LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Individuals Not Ideologies
-
Archive of "Mobs" Category
Climategate: Indian Environment Minister Says IPCC Wrong On Glaciers Melting
There are some interesting developments on the climate-gate frontier.
Apparently, the Himalayan glaciers aren’t melting, after all.
Or at least, not as fast as the IPCC (the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change , the UN body tasked with climate change) thinks they should. (more…)
Lew Rockwell On The Climatista Totalitarians
Lew Rockwell in The Misesean Vision:
“Let me give another example of the banality of evil. Several decades ago, some crackpots had the idea that mankind’s use of fossil fuels had a warming effect on the weather. Environmentalists were pretty fired up by the notion. So were many politicians. Economists were largely tongue-tied because they had long ago conceded that there are some public goods that the market can’t handle; surely the weather is one of them.
“Enough years go by and what do you have? Politicians from all over the world, every last one of them a huckster of some sort only pretending to represent their nations, gathering in a posh resort in Europe to tax the world and plan its weather down to precise temperatures half a century from now.
“In the entire history of mankind, there has not been a more preposterous spectacle than this!
“I don’t know if it is tragedy or farce that the meeting on global warming came to an end with the politicians racing home to deal with snowstorms and record cold temperatures.”
Maya Angelou On What People Remember
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Marketing saw, quoted by Maya Angelou
My Comment:
This quote led me to think of the way in which political debates these days have become entirely devoid of emotional intelligence. I’m convinced that the way we debate things is at least as important as what we debate. Maybe even more important.
There’s something fundamentally wrong with the media when it humiliates public figures, either directly and anonymously on the internet, or indirectly though misrepresentation and innuendo in print. There’s nothing funny, liberated, or “free speech” about any of it. It’s an abuse of speech… a form of violence.
Now if you cuss out someone who’s provoking and attacking you directly, that’s one thing. Turn about is fair play.
But using sexual humiliation as a tool to demonize political candidates (Sarah Palin) or feeding public voyeurism about prominent figures with no political relevance (David Letterman, John Edwards, Tiger Woods) is morally wrong and socially dangerous. It feeds a constant cycle of partisan retaliation that drives everyone but the most insanely ambitious out of politics.
Then, of course, the media turns around and complains without irony about how insanely ambitious politicians are.
Reporters are professionals. They have standards to adhere to. It’s not their job to simply supply a demand. It’s one thing to follow stories that interest people (within certain boundaries of what’s relevant to public discourse). That’s fair enough. But reporters can’t just cave into whatever it is they think people want to talk about.
You could, after all, argue that people also like watching snuff movies. Does that mean the media feeds that appetite too?
Demand doesn’t just come into being. It’s also created. And that’s not a one-way thing. There’s a feedback loop. Demand feeds supply, which feeds demand….. There’s an addictive element to the whole thing.
Which means writers can’t just give up their own moral freedom to feed a demand for immoral things. They have to make a conscious choice to go against what’s in their (or their publisher’s) economic interest and, instead, do what’s right. Admittedly, it’s hard.
As for the so-called hypocrisy of politicians, politicians and entertainers aren’t meant to be moral exemplars, so the question really shouldn’t arise at all.
Since the public expects a certain image, politicians have to conform if they want to get elected. Wanting that image to reflect reality strikes me as an example of the foolishness of the public, not of the hypocrisy of politicians.
Public figures are more and more simply the victims of mob mentality. From that perspective, John Edwards did quite right to deny the scandal until the end. It’s no business of the mob’s to know everything about a politician’s marriage and demand a standard from him that the vast majority of people don’t hold to.
Now, Edward’s team members are a different issue. They sacrificed money and time and they might naturally feel betrayed. That’s a different matter. Perhaps they should have researched him a bit more before latching onto him. That they didn’t suggests they have a problem - mindless hero worship.
People can have extraordinary talents but it doesn’t follow they’re perfect human beings, and there’s something deeply troubling about the urge to demand perfection from mere human beings…. and then attack them when they can’t supply it.
If I were Edwards, I would have banged the door on reporters who hounded me, a long time back. I would have turned the tables and started asking them a few questions about their private lives.
I suppose that’s why I have a degree of sympathy for people who’ve played the game back at reporters, like CEO Mark Cuban..and lately, Patrick Byrne.
Cuban has used Web 2.0 to his advantage against regulators as well.
A New York Times article in 2007 described how John Mack Mackey of Whole Foods and even disgraced and convicted financier Conrad Black of Hollinger International posted anonymously on message boards to counter negative posts about their companies. The articles noted that they ran the risk of violating securities laws, especially if they disclosed company business in their posts.
Perhaps that’s where the problem lies. We have laws to stop CEO’s of companies from defending themselves against attacks, but none for the people who do the attacking, even if they have a financial motive for it and even if their attacks are founded on semi-truths and lies indistinguishable by casual or lay readers.
Mack Mackey used the handle rahodeb, an acronym of Deborah, his wife’s name, and he even commented on how cute he looked with a new hair-cut. Byrne, on the other hand, has used a pseudonym Hannibal (the ruler of Carthage, not the star of “Silence of the Lambs”), but always signs his name underneath. Both took up the pen to counter attacks on their companies by anonymous internet posters.
It seems to have become a real problem.
In 2008 Apple CEO Steve Jobs finally had enough of the rumor mongering about his health and called Joe Nocera of the New York Times a juicy epithet I will chastely refrain from repeating.
[Since I've begun contributing to Deep Capture and enjoy a degree of bloggeraderie with them, I'm refraining from commenting directly on Byrne's running battle with the media, about which I've written before. I will just admit to being on their side versus Goldman and the short-raiders. I think they tell it like it is. But any obscene rants at reporters' expense don't earn brownie points with me. And I maintain a neutral rating on Overstock, since I just don't know enough about that end of things].
Either journalists act like a responsible press, or they are paparazzi, in which case they should expect to be hounded and harassed in turn. If reporters want access to the highest levels of business and government, if they want to report on subjects that are socially and politically important, then they should show some respect for their jobs, qualify themselves, adhere to professional standards of behavior, and avoid tormenting other human beings just to make their names.
Remember these are the same reporters who failed to report accurately or in time on one of the biggest stories in a hundred years, and why was that? Because (with honorable exceptions) they were either too comfortable with Wall Street, too lazy to do the research, too ignorant to know where to look, too provincial to read the people who could tell them, and too venal to go against their interests…. or all of the above..
This kind of public exposure we subject people to is not a one-time business. There is a record of the Edwards saga for ever on the net, visible to the whole globe….every little painful detail. What kind of sensitivity to a sick woman does that show, just to take one angle. Or consider their children..
Isn’t it a kind of torture?
And doesn’t it make us, as it makes any kind of torturer, bestial?
Meanwhile, the victims never forget…Doug Valentine On The Impotence Of Progressives
Doug Valentine offers a piece on the futility of much activism.
(Please note: The opinions in this piece are not mine. They are Doug’s. But his point was not to exclude himself or any other writer who claims to be an activist. Its something all of us feel one time or other. I know I do. Frequently. At some level, what writers do is perfectly useless and only a form of self-advancement, if that).
Why Don’t All You People Just Shut Up!
“As my friend Roger says, ‘Never have so many held Washington hangers-on office for so long and talked endlessly to each other for so much money and done so little as the Republic rotted. The utter impotence of the progressive think tanks, lobbies, etc. is a great unwritten story.’
The Demonic Style: Valentine On Military Historians, Avatars, and the CIA
Insight into why the revisionist media never ‘gets’ it:
“The extent to which this practice existed was revealed in 1975, when William Colby informed a congressional committee that more than 500 CIA officers were operating under cover as corporate executives and that 40 CIA officers were posing as journalists.
“When it comes to the CIA and the press, one hand washes the other. In order to have access to informed officials, reporters frequently suppress or distort stories. In return, officials leak stories to reporters to whom they owe favors.
The Mental Gulag Is Here (Update)
Mind-reading passengers for terrorist potential - (note, potential) i.e. “thought crimes” - is here, folks, and seriously being batted about by Homeland Security:
“The aim of one company that blends high technology and behavioral psychology is hinted at in its name, WeCU — as in “We See You.”
The system that Israeli-based WeCU Technologies has devised and is testing in Israel projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, said company CEO Ehud Givon.Pankaj Mishra On The Strength Of Passivity
The old world, with its failures, weaknesses, and poverty, has at least a proper estimation of the limits of human action, says writer Pankaj Mishra in an oped in the New York Times, last August:
“India may have been passive after the Mumbai attacks. But India has not launched wars against either abstract nouns or actual countries that it has no hope of winning or even disengaging from. Another major terrorist assault on our large and chaotic cities is very probable, but it is unlikely to have the sort of effect that 9/11 had on America.
Swine-Flu Vaccine Facts That Should Frighten You
One of the best read articles in 2009 on Lew Rockwell was one by Bill Sardi on eighteen reasons you shouldn´t take the swine flu vaccine. Here´s an excerpt, but it´s worth reading the whole piece.
“4. The vaccines will be produced by no less than four different manufacturers, possibly with different additives (called adjuvants) and manufacturing methods. The two flu inoculations may be derived from a multi-dose vial and in a crisis, and in short supply, it will be diluted to provide more doses and then adjuvants must be added to trigger a stronger immune response. Adjuvants are added to vaccines to boost production of antibodies but may trigger autoimmune reactions. Some adjuvants are mercury (thimerosal), aluminum and squalene. Would you permit your children to be injected with lead? Lead is very harmful to the brain. Then why would you sign a consent form for your kids to be injected with mercury, which is even more brain-toxic than lead? Injecting mercury may fry the brains of American kids.
Why We Believe Propaganda
From a piece I wrote in 2005, “America´s Downing Syndrome,” about why the airwar in Iraq was never represented in media coverage:
“And how does the public conscience square with all this? Simple. The civilians who are fair game are not American civilians. The skies that are threatened are not American skies. It may take a village to raise a child, but given enough air power, we now know also that it only takes a child to raze a village. Our children, their villages. And in return for our invulnerability, we make cultural icons out of bomber pilots, turning a blind eye to their ravages abroad. While the grunt that kills and is killed on the scorched ground bears the burden of public backlash against any horrors of war making that might elude censorship, his mates in the clouds are untouchable. Atrocities are always only committed on earth. So a Lieutenant Calley is court-martialed over My Lai and a Charles Graner is imprisoned for Abu Ghraib, but the bombers who wreak havoc on a magnitude far grander not only walk free, but are feted by a society in which for many reasons the air force is substantially white and the officer corps even whiter.
