Friday, December 30, 2011

2555 days & nights.

Of joy. & a few of sorrow.
Of peace. & some where it was wished for.
Of happiness. Mostly.
Of gratitude. Sometimes for the temporary ability of deafness.
Of forgiveness. Even when it was hard.
Of kindness. Especially when it wasn't deserved.
Of rock-solid support. Even when it seemed like shaky ground.
Of fun. Even when it didn't seem like it at the moment.

My gorgeous wife, Sona, & I, were wished upon us a 'Happy Married Life' 7 years ago.
We gratefully accepted those wishes with very little knowledge of what lay ahead.
We learnt along the way. & still are.
That we have just one another. Even when we had family & friends around.
That Happy-ness is a journey. Not a destination.
That Home is where we decide to keep our hearts. Not an enclosure of walls.
That Children are a blessing. Even when they make their best effort to prove otherwise.
That Madness is a common streak in people. Especially when you're married.
That Decisions are easy to make. Following through with them isn't so.
That Solitude is available. Maybe even necessary. Again, especially when you're married.
That Choices are visible only if you are willing to accept them.
That Sacrifices are essential. But they don't cause as much pain as it's made out to be.
That Sickness is an instant relationship healer. If you allow it to be.
That Health is a constant work-in-progress.
That Kids say the truth always. Especially when you don't want them to.

As we step into the 8th year of our wedded life, & 11th (or is it 12th?) year of having known one another [it's enough that one person remembers those dates! ;) ] I wish us that Irish blessing, modified slightly:

"I wish us enough sun to keep our attitude bright,
and enough rain to make us appreciate the sun more.
I wish us enough happiness to keep our spirit alive,
and enough pain so that the smallest joys in life
appear much bigger than they are.
I wish us enough gain to satisfy your wanting,
and enough loss that we'll appreciate all that we possess.
And I wish us enough "Hello's" to get us through the final "Goodbye".

Happy Anniversary Sweetheart!
.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Childlike curiosity

Child-like

Musing about SOPA

Musing about SOPA:

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write this post. The internet was not, and is not, solely a new distribution mechanism for Hollywood and for pockets of the music industry; but the power of these incumbents is immense in the Western world, and it is therefore possible, perhaps even likely, that bad law will be legislated to protect decayed and dying industries from being disrupted. Even though the customer suffers as a result.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write this post. The internet wasn’t always a global phenomenon. It grew principally from the vision and commitment of US citizens, and as a result there has been a level of US-centricity about its progress and evolution. If the US were to give up this leadership role (which it no doubt will, if SOPA goes ahead) then others will step into the breach. The internet routes around obstacles, we have seen this repeatedly during Arab Spring.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write this post. The anchors and frames for this debate have already been subverted; the incumbent lobby has done a good PR job. The commonly held belief is that people against SOPA, by definition support stealing, support denying artists their rightful income. So everyone who tries to attack SOPA goes through that mill, and the mill grinds slowly and exceeding small.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write this post. Anything I do may not be enough to stop it happening; it may not matter anyway; and it may damage my reputation unduly and unwarrantedly.

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to write this post. There appear to be only downsides to my action.

So why am I writing it?

Because the internet matters. It matters to the world. It matters to people who are giving their all to changing historical and broken paradigms in education, in healthcare, in business, even in government. As the price of being connected with smart mobile devices drops, as three billion more people join the ranks of the ubiquitous always-on, we’re going to see amazing changes. Changes that will radically improve the lives of our children and grandchildren.

For that to happen, we have to make the internet a safer place. We. Not me. Not you. We. Much has been done to achieve this, much remains to be done. Sustainable cybersecurity is essential if we wish for a world where health, education, welfare, business and government are transformed anew. And there’s been so much progress in making this happen that wasting it is bordering on the criminal, the insane, the criminally insane.

This transformation, bringing in the power of the collective, making everything more social, more sharable, democratising access and knowledge and power, this transformation is essential if we are to solve some of the core problems we face, in environment, in disease control, in health and nutrition, in climate change, in food supplies, in water. The institutions we looked to in the past cannot cope with the complexity they face. They need the internet and what it represents. And they need it to be safe, secure, reliable.

I’ve read more than I care to list here about SOPA; I can’t claim to understand all of it, I’m neither a lawyer nor a politician. The Wikipedia article is probably a good place for you to start, if you’re interested… the very existence of Wikipedia is threatened by everything that SOPA represents.

There is so much emotion around about SOPA that I wanted to give my readers something fundamentally different to look at, when it comes to forming your views. What I suggest is, leave aside everything else you’ve heard and read about SOPA, and concentrate on this one point:

How do you defend cyberspace while protecting against online piracy?

This research paper by the Brookings Institution: Cybersecurity in the Balance: Weighing the risks of the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, is a must-read in this context. Here’s part of the opening:

This paper does not deal with the questions of economic value, free expression or other issues raised by advocates on both sides. Instead, I highlight the very real threats to cybersecurity in a small section of both bills in their attempts to execute policy through the Internet architecture. While these bills will not “break the Internet,” they further burden cyberspace with three new risks

The “three new risks” mentioned are spelt out further in the article. I summarise them below (my words, my interpretations):

PROTECT IP and SOPA make it harder and more complex to keep the internet secure, just in terms of architecture and processes

In addition, as companies and customers are forced to migrate away to less secure places, they will be exposed to greater risks

Current national and international initiatives to improve security will be undermined, set back, and sometimes even abandoned

We need to frame the argument differently, and the Brookings paper helps us do that.

It’s not “Do you support Hollywood or do you support stealing?”

