Archive for July, 2006


Iran’s fabricated excuse

By: psr, 2006-07-23

Since the beginning of the current surge in violence between Israel and Hezbollah, which has caught Lebanon in the middle, I’ve been thinking that this is no incident, and that it has all been carefully planned.

It is well known that Iran and Syria are behind Hezbollah. Iran has been recently the center of attention for its nuclear program. In late June 2006, the foreign policy chief of the European Union (EU) Javier Solana and Ali Larijani, Iran’s negotiator on the nuclear talks, were to have a meeting to discuss a new proposal to reach an agreement. However, Iran cancelled this meeting and postponed it without further explanations.

A few days later, Hezbollah killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another two. Israel then responded with counterattacks, to which …

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2006-07-23 | World | Trackback | 3 Comments »

A State surrenders

By: psr, 2006-07-22

There are some in Spain who claim that victims of terrorism cannot give an opinion about how to end terrorism. With this article I intent to counter that argument, although it is first necessary to clearly state what is meant by ending terrorism.

Ending terrorism means the stopping the use of intimidation, extortion, fear, violence, killings, and any other activity which threatens individual liberties. No nuances may be introduced in this definition.

The actions of the Spanish Government to end terrorism have spawned ample debate about the wrongly called peace process to achieve the end of… of what? Some say “the end of terrorism” while others talk about “the end of the conflict”. What we need is the end of ETA: the end of …

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2006-07-22 | Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

Policies to stimulate research

By: psr, 2006-07-17

Why don’t companies in Spain commit resources for technical and scientific research? Before answering that question, it is necessary to answer another one: Should companies commit resources for research activities?

I’ll start off with the second question: Politicians talk a lot about investing in research, and it all looks very nice on the agendas of the European Commission and on the electoral programs of political parties. I do believe research is necessary, but not merely as something that can be directed or required from government, but (and much more importantly) as something that companies wish to invest on, as part of their growth or competitiveness strategy.

Therefore, let us begin by assuming that companies should devote resources to research.

That said, companies will not do company strategy aligned research simply because …

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