But there’s more. Strategic bombing directed broadly against a country´s will or morale rather than military targets has nearly always been associated with civilian not military control. Pen-pushers in think tanks and journals, couch-crusaders on Wall Street and Main Street are the most hysterical groupies for total war from the skies. (9) Remote from actual bloodletting, they’re still the quickest to tote up grand calculations of its necessity in bringing about their favorite utopia. It was Lyndon Johnson, not the generals, who first ratcheted up the air war against North Vietnam to genocidal proportions.
And because the civilian leadership unlike the military is always indebted to public opinion for its existence, it´s ultimately public approval rather than military need that drives air war against civilians, which is why the corporate media obligingly does its bit to keep that approval going.
Media and government duplicity, widespread intoxication with technological wizardry, a deadly sense of impunity combined with a deadlier sense of omnipotence, cultural myth making, and socio-economic class are the causes of America’s fundamentally diseased relationship with air power and thus with the raw foundation of imperial might. It is the cognitive disease which periodically manifests itself in redundant “smoking-guns” and “exposes” about memos whose sole purpose apparently is to maintain our illusion of ourselves as eternal naifs duped by an endless procession of charlatans in government.
Clearly, it’s not merely war propaganda so much as the public´s receptivity to war propaganda that’s the problem. The addiction to war-as-Grand Theft Auto reveals an insatiable craving in the bowels of the military-industrial leviathan for physical violence. Air war feeds that craving while disarming us with its technical virtuosity and its remote-controlled, surreal impersonality.
Air war works because it displays naked aggression masked as defense, hard core furtively masquerading as family viewing in the American living room. It’s the secret fix that lets us look like good guys but act like bad guys; it’s the other face of the double-eagle, the predator behind the mask of the protector.
Air war is the white noise of a consumer society so narcotized that only violence makes us feel alive. If we no longer see it, hear it, or talk about it in the heart of empire, it’s ultimately only because for more than fifty years now, we’ve never really done without it.”
More Apparent Wiki Whacking On Naked Short Selling
Deep Capture has more on wiki manipulation in its latest post:
“In the past (as you can read about here), we know Weiss spread misinformation relating to stock fraud via Wikipedia on behalf of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the Wall Street firm considered a key enabler of illegal short selling. Exactly who’s sponsoring Weiss these days is unclear; however, as the evidence that follows will demonstrate, his concerted effort to whitewash DTCC’s Wikipedia article makes that company the prime suspect.
Now that his ruse has been uncovered – yet again – the focus becomes one of identifying and repairing the damage done. A brief review of some of the thousands of changes made by Weiss will give you a sense of both the scope of the problem and the nature of his motives. I’m organizing the following tiny sampling of Weiss’s Wikipedia edits by topic, with the content as it originally appeared on the left, with Weiss’s changes on the right. Words added or removed appear in red.”
My Comment
For now, I am just posting this as an interesting development that I haven´t personally verified. Also, I think any notion that the tide has turned on wiki manipulation is overly optimistic. I doubt, for example, that Weiss´ media bosses don´t know what´s happening. That to me is an incredibly naive position to take.
Edward Bernays On Why Conspiracies Work
“In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons [...] who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.”
– Edward Bernays
“Scientific” Academies Need A Taste Of RICO Too
Alan Caruba , a conservative writer and reviewer:
“Consider a letter dated October 21, 2009 and signed by the presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the Association of Ecosystem Research Center, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the American Society of Agronomy, the American Statistical Association,
And the Botanical Society of America, the Crop Science Society of America, the Natural Science Collections Alliance, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Soil Science Society of America, the Ecological Society of America, the Organization of Biological Field Stations, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Together, they asserted that “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” It went on to repeat all the usual scary scenarios of rising sea levels, urban heat weaves, wildfires, and other climate-related events.
In a footnote, the letter to U.S. Senators said, “The conclusions in this paragraph reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.”
We now know that the “science” being cited by these two entities was, at least in the case of the IPCC, totally rigged, but the presidents of these alleged science-based organizations took it on face value despite ample scientific evidence it was false. The revelations of emails exchanged between the perpetrators of the hoax have demonstrated the deceptions…….
In light of this, who can trust these organizations? And who can trust the “science” produced by NASA and other U.S. agencies that have benefited from billions in grants directed at so-called climate, i.e. global warming research?”
Dan Denning On Dubai, Copenhagen, And The Stock Market
Dan Denning, author of “Bull Hunter” (Wiley, 2005), in the Daily Reckoning (Australia):
“The S&P 500 hit a 14-month high overnight. The conventional wisdom is that two news events are responsible. This is probably wrong. But let’s look at both events anyway and see what happened.
The first is that Abu Dhabi extended a $10 billion in financing to debt-distressed Dubai. Hossanah! Remember, Dubai is not Lehman. It’s Bear Stearns. It’s merely the reminder that there are lot of leveraged investors in the world who’ve used borrowed money to buy assets that aren’t very productive. They’ll get theirs soon enough.
The second bullish item is that ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) made a US$41 billion all stock bid for Houston-based natural gas company XTO. This sent Exxon shares down 4.4%. Thus the Dow’s rally was a bit tepid (XOM is a Dow component)……
Exxon is either getting a bigger foot in the U.S. natural gas market or hedging against cap-and-trade legislation, or both. We vote for both. No one is in a better position to know about the constraints on global oil production and discovery of new reserves than a major company like Exxon. And Exxon has seen firsthand that unconventional natural gas can be a lucrative little market.
But are those two bits of news really enough to send the market higher? Probably not. Who knows why the market goes higher? It does what it does. There’s an alternative explanation.
The alternative explanation is that the Copenhagen climate talks look like they’re collapsing into confusion and President Obama’s legislative agenda is in tatters. The private sector absolutely loves this…..
Good policy? Bad policy? Who knows? All we know is that the more uncertainty you introduce into the markets, the more conservative and defensive investors are going to get……
That’s not to say that a deal won’t come out of Copenhagen. Maybe the planet will be saved. Or maybe Copenhagen is the sell signal for global warming as a big idea/moral issue with which to bash the public. But either way, we reckon the stock market actually likes the idea that no climate deal is imminent and that healthcare legislation in the U.S. Senate can’t seem to get 60 votes.“
My Comment
Full disclosure: I worked for Agora two years ago. I receive no financial or other compensation ( trips, free food, passes to movies, restaurants, invites to exclusive seminars, commissions on real estate, insider deals etc. etc.) for mentioning them. But, if you´re writing about financial contrarians, they´re the original ones ….
My own difficulties with and criticism of them do not - and should not - prevent me from correctly attributing and acknowledging their work in populariazing nearly all the main issues that are now being debated in the media. Certainly, it was through them, and through Lew Rockwell, and Mises, not through establishment media or their blogs that I received an education in Austrian economics (I should add that I was always instinctively oriented to it, from childhood on).
Having deleted my facebook account after the social media wrestling-match between the Wall Street media mob (and backers) and Deep Capture´s investigative team (and backers), I am now content with actually writing emails or making phone calls to people I want to contact. Thankfully, there aren´t many I do.
Climategate: Freakonomics Author Says Climate Models Driven By Funding
“Freakonomics” co-author, Stephen J. Dubner weighs in on Climate-gate in The New York Times:
“The current generation of climate-prediction models are, as Lowell Wood puts it, “enormously crude.” … “The climate models are crude in space and they’re crude in time,” he continues. “So there’s an enormous amount of natural phenomena they can’t model. They can’t do even giant storms like hurricanes.”
There are several reasons for this, [Nathan] Myhrvold explains. Today’s models use a grid of cells to map the earth, and those grids are too large to allow for the modeling of actual weather. Smaller and more accurate grids would require better modeling software, which would require more computing power. “We’re trying to predict climate change 20 to 30 years from now,” he says, “but it will take us almost the same amount of time for the computer industry to give us fast enough computers to do the job.”
That said, most current climate models tend to produce similar predictions. This might lead one to reasonably conclude that climate scientists have a pretty good handle on the future.
Not so, says Wood.
“Everybody turns their knobs” — that is, adjusts the control parameters and coefficients of their models — “so they aren’t the outlier, because the outlying model is going to have difficulty getting funded.” In other words, the economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the models to approximately match one another. It isn’t that current climate models should be ignored, Wood says — but, when considering the fate of the planet, one should properly appreciate their limited nature.”
Dubner´s piece reads Climate-gate as a kind of Rorscharch test for pundits. If you´re pro AGW, then all this is a tempest in a tea-cup (Paul Krugman). If you´re anti AGW, (James Delingpole), then it´s the greatest scientific scandal of the century.
“All those e-mails — people have never seen what academic discussion looks like. There’s not a single smoking gun in there. There’s nothing in there. And the travesty is that people are not able to explain why the fact that 1988 was a very warm year doesn’t actually mean that global warming has stopped. I mean, that’s loose wording. Right? Everything is about — we’re really in the same situation as if there was one extremely warm day in April. And then people are saying, well, you see, May is cooler than April, there’s no trend here. And that’s what — the travesty is how hard it has been to explain…”
“If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW.”
Well, I think of myself as a critic, but I don´t see the scandal right now as definitively one or the other — either game, set and match…..or a fizzle. It´s obviously a well-timed and massive hit to AGW, but I can think of worse things done in the name of science….from experiments in mind-control on unsuspecting patients… to Lysenko…..
As for its impact on AGW, I´m afraid the spin-machine will quickly rewrite the significance of some of the language used by the rogue scientists.
Still, at the end of the day, it all helps to erode people´s trust in expert authority..and that is always a good thing.
The “Enough Already” Factor
From AP, Americans signal they´ve had enough of the imperial state:
“WASHINGTON – Americans are turning away from the world, showing a tendency toward isolationism in foreign affairs that has risen to the highest level in four decades, a poll out Thursday found.
Almost half, 49 percent, told the polling organization that the United States should “mind its own business” internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own, the Pew Research Center survey found. That’s up from 30 percent who said that in December 2002.
Results of the survey appear to conflict with President Barack Obama’s activist foreign policy, including a newly announced buildup of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to fight Taliban and al-Qaida extremists.
“Isolationist Sentiment Surges to Four-Decade High,” the nonpartisan research center headlined its report on the poll about America’s role in the world.”
