Educational Computer Architecture

There is a list of:
ISO Hobbyist Computer Architecture

Also lists of open core computer architectures.

I am evaluating all these for educational purposes.

I had made a comparative lists of VHDL written cpu soft cores but I
have lost it but have chosen a few VHDL open core CPUs for learning
purposes. I even made it into an assignment for students.

1. Simulating Weijun Zhang VHDL CPU
2. Simulating Hamblen's MIPS
3. Simulating CQPIC

All are written using VHDL. However I notice that the industry is
going for Verilog so we may have to equip students with Verilog. I
have not gone deeper into this subject yet.

There are problems with learning about computer architecture using
these open cores. The most important is the lack of detailed
documentation. Ashenden may have written a book but I cannot find its
source code. The book is more about writing VHDL than about computer
architecture.

For me, language either VHDL or Verilog is a temporary phenomena.
After going through all the computer languages and design tools cycles
and developments, the most important aspect of learning is about the
fundamentals, not the specifics. These tools keep on evolving so we
must keep up but fundamentals never change.

So I now start looking for better educational computer architecture,
or computer organizations. It has to be extremely simple. The simplest
the better. It has to be better documeted, with links to logic design
principles. It can either written in any HDL, but it has to have
schematic diagrams.

Schematic diagrams help a lot in making people understand quickly. The
idea is to let even weak students understand computer
organization(hardware) and therefore computer architecture(ISA).

Learning about instruction set is one way of learning but not
complete. We can only simulate but there is something missing in not
being able to simulate the hardware and the information flows
graphically. There are available instruction set simulators for which
the iso computer architecture lists may include, but I have abandoned
it in favour of soft cores.

We now have free FPGA tools, especially from Altera Quartus II and
Modelsim. We can compile VHDL and Veriflog easily but it is still too
hard for many students. Graphical interface is vital towards
undestanding.

After scanning a few tex books about computer architecture, Stallings,
Mano, Hennessy, Tanenbaum, Hamacher, Murdocca, Cragon, I notice that
among the simplest is the one by Mano and Kime in the book Logic and
Compute Design fundamentals. I use this book for our Logic design
course but have not studied the computer design parts in detail until
a few weeks ago.

Mano described the computer design using state tables and diagrams.
For both single cycle as well as multicycle implementations. It is
complete. It even has zero insertion for immediate data.

I start googling for real implementations of Mano's processor.
The best implementiion for eduational use is this:
AC 2010-45: HDL BASED DESIGN PROBLEMS FOR COMPUTER
ARCHITECTURE , Chad E. Hager, Steven F. Barrett, Cameron H. G. Wright,
archived in http://search.asee.org

http://search.asee.org/search/fetch;jsessionid=1kf7y38dinafd?url=file%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%2FE%3A%2Fsearch%2Fconference%2F32%2FAC%25202010Full45.pdf&index=conference_papers&space=129746797203605791716676178&type=application%2Fpdf&charset=

The mano machine is documented in the wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mano_machine
The description may be wrong because it is not an accumulator based
CPU. It uses 2 operand addresses and 1 destination address.

Accumulator based CPU may be small, like PDP8 and PIC, but it is
difficult to implement, or is it to explain. Whereas as 3-addrss RISC
style, is much easier to explain as X = Y + Z, which is intuitive for
humans.

Is there any other open source machines which allow us to explain to
students in the easiest possible way?
Hopefully computer architecture will not viewed as being difficult.
Anyone should be able to understand the fundamentals.

Tanenbaum explains in his textbook about his processeor sthe Mic-1 to
Mic-4, but it appears to be too complex for beginning students.

