May 30, 2009. Pakistan and Afghanistan?

The female entrepreneur Linda Resnik was on CR Show talks about sharing her successful story in the business world.

She is saying all the right words such as care about your employees, something must have intrinsic value in order to sell in the market, the company must care about environment, etc.

I have no idea what is the back ground of her company. She is promoting her product on the show. Pomegranate juice is what she is selling. She claims that scientific research supported by her with peer review has indicated that it is a good anti-oxidant that helps lower the PSI level of prostate gland. This prevents the onset of prostate cancer.

This is such a hot air, sweet talk and PC talk to woe consumers to buy her product. This is a psychology of the marketing folk which is her profession. This is similar to the selling point of being green with so many merchandises lately. Whole foods super market chain is another example.

He has a very factitious attitude toward the fat cats on the show. However, when it comes to US foreign policy toward Iran, he is so enthusiastic and totally forgets that any aggressive policy would entail in term of cost at all.

Reshid Kahlidi is the professor at Columbia University. He is offering a balancing view on US policy toward the Israeli Palestinian conflict. His was not given time to expound on his thesis at all.

The thought of NPR is also a mouth piece of the government in the sense that it receives funding from government then it has to do what government tells it to do as part of the deal of becoming a balance station. So it also received fund from business entities as well as private listeners and it offers program that meet the need of these communities too.

The idea of writing short story as a way to descript thing that cross my mind or I read online or offline. This sounds very simple but it may take some time to get used to it.

A panel of experts on Pakistan and Afghanistan were on the CR show talking about the situation there and what has the US military and state department have been done there and the reaction of the local people and officials think about them.

The picture that I take away from viewing and listening to the conversation is US has no intention to help the local government to turn around the public feeling by supporting the local government genuine effort to woo the public to support US policy and stay away from the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

US advisors simply do not trust the local government to hand over all the money and support their idea of reform and economic development that would gather more support from the locals. So it is a bunch of lips services for democracy. This is a recipe for disaster when it comes to winning the heart and mind of the locals.

The locals would say US has its drone to bomb the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but they also have their drone which is known as ���suicide bomber��� in the western media. This is the kind of tit-for-tat spirit that so-called enemy has toward the drone technology of US and developed world.

The journalists on the panel are all from NYT. They are Jane Perlez, Mark Masetti, Pir Zabair Shah. They said that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have a long term view of their resistance against US while US has only a short term plan that only last as long as the current president is still insisting on pursuing the same policy to the end of his term. This is not really the case with Obama. He is continuing the policy of W. Bush toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. So it is not a short term policy as the opposite side sees it.

The panel agrees on one thing it is when US interest and the Pakistan, Afghanistan interest become aligned, there is little chance that the plan of wiping out Taliban and Al Qaeda will turn out to be successful.

The panel also reveals that the Taliban has a secret weapon-Sheri laws and land reform���that is winning the heart and mind of the locals in the border province of Pakistan. There are still too many economic injustices existing in the provinces or North West Pakistan. Land lords are still in control of vast swath of land in this region. Serfdom is still the dominant economic model in the area.

There is another author who spent two years of his life living among the Pakistani people to find out what the real living condition is and what is on the people mind. He is Nicholas Schmidle. His new book is ���To live or to perish forever���two tumultuous years in Pakistan���.

He was on CSPAN ���AFTER WORDS��� program last night. Schmidle also interests in the development of Bangladesh political system and its past history. He claims that this country is very open, he can freely travel and talk to anyone he wishes. Bangladesh refuses to accept the Islamic system imposed by Pakistan on it and become an independent nation.

The plan to turn a deep sea port at the southern city of Pakistan into the next Dubai is meeting with resistance from the local people who feel that they are not benefiting from this effort at all. The Beluchi party takes advantage of it to demand more power from the central government.

Pakistan current government is very shrewd in taking advantage of the mistake of Taliban and Al Qaeda to soar up the public support of its current reform and cooperation policy with US according to Schmidle.

Robert Kagan was on Brooking institute again bashing the past government and current government policy toward resolving the Iran ambitious goal to be energy independent and having the capacity to produce nuke weapons when she sees fit.

Diplomats from Italy and France are on the Brooking institute panel discussion last night. They had some insight on the problem of negotiation with Iran in term of exchanging Western Aids with giving up nuke development effort for peaceful purpose or not.

One idea that crosses my mind when reading about US foreign aids to Pakistan and North Korea with the conditions stipulated by US side. The reality of foreign military and economic aids is a joke even during the Vietnam era. South Vietnam officials have long been complained about the unfair nature of the aids. The aids receipting party has no choice on what to buy and who to buy and under what price and what condition. It is more take it or leave it arrangement. This is still the same attitude when it comes to foreign aids to Pakistan, Afghanistan and North Korea.

The claim of black mail from North Korea is sounding like the North Korea had received a lot of resources from US side and US had actually carried out its promises. This is not the case from the North Korea perspective with the promises made by Carter and Clinton administrations.

May 29, 2009. Meltdwon again?

Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are teaming up on spinning a version that blaming government regulation as the root cause of current finance meltdown. This is the right wing blaming government perspective. This is nothing new to me. In the same group, there is another spin doctor who blames the Fed for all the ill in the finance and economy of the nation. They are entitled to their opinions.

Then there is another group such as the left that blames the Greed and recklessness of the Wall Street CEOs as the root cause of current meltdown in Wall Street. They are including the insiders that work in the investment firm of Wall Street. The over leverage of these investment banks are not a result of the system according to William D Cohan in his book entitled “The house of card”. He has been on Charles Rose program twice. He was an investment banker with Lazard, an investment firm also on Wall Street.

He likes to point out the fact that Lazard and a couple of investment firms on Wall Street did not follow the bandwagon of reckless leveraging of other people money as a way to enrich themselves. This is not a system wide problem as many people would like to say. There are some prudent and smart investors in the crowd. The time when he uses the word system as in systemic problem is when he refers to the reward system of Wall Street. He is very dismissive on this system of reward for the workers of Wall Street.

He likes to use the Bear Stearns as an example of the mentality of Wall Street mainstream investment firms and the egregious crowd of the Wall Street. He says except Goldman Sachs that has a system of leadership replenishment that keep the CEOs on the ball. The rest of the Wall Street investment firm CEOS are complacent folk that refuse to give up their seat once they reached the top.

The technical issue of diversification is also raised during the discussion by Kate Kelly who is also a reporter from Wall Street Journal. She would offer that suggestion diversification would prevent the problem of excessive leverage. Cohan fights back with an example of Lehman Brother which is as diversified as it can but still going under during this crisis. They are also operating on overnight borrowing from other commercial banks. When the credit crunch hits, the source of fund stops, the firm goes belly up in one day.

Cohan praises the CEOs and the board of director for their courageous acts at the last two days of Bear Stearns. Alan Schawrcz is constantly mentioned at this period as a good fire fighter. He is the second man in the organization running the show at the end. Jimmy Kane was the top man, but he has his eye off the ball for a while and focuses more in enjoying his status and perks such as playing the game of bridge and golf then managing business.

He also reveals the fact that Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner have the final say on whether the Bear Stearns will survive or not. They would give the firm only one week to raise enough reserve to meet Fed requirement. Otherwise, they would be forced to close down. He said that this is to avoid the concern of “moral hazard” that many free market supporter object.

The guests also comment the current attempt of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to return all the TARP fund and going back to status quote. The agreement of the panelists is that the current Obama administration is not going to let that happen again. This is under the pressure and objection from the public that government bailing out the Wall Street without any oversight of the money.

Going back to status quote means business as usual, i.e. returning to the reckless leverage and betting of the past years to reward themselves with excessive bonus and outrageous employment contract even when they fail to do a good job.

Paul Greenberg is the author that I happen to come across on CSPAN “After Word” program. He is a main stable of the Washington Post. He is one of the foreign policy wonks on the Washington Belt way. An article written by him is bashing the North Korea nuke testing and its implication on the Iran nuke development program. Other writer such as William Safire, William Kristal and Richard Pearl are no longer writing for Washington Post.

Nathan Sales is a professor with George Mason University of the D.C. area. He has a piece on Washington Post criticizing the appointment of Sonja Sotomayor as the new Supreme Court justice. Here is the following view on the role of a justice of conservative. “The supreme Court’s job is not to second guess Congress and the president’s counter terrorism policies. Instead, its task is to faithfully enforce clear constitutional commands and where the constitution is silent, to stay out of the political branch’s way.”

Constitution after all is just as useless as any other so-called guidance when it comes to controversial subjects or hot button issues. It will silent when it is unsure of the issue and leave it to the political reality to sort them out. It could be done brute force or power of persuasion.

This is the job that lawyers and justices get paid big buck to do. The reality is Supreme Court justices are the groups of people decide what to make of all the disputes and controversial issues. Sometime the court swings to the left, other times to the right. There is no rule to go by. This is why too often people referring to the constitution as a “living document”.

Last night there is an interview of the author of an upcoming article in NYT this weekend. It is about the style and character of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as president of USA. How they think and how they work in coming to a decision. How they work with the people surrounding him.

Basically, it is a decisive, focusing, and methodical, versus free ranging, hedging, slicing and dicing. Obama was attributed with the former characterization and Clinton with the latter.

Bill Clinton has changed a lot after he had heart bypass surgery. He is less cantankerous, tumultuous. Obama is very self control and calm in contrast.

Entry for May 28, 2009

Cybersecurity Czar is wanted. The perception underlying this is more power to the government agency. It is the only way to get anything done in a democracy, is it? All the rhetoric of democracy and efficiency of getting thing done seem to contradict to each other.

Larry Summers wants his organization- National Economic council, “to have a key role in cybersecurity to ensure that efforts to protect private networks do not unduly threaten economic growth”. How is this development comparing to the same kind of cybersecurity development in PRC when the government demands all vendors of security software released their source codes for government security agency’s examination?

Sebastian Mallaby’s writing on Washington Post opinion page reminds me he is playing the role of George Wills and Richard Claudhammers. They are simply expressing their opinions. He is specialized in countering China currency policy. Today he has put out an article that tantamount to a pot shot on the attempt of China to pass on its US debts holding to other countries in the world. The article points to countries in Latin America and Asia. The goal is to replace the USD as the only international business transaction tool. Moreover, this also cut back the USD dollar weight in the Basket of reserve currency in Chinese possession.

The mechanism is to form a multinational fund that would provide loans to Latin America and Asia in Yuen denomination. Details are vague but the gist is to pass on the USD in China reserve holding to Asian and Latin American countries via these loans in USD but paying back using Chinese Yuen. This is a plan has been floating around for a while after the Wall Street meltdown. This is the only place I come across the details of this plan. All the articles in Asia Times online never mention in detail how this plan would be carried out.

The Explore program of NatGeo Channel last night has a story on how to define death in today medical setting. The advanced of life supporting machines and technology has redefined the meaning of death for human being. Sudden and violent dead are no different from the old day. The only difference involves here is the brain dead of patients who fail to respond to common and simple sensory stimulations from doctors. However, there is still normal heart beat and organs function inside the patient.

What even more interesting is the case of comatose patients can be awakening after years of staying in vegetation state. Some without any lowering of body temperature with dry ice type of substance and some with dry ice wrapping around the limbs and body. This sounds more like what I see in Twice Light Zone program.

The out-of-body experience is also shown with the interview of a patient who experiences this during a surgical operation. He was unconscious and his eyes were covered with cotton patch. A cloth curtain was separating his head from the doctor who performing the operation. However, he would identify all the movements that the doctor made during the surgery and what kind of shoes he worn that day.

This is not a scientific program with solid explanations and replicable lab experiments, etc. There is hardly a replicable process of refilling the patient in vegetation state with oxygen slowly to revive the cells in patient’s body. The program death of cells is a natural biological phenomenon. Experience with patients that fall into icy water has indicated that all the victims can be revived slowly and recovered to its normal condition. However, there is no memory of the period when the patient in vegetation state.

Cold temperature would stop the mutating process of human cells. This postpones the eventual dying of the cells and thus prolongs the live of the cell. This is a way to go to increase longevity.

Heart transplant and repair by definition has refined the meaning of death. The patient during the operation is dead by conventional definition. But he is back to normal after the surgery. This could be deemed as coming back from death.

A better and coherent narrative and contents should be created for these types of documentary films. Ongoing researches in NIH and other medical institutes could be a source of interesting medical stories for the viewers.

There is little research in the realm of virus and epidemic vaccines. No such stories in the pop science level from these film producers at all. This may not cost an arm and a leg to produce this type of documentary at all.

The reaction of PDNK second nuclear explosion is very visceral and the usual condemnation. But Washington Post today has an interesting article that offer a different respond that calls for more economic and cultural aids to the North Korea society in order to influence the people of North Korea thinking there is no need for any nuclear weapons at all. This is a stark contrast to the business as usual rhetoric of calling for more boycott and sanctions.

The wishful thinking of the author calls for even a rosy outcome that North Korea people and regime would embrace US humanity value and distant itself from the influence of China. This is rather interesting to say the least.

The perception of Obama going back on his promise to the general public as a “pragmatic” Obama is not too far from what I had come across several days ago. In assessing his domestic and foreign policy so far since his inauguration, everyone would have drawn the same conclusion. This is the result of his surrounding himself with people who were more pragmatic and amoral. The plan is to prepare him for another term as president of USA.

Morality is not the first priority in this effort of continue his job to second term. This is a “pragmatic” approach as people would say. But it is not in the interest of the disadvantage and working class. This is in part, evidence that backs the saying that “power begets corruption and absolute power corrupt absolutely.”

What is going on is strictly based on the premise of “heart and mind” to get to ones political goal and personal ambition. It is not the kind of sacrifice that Martin Luther King Jr. embodies. This is the Bill Clinton model and tradition of Jimmy Carter.

May 27, 2009. Hypocrisy and war?

May 26, morning’s session of viewing on Movieplex about the story of “capturing” enigma coding machine of German Navy during WWII connects me to the special series on WWII about Stalin and Nazi.

The people of Germany and Russia would be told the same thing that the commander of the US commando would say to its team members–this is for the sake of the war and the benefit of the nation. One dies so the rest of the group can live. This sounds very noble and it is the same kind of rhetoric that the Nazi and Stalin gangs would tell their soldiers.

