Mark Pincus Blog

Back at Tribe

so this is a little late as the blog world caught my post on tribe thursday night. but for anyone out there who doesnt read techcrunch, fred wilson or silicon beat, yes i have stepped back in at tribe. i believe in brian lawler and the team. i also believe that we're still at early stages for social media. i'm excited about the opportunity to continue working on making social media more useful for people.

it's also important to many of us to keep tribe the community running and vibrant. on the eve of burning man, the greatest live community event, it's nice to know that tribe, one of the important sites around this event, will be sticking around too.

i'll be at burning man as of tuesday, camping at the deepend (9:30 and faith). come by one afternoon and if i'm bartending, i'll serve you a drink.

I miss my friend tom

Every time I'm alone or come up for air. I keep saying its so weird. How can he be gone? Where can he go to? What happens? Can he create rainbows there?

Can a soul cease to exist? Or does our energy go somewhere else? A lightbulb bruns out. Does its energy go somewhere else or its just expended and ceases? How do we contemplate any soul ceasing to exist?

Its starts out feeling like your friend just went on a long vacation. Then they become a series of memory flashes. For me its just like pulling up pictures. The video and audio brings them back more than any other way. Thank g-d for that.

Please make sure you video your friends and family a lot. That's been big and I'm sure will get way more sophisticated by the time most of us leave. I'm sure my friend rob will create holographic bobbing heads to rise above our graves and talk to our loved ones when they visit. Maybe we'll apply AI to learn a personality, character, past and enable people to ask parents for advice and reactions for decades. Allow great grand children to meet long lost ones.

Maybe we'll replace statues (about time!) With holograms. The next great president will sit on the steps of his library and greet each visitor. Parks will come to life with great men and women replacing dead stone replicas.

Nothing will bring tom back. Nor will I find some easy way to fill the void. The sadness is with me every day. Not sure it will ever leave or that I want it to. My only connection left.

This has forced me to grow up. I never aspired to become a man before. Always laughed that I could cheat life and stay a kid. Well life had a different plan. Guess digging a hole and poring your best friend's ashes in it can have that effect.

There is a rainbow though. I've ben more present these past three weeks than the lifetime before. No more celphone in the car with friends. No more blackberry while I'm half listening.

Tom's osho book of understanding talks about how we have to be 100 pct engaged on our path with no regrets. That it is more important to be 100 pct than on the *right* path.

There is no better path, only the one we're on. I've spent a lot of my life struggling with decisions, tormented by the prospect of choosing the wrong path. No more. That is one of tom's greatest gifts. Tom used to say 'its all good' and it is and 'be here now' and I will be.

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Tom visited tomstock 2006!

PICT0004.JPG
Originally uploaded by markpinc.

tom blessed his own party with the most amazing rainbow any of us had ever seen. not only was it complete from end to end, but there were two parallel. unfortunately, i only captured half and missed the second in this shot.

Tomstock next weekend in woody creek CO

Just want to let everyone who knew tom that I am hosting 'tomstock' next weekend. If anyone wants to participate email me at markpinc at gmail.
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

"We will not capitulate" by Ben Caspit

[note: that i originally got this wrong as a result of a friend's email and thanks to brian goler have now corrected the context for this.]

We Will Not Capitulate

Ben Caspit proposes the text for a speech by the Prime Minister that would explain to the world exactly what we’re fighting for

this is a proposed speach to the UN for the prime minister of israel and articulates my frustrations so much better than i can. why is israel always treated differently than all other countries? what other country is chastised for defending itself by the entire world?  i would love this speach as it would be heroic.

would the US apologize for taking out missiles in mexico that were being fired into texas? hell, we even rationalized invading cuba because we suspected they might receive russian missiles. why doesnt the media ever acknowledge the double standard applied?

July 31, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

A voice for six million citizens Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force.

The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility. Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.

The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya? What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly.

We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us.

Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more. In a loud and clear voice And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. What did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm.

And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London.

An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent.

What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't?

In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine.

