Mark Watson's opinions on Java, Ruby, Lisp, AI, and the Semantic Web

In my opinion, for far too long the far right wing group (neoconservatives) American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been pushing a militaristic foreign policy in the Middle East. This is a group that everyone in Congress lives in fear of because they are so well funded and organized. If you want to research the connections between the neoconservatives and AIPAC then Google is there to help you.

We live in a free country and AIPAC members are certainly free to do what they want but personally I hope that JStreet.org gets support from who I think are the vast majority: people who look for a more rational approach to problems in the Middle East, including the mess in Iraq and who disagree with the radical right wing crowd that now seems to want war with Iran. Most of us do not want unending war.

Labels: politics

www.npr.org

Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You're not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets.

Greenberger is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the director of the University's Center for Health and Homeland Security.

This is a long listen (39 minutes), but is the sort of thing that if every voting American listened to, and if every politician in Washington knew everyone listened to, that a lot of the future corruption in Washington might be avoided. Professor Greenberger also gives very solid advice on what we must do as a country to avoid having Asian countries "eat our lunch": emphasize science and technology and build companies that produce real products - and don't idolize people and companies who make money speculating instead of producing. I liked that he seemed to think our problems are fixable, but only with positive action. Listening to this interview, and then emailing your 2 senators and your representative in congress regarding this material would be a good start.

Labels: economy, politics

I had intended to not write any more political blogs, but I need to express myself here:

Hillary Clinton served on the board of directors for Walmart while that company was cutting worker benefits. I do not like her and Bill's long standing enabling of Monsanto's push of genetically modified food and seeds that produce plants that generate infertile seeds - forcing many farmers in third world countries into bankruptcy. When she became a US senator, she and Fritz Hollings accepted very large soft money payments from Disney and promptly promoted the awful pro-Disney SSSCA legislation.

I just read yesterday that she is getting more defense industry PAC money than John McCain. Read between the lines on that one.

The problem that my country has is huge: being a military super power is just not a viable economic strategy. Spending more on our military industrial complex than every other country combined just does not pay for itself, but is making many politicians and their corporate masters a lot of money. So a fundamental flaw in Hillary Clinton's campaign for president is that not only is she herself a bad pick because I believe that she will keep our country on the non-competitive current "military super power" strategy, but even worse, she is unlikely to win a general election against John McCain - on the other hand, every poll that I have seen seems to indicate that Barack Obama could fairly easily beat McCain in a general election. Hillary Clinton is acting as a spoiler, an agent to get John McCain elected, and she is being enabled and supported by many democrats who are not clearly analyzing how to achieve their political goals. BTW, I like John McCain, but his current views on foreign policy make him, in my opinion, a poor candidate for president.

While I am not as excited about Barack Obama's run for president as my more liberal friends, he seems to be the logical choice for president.

Labels: politics

Although I am not a huge fan of MoveOn.org, they have the right to collect donations and run advertisements. What I have been appalled at this week is that Congress, with so many problems confronting our country, have apparently spent a lot of time in the last week debating the MoveOn advertisement instead of important issues like legislation to support our troops with adequate rest periods between deployments, and address other problems we have. Bush's attack on the MoveOn advertisement seems like a political smokescreen to me.

Most of the anonymous posts to my last blog were frankly irritating to me: I don't mind criticism, but to do so anonymously shows a lack of backbone. Also, hardly anything is black and white: I find that when I talk with people who hold different opinions than mine, if we talk long enough we always find some common ground. I do not believe that anonymous dialog is very useful however. If people are not willing to identify themselves, how interesting is it really to talk with them?

So, I just turned off anonymous comments, and hopefully enough of my readers have blogger.com accounts (they are free :-) that I can still get a statistically meaningful range of comments.

If you don't have a blogger account and want to add a comment to any of my blog articles (disagreeing with me is fine) please email me and I will promptly post your name and comment for you. I am pleased to do this.

Labels: politics

Read the advertisement for yourself. The text is very short, so it will only take a few seconds.

