Israel’s Position

Israel today is the fourth or fifth most powerful technological military and nuclear power in the world. They have no need to negotiate. Any negotiation would be asymmetrical from their point of view. Israel has all the marbles.

The power elite in Israel are made up of non-indigenous peoples. Most of the immigrants over the last few decades to Israel are Caucasians from Russia and Eastern Europe. They see the darker skinned peoples, especially the Palestinians, as something to be excluded. They declare Israel is a “White” nation.

The power elite are in a recognized land grab. They no longer honor previous agreements, such as those involving Jerusalem with the Palestinians. Efforts to declare their actions in Gaza  as human rights violations and genocide by international bodies are consistently blocked by one nation. America blocks all international questioning and condemnation of Israel. It uses it veto to block any UN resolutions. Things will remain the same, as long as the American Jewish tail representing Israel, can wag the American dog and America remains powerful. American politics are captured by the wealthy Jewish establishment. No one is immune from the power of the Jewish establishment in America, not even Glen Beck.

Israel has absolutely no intention of negotiating peace. Its sights are on a Palestinian and Middle Eastern fiefdom. At some point Israel is going to become so powerful it no longer needs America. When that happens, the Conservatives and Evangelist will be in shock as Israel dictates to America.

Israel’s avowed goal today is a return to “empire”.

The Cloud

Everywhere the “cloud’ is being presented as the technology panacea.

First what is the cloud? In computer related data management there are basically three layers. First, there is the data layer made up of information. Second there is the process layer or how you manipulate the information. Third, there is the interface layer or how the user interacts with the data through processing.

A spreadsheet, a document, music or video are all just different kinds of data. Today most of this data is resident on your laptop, cellphone or PC. Increasingly, in the case of email and attachments, it might reside in the “cloud” on email servers. This is why you can log in to your email from various devices, access your contact list, review archived messages and acquire new messages. The information is not resident with a device. It follows that if the data is in the cloud, so too is the process. The same concept applies when you use a service like Netflix and “stream” a movie. The movie never really completely leaves their server.  Netflix sends you real time bits that are refreshed as the previous bits are used.

In the new cloud model the interface layer may have split functions and reside in part either on a device and in the cloud. Apple is famous for developing excellent user interfaces of what you see and how you interact.

Today most of the programs you use has its data, process and user layers resident on a PC, laptop or other device. The cloud advocates want to change that so you are purely a “subscriber” to a program. It will allow cloud businesses greater control over how the programs are used and instant flexibility in charging.  The downside is nothing is private. They can sell any and all information they obtain about you. The government can also use “warrantless” wiretaps claiming public domain.

What do you need for a “cloud”. First, you need a server or mainframe computer to host at least the data and processing layers. Second your computer must be network "connectable" to the user. Companies like Amazon have acres of such computers that they lease to businesses for their cloud presence.

Here is a way to think of the cloud. Think of yourself as the Emperor on parade in the Hans Christian Andersen story “The Emperor's New Clothes”. Add a chain around your neck as well with someone else holding the reigns while you are on parade. But if you are on "Facebook", nudity is likely not an issue.

Orthodoxy

Insights are constrained by the culture in which they are presented. It is why such things as the earth not being the center of the universe took so long to become orthodoxy.  It is why views of different reality gained from insights in the quantum arena will take generations to become orthodoxy in America.

I will draw you a picture of what the future generations will consider our myopia in another area.

There is almost incontrovertible proof that our current level of human development IS NOT THE FIRST ASCENSION OF MAN.  If so much overwhelming evidence exists, why is it not publicly appreciated and acknowledged? 

The answer is culture. Western culture is based on two things. A unique ability to achieve and racial dominance. If this is not the first ascension of man, how much we credit as discoveries are really just rediscoveries? How many of the Greek achievements might fall into this category? Suppose the previous ascension was not dominated by Caucasians. Suppose Caucasians played an obscure role in that world.

The ramifications are far reaching. We would have to re-evaluate some things in today’s oldest historical writings. Today's oldest writings are in texts of the major religions. Even the old testament of the Bible would not be immune. We would have to consider some of the stories are events from a much earlier time. The most prominent being the flood reference in all the major religious texts. We would have to also consider that the Sphinx occupied the Nile Valley a millennium before the pyramids. We would succumb to an understanding that some cataclysmic event occurred that wiped out the peoples of the Americas. We finally would have to acknowledge today’s Caucasian prominence in the world is merely a product of the times and not an innate superiority or divine blessings.

Would you embrace a previous ascension of man, if in doing so, it destroyed your scared self image?

Lightening

The sky darkens and high in the heavens a cooler mass of air comes in contact with a warmer one. If enough of a temperature difference exists, thunder, lightening and rain occur. A violent storm shakes the earth.

For a half a millennium Western culture has rolled over others. Often the clash was a violent storm. Today we have a ring side seat to a clash of the East and the West.