This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM FACTS

1. ISRAEL BECAME A STATE IN 1312 B.C., TWO MILLENNIA BEFORE ISLAM;

2. ARAB REFUGEES FROM ISRAEL BEGAN CALLING THEMSELVES "PALESTINIANS" IN 1967, TWO DECADES AFTER (MODERN) ISRAELI STATEHOOD;

3. AFTER CONQUERING THE LAND IN 1272 B.C., JEWS RULED IT FOR A THOUSAND YEARS AND MAINTAINED A CONTINUOUS PRESENCE THERE FOR 3,300 YEARS;

4. THE ONLY ARAB RULE FOLLOWING CONQUEST IN 633 B.C. LASTED JUST 22 YEARS;

5. FOR OVER 3,300 YEARS, JERUSALEM WAS THE JEWISH CAPITAL. IT WAS NEVER THE CAPITAL OF ANY ARAB OR MUSLIM ENTITY. EVEN UNDER JORDANIAN RULE, (EAST) JERUSALEM WAS NOT MADE THE CAPITAL, AND NO ARAB LEADER CAME TO VISIT IT;

6. JERUSALEM IS MENTIONED OVER 700 TIMES IN THE BIBLE, BUT NOT ONCE IS IT MENTIONED IN THE QUR'AN;

7. KING DAVID FOUNDED JERUSALEM; MOHAMMED NEVER SET FOOT IN IT;

8. JEWS PRAY FACING JERUSALEM; MUSLIMS FACE MECCA. IF THEY ARE BETWEEN THE TWO CITIES, MUSLIMS PRAY FACING MECCA, WITH THEIR BACKS TO JERUSALEM;

9. IN 1948, ARAB LEADERS URGED THEIR PEOPLE TO LEAVE, PROMISING TO CLEANSE THE LAND OF JEWISH PRESENCE. 68% OF THEM FLED WITHOUT EVER SETTING EYES ON AN ISRAELI SOLDIER;

10. VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE JEWISH POPULATION OF MUSLIM COUNTRIES HAD TO FLEE AS THE RESULT OF VIOLENCE AND POGROMS;

11. SOME 630,000 ARABS LEFT ISRAEL IN 1948, WHILE CLOSE TO A MILLION JEWS WERE FORCED TO LEAVE THE MUSLIM COUNTRIES;

12. IN SPITE OF THE VAST TERRITORIES AT THEIR DISPOSAL, ARAB REFUGESS WERE DELIBERATELY PREVENTED FROM ASSIMILATING INTO THEIR HOST COUNTRIES. OF 100 MILLION REFUGEES FOLLOWING WORLD WAR 2, THEY ARE THE ONLY GROUP TO HAVE NEVER INTEGRATED WITH THEIR CORELIGIONISTS. MOST OF THE JEWISH REFUGEES FROM EUROPE AND ARAB LANDS WERE SETTL ED IN ISRAEL, A COUNTRY NO LARGER THAN NEW JERSEY;

13. THERE ARE 22 MUSLIM COUNTRIES, NOT COUNTING PALESTINE. THERE IS ONLY ONE JEWISH STATE. ARABS STARTED ALL FIVE WARS AGAINST ISRAEL, AND LOST EVERY ONE OF THEM;

14. FATAH AND HAMAS CONSTITUTIONS STILL CALL FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL. ISRAEL CEDED MOST OF THE WEST BANK AND ALL OF GAZA TO THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, AND EVEN PROVIDED IT WITH ARMS;

15. DURING THE JORDANIAN OCCUPATION, JEWISH HOLY SITES WERE VANDALIZED AND WERE OFF LIMITS TO JEWS. UNDER ISRAELI RULE, ALL MUSLIM AND CHRISTIAN HOLY SITES ARE ACCESSIBLE TO ALL FAITHS;

16. OUT OF 175 UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS UP TO 1990, 97 WERE AGAINST ISRAEL; OUT OF 690 GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTIONS, 429 WERE AGAINST ISRAEL;

18. THE U.N. WAS SILENT WHEN THE JORDANIANS DESTROYED 58 SYNAGOGUES IN THE OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM. IT REMAINED SILENT WHILE JORDAN SYSTEMATICALLY DESECRATED THE ANCIENT JEWISH CEMETERY ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, AN D IT REMAINED SILENT WHEN JORDAN ENFORCED APARTHEID LAWS PREVENTING JEWS FROM ACCESSING THE TEMPLE MOUNT AND WESTERN WALL.

THESE ARE TRYING TIMES. WE MUST ASK OURSELVES WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING, AND WHAT WE WILL TELL OUR GRANDCHILDREN ABOUT OUR ACTIONS DURING THIS CRISIS, WHEN WE HAD THE CHANCE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

START NOW! SEND THIS MESSAGE TO 20 FRIENDS, AND ASK EACH OF THEM TO SEND IT TO 20 MORE. JEWISH OR NOT, IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Urban hikes

i went on an urban hike saturday night with my friends gary and zinga. have you ever done a midnight urban hike? i'm sorry to say this was only my second. my first was a few weeks ago with my recently departed friend tom. i'm so thankful tom introduced me to this lost (or never found) artform.

