January 07, 2007 ... The bread and circuses of the $100 laptop project.
It has been deemed desirable that the children of the developing world have the benefit of a laptop computer costing no more than $100.00. This is due to happen in the second half of this year.
The technical features of this innovative product are: no hard drive, a tiny battery supplemented by a wind-up generator--like the one fitted to your Grandparents' gramaphone, a tiny low-resolution, low-color screen culled from a portable DVD player product, a scaled down version of a standard keyboard, a CPU of no more capability than installed in many domestic printers, and an operating system based on a reduced capability version of Red Hat Linux. At best, this could be considered about the equivalent of a modest PDA, but is certainly not even the match of a normal laptop, which would be consigned to the bin, in many cases.
 |
 |
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| $100 laptop | IBM 380Z |
The government and international agency sponsors of this innovative product have announced that a few developing countries have signed up to buy millions of it. Not so. The governments of the developing countries have signed up for the foreign aid that we will be paying to supply this $100 laptop. A billion misspent dollars would not be an unlikely estimate for this foolishness.
It is true that the children would benefit from a $100 laptop. But these already exist if the battery and hard drive were not fitted to a low-cost, freely available laptop from Taiwan. This money should have been allocated to providing sources of electrical power so that many more opportunities of progress could be realised. But what we now have, with this $100 laptop project, is the use of state sponsored education allied to international coercion, at our expense, to promote the philosophy of make-do in the face of environmentalism, and a furtherance of the dependency on the state and its foreign backers.
No child shall be left behind :-)
December 06, 2006 ... Technology, choice, and freedom of opportunity trumps politically expedient law.
Environmentalists in alliance with government representatives are busily soliciting Supreme Court support for laws designed to restrict the emission of industrial and automobile carbon dioxide products into the atmosphere. In the case of automobile emissions there is already a 50% reduction in tailpipe emission from new automobiles. This is because of the attractive selling feature that more fuel efficient and and more powerful motors per cubic provide to the customer. And this 50% percent reduction in tailpipe emissions, means that auto industry is running at four times in advance of the Kyoto Treaty’s advisory of 12.5%.
In the case of industry, cleaner coal burning technology is available for coal-fired electricity generating plants. And steel production and other heavy industries of consequence have mostly been moved to the far east.
In short, technology and market forces have, and are, reducing America's carbon dioxide output without negatively affecting the economy.
But wherever government and politically expedient law coexist, the individual's choice and ability to pursue their freedom of opportunity is undermined to little better than that which prevailed in the likes of east Germany prior to German reunification where there was insufficient electricity supply, buyers had to wait up to ten years to take delivery of a small plastic car fitted with a primitive, two cylinder, two-stroke motor, and the economy was in meltdown.
November 15, 2006 ... No time for politics as usual.
Having secured a majority in both the Congress and the Senate, the Democrats are now obliged to make good the mess they left behind when they lost the White House after Bill Clinton, instead of using interminable and worthless inquiries and investigations to stymie the Republicans and bore everyone with details they know already about Afghanistan and Iraq.
The mess the Democrats left behind was the proliferation of nuclear technology by the Pakistanis and their chief nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, to the rogue states of Libya, Iran and North Korea (click on 'Watch The Nuclear Walmart' link to watch entire program)
Libya's Colonel Qadafi has, of course, backed down after seeing what befell Iraq's Saddham Hussein and relinquished his nuclear ambitions. But North Korea's, Kim Jong Ill and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly have no intentions of doing likewise, since they know the western powers, headed up by America, are in moral disarray about what to do next.
This is not the time for blame-games, but must be the time for decisive action by the Democrats in consort with the Republicans and President George W. Bush to step on North Korea and Iran once and for all. It must not become the time for our administration to act retroactively and further undermine our constitutional specificities of freedom by implementing ever more counterproductive anti-terrorist measures in the name of security. Security only becomes a reality when the enemy know they will be proactively and decisively vanquished whenever they instigate or are found to be planning to instigate action which is contrary to our self-interest and our constitutional specificities of freedom.
