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Bits Blog: Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End
Google has joined the UN, Harvard University and a pressure group founded by George Clooney to use satellites to scour Sudan for evidence of state-organised violence before next month’s referendum that could see the country split in two.
Clooney said that he had launched the Satellite Sentinel Project to “stop a war before it starts” by warning the government in Khartoum that it would not be able to hide war crimes from the rest of the world, as it did for so long in Darfur, if there is violence in southern Sudan, which is likely to vote on 9 January to secede.
The project plans to reduce the waiting time for satellite images from more than a fortnight to less than 36 hours. The images will be scrutinised by the UN for evidence of mass movements of people, destruction of villages and other indicators of organised violence. The Harvard Humanitarian Initiative will also study the pictures.
The images will immediately be made public. If there is evidence of war crimes, appeals for action will be led in part by the Enough Project, an anti-genocide organisation led by the author and activist John Prendergast.
Clooney and Prendergast said today in a statement that there was a serious threat of violence.
“The government in Khartoum has armed militias in contested bordering regions, the government air force has bombed border areas, and both sides have massed military units and equipment along the hottest border spots,” they said. “These areas have witnessed some of the most deadly conflict in the world since world war two. The former director of national intelligence says that southern Sudan is the place in the world most likely to experience genocide.
“We were late to Rwanda. We were late to the Congo. We were late to Darfur. There is no time to wait.”
The referendum is the result of a 2005 peace deal to end more than two decades of civil war that cost more than two million lives. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, has committed himself to respecting the result of the oil-rich south’s vote. But there has already been violence amid accusations that the government is funding armed groups opposed to independence. Last week, the US vice president, Joe Biden, called Sudan’s second vice president, Ali Osman Mohmed Taha, to express Washington’s concern about potential violence.
Jonathan Hutson of the Enough Project said that advances in technology had given humanitarian organisations an advantage that should help not only expose violence but prevent it. “This project is leveraging Google map makers open source platform to wage peace. Unlike previous satellite imagery gathering projects which were after-the-fact documentation exercises, this project aims to stop a war before it starts,” he said. “War criminals thrive in the dark. They behave differently when you shine a media spotlight on them, when you give them notice that satellite imagery can be quickly shared with the world. This is an open source public platform for waging peace and this transforms anti-war efforts from now on.”
“Passing over Sudan at any given time are perhaps a dozen commercial satellites that have high resolution images available for purchase. The cost barrier has been the key factor that has limited the effective use of satellite imagery analysis in the human rights field,” Hutson added.
The Sudan initiative is being funded for six months by Not On Our Watch, an organisation co-founded by Clooney and other film stars such as Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. “We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we’re watching, the world is watching,” said Clooney.
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There’s something about the internet that can move even the most monosyllabic politician to flights of visionary rhetoric. “Imagine if the internet took hold in China,” said George W Bush in 1999, sounding like a knock-off John Lennon. “Imagine how freedom would spread.”
It turns out he was wrong on that one, too. After four years of running a search engine in China, Google last week relocated it to Hong Kong. On the Chinese mainland, Google had been self-censoring search results to keep on the right side of the Communist party; now that it has moved offshore the entire service will face interruptions from the Great Firewall – a massive, sophisticated system that monitors Chinese surfing of any websites outside the domestic internet. What you’re seeing here is not just the humbling of the Don’t-Be-Evil brigade; it’s yet another defeat of the idea that to bring democracy to foreign dictatorships, you simply add the internet.
Bush isn’t the only world leader who believed this. There was Bill Clinton, who famously argued that “trying to control the internet is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall”. And Gordon Brown, who told this paper last summer that Twitter, blogging and all the rest meant “you cannot have Rwanda again”, because word would spread so quickly. And behind the prime ministers and presidents were enough new-media visionaries to fill a dozen wi-fi enabled Starbucks, all preaching the gospel of a borderless internet and free expression for all.
