peak oil - why the pentagon is pessimistic

LeMonde | “Twilight in the desert” is a book summing up the arguments of a Texan oil banker who suggests that Saudi Arabia is overestimating its future oil production capacity. I’ve learned through the American Department of Defense that this book is the source of two recent Pentagon reports envisaging a severe lack of oil starting in 2012 and continuing until 2015 at least.

[Matthew Simmons, who wrote “Twilight in the desert, published in 2005, died in august at the age of 67. His analysis remain a major piece of the peak oil debate.]

According to the thesis developed in “Twilight in the Desert”, the official numbers published by Saudi Aramco, the national Saudi oil company, highly overestimate the true level of reserves that the largest world oil power is capable of extracting from its soil. As a consequence, according to Matthew Simmons, the Saudi oil production will no longer increase, and could even be on the point of a drastic reduction.

The advisory staff of the American armed services seems to consider the fears of Mr. Simmons as well-founded and credible, and based on this, the staff has produced a prognosis of a “severe energy crisis” that is potentially inevitable.

Two biannual reports, having appeared in 2008 and in 2010, describe the “environment” of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff [translator: “inter-armed service forces” in the original] (the JOE reports stand for Joint Operating Environment). They occupy an important place, in this reporter’s opinion, among the recent analyses recognizing the eventuality (or stating the threat) of a fall in the world oil production between now and the middle of this decade.

[The simple fact that the reports JOE2008 and JOE2010 come from the advisory staff of the joint chiefs of staff confers on them a certain importance. The U.S. armed forces have always overseen (very) closely the provisioning of this great power of the “free world” with Saudi black gold : since 1944 and the past alliance between President Roosevelt and King Ibn Saoud several days after Yalta, continuing to 1973 and the Yom Kippur war, when the U.S. Navy developed attack plans to get a hold of the Ghawar mega-field the no less vital terminal of Ras Tanura, and when at the same time Saudi Arabia agreed to secretly break its own oil embargo in order to provision the American sixth fleet, which was threatened with its gasoline tank going dry, and… continuing on to today.]

The 2008 and 2010 JOE reports describe in identical terms a diagnosis that figures to this day to be among the most pessimistic on the question of an eventual structural oil shock between now and 2015 [I was the first journalist to point this out, in April 2010 ]

strip to protest tsa

Video - Germans strip to protest TSA.

does the tsa ever catch terrorists?

Salon | If they do, for some reason they won't admit it. Writing in Slate on Thursday, political reporter David Weigel identified a "full-blown revolt against the TSA." On Saturday, would-be passenger John Tyner refused an airport security pat-down with the now-famous phrase "if you touch my junk I'm going to have you arrested"; Texas congressman Ron Paul introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act to establish "that airport security screeners are not immune from any US law"; and several groups have designated Wednesday, Nov. 24 (the day before Thanksgiving), National Opt-Out Day against invasive body scanners. According to the TSA's Web site, new security measures like full-body scanners are just part of its mission "to prevent any terrorist or criminal activity"—but have TSA screeners ever actually prevented a terrorist attack?

It's hard to say. The TSA was unable to provide any comprehensive data covering all nine years of its existence on short notice, but it does publicize incidents on a weekly basis: From Nov. 8 to Nov. 14, for example, agents found six "artfully concealed prohibited items" and 11 firearms at checkpoints, and they arrested six passengers after investigations of suspicious behavior or fraudulent travel documents. (Those figures are close to the weekly average.) It's not clear, however, whether any of these incidents represent attempted acts of terrorism or whether they were honest accidents. (Whoops, forgot I had that meat cleaver on me! Or, I had no idea flares weren't allowed!)

Citing national-security concerns, the TSA will not point to any specific cases in which a screener stopped a would-be terrorist at a checkpoint. Nonaffiliated security experts, such as Bruce Schneier (who coined the term "security theater"), argue that that's because this has never happened. It's true the TSA doesn't make a habit of keeping success stories a secret. In April 2008, the TSA touted the arrest of U.S. Army veteran Kevin Brown at Orlando International Airport as a victory for its behavioral detection program. Brown was arrested after trying to check luggage containing pipe-bomb-making materials. Airline officials insisted passengers were never in danger, since Brown didn't intend to assemble the bomb on the plane. Moreover, he did not have ties to organized terrorism, and it's not apparent what he wanted to do with the hazardous materials after arriving at his destination. Brown fits into the category of troublemakers that Schneier says the TSA does catch: random nut jobs. (Not professional terrorists with thought-out plans.)

anxiety

the seven creepiest things about tsa scanners

Video - TSA unveils new genital visualizer systems.

Alternet | The invasive scanners can see your tampons, give you cancer and make your grandmother cry -- and they're not cheap. Why do we keep using them? The recent, furious backlash against the TSA's degrading body scanners has drawn attention to the myriad ways the so-called "porno scanners" can violate one's privacy, civil rights and basic sense of dignity.

With National Opt-Out Day approaching the day before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel days of the year, here are several of the absolute creepiest things about scanners that everyone should keep in mind when flying at the holidays, or any other time of the year.

1. The scanner operators can see everything, including your pads and tampons. It's creepy enough that the scanners take naked pictures of passengers, but now recently-appointed TSA head John S. Pistole has told the New York Times that they can also detect sanitary napkins, and that such a finding could lead to passengers being pulled aside for extra security measures. Screeners "are expected to exercise some discretion," he said, but discretion about what? Can we expect an extra invasive pat-down of our crotches on heavy flow days?

2. Naked passenger images are easily saved -- and spread on the Internet. Body scanner images are supposed to be deleted immediately. But as tech-blog Gizmodo proved earlier this week, it is all too easy for the machines to save images of naked passengers, genitalia and all, and for blogs to get a hold of them and spread them on the Web.