Our administration has only a few months in which to make clear to the leadership of North Korea and Iran that this is their intention. But if our administration decide to shrug off this responsibility in favor of political point scoring and the implementation of counterproductive security measures we can look forward to a very bleak future indeed.
October 03, 2006 ... Sanctions and handouts only serve to defeat ourselves.
As the escalating crisis in North Korea is clearly showing, sanctioning failed states such as North Korea and Iran does not impede them from achieving their goal of building nuclear weapons. This is because the Iranians and North Koreans are perfectly content with sacrificing their population if that is what is needed to achieve their ideological goals. Failed states such as these only respond to overwhelming force and simply regard diplomacy as a way to divide the opposition amid its moral confusion and ridiculous pretzel logic of propping up other failed states in a hopeless bid to forestall the evil day--Mynamar, for example.
In addition to this, we now are seeing how the lack of a clear and decisive Israeli victory in the recent Israeli-lebanon conflict has emboldened Hamas to smuggle tons of munitions, rockets and sundry small-arms in a near-future bid to attack Israel from Gaza. All under the watchful eye of our two-billion dollar a year ally: Egypt.
Failed states such as the aforementioned and their counterparts must be confronted without concerning ourselves about being tagged as new-imperialists*. For if we don’t, and persist in pursuing our self-interest by way of civilised means in the face of barbarism, we will surely suffer horrendous and unforgivably needless losses.
*Please refer to the previous Op-Ed: Foreign Assets. This presents a clear idea about how this circle can be squared. And remember this, we have six-hundred thousand Iranian exiles living in California.
September 01,
2006 ... Why is Medical Care so Expensive? By Hans F. Sennholz
Medical expenses are rising faster
than the costs of any other service. They are climbing at rates that exceed
not only those of inflation and dollar depreciation but even the Federal government
itself. In fact, they are consuming an ever larger share of personal and national
incomes...
August 01, 2006 ... Capitalism is constrained by reality.
A fair criticism was made of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s philanthropic contributions to third-world nations, it pointed out that they would have been better using their billions to encourage those nations’ wealth-creators to properly engage in free trade, so that poverty and its consequent ills would be overcome. This is true in so much as that wealth given, very seldom leads to anything but the squandering of that wealth or the simple dwindling of its value over time, since wealth has no self-sustaining means to maintain its value in the face of market forces, hampered or otherwise. But before a proper approach can be established, as advocated by capitalism, the reality of today needs to be appreciated.
A fundamental requirement for capitalism is that one must be alive and in reasonable health for a significant period of time in order for one to achieve one’s goals by way of productive activity in a division of productive activity (labor) society. This would be possible in the United Kingdom, for example, where the life expectancy is close to 80. The average birth rate per female is less than 2. And where the instance of HIV-AIDS is less than 0.2% of the population.
But in Zambia and Zimbabwe, for example, life expectancy is between 38 and 45. The birth rate per female averages 3 to 6. The prevalence of HIV-AIDS is between 16 and 25% of the population. And with no allowance factored in for the impact of diseases and ailments specific to that region of sub-Saharan Africa.
For the majority in Zambia and Zimbabwe, quality of life and life expectancy are comparable with that of middle-ages Europe, The Black Death notwithstanding.
Excluding the desire to simply express goodwill, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have many other sources of capital by way of their respective business interests to possibly build on their philanthropy by more quickly changing the reality of parts of the third world today for a better reality tomorrow.
July 01, 2006 ... As complex as the weather.
It is no exaggeration to compare the complexity of the economy to the complexity of the World’s weather system.
Scientists have observed that tiny changes in any part or parts of the World’s weather system result in subtle and unpredictable effects, which often lead to catastrophic consequences for man.
Seemingly innocuous and well-intentioned, yet too often ill-considered regulatory tampering with the availability and market price of materials, and demanding that labor is paid a minimum and arbitrary level of wages beyond the proper market value, has catastrophic consequences for too many, who are already in parlous, financial difficulties. Reason enough then, for government to stay well clear, and let free-market competition deal with the complexity of economics, which only it can.
