the world until yesterday

Guardian | Anthropology was born of an evolutionary model by which 19th-century men such as Lewis Henry Morgan and Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", envisioned societies as stages in a linear progression of advancement, leading, as they conceived it, from savagery to barbarism to civilisation.

Each of these phases of human development was correlated, in their calculations, with specific technological innovations. Fire, ceramics and the bow and arrow marked the savage. With the domestication of animals, the rise of agriculture and the invention of metalworking, we entered the level of the barbarian. Literacy implied civilisation. Every society, it was assumed, progressed through the same stages, in the same sequence. The cultures of the world came to be seen as a living museum in which individual societies represented evolutionary moments captured and mired in time, each one a stage in the imagined ascent to civilisation. It followed with the certainty of Victorian rectitude that advanced societies had an obligation to assist the backward, to civilise the savage, a moral duty that played well into the needs of empire.

Oddly, it took a physicist to challenge and in time shatter this orthodoxy. Frans Boas, trained in Germany a generation before Einstein, was interested in the optical properties of water, and throughout his doctoral studies his research was plagued by problems of perception, which came to fascinate him. In the eclectic way of the best of 19th-century scholarship, inquiry in one academic field led to another. What was the nature of knowing? Who decided what was to be known? Boas became interested in how seemingly random beliefs and convictions converged into this thing called "culture", a term that he was the first to promote as an organising principle, a useful point of intellectual departure.

Far ahead of his time, Boas believed that every distinct social community, every cluster of people distinguished by language or adaptive inclination, was a unique facet of the human legacy and its promise. He became the first scholar to explore in a truly open and neutral manner how human social perceptions are formed, and how members of distinct societies become conditioned to see and interpret the world. Boas insisted that his students conduct research in the language of place, and participate fully in the daily lives of the people they studied. Every effort should be made to understand the perspective of the other, to learn the way they perceive the world, the very nature of their thoughts. Such an approach demanded, by definition, a willingness to step back from the constraints of one's own prejudices and preconceptions.

This ethnographic orientation, distilled in the concept of cultural relativism, was a radical departure, as unique in its way as was Einstein's theory of relativity in the field of physics. It became the central revelation of modern anthropology. Cultures do not exist in some absolute sense; each is but a model of reality, the consequence of one particular set of intellectual and spiritual choices made, however successfully, many generations before. The goal of the anthropologist is not just to decipher the exotic other, but also to embrace the wonder of distinct and novel cultural possibilities, that we might enrich our understanding of human nature and just possibly liberate ourselves from cultural myopia, the parochial tyranny that has haunted humanity since the birth of memory.

Boas lived to see his ideas inform much of social anthropology, but it wasn't until more than half a century after his death that modern genetics proved his intuitions to be true. Studies of the human genome leave no doubt that the genetic endowment of humanity is a single continuum. Race is a fiction. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all descendants of a relatively small number of individuals who walked out of Africa some 60,000 years ago and then, on a journey that lasted 40,000 years, some 2,500 generations carried the human spirit to every corner of the habitable world.

It follows, as Boas believed, that all cultures share essentially the same mental acuity, the same raw genius. Whether this intellectual capacity and potential is exercised in stunning works of technological innovation, as has been the great historical achievement of the West, or through the untangling of the complex threads of memory inherent in a myth – a primary concern, for example, of the Aborigines of Australia – is simply a matter of choice and orientation, adaptive insights and cultural priorities. There is no hierarchy of progress in the history of culture, no Social Darwinian ladder to success. The Victorian notion of the savage and the civilised, with European industrial society sitting proudly at the apex of a pyramid of advancement that widens at the base to the so-called primitives of the world, has been thoroughly discredited – indeed, scientifically ridiculed for the racial and colonial notion that it was, as relevant to our lives today as the belief of 19th-century clergymen that the Earth was but 6,000 years old.

the ghost in the machine?

Guardian | The origin of life is one of the great outstanding mysteries of science. How did a non-living mixture of molecules transform themselves into a living organism? What sort of mechanism might be responsible?

A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin produced a convincing explanation for how life on Earth evolved from simple microbes to the complexity of the biosphere today, but he pointedly left out how life got started in the first place. "One might as well speculate about the origin of matter," he quipped. But that did not stop generations of scientists from investigating the puzzle.

The problem is, whatever took place happened billions of years ago, and all traces long ago vanished – indeed, we may never have a blow-by-blow account of the process. Nevertheless we may still be able to answer the simpler question of whether life's origin was a freak series of events that happened only once, or an almost inevitable outcome of intrinsically life-friendly laws. On that answer hinges the question of whether we are alone in the universe, or whether our galaxy and others are teeming with life.

Most research into life's murky origin has been carried out by chemists. They've tried a variety of approaches in their attempts to recreate the first steps on the road to life, but little progress has been made. Perhaps that is no surprise, given life's stupendous complexity. Even the simplest bacterium is incomparably more complicated than any chemical brew ever studied.

But a more fundamental obstacle stands in the way of attempts to cook up life in the chemistry lab. The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology. DNA is described as a genetic "database", containing "instructions" on how to build an organism. The genetic "code" has to be "transcribed" and "translated" before it can act. And so on. If we cast the problem of life's origin in computer jargon, attempts at chemical synthesis focus exclusively on the hardware – the chemical substrate of life – but ignore the software – the informational aspect. To explain how life began we need to understand how its unique management of information came about.

the secret history of the gun control agenda in america

theatlantic | The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight.

The eighth-grade students gathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation’s Capitol. But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.

The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. “The American people in general and the black people in particular,” he announced, must

take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.

Seale then turned to the others. “All right, brothers, come on. We’re going inside.” He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state’s most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.

two different worlds we live in: lawfulness and perceived police misconduct

ssrn | What should we make of this? At least three points are important:

First, people’s ordinary intuitions about rightful police behavior do not comport with the law. That is, people do not seem to care very much at all about police adherence to constitutional rules when assessing whether the police should be punished. They care instead primarily about the procedural justice and fairness of the way the police act when dealing with people in the community. This could result from at least two conditions. The first condition is one in which people are aware both of legality and fairness factors, but consciously choose to credit fairness over legality. A second condition is one in which people choose fairness over legality because they are unaware of -- or perhaps more precisely -- untutored in legality. If this condition holds, then we would expect people’s assessments of legality and fairness to be coextensive.

To put this point another way, people rely on fairness to evaluate police conduct because they do not know the law. On this account procedural justice is a kind of “everyday lawyering.”62 As best we can tell, the second condition is a better descriptor of our data.63 People do not know the law and apparently judge police behavior with reference to their procedural justice judgments.

