Ruminations of an Ex-Politico

Foxconn to deploy 1 million robots - what does it mean?

2011-08-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

According to Xinhua, the official press agency of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn will deploy 1 million robots over the next three years to improve efficiency and reduce labor for tasks better suited to a robot. The robots will be used to do traditional industrial robot work such as spraying, welding and assembling.

What does it means to robotics industry?
Engadget suggested that ABB would get the contract to provide the robots, perhaps in partnership with Foxconn itself. More companies will be involved; very little information has been provided thus far. We’ll have to wait and watch. Certainly, this is big news for the robotic manufacturing industry. If for no other reason, Foxconn’s deployment will more than double the world’s industrial robot population. And it will do so outside of the auto industry. Next Big Future blogger Brian Wang says, "This seems to be the start of a renewed push to automation in industry. If other companies in China follow, then we could see ten times or more the number of industrial robots."

Why is manufacturing so important to national politics?

In America, manufacturing has been the engine of growth since the Industrial Revolution, and developing great products a national pride. Manufacturing within one’s own country helps reduce the trade deficit and promotes healthy economic growth through profits, wages and sub-contracts. At present, manufacturing represents 21% of America’s GNP and more important, 50% of exported goods. There is also a security/defense component to sustaining a capable homeland manufacturing resource.

Outsourcing weaponry, technology and high-tech R&D is subject to the whims and events of foreign powers and not under a country’s own control. Many nations understand the necessity for their homeland manufacturing and have initiated stimulus programs to sustain that capability and also to promote the use of new breed of robots to enhance it. American is late to the party with it’s AMP and NRI programs, but has just funded $500 million, $70 million of which is for robotics research relating to co-robotics.

The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP) and National Robotics Initiative (NRI) focus on the importance of sustaining a strong homeland manufacturing capability which, in addition to helping offset negative trade balances, enables the manufacture of its own high-priority (military, defense, security, space and highly technical) products. America is just beginning to fund what other countries have been funding, in larger amounts for many years now, Korea in particular.

Is the Foxconn pronouncement a wake up call to America?
In 2009, Harvard Business Review published "Restoring American Competitiveness." Here are a few excerpts:

Beginning in 2000, the country’s trade balance in high-technology products—historically a bastion of U.S. strength—began to decrease. By 2002, it turned negative for the first time and continued to decline through 2007.

America has lost or is in the process of losing the knowledge, skilled people, and supplier infrastructure needed to manufacture many of the cutting-edge products it invented.

Even more worrisome, average real weekly wages have essentially remained flat since 1980, meaning that the U.S. economy has been unable to provide a rising standard of living for the majority of its people.

A recent cover story about “Speedup” in America by Mother Jones magazine provides poignant examples of how this trend has affected American workers.

Yes, there is a growing body of real and alarming evidence proclaiming the need for change – but, with America’s polarized and contentious Congress and fearful populace, nobody appears able to do anything about it. Are robotics and Foxconn the wakeup call? Probably not. It's more likely that the Standard & Poor's credit downgrade from triple A to double got everyone's attention. It sure was felt in the stock market - and robotic companies fared as well as all the others... they lost significantly, dramatically, and did serious damage to investor confidence and their investment portfolios.

If this explanation from Standard & Poor's isn't a wakeup call, I don't know what is:

We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade.

How are the industrial robotic companies reformulating to stay competitive?
A new breed of flexible industrial arms is on its way. Almost all major companies in industrial robotics are trying to bring to market a similar kind of robot to cater to the needs of new-age manufacturing. Traditional companies like ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa Motoman and Fanuc are trying to bring their robots out of their cages in a step by step manner of evolution, while new entrants and researchers are trying to build entirely new kinds of revolutionary devices.

ABB's FRIDA two-armed robots, from the ABB website

The evolutionary robots are the 1-2-3 armed robots which have evolved from their older versions. These robots are highly suitable for large scale fixed factory-line processes. They have high precision but less flexibility to be a co-worker and need a lot of evolutionary steps to be able to accomodate medium scale dynamic environments.

Courtesy iClipart.com

On the other side are the revolutionary companies such as Heartland Robotics whose focus is to develop robotic assistants - the so-called "co-robots." These will be more affordable, easily trainable, safe and flexible for human environment but not as precise as the evolutionary ones. And they will address the needs of the biggest manufacturing sector in the country: SMEs - small and medium-sized enterprises. This video, made by the EU SME Project, visually highlights those needs.

Will robots make a difference?
Certainly the Foxconn deployment will be a boon to one or more non-U.S. industrial robot manufacturer (America long-ago lost this market - a market started in America - to foreign competitors). Foxconn's actions might speed up the use of industrial robots in other high-volume production situations, but it's not a market-changing phenomena. Instead, one thing is clear - that the service robotics market, where most of the growth in robotics is happening, and which is not dominated by any single company or country (as is the case with industrial robots) is the market where there is hope for American manufacturing.

If any competitive breakthrough product(s) are to offset Foxconn's plans, and the very-likely roll-out of the other foreign industrial robot makers to parlay Foxconn's actions with new-industry deployments of their own, particularly in Asia, if some new true robotic assistant is developed that is low-cost, lower cost of entry, easy to train, flexible, and safe to work alongside humans, the first to market will create a whole new arena, a whole new marketplace, with new manufacturing jobs, and a whole new product family ushering in the "real" robotic age. That's why everyone is so interested in Heartland Robotics. They are a privately-funded start-up focusing on a large, untapped market with a low cost product family perfectly matched up to the needs of the market. If they can pull it off, there's hope. If not, some other company, somewhere else in the world, will do so and the global SME marketplace will be theirs.

Robots help keep costs down and productivity high. The cost of entry isn't prohibitive but involves changing the mix of labor from skilled to very skilled. They are and will continue to be a staple in the manufacturing arsenal. Further, maintaining a homeland base of manufacturing is important for security, jobs, the balance of trade, and as part of sustaining a middle class. Robots can help, but national leadership can inspire the changes needed for America to play the role it has in the past, and wants for the future... a role which includes an ever-increasing use of robots in all facits of society.

Cultural Differences and the Japanese Nuclear Power Disaster

2011-07-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Facility - Before Twin Disasters

How did it come to be that Japan's nuclear power authority didn't have any emergency robots ready to assist with damage and control? Why were they caught unprepared?

In the days after a giant tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi’s cooling system, the prime minister’s office and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, the plant’s operator, wrestled over whether to inject cooling seawater into the reactor buildings to prevent catastrophic meltdowns, and then over how to do it.

With radiation levels too high for workers to approach the reactors, the Japanese authorities floundered. They sent police trucks mounted with water cannons — equipment designed to disperse rioters — to spray water into the reactor buildings. Military helicopters flew over the buildings, dropping water that was scattered off course by strong winds, in a “performance, a kind of circus” that was aimed more at reassuring an increasingly alarmed Japanese population and American government, said Kenichi Matsumoto, an aide to Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

What became clear was that Japan lacked some of the basic hardware to respond to a nuclear crisis and, after initial resistance, had to look abroad for help. For a country proud of its technology, the low point occurred on March 31 when it had to use a 203-foot-long water pump — shipped from China, an export market for Japanese nuclear technology — to inject 90 tons of fresh water into the No. 1 reactor building. But perhaps more than anything else, the absence of one particular technology was deeply puzzling: emergency robots.

“The plant operators said that robots were not needed,” said Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, 77, an engineer and a former president of the University of Tokyo, Japan’s most prestigious academic institution. “Instead, introducing them would inspire fear, they said. That’s why they said that robots couldn’t be introduced.” [NY Times]

There are significant cultural differences between Japan and Western countries, some developed over hundreds of years, some more recent.

The "robot journey" in Japan has been the discovery of fantastic entertainers, tools, and, ultimately, friends in robots. Because of this rich tradition, Japanese are especially able to see robots as something more than mere tools, buckets of bolts, or steel and silicon. They can welcome them as partners in everyday life with surprising ease. [Tim Hornyak, from his book Loving the Machine]

In the present situation two converging themes are influencing decisions on a daily basis: a belief in the safety of nuclear power developed from 50 years of PR, and Japan's centuries old seniority system.

“In Japan, we have something called the ‘safety myth,’” Banri Kaieda, who runs the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which oversees the nuclear industry, said. “It’s a fact that there was an unreasonable overconfidence in the technology of Japan’s nuclear power generation.”

As a result, he said, the nuclear industry’s “thinking about safety had a poor foundation.”

Japan’s government has concentrated its propaganda and educational efforts on creating such national beliefs in the past, most notably during World War II. The push for nuclear power underpinned postwar Japan’s focus on economic growth and its dream of greater energy independence. [NY Times]

Japan's seniority system often gets in the way of productivity and efficiency. Teachers complain that principals and administrators, having been rewarded their positions based on seniority rather than merit, are often ceremonial leaving the real work for teachers to pick up.

RC Bobcat and Talon from QinetiQ and Packbot by iRobot

In the case of Fukushima, both iRobot and QinetiQ, companies that volunteered equipment to Tepco, instructors found that senior Tepco employees were chosen to be trained to operate the American and British robots yet they were less suited to the task than the 20-year olds who had gamer experience. The remote-controlled PackBot and Talon robots and the RC Bobcat tractors, all used gaming consoles to operate their devices and the senior employees were slow to learn. In a recent Webinar on the issue by Robotic Trends, the trainers found that 20-year olds learned in less than a day while it took the older Tepco employees many days to approach any level of competence.

Tepco is still involved in the containment process and will be for many months. Simultaneous to their activities, and in addition to Japanese investigations, the international nuclear community is evaluating what went wrong and how it might have been handled better for future nuclear power plant "incidents."

International, as well as Japanese, standards broke down. France, with 58 plants in operation, has a robotic emergency response capability yet Japan, with 54, does not.

The Group of Robotics INTervention on Accidents (INTRA), maintains a fleet of robotics machines capable of intervening, in the place of man, in a major nuclear accident, in and around the industrial buildings of its members. It also assures the continuous training of robot pilots within the installations of company members. [Group INTRA website]

The US, with 104 nuclear reactors, doesn't have a robotic response group (like the French one). Each utility has it's own set of procedures and guidelines monitored by the AEC. But the industry does have public relations websites emphasizing the safety of American nuclear power plants. One site, run by the Nuclear Energy Institute, uses keywords safe, secure, reliable and responsible with only cursory descriptors of actions and plans that make our reactors safe or secure or reliable or responsible.

Hence the question: does America have it's own 'safety myth' in relation to nuclear power?

Transitioning from Industrial to Service/Personal Robotics

2011-06-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Will big industrial robot makers such as ABB, Fanuc and Kuka, transition and begin making products for the consumer and service markets? I'm beginning to think not. And here are a few of my reasons:

I've been impressed by the possibilities for power companies to reduce costs and expand safety and efficiency by adapting robots for high voltage transmission line maintenance and inspection instead of their present methods. Consequently, I researched and found some interesting Japanese and Canadian robotic solutions - and also an American one scheduled to debut in 2014 - and suggested these three options to the companies that presently perform line inspection and maintenance. I commented that this was the wave of the future and asked them whether they were going to use them. There was little, if any interest in doing so.

This lack of interest is not unique to the power industry. When I talked with the big industrial robotic vendors I received the same message when I asked about the possibilities of their producing social and work-place-assistant robots or using open or non-proprietary operating systems and even using non-proprietary devices like an iPad or tablet for programming and training.

The resistance is on many levels: job protection, revenue protection, technology and systems protection, and product protection. Notice the "protection" in each phrase? That's the main problem.

Bill Clinton, in a recent commencement speech at NYU, said that in the last 30 years companies have come to believe that they have obligations only to their shareholders.

The problem is that if you do that you ignore the other stakeholders.

That could be why wages have been virtually stagnant for the past 30 years, because the workers are stakeholders. It could be why communities have been unable to undertake economic transformations in many places, because communities are stakeholders. It could be why customers don’t care so much what the source of their purchases are, they’re stakeholders.

He clearly said that the world we live in is too unequal; that the world we live in is unstable; and that the world we live in is unsustainable. [Abstract of Pres. Clinton's commencement address.]

In thinking about what he said and what I heard from the robot executives in relation to using robots instead of humans or helicopters to maintain and inspect power transmission lines. When helicopters are used companies that perform the service charge seven times the estimated cost of using a robot. Thus the profits derived are seriously more than would be derived from using a robot. Said another way, the profits from the sale of just one PacBot system is equal to the profits from the sale of 500 Roombas.

Protective and narrow thinking - as was expressed to me in many forms by the current vendors - is what will prohibit these vendors from transitioning into the different world of consumer/service robotics. That kind of thinking stultifies innovation and thwarts the goals of the corporation to all their stakeholders.

Consumer sales are whimsical, dependent on many variables. Manufacturing and selling 500 or 5,000 or 5 million consumer products is an entirely different process than selling a single defense contract which rarely if ever ramps up into numbers over 100.

Further, defense, space and security robotics are mostly in the domain of large aerospace companies or spinoff startup companies from university research centers and derive their profits as a fixed percentage of their costs and overhead... a formula that doesn't translate into the commercial sector.

Finally, most service robots involve interactions with humans in human/robot roles entirely different than in a factory setting.

Therefore, I believe that disruptive startup companies will spin out of research facilities and throughout the world of inventors and venture capitalists and provide product solutions to consumer needs that they want to purchase. Further, I believe that the business model for these new companies is entirely different than the model for old-line robotic manufacturers and also the aerospace industry. Consequently, this will be a worldwide phenomena. With my US hat on, it means that the US has a fresh start at an industry that is soon to emerge: small business and personal service robots and vehicles.

The Next 7-10 Years of IBM's Watson

2011-03-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

Jeopardy! Was Just The Beginning

Alex Trebek, Ken Jennins, Watson and Brad Rutter
Photo courtesy of Jeopardy!

IBM's achievement with their Watson system and software was more than good television:

It's a major language processing realization. Computing systems will no longer be limited to responding to simple commands.
The data management aspect lends itself to specialization, ie, medical sub-sets, legal data sets, call/support centers databases, etc. John Markoff, in a recent NY Times article on the subject, said "any job that now involves answering questions and conducting commercial transactions by telephone will soon be at risk. It is only necessary to consider how quickly A.T.M.’s displaced human bank tellers to have an idea of what could happen."
The language processing is amazing, illuminating, and lets one dream of a future where the promises of human-robot (or for that matter, human-device) interaction and instantaneous translation is really going to happen soon.
A staggering amount of horsepower was harnessed to work harmoniously using massively parallel technology on 2,700 processors spread over 90 servers to enable the Jeopardy! win. Historically, this will advance to smaller devices within a few years. Ray Kurzweil, quoted in The Economist, notes that it was only five years after the massive and hugely expensive Deep Blue beat Mr Kasparov in 1997 that Deep Fritz was able to achieve the same level of performance by combining the power of just eight personal computers. In part, that was because of the inexorable effects of Moore’s Law halving the price/performance of computing every 18 months. It was also due to the vast improvements in pattern-recognition software used to make the crucial tree-pruning decisions that determine successful moves and countermoves in chess. Now that the price/performance of computers has accelerated to a halving every 12 months. Mr Kurzweil expects a single server to do the job of Watson’s 90 servers within seven years—and by a PC within a decade. If cloud computing fulfills its promise, then bursts of Watson-like performance could be available to the public at nominal cost even sooner.

And most importantly, right after the Jeopardy! win, IBM announced partnerships with a few hospital groups to provide diagnostic physician assistance using Watson's DeepQA software and data management methods. And their website displays other areas where Watson might be particularly helpful. IBM is bringing Watson to the marketplace.

It's important to keep in mind that inside a computer there is no connection from words to human experience or cognition. To Watson, words are just tokens. In parsing a question such as those on Jeopardy!, a computer has to decide what's the verb, the subject, the object, the preposition and the object of the preposition. It must remove uncertainty from words with multiple meanings, by taking into account any and all contexts it can recognise. When people talk among themselves, they bring so much contextual awareness that answers become obvious. The computer must use logic to "disambiguate" incoming tokens into choices which can be measured (scored) against alternative choices. And it must do all that within seconds.

What about robots and robotics?

The AI system managing a robot gathers facts through sensors or human input, compares this to stored data, and decides what the information signifies. The system then runs through various possible actions and predicts which action will be most successful.

Some robots also have a limited ability to learn. Learning robots recognize if a certain action achieved a desired result and store that information for the next time it encounters the same situation. Naturally, they can't absorb information like a human but in Japan, roboticists have taught a robot to dance by demonstrating the moves themselves.

It's important to remember that IBM isn't the only AI game in town. There are many companies and research facilities developing and providing AI software, the most visible of which is Google.

IBM 701 Computer
From Wired's Danger Room: Back in 1954, IBM announced that its 701 computer crunched a bit of Russian text into its English equivalent. A Georgetown professor who worked on the project predicted the computerized translation of entire books “five, perhaps three years hence.”

Thus was born a scientific (and sci-fi) drive that’s lasted 57 years, from Star Trek to Babel Fish to Google Translate: instantaneous speech translation. But even though no one’s mastered that yet, the Pentagon’s out-there research branch is asking for even more with its Boundless Operational Language Translation, or BOLT. As outlined in Darpa’s fiscal 2012 budget request. For the low, low starting cost of $15 million, Congress can “enable communication regardless of medium (voice or text), and genre (conversation, chat, or messaging).”

Not only will BOLT be a universal translator — the creation of which would be a revolutionary human development — but it will “also enable sophisticated search of stored language information and analysis of the information by increasing the capability of machines for deep language comprehension. In other words, a 701 translator that works.

So What's The Holdup?

There are many reasons for the delay in robotic training and interaction with humans - some of which can been seen in the mammoth resources it took IBM to achieve their Watson Jeopardy! victory. You cannot place those resources into a robot nor can you rely on a computer controlling a robot (or series of robots) via a wireless communication channel as they go about their various tasks.

Matthias Scheutz, an Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science and Informatics and Director of the Human-Robot Interaction Lab at Tufts University, adds research funding to the equation saying:

The fields of robotics and human-robot interaction are growing, with the highest expected growth rates not in industrial, but service robots. Several countries (Japan, South Korea, the EU, etc.) around the world are heavily investing in service and social robotics. In the US, there are very few funding programs specifically targeted at artificial cognitive systems that would enable complex autonomous service robots. My hope is that this will be changing soon given enormous market potential of this area and the heavy investments other countries are making. To keep the US competitive and to enable, not Watson-like, but more modest, more natural interactions between humans and autonomous robots in natural language, we will need interdisciplinary funding programs that are aimed at developing the right kinds of integrated control architectures for these systems, which we are currently still lacking.

Scheutz goes on to say:

Computing power is obviously a critical component for a lot of AI technology (e.g., algorithms that are data-based and need to be trained on large data sets, or algorithms that have to explore large search spaces in a short amount of time). Equally important is the architecture of an intelligent system, the way in which different components operate and interact. And here is where we have made much less progress compared to the hardware side. Consequently, although the performance of Watson is very impressive and clearly a break-through, from an engineering perspective, it does not yet address the problem of human-like natural language processing as we will need it for robots. And while there will likely be applications in the context of recommender systems in the near future, it is not clear to me how the technology used on Watson can be put on a robot and make it have natural task-based dialogues with humans.

The EU, Japan and Korea have roadmaps which lay out the science that needs to be tackled before effective products can be produced. And they have national direction and public-private funding to make their plans happen. America does not yet have such a plan nor any national direction regarding robotics. And this is a critical holdup.

President Obama, in his State of the Union Speech, specifically excluded robotics when he discussed the need for strategic investment in key areas of innovation. How the President could overlook that not a single sector is devoid of the applications of robotics is one question. Another is to ask whether he is aware that 12 of the 13 major robotic manufacturers selling industrial and manufacturing robots in the US are off-shore companies.

A Sputnik II Moment

2011-01-30T11:25:00.000-08:00

I was disappointed with the section of President Obama's 2011 State of the Union speech regarding investing in selected new technologies for future growth.

I had hoped he would use the word “robotics” and include the necessity for an American robotics industry in his speech and it is unfortunate that he did neither. That he focused his investment scope to exclude robotics might just be the death knell for the American robotics industry because, without national strategic focus, things will go on as they have… VERY slowly and very dependent on Space and Defense for research dollars.

A thriving robotics industry provides jobs, helps the nation increase efficiency, profitability and productivity and upgrades the mix of workers involved. Yet America doesn't presently have a national robotics agenda. Europe does. Japan does. Korea does. And each of these countries is gaining success and momentum worldwide.

Tom Atwood, editor-in-chief of Robot magazine, recently stated:

Although the government is beginning to wake up and push for an expansion of robotics education in schools with the DARPA-funded FIRE (Furthering Innovation through Robotics Exploration) program at Carnegie Mellon and the NSF-funded DARwIn-OP project at Virginia Tech, these and similar programs, by themselves, are not enough for our country to maintain its competitive technological edge. We need a national robotics policy that is specifically articulated in a clear call to action by our executive branch, and we need backing of such a program by Congress.

Pres. Obama was inspiring in his speech and his directness to the issues of the day, and his reference to a Sputnik II moment was wonderful as he attempted to address the need for American students to become involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs. This is a serious issue and a major difference between America and all of the other countries in which robotics flourish: STEM education takes extra dedication, energy, time and persistence which is not happening with American students; in fact there seems to be resistance to pursuing a career in science (except for a career in medicine, or on the business side of math - as a quant - which, even today, still equates to enormously big bucks.) The Sputnik reference was eloquent but, at least for robotics, empty.

Microsoft Kinect - add-on device for Xbox game controller

He missed some great technology examples. One that I find particularly illuminating is the effect that the technology inside Microsoft’s new Xbox Kinect device has had. Kinect is a controller free gaming and entertainment experience. It enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 game system without the need to touch a controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands. Not only have sales of Xboxes exploded but so have the applications and uses - and sales - of the cameras and depth-perception software inside the Kinect. iRobot and WillowGarage are using the $50 Kinect innards in lieu of LIDAR range-finder machines costing upwards of $5,000. Check out iRobot’s new AVA concept robot. Hackers and inventors worldwide have been finding new uses for the Kinect that Microsoft didn't even dream of. Now that’s inspiring!

There are many things happening in robotics in America. There's work underway - with some successes thus far - to get an American robotics roadmap funded and implemented and there's been a steady trickle-down effect from the research dollars spent on defense and space by NASA, DARPA and the DoD. Medical robotics are on a tear. There is independent investment as well. In Wisconsin, Indiana, Georgia, Massachusetts and Alabama, state-, corporate- and educationally-sponsored Robotic Centers are springing up to provide training in the programming, repair and maintenance of robots, as well as for research and testing. Alabama's recently opened Robotics Technology Park is a serious $73 million three-pronged endeavor to provide (1) an industry training program where technicians will be trained to work on robotic machinery; (2) a test facility for NASA and the US Army for research and testing of leading edge robotics for defense and space exploration; and (3) a facility to allow start-up companies to build and adapt robots for new industries. Imagine if this kind of state-inspired public-private forethought were done on a national level... now that's a Sputnik II moment.

Alison Diana at InformationWeek just did a piece on 12 Advances in Medical Robotics but failed to note that 2/3 of the vendors were not American. Eight out of the 12 were Japanese, Korean or European. The ratio of industrial robot providers in America is even worse: although integrators, engineers and consultants tend to be American-owned, the major robot providers (KUKA, ABB, Comau, Denso, Schunk, Motoman, Daihen, Reis, Fanuc) are all foreign-owned. That is also a Sputnik II moment.

English Teaching Robot

In South Korea, robotic guides and docents patrol the Presidential Museum as 70,000 monthly visitors experience an advertisement of the nation’s cutting-edge technologies that made it a global leader in chips, mobile phones, TVs, display panels, and robotics that combine them all. South Korea is into the 5th year of a 10-year $1 billion investment in robotic technologies with a series of national goals endorsed by their President.

An example of how a nationally-directed strategic program works is when a shortage of English teachers compelled the South Korea government to use robotic teachers. They are deploying them in 500 preschools in 2011, and 8,000 preschools and kindergartens by 2013. It helps address the lack of English teachers in rural areas or remote islands. Learning English represents a necessary educational step for competitive South Korean students, and especially those aiming to study abroad at major universities in the U.S. Now that's a Sputnik II moment.

This is what was missing from President Obama's speech: the recognition that part of the underbelly of America's productivity and efficiency is automation and robotics. It's a very necessary industry which needs national direction. Mark Ingebretsen, the new editor of Robotic Trends Business Review, adds an additional dimension to Pres. Obama’s exclusion of robotics, “the robotics that drive America’s economy and defense will be in the hands of other countries that have spent the early 21st century developing robot technologies.”

President Obama's call for action using the Sputnik II example is moot in relation to robotics without the formulation and acceptance of a roadmap and the establishment of a public-private consortium to implement it fully. A roadmap was presented in May, 2009 and some of it's provisions are slowly making their way through the halls of Congress. But there is no executive leadership thus far. If there were, Pres. Obama's Sputnik II moment would be a true call to action instead of pointless rhetoric.

