Off with their heads (Queen Feinstein on health care)

""Senator Dianne Feinstein has already taken a hammering from Dems and health care reform advocates for casting doubts on the prospects of President Obama’s health care reform efforts. MoveOn, for instance, aired an ad against her in California, demanding she show some leadership and fight harder to get the president’s reform plan passed.

Now Feinstein has hit back at the criticism from the left in an article about lefty groups targeting Dems for waffling on key components of health care reform:

“I do not think this is helpful. It doesn’t move me one whit,” she said. “They are spending a lot of money on something that is not productive.”

That sharply dismissive tone won’t exactly smooth over tensions......""""

DiFi whines in her predictably centrist-DINO tone. Just as predictable has been the blogocrat reluctance to criticize the DINOcrats and the blue dog types, who like, this pedazo de mormon mierda, cunningly argue for a conservative sort of taxpayer-funded plan which would release business owners from their obligation to pay ever-increasing healthcare premiums for their employees (premiums have recently gone up on all businesses, due to actions which the Demo's voted in). Brighamius is of course too stupid to realize even the Leahy plan will keep the higher premiums on businesses intact for most part (Leahy sort of dissed Medicare).

In effect, a single-payer plan--even Medicare, supposedly "socialized medicine"-- could be a windfall for corporate America, if the DINOs pass on the premium cost to normal citizens by substantially increasing Fed taxes (as Obama seems to favor). The Tri-committee plan--perhaps similar to Hillary's plan-- does appear to provide citizens with the most coverage, though financing has not been worked out. It does not seem nearly as "centrist" as Obama's own bill, which does give many big corporations the windfall (Contingencies has not as of yet mastered the murky waters of the healthcare Lagoon). The blue dogs are stalling on it, of course, mostly because they don't want to piss off the business owners, insurancemen, and doctors. Instead of passing off the tax-increases to the public or, in DiFi style, appeasing the nobles of business and medicine , they should grow some spine, and DEMAND higher premiums on companies to cover it, and also ensure that companies don't merely slash wages to pay for it. Curtailing or capping management salaries might work...

Churches are trade unions (ACGrayling)

This blasphemous, bawling piece of british garbage gent entertains at least:

So I repeat: in a free society people must be allowed to believe what they like, even stupid, ignorant and absurd things, provided they do no harm to others. Religious organisations have every right to exist and have their say, just as any other self-selected, self-constituted interest group does, such as trade unions and political parties. But religious organisations have to recognise that they are such groups, and nothing more than such groups – that they are civil society organisations like trade unions, existing to protect and promote their own interests – and although they have the same rights, they do not have any greater rights.

And here is the problem: the religions think they have much greater rights than anyone or anything else – rights to be heard, to be exempt from laws, to be awarded special privileges, to be given our tax money to run their own schools, to have representatives in the House of Lords (26 bishops plus all those retired bishops and archbishops who are now life peers), to be given hours and hours of air time on publicly funded radio every week, to have charitable status, to have their hospital chaplains paid for by the public purse, and so on and endlessly on, getting a huge slice of the pie out of all proportion to the realities: which – as an indication of the overall picture – are that about 3% of the population go to Church of England services every Sunday, less than 10% of the population going weekly to any church, temple, mosque or synagogue. And the state goes along with it!

How can this be tolerable? All religious organisations should be relegated to the status of private self-selected and self-constituted NGOs like trade unions and other lobby groups, should survive on what money they can raise from their adherents, should have the same and no more than the same rights and entitlements as any other such organisation and should stop getting privileges, money and an amplification for their views (views, never forget, derived from the beliefs of illiterate goat-herds in ancient times) from government.""""

Contingencies also agrees that voluntary self-euthanasia should be a right, though a carefully delineated right.

Bellum omnium contra omnes

(James Poulos)

""""One drawback of Leviathan is that Hobbes, the great theorist of the individual, doesn’t theorize the kind of individual that emerges in real life in the wake of, say, Napoleon. (This is a kind of individual different yet from the one we associate with the Revolution itself.) Already within Hobbes is the promise that great freedom awaits those savvy enough to surrender their political liberty. Yet the specific interests and passions of individuals ready to dump political liberty today, of course, look rather different than they did in Hobbes’ time. Now, the character of these differences could be summed up as, or chalked up to, certain developments in capitalism or technology — to the outworking of the relations between man and money on the one hand and man and nature on the other. On the other hand, we could consider that the rise of individuality as a moral ideal has been changing the way we relate to one another in a way that’s more cause than consequence of the man-money and man-nature relationship. It’s significant that this development remains only implicit in Hobbes."""""

