Is democratic capitalism in danger?

“In the quest for growth, many countries have neglected to build a reliable system of social security that will help citizens buffer the market's volatility.(...) Democratic capitalism’s greatest problem is not that it will destroy itself economically, as Marx would have it — but that it may lose its political support.” Raghuram Rajan 

David Seaton's News Links

Professor Rajan's idea that capitalism might lose its "democratic support" unless it protected its citizens with a reliable social net just wont leave me alone, I keep coming back to it over and over again... especially when the entire system's trend at this moment seems to be going in exactly the opposite direction: leaning toward reducing not enlarging "entitlements" and the worse things get, the more cuts are being put on the table and the more entitlements are being taken off.

What exactly would "democratic capitalism, may lose its political support” mean?

I take it to mean that under extreme pressure, a large number of citizens would be giving a serious look to other economic systems, specifically "democratic socialism", and they might be tempted to organize democratically to achieve that.

If that were the case: what tools would the corporate system need to protect its version of capitalism from democracy?

If you take that that question to form a paradigm, many disparate things in our political system begin to cluster together in interesting patterns.

Look at the following snippets for a sample of what I mean:

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the nation's biggest companies. AP

 And of course we already had this:

Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.(...) The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. NYT - January 21, 2010

 You might say we are looking at a concerted plan of action:

The Supreme Court, which winds up its term Monday, has once again shown itself to be highly skeptical of large lawsuits against big business, regardless of whether the suits are intended to protect workers, consumers or the environment. This year, a 5-4 conservative majority gave companies a stronger shield against class-action claims from consumers who said they were cheated and from employees who said they were victims of discrimination. The same five justices also blocked lawsuits against the makers of generic drugs for failing to warn patients of new dangers. And in a unanimous decision, the high court killed a broad lawsuit that sought to force the major power producers to limit the carbon pollution linked to global warming. LAT

 Now stir this into the mix:

The Obama administration has long been bumbling along in the footsteps of its predecessor when it comes to sacrificing Americans’ basic rights and liberties under the false flag of fighting terrorism. Now the Obama team seems ready to lurch even farther down that dismal road than George W. Bush did. Instead of tightening the relaxed rules for F.B.I. investigations — not just of terrorism suspects but of pretty much anyone — that were put in place in the Bush years, President Obama’s Justice Department is getting ready to push the proper bounds of privacy even further. Editorial - New York Times

Reading the above as if were one text, it would seem to me that the great and the good are expecting things to not only stay rough for a long time, but to get a lot rougher and the war on terrorism, like the war on drugs, and all the other endless wars that America finds itself engaged in have been a vary practical workbench for developing some extremely useful tools, if and when "democratic capitalism" ever lost its "political support". DS

Why I miss George W. Bush more and more with each passing day

David Seaton's News Links

The Obama administration has long been bumbling along in the footsteps of its predecessor when it comes to sacrificing Americans’ basic rights and liberties under the false flag of fighting terrorism. Now the Obama team seems ready to lurch even farther down that dismal road than George W. Bush did. Instead of tightening the relaxed rules for F.B.I. investigations — not just of terrorism suspects but of pretty much anyone — that were put in place in the Bush years, President Obama’s Justice Department is getting ready to push the proper bounds of privacy even further. Editorial - New York Times

A review of President Obama’s record suggests that he may have been for same-sex marriage before he was against it. New York Times

I miss George W. Bush more and more with each passing day.

What do I miss most about George W. Bush?

I miss "hope".

George W. Bush gave the American people hope.

When Bush was president I, and many like me, had the hope that the United State's fundamental problem was that the president of the United States was stupid.

Now that Bush has gone, and we have elected a president who is said to have a very high IQ and a suitable time has passed, and looking around, it is becoming clear that things are no better: Guantanamo is still there, the Patriot Act is still there, the people who caused the financial crisis are still there. The two wars that Obama inherited are still there, plus another one he has started on his own...

It is obvious that the problem we and the world are facing isn't as simple as presidential bandwidth and although Barack Obama is beginning to look a bit like William Faulkner's impression of Henry James, whom he described as, "one of the nicest old ladies I ever met"; whatever the problem is in American government, presidential stupidity is not at the heart of it.

It is beginning to look as if perhaps the American political system itself and perhaps even the country itself are stupid; that George W. Bush and the United States of America were a perfect fit.

And if that is true, then it is quite difficult not to lose hope. DS

Humanity: up a tree, with no fireman in sight

Raghuram Rajan

“The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.” [Marx - Capital, Volume III, Chapter 30]

“It is the end of cheap goods,” says Bruce Rockowitz. He is the chief executive of Li & Fung, a company that sources more clothes and common household products from Asia than perhaps any other.(...) China helped to keep global inflation in check. But that era is now over, (...) Nothing can replace the Chinese miracle. “There is no next,” says Mr Rockowitz. Prices will now start to rise by 5% or more each year, with no end in sight. And that may be optimistic. So far this year, Mr Rockowitz says, Li & Fung’s sourcing operation has seen price increases of 15% on average. Other sourcers of Asian toys, clothes and basic household products tell similarly ominous tales. Economist

“In the quest for growth, many countries have neglected to build a reliable system of social security that will help citizens buffer the market's volatility.(...) Democratic capitalism’s greatest problem is not that it will destroy itself economically, as Marx would have it — but that it may lose its political support.” Raghuram Rajan

David Seaton's News Links

Marx's predictions of the system collapsing under the "enmiseration" of workers seem to have been foiled over and over again by the system's growing ability to produce and market ever cheaper and more abundant consumer goods and then, when incomes began to stagnate, to make available ever cheaper and more abundant credit with which to buy those goods: a form of consumption which used to be aptly known in England as "buying on the never-never". The role of the worker was replaced by the role of the consumer and the connection between the two roles became ever more tenuous.

Thus did the system square the circle: people could "own" their own home and consume just as if they were prosperous, despite stagnant or falling wages and to tide people over the rough spots, in most developed countries, there was a generous welfare state in place.  This formula for dynamic economies combined with social peace appears to be have run out of road. And in this financial crisis the "never" of never-never seems to have arrived.

