Obama Offers Millions for Muslim Tech Fund

Funding for technology projects as part of foreign aid to countries with predominantly Muslim populations != "Muslim Tech Fund". We don't call foreign aid to Israel "Jewish aid".

While I like the idea of trying to inspire the (radical?) muslim countries in the middle east to develop out of the oil market, I don't think our $150M--or even $1.5B--will change anything.<p>The leaders in the middle east need to make these investments with their endless piles of cash.... and historically they haven't (Dubai for finance being a notable exception).<p>The truth is we should be disengaging from these countries on a business level by putting massive investment into solar, wind and nuclear. The investments in our recent wars in the region could have easily made us energy independent by now..... if Bush or Obama were true leaders they would have focused our resources on the goal of energy independence.

For a country that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy this is a prime example of poor money management.

This seems like an incredibly poor idea. For whatever reason, people with engineering and hard-science backgrounds are much more likely to become terrorists (<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/engineers_terrorists_wikipedia_oxford_sociology/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/engineers_terrorists...</a>). And dollar-for-dollar, US companies still seem to get more out of engineering investments than overseas companies do (even when they're using workers who immigrated). And with a deficit like the one we have, throwing more money at uncertain projects is a poor plan, even if it <i>is</i> investment, rather than spending.<p>So, this is a waste of money we don't have, in order to get worse results that it would get if we spent it here, with the side effect that it could increase the supply of terrorists.