the asymptotes of power

bnarchives | My presentation today is a follow-up to a talk I delivered last year at the 2010 inaugural conference of the Forum on Capital as Power. Both presentations are part of my joint research with Shimshon Bichler on the current crisis. Last year, my purpose was to characterize this crisis. I argued that it was a ‘systemic crisis’, and that capitalists were gripped by ‘systemic fear’. This year, my goal is to explore why.

Begin with systemic fear. This fear, we argue, concerns the very existence of capitalism. It causes capitalists to shift their attention from the day-to-day movements of capitalism to its very foundations. It makes them worry not about the short-term ups and downs of growth, employment and profit, but about ‘losing their grip’. It forces on them the realization that their system is not eternal, and that it may not survive – at least not in its current form.

Last year, many in the audience found these claims strange, if not preposterous. Capitalism was obviously in trouble, they conceded. But the crisis, though deep, was by no means systemic. It threatened neither the existence of capitalism nor the confidence of capitalists in their power to rule it. To argue that capitalists were losing their grip was frivolous.

That was twelve months ago.

Nowadays, the notions of systemic fear and systemic crisis are no longer farfetched. In fact, they seem to have become commonplace. Public figures – from dominant capitalists and corporate executives, to Nobel laureates and finance ministers, to journalists and TV hosts – know to warn us that the ‘system is at risk’, and that if we fail to do something about it, we may face the ‘end of the world as we know it’.

There is, of course, much disagreement on why the system is at risk. The explanations span the full ideological spectrum – from the far right, to the liberal, to the Keynesian, to the far left. Some blame the crisis on too much government and over-regulation, while others say we don’t have enough of those things. There are those who speak of speculation and bubbles, while others point to faltering fundamentals. Some blame the excessive increase in debt, while others quote credit shortages and a seized-up financial system. There are those who single out weaknesses in particular sectors or countries, while others emphasize the role of global mismatches and imbalances. Some analysts see the root cause in insufficient demand, whereas others feel that demand is excessive. While for some the curse of our time is greedy capitalists, for others it is the entitlements of the underlying population. The list goes on.

But the disagreement is mostly on the surface. Stripped of their technical details and political inclinations, all existing explanations share two common foundations: (1) they all adhere to the two dualities of political economy: the duality of ‘politics vs. economics’ and the duality within economics of ‘real vs. nominal’; and (2) they all look backward, not forward.

As a consequence of these common foundations, all existing explanations, regardless of their orientation, seem to agree on the following three points:

1. The essence of the current crisis is ‘economic’: politics certainly plays a role (good or bad, depending on the particular ideological viewpoint), but the root cause lies in the economy.

2. The crisis is amplified by a mismatch between the ‘real’ and ‘nominal’ aspects of the economy: the real processes of production and consumption point in the negative direction, and these negative developments are further aggravated by the undue inflation and deflation of nominal financial bubbles whose unsynchronized expansion and contraction make a bad situation worse.


3. The crisis is rooted in our past sins. For a long time now, we have allowed things to deteriorate: we’ve let the ‘real economy’ weaken, the ‘bubbles of finance’ inflate and the ‘distortions of politics’ pile up; in doing so, we have committed the cardinal sin of undermining the growth of the economy and the accumulation of capital; and since, according to the priests of economics, sinners must pay for their evil deeds, there is no way for us to escape the punishment we justly deserve – the systemic crisis.

poverty and families in the victorian era

HiddenLives | The nineteenth century saw a huge growth in the population of Great Britain.

The reason for this increase is not altogether clear. Various ideas have been put forward; larger families; more children surviving infancy; people living longer; immigration, especially large numbers of immigrants coming from Ireland fleeing the potato famine and the unemployment situation in their own country.

By the end of the century there were three times more people living in Great Britain than at the beginning.

Growth of the cities
Although the population of the country as a whole was rising at an unprecedented rate, that of the towns and cities was increasing by leaps and bounds. This was due to the effects of the industrial revolution; people were flocking into the towns and cities in search of employment. For some it was also the call of the unknown, adventure and a better way of life.
The search for employment

Therefore all these factors – population explosion, immigration both foreign and domestic – added up and resulted in a scramble for any job available.

Large numbers of both skilled and unskilled people were looking for work, so wages were low, barely above subsistence level. If work dried up, or was seasonal, men were laid off, and because they had hardly enough to live on when they were in work, they had no savings to fall back on.

Child labour
Children were expected to help towards the family budget. They often worked long hours in dangerous jobs and in difficult situations for a very little wage.

For example, there were the climbing boys employed by the chimney sweeps; the little children who could scramble under machinery to retrieve cotton bobbins; boys and girls working down the coal mines, crawling through tunnels too narrow and low to take an adult. Some children worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, and they sold matches, flowers and other cheap goods.

The housing shortage
Low wages and the scramble for jobs meant that people needed to live near to where work was available. Time taken walking to and from work would extend an already long day beyond endurance.

Consequently available housing became scarce and therefore expensive, resulting in extremely overcrowded conditions.

Slum housing
All these problems were magnified in London where the population grew at a record rate. Large houses were turned into flats and tenements and the landlords who owned them, were not concerned about the upkeep or the condition of these dwellings.

In his book The Victorian underworld, Kellow Chesney gives a graphic description of the conditions in which many were living:

‘Hideous slums, some of them acres wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up a substantial part of the, metropolis … In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a single room.

Overcrowding
Many people could not afford the rents that were being charged and so they rented out space in their room to one or two lodgers who paid between twopence and fourpence a day.

Great wealth and extreme poverty lived side by side because the tenements, slums, rookeries were only a stones throw from the large elegant houses of the rich.