Demonizing one group of people on one hand and glorifying another group for the same act of violence on the other hand is simply a bunch of nonsense. This is the kind of mind molding, double talk to inspire the youth in every nation of the world to get involve in so-called sacrificing noble act.

However, these practices have been replicated all over the world by the ruling class throughout history. This is based on the premise that lie repeated thousand times would become truth in the mind of the subjects. This is nothing new. This is why there is a need to control the media outlet of every country at time of crisis.

The question why there is an area in submarine that is full of water and air pressure lines of controlling missile launcher passing through is answered by thinking about the need of a ballast that control the weight of the submarine so it can be submerge and emerge at will. This is a big “tank” with opening on the floor in a submarine that is full of water and people constantly going in and out of this area for maintenance works.

This is never crosses my mind before every time I watch a movie about submarine. Another drawback of the submarine in the old day and could still be true nowadays: it is the lack of radar system while submerge in the ocean. Everything movement under water is monitored by using the sonar system.

The same goes with surface and underwater communication. The only time a submarine communicates with the rest of the world is by emerging to the surface of the ocean. This is the most vulnerable time of a submarine. Air born attacked could easily sink the submarine at this point of time.

The story of submarine crews have to suffering from demanding treatment is a norm of military. The air plane crews would be told the same story of dropping a nuclear bomb would save a lot of lives of soldiers if strength of the enemies has been decimated considerably. This is the kind of mind control rhetoric that human being in general likes to buy into. This is the nature of human that self delusion is a necessity facing reality that beyond one’s control.

Sacrificing a soldiers or a division of soldiers to save the life of the rest of the nation is simply a necessity in war fare. They are nothing but game piece of a chess game for the ruling elites of a state. The rhetoric of a commander should bear the responsibility of taking care of the live of its subordinates is more of a rhetoric than reality.

The story reveals that the commander of the commando operation that it is a secret operation, if necessary, all the member of the commando team would be killed to prevent the secret from leaking to enemy under interrogator.

“A hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died to the making of every general in the military” is an adage been around for years. Life is never fair in this regard. But fairness is what the spin doctors in government would like to promote around the world. It is part of the mind control game that replace the old line that Christianity must be promoted or civilization must be imposed on other part of the world in the past centuries.

Fairness is also the highest principle a justice system goes by and builds upon. People who are in power would like to say live is unfair. This is when the justice system and rule of fairness should bring to bear on these advocates.

Double talk is the only way spin doctors can articulate to bamboozle the gullible public. The same kind of rhetoric also exists in citing the slogan that it’s for the sake of “rule of laws”. “Laws and orders” is thing only applies to the gullible and powerless subjects of a system.

In a so-called democracy, we need the votes of the people to get elected. It is a kind of game that voters would only offer the choice on a menu. One cannot wish for a different kind of menu if one like to play the game. This is the kind of “limit” democracy that is offered by the West for the sake of so-called “efficiency.”

This is also a way to help the ruling elites and the rich to keep their status quote. What a better way to prevent the have-not and powerless to break out from the cage and self bootstrap themselves to a better level. This is the kind of rhetoric when the ruling elite would like you to believe in the context of not relying on government assistance to free yourself from poverty.

Hiding this kind of facts from the gullible subjects and the disadvantage is also a good way to prevent them from rebelling against the ruling elites. One thing that so-called democracy allows as far as freedom of speech and information is to criticize the system in a very limit scope and scale. Anything beyond this boundary such as overthrowing the current regime or having a “regime change” from the ground up would be considered as treason and terrorist act.

May 25, 2009. Human nature and consequence?

Watching the Joseph Kennedy biography on American Experience program leads me to the conclusion that JFK is not much different from W Bush in term of it foreign policy disaster at the beginning of their time in office. The analysis in the program reflected in the narrative in a very subtle way indicates that JKF is an incompetent leader who reacts more on emotion than on rational.

The play boy nature of his character is a prominent one. This is the missing link that leads to the harebrain reaction of approving the invasion of Bay of Pig. This parallels with the same act that W Bush made on invading of Iraq. The words used in the document are that he is letting the victory in the presidential race getting over his head.

Bay of Pig is a disaster that reflecting this reality. I was not in a moment before connecting these two dots. Then there is another with elephant in room: The Vietnam escalation by Kennedy. I was not connecting the dots when it comes to JFK at all. It simply clicks now with the help of the narratives of this documentary. The North Korea and Afghanistan situation I am witnessing now is also very precarious and could turn into another trap for these kinds of emotional reaction to events around the world by Barack Obama.

A common threat of all these geopolitical events is the imperialism hubris that a world policeman should maintain order of the world. This is a most convenient and appropriate way to grapple with the issue notwithstanding all the smokes and mirrors put up by the spin machine. Alexander Cockburn writing this week on Counterpunch clearly points out this kind of thinking.

Bullying small countries sounds easy said than done. North Korea had learned a lesson and gave up it plan A to renormalize relation with US. It seeks the nuke insurance as a way to protect the regime survival. There was USSR before to ensure the survival of Cuba, and there is no such player to back North Korea regime any more. Logically thinking, it is a rational move. Kim Myong Choi had raised this point in Asia Times online this week.

The promising of not toppling the regime of Havana is the final draw demanded by Kuchev to settle the Cuban crisis. What would be the crucial element that is going to have the tension between Iran, North Korea resolved? History would offer many clues on this matter.

There are many signs B. Obama is falling into the same trap that W. Bush, JKF, B. Clinton, J. Carter had experienced before as emotion takes over their decision processing.

Sometime I was wondering if the dissolving of the USSR by Gorbychoff is the result of the detent policy of Reagan administration instead of its military buildup as proposed by many spin doctors.

Interesting viewing of cosmology last night at Nat Geo channel on Neutron star, super nova, black hole, etc. leads to a few thought on this subject matter. There are still so many unsolved mysteries on the universe. Black matter and jet stream shooting out of black hole are among them.

Having explanation is not as simple as I thought. There is a contradiction of the concept of black hole sucking everything into the hole and all information about the spacetime will be lost forever and the concept of black hole has hair (radiation out of the black hole as posited by Richard Hawkins). Now there is another phenomenon that is violating the conventional concept of black hole that would not let anything escape from its center. This is the phenomenon observed by Hubble telescope. M87 galaxy is the name of this phenomenon takes place.

The explanation in the NatGeo program is that there are so many materials to be sucked into the black hole and it causes a traffic jam at the path some materials escape from the supper gravity of the black hole and forming a long line in the spacetime. However, no one can prove this is the case yet. This is a speculation that is not been covered in all the pop science on cosmology books that I happen to come across. This is a very interesting research subject.

Shoemaker-levy comet strikes Jupiter is another interest observation of the life time and in the history of astronomy. This is an effort by Heidi Hammel also a researcher of astronomy. She proposed that Hubble scope should be allowed to train on this comet and observes the collision in real time. The result is a real time event observed in the Space telescope institute in Baltimore MD.

Then the Eta Carina super nova in the Eta Carina nebula is also very interesting. I see this amazing image of two super heated gases shooting out from the core of these two stars the first time in my live. This is a phenomenon occur before a star blows itself out of existence. All the materials the form the stars would be scatter in space and become the substance that form live in the universe. They are calcium, iron, etc,

What is reported in this week on the Bill Moyer program makes me clinch. This is a same old business as usual mentality of US congress and White house. The kow-tow of US congress (Baucus of Wyoming) and White House (Obama) to the insurance industry is so heartbroken for the general public that want to health care reform the single payer style.

The reality is that billion dollars from the insurance industry can be let destroyed by any health care reform.

The solution to get thing done with the government is so obvious by now. Simply showing the US congressmen and women with money is the way to go. Why can the public do the same thing as the insurance industry? This is what reality different from morality.

No one can get rid of the health care industry. This is not true in Canada. There is a lack of will and back bone in the US political sys
tem. The spin that patients can not choose their doctors is a lie. With the current amount of health care spending, patients can choose more doctors than they wish. The rising cost of the health care is partially caused by the administrative cost of hospital and doctor offices spend in fighting with insurance companies to get a request treatment approved.

Private practice will still thrive in the medical field. The only thing different is less administrative task, of red tape as commonly known. Obama���s smoke screen of the current system would be disrupted by the new system. The reality is the under insured and uninsured people had been disrupted for so long and no one care about their plight. What is going to be disrupted is the business of the insurance companies not the practice of the doctors and nurses.

People in medical field such doctors and nurses want to practice medicine not pushing paper works. The money in the healthcare industry is one sixth of the GPD. This is as huge as the auto industry before. The people think that they can get into the healthcare industry and not to worrying about the jobs will be outsourced away is making a big mistake.

Anything is frivolous would eventually do away in the future. The current system is heavily subsidizing the insurance companies on the tax payer cost. A free market not supposes to work in this manner. Canada and Taiwan have the single payer model. They are the examples of the guest on the program namely David Himmelstein and Sidney Wolfe.

Who would put pressure on White House to respond to the need of the public? This is how to shore up the competitiveness of the industry. Ha ha.

May 24, 2009. Robert Kennedy?

The viewing of the Kennedy fiasco on Bay of Pig leads to the distrust of the president of CIA and military intelligent agency. This is the same crap all over again during the Iraq invasion of the Bush Administration. The forming of a new agency to oversee all branch of intelligent gathering agency of government is a testimony of the problem of reliable intelligence gathering is still unsolved.

This is an incident of history repeats itself. Who not learns from history will be taught a lesson by history is a commonly known statement.

The leaving a certain perspective behind is a good description of one no longer endorses a certain perspective of the past. The Robert F. Kennedy transformation from a fat cat interest supporter to a liberal politician that cares about the interest of the poor and working class is one example of it. Mainstream media has no interest of this kind of change of mind set of politician. However, there are many such as example in the field of US Supreme Court.

JFK has no intention to side with the interest of the working class and the disadvantages. It is the tradition of the upper class to protect their interests and the interest of the business class. His father is a symbol of this privilege class.

The story clearly does not reflect this transformation. However, the narrator implies that he should act as his father. Like father like son is the premise of this thinking. What the story reveals contradicting to expectation of a person with such family background. He changes the mind set of JFK on the Cuban policy namely bully the Cuban regime any time the president and the military want it. He was even ordered by JFK to undermine the Cuban regime and assassinate the Cuban leader. But this never put into place as event unfold.

He is the one suggests that JFK should accept the fact that there is no need to initiate a nuclear holocaust simply because ones attitude toward a small socialist country on the southern coast of USA.

RFK also convince JFK to support the civil right bill and put it through US congress for a vote. This may upset the Dixiecrats of the south but it is good for the unity of the nation in term of race relation. These are histories by now. But they are never mentioned again in high school and elementary text book about history of US and sociology at all.

All people want to talk about is the assassination of JFK and RFK for unknown reason. They refuse to deconstruct the social and political atmosphere at the time.

RFK is a very pragmatic and realistic person. He actually runs the campaign of JFK that helps him win the presidency. He is also very effective in running his own campaign for the president job after the assassination of JFK. He is winning from behind as an underdog.

Play boy or not, he is a very adaptive person and he can get thing done as required. But he lacks the political acument required by politicians that often have to compremise their own position as a way for horse trading or quid pro quo.

He hates LBJ as vice president of the administration. This is so ludicrous that such as characters could be coexist in the same administration. There are many factions within the Democratic party vying for the top job of the executive branch.

The power of his father is mentioned again and again during the documentary. He is having his way by offering money to get thing done according to his wish.

May 24, 2009. Michael Hudson?

Michael Hudson writings seem to be more interesting than the writings of Paul Craig Roberts lately. Roberts seems to run out of steam and starts focus on political issue such as POW torture and taxation of Barack Obama.

There is not much talk about the health care and social security reform. From Michael Hudson perspective, nothing has been changed at all after the inauguration of the Obama presidency.

The finance industry is still having a strangles hold on the economy.

Counterpunch.org is the only site that offers many refreshing perspectives and inspirations for writings. The so-called “the Nation”, “Salon”, “Mother Jones” and “Huffington Post” are too inside the box.

The question essentially is how to overthrow the system according to Hudson. If there is nothing one can do about it to make a difference, then it becomes a question of how to join them, i.e. taking advantage of the system to benefit oneself if possible. Both are not easy tasks.

But knowing the reality and selecting the appropriate actions are the right approach toward solving the problem. Even government is out of tools to fix the system if she wants only play along with the king makers of the system.

He points out the crux of the matter in a very straight forward manner. No vague language of the finance system is used.

I was wondering how the entertainment industry and hospitality business fit into the picture of this perspective. Hudson only mentions the dichotomy of finance industry and tangible industry. There are more than that in reality.

The exorbitant wages and rents extracted from the sport, music, movie and TV industry seem to be nowhere to be found in this author writings. “Rents” is a subject that no longer the focus of any academic discussion. Classical view of economy has been out of fashion for a long time.

Hudson has his own web site now. He emerges from the current finance meltdown as a better insider than the Paul Craig Roberts.

The statement that IMF only imposes the regiment of prescription drugs on developing world and spars the US public from taking these regiment of medicine is not true. The public has already suffered a lot from wage cut back and laying off. The public service cut back is also a fact of life. This is an ongoing process of scaling back.

It is not reflecting on the Federal budget level, but it is taking place on the state budget and municipal budget level. The reduction of endowments, 401k reserve of the working folks is real. This mandatory cut back though not imposed by IMF and World Bank, is a reality force upon the public by the “free market” system.

IMF, World Bank, and WTO only grant veto power to one member, it is the USA. This is not widely known by the general public that is no well verse in these “international” organizations.

Eugenia Tsao of university of Toronto has a point when she points out that no PH D is irreplaceable in reality when a vacant position is open up for filling. They are ton of candidate waiting in the wing applying for the same position.

This happens to coincide with the assessment made by one writer about the value of CEOs: they are more productive than the rest of employees of a company and thus deserts an exorbitant compensation package. As a matter of fact, I recall that it is made by the president of the international service workers union Andy Stearns.

May 23, 2009. IBM and holocaust?

The plight of the Jews during the holocaust is another example of the fact that politic and morality do not mix. The author Edwin Black that the politicians and the president back then FDR were influenced by the big business involvement in helping the Nazi further its cause of European domination. This is an aspect that rarely mentioned by nay books about WWII.

The reality is so complicate that telling one side of the story is enough to satisfy the need of fodder for thought of the readers. Black goes beyond the limit and outside the box to dig up the reality. He mentions that IBM is the only one that refuses to apologize for its past deeds. It is a result of relentless pursue of business opportunity on the part of John Watson Jr. of IBM.

