A world of the living dead and their slaves

A friend commented on the “who is in charge?” blog.  He saw another complication and ambiguity in the advances in medicine and science – the increasing number of children with serious handicaps that might, without modern science, have died.  That certainly is one of the reasons for the increase in health care costs for children – millions of children living now would have died at birth, or soon after, at any other period in human history.  I focused, because I am old, on the old side of the equation, but there is just as much of an issue on the opposite side – the very young.  Both groups contain a significant percentage of individuals existing only through the graces of science; and both groups promise to create serious challenges for society in the future.

The old will increasingly argue for choice, the right to opt out.   I remember how sad my mother was when the last friend of her generation died and left her alone; no one called her by the name of her youth, no remembered when she was young and pretty, and no one really knew her or her times.  That did not mean she did not love us or wanted to die, but she stopped wanting to live forever and started to see death as a relief from the struggles of life.   I have know other people who expressed the same thought, the “I am ready to die” thought.   As science extends the potential of life, that will become much more of an issue; people will want the right to choose when they have had enough.  And they will not be alone, reasonable and thoughtful people will also begin to understand the longer people live the more people will be living on the planet; and they will realize that all of those very old people, except those with enough wealth to be self-sustaining, will be a burden to those who are young enough to be working.

If you combine those two groups; the very old  and the not old, but not completely functional either,  you have a huge segment of the population which must be supported.  Our society might become like a bad science fiction movie, millions of living dead, living but unable to care for themselves, ruling the world.  They would rule it by virtue of forcing the rest of the population of the world into indentured servitude; working to keep them alive.  And if you had that kind of a twist to your mind you might envision a script for that movie where all humans on the planet were trapped by science in lives of misery – one group working for decades without a break to support the living dead – and the other group the living dead, held frozen – alive, but unable to live.  Cruelest of all, the workers would work and work without any hope of relief; they would work, not until they could retire, but until they too became one of the living dead.  And George Orwell thought he had a nightmare.  In our combined genius we are creating a  monster – one made of the fabric of science and technology – that might, if we let it, will take over all of human society and place it into a terrifying world of slave workers and living dead.   There are some very big decisions coming;  always choosing life over death, as we have traditionally done,  will not be so simple or so obviously right.

Who is in charge of this planet anyway?

 

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  Juana Bautista de la Candelaria Rodriguez shows a civil registry document that states she was born on Feb. 2, 1885, during a party ahead of her 127th birthday, at her home near the neighborhood of Santa Rosa in Ceiba Hueca, where she was born in the Granma region of eastern Cuba, Wednesday, Feb.1, 2012. Bautista, who is also known as Candulia, was born Feb. 2, 1885 according to the civil registry, making her possibly the oldest person in the world.(AP Photo/Franklin Reyes) Fox News Latino

As much as I follow the news, there very few issues locally, nationally or internationally that I feel personally or that are emotional for me.  So for example, I don’t feel connected to the Japanese, Russian and German power issues; should there be more nuclear power, less nuclear power – it is an abstraction and academic to me.  I really don’t care one way or the other.  Why?  I think most of the really big issues in the world are out of the control of people; there is not anyway to change the course of some things.  Regardless of what we use to fuel our lives, what we eat or how many trees we might save by going paperless, do you really think the warming and cooling of the planet that has been effecting life on its surface for billions of years can be changed by us?  Oh, sure we might slow down the process, a bit, but change it?  I don’t think so.  The world we see and know today,  will disappear, the continents will form new patterns and even the air will change; the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere will bring about new life forms and end others – this period is an epic, a period, an era and like all others and it will pass as they passed.

In our human society,  a minor subset of the various life forms on the planet, we have more impact, but still less than we think we have.  To me there are some forces driving human society that follow their own internal logic and are not subject to the opinions, needs, desires or control of individual (or groups of individuals) human beings.  Capitalism and technology are driving human society and it matters little whether it is right or wrong; it is above our moral values and it defies our control.  We don’t choose what will come next in technology, do we?  Did we vote for or in anyway choose to create iphones or did they simply grow organically out of the technology and our system of capitalism.  We are just spectators in this grand drama as we have always been; and increasingly I am aware that I am an old spectator and won’t live to see the end of any of today’s trends or learn who was right and who was wrong.