Malaysia Goes After a Whistle-blower

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4672&Itemid=178

Written by John Berthelsen

Monday, 09 July 2012

Malaysia Goes After a Whistle-blower    Bourdon and Gabriel say they've got the goods Companies commission investigators show up at NGO's door Suaram, the Kuala Lumpur-based human rights NGO at the center of attempts to break open a corruption case over Malaysia’s 2002 purchase of French submarines, has been given seven days by officials of the Companies Commission to hand over an array of documents covering its expenditures from 2008 to 2011. Cynthia Gabriel, director for the organization, told Asia Sentinel that  Suaram would comply although the NGO is taking advice from lawyers on strategy. The authorities sought to raid Suaram last week but were turned back, once because their warrant wasn’t signed and a second time because they arrived at the Suaram headquarters after everybody had gone home. The visits followed several days of stories in ruling party-controlled newspapers demanding to know why Suaram was registered as a company rather than an NGO, and what it had done with earnings it posted since 2009 although that seemed to be a deflection against damning documents.that showed that top government officials had been complicit in bribe charges for two decades. The visits by the Companies Commission investigators were characterized as “harassment, pure and simple, as a way to distract the public from the ongoing Scorpene probe in France,” Gabriel said. “Further to this, we have nothing to hide. We audit our accounts yearly.” The visits – the first in Suaram’s 23 years of existence – appear to be a fishing expedition to try to find out where the NGO gets enough money to hire French lawyers to pursue a government scandal, and more particularly whether any of the money is coming from the Pakatan Rakyat coalition headed by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim. The Commission’s other priorities? In the meantime, the Companies Commission investigators have been so busy seeking to investigate Suaram that they have neglected to investigate two other companies – Perimekar Sdn Bhd, which somehow became important enough to win a €114.96 million commission on the sale of the submarines despite the fact that it did no business the year before it won the commission, and Terasasi Hong Kong Ltd, which received another €36 million from the French defense contractor despite the fact it only existed as a name on a wall in a Hong Kong accounting office. Both companies were headed by Abdul Razak Baginda, then the head of a think tank called Malaysia Strategic Research, which was closely connected to the United Malays National Organization. Razak Baginda was one of then-Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak’s best friends. Two years ago, Suaram hired a team of Paris-based lawyers headed by William Bourdon to investigate the French defense giant DCN and its subsidiaries on suspicion it was involved a web of corruption. The story has been told in voluminous detail in 133 documents submitted to a French prosecuting court. The documents describe a long tangle of blackmail, bribery, influence peddling, misuse of corporate assets and concealment, among other allegations. The documents, written in French, were described in a story published in Asia Sentinel on June 25 and uploaded onto the Internet here. Increasing fire from government blogs, papers Suaram has come under increasing fire since Bourdon and his colleague, Joseph Breham, began to publicize a series of allegations related to the documents in May. Pro-government bloggers have repeatedly accused Suaram of being in Anwar’s employ, have questioned the veracity of the documents and whether they existed and whether French authorities in fact are even going to move the case forward. Questioned by the opposition in Parliament, Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi took the floor briefly almost at midnight on June 26 to say Suaram was wrong to say there was a trial taking place in France’s Tribunal de Grande Instance over the sale of the subs, although neither Suaram nor Asia Sentinel had said a trial was taking place. There is an investigation taking place, however, and it was those investigators who confiscated hundreds, perhaps thousands of documents from DCN and its subsidiaries in raids on April 7, 2010 to present to the investigating magistrate. Ahmad Zahid also said that the Defense Ministry had no information on allegations confidential documents of the procurement of the submarines were sold to Thint Asia (Thales International) by Terarasi (Hong Kong) allegedly for €36 million although Asia Sentinel was able to obtain the information from the documents, which are on line, and from the Hong Kong Registry of Companies. "The ministry also does not have any information on the alleged payment from Thales International Asia to Terasasi (Hong Kong)," he said. As Asia Sentinel reported, at least one secret diplomatic cable shows that some of the misdeeds appear to have taken place with the knowledge of top French and Malaysian government officials including then-foreign Minister Alain Juppe and with the consent of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The documents were presented to the French Prosecuting Magistrate at the Court de Grand Instance de Paris in May and June of 2011. Harassment: Not a new tactic It is not the first time the Malaysian government has sent investigators after those calling attention to massive corruption on the part of the government and its cronies. For example, when Ramli Yusuff, the director of Malaysia's Commercial Crime Investigation Department, sought to bring Tajudin Ramli, a crony of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, to justice for looting Malaysian Airline System (MAS) of tens of millions of dollars, it was Ramli who was pursued by the Malaysian Anti-Crime Commission rather than Tajudin despite abundantly clear evidence of the charges. Ramli and his lawyer came under fire that nearly ruined their careers and almost put them in jail. Likewise, Lim Guan Eng, now the chief minister of the state of Penang, was arrested in 1994 after pointing out that the former chief minister of Malacca, Rahim Thamby Chik, had been absolved of charges of statutory rape after having had sex with an underaged girl and in fact had had the girl arrested after her parents complained. Lim was ultimately sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for sedition for bringing up the charges, was disallowed from standing for election to public office for five years and he was made ineligible to contest the 2004 Malaysian general election.

Easy to get nobel prizes

 Just follow the Israeli example. I read an article in Metro about how difficult it is to get high ranking in QS university rankings. The QS rankings are based on the following:

1) Number of lecturers, no PhD required. Is it so difficult?

2) Number of foreign lecturers.

3) Number of foreign students.

4) Number of citations, i.e. quotations of papers published in Scopus but Scopus is expanding its lists of journals to include open journals, just like Google Scholar h-index.  Is it difficult to quote our colleagues works? Better still, just do what the Israeli do, i.e. give longer Sabbatical leave for lecturers so that they can get friends from outside to share research and thus get quotations from them or vice versa.