Pollution, Not Global Warming, Is Biggest Environmental Threat
Mark Sircus. from Globalresearch, via Lew Rockwell:
“Meanwhile despite the international financial crisis pollution is still increasing as we continue to blanket the planet with mercury from coal fired electrical plants around the world. Mercury and thousands of other chemicals continue to be released in staggering tonnages and this is the real threat that we and our children face. Again they had most people worrying about the wrong thing – our old friend CO2.
Should we count the huge tonnage of Coke and Pepsi into our calculations of poisons released on earth directly into peoples’ guts?
Things are quite a bit different today than in 1918 when the last pandemic (first large experimental vaccine program) happened. Today people and our children are walking chemical time bombs. Diseases are accidents only waiting to happen and the triggers that will set us off get more fine-haired every year. The global catastrophe with chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart and neurological diseases has more to do with chemical poisoning running head on into nutritional deficiencies; and the fact that too many have lost their souls and don’t know truth from untruth anymore than anything else.”
Speculation Drives Metal Prices
Geologist Brent Cook at Mineweb explores the speculative frenzy behind metal prices:
“Now I do not know if Paul’s [Van Eeden] thesis on gold is accurate or not: if it is it could still take many years to play out. Likewise, I do not know how or when the base metal prices will re-equilibrate to the reality of end demand-whatever that is. What is obvious is that gold and now base metals have become speculative investments that in addition to being bought as hedges against inflation and a falling US dollar are the latest get rich quick scheme. The end result is that absent the faith that metals and markets are all headed higher, we here at Exploration Insights are finding it difficult, although not impossible, to find value in junior mining and exploration companies.
Hot money on the other hand is not.
Over the past few months we have witnessed bought-deal equity financings for individual mid- to junior tier gold companies in the 10’s to 100’s of million dollars. These are being bought at nearly the absolute 52-week highs by funds that I know have not looked into the mining, metallurgical, social or political intricacies that make or break a mine. This fearless hot money jumping into the sector worries me. It always precedes a market bubble and correction: sometimes serious, sometimes temporary- sometimes by weeks, sometimes by years.
Adding to the absence of fear and proper due diligence in the market, my recent discussions with corporate financiers confirm that both large and mid-sized gold companies are being offered substantial unsolicited bought-deal financings-no questions asked. At the same time, some of the very same companies being offered the quick money are being hit with heavy selling when a fund manager becomes “concerned” because there has been no news for a couple of weeks or gold backed off $15.
Hand in hand with heavy fund demand for new metals investment ideas most of the major research firms have increased their commodity price assumptions to reflect the “new reality”. The primary advantage afforded by the commodity price revisions is that previously overvalued mining companies can instantly become “Buys”. Recall that the last major upward revisions from many of these same research firms came as the new reality of higher prices set in 2008.
The problem is that greed is driving the market and so any small hiccup or change in sentiment and the hot money tends to bolt. As last year taught us (remember last year?) when the fast money going in is the liquidity, there ain’t no liquidity getting out.
I remain cautious and somewhat concerned by what appears to be hot and fickle money jumping into a sector that is apparently taking its cue from pig farmers”.
Prechter - Debt Is the Problem, Not Paper Printing
Goldseek radio has an interview with Robert Prechter here.
Prechter’s 2002 book, “Conquer the Crash,” predicted the current economic collapse and this is an interesting and wide-ranging interview. Prechter is a renowned Elliot Wave theorist and a long-time prophet of depression.
Summing up his most important points:
*We have been in a developing deflation since 2002
*Debt is the problem, not paper-printing.
*Gold will hold value and do well, but it won’t go to the moon
*Cash is a good place to be
*The market will go down for a replay of 2008, in spades
Ron Paul: There Will Be Violence….
Ron Paul on Glenn Beck, via Lew Rockwell:
“I think that there will be violence,” he explained. “I hope we don’t have to go through, you know, a very violent period of time, but that’s what happens too often when the government runs out of money and runs out of wealth, the people argue over, you know, a shrinking pie and, of course, the people who have to produce are sick and tired of producing.”
Florida Republicans Purge Libertarians from GOP
“On Friday — timed just right to minimize news coverage — Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer and the state party Grievance Committee notified a number of party members, many of them holding elective office, that they were effectively purged from the party and had been removed from their offices and would be ineligible to hold any other party positions for periods ranging from two to four years.
The targets of this purge are mostly members of the Florida chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a group which seeks to return the party to its core beliefs of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets. These particular individuals were targeted because they had expressed opinions critical of party policy, candidates, and office holders, on the basis of which the grievance committee decided that they had “engaged in disruptive conduct likely to interfere with the activities of the Republican Party.”
More here at The Next Right. Thanks to reader, Zara.
White Hats Telling White Lies
My piece on Team Obama’s propaganda effort on behalf of its economic interventions,
“Green Shoots and White Lies,” is up at Lew Rockwell this morning.I’m posting the part that sums up a few of the biggest whoppers the administration is pushing to get those old animal spirits juiced up again. Will the PR work? Well, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. Tell a lie big enough and tell it often enough and people will buy it.
White Hats Telling White Lies:
Fudge One:
Goldman Sachs had a great quarter, making a profit of $3.5 billion and the government made $1.4 billion on its investment in Goldman Sachs. The government also got a 15% return on its investment in the eight biggest banks.
Truth:
Goldman had a great quarter only because it moved its reporting calendar to cut out December 2008, when it had a loss. And the government only made a profit on the TARP money it gave to Goldman because
* It funneled more money via the bailout of insurance giant AIG to AIGs counterparties, including Goldman (which took in $13 billion of the AIG money).
* Warren Buffett made a pre-TARP financial investment in Goldman.
* Goldman got the benefit of exceptionally low interest rates from the government at the expense of savers and to the benefit of borrowers.
* Goldman was issued FDIC-guaranteed bonds.Without that extra welfare thrown at it, Goldman would actually be broke, not showing a profit. Ditto for the other banks.
Fudge Two:
The labor market is getting better because jobs are growing. The unemployment rate fell from 9.5% in June to 9.4% in July.Truth:
That number only shows a slowing in the growth of unemployment. And even that small improvement has been offset by other aspects of the labor market that are worsening quite sharply:
* The duration of unemployment is increasing
* Temporary jobs are declining.
* The percentage of the eligible population receiving unemployment insurance has increased (0.1 percentage point to 4.7%. by September).
* The four-week moving average of initial claims has moved to its highest level in a month.Even when jobs have been added, they’ve been created by government spending and they’ve been in areas like education, health, and government. In the purely private economy, in manufacturing, construction and retail, job losses have been huge. (“Brown manure not green shoots,” Nouriel Roubini, Forbes, July 9, 2009.)
Note: Recent improvement in the ISM (Institute of Supply Management) Index that signals expansion of production (and thus hiring) also needs to be discounted against the huge price inflation an increasingly pressured dollar will entail. That’s beside the effects of a hike in the Federal Funds rate that’s bound to follow a dollar-crashing scenario.
Note: The ISM is a leading indicator of executive expectations for future productions, orders, inventories, hiring, and deliveries.
Fudge Three:
Increases in real personal income in April and May will increase consumer spending.
Truth:
The increases were caused by tax-rebates and unemployment benefits kicking in, and most of it was saved, not spent (80 cents on the dollars). There was a temporary lift in consumer spending, but it petered out quickly. And as unemployment rises, benefits decline, and credit tightens in the future, consumption will decline even further
Fudge Four:
The bank stress tests came out better than expected.
The bank stress tests led Ben Bernanke to conclude that nearly all of the banks had enough capital to absorb higher losses should the economy worsen, and that the Treasury stood ready to provide more.
(AFP, “Hope is alive for green shoots,” May 11, 2009)
Truth:
The bank stress tests used an unemployment figure of 10.3% (the most adverse case). But unemployment is likely to be 11% and above by next year. If you take into account discouraged and partially employed workers, some economists suggest the figure is more likely to be 16%.
Another point. The stress tests overlooked all the other ways in which the government was paying for the banks, through FDIC guarantees and cheaper loans, for instance.Fudge Five:
The housing market is improving.
In July, the Pending Home Sales Index was up 3.2%. Another improvement was in the value of U.S. homes. In the second quarter that number fell year-on-year (the 10th consecutive quarterly decline), but it fell by a smaller amount than in the previous quarter, for the first time since 2007.
Truth:
The improvement in home sales has been mostly in the lower end of the market and it largely reflects foreclosure sales and government credit, not real improvement in the market.
The slowdown in price decline has been offset by negatives in other areas:
* 23% of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
* 22% of all home sales nationwide in June were foreclosure resales.
* 29.2 percent of all homes sold in June were sold for less than the owners originally paid.(Portfolio.com August 11, 2009)
Loan problems aren’t confined to subprime. Prime mortgages are going underwater too.
Meanwhile, the market also has to deal with the decline in commercial real estate, which is undergoing one of the greatest contractions in retail in decades. Rents, even in the best urban shopping districts, have been declining.
(Colliers International Spring 2009 Retail Report, May 14, 2009).
Beyond commercial real estate, there are also all the other plagues about to visit us, when personal loans, auto loans, and student loans tighten over the coming years.
Bottom line?
There is no real basis for sustained optimism about the economy yet.How Green Are Our Shoots!
I’m working on a new piece on the propaganda effort on the economy coming out of Team Obama. Here’s a part:
“How green are our shoots!
Thus say both Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
And the public believes them. How come?It all began in March. In the first televised interview by any sitting Fed chairman in 20 years (CBS 60 Minutes), Bernanke used the term, “green shoots” for the first time. He pointed out that the Dow Jones index had recovered from 12 year lows in 2008 and the banking system had stabilized. No more big banks would fail, he predicted (AFP, March 15, 2009).
Two months later, His Timness echoed Big Ben. Geithner cited reduced spreads on corporate and muni bonds, the reduction in costs in credit protection at the big banks, and smaller risk premiums in the interbank market. He too said the economy was recovering. (Tim Geithner, Statement before the Senate Banking Committee, May 20, 2009)
In June, World Bank President Robert Zoellick joined the ’shooters.’ Zoellick is a former US trade representative notorious for forcing US government subsidies and trade policies inimical to small farmers onto emerging markets. Zoellick noted “signs of global recovery,” but cautioned that they might be killed off if protectionism were adopted (Reuters, June 8, 2009)
Translation: foreigners had better not object to US government-managed trade policies…or the global recovery will fold.Put out….or look out.