And to think some Contingencies fans considered references to Hobbes obscure and antiquated! Actually Poulos perceives a different Hobbes than we do. He also makes rather extreme demands by suggesting that TH (or any thinker ) failed to anticipate some historical event X . Regardless, the classic reduction of the state of nature in Leviathan, and the material concerning "omnia bellum contra omnes" hints at a anarchistic world of Napoleons (or would-be Napoleons):

“ the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short..."

Hobbes thus did consider potential Napoleons--both in the pre-society, state of nature (see the brief paragraph in Book XV contra-Aristotle's "magnanimous man"--i.e. frat boy tories the world over, of whatever race), and in civil society--with a tyrant or dicatator who no longer upholds the citizens' covenants are considered nulled/overturned. Indeed at times a protestant "leveller" aspect appears in Hobbes--probably one reason the royalists distrusted him (though the puritan levellers took him to be a...royalist). Leviathan is not Machiavelli--tho' Poulos seems more drawn to machiavellian politics than to Hobbes contractualism. It just goes to show that one never knows even old, dead white philosophers like Hobbes still matter to some in cyberland.

Ave atque vale


Gidget, known for the tagline ‘Yo quiero Taco Bell,’ died from a stroke.

Here come those santa ana winds again....

Dan days


"The seasonal Santa Ana winds are hot, dry, strong gusts which blow westerly across Southern California between September and February. "Santa Ana" is Spanish for "Saint Anne" and refers to the Santa Ana Canyon near San Diego where the winds were thought to originate (in reality they come from near the Rocky Mountains). A boon to surfers but a nemesis to firefighters and homeowners, the hot winds are said to fuel aggression and can even foretell a coming earthquake — the so-called "shake and bake" syndrome."

steelydandictionary

Ray Chandler called it Red Wind:

""There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.""

Plutocracy, ObamaCo-style

"""""Goldman Sachs exemplifies the domination of the banks over government policy and both political parties. It has supplied the top personnel for government economic policy-making in the Democratic Clinton, Republican Bush and Democratic Obama administrations. Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, formerly the CEO of Goldman, saw to it that the government bank bailout paid especially rich dividends to his former company. This included a bailout of AIG that allowed the company to pay off billions of dollars in derivatives debts to Goldman at 100 percent.

The list of former Goldman Sachs employees holding top positions in the Obama administration includes:

• Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, who is the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (himself the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York).

• Reuben Jeffery III, former managing partner at Goldman Sachs, who holds the post of undersecretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs.

• Neel Kashkari, former Goldman Sachs vice president, who is the assistant secretary of the treasury for financial stability, responsible for administering the TARP funds.

• Dianna Farrell, former financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, who serves as deputy director of the National Economic Council.

There is a word to describe this type of socio-economic order: Plutocracy, i.e., rule by the rich. This is the reality behind the increasingly thin veneer of democracy in America.

The Obama administration in an instrument of the plutocrats, and the American people are the victims.

There is no way this can be reversed within the framework of capitalism. The only social force that can end the dictatorship of the banks is the working class. It must be mobilized as an independent and revolutionary political force in opposition to Obama and both parties of big business.

The fortunes obtained through fraud and socially destructive means must be expropriated and directed toward providing social relief, rebuilding industry and the country’s infrastructure, and guaranteeing jobs, education, housing and decent living standards for all. The practices of the banks, hedge funds, CEOs, big investors and speculators must be investigated and exposed to public view, and those responsible for the economic disaster held accountable.

Socialist policies are needed to break the stranglehold of the financial aristocracy. The banks must be nationalized and turned into public institutions, under the democratic control of the working population. Only on this basis can economic life be organized according to social need, rather than private profit and the accumulation of personal wealth by a small minority.""""""

Contingencies usually agrees with the marxist diagnosis of the disease of finance capitalism but not always with the proposed marxist treatment (there are to be sure groups more radical than WSWS). The financial aristocracy needs to be dismantled though that doesn't mean Labor and a few marxist academics are the only ones who can stop it. Marx hisself was no syndicalist or worshipper of the trade unions. The bolsheviks arguably came into power precisely because they refused to kowtow to the union bosses of the time (though they were stronger in Europe than the czar's Russia). VI Lenin may have communicated with the De Leonist sorts, but the bolsheviks were quite aware of the drawbacks of De Leonism, and other types of syndicalism (including the anarchist sort). One drawback may be called "Norma Raeism," for lack of a better word.