In the video above, Chicago University professor and former (clairvoyant) chief economist of the IMF, Raguram Rajan lays great emphasis in improving education in order to prepare workers for a labor market demanding ever more sophisticated skills, as those without said skills, seem irredeemably doomed to Marx's "enmiseration". 

As much as I admire professor Rajan, and I admire him very much, I am skeptical about the possibility of training the mass of humanity, the grandchildren of homo habilis, in the skillful, rather obsessive, management of the abstract symbols and concepts which make up so much of the new technologies... This is a sort of skepticism I have been incubating for a long time. I remember even writing a poem when I was in my teens, with the lines:

On a rectangular plot of manicured grass,
Sits the man of tomorrow,
On yesterday's ass

My intuition tells me that we are quite a young species -- only about 200,000 years old -- and only living in permanent village-town-cities, that is to say, "civilized", for some 10,000 years. We belong to a species, which, by a quirk of evolution, is intelligent enough to have gotten itself into a situation which we are not intelligent enough to get out of... something like a kitten climbing a tree... Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a "fire department" to get us down from our "tree".

Let me give a simple, graphic, example of what I am trying to say. Look at today's epidemic of obesity, which I think is a perfect indicator of our dilemma. For almost all of our 200,000 years of existence as a species, right up till the very recent development of our advanced agricultural and distribution techniques, being able to gain weight quickly, when food was abundant, and lose it slowly, when food was scarce, was a vital plus for surviving frequent crop failures, droughts and other natural disasters. Suddenly, within a few generations, thanks to our logistics and food processing systems, a large percentage of the population finds itself waddling toward an early grave.  I think this will serve as metaphor for many observable phenomena today, you are welcome to make your own list.

Certainly most of humanity through most of its history and prehistory, survived and did useful work without having to manage abstract symbols and concepts and it seems to me as cruel as laughing at fat people  to make those abilities essential for living with any security and dignity today.

The challenge today is to allow the most average of people to have a decent life, with good health, as much education as they are able to absorb and a chance to work gainfully in occupations within their capacities and enjoy a dignified retirement. The person able to "re-invent" work, and make this possible would be the "Einstein" of today's world.  DS

Movements without "leaders"

David Seaton's News Links

The other day, a top American political consultant, Matthew Dowd, was visiting Madrid and was interviewed by the local "newspaper of reference", El País. When he was asked his opinion about Spain's "15th of May" citizen's movement, AKA, "The Spanish Revolution" or "Los Indignados", he dismissed them saying, "If they want to influence the system they must work from within, supporting a leader." In so saying, I think this consummate insider has revealed one of the keys to a political system which today seems much more in tune with lobbies and special interest groups than with the lives and concerns of its citizens and voters: a "caste apart"... precisely what los indignados are indignant about.

Are political leaders a solution?

A true political movement is about agreed goals, not about "leaders". Look at the American Civil Rights movement, a true citizen's movement if there ever was one. Martin Luther King was its voice, but the energy behind his voice was the energy of thousands of "Rosa Parks": black people, who had it very clear in their minds that they had had enough. Men and women, even children, who simply were not about to take any more shit.

Without those thousands upon thousands of "Rosa Parks", marchers and martyrs, and their firm decision not to back down even one step, Martin Luther King would have been no more than another fine example of the African-American community's legendary, evangelical pulpit artistry. The nobility of the movement he gave voice to washes away any controversies over personal frailties he may have had and enshrines him in American history. In short, Rosa Parks "created" Martin Luther King and Martin Luther King Day and not vice-versa. 

Therefore a clear cause, with clear objectives, is the heart of a powerful movement: objectives which elicit the commitment of those who join it, and that combination of objectives and massive commitment calls forth clear "leadership" as needed. In short a healthy mass political movement is created first by the "followers" not by the "leaders".

Starting with the leader and then looking around for some objectives and then looking for followers is simply manipulative, no different really than selling any other product. You could even say that in a "leader-originated" movement, the leader's role is to take the "movement" out of the movement. Certainly there could be no greater contrast than between the Civil Rights Movement and the  marketing operation, cast as a "movement", that took Barack Obama to the White House. Contrast MLK's, "If man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live." with Obama's lawyerly, "change (you can believe in) ".

The proof of this is that, what should have been the crowning moment of the Civil Rights struggle, putting an African-American into the White House, after all the froth and self-congratulation, is turning out to be next to meaningless by any objective measure.

So Matthew Dowd is wrong. There is a surfeit of "leaders" today, politics is crawling with them, what are needed are people: masses of committed people, people who come together with clear objectives to change things and just like Rosa Parks, wont take no for an answer.

It would make me happy to think that anything as spontaneous and potentially fertile as Spain's "indignados" could spring to life in the USA... that would change not only the USA, it would change the entire world.

We live in hope. DS

Times Change

David Seaton's News Links

I happened on this clip and I began to wonder about how something that was once so mainstream, so top of the line, so wholesome, so American "family" entertainment, now looks so painfully like a charter flight full of scummy, leering, pedophile, sex tourists setting off on holiday to Phnom Penh. The word "inappropriate" falls far short. What has happened... what has changed? Reality? Fantasy?  It is hard to believe that the sophisticated libertines of 1930s Hollywood were not fully aware of all the implications of what they were selling. Or a significant part of the public too, if only subconsciously. To my mind this bit of film seems even older than the "Dancing Lady" of my previous piece. DS

Memento Mori: In a hundred years we'll all be bald

"It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

David Seaton's News Links

A favorite subject of painting's old masters was that of a saint contemplating a skull or some such memento mori to remind him or her of the unbearable lightness of being. But the cinema has been around long enough now for the shadows of people to populate it who were dead before your grandparents or even great-grandparents were born and they do a better job than any painting of reminding us how fleeting life really is.

