One Missing Word....,

The Independent | A nit-picker this week. And given the fact that we're all remembering human rights, the Palestinians come to mind since they have precious few of them, and the Israelis because they have the luxury of a lot of them.

And Lord Blair, since he'll be communing with God next week, might also reflect that he still – to his shame – hasn't visited Gaza. But the nit-picking has got to be our old friend United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. This, you'll recall, was supposed to be the resolution that would guide all future peace efforts in the Middle East; Oslo was supposed to have been founded on it and all sorts of other processes and summits and road maps.

It was passed in November 1967, after Israel had occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai and Golan, and it emphasises "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and calls for "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict".

Readers who know the problem here will be joined by those who will immediately pick it up. The Israelis say that they are not required to withdraw from all the territories – because the word "all" is missing and since the definite article "the" is missing before the word "territories", its up to Israel to decide which bits of the occupied territories it gives up and which bits it keeps.

Choice of a New Generation?

amateur genetic engineering at home

Physorg | Meredith L. Patterson, a computer programmer by day, conducts an experiment in the dining room of her San Francisco apartment on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008. Patterson is among a new breed of techno rebels who want to put genetic engineering tools in the hands of anyone with a smart idea. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering - a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.

(AP) -- The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself.

Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering - a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories.

In her San Francisco dining room lab, for example, 31-year-old computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to develop genetically altered yogurt bacteria that will glow green to signal the presence of melamine, the chemical that turned Chinese-made baby formula and pet food deadly.

"People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process," she said.

So far, no major gene-splicing discoveries have come out anybody's kitchen or garage.

But critics of the movement worry that these amateurs could one day unleash an environmental or medical disaster. Defenders say the future Bill Gates of biotech could be developing a cure for cancer in the garage.

Many of these amateurs may have studied biology in college but have no advanced degrees and are not earning a living in the biotechnology field. Some proudly call themselves "biohackers" - innovators who push technological boundaries and put the spread of knowledge before profits.

In Cambridge, Mass., a group called DIYbio is setting up a community lab where the public could use chemicals and lab equipment, including a used freezer, scored for free off Craigslist, that drops to 80 degrees below zero, the temperature needed to keep many kinds of bacteria alive.

Co-founder Mackenzie Cowell, a 24-year-old who majored in biology in college, said amateurs will probably pursue serious work such as new vaccines and super-efficient biofuels, but they might also try, for example, to use squid genes to create tattoos that glow.

Cowell said such unfettered creativity could produce important discoveries.

"We should try to make science more sexy and more fun and more like a game," he said.

Observational Learning

Wikipedia | Observational learning (also known as: vicarious learning or social learning or modeling or monkey see, monkey do) is learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and, in the case of imitation learning, replicating novel behavior executed by others. It is most associated with the work of psychologist Albert Bandura, who implemented some of the seminal studies in the area and initiated social learning theory. It involves the process of learning to copy or model the action of another through observing another doing it. Further research has been used to show a connection between observational learning and both classical and operant conditioning.

There are 4 key processes of observational learning. 1.) Attention: To learn through observation, you must pay attention to another person's behavior and its consequences. 2.) Retention: Store a mental representation of what you have witnessed in your memory. 3.) Reproduction: Enacting a modeled response depends on your ability to reproduce the response by converting your stored mental images into overt behavior. 4.) Motivation: Finally, you are unlikely to reproduce an observed response unless you are motivated to do so. Your motivation depends on whether you get benefits from responding that action.

Many mistake observational learning with imitation. The two terms are different in the sense that observational learning leads to a change in behavior due to observing a model. This does not mean that the behavior exhibited by the model is duplicated. It could mean that the observer would do the opposite of the model behavior because he or she has learned the consequence of that particular behavior. Consider the case of learning what NOT to do. In such a case, there is observational learning without imitation.