For a
detailed argument about how minimum wage legislation has disastrously affected
many of our poorest, please use the following link for an article by Hans
F. Sennholz, for the Mises Institute.
June 05, 2006 ... Foreign assets.
May 01, 2006 ... The price of gas. I swear allegiance to the gold-standard.
April 03, 2006... The Genius of Democracy..
April 01, 2006... The April Fool.
And so it has come to pass, in Palestine, most recently. Democracy has once again demonstrated, with the election of Hamas, a prescribed terrorist organization, how valueless democracy is whenever there is no proper moral foundation to its purpose. And we are expected to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to this new Palestinian administration, sworn enemies of the west and its steadfast ally, Israel, alongside our fair-weather-friend-allies in Europe, who roundly castigate our efforts in Iraq, and actively impede a proper resolution to the Iran nuclear issue.
Still, Secretary of State Dr. Condolezza Rice, during her March 31, 2006 trip to Blackburn, Lancashire, England, declared that she believed: ... the US would be judged by history on whether it had made the right 'strategic' foreign policy decisions. But history has already made its judgment on Afghanistan, a place benefiting from a previous intervention, and look, for example, what has been achieved there.
Quote:
For his part, Ahmed Wali
Karzai (President Hamid Karzai’s brother) calls these charges of
drug-trafficking unfounded "propaganda."
"This
is character assassination," says Mr. Karzai, in his large lush campaign
office, where dozens of tribal leaders await outside his door for a meeting.
"What else can they say? Is there any proof? I am ready for any kind
of investigation. I'm willing to take a polygraph test. What else can they
say?"
End quote.
If it weren’t so serious it would make a sane person laugh at the actions of our administration in its dogged determination to pursue policies akin to those written by the writers of satires, Dr. Strangelove, for example.
For the hopelessly failed Afghanistan campaign, we have squandered tens of billions of dollars directly, and by way of blatant and verifiable graft. And what for? To introduce a bunch of warlords, clerics, thugs and killers to the benefits of democratic graft, of course. And to also end up with a hard-line Islamist state where, Abdul Rahman, a convert to Christianity from Islam, has been forced to seek exile in Rome, Italy, so that he can avoid being put to death, leaves ourselves, and the Afghanies we were supposed to be liberating, insignificantly better off than when the Taliban were in charge.
This sorry state of affairs could have been avoided, had we only bitten-the-bullet and done the job properly.
This would have entailed: The total disarming of all militias and associates, and, if need be, the arrest and imprisonment of their leaders in Guantanamo, Cuba. The destruction of all means of poppy production and processed product held in stock. And the installation of a proper--directly controlled by ourselves--administration under a proper constitution bereft of any religious aspect to its articles.
This alternative to the installation of a morally corrupt and puppet government would have acted as the benchmark, so that when it became time to introduce an elected, local authority, that elected authority would be sufficiently experienced about what a proper authority should be. Remember, the Afghanies had no experience of self-rule for more than thirty years, and, at best, their previous form of rule was by way of a Monarchy allied to feudal fiefdoms led by warlords and clerics. So expecting such people to quickly form a viable administration, was ridiculous.
And this could all have been done, at probably less expense, with vastly fewer casualties to our service personnel, and achieved the outcome we are supposed to have had.
But doing the job properly would have shone a very bright spotlight on our own inadequacies at home, and our administration certainly wouldn’t want that. It being so much better to have our nation become akin to a pariah state in the eyes of the world, instead of the shining beacon of freedom of opportunity it really should be, without having to wait for the fog-of-history to pass judgment.
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March 22, 2006... France v. Apple.
