May 9, 2007
Gates Discusses Software, but Talk of a Yahoo Deal Persists

By MIGUEL HELFT
SEATTLE, May 8 — Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, spoke to hundreds of marketers and advertising agencies here on Tuesday amid rumblings about his company’s struggle to compete against Google in online advertising and about its efforts to court Yahoo for some sort of partnership.

But Mr. Gates skirted those issues entirely and focused on what Microsoft has done best over the years: software. He demonstrated new technology that brings interactivity to online video and the ability to preview search results, which he said would open new doors for advertisers.

Software, Mr. Gates said, is going to “revolutionize not only advertising but the whole way people consume media, they way they communicate and the way they create.”

Microsoft’s display of technological wizardry and the talk of the company’s potential to deliver more targeted ads to users appeared to have the intended effect. Many of those attending said they came away feeling that Microsoft would become a stronger competitor to Google and others in online ads — eventually.

“They actually have a fairly bold vision,” said Kevin Lee, executive chairman of Did-It.com, a search marketing firm, speaking about Microsoft’s efforts to aim video ads at specific viewers. “I never count them out.”

Still, talk persisted about deals, real or rumored, heightened by the planned appearance of Yahoo’s chief executive, Terry S. Semel, at the close of the two-day event on Wednesday.

Last Friday, reports that Microsoft might buy Yahoo sent Yahoo’s shares soaring. But people close to the companies said that no merger talks were active, and that the two were only discussing potential business partnerships.

Microsoft executives played down the prospects of any major announcements at the conference here.

Both Yahoo and Microsoft have struggled recently as Google has grabbed an increasing portion of the online advertising market. Google’s gains in search advertising have come at the expense of Microsoft, in particular. Many analysts, meanwhile, contend that Google is poised to extend its dominance from text-based ads into graphical advertising through its planned $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, the advertising services company.

Microsoft and Yahoo were also interested in acquiring DoubleClick, and Microsoft has asked federal regulators to scrutinize the deal.

In the face of Google’s growing power, some advertisers suggest they would like to see stronger competitors to the search giant.

“As long as MSN has the audience it has and the technology initiatives it has, it can only get better,” said Mark D. Goldstein, vice chairman and chief marketing officer for BBDO North America.

He pointed to a demonstration by Mr. Gates of technology that allows users to preview search results without having to click on a link, as an example of Microsoft’s strength. “I turned to my partner and said, ‘That is cool,’ ” Mr. Goldstein said.

Some participants took the speculation about a Microsoft-Yahoo merger in stride. Sean Finnegan, managing director for digital at OMD, a global advertising agency, said the same rumors had surfaced around this time last year.

“It was almost perceived as an April Fool’s, where everyone had heard this before,” he said about last week’s rumors. “It was certainly interesting. At the same time, I am not sure the two need one another to compete with Google.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

May 9, 2007
The Energy Challenge
Clean Power That Reaps a Whirlwind

By KEITH BRADSHER

HOUXINQIU, China — The wind turbines rising 180 feet above this dusty village at the hilly edge of Inner Mongolia could be an environmentalist’s dream: their electricity is clean, sparing the horizon sooty clouds or global warming gases.

But the wind-power generators are also part of a growing dispute over a United Nations program that is the centerpiece of international efforts to help developing countries combat global warming.

That program, the Clean Development Mechanism, has become a kind of Robin Hood, raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global warming gases. The biggest beneficiary is no longer so poor: China, with $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, received three-fifths of the money last year.

Scientists increasingly worry about the emissions from developing countries, which may contribute to global environmental problems even sooner than previously expected. China is expected to pass the United States this year or next to become the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases. And as a result, some of the poorest countries are being left out.

That draws attention to the Clean Development Mechanism, which has grown at an extraordinary pace, to $4.8 billion in transfer payments to developing countries last year from less than $100 million in 2002.

The Clean Development Mechanism raises its money through a complex market in trading pollution credits: businesses and governments in affluent regions like Europe and Japan help pay to reduce pollution in poorer countries, offsetting their own emissions. This helps advanced industrial nations stay within their Kyoto Protocol limits for emitting climate-changing gases like carbon dioxide.