The name ‘rookeries’ was given to these dwellings because of the way people lived without separate living accommodation for each family. The analogy being that whereas other birds appear to live in separate families, rooks do not. Neither did the very poor in the tenements of London.

piercing the propaganda: a pure play for primate primacy?

MediaLens | What would it take for journalists to seriously challenge government propaganda? A war with over one million dead, four million refugees, a country’s infrastructure shattered, and the increased threat of retail ‘terror’ in response to the West’s wholesale ‘terror’? How horrifying do even very recent experiences have to be, how great the war crimes, before media professionals begin to exhibit scepticism towards Western governments’ hyping of yet another ‘threat’. Why is warmongering the default mode for the corporate media?

On Channel 4 News, the famed ‘pinko-liberal’ news presenter Jon ‘Six Pilgers’ Snow intoned ominously:

‘It is still not a nuclear weapon, but an upgrading of Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium ostensibly for its nuclear power plant.’ (C4 News headlines, February 15, 2012)

‘Still’ not a nuclear weapon - not yet? - but the primary focus is absolutely on an alleged military threat that does not actually exist. Foreign correspondent Jonathan Miller added:

‘This development does not bring Iran any closer to building a bomb… But if Tehran is trying to convince the world that its purpose is peaceful, no-one’s buying it...' (C4 News, ‘Iran reveals its latest step in nuclear arms’, February 15, 2012)

That is not quite true, as we will see below. Miller added:

'This may look like the set of a 70s Bond movie, but this is the Natanz reactor…’

The reference is telling - much media reporting does seem to be inspired by a Bond movie vision of the world. Token balance was provided:

‘There’s no evidence that Iran is intending to construct a nuclear weapon.’

This put Snow’s opening comment in perspective. A more accurate version would have been: ‘It is still not evidence that Iran has plans to build a nuclear weapon.’

Instead, the required propaganda pitch was clear. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was defiantly sticking ‘two fingers up to the UN and a hostile world’. As ever, it is 'us' (the 'world') versus 'them'. Miller continued:

‘The 74 million people of the Islamic republic are paying a high price for their leader’s defiance.’

As in Iraq, the Bad Guys, not the West, are responsible for any suffering caused. No question that Israel, the US and its allies bear any responsibility for the tension, or the lethal effects of sanctions.

why bombing iran means invading iran...,

TheAtlantic | Mitt Romney is tired of hearing President Obama threaten Iran in only vague terms. Enough of this "all options are on the table" stuff. Obama, Romney says, should declare that "we are considering military options" and "they're not just on the table--they are in our hand."

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Romney will get some support next week when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington: Netanyahu will ask Obama to say publicly that "the United States is preparing for a military operation in the event that Iran crosses certain 'red lines'."

Before signing on to this mission, could we get some clarity on what exactly this "military operation" will ultimately entail?

There are two main schools of thought about how air strikes on Iran would work out. Most Americans seem to envision something cleanly surgical--a few days of bombing runs and then we get that "mission accomplished" banner out of the closet. A smaller number of Americans--notably including a lot of national security experts--realize that Iran would probably retaliate, possibly in ways that drew America into a sustained and even far-flung conflict.

What too few people emphasize, it seems to me, is that these two scenarios don't exhaust the possibilities. Even if air strikes don't draw us into an instant conflagration, they could drag us into a long-term conflict with Iran that winds up with American boots on the ground. In fact, when you think about the military and political logic of the situation, the invasion and occupation of Iran is the most likely long-term outcome of bombing regardless of what happens in the short term.

iran will meet threat with threat

NYTimes | American officials who have assessed the likely Iranian responses to any attack by Israel on its nuclear program believe that Iran would retaliate by launching missiles on Israel and terrorist-style attacks on United States civilian and military personnel overseas.

While a missile retaliation against Israel would be virtually certain, according to these assessments, Iran would also be likely to try to calibrate its response against American targets so as not to give the United States a rationale for taking military action that could permanently cripple Tehran’s nuclear program. “The Iranians have been pretty good masters of escalation control,” said Gen. James E. Cartwright, now retired, who as the top officer at Strategic Command and as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff participated in war games involving both deterrence and retaliation on potential adversaries like Iran.

The Iranian targets, General Cartwright and other American analysts believe, would include petroleum infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, and American troops in Afghanistan, where Iran has been accused of shipping explosives to local insurgent forces.

Both American and Israeli officials who discussed current thinking on the potential ramifications of an Israeli attack believe that the last thing Iran would want is a full-scale war on its territory. Their analysis, however, also includes the broad caveat that it is impossible to know the internal thinking of the senior leadership in Tehran, and is informed by the awareness that even the most detailed war games cannot predict how nations and their leaders will react in the heat of conflict. Yet such assessments are not just intellectual exercises. Any conclusions on how the Iranians will react to an attack will help determine whether the Israelis launch a strike — and what the American position will be if they do.

While evidence suggests that Iran continues to make progress toward a nuclear weapons program, American intelligence officials believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. But the possibility that Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike has become a focus of American policy makers and is expected to be a primary topic when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel meets with President Obama at the White House on Monday.

In November, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, said any Iranian retaliation for an Israeli attack would be “bearable,” and his government’s estimate that Iran is engaging in a bluff has been a key element in the heightened expectations that Israel is considering a strike. But Iran’s highly compartmentalized security services, analysts caution, may operate in semi-rogue fashion, following goals that seem irrational to planners in Washington. American experts, for example, are still puzzled by a suspected Iranian plot last year to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

“Once military strikes and counterstrikes begin, you are on the tiger’s back,” said Ray Takeyh, a former Obama administration national security official who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And when on the tiger’s back, you cannot always pick the place to dismount.”

israel's last chance to strike iran

NYTimes | ON June 7, 1981, I was one of eight Israeli fighter pilots who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. As we sat in the briefing room listening to the army chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, before starting our planes’ engines, I recalled a conversation a week earlier when he’d asked us to voice any concerns about our mission.

