On leadership...

A lot has been said during these last few weeks about our president...and his feckless foreign policy.

A lot.

The "back story":

• Across the Pacific, the Chinese are "projecting power" with their growing blue water navy, harassing neighboring nations and threatening expansion. The ChiComms are being so aggressive that Vietnam is turning to its old nemesis, Japan, for aid; and Japan, no friend of nuclear weapons, is giving serious thought to changing its constitution to allow its military to have nukes. (The wild North Koreans also figure into the equation.)
• In Eastern Europe, Vlad Putin is doing his best to restore some bizarro version of old Imperial Russia. First, it was Crimea (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Moscow); and now, Ukraine is seeing its sovereign territory nibbled away...daily. Next up: Lithuania? Can we get a Estonia? Latvia? How about Poland? (And you thought the Cold War had ended.)
• The worst appears in the guise of a rogue bunch of "non-state actors," who are tearing-up the Middle East and threatening everyone else. Known as ISIL, ISIS or "those bat-sh** crazy bastards," the group (once called the "jayvee" team by President Barack Obama), has now swelled to more than 20,000 strong. Nerves were further rattled when, last week, Obama said he had "no strategy" in place to deal with ISIL/ISIS...a group that has been steadily menacing for close to a year. (Even The Washington Post's editorial board took notice!)

Which brings us to the following. Below is a perfect dissection of the problems at hand...chief among them: a lack of leadership -- on the part of our president.

This piece is by Kevin Elliott, a Bay Area public relations professional who knows a thing or two about leadership, strategy and communication. The White House would be smart to follow his lead(s) here. But then, that's probably expecting waaaaay to much.

The Bliss Index gives you Kevin Elliott:

I've been trolling the news this morning and it is interesting to see how ideology colors pronouncements by various news outlets. Various outlets that are either balanced or conservative in their editorial policy point to the British Prime Minister -- the man with a plan -- as the example of leadership. 

The same outlets reflect the frustration of the nation at the President's announcement that he doesn't have a plan to deal with the growing threat that his defense secretary has called, "unlike anything we've ever seen." 

Enter the other side... The Huffington Post is beside itself that American conservatives are praising David Cameron's no-nonsense tough talk. HuffPo points out that at least we are bombing the terrorists. And then they go on to lament the daily cost of the military action on the Islamic State. 

In Britain, the left opposition is answering Cameron with a call for (wait for it) mandatory programs for deradicalization for young jihadi wanna-bees. Okay, so if some nut wants to run off and fight for the terrorists, the Labor Party wants to send them to a mandatory government program. 

Great. 

Where is Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Okay, at least the British have their clear leader... But why is it wrong for us to ask -- no, demand -- clear and unambiguous leadership? 

President Obama has made his position clear repeatedly. The threats against our country are of our own making, he believes. They are the result of generations of exploitation at home and abroad. He was elected, he believes, to get us out of foreign conflicts and he has declared those wars in the Levant and Afghanistan to be over. 

We will not get a firm, clear word from the White House that we are committed to defeating or destroying the Islamic State. It's not his style and doesn't fit his narrative. So, instead, we will have an election this year...and another in 2016. 

And if anyone doesn't believe that elections have consequences, you need look no further than this week...either here in the US or over in the UK.

Spot-on.

Bonus add: Dilbert gets it.

That crazy Kim Jong Un!

North Korea is mad! Dance video features Kim Jong Un

From NPR:

He grins, he fumes, he fights — and through it all, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un dances his way in and out of preposterous situations. That's the premise of a video that has become popular in China and reportedly sparked a protest from North Korea.

Citing "a source in China," the reports that "the North feels the clip, which shows Kim dancing and Kung-Fu fighting, 'seriously compromises Kim's dignity and authority.'"

The newspaper says that after North Korea asked China to stop the video from spreading, "Beijing was unable to oblige."

