I just finished watching the documentary Why We Fight by Eugene Jarecki, which focuses on the relationship of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned the US about in his farewell speech as President of the United States. The experts in the movie contend that this corporate system of influence includes four primary entities:

1. The Military

2. The corporations who supply the military with hardware (Boeing, Raytheon, and of course--Halliburton among others)

3. Congress

4. The Washington Think Tanks like The Project for a New American Century

Let's consider the parting words of Eisenhower, shall we:





Now, the documentary contends that Congress, the military, and the corporations which provide the hardware for war are each junkies caught up in love with a drug they cannot quit, whereas the Think Tanks are the very danger which Eisenhower was warning us against in his farewell speech--groups of individuals making policy who are not elected nor are they affected by the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of the citizenry. We, the People, have allowed a golem to come into being which is driving the world right into the toilet while the already wealthy become even more wealthy at the expense of our future and our individual freedom.

At one point, one of the Iraqi citizens who gets interviewed (and claims to have had family members killed from one of the first "smart" missiles missing its target and falling on their house) says, "America will not last long because it is not acting the way a great nation acts."

We are a war-society, despite all belief to the contrary. I wouldn't say that our culture is as outright blood thirsty as the ancient Spartans but we're not far off either. America has averaged an armed conflict with other nations something like every twelve years or so since our country was born. But it has only been since World War II when the machinery of war became the most profitable industry on the face of the earth.

The movie claims that the United States spends more on defense (22% of our gross expenses) than all other countries combined. Now, let's be honest; when we say we're spending money on Defense, it's not like we're building bomb shelters and arming and training young men 14 and older to handle firearms in case some blood thirsty enemy invades their community. No, when we say "defense," what we mean is the machinery to make war on other nations and the payoff after we've made war is in the access to their resources and the opportunity to sell them a bunch of plastic toys and nutritionless food that they really don't need in the first place and which will eventually rot their souls and bodies the way we've allowed ours to become rotten here in America.

Sorry to be so cynical but isn't that what it all comes down to? Isn't that the American dream today? Isn't that what the success of our billionaires is built on? Is this how a great nation acts when it claims to be the steward of all that is righteous and right about the world and our species?

Does freedom truly come with a blood red price tag that involves shooting another man in the head who doesn't have the same accent or bloodline we do?

I have seen glimpses of absolute freedom in my life and each time they were accompanied by death--the death of my ego, the absence of the observer, and each time a warm and pure energy flowed into the moment and filled every snapping nerve with a calm and roaring creative energy which is the source of all life and all things good in the world. I have had moments of death in life that were filled with whatever is beyond that razor metaphor that so many kill each other over and I did not have to pick up a weapon and splatter brains all over the desert sand to allow that type of absolute freedom to wash over my mortal soul (if only for a second).

But this type of freedom is worthless to the man in the suit in the corporate boardroom or the shadowy halls of Congress or the man in the dress blues in the first six rows during a Presidential address to the nation; nor is it worth a thing to the eggheads in the think tanks who work hard to draw lines of death and division on the maps of the world which we must all then walk around like invisible mine fields hanging in the air.

This type of freedom is absolutely free except for the payment of death in the moment.

This type of freedom cannot be killed for but it must be died for. Go ask Jesus. Go ask Buddha. Go ask Hallaj. Go ask Giordano Bruno. Go ask the Dali Lama.

This type of freedom is life itself in the sparking moment and moves the soul through instinct like a deep water fish through coral.

This type of freedom cannot be found in books, ancient relics, or arcane rituals. It cannot be called from the sky, divined from the air, or reeled from the sea of sorrow we know as the collective mind of humanity. It cannot be pulled into time and space because its presence dictates their absence.

This type of freedom is the beginning of intelligence and no man who ever claims to be the leader of nations should be without it.

This type of the freedom is the beginning of healing and the nexus of understanding and when the smallest seed of this type of freedom is present in the heart of the individual, the universe is set right and saved and so it is that the world becomes saved in tandem.