For each ton of global warming gases that a developing country can prove it has eliminated, the secretariat of the Clean Development Mechanism, in Bonn, Germany, awards it a credit. Developing countries sold credits last year to richer nations for an average price of $10.70 each.

Its growth has come almost entirely by focusing on efficient projects in China and other fast-growing countries that spread the administrative costs over many large efforts, while poorer lands have received almost nothing. And that is why the program is becoming a battleground, pitting an unlikely coalition of bankers, traders, industrialists and environmentalists, who defend it, against economic development advocates, who warn of distortions.

According to the World Bank, China captured $3 billion of the $4.8 billion in subsidies last year for dozens of projects. Yet it accounted for less than two-fifths of the developing world’s fossil fuel consumption, the main source of warming gases.

One of the projects is the wind farm here, nestled on a pine-forested hill beside a blue lake fringed by broad fields tilled into long furrows of freshly planted wheat. It is profitable even without the subsidies, and is owned by a group of Chinese companies traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

But it is China’s financial sophistication that has helped it soak up so much in subsidies. A vigorous cottage industry of project designers and brokers has sprung up in Shanghai — with workers translating forms into Chinese, promoting the program and taking steps to make it easy and inexpensive for Chinese companies to participate.

“There are a lot of people who know how to do it,” said Tao Fuchang, the general manager and chief engineer of the Liaoning Zhangwu Jinshan Wind Power Electricity Company, which built and operates the turbines here.

Next in line are India, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, which get most of the rest of the subsidies, along with South Korea — incongruously classified as a developing nation by the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 pact to limit emissions that also led to the creation of the Clean Development Mechanism.

Trailing far behind are African countries. Payments totaled less than $150 million last year for all of Africa, where government officials say they have been largely left out of one of the biggest bonanzas for the developing world in many years.

“We see this problem everywhere in Africa,” said Sateeaved Seebaluck, a high-ranking environment official in Mauritius, an island nation east of Africa.

Even when very poor countries are able to organize development projects, they may lack expertise and must sometimes pay out as much as half the credits in the form of fees for international consultants and credit brokers.

United Nations executives respond, with considerable support from environmentalists, bankers and corporations, that the program’s primary task is to reduce the tonnage of carbon dioxide and other warming gases entering the atmosphere — regardless of where it comes from. By that measure, they say, the program is a success.

Kai-Uwe Schmidt, the Clean Development Mechanism’s executive board secretary, said the organization was acutely aware of regional imbalances in global warming projects and hoped to address them. But setting up an emissions reduction project usually requires considerable investment.

“We do not see many investments flowing into Africa in the first place,” he said.

Subsidies are readily available for a wide range of projects — straw-fired power plants, wind turbines, even the capture and burning of methane leaking from landfills. Though detailed procedures have been developed for projects in China and other fast-growing countries, they can easily be copied for use in other places.

But before manufacturers can obtain the subsidies, their national governments need to set up a legal framework for handling the money, which some of the poorest countries have not yet been able to do.

The projects that have produced the greatest number of credits so far involve attaching waste-gas incinerators to chemical factories that manufacture an ozone-destroying air-conditioner refrigerant, HCFC-22; these factories are found almost exclusively in the more prosperous developing countries.

Kristalina Georgieva, director of sustainable development strategy and operations at the World Bank, said the Clean Development Mechanism’s secretariat could simplify its rules to help poorer nations.

Ms. Georgieva said the secretariat should also pay more attention to fostering renewable energy in very poor lands, because 1.6 billion people lack any electricity and it is crucial to choose power-generating technologies for them that will contribute as little as possible to global warming.

“How the developing countries choose to electrify will determine the fate of the earth,” she said in a recent speech.

Some say the verification process is too burdensome for the poorest countries. But too much streamlining of the process could undermine the confidence of investors in rich countries that the pollution credits are genuine, Ms. Georgieva acknowledged in an interview. “What you may get is eroding trust in the system,” she said.

