Racism, Prejudice and Genetics - today's Taboo

The amount of political and socially charged opinions, and just how important those opinions happen to be, has created a climate of near censorship, socially imposed and even more taboo than talking about sex today.

It will be interesting for those in the future to know, that one who expresses their opinions about race and religion is at risk, not only in the public forum of the internet, but in semi private bedrooms and ultra private boardrooms across the country.

I dont think this socially imposed censorship should be the rule of the day. I believe in free speech as the method to resolve issues and conflicts in a non-violent manner. And the oppression of such speech is why we still have such difficulty with this issue, some 200 years later.

I have a unique perspective regarding race relations, to say the least.

Yes, everyone has their story, but my life happens to be uniquely poised to think about and understand issues of race and prejudice.

In short, I was reared in an outspoken Atheist household living in the heart of conservative Utah, among a strong majority of Mormon families just outside of Salt lake city. Nearly everyone we knew was Mormon.. all he neighbors, the butcher, gas station guy, school teacher, police chief.. we were the only Atheist family that I knew of, at the innocent age of 5 found myself bullied by the local kids for being different. My parents encountered the prejudice in a more direct manor, causing our whole family to pack up and move out to California.. for religious freedom in 1974.

As my father often worked abroad, I had the opportunity to live in South Africa and Botswana in the middle of Apartheid.

Moving back to the states, I found the multicultural like to be more interesting, so I moved to the east bay area: a place where, if you pick a random person off of the street, you are just as likely to speak to someone from hundreds of different possible countries.. way to many to list.

And it is this diversity that not only was fascinating to me, but I could see was somehow a binding force, or some kind of identity or badge of honor. As a result of so many cultures in such a small area, it is so easy to enjoy many different cultures in complete on any given day: the food, clothes, language, music, song, stories, lifestyle, perspective.. its absolutely fascinating and enriching to me.

And, unfortunately, on this wonderful tapestry of cultures, a half-assed scrawl of pre-pubecent tagging.. namely the concept of power, competition, fear, violence, gangs and racism.. scrawled all over such a beautiful work of cultural art that is the bay area.

You can tell, Im a little bit wishful that the fantasy of ethnic harmony will come to my town.

In the mean time, it serves as yet another interesting environment to further my understanding of Prejudice and Racism.

Since WWII, understandably, there has been a hesitancy to talk about the genetic differences between us, as thought we would like them to not exist. I happen to think that is what makes us interesting and strong, as I was saying, but others, I think, would like us to actually all be the same, not just 'created equal' under the god(s), state, or social more.  But the fact is, we are all different, either by design or accident.

Setting race aside for the moment, everyone knows that some of us are good with numbers, some have a way with words, others with movement, or music.. seemingly many skills are independent of eachother.. might have someone who is a skilled pianist who cant dance or balance his checkbook for example.. but there are many around us. Very few of us, if any, have exactly the same "propensity" for all the differing skills there are to be had. (yes I know propensity is charged)

We all know that, at 5 9, from a line of shorter men, my opportunity to high jump over 7ft is not forthcoming.

There is a lot of debate about how much some of our various skills come from Genetic traits passed on from by our ancestors, or learned in essence from the world around us.

It makes sense to me, that some skills are nearly all Genetic, others nearly all learned, and most somewhere in between.

I assume all the various skills one can posses, if you actually had the information about their derivation in this respect, and mapped it all out, would show a wide distribution of possible sources for our traits.

So, if some traits are nearly all Genetic, like my ability to high jump 7', you can assume I wont be able to learn the behavior no matter how much I practice the Fosbury flop.

So, some traits, like playing Chess for example, is to me, clearly a mixture of learned and genetically expressed behavior, as most behaviors probably are.


Individuals carry genetic and learned behavior in the context of their ancestors past, and their immediate culture. We carry genes expressing similar traits as all humans, and specific traits to groups of humans with whom evolved over tens of thousands of years of history.. Distinct Races, as we call them today, were the same humans, just distinct groups in geography, evolving minute amounts of distinct genetic traits from other groups of humans concurrently on earth.

We all know the stereotypes, White people cant jump, Asians cant drive, etc...  and we all know there is some truth to the generalities. Different Races of people have distinct genetic traits, obviously. And it is silly to think it stops at the color of ones skin.

So why cant we openly talk about the different skills, or weaknesses of certain groups of poeple?

