For those people who think that the criminalization of marijuana is insane, you have to read this.

It is now clear that the reason is that the big pharmaceutical companies are getting patents in place on a whole bunch of marijuana derivatives, GM modified, drugs.

Soon we will all be able to get high legally, by getting a scrip from the doc.

Here is the abstract from one patent that has been granted by the US Patent Office. Makes me feel good that someone has clearly done the research to determine that cannabinoids inhibit all those age related diseases!

I was talking to a friend over the weekend who had been in Japan during the week at a relatively high level meeting in which the aging of countries was discussed.

Apparently Japan has taken the view that they will not allow immigration of foreign nationals to provide support for their increasingly aging population. Their view is that their culture would be damaged and that the solution is in robots.

This has got to mean that there will be a tremendous amount of investment in all kinds of associated technologies, and an opportunity to establish global leadership in this area of business.

I think that this has very important implications for countries like Australia where we have a greying population, a phenomenal potential for continuing wealth generation as a result of the ongoing demand for resources and a limited amount of carrying power for the land itself because of water shortages.

Pandemonium is a book by Andrew Nikiforuk, a Canadian journalist....

This book should be read by anyone who read Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat". It details all the things that happen as a result of globalism that are 'off balance sheet' and which come back to bite us when we are not looking.

The sub-heading on the Australian paper-back is: "How Globalization And Trade Are Putting The World At Risk". (different to the original edition, and more apt).

When are we going to realize that the more we all participate in the rush to get richer, consume more, do more, the more we miss the subtext of what we are doing. Nikiforuk gets us back on track. Think about this: Every time a ship comes into port it blasts out its ballast tanks, refills them etc. The water that it takes on board as ballast is filled with micro-organisms and many not so micro. Taken half way round the world and instantiated into another ecosystem, away from the view of the customs and livestock inspectors these micro-organisms have already wreaked havoc on the busiest harbours - gutting local fish stocks and massively changing the environment.

A litany of problems emerge in this book. It takes into account factory farming of chickens and the reducing bio-diversity of the species as meat yields become the critical ingredient of farming. And as a result H5N1 emerges and finds a way to jump species. It details the history of experimentation into weaponising anthrax and other deadly pathogens and who is responsible.

And what you get at the end of it is a realization that should not be a surprise: It is impossible to fight the powers of greed and yet we must find a way. Markets work perfectly when there are perfect rules and people obey them perfectly. We live in a society where greed has been good a long time, and I suspect that for many people one of the o's got dropped along the way...

John Bee is a recording engineer. He worked with/for me on pretty much all of the records I produced in the 70's and 80's in Australia.

He is also a Vietnam Vet.

John has a degenerative neurological disease that has attacked his feet making it very difficult for him to walk.

John shares a house in the Blue Mountains and I was there this weekend past doing some work on some theme music for a program that is being produced by one of our companies. I had heard from his brother that John was doing it tough. So I asked him what was happening.

John told me that the specialist that he has been seeing about the illness asked him if he had ever come into contact with Agent Orange during his tour of duty in Vietnam. John told him how he had been accidentally bathed in it when one of the helicopter gun ships he was guarding was having its tanks topped up. His neurologist believes that this is the reason for his illness.

Problem is this: Our government has not accepted that Agent Orange can be the cause of anything.

So that leaves John pretty much outside the system. He ekes out his life nowadays on a pension that is below the minimum wage. And this is guy that served his country.

During the time we were making records together, John never talked about his time in Vietnam. I learnt on the weekend that when he left the army he made a conscious effort to not talk to anyone he had served with, to not be associated with anything during that period in his life, to shut the door on it. Now he is having to relive it.

The local Vietnam Vets Association is being very supportive, but they have also told him that in their ranks are others who have had problems with being exposed to Agent Orange, and that no one has won against the government.

Isn't it amazing that our governments (of all political persuasions) find it so easy to send people to war, but so hard to take care of them when they come back, broken.

I asked John what he thought about the Iraq war and its effect on the soldiers. He said that he thought the effect of this war on soldiers had to be far worse than Vietnam. His view was that their lives were now over, wasted.

We really have to come to our senses in Australia. Wars may or may not be inevitable. But we must all start making the effort to put pressure on the government to support the soldiers who have served and to give them better health care (both physical and mental) after the war, and spend money on the vets.

The one thing that governments really respond to is money. When they start seeing that returning soldiers will have a negative impact on the country's balance sheet maybe they will think twice about the need for war in the first place.

If you were pressed, and had to make just one new friend in a new city/state/country/culture, who would that be? Think its hard? Nope. Its slam dunk easy. Ken Sabbag. Six years ago we met Ken. He was new in LA.So were we. We moved into apartments side by side. Cool guy.

Then, actually,  four weeks ago, Ken became not just the most important person in America but the world. My elbow was broken into four pieces. Ken had the job of surgically putting it back together. He used several pieces of surgical wire to thread through the bones. He put a 'rubber band' around the outside of the elbow and wired up bones, tendons, ligaments et al. He made sure that 21 stitches went in the right way. And a tonne of other doctor/medical/surgical/pain stuff, but you get the nasty picture. Did I mention Ken's an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hands, wrists, elbows and arms? Perhaps, a lucky break for me knowing him, eh?