The WSWS itself seems prone to Norma Raeism. WSWS has been fairly active in so-cal politics--though you wouldn't know that reading the HuffPo or daily celebrity snatch news. They were involved in the grocery worker strike of 2003-2004, and other labor issues. Unfortunately, the WSWS type of labor-leftists tend to be controlled by Norma Raes dedicated to union style politics and the holy concept of Seniority. The long-time unionist does not really approve of progressive leftists--even radical, bolshevik sorts. Her leftism is not that of the University, of the scientist or philosopher, but of truck drivers, meat workers, fruit and vegetable packers, agriculture workers, los Migros. For Norma Raes (or Normitas) La Huelga does not depend on what a Zizek or Chomsky has to say--she probably has never read a word of a german philosopher--, but on the union jefes, who are--I contend--more like De Leonists than bolsheviks or trotskyites (to toss around a bit of jargon)--though even in CA there are somewhat maoist unionists as well.

From the biography of L. Ron Hubbard

"....shows a man who was incapable of telling the truth: a pathological liar who hated and despised humanity; a sociopath caught between the conflicting desires to earn the admiration of humanity, and his desire to inflict great pain and misery upon those who ignored him and refused him his self-perceived due measure of honor and reverie (which was and is 99.999% of his fellow human beings).
As such, Mister Hubbard was constantly trying to purchase glory and recognition when he had the funds to make the attempt, or stole that recognition by lying and deceiving when money wasn't enough.

Mr. Hubbard was driven by greed and megalomania. He was a devout racist who wrote in praise of South African Apartheid; he was a crazed misogynist who insisted women were inferior intellectually--- later in life his venereal disease (caught from a whore while on leave from the Navy) instilled within him a fear and dread of womankind that expressed itself in insanity and impotency......"""""

L-Ron also counted Heinlein as his pal, and though some RAH fans deny it, Heinlein--a hawk on 'Nam, and Reagan supporter--remained fairly close to L-Ron, up until Hubbard's rather odd demise (CoS doctrine forbids drugs, yet the autopsy showed that L-Ron's bloated corpse was pumped full of barbituates). See also the fairly well-known story of L-Ron's association with Jack the Quack Parsons, rocket scientist, and one of the founders of Cal Tech and JPL (Mike Davis' City of Quartz describes it effectively). Both L-Ron and Parsons had an interest in the occult--that is, until Parsons blew himself up in his Pasadena garage.

The CoS remains a force, in entertainment, and online, unfortunately--as with this untalented nut, who has taken to writing a sort of stoner operetta featuring a Battlefield Earth-like "libretto" (with some great staging hints--"a million years passes"), and some bad garage band-like rock. Holu McXenu Batman, thorazine on the way. You know you're dealing with an Appliantologist type of crypto-nazi occultist when you're reading something with anthropomorphized stars and planets, and that old saxon "sky" (ascendit ad caelos, as the orison went---or descendit ad infernalis, in McNut's case). Let's not forget many mormons also support the CoS quack cult. Combine Hubbard and Moroni, and voila: All-American psychotic.

Ezranomics, cont. (con musica)

"""The Puritans were Bible-crazy, but they did not bring the Hebrew Scriptures only. The culture of Adams and Jefferson is a Latin culture with a mixture of Greek. Otis wrote a Greek Grammar which he destroyed, or which was lost for the lack of a competent printer. During the prosperous colonial era the arts of silversmithing, furniture making, and architecture developed. The houses, although made of wood, were a Greek dream. Numbers of them burned down. From Germany came groups of religious sectarians. They brought with them the art of glassmaking, and organised, at least once a year, a Bach Festival. Monticello is full of refinement. The polygrapher longed for a complete civilization equal to that of an Italian Court, ceremonies omitted, of the Fourteenth Century. He got into debt.

Adams was frugal, and used the weather-boards of his attic study as a handy file for his correspondence. For at least a century New England took as an idea: “Low Living High Thinking”.

Usury spoiled the Republic. Usury has been defined as too high an interest on money. The word finance became fashionable in the bank-paper era. And it is to this that Jefferson alludes in the phrase: “No one has a natural right to be money-lender save him who has it to lend.” With the “financial” era the word usury disappeared from polite conversation.

There is no greater imbecility than to leave one’s own bank-account or one’s own sources of information in the hands of an enemy, or an irresponsible man.

The struggle between the people and the exploiters, in America, was waged around these forms of imbecility.