Apple Computer’s iTunes division is being forced by the French government to modify their system, so that anyone with a portable music player, other than an iPod, can directly access the iTunes store. It is true that Apple’s iTunes has an industry lead because of of security features built into the iTunes’ file system, which are incompatible with other music players, and builds record industry confidence. But it is also true that, an iTunes user, with a personal computer and low cost or free audio editing and encoding software, can simply playback an iTunes track and rerecord that track as a .wav file, which can then be encoded as a .mps, .rm .wmv or .ogg, for example. Thus, with a modest amount of ability, no iTunes user is unable to overcome the iTunes security and be able to play downloaded music tracks on whatever portable player they wish to.
That said, the French government’s position must be condemned as yet another example of government coercion aimed at proper business practice, which provides a first class service, at a modest cost, and improves choice to the buyer.
March 21, 2006... Identity crisis.
If ever there was a time for western culture to clearly identify what its philosophy is, it is now. For a demonstration of what awaits us in America, we only have to take note of what is happening in Holland. A country which prides itself on its easy going ambivalence to its philosophical underpinnings, and now suffers mightily for it. Its members of parliament, filmmakers, and speakers of the truth are now the target for extra-judicial assassination by Muslim extremists.
MP. Geert Wilders, for example, is a controversial critic of Islam, and has two, armed police officers, constantly by his side, when working in his high-security office, for fear of someone attempting to behead him. He has no idea where he will sleep at night, as he is moved from one safe house to another, in a convoy of armored cars.
This all began after the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, when the police discovered a network of Muslim radicals and their plans to assassinate Geert Wilders, and other ‘enemies of Islam’. An Internet video offered seventy-two virgins in paradise to any Muslim, who successfully beheaded Wilders.
For the Dutch, it is almost too late to do anything about this problem, since they have permitted Amsterdam and the Hague to become massively inundated with Muslims. So much so, that the Dutch are seriously considering the possibility of leaving the European Union in order to defend themselves, should Turkey be allowed membership.
The Dutch, like ourselves, are totally open to this kind of attack to our citizens, simply because we refuse to implement the proper moral basis from which we can clearly identify and take decisive action against our sworn enemies.
Fortunately, western culture already has the proper moral basis from which we can clearly identify and take decisive action against our sworn enemies. And that is capitalism, with its recognition of individual rights, and the rational refusal to accept any moral equivalence to philosophies based on the unworthiness of man with respect to a supernatural entity, or a man-made equivalent, as exists in fascist or communist states.
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March 03, 2006... Ten-thousand tigers.
According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF): ‘The tiger, largest of all cats, is one of the most charismatic and evocative species on Earth; it is also one of the most threatened. Only 6,000 or so remain in the wild, most in isolated pockets spread across increasingly fragmented forests stretching from India to south-eastern China and from the Russian Far East to Sumatra, Indonesia.’
In the U.S.A., however, where the tiger isn’t even an indigenous species, it has recently been estimated that there are more than ten-thousand tigers in captivity. As exhibits in zoological gardens or wildlife parks. As breeding colonies. As pets. And a few have even been reported serving in the capacity of a guard-tiger, guarding stashes of drug dealers’ drugs.
This clearly demonstrates that, when an endangered, wild animal becomes private property, it is no longer an endangered animal. This is because it is protected by the law and the courts, like any other private property of value.
Such privatized tigers reap many benefits form this privatization, in comparison to their counterparts in the wild, whose life hangs by a thread.
In a wildlife park, for example, the tigers benefit from free medicare and a dental plan, meals-on-wheels, free heat and housing, and personal grooming and pedicure services, etc. These tigers sure are living it large, in comparison to a homeless person, for instance. Even so, should someone venture unawares into the tigers’ domain, he or she can be sure of getting their butt well savaged, at the very least. Tigers just don’t understand the concept of gratitude, as an expression of the reciprocation of the rights they have been ascribed.
Privatized tigers don’t have a lot to get worked up about, the most asked of them, is to at least participate in breeding. This they do only too effectively. Which only leaves the problem: who is going to slip the condom on the tiger?