Big Changes in Robotic Manufacturing

2011-01-01T20:23:00.000-08:00

2011 is a pivotal year for industrial and service robots. In fact, we may see the marriage of industrial with service robots to be used as assistants in manufacturing. The recent launches in Europe of pi4-robotics' workerbot and Japan's Motoman's two-armed headless robot, and the anticipated 2011 launch in the U.S. of Heartland Robotics' factory assistant robot are examples of this trend.

Henrik Christensen (Director Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology) said in a recent ROBOTICA Forum:

In manufacturing only through use of automation can we reduce the need to out-source. Our workers are not going to be more effective in doing manual labor, but with the right tools they can be more effective and the motivation to outsource less pronounced. Companies are starting to realize that once you start an out-sourcing process it may result in all of the process going off-shore. That happened in textiles and apparel and the poster child in the IT industry is the IBM ThinkPad transformation to Lenovo laptops. Also the disk drive industry had a similar move to Singapore.

To be effective, robots have to be lower cost and higher dexterity. We are starting to see this - and the cost of integration is also coming down.

The recently released 2010 robotics industry reports from the International Federation of Robotics said:

Dramatic advances in robotics and automation technologies are even more critical with the next generation of high-value products that rely on embedded computers, advanced sensors and microelectronics requiring micro- and nano-scale assembly, for which labor-intensive manufacturing with [low-skilled] human workers is no longer a viable option.

Here are some quotes from the Heartland Robotics website that are more real than hyperbole:

Today's manufacturing robots are big and stiff, unsafe for people to be around, engineered to be precise and repeatable, not adaptable. Normal workers can't touch them.

Our robots will be intuitive to use, intelligent and highly flexible. They'll be easy to buy, train, and deploy and will be unbelievably inexpensive.

Similar wording can be found on the pi4-robotics website and Motoman's.

Today's industrial robots are truly expert systems

Lest we forget, industrial robots encapsulate years of translating the skills of craftsmen to the mechanical capabilities of robots. There's no other way that robots could have replaced their human counterparts were it not for the fact that the robot can do the same task equal to or better than the human.

Industrial robots in car factory

The know-how, where robots mimic human actions in the various aspects of the auto industry, represents decades of accumulated knowledge transfer by veteran craftsmen.

In welding, for example, the finish of welding varies, depending on the kind of metal used, its thickness and the power voltage. Craftsmen adjust the speed of welding by observing how sparks fly to get the best finish. From a story in Asahi:

About 10 years ago, Yasakawa (Motoman) started filming its craftsmen at work, using a high-speed camera to record their hand movements. The accumulated data was programmed into robots to enable them to perform tasks from several thousand options of welding that craftsmen had established over the years.

Because Yaskawa makes and uses robots at its main factory, it enables the company to pass along technical expertise from elders to their juniors.

"You can copy a robot, but not control technology that craftsmen created," said Junji Tsuda, president of Yaskawa. "(Exporting robots) is like shipping the craftsmen themselves."

"Chinese and South Korean makers are less likely to come up with such technology because they are more inclined to want results in the short term," said Akira Yoshino, the engineer-inventor of the lithium-ion battery.

Presently, robots in manufacturing are, except for the auto industry and welding apps, mostly involved in post processing and packaging rather than in the manufacturing process. [This latter point is not to be minimized - in fact, it is a booming area of robotics: picking, packing, packaging, processing, sorting and warehousing.]

But not general manufacturing!

The near-term future will see the gradual appearance of multi-purpose, flexible, easily trainable robots. We are likely to see the bridging between the expert systems of the past and these flexible systems of the future - in manufacturing in 2011.

I see three issues involved:

Robotics for Small and Medium-sized manufacturers and factories (SME's)
National strategies to solve important issues
Training and retraining people for the future

SME's are the life-blood of the middle class and the area of greatest jobs growth. SME's create new jobs, contribute to the community, and produce needed products.

Yaskawa Motoman
Two-armed Factory Robot

A few years ago, in Europe, the EU recognized the need to support SME businesses with improved robotics - robotics that were easily trainable, safe to work alongside, relatively inexpensive and flexible enough to handle all sorts of ad hoc tasks in any quantity. The EU invested in the development of SME robots because they felt that without their investment production efficiencies couldn't be maintained and more and more manufacturing would move offshore. The SME project ended early in 2009 and the consortium members quickly brought products to market that address the needs of SME's. These include two-armed robots, safety sensors and train-by-example programming. The EU also invested in the PiSa Project which had a similar goal. The pi4-robotics "workerbot" mentioned above is the result of that effort. Motoman's two-armed robot is an outgrowth of the SME project and is presently replacing older robots in the Mercedes factories.

America doesn't have a national robotics agenda (roadmap) just yet even though there is effort in that direction. Congress was presented with a roadmap in May, 2009. There has been some movement from the Obama Administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy including some SBA funding and some targeted areas of robotic development funding opportunities from five different government agencies. But robotics are not yet on the national agenda - there's no U.S. Robotics Initiative as there is for other areas of development.

Nor is there a real training and retraining mechanism for keeping up with the changing technological landscape. Instead, we fear losing jobs rather than understanding that we will instead change the mix of workers (as is generally the case when robots enter the picture). Yes we have FIRST programs, and interesting robo-competitions all oriented to interest students in STEM education. But we are very lax in our science education overall and really don't have a national reeducation program for our workforce.

What America has is an entrepreneurial system of funding (which I described back in January ("Financing the Strawberry Project")) supplemented by irregular special purposes like national defense (DARPA), homeland security and space exploration. If an inventor/business has a good enough idea to get past the angel investors and on to the real VCs, he/she will get enough money to get it off the ground. It's part salesmanship, part product, and timing, rather than an outgrowth of a national agenda to help society.

It's great to wish Heartland Robotics well but it isn't right that they are America's only knight in shining armor (if it turns out that they really are). Also, if they are successful they will be contributing to the jobs issue by changing the mix of workers from low-skilled to highly skilled. Without a retraining program in place, there will likely be serious repercussions, a lot of bad press, and slowdowns.

Bill Gates, Samsung, the government of South Korea, Toyota, Ray Kurzweil and many others are predicting that there will be a robot in our homes, companies and cars in this decade. It truly is a political issue - one of technological complexity, national importance and economic strategy - to make sure that we don't derail ourselves with pettiness, greed, apathy and inaction.

What's happened to the American dream?

2010-11-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

On this election day I cannot help but consider whether Arianna Huffington's "Third World America" book is more than just a warning.

Graphic from AStrangeLife

James Truslow Adams coined and defined the American Dream as:

The American Dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.

Home ownership is sometimes used as a proxy for achieving the promised prosperity; ownership has been a status symbol separating the middle classes from the poor. Sometimes the Dream is identified with success in sports or how working class immigrants seek to join the American way of life.

Thus the American Dream isn't to be rich; it's to be middle class, relatively content, and with trust that the future will be equal or better for the offspring.

Not only has that trust eroded, it's being chipped away daily by greed, temptation, outright corruption, misdirection and obfuscation, and passivity.

Right now 2/3 of Americans believe that their children will be worse off than they are now. Two-thirds! Yale's Jacob Hacker says that 40% of all household income gains over the last generation, from 1979 to 2007, went to the richest 1% of Americans. Consequently, as more and more wealth goes to the top, people in that group lose sight of the American Dream and use their wealth to buy politicians, lawyers and PR/Communication specialists to turn government into an instrument where they can have their way.

Consider this story by Kurt Kleiner in MIT's TechnologyReview:

BOGUS GRASS-ROOTS POLITICS ON TWITTER

Data-mining techniques reveal fake Twitter accounts that give the impression of a vast political movement.

Researchers have found evidence that political campaigns and special-interest groups are using scores of fake Twitter accounts to create the impression of broad grass-roots political expression. A team at Indiana University used data-mining and network-analysis techniques to detect the activity.

"We think this technique must be common," says Filippo Menczer, an associate professor at Indiana University and one of the principal investigators on the project. "Wherever there are lots of eyes looking at screens, spammers will be there; so why not with politics?"

The research effort is dubbed the Truthy project, a reference to comedian Stephen Colbert's coinage of the word "truthiness," or a belief held to be true regardless of facts or logic. The goal was to uncover organized propaganda or smear campaigns masquerading as a spontaneous outpouring of opinion on Twitter—a tactic known as fake grass roots, or "Astroturf."

Menczer says the research group uncovered a number of accounts sending out duplicate messages and also retweeting messages from the same few accounts in a closely connected network. For instance, two since-closed accounts, called @PeaceKaren_25 and @HopeMarie_25, sent out 20,000 similar tweets, most of them linking to, or promoting, the House minority leader John Boehner's website, gopleader.gov

In another case, 10 different accounts were used to send out thousands of posts, many of them duplicates slightly altered to avoid detection as spam. All of the tweets linked back to posts on a conservative website called Freedomist.com.

This is not atypical. It's just more sophisticated. Whatever it is, it's deceitful and corrupt, not public-spirited... and very likely to get worse.

James Gilligan, psychiatrist and author, said in his book "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic:"

The main social and economic causes of violence are those that divide the population into the superior and the inferior, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor. The more highly unequal a society is, the higher its rates of violence. A greater level of equality is essential in order to curb both interpersonal violence and collective political violence.

Thus the ever-increasing prison population, the unintended but predictable consequence of income disparity, lack of trust and growing poverty. And the ever-increasing use of professional manipulators like Karl Rowe, Fred Malek, Carl Forti and other operatives and communicators Roger Ailes, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh all of whom are now armed with unlimited and unidentified corporate contributions in almost unlimited amounts. Very scary!

Awareness is the first condition of change, hence this message. Maybe we all should read Arianna Huffington's book.

And civility in incremental actions might be the next step. President Obama said today that it was incumbent on all of us, when we feel it's appropriate, to "disagree without being disagreeable."

And John Stewart ran a whole rally last Saturday on the Washington, DC Mall predicated on that single point.

Do robots take away jobs or just change the mix of workers?

2010-10-29T06:43:00.001-07:00

All of us are thinking about jobs and the economy, and those of us that are techno-centric are also concerned about the discussion as to whether robots take away jobs -- or not. It's an argument that's been going on since the invention of robots. Hollywood has vilified robots while Asians think of them reverently. Nevertheless, the question is valid and disruptive. Disruptive in the sense that jobs are lost when a superior technology emerges - think workhorses when cars started to be mass-marketed. Our present digital era is a disruptive one.

Distributing the workload increases skill levels - think Microsoft Word versus stand-alone word processors, or travel agents when e-tickets and online airline websites surfaced.

Jeanne Dietsch, CEO of MobileRobots, said in her blog earlier this year:

Did people lose jobs to computers? Yes, a number of secretaries had to upgrade their skills, and executives who refused to learn to type had a tough time of it, just to cite two examples. But these jobs were replaced by tens of thousands of high-paying software engineering positions, plus computer installers, computer operators, data storage firms and more.

A very thoughtful and well researched paper about jobs and automation appeared in Good Magazine's "Automation Insurance: Robots Are Replacing Middle Class Jobs:

MIT economist David Autor
MIT economist David Autor published a report that looked at the shifting employment landscape in America. He came to this scary conclusion: Our workforce is splitting in two. The number of high-skill, high-income jobs (think lawyers or research scientists or managers) is growing. So is the number of low-skill, low-income jobs (think food preparation or security guards). Those jobs in the middle? They’re disappearing. Autor calls it “the polarization of job opportunities.”

Princeton economist Paul Krugman is out there telling Congress to spend more money to create jobs. The former secretary of labor Robert Reich is arguing for tax breaks for the bottom brackets so people can buy stuff again. Here’s the thing, though: The erosion of the middle class is a phenomenon that’s bigger than the Great Recession. Middle-range jobs have been getting scarcer since the late 1970s, and wages for the ones that are still around have remained stagnant.

In his report, Autor says that a leading explanation for the disappearance of the middle class is “ongoing automation and off-shoring of middle-skilled ‘routine’ tasks that were formerly performed primarily by workers with moderate education (a high school diploma but less than a four-year college degree).” Routine tasks, he explains, are ones that “can be carried out successfully by either a computer executing a program or, alternatively, by a comparatively less-educated worker in a developing country.”

The culprit, in other words, is technology. The hard truth—and you don’t see it addressed in news reports—is that the middle class is disappearing in large part because technology is rendering middle-class skills obsolete.

People say America doesn’t make anything anymore, but that’s not true. With the exception of a few short lapses, manufacturing output has been on the rise since the 1980s. What is true is that industrial robots have been carrying ever more of the manufacturing burden on their steely shoulders since they appeared in the 1950s. Today, a Japanese company called Fanuc, Ltd., has industrial robots making other industrial robots in a “lights out” factory. (That’s the somewhat unsettling term for a fully automated production facility where you don’t need lights because you don’t need humans.)

Research findings like this are just part of the current dialogue about whether robots are truly taking away jobs or just redistributing the workforce and increasing productivity.

Omitted from Autor's report, however, was that part of the dialogue which deals with investments in education and research and development. Because of intense focus (some might say greedy) on quarterly profits and production efficiencies to meet those quarterly quotas, we've had a decade where R & D has either been reduced or off-shored. Further, because of wars and other reasons, there's been less investment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education - budget cuts - although the Obama Administration has been showing signs of renewed interest in this area in the last few months.

John Dulchinos, CEO, Adept

Earlier this year John Dulchinos, the CEO of Adept, during an interview with GetRobo's Noriko Kageki, made a dramatic observation:

Did you know that there are a billion cell phones per year being made globally of which 200-300 million are sold in the U.S. but not a single one is built in the US? Ten years ago that was not the case.

If the industry can’t remain competitive, then there are no jobs. And robots are automating tasks no longer done by hand. But in almost all cases those people are redeployed into other applications in the plant and allow the plant to grow and get even more efficient.

Foxconn workers

Sad but true. Even iPhones (and iPads, Macs and iPods) are manufactured in China. As many as 400,000 of the workers at Foxconn produce Apple products. (Foxconn has been in the news because that's the place where there were so many suicides and suicide attempts.) Thus the question is whether companies can compete from nearby manufacturing facilities or must they, in order to produce a low-cost product, resort to off-shoring. Many think that robotics and government investments in STEM education and vocational retraining can help the economy rather than enlarge the disparity described by Autor.

British pottery manufacturer Wade Ceramics is one such proponent of stay-at-home automation, and says Wade can now make some of its products for the same costs as firms in China – thanks to a £3 million investment in robotic equipment. Managing Director Paul Farmer, in a recent article in The Sentinel, said:

We haven't lost permanent staff because we have been busy in other parts of the business... We have lost some agency workers, but we have kept the permanent workforce stable. We are growing and in fact we are starting to recruit again... At the moment we're looking for engineers and machine operators.

Wage levels in China are going up and I believe the minimum-order quantities there are huge. This [robotic] technology and our flexibility means we can really exploit that.

Mr Farmer believes automation is becoming more important as traditional skills become harder to find.

There isn't any young blood coming through and we are all having to fight each other for the skills out there.

Wade Ceramics is representative of a very real situation: a shifting, reduced or diminishing workforce due to a variety of causes. The effect is that Wade is having difficulty finding skilled labor to man its factories. The same situation is appearing in certain areas around the world, Japan in particular. And robotics is playing a role in remedying the situation. It seems to me that robotics and automation are inevitable and it's incumbent on governments to upwardly retrain and educate the workforce accordingly.

EmTech@MIT 2010: More than just 35 young innovators giving their "elevator pitch"

2010-09-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Afternoon sail on the Charles River; downtown Boston background.

Boston, the Charles River, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provided a beautiful setting for the iPad-toting crowd of VCs, inventors, technology gurus, students, business execs, and curious individuals and investors searching for inroads to our technological future. This year’s Emerging Technologies Conference, which took place September 21-23 on the MIT Campus in Cambridge, focused on important innovations (identified by MIT's Technology Review magazine) in the key sectors of communications, energy, biotech, IT and materials.

Len Polizzoto

There was discussion about the innovation process including defining the difference between a business plan and model (eg: the iPod started as a music business model; not just technology) and a presentation by Len Polizzoto of Draper Labs that included his 10 guiding principles of innovation: (1) A patent does not an innovation make; (2) 90% of new products fail each year; (3) Innovation does not have to be based on new technology; (4) It takes a diverse team; (5) It requires the generation of real value; (6) Value is determined by the end user; (7) The competition is always better than you think; (8) Organizations become less innovative as they grow; (9) VCs don't take risks; and (10) Innovation takes discipline, commitment and dedication.

EmTech@MIT 2010: 35 Innovators Under 35

An awards ceremony honored the 35 outstanding men and women under the age of 35 chosen for 2010 by Technology Review who exemplify the spirit of innovation in business and technology. This year’s winners included Philip Low, Founder and CEO of NeuroVigil, for advances in patient self monitoring of neurological disorders, Wesley Chan, Investment Partner for Google Ventures for developing the Google Toolbar, Google Analytics and Google Voice, and David Kobia from Ushahidi, who received the Humanitarian of the Year Award for his work creating web programs for communities around the world faced with natural disasters or social upheaval.

Each of the 35 gave their "elevator pitch" about their product or service and, more importantly, were available for in-depth conversations during the receptions and networking sessions. Nevertheless, their presence was somewhat anti-climatic because the magazine had already come out fully detailing each innovator and innovation.

Communications and Information Technology:
Although the actual number of cellphone subscriptions worldwide is an estimate ranging upward from 3.3 billion (Informa), the bottom line is the same: it's a mammoth marketplace, larger than the combined worldwide total of PCs, autos and TVs!

Fewer and fewer people have land-lines. Cellphones are more convenient and are providing the necessities plus fun and games and, in some cases, personal identity, eg: in rural or storm damaged places where there are no home addressing systems (or no homes).

Taking advantage of the movement from simple to smart phones and pads was at the core of many of the Tech 35 Innovations. Some of the more altruistic pursuits include using cell and smart phones to place grocery orders for small stores in India, or to report incidents, requests for help and provide tracking in places faced with natural disasters or social unrest, or providing low-cost self-contained solar-powered satellite communicating VoIP base stations (Vanu) for extreme rural areas.

Matt Grob, Qualcom's head of Corporate R&D and other R&D presenters from Bell Labs and Alcatel/Lucent showed some of the anticipated capabilities including augmented reality projects like road sign translation (imagine how that would help you navigate in Japan, China and Egypt where few signs use English characters), product identification, and gaming, and also short-distance communication, so that appliances can communicate with base stations and become part of a smart grid or network.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse

Progress in providing faster networks is complex and includes the necessity by the provider companies to recoup their investment (a 3-year process at the least) before they expend the billions it takes for next generation speeds.

Sprint's 4G network release in the Boston area was displayed in many forms at the conference (outside, multiple booths, etc.) - including in a talk from Sprint CEO Dan Hesse where he said that, although Sprint's 4G data plans offered unlimited service, it is reserving the right to rescind that for very heavy users.

With faster networks, many healthcare apps become more realizable as therapeutic need mixes with technology to quickly move color medical images and files around the community, campus and world. Educators look forward to being able to similarly push content and interactive tutoring in ever faster ways to improve the online learning experience. And gamers and consumers, with their streaming and shopping needs, drive system use and create demand for ever more speedy networks.

Energy and Batteries:
Processing power versus battery life and cost; net-based processing versus local; games and high-bandwidth streaming entertainment versus a limited or differently-priced plan; the costs of scaling up to demand - these were some of the complexities discussed in the IT and communications sphere.

A very similar discussion was hashed about by senior technology scientists and planning advisors from Shell, Exxon and MIT regarding changing how we get and use power. In the energy/power sphere, intermittent power sources such as wind and solar add to the complex decision making process by their desirability versus their inability to store power thus requiring the grid to be smart enough to reduce other sources flexibly... a not-in-the-immediate-future situation.

Energy complexity, with no real solution (or even a national strategy and policy) in sight, is causing uncertainty, speculation and even fear, with a result that hesitation and indecision is slowing down incremental progress. By this inaction we end up waiting for a miracle solution to come from the labs. This will surely happen, but the questions are when and whether we can we afford to wait.

Consumers choose Kindles over iPads because of battery life. Payment plans, another element of the business model, also plays a role. Amazon eliminates the need to choose a data plan and is a consumer favorite as a result. Eliminating irrelevant or bothersome choices (eg: which data plan) is going to be important in forthcoming products and their business models.

Much of the energy discussion was removed from technology - except for a nifty display of MIT's urban car project and the EmTech 35 innovations involved in new battery materials and methodology - and bordering on the political - very confusing from the point of view of expectations about the conference.

Robotics, Biomedical and Materials:

Polymer-based SDM Hand

Aaron Dollar, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Yale, has developed a plastic hand able to grasp a wide variety of objects without damaging them, which replicates the flexibility and gentleness of a human hand. As a result he is exploring whether it can be used as a prosthetic.

New battery technology and materials was a hot topic - in fact, batteries were at the core of many topics - and included Hany Eitouni and his solid polymers SEEO company, acoustic printing of solar cells from SunPrint/Alion, cost-reducing methods for OLED displays, the previously mentioned neural monitoring device for sleep apnea, and a novel armband interface from Microsoft Research to detect gestures.

Conspicuously missing from the conference were representatives from major hubs of emerging technologies, eg: Apple, Amazon and Google.

New-Tech Fight Against Cocaine Cartel Detailed in The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth

2010-08-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

In a meticulously researched book as current as today's headlines, Frederick Forsyth's new book The Cobra offers a high tech thriller about the problem of cocaine. His thesis is to change the terminology from "war on drugs" and reinterpret "drugs," and in particular cocaine, as a form of terrorism, and then use all the worldwide resources and technology that is already being used to fight terrorism.

A few reviewers have panned the ending of the book, saying:

You'd be better off reading until about three quarters of the way through, throwing the book away, and enjoying all the different endings you could come up with on your own.

Another spin on the ending, which I won't reveal, is that it is closest to a painful reality and that's what Forsyth is attempting to present.

The book uses Global Hawk UAVs, their pilots in Nevada, and their capabilities in critical information gathering, to harness the drug trade. That alone is worth the price of the book but there's lots more high-tech software utilized in the plot that we only read about from the research labs. It's a great summer read.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Forsyth about The Cobra - the last sentence is the clincher for why I'm so enthused about the book:

Readers nowadays have been around, seen a lot, traveled a lot. And there is the Internet. If they want to check you out, they can. So if it is uncheckable, you can make it up, but if it can be checked, it had better be right. That is why I go all over, looking, probing, inquiring, conversing in low places, until I am damn certain that even the smallest detail really is the way it is.

For The Cobra, a deep delve into the murky world of cocaine, smugglers, Coast Guards, cops, and gangsters, there were certain “must-go” targets. The HQ of the DEA in Washington, the backstreets of Bogotá, the dockside dives of Cartagena. But the more I researched, the more I came across a recurring name: Guinea-Bissau.

Once a Portuguese West African colony, G-B went through eighteen years of independence war and about the same of civil war. The two left it a shattered, burned-out hellhole. The ultimate failed state. It still is. And the cocaine cartels spotted a perfect shipment point for coke going from South America to Europe. They moved in, put almost every major official and politico on the payroll, and began to shift scores of tons of puro through from Colombia to Europe. This I had to see, so I went, posing as a bird-watcher (the swamps and marshes are a wintering ground for European wading birds).

It was not my fault I landed in the middle of yet another coup d’état. It started while I was airborne from Lisbon to Bissau city. When I arrived, my contact was in a hell of a state. Flashing his diplomatic pass, he whisked us both through the formalities. It was two a.m.: sweaty hot.

“What’s the hurry?” I asked, as he raced his SUV down the pitted track to the city. “Look behind you,” he said.

The horizon in the rearview mirror was aglow with headlights. A vengeful Army was also heading for the city. At eight-thirty the previous evening, someone had put a bucket of Semtex under the Army chief of staff. He was all over the ceiling. The Army reckoned it was the President—different tribes and eternal enemies. They were coming to settle accounts.

I was in my hotel by three a.m. but unable to sleep, so I put on the light. It was the only modern hotel and had a generator. There is no public lighting in Bissau. At four-thirty, trying to read, I heard the boom, about five hundred yards down the street. Not thunder, not a head-on crash. Ammo, big ammo. One remembers the sound. Actually, it was the Army putting an RPG through the President’s bedroom window.

It seems the explosion did not kill the old boy, even at seventy-one. He crawled out of bed. Then the building collapsed on him. Still alive, he crawled from the rubble to the lawn, where the soldiers were waiting. They shot him three times in the chest. When he still wouldn’t die, they realized he had a juju that made him immune to bullets.

But that juju cannot prevail against machetes. Everyone knows that. So they chopped him up. He died.