It is “Do you want a safe internet where health, education, welfare and government are transformed, or do you want a distribution mechanism with protection for Hollywood’s historical business model?”

I hope SOPA does not happen. I hope better, more sensible, more technically feasible, more equitable and more progressive means are found to deal with the problem of decay of Hollywood business models. I hope that the more sensible routes will actually mean that creatives get paid properly, rather than what happens to them today.

Friday, December 23, 2011

My Wallpaper

Or rather, a reminder.

Done is better than Perfect.

Federal Judge Questions SEC Settlement

2nd Federal Judge Questions SEC Settlement

A federal judge in Milwaukee has criticized the Securities and Exchange Commission for being too soft with corporate enforcement, marking the second time the agency has been criticized for weak settlements in the past month.

The idea of settlements is a bit too vague to me. They admit they are guilty, but they don't. What is it really?

Another Too Big to Fail bank gets off lightly

"Bank of America agreed to pay $335 million to resolve allegations that its Countrywide unit engaged in a widespread pattern of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers on home loans."

Right, so the Bank of America settles with the Dept of Justice to resolve allegations.

No admission of guilt.

Pay a milli-ounce of what passes for flesh, & you're off the hook.

Great system. For the perpetrators.

Another Too Big to Fail bank gets off lightly..

Notice something wrong with this Fox News Report?

Is this Faux's News Strategy??
For faux sake.

The Unintended Empire - George Friedman, Stratfor

An empire it is.... & the Emperor's clothes?

The Unintended Empire

By George Friedman, STRATFOR

The American president is the most important political leader in the world. The reason is simple: he governs a nation whose economic and military policies shape the lives of people in every country on every continent. The president can and does order invasions, embargos, and sanctions. The economic policies he shapes will resonate in billions of lives, perhaps over many generations. During the next decade, who the president is and what he (or she) chooses to do will often affect the lives of non-Americans more than the decisions of their own governments.

This was driven home to me on the night of the most recent U.S. presidential election, when I tried to phone one of my staff in Brussels and reached her at a bar filled with Belgians celebrating Barack Obama's victory. I later found that such Obama parties had taken place in dozens of cities around the world. People everywhere seemed to feel that the outcome of the American election mattered greatly to them, and many appeared personally moved by Obama's rise to power.

Before the end of Obama's first year in office, five Norwegian politicians awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, to the consternation of many who thought that he had not yet done anything to earn it. But according to the committee's chair, Obama had immediately and dramatically changed the world's perception of the United States, and this change alone merited the prize. George W. Bush had been hated because he was seen as an imperialist bully. Obama was being celebrated because he signaled that he would not be an imperialist bully.

From the Nobel Prize committee to the bars of Singapore and São Paolo, what was being unintentionally acknowledged was the uniqueness of the American presidency itself, as well as a new reality that Americans are reluctant to admit. The new American regime mattered so much to the Norwegians and to the Belgians and to the Poles and to the Chileans and to the billions of other people around the globe because the American president is now in the sometimes awkward (and never explicitly stated) role of global emperor, a reality that the world—and the president—will struggle with in the decade to come.

The American Emperor

The American president's unique status and influence are not derived from conquest, design, or divine ordination but ipso facto are the result of the United States being the only global military power in the world. The U.S. economy is also more than three times the size of the next largest sovereign economy. These realities give the United States power that is disproportionate to its population, to its size, or, for that matter, to what many might consider just or prudent. But the United States didn't intend to become an empire. This unintentional arrangement was a consequence of events, few of them under American control.

Certainly there was talk of empire before this. Between Manifest Destiny and the Spanish American War, the nineteenth century was filled with visions of empire that were remarkably modest compared to what has emerged. The empire I am talking about has little to do with those earlier thoughts. Indeed, my argument is that the latest version emerged without planning or intention.

From World War II through the end of the Cold War, the United States inched toward this preeminence, but preeminence did not arrive until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, leaving the U.S. alone as a colossus without a counterweight.

In 1796, Washington made his farewell address and announced this principle: "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible." The United States had the option of standing apart from the world at that time. It was a small country, geographically isolated. Today, no matter how much the rest of the world might wish us to be less intrusive or how tempting the prospect might seem to Americans, it is simply impossible for a nation whose economy is so vast to have commercial relations without political entanglements or consequences.

Washington's anti-political impulse befitted the anti-imperialist founder of the republic. Ironically, the extraordinary success of that republic made this vision impossible.

The American economy is like a whirlpool, drawing everything into its vortex, with imperceptible eddies that can devastate small countries or enrich them. When the U.S. economy is doing well, it is the engine driving the whole machine; when it sputters, the entire machine can break down. There is no single economy that affects the world as deeply or ties it together as effectively.

When we look at the world from the standpoint of exports and imports, it is striking how many countries depend on the United States for 5 or even 10 percent of their Gross Domestic Product, a tremendous amount of interdependence. While there are bilateral economic relations and even multilateral ones that do not include the United States, there are none that are unaffected by the United States. Everyone watches and waits to see what the United States will do. Everyone tries to shape American behavior, at least a little bit, in order to gain some advantage or avoid some disadvantage.

Historically, this degree of interdependence has bred friction and even war. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, France and Germany feared each other's power, so each tried to shape the other's behavior. The result was that the two countries went to war with each other three times in seventy years. Prior to World War I, the English journalist (later a member of Parliament) Norman Angell wrote a widely read book called The Great Illusion, in which he demonstrated the high degree of economic interdependence in Europe and asserted that this made war impossible. Obviously, the two World Wars proved that that wasn't the case. Advocates for free trade continue to use this argument. Yet, as we will see, a high degree of global interdependence, with the United States at the center, actually increases—rather than diminishes—the danger of war.