Looking through old cinema archives several years ago I stumbled on a brief scrap of film of this joyfully erotic "Hootchi Cootchi" dancer from the Saint Louis World's fair of 1904. I put it in my editing program and slowed it down to cancel out the jumpiness of the pre-24 frames a second footage and then hunted around for some raunchy music to set it to... and there I had my own memento mori, standing there, dead as Cleopatra and everyone who ever her knew her or ever loved her, just as dead as she is: shaking her booty just for me.

I wonder how many great, great granddaughters of my dancing lady are going clubbing tonight totally ignorant of where the DNA that has their boyfriend's hormones so fissiparous comes from. DS

Better watch out for the cucumber that ate Hamburg, for he may eat your city soon

The number of people hit by a massive European outbreak of foodborne bacterial infections is a third bigger than previously known and a stunningly high number of patients suffer from a potentially deadly complication than can shut down their kidneys, officials said Wednesday. Associated Press

You'd better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago,

For he may eat your city soon.

You'd better watch out for the eggplant that ate Chicago,

If he's still hungry, the whole country's doomed.

The Eggplant that Ate Chicago

Is this “simply” a very bad on-farm breakdown of Good Agricultural Practices? Is the outbreak the result of an exceptionally toxic warehouse somewhere in the supply chain? Could it possibly be agro-terrorism, as unthinkable as that prospect is? - The Packer

David Seaton's News Links

"Could it possibly be agro-terrorism, as unthinkable as that prospect is?" That is a haunting phrase if ever there was one.

Reasons for thinking it could be:

• Osama bin Laden was killed recently and Al Qaeda has promised a spectacular response.
• Documents captured way back in Tora-Bora days, showed that even at that time Al Qaeda was investigating using human feces cultures to develop deadly pathogens as a simple, cheap method with which to sabotage the enemy's (our) food distribution systems.
• It is doable. Wholesale food distribution, loading, unloading, classifying, re-packing for retail: the vegetables and fruit we eat pass through countless hands on the way to our tables and many of those hands are minimum wage immigrants, therefore the selection of employees cannot be very rigorous... it is proving immensely difficult to determine exactly where the infection has its origins.
• As we can see with the German, "cucumber panic" our food distribution systems, with their huge volume, are complex, sophisticated and vulnerable.  Moreover, if anything affects them, it receives enormous media coverage everywhere, because the idea that the food we buy in the supermarket might kill us is extremely disturbing to modern city dwellers entirely dependent on said distribution systems. If this proved to be Al Qaeda's work the resulting terror and paranoia would be indescribable
• German public opinion is very unenthusiastic about Germany's participation in the war in Afghanistan and generally hostile to German military adventures of any kind. Jihadists poisoning cucumbers to kill German hausfraus might be the straw that breaks the camels back and has them running for the Afghan doors.

At this writing we don't yet know the exact causes of this infection, which is drawing the fascinated horror of the developed world. And even if turns out to be only fortuitous or simply human error or cupidity, we have been given a sobering reminder of how artificial our world has become and how helplessly vulnerable we might find ourselves in the midst of all our power and wealth. DS

The Bradley Manning Video

David Seaton's News Links

This video raises many, many issues... but the most significant thing is how somebody like this was ever kept in the army in the first place and then was sent to Iraq and then given the access to the classified information he was given access to.

This is very, very strange... This is NOT about Bradley Manning, this is about the US Army. The US Army is supposed to be the "greatest" army in history, certainly the most expensive one in history... what the hell is going on?

I find it utterly tragic that the only way that a person as potentially valuable in an information economy as Bradley Manning could ever hope to go to university was to enlist in the army... as if Shirley Temple had to join the Marine Corp in order to get dental care

The whole thing is so amazing... It's not that he is gay, gays come in all shapes and sizes, but he is like a little girl. He is blond, blue eyed, about five-nothing tall and practically floats. In an overtly homosexual and violent environment like a prison, he would probably become the "punk" of the most alpha-male doing life and just "keep house" for him and never have to worry about violence or humilliation, but in the "don't ask, don't tell" environment of this weird army, hypocrisy meets sadism bathed in incompetent stupidity... When you get this far into the story, you are not really surprised to find that the passwords to highly classified material are written on post-its and stuck on the computer screens.

Manning's best defense would be temporary insanity and the people who admitted him and kept him the army should be court marshaled. There should be a congressional investigation into the whole thing. DS

The Middle East made simple(r)

David Seaton's News Links

When very complex situations become very simple is when they become most dangerous. The situation that America finds itself in today's Middle East is such a situation: simple and potentially deadly for American prestige and power, two things which feed off each other, and in passing feed the American people.

The endless Palestinian question is a bone in the throat of an Arab and Muslim world that sits astride some of the world's most essential commodities, notably oil. The United States is seen as the only country that could possibly have enough influence over Israel to solve it.

The perception the world has is that Israel has more influence over the USA than the USA has over Israel, this is very bad for America's worldwide reputation and influence. In a great extent the prosperity, the "way of life" of the American people depends on that power and influence.

Perhaps for the senators and congressmen in Washington, Israel is the measure of all things, but this is not true for the rest of the world, and every day there are relevant, new players to take into account. AIPAC works tirelessly to insure that Americans' notorious love of cheap gasoline doesn't trump their legendary love of Israel. Unfortunately for Israel there is no such thing as a CHIPAC (China Israel Public Affairs Committee) or much less a BRICIPAC or a even a European EUIPAC... so Obama is left holding the bag.

The "solving" of the Palestinian question is the Saudi Peace Initiative, which would fully integrate Israel into the Middle East, economically and diplomatically, in exchange for Israel returning to its 1967 frontiers. Israel wants no part of the Saudi plan. My private hypothesis is that they are merely playing for time, thinking that sooner or later a great war will break out involving the entire Middle East, and under the cover of that chaos, they will be able to ethnically cleanse the occupied (sorry, "disputed") territories.  With the entire region in ferment, the possibility of such a conflict and the opportunities it would present, multiply exponentially.

Truly the "Arab Spring" complicates the situation wonderfully. Let me quote president Obama on this one:

(...) a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region. A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.