In the video, Kim's face is superimposed onto a kitchen sink's worth of videos, in scenes taken from everything from viral dance videos and TV shows to the vaudevillian action film Kung Fu Hustle. In one segment, Kim pirouettes in a dance studio — before being hit with a kick delivered by President Obama. Other world leaders also make appearances, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

And while a couple of sequences make fun of Kim's fascination with weaponry, we'll note that the video doesn't accuse the North Korean leader of not having rhythm.

So that's where (some of) the money went!

Big money, few results...

From Bloomberg:

"The glass-and-metal building that Solyndra LLC began erecting alongside Interstate 880 in Fremont, California, in September 2009 was something the Silicon Valley area hadn’t seen in years: a new factory. It wasn’t just any factory. When it was completed at an estimated cost of $733 million, including proceeds from a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, it covered 300,000 square feet, the equivalent of five football fields. It had robots that whistled Disney tunes, spa-like showers with liquid-crystal displays of the water temperature, and glass-walled conference rooms."

“The new building is like the Taj Mahal,” John Pierce, 54, a San Jose resident who worked as a facilities manager at Solyndra, said in an interview.

The building, designed to make far more solar panels than Solyndra got orders for, is now shuttered, and U.S. taxpayers may be stuck with it. Solyndra filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6, leaving in its wake investigations by Congress and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a Republican-fueled political embarrassment for the Obama administration, which issued the loan guarantee. About 1,100 workers lost their jobs.

Amid the still-unfolding postmortems, the factory stands as emblematic of money misspent and the Field of Dreams ethos that seemed to drive the venture, said Ramesh Misra, a solar-industry analyst in Los Angeles for Brigantine Advisors. “When you don’t have the demand, you can’t go into something with the attitude, ‘Build it and they will come,’” Misra said. “You have to make sure the customers are already there when you build it.”

He is skeptical of the company’s statement, in a press release on the groundbreaking for the plant, that it had a backlog of $2 billion in orders for its cylindrical solar modules for commercial rooftops, which it touted as cheaper to install and more efficient than competing flat panels. “Backlog” is a term sometimes used loosely in the industry and may not represent firm orders at all, he said.

Solyndra was the dream of founder Chris Gronet, who received a Ph.D. in semiconductor processing at Stanford University and had spent 11 years as an executive at Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) He adopted as the company’s motto, “What we do here will someday change the world.” Gronet didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attended the 2009 groundbreaking for the plant. At the event, Chu said the U.S. solar-energy industry was losing out to countries like China and the loan guarantee, the first awarded by the department under President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus plan, would ensure the company’s orders would be filled by U.S. workers.

Even as Chu, Gronet and Schwarzenegger were thrusting their shovels into the dirt, market forces were working against Solyndra. The price of polysilicon, the main ingredient in competing traditional solar panels, had plunged. By the time the plant opened last January, the price would be down about 40 percent from when Solyndra got the loan guarantee. Chinese companies were ramping up production of their ever-cheaper competing flat panels.

Solyndra executives rushed construction in a race to fill orders, putting some work on a 24-hour, seven-day schedule. The factory was up and ready for equipment installation in 10 months. The project employed more than 3,000 union construction workers, according to a Solyndra background sheet.

‘First Class’

“They were anticipating large production,” Juancho Suntay, 51, a former Solyndra equipment maintenance technician, said in an interview. “That’s why they wanted to have a state- of-the-art factory.”

The plant features 19 loading docks, four electric car charging stations in the parking lot and landscaping of wild grass and a rock garden. An automated rail system moved parts through the assembly process.

Robots that resembled “a big freezer with wheels” maneuvered around the factory transporting panels from one machine to another, said George Garma, 49, a former Solyndra equipment maintenance technician from Fremont. The Disney tunes alerted workers to the robots’ presence.

“It was first class,” David Chan, 51, who was an information-technology contractor for Solyndra, said in an interview. “I’ve been in the business for 25 years and have seen some elaborate buildings. I’ve never seen a facility like it.”

Costly Real Estate

The plant caught the attention of competitors. “Everybody I know in the solar industry would remark on it and say ‘Boy, that’s a really, really big factory,’” said Barry Cinnamon, chief executive officer at Westinghouse Solar Inc., a Campbell, California-based solar-panel company that manufactures in China.