3. They could give you cancer. Scientists have warned that there are serious health risks associated with X-ray body scanners. In April, a group of scientists from the University of California, San Francisco sent a letter to the White House about scanner safety concerns, while Dr. Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the Johns Hopkins University school of medicine, has said that "statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays."

4. If you refuse to go through one, you could be publicly groped. Should you decide to take the National Opt-Out Day pledge and refuse to go through a body scanner on November 24, be prepared to receive an "enhanced pat down" of your entire body, including genitals, likely conducted in full view of other passengers. A pilots union has likened the process to "sexual molestation," while rape victims have been emotionally triggered and old ladies brought to tears by the pat downs.

5. You could wind up with a hefty fine for refusing to be scanned. The TSA has opened an investigation targeting John Tyner, a software engineer who refused to be scanned and was subjected to an "enhanced pat down." When Tyner told the TSA agent not to "touch [his] junk" -- and caught the exchange on camera -- he was kept from getting on his flight and now faces prosecution and an $11,000 fine. (Sign a petition to encourage the investigation of the TSA, not Tyner, here.)

6. They're fueling homophobia in brand new ways. The anti-gay wingnut group Americans for Truth About Homosexuality has called for the TSA to use "common-sense, healthy 'discrimination'" by banning "self-acknowledged homosexuals" from being security agents "so as to avoid [passengers] being put in sexually compromising situations." Apparently if a straight person feels you up publicly, that's just fine, but a gay person doing so is "sexually compromising."

7. They're an obscene waste of money. The House actually voted down the use of body scanners, but the TSA ignored the will of Congress and bought the machines anyway, wasting $25 million in stimulus funds.

tsa says "shut your pie holes!!!"

The Doctor | If you haven't been keeping up with current events, not too long ago the US Transportation Security Agency (anon.) set in motion a plan in which full body scanners would be deployed in select airports around the country. The idea behind them is that security teams could tell if someone had something concealed beneath their clothing, and as a side effect shows the traveler naked for all intents and purposes, and what's more they archive the images for an undisclosed period of time. For a while various groups and a few US senators were pushing back against this plan but they've started deploying the scanners anyway. There are still health concerns about the x-ray backscatter scanners that are yet unresolved. The Food and Drug Administration is trying its best to reassure people.

There is also the little matter of both types of full body scanners not being able to detect the objects they were put in place to catch, namely, bomb components. In fact, a couple of experts have come right out and said that they're a waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere. Hell, even Max Headroom's evil sister Ann Coulter has spoken out against them. Taking all of these things into consideration it's little wonder that people were opting to be searched by hand in the fashion that my wife was a couple of weeks ago at BWI when she kept setting the metal detector off. Sure it took a little longer and was marginally less humiliating than a random stranger at the airport looking at you naked but it satisfied the security regs, right?

It seems that, due to the fact that travelers are speaking up and refusing to be imaged by devices of questionable accuracy, utility, safety, and ethics the TSA has decided to push back by humiliating people who dare to refuse. The first person to report what happened was a pilot who works for ExpressJet Airlines who found out the hard way. Sometimes refusal to go through a scanner gets written up as an "incident" to go on a permanant record of some kind (what is this, middle school?) Chances are it means being detained for a while, usually until a security detail shows up to inqure why someone had the temerity to say anything. Your limbs will be squeezed to check for anything that might be fastened to them, as will your torso (I wonder what they'd make of an insulin pump?) and neck. Your buttcrack will be spread to see if you've got anything hidden in there. Your legs will be checked in like fashion and your genitals will be fondled to see if you have anything hidden on or near them.

At least you have the option of having it done in a back room; personally, I'd prefer having it done in front of everyone to show the crowd exactly what things have come to. Plus, it might be good to have a few dozen witnesses in case the TSA tries to play a harmless joke on you. However, if you refuse you might roll a botch and wind up in handcuffs without a ticket and get thrown out by a flying wedge of real police officers.

The answer seems cut and dried, doesn't it? Just shut up, swallow your civil rights, and go through the scanner, right? Unless the powers that be decide that the all-but-naked scan wasn't good enough and you have to go under the gloves anyway. Or you might be randomly selected to get felt up. It needs to be said that not everyone is going to take kindly to this, such as survivors of rape and possibly survivors of physical abuse. A number of professional associations for pilots are protesting the measures in a half-hearted fashion, flight attendents are getting upset, and unions are beginning to cry foul. The ACLU is collecting stories from travelers who have undergone this humiliating treatment for no good reason. Or maybe sometimes there is a reason.

see what happens you touch somebody else's junk?!?!?

AP | A malicious computer attack that appears to target Iran's nuclear plants can be modified to wreak havoc on industrial control systems around the world, affecting the production of everything from chemicals to baby formula, government officials and cyberexperts warned Wednesday.

Experts told senators that attackers can use information made public about the so-called Stuxnet virus to develop variations targeting other industries, and that the worm's consequences go "beyond any threat we have seen."

The code has attacked industrial sites in Iran and several other countries, and infected several employees' laptops at the Bushehr nuclear plans. Iran has said it believes Stuxnet is part of a Western plot to sabotage its nuclear program, but experts see few signs of major damage at Iranian facilities.

Specific industrial control systems using Windows software are vulnerable to the code. These are used in many critical sectors, from automobile assembly to mixing products such as chemicals and baby formula, Sean McGurk, acting director of Homeland Security's national cybersecurity operations center, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

"This code can automatically enter a system, steal the formula for the product you are manufacturing, alter the ingredients being mixed in your product and indicate to the operator and your antivirus software that everything is functioning as expected," McGurk testified at a cybersecurity hearing.

a keen grasp of ponerology

Video - nice little montage on political ponerology.