The rest of oil-consuming world is also running out of patience: they are suffering from (to coin a phrase) "Israel fatigue". Again Obama:

And just as the context has changed in the Middle East, so too has it been changing in the international community over the last several years. There's a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process, or the absence of one, not just in the Arab World -- in Latin America, in Asia, and in Europe. And that impatience is growing, and it's already manifesting itself in capitals around the world.

America is trying to end two wars of its own and cut its gargantuan defense budget, this is urgent because the American debt is causing great concern everywhere, the dollar, the basis of international commodity trading, is no longer seen as a uniquely reliable store of value and the Middle East, where the oil on which the world runs is concentrated -- democratic and otherwise -- is growing more volatile with every passing day.

Ending the Palestinian problem is an essential component in pacifying the Middle East. If the USA is incapable of doing so the rest of the world is going to give it a try.  They  have no other choice. "Ein brera" as the Israelis say. DS

The Arab Spring, Israel, the dollar and gasoline: "Horror on K-Street"

Arm wrestling?

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.(...) Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.  Robert Fisk - Independent

David Seaton's News Links

The US dollar is not in good shape, the sharpest speculators like Soro's old sidekick Jim Rodgers or Pimco's Bill Gross call the US currency "debased" and are unloading them as fast as they can.  Oil producing countries are especially "long" on dollars, as dollars are the only currency in which oil is traded. The United States has dominated the world's access to the world's most important center of oil production, the Middle East,  since World War II, and just as much or more than its military might the US dollar has defined that domination.

It might not be an exaggeration to say that with America's humongous debt and overextended military, having the world's most essential commodity, oil, bought and sold in dollars, of which the United States can print as many as it likes, is the most important remaining pillar of America's imperial status. As it stands, any country that wants to buy oil has to change their currency into dollars to do so...  If the USA had to change dollars to another currency in order to buy oil, it might find itself in a similar situation to the emperor whose new clothes turned out to be his birthday suit.

Cutting to the chase: If this happened Americans might find themselves facing Wiemar-like inflation. It is not very difficult to predict that if Americans cannot afford gasoline to go to and from work,supposing they still have work to go to,  that they will vote out of office anyone who happens to be occupying the White House at  the time. This sort of thing will concentrate a president's mind wonderfully... Even if he finds himself helpless to do anything about it.

Now we are faced with what is called the "Arab Spring".

Before we go on much further talking about said "spring", let us see what the word "spring" means... as you can see below it means almost anything you'd like it to mean. Have a look, take your time:

spring  (sprng)
v. sprang (sprng) or sprung (sprng), sprung, spring·ing, springs
v.intr.
1. To move upward or forward in a single quick motion or a series of such motions; leap.
2. To move suddenly on or as if on a spring: The door sprang shut. The emergency room team sprang into action.
3. To appear or come into being quickly: New businesses were springing up rapidly. See Synonyms at stem1.
4. To issue or emerge suddenly: A cry sprang from her lips. A thought springs to mind.
5. To extend or curve upward, as an arch.
6. To arise from a source; develop.
7. To become warped, split, or cracked. Used of wood.
8. To move out of place; come loose, as parts of a mechanism.
9. Slang To pay another's expenses: He offered to spring for the dinner.
v.tr.
1. To cause to leap, dart, or come forth suddenly.
2. To jump over; vault.
3. To release from a checked or inoperative position; actuate: spring a trap.
4.
a. To cause to warp, split, or crack, as a mast.
b. To bend by force.
5. To present or disclose unexpectedly or suddenly: "He sprung on the world this novel approach to political journalism" (Curtis Wilkie).
6. Slang To cause to be released from prison or other confinement.
n.
1. An elastic device, such as a coil of wire, that regains its original shape after being compressed or extended.
2. An actuating force or factor; a motive.
3.
a. Elasticity; resilience.
b. Energetic bounce: a spring to one's step.
4. The act or an instance of jumping or leaping.
5. A usually rapid return to normal shape after removal of stress; recoil.
6. A small stream of water flowing naturally from the earth.
7. A source, origin, or beginning.
8.
a. The season of the year, occurring between winter and summer, during which the weather becomes warmer and plants revive, extending in the Northern Hemisphere from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice and popularly considered to comprise March, April, and May.
b. A time of growth and renewal.
9. A warping, bending, or cracking, as that caused by excessive force.
10. Architecture The point at which an arch or vault rises from its support.
adj.
1. Of or acting like a spring; resilient.
2. Having or supported by springs: a spring mattress.
3.
a. Of, relating to, occurring in, or appropriate to the season of spring: spring showers; spring planting.
b. Grown during the season of spring: spring crops.
The Free Dictionary

Perhaps the most relevant definition as far as America's future role in the "new" Middle East is concerned would be definition number eight in the above verb list: "To move out of place; come loose, as parts of a mechanism." 

That "coming loose",  is really what is happening: America's foreign policy in the Middle East, elaborated over decades, is being destabilized and deconstructed and it is extremely doubtful that new governments resulting from this destabilization will be more ductile and cooperative in complying with American designs than the security states they replace.  Instead of its shining moral and democratic example, it may be the weakening of America's power grip that is helping to drive event in the Middle East.  

In short, the weakness of the dollar, military weariness, and America's mountainous debt, more than its love of democracy, are what the US brings to the "Arab Spring". 

And now in a "perfect storm" of American domestic politics, the future price of gasoline meets the Israel lobby, a film that might be entitled "Horror on K-Street".

The crunch for the USA in the Middle East comes in September, when the UN General Assembly -- where the US has no veto -- is set to recognize Palestine as an independent, sovereign state, whose frontiers will be those of 1967 and whose capital will be Jerusalem. This will mean that 1/2 million Israelis will be illegally occupying the territory of a UN member state and this will convert Israel into an instant "pariah state". The US and Israel will naturally vote against this and as it stacks up today they will be accompanied by the likes of Guatemala, Tonga and Vanuatu... a disaster... even Britain and France are set to vote for the recognition of a Palestinian state. 

