Loyalty to the Party

The Va. GOP has decided those who wish to vote for the primary in Va. must sign an oath of loyalty to the republican party. That means if you think Obama is better than one but not the other, you either have to risk voting for a candidate that is not as good as Obama to nominate the candidate that is better than Obama, not vote in this primary, or lie. What disturbs me is not the republicans apparent childishness that has become the norm in American politics. No. What disturbs me is we have moved on from dividing the waters, throwing mud and name calling and moved towards ideological fanaticism.... the kind typical of the Taliban, not American politics.

Okay, that may have been a little harsh to say, but the loyalty oath is atypical of American politics. This is a step towards a single party system where citizens need to swear loyalty to an established party to be allowed to vote. It may only be a primary, but the mind set is the same. It also is not the first example of an oath of ideological fealty. Many republicans have been pressured into signing an oath to never raise taxes and many have kept to that oath. While we can admire such steadfast fidelity to a promise, it also hampers the political process; at times it is a must we raise taxes. Wars cost just as much as debt and we cannot cut our way out of it every single time.

But I do admit to how clever the Va. GOP is in requiring these oaths. While many will say they will just lie, the GOP has secured a certain amount of your mind space that otherwise only can be attained through marketing. If you understood this as a form of Meta Marketing, please give yourself a pat on the back. The oath is something many in Va. will remember and it will sway them to vote republican and if you take a group of people who signed, while there will still be people who vote democrat, there will be a stronger tendency for the group to vote republican after signing the oath than before.

This does not discount the dangers of an oath, even if it helps secure a handful of votes. We should as a nation sooner move towards a three, four or multiparty system instead of a single party system with oaths of loyalty.

Thanks for reading.

When all roads lead to Rome: War and Sanctions

The U.S. has ruled out military strikes to stop Iran's nuclear program, favoring economic sanctions, which Iran has declared an act or war if implemented. Iran has recently promised to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, an important passage for oil tankers in the middle east.
This puts the U.S. in a back position. If they do anything to block Iran's path, Iran will pull the U.S. into an even more expensive war in the middle east. While the Iranian economic situation is fragile, the U.S. situation is not healthy either and can be worsened by fluctuating oil prices. What Iran and the U.S. have entered into is similar to the situation the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. created during the cold war. I am referring to the MAD plan.
If the United States issues sanctions, Iran will declare war, oil will stop flowing through the Hormuz for a while and oil prices will create havoc around the world. No body wins if the U.S. and Iran goes to war and by extention, no body wins if the U.S. issues new economic sanctions against Iran.
There for, it is wrong for the U.S. to use sanctions to meet its end goal of an Iran without nuclear weapons, nuclear break out capabilities or a civilian nuclear program.
That is all for today, thanks for reading.

Cheap technology and the high price paid for it

This post isn't about exploiting cheap labor in India.

Or conflict metals in Africa.

But it is a post about the human cost of technology.

Technology has made it easy for us to network and cooperate in ways we never have before. Facebook is one hell of a social network and twitter helped mobilize the Occupy movement. Camera equipped drones keep an eye on both the protesters and the police and cell phones make it easy to relay important messages, which is where we find the down side of cheap technology.

The Mexican drug war is a long standing battle between many parts. Zetas is ruthless and gets away with it, threatening to kill any one who criticizes them on the internet. I had an image of Zetas as low tech, using cell phones and pagers to make deals and organize. When I heard about Anonymous entering the war, I thought 'Fuck Yeah, social technology to the rescue!' Well, I was wrong. Zetas turns out to be tech savvy, operating its own high tech encrypted radio network extending over all of Mexico and parts of South America. So the fat cats are planning their deals over the air waves, using expensive hard to get technology in order to secure themselves from police surveillance. Except, the fat cats are using the internet, the low level thugs use it as an early warning recon system and the technology is so cheap, installing the equipment, complete with solar panels, on a large scale is no problem. Replacing it is a simple matter too. The technology is widely available the police cannot keep up. Some have suggested an arms race, importing and deploying U.S. jamming technology, but this will only work until Zetas acquires new cheap technology to counter the U.S. jammers.