That the world is no longer filled with relatively equal powers easily tempted into military adventures mitigates this danger somewhat. Certainly the dominance of American military power is such that no one country can hope to use main force to fundamentally redefine its relationship with the United States. At the same time, however, we can see that resistance to American power is substantial and that wars have been frequent since 1991.

While America's imperial power might degrade, power of this magnitude does not collapse quickly except through war. German, Japanese, French, and British power declined not because of debt but because of wars that devastated those countries' economies, producing debt as one of war's many by-products. The Great Depression, which swept the world in the 1920s and 1930s, had its roots in the devastation of the German economy as a result of World War I and the disruption of trade and financial relations that ultimately spread to encompass the world. Conversely, the great prosperity of the American alliance after 1950 resulted from the economic power that the United States built up—undamaged—during World War II.

Absent a major, devastating war, any realignment of international influence based on economics will be a process that takes generations, if it happens at all. China is said to be the coming power. Perhaps so. But the U.S. economy is 3.3 times larger than China's. China must sustain an extraordinarily high growth rate for a long time in order to close its gap with the United States. In 2009, the United States accounted for 22.5 percent of all foreign direct investment in the world, which, according to the United Nations Council on Trade and Development, makes it the world's single largest source of investment. China, by comparison, accounted for 4.4 percent.

The United States also may well be the largest borrower in the world, but that indebtedness does not reduce its ability to affect the international system. Whether it stops borrowing, increases borrowing, or decreases it, the American economy constantly shapes global markets. It is the power to shape that is important. Of course, it should also be remembered that every dollar the United States borrows, others lend. If the market is to be trusted, it is saying that lending to the United States, even at currently low interest rates, is a good move.

Many countries have impacts on other countries. What makes the United States an empire is the number of countries it affects, the intensity of the impact, and the number of people in those countries affected by these economic processes and decisions.

In recent years, for instance, Americans had a rising appetite for shrimp. This ripple in the U.S. market caused fish farmers in the Mekong Delta to adjust their production to meet the new demand. When the American economy declined in 2008, luxury foods like shrimp were the first to be cut back, a retrenchment that was felt as far away as those fish farms in the Mekong Delta. Following a similar pattern, the computer maker Dell built a large facility in Ireland, but when labor costs rose there, Dell shifted operations to Poland, even at a time when Ireland was under severe economic pressure. The United States is similarly shaped by other countries, as were Britain and Rome. But the United States is at the center of the web, not on the periphery, and its economy is augmented by its military. Add to that the technological advantage and we can see the structure of America's deep power.

Empires can be formal, with a clear structure of authority, but some can be more subtle and complex. The British controlled Egypt, but Britain's formal power was less than clear. The United States has the global reach to shape the course of many other countries, but because it refuses to think of itself as an imperial power, it has not created a formal, rational structure for managing the power that it clearly has.

The fact that the United States has faced reverses in the Middle East in no way undermines the argument that it is an empire, albeit an immature one. Failure and empire are not incompatible, and in the course of imperial growth and expansion, disasters are not infrequent. Britain lost most of its North American colonies to rebellion a century before the empire reached its apex. The Romans faced civil wars in recurring cycles.

While the core of U.S. power is economic—battered though it might seem at the moment—standing behind that economic power is its military might. The purpose of the American military is to prevent any nation aggrieved by U.S. economic influence, or any coalition of such nations, from using force to redress the conditions that put it (or them) at a disadvantage. Like Rome's legions, American troops are deployed preemptively around the world, simply because the most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening.

The map below, in fact, substantially understates the American military presence. It does not, for instance, track U.S. Special Operations teams operating covertly in many regions, notably Africa. Nor does it include training missions, technical support, and similar functions. Some U.S. troops are fighting wars, some are interdicting drugs, some are protecting their host countries from potential attacks, and some are using their host countries as staging areas in case American troops are needed in another country nearby. In some cases these troops help support Americans who are involved in governing the country, directly or indirectly. In other cases, the troops are simply present, without controlling anything. Troops based in the United States are here not to protect the homeland as much as to be available for what the military calls power projection. This means that they are ready to serve anywhere the president sees fit to deploy them.

As befits a global empire, the United States aligns its economic system and its military system to stand as the guarantor of the global economy. The United States simultaneously provides technologies and other goods and services to buy, an enormous market into which to sell, and armed forces to keep the sea-lanes open. If need be, it moves in to police unruly areas, but it does this not for the benefit of other countries but for itself. Ultimately, the power of the American economy and the distribution of American military force make alignment with the United States a necessity for many countries. It is this necessity that binds countries to the United States more tightly than any formal imperial system could hope to accomplish.

Empires, the unintended consequence of power accumulated for ends far removed from dreams of empire, are usually recognized long after they have emerged. As they become self-aware, they use their momentum to consciously expand, adding an ideology of imperialism—think of Pax Romana or the British "white man's burden"—to empire's reality. An empire gets writers like Virgil and poets like Rudyard Kipling after it is well established, not before. And, as in both Rome and Britain, the celebrants of American empire coexist with those who are appalled by it and who yearn for the earlier, more authentic days.

Rome and Britain were trapped in the world of empire but learned to celebrate the trap. The United States is still at the point where it refuses to see the empire that it has become, and whenever it senses the trappings of empire, it is repelled. But the time has come to acknowledge that the president of the United States manages an empire of unprecedented power and influence, even while it may be informal and undocumented. Only then can we formulate policies over the next decade that will allow us to properly manage the world we find ourselves in charge of.

