Welcome President Obama to the Philippines, we need more investments & trade, not just arms & alms

Welcome Pres. Obama, we need more investments & trade, not just arms & alms

I'm inspired by the people I meet in my travels--hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency…They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. --- Barack Obama

            Welcome to the intellectually brilliant, eloquent and well-intentioned U.S. President Barack Obama to Asia’s most fun-loving country the Philippines. I urge Obama to please prioritize promoting more American investments, trade and tourism here, not just rosy speeches and effusive photo-ops, not just free U.S. military access to our archipelago, not just aid, not just more sales of military weapons.

It is sad that not many of our politicians realize that the true bulwark of national security and the best foundation for our democracy is a vibrant, self-reliant and globally-competitive Philippine economy, not just more new warplanes or ships.

Image above of President Barack Obama sourced from en.wikipedia.org

            President Obama’s desire for a strategic pivot (or “rebalance”, as the White House has seemingly renamed it after supposed panic and complaints from close allies in the Middle East and Europe) to Asia should hopefully be more vigorous economically, not just on the diplomatic, military and political aspects.

Help nudge our leaders to push economic democracy

I hope pro-poor President Obama can nudge our political leaders to push more decisive socio-economic reforms such as a Theodore Roosevelt-style anti-trust law and Senator Grace Poe’s Freedom of Information (FOI) bill. How can our economy be truly dynamic if it is agriculturally semi-feudal and industrially oligopolistic?

Also, on April 22---Earth Day, ecological champion Senator Loren Legarda and director Brillante Mendoza launched a riveting documentary on the destruction of the priceless marine biodiversity in our many coastal areas where millions of the rural poor live. I urge Obama to give technological and financial aid to our environmental projects, especially since logging, mining and other huge extraction of our natural resources grew under U.S. colonial rule and mostly by the multinationals.

Despite the gitzy malls and many new condominiums in our cities, we in Philippine society still have a long way to go economically. True, we’re politically an American-style constitutional democracy, but not yet an economic democracy.

In fact, it was a tragedy that U.S. colonizers had failed to implement agrarian reform and end feudalism in the Philippines the same way they did in postwar Japan under General Douglas MacArthur. I recall reading that MacArthur once even said that if he were a Filipino, he’d most likely have been a Huk rebel in the 1950s.

True, we’ve enjoyed investment-grade ratings upgrades and high economic growth rates, but the benefits have not yet trickled down fast enough. The small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) are still not yet very energized. I hope the civil libertarian Obama can nudge our leaders to push inclusive economic growth and help make the Philippines a true economic democracy with a broad-based middle-class.

U.S. once helped build up Philippine economy to No. 2 in Asia

Image above of USA and Philippine flags sourced from finestflags.com

Before at the residence of then U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney, I told her that in our ethnic Chinese family’s over two centuries here in the Philippines---including the Spanish colonial era, the brief interlude of Japanese military occupation and the post-war decades of independence---family elders say that the half-century American colonial period witnessed the rise of the Philippines into Asia’s second richest and most developed economy. Can the U.S. again more vigorously support the Philippine economy with preferential import tariffs, more investments and tourism?

            This need for stronger U.S. economic engagement with Asia should hopefully be uppermost in the agenda and priorities of Obama during his trip. We in the Philippines have received the least amount of economic aid, investments and trade from the U.S. compared to the three Asian countries Obama is visiting such as America’s former World War II foe Japan, South Korea and even Malaysia which used to be led by harsh U.S. critic ex-Prime Minister Mahathir.

More USA investments & trade with ex-foe Vietnam than ally Philippines

Image above of overlapping USA and Vietnam flags sourced from flamenkitaviajera.com

Even Vietnam, another war foe which even dealt the United States its first ever military defeat in history, has in recent years amazingly received more American investments, aid, trade and tourists than we here in the Philippines despite our “special relations”, our being the only former U.S. colony in Asia, our being staunchest U.S. ally since World War II, our fluency in American-style English as well as our having better U.S.-style legal and accounting systems here.

According to the U.S. Embassy in Manila: “The United States is among the Philippines’ top trading partners, and it traditionally has been the Philippines’ largest foreign investor… The stock of U.S. foreign direct investment in the Philippines exceeded $5 billion.”

In January this year, a firm identified with America’s prominent Rockefeller family announced a massive new investment in Vietnam. Rose Rock Group, a Rockefeller family-backed alternative investment management firm, said it shall help develop a $2.5 billion residential and hotel project in on the south-central coast of Vietnam.

This Vung Ro Bay development shall cover 200,000 square meters (2.15 million square feet) and to be developed with Vung Ro Petroleum Co. This huge undertaking will include 350 marina berths, hotels of over 760 rooms, 4,300 residential apartments, 100 townhouses and retail shops.

