Saturday, July 29, 2006

Broadcasting From Home

Wave a magnet over a coil of insulated wire and you create electricity in the wire. Use a battery and a second coil of wire to generate the magnetic pulse and you can send signals back and forth.

That's how the broadcast age began.

It didn't take long for people to realize that for one transmitter there can be many receivers. A transmitter can broadcast. At the same time, one receiver could tune in several different transmitters. A receiver can shop around.

Broadcasters competed for the public ear. Commercials brought in money, money hired quality performers, and quality brought in listeners. The hottest radio shows went national over network telephone wires to local radio stations for broadcasting.

A single voice could speak to all.

A star system was born. Communication was from one to many. For ordinary humans to speak to a nation was out of the question. But over the years, ordinary man as well has slowly become able to do this.

Ham radio put a transmitter on the desk. A lonely farmboy could talk in voice or Morse to people all over the world. He could only officially be in contact with one other person at a time - like the telephones of the time, the communication was one-to-one. But others could hear him.

Telephone calls became many-to-many. Chat rooms on the web are many to many. Any amateur preacher looking for a following, any would-be musical hero, now can put their own one-to-many video together and share it on YouTube. Cellphone cameras capture the news. It's a world of any-to-many.

We all can see the things we each can see.

Friday, July 21, 2006

The String Theory Of Government

People who believe that power descends from above like the drip of trickle-down economics often also believe that everybody has a string that can be yanked. Moreover, that there is a guy out there somewhere who yanks the strings of all the other string-yankers and of the yankers of yankers. The top dog.

Other people know differently. Others know the power of the flock, both for staying on course and for remembering where to find food and rest. My power is the power of the flock.

At the recent G8 Summit meeting of world leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia, Mr. Bush illustrated his understanding of political string theory with a statement that will live in history for its natural candor. "What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over." He threatens to use candor again, if necessary.

The fact of the matter is that Syria holds little sway over Hezbollah. There is no string to yank of the sort that Mr. Bush imagines.

In Mr. Bush's Yale MBA world, every transaction has a "quid pro quo", a "this for that". If I do you a favor, you owe me one. This may not be the case in Islamic countries. I think that people there may often do good for one another invisibly and silently, just as practicing Christians do. Both are flocks.

If you live in a world where favors are transactions, then for every favor there is a debt. You can call in favors. You can pull strings.

If only we could pull a string with someone who could pull strings in Syria, who could pull strings in Hezbollah, then the problem would match the theory, and voila! It is solved!

However, the problem does not match the theory. Perhaps there is a theory that matches the problem? And what do we know of the problem?

Islamic governments are contributing to non-governmental organizations which perform coercive and violent acts outside the law. These include not only Hezbollah and Hamas but also the Janjaweed militias in the Sudan. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has grown more powerful than the Lebanese government. Lebanese army forces were not sent to the Israel border as was specified in the last peace treaty. Hezbollah didn't want it.

As noted above, while Syria provides a lot of Hezbollah's budget, intelligence from the ground reveals that they really don't have much control over them. There are no strings attached.

A theory that matches this problem needs to understand worlds where there are no strings attached. One may possibly develop this understanding by observing the nature and power of the flock. What does a member do for the flock? What does a member get from the flock?

The theory needs to include not only need-driven transactions but also the gifts people give from their surpluses to others, both within and beyond their flock. It needs to explain life beyond strings.

Given a person in the Presidency who believes in pulling strings and an intelligence service that is doing its best to get the goods on everyone, one begins to wonder about the value of a string-free existence.

Freedom may lie in the personal discovery of a life without strings.


Added note, 07/26/06:

There is still a lot of string-pulling in the Middle East. Perhaps any situation involving people will always contain both a "flock" effect and a "string-pulling" effect. Where people are like sheep, the string-puller may become a herder. Where they are like birds, he may become a poop target.

In the Middle East, the string-pullers are trying to herd the birds. Poop is landing. Meanwhile, the sheep are growing wings. Apparently all that a modern revolutionary must do is to help sheep grow wings and loosen their tether. The rest takes care of itself.

How democratic.

On the TV news, more and more video is from cellphone videocams. The human element comes through strongly. Bombed houses, wounded children, and neighborhood rallies are recorded by ordinary individuals. They can immediately sell what they record, or they can save it on the web in places like YouTube.com. If it is popular, TV news teams, working around the clock, may discover it and harvest it for the evening news. The evening news on TV then shows what the world has been watching the most on the web.