When differences are disscussed you can have one of two reactions..

The first.. organize the various differences into a competitive landscape, a hierarchy, or valuation system of positive or negative traits associated with the ones value systems associates with various traits, or lack there of.

The second.. to see the differences as all the same, as a tapestry of different skills, talents, weakness and short-comings, all combined into a uniform emulsion of genetic expression through form, thought and action.

For those who choose the first path, discussion of genetics and race would understandably be quite troublesome. Simply the mention of different traits can cause subjugation, supremacist ideology and the like.

For those who choose the second, genetic differences are enjoyable to identify, expressed in individuals and groups alike.


Part 2 to come, feel free to comment.

















 

Big Busness Governs the Government in the USA

A very interesting development last month, in the changing power relationship between big government, and big business:

This last month, Apple computer announced, followed by a few other very large global companies, that they had been hacked by China.

This was a direct message to the Chinese government, surpassing the authority of the USA. The large businesses were oviously acting in concert, and enacting a very exact plan to force the US government to admit publically that this existed, while warning China directly - giving them the clear message that big business is a separate and significantly powerful entity that must be appeased, and cannot be controlled by the USA.

The US government responded like a news reporter late on a scoop, admitting the Chinese State had tried to hack both US businesses, but also military contractors and the like.. as if they are aware, but not really into stopping it. 

I think I know why... The Chinese responded to Apples passive aggressive warning with a virtual admission of hacking, stating that the US has been doing the same thing in China for years.. of which there is no doubt. The US must think we are simply better at the game, and we can take more information than we will give up, with a semi-secret and open Cyber warfare with China. thus the lack luster response to some kind of Cyber armistices.

Times are a changing... With Corporations and State blending.. Imagine a Chinese company with so much influence in our politics, that we allow them to take information from American companies.. not at all far fetched with a perverse Econopolitical system.

Business influence over government in the states has changes the political dynamics of the world.

Global domination games have taken an unusual shape.. with sworn enemies fighting WWII style wars while concurrently conducting business and trade. I wonder is Nixon had this in mind all along..

And a trend that is just starting, but will increase.. States are buying areas of land on the commercial market, or overthrowing un-business-friendly governments rather than invading them with State sponsored military and tring to hold territory by force, trends that can only increase until the people rise up and stop it through the media. 

Double Bubble - The Next Financial Malfunction

As confirmation, while talking to my real estate working friend in Napa California..

"its crazy," she says, shaking her head slowly in amazement. "its like its started all over again.. each listing is coming back with multiple cash offers above asking"

We have a Double Bubble on our hands.

And yes, with respect to real estate in Napa, many are first time buyers, and people getting back into the housing market in order to have a home in which to live.

But the is an enormous amount of speculation in both the housing and stock market driven by artificially low interest rates, is very schetchy...

Inventory of houses is tight, due to speculation, artificially driving up these prices again for the live in home owner. 

"They are doing it again," She says, " ..there is no way this house is worth that much."

And the ability for foreign interests to so easily buy a piece of America, is quite startling.

I mean, there is only one reason some other country has not come purchased a large contiguous chunk of America, just as just happened in Grease, a foreign interest purchased a few Greek Islands while there pants are down.

So, what is preventing foreign interests from causing another crash, and taking the money out of the country just as has happened in the last financial crash we just experienced. international interests profiting from financial collapse, and then profiting again by loaning us our own money back to bail us out... not to say there isnt enough blame to be evenly distributed among most industrial nations.

The solution, as the title of this blog suggests, is to get big money out of our politics.. moderately tax, and heavily regulate financial speculation in this country.

I highly recommend this read: Columbia University hosted a very tight study on what happened, and what should be done:

http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/null?&exclusive=filemgr.download&file_id=70150

History will call this era the "financial wild west". Quite uncivilized. One day we will all be forced to comply. 

Front and Center - the left splits in half

The coming revolution is as sure as rain.

If there is any result of the Arab spring that will capture the attention of history, is the resulting irony of revolution in the US.

Why, we ask, did the Arab spring catch like wildfire across the middle east?

Simply because people witnessed the sheer power of protest, and how truly unstoppable it is.

The only component necessary, after the full disclosure of the actual risks of such a revolution, is the level of angst to outweigh the costs.

The costs of revolution through protest, thought to be quite high, has been discovered to be much less, causing a global adjustment to the cost/benefit equation of revolution.

