Overview
SICOM3024PT is a precise clock synchronization solution of IEC61850 compliant managed industrial Ethernet switch specifically designed to operate stably in electrically harsh and climatically demanding utility substation and industrial environments. It offers up to 24 100Base-FX or 24 100Base-TX, 4 1000Base FX/TX.
The redundant function of optical fiber network, independent entire network management channel, redundant power input function, and entire network real-time management system provides multiplex guarantee for reliable operation of the system.
Features
1. IEEE1588V2, Boundary Clock, E2E Transparent Clock (TC-E2E), P2P Transparent Clock (TC-P2P)
2. Time source automatic selection
3. Support G.8261: Timing and Synchronization Aspects in Packet Networks
4. IEC61850-3 & IEEE1613 compliant for substations, EN50121-4 compliant for rail transportation.
5. Low time delay and zero packet loss features while working with full load in a long period of time, specially designed for digital substations.
6. Support DT-Ring protocol suite (recovery time<50ms), RSTP/STP(IEEE802.1w/d) redundant protocol.
7. Support up to 24 100Base-FX and 4 1000Base SFP ports.
8. Support ring, chain, star, and tangent ring protocol.
9. Advanced ring topology protocol avoiding broadcast storm.
10. Support IGMP Snooping, port mirroring, QoS, VLAN, ACL.
11. Support multiple management functions including CLI, TELNET, WEB, SNMP V1/V2 and OPC etc.
12. Support centralized management software, network topology generated automaticly.
13. Safe MAC and port binding function, support static FDB.
14. Bind width setting function enables port band width limitation.
15. Improve network monitoring ability through RMON(group
1,2,3,and 9)
16. Broadcast storm control and unicast attack detection.
17. Real time temperature detecting and alarming, alarm value can be setted.
18. IP and MAC address confliction detection.
19. System operation log and uploading.
20. EMC industrial level 4, specially designed for harsh electromagnetic interference environment.
21. Abundant power supply options, able to provide redundant DC power supply.
22. Support relay alarm output port alarming the lose of power
23. Unified management software for SICOM series: Kyvision3.0.
24. Working temperature: -40 to 85°C(-40 to 185°F)
25. Ribbed Aluminum housing for heat dissipation, fanless design
26. Rack-mounting (19' 1U) installation.
27. IP40 protection class.
David Asman: They bow their heads, and after getting slapped, they looked up sheepishly and asked, “Please, sir, can I have another?” Now, others did stand their ground. But what was the purpose of this show trial? Was it really to get to the root of the financial crisis, or was it to deflect blame to the easy targets while setting the stage for yet another tax increase?
After all the bankers, we’re just taking advantage of some dumb fiscal regulatory and monetary policies that government officials have been putting in place for decades. The bankers were taking advantage of a bad situation. For that they’ve been pillaried and paraded through the press the way capitalist voters were force-marched with dunce caps by Mao’s red guards during the Cultural Revolution.
Of course, many bankers were shortsighted. Like the rest of us, they just kept overextending during the boom cycle. And in some cases there was actual double dealing. Some banks recommended bad financial instruments that were being shorted by another division of the same bank. That’s bad, it’s possibly illegal and it should be exposed.
But aren’t we blaming the wrong people for the cause of the crisis? The right people to blame are folks like Alan Greenspan who left interest rates too low for too long because he believed a nation homeowners would be good for the economy at any price. Folks like Chris Dodd who are taking favors from sub-prime lenders while rewarding those lenders with billions of your tax dollars in legislation. Folks like Barney Frank who spat at anybody who was worried about Fannie and Freddie getting billions of dollars over their heads with these lousy sub-prime loans, folks like Tim Geithner who got us in so far over our heads with AIG’s bailout, that he now may be losing his job over it.
In short, the real culprits in this mess are the politicians and the bureaucrats who let the good times roll without any consideration of the consequences of bloated government and easy money.
So, are we blaming the wrong people? Let’s ask Republican Congressman Ron Paul, who joins us now from his home I believe. Good to see you, Congressman, thanks for being here.
Ron Paul: Thank you, David.
David Asman: So are we blaming the wrong people when we focus on all the attention on the bankers?