Although observational learning can take place at any stage in life, it is thought to be particularly important during childhood, particularly as authority becomes important. The best role models are those a year or two older for observational learning. Because of this, social learning theory has influenced debates on the effect of television violence and parental role models. Bandura's Bobo doll experiment is widely cited in psychology as a demonstration of observational learning and demonstrated that children are more likely to engage in violent play with a life size rebounding doll after watching an adult do the same. However, it may be that children will only reproduce a model's behavior if it has been reinforced. This may be the problem with television because it was found, by Otto Larson and his coworkers (1968), that 56% of the time children's television characters achieve their goals through violent acts.

don't fix the economy - change it

The Star | Amid the discordant clash of solutions being served up to address the global financial crisis, a common refrain can be heard: Most global leaders and their economic advisers key their policy prescriptions to "sustained economic growth." The prevailing debate is how to get there most quickly. In Canada, how this debate plays out could bring down the government in a matter of weeks.

Unfortunately, it is the wrong debate. Neither the Conservative minority nor the opposition has proposed anything that will set Canada on a long-term path toward the kind of economy that will both provide for the well-being of Canadians and enhance and preserve the ecological community of which people are but one dependent part.

All eyes may now be on the kind of fiscal budget the Conservatives might produce next year, but a more essential budget also demands urgent attention: the global ecological budget. The financial crisis has brought into sharp focus the need to fundamentally change, not merely repair or rebuild, our economy. Because, quite simply, sticking with an economic model that is driving toward ecological catastrophe will kill us. So, it is essential to address the financial and ecological crises together.

The ecological budget, on which all life and, consequently, the human economy depends, is already in dramatic deficit. Why is this budget ultimately more important than the fiscal budget? Sept. 23, 2008, was Earth Overshoot Day. The period after Sept. 23 represents the time the human population causes an ecological deficit, using up the Earth faster than it can regenerate.

Every year, Earth Overshoot Day comes earlier. This moving date tells the story of a global environment rapidly losing its ability to support life: accelerating climate change; the loss of species and habitats; declining fisheries; the proliferation of ocean dead zones; diminishing freshwater resources; and more. Ecological overshoot is climate change on steroids.

the minority reality

There are two realities "out there" now competing for verification among those who think about national affairs and make things happen. The dominant one (let's call it the Status Quo) is that our problems of finance and economy will self-correct and allow the project of a "consumer" economy to resume in "growth" mode. This view includes the idea that technology will rescue us from our fossil fuel predicament -- through "innovation," through the discovery of new techno rescue remedy fuels, and via "drill, baby, drill" policy. This view assumes an orderly transition through the current "rough patch" into a vibrant re-energized era of "green" Happy Motoring and resumed Blue Light Special shopping.

The minority reality (let's call it The Long Emergency) says that it is necessary to make radically new arrangements for daily life and rather soon. It says that a campaign to sustain the unsustainable will amount to a tragic squandering of our dwindling resources. It says that the "consumer" era of economics is over, that suburbia will lose its value, that the automobile will be a diminishing presence in daily life, that the major systems we've come to rely on will founder, and that the transition between where we are now and where we are going is apt to be tumultuous.

My own view is obviously the one called The Long Emergency. (read more of James Howard Kunstler's Forecast for 2009)

GOP Minstrelsy?

Washington Post | Former Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell defended Saltsman and attacked the media.

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-elect Obama being the first African American elected president," Blackwell, who is black, said in a statement.

"I don't think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them," he said. "When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people."

Saltsman adopted a similar line yesterday, calling out the media for reporting on his holiday gift.

"Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media didn't utter a word about David Ehrenstein's irresponsible column in the Los Angeles Times last March. But now, of course, they're shocked and appalled by its parody on 'The Rush Limbaugh Show,' " Saltsman said in a statement, referring to the op-ed article that reportedly inspired the song lyrics.

"I firmly believe that we must welcome all Americans into our party and that the road to Republican resurgence begins with unity, not division. But I know that our party leaders should stand up against the media's double standards and refuse to pander to their desire for scandal," Saltsman added.

So right off the top, there are two things warranting direct consideration.

1. The original Ehrenstein article in the LA Times linked above.
2. The Shanklin/Limbaugh parody song allegedly based on the Ehrenstein article.
   