General Motor, Ford and Chrysler all are participating in helping the Nazis in carrying out the plan of genocide of the Jew. But they admitted their past wrongful deeds and apologized for them. The motivation of the US industry is all about anti-Semitism and money. The IBM motivation is all about money.

The thesis of his book is that it is an ongoing struggle of the money and morality. And politic and morality do not mix is resurfacing again in the past and nowadays. Without the helping hands of the US corporations, the scale and scope of the holocaust would be much less smaller and lower.

There is a contradiction of the past of the US policy and the current staunch support of the Zionism of the Jewish people. The US government isolationism is a fact that rarely discussed in any books that I happen to come across so far. This book of Edwin Black sheds a light of this issue. The isolationism is a smart business move to capitalize the conflict among European to benefit US industry.

This is the same theme that Charmer Johnson has posited in his works about the US hollowing out of its industry during the Cold War and the exploitation of war of the Japanese and Korean industry to emerge as industry power house of the world.

This jives with the thinking of Joseph Kennedy while he was the US ambassador to UK in the period leading to the WWII. This answers my own question why these people from the isolationism camp have such an attitude toward the conflict of Europe. Then why FDR changes from support the isolationism of US to active foreign involvement? Is it because his advisors made it clear to him this is an opportunity for US to expand its influence around the world and grabbing the crisis of the world to become the leader, super power of the world.

There is another reason for it. The emerging of the Soviet Union as the hegemon of the world is also the reason why FDR want to involve US in the world affair. If FDR still stick to the isolationism of the time, US may be relegated to the second rank power of the world. And it will lose all the opportunity to make a buck in the world market when the European power collapsed as a result of their own madness.

The role of the Arab world during the WWII is also mentioned partially in talk by Black in a NYC synagogue. He would call the current effort of Iran president Mahmud Ahmadinajad as the continuation of Nazis job. He also exposes the fact that US policy of oil addiction is set up for future collapse of the economy when Iran blocking of any export of its oil and oil from this region.

He also exposed the fact that GM plan of get rid of the electric cars and truck industry of the past to monopolize in combustion engine. The current hydrogen technology has been around since the end of the 1800s. He said that submarines, ships and cars had employed hydrogen technology back then. There is no such thing as inferior technology back then. And it is no such thing as inferior technology now. It is simply a matter of ���political will��� or special interest strangles hold of the economy.

The social and marketing aspect of the switching of electric cars to combustion engine, gasoline based cars is simply psychological: Electric cars are too quiet and feminine. To sell more cars, the industry needs to create a macho image of a car with a roaring powerful combustion engine.

���Go down Together��� by Jeff Guinn is a book about Bonnie and Clyde of West Texas, near Dallas Texas.

The thesis is to explore the social and economic setting of that time (Great Depression) and the fascination of the US public to this kind of story.

It is the lack of a bright future for the people of the west Texas region and the bleak economic situation of the Great Depression that prompts media outlet to come up with a story to sell news papers. The banks are the subject of despise of the public in fostering the creation of Great Depression. Robbing banks would be a popular subject of the day for the general readers. So here comes the birth of the myth of Bonnie and Clyde. It is a way to take the mind of public of the depressing economic reality.

May 23, 2009. Morality and Kennedy?

Kennedy family history is subject of a PBS show. I learned a few things from the program. It turns out the father of the clan is a successful and powerful business man that made his fortune from illegal alcohol during the prohibition period.

There program does not explain why the Fed is not getting him for this activity. The IRS also spares him too. The answer is very simple. Money means power in the real world. He would spend money on politicians of all stripes and this protects him from all the hassles stemming from any government agencies.

He has an eldest son who also happens to have the same name as the father Joseph Kennedy. He is the favorite son of the father. The father has an ambition to be the president of USA. He was the supporter of FDR. He was appointed as US ambassador to UK as a reward of his political support of FDR. However, he is an isolationist and refuses to let US involves in the war among nations of Europe at the beginning of WWII.

However, this runs contradict with the policy of expansion of US by FDR and he soon was falling out of favor in the political arena. When US joins the fight against Germany, his sons join the military as a patriotic act. The eldest son was a bomber pilot. He was a volunteer of a danger bombing mission and his airplane loaded with bombs blew up mid air over Atlantic.

Jack Kennedy was the second son in the family. He is a physical unfit for any military duty because of his health problem on the back. He was born with a deformity on his legs. He has uneven set of legs, one leg was longer than the other and this causes him severe back pain and in bad health all the time. He has to rely on pain killer to control the pain.

There is another member of the family who was diagnostic as retard. She was later undergoing a lobotomy and ended up confined to sanitarium the rest of her life. These are not known to me before.

The flamboyant life style of the family, partying with many celebrities and local politicians makes them the subject of much envy. This is totally different from the other political families with similar background.

The psychology of Robert Kennedy is also well documented. The political infighting of him with LBJ is well known. But I would not spend all night to view the documentary on two occasions. The rest of the family political involvement is partially history and partially ongoing.

The documentary proves the point that one’s past is does not matter in politic and how one uses one’s wealth is critical. This reminds me the pardon of Bill Clinton to another business man John Rich. Money could buy so many exception treatments.

Politic and morality are anathema to each other. This is reality. The church of the Dark Age likes to advocate morality as a way to give its legitimacy to govern. The current debate of using torture, military violence on the name of national security and the repudiation of torture and using noble idealism such as human right and justice as the standard of behavior reminds me the fact that morality is simply secondary in the eye of the politicians.

Obama is a realist as Bill Clinton. They are not much different. It strikes some people that there is little different between the W Bush foreign policy toward Afghanistan and Iraq and Obama’s. Some would claim that the recent brouhaha between Dick Cheney and Barack Obama really makes not much difference. It is only a matter of degree and there is no fundamental difference.

Morality has no place in the real world of polity. This is why the spin doctors working for a regime would like to come up with new slogan for their policy. They would not use the term morality in general. They would divert the attention of public into a very narrow define goal as a way to substitute the boarder meaning of a term. Redefining the meaning of term is part of the job of political reality.

This is another way to set the agenda and the way to control the mindset of the public. This is why there are so many culture critics put out books on distortion of meaning of words. “Say what your mean and means what you say” is the most familiar slogan of these critics. They are sometime disguised as a linguist talk. They are political in nature.

History of Bruce Lee is put on TV again. This is a revision of the role of Bruce Lee philosophy and its impact till today in pop culture and business. This is a reminder of what reality can do to an iconoclast. The political interest is too powerful to let these revolutionary to rock the boat and turning everything on its head. Powerful families are not exception.

Bruce Lee is a revolutionary that set himself apart from the rest of the tradition of martial art that has origin 4000 years ago from India. He is creating his niche in this field and modernizing the field with new thinking and practice.

Movie, music and games are still under the influence of Lee legacy. If he is still alive, would he be as beloved as he is today? Would he be another cult leader? Or would he become hated figure like Microsoft’s Bill Gate?

One family against the power of many families also very influential is bound to turn into fiasco. Kennedy is one good example. And this is why Obama refuses to play to role of a revolutionary. If he wants to stay in power and holds on to the Oval office for another term.

May 20, 2009. HDTV is around the corner?

What was happened over the weekend is mundane. I had purchased a Dynex HDTV for the apartment. So we could have two TVs to watch. When I had the TV hooked up to the cable, Vola, there are 130 channels show up on the screen.

This is a surprise. There are only a few HD on the cable, the Palladia musical channel, the Discovery HD, The USA HD, A&E HD, The NatGeo HD, PBS HD, NBC HD, CBS HD, and ABC HD.

So there are so RF channels as well as Digital channels too. The content of these channels is not interesting to me.

I was wondering about the meaning of expression “100 channels with nothing to watch”. There should be more CSPAN HD in the future. But it is not showing up yet. June is around the corner.

I was wondering if CSPAN has a HD plan in its plan.

I was watching Mark Rudd’s “Underground” book talk. This is a “terrorist” of the radical 60s as we known by the standard of Washington consensus. Now he is a math teacher of the state of New Mexico.

He has raised the privilege that he possesses as a white radical of the 60s. He only did a short time in jail.

I noticed that there are three types of signals from the cable company available to the through the cable: RF, analog and digital. There are total 133 channels available to the TV. Some are scrambled.

The MSNBC and CNBC are not in high definition. I was wondering if CSPAN would broadcast in HD in the near future.

The BookTV program is not available every day, it is only available on Saturday and Sunday.

My mind is blank because I was not in the mind set to watch the Front line program on Wall Street Meltdown. The stitching together the events together in order and explaining the significance of each event make sense only in hindsight. There is no such effort when the events unfold.

I find viewing CSPAN is much soothing than other programs that filled with commercials.

There are many other things that are changing on the cable system. The set up of channels from COMCAST is in a flux as this writing. This is why there is so many set up disappear after a while and new setting pop up.

May 17, 2009. Morality and reality?

Morality and the science, what I have in mind is the evolution theory, do not mix as water with oil.

This is what I have neglected to think about for so long. This is a strange relationship between so-called another value system such as “free market” and “democracy” and “morality”.

Some would equate morality with “free market” and “democracy”.

Others would equate “human right”, “animal right”, “environment protection” as “morality”. What is the nature of these equations?

Some would also think “fairness”, “economic equity” as “morality” and devoted themselves to fight for this “cause”.

So what is the nature of morality? Is progress means “morally” superior than “fairness”, “justice”?

What is the relationship between morality and “special interest”?

“National interest” means morality?

Science and morality can be coexisting as some claim, can they? Some would like to equat “god” with “morality”. “Blind faith” and “scientific objectivity” can be coexist as a way not to offend one’s fan base or support as some one claims before. I have Francis Collin in mind. This is shooting one foot to say something offending your supporters.

Constitution is as sacred as morality?

Morality is a subject of perspective, is it? Objectivity is not synonymous with morality, is it?

Have 100 people killed to saved 1000 people is morally superior than having 1000 people killed around another corner of the world so no one in the side of the world should not have to suffer any inconveniency, is it?

What is the point? Can one forgo reality for idealism?

Should one give up one life to save the world? Can the world be saved from reality of dog-eat-dog? Can human tame the animal world so they would not prey on each other?

Priority setting is an act of morality, is it?

May 16, 2009. More pop physics?

The Roger Penrose book “road to reality” is getting easier at the end of the books. There is hardly any math in chapters toward the end of the book.

The chapter 18 is full of math concepts. Chapter 20 on Quantum mechanics is full of wave function, its solution, its representation in the special relativity setting. The 4-dimension momentum is also very interesting and tough going.

The dynamic valuable actually is another name for the differential operator on the wave function or the eigenfucntion. They are a form of mental refreshment that I hava not seen for a long time.

This book must be chewed very slowly. Writing down whatever you think is interesting on a note book is also helpful in understanding the topic.

There is very little fact on the General relative model. It is all about quantum mechanics, black hole, big bang, and standard model. Dirac anti particle is also a special topic with a chapterful of narrative.

Juan Cole is hot lately after releasing a new book on Middle East policy. He simply has a different perspective and it is based on the fact finding he did on the ground at Pakistan. The smoke screen put out by the foreign policy crowd in White House is not much different from those of W Bush.

The economics policy and finance policy are almost the same and still under the control of the same group of people previously helping Bill Clinton Administration.

The condition at the work place seems to be getting worse. The pressure cooker is boiling again to put pressure on all the employees.

There are still many bugs in the robot detecting system. The shipping and receiving dept also generates a lot of waste. We do so many extra works for nothing.

May 15, 2009. Labor VS Ceo?

Last night, the interview with Andy Stearns on CR Show is simply an effort of Bloomberg News to survey the opinion of different quarter of the society toward Obama Administration.

What I find interesting and rarely come across in mainstream media is the repudiation of this man who is the president of the International Service Worker Union, toward the argument that CEO deserts the exorbitant pay for the works they had done to bring in profit for the share holders.

The counter argument is usually known in other occasion as a criticism of the current CEO reward system. It is the 100s and 1000s of multiple of wages and salaries of worker on the floor. What they try to ignore on purpose is that the fact that they would demand the same kind of outrageous payment when they screwed up a company.

This is the connecting of this fact with the argument that CEO desert this kind of employment contract because they had helped a company thrives is an absolute myth and mendacity.

Pointing out the ways share holders cast their proxy vote during a board election and share holder meeting is another good example for debunking the myth the secret ballot is a must for a democratic and fair system. This is the same practice that labor union embrace for union forming voting.

The business owner side spin doctors would say this is undemocratic practice on the labor union. They would keep their mouth shut on the same practice on the employers and CEO side.

What is reflecting on the program is that the program host really is not on the ball regarding to this kind of issue.

Vision of this labor union president is a fully funded pension system for workers and a universal healthcare system albeit run by private sector. The other vision is an affordable college education for kids of the workers.

He likes the German model of public private partnership model in business and economic. He really does care about the French system which is more leaning toward public owned enterprise system. The bottom line is that the interest of the workers must be protected and supported one way or the other.

I had read a book on labor union written by another spin doctor in the academic world criticizing the failure of the current labor union movement and Andy Stearns had been implicated by the author as non effective.

However, he revealed during last night interview that janitors in NYC are paid with a $26/hour wage regardless of the Hotel or apartment they work for in NYC. This is the only thing he bragged about as the achievement of labor union under his leadership.

He also like to attack the CEO of Wal-Mart as a way to influence the public opinion and behavior in supporting their demand of forming union in Wal-Mart. This is the second largest Fortune 500 company in US according to the latest ranking in USAToday.

May 13, 2009. Maya code cracking?

The re-watching of “Cracking the Maya code” leads me to change my view about this program from NOVA. This must be a respond to the viewers’ criticism of the nature of the program that is bias and slant against the nature of the Maya culture.

The civilization flourishes over 2000 years in city such as Tikal, Copan and Palenque. This is from 1930 to 60 B.C. This is even during the time when Europe was in the Dark Age.

NOVA this time around actually has a totally reversed its view of the Maya culture from those of the Spanish conquered of Latin America. The narrator even quotes the historical event that leads to the current view. It is a reaction to the reaction of Eric Thompson who is the dominant figure of the Maya culture research from England.