This type of freedom is the only thing that matters in this life and in this death and if we are not struggling to bring it into existence in the waking moment, then we are each living the lie of devils whispering in our ears and dangling golden trinkets before our eyes. This type of freedom can only be won inside each of our minds.

The final battle is always fought with ideas and emotions; the stakes are always for our immortal souls and the bet is always all-in.

LINKS:

• Why We Fight
  
• The Project for the New American Century

Buy Why We Fight Here and Support the Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers Blog

TAGS:
Freedom, America, Spirituality, Why We Fight, Eugene Jarecki

There are times when I am speechless and I've been patient waiting to watch the movie that tells the Enron story.

I am normally not a viscious man. I don't believe in overpunishing.

But when it comes to Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Faustau, and whoever else was at the helm while Enron deliberately caused rolling blackouts and energy shortages in California and then resold the same energy that was there back to the state to the tune of 30 billion dollars while the Executives set up false side companies to hide debt and while they put fake profits on the books, profits that would never surface--the Executives started looking for a way out and dumped all their millions in stock while the assets of those far below them were frozen, leaving them to rot in the poor house--I tend to get a little upset.

I am so upset after watching this that if there was a public crucifixion of these men, I would probably attend it and cheer when they cried out for mercy.

Watch this movie. Get pissed off. Start paying attention to what your company is doing because chances are that this evil is alive everwhere in corporate America.

There is something so insidious at work in the traders who caused blackouts in California in order to reap windfall profits. Some kind of humanity gap occurred that I immediately refer back to the Holocaust to find a commonality.

Now, I am given to believe in Adam Smith's thesis that the quest for personal gain in an open market place tends to yield the highest social good. But I do have to admit that this type of freedom also opens the doors for situations like Enron. Now, I'm questioning where the lines are and where they should be.

What do you think?



LINKS:
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Enron Trial Watch Blog

TAGS:
Enron, The Smartest Men in the Room, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andy Fastau,

My company is having a huge kick-off gala in my hometown filled with hours and hours of presentations and motivational speeches that are, truly, spectacular. Our CEO even flew in last night to give us a huge boost with his speech.

Now, you know that I don't reveal who I work for or what my business is because of proprietary information that is outside the scope of this blog. But I would like to pass on something that happened last night.

It was just after a great motivational speech by a famous person, a living legend, really. And I had to piss, bad! So, I made my way to the restroom and used the stall, washed my hands, and checked the time.

It was 8:00! That was my son's bedtime and I haven't gotten a chance to see him in two days. So, I called home on my cell, still in restroom by the sinks. And just as I got my wife to get my son the phone, the CEO comes walking around the corner to wash his hands.

My son was talking to me, telling me how much he missed me and loved me.

Now, I had a choice--I could have hung up on him or pretended that I was on some business call or something but that would have been the action of the weasel and I'm no humping weasel.

So, I just let go and started baby talking to him, telling him how much I loved him and missed him and that I was sorry I wouldn't be able to read his stories to him tonight (I'm reading him The Hobbit). To my surprise, the CEO laughed, but in a good way, in the way that a man touched by a sweet memory laughs and suddenly I realized that this guy was a father (and just happens to by an unbelievably magnificent human being who is quickly rising to the status of hero in my mind).

But look, we are all human beings before we are anything else. And if we can't be humans with each other, then there's nothing left of the grace and majesty that once accompanied the higher angels of our natures.

I learned never to be ashamed of expressing my love for my child any place or time because that love is more precious than all the pats on the back by CEOs one could ever receive.

And when I jokingly expressed my embarassment to the CEO's number one man, he looked up from his Blackberry, pulled his bifocals down his nose so he could see me better, and said, "Josh, life is about bringing children into this world and watching them grow." Then he slid his glasses back up his nose and went back to his blackberry surfing.

I think that is the wisest statement I have heard directly from the mouth of another human being.