Zoellick added his own revealing metaphor to the shooter lexicon: “Right now there is a low-grade fever; it isn’t full influenza, but we need to keep a close watch…”.[my emphasis]
[Oddly, Zoellick's own employees at the World Bank contradicted their boss's assessment in a report only a couple of weeks later (See "World Bank Global Economic Outlook" below]
In May billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros was seeing green. And in July , chief wonk of the Obama economic team Lawrence Summers detected greenery in remarks to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Green shoots were now being sighted by everyone:
*In July the International Monetary Fund published its World Economic Outlook update
The Fund revised expected global growth in 2010 upward to 2.5%. The main source of the improvement, it claimed, was a brightening outlook for Asia.*Simon Johnson, IMF economist–turned-Peterson-Institute-spokesman-turned green-shooting-star even went on PBS to announce, “we are turning some sort of corner.” (August 20, 2009)
*Surveys of economists and business leaders in the summer showed that, in contrast to only a few months earlier, slightly more than half thought that the economy had bottomed.”
There’s a lot more I’m working on. Hope to have it on Lew Rockwell tomorrow, although I’d like to see it on some left-anarchist sites too. What began as a bit of trivia hunting (I was trying to figure out when the “green shoots” meme started) ended up throwing some interesting light on politics, the media, and the economy….
Zionist Inquisitors and the Media Narrative
“No media outlet mentioned that in 2003 Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired control of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.
While wielding a major opinion-shaping media outlet during Merkel’s ascendancy as Germany’s first female chancellor, Saban described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Steve Rattner, Saban’s financial adviser, explained the motive for his media acquisition: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.” Rattner re-emerged as president Barack Obama’s auto industry “car czar” before resigning in mid-July due to a pension fund scandal…..
..In June 2006, a Saban-led group acquired Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. With Latinos the fastest-growing voting bloc in the U.S., Univision is critical to Israel’s ability to sustain its control of U.S. foreign policy. Univision is the fifth largest television network in the U.S., reaching 98% of Spanish-speaking households through 62 television stations, 90 affiliate stations and more than 2,000 cable affiliates. [See “How the Israel lobby took control of U.S. foreign policy.”]….
. In addition to emerging as a reliable EU advocate for Israeli policies, Merkel threatened to arrest Williamson for Holocaust denial on a EU-wide warrant. A search of her phone records would doubtless uncover a discussion with a key supporter, Haim Saban.
Zionists and the lawmakers they groom are well positioned to advance a modern-day Inquisition—as when Bishop Williamson simultaneously faced arrest in Europe and expulsion from Argentina, the site of a seminary he directed and home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America.”
Read more about the framing of media narratives by Jeff Gates at Intifada-Palestine.com
H1N1 Pandemic Bill in Mass. Calls for Medical Police State
H1N1 Pandemic Bill in Massachussetts introduces a Medical Police State
Hans Hoppe on Citizens as Public Property
Lew Rockwell cites some arresting insights from Hans Hoppe on the Constitution and on the ultimate nature of democracy and the total state:
“History bears this out. Hoppe dates the onset of modern democracy to World War I and following, and he has scandalized many by calling the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany all democracies, but he means this in his special sense: the people neither own themselves nor are owned by anyone. The citizens are public property and are said to all participate in their own governance understood as an elected executive state. This was a modern form of government that displaced the old form – and it goes a long way towards explaining the advent of total war and the total state.”
If Pigs Flu……
From Bill Engdahl via Financial Sense.com:
The Pew study notes, ‘That is where the real investigation ought to begin, with the health and sanitary dangers of the industrial factory pig farms like the one at Perote in Veracruz. The media spread of panic-mongering reports of every person in the world who happens to contract ‘symptoms’ which vaguely resemble flu or even Swine Flu and the statements to date of authorities such as WHO or CDC are far from conducive to a rational scientific investigation..
Tamiflu and Rummy
In October 2005 the Pentagon ordered vaccination of all US military personnel worldwide against what it called Avian Flu, H5N1. Scare stories filled world media. Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced he had budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile the drug, Oseltamivir sold under the name, Tamiflu. President Bush called on Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu stocks.
What Rumsfeld neglected to report at the time was a colossal conflict of interest. Prior to coming to Washington in January 2001, Rumsfeld had been chairman of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences held exclusive world patent rights to Tamiflu, a drug had developed and whose world marketing rights were sold to the Swiss pharma giant, Roche. Rumsfeld was reportedly the largest stock holder in Gilead which got 10% of every Tamiflu dose Roche sold.14 When it leaked out, the Pentagon issued a curt statement to the effect that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided not to sell but to retain his stock in Gilead, claiming that to sell would have indicated something to hide.’ That agonizing decision won him reported added millions as the Gilead share price soared more than 700% in weeks.…….
….. Avian Flu was traced back to huge chicken factory farms in Thailand and other parts of Asia whose products were shipped across the world. Instead of a serious investigation into the sanitary conditions of those chicken factory farms, the Bush Administration and WHO blamed ‘free-roaming chickens’ on small family farms, a move that had devastating economic consequences to the farmers whose chickens were being raised in the most sanitary natural conditions. Tyson Foods of Arkansas and CG Group of Thailand reportedly smiled all the way to the bank.”
Why More Swine Flu Deaths in Bangalore?
From Sify.com:
“State health commissioner P.N. Sreenivasachari told IANS: ‘It’s difficult to say why Karnataka, more precisely Bangalore, which is endowed with adequate healthcare facilities, is witnessing large number of swine flu deaths. We too are puzzled.
‘We can say the virus is already in the air and it’s time people became more aware and cautious to stop the spread of the virus. However, from the point of view of the administration, we have provided adequate healthcare facilities to treat swine flu patients,’ added Sreenivasachari.
Principal secretary (Health) I.R. Perumal said people should not get panicky.
‘People with swine flu like symptoms should immediately get themselves checked, as the city is well equipped to deal with the pandemic,’ added Perumal.
On Friday, two deaths were reported from Bangalore, one came from Bijapur.
My Comment
Why? I have no idea. More international travelers is one reason and a plausible one. But I confess I couldn’t help thinking about this piece I wrote in 2005, “Terror Hits Bangalore.”
One result of swine flu scare-mongering will be a shift of money to influenza research - hitherto absent in India. That means funding for drug trials. I wonder who the lucky drug companies are that will benefit?
The two states hit hardest are Karnataka (where Bangalore is) and Maharashtra (where Bombay is). Those are also the states that are the destinations of most foreign travelers and where India’s IT business and stock market are located. Bangalore is the home of a booming biotech business. And a locus of the anti-globalization movement as well. Just thinking out a loud…
Deaths so far are a hundred or less. That’s in a country of roughly a billion and a quarter where tens of thousands die from traffic accidents (300 a day or around 100,000 a year) and from water-borne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and jaundice. Hundred of farmers are committing suicide. None of that has qualified for the term pandemic….OR for the accompanying switch in research funding..
Here’s some information on malaria in India in 2008:
“While the official figures state that in 2008 India had 1.5 million malaria cases, resulting in 924 deaths, the real number of deaths is higher by several orders of magnitude.
“These numbers are a joke,” said Sunil Kaul, a doctor who works for a volunteer organization called the Ant that treats villagers. “In Assam alone we had at least 1,500 deaths last year.”
The real number of malaria-related deaths in India was closer to 40,000 in 2008, according to various non-governmental sources and some government officials who didn’t want to be named.”
Under-reporting and lack of knowledge about the disease are two of the main obstacles in retarding the spread of malaria. But interestingly, it’s also international organizations like WHO that obstruct progress in many ways:
“These problems are further complicated by foreign agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which — under the influence of global lending agencies like the World Bank and big pharmaceutical companies — have pushed India to adopt prevention methods that don’t suit the local conditions and to initiate huge, ill-considered projects rather than targeted ones. ….”
More here at The Global Post.
Swine-Flu is a Man-Made Panic..
My new piece on swine-flu is up at Lew Rockwell.
Please note, I have it as Harold Varnus in the piece. It should be Varmus, as in my previous blog post on the subject. In my defense, I wrote it mostly in very dim light…
“The latest in the barrage of media reports on swine flu is a Bloomberg news report (August 25, 2009) that it might hospitalize 1.8 million patients in the US and over-burden hospital intensive care units.
This comes from a planning scenario released by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
The Bloomberg story cites some theatrical numbers:
- Half of the US population infected (that is, over 150 million people)
- 300,000 people in hospital intensive care units
- 30–90,000 people dead
- By-pass surgery emergency operations disrupted
But hidden in paragraph 5 of the Bloomberg piece is the most pertinent part:
These numbers are only “scenario projections” that were “developed from models put together for planning purposes only,” says a Centers for Disease Control spokesman.
So.
- Statistical projections.
- Projections from models of past pandemics. (And not the past, as in 1968 or 1957, but way back, as in 1918.)
- Projections developed for planning purposes only.
That’s three stages removed from anything you could call reality.
But perish this tenuous link with facts, PCAST wants Obama to rush through vaccine production so that 40 million people can be infect – er – injected by mid-September.
And who should make that decision?
A doctor? The surgeon-general? A medical team?
Why, the homeland security adviser!
That’s John Brennan, a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, deputy executive director of the CIA under George Tenet, and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2005 during the exact period when the CIA became most heavily involved in torture practices in Iraq and elsewhere.”
Note:
I wanted to state here that my social views are quite liberal, and I do not have any objection to voluntary family planning and contraception. I’m also firmly pro-choice. And in terms of the environment, I support far greater consideration by each of us, as individuals and as communities, for animal life, nature, and conservation.
But those are my personal views. Putting the legal and physical force of the corporate- state behind those preferences, in the form that Holdren apparently thinks will work, is, in my view, completely misguided.
The Political Ideology Behind Swine-Flu Hysteria
A new piece about swine-flu that I’m still working on:
The President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, the creators of the swine-flu scenario, has three co-chairs:
1. John Holdren (Director, White House Office of Science & Technology, Obama’s “science czar”)2. Eric Lander, (head of the Broad Institute, MIT)
3. Harold Varmus (CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Center, NY)
A little digging fills in the details.