Ron Paul: If you do only the bankers and include all the bankers, yes. Some bankers know exactly what they’re been doing and they’ve been benefiting from the easy money system, and they were wildly speculating and making a lot of money. But they were also encouraged by the moral hazard of FDIC and “too big to fail” and they knew what they were doing. So they were acting in a logical way. But the real culprit that I’ve been talking about for so long has been easy money too long, and that is low interest rates, the false signals of a lot of savings out there and you should be investing and that, of course, isn’t looked at.
David Asman: It started with the Fed and Alan Greenspan?
Ron Paul: Well, even before that. I base our modern calamity in our financial situation from 1971 when all the restraints were removed from creating currency out of thin air. And that is the reason you have your deficits – because of the lack of the tying of our dollar to anything other than paper.
David Asman: Let me just be specific for the folks out there that might not remember. 1971 is when Nixon separated the dollar from gold.
Ron Paul: Yes, and this introduced an era where Congress could run up deficits for any reason, whether it’s for policing the world or for the welfare state, and at the same time accommodating the financial situation too; the financial organizations knew about this, too. So the Fed had to monetize the deficit. If you don’t have a central bank that monetizes the debt, you put a lot of restraints on big government. Anybody that thinks government should be smaller and held in check, they have to believe in sound money, because it’s with the Federal Reserve System and the ability to create this money and the following corruption and the malinvestment and the financial bubbles and the bailouts. It’s all a consequence.
But if you do concentrate on a narrow group of bankers and say they created the whole problem without looking at legislation and without looking at the Federal Reserve and without looking at all the regulations that are a burden as well, then you’re really missing the boat.
David Asman: Alright, let’s talk about some individuals here: Barney Frank and other congressmen and senators who supported Fannie and Freddie getting way in over their head on the sub-prime loans. That had a lot to do with this as well, didn’t it?
Ron Paul: Oh yeah. I think this line of credit to the treasury was only 2 billion dollars, but I always said that when push comes to shove, the Fed will end up owning these derivatives and these securities. But I had legislation in 8, 10 years ago that said, “Remove the line of credit, remove this guarantee that the Fed would always step in”. Because if the Fed had not stepped in, you would have had the dollar crisis which has just been delayed, because too many around the world, for example the Chinese, are owning all these and if they literally collapse you would have had a bigger calamity. But all we have done is delayed the monetary crisis because we have allowed our Federal Reserve to buy up all these securities. But that was part of the system of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and propping them up and guaranteeing that everybody can get a loan, no down payments, 125% as equity, the whole mess. When this history is written, it will be unbelievable.
David Asman: Unbelievable. And frankly, congressman, what I would call out-and-out bribes. I mean, when you had Chris Dodd, who was the head of the banking committee writing legislation that benefited people that he was getting sweetheart deals from to the tune of 300 billion dollars in that housing bill. I would call that criminal behavior, wouldn’t you?
Ron Paul: Yeah, this is fraud in the individual sense and it should be punished and it should be looked into.
David Asman: Well, it was looked into and of course it was whitewashed, Congressman. That was the problem.
Ron Paul: Yeah, but also, the fraud is in the money. I mean, it’s fraudulent to steal from the people by diluting the value of the money. Debasing the currency is the big fraud which destroys the economy and takes away the jobs and puts the burden of inflation on the little people.
The one thing that they never talk about is our medical care system is in a crisis because it costs too much. Well, it costs too much because there is an inflationary factor. That isn’t even discussed. So everybody is cheated when you have fraud in the monetary system. But the individual fraud – how people take advantage of this and adds on to it and then there is corruption involved. Yes, but that to me is probably much smaller than the fraud of the monetary system and what we’ve been living with.
David Asman: But I have to ask you about Tim Geithner, because of course, he’s in the news. He’s going to have to answer questions before Congress. Do you think he deserves to go, based on what we’re now finding out about his role in AIG?
Ron Paul: Yeah. And he deserves to go but I warn people that’s not going to solve all our problems. They’ll replace somebody that believes in the same things that he believes in. The point that I made with the Geithner affair is that it makes my point: transparency of the Federal Reserve. We should know about all those deals, and if they knew we were going to know about all those deals, they wouldn’t be making so many and getting into so many problems.
David Asman: Well, you know we support you on the transparency issue. We actually support you in court on that. Ron Paul, great to see you, thanks for being here, appreciate it.
