The Murdoch Turkey Shoot

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(Britain's politicians) had been pushed into taking a stand by the overwhelming public revulsion that greeted the discovery that the mobile telephone of Milly Dowler, the murdered Surrey schoolgirl, had been hacked. Even so, it was a dramatic show of political will. “The world has changed,” said Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, whose personal reputation has been enhanced through his crusade against the Murdoch empire. Financial Times

Repulsive as Murdoch is, the story of the Murdoch turkey shoot is not really about him. Much more importantly it is about public power finally standing up to immense and aggressive private power.

I cannot remember such a revolt against the corporate masters of the universe by the public's so called servants as we are watching these days in the the UK. Certainly I remember nothing like this at any time since well before the days when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher first affirmed that government was the "problem" and not the solution to the world's affairs.

Now even such timid souls in the face of economic power as US senators are asking questions about Murdoch and all his works... where will it all end?

Has the worm finally begun to turn?

If so, about bloody time.

Let's see if, all pumped up on testosterone, the elected representatives of the people are manned up enough to take on the financial industry... beginning maybe with saving the Dodd-Frank bill from being neutered by the lobbies.

The crisis we are in is political-economic and economic-political. It begins as the income of the middle class began to stagnate in the '70  (economic) making it difficult for them or for those aspiring to enter the middle class to consume enough to float a consumer society or make a down payment on a home. This caused the politicians to water down moral hazard (political) and free up credit to encourage the people to spend money they didn't have. This in turn gave incentives to the financial sector to take huge risks (economic) in the knowledge that the tax payers would finally foot the bill and leave their bonuses untouched (political). Bubble followed bubble, with employment taking longer to recover from each bubble's burst... now we are looking at the bubble of bubbles: we are facing the specter of a chain of sovereign defaults, which would probably begin in Greece (where our civilization began) and end up... perhaps in Washington.

Who knows, perhaps we are watching the first faltering, toddler steps of the great capitalist Armageddon, the one that Marxists have been predicting for generations, where the contradictions of the system bring it tumbling down. Certainly I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen. But one thing is certain: this political-economic-economic-political merry-go-round, will only be brought under control (if it can be brought under control) by politicians taking charge of the situation... simply because the corporate interests are only able to measure profit and loss, that is their job, their role and it would be foolish to expect blood to flow from a stone: whereas politicians are required by the nature of their art, to measure intangibles, such as happiness and rage and to consider the pain and suffering of those they represent.

Will they be up to the job?

Probably not, but what is happening in London these days gives a tiny ray of hope that they might. DS

Is the world run by Psychopaths?

Charming, materialistic, aggressive, self-centred, Machiavellian, thrill-seeking alpha males with little respect for rules who eat stress for breakfast – sound like a banker you know? If so, think again: it is a summary of the traits of psychopaths. Financial Times

There is a class of individuals who have been around forever and who are found in every race, culture, society and walk of life. Everybody has met these people, been deceived and manipulated by them, and forced to live with or repair the damage they have wrought. These often charming—but always deadly—individuals have a clinical name: psychopaths. Their hallmark is a stunning lack of conscience; their game is self-gratification at the other person's expense. Many spend time in prison, but many do not. All take far more than they give. Robert Hare (the acknowledged authority on psychopathy)

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There is a quite plausible theory that the world is run by psychopaths: empathy-deficient, glib, manipulative, reckless swine... with apologies to our brother pig, who gives so much and gets so little in return.

I am very skeptical of pop psychology and psychobabble in general and totally against putting a creature as complex as the human one into neat little boxes, however, the autistic and unrepentant behavior of the lords of finance in provoking so much pain on so many millions; the reckless, Harpo-Marxian rutting of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Rupert Murdoch's looting the telephones of the dead, has me wondering if there might be some truth in the idea that our destiny has been delivered unto the hands of the clinically insane.

The best, the most sensitive, video I have found on the subject features Frank Ochberg MD  one of the founding fathers of modern psychotraumatology who has helped to define and research Post-traumatic stress disorder. Doctor Ochberg's interest in psychopaths is directed toward helping their victims, which as far as the News Corporation, politicians or the financial sector is concerned, includes most of us.