Well, get this. Four years ago my wife had the grand slam of traumatic elbow breaks. Fifty broken pieces of bone,  ligaments severed from the bone, bones dislocated, multiple incisions etc, etc. Very. Very. Very. Ugly. Ken did the job. Reconstructed a usable elbow with big titanium screws and lots of skill. Then two years ago, went back and and changed around elbow ligaments to restore more mobility and functionality to a fixed stiff elbow.(which he knew he'd have to do on day one in 2002)

So, Ken's been working on our elbows every two years. And elbows are tricky. Painful. Except he loves them. Loves the surgery. The precision of the hunt for a perfect and workable solution. Gets a charge out of fitting  bits of bone together.

Ken's living proof about medicine today . You need a specialist. In your exact operation. You need the guy who does hundreds of operations every month on this exact problem. Who does thousands a year. So, you need to be assertive. To ask the tough questions. Like? When was the last time you did this exact one thing? No, not bone surgery. This. Reconstructing elbows. Because the stats bear it out. You get better results. Much much better results. In every field of medicine.

We've had plenty of time to think about this over the last four years and three major elbow surgeries. But also to wonder. Can there  be anyone else in LA with his and her new elbows?  And know. Ken's the man.

Kleiner Perkins have been one of the hottest and most astute Venture Capital companies in Silicon Valley. Today, they announced a 200 million dollar fund to invest in fighting pandemics, like bird flu. SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola are the new disease fronts of the 21st century. Moving aggressive VC money into play offers the fastest possible way of attacking the virus problem. This will be the start of serious money being thrown into the problem to attract the best brains. An important step towards powerful health outcomes and better disease solutions

Here is something nice to start Monday with...... an article from CNN/Fortune about the views of George Soros and Bill Browder on the potential scenarios that could lead to further spikes in the price of oil.

From the fall of the house of Saud to Iraqi insurgents disrupting pipelines - none of the scenarios are outrageous.

Last night on the BBC World News channel there was a tremendous program  hosted by Nik Gowing at Davos with leaders of countries, industries, companies - again from Davos - trying to establish what things should be on the agenda that are not. Key issue that came out was the need for mobility of labour. Demographics in Europe mean that there has to be a massive influx of non-anglo saxon people to provide basic labour as the native poplulations of the countries of Europe age. But this is not a vote winner domestically in each of the countries. Capital flows easily to where it can be used most profitably. People do not/can not.

Wikis are starting to enter mainstream life.  A Virginia woman, Melanie Mattson, worried about Bird Flu puts up a wiki on the net. A wiki is an efficient way to gather, store and disseminate information and its this sort of community lead activity that will propagate the idea of collaboration and community from grass roots through to corporations.

China's forth human death keeps bird flu as a world threat paramount. Several months ago, bird flu became the western media scare of the day. Then it subsided. But the birds kept flying. People are still being infected. Human to human transmission keeps occurring. Bird flu, in birds, now stretches from Indonesia through Russia and China on through the Middle East to England and Ireland.In humans, its all China, Vietnam, and Indonesia

In Ukraine the Parliament and President have declared a state of emergency. In Indonesia, it seems human to human transmission is increasing. In China, human infections have escaped official attention until people die. The flu may yet mutate to a mild flu. But the threat of this virus remains strong, real and growing.

World Swim for Malaria  takes place on Saturday, 3 December. It's a striking idea for a worthy cause. Get a million people to swim that day and raise money to fight malaria, still a scourge of the tropics. It's one guys' idea. An Australian in the UK, Rob Mather; who did 'something'  in 2003 for  a young burns victim called Terri, raising 120,000 pounds, say 200,000 US dollars.

He just decided to 'do a swim'. Asked a few friends to join him, others to sponsor, then more joined in. Afterwards, someone said "what next?"  This was it. Fighting Malaria. With a million people goal.

He's co-opted trustees. An advisory board. Built a charity. And he's got a quarter of a million people projected to swim. Not bad for a first time, eh!

All the money they raise will be spent on providing 5 dollar mosquito nets to stop children and adults being bitten. Simple, direct action. Stuff that works. He's got Price Waterhouse involved. Speedo too. Clearly, an ad advertising agency is on board. Result. All around the world people are doing swims.

But I, a seven day a week, 52 weeks of the year swimmer, mass and internet media professional consumer didn't know about the event until tonight, barely days before the swims.

There's nothing for the obsessed swimmers of Google Groups, only a smattering of blogs mention it, and there's been relatively few major media mentions. On the World Swim site there's no blog, no podcast, no vlog, and, the ad they have on the site must be downloaded, unzipped and then viewed. (I lost it  on download)

So, they have done wonderfully well in a very, straightforward linear way. Brilliantly.

What they haven't done is unleash the reverberating power of the internet, used the nets ability to distribute announcements widely, and send rolling waves of comment, news and opinion around the globe effortlessly, made the net amplifying this worthy effort to a crescendo within moments. 

The silence of the available marketing power and tools of the net is remarkable. A case study really.

Yet it's not too late.

Microsoft are a sponsor. Why not? Bill Gate's personal foundation is also fighting malaria to the tune of 258 million dollars. So. Ask Gates to send one email to all Microsoft staff. In it he asks. Just blog it. One post later, in each of their 3000 company blogs, and unknown personal blogs, and a deed is done. Ask Price Waterhouse the same. One email. All staff. A request. Blog somewhere!

Then stand back and watch. A tidal wave. Search engines would pick it up. Each step would  build on the earlier. If nothing else, it'd be a massive global awareness raiser about malaria. And this event.

And Influence Marketing at work.