He view is actually influenced by the experience with the WWI and WWII in Europe. This is a period that the public are really disdain of any bellicose sentiment in culture as a way to glorify one’s superiority. This is the reason why he repudiates the view of the Spaniard priest that demonized the culture of the local in the Central America.

He proposed that the Mayan is a group of state nation that is much advanced in Astronomy, art, math and other culture. The writing system is one of it. These writings are for worshiping purpose and they describe the myth of the Kingdom that they yearn for in after life. There is little narrative of what kind of contribution Eric Thompson made to this field at all. I could have missed it during the program.

1930s
Giant steps—and missteps
By the 1930s, British researcher Eric Thompson was the world’s foremost expert in glyph studies. His achievements included deciphering signs related to the calendar and astronomy as well as identifying new words from the Maya lexicon. Thompson also developed a numerical cataloguing technique, the “T”-numbering system, for each glyph (above). This enabled experts to easily discuss symbols that had yet to be fully understood or identified. Nevertheless, glyph studies nearly came to a halt during this time, in large part because Thompson had most scholars convinced that each of the symbols in glyphs stood for entire words or ideas. For instance, the glyph for “west” included a well-known symbol for the sun and an as-yet unidentified symbol depicting a nearly closed hand. Thompson suggested that the hand meant “completion.” And so “west,” where the sun sets, was symbolized by “completion of the sun.” It was a reasonable guess, but one that, along with Thompson’s more general take on the glyphs, would be proven wrong.

All the efforts of this group of settler in such a lust, productive agriculture land seem to be passing down the proud history of this group. This is a big contrast to the nomad lift style on the steppe in North America. There are little writings or research of the people that live in the Canada East coast and West coast.

It turns out there are three codex manuscript for Mayan written language the on the museum of Europe. One is in Madrid Spain, the second is in Paris France, and last one is in Dresden Germany. They are only partial helpful to the decoding of the writing on stelae that serves similar to the more familiar totem pole of the Indian. Writings were also found in the wall of giant tomb and other temple like structure in Palenque and Copan.

Tatiana Prostoekoff is the first female researcher that cracks a couple code of the writing on stela she found in the Pea Body museum. The meaning of a bird head wrapped in cloth always found on top of these stela in the museum. She deciphered that this symbol suppose to define the period of time that last about 60 years as a period of one dynasty. The plaque that planted in the ground straight up is actually a recording device of the history of the ruler.

Lord shield is the name given to this character inscribed in the stone tablet studied by Prostoekoff.

Mayan study has a long history. The Spaniard, the French, the German, the Russian also study the history of this culture. Some manual scripts and research papers in Berlin museum were captured by Soviet Army officers during the fall of Berlin into the hand of Red Army. One of the soldiers who gets hook on this study is Knorosov.

He is an independent researcher in Moscow that has no any outside connection during the Cold War period with the West. The point is that he is not influenced by the thinking that leads to the dead end in this field in the West. He discovered and proposed that this must be a system of writing that based on phonetic system instead of pictograms that represent idea such those of Chinese writing system.

This is opposite to the thinking of Eric Thompson at the time and it is the convention thinking of this field in the West.

However, there are still many unsolved symbols that need to be deciphered. One of the men the story focuses on is a genius name David Stuart. He has been study for fun as a kid while accompanying his father who is a researcher in this field. His father would take him to the field site with him. And he picked up all the knowledge of these glyphs simply by watching his father works. Hieroglyph is the name of these writings. This is a pure imagination and connecting the stories told by the Maya people through time verbally. Cross referencing is the only way to figure out what they actually mean. The works of any native Maya researcher are never mentioned in the program at all. Even though some of the pictures show there are native researchers were among the folks from Europe and North America.

Hieroglyphs (pictograms) are read from left to right and two columns at a time. This is a strange system of encoding any way. This is a random system conjured up by people before the Columbian time without the influencing of the Western civilization.

The key that discovered by Stuart is the fact there are many symbols representing the same sound. There are some time 8 to 9 symbols to pronounce the same. Sometime there are even up to twenty some symbols representing the same sound. This is more than the current upper case and lower case of the Western writing system.

With that the writings were finally cracked by these researchers. These are decades of hard work and lucks. The narrator would say that they finally help the native Maya discover their own history and knowing how to read their own language instead of reading and speaking Spa
nish.

“Free market” has been dealt with a blow in EU to the chip maker Intel. Intel inside predatory practice of penalizing manufactures of PC refuse to use Intel chip would be denying them the next opportunity to buy it from Intel. This is very similar to the “free market” practice of Microsoft too. EU finally slaps a fine and stops the Intel of these “free market” practice in Europe.

Google is practicing the same game now in term of content providing and drive most other content providers such as news paper out of business. The publisher of magazine such as ACM and IEEE are still in business because they refuse to release their version of content to public view. They would only available to subscription based readers.

May 12, 2009. Morality and Misc?

The trip to VA Beach

This is a one and half hour drive as people said. But the city of this region has lousy street as other city of Virginia. The state has no fund to upkeep the streets for some reasons. The cost of living is high in these tourist areas of the coast. The state has a disproportion of low income people. The tax revenue therefore is low compare to other states with good business and industry base.

The beach area is still very cold on Sunday afternoon. This is already May and there is no sign of heat wave attack yet. There is little entertainment establishment along the beach yet. Hotel styles are very conservative and low key. The dissimilar with Miami Beach is stark. This is done on purpose to distinguish itself from the rest of the beach on East Coast.

The Williamsburg area is still so pristine that there is very little street light in the city say comparing to the city of Orlando Florida. I come across a McDonald fast food store has cash register problem. It would only accept cash as a result. This store has only a bunch of Thai teenage workers with one black young manager running the store. This is an example that cheap labor is preferred still in this state nowadays.

There are thousands of unemployed people in the Richmond area and the business would not employ these folks and would prefer to hire people across the ocean from another continent. What a greedy bunch of business owners. I guess the old money is still very powerful in this state.

I come across a report on Richmond Times Dispatch that the city is considering a ban of building more than 6-story high along the river bank of the city of Richmond. This is the conservative that is exerting its influence in the city economic development. I have no ideas who are these people. The mayor used to be the black governor of the state.

The highway that connects the coastal city with center Richmond is a narrow 2-lane highway. The highway is almost bumper-to-bumper with traffic. No one can go any faster than 70 mph on this highway. There is no town between Richmond and Williamsburg. Few exits to food and fuel are seen along the way.

Naomi Klein and William Grieder really fail to take advantage of the short time in CR Show to expound their visions. Morality is the compelling factor that they reiterate again and again. Religion leaders also raise this point as their basis for alternative argument in the current crisis management policy.

The major complaint is that there is little change in the finance reform policy because the groups of people who run the show are the same group of people from Clinton Administration. The lack of political will to dismantle the old unbridles, monopoly power of the financial industry is still here. There is no attempt to take it away from this interest group yet.

Naomi thesis of shock treatment is still unfolding as this writing. Her thesis is never given a chance to elaborate during this interview. She had amble time to do it while at CSPAN’s After Word program. She worries about that the elites would take advantage of this time of crisis to raid the social security and medical insurance fund of the public sector. The banks had just done it in a sense.

Paulson used the analogy of a burning house owner should not ask the fire fighter what he is planning to do but accepting whatever he offered to put out the fire on a CR Show program. There is no chance to discuss future plan at this point. This is why there is no oversight at the congress on tax payer money.

Grieder and Klein suggested the only way to hold Obama responsible for the campaign promises is to have more demonstrations on street organized by the grassroots voters and workers. There is no such as national wide organization to mobilized the public yet. This is not the job of these writers of social issue. This is the job of community organizers. How to coordinate the activities of the grassroots is a major issue that had been ignored by political activists for a long time.

The AFI-CIO, allying with the Democratic Party, had a mobilization of the member of supporting the last candidate representing the Democratic Party. There is no funding and mobilization of grassroots voters for this kind of activities to put pressure on the leader of the Democratic Party at Congress and White House to reform the finance system as well as the healthcare system.

Funds must be sought by the activists independently. There is no urgency in the air for such thing yet. The galvanization of public is easy said than done. This would be a slow process. But it all begins with books that plant this idea of self empowerment in the head of the public.

People are still feeling very comfortable with the current status quote. This is why no action is seen across the society except a few so-called “tea party” revolts at street corner by a few unorganized folk. This is a grassroots effort but it is not deemed as a recognizable political force yet

The only time that people forced to mobilize themselves is when they are not getting any government unemployment assistance en mass. And only then they would turn to organizing themselves to make their voices heard.

Speaking about morality by these writers, I recall the talk of a Catholic historian in Philadelphia last Sunday. He has a lot of points on judging the society. One example is how people treat each other. It is the general rule to evaluate how morality is being upheld. He says the society is falling apart from the perspective of morality.

People would like to exchange old stuff with new stuff. They change car, house, furniture, spouse, school, work place. But their nature and thinking would remain the same years after years. Human nature never changes. American Catholic is a dying breed. When catholic was asked if they are catholic happen to be American or American happen to be catholic? The majority would answer they are American first that happen to be catholic.

The education system is not doing its work. This is true across the board and including catholic school and university. Less and less young men get into the religion organization. There is a lack of dedicated people in the education business.
The pay of teacher is not the issue of reform the education system. No one get into the profession of teaching to become rich. Investing more in school is not going to get a better educating system.

The quantity of teacher or catholic is immaterial, it is the quality of the teacher and the catholic is the key to the prosperity of a society. It is not the collecting of information as the key of education. It is the critical thinking capacity that is the thing education tries to inculcate into the person. .

Critical thinking is what I do every time I ask a question why when I read a mathematical book or physics book. The readers of political and social subjects often would not ask such question because the subject is so mundane to them, there is nothing that would provoke them to ask question.

John Lukacs is the name of this person in this boat room of St. Joseph University at Philadelphia. “Last Rite” is the title of his book. It is a biography of his thought over the years. He is in his 70s now. He said his life does not begin until 65. So don’t waste one life after retirement as time of doing nothing.

He also criticizes the Intelligent Design concept that relegates God to a super computer. Darwinism equates human to animals. It hence, makes no difference as far as sin is concerned namely incest, murder, abortion, business of military, ripping off other, damaging other people career and dashing other people ambition, etc.

The theme that human nature does not change is anathemas to the thesis of Darwinism that human evolution over time. Darwinism is only referring to the human biological organs and features, not the human nature of survival. He seems to mixing apple with orange. This human progress for the better is actually a Darwinian concept. This is a perspective that I rarely see articulated by writer in this society.

Some would claim that social Darwinism is a distortion of the theory of Darwin. Edwin Black is an author (historian on Nazis period US corporations’ involvement with the holocaust) would say exactly this.

The claim that Taliban movement is against human progress or social progress is a false statement made by political spin doctor. There is no human progress according to him. Human nature never changes.

A trip of the sea turtle across the Pacific Ocean program to lay her’s eggs on the beach where she was born is a very interesting one. The story is basically telling the danger facing by such a long distance traveler. This fails to strike a chord with long distance traveler nowadays. The jet set traveling is taken for grant for many people. The danger facing along the trip is inconsequential to them.

The storm stirs up the sea born creature such as plankton in the ocean and thus attracts fishes from everywhere big and small to feed. This is a marvelous scene of ocean after storm.

There are so many things that one never seen before in an ocean such as school of fish congregated in the form of a big ball as a way to protect themselves from bigger fishes. There are also schools of sharks, whale, dolphin, stinger ray, tune fish, etc in the ocean. There is even sea born crocodile seen on beaches of islands in Pacific Ocean.

There are many kind of whales seen in the ocean, sperm whale, blue whale, sliver whale, etc, they are the fastest swimmers on the ocean. There are no scenes of school of whale gathering for feeding. Their feeding ground is in North Pole and Antarctica not Pacific ocean. But whales like to eat squibs in the bottom of ocean. Squibs could be in the average size of 6 feet long. And they could go up to 25 foot long. Sharks are feed in school. They normally feed at night. Whales do not feed in large group.

Coral reef is actually a living animal that spawn eggs during high moon night. Scientists would say that moon is what causes high tide in sea and Coral reef could sense the high tide and start spawning.

The reading of energy such as momentum can be connected with derivative process with respect to time and space. Is this means the change of a vector field would generate energy? Energy has been associated with many other things before, namely fire, force, light, radiation, sound, movement, oxidization, etc. So, one more association is not going to make thing anymore complicating.

This is similar to the association of curvature of geometry to gravity. They do not make any sense at first glance. But when one exams it closely, this turns out to be truthful statement.

The Hamilton H function that also depend not simply a bunch of independent parameter, such as momentum and coordination of a spacetime frame, but also depend on field which is also another function on the vector. It could be many things, namely gravitational force, wind, current flow, electromagnetic force, etc.

There is a long section of the power of Hamilton H in formulating a physics theory. However, there are also sections on the limitation of this approach in General Relativity theory formulation, etc. Lagrangian approach is basically the same. The Hamilton approach is the basic approach to formulate the quantum mechanics theory.

The author Penrose uses over one thousand pages to get his message on physics out. There are still details that he had ignored and posed as questions or quizzes. The book could be lengthened to 2000 pages if he wishes to do so.

May 09, 2009. Finance system reforms red herring?

Richard Durbin is the Senator that initiates a new program to release the foreclosure home owners from the pressure to have their homes repossessed. He senator says there are full of such provisions and options for the second home and condo owners that are much financial well off. This is a double standard on the part of the banking interest.

The senator reports that the banking sector lobbyists are hard at work in talking to member of senate to fight off this proposal by Durbin. He laments that the senate is practically owned by the banking interest. This is the hall mark of current form of western democracy that the right wing conservative like to spread to the rest of the world.

The problem in Pakistan and Afghanistan is the US was not really bringing democracy to these states. It is only a rhetoric and lip service on the policy makers’ mouth. The only thing they focus is to use more raw military power bringing to bear its influence on the general public of these nations.

Karzai and Asif Al Zardari of Afghanistan and Pakistan are nothing but puppets that has no genuine local supports at the border regions. They have the unspoken support of US in the form of promise military and economics aids but these aids are under the strictly control of the US bureaucrat and military. The civilian leaders of the countries that received aids have little control over how they are going to be used.

Their presence in US is to take order and promise US to focus more the Taliban issue instead of threat from Indian Pakistan border. This is a big issue lately on the news cycle and it is a campaign of the media circus to put more pressure on Pakistan military leadership.

