on his blog article, entitled, "Is Obama Gorbachev?":

"As president, Barack Obama is faced with the essential fraudulence and unreality of the US economy. Notice that, as ominous as they are, the wars in iraq and Afghanistan have generated only minimal protest so far in the early Obama period, despite the fact that they are not operationally different from their conduct under Bush. There is no protest because, for now, a consensus exists that our troops are in these places for perceived reasons -- to keep Mideast oil supply lines open... to keep Islamic maniacs busy in their own backyard instead of on US territory... to keep Iran in a vise... to maintain the American "empire" (take your pick). There's something there to appeal to a broad majority of US voters. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq and Afstan are not perceived as out-and-out frauds.

But the economy is. Since September of 2008, when Hank Paulson began shoveling bail-outs to the very banks who screwed the world on fraudulent and unreal securities, and left American society comprehensively bankrupt, the consensus has only deepened on the perception of an historic swindle. And so far, President Obama has positioned himself as chief enabler to further swindling. One need look no further than the rulings this past spring of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) as authorized by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, an official government agency, created 1934), which have allowed the biggest banks to pretend that the fraudulent paper in their vaults does not have to be recorded as a loss on their books.

The US economy is now dying a slow and painful death because it had become based on activities that had nothing to do with producing real wealth. Instead, it became dependent on rackets, that is, behavior geared to getting something for nothing. These rackets are often summarized under the acronym FIRE (for finance, insurance and real estate), a system set up to strip-mine profits from the wish commonly labeled "the American Dream" -- itself largely a product of televised advertising and propaganda."

The Asia Times has reported that a young, 25 year old engineer in China, Sun Danyong, killed himself after a fourth-generation iPhone prototype he was responsible for disappeared. Someone or something in China confiscated Mr. Danyong's property and subjected him to very harsh interrogation before he jumped to his death from a twelve story building.

Apple said it was really, really sorry.

VentureBeat, AppleInsider and The Register are among the tech sites covering this story.

AppleInsider notes that it's the second piece of bad news for the company recently. Last week an investigation found that 45 of the 83 factories that built iPhones and iPods in 2008 weren't paying valid overtime rates, and that 23 weren't even paying some of their workers China's minimum wage.

I have an iPhone but think it is time to try one of the RIM devices, from Canada.

It is folly for people making $500K to blame the poor and middle class for the problems facing us and just as folly to direct rage at people making $500K. The fact is that all of us are getting crushed in this depression. Investments, pensions and 401K's are being lost or stolen. Small businesses cannot borrow money and have to cut comp and lay people off or shut down, because of cash flow. They can't get bridge loans to make payroll. Promising futures are being put on hold, at the very least. People who thought they were Middle Class struggle to pay for the basics.

A person making $200K or even $1M has no more political power in the United States than a person making $30K. Our country is dead. Stop pretending that there is some magical Santa Claus that is going to pass a law and turn the clock back.

Real wealth is owning your own Representative, or Senator or President. The power of Wall Street and some of the biggest corporations on Main Street have this kind of wealth. They bought their Santa Claus's and those politicians don't give a rat's ass about any of us. The United States is a corporate, fascist state, as corrupt as anything spawned in S. America.

Stop blaming the people you see in the malls, or at work. These folks ain't the problem. Find out who got the bonues's and multi-million dollar comp at GS or MS. Find out where they live and more. If you want to break out the pitchforks, direct it at them. To aim any lower is to do exactly what they want you to do.

The Financial Times has reported that the tenth richest man in China, Zhang Zhixiang, was beaten to death by employees in one of his steel mills.

Zhang reportedly said that he would re-establish Tonghua “under the name of Chen” and lay off nearly all the employees.

The Chinese Patent Office posted some very interesting statistics last week:

"China Announces Patent Statistics for First Half of 2009 -- Last week China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) reported that it had received 426,000 patent applications (including utility models and designs) in the first six months of 2009, a 23.1% increase over the same period in 2008. Foreign filings decreased by 7.3% during the period, with only 12% of applications coming from outside China."

Based on PCT filing data, I estimate that US patent application filings are down 30-40% compared to last year, which was not a great year. The actual numbers are so bad the USPTO has not released them. What they have said is that the PTO is losing a lot of money. Historically, the PTO has been one of the few money makers for the government.

These statistics show that the future of technological development is in Asia, not the U.S. For too many generations, the US abused its engineers and scientists, with low pay and outsourcing the jobs. The "chickens have come home to roost." It ain't coming back.