Predicting Human Interactive Learning by Regret-Driven Neural Networks

Davide Marchiori¹ and Massimo Warglien^2*

Much of human learning in a social context has an interactive nature: What an individual learns is affected by what other individuals are learning at the same time. Games represent a widely accepted paradigm for representing interactive decision-making. We explored the potential value of neural networks for modeling and predicting human interactive learning in repeated games. We found that even very simple learning networks, driven by regret-based feedback, accurately predict observed human behavior in different experiments on 21 games with unique equilibria in mixed strategies. Introducing regret in the feedback dramatically improved the performance of the neural network. We show that regret-based models provide better predictions of learning than established economic models.

¹ Interdepartmental Center for Research Training in Economics and Management (CIFREM), University of Trento, Italy.
² Advanced School of Economics and Department of Business Economics and Management, Ca' Foscari University, Venezia, Italy.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: warglien@unive.it

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Connectomics

T3 hollar'd at me this morning about neural density. This in turn provoked me to dredge up this post on neuroeconomics from the archives and do a bit of google-ing. My remarks to T3 were rather disparaging of the state of the art. As it turns out however, the dismissive remarks were right on target as this article in the current Technology Review bears out.

The diagram is the fruit of an emerging field called "connectomics," which attempts to physically map the ­tangle of neural circuits that collect, ­process, and archive information in the nervous system. Such maps could ultimately shed light on the early development of the human brain and on diseases that may be linked to faulty wiring, such as autism and schizophrenia. "The brain is ­essentially a computer that wires itself up during development and can rewire itself," says ­Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at MIT, who is working with Lichtman. "If we have a wiring diagram of the brain, that could help us understand how it works."

Although researchers have been studying neural connectivity for decades, existing tools don't offer the resolution needed to reveal how the brain works. In particular, scientists haven't been able to generate a detailed picture of the hundreds of millions of neurons in the brain, or of the connections between them.

Not exactly the product of crack smoking, but a little on the "crackish" side, just the same...., The pictures are pretty and the underlying techniques are interesting and in sync with some prior articles on bio-fluorescence.

The Great Game in the Second World

A Game Where Resources Dwindle and Partners Shift

In the 21st century the empires strike back. The United States, the European Union and China dare not call themselves imperial powers, Parag Khanna argues in “The Second World,” his sweeping, often audacious survey of contemporary geopolitics, but they are busy reshaping the globe to suit their interests. The game is afoot, with the natural resources and potential wealth of countries like Ukraine, Turkey and Brazil as the prize.

Mr. Khanna is the director of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute. He strides the world in seven-league boots, armed with a powerful thesis: in the postcolonial, post-cold-war era, three superpowers have emerged with a ravenous appetite for energy and natural resources. Restlessly, they look to the second-tier economies of Latin America, the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East and Asia for partners or patsies. This argument was laid out recently in The New York Times Magazine in an excerpt it published from the book.

No shots will be fired. Instead the three imperial rivals will woo and coerce, relying on distinct styles. The United States offers military protection, along with the promise of democracy and human rights. The European Union dangles the prospect of membership in, or affiliation with, the world’s most successful economic club, provided that applicants undertake specific reforms. China talks trade, investment and infrastructure projects, with no annoying demands for political reform in its would-be client states.

“To a large extent, the future of the second world hinges on how it relates to the three superpowers,” Mr. Khanna writes, “and the future of the superpowers depends on how they manage the second world.”

Global Governance Challenges

Temple3 continues his analysis of global governance challenges and the bare-knuckles quest for power within the empire;

more than oil…concessions, access, other resources, the whole nine yards. Oil is just a part.

The complete calculus includes “go along to get along” votes in international organizations, support for NGOs, permission to establish military bases and much more. It’s a big deal - and while this pattern clearly did not start with Slick Willie, he seems to be about the only one masquerading as a “Black President.”

He's dot connecting a quest to politically control many of the resources required to exercise a new model of global governance. This subject is foundational to the mission of this blog. Last October I recommended the following RAND study to your attention;

This report summarizes the issues that arose and the discussions held during the meetings of a 1998-1999 study group focusing on global governance of information technology and biotechnology. The goal was to bring a policy perspective to bear on a discussion of new technological developments through a series of free-flowing and exploratory presentations and discussions.