Everybody, everywhere would like a peaceful and quiet Middle East, where the oil flows freely like the biblical milk and honey and the Palestine question is a major obstacle to this, because it has become perfectly obvious that Israel is only using the "Peace Process" to kill time while they carve up and colonize the occupied (sorry, "disputed") territories bit by bit... "creating facts" they call it... "one hill at a time"... it has been going on since before WWI and it is obvious that the USA is unable to make them stop. Seeing the tail so blatantly wagging the dog gives the new Arab democracies little motivation to go against their public opinion and cut the US any slack at all. The USA is not seen to holding any solutions for the problems of the Middle East, neither those of the new democracies, nor those of the remaining autocracies (read Saudi Arabia) but rather part of the problem.

Oil even more than money makes the world go round. For most of the world the choice between cheap oil and Israel is a no-brainer, but the American political system is paralyzed by its myriad lobbies and political action committees, like the NRA or AARP or in this case, the  American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

AIPAC works tirelessly to insure that American's notorious love of cheap gasoline doesn't trump their legendary. love of Israel. Unfortunately for Israel there is no such thing as a CHIPAC (China Israel Public Affairs Committee) or much less a BRICIPAC or a even a European EUIPAC so Obama is left holding the bag. If one day the President of the United States announces that the frontiers of any Palestinian state will be the frontiers of 1967, the next day he has to back down.

So that is the lay of the land: oil may be sold in a basket of currencies, which will mean a dollar in free fall, which will mean the end of "happy motoring" and Israel will have become a pariah state in a sea of hostile new democracies, mostly because the American political system is terminally paralyzed. DS

UPDATED: Protests in Spain: waiting till the fat lady sings

UPDATE:

The results of the election were exactly what the polls projected: the 15-M Movement appears to have had no affect on the voting... Whether this movement consolidates into something meaningful remains to be seen.

The Socialists got trounced because they applied neoliberal recipes and their voters deserted them, preferring the original to an imitation (Democrats take note).

What is most striking about Spain is that despite very high unemployment, the elections were quiet and without incidents. The protest movement has been non-violent and the atmosphere cheerful. This is due to Spain's society still being based on personal relationships and not just on the cash-nexus. As Dimitri Orlov says, when things get really bad, what you need are friends, friends being defined as people who will do things for you without asking for money in return. I shudder to think what the USA would be like with Spanish unemployment figures.

So yes, Spaniards still have their happy families, because if they didn't, with those levels of unemployment, the 15-M Movement would have been violent, not Gandhian. The United States could certainly benefit by studying the stability of Spanish society under stress.

As to bullfighting, the Mexican bullfighter, Ignacio Garibay, got gored badly in Madrid yesterday by a bull from the ranch of Pablo Romero that weighed 672 kgs. (nice Hemingway touch, nu?)

David Seaton's News Links

I am holding off writing about this till the votes are counted on Sunday's local elections, because till then, it will be difficult to extract any meaning from it except that, up till voting, what we have here is one of those wonderful, very Spanish, bring the family and spend the day, type of enormous fiestas, with lovely, 1960ish, hippy vibes, very well and spontaneously organized by the kids themselves. We went to the Puerta del Sol yesterday twice. Once in the morning and then later in the evening and it was beautiful... the kids are really lovable.

The rightwing is baying to have the riot police clear the square, but the government are behaving very intelligently... As I say, if this significantly affects the voting in any way. Then we we would be looking at a really meaningful protest.

It would seem logical that if people of the left wanted to send a message to the Socialists they would vote for Izquierda Unida, the Communist led coalition of the left,  which would force the Socialists to move more to the left. However, if everybody just stays home and doesn't vote, they will  have four years to regret so doing at their leisure, because the rightwing people always vote. They only win elections in Spain when there is big abstention. So lefties staying home would be cutting off their nose to spite their face. DS

If you'd like to follow all of this live, here below, is the video stream direct from the center of downtown Madrid.

Video clips at Ustream

My Tribute to New York's Finest

 

In some ways, last weekend was not especially remarkable for the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Squad. About 30 new cases came in, typical for the citywide unit of 190 specially trained investigators and supervisors.

But of those cases, among the 6,000 sex-based cases that the squad handles each year, none carried the notoriety of the one that accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, of sexually attacking a housekeeper at a Manhattan hotel. New York Times

David Seaton's News Links

Anybody who reads my blog knows that I am no great admirer of American foreign policy or American militarism and especially not an admirer of the father and mother of  the above mentioned, America's economic system. However, the Strauss-Kahn case has given me a pleasant twinge of patriotic nachus schlepping, something this expat hasn't felt for a long, long time.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, one of the world's most important and powerful men, sexually attacked Nafissatou Diallo, a poor, black, immigrant, single-mother, a  working woman struggling to support her young daughter, and the NYPD went and nailed his bitch ass. Hats off to "New York's Finest"... Sincerely, I get choked up with pride just thinking about it. DS

Strauss-Kahn - an alternative narrative

Warning: speculation in progress

David Seaton's News Links

If ever, bored with reality, I decide to write political thrillers, this is how I would break down the Strauss-Kahn case.

The hotel is French owned... when I heard that my antennae went all aquiver... I was  invaded by the spirits of Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Len Deighton and John LeCarré... this has all the ingredients for one of their tales.

When we talk about the the New York Sofitel, we are talking about a little piece of France in the middle of Manhattan, a little piece of France, which comes under American legal jurisdiction, which is something that has both advantages and disadvatages, depending on how you play them.

New York in case you weren't aware of it, is a spook's paradise, it being simultaneously America's financial center and the home of the United Nations. Imagine the goodies available for the diligent gleaner. Think how convenient it would be for the French intelligence establishment to be able to listen to all the conversations, make video recordings of all the amorous liaisons in a luxury hotel... especially those of the most wealthy and influential French guests. It would seem probable to me that French intelligence has assets of theirs working in the hotel... microphones and video cameras installed or removed along with the dirty towels. To do this they would have to have the tacit permission of the hotel's French owners, if an appeal to their patriotism were not enough to convince them, it would not be difficult to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. So I think it would have been very easy for French intelligence to have organized the downfall of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Why in the world would they want to do that?

