virgins and lush gardens. Farhad was also taught that any Muslim working with the Americans in Afghanistan was no longer a Muslim, but a "munafiq," a pretend Muslim. It was written in the Quran, Farhad was assured.

Even I, who have tried to get a grip on Muslim suicide bombing, was stunned by the depth of the brainwashing. I'd never seen anything like it. So I asked the question, What religion is Musharraf, the president of Pakistan? He's a Jew, the Taliban had assured Farhad.

No wonder Farhad agreed to go to Jalalabad to kill a fellow Muslim. Still, wasn't there a doubt in his mind about taking his life like that and who knows how many others? No. The Taliban had told him that when he pushed the button on his suicide vest, it was Allah then who would decide whether to summon him to heaven or not.

Earlier that day I'd visited NATO headquarters to talk to an American Marine colonel who tracks suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices. He came straight to the point: neither military force nor intelligence is going to stop suicide bombings. Only "mitigate" them. What NATO is pressing the Afghans to do is to deindocrinate young men like Farhad. But how do you get someone like Farhad, who may never have seen a map, change his radical worldview?

Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down.