The larger flock observes.


Today Israeli forces targeted and destroyed a UN observation post. As madmen yank their strongest strings, the world watches, bemused.

Why Is Israel Supporting Hezbollah?

For some strange reason, although it claims to be intent on destroying Hezbollah, Israel is destroying the Lebanese infrastructure. Have they made plans for the hundreds of thousands of refugees they have just created?

Or will they leave it to Hezbollah to take care of them?

Who will rebuild? Who will pay the bill?

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Middle Eastern Golden Rules

"Do your people have," I asked my college friend from Aleppo long ago, "anything like the Golden Rule?"

"What's that?"

"Here in America we are taught when we are very young to 'Do Unto Others What You Would Have Them Do Unto You.' Do good to others because you want it for yourself. Is there anything in your culture like that?"

"Oh sure, Danny. Our version goes,'Whatever Anyone Does To You, Do Ten Times That To Him'" he said.

"Well, that explains a lot about the Middle East," I replied.

"We have another saying that is related," he added, "And that is that a man should have ten sons - one to carry on the name and nine others to carry on the holy war."

That is my memory. It was long ago.

As to the other side in the Middle Eastern conflict, the Israelis, they appear to have no fear of retaliation, as they punish whole villages for the acts of their members and knock down the family homes of the wayward children who carry bombs into Israeli restaurants. One wonders what principle guides this behaviour.

They appear to be punishing families and communities for not being command environments. In an army, in a business, someone is in command. If you have a problem with an individual, you can go over their head. Israel appears to be punishing its neighbors because they are not command environments. They cannot produce the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Well, bomb them until they develop that ability.

Fools.

If you do something nice for an Arabic Islamic person, they will do ten times that for you.

If you do something nice for an Israeli, what will they do?

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

The Lies One Lives

It is so easy to live a lie.

America is in Iraq to spread freedom and democracy. It is not about the oil. If they didn't have any oil, we'd still be there. Fighting dictators is what we're all about. We're dictator-fighters.

I am a good listener.

I am considered by some to be the world's greatest lover, or at least a very good one.

I understand the stock market well enough to manage my investments.

I am able to set up a home network.

I am able to program in modern computer languages.

I am unafraid of women.

Television is companionship.

I am ready for death.

I was honestly elected.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Bullies On Parade

Don't leave marks. That's the most basic principle of torture. Then you can always say that any claims of abuse are fabrication, and who would the judge believe - a fine upstanding man in uniform with a badge and a hot radiator in the back room, or a poor, troubled miscreant?

We're leaving marks all over the place.

First, there are an increasing number of incidents coming into the light of day where foot soldiers on the ground appear to be fulfilling a belief that Arabs are "sand niggers" by raping and killing - or maybe just killing - innocent Iraqi civilians.

As order is restored in Iraq, do we expect these reports to disappear?

Everything we have done to hurt any Iraqi citizen will be of record. And it will given a monetary value. This is the information age.

The cost of our supremacist bullying will be presented to us sooner or later.

Our intelligence services have been torturing people. We have been torturing people. We. Us. We American citizens have been torturing people, through our government. We have been leaving major marks.

For people who live for the spirit, for people of conscience, this is appalling. For those who think of themselves, consider that there will be bills to pay.

We have been abducting people around the world, putting them in torture situations, and then turning them free to tell their stories to the world press. On the way to the torture sites, our airplanes have stopped in countries that don't allow that sort of thing. The Italian government has issued an arrest warrant for our former CIA Rome station chief. If we fail to extradite him, it would not be a surprise if they were next to shut down our airbase at Aviano.

Italy is a democracy. It just replaced George Bush's friend, Berlusconi, with someone less friendly to the Bush style of government. Britain's Tony Blair is going soon, and for some of the same reasons. If anger at our arrogance continues to grow, we'll have no friends at all.

We are holding dozens of prisoners of other nations for unstated reasons at Guantanamo. When we release them, their stories will be told. We dare not kill them. We can only hold them forever. In an increasingly democratizing world. How did we get stuck in this situation?

Our locked-in behavior at Guantanamo is a continuing statement to the world that America does not do as it says. A big advertisement.

We're bad.

How did we get this way? How did we become represented to the world by bullies? How is that we have failed to fulfill the Golden Rule?