Was the Ehrenstein article irresponsible? Is the song a valid parody of the Ehrenstein article? What was Saltsman's motive for including the song in his gift to party members? Is there a double-standard at work here? Is Saltsman really a fine person as Ken Blackwell contends, simply misunderstood for publicly indulging lighthearted parody? Is Saltsman being singled out by the media in an effort to monetize scandal? Is Saltsman's behavior illustrative of the anti-Black sentiment that has animated a significant percentage of the GOP's base since the Nixon administration's electorally opportunistic employment of the southern strategy?

The Irresponsibility of Thomas Friedman

I'm not a big fan of Tom Friedman. Evidently, Tikkun is fed up with this superfluous windbag too.

Tikkun | In the introduction to his 2002 book that reprinted many of his columns on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11), Friedman boasts that he has “total editorial freedom to take whatever stance I want on an issue,” that no one but the copy editor sees his column before it is published, and that the publisher of the Times has never commented on anything he has written. “I am completely home alone,” he writes in his preface.

It shows. In his columns on the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, especially in the first three or four years after Camp David, Friedman utilized this complete freedom from criticism and accountability (1) to make arguments, statements, and charges that had been repeatedly demonstrated to be factually wrong; (2) to make a number of assertions for which there was no evidence, as if they were so self-evident that no evidence was required; (3) to oversimplify and even, on occasion, vulgarize the issues; and (4) on several occasions to indulge in emotional diatribes that managed to be simultaneously unpersuasive and self-contradictory.

At least on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then, Friedman’s unbounded self-confidence in his own views is an unearned one, for he has not been seriously interested in learning in depth about the events in recent years, or in correcting his many errors or poorly-grounded arguments as new information and analyses became available. As a result, Friedman’s discussions of the breakdown of the peace process at Camp David and after, as well as his analyses of the causes of the Palestinian intifada, are neither intellectually respectable nor, given his great influence, morally responsible.

Speed Camera "Pimping"

Sentinel | As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera "Pimping" game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.

"This game is very disturbing," the parent said. "Especially since unsuspecting parents will also be victimized through receipt of unwarranted photo speed tickets.

The parent said that "our civil rights are exploited," and the entire premise behind the Speed Camera Program is called into question as a result of the growing this fad among students.

The Speed Camera Program was implemented in March of this year and used for the purpose of reducing traffic and pedestrian collisions in the county. Cameras are located in residential areas and school zones where the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour or lower. A $40 citation is mailed to the owner of the car for violating the speed limit in these areas.

The punchline comes near the end of the story where a city councilman expresses his concern that this activity may undermine confidence in the integrity of the program. The fact of the matter is that the children have identified a fundamental and insurmountable weakness, exploited that weakness, and rendered "the program" functionally obsolete in the process. Time to go back to the drawing board and devise a less vulnerable scheme for passive municipal revenue generation.

Fundamental Innovation....,

So, I've been asking some questions about innovation over at Spence's in response to his post The 21st Century Crisis of the Black Intellectual. As fate would have it, Ed Dunn wrote a stunning example of fundamental innovation in practice just a couple days ago. Responding to a Question About Google, Inc. Search Operation

I received a question regarding Google, Inc. search operation presented by their founders nearly 10 years ago and that document can be seen here. This is my response and “they” specifically means Google, Inc.:

I saw the holes in this presentation when I first read it nearly 10 years ago.

I do not believe they are scalable and their approach created tremendous amount of opportunity for me. Most of their approach is self-imposed overhead and an albatross they created that won’t be easy to remove when competing against us.

The primary component needed for a scalable search operation is giving web site operations the power to index themselves. I believe they believed too much in their own search algorithms due to personal arrogance. And this documented made the same mistake all the other search operations have done that I have not - they mistaken the ‘customer’ as the people who perform search (due to advertiser-orientated mentality) where I identified the customer as the web site operators who provides the content (due to an empowerment mentality).

In summary, they were arrogant to assume they could index/organize it all and better than the web site operators operating collectively and in self-interest. In fact, their pay-per-click system invalidates this outdated document because majority of their revenue is dependent on web site operators bidding on keywords and they (and other search operations) have yet to find a viable revenue model that support this document.

