One thing even ardent environmentalists don't acknowledge is there is no natural order anymore.
The reason is that man has replaced all the other predators. There is hardly any natural predation anymore. We kill 'em all. As a result, it's not the aged, the diseased, and the lame which are killed in the wild, but the beautiful, the 8-point bucks. We've decapitated nature. It does not exist as it once did, anywhere.
This is doing more to destroy our planet than even climate change. And the damage has already occurred. It seems irreversible.
Fortunately, I have someone in my house who wants to do something about it. My daughter Robin (above) is interested in wild cats -- tigers, bobcats, panthers, lions, all kinds of wild cats. She wants to study them, she says, in the wild and in zoos.
So on her behalf I undertook a brief study of the literature.
The first thing I learned is it's amazing what you can learn on the Internet in just a half hour! You can build a platform on which to base not only tentative conclusions, but a lifetime of learning, at a higher level than was ever possible before. Imagine how it was 30 years ago, in my day....if I wanted to learn about this kind of subject I'd spend all day in a library and not come up with half the resources I'm about to describe.
Think of this as Volume 11, Number 22 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
All the scandals of this decade can be summed up in one word.
Loyalty.
Misplaced loyalty sees this word as a two-way street. I'm loyal to you, you're loyal to me.
In fact it's a circle. Loyalty always flows upward. When you're on the top of the tower, that means it flows to what's really most important to everyone else, the customers and owners in the case of a corporation, the voters and the system in the case of a politician. That loyalty then showers down like rain and blesses everyone below, watering the roots, raising everyone up.
In a corporate loyalty chain the result is higher profit, higher sales, and goodwill. Think Warren Buffett (left). His loyalty is to his shareholders, and he teaches that their loyalty is to customers. As a result his annual meetings are a joy, a Buffettstock. Like IBM meetings in the 1920s, Coca-Cola meetings in the 1950s, or Microsoft meetings in the 1990s. When companies are run right this is what all their meetings should be -- celebrations.
In the case of political loyalty the result is much the same -- peace, prosperity, power, and the respect of other nations. All the good feelings one has when one thinks of the word patriotism.
In both politics and corporate life we are supposed to have figures who keep an eye on the powerful and make sure the proper loyalty is maintained, that loyalty to people does not replace loyalty to the system. Prosecutors and courts owe their loyalty to the law, nothing else. They have no loyalty to the people at the top, even when those people are in high office. And when those in the chain of command are questioned by such people, their loyalty too must flow to the system, not to their bosses. Otherwise what's the difference between a political or corporate hierarchy and a Mafia crime family? None.
The words of our national anthem, unfortunately, don't teach this lesson. They're taught better by songs like Norah Jones' American Anthem:
Let them say of me
I was one who believed in
sharing the blessings I received.
Let me know in my heart when my days are through,
America,
America I gave my best to you.
It is in short-circuiting this system that this generation of politicians and corporate leaders have led the United States onto the rocks. They have destroyed our nation's credibility, they have destroyed the credibility of our markets, they have destroyed the credibility of our dollar. That won't be returned to us, automatically, by the results of any election. In a sense we're all like James Frey, whose A Million Little Pieces was shown to be fiction although it was billed as autobiography. (Also see Miller, Judy and Blair, Jayson.)
Lies have been told in our name, and believed. People have been murdered. We have betrayed the trust the world gave to us. Our collective credibility is zero.
The only way to rebuild is from the ground up, brick by brick.
The game was over by the time Landon Donovan was scratched, ostensibly with a groin injury, but in fact so as not to detract from teammate David Beckham getting his 100th (and last) cap for England. Becks later set up the first English goal, then showered and wore a nice suit during the second half.
He wears a suit well. More on that later.
Without Donovan, we had nothing to offer in attack. We had Euro-scrubs, guys like Eddie Johnson and Carlos Bocanegra who couldn't play for Fulham, guys from minor leagues in Belgium, Holland and Germany. Our back line of Cherundolo (too old), Bocanegra (too slow) and Onyewu (too ponderous) could do nothing with the English attack, and Coach Bob Bradley did nothing about it.
It's no longer enough for me to come up on a big occasion and watch our coach act like he's scared of the upcoming Barbados encounter. We've practically got an automatic, every quadrennial bid to the Big Dance now, and it's past time we got to the next level.
