Christian Renaud's Blog

Don't tell Big Brother.....

One of my favorite recent purchases, my Sony Reader, recently presented this tidbit to me while rereading Orwell's 1984.  It seems topical, but that may just be the vacation talking....

In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.
 
But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed.

BRIC this!

There has been a trend in recent years, in economic conversations, to refer to 'BRIC' opportunities.  BRIC, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China, is another way of saying 'look at all the markets that will open up for us to exploit', as well as the potential threats to US global economic hegemony.  Goldman Sachs has a  great paper on the ramifications of the rise of the BRICs here.

About a year ago, I read a very interesting book on the history of tea (being an avowed Teaist), Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire by Roy Moxham, which spend a considerable amount of time on how the English and Dutch exploited their territories in India, Sri Lanka, and China for the Opium and Tea trade.  My wife recently read me  excerpts from Empress Orchid by Anchee Min, which spent some time on how the British diplomatic efforts within China to make sure that they would continue to buy their opiates.  Not only that, but when the Chinese tried to resist the opiate trade from the British, the Brits pummeled their opposition brutally, then made the Chinese pay them reparations for their resistance.

I stumbled upon this item in my inbox this morning showing the historic percent of GDP of China and India versus the United States.  We tend to think of China and India as just now being rising powers, but history shows us otherwise.

What I want to hunt down is, during the same period, what the British and Dutch percent of GDP was.  Since the majority of profits from the legal opium trade at the time went to the East India Company, it should be reflected in the data, right?

Addition: Here is another interesting graphic on GDP stats, with countries represented as US States.  I dont know exactly how this maps to size/contribution, but it's a cute graphic nonetheless.

Riddle me this.....

Within the last 30 days, Congressional approval rating polls have lingered between 16 and 36 percent.  That means that between 64 and 84 percent of Americans believe that the people they had previously elected to Congress are doing a poor job.

This morning, I took a quick stroll down the 'won' and preliminary election results.  In my own home state of Iowa, 3 of the 4 elections went to incumbents.  In hotly-contested Virginia, 11 of 11 reported races went to incumbents, and the last Senate race is within 8,000 votes of going incumbent. Nationwide, based on what has been reported (it's 3am in Iowa as I write this from Europe), only 6% of the House and Senate are predicted to change hands. 

So how do the 3/4 of Americans who disapprove of their Congress manage to re-elect the vast majority of incumbents?

Some great podcasts

I don't know how these snuck past me.

Here are three links to some excellent podcasts, via the ACLU, from 'slam poets' Steve Connell and Sekou.  It is freeform verse about the stealing of our civil liberties in the U.S., and requires iTunes to work.  Think 'Rage against the machine' meets e.e. cummings.

First
Second
Third

Enjoy.

The Politics of Marketing, or vice-versa

 

At the end of the newest Bob Woodward book, State of Denial, he quotes National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as saying "Great! This book (meaning Woodwards) is going to be published in 2006, right after Jerry Bremer's book!" and goes on to say that the one-two punch of these accusations was going to be dangerous to the president and mid-term elections.

This passage seemed conspicuously out of context with the rest of the book, like the camera dwelling a bit too long on a Coca-Cola can in a film or TV show.  Did Simon and Schuster, the publisher of both Woodward's State of Denial, as well as Bremer's My Year in Iraq, purposely 'product place' a plug for Bremer's book in what they knew would be a popular Woodward book?  If so, I think that may be the first deliberate product placement in a book that I have seen yet.  That is, unless those old Dunhill cologne references in the John Gardener James Bond books were paid for.

By the way, since Amazon does not allow you to 'search inside' Bremer's book and I do not own it, I cannot determine if this is cross-promotion.  Anyone who owns it, please let me know if they are shamelessly plugging each other's work.

On a related note, I also recently finished Barry Werth's 31 Days, recounting the 31 days starting with Nixon's resignation until his pardon.  It is just amazing how many people from that time period in the '70s, working for Nixon and Ford, are also currently in the Bush administration in high positions (Hadley, Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc.).

A sad day for America

Well, it happened.

President Bush today signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that allows the government to seize anyone they deem an 'enemy combatant' (process undefined for determining that), torture them, and detain them without due process.

"The new law imposes tight limits on defendants' traditional courtroom rights, including restrictions on their ability to examine the evidence against them, to challenge their incarceration and to exclude evidence gained through witness coercion.

The president said the extraordinary measure is justified by the extraordinary circumstances of the fight against terrorism. "It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill he knows will save American lives," he said, before signing the measure. "I have that privilege this morning."" (From WP)

I think this is counter to any moral high-ground that America has worked hard over the last 200+ years to obtain.  We are a country of civil, thinking, rational people, not barbarous savages.  We have regressed as a country by allowing this bill to actually be deemed worthy of consideration.

