Karzai blasts US, NATO for 'using' Afghanistan, announces Taliban talks (The Christian Science Monitor)

By Tom A. Peter Tom A. Peter – Sun Jun 19, 12:22 pm ET

Kabul, Afghanistan – In what’s become a familiar pattern, Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivered a speech on Saturday afternoon blasting the US and NATO for “using our country.”

a€?The nations of the world which are here in our country are here for their own national interests,a€

Since March, he has called on the US and NATO to stop operations here (only to later clarify that he meant operations that result in civilian casualties) and given them a stern ultimatum to stop killing civilians. Shortly after each controversial speech, he usually reaffirms ties with NATO and the US.

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Karzai’s tendency to oscillate between positions at either end of the spectrum has confounded and irked friend and foe alike, leading to speculation among American diplomats that he may be struggling with a mental illness. But some Afghans say that the main problem could be that Afghans leaders – traditionally used to tailoring their messages to navigate shifting allegiances – are just not used to coping with modern, international media that stand ready to expose any contradictory remark.

“Currently some politicians are the same as Karzai, but the media is not focusing so much on small politicians. Karzai is the president and has the most media coverage,” says Babrak Shinwari, a former member of parliament from Nangarhar province. “I would suggest that he use only written speeches and does not deviate from them. When he goes off script, he says anything and that’s why it brings the mistrust of the regional countries and the international community on Karzai.”

Fluid allegiances, competing messagesThroughout history, Afghans have been notorious for working with competing sides and changing allegiances when it becomes clear their rivals are becoming more powerful. For Afghan politicians, this has meant a history of working closely with rivals and communicating sometimes seemingly competing messages to different audiences.

This strategy, however, encounters serious problems when politicians make remarks intended to appeal to a specific audience in the presence of media who broadcast the remarks countrywide and sometimes internationally. Additionally, as the media has grown substantially since the fall of the Taliban, Afghans have become more savvy about leaking select information to journalists.

In this climate, Karzai’s remarks about NATO are likely intended to win support among Afghans, but when disseminated to an international audience they create major problems.

'People are confused' Still, many Afghans say this is no excuse for Karzai’s seemingly erratic remarks.

“Media should be considered a given in today’s world and today’s society," says Daoud Sultanzoy, a former member of parliament from the eastern province of Ghazni. "Leaders have to adjust to that, to the freedom of the media, to the freedom of expression.”

Even among Afghans familiar with leaders who flip flop as political tides turn, Karzai’s behavior is seen as confusing and difficult to read. In a nation where 72 percent of the population is illiterate, many Afghans still follow radio and television news closely and hear the president’s contradictory remarks.

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“People are confused," says Izzatullah Wasifi, Afghanistan’s former anti-corruption chief. "They can’t understand what are his motivations, what are his motives, what is his strategy, and where does he want to take this nation?”

Karzai's increasingly blunt criticism of NATO and US efforts led American Ambassador Karl Eikenberry to issue a rare response Sunday at appearance before students at Herat University.

“When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost — in terms of life and treasure — hear themselves compared with occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest, and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people," said Mr. Eikenberry, without mentioning Karzai by name, "they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here.”

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Apple patents tech for using locally saved snippets with cloud media (Appolicious)

Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG) are already running their cloud-based media streaming services, flying in the face of convention by not dealing with record labels directly to get their blessing on the technology.

Apple (AAPL), on the other hand, is playing it safe and has reportedly signed a deal with record company BMI, with more on the way, for its upcoming streaming service.

Coming from behind, it’s fair to speculate that Apple is looking for ways to one-up rivals Google and Amazon in creating a better music-streaming Internet service than those two companies have. With both Google and Amazon, users upload their music to an Internet server, and then are able to access that music through apps and web browsers to stream it down to other devices – smartphones, computers and tablets.

A new patent for Apple suggests a different, and potentially better, approach to using the cloud. According to a report from Apple Insider, Apple has patented cloud technology that relies on using a “snippet” of a song in a user’s iTunes library to work with the song file as stored in the cloud. Instead of storing a whole user’s library on a device like an iPhone or an iPod, only a small piece of each song – and therefore a whole lot less data – would be stored on the device, with the rest going out into the cloud to be recovered using Internet streaming.