The next level, in this case, is beating teams like England, and Spain, and Argentina, in their own buildings, in front of their own fans, with fancy, fast, entertaining, high-energy stuff.
The U.S. military is the largest user of fuel in the world. Especially jet fuel. Get our people out of Iraq and we can cut those needs dramatically, thus cutting the price of oil substantially.
It is amazing that no one in politics or the media has made this simple observation. Supply and demand for oil are on a knife-edge, the price set and re-set constantly on the floors of commodity exchanges like the New York Merc. Given the conservation now going on across America, prices should have started falling by now.
They haven't. Because the U.S. military keeps grabbing up supply.
Smart defense suppliers know this. But their plans for "oil free by 2050" don't yet call for the military to move away from hydrocarbons. Instead they want to develop tar sands and oil shale for military fuel use. These fuel sources are actually worse for the environment than oil itself, because of the energy needed to extract the resource.
The most dangerous have begun a vast underground e-mail campaign aimed at seeking to de-legitimize the result before it happens and, failing that, create a counter-insurgency.
Such tactics are difficult to fight. They won't go down by simply using the Google, as some on the left suggest. (Not that there's anything wrong with having Obama ads on Google services. Just don't over-estimate the effectiveness of Web tactics in an e-mail world.)
There are ways to fight back effectively, minimizing the number of people who believe these lies, isolating them, and keeping an eye out for any escalation.
Traceroute -- There are ways in which to tell where spam e-mail originates. It's worthwhile to go to the sites hosting these people, expose them, and if they don't stop know who they in fact are.
Treat Spam as Spam -- All the tools in the anti-spammer arsenal need to be deployed by supporters of democracy. We can know where this is originating and, in their knowing they're known put some real fear into them.
Reply -- Obama supporters need the tools with which to respond, in their own words, to these lies when they're confronted with them, and tools with which to seek out both lies and truth. We need to find the victims of these hoaxes and present the truth to all who will listen.
Understand -- While e-mail remains the most common Web activity, it's far more popular among dial-up users than those with good broadband connections. As my connectivity has improved I find myself using e-mail far less and RSS far more.
Database -- As important as it is to have databases of your friends, it's just as important to know who the enemy is. Anonymous enemies need to be identified, tracked, traced, and exposed for what they are, liars and cowards. Those who won't listen to reason need to be seen for what they are, potential terrorists.
The papers are filled with stories of people forced into "stay-cations," hanging out at home in lieu of traveling to Lake Minnewakahaspee or the Redneck Riviera.
Personally, I prefer stay-cations to any other kind. All my stuff is here. I get time to enjoy it. My family is here. I get to enjoy them. No fussing in the car, no fuming over what's missing when we get there.
Yesterday, for me, was the highlight. My son and I took a nice ride. We got on our bicycles and, without spending a penny, we enjoyed the day, the city, and one another's company.
Our home is 5 miles due east of downtown Atlanta, on the border with Decatur. There are nice routes anywhere you go, because we're next to the railroad line featured in the Battle of Atlanta. This means it's flat. As you get older a flat route becomes a better one.
We headed east, but not along the railroad track. Instead we wandered through the tree-shaded streets of Kirkwood, our neighborhood. This was the "city" Frederick Law Olmsted was working for, in 1894, when he became stricken with what was probably Alzheimer's, but was described as dementia by his biographers.
Kirkwood wanted to build a north-south community between Atlanta and Decatur. The south end would have a commercial district, the north end a park. Many decades later, after the MARTA rail was run along the old freight rail tracks, creating a "wall" between north and south, and black folks filled in the southern part, this northern area became known as Candler Park, Druid Hills and Lake Claire. (If you look at Weather.Com for our area, you'll still see this designation, North Kirkwood. I don't know why, but I like it.)
Anyway Kirkwood is coming back. It's only a few miles from Emory and the CDC, just 5 miles from downtown and midtown Atlanta, and an easy commute to either Buckhead or Sandy Springs via MARTA. The houses cost half what they do elsewhere. Not only are they being fixed up, but we're getting some major in-fill development as well. A burned-out shell once owned by Hosea Williams himself was torn down and replaced with a mixed-use development called Kirkwood Station. The Kirkwood Neighbors Organization has put up a Welcome to Kirkwood sign on the former Boulevard Drive, now Hosea Williams Drive. (I think they should have made it Hosea Williams Blvd. myself...)