The unrelenting digitization of the commercial world has left few industries and professions untouched, with the latest robot from Japanese developer Eager looking set to make an impression on the world of modeling for the first time. Apart from being made almost entirely made of recycled corrugated cardboard and hence cheap to produce and eco-friendly, the D+ropop is incredibly elegant and will perform a host of new and existing modeling tasks very cost-effectively. At an all-up price of around USD$5500, the D+ropop will work 24/7, won’t throw tantrums, get involved in scandals and damage your brand, or be perpetually late…
Motor vehicle accidents are the single highest cause of death for young people – and the dangerous practice of texting while driving is on the rise among teens and young adults. Textecution is an Android app that parents can install on their kids’ phones. It’s designed to shut down all texting functions – sending and receiving – if the phone handset is moving at more than 10mph. It’s a flawed solution, but a first step towards combatting a very serious issue that’s only going to become worse as smartphones proliferate…
In addition to its recent 7-year / 150,000km warranty announcement, Kia has created further interest with the showing of its UVO in-car voice and touch activated communication and entertainment system. Developed in collaboration with Microsoft, the system offers users an easy to use interactive hands-free alternative that uses speech recognition for making and taking calls, sending text messages and managing in-car music. Featuring a 4.3” full color touchscreen display and built-in 1GB storage with the ability to rip CD’s and MP3’s onto the system’s “Jukebox”, the open platform UVO system also doubles as a rear view camera when the vehicle is in reverse. ..
A residential highrise development is proposed in Lewisham in inner Sydney.
However, an anti-development NIMBY group has created a poll at the following site:
Hyundai’s tasty Blue Will concept car turned up at the Detroit NAIAS this week for its first showing on American soil. We got to take a close-up look at the Korean company’s blue-sky plug-in hybrid and were impressed by some of the details – headlamp surrounds made from recycled PET bottles, a full undertray for sleek aeros, a glass roof impregnated with solar cells, drive-by-wire steering column and a thermal generator to turn waste heat from the combustion engine into electricity…
The single most important number in our lives is arguably the telephone number. It’s the number we give to potential dates and prospective business partners; it’s the number we can recite anytime,
anywhere. In some nations, telephone numbers are auctioned off because of their
symbolic value, with ”666 6666″ going for over $400,000 in Qatar and 8888 8888 bringing in $200,000 in Hong Kong.
In other places, whole towns identify themselves by their geographic phone code. In the Netherlands, soccer fans speak of “those people in 010 or 020,”
which are codes for arch rivals Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
The main subject of the conference is the science and technology of hydrogen and energy including hydrogen production, storage, fuel cells, combustion and theoretical modelling.
Being inappropriately dressed in Antarctica can be life threatening. However, being appropriately dressed takes a lot of time and an exceptionally good memory.
I’m not exactly sure if this was offiically on the agenda of Electronic Arts, but the publisher did admit in a recent interview that they were sure “able to piss off a lot of people.” EA Montreal’s
Dina Gusovsky: When it comes to the earthquake in Haiti, the Christmas Day incident, and the scandal surrounding the New York Federal Reserve, one political reaction seems to stand out. And that’s Congressman Ron Paul’s; he joins me today. Dr. Paul, thank you so much for being here. So first, the top story is the devastating earthquake in Haiti. Do you think that the United States is doing enough in terms of monetary support, in terms of rescue efforts? Barack Obama said that he would do anything he could to help the situation. How would you handle it if you were in the White House?
Ron Paul: Well, under the circumstances, you know, if we’re nearby and able to and if there is an emergency, I would say that we could help them out a bit. But the real help will have to come, I think, from the generosity of the American people. And they have, in the past, been very, very generous on problems and emergencies like this. And generally they can raise not only millions but literally billions of dollars and donate to people like this; and we could and we should.
You know, the biggest thing, though, long term that we could do for Haiti would be to introduce them to sound economic policies so that they wouldn’t suffer. I mean if buildings were built poorly and the people are so poor, and just handing out money is not going to solve that problem. They need to be introduced to the philosophy of free markets and sound money, so they can be more prosperous, build better houses. But in the meantime, if we’re in the region and nearby and people are suffering, some of our ability, whether it’s military or not, could be useful in helping them out just in a humanitarian sense. That would be a lot better than using the military personnel over in the Middle East lobbing bombs on different countries. So, under the circumstances I would say that would be a better use of the military.
