Shaolin Coke

Great advert in Quicktime 'Pepsi Can Fu'

Net Changes

Netimperative, the UK news site focusing on electronic commerce and media has finally given up its pay to view model. You can visit the site here

Next of Kin

Years ago, Liam Neeson and Patrick Swayze were in a film called Next of Kin. The plot of the film was something like this:

There was a family who lived in Appalachia, a mountainous region that includes part of Kentucky (as well as Tennessee, the Carolinas, western Virginia, West Virginia, central Pennsylvania and south western New York state). The region is isolated and poor with the main industries being lumber, coal, strip mining, tourism and whisky (the occasional cultivation of cannabis and I guess now the resale of Oxycodone, also known as hillbilly heroin), its a poor area, the people that live there are tightly bound together and do things differently.

The economic hardship is such that the best and their brightest leave to get work in the big city. Truman Gates (Patrick Swayze) becomes a Chicago police officer and specialises in working with the the underclass of economic hill folk migrants (hillbilly is an offensive term) who come a cropper in the big city. His younger brother gets killed when he gets involved with an organised crime family. Then the slop houses, mobile homes (US Eng: trailers) and rickety cabins of Kentucky empty as Briar Gates (Liam Neeson) and the rest of the poor but upright extended family decend on Chicago to take justice into their own hands. The film was a curates egg, not enough action, too much of a plot and too many messages that it was meant to convey for mainstream audiences, but at the same time it was a Hollywood production.

What it emphasised however was the diacotomy of the US, on the one hand the most advanced and powerful country on earth, on the other, these communities living in grinding poverty held together purely by old-fashioned community values.

I was reminded of this when I read this piece Where Prosecutors Say Votes Are Sold in the New York Times (registration required) about the sale of votes in the 21st century. Ross Harris, a big wheel in the political machinery in Kentucky is accused of buying votes for 50USD a time.

According to the article, one of the people accepted the money to buy a coat! Naturally people are disturbed by political corruption, however the article failed so to mention or comment on what is to me an obvious observation.

Why are the political parties not offering to improve these peoples lot? Appalachians have a history of political involvement and were at the sharp end of the American civil war, partily because the plainsmen of the Confederate states had largely denied them a political voice and their self reliant nature had meant that they did not use black people as slaves (an outcome of this was the founding of West Virginia as a state and counties called Union County and Lincoln County).

If the people are prepared to sell their vote, its probably because the changes in the political system makes no positive impact on their livelihoods or them or their children anyway. Is this the American dream? Is it right? And then politicans and economists have the gall to criticise the way European governments try in some way to look after all members of society? I would rather have a cohesive society than slightly higher economic growth rates.

If you want a more positive viewpoint on these commmunities have a look at the Center for Virtual Appalachia

Digital media -- knowing your rights

Below if a very useful consumer guide to DRM was published online by the Baltimore Sun (link to the article here), presumably syndicated from the Wall Street Journal.

Technology is changing how much control users have over the music, movies, games they buy

By Nick Wingfield

The Wall Street Journal August 23, 2004

Buying music used to be simple: You coughed up $14 or so for a CD, and as long as you didn't bootleg it or charge crowds of people to listen to it, the music was yours. The Internet and other technologies are changing all that, opening up a slew of new options for purchasing entertainment, be it music or movies or games. That's a good thing.

The not-so-good thing is that in the next few years, the sheer number and complexity of those new options are likely to bewilder many consumers. You may no longer be able to "own a movie" or "own a CD," at least in the sense those phrases have been used. Instead, you will merely have "rights" to the content, enforced by technology. Those rights might change over time, even at the whim of the music or movie company you get them from.

The technology allowing all this is called digital-rights management, or DRM. It's a kind of invisible software lock securely bolted onto a song or movie. Being software, it's a very flexible sort of lock. A music label, for example, might let you download a song free and then listen to it for a day, but then require you to pay up to keep on listening.

For a taste of what DRM might bring, check out Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, which sells songs for 99 cents.

ITunes COMES with a DRM system that prevents customers from playing those songs on more than five computers, or burning more than seven identical lists of songs onto CDs. (Before you can play a song on a sixth computer, you need to use the DRM software to "de-authorize" it from one of the first five machines.)

Of course, no such technical limits exist on normal music CDs, though recording companies, especially in Europe, are experimenting with restrictions.

Some iTunes users are grumbling. In June, science-fiction writer Cory Doctorow gave a talk critical of DRM technology in which he related how he hit Apple's limit on the number of computers he could play his music on -- three machines at the time.

One computer was in the shop, another was at his parents' house and a third was a defective machine he had returned to Apple -- without first remembering to de-authorize his music on it so he could play it on another machine. As a result, Mr. Doctorow said he was unable to listen to hundreds of dollars worth of music.

Apple says such problems aren't common, especially since the company upped its computer limit to five in April. But that change itself was a lesson in the power of DRM: Apple's increase was retroactive, and applied to all songs, not just those purchased after the change took effect.
In this case, Apple gave users more liberal rights. (It also curbed some types of CD burning, but the change didn't apply to previously purchased music.) However, there's nothing preventing Apple from making its DRM retroactively more restrictive -- though the company says that's unlikely.
Apple set up the iTunes DRM as a way of getting the big labels -- badly burned by the original Napster -- comfortable with music online. It deserves credit for helping legalize digital music: iTunes has had more than 100 million downloads.

And even with the restrictions, iTunes customers more or less "own" their music once they've bought it. By contrast, consumers only "rent" music at subscription services like RealNetworks's Rhapsody, which typically charge a $10 or so monthly fee for playing as much music as customers want.