I listened to a report his morning on the increasing health cost for children.  The bottom line of the commentary was simple; the cost of treating childhood diseases is escalating dramatically and that has huge implications for the future of health costs; as it always costs more for old people than young people, a new base price is being established – a base from which we can predict costs in 50 or 60 years.  Everyone’s health costs begin to increase rapidly after the age of 65 – it is double the cost of health care for a 45-year old for example.  So when these 10-year old children in the health care system today hit 65 it will be an economic disaster.  Really?  Send me a post card.   I am going to be off doing something else.  As I don’t believe in reincarnation, I don’t think I will be worrying about heath care costs in 50 or 60 years – unless of course I am the oldest living person on the planet.

But even that could happen, I might live to be a hundred and thirty years old.  If I do, it will not be my choice.  It will be the result of improvements in medicine and medical treatment; in fact I am living today because of those improvements.  The treatment I got when I had blood clots in my lungs and the blood thinners I will take for the rest of my life are the reasons I am writing this today instead of pushing up daisies and preparing for the visits of my family on Memorial Day.   Now, mind you I was glad for both and eager to get out of the hospital, go for a run and take a woman out to dinner.  I was not ready to die, but it would not have mattered, even if I did not want to live, I would not have been able to choose.   It is not legal to opt out.  If they get me in the hospital, they can keep me and will keep me alive as long as they choose; or at least long as they are being paid to keep me alive.  It is a system and once you are in the system, you are in the system.

After the Arab Spring – it is not a Hollywood movie

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Both Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s second city, have witnessed a spate of mass-casualty bombings, generally targeting civilians Photo: AFP

The Hollywood movie is a cliche for glitzy staging and happy endings – everything is beautiful and bountiful and after a few twists and turns the boy marries the girl and they live happily ever after.  There were times last year, during the early days of the Arab Spring. that it seemed as if a Hollywood script writer was behind the action.  In those heady days, Facebook driven demonstrators took down dictator after dictator – democracy and a shinny new free society were just over the horizon.   Reasoned observers knew it would take time and not be pain free – but in a year or two and things would be perfect – the music for the final scene would be queued up and joy would be on every face.

Now, with a little more time to gain some perspective and evaluate the progress toward that perfect ending, it does not appear quite the same.   Take for example Syria, which should not qualify for as a “spring-state” for a variety of reasons, but is still part of the trend in most people’s minds.  Bashar al- Assad is still the president of Syria and does not appear to be very much weakened regardless of the acts and proclamations of the United Nations.   On the other hand, the resistance has not dried up and blown away either.  Some one is funding and arming the anti-government forces, whoever they might be, and it does appear there is more than one “opposition” force.  All along Assad has claimed the resistance was being directed by external forces with their own agendas – he, like Muammar Gaddafi before him – has laid the blame on Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Islamic radicals, in particular al- Qaeda.  Of course we laughed and said he was living in denial; we were certain his time had come and democracy would win out.  But it now seems certain that there are outside forces at work providing arms, money and even suicide bombers.  The opposition says that Assad is simply trying to make it look like there are outside forces when, in truth, the Assad forces are really behind all of the bombings, shootings and other acts of violence.

Even the secretary general of the United Nations has declared that al-Qaeda is at the bottom of some of the bombings. They fall into very clear al-Qaeda patterns, using the same methods and selecting the same types of targets.  Ban Ki-moon has not identified any outside sources for funding of the resistance army, but he does see a sinister force at work in the bombings.

“Very alarmingly and surprisingly, a few days ago there was a huge, serious, massive terrorist attack,” the secretary general said. “I believe that there must be al-Qaeda behind it. This has created again very serious problems.”London Telegraph, 5-18-12

Of course that does not prove anything, but it certainly adds a word of caution and demonstrates there is more than one force at work in Syria – and further illustrates that “spring-ness” is not visible at all now.  This is not a Hollywood movie and is not part of the wondrous Arab Spring we were celebrating just a year ago.