A handful of people, who lived on little and did not run into debit brought to, and preserved in America, a rather high, severe culture, and a civic sense nourished by the traditions of English legal liberty, that is, by a centuries-long conquest in which the traditions of North European tribes and Roman Law converge.""""

(Ezra Pound,
An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States).

To reiterate: """The polygrapher longed for a complete civilization equal to that of an Italian Court, ceremonies omitted, of the Fourteenth Century."" Jefferson the Polygrapher. Yo le gusta.

Domingo-dia de Dios muzak! Stomping at the Savoy. ah yass

O'REILLY?????????

Bill has some spine at least, unlike most WASP pieces of mierda.

O'Reilly criticized Jackson for "incredible selfishness -- spending hundreds of million dollars on himself while singing 'We Are the World,'" and said that it "should make any clear-thinking American nauseous."

Speaking to guest analyst Marc Lamont Hill, a black FOX commentator, O'Reilly also addressed race as an issue at the memorial service: "Why are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton making this a racial deal? Jackson bleached his own skin. And then chose white men to provide existence for his in vitro children. Give me a break with all this.

The two debated for quite some time on whether Jackson had helped in uniting black and White Americans. The debate, however, turned into a shouting match with O'Reilly proclaiming: "If he's such a black American icon, why did he have his kids with white men!?"

..........


Word. Rational humans realize that Jackson's pop-hype's not worth discussing; he's about as much as a hero as say the Bee-gees were. Did you like lose sleep when Elvis or Sinatra died? (a bit before my time, but, like, connect the dots). At least Sinatra and his cronies produced some interesting and complex muzak on occasion. Would say Ralph Ellison have given his blessings to MJ, or joined in the insta-elegy? I rather doubt it (not that it matters overly much). Bienvenidos a Perdido, puto.

........

sabado-noche GIGANTE

Walmartization.

In a few decades, about everyone will have a Wallymart vest, except for the Uber-executive-celebrities in Wally-mart towers and gated enclaves, and maybe some red-rebels in a few third world nations (No se quiero El Wally!). The academic-left went through a Walmart-fetish phase a few years ago, so this topic may be boring to some; regardless of a few whines from marxist sorts or journalists, however, Walmartization does not appear to have abated much (though paraphrasing Iggy Pop, I don't have time to like check the demographics). Walmart marches on, regardless of war, economic collapse, revolutions, or water and environmental issues (building one of the super-stores--and it's the brokering, building and contracting that brings in the big shekels, not the mere day-to-day retail biz--requires more energy, water, and resources than many towns will use in a few years).

W-mart also functions psychologically, we suggest. As the Super-stores shut down the Ma and Pa shops as well as the mid-sized retail--best buy, circuit city (gone from eastside), pep boys, k-mart, various restaurants--the herd congeals, and becomes a sort of ersatz proletariat. Of course wally-bots (aka employees) are not allowed to unionize, per their employment contract, and usually are pink-slipped if they show any inclination towards collective bargaining.

The small town or 'burb sort of becomes a Walmart-feeder--the host to the Wally-parasite. One might say the Consumer does not consume the commodities offered by the store-machine, but that the store-machine--and waxing marxista for a few nanoseconds, the capitalist-owners, aka the Waltons, and their managers--consumes the towns and cities, urban areas, and finally entire regions, producing a class of 'Merican-bots, usually obese, addicted to fast-food, booze, various narcotics, firearms, bad movies, muzak, and cheap technology. Or something like that.

From Orwell's Politics of the English Language:

"""Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."""

Whoa. Orwell knew the score on liberal bloviation decades before the DailyKOS boutique or postmodernists arrived (tho' yes, the Limbaugh-right bloviates, tho' they tend to stick to monosyllables).

Ezranomics

From Ezra Pound's An Introduction to the Economic Nature of the United States

"""History, as seen by a Monetary Economist, is a continuous struggle between producers and non-producers, and those who try to make a living by inserting a false system of book-keeping between tile producers and their just recompense. The Bank of England was based on the discovery that instead of loaning money, the Bank’s paper could be put out on loan. The Philadelphia financiers, not entirely severed from their friends in foreign countries, saw the possibility of speculation and the monopolizers of money tried their usual tricks on a thick-headed public.

“Financiers and Congressmen bought a great quantity of soldier’s pay certificates which had been issued during the war. The certificates were simply printing press money without anything of value behind them. Years had passed since their date of issue and, as their hope for redemption went down, their value went down, and down. In 1789 they could be bought for 10 or 15 cents to the dollar. Alexander Hamilton proposed that the Continental certificates be redeemed at par.”[1] And then the nation “assumed” the responsibility of paying them as proposed. These were the famous certificates of pay due to the Veterans. This constituted the “Scandal of the Assumption.”