Managing the Imperial Reality

Over the past twenty years, the United States has struggled to come to grips with the reverberations of being "last man standing" after the fall of the Soviet Union. The task of the president in the next decade is to move from being reactive to having a systematic method of managing the world that he dominates, a method that faces honestly and without flinching the realities of how the world operates. This means turning the American empire from undocumented disorder into an orderly system, a Pax Americana—not because this is the president's free choice, but precisely because he has no choice.

Bringing order to empire is a necessity because even though the United States is overwhelmingly powerful, it is far from omnipotent, and having singular power creates singular dangers. The United States was attacked on September 11, 2001, for example, precisely because of its unique power. The president's task is to manage that kind of power in a way that acknowledges the risks as well as the opportunities, then minimizes the risks and maximizes the benefits.

For those who are made squeamish by any talk of empire, much less talk of bringing order to imperial control, I would point out that the realities of geopolitics do not give presidents the luxury of exercising virtue in the way we think of it when applied to ordinary citizens. Two presidents who attempted to pursue virtue directly, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush, failed spectacularly. Conversely, other presidents, such as Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, who were much more ruthless, failed because their actions were not directed at and unified by any overriding moral purpose.

In bringing order to empire, I propose that future presidents follow the example of three of our most strikingly effective leaders, men who managed to be utterly ruthless in executing a strategy that was nonetheless guided by moral principle. In these cases, moral ends did in fact justify means that were not only immoral but unconstitutional.

Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union and abolished slavery by initiating a concerted program of deception and by trampling on civil liberties. To maintain the loyalty of the border states, he never owned up to his intention to abolish slavery made clear in the great debates of 1858. Instead he dissembled, claiming that while he opposed the spread of slavery beyond the South, he had no intention of abolishing the right to own slaves in states where owning them was already legal.

But Lincoln did more than prevaricate. He suspended the right to habeas corpus throughout the country and authorized the arrest of pro-secession legislators in Maryland. He made no attempt to justify these actions, except to say that if Maryland and the other border states seceded, the war would be lost and the nation would be dismembered, leaving the Constitution meaningless.

Seventy-five years later, in the midst of another grave crisis for the nation, Franklin Roosevelt also did what needed to be done while lying to hide his actions from a public that was not yet ready to follow his lead. In the late 1930s, Congress and the public wanted to maintain strict neutrality as Europe prepared for war, but Roosevelt understood that the survival of democracy itself was at stake. He secretly arranged for the sale of arms to the French and made a commitment to Winston Churchill to use the U.S. Navy to protect merchant ships taking supplies to England—a clear violation of neutrality.

Like Lincoln, Roosevelt was motivated by moral purpose, which meant a moral vision for global strategy. He was offended by Nazi Germany, and he was dedicated to the concept of democracy. Yet to preserve American interests and institutions, he formed an alliance with Stalin's Soviet Union, a regime that in moral terms was every bit as depraved as the Nazis. At home he defied a Supreme Court ruling and authorized wiretapping without warrants as well as the interception and opening of mail. Yet his most egregious violation of civil liberties was to approve the detention and relocation of ethnic Japanese, regardless of their citizenship status. Roosevelt had no illusions about what he was doing. He was ruthlessly violating rules of decency in pursuit of moral necessity.

Ronald Reagan also pursued a ruthless path toward a moral purpose. His goal was destruction of what he called the evil empire of the Soviet Union, and he pursued it—in part by ramping up the arms race, which he knew the Soviets could not afford. He then went to elaborate and devious lengths to block Soviet support for national liberation movements in the Third World. He invaded Grenada in 1983 and supported insurgents fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua. This led to the elaborate ruse of engaging Israel to sell arms to Iran in its war with Iraq and then funneling the profits to the Nicaraguan insurgents, as a way of bypassing a law specifically designed to prevent such intervention. We should also remember Reagan's active support for Muslim jihadists in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. As with Roosevelt and Stalin, a future enemy can be useful to defeat a current one.

The decade ahead will not be a time of great moral crusades. Instead, it will be an era of process, a time in which the realities of the world as presented by facts on the ground will be incorporated more formally into our institutions.

During the past decade, the United States has waged a passionate crusade against terrorism. In the next decade, the need will be for less passion and for more meticulous adjustments in relations with countries such as Israel and Iran. The time also calls for the creation of alliance systems to include nations such as Poland and Turkey that have newly defined relations with the United States. This is the hard and detailed work of imperial strategy. Yet the president cannot afford the illusion that the world will simply accept the reality of overwhelming American hegemony, any more than he can afford to abandon the power. He can never forget that despite his quasi-imperial status, he is president of one country and not of the world.

That is why the one word he must never use is empire. The anti-imperial ethos of America's founding continues

to undergird the country's political culture. Moreover, the pretense that power is distributed more evenly is useful, not just for other countries but for the United States as well. Even so, in the decade ahead, the informal reality of America's global empire must start to take on coherent form.

Because a president must not force the public to confront directly realities that it isn't ready to confront, he must become a master at managing illusions. Slavery could not have survived much beyond the 1860s, no matter how much the South wanted it to. World War II could not have been avoided, regardless of public leanings toward isolationism. Confrontation with the Soviet Union had to take place, even if the public was frightened by those crises. In each case, a strong president created a fabric of illusions to enable him to do what was necessary without causing a huge revolt from the public. In Reagan's case, when his weapons-dealing machinations came to light as "the Iran-contra affair," complete with congressional hearings and indictments and convictions for many of the participants, his well-maintained persona as a simpleminded fellow shielded his power and his image from the fallout. The goings-on in Israel, Iran, and Nicaragua were so complex that even his critics had trouble believing that he could have been responsible.