            On bilateral trade, the U.S. Embassy in Manila said: “The Philippines was the United States’ 33rd largest export market in 2012 and its 35th largest supplier. Goods exports totalled $8.1 billion; goods imports totalled $9.6 billion.” Two-way trade between theU.S. and the Philippines totalled US$17.6 billion. In comparison, bilateral trade volume between former enemies U.S. and Vietnam in the same year 2012 totalled US$ 24.890 billion dollars.

            President Barack Obama, let us substantially expand bilateral economic relations between the Philippines and the U.S. and help in our war against poverty.

I wish to pay tribute to an outstanding political leader, a courageous and principled man, a brash and decisive reformer---the late three-term New York City Mayor Edward Koch who died at age 88.

Ed Koch had demonstrated through his life and sterling public service record that one could be proud of ethnic heritage and still be a patriot of one's adopted country---having been Jewish and also American.

Read the two eulogies by a Bloomberg News columnist and another by the New York Times below.


(This image below sourced from wtsp.com)






(Image below sourced from nytimes.com)




(Image below of New York City sourced from blogs.villagevoice.com)




(Image below of New York City sourced from everaftermiami.com)





Here is an eloquent eulogy by Jeffrey Goldberg, a columnist of Bloomberg News:

Ed Koch, Proudest of Jews

By Jeffrey Goldberg Feb 2, 2013 12:14 AM GMT+0800

One of the reasons I adored Ed Koch (with eyes open -- I knew that his last term as mayor was a sad one, beset by corruption and hubris, and that he could have tried much harder to create a functional relationship with the city's black community) is that he reviewed movies like my grandmother reviewed movies. People may not remember this, but Koch had a long and illustrious post-Gracie Mansion career as a very bad movie reviewer. (A characteristic teaser Tweet: "Drive, don't run, to see Ryan Gosling in 'Drive.'")

My grandmother, who died several years ago and who also adored Koch -- even though Koch, unlike my grandmother, betrayed the city by living outside of it for parts of his life (my grandmother rarely ever budged from Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn) -- devoured movies, too, and her reviews had Koch's same slashing forthrightness and practical outer-borough sensibility. When I asked her what she thought of "Titanic," she answered, "Enough with the water already."

Many years ago, I gave my grandmother a moment of real joy when I told her that Koch had driven me home the night before from a dinner (his very loyal NYPD protective detail did the actual driving).
"Did you tell him I love him?" she asked. Actually, no. "Did you say thank you for saving us?" This was her unshakable view, and the view of many hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers: Ed Koch saved us. The city was in seemingly permanent decline when he took over City Hall, and he lifted up New York through sheer will, irrepressible optimism and hot air. He didn't make it perfect. But he did, in fact, save it.

There was one other aspect of Koch's gargantuan personality that moved New Yorkers like my grandmother. He was the proudest of Jews. He was just saturated with ethnic feeling, and rambunctious in his pride. His devotion to Israel was total, and he despised what he saw as an Upper West Side tendency to cringe and wring hands. He felt about the Jewish people, and their reborn homeland, the way he felt about New York.

Koch will be buried in Manhattan, of course -- he wouldn't have had it any other way. And on his gravestone, he decided several years ago, will be the words of the "Hear, O Israel" prayer, and these lines: "My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.” These words are not his own; they were the last words spoken by Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.

Even in death, Koch will be celebrating the two most important aspects of his epic life: his city, and his people.

(Image below sourced from courant.com)




Below is an eloquent obituary of the New York Times on this remarkable mayor:

Remembering Ed Koch

By THE NEW YORK TIMES 

 

Paul Hosefros/The New York Times On the brink of power: Ed Koch on primary day in 1977, two months before he was elected to his first term as mayor.

With the death on Friday of Edward I. Koch , the “little Jewish kid from the Bronx” who grew up to govern New York City through 12 of its most memorably turbulent years, remembrances of the man, his deeds, his words and his 88 years flowed in from all over the world in every possible form.

Today on City Room we are curating moments from Mr. Koch’s seemingly infinite public life, and the reaction to his passing.

12:58 P.M. | On Koch's Tombstone, Daniel Pearl's Last Words (Image below sourced from hfba.blogspot.com)

The last words of journalist Daniel Pearl, kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan while investigating al Qaeda in 2002 for the Wall Street Journal, are inscribed on Mayor Koch’s tombstone.

Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Daniel Pearl

“My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.”

Mr. Pearl, as the journalism blog Poynter points out, died 11 years ago today.

In a 2008 interview with the Associated Press, Mr. Koch said he was moved that Mr. Pearl had chosen to affirm his faith as his last words.

He also said in the interview that he bought his plot at the Trinity Church Cemetery because it was the only graveyard left in Manhattan with room. “I don’t want to leave Manhattan, even when I’m gone,” he said. “This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me.”

On the tombstone, Mr. Koch also included a Jewish prayer. And there’s no “How’m I doin’? ” inscribed. Instead, he wrote:

He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II.

— Jennifer Preston

12:22 P.M. |The Mayor of the Underground

Tyrone Dukes/The New York Times Where the action was: Mr. Koch handing out leaflets outside a subway station in 1975, when he was a Congressman.