David Doniger, an environmental official in the Clinton administration who took part in many Kyoto Protocol drafting meetings in 1997 that led to the creation of the Clean Development Mechanism, said questions had been raised then about whether very poor countries would be able to obtain credits.

But the negotiators decided against any system for guaranteeing a division of credits by region, preferring one focused on reducing emissions wherever they occurred.

“Those were rejected on the grounds that you wanted to get more bang for the buck and they didn’t want this to turn into another U.N. institution with a lot of emphasis on regional balance,” said Mr. Doniger, who is now climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The wind turbine project here in Houxinqiu, an impoverished area of China, shows the pluses and minuses of the current system. It generates nearly 24 megawatts of electricity that would otherwise come from coal. China is already building enough coal-fired power plants each year to light all of Britain.

Farmers here still use mules to pull their steel-tip wooden plows and draw their aging wooden carts, the rough-hewn slats bleached white by years of sun and rain. The setting sun vanishes into a dark murk over the plains to the west, where China has been rapidly building coal-fired power plants.

Li Guohai, a local peasant riding his mule cart home with his wife on a recent evening, explained how he had received free electricity since the wind turbines were erected four years ago. He has saved enough money that he bought an all-steel plow for his mules to pull; the new plow now frees his son to finish junior high school and perhaps go to high school, Mr. Li said.

The project is narrowly profitable even without Clean Development Mechanism payments, Mr. Tao, the general manager, said. But the payments made the project more attractive and made it easier to raise money for it.

While Mr. Tao was reluctant to discuss the company’s finances, Clean Development Mechanism records show that the wind farm saves the equivalent of 35,119 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. At $8 a credit, that is worth $281,000. Mr. Tao does not rely on that money to make the project viable, as the C.D.M. subsidies aim to do, but it helps him pay for more turbines.

“Without the Clean Development Mechanism, we’d still be profitable,” Mr. Tao said. But “you need the C.D.M. for further expansion.”

Serbia's Choice
By Peter Zeihan
More than 15 weeks after Serbia's Jan. 21 national elections, time is running out for the various parties in parliament to form a majority coalition. Most Serb politicians do not see this as a problem. Serbian national pride is about to be crushed by Kosovo's imminent and inevitable independence, and no party is anxious to take part in the government, whose first act will be perceived as giving the province away. As such, the May 14 deadline for forming a government quite likely will slip on by, and such failure to act will open up a new election season.
Such an election season will be a continuation of the past four years of de facto Serb policies: denial. But this time such stubbornness could end with the demise of Serbia itself.
The Kosovo Impasse
It was not always like this.
The winner of most parliamentary seats in the 2003 elections was the Serbian Radical Party, a nationalist party that during the 1990s was the rabid junior partner in Slobodan Milosevic's ruling Socialist-Radical coalition. But this did not result in an isolationist government. In 2003, Milosevic was in The Hague for war crimes and most people in Belgrade felt the country was about to turn a corner and begin economically reintegrating with the rest of Europe. That impetus led the country's fractious pro-Western political parties to form a broad coalition in an attempt to bring Serbia in from the cold.