We believe, especially here in America, our Western culture is superior and will triumph.  What might we see looking over the warfare trench wall to the battlefield?  We see America and its allies invading the traditionally Muslin area of Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya. We see Italy throwing up barrier to immigration from North Africa. We witnessed the Serbs war on Bosnia and Herzegovina. We see the Swiss banning the building of minarets or the French the burka. It seems Muslin immigrants do not seek assimilation.

Through the lightening and rain we see that in France Islam is the second most widely practiced religion. The worshipers are an estimated to total 5 to 10 percent of the population. Muslims in Britain have grown to more than 2.4 million in just four years. It is growing 10 times faster than the rest of that society. There are large communities of Muslims in China, the Balkans, and Russia. India is over 13%. Israel is over 16%. The Guinness World Records (reportedly a generally reliable and unbiased source) rates Islam as the world’s fastest-growing religion. In the world around one in five people follow Islam.

The victor today in the battle of cultures is not assured. The Swiss recognize Sharia law. Britain adopted recognition of Islamic Law and gives its courts full power to rule on civil cases. Sharia law is seeping across Canada. But what about the most important icon of Western culture, “capitalism”?  Economist sometime are willing to admit that capitalism is an imperfect system. The problem has been nothing better to replace it. But the same was said about the barter or mercantile systems in their time. Here in America we are devout in our worship of capitalism.

Suppose that blinding flash of lightening on the cultural war battle field is the advance of the Islamic economic system vanquishing capitalism?

A Little Leaven

Up until about 1980 a layoff was viewed considerably different. It represented a management and business failure to be avoided at all costs. It was an announcement management was inadequate. It would be a negative albatross the management would carry the rest of their career.

After 1980 layoffs became a fall back position in most all the business cases I read of major companies. The business case solution, to not meeting revenue with proposed plans, was a layoff. Layoffs became a financial celebration of investors to increase short term gains. It was rewarded by Wall Street as astute management. Taking credit for having instituted force reductions became chic on executive resumes.

Also after 1980 a rash of consolidations, mergers and acquisitions took place. The financial benefit used to justify a large share of the costs was reducing the labor force of the combined companies. It would be accomplished by supposedly eliminating duplication. The larger this speculative reduction number, the larger the smile on the Wall Street Cheshire cat.

A question popped in my mind at the time all this was starting. What is the impact of a layoff to society?  The Federal and local tax revenue would be less. Social services would be required. There would be the upset of the family and an enduring psychological impact.  People would consume less. I thought at that time that a tax should be placed on business for each employee they layoff. The goal would be to raise the financial costs to the business to make a layoff much less attractive.

Such a financial penalty scheme would have had a sobering effect on American business. First, there would have been far less mergers and acquisitions. Second, it would have changed the financial calculus of “off shoring”. Third, it would have thinned out the financial investor speculating sharks. Finally, it would have greatly slowed the surging America growth rate during the years. The net result would be a much smaller but longer term consistent rate of growth. It would also have perpetuated a longer term for egalitarian distribution of business prosperity.

Perhaps today the argument would be how much growth, as opposed to getting growth started.

What is really behind the Budget Angst?

 

There are two elephants not mentioned in national expenditure. Neither has a specific line item in government budgets.

The first is expenditures to the military industrial complex. This is separate from the wars.  The military industrial complex receives multi-year funding for projects behind schedule and over budget that are speculative and futuristic. The money is huge, in the neighborhood of $500 billion dollars.

The other elephant is the business welfare state.  It is tax breaks, subsidies, and favorable legal and legislative rulings that enhance the bottom line of business primarily at consumer and tax payer expense. At the Local, State and Federal levels it equates to a trillion dollars a year.

 

The burden of these two elephants is not sustainable without increased revenue from other sources. The answer is take money from elsewhere, meaning collective bargaining agreements, social security and Medicare. The Budget Smoke and Mirrors is cloaking the real problem. But the gap needed to be closed with additional funds is so large and growing, that you would practically have to eliminate or completely privatize social security and Medicare.

Democracy works only with an alert and informed public. It works best with a culturally homogeneous public that has a shared set of goals. American society is a three tier political arrangement today. The first tier that runs everything and controls all three branches of government is the richest 1%. The next tier is the baby boomers [retirees]. The last, and by far largest tier, is everyone else. They have the least economic and political clout in America. It represents about 80% of the nation.

A final note of irony is the statement by Pete Domenci, the Republican from New Mexico that headed the Office of Management and Budget. He said we went from a surplus to a deficit based on choice. The forecast in early 2000 was a surplus indefinitely. The Administration and Congress used this as a spending opportunity that created a financial disaster. They initiated tax cuts and two unfunded wars paid for on borrowed money. I agree with Domenci and go a step further in analysis. I recognize the largest recipient of the tax cuts were the richest 1% and they also received wealth from "privateering" in the wars.

 

The Tea Party movement is an orchestrated effort of the richest 1% to gain greater control over tax payer money to funnel to its own ends. But the movement is dangerous even to them. It might gain a life of its own. Witness the rise of the savvy “wild card” Donald Trump.