England was trying diverse methods of usury and sanctions. The lack of caution on the part of the great property owners of the South, reduced them to indebtedness. Slavery became less profitable than the new industrial system, in which the owner did not have to take care of his employees.

Let us note that at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the “Mercantile” concept still retained traces of decency. Adams judged it “hardly mercantile” to do business on borrowed capital. At that time individualism had its own probity, a modest but secure income was called an “independence”.

History taken as a lesson, and taking into account the difference between certainty and supposition, would be an exposition of the nature of events, rather than a chronicle of names.""""

(yo le gusta!).

""""The true history of the economy of the United States, as I see it, is to be found in the correspondence between Adams and Jefferson, in the writings of Van Buren, and in quotations from the intimate letters of the Fathers of the Republic. The elements remain the same: debts, altering the value of monetary units, and the attempts, and triumphs of usury, due to monopolies, or to a “Corner”.

In order to please those who love to gamble, the Exchange permits Mr. A to sell to Mr. B what Mr. A does not possess; on condition that Mr. A. succeeds in buying it and consigning it to Mr. B within a determined time.

The Americans have chosen this game instead of bull-fighting. And naturally, if a group of financiers succeeds in inducing simpletons to sell more than actually exists, or to sell more of it than can be obtained, the late-comers can be made to “pay through the nose”. In 1869, Gould, Fisk and others almost succeeded in monopolizing the available gold in New York. Roosevelt followed Jim Fisk.

The speculators boast about their courage or temerity, but this courage is a different kind of courage from that displayed at the Roulette, or other games of chance; for, by speculating on wheat and other commodities these gamblers are not just gambling among themselves, they are deciding on the prices the public must pay for its necessities."""

(Yo le gusta, tambien)



""""From the War of Secession up to now, the economic history of the United States has consisted in a series of exchange manoeuvers in New York and in Chicago; attempts to impose monopolies, corners, variations in the prices of the shares of new industries, and of the means of transportation. In the beginning they speculated on the value of land. An inflation in its value was stimulated without bothering about the difficulty, or the impossibility of transporting products from distant fields to the market. Then they speculated on the values of the railroads.

If it is in the interest of the common worker, producer, or citizen to have an equitable and fixed price, this is not at all in the interest of the speculator or broker. “Hell”, he says, “I don’t want a still market. I couldn’t make any money.”

Like a patient fisher, the broker waits for the rise or fall of even ¼ or 1/8 per cent, and there is his fifty or one hundred dollars.

He waits for a “break”. It may come once in a life time. This may be the starting point to a fortune. The great Morgan, during the Civil War, bought on credit a certain quantity of damaged rifles from the War Department in Washington, and sold them to a Military Command in Texas, and was paid by the latter before he had to pay the former. He made $75,000.00 profit. Later he was even sentenced, but that did not prevent his becoming the great Mahatma of Wall Street, and a world politico-economical power. Such is the material of which the economic and human history of the United states is made.""""

Bastante, por ahora

SCOTUS declares Strip-search Unconstitutional

From the LA Times:

"""Justice David H. Souter, in what could be his final opinion before his retirement, said a strip-search is "categorically distinct" from other efforts to find drugs or weapons on campus because it is embarrassing and humiliating to the children who are targeted.

In the past, the court has said school officials can search purses, backpacks or lockers if they have reason to believe a student has drugs. And twice, justices have upheld mandatory drug testing of high schoolers, including athletes, even when there was no reason to think any of them was using drugs.

But requiring a student to remove her clothes goes too far, Souter said. He suggested such a search would be justified only if a school official had strong reason to believe a student was hiding a dangerous drug or a weapon in his or her underwear."""

The SCOTUS made the obviously correct decision in Safford. Of course, educational bureaucrats and local cops regularly conduct KGB-like search and seizures, and this decision is unlikely to stop them. Americans who value (and understand) the 4th might take a look at Clarence Thomas's rather cop-like dissent, however. Thomas claimed the local edu-crats have the right to make the judgement call, and suggests they shouldn't be overly concerned with the mere Constitution. Thank Osiris a few of the SCOTUS geniuses understood the real meaning of the 4th--to protect the accused (in the Safford case, a 13 yr old schoolgirl), regardless of the accused's age, race, socio-economic standing, or political affiliation (Due Process applies even to the non-Democrat--a concept many Sally Fields liberals can't quite grasp).

