Hasta La Gadget!

Alan Turing has long been regarded as the father of modern computing. Why? We’re glad you asked. Today, we dive into the history of the Turing machine, go hands-on with Ricoh’s new Theta camera, and take a look at Corning’s new Gorilla Glass 4. Read…

This week Algeria has convened long-stalled negotiations for a settlement of Mali’s two-year political crisis. Its role is an acknowledgment of the North African country’s continuing credibility as a mediator in the developing world, a credibility that reflects Algerian refusal to interfere in neighbors’ internal affairs and the mystique that still attaches over a half century after Algerians won their bruising war of liberation from France.

Algiers is hardly disinterested, however, in either Mali’s conflict or any other in which Islamist extremists are battling relatively secular regimes. After annulling elections in 1992, Algeria’s security forces suppressed a violent Islamist insurgency in the “années dures” (hard years) that followed. As the war wound down they turned to a one-time political operative and internationally respected diplomat, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to lead the government, hoping he could reconcile disaffected Algerians and muffle international critics.

Bouteflika has made some progress in civilianizing the military-dominated regime, but poor health has now largely incapacitated him. He slipped out of Algiers last week for medical attention in France, just as I was winding up my own stay in the country visiting UNESCO World Heritage sites. The more contemporary inheritance that the ailing Bouteflika hopes to bequeath is the country’s seeming stability, built on the government’s large investment of oil and gas income into social development, from housing to health to education–and, oh so incidentally, into the security forces.

But the stability may be brittle, and the political leadership elicits more public indifference than active support. Few people imagine that police protests in the south could spark a broader challenge (though no one had expected a fruit seller’s suicide in neighboring Tunisia to topple its regime). Having contained the contagion of unrest that swept much of the Arab world in 2011, the country’s power elite remains alert to any stirring of Islamist political movements, including those that wrap themselves in a mantle of “democracy.” It was therefore particularly embarrassed by Islamists’ abduction and grotesque beheading of a French trekker in September.

Algerians observe with some satisfaction Washington’s sobered reassessment of its early enthusiasm for what Beltway wordsmiths credulously dubbed the “Arab spring.” Algiers had been aghast as Western countries appeared to encourage uprisings that Algerian leaders guessed would inevitably empower hard-core Islamists, not liberal democrats.

On their eastern border, Tunisia has, for the moment, turned out better than expected. But for Algiers, the ongoing chaos in Libya vindicates its opposition three years ago to the Western military intervention aimed at the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi. Algerian authorities claimed that many among the Libyan rebels had links to Al Qaeda-style extremists, and they pointedly gave refuge to Qaddafi’s wife and three children when his forces were driven from Tripoli.

Algeria also led the opposition inside the Arab League to the Saudi and Qatari campaign to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’ath party regime in Syria. As with Libya, Algerian officials asserted that Islamic extremists were at the core of the insurrection. They have accepted with equanimity the wanton destruction wreaked by Syrian security forces inside rebel-held areas as unfortunate but inescapable collateral damage.

Long before the Security Council’s September vote to require governments to block their nationals from traveling to become foreign terrorist fighters, Algeria’s watchful security services had succeeded in suppressing recruitment of Algerians into the Syrian rebel ranks. The number of Algerians fighting with jihadists in Syria is said to be among the lowest in the Arab world–in particularly striking contrast to the hundreds of religiously radicalized Tunisians and Libyans who have flooded into Syria.

As the bloody conflict in Syria has ground on, the Algerian assertion that fanatical jihadists dominate the Syrian insurgency has gained grudging acceptance. The startling expansion this spring into Iraq of the self-styled “Islamic State” led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a former prisoner of U.S. forces in Iraq, has seemed to prove the clairvoyance of Algerian policymakers. ISIL’s viciousness triggered a concentrated American military campaign to roll it back in both Iraq and Syria, at last putting Washington in sync with Algiers.