Mayor Edward I. Koch ventured underground in his jacket and tie, spoiling for someone, anyone, to tell him how he was doing. When graffiti-addled subway cars presented an eyesore, he proposed dispatching dogs — or better yet, wild wolves — to patrol the yards where trains were often vandalized. And as he prepared for the moment that arrived Friday morning, when Mr. Koch died at age 88, the three-term mayor took care to ensure that the city’s transit riders were properly considered.

“He wanted to be buried near a subway,” said Richard Ravitch, who led the Metropolitan Transportation Authority during Mr. Koch’s first term and became a close friend, “so that people could come to his grave easily.”

His plot at Trinity Church Cemetery is a short walk from the No. 1 train.

There are few figures in the city’s history so synonymous with its signature mode of transportation, and few who took such an active interest in its finer details. On Friday, transit advocates credited Mr. Koch with cajoling the transportation authority to improve announcements, doubling the city’s commitment to an agency rebuilding program, and securing over $1 billion for city subways and buses in 1985.

But perhaps most memorable was Mr. Koch’s campaign against subway graffiti, even if his most imaginative plan never quite came to fruition.

His proposal was simple: build a fence, perhaps two fences, around the perimeter of the train yards, and place dogs inside to dissuade marauding vandals.

In an interview released by La Guardia and Wagner Archives, Mr. Koch recalled his detractors’ concerns: “Oh dogs, they’ll bite,” they would say. “I said, ‘well, that’s what dogs are supposed to do.’”

Then he had another idea.

“Instead of dogs, put in wolves,” he told them. “There is no recorded case of a wolf in the wild state ever attacking a human being in North America. It’s happened elsewhere, but not in North America.”

Alas, wild wolves never came to protect New York City’s subways. But some dogs were recruited. In 1981, days after he announced the use of German shepherds at a yard in Corona, Queens, the mayor was informed that one of the guard dogs had given birth to four puppies.

“Now that’s productivity,” he said.

Mr. Ravitch said Friday that the reduction in graffiti had more to do with the purchase of stainless steel cars, which were easier to clean, than with menacing animals. But Mr. Ravitch recalled Mr. Koch as a sparring partner and a friend, an occasional cheerleader for the system but a man who “often used to say on television, ‘If you don’t like the subways, don’t blame me, blame Ravitch.’”

Once, Mr. Ravitch recalled, Mr. Koch called the city’s transit workers “loungers and loafers.” After Mr. Ravitch defended the workers — and the city’s editorial boards defended Mr. Ravitch — the two decided to call a truce. Mr. Ravitch invited the mayor to his home on a Sunday night, for Chinese food. “We ordered spare ribs and egg rolls,” Mr. Ravitch recalled.

Mr. Koch also waded into other corners of transportation policy. Decades before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s bike lanes sprouted along the city’s thoroughfares, Mr. Koch installed experimental lanes of his own — inspired by a trip to Beijing, where he admired the bicycle’s prevalence. Mr. Koch later reversed course, and in 1987 moved to ban bicycle use on sections of Park, Madison, and Fifth Avenues during many weekday business hours.

But the subway always remained near to his heart. In a recent interview, Mr. Koch marveled at how cordial riders had become since his administration ended, recalling a crime-riddled age when “the rule was, avert your eyes because eye contact meant battle. Like two animals.”

In recent years, he said, even pregnant women had begun offering him seats.
“I always say no,” he said.

— Matt Flegenheimer

(This old photo of Ed Koch below sourced from globalgrind.com)

Holy Macakarel! Twitter already worth US$ 9 billion dollars? !!!

Do we Twitter users get cash bonuses or some shares from the huge fortune of Twitter, which we the Twitterati helped create?

Hello Twitter bosses!

(Image below sourced from twitter.com)




(Image below sourced from mashable.com)




(Image below sourced from istrategyconference.com)



(Image below sourced from slurpy.com)







News report! Amazing!!!

Twitter Is Said to Be Worth $9 Billion as BlackRock Buys Shares

By Douglas MacMillan, Alexis Leondis & Ari Levy - Jan 26, 2013 1:01 PM GMT+0800 Bloomberg

Twitter Inc. was valued at about $9 billion after early employees sold $80 million in shares to a fund managed by BlackRock Inc. (BLK), three people with knowledge of the matter said.

The sales were overseen by Twitter Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani, said one of the people yesterday, who asked not to be identified because the transactions were private.

5:12

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Paul Hawtin, chief executive officer of DCM Capital, talks with Bloomberg's Deirdre Bolton about how to use Twitter to trade stocks. They speak on Bloomberg Television's "Money Moves." (Source: Bloomberg)

Twitter is helping early shareholders realize part of the value of their holdings while letting select investors obtain equity in the fast-growing Internet company before it holds an initial public offering. The deal with BlackRock, the largest money manager, marks an increase in the blog-site’s value since 2011, when an investment led by DST Global valued Twitter at $8 billion, people with knowledge of the plan said then.
Farrell Denby, a spokesman for New York-based BlackRock, declined to comment yesterday, as did Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Twitter.