We told him about the risks we foresaw: running out of fuel, Iraqi retaliation, how a strike could harm our relationship with America, and the limited impact a successful mission might have — perhaps delaying Iraq’s nuclear quest by only a few years. Listening to today’s debates about Iran, we hear the same arguments and face the same difficulties, even though we understand it is not 1981.

Shortly after we destroyed Osirak, the Israeli defense attaché in Washington was called into the Pentagon. He was expecting a rebuke. Instead, he was faced with a single question: How did you do it? The United States military had assumed that the F-16 aircraft they had provided to Israel had neither the range nor the ordnance to attack Iraq successfully. The mistake then, as now, was to underestimate Israel’s military ingenuity.

We had simply maximized fuel efficiency and used experienced pilots, trained specifically for this mission. We ejected our external fuel tanks en route to Iraq and then attacked the reactor with pinpoint accuracy from so close and such a low altitude that our unguided bombs were as accurate and effective as precision-guided munitions.

Today, Israel sees the prospect of a nuclear Iran that calls for our annihilation as an existential threat. An Israeli strike against Iran would be a last resort, if all else failed to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. That moment of decision will occur when Iran is on the verge of shielding its nuclear facilities from a successful attack — what Israel’s leaders have called the “zone of immunity.”

Some experts oppose an attack because they claim that even a successful strike would, at best, delay Iran’s nuclear program for only a short time. But their analysis is faulty. Today, almost any industrialized country can produce a nuclear weapon in four to five years — hence any successful strike would achieve a delay of only a few years.

What matters more is the campaign after the attack. When we were briefed before the Osirak raid, we were told that a successful mission would delay the Iraqi nuclear program for only three to five years. But history told a different story.

After the Osirak attack and the destruction of the Syrian reactor in 2007, the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs were never fully resumed. This could be the outcome in Iran, too, if military action is followed by tough sanctions, stricter international inspections and an embargo on the sale of nuclear components to Tehran. Iran, like Iraq and Syria before it, will have to recognize that the precedent for military action has been set, and can be repeated.

Others claim that an attack on the Iranian nuclear program would destabilize the region. But a nuclear Iran could lead to far worse: a regional nuclear arms race without a red phone to defuse an escalating crisis, Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf, more confident Iranian surrogates like Hezbollah and the threat of nuclear materials’ being transferred to terrorist organizations.

Ensuring that Iran does not go nuclear is the best guarantee for long-term regional stability. A nonnuclear Iran would be infinitely easier to contain than an Iran with nuclear weapons.

there's no tomorrow...,

Fist tap Dale.

inner steppe

Inner Steppe from Alex Schulz on Vimeo.

Behance | A stop-motion animation based on the work of Hermann Hesse and Carl Gustav Jung. The motion picture soundtrack was composed and performed in addition to the film.

The animation is about a main character, that chooses an isolated, lonely way of life just like Hesse's Harry Haller in 'Steppenwolf'. At the same time the protagonist is impersonating the lonesome outlaw you can find in classic and modern westerns and C. G. Jungs Ego Consciousness, being the central, rational part of the human mind. He embarks on a surreal odyssey through his inner landscape and meets embodiments of his mind, representing different personal and collective characteristics and behaviours. The Persona of his psyche, representing the social mask and assimilation to everyday life, invades his privacy. This part of his soul is knocked out by the Shadow of his psyche later on, which impersonates repressed needs, pleasures and a humorous living. The Shadow is pushing the main character to the final, deepest point of his mind: the Anima. She represents the bridge between the Ego Consciousness and the Collective Unconsciousness and is leading the protagonist to the destination of his trip. She is exposing him an alternate way of life and the importance of harmony and the unity of his inner world.

cure to greece debt crisis: war with turkey

JohnGalt |As the strain in relations expands between Israel and Turkey, the Israeli government has sought out closer relations with Greece and by default, the Greek government in Cyprus. The story from the Jerusalem Post on February 7, 2012, Israel to ask for military facility in Cyprus (click title to read the article in full), has further antagonized the Turkish government as word has spread throughout Turkish Cyprus and the nation of Turkey that Israel my ask to deploy as many as 5,000 troops to protect the pipelines and energy infrastructure being developed in the Eastern Mediterranean and on the island itself. A commentary from the Hürriyet Daily News on February 24th, “We May Shoot Turkey“, expresses the concerns from the government in Ankara and within the Turkish Cypriot population quite clearly:

For the protection of the “gas plant,” Israel will need to deploy up to 5,000 armed personnel. Thus, the area to be allocated to Israel for the gas plant will be large enough to construct the plant and a town for the Israeli workers to be employed at the plant as well as the around 5,000 armed personnel deployed on the island. If there are only a few settlements with a population of more than 10,000 or so on the island, it might be said that the new Israeli base will indeed be a new high-security base city.

Israelis, as a result of the fashionable “kick me and I will kick you” antagonist play between Turkey’s Islamist government and the rather standoffish nationalist administration in Tel Aviv, appear willing to go to bed even with the devil if that would hurt Turkey. But not all Greek Cypriots would be carried away with aloof romanticism. A participant in the meeting asked the million dollar question: If Turkey is sincere that it would protect its and Turkish Cypriot interests at any cost, and some sort of hostile attack was directed at the gas plant, what would happen?

The answer was reportedly abrupt: We shall then retaliate with bombardment.

But, bombardment of what? Turkey? The answer was even colder: We shall teach the Turks they ought to have limits. The facility will be Israeli territory, we shall not leave any hostility unanswered.

