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28. april 2007
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In Iran, the hardliners are using the pretext of a confrontation with the west as an excuse to beat up women.
Iranian police shoved and kicked them, loaded them into a curtained minibus and drove them away. Hours later, at the gates of Evin prison, they were blindfolded and forced to wear all-enveloping chadors, and then were interrogated through the night.
All 31 were women — activists accused of receiving foreign funds to stir up dissent in Iran. But their real crime, says Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, was gathering peacefully outside Tehran's Revolutionary Court in support of five fellow activists on trial for demanding changes in laws that discriminate against women.
During her 15 days in prison, "I tried to convince them that asking for our rights had nothing to do with the enemy," Abbasgholizadeh told The Associated Press by telephone from Tehran. "But they insisted that foreign governments were exploiting our cause."
The March 4 arrests highlight how women's rights, which were making some advances under the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, are being rolled back by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who succeeded him in August 2005.
Activists say that while world attention has focused on the West's standoff with Iran over its nuclear program, the abuses of women's rights have intensified, using fear of a U.S. attack as a pretext.
Over the past 10 months, security forces have "become more and more aggressive even as women's actions have become more peaceful and tame," said Jila Baniyaghoub, an activist who has also spent time in jail.
I don't see much hope for serious improvement of women's conditions in Iran before the Mullahcracy is brought to an end. There may be temporary reprieve if one relatively "moderate" Mullah replaces a nut job like Ahmadinejad, but there is something about oppressing women that appears so important to religious fanatics everywhere.
10:06:03 PM 
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A group of IBM researchers ran a neural network simulation on a supercomputer that simulated half the brain of a mouse, running on one tenth of the speed. That should put the difference between digital and biological neural computing somewhat in perspective.
Brain tissue presents a huge problem for simulation because of its complexity and the sheer number of potential interactions between the elements involved.
The three researchers, James Frye, Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan, and Dharmendra S Modha, laid out how they went about it in a very short research note entitled "Towards Real-Time, Mouse-Scale Cortical Simulations".
Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres.
Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform".
The team, from the IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada, ran the simulation on a BlueGene L supercomputer that had 4,096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory.
Using this machine the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000 neurons that had up to 6,300 synapses.
The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for ten seconds at a speed ten times slower than real life - the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.
Did BlueGene suddenly develop a strong craving for cheese?
With the increasing computer power predicted by Moore's law, we may be able to simulate half of Paris Hilton's brain next year or so. Wouldn't be the first time somebody confused silicon and silicone.
3:28:47 PM
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One of al-Qaeda's top leaders has been captured:
A Pentagon spokesman said Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was now in Guantanamo Bay.
He was heading to Iraq to take over al-Qaeda operations and possibly plot attacks on Western interests, he said.
He was accused of commanding attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, and of involvement in plots to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao described the arrest as a "welcome development".
He has since 2005 been identified as one of Bin Laden's "top deputies" and is has been charge of oversight of the terrorist operations in Iraq. A very good catch.
Update: Abd al-Hadi is also believed responsible for the London 7/7 attacks.
The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans.
Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred to the internment camp in Cuba.
Abd al-Hadi, 45, was regarded as one of al-Qaeda’s most experienced, most intelligent and most ruthless commanders. Senior counter-terrorism sources told The Times that he was the man who, in 2003, identified Britain as the key battleground for exporting al-Qaeda’s holy war to Europe.
So he's been secretly in captivity for maybe half a year.
1:21:57 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.05.2007; 04:54:40.
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