Rowghani, who was promoted from the role of finance chief last month, has taken an active role in lining up buyers for shares, according to the person with knowledge of the matter. In doing so, he may seek to limit pressure on Twitter’s valuation that could result from employees dumping a large amount of stock after post-IPO “lockups” on their shares are lifted. A tighter rein on who holds stock can also limit the amount of inside information circulated ahead of an IPO.

The close involvement of Twitter in private-share sales is a shift from the freewheeling marketplace for shares of Facebook Inc. that arose before the social network’s 2012 public offering.

Confidential Data

On websites such as SecondMarket Inc. and SharesPost Inc., Facebook shares were traded freely among employees and investors with little intervention from the company -- often resulting in the exchange of confidential data about its financials and daily projections on its valuation that loomed over the IPO.

By contrast, Rowghani and his team have turned away many potential buyers and limited access to Twitter’s financials to a select few investors, a person said.

Twitter, founded in 2006, has sought to limit private-share sales in the past. In 2011, the company asked shareholders to refrain from selling on Web exchanges, two people said at the time.

The company allocated half of its $800 million investment from DST for buying shares back from employees and investors, people said at the time. Twitter hasn’t disclosed plans for a public-market debut, though Rowghani’s promotion was a possible precursor to an eventual IPO filing.

BlackRock’s purchase and Twitter’s valuation were previously reported by the Financial Times.

The late civil rights activist, defender of minorities and Christian minister Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was not only a courageous and inspiring leader, he was also remarkably eloquent.

He not only fought for minority rights, equality, social justice and the realization of true democracy in his country America, but his non-violent struggle will forever be an inspiration for all peoples worldwide.

Below is information I received yesterday from the USA Embassy in Manila about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day which is a public holiday in America and all American embassies.


(Image below sourced from htu.edu)





(Image below sourced from time.com)





(This image below sourced from allposters.com)


(Image below sourced from chicago.cbslocal.com)

***

Here is information I received yesterday from the United States of America (U.S.A.) Embassy in Manila, the Philippines regarding the holiday in honor of this people's hero:

U.S. EMBASSY TO CLOSE ON JANUARY 21

　
The Embassy of the United States in Manila and its affiliated offices will be closed to the public on Monday, January 21, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, an American holiday.

The Embassy will resume its services on Tuesday, January 22.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), who is remembered in the United States on the third Monday of January each year, is perhaps best known as America’s chief spokesman for nonviolent activism as a result of his leadership role in the U.S. civil rights movement.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation into law making King’s birthday a federal holiday.

In 1994, the U.S. Congress designated the Martin Luther King Jr.holiday as a national day of service, calling on Americans from every walk of life to volunteer their time and effort on that day to help realize King’s vision of a "beloved community."

I got this email from the White House in the U.S., through the office of President Barack Obama, a letter from his Vice-President Joe Biden on their bold and positive actions to try curbing the crazy gun culture in America. I salute them for their gun control and reform efforts!

What about us in the Philippines, when will our political and other leaders curb widespread gun ownership as well as reform our police and military, decisively crack down on lawless elements with a lot of illegal firearms?


(This image of Joe Biden below sourced from biography.com)




(This image of Barack Obama sourced from washingtonpost.com)




(Image below of recent spate of USA gun violence crimes sourced from nydailynews.com)



Hello --

Today President Obama announced a plan to help protect our kids and communities from gun violence. You're going to hear a lot about it, but I wanted to make sure you got a chance to get the facts, straight from me.

After hearing from Americans from across the political spectrum, we decided to focus on some key priorities: closing background check loopholes, banning military-style assault weapons, making our schools safer, and increasing access to mental health services.

The ideas we sent to President Obama are straightforward. Each of them honors the rights of law-abiding, responsible Americans to bear arms. Some of them will require action from Congress; the President is acting on others immediately. But they're all commonsense and will help make us a little safer.

Now is the time for all of us to act.

Read about the events that brought us to this point, learn about the plan we've proposed to help protect our kids, and then add your name in support to help build momentum for this plan.
Here's what we've put together:

We're calling for requiring background checks for all gun sales and closing the loopholes that allow dangerous individuals to make their purchase without going through one of these checks.

We're asking for a new, stronger ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that allow a shooter to fire dozens of bullets as quickly as he can pull a trigger. And we're asking Congress to help protect law enforcement by make it illegal for members of the public to possess armor-piercing bullets.

We're going to give law enforcement more tools and resources to prevent and prosecute gun crimes, and we're going to end the freeze on gun violence research that prevents the Center from Disease Control from looking at the causes of gun violence.

We're calling on Congress to help make schools safer by putting up to 1,000 school resource officers and mental health professionals in schools and ensuring they have comprehensive emergency management plans in place.