Countercurrents | We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity. The elites have successfully convinced us that we no longer have the capacity to understand the revealed truths presented before us or to fight back against the chaos caused by economic and environmental catastrophe. As long as the mass of bewildered and frightened people, fed images that permit them to perpetually hallucinate, exist in this state of barbarism, they may periodically strike out with a blind fury against increased state repression, widespread poverty and food shortages. But they will lack the ability and self-confidence to challenge in big and small ways the structures of control. The fantasy of widespread popular revolts and mass movements breaking the hegemony of the corporate state is just that – a fantasy.

My analysis comes close to the analysis of many anarchists. But there is a crucial difference. The anarchists do not understand the nature of violence. They grasp the extent of the rot in our cultural and political institutions, they know they must sever the tentacles of consumerism, but they naïvely believe that it can be countered with physical forms of resistance and acts of violence. There are debates within the anarchist movement – such as those on the destruction of property – but once you start using plastic explosives, innocent people get killed. And when anarchic violence begins to disrupt the mechanisms of governance, the power elite will use these acts, however minor, as an excuse to employ disproportionate and ruthless amounts of force against real and suspected agitators, only fueling the rage of the dispossessed.

I am not a pacifist. I know there are times, and even concede that this may eventually be one of them, when human beings are forced to respond to mounting repression with violence. I was in Sarajevo during the war in Bosnia. We knew precisely what the Serbian forces ringing the city would do to us if they broke through the defenses and trench system around the besieged city. We had the examples of the Drina Valley or the city of Vukovar, where about a third of the Muslim inhabitants had been killed and the rest herded into refugee or displacement camps. There are times when the only choice left is to pick up a weapon to defend your family, neighborhood and city. But those who proved most adept at defending Sarajevo invariably came from the criminal class. When they were not shooting at Serbian soldiers they were looting the apartments of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo and often executing them, as well as terrorizing their fellow Muslims. When you ingest the poison of violence, even in a just cause, it corrupts, deforms and perverts you. Violence is a drug, indeed it is the most potent narcotic known to humankind. Those most addicted to violence are those who have access to weapons and a penchant for force. And these killers rise to the surface of any armed movement and contaminate it with the intoxicating and seductive power that comes with the ability to destroy. I have seen it in war after war. When you go down that road you end up pitting your monsters against their monsters. And the sensitive, the humane and the gentle, those who have a propensity to nurture and protect life, are marginalized and often killed. The romantic vision of war and violence is as prevalent among anarchists and the hard left as it is in the mainstream culture. Those who resist with force will not defeat the corporate state or sustain the cultural values that must be sustained if we are to have a future worth living. From my many years as a war correspondent in El Salvador, Guatemala, Gaza and Bosnia, I have seen that armed resistance movements are always mutations of the violence that spawned them. I am not naïve enough to think I could have avoided these armed movements had I been a landless Salvadoran or Guatemalan peasant, a Palestinian in Gaza or a Muslim in Sarajevo, but this violent response to repression is and always will be tragic. It must be avoided, although not at the expense of our own survival.

Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d’état in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world’s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter.

Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.

a hedge fund republic?

NYTimes | Earlier this month, I offended a number of readers with a column suggesting that if you want to see rapacious income inequality, you no longer need to visit a banana republic. You can just look around.

My point was that the wealthiest plutocrats now actually control a greater share of the pie in the United States than in historically unstable countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. But readers protested that this was glib and unfair, and after reviewing the evidence I regretfully confess that they have a point.

That’s right: I may have wronged the banana republics.

You see, some Latin Americans were indignant at what they saw as an invidious and hurtful comparison. The truth is that Latin America has matured and become more equal in recent decades, even as the distribution in the United States has become steadily more unequal.

The best data series I could find is for Argentina. In the 1940s, the top 1 percent there controlled more than 20 percent of incomes. That was roughly double the share at that time in the United States.

Since then, we’ve reversed places. The share controlled by the top 1 percent in Argentina has fallen to a bit more than 15 percent. Meanwhile, inequality in the United States has soared to levels comparable to those in Argentina six decades ago — with 1 percent controlling 24 percent of American income in 2007.

At a time of such stunning inequality, should Congress put priority on spending $700 billion on extending the Bush tax cuts to those with incomes above $250,000 a year? Or should it extend unemployment benefits for Americans who otherwise will lose them beginning next month?

One way to examine that decision is to put aside all ethical considerations and simply look at where tax dollars will do more to stimulate the economy. There the conclusion is clear: You get much more bang for the buck putting money in the hands of unemployed people because they will promptly spend it.

HR 3808 got stuffed yesterday in the lame duck

4ClosureFraud.org | Looks like it might be time to get to know your representatives that voted to override the presidents veto…

House Vote #573 (Nov 17, 2010)

On Passage of the Bill, the Objections of the President `: H R 3808 To require any Federal or State court to recognize any notarization made by a notary public licensed by a State other than the State where the court is located when such notarization occurs in or affects interstate commerce.

Number:	House Vote #573 in 2010 [primary source: house.gov]
Date:	Nov 17, 2010 5:24PM
Result:	Failed
Related Bill:	H.R. 3808: Interstate Recognition of Notarizations Act of 2010

	Totals			Democrats	Republicans	Independents	All Votes Needed to Win
Yea:	185	(43%)		16	168	0
Nay:	235	(54%)		230	5	0
Present:	0	(0%)		0	0	0
Not Voting:	13	(3%)		8	5	0
Required:	2/3 of 420 votes (=280 votes) (Vacancies in Congress will affect vote totals.)

Please note that there is a slight glitch in this voting record. GovTrack could not identify all of the voters from the original source data. Some voters are listed as ‘Unknown Person’, and the Party Breakdown table may be inaccurate.

anonymity is just one manifestation...,

Video - Game Theory explained part 2.

GlobalResearch | Because my OED is inaccessible at the moment, I cannot specify exactly when the word 'philanthropy,' which etymologically means "love of mankind," came to be applied to the donating of money to build self aggrandizing enterprises. But alas, it has! People seem to have a way of twisting meanings in ways that make the malevolent appear benevolent. And so, enterprises of all kinds have been funded by such 'philanthropy.'