The idea is that having the beginning portion of a song stored on a device gives Apple’s streaming technology time to do its work without having a delay in playback. Users can click any song in their library that they want to stream and it starts to play immediately, because what’s playing at first is actually stored locally like any other song file. Meanwhile, as the song plays, iTunes is working to stream down the rest of the song.

This also means that users can listen to half a song, get bored and click a different track and have that one start immediately, too – instead of having to wait for the streaming service to catch up with the choice, as is the case with something like Amazon’s Cloud Player. With the whole track stored on the cloud, changing songs quickly means waiting for the data to stream down from the Internet again, and a large amount of data has to be cached on the device before actual playback can start up. Since Apple’s playing you a piece of the song you have on your device’s hard drive, it has a buffer period during which the streaming can happen unbeknownst to the user.

The drawback to Apple’s method is that while it makes playback better, it’s not as significant a reduction in storage necessity as Amazon and Google users might enjoy. Locally storing a snippet of a song is still less data-intensive than storing the entire song, but that’s still music data stored on your hard drive, and it still takes up space. Instead of having a fully cloud-based service and thereby not needing to use hard drive space almost at all, as Google and Amazon do, Apple requires users to save some music space on their hard drives.

Apple’s patent doesn’t nail down exactly where the content is coming from, leaving that open for the company to define later. We’ve heard that Apple might pull its tracks not from a user-controlled data storage locker, the way Amazon does, but might take a Streamedy approach, allowing users to copy their songs to a giant database and then stream anything they own from that one big source.

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MasterCard says 62 percent of people would make payments using mobile phones (Appolicious)

Google (GOOG) and a number of other companies think that paying for things using smartphones might be the future of brick-and-mortar commerce.

It’s called Near-Field Communication, and it’s a technology found in Google’s Nexus S phone and other smartphones that have recently hit the market. It allows the devices to broadcast a short-range signal that can interact with certain receivers. Users could wave the phone at a payment terminal when they go to check out at the grocery store, and their credit card information would be used instantly to complete the transaction. It could also be used to gather information from movie posters, for example, that would offer advertising information or show times.

But payments are the real power of NFC technology, it seems. According to a report from Fierce Mobile Content, MasterCard (MA) has been surveying customers to see if they’d be willing to use their mobile devices as payment tools for transactions, with 62 percent of those asked responding in the affirmative.

The survey found that 63 percent of respondents between ages 18 and 34 would be willing to make mobile NFC purchases, but that number dropped down to 37 percent for respondents who were 37 or older. MasterCard also found a disparity between men and women in mobile payments, finding that 51 percent of males said they were comfortable with NFC transactions, compared to 40 percent of females.

Respondents in the survey were also asked how they feel about having cell phones on them – 65 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they felt more ‘naked’ without their phones than their wallets, compared to 34 percent of respondents older than 35. Between men and women, 50 percent of women said they felt more exposed without a mobile device than a wallet, with only 36 percent of men responding in the affirmative.

MasterCard has worked with Google in the past to help embed NFC payment technology in smartphones, which is supported by Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system.  Other companies, like Amazon (AMZN), are considering getting in on near-field technology, considering it the cutting edge of mobile capabilities. Verifone (PAY), a maker of payment terminals for retailers (you’ve probably seen them – they’re often used for scanning credit and debit cards and inputting PINs), is adding NFC capabilities to all its newly manufactured terminals, as well.

But MasterCard’s survey suggests that while 62 percent of respondents are willing to go along with mobile NFC payments, that means almost half of respondents still feel the technology is a bit dubious. There’s a lot of investment going into NFC from many sources, but it’s going to take an investment in convincing people that near-field communication is a trustworthy and safe way of passing financial information before it really takes off.

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Supreme Court blocks Texas execution using new drug cocktail

Update at 2:56 p.m. ET: In its brief ruling, the court gave prosecutors 30 days to respond to the defense petition, after which the Supreme Court will decide if the appeal has merit. Foster's defense team said they are encouraged by the ruling."It's not a common procedural posture," Maurie Levin, a University of Texas law professor and one of Foster's attorneys, said. "We're very happy for the stay and that the Supreme Court will be looking at important issues raised."

