Goodbye Betty, Goodbye Phoebe, Goodbye Amy

As is the custom for the cold last week of December, television and radio news programs pulled out the list of famous men and women who died throughout the year.

I was almost ready to hop out of bed the other day when NPR did an audio montage featuring musicians and songwriters we lost in 2011. Listening to it cast me into one of those bittersweet moments when the corner of my lips turn up into a small smile while my heart aches just a bit.

This may sound terrible, but my favorite part of the yearly Oscar show is when the glitterati take time out from honoring one another to remember the movie stars and filmmakers who died throughout the year. Watching the clips from old movies is like thumbing through a family scrapbook and being reminded of long forgotten friends.

I don't know exactly when it started to happen, but gradually the faces of those who passed away during the year have moved from being almost exclusively from my mom and dad's generation, to include many from my generation.

Of course, my generation has long been represented. We've lost many to tragic overindulgences and the inability to cope, like Mama Cass, John Belushi and Richard Brautigan. Others, like John Lennon, were taken from us far too soon.

However, for the longest time these were the exceptions. For every one from my generation who left us early like the shooting star you catch out of the corner of your eye, there were ten from my parents' generation.

I knew them too. I've always loved old movies and music. I'll still watch just about any Cary Grant movie they queue up on AMC and I've been downloading a lot of Louie Armstrong music to my iPhone lately.

When noted artists from my parents' generation died, I could look back and appreciate their entire body of work and see how much they contributed to entertaining us through the years. But, when someone like Jimi Hendrix was included in the montage, it was different. The influence was huge, but somehow incomplete.

Today notable men and women from my generation are beginning to pass on who have had enough time to let us know what they were capable of doing. Steve Jobs gave us an entire digital lifestyle starting with the humble Apple II computer and moving on to the iEverything. Gil Scott-Heron and Phoebe Snow created truly singular music and sounds that both inspired and entertained. (And, for those of us who appreciated Phoebe Snow, there are many things unsettling about losing Amy Winehouse in the same year.)

There are still many from my parents' generation making the year end roster; James Arness, Jackie Cooper and Betty Ford, are a few names included in most of the 2011 lists.

But my generation is catching up fast and very soon we'll be dominating.

Ad sales steer you along the 'Information Superhighway'

There's an excellent TED talk you should see. Eli Pariser speaks to how the Internet is funneling information to us in a way that's putting us into comfortable little personalized worlds where we're fed only the information that the algorithms presuppose we want to know.

It's the "Information Superhighway" version of marrying your first cousins.

One thing the talk doesn't say is that virtually every editorial or informational decision on the Internet is being made by an adman, or adwoman—although technically it's a digital or software version of an advertising salesman.

My background is in print journalism and I've worked in the newspaper industry. There is a fence between the editorial side and advertising side of a newspaper...or at least there used to be. Ad salespeople are not allowed to meddle in the work being done on the editorial side of the newspaper.

On the Internet, just about every page you see is in someway connected to putting an ad in front of your face with the hopes that you'll click on a link or a banner and ultimately buy something. Editorial content is being digitally micro-managed to ultimately collect advertising revenue.

What makes this scary is that the news and information you are being fed on Google searches and even in your Facebook news feed is being edited and tailored in a way that attempts—very successfully I might add—to predict the kinds of things you want to see.

If you love cute cat pictures or news about professional sports, you are going to be presented with web pages and search results tailored to those interests. You'll never be treated to the absolutely hilarious dog pictures or the important ballet news.

In his TED talk, Pariser discusses how he noticed that Facebook had stopped sending him updates about his politically conservative friends. Admittedly, Pariser engaged his conservative friends less on Facebook than his liberal friends. Because the software running the news feed at Facebook is only concerned about commanding as much of your eyeball time as possible, it edits out information from the people you engage less often—without regard to the importance of what those individuals might be saying.

Ultimately, the decision is made solely to maximize profit from advertising sales.

Here's the paradox: The "Information Superhighway" is pushing us onto off ramps that lead to little side streets where we're surrounded only by the friends, family and information that make us feel comfortable.

When I was growing up we received both a morning and evening newspaper. The morning paper was the San Francisco Chronicle which covered larger regional, national and world news. The evening paper, The Redwood City Tribune, covered our hometown news.

Each day editors at these papers—men and women whose lives were devoted to gathering and reporting the news—made decisions about what they regarded as the most important stories. As space allowed, these stories were organized into newspapers that ended up on my front step. I made the final editorial decision on which stories I read and which stories I ignored. You can't get any more "personalized" than that, can you?

And, I was able to make those decisions absent of any advertising influence, except for the fact that had there been no ads, there wouldn't have been any newspaper to begin with.