Algeria’s leaders have never really courted Washington. (Indeed, in the first years of the American republic, the Bey of Algiers famously disdained it.) Clinging to Algeria’s more recent liberation heritage–Bouteflika himself had served in the national liberation army fighting the French–they have preferred correct rather than close relations with the United States.

This arms-length relationship is intended to preserve them from the kind of political dependency that might make them susceptible to Western meddling, as they believed Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak had become. In particular, they see no need to accommodate American enthusiasms for promoting democracy, whose baneful results they believe they see all around them in the Arab world’s current convulsions.

While for 20 years the Americans were toasting Mali as a model African democracy, the Algerians saw Tuareg disaffection as a threat to the country’s survival–and a potential opening for Al Qaeda in the Maghreb. They sought to mediate political accords in Mali seven years ago, long before the West realized how hollow that “democracy” was. Algerian leaders’ efforts to mediate a settlement today are built on an unsentimental realism about how politics really work in Mali.

Perhaps, however, unsentimental realism may cloud Algerian leaders’ clairvoyance about the future of their own society. You don’t have to be Sweden in order to avoid becoming Syria. Indeed, little neighboring Tunisia may help point a way to assure Algeria’s own long-term stability.

Joining its recent slew of new products comes a new audio device from Quirky, the Ohm Bluetooth Speaker. The unit won’t be shipping until December 10, but interested parties can pre-order it now from the company’s website for $169.99 USD. As far as speakers go, the Ohm isn’t terribly notable — what sets it apart is the base, which includes … Continue reading

Republican lawmakers slammed President Barack Obama for announcing Thursday that he would act unilaterally to provide deportation relief for approximately 4.4 million undocumented immigrants.

Obama has said that he was forced to act alone because Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform. He has also said that immigration reform passed by Congress could supersede his executive order.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the president was more interested in playing politics on immigration than working with lawmakers.

“By ignoring the will of the American people, President Obama has cemented his legacy of lawlessness and squandered what little credibility he had left,” Boehner said in a statement on Thursday.

In a video on her Facebook page, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) said Obama was “giving the middle finger” to voters.

Texas governor-elect Greg Abbott (R) said in a statement that he would “immediately challenge” Obama’s plan in court. Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio also said he would file a lawsuit against the president over the executive action.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said Obama’s announcement amounted to a declaration of war on the United States.

“President Obama has put the interests of an extreme wing of his party above the interests of American workers. Some have said that the actions he is taking this week equal a declaration of war on Republicans,” Smith said in a statement. “I believe he is actually declaring war on the American people and our democracy.”

Appearing on CNN, former Republican House Speaker and 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Obama’s remarks were “a Gruber speech,” referring to Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who has recently come under scrutiny for suggesting that the “stupidity of the American voter” helped pass the Affordable Care Act.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential election, said the actions outlined by the president would do little to fix the country’s immigration system.

“The President’s unilateral action announced today fails to address the root causes of the dysfunction in our immigration system, including an insecure border, the absence of a rational, efficient guest worker program to meet America’s urgent labor needs, and a broken system for legal immigration, which fails those around the world who seek the American dream by actually following our laws,” McCain said in a statement on Thursday.

Under Obama’s plan, approximately 4.1 million undocumented immigrants will be eligible for a new policy that will permit undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents to remain in the country. Obama also announced that he will expand a program which gives deportation relief to undocumented children who came to the United States legally.

While Republicans have said that Obama is acting outside of his constitutional authority, legal experts, including some conservatives, have said that Obama has the authority to act on his own.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama announced plans to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

In an address from the White House’s East Room, Obama outlined his plan to provide deportation relief to approximately 4.4 million individuals, protecting parents as well as those who came to the United States as children.

“The actions I’m taking are not only lawful, they’re the kinds of actions taken by every single Republican President and every single Democratic President for the past half century,” Obama said. “And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill.”

Read more on Obama’s immigration plan from The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley.

Naturally, reactions from both sides of the aisle poured in as Obama gave his remarks — including from a number of politicians who are believed to be eyeing the presidency in 2016.

Here’s how the potential presidential candidates are responding to the president’s remarks: