Category Archives: Thoughts

Thoughts

Emperor Trajan was a “real American”

As I think upon the wars and conflicts of recent times (Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Syria), and the reasons for their occurrence, I’m reminded of Romania’s past, and its conquest by a newly elected Roman emperor by the name of Trajan.

If the picture isn’t clear to you by already, let’s connect the dots.

Back then, the region now known as Romania was known as Dacia. It was a sparsely populated but very rich country: the soil was fertile, and I’m not just talking about agriculture. Dacia had incredibly large (and easy to get to) deposits of gold, silver and other important metals. The Dacian kings had so much wealth they didn’t know what to do with it.

The Roman empire lay to the south of Dacia, and it took plenty of money to run it. They started to feel the bottoms of the coffers as they dug in for more aureus and denarius. The kings of Dacia weren’t exactly bright when it came to not advertising their wealth. They advertised it, alright — so much so, that the Romans, who were allies with the Dacians, knew exactly where to look when their money was no longer sufficient.

What did the Romans do? Exactly what the Americans did when it came to Iraq. They invented a reason for going to war with the Dacians. They manufactured a dispute over the border between the Roman Empire and Dacia and once the pretext was in place, they invaded. They were pushed back the first time, but Trajan was persistent. After all, he didn’t have a choice. It was either Dacia’s money or he’d have to run Rome on a budget, and we all know how budget disputes work (hint: just have a look at current-day Washington, DC).

Before long, he’d succeeded in invading Dacia. He didn’t stop there though. He murdered virtually all of Dacia’s nobility, tore down all its cities and temples, erased any sign of Dacia’s culture, and began a decades-long exploitation of Dacia’s mineral reserves, pouring all of it into Rome’s hungry coffers. It’s estimated that he stole over 3,000 tons of gold and over 5,000 tons of silver, all in all. And he didn’t stop there, either. No, he colonized Dacia with Romans. He took all sorts of people from all corners of the Roman empire, people who were more than happy to rape and pillage their way across Dacia, and he let them pick their favorite spot and settle down with their loot. But that wasn’t enough for him, no. He had to build a monument, Trajan’s Column, to commemorate his murderous deeds. It still stands in Rome to this day, a monument to his legacy.

The Bush administration tried to do the same sort of thing in Iraq. They wanted to get at the oil reserves, they needed a pretext, they made it up and went in. But you see, things are a lot murkier in modern times. These days you can’t massacre people and suspend human rights like you used to be able to do it in ancient Rome. So getting at the oil proved to be a lot trickier than the Americans thought. They had to tack on a bunch of other goals to their mission, like “installing a democratic regime in Iraq”, “restoring peace and order to the country”, “training Iraq’s police and army”, “restoring Iraq’s infrastructure”, etc. How many years has it been since they went in? I lost count. They’re still not out of there, and I don’t know how much oil they’ve actually managed to get out of the whole ordeal. And how much money did they spend so far? I don’t want to think about it, because as an American taxpayer, I have to foot part of the bill for it…

I have no idea why the Americans went into Afghanistan. I think they had to do it in order to pump new life into the pretext for attacking Iraq, which was WMDs and Osama bin Laden. They went in there to get him but over time they found they had to tack on a bunch of other goals to their agenda, like in Iraq… And we’re still not out of there, nor will we be out of there any time soon…

The Americans tried a different approach with Egypt and Syria. They encouraged revolts (the CIA’s good at that sort of stuff, they’ve done it plenty before) and let their chosen “rebels” topple those governments. They also co-opted NATO, so they could share the costs and (unfortunately) the loot. The idea was to install people who favored them and hopefully that would make it easier to get at the oil reserves. Things were hit and miss for a while, but so far, so good, sort of… Again, things are a lot murkier these days, you just don’t get the same bang for your buck that you used to get back in the day. Things are on track for the oil contracts, but who knows… these rebel governments often turn on you, as they’ve done in the past and history speaks for itself there. We’ll see.

Let’s end this little trip through memory lane, shall we? I hope I’ve connected enough dots for you to see the whole picture, right? Emperor Trajan was the mythical “real American”. He was a go-getter. His empire had a problem and he went in there and solved it within a few years. Became a hero. The Romans revered him.

It didn’t go the same way for Dubya, although he wanted it so badly. The guy even went on a battleship, flew a fighter jet and said the war was over… about a decade before it even started to end, but hey, maybe history will be gentler on him, who knows.

Back to Romania (or Dacia). Whichever. It’s all the same, even now. Romania still has some gold left, because Trajan didn’t steal all of it. The technology of his time didn’t allow it, or he would have. And this time, the Americans (or is it Canadians) want it. Actually, they want the money, not necessarily the gold. In the end, it boils down to yet another exploitation of Romania. Except these days things are a lot murkier (I keep saying that). And the company that wants to steal abscond take buy Romania’s gold has found that they too have to tack on a few extra goals to their agenda in order to sell it. So they’ve promised to set up a village museum, to make sure they don’t pollute (they will actually poison the whole area with cyanide), to do a bunch of other pointless things, etc, but in the end it still boils down to 96% of the gold for them and 4% of it for the puppet Romanian government. What a steal!

The moral of the story is this: it sucks to be Romania. Actually, it sucks to be a country with any important natural reserves, because unless you’re the bully on the block, you will be invaded, raped, pillaged, colonized, stolen and partitioned — and this will happen to you over and over and over and over, throughout history, until you will no longer have anything worth stealing, in which case you will then have to become a bully and start doing unto others as they’ve done onto you.