1. Holdren:
Holdren isn’t just any old bureaucrat. He’s a climate change expert who holds the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
(The ‘Teresa’ is, of course, John Kerry’s wife when she was spouse of Ketchup king, John Heinz)
The support for climate change policies goes hand in hand with support for nuclear technology that Holdren believes is needed for those policies. He also believes all nuclear energy should be under the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy.
Climate change and “peaceful nukes” have been the beneficiaries of a huge PR effort over the last 15-20 years, largely stemming from the Pentagon, specifically, from Andrew Marshall, a charismatic theorist of American dominance whose Office of Net Assessments is the most influential outfit you never heard of. This PR typically derides any dissent from climate orthodoxy and downplays the enormous costs and risks involved in the global move to nuclear energy.
There’s more. As early as 1969 Holdren teamed up with neo-Malthusian doomsdayer Paul Ehrlich to advocate population control to “fend off the misery to come.” In 1977, he and Ehrlich, as well as Anne H. Ehrlich, co-authored a textbook (”Ecoscience”) in which they discussed “a wide variety of solutions to overpopulation from voluntary family planning to enforced population controls…..”
Check out this site for some truly mind-boggling quotes:
Toward a Planetary Regime
…
Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. Thus the Regime could have the power to control pollution not only in the atmosphere and oceans, but also in such freshwater bodies as rivers and lakes that cross international boundaries or that discharge into the oceans. The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market.The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits. Control of population size might remain the responsibility of each government, but the Regime would have some power to enforce the agreed limits.
Progressives Seeing the Light On Obama
Believers waking up to the fact that they drank the kool-aid on Obama…
The Neurolinguistic Programming of Reality
“An excellent example of globalist
redefinition of a common term
is the use of the word “state” in place of “country”
. When the media and leaders
refer to a country like Iran as a “state”
this has the same or similar effect as the
British globalists referring to the United States
as “the colonies”, which is off-handed at best.
This type of redefinition of terms is
designed to belittle the conception of a
supposed and/or perceived enemy by making
them appear less important and smaller in perspective
to the aggressors. Most soldiers would be
more willing to attack a “rogue state” than an “enemy
country”. The actual usage of this type of
terminology actually creates a mass perception
that the said country has already been assimilated
into the globalist empire and is simply acting out of
turn and is deserving of punitive damage whether
compensatory or offensive or both.
However, the true modus operandi
of the globalists is essentially Hegelian
in nature. Time and time again as a
species we can observe the workings of “thesis,
antitheses and synthesis”.An excellent example would be the attacks on
the World Trade Center of 2001.
Thesis: “terrorists are a continual threat
to our liberty”. Antitheses: the
attack on the World Trade Center. Synthesis:
the Patriot Acts and Office of Homeland
Security, also known as: the loss of liberty
in the name of security…….There are many conclusions to be drawn when
looking at the cycle of empires, but one
stands clearly: ruling is a science, and it
involves coercion whether via induced
suffering, psychological
torture and/or destabilization….”— Max Mitchell, “Foundations of War:
Terminology of the New World.”Bill Blum on the Obama Cult
Bill Blum at the Anti-Empire Report:“The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I’m referring to people who I think should know better, who’ve taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult.
In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine the emotional appeal. We all know the world is in big trouble — Three Great Problems: universal, incessant violence; financial crisis provoking economic suffering; environmental degradation. In all three areas the United States bears more culpability than any other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind’s craving for relief than a new American president who, it appears, understands the problems; admits, to one degree or another, his country’s responsibility for them; and “eloquently” expresses his desire and determination to change US policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow his inspiring example. Is it any wonder that it’s 1964, the Beatles have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl?
I could go through the talk Obama gave in Cairo and point out line by line the hypocrisies, the mere platitudes, the plain nonsense, and the rest. (“I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.” — No mention of it being outsourced, probably to the very country he was speaking in, amongst others. … “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” — But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.) But since others have been pointing out these lies very well I’d like to try something else in dealing with the problem — the problem of well-educated people, as well as the not so well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying “all the right things” to give food for hope to billions starving for it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday. I’d like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler, speaking to the German people two years and four months after becoming Chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with humiliation from its being The Defeated Nation in the World War, with huge losses of its young men, still being punished by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and other effects of the great depression. Here are excerpts from the speech of May 21, 1935. Imagine how it fed the hungry German people.
———————HITLER:“….. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution. Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others, for we have suffered most from war. None of us wants to threaten anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and equality of our people……….The German Reich, especially the present German Government, has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship with all the neighboring States. Germany has nothing to gain from a European war. What we want is liberty and independence. Because of these intentions of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our neighbor States.Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria.The German Government is ready in principle to conclude non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor States and to supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents and localizing war areas…….Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention. She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which are a deadly menace to civilian women and children.To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombardment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done gradually. Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended later to all bombing. As long as bombing is free, a limitation of bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bombing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will automatically cease.
Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians……The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts effectively to lessen tension between individual States through international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre.…… [1]– End of speech excerpts –
How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader?
NOTES
[1] The entire speech can be found at: http://members.tripod.com/~Comicism/350521.htmlMarket Up and Dollar Down
The dollar is at the low end of its trading zone (roughly 81-82 on the low end and 84 on the high) and likely to be under pressure this week.
The general idea is that risk appetite has returned, following some supposedly good data.
One is an improvement in sentiment among builders.
Another is the news that apparently banks have raised about $48 billion out of the $78 billion needed to get through the downturn.
But it’s my view that the dollar holding up was not about risk aversion as such, although it probably included a component of it. (Actually, recently, you can’t really say it has shown any strength - it’s been struggling bravely). The dollar’s rally was about deleveraging - which is not the same thing at all. Investors might think that sentiment is getting better but that doesn’t mean that positions don’t still have to be unwound and debts paid back.
But right now, it’s a giddy party again. The Indian Sensex went up 17% in one minute on May 18 on the unexpected news that the incumbent Congress party and the liberalizing PM Manmohan Singh had been reelected. But notice that the spike also involved some hasty short-covering. And it was helped by Sri Lanka declaring that the 25 year war with the rebel (or terrorist, depending on your persepctive) Tamil Tigers was officially over. The Sensex led the world financial bounce with an upsurge of 48%.
We’ll see how that goes.
Meanwhile, injecting some unseemly gloom into the festivities, Jim Rogers tells us that the next meltdown will be in currencies.
I notice that the COT (Commitment of Traders) report shows net long positions in the dollar are at their lowest since 2008. That usually signals a reversal of trend, but expect further pressure in the short-term.
Record Prices for Rarities at Auction Sales
High prices at auctions are an indication that investors are avidly interested in high quality tangible assets which will hold onto their value and are ready to pay extraordinary prices for them even in this market. Two illustrations from the auctions houses:
In Namure in southern Belgium, on Sunday, demand for Tintin, the cartoon reporter, broke national and world sales records, AFP reports. Five hand-drawn pages by Herge raised 1, 172,000 euros (1.57 million dollars) a world record for Herge as well as a national record for cartoon strips books. Buyers came from all over Europe, the United States, Lebanon and China.
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that at Sotheby’s semi-annual sale at Geneva, a virgin blue diamond straight from South Africa, weighing 7.03 carats, sold to any anonymous buyer on May 12, Tuesday, for a record 10.5 million Swiss francs ($9.49 million), including commission, the highest price paid per carat for any gemstone at auction and a new world record price for blue diamonds. The sale price without commission, a record, was $1,349,752, Sotheby’s said.
Wiki Fake Quote Shows Up Journalists
In the news:
“When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major’s made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer’s death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote’s lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.
A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud….”
More here
My Comment
Only a 22 year old would be shocked by this, of course. Any one else knows that very few journalists double check sources or go to the original print report and look for an additional sources. But I’m not convinced that Wikipedia is such a paragon of journalistic rectitude either.
And I wonder whether this story coming out now doesn’t conveniently bolster wiki’s own reputation? I like wiki as much as the next person, but, among other instances, when I was writing about Virginia Tech, I noticed some manipulation of the time-line (which I’ve written about on this blog).
The fact is Wiki has its own slant and it often editorializes very strongly. Of course, bloggers do it too.
But bloggers are supposed to editorialize, push the envelope and move faster than the print media. Wiki, on the other hand, is supposed to be the definitive online, interactive, “wisdom of crowds.”
Again - don’t get me wrong. I love wiki and find it mostly a reliable source, at least of references and pointers. But it’s been known to engineer a few things too….
(Continued in the next post)
Beat Up a White Kid Day [Added links]
A posting on facebook tells me that there is such a thing as “Beat Up a White Kid Day,” apparently a kind of May-day ritual.
I was astounded and first thought it must be some kind of prank, but there it is on wiki:
“However he [Judge Russo] concluded that “based on the evidence I’ve heard, May Day is reality and the evidence was overwhelming that this was an attack based on May Day and that the victim was chosen because she was white.” In drawing such a conclusion, Judge Russo suggested that white students in Cleveland’s integrated public schools have reason to fear assaults by minorities in so-called May Day attacks every May 1.”
Lila:
The judge in question was Cuyahoga juvenile court judge Russo, who was ruling on the beating up of Melissa King, a 13 year old student at Wilbur Wright Middle School in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 1, 2003, by a group of black and hispanic children. Although the immediate cause in this case was a personal vendetta, almost everyone in the case, seems to have acknowledged the reality of “Beat Up a White Kid Day.”
Since there’s been so much talk about white supremacists and their links to tax protesters and militia groups, I thought it was only right to show that such ideologies don’t rise in a vacuum. There’s plenty of hate anger to go around. [Lila: hate is misused as a word so I changed it to anger] And here’s one instance.
What was the reaction?
In Cleveland, the original story brought a flood of more than 100 letters to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in which readers wrote that in fact this had been a May-day ritual for many years in desegregated communities and that many of them had been afraid of going to school on that day.
I’ll be retuning to this blog post to add any links to interesting aspects of the media coverage of this (or lack of it).
(And yes, I know I have two other posts I have to return to to update…bear with me).
OK. Remember Jena in Louisiana ? In 2006 a white student, Justin Barker, was attacked by six black students, setting off a case that had the whole country in a ruckus.
In this Alternet piece, a black commentator looks at Jena and sees excessive fear of young black males that leads to their being sentenced much more stiffly than whites for comp[arable crimes.
On one site. black readers' comments show that the central fact of the Jena case for them was the hanging of nooses.
That was seen by many of the whites in Jena as a prank.