Bush and other republican critics keep saying that the advertisement is disrespectful to our troops and all military officers. I just don't see any criticism at all of our troops when I read the advertisement, do you? Certainly, the ad is insulting personally to General Petraeus (and I have mixed feeling about that). Do Bush and other republicans simply lie because they assume that most people will not fact check them?

Labels: politics

I am going to loan my copy of The Millionaire Next Door to my kids and nieces as a guide for long term wealth building - this entertaining book is a road map for building wealth instead of living a consumption based life style.

Since many more economists are now warning about the serious structural problems in our economy (that the war in Iraq is keeping out of the public consciousness), it occurred to me that Stanley and Danko's advice on money management and life style also apply to protecting you and your family from economic downturns. I am old enough to have lived through several economic "boom and bust" cycles, and one thing that has always caught my attention is that during "boom" economic times, a lot of people seem to believe that the good times will never end. In fact cycles are natural, should not be feared, and should be planned for.

Labels: economy, politics

I just sent this link to my family and friends with the joke that the news media, in this case the New York Times, feeling guilty for not doing their proper job during during the run up to the Iraq invasion has finally decided to tell the truth about food :-)

This article on food and nutrition strikes a cord with me for another reason: I have friends who worry about future shortages of potable water and energy. I believe that the solution to future resource problems is simple: let the free market determine the costs of the food that we eat. A case in point: why should Congress give the beef industry about $40 billion a year in free water subsidies?

Raising meat for food rather than plants does the following:

• Uses 10 times the water
• Uses 10 times the energy
• Generates horrendous pollution of the air and underground water supplies
• Raises health care costs caused by unhealthy eating habits

I think that it is fine to eat meat, but we only need tiny portions each day to augment a primarily vegetarian diet.

It all comes down to a personal choice not to be a glutton, be it gluttony for food, buying large fuel inefficient vehicles, or houses larger than your family needs for comfortable living that you will never be able to own (i.e., pay off the mortgage). I believe that water and energy resource problems are solvable with free market economics and raising our collective consciousness concerning the downside of gluttonous life styles.

Labels: economy, health, nutrition, politics

For those of you not sleeping during the 2000 primaries, you will remember how the news media "nuked" Howard Dean: they kept re-running a 10 second video clip of Dean 'blowing up and losing it' - in reality if you saw the the full 2 minutes of surrounding video you off course know that Dean was laughing and joking with loyal constituents. That was a fine example of how our corporate overlords keep candidates not meeting their stringent requirements off of ballots.

In the last week both MSNBC and CNN have started really dirty tactics against Obama. Pay attention, and learn a real lesson on what power is: not only affect the outcome of elections but also choosing who people will get to vote for. CNN was the worse: Wolf Blitzer (who was a founding member of AIPAC, the American pro-Israeli lobby group that tries to crush any politician who publicly criticizes Israel) ran a piece comparing how Obama's clothes look so much like those worn by the President of Iran - lots of side by side videos of the two men.

Labels: politics

I was reading people's opinions on Slashdot this morning about Microsoft's indirect attack on Linux through Novell and saw an example of the New World Order at work: an entrenched corporation fighting against a distributed movement for free and open source software. If you enjoy history, then you know that the rich and powerful have always bought and influenced governments but I believe that the New World Order of Corporate Power is something different:

• More transparent: with the Internet, it is too difficult to contain information and free speech - a good push-back against corporate consolidation and control of news media for their own interests. With more transparency, it is possible for people to be more aware of corruption and control.
• The world is even less of a "zero sum game". When Spain recovered huge deposits of gold, emeralds, etc. in the New World, they increased the money supply (gold) but also spurred other European nations to other areas of technological inferiority that had valuable resources. Although slowed down by energy costs, we now see opportunities around the world open up - someone winning does not always mean that someone has to lose. (In the context of this blog: I see a win-win situation between proprietary software and with free and open source software, with competition between the two approaches as a good thing.)
• Countries/corporations that move early to alternative energy sources will have a large long term advantage as the price of oil increases
• Real value vs. vapor: with the fiat U.S. currency (I have seen estimates that the privately owned Federal Reserve has increased the supply of dollars by about 20% so far this year - the cost of printing money is much less than the current "value" of money!) common people do not own much real equity value: any money they hold has dubious value when a private group of individuals has control over inflation, etc.; people tend to not have much real equity anymore in their homes and are at extreme economic risk when inevitable real estate value crashes occur (they always occur - it is just difficult to say when they might occur). Real value is in industrial production capability, education that enables "high up the food chain" employment and entrepreneur-ship, intellectual property, trade and business partnerships, etc. It is not difficult to see that except for high valued education/job skills and the entrepreneurial success stories, that most real value lies in the control of large corporations and the individuals who have capital and ownership of these corporations.
• Formally third world countries are enjoying a major upswing in the percentage of middle class workers while established industrial nations are seeing a greater separation between the very rich and a shrinking middle class and the poor. This is natural: areas of very low cost of living that can supply well educated and motivated workers draw in business development, research and development, manufacturing infrastructure.

I think that as much as the world looks more "global", that we will see a huge difference in economic success between countries (and trading blocks that share laws affecting business and trade) that either:

• Allow corporations to do business but do impose minimal laws to encourage business growth at all levels. Or:
• Allow corporations to do business and through corruption or other processes discourage business growth and development for all but the largest corporations.

Minimal government is best but some government and fairness in laws and enforcement of laws is required to maximize economic growth and the general good.

I believe that in the future talented people will naturally migrate to countries that provide minimal but fair government and give people good value for their (hopefully small) taxes. Countries like the USA (my country) where a very large fraction of people's federal income taxes goes to pay interest (on previous government expense overruns) to the private individuals who own the Federal Reserve will be at a competitive disadvantage as taxes have to keep rising to pay off previous debts. In a very real sense, government spending overruns enrich the most wealthy people. Small surprise.

What can people do to build more value instead of vapor? A few things come to mind:

• If possible prefer to reside in regions of low tax and high economic growth.
• Prefer more education to less. Prefer training in high skilled jobs that must be performed "on site" and can not be done remotely.
• Prefer investment in corporations with real production value, real property, scarce resources, etc. Prefer to not take out a second loan on your home to buy a new SUV that is better than the one your brother in law bought last week.

The great thing is that we all have control over our decisions in life. While external events can affect the results of our decisions, we still get to decide how to allocate our personal resources and how to live our lives. Self Responsibility = Self Empowerment.

Labels: business, politics

Exit polls shows that 3/4 of voters favored Democratic candidates because of government corruption. I hope that the new House of Representatives lives up to its responsibilities to thoroughly investigate and act on:

• Illegal lobbying
• Illegal lobbying by foreign governments
• Outlaw riders on bills in Congress: lately some obscene riders have been attached to important bills
• Outlaw voice votes on Bills: let us always know how Congress people vote!

My sincere hope is that no single political party ever again controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency.

Labels: politics

I just made a small donation to the EFF for helping to monitor the electronic voting machines in the upcoming election:

http://secure.eff.org/friends2006

I urge you to do the same. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a great group that I have been supporting for years.

Be you a Democrat or Republican, I hope that we can all agree that fair elections with one person, one vote is the cornerstone of our society and government.

Labels: politics

Long term, it is bad news that North Korea has had a successful nuclear test. Short term I am more concerned about the unstable government in Pakistan with their existing nuclear weapons (General Musharraf took control 8 years ago in a military coup, has never faced an election, and is unpopular in his own country - a country with few natural resources, increasing population pressures, etc. - who gets these nuclear weapons if the Musharraf government falls?) Also, many people in the Middle East and Europe are concerned with Israel's nuclear weapons. I believe that it is time for our government to start one-on-one negotiations with countries like Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Public "negotiations" are seldom effective - we need closed door sessions with top level diplomats (private, so egos do not get in the way).