The is another spring-less illustration I can offer, Egypt.  Egypt, the home of Tahrir Square, million person Facebook demonstrations and the fall of Hosni Mubarak.  The demonstrations in Egypt successfully brought down the government;  the military has had a caretaker government in place since.  The military promised stabilization  until presidential elections could be held – that will be next week, parliamentary elections were held earlier this year.  The parliamentary elections made headlines because of the outcome – Islamic parties won the major of seats and that re-framed the way Egyptians and the rest of the world viewed the future of Egypt. Now, just one piece remains, to choose a president; the army swears it will turn over the reins of power to whoever wins.  That may or may not happen; but like in Syria, the demonstrators are no longer part of the process, now it is the established political parties with money, organization and a ready made constituency and the ever-present military that are dominating the debate.  That includes the Islamic party with the largest number of delegates in parliament – the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since it came out of the closet and repression of the Mubarak regime and began to function as a legal political party, Muslim Brotherhood, has taken a very conservative and cautious stance on issues; it has declared for democracy, open and free participation by everyone and it has put Sharia and Islamic fundamentalism on the back burner.  Until last week, when according to some Arab media sources, the party took a sharp turn to the right.  According to those sources, the party’s  candidate for president, Dr. Mohamed Morsi, gave a speech in where he said that one day there would be an Egyptian caliphate, ruled by Sharia with its capital in Jerusalem.   The English language version of the Muslim Brotherhood did not carry any such report.  It has published a few denials – where the party denies that Morsi said some of the things his political opponents are accusing Morsi of saying and where the Brotherhood  denies it has turned right.  The truth is difficult to ascertain if you speak and read Arabic, without that I am left pretty much in the dark reading the various reports in English.  The reports are at least regional and derived from  Arabic language sources.   Not much consolation, but some.

Even given those limitations, it is clear to me that this not the Hollywood movie I thought it was.   The Middle East is very complex and the situations are unique and specific to each country.   It does not appear there will be a wondrous and joyful sound track,  there may be no happy endings in sight and the boy and girl may be separated forever by strict laws and customs.  Wow, this is more like a French or Germany movie, isn’t it?   No simple plot lines, no guaranteed endings – I am not used to such heavy emotions or deep plots that require serious thinking.

“Thanks, David, for bringing 4,700 more games into the market. That’s great for us.”

(Courtesy of The Cordish Company/Courtesy of The Cordish Company) – An early rendering of the slots casino planned for Anne Arundel County. Washington Post, 4-26-12

The gaming industry gathers once a year in Las Vegas to discuss its future and look at the products and service that casinos will be using next year; but throughout the year there are smaller regional conference/trade shows.  This week, there is one in Atlantic City and as one might suspect, competition is a major topic.  A panel of experts, sitting inside the $2 billion, recently opened Revel discussed the Atlantic City market and its future.  The Wall Street guys are warning casino operators, investors and regulators that at least one casino has to go away in Atlantic City now that Revel is open and the Golden Nugget has been totally redone.  The East Coast Gaming Conference is not the first time anyone has heard that prediction.  Since the expansion of gaming in Pennsylvania revenues have been falling in Atlantic City; bankruptcies have become common.  So everyone knew a new, multi- billion dollar casino had to either going to grow the market – which it does not appear to be doing – or it would kill off the weaker Atlantic City casinos.  Who will be the first to die is a question no one wanted to tackle.

On another panel the discussion was not about the in-market problems of Atlantic City, but the intensity of the competition in the region; that panel was made up of gaming executives.  David Cordish was on the panel because his company is opening a new mega-casino in Baltimore, Maryland in June.  He believes there are too many casinos now on the East Coast and something should be done to limit further development.  Cordish was rather harsh in his comments on lawmakers and regulators for granting too many licenses; now that he is in the market, it seems that he want to shut others out.

When you put megacasinos close together, they generally saturate the market and don’t work,” Cordish said while warning of a gambling glut. “I don’t know how we can control the politicians; they certainly don’t understand the word `over saturation,’” Cordish said. “They think you can have casinos like Starbucks.” Press of Atlantic City, 5-17-12

One of the other panel members, a Caesars executive, thanked Cordish for adding to problem; something that seems to have slipped David’s mind all together.

“Thanks, David, for bringing 4,700 more games into the market. That’s great for us,” Don Marrandino, president of the four Caesars Entertainment Corp. casinos in Atlantic City, said sarcastically. Press of Atlantic City, 5-17-12

That is the problem; everyone thinks they should be able to do whatever they want, add more casinos, add more capacity (Caesars is in the bidding in other states in the region and operators casinos in all existing jurisdictions) and grow their revenues in anyway they can.  At the same time, they want to restrict others would might want to expand.    Of course that is not possible and even it was it would solve the problem, there are too many casinos already; any new casinos are going to hurt the existing ones; that is the nature of competitive capitalism.  The saturated markets exist, that is the reality and there is no backing up or turning around.  The next few years are going to be ugly for many casino operators and that fact is slowly dawning on everyone watching the gaming industry.  With the new casino in Cleveland opening this week there have already been a series of editorials from Detroit, Canada, Pennsylvania and Indiana warning of the impact of Ohio casinos.   In the battles to come, there are going to be some winners and some losers.  I have no idea which companies are going to win and which are going to lose, if I did I would be buying stock in the winners and selling losers.   It was so much simpler when all growth was a good thing, way back in the last century.

