

Obama Offers Millions for Muslim Tech Fund - newacc
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-offers-millions-for-Muslim-tech-fund/articleshow/5158238.cms

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tptacek
Funding for technology projects as part of foreign aid to countries with
predominantly Muslim populations != "Muslim Tech Fund". We don't call foreign
aid to Israel "Jewish aid".

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SamAtt
2 Things here...

1\. This is marketing. The Obama administration is attempting to use this as
an olive branch to the Muslim community in these countries so that those
Muslim's who hate America might say "Hey, maybe those Americans aren't so bad
after all". Hence the name.

2\. Israel is one country while this is to many countries. The only thing
those countries have in common is that they are predominantly Muslim (and in
fact, as I said in Point #1, that's why we're giving them the money in the
first place)

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tptacek
Who called it the "Muslim tech fund"? Not, it appears, Obama. They're overtly
targeting Muslim-majority countries, but there are people of many different
faiths in those countries.

This news article also begs a question. The fund targets the Mid-East, North
Africa, and Southeast Asia. Given that Europe, Russia, Japan, and Australia
don't particularly need foreign aid from us, what does that leave aside from
the "Muslim nations"? South America and Southern Africa. I think we may
sometimes lose sight of how broadly influential Islam is in the rest of the
world.

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jasonmcalacanis
While I like the idea of trying to inspire the (radical?) muslim countries in
the middle east to develop out of the oil market, I don't think our $150M--or
even $1.5B--will change anything.

The leaders in the middle east need to make these investments with their
endless piles of cash.... and historically they haven't (Dubai for finance
being a notable exception).

The truth is we should be disengaging from these countries on a business level
by putting massive investment into solar, wind and nuclear. The investments in
our recent wars in the region could have easily made us energy independent by
now..... if Bush or Obama were true leaders they would have focused our
resources on the goal of energy independence.

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jacquesm
Excellent points, but there will be an ROI on that money. America has a big
image problem abroad, Obama is a big difference from Bush but it will need
more than a 'pretty face' to change attitudes.

And the fact that this gesture gets broad play in the targeted countries means
it is already paying off.

For the price of less than one day of war in Iraq (255 M or so ?) it seems to
be pretty cheap.

The independence of oil for energy can't come soon enough.

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gsmaverick
For a country that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy this is a prime
example of poor money management.

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jacquesm
Au contraire, it is excellent money management. The PR value of this is easily
orders of magnitudes larger than the money spent.

A country that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy should not start wars it
can't afford, that is a prime example of poor money management.

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gsmaverick
Good PR won't save you from bankruptcy!

~~~
jacquesm
It may actually. By doing some good PR now you will be able to save yourself a
multiple of that at some point in the future.

The US needs allies, what better way to get them than through good PR. Wars
don't work nearly as well and cost a whole lot more. They also make you more
enemies, and the allies that you had may look at you in a new light.

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byrneseyeview
This seems like an incredibly poor idea. For whatever reason, people with
engineering and hard-science backgrounds are much more likely to become
terrorists
([http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/engineers_terrorists...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/engineers_terrorists_wikipedia_oxford_sociology/)).
And dollar-for-dollar, US companies still seem to get more out of engineering
investments than overseas companies do (even when they're using workers who
immigrated). And with a deficit like the one we have, throwing more money at
uncertain projects is a poor plan, even if it _is_ investment, rather than
spending.

So, this is a waste of money we don't have, in order to get worse results that
it would get if we spent it here, with the side effect that it could increase
the supply of terrorists.

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jacquesm
> people with engineering and hard-science backgrounds are much more likely to
> become terrorists

Of all the out-of-context-nonsense this has to be the best piece ever.
Seriously ?

You think maybe that errrm, toddlers or gradeschoolers or writers are going to
be as adept as technical people at blowing stuff up or destroying it ?

The Army corps of _engineers_ is just as good at putting stuff together as
they are at taking it apart.

Of course technical people would be the ones you find behind successful acts
of destruction.

But that does not mean that _all_ engineering and hard-science types are more
likely to become terrorists.

It just means that if you take a random sampling of people and you test them
for terrorist potential you will find that the technical ones will do better
at it.

If this is the 'right attitude', then why bother letting those scary muslims
have any education at all ? Maybe we should bomb all those schools, that way
they're certainly not going to be engineers and science types.

Bollocks.

What I think is that if having an education will make them less susceptible to
brainwashing. Engineering takes skill and critical thought.

If that means that the few engineers that will go through this program ending
up as terrorists will be better at it, then that's just too bad, but as a
scheme education certainly beats arming opposing groups (the normal way to
deal with this problem).

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byrneseyeview
_Of course technical people would be the ones you find behind successful acts
of destruction._

 _But that does not mean that all engineering and hard-science types are more
likely to become terrorists._

Right, but that's not what I said at all. Regardless of _why_ there is a
correlation between engineering education and terrorism, there is a
correlation; whether you're equipping potential terrorists with the tools to
commit terrorist acts, or somehow making non-terrorists more terroristic, the
end result is the same.

 _It just means that if you take a random sampling of people and you test them
for terrorist potential you will find that the technical ones will do better
at it._

That's interesting; I hadn't heard that the same kind of study had been
duplicated elsewhere. Do you have a source? Before I saw the study, I was
struck by how many of the 9/11 hijackers had an engineering, compared to,
e.g., American terrorists. (The Unabomber is the closest analogue, and his
academic background was fairly abstract).

 _What I think is that if having an education will make them less susceptible
to brainwashing._

And yet that effect is clearly counteracted by whatever else it is that makes
engineers more likely to blow stuff up. If they're half as willing but ten
times as able to commit terrorist acts, we still lose.