Second, that people “know” fairness and not the law means, we think, that it is extremely important to separate lawfulness from unlawfulness on the one hand, and fairness and unfairness on the other while specifying a relationship among them as we do in the model presented above. Perhaps the most important reason to do this is that police are creatures of law and are trained in it. Police are not everyday lawyers. They strive to conform their behavior to set of norms and scripts heavily influenced by formal law.

The bifurcation we see on the spectrum of evaluations that ordinary people make regarding police behavior represents a social psychological disjuncture in police-citizen engagement that is damaging to citizens, counterproductive for policing agencies and ultimately inconsistent with the police accountability project that is critical to so many cities today. Of course, one way to respond

to the fact that citizens are unaware of the law is to educate them about constitutional law in the hope that they may comport their internal assessment processes in ways that are much more consistent with articulated law. To be blunt, this is likely a fool’s errand. The resources involved would be enormous, and the project bumps up against the natural inclination that people have to choose evaluative methods that are consistent with and affirm their social identity.

Constitutional law, as it is currently composed, does not emphasize the importance of quality of police treatment, but rather places a premium on the police officer’s intention when she decides to exercise her discretion to engage someone. The values that the law protects are not those that ordinary folks, at least in this area, regularly look to when constructing individual or group identity as decades of social psychology make clear. Nothing about constitutional law prohibits a police officer from being rude, and very little of constitutional criminal procedure promotes the kinds of dignity concerns that people tend to care about.

Indeed, as our review of the constitutional imperative of suspicion which highlights much of the law is even at odds with concerns about human dignity.64 When the police deal with people in the community their legal framing encourages them to look at people as potentially engaged in “suspicious” activity. It is identifying signs of such activity that justifies police officer intervention into people’s life. Hence, when people deal with the police their experiences are tinged with mistrust and a demeaning tone. The police already suspect those they deal with are “up to no good” and they adopt the tone on inquisitors to gather data in support of these suspicions.

One possible reform strategy is to advocate change in the legal rules that shape police conduct – perhaps along the lines that Bill Stuntz has suggested.65 We worry that this approach is an exercise in futility. Thus, we may be better served by educating police officers about procedural justice. Police officers need to comport their behavior with constitutional rules, yes, but they also need to be encouraged to treat people with dignity and respect regardless of whether the rules require it.

Third, that the approach we have outlined likely leads to safer streets is only one of its benefits. As British legal scholar, Neil Walker, notes “the police are both minders and reminders of community – a producer of significant messages about the kind of place that community is or aspires to be.” Taking Walker seriously promotes an understanding of the policing enterprise that is different from is different from the usual conception that emphasizes solution of collective action problems, which in turn emphasizes police primarily as crime control agents. We do not doubt the positive benefits of policing agencies casting themselves as necessary utilities for the production of safe, functioning communities akin to well-lit streets, clean water, and cheap, widely available electricity. One must be careful in making the public utility analogy,

however. A consequential conception of a public good, which the utility analogy clearly is, conceives of production of the good as one that can be enjoyed by individuals and aggregated up, so to speak. Thus its benefits – and costs – can always be assessed in terms of efficiencies at the individual level, and it is possible to imagine the good’s production by some entity other than the state.

We think our account of the way in which people assess the rightfulness of policing behavior is more consistent with Waldron’s account of a public good which acknowledges that "no account of [its] worth to anyone can be given except by concentrating on what [it is] worth to everyone together." Truly good policing then, is enjoyed by all people in common whether or not they experience positive outcomes as individuals. Generation of it is “wholly, directly and reciprocally dependent upon its simultaneous generation for and enjoyment by certain others.”66

We can go further and say that our argument not only implies a demand for policing that is assertedly social as Waldron suggests, but constitutive, too, in the way that Ian Loader and Neil Walker claim. It is not enough for policing to simply solve collective action problems associated with the project of crime reduction. Policing also can and should play a role in the production of positive feelings of self-identity that helps to “construct and sustain our ‘wefeeling’—our very felt sense of common publicness.”67 Legitimacy, then, can be a key driver of a healthy and properly functioning democratic government. We need to do more work to fully justify this last potentially normative claim. No doubt many are made uncomfortable by the notion that police should be involved in this work. What we know, however, is that they are involved in it. The empirical distinctions we demonstrate between lawfulness assessments of police conduct on the one hand and fairness assessments on the other, powerfully suggest that people understand police treatment of citizens in the constitutive manner that Loader and Walker describe.

The focus that people place upon the procedural justice of police actions points first to the potentially negative consequences of an exclusive focus on lawfulness. If the police are not cognizant of and responsive to public concerns they are blind to the source of public feelings that police actions are inappropriate and should be sanctioned. Further, the police miss the opportunity to be involved in the broader effort to build people’s ties to their communities that build healthy and vibrant communities that are both more open to cooperation with the police and better able to generate the types of social and other forms of capital that can help communities to “build their way out of crime”.68

what if? - REALLY, "WHAT IF?"

NYTimes | WE typically blame Washington for not doing more to help the economy grow. But what if we have it backward: What if it is the weak economy that is driving the failures in Washington?

That is what Benjamin Friedman, a Harvard economist who has studied the way slow growth frays societies and strains politics, thinks. “We could be stuck in a trap,” he told me last week. “We could be stuck in a perverse equilibrium in which our absence of growth is delivering political paralysis, and the political paralysis preserves the absence of growth.”

Consider how different our politics might be today if the economy had not collapsed in 2008 and not been mired in sluggish growth ever since. A ballpark estimate suggests that if the economy were to grow one percentage point more than expected in each year over the next 10, the deficit would shrink by more than $3 trillion. That would be more than enough to set the ratio of our debt to our annual economic output on a comforting downward trajectory. Moreover, it would happen without making cuts to a single program, like Medicare or food stamps, or without raising a single dollar of additional tax revenue. Even a much smaller boost to growth — say one-tenth of a percentage point per year, or even half that — would make Congress and the White House’s burden hundreds of billions of dollars lighter.

And consider how much better deficit reduction might feel to families in a growing economy, compared with a limping one. The recovery in the past year has delivered only sluggish wage growth, with much erased by inflation as more of a worker’s paycheck goes to paying for more expensive groceries, tuition bills and gas. The end of a payroll tax holiday was only one small portion of the fiscal deal the White House and Republican leaders brokered at the turn of the year. Yet it was enough to wipe out a full year’s worth of wage gains entirely.

Indeed, even before the economic crisis, middle-class incomes had stagnated, with the economy’s gains primarily going to a thin sliver of wealthy families. Then, of course, the crisis hit, forcing millions into unemployment and millions more into poverty. Given that reality, Democrats have fought for making the George W. Bush-era tax cuts permanent for 98 percent of households. Republicans have argued that nobody should have to shoulder the burden of tax increases at all.