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February 17, 2006... The New Dark Ages
With or
without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people
doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
-- Steven Weinberg, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics
As debate rages about whether or not climate change and global warming are attributable to man’s energy consumption, the affably plausible Pastor Jim Wallis is traveling the world extolling the virtues of religion and its view of morality, as an integral part of politics, in western culture. For a taster of what this would mean in practice, we have to look no further than these two examples, where the right to freedom of expression is imperiled. The first, a death sentence for a Danish cartoonist, ordered by one of the world’s most enlightened thinkers in the northwestern Peshawar, Pakistan. The second, the consequence of a a multi-million dollar chill-clause, which means that even the foremost Jewish scholars (possibly an oxymoron) dare not speak out for fear of international arrest warrants, backed up by the U.S. legal authorities.
1. A Pakistani cleric Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, head of Peshawar's central mosque - Mohabat Khan - told Deutsche Presse Agentur that some well-off citizens in the northwestern Peshawar have put a bounty of a car and $25,000 (U.S.) on the head of the cartoonist who made the satirical sketches of the Prophet Mohammed. The well-off citizens, mainly businessmen and traders, asked him to announce the reward on their behalf as the cartoon issue ‘badly’ hurt their feelings.
The reward ‘will encourage people to kill the blasphemer,’ Qureshi said, adding that he hoped that many other people would come up with more such announcements.
2. Orthodox Rabbi Emanuel Schochet of Canada, an expert in Kabbalah, spoke out against Philip Berg's interpretation of Kabbalah on a number of occasions, including a 1993 lecture to the Jewish community in South Africa. In response, upon his return to Canada, Philip Berg sued Schochet for $4.5 million dollars for ‘libel and slander’
And how is Pastor Jim Wallis defending his proposition? He is defending it by jumping on the bandwagon of global poverty and climate change, which the west’s socialist-gangster politicians now also find good to jump on, in their desperation to avoid the issues, only capitalism can address. This is because capitalism deals with things as they really are, and not how they might be, according to interpretations of supernatural nonsense by charlatans and maniacs, aided and abetted by moral cowards such as Bill Clinton, who gives credence to the most insidious enemy to our culture.
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February 08, 2006... Why state sponsored education equals state sponsored terrorism
State sponsored education has come to rely upon the expedient of teaching students about how to access information from books and online resources instead of relying upon the vital integration and memorization of such information. This would include science, mathematics, literature, history, etc. It is argued that the memorization and integration of such information in one’s brain, is an impediment to the more purposeful activity of problem solving by one’s own innate ability, and the referral to a vast amount of externally available reference material.
The obvious problem of what would happen if the externally available reference material was unavailable, is a pitfall to this approach. But, enormously more problematic than that, is the problem of one who always must rely upon external knowledge, is one incapable of developing concepts and understanding principles, since one has no significant information mentally available, with which to from or act upon concepts and principles. It is only the ability to form concepts and act on principles that will ensure that our civilization is properly distinct from that which prevails in impoverished and extremist Islamic cultures, for example.
It is no wonder that students from such cultures, who come to study in America, can see no difference in how they approach life, since they, too, must continuously refer to a book--and interpretations thereof--to guide all their actions. A book which requires no ability to conceptualize, except for metaphorical clarification, at best, and a fundamental principle which states that one’s life on earth is simply a penitent transition to a better supernatural one, toward which, sacrifice of others is proper behavior. The education they do receive in America, is, to them, simply an alternative viewpoint about what they already believe.
In our misguided state sponsored approach to education, we are destroying the foundations of our own superior culture. The only remedy is, of course, to privatize all education, so that what students are taught is not coercively enforced by the power of the government, for which the current state of affairs perfectly suits, as uneducated students move in to the corridors of power, to mindlessly perpetuate the problem, as per the declared aim of helping the poor and underprivileged in American society, and from overseas.
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01/17/2006.. Suffering does not equal freedom or enlightenment
An older
student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a
great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures.
I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment.
I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I have suffered, but
I have not been enlightened. What should I do?"
Otis replied, "Give up suffering."