For instance, Carnegie Mellon University was founded by Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. and Richard B. Mellon; Cornell University was founded by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White; Purdue University was founded by John Purdue; Rice University was founded by William Marsh Rice; Stanford University was founded by Leland Stanford and his wife. There are hundreds more.

There are museums, too (The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, The Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Kimbell Art Museum, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art and many more), concert halls (Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, The Eastman Theatre, Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center to name just a few), Opera Houses (The Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall, The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, The Peabody Opera House, The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, The BAM Howard Gilman Opera House), innumerable charitable foundations and buildings built for public use such a libraries.

Although it is difficult to deny some merit to most of these enterprises, it is also difficult to even imagine that when Christ said, "love thy neighbor as thyself," he was advocating the kind of love philanthropy has come to express. But belittling philanthropy is not the intent of this piece. These examples are intended solely to lay the basis for an exposition of some contrasts and to draw some revealing conclusions from them.

First of all, the kind of giving described above is not the only kind of giving that has become prevalent. During last week's midterm electioneering, unspecified amounts of money were donated anonymously to Political Action Committees in an attempt to influence the electoral process. What distinguishes this group of donors from those above is the anonymity. The benefactors, in the first group, like the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, have no qualms about putting their names on their projects. (I suspect that more often than not, they insist upon it.) But not the donors in the second group.

Why? I suspect a principle lies behind the difference: People do not hide that in which they take pride! The benefactors in the first group are proud of their giving, they want it made known to all, they want to be remembered for it. So why wouldn't the "benefactors" in the second group be equally proud of their beneficence? Are they merely cowards who lack the courage of their convictions? Or are they ashamed of what they are doing? Are they hiding their shame behind their anonymity? In either case, they cannot be judged kindly.

Anonymity, however, is just one manifestation of a deeper and growing tendency in American society—the trend toward more and more secrecy, and no one, to my knowledge, has revealed the ultimate, disastrous consequences of this tendency.

bacterial communities trump game theory

Video - Game Theory explained.

ScienceDaily | When it comes to gambling, many people rely on game theory, a branch of applied mathematics that attempts to measure the choices of others to inform their own decisions. It's used in economics, politics, medicine -- and, of course, Las Vegas. But recent findings from a Tel Aviv University researcher suggest that we may put ourselves on the winning side if we look to bacteria instead.

According to Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy, current game theory can't account for bacteria's natural decision-making abilities -- it's just too simplistic. Understanding bacteria's reactions to stressful and hazardous conditions may improve decision-making processes in any human arena from everyday life to political elections.

In a recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), Prof. Ben-Jacob and his fellow researchers outline how decisions made by communities of bacteria trump game theory. "When human beings make a decision," he says, "they think they're being rational. We now understand that they're influenced by superfluous 'noise,' such as their cognitive state and the influence of others." Bacteria, he explains, are both simpler and more sophisticated -- they can more effectively control this superfluous noise and make group decisions that contribute to the well-being of the entire bacterial colony.

Looking out for the whole
Bacteria live in complex colonies that can be 100 times as numerous as the population of Earth. Under stressful circumstances, bacteria have demonstrated a capacity to assess the noisy and stressful environment around them, filter out what's relevant and what's not, and make decisions that ensure the survival of the colony as a whole.

For example, one bacterial response to starvation or poisoning is that a fraction of the cells "sporulate," enclosing their DNA in a capsule or spore as the mother cell dies. This, says Prof. Ben-Jacob, ensures the survival of the colony -- when the threat is removed, the spores can germinate and the colony grows again.

During this process, the bacteria "choose" whether or not to enter a state called "competence," in which bacteria change their membranes to more easily absorb substances from their neighboring, dying cells. As a result, they recover more quickly when the stress is gone. According to Prof. Ben-Jacob, it's a difficult choice -- in fact, a gamble. The decision to go into a state of competence only pays off if most of the cells decide to sporulate.

Indeed, observations show that only about 10% of cells decide to go into competence. So why don't all bacteria attempt to save themselves? Bacteria don't hide their intentions from their peers in the colony, he explains -- they don't lie or prevaricate, but communicate their intentions by sending chemical messages among themselves. Individual bacteria weigh their decisions carefully, taking into account the stress they are facing, the situation of their peers, the statistics of how many cells are sporulating and how many are choosing competence.

communities thrive on residents affection

Knight Soul of the Community 2010 - National from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

LiveScience | If you sometimes stop and wonder why you donate to your local school’s annual fundraiser, help plant trees on your town’s main drag or offer free hot cocoa at every street fair, the answer is because you're either very generous or you know what's good for your local economy.

New research suggests when people “love” the culture of their towns, economic prosperity follows. In a three-year Gallup survey of 26 U.S. cities, researchers learned the communities with highest levels of resident attachment — a person's passion for where he or she lives — also had the highest rates of GDP growth over time.

The findings "point to a new perspective that we encourage leaders to consider," said Paula Ellis of the Knight Foundation, which funded the poll. "It is especially valuable as we aim to strengthen our communities during this tough economic time.”

The "Knight Soul of the Community" survey explored the connection between local economic growth and residents’ emotional bond to a place. Results clearly show a significant, positive link between resident attachment and local GDP growth, conclude researchers and Ellis, the foundation's vice president for strategic initiatives.

Three qualities surfaced as the leading drivers for attachment to a home city: its social offerings, openness and beauty. Those qualities were cited by survey respondents more often than other possible influences and demographic characteristics such as people’s perceptions of their local economy, leadership and safety. Fist tap Nana.

copycat floridian can't hold a candle to missourian

Video - Russia Today covering the year old trucks and AK-47 promotion in Butler MO.