NATO is in no position politically or militarily to deal with a renewal of the decades old conflict between Greece and Turkey and the involvement of Israel should that arise. However the German government as well as the bankers of the European Central Bank desire to see their losses mitigated and erased with an expanding Greek economy and hydrocarbons flowing from Greece would prove far more palatable than a dependency on the Russians. When one considers the Russian defense contracts and pipelines that have been in development with the nation of Turkey over the past five years, the realization that a conflict with Greece, Turkey, and Israel would have far greater implications than the historic regional flare ups and could easily spread into a direct NATO-Russian confrontation where member nations may have to declare war on one of their own members.

This cure to the Greek debt crisis and economic issues would resolve many of the issues the nation faces but at what cost? The Europeans are split over this issue and as usual dependent on a bureaucratic analysis while the nations of Greece and Israel accelerated the development of the natural gas fields already discovered while further exploration continues. In the interim, Turkey is developing closer ties to Russia and Iran and drifting further from the NATO sphere in no small part thanks to the incompetent diplomatic efforts of the Obama administration. The table is being set for a solution to the Greek financial crisis but a large regional conflict will only spawn further complications for world economies as a consequence.

stratfor say political and oil reasons behind attack on iran...,

ibtimes | WikiLeaks has started publishing more than five million emails hacked by Anonymous from the servers of Stratfor, a US intelligence gathering company.

An email sent by Chris Farnham, senior officer for Stratfor, to an internal unnamed source inside the company titled "Israel/Iran Barak Hails Munitions Blast in Iran" provides details about who would benefit from an Israeli attack on Iran, and say such a plan would be motivated by economic factors.

According to the email, sent on November 13, 2011, supporters of an Israeli-led attack are Russia, India and Saudi Arabia, while the EU and China stand against such plans, mainly for economic reasons.

"Not many people know that Russia is one of Israel's largest military partners and India is Israel's largest client. If a direct conflict between Iran and Israel erupts, Russia and Saudi Arabia will gain the advantages on oil increasing prices. On the other hand, China and Europe are expected to lose from an oil crisis as a result of a conflict," the email says

Farnham said that an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities would last only 48 hours and be so devastating it would lead to regime change.

"Based on Israeli plans, the attack on Iran will last only 48 hours but will be so destructive that Iran will be unable to retaliate or recover and the government will fall. It is hard to believe that Hamas or Hezbollah will try to get involved in this conflict," Farham wrote.

The Stratfor analyst then reveals that despite claims propagated in the media, an attack on Iran is unlikely since Israeli commandos have already targeted major parts of Iran's nuclear programme.

"In the open media many are pushing and expecting Israel to launch a massive attack on Iran. Even if the Israelis have the capabilities and are ready to attack by air, sea and land, there is no need to attack the nuclear programme at this point after the commandos destroyed a significant part of it."

Farnham said an attack would be motivated by economic factors rather than Iran's nuclear programme.

"If a massive attack on Iran happens soon, then the attack will have political and oil reasons and not nuclear. It is also very hard to believe that the Israelis will initiate an attack unless they act as a contractor for other nations or if Iran or its proxies attack first," the email concludes.

extend and pretend coming to an end...,

Washingtonsblog | You have to admire the resourcefulness of the vested interests in disguising disaster and pretending that time will alleviate the consequences of their insatiable greed, blatant criminality and foolish risk taking. Extending bad loans and pretending they will be repaid does not create the cash flow necessary to actually pay the interest and principal on the debt. The chart below reveals the truth of what happened between 2005 and 2008 in the commercial real estate market. There was an epic feeding frenzy of overbuilding shopping centers, malls, office space, industrial space and apartments. During the sane 1980’s and 1990’s, commercial real estate loan issuance stayed consistently in the $500 billion to $700 billion range. The internet boom led to a surge to $1.1 trillion in 2000, with the resultant pullback to $900 billion by 2004. But thanks to easy Al and helicopter Ben, the bubble was re-inflated with easy money and zero regulatory oversight. Commercial real estate loan issuance skyrocketed to $1.6 trillion per year by 2008. Bankers sure have a knack for doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing at the exact wrong time. They doled out a couple trillion of loans to delusional developers at peak prices just prior to a historic financial cataclysm.

The difference between bad retail mortgage loans and bad commercial loans is about 25 years. Commercial real estate loans usually have five to seven year maturities. This meant that an avalanche of loans began maturing in 2010 and will not peak until 2013. With $1.2 trillion of loans coming due between 2010 and 2013, disaster for the Wall Street Too Big To Fail banks awaited if the properties were valued honestly. A perfect storm of declining property values and plunging cash flows for developers should have resulted in enormous losses for Wall Street banks and their shareholders, resulting in executives losing not only their obscene bonuses but even their jobs. Imagine the horror for the .01%.

The fact is that commercial property prices are currently 42% below the 2007 – 2008 peak. The slight increase in the national index is solely due to strong demand for apartments, as millions of Americans have been kicked out of their homes by Wall Street bankers using fraudulent loan documentation to foreclose on them. The national index has recently resumed its fall. Industrial and retail properties are leading the descent in prices according to Moodys. The master plan of extend and pretend was implemented in 2009 and three years later commercial real estate prices are 10% lower, after the official end of the recession.