There is now less of a threshold, a lower necessary level of discontent necessary to tip the scale.

Does any one think, after witnessing the Arab spring, that we cannot bring down any government on earth with simple passive resistance alone? Quite clearly, we can.

So, the threshold of pain has yet to be reached in the US. But when and if it does, we will not need to take up arms against anyone. The revolution will happen at the right time, and the people will be ready to form a new government when that time is right.

I listen to the Obama Democrats, as I call them, or those who voted for Obama twice.. and what I hear astounds me.

Obama is an obvious conservative, if anyone knows what the term means in context. Not only does the left not protest his imperialist military policies, but they stand in line to worship the man. Some of these same people were student leaders protesting the Vietnam war in the 60's. Hippies into Yuppies, they abandoned their principles in the booming 90's and haven't looked back.

I have to laugh when people talk about the banks causing the housing crash. It was personal greed, for the most part. I watched it all around me at the time. People took what they could get, with little concern for the big commune. These are the hippies, now driving hybrids and eying their 401ks.

Noam Chomsky and Cornel West both talk about how the values of the 'left' changed from social welfare to the protection of personal freedoms, ie civil liberties and the like. There was a time when lifting a citizen out of poverty was the central liberal agenda, as opposed to abortion rights, global warming, labor union protection and the like.

People talk about the extreme right and their salacious ideas, but the left has shrunk so far as to only include those who participated in the Occupy movement, those who mostly protest the voting system for lack of authenticity, and a majority of despondent and apathetic give-upers who have also chosen the selfish path.

And from this motley crew, we will find the leader of the next great American revolution.

War on terror and global domination

It is amazing how efficient the suppression and control of information has become, in the main stream US press..

What started as a 'war on terror', in revenge for 911, has increasingly merged with existing struggles of global domination, after the Arab Spring in particular, pitting old foes against each other upon 'terrorist' fighting lines.

The cold war is not over. In fact, Russian aggression in Georgia while the US was over burdened with Iraq and Afghanistan, is a clear indication that Russia is capable, willing, and looking for the opportunity to take territory.

The stalemate in Syria is one of the most brutal of US policies, harking back to the encouragement of civil wars in Aria, conflicts like Afghanistan v Russia, Iraq v Iran. The US war mongers love the idea of Islamists dying to fight Iranian and Russian secret service and militia, not to mention depleting the strength of Syrian state.

The US learned from the arming of the Mugahadeen in fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan that they may very well morph into a al Qaeda like entity, able to turn the fighting skills and weapons provided by the US, back on the US in time...  The US learned not to arm or train them, just to get them to fight effectively enough to create a stalemate against another enemy (in this case Assad in Syria)

The US is happy to see the coalescing of Islamist groups, given how difficult it has been to find and bomb them into submission. How wonderful it would be, for our WWII style military, built to take and hold land. Stand there and let us shoot at you.. sounds silly, but we figured out how to get Islamists to not only show themselves, in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to get them to stand up and fight our enemies.

I dont think the US military is smart or talented enough to make that happen by design, but since it has materialized, the US brass is all over supporting and perpetuating the situation.

The modernization of the military, or so Obama called it, is all about being everywhere, irrespective of declarations of war, or map bound conflict over land.

The US decided not to follow international law, quite some time ago now. Part of that, is not playing by the rules of engagement up to that point. No declaration of war necessary, no need to hold territory, no need to send public personnel, using technology to blur the lines of the old paradigm. - For example, we now do business with our enemies, as long as our conflicts are low on the public radar. (Russia, China)

What we thought would be a war of information and espionage, has also been a war of evolving methodology in how to use that information (drone strikes, political and social manipulation, for example). Managing stability of nations, or the lack thereof, has been the key to the new global war.

The Arab spring has provided a large opportunity for the US. Both the Muslim brotherhood movement and the fall of dictators we didnt favor. In general, the middle east is unstable, just like we want it. We dont want them to become too powerful, in a state kind of way, ie Iran. Its much better to see the tribal fiefdoms all across the middle east, not able to organize any major military to threaten the global position of the US. Its a risky strategy, but thats what we are going with, given the results of the Arab spring to date.

I think we learned from what Al Qaeda tried to do in Iraq, when they started car bombing opposite sides of old religious and cultural lines of conflict in Iraq in order to cause instability. We figured that was a great tactic, even though it didnt work for Al Qaeda of Iraq, with our resources and military sophistication, we could do that same trick much more effectively. I think this is now playing itself out in Syrian policy.

