Responding to nefarious emails

It happens all the time since “Fake News” were officially enshrined by Trump and Facebook. I receive lots of “fake information” and I generally ignore it unless it comes from friends or folks I know well.

Then, I feel compelled to respond and try to set the record straight. The last in date went like this: “Pictures From Hell (Formerly Called Paris, The Capital Of France)” and showed a succession of pictures of black and Arab individuals amidst chaos and trash, even some urinating inside public transportation (see samples).

I have several reaction to that message that I shared with the sender and the other addressees: I don’t recall seeing quite the kind of mayhem showed on these pictures and described in the text the last time I recently was in Paris.

This said, it seems to me that there is a racist and xenophobic undertone in these pictures and the narration accompanying them. I don’t believe racism as we know it has such great future. Humanity also happens to originate from Africa, we should never forget it.

Granted, there’s a racist in all of us and it seems to me that it’s in our self best interest to curb that tendency and work at eliminating for good. The immediate problem that I can see with the situation as it’s portrayed, is the current French government’s responsibility.

Just like our dear American government, it needs to do a much better job at reviewing and amending its emigration policies, integrating any bonafide immigrant into its society, yet have zero tolerance for folks praying in the middle of the streets, roaming around in burkas or peeing in the subway.

Smarter folks know that religion is poison, whether it’s Christian, Muslim or whatever. The government also needs to make sure its public schools are equal for all, set and have its citizens abide by certain standard conducive to a harmonious society if they are to remain part of the community.

Finally, we’re more than 7.7 billion people on this planet and don’t be naive enough to expect national borders not to bulge at the seams, especially now in this 24/7 age of Instagram and Facebook. Not just France, but governments the world over should do something about overpopulation that’s dooming our planet.

Remember that global warming is but a symptom of overcrowding on earth. Overpopulation is the real cause we need to go after...

Don't let your imagination run dry!

If my memory isn't playing tricks on me, I seemed to have more imagination when I was a kid than today. Some scientific studies link memories to imagination and assert that, as we age, both tend to wither.

This makes sense to me, based at least on my personal observations concerning imagination.

For years, a fertile imagination has always open door for me, made me more creative and has helped me in countless other ways. In fact, it's been the ingredient I've constantly used to map out my path into life.

Today, I'm concerned about losing some of that tool that, I feel, gave me a special, useful edge in all my endeavors. Even if and my imagination seems to remain reasonably vivid, it might be worth focusing on ways to maintaining it fired up for as long as I live.

I still can use plenty of it along the way!

Innovating isn't for sissies!

In life, there's always the true and tested method to consider before jumping into the new and unknown. The later requires much more research, significant risk-taking and always comes with an uncertain outcome.

Further, even if the end result works, it may not be stunning at all and not worth the extra effort and resources spent. Yet, there are folks who are never content with replicating yesterday's experience and want to turn any opportunity into a stage for some innovation.

It's harder, more expensive and has the potential of yielding something great. These folks are game-changers and need our support, even when their efforts go sour!

Down jacket and tennis balls

My wife loves her down jacket, so when it came time to cleaning it at the end of the winter season, she was filled with apprehension. She had heard of some trick to make the job possible - not lethal - for the garment, but didn't remember exactly what it was when, with tremendous anxiety, she dropped the garment into the washing machine.

At the end of the cycle, she pulled the jacket out: It looked just like a formless, downed, dead cat. Visibly, the jacket was ruined. I searched on the web and found that by tumble-drying the parka along with a few tennis balls or a pair of clean sneakers, it would resurrect.

This was precisely what my wife was told as she remembered the magic trick. That's what she did and the jacket returned to its prior, fluffy nature. Really hard to believe!

Can we change our mind?

Are our opinions etched in stone and never subject to change? As we mature, we tend to become more set in our ways and less prone to adapt. We tend to radicalize ourselves, this is why, in large part, the baby-boomers that used to be so liberal, are now, with so much to lose, clinging to a much more conservative agenda.

If we've indeed become so stuck with our sets of beliefs we might have also become dangerous to ourselves, our kids, grand-kids and society in general. Innovation and achievements are generally associated with younger minds, not old geezers, unless of course these people are more like Warren Buffet than John Boehner.

 

Let's take a good look at ourselves; are we still mentally young enough to truly adapt to new paradigms and change our minds?

The making of opinions

Most people are reactive creatures who don't take enough time to think for themselves. They tend to gravitate towards opinions that speak to their fears, their concerns, their worries, their cultures and their familiar habits. Yet, if we were to ask them to define themselves in relation to some ideology (political or other), they would have a very hard time defining it and defending it.

The simple answer for that apparent paradox is that we hardly take any time to catalog what we truly, deeply stand for. Contrary to popular belief, this should be a statement that knows no right and no wrong. It should simply be made up of what we truly think and of the values (or deviations) we believe in or can live with.

This is of course where things get dicey as we all want to exhibit some token of decency, morality and political correctness like the classic expression “you know, I'm not racist, but...” Simply posing a question like that one opens up a lot of disquieting notes. Will it show our true monstrosity, our petty biases, or our questionable dark sides? I invite you and myself to conducting this exercise and writing down, for once perhaps, our own mission statement. Chances are we'll all be in for a pretty big surprise!