Download it and read it in its entirety when you get a chance...,

The governance challenge of the 21st century is no longer democratic control over centralized systems, as it was in the 20th century, but governance over decentralized, distributed systems. The features that make these technologies different from and their potential benefits greater than those of other technologies increase their potential for abuse.[...]The mechanisms societies use to control, direct, shape, or regulate certain kinds of activities is what we mean by governance. Governance is almost always conducted by governmental bodies, although it can be carried out in other ways. Yet, the practical obstacles to governance of these new technologies are tremendous. Success in governing them requires the cooperation o stakeholders, states, nongovernmental organizations(NGOs), interest organizations, and the average citizen. Within any decision making process, commercial, defense, social, and individual interests will intermingle and a consensus among many players may be integral to any workable outcome.[...]Two recent shifts in attitudes strongly influence the issue of governance within technological arenas. The first shift is the decline of conventional top-down governance models and an emphasis on applying privatization, deregulation, downsizing of bureaucracy, and private, market-based solutions to many social problems.

Stakes are very, very high - and T3 has thickened the plot in a way with which I can vibe without any further reservations. As he said; My people suffer from a woeful lack of knowledge....,

The Gaza Bombshell

The April issue of Vanity Fair reports that it has "obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the US and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams to provoke a Palestinian civil war."

The magazine adds that the plan "was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America's behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically-elected Hamas-led government from power."

A great irony here is that Israel originally (covertly) helped Hamas when it was first founded in the late 80's, on the grounds that a religious extremist movement would help undermine the PLO. (sounds vaguely familiar...,) - it is ironic that the Israeli leadership [and, we can add, the US leadership as well] is now supporting the PLO in the hope of undermining Hamas.

Both policies - Israel's initial support for Hamas and this latest US effort to undermine it - have been disastrous as far as Israeli security is concerned. The article in Vanity Fair concludes:

"It is impossible to say for sure whether the outcome in Gaza would have been any better-for the Palestinian people, for the Israelis, and for America's allies in Fatah-if the Bush administration had pursued a different policy. One thing, however, seems certain: it could not be any worse."

The more things "change" - the more they just seem to stay the same....,

What You Gonna Do? (when they come for you...,)

What will the effects on American social order be when society is even more seriously buffeted by economic collapse? A best case scenario would be similar to the Great Depression (1929-39), when neighbors tended to band together and help one another. A worst case scenario will be one in which stealing, killing, and violent criminal gangs increase and become the more prevalent order of the day.

The two scenarios seem so contradictory that they seem nearly mutually exclusive. Both highly contradictory scenarios will, however, occur and the main question is what must you do now in order to facilitate the former rather than the latter? What must you do in order to choose? Let's refer to the two scenarios respectively as (A) Co-operation and (B) Competition.

Choosing examples of the two modes, what social and historical patterns reveal themselves as important to facilitating one or the other way of life? Do any patterns begin to reveal themselves?

South America on the Brink of War

Venezuela's military currently has about 100,000 regular troops and a growing force of reservists that now totals 280,000. Colombia's U.S.-backed military has 255,000 regular troops and 62,000 reservists, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Radical Simplification?

5.5 Billion too many humans is one of the foundational premises of the world problematique as originally formulated and as analytically refined by a subsequent handful of good faith futurist thinkers. Bear in mind that extensive old-school operations analysis and serious infrastructural investment in old-school solutions delivery capability is a fact of life.

I posted Orlov's Five Stages of Collapse as part of my continuing information sharing agenda, and, as a rhetorical counter to the false optimism and relentless apologetics for unsustainability by so-called conservative commentators. I'm going to go out on a limb this morning - and pose an interrogatory challenge to my most respected blogging associate Temple3 and any and all commentators tracking on the subject matter we're both following and around which he's formulating a dot connecting explanatory thesis.

T3, what if what you're about to describe is indeed the case? Knowing the absolute seriousness with which cultural hegemony is sought (a deep tenet of - what it do - because the monoculture has shown its true nature for the better part of a century) is the path to minimal-regret you're outlining a "worst case" scenario, or, a hard choice on a hard road scenario?

The word “collapse” implies for most people something highly negative. No doubt it is important to be sober about the level of shock and suffering that will be entailed in this process. But it is also important, in order to be able to imagine any light at the end of the tunnel, to play with other language that could also describe the process we find ourselves in. For example, it feels very different to say: “We are on the brink of the radical simplification of human society on the planet.”[...]

The word collapse calls up images of horror. And that’s not inappropriate. But images of collapse inspire no visions of ultimate benefit. On the other hand the term radical simplification could sound a different chime for people exhausted from the current wage slave system, where the many work ever harder to stuff the ever more soft and opulent feather beds of the few elite. Radical simplification of life, if people would slow down enough to contemplate it, could actually feel like a breath of non-polluted air. Too many people, most people I would venture to say, and even those with currently stable incomes, are incredibly lonely. They sit in quiet despair in front of their television sets or walk the malls with iPods stopping their ears, or drink beers and soullessly cheer at yet another sporting event, forever in frantic search of more distraction. For most, collapse will be, alternatively, either a shock or, if it proceeds slowly, just a heightened erosion of already degraded and meaningless lives. The coming transition will not be pretty for the bewildered herd. But for visionaries and cultural creatives collapse, or radical simplification, likely calls up what may seem to be paradoxical feelings of relief and even empowerment. I’ve heard more than one friend recently exclaim, “Bring it on. I’m sick of this shit.”

