"In the history of economics monopolies do not survive long."

Dr. Mathias Döpfner

Said : European media tycoon Dr. Mathias Döpfner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Axel Springer in a letter addressed to Google boss as reported by the BBC a short while ago. His letter, published in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, was in response to a column by Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt. In his letter, Döpfner questions : "whether Google intends to create a superstate where anti-trust and privacy laws don't apply."

Döpfner's Axel Springer publishes more than 200 newspapers and magazines including German papers Die Welt and Bild. It also has a significant online presence and television and radio interests.  Schmidt, in his column, had referred to the Google's advertising relationship with Axel Springer. He described how the relationship had been challenging at times but how now they had "walked down the aisle" and signed a multi-year deal.

Eric Schmidt

Döpfner, however, referring to the 'deal' said that his company had little choice but to engage with Google as "we know no search engine alternative to increase our online reach". Döpfner said the resulting agreement between the two parties was not a compromise but instead the European Commission had "sanctioned the introduction of a business model, which in less honourable circles is called extortion". 

Döpfner claimed that large technology companies like Google were far more powerful than people realised. Döpfner said that he was concerned about the role Google plays online.  Döpfner said: "Google founder Larry Page dreams of a place with no privacy laws and without democratic accountability."  Döpfner questioned "Is Google planning to operate in a legal vacuum, without the hassle of anti-trust and privacy? A kind of superstate?" Döpfner warned Google that in the history of economics monopolies never survived long.

Mark Zuckerberg

Döpfner was also critical of Mark Zuckerberg with regard to how Facebook stored data and protected users' privacy. Zuckerberg has brushed aside the question of privacy by saying that 'those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear.' Döpfner called this a mindset that was fostered in totalitarian regimes. "Such a sentence could also be said by the head of the Stasi or other intelligence service or a dictatorship," he added.

Russia Could Turn U.S. into 'Radioactive Ashes'

Russian TV Anchor Dmitry Kiselyov

Said Russian State TV Anchor Dmitry Kiselyov on his news program on Sunday at the time when Crimea went to the polls to vote in the referendum to re-join Russia.

According to the Moscow Times, Kiselyov - well-known as the voicepiece of the Russian government - also showed a simulation of a Russian nuclear strike during his program.

Kiselyov - a loyalist to Russian President Vladimir Putin - said "Russia is the only country that could really turn the U.S. into radioactive ashes."


Meanwhile, Russian and Crimean parliaments signed treaty of accession today. In a speech to a joint session of parliament, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will always protect the rights of Russians using “political, diplomatic and legal means.”

Vladimir Putin reading his speech

According to a news-report in the Washington Post : "Putin insisted that Russia was acting within international law. He dwelled at some length on Kosovo, which broke free of Serbia in 1999, after NATO intervention, and ultimately declared independence, with international recognition, in 2008. He said that precedent gives Western countries no standing to complain about Crimea. Putin said that Russia has no plans to take other regions of Ukraine after Crimea and Sevastopol.

“You can’t call something black one day, and the same thing white the next,” he said.

He complained that leaders in the West, led by Americans, “believe they’ve been entrusted by God to decide the fate of other people.”

His address, devoted to proving that Russia cannot be pushed around, was met with a standing ovation — which is much less common in Russia than in the U.S. Congress.

"Victims of a conspiracy : Around 64,000 silicon valley programmers were cheated by their bosses......"

Joseph R. Saveri

said Joseph R. Saveri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs of a class-action lawsuit that accuses industry executives of agreeing between 2005 and 2009 not to poach one another's employees. According to a report of The New York Times March 1, the case is headed to trial in San Jose this spring and seeks billions of dollars in damages.  Mr. Saveri said that "these engineers were prevented from being able to freely negotiate what their skills are worth."

"Its mastermind, court papers say, was the executive who was the most successful, most innovative and most concerned about competition of all -- Steve Jobs", the newspaper reported.

Steve Jobs : Hero or Villain?

Quoting court papers, the news-report says : "Mr. Jobs was particularly worried about Google, which was hiring rapidly and expanding into areas where Apple had an interest. In 2005, for instance, Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, tried to hire from Apple's browser team. "If you hire a single one of these people that means war," Mr. Jobs warned in an email."

Mr. Brin backed off, and Google and Mr. Jobs soon came to an informal agreement not to solicit each other's employees. Apple made similar deals with other companies. So did Google. By 2007, when a Google recruiter slipped up and contacted an Apple engineer, Mr. Jobs immediately complained. To appease the Apple chief, Google fired the recruiter within an hour. Mr. Jobs's control extended even to former Apple engineers. When Google wanted to hire some, the suit says, Mr. Jobs vetoed the idea. 

"There are more cellphone users than toothbrush users......"

David Culler

Said : David Culler, chair of UC Berkeley's Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department, as reported by Mercury News in a report titled "Women missing out on lucrative careers in computer science."