Another idea for Haiti

Back on May 14 and 15, I was voicing some suggestions about what to do to turn Haiti around. Today, as everyone is marking the 6th month anniversary of the disaster and assessing the situation, progress still seems few and far between and the main conclusions appear to be on Haiti government powerlessness and donor nations paying lip service to their pledges. This is where my new idea comes into play. I would divvy up the country between all these nations based on their economic size and early aid commitment, have each one take the lead in their assigned area, thus creating a healthy emulation among them; namely which one would clear its share of rubble faster, involved and employ the greatest number of Haitians, do it in the most sustainable and effective ways, etc.

NGOs would continue their work and ideally coordinate them better with these multinational “centers of excellence.” Every six month or so, a status report would be issued comparing the efforts, outlining ideas that work best, generating “best practices” and the rebuilding process would go on. Instead of spending national pride and capital on stupid athletic events such as the Olympics and world championships of all kinds, this would be a much more constructive way to get things moving in a country that appears to be stuck into inaction. Any comments?

Free, fair or balanced trade?

While I've long been convinced that the so-called “free-trade” doctrine has consisted in shipping abroad western know-how in exchange for cheap goods and huge corporate profits, I'm convinced that it also has dismantled our way of living, made our unemployment worst and is contributing to widening the gap between rich and poor, not just worldwide but within our own country. I see the process as burning the furniture in order to say warm. Without getting into examining fair trade, which is another twist in the whole trade philosophy, I'm a proponent of a better approach to trading that could appropriately called “balanced.” I have already introduced that idea in this blog on March 23 and 24, 2009, and still think it has lots of merits.

One element that I missed when I wrote that piece was the elimination of all government subsidies which, in many instances, have triggered the push for “fair trade.” Again, my proposal would be duty-free for equal trading between countries (that is, for the same values of goods changing hand) and levy a duty on goods that exceed this equal level of exchange. This would offer a self-regulating mechanism that wouldn't make the WTO happy, but might reframe the debate between "we the people" and the big corporations...

Saying vs. doing

We all have great plans, unique ideas and original solutions at one point or another in our life, year, month or even day. Yet, most of them seem to fall flat on their faces as they dry up, untested, untried and unfulfilled. It sadly reminds me of an abortion clinic designed on Ford's assembly line principles. We could have acted on these fine initiatives, but somehow we failed to and we certainly have a lot of great excuses for not turning them into reality. We were just too early, too narrow, too right, to young, too poor or we simply couldn't make them happen because of a person, a family, a company or a government system that got in the way.

Are you impressed by the list of excuses? You definitely should not, and if you are giving that one person who didn't act, the benefit of the doubt, you're dead wrong, because there never is a valid reason for inaction! As a follow-up to that sad state of affairs, I suggest that we reform that paralysis and bring more movement into our lives, let's call that dynamic action instead. That practical passage from thought to deed would be such an innovative concept!

Big projects, tiny pieces

Large overwhelming ideas or projects are a lot easier to handle when we break them down into small pieces. The difficulty resides in our ability to precisely envision all these pieces of the completed puzzle at the single level. It certainly is a lot easier when the task a hand is a concrete one. We can picture its finite elements or more simply, put it on a piece of paper and make sure each of them will fit. It's also easier when the project is something we've already tackled or is similar to a work we've already seen in the past or can observe around us.

When things gets more complicated is when we are treading into some abstract concepts or into undertakings for which we have no per-existing patterns to follow or can get inspired from. We then need to create the sub-elements of an abstraction from scratch and make sure that, as we proceed into our general plans, all the pieces will fit together and won't end up creating a monster instead of the perfect result we want.

That in fact is when things can become interesting; there are moments when the tiny component can take a life of their own, show us new ways or ideas that we never before thought of before and may affect the end-result for the better. What is guaranteed is that – if we apply ourselves and pay great attention – we may end up with a project that is of much superior quality and performance than the rough dream we started from. How should we call that bounty? Synergy or creative abundance?

Mentoring a nation...

Yesterday, I brought up the idea of mentoring Haiti, but the concept could be extended to a host of other struggling nations whether they are failed, poor or barely developing ones. It could be called nation-building, but it would be a better solution for managing the planet as long as it provides mutual benefits for the mentor(s) and the country that is helped in that way.

In stating my view, I obviously forgot many important elements, like the eradication of corruption, citizens exploitation for reasons of culture, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation or social origins, and the biggest one and root of most evil, the establishment of effective family planning, the number one answer to all of our environmental woes. That's it, I made these points, now I'd love to read your feed-back!

A solution for Haiti?

I was watching last night an update on the situation in Haiti, where progress is slow, contradiction is rampant, government is conspicuously absent and where the situation on the ground seems only “controlled” by NGOs, hence Haiti's nickname, the Republic of NGOs. While this situation isn't new, it has gained increasing prominence following the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Some suggest that funneling so much aid through NGOs perpetuates a situation of limited government capacity and weak institutions. Rather than looking to their government for basic public services, Haitians look to NGOs and it still today their government remains invisible and ineffective.