If you achieve all these, nobel prizes will be very easy indeed. If Israel with a population of 5million, many of who are Arabs, how can Sabah with a population of 3.5 million cannot compete with Israel in producing nobel prize winners?

 http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/article3620867.ece

A science enigma in Israel

R. PRASAD

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Dan Shechtman won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2011. Photo: R. Prasad

In all, Israel has produced ten Nobel Laureates, of which four were in Chemistry in recent years. Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, where Nobel Laureate Dan Shechtman works, is the first and smallest university in the country. Dr. Shechtman won the Noble Prize last year for chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals.

It has another distinction as well. “Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has three Nobel Laureates in Chemistry,” said the Laureate to The Hindu during an interaction with journalists at the recently concluded 62nd Nobel Laureates Meeting dedicated to physics from July 1 to July 7 at Lindau, Germany.

Prof. Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009, two years before Dr. Shechtman.

Despite being a small country, how has it managed to produce so many Laureates? “I don’t know the answer,” he said frankly. “I think we do good work. I think we encourage young talented people to go to science.”

Though he was at a loss to pinpoint the reasons, he did throw some light to what may be the factors facilitating his country’s success. “We have very good scientists in Israel. We publish many papers in many reputed journals,” he noted.

But the distinguishing factor that emerged is the way the scientists interact with their counterparts based in other countries. “We are encouraged to travel to other laboratories in the world,” he said. To facilitate this interaction, very vital for science, the scientists are allowed to avail sabbatical for period extending up to 6 to 7 years. “Every summer, if you want to go and work somewhere, they allow you [to go]. So we have many contacts in the world,” he revealed.

In fact, it was while Dr. Shechtman was on sabbatical at John Hopkins University and working with the National Bureau of Standards in 1982 that he discovered the existence of quasicrystals.

Availability of liberal funding is another critical factor. Scientists have several sources of funding to turn to — industrial, defence, government and binational funding. The binational funding comes from binational agreements — Israel-Germany, Israel-United States, Israel-England and others.

Another peculiar aspect is that the government does not fund universities directly. Instead, it provides fund to intermediate bodies, which in turn fund the universities. “So the government is not directly involved. We [are in touch with] the intermediate bodies and it is excellent,” he underlined.

“A good scientist who writes a good project proposal has a good chance of securing funding,” he said. “In my department, there are 16 faculty members and everyone has a nice chunk of research funds.”

But there are problems and all is not conducive to people taking up research. “There are many scientists who cannot find jobs in Israel,” he said. “Israel is a start-up country. Everybody thinks of starting a start-up. The number of start-ups in the country is enormous. The spirit of entrepreneurship is fantastic.”

According to him everybody communicates with everybody else in Israel. “Communication is good for science. People need to talk,” he said. “All these don’t answer your question [of how a small country is able to produce so many Nobel Laureates]. I understand that. I don’t know what the reason is.”

Sixteen students from India participated in the 62nd Nobel Laureates Meeting at Lindau. The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) sponsored their visit.

(This Correspondent was one of the two journalists from India who participated in the 62nd Nobel Laureates Meeting at Lindau, Germany, at the invitation of the German Research Foundation (DFG) Bonn.)

Keywords: Technion, Dan Shechtman, Nobel Laureates Meeting, Lindau, Nobel Prize, quasicrystals, Isarel scientists,

Why the Republicans keep on lying and wanting to repeat Bush mistakes

The Republicans keep on wanting to repeat the failed Bush policies of
taxing the poor more than the rich and removing all controls to the
point of allowing the loan scandals to destroy the world's economy.

The Republicans keep on wanting to repeat this mistake blaming it on
Obama's policies. Obama policies were working until the US citizens
voted in the Republican congress who passes extensions of Bush tax
exemptions for the rich while blocking taxes for the rich to make them
pay as much as the poorer people.

The blame and want to repeal immediately the Obamacare and yet DO NOT
REPEAL IMMEDIATELY the almost similar Romneycare in Massachusetts.

What I don't like about the comment below are the blatant lies and
arrogant misinformation that it cultivates. In a way it reflects on
the current US voter sentiments who believe that letting rich people
be taxed much less is good for them. It is ridiculous when it is well
proven that it failed miserably during the Bush and Reagan eras.

See my comments marked with quotes " "

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/30/president-obamacare-victory-speech-translation/

The president's ObamaCare victory speech -- a translation

By John Stossel

Published June 30, 2012

FoxNews.com

After the Supreme Court approved ObamaCare Thursday, the president
gave a speech. I think it needs decoding.

Obama: Today's decision was a victory for people all over this
country.

It's a victory for central planners, not "people." One thing I've
learned in 42 years of reporting is that centrally planned bureaucracy
kills innovation, increases costs and undercuts personal liberty.

"It may be true in many cases, but not in all cases as compared to no
central planning at all. Cases are disaster reliefs, national defence,
public security and now insurance"

If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have
health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.

Unless your insurance company, like Principal Financial, leaves the
business, because you've made it bad business. Then people lose their
policy.