Video - Fox covers Florida trucks and AK's copycat.

who will stand up to the superrich?

NYTimes | “How can hedge-fund managers who are pulling down billions sometimes pay a lower tax rate than do their secretaries?” ask the political scientists Jacob S. Hacker (of Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California, Berkeley) in their deservedly lauded new book, “Winner-Take-All Politics.” If you want to cry real tears about the American dream — as opposed to the self-canonizing tears of John Boehner — read this book and weep. The authors’ answer to that question and others amounts to a devastating indictment of both parties.

Their ample empirical evidence, some of which I’m citing here, proves that America’s ever-widening income inequality was not an inevitable by-product of the modern megacorporation, or of globalization, or of the advent of the new tech-driven economy, or of a growing education gap. (Yes, the very rich often have fancy degrees, but so do those in many income levels below them.) Inequality is instead the result of specific policies, including tax policies, championed by Washington Democrats and Republicans alike as they conducted a bidding war for high-rolling donors in election after election.

The book deflates much of the conventional wisdom. Hacker and Pierson date the dawn of the collusion between the political system and the superrich not to the Reagan revolution, but to the preceding Carter presidency and its Democratic Congress. They also write that contrary to the popular perception, America’s superhigh earners are not mostly “superstars and celebrities in the arts, entertainment and sports” or the stars of law, medicine and real estate. They are instead corporate executives and managers — increasingly (and less surprisingly) financial company executives and managers, including those who escaped with outrageous fortunes as their companies imploded during the housing bubble.

The G.O.P.’s arguments for extending the Bush tax cuts to this crowd, usually wrapped in laughably hypocritical whining about “class warfare,” are easily batted down. The most constant refrain is that small-business owners who file in this bracket would be hit so hard they could no longer hire new employees. But the Tax Policy Center found in 2008, when checking out similar campaign claims by “Joe the Plumber,” that only 2 percent of all Americans reporting small-business income, regardless of tax bracket, would see tax increases if Obama fulfilled his pledge to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for the top earners. The economist Dean Baker calculated that the yearly tax increase at the lower end of that bracket, for those with earnings between $200,000 and $500,000, would amount to $700 — which “isn’t enough to hire anyone.”

Those in the higher reaches aren’t investing in creating new jobs even now, when the full Bush tax cuts remain in effect, so why would extending them change that equation?

regulators focusing in on foreclosure crisis

Video - politicians and regulators taking a closer look at foreclosure crisis.

WaPo | A congressional oversight panel is set to warn on Tuesday that a widespread problem of flawed and fraudulent foreclosure paperwork could upend the housing market and undermine the nation's financial stability, just as the issue is coming under greater scrutiny this week in Washington.

The report, issued by the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors the government's bailout program, marks the first time a federal watchdog has weighed in on the nationwide foreclosure mess.

The panel echoed concerns raised by consumer advocates and financial analysts, who have said that although the consequences of the foreclosure debacle remain unclear, the problems could throw into doubt the ownership not only of foreclosed properties but also the millions of ordinary mortgages that were pooled and traded by investors around the world.

The report is scheduled to be released in the morning, just before the Senate Banking Committee holds a hearing on the matter and as lawmakers are considering several legislative responses.

The spotlight on the foreclosure process has anxious financial executives mobilizing on Capitol Hill. A financial lobbyist said senior executives have been meeting with lawmakers and their staffers, and industry groups are planning letter campaigns aimed at preventing any aggressive new legislation.

"Everyone's very nervous about what's going to happen this week," said another industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his firm has a stake in the outcome. "We have all hands on deck."

It's unclear what new measure could pass in a politically divided Congress, but some ideas under consideration could broadly reshape the mortgage industry.

Some lawmakers want to resurrect legislation that would give bankruptcy judges the power to order lenders to reduce the principal that homeowners owe. Others are pushing for some big banks to spin off their mortgage-servicing arms to avoid conflicts of interest. There's also discussion of the federal government replacing the industry's current system for tracking mortgages with one that would be subject to federal regulation.

"The risk is small that a bill gets through," the financial lobbyist said. But, he added: "We are taking it very seriously."

highest foreclosure rate and 80% underwater

Sun | Las Vegas home values as measured by Zillow fell 4.2 percent in the third quarter and pushed the region’s percentage of underwater properties to 80.2 percent.

The number of homes underwater -- when property owners owe more on their mortgage then the home is worth -- increased from 78.1 percent in the second quarter, the Seattle-based firm reported. Phoenix ranked second with 68 percent underwater during the third quarter.

“The high percentage of homeowners in negative equity continues to be troubling in that it represents a huge number of people who are not only more vulnerable to foreclosure but who are essentially trapped in their current homes and are prevented from selling and buying a new home,” said Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries. “This has profound implications for future demand and will be a millstone around the neck of the housing market.”

In September, 39 percent of homes sold in Las Vegas were for a loss, up from 20 percent in September 2009. Nationally, 27 percent of the homes sold in September were for a loss, the firm reported.

Zillow, which says it measures the value of all homes and not just those sold, reported home values have fallen 58 percent since their peak in May 2006 -- back to August 2000 levels.

In Las Vegas, 47 percent of all home sales in September were foreclosure sales, down from 49 percent in September 2009. Nationally, foreclosures comprised 20 percent of all sales.

just like in the hood....,

LATimes | About 30,000 people have been killed in Mexican cartel violence since President Felipe Calderon started deploying troops to take on the drug and gun traffickers in December 2006. Nearly 70,000 U.S.-originated firearms were recovered in Mexico between 2007 and 2009.

About 7,000 licensed U.S. gun dealers operate near the 2,000-mile border, and cartel leaders often hire straw buyers to purchase firearms and pay others to transport the weapons into Mexico. Just as the drugs flow steadily north, the guns reach Mexico secreted under truck beds or stashed in car trunks, sometimes even hidden in clothing.