And we're going to increase coverage so that students and young adults can get access to the mental health treatment they may need.

We know that no policy we enact or law we enforce can prevent every senseless act of violence in our country. But if we can save the life of even one child, we have a deep responsibility to act.
Now is the time to come together to protect our kids. Learn about the plan, then add your name alongside mine:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/now-is-the-time

Thanks,
Vice President Joe Biden

Kudos to Asia! Apple, Inc. boss just said that booming China will soon surpass USA as the world's biggest market! Let us all work harder to help our entire region to benefit from unprecedented economic progress!

We are truly witnessing the rise of a new world order in the 21st century, of the resurgence of Asia again as the center of world civilization, socio-economic progress and hopefully long-term harmony as well.

Apple CEO Cook Says China Will Overtake U.S. as Biggest Market

By Bloomberg News - Jan 11, 2013 10:27 AM GMT+0800

Play

Apple CEO Cook Meets with China Mobile Chairman

 

 

Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said China will overtake the U.S. to become its largest market, as the iPhone-maker adds more stores and considers debuting new products in the country.

Apple CEO Cook Says China Will Overtake U.S. as Biggest Market

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Pedestrians walks past an Apple Inc. store in Beijing, China. Apple intends to open “many more” outlets in China over the next several years, Cook said in the Xinhua interview. The company now has 11 stores in China and Hong Kong.

 

Pedestrians walks past an Apple Inc. store in Beijing, China. Apple intends to open “many more” outlets in China over the next several years, Cook said in the Xinhua interview. The company now has 11 stores in China and Hong Kong. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Apple’s Cook Discusses Cooperation With China Mobile Chairman

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

A worker walks past the Apple Inc. logo in the Sanlitun area of Beijing, China.

A worker walks past the Apple Inc. logo in the Sanlitun area of Beijing, China. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

China Mobile chairman Xi Guohua

Jerome Favre/Bloomberg

Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile Ltd.

Xi Guohua, chairman of China Mobile Ltd. Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg

“I believe it will become our first,” Cook said in an interview with state-owned Xinhua News yesterday. No timeframe was given for the prediction. The Cupertino, California-based company had $5.7 billion of sales in China during the quarter ended September. U.S. revenue was about $14.4 billion, based on figures in an Oct. 25 earnings statement.

Cook also met the chairman of China Mobile Ltd. (941) while in the country, as he seeks to boost cooperation with a wireless operator that has 707 million customers and no agreement to sell iPhones. The CEO is making his second visit to the country in less than a year as Apple tries to reverse its shrinking share of the local smartphone market.

Apple intends to open “many more” outlets in China over the next several years, Cook said in the Xinhua interview. The company now has 11 stores in China and Hong Kong.

Cook also said he would also “love” to introduce new products in China first, according to the report. The iPhone 5 was released in China in December, almost three months after the U.S. introduction.

China Growth

The company’s growth in the world’s most populous nation has been limited by it only working with smaller carriers and competition from domestic phone-makers. Its share of the nation’s smartphone market slipped to sixth from fourth in the third quarter, according to researcher IDC.

Yesterday, Cook met with Xi Guohua, the chairman on China Mobile at the carrier’s headquarters in Beijing. The two discussed “cooperation,” according to a statement from China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless operator by subscribers. It didn’t elaborate.

China Mobile, which accounts for 64 percent of the nation’s mobile users, said last month that it needs to reach agreements on benefit-sharing with Apple before it can begin offering iPhones. The operator also has a homegrown third-generation network that isn’t used by other carriers.

Apple distributes iPhone with the nation’s second- and third-largest carriers: China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (762) and China Telecom Corp. (728)

The Philippines has too many guns! Let us campaign for GUN BAN nationwide, especially loose, unlicensed, expired and illegal firearms! Let us end this GUN CULTURE, starting with Mindanao!

Whether in the Philippines or in the United States of America (USA), I am for GUN BAN!

Latest statistics I saw today in GMA 7 News, shocking, disgusting, infuriating these numbers below!

328,320 loose firearms; 528,485 expired/not renewed firearms; 1,620,948 licensed firearms (Source: Philippine National Police or PNP)


(Image below sourced from samuelatgilgal.wordpress.com)





(Image below sourced from opednews.com)

Dangers of Twitter, Facebook: Beware!

Is technology---in particular the ubiquituous social media---sapping our productivity, our physical and social health, our ability to live better quality of life if we use them wrongly? These are serious questions we as human beings of the 21st century should ponder on carefully and address in this 21st century? Let us change for the better, not worse!

Here's a thought-provoking Bloomberg column (below) by Caroline Baum which expresses a lot of my concerns. Baum has a B.A. in political science from Tufts University and an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University. She lives in West Tisbury, Massachusetts, United States of America.

 

Twitter Saps Productivity, Facebook Makes You Fat

By Caroline Baum Dec 27, 2012 7:30 AM GMT+0800 Bloomberg

Ever since the invention of the wheel in Mesopotamia around 3500 B.C., technological innovation has been improving our lives. Because new devices and processes help us produce more (output) with less (labor input), prices fall, real wages rise and we are all better off. If there is a free lunch in this world, it’s productivity growth.