“That’s a lot of money that went into that factory,” Cinnamon said in an interview. “It’s one of those neck-snapping things every time you drove down the highway.”

Commercial real-estate agents in the region wondered why a new factory was being built in the Silicon Valley region, the epicenter of some of the priciest real estate in the country, where most new construction consists of office space.

“There hasn’t been a factory or warehouse building built in Silicon Valley in well over 10 years,” Jeff Fredericks, managing partner at Colliers International in San Jose, said in an e-mail.

The asking rate for industrial properties in Silicon Valley is the fourth-most expensive in the U.S., according to Jack DePuy, Bay Area research manager at CB Richard Ellis in Foster City, California.

Machinery Breakdowns

About 11.4 percent, or 950,801 square feet, of industrial space was vacant in Fremont in September 2009, according to data from Colliers.

“There was available space that we talked about with them,” Bob Wasserman, Fremont’s mayor, said in an interview. “It was their decision that they needed a new building. Was that a good decision? It didn’t turn out to be.”

John Olenchalk, senior vice president at Kidder Mathews, a commercial real-estate firm in Redwood City, said Solyndra executives considered existing space, including a former Sun Microsystems Inc. facility in nearby Newark that had 218,000 square feet of production space. The company wanted more space and to be near its existing operations, he said.

Solyndra used the new plant for the first phase of panel production. An older facility nearby finished and assembled the panels, former employees said. Problems developed at the old plant, when machinery wouldn’t work properly and needed constant repair, workers said.

“Everybody was talking about it,” said Edward Santos, 44, a former warehouse worker in Solyndra’s logistics department.

Advantage Lost

“A significant percentage of the product we built went into a dumpster because it was defective,” said Craig Ewing, 55, a former maintenance technician. “It seemed like the company accepted that,” he said.

Even if the old plant hadn’t had problems, by the time the company opened the new facility it was clear that Solyndra had lost whatever cost advantage it might have had, said Michael Butler, chairman and CEO of Cascadia Capital LLC, a Seattle- based investment-banking firm that advises renewable-energy companies.

“I’m sure there was a lot of panic at that point, because I’m sure that everyone saw the writing on the wall,” Butler said.

Workers noticed inventory piling up. “The drivers would tell us that the warehouses are getting full,” Santos said. “Sometimes, they’d stay there one or two days before the material was unloaded.”

About two weeks before the company closed, Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison gave an upbeat speech at the new factory, said Romie Sumera, 58, a former equipment-maintenance technician. Solyndra was getting leads on new orders from companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Harrison told them.

Stay tuned for even more (damaging) disclosures...

The Internet is open...

...but for how long?

The headline in today’s Washington Post: “Obama administration joins critics of U.S. nonprofit group that oversees Internet”

Obviously, this is not good...

“The California nonprofit organization that operates the Internet's levers has always been a target for such global heavies as Russia and China that prefer the United Nations to be in charge of the Web. But these days, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is fending off attacks from a seemingly unlikely source: the Obama administration,” according to the story. “The U.S. government, which helped create ICANN in 1998, has been reprimanding the nonprofit group to give foreign nations more say over the Web's operations."

Wait, what? We want to give other nations more say - especially over free speech? A free press?

The story continues: “Other nations have been mobilizing against ICANN. China, which monitors dissident activity on the Web, has been leading a campaign among dozens of developing nations to lobby the U.N. for oversight over ICANN, according to former and current ICANN officials. And a coalition of former Soviet states led by a Russian minister has been pushing the U.N. to obtain veto power over ICANN.

What a brilliant idea! I mean, especially since so many other nations - including some we call "friends" - are just as dedicated to freedom as we are. I'm sure this will all end superbly.

After all, when countries like Egypt, Libya and China have control over the Internet, they've been nothing but wonderful. Right?

Big green lies...

So much for all those "green" jobs that were going to save California...