Here's a simple truth about business: You can't manage people; you can only manage the processes that people work inside.

People must ultimately manage themselves and any manager who doesn't understand this has defeated their purpose before they even begin.

Managers must engage processes by studying, analyzing, and streamlining them so as to make it as easy as possible for people to manage themselves within these processes.

Anything else in business is egotistical tom foolery.

...and the retailer will be forced to slash the prices. Take a look at what is happening in the video game market. No one is buying games and uber-maker EA Games has decided to slash prices by $10 in the hopes of spurring sales.

I am predicting this will be a successful strategy because they are doing it one week prior to the release of the XBox 360, which will be a huge seller and will dominate the video game market throughout the holiday season and well into next year when Sony releases its own next-generation system.

It's also no mistake that EA games has several titles on the backward compatibility list for the 360, so slashing titles should open them up to a new market of XBOX users (like me).

But beyond video games, this is just a good lesson in consumerism because basic economics dictates that people want to pay for something at the lowest price possible and that manufacturers, retailers, and suppliers want to sell it at the highest price possible. Where the will of these two sides meets determines the fair market value and millions of these negotations happen each second to allocate scarce resources to their most efficient uses.

Well, when consumers pull back on what they are willing to pay, the other side must either pull away completely and scrap the service or product being bartered for, or they must come farther over toward the consumer's demand and the price is lowered.

Of course, the flip side to this is that these price lowerings are generally temporary because basic economics also dictates that low prices are generally followed by higher demand for the product or service which puts a strain on the scarce resources which go into its production and cause a rise in price to curb consumer demand (look no further than the recent gas price spike and the choices we each made in our personal financial situations to demonstrate this).



So, if you want video games for $5, shut up about them and wait around. Of course, once all the profit potential leaves the industry, this means we'll all be sitting around playing pong again--but we'll do it cheaply!

• Here is a .pdf of the new XBOX 360 Owner's Guide
  

• And here is a list of Best Buy allocation sheets for the XBOX 360 around the country

Hat tip to Digg for these two links.

TAGS: Video, EA, XBOX, Marketing, Economics

Sony has chosen to cease with the XCP antipiracy software on its CDs and has buckled because of the pressure induced upon it by the online community.

The story was broken on the Internet.

The story bubbled and popped on the Internet and the heat was turned way up on Sony, you guessed it, on the Internet.

Blogs around the world just hammered the mega corporation after it was leaked that this malicious software not only invaded the consumer's right to privacy but opened PCs up to hostile attacks, spyware, spamware, and ruthless viruses that could lock out the CD drive or lock up the machine altogether.

Perhaps if Sony and the other labels in the recording industry would spend more time on producing quality music that actually highlights the art in artist, they wouldn't have to worry about people stealing their music beacause they would gladly be paying to support the vision of the artist.

Remember how many people owned multiple copies of Thriller back in the early 80s? That's because people bought into the vision of Michael Jackson. Today, no one even wants to steal a new Michael Jackson CD, nor would many take one for free.

It isn't about music being a commodity. It's about creating a vision that heals the world in some fundamental way and then gathering an audience of individuals to support your vision.

But how can you explain human nature and the proper role of mythological art to a empty-souled corporation?

I recently saw an interview with Michael Moore (not my favorite person in the world) where he was talking about this very point. He basically asked the audience to think about why these big media corporations continue to support and distribute his work when the fundamental message he's purporting is a complete attack upon the foundation of their business models and the society in which they operate. His answer is because the corporation is concerned only with profit and greed (the common response from a liberal but one which bears weight in this argument).

We need individuals of substance at the helms of our corporations, government, and families again--this is the only thing which can save our species from total and utter destruction.

Each of us has a civic responsibility to step up and become these individuals of worth in the eyes of the face that looks back at us in the mirror every morning. And this is the only earthly country and culture I am interested in creating through my relationships with those around me and the people I come across online each day.

This type of world is the only one worth dying for and, more importantly, the only one worth living for.