-- Camden Benares, "Zen
Without Zen Masters"
Like the ‘older student’ in the above quotation, America is suffering unnecessarily. too, when it comes to dealing effectively with the current Iranian tyranny. Instead of taking decisive military action to destroy the Iranian tyranny and replace it with with a Capitalist alternative, America is, yet again, embarking upon a useless campaign of diplomacy and the pursuit of moral sanction from the U.N. Meanwhile, the Iranian oligarchy laugh all the way to their Swiss banks, and prepare for middle-east and world domination, after plucking the eyes out of the heads of the EU-3 and spitting in the holes.
As per the war in Iraq, effective military action does not mean fighting in the streets as a way to enable proportionality in conflict. Iraq has clearly demonstrated that, only by using our technological advantage can the enemy be overwhelmed, so that our soldiers are not killed, or returned home, maimed and crippled. One engages in war to win, not to sustain unnecessary casualties or to win the enemy’s hearts and minds. The French defeated the English longbow men, with advanced cannon technology. The Americans defeated the Japanese, and deterred the Russians’ advance, with the atomic bomb.
But even when America has toppled the Iranian tyranny, it still has the problem of moral uncertainty at home to deal with, so that the toppling of the Iranian tyranny is understood to have been truly justified and the vanquished truly understand why they have been vanquished. Fighting a war on many fronts is impossible. An impossibility exemplified by the inability of President Bush to justify himself, or his administration’s actions, to the activist, Cindy Sheehan. But must, instead, resort to dirty tricks to impede her, and her supporters. If the current American administration and Presidency had moral certainty on their side, the hypocracy which bedevils our efforts to maintain freedom, at home and abroad, would be eliminated.
Only the moral certainty of capitalism--as advocated by Procapitalism U.S.A. and its Pan-European counterpart --can do all of this. America almost had such a form of capitalism before we embarked upon a ruinous road of government intervention, in the early decades of the twentieth-century, so that our economy could compete with European empires and their ‘imperial privilege’ markets. This led to the Great Depression, and the predicament from which we have still to emerge: the big sell out of freedom by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Joseph Stalin, and big-beaurocracy at home.
It is long past time to stop suffering.
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01/01/2006... Jones the Law
Richard Dawkins, author and professor of the public understanding of science, Oxford University, England:: Judge John Jones has dealt a fair blow for reason and true education, in the secular Enlightenment tradition of the Founding Fathers. It is good to know that, in an otherwise dark time for this great republic, American justice is alive and well. The know-nothings of creationism should now retreat to their caves and let real science teachers get on with their job."
For rational Americans, Judge John E. Jones' judgment that, Intelligent Design is not a science, but another form of creationist dogma, and its promotion must be excluded from the state school science curriculum, has been hailed as a victory. Although this is a significant victory in itself, it should be more properly considered, a small victory against a constant erosion of the rights of Americans, as America is led down the slope toward fascism, by politicians and religious pressure groups.
Judge John E. Jones can only do so much to impede this slide toward fascism and the theocratic chaos and tyranny of Iran and its allies. Only when rational Americans elect capable politicians, can so much lost ground be regained, and America move forward to live up to its claim of being the home of the free.
Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida: ``Yeah, but I don't think it (Darwin and the theory of evolution) should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''
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12/12/2005.. The .com bomb.
The Internet .com bubble imploded as a fabulous and bottomless pit of opportunity in 2000, not because it was some kind of a useless thing, but because Internet business does not conform to the well established practices applicable to centralized corporations of the post World War 2 economies.
This realization, has forced those using the Internet to conduct trade, to reconsider many of the fundamentals about what property ownership means, with respect to copyright, patents, security, licensing, payment and other aspects of free trade. In other words, considerable intellect must now be applied by a producer, to make a profit, since the protection s available for other forms of trade simply cannot be applied, without alienating potential customers, as Sony has recently discovered to its considerable cost. Microsoft, too, has discovered that the Operating System and Office productivity market is now too mature and too open to Open Source competition, to be a sustainable enterprise. Which is why Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are feverishly engaged in research into web-services, interoperability, gaming consoles and mobile phone technology, etc.
Note:
these links are to media clips and not webpages, so use as download links.