Dina Gusovsky: Let’s talk about another major issue. Ever since the Christmas Day incident it seems like a lot of attention has been turned to Yemen. And you have some politicians calling for this country to sort of be the new front on the “War on Terror”, even urging Barack Obama to concentrate efforts over there. Do you agree with this assessment?
Ron Paul: No. And what they’re doing is not assessment. I mean, we’re just looking for another war. We’ve been lobbing bombs over there and we have another front. I think it’s a disaster; the continuation of the foreign policy of George Bush believing in preventive war. And if we think there are some people there who don’t like us, we’ll start bombing them. Then we bomb people and kill innocent people and all we do is make more people angry at us. I think the further we stay away from Yemen, the better off they would be and the better off we would be.
Dina Gusovsky: Barack Obama did mention that he is not going to send more troops over there. But it seems that the people down there, even this perception or notion that the government of Yemen is somehow cooperating with the government of the United States, is really enraging them.
Ron Paul: Sure. And I don’t know whether people will absolutely believe what we tell them. We say we’re not going to do it, that doesn’t necessarily reassure them that we won’t. And, you know, dropping a bomb from out of the sky is every bit as bad as sending on troops. Matter of fact, it might even make them angrier, the fact that they do it without any chance to have any retaliation. And these bombs and missiles can come flying in, supposedly only to kill bad people. But they might be just upset with us because we’re already over there and interfering in their government. And the government of Yemen is propped up by us and we send them a lot of money so the people who resent that are angry at their own government, they’re angry at us. So I think the position of non-intervention, non-involvement in the internal affairs of other nations would serve us well and would serve them well, too.
Dina Gusovsky: You’ve also raised the question of how 75 billion dollars towards intelligence gathering couldn’t have stopped this man, especially when we consider that his own father went to authorities and warned them about him.
Ron Paul: Yeah, it proves bureaucracies don’t work. And I think the responsibility falling on a 75 billion dollar bureaucracy that has 16 agents that are trying to coordinate the information proves it doesn’t work. I think all the responsibility should be on the airlines. The airlines should be responsible for who gets on airplanes, and they should be obligated. Government should never profile, governments don’t have a right to keep a log of all our fingerprints and label us and profile us and say that we have to check every Muslim that gets on an airplane. That would be wrong. But if you own the airline and you’re getting on the plane voluntarily and they have certain rules, they could manage this much better.
For instance, there is technology available to us today to carry a certain type of electronic gadget that identifies the person. But it only works if I put my fingerprint on it. But the airline registers the gadget. And we could work that out, so all citizens could have one to get on the airlines and no records would be kept. They could just prove that you are a citizen or a frequent flier; you’re not a threat to your country. And those lines would move quickly. The airlines then might chose to say, “Well, if you’re a non-citizen, you just came in from such-and-such country”, if they want to look at you more carefully, they have every right to. It wouldn’t be mandated by government, it would be a voluntarily contract between the person flying on the airplane and the airline company.
Dina Gusovsky: Well, speaking of technology, one of the other consequences of this terror scare is that now the government is looking to buy all these new machines, all this new equipment. Something like a 150,000 dollars each for one of these body scanners. And then you have British officials saying they’re not even proven to work. So is this really what it takes? All of these new rules that say you can’t go to the bathroom an hour before the plane lands and things like that. What is that all for, then?
Ron Paul: Just to make us obedient servants of the state. To teach us that they are in charge of us and tell us what to do and we’re robots and we’re supposed to obey them. That full body scanner actually is probably dangerous to us medically. It does have some x-ray involved. What it isn’t dangerous to is the company that makes them, who happens to be Chertoff, who used to be the Homeland Department Secretary.
Dina Gusovsky: And he’s promoting this left and right all over the media.
Dina Gusovsky: So, I mean, how cynical can we get. So no, that isn’t going to help at all. You wouldn’t need that if you were going to look at what I’m suggesting. You wouldn’t be taking elderly women and little kids and people in wheelchairs who are American citizens, who can prove who they are with a mere fingerprint on a gadget that the airlines would accept. We would need none of that except in a rare circumstance where you would have to have closer surveillance of individuals that might have a suspicious record and the airlines decided they want to check you. But the whole thing is 80% or 90% of people traveling in this country wouldn’t have to throw away their toothpaste and they wouldn’t have to take their belts off and they wouldn’t have to take their shoes off. One month you put your computer in your briefcase, then you have to put it in a tray, then you put your shoes in the tray, now you put them on the belt. It’s all just conditioning us to be obedient to the almighty state and I think it’s a bad sign for us.