"This is the crux of the matter. Insurance companies are afraid of
losing to competitors, the government. So strange for Republicans who
believe that competition is healthy for the nation and blaming the
governments are always inefficient. So let Republicans prove it by
allowing Obamacare to test itself. If REpublicans allow Romneycare,
why not Obamacare that is almos the same?

Prove that private insurance companies are ALWAYS MORE EFFICEINT than
government insurance companies."

This law will only make it more secure and more affordable.

It's impossible to do both.
" Only impossible for Republicans who allow only profit oriented
private insurance companies to compete among themselves without any
oversight or checking on their activities and practices"


Because of the Affordable Care Act, young adults under the age of 26
are able to stay under their parent's health care plans…

That will make insurance cost more.

"It will but not that much more."

…A provision that's already helped 6 million young Americans.

And made insurance cost more.
"Optional insurance is much more expensive than mandatory insurance.
More people opt for insurance the costs can be shared among more
people. It may cost more, but it was still affordable to the 6
million. By mandating it, the existing 6 million will experience even
lower premiums because of the economy of scale.

This fact should be well known to anyone who is interested in
insurance, which makes me suspect that this Stossel is lying or
deliberately misinform readers. Alas very common among REpublicans and
unfortunately believed by US voters, who only listen to advertisements
sponsored by rich people and rich insurance companies who benefit the
most from the Republicans of taxing the rich people and companies the
LEAST."



And because of the Affordable Care Act, seniors receive a discount on
their prescription drugs – a discount that's already saved more than 5
million seniors on Medicare about 600 dollars each.

Even rich seniors get a handout. According to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-
Ala., ObamaCare will cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion in the next 10
years.

"If Republicans want to tax the rich much less than the poor, why the
double standard here. I believe Obama never wanted to tax the rich
more than the poor, just tax them equitably, so naturally, the rich
should also be given access to the benefits just like everyone else,
EQUALLY.

And the figure of the cost is wildly from thin air. It may be more,
but not necessarily this large, but it certainly much less than the
defense spendings that the US cannot afford because it does not
benefit the most US citizens. Healthcare benefits the US citizens much
more, and will help in its defence as well. Sich citizens cannot
defend the county."

These provisions provide common-sense protections for middle class
families, and they enjoy broad popular support.

True, because people like "free" stuff.
"That include Republicans as well."

If you're one of the 30 million Americans who don't yet have health
insurance, starting in 2014 this law will offer you an array of
quality, affordable, private health insurance plans to choose from.

There were already plenty of options for them, including Medicare and
charity. But we in government are only happy if it's all centrally
planned. Now, you'll get to "choose" from a whole "array" of mandated
expensive and mediocre healthcare "options."

"Mandated options are completely different from plenty of options.
These plenty of options do not equate to necessary options. This is
similar to the case of installing safety belts in cars. If it is not
mandated, it will be extremely costly for us to install safety belts
which is essential in saving lives. This Stossel may feel that making
the cost of life saving options so expensive is good for the US,
because the US can spend more on weapons."


They won't be able to charge you more just because you're a woman.

That's right. They'll just charge everybody more in higher premiums
and higher taxes. But that's nuts! Women visit doctors more than
men. They consume more health care.

"that is the idea of INSURANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Pooling resources
so that the unlucky ones can get help. The private insurance
companies, in their pursuit of maximising profits, have made it their
priority to insure ONLY THOSE THAT DO NOT NEED INSURANCE, the healthy
ones."

Not charging women more for health insurance is like not charging
Charlie Sheen more for property insurance. People who incur higher
costs pay higher insurance rates or insurance doesn't work.

"Stossel is either ignorant or just lying. Even when death is certain,
some policies still can work by allowing the benefits to be only the
premium paid. Insurance companies do not lose a single cent, only the
profit margin is much less. Insurance companies make the most money by
isuring people who do not need insurance in the first place."

If you're sick, you'll finally have the same chance to get quality,
affordable health care as everyone else.

Quality? Affordable? Without a market, how would we know? Quality and
innovation come from market competition. That pretty much stops with
central planning. Canadians get "free" healthcare, and they have the
privilege of waiting 23 hours to see someone at the ER, as opposed to
the 4 hours Americans have to endure.

"So let the people decide. Let private insurance compete against
government linked insurance schemes. What is so difficult about it?
Are Republicans so afraid that their views are proven to be completely
wrong? At least the current Republicans which is already enjoying a
lot of socialism compared to the even more conservative early US
Republicans and political parties in the undeveloped nations, who have
no socialism or government planning at all."


And if you can't afford the premiums, you'll receive a credit that
helps pay for it.

And you will be taxed for that. The bill raises premiums by up to 50%
-- that's $1,500 for individuals, and $3,300 for families -- according
to a study by Blue Cross Blue Shield (BSBA).

"You will be taxed but you will get a credit also. So what?"