The next day was kind of quiet, apart from the patrolling Army jeeps bristling with the usual Kalashnikovs, looking for the murderers of their boss. My contact waved his diplomatic pass; I beamed and distributed signed photos of a smiling Queen Elizabeth, with assurances that she wished them well (the Third World reveres the queen, even with a facsimile signature). We were waved through.

The airport was closed; ditto the borders. I was trapped inside, but no one could get in either. In the trade, it’s called an exclusive. So I borrowed my host’s mobile and filed a thousand-word summing-up to London’s Daily Express, for whom I do a weekly column. I had the Express call me back and dictated the story to a lady with earphones in London. No one has filed news like that since Dan Rather was in college. Old-fashioned, but secure from intercept, I thought.

But of course the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland, heard it all and told the CIA. In the matter of coups in West Africa, I have what London’s Cockneys call “a bit of previous.” I wrote The Dogs of War long ago about that very subject.

After the story, half the West’s media was trying to get me, but I was out in the creeks checking out the sumptuous mansion of the Colombians, notable for their ponytails, chains of gold bling, and black-windowed SUVs. When I got back to Bissau, a very voluble wife, Sandy, was on the phone.

It seems she was fixing a lunch date with a girlfriend and explained in her e-mail: “I’m free for lunch ’cos Freddie is away in Guinea-Bissau.” Mistake. The e-mail vanished off the screen unfinished. Her mailbox vaporized. Database wiped. Instructions appeared on her screen: “Do not open this file. Cease all sending or we will respond.”

I had a zany mental image of the morning conference at Langley. Corner suite, seventh floor, Old Building.

“What’s this going on in Africa, Chuck?”

“A coup in Guinea-Bissau, Director. Several assassinations. It could be that damn limey again.”

“Can we take him out of there?”

“It seems not. He is somewhere in the jungle.”

“Well, zap his wife’s lunch dates. That’ll teach him.”

The same night, I dined with new friends, and my neighbor at the table was an elderly Dutchman. “You work here?” I asked.

“Ja. Three-year secondment. I am a forensic pathologist. I run the mortuary.”

The only things that work in Bissau are the gift-aid projects donated by the developed world. The Dutch built the modern mortuary. Shrewdly, they put it next to the locally run general hospital. Smart, because no one leaves the hospital save feetfirst on a gurney heading for the morgue.

“Been busy?” I asked. He nodded solemnly.

“Ja, very busy all day. Stitching the President back together.”

It seemed the government wanted the old boy in his coffin more or less in the right order. I tucked into my stewed goat.

It took three days for things to calm down and the airport to reopen. I was on the next flight to Lisbon and London. At Heathrow, a passport officer checked the stamps, raised an eyebrow, and passed the document to a colleague. He contemplated both the passport and its owner for a while, then gave it back.

“How was Guinea-Bissau, Mr. Forsyth?” he asked mildly.

“Cancel the vacation,” I advised. “You won’t like it.” Both smiled thinly. Officials don’t do that. Never jest with officialdom. I stepped out into the crisp morning air of March 1, 2009. Beautifully cool. Good to be home.

So if you are interested, dear reader, it’s all in The Cobra. The dives of Cartagena, the U.S. Navy SEALs, their British equivalents the SBS, the Global Predator UAVs, oh, and dear old Guinea-Bissau. And it’s all true. Well, okay, it’s not all true, it’s a novel. But it’s accurate.

Eisenhower's Words 49 Years Later

2010-07-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

In late 1961, as President Dwight Eisenhower was preparing to leave office, he carefully warned of a process which I believe parallels our situation today:

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Reading these words is a sad experience for me. Eisenhower really had people and the world of people in mind when he developed and delivered this speech. And he had the perspective of having been a General in war needing and using equipment and a President during a peaceful time, keeping that peace while encouraging and growing the civilian economy.

Bringing this message home to the robotics industry involves a discussion on research in America versus the rest of the world, and the politics of representation to get funding for the industry. The former has been incorporated into most of my blog entries, particularly the article on financing the strawberry project.

Getting government funding for defense and civilian research and development is what I want to talk about here. There are two Congressional Caucuses today representing the robotics industry. One is educational; the other little more than a platform for lobbying to expedite funding. One addresses industrial and service robotics (which includes UAVs of all types) with a goal of providing a roadmap (including a funding roadmap) to help tackle America's fledgling robotics industry (or watch it be lost to off-shore companies); the other is focused on unmanned aerial devices for the DoD and Homeland Security with little, if any, attention to civilian uses.

Which one do you think will have the biggest impact on America and our long-term strategic goals for continued American life as we know it? The Robotics Caucus. Which one is getting all the attention and money? The UAV Caucus, of course. And that is because of their focus to provide access to Congress for lobbyists from the defense sector.

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece entitled: "Our Future Is Already in the Hands of Robots" and included the following quote:

Enthusiasm for robots on the battlefield, it seems, is only outpaced by the speed with which the military is acquiring them, says the author of "Wired for War," P.W. Singer

"We went into Iraq with a handful of drones; we now have 7,000 in the inventory," Singer said. "We went into Iraq with zero unmanned ground vehicles that are robotic; we now have 12,000.

UGVs and UAVs are a big business right now as are all companies providing products and services to support our war effort. But war spending isn't good for the public, particularly when most of the spending is being spent off-shore. The public may be listening to the Tea Baggers but they know and are experiencing the loss to the economic well-being of our country - and their households - by the trillion dollars we've spent on the Iraq and Afghan wars. We are bankrupting ourselves while the military-industrial complex is thriving. Voters know this. That's why James Carville's maxim "It's the economy, stupid" is as applicable today as it was then. Except that I would add President Eisenhower's warning to the maxim:

"... [and] guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

The Problem Today Is Inadequate Spending

2010-07-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

Rhetoric is winning over substance these days with the resultant effect that people are suffering. Worse, there are "tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again" said NY Times columnist Paul Krugman in a recent op-ed piece entitled "The Third Depression."

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

This is part of the hypocrisy of current-day politics that I find so terribly offensive and counter-productive, or as Krugman said, "self-defeating." People are being manipulated to do things against their own best interests by political consultants that stir unnecessary flames and heighten righteousness. Furthermore, because of the increasing polarity, nothing is able to get accomplished and people end up dissolute and cynical which makes them even more passive and persuadable. Congressional party-line votes illustrate how the partisan acrimony gripping Congress is preventing cooperation, even for universally shared goals like healthcare, financial regulation and campaign finance.

In an in-depth piece in the International Herald Tribune entitled: "Betting That Cutting Spending Won't Derail Recovery," David Leonhardt wrote:

Policy makers are betting that the private sector can make up for the withdrawal of stimulus over the next couple of years. If they’re right, they will have made a head start on closing their enormous budget deficits. If they’re wrong, they may set off a vicious new cycle, in which public spending cuts weaken the world economy and beget new private spending cuts.

All the while stocks are tumbling and the daily economic and business news is abysmal. Repeating what Krugman wrote: "It's almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don't."

I agree with Krugman that it's too soon to stop stimulating the economy. Stimulation is necessary to get people working and also to enable new technologies to flourish over longer periods of time. By being short-sighted and focused on quarterly profits many American companies have pulled back their research and development budgets thereby thwarting new technologies. And by the government pulling back on it's economic stimulus, it's like a one-two punch backwards.

A Lesson from Arkansas and a Call for Transparency

2010-05-18T07:53:00.000-07:00

UPDATE May 18: Rhetoric lessons for Democrats by Drew Westen - see below.

In 2008, Arkansas voted for John McCain for President. In fact, the state voted more Republican than all other states. It swung 11% to the Right from the Bush vote in 2004. That's what the figures show.

A lot happened in Arkansas in 2007 and 2008 leading to that misleading statistic. Arkansas was already favored to be a solid Red state - just not one that changed so dramatically to the Right.

Hillary ran and lost a savage and divisive campaign against Obama. Her home-state voters were particularly vocal and aggressive and really wanted her to win. They were crushed when she lost and sour and embittered. They lost their fervor to change America for the better and became resentful and lethargic and stayed away from the final days of the election. Many of them didn't vote. Arkansas Democratic votes in the 2008 election were down in numbers that didn't go to the Republicans... they just didn't vote.

Republicans had the devil Hillary to rail against and Mike Huckabee to root for. The well-liked Arkansas Governor spoke to what they wanted to hear. When he lost to McCain, Arkansian Republicans were also crestfallen. But they acted differently than the Democrats. They turned out to vote against the Democratic choice more than to vote for McCain. Actually they voted for Sarah Palin. They were bitter and hurt and angry, and Palin spoke to their needs, so they voted her way.

As a result, rather than Arkansas swinging 11% more Republican, what really happened is a large quantity of embittered Democrats didn't vote and an even larger angry group of Republicans voted against their own best interests by turning out for Palin.

In both cases, Republicans and Democrats voted against their own best interests. Literally, their wrong-headed votes (or lack of votes) were self-punishment and self-destructive to themselves. Voting for Palin when really they just didn't want to vote for a Democrat; not voting for Obama when he was clearly the only choice.

I see the lesson to be a psychological one that Drew Westen wrote about in his book "The Political Brain." People tend to vote against their own best interests when anger and/or fear provoke them out of their point of view. Further, that anger/fear can be sustained - by manipulation - to achieve that state of doing the unthinkable. That's why so many people who see that manipulation were/are angry at Karl Rowe because he was a master at provoking and sustaining that type of contentiousness and cynicism that would lead a person to withdraw - to get away - to not vote - literally to vote against their own best interests.

That manipulation through fear and anger is happening right now. Republicans and others are translating their frustration with the lack of progress in getting jobs, solving problems, regulating the banking industry, and putting the guilty in jail and they are making Obama and his administration the scapegoat.

In a Washington Post article today by Perry Bacon Jr., Drew Westen said that Democrats should not talk about "the environment," "the unemployed" or "the uninsured." Instead, they should replace those phrases with ones that have more appeal to voters, such as "the air we breathe and the water we drink," "people who've lost their jobs" and "people who used to have insurance."

"There are a few things if you know about the brain, they change the way you think about politics," he said in an e-mail. "If you understand we evolved the capacity to feel long before we evolved the capacity to think, instead of barraging people with facts (the standard Democratic way of talking to voters) you speak to people's core values and concerns."

Westen also said in the e-mail that "the White House has sharpened its message substantially since the president's first year in office," although he thinks it could still be more blunt in illustrating differences between the two parties.

Transparency is one of the answers to this problem. Clarity, honesty, feeling and transparency.

Let's hope that President Obama can speak about this problem. There's no reason that clarity and transparency be limited to John Stewart and Bill Maher.

The Importance of Making vs Selling Stuff - sidebar on Goldman Sachs

2010-04-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Much discussion is being focused in Congress, recent books, articles, and in the media, on the financial crisis and the contributing factors to that crisis. Omitting until the end the role of Goldman Sachs, one important factor about the crisis must not be overlooked said James Kwak of The Baseline Scenario:

Remember that financial services are an intermediate product -- that is, we don't eat them, or live in them, or put them on in the morning. They are supposed to enable a more efficient allocation of capital, so that the non-financial economy is more productive. But what we saw since the 1980s was the unmooring of the financial sector from the rest of the economy.

Financial services are supposed to serve our economy; not be the economy. Yet the trend is otherwise... over 40% of the profits of the entire US corporate sector went to the financial industry. As a reference, in 1970 it was 4%!

Paul Krugman wrote:

A growing body of analysis suggests that an oversized financial industry is hurting the broader economy. Shrinking the oversized industry won't make Wall Street happy, but what's bad for Wall Street would be good for America.

Martin Wolf, of the Financial Times, wrote:

...the financial sector seems to be a machine to transfer income and wealth from outsiders to insiders, while increasing the fragility of the economy as a whole."

Even the ethic has changed. Doing things with ones hands - the pride in the skill and craft of so doing - used to be our ethic; now it's who can earn the most money.

The real issue is that America has changed from a hands-on country to one that sells the products of others. As more and more production and service jobs go off-shore, only financial services are staying behind. And as Andrew Sorkin said on the Charlie Rose show last week:

...so many of these instruments on Wall Street, it's really just a casino, there is no underlying assets, they don't actually own these devices; people aren't getting mortgages because of this... What is the social utility of that?

All of this can be seen in the difference between the growth of the robotics industries in America and everywhere else. America used to develop, design and manufacture their robots. Then they only developed and designed them - the products were built off-shore. Now much of the non-defense design is being done elsewhere and manufactured off shore without America having a piece of the pie. Most of the iRobot products sold to the DoD are manufactured offshore!

Sidebar about Goldman Sachs

From a blog entry in The Huffington Post by Senator Carl Levin:

Most investors make the assumption that people selling them securities want those securities to succeed. That's how our markets ought to work, but they don't always. The Senators who in the 1930s investigated the causes of the Great Depression stated the principle clearly:

[Investors] must believe that their investment banker would not offer them the bonds unless the banker believed them to be safe. This throws a heavy responsibility upon the banker. He may and does make mistakes. There is no way that he can avoid making mistakes because he is human and because in this world, things are only relatively secure. There is no such thing as absolute security. But while the banker may make mistakes, he must never make the mistake of offering investments to his clients which he does not believe to be good.

Goldman documents make clear that in 2007 it was betting heavily against the housing market while it was selling investments in that market to its clients. It sold those clients high-risk mortgage-backed securities and CDOs that it wanted to get off its books in transactions that created a conflict of interest between Goldman's bottom line and its clients' interests.

These findings are deeply troubling. They show a Wall Street culture that, while it may once have focused on serving clients and promoting commerce, is now all too often simply self-serving. The ultimate harm here is not just to clients poorly served by their investment bank. It's to all of us. The toxic mortgages and related instruments that these firms injected into our financial system have done incalculable harm to people who had never heard of a mortgage-backed security or a CDO, and who have no defenses against the harm such exotic Wall Street creations can cause.

Levin went on to say that:

Running through our findings and these hearings is a thread that connects the reckless actions of mortgage brokers at WaMu with market-driven credit rating agencies and the Wall Street executives designing the next synthetic. That thread is unbridled greed, and the absence of a cop on the beat to control it.

I couldn't agree more. I'm pained to see this happening during my lifetime.

Rethinking Singularity

2010-04-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

I have concerns about Ray Kurzweil's Singularity. The following three stories will show you where I'm coming from and give some background to what I want to say:

(1) In the '80s, Tom Axworthy, then Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (and now with the Center for the Study of Democracy at Queens U in Kingston, Canada and the Gordon Foundation), spoke before my group, the American Association of Political Consultants, and told why Canadians and other countries distinguished themselves from Americans and American political campaign technology. He said that Americans pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a national credo whereas most other societies have as their goals peace, order, liberty and fraternity. Fraternity being the sharing in the well-being of all of society. Big difference between the individual pursuit of happiness to the altruistic sharing of the well-being of everyone. And that difference translates into political orientation, campaign practices and social ethic. In America elected officials have star status whereas most members of parliaments worldwide are part of the party and not well known. They are often elected as the x-party member for the y area. Hence there's less personality and more issue orientation. Not Barney Frank versus Earl Sholley but instead Liberal versus Tory. Axworthy's talk has stuck with me to this day because I strongly believe in his version of Fraternity and what it means for society and the future. Also it was one of the many reasons I chose to sell off and quit my activities in politics.

(2) Ray Kurzweil's projections of logarithmic (exponentially accelerating) technological progress - particularly in the fields of robotics, biotechnology and nanotechnology - leading to a "singularity" or merging of these super-intelligent sciences sometime between 2040 and 2045, a merging where differentiating between a human with consciousness and a robot-like device acting as if it had consciousness, has been fascinating to me because I'm a technology enthusiast, particularly in the areas of computers, AI and robotics. I see it happening just as he says. In robots, genetics, longevity, artificial intelligence, aging, stem cells, and many more sciences, my vision of the future is similar to Kurtzweil's. And this is disturbing because his projections are leading to a conclusion that I don't want for society.

(3) While driving to and from Lake Tahoe last weekend, some friends and I listened to an audiobook entitled Death Match. Although it was a mystery, it was really about artificial intelligence. It involved a computer dating service that went beyond simple questionnaires and instead merged psychological, medical and financial data along with social data such as travel, movie and book preferences, phone call records, traffic tickets, etc. into a massive database which was then sliced and diced to provide information about the candidates well-beyond what they entered on their initial survey forms. Armed with all that data, the computer did it's match and was quite successful. A discussion occurred about individual boundaries, and computer capabilities. Coincidentally, I had recently listened to a podcast of an AI expert discussing how things were presently done (constructivist) and how they will be done shortly (software developing software). This shed light on what was fictional in the story. The discussion continued to include the fact that the story's software and manipulation of massive databases was available today but that it wasn't going to get too much better until more capable and extensive software could be developed and that was precluded because the present state of the art was constructivist (done by human programmers and limited by their time and capacity). Although software is used to create new computer chips, humans are still cranking out AI software. When AI software becomes self-generating, that's when robotics and other embedded sciences will grow - and the dangers I foresee begin.

This brings me to a long and old (2000) Wired Magazine article written by Bill Joy, co-founder and network computer scientist of Sun Microsystems, a VC at Kleiner Perkins Greentech and FOO (Friend of Obama). In the article, Joy worked his way through his own history of thoughts about technology to an evening when he spent some time with Ray Kurzweil and learned, first-hand, what Kurzweil foresaw.

Ray was saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that and John [Searle, also at the meeting] countering that this couldn't happen because the robots couldn't be conscious.

I had always felt sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected, I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility. I was taken aback, especially given Ray's proven ability to imagine and create the future. I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me.

Joy wrote pages of his history in thought from then until he met scholar and author Jacques Attali who described his interpretation of Fraternity.

Jacques helped me understand... Fraternity, whose foundation is altruism. Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of others, affording the promise of self-sustainment.

This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil's dream. A technological approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices.

I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers.

We are getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st-century technologies - the prevention of knowledge-enabled mass destruction - and further delay seems unacceptable.

It seems to me that Joy's seriousness and concern is well-deserved and appropriate. I share his concerns fully. What do you think?

Just One Sentence for Robotics in the Presidents Stimulus Message

2010-02-11T11:49:00.000-08:00

In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, Google's Eric Schmidt described why America has an innovation deficit and suggested ways that stimulus might change that situation.

We see it reflected in our search trends at Google: Too many people are out of work, and the fear of unemployment is changing the behavior of millions more.

We have been world leaders in innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity.

But much of the cutting-edge research and development in key and critical areas now takes place outside the United States.

We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy.

Schmidt is saying is what I have found to be true in robotics funding. Other than DARPA, DOD and NASA, funding for robotics is not directed or strategic. In other countries, however, strategic funding is reaping benefits that are placing America farther behind in robotics development, deployment and manufacturing. Here is Schmidt's five-point prescription to invigorate American technology innovation:

Start-ups and smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their larger rivals. They don't need favors, just a level playing field. Congress should ensure that every bill it passes promotes competition over protecting the interests of incumbents.
Encouraging risk-taking means tolerating failure -- provided we learn from it. If we want to be a leader in new industries such as green energy [and robotics], we have to accept that some of our investments won't pan out.
We need to invest more in our knowledge base. The decision by Congress to double science funding last year was a big step in the right direction. Now we need to extend the R&D tax credit so businesses can confidently invest in their future.
Information must become even more open and accessible. Government-funded research should be made public through "a Wikipedia of ideas," so entrepreneurs can harness ideas commercially. Broadband is a major driver of new jobs and businesses, yet America ranks only 15th in the world for access. More government support for broadband remains critical.
We need to hang on to talented people. The best and brightest from around the world come to study at U.S. universities. After graduation, they are forced to leave because they can't get visas. It's ridiculous to export such talent to our competition.

Yes, all these points are fine. But there are more important issues going on. There is a perception that robotics takes away jobs which is not being factually countered. National Robotics Week - an awareness program initiated by a few companies and America's major tech universities - is a good first step. However, the government's consistent omission of robotics in their stimulus proposals is, to me, a sad surrender to the cry from unions and others that robots take away jobs. Instead of arguing that retraining and innovation and strategic funding create jobs, we are steadily giving in to these ill-founded claims and eroding our possibilities to lead again in technological innovation.

2010 Robotics Predications; Reality Check for 2009

2010-01-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

Trick math question: If you have $100 and lose 50% and then gain back 50% of that, how much do you have?

$100
$50
$75
None of the above.

Stock markets around the world rose dramatically in 2009. Robotic stocks did as well or better than the major tracking indexes, particularly service robotic stocks. But the real story isn't the gains of 2009 but the lack of recovery from 2007.

An example: U.S. publicly-traded industrial robotic companies saw their stocks rise 40% in 2009. But those same stocks lost 53% in 2008. Thus their year-to-date rise in 2009 of 40% really only recovered 16 points of the 53 lost the year before. U.S. industrial robotic stocks are still down 37% from their close at the end of 2007 as are almost all robotic stocks worldwide. That is what these Robo-Stox™ charts - one for industrial robotic companies and another for service companies - attempt to show. Click to enlarge.

Most countries' robotics stocks didn't fare as well as the American NASDAQ Index with the exception of Canada, India, Israel, Taiwan and a very few individual stocks. Thus although 2009 was a significant up year for stocks, and robotic stocks in particular, robotic stocks have yet to recover their highs of 2007 and have a long way to go to do so.

The seriousness of the recent worldwide stock market and economy crash - of the drop in market value of the companies - of the loss of jobs and orders, and revenue and profits - is a long way from recovery. Although jobs in the robotics sector are available for qualified takers, particularly in the service sector, unemployment in general is dramatically high and most economists are predicting that it will be well into 2012 before any real gains occur.

That is not to say that all is pessimistic, particularly for robotic businesses. 2010 looks to be a good year with definite "drivers" effecting selected marketplaces.

Worldwide military, police and security agencies are continuing to purchase and invest in R&D for all types of unmanned, remote-operated aerial, underwater and ground robotic devices. More jobs - with the likelihood of continued growth over the next few years.

Medical robotics (included in the services sector) are poised for many years of rapid growth propelled by:

Growing patient demand for non-invasive surgery,
The current effort to reduce hospital costs by increasing productivity through a variety of robotic activities (non-invasive surgery, pill dispensing, materials transfer, lab assistance, etc.),
Hospitals, which have held back capital purchases (such as Intuitive Surgical's million dollar da Vinci devices) for the past two years, are beginning to reinvest in these types of equipment.

With the return of small amounts of discretionary income back into the economy, consumers are once again interested in robotic toys and kits as can be seen by 2009's Christmas rush to buy millions of robotic hamsters (Zhu Zhu) and thousands robotic penguins. And the hit of CES was an indoor-flying iPhone controlled quad copter by Parrot that will sell for $129.

For industrial robot manufacturers, orders will stay down for quite a while. For those vendors that have switched or are making inroads into the services sector, the horrendous spate of bankruptcies and buy-outs has stopped and the future is looking brighter especially in new markets including the SME market.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are now being offered affordable robotic products that haven't been available to them before, first in Europe and Asia, and later in the U.S. Lightweight and easily trainable, these flexible robots are enabling these smaller manufacturers to increase productivity and not have to go off-shore to produce their products.

Robotics 2009 - A Review

2009-12-24T08:26:00.000-08:00

Singularity Hub, a website reporting advances in nanotechnology, genetics, biology, AI, aging and robotics, presented their 2009 Best Robots pictorial, a graphic review of some of the most interesting robots in the news in 2009. A few of the entries were frivolous or prototypes with no prospect of near-term commercialization, and there were some major omissions, but overall it gives a favorable impression of the progress made during 2009 - and prospects for the future - in robotics. It made me think that it might be time to review my own progress through 2009.

In June, 2008, I began to research the robotics industry - and the future of robotics - with an eye toward selectively investing in publicly-traded or privately held robotics businesses. I set up The Robot Report as an adjunct of my research - to share the data I've collected and to provide a visual method to track the business of robotics. I've also been compiling a database of robotic companies and facilities worldwide and developed an industry chart (RoboStox™) of publicly-traded service and industrial robotic companies from which to compare their change to that of the NASDAQ and the DJIA indexes. RoboStox™is updated and recapped monthly on The Robot Report.

My research was necessary because my stock brokers didn't have a list of companies involved in robotics. They had a few stock tips but nothing comprehensive about the industry. Nor was there a fund or index for the industry. Not even a knowledgeable specialist or quant. I realized that I had to do the legwork myself. It's been an intensive project that has taken me to Korea, Germany, Japan, and all over the Internet. My eyesight has suffered but not my mind. I love what I'm doing and discovering.

September 2008 was right about the time that the economic crisis really hit. Stocks took their second and biggest dive. People were on the edge of panic. Things hidden behind years of obfuscation became painfully visible in the media.

Robotic stocks tumbled that September. Fell like bricks. But I was still optimistic. I thought that by the time I really grasped the business of robotics, I'd be able to select the good from the chaff, and ride the wave back up, should it ever happen.