The greatest threat to a government are the people who think for themselves. And if you can condition people everyday, all day, to depend on the government to do their thinking for them, then they become more obedient. So if we depend on the government to protect us from our food and all our habits and tell us how much salt we can have and whether we’re allowed to gamble or not, the government owns us. Instead of you owning yourself, the government owns you. And that would be very, very dangerous. So all of this activity with the federal government regulating our every economic and personal habit, is very, very dangerous. It’s not that individuals can be perfect, it’s just that governments are always imperfect. They always make mistakes and when they do, they’re very, very painful and they hurt every one of us.
Dina Gusovsky: Let’s shift gears and talk about another controversy: AIG and the New York Federal Reserve. Law makers are now demanding the release of certain documents that could show whether or not the New York Fed pressured AIG into not revealing certain documents and certain payments to the banks. And, of course, the real scandal here is that Timothy Geithner, who is now secretary of the treasury, was head of the New York Fed at this time. What do you think about all of these allegations?
Ron Paul: Well, it proves my point: we should have complete auditing of the Fed constantly and they shouldn’t be able to work in secrecy. The whole thing is we have a right to know and we should know. And I believe it’s probably true that they were probably pressured to not reveal it because certain companies got bailed out, other ones didn’t. Some got bailed out dollar-for-dollar, and I think that’s what happened with AIG and Goldman Sachs.
Dina Gusovsky: Well, it goes into the bigger question of should the Federal Reserve micro-manage the economy. Should it be the one responsible for fixing the financial situation? Because they’ve reported a record net income, they reported giving the treasury 46.1 billion dollars this year, that’s a new record. What do you make of all this?
Ron Paul: Well, it should be micromanaged by the people, by the consumer. In a free market the consumer is the king and decides everything; which businesses succeed and which ones fail, how much they get paid and how much profit there are and how much labor is paid. That’s what the market does. So it’s micromanaged by the consumer. But in this country, as in most countries of the world today, it’s being micromanaged by the central government and central banks.
Ironically, we here in America used to believe in the individual and the consumer micromanaging and taking care of things. But now the shift is away, financial and everything else, towards the East. For instance, China happens to be rewarding people who work hard and save money. And they’re getting to be in the driver’s seat; they’re our banker and all. So it’s an amazing shift that’s happened in my lifetime (in the last several decades) away from our traditional values and shifting over where communist nations once wanted to run every single thing are moving in the direction of free markets. And they will become the wealthier countries of the world. Markets work, individual freedom works, that’s what I argue for and right now we’re sort of losing ours and others are picking up on it.
Back in November, former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative Ken Segal said that Steve Jobs‘ original name for the iMac would “curdle your blood.” I guessed Macternet, but according to this account, that wasn’t blood-curdling enough. Jobs’ alleged proposal was a lot worse:
Our sources claim that the name that Steve Jobs wanted was… MacMan. At the time, the name was being used by another company, called Midiman. They manufactured the MacMan, a serial-to-MIDI adapter with one input, three outputs, a serial passthrough switch, and MIDI indicator LEDs. According to this account, Apple came to them with an offer for the name, but Midiman’s owner thought they didn’t offered enough ruby rupees. He declined Apple’s offer.
If this is true—and it rings real to me—I’m glad the owner declined. Just imagine if they called that bondi blob the MacMan. We would still be hearing the echoes of the worldwide laughter.
For the same reasons, I hope they don’t go with Apple iSlate (Apple Is Late?). It’s not as bad as MacMan, but it’s almost there.
Scabiosa is one of my favorite garden flowers. They’re easy to plant and care for, have a long flowering season, and work well as a stand alone plant or as an accent flower planted along side of other garden flowers. Scabiosa grows quickly which is nice if you’re trying to fill a plot in. I also like that they’re splashy looking and pretty, but not overly showy plus they look great in a bouquet and are easily pressed if you like to make pressed or dried flower art. Here are some basics…
Scabiosa is sometimes called the ‘Pincushion flower’ and comes in both annual and perennial varieties.