And for those of you out there who support the president and are quick to write this off as Bush-bashing, I would have written the above exactly the same if it had been John Kerry signing the paper.  It's a mistake regardless of who conceived it or approved it.

"If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another."- Winston Churchill

When Hell freezes over....

I caught a brief snippet on Boing Boing about the US Congress Joint Economic Committee issuing a press release discussing taxation of virtual economies, like Second Life and World of Warcraft.  Luckily for now, the JEC is pursuing a study to determine what their next step is, however this quote was disconcerting....

"Based on existing law, if an individual generates cash income in U.S. dollars from transactions in virtual economies, the question may arise whether a tax is due on that real-world income. "

I am not going to react to this, but rather wait to act until the time is right.  I don't know how the IRS or JEC could  reasonably expect to tax virtual economies (so Japanese user A purchases item from Korean user B using a server hosted in China, owned by an American company) outside of their jurisdiction, but that has not stopped the IRS from having rather foolish and questionable demands on taxes on out-of-country-income earned by ex-US-citizens.

Link here.

Architecture is Politics

One thought crossed my mind yesterday during a business meeting.

We were discussing the opportunities for overlaying a trust infrastructure for the Internet, to identify and assert the reputability of a given individual, and we ran smack dab into a larger philosophical and political roadblock. There were advocates of purely distributed architectures, and there were advocates of centralized (or at least hybrid) architectures.

It then occurred to me that McLuhan's old adage above was not only true of governments and buildings, but any architected system and the leanings of it's creators.

I have written before about Techno-Libertarians.  These are the types that are technology-centrists and reject any government (or other) oversight as oppressive and controlling.  These TL's will gravitate towards distributed architectures (Bit Torrent and other P2P systems, for example).  If you are a Libertarian-leaning person, like me (if I haven't made that abundantly clear in posts of late), you will likely design a system that precludes the ability to centralize power in one area. 

If you are less cynical or more trusting of authority, you may opt for a more hybrid model or a centralized service.

There are currently an abundance of techno-libertarians at work developing the next generation of Internet protocols.  Their political politics will inevitably find their way into the architecture of the Internet, and given the Internet's pervasiveness, will be amplified into society as a whole.

Quote of the Day- More Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world." - Thomas Jefferson

Scant consolation to the widows and children of the 3,750,160 Americans who have died or been wounded in American wars since Jefferson.  And it is no consolation to me that the U.S. debt is growing at $1.66 Billion dollars per day, now tracking at more than $8.5 Trillion dollars.

What kind of world will our children have to live in to pay off our debts?

American Airlines, Politics, and PACs

On a recent flight to New York on American Airlines (I know, I know, I do HATE AA, but they just instituted a direct flight from DSM to LGA), the airline sat me near the Senior Senator from Iowa, Senator Charles (Chuck) Grassley.  Ah, Serendipity, my muse!

I had only seen Chuck a few times around town, so I was happy to have a chance to trade a few words with him and question him regarding the Coburn/Obama Federal Spending Database Bill that was up for a vote the prior week.  He smiled and answered my questions patiently, which I felt oddly thankful for, even though technically the guy works for me and my neighbors.  I really resonate with the 'Government for the people, by the people' thing.

So, in perusing opensecrets.org this morning, which does an excellent job of tracking campaign/PAC contributions to candidates, I decided to take a look and see who was buttering Chuck's bread in the 17 years he has been on the job.  Here's what I found:

Overall, he's raised $17,622,099 since 1989 in contributions from companies, political action committees, individuals and such (majority from PACs).  To cut to the chase, I looked at the committees that he sits on (5) and calculated campaign contributions to see if there was correlation.  Total time elapsed (thanks to the site's great formatting and cut-and-paste), 3 minutes.  Results:

Committee: Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry- $421,991 or 8% from Agribusiness plus a sweet $1M+ from Health PACs for 10% more.  Total 18% or roughly $1,422,000.

Committee: Budget- $369,585 or 7% of total from Energy, plus some small change ($239,833, or 4%) from transportation. I include those here as he is not on the energy committee, nor trans, and this is probably why these contributions are more tokens of appreciation per-se.  I still wonder why Florida Power and Light needs to contribute money to an Iowa Senator, or even why over 62% of his total contributions come from 'Out-of-State' organizations.

Committee: Finance (Chair!)-$1,120,029 or 20% of total funding from Financial Services, Insurance, Real Estate PACs/Companies.

Committee: Judiciary- $569,335 or 10% from Lawyers and Lobbyists.

Committee: Joint Committee on Taxation.  I think this covers pretty much everyone on the contributor list, be it Communications firms not wanting Internet sales taxes (7%), or even Construction (4%).

I checked his voting record on Project VoteSmart, and there were few surprises.  The next task (and future blogpost-fodder) is to correlate beneficiaries of Congressional largess with campaign contributions, if any correlation exists.

- C