Part one of the “extend and pretend” plan has failed. Part two anticipated escalating developer cash flows as the economy recuperated, Americans resumed spending like drunken sailors and retailers began to rake in profits at record levels again. Reality has interfered with their desperate last ditch gamble. Office vacancies remain at 17.3%, close to 20 year highs, as 12.3 million square feet of new space came to market in 2011. Vacancies are higher today than they were at the end of the recession in December 2009. The recovery in cash flow has failed to materialize for commercial developers. Strip mall vacancies at 11% remain stuck at 20 year highs. Regional mall vacancies at 9.2% linger near all-time highs. Vacancies remain elevated, with no sign of decreasing. Despite these figures, an additional 4.9 million square feet of new retail space was opened in 2011. The folly of this continued expansion will be revealed as bricks and mortar retailers are forced to close thousands of stores in the next five years.

It is clear the plan put into place three years ago has failed. Extending and pretending doesn’t service the debt. Only cash flow can service debt.

the military proposals were an overreach...,

NewAmerican | Lawmakers in the Wyoming House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday for the second time to explore how the state might respond to a possible “doomsday” scenario such as the economic or political collapse of America. Some of the potential responses to be considered include the issuance of an alternative currency in the event of a dollar meltdown or how the state might deal with a “constitutional crisis.”

If the legislation becomes law, a special task force would be formed consisting of state Representatives, state Senators, and several key members of the executive branch, including the Wyoming National Guard. The commission would be charged with considering various scenarios and preparing a report on its findings and recommendations by December of this year.

Among the hypothetical developments cited in the legislation to be considered by the panel are the potential effects of "the rapid decline of the United States dollar and the ability to quickly provide an alternative currency." A situation in which the federal government crumbles would also be examined.

Other scenarios to be considered include a potential “constitutional crisis” and disruptions in food or energy distribution. An amendment to the bill that was later removed even called for the task force to examine “conditions under which the state of Wyoming should implement a draft, raise a standing army, marine corps, navy and air force and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.”

The original sponsor of the bill, Republican State Rep. David Miller, told the Casper Star-Tribune that such catastrophic scenarios are unlikely to strike America anytime soon. But with Washington D.C.’s out-of-control budget deficits and a national debt that is now officially larger than the nation’s GDP and growing — not to mention the unfunded liabilities estimated in the hundreds of trillions — the situation could turn ugly very rapidly.

“Things happen quickly sometimes — look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations,” Rep. Miller told the newspaper. “We wouldn’t have time to meet as a legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond.”

As protests continue to grow across America and wealthy individuals flee the nation in increasing numbers, the trend is ominous, Miller explained. Meanwhile, economic and social problems could keep growing to the point where they spiral out of control. And Wyoming needs to be ready just in case, he said.

HuffPo | Wyoming lawmakers on Tuesday voted down the state's "Doomsday Bill," which among other things, called for the state to explore buying an aircraft carrier, creating its own currency and starting a military draft for its own army.

The Wyoming House of Representatives voted 30-27 against the bill during a session Tuesday; 31 votes are needed to pass the bill. It already was stripped Monday of provisions for the aircraft carrier and draft. State Rep. Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) said lawmakers did not debate the bill before the vote.

"There was no discussion on it today," Zwonitzer told The Huffington Post Tuesday afternoon. "It went up and we voted."

The bill originally was pushed as a study of the state's homeland security and its approach to emergencies. The bill included a study of how the state would handle running out of food or a collapse of the nation's economic system. Zwonitzer said that he was in favor of the bill.

"It was $15,000 for a study to see how Wyoming would handle an emergency, if we were prepared for a crisis," he said. "It was an innocuous study to prepare for a crisis."

Zwonitzer said the proposals for the state to look into purchasing an aircraft carrier, buying fighter jets, creating a military, launching a draft and creating a currency were added early in the process in order to defeat the bill. He said state lawmakers were surprised by the national media attention, which they aren't used to, following the insertion of the aircraft carrier proposal.

rich more likely to lie, cheat, and break the law...,

ScienceMag | Observers of human nature have long puzzled over the possibility of an ethical class divide. On the one hand, people with fewer resources and dimmer prospects might be expected to do whatever's necessary to get ahead. On the other, wealthy types may be more focused on themselves, because money, independence, and freedom can insulate people from the plight of others. They may also be less generous: Studies involving money games show that upper-class subjects keep more for themselves, and U.S. surveys find that the rich give a smaller percentage of their income to charity than do the poor.

To see whether dishonesty varies with social class, psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues devised a series of tests, working with groups of 100 to 200 Berkeley undergraduates or adults recruited online. Subjects completed a standard gauge of their social status, placing an X on one of 10 rungs of a ladder representing their income, education, and how much respect their jobs might command compared with other Americans.

The team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty. For example, upper-class subjects were more likely to cheat. After five apparently random rolls of a computerized die for a chance to win an online gift certificate, three times as many upper-class players reported totals higher than 12—even though, unbeknownst to them, the game was rigged so that 12 was the highest possible score.

When participants were manipulated into thinking of themselves as belonging to a higher class than they did, the poorer ones, too, began to behave unethically. In one test, subjects were asked to compare themselves with people at the top or the bottom of the social scale (Donald Trump or a homeless person, for example.) They were then permitted to take candies from a jar ostensibly meant for a group of children in a nearby lab. Subjects whose role-playing raised their status in their own eyes took twice as many candies as those who compared themselves to "The Donald," the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In another test, participants were asked to list several benefits of greed; they were given the example that greed can help further one's professional goals, then asked to come up with three additional benefits. Again, lower-class subjects whose attitudes toward greed had been nudged in this way became just as likely as their wealthier counterparts to sympathize with dishonest behavior (taking home office supplies, laying off employees while increasing their own bonuses, overcharging customers to drive up profits).

plentyofassclownerytogoaround...,

TheAtlantic | On June 2, 2009, Anya Alfano of Stratfor, which describes itself as a private "global intelligence company," sent an email to a colleague requesting some global intelligence on a certain trans-national civilian group on behalf of a powerful international client. That email has now been released to the world, along with five million others like it, by global transparency group Wikileaks, thus revealing Stratfor's shadowy scheme.