The annual Scabiosa atropurpurea is a good flower to start early indoors, but you can sow right into the ground in the spring as well. These plants can get pretty tall (up to 3 feet) and have a flowering season that can go from mid-summer all the way into autumn. The downside is that because of their height you may need to stalk the plants.
Scabiosa columbaria, or the perennial Scabiosa, is actually one of the very first plants I planted when I had my first garden. I planted the lavender shaded, ‘Butterfly Blue’ variety, but these also come in other colors. There’s no staking necessary with columbaria because the plants only grow about ten inches high with flowers that can be 18 inches long, but are often shorter. I like this variety because they’re perfect for cutting and have this crazy long flowering season (in the Northwest anyhow) that can start as early as May and will go until frost. I’ve actually seen flowering Scabiosa in mid-winter though here in Oregon, so if you have a milder winter climate you may get flowers almost year round.
Both Scabiosa columbaria and Scabiosa atropurpurea need full sun and rich well drained soil. I’ve heard that you can grow these in partial shade with some success, but they’ll have fewer flowers. NOTE: I haven’t tried growing these in the shade though, I’ve just heard this rumor around. Another perk of Scabiosa is that this plant will attract butterflies to your garden.
I’ve never really looked beyond lavender Scabiosa because I like them, but then this year I saw an awesome pink variety that made me wonder what other colors were out there. Here’s a collection of options below, starting with the pink variety I mentioned – Scabiosa atropurpurea ‘Summer Sundae’ – a totally pretty blend pink shades with a hint of white.
Scabiosa Summer Berries – a lovely blended mix with blackberry, wine-red, dusty rose and delicate pale pink.
Organic Ace of Spades Scabiosa – this plant has deep maroon, almost black flowers plus extra long stems for unique bouquets.
Scabiosa atropurpurea Ebony and Ivory – While I don’t think I’d plant this mix, because it’s a little bold for my personal flower style, I do think that this mix would look stunning in the right garden setting.
Reserve Togo goalkeeper, Kodjovi Obilale, arrives at Lanseria airport after being evacuated to Johannesburg after the attack on the team in Cabinda. Reuters
By GEORGE OGOLA (email the author)
Posted Wednesday, January 13 2010 at 18:47
As dramatic as the opening match in the African Cup of Nations between Angola and Mali was, the shooting of the Togolese team in Cabinda last week remains the talk of the sporting world. It was a tragedy that was rightly condemned within the continent and beyond. But it also gave cynics, afro-pessimists and closet bigots plenty of reason to return to the usual anthropological reading of Africa. The Cabinda attack has given much of the international media reason to caricature the continent. It has been a tragic blend of ignorance and prejudice passed as news coverage.
Culturally and politically, Africa is perhaps far more diverse than Europe, in part a function of its very complex history. A widely shared skin colour does not reflect this diversity yet very often misconstrued and used either unwittingly or deliberately to qualify certain homogenised narratives about the continent. As a matter of fact, Angola may have more in common with Portugal than South Africa.
Not for the first time, the continents heterogeneity has been disregarded by much of the international media who continue to look at Africa as an undifferentiated aggregate. In the coverage of the attack, a region no more than 7,300 square miles became face of a continent with a land mass of about 3,0221,532 square miles. It was a coverage that reinforces the need to strengthen the continents individual national media or support pan-African media initiatives which can ably tell the story of the continent, cognizant of its peculiar historical complexities and cultural differences. African countries must realise that the Western media will do it no favours.
Once the attack happened, the media template to be used was drawn, and indeed followed to the letter. In the popular Soccer Saturday sports programme on Sky Sports watched by millions in the UK and beyond, it was left to former white footballers, who had perhaps never heard of Angola let alone Cabinda to talk about the shooting. Expectedly, the amiable but clearly ignorant host Jeff Sterling immediately framed the subject as an African problem and wondered whether this was going to be an issue for South Africa hosting the World Cup. Like members of a choir, his panel sang in unison calling the region insecure. Others even hinted at the idea of moving the World Cup away from South Africa.