Anyone who has been shaken down by cops--or, better, had some city pig's Glock an inch away from one's temple--for "reasonable suspicion" of drugs or a firearm realizes the 4th is pretty much a joke, unless one's driving a Hummer or new Benz, and has a high-powered defense attorney riding shotgun (Donde esta Dr. Gonzo?). Read a few police reports and one soon discovers nearly all search and seizure methods currently in use for dope cases (and most firearms) are unconstitutional. They can search your car if they suspect something (even that arguably BS), but in theory the cops can't then go to your house and upturn everything, unless you're in the Gambino crime family, or they take the time to obtain a warrant. But those sort of warrantless Gestapo or KGB searches do go down every day. The judicial business of course depends on the cop-goons, and the black gown posse rarely questions the police power, even in regards to that supposedly sacred 4th. If it's your word vs. the boys in blue, you'll lose.

Obama’s War on Terror
JoshFrank/Counterpunch

"""No longer can the blame for the turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan rest at the feet of George W. Bush alone. This is now Obama’s War on Terror, fully funded and operated by the Democratic Party.

The bill that passed the House on Monday, once approved by the Senate, will not be part of the regular defense budget as it’s off the books entirely. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, Congress has passed similar emergency spending bills to finance US military ventures in the Middle East. The combined “supplementals” are fast approaching $1 trillion, with 30% going to fund the war in Afghanistan.

In addition to the latest increase in war funds, Obama is also asking for an additional $130 billion to be added on to the defense budget for the new fiscal year starting on October 1. The president is upholding his campaign promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan, which also means increasing the use of remote controlled drone planes in neighboring Pakistan that are to blame for hundreds of civilian deaths since Obama took office last January.

Despite Obama’s historic (albeit rhetoric filled) speech in Cairo, the new Commander in Chief is still not about to radically change, let alone reform, the US’s long-standing role in the Middle East. A master of his craft, Obama is simply candy coating the delivery of US imperialism in the region. Given the lack of opposition to Obama’s policies back home, it is becoming clear that he may well be more dangerous than his predecessor when it comes to the US’s motivations internationally."""""

Counterpunchers such as Frank (who has written some decent stuff on the California oil business) remind us that the authentic progressive should not be mistaken for a card-carrying, union-worshipping LBJ-democrat. Instead of napalm--invented by nazis, prohibited by Geneva conventions, yet approved by both LBJ, and Nixon-Kissinger--the Demopublican masters of war now wield Drones.

Vivan Las Moscas

PETA peoples in the house:

""""""The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants the flyswatter in chief to try taking a more humane attitude the next time he's bedeviled by a fly in the White House.

PETA is sending President Barack Obama a Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.""""""""

Obviously most out in Consumerland read this as another example of PETA's media politics of hysteria, but Friedrich does raise a slightly interesting point. We protest cats or monkeys used in lab experiments--rightly, in most cases. We might also object to mass-produced extermination of cattle, pork via slaughterhouse, or poultry in abattoirs, though that doesn't necessarily mean one thereby agrees to the premises of vegetarianism, or to Peter Singer-like sentimentality. The division of labor issue should be noted however. Mammals appear, prima facie, to be at least slightly sentient and not merely automatons (birds not quite as much).

Insects, however, do seem a bit less deserving of our respect than mammals. They aren't too attractive for one; instead of fur, or feathers, flies have chitin. They lack the interesting sensitive eyes that cats or cows possess. In comparison to cats or cows, they are very small. They bite, or swarm, or annoy greatly, and do not appear intelligent whatsoever but more like evolutionary mistakes. Waking up to find a massive column of fire-ants on the kitchen counters, most humans, even granola-munchers probably reach for the Raid and have no problem exterminating 10,000 or so in a few minutes. PETA reminds us that exterminating does have some spiritual consequence, however paltry it might seem. Ergo, utter a prayer, to whatever deity, or dharma may be responsible for the insect spirit world, and hopefully you don't meet some ant or fly-headed creature in the hereafter.

The Eugenics code of Brighamius

Pop-science factoid of the day:

"""According to Duke University psychologist Mark Leary, the feeling of being disliked, ostracized or rejected was specially designed by evolution to be particularly painful; subjectively speaking, being evaluated negatively by others can feel even worse than physical trauma. The reason that others’ negative evaluations affect us so deeply, Leary believes, has to do with our primate past.