According to Anya Alfano's email, Stratfor's target was PETA, the animal rights group, and its client Coca-Cola. Their top secret mission was to find out "How many PETA supporters are there in Canada?" and other tantalizing global secrets that could only be secured through such top-secret means as calling PETA's press office or Googling it. Alfano concluded her chilling email, "I need all the information our talented interns can dig up by COB tomorrow."

Shortly before the release, Wikileaks told the world to prepare for "extraordinary news." In announcing today's release, Wikileaks describes Stratfor as "a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations." The group's announcement says that the released emails "show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods" and calls the company "a money-making scheme of questionable legality." It adds, "The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients."

Maybe what these emails actually reveal is how a Texas-based corporate research firm can get a little carried away in marketing itself as a for-hire CIA and end up fooling some over-eager hackers into believing it's true.

The group's reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. As a former recipient of their "INTEL REPORTS" (I assume someone at Stratfor signed me up for a trial subscription, which appeared in my inbox unsolicited), what I found was typically some combination of publicly available information and bland "analysis" that had already appeared in the previous day's New York Times. A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year.

It's true that Stratfor employs on-the-ground researchers. They are not spies. On today's Wikileaks release, one Middle East-based NGO worker noted on Twitter that when she met Stratfor's man in Cairo, he spoke no Arabic, had never been to Egypt before, and had to ask her for directions to Tahrir Square. Stratfor also sometimes pays "sources" for information. Wikileaks calls this "secret cash bribes," hints that this might violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and demands "political oversight."

For comparison's sake, The Atlantic often sends our agents into such dangerous locales as Iran or Syria. We call these men and women "reporters." Much like Statfor's agents, they collect intelligence, some of it secret, and then relay it back to us so that we may pass it on to our clients, whom we call "subscribers." Also like Stratfor, The Atlantic sometimes issues "secret cash bribes" to on-the-ground sources, whom we call "freelance writers." We also prefer to keep their cash bribes ("writer's fees") secret, and sometimes these sources are even anonymous.

douchenozzlesprayswherethesundoesntshine

newswire | Wikileaks is making public about 5 million emails of Stratfor (a private company that makes money out of selling strategic intelligence). In the global economy, knowledge of coming political events help companies make money out of futures. As trading in futures becomes important for bonds, stocks, currency and even food and raw materials, so does the value of information. So what was earlier the exclusive preserve of governments is now becoming an industry, with Stratfor a new animal in this global security zoo. Along with Blackwater, renamed as Xe Services and now once again name changed to Academi, Stratfor is seeking to get into the larger security market.

Stratfor did not stop with only providing information to its clients. From the treasure trove of its emails, it is clear that it also did what all intelligence agencies do. It was also monitoring activists who were fighting for the rights of the victims of the Bhopal gas leak, for Dow Chemicals. . At a price, its services were available – from collecting dirt on opponents of its clients to “fixing” them if required. A private dirty tricks agency.

Wikileaks itself was a target of Stratfor. There are more than 4,000 emails detailing the efforts of the US agencies and Stratfor in attacking Wikileaks and Julian Assange.

The emails makes it clear that Stratfor was also closely tied up with CIA and Mossad. Both must have found the veneer of “independent analysis” that Stratfor provided as very useful in shaping the public discourse. As Stratfor also gave out free backgrounders on critical issues, a host of people (including me) find it useful as basic information. It is widely used by journalists and analysts all over the world, despite its pro-American stand. What stands out – from a preliminary analysis by Wikileaks – is how close it was to the agencies of the US Government. Wikileaks states,

Stratfor claims that it operates "without ideology, agenda or national bias", yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.

What is even more disturbing in the Stratfor emails, is how it was modelling itself on the ethics or the lack of it of the intelligence agencies. George Friedman , the head of Stratfor tells Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla in an email on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez, "[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase."

When the Anonymous break-in had occurred in December last year , Stratfor had claimed that the list of private clients that had been made public was not of clients for whom it provided intelligence services. Friedman, the Stratfor head had stated.

Contrary to this assertion the disclosure was merely a list of some of the members that have purchased our publications and does not comprise a list of individuals or entities that have a relationship with Stratfor beyond their purchase of our subscription-based publications.

It is now clear from the emails that this was deliberate misinformation – Stratfor did have private clients for whom they did considerably more than just supply publications. The size of the payments as visible from its invoices is to the tune of half a million in some cases, easily making these the most expensive publications in history!

douchebagleakinglikeasieve...,

Transcript:

I'm George Friedman, founder and CEO of Stratfor.

As most of you know, in December thieves hacked into Stratfor data systems and stole a large number of company emails, as well as private information of Stratfor subscribers and friends. Today Wikileaks is publishing the emails that were stolen in December. This is a deplorable, unfortunate -- and illegal -- breach of privacy.

Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies. Some may be authentic. We will not validate either, nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questions about them.

The disclosure of these emails does not mean that there has been another hack of Stratfor's computer and data systems. Those systems, which we have rebuilt with enhanced security measures, remain secure and protected.

The release of these emails is, however, a direct attack on Stratfor. This is another attempt to silence and intimidate the company, and one we reject. As you can see, emails sent to many people about my resignation were clearly forged.

We do not know what else has been manufactured. Stratfor will not be silenced, and we will continue to publish the geopolitical analysis our friends and subscribers have come to rely on.

As we have said before, Stratfor has worked to build good sources in many countries around the world, as any publisher of geopolitical analysis would do.

We are proud of the relationships we have built, which help our analysts better understand the issues in many of these countries through the eyes of people who live there.