For the whites the physical beating far outweighed the symbolic threat of the nooses (equivalent to cross-burning).
Here's a Counterpunch article on it that plays up that angle. But there are some interesting slants in the piece which grate on me a bit. Picking apart the language of Jena residents (who refer to "coloreds" and "our blacks") is a bit silly. Small town people without requirements to be PC in their language are going to express themselves in ways that are not as 'sensitive' as less insular society demands. This probably means nothing. And what was the need to emphasize that there was only one black person on the 9 member school board and only one black man in the 10 member parish government? Jena had a little less than 3000 people at the time. The African-American population is around 3500. That means the Af-Am percentage was at the time a bit over 10%. That means the racial make-up of the board seems quite fair, even if you subscribe to such numerical tests. [Correction: I have to go back and look at the hispanic population and find out how much of a difference to my calculations adding it would make].
But I digress. While I can find any number of articles on the Jena 6, most of them focusing on southern racism and noose hanging, I can find hardly any on Beat Up a White Kid Day. And on forums I’ve seen, the attitude is that there can be no race hatred among minorities because racism is related to power structure.
With Barack Obama now president, that leaves us with several possible positions.
One. Blacks now are part of the power-structure and can be as racist as whites.
Two. Blacks really aren’t part of the power-structure, and Obama is just a figure-head.
[In that case we need to ask who really is in power].
Three. There are many kinds of power. Opinion-making is also power.
Media Coverage:
On the Jena story, digging through links, I got an American Journalism Review piece which covers the media coverage (always the most interesting part of an American news story). The piece shows that the national media actually didn’t touch the story until 5 months later, when black bloggers and activists like Alan Sharpton had made a furor over it, and then they almost uncritically accepted the version put out by an activist called Alan Bean. The AJR piece questions Bean’s portrayal of the story, raising several points that also struck me.
Here’s a quote from AJR:
“Out of 57 stories:
Only eight stories allude to Mychal Bell’s prior criminal record….
Ten stories use the phrase “all white” to describe the jury that found Mychal Bell guilty of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated second-degree battery. None explains why the jury was all white…..
Multiple stories describe the tree the nooses were found on as a “white tree”…… No stories question if the description is correct, and none asks students about the tree. Only the L.A. Times does not describe the tree as “white.”
Descriptions of white student Justin Barker’s medical condition vary from paper to paper and from story to story.…….. [Lila: here's a link to what is seems to be an injured Justin Barker. From the looks of it, the beating doesn't seem too bad. ]
The Washington Post, the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune never, in months of coverage, mention Barker’s medical bills. [Lila: the medical bills seem to be equivalent to the cost of an ambulance, ER, stitches and a bit more - roughly $12,000; again, more like injuries in a school brawl)..........
All four papers link the events in Jena multiple times, without ever explaining why they're linked............
Thirty stories quote civil rights activists, organizations or advocates. Eight stories quote Jesse Jackson; twelve quote Al Sharpton; others quote the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP. Six quote Alan Bean of Friends of Justice five of them in the Chicago Tribune.........
..... In a piece titled "How One Man Fired Up Jena 6 Case," [Jason] Whitlock wrote that the media blindly accepted Bean’s story, to the detriment of the truth. Why? Because it was easy, he says.”
Lila: To put this in perspective, consider another race-hate crime in the last two years:
The Megan Williams torture case: in which a twenty-year old black woman was held captive for several days, sexually abused, forced to eat faeces, and stabbed by six whites, according to this AP report.
One of the defendants in this case got 10-25 years for second-degree sexual assault and another got three consecutive sentences, one for 10 years for violation of civil rights and the others for 2-10 years for assault.
Put this against what Mychal Bell, the 16 year old defendant at Jena, was initially charged with. He was charged as an adult with attempted second-degree murder (Lila: surely excessive). Later, this was reduced to aggravated second-degree battery.
At his initial conviction Bell faced up to 22 years in prison. On retrial, this was reduced to simple battery and finally he served 18 months altogether.
Lila (May 6):
Well, I don’t agree with the comment that “blacks are not part of the power structure” unless you want to say the president of the USA , the AG and a number of other positions are completely devoid of power. In which case, whites haven’t been all that powerful either. I think the third position is the correct one. There are many kinds of power: there’s money power, there’s political power, there’s public opinion, there’s academic opinion, there’s moral force, there’s biological power….
We tend to focus on money power/political power to make claims about the power or lack thereof of minorities. And largely, I think that’s correct - when you’re talking about structures of law, administration and institutions where those kinds of power hold sway. But there are other realms, as I’ve indicated.
My point is our discussion of race is abysmally simple-minded. We think in slogans and in memes. And that gets echoed in real life. Ultimately, this kind of mass thinking drives real life victimization, especially in troubled times. Exactly how it does this needs to be explored.
But this post is long enough now, and I’ll leave it at that.
PS (May 6): The context that is ignored in all this is inter-racial crime, crime that is not characterized as hate-crime officially, but is felt among whites as racially motivated. But since a post on this would be lengthy and involved I’ll address it separately.
Indian Business Students Drive Sales Of Mein Kampf
“Sales of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler’s autobiography and apologia for his anti-semitism, are soaring in India where business students regard the dictator as a management guru.
Booksellers told The Daily Telegraph that while it is regarded in most countries as a ‘Nazi Bible’, in India it is considered a management guide in the mould of Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese”.Sales of the book over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year.
Several said the surge in sales was due to demand from students who see it as a self-improvement and management strategy guide for aspiring business leaders, and who were happy to cite it as an inspiration.
“Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we’re happy to sell it to them,” said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book.
“They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it”.
More at The Telegraph, UK”
My Comment
April 20 was Hitler’s birthday and I suppose the anniversary provides the justification for stories like these. Mein Kampf is a book that I’ve never read myself and haven’t felt curious enough to read, either . It’s apparently selling briskly to Indian students, not for its anti-semitism but for the inspiration it provides management students.
More mischievously, the article goes on to insinuate a link between Gandhi and the Nazis.
There was one, but nothing that would please any Nazi-hunter. Gandhi was not unusual in seeing the European war as intra-imperial and seemed to think that satyagraha would work on the Germans as well as it had done on the British.
He went so far as to advise Jews to let themselves fall before the Nazis as a kind of sacrificial gesture that would turn the consciences of their oppressors. Many scholars have - unsurprisingly - reacted to this with repugnance, but the advice was more a symptom of Gandhian quixotry than anti-Semitism - conscious or unconscious.
Greenwald Calls Out Right-Wing Amnesiacs
From Salon, the tireless Glenn Greenwald calls out the amnesiacs on the right for double standards:
“Conservatives have responded to this disclosure as though they’re on the train to FEMA camps. The Right’s leading political philosopher and intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, invokes fellow right-wing giant Ronald Reagan and says: ”Here we go Again,” protesting that “this seems so nakedly ideological.” Michelle Malkin, who spent the last eight years cheering on every domestic surveillance and police state program she could find, announces that it’s “Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real!” Lead-War-on-Terror-cheerleader Glenn Reynolds warns that DHS – as a result of this report (but not, apparently, anything that happened over the last eight years) – now considers the Constitution to be a “subversive manifesto.” Super Tough Guy Civilization-Warrior Mark Steyn has already concocted an elaborate, detailed martyr fantasy in which his house is surrounded by Obama-dispatched, bomb-wielding federal agents. Malkin’s Hot Air stomps its feet about all “the smears listed in the new DHS warning about ‘right-wing extremism.’”
Amazing chutzpah. Malkin’s, especially, considering that her magnum opus was a celebration of the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, precisely the kind of violation of liberties she’s exercised about now.
No. Libertarians have to wash their hands off the two-party system entirely and admit that both parties are too compromised by their records to pose as civil libertarians and constitutionalists at this hour. Give the mic to the people whose record holds up, please.
Or to anyone else but these folks.
Bernays On Citizen Parrot
Theory:
“Opinion polls are designed to gauge whether the agitprop of the corporate state is having the desired narcotic effect on the general population. The more the average citizen can parrot back what he has been told by his betters, the more democracy, as defined by the elite, can be preserved.”
- Edward Bernays, the father of modern marketing psychology
Practice:
“When You’re Flush But Acting Flat Broke: Social Cues Can Drive a Downturn” Washington Post, April 16, 2009, is an interesting piece by Michael Rosenwald, which quotes Robert Cialdini on how social influence can make a downturn even worse.
Interestingly, we referenced Cialdini’s enormously useful work in “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets” (Bonner & Rajiva, 2007) in Chapter 4, footnote 14. p.88. I happened on the book purely by chance, but now, reading the Post piece, I’d like to read his other work.
Rosenwald’s take in his piece is rather close to mine, with one crucial difference.
I see no reason why people who have money in their pockets should hold off buying when there are so many bargains to be had.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s your patriotic duty to go forth and spend when the economy is hurting. But there’s certainly no reason why doom-saying should prevent people who are far from the edge from continuing with their investments. Panic only makes things worse. And many astute people are no doubt making things much worse because they’re on that end of the trade.
I don’t believe in papering over how serious the economic situation is. But ’serious’ is not the end of the world, even if such a thing could be.
So I think the Wash Po piece gets the “Mobs” part of the equation right.
But I’m not sure if getting experts to sell optimism is the right advice. That’s where the “Messiahs” part of our book comes in.
Whatever you decide to do should be based on your own study of the matter at hand and should suit your own circumstance, life-style, psychological profile, risk appetite, and responsibilities. Trading gurus, commodity mavens, gold boosters, currency experts, professors, analysts, and talking heads - take all the advice you want and look through as many eyes as you can.
But in the end, choose for yourself.
Ultimately, it’s the only way to build up your own economic and moral well-being.
No one else will do it for you.
Goldman Changes Mind On Gold
“Goldman Sachs now says it expects the gold price to average $930 this year.”
Comment
Well, well. They must be reading us.
Because readers of our humble blog will note that holding to our guns staunchly we’ve said the gold is not performing as well as it might….and unlike Goldman, we didn’t wait for a drop to say that… We’ve been saying that right through even when gold looked like it was going to take out $1000 (Of course, we wish we’d bought a little and taken a quick ride too)
We’ll change our tune in a hurry if we have to, but our own experience over the past year has been that it’s better to wait for the dips.