what's amazing is that we were within 2 miles of my house the whole time but still managed to explore woods and hills i had never been too. apparently, tom had been doing these hikes for almost 10 years (behind my back).

anyway, i'm a new believer in the urban hike. you dont even really need hills and trees. just some area near you that you've never really explored and a bright moon helps too.

i've helped murry gunty make google and wikipedia!

sorry. i just find this whole thing too funny. so i looked and saw that a) the murry gunty story is now most of the links when you google him and b) someone created an entry for him on wikipedia that links to this blog and the original story in the harvard crimson. wonder if he also asked them to take his full name out?

i'm reposting a few excerpts too. i just love how murry doesnt even admit that he didn anything wrong. i think this guy represents all that harvard business school has become. it's THE place to mint the greedy corrupt ceos who steal from their investors every day with their ridiculous compensation packages, backdating options and whatever new tricks they make up.

Harvard Business School officials are currently investigating a student's alleged attempt to rig the elections of the school's prestigious Finance Club Last week.

First-year MBA student Murry Gunty resigned as co-president-elect after the club's incumbent president found that he had asked non-members to vote using the names of club members.

Gunty said he resigned because he didn't want to take over "if rules were apparently violated" but insisted that the non-members voted as "proxies" for the members, according to the Harbus News, the Business School's student newspape

The alleged tampering has brought some negative attention to the school's highly-touted ethics program, which was established with a $20 million pledge five years ago. First-year MBA student are required to take courses in the program.

it would be so nice to hear murry own up to this instead of being another lay or skilling, hiding behind bullshit. why couldnt you just stand up and say i fucked up? i was scared i wouldnt get a job at goldman sachs. i was greedy but now i see that. it's never too late murry. and now i'm helping you. just go google yourself and see!

and btw, we should all link to his firm, milestone capital, too or whatever you do to get a high google rank so that new potential investors can get the whole story too. it says he has important people like james baker as advisors. guess former politicians can live with questionable ethics. makes good company.

Another reason to leave typepad

sorry to be a stream of complaints but has anyone noticed how bad photo uploads work? it pretty much never works and i have to go upload on flickr and then 'blog this' to get a damned picture into my blog. if i werent spending all my time working on tom memorials i'd be working on moving off typepad. and i'm paying $14.95 for this.

I found murry gunty!

I found murry gunty!
Originally uploaded by markpinc.

thanks to gigi for forwarding me a link to murry gunty's pvt equity fund. i guess he must have contacted six apart to ask that i not be allowed to include his name on this blog. well 6A, here is a photo of murry too! and murry, i'd welcome any comments from you here too.

from my dad on why the us and israel should give up on the press

this is a terrific article my dad wrote for the chicago suntimes newspaper. you may all notice how i got my dad's passion for arguing but not his beautiful way with words. (and it's ok if you dont know all the words he uses bc i dont:)

TO HELL WITH P.R.

IT’S TIME TO TAKE OFF THE GLOVES IN THE

MIDEAST

By Ted Pincus

I’m a lifelong PR man who has preached forever the gospel that public opinion is the ultimate weapon. But isn’t the time overdue for me, and maybe for you, to say “To hell with PR when survival is at stake” ?

In the current mideast conflict as at any other moment of turmoil, common sense says that the diplomatic card should always be played first to preclude bloodshed. But history has shown us that some conflicts have no diplomatic solution, as in two world wars and 9/11, where the enemy is sworn to kill you.

When the cards are stacked against you,it’s wise to walk out of the game. That’s what both

Israel

and the

U.S.

must do instead of wrestling with the twisted Orwellian logic of morality clouding world opinion and media coverage today. It’s just too dangerous to continue paying obeisance to elusive global goodwill at the expense of security.

But the real issue today isn’t the failure to find a diplomatic solution in the mideast, which I don’t  believe will be found. Why haven’t the world leaders spoken out against this remarkable watershed event in human history in which –for

Israel

alone—the traditional rules are turned upside down and a monumental, unique double-standard applies? When was the last time a nation was attacked by unprovoked aggression and almost universally condemned for defending itself. When was the last time the defenders were demonized by charges of “disproportionate retaliation”?  Was it following Pearl Harbor, when our response culminated with the incineration of over 400,000 civilians at

Hiroshima

and

Nagasaki

?  Hardly. Was it following the buzz-bombing of

Britain

, when the response led to the leveling of

Berlin

,

Dusseldorf

and especially

Dresden

, and the destruction of 

Germany

? Was it following 9/11, when the response was an invasion of

Afghanistan

and immense collateral damage?  Did those responses ever need justification?

