Can Bill Gates (along with Warren Buffet) Save the World:

Michael Specter, writing in The New Yorker, has produced an excellent article on the topic. If you haven't had a chance to read it, you can check it out here.

Internet Close to Shutdown:

Is the Internet as we know it about to be closed down? Mitch Ratcliffe at ZDNet certainly thinks so. The Republican controlled government is about to close down what has been called "net neutrallity" with legislation that will allow service providers, who already make a fortune, to not only charge fees according to content but also to censor the content available to us.

According to Ratcliffe,

Carriers are already free to charge for dedicated services. The Internet is not architected on a foundation favorable for dedicated services, which is where the carriers want to ghettoize Web services that won't pay a surcharge for their success. At the same time, the carriers enjoy monopoly or duopoly pricing power at both ends of their network. All the Senate is doing is clearing the way for carriers, which are already very profitable, to make more money without any additional investments in improved services.

Pro-carrier advocates like to argue that it is the telco and cable companies' network so they should be able to do with it what they want. Indeed, we've handed it over to them in a tragic giveaway to duopolists that fight any upstart network or network service. It's their network now.

You can read the proposed legislation here.

On the American Oligarchy:

Jim Jubak closes his article in today's MSN Money ("The worst-case scenario is not about us") this way:

the Federal Reserve doesn't have to do a thing or even listen. These bankers don't stand for election. They're appointed for 14-year terms. They're never accountable to voters. For that matter, they aren't even accountable to the people we do elect.

What we've done is put some of the most important decisions about how our country is run in the hands of officials over whom we have no control.

It's a lousy way to run a democracy.

The next time you listen to someone talking about why we went to war in Iraq keep this in mind.

Jubak's article is well worth the time it takes to read, especially his discussion about India's and China's economic growth. All the indicators point to a cataclysm in this century. Economics, energy, the environment, and population growth.

Currently, America's leadership presents us with directives that require us to live with our heads burried in the sand.

Breaking News!

Outsourcing of Border Wall with Mexico:

In a special news conference held on the second Tuesday of last week, President Bush announced that he had been informed by Tricky Dick Cheney that America will outsource the construction of the wall to protect Mexican workers from unsrupulous American employers.

"In an effort to keep the cost of construction low," the president said, "we'll be outsourcing the labor of the construction of the wall to Mexico. We'll have the illegals build the wall themselves, but we're going to make them stand on the Mexican side of the wall to build it. That way the labor costs will be kept extremely low. Everybody knows that in Mexico hourly wages are much lower than they are here in 'Merica."

When questioned about the security issues that might be involved by having the very people one hoped to keep out of the country build the wall that was meant to keep them from coming into it, the president responded by saying that he had complete confidence in the integrity of the Mexican workforce. "If they're good enough for Wally-World, they're good enough for me," the president pronounced.

Dominoes/Dominatrix:

Remember when Vietnam was the key domino that had to be propped up by American military might to prevent godless world communism from over running your freedom to be exploited by the major oil companies and the banking system?

America touted itself as God's gift to the world because we were able to change our leadership without civil wars. Vietnam is about to undergo a leadership change (not the first since 1975) without a drop of blood being shed. Its leadership trinity (president, prime minister, and chief of parliment) all submitted their resignations recently after having failed to win elections. Elections! Not a military coup!

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Earlier this year Intel launched a $300 million chip plant in Ho Chi Minh City. Bill Gates attended lunch in Hanoi. In November Vietnam will host a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. George W. Bush is expected to attend.

Economic Growth:

Since 1997 Vietnam's economy has been growing at a 7 percent rate, and last year that improved to 8.4 percent.

Well, tie me to the bedpost and tickle my fancy! Who'd a thunk it!

Technology:

What's the latest? Office programs on the Web, writing, calendering , and so forth right from your Web browser (preferably Firefox ; does anybody still use IE?). I'm writing this in a program called "Zohowriter" from, of all places, www.zohowriter.com. No, this is not an advertisement.

Doing more things right from the browser seems to be where computing is heading. Microsoft recognized this a long time ago, although they fought it vigorously. Back in the 1990s, Microsoft set out to deliberately destroy Netscape, remember? That was because they recognized what the Netscape folks had realized. You might not even need an operating system, just a simple way to get to the Web, in order to do most of your computing needs.

You may have heard already that Microsoft, too, is trying to develop its latest Office program as an online set of tools. So far, they've had what amounts to a monopoly on the office programs, which, along with their operating system, has made Uncle Bill so rich that he's finally had to go into partial retirement so that he can figure out how to spend all of those billions he accumulated. (Let's hope he stays in touch with Jimmy Carter on that one.) The big question will be if they can maintain their huge economic advantage in this format.