This is how I came up with that idea of mine; why not let a well-structured and well-organized country take over the management (government if you prefer) of that poor country? I was thinking of Canada, Germany, Japan, Scandinavia, and not necessarily in that order. I wouldn't give that task to Italy, Spain or Greece, nor would I give it to the United States or the U.K. (we seem to get nowhere in Iraq and Afghanistan) but it might perhaps be a smarter idea to consider a consortium of Francophone countries, like Belgium, Canada, France and Switzerland.

All along, this effort would be monitored by the U.N. Whoever would take charge would be in charge of putting in place strong institutions, a capable and effective administration, educate the masses and bring rule of law. At the same time, it would also invest in the country's infrastructure by rebuilding whatever needs to be, bringing sustainable manufacturing activity, schools, universities, research centers, hospitals and well adapted tourism. After at least three decades of nation building (all that time, because it's a whole generation) the mentor nation or nations would be able to either continue its presence or progressively move away depending on the level of prosperity and sustainable development reached in that small nation. I like the idea; do you?

Innovation and (near) perfection

The commemoration of the lunar visit is another reminder that innovation is fuel for progress. Down the bumpy road we're traveling I'm convinced that innovation, not Christ's second coming, will save humanity. The problem with that though, is most humans are a bit slow to pick up and adopt new trends or new technologies. We're incredibly attached with the way things are and really need to be pushed into adopting something that is radically new. Even when improvements are clearly beneficial, most of us will drag our feet to adopt and implement them.

Over the years, it's been clear that successful innovations were the ones that were the most user-friendly, intuitive and properly debugged before they hit the market. Citroën, the French automaker was the poster child for newness going awry; great idea, poor execution; there isn't a day when I see a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight that I'm not reminded of the Citroën's foresight. Apple is the antithesis of that and explains why its iPod and iPhone products were so successful. Bottom line, if innovation is to be successful, better make sure that it passes the test of near-perfection and that it brings compelling progress so users can be nudged into taking that step forward and enjoying the future!

More on free trade…

Yesterday, I was providing a plan for what would be a better way to handle international trade as an alternative to liberalizing it totally or returning to protectionism. In it, I was explaining that variable custom duties could mirror the trade gap between countries. Of course, these duties should be scaled in ways likely to force trading partners to seriously address any unbalance, but not so drastic that they would freeze all exchanges.

For instance, a product made in China should be burden with a U.S. duty proportional to the 375% represented by our trade gap with that country but not equal to it. It should be figured so it makes the item significantly more expensive, but not so much that it would totally prevent its importation. The rate should provide enough incentive for the country that sells more than it buys to import more from its counterpart. Likewise, a country like the USA that has a terrible trade balance with almost everyone should seriously examine what it must do to increase exports.

This may mean more added-value, totally new products or services, more innovative designs, lower production and usage costs, etc. This would go a long way to keep core industries and know-how from leaving a country and instead focus on innovation and quality to a much greater degree. Again, the plan that I propose is self-regulating and might take five years to a decade before it effectively starts working for the benefit of all trading partners, spurring true progress while tying the economic destiny of all stakeholders in more solid and equitable ways than is currently the case.

A fair approach to free trade

Trade policy is a favorite political football; Democrats criticize free trade a lot because of heavy unions’ influence, while the republicans keep on claiming that without it, the United States can’t survive. I’m one who believes that our approach to trade in general is flawed and needs to be reformed. My reason is simple: We’ve been exporting our jobs abroad and our commercial balance is chronically and increasingly in the red. As of 2008, while we’re exporting $1.377 trillion, we’ve been importing close to $2 trillions, leaving a $568.8 billion deficit that represents 41% of what we sell abroad. This is simply insane and this is where my proposal comes in.

The nation’s goal should be to strike a balance between what we sell and what we purchase outside of the U.S. For instance, if we use China – our largest trade partner – as an example, in 2008 China exported $338 billion to the US while we managed to sell them just $71 billion, leaving a $266 billion gap. What I’m proposing is offer free trade (read no custom duties on anything) for Chinese goods entering the United States, as long as we can sell as much goods or services to China. That would mean that to maintain its duty-free privilege, China should have bought and extra $266 billion from us during the 2008 year.

If there is any imbalance for a given calendar year, a duty lasting for one full year would be put in place in the second quarter of the following year. It would amount to the ratio of any surplus divided by the lowest volume of one of the two partners; in that case, we would levy a 375% duty on all Chinese import brought into the USA between April 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010. The following year, a new duty would be established based on the 2009 trade balance and so on.

This would be fair, self-regulating and quite simple and could be implemented by leaving the present custom agreements in place. Each trading partner would monitor its trading activity on a month-by-month basis, watch it and make every possible adjustment to keep, as much as possible, the exchange on a level playing field; the incentive would be powerful and we’d put and end to the endless rhetorical exchange meant to protect a few big US firms that are vehemently defended by their lobbyists before Congress. Before I dig deeper into this proposal’s details, does the concept make sense to you?