Perhaps the deregulated environment of the post-Cold War world is to blame for all of this. For example, basketball is a recent invention and the NBA as a huge business, very, very recent. Before basketball, if you had a son who was 7ft tall, he was simply a freak: you had to buy him a special bed and try to find huge shoes for his enormous feet.... Now, you are thinking that he is going to play for the Lakers and guarantee your old age.... Maybe the same thing has happened to psychopaths... maybe deregulation has created an "NBA" for psychopaths. Maybe this explains the strangeness of the period we live in. DS

Murdoch... Beyond Parody

This misreading of the political mood has been the thread through News International’s bungled response to the phone-hacking affair. Odd really when one recalls that Rupert Murdoch was once the most politically-attuned and ruthless media proprietor in living memory. Phillip Stephens - Financial Times

The newspapers today are obsessed by the threat to the Murdoch empire. But I wonder whether the gloating over the sight of the media mogul laid low is slightly diverting attention from a potentially more dramatic angle to the phone-hacking story - the threat to the entire Cameron government. Gideon Rachman - Financial Times

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Reading through all the articles about News International’s phone-hacking debacle, I find that I am not much shocked by the amorality and the immorality of Murdoch and his crew... been there, done that... I would have been surprised to learn something nice about him and his organization. No, what has me a little dazed, is how clumsily it is being handled, how fumblingly incompetent and tone-deaf they and the British government both are as they bumble through the whole disaster.. It is all part of this "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", "tale told by and idiot", feeling I get from most of the political news I read nowadays.

Now, as the Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator, Gideon Rachman points out, this business may even end up bringing down David Cameron's coalition government:

The arrest of Andy Coulson, the prime minister’s former press secretary, obviously takes the scandal right into Downing Street. I thought the statements of both Coulson and Cameron, in the aftermath of the Coulson arrest were fascinating – both for what they said and what they didn’t say.(...) As Coulson left the police station on Friday, he said – “There is an awful lot I would like to say, but I can’t at this time”. Was that just a brush-off to the waiting media. Or was it also a message to his old boss?

Spanish voters, for example, are telling pollsters that they rank the "political class" right behind unemployment as the major problem their country faces right now.... I think they are on to something universal. DS

Marine Le Pen is no Sarah Palin

Marine Le Pen

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Marine Le Pen is the leader of  France's National Front. Right now polls show her probably eliminating Nicholas Sarkozy in the first round of France's next presidential elections and facing a lackluster, Socialist, Martine Aubry, running as a hurried replacement for shop-soiled Dominique Strauss-Kahn  in the final runoff.

Le Pen probably wont win, but  before she loses, she is going to give a lot of people in power the fright of their lives.

Le Pen is a populist of the extreme right, someone who appeals to the disenchanted and stagnant middle classes and to working people struggling not to slide off into social exclusion in the present crisis. A glib American observer might be tempted to compare her with Sarah Palin or Michele Bachman, but, despite their having similar constituencies, in contrast with Palin and Bachman, this lady is nothing to laugh about.

The following snippet from Der Spiegel's English edition, will give you a taste of the style and the reality of Marine Le Pen:

Using her notes instead of a prepared speech, she speaks in short, hard-hitting sentences. She talks about issues like the loss of buying power, and about people who have no more than €50 or €100 ($71.50 or $143) left over at the end of each month. She warns against refugees from Tunisia, and against immigrants in general. She demands social welfare systems for the French instead of for immigrants. And then she finally gets to her central issue: the fight against globalization, which Le Pen says is destroying France. She wants to leave the euro, reintroduce customs borders and nationalize banks. Her vision is the antithesis of a Europe that hardly anyone, even in France, believes in anymore. "What are the others, the conservatives and the socialists, proposing? Nothing! They are busy fighting the National Front!" She rants and she is audacious, unlike the well-trained spin doctors normally seen on television, and she appeals to many people. "Elections are sexual affairs," the author Christine Angot wrote recently in the daily newspaper Libération. "Marine Le Pen appeals to 20 percent of us and fascinates 80 percent. A mannish woman, phallic, we like that. A woman who dominates her father and gets better results." Der Spiegel

Whew, now that is change you can believe in!

Marine Le Pen is a sinister lady for sure, but what you see is what you get... when you compare her to American politicians, even, or especially to a pair of clowns like Palin and Bachman, American politics seems like a Punch and Judy show, with one puppeteer doing all the voices and the same hands up all the puppet's bottoms. 