“Everything is easier to do if the economy is growing,” says William G. Gale of the Brookings Institution. “If you want to cut spending, it is easier to do in an environment where people think they are going to have robust income growth and aren’t as dependent on government. In terms of taxes, growth gets you not just more income to tax, but taxpayers moving into higher rates.”

extreme weather grows in frequency and intensity around the world

snow blankets Jerusalem

NYTimes | Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable: Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace.

Especially lately. China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk. 

Bush fires are raging across Australia, fueled by a record-shattering heat wave. Pakistan was inundated by unexpected flooding in September. A vicious storm bringing rain, snow and floods just struck the Middle East. And in the United States, scientists confirmed this week what people could have figured out simply by going outside: last year was the hottest since records began. 

“Each year we have extreme weather, but it’s unusual to have so many extreme events around the world at once,” said Omar Baddour, chief of the data management applications division at the World Meteorological Organization, in Geneva. “The heat wave in Australia; the flooding in the U.K., and most recently the flooding and extensive snowstorm in the Middle East — it’s already a big year in terms of extreme weather calamity.” 

Such events are increasing in intensity as well as frequency, Mr. Baddour said, a sign that climate change is not just about rising temperatures, but also about intense, unpleasant, anomalous weather of all kinds.

sanity is the ability to live within the laws of nature

denverpost | In November, I watched the two parts of Ken Burns’ new documentary film, “The Dust Bowl.” The film presents a lesson for us today.

When farmers first arrived in the large area surrounding the Oklahoma Panhandle, the ground was covered with hardy buffalo grass that firmly protected the soil from erosion by the wind. Then each farmer acted freely and independently to do what was economically best for him. He plowed up the buffalo grass and planted wheat. The more land he plowed and planted, the greater was his income. Almost a decade of very low rainfall dried up the land, but the farmers hung on, plowing up even more land and hoping that there would be rain next year. Most important, there were no government agencies interfering with the freedom and independence of the farmers by trying to promote conservation or to limit the acreage of buffalo grass that was being plowed. The collective action of all of the individual farmers, each acting in his own best interest, resulted in the buffalo grass being stripped from enormous areas of the Great Plains. When the wind started blowing over the exposed soil, the dust began its assault on all living things in the area and beyond. The suffering was so severe as to be difficult to imagine.

A few doomsday voices pointed out the destructive consequences of the elimination of the buffalo grass over such a large area but these voices were ignored by the farmers who resented any suggestion that their agricultural practices were responsible for the disaster. The relief and public works programs initiated by President Franklin Roosevelt provided some immediate help to the suffering people, allowing them to hang on a bit longer.

The lesson I got from this is that when you have large numbers of individuals practicing free enterprise in an unregulated society, with each individual (or today it could also be each company) acting in his or her (or its) best interest, the result can be disastrous to all. The great recession that started around 2008 is only the most recent example of this. These are examples of the “Tragedy of the Commons” in real life just as Garrett Hardin portrayed it.

The long-term solution of the Dust Bowl problem came only after the Federal Government purchased large areas of farmed grassland and replanted these areas in grass to create national grasslands. What the free and independent farmers had destroyed, the “socialistic” Federal Government restored.

ocean currents and sea ice

mit | Each winter, wide swaths of the Arctic Ocean freeze to form sheets of sea ice that spread over millions of square miles. This ice acts as a massive sun visor for the Earth, reflecting solar radiation and shielding the planet from excessive warming.

The Arctic ice cover reaches its peak each year in mid-March, before shrinking with warmer spring temperatures. But over the last three decades, this winter ice cap has shrunk: Its annual maximum reached record lows, according to satellite observations, in 2007 and again in 2011.

Understanding the processes that drive sea-ice formation and advancement can help scientists predict the future extent of Arctic ice coverage — an essential factor in detecting climate fluctuations and change. But existing models vary in their predictions for how sea ice will evolve.

Now researchers at MIT have developed a new method for optimally combining models and observations to accurately simulate the seasonal extent of Arctic sea ice and the ocean circulation beneath. The team applied its synthesis method to produce a simulation of the Labrador Sea, off the southern coast of Greenland, that matched actual satellite and ship-based observations in the area.

on the deep-state politics of legalization...,

wonder why the top always bottoms out as lizards/dragons/reptillians?

Here are the words of the creator of this piece, Don Harkins:

Over the last several years I have evolved and discarded several theories in an attempt to explain why it is that most people cannot see truth -- even when it smacks them in the face. Those of us who can see “the conspiracy” have participated in countless conversations amongst ourselves that address the frustration of most peoples' inability to comprehend the extremely well-documented arguments which we use to describe the process of our collective enslavement and exploitation. The most common explanation to be arrived at is that most people just “don't want to see” what is really going on.

Extremely evil men and women who make up the world's power-elite have cleverly cultivated a virtual pasture so grass green that few people seldom, if ever, bother to look up from where they are grazing long enough to notice the brightly colored tags stapled to their ears.

The same people who cannot see their enslavement for the pasture grass have a tendency to view as insane “conspiracy theorists” those of us who can see the past the farm and into the parlor of his feudal lordship's castle.

Finally, I understand why.

It's not that those who don't see that their freedom is vanishing under the leadership of the power-elite “don't want to see it” -- they simply can't see what is happening to them because of the unpierced veils that block their view.

All human endeavors are a filtration process. Sports is one of the best examples. We play specific sports until we get kicked off the playground. The pro athletes we pay big bucks to watch just never got kicked off the playground. Where millions of kids play little league each spring, they are filtered out until there are about 50 guys who go to the World Series in October.

Behind the first veil: There are over six billion people on the planet. Most of them live and die without having seriously contemplated anything other than what it takes to keep their lives together. Ninety percent of all humanity will live and die without having pierced the first veil.

The first veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the first veil and find the world of politics. We will vote, be active and have an opinion. Our opinions are shaped by the physical world around us; we have a tendency to accept that government officials, network media personalities and other “experts” are voices of authority. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the second veil.

The second veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the second veil to explore the world of history, the relationship between man and government and the meaning of self-government through constitutional and common law. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the third veil.

The third veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the third veil to find that the resources of the world, including people, are controlled by extremely wealthy and powerful families whose incorporated old world assets have, with modern extortion strategies, become the foundation upon which the world's economy is currently indebted. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fourth veil.

The fourth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fourth veil to discover the Illuminati, Freemasonry and the other secret societies. These societies use symbols and perform ceremonies that perpetuate the generational transfers of arcane knowledge that is used to keep the ordinary people in political, economic and spiritual bondage to the oldest bloodlines on earth. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the fifth veil.

The fifth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the fifth veil to learn that the secret societies are so far advanced technologically that time travel and interstellar communications have no boundaries and controlling the actions of people is what their members do as offhandedly as we tell our children when they must go to bed. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without having pierced the sixth veil.