(Image below sourced from Msshawnblog.blogspot.com)



There is even an economic school of thought, known as real business cycle theory, which views technology shocks as the main driver of the business cycle: not the central bank, not fiscal policy, not animal spirits or expectations.

 

Technology, in fact, is always equated with good: More is better.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for progress, but I keep wondering if some of the latest innovations are productivity- enhancing or just a pure waste of time.

For example, every time I’m in Manhattan, I marvel at the number of people crossing the street or sitting down to lunch with a friend without taking their eyes and fingers off their electronic devices. I can even predict the effect such interconnectivity will have on the individual psyche. Twenty years from now, sociologists and psychologists will publish studies about how the teenagers of today, addicted as they are to texting abbreviated word forms, have trouble relating to one another. Educators will bemoan the inability of the youth of America to write.

(Image below sourced from article.wn.com)

‘Alone Together’

I didn’t have to wait 20 years. Sherry Turkle, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described this phenomenon perfectly in an April 21 New York Times article titled, “The Flight from Conversation.” She called it “alone together.” It encapsulated everything I had been thinking about for years.

“We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating,” Turkle, a psychologist, wrote. “And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.”

(Image below sourced from businessinsider.com)





Social networking is just such an alone-together pursuit. Last year, Bloomberg journalists were encouraged to set up Twitter accounts. I reluctantly complied. I don’t have a Facebook page, was never tempted to create one and didn’t understand the value of letting friends know that I was eating a peach or walking the dog.

At first I restricted my tweets to my column and blog posts. I never looked at Twitter in between. Then I started interacting with people, and it became contagious, more like a game. Who was retweeting my posts?

How many followers did each tweet produce? What was my tweet-to-follower ratio? My most attention-grabbing tweet was something snarky I wrote on Nov. 14 during L’Affaire Petraeus: “Both Petraeus & Broadwell were married. Yet now she’s his ‘mistress.’ Do we have an equivalent word in English for him?”

I got dozens of suggestions and 50 new followers. But what was the value? It seemed like a huge distraction from my work. If we as a nation are twittering or frittering our lives away, surely it must be manifesting itself in the statistics.

To find the answer, I decided to go to the source on labor productivity: the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I asked one of the economists who works in that division if he could help me determine how my personal productivity was being affected by tweeting. Once I became an expert, I was sure I could extrapolate the results to the universe at large.

You probably guessed: It’s not that easy. In its monthly calculation of output per hour worked, or productivity, the BLS uses revenue, or nominal sales, as a proxy for output. That revenue is then adjusted for price changes.

Total hours worked, which businesses report to the BLS each month, is used as a proxy for labor input. Productivity is computed from the two numbers.

Unadjusted Quality

What about the effect on the quality of my work? If I’m spending more time tweeting and less researching and writing my column, surely the quality suffers.

Goods can be adjusted for quality changes: something the BLS does each month to determine what part of the change in the price of a consumer good is due to improved quality. It’s harder with services industries and is almost impossible for my output. (Readers, however, have no problem providing instantaneous qualitative assessment: It stinks.)

The good news is, until my slacking off starts to affect Bloomberg LP’s sales, my personal productivity isn’t captured in the statistics. The bad news is, I may lose my job.

The difficulty of capturing the Twitter effect in the aggregate data notwithstanding, the productivity-sapping side of social networking doesn’t stop there. A recent study by Keith Wilcox, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, found that Facebook was making people fat. Yes, fat. It seems that social networking improves self-esteem and, in so doing, reduces control over our choice of snacks.

The study said nothing about the effect on productivity. That’s a leap I’m taking. To the extent that obesity and its secondary effects require treatment, it means less time devoted to work.

Does that make sense? I think I will share that idea with my Twitter followers and see what they think. Then I’ll get back to work.


(Image below of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sourced from shinyshiny.tv)





(Caroline Baum, author of “Just What I Said,” is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

Senator John Kerry would make an ideal U.S. Secretary of State due to his cosmopolitan and liberal mindset, opposite that of his former political rival ex-President George W. Bush who was jingoistic.

Although he is a bemedalled hero of the Vietnam War, he eventually made a courageous stand based on his moral principles and objective analyses to eventually oppose the Vietnam War. He also opposed the Iraq War of George W. Bush. He is a highly-educated and intellident leader, an ideal diplomat for peace in the world.

(This image sourced from esquire.com)





(This image sourced from vanityfair.com)

Obama Turns to Global Traveler Kerry This Time Around

By Laura Litvan - Dec 22, 2012 3:56 AM GMT+0800 Bloomberg.com

Months after passing over Senator John Kerry for a Cabinet post in 2009, President Barack Obama turned to the Massachusetts senator to warn Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai that U.S. support was at risk.
The Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee coaxed Karzai into agreeing to a runoff after a contested presidential election. Kerry “made the kind of difference diplomacy can make,” Michael Mandelbaum, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said in an interview.