Cyber-utopians, Evgeny Morozov calls them – and the internet scholar admits he used to be one. A few years ago, he worked for a non-profit organisation that promoted web-based journalism in his home of Belarus and other authoritarian parts of the former Soviet bloc. “We wanted more young people in politics,” he says. “They ended up going to prison instead.” A cheap way of building a new civic society was no match for the old repressive structures of the state.
That has become the theme of Morozov’s work. Now an academic in the US, he has plenty of examples of how Beijing, Tehran and Moscow are adapting the internet for their own purposes. He quotes the example of the “Fifty-cent” bloggers in China, so called not because of their fondness for over-muscled American rappers but because of the money they earn for each pro-government blog they post on internet forums. He describes how the clerics of Qom in Iran are now recruiting and training religious bloggers; while the secret police in Tehran find Twitter and Facebook very useful tools for keeping tabs on dissidents.
New means of communication usually excite heady talk about how they will bring about big social changes. As Tom Standage observes in his book The Victorian Internet, the fact that the telegraph allowed people in different continents to communicate almost instantaneously gave rise to predictions that there would never be another international conflict. There then followed two world wars.
Developed in California, the web is often seen as the repository of similarly sunny liberal values. This paper’s coverage last week of the Google case ran under the logo “CHINA V THE WEB” – as if the internet were a sovereign state or a moral philosophy rather than a technology that people use to download porn, or watch videos of a cat playing the piano.
Like all mass technologies, the web is a force for change – primarily because it makes it cheaper and easier than ever before for people to communicate with each other. But there’s nothing that says the change has to be good or bad, or how far it needs to go. The answers to those questions won’t be found on Google.
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They are reddish-brown, smaller than an apple seed, have a taste for human blood and when they bite they itch like hell. And now the onward march of the common bedbug has extended into cyberspace.
The search engine giant Google confirmed today that its 9th Avenue offices in Manhattan have been infested with the bugs. Parts of the headquarters, a futuristic space renowned for having a Lego room and scooters for staff to move around, have been found to be harbouring the parasites, prompting the wags at Gawker media group to wonder whether its possible for them to spread via the internet.
Google is the latest victim of an epidemic that has been rampaging through New York over the summer and has the city that normally prides itself on its permanent state of cool in a veritable panic: the blood suckers have wreaked havoc everywhere from the Empire State building to hospital wards, the prosecutor’s office in Brooklyn and Time Warner’s Manhattan headquarters.
Nobody is immune to the threat, from theatre-goers to dwellers in posh Manhattan condominiums and shoppers. Hollister, the teen clothing store, had to close its flagship outlet in SoHo after employees complained they were being bitten.
The outbreak at Google was disclosed by one of its marketing staff who posted the news on her Twitter feed. “Jeepers, I am not immune to the bedbug panic. Bedbugs have been found at work.”
The feed has now been taken down.
Across the city, there has been a two-thirds increase in the number of bedbug cases reported over the past two years, with almost 13,000 calls to the city’s helpline over the past 12 months. Last year, a survey suggested one in 15 New Yorkers had become victims, a proportion that is likely to have risen since. Experts put the spread down to the decline in use of the chemical DDT, which was banned in 1972. The US environmental protection agency warned last month of an “alarming resurgence” of bed bugs that was overwhelming public health authorities.The agency has promised to search for a new generation of safe pesticides strong enough to eradicate them.
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Last week, Microsoft released tantalising pictures of its latest device which got bloggers talking about a tablet. The division of Microsoft behind the account, however, makes keyboards, webcams and mice so it’s more likely that the flat matt black device in the photos is Microsoft’s rival to Apple’s recently announced trackpad. Also Microsoft has a patchy record when it comes to consumer trends. While the Xbox has taken a valuable place in the games console market, its Zune portable music player is still years behind Apple’s iPod in terms of sales.Last month chief executive Steve Ballmer said developing Windows-based tablet computers is “job one urgency” for the software group. He added “we have got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates” but while the firm’s latest PC version of its software has touch capabilities, analysts have warned that putting the whole operating system on a tablet will mean manufacturers will have to use a lot of memory and fast processors on the device, which will increase its price. Also they question whether Microsoft still has the tablet market wrong: consumers do not want to do everything they can do on a desktop on a tablet. It is not merely a new form factor, it is a new kind of device. Some manufacturers are looking at whether its Windows Phone software – which also enables touch as well as the viewing of Microsoft Office documents – is not a better system on which to base Microsoft tablets. Either way, Ballmer said Microsoft is working with partners including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Asus, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba, and Sony on tablets. Many of those firms, however, also have other software in mind.