The US will go after the militants that gather, or recruit significant followings.. like in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, parts of Indonesia, for example, as long as they are not busy fighting our enemies. I think they like the idea of a situation like Mali, where there is a visible force to defeat, especially if Europe foots most of the bill.

Where the Islamists do not solidify into a fighting force of size, we will attack them with commandos and drones. 

We have military in over 130 countries or so.. its hard to count at this point. There is little hope of a change in strategy like long term economic engagement, or appeasement and recognition of those who want to live under Sharia law. Our support and cooperation with Saudi Arabia should be an example of how we can peacefully work with conservative Islamic states, not a reason for us to abandon relations with other Islamic states that may develop in northern Africa.



 

The second great depression and the Occupy movement of 2012.

It was almost ten years ago now, I was warning my friends who were buying houses they could not afford, that they were sitting of a bubble about to burst.

Yes, I thought it would be a 20% adjustment, the banking system was banking on a government bailout, and would get it.

What I didnt see, was how the ill timing of the retooling of the US economy, from a manufacturing to a service, and intellectual property based economy, and the increasing equalization of wages due to globalization, in conjunction with a %35 miss-speculation on the housing market, caused global ramifications in the solvency of nation states.

I knew the banks were lending money they knew would not be repaid, to make money on the transaction, write off the loss, and get bailed out in the end.. all while each employees within those banks kept getting raises and bonuses.

The hire ups in the banks figured out they would make more money with a collapse and subsequent bailout, reaping the benefits of the booming business all the way up..

.. being sure to sell at the top.. as on the way down, one could take the million dollar severance, blow a kiss to the regulatory bodies of the US government, and retire to Florida.

It's all a shell game that is a bit to obvious to play. Except we have no choice.

Due to corporate influence in US politics, there is little effective regulatory reaction to what led to the global financial crisis. I have read that the financial industry, in their infinite wisdom, could not have imagined getting away with what they did, and are now able to continue at will. I am told they are downright giddy that they made a lot of money during the 'crash' and are excited to see the game continue.

Speculation is still a huge part of the daily amout of dollars spent in the stock market. Anyone, including absolutely huge stock brokerages, or fund managers, can bet in the failure of whatever they want to see fail, including the US government.

The buying and selling of nothing more than knots of mathematics, imaginary products of risk and tolerance. Bets that create economies of perverse intensive.

Economies of perverse incentive, people. This is not a good thing.

We want out systems of economies, and yes we can and should guide them.. we want them to be built on positive relationships and intensives. ie, healthy competition drives innovation and efficiency, that is good for the economy.

This is what we should have learned about why Communism wasnt efficient at providing social welfare - the incentive to compete was absent, creating disincentive to be creative, or work harder to make more, in fact you are working harder and making the same, in effect making less.

So, we have not, to this point, proposed or passed any meaningful regulation to change to rid our system of its perverse incentives, or the rampant speculation as its main source of funding.

This is because big business, including the banking system, have nearly complete control of the US political system, at this point.

I already see a bubble developing in the way Chinese and Indian growth is funded, not to mention Brazil.

The problem for us is, and this post is here to predict, that the next financial collapse will be without bailout, leading to a painful global depression. This next crash could bring most all of us back to per-industrial living conditions due to a lack of capital investment in small buiness.

My guess is we have 20 or so years before it goes down, so to speak. Enjoy it while we can, and prepare for rough seas ahead... as the greedy will hold on to our system, like a pitbull will hold onto its prey long after the dog is dead.

The Occupy Oakland movement is just the beginning here in the states. The Arab Spring has inspired the movement, and has reminded everyone across the world of the power of protest.

Especially in Syria, if the protests are successful there, in the face of such brutality, that will send a strong message to the US as well.

This may be as simple as getting the corporate right to person-hood revoked, and getting all public elections publicly funded by a general tax... or as simple as a 'separation of corporation and state' amendment (28th!!).

In the end, the corporations couldn't govern the people if it wanted to, so they will fail in politics. Its just a matter of time until they are kicked out due to incompetence and the power given back to the actual electorate. I just hope its a swift kick in the butt, so we can get back to prospering as a country.

Free Topo Map of SF Bay

After looking for a half an hour for a simple topo map of the bay area.. thought Id post it here so you all can find it easier..