The job generations for the domestic youths and farmers are nowhere to be seen. There is no economic development in the area to employ more youths and divert them from the pull of Taliban and Al Qaeda that provide service and jobs for these unemployed youth.

The propaganda machine would then say that is because of the corruptive nature of the local government that US and western allies refuse to hand over all the aids. They would only have the rights to say good thing about their benefactors. Now the two are saying that the aids should be delivered to them and under their management.

AfPak also want opening up the US market for their products and services, (contracts for their industry) as a form of economics aid. The figures that were reported by the Western press as aids given to them by US are simply double talk. Pakistan want more drone, night vision goggle, F15 fighters, missiles on their terms and at their deposal and not under US deposal and charge against them as aid.

They also want, I presume more US investment in their locals to provide jobs for the youngsters so they have income to support their families and create a hopeful future and drawn them away from the “attraction” of the extreme groups. This sounds very logical and reasonable. But reality is not reflecting these things unfolding as this writing.

The corruption is never mentioned by the leaders of local, and they offered no way to solve it. They would only mention that this is a long term process to correct the inefficiency and undemocratic practice. The people have to be up to snuff to carry out their rights and responsibilities. Educating the general public is a long term and slow process. This is a process longer than 200 years as indicated by US own history of “democracy”.

What is the problem people pointed out in the Counterpunch and Asia time online? Civilian casualties as collateral damages are the root of the current crisis. This is simply rhetoric from the political liberals.

The liberal critics would point out the goal of battle is to win the heart and mind of the public. Bombing is only a small part of the comprehensive package. Sarah Chayez was a NPR foreign correspondent and now a mentor of democracy for the Afghanistan government. She is the kind of liberals that want to make a difference by actually working on the problem instead simply reporting the problem. She is a bridge between US government and the Afghan public.

This is part of the effort to “rebuild” the war torn nation in the central Asia.

She is also viewing the Pakistan military as a hurdle for the democratizing of the nation of Pakistan. She believes that they are stoking the Indian boogieman as a way to assert its power in the society. Without this threat, they would have no chance to grab so much power as to head a civilian government and total disregard the other branch of the government such as legislative branch and judicial branch.

Abusing power by Pakistan military is not supported by the Chayez. She is working as a mentor of civilian government that upholding the principle of democracy: government should respond to the need of the people more than that of the security apparatus. What is the plan of military planner in Pentagon to deal with the Pakistani military? Treat them like Saddam Hussein Republican Guards and Iraq Sunni based Army.This is a lesson that they need to take it to the heart.

Or they could put into the military another header who is sympathetic to the wish of US security. This is a problem of internal power struggle that she sees taking place in Pakistan between civilian power and military power. This has been around for years in developing countries. Indian threat is an excuse of Army refuse to focus on the Pashtun problem on the border with Afghanistan.

She also criticizes the view of with-us -or-against-us. The underlying view is we should understand the needs and view of the locals instead imposing our value on other society. NATO unwillingness to cooperate with US in sending more fighting force to the region is a consequence of the Bush Administration own making. The US military has been going it own way at the beginning without paying any regards to the NATO’s view. They would certainly refuse to take care of the mess left over by the Bush administration military strategy.

Lip service on democracy building from the Bush Administration leads to the mistrust of the general public. Governmental officials in Afghanistan need to cover their rear and align with whomever that they think is really serious about staying with the area in long run. This is also the reason why the public are wearying of the US policy in Afghan.

One of the leaders in the interview also counters the view that drug traffic is the main so
urce of finance of the Taliban. His view is that they benefit from it partiall. It is basically the operation of the drug trafficking thugs.

Open US market is the cold war model to win more allies to US. The cost is the hollowing out of US industry and more unemployment in US economy. This is the price of Cold War that brought down USSR. This is the root cause to the current finance crisis where the major player in the economy is no longer industry and manufacture but finance service and gambling on financial market.

All the talks of finance system reform are simply wrong diagnostic of the current woe in the world of finance. Reinstalling the Glass Stegall Act is not very helpful with the power of the Wall Street and banking sector still intact. The same goes with giving the treasury department more power to manage the financial system on the tax payer back. The real reform is to scale back the role US want to play in the world to support the industry and finance sector via its foreign policy and military presence around the globe.

Helping the rest of the world in term of developing a democracy and stabilize the political landscape in order to sell more US products all over the world is simply the rhetoric that would eventually bankrupt US. The current account deficit and the national debt are simply the symptoms reflecting the consequence of this policy. The international derivative market is another manifestation this foreign policy. International involvement has been around since the day of FDR.

The banking crisis is still not out of the wood yet. The stock market is simply over exuberant in predicting a rosy future. This is a misreading of what is the financial market indicating. It is actually a legalized gambling venue for the speculators.

May 09, 2009. Weekend viewing?

PDANet is not as good as I thought. It is partially because of the characteristic of this Ad-hoc technology of connection. Other than that it is connecting quiet good for a while then stop connecting after a certain period. I wonder if there is another replacement technology of this.

Edward Murrow is the one that brings down the McCarthy. This is because Murrow is feeling threatened by McCarthy too. Morality is also the basis for the anti McCarthyism too. The red threat is simply a trumped up pretext to grab more power.

Susan Jacoby is on the move again at Ohio University at Columbus Ohio. She is the firebrand critic of today social spin on all aspects of the society. The education system, the business movement, the political spin, the religion spin of Darwinism, the electronic-computer industry effort to hypnotize the young generation with games at the expense of all else.

The only problem is that the topics she touched on are all over the maps. This is confusing especially when the issues are conflicting with each other and she offers no solution as what to think of it. Critical thinking skill is a personal virtue. This is simply the question of why it is so of every issue. Accepting nothing for granted is the basic principle that governs the so-called critical thinking.

This is the kind of thinking one often has very time reading something new in every field of the academic.

It is a natural reaction of the mind when seeing something new or paradoxical. This is very different from the experts’ testimony of author of political writings. They offer a very laser shape focus on a certain issue and knock it down with as much evidence s and arguments as possible.

The only thing I find refreshing is the attack of Ann Ryan philosophy on Objectivism. She claims this is just a bunch of hog wash by another atheist even though she is also an atheist. She states that there dumb atheist as well as dumb conservative. She however, praises Barry Goldwater’s book “Conscience of conservative”. Flat tax is not as good as progressive tax to flatten out the level playing field in society. She asserts that no matter how high a tax rates the fat-cats subject to, there are still plenty of after tax left over for them comparing to the working poor.

The fact that people can have two conflicting concept and also accepting them at the same time is a phenomenon of brain that she has to accept it. Many people know that the statistic of divorce is 50% in US and people still rush into marriage anyway. The same goes with Darwinism and believe in God at the same time. The typical one is the NIH genome project director.

Joseph Lowndes has a new book entitled “From the New Deal to the New Right” is an interest book that traces the current development of the Conservative movement. This is nothing new except a few names that are not familiar to me of the New Deal period. The name Bill Buckley is the familiar name so does Ronald Reagan. However, Barry Goldwater is never mentioned during this short interview on the book show.

Sara Lawrence Lightfoot and the Nikki Giovanni also a black female scholar and poet were on Bill Moyer Journal show. Last night is for Lightfoot. She is a writer with many new ideas. The one that sounds most revolutionary is that learning is what takes place within the 4 walls of a class room in a university, and education is a long term life long process that takes place in the real world every day. She says that one thing she had to unlearn is to do thing as quick as possible and most efficient in manner.

She feels now that learning is a slow process that comes naturally in life. The rushing through the learning process is very harmful to the thought of many people. This is a kind of industrialization of learning. After retirement there is no need for this kind of organized learning any more.

“The third chapter” is the title of the book about learning after retirement and in real life outside an institute or organized learning.

The idea of death is never crossing her mind. Even though she thinks that life is so short. She would like to say in the current depression era, one actually has to be more innovative in working with fewer resources and generate better outcome or same outcome as before. This sounds contradiction to her previous assertion that simply learning in a slow pace and let nature takes over as one goes forward.

Smell the rose is something she never experienced before. So many examples are given in the book as a new paradigm in the retirement age. Instead of sitting idle and let the time takes over one life. This actually is a very active and beneficial period of one life after retirement. One can still contribute a lot to the society. She used to feel old when doing mentoring to young people. Now she feels totally different on the issue of mentoring young people.

She has actual more than 40 stories in the book as examples of how to live a life that really make a difference. Writing is not only a hobby; it actually makes new connections of old facts. Life event is interesting on itself.

“All of us at this point, to some degree, are on a search for meaningfulness, for purposefulness. And we want to find what this next 25 years, this penultimate chapter of our life, is going to be about. And we’re ready for something new. For a new experience, for a new adventure, and I think all of us, to some degree, experience some burnout. Burnout is not about working too hard. Or working too diligently or being over committed. Burnout is about boredom. And so, I think in some ways this is about sort of moving beyond the boredom to compose, to invent and reinvent the path that we’re on.”

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She has pioneered portraiture, an approach to social science methodology that bridges the realms of aesthetics and empiricism. Lawrence-Lightfoot has written a number of books, including I’VE KNOWN RIVERS, which explores the development of creativity and wisdom using the lens of “human archaeology,” THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PORTRAITURE and THE ESSENTIAL CONVERSATION: WHAT PARENTS AND TEACHERS CAN LEARN FROM EACH OTHER. In 1984, Lawrence-Lightfoot was awarded the prestigious MacArthur prize fellowship, and in 1993, she was awarded Harvard’s George Ledlie prize for research that makes the “most valuable contribution to scienc
e” and “the benefit of mankind.”

In March 1998, she was the recipient of the Emily Hargroves Fisher endowed chair at Harvard University, which, upon her retirement, will become the Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot endowed chair, making her the first African-American woman in Harvard’s history to have an endowed professorship named in her honor. She also has an endowed professorship named in her honor at Swarthmore College. She enjoys long-distance swimming, tennis, dance, the theater and symphony, playing the piano, and traveling abroad.

Giovanni even gives a speech during VT massacre memorial and healing conference in Virginia Tech University. They are living on emotion rather rational. This is a major difference from the writing such as Susan Jacoby. She is more cerebral than cardinal. There are little connections between these two groups of female writers. There is little writing lately from so-called feminist writers lately on CSPAN.

May 08, 2009. Reform of the current finance system?

Tim Geithner was on CR Show night before last night. Then last night Neel Kashkari was on the program, Kashkari was the under secretary of Department of Treasury. He is head of the TARP fund management committee.

Evasive is the characterization of their talks. This is because they would not want to reveal too much information about what the department wants to do and upset or being taken advantage by the investment community on tax payer’s back.

They are the most boring thing to view. Behind the scene and frank discussion are not parts of the role of these so-called public officials. The Jews and the Mid East Arabs are favorite group of people in this money business. Speculation and setting up scam are the forte of this group of people.

Simply check the back ground of the Wall Street people. Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brother, City group, Bears and Stearns, Solomon Brother, etc. Then Kashkari, Taleb, Soros, Kerkorian, etc are other examples of this ethnic group from the Mid East.

Mentioning the name of officials and Mid East ethnic group, it rekindles my thought on AIPAC meeting lately and the Counterpunch.org’s report on the subject of official bribery in US congress and the wire tapping scam of government on the name of anti-terrorism.

Government officials using wire tapping results to blackmail public officials that involved in shady deeds to support executive branch plan is a common phenomenon under the Hoover FBI era. Nixon water gate is another example of this kind of practice.

Black mailing had been suspected by some whistle blowers as the reason why their cases against officials selling out US interest to foreign agents had been dropped by US congressional wrong doing investigation of a certain members. Henry Waxman and Pelosi come to mind and Denis Hartman is also part of this establishment that protecting their own class even though they are rivals in certain time and place.

CounterPunch .org reports that Hartman was working as a foreign agent representing the interest of Turkey. The one representing AIPAC such as Joe Lieberman is well known in the circle of Washington belt way.

This is nothing new at all. Corruption is part of the political reality. Grand standing is also a part of these political realities.

I come across a very solid reason why religion has been a dominant force in many mind of the public. It represents morality as far as these people are concerned. Morality is what lacking in politic. Human rights and civil rights are not part of the fabric of the political system for a long time. It is still the norm that political interest trumps morality. People flock to religion organization as a way to put pressure on the political body to heed the need of morality in their decision making.

The talk never mentioned the actual details of the reform plan for the finance system at all. Who are the members that oversee the drafting of this plan during the Geithner interview? The interview with Kashkari also had no mentioned of this plan either.

What only revealed during Kashkari appearance was the fact that they had no plan to control of use of TARP fund by banks to pay for bonus of CEOs and the executive group. This is their negligence in the plan to prevent world finance system from collapse.

Toxic waste according to Kashkari only amounts to $15 trillion. The amount the in the hand of foreign banks are included. $700 billion so far injected into the finance system only at US. How much had been injected to European states and Asian state?

He always reiterate the fact housing market is a local market, there is no national real estate market. This explains why the local real estate market has shown no sign of correction at all.

May 07, 2009. Myan code cracking and Stem cell?

The program on Times magazine cover issue on stem cells research are good introductory but all hype about the benefit of stem cells research based on Embryonic stem cells not adult stem cells.

I found the answer for the reason why medical researchers keep insisting using embryonic stem cells instead of adult stem cells for research. It is because of the negative effect cancer induce possibility of the adult stem cell method derived from human skin cell. These are so-called cancer gene is not good for human.

Induced Pluripotent stem cell (IPS) is the name of the method of producing stem cell from skin cell by injecting genes that force the cell to revert to their primitive “blank slate” form with all the pluritent capability of embryonic stem cell.

Adult or umbilical cord blood stem cells are also pluripotent able to become any kind of stem cell. This is why the debate on Washington Post about the scientific field using embryonic stem cell for research purpose is baseless.

Doug Melon of Harvard stem cell research lab was on Charles Rose Show last night to defend the using of embryonic stem cell in research.

There are basically three types of uses of stem cells now for scientific researches.

Lou Gerick and Parkinson disease are in need of this kind of stem cells to test drug that would slow the process.

The stem cell for growing new organ in animal for transplant purpose is another long term goal in the type of research.

The stem cell to study disease in human by placing hum cell in animals and observe how disease develops (Recapitulate disease in animals) is another use of stem cell.

Research is a discovery process. There is no way to predict the outcome of the research. However, reproducing disease is the most promising field. To discover the mechanism of disease development in animals so to develop drugs to fight these diseases or slow it down.