The catch: Rhapsody subscribers can play their songs only on their PCs, not portable audio players, and only as long as they keep paying their monthly bills. That's the main reason these "rental" sites haven't done as well as iTunes. (By the end of this year, a new version of Microsoft's DRM will allow subscription users to transfer content to portable players.)
It's not just Internet music that's getting more complicated. Most of today's movie DVDs contain restrictions that prevent users from copying them, or playing them in a different geographic region from where they are bought.

But Hollywood studios, along with technology and consumer electronic companies, are working on a new generation of DVDs that will, in addition to holding more data for high-definition movies, also have a much more flexible DRM. As a result, different studios might end up imposing different DVD restrictions. You may, for instance, be able to make a copy of the "Toy Story 4" DVD for your laptop -- but not do the same thing with "Charlie's Angels 5." Those variations will likely require some form of labeling on DVDs so consumers will know what they're getting, according to companies involved in planning them.

Alan Davidson, associate director of the civil liberties group Center for Democracy and Technology, says he isn't opposed to DRM, but worries consumers may not understand what rights come with content they purchase. "DRM underscores the point that consumers are going to have to become a lot more sophisticated about what they're buying," he says.

American Nightmare

Or why US economic policies are wrong and the European model is better

The San Diego Union Tribune carried an article on how more Americans than ever are living below the poverty line and lacking health insurance, despite improvements economic growth indicators such as gross domestic product (GDP). What job growth had been occuring had been in low paying sectors such as the hospitality industry. These figures do not bode well for the global economy as a whole, since America and is a engine for growth in the global economic machine.

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Essential details and numbers

- A staggering 17.6 per cent or 12.9 million American children living below the poverty line, which is obscene

- Average salaries were flat and failed to keep pace with inflation

- An increase of 1.3 million now living below the poverty line bringing the total to 36 million

- California, long America's richest state had a higher than average 13.4 per cent of its population living below the poverty line

- 45 million Americans were without health insurance last year, a jump of 1.4 million, preventing them from getting access to healthcare

- Profits in American companies have jumped 62 per cent

The Wisdom of Irvine Welsh

Hot Rocks

Back once again with some vinyl recommendations:

Quentin Harris - The Episodes EP (Shelter Records) - fine slab of deep house, despite the 'hardcore' styling of the label logo

Antonio Ocasio - Forward (Wave) - many will buy it for the Francois K remix, however make sure that you also have a listen to the tribal winds roots mix on the flipside

Massive - Unfinished Sympathy (Wild Bunch/Circa) - yes I know that this is 13 years old, but Phonica have some repressings with the original, instrumental, and Paul Oakenfold remix/instrumental on it. The only one it misses is my favourite the Nellee Hooper club mix - if you want that mix get scouring eBay. (Factoid: Massive Attack renamed themselves on a temporary basis, during and immediately after Gulf War I when they heard on the news that "the attack was swift and massive" refering to the American-led assault on the Iraqi army of occupation. Bomb the Bass temporarily changed to their producer's name Tim Simenon. Copies of Massive Attack's Blue Lines CD still have Massive on the disc artwork and early copies with attack missing off the cover name are sought after collectors items)

Onionz & Greg Sankovich - The Magic of Music EP (Siesta) - I didn't know what to do my music project on in the third-year of secondary school, so did a few mini projects under the 'magic of music' project title, I got a good mark. Fortunately the same titled EP by Onionz is a whole lot better - more the 'west coast hippie sh!t' as my friend Freddy Garcia calls it. A solid slab of west coast house to put a shimmy in ya' game

Hashim - Al Naafysh (white label) - Single-sided bootleg mix of THE electro classic, making it more friendly to use in a house set without losing its phreshness. One to drop with care for extreme dancefloor impact

Soha - Seas and Sirens (Poussez) - deep acid house from France, almost as moving as Fingers Inc. - Washing Machine, way back, back in the day. Amazing and quite hard to get hold of

Watching your Karma

What goes around comes around and all that, new MP3 pimping site with content from some 3,000 different artists launched. Not particularly easy to search from the quick scan I had of it and missing a lot of indie classics like AR Kane, but also had an unsigned section as well which is a nice touch.

Karmadownload is the name, I quite like it in a Bill & Ted kinda way - excellent. Check it out man, somehow I don't think Apple will be looking over their shoulder just yet.

The Mother of All Websites

Mother the marketing agency are known for the their creativity, including Munkey: the one good thing to come out of ITV Digital as well as their crap hard-nosed business man and strange teaching child campaign for Orange. Anyway, smart though they are they forgot to register the dot co dot uk version of their web address. So Ben Wheatley has put up some creative ideas that he thinks they should be using instead. Ben's work can be found here, Mother's holding page can be found here.

Kudos to B3TA for the links

In The Sandpit

Great article in the Guardian Online on the dangers of selling internationally, but not thinking the same way from a geographer employed at Microsoft. Lessons that all international marketers should learn from. Selected highlights include:

- Showing the disputed Kashmir region as not belonging in India on a map used for setting timezones on a computer, which stopped sales of Windows 95 in the country

- Including sections of the Koran as background chants in a Mortal Combat-type game called Kakuto Chojin, it had to get pulled off the shelves soon after it went on sale (and you wonder why the X-Box doesn't have all that many good games apart from Halo and.. and there's erm.. erm Halo2, and.. and... erm let's move on shall we)

- Describing April, 30th as the Queen's birthday in the republic of Uruguay (so which queen is that then?)

Respected Members of Congress on no-fly list

Respected politicians marked out as terror suspects

Democrat Party congressman John Lewis who was a close associate of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, is on the terrorist watch list, what's going on here. Someone find an old J Edgar Hoover memo which warned about black people in southern states getting uppity and wanting the white peoples seat on the bus? I know George Bush is conservative, but even he has two black people that I know of in his cabinet.

Lewis has distinguished company in Ted Kennedy (yes, related to Bobby and former president John F.). The bit that gets interesting is that they "can't" take congressman Lewis off the list. The Republic Party Rally to gee up the troops for the next election starts in Nuremberg oops Freudian slip sorry New York, I wonder how many delegates will be on the no-fly list?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/08/20/lewis.watchlist/index.html

Maximum kudos to the Interesting People email list for this

Why ID sucks almost as much as David Blunkett

The text below is from a website belonging to John Gilmore, one of your average west coast geeks who has done very nicely thank you. John is currently taking the US attorney general to court.

Whats wrong with showing ID?

What does an ID, any ID, do for security? The honest answer is 'not much'. If anything, relying on ID for security purposes actually makes things worse.

Shwing ID only affects honest people. If you're dishonset you can obtain false documents or steal the identity of an honest person.

If a 19 year old college student can get a fake ID to drink, why couldn't a bad person get one, too? And no matter how sophisticated the security embedded into the ID, wouldn't a well-financed terroriste be able to falsify that too? The answer to both questions is obviously yes.

Honest people, on the other hand go to pro-life rallies. Honest people attend gun shows. Honest people protest the President of the United States. Honest people fly to political conventions. What if those with the power to put people on a 'no fly' list decided they didn't like the reason for which you wanted to travel? The honest peoople whouldn't be going anywhere.

Bad people , besides using fake IDs and stolen identities, can also make the system of checking IDs work in their favour. The Carnival Booth effect, as described by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, means that terrorists can probe an ID security system by send a number of peoople on innocent trips through the system and noting who is flagged for extra searches and who isn't. They then send only those who the system doesn't flag up on terrorist missions.

Music Industry Calls Halt to Giveaway CDs

In the UK, music is licenced to help marketing campaigns by giving away music with product. This tactic has been used the UK newspaper industry to great effect. Now according to Music Week, there are those within the industry that want to stop the practice, as they feel it undermines their fight against privacy and the UK's 50-year copyright law.

They're wrong:

- The music has been paid for in some way, shape or form from a marketing budget

- With the alleged demise of record sales to piracy, you'd think that the industry would want to explore alternative revenue streams

- CD samplers have been used by the music industry to drum up interest and sales in artists, so these free CDs should be a benefit rather than a hinderance

- The 50-year copyright law is not about the record companies getting what is rightfully theirs, but further encroaching on consumers fair use. Should the original publisher of William Shakespeare's works still be claiming copyright or are they a world treasure? Where do you stop? The 50-year issue has always existed the music industry was negligent in not allowing for it. Its as incompetent as someone who lives in a rented property, yet refuses to pay and then wonders why they get kicked out on to the street. Record companies have had access to the best lawyers money can buy, they have no excuse

- The 50-year copyright issue highlights a bigger problem in the music industry. That it has failed to invest in and build long-term acts on an ongoing basis and is relying on a legacy that it will be no longer entitled too. Like other industries such as the UK motorcycle and car industry, it should be allowed to pay the price for its lack of investment in talent

K-Tel beats the Smithsonian Institute

Had to share this 1970's mock up cover for The Onion with you. Pure class; Jimmy Carter and Congress speaking via CB radio and KTel petitioning politicans to save 1970s pop music forever. Super dope stylin', check it out

Jargon Watch

Toyota-isation - Deserts surfaces that contain microscopic lichen, algae and other particles are being disrupted as everyone (whose anyone) in the North Africa, the South West United States and the Middle East have given up their camels for Toyota Landcruisers. This has meant that the amount of dust that is picked up by storms has increased massively and may become a widespread hazard to the environment and people's health according to Oxford professor Andrew Goudie. But on the plus side we'll have amazing blood red sunsets. Goudie's comments were written about in UK newspaper The Independent here.

The New Normal

When I started out in PR the internet was still special. There was a sense of wonder in the power that it provided to you. Email was over used to send jokes and video clips because you could. Now its the workaday, people who don't have an email address are the underclass or trying too hard to make a statement. My email account vomits untargeted marketing related mail just like the letter box in my front door and most of the useful content has a price on its head just like at WH Smith.

Using a Hotmail account as your contact details is like buying your groceries with welfare stamps, one step up from not existing at all. People whom you can't google (find using the Google search engine) either have a common-as-muck name, or have been doing an eight-year stretch for possession with intent to supply or armed robbery.

Wired the media pimp of the internet for so long announced on Monday, an important change to its style guide the words net, internet and web would no longer be capitalised. Online had lost its last remaining claim to be special. Its no longer new media, but treated with familarity more like a well-read and dog-eared book.

In reality Wired has given up to what many of us have thought and felt for the past three years. The full article can be read here.

On a another related theme, during the dot.com boom I worked on the Palm (PalmOne) pan european PR account, one of the more hair-brained schemes cooked up by the executive team in the States was selling 'special edition' blue Palm Vx devices through Claudia Schiffer's website claudiaschiffer.com. Whilst the site, was up there for an indecently long time, I see that this ghost in my cupboard has now been buried with a holding page from the design company entitled 'gone fishing'. Here's a link to the site on Archive.org's Way Back Machine to an archived version of the site.

The Schiffer device was launched at a Red Herring conference in the US, crueller wags at the time alleged that during the launch one of the Palm executives spent an inordinate amount of time looking at Ms Schiffer's chest and fluffed his lines. I wasn't there, so I don't know the truth of the story.

There was also talk of a deal with Michael Jordan along similar lines for the Palm m100 device (known to us at the time as Kelvin) as well, we did some preliminary thinking about this, but it never came to fruition on my shift.

The original press release text is below:

High tech icon Palm and fashion icon Claudia Schiffer to create new world of "chic tech"; Leaders of tech and fashion create designer Palm handheld

Los Angeles - August 4th, 2000: Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM), the pioneer and leader of handheld computing; Claudia Schiffer, model, actress and entrepreneur; and PTN Media (OTCBB: PTNM), today announced a collaboration to design and market the Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Edition handheld computer. A prototype of the elegant, brushed metallic-aqua Claudia Schiffer Edition handheld was unveiled today at the Red Herring "Herring on Hollywood" Conference in Los Angeles.

On her latest entrepreneurial effort, Schiffer said she had been exploring the technology industry for some time but had been waiting for the right opportunity. "Palm is a company I admire for its devotion to making sophisticated technology simple and accessible to everyone," said Schiffer.

She added, "I am excited to be working with Palm to bring fashion to technology and extend its reach to the wider population." A highly mobile professional who constantly juggles a time-constrained schedule, Schiffer exemplifies the increased efficiencies that can be gained from using a Palm handheld.

The Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Edition, based on the marriage of product functionality with fusion of bold colour and style, catapults Schiffer's image to a symbol of "chic tech" and enables Palm to broaden its addressable market and maintain its leadership position in the high-growth mobile market.

"Our goal is to become as essential in pop culture as we are in tech culture," said Satjiv Chahil, chief marketing officer, Palm, Inc. "We are delighted that as an avid Palm user, the multi-talented Claudia Schiffer recognises the opportunity to market an elegant, powerful and simple-to-use technology to the fashion-conscious public."

Schiffer has global appeal across a broad market demographic. Her name has been associated with the leading brands in fashion for nearly a decade, and she has appeared on thousands of magazine covers worldwide. "We expect the Claudia Edition will be the product that women around the world will find to be an essential item to manage their increasingly busy lives," predicts Peter Klamka, president of PTN Media, which is owned in part by Schiffer.

Tony Perkins, founder and chairman of the prestigious Silicon Valley Magazine The Red Herring, lauded the announcement saying, "This marks the beginning of a new trend where technology is no longer the domain of the techno-elite and business professionals, but a lifestyle choice and fashion statement."

The Palm Vx handheld is ultra-slim, ultra-light and holds thousands of names, addresses, phone numbers, appointments, to do's, and e-mail messages. It has 8 MB of memory and synchronises and backs up data with a PC or Macintosh at the touch of a button. There are several add-on accessories available for the Palm Vx that enable wireless connectivity and Internet access. Schiffer is personally selecting her favourite add-on software applications to include on a CD that customers can use to install the programs on their Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Edition handheld.

The Palm Vx Claudia Schiffer Edition will be available exclusively online Autumn 2000 at www.claudiaschiffer.com.

About Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. is the leading provider of handheld computers (IDC personal companion devices category, 1999), including the Palm III, V and VII series of handheld computers. The Palm OS platform is the foundation for the market-leading handheld computers from the company as well as products from its strategic partners such as IBM, QUALCOMM, Franklin Covey, Handspring and Symbol Technologies. Designed to support the increasingly mobile and geographically dispersed nature of information management, the company's handheld solutions allow people to carry their most critical information in their pockets. For more information, please visit www.palm.com

About Claudia Schiffer
Claudia Schiffer is one of the most recognised women in the world. She has been called "the most beautiful woman in the world" by GQ magazine and countless others. Her name has been associated with the leading brands in fashion for almost a decade, and she has appeared on thousands of magazine covers worldwide, earning the Guinness World Record for the most magazine covers. In 1999, Schiffer earned US $9 million and made the Forbes Power 100 in Hollywood.

Schiffer currently does business on every major continent through modelling and endorsements, including her ongoing role as international spokesperson for L'Oreal Cosmetics. Film credits include Black & White, Friends & Lovers, and The Blackout. She recently finished starring in the short film Meeting Genevieve, directed by Luis Mandoki, and she is currently completing an untitled BBC film with director Nicolas Roeg.
Schiffer is also a National Ambassador for UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund).

About Claudiaschiffer.com
ClaudiaSchiffer.com, which is being launched by PTN Media, is designed to be a destination site for fashion, style and beauty news and commerce. In addition to regular reports from Schiffer herself, the audience will have access to all of the latest information on trends, cool stores, and all things fashionable.
CONTACT: Ged Carroll
Tel: +44 (0)207 544 3193
e-mail: gcarroll@webergroup.co.uk
Paul Rogers
Tel: +44 (0)207 544 3164
e-mail: progers@webergroup.co.uk

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

Below is a speech given by former secretary of state Robert McNamara in 1966 to a group of journalists in Montreal. It is especially strange reading it with the current war on terror and having read about the performance of the post-McNamara World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in systematically destroying economic value in Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz (who was a former economic advisor to the Clinton administration and respected economics professor at an American university). Of the World Bank Stiglitz wrote "Decisions were made on the basis of what seemed a curious blend of ideology and bad economics, dogma that sometimes seemed to be thinly veiling special interests ... Open, frank discussion was discouraged--there was no room for it." The original website link with scans of the presentation foils (1966 was pre-Micro$oft PowerPoint, Aldus Persuasion or Apple Keynote) that Robert McNamara used can be found here.

This speech was delivered by Robert McNamara in 1966 when he was
disillusioned with the US efforts in South Vietnam, and the profound
misunderstanding of the nature of international conflict in the world. He
knew there were similar types of conflicts arising all over the world
which simply promised more chaos, and could not be dealt with cost
effectively after they got fully underway - that the communists were only
exploiting them for their own purposes - and that, if we wanted a
'peaceful world' much greater effort must be expended other than military
to prevent them. I was his 'Assistant for Counterinsurgency' at the time,
and did the studies that underlay the speech and theory, and suggested the
central thesis that 'Security is Development' in the contemporary world,
and I crafted large sections of the speech.

It got a world wide reaction. Utter suprise at its sweep, transcending all
the other agencies of the US government who should have, but were not,
relating their efforts to global security and peace. (some thought he was
going to run for President) Later, McNamara, putting his money where his
mouth was, left the government, and took the helm as President of the
World Bank - which attempts to support 'development' in the 3rd world. Of
course the US public, which hates foreign aid, and understands it even
less, did nothing. And lots of the US press, which can't grasp or report
effectively on big ideas. just glomed onto the 2 year Service idea as the
'news' of the speech.

But if anyone cares to notice, the world since 1966 (it is now 1999) has
unfolded as McNamara predicted, and there is more political violence than
ever - and less ameliorative development. With the US military continuing
to act as the world's policeman. And the US still confused as to its role
in the world.

David Hughes Col, US Army, Retired.
then Lt. Col. US Army

SECURITY IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense
before the American Society of Newspaper Editors
Montreal, Canada, May 18th, 1966

Any American would be fortunate to visit this lovely island city, in this
hospitable land. But there is a special satisfaction for a Secretary of
Defense to cross the longest border in the world and realize that it is
also the least armed border in the world. It prompts one to reflect how
negative and narrow a notion of defense still clouds our century.

There is still among us an almost eradicable tendency to think of our
security problem as being exclusively a military problem-and to think of
the military problem as being exclusively a weapons-system or hardware
problem.

The plain, blunt truth is that contemporary man still conceives of war and
peace in much the same stereotyped terms that his ancestors did.

The fact that these ancestors, both recent and remote, were conspicuously
unsuccessful at avoiding war, and enlarging peace, doesn't seem to dampen
our capacity for cliches.

We still tend to conceive of national security almost solely as a state of
armed readiness: a vast, awesome arsenal of weaponry.

We still tend to assume that it is primarily this purely military
ingredient that creates security.

We are still haunted by this concept of military hardware. But how limited
a concept this actually is becomes apparent when one ponders the kind of
peace that exists between the United States and Canada.

It is a very cogent example. Here we are, two modern nations, highly
developed technologically, each with immense territory, both enriched with
great reserves of natural resources, each militarily sophisticated; and
yet we sit across from one another, divided by an unguarded frontier of
thousands of miles, and there is not a remotest set of circumstances, in
any imaginable time frame of the future, in which our two nations would
wage war on one another.

It is so unthinkable an idea as to be totally absurd. But why is that so?

Is it because we are both ready in an instant to hurl our military
hardware at one another? Is it because we are both zeroed in on one
another's vital targets? Is it because we are both armed to our
technological teeth that we do not go to war? The whole notion, as
applied to our two countries, is ludicrous.

Canada and the United States are at peace for reasons that have nothing
whatever to do with our mutual military readiness. We are at peace-truly
at peace- because of the vast fund of compatible beliefs, common
principles, and shared ideals. We have our differences and our diversity
and let us hope for the sake of a mutually rewarding relationship we never
become sterile carbon copies of one another. But the whole point is that
our basis of mutual peace has nothing whatever to do with our military
hardware.

Now this is not to say, obviously enough, that the concept of military
deterrence is no longer relevant in the contemporary world. Unhappily, it
still is critically relevant with respect to our potential adversaries.
But it has no relevance what ever between the United States and Canada.

We are not adversaries. We are not going to become adversaries. And it is
not mutual military deterrence that keeps us from becoming adversaries.
It is mutual respect for common principles. Now I mention this-as obvious
as it all is-simply as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the concept that
military hardware is the exclusive or even the primary ingredient of
permanent peace in the mid 20th century.

In the United States over the past 5 years, we have achieved a
considerably improved balance in our total military posture. That was the
mandate I received from Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; and with their
support, and that of the Congress, we have been able to create a
strengthened force structure of land, sea, and air components with a vast
increase in mobility and materiel and with a massive superiority in
nuclear retaliatory power over any combination of potential adversaries.

Our capabilities for nuclear, conventional, and countersubversive war have
all been broadened and improved; and we have accomplished this through
military budgets that were in fact lesser percentages of our gross
national product than in the past.

From the point of view of combat readiness, the United States has never
been militarily stronger. We intend to maintain that readiness. But if we
think profoundly about the matter, it is clear that this purely military
posture is not the central element in our security. A nation can reach
the point at which it does not buy more security for itself simply by
buying more military hardware. We are at that point. The decisive factor
for a powerful nation already adequately armed is the character of its
relationships with the world.

In this respect, there are three broad groups of nations: first, those
that are struggling to develop; secondly, those free nations that have
reached a level of strength and prosperity that enables them to contribute
to the peace of the world; and finally, those nations who might tempted to
make themselves our adversaries. For each of these groups, the United
States, to preserve its intrinsic security, has to have distinctive sets
of relationships. First, we have to help protect those developing
countries which genuinely need and request our help and which, as an
essential precondition, are willing and able to help themselves.

Second, we have to encourage and achieve a more effective partnership with
those nations who can and should share international peacekeeping
responsibilities.

Third, we must do all we realistically can to reduce the risk of conflict
with those who might be tempted to take up arms against us.

Let us examine these three sets of relationships in detail.

The Developing Nations

First, the developing nations. Roughly 100 countries today are caught up
in the difficult transition from traditional to modern societies. There
is no uniform rate of progress among them, and they range from primitive
mosaic societies fractured by tribalism and held feebly together by the
slenderest of political sinews to relatively sophisticated countries well
on the road to agricultural sufficiency and industrial competence.

This sweeping surge of development, particularly across the whole southern
half of the globe, has no parallel in history. It has turned
traditionally listless areas of the world into seething cauldrons of
change.

On the whole, it has not been a very peaceful process.

In the last 8 years alone there have been no less than 164 internationally
significant outbreaks of violence, each of them specifically designed as
a serious challenge to the authority, or the very existence, of the
government in question. Eighty two different governments have been
directly involved.

What is striking is that only 15 of these 164 significant resorts to
violence have been military conflicts between two states. And not a
single one of the 164 conflicts has been a formally declared war.
Indeed, there has not been a formal declaration of war anywhere in the
world since World War II.

The planet is becoming a more dangerous place to live on, not merely
because of a potential nuclear holocaust but also because of the large
number of de facto conflicts and because the trend of such conflicts is
growing rather than diminishing. At the beginning of 1958, there were 23
prolonged insurgencies going on about the world. As of February 1, 1966,
there were 40. Further, the total number of outbreaks of violence has
increased each year: In 1958, there were 34; in 1965, there were 58.

The Relationship of Violence and Economic Status

But what is most significant of all is that there is a direct and constant
relationship between the incidence of violence and the economic status of
the countries afflicted. The World Bank divides nations on the basis of
per capita income into four categories: rich, middle income, poor, and
very poor.

The rich nations are those with a per capita income of $750 per year or
more.

The current U.S. level is more than $2,700. There are 27 of these rich
nations. They possess 75 percent of the world's wealth, though roughly
only 25 percent of the world's population.

Since 1958, only one of these 27 nations has suffered a major internal
upheaval on its own territory. But observe what happens at the other end
of the economic scale.

Among the 38 very poor nations those with a per capita income of under
$100 a year not less than 32 have suffered significant conflicts.
Indeed, they have suffered an average of two major outbreaks of violence
per country in the 8 year period. That is a great deal of conflict.

What is worse, it has been predominantly conflict of a prolonged nature.
The trend holds predictably constant in the case of the two other
categories: the poor and the middle income nations. Since 1958, 87
percent of the very poor nations, 69 percent of the poor nations, and 48
percent of the middle income nations have suffered serious violence.

There can, then, be no question but that there is an irrefutable
relationship between violence and economic backwardness. And the trend of
such violence is up, not down.

Now, it would perhaps be somewhat reassuring if the gap between the rich
nations and the poor nations were closing and economic backwardness were
significantly receding. But it is not. The economic gap is widening.

By the year 1970 over one half of the world's total population will live
in the independent nations sweeping across the southern half of the
planet. But this hungering half of the human race will by then command
only one sixth of the world's total of goods and services. By the year
1975 the dependent children of these nations alone children under 15 years
of age will equal the total population of the developed nations to the
north.

Even in our own abundant societies, we have reason enough to worry over
the tensions that coil and tighten among under-privileged young people and
finally flail out in delinquency and crime. What are we to expect from a
whole hemisphere of youth where mounting frustrations are likely to fester
into eruptions of violence and extremism?

Annual per capita income in roughly half of the 80 underdeveloped nations
that are members of the World Bank is rising by a paltry 1 percent a year
or less. By the end of the century these nations, at their present rates
of growth, will reach a per capita income of barely $170 a year. The
United States, by the same criterion, will attain a per capita income of
$4,500.

The conclusion to all of this is blunt and inescapable: Given the certain
connection between economic stagnation and the incidence of violence, the
years that lie ahead for the nations in the southern half of the globe are
pregnant with violence.

U.S. Security and the Newly Developing World

This would be true even if no threat of Communist subversion existed is it
clearly does. Both Moscow and Peking, however harsh their internal
differences, regard the whole modernization process as an ideal
environment for the growth of communism. Their experience with subversive
internal war is extensive, and they have developed a considerable array of
both doctrine and practical measures in the art of political violence.

What is often misunderstood is that Communists are capable of subverting,
manipulating, and finally directing for their own ends the wholly
legitimate grievances of a developing society.

But it would be a gross oversimplification to regard communism as the
central factor in every conflict throughout the underdeveloped world. Of
the 149 serious internal insurgencies in the past 8 years, Communists have
been involved in only 58 of them - 8 percent of the total- and this
includes seven instances in which a Communist regime itself was the target
of the uprising.

Whether Communists are involved or not, violence anywhere in a taut world
transmits sharp signals through the complex gangli of international
relations; and the security of the United States is related to the
security and stability of nations half a glob away.

But neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the United States
is, should or could be the global gendarme. Quite the contrary. Experience
confirms what human nature suggests: that in most instances of internal
violence the local people themselves are best able to deal directly with
the situation within the framework of their own traditions.

The United States has no mandate from on high to police the world and no
inclination to do so. There have been classic case in which our
deliberate non-action was th wisest action of all. Where our help is not
sought, it is seldom prudent to volunteer. Certainly we have no charter to
rescue floundering regimes who have brought violence on themselves by
deliberately refusing to meet the legitimate expectations of their
citizenry.

Further, throughout the next decade advancing technology will reduce the
requirements for bases and staging rights at particular locations abroad,
and the whole pattern of forward deployment will gradually change.

But, though all these caveats are clear enough, the irreducible fact
remains that our security is related directly to the security of the newly
developing world. And our role must be precisely this: to help provide
security to those developing nations which genuinely need and request our
help and which demonstrably are willing and able to help themselves.

Security and Development

The rub comes in this: We do not always grasp the meaning of the word
"security" in this context. In a modernizing society, security means
development.

Security is not military hardware, though it may include it. Security is
not military force, though it may involve it. Security is not traditional
military activity, though it may encompass it. Security is development.
Without development, there can be no security. A developing nation that
does not in fact develop simply cannot remain "secure." It cannot remain
secure for the intractable reason that its own citizenry cannot shed its
human nature.

If security implies anything, it implies a minimal measure of order and
stability. Without internal development of at least a minimal degree,
order and stability are simply not possible. They are not possible
because human nature cannot be frustrated beyond intrinsic limits. It
reacts because it must.

Now, that is what we do not always understand, and that is also what
governments of modernizing nations do not always understand. But by
emphasizing that security arises from development, I do not say that an
underdeveloped nation cannot be subverted from within, or be aggressed
upon from without, or be the victim of a combination of the two. It can.
And to prevent any or all of these conditions, a nation does require
appropriate military capabilities to deal with the specific problem. But
the specific military problem is only a narrow facet of the broader
security problem.

Military force can help provide law and order but only to the degree that
a basis for law and order already exists in the developing society: a
basic willingness on the part of the people to cooperate. The law and
order is a shield, behind which the central fact of security - development
- can be achieved.

Now we are not playing a semantic game with these words. The trouble is
that we have been lost in a semantic jungle for too long. We have come to
identify "security" with exclusively military phenomena, and most
particularly with military hardware. But it just isn't so. And we need
to accommodate to the facts of the matter if we want to see security
survive and grow in the southern half of the globe.

Development means economic, social, and political progress. It means a
reasonable standard of living, and the word "reasonable" in this context
requires continual redefinition. What is "reasonable" in an earlier stage
of development will become "unreasonable" in a later stage.

As development progresses, security progresses. And when the people of a
nation have organized their own human and natural resources to provide
themselves with what they need and expect out of life and have learned to
compromise peacefully among competing demands in the larger national
interest then their resistance to disorder and violence will be enormously
increased.

Conversely, the tragic need of desperate men to resort to force to achieve
the inner imperatives of human decency will diminish.

Military and Economic Spheres of U.S. Aid

Now, I have said that the role of the United States is to help provide
security to these modernizing nations, providing they need and request our
help and are clearly willing and able to help themselves. But what should
our help be? Clearly, it should be help toward development. In the
military sphere, that involves two broad categories of assistance.

We should help the developing nation with such training and equipment as
is necessary to maintain the protective shield behind which development
can go forward.

The dimensions of that shield vary from country to country, but what is
essential is that it should be a shield and not a capacity for external
aggression.

The second, and perhaps less understood category of military assistance in
a modernizing nation, is training in civic action. Civic action is another
one of those semantic puzzles. Too few Americans and too few officials in
developing nations really comprehend what military civic action means.
Essentially, it means using indigenous military forces for nontraditional
military projects, projects that are useful to the local population in
fields such as education, public works, health, sanitation, agriculture -
indeed, anything connected with economic or social progress.

It has had some impressive results. In the past 4 years the U.S. assisted
civic action program, worldwide, has constructed or repaired more than
10,000 miles of roads, built over 1,000 schools, hundreds of hospitals and
clinics, and has provided medical and dental care to approximately 4
million people.

What is important is that all this was done by indigenous men in uniform.
Quite apart from the developmental projects themselves, the program
powerfully alters the negative image of the military man as the oppressive
preserver of the stagnant status quo.

But assistance in the purely military sphere is not enough. Economic
assistance is also essential. The President is determined that our aid
should be hardheaded and rigorously realistic, that it should deal
directly with the roots of underdevelopment and not merely attempt to
alleviate the symptoms. His bedrock principle is that U.S. economic aid -
no matter what its magnitude - is futile unless the country in question is
resolute in making the primary effort itself. That will be the criterion,
and that will be the crucial condition for all our future assistance.

Only the developing nations themselves can take the fundamental measures
that make outside assistance meaningful. These measures are often
unpalatable and frequently call for political courage and decisiveness.
But to fail to undertake painful, but essential, reform inevitably leads
to far more painful revolutionary violence. Our economic assistance is
designed to offer a reasonable alternative to that violence. It is
designed to help substitute peaceful progress for tragic internal
conflict.

The United States intends to be compassionate and generous in this effort,
but it is not an effort it can carry exclusively by itself. And thus it
looks to those nations who have reached the point of self-sustaining
prosperity to increase their contribution to the development and, thus, to
the security of the modernizing world.

Sharing Peacekeeping Responsibilities

And that brings me to the second set of relationships that I underscored
at the outset; it is the policy of the United States to encourage and
achieve a more effective partnership with those nations who can, and
should, share international peacekeeping responsibilities.

America has devoted a higher proportion of its gross national product to
its military establishment than any other major free-world nation. This
was true even before our increased expenditures in Southeast Asia. We
have had, over the last few years, as many men in uniform as all the
nations of Western Europe combined, even though they have a population
half again greater than our own.

Now, the American people are not going to shirk their obligations in any
part of the world, but they clearly cannot be expected to bear a
disproportionate share of the common burden indefinitely. If, for
example, other nations genuinely believe - as they say they do - that it
is in the common interest to deter the expansion of Red China's economic
and political control beyond its national boundaries, then they must take
a more active role in guarding the defense perimeter. Let me be perfectly
clear. This is not to question the policy of neutralism or nonalignment
of any particular nation. But it is to emphasize that the independence of
such nations can, in the end, be fully safeguarded only by collective
agreements among themselves and their neighbors.

The plain truth is the day is coming when no single nation, however
powerful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its own
borders. Regional and international organizations for peacekeeping
purposes are as yet rudimentary, but they must grow in experience and be
strengthened by deliberate and practical cooperative action.