Enlarge image

Senator John Kerry

Scott Eells/Bloomberg

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Sudan and China, Kerry, 69, has made at least 30 trips abroad over the past four years, often serving as an unofficial special envoy for the Obama administration.

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Sudan and China, Kerry, 69, has made at least 30 trips abroad over the past four years, often serving as an unofficial special envoy for the Obama administration. Photographer: Scott Eells/Bloomberg

6:52

Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama named Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as his choice to become the next U.S. secretary of state during a news conference in Washington. The nomination of Kerry, 69, a Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is subject to Senate confirmation. (Source: Bloomberg)

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Sudan and China, Kerry, 69, has made at least 30 trips abroad over the past four years, often serving as an unofficial special envoy for the Obama administration. Today, the president made it official, saying he will nominate Kerry to replace the departing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

“Over these many years, John’s earned the respect and confidence of leaders around the world,” Obama said, with Kerry at his side at the White House. “He is not going to need a lot of on-the-job training.”
Republican colleagues predicted in advance of Kerry’s nomination that he would easily win Senate confirmation.

“I don’t foresee a big obstacle,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who will become the No. 2 Republican leader in January, said in an interview. “He’s been a good and effective senator.”

Patrician Manner

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who first became known nationally as a critic of that war, has been steeped in foreign policy issues throughout his career. Traits Republicans ridiculed in his failed presidential campaign in 2004 -- his patrician manner, his fine-grained parsing of language, even his occasional tendency to lapse into French to choose the mot juste -- may wear well on the international diplomatic circuit.

Kerry will be able to follow in the footsteps of Clinton, who is effective partly because she’s a well-known figure globally, according to Joseph Nye, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Kerry is “a distinguished senator and he’s seen as having a political presence of his own, which is very helpful,” Nye, a former Defense and State Department official who has known Kerry for 20 years, said in an interview.

On foreign policy, Kerry shares Obama’s preference for working through multinational alliances and for avoiding open- ended engagement, such as the Iraq war they both opposed.

“Ideologically, he and the president are in a very similar place,” James Carafano, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said in an interview.

Syria Caution

Kerry’s approach to U.S. intervention abroad has been reflected in his comments on the war in Syria, where he has shared Obama’s reluctance about direct military involvement.

“It would be important not to repeat the mistakes of the past by thinking we can just willy-nilly commit some forces to a conflict without a definition or achievable objective,” Kerry said at a committee hearing on Aug. 1.
Kerry and Obama have political bonds dating to 2004, when the senator gave Obama his breakthrough opportunity as the keynote speaker at the Democratic convention that nominated Kerry for president. The speech turned Obama, a state senator from Illinois running for the U.S. Senate, into a national political star.

Clinton Chosen

In 2008, Kerry backed Obama over front-runner Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries, only to see Obama reach out and choose Clinton as his first-term secretary of state. In this year’s presidential campaign, Obama prepared for debates with Kerry playing the role of Republican opponent Mitt Romney.
“Nothing brings two people closer together than weeks of debate prep,” Obama said today.

After graduating from Yale University, Kerry volunteered for the Navy. In two tours of duty in Vietnam, he rose to the rank of lieutenant and served on a Swift Boat that traveled treacherous river deltas. He was decorated with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts.

“Having served with valor in Vietnam, he understands that we have a responsibility to use American power wisely, especially our military power,” Obama said today.

Kerry came to see the war he fought as futile, and on his return to the U.S. he became a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

‘Last to Die’

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Kerry said in April 1971, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he would one day lead. On that visit to Washington, he joined other veterans who threw their medals and ribbons over a fence at the Capitol to protest the war.

Kerry made an unsuccessful bid for a House seat from Massachusetts the following year, then worked as a prosecutor before being elected lieutenant governor in 1982 and senator in 1984. For years, he was overshadowed in Washington by the state’s senior senator, Edward M. Kennedy, who died in 2009.

In the 2004 presidential campaign, Republicans portrayed Kerry as flip-flopping on funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They seized on his comment in March 2004 that “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”

Kerry said his “inarticulate” phrasing referred to his support for an unsuccessful Democratic alternative that would have offset war costs by reducing Bush’s tax cuts.

Among Wealthiest

Largely because of the wealth of his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Kerry is one of the richest members of Congress. His net worth was at least $181.5 million in 2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington.

Kerry and Senator John McCain, a fellow Vietnam veteran, traveled to Hanoi in 1993. They visited the prison where McCain was held as a prisoner of war for six years. Kerry and McCain, an Arizona Republican, worked together for the normalization of Vietnam-U.S. relations that occurred two years later.
Kerry became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, when Joe Biden left the post to become Obama’s vice president.

In February 2009, Kerry was the highest-level U.S. official to visit the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized control of the territory in June 2007. He didn’t meet with Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union.