He asserts that the scientists have no major issue facing right now in research. Doubling the resource would double the outcome. But there is no 1000 folds outcome yet.

The major hurdle now of making heart cells and kidneys cells by grafting of stem cells into human. Bioengineering is the key.

Stem cell to pancreas cell and eventually organ cell is the goal. The research in this field is making good progress. Diabetic baby cell has a good chance of success especially for type-1 diabetes.

The concept is known as rebooting the pancreas to get rid of all the disorder.

Understanding and preventing ar e the current goal, curing disorder is the final long term goal.

Young person has a much stronger stem cells reservoir than adult. This is why kids heal much quicker than old person.

Stem cell research ban has some impact on the effort of the research but it would not cause severe brain drain as many had thought. We can still attract many young researchers from all over the world.

In human being the pool or reservoir for stem cell are only available for a certain defects such as skin, blood replenishment. For heart cell, kidney, liver there is no such pool.

Cracking the Mayan Code by NOVA is also a good program… However; these writer could only focus on the warring nature of the Mayan history. There is no other aspect of cultural life beside the myth of underworld and secular world connection as a source of super power for the leader of society.

There is no other aspect such as technology, astronomy, art, tools making, agriculture, architecture, pyramid, etc. This is a reflection of the emphasis of the story narrator also. This is very similar to the propaganda movie that only focuses on the holocaust during the Nazi with no other supplements such as military strategy, technology, cultural for the war, psychology of the leadership, etc.

This is a reoccurring theme every time these writers of NOVA program talk about Mayan culture and Nazi activities.

The code itself is a reflection of the technology or the abstract thinking of the Mayan elites. This is the ability of creating language that based on both sound and pictogram.

The Chinese and Korea have a more abstract system of writings than the Mayan continues throughout history of human development.

May 04, 2009. Weekend Musing?

Mark Bauerlein’s “The dumbest Generation”, is all about the current hype of digital virtual social network as a way of future for the business world to push its products. This is actually another tool to dump down the young people that constantly hang out in this area at the cost of neglecting all other needs in life.

Christopher Catherwood’s “Winton Churchill: The Flawed Genius of the World War II” is a good contrast to the spin by Alan Beatti, author of the “False Economy: a Surprising Economic History of the World”.

Catherwood has the thesis that if Churchill was a Genius than there would be no Iraq crisis and all the bloodshed associated with the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein and the ensuing tragic consequence of occupying Iraq with inadequate military force. The other case quoted by Catherwood to backup his thesis that Churchill is a flawed genius is the case of COLD WAR. If decision made by the genius as conventional wisdom goes, then the border of the East West conflict would not be at the German’s Berlin and it should be way over Poland.

I have a problem with his speech because of his accent and habit of talking very fast. This is a talk from the local University of Richmond history department.

“The Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of injustice and Redemption” by Ronald Cotton and Jenifer Thompson-Cannino is also very emotional. Majority of the audience are ex-convicts that were wrongfully put in jail for something that they had not done. This is a story of how unreliable personal memory from so-called eye witness account. This is a major problem of US justice system. Then there is another overly confident case of using DNA to prove any case beyond shadow of doubt. When DNA was gathered wrongfully from the wrong evidence could also lead to wrongful conviction too. The due process is the key. DNA could become inaccessible over time because of fossilization and contamination of DNA. DNA is not panacea.

David William’s “Bitterly Divided: The South inner Civil War” is a book about the suffering of the poor white in the South in the hand of the plantation owners during the War between the South and the North. This is a reality that never mentioned by all the hype about slavery and the conflict between the Confederate and Union Army. All people want to show is the battle ground and how many people had perished during the war.

“What Obama means to Our culture, Our politic and Our future” by Jarabi Asim is also interesting up to a certain extend. It is all about the view of the general black population think about the so-called Obama effect. It is a confession of a skeptic turn optimists, Asim. He is also a reporter for Washington Post.

“Great Power: America and the World after the Bush” Thomas P.M. Barnett is a show that I missed last night.

Washington book review has a bad piece of his thesis. I also come across him at Tavis Smiley show. The interview is too short to give me a good impression of him. But last night I caught a glimpse of his speech during the last leg of his Q/A session. He seems to be very realistic about the world especially about the relationship with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the rest of the world. He would say let the current generation mature, they will become less radical when they have enough money and job to marry and raise a family.

The best policy is not to spend more money on these elements. They will focus more on economic and feeding their family and providing jobs to the people in the society. This is the major concern of all the government around the world.

I find the writing of mathematic thought and physics very inconvenient on the Web. There are times must be spent to learn the MathXL script language in order to do that. This is very time consuming.

May 04, 2009. Free Trade Myth again?

A question why the banks have the ability, legal right to create money out of thin air, they would still speculate in derivative market and finally demand more from Uncle Sam?

There is a missing link somewhere in the power of the banks to create money and the Power of the government. Ellen Brown (author of the Web of debt) has no answer for this question yet. One answer I could come up with is that this is not the bankers in US that want money from the government beside the right to create money out of thin air. It is the outside international fat cats that want the same right to do so on the back of the working people in US too.

Game of life is that it is all about. There is really no need for all these money on individual level. It is the power of having the feeling one is above the rest of the world that drives fat cats into these kinds of maddening games of power.

Bernie Madoff is one of those leading figure that finally reveals its true color as one of these fat cats swindler on massive scale of the world.

The Fed is an organization that is independent of the control of US government. The chairman of the FED can be called to testify in front of congress. But US congress has no control over it. The governor of the Open Market committee of the FED has the right to set the interest rate of short term loan.

Short term loan is more important than long term loan? In the long run we all die anyway.

There is another spin doctor by the name Alan Beattie was on the CSPAB book tour circuit. He is another of these British croon that promoting free trade as a way to grow the world economy for the industrialists.

The usual spin of China is saving too much and this hinders the flow of trade around the world. The Chinese manipulate currency and this leads to the deficit of trade balance of the Western nation and US is rehashed on the program by this spin doctor.

The Ahamed book has clearly points out that this is the tool used by the government of the Britain in 20s to attempt establishing itself as a world leading economic power. With the help of the gold standard, this brings forth the world greatest depression so far.

The Brit biggest liar from the labor party, Tony Blair also tries to pull the old trick of lying on bald face to support US invasion of Iraq on the falsified claim of WMD in Iraq. They like to spin as much smoke screen as possible as a way to control the world opinion as well as domestic public opinion. Adam Smith and Richard Ricardo are the two most famous spin doctors so far in history of economics are still put on Pedestal by the conservative spin doctor in both side of Atlantic.

Beatti even asserted corruption in government is unavoidable and support the idea of one central corrupted government is better than many decentralized corrupted government on all level. He also pull the same trick that put words in other people mouth to say that this is why Indian economy is not been successful as the Chinese in recent years by quoting this as words from an Indian official.

He would support the new idea that is currently prevalent in the West that water is a precious supply that should not be used as a resource to irrigate the rice field. Food in the third world countries should be imported from the West and the water should only be used for cooking and drinking. They are precious natural resource.

He would not encourage the third world attempt to become self sufficiency in food production. This is a losing battle for these nations.

He would argue that religion belief is not the driving force of the economics development of the US. It is the freedom to establish one own religion belief that really the driving force of the economic development.

If one does not like the religion of the puritan, one can go to another area to form new religion that fits one liking and philosophy.

He blames Argentina development falling behind USA on the ground of misguided economic policy of the country when USA and Argentina both start at the same line. This is particular obvious in hindsight after the Great Depression of the 30s. USA has focused more on industrialization and Argentina continued on the path of agricultural development especially in beef production.

The trade focus of this author reminds me the view of Chang also on trade issue that I also come across a while back on C-SPAN. He debunks all the so-called free trade hype of the classical economist���s views. He is also a British trained economist teaching at University in England.

He also claims that reform is hard for a country. In times of crisis, people always launch new reform of this or that. This is the only time when the public pressure is higher and there is a chance for the reform mind to defeat the status quote.

May 03, 2009. Lord of finance (Ahamed) ?

Liaquat Ahamed is the name of the author of “Lord of Finance”. This is a historical account of what was going in the time leading to the 30s Great Depression for the world. This is an historical event that the system tries to forget and even distorts to suit one political persuasion

The problem with this kind of writing is that it is very hard to give an “objective” view of the matter. One has to be a very involved person, from the inside of the system of decision making to get a first hand view of the event as it unfolds.

It is hardly likely that anyone with this kind of back ground live to tell this story without any burden of offending the ruling elites whether they are in the government or in the controlling echelon of the business world. This would also jeopardize their social standing and the chance to continue making a comfortable living at all.

There are books around for years on this issue of what is the root cause of the Great Depression. However, they are often slandered one way or the other. Some blame it on the excess of the Wall Street and the Robber Barons of the time, other blame it on the government policy of budget balancing. Some blame it on the geopolitical rivalry in Europe and some blame it on the gold standard system. Well as I see it, it is all the above.

Ahamed description seems to be fallen into the case of the latter. He simply lays out all the factors on the table. Slice and dice is the job of the spin doctors. As an historian, this is all he has to do. Let other do the judgment call. The ignorant would make the wrong call and the smart would make the right call.

Angle of this book is more or less focus on the central bankers on US, Great Britain, Germany and France. The author traces the history of these people and their decision during the time and after the break out of the Great Depression. Such characterizing of the book makes it unique from other books.

Details of the each person experience during the time turns out to be so different from each other. The US central banker who is a New York Fed chairman by the name Benjamin Strong, Hjalmer Schacht is the counterpart in Germany, Montagu Norman of England and Emil Morceau of France are the central characters of the book.

There are also political characters in the parliament of each state that also play a important role that gives rise to the deadly situation of the Great Depression. Who’s decision to put the blame of First World War on the shoulder of Germany and the subsequent reparations Germany has to make to the winning states such as Britain, France and USA. This is a story of geopolitical chicanery that this author and the interviewer refuse to go into detail.

Without a doubt this probably is not the focus of the book. But it is also a major factor that brings the problem of economic depression into live. If the author wants to get into this aspect, the book would extend to two volume set and it would not good for making deadline of the publisher. The timing of the release of the book is also crucial of the success of the book as far as publishing business is concerned.

John Maynard Keynes was also mentioned in the book and his ascendance was also described by the author. He is a man who wonders how come there is no Gold Standard and all other political elements and debts that burdening the European power after the war also suffering from this economic disease. This prompts him to carry out the research undertaking for years to find out the reasons behind the situation in USA economy.

For the past couple decades many works had been devoted to this subject. The conclusion all seem to point to the lack of knowledge of how economic operates in reality. However, human factor and political atmosphere of the time is also play very vital role too. This is seen in today rhetoric from politicians. Mainstream media has nothing but rhetoric from these characters as a way to sell newspaper and advertisement time on airway.

Trade and protectionism stemmed from national interest and the need to cut off supply to your rivals are the major concern of the day. This is still the case in today environment. The depression is no concern for the people in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran as far as the US and the West is concerned. Selling more goods and technologies to these nations is not on the table when discussing the remedies for the economy of the world. This is a white elephant in the room that these policy thinkers would not see.

As far as getting thing done, political concern is always playing a role in clouding people judgment. It would seem to most that as far as getting job done, it should make no difference whether the color of the mouse is black or white. But this is not the case in reality. Selling more goods to the world is not the major concern of the political leaders and policy makers in the administration or other political branch of the government. This is clear as day light.

Back in the 30s, the US congress would refuse to grant the Fed presidents of various regions the power to make decision to flood the market with liquidity as it would today. This is a manifestation of the power of US congress over the business community back then. This seems to be a reverse situation today. Business has more power than the rest of the society. The blank check and no oversight bailout to the banking CEOs is a stark contrary of the balance of power in society now a day.

No one to run the banking business and auto industry is a result of the current system of incompetent politicians and government leadership. This is a misguided policy of the industry over the national interest of the people. The root cause of this is the imbalance of power between government and the business interest. This is a viewpoint that all these so-called spin-doctor writers would dare to articulate in their writings at all.

Running of the bank is the major problem of the Great Depression. Liquidity crunch is more severe in the past than today. It is basically caused by the Gold Standard system that tries to put fiscal responsibility on the part of government in the European countries. The way war was financed in Europe back then, by borrowing money from US and others is what limit the ability of government to create liquidity to the economy. Today no such limitation is imposed on the system.

However, the political factor that cloud one judgment is still around. There are so many oppositions still around of wasteful government spending. This is simply rhetoric of the opposition party and politicians. They also still oppose to the heavy hand government regulations in general. However, none of them would against socializing the risk and privatizing the profit of banking system.

According to the author Ahamed, that IRS has put fines on several bank presidents that shorting their own banks stocks to profit from the fall of the banking system in 30s. US treasury secretary also indicted by IRS to pay back tax on some profits made during the depression. IRS was decimated by US GOP and DEM members as the rise of the anti and small government gain more influence in US congress.

The fear of inflation is never mentioned directly in the book by this author for the current recession. The fear of lack of discipline in government spending implies the fear of inflation in the economy. This is main focus of Paul Volcker in the 60s, 70s era.

Christine Romer in the Economist council of Obama is an economist specialized in the study of impact of spending on the recession. She shows that consumers spending cut back is the major factor that leads to the economic recession during 30s. The FDR spending stimulus package is actually very modest in light of the need of the economy.

Other also find that the devaluation of USD also help to inflate the value of gold reserve in US treasury and this gives banks more reserve to lend to the businesses, this is a virtual expansion of credit liquidity. This level of details is hardly noticed by other books in economy and depression at all.

The Bernanke focus is basically on how the banks react to the liquidity crisis. The fact that banks would call in loans and business have to pay back loan immediately as an upshot is not clearly reported in all the writings that I come across so far is a scam. This is why the dollar value goes up because of demand of business to repay loans in USD from around the world and thus created a liquidity crunch around the world by lending institute that want dollars as a form of payment. This is a factor that people investing in foreign currency keep it in secrecy. And this is why the world is in crisis as US sneezes.

Details of life of the four central bankers were details in the book and during the conversation in CSPAN interview after word.

The French was upset that Germany would rise again if they cooperating with international community. The England demand of $100billion of reparation from German, 10x the GPD of Germany at the time, etc. leads to default of debts after debts from countries. However, this also sows the seed for the rise of Nazi in Germany and the WWII later on. The crisis of depression hit Europe only 10 years after the end of WWI.