~~~
jacquesm
Any time you educate someone in technology you increase their potential to do
harm.

The high school kid with sharpshooter skills can do more harm than the one
without, the professor with a good and solid understanding of chemistry will
be able to do more damage than the one that studied English poetry in the 17th
century.

Technology is a two-edged sword (for want of a better analogy), you can do
good with it or bad. Technology education is neutral as well.

The people that have access to technology decide what they can do with it. And
that means that if you educate people in a country where terrorism is high
that you will proportionally educate more terrorists.

But that's not a reason to deny the others of that education, in fact that's
an excellent reason to educate _all_ of them, which will to some extent level
the advantage of technically inclined people bent on destruction.

Check out the high schoolers that are technically inclined, I'll bet you that
a good portion of those that studied chemistry got in to it because they liked
to play with stuff, and in the process learned a thing or two about
explosives, maybe even played with them.

I know I did. And if I should turn 'terrorist' I'd probably make a half decent
one, as would anybody else with some understanding of technology.

What stops people from doing stupid stuff though is not just their technical
education - or lack thereof - , but their overall education and worldview.

And if you were a terrorist in the making, aged 15 or so and nicely
brainwashed by your environment, told to go study engineering, you would do it
to and you'd possibly excel at it.

So, that might even be the spot where you might find out who these people are
and deflect them before they can do real harm.

You'll stop losing by creating economic parity and making sure that those in
the world that would turn to terrorism have too much to lose themselves.

You'll never achieve that goal by denying them an education, that makes the
disparity even greater.

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ErrantX
_I know I did. And if I should turn 'terrorist' I'd probably make a half
decent one, as would anybody else with some understanding of technology._

This is (if you'll excuse the aside) one of my favourite hypothetical
exercises.

The conclusion I usually draw is mostly that technical knowledge is a lot less
important than technical competence. And also that the main "failure" of
terrorist attacks (or planned attacks) are due to a lack of this competence
higher up the chain.

Whereas the actual bombers or bomb makers (to take a primitive example) might
be highly educated they are usually recruited (or as you say sent after
recruitment to receive training) to achieve a plan. The planners are almost
certainly a lot less technically skilled - they make crazy mistakes or bad
choices and it all goes bad for them.

When you consider how GOOD a terrorist you yourself could be (in a coldly
logical way) and then think that the vast majority of visitors here are as
good or better then I think it puts things in a lot of perspective compared to
the fear these people are supposed to instil. The people that do turn to it
are, really, no match to our collective might.

~~~
jacquesm
About 5 years ago, visiting some friends in Colorado living somewhere high up
in the rockies the talk turned to terrorism.

So I posed a question to these guys, all of them are pretty smart.

Given a 50 dollar budget, how much damage could you do to society.

Let me phrase the outcome of the rest of the talk like this: We, collectively
should be really happy that the terrorists are unable to think as clearly as
this group of middle-aged mostly hippies, vets and engineers.

Sabotage is _so_ much easier than construction.

Flying planes into buildings is destruction on a massive scale, but if you sat
and did some cold hearted calculations on how to make sure you kill a large
number of people with low tech means you could do a whole lot 'better' than
that. It wont' get your cause 10 years worth of television coverage though.

The 'love affair' between terrorism and media is for the most part what keeps
this whole thing going.

~~~
ErrantX
Yep done the same thing with a couple of my mates too. We went for a
financial/digital attack as the easiest vector.

We actually agreed, in the end, it was lucky these groups have an obsession
with causing _deaths_. Callous as it sounds, killing people in large enough
numbers is bloody difficult.

> The 'love affair' between terrorism and media is for the most part what
> keeps this whole thing going.

Agreed! Ironic really that it's partly that which they crave!