What provoked this morning's question? I came across a lengthy though somewhat new-agey and hand-wavy response to Orlov's Five Stages of Collapse article called Orlov and the Wonderful, Terrible, Radical Simplification, and, I fell asleep on Roberto Rodriquez' Planet Terror last night....,

Engineering Life to Convert CO2 to Fuel

A scientist who mapped his genome and the genetic diversity of the oceans said Thursday he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.

Geneticist Craig Venter disclosed his potentially world-changing "fourth-generation fuel" project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California.

"We have modest goals of replacing the whole petrochemical industry and becoming a major source of energy," Venter told an audience that included global warming fighter Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.

"We think we will have fourth-generation fuels in about 18 months, with CO2 as the fuel stock."

Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter.

Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step is life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste, according to Venter.

"We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future," Venter said. "We are limited here only by our imagination."

His team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life, he said. Organisms already exist that produce octane, but not in amounts needed to be a fuel supply.

"If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet," Venter said. "The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them."

The genetics of octane-producing organisms can be tinkered with to increase the amount of CO2 they eat and octane they excrete, according to Venter.

The limiting part of the equation isn't designing an organism, it's the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms, the scientist said in answer to a question from Page.

Scientists put "suicide genes" into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves.

Venter said he is also working on organisms that make vaccines for the flu and other illnesses.

"We will see an exponential change in the pace of the sophistication of organisms and what they can do," Venter said.

"We are a ways away from designing people. Our goal is just to make sure they survive long enough to do that." — AFP

Part III of Bill's Long Con - T3 Continues

Week before last, I had the privilege of linking T3's first installment of a deep mapping series on the longterm designs of very powerful elements within the TEP. After having read the current installment a few times - with the interim backstory linked over at his site - I believe I understand where he's going with this. Needless to say, I'm very much enjoying the unfolding of the data as he lays it out and draws our attention to various and sundry connections, and look forward to the big picture he promises to disclose.

"invasion of sovereign bodies" is a strikingly liminal allusion that is deeply sympatico with the subrealist approach. While it's clear that T3 is addressing himself to the who, what, when, and where of the thing, I'm equally if not more taken with the "what it do" aspects of his treatment. In a nutshell;

The emergence of biological and chemical research and experimentation which objectified Black and other bodies was part of a broader cultural framework. The value system of the scientists was consistent with broader societal beliefs and was framed within a pseudo-humanitarian “box” which condoned the invasion of the sovereign body in the same way that the notion of “civilization” and “democracy” and “capitalism” condoned the invasion of sovereign lands.[...]

The invasion of sovereign lands has always been a complicated endeavor for Europeans. The spectre of disease has always loomed large. Eradication, then, has been critical to support the managerial requirements of appropriating wealth from “hostile environments.” In most instances, stating that objective has been too bold for public consumption. Instead, Western philanthropists have emphasized the long-term needs of children versus the short-term needs of adults in their approaches to humanitarian aid. For children, the priorities are education (solution: build schools), healthcare (solution: provide vaccines), and security (solution: subsidize persons or groups promising democracy or at least access to markets and natural resources). For adults, the issues are a bit different - and adults are not the focal point of these efforts - except as it relates to testing. [...]

Resolving the critical needs of African adults - the care takers of African children - requires different solutions. For all the millions spent to cure the fourth leading cause of death, thousands of African communities continue to suffer from the THREE LEADING CAUSES of DEATH for lack of a 21st century WATER and SANITATION system.

Do these folks actually want to keep the baby, and throw out the parents with the bathwater?

Having been condemned for letting folks off the hook for their historical and continuing behaviors, (not like I or anyone else is likely to be able to hold major actors accountable anytime soon - if ever), I remain principally fascinated with coherent and falsifiable descriptions of what's happening that can be put to work to increase collective awareness of the same.

The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis

If you don't get it yet, please read the implosion article in its entirety. Not merely the titillating excerpts that I quoted. Then, go read The World's Growing Food-Price Crisis at Time.com.

I don't believe that the centuries old art of elite gangster macking can be presented in terms any more straight up, simple, or plain. Only difference now, is that the game is international, worldwide...,

"U.S. and British farmers are laughing all the way to the bank,"

says Simon Maxwell, director of the London-based Overseas Development Institute, an independent think tank.

"And some poor people will get jobs on farms or in local communities."

Yet those people will need to buy food, whose prices are rising far faster than wages. With relief agencies struggling to feed the hungry and the shelves in Pakistan, Burkina Faso, Senegal and many other countries in the developing world stocked with food many locals can no longer afford, the prospects for chaos are steadily growing.