So war plays a great part to the break out of the finance crisis of Europe and the rest of the world because the world is actually connected via economic and finance interest. This is beyond the comprehension of the elites of the day at the continent of Europe.

Then another thing this spin doctor Ahamed failed to disclosure is the plight of the workers with no income to spend so economy can be boost of the depression by stimulus from the private consumers sector. Viewing on the Amazon website about the back ground of the author reveals that he is another those conventional head economist and hedge fund manager, so his view is certainly tainted with the classic bias of the money class.

The efforts of stimulus and the angry sentiment of the speculation of today bankers is not the topic of the book. This could have hindered the effort to pull the economy out of the severe doldrums. They are beneficiaries of the bailout plan of the finance system. This is the conventional wisdom of the economists of the West. There is no other view than this.

The Japanese problem during the 90s is also a blow to this view and the recuperation of Japanese economy is attributed to the new banking policy also from government to force bankers to write off their bad loans and enable new money injection to the zombie banks in banking sector from the foreign investors such as private equity and hedge funds.

But there is another view that the way the Japanese out of the recession is actually none of the above measures but the open up of China as a new market for Japanese goods and industry facilities. But where can one find alternative view of world economic events when everywhere one sees is under the influence of the capitalism.

The view of more regulations is simply baseless since regulations are already there but they had been dismantled by the politicians on behalf of the business class in banking sector and the cronies that representing the business class in government regulatory agencies.

Blaming everything on Government policy is the best way to go. Who is the government representing anyway?

May 01, 2009. Ramo and international relation?

Talking about the G-2 in foreign policy magazine and reading this in Asian Time online poke my interest of the subject matter. It turns out this is an idea promoted by Henry Kissinger and ZBignew Brzezinski. Elizabeth C Economy and Adam Segal of Council of Foreign Relation have a piece on the magazine commenting on the insufficient nature of this model of G-2 relation between USA and China.

The style of the writing is very formal and there is little fault one can find in the argument that is very comprehensive. The authors recognize that there are many short coming on the part of US that the current relationship between USA and China was not as well as expected. This is why they proposed more international parties involved. So the short coming of US can be over compensated with the merit of other countries that have no such short coming.

Moreover, US can look for extra pressure from other international players when she feels no leverage on her part. But these authors have not raised the problem that these international players may also have problem with US too. Instead of siding with US, they may become neutral and even worse disagree with US position. Then what matter would become much messier. Bilateral relationship is for the merit of making relationship simple.

So there are drawbacks in this model too. The article mentions the interest view of Kurt Campbell and Richard Wietz. They correctly pointed out something I come across before by playing secrecy as part of one bargaining power. This is often seen in the conservative advocacy of secrecy based on national security ground. China is a weak player and believes that uncertainty about it true capabilities can act as a deterrent. There are not much apart in its position on secrecy.

China is also very clear on refuse to join US in playing the human right game as well as the game of IP protection. This is another ground for the people in China policy worry that US at a disadvantage when playing the game of global warming cooperation to cut down on CO2 release. Japanese has no problem on this issue by cooperating with China to fight for better emission control. This is the same aspect that international cooperation on fighting healthcare issues that facing the entire world because of the possibility of virus spreading from one area to another area across borders.

Learning to give power as proposed by Ramo would be a good way to start to build a better international relationship with the rest of the world. Learning to negotiate indirectly is also a new way to handle international relation. Avoiding scaring and intimidating others and start building a more defensive system by become more resilient is a good alternative to the current attitude. This is how one build new relationship around the world after the Bush era.

May 01, 2009. Ramo and Swine flu connection?

It’s unbelievable that streaming broadcast via Iphone would stop the rest of the Internet connection on the web browser at all. It is so much for the 3G technology of wireless mobile phone.

Swine flu has been looked at by many writers on the web from different perspective such as globalization, Wall Street, scientific, commerce, politic, traveling, business of import and export, international relation, and national security, etc.

There is no reporting of Swine flu from the perspective of single pay health care system and the cooperation on international level of providing assistance to the resource lack countries in fighting the spreading of Swine flu virus.

More reactions based on selfish interest are seen around the world such as limit travel advisory issued by more countries around the globe are seen. If more aids are dispensed to these inflicted regions, then there would be less likely that this virus would spread so quick around the world. Is this simply wishful thinking on my part? Then there is another aspect of this could be a conspiracy of some agency that testing a biological weapon using the general public as genie pigs.

The aspect of industry farming and feeding of animals with steroid to speed up their growth and rip the sale of the animals much more sooner never cross the mind of the mainstream media outlet reporters at all.

But, this is not emerging out of the mainstream media report at all.

Wired magazine even pull out an article on David X Li as the genius who comes up with the mathematic model that all the bad loans in the mortgage market as random event that would not affect the overall condition of the mortgage back security market at all.

This is a perspective of mathematical model and a spin of this magazine. However, as observed by Janet Tavakoli in her book “Dear Mr. Buffet”, this is mismanagement and regulatory problem not a mathematic model problem as many would like you to believe at all.

According to an article on Asian Time online by Julian Delasantellis, it is also the psychology of the American public too lazy to fight for the community cause of having a good public school and endorsing the flight to better neighborhood with a strong school system for their children education sake. This is also a racism in disguise that think all black are bad because they are poor and lack of family responsibility and discipline in general.

View like this has been around for more than 200 years and thing has not changed for better at all. This is the reason given by Delasantellis that same house in two different school district of a city could have a $50000 difference in price. And the reason that the consumers in US are general in debt because of the school finance for their kids.

If these people can be easily to bamboozle in believing something out of human creation such as religion and phony morality, they would be easily be smoked into believe all the spin pronounced by the high priest in the Wall Street and many other fields. They simply refuse to think critically on their own as an independent human being because they are working too many OT at work place and no time for other tasks in life.

Ramo was on Charles Rose last night selling his latest idea in the book “The Age of Unthinkable” again. He was being asked more on his view about the growth of China than any other aspect of his book. Sand pile model of Per Bak was reiterated by Ramo to back his thesis that no one can predict the future of an increasingly unstable system that currently working on international level.

Chinese has focus on this for a long time. Managing economic growth to benefit the ruling party is a major concern of the ruling elites. An increasingly uneasiness is felt among the Communist party liberal wing in the wake of the international finance melt down stemming from Wall Street. They felt that conservative wing is gaining momentum with the people. A new way to manage the growth must be invented; otherwise the life of the ruling liberal wing is numbered.

China history and China future are constantly fight with each other. The people on the street have a different view from that of the officials. They believe the conflict with US is inevitable at all.

Calling for change is nothing short of wanting a carrier to change its course. It is a slow process and it must be decided in earnest and as soon as possible. Society has a tendency to hold on to the status quote, only the people in the binds want to carry out change as quick as possible. It takes a lot of resource to reorganize a society anyway. This will meet with many resistances from all corners of the society.

The mental change is simple and it is the work he is preparing now with this book. It would take a lot of efforts and times to turn it into reality. This is an open society according to Ramo and people would see the benefit of it when showing the fact to them.

However, I feel he is not as articulate as many politicians in both the left and the right. This is particular true for people like William Buckley, Jr. to Karl Marx. They all spend a lot of times thinking about the issue how to enact change in society.

There are other things about selling a vision. One must show a passion in the vision by acting on it and writing on it as much as possible. This is what he lacks now. Ramo does not articulate well and connecting with the viewers and readers of his books in a most profound way. The number of stories cited in his book are not convincing enough and helping the people making the necessary connection between mindset and action.

This is a deep issue to deconstruct. There is little model and stories to go by. What happens in the future is not here yet. So it is difficult to convince people to agree with your view. But ones passion and articulation would influence the mindset of the audiences and eventually their behaviors in the future. It is a matter of time. The established practice is entrenched and had been around for decades. To uproot it would also require the same amount of times and efforts.

The model of connected world is another good way to get the message across. What is done to other would come back implicating us too. This is the principle that had been around for t
housands of years.

The sand pile model of Per Bak also reminds me the new model of science is complexity and chaos theory. Where are they now? are they making any progress at all? The fractal theory of human and social development seem to getting no where lately. I hope it is not a fad that simply disappear from the scene after a while. I remember fractal application in computer science for cloud and mountain, etc rendering on computer screen. There are also fractal finance market model, but the progress seem come to a halt after that.

April 30, 2009. 100 day of Obama admin?

Well, tonight I found an article on www.freerepublic.com./focus/f-news/582763/post via

Google search on presidents before George Washington. It turns out that these are the administrators of the Continental Congress which was designed by the Article of Confederation. This is before the official US constitution was formulated. John Hancock was one of these so-called presidents as the president of a company or president of an organization.

So it is a matter of definition and the history of political institute before the US constitution. There are still many things of that period were not known to the general public except a few specialists on that period. I remember a book about the ethnic cleansing of French settle along the East coast in Canada and colony of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, etc.

This is the same tradition of the kind of ethnic cleaning done by Andrew Jackson and the current Slobevic xxx of Serbia that carried out the ethnic cleansing of Muslim population in the former Yugoslavia. The Rwanda of Africa also has the same human instinct of power grab via ethnic cleansing during the Clinton Administration watch.

Today is the 100 day of Obama administration. He was given an F from the GOP and the Left wingers. But 60% of the public give him an A minus score. This is not impressive a score at all. What is most disappointing is his economic policy and the finance reform program for the country and the rest of the world.

The viewing of the midget race in Indonesia discovery is interesting. This has a potential to overthrow the current convention model about anthropology of the West.

What a boring day as far as the achievement of the new Obama admin. This is a very disappointing administration after the W. Bush’s stinging mess. Expectation is after all only expectation. Reality fails to match the imagination and emotion of the general public.

Swine flu has killed a small Mexican child coming back from Mexico to Brownville Texas. Other than that there is little report on the scientific aspect of this strain of virus at all.

April 29, 2009. Swine flu and The Prince?

The Swine flu epidemic really as the spin wiped up by the media really originated from Mexico? The panel of specialist on Charles Rose had a different view of this. The lady from council of foreign relation said that last September, Texas first reported two case of Swine flu. The same virus H1N5 that the center of disease control in Atlanta, Georgia had sampled and predicted would be in the air this winter.

However, the detail is not clear if it is a variant strain of this H1N5 or it is the same kind of virus that killed many young kids in Mexico. The doctors in CDC are working hard to identify and find the antidote of this virus.

But the convenient of air travel has made the spread of the virus much quicker than usual. The only suggestion the medical field gives is limit one’s travel to Mexico. US has experienced many cases of the same strain of flu but none of them is fatal yet. This reminds me the Canadian experience couple years back on the Avian Flu.

Tamiflu is the drug that has some good for avian flu if the flu is detected early in its phase. But the current flu epidemic may have the same characteristic as the avian flu, i.e. stopping it in the track at early phase by going to doctor for flu like symptom. The problem is the lack of national healthcare system that covers this kind of early doctor visiting. So by the time the patients were really sick, there is no chance for the treatment to take effect. This is mentioned by the female guest and also in today counter punch article.

There is no solution and scientific report on this strain of virus yet. There is little on the media as far as this subject goes.

The viewing of the “Prince” on Tavis Smiley show is very interesting. He is really a strange person. He seems to very keen of the business side of the music publishing. He is release a set of three CDs this week. One of the CD is for a white female from Mediapolis, Minnesota. She looks very beautiful, but I had not find anything unique about her as person yet. Her voice and singling style is unique alright. She is singing the kind of tune that is flat but still distinguishable from the rest of the artists.

However, the observation of this artist through his conversation with Tavis is that he is not well versed in the conventional language of describing human relation and behavior. This is probably he would not like to read other people works and he likes to create his own works.

This is why he tends to use a unique set of language created by him. And he seems to unable to answer majority of the question head on. He likes to meander into other topic that is not related to the question by the conventional standard.

He also has a very strict experience while grow up with his father. But he is not answering the question such as how to grow himself out of the pressure put on him by kids around him while in school. He would answer by having a good support group to encourage in face of trouble. So it is relying on someone beside you to overcome the misgiving getting from hostile groups.

The answer to the question how to consider a criticism is a constructive criticism on his works instead of personal criticism is that it is depending on the love that shows in the criticism or the method of criticism that are more indirect and metamorphic. But if some consider the works is ahead of time, so advent guard, how one without a vision of the music future similar to him, could have come up with criticism on technical dimension and content of his works?

He also said something about the current political system and Obama as a symbol of the current system that makes me perplex. He would agree Obama is a very smart person. But he would assert that this does not change the experience of the disadvantage group that living in the ghetto. He also comments that the separation of state and religion is the source of the current lack of morality in the political system.

He likes to equate religion with morality. He recounted an anecdote while he was having a concert in England and viewing a direct feed of UN speech and found there are so many talks of god and morality in these political speeches. But this is not the case in US political speech at all in respond a question why he does not vote.

Then he also said something that how can one trust a system that never told the students that George Washington is not the first president of USA. There are seven presidents before him. What is he talking about?

His relation with the artistic community is not as cordial as it should. He has only a few friends remain with him now. He is still a sanitation freak around his house. He would want to get some income supplement by releasing new CDs and more concerts tour around the world.

FDR’s polio back ground is a white elephant in the house that few people attacked him seem to see at all. He has a plan for his run of the president job by the inspiration of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt experience. He followed the extract path that prepared his run for the US presidency.

If he were not become wheelchair bound and strike a chord with the plight of the general working public and voters, he could have lost in his run for the US president job. He would not gain the approval of the voting public that is in dire straight because of economic recession.

He has changed the isolation attitude of the US society forever. Today US international involvement is the legacy of his effort.

There is little analysis of his philosophy in politic and international relation at all by W. H. Brands. The unique thing he said about FDR is that he is actually an actor that plays the role of US president very similar to the act of Ronald Reagan. So it is a waste of time to dig up his thinking behind all his policies.

There is no real deep root in his political thinking. He never has any documents left that are written about himself at all. All the documents are about someone else he had observed daily.

April 28, 2009. Cherokee nation?

The viewing of American Experience program on the demise of Cherokee as a nation and people was so outrageous. This leads to the observation that rule of the human evolution is always dog eat dog. The Nazi Germany of the WWII, the 30 year religion war of the West, the British Empire of the past 200 years, the current Israel Palestinian conflict, The Vietnam era conflict, the Cold War, the Iraq invasion, the Afghanistan backlash, the Pakistan reaction, etc. are the stark manifestation of this rule.