The human cost of cheap technology in Mexico is found among the graves of Zeta's and the cartels victims. The ease at which these gangs have organized to evade the police can be attributed to their understanding of communication technology and there is nothing we can do to stop them without stopping progress in general. It isn't the technology killing the innocent, it is the person who employs technology to kill.

Personality cults and governence

Those of you who follow international news know about two important events in global politics that are seemingly unrelated, but show similarities and dangers we should be aware of in democracies.

The elections in Russia are contentious, marred by protests and ripe for international criticism. However, the elections are still democratic in nature, even if the qualities elected give the elections a less than trust worthy reputation. Vladimir Putin is a tough guy. He trains with the national Judo team, rides horses and does every thing he can to show the public he is masculine, hard as nails and much like Teddy Roosevelt of the U.S. It is what the public wants in an elected official. It may not be the best kind of leader the Russian electorate can elect, but there are emotional factors in who we elect in any democracy and Putin is very good at exploiting these emotions. It is why he was so successful as a KGB agent and later in his presidency.... Wait.... economic reforms?.... growth?.... a Chechen war?.... Okay, maybe there is some good sense behind his tough guy exterior, but these factors are not highlighted by his political campaign. He is the head of a familiar term we hear more often further south.

On July 8th, 1994, Kim Il-sung died. A nation wept, a son took power. He was the first of an official personality cult in North Korea. His son took over where he left off and when Kim Jong-il died, a nation wept.... forcefully wept. No one liked Kim Jong-il. He ruled with fear. He also enforced the personality cult, which covered all the horrible qualities he had as a leader. Feeding the nation didn't seem that big of a deal compared to him shooting a perfect game of golf, being a ladies man in novels and so on. This is not so different from what we are seeing in Russia right now, except Putin is actually a pretty good leader. But what if he wasn't?

In the United States, when we elected Obama, we were thinking about health care and economic reforms. The fact he was black was novel, but not a fact in his favor. A lot of racists excluded him as a president off the bat and then there were many that were hesitant. There were many that voted for him because he is black too. On balance, I doubt it decided the election. So he didn't head a personality cult by being black. He headed a personality cult by selling hope. Not a bad product to sell. I think it is fair game too. He was however not ready for presidency. He had grand ideas of introducing the Swedish health care model to the U.S. and his advisers said no. He had plans for transport and his advisers said no. He had plans and his advisers said no. For all the insults we have for bosses and their yes men, it seems ironic when a president finally surrounds himself with no men, we have an ineffectual presidency.

When we elect our future leaders, we need to sit back a moment and ask ourselves if we are in love with a cult personality or if we are down to the brass tacks. It is something I will think about before I buy my next computer.

The eleven year old girl in make up

An eleven year old girl in Texas had sexual intercourse with a group of older males from fourteen to twenty-seven. The nation was shocked and we were seated for a national outcry against such profane acts of abuse.

Then people from around the nation came to the defense of the males who abused the eleven year old girl.

Blame her parents.

Blame the system.

Blame her.

Dear lord. Has Nambla finally succeeded in some small way?

Perhaps in the race to be the first activist on the scene, some people are not thinking what they are saying through, but they grab the attention of the crowd and form an opinion such as those expressed by Quanell X. By the time rational minds come to the scene, it is too later. Quanell already has swayed public opinion and made the town a place a little less safe for little girls to live in. I can forgive the lawyer. It is a lawyer's job to help the client. But Quanell? Who the hell is he?

I would encourage any and all readers to please post something, somewhere to undo the damage done in that town and sway that town's opinion the other way again. People like Jane Velez-Mitchell has helped by writing opinions for CNN and other news papers. Now it is the nation's turn to help.