Ground Swell?

Remember when Bush told us the war in Iraq would only cost $80 billion? Some now calculate the indirect cost as high as $1.5 trillion. The only direction W. could run a business was into the ground. He seems to have found a business model to his liking, one with a huge blank check, where he can just keep adding zeroes.

Is there really a movement to push for an American troup withdrawal from Iraq? A recent debate in Congress seemed a response to the debacle. The comparison has been to Vietnam, but there is no comparison between the two other than a very superficial one.

Vietnam was about big business's terror over a world wide labor movement, which didn't exist, and the Demcoratic party's need to demonstrate it could be tough on "communism," a concept that had never been practiced anywhere in the world other than among small groups of people.

Iraq is about the handful of oil companies wanting desperately to get Iraqi oil out of the Iraq government's hands and to sit American troops on top of it so that the oil companies can control the oil market.

And then there is the American banks' need to keep the dollar as the standard for oil pricing.

These are the rationals for America's war with Iraq. It's just that simple and straightforward. Nothing so plain and simple existed in America's madness in Vietnam. And America's exit from Vietnam had no effect on America, other than its collective psyche.

The problem with a withdrawal from Iraq is that no one knows what will fill the void once the U.S. pulls out. Make no mistake, the Democrats don't want to face that void anymore than the Republicans do.

What's Worth Reading This Summer:

Kevin Phillips, a long time Republican strategist and one of the most intelligent Republicans in the wild, dedicates his most recent book, American Theocracy (Viking 2006), to "the millions of Republicans, present and lapsed, who have oposed the Bush dynasty and the disenlightenment in the 2000 and 2004 elections." I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat—having no money or property to protect from the mob. As it happens, I'm not even part of the mob, but I do enjoy hearing and reading someone who has been close to presidents, slicing and dicing the reigning power figures. Phillips does a masterful job.

What I'd like to call attention to here is a telling passage about the current state of the economy:

German, Japanese, and Swiss export prowess puts the once-mighty United States to shame. In 2003 and 2004 the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods rose from $470 billion to $552 billion. The three better-ballanced economies, by contrast, enjoyed huge surpluses in trade in manufactured goods and large ones in their overall current accounts. A set of statistics will demonstrate the point. Estimates for 2004 provided by the CIA in mid-2005 put Germany first in the world with $893 billion in exports (mostly manufactured goods)—this from a national population of 82 million. The United States placed second with exports of $795 billion, not exactly a triumph because (1) the United States had a population of 296 million and (2) these exports were dwarfed by $1.3 trillin worth of imports. The Japanese, chalking up the world's third-highest export total, $538 billion, did so with a national population of 127 million. Pocket-sized Switzerland was even more of a per capita powerhouse: with a national population of only 7.5 million, it exported $131 billion worth of goods in 2004. Keep in mind the entire equation: the Germans, Japanese, and Swiss do this with workforce wages and benefits and industrial-production costs as high as or higher than those in the United States. (313-4)

In other words, old Europe and Asia are beating the pants off of the American worker despite the much vaunted American productivity achieved, not through technology, but through paying lower or stagnant wages, requiring longer hours, and paying fewer benefits.

Although Phillips' title calls attention to the growing religious fanaticism in the country that has been criticized in other places, he devotes considerable space to discussing the dissolution of the American economy and the forces behind it, big oil and banking in particular, and their influences on the current administration.

Still think we went into Iraq for purposes other than oil? Remember, Iraq owns its oil. It was nationalized a few decades ago. Exxon Mobil and the other major oil companies want to get their hands on that oil. That's how the Bush administration spells democracy—the privatization of other countries' natural resources.

And, no, Exxon Mobil et al are not particularly worried about getting it to you any time soon. They'd just as soon leave it in the ground with American military bases sitting on top of it. After all, the oil companies are producing as much gasoline and heating oil as they possibly can already. If anything, they want to make sure that ultra cheap Iraqi oil does NOT get to the market any time soon. That's what Sadaam was trying to do, get it out of the ground and into the market place. The oil companies wanted him stopped.

By the way, it costs all of $1 per barrell to pump Iraqi oil, the cheapest in the world. And no one knows just how much oil there is under Iraq. The oil companies themselves believe Iraq has more oil than Saudi Arabia.

Notable Quote:

"Fewer children mean fewer germs." — my son.