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Thoughts

Good stuff coming from IBM

I had lost track of IBM after they spun off their consumer hardware arm (now known as Lenovo). I didn’t get their software offerings, still don’t, so I wrote them off. But then I found out stuff like this, which has reminded me of their great hardware achievements in the past and made me glad they didn’t spin off their hardware R&D.

IBM and 3M have just announced 3D semiconductors: layers of silicone chips sandwiched up to 100 chips high with special cooling glue, to form a “brick” chip that’s up to 1,000 times faster than any microprocessor on the market today. ETA for this is 2013, so not that far off.

Now couple this discovery with their super-fast PCM (Phase Change Memory), which they announced back in June. It writes data at speeds up to 100 times faster than any flash memory on the market today.

ETA for it is 2015, so a couple of years after the 3D semiconductors, about the same time as Intel’s Silicon Photonics, a silicon and laser link between devices that enables data transfers at up to 50 Gbps.

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Thoughts

Wonderful thoughts on Steve Jobs from a neighbor in Palo Alto. The article shows a different view of Steve, that of the devoted family man.

My Neighbor, Steve Jobs This article first appeared in Palo Alto Patch. My neighbor, Steve Jobs, has been in the news lately. The talk of the town is the recent announcement he will be stepping aside to let other seeds grow at Apple. The business press, the general press, the blogosphere, and just about everybody else has waxed poetic about the “greatest CEO of all time” saying that this “boy wonder” has shaped the very nature of our lives with his genius.  It’s all tru … Read More

via Lisen’s “Blog” – An Angle of PrismWork

Get well, Steve!

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Thoughts

The pillaging of Romania’s natural resources

The following are a couple of examples of what’s going on in Romania right now.

Romania’s largest petroleum reserves (famous since WWII) were recently sold to OMV (Österreichischen Mineralölverwaltung Aktiengesellschaft).

Petrom, Romania’s state-owned petroleum company, now belongs to OMV, and every time I fill up my car at Petrom, the receipt says OMV Petrom. I talked to someone today who told me OMV sells roughly 4 Billion Euros of Romanian petroleum every year. And they’ve also got a contract to sell Romanian natural gas, of which they move roughly 2 Billion Euros’ worth every year.

That’s about 6 Billion Euros of sales from Romania alone (they have holdings in other countries and their total annual sales are around 23 Billion Euros per year).

Do you know how much Romania makes from these sales of its own natural reserves, per year, according to the contract drawn up by its own government? 100 Million Euros. That’s an incredibly paltry sum compared to the money OMV makes.

Could Romania have made more? Absolutely. Would OMV have paid more for the right to sell Romania’s oil and gas reserves? Absolutely. I think half and half would have been equitable. Did Romania even need to make a deal with OMV? No.

But when the political environment is such that you can pay a few million Euros to a few corrupt politicians and get the contract drafted with much more favorable terms, of course a corporation will take the easier way. Corporations are out to make money, not to watch out for the common good. Governments are supposed to watch out for the common good. In Romania, the government doesn’t do that.

Here’s another case.

You may have heard about a little region in Romania called Rosia Montana. It’s been famous since Roman times (two thousand years ago) for its gold reserves. It still is.

For several years, Rosia Montana Gold Corporation, a gold mining corporation with investors like George Soros, has been trying to get its claws on it. They’ve been promising all sorts of things to the Romanian government and to the local people in Rosia Montana, but they’ve met with unexpected and forceful grassroots resistance against the deal, and rightfully so.

When you look at the facts, the deal they want the Romanian government to sign is this: they get 96% of the finds and Romania gets 4% of the finds.

Someone’s getting thoroughly shafted and I bet it’s Romania itself. The Romanian government is ready to sign on the deal, because they’re thoroughly corrupt and select politicians stand to make millions, but lots of Romanians (and foreigners concerned with the environmental impact of the project) are saying no, so for now, the deal’s hotly debated.

Romania’s own president, Basescu, wants the deal to go through, because the gold found there will supposedly “replenish Romania’s gold reserves”. He’s either a moron or he stands to make a personal fortune if the deal goes through. If there’s “gold in them thar hills”, then for goodness’ sake, get some unemployed Romanian miners in those mines, take 100% (not 4%) of that gold and get it into the state vaults, pronto. What do you need Rosia Montana Gold Corporation for? Say you do need a foreign investor to help you mine the gold? Then make the revenue sharing more equitable! Again, half and half would be the right choice.

Naturally, the Romanian government would disagree, and TV pundits are talking the issue to death on all the news channels. Talk solves nothing. Ever since 1989, Romanian newspapers and independent TV and radio stations have been uncovering corruption after corruption in Romania’s political dealings, and oftentimes, they’ve given clearcut financial proof of the wrongdoings. Have any of the truly guilty gone to jail? No, some of their cronies went to jail, while the real bastards have gotten richer and re-elected. The judicial branch has never been able to convict and send to jail powerful Romanian politicians, in spite of all their corruption, theft of government money, manipulation of government contracts and… the list of crimes goes on and on.

On the other hand, and this is the saddest part, if these contracts with foreign corporations were equitable, do you think all that money would benefit the Romanian people? Do you think it would be used to rebuild Romania’s infrastructure and to spur innovation and small business growth? You’d be a fool to think so. After all, this is Romania, not Sweden, Norway, Iceland or New Zealand. Logic and rational thinking have no place here, nor does equitable behavior. All that extra money, all those gobs and gobs of extra money would likely line the pockets of the same bastards who are screwing the country right now.

I don’t know what’s to be done. Well, I do know, but my solution involves legal superpowers and weapons and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in the EU and most of the countries in this world…

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Thoughts

The Unseen Sea

A lovely timescape (time lapse) video by Simon Christen, featuring photographs taken over the course of a year in the San Francisco Bay Area. I like the soundtrack, too.

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