To gain a flavour about some of the aspects of this new frontier in free trade,
the following links to Dave
Winer (9.00MB), Dan
Bricklin (29.6MB) and Tim
O'Reilly (89.67MB) are good places to get started, since this covers many
of the areas already indicated.
Note:
these links are to normal webpages.
The Dave Winer clip is an audio only .MP3 from his
own website.
It is a recording of a presentation for an audience in Pisa, Italy, which
he couldn't attend.
The Dan Bricklin clip is an audio only .MP3 from his
own website.
It is a lecture-cum-discusssion with Jay Walker of Walker
Digital.
The Tim O'Reilly clip is a video .MP4 from Robert X. Cringely's NerdTV.
It is an interview with Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly
publishing.
It's time to get thinking :-)
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12/01/2005...
America’s heel.
One of Senator Edward Kennedy’s
interests is the provision of affordable
healthcare for all Americans. This is to be financed by further government
regulation and taxation on employers and producers, so that the evil medical
and healthcare service providers are restrained in their greed, and the public
do not have to concern themselves with integrity and reputation. And, as we
all know, government has a lot
of both ;-)
For healthcare to be affordable for Americans, the government must totally distance itself from any medical and healthcare provision, and the oversight of of medical standards. This would enable free market economics to keep healthcare affordable, and place proper value upon integrity and reputation, within the medical and healthcare services.
To do as Senator Edward Kennedy proposes would cost the American taxpayer in excess of 1.5 Trillion dollars annually, which would provide no more than exists within the National Health Service of our coalition ally: Great Britain.
When the Democrats of the twentieth-century followed the example of Great Britain, it led to the creation of the federal reserve, a direct involvement in two world wars, the Great Depression, the creation of a bogus United Nations, fifty years of another world war fighting communism across the globe, and an ongoing middle-east war centred in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is a direct consequence of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s unswerving support for the medieval dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, so that Americans had a government backed guarantee of oil, to cite a few disastrous outcomes of the electorate not keeping government out of economics.
America simply cannot afford healthcare based upon government intervention. If America did embark on this policy, Americans can realistically expect to end up in in a similar state to that which the Trojans currently enjoy.
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11/11/2005... Hanging our heads in shame.
The idea that state education equals state indoctrination has been cited as one compelling reason why state education is an undesirable thing. In the context of America, this can seem like the very thin end of a very unlikely wedge. However, as can be seen from the ongoing Intelligent Design versus Darwinian Evolution theory, this wedge really does exist.
When our kids are sent to school, it is expected that they will be suitably equipped for life after school, as a scientist, a entrepreneur, a employee capable of making something purposeful of their lives. It is rarely the case they are expected to achieve nothing of consequence.
Darwinian Evolution theory is a part of the science of biology, a science which has, over a few decades, benefited mankind in startlingly good ways. Intelligent Design, on the other hand, is a part of Christian faith teaching, which has encouraged endless conflicts and startlingly bad outcomes, over the two thousand years of its existence.
It was for very similar reasons that state and religion were deemed totally incompatible at the time of the founding of the American Republic. Yet. the Bush administration is doggedly determined to override this founding principle, by insisting Intelligent Design--a variation on creationism--to be scientifically meritorious in its cutting edge credentials.
If anyone needs to be enlightened, as to the outcome of this policy, they only have to look at Iraq and Iran. Once the vanguards of civilization, now reduced to states of fear, poverty, and the fountainhead of global terrorism.
America cannot seek to further its purpose, by way of the counter theocracy of Intelligent Design. Instead, America must pursue Intelligent Science, which Darwinian Evolution theory is a part of. And American kids need the benefit of a private education, to enable them to escape the ideology of a state, gone mad.
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11/03/2005... The Ould Sod.
For as long as America has existed, it has benefited from the skills, expertise and initiative of immigrants fleeing poverty and turmoil from all across the world. And whilst these immigrants have become Americans, by nationality, they still retain a strong identity with their ancestral homeland. Ranking highly in this list, is the Irish-American community, for decades associated with the police and fire services, healthcare, and all the way to Mr President, on many occasions.