Should spies and killers be hung?

Julian Paul Assange  is an Australian computer programmer, political/internet activist, publisher, and journalist  He is best known as the editor in chief and founder of WikiLeaks, a media website which publishes information from whistle blowers. The site acts as a conduit for worldwide news leaks, with a stated purpose of creating open governance.  Wikipedia

Julian Assange offends me, he offends me at a visceral level, not necessarily at the intellectual level.  Although, sometimes he offends me there too.  Maybe it is Assange’s assumption that he is doing something of the highest moral value and that he is not subject to the same rulers as the rest of us.  Maybe it is because he is willing to publish leaked information regardless of the source or the danger it posses to the people he exposes – I don’t know what it is exactly, but something about him offends me.

In Iran, a 24-year old kick-boxer, Majid Jamali Fashi, was hanged for the assassination of a Tehran nuclear scientist.  The western media reports say that WikiLeaks published a confidential U.S. Embassy cable containing a detailed  diplomat’s debriefing of a person who was a ‘licensed martial arts coach and trainer’.  It is being reported that  Fashi was arrested, convicted and executed based on that information. Iran says he was working for Israeli intelligence and his arrest was a very significant accomplishment for Iran; much as killing Bin Laden was significant for us.  My first reaction to the story was outrage.  But, wait, calm down and think about this for a minute.

If Fashi helped the Israelis and killed a nuclear scientist, shouldn’t he be executed?  If an agent working for the Chinese, Russians or indeed the Iranians had killed one of our scientist, wouldn’t we be justified in executing him? Of course we would!  And as to leaked information, isn’t much of our best journalism based on confidential sources willing to tell the “real story” – like the Watergate scandal?  Watergate brought down a president and shook us to the core, but one could argue it saved democracy.  Under those circumstance, there is no crime in publishing confidential and secret information, not to me or within our criminal justice system; but Nixon was seriously pissed.   Nor is there any crime in convicting and executing a spy.   So what is my problem?  Because this story still bothers me – I mean, supposing that Fashi was not the right martial arts guy?  Or supposing he was not guilty of anything but speaking out against the government, or having too many friends on Facebook, or just having offended someone in power.

I am conflicted, I want to see the bad guys captured and punished; but I don’t want to see people punished unjustly.   It is a crime in my mind to punish people because they look like illegal, undocumented aliens, belong to the wrong church or dislike our system of governemnt and our leaders.  And therefore, it is a crime to me, to publish anything that would lead to unjust arrest and conviction of anyone.   It is a very fine line between responsibly publishing important information that discloses serious wrong doing and irresponsibly publishing anything you can get your hands on.

All of this would be just an academic exercise were it not for the man dangling at the end of the rope; nothing like a good visual is there?  I wonder if Julian looks at the pictures online, is he proud of his work, does he have any misgivings?   – [Disclosure: the person in the photograph is a real person, that is a real execution in Iran, but the man being hung is not Majid Jamali Fashi.]

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“The Chinese middle class is going to change the world.” – James Packer

A joint project between Turkey and Greece to promote the two countries to Chinese tourists is scheduled to become operative in a short period of time.

James Packer, the Australian billionaire read my blog on China yesterday and added a comment.  Okay, Packer did not read the blog and his comment, although apropos, came from another perspective entirely and was delivered to another audience – Australia.   Packer owns casinos in Australia and in Macau; his father was a legendary gambler, a whale who once lost $30 million in a weekend in Las Vegas; but he made his  money in the media, when he died was the richest man in Australia.  James inherited his father’s empire, but is slowly converting his holdings  into a gambling empire – concentrating on casinos, not the media.

Packer has been on a mission lately to get the Australian government to open its eyes to a new reality and put out the welcoming mat for the Chinese.  Packer would like to make it easier for Chinese high-rollers to get in and out of Australia and to exchange money for gambling.  This week Packer was lecturing on Chinese tourism in general – telling the Australians what Chinese tourists want to see – not surprisingly he thinks casinos are more important than mountains to the Chinese – and comparing the Chinese to the internet; a force that cannot be resisted and should be embraced if one wants to survive and prosper in the brave new world of tomorrow.

