Simplicity is better, especially when complexity means pop-culture and tabloid opiates on a default search engine page.

When you type google.com into the address bar, Google still assumes you know what you're looking for and gives you a simple search page with concise links to other departments you may want. In other words, without making a big deal about it, you're still in the driver's seat.

When you type yahoo.com into the address bar, the default offering is not a simple search page, but a slurry of pictures of exploited celebrity human products, tabloid headlines and sensationalist news. Yahoo is like TV-junk-food internet, it is busy, mentally poor and full of commercial breaks in attention span. And the latter happens to turn out people with fractured attention spans and distractive tendencies.

Yahoo just wants us to have "options," right? To keep us informed? I'm not so sure. One of the surest way to limit options is to determine what they are first, then tell your audience you've given them "choice."

Is this really what internet users demand or want? Or is it a matter of not having a choice so that advertisers and Yahoo's indirect advertiser-related topics must pay Yahoo more and get more of what they want: guaranteed access through the visual first impression on our brain of what Yahoo has placed on the default.

To go directly to Yahoo's search engine with less junk, you type this into your favorites or history:

http://www.search.yahoo.com/

Google wins. Yahoo dumbs us down with fool complexity and less choices. Google leaves the channels open for us to think without visual distraction and solicitation before we research. This involves more proactive thinking it seems.

The high profile exploitations of Ms. Smith, Ms. Spears and Ms. Monroe illustrate that inhuman exploitation for entertainment is not only still with us, but is actually celebrated in America. What started out as glamorous careers turned into carnival exploitation of so-called "freaks" by people who definitely know better, but who deliberately do evil to their fellow human beings in the name of "business." How can this be in a country that is supposedly aligned between moral common sense and liberal sensitivities about human and civil rights?

As an example, to say "dumb blonde," however acceptable that might be because most blondes are of the majority race and are not considered historically disadvantaged because of it, is no less racism than what Imus said. And, as an odd symbol of channeled cruelty, it seems these unfortunate women are considered game targets.

These women are symbols of a larger number of women who are born into situations which put them on track for expensive colleges-in-a-box with low grad rates, dropping out of school altogether, or cosmetology training, for instance. We have a socioeconomic channeling system geared to classes. Unless brain damaged, and with straight-talking motivators to challenge them where they are, such persons could handle a planned, if longer, track to share breathing space at enriching learning institutions with the children of socioeconomically advantaged students.

The exploited celebrity examples, 1 of 3 still alive, are examples of categories of vulnerable persons that function well enough to appear presently aware of what they're getting into when they sign contracts, but do not really have that awareness. Even if they have counsel, if counsel kills the contract, it kills an immense earning power that would eventually line his or her wallet. Whether the decision to contract into hyped celebrity is ultimately good or bad for the person is irrelevant to most because they are well-paid and the age of majority. This is the envy-hate rationalization.

Observing the behavior of the ladies in this example, one sees indisputable vulnerability to others' intelligence and power. They are harvested as they are because they are easy money, easy to influence towards self-destruction using psychological techniques available to those with the power to make them loved or make them hated, and therefore they are considered more predictable assets for buying, leasing to the public, and/or liquidating. This sort of commoditization of the human being is the rotten gut of what exploitation is all about. It assumes de-humanity from the beginning. That is the business. Whether making cash from an object of worship or an object of scorn or an object of derision, fully informed people do something destructive to others for money.

Issues of vulnerability, capacity, inexperience, inequal need and manipulation are all areas which the law enters to protect people deemed equitably disadvantaged. However, in some cases, the law hasn't caught up with the ethics inherent in its own protections in contracts involving compromised persons. Those marred by abuse, born to neglect, damaged in any way, or who believe the unspoken, much shown exploitative premise that they need not fully educate themselves because they've got looks, are not considered by the law to be worthy of protection.

Mr. Joseph Merrick's story involved his cruel exploitation in which he was exploited as a carnival freak, once known as the Elephant Man. It was because of his appearance. His disease was what is now called Proteus Syndrome. He had been taken in by an exploiter and abused whenever he acted in resistance to his exploitation. Three evil assumptions combined to victimize Mr. Merrick. One: that a person is as valuable as their money-making use. Two: that a person who is a freak may be treated as a freak if they would "be nowhere" without the exploitation. Three: that a person so exploited deserves no sympathy if they were paid better than others who pay to "watch" and gossip about the person's ailments and features.

How is sex appeal as an external appearance exploited for the lust of fantasy ethically different, for example, from symptomatic deformities as an external appearance exploited for the desire to gossip and pretend false sympathy? Each form of discriminatory exploitation is inherently dehumanizing for others' gratification. It is an anti-social and evil tradition.

When a person is reduced to a state of vulnerability, whether genetically, by ill socialization, abuse, or whatever about them makes others shun and use them, a civilized society seeks to know more about this person to understand them, to anticipate how ill-treatment might cause the person to respond, and plans steps to try to help bring them to equal protection under the law.

Thinking About Two Polls in Iraq

By Michael S. Woodson

Two polls of Iraqis in 2004 and 2007 suggest effects of domestic conflicts of interest that undermine US foreign policy and trustworthiness abroad.