The sixth veil: Ten percent of us will pierce the sixth veil where the dragons and lizards and aliens we thought were the fictional monsters of childhood literature are real and are the controlling forces behind the secret societies. Ninety percent of the people in this group will live and die without piercing the seventh veil.

The seventh veil: I do not know what is behind the seventh veil. I think it is where your soul is evolved to the point you can exist on Earth and be the man Gandhi was, or the woman Peace Pilgrim was - people so enlightened, they brighten the world around them no matter what.

The eighth veil? Piercing the eighth veil probably reveals God and the pure energy that is the life force in all living things - which are, I think, one and the same.

If my math is accurate there are only about 60,000 people on the planet who have pierced the sixth veil. The irony here is too incredible: Those who are stuck behind veils one through five have little choice but to view the people who have pierced the veils beyond them as insane. With each veil pierced, exponentially shrinking numbers of increasingly enlightened people are deemed insane by exponentially increasing masses of decreasingly enlightened people.

Adding to the irony, the harder a “sixth or better veiler” tries to explain what he is able to see to those who can't, the more insane he appears to them.

Our enemy, the State

Behind the first two veils we find the great majority of people on the planet. They are tools of the state: Second veilers are the gullible voters whose ignorance justify the actions of politicians who send first veilers off to die in foreign lands as cannon fodder -- their combined stations in life are to believe that the self-serving machinations of the power-elite are matters of national security worth dying for.

Third, fourth, fifth and sixth veilers are of increasing liability to the state because of their decreasing ability to be used as tools to consolidate power and wealth of the many into the hands of the power-elite. It is common for these people to sacrifice more of their relationships with friends and family, their professional careers and personal freedom with each veil they pierce.

Albert Jay Nock (1870-1945), author of “Our Enemy, the State” (1935), explained what happens to those who find the seventh and eighth veils: “What was the best that the state could find to do with an actual Socrates and an actual Jesus when it had them? Merely to poison one and crucify the other, for no reason but that they were too intolerably embarrassing to be allowed to live any longer.”

Conclusions

And so now we know that it's not that our countrymen are so committed to their lives that, “they don't want to see,” the mechanisms of their enslavement and exploitation. They simply “can't see” it as surely as I cannot see what's on the other side of a closed curtain.

The purpose of this essay is threefold: To help the handful of people in the latter veils to understand why the masses have little choice but to interpret their clarity as insanity; 2. To help people behind the first two veils understand that living, breathing and thinking are just the beginning and; 3. Show people that the greatest adventure of our life is behind the next veil because that is just one less veil between ourselves and God.

Watch the Conclusion Here:

a brief history of dollar debasement

seekingalpha | Technically the U.S. left the gold standard in 1971, but in reality we abandoned it in 1913 with the creation of the Fed. The two publicly visible gold-standard slippages of the past century (FDR's repricing and Nixon's cancellation) were merely necessary adjustments following decades of gradually increasing gold-price inconsistency caused by continuous inflation. Given this, it seems hard to imagine that the Fed was created for any purpose other to create this inflation, i.e. to effectively raise our taxes under the table.

This has enormous implications for today's long-term investor. Our most constant and predictable financial reality is the continued inflationary policy of the Fed. Given this, and assuming the U.S. is unlikely to pull another rabbit out of the global hat as Nixon and Ford did with the petrodollar in the early 70s, the dollar will almost certainly continue losing purchasing power indefinitely, in terms of both commodities and other currencies. And when the oil-producing nations finally agree to accept payment in currencies other than the dollar, expect a precipitous drop. Invest accordingly.

the importance of hesychasm in the history of orthodoxy

ohmksea | Hesychasm* constitutes the quintessence of Orthodox tradition, having related itself to everything that the term “Orthodoxy” embodies and expresses. Orthodoxy outside the Hesychastic tradition is unthinkable and nonexistent. Besides, Hesychasm itself is the “philosopher’s stone” by which one can recognize the genuine Christian image. In the Orthodox tradition, the “divine charismas” are acquired through fasting, vigils and prayer. And it should be clarified, that Hesychasm is understood first of all as the course towards theosis and the experience of theosis, and only secondly, as a (theological) recording of this method of experience. In Christianity (the authentic Christian conscience), we know that textual recordings are basically pursuant to practice and that they comprise descriptions of that practice; they do not however comprise a substitute. Saint Gregory Palamas’ “successors” are not located in academic theology; they can only be found in the continuance of his ascetic lifestyle.

«Hesychasm, as an ascetic therapeutic treatment, was at the core of Orthodoxy, even from the time of the Apostles, and it prevailed throughout the entire Roman kingdom, in the East and in the West» (Fr. John Romanides). This was the responsible verification of one of the most reliable researchers of Hesychasm and of Saint Gregory Palamas, i.e., father John Romanides. In the framework of a tradition that was spiritually uplifted by Hesychasm, it is easy to understand and to interpret the national, social and (even) political history of Romanity (Fr. John Romanides). It is precisely within this framework that one can also properly evaluate the contribution of Saint Gregory Palamas. “Being a continuation of the ancient Fathers”, of the united and indivisible patristic tradition, he “expressed –according to the venerable Geron, father Theocletos Dionysiatis- the eternal spirit of the Orthodox Church, by reviving its experiences, its practices, its teachings and its promises.» He contributed decisively in this way, towards the preservation of the Church’s overall identity.

the decline of christian spirituality in the roman catholic religious organization

digilander | Tracking the history of the decline of authentic spirituality in the Roman Catholic Religious Organization [RCRO] has many key events or points that cannot be all listed here in a single post. The best thing is to enter this topic gradually. There is method behind how topics are introduced.

Even the RCRO was at first highly critical of what was called "devotio moderna" during the late medieval and early modern period. But since its own authentically spiritual tradition was effectively dying (murdered by the RCRO itself), there was a void that could not withstand the flood of modern devotionalism. Modern devotionalism is the kind of emotionalism that the older Spiritual Directors warned against. It was called enthusiasmos, mania, and hysteria. It is a selfish, self-preoccupied, and auto-erotic narcissistic concern for being right and correct, often in the eyes of others and oneself.

The very basic difference between spirituality and the pseudo-spirituality of this emotionalism (that has deep ramifications to brought out later when we discuss the differences between nous, dianoia, ethical and intellectual virtues, and so on) is to be find in some of the older catechism "talks" some exceptional Fathers had with adult converts who were recently Baptized/Chrismated (originally, the instruction was the night after chrismation when the newly chrismated stayed in the church with the Bishop or Father). In the talks that have been recorded, there is a consistency from the 5th century to the 19th century that reveals the catholicity of these instructions. So, I summarize them.