This goes directly to the heart of my recent post about economics which Mr. Dunn correctly and succinctly summarized thus;

This phenom also happened in the search/information retrieval industry where these complex text algorithms and AI patterns designed by these Phd grads are way out of touch of simple human context.

I find this observation to be interesting because it fundamentally explains why I feel to be the only one who can see the weakness in current search models and algorithms..

and underscores a broad intersection of complementary interests that could be expeditiously merged and served if folks put their heads together in just a little bit of discussion about collaboration.

US Police Get 'Pain Beam' Weapons

New Scientist | The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.

The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon's controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person's skin and cause pain.

Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a "repel response" - a strong urge to escape from the beam.

A spokesperson for the National Institute for Justice likens the effect of the new devices to that of "blunt trauma" weapons such as rubber bullets, "But unlike blunt trauma devices, the injury should not be present. This research is looking to reduce the injuries to suspects," they say.

Existing blunt trauma weapons can break ribs or even kill, making alternatives welcome. Yet ADS has recorded problems too - out of several thousand tests on human subjects there were two cases of second-degree burns.

Afghan Warlords Get Little Blue Pills....,

Washington Post | The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

"Take one of these. You'll love it," the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes -- followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country's roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

Sen. Inhofe: Paulson Made Martial Law Threats

Business and Media | At the time of the votes on the $700-billion bailout bill, which finally passed Oct. 4, there were dire warnings of calamity if the bill failed. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., said martial law would have to be enacted to keep public order if it didn’t pass. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Ala. said the aftermath would be comparable to the scenes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., revealed on “The Pat Campbell Show” on 1170 KFAQ, a talk radio station in Tulsa, Okla., where some of these ideas in Congress may have originated. He divulged details of a conference call with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson from mid-September, which may be behind why some members of Congress were warning of catastrophe.

“We had a conference call early on,” Inhofe said on Nov. 18. “It was on a Friday I think – a week and half before the vote on Oct. 1. So it would have been the middle … what was it – the 19th of September, we had a conference call. In this conference call – and I guess there’s no reason for me not to repeat what he said, but he said – he painted this picture you just described. He said, ‘This is serious. This is the most serious thing that we faced.’”

According to Inhofe, Paulson said this would be far worse than the Great Depression - a time when unemployment was at 24.9 percent and U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) suffered steep declines.

“He said, ‘This is going to be far worse than the Great Depression in the ’30s,’” Inhofe said. “And all these things – he was very descriptive of exactly what would happen if, if we didn’t buy out these toxic assets which he abandoned the day after he got the money.”

However, nearly a month and a half later, Paulson changed course on his bailout plan. Instead of buying up troubled assets as he originally proposed, the former head of the investment bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) announced on Nov. 12 the Treasury would instead on injecting capital directly into banks, upsetting some lawmakers in Congress. Paulson had to defend this decision before the House Financial Services Committee on Nov. 18.

Inhofe also appeared on CNN’s Nov. 18 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” and said even as senior member of the U.S. Senate he just found out only $60 billion of the initial $350 billion amount remains. He also said he feared the amount of power Paulson has to do with the $410 billion remaining.

“I have introduced a bill and it’s called Senate Bill 3683,” Inhofe said. “And, it would freeze any further spending. And if you look at what’s just left now and the $350 billion that would come up, I’m very much disturbed because there is a process to enter into that, to access that $350 billion. That means if we’re not here in session, then it’ll be done unilaterally by the Treasury Department.”

“When in the history of America has one unelected person had the control of a massive amount of money like this – total control to do with whatever he wishes?” Inhofe asked.

The Day the Earth Went Broke

This is excerpted from a very well-written sales pitch for precious metals. Well worth reading down to the paragraph below which precedes the pitch to buy silver and gold.

So it makes me wonder. How bad is it out there? How many other Ponzi schemes are there besides Madoff’s? How many more financial psychopaths are ginning up fake account statements? How many little old ladies are there out there who think they have money in an account, but it’s all just some big scam? How many more bad banks? How many bad brokerage houses? How many more bad companies with bad stock? How many more bad government entities with bad finances and worse bonds? How many bad pension funds?