Packer says the Chinese middle class is going to change the world – I think he is right – it may not have next year or in the next decade, but a huge wave of Chinese with money to spend is building up in the east and eventually will be breaking across the shorelines of the rest of the world.  If you haven’t thought about what you might sell to them, you want to begin to think about.

Australia’s flagging tourism industry can be saved by attracting the Chinese middle class to large casinos, Crown chairman James Packer says. Mr. Packer said recognizing the Chinese middle class was as important as recognizing the internet. “It’s like saying how big a deal is the internet,” Mr. Packer told Channel Nine. “The Chinese middle class is going to change the world.”He said Australia cannot rely on its natural beauty alone, because people are more drawn to man-made attractions. “A lot of the Chinese tourists like man-made attractions as well as natural attractions,” he said. Australian Age, 5-15-12

Better living through chemistry – a solution for every problem – if we have enough time left

Teachers and students experience hydrogen-powered vehicles in Nanjing University on May 12. China news.com,Yang Bo, Chinese People’s Daily, 5-14-12)

Better living through chemistry was a commercial slogan, but it is also a mindset that has dominated western European thinking for two centuries.   I have no idea exactly when it the idea first started to gain traction, sometime in the 19th century.   Science seemed to be able to solve every problem we as a society faced and lead us into a better and richer future.  The inventions driven by the evolving sciences changed the way people lived.  Those inventions have come in a constant stream for two hundred years; steam power, cotton gins, railroads, electric lights, telegraph, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, radios, television, computers and the internet.  Inventions rushed out of scientific brains as if they came from the wands of magicians.  It was the same with medicine; the plague, polio, malaria, leprosy, bacteria infections, measles, mumps, tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea and practically any other disease that plagued humanity for the last five or ten thousand years, except, of course, that pesky cancer, can be cured or at least made endurable through modern medicine.  Today it is possible to replace hearts, kidneys, knees, shoulders and many other organs or body parts – got a worn out part, it can either be tuned up or replaced.  Science has all  the answers; we live better lives with a little help from those friendly chemical, don’t we?

The inventors just followed the science; and science was applied where it was needed it most – or possibly where the rewards are greatest; necessity is the mother of invention -right?  That is a good thing, because we have a couple of really big problems that are going to need to be solved if the human race is to survive in its present state.  As the population of the planet works its way toward 10 billion people we are running out of liveable space, farmable land, potable water and of course the fuel that has powered the last hundred years of economic growth and expansion – fossil fuels.  A solution to those problems has not been commercially viable enough for the scientific geniuses and their super-powerful computers to really put their efforts into the subject; so here we sit, all of the people in the world, using up our most important and non-renewable resources, waiting and until science decides to quit making better plastic, slicker communication devices and new lungs for old people and find some way to make places to live, food to eat, water to drink and a bit of fuel to speed us on our way.

In the 19th century, the British and European scientists were the guys on the job, in the 20th century, the Americans stepped up and took up much of the heavy lifting, but who is going to do that in the 21st century?   I think it will be the Chinese; first there are more of them and they have a much greater need for land, water and fuel than any country except India.  Secondly, because they are less apt to do a calculation on the economic return on investment before taking on a problem than any other country that might be leading the charge.  Therefore the Chinese are free to do what needs to be done, instead of what pays to be done.  I don’t think we need to worry about forcing Detroit to make alternative fuel cars – I think the Chinese will do it for us.

The Chinese are buying more cars a year now than we are, they are faced with worse pollution problems that Los Angeles in the 1970s and the have a middle class clambering to have cars.  The Chinese really need cars that run on something other than fossil fuels and it looks like they are on the way to finding a solution to the problem.   We will not like it when we have to buy our cars from China because there simply is not enough fossil fuel left on earth to fuel our internal combustion engine automobiles – but we won’t have a choice.  There are some things that cannot be put off for ever – if we don’t solve the problems someone else will, like the Chinese.  Or not, in the or not case, we will all die when there is not enough oxygen in the air or enough water in the ground to sustain human life.  An i-phone, new knee, faster food or bigger house will not be of any use to us then, will it?  Nor will it matter who makes the most efficient car.