The niptic Fathers teach that the type of emotionalism that characterizes the western forms of modern devotion are to be avoided. It is true, for example, that one is to try to pray with all one's thought, feeling, and attention focussed on the prayer even at the stage of verbal prayer. But such as we contra-naturally are, we do not have the power to attend fully and faithfully (its a lost natural capacity that needs to be regained as a skilled habit), nor the right attitude or feeling and any attempt on our part to emotionally try to feel the right feeling is imagination. We must work solely with focussing our thought (by stilling) and attention, and then, the prayer will teach us what to feel, how to worship, and elicit the appropriate response from us if and only if we are participating seriously in the ethical askesis and liturgical life of the Church as prior and contextual conditioning, so to speak. Without these other two, our soul's are not the previously furrowed or prepared "raw material" that can be appropriately worked on towards transformation.

This is why the Church gives us formal prayers to "recite" and the Psalms. We do not know what to feel or how to pray and need to be taught. In modern times, even the praiseworthy attempt to be deeply attentive is misguided. The attempt to attend takes the form as a concern with what to think, what to feel, and what to imagine during prayers and Divine Services. This is precisely to be as consumed, as distracted, and as dissipated in one's own self-preoccupied fantasies of being a good worshipper as the fellow thinking about his meal, and perhaps, football game and nap after the Liturgy.

Such a state of mind and its concerns is the exact opposite of the sober wakefulness needed. Lets call it "self-meddling preoccupation with one's attitude." One is just to attend to the prayers and Divine Services with a certain fullness of presence. In the beginning, one may feel cold. One has no feeling for these things. One is impatient. One's feet or back hurts. One's kids are an irritating embarrassment and you hope others didn't notice. That puts you in a bad mood of which you feel ashamed, and so, you do not try to make the effort attend because you feel unworthy, and thus, don't FEEL like it. Again, one falls into making it an issue of emotion. One is always catching oneself distracted, irritated, and inattentive. One notices how this insight may also lead one to forget again to try to just attend. To notice this is a first moment of discrimination (diakrisis).

Fantasy begins when I try to search for a way to give myself or make myself have the appropriate attitudes and feelings. Make no attempt to feel what one thinks one should feel. That is the role of the Holy Spirit through the Services, Psalms, Prayers, and Hymnography of the Church. Instead, noting one's distraction, irritability, pain, (pseudo-spiritual) passional concern over what to feel, and inattention, try again to just attend. Listen. This is the first baby step in dispassion (apatheia).

By contrast, the emotionalism of modern devotionalism is passional quicksand. Intensified, it can become refined into many fine shades of erotomania (eroticism and mania - manic).

orthodox spirituality compared and contrasted with other religious traditions

digilander | Development of the Soul

Although to describe in more detail how would take us too far afield, all three traditions are pretty much in agreement about the nature of the passions of the soul in its fallen, contra-natural, or samsaric (Yoga and Buddhist term roughly equivalent to both "external man" and "world" in St. John the Apostle's sense) state. All three would agree there are two kinds of virtue: practical or ethical and intellectual or contemplative. There is also some agreement about the nature of the ethical and intellectual virtues of the soul (mind). Each tradition would recognize as a form of ethical virtue what the others would regard as a form of virtue.

As indicated, there is agreement about the nature of the intellectual faculties of the soul (mind) and about the nature of the intellectual virtues of these two faculties in their higher forms of development, which we will not get into detail now.

Spiritual Practice

Corresponding to the consensus about the various powers of the soul and their developmental possibilities, it is no surprise that there is a superficial agreement about the nature of their training within a spiritual practice. According to both the Buddhist and Hindu tradition, the Eightfold Path and the Eightfold Yoga of Patanjali are also described as the threefold spiritual practice. In both these traditions, this threefold spiritual practice is also seen as a twofold training mainly of the will (and its affections) and of the mind, or, a training in the ethical virtues and in the intellectual virtues.

In Buddhism and Yoga, the threefold practice is sila, prajna, and samadhi. Sila is the training of the will and affections of the soul by the practice and cultivation of the moral virtues. Prajna is the dianoetic training of the reasoning, conceptualizing, logical part of the mind into its peak virtue. As indicated, samadhi is the noetic training of the power of consciousness or pure awareness to be increasingly intense degrees of self-concentrated states of non-distraction and self-awareness.

The Hesychast tradition can be schematized along very similar lines. There is a twofold training of the soul's capacities for ethical virtues or praxis, and of the soul's powers for intellectual virtues or theoria. But praxis and theoria can also be schematized as a threefold spiritual practice. The threefold schematization of the Hesychast way is comprised of praxis, diakrisis/sophia, and enstasis/hesychia. Again, praxis is the training of the will, affections of the soul, and their cultivation into the ethical virtues. Diakrisis/sophia is the training of the dianoia into virtuous form. Enstasis/hesychia is the training of the nous into a self-lucent and self-concentrated state of wakeful non-distraction.

There is also agreement between all three traditions about how these three intially separate lines of training mutually interact with each other and reinforce each other's development. So, while beginning as apparently three separate lines of effortful developmental training, in more advanced phases their mutual augmentation becomes increasingly effortless and spontaneous unified way of being. But it is at this point that the really crucial differences are made clear, and thereby, reveal the fundamental differences that were there, under the surface, all along.

Differences

It is to these differences between Hesychasm, Buddhism, and Hindu Yoga that I now turn.

To best understand why there are these vitally important differences and what they mean, let us follow the Fathers of the Church, according to whom, there are the following possible three states of human existence, of the soul, and all its faculties. These three states are:

(1) the sub-natural or contra-natural state, also known as the "contrary to nature" state, and fallen subsistence,
(2) the natural state, also known as the "according to nature" state, and life as created in the Image, and -
(3) the supra-natural state, also known as the "beyond nature" or "according to grace" state of ascending participation in the Uncreated Energies, and deified eternal life after the Likeness.

There are two things to point out about these states. First, originally, we were created in the natural state in the divine Image but were meant to grow in synergy with the Uncreated Energies into the deified Likeness of God.

Second, we are in the contra-natural state. So, of course, it is the better known state. The natural and supra-natural states are less well known, even to the Fathers of the Church. Accordingly, there is more agreement between all three traditions, not surprisingly, about the nature and problems of the contra-natural state than there is about the natural state or about our ultimate supra-natural destiny. As a result, while there is much agreement about the nature and problems of the beginning stages of the spiritual life from the contra-natural state to the natural state, this consensus rapidly disappears. Despite the alleged superficial and deceptive similarities of the peak of the spiritual life that has been created by those who engage in highly selective quoting and juxtapositioning of bits and pieces of texts from various mystical traditions in an effort to support the view that all religions are one at the top, what we actually find is that both the nature and purpose of the more advanced phases of the spiritual life are topics where there is an increasing divergence of opinion. But as we can see with the Fathers, particularly in how the Cappadocians treat and weigh what is true and of value in Greek philosophy, and following their lead, especially with the Syrian Fathers dealing with what was true and what was error in Buddhist practice (as represented in Bactria), even the agreement about the nature of the contra-natural state is more limited than is apparent at first sight. This is because you can only fully agree about exactly how the contra-natural state is contra-natural only if there is shared knowledge of what the original design plan of purpose of human life intended us to be.