On happier news: Japan is "officially" recovered from its severe 15 year economic slump. Less happy is a comparison between the assets that Japan had to survive economic hard times that we in the USA do not have (and make no mistake, a severe economic downturn will hit us in the future):

• Personal savings: citizens in Japan had relatively large personal savings that they could rely on for living expenses (consumer savings in the USA is close to zero, considering people who increase their debt with second loans on their homes, etc.)
• Japan had low defense costs (the USA spends as much money on defense than the next 24 countries in the world combined)
• Japan had healthy industrial infrastructure with modern factory equipment (the USA is way behind the curve in updating basic infrastructure like factory equipment and our road and highway systems)
• The government of Japan did not have the huge deficits that the government in the USA has.
• The government of Japan did not have the huge foreign debts that the government in the USA has.

Labels: business, economy, politics

Hello family and friends,

To be honest, I did not really understand what waterboarding was; here is some info: the Khymer Rouge, having about the worst history of brutal torture in recent history, used two primary means of torture: waterboarding and stress positions.

I still can not believe that there is any discussion at all in this country of us doing this to anyone. BTW, waterboarding is an especially insidious form of torture because people will say anything to make it stop - not any way at all to get useful intelligence information. Just a way to torture people.

In addition to being plain immoral, this kind of behavior by the Bush administration puts our soldiers in even more jeopardy. What are the long term consequences for our country being a "torture regime" in the eyes of the civilized world?

Lets all pray that the democrats get back one of the houses of congress in order to help stop the journey on the wrong path that the Bush administration has us on. I especially hope that my family members and friends who usually vote republican seriously consider voting democratic in the upcoming election. Our government is supposed to have a healthy separation of powers. A little congressional grid lock is a good thing. Our government ironically works best with contention, not when the executive branch and both houses of congress march in lock-step. We need proper debate over important issues.

Love to all,
Mark

Labels: politics

A Republican-controlled committee in the US Senate sharply rebuked the Bush administration's outrageous claims of a 9/11 association between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

Most of my friends and family can not believe that about 40% of people in the US still believe this ridiculous claim, but I say give these people a break: it is difficult to accept that a US President will time and again tell a falsehood in public speeches to the American public. Cynics will criticize me for naivete: presidents do lie to the American public - just look at history. But Bush is different in that his politically motivated falsehood about the link between Sadam and Al Qaeda has so badly damaged our country. If Bush had recanted his falsehood right after the invasion of Iraq, then I would give him the benefit of the doubt. That he still continually tells this falsehood to the American public must put a terrific strain on him.

I have a prediction to make: after the all-important fall elections, I expect Bush to come clean on this issue and if he does so, I believe that he will earn back some of the respect that he has lost. I feel sorry for Bush: every president wants to be remembered well in history and most people who are able to set aside politics agree that his presidency has been a disaster for our country. I voted for Bush in 2000 and I now feel that he is the worst president in my lifetime (I think that Nixon was effective in some aspects of his presidency and Carter had bad luck). Bush will not be fondly remembered in the future however: future generations will suffer financially a great deal in paying for Bush's deficit spending and massive tax cuts for the rich - "cut and run" economics that most people will never really recover from.

Labels: politics

Israel is a sovereign country and an ally and I wish them good luck in solving their problems. I am more than a little displeased however at the "Israel Lobby" in the U.S. (my country) that I believe consistently puts Israel's interests way above our own national interests: how wrong is that?

I am usually able to simply ignore the Israel Lobby because I feel it is important to allow free speech in a democracy, and they have the right to promote any policies they want. I don't agree with them, but they have the right to free speech.

Labels: politics

Both democrats and republicans agree with data compiled by The Washington Post showing that 75% of Bush's advertising is negative (i.e., doing nothing but attacking the opponent) while only 27% of Kerry's advertisements are negative.

What else does the Bush administration have to work with except for misleading and negative advertising?

Watch out: the Bush campaign will be heavy on non-factual emotionally charged advertising.

I believe that history will be very hard on Bush. Right now, people give him the benefit of the doubt because he is the President and believe what he says, no matter how little truth is in his words; after he is out of office, the truth will come out - it always does.

I think that the most shocking future revelations about the Bush administration will be how much public money has been given to special interest groups - I think that this will be a much larger issue than non-truth-telling to get us into the Iraq war, prevaricating about the new clean air act (ha! what a misnamed piece of legislation!), etc.

Labels: politics