How is it that we see only the confabulist's view of ourselves and blind ourselves to the pain our government torturers are causing? The rest of the world is not blind to that pain.

Bullies are a minority. Democracies have places for bullies.

They send them there often.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Suppose They Send US The Bill?

On July 12th, the deadline that the US imposed through the UN on Iran to halt its nuclear program will expire.

What then?

The Air Force wants to bomb. They're good at that. The Marines don't want to have to secure the ground. The ground is not too good for that. The Army and Navy aren't too hot about the whole idea, either.

What if we bomb? We're thinking of simulating a small nuclear explosion by dropping bunker buster bombs in sequence on the same spot. There is a 75-foot deep subterranean laboratory where the Iranians are creating nuclear fission materials. We know where the entrance is because we can see it from the air. We don't know how far the complex extends, or in which directions, because we have absolutely no spies on the ground. So we can only bomb the part we see from the air.

We will not knock the complex out. They will construct another entrance.

We're also thinking of bombing a lot of other places while we're at it. Hit Iran a stunning blow. Then maybe they'll come to their senses.

It can only work in our favor, some think.

We have no intelligence.

Maybe when you're five miles high the world is simple.

Proceeding on faith alone - on faith-based intelligence - we will embarrass ourselves. Not so badly as diving into the Iraq war on Feith-based intelligence, but it will still be expensive.

Who is going to put all this back together again? The Bin Laden family, who have done a lot of the turn-key construction projects in Saudi Arabia?

"The bin Laden family owns and runs a five-billion-dollar-a-year global corporation that includes the largest construction firm in the Islamic world, with offices in London and Geneva."

Who will pay the bill, and how will it be paid?

There seems to be faith among some that the Apocalypse is at hand. George, Donald, Richard and Karl are the four horsemen. We can borrow all we like, because there will be no tomorrow.

But many other people, especially in other countries, differ. The beliefs of frightened Christians aside, people in the other religions and cultures in the world do not generally believe that we are going to hell in a handbasket.

They believe that the world is slowly working out all our differences. They believe we are headed into a planetary culture. While we may retain our own governments and religions, our values and standards will be global. Law will become global.

This means that if you break it, you pay for it. Sooner or later.

Our descendents will receive the bill for Iraq's and Iran's rebuilding.

Consider how Cuban landowners whose land was confiscated during the socialist days of the Cuban revolution are now planning on getting it back, perhaps through the courts, the day Castro dies. They lost that land 43 years ago. Who will be suing us 43 years from now for the losses we've brought down on them today?

So not only are we burdening our grandchildren by our borrowing to fund a foolish war, we may also be setting them up for a big cash judgement. Against them.

Can we picture first, not the flexing of our own prowess, but what we want the world to look like when we're through with this Iran exercise?

Every action invokes an opposite and equal reaction. What reaction would we like to invoke from the other side? What result do we hope to obtain? What benefit, and how much will it cost?

Can we do something that invokes friendship?

If we don't begin to ask these questions, one of these days the world is going to put this country in a play-pen.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

Supreme Court Affirms The Rule Of World Law

The Supreme Court this week ruled that the Bush Administration could not establish by decree its own courts within the military. The military had been attempting to try on its own the detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq that it is holding at Guantanamo, Cuba. It was hoping to be able to use its own rules of evidence. This was a big defeat for a would-be king. You can't rebirth the government from within.

A corporation's executives can manage so poorly that they drive the company's stock into the ground. They can then buy the company out at a low price, taking it back into private hands. This practice may not work with government.

Completing the return to a three-fold system, the White House bowed to Congress:
"... the White House and other administration officials quickly signalled they would try to consult with Congress to refine rules for such commissions, in line with the landmark Supreme Court judgement."
In making its decision, the Court observed that the President's special little court system violated both United States Law - the Uniform Code of Military Justice - and international law - the Geneva Conventions.

When a treaty is created, it becomes the law of all nations that subscribe to it. Each subscribing nation makes that treaty its own law. Even though there is no world government, an international law gets created. An example of this is the Geneva Conventions. Mr. Bush considers them advisory.

Mr. Bush has a belief, told to him by those he hired, that he can go outside the law to protect the country against its enemies. Some of the things he does - like allowing torture - create more enemies, and an even greater need for Mr. Bush to go outside the law. Democracy suffers.

The Supreme Court has said that the law rules. The government cannot act outside the law, national or international.