The Whole Depraved Mess is Going to Implode

Yielding the floor once again to the devastating power of the hypertiger wisdom;

Democracy is just a nice sounding word...You say..."We are in there to give the poor unfortunate people of country X Democracy"...And the population generally appears to accept invasion/conquest without too much resistance.

But Yes the parliamentary system or Westminster administration system was basically invented by the British...And it works well...The top can maintain control of the bottom but when they lose control and the bottom demands blood...the elected scapegoats take the fall...Not the top...[...]Here it is again...A reminder...

The purpose of the Police and military is to protect the top from the bottom...

To protect cause from consequence...

The easiest prey of the hunter gatherer is the farmer and the simplest operation is the protection scheme...[...]

All money is decreed money...fiat...

The top says this is money...Or else...period end of story....

You Farmer are on the Land owned by the LORD of the land and will pay tribute to the LORD of 1 Gold coin a year...

Where do I get this GOLD coin?

You can take one short ton of grain to the grainery of the LORD and there you will be given a GOLD coin for it and then you can give the gold coin to the servant of the LORD...

What if I refuse?

Then the LORD will drive you from the Land that the LORD is the LORD of...

There you go an abundant supply of free food to power your wildest hopes and dreams...Lies and delusions...[...]

Well what is done with all that Food the tillers of the LORD's land give the LORD as Tribute? It powers the Absolute capitalist Hierarchial food powered make work enterprise...

The city state...Or Civilization...The thing you all popped into existence within...and are in now...

Free your mind....,

The Scapegoat is Being Readied

Came across this blogpost a little while ago explaining in some detail the nature of the economic situation. It just doesn't get any more simple and direct than these quotes;

Those managing it are attempting to get to a point where it's planned to fall to pieces...While they are all babbling and creating a smokescreen to obscure the situation the scapegoat is being readied...A mezmerizing spectacle of some sort...to focus attention away from the system as cause and onto an effect as the cause...[...]

Behind the scenes the debate currently is between doing what is required to at least keep you all fed (save as many as possible) or just pulling the plug and letting you all starve (Liquidate as many as possible)...and how to deal with the fate resisters.

Behind the scenes they are not wondering if....they know what is coming...The war on terror is just cover to implement all the new crowd controls for the austerity measures that are to follow.

Be careful what you pay attention to. Not everything that looks good to you is actually good for you.

Dueling Systems and the Five Stages of Collapse

Over the past week and a half or so, I've been chatting with a number of Cobb's commenters and intermittently with the man himself. Here lately, he's embarked on an apologia for war socialism. Brahman has a tendency to get caught up in philosophical rather than practical or empirical argumentation. I've begun to suspect that a significant part of his political orientation is attributable to this tendency. In opting for philosophy and abstraction - both he and his conservative co-religionists have a tendency to get lost in flights of metaphorical fancy.

Case in point yesterday afternoon on a post he called The Morality of War he asked;

"Are you suggesting that we should not have fought Stalin?"

Last I checked, we didn't...., but that minor historical quibble aside, this was not a discussion of history, philosophy, or morality per se. Rather, it was the branching of a prior thread in which I was accused of blaming G-Dub for the American war socialist posture. A brief review of Jay Hanson's warsocialism site will clearly dispel any such notions of contemporary blame - and - put the concept of war socialism on its proper historical footing. Hanson calls the system of American governance a war socialist system - I happen to find his arguments concise and very persuasive.

Aside from the countless tragic, wasteful, and destructive proxy wars that it spawned - the political, philosophical and moral dimensions of the Cold War hold little interest for me - I won't be pursuing any of those issues at great length. Rather, what I'd like to bring to your attention is the way in which the former Soviet Union survived it's own economic and industrial collapse - and - invite you to compare and contrast the adaptability and survivability of our own war socialist system of governance in the face of impending collapse. Dmitry Orlov writes;

the collapse of the Soviet Union - our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial collapse - did not reach the point of political disintegration of the republics that made it up, although some of them (Georgia, Moldova) did lose some territory to separatist movements. And although most of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including the military, public utilities, and public transportation, continued to function throughout. And although there was much social dislocation and suffering, society as a whole did not collapse, because most of the population did not lose access to food, housing, medicine, or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to resources. Thus situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently possible in the United States.

Having given a lot of thought to both the differences and the similarities between the two superpowers - the one that has collapsed already, and the one that is collapsing as I write this - I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define five stages of collapse, to serve as mental milestones as we gauge our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve it.

IMOHO - this is the type of systematic thinking that we need to enjoin in America as we gird ourselves up to cast what may be operationally and systemically decisive votes in this year's presidential election. I sincerely believe that the U.S. is caught up in a still civil dispute among its ruling elites over the type and pace of contraction and collapse that citizens will be subject to over the next twenty to thirty years. I believe that the frontrunning presidential candidates literally embody the respective elite camps and their dueling perspectives on how this should shake out.

