Will The U.S. Invade Pakistan?

Background

Pakistan acquires nuclear weapons in 1987, the result of a program started by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, grandfather of Benazir Bhutto.

In 1999 Military General Pervez Musharaff seizes power of Pakistan in a military coup d'etat, with active monetary and military aid from the United States. Reasonably, U.S. relations with Musharaff can be seen as a preventive safeguard, ensuring control over the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Recently

America's close relations with military dictator Musharaff has continuously been criticized,

By proxy, the international pressure has resulted in Musharaff removing his military uniform, effectively stripping himself (at least in theory) of his military executive power.

In exchange, he took up office as civil leader and president of Pakistan, and announces democratic election on January 8th of 2008.

Meanwhile, Benazir Butto, previous prime minister and a national hero of sorts, has returned from her self-imposed exile in order to run for presidency.

During a campaign rally on December 27th 2007 Benazir Butto is assassinated. The following days have seen much confusion, anger, violence and revelry on part of the Pakistani population.

Conspiracy theories flourish, and interviews from Pakistani streets portray a mixture of beliefs as for who bears the responsibility - anywhere from Al Qaida to Musharaff.

Discussions ensue whether elections should be held as planned or not, now that the oppositional party's primary leader is dead.

No one knows what will happen.

Next ?

Some scenarios:

1. The people of Pakistan accept neither cancellation of elections nor Musharaff. Political instability ensues and in order to protect nuclear arsenals from militant Islamist groups in Pakistan, the U.S. invades Pakistan.
   
   
2. Musharaff quells civil unrest, and his dictatorship commences and remains in place for the time being.
   
   
3. The U.S. announces west/self-protective intentions and a detailed roadmap to when and how they will invade Pakistan, effectively imposing on their sovereign right.
   
   

And various nuances of the three. I would be interested in hearing what disagreements people may have with these - please comment.

The computation beast awakens

More than a 100 years ago, Charles Babbage fathered the first abstract form of the computation beast into our world, in the shape of mathematics. This was the first modern day incantation of its primordial being.

. . .

Thirty years ago, you had to be able to count in hexadecimal (base 16) in order to make computers operate. Today, the everyday user has no idea these numbers provide the memory address to each and every little piece of data we use - your music, documents, programs and images.



Twenty years ago, you had to be able to use a teletype terminal to use a computer. Today we have personal computers with (sometimes) intuitive graphical interfaces, which we interacted with using a mouse or our fingers. Tomorrow we may do it by brain stimulus - already we have monkeys control robots and blind men seeing.


Ten years ago you had to know HTML in order to publish textual on the web. Today we blog, post videos, edit content and otherwise contribute with no technical knowledge beyond turning on a computer and using a web browser. Still, at the root of it all lie the hexadecimal representation of the binary, digital data that makes this all possible, from the transnational low of information to its pixelated display on your screen.


Today you have to spend years learning programming and various programming languages in order to create applications. At the root, however, programming is merely control and manipulation of information flow; tomorrow the technical threshold will be surmounted and programming will reduce to this (not less beastly) principle - complexity management through architectural and patterned structuring.

What I am saying is this: Computation is a beast of unimaginable capacity, and software its physical incarnation. Today, this beast is still in its early infancy, and we cannot predict or comprehend its mature form. Thus far, the technical threshold for participation in its development and nurture has been high enough to exclude all but the wiz and the nerd. However, technical literacy is on the rise, and with every human being a potential contributor to the most powerful tool of abstraction of human time we are in for exciting times.

Listen - you can hear it rumble...