Unlike virtually every other species, the hominids could not rely on speed, flight, strength, arboreal clambering, burrowing or ferocity to evade predators. Many theorists in psychology, anthropology and biology have noted that human beings and their hominid ancestors survived and prospered as species only because they lived in cooperative groups. Given the importance of group living, natural selection favored individuals who not only sought the company of others but also behaved in ways that led others to accept, support and help them.


"""In other words, for a human being, only death itself ensures a speedier genetic demise than stigma and exclusion. To ensure that our ancestors were ever wary of their tenuous dependence on others, Leary proposes that they evolved a sort of subjective, psychological gauge that served to continually monitor their fluctuating “relational value,” an affective index of where the self stood in the eyes of other ingroup members. Generally speaking, the higher one’s relational value, the greater one’s reproductive opportunities and genetic fitness. Just as it continues to do today, this hypothetical “sociometer” generated emotional states that, collectively, were translated into what’s popularly known as our “self-esteem.” Assuming our sociometer isn’t broken or impaired, negative self-esteem is a kind of warning, then, that one is at serious risk of social (and therefore genetic) exclusion.""""

"It Takes a Village" pop-psychology, updated via some lightweight eco-anthropology. You want to be happy? Be fruitful and multiply, and be a happy, helpful contributor to the community! These pathetic insta-studies do not really merit refutation, but, one, self-esteem is not quantifiable. Choosing to be an outsider, or loner, or even a recluse does imply that one thereby feels sad, or lonely, or "suffers from low self esteem." Outsiderness may be--and often is--a conscious choice. The researchers beg the question of intentionality, anyway: given their own assumptions of genetic determinism it would seem that all human decisions--or apparent decisions-- were simply the result of bio-chemical processes anyway, beyond the individual's control.

For that matter, anthropologists have no business making assumptions about humans' evolutionary motivations, nor suggesting that some sullen outsider who chooses to "not join" suffers in some way: it's often the happy joiners--or their children----who suffer, when they succumb to peer pressure, oneupsmanship, endless competition of the mediocre suburbanite. Humans may not be Cartesian ghosts, but they aren't merely primates: they possess something like moral autonomy--the ability to choose, make decisions, envision future events. The Duke comrades in fact rely on the old social darwinist fallacy that what nature suggests as evolutionary "proper" for certain animals or primitive man must be right for contemporary humans: even Nietzsche objected to that sort of crypto-eugenics code.

Mullahocracy

Hitchens/Slate

""Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict—which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane—the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not "run." Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. ("They fell for it? But it's too easy!") Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with."""'

However irritating Hitchens may be on occasion, he may be correct, at least in this instance (though not when blessing Bushco, as he did in 2003). Objecting to muslim theocracy does not imply that one thereby supports Israel, however (not lacking in theocratic aspects, either). Dame Hillary's tame remarks on the Iranian vote did sound rather accomodating.

Political reality does not lend itself to truth functionality, to the facile dichotomies preferred by naive leftists (or rightists)--not dialectical, but poly-lectical.

Bergson
"....Bergson's original training was in mathematics. Bergson won the first prize in mathematics for the prestigious “Concours Général,” which led to the publication of his solution to a problem by Pascal in 1877. Bergson nevertheless chose to prepare for the École Normale in the letters and humanities section. His math teacher, disappointed, famously claimed, “you could have been a mathematician; you will be a mere philosopher”"".

""""Bergson's position is illustrated — and what is to be said in criticism may also be aptly illustrated — by Zeno's argument of the arrow. Zeno argues that, since the arrow at each moment simply is where it is, thereforethe arrow in its flight is always at rest. At first sight, this argument may not appear a very powerful one. Of course, it will be said, the arrow is where it is at one moment, but at another moment it is somewhere else, and this is just was constitutes motion. Certain difficulties, it is true, arise out of the continuity of motion, if we insist upon assuming that motion is also dis-continuous. These difficulties, thus obtained, have long been part of the stock-in-trade of philosophers. But if, with the
mathematicians, we avoid the assumption that motion is also discontinuous, we shall not fall into the philosopher's difficulties. A cinematograph in which there are an infinite number of films, and in which there is never a next film because
an infinite number come between any two, will perfectly represent a continuous motion. Wherein, then, lies the force of Zeno's argument ?