Secrecy, Collusion and Bad Medicine

The drug industry's long and ignoble history of secrecy

In 2004, UK researchers commissioned by Nice to develop guidelines for prescribing antidepressant drugs to children tried to obtain unpublished trials from the drug companies. They were refused. They then contacted the individual researchers who had worked on the trials. Only then did a picture emerge of increased risk of attempted suicide, and a lack of efficacy. Nice concluded by banning the drugs for under-18s with the exception of Prozac.

Yesterday's report suggesting that modern antidepressants offer no significant clinical benefit over placebo has been dismissed by the drug industry as "just one study" which should not be allowed to undermine the wealth of research showing that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants are effective.

But that is to miss the point. The Hull University researchers have demonstrated how partial access to research can give a distorted view of a drug. The non-disclosure of data on the SSRIs has raised doubts about the trustworthiness of all research on antidepressants.

We should be relieved that the licensing authorities have an absolute right to see all trial data, positive and negative, before approving a drug. But, bizarrely, Nice, with the responsibility for deciding which drugs should be used by the NHS, only gets what the drug companies agree to give it. The Health Select Committee has called for action to remedy this omission. Ministers must respond.

Antidepressant Drugs Don't Work – Official Study

They are among the biggest-selling drugs of all time, the "happiness pills" that supposedly lift the moods of those who suffer depression and are taken by millions of people in the UK every year.

But one of the largest studies of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don't work.

The finding will send shock waves through the medical profession and patients and raises serious questions about the regulation of the multinational pharmaceutical industry, which was accused yesterday of withholding data on the drugs.

In the study, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of all 47 clinical trials, published and unpublished, submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the US, made in support of licensing applications for six of the best known antidepressant drugs, including Prozac, Seroxat – which is made by GlaxoSmithKline – and Efexor made by Wyeth. The results showed the drugs were effective only in a very small group of the most extremely depressed.

Two drugs were excluded from the study because of incomplete data. A third drug, chemical name nafazodone, has been withdrawn from the market because of side-effects.

Professor Irving Kirsch of the University of Hull, who led the study published in the online journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine , said the data submitted to the FDA would also have been submitted to the licensing authorities in Britain and Europe. It showed the drugs produced a "very small" improvement compared with placebo of two points on the 51-point Hamilton depression scale.

That was sufficient to grant the drugs a licence but did not meet the minimum three-point difference required by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) to establish "clinical" significance. Full-monty available here - in tomorrow's UK Independent.

All We Are Saying - Is Give Kip a Chance...,

Prior to assuming his current position, Ward was Deputy Commander, Headquarters US European Command, Stuttgart, Germany. He previously served as the Deputy Commanding General/Chief of Staff, US Army Europe and Seventh Army. While in this capacity he was selected by the Secretary of State to serve as the United States Security Coordinator, Israel - Palestinian Authority where he served from March through December 2005.

If you have concerns, take them directly to the Africom Dialogue A clearinghouse of the U.S. Africa Command's senior leader's updates on issues important at AFRICOM. We encourage your comments and feedback.

Further Tribal Demands On Obamamandius

From the Jerusalem Post - Obama and the Jews

With all due deference to the Obama celebrity supporters like Steven Spielberg and George Soros, can Jews herein Israel and in America and other friends of Israel risk a vote for Obama in November? A quick look at the facts should switch on a big red light in most peoples' minds.

First and foremost among the considerations that should trouble friends of Israel is the foreign policy team Obama has selected to advise him. The composition of a candidate's advisory panel is usually a very good indicator of where the candidate will come out on the issues if elected.

This was the test this writer applied to George W. Bush in 2000 at a time when most pundits in Israel and in the Jewish community predicted that his Middle East policy would be a carbon copy of his father's, meaning trouble for Israel. But Bush, the son, had selected a blue-ribbon team of pragmatic and conservative advisors whose views on the Middle East were markedly pro-Israel and pro-democracy. Subsequently, the W. Bush Era became among the closest allies of Israel in her 60-year history.

The opposite is the case with the Obama team. Headed up by Jimmy Carter's ("Israel is an apartheid state") national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Obama's team includes such problematic figures as Anthony Lake, Robert O. Malley and Susan Rice.

One commentator, citing an article by the staunchly left-wing Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, has noted that an Obama presidency including a foreign policy team that included the foregoing and their ideological soul-mates, "would likely have an approach towards Israel radically at odds with those of previous Presidents (both Republican and Democrat)" and is the candidate apt to be "least supportive" of Israel.