One fundamental conflict is the US developer-liberator role versus its competitor-dominator ambition relative to less developed nations. The other is between American media as truth teller as opposed to media empire haven tied to official sources for ratings-worthy news. Finally, the US talks small government, states’ rights and civil freedoms, however does it walk the walk as an example to the world?

The questions wouldn’t have to be asked if there were a severance between corporate influence in campaigns, public office-private sector revolving doors, and other moneyed dependencies between business and government. If there were such a severance, the US could credibly argue the separateness of its rescuing foreign policies from its ambitious appetite to dominate markets.

Yet, does every other power trading in the world ply the same conflict?

Second Hand News?

In 2004, USA Today published a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll of Iraqi opinion on the American invasion and troop conduct in Iraq that found majority Iraqi displeasure with the occupation if you don’t count the Kurds and don’t question the questions.

Of a purported diverse sample of 3,500 Iraqis the report emphasized that the majority of respondents thought American troops were occupiers who behaved badly in general and treated Iraqi families in their homes with disrespect. In the 40% range, respondents thought US troops showed disrespect for Iraqi women and mosques. All emphasized findings segregated Kurdish opinion as if it “skewed” the results away from the negative.

Some 23 paragraphs into the report was the following disclosure: that 7% of the 3,500 surveyed based their answers on firsthand experience. The report speculated that likely sources of second hand information were Al Jazeera, al-Arabiya, and Pan-Arab Television.

It seems that the 2004 poll was more of a measure of which media Iraqis trust: the one that looks and sounds more like Iraq’s indigenous peoples.

So Iraqis distrust American media. Russians also openly express their distrust of US media. Why? It’s the consumer news assumption. Iraqis and Russians want to hear what puts their cultures in the best possible light. They assume that Americans want the same and so dismiss the genuineness of “free presses” where they believe powerful forces manipulate them. The ‘old world’ is cynical.

This past March Pollster.com synopsized an ABC/USA TODAY/BBC/ARD Iraq Survey which had 78% of Iraqi respondents opposing the US presence while 68% wanted them to stay until Iraqi security forces could effectively keep the peace. These paradoxical numbers suggest that Iraqis see US forces as a necessary evil to bring security and stability.

What isn’t clear is whether Iraqis today would count Saddam Hussein’s regime to have been a necessary evil to keep peace and security in Iraq. Also, it isn’t clear how much of Ba’ath Socialism mattered to ordinary Iraqis of diverse backgrounds.

How much of Iraqi resignation to central authoritarianism is socialist ideology from Ba’athism versus cultural-tribal? If American modes of civilization are not acceptable to most Iraqis, why was another Western ideology, socialism, acceptable? Or were both ideologies irrelevant to more fundamental things rooted in Islamic culture? These are questions for future Iraqi polls.

How well do Americans understand the foreign policy assumptions in their own leaders’ actions? On one hand, rejection of American modes of civilization by Near and Far Eastern cultures implies negative American Exception in the sense that American ways in Iraqi eyes are ‘good for you Americans alright, but not for us.’ This isn’t monolithic, however. They want some of what comes with the American presence, if possible without the presence.

Is Iraq America’s frontier? And what are frontiers for? If frontiers are for leading others in great causes as Brent Scowcroft recently implied about the US purpose abroad in a piece written at the National Interest Online, what about the U.S. example at home supports any given cause in this purpose?

For example, although small business is said to be the backbone of the American economy by those who want to sell things to it, large corporate interests set the rules and tend to squash locals when desired. When they do it, sometimes they use government policy-setting influence. Is that the example of free (in the democracy sense) enterprise that the US purports is a “great cause?”

Those who subscribe to evangelizing the world with American style political economy (internationalists of both parties) imply American Exception in the sense that others should adopt some or all of our mindset, buy it from America, and franchise the exception. However, we are also competing with these countries. How does this conflict differ from that of command economies abroad?

Does the fact that America is no longer a frontier mean that it should have a frontier other than outer space? Should it turn abroad for vicarious frontiers? These judgments are inherent in official actions abroad, whatever the official words.

An intellectual tradition of the American elite (Right and Left)supports internationalist foreign policy assumptions that the world needs help from a benevolent, and if necessary, combative world leader state which must be the US. As less developed nations mature with past help, and more help from other powers, developing nations balk at the internationalist assumption whatever their own governing merit.

There was supposed to be a time to let go of the Cold War world chess game through interim country squares, and a time for self-determination abroad. Is there a uniformly defined and applied concept of self-determination in US foreign policy that sets a standard for taxpayer supported aid to self-determination?

Past, present and resurgent imperial hypocrisies aside, artificial impositions of power that impinge on the daily life and cultural traditions of locals anywhere scare people to anger whether it’s anti-Walmart protestors in a town of 20,000 or Iraqis feeling dictated-to by giant sun-screened aliens with advanced rifles.

People don’t want their faith, neighborhoods, families and comfort zones messed with even if they like some of what you have for sale. Troops on the ground have always known this as have seasoned commanders. When politicians ignore this with ideologic glee, no matter their aisle seat it has predictably lousy results for foreign policy and credibility.

Local conflicts projected on localities across the globe seem to incite local conflicts that reflect back to us in a hall of mirrors.