Thus far I've identified more than 600 companies (worldwide) that produce robotic products, 150 of which are publicly traded. Of the 600, many are conglomerates or companies where robotics aren't their primary business - ABB is an example. Less than 1/3 of ABB revenue is from robotics, yet ABB is one of the major robotics providers in the world. Many of the companies aren't listed on American exchanges. My database has another 650 companies, some of which are public, that are ancillary to the industry providing everything from engineering, integration, software, vision systems and other necessary components to purely educational and research facilities. I have another 200 UAV providers on hold because many are unlikely to become commercially viable due to restrictions in airspace and the probability that countless years will pass before those limitations are lifted.

Observations from 2009:

Strategic funding toward a robotics industry via a roadmap is non-existant in the U.S. but not in Korea, Japan and the EU. Their "roadmaps" have been designed, plotted out, funded, the public-private groups selected, and the tasks and research are underway. Korea's $1.25 billion Frontier Program has an overall goal of a robot in every household and for Korea to become the primary worldwide provider of industrial robots by 2018. Japan's $100 million transition to service robotics is reflected in a variety of prototype elder and home care robots and smaller multi-functional assistance robots. The EU has funded (at least $600 million) for a variety of public-private consortiums in the area of cognitive systems, human-robot and robot-robot interaction.
In America, we are many years behind. Our "roadmap" was presented to a congressional caucus in February but has yet to be approved or funded. If it does get approved and then funded, it is unlikely to get into the budget until FY 2013 or 2014. As an American, I find this to be quite disturbing.
Pragmatic funding for robotics does happen in the U.S. particularly for defense through DARPA, space, and from a select few individual entrepreneurs.
Although there is and will be stimulus for high tech from the 2009 Economic Stimulus Bill, there is NONE for robotics; rather, there's money for healthcare digitization, enhancing the national broadband system and for energy efficiency (mostly in the form of grants and tax credits) and the ARPA-E grants for the development of enhanced battery technologies, carbon capture and other non-robotic research.
Industrial robot producers have been diversifying and consolidating into the service sector and improving their products by making them lighter, more capable, less requiring of a safety cage, and easily trained.
Like other companies suffering the economic crisis, orders have been down and employee cuts were necessary. But that trend appears to be reversing in the services sector.
Proof of this last point came from job offer information from LinkedIn and the Robotics-Worldwide mailing list - sources for monitoring such offerings. One can see particular progress in the areas of bionics, motion vision, human-robot and robot-robot communication, motion flexibility, and artificial intelligence.
Worldwide robotics stocks - in anticipation of a return to economic normalcy - have recouped much of their losses from lows reached early this year. Nevertheless, almost all are still lower than they were in 2008.
Other researchers are getting on the robotics bandwagon in addition to The Robot Report. Three new players offered pay-for material about the industry in 2009. The Robot Report, of course, is free.

Thus 2009 was a year of retrenchment for industrial robotic suppliers - product improvements and movement toward new products in the service robotics sector. Industrial orders may have been down, but companies making the move to the service sector are hiring and marketing. One exception to this has been in defense, space and surveillance where orders and sales are up. Although news reports make it appear to be an American thing, it really is a worldwide phenomenon. Countries from Israel to South Africa, from Brazil to China, are all developing security and defense bots of one type or another.

For me, 2009 was a year of research, database development and learning. As the year progressed I began to focus on areas of particular appeal: rehabilitative robotics, agricultural robots, and medium-priced robotic toys to name a few. People and companies began to discuss their financial needs with me and my collection of NDA's is growing. Hopefully 2010 will be the year where everything robotic gels and we all have an exiting and prosperous robotics New Year. One can only hope!

PS: 'Christmas Fun with Electronic Robots' was the cover story on the now-defunct Popular Electronics magazine back in December, 1958 - 51 years ago. The issue sold for 35 cents! I scanned and Photoshopped the cover into the graphic shown above.

Revelations from Tokyo

2009-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

iREX2009 (International Robot Exposition 2009) held at the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center in iREX2009 (International Robot Exposition 2009) held at the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center in Tokyo November 25-28, was, to many, somewhat of a disappointment. The effects of the worldwide economic crisis appeared to have taken their toll on participation and attendance.

But from my point of view, things were quite different. There was the fun of traveling to an exotic city, seeing all the different sights, experiencing the subways and noodle cafes and all the wonderful tastes and smells. There was the pleasure of meeting new people, talking about robotics and seeing the robots do their stuff. And it was a terrific learning experience. On the other hand, except for hobbyists and young peoples' contests, the excitement that you normally see in the crowds as they gather around the most interesting exhibit(s) at trade shows appeared to be missing.

There were few exhibitors that I hadn't already reported upon and included in The Robot Report's database of stories and links. Nevertheless there were many noteworthy displays, some of which are discussed below.

Here is a slideshow of my photos to give you a feel for the show, it's colors and crowds. Slide #1, of the Statue of Liberty - Tokyo version - was taken near the convention center and had a spectacular view back across Rainbow Bridge to central Tokyo and Tokyo Tower.

Robot --> robot interaction: Robot-robot interaction (where multiple robots work together to achieve a common goal) was featured by most of the major industrial robot manufacturers. From the programmable dancing robots to the larger arms and hands that pass things to other robots, many companies presented where they were and what they were planning to offer. Yaskawa and Kawada's robots (shown in the slideshow) worked, danced, moved in sync and were very stylish and colorful.

Robot --> human interaction: (The enabling interfaces so that humans and robots can communicate.) In the area of robot-human interaction, haptics and speech processing were shown in many different booths. Nevertheless, preprogrammed routines still control most robot activities although many manufacturers presented their prototype and edutainment robots which displayed every form of communication methodology.

Arms, grippers and hands: There were many new thinner, smaller and very flexible arms including some very capable lab robots and very stylish tabletops. Incremental improvements in arms and grippers were displayed - like the flex-pickers from ABB and Fanuc and a wide array of hand-like grippers and the very capable grippers from Kawasaki and Panasonic. KUKA invited people to their Tokyo headquarters to see their new sleekly designed arm unit (rightmost, above).

Sensors and vision systems were everywhere. Many 3D vision units were displayed. However, real-time sensing and perception -- the conversion to and interpretation of the digital results of the sensors and vision systems -- as has been coming out of research labs around the world, was lacking at the show.

Some achievements are now almost taken for granted and omitted or minimized from the show: navigation, mobility platforms and safety systems in particular. An infrared GPS navigation system from Toyo was one of the few exceptions.

Software normalization may be necessary, but there were so many competing software systems (SRI's Karto and Willow Garage's ROS to cite two that stood out) that standardization seems a long way off.

Many companies were offering virtualization software [a very necessary step in the acceptance and use of robotic surgery devices] for manufacturing, navigation and surgeries.

Service robots of all types were displayed: fire-fighting robots, surveillance scouts, security patrol bots, pipe cleaners, receptionists, edutainers and guides, etc. One stand-out, ripe for commercial deployment, was Sumitomo's new line of autonomous industrial cleaning robots (right).

In one of the classes, KUKA and EUROP's Rainer Bischoff said, "Technology, economics and customer demand are re-shaping the future of robotics into one of service and human interaction." These sentiments were reflected in the actions of most of the major industrial manufacturers who were showing prototypes of their future service robot products as were a few Japanese technical universities (like the University of Tokyo KobaLab's pretty android receptionist Saya).

Another interesting prototype is Mitsubishi's Wakamaru robot. Although not available for sale to individuals, it is available for universities, research projects and companies and is promoted as the first human-size robot that can provide companionship, or function as a care-taker or house sitter. It's capabilities are similar to the other prototypes: recharges itself, call or e-mail if it notices a problem, continuous access to the Internet, voice and face recognition, and a dictionary able to recognize 10,000 words.

Healthcare, eldercare and medical robotics: Just as Intuitive Surgical was getting Japan's FDA approval to begin selling their da Vinci systems in Japan, Japan was preparing their own entry for trials and approvals in the EU and US (see below and in the slideshow).

The show had many healthcare robots from university labs and companies at varying stages of development. Yurina's Care Robot is a fascinating device for moving disabled people from and to beds and chairs. KobaLabs displayed robotic walking assistants. There were various exoskeletons shown: one from Tokyo's Institute of Technology enabled a person to lift and carry extraordinary amounts of heavy packages. Cyberdyne was there with their new line of rental exoskeletons. Paro and Beatbot rehabilitation robots got lots of attention.

Concluding remarks: Two stories caught my attention during the show: one reported upon a GA Tech survey which found that older adults are more amenable than younger ones -- 77% to 67% -- to having a robot "perform critical monitoring tasks that would require little interaction between the robot and the human." The findings represent a significant heads up for the eldercare robotics industry and appeared to be reflected at iREX2009.

The second story, from the Atlantic, suggested that robotic takeover of repetitive, dull, dirty and dangerous jobs is having a serious impact on America's unskilled labor force and, combined with a continuing focus on cost-cutting and productivity increases, is going to have a large and continuing destabilizing effect on America's economy.

The fear of job losses, coupled with America's lack of investment in STEM education and research (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), is propelling the robotics industry to countries that already have funded robotics roadmaps designed and being implemented. In America, the roadmap was presented last February and is still being discussed. It's a long way from being funded. President Obama has been making the rounds talking about strategic investments to help with STEM -- and many companies are getting onboard (iRobot just started a new program for the advancement of robotics knowledge) -- but will it be enough to tip the scales from the destabilizing effects suggested in the Atlantic story? It was this pessimistic spin that was on the lips of the English speaking people I talked with. Additionally, America's lack of direction in robotics appeared to be reflected in the few American companies displaying their products at the show.

I left iREX with a bag full of robotics literature and a good feeling toward all the people I met and talked with. I learned and saw things from the perspective of the biggest players in the field and I am grateful for the overall experience. And I'm anxious to return... I was so busy that I didn't have time to see the cult movie "RoboGeisha" (which has English sub-titles)!

Optimism: A Conversation With Henrik Christensen

2009-11-21T08:57:00.001-08:00

I met Henrik Christensen (Director Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology) earlier this year at International Experts Days at the Schunk factory in Hausen, Germany. His presentations and comments were business-like and focused on the numbers that make emerging products successful (large enough marketplace, serious need(s) satisfied by the new product, price comparable or less (with savings) with present methods and costs, etc.).

A few days ago we had a conversation that covered many of the current issues in robotics. Throughout the conversation, Henrik remained positive and upbeat, heralding the next few years as the tipping point for this emerging industry, particularly here in America. Of course, that's part of his current job: making robotics a key economic enabler in America. He is a significant player in the Roadmap for US Robotics presented to the Congressional Robotics Caucus earlier this year and continues to make presentations about robotics at various levels of government, encouraging cooperation and strategic funding to make things happen.

One area frequently in the news is robotic surgery. Intuitive Surgical is hot on the American stock parade. But almost 50% of the di Vinci surgical machines are not working at their capacity because many doctors don't have the skills to make them work for them. For example, one proctologist used to take 2-3 hours for a procedure that he now does using the di Vinci in 30-40 minutes. But many more proctologists take 3-6 hours (and after 4 or 5 hours it becomes somewhat dangerous to the patient). After giving it a few tries, they go back to their normal way. For them it's a matter of income - they can do more procedures in the old way and time. [There are new devices being reviewed by the FDA from Japan, Korea and the EU which, unless something is done, will also become underutilized.]

There's an industry term for this occurrence: stalled site - which usually occurs when the primary proponent moves on without a trained replacement.

Henrik says there's a major case for simulation training and two of the companies that do airline simulation are working on moving into that area as are major programs at the University of Michigan, SimuLab and Immersion. Right now Intuitive Surgical only gives a four-hour training course on their machine. Airline pilots have to invest hundreds of hours in training and retraining. The Captain and officers of the new cruise ship Oasis of the Seas spent 500+ hours of simulation time before ever stepping aboard the ship! Henrik sees not only a growing need for such simulation training but the economics that can make such an industry work and be profitable.

Industrial robots are engineering wonders that are extremely precise, mechanically intricate and last forever... which is part of their expense. To reduce those costs, manufacturers are making their machines more flexible, safer, human friendly and less exacting. Rodney Brooks' new start-up Heartland Robotics hopes to make machines that are 20%-35% less expensive and more assistive in, as he calls it, the "as yet un-automated manufacturing" sector. This is similar to the EU project SME Robot which focused on small and medium manufacturers and their requirements for flexible and quick shop assistance.

One "as yet un-automated" sector is warehouse fulfillment, an area where Kiva Systems has been so successful that it can't keep up with its orders. Amazon and all the other big mail-order processors are in need of products similar to the Kiva system but unique to their specific methods. It's an area ripe for innovation and one in which Henrik sees many things happening as early as early 2010.

One area where the economics aren't right yet for commercialization appears to be in therapeutic and eldercare assistive robotics. The research and equipment have yet to find their niche, yet the needs exist with autistic children and people with strokes and other disabilities and eldercare needs. The economic model to make saleable products with today's state of the art research and products just doesn't presently exist.

Finally we talked about the need for regional incubators to foster start-up companies -- to help them make the big switch from research engineers to marketing and management executives and to focus on helping customers do their jobs better with robotic equipment.

Henrik wants to tie research grants to real needs which, if he is able to get an agreement from the government to make strategic investments as is done by DARPA and now ARPA-E, will pay off and make robotics a key economic enabler in America.

Robotics stocks in Korea, Japan and the EU are outperforming US stocks. Why?

2009-07-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

Robo-Stox™, a compilation of worldwide publicly traded stocks in the robotics industry and exclusively presented on The Robot Report, clearly show that America is losing the race in robotics except in two areas: medical/surgical and defense/security. Click chart to enlarge.

PPIP’s. Public, Private Investment Partnerships focused on robotic growth where it will do the most good are, in my opinion, the reason why Korea, Japan and the EU are surpassing America in robotics development.

Korea is two years into an aggressive plan to invest $1 billion in order to be #1 in the worldwide robotics industry by 2018 and they’re spending $100 million each year in that pursuit.

Japan has many PPIPs focused on enabling the elderly to remain independent as long as possible thereby reducing healthcare cost and providing a better life for its citizens with robotics.

Europe has many PPIPs. One, which just concluded, focused on the robotic needs of small and medium-sized manufacturers.

When American educators from the major US tech universities presented their roadmap for our robotics industry before Congress last month, their suggestions for manufacturing had already been researched and reflected in the EU’s SME Robot Initiative. We are that far behind!

Worse, to date there’s been just one story about the presentation before Congress, and not a single published quote on the subject from any of the members of the Robotics Caucus. It's an interesting and illuminating read and I invite you download the PDF file and read it.

Led by Japan, Korea, and the European Union, the rest of the world has recognized the irrefutable need to advance robotics technology and have made research investment commitments totaling over $1 billion; the U.S. investment in robotics technology, outside unmanned systems for defense purposes, remains practically non-existing. [from A Roadmap for US Robotics]

Robotics, in all its interdisciplinary forms, will be everywhere very soon. In our homes, cars and appliances. At the hospital and in the workplace. Protecting us from near and afar. It's happening fast but not like in the movies. In America and Europe, it'll be in advanced embedded interactive systems like adaptive cruise control that now includes lane boundary awareness and will soon handle trucks and busses un-manned in controlled lanes; or in Kiva-style warehouses (no fixed shelving; few pick and pack people; heavy computer control, autonomous robots interacting with one another); or in smaller and smaller interactive medical and sensing devices.

In Japan and Korea, more humanoid-looking robots will be used for personal and factory assistants and we'll all be using exoskeletons of one type or another such as the ones being used for Japan's seniors to help them garden or Honda's factory workers who need to squat, climb and lift to do their jobs.

It's truly amazing and just beginning to get into stride. Worldwide defense spending is paying for the R&D and smart guys like Rodney Brooks are commercializing that R&D into household products.

Part of why America's robotics industry is lagging is that it is quite fragmented with all the R&D being at the behest of DARPA, NASA and the DoD and none in the commercial sector. Other than in medical robotics (which were originated by NASA), our robotic companies are integrators, engineers, software developers and resellers; not manufacturers. Even Ugobe's adorable Pleo dinosaur robot was contract-manufactured in Hong Kong!

Robotics technology – at it’s present level of technological progress - offers a rare opportunity to strategically invest to create new jobs, increase productivity, and increase worker safety in the short run, and to address long term fundamental issues associated with economic growth in an era of significant aging of the general population and securing services for such a population. Public/private investment partnerships take actions that, to date, at least here in America, have not yet begun to happen.

But that’s where we are today, not where we can be tomorrow unless we start making some decisions today!

Let’s take stock of what we do have. First, we have an established, albeit fragmented, robotics industry comprised of some of the most innovative people in the field, if not the most accomplished at this moment. Second, we have already invested in a Robotics culture at the secondary school level with Robotics Clubs proliferating and a lot of groundwork already having been done by both our competitors and the pop culture. Third, and most important, we have a history of leadership in the development and domination of new technologies once we get going in earnest; computers, microchips, pharmaceuticals, medical devices… the list is long.

It's unacceptable that, with all the stimulus money and new technology rhetoric floating around, we are not strategically investing in an industry that has the likelihood of becoming "the next big thing."

Conversation with Chris

2009-06-03T12:16:00.001-07:00

I had an informative conversation with a recent LinkedIn acquaintance that I'd like to share. It began in answer to his question:

Just curious, your profile says, "Because I believe that robotics is the next big thing..." What do you envision, in terms of "next big thing"?

I responded:

Robotics, in all its interdisciplinary forms, will be everywhere very soon. In our homes, cars and appliances. At the hospital and in the workplace. Protecting us from afar. It's happening fast but not like in the movies. In America and Europe, it'll be in advanced embedded interactive systems like adaptive cruise control that now handles lane boundaries and will soon handle trucks and busses unmanned in controlled lanes; or in Kiva style warehouses (no fixed shelving; few pick & pack people; heavy computer control); or in smaller and smaller interactive medical devices.

In Japan and Korea, more humanoid-looking robots will be used for personal and factory assistants and we'll all be using exoskeletons of one type or another such as the ones being used for Japan's seniors to help them garden or Honda's factory workers who squat, climb and lift.

It's truly amazing and just beginning to get into stride. Worldwide defense spending is paying for the R&D and smart guys like Rodney Brooks are commercializing that R&D.

My interest is in finding either (or both) a basket of stocks of robotic companies that will rise in price or helping fund a select few companies in need of management, marketing and money to grow.

What do you think?

And then came this wide-ranging informative response that I found particularly illuminating:

When I was younger, I had the good fortune to witness/participate in this same dynamic in the computer industry, WANG Laboratories, Atex, Computervision (located in the same building that iRobot is in, Bedford now) and Sun Microsystems.

While I didn't realize what I was part of and witnessing at the time; it was a technological Darwinism that was unfolding with incremental technical breakthroughs that were being applied, somewhat haphazardly, achieving momentary commercial success and were quickly "leapfrogged" by a new company down the street, often with the same players. Although none of those companies and many others like them are around today, the relatively mature and stable PC we're both using has individual components (soft and hard), developed by those players and their technological derivatives; owing to materials and other advances.

Now I'm older, I realize what I was seeing then but adding a bit of experience and now seeing that in the case of robotics and many other advances; that relatively short period of success that the individual computer players enjoyed will be even shorter for this field. This leapfrog speed is and will be much faster. But, I'm reminded that to this day there are significant numbers of DEC and WANG servers still running vast arrays of applications, many for the government and others for many of the large institutions. The installed user base as it were.

So, what might this mean for robotics? If we look at the practical application of robotics, it will be interdisciplinary as you say and much of it is taking place in all the salient ways you mentioned. While all of those are viable and happening, it's the medical applications that most come to mind as immediate and timely candidates. Rodney Brooks is a great salesman but while his automated floor sweeping and gutter cleaning toys capture the public imagination, its his investment in things like MAKO Surgical that really demonstrate the potential for robotics (hardware-wise).

Take any high skilled operation in medicine, dentistry, exams, etc. study it carefully and you'll find that the operation can be mechanically fixtured and simplified via robotics which will do what they are truly best suited for, namely precision and repeatability. So envision going into a dentist for a root canal and instead of having an overpaid technician pounding in your mouth, using the same primitive tools that I use to file down a piece of aluminum; instead you sit and bite down on a universal, sterilized fixture that is ergonomically designed, and an "operator" is sitting in front of you, precisely directing the root canal "robot" via joystick/camera and or pre-canned software routines to effect all the physical force and position functions. Maybe it's mobile and can go to the patient in some remote areas, "affordable root canals for all." Perhaps this highly paid operator is making $ 60/hour so a root canal costs $600 rather than $ 2000. Further, it's repeatable every time. So the quality, repeatability, low cost, accessibility, etc. all combine as customer needs are met. Other examples exist and they will be found wherever we have a highly skilled operator operating high value equipment or carrying a highly specialized body of knowledge in his head. These are the applications that one might fund, (this paragraph long business plan, may or may not be the best example of it) but a good paradigm is to think of a skilled machinist versus a CNC milling machine. We've got very few skilled machinists today but we machine parts faster, cheaper and with much higher quality and repeatability.

So envision an installed user base of this machine across the country, in some percentage of dental clinics and pretty soon we can quantify the commercial value. That’s not to negate the commercial potential of mundane consumer applications mind you.

I think you're on the right track about the trend, as long as you focus on the substance and not the Hollywood hype, (terminator looking robots or the Kabuki Dancing dolls the Japanese trot out every year or so). The applications are happening all around us and from my perspective, one of the reasons were not moving faster is because some of the guys driving these things are coming out of University laboratories and feel it's important that they re-invent every nut and bolt, lacking practical experience in integration; rather than focusing on that one unique thing that they have developed, (perhaps a faster algorithm, a smaller/cheaper feedback device, wireless power transmission, etc. etc.).

If you visit Heartland Robotics website and go into the manufacturers’ survey link; you’ll see by the questions on that potential end user survey that the graduate student who put that question list together has never been within a mile of a factory, let alone understand what the factory floor may or may not need from a transformational concept like universal robotics. We sort of have solutions looking for problems in that regard.

To be fair to the academics and apologizing for my industrial bias here, there is some significant IP that will/is being developed as fresh eyes accidentally reinvent the “bolt”, material advances, etc. but it is taking the applications much longer to be developed. There's quite a bit of empowering technology already abundantly and cheaply available but it's not being applied, I think. That's not to say this isn't exciting stuff both technically and commercially, but much of it is still at the parlor trick stage as they agonize over things that have long ago been solved in industry.

Sorry for the long reply but this is an area I'm interested and have a bit of experience in and maybe I can help you and your group identify/evaluate some of these opportunities from a technology perspective or add value in other ways.

I'm not sure that I can help with the stock picks approach as I've long ago stopped riding up and down elevators in the Hancock Building listening to shills and I'm confident your grapevine is better than mine but if you're evaluating funding requests, perhaps I can add my two cents worth on the technology/assessment vs. what’s already available or maybe even evaluate the viability of what's proposed from a technical/architectural perspective.

What do you think?

It's Adaptive to be Vulnerable

2009-03-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

Jack and Suzie Welch said it best when they wrote "Put Your Rage on the Back Burner" for this week's BusinessWeek Magazine.

"It's crazy to think the most profound economic and cultural upheaval of our times will end well if we let ourselves marinate in rage. Rage begets only rage: it often makes people do stupid, short-sighted things that invariably spawn unintended consequences. Rage isn't healing; it's polarizing.

We all have to fight to keep hope alive replacing our rage with renewed focus on the good that are all around us.

Right now there are thousands of geeky, brilliant engineering wonks sitting in their dorm rooms at MIT and Stanford and campuses around the world, oblivious to the weather as they pour their hearts into cool new ideas. Those kids and their ideas are the future of business if we just hang on tight and adapt.

Psychologist, author and artist Robert W. Firestone says that it's adaptive to be vulnerable - that we are more open to opportunity and willing to challenge ourselves and take risks when we're not hindered by rage and other defenses.

Certainly now is the time to stay focused and not get distracted with transitory issues. Ben Bernanke made the analogy of the current financial crisis to the story of the guy next door who smokes in bed. One day his house catches fire. While the house is on fire, it's not the time to place blame. Instead, it's the time to protect your home by pitching in to help fight the fire. When things are safe again there'll be plenty of time to assess blame and provide punishment where it's due. But right now the flames are challenging and it's time to take action.

The Welch article was uplifting to me. I hope you take the time to read it.

Innovation will lead the way out of our crisis

2009-03-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

The current issue of Fortune Magazine has a story about Obama's difficulties in hiring a new CTO.

It's not just a Silicon Valley parlor game. The process is being watched all over the country - and the world. It's a key position: the new CTO will focus on using technology to spur innovation both within the government and the broader economy. And that innovation isn't just in the area of telecom; robotics needs to have an equal share of the focus.

Scientific advances and entrepreneurship will help lead us out of our crisis, but the process needs focus and direction from the top. Obama promised that leadership throughout the campaign by his desire to hire and his description of the functions of a Chief Technology Officer.