Brzezinski has been disseminating vitriol about Israel for three decades and recently publicly defended the Walt-Mearsheimer study which concluded that US policy towards Israel was the result of Jewish pressure and inconsistent with American interests. More recently Brzezinski called for the US to initiate dialogue with Hamas, described Israel's action in the Second Lebanon War as a killing campaign against civilian hostages and earlier this month made a trip to confer with Syria's President Assad, ostensibly unbeknownst to the Obama campaign.

Robert O. Malley, another former Carter Administration diplomat and President Clinton's special advisor on Arab-Israeli affairs, is an unabashed advocate for the Palestinians, co-authoring a spate of anti-Israel propaganda with former Arafat advisor, Hussein Agha, including a tract that blames Israel for the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks and another piece which blames the Bush Administration for continuing Israeli-Palestinian strife.

And then there is Susan Rice, foreign policy advisor to the ill-fated John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004, where she concocted the idea of solving the Middle East problem by appointing none other than Jimmy Carter and James Baker as negotiators, an idea which was later repudiated by her own boss as being unbalanced against Israel. Nor are these the only "bad apples" in Obama's foreign policy bin…

Another problematic indicator is candidate's close association with Jeremiah Wright, Jr., pastor of the Trinity United Community Church (a member of the United Church for Christ, which itself has been rebuked for anti-Israel bias), who is well known for his virulent anti-Israel remarks, including a call for a divestment campaign against Israel for the "injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."

Nor should bring much solace to Jewish voters and friends of Israel that Reverend Wright counts among his closest friends, the nefarious anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan for whom Judaism is a "gutter religion" and Jews are "bloodsuckers." Obama could have picked any one of hundreds of churches in Chicago's South Side; he picked Jeremiah Wright's parsonage, which awarded Farrakhan with the Jeremiah Wright Lifetime Achievement Trumpeteer Award in 2007. And Wright's church is the single largest beneficiary of Obama's charitable giving. Even Jewish columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post felt compelled to ask Obama to clarify his relationship with these anti-Jewish and anti-Israel community leaders, questioning why Obama has stayed steadfast in his allegiance to Pastor Wright over the years.

Is He Supremacist Enough?

With tribal violence roiling central europe, a sustained eruption of primitive, tribal impulses has begun to color the presidential election. Let's just be very sure to call these archaic and atavistic attacks precisely what they are. Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia's 1st District puts it right out there and demands that Michelle Obama kneel and pledge allegiance to his tribe.

Sen. Barack Obama's refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin along with a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem led conservatives on Internet and in the media to question his patriotism. Now Obama's wife, Michelle, has drawn their ire, too, for saying recently that she's really proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Conservative consultants say that combined, the cases could be an issue for Obama in the general election if he wins the nomination, especially as he runs against Vietnam war hero Sen. John McCain.

U.S. Not Planning Bases In Africa

G-Dub's not much of a poker player judging from this classic tell...,

Bill O'Reilly's Anti-Obama Strategery

Folks with no substantive issues to pursue, but with a crystal clear political agenda, will manufacture issues from thin air. Thus the 72 hour grind from Bill O'Reilly on Michelle Obama's decontextualized remarks. In his own fit of "reckless eyeballin" pique - O'Reilly not only insists that Mrs. Obama be made answerable to him for her statements, but in the process unintentionally discloses a very great deal about the collective psychology that he exemplifies;



Oh yeah, I'm not on about the lynching comment as some folks are, because I think that's perpetrating on the same level as O'Reilly is perpetrating from - but I think Gene Robinson's and Keith Olberman's dialog about O'Reilly is right on target.



From Media Matters;

O'Reilly: "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels"

Summary: In a discussion of recent comments made by Michelle Obama, Bill O'Reilly took a call from a listener who stated that, according to "a friend who had knowledge of her," Obama " 'is a very angry,' her word was 'militant woman.' " O'Reilly later stated: "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that's how she really feels -- that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever -- then that's legit. We'll track it down."

The Next Slum

The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements.

Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading.

At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”

Read the full monty by Christopher B. Leinberger at the Atlantic.com

The Tragedy of Suburbia

Africa in 2040

Paul Chefurka's grim assessment of what's in store for Africa. Please read and bookmark this paper.

There is a darkness moving on the face of the land. We catch glimpses of it in newscasts from far-off places that few of us have ever seen. We hear hints of it on the radio, read snippets about it in newspapers and magazines. The stories are always fragmentary, lacking context or connection. They speak of things like inflation in Zimbabwe, war in Chad, electricity problems in Johannesburg, famine in Malawi, pipeline fires in Nigeria, political violence in Kenya, cholera in Congo. Each snapshot of grief heaves briefly into view, then fades back into obscurity. With every fresh story we are left asking ourselves, "Is there something bigger going on here, some unseen thread connecting these dots? Or is this just more of the same from a continent that has known more than its share of misery?"