It's starting to look to me like the old system was far superior for me and for society.

We are seeing dangerous political polarization all around the world. I can't help but think that as Internet news and information has become increasingly "personalized" it has made this problem worse, and all in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.

With Free Trade You Get Egg Roll

In the movie "You've Got Mail" small book shop owner Kathleen Kelly is talking to Joe Fox, whose large corporate bookstore is causing Kelly's store to go out of business. They have a conversation about Fox's decision to locate a store close to Kelly's.

Joe Fox: It wasn't... personal. 

Kathleen Kelly: What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's personal to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?

We're seeing this dynamic all across our nation. International corporations shutter their factories in the United States so they can move somewhere in the world where they can make their products at a lower cost and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.

It isn't personal to the heads of the corporations. If they fail to respond to the demands of the global economy, the futures of their companies are doomed. But to the people who have lost their jobs it is very personal.

I see a problem with the globalization of commerce. To put it simply, factories are allowed to move, but factory workers are not.

Recently a GM plant stopped assembling cars at a plant in Tennessee. Many workers were given the option to relocate to a different state and work at another GM plant. This option isn't available when a plant moves to another country.

A friend of mine is planning to move to Thailand. He has married a woman there, likes the culture and the low cost of living. Since he is moving from the United States, with its much higher cost of living, he has an advantage when he relocates to Thailand.

Throughout history workers have moved to where the jobs are. Agricultural workers follow the crops. Farmers relocate to cities when factories open. But, aside from illegal immigration, this isn't permitted on an international level.

If we're going to have global free trade, shouldn't we also allow for global free movement of workers? When signing a "free trade agreement" with nations perhaps part of the agreement should be to allow for free immigration between each participating nation.

That would address Kathleen Kelly's complaint. If individuals were allowed to immigrate as freely as corporations are allowed to relocate, then globalization would become "personal."

If this idea sounds crazy, think of it this way. There are huge global pressures to keep wages low. Workers in the United States feel these pressures. Their wages do not increase. In fact, in many cases they go down. New workers in automobile plants in the United States are often forced to accept a lower pay scale than workers who are already working at the plants.

Essentially what this is saying to the new workers is, "If you want to work for us, we're going to have to treat you, at least in part, like we would treat workers at an assembly plant in China."

However, the workers don't have the option to live in a lower cost Chinese neighborhood. That's what makes this system "out of whack."

Why not give workers the option to relocate to a foreign country when their factories relocate? You might say, and rightly, that American workers wouldn't do that. But some would. And over the years the number of workers who would be willing to relocate would grow.

But, even more important than this is that it would make world leaders a lot more careful about negotiating "free trade" agreements if they knew free immigration was part of the deal.

As I see it, there is no way around the fact that ultimately free global trade will equalize incomes and standards of living throughout all participating countries. That's probably good for some people, bad for others.

Allowing for free immigration will speed this up and, if nothing else, make the painful process of accepting a lower standard of living within the developed world go by more quickly, like pulling a bandaid off with one quick yank.

By the way, if you remember "You've Got Mail" at least one worker from Kelly's bookstore follows the work and "immigrates" to the corporate bookseller.

Attention Environmentalists: It's the Economy, Stupid

The problem with liberals is that they mistake the end result for the cause or for the process that leads to the end result.

Simply stated, liberals generally get things backwards.

Recently I wrote, "Our diversity is not our strength. Our strength is our shared values, if any remain. Our diversity is the spice that makes living in the United States a rich experience."

Liberals see the rich diversity in our nation and mistakenly believe diversity itself is the good thing that makes us strong. Here's the truth: Because we have been a nation united in the belief that God has given individuals the right to personal liberty, we are strong enough to allow a diverse group of people to express themselves and coexist peacefully (more often than not) among one another.

Liberals often point to the words of Emma Lazarus on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…" as a "proof verse" that our strength is our diversity, or our willingness to allow anyone to immigrate to the United States. However, it is the next words that are the most important, "...yearning to breathe free." The diverse group of immigrants this nation opened its doors for was made up of individuals who valued personal liberty.

It is the shared quality of recognizing individual liberty that allows for diversity. Further, the concept of "God-given" individual liberty is a biblical Christian notion. You see, the idea of people being able to freely choose their own destiny is central to the Christian faith. Simply put, a person becomes a Christian by "believing" in Christ.

"Believing" in Christ is not possible unless a person can also choose not to believe in Christ. Without the personal freedom to reject Christ, Christianity cannot exist.

I am not saying that those who have professed to be Christians over the millennia have practiced their faith perfectly. But, if you look at the history of Christianity I believe you will see that Christians have recognized the times when they have erred and the foundational truth that Christianity is a free and unfettered faith in Christ has been true since the days of the apostles.