Assuming history goes as it should, as polls say it will, the next War on Terror is right around the corner.
This will be a real war. A war on your street, in your town. Against terrorists who look just like you.
This is certain for two reasons. First, it happened before -- remember the Weathermen? Second, you can't run for a generation on the proposition that the other side is illegitimate, un-American, an enemy, and not expect some blowback. Just look at what happened under the Clintons -- Oklahoma City, the Atlanta bombings.
Once the Republican Tribes realize they're finished, they're going to ground. They're going to use their technical savvy (they're Americans) and their ready access to arms (they're Americans) to gather their forces and try to take it all back by force, all the while claiming that they're the victims, they're the ones under attack, they're surrounded and they're just defending themselves.
It's how they roll.
So who are these new terrorists? Thanks to groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center we already have some good ideas.
But that understanding is limited because the SPLC only actively tracks groups which have already announced their intentions against the government -- neo-Nazis, Christian brotherhood, white nationalist, even black nationalists. What happens when what are now mainstream groups find themselves marginalized? And what happens when the economic downturn grows ethnic-based organized crime gangs, as it has in the past?
A research team based in Edinburgh, Scotland tested specific types of nanotubes -- collections of tubes which look like asbestos -- in mice. Injecting them to simulate exposure to lung linings resulted in "inflammation and the formation of lesions known as granulomas"
This does not mean that nanotubes, or Buckytubes, are as dangerous as asbestos. It means that specific types of nanotubes -- long, thin tubes allowed to float in mid-air -- could cause the same lesions we know happen with asbestos.
Think of this as Volume 11, Number 21 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
All the economic problems of our time have a single root cause. (Cartoon by Thomas Nast, for Harper's Weekly.)
Whether we're talking about the Internet, about wireless technology, or about energy, the cause is a lack of reason to produce more.
Consider oil, only because it's top of mind. Why should OPEC produce more? Why should any other major producer? Why should these suppliers lift a finger to halt the thefts and corruption which keep oil from the market?
Will they make more money by doing this? No, they won't. Oil is at $130 per barrel and going higher. Add more supply and the price will go down.
The same is true for Internet service and wireless service. Why should the companies which control Internet broadband allow the creation of a "new pipe" in wireless? It would compete with their shared monopoly. Having kept prices for basic broadband at $50/month and higher, these monopolists are now moving to actually raise prices by limiting the number of bits they deliver under those contracts, and preventing the spread of competing technologies.
Why shouldn't they? What is their incentive for investing in their networks to increase the number of bits they deliver? Will they earn more money as a result? No, they won't.
The problem in all these cases is the same. Shared monopolies, or oligopolies. The free competition of capitalism naturally moves markets toward this climax state. Think Coke and Pepsi, or Bud and Miller, or WalMart and Target. A very small number of companies in each market control the bulk of supply, and are thus in a position to set prices. Why do you think it costs over $1 for a can of fizzy water?
While proclaiming the benefits of capitalism and competition, the United States government has been endorsing this principle of oligopoly for most of the last century, and that trend has accelerated during this decade. All that has really happened is that the oil producing nations of the world have figured this out and taken advantage.
So the answer to our economic doldrums is simple. We need to switch from giving people reasons to withhold product from the market and give them reasons to supply it.
The husband of our hostess, my son's Chinese teacher, wrote to say that there are still fears the dams will burst, and that the area is not yet safe.
He advised his wife not to follow through on her own travel plans, to stay a while here in the U.S. Since they haven't been together in almost a year, and must miss each other very much, that decision was not taken lightly.
Right now our plans are to delay departure until April. That will be my son's Spring Break during his senior year. The Chinese schools should be back up by then. The weather should be very nice. And the disaster should be over.
Meanwhile, we're going to do a little fundraising. Once his teacher returns home we'll stay in touch via e-mail, learn what the schools there need, and try to help supply it.
One thing even ardent environmentalists don't acknowledge is there is no natural order anymore.
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