Google, meanwhile, has long been rumoured to be working on its tablet computer, most recently in conjunction with Verizon (that story, however, may have been a confusion of the recent news that Verizon is actually working with Motorola to produce a tablet device aimed at the home entertainment market and running Google’s Android software). But there are questions as to why Google needs an own-brand tablet while many manufacturers are to produce their devices based on its Android. The company was planning a smartphone called the Nexus One because it feared that the iPhone was running away with the market and the industry needed to be shown what could be done with Android. But now that a plethora of good quality Android devices are appearing, Google has halted the Nexus programme. The real question among technology watchers is whether Google will work closely with one or two tablet manufacturers to create devices based on its Chrome OS software, which is aimed at web-enabled laptops and is due out later this year.
The handset makers
Several mobile phone manufacturers are already working on tablets based on Google’s Android. First out of the blocks will be a tablet from Samsung. The Korean hardware company is expected to give more details today but it will run Android and have a 7 inch screen, making it smaller than the iPad, but including a camera and accept memory cards. There is also talk of a second device with a tablet screen on one side and e-book reader on the other. While its first tablet is likely to use Android, Samsung also seems to want to use its new Bada operating system – which is used by its recently launched Wave mobile phone – for tablets. It remains to be seen whether consumers will want yet another operating system to deal with. Domestic rival, LG, is also working on an Android-based tablet which is scheduled for launch by the end of the year.
RIM, the company behind the BlackBerry, is rumoured to be working on a rival to the iPad, dubbed the BlackPad, which is scheduled for launch in November. Nokia, meanwhile, tried to enter the so-called netbook market with its own 3G Booklet last year. It ran Windows 7 and was hardly a success. Since then, the Finnish mobile phone company has teamed up with Intel to develop software better suited to laptops and tablets, under the MeeGo banner. The first device is likely to be a smartphone which could be out for Christmasand Nokia seems to be in no rush to produce a tablet.
Motorola is working with Verizon on an Android-powered tablet. The question is whether HTC will follow up its success in the Android-powered smartphone market with a tablet.
The PC manufacturers
Tablets running Windows have been in the market for some time from manufacturers such as France’s Archos while Lenovo, HP and others have released laptops – called convertibles – whose screens swivel to turn them into tablets. Taiwan’s Acer and China’s Asus are preparing tablets with Microsoft software. The latter will also release tablets using Android. But many consumers will prefer a household name when they take the plunge into tablets. One of the first was the Streak from Dell, but it is smaller than the iPad and seems more like a smartphone. BT, wants to get in on the tablet act and is developing a touchscreen version of the traditional landline telephone, which raises the unwelcome spectre of Amstrad’s failed eMailer device.
Toshiba has produced a dual-screen tablet running Windows 7 and is working on a single screen tablet called SmartPad, which may run Android. Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, is believed to have been working on a device called the Zeen which runs Android and looks more like an e-reader. Tech watchers reckon HP’s real push into tablets will come on the back of its recent acquisition of smartphone designer Palm. The e-reader market, of course, already has the Kindle from Amazon – which has just been upgraded – and the Sony e-Reader, although both are likely to be superseded, over time, by tablets.
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Google and Verizon have put forward a joint policy framework aimed at allaying fears the two companies could bring an end to the internet principle of net neutrality.
In a joint op-ed in the Washington Post today, the Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and his Verizon counterpart, Ivan Seidenberg, outlined their “commitment to an open internet”, saying “blocking and degrading internet traffic is antithetical to the principles of openness and consumers’ expectations”.
Long-running talks between the US media and telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a host of big internet companies – including Google and US telecoms operator Verizon – broke down last week amid reports of the two companies trying to forge a deal in private, something they both denied.