A Global Strategy of Regions

America's fundamental interests are the physical security of the United States and a relatively untrammeled international economic system. As we will see when we turn to the current state of the world economy, this by no means implies a free trade regime in the sense that free-market ideologues might think of it. It simply means an international system that permits the vast American economy to interact with most, if not all, of the world. Whatever the regulatory regime might be, the United States needs to buy and sell, lend and borrow, be invested in and invest, with a global reach.

One quarter of the world's economy can't flourish in isolation, nor can the consequences of interaction be confined to pure economics. The American economy is built on technological and organizational innovation, up to and including what the economist Joseph A. Schumpeter called "creative destruction": the process by which the economy continually destroys and rebuilds itself, largely through the advance of disruptive technologies.

When American economic culture touches other countries, those affected have the choice of adapting or being submerged. Computers, for example, along with the companies organized around them, have had profoundly disruptive consequences on cultural life throughout the world, from Bangalore to Ireland. American culture is comfortable with this kind of flux, whereas other cultures may not be. China has taken on the additional burden of trying to adapt to a market economy while retaining the political institutions of a Communist state. Germany and France have struggled to limit the American impact, to insulate themselves from what they call "Anglo-Saxon economics." The Russians reeled from their first unbuffered exposure to this force in the 1990s and sought to find their balance in the following decade.

In response to the American whirlpool, the world's attitude, not surprisingly, is often sullen and resistant, as countries try to take advantage of or evade the consequences. President Obama sensed this resistance and capitalized on it. Domestically, he addressed the American need to be admired and liked, while overseas he addressed the need for the United States to be more conciliatory and less overbearing.

While Obama identified the problem and tried to manage it, resistance to imperial power remains a problem without a permanent solution. This is because ultimately it derives not from the policies of the United States but from the inherent nature of imperial power.

The United States has been in this position of near hegemonic power for only twenty years. The first decade of this imperial period was a giddy fantasy in which the end of the Cold War was assumed to mean the end of war itself—a delusion that surfaces at the end of every major conflict. The first years of the new century were the decade in which the American people discovered that this was still a dangerous planet and the American president led a frantic effort to produce an ad hoc response. The years from 2011 to 2021 will be the decade in

which the United States begins to learn how to manage the world's hostility.

Presidents in the coming decade must craft a strategy that acknowledges that the threats that resurfaced in the past ten years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism were one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era in which these threats don't exist, but he must not believe his own rhetoric. To the contrary, he must gradually ease the country away from the idea that threats to imperial power will ever subside, then lead it to an understanding that these threats are the price Americans pay for the wealth and power they hold. All the same, he must plan and execute the strategy without necessarily admitting that it is there.

Facing no rival for global hegemony, the president must think of the world in terms of distinct regions, and in

doing so set about creating regional balances of power, along with coalition partners and contingency plans for intervention. The strategic goal must be to prevent the emergence of any power that can challenge the United States in any given corner of the world.

Whereas Roosevelt and Reagan had the luxury of playing a single integrated global hand—vast but unitary—presidents in the decade ahead will be playing multiple hands at a highly fragmented table. The time when everything revolved around one or a few global threats is over. The balance of power in Europe is not intimately connected to that of Asia and is distinct from the balance of power that maintains the peace in Latin America. So even if the world isn't as dangerous to the United States as it was during World War II or the Cold War, it is far more complicated.

American foreign policy has already fragmented regionally, of course, as reflected in the series of regional commands under which our military forces are organized. Now it is necessary to openly recognize the same fragmentation in our strategic thinking and deal with it accordingly. We must recognize that there is no global alliance supporting the United States and that the U.S. has no special historical relationships with anyone. Another quote from Washington's farewell address is useful here: "The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest." This means that NATO no longer has unique meaning for the United States outside of the European context and that Europe cannot be regarded as more important than any other part of the world. Nostalgia for "the special relationship" notwithstanding, the simple reality today is that Europe is not more important.

Even so, President Obama ran a campaign focused on the Europeans. His travels before the 2008 election symbolized that what he meant by multilateralism was recommitting the United States to Europe, consulting Europe on U.S. actions abroad, and accepting Europe's cautions (now that they have lost their empires, Europeans always speak in terms of caution). Obama's gestures succeeded. The Europeans were wildly enthusiastic, and many Americans were pleased to be liked again. Of course, the enthusiasm dissipated rapidly as the Europeans discovered that Obama was an American president after all, pursuing American ends.

All of which brings us to the president's challenge in the decade ahead: to conduct a ruthless, unsentimental foreign policy in a nation that still has unreasonable fantasies of being loved, or at least of being left alone. He must play to the public's sentimentality while moving policy beyond it.

An unsentimental foreign policy means that in the coming decade, the president must identify with a clear and cold eye the most dangerous enemies, then create coalitions to manage them. This unsentimental approach means breaking free of the entire Cold War system of alliances and institutions, including NATO, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. These Cold War relics are all insufficiently flexible to deal with the diversity of today's world, which redefined itself in 1991, making the old institutions obsolete. Some may have continuing value, but only in the context of new institutions that must emerge. These need to be regional, serving the strategic interests of the United States under the following three principles:

1. To the extent possible, to enable the balance of power in the world and in each region to consume energies and divert threats from the United States.
2. To create alliances in which the United States maneuvers other countries into bearing the major burden of confrontation or conflict, supporting these countries with economic benefits, military technology, and promises of military intervention if required.
3. To use military intervention only as a last resort, when the balance of power breaks down and allies can no longer cope with the problem.