Having seen first-hand the success of public/private initiatives in Korea, Japan and Europe with a focus on robotics, I'm sure that similar focus here in the U.S. will yield dramatic successes, particularly in the area of robotics.

It's time for President Obama to choose our new CTO and get the process going.

President Obama. When will you choose our new CTO?

2009-03-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

President Obama, when will you choose our new Chief Technology Officer?

You promised to stimulate the economy with investments in roads, schools - and technology. Robotics is the next transformational technology comparable to the introduction of the personal computer. Inroads in robotics are happening at an ever-accelerating rate in every area of the industry. Yet not one single reference to robotics (except within NASA) appears in any of the stimulus bills.

How can that be?

Robotic-related public/private initiatives are prevalent in Europe, Korea and Japan. These partnerships address important social issues (senior healthcare in Japan and Europe; increased productivity in many parts of Europe; etc.). And these initiatives are making progress. But not here in the U.S.

Again, how can that be? How can we be losing at a field we invented? The first manufacturer of robots was here in the U.S. It has since moved to Japan. In the service sector, robotics is on the threshold of amazing breakthroughs in healthcare, all manner of personal and home assistance, unmanned surveillance (aerial, underwater, on-land), space, defense and security, and in social therapies (physical, emotional, training, etc.). In the industrial sector, they are moving to lower costs, make the devices easier to train, enable more autonomy, and cover more aspects of manufacturing, logistics and process control.

Yet not one single reference to robotics appears in any of the stimulus bills.

We need a new CTO and we need him now.

Thank you for your time and consideration and for all that you've done thus far.

Accelerating Robotic Development Needs an Innovation Action Plan

2009-03-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

Thomas Kuczmarski suggested in two recent BusinessWeek articles a need for a Secretary of Innovation - a cabinet-level person to sharpen the focus on changes needed to stabilize and revive the nation's economy, and an innovation action plan to mobilize and coordinate all of our technology resources. That presently unfilled position is called the U.S. Chief of Technology. Perhaps the delay in choosing this key player in the Obama administration is because of the prevailing hunker-down mentality, or because they don't see the pressing need, or confuse the position with R&D and sci-fi.

Too many companies are choosing to hunker down, postpone investments in R&D, and avoid risk-taking until the market has stabilized. The companies that continue to build an innovation culture and make modest investments to keep the innovation pipeline full will be the ones that enjoy a big competitive advantage a few years from now.

The process of innovation can have just as much to do with rebuilding a devastated economy as it does with rebuilding a product line. It needs someone responsible for leveraging the talents, skills, technologies, and capabilities that we have as a country.

I think his seven-point plan has merit:

Graduated tax credits for R&D investments
Innovation booster grants
Innovation awards
National business incubators
Innovation training
Intellectual property auctions
Innovation index fund

Innovation and robotics are buzzwords that are often misused. Both words suggest enormous appeal and promise, yet both are also used to imply excessive research and long-lead hi-tech costs with associated developmental problems.

The business side of robotics is not invention; rather it is the result of research to identify needs, wants and problems and then the interdisciplinary turning of those issues into practical, useful, necessary products and services. But the process desperately needs someone responsible for leveraging the talents, skills, technologies and capabilities that we have as a country.

The new Chief of Technology will help ensure that the full power of the innovation process will be used in the vital work of stabilizing the economy and for advancing technological change and innovation into the future. He or she needs to be chosen and put to work right away.

An Open Letter to the Obama Committee Selecting the new U.S. Chief of Technology

2009-02-27T15:32:00.001-08:00

The new stimulus bills will only help the American economy long-term if they help create domestic job-creating industries. Unfortunately, thus far, there is not one dollar in these bills to support what could be a high-growth, high-income, high-job creation industry vital to America's future: robotics. And the 20 members of the Congressional Robotics Caucus have not produced a single news item for anything robotic in the past 120 days.

Society is experiencing significant aging which impacts industry, healthcare and our daily lives. Robotics facilitates a higher degree of personal autonomy, new methods for manufacturing closer to the customer, an entirely new industry in terms of services, and new technologies for security and defense. Robots and robotics are loaded words implying replacing workers in the workforce. In fact, the opposite is true. If the U.S. were to seize the lead in this innovative industry, it could be a source of not only national income, but hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The auto industry and its ancillary businesses could almost immediately yield benefits from strategic investments in improved robotic technologies to aid their industries. Improving manufacturing productivity, after all, is one of the keys to saving the U.S. auto industry - and the millions of jobs that depend upon it.

The healthcare industry is at a similar crossroads. The current application of robotics technology to provide tele-operated surgical solutions represents the tip of the iceberg. Robotics technology holds enormous potential to help control costs, empower healthcare workers, and enable aging citizens to live in their homes longer by the use of patient monitoring robots, robotized motor-coordination, intelligent prosthetics, robot-assisted physical, cognitive and social therapy, and robotized surgery. Yet they remain unviable alternatives as these procedures are not covered by insurance.

Revolutionary technologies are available now to increase worker productivity and revitalize manufacturing, particularly in small businesses. Small scale (micro) manufacturing can utilize these new technologies to accelerate the transition of manufacturing back to America. It will take investment dollars to spur this on - to be the driving force. Yet not a dollar has thus far been earmarked for anything robotic. Nowhere! Not in any of these stimulus or bailout bills!

Robotic-related public/private initiatives are prevalent in Europe, Korea and Japan. These partnerships address important regional social issues (senior healthcare in Japan and Europe; increased productivity in many parts of Europe; etc.). But not here in the U.S. [with the exception of military, defense, NASA and security projects].

I was so outraged by these facts that I rechecked the research -- with the same result. Not a single reference to anything robotic in the House Bill, the Senate Bill or the final American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. And not a peep from the Caucus. Nor from any of the Chief Technology Officer candidates.

How can that be?

Robotics is the next transformational technology comparable to the introduction of the personal computer, yet since the days when it was first established in America, almost all of the robot manufacturers have moved away from the US. Most robots are built in Europe or Japan. CMU, MIT, Stanford and a few other research centers have clusters of innovative regional robotic providers mostly funded by NASA, DoD and DARPA research.

I'm frustrated! It's hard to be hopeful under these conditions. But I do hope that you – the people on the selection committee for the new CTO – will take notice and select someone who is robot friendly, supporting his interest with strategic investments and public/private initiatives initially focused on small businesses, the auto industry and healthcare.

Perhaps Rodney Brooks (MIT, iRobots, Heartland Robotics) could be persuaded to take the job.

NOTE: This piece came from my participation in a robotics conference (International Expert Days) last week in Germany. It became clear to me that America was and is at an unfair advantage in the area of robotics because of the public/private initiatives prevalent in Europe and Asia -- and the lack of any similar partnerships here in the U.S. Hence, this article.

Plastics! Wordprocessing! PC's! The Internet! Cellphones! And now . . Robotics!

2008-11-07T14:57:00.000-08:00

I've been fascinated by the growth aspects of the field of robotics. Not the industrial sector - although those are intriguing in their functionality. But it's the service sector that is of particular interest.

In 2011, more than 18 million robots will populate the world - up from 6.5 million in 2007. Most of the growth will be in the service sectors. [ iRobots is selling their line of cleaning robots in shopping malls!]

As a method to focus my fascination - and keep it on track to make money through selective investing - I've started THE ROBOT REPORT as a new website dedicated to tracking the business of robotics. It is a resource for news and links to and about this growing industry:

Service Robots for Governmental and Corporate Use
Service Robots for Personal and Private Use
Industrial Robots
Ancillary Businesses
Educational and Research Facilities

THE ROBOT REPORT will be updated as often as there is news - and continually for the addition and maintenance of links.

THE ROBOT REPORT, in January, will begin daily updates of it's new ROBO-STOX™ index, comparing international publicly-traded robotic stocks to the S&P500.

You can help make THE ROBOT REPORT a success by telling your friends and colleagues about the site, sending stories and links, and suggesting new ideas and improvements. Perhaps even advertise on the site.

Please visit and explore our new site. Tell your friends. Send in stories, ideas and links. Tell us what you think. Add me to your mailing list.

Thank you.

Manipulation of the Right Brain

2008-04-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton is a sharp, analytical woman. She's shrewd, calculating, objective, dispassionate and focused... all the reasons why she's going to lose the nomination.

People don't vote analytically; they vote emotionally. That's not what they say but it's what they do says author and psychologist Drew Westen. Another psychological principle kicks in to cover the dichotomy: rationalization: the need to invent plausible reasons for why you've decided as you have.

So people say they "figured it all out" and decided on Obama instead of Hillary but that's not what's really happened. That's the rationalization. Instead, people respond to Obama's use of emotive methods of communication and his focus on altruism and hope. They know he hasn't described his plans for the future; they don't care. They're paying attention because they're emotionally involved and prefer that connection to the facts.

It's right brain versus left (from the work of psychologist/zoologist Roger Sperry).

Hillary is going to lose because her presentations are left-brain focused; Obama is going to win because his subject matter appeals to the emotions of his listeners as right-brain material.

Republicans also use emotive methods of communication but much is predicated on capitalizing on fear and then refocusing that fear into areas favoring Republican issues and candidates. Karl Rove is a master at fear provocation and manipulating the results with the careful use of catchy one-liners (sound bites). Thankfully, neither Hillary nor Obama have used fear in this way.

People are being hit from every side these days: health care costs, aging, higher prices for food and fuel, sinking home equity, shrinking (or at least tightening) credit, the "war" and fear of more wars (Iran, another massive terrorist event), more disasters (climate change, rising oceanfronts, melting ice), more economic woes (bankruptcies, foreclosures, inflation, an inability of the government to continue Social Security and Medicare benefits, etc.), and, for those of us that can travel, the extraordinarily high cost of everything because of the sinking dollar. These issues will become even more volatile as the election nears for two reasons: they're real and happening, and people pay more attention as the election (a perceived time of change) gets closer.

Howard Dean suggests that every Democratic candidate should read Westen's book. But it doesn't just work that way -- you have to have the personality to go with it. A calculating person such as Hillary has her place in the world; but a more appealing personality that speaks to everyday issues and insights emotions just below the surface will win every time.

Let's Take A Lesson From General Musharaf

2007-11-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

Pakistan's General Pervez Musharaf has this week assaulted Pakistan's judiciary, lawyers, and media, imprisoning many and shutting down or limiting access and content of TV broadcasts. He's fighting those who are fighting him. And his methods aren't that nice.

We could take a lesson from the General -- not by sending people to jail; but by firing them and bringing in a new group of players.

Throughout this campaign I've been waiting for any of the candidates to speak about corruption, temptation, campaign financing, the complacency of the Congress, the fact that Congress cares more about political gain and reelection than it does about the rule of law, the protection of our Constitution, and common-sense accountability. And the media who have complacently gone along with converting an altruistic news organization paid for by all the other venues, to the news groups becoming profit centers owned and operated by entertainment conglomerates.

Well . . . in the footsteps of a recent and very powerful speech by Salt Lake City's Mayor Ross Anderson, let's fire the bums.

You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.

While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.

You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.

You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.

We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!

I spent three hours researching the news to see how Mayor Anderson's speech was reviewed. In America, not a single major media outlet covered it but a few online services reported it with the full text of the speech. It appeared on a few independent blogs and news feeds. Overseas however, it got more play. New Zealand and Australia particularly.

Again, from Mayor Anderson's speech:

We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country – and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people – 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks – a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.

One of the first few acts of the new team at the AG's office would be to enforce the FCC standards that are being flagrantly violated so that the media will do what we chartered them to do: fairly report the news in return for the use of the public's airwaves, and to end torture and rendition. I can't see either happening with our newly appointed AG.

One of the first acts of a new team of legislators will be to free themselves from funding outrageously expensive campaigns that require huge amounts of time fundraising to the detriment of hours that could be better spent doing the job they were elected to do. Whether it be federally financed campaigns or some other alternative, we cannot afford for our legislators to abrogate their duties to spend time fundraising and also spend face time with big contributors with an axe to grind. Since this topic hasn't appeared too often in the debates - and when it has there's been lip service instead of serious proclamations - I don't foresee a major change in this area either.

And one of the first steps from a new President will be to perform a serious house-cleaning (de-Baath-ification-like) within the top echelon of our government's bureaucracy to rid us of those who have been tempted and those who close their eyes to it.

There are a thousand other activities that need to happen to bring us back down to earth and get the various arms of our government functioning full-time again.

What say you?

Certainly the public senses all these things. Otherwise why would Congress' approval rating be so low? People know but they don't know what to do. The answer is simple: draw a line and say "I'm not going to take it anymore" and then vote to throw the bums out. More importantly, research who's running and select only those that meet your standards. YOUR standards.

What say you?

I'm still vacationing but . . .

2007-08-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

I'm still vacationing but I came across this quote from Carl Bernstein in an interview with The Financial Times about his book A Woman in Charge that I wanted to share.

FT: Do you think Hillary will bring the same kind of tough image that America currently has under the Bush presidency?

CB: I think your description of a "kind of tough image" mis-states the actual facts in terms of the Bush presidency. A more common and widely held image, I believe, is one of arrogance, mendacity, incompetence, and secrecy bordering on, or crossing into, the extra-constitutional.

Bravo! and pass the sunscreen.

Gone Fish'in

2007-07-22T10:27:00.000-07:00

Actually, I don't fish. But as you may have noticed, I'm on vacation until mid-September sailing throughout the Med and driving all over Europe and the UK. I'll write if the occasion arises but otherwise... I'm on vacation.

Thanks very much for being a reader.

Ex-Politico (Frank)

Who are we as a people? Where is our soul?

2007-05-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

Michael Moore told reporters after a press preview the other day:

I'm trying to explore bigger ideas and bigger issues, and in this case the bigger issue in this film [SiCKO] is who are we as a people? Why do we behave the way we behave? What has become of us? Where is our soul?

So began the hoopla at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Moore's movie portrays the American medical industry as driven by greed.

SiCKO, which has taken Cannes by storm, goes further than just the health care industry by depicting a country where the government is more interested in personal profit and protecting big business than caring for its citizens, many of whom cannot afford health insurance.

Where is our soul is a serious question as we ponder candidates for our next President. What have we become as a people - and how can we get back on tract - are questions that beg to be answered. The recent Republican debate was such an example of spirit being derailed that it was disheartening to me. Every candidate wanted to be seen as the strongest fighter against terrorism, the most ballsy, the most "manly." Not one of the candidates attempted to answer these questions - or even acknowledged that a good majority of Americans believe them to be our primary issues in this campaign.

I saw Farenheit 9/11 at theaters in Europe and America and the reactions, poignant tearful spots, laugh lines and murmurs were the same - which surprised me. That's why I'm anxious to see this new movie and see it in large theaters at various places in my travels so I can watch the various responses as they occur.

A New Book by Al Gore

2007-05-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

Time Magazine calls Al Gore "the perfect stealth candidate for 2008" in their article which excerpts from his new book The Assault on Reason. I've read the excerpts but the book won't be available until next week. Gore says some wonderful things toward developing an understanding of how the media has failed us and what we can do to change the process.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong.

One-way media, TV, enables manipulation of public debate which leads to cynicism, doubt and lack of participation.

Unfortunately [there is] a new cynicism about reason itself — because reason was so easily used by propagandists to disguise their impulse to power by cloaking it in clever and seductive intellectual formulations. When people don't have an opportunity to interact on equal terms and test the validity of what they're being "taught" in the light of their own experience and robust, shared dialogue, they naturally begin to resist the assumption that the experts know best.

So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.

I've blogged many times about Gore's point of view (which I share) on this subject. In the area of political dialogue, it might be called the “pollster-consultant industrial complex” [coined by Joe Klein] that has had the same effect in political dialogue as manipulative commercial advertising has on the buying public: lack of spontaneity, test-tube bromides, insipid photo ops, and idiotic advertising combined to pass for political discourse. In the current Time excerpt Gore is less dramatic and confrontational than he was last year when he said:

The conversation of democracy has been desiccated [pulverized; lacking in energy or vitality]. To bring it back to life, break the monopoly of broadcast and cable television.

Is there hope in what he writes? Does he propose a plan to take back the airwaves and enable real awareness and discourse? Here's what he writes:

...broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy.

Cutting Carbon Emissions

2007-05-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

First, a rant: most members of Congress are either lawyers or businesspeople. They know what “fiduciary responsibility” is. It means reading and understanding each and every bill that they vote upon.

Congress has not met this duty for a long time. Instead . . .

They carelessly pass mammoth bills that none of them have read. Sometimes printed copies aren't even available when they vote.

Often no one knows what these bills contain, or what they really do, or what they will cost.

Additions and deletions are made at the last minute, often in secrecy.

They combine unpopular proposals with popular measures that few in Congress want to oppose.

Once these bills are passed, and one of these unpopular proposals comes to light, they pretend to be shocked. “How did that get in there?”

America was founded on the slogan: “No taxation without representation.” It's not as catchy but perhaps we need another slogan: “No legislation without representation.”

Now, for cutting carbon emissions: the legislative process - to debate a strategic issue and negotiate a legal solution - involves fact gathering and discussion. The process includes sifting through biased and often selfish information sources and involves the art of persuasion, creative thinking, and manipulation as well as strength of character, due diligence and altruism.

Cutting carbon emissions - a world-wide issue of momentous magnitude - is a perfect example of how things are supposed to work.

There are thousands of industry groups. The automotive industry is one case in point. The industry has almost one hundred groups representing the various types of labor, parts suppliers, steel makers, the car manufactures, the truckers, shippers and other transportation industries, the sellers and dealerships, the engineers, the computer people, etc. And they each have a different point of view regarding what to do about reducing carbon emissions and how so doing will effect their group.

Each industry group attempts to present their point of view to the congressional committee members that might have influence on the development of a legislative proposal to address the problem. They also lobby staffers and reporters as well. Most such groups hire paid lobbyists to target and approach key legislators and staff members. Many of these paid lobbyists are ex- (or present) political consultants or ex-members or staff of the very Congress they are lobbying. Their very familiarity with the players gives them a bit more access than anyone else.

How does each group make it's point of view known, heard and favorably received? In caustic terms, one might say that cash opens the door and long-term economic promises keep them open for comments and rebuttals. Even if cash were taken out of the equation, it's still in everyone's interest to gather and hear information from every source before negotiating a solution.

Here's where integrity enters the picture. In recent years many committees and committee members have actually let industry groups draft the legislation that is then proposed by the committee.

Where did the due diligence go? The fiduciary responsibility?

Although extremely partisan members of congress might say that no money changed hands, how much does one favor his "friends" versus doing what's right for his country and constituents?

Only a new slate of players - elected officials with ethics, responsibility, and a passion for change - can sift through the partisanship, one sidedness and unfairness to craft a solution to cutting carbon emissions.

Ability vs. likeability

2007-04-08T01:53:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine - a reporter - asked whether Obama was my type of guy.

My kind of candidate is the rare breed of person who is good at getting things done. He's a practical type - good with his hands and also good at inspiring and encouraging others to use their's wisely AND with conviction and efficiency. Ability to win elections isn't necessarily indicative of ability to make practical changes happen [particularly these days where the process of politics is a study in misuse of power]. Both Bush's have proven this to be true.

Is Obama that kind of guy? How can one know. Is Gore? There's a better chance with him than almost anywhere else. But Obama can bring tears to ones eyes. So could Mario Cuomo and Cuomo also got things done.

I'm not a happy camper with ANY of the present candidates. I've signed petitions to draft Cuomo and Gore.

There was a story caption in last week's BusinessWeek that read: Investing in Russia's People. It caught my attention because Russia needs that kind of investment and Putin is making it happen.

Whichever candidate convinces me that this will actually happen here in America - that he or she is dedicated and has the will to make it happen - will get my vote.

More than ever I'm interested in:

Ability rather than like-ability.

A change of direction from politics as spin, bicker and manipulate to negotiate and solve.

Strategic investments in education, welfare, health care, physical infrastructure and honest communication.

Changing our posture in world relationships from braggart/bully to willing participant.

In rewarding those who educate our children instead of those who sell to them.

And in reducing fear on three levels: lowering the rhetoric, cooperating in a world-wide fight against terrorist activities and helping lower worldwide poverty so that there are fewer breeding grounds for terrorist incubation.

Is Obama that kind of guy? He certainly says that he is. We'll have to wait and see.

U.S. Child Well-Being Report Says We're Not Doing Well

2007-03-31T13:58:00.000-07:00

This woman walks into a butcher shop and asks to see a whole chicken. The butcher hands her one and the woman proceeds to inspect it up, down, sideways, and every which way. She even sniffs it. She hands it back and says no thanks.

The butcher responds: "Madam, could you pass a test like that?"

UNICEF had such a test that the US didn't pass. In fact, we flunked terribly. We came in 20th out of 21.

UNICEF reviewed various tests and performed surveys within the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and compiled a report entitled ‘Children’s Welfare in Rich Countries.’

According to the report, there are six indicators of well-being for children: health and safety; education; economic well-being; family and social relationships; conduct and risk; and the child’s own perception of well-being in addition to traditional measures or mortality rates, poverty levels, school achievement and health and immunization statistics.

The US scored poorly in every category:

Health and safety = 21st out of 21
Educational well-being = 12th
Family and peer relationships = 20th
Behavior and risks = 20th
Material well-being = 17th

The UK and the US are in the bottom third of the rankings for five of the six dimensions reviewed.

The true measure of a nation’s standing is
how well it attends to its children – their
health and safety, their material security,
their education and socialization, and
their sense of being loved, valued, and
included in the families and societies into
which they are born.

We've been sidetracked for too long from providing meaningful services and support to Americans in general and our children in particular. It's time to repair the infrastructure that has made America a great country. This isn't family values nonsense; it's necessary for our future well-being. Each measure on UNICEF's scale needs our attention and investment.

Download the full report.

Fear Mongering Is A Provocation

2007-03-26T15:02:00.000-07:00

Deliberate action or speech that makes someone fearful or angry, such as the recent (and regular) gems by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, perpetuates fear, most often existential fear.

There are numerous psychological studies establishing the power of fear:

Groups of strangers could persuade people to believe statements that were obviously false.
People were often willing to obey authority figures even when doing so violated their personal beliefs.
Ordinary citizens could continually shock an innocent man, even up to near-lethal levels, if commanded to do so by someone acting as an authority.
Cognitive dissonance often causes illogical and nonsensical mental constraints.
Heightened patriotic urge, for example right after 9/11, was an attempt to counterbalance the scary thought of ones own mortality brought on by those attacks.
When people are reminded of their own deaths, they become more conservative, more family oriented, more security-minded and more patriotic.
Fear of death provokes a need to feel connected to others, to have a clear sense of identity, to know how one fits into the world, and to feel one has free will.
People have different versions of God, thus they have different versions of evil.

In each of us there's a tug of war between our primitive instinct to survive at all costs and a brain that is not only conscious of its own existence but also is aware that our lives are finite -- our existential plight.

Social psychologists, philosophers -- and recently existential and terror management psychologists -- know and have proven these facts. Intuitively we all know them to be true. But very few of us ever leap beyond our own discomfort to figure out how to make use of this information -- to manipulate others based on knowledge of these principles.

Karl Rove and Lee Atwater are a examples of political operatives that have waged fear campaigns taking advantage of these psychological axioms. They have carefully crafted campaigns that create a longing for a protector/authority figure [in the form of their candidate(s)]. Even though in my book those tactics are blatantly immoral and unethical, they have repeatedly used them with great success.

With less knowledge but equal effect are bullies like Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Bush who wage similar campaigns through the airwaves of our daily news instilling fear and repugnance in all who read or hear the news. These are crippled people but unfortunately in powerful places. In Bush's case, he's both an addict (albeit reformed) and an effeminate man who masquerades as a macho man by bravado. The result is his stubborn belligerence to reality and his inability to act as a President should: pragmatically resolving the hard-to-resolve problems affecting America and Americans. Who knows why the other two play the game, but game it is and play it they do with you and I in the way of their friendly fire.

Ahmadinejad is playing that game today (provocation, bullying gestures in the press), expressing his anger at the US's denial of some of his UN visas by capturing and holding for trial 15 British sailors. Some of the incidental consequences are that oil prices are skyrocketing, British Prime Minister Blair is thwarted from using normal diplomacy, the British public are going ballistic, and we're all worried that Bush or Israel will do something quick and terrible that will blow up the situation even further.

[PS: You may wonder why Howard Dean is included in my rogues gallery above. I like the guy and what he's doing for the Democratic Party. But calling Reps "brain dead" and saying that "a lot of them never made an honest living in their lives" is equally provoking. His words define opponents as beyond the reach of reason which is no different than the polemics of extreme religious thought and the bullying back and forth of Ahmadinejad, Bush and Chavez.]

A More Socially Conscious Electorate

2007-03-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

There's been a steady measurable trend since the early '90s that is directly antithetical to the policies of the Bush administration.

