Editorial on the news of the Day and Review of the Gridlock around the world.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

North Korea Draws line in the sand

North Korea has rejected further talks on its nuclear program using language that could close the door on future progress. Until that is the PRK needs something from the world community.

The rhetoric issued by Choe Su Hon, North Korea's deputy foreign minister is issued in a final sounding context.

"It is quite preposterous that the DPRK, under the groundless U.S. sanctions, takes part in the talks on discussing its own nuclear abandonment," Choe said, referring to North Korea‘s formal name, the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea. He said it was a matter of principle "that cannot tolerate even the slightest concession."


That said the DPRK often issues statements that sound final or sound like ultimatums in public only to make some small amount of progress in private dialogues when the countries motives require their cooperation with other countries in the world. This set of circumstances is unfortunately few and far between.

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Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Weaponized Principles - When crazies and ineffectuals lash out

The polarized leaders of the world all share a common trait in leader ship styles. They each rely on the rhetoric of acting on principle and encapsulating that principle in a nice easy to swallow or religious tone, rule or fundamental requirement.

President Bush, President Chavez and President Ahmadinejad all share this style. They take action on world stages basing their actions on principles but stirring their local political bases to action by lacing their rhetoric in religious concepts and tones.

Each plays to their own religions hot points or buttons. Bush works under the concept of acting the simpleton, the common man, the down to the salt of the earth 'rancher' with a good ol' boy accent and many misplaced words and accents to connect to his base. President Chavez similarly fires up his base by providing impassioned dialogue against Bush. Both Bush and Chavez speak in the same terms, almost. Bush calls on the incarnation of evil where as Chavez attempts to summons the world to recognize Bush as the Devil. Two different hemispheres of culture and a slight variation of the same christian religion.

Then there is Ahmadinejad operating from a hemisphere opposite that of Bush and Chavez in the geographical sense and in the religious sense. However, Ahmadinejad and Chavez live in the same economic hemisphere, the hemisphere of petroleum. All three rely on each other. Bush dependent on the world's oil and suppliers like Ahmadinejad and Chavez. Chavez and Ahmadinejad both dependent on the consumption of the West. They'v recently seen new consumption opportunities in China, but fail to recognize that the consumption is not truly Chinese in nature. China has in recent years been working as a middle man for Western consumption. The world is pushing China to become ever more dependent and increase their own consumption almost like a historical repetition of the consumption of a 19th century opiate.

China recognizes this risk and struggles to find a middle ground that will not bind them to one side or the other.

The problem with this parlee is that the three leaders have weaponized their principles. They use the ends to justify any means whether or not that means is crazy, or inneffectual or unfair. As politicians all three are very successful in attracting attention, there's hardly any bad press in politics when weaponized principles laced with heart penetrating religion is utilized. All press can be used to justify a message to the local grass roots support of their base.

Just as when a hand gun is removed from the hands of a criminal, when their weaponized principles are removed or stripped away all three leaders appear to be devoid of substance or tangible positive results.
Bush has fought a war of terror campaign that has removed two nation state regimes from power, but in doing so he has created a breeding ground across the middle east and asia for new home grown terrorist cells.
Chavez has succeeded in isolating his country from many nations of the world especially his best paying customers and alligning himself with the agitative dictators and fringe groups that might have dropped from the radar of the world political stage if not infused with his touch of oil power.
Ahmadinejad has succeeded in scare tactic politics. Iran might have successfully lobbied for the use of peaceful nuclear technologies and systems. However, when their development actions were combined with the weaponized principle rhetoric of Ahmadinejad fire-brand of quasi religious rhetoric, many very practical people and countries doubt his sincerity.

It can all be summed up with the concept that all three benefit and suffer from on the world stage. Its hard to believe a country that tells you that they mean you no harm when their leader states, "I mean you harm and anyone else that scares me."

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Monday, September 18, 2006

Fighting Corporate Spin - The Future of Political Campaigns

I’ve been reading about a company that gather’s feedback from people that want to complain.

We’ve all seen complaint focussed websites. Someone has bought something or used some service and gotten the short end of the stick and then the company behind the product or service does the wrong thing time and time again until a complete saga worthy of a James Clavell novel develops. The whole thing gets a lot of internet publicity maybe even circulated around on emails until millions of people read it and finally the complaining victim gets the attention they deserve and the company fixes the problem.

Its kind of like the American Service Dream come true story.

Well, this story does still exist and occur but its fairy tail dimensions may be attracting some internet savvy web designers hoping to capitalize on the energy that thousands of complaining American can bring to the table. Let’s face it when a company upsets you, you need an outlet to vent sometimes as much as you need the problem fixed.

So websites are popping up that cater to these ‘content writing / generating machines’ called complainers. Throw in some advertising and a heavy load of SEO marketing experience and made for complaint websites can rocket to the top of Search Engine Rankings like Google’s.

Well that’s great in the fairy tail land where everyone has innocent motives. But what happens when a company decides that they don’t want to verify the complaints or what happens when they allow people to write up blatantly false complaints and let the sensational comment blast to the top of Google talking bad about a company or a person or old boyfriend or girlfriend or something.

A recent web release about Rip-Off Report describes these kinds of issues. They talk about a website called RipOffReport.com and its owner and talk about just these types of tactics even categorizing some activities that might be associated with extortion. So they offer up a service to combat this, not by litigating or trying to fight the thing out in the courts for months at a time. That would be something for a companies lawyers. No they work to help counter the talk on the web. Fighting the web rankings fire with their own internet savy to push the complaints further down the Google rankings to get it off the top 10 and on a good day bury it to the point where no one will ever click the ‘Next page’ button enough to find it.