And it's not just Palin and Bachman, even president Obama, who was once sold as a sort of medicine show cure-all, about to re-found the Republic in progressive righteousness, has turned out to be a damp squib... to put it mildly.


Even the ballsiest lady in US politics, Hillary Clinton, is basically somebody's wife, with no fighting agenda anybody could locate in a dimly lit room. No, there is no American equivalent to Marine Le Pen. And despite this in-definition, the system seems paralyzed by partisan conflict... Most puzzling.

The question is really: is this all embracing, bland, gummed up, impassive, unmovable phoniness, where everything changes in order that things never change, finally the genius of our system or its ruin? DS

Sign of the Times: Glenn Beck to address the Knesset

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We do live in a society in which things have become almost inscrutably complex. (...) I think the rise in autism diagnosis has a lot to do with children coming into a society that no longer makes much sense socially and contains within all the incentives for behavioral meltdowns, social misunderstanding and anxiety. When you consider high unemployment, high divorce rates and general unhappiness in the culture, the complexity that we've accepted and nurtured as somehow being representative of a more advanced and healthy society seems much less so. Orion

“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  

Despite so many ethnic, religious and social conflicts, over the years America has plowed on in reasonable harmony because the economy provided jobs and a reasonably predictable outcome for anyone willing to work hard... That has ground to a halt and now, in America, like at some family dinner from hell, when much too much has been drunk, all the built up spleen and resentment is spewing out and things are said that can never be taken back. 

With jobs disappearing for months beyond any unemployment coverage and with health insurance coverage dependent on having a job, out, Americans live with an intolerable level of anxiety, complicated, as Orion points out, by an enormous, tectonic shift of ever increasing social changes that shake up the familiar relationships of the generations, the ethnic groups and the sexes.

This is the perfect time for someone like Glenn Beck and he knows it... In a horrible sort of way he is a genius, someone who was just waiting to happen... he doesn't need Fox or any other network or master: all he needs is to channel America's mood and it to make it his bitch. 

To take the temperature of that mood, have a look at the following from the BBC:

The difficult truth for Spokane, for Washington State, for neighbouring Idaho and for all of the US, is that hate groups - anti-black, anti-Jew, neo-Nazi - are on the rise again. And nearly everyone, including members of those groups, agrees that the election of Barack Obama has been a catalyst for the increase in support. "I wouldn't say it surprises me," says Spokane's mayor Mary Verner, "though it is alarming to me". "We are seeing a resurgence in hate groups because we are seeing democratic activity and empowered citizens who are not Anglo-Saxon Protestants." There was the same sort of reaction from the local sheriff, Ozzie Knezovich, when he heard that a bomb had been left beside the route of the Martin Luther King Jr Day march. "Surprised? No," he says. "We live in a different world now - hate seems to be a widespread phenomenon right now." And there are ordinary citizens - and their children - who are at the receiving end of hate group activity in Washington and Idaho. A sign questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama as president Barack Obama has faced repeated questions about his legitimacy as president Rachel Dolezal, who teaches art and African-American studies, has been repeatedly harassed since word got out about what she taught. Her homes - she has moved several times - have been broken into. Nooses have been left for her, and a swastika was left on the door of her workplace. And she has acted to protect her son. "I actually bought him a pair of earphones for the bus," she says, "because he hears the word 'nigger' every day. "It seems things were kind of hush and sanitised and cleaned up, or something, and then Barack Obama just brought things to the surface that were already existent within people."

Now one the most curious manifestations of Glenn Beck's peculiar genius is to appeal simultaneously to both antisemites and to the Zionist right. You may remember this news item from back in January:

Four hundred rabbis, including the leaders of all the main branches of Judaism in the US, have signed an open letter calling on Rupert Murdoch to sanction the head of Fox News and one of the channel's most famous hosts for frequent inappropriate references to the Nazis and the Holocaust.(...) In the letter, the Jewish coalition calls on Murdoch to take action against Roger Ailes, the bombastic president of Fox News, as well as against Glenn Beck, the channel's most notorious rightwing commentator. "We share a belief that the Holocaust, of course, can and should be discussed appropriately in the media. But that is not what we have seen at Fox News," the letter says. Guardian

And now, only a few months later, this:

News Item: Glenn Beck to address Knesset panel in July - Jerusalem Post
Conservative pundit Glenn Beck will advise MKs on fighting the delegitimization of Israel abroad during a trip to Israel in July. Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee chair MK Danny Danon (Likud) invited Beck, a Fox News and radio host and an outspoken supporter of Israel, to address the committee on how to recruit friends of Israel in the US to defend Israel’s right to exist. “When we face an international wave of hatred of Israel and Jews – which is expressed in Facebook pages and films calling for our destruction – it’s good that Israel has talented friends that can contribute to our public-relations efforts,” Danon said.