At the height of the British Empire, Lord Palmerston said, "It is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow." This is the kind of policy the president will need to institutionalize in the coming decade. Recognizing that the United States will generate resentment or hostility, he must harbor no illusions that he can simply persuade other nations to think better of us without surrendering interests that are essential to the United States. He must try to seduce these nations as much as possible with glittering promises, but in the end he must accept that efforts at seduction will eventually fail. Where he cannot fail is in his responsibility to guide the United States in a hostile world.

The Daily DIlbert

Right??

Women Veteran's Opinion on Afghan Wars

Maybe because they have more sense than men?

Women Veterans Opinion on Afghan / Iran Wars

Some laughs..

Nativity 2.0

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Merry Christmas!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Shut Up Hillary Says Egypt's Military

via Reuters

Appears to me that the puppet chosen has a mind of its own. So what now, Ms Clinton? Will you bomb the daylights out of them too?

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Women in Egypt protest..

Women march in Egypt protest

A follow up to a previous posting about the barbaric treatment of protestors in Tahrir Square, specifically the burqa-clad woman who was stripped to her bra, & beaten black & blue.

The Daily Dilbert!

Brilliant!!! Loved this!!!

Let The Censorship begin..

US asks scientific journals to censor bird flu studies:

US requests scientific journals publish redacted versions of studies on a version of bird flu that could spread to humans
The US government has asked the scientific journals Nature and Science to censor data on a laboratory-made version of bird flu that could spread more easily to humans, fearing it could be used as a potential weapon.
The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity asked the two journals to publish redacted versions of studies by two research groups that created forms of the H5N1 avian flu that could easily jump between ferrets - typically considered a sign the virus could spread quickly among humans.
The journals are objecting to the request, saying it would restrict access to information that might advance the cause of public health.
The request was a first for the expert panel, formed after a series of anthrax attacks on US targets in 2001. It advises the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies about "dual use" research that could serve public health but also be a potential bioterror threat.
"NSABB has never before recommended to restrict communications on research that NSABB has reviewed that has potential dual use implications," Dr Amy Patterson, director of the National Institutes of Health's Office of Biotechnology Activities, said in a statement.
The bird flu virus is extremely deadly in people who are directly exposed to infected birds but so far it has not mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person.
The National Institutes of Health funded the two research labs' work to see how the virus could become more transmissible in humans, with the aim of getting early insight to contain threats to public health.
The NSABB wants to keep this information from falling into the wrong hands.
The articles involved work done by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist, and Dr Ron Fouchier and colleagues from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam.
The National Institutes of Health said the health department agreed with the panel's assessment and gave the journals non-binding recommendations to withhold key elements of the studies.
But the NIH said the government was working out how to allow secure access to the information to those with a legitimate need to see it.
"It is essential for public health that the full details of any scientific analysis of flu viruses be available to researchers," the editor in chief of Nature, Dr Philip Campbell, said in a statement.
"We are discussing with interested parties how, within the scenario recommended by NSABB, appropriate access to the scientific methods and data could be enabled."
Dr Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of Science, said the advisory board asked the journal to delete details on the scientific methods and specific mutations of the virus before publishing an article by Fouchier and colleagues.
"The NSABB has emphasised the need to prevent the details of the research from falling into the wrong hands," Alberts said in a statement.
He said scientists who study influenza have a need to know the details of the research to protect the public. He said Science was evaluating how best to proceed.
"Our response will be heavily dependent upon the further steps taken by the US government to set forth a written, transparent plan to ensure that any information that is omitted from the publication will be provided to all those responsible scientists who request it, as part of their legitimate efforts to improve public health and safety," Alberts said.
Other researchers voiced concern over government censorship of science.

"It is a very worrying idea that information from this type of work may be restricted to those that 'qualify' in some way to be allowed to share it," Professor Wendy Barclay, chair of influenza virology at Imperial College London, said.
"Who will qualify? How will this be decided? In the end is the likelihood of misuse outweighed by the danger of beginning a Big Brother society?"

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

America is no longer a free state - Lee Rockwell

Politically, Economically... & more importantly, morally??

The State that has, for decades, claimed itself for Freedom of Speech, Democracy, & the like..

Philippines declares state of calamity as storm toll nears 1,000

Philippines declares state of calamity as storm toll nears 1,000:

The scale of this disaster is unimaginable for the survivors - think the impact of the tsunami in 2004...

MIT’s new online courses target students worldwide

Now that the penny is dropping (literally) that "higher" education is a definite way to get yourself into debt without knowing what it really is... about time?

Question: will it be cheaper AND more valuable?

MIT’s new online courses target students worldwide: [via GigaOM]

Next spring, MIT will launch a pilot of MITx online-only courses geared to reach prospective learners everywhere. The university said it will open source the underlying technology infrastructure for use by other educational institutions.

MITx builds on the near-ubiquity of broadband communications, as well as availability of social networking capabilities that make online interaction for prospective students easier. MITx coursework will incorporate online laboratories and interactive student-to-student communication.

The effort is led by MIT provost L. Rafael Reif. In a statement released Monday, Reif said:

Students worldwide are increasingly supplementing their classroom education with a variety of online tools. Many members of the MIT faculty have been experimenting with integrating online tools into the campus education. We will facilitate those efforts, many of which will lead to novel learning technologies that offer the best possible online educational experience to non-residential learners. Both parts of this new initiative are extremely important to the future of high-quality, affordable, accessible education.

MITx takes some cues from the university’s existing OpenCourseware effort, which offers free, non-accredited online courses. MITx students who do well, on the other hand, can pay a fee and earn an MITx certificate of completion, but not an MIT degree. Charges have not been finalized.