With the elections coming up for mid-terms and for the next Presidential season in 2 years, politicians and political campaigns are going to have to employ similar tactics to win in the Search Engine Political fight.

In the old days, over zealous grass roots campaigners might go around and uproot political signs replacing them with their own favorite politico sign. (not necessarily legal, but happens all over and in business too) This is kind of a similar thing, but perfectly legal. Put your message to counter the claims and do it in a way that is more effective from a Search Engine Marketing perspective and your message will reach people and your oponents will not.


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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

What's the Real motive for the War on Terror?

Video asks many questions about what the motivations were.  Personally, I think the reason to go to remove Saddam was necessary, I do feel that the execution of the action was inadequate and possibly inept at worst.  So we look to the motivations behind the action to determine if there was a reason why the administration chose to invade Iraq with one third of the forces needed to win the peace.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

President Bushes losing formulas's driving away Republicans

Time offers and interesting article today. Its definitely worth a read.

As we head into the midterm elections it appears that rank and file Republicans are starting to abandon the president and Republican leaders that are sticking with the losing forumula's of the President.

63% of Americans feel that the President has mis-handled the war in Iraq and 51% feel that he hasn't executed the war on terrorism well.

I think this in part due to the fact that the President's formula included a strong offense in Iraq and a defensive position in the war on terror. As a country we have drawn ourselves in with fear mongering and worked to raise our defenses against future terrorist strikes. Simultaneously, we've lashed out with a sabre against Iraq. The sabre cut off the head of Iraq's former leadership, but did not win hearts and minds in the region as we put up barriers that repelled potential friends in the middle east.

So now, we are reaping the fruits of our ill formed labors. The Iraqi people not having a friendly shoulder to turn to in the West and having no stable local allies have begun to fall under the weight of a terrorist infusion that invaded their country shortly after our own invasion.

And what of the terrorists that scared us so badly in the first place? Like a hydra they have received a few bruisings, but raised their many headed body to taunt and strike back at us again.

The British are starting to call Tony Blair to account for a lack of a winning formula. I almost sense an irony here as it sometimes appeared that he worked to keep President Bush somewhat in check over the last few years. But no blatant failure goes unchecked in politics, and that goes double when a party runs out of scape goats.

The Republican party has preached to their principles using a clear voice for almost a decade. Unfortunately, President Bush has been systematically proving his inability to deliver the results preached by those principles. I suspect his failures may set the Republican party back more than the Watergate scandal of the early seventies.

The republicans have raised the deficit, raised governmental spending, increased the size of the governmental bureacracy, and then demonstrated its severe incompetence in the preparation of Hurricane Katrina and surprised the world with its void of concern and humanity for American citizens.

President Bush would argue that to pull out of Iraq now would be an act that would invalidate the sacrifice of over 2600 service men and women of the US armed forces. This is a false argument. His inability to lead effectively and achieve results is the only attempt at invalidation. Those service men and women lost their lives defending the constitution and following orders set into motion by the President. Their actions won the war in Iraq. The President's actions have lost the peace and his inability to react to changes in developments in Iraq lose the peace everyday.

The peace can still be won and it can be won whether or not US troops redeploy home to the United States. The peace can be won as soon as we as a country start waging and offense on terror and not reacting defensively. The first offensive move on terror starts with demonstrating that we are not afraid and that the terrorists cannot change our good will our intentions or our ability to befriend and partner with any people anywhere in the world.

Today, the terrorists and President Bush speak differently but chase the same goal. They are maintaining and increasing their political power through fear. President Bush in the early days after 9/11 talked the talk that could have steered our country away from this trap. However, he did not walk the walk, and these days he doesn't even talk a good game.

This is why elected Repbulicans are pulling away from the White House political strategies and Rhetoric and even more so, this is why so many grass roots Republicans are identifying themselves with independents and libertarians and even some democrats. The rank and file elected Republicans are hearing and feeling this from their evaporating political base and thus the weaknesses in the Republican levy are starting to show signs of leakage. The drop of water that cracked the levy can probably even be traced back to Hurricane Katrina.

This is really no surpise as many many people were disgusted with the failure of the national government to protect its citizens and with the failure of the national government to work effectively with state and local leaders. As the levies broke in New Orleans the first cracks in the Republican levies started to form. The midterm election is just a few months away and accountability for actions and failures in the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina and even the war on terrorism will become accountable. Its not the soldiers that will be voted out of office, its the politicians that failed to successfully utilize the power of the United States.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

North Korea appears to be preparing to test a Nuclear Weapon

The indications keep coming in that North Korea is preparing for another milestone.  They pulled away from talks and are now signalling to their Chinese and US counterparts that they are not interested in coming back to the table for more talks.

It is difficult to parse the truth as events unfold in the media.  The Chinese, US and North Korean governments are all coming up short in the credibility department.  The only thing that seems to be generally agreed upon is that the North Koreans have less credibility and the least to lose if they carry out a nuclear test.

North Korea may be watching the example recently set by Hammas in Lebanon.  North Korea need only maintain the status quo of not resuming talks and not meeting the demands of the international community to declare a small victory.  The status quo for North Korea is a path that could leed them to developing the capability to produce a working nuclear weapon. 

News reports indicate that North Korea is likely to have produced enough weapons grade material for 6 nuclear bombs according to US Congressional estimates and that they may have the plutonium to create a total of 13 weapons if they start production again.

In addition it is report that Kim Jong Il may be travelling by train to China and that is train is reportedly near the Chinese border.  Chinese officials have reported that no visit is planned, however a visit might not be rebuked and a visit on North Korean territory might be a possibility as well.


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