ATF officials defended their marquee program, named Project Gunrunner, saying it has gone a long way in combating the illegal flow of U.S. firearms into Mexico since it was started in Texas in 2005 and expanded nationwide a year later.

Kenneth E. Melson, the ATF's deputy director, said in a lengthy rebuttal letter to the inspector general's report that there had been "significant accomplishments," with gun investigations up by 109% and prosecutions up by 54% under the project.

But he said a reduction in funds had limited some gun-tracing operations and had stalled attempts by the ATF to place more U.S. agents in Mexican police stations to work on joint investigations.

can mexico be saved?

WSJ | Cleaning up the mess here will require the proper diagnosis, and I ask the mayor to share his. "If you have the biggest consumer of drugs just beside your [border] and you have a lot of people here who have no opportunity, you have the culture for insecurity," he tells me. But the mayor doesn't dwell on what he cannot change. Instead he zeroes in on Mexico. "The real causes that are generating the insecurity in Juárez and all over Mexico are lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of [necessities], impunity, lack of justice. It is a mixture of a lot of problems where we Mexicans haven't done our homework," he says.

"People who think they are going to fix [the problem] with policemen and arms are completely crazy." Instead, he wants to see Mexico "make the changes in the fiscal policies to encourage investments that create jobs."

To capture the desperation of Mexico's young, the mayor-elect shares an anecdote: "Last week, at a gas station here, I met an 18-year-old. He told me 'Teto, you politicians don't know anything. You don't understand that without hope we have no future. We prefer to die in one year standing up than living all our lives on our knees.'" Summing it up, Mr. Murguia says, "When people lose hope they will do anything [to improve their circumstances]."

By Mr. Murguia's measure, Juárez was a place of hope not so long ago. "Juárez for 40 years, from 1965-2005, was the city that generated the most jobs per capita in all of Mexico. And those jobs were not only for juarenses," he says proudly. "People came from Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Veracruz because they couldn't find jobs in their own city. Some of them tried to cross the river but a lot of them found a job in Juárez."

What went wrong? The mayor-elect blames Mexico's revenue sharing model. "The investment that the federal and state government makes in Juárez does not correspond to what the city sends in federal taxes." He complains that though the city created jobs for the nation, investments in "public services, streets, schools, parks, community centers and health-care centers haven't corresponded to the job growth. We were forgotten." He wants the federal government and the state "to return to Juárez what they owe us."

military report warns sudden collapse of mexico possible

usjfcom | Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse:
Pakistan and Mexico.

"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

florida's foreclosure rocket docket

Rolling Stone | The foreclosure lawyers down in Jacksonville had warned me, but I was skeptical. They told me the state of Florida had created a special super-high-speed housing court with a specific mandate to rubber-stamp the legally dicey foreclosures by corporate mortgage pushers like Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan Chase. This "rocket docket," as it is called in town, is presided over by retired judges who seem to have no clue about the insanely complex financial instruments they are ruling on — securitized mortgages and laby­rinthine derivative deals of a type that didn't even exist when most of them were active members of the bench. Their stated mission isn't to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. They certainly have no incentive to penetrate the profound criminal mysteries of the great American mortgage bubble of the 2000s, perhaps the most complex Ponzi scheme in human history — an epic mountain range of corporate fraud in which Wall Street megabanks conspired first to collect huge numbers of subprime mortgages, then to unload them on unsuspecting third parties like pensions, trade unions and insurance companies (and, ultimately, you and me, as taxpayers) in the guise of AAA-rated investments. Selling lead as gold, shit as Chanel No. 5, was the essence of the booming international fraud scheme that created most all of these now-failing home mortgages.

The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.

Foreclosure lawyers told me one other thing about the rocket docket. The hearings, they said, aren't exactly public. "The judges might give you a hard time about watching," one lawyer warned. "They're not exactly anxious for people to know about this stuff." Inwardly, I laughed at this — it sounded like typical activist paranoia. The notion that a judge would try to prevent any citizen, much less a member of the media, from watching an open civil hearing sounded ridiculous. Fucked-up as everyone knows the state of Florida is, it couldn't be that bad. It isn't Indonesia. Right? Fist tap Dale.

unprecedented decline in home values with no end in sight

Business Insider | Zillow just released a devastating third quarter housing report. Basically every major indicator is crashing:

* The decline in home values accelerated in September, dropping 0.4% month-over-month
* Foreclosures reached an all-time high
* A record 23.2% of mortgages are now underwater

The double dip -- already a rare phenomenon -- is now entering an unprecedented free-fall. Zillow economist Stan Humphries says prices won't hit bottom until next summer at the earliest, as foreclosure activity grows.

Humphries warns: “While not unexpected, the unceasing declines in home values signal that we’re in for a long, bleak winter of continued troubles for the housing market. The length and depth of the current housing recession is rivaling the Great Depression’s real estate downturn, and, with encouraging signs fading, will easily eclipse it in the coming months."

one of murdoch's lying liars crosses the line

CSMonitor | “For a political commentator or entertainer to have the audacity to say – inaccurately – that there's a Jewish boy sending Jews to death camps, as part of a broader assault on Mr. Soros, that's horrific,” said Abraham Foxman, director of Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a Holocaust survivor.

“While I, too, may disagree with many of Soros' views and analysis on the issues, to bring in this kind of innuendo about his past is unacceptable," said Foxman in a statement. "To hold a young boy responsible for what was going on around him during the Holocaust as part of a larger effort to denigrate the man is repugnant.”

Commentary magazine, the neoconservative publication founded in 1945 by the American Jewish Committee, has long been critical of Soros. But on the publication’s website, executive editor Jonathan Tobin writes:

“Beck is in no position to pontificate about the conduct of Holocaust survivors and should refrain from even commenting about this subject…. Such topics really must be off-limits, even in the take-no-prisoners world of contemporary punditry.”