This is not quite so mysterious as it might first appear.  Glenn Beck is someone who spots all the fault lines in American society... even the Jewish ones.  Right wing Zionists are quite ambivalent about antisemitism, they always have been: obviously more antisemitism leads to more people emigrating to Israel.  Also, the Zionist right wing of Israel, would like to put pressure on progressive or liberal American Jews, who are getting rather lukewarm about Israel of late. Beck is a "wild card", the joker in the deck for them to play. Glenn Beck, knows what he is doing and so do they.

Really, Glenn Beck is nothing more than a symptom, like toadstools are a symptom of a wet spring. When the conditions are right both the Becks and the toadstools pop out of the ground overnight. The true dilemma is to face and  to overcome those conditions. DS

DSK: do you have to be nice person to get raped?

Portrait of a used Kleenex

Although the Manhattan district attorney’s office agreed last week to release Mr. Strauss-Kahn from house arrest, prosecutors said they still believed that there was evidence of a forcible sexual attack. Most of their problems with the case, they said, had to do not with the woman’s account of the attack, but rather with inconsistencies in her life story — lies she told on her asylum application and tax returns; deposits that were made to a bank account in her name; and a conversation she had with a man in federal custody in Arizona.  New York Times

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The question here seems to boil down to this: do only "nice" people get raped, while non-nice people merely get fucked, because that is what they are here on earth for?

Or is it OK to rape a poor African woman who told a lot of stories to get into the USA, and who has a boyfriend that sells dope, because nobody will ever believe her, even when all the objective evidence supports her version of events?

At this point it looks like ace-District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is going to drop charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn because he is afraid to put the victim on the witness stand. Frankly it appears that he has lost his nerve.

I discovered, while reading Le Monde, that some of the best coverage of this case is from The Daily Beast

I followed a link in the French newspaper to the following article by Christopher Dickey in the Beast, and I have taken the liberty of putting a few phrases I find significant in bold type:

The prosecutors sought the additional hotel key records on Wednesday, informed defense lawyers about the victim's credibility problems on Thursday, then got the hotel security key logs for the other rooms the next day, one source said. Prosecutors “may have undercut the victim's story before fully checking it out,” the source said.

The logs, according to the source, appear to track the maid's original story. They show the maid entered room 2820 – around the corner from Strauss-Kahn's luxury suite – at around 10:30 a.m., then again at 11 a.m., and then at 11:30 a.m.

She then used her key to enter Strauss-Kahn's room around 12:06 p.m. A room service colleague has told authorities he went into Strauss-Kahn's suite at around noon to pick up dinner trays, saw no sign of Strauss-Kahn and then told the maid the room was empty and OK to be cleaned, sources told the Beast.

Other hotel witnesses said the woman told them she believed the room was empty and was even fearful she might lose her job for walking in on a VIP client, sources have previously said.

The maid alleged the sexual assault occurred between 12:06 p.m., when she entered the room to clean it, and 12:28 p.m., when Strauss-Kahn hurriedly left his room and checked out. Witnesses at the hotel checkout counter told investigators that the normally prim and proper Strauss-Kahn appeared so rushed to leave that he still had toothpaste foam around his mouth, one source said.

The maid has alleged that she managed to flee Strauss-Kahn's room shortly before he left and hid around the corner, right near room 2820 which she had been cleaning earlier, sources said.

A supervisor told prosecutors she found the upset maid near a linen closet outside room 2806, Strauss-Kahn's suite, shortly before 12:30 p.m. and that she took the alleged victim back to Strauss-Kahn's room to calm her and debrief her about the incident, sources have said. Hotel colleagues reported the woman spit on the floor and walls in front of them, and appeared so traumatized that she wanted to vomit.