The Irish are rarely portrayed as villains. Instead, the Irish are most often considered to be nice guys. The kind of nice guys who would give you the shirt of their backs, help old ladies across the street, and so on. In other words, people that one would be proud to call a friend.
Taking advantage of this friendship are the Irish, one would not be proud, to even be rumored to be associated with. That is, if one had any moral values, which the previous Clinton administration did not, and which the current Bush administration does not, in the unending efforts to placate one of the world’s leading fascist organizations: Sinn Fein.
Sinn Fein represent the type of Irishmen who do not think twice about shooting a defenseless woman in the back of the head and burying her on a deserted beach. Ambush and assault fire and ambulance service personnel. Kidnap and threaten to kill bank employees and their families, as they make off with the world’s largest bank heist. And export bomb-making and deployment techniques to Colombia and Iraq, to kill innocent civilians and government forces.
In America, today, the Irish-American ‘Friends of Sinn Fein’ raise funds for Sinn Fein, in the belief they are aiding freedom in Ireland. But they are not. They are aiding the infiltration of tyranny and fascism in Ireland, and all over Europe, which will not be long in coming to America.
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10/26/2005... Pressure drop.
Pressure--as in pressure from pressure groups and special interest groups--sure has got a drop on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his attempt to get reelected in the 2006 midterms, to the world’s fifth largest economy: California.
Public sector employees such as teachers, nurses, firefighters, and others who claim to be concerned with the social and public good, ambush him at fund-raisers and public speaking engagements. Ridiculing the very idea that there is any need to pull the fifth largest economy in the world back from the edge of bankruptcy. Simply raise taxes is their solution. Government should be funding our social services: education, medicare, etc. But there’s nobody left to tax any harder. At present, the budget deficit stands at $34.8 billion. And the country is in hock to the Chinese.
The root of the problem is in public education at all levels. Almost 25% of students leave school barely able to read and write. Even Cuba manages close to 100% And those who are expected to be the cash-cow professionals of tomorrow, leave university with a head full of mush about the nature of society, themselves as individuals, and how these two aspects of life are related under proper government.
For Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to better address his current dilemma, he too will have to clear his head of all the mush about the nature of society, himself as an individual, and how these two aspects of life are related under proper government.
Simply reducing the problems of California to the analogy of a credit card balance, and the like, isn’t going to work.
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10/24/2005.. Agents of Chaos.
After the war of independence, the American Constitution was swiftly introduced to unite a confederation of states under a central government. The Bill of Rights was subsequently added, to ensure a majority vote could not undermine the rights of the minority. This was to limit the government to being the agent of the people--to protect all of the people’s rights--and not be the ruler of the minority on behalf of the majority’s interests. Whoever and whatever they may be, during any given period of elected government.
Over the centuries, the constitution has been amended to define and sanction the relationship between state law and federal law. Which is where the Supreme Court has ultimate authority.
For the Supreme Court to be an effective and impartial authority, its judges must have a proper moral base to work from, and be divorced from government influence. A lifetime appointment was the decided upon method to ensure the latter because the judges would most probably live beyond any Republican or Democratic terms of office that had appointed them. But the former aspect of their effectiveness has never been addressed and is now the most problematic. This is simply because the politicians of the Democratic and Republican parties have abandoned the principle of rights, in favor of any means, fair or foul, to get elected.
Pressure groups now decide who is to be elected. And since the elected decide who are to be the Supreme Court judges, they are going to appoint Supreme Court judges with credentials in line with the pressure groups, so that they get reelected.
The most important credential for a Supreme Court judge is how good a Christian he or she is. and how they will interpret the law to fit in with what the Christian pressure groups demand. In other words, if one is not a card-carrying Christian one doesn’t get elected and one doesn’t get to be a Supreme Court judge.
And so, religion and state have become united. And everyone’s rights are getting to be not worth the parchment hey are written on. And America is headed to where many Islamic states already are. Allahu Akbar!
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