According to Culler, two and a half billion people are connected to the Internet involving all aspects of society and all aspects of modern life. Commenting on extremely low number of female computer science students in the United States, he asks : "Would you want any demographic group to be left out of shaping something that is so important to our future?"

"Based on current trends, U.S. universities will graduate about 400,000 computer scientists between 2010 and 2020, a decade during which 1.4 million U.S. computing jobs will open up, leaving a gap of about a million computing jobs. Together those 1 million jobs would pay $500 billion in wages, the report says quoting Hadi Partovi, co-founder of Code.org, a nonprofit working to encourage computer science education in K-12 schools.

According to the Mercury News report, four of the 20 top-paying jobs for women are in computing, a broad field in which only about one-quarter of workers are female. The best tech jobs for women are positions such as computer programmer, software developer, information systems manager and systems analyst, with median pay for women ranging from about $60,000 to about $80,000. The figures are higher for men, ranging from about $71,000 to about $90,000. Without U.S. workers to fill those jobs, employers will face three choices: export the work, import the workers or leave the positions empty.

“The Indian Ocean will be the true nexus of world power and conflict in the coming years”

Robert David Kaplan

Said : Robert David Kaplan, an American journalist, in his book 'Mansoon' as reported by  his colleague Antonia Colibasanu in her post of Nov. 11, 2013 titled "India: the Pivot of the 21st Century."

Antonia describes the recent meeting of the foreign ministers of Russia, China and India - on Nov. 10 on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting - as noteworthy especially since the three countries’ prime ministers have recently held bilateral meetings. She has linked this meeting between Sergei Lavrov, Salman Khurshid and Wang Yi in New Delhi with the growing importance of the Indian Ocean in the global politics of the 21st century. She feels that India has the strategic importance in the Indian Ocean geography and can be termed as "the natural pivot state of our century."

According to Antonia : "China’s interest in deepwater ports in friendly countries along the Indian Ocean coastline is notable and worthy of monitoring, as Beijing seeking to consolidate a presence it can use for civilian and military purposes. This aligns with the strategy China is pursuing in the South China Sea." She quotes Kaplan, who notes : “China, through the combination of its economic and military power, will undermine the sovereignty of countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore, all of which are de facto or de jure U.S. allies.”

Kaplan, in his guest lecture at the Carnegie Council's Public Affairs Program on November 1, 2010, spoke on his book "Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power." His remarks provide a good base of Antnia's observations in her blog. Kalpan, concluding his lecture, had said : "Vietnam looks like it will emerge like France or England in the 20th century, as a major ally of the United States in the South China Sea. The South China Sea will be somewhat of a diplomatic battleground. Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and other countries, all have claims over it. The world we are entering in is going to be one of a kind of Metternichian balance of power, where India, China, the United States, Vietnam, and other countries will leverage and cooperate with each other in some points, come into conflict in others. It will be a world where the center of strategic gravity will move from Europe to the southern rim land of Eurasia."

Robert D. Kaplan is Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm, and a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. He has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for over a quarter century. He is the author of 14 books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages. Kaplan was chosen by Foreign Policy magazine as among the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers".

"The one sure prediction : All predictions will be proven wrong"

Prof. Henry Kautz

Said : Prof. Henry Kautz - Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Rochester Data Science Institute at the University of Rochester - speaking on the impact of AI on society during the IJCAI-13, the Twenty-third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence held in Beijing, China from August 3-9, 2013.

According to Kautz's presentation, technology is shaping society… by making it fatter. He presented a slide showing the rapid rise in the rate of obesity, especially in the technologically developed countries. 

"We are remarkably bad at predicting the form technology will take, and how it will change our lives. We rarely envision the actual as even one of the possible futures," he said in relation to being pessimistic about predicting the future. "Future must be almost upon us before we can see it coming providing us a short window to act to change the outcome," he added.

Kautz illustrated several pros and cons if Artificial Intelligence (AI) was achieved. He concluded showing the following slide.

“Please, open your markets. Invest in Pakistan. Make profits, and help drive our economic development.”

Foreign Minister Westerwelle with Chief Minister
Sharif, State Secretary Herkes of the Federal
Economics Ministry and Stefan Dircks of the
Association of German Chambers of
Commerce and Industry (DIHK)

Said : Chief Minister of Punjab, Pakistan, Shahbaz Sharif (Brother of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif) on October 30, 2013 at the launch of 'Pakistan Days' in Berlin - an event in organized by the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Pakistan German Business Forum.

According to Germany's Federal Foreign Office, more than 300 participants from Pakistan and Germany gathered at the House of German Business in Berlin to work together on deepening German‑Pakistan trade relations. The discussions centered on the search for new markets and fresh opportunities open to investors and businesses in the two countries.

The German Foreign Minister Westerwelle advised the Government of Pakistan to "continue its reform policy, even if some of the necessary steps will be unpopular, like raising the tax base or restructuring public enterprises.”

Germany is an important market for Pakistan’s businesses selling medical instruments and jewelry as well as textiles and agricultural products.