Select Links

• Understanding Islam & Terrorism (Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet)

"I wonder what percentage of news consumers associate Islam with terrorism. It seems like every time you turn around there's another news story about some "Islamic fundamentalist" committing yet another suicide-bombing or jumping up and down in front of a camera shouting curses against America."

• Wired: Mixing Romance and Tech (Joanna Glasner, Wired Magazine)

"Wolf succeeds in generating a certain interest around Rossetto, who is cast as a libertarian techno-visionary with a stubborn streak that would make a mule envious. In its first chapters, the book tracks the furious efforts by Rossetto and his companion, Jane Metcalfe, to find backers for a publication chronicling the movers and shakers of the digital world."

• Why Can’t The IAEA Scour Iran For Nukes? (Brendan I. Koerner, Slate Magazine)

"Iran, however, is hardly the only nation to have dragged its feet on implementing the additional protocol. In theory, all of the IAEA's 136 members should have no problem approving the revised safeguards. But only 73 nations have signed the protocol, and only 35 of those countries have actually implemented the new agreement. That's no great concern when it comes to the likes of San Marino or Tonga, but the holdouts also include nuclear powers such as India, Pakistan, and Israel, which have yet to sign, and the United States, France, and Russia, signees who have yet to implement the prescribed changes."

• South Korea: Can Roh Handle a Summer of Strikes? (Moon Ihlwan, BusinessWeek)

"A summer of discontent is brewing in South Korea, presenting President Roh Moo Hyun with what may turn out to be his biggest domestic political challenge since his February inauguration. Just a few days after Roh's government intervened to end an illegal strike that sparked a panicky run on the country's fifth-largest bank, some 10,000 workers at Hyundai Motor Co. walked off the job for four hours on June 25. That stoppage is expected to be followed by an all-out strike starting on July 2, for a shorter workweek, higher wages, and other demands. "We will fight a proxy war with company management," declares Chang Kyu Ho, a leader of Hyundai Motor Union."

• White-Collar Sweatshops (Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon Magazine)

"The latter practice, known as "outsourcing" or "offshoring" or even "near shoring" when it takes place in a neighboring country, is based on a simple economic rationale: Cut costs by sending work overseas to someone who will do it for less money. In the past, such work tended to be relatively low-skilled, such as answering customer service calls, or handling simple forms of tech support. But no longer. Now programmers are feeling the pinch, and the phenomenon may be quickly spreading out of the high-tech sector."

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.