The underlying infrastructure, under development by a team led by Anant Agarwal, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will be available to whoever needs it.

Creating an open learning infrastructure will enable other communities of developers to contribute to it, thereby making it self-sustaining … An open infrastructure will facilitate research on learning technologies and also enable learning content to be easily portable to other educational platforms that will develop. In this way the infrastructure will improve continuously as it is used and adapted.

It’s clear that online learning, once the province of for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix, is of growing importance to traditional colleges and universities seeking ways to reach beyond their traditional constituencies.

Given the choice of a certificate from an MIT or other brand-name institution or a degree from a for-profit school, many students might opt for the former. This is especially true given the debate raging about whether schools are pushing postsecondary degrees for their own commercial purposes. If a non-degreed certification from a respected institution is seen as just as valuable as a postsecondary degree from a non-brand-name school, there could be big shakeup coming in higher ed.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Alun K. Wu.

Not premature to consider Obama vs Paul?

This statement made me laugh out loud..." the pollsters said .....his popularity depended heavily on the youth vote and he trailed both Romney and Gingrich among older voters".

Strikes me as strange that a 78 year old commands the respect of, & popularity with, youth, rather than more "youthful" candidates who, it appears from their utterances, don't know their ass from their elbow..

Strange indeed...

Ron Paul surges ahead in latest poll

Monday, December 19, 2011

A precursor of what SOPA will mean once legislated..

The third user account on twitter suspended for "talking too much about Occupy Wall Street"

So much for freedom on speech in the "freest country in the whole wide world"!

United Police States of America - sponsored by twitter

Sunday, December 18, 2011

This is what Egypt got from the Arab Spring.

Egyptian Military
This is what the Egyptian people are now getting as a result of the Arab Spring.. new military dictators no different from the ones propped up by the West in both instances.

Stunning statistics..

Shocking is all I can say.

6000$ for a house in Detroit? What's going on here??

50 economic numbers from 2011 that are almost too crazy to believe

Sixteen former Judiciary staffers lobby on online copyright issues - Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

Follow the money - who's paid for the SOPA to be introduced...

SOPA revolvers: Sixteen former Judiciary staffers lobby on online copyright issues - Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group

War Without End, Amen: The Reality of America's Aggression Against Iraq

Saturday, December 17, 2011

another convicted corrupt Frenchman

Jacques Chirac suffers memory lapses, & I suppose that that is a phenomenon common to the general public across the world too.

via xinhuanet: Chirac not to appeal conviction

the Beginning of the Fall of a once-great nation

via Voltairenet.org From America to Amerika

Militarily the U.S. does not have the troop strength to quell massive civil unrest without the use of non-conventional force application. Which is it? Is it another Pearl Harbor “let it happen on purpose” like 7 December 1941 and, for that matter, also similar to the 9/11 “made it happen on purpose” gambit used to psychologically traumatize and induce fear into the the American public by fabricating a non-existent enemy striking from the caves of Tora Bora? The threat of NDAA appears to be ‘real’ but, to those of us who understand what it represents, as ludicrous as Emperor Hirohito calling FDR on the phone and telling him that on Sunday, 7 December 1941, he was going to attack the U.S. fleet. Something is seriously wrong with this picture. Perhaps they want to provoke a civil war that would justify to complete deconstruction of America. Perhaps they are simply playing us for saps. It has worked before. It can work again.

WTF?? When did Iran get linked to 9/11???

via RT.com Iran guilty of 9/11

I guess 10 years is long enough to get everyone forget who they said was responsible for 9/11

via RT.com: Ron Paul on Iran

Before dismissing Ron Paul as a lunatic - which most mainstream media is quite happy to do, it is high time that anyone interested in the world we live in listens to the man's views.

"If we think we can do that (occupy foreign lands) and not have retaliation, we are kidding ourselves." - Ron Paul Why is this such a hard thing to understand for the All-lies?

Of course, the peoples of these nations are far too busy with the next big gadget to see how messed up they're leaving themselves & the next generations...

Shame

via RT.com: Ron Paul on Iran

The Hindu: 68.5 cm!!! Indian is world's shortest living woman

The Hindu : News : Indian is world's shortest living woman

Stomach flu outbreak at Japan nuclear plant

Of course, this is just a coincidence, right? What's a minor stomach flu when compared to radio-activity levels that are more than in Kyrpton?

The Hindu : News / International : Stomach flu outbreak at Japan nuclear plant

Occupy the food system

An excellent write up by Willie Nelson;
We simply can't afford it. Our food system belongs in the hands of many family farmers, not under the control of a handful of corporations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/willie-nelson/occupy-food-system_b_1154212.html

the President's facebook policies..

"Why would we want to have a whole bunch of people who we don’t know knowing our business? That doesn’t make much sense." - Barack Obama

Obama on facebook

A chest of books..

Like the tile says, a great resource of outstanding literature..
http://chestofbooks.com/

check out the health section...

An excerpt

This section of the book is from the "Handbook of Nature Cure Volume One: Nature Cure vs. Medical Science" book, by John L. Fielder.

Less Food Is Required As Man Grows Older

This retrenchment is necessary, nor can it be avoided, since it is impossible for an to live foreve; and as he draws near this end, he is reduced so low as to be no longer able to take any nourishment, unless it be to swallow, and that too with difficulty, the yolk of an egg in the four and twenty hours, and thus end by mere dissolution, without any pain or sickness, as I expect will be my case. This is a blessing of great importance, yet may be expected by all those who lead a sober life, of whatever degree or condition, whether high, or middling, or low; for we are all of the same species, and composed of the same four elements. And, since a long and healthy life ought to be greatly coveted by every man, as I shall presently show, I conclude that every man is bound in duty to exert himself to obtain longevity, and that he cannot promis himself such a blessing without temperance and sobriety.