Tobin continues: “There is much to criticize about George Soros’s career, and his current political activities are troubling. But Beck’s denunciation of him is marred by ignorance and offensive innuendo. Instead of providing sharp insight into a shady character, all Beck has done is further muddy the waters and undermine his own credibility as a commentator.”

the big lie

The Atlantic | It seems to me that the last year or so in America's political culture has represented the triumph of untruth. And the untruth was propagated by a deliberate, simple and systemic campaign to kill Obama's presidency in its crib. Emergency measures in a near-unprecedented economic collapse - the bank bailout, the auto-bailout, the stimulus - were described by the right as ideological moves of choice, when they were, in fact, pragmatic moves of necessity. The increasingly effective isolation of Iran's regime - and destruction of its legitimacy from within - was portrayed as a function of Obama's weakness, rather than his strength. The health insurance reform - almost identical to Romney's, to the right of the Clintons in 1993, costed to reduce the deficit, without a public option, and with millions more customers for the insurance and drug companies - was turned into a socialist government take-over.

Every one of these moves could be criticized in many ways. What cannot be done honestly, in my view, is to create a narrative from all of them to describe Obama as an anti-American hyper-leftist, spending the US into oblivion. But since this seems to be the only shred of thinking left on the right (exacerbated by the justified flight of the educated classes from a party that is now openly contemptuous of learning), it became a familiar refrain - pummeled into our heads day and night by talk radio and Fox. If you think I'm exaggerating, try the following thought experiment.

If a black Republican president had come in, helped turn around the banking and auto industries (at a small profit!), insured millions through the private sector while cutting Medicare, overseen a sharp decline in illegal immigration, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, reinstituted pay-as-you go in the Congress, set up a debt commission to offer hard choices for future debt reduction, and seen private sector job growth outstrip the public sector's in a slow but dogged recovery, somehow I don't think that Republican would be regarded as a socialist.

This is the era of the Big Lie, in other words, and it translates into a lot of little lies - "death panels," "out-of-control" spending, "apologies for America" etc. - designed to concoct a false narrative so simple and so familiar it actually succeeded in getting into people's minds in the midst of a brutal recession. And integral to this process have been conservative "intellectuals" who should and do know better, but have long since sacrificed intellectual honesty for the cheap thrills of enabling power-grabs. And few lies represent this intellectual cooptation of talk radio/FNC propaganda better than the lie that Obama has publicly rebutted the idea of American exceptionalism.

Where does one start? Where one always starts with these things - Jonah Goldberg:

oil will run dry before substitutes roll out

Physorg | At the current pace of research and development, global oil will run out 90 years before replacement technologies are ready, says a new University of California, Davis, study based on stock market expectations.

The forecast was published online Monday (Nov. 8) in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. It is based on the theory that long-term investors are good predictors of whether and when new energy technologies will become commonplace.

"Our results suggest it will take a long time before renewable replacement fuels can be self-sustaining, at least from a market perspective," said study author Debbie Niemeier, a UC Davis professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Niemeier and co-author Nataliya Malyshkina, a UC Davis postdoctoral researcher, set out to create a new tool that would help policymakers set realistic targets for environmental sustainability and evaluate the progress made toward those goals.

Two key elements of the new theory are market capitalizations (based on stock share prices) and dividends of publicly owned oil companies and alternative-energy companies. Other analysts have previously used similar equations to predict events in finance, politics and sports.

"Sophisticated investors tend to put considerable effort into collecting, processing and understanding information relevant to the future cash flows paid by securities," said Malyshkina. "As a result, market forecasts of future events, representing consensus predictions of a large number of investors, tend to be relatively accurate."

Niemeier said the new study's findings are a warning that current renewable-fuel targets are not ambitious enough to prevent harm to society, economic development and natural ecosystems.

"We need stronger policy impetus to push the development of these alternative replacement technologies along," she said.

wheat bread $23.00 a loaf?!?!

NaturalNews | Within a decade, a loaf of wheat bread may cost $23 in a grocery store in the United States, and a 32-oz package of sugar might run $62. A 64-oz container of Minute Maid Orange Juice, meanwhile, could set you back $45.71. This is all according to a new report released Friday by the National Inflation Association which warns consumers about the coming wave of food price inflation that's about to strike the western world.

Authored by Gerard Adams (no relation to myself, Mike Adams), this report makes the connection between the Fed's runaway money creation policy ("quantitative easing") and food price inflation.

"For every economic problem the U.S. government tries to solve, it always creates two or three much larger catastrophes in the process," said Adams. "Just like we predicted this past December, the U.S. dollar index bounced in early 2010 and has been in free-fall ever since. Bernanke's QE2 will likely accelerate this free-fall into a complete U.S. dollar rout."

The upshot of a falling dollar will mean rampant price inflation on the basic goods and services that Americans depend on to survive. Food in particular is likely to be hit hard by price inflation within the decade.

The National Inflation Association has released its food price projections in a free downloadable PDF file here: http://inflation.us/foodpriceprojec...

It offers statements like this: "NIA is confident that the upcoming monetization of our debt will send nearly all agricultural commodities soaring to new all time inflation adjusted highs."

The Federal Reserve, of course, is currently engaged in the most massive money counterfeiting operation the world has ever witnessed. And it seems determined to keep printing money until all the dollars the rest of us hold are near-worthless.

why I no longer believe religion is a virus of the mind

Guardian | Are religions viruses of the mind? I would have replied with an unequivocal "yes" until a few days ago when some shocking data suggested I am wrong.

This happened at a conference in Bristol on "Explaining religion". About a dozen speakers presented research and philosophical arguments, mostly falling into two camps: one arguing that religions are biologically adaptive, the other that they are by-products of cognitive mechanisms that evolved for other reasons. I spoke first, presenting the view from memetics that religions begin as by-products but then evolve and spread, like viruses, using humans to propagate themselves for their own benefit and to the detriment of the people they infect.