Do I think Sarkozy is behind all this?

No, I don't, I don't think they would do this for Sarkozy, I think that they are doing it precisely because of the weakness of Sarkozy.

Most Americans reading about this affair think it is about the IMF, but in fact, true or false, it is about France.

And American readers who have understood that much may think that the coming French election was going to be between Sarkozy and Strauss-Kahn, when in fact Sarkozy's popularity has sunken so low that it is quite possible he won't even make it to the second round of those elections.

So again, imagine if a scandal like this were to break during the campaign, or was staged by people close the French far-right, it would, in the case of DSK still winning, leave France in the hands of a totally disgraced and crippled politician or hand the election to Marine Le Pen... This might lead to the break-up of the European Union, the collapse of the euro... either result would be a Pandora's box... a disaster for France and for its establishment. The merest possibility would be too terrible to contemplate.

In my alternate scenario, the downfall of DSK could be seen as the controlled demolition of a building in ruins, before it collapsed on its own, killing innocent pedestrians passing by. Doing it in New York would be simply be using America's implacable legal system to do their dirty work for them.

Happy ending. It gives the Socialist party time to recover from the shock and choose a candidate. Like him or not the French establishment can live with Sarkozy if he survives and wins again and the Socialist contenders: Aubrey, Hollande and Royale are all solid, clean, members of the French establishment and any of them could trounce Marine Le Pen in the run-off.

Is any of this political thriller true? Probably not, but, se non è vero, è ben trovato, it would make an entertaining read on a long flight. DS

PS: In an interview in the Spanish Newspaper El País, the pioneer of  America's "New Journalism", Gay Talese said that in his opinion the leading character of the Strauss-Kahn drama isn't the head of the IMF, but the chambermaid.

Who is the maid?

She is reported to be 32, and an immigrant from Africa, living with a teenage daughter. Investigates the Times: ““They’re good people,” said one neighbor, another African immigrant. “Every time I see her I’m happy because we’re both from Africa. She’s never given a problem for nobody. Never noisy. Everything nice.” Business Insider

Africa is a big, place, I would want to know if she is from francophone Africa, and if she is, does she have family in France, and if so would she or they be interested in obtaining French nationality?

The bigger they are the dumber they fall

David Seaton's News Links

Until this incident, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was favored to take the presidency of France away from Nicholas Sarkozy. Maybe he was set up... Sarkozy would be perfectly capable of that. 

But whether the chambermaid's story is true or not, I can't believe how dumb the head of the IMF is... He was in such a hurry to get away, he even left his cell phone... Not to mention samples of DNA.

I thought that only presidents of the USA did this kind of thing.

The way he behaved was panicky and dumb. A president may be required at times to be criminal, but to be panicky and dumb is unforgivable. DS

"Geronimo"?... A Freudian slip?

David Seaton's News Links

The code name the SEALs gave Osama bin Laden, "Geronimo", gives the game away... Freudian slip, I guess. This is a story that goes way way back... really it is just the dark side of the new technologies that makes it different. 

As we hear all the time, these are tools which "empower" people. If the technologies had existed back then, Geronimo, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would probably have attacked New York and Washington and the Zulus might have trashed London. 

Today we live 21rst century imperialism and it reads a little bit like a cross between Arthur C. Clark and Rudyard Kipling... on LSD. The only thing that gives this all a special taste is America's endless hypocrisy... like Al Capone nattering on about "values" and "that's not who we are".... Yes, in fact, that is "who we are" and we must schlepp the karma. Al Qaeda is just  part of that karma.

There are all sorts of "natives" that have resisted imperial oppression, we could as easily speak of Tipu Sultan as Crazy Horse, but Native-Americans like Sitting Bull and Geronimo are better known to Americans than the Fuzzy-Wuzzys. Most of them were killed or imprisoned and the people who did so were sure they deserved to be. Osama bin Laden was simply -- up till today -- the most wildly successful "native" in history in inflicting pain on his imperial adversaries and probably over time, that is how he will be seen. He showed it could be done... he could be called the Wright Brothers of anti-imperial terrorism.

What will the future bring?

If we keep sticking our noses into other people's affairs, economies, religious practices and local arguments, you can be sure that sooner than later, much, much, worse things than 9/11 will occur on American soil. DS

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us...

 "Torture the one who knows nothing to make him talk, kill the one who knows everything to make him shut up."

David Seaton's News Links
I'm proud to say that Andrés Rábago, who signs, "El Roto" ("the broken one"), is an old friend of mine and it is no stretch to affirm that he is one of the world's finest political cartoonists, able to sum up a complex policy or even a philosophy with only a few words and some shadows. Here is his take on Obama's fine adventure. His email is on the drawing if you'd like to congratulate him.DS

Why Obama won't release the photo of bin Laden. A wise decision

Bullet wound to the head: entry-exit

"I think that, given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk," Mr Obama said.(...) "It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence, as a propaganda tool. That's not who we are." BBC

In general, exit wounds are larger than entrance wounds. They are also more irregular in outline, and their edges are everted. They exhibit no abrasion collar, and they do not have any features of secondary muzzle product projectile impact, such as soot soiling, or powder tattooing (Besant-Matthews 2000; Knight 1996).  www.forensicmed.co.uk

Osama bin Laden's 12-year-old daughter watched as her father was shot dead by American special forces, a senior Pakistani intelligence official has told the Guardian.

David Seaton's News Links

Obama's decision not to publish the photo of the dead bin Laden is wise decision albeit a rather desperate one.

People who have been allowed to see the photo all report that there is a large wound over bin Laden's left eye, large enough to have a clear view of his brain. This means that he was shot in the back of the head.

On viewing the photo thousands of forensic surgeons all over the world could quickly calculate the type of bullet and the distance it was fired from.

Before too many days have passed Osama bin Laden's twelve year old daughter will be interviewed by the Arab media. In the interview she will tearfully profess that her father was unarmed and captured when he was summarily executed by America's "A-Team", the highly trained Seals.