Zeno belonged to the Eleatic school, whose object was to prove that there could be no such thing as change. The natural view to take of the world is that there are things which change ; for example, there is an arrow which is now here, now there. By bisection of this view, philosophers have developed two paradoxes. The Eleatics said that there were things but no changes ; Heraclitus and Bergson said that there were changes but no things. The Eleatics said there was an arrow, but no flight ; Heraclitus and Bergson said there was a flight but no arrow. Each party conducted
its argument by refutation of the other party. How ridiculous to say there is no arrow ! say the " static " party. How ridiculous to say there is no flight ! say the " dynamic " party. The unfortunate man who stands in the middle and maintains that there is both the arrow and its flight is assumed by the disputants to deny both ; he is therefore pierced, like St. Sebastian, by the arrow from one side and by
its flight from the other. But we have still not discovered wherein lies the force of Zeno's argument.



Zeno assumes, tacitly, the essence of the Bergsonian theory of change. That is to say, he assumes that when a thing is in a process of continuous change, even if it is only change of position, there must be in the thing some internal
state of change. The thing must, at each instant, be in-trinsically different from what it would be if it were not changing. He then points out that at each instant the arrow simply is where it is, just as it would be if it were at rest.
Hence he concludes that there can be no such thing as a state of motion, and therefore, adhering to the view that a state of motion is essential to motion, he infers that there can be no motion and that the arrow is always at rest.

Zeno's argument, therefore, though it does not touch the mathematical account of change, does, prima facie, refute a view of change which is not unlike M. Bergson's.
How, then, does M. Bergson meet Zeno's argument ? He meets it by denying that the arrow is ever anywhere. After stating Zeno's argument, he replies : " Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever be in a point of its course. Yes again, if the arrow, which is moving, ever coincides with a position, which is motionless. But the arrow never is in any point of its course " (C. E., p. 325). This reply to Zeno,
or a closely similar one concerning Achilles and the Tortoise, occurs in all his three books. Bergson's view, plainly, is paradoxical ; whether it is possible, is a question which demands a discussion of his view of duration. His only argument in its favour is the statement that the mathematical view of change " implies the absurd proposition that movement is made of immobility " (C. E., p. 325). But the
apparent absurdity of this view is merely due to the verbal form in which he has stated it, and vanishes as soon as we realise that motion implies relations. A friendship, for example, is made out of people who are friends, but not out of
friendships ; a genealogy is made out of men, but not out of genealogies. So a motion is made out of what is moving, but not out of motions. It expresses the fact that a thing may be in different places at different times, and that the places
may still be different, however near together the times may be. Bergson's argument against the mathematical view of motion, therefore, reduces itself, in the last analysis, to a mere play upon words. And with this conclusion we may pass
on to a criticism of his theory of duration. """""

Russell on Bergson, though perhaps not quite getting it. The description of the event does not equal the perception of the event; the perception of event is not the Event itself. Change Zeno's arrow to a cannonball, however, and given a certain force of detonation, the trajectory may be mapped out, kill count estimated, whether one calls it motion or not.

Hitchens on Obama's Cairo speech.

(Slate)

".....Nothing prepared me for the way in which the authorities at the camp have allowed the most extreme religious cultists among the inmates to be the organizers of the prisoners' daily routine. Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn't much fancy your chances. The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers' money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion. To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It's a state-sponsored madrasah.

The same near-masochistic insistence on taking the extreme as the norm was also present in Obama's smoothly delivered speech in the Egyptian capital. Some of what he said was well-intentioned if ill-informed. The United States should not have overthrown the elected government of Iran in 1953, but when it did so, it used bribed mullahs and ayatollahs to whip up anti-Communist sentiment against a secular regime. The John Adams administration in the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli did indeed proclaim that the United States had no quarrel with Islam as such (and, even more important, that the United States itself was in no sense a Christian nation), but the treaty failed to stop the Barbary states from invoking the Quran as permission to kidnap and enslave travelers on the high seas, and thus Thomas Jefferson was later compelled to send a fleet and the Marines to put down the trade. One hopes that Obama does not prefer Adams to Jefferson in this regard......"

At least Hitchens has the secular spine to remind us that Islam carries no more authority than christianity or judaism (which is to say, in terms of logic and science, no authority). As CH also noted, the blogocrats refused to address Obama's oversimplifications and verbal gaffes (like hajib, when the word is hijab). Had Bushco muttered hajib instead of hijab, the Kossacks would have indulged in their gonzo-lite jokes for weeks.

(Ah I forgot: Hitchens is on the Oppressor list, according to some in Linkspartei. Perhaps. He oppresses with a modicum of taste, and avoids the stalinist gambit "we can exploit religious hysteria to our benefit.")

Berlin calling



The lovely and talented Mildred Gillars, aka Axis Sally.