It drives home the point of wondering whom you can trust. And how bad is it with even the U.S. government? Do you really trust government statistics, like the one for the rate of inflation or unemployment? And how about the numbers in the national budget accounts? We’re spending how much? Does money even have any meaning to the people who have the power to appropriate it? Our whole national accounting process has turned into an intergenerational Ponzi scheme.

Really, our $10 trillion national debt is not enough? We are looking at trillion-dollar deficits in just the next year or two. How long can it last? And whom can you believe in any position of authority? So Bernard Madoff had a “system” for investing? And Ben Bernanke has a “system” for managing the monetary policy of the country, right? Hank Paulson has a “system” for managing the Treasury accounts? And Congress and the president — G.W. Bush, and after him B.H. Obama — have a “system” for spending the nation’s limited wealth on important things, yes?

Begs so many questions. For example, how does the devastation resulting from Madoff's fraud compare with the WTC devastation precipitating the GWOT? If as I suspect, Madoff is just the visible tip of a much larger iceberg, what level of alert is appropriate in response to what will ensue as other such schemes unfold over the next few weeks and months? (and no, I don't think buying silver and gold at this late hour is the answer)

Inner-world Struggle..,

Christmas 1926. Prieure. Gurdjieff, in reflecting on his productivity in regard to writing, realizes that "in reality at all times strictly corresponded in its duration with the length and quality of the, so to say, 'degree of contact,' between my consciousness and the suffering proceeding in me on behalf of my mother and wife."

He had written before with Olga de Hartmann. Dr. Stjoernval, and C.S. Nott sitting beside him, they acting as a sort of negative pole in the 'battery' set up. But with his wife and mother Gurdjieff suffered unconsciously. And so he elicits the use of unconscious suffering as well as conscious.

While "watching the children around the Christmas tree and their unrestrained joy," Gurdjieffsays he comes to the recognition "of the full possibility of attaining his aims through the forces of the inner-world struggle."

Pages 84 and 119, Struggle of the Magicians William Patrick Patterson

Gas Impasse....,

Washington Post | Russia and Ukraine appear to be heading for a new collision over natural gas that could disrupt supplies to Europe this winter, with Russia threatening to stop selling the fuel to Ukraine on Jan. 1 if it does not repay more than $2 billion in debt.

Russia called on European nations Tuesday to pressure Ukraine to guarantee the delivery of Russian natural gas to the continent. The appeal, made by Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, came as negotiators prepared to meet in Moscow in an attempt to resolve the politically tinged standoff.

Russia briefly reduced its supply of gas to Ukraine in March and shut it down for a few days in January 2006. But the latest disagreement could be more severe because the global financial crisis has battered both countries and left them hungry for funds.

Any disruption could affect Europe because Russia supplies as much as a quarter of the gas the continent uses, most of it delivered through pipelines in Ukraine. Analysts say Ukraine could divert gas intended for Europe to satisfy its own needs if Moscow carries out its threat to shut off the supply to Ukraine.

"Europe must be concerned by the decisions made by Ukraine," not by Russia, Shmatko said at a news conference. "Russia will ship and export gas in quantities stipulated in our agreements."

He added that Europe should "exert required pressure" to ensure "guaranteed gas transit."

Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, set the Jan. 1 deadline for payment of Ukraine's gas debts at a news conference last week, saying Ukrainian officials had informed the company they could not raise any more funds for gas for the rest of the year.

But Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said the country had already paid Russia for gas consumed in the summer and autumn, and the national gas company, Naftogaz, said additional payments were planned.

Putin says 'cheap gas era' ending

BBC News | The era of cheap gas is coming to an end, Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has told ministers from the world's major gas-exporting countries.

Mr Putin said the cost of extracting gas was rising sharply, therefore "the era of cheap energy resources, of cheap gas, is of course coming to an end".

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) meeting in Moscow has agreed a charter and plans for a permanent base.

Some observers say the GECF may develop into an Opec-style producers' cartel.