Obama's approval ratings

Obama's approval ratings

Obama has proved himself no different to his predecessor. The legislations passed on his watch will probably have worse implications than any of his (?) Nobel Peace Prize winning work.. (what did he do to deserve the prize again??)

Edit: Very strange, i posted the yahoo link above that reported Obama's approval ratings down to 39%. Doesn't work now! hmmm...

Collateral - same term used in banking too

Secret papers shed light on killings as troops pull out

Jobs? Or skills?

The 10 key skills for the future of work

If I die young - The Band Perry

Friday, December 16, 2011

Questions....

What does the NDAA foretell?

I don't miss facebook

I don't miss Facebook

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Copper no going nowhere

Go, go physics! Huawei tests gigabit DSL

Way to go Louis

What Louis CK knows that most media companies don’t

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A sane voice.. to me at least

Why apps are not the future

Google Nexus S

Incredibly easy to set up.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

on Immortality

One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

Listen: The Dilbert Speaketh.

Modern "Medicine"?

Australia: The Child Allergy Capital of the World..[via yahoo news]

Expounding a research by Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, this article identifies a 2-year old who is suffering from food allergy, but is alive.

Somewhere in this article, a mother gratefully thanking "modern medicine" says, “If we'd been in a third world country, and we hadn't known about the testing, or the awareness of allergies wasn't so high, he probably would have died before the age of one.

The medicine man (or researcher - I'm not sure what he is), says "We know that it is something to do with modern lifestyle because in developing countries food allergy rarely exists, and in countries that are undergoing modern developments, like in China, we're now seeing rates that are rising.”

"Maybe it’s the dark side of those fantastic public health initiatives that we really need to think about, that we're not stimulating our immune system enough. That includes getting out and playing outside, it includes things like exposure to farm animals and pets,” Professor Allen said.

I am more inclined to believe the medicine man.

What if modern messing around the food chain was the reason for the food allergy in the first place? What can be said with certainty is that those "third-world" countries have far less Genetically Modified & packaged food on their store shelves?

Just thinking aloud.

Inflation? or a product of Globalisation?

The Price of Butter! [Yahoo news]

In the last few decades, strong-arm tactics & policies of certain nations, driven by - it is now becoming more apparent - the wolves of private interests in sovereign sheep's clothing - have resulted in a gradual change.

This change has been primarily in habits, daily acts & choices performed by all people, perhaps by need, availability, affordability, & a host of other reasons.

My view of this change has been that this change, whether conspired or otherwise, has led to some fundamental choices that were never seen by the human race before, on a scale as we see now. A classic example was the number of mouths required to be fed as opposed to the resources required to feed those mouths. New age thinking is that with improved productivity & technology, a lesser effort/ resource is required to achieve the same result.

This has inevitably led to the increase in the number of people moving away from a primary activity of growing food to higher paying, quicker turnaround, lesser effort jobs requiring "skill" - insinuating that these agrarian jobs somehow required no skill - just put some seeds in the ground & within a short time you get food.

This ridiculous situation - of prices of food becoming unaffordable - is probably going to be a more common phenomenon as we move towards food scarcity - ironic considering the amount of food that is wasted every day in every single family.

Kyoto Protocol: Canada Withdrawing From Climate Change Agreement

Right, so whither Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax Scheme, sold widely to the local populace as the pioneering experiment with support from Canada?

Kyoto Protocol: Canada Withdrawing From Climate Change Agreement

Winning & Losing

$90 & a meal instead of your casino winnings? Sure, why not!
[via yahoo news]

The only ones winning here are the lawyers! Another Jackpot!

Air France 447 Cockpit flight recorder transcript

Makes for chilling reading..

What really happened aboard Air France 447

Alone in the wilderness

The amazing story of Dick Proenneke's 30 year life in the Alaskan wilderness.
Shot with a 16mm wind-up Bolex camera.

Part 1

Part 2

Let Calcutta surprise you!

A beautifully created video about Calcultta!

Imitation

The Americans seemingly don't care about lives lost in their own backyard or in the rest of the world.

I think this building is a stark reminder of the events of 9/11, even if the builder claims otherwise - one that needs to be remembered for the consequences of absolute corruption & greed that private interests have always had.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/developer-to-keep-twin-towers-design-20111212-1ortw.html

Hypocrisy.. US style...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-12/iran-to-reverse-engineer-us-drone/3727432

What about returning several countries that you have occupied back to the people who live in the land back to them Mr. Obama?? You violate someone's airspace (based on your own laws), & now you don't like to be on the other side of the fence? Shame on you!

Not Lost, Found!

Fishermen unravel family mystery!

This is an awesome story - & probably a good reason not to be connected 24/7

Monday, December 12, 2011

Could say this about a few people I know.. myself included!

Problems, Dilbert-like

Sexism...

.. in the tech reporting space

Well said, Dave.. "stop using women as examples of confused computer users"

& here's why:
"Irrespective of where you live, if you are a woman,
chances are that you are doing more than one job. Your time is fragmented
in complicated ways. One of the natural consequences of this is that your
patience with things that don’t work is lower. In this sense, women become a
gold standard for usability. If you can get it right for women, it’s going to
be right for everyone. If you don’t aim at the beginning point of coming out of
the box and just working and working flawlessly, every time, there are going to
be a lot of women for whom that solution is never going to be a part of their
lives. Not because they don’t understand technology … but because there are so
many other constraints and pressures.” - Genevieve Bell, Social Anthropologist at Intel

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