This paper is my attempt to connect those dots, to tease some order out of the chaos of the news reports. I will use some very simple numerical techniques to fill in the missing lines, and in the end a picture will emerge. I can tell you in advance that the picture is fearsome beyond imagining, and you may well be tempted to avert your gaze. I would advise you instead to screw up your courage and take a good look. It is crucial to our future as a civilized race.

I expect the collapse to turn Africa into the next arena for a quick game of "Disaster Capitalism." Large trans-national entities will make offers of "significant assistance" to particular countries in return for untrammeled access to their resource base. The vultures will be lining the banks of the Zambezi waiting for the feast, no doubt about it.

"I know there's rumors in Ghana `All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here,' Bush said at a news conference with Kufuor. "That's baloney. As they say in Texas, that's bull."

Instead, he said the new command — unique to the Pentagon's structure — was aimed at more effectively reorganizing U.S. military efforts in Africa to strengthen African nations' peacekeeping, trafficking and anti-terror efforts.

"The whole purpose of Africom is to help African leaders deal with African problems," Bush said.

Bush sought to dispel the notion about militarization of Africa even before giving reporters a chance to ask him about it. Kufuour said he was satisfied with Bush's explanation, and thanked him for announcing it "so that the relationship between us and the United States will grow stronger."

For now, the administration has decided to continue operating Africom out of existing U.S. bases on the continent with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. War-wrecked Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host a headquarters. Bush said before the trip that "if" a headquarters for Africom is ever established on the continent, he would "seriously consider" Liberia as the host.

Talk Radio in a Tizzy

Update: F@&k Talk Radio!!! I'm now officially proud of Wisconsin!

I am utterly ashamed of - and deeply disgusted by - the individual and collective mentality attacking Obama. Good reminder of precisely what kind of mentality was involved in attacking and murdering little boys for the crime of "reckless eyeballing"

Talk radio has made hay with this comment ALL DAY LONG today.

Your thoughts?

Black Gold in the 21st Century

The average American daily uses the oil energy equivalent of 120 healthy adult slaves...,

Prisons and Slavery: Seeking Cheap Labor and Control of African-Americans

Throughout history those in power within a given period of time have sought to control in some way groups that they perceived to be a threat and/or groups they wished to dominate for political or economic gain. The methods of control have varied from economic marginalization to thought control via propaganda to subjecting them to the control of the legal system to total or partial segregation and finally, in extreme cases, total extermination (e.g., genocide). In America such control has targeted Native Americans, African slaves, labor agitators and many others.

It can also be said that the use of inmates as a form of cheap labor has been part of the capitalist system from the beginning, as owners seek to maximize profits however they can, including using the cheapest form of labor, whether it be slaves, immigrant labor, or inmates. In fact, taking advantage of those imprisoned (in various forms, including slavery) has been common among nations for centuries.

President Clinton's Prison Legacy

Too Little Too Late
Preserving law and order has historically been a Republican issue. Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson's losing opponent in the 1964 presidential race, was the first to campaign on crime control in an attempt to counter the prevailing "liberal" mood of the 1960's. Following Goldwater's lead, Richard Nixon called for an increase in punitive crime control measures and a "war on drugs" that led to an increase in incarceration for low-level drug offenders.2 The Republican National Committee's unleashing of the now famous "Willie Horton" advertisement during the race between Vice President George Bush and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis solidified the rhetorical advantage held by Republicans in the law and order arena.

President Bill Clinton: The Incarceration President
When William Jefferson Clinton took office in 1993, he was embraced by some as a moderate change from the previous twelve years of tough on crime Republican administrations. Now, eight years later, the latest criminal justice statistics show that it was actually Democratic President Bill Clinton who implemented arguably the most punitive platform on crime in the last two decades. In fact, "tough on crime" policies passed during the Clinton Administration's tenure resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.

Although Republicans are normally thought to hold the tough on crime mantle, in President Clinton's first-term (1992-1996), 148,000 more state and federal prisoners were added than under President Reagan's first term (1980-1984), and 34,000 more than were added under President Bush's four-year term (1988-1992).

When President Clinton Stole the "Get Tough on Crime" Show
When President Bill Clinton included "the war on crime" as a major tenet in both his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns, the past ten years had already witnessed the largest incarceration increase in the nation's history.4 During his 1992 campaign, to illustrate his resolve, President Clinton actually interrupted his campaigning to return to his home state of Arkansas to oversee the execution of mentally retarded death row inmate Ricky Ray Rector.5

Throughout its tenure, the Clinton administration consistently supported increased penalties and additional prison construction. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 provided state and municipal governments with $30 billion to add 100,000 new police officers, to build more prisons, and to employ more prison guards, as well as funding for crime prevention programs.