Last month, my colleagues on the John Batchelor Show and I discussed how China - through subsidies and economic espionage - has destroyed the solar panel market for much of the rest of the world...especially here in California.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) meets workers at Solyndra's Fremont-based facilities. Boxer touted her support of green jobs, like the ones being lost at Solyndra, as key to fixing what ails California...

Like most fantasies, this one is coming to a conclusion. It can now be said that we are seeing the beginning of the industry's end here in the Golden State. The worst part is that the federal government, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA-D) - who ran on this very issue as a key pillar in her recent campaign - did know/should have known this was happening.

China's now-burgeoning solar panel manufacturing industry benefits from years of economic espionage, illegal subsidies and no environmental regulations to speak of...

"Despite a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government, Solyndra, a maker of solar panels in the southeast San Francisco Bay Area city of Fremont, will close one of its manufacturing plants, lay off 40 permanent and 150 contract workers, delay expansion plans of a new plant largely financed with the government-guaranteed loan and scale back production capacity more than 50 percent. Despite the hype and tax money, Solyndra seems unable to compete with Chinese manufacturers, whose prices are lower. This is the latest bad news for the company touted by Mr. Schwarzenegger and President Barack Obama as one of the green industry’s supposed shining lights." – Editorial, The Orange County Register, November 11, 2010.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (center) helps break ground for the now endangered Solyndra solar panel manufacturing facility... (photo: Solyndra)

Not only is this news a hit on the industry and the over-hyped notion that green jobs would pull California out of the economic tailspin that it's now it, but it also was a hit on the president's much-touted Stimulus program.

President Barack Obama at Solyndra's Bay Area facility...

"...The US Government's $535 million deal is is the first loan of its type using funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and also the first of its type from the US Department of Energy (DOE) since 1980," according to a report at Treehugger.com.

Just great! Not one but two taxpayer-financed fantasies gone bust...

Radio, Radio...

Tonight, I'll be doing another stint as a co-host on the John Batchelor Show with my friend and colleague, Gordon Chang.

The guest list and topics for tonight’s show (6-10 p.m. Pac Time):

Toshi Yoshihara - post-World War II Japan

Elisabeth Eaves - “ghost cities”

Jim Walsh - nuclear proliferation since WWII

Yifei Zhang - China coal mines

Dean Cheng - China and North Korea

Andrew Benton - higher education

Tunku Varadarajan - Hillary Clinton

Tom Henriksen - Afghan and Africa

Jonathan Knowles - robotics

Christine Loh - her book Underground Front: The Chinese Communist Party in Hong Kong

Carla Marinucci - California's budget deficit

Bill Thomas - Maryland politics

Mary Kissel - Indonesia anti-corruption court

Paul Vigna - U.S. economy

Rick Fisher - the Chinese space program.

Check the John Batchelor Show website for details, schedules, stations, etc.

Hope to see you there!

The new “blood diamond?”

Several years back, the world was up in arms over the trafficking of “blood diamonds” – gems mined and sold out of Africa, which funded all sorts of nasty activities…like wars.

Hollywood, led by The Social Conscience That Is Leo, even made a movie about the horrors.

Eventually, panged by guilt, the West passed laws and made it socially taboo to purchase “a girl’s best friend” from anyone/anywhere it couldn’t be ascertained that the jewels were free of sin…of the taint of sub-Saharan coup d’états, jungle warlords conducting mining operations with slaves, and all the brutality one can imagine in a Third World environment fueled by First World money (and weaponry).

Now we have the new blood diamond. Perhaps a better name might be the “iBlood Diamond.”

Today, in one of China’s fastest-growing, most globally capitalistic cities, more than 300,000 workers toil in the biggest manufacturing facility in the world, owned by electronics giant, Foxconn. If you own any number of electronic and computing gadgets, chances are the drones of Foxconn put it together (for just a few hundred dollars a month – at best). Most notably, Apple’s products – the iPhone, Mac Books and the hugely popular iPad – are all produced at mega-plants in Longhua and Shenzhen (employing 300,000 and 120,000 workers, respectively).

A busy worker is a happy worker - right?