Today, the Supreme Court also upheld the principle that people who can
afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health
insurance.

Should take responsibility? No. The Supreme Court ruled that you
must buy insurance because the Feds say so. That's not "can take
responsibility," that's force.

"If you don't wear safety belt, you will be fined. Is that force or
just a responsibility? If you choose to kill someone, shouldn't you
pay for it?"

…If you ask insurance companies to cover people with preexisting
conditions, but don't require people who can afford it to buy their
own insurance, some folks might wait until they're sick to buy the
care they need…

We still will. The penalties cost less than insurance. This will
drive private insurance companies out of business. Then we will be
stuck with government care. Maybe that was the intention all along.

In fact, this idea has enjoyed support from members of both parties,
including the current Republican nominee for president.

True. Although he imposed it only on one state. We have 50.
Experiments at the state level at least allow comparison. And some
freedom. Also, when ObamaCare passed, there was not "support from
both parties." No Republicans voted for the law and Mitt Romney
promises to repeal the law if he gets elected.

"And yet Romney does not want to repeal his version of Obamacare! That
proves a lot about the accusations about people not wanting to pay
insurance."

…I didn't do this because it was good politics. I did it because I
believed it was good for the country.

"And yet you lie and distort facts. It proves a lot about your
intentions"

I believe you. Statists think that big intrusive complex government
micromanagement is a good thing.They think that government can solve
our healthcare problems. I say, "No They Can't."

"You are arguing against proven facts, unlike your lies and
misinformation."

And now is the time to keep our focus on the most urgent challenge of
our time: putting people back to work, paying down our debt and
building an economy where people can have confidence that if they work
hard, they can get ahead.

But ObamaCare works against all those things. It discourages those
who do work from hiring people. It makes it harder to pay down our
debt. This study predicts that the healthcare law will add $530
Billion to the national debt in just 10 years.

"If you really study the statistics, even without Obamacare, the
government healthcare cost will increase similarly. It has nothing to
do with Obamacare then. It is just inflation."

…when we look back five years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20
years from now, we'll be better off because we had the courage to pass
this law and keep moving forward.

"Why don't you give it a chance and see how it works? You may like it
so much you will find that you can't live without it? Is that what you
are afraid? Isn't it better to spend money on health than on luxury?"

We'll be better off if we have the sense to repeal it. Government
doesn't know best. Central planning, federal mandates and government
controls are a fatal conceit of an arrogant political class. Mr.
President, at Harvard Law School, you were taught that you can manage
life though paper and procedure. But that is a lie.

"So you think Harvard University lecturers are all lying?"

John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's
the author of "No, They Can't: Why Government Fails-But Individuals
Succeed," "Give Me a Break" and of "Myth, Lies, and Downright
Stupidity." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his website at
johnstossel.com.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/06/30/president-obamacare-victory-speech-translation/#ixzz1zJnwPBUg

Syria and the best of bad options

An excellent analysis of the Syrian situation.