In 2007, the Radicals again won a majority of seats -- but this time around that feeling of imminent progress is nowhere to be found. After 18 years of ostracism from European culture, Serbs as a rule are impoverished, humiliated and demoralized. The international community appears poised to impose a final status on Kosovo that translates into de facto independence -- a devastating result to nearly a decade of diplomatic wrangling.
In 2003 there was a common feeling that, by putting aside their differences, the leading parties could push on to a brighter future; in 2007 no one wants to put aside their differences to become the government that oversees Kosovo's separation. The most likely result will be a fresh electoral season lasting about three months -- followed by the toughest decision a culture has to make: whether to swallow the collective pride and live on, or wallow in righteous indignation and risk dissolution.
Regardless of what one thinks of the rationale for the 1999 Kosovo war between Belgrade and NATO, pretty much everyone agrees on this: it not only hived off Kosovo from Serbia proper, but also definitively ended the Yugoslav wars. Those wars that raged first in Slovenia and later, and more infamously and furiously, in Croatia, Bosnia and ultimately Kosovo, claimed in excess of 300,000 lives and were the darkest chapter in European history since World War II. Most consider the Serbs -- primarily because of the actions of former Serb leader President Milosevic -- responsible for the majority of the carnage, but there is certainly plenty of blame to pass around.
After the Kosovo war the question became, what to do with Kosovo? The Europeans -- who only recently in historical terms had suppressed their own separatist regions -- were not prepared to allow yet another breakaway state in the Balkans. The Russians were furious that NATO had carried out the war without explicit U.N. Security Council (UNSC) approval. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration was belt-deep in its own concerns.
So the answer could be summed up in a single word: stall. Officially, the plan was to see whether a way could be found for the Serbs of Serbia and the Albanians of Kosovo to once again coexist under the roof of a single state. As the months turned into years the Kosovar Albanians' nothing-but stance hardened to match the Serbs' anything-but position on Kosovo independence.
Dealing with the Inevitable
But right from the beginning the writing was on the wall. NATO had, in essence, been lured into fighting the Kosovar Albanians' war of independence for them. Thus, shy of a direct pullout of NATO forces that would leave Belgrade's payback-desiring security forces responsible for Kosovo, there is nothing that can reverse the reality on the ground. U.N. Special Envoy to Kosovo Martti Ahtisaari said as much in his recommendations for Kosovo's future to the UNSC.
Since the beginning of 2006 the world has been largely marking time on the issue, waiting for the Serbs to prepare for Kosovo's inevitable independence. Considering that the Serbs do not want that day to come, however, their preparations -- institutional, political or cultural -- have been nonexistent. A decision and vote on a new constitution sans Montenegro were dragged on for months. The subsequent election campaign came and went, generating a stalemate in parliament that now appears intractable without new elections.
Moscow also is playing its diplomatic cards to delay the inevitable, up to and including brandishing its UNSC veto -- albeit more for its own reasons than for anything to do with Serbia or Kosovo. For at least the past century Moscow has promoted itself as the protector of Europe's Slavs in general and the Serbs in particular (even though for most of this time the majority Slavs have enjoyed more rights and a better standard of living than most Russians). The logic gives Moscow leverage in regions that have slipped beyond the levers of more traditional economic or military influence, and the tactic always provides good bargaining chips. In this case the Russians want to keep Western attention riveted as far from Russia's borders as possible until President Vladimir Putin can manage his transfer of power.
Sick of all these delays, the Kosovar leadership has proclaimed that it will declare independence by the end of the month. It is a bold and risky move -- but eminently achievable.
Statements out of the United States, NATO and the European Union over the past week can be boiled down to this: Russia should not stand in the way of Kosovar independence unless Moscow is prepared to take the blame for subsequent violence. The logic might be a bit backward -- no Serb-Kosovar split could be expected to be completely clean -- but the underlying point is direct: Kosovo will go its own way, and soon.
The Agonizing Choice
Though the global press will be focusing on the awkward emergence of the world's soon-to-be-newest state, the events of true importance will be evolving back in Belgrade. Against the backdrop of a forced divestiture of Kosovo, the Serbs will be in yet another election campaign. At this point predicting the outcome of such a campaign is impossible, but two things must be kept in mind.
First, the nationalists are phenomenally well-positioned. In the race that ended Jan. 21, the Radicals came in first with 80 seats; their campaign capitalized on fears that Kosovo was about to be taken away. With Kosovo being actively and formally ripped away from Belgrade, the Radicals in these next elections are almost certain to produce a stronger showing -- and could even garner a majority. Even now their power is rising: on May 8 an old Milosevic stalwart, Tomislav Nikolic, was selected to serve as the parliamentary speaker -- one step away from the presidency.
Second, for all practical purposes Serbia does not currently have a government, so it is impossible for Serbia as a state to make any decisions as to which path to take. But regardless of the result of the upcoming elections, Serbia must make a painful choice: It can tap its ample connections to Serb populations in Kosovo, Montenegro and, above all, the Serb-populated portions of Bosnia and push for a Serb resurgence -- trying to bring all the Serbs of the region into a single state. It can fight for Serbian heritage and pride and attempt to create a Greater Serbia. And, from a much weakened position it can trigger an outright war with a West that is larger, closer and more militarily capable than the West it stood against in 1995.
As a regional power, Belgrade is finished. From a Yugoslav height of 24 million people, rump Serbia only contains about 8 million. As Belgrade wallows in righteous indignation, roughly 10 percent of the Serb population has left in search of a brighter future elsewhere. Once the star of the region, Serbia has now fallen behind not only Hungary and Greece, but European laggards Bulgaria and Romania in terms of power, population, economic strength and even standard of living.
Fighting is always an option, but any decision by Belgrade to engage in hostilities in the Balkans now would bring about a conflict that -- at best -- would result in another lost decade (which is not to say the Serbians could not cause one colossal mess -- the damage in perennially unstable Bosnia next door could be particularly catastrophic). Serbia has lost ground, literally, on all of its recent conflicts, and its viability as a state would be called into question if it were to lose ground again. Pursuing such a self-destructive course seems foolish, but more than one culture in Europe's past has faded into history for refusing to acknowledge the inevitable.
Alternatively, the Serbs could abandon their claim to their ancestral homeland of Kosovo. They could silently allow themselves to be reduced to a rump state and stand humiliated and defeated in front of the world for the fifth time in the past 15 years. In essence, they can swallow their wounded pride, accept their crushing defeat and walk away from the past into a future heavily shaped by an institution that defeated them in war.
It is a painful choice. Unlike the decision on Kosovo, however, this one is actually for the Serbs to make.