We have developed these relationships with individuals and partnerships with local media in a straightforward manner, and we are committed to meeting the highest standards of professional and ethical conduct.

Stratfor is not a government organization, nor is it affiliated with any government. The emails are private property. Like all private emails, they were written casually, with no expectation that anyone other than the sender and recipient would ever see them. And clearly, as with my supposed resignation letter, some of the emails may be fabricated or altered.

Stratfor understands that this hack and the fallout from it have created serious difficulties for our subscribers, friends and employees. We again apologize for this incident, and we deeply appreciate the loyalty that has been shown to Stratfor since last year's hack.

We want to assure everyone that Stratfor is recovering from the hack. We will continue to do what we do best: produce and publish independent analysis of international affairs. And we will be back in full operation in the coming weeks. We look forward to continuing to serve you.

secret people...,

If we think of Cordoba and Baghdad as magnetic poles we can see that the whole of Europe lay in the field which they subtended. Within this field much might yet be achieved. Within it, a required, foreordained rise in the specific gravity of human nature could still perhaps be contrived. Humanitarianism, science, art, techniques for man's individual as well as collective development might be induced.

A wholly new basis of human life was called for, utterly beyond the imagining of the men of AD 1000, and beyond the imagining of billions in AD 2012. Step by step, trend by trend, man and his institutions would be impelled or restrained along the preordained road. Over and over again, man would wander off the path and be guided back, or would step off the road, only to be halted and compelled to retrace his missteps and return to the road.

Institutions once regarded as fundamental verities of human experience would fall to the wayside, or be destroyed if necessary. Monarchy yielded to different modes of governance, the concept of the kingdom, yielded to that of the nation, and in turn, to that of the corporation. Man would be offered a glimpse of an expanding universe and his mind which could formerly only measure in leagues, would come to wrestle with light-years.

Within the past millenium, the specific gravity of human soul-stuff would be required to increase by an amount greater than had been achieved in all the previous eras of recorded human history. Within the force-field that was molding him, man would understand very little of this process, cooperate with one another very little, and with the process itself, hardly at all.

From within the viewpoint of his own present moment in any of the unfolding centuries, static men would see only change without pattern, quixotic ebb and flow, disruption, chaos, order lost, and order seemingly restored - over, and over again. Sacred standards would be cast down, and strange, seemingly arbitrary, and often as not incomprehensible new standards created.

From the present moment of his own temporal embedding, all would seem the whim of chance and accident, all without purpose or meaning. Yet from the present moment of human intelligence capable of containing the whole of human history as a single perception, all would seem structured, purposeful, law-conforming, and deliberate - almost - but never quite - inevitable.

If not quite inevitable then certainly necessary, for a great event lay ahead in man's temporal future. It existed already in eternity and was required to be actualized and normalized in time. The event toward which we have been impelled is the mutation which will yield a new organ of perception, an organ of liminal perception latent in some, alchemically activated in others, but here-to-date only intermittently active in a few exceptional individuals. What is inevitable is that man one day inherit it as part of his normal total experience, or else the experiment that is man will be terminated.

Many promising races of pre-men have been exterminated in the course of human existence. Many promising races of men have been exterminated in the course of the current historical era due to their inability to come to terms with intellect. What is expected of those who will inherit the future is an unmanageable and incomprehensible experience for most living today.

An organ of perception and experience giving rise to access to the four-dimensional world, will be as disastrous for intellect-based modern man, as the rise and normalization of western intellect has proven to be for many peoples during the span of the past millenium. A certain minimum cognitive standard and specific psychic gravity is required before such a radical new modality can be risked. Preparation for this was begun 1000 years ago as a deliberate operation.

The first steps involved a certain social tolerance, an expansion of intellect, and a degree of instinctual humanitarianism - which had to be established before Work on switching the new modality of consciousness could be enjoined in earnest. The presence and purpose of those who do this Work is mostly obscured from the view of the men and women on whom the operation is conducted. Exactly like the work of a farmer is mostly obscured from the comprehension and understanding of his flocks....,

the function of dreaming in the cycles of cognition

biogeneticstructuralism | In summary then, biogenetic structural theory holds (with Roffwarg et al. 1966, Robson 1988, and others) that the function of dreaming is essentially developmental. We have seen that the primary task of the higher brain centers is to construct a cognized environment from the nascent, neurognostic structures of the pre- and perinatal nervous system. The cognized environment is a vast system of models pertaining to the "real world," or operational environment, including him or herself as an organism. These models may be entrained to conscious network to produce our moment-by-moment flow of experience. The models mediating experience operate within the field of associations entrained in the dialogue between the prefrontal intentional processes and the sensorial processes, and become routinized in organization (form creodes) within cyclically recurring patterns of entrainment. These gross and recurring patterns of entrainment are recognized by their recurrent attributes, and are usually cognized as rucurrent by the individual, generally during enculturation by his or her society, and are experienced as phases of consciousness. Because our species has evolved as a diurnal primate phases of consciousness tend to take on a daily, or circadian rhythm of recurrence that alternates between those specialized to encounter and cognize events in the outer operational environment (we call these "being awake" in our culture) and those specialized to establish a transformative, reorganizational and homeomorphogenic interaction between models and other somatic processes (we call this "being asleep" in our culture).

Although the biological functions of sleep are manifold (Hobson 1988), the function of dreaming itself may be seen as the symbolic fulfilment or evocation within the sensorium of transformative processes occurring in the main outside the bounds of conscious network. The feedback relations (homeomorphogenesis) between the symbolic play of dreaming and extra-sensorial somatic processes is potentially a reciprocal one. But just how passive or active conscious network will be in intending the sensorial play will vary from dream to dream, from individual to individual, and from society to society.