This speculation increased with the news that the charter had been adopted and that GECF leaders had agreed to establish permanent offices in Doha, Qatar.

Mr Putin had earlier said Russia was ready to set up the headquarters in St Petersburg and give it full diplomatic status.

"A new organisation has been born today, said Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko.

As the head of the government of the world's biggest gas exporter, Mr Putin's word carries weight both with producers and consumers, the BBC's James Rodgers in Moscow. Concerns over energy security mean a formal organisation of gas exporting countries would be deeply unpopular in Europe and the US.

It is feared that such an organisation could hold a monopoly on world supply and set prices to suit its own needs.

The countries attending are Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Equatorial Guinea and Norway are attending as observers.

It is not ruled out that the current position of the Ukrainian side... could lead to disruptions in the stability of gas supplies

As well as the possibility of formalising the organisation, issues including possible future cuts in gas production and the effect of lower oil prices are also likely to be on the agenda, our correspondent says.

Industry analysts say technical differences between the oil and gas markets - including longer-term contracts for gas exports - make it unlikely for now that gas exporters will set Opec-style quotas.

Officials at the meeting stressed they were not trying to set up a price-fixing cartel.

Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said participant countries wanted to build a solid organisation, "which has in its foundation the same principles that gave birth to Opec".

But he added: "It's not a cartel. We are defending the interests of our countries, that's all."

Generational Causus Belli....,

My man Spence has been holding it down this week on the subject of youth rioting in Europe and some of what's motivating the current wave of unrest. David Green explored some of this same territory with an American focus at Counterpunch.

I cannot think of a single time in American history where one generation left their children such a stunningly large and complete a mess to clean up.

The fiscal part of it is astonishing, though only the most visible element. A wrecked economy that may sink below the depths of the Great Depression is just the latest contribution. But even before that, economists have been predicting that today’s young people will be the first generation in American history to be less well off than their parents. That doesn’t even account for the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, which has been almost completely neglected for thirty years, so that we could party now and pay later. It also doesn’t include bills encumbered as Baby Boomers begin to retire and demand their promised Social Security and Medicare. These would be almost impossible to meet by virtue of demographic and rising healthcare factors alone. But we might have had a chance at doing so had we set aside the revenues coming in all these last decades while Boomers were working, for use at the time when the payers would became the payees, en masse. But, of course, that would have meant raising taxes or spending less – and we can’t have that! – since we’ve been using that money instead to pay for general budget expenses.

Or, should I say, to not pay for general budget expenses? Could you imagine parents so reckless that they would party themselves into a drunken stupor by stealing the funds from their children? I’m not talking about burning through the inheritance, which, after all, is the parents’ money to do what they want with. No, I’m talking about spending the money the kids have saved themselves for their own college education, or for a down-payment on a house. Outrageous, eh? Well, guess what? That’s exactly what the Baby Boomers did. Because they wanted all the government services they got, plus the tax cuts that put a little extra jingle in their pockets, plus the luxury of being so stupid and ill-informed that they didn’t have to grapple with the questions of where that tax ‘cut’ money was really going, or how utterly bogus were the administration’s claims about its policies, especially concerning the hugely expensive Iraq war. Put it all together and it equates to living well beyond your means. And when you do that, there are only so many ways to deal with the difference in what you’re spending versus what you’re bringing in. Cue the kids here.

The math is astonishing. The current amount of the national debt is a staggering 10.667 trillion dollars, and climbing fast (indeed, it has already risen substantially since I typed that number). Let’s leave aside for the moment that it is rising every year with each annual deficit – which some people now think could be a dramatically record-breaking trillion dollars next year – added to the pile. And let’s also leave aside the fact that each of those dollars are borrowed, and are thus accruing additional liability every day in the form of interest. If we just take the current debt, and divide it by the number of payroll workers in America (about 150 million), that means each worker’s share of the existing debt is $71,113. Now, just for the sake of argument, let’s say a worker has a job pulling down fifteen bucks per hour in pay. At that rate, they would have to work 4,741 hours to do nothing but pay off the amount that has been borrowed in their names, without their assent, and just to cover only what has been loaned so far to date – not counting new additions to the pile each day, and not counting accruing interest. At forty hours a week, that’s 2.37 years of someone’s life. In fact, that’s 2.37 years of 150 million people’s lives. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine going to someone and saying “I’m going to force you to work over two years of your life in some job you probably don’t like, so that I don’t have to”? Because that’s exactly what this represents: Baby Boomers refusing to live within their means and desperately turning to their own children to facilitate the parents’ irresponsibility. Parents stealing more than two years of their children’s lives, to add two years of play time to their own. Unreal.