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China to Send Military Unit to Darfur
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 8, 2007; 10:10 AM

BEIJING, May 8 -- China will send a military engineering unit to help strengthen the overtaxed African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, the Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday.

A spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, did not say how many Chinese soldiers would be dispatched or what their duties would be, describing them as "multifunctional" military engineers. U.S. officials in Washington estimated the number at around 300, the Reuters news agency reported.

The decision to help bolster the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers was seen mainly as a gesture to underline Chinese support for a U.N.-administered solution to the four-year-old conflict in western Sudan's Darfur region. Since an armed secessionist revolt began there in 2003, an estimated 200,000 people have been killed and nearly 2.5 million have been driven from their homes.

In recent weeks, the Darfur crisis has become particularly sensitive in China because of suggestions in the United States and Europe that people should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics to demonstrate opposition to Chinese policies in Sudan. China, which has deep economic and military ties there, has been widely criticized for failing to bring strong pressure on the government to persuade it to accept a large force of U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur.

The ties include large oil purchases and extensive arms sales, which the human rights group Amnesty International charged recently have been continuing despite U.N. calls for an embargo. Jiang, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, declined to respond to questions about the Amnesty charges. But she said China's arms sales to Sudan are strictly controlled, include only conventional weapons and do not violate U.N. regulations.

Five of the African Union peacekeepers were killed April 1, leading to warnings that the Darfut situation could deteriorate further unless more is done to stop the fighting. Clashes involving the Sudanese army, allied militias and a half-dozen rebel groups have erupted regularly despite a peace agreement reached a year ago. Fifteen African Union soldiers have been killed since they were stationed in Darfur in 2004.

The U.N. Security Council decided in August to send more than 20,000 peacekeeping troops and police to halt the bloodshed, which the Bush administration has described as genocide. But the Sudanese government, headed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has insisted Sudanese authorities should retain control over the rebellious area and suggested the African Union force should be allowed to do the job.

As negotiations continue about the full U.N. force, Bashir has accepted a 3,500-strong interim U.N. force designed to strengthen the African Union units already on the spot. The Chinese engineers were being dispatched as part of those reinforcements, which has been called a "heavy support package," U.S. officials said.

Rejecting the criticism from abroad, Jiang said China also has "a positive attitude" toward getting the full-strength U.N. force to Darfur. Throughout the struggle, however, the Chinese government has insisted that whatever the United Nations does should first be approved by Bashir's government. Citing that stand, it abstained when the Security Council voted in August to send 20,000 peacekeepers.