The photograph of bin Laden would be physical evidence that her story is true.

This of course would inflame public opinion and not only in the world of Islam.

Thus, at this point, the president's decision is a wise one. However, one must ask if the decision to not bring bin Laden to trial and to summarily execute him in front of witnesses after capturing him, and then showing the photograph around, after leaving the witnesses behind, were wise decisions. DS

Et Maintenant?

"There are a lot of doubts," echoed Magdy Suleiman as he was fixing falafel sandwiches for a lunch-hour crowd in Cairo's middle-class Agouza neighborhood Tuesday. "Why did they catch him now?"(...) In cafes in downtown Riyadh, bin Laden's birthplace, men Tuesday repeated another long-standing belief among some Arabs: that the terrorist mastermind never existed. "To be honest, I've never been convinced that there was such a person as Osama bin Laden," said Osama al-Obeid, a Saudi banker.  Wall Street Journal 

By midday yesterday, I had three phone calls from Arabs, all certain that it was Bin Laden's double who was killed by the Americans – just as I know many Iraqis who still believe that Saddam's sons were not killed in 2003, nor Saddam really hanged. In due course, al-Qa'ida will tell us. Of course, if we are all wrong and it was a double, we're going to be treated to yet another videotape from the real Bin Laden – and President Barack Obama will lose the next election. Robert Fisk - Independent

In reality, Bin Laden's death changes nothing, except perhaps to ensure that, economy permitting, Barack Obama is re-elected. The occupation of Iraq, the Af-Pak war and Nato's Libyan adventure look set to continue. Israel-Palestine is stalemated, though the despotisms in the Arab world that Obama has denounced are under pressure – except the worst of them all, Saudi Arabia. Tariq Ali - Guardian

David Seaton's News Links

You have to hand it to Obama he took the chance to win the prize. But he may yet have cause to regret his triumph.

There seems to be a sour feeling hanging over the whole thing. The disturbing story bin Laden's daughter tells from Pakistani custody and the conflicting and confused response(s) from Washington have taken a bit of the glowing edge off the whole thing.

We now wait for the other shoe to drop.

If Al Qaeda, or what is left of it, cannot produce anything spectacular in response to the death of their icon, something, if not as grandiose as 9-11, at least as professional... not a schoolboy wearing exploding diapers, but something stunning, then we will have come the end of an era and we will have to hunt around to find the beginning of a new one

Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists and Osama bin Laden is dead, who will take on the indispensable role of the "official villain" or "bad guy", so the "indispensable nation", can be "indispensable"? Who will be the Hitler du jour, without whom it will be difficult or impossible for the USA to justify its serial invading of small countries which is what justifies in turn its massive military expenditures?

Osama bin Laden, who began his career fighting the USSR in Afghanistan was about the last relic of the Cold War left standing, unless you count the ancient Fidel Castro... What will they find to keep the military-industrial complex up and running... You can be sure that they will find something.

As Gilbert Becaud put it... What now? DS

Now what? (heavily updated)

Update: I get the strange feeling that Osama bin Laden was like a bottle of champagne that people keep in the refrigerator to open on some future, unspecified "special occasion". Since he was obviously under Pakistani surveillance and probably has been for years, I'm interested in understanding the timing of this great day.

The "mysterious force" that seems to be at work here is the collapse of supply side economics, otherwise known as "voodoo" economics or Reaganomics, which has led to a situation where the USA must cut costs and raise taxes or go the way of the Wiemar Republic. This is very upsetting for those few who have enough money to influence public opinion, such as the Koch brothers, Murdoch and of course Trump, plus many other less conspicuous billionaires. Nothing more mysterious than that.

Recently added to this poisonous brew is the slow motion collapse of America's position in the center of the world's oil production, the Middle East, otherwise known as the "Arab Spring", which is being sold as a triumph of our "values", but which is, in fact, an unqualified disaster for the USA both economically and geopolitically.

My tentative reading of the bin Laden "job" is that Obama was looking weak and now needed some of what Dubya called "political credit" in order to raise taxes, cut entitlements and declare "victory" in Afghanistan and Iraq and get out ASAP, because the USA is broke.

Bin Laden had been located for quite some time and like the bottle of champagne kept in the fridge for special occasions that I mention, now was the time to uncork it and drink it... get people feeling good before major surgery.

David Seaton's News Links

Nearly ten years after the attack on the Twin Towers, it is reported that Osama bin Laden has been killed in a military town in Pakistan by American commandos and his body quickly dumped into the ocean. At this writing there is no photograph of his corpse.

The question that immediately springs to my mind is that, although Americans will feel a lot better, what will  be the real impact  of bin Laden's death (in battle) in an Islamist culture of martyrdom, a culture of countless suicide bombers? Are they expected to pack up and go home on hearing the news. To be killed in jihad was presumed to be bin Laden's heart's desire. To have captured him and brought him to trial would have certainly been more demoralizing.

Do Al Qaeda still have the capacity to retaliate significantly? That is the real question in the coming days and weeks. DS

Donald Trump, or the death rattle of "Voodoo Economics"

I am ugly, but I can buy the most beautiful woman for myself. Consequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power to repel, is annulled by money.(...) I am a detestable, dishonorable, unscrupulous and stupid man, but money is honoured so also is its possessor. Money is the highest good, and so its possessor is good. Besides, money saves me the trouble of being dishonest; therefore, I am presumed honest. Third Manuscript of Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Karl Marx, 1844*

David Seaton's News Links

You may wonder, as I often do, why characters like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman. Glenn Beck and now, Donald Trump are literally crawling out of the political woodwork these days. What is the force that draws people who would make Huey Long look like Abe Lincoln into the limelight?  What power is it that allows seemingly serious consideration for the highest offices in the land to men and women who, not so long ago, would have been simply laughed off the stage?

The power of money of course... terror stricken money.

Why is money, the most powerful of man-made forces afraid?

Basically because today's rich people are in very serious danger of having to pay taxes again and they have gotten out of the habit of doing so.