Interestingly, there is as yet no current mobilization along generational lines in the U.S. such as we're witnessing in Europe. I suspect we can easily understand why this is the case. I suspect that as we descend further into the devastating economic crisis of the Greatest Depression that Barack Obama cannot halt, there will be tens of millions of Americans who will be ruthlessly thrust aside. As their houses are foreclosed, as their jobs are lost, as they are forced to declare bankruptcy and watch their communities collapse, they will retreat even further into irrational fantasy. It will be very interesting to see what glittering and self-destructive illusions the dopamine hegemony - our corporate advertisers, our charlatan preachers, our television news celebrities, our self-help gurus, our entertainment industry and our political demagogues—have in store for American youth who have yet to face their own rude awakening. We ain't seen nothing yet.....,

Liar Apes...,

NYTimes | When considering the behavior of putative scam operators like Bernard “Ponzi scheme” Madoff or Rod “Potty Mouth” Blagojevich, feel free to express a sense of outrage, indignation, disgust, despair, amusement, schadenfreude. But surprise? Don’t make me laugh.

Sure, Mr. Madoff may have bilked his clients of $50 billion, and Governor Blagojevich, of Illinois, stands accused of seeking personal gain through the illicit sale of public property — a United States Senate seat. Yet while the scale of their maneuvers may have been exceptional, their apparent willingness to lie, cheat, bluff and deceive most emphatically was not.

Deceitful behavior has a long and storied history in the evolution of social life, and the more sophisticated the animal, it seems, the more commonplace the con games, the more cunning their contours.

In a comparative survey of primate behavior, Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland found a direct relationship between sneakiness and brain size. The larger the average volume of a primate species’ neocortex — the newest, “highest” region of the brain — the greater the chance that the monkey or ape would pull a stunt like this one described in The New Scientist: a young baboon being chased by an enraged mother intent on punishment suddenly stopped in midpursuit, stood up and began scanning the horizon intently, an act that conveniently distracted the entire baboon troop into preparing for nonexistent intruders.

US warns Russia against selling missiles to Iran

Brattleboro Reformer | U.S. officials said Monday that they want answers from Russia on whether it is selling advanced surface-to-air missiles to Iran, a move the U.S. insists could threaten American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. A senior military intelligence official said that while Moscow has sent out conflicting responses to reports on the sale of long-range S-300 missiles, the U.S. believes it is taking place. However, it appears that no equipment has yet been delivered to Iran, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Russia's state arms export agency said Monday it is supplying Iran with defensive weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, but did not say whether they include sophisticated long-range S-300 missiles.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the U.S. is seeking clarification from Russia.

"We have repeatedly made clear at senior levels of the Russian government that we would strongly oppose the sale of the S-300," Wood said. "As the U.S. government has said before, this is not the time for business as usual with the Iranian government."

Iran currently has an antiquated missile defense system, dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, so the Russian sale would provide Tehran a much longer range, more mobile and lethal capability. With a range of roughly 75 miles, the Russian system would allow Iran to reach coalition forces operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, if the missiles were moved near the borders.

Both the U.S. and Israel have strongly opposed the sale, saying that supplying such an advanced anti-aircraft system to Iran would shift the military balance of power in the Middle East. It also would make any strike at Iran's first nuclear power plant — which Russia is helping to build — more difficult.

There have been indications that Russia intends to supply only defensive weapons to Iran, thus keeping in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions that impose sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt its uranium enrichment and prohibit supplying Iran with materials that could contribute to its nuclear program.

Officials acknowledge that the sale of the S-300 system is not prohibited by the resolution.