But the two companies have been discussing the concept of net neutrality – an internet tenet stating that all content should be delivered at the same speed on a level playing field – for some time.
In a post on the Google Public Policy blog late yesterday, Alan Davidson, the search giant’s director of public policy, and Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president of public affairs, outline the future for net neutrality in the US.
Here’s some initial reaction from around the web:
“One cynical way of reading this is to think of Google and Verizon as two syndicates carving out a piece of the action: Google gets a commitment to net neutrality over the standard, wired internet that people access via computers at home or at work, while Verizon gets far weaker regulation on wireless networks accessed via smartphones.
“Why does Google feel it needs to work with Verizon on this? Verizon in the US is in a uniquely powerful position of straddling both wired and wireless access, since it operates one of the two major wireless networks (AT&T running the other), while also being a major wired ISP competing with the likes of cable provider Comcast.
“[...] Needless to say, the lack of regulation applying to wireless access and the possibility of future ‘designated services’ doesn’t please anyone outside the telecoms industry, or indeed at the FCC.”
“But here’s the rub: You should not trust Verizon or other carriers, or Google for that matter, to follow through in ways that are truly in the interest of the kind of open networks the nation needs. Throughout the conference call, we kept hearing references to the ‘public internet’ – an expression that leads inescapably to something else.
“If Schmidt was telling the truth when he said Google’s overwhelming focus will remain on the public internet, such as his promise that YouTube will remain there, that’s great. I have no reason to disbelieve him, and Google’s track record to date is strong on this issue. But plans change, managements change, and corporate goals change.”
“If open networks are good, why should wireless be different? They don’t make the case in these documents for why the ‘unique technical and operational characteristics’ should change the fundamental underlying principle of the network. That’s not to say there isn’t a good argument, but it’s certainly not in either the blog post or the policy document.
“More troubling is that the language of the wireline net neutrality is squirrely. The companies suggest that they would be maintaining ‘net neutrality’ on wireline services, but they’d allow ‘additional or differentiated services’ over their networks.
“[...] Again, this is just a policy paper, but this seems like a slippery definition of what is and is not internet traffic. Why not carry these ‘additional services’ over the internet, where they would be subject to the net neutrality rules that these companies claim to think is a good idea?”
“The good news is nothing about this compromise has any teeth without the FCC deciding to made it part of its official rules on network neutrality. However, given the FCC’s precarious position as a broadband regulator and a lack of support from Congress on this issue the temptation to accept this compromise as good for everyone may force a version of network neutrality that leaves mobile, one of the fastest areas of innovation on the web, out of the new rules. It also enables an alternative version of the public internet that could lead to the creation of a first-class and a second-class system of packet delivery.”
“I’m concerned [that] if the FCC uses this as a template, we will create a backwater on the traditional internet and allow for a lot of top-down control in the very areas where use seems to be moving.”
“Overall, there’s a lot that’s bad about this proposal, and it shouldn’t form the basis of legislation in Congress or of rules by the FCC.
“The biggest problem with the framework is that, while purporting to support ‘the open internet’, it draws illogical distinctions on the basis of what technology you use to access the internet, and between ‘the public internet’ (Verizon’s mantra on the press call) and ‘additional online services’.
“If the Verizon/Google proposal is adopted, the window of openness that allowed companies like [Schmidt's] to thrive and grow will be closed. The internet could be frozen in 2010, with companies like his on top.”
“The idea that Google and Verizon think nobody will notice they’ve proposed a network neutrality solution that excludes wireless while nuzzling their multi-billion-dollar Android partnership seems almost obnoxiously cocky. Arrogance is par for the course for Verizon, but assuming your audience is comprised of complete morons seems like new territory for Google.
“It seems like common sense that telecom regulators, not the sector’s wealthiest players, should be dictating the beat of this particular policy drum. The fact that this isn’t the case speaks to the FCC’s murky leadership over the past year. The framework used to create any internet policy rules shouldn’t be a game of policy make believe focused on protecting the revenues of the wealthiest constituents – it should be the brain trust of a broad collective, including consumers, smaller carriers, and truly independent experts.”