Cleve Foster, 47, blames his conviction on lawyers he didn't trust, what he called false testimony from police and prosecutors he contends misled jurors. "To me, they were pretty much pulling stuff out of their hats," he told the AP previously from death row.

Earlier posting: The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked an execution in Texas that was to be the state's first with new drug cocktail.

Cleve Foster was to have been executed this evening for killing a Sudanese woman in Fort Worth in 2002.

It would have been the first Texas execution since the state switched to pentobarbital in its lethal three-drug mixture, the Associated Press reports.

In its ruling today, the high court agreed to reconsider its January order denying the 47-year-old's appeal. That appeal had raised claims of innocence and poor legal help during his trial and early stages of his appeals.

Foster's lawyers also argued that Texas prison officials violated administrative procedures when they announced the switch to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental.

There is a national shortage of sodium thiopental, which has been used already in executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.

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Lawmakers Look for Foothold in Libya Debate Using Power of Purse

AP

Sen. Rand Paul speaks to a crowd in a Kentucky Senate committee room in Frankfort, Ky., on Feb. 22.

Congressional lawmakers, after watching from afar as the Obama administration sent U.S. forces into Libya, have started to weigh in with legislation aimed at exercising some control over the direction -- or at least the funding -- of the mission. 

After returning from recess, lawmakers are looking at drafting a proposal that would put Congress on record for or against U.S. military involvement. Those writing it want Congress to authorize the involvement, but they acknowledge such a debate would open the door for opponents who think President Obama overstepped his bounds and want to rein him in. 

So far, those skeptics have targeted the funding for the military operation. Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed Thursday that the mission had run up a $550 million bill as of Monday, and would continue to cost about $40 million a month, now that NATO has taken the lead. 

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, delivering a lengthy speech Thursday on the House floor, said he wants to offer an amendment to ban funding for the Libya campaign outright. 

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., just introduced a bill aimed at ensuring the Libya operation does not add to the deficit -- at a time when lawmakers are wrangling over how much to cut from the rest of the 2011 budget and try to slow the pace at which the country adds to its $14 trillion debt. 

The Bartlett proposal would require the president to provide Congress with a list of proposed cuts from the discretionary, non-military section of the budget to cover the military's expenses in Libya. 

The role of Congress is still unclear. Obama administration officials claim they don't need Congress' permission to launch what they describe as kinetic military activity. But critics, who want to know how the Libya action is different from war, have demanded a vote, and supporters of the president's actions have started to work on a resolution, to be on the safe side. 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Thursday he is working with Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., to make sure any resolution they develop contains "language that can receive an overwhelming vote in the Senate. It would not be a good signal, otherwise." 

The group, which is working with the administration, has "not yet decided" whether the resolution will be a symbolic measure, known as a "sense of the Senate" resolution, or something binding. 

An aide to McCain said the group wants to introduce something "sooner rather than later," as there is a growing concern that some senators could introduce a resolution to force an end to the current mission in the north African nation. 

One of those skeptical senators, Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, on Wednesday introduced a nonbinding resolution that states the president "does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." 

Paul said earlier that the president's decision stood as a "very serious breach of our Constitution." 

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., acknowledged Tuesday that launching a debate on a resolution authorizing military force after the fact could open the door for opponents to rally against the resolution. But lawmakers are acting out of concern for the provisions of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which states Congress, even after the fact, must formally declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days. It provides flexibility in certain circumstances. 

Kerry said Thursday he's not sure if Congress needs to pass the resolution but said lawmakers are beginning to draft one. 

Meanwhile, Gates made clear Thursday that the Defense Department cannot afford to pay for the operation on its own and would likely need to request a supplement budget to fund the operation. 

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed concern Thursday that the conflict could inflame the deficit. 

"We find ourselves in a situation where Congress is debating cuts in domestic programs to make essential progress on the deficit, even as President Obama has initiated an expensive, open-ended military commitment in a country that his defense secretary says is not a vital interest," Lugar said in a statement.

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