Keeping your agreements

The Danish state recently started debating and talking about a 'service check' of a 2003 agreement with Mærsk, Chevron and Shell to pump oil from the north sea. If the term sounds confusing, that's the point, I think. 'Service check' is a fancy way of saying you want to change the terms of the contract and the Danish state wants to do exactly that to extract more taxes from companies that entered a binding agreement with the state.
The only problem the state sees is in the way is a 'stability clause' Mærsk negotiated for, which compensates the company in the event of the government changing the terms of the contract. Smart move Mærsk. Keeping your agreements is a central pillar of good business. If you break your agreements, then you will create for yourself a bad reputation. Mærsk knew something about Denmark's reputation and negotiated insurance for itself. However, no one should underestimate the Danish government's balls; the sitting party has called the clause unusual and has all but promised to ignore it completely.

An expert in Politiken [Nov. 16] has called the clause something one only sees in Africa and not the stable west. It is thought that the west is too consistent to ever fetter with its contracts. At least this person also admits there is a very high bar to clear in order to change the terms. Someone should tell Minister Martin Lidegaard.

Climate and Energy minister Lidegaard has denied the idea Denmark would owe anything to Mærsk in any change of the North Sea agreement, which means he feels Denmark can renegotiate a binding contractual agreement when ever it feels like it. To the critics who are going to slap me around for saying that, consider the precedent these events set for future business. The state may make and break agreements when ever it sees money can be made. Why shouldn't the state be allowed to do this to a company? It isn't a person after all.
A company may not be a person, but there are real people behind the company that are affected. Stock holders and employees are affected by economic activities of the associated companies and when the state decides to ignore agreements it has made in the past for what ever reason, people loose money. If the Danish state did this to a much smaller company, for example a plumber who owned his own little company, breaching a service contract with his company to tax the company for more is the same as breaching a contract with him in order to tax him for more. Yes, they are two very different sizes. Yes, the burden is spread across far more people. Yes, Mærsk gives the same huge bonus to the executives who run the company.

At what point do you differentiate between a company that it is morally okay to break a contact with out due compensation and when is it not okay?
Right now, I have every reason to be jaded; Denmark sucks.

Censorship and Science

Arthur Caplan authored an opinion piece for CNN which advocated censorship in Science. While there is a strong backlash against the arguments he advocated and, disappointingly, strong support for, all three sides, the author, advocates and opponents, misses established ethical practices that already addresses concerns about potential harm from research. While I will acknowledge Arthur Caplan's fears about a terrorist in a well funded lab, or perhaps Iran, creating a flu virus that can result in a wildfire if released, I must point out to Caplan his reaction to his fears infringes on rights of individuals to both collect and develop knowledge, share and collaborate work as a form of free speech and stifles scientific progress by giving the keys to knowledge to a single authority, preventing scientists from advancing others' work.

Established ethical practices also prevent the release of truly damaging information by either self censorship or refusal to develop the knowledge. These practices are taught in universities and are by themselves subjects with project, research papers and majors for degrees. Aspiring scientists are taught the norms of ethical practice that range from the ethics of plagiarisation to the harm of weapons research. This is the only effective safe guard against the fears Arthur Caplan has expressed; scientists who disagree with the government will always continue their theoretical work which has the same potential harm as a scientist at the CDC with a grudge against the powers that be. Embracing them into the fold of good ethics works.

This study of ethics is a doubled edge sword for any government that wants to develop weapons; many scientists who worked on the first nuclear bomb would never have joined the project if they had known for ethical reasons. However, these same ethics also prevent the scientific establishment from cooperating with terrorists or rouge states. However, handing the keys over to the government wouldn't dull the edge Arthur Caplan intends. When the government is in control of access to knowledge, the government can also require scientists prove their loyalty or harmlessness, which can include working on government projects involving bio-weapons, chemical weapons or nuclear weapons. Michio Kaku's pinnacle, where humanity, my generation, will know if we survive the transition from a type zero civilization to a type one, categorizes these as serious threats to our transition. If the government were to censor science by means of security clearance, the very fears Caplan has would come much closer to reality.

Therefor Arthur Caplan, I must urge you to reconsider your opinion, renounce it and support the individual scientist's and journal's autonomy in ethical decisions.