All the so-called human superiority over animal world is simply a bunch of lie that has no place in reality. This is why the need to protect oneself against the other is the top priority in a certain group of people wanted to survive this struggle with the more powerful neighbor.

But the reality is that the power also lead to corruption and the powerful would also reduce to nothing by its own power. The moderation is thus a normal state of the nature. The so-called eternal revolution and the eternal expansion are simply wishful thinking.

The demise of USSR is one examples, the demise of the West had been around for 60 some years, when the other super power fall down is any one’s guess. This is the simple rule of sand pile avalanche of the Per Bak.

What can one do in this situation like the Cherokee? Figuring out a way to beat the system of encroachment is the only way out. The principle that no one can predict the future is a good principle to go by. This is also a hopeful rule that beat the so-called predetermine view of history. Empire rise and fall, this is the simplest rule of human evolution.

Andrew Jackson is the one carrying out this policy of ethnic cleaning of the century. However, the spin doctor would put it as a way that the president helping the land prospectors and the landless population of the South East region of USA. He is also an advocator of the trade and craft union against the encroachment of the big bankers and big business of the day. Is this really the intention of this president on the 20 dollar bill? Andre Jackson by the way was born near Charlotte NC and raised there.

This is kind of like people praising Richard Nixon as a genius foreign policy on one hand and demonizing him as the arch enemy of democratic principle of fair competition among party.

April 27, 2009. Hot spring day in Richmond?

I come to downtown Richmond to check out the VCU Medical College Center which is a hospital associated with the Virginia Commonwealth University. This is a teaching hospital for the poor in the state and for the city of Richmond.

This is a university that gets little attention and funding from the US government. There is little research result conducting in this facility that has a prominent place in medical research community.

NYU, Male clinic, UCSF, Cornel University, Duke, General Mass, Harvard medical school, Duke University, Pennsylvania University, Emory University, UCSD, UCLA, John Hopkins have more publicity and recognition than VCU. Why? It is because there is no leading research here that benefit the rich and majority of the patient here are poor black, is it?

Or it is simply a non-Ivory leagues University and thus has little national media support and local business support at all. This is a city with almost 60% of its population is Black. Very close to the 70% level in Washington D.C. It also gets a lousy treatment from the rest of the nation in term of political representation in US congress.

Philip Morris center of research and technology was also in the vicinity of this facility. The city hall of Richmond also locates nearby. The coliseum of the city also built next to the hospital. The street and traffic flow around this area is terrible. The parking space is also very tight.

The VCU Medical College Center is not as well organized as the Caroline Medical Center of Charlotte. There is no curbside assistance for patients at the main entrance and no traffic direction assistance too at the same place.

This is the drawback of most of the city center medical facilities. They have no expansion room. They could have built these medical facilities in the suburban area with plenty room to expand.

Now I know why the streets in the city and highway in its surrounding are in so bad a condition. There are pot hole the size of two basket ball all over the section near I64 and I95 exchange. There are very lousy repairs on the inner city streets as well. The simply reason is the city has no adequate revenue to provide these basic services to the people. The people are poor and there are abject poverty and unemployment in the city. Where would the revenues come from other than the residents’ incomes and business tax?

The weather turns into 90 F in simply one day. This is a lousy and swift change in such a short time. Again I had driven around the neighborhood and found out that the housing price is ridiculous high in my neighborhood even for some crappy houses that are over 30 years old.

V is still feeling lack of strength and feeling dizzy every time she gets up from chair or the seat of car. What is going on with her blood pressure?

I find the chapter of group in Road to Reality does not do justice to the concept of Tensor and why tensors possess such an interest utility in physics at all. It is because of the way it get transformed in a translation of coordinates and rotation of coordinates, is it? These transformations would not change the general form of a formula that describes relation of certain elements within different coordinate system.

I had read this chapter twice and still found there are many things very vague. This is because there is no attempt on the author’s part to get this question answered as clear as possible without referring to some concrete examples that only come into existence at the later part of the book.

I had stopped reading the book as soon as V wants to get out of the house and get some shopping done in super market. The tree pollens are all over the cars in the apartment’s parking lot. This is spring time. But the weather makes me feel like it is the mid of summer time. I thought that the sea breeze from the coast would be here and blow away all the heat in the area. It is obviously not the case today.

The FT (Finance Time) editor Lionel Barber was on Charles Rose show Friday night. He was talking about the trouble of the news paper business and how to overcome it. His approach is to provide as much as possible all the information on a certain issue to attract readers to the news paper. There is no lack of readers ready to shell out more money to subscribe to the financial news paper. Wall Street Journal has no such problem. Bloomberg news service also has no such problem.

He gives a lot of credits to the emerging countries such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia. This is not the case in US business news paper. They are more or less spinning business and political view of special interest groups. This is a stark contradiction as the role played by business media outlets in the opposite side of the Atlantic.

He also subscribes to the notion unfettered Capitalism is not the model endorsed by the international community at the present time. This is contradicting to the view of the Austrian School of economic supporters. They would blame the current crisis on the role played the FED which is part of the government. Their ease credits policy is the root cause of all the recession and inflation around the world.

He projects that the finance market will be smaller in the future. The dominant role of the business power over the rest of the society will be diminishing. Margaret Thatcher assertion that “there is no such a thing as society, only thing matter is stock market and economy in a country” will no longer be true. The state and public sector will be cut back because of lack of resources.

He asserts that FT will have to be more than just financial newspaper and it has to also dominate the other aspects of news too. The term is to own the story of all its dimensions.

I had a gleam of the Bill Moyer Journal show this week. They guests on the panel are the usual Simon Johnson and another economics professor talking about the similarity of today finance crisis and the 30s great depression. There are many new regulations put into place after the meltdown back in 30s, and there are also a lot of investigation from the regulation and state attorney general of New York. However, this is not the case in today setting.

People are talking about that the public has to show some action to back up Obama administration to pressure US cong
ress to follow through on its role of being the oversight organization of the current system of finance. That means there is going to be a power struggle between the executive branch and the legislative branch of the government. So the current brouhaha of the successful of the Obama administration is nothing short of a farce.

April 26, 2009. Is Ramo another spin doctor?

“The age of unthinkable” by Joshua Cooper Ramo is very interesting and very board in nature. This is the kind of book that requires readers to make their own connections with this general observation.

Ramo is the managing editor of the Henry Kissinger associate based in Beijing China. He used to be the foreign correspondent of Times magazine. This is the kind of job that Thomas Friedman used to have. The writing style and the nature of the writing are very similar to those of Thomas Friedman. It is full of hype.

There are many examples in the books to prove the point. However, whether people buy into it or not is totally different story.

The writing style is of those superficial one of general reporting than an in-depth analysis with details argument and many other evidences to back them up.

He has some points but the problem with his assertion is very general in nature. It will work out fine in principle and it will not hurt the society that adopts this policy of resilience. There is nothing to lose. Playing safe is better than playing recklessly. But this is contradicting to the risk taking mentality that the current system so keen in promoting it.

The current economics and financial crisis are result of this reckless risk taking attitude in general. It does not matter how the right wing conservatives would say to divert the attention from the mess that created by the people claimed to be in their camps.

Ramo so-called scientific basis for this argument of one must play it safe because the inherent instability of the sand pile model build by the Danish physicist Per Bak who had passed away a few year ago while still in his youth. The other observation that any company that stop innovating would bind to lose out in the future when the rest of the world is non-stopping innovating.

It is a simple logic. He is touting the innovating spirit of Silicone Valley is something unique to the spirit of the entrepreneurs of this region that is something lacking in the rest of the world. There is another saying “necessity begets innovation”. Where are the necessities now? The energy crisis and the global warming crisis are the necessities facing the world now. So let see who would be coming ahead in this competition of coming up with the technology of using energy more efficiently.

The listing of all the current failure in business, military, education, companies policy, immigration policy, cost controlling policy, etc. are good example of lack of innovation. This is because the current of crops of products are failing in capture the imagination of the consumers.

The saying “There is nothing to watch with over hundreds of channels available on the TV set” is a good example of lack of innovation in the creative world of television content producing. The other example such as newspaper sector declining in income is another good example of lack of innovation of the business sector of media production. The author says it is clearly indicator of the newspaper publishing sector failure to adept to change and lack of innovation on its part.

This begets the reminiscence that many newspaper editors were on the Charles Rose show to spread the message the Internet surfer must pay for the contents of their enterprise. They refuse to change by providing a new business model that based on free contents such as the NYT and Washington Post online had done so far. AP is asking for more money from Google and FT is doing the same thing with its clients.

They are basically the dying dinosaur in this era.

The failure of military failure to prevent the 911 attack is another example of this fact. The military budget in the hundreds of billion dollars every year but all these spending are for naught. The stoppage of more production of F22 Raptors is a move to stop this nonsense.

The failure of the administration criticized by Williams Blacks the other night on Bill Moyer Journal is another example of lack of innovation and refuse to change of the current establishment in term of finance system overhaul. The example given by Blacks is that it is similar to NTSP refuse to investigate after each airplane accident and saying thing would be getting better next time simply by treating the glass as half full instead of half empty.

The indictment of Janet Tavakoli last week end on CSPAN on the genies of the current melt down on the failure of the regulators and management as a way to rip-off the investors around the world and in US and not a failure of so-called mathematical model of the Quant analysts in the investment field.

Her interview is available on the theqanda.org belong to CSPAN. This is a new website that provides the full script of the interview on the program.

She is a finance worker for some US companies that help clients resolving finance problem. She was an chemical engineers from Chicago and married her ex husband who is an engineer from Iran. This last name is a reflection of this fact.

She reminds the viewer that the danger and the trouble with these finance derivative are well known in the past (2004) on Warrant Buffet corporation website in the form of public letter to its investors. This is what known as WMD (Weapon of Massive Destruction)by Warrant Buffet.

April 25, 2009. God is back?

“God is back” by Adrian Wooldridge and John wicklethwait are on AEI today. They are talking about religion and public life again. This is a rapid fire talk by these two authors on the subject of American style Christianity influence all over the world and the reaction of other religion of the world toward this spreading of US style religion around the world.

The largest Christian nation in the world would be China in future and China could also be the largest Muslim nation in the world. This is not to mention the possibility of the largest Buddhist country on the earth. This could create the instability that the country tries to avoid. This conflict of culture could bring down the country if not carefully handled.

They mentioned that China is having a very strong religion movement that beyond the control of the Communist government. The Pentecostal sect of the Christianity and the Evangelist sect of the Christianity influence in Latin America are strong according to their surveys.

They would mention that the revival of Eastern Orthodox in the former Eastern bloc countries and the distinction between Vatican Catholicism and the rest of the Catholic community around the world. There is also the mention of great Protestant community following the American style of mega church in Korea. This is a contradiction to the North Korea communistic system.

However, they were concerns of this trend and the influence of religion in the political field, in particular the clash of religion around the world. This is a cultural clash that they are worrying about. This is not simply the Christianity that they focus; Muslim is also their concerns around the world. The Muslim influence in Europe is very clear.

The authors believe the Christianity is more adaptable to modernity by accepting scientific practice, medicines, science and technology than the Muslim. Koran according to the authors is not fit to translate into other language. They cannot be depicted as cartoon either. But that is a bias of the author. The Muslim world has no problem adapting to gun, boat, airplane and modern architecture, etc.

Both religions would not give up their power of control the mind set of their faithful. This is the commonality of all religions around the world.

There are issues of religion violent and the secular violence against religion. They are part of the fact that they feel that we must accept as the result of religion freedom and diversity.

The theme is that religion is back into the public life. This is even true in European continent.

They cover so much issue about religion throughout history and all over the world. But they would not focus on one issue. This is the drawback of the talk. There are simply too many things to cover in such short time.

Luis Lugo from Pew Forum on Religion and Public life was also on the panel to offer a counter view. He is also give a non-stop speech on his view. This is not the kind of engaging dialogue that offers point to point counter argument at all.

The mega church is the repeated subject and is a model for the rest of the world. It is the services provided by these mega church reminds me the Hezbollah and Hamas also provide service to its followers. This is the same thing that attracts many people to show that they are part of the community. They got what they want in return for the services. They have to continue going to the church from now on every week and contribute their part of the tithe.

The Pentecostal church even provides business books from US leading business professors and consultant to their faithful as a way to salvation in the present life. This is one way they believe would help the faithful out of poverty in the real world. Pentecostal is a movement started out in California and is spreading out throughout Latin America now.

They even quote CIA documents that dismissing the influence of religion is country such as Iran as evidences that religion is always around in Mid East. The current division in politic at Iraq is another evidence that religion is still playing a very important role in public life.

The cultural issue of stem cell research, abortion, and gay marriage would not go away because of contradicting to religious belief. To resolve social conflict with religion must be resolved with the involvement of the religion leadership.

The authors also mention US founding fathers ingenious solution of religion is to have the principle of separation of state and religion and the freedom to have all religions competing with each other. This is the basic of pluralism in US.

The Luis Lugo counter argument Eastern Orthodox Christianity is still having problem with modernity in the same manner that Muslim has with modernity.

He raises the issue of religion does not equate with morality. Modernity does not equate to secularism and pluralism too.

The religion practice and philosophy of Pentecostal church would not only take care people from aboard migrating to US but also take care of people migrate from country side to cities. This is contradicting to the perception that religion would only provide console to the after need of its faithful.

Religion faithful no longer content with leaving their religions at home. Berlin city council is discussing in public of whether to replace teaching public civic lessons in school system with religion teaching in school. This is a big chance for the secular Europe.

All those studies in academic saying “religion is a sinking ship, it bounds to go away and why spending times with what the world would soon give up?” This is evidence that study does not match with what is cooking out there.

In China religion also jump the band wagon of economic freedom and Fat-Lun-Kun is the example of it.

Muslim in US is different from the Muslim in Europe because of they are part of the mainstream middle class and they are 2/3 foreign born. They are not the underclass in Europe. They are doing much better financially in US than in Europe. US Muslim are
less homogenous as in Europe as they are coming from the same Middle East country. (For example Turk in Germany is the majority of the Muslim faithful).

People in the Amazon.com review say that it is a good testimony that religion is still alive and well in the modernity. This is in contradiction to a latest survey that says more people are non religious than before in US.

The most famous America philosphor Yagi Bera once said “It is only in America.”