http://www.semissourian.com/story/1864919.html

Syria and the best of bad options

Thursday, June 28, 2012

By Wayne H. Bowen

The increasingly catastrophic conflict in Syria has led many world leaders -- from members of Congress to diplomats in the Arab League -- to call for a robust international intervention, along the lines of the NATO-led air campaign that helped topple Libya's Muammar Qadhafi. The temptation has been growing among many -- admittedly even with this writer -- to bring an end to the pro-Iranian Baathist regime in Damascus quickly through an air campaign. While a U.S.-led coalition could overthrow the corrupt and brutal state of Bashar Assad relatively quickly, and hand power to the opposition, we should resist the temptation of direct intervention, in the form of airstrikes or the insertion of ground forces.
At the same time, the timid steps taken by President Obama, essentially confined to modest economic sanctions and some kind words for the opposition, have emboldened the Syrian dictatorship and convinced Russia and Iran that they can continue to support Assad with impunity.
Between sending in the Marines, and tolerating the intolerable, however, there is a third option: letting the Syrians fight, and win, their own war.
The United States and its allies should openly recognize the opposition Syrian National Council, and equip the Free Syrian Army with humanitarian and military aid. This would allow the Syrians to liberate their own nation, rather than receiving it at the hands of Western power.
While a campaign of this type, with free Syrians fighting on the ground, might lead to more casualties in the short run, it would lend legitimacy to the opposition's final victory. Winning against Assad could also assist in creating a new common bond among the Syrian people in the struggle against the current regime.
Most importantly, the U.S. should guarantee an easy exit, in the form of immunity from prosecution, for the key figures of the regime. Safe havens for Baathists leaders, including Bashar Assad and his family, would discourage them from waging a war to the bitter end. We should also allow the al-Assad family to maintain a significant percentage of their wealth, estimated in the billions.
While it seems unlikely that any Arab state would be willing to host the Assad circle as permanent refugees, perhaps Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan or some other pro-Baathist nation could be persuaded, with adequate payments from the overseas bank accounts of Syria's current ruling class, to accept a few dozen well-heeled refugees from Damascus. With, for example, even 10 percent of their net worth left to them, Syria's current leaders could ensure for themselves a lifetime of luxury and protection, while allowing their people to be free of their onerous presence.
It may seem contrary to the idea of justice to allow a brutal dictator to flee into the security of exile, even if this refuge is as unwelcoming as Minsk or the windswept Kazakh steppes. However, one only has to compare Tunisia -- where the exile to Saudi Arabia of former dictator Ben Ali enabled a peaceful and rapid transition to democracy -- with Libya, which endured months of civil war and 30,000 deaths before Muammar Qadhafi died at the hands of insurgents.
Qadhafi, under international indictment for war crimes, was not guaranteed exile by the West, even though several nations seemed willing to offer. Libya has still not emerged as a stable state and remains hobbled by damage done to its infrastructure during its recent civil war. Surely it would have been worth considering such an option for Libya to avoid the conflict it endured.
In some ways, the NATO-led intervention made conditions in Libya worse, as the hasty ending of foreign air support to the interim government weakened their ability to defeat regime holdouts and rebellious tribes who had been allies of Qadhafi.
While Syria has unfortunately already endured much loss of life at the hands of the Assad regime, it is not too late to avoid a full-scale civil war and an even greater humanitarian disaster.
Neighboring Turkey, which has provided support to the Syrian opposition, could be a partner in a U.S.-led effort to equip the free Syrians for victory over Bashar Assad. By all accounts, the official Syrian army is militarily incompetent, equipped with outdated Soviet equipment, and losing soldiers at all levels to defections.
The time is now for diplomatic recognition of the Syrian opposition, a public announcement of military aid to the free Syrians, and an open door into exile for regime leaders. Not only would the U.S. and NATO avoid another direct and costly intervention, but these measures could also help bring to a rapid end the anti-American and pro-Iranian regime that currently rules Damascus.
There are no guarantees that a new government in Syria would be more stable, more pro-Western, or less anti-Israel. Given that uncertainty, it makes even more sense to avoid risking U.S. casualties in a nation not considered a vital American interest.
If, however, we can offer diplomatic and material support to the Syrian opposition, we will create opportunities for a better relationship with a new government. Certainly this possibility is more preferable than our toleration of a cruel anti-American regime, and its daily massacres of its own people.
Dr. Wayne H. Bowen, professor and chairman of the Department of History at Southeast Missouri State University, is also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

© Copyright 2012 Southeast Missourian. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Vigilante required for World Peace

Syria needs a vigilante to save its people

Ned Dobos

June 28, 2012 

 

The world should bypass the UN because it is politically paralysed.
ON APRIL 12 Kofi Annan negotiated a ceasefire between the warring factions in Syria, though you wouldn't know it. The body count continues to climb, and the fighting has now grown so intense that the UN has suspended its monitoring activities in the country.
So what now? Ideally, the UN authorises tougher action, maybe even military intervention. Unfortunately the structure of the Security Council still reflects the distribution of power that existed at the time of its creation. The five permanent members each wield a veto. One of those members - Russia - looks almost certain to use it against any resolution authorising the use of force.