Differing conceptions of the ultimate nature and purpose of human life provide differing cures for the contra-natural disease we all suffer from. But as the meaning of the Greek word "pharmakon" reveals in ancient Greek medicine, depending on the exact nature of the disease as diagnosed in terms of some exact conception of health, the very same substance or treatment can either serve as a medicine (pharmakon) or poison (pharmakon). To be a medicine, a substance or treatment has to be given in the right amount, at the right time, and under the right conditions for a correctly diagnosed disease in order to have the right effect. The same holds true for spiritual treatments, techniques, and cures. We need to understand the vastly different purposes, serving different diagnoses of what is wrong, based upon different views of what human life is supposed to be, that similar, or even, exactly the same spiritual techniques are made to serve. It is not similar techniques that we need to look at but their purpose, their actual function within a larger operational context, and thus, their intended effect.

we must drive the money changers from the temples of life...,

Society is a hierarchical structure of vertical transactions enforced by the threat of coercive violence, which prescribes, proscribes and controls voluntary horizontal transactions as well. 

Community is structured on horizontal voluntary interactions - only some of which are transactions, none of which are backed by the threat of coercive violence. 

Building community dismantles society.

to keep the debt servitude paradigm going...,

zerohedge | Doing the “right thing” is usually political suicide for politicians. Cutting expenditure to pay its bills to pay down the debt will make the economy implode. Instead, the government in power continues its daily activities and promotes new social programs to promote reelection. Almost half of the spending done by the US government goes to entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, social security). If any cuts are carried out in this sector, you can expect riots on the street (approximately 28% of the US population are baby boomers and 80% of investments and laws are carried out by this powerful demographic.) Cuts to entitlements are highly unlikely!

The continuous debate on raising the debt ceiling is all about a government mismanaging its money and not being able to control it–much like a child with no discipline. Since debt is being mismanaged, it has caused many distortions in the markets, and yet the debt is allowed to grow because of the US Congress. The debt ceiling has been increased 10 times since 2001. If the debt ceiling were actually a ceiling, the market and debt distortions would have imploded the economy–an implosion necessary for the economy to restore its equilibrium and liquidate all inefficiencies. 

“Too big too fail” is absolute nonsense.

Paying back investors, costly wars, entitlements and bailing out the “financial terrorists” (who caused the crisis) all add to the national debt and to the dysfunctional economy that continues to operate until its debt will cease to grow. The problem with this system is that it created significantly more credit (someone is the creditor to all the debt) than “cash” money (money in your wallet). Every time debt expands, the credit supply also expands. (Read Fractional Reserve Lending on how money is created.)

According to the FED, the Total Credit Market Debt Owed (TCMDO) is approximately 53$ trillion and 2.4$ trillion in the true money supply (M1). In other words, cash money is approximately 4.5% of credit (TCMDO/M1).

The result to our economy is that “boom” periods are hardly driven by cash money, as cash money is insignificant in relation to credit. Credit is what drives the markets, and it is this same credit that “busts” the markets as well, in times of credit contraction. In order for debt to expand, someone must be lending the US this money. At the moment, the lenders are China, Japan, and the OPEC countries.

But why do they continue to buy this debt?

Because they have too.

The US Dollar is the reserve currency of the world. You need it to buy oil, a vital component of any economy. Since other countries like China cannot print US dollars at their leisure, they have to get it from somewhere. They get it from trade with the US. The US buys products in Asia and the rest of the world with US dollars, and in turn these same dollar surpluses are used to buy oil and US bonds, creating a much needed artificial demand for US dollars.

too big to fail and too big to jail

finalcall | According to a Dec. 11, USA Today story, the British banking giant Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion settlement after a broad investigation by U.S. federal and state authorities found the bank violated federal laws by laundering money from Mexican drug trafficking and processing banned transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.

Between 2006 and 2010, Mexican drug traffickers laundered at least $881 million in illegal proceeds through accounts in HSBC’s U.S. arm, according to the story. The bank reportedly supplied a billion dollars to a firm whose founder had ties to Al-Qaeda and shipped billions in cash from Mexico to the United States, despite warnings the money was coming from drug cartels. Earlier this year, a Senate investigation concluded that HSBC provided a "gateway for terrorists to gain access to U.S. dollars and the U.S. financial system."

However, unlike the fairytales shown to us on TV and in the movies, no one involved with the bank has been indicted. When asked by Amy Goodman on NPR’s Democracy Now! "What does the Justice Department, what does the Obama administration, gain by not actually holding HSBC accountable?" Matt Taibbi, author of the book Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, answered: "I really believe—and I think a lot of people believe this—that the Obama administration sincerely accepts the rationale that to aggressively prosecute crimes committed by this small group of too-big-to-fail banks would undermine confidence in the global financial system and that they therefore have to give them a pass on all sorts of things …"

So because HSBC is "too big to fail," all of its managers are "too big to jail." On the other hand, according to Mr. Taibbi, "There are 50,000 marijuana possession cases in New York City alone every year. And here we have a bank that laundered $800 million of drug money, and they can’t find a way to put anybody in jail for that."

When a Black man is caught with 28 grams of cocaine, he goes straight to jail for five years and most of his citizenship rights are taken from him, forever. Too bad "Honest Abe" overlooked the "fine print" in the Thirteenth Amendment, which gave America the right to impose involuntary servitude on any Black "convicted of a crime."

Without the dirty international bankers to launder the drug money, drug trafficking on a large scale would cease. It is the HSBCs of the world that finance the drug trade and the drugs that infest the Black communities and ensnare our young Black males for the new prison plantation system. So now the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has to bring the F.O.I. into drug-torn neighborhoods to clean up the mess hatched by these international hoodlum bankers.

However, I must at least give Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy credit for going up against the International Bankers—but for doing so, they were assassinated. And maybe that is why President Obama is reluctant to take on Wall Street, the International Bankers and the Federal Reserve System.

there is no such thing as IQ or a general measure of intelligence...,

thestar | The idea that intelligence can be measured by a single number — your IQ — is wrong, according to a recent study led by researchers at the University of Western Ontario.

The study, published in the journal Neuron on Wednesday, involved 100,000 participants around the world taking 12 cognitive tests, with a smaller sample of the group undergoing simultaneous brain-scan testing.