This idea began with Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, was developed in his later article "Viruses of the mind" and taken up by others, including myself in The Meme Machine and other works. It is one version of "dual-inheritance" theory in which genes and culture are both seen as evolving systems.

The idea is that religions, like viruses, are costly to those infected with them. They demand large amounts of money and time, impose health risks and make people believe things that are demonstrably false or contradictory. Like viruses, they contain instructions to "copy me", and they succeed by using threats, promises and nasty meme tricks that not only make people accept them but also want to pass them on.

This was all in my mind when Michael Blume got up to speak on "The reproductive advantage of religion". With graph after convincing graph he showed that all over the world and in many different ages, religious people have had far more children than nonreligious people.

The exponential increase in the Amish population might be a one off, as might Catholics having lots of children, but a comparison of religious and nonaffiliated groups in the USA, China, Sweden, France and other European countries showed that the number of children per woman in religious groups ranged from close to zero (for the Shakers) to between six and seven for the Hutterites, Amish and Haredim, while the nonaffiliated averaged less than two per woman – below replacement rate.

Data from 82 countries showed almost a straight line plot of the number of children against the frequency of religious worship, with those who worship more than once a week averaging 2.5 children and those who never worship only 1.7 – again below replacement rate. In a Swiss census of 2000 the nonaffiliated had the lowest number of births at 1.1 per woman compared with over two among Hindus, Muslims and Jews.

the privatization of war: mercenaries, private military and security companies (PMSC)

globalresearch | In 1961, President Eisenhower warned the American public opinion against the growing danger of a military industrial complex stating: “(…) we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together”.

Fifty years later, on 8 September 2001, Donald Rumsfeld in his speech in the Department of Defence warned the militaries of the Pentagon against “an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America (…) Let's make no mistake: The modernization of the Department of Defense is (…) a matter of life and death, ultimately, every American's. (…) The adversary. (…) It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. (…)That's why we're here today challenging us all to wage an all-out campaign to shift Pentagon's resources from bureaucracy to the battlefield, from tail to the tooth. We know the adversary. We know the threat. And with the same firmness of purpose that any effort against a determined adversary demands, we must get at it and stay at it. Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

Rumsfeld should have said the shift from the Pentagon’s resources from bureaucracy to the private sector. Indeed, that shift had been accelerated by the Bush Administration: the number of persons employed by contract which had been outsourced (privatized) by the Pentagon was already four times more than at the Department of Defense.

It is not anymore a military industrial complex but as Noam Chomsky has indicated "it's just the industrial system operating under one or another pretext”.

The articles of the Washington Post “Top Secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control”, by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (19 July 2010) show the extent that “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work”.

The investigation's findings include that some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States; and that an estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. A number of private military and security companies are among the security and intelligence agencies mentioned in the report of the Washington Post.

The Working Group received information from several sources that up to 70 per cent of the budget of United States intelligence is spent on contractors. These contracts are classified and very little information is available to the public on the nature of the activities carried out by these contractors.

The privatization of war has created a structural dynamic, which responds to a commercial logic of the industry.

shall the religious inherit the earth?

Guardian | Europe, 2020. The Islamists have stormed to power across the continent. Every French woman is forced to be veiled. Holland's gay clubs have been relocated to San Francisco.

Welcome to "Eurabia", Canadian author Mark Steyn's fantasy of what Europe will look like in a decade. According to Steyn's US bestseller America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, Muslims are breeding like "mosquitoes", whereas the "European races" are "too self-absorbed to breed". Failure in the bedroom is allowing for the "recolonisation of Europe by Islam".

Steyn stands upon the more poisonous shores of anti-Muslim rhetoric. But the idea of Muslims breeding their way to power is becoming mainstream. Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Catholic theologian George Weigel have all warned of a Europe walking blindly into a Muslim-dominated future. Now the liberal academic Eric Kaufmann, a political scientist at Birkbeck College, London, has entered the fray. In his new book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, based on data from demographic studies in Europe, America and Israel, Kaufmann adds a new twist to the Eurabia thesis. Don't worry so much about Muslims, he suggests. Just be very afraid of fundamentalists of all stripes.

the monoculture goes in on islam

Video - Sam Harris Science can answer moral questions.

Ted Talks | I'm going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values. Now, it's generally understood that questions of morality -- questions of good and evil and right and wrong -- are questions about which science officially has no opinion. It's thought that science can help us get what we value, but it can never tell us what we ought to value. And, consequently, most people -- I think most people probably here -- think that science will never answer the most important questions in human life: questions like, "What is worth living for?" "What is worth dying for?" "What constitutes a good life?"

So, I'm going to argue that this is an illusion -- that the separation between science and human values is an illusion -- and actually quite a dangerous one at this point in human history. Now, it's often said that science can not give us a foundation for morality and human values, because science deals with facts, and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres. It's often thought that there is no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be. But I think this is quite clearly untrue. Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the wellbeing of conscious creatures.

Why is it that we don't have ethical obligations toward rocks? Why don't we feel compassion for rocks? It's because we don't think rocks can suffer. And if we're more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it's because we think they're exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering. Now, the crucial thing to notice here is this is a factual claim: This is something that we could be right or wrong about. And if we have misconstrued the relationship between biological complexity and the possibilities of experience well then we could be wrong about the inner lives of insects.

And there is no notion, no version of human morality and human values that I've ever come across that is not at some point reducible to a concern about conscious experience and its possible changes. Even if you get your values from religion, even if you think that good and evil ultimately relate to conditions after death -- either to an eternity of happiness with God or an eternity of suffering in hell -- you are still concerned about consciousness and its changes. And to say that such changes can persist after death is itself a factual claim which, of course, may or may not be true. Fist tap Dale.