In a just-released study by the Pew Charitable Trust about trends in political values and core attitudes the numbers show that the electorate is gradually getting fed up with socially conservative ideology and religious intensity.

The numbers are quite clear:

Government should care for those who can't care for themselves - up 12% to 69%
Government should help the needy even if it means greater debt - up 13% to 54%
Old fashioned values about family and marriage - down 8% to 76%
School boards should have the right to fire homosexual teachers - down 11% to 28%
Prayer is an important part of my daily life - down 7% to 45%
I never doubt the existence of God - down 11% to 61%
People believe that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer - up 8% to 73%

The new survey still shows deep rifts in partisan views on core subjects like national security, social values, personal finances and the role of government as well as increasingly negativity about America and being American:

Americans feel increasingly estranged from their government. Barely a third (34%) agree with the statement, "most elected officials care what people like me think," nearly matching the 20-year low of 33% recorded in 1994 and a 10-point drop since 2002.
The public is losing confidence in itself. A dwindling majority (57%) say they have a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions. Similarly, the proportion who agrees that Americans "can always find a way to solve our problems" has dropped 16 points in the past five years.
Young people continue to hold a more favorable view of government than do other Americans. At the same time, young adults express the least interest in voting and other forms of political participation.

The Pew Research Center concludes:

Increased public support for the social safety net, signs of growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished appetite for assertive national security policies have improved the political landscape for the Democrats as the 2008 presidential campaign gets underway.

I am heartened by this information. It correlates to my intuition, observations and other resources. And it bodes well for Democrats in the next election unless we shoot ourselves in the foot like we've done so many times before.

We all have the right to hope (so long as we are active in the pursuit of our goals).

We're All The Same

2007-03-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

In the movie "Letters from Iwo Jima" there's a scene where a Japanese soldier translates aloud a letter from an American soldier's mother and everyone in the movie (and in the audience) could see that it was the same as letters they had received from their mothers and loved ones... because we're all the same.

That lesson is NOT taught in schools or from the pulpits of our lives. In fact, the opposite is being taught. Our parents tell us to watch out for those people; our churches say that their religion is the only true avenue to a fulfilling life; our government says that it's form of cracy is the only one for the world to emulate. Worse, we're taught that everyone that doesn't agree is an infidel, barbarian, third world ignorant or a heathen.

Hillary Clinton says that we have a basic bargain with our government that it will provide a structure for us so that we can build a good life. And that our founding fathers set up a representational form government to do just that.

Presently that government is failing because it has politicized every aspect of government and that is not in the public interest. Hence the need for real change.

Barack Obama said on one of the Sunday talk shows that:

...one of the larger problems in this administration is that it is politicizing issues that should be guided by competence, practicality, common sense. That's part of what I think the American people really want to see changed in the next president.

Obama suggests that we need to change politics and it's rhetoric so that the lessons come from us, from the grassroots upwards, from an engaged citizenship discussing the issues of our day so that we can all be part of the solution.

I wholeheartedly agree and like the way Obama speaks what's on my mind. I wish him well.

Engaging rather than interrupting; reasoning rather than rabble-rousing

2007-03-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

It seems like the pendulum of political discourse is swinging back to reality instead of sarcastic, provocative entertainment.

When Ann Coulter said what she did about John Edwards, the backlash was swift and across the board non-partisan. Republicans, Democrats, gays, straights, they all reacted similarly suggesting that Coulter wasn't just out of line, but instead making a desperate attempt for self promotion at the expense of Edwards.

When the Attorney General fired the eight Federal attornies and it became apparent that they were all political firings - that there was nothing negative on any of their records (in fact, quite the opposite) - the press, the attorneys themselves, and the public all reacted quickly with dismay that Gonzalez could be so petty and robotically following the whims of President Bush and that the lies coming out daily from Rove's office, Gonzales', and the White House were so blatant that it's become painfully clear that there's total disorganization at the top of our government.

Valerie Plame-Wilson made the clearest statement of how she and her husband were misused for purely vindictive political purposes while public sentiment suggests that Libby (who was found guilty for the leak that harmed Plame-Wilson) was the Vice President's fall guy and should get pardoned.

NBC News recently reported that 73% of Americans say they are following the Presidential election process closely - "an astounding figure in a country in which it's a big deal if more than half the electorate votes. Everywhere there's talk that this may be the most momentous race in our lifetime, that it's clear that the country is teetering on the cusp of something good, bad or cataclysmic" says Anna Quindlen in a Newsweek editorial.

Finally the blinders are off and we're all seeing what has been happening and the harm that's been done: that the bias has been so unfriendly and unwavering, that there's a backlash wanting silence (or at least the toning down of the rhetoric), that issues have gone wanting, and that partisan politics - particularly President Bush's brand of politics - has abandoned the will and wishes of the bill-paying electorate.

Quoting again from Anna Quindlen: "If, as many suspect, this is either a moment for the United States to prevail or to implode, a radio program, a column, or a TV talk show really matters. It's a valuable piece of public real estate that should be earned every day, by engaging rather than interrupting, by reasoning rather than rabble rousing. Maybe even by doing the really unthinkable in the civic auditorium and trying to move the conversation in fruitful directions."

I fervently hope that this is the case!

Change the System: Make Strategic Investments

2007-02-26T18:00:00.000-08:00

I was riding in a taxi in Washington, DC talking with my companion about morality and moral dilemma when the taxi driver interrupted:

Moral dilemma? I'll tell you about a moral dilemma that the City of Washington, DC is putting me through right this moment.

I make my basic living as a taxi driver. But during the day, when things are slow, I supplement my income by taking patients to get their dialysis treatments. The City pays as part of it's program to assist poor people get needed medical care.

So here's the dilemma I'm in. I need the extra money. The people need to get to the care centers. But the City hasn't paid me in five months! That's right... five months. It's not a billing discrepancy. Everyone agrees that I'm supposed to get the money. They just don't have the money to pay us.

So what am I to do? Stop picking up and delivering patients who need my service to get their medical help?

Now that's a moral dilemma.

Problems like that haven't gone away. A recent Washington Post editorial exposed very similar circumstances: promises made, good intentions put into governmental programs, and no (or slow) actions or funding. Think Katrina.

Or think about all the other major problems that could be remedied with foresight and preventative investments which I like to think of as strategic investments [an investment now into remedying a social problem to save a larger amount at a later date. Think Head Start programs. In venture capital terminology, strategic investors are distinguished from venture capitalists and others who invest primarily with the aim of generating a large return on their investment.]

Alzheimer's will shortly become our biggest and costliest killer. The medical costs for a patient are phenomenally high as they become more and more incapacitated. As baby boomers age and other diseases find cures, Alzheimer's is moving quickly up the ladder to the number one spot. The numbers and costs are against us and NIH knows this as does every major health organization -- yet funding for Alzheimer's research is still meager and disorganized. There's no reason why a strategic investment today won't reap cost-saving benefits in the future. Yet... it's not happening.

Mental health is another serious concern. In Congress they're talking about "parity" which is a spin word to defuse the issue. [Disparity between full medical coverage versus limited mental health coverage (if any).] Yet today's military can't cope with their present load (as evidenced by recent articles about an APA Task Force studying the subject). Returning Vets from Iraq and Afghanistan's have mental health issues AND head injuries that are causing VA costs to skyrocket out of budget with future years even worse. As life becomes more complex and people live longer, mental health issues become more prevalent. Yet they are still treated primitively when it comes to insurance coverage. Limited treatments, if any, may alleviate pain temporarily, but don't provide life-changing help. Other than cost, there's no reason why a strategic investment here won't reap long-term benefits. Yet... it's not happening.

Educational changes are also strategic investments. Educating doesn't just happen in schools. Think Surgeon General Koop's condom and anti-smoking messages. Complexity, ethnic diversity, religious tolerance, compassion, and developing an understanding that we're all the same AND in the same boat are teachable and could have significant cost savings (think no wars).

Treating addictions as a mental health issue through early education and exposure to and emancipation from the underlying causes is another cost-saver.

The list goes on (the climate crisis, immigration, stem cell research, biotechnology, etc.) but the bottom line is the same: an altruistic strategic investment today will save what we'll have to pay down the road.

We all know that government is innefficient. Ours is. But this is an area that they (we) are charged to provide. Let's get the new Congress and the next administration to do their job - particularly in the area of strategic investing.

Psychology and Politics

2007-02-12T10:54:00.000-08:00

"Fear of death has the highest correlation with being conservative" says scholar and author Frank Sulloway.

Many recent studies prove that the fear of death drives people to demonize those who hold different world views or beliefs about life and death. Tragically, most people are willing to sacrifice themselves in war to preserve their nation’s or religion’s particular symbols of immortality in a desperate attempt to achieve a sense of mastery over death. On a lesser scale, people can be – and are – manipulated using pseudo fears that elicit the same psychological reaction(s). Thus the title of this message: Psychology and Politics.

There are many studies, and many government-funded ones after 9/11, that delve into the psychology of politics. Particularly, that identify characteristics which differentiate between liberal and conservative ideologies.

Three books by George Lakoff: Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think; Metaphors We Live By; and Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives.

Other books by Jost (Political Psychology: Key Readings (Key Readings in Social Psychology)), Kruglansky (The Psychology of Closed Mindedness (Essays in Socialpsychology)) and Sulloway (Born to Rebel) provide in-depth research useful to identify distinguishing characteristics of conservative and liberal personalities.

The Origins of Ethic Strife, Mind and Human Interaction, Vol 7, #4, 1996, Robert W. Firestone.

In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror, Pysczynski, Solomon, Greenberg.

Consider these examples from a NY Times article by Patricia Cohen:

Most liberals think about morality in terms of two categories: how someone's welfare is affected, and whether it is fair. Conservatives, by contrast, broden that definition to include loyalty, respect for authority, and purity or sanctity.

There is a whole dimension to human experience best described as divinity or sacredness that conservatives are more attuned to.

Offices and bedrooms of conservatives tended to be neat and contain cleaning supplies, calendars, postage stamps and sports-related posters; bold-colored, cluttered rooms with art supplies, lots of books, jazz CDs and travel documents tended to belong to Democrats.

Thinking cynically, this is wonderful material for political strategists. Imagine what they could do with a presidential campaign budget and these targeting tidbits. They could slice and dice messages that would inflame religious fervor, patriotism, fear of terrorism, and loyalty to either enlist the conservatives or provoke the liberals (depending on who the consultant was working for). And they could match their voter and cable channel databases against consumer purchasers of jazz CDs, members of book clubs, etc. to further enable accurate demographic targeting.

I wasn't always this cynical. I used to be a believer, particularly in Democrats and their social consciousness. But dirty politics has bred dirty politicians on both sides making them indistinguishable in their infighting and fundraising; only in their positioning are they different -- they are still Democrats and Republicans with major differences in beliefs and wants and an inability to compromise for the common good.

When people are fearful or exasperated, they forget that we're all just like one another. They forget that if other people have different colored skins or religious practices that, nevertheless, they are human and have human desires and aspirations, that they're fragile, hurting, have a limited life span - that they're just like us.

As psychologist Robert Firestone said in his interview with Fred Branfman, "It's madness to be rigid: to define God in your own terms in a way that excludes other people's beliefs. It's madness to think that our way is right and everybody else is wrong. It's even the definition of insanity where you think everybody's wrong and you're right."

Click to see the 5-minute video clip from the interview:

It's time to remember that we're all the same. It's time to teach it in our schools and secondary media (like movies and commentaries) and from our pulpits and bully pulpits. It's time to teach people a world view full of complexities yet that we're all the same, that to be at odds about belief systems and to be defensive is criminal when it leads to destroying other people. This I believe and this I hope will happen when we get a different administration.

Let me introduce myself

2007-01-03T08:43:00.000-08:00

For the past six months I've jotted down my thoughts about various political issues, particularly those involving the campaign process. All the while I've hidden my identity and wondered what right I had to put my thoughts out on the Internet, what credibility I had, even what value my ideas and opinions might have, and that it was naive of me to think otherwise. But a few things happened these last six months which have caused me to rethink my situation. In addition to developing a small but regular group of readers, I've come to believe that silence is an endemic problem gripping our society, country and global leadership, and I value my opinions and comments and want them to be heard and read.

So let me introduce myself: Frank Tobe, partner and then owner of the firm Below, Tobe & Associates, Inc., and founder/owner of APT (Applied Political Technologies) Inc. Both developed and segmented political databases somewhat similar to what Karl Rove has done, and both provided political direct mail of all types. Ten years ago I sold or dissolved both.

Vanity Fair's December issue had an article about Rove in which the author described Rove's process of splitting versus lumping -- discriminating versus celebrating inherent similarities -- indicating that Rove was a divider and FDR and Ronald Reagan were lumpers (consolidators).

For 25 years I was in the same business as Rove but never went as far as him in the splitting process because part of his process was to also use his information as a wedge to widen the divisiveness and inflame the fears of that split rather than try to unite around some issue or candidate that could help provide a real solution.

I wanted to differentiate my activities from Rove's and say that my companies and the clients that we worked with, mostly attempted to use niche targeting to get people's attention but then to talk about generic, consolidating, real issues. Although I've been out and away from the business for the last 10 years, I've followed the process and the players with interest and recently, with dismay. Today's extensive national databases and slice-and-dice software are so enabling, and the temptations so great to inflame divisiveness to get the results wanted, that altruism and the pursuit of fairness in politics are almost lost in the process. Although I'm glad I'm no longer part of that business and have no desire to reenter, I think it important to speak out -- because silence is part of the problem and I want to be part of the solution... and to consolidate and unite my friends and readers in the process.

So . . . welcome to my blog.

Want to change the system? Educate females!

2006-12-24T11:50:00.000-08:00

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, divided into two equal parts, to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank for their efforts to create economic and social development from below. Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Micro-credit is one such means. Development from below also serves to advance democracy and human rights. Over many thousand loans they've found that the most effective and wide-reaching in their successes have been those loaned to women.

Another example written up by Nicholas Kristof in today's NY Times is about an elementary school in rural Cambodia initiated with American funds raised from an elementary school in Redmond, Washington. In addition to the initial funding, they regularly carry on e-mail communication with the students at both schools. Without schooling, Cambodian girls are ripe to be kidnapped and placed into the sex trade. Kristof bought two such prostitutes out of their brothels only to follow up and find that one returned and the other was pregnant and a ward of her village.

Building schools doesn't solve the immediate problem of girls currently enslaved inside brothels - that requires more rigorous law enforcement, crackdowns on corruption and outspoken diplomacy. But in the long run no investment in poor countries gets more bang for the buck than educating girls. Literate girls not only are in less danger of being trafficked, but later they have fewer children, care for their children better and are much better able to earn a decent living.

Every study shows that female literacy has a direct coorelation with fertility rates. Girls' educational achievements have a direct influence on the timing and number of their children: educated women have fewer children, and have them later. Today, some 400 million adolescent girls stand on the brink of adulthood. If many choose to delay childbearing, even for a few years, they will enhance their health, education and employment prospects.

Here comes the rant. There are so many areas in our lives where a bit of investment in strategic areas can have such a great impact on the future that it's almost criminal to NOT make those investments. For sure it's immoral! Instead we are wasting our resources in Iraq and through governmental inefficiencies and corruption. We have to change our priorities to focus on reducing poverty, fighting rampant diseases (like Altzheimer's and AIDS), educating females, attempting to curb environmental crises, providing fair and equal health care, and expanding communication everywhere. We're all in the same boat!

Manipulation Is Manipulation No Matter How You Spin It

2006-12-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Where do you all those political consultants go when the election cycle is over?

They do commercial work for large corporations. Although they have to moderate their techniques, manipulation is manipulation no matter where or how you spin it.

Consider CEO salaries. During the Clinton years a law was passed attempting to put a ceiling on the disparity between CEO and the average employee salary difference and make salaries more performance-based. It also put the burden of monitoring and officiating on the board of directors. But shortly after the law was passed (1993) so many loopholes were found that, for a paltry $5,000 consulting fee, any tax lawyer or accountant could document how a particular corporation and their board of directors met the requirements of the law (but not the moral implied law that was intended). So the serious disparities have continued undeterred. The anecdotes of seemingly ludicrous CEO pay never stop; every week a fresh batch of fat cats parade as examples of capitalism run amok.

When the head of a company gets $200 million for his severance package but was fired for lack of performance there is a riple effect throughout the corporation and the business world. Loyalties diminish; schisms widen; paranoia increases; profits are wrongly used (in this case $200 million of profits); and hopes for a better life working within that corporation are dashed. By the way, you and I are paying a good portion of that $200 million because it's tax deductible to the corporation.

Call in the spin masters to try and mitigate the damage. Release the information around Christmas time when no one is paying attention; release information slowly and in confusing terms; obfuscate. One form of obfuscation is to commission an economic analysis of how CEO's (and their top-5 team of similar highly paid executives) enhance corporate performance and support their outrageous pay. There are a lot of non-profit economic think tanks and universities that can use the commission money AND, if you don't like what they write, trash it and find another one that reports what you need it to say. Release those studies around the same time as the damaging information is released. Now THAT'S obfuscation!

It's sad and shameful that things aren't improving and that spinmasters are exacerbating the situation by clouding the facts. It's immoral that this year's top paid CEO got $254 million (Forbes). That's 7,000 times greater than the average salary for his corporation! SEVEN THOUSAND TIMES!

I think it naive that the new Democrat Congress will make any inroads in this area but I'm forwarding a copy of this blog to my congresswoman and two senators just in case.

Let's Take Annihilation Out of the Equation

2006-12-09T10:20:00.000-08:00

In reviewing candidates and issues for the 2008 Presidential Election, the Iraq situation - as distinguished from the fight against international terrorism - is and will be the leading topic, even if it's in hindsight. Here's my thinking:

Nothing dramatic is going to happen in Iraq except a steady slide downward.
Democrats and Republicans will go along with the Iraq Study Group's 79 proposals and negotiate with President Bush and new Secretary of Defense Gates some semi-satisfactory actions that will slowly take effect.
As Senator Feingold recently said: "Unfortunately, while the Iraq Study Group's report recognizes that the Administration's policy is not working, it doesn't correct the myopic focus on Iraq that has so dangerously weakened our national security."
Israel is likely to continue it's paranoid policy of self-preservation at any cost, periodically signaling their neighbors to seriously worry about being attacked.
Iran is getting a free ride (and it's fervent wish to merge all Shiites into one region) while all of this is going on and making the most of it by outrageous provocations, threats and proclamations.
Hezbollah is progressively taking over (and likely to succeed at taking over) the entire government of Lebanon.
No leader anywhere - within the U.S., at the UN, or worldwide - is passionately proposing a solution... any solution.
There's no chance of Congress withholding funding of additional Iraq expenditures so the saga will continue, properly funded. Perhaps with more attention to veteran's costs and benefits.
The King of Saudi Arabia is worriedly saying that the region is ready to blow up. What he didn't say is that in addition to Wahhabism being the State Religion of Saudi Arabia, it was he and the previous King that started, funded and provided instructors for the 15,000 +/- religious Madrases schools that populate the Muslim world and provide a breeding ground for worldwide radical fundamentalists.

Everyone is threatening everyone with annihilation, often nuclear annihilation. So... what would happen if we took annihilation out of the equation? What if some passionate statesman somewhere - perhaps at the UN, perhaps here in the US - were to make a comprehensive suggestion that Iran AND Israel get rid of their nuclear weapons and that the UN not only verifies the removal but also promises to secure and protect both countries and the surrounding region? Imagine an Al Gore-type statesman presenting and proposing his Iraq solution with similar passion, data and clout.

If the nuclear alternative were eliminated, would people then have no choice but to sit down at the table and honestly talk?

Every candidate for president, Rep, Dem or whatever, I look for that passion, that plan, that suggestion or set of ideas, that intensity and strength of character to pursue this goal until it or something better actually happens. Senator Feingold has dropped out of the race; Howard Dean isn't going to run either... I've got to admit that nobody thus far qualifies. But I'm hopeful. Perhaps naively so.

Democrats Didn't Win The Mid-Term Elections

2006-11-25T11:18:00.000-08:00

Instead, the Republicans lost them.

Republicans shot themselves in their own feet with their corruption, business favoritism, lock-step voting and party-line talking points, arrogance and outright lies, religious righteousness, and gross missmanagement of the situations in Iraq and with Katrina. And the people came to know that these things are true. And they sent the word that change was (and is) needed. It didn't take Bob Woodward's thorough expose "State of Denial" to prove it; rather, it was just felt and seen. Seen in the everyday behaviors and comments of the Bush leadership; felt by the ferocity of their hackles being raised over normal questioning and limited criticisms. Seen by the extent of the corruption and scandals. And felt and seen by the growing numbers of cynical warriors and seriously wounded young Americans returning from Iraq and then having to go back again. Everybody has plainly seen the diminution of our standing in the world community; has felt embarrassment over Bush's crude and simple remarks; has begun to see how missmanaged and misshandled our DOD really is and how it has been forking over fistfuls of money to business friends of the Bush administration and to sheer corruption and incompetence. And we've slowly come to learn how extensive the lieing and cherry-picking of intelligence information was manipulated to enable a foregone but unnecessary war. And we're all seeing how half a trillion dollars has been taken from our economy because it's starting to show and be felt everywhere.

Worse Is Yet To Come
Secret U.S. government report: Insurgency in Iraq now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, fake charities and other crimes... It would be VERY wrong for the Democrats to think that they won the elections. It would be VERY right of the Democrats to show their feminine side in the next many months and stick to an agenda of social and leadership readjustment along a more altruistic line rather than one of self-interest.

Rhetoric generally gets toned down after an election. The Democratic leadership has to make sure that it stays down, matter-of-fact, productive, and socially sensitive. No bickering or excessive partisanship. I'm rooting for our team (but then, I'm the naive one).

Hurry Up and Wait

2006-11-11T08:48:00.000-08:00

From now until February 1st, 2007 we're in a funny state of limbo. Remember the line from your service days that went "Hurry Up and Wait (Huaw)?" Well it's true today as we wait for the new 110th Congress to come online, elect new speakers, pick committees, and actually go to work and do something.

Kos reminded his readers of all the puzzle pieces that came together to make the mid-term election outcome as it was:

Senate: 51 Dems; 49 Reps; +6 Dems
House: 229 Dems; 196 Reps; +29 Dems
Governors: 28 Dems; 22 Reps; +6 Dems

Kos also admonished everyone who thinks that they single-handedly won the election that they didn't, couldn't, and shouldn't think of themselves as the source of all good for the party, government and the world.

It wasn't the DNC and Howard Dean (although Dean's 50-state program played a significant role).
Nor was it the DCCC andd Rahm Emanual.
Nor the DSCC and Chuck Schumer.
Nor the 527s and unions and allied organizations that ran all those independent campaigns (the VoteVets ads were awesome).
Nor the grassroots and Internet crowd (although the technology is improving and more and more are participating and contributing).
Nor the big dollar donors.
Nor the new campaigning technologies.

Kos reminds us that we were all (including Bush and his cronies) part of a glorious puzzle, working together, not always harmoniously to effect the election. Also, it might be said that part of the success was because we mostly ignored the pundits and middle-of-the-roaders who advocated a Democrat-swing-to-moderate-Republicanism approach.

The people spoke in a rush and flurry of exclamation points. And now we have to wait until February for their wishes to come to fruition... if they do. Huah.

[Many terrible things have happened in this waiting period in the past; it's not a time to hibernate.]

GOTV, Campaign Money, Rush Limbaugh and our Do-Nothing Congress

2006-10-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

GOTV

Republican get-out-the-vote (GOTV) programs are set and ready to roll. They track people who've been identifed as saying they intend to vote right up until they actually do vote. If they vote early or absentee, they are purged so that the resulting target list is up-to-date and refined. Democrats have a similar capability but not a system for doing it everywhere; they do it where and if they have the money. The result is that the Reps get some votes that would otherwise fall through the cracks. And this election cycle, many Reps are seriously considering not voting, thus this GOTV program will get many of them back in the fold.

My opinion: a fair portion of moderate Reps that either didn't plan to vote, or were planning to vote moderately, will be guilt-driven back into voting solidly Republican. Dems just don't have the same mechanism or mentality. And if Dems are apathetic, as many are, they don't get goaded back into the fold.

Campaign Money

In targeted races, the money is coming in evenly albeit late for the Dems. But late money means more costly expenditures, in effect, less for more. Early money gets lower rates and the effect of repetition, a necessary requirement for name recognition in the less popular races. In organizational money for party and party organizations, the Reps are far ahead of the Dems. That money goes to GOTV, database development and maintenance, volunteer recruitment and voter registration.

My opinion: Coupled with the Rep many-year investment in a national database and their seriously greater party-building monies, wherever organization and technique play a role in the outcome of an election, the Reps win.

Rush Limbaugh

Time Magazine asked whether Limbaugh was good for America and the answer seems to be "No." Especially as he has stretched our tolerance and amusement levels with his caustic and slimeball remarks about Michael J. Fox, the feeling de jure seems to be less noise; more brotherhood.