With today's economic crisis we are looking at what appears to be the terminal phase of what Bush "the elder" called "Voodoo Economics" and most academics refer to as "Supply Side Economics":

Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that overall economic well-being is maximized by lowering the barriers to producing goods and services (the "Supply Side" of the economy). By lowering such barriers, consumers are thought to benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical supply-side policy would advocate generally lower income tax and capital gains tax rates (to increase the supply of labor and capital), smaller government and a lower regulatory burden on enterprises (to lower costs). Although tax policy is often mentioned in relation to supply-side economics, supply-side economists are concerned with all impediments to the supply of goods and services and not just taxation. Wikipedia

Well, we have seen the final result of massive deregulation of the economy and radical tax cuts for the wealthy: the USA, supposedly the richest nation in the history of humanity, is courting bankruptcy... Being warned by Moody's and the IMF, like traditionally impoverished Greece and Portugal are today and banana republics were in the recent past.

If another and even worse crisis isn't to ruin the country once and for all, then the way forward is fairly obvious... in fact, much too obvious for some people's taste.

The way forward would basically involve revoking the policies that caused the crisis is the first place.

It would include very detailed and rigorous national and international regulation, the closing of offshore tax havens and of course raising taxes back to where they were before Reagan began to tinker with the economy.

This (naturally) has the wealthy in a panic, they would pay off the nation's debt by laying off policemen and firemen and reducing support and entitlements for America's elder citizens and a long list of the vulnerable and needy and of course these solutions are so psychopathicly antisocial, that  if the American people were allowed to think straight for even a moment they would tar and feather the people who propose them... and raise those taxes, close all the loopholes and regulate a more robustly crisis-proof system... so obviously anything that muddies the water, distracts from something so clear and simple will find ample funding and echo in the media whose owners just happen to be belong to the super rich themselves.... And having Caspar Milquetoast in the White House isn't helping one bit. DS

PS. Just for fun, here's another quote from the same text that tops this post:

Let us assume man to be man, and his relation to the world to be a human one. Then love can only be exchanged for love, trust for trust, etc. If you wish to enjoy art you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating an encouraging effect upon others. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return, i.e., if you are not able, by the mere manifestation of yourself as a loving person, to make yourself a beloved person, then your love is impotent and a misfortune.

The world crisis as it develops

David Seaton's News Links

The other day we went shopping at a huge hypermarket of the French, "Carrefour" chain on the outskirts of Madrid. We hadn't been there for about a year and we were struck by how the quality of the store-brand, discount merchandise had deteriorated in that time. Not that long ago it was possible to buy quite nice things at discount: bluejeans, appliances, etc, for very little money. The prices have held, but what is for sale is shoddy junk. This is a trend that I am noticing in all over the discount stores: hypermarkets, supermarkets, etc.

Obviously to avoid raising prices in the middle of a recession, the merchants are looking for ever more cut rate suppliers...  this appears to be the last "firewall" against inflation and when it is broken it will be difficult  for the great majority to continue to consume, especially since credit has tightened and jobs continue to be offshored; again, an attempt to buck the inflationary trend.

If the consumers in the wealthy countries can no longer afford to consume, many factories in the third world will be closed and their workers laid off, which will lead to turbulence in those countries, where workers and their families are much more exposed to the rising cost of basic food items... and so it goes.

There follow a series of quotes to fill in a possible profile of what awaits us in the coming months:

“The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.” [Marx - Capital, Volume III, Chapter 30]

(...) High inflation endangers China’s status as the low-cost workshop for the world.(...) Food prices are soaring, and the government said on Friday that the consumer price index in March had risen 5.4 percent, its sharpest increase in nearly three years.(...) Beijing and many municipal governments have required employers to raise wages. The government has raised minimum wages in the hope of reducing the big income gap between the rich and the poor, and the urban and rural.(...)  “China is moving into a new era, a new norm,” said Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong. (...)  In some cases, retailers are bidding for goods at prices the exporters consider too low.“I hear that many Chinese exporters are rejecting orders from Wal-Mart and other Western retailers,” Mr. Tao said. “I’ve been covering the Chinese economy for a long time, and I’ve never heard that before.”(emphasis mine) New York Times

"The hedge funds are now active in commodities and are playing the futures contracts, where upwards of 30 million tons of soybeans for future delivery are contracted for every day. They are also buying the companies that stock grains.(...) Futures purchases of agricultural commodities classically have been the means by which a limited number of traders stabilized future commodity prices and enabled farmers to finance themselves through future sales. Speculative purchases have no other purpose than to make money for the speculators, who hold their contracts to drive up current prices with the intention not of selling the commodities on the real future market, but of unloading their holdings onto an artificially inflated market, at the expense of the ultimate consumer. Even the general public can now play the speculative game; most banks offer investment funds specializing in metals, oil, and more recently, food products. It is astonishing in the present situation that the international financial institutions and government regulators have done little to control or banish this parasitical and anti-social practice. The myth of the benevolent and ultimately impartial market prevails against all contrary evidence." William Pfaff

"The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis — by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources." Tony Karon - Time

It has always seemed to me that Marx's predictions were foiled by availability of ever cheaper and more abundant consumer goods and ever cheaper and more abundant credit with which to buy them, despite stagnant or falling wages. This formula seems to be in crisis now. It will be interesting to see how we wiggle out of this one. DS

"A Hard Day's Night" remembered

David Seaton's News Links

I saw this film one sultry, summer night in Dalton Georgia, of all places, and two days later I joined a crowd of university students that were playing and singing the songs from the film in Washington Square in New York. Not long after that I saw the Beatles perform the same songs in the surrealistic atmosphere of Madrid's bullring... with Franco's police liberally using billy clubs on any overenthusiastic fans. That sequence of events was real globalization, with no Facebook or Twitter required.

I don't think such a joyous worldwide mania as that one could possibly happen today, if for no other reason than today's market is too "segmented". 

I saw this clip on the New Yorker online and thought I would bring it to the attention of those too young to remember that magic moment and those strangely innocent times. DS