In this matter, the example of Canada is a model for nations everywhere.
As Prime Minister Pearson pointed out eloquently in New York just last
week: Canada "is as deeply involved in the world's affairs as any country
of its size. We accept this because we have learned over 50 years that
isolation from the policies that determine war does not give us immunity
from the bloody, sacrificial consequences of their failure. We learned
that in 1914 and again in 1939. . . . That is why we have been proud to
send our men to take part in every peacekeeping operation of the United
Nations in Korea, and Kashmir, and the Suez, and the Congo, and Cyprus."

The Organization of American States in the Dominican Republic, the more
than 30 nations contributing troops or supplies to assist the Government
of South Viet Nam, indeed even the parallel efforts of the United States
and the Soviet Union in the Pakistan-India conflict these efforts,
together with those of the U.N., are the first attempts to substitute
multinational for unilateral policing of violence. They point to the
peacekeeping patterns of the future.

We must not merely applaud the idea. We must dedicate talent, resources,
and hard practical thinking to its implementation. In Western Europe, an
area whose burgeoning economic vitality stands as a monument to the wisdom
of the Marshall Plan, the problems of security are neither static nor
wholly new. Fundamental changes are under way, though certain inescapable
realities remain. The conventional forces of NATO, for example, still
require a nuclear backdrop far beyond the capability of any Western
European nation to supply, and the United States is fully committed to
provide that major nuclear deterrent.

However, the European members of the alliance have a natural desire to
participate more actively in nuclear planning. A central task of the
alliance today is, therefore, to work out the relationships and
institutions through which shared nuclear planning can be effective. We
have made a practical and promising start in the Special Committee of NATO
Defense Ministers.

Common planning and consultation are essential aspects of any sensible
substitute to the unworkable and dangerous alternative of independent
national nuclear forces within the alliance. And even beyond the alliance
we must find the means to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
That is a clear imperative.

There are, of course, risks in nonproliferation arrangements, but they
cannot be compared with the infinitely greater risks that would arise out
of the increase in national nuclear stockpiles. In the calculus of risk,
to proliferate independent national nuclear forces is not a mere
arithmetical addition of danger. We would not be merely adding up risks.
We would be insanely multiplying them.

If we seriously intend to pass on a world to our children that is not
threatened by nuclear holocaust, we must come to grips with the problem of
proliferation. A reasonable nonproliferation agreement is feasible. For
there is no adversary with whom we do not share a common interest in
avoiding mutual destruction triggered by an irresponsible nth power.
Dealing With Potential Adversaries

That brings me to the third and last set of relationships the United
States must deal with: those with nations who might be tempted to take up
arms against us.

These relationships call for realism. But realism is not a hardened,
inflexible, unimaginative attitude. The realistic mind is a restlessly
creative mind, free of naive delusions but full of practical alternatives.
There are practical alternatives to our current relationships with both
the Soviet Union and Communist China.

A vast ideological chasm separates us from them and to a degree separates
them from one another. There is nothing to be gained from our seeking an
ideological rapproachment; but breaching the isolation of great nations
like Red China, even when that isolation is largely of its own making
reduces the danger of potentially catastrophic misunderstandings and
increase the incentive on both sides to resolve disputes by reason rather
than by force.

There are many ways in which we can build bridges toward nations who would
cut themselves off from meaningful contact with us. We can do so with
properly balanced trade relations, diplomatic contacts and in some cases
even by exchanges of military observers. We have to know when it is we
want to place this bridge, what sort of traffic we want to travel over it,
an on what mutual foundations the whole structure can be designed.

There are no one cliff bridges. If you are going to span a chasm, you
have to rest the structure on both cliffs. Now cliffs, generally
speaking, are rather hazardous places. Some people are afraid even to
look over the edge. But in a thermonuclear world, we cannot afford any
political acrophobia.

President Johnson has put the matter squarely: By building bridges to
those who make themselves our adversaries, "we can help gradually to
create a community of interest, a community of trust, and a community of
effort."

With respect to a "community of effort" let me suggest a concrete proposal
for our own present young generation in the United States. It is a
committed and dedicated generation. It has proven that in its enormously
impressive performance in the Peace Corps overseas and in its willingness
to volunteer for a final assault on such poverty and lack of opportunity
that still remain in our own country.

As matters stand, our present Selective Service System draws on only a
minority of eligible young men. That is an inequity. It seems to me that
we could move toward remedying that inequity by asking every young person
in the United States to give 2 years of service to his country whether in
one of the military services, in the Peace Corps, or in some other
volunteer developmental work at home or abroad.

We could encourage other countries to do the same, and we could work out
exchange programs much as the Peace Corps is already planning to do.

While this is not an altogether new suggestion, it has been criticized as
inappropriate while we are engaged in a shooting war. But I believe
precisely the opposite is the case. It is more appropriate now than ever.
For it would underscore what our whole purpose is in Viet-Nam and indeed
anywhere in the world where coercion, or injustice, or lack of decent
opportunity still holds sway. It would make meaningful the central
concept of security a world of decency and development where every man can
feel that his personal horizon is rimmed with hope. Mutual interest,
mutual trust, mutual effort those are the goals. Can we achieve those
goals with the Soviet Union, and with Communist China? Can they achieve
them with one another?

The answer to these questions lies in the answer to an even more
fundamental question. Who is man? Is he a rational animal? If he is,
then the goals can ultimately be achieved. If he is not, then there is
little point in making the effort.

All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal
but with a near infinite capacity for folly. His history seems largely a
halting, but persistent, effort to raise his reason above his animality.
He draws blueprints for utopia. But never quite gets it built. In the
end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever
at hand his own part-comic, part-tragic, part-cussed, but part-glorious
nature.

I, for one, would not count a global free society out. Coercion, after
all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.