“When we looked at the data, the bottom line is the whole concept of IQ — or of you having a higher IQ than me — is a myth,” said Dr. Adrian Owen, the study’s senior investigator and the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging at the university’s Brain and Mind Institute. “There is no such thing as a single measure of IQ or a measure of general intelligence.”

Rather, the study determined three factors — reasoning, short-term memory and verbal ability — that combined to create human intelligence or “cognitive profile.”

IQ testing is used by many educators to measure intelligence, including in public schools in Ontario.

The researchers advertised their tests through New Scientist magazine and on discovery.com. Word quickly spread around the world, far surpassing the expectations of researchers, who expected only a few thousand participants. It became the largest online study on intelligence, allowing them to gather data across demographic, age and gender lines.

The scientists also used brain-scanning (fMRIs) on some of the subjects. “If there is something in the brain that is IQ, we should be able to find it by scanning. But it turns out there is no one area in the brain that accounts for people’s so-called IQ. In fact, there are three completely different networks that respond — verbal abilities, reasoning abilities and short-term memory abilities — that are in quite different parts of the brain,” Owen said.

Among the study’s other findings:

•  While aging has a detrimental effect on reasoning and short-term memory, it leaves verbal abilities “completely unimpaired.”
•  Smoking has a negative impact on verbal abilities and short-term memory but does not affect reasoning skills.
• People who play video games performed “significantly better” in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory.
• Products that are advertised to improve brain function aren’t effective. “People who ‘brain-train’ are no better at any of these three aspects of intelligence than people who don’t,” Owen said.

 People can still take the tests at cambridgebrainsciences.com/theIQchallenge. Owen said he hopes that 1 million people across the globe will eventually participate. Fist tap Dale.

a shining example of oft-noted (never cited) PRR and where it leads...,

lesacreduprintemps19 | Rushton’s (1985, 2000) r-K life history theory that Mongoloids are the most K evolved, Caucasoids somewhat less K evolved, and Negroids the least K evolved is examined and extended in an analysis of data for erect penis length and circumference in three new data sets. These new data extend Rushton’s theory by presenting disaggregated data for penis size for European and North African/South Asian Caucasoids; for East Asian and Southeast Asian Mongoloids; for Inuit and Amerindians and Mestizos, and for thirteen mixed race samples. The results generally confirm and extend Rushton’s r-K life history theory.

speaking of eugenic conspiranoid beliefs: the "peers" in that formerly oft-noted "peer reviewed" research...,

Bigthink |  On 02 October, J. Philippe Rushton passed away at an infuriatingly young age of 68.

I first learned of Phil’s work in 1999 when, as a then member of the Social Psychology Section of the American Sociological Association, I received a complimentary copy of the abridged edition of Race, Evolution and Behavior, which Phil had sent to all 600+ members of the Section at his personal expense.  I read it right away, then I purchased and read the unabridged version.

When I met Phil in person for the first time the following year, I could not believe that a man so intensely hated in public (nearly always by idiots who did not know him personally and who did not know anything about science) could be so gentle, genial, and generous in person.  His very kind and mild manners always impressed me, especially in stark contrast to how people thought and assumed he was.

Here’s one of my most favorite pictures in the world, which I call “The four most hated men in science, and Jim Flynn.”  The four most hated men are, from left to right, J. Philippe Rushton, Helmuth Nyborg, Richard Lynn, and yours truly, with James R. Flynn at the center.  The picture was taken at the 2007 conference of the International Society for Intelligence Research, by a young intelligence researcher Jonathan Wai.  I proudly display this picture in my office at LSE.  My latest book The Intelligence Paradox:  Why the Intelligent Choice Isn’t Always the Smart One is partly dedicated to Phil, as well as to the other two most hated men in the photo and other courageous pioneers in the field of intelligence research.  I can’t believe there can’t be any more pictures like this with Phil.

facts that make eugenic conspiranoid beliefs seem tame by comparison...,

Wired | Author’s note: Most people don’t realize that we knew in the 1920s that leaded gasoline was extremely dangerous. And in light of a Mother Jones story this week that looks at the connection between leaded gasoline and crime rates in the United States, I thought it might be worth reviewing that history. The following is an updated version of an earlier post based on information from my book about early 10th century toxicology, The Poisoner’s Handbook.

In the fall of 1924, five bodies from New Jersey were delivered to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. You might not expect those out-of-state corpses to cause the chief medical examiner to worry about the dirt blowing in Manhattan streets. But they did.

To understand why you need to know the story of those five dead men, or at least the story of their exposure to a then mysterious industrial poison.

The five men worked at the Standard Oil Refinery in Bayway, New Jersey. All of them spent their days in what plant employees nicknamed “the loony gas building”, a tidy brick structure where workers seemed to sicken as they handled a new gasoline additive. The additive’s technical name was tetraethyl lead or, in industrial shorthand, TEL. It was developed by researchers at General Motors as an anti-knock formula, with the assurance that it was entirely safe to handle.

But, as I wrote in a previous post, men working at the plant quickly gave it the “loony gas” tag because anyone who spent much time handling the additive showed stunning signs of mental deterioration, from memory loss to a stumbling loss of coordination to  sudden twitchy bursts of rage. And then in October of 1924, workers in the TEL building began collapsing, going into convulsions, babbling deliriously. By the end of September, 32 of the 49 TEL workers were in the hospital; five of them were dead.

The problem, at that point, was that no one knew exactly why. Oh, they knew – or should have known – that tetraethyl lead was dangerous. As Charles Norris, chief medical examiner for New York City pointed out, the compound had been banned in Europe for years due to its toxic nature. But while U.S. corporations hurried TEL into production in the 1920s, they did not hurry to understand its medical or environmental effects.

In 1922,  the U.S. Public Health Service had asked Thomas Midgley, Jr. – the developer of the leaded gasoline process – for copies of all his research into the health consequences of tetraethyl lead (TEL).

Midgley, a scientist at General Motors, replied that no such research existed. And two years later, even with bodies starting to pile up,  he had still not looked into the question.  Although GM and Standard Oil had formed a joint company to manufacture leaded gasoline – the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation - its research had focused solely on improving the TEL formulas. The companies disliked and frankly avoided the lead issue. They’d deliberately left the word out of their new company name to avoid its negative image.

In response to the worker health crisis at the Bayway plant, Standard Oil suggested that the problem might simply be overwork. Unimpressed, the state of New Jersey ordered a halt to TEL production. And because the compound was so poorly understood, state health officials asked the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office to find out what had happened. Fist tap Dale.

bankster monopoly takeover hijinks

counterpunch | The aim of financial warfare is not merely to acquire land, natural resources and key infrastructure rents as in military warfare; it is to centralize creditor control over society. In contrast to the promise of democratic reform nurturing a middle class a century ago, we are witnessing a regression to a world of special privilege in which one must inherit wealth in order to avoid debt and job dependency.