Working in shifts that run 10 -12 hours and perhaps longer, employees live at the facility 24/7 and life is Spartan and very regimented. While workers are provided food, shelter and medical care (often in shorter supply than what they receive at Foxconn’s facilities), the life of a Foxconn worker closely resembles something more akin to the endeavors of colonizing insects than it does modern day humans. Socializing on the factory floor is strongly discouraged and output quotas test even the most able. Before long, like at most sweatshops, employees are burnt out. (A Foxconn worker recently died from “overwork and fatigue.”)

The facility and the conditions workers toil “against” have been coming under tremendous scrutiny lately, as more than a dozen Foxconn workers have committed suicide, numerous others have attempted to do so, and others have run away from the facility. Reacting to the harsh glare of international criticism, Foxconn has taken a “humane” approach to helping its workers: additional counselors have been made available; and workers now have to sign a pledge promising not to hurt or kill themselves or others.

According to a report by The New York Times, Foxconn, “Stung by labor shortages and a rash of suicides this year at its large factories in southern China, Foxconn Technology said Wednesday that it would immediately raise the salaries of many of its Chinese workers by 33 percent. The pay increase is the latest indication that labor costs are rising in China’s coastal manufacturing centers and that workers are demanding higher pay to offset an increase in inflation and soaring food and property prices.” As my colleague on the John Batchelor Show, Gordon Chang, points out, “…this isn’t about money [to the workers]. This is about human dignity.”

Apple's Steve Jobs (left); and protesters decrying working conditions at Foxconn...

In a story posted by Reuters, “Apple Inc Chief Executive Steve Jobs finds ‘troubling’ a string of worker deaths at Foxconn, the contract manufacturer that assembles the company's iPhones and iPads, but said its factory in China ‘is not a sweatshop.’ But a string of deaths at Foxconn's base in southern China, which critics blame on stressful working conditions, threatens to cast a shadow over the device's success. ‘It's a difficult situation,’ Jobs, dressed in his customary black turtleneck and jeans, said on stage. ‘We're trying to understand right now, before we go in and say we know the solution.’"

In one of his recent columns for Forbes.com, Chang writes “The mystery of the suicides is that Foxconn's facilities are by no means the worst in China. On the contrary, because the company is so visible, its working conditions, as dehumanizing as they are, are considered to be among the best of the mass manufacturers in the country. That's why, on one level, the suicides are so troubling. They strike at the heart of the Chinese industrial system, perhaps signaling the questioning of the Communist Party's model of manufacturing. That model worked because peasants were willing to travel a thousand miles to live in labor-camp conditions. Today, we see the social detachment, alienation and despair that are the result of an efficient--but ultimately unsustainable--system. The inspectors from Apple will examine the details of Foxconn's facilities, which they have seen before, but they will not look at the larger issue: the compatibility of China's economic model to a modernizing society.”

Chang is absolutely correct, but there is another side to this we must consider (beyond the failings of China, the thugocracy that rules it and the outside capitalists willing to take advantage of slave labor-like conditions there). We must consider our own actions.

If, during the “blood diamond” conflicts in Africa, you’d been offered a gem you knew came to you along a route of blood, sorrow and misery, would you take it? Would it matter the price? That may be where we are – or are heading – with products manufactured/assembled at Foxconn (and other similar facilities). It’s one thing to be able to stand back and point at wealthy, bejeweled people and demand they forsake their diamonds. It’s always easier to ask for sacrifice if you can’t/won’t yourself. But devices like smart phones and laptops are so ubiquitous these days, I’m afraid that when the true story of Foxconn and the life of indentured servants throughout China come to light, there won’t be much of a push from the West to change things.

They're everywhere...

You see, we love the convenience of our gadgets. We love how fun the apps are and how nice it is to chat, email and web-browse on the go. And most of all, we love the price. They are ubiquitous because they are affordable. Business depends on the devices, families stay connected with them…they’ve even become de rigueur among the youngest in society.

In one sense, these iMachines could very well be the new blood diamonds: socially unacceptable pariahs. On the other hand, they never will be. There is no desire among the comfortable to become afflicted…nor is there the will among them to comfort the afflicted.