Without going into great detail, I want to explain why it is important that the founders of our nation recognized that our right to personal liberty comes from God:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The men who signed our Declaration of Independence recognized the ultimate authority of God and since God gave men the right to liberty, men could not take that right away. It is a universal and eternal fact. Even if there is a referendum tomorrow in the United States and a majority votes that man does not have personal liberty, the vote is null and void. Certainly we can be cruel and abrogate one another's liberties but that doesn't mean we don't have the God-given right to liberty, just as when a murderer takes someone's life it doesn't mean that the victim didn't have the right to live.

Humanists—virtually all liberals are humanists as well as many conservatives and libertarians—believe man is the ultimate authority. And, as we have seen many times, what man giveth he can also taketh away. Therefore, recognizing the fact that our right to liberty comes from God is vitally important if we want to maintain our liberty.

Before I move on to what I really want to discuss—which, believe it or not is the economy and the environment—let me capsulize the points I've made so far. First, liberals get things backwards. They think diversity itself is strength while the strength is actually the shared value of recognizing the right of personal liberty, among other shared values. And, personal liberty is a Judeo-Christian God-given right. The Islamic view of Allah does not share this attribute.

But, as I said above the real subject of this is the balance the interaction between our concern for the economy and our concern for the environment. This relationship illustrates another example of liberals getting things backwards. 

During my entire adult life, and I'm almost 60 years old, liberals and the mainstream media have been pushing the message that our economic well being is dependent on environmental protection. (We have an Environmental Protection Agency that works like crazy to protect the environment and a Commerce Department that generally makes commerce difficult.)

In fact, the truth is the opposite: Environmental protection is dependent on a strong economy. Simply stated, when people are impoverished, they don't give a damn about the environment. That's why poor people who live on islands will chop down and burn every tree. It is human nature. When we are poor we will destroy our environment in the short term without any regards to the long term implications of our actions. Again, it's human nature. It cannot be changed.

This issue is more important today than it has ever been because our economic well being is more threatened than it has been since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Yet, we still see liberals investing in "green technologies" that are contrary to the best interests of our economic development.

For example, the federal government has invested billions of dollars in electric cars and has pushed private corporations, like General Motors, to do the same thing. However, it takes a big population of wealthy people willing to spend the money on this technology for electric cars to be viable and given our economic crisis this is a virtual impossibility. The billions of dollars invested, is wasted. Money is also a resource that we must wisely steward.

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." As much as we might want to do everything within our power to make the environment pure, it cannot happen if we are not sufficiently wealthy as a nation.

If I there are any liberal environmentalists still reading this, here's my message: If you really care about the environment, you'll do everything you can to restore material prosperity in our nation, even if on the short term it seems contradictory to your environmental concerns.

On the verge of a UN sanctioned second Holocaust?

Can we take Palestinian leadership at their word? If so, this effort for statehood is another step toward a second Holocaust. Here's what they've recently said:

"They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state." Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 9/23/2011. 

“The future independent Palestinian state will not include a Jewish minority," a top Palestinian official told USA Today on 9/21/2011.

By contrast, here's what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN:

"...the Jewish state of Israel will always protect the rights of all its minorities, including more than 1 million Arab citizens of Israel."

Israel's Knesset currently has 14 Arab members. The list of Arabs who have been elected to the Knesset is long. In fact, Arabs have served on the Knesset since its first session.

It's ironic that while many hope the so-called "Arab Spring" will bring democracy to the Arab Middle East, Arab citizens of Israel have enjoyed democracy since the founding of the Jewish nation.

For there to be legitimate negotiations between two parties, both must have something to give, as well as benefits to receive.

The only things the Palestinians have to offer Israel are

1. to recognize the Jewish state and
2. to commit to being peaceful neighbors with Israel.

It is clear that the political leaders of the Palestinian people are committed to the destruction of Israel and driving Jews out of the Middle East. Why are we pushing Israel to negotiate with the current Palestinian leadership? And even worse, why is the United States attempting to force Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians even before the Palestinians are willing to sit down and negotiate in good faith?

Further, Abbas' use of the phrase "final answer" should send chills up the spine of every civilized person.

As much sympathy as many of us have for average Palestinians who are living in the most difficult conditions, we must not let that sympathy allow us to overlook the murderous, anti-semitism of the Palestinian leadership.

Nor should we ever forget that Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East and the only true friend the United States has in that region.

http://weaselzippers.us/2011/09/23/abbas-we-will-never-recognize-a-jewish-state/

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/what-plo-ambassador-said-about-removing-jews-palestinian-state_594117.html

Trading with the Enemy

The Wall Street Journal headline reads, "Cisco Poised to Help China Keep an Eye on Its Citizens."