The emerging financial oligarchy seeks to shift taxes off banks and their major customers (real estate, natural resources and monopolies) onto labor. Given the need to win voter acquiescence, this aim is best achieved by rolling back everyone’s taxes. The easiest way to do this is to shrink government spending, headed by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Yet these are the programs that enjoy the strongest voter support. This fact has inspired what may be called the Big Lie of our epoch: the pretense that governments can only create money to pay the financial sector, and that the beneficiaries of social programs should be entirely responsible for paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, not the wealthy. This Big Lie is used to reverse the concept of progressive taxation, turning the tax system into a ploy of the financial sector to levy tribute on the economy at large.

Financial lobbyists quickly discovered that the easiest ploy to shift the cost of social programs onto labor is to conceal new taxes as user fees, using the proceeds to cut taxes for the elite 1%. This fiscal sleight-of-hand was the aim of the 1983 Greenspan Commission. It confused people into thinking that government budgets are like family budgets, concealing the fact that governments can finance their spending by creating their own money. They do not have to borrow, or even to tax (at least, not tax mainly the 99%).

The Greenspan tax shift played on the fact that most people see the need to save for their own retirement. The carefully crafted and well-subsidized deception at work is that Social Security requires a similar pre-funding – by raising wage withholding. The trick is to convince wage earners it is fair to tax them more to pay for government social spending, yet not also to ask the banking sector to pay similar a user fee to pre-save for the next time it itself will need bailouts to cover its losses. Also asymmetrical is the fact that nobody suggests that the government set up a fund to pay for future wars, so that future adventures such as Iraq or Afghanistan will not “run a deficit” to burden the budget. So the first deception is to treat only Social Security and medical care as user fees. The second is to aggravate matters by insisting that such fees be paid long in advance, by pre-saving.

There is no inherent need to single out any particular area of public spending as causing a budget deficit if it is not pre-funded. It is a travesty of progressive tax policy to only oblige workers whose wages are less than (at present) $105,000 to pay this FICA wage withholding, exempting higher earnings, capital gains, rental income and profits. The raison d’être for taxing the 99% for Social Security and Medicare is simply to avoid taxing wealth, by falling on low wage income at a much higher rate than that of the wealthy. This is not how the original U.S. income tax was created at its inception in 1913. During its early years only the wealthiest 1% of the population had to file a return. There were few loopholes, and capital gains were taxed at the same rate as earned income.

welcome to 2013: centennial anniversary of the irs and the fed...,

seekingalpha | The IRS was Conceived 100 Years Ago Next Month

On February 3, 1913, Delaware became the 36th state to ratify the proposed 16th Amendment authorizing income taxes. With three-fourths of the 48 states backing the resolution, the 16th Amendment became an official part of the U.S. Constitution on February 25, while Republican William Taft was a lame duck President awaiting the inauguration of Democrat Woodrow Wilson a week later on March 4, 1913.

Six months later, the Revenue Act of 1913 was signed into law on October 13, 1913 authorizing tax rates ranging up to 7% for those earning $500,000 or more. The lowest (1%) income tax rate kicked in for single taxpayers making $3,000 per year or couples making $4,000 or more. Therefore, fewer than 5% of U.S. workers were obligated to pay any income tax at first. Businessmen, proud of their success, showed off their tax bill in bars as if to say "I'm one of the top 5%," a badge of honor in a capitalist economy.

World War I changed all that. By 1917, President Woodrow Wilson raised the top tax rates tenfold.

In 1916, President Wilson campaigned against joining the "war to end all wars," but just one month after his second inauguration, he pushed us into World War I and used the income tax to fund that war effort. In 1917, the top income tax rate grew nearly tenfold, from 7% to 67% on top income earners. The new income tax tool was powerful enough to fund America's first entry into a major European conflict.

Unlike most politicians, who tend to mask their views in patriotic pieties, Wilson clearly stated the pragmatism of his politics much earlier in his 1889 book The State:

We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence … Government does now whatever experience permits or the times demand.

Wow! Those last 10 words form a chilling expression of raw unprincipled power. They are also applicable to today's fiscal cliff debate: "Whatever experience permits or the times demand" is a fair description of raising tax rates to fund runaway spending needs.

The Federal Reserve was also Born a Century Ago, in 1913

In a parallel track, the Federal Reserve was conceived and born a century ago this year. On March 31, 1913, J.P. Morgan, America's unofficial one-man central bank, died in his sleep in Rome. Like any good banking man, he died at the closing day of a financial quarter handing new President Woodrow Wilson the opening to create a central bank. After a close call in the Panic of 1907, J.P. Morgan, then entering his 70s, told the nation he was retiring from the central banking business, saying that the next panic would sink him - and the country - even if other syndicate members joined him (as they usually did).

The death of J.P. Morgan almost nine months later led to the centralized solution everyone seemed to favor then. At 6:02 pm on December 23, 1913, The Federal Reserve Act, authorizing the creation of the Federal Reserve, was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson using four golden pens in a lightly-attended ceremony during the Christmas break. Like income taxes, the Fed quickly grew quite powerful.

The Federal Reserve took shape in stages, throughout 1914, with an official launch date of November 16, 1914. Ironically, the Fed was formed for the express purpose of avoiding the financial panics so painful in recent memory - 1893 and 1907 - but the Fed merely continued the same kind of boom-bust cycle of panics, ranging from a short, sharp shock in 1920-21, to the long-term Great Depression of 1929 to 1941.

In particular, the Fed fueled a huge wave of inflation after providing liquidity for World War I spending. That was followed by a sharp cutoff in liquidity and a "flash" depression in 1920. The Fed then fueled too much liquidity throughout the 1920s, leading to a real estate and stock market crash, followed by a sharp (33%) cut in liquidity between 1929 and 1932. The Fed just couldn't seem to find a balance.

The early Fed was quite clear in its mission. In its 1923 Annual Report, the Federal Reserve described its role clearly:

The Federal Reserve banks are…the source to which the member banks turn when the demands of the business community have outrun their own unaided resources.

This is why the Fed increased credit 61% in the 1920s, from $45.3 billion on June 30, 1921 to over $73 billion in July 1929.

The Fed's inflationary monetary policies led to a nearly 99% decline in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar in gold terms. In 1913, gold traded for $20.67 per ounce vs. around $1,690 today. Our official cost of living increase since 1913 is +2,261%, meaning that an item costing $1 in 1913 costs $23.61 now. The Fed's policies have also led to a series of stock market booms and busts over the century, begging the question of whether the Fed has been any more effective than J.P. Morgan and his big-banker syndicate.