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Software company Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the search giant of patent infringement with the Android mobile operating system.
The legal complaint, filed in California, concerns Oracle’s Java software, which it acquired through the purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier this year.
In a press statement, Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said: “In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property.
“This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement.”
A Google spokesman said he could not comment on the lawsuit as the company had not had a chance to review it yet.
Google’s Android platform has enjoyed a rapid ascent in the smartphone market due to the multiplicity of devices now running it. Figures released yesterday by analyst Gartner show Android is now the leading smartphone platform in the US, overtaking BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion.
In the months leading up to Android’s release, industry insiders speculated about its possible effect on the Java programming language.
Now Oracle is said to be seeking an injunction to stop Google from further building and distributing Android, plus higher monetary damages for willful and deliberate infringement.
Part of Oracle’s complaint focuses on a piece of software included within the Android operating system called Dalvik. It is a virtual machine which is used to run some applications on Android devices.
Malik Saadi-Kamal, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms &; Media, told the Guardian: “This is similar to when Microsoft was mandating the integration of Internet Explorer as a default browser, which raised some concerns among competitors.
“But the problem I can see coming is the fact that Google is mandating the use of Dalvik as the main java runtime for Android and device vendors can’t really substitute this runtime against another Java Runtime complying with Java Me or not.”
Writing on the company blog, Brian Prentice, a research vice president at analyst Gartner, said Oracle is “not a company that has made a sport” out of actions like this:
“[...] before we write off Oracle’s action against Google as another attempt to obtain a tidy little license agreement, let’s realise that we could be dealing with an IP pit bull here.
“If Oracle sees Android as being as much a strategic threat to their business as TomorrowNow was, then this has a higher probability of making its way to the courts than your average infringement action. If it does, and if they prevail, then look out Google.”
Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight, told the Guardian: “Given that over one billion mobile phones are sold every year, even a few pennies per mobile phone can add up to a big revenue. On this basis it is unsurprising that Google’s Android has emerged as a target for intellectual property claims.
“Google is likely having discussions with lots of patent owners on this topic and given Java’s long history in mobile phone application development Oracle may feel that it has grounds to claim infringements.”
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Police in South Korea have raided Google’s Seoul headquarters as part of an investigation into data collected by the company’s Street View cars.
Police official Ahn Chang-soo said computers and hard drives had been seized in the raid by 19 Korean National Police Agency (KNPA) officers on the Google premises in the South Korean capital.
“[The police] have been investigating Google Korea on suspicion of unauthorised collection and storage of data on unspecified internet users from Wi-Fi networks,” a statement released by the KNPA added.
A Google spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that the police have visited Google Korea in conjunction with their investigation around data collection by Street View cars. We will cooperate with the investigation and answer any questions they have.”
South Korea is one of many countries – including the UK – investigating the data collected by Google’s Street View cars. The search giant has admitted to accidentally intercepting fragments – amounting to 600MB – of personal data through Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries as it sought to map towns and cities.
In May this year, Alan Eustace, a senior vice president in engineering and research at Google, wrote on the company’s blog: “It is now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.”
In June, the company said it had deleted private wireless data collected in Austria, Denmark and Ireland.
A string of code in the production systems of Street View cars allowed Google to retrieve and store information about the networks’ location, names and Media Access Control (MAC) addresses on wireless networks that were not password protected.
Last month the UK information commissioner ruled that Google is unlikely to have collected “significant amounts of personal data” with its Street View mapping cars, saying there is “no evidence as yet that the data captured by Google has caused or could cause any individual detriment”.
Figures collated and published earlier this year by analysts Aqute Intelligence showed that nearly half of the 60 worldwide legal or criminal investigations being faced by Google relate to the company’s Street View service.
Street View cars have been collecting Wi-Fi data in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the US.