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Should any state or coalition decide to bypass the Security Council, that would be unlawful, at least according to the orthodox interpretation of the UN charter. But would it therefore be unethical? If Security Council authorisation is a legal necessity, is it also a moral imperative?
Admittedly there is considerable overlap between law and morality, but the two are not co-extensive. Something that is illegal is not necessarily immoral - ask any advocate of gay marriage or recreational drug use. And things that are immoral are not always illegal - the historical record of state-sanctioned murder, slavery and discrimination is a testament to that. Still, there is in general a good moral reason to insist on a UN mandate.
''Just war'' theory has its origins in the work of Catholic theologians, but today the concepts and precepts of the theory guide secular thinking about the moral legitimacy of using military force. Recourse to war is justified when there is a sufficiently weighty reason for it, when there is a good prospect of success, when all peaceful alternatives have been exhausted, and when the expected human and material costs are not excessive compared to the anticipated benefits. These are, respectively, the conditions of ''just cause'', ''likely success'', ''last resort'', and ''proportionality''.
A UN mandate can help to ensure that these conditions are satisfied. The motives of states that engage in humanitarian intervention unilaterally are often viewed with suspicion, which invariably aggravates and protracts the resistance from within the target society. This impedes the success or at least augments the costs of intervention. The motives of the international community, by contrast, seldom arouse the same distrust.
All this tells us, however, is that UN approval can on occasion be indirectly necessary; morally required not for its own sake, but only to help a military operation satisfy other standard justifying conditions. The more interesting question is whether we should think of UN approval as being morally necessary in its own right.
It is sometimes said that unilateral intervention is vigilante justice writ large. So we can begin by asking: what's wrong with vigilantism?
When individuals come together in a society, they each consent to obey the laws, pay their taxes, and to invest the power of law enforcement in the sovereign state exclusively. This is all part of the social contract. The vigilante imposes on his "victim" a coercive authority that the victim has not consented to; he usurps the legitimate power of the state; and he breaks his commitment to the people around him - he violates the social contract.
Analogously, a state engaged in unilateral intervention is guilty of wronging at least three parties: the target state, whose sovereign equality has been denied; the United Nations, whose legitimate authority has been usurped; and its co-signatories in the United Nations, whose self-restraint has gone unreciprocated.
But it would be a mistake to think that these observations show unilateral intervention to be unethical, always and without exception. A simple thought experiment once presented by Scottish philosopher W.D. Ross is illustrative.
You make a promise to meet a friend. On your way you come across the scene of an accident that has left a person injured and in need of attention on the side of the road. If you stop to render assistance you will not meet your friend, and therefore you will break your promise. Nevertheless we all agree that stopping is permissible, and obligatory. The explanation, crudely put, is that obligations arising out of one's promises are "prima facie". That is, these obligations can be overridden by competing moral demands. The duty to render assistance trumps the duty to keep one's promises.
Champions of the UN often fail to see or acknowledge that the obligations of a state's international commitments are equally prima facie, and that in some cases a perfectly good justification for their transgression will be available.
Syria is one of those cases. The global body entrusted with the task of preventing human rights abuses is, once again, paralysed by politics. For any state that is able and willing to act unilaterally, the imperative to defend people against murder, torture and rape trumps fidelity to international covenant. A vigilante that defends the innocent when the police can't or won't is not a villain, he is a hero.
Dr Ned Dobos is a lecturer in ethics at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and author of Insurrection and Intervention. This article is based on a presentation given at the Second International Conference on Humanitarian Intervention.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/syria-needs-a-vigilante-to-save-its-people-20120627-212ra.html#ixzz1z3qiryRb

Animals prove smarter than we think- AP

Animals prove smarter than we think

Sapa-AP | 25 June, 2012 10:25

A vervet monkey in the Kruger National Park.
Image by: Bruce Gorton

Researchers are finding that the more we study animals, the less special we seem.

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• Chimps can plan 'future deception': study

Baboons can distinguish between written words and gibberish.
Monkeys seem to be able to do multiplication. Apes can delay instant gratification longer than a human child can. They plan ahead. They make war and peace. They show empathy. They share.
“It’s not a question of whether they think — it’s how they think,” says Duke University scientist Brian Hare. Now scientists wonder if apes are capable of thinking about what other apes are thinking.
The evidence that animals are more intelligent and more social than we thought seems to grow each year, especially when it comes to primates. It’s an increasingly hot scientific field with the number of ape and monkey cognition studies doubling in recent years, often with better technology and neuroscience paving the way to unusual discoveries.
This month scientists mapping the DNA of the bonobo ape found that, like the chimp, bonobos are only 1.3% different from humans.
Says Josep Call, director of the primate research center at the Max Planck Institute in Germany: “Every year we discover things that we thought they could not do.”
Call says one of his recent more surprising studies showed that apes can set goals and follow through with them.
Orangutans and bonobos in a zoo were offered eight possible tools — two of which would help them get at some food.
At times when they chose the proper tool, researchers moved the apes to a different area before they could get the food, and then kept them waiting as much as 14 hours
Call says this is similar to a person packing luggage a day before a trip: “For humans it’s such a central ability, it’s so important.”
For a few years, scientists have watched chimpanzees in zoos collect and store rocks as weapons for later use. In May, a study found they even add deception to the mix. They created haystacks to conceal their stash of stones from opponents, just like nations do with bombs.
Hare points to studies where competing chimpanzees enter an arena where one bit of food is hidden from view for only one chimp. The chimp that can see the hidden food, quickly learns that his foe can’t see it and uses that to his advantage, displaying the ability to perceive another ape’s situation. That’s a trait humans develop as toddlers, but something we thought other animals never got, Hare said.
And then there is the amazing monkey memory.
At the National Zoo in Washington, humans who try to match their recall skills with an orangutan’s are humbled. Zoo associate director Don Moore says: “I’ve got a Ph.D., for God’s sake, you would think I could out-think an orang and I can’t.”  In French research, at least two baboons kept memorizing so many pictures — several thousand — that after three years researchers ran out of time before the baboons reached their limit. Researcher Joel Fagot at the French National Center for Scientific Research figured they could memorize at least 10,000 and probably more.
And a chimp in Japan named Ayumu who sees strings of numbers flash on a screen for a split-second regularly beats humans at accurately duplicating the lineup. He’s a YouTube sensation, along with orangutans in a Miami zoo that use iPads.
It’s not just primates that demonstrate surprising abilities.
Dolphins, whose brains are 25% heavier than humans, recognize themselves in a mirror. So do elephants. A study in June finds that black bears can do primitive counting, something even pigeons have done, by putting two dots before five, or 10 before 20 in one experiment.
The trend in research is to identify some new thinking skill that chimps can do, revealing that certain abilities are “not uniquely human,” said Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal. Then the scientists find that same ability in other primates further removed from humans genetically. Then they see it in dogs and elephants.
“Capacities that we think in humans are very special and complex are probably not so special and not so complex,” de Waal said.
“This research in animals elevates the animals, but it also brings down the humans.... If monkeys can do it and maybe dogs and other animals, maybe it’s not as complex as you think.” 
At Duke, professor Elizabeth Brannon shows videos of monkeys that appear to be doing a “fuzzy representation” of multiplication by following the number of dots that go into a box on a computer screen and choosing the right answer to come out of the box. This is after they’ve already done addition and subtraction.
This spring in France, researchers showed that six baboons could distinguish between fake and real four-letter words — BRRU vs KITE, for example. And they chose to do these computer-based exercises of their own free will, either for fun or a snack.
It was once thought the control of emotions and the ability to empathize and socialize separated us from our primate cousins. But chimps console, and fight, each other. They also try to soothe an upset companion, grooming and putting their arms around him.
“I see plenty of empathy in my chimpanzees,” de Waal said. But studies have shown they also go to war against neighboring colonies, killing the males and taking the females. That’s something that also is very human and led people to believe that war-making must go back in our lineage 6 million years, de Waal said.
When scientists look at our other closest relative, the bonobo, they see a difference. Bonobos don’t kill. Hare says his experiments show bonobos give food to newcomer bonobos, even when they could choose to keep all the food themselves.
One reason scientists are learning more about animal intellect is computers, including touch screens. In some cases, scientists are setting up banks of computers available to primates 24-7. In the French word recognition experiment, Fagot found he got more and better data when it was the baboons’ choice to work.
Animal cognition researcher Steve Ross at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago agrees.
“The apes in our case seem to be working better when they have that control, that choice to perform,” he said.
Brain scans on monkeys and apes also have helped correct mistaken views about ape brain power. It was once thought the prefrontal cortex, the area in charge of higher reasoning, was disproportionately larger than the rest of the brain only in humans, giving us a cognitive advantage, Hare said. But imaging shows that monkey and ape prefrontal cortexes have that same larger scale, he said.
What’s different is that the human communication system in the prefrontal cortex is more complex, Hare said.
So there are limits to what non-human primates can do. Animals don’t have the ability to communicate with the complexity of human language. In the French study, the baboons can recognize that the letters KITE make a word because through trial and error they learn which letters tend to go together in what order. But the baboons don’t have a clue of what KITE means. It’s that gap that’s key.
“The boundaries are not as sharp as people think, but there are certain things you can’t overcome and language is one of them,” said Columbia University animal cognition researcher Herbert Terrace.
And that leads to another difference, Ross said. Because apes lack language skills, they learn by watching and mimicking. Humans teach with language and explanation, which is faster and better, Ross said.
Some of the shifts in scientific understanding of animals are leading to ethical debates. When Emory University researcher Lori Marino in 2001 co-wrote a groundbreaking study on dolphins recognizing themselves in mirrors, proving they have a sense of self similar to humans, she had a revelation.
“The more you learn about them, the more you realize that they do have the capacity and characteristics that we think of as a person,” Marino said. “I think it’s impossible to ignore the ethical implications of these kinds of findings.”
After the two dolphins she studied died when transferred to another aquarium, she decided never to work on captive dolphins again. She then became a science adviser to the Nonhuman Rights Project, which seeks legal rights or status for animals.
The idea, Marino said, is to get animals such as dolphins “to be deemed a person, not property.”
The intelligence of primates was one of the factors behind a report last year by the Institute of Medicine that said the National Institutes of Health should reduce dramatically the number of chimpanzees it uses in biomedical research.
The NIH is working on new guidelines that would further limit federal medical chimpanzee use down from its current few dozen chimps at any given time, said NIH program planning chief James Anderson. Chimps are a special case, with their use “very, very limited,” he said. But he raises the question: “What happens if your child is sick or your mother is dying” and animal research might lead to a cure?
The issue is more about animal welfare and giving them the right ”not to be killed, not to be tortured, not to be confined unnecessarily” than giving them legal standing, said David DeGrazia, a philosophy and ethics professor at George Washington University.
Hare says that focusing on animal rights ignores the problem of treatment of chimps in research settings. He contends that for behavioral studies and even for many medical research tests they could be kept in zoos or sanctuaries rather than labs.
Animals performing tasks in near-natural habitats “is like an Ivy League college” for the apes, Hare said. “We’re going to see them do stunning and sophisticated things.”