My opinion: The Fox fiasco may not play out as well as the Foley one, but it adds to the consensus that false bravado, "staying the course," "cut and run," and all the other phrases Reps have used and Limbaugh has repeated are nothing more than that - harsh, insensitive, slimey, PR phrases.

Our Do-nothing Congress

The only breath of fresh air in Congress today is Nancy Pelosi's statement about not tolerating impeachment diversions but instead, focusing on a progressive agenda of very necessary action items should the Dems win the House and she gets the leadership post (Reid has said that he intends to pass it on to her). This truly has been our worst and most unproductive Congress. A recent mass e-mailer making the rounds shows that although Congress has been lackluster in terms of passing laws, they have been wonderful at breaking them!

3 have done time for assault
7 have been arrested for fraud
8 have been arrested for shoplifting
14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
21 currently are defendants in lawsuits
36 have been accused of spousal abuse
71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
84 have been arrested for drunk driving within the last year

My opinion: A pox on both houses. But a (naive) hope for a less politicized leader, Nancy Pelosi, should the Dems win the House.

Kos vs Stephanopoulos

2006-10-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

When George Stephanopoulos was in the White House I admired him greatly for sticking to his guns. But in his recent interview with President Bush on Sunday's ABC This Week, he didn't blink an eye when Bush lied. But Kos came to the rescue with his Monday blog "Stay the course"? Whoever said such a thing?

Kos embedded a YouTube video montage showing all the times Bush specifically said "Stay the course" in his speeches. Bush made such a blatent lie in that TV interview that it's well worth our effort to send this video to every news editor everywhere in the country. Certainly John Stewart could run it as is on his Daily Show.

In relation to Stephanopoulos, he might benefit from a quote from Martin Luther King: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

In relation to whoever prepared the video on YouTube, BRAVO!

In relation to Kos who incorporated the video into his diary entry, you are showing why your blog is supplementing the major news outlets and is so well read. Keep up the good work!

And in relation to those of you that read my blog, consider taking a few moments to forward the link to this YouTube video to every news person you know. Let's see what happens. I hope something does.

Second City's "I'm A Democrat" Ad

2006-10-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

This ad is one of a few that will NOT appear on mainstream TV.

It's a parody of the PC/Mac Bill Gates/cool Apple guy ads that are so popular and are working so well for Apple. It uses comedy to say why I'm a Democrat and why I send some of my money to support Democratic candidates like Jack Carter for Senate in Nevada.

I hope you enjoy the sentiment (and will also send some of your money to support your candidates (and perhaps Jack Carter's Nevada US Senate campaign)).

PS: You can see the other YouTube ads from the guys at Second City by clicking here.

I just spent 12-1/2 minutes with ex-president Jimmy Carter!

2006-10-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

I was driving from San Francisco to Santa Barbara when a woman called my cell phone and asked whether I would like to talk with ex-president Jimmy Carter. I said that if it was a recording, I didn’t want to. She said that it was the real thing. So we scheduled a phone appointment for 12:35 today.

I was in the process of pulling over at 12:34 when the lady called again. She waited for me to get parked and then put him on… and it was really Jimmy Carter!

He was asking me to contribute to his son’s senate campaign in Nevada.

So I told him that I already had. That I had already sent the maximum $2,100 contribution to the Jack Carter for Senate campaign. He was surprised about that and then we talked about how to contribute even more through the state party. He gave me the name of the lady at the state party and their mailing address.

And then, since I figured the phone call was almost over, I told him that I appreciated his being outspoken about today’s issues – particularly about North Korea and in his August Der Spiegel interview where he said:

Israel had no moral or legal justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.

The Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.

The major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration out of fear that they would be accused of being disloyal.

And that we've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.

He told me that he had received a lot of flack about that interview and that he appreciated my comments.

Then we talked about various campaigning techniques. He said that he and his family really knew about low-budget campaigns and that all 22 of his family were going to work for Jack from next Monday until the election.

I told him that I had a group of friends that pretty much had decided to pass this race by because it was losing race and that our money would be better spent in Montana or elsewhere.

He said that the most recent polls from the WSJ showing Jack down 6% which was within the area of chance for a win. His honesty showed through in that he didn’t say that Jack was a winner; rather he said that he was a long shot but a worthwhile long shot.

Jimmy Carter said it best when he said that he and his family knew low-budget campaigning with long odds. And that it was the personal touch that won elections.

All the while – as we were talking – I was watching my car clock tick away. Overall, our conversation lasted 12-1/2 minutes.

I felt very sad afterwards. Sad because I had talked with an American hero and that the conversation was real and personal and friendly and open-ended.

As a result, I heartily recommend that you too contribute the maximum to Jack Carter’s senate campaign. And also to the VoteVets.org group’s Nevada campaign. And to the Nevada Democratic State Party with an earmarked contribution to the Jack Carter campaign.

Here are the links:

Jack Carter Senate Campaign

VoteVets.org

Nev Dem Party

Please do contribute.

The Rep Slice and Dice Advantage

2006-10-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

When I first started working campaigns, part of the thrill was the giant disparity between Rep and Dem funding. The interest income from the Rep warchest was what the Dems hoped to get. The Dems had 1/12 of the funds that the Reps had.

So the Dems used technology to counter the Reps money. The Dems invented micro-targeting versus the Reps blanketing. The Dems developed and coded sliceable databases while the Reps advertised to everyone, blanketing whole areas with their materials and TV.

Often the latter paid off: in California the Reps mailed every Rep household and asked whether the recipients wanted to vote absentee. This was the first time that anyone took advantage of the loophole that you didn't have to be out of the country or state to vote absentee. The result was that a dull Governor won over a popular Black candidate who actually won the non-absentee vote.

But things changed then as they have now. Dems picked up the bandwagon on absentee voting and the machinery to solicit and then advertise this group of voters. The absentee vote now breaks evenly in most areas although it is continually growing because of its convenience.

The larger problem is that micro-targeting has become the ballywick of the Reps mainly because they have had the funds and organization to preserve the data from one election to the next and from all layers within the database -- from statewide to the smallest city/county office, board or commission. On the Dem side, each cycle has started fresh until Dean came into office. Now things are changing BUT it's going to take a few cycles before the database on the Dem side becomes as powerful and useful as the one on the Rep side. Two particular areas where Dems are behind is in poll results and contribution history. Every polled voter on the Rep side is in the database encoded with his or her answers. And every Rep donation is in there as well. Dems post this info from public and traded files each cycle but are missing the historical advantage that the Reps have.

As repugnant as Rove is in his public statements, this is his background and expertise: efficient and effective micro-targeting. This is where he started (developing the national, enhanced database) and this is his forte (using that enhanced data to target and concisely advertise thousands of very precise and meaningful messages to thousands of like-minded recipient groups).

And this election is where Rove's expertise is going to meet its first real challenge. I'm rooting for the Dems. But I'm naive.

Hypocrisy Begets Immorality: Similarities Between Foley and "State of Denial"

2006-10-04T09:06:00.000-07:00

And can cause wars! And people’s deaths!

Isn’t it hypocritical to be Co-chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives whilst writing sexually explicit e-mails to an underage congressional page?

He publicly crusaded against the very activities that he appears to have done himself. By definition, doesn’t that make him a hypocrite? And a corrupt one at that?

This is very similar to what happened with evangelist Jimmy Swaggart who advocated moral and marital purity but was caught with a prostitute.

There’s a psychological component in play here: contradictory actions such as these are consistent with those of a person struggling with an internal moral battle. “The righteous, fervent crusading against something often may represent an attempt to keep one’s own impulses under control,” said Dr. Jon Shaw , director of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the U of Miami(i).

Isn’t it hypocritical to be President of the United States and be so stubbornly arrogant as to close his ears to the many voices who warned (and continue to warn) of the impending dangers?

Despite the reports and warnings of the worsening situation in Iraq, Bush, Rumsfeld and other key figures insist "repeatedly in public" that "things are better(ii)."
Amid the escalating violence in Nov. 2003, Woodward quotes Bush as saying "I don't want anyone in the cabinet to say it is an insurgency. I don't think we are there yet(iii)."

And in May 2005, Woodward says Vice President Dick Cheney told CNN that the insurgency was in "the last throes" when Bush knew it was, in fact, worsening(iii).

'State of Denial' recounts disturbing anecdotes about administration pettiness on a level with high school(iii).
Rumsfeld cut others out of Iraq decisions and planning and would not even return the phone calls of then-National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice until ordered to do so by Bush, the author claims(iii).

Rumsfeld also "bleached out independent military advice and got too many generals and people in the upper reaches of the system who were not strong, who were not independent, who would not come and say, 'hey, look, this is the way I look at it.'(iii)"

Rumsfeld rejected recommendations that it would take about 450,000 troops to secure Iraq and instead sent one-third that number(iii).

The defense secretary also ignored a State Department blueprint that could have prevented the looting of arms depots by future insurgents, Woodward claims(iii).

So how does President Bush respond?

On Wednesday he claimed Democrats can't be trusted to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. "Vote Republican for the safety of the United States," he said(iii).

Isn’t this very similar to VP Cheney’s 2004 comment that Sen. John Kerry would risk another terror attack?

Bush also said his pro-growth economic policies have helped working Americans, and called on Congress to make his administration's tax cuts permanent. "If the other bunch gets elected," he said of Democrats, "they're going to raise your taxes.(iii)"

Hugo Chavez recently ridiculed these characteristics in Bush when he said: “He walks like this cowboy John Wayne. He doesn't have the slightest idea of politics. He got where he is because he is the son of his father. He was an alcoholic, an ex-alcoholic. He's a sick man, full of complexes, but very dangerous now because he has a lot of power.(iv)”

There's a psychological component in play with Bush also, in relation to his being an ex-alcoholic/addict.

He exhibits arrogance and aggressive behavior. His intellectual level is severely limited. On first blush, you would think him quite competent, but on closer examination and close attention to his speech, you find that he uses words he doesn't understand and uses them completely out of context, while pretending to know exactly what he is talking about. When challenged that there is a problem with what he says, he responds with "That's my way of putting it" or "That's my way of doing it."(v)

Mistakes are inevitable. But the common theme presented here is the addictive display of ideology and arrogance over the pragmatism that is needed to be President of the United States and to adjust to changing conditions.

Even more disturbing is the portrait of a man who seems unable to come to terms with the damaging and dangerous situation he has helped create -- much less imagine a way out of it.

----------
(i) ABC News: What Could Explain the Two Faces of Mark Foley? by Siri Nilsson, 10/2/06
(ii ) Washingtonpost.com: Bush Raises Volume on Campaign Charge by Deb Riechmann, 10/4/06
(iii) ibid
(iv) CNN.com: Chavez: Bush 'devil'; U.S. 'on the way down,' 9/21/06
(v) PA Health System excerpt "True Nature of Alcoholism," 1/30/06

How an Attack [on Iran] Would Unfold

2006-10-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

I was in San Francisco for the weekend and opened up the Sunday Chronicle to find this full-page story. It scared me beyond imagine.

Numerous rumors abound about what President Bush might do in his lame duck years. One particularly fearsome report came from an Israeli press interview with the head of their IDF that their military command thought it likely that either they or the U.S. would knock out Iran's nuclear program before the 2008 U.S. elections. And then I saw this article which never did say why an attack such as the one described would occur; it only talked about the mechanics of the attack itself. And the anticipated responses from Iran and other countries in that region.

It's unclear how many targets U.S. bombs would need to hit, and how often. "Could very well be 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 after you begin to add in all the other things like air bases, missile storage sites," he said. "The nonnuclear part is expanding." Cordesman estimates the number of sorties by bombers and cruise missiles would range from several hundred over a week's period for strikes focused on nuclear and missile sites to as many as 2,500 over a period of months for wider strikes including those targeting Iran's retaliatory military capability.

Holy shit! That's like the air war in Bosnia.

In the section discussing the aftermath of attacking Iran, every conceivable reaction was discussed: cutting off oil production and otherwise withholding oil getting to Western clients and America; sinking oil transports in the Gulf; bombing and shutting down oil production in Iraq; attacking Israel; funding surrogates in the Middle East and in America to harm American, Israeli and European interests; etc.

Jeez! This is hardly calm Sunday morning bedroom reading. One reader was quoted as saying:

Go for it George! As a former owner of a major league baseball team, you know the importance of this end-of-season "Axis of Evil" three-game series. A swift win over Iran will not only offset the devastating, poorly played loss to Iraq, but will give you much-needed momentum going into the big game with North Korea. But don't forget you still have that make-up game with Afghanistan.

I'm more freightened than amused. Some have said that in Bush's State of Denial (pun intended) he's getting progressively mentally deranged and might really do something this shocking and destructive. And unless we - all of us voters - effect a change in the makeup of the cadre around him, it's likely that something dramatic - if not an attack on Iran than something else - is going to happen shortly after the November elections. At the least, increased troops to Iraq.

Personally, I've never thought that Bush was a mental case. Rather, I've believed that he was and is an underrated quick-study on most subjects related to campaigns and politics and the nuances of power - but with an unethical slant. He's not a good speaker nor a policy wonk. But he's mastered a lot of the other tasks of the politics of the presidency. His training came from harsh and cynical experts like Atwater and Rove. And the influence of their ideas and practices have matured into some formidable problems for Democrats in the forthcoming elections amongst them is his aggressive and stubborn mind-set.

In "One Party Country," by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, both of the LA Times, the effects of chipping away at Democratic strongholds like what used to be the block vote of African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews, and the effects of jerrymandering the electoral redistricting have had, and will have, significant negative effects for Dems. These and the systematic and targeted funneling of taxpayer dollars into faith-based entities where reciprocity rules, and investing in database development so far beyond what Democrats have funded thus far have enabled Reps to have the advantage in turning out small targeted and targetable segments of the electorate that, when turnout is low, can win elections.

And turnout has been low thus far this year. Perhaps we on the Internet, the bloggers, the Daily Kos readers, all of us, can channel our efforts and effect a change on the turnout figures for November. But we haven't thus far in the primary elections and we'll need to do something more effective.

Any suggestions?

A Long-Term Solution to Ethnic Strife

2006-09-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

Excerpted from The Origins of Ethnic Strife by Robert W. Firestone, Ph.D.

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.
You’ve got to be taught from year to year....
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.
You’ve got to be carefully taught!

The words of this song from the musical South Pacific pertain to one aspect of a powerful psychological defense mechanism that reifies the family, shrouding it and other forms of group identification in a fantasy bond that assures immortality in the face of the conscious and unconscious anxiety associated with death.

Psychological defenses that minimize or shut out psychological pain are collectively expressed in restrictive, dehumanizing cultural patterns that people feel must be protected at all costs. Ernest Becker suggests that aggression stems from frustration and fear rather than from instinct:

It is one thing to say that man is not human because he is a vicious animal, and another to say that it is because he is a frightened creature who tries to secure a victory over his limitations.

This explanation not only provides a clear perspective concerning the underlying meaning of prejudice, racism, and war, but is also more positive, pragmatic, and action-oriented. It offers hope for the future, whereas the deterministic conception of man’s essential savagery may well provide a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, pessimistic forecasting generally precludes constructive action and people tend to feel progressively more demoralized and helpless.

The lack of an immediate, obvious course of action or definitive pragmatic program should not be interpreted as cause for pessimism or devalued on those grounds. Psychological guidelines explaining human aggression can lead to an effective program of education that may enable men and women to come to know themselves in a manner that could effectively alter destructive child-rearing practices and social processes that foster aggression. Freud declared that people might benefit from an awareness rather than a denial of their mortality:

Would it not be better to give death the place in reality and in our thoughts which is its due, and to give a little more prominence to the unconscious attitude towards death which we have hitherto so carefully suppressed?

In order to find peace, we must face up to existential issues, overcome our personal upbringing, and learn to live without soothing psychological defenses. In some sense we must continually mourn our own end in order to fully accept and value our life. There is no way to banish painful memories and feelings from consciousness without losing our sense of humanity and feeling of compassion for others. An individual can overcome personal limitations and embrace life in the face of death anxiety. Such a person would find no need for ethnic hatred or insidious warfare.

Robert W. Firestone
Click to see a video clip from an interview of Dr. Firestone with Salon's Fred Branfman

"If you don't vote, you don't matter!"

2006-09-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

"It's up to you to nail up any bastard that get's between you and the roads and the bridges and the schools and the food you need."

A timely message from the movie character Willy Stark (patterned after Huey Long) in the just-released remake of "All The King's Men" starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins and lots of others.

$479,000,000,000 - that's right, four hundred sevety-nine billion - is standing between you and the roads and the bridges and the schools and the food you need. That's what we are spending (and have spent) for the Iraq war. That money is lost forever. It's not a valuable investment; it's the opposite... in fact it's going to cost us a lot more in the years to come. It's why Hugo Chavez got such resounding applause at the UN (reportedly the longest and loudest of any leader who spoke thus far this session). The people know of what he spoke. Of the lies and favoritism; of the corruption and misinformation. Of the hipocricy. And of the people dying for no real reason. Chavez gave voice to all those thoughts.

But Willy Stark said it best: "If you don't vote, you don't matter!"

You can always trust Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

2006-09-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

Kos (of the famous Daily Kos blog and colorful prose) is right once again:

I'll be shocked if we wake up on election day controlling either chamber of Congress. If we do, it'll be because enough candidates decide to give those DC consultants and staffers the middle finger and run the race they know they need to run to win.

My sentiments exactly. And my fear as well.

Kos puts the blame on DC consultants. I concur but also put it on the candidate integrity factor.

Lee Atwater put a variety of alternatives in front of Bush Sr. including the racially-pointed independently-run Willie Horton ads against Dukakis. Any candidate with integrity would have said: "Thanks but I can't do that. It's wrong."

Karl Rove puts a variety of alternatives in front of Bush Jr. daily. Like his father before him, Bush Jr. doesn't object on moral grounds; he just uses the information as recommended, regardless of the truth of the issue(s) involved.

The result is what we have today: a totally ineffective Congress, bribed officials everywhere, major MAJOR issues going unanswered, rampent fear and polarization, burgeoning REAL threats to our very existence, and a stubborn, belligerent and antagonistic executive branch.

Political consultants are recommending that the Dems focus on the economy in these last weeks of campaigning before the mid-term elections. Candidates can still shuck the chaff and choose what's right for them, as people, and as they see their electorate. Every election is a local election, no matter the national talking points.

People are hungry for a real leader to represent them. They've had enough lies and manipulation. They just want an honest person, with real feelings for their district and state, and an ethical passion to get necessary things to happen for their constituents. Voters are tired of the rhetoric; they just want a straight-talking representative with the integrity to do the job.

Me too.

Know anyone that fits the bill? Vote for them. Know anyone that doesn't? Vote against them.

That's the self-correcting feature of our system that ex-President Jimmy Carter recently talked about.

"Submission to You [God] feels like self betrayal."

2006-09-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls herself "a dissident of Islam" because, given what Allah supposedly enjoins and what she knows is right, "the cognitive dissonance is, for me, too much." In the 11-minute film "Submission," for which she wrote the script, the main character says: "Faith in You, Submission to You [God] feels like self betrayal."

Now Ali is living as a dissident here in the US and the filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, was killed by an Islamic extremist who slit his throat with a machete. The murderer (in whose room was found a disc containing videos of "enemies of Allah" being murdered, including a man having his head slowly sawed off) used another knife to pin a long letter to van Gogh's chest. The letter was to Hirsi Ali, calling her a "soldier of evil."

The film's title is a direct translation of the word "Islam." The film suggests the mistreatment of women born to Muslim families. The film was shown on the Dutch public broadcasting network (VPRO) on August 29, 2004. It portrays a Muslim woman as having been beaten and raped by a relative. The bodies are used in the film as a canvas for verses from the Qur'an.

George Will writes of her:

Slender, elegant, stylish and articulate (in English, Dutch and Swahili), she has found an intellectual home here at the American Enterprise Institute, where she is writing a book that imagines Muhammad meeting, in the New York Public Library, three thinkers -- John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper, each a hero of the unending struggle between (to take the title of Popper's 1945 masterpiece) "The Open Society and Its Enemies." Islamic extremists -- the sort who were unhinged by some Danish cartoons -- will be enraged. She is unperturbed.

Neither is she pessimistic about the West. It has, she says, "the drive to innovate." But Europe, she thinks, is invertebrate. After two generations without war, Europeans "have no idea what an enemy is." And they think, she says, that leadership is an antiquated notion because they believe that caring governments can socialize everyone to behave well, thereby erasing personal accountability and responsibility. "I can't even tell it without laughing," she says, laughing softly. Clearly she is where she belongs, at last.

The west has "the drive to innovate." But Europe is invertebrate. Great phrases for a desperate situation. But I ask again, who out there amongst our political candidates is willing to stand up and confront this issue intelligently? Perhaps Russ Feingold. Jimmy Carter [but he can't run again]? Madeleine Albright? Can you name somebody - anybody - who is willing to take the yoke and run with it? Who has the strength of character and intelligence to open and sustain the dialogue? The integrity to keep it up until something positive happens? And the charisma and ability to debate with humor and compassion?

God, Elvis, Sam Harris, and George Bush.

2006-09-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.

Sam Harris, Ph.D., Letter to a Christian Nation, Random House, 2006

A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.

Sam Harris, Ph.D., Letter to a Christian Nation, Random House, 2006

I listened to Sam Harris talk about religion recently and couldn't help but worry for his safety. He's a 21st Century heretic. But he's basing his thesis on facts. He's saying that we are almost beyond rectifying our present confrontational situation and that conversation is the only way we're going to break the deadlock. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics. That's got to stop. And soon!

We have no reason to expect to survive our religious differences indefinitely. Faith is intrinsically divisive. We have a choice between conversation and war. It was conversation that ended slavery, not faith. Faith is a declaration of immunity to conversation. To make religious war unthinkable, we have to undermine the dogma of faith. The continuance of civilization requires not moderation, but reason.

Strong but timely stuff. Harris, Richard Dawkins, Madeleine Albright, psychologist Robert Firestone and others are discussing the topic. But who out there amongst our political candidates is willing to stand up and confront this issue intelligently? Perhaps Russ Feingold. Jimmy Carter [but he can't run again]? Madeleine Albright? Can you name somebody - anybody - who is willing to take the yoke and run with it? Who has the strength of character and intelligence to open and sustain the dialogue? The integrity to keep it up until something positive happens? And the charisma and ability to debate with humor and compassion?

It's Really a Choice Between Life and Death

2006-09-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw a comparison of Nixon and Bush when I watched the new movie/documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The movie begins with Lennon singing: "Nobody told me there'd be days like these" and was summed up by Gore Vidal who said:

Lennon represented life... and Mr. Nixon and Mr. Bush represent death.

The similarities between then and now are so evident: the misuse of the government to coerce, misdirect and scare; the purposeful misdirection of the media; the outright lies; the usurption of the Constitution and international law; and the specifically personal traits: the meanness, stubbornness and outright lies. Mario Cuomo said in the movie:

Their distortion of the Constitution was the greatest disloyalty to this country.

From a purely historical perspective the old axiom below has never been more true.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

From a personal point of view, many things affected me: seeing people in the film that I knew and admire(d) age; remembering myself back in the Beatle days - how I was defiantly against my own best interests and how I didn't become a Beatles fan - or a more socially conscious independent person until much later; understanding how I, like many others, chose painkillers instead of integrity when confronted with the meanspiritedness of what we thought and hoped to be our representative government.

All that and more came up as I watched this movie. It is very timely even for those of you young enough not to have known who he was on a day to day basis. The message throughout, however, wasn't really about the US versus Lennon. It was about what he lived and preached: Give peace a chance.

PS: John Lennon's songs like "Imagine," "Nobody Told Me," "Instant Karma (We All Shine On)," "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," and "Power to the People," and the chants "Give Peace a Chance," and the Beatles' "Revolution" were all included in the film including two previously unreleased songs -- "Attica State," recorded live at 1971's John Sinclair freedom rally, and an instrumental version of "How Do You Sleep." It'll be a great soundtrack when it comes out.

What's It Gonna Take? Words from Mario Cuomo.

2006-09-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

What is it going to take to counter voter apathy - to rally Democrats to vote - to inspire Democrats to support their candidates with their dollars, their energy and their votes. What came to mind was a person that could persuade me. So I listened to Mario Cuomo's speech at the 1984 Convention in San Francisco.

I was in tears. He was passionate, exuded honesty, and made clear sense -- with a poet's sense of integration, timing and color.

His speech had great one-liners (for which I'm quite jealous):

"The lucky and the left out" referring to rich Republicans and the trickle-down (or supply-side) theory of economics for the rest of us.

"Divide and cajole" about their campaigning tactics. Certainly Rowe and Bush are graduates of this one.

I excerpted three of his comments from that speech which are as relevant today as they were then.

About Iraq and our relationship with our allies.
Click the arrow to listen.