Tech giant Cisco is providing much of the hardware that the Chinese city of Chongqing (oh, if that were only an allowable Scrabble word) needs to rig up a network of 500,000 cameras officials say they need to fight crime.

The name the Chinese have given the project pretty much guarantees that the Chinese are really up to no good. They're calling the installation of 500,000 spy cameras, "Peaceful Chongqing." As an armchair China watcher over the years, I've learned that whatever name the Communist Chinese give a project, it's a safe bet that the truth is exactly the opposite.

For example, the purpose of the "Cultural Revolution" was to destroy Chinese culture. The "Great Leap Forward" was a huge step backwards. You get the point. The "Peaceful Chongqing" project would probably be better served by a moniker like "The Project to Terrorize, Intimidate and Eliminate Dissidents."

The fascinating aspect of Cisco's participation is that the U.S. company has made its gazillions on the Internet, which Chinese officials—if they had their deepest and darkest wishes—would like to see just wither away.

Of course, Cisco isn't alone in its pursuit of Chinese cash. Legions of American and European companies are bidding against one another for "lucrative" Chinese contracts. However, it has to be obvious to any intellectually honest observer by now that China doesn't want to participate in world commerce and political discourse, the country wants to dominate world commerce and political discourse. And, western companies are low balling each other to win the contracts that will eventually provide China with the infrastructure it needs to get the job done. Google, to its credit, at one point turned its back on China over the issue of search results censorship.

The situation demonstrates a weakness of capitalism. Anyone who reads more than a sentence or two that I write knows that I think that capitalism is by far the best economic system. However, I believe that capitalism originally developed in a culture firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian ethics. Over the last several decades that foundation, although never perfect, has eroded to a point where it is all but gone.

I don't believe there are very many powerful contemporary capitalists who realize what will happen if, to put it bluntly, China wins. All the personal and commercial liberties that are the basis of modern capitalism will eventually go away. China will contract with Western companies only as long as it needs to. We already know that one of the big requirements China often places on contracts with Western firms includes the transfer of vital technologies.

Again, as an armchair China watcher, I haven't yet heard the Communist Party leadership disavow adherence to Communist principles. The country's opening up to Western commerce will last only as long as it serves the Communists' interests.

Vladimir Lenin said, "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Cisco and many other Western firms are today's rope salesmen.

Fat folks need something as cool as that striped flag the gay guys have

Let's consider the government response to two epidemics: Aids and obesity.

In the 1980s newspapers and television news programs were full of stories about the AIDS epidemic. Similarly today, the media are rife with articles about the mushrooming obesity epidemic.

The two health problems are similar in the fact that they both, to a very large degree, are caused by behaviors. Overeating in the case of obesity and male homosexual practices in the case of AIDS. Of course, intravenous drug with shared needles is also a common source of spreading the virus that leads to AIDS.

Not for a moment do I want to deny the seriousness of AIDS and all the heartbreak and tragic loss of life it has caused. I just want to look at the dissimilar ways the government has reacted to the AIDS epidemic and the obesity epidemic.

Today, at virtually every level of government—local, state and federal—there are massive campaigns to change the food people eat. To put it frankly, government agencies don't want people to eat the foods they enjoy: fast food, sweets, etc. They want Americans to change their behavior with regards to food. Essentially advocates like Michelle Obama and others are saying, "Hey, why don't you guys just start eating salads? They're a lot less fattening."

I don't think I would be stretching my point to say that some local governments are actively taking measures they hope will ultimately put fast food restaurants out of business. And, I suspect that the diet police at all levels would be overjoyed it this were to ever happen.

In contrast, government agencies have never proposed that male homosexuals change their behavior with regards to the type of sexual relations they enjoy. I don't think I've ever heard one federal official say, "Hey, why don't you guys just start having heterosexual sex instead? It's a lot safer."

The government response to AIDS was to encourage "safe homosexual sex" and invest billions in research to find a cure. Again, don't misinterpret what I'm saying. I'm glad that effective treatments have been developed over the years.

But, there is no denying the fact that both of these public health problems stem from human behaviors that when changed, would dramatically decrease the incidence of disease.

If the government were to take the same approach to obesity that it has to AIDS, it would be investing billions to find a medical cure that would allow people to consume fatty foods and sweets and not gain weight.

It's interesting that both of these "epidemics" are directly related to what must be the two biggest human urges: having sex and eating. I think one of the main reasons the government's response has been different is because fat people are not at all politically organized, while homosexuals have a lot of political power.

If America's fat folks could just get an emblem as eye catching as that multicolored flag the gays have adopted, then maybe we could get a low fat bacon cheeseburger that tastes good.