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So Google have come up with a number, and it’s big. Thanks to the blistering pace of technology, of course, its claim that there are precisely 129,864,880 books in the world will already be just that little bit out of date – but it’s enough to set you thinking. How many of them are any good? How many of them have never been read by anybody other than their author? How many of them are available on the Kindle?
The number itself, naturally, is open to dispute. On the Google Books blog, “software engineer” Leonid Taycher goes into gnarly detail about how they’ve arrived at it, beginning with the question “what is a book?” and going on to investigate issues of duplication, the reliability of sources and the exclusion of “non-books” (microforms, maps, t-shirts with ISBNs – there are around 1,000, apparently). It seems that they’ve given lots of thought to the matter, at any rate, but what we’d like to know is a much more homespun sort of number. How many books can you, personally, put your name to?
Counting the books I’ve got at home is complicated because I’m not there right now, and neither are most of my books (long story), but right here, right now, “filed” on the desk, I’ve got 46 – though I swear that at least three of those have nothing to do with me. In the cupboard across the way I’ve got about another 60, and there are probably a bunch more waiting for me in the post room, so even on this small scale, when we try to come up with a figure, we run into problems. But nevertheless that’s what we want to know: if Google has 130m books, how many do you have?
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Google has dismissed reports that the company is in talks with US telecoms operator Verizon that could bring an end to net neutrality.
In an article published yesterday, the New York Times said the two companies “are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege”.
Today the search giant has said it remains as committed as ever to an internet where content exists on a level playing field.
A Google spokeswoman told the Guardian: “The New York Times is quite simply wrong. We have not had any conversations with Verizon about paying for carriage of Google traffic. We remain as committed as we always have been to an open internet.”
Verizon has also moved to dismiss the story.”The NYT article regarding conversations between Google and Verizon is mistaken,” the company said. “It fundamentally misunderstands our purpose. As we said in our earlier FCC filing, our goal is an internet policy framework that ensures openness and accountability, and incorporates specific FCC authority, while maintaining investment and innovation. To suggest this is a business arrangement between our companies is entirely incorrect.”
Many news outlets reported Google and Verizon as edging towards a deal that could see content creators paying for internet service providers to fast-track content to consumers.
Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive of Google, said earlier this week that the two internet giants had been talking for “a long time about trying to get an agreement on what the definition of net neutrality is”.
Such a deal could have seen providers of high-bandwidth content or applications – Google’s YouTube and BBC’s iPlayer, for example – having to pay the internet service provider (ISP) for its content being delivered to consumers. Google has previously said it wouldn’t pay for such a service.
Google and Verizon are just two of the parties involved in a long-running hearing held by the US Federal Communications Commission with the aim of coming to an agreement on the future delivery of online content and services.
Julius Genachowski, the FCC chair, is seeking to adopt guidelines that would ensure telecoms companies provide equal treatment of traffic travelling over the networks. The current hearing comes from a Federal Courts Appeal ruling in April this year which said that the FCC has no authority to apply net neutrality policies to ISPs in the country. ISPs are legally entitled manage the traffic on their network as they see fit.
The FCC has said that it does not wish to impose strict terms and conditions on internet rates – seeking to appease concerns the agency could become more of a regulatory body – but says a consistent metric for equal access must be reached. Advocates of net neutrality argue that any impositions on content delivery would stifle innovation and the business models of many new internet companies.
Gigi Sohn, president of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, told the New York Times: “The point of a network neutrality rule is to prevent big companies from dividing the Internet between them. The fate of the Internet is too large a matter to be decided by negotiations involving two companies, even companies as big as Verizon and Google.”
The reported deal that both companies were said to be nearing took many by surprise, not least because Google’s submission to the FCC calls for “a nondiscrimination principle that bans prioritising internet traffic based on the ownership (the who), the source (the what) of the content or application”.
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Bits Blog: Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012George Clooney and Google launch satellite plan to avert Sudan violence
Thursday, December 30th, 2010Apple’s iPad bonanza triggers race to launch copycat tablets
Saturday, August 14th, 2010
This article titled “George Clooney and Google launch satellite plan to avert Sudan violence” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 29th December 2010 20.58 UTC