About what it means to be a Democrat.
Click the arrow to listen.

And finally, the question that I think should become the question asked from every podium during this campaign cycle.
Click the arrow to listen.

Let's all ask that question: Are we safer, stronger or better off than we were before George W. Bush became president?

No? Than let's change the players, election by election, candidate by candidate.

This has been, truly, the do-nothing Congress of all time!

2006-09-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Neither side deserves to be reelected.

Great quotes from Dick Morris. [I wish I had the knack for one-liners like that!]

Turnout is the key to this fall's elections -- and the low, apathetic turnout in yesterday's primaries suggests that, unless there's some real meat in the runup to the November elections, the results will favor the Republicans.

Why? Because low turnouts favor the passionate few that do vote... and they tend to be the rightious, religious, conservative, issue-based, homophobic portion of the Rep registered voter base. Dems just don't have those types of groups. Moderate Reps and across-the-board Dems who feel embarrassed by their government, their president, their foreign policy, their legislators, just pull up their collars and avoid the whole process. They don't vote, thus, in low turnout races they lose.

DNC Chair Howard Dean is right (and courageous) to run a 50-state program to drum up new voters, include and encourage past voters, and provide issues and reasons to vote. These efforts don't fully show up in the primary elections because the DNC doesn't support particular primary candidates. But they will show up in the Fall but it may all be for naught if voters - particularly swing Reps and loyal Dems - see it like Dick Morris does: that Congress did nothing and why should they think that new players will do any better? Low turnout figures for yesterday's primaries seem to indicate that this attitude is prevalent.

My fear is that public awareness doesn't coorelate with the DNC's (and the other campaign committee's) efforts.

A third of Californians vote 5-15 days before the peak of the advertising campaign. That's true in every state that has absentee voting. Since people gather most of their information from TV, and don't really pay attention until just before the election, absentee voters fall into a catch-22 of missing information (and the rising passion for change) yet voting nevertheless.

Bush and Rove have formulated an articulate argument for the Iraq war being an integral part of the war on terror. There's no arguing with them because every Rep speaker is in lock-step. The result, as they've planned, stirs fear and apathy to a place where the fervent vote and the frustrated shrink thereby echoing my turnout predictions.

No Dem speaker to date has controlled the news and people's interests with a poignant plea for honesty, integrity and a willingness to negotiate and get things done. Nobody has come to the forefront to lead the debate and say why we need to change the makeup of the House and Senate. Nobody has made the case that six more years of obstructionism will be in the way when a new Dem president takes over in 2009.

Worse yet is today's news that the RNC, RSCC and RCCC plan to outspend the Dems five-to-one. They plan to spend $60 million versus the Dems $12 million.

Still, even with all this bad news, elections are won one race at a time and every one is a local one. For me, I'll not shrink either from the rhetoric or from doing my duty to fund, discuss and vote for the candidates of my choice.

The Self-Corrective Feature Of Our Country

2006-09-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

Instutionalized corruption. Rampant temptations. Plutocratic tendencies. The coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. The creation of a class system. A congressional favorability rating lower than that for used car salespeople.

The 2006 mid-term elections are likely to reflect all of these perceptions with marching orders for incumbents and a sweep of new Democrat freshmen (hopefully).

I say hopefully because we Democrats shot ourselves in the feet often and at the worst of times (think no farther than Dukakis and Gore).

But besides electing new players who are more likely to steer clear of the many temptations and begin a severe housecleaning process, there are bigger issues that are making it neigh on impossible to effect meaningful change:

We don't have a vocal moral compass like Mario Cuomo or Jesse Jackson used to offer. Critics have poked so many holes in them personally that their words no longer make us cry out with passion and committment.
Our own social tendencies have been so verbally corrupted that we are fearful to even utter our desires for fear of indignant rebuttals (perhaps even harrassing reactions) from almost every front along with the distortion of our language, word by word, into meanings that we didn't intend.
In addition to this language disconnect, there is also a disconnect between overall economic growth and the growing squeeze on many working Americans. Like his father (and the barcode incident in the grocery store), our current President seems equally out of touch as he claims that the economy is doing well. This angers people who are suffering the truth: that the rich are doing well and the rest of us aren't. And it's that anger, along with our discontent with the situation in Iraq and the Middle East, that is propelling voters this fall to vote for anyone but the incumbent.
There's a disconnect in what we think is right and what we are offered as right. Health care is one such case in point. For the last 20 years or so, employers have slowly cut back benefits, passed on costs, limited coverage and generally made a mockery of employer-paid health insurance. Retirement plans are another case in point. More and more we're becoming convinced that we're on our own - without goverment or employer assistance.
Cagey and cynical aides to the President and his father before him, have changed campaigns and political discourse into adversarial, rightious trials with only one winner: the faithful, and only one way: their way. Altruism and brotherhood are nowhere to be seen. Gray isn't negotiable because it's neither black nor white.

Rather than cry wolf and feel ineffectual, we can correct today's situation by getting involved in this November's mid-term elections. And we can also do as georgia10 writes on Daily Kos:

Millions of us wait around for the 247 Democrats in Congress to speak up and stand up. Brilliant articles are penned about exactly what Democrats should say, and how they should say it. Other editorials rightly rail on "spineless" Dems who shrink from confrontation.

But we must never forget, my friends, that we are also Democrats. And every time we let a wingnut email go unanswered, we are the spineless Dems. Everytime we hesitate to jump in when our family or friends complain about politics, we are the cowards.

We're the front lines of progressivism, a 50-state army composed of millions of articulate, informed, and fundamentally right soldiers of truth. We're armed with facts, that weapon that deals a deadly blow to any Republican propaganda. And yet, in the chambers of our daily lives, I think we don't use them enough.

For example, why is it that my inbox is cluttered with right-wing chain mail but rarely any liberal forwards? And why is it that upon reading yet another email about "staying the course", my tired self is tempted to just click "delete" instead of "reply all"?

Because it's easier to let it slide, of course. It's easier to ignore than instigate. Too often, we are so afraid of getting into political fights that we shy away from having political discussions. But if we don't defend liberalism and our party, who will?

So let us not shrink from educating the ill-informed, from converting the conned with logic, and from building a new Democrat majority, one voter at a time.

Tipping Point

2006-08-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

There's often a tipping point where choices have more than a casual effect: they affect our lives. Sometimes, perhaps more often than we imagine, those decisions are made incorrectly, misguided or even purposely misdirected.

In a recent Newsweek article about Billy Graham, Jon Meacham wrote:

As he has grown older, Graham has come to an appreciation of complexity and a gentleness of spirit that sets him apart from many other high-profile popular religious figures. Graham prizes peace. He is a man of unwavering faith who refuses to be judgmental; a steady social conservative in private who actually does hate the sin but loves the sinner; a resolute Christian who declines to render absolute verdicts about who will get into heaven and who will not; a man concerned about traditional morality who will not be dragged into "hot-button issues" of the hour. Graham's tranquil voice, though growing fainter, has rarely been more relevant.

We are constantly being influenced to see and do things in ways that are often not our own choices: to buy, do, vote for or against, go places, etc. These temptations often tip our judgement and bend our personal ethics. When this happens in high places, it can affect our lives and livelihoods as has been the case with President Bush. We are tipping downward and wobbling out of control because of misguided or misdirected decisions he has made on our behalf.

Fortunately there is an election coming this November which can - if enough new and vocal congresspeople get elected - wobble us back up to a wavering tipping point once again - and this time we might be able to make the right choices.

Jon Meacham said it right (about Billy Graham) when he said that

Complexity should be appreciated and leadership should reflect and maintain a gentleness of spirit and a sense of brotherhood for all.

We've tipped away from that with polarizing "hot-button issues" like immigration, gay marriage, and mean-spirited aides to the President like Cheney and Rove. It's time to tip back toward fairness, gentleness, altruism and brotherhood.

A Timely Indian Prayer

2006-08-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

By Tom Whitecloud
Florida, circa 1700

Oh Father whose voice I hear in the woods
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me.

I am a man before you; one of your many children.

I'm small and weak; I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold
the red and purple sunset.

Make me wise so that I may know the things you have taught my people;
the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock.

Make my hands respect the things you have made;
my ears sharp to hear your voice.

I seek strength Father; not to be superior to my brothers,
but to be able to fight my greatest enemy: myself.

Make me ever ready to come to you with clear hands and straight eye,
so that when life fades as the fading sunset,
my spirit may come to you without shame.

Legacy/Schmegacy! Ex-Pres. Carter Speaks Out.

2006-08-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

As a followup to my open letter to Ex-President Clinton (and my response to a reporter friend's questions about Clinton's legacy issues), here's an example of how a legacy is being created, day-by-day, by another ex-president.

In an August 2nd interview with Der Spiegel, Ex-President Jimmy Carter said:

CARTER: Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis. Another very serious departure from past policies is the separation of church and state. This has been a policy since the time of Thomas Jefferson and my own religious beliefs are compatible with this. The other principle is basic justice. We've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.

Also:

SPIEGEL: But wasn't Israel the first to get attacked?

CARTER: I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

And most importantly:

SPIEGEL: One main point of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?

CARTER: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history. And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.

SPIEGEL: So how does this proximity to Christian fundamentalism manifest itself politically?

CARTER: Unfortunately, after September 11th, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous. For three years, I'd say, the major news media in our country were complicit in this subservience to the Bush administration out of fear that they would be accused of being disloyal. I think in the last six months or so some of the media have now begun to be critical. But it's a long time coming.

To Ex-President Clinton: I rest my case for alltruism rather than concerns of legacy.

To Ex-President Carter: Bravo for saying clearly and boldly what needs to be said.

And to all of the rest of us, here's one more thing Carter said that involves us directly:

CARTER: There is a self-corrective aspect to our country. And I think that the first step is going to be in the November election this year. This year, the Democrats have a good chance of capturing one of the houses of Congress. I think the Senate is going to be a very close decision. My oldest son is running for the US Senate in the state of Nevada. And if just he and a few others can be successful then you have the US Senate in Democratic hands and that will make a profound and immediate difference.

Let's help that self-corrective aspect affect change this November. Campaign for who you believe will make the boldest contribution, back your beliefs with money and action, and vote. I'll be doing the same.

Was "Reutersgate" A Planned Manipulation?

2006-08-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

Different angles of the same photo re-used on different dates. Photoshop manipulated clouds to emphasize smoke and bomb devastation. Non-existent rockets attacking a non-bomb-dropping jet.

The Los Angeles Times wrote:

"There are two problems here, and they're the reason this controversy shouldn't be allowed to sputter to its inglorious conclusion just yet:
One of these has to do with the scope of what strongly appears to be wider fabrication in the photojournalism Reuters and other news agencies are obtaining from their freelancers in Lebanon.

The other is the U.S. news media's grudging response to the revelation of Hajj's misconduct and its utter lack of interest in exploring whether his is a unique or representative case."

It seems obvious that some of the photojournalists involved are either intimidated by or sympathetic to the Hezbollah terrorists for them to fraudulently manipulate photos as they have done.

Or perhaps there are some bigger players involved. This could be just the sort of trick that Rolling Stone's James Bamford wrote about when he was describing the activities of John Rendon and his Rendon Group on behalf of the CIA and DoD. In that expose Bamford described a scene where a terrorist described an event that was going to happen but when he was given a lie-detector he failed completely.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda.

If the shoe fits . . . ?

Perhaps we could eliminate from our governmental expenditures monies that pay for the Rendon Groups activities along with the blatently campaign activities being done from within the Whitehouse by Karl Rove. It might not save much in dollars but it could reduce tensions and false illusions by quantum leaps.

The Black Kettle* Has a Few Good Ideas

2006-08-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

[* from the old saying "A pot calling the kettle black" which comes from old times when pots and pans were generally black and kettles were generally metallic and reflective. Therefore the pot sees its black reflection in the kettle and thinks that the kettle is black.]

"I am a politician," Rendon said in a 1998 speech to the National Security Conference (NSC), "and a person who uses communication to meet public policy or corporate policy objectives. In fact, I am an information warrior, and a perception manager. This is probably best described in the words of Hunter S. Thompson, when he wrote 'When things turn weird, the weird turn pro.'"

At a recent lecture in San Francisco, John Rendon, owner of The Rendon Group, was booed and jeered and his speech intrerrupted - but he also made some suggestions that merit repeating.

Rendon used to be a Democrat player. He worked in big campaigns and as the Executive Director of the DNC. But in 1991 he branched away from Democratic politics and began providing public relations services for the CIA and DoD (amongst others). He became a disinformation provider and privy to more polling and survey data than any single campaign or party could ever muster. He began using his campaign skills to enable our foreign policy and psyops programs to operate more successfully by missusing those very tools and practices very similar to the way the Reuters and AP photo journalists are missusing their photos from Lebanon by using Photoshop image manipulation techniques.

At the San Francisco lecture he recited facts and figures that could only come from the CIA's resource database (at least I hope they were "facts"). You can listen to the complete lecture by downloading the podcast from iTunes.

The lecture was interesting to me because of the case Rendon made of how little we really know about what we're doing throughout the world. The information isn't flowing in because we don't want to hear it, because we are often misdirected, and because there are some (himself included) that are using psychological and manipulation tools to make us too fearful to want to know. Further, our resources for alternate and competing information (returning travelers, foreign news sources, international travel) is being limited by the polarization that we see increasing daily in our congress and state and local chambers.

He claimed that as polarization increases (often accelerated by his company's efforts), balanced views of the world disappear and are replaced by selective information that supports the particular polarized group that the viewer belongs to and that these two suggestions would help mitigate that effect. Rendon suggested that we could alter our centrist view of the world by bringing more of the world to our news sources:

Require every news agency that has a federal license to have at least 10% of their reportorial staff exchanged with a foreign news agency

Require that before any college degree is awarded that the student have at least two years of foreign travel under his or her belt

He said that these two suggestions were the least that we could do to tip back America's lack of balanced information needed for understanding, planning and governance - an imbalance that, in part, he helped tip.

Re: Open Letter to Bill Clinton

2006-08-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

A reporter friend asked me to comment about a story he is writing about the tension between Clinton's two great desires:

To be a beloved post-partisan ex-president helpful in all the world statements-type responses to international events

To be the Democratic Party's unofficial leader and first-ever First Gentleman

I think that Bill Clinton’s legacy would be enhanced if his immediate political activities were more altruistic than helping his wife get elected.

The new president has a lot to repair both within and outside the US. He or she should have the best team and support with the least diversion of attention to scrapping and other shenanigans.

Hence my suggestion that Clinton draft (and craft) Gore and participate in the solutions rather than contributing to the problems. Insuring that a Democratic President gets elected and a get-things-done team of straight shooters is placed is far more important in this next cycle than electing Hillary (who, in my opinion, is not the right person for this particular time).

Gore has a passion to effect change regarding our immediate environmental problems and he has knowledge and experience with cleaning up our government and extricating all of the cancerous corruption, evil policies, poison pills and hateful and wrongheaded initiatives that the present administration has embedded. He’s not a corrupt man and has the integrity to remain so. With the Clintons onboard as UN Ambassador and Secretary of Health and Human Services (for example) everyone would see by their selfless example that repairing our country is far more important than any sense of entitlement or legacy building.

What better legacy than that?

An Open Letter to President Bill Clinton

2006-07-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

Hello President Clinton,

In the 2006 California governor's primary, Steve Westley said some things about Phil Angelides that the Reps are using in their ads against Angelides.

I'm sure that the same will be true in the CT senate race against Lieberman or Lamont because of the rhetoric that's been flying every which way there.

You said yourself the other week in Aspen that: "If we allow our differences over [whatever] to divide us instead of focusing on replacing Republicans [in Congress]; that's the nuttiest strategy I ever heard in my life."

I have a suggestion that you might find hard to swallow BUT might also think is the right thing to do:

Convince Hillary NOT to run for President in 2008 AND

Develop and manage (with Hillary) a Draft-Al-Gore campaign for President because:
- of his passion to effect a change regarding global warming
- of his humility in relation to losing the 2000 election
- of his understanding of his mistakes particularly in relation to using you as an asset in his campaign
- of his basic sincerity and humanity
- because he can be a better Internet candidate than any of the others (and, it's my opinion that the 2008 Presidential election will be the first in which the Internet is the primary and most effective media)
- and because it's very likely the best solution for 2008 and for our country's future

All these points have public appeal, and with your support (and without the conflict of Hillary's candidacy) could make the difference in what portends to be a very close, costly and bitter race.

And count on me for support in money, effort, technology and whatever else is needed.

Thank you for your consideration.

Ex-Politico

Internet Privileged vs. Internet Resistant and the 2008 Election Cycle

2006-07-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

Fellow bloggers, political browsers, and members of Daily Kos are the privileged ones. We can handle ourselves on the Internet; find what we want; view and listen and comment. We're not intimidated by blogs, vlogs, podcasts, etc. And when it comes to campaigning, we're more interested in getting the facts on our own rather than being told what they are through advertisements.

So who are the underprivileged; the resistant*? This group is equally important because they are also prime targets for the 2008 Election Cycle. If we don't find and identify this group they might miss the massive amount of real information, our candidate's information, and the pleasure of independent research.

People who were 12 or younger in 1992 were on the cusp of the Internet revolution. They learned it and took it for granted and are adept at navigating and searching for whatever they want. They gather information as they become interested; they participate when the feel like it; they buy confidently, contribute freely, and disseminate regularly. So the campaign pitch to those folks is to interest them in finding out more; doing more; thinking more; participating more; contributing more.

The older groups of 1992 contained many of the resisters, particularly in the 1992 age range of 40-65 who are now 55-80. Some of the seniors within that group have learned what it is and how to use it because it's their primary source of communication with their dispersed families, but they're not really at ease with all the capabilities and features. The remaining group of AARP-elegibles are prime targets for traditional advertising and also for sympathetic Internet training.

Segmenting the electorate into Internet saavy versus traditional and also by Internet resistance versus taking it for granted are necessary first steps toward making the 2008 Presidential Election our first real Internet-as-primary-media election.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point when he hosted "The Charlie Rose Show" and interviewed Jonathan Alter of Newsweek a few weeks ago. He said:

Successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times.

The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering.

Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio.

John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.

And with an issue as eye-glazing as the deficit, a wacky, jug-eared Texan named Ross Perot received 19 percent of the vote. He did it with "Larry King Live" and an 800 number.

Howard Dean and later John Kerry showed that the whole idea of "early money" is now obsolete in presidential politics. The Internet lets candidates who catch fire raise millions in small donations practically overnight. That's why all the talk of Hillary Clinton's "war chest" making her the front runner for 2008 is the most hackneyed punditry around. Money from wealthy donors remains the essential ingredient in most state and local campaigns, but "free media" shapes the outcome of presidential races, and the Internet is the freest media of all. Finally, since at least a quarter of the voting population voting early or absentee, traditional methods of advertising are diluted further still.

The 2008 presidential election cycle will begin shortly. I believe, like Schieffer, that he who masters the prevailing media will win. That media used to be TV but by 2008 it will be the Internet - and we are all players in this new drama.

Be sure to vote.

* Cartoonist Mike Reed became famous a few years ago because of a flame-out he had with a few people on a digital arts forum. He was silent for a few weeks and then came back with a dozen cartoons that expressed his anger. Appreciation of those cartoons led to a book called "Flame Warriors."

A Little Heart, A Lot of Brotherhood vs. the Politics of Fear

2006-07-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

A recent interview in BusinessWeek with George Soros:

"The Bush Administration and the Nazi and Communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear."

Do you really believe the Administration is a threat to democracy?

Yes, I really do believe that, and that is why I got involved in politics. By claiming to engage in a war against an unknown enemy that will never disappear... President Bush has appropriated excessive powers for the executive branch... undermining the division of powers that have been the mainstay of our democracy. In addition, he succeeded for a while in making any criticism of his policies appear as if it was unpatriotic. That undermines the first principle of an open society: critical thinking.

Your book dwells on the negative. Don't you run the risk of being perceived as a very wealthy Chicken Little?

I do. But I contend that we have become a feel-good society unwilling to face harsh reality. As a result, reality has become increasingly threatening.

Remember Lee Atwater? How ruthless he was? How harsh? How his words were so well chosen that they drilled their message into the hearts of the intended victims but sailed by everyone else?

Did you know that Bush was good friends with Atwater and worked across the hall from him during his father's campaign for president and encouraged his father to heed to Atwater's advice when it was cruel even to Bush Sr.? W learned from and repeatedly endorsed Atwater's tactics and practices. One of Atwater's lessons was repetition. Repeat a key phrase or idea from a variety of sources and people's disbelief will slowly deteriorate. You see this daily in DC with statements eminating from Rove's office delivered as talking points from the Speakers office, the RNC and various Rep candidates across the country.

Having been in that business and known the players - including Atwater - it's hard to be compassionate to Bush because he knows what he is doing. And I don't feel that I'm naive in this belief because I knew Atwater and felt the blows of his attacks and the pain of his victories. It was good training for Bush and there's no doubt that he was a quick and thorough learner.

Atwater came to recant what he had done.

In a February 1991 article for Life Magazine, Atwater wrote:

My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.

It took a fatal brain tumor to elicit Atwater's poignent repentence. I don't see anything short of that which could shake President Bush's repeated lies and reliance on Rove and others who daily repeat Atwater's worst traits.

Soros is right: there are harsh realities that are slipping away from us day by day by the repeated diversions, fear and bickering of the Bush Administration.

It's time for people in the news to return to being investigative reporters instead of repeaters of Administration stuff. Doesn't any newspaper or magazine have an investigative reporter and editor willing go after Rove and Bush and stand up to the harassment that is sure to come?

Open Letter to the Editor of Time Magazine

2006-07-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm astounded that Time chose Rove for "Lessons from a Larger-than-Life President" (with a cover highlight) for your Teddy issue (which I very much enjoyed and appreciated (sans Rove)).

He was cited as a history buff. Actually he is more of a malicious political trickster. He has learned how to misuse and manipulate the system and the people who depend on it. During his time in the campaign process, and now on the federal payroll, he has undermined trust, accelerated fear, spread rumors, cultivated a culture of religious elitism, and disseminated so many attacks that he can hardly be a credible addition to your magazine's cadre of respectable reporters.

One blogger, in response to this article, said that Rove "should be kept away from elections for the same reasons we keep Charlie Manson away from the cutlery. And not only that, but he's the guy who spent a flat year hanging one of Time's own reporters out to dry! Rove's a vandal and a thug who would tear the Time-Life Building down for a parking lot if he thought it would mean five points on the next Gallup Poll."

Instead of adding articles from Rove, Time should be writing articles about the terrible things that Rove is doing while we, as taxpayers, are paying him. Isn't that a crime? Doing the things he does on the government payroll? Doesn't Time have an investigative reporter and editor willing go after him and stand up to the harassment that is sure to come?

I hope so!

2008: The First Internet Presidential Election?

2006-07-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

Bob Schieffer of CBS News made a good point when he hosted "The Charlie Rose Show" and interviewed Jonathan Alter of Newsweek. He said:

Successful presidents have all skillfully exploited the dominant medium of their times.

The Founders were eloquent writers in the age of pamphleteering.

Franklin D. Roosevelt restored hope in 1933 by mastering radio.

John F. Kennedy was the first president elected because of his understanding of television.

And with an issue as eye-glazing as the deficit, a wacky, jug-eared Texan named Ross Perot received 19 percent of the vote. He did it with "Larry King Live" and an 800 number.

No one knows exactly where technology is taking politics, but we're beginning to see some clues. For starters, the longtime stranglehold of media consultants may be over [Yeah!!!]. In 2004, Errol Morris, the director of "The Thin Blue Line" and "The Fog of War," on his own initiative made several brilliant anti-Bush ads (they featured lifelong Republicans explaining why they were voting for Kerry). Not only did Kerry not air the ads, he told me recently he never even knew they existed. In 2008, any presidential candidate with half a brain will let a thousand ad ideas bloom (or stream) online and televise those that are popular downloads. Deferring to "the wisdom of crowds" will be cheaper and more effective [than focus groups and pollsters].

Open-source politics has its hazards, starting with the fact that most people over 35 will need some help with the concept [but this is easy to overcome].

Also, the Internet strips big shots of their control of the process [which is a good thing]. Politics is at its most invigorating when it's cacophonous and chaotic.

I began writing and speaking about the Internet in politics in 1994. I had a vision that is just now taking place. A vision where funds came from eager people wanting to join the process of electing their choice to the Presidency; where they could afford their contribution(s); where they could be informed of and join a regional rally or event; where they could research his or her stances on issues pertinent to them; where they could download photos, posters and campaign materials for themselves and their friends; where they could hear and see their candidate speak on various issues - basically what is happening now and can be seen clearly by reviewing the Edwards, Clark, Clinton, Warner and McCain websites.

The 2008 Presidential election cycle - now beginning in earnest - may be the first where the Internet is the key media factor. And using Schieffer's analogy, he who master's the media most effectively, wins.