It was left to the rather inarticulate former Arsenal player Paul Merson to appear like a genius reminding his colleagues that Angola is not South Africa and indeed that if a similar thing happened in Germany during the last World Cup, the world would not blame Europe.
At the BBC, a news organisation that has broadcast from the continent for decades, the analysis was also left to former footballers, recast as knowledgeable pundits. They all called for the tournament to be cancelled and for the African players to come home, the irony of the latter statement notwithstanding.
Soon after the attack, this media got a hero in Manchesters Citys Emmanuel Adebayor. Not long ago savaged by the British media for taunting Arsenal fans following his rather disreputable celebration of a goal against his former club, he become the most sought-after source after his remarks following the shooting. Adebayor, it must be noted, has always appeared in need of some kind of affirmation he never received at Arsenal and must have realised this was an opportunity to grab with two hands and feet.
It would be wrong to ignore the shock and the fear that must have gripped the player and his colleagues following the attack. But this ceased being a sporting issue at that very moment. It was certainly not for Adebayor to analyse. It became a matter for the Angolan and Togolese governments and the tournament organisers the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to handle.
While Adebayor rightly condemned the attack, he also overreached himself arguing that Africa must do something about its image considering it was about to host the World Cup. Cabinda is not Africa and Africa is not Cabinda.
Keen to confirm their template, Adebayor became to the media, the Holy Grail whose words hogged column inches from Paris to London and radio stations across Europe. He provided the very legitimating voice this media was seeking.
It was the Africans saying these things. We are only providing the platform. The focus was firmly planted on the failure of the tournament and the fears about the World Cup. Premier league managers such as Martin O Neill and Phil Brown were widely quoted when they called for the FA to demand that their players return to England. Meanwhile, it was fascinating seeing the BBCs Karen Allen, sending her report on the Cabinda attack standing outside Soccer City in Soweto, South Africa.
Significantly, the report relied disproportionately on Adebayors comments. Was it so hard to get quotes from the Angolan government or from CAF or perhaps from political analysts knowledgeable about the Cabinda conflict? Danny Jordan, the Chair of South Africas World Cup Organising Committee gave a powerful rebuttal on the double stands being applied to the coverage of tragedy, reminding the international media that it would be unfair to draw comparisons between Cabinda and South Africa. He argued that conflict in Kosovo did not mean Germany was unsafe to host the last World Cup. His comments were not carried by the flagship BBC TV news programmes much less Sky. Instead, he was given a brief mention on BBC sports programme.
AMMAN – Private companies with renewable energy projects will now be able to negotiate directly with the Energy Ministry as part of a series of changes to the sector, a senior ministry official announced on Wednesday. Investments in renewable energy …
Here comes another blow against skeptics who question whether large, enterprise-scale companies will ever use web-based (or, to use the more trendy term, cloud-based) applications: Electronics maker Panasonic just announced that it’s switching over from Microsoft Exchange and other on-premise technology to IBM’s LotusLive suite of online collaboration software.
That’s about 100,000 people migrating to LotusLive initially, and IBM says the number could reach as high as 300,000. The company is describing this as “the largest enterprise cloud deployment in history,” and while it’s hard to make that statement definitively, it’s certainly up there. For example, one of Google’s big wins for its Google Apps bundle of online business software was Genentech, which has around 11,000 employees.
The move comes as Panasonic says it wants to bring together its various brands and companies into a more unified global organization. Sean Poulley, Vice President of IBM Cloud Collaboration, said Panasonic’s decision to switch to web apps stems from that goal, while Panasonic choice of IBM over competitors like Microsoft or Google came down to IBM’s inter-company collaboration capabilities, and to trust.
“We were designed from the get-go not just for collaboration inside of a company, but between companies,” Pouley said.
This deal is particularly impressive for a company that isn’t as closely associated with cloud computing as Google. And we’re talking about service that only launched last year, and only added email last fall. IBM says LotusLive now has a total of 18 million users. (Back in October, Google said Google Apps has 20 million.)
Back in November, former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative Ken Segal said that 
If this is true—and it rings real to me—I’m glad the owner declined. Just imagine if they called that bondi blob the MacMan. We would still be hearing the echoes of the worldwide laughter.
Reserve Togo goalkeeper, Kodjovi Obilale, arrives at Lanseria airport after being evacuated to Johannesburg after the attack on the team in Cabinda. Reuters 