The hotel key card records that prosecutors belatedly got from the Sofitel on Friday show the maid keyed room 2820, which she had cleaned hours earlier, at 12:26 p.m. and, during the same minute, also keyed room 2806 where Strauss-Kahn had stayed – which would support the assertion that her supervisor took her there, according to a source directly familiar with the evidence. Daily Beast

What more can be said for the moment, except that this is the most sordid political-money-sex case I can ever remember... and all I can say is that I hope that District Attorney Vance will finally man up and let this lady have her day in court. DS

Notes on a conversation

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A couple of days ago I spent a hot Madrid summer evening sitting in a sidewalk café, chatting and reminiscing late into the night over tapas with a group of Americans from San Francisco, who you might say were a good cross section of modern progressive, middle class America with several different ethnic heritages represented. In common: education, income, residence and liberal tendencies.

The reason I am providing so much context is because, well into the evening, the talk turned to the Greek debt crisis, which led to Goldman Sachs' role in cooking Greece's books in order for them to enter the Euro, which is the origin of their problems today. At the mention of Goldman Sachs, there settled over the conversation a type of silent, ice-cold murderous hatred that I don't associate with middle class America. A very "un-American" type of hatred; as if you mentioned the Chinese to a Filipino or the Serbians to a Croatian or the Germans to an elderly Jewish person... not an outburst of eyeball-popping expletives, just something hard and cold and deadly, more like the Balkans or of people who fought the Spanish Civil War, than any educated, progressive, middle-America I have ever known.

Observing this change of mood... its depth and coldness, for the first time in many years I got the urge to return to the states and take a trans-continental bus ride, while I still can, and just listen to Americans talk, unfiltered by the media and the system. I got the feeling which I really cannot confirm from here, that the entire system, from the Wall Street encumbered, Obama administration to Michele Bachmann's clown-shop Tea Party are only acting out a farce to distract people from the whiff of cold hatred I picked up that night.

I don't know who would have the nerve to do it, but I got the feeling that the politician who promises to put Lloyd Blankfein and all who sail in him in jail with Bernie Madoff, for the rest of their lives, might sweep the polls in 2012. There is definitely the smell of blood in the air. DS

DSK: New Developments

(S)upporters raised the prospect of Mr Strauss-Kahn’s return to French politics, while snap opinion polls found strong popular support for a presidential bid from the man once tipped as the candidate most likely to beat President Nicolas Sarkozy in next year’s election.   Financial Times

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As far as I can see the proposed scenario is the following: So relieved to discover that DSK is not a pathological sex criminal, but simply a seedy, sordid, old scumbag, -- the sort of person Andrew Weiner would like to be when he grows up (if he ever does) -- the French people go and elect Dominique Strauss-Kahn the president of France.

I think that would be the "coup de grace" to what is left of their tattered, tired and tatty "grandeur"... if you'll pardon my French. DS

'Singing penis' sets noise record for water insect - BBC News

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In a phenomenon, which I believe is known as "fractalization", the tiniest parts of nature are reproduced on a much larger scale and vice versa. For example, under a microscope, a grain of sand appears identical to the tallest mountains... or the following story:

A tiny water boatman is the loudest animal on Earth relative to its body size, a study has revealed. Scientists from France and Scotland recorded the aquatic animal "singing" at up to 99.2 decibels, the equivalent of listening to a loud orchestra play while sitting in the front row.  The insect makes the sound by rubbing its penis against its abdomen in a process known as "stridulation". Researchers say the song is a courtship display performed to attract a mate. Micronecta scholtzi are freshwater insects measuring just 2mm that are common across Europe.  In a study published in the journal PLoS One, the scientists discovered that the small animals make a mighty sound.

DS

What's up with Hugo?

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Hugo Chávez has managed to keep his mouth shut since the 10th of June and the world's rumor mills are alive: he is dead, he has cancer, he is in coma... soon there will be sightings like Elvis.

What advantage could there be for Hugo Chávez to simply sit in his hospital bed in Havana and keep his mouth shut for a few days?

The silences of the talkative can be very powerful.

For a devious man, and Chávez, behind his clownish behavior, is a very cold and devious man, this silent stay in the hospital could provide some unique opportunities.... rather like attending one's own funeral and watching out for who cries too little or too much.

He and his security organization in Caracas could observe very closely who in the opposition or even among his followers might have plans for a future without him at the helm and might show their hands during his strange silence. Lots of interesting and even incriminating conversations may be flying around bugged telephones...

They say he'll be back in Caracas next week and why not? A night of long knives may very well follow. DS

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 

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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

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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

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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"

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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

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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

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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