A line in the sea...

Two months ago, as the Cheonan – a South Korean naval corvette – cruised through the international waters of the Yellow Sea; a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo at the Cheonan. The device struck the South Korean vessel amidships, tearing it in two. The ship quickly sank and 46 sailors of the Republic of Korea lost their lives in the unprovoked attack.

Now, after a thorough investigation by international teams, the proof is there for the world to see: divers recovered pieces of the easily identifiable North Korean weapon and the evidence has been presented to the world. Despite having known from the get-go that their brothers to the north had attacked their nation, South Korea held judgment until all the corroboration was in.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s response to South Korea’s revelations was to – predictably – call its neighbor nation and those involved in the investigation “liars.” Also quite predictably, Pyongyang ratcheted-up tensions by putting its military on high-alert, conducting maneuvers and cranking-up its propaganda machine (spewing threats of all-out war against South Korea and its allies). For its part, “South Korea banned trade with its neighbor, said it would take the sinking to the UN Security Council and announced a resumption of propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers at the inter—Korean border.”

In addition, various trip-wire safeguards (which no one really ever believed the North would adhere to) have been scrapped by the communist nation. As the Voice of America and others are reporting, “In a sharp escalation of tensions with South Korea, North Korea says it is discarding military procedures the two sides have agreed to follow for years to ensure a conflict does not get out of hand.”

The remains of the South Korean corvette...

Also worth noting is South Korea and the U.S. revealing that four North Korean submarines – the kind the DPRK typically uses for inserting special forces troops or saboteurs into the South – were detected leaving their bases. (As worrying as this is, it is a clear message from the allies to North Korea that “we know where you are and what you’re doing.”) In response to the attack, the sub launches and the North’s announcement it would no longer allow safe passage through neighboring waters, “South Korea's navy conducted anti-submarine warfare drills off its west coast. South Korea and the United States have announced they will conduct a joint anti-submarine exercise, widely expected to take place within a matter of weeks.”

As the UN Security Council prepares to cogitate on the situation, North Korea’s patron – China – is said to be working behind the scenes to protect its puppet in Pyongyang, perhaps even offering the U.S. a deal that would finally bring sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program in exchange for softer treatment of the thugs of North Korea. This, however, will not go over well in Seoul. It will not sit well with a nation that has endured 60 years of attacks, terrorism, extortion and all forms of criminality. And it will not sit well with the families of the 46 sailors massacred on March 26 in the Yellow Sea.

South Korea, which has gone out of its way for decades to seek a peaceful reunification of North and South Korea, has always viewed its northern neighbors not as an “enemy” but, instead, as a “brother.” With the sinking of the Cheonan, however, that has all changed. As the BBC reported, “Thousands of protesters have gathered in Seoul to denounce North Korea's threats against the South, amid heightened tensions between the two countries.” South Korea’s leader, Lee Myung-bak (a solid, no-nonsense head of state with a backbone), has promised to take stern action against the North Korea.

North Korea has a history of inflicting violence on South Korea and then threatening worse when the light of day shined on their misdeeds. Once again, now that the world knows what Kim Jong Il’s regime has done, the Hermit Kingdom’s mad leader is trying to bully his way through the fallout. As noted, it doesn’t look like the South will stand idly by and let their sailors’ deaths pass as mere “incidents.”

The South is not going to back down and North Korea, which only has its willingness to commit violence to stand on when it comes to any form of credibility, is going to believe its hand is being forced.

These are dangerous times on the peninsula – perhaps worse than any since the Korean War itself. The difference this time is that the stakes are much, much higher. Let’s face it: North Korea, a nation ruled by a megalomaniac, possesses nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them – this should not be taken lightly. In addition to the human toll a renewed conflict would take, much of the world’s economy depends on that part of Asia: South Korea, Japan, and China. An all-out war would likely create devastation/havoc and throw the world into a vortex previously unseen.

The madman of the North...

Back on March 26, when North Korea sank the Cheonan, it drew a line in the sea. The question is who will step over it, first?