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From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/4497

A Million Moderate Muslims on the March
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
May 8, 2007

[Title and text modified from NY Sun version]

"Moderate Unicorns," huffed a reader, responding to my recent plea that Western states bolster moderate Muslims. Dismissing their existence as a myth, he notes that non-Muslims "are still waiting for moderates to stand and deliver, identifying and removing extremist thugs from their mosques and their communities."

It's a valid skepticism and a reasonable demand. Recent events in Pakistan and Turkey, however, prove that moderate Muslims are no myth.

In Pakistan, an estimated 100,000 people demonstrated on April 15 in Karachi, the country's largest city, to protest the plans of a powerful mosque in Islamabad, the Lal Masjid, to establish a parallel court system based on Islamic law, the Shari‘a. "No to extremism," roared the crowd. "We will strongly resist religious terrorism and religious extremism," exhorted Altaf Hussain, leader of the Mutahida Qaumi Movement, at the rally.

In Turkey, more than a million moderate Muslims in five marches protested the bid of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to take over the presidency of the republic, giving it control over the two top government offices (the other being the prime ministry, currently filled by Recep Tayyip Erdo?an).

The Ankara march of April 14, 2007.
The first march took place in the capital city, Ankara, on April 14, organized by ?ener Eruygur, a former general who is president of the Atatürk Thought Association. An estimated 300,000 secularists (i.e., moderate Muslims) held up banners with pictures of the republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, chanting slogans along the lines of "We don't want an imam as president," "We respect belief, but not radicalism," and "Turkey is secular and will stay secular!"
A young woman carrying a huge Turkish flag, Muge Kaplan, explained that the crowd is Muslim and believes in Islam, but it doesn't want Islam "to become our whole way of life." A farmer, Bülent Korucu, asserted that the crowd is defending its republic "against religious fundamentalists."

Repeating these themes, a second march on April 29 in Istanbul boasted 700,000 marchers. On May 5, smaller marches took place in the western Anatolia towns of Manisa, Çanakkale, and Marmaris.

Nor are the masses alone in resisting AKP's Islamists. President Ahmet Necdet Sezer warned that, for the first time since 1923, when the secular republic came into being, its pillars "are being openly questioned." He also inveighed against the imposition of a soft Islamist state, predicting that it would turn extremist. Onur Öymen, deputy chairman of the opposition Republican People's Party, cautioned that the AKP's taking the presidency would "upset all balances" and create a very dangerous situation.

The military – Turkey's ultimate powerbroker – issued two statements reinforcing this assessment. On April 12, the chief of staff, Gen. Mehmet Ya?ar Büyükan?t, expressed his hope that "someone who is loyal to the principles of the republic—not just in words but in essence—is elected president." Two weeks later, the military's tone became more urgent, announcing that the presidential election "has been anxiously followed by the Turkish Armed Forces [which] maintains its firm determination to carry out its clearly specified duties to protect" secular principles.

This resolute stand against Islamism by moderate Turkish Muslims is the more striking when contrasted with the cluelessness of Westerners who pooh-pooh the dangers of the AKP's ascent. A Wall Street Journal editorial assures Turks that their prime minister's popularity "is built on competent and stable government." Dismissing the historic crossroads that President Sezer and others perceive, it dismisses as "fear mongering" doubts about Prime Minister Erdo?an's commitment to secularism and ascribes these to petty campaign tactics "to get out the anti-AKP vote and revive a flagging opposition."

"Even if Erdo?an walked on water, the secularists wouldn't believe him," observes a former American ambassador to Turkey, Morton Abramowitz. Olli Rehn, the European Union's "enlargement commissioner," instructed the Turkish military to leave the presidency election in the hands of the democratically-elected government, calling the issue "a test case" for the armed forces to respect its political masters, a position the U.S. government subsequently endorsed.

Is it not telling that great numbers of moderate Muslims see danger where so many non-Muslims are blind? Do developments in Pakistan and Turkey not confirm my oft-repeated point that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam the solution? And do they not suggest that ignorant non-Muslim busybodies should get out of the way of those moderate Muslims determined to relegate Islamism to its rightful place in the dustbin of history?