Afghanistan Dinners

On his visit to Afghanistan in 2009, Kerry met with Karzai five times over five days, including twice over dinner, to broker the terms of a runoff election. Obama later said Kerry was “extraordinarily constructive and very helpful.”

In May 2011, Kerry was the first high-level U.S. official to visit Pakistan amid bilateral strains following the May 2 killing there of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs.

At the Capitol, Kerry worked with the Foreign Relations panel’s top Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on issues such as a strategic arms control treaty with Russia that they ushered through the chamber in December 2010.

Kerry tried unsuccessfully to push through the Senate legislation intended to curb global climate change. As secretary of state, Kerry may be able to revive interest in the subject as “the recession recedes and you’ve more reminders like Hurricane Sandy,” Nye said.

Kerry also may help negotiate a “status of forces agreement” for U.S. forces to maintain a role in Afghanistan after most troops are withdrawn in 2014, Nye said.

Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who is in line to replace Lugar as top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee next month, said Kerry is clearly qualified for the Cabinet post.

“He’s lived a life of involvement in diplomacy and issues related to foreign relations,” Corker said.

Is it right for a married guy to fire a beautiful assistant or employee he finds "irresistable" or a temptation? This really happened in USA, recently! The reason for firing seems unfair or even absurd and ridiculous, but in America's dynamic and truly democratic free enterprise system, an employer can lawfully terminate the services of any employee for whatever reason as long as she or he is justly compensated.

This is the essence of free enterprise, employers have the right to hire or fire people and not be compelled to retain employees as long as the employees are properly compensated. The world's two biggest capitalistic economies have proven that this democratic principle works---USA and China.


(Image below sourced from news.com.au)




Read this CNN news report:

Iowa Supreme Court: OK to fire 'irresistible' worker

By Dana Ford, CNN

December 23, 2012 -- Updated 0123 GMT (0923 HKT)

 

 

Worker fired for being 'irresistible'

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Melissa Nelson worked as a dental assistant for James Knight for more than 10 years
• Knight complained Nelson wore tight clothes, was a "detriment" to his family
• Knight's wife demanded he fire Nelson; he did
• The all-male high court rules her termination did not constitute unlawful discrimination

(CNN) -- Can a boss fire an employee he finds attractive because he and his wife, fairly or not, see her as a threat to their marriage?

Yes, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday.

"The question we must answer is ... whether an employee who has not engaged in flirtatious conduct may be lawfully terminated simply because the boss views the employee as an irresistible attraction," Justice Edward M. Mansfield wrote for the all-male high court.

Such firings may not be fair, but they do not constitute unlawful discrimination under the Iowa Civil Rights Act, the decision read, siding with a lower court.

An attorney for Melissa Nelson, the fired employee, said the decision was wrong.

"We are appalled by the court's ruling and its failure to understand the nature of gender bias," said Paige Fiedler, the attorney. "For the seven men on the Iowa Supreme Court not to 'get it' is shocking and disheartening. It underscores the need for judges on the bench to be diverse in terms of their gender, race and life experiences."

The case concerns her client's employment as a dental assistant. Nelson worked for James Knight in 1999 and stayed for more than 10 years at the Fort Dodge business.

Toward the end of her employment, Knight complained to Nelson her clothing was tight and "distracting," the decision read. She denied her clothes were inappropriate.

At one point, Knight told Nelson that "if she saw his pants bulging, she would know her clothing was too revealing," the decision read.

At another point, in response to an alleged comment Nelson made about the infrequency of her sex life, Knight responded: [T]hat's like having a Lamborghini in the garage and never driving it."

During the last six months of Nelson's employment, Nelson and Knight, both married with children, started sending text messages to each other outside of work. Neither objected to the texting.

Knight's wife, who was employed at the same dental office, found out about those messages in late 2009 and demanded he fire Nelson.

In early 2010, he did just that. In the presence of a pastor, Knight told Nelson she had become a "detriment" to his family and that for the sakes of both their families, they should no longer work together, the decision read. Knight gave Nelson one month's severance.

In a subsequent conversation between Knight and Nelson's husband, Knight said Nelson had done nothing wrong and that "she was the best dental assistant he ever had," the decision read.

Nelson filed a lawsuit, contending that Knight fired her because of her gender. She did not say he committed sexual harassment.

In response, Knight argued that Nelson was fired because of the "nature of their relationship and the perceived threat" to his marriage, not because of her gender. In fact, he said, Knight only employs women and replaced Nelson with another female employee.

A district court sided with Knight; Nelson appealed.

"As we have indicated above, the issue before us is not whether a jury could find that Dr. Knight treated Nelson badly," read the high court's decision.

"We are asked to decide only if a genuine fact issue exists as to whether Dr. Knight engaged in unlawful gender discrimination when he fired Nelson at the request of his wife. For the reasons previously discussed, we believe this conduct did not amount to unlawful discrimination, and therefore we affirm the judgment of the district court."