The extent of awareness within dream phases varies enormously, and is the single most important variable in determining both (1) understanding in and of the dream, (2) and the locus of control of dream content. If awareness is hypointentional (weak involvement of prefrontal processes in conscious network), then the locus of control of dream experiences will lay with somatic processes largely outside the boundaries of conscious network. On the other extreme, if awareness is intentional (within the "normal" range of waking involvement of prefrontal processes in the conscious network mediating dreaming), then control of the dream experience may (but not necessarily) shift to conscious network. And, of course, entrainments mediating dreaming may range on a continuum of prefrontal involvement between these extremes.

In other words, hypointentional entrainment in a dream phase will produce little awareness, and the content may be relatively dull, unclear, confusing, perhaps producing little cross-phase influence or memory in a subsequent phase of consciousness. Increased intentionality will tend to produce the opposite experience, characterized by vividness of sensory content, active awareness of theme and continuity, lucidity (i.e., awareness of dreaming while within the dream), comprehension of meaning and perhaps active involvement of the "dream ego" in controlling the the dream content. Hyperintentionality (intense involvement of prefrontal processes) during dreaming may, for example, lead to the portalling experience (MacDonald, Cove, Laughlin and McManus 1989) in which intense concentration upon some element of a scene produces a "doorway" that "opens up" into an entirely different scene, a very common experience among meditators and dream yogis. Under hyperintentional entrainment, the dream ego ceases to be a passive point of view in the dream and becomes an active, questing locus of control (see Hillman 1987, LaBerge 1981) that may facilitate the capacity for advanced exploration of one's own unconscious processes (Malamud 1979).

The role of culture is enormous in preparing the individual to participate in and interpret experiences in multiple phases of consciousness (see e.g., Eggan 1955 on the Hopi). We have suggested that cultures may lie on a continuum from those tending to produce a monophasic orientation toward alternative phases to those that encourage transcendental exploration via alternative phases. Materialistic cultures tend to enculturate monophasic egos; that is, self-concepts informed primarily from memories accrued during waking phases of consciousness. Even when dream phases are not ignored as a source of experience, dreams are considered more like symbolic puzzles that must be decoded in terms comprehensible to the waking ego, than as experiences that are meaningful in their own right (James Hillman 1979). By contrast, more spiritually inclined cultures tend to enculturate polyphasic egos; i.e., those characterized by self-concepts informed from a variety of alternative phases of consciousness, including dream phases. In cultures that have developed advanced dream exploration as a means of verifying and vivifying their cosmology, experiences in the dream phase are meaningful to a polyphasic ego from within the dream itself, and may not require later interpretation in the waking phase for comprehension and integration into the ego complex.

to be black at stuyvesant high...,

NYTimes | LIKE a city unto itself, Stuyvesant High School, in Lower Manhattan, is broken into neighborhoods, official and otherwise. The math department is on the 4th of its 10 floors; biology is on the 7th. Seniors congregate by the curved mint wall off the second-floor atrium, next to lockers that are such prime real estate that students trade them for $100 or more. Sophomores are relegated to the sixth floor.

In Stuyvesant slang, the hangouts are known as “bars.” Some years ago, the black students took over the radiators outside the fifth-floor cafeteria, and the place soon came to be known as the “chocolate bar,” lending it an air of legitimacy in the school’s labyrinth of cliques and turfs.

It did not last long. This year, Asian freshmen displaced the black students in a strength-in-numbers coup in which whispers of indignation were the sole expression of resistance. There was no point arguing, said Rudi-Ann Miller, a 17-year-old senior who came to New York from Jamaica and likes to style her hair in a bun, slick and straight, like the ballerina she once dreamed of becoming.

“The Asian kids, they’re just everywhere,” she said.

When the bell rings and the school’s 3,295 students spill out of classrooms into the maze of hallways, escalators and stairs like ants in a farm, blacks stand out because they are so rare. Rudi was one of 64 black students four years ago when she entered Stuyvesant, long considered New York City’s flagship public school. She is now one of 40.

Asians, on the other hand, make up 72.5 percent of Stuyvesant’s student body (they are 13.7 percent of the city’s overall public school population), a staggering increase from 1970, when they were 6 percent of Stuyvesant students, according to state enrollment statistics. Back then, white students made up 79 percent of Stuyvesant’s enrollment; this year, they are 24 percent, and 14.9 percent systemwide.

Hispanic students are 40.3 percent of the system. Currently, they make up 2.4 percent of Stuyvesant’s enrollment, while blacks, who make up 32 percent of the city’s public school students, are 1.2 percent.

New York City has eight specialized high schools whose admission is based entirely on the results of an entrance exam, a meritocratic system that does not consider race or ethnicity. The top score on the exam is 800. In recent years, the cutoff for Stuyvesant has been around 560; Rudi scored 594.

Earning a spot at Stuyvesant is unquestionably a badge of honor, sort of a secret knock to an exclusive club. As high school admissions decisions are revealed across the city in the coming week, many people are concerned that it is a club that black students — and, to a similar extent, Latinos — have an increasingly hard time cracking.

No one claims that the disparity is caused by overt discrimination. But in a school that is devised to attract the best of the best, parents and educators alike find the demographics troubling. It has become a question of perception as to who belongs.

The school’s parent coordinator, Harvey Blumm, said that when he visited middle schools whose enrollments were overwhelmingly black and Latino, it was not uncommon to find students who had never heard about the specialized high school exam; or to meet students who had signed up for the exam, but had never thought of taking a practice test or prep course — something common among white and Asian students; or to have guidance counselors tell him that Stuyvesant “isn’t for our kids.”

let your life be a friction to stop the machine...,