And has anyone, anywhere, condemned JFK for nuclear brinksmanship in forcing

Russia

to remove its missiles from

Cuba

, 90 miles from our shores? Consider what our reaction would have been if 1900 of those missiles had landed on our cities –as experienced this past month by Israel in enduring the Hezbollah barrage.

Yet from the outset, despite the obvious fact that terrorist aggression clearly violated U.N. Resolution 1559 and was an act of open war,

Israel

has been castigated not only by Islam but by most other nations around the globe, and on the floor of the U.N. itself, led by its esteemed secretary general in his even-handed wisdom.  A Pew Research poll just completed shows of course outrage among Muslims (the majority of whom, in each nation polled, also deny that Arabs ever committed the 9/11 attacks, and are in  full support of Osama bin Laden), but also venom among “neutral” populations where only 38 percent of the French, 24 percent of the British and 9 percent of Spaniards sympathize with Israel. And even in

America

, its staunchest ally, only 48 percent express support, Pew reports.  It’s the sad continuation of a half century in which miniscule

Israel

has been honored with more U.N. condemnation resolutions than all other countries combined.

I believe this has happened not despite the fact, but because of the fact that Israel, with less than 1/1000^th of the world’s population, is an island of democracy whose $100 billion economy is larger than all of its neighbors combined, and proportional to its population produces more university degrees, medical advancements, scientific papers, and tech innovation like the cellphone, Windows XP, and the Pentium chip, than any other nation on earth. Witnessing this, respect long ago was replaced by envy and bitterness.

What does all this say? It says that in this isolated case only, mankind’s rules of engagement do not apply. The very legitimacy of military response is in question, even in self defense, even to deter a fusillade of rockets, whose Iranian-made Fajr-5 may well reach Tel Aviv, as we speak.

Hitler was noted for his mastery of The Big Lie. That specter has returned again, with Iran’s Ahmadinejad not only urging Islam to “wipe Israel off the map” but denying that another guy tried 65 years ago and succeeded in preventing 6 million Jews from ever reaching Israel. And The Big Lie always evolves with one insidious question: “Who would ever believe it?” Mel Gibson already has. 

Hollywood

’s revered icon, who last year indignantly rebuffed anti-semitism accusations over his film “The Passion of the Christ”,this month managed to blurt out for the record his belief that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars of the world.”

The world chooses to believe things for convenience. It has learned that truth or fiction can be rationalized. The most graphic dramatization of this phenomenon was Friedrich Durrenmatt’s 1956 play, The Visit, in which an enormously rich woman, on a vendetta against one man, demanded to an astonished  village that he should be punished for an imaginary crime. When she offered to bestow her wealth on the entire citizenry, they slowly began to disregard his purity and convince themselves that he was indeed guilty, and ultimately executed him. Although it’s largely unspoken, that’s the scenario today, where well-intentioned, pious, peace-loving nations are sufficiently blackmailed by the oil producers to bend age-old beliefs and concede that, for

Israel

, there should be a dual code of ethics. In sum, the hostage can be easily sacrificed, and in good conscience.

This ambiguity is now coupled with another equally fearsome evolution –the end of conventional warfare as we know it, and the rise of asymmetric

tactics. As we found to our dismay in

Afghanistan

and

Iraq

, battle lines have evaporated, and so has the uniformed enemy soldier. Nowadays, everyone is a “civilian”—dressed as any harmless man,woman or child. The enemy intentionally imbeds itself in civilian networks, callously putting its own families at risk. The relative impossibility of combating this invisible foe, without creating collateral casualties, has been realized daily in

Iraq

and now

Lebanon

. “The human shield” has become the weapon of choice,like it or not.

But isn’t it interesting that over the several weeks of war in

Lebanon

, not one government or news medium has reported any Lebanese casualties but the “400 civilian deaths”. Is it possible that not one Hezbollah fighter has been identified among them?  Has

Israel

killed only innocents?

Obviously, the PR War has been lost long ago by

Israel

and since 2003 by the

U.S.

, as Pew Research reminds us monthly. There’s just no contending with a stacked deck. It’s automatic demonization.  But there comes a time when humans and nations must put aside polite concerns about public opinion and shrug off the PR risks, when they’re fighting for their lives.

Given the aspirations of the world’s religious fundamentalists, their oil money, arsenal, suicidal bent, and brand new mode of “all civilian warfare,”

It soon may not be only

Israel

fighting for its life but the entire free world. In that struggle there’s something even more important than your reputation. It’s your skin. And in that card game, all bets are off.