Quote:
“Gold has gone sharply down below 900. Already I feel better, although it puts my SLV nibble in the red.I held off buying because I thought GLD showed more strengths on its down side moves - but recently I was just wondering if I was wrong after all and whether it was making a solid base at around 900-920. Good thing I held off. That plunge down was sharp and shows that the corrective thrust is stronger than the upthrust still….”
That’s from an earlier post, “Gold Below 885″ (March 18) Also check out “Dollar Index Imponderable” (March 20)
You can check them, and others, by using the search function on the right…..or just search “gold” and you’ll get my take on it over the past year…I’m long term bullish but bearish in the short term, and possibly also in the midterm.
Gold Above 940
Wow. Bernanke opens his mouth and the dollar sinks to 84.5.
Can’t he read a RED STOP sign?
And this weird thing here: I saw a piece on bond yields and when I looked it up on yahoo, it’d been removed.
/cnnm/090318/031809_credit_market.html http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_bs262‘Here’s the URL for the original site:
CMWire - The Capital Markets Newswire
But when I looked through Capital Markets wire just now I couldn’t find it.
Here’s a copy of the google search result for the piece:
Mar 18, 2009 … Yields plummeted by the widest margin since 1987. … 14:41 AIG chief asks execs to return bonuses» CNN.com. AIG chief Edward Liddy told lawmakers ….. (
Corrects the headline to reflect that Treasury yields plunged). …
cmwire.com/ - 39 minutes ago - Similar pages -(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yields+plunge+1987+cnn&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=)
Update:
OK - I found the piece. It’s by Deborah Levine and I found it at Market Watch.
I think the original wire report on CMWire and Yahoo might have been taken off to make the headline look less alarming, so that the reference to 1987 didn’t spook stock investors - the media’s target patsies.
You can see that the article now reads - “Treasury prices soared Wednesday, sending yields plummeting….”
The powers that be want to keep the poor Dow’s chin up at least for today before the big bad short sellers come out in droves…
“Treasury prices soared Wednesday, sending yields plummeting by the largest amount since 1987 after the Federal Reserve surprised bond investors by saying it would buy $300 billion in longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/treasurys-soar-after-fed-says/story.aspx?guid={7DB91E8A-FD87-4BD4-9296-3C6EA402C920}&tool=1&dist=bigcharts&
Meanwhile here are the details at Bloomberg on the FOMC decision:
” This Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee of the United States’ Federal Reserve made a unanimous decision to keep the Fed Funds rate unchanged at the 0.25% to 0% range. The rate decision was not a surprise for a good number of investors since the Federal Reserve stated clearly on its last FOMC statement that “economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time”. Even so, today’s FOMC statement sounded a bit more dovish than expected, not reflecting the positive performance of the U.S. stock, bond and credit markets over the last two weeks. The Federal Reserve said “it sees some risk that inflation could persist for a time below rates that best foster economic growth and price stability in the longer term”. In addition, “to help improve conditions in private credit markets, the Committee decided to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.” So once gain, the Fed said it will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and this makes us believe that the Fed will continue to purchase large quantities of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities to provide support to the mortgage and housing markets. In other words, the Fed will use quantitative easing. Currency traders reacted very negatively to the FOMC statement driving the U.S. dollar lower against the world’s most heavily traded currencies.”
Comment:
What are they doing? Blowing smoke in everyone’s eyes pretending they see deflation in store in order to throw everyone off the inflationary scent? Hoping meanwhile that gold doesn’t pop up too much and give the game away before they finish the next mighty round of mortgage hot potato? (Most plausible scenario).
Or, are they really terrified of having so destroyed the capital base of the economy that they think something, anything (maybe another financial instrument’s been discovered we haven’t heard about) has to be done. And since all they have is a printing press., well why not use it? Off with the heads of the middle class, the thrifty, the savers, those who have no debt, the creditors! (Also plausible, though probably only if combined with the theory above).
There’s a third option, but I’ll explore that in another post.
And why is Bill Gross pumping this whole business to the public?
“You want to continue to buy what the government will buy,” Pimco’s Bill Gross told CNBC.
From now on, it will be Pimpco to me. Sorry.
Police State Chronicles: The All-Seeing Eyes Of Advertising
Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there’s a slim — but growing — chance the ad is watching you too.
“Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity — and can change the ads accordingly.
That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.
And even if the ads don’t shift based on which people are watching, the technology’s ability to determine the viewers’ demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they’re reaching their target audience.
While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 percent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.”
From AP, via Cryptogon.
The Mind-Control Weapon In Your Living Room
One of Britain’s leading authority’s on children’s speech development, she completed a ten year study which showed that the background noise in the average two year olds day can delay his or her acquisition of a language by up to a year. Almost invariably the background noise came from television.
Amongst other things she found that:
· Children learn to speak from their parents and parents don’t play or talk enough with their children when the TV is on.· Background noise from TV or radio, confuses infants. In response they learn to ignore all noise and then they ignore speech.
· Children of two years or older should not be exposed to more than two hours of TV a day.
· Children of one year old or younger should not be exposed to television at all.
Sally Ward is currently preparing to focus on television and the way it affects our attention. In particular she will be looking at Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). “. . . a lot of people think it’s chemical,” she says, but in her view . . . “it’s very peculiar that at the onset of children’s television it got a lot more prevalent, and at the onset of children’s video’s it got a lot more prevalent.”
Her concern is being reiterated in America where child psychologist John Rosemond has stirred some controversy by suggesting that ADHD is environmentally created; a suggestion that is completely at odds with the pharmaceutical industry, which maintains that the disorder is genetically inherited and makes considerable profit as a result.
“Ritalin may work, temporarily,” says Rosemond, “But pharmaceutical intervention won’t change behavioural and motivational problems.” And these he blames on television – “the endlessly changing images, flickering like the attention spans of ADHD children.”“Television: The Hidden Picture” - Rixon Stewart, via Handmaiden’s Kitchen
The Washington Post Spins the AIG Story
Just came across this, since I was out of the country in October:
Here is The Washington Post covering the story about AIG and the credit default swaps that underlay the crash in October, acting as though they were the first ones on it. No mention of the dozens of people in the alternative press, and in alternative investment newsletters and offshore news, who have been writing about this for years!
Read The Crash: What Went Wrong and then go and look at my pieces at Lew Rockwell about two months ago, including Three Card Capitalists (October 1, 2008)
Putting Lipstick on an AIG (September 19) and The Paulson Putsch. (September 25)
One of them, the more “leftish” sounding one, got linked a lot. The other two, more “rightleaning”, hardly got linked though they got passed around through email and fax among some southern Republicans with political connections, and I got a lot of private email (and some public). I swear even Newt Gingrich sounded like he was chanelling it the next day on TV when he suddenly started calling Paulson un-American, after praising him just a day or so before.
Now notice how the Post has slanted the pieces to make Rubin (Obama’s team has a quota of Rubin clones) look like the “good guy” while scrupulously avoiding calling him one of the good guys outright. Even the Post couldn’t go that far, since after all Rubin is being sued - presumably not for his goodness - and people who follow these things have no great opinion of him at all.
Then notice the book that the Post recommends people read - Richard Bookstaber’s “A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds and the Perils of Financial Innovation” which is from the industry itself. Naturally, the “machine” is blamed. The structure. The way things work.
Not that I dislike Bookstaber’s book, I don’t. Here is an excellent review of it, by the way.
Bookstaber is right about risk management too.
But risk management is not the whole story. You can’t just look at structures and techniques. You have to look at who’s behind them.
You don’t want to demonize anyone, true. But events are created by actions taken by individuals, and if you don’t look at them like that, you don’t really understand what’s happening.
This is the problem (for me) with a lot of socialist analysis. It is heartfelt, well meant but analytically weak, because the objects of the analysis are not units in a calculation or cogs in a machine. They are human beings, organic, dynamic, opaque creatures. And the structures we like to analyze are only ”instantiated” in them… as a social theorist like Anthony Giddens might put it….They have no separate existence apart from them.
That’s all for now, while I go and do some research into where else I can put my little stash of winter nuts before the bear eats it all up…
Media-Trix: Suspect In 2001 Anthrax Attacks Commits Suicide….
“Federal prosecutors investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks were planning to indict and seek the death penalty against a top Army microbiologist in connection with anthrax mailings that killed five people. The scientist, who was developing a vaccine against the deadly toxin, committed suicide this week.
The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, worked for the past 18 years at the government’s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Md. For more than a decade, he worked to develop an anthrax vaccine that was effective even in cases where different strains of anthrax were mixed, which made vaccines ineffective, according to federal documents reviewed by the AP.
U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing grand jury investigation, said prosecutors were closing in on Ivins, 62. They were planning an indictment that would have sought the death penalty for the attacks, which killed five people, crippled the postal system and traumatized a nation still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks….”
More at FOX on a tragic twist in a bizarre case.
Comment:
For those of you who didn’t follow it, here’s the gist.
In 2001 Anthrax-laced mailings killed 5 people and led investigators to the government’s bio-defense labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Originally, the mailings looked like they were written by a Middle Eastern or Pakistani person. Relying on a novel technique of literary analysis created by an English professor and written up in Vanity Fair, the FBI shifted suspicion to a bio-terrorism expert, Stephen Hatfill, who was placed under 24-hour surveillance.
Hatfill later sued Vanity Fair and the English professor for the allegations. He also sued the government for leaking the charges that led to his hounding in the media. This June, the government settled (without admitting guilt) for a multi-million dollar figure. Now, another scientist, Bruce Ivins, who has been under investigation for the same attacks, has killed himself.
Hmmm.
So many killer scientists and so little anthrax….
What should we make of this?
Here’s my novel investigative technique. Leaning back in my chair and putting my finger tips together in my best Sherlock style ( I haven’t got a Stradivarius around to saw on…….let alone cocaine), let me pronounce judgment.
Could it be that our dear (almost departed) government was busy concocting “evidence” (with your tax dollars) to bolster their global-crazed-Islamicist-preemptive-porky-military-boondoggling case for going to war in Iraq? And that it didn’t quite fly….
That is to say, the suspicious-Paki-letter-writer part..er… bombed (overlook that imagery, please..).
And could it be that they then tried to distract attention by publicly fingering assorted scapegoats, leading to one of said scapegoats accidentally turning into sacrificial kebab?
And could it also be, dear reader, that I have a future as an FBI consultant….or at least, a Vanity Fair theorist?
For more on this, see Glenn Greenwald’s blog. Greenwald’s raised questions about the anthrax scares earlier.