Crime Control Impact: A shift in resources from communities to corrections
The money and resources spent by governments and private interests on the criminal justice system is so large that it is having a profound impact on our economy, and as a result, our society. In 1994, just two years after President Bill Clinton took office, there were 1.4 million prison and jail inmates in the U.S. and by 1997, the criminal justice system employed more than two million people,6 and cost taxpayers more than $70 billion a year. One estimate suggests that by 2002, the criminal justice system will cost taxpayers more than $200 billion annually.7 Today, there are more people working in the criminal justice system than are working in community and social service occupations (like employment, vocational, mental health and substance abuse counseling).8 Ironically, these are the occupations that are most likely to be geared towards preventing crime, and helping to rehabilitate ex-offenders, as opposed to occupations that are designed to arrest, prosecute, detain and imprison. With two million people behind bars in the U.S., and 4.5 million people on probation and parole, America ends the Clinton-era with at least 8.5 million people who are either under the control of the correctional system or working for the criminal justice system.

While everyone is affected by the nation's quadrupling of the prison population, the African American community has borne the brunt of the nation's incarceration boom. From 1980 to 1992, the African American incarceration rate increased by an average of 138.4 per 100,000 per year. Still, despite a more than doubling of the African American incarceration rate in the 12 years prior to President Clinton's term in office, the African American incarceration rate continued to increase by an average rate of 100.4 per 100,000 per year. In total, between 1980 and 1999, the incarceration rate for African Americans more than tripled from 1156 per 100,000, to 3,620 per 100,000.

The FISA Bill Has Expired

The FISA bill, ostensibly designed to allow the feds to monitor overseas communications to/from the United States, has expired.



The House of Representatives would not accept a provision that gave RETROACTIVE immunity to telephone companies who had obeyed Homeland Security Department orders to include all domestic communications in their sweep. The President would not sign the Bill without the retroactive immunity provision [which the Senate had dutifully included in its version of the Bill].

Among telephone companies, QWest is the only one to have not buckled under Homeland Security pressure to surveille clients. Thus, QWest is the only telephone company to not need retroactive immunity for blatantly illegal acts that sold out American liberty.

Antidepressants and School Shootings, Suicide, Addiction

Cutting the Internet Cables Didn't Work...,

Iran established its first oil products bourse Sunday in a free trade zone on the Persian Gulf Island of Kish, the country's oil ministry said.

A statement posted on the ministry's Web site said 100 tons of polyethylene consignment was traded at the market's opening on the island, which houses the offices of about 100 Iranian and foreign oil companies.

Oil and petrochemical products will be traded in Iranian Rials, as well as all other hard currencies, the statement quoted Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari as saying. About 20 brokers are already active in the market, it said.

"The bourse provides an economic opportunity for Iranians, other countries and foreign customers," Nozari was quoted as saying.

Iran produces more than 20 million tons of petrochemical products per year.

Iran has already registered for another oil bourse, in which it has said it hopes to trade oil in Euros instead of dollars, to reduce any American influence over the Islamic Republic's economy.

A bourse official, Mahdi Karbasian, told the IRNA official news agency that such an oil market would begin operating within the next year.

While most oil markets are traded in U.S. dollars, Iran first floated the idea of trading oil in Euros in the early 2000s during the tenure of reformist president Mohammad Khatami. It gained new life after the nationalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005.

As the fourth largest oil producer in the world, Iran has a measure of influence over international oil markets. The country ranks second for output among OPEC Countries, and controls about 5 percent of the global oil supply.

Paxil's a Helluva Drug....,

It took long enough, but at last the lid seems to be opening up on the psychopharmacological motive underlying the Valentine's day massacre at NIU.

Stephen Kazmierczak - the Illinois gunman stopped taking Paxil (Seroxat)… according to news channel ABC7 Chicago - full story here:

“Authorities have not figured out what motivated the man, described as a hardworking, award-winning former honor student by NIU faculty, to go on a shooting rampage that killed five students.

Kazmierczak, 27, was treated for mental illness nine years ago. He was considered volatile, according to a staff member who worked at the facility at the time, and violent if he stopped taking the antidepressant and anti-anxiety pills prescribed for him. Including Paxil, it was medication he was supposed to still be taking and apparently stopped a couple of weeks ago.”

So Paxil/Seroxat may have been involved in this tragedy, however we need to know the details - we need to know the truth.

Real Change

Do you remember when Halliburton relocated its world HQ to Dubai last year?

If you could, you would too.

I came across this post this morning and it documents the most jaw-dropping economic development one could ever imagine outside the annals of pure science fiction.

Dubai in 1990:

The same street in 2003;

The same street in 2007;

Go check out the full monty at Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis where there are many more mind-boggling images to document this trend.