Mobs: A Citation in ‘USA Today’
Should have posted this last month when it came out…
As Economy Dips, So Does Customers’ Generosity
2008.3.21 22:30
Hair isn’t the only thing being trimmed at Head Bangers The Salon in Pendleton, Ind.
Customers searching for ways to fight high gas and food prices are doing some trimming of their own - in tips.
“Even the regulars are cutting back,” stylist Joanna Anderson said. “Usually they are apologetic and say they wish they could give more. But they just can’t right now.”
Many workers depend on tips for a substantial part of their income, and those hairdressers, bartenders, cab drivers and food servers have been among the first to be hit hard by the slowing economy, experts say.
Those workers are feeling a pinch because talk of a recession has consumers putting the brakes on extra expenses.
“It’s simply panic, and people cut back in anticipation of what may or may not come,” said financial commentator Lila Rajiva, co-author of “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics.”
More at USA Today.
(c) 2008, USA TODAY International. Distributed by Tribune Media Services Internationa
Feminastiness: Eastern Men As Oppressive As Westerners….
Topping my recently opened female-of-the-species-is-more-deadly-than-the-male file, this, from an Indian site (I’ve changed some of the language for clarity):
How to Improve Gender Sensitivity in India:
1) Women must not be imprisoned even if they kill. They need to be put into reformatories.
2) As soon as a woman marries, she should get 50% rights to her husband’s property.
3) Large scale single parenting by woman (with maintenance provided by husband) is the norm. Research shows that children who are not allowed to see their fathers after divorce for years grow up to be very healthy. In India, Gender Sensitive judges alone should decide if the women should allow the father to see the child after divorce or not. Or if he should ever see them.
4) Any violence committed by woman against others (including murder) should be considered self-defense.
5) The disparity between life expectancy rates in men and women needs to be raised to the levels in developed countries. In India, women live 2.4 years more than men on an average. This difference has to be improved to the levels in the US and Europe where women live more than 6 years than men on an average.
6) If a man cancels an engagement, he need to be punished by imprisonment of upto 5 months. On the other hand, if a woman cancels an engagement, she should be compensated with 30% or more of the man’s yearly income.
7) For any woman who commits suicide within 7 years of marriage, a dowry harassment (or other harassment) case against the husband should be filed by default. He should be imprisoned for at least a year for not taking care of his wife.
If a woman complains of domestic violence, the man should be imprisoned immediately and bail only granted by a court. All their joint bank accounts need to be frozen at once. The woman also has the to right to stay on in the “matrimonial home” (i.e., the husband’s house), until she gets a divorce. If the women has an adulterous relation that is proved beyond doubt, the husband must still allow her to live in his house, or provide alternate accommodation of equal quality. The benchmark case is in the movie, “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.” The husband is even expected to help the women achieve her adulterous goals. If he cannot directly help, he must provide one-third of his salary towards the wife until she marries the other man.9) A man must do half of all household work, even if his wife is not working. But he must always work full-time. If he does not, even if he does all house work, he should be labeled lazy, improvident, pathetic, and derelict, certainly in private, and preferably in public where it will cause maximum humiliation and pain either to him or to his relatives. If a woman does not work either outside the house or in, she is nonetheless entitled to all consideration and respect and anything less than deferential treatment of all her needs, demands, whims, and psychiatric moods should be considered a violation of her human rights.
10) After marriage, a man must not stay with his parents or allow his parents to stay for a prolonged period with him (”prolonged” to be decided by the woman and subject to revision at any time on request by her, her friends, or her relatives however distant and uneducated). He must allow her in-laws to stay in his house for at least the same length of time his parents stay in his house. If he violates any of these fundamental human rights of a woman, he can be imprisoned for neglect and abuse of his in-laws.
11) If in-laws of a man “feel” their daughter (or they) are not properly treated, the man should be thoroughly counseled and sensitized to his failure. If he does not mend his ways, stringent laws must be passed (with provision even for administering a good lashing) that will rectify his behavior.
12) The ratio of male:female suicide rates in India should be brought to the levels in the West. In India, 50%(about 25,000) more men commit suicide than women. This is much lower than western standards, where about 150% more men commit suicide than women.
13) The richer and the more educated the men are, the more pressure should be placed on them. They should provide the wife with a lifestyle equivalent to their status….. and they must also spend quality time with family (See 9, 10, 11 above). If this is still impossible, see 12.
14) By definition, Bangalore techies (since they work with software) are required to be softer than others. Since they are also paid more than most, they should deposit 20% of their monthly salary, at least, in their wives’ names.
15) If the wife of a techie complains of dowry harassment (or any other harassment), he must be sacked from the job immediately (that is, after he gets out of jail on bail).
16) If the wife and husband are both techies, then the wife must not spend any part of her salary towards household or personal expenses. All expenses must be born by the man.
17) Streedhan given as a gift to the daughter during marriage must also be considered dowry.
18) Rural women and poor women are ignorant and can’t afford legal help. So, clearly the laws are really meant for urban India. Rural women should actually be discouraged from approaching the police or the courts since they don’t have the money anyway. Instead, they should be empowered in other ways - by better employment and by continuing to live in the traditional family system where they respect the decisions of elders. That will show everyone that that women’s rights laws are really UNDERUSED and (more importantly) will encourage urban women to MISUSE the law and file false cases. That makes for good business for feminist and Human Rights lawyers and keep bribe-giving at a healthy level, the booty being divided between the police and the women’s organizations. Currently, the rate of extortion for a techie is upto 1 lac and for an NRI (non-resident Indian) it goes upto 4 lacs.
19) Since, rural women do not suffer from domestic violence (see 18), domestic violence laws must be used mostly - and most stringently - in urban India. Quod Erat Demostrandum.
More here in the archives of one of many new blogs on the feminist abuse of dowry and domestic abuse laws in India.It would be funny if it were not another grim reminder of the way statutory remedies by the state end up creating more problems than remedies. Ultimately, both the men’s movement and the feminists are right….only in different places and ways. The feminists are more right (generally) about rural, uneducated women…..and the men’s movements is more right (generally) about urban, well-educated women.. But even then, each individual case is unique.
Racism, sexism and exist, but only as useful terms for analysis.. Down in the marrow, it’s all about power and relative power.
And when it holds power, the fairer sex is also the fiercer sex…
Read more here on the abuse of dowry laws and some advice for expatriate men who want to return home to be married:
498A victims offer the following advice for men getting married in India:
• When the bride and groom’s families exchange gifts, keep a written record of everything received and given.
• If you are traveling to India, make copies of your passport, visa and all credit cards and leave the copies with a trusted friend or relative.
• Don’t give anyone your tickets or passport.
• Register with the local Foreigners Registration Office upon arrival in India, and let them know your expected date of departure as well.
• “Don’t sign any blank checks.”
• Consider a prenuptial agreement.
• Keep aware of any bank activity by monitoring your bank statements.
• Print out and save any emails that may help your case. Under India’s recent cyber-laws, the emails may be admissible as evidence.
For more information, contact the following:
• Yahoo! Groups: Misusedowryact and Nridivorce
• www.sangyabalya.org (site is not always operational; alternatively, call them in Bangalore at 011-91-80-5696-9850 or email them at victimsof498a@rediffmail.com.
• The FBI’s local Indian staff can be reached through the American embassy in New Delhi: 011-91-11-2419-8000
• A few blogs are online, such as batteredmen.fullhydblogs.com, batteredmen.rediffblogs.com and batteredmen.blogspot.com.The Making of MOBS
“Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets” is coming out next week in the book stores.
Pretty exciting.
And the end of a year-long saga.
Bill and I began work on the book in July, 2006.
Well, sort of.
In fits and starts.
We couldn’t fit in what both of us wanted to say and we got a late start… September 2006, to be exact.
The late start came about because Bill convinced me (he is a powerful persuader) that I ought to transport myself to South America to help write the manuscript somewhere on his 250,000 acre ranch in the terrain beyond the colonial university town of Salta (it might have been twice that much — I’ve lost count of the zeroes), lost in the north-western mists of Argentina, near the border of Peru.
It says something, I suppose, that I seriously planned on doing it.
Although I don’t speak Spanish and had never set foot in South America before.
But I ended up hanging out in Buenos Ayres.
Not a bad place to hang out, by the way.
And no, I did not live in one of Agora’s magnificent French apartments on Nuevo de Julio, but that’s another story.
Getting back to the book. Bill is a prolific author, as anyone who knows him would say. Churning out words is not a problem for him. And I believe I am not lacking in loquacity either. Of course, we could cull material from his financial columns. But this book was not really only - or even mostly - about finance. It’ s on something very central to Bill’s thinking – “public thinking” — the kind of pseudo-thinking about big issues that dominates the newspapers.We ended up working in a bit of a frenzy.
The result was that between late September and the end of December ‘06, while we thought we’d put together a manuscript of about 500 pages, we turned out to have been counting in single- spaced pages — which meant we actually had on our hands some 1000 pages, almost three times the length of the usual financial book.
It was, needless to say, a singularly tedious January for me…..
But, finally, we did manage to turn in the finished product right on deadline in the first week of February.
It was by then a slimmer and a more toned opus, but even then, as Bill’s good friend, contrarian guru Marc Faber asked — who would want to read a 400- page book, when most people these days think they can become informed about everything everywhere in the world from 30-second TV spots?
Good question.
But, apparently, a lot of people do. A week before hitting the stores and with the marketing just gearing up, MOBS is already #4 on Amazon (it was briefly #3) and #1 in the business/finance section. (It’s actually backed off to #5 this evening).
That means it’s up there behind Harry Potter, a story by Khaled Hosseini set in Afghanistan, a memoir of a famous rock-and-roll trifecta (George Harrison-Patty Boyd-Eric Clapton), and a book about Mother Theresa.Saints, Sinners, War — and Magic.
We, I suppose, must classify ourselves under Money.
But I rather think there’s really a bit of everything in the book. In a skewed helter-skelter fashion.
Money, of course. The genuine kind and the dubious stuff mounting up in gigantic heaps all over the planet like industrial waste.
War, course. That’s what empires do best. And we included a full complement of would-be saints and the herd of sinners who stumble after them.
The only thing we missed was magic. Although, come to think of it, we have a dollop of that too — in the chapters about central banks and paper money.
Talk about conjuring from thin air.
Hogwarts has nothing on the Bank of Bernanke.
Recent Comments