Saturday, May 10, 2008

Good Music

ANOTHER GUEST POST FROM MATT, OF BUCKEYE THOUGHTS:

I always love when I hear a good song. It´s just I could listen to them over and over and over again.

The first one is one I hadn´t heard before coming to Spain. I have one of her older discs staeside. Her name is Paulina Rubio and she´s from Mexico. Here´s her song "Ni sola una palabra" (Not Even One Word) from 2006. I can´t embed it, unfortunately. It´s worth watching though.

Next up we have Laura Pausini, from Italy. All of her songs are very good. Here´s "Se fue" (He left):





Next we have another oldie but goodie. La Oreja de Van Gogh is from Spain and I´m proud to say I own all of their discs, they only have three out and that might be all they´ll ever make. Word on the street is their lead singer split last year and is trying to go solo. Yeah, that ain´t gonna work. Here´s "La Playa" (The Beach):







I tried looking for it on YouTube but someone hasn´t put it up yet. The song is used in an Herbal Essences commercial, which I saw for the first time three days ago, meaning it´s realtively new and won´t be on YouTube for a while.

Here´s another one from their latest (last?) album, from 2006. The song is "Dulce locura" (Sweet Craziness):







Leona Lewis´s "Bleeding Love". Let´s see, what else? Hmmm...


Ah, yes of course, from 2007! Dalmata´s "Pasarela" (Fashion Show):







Finally, to close it off, let´s go back to the best genre of all time, classic rock! From the ´70s, George Thorogood and the Destroyers´"I drink alone":





I would´ve wrote a post on May 2nd but that´ll have to wait. The place is closing soon and won´t have access tomorrow, as everything shuts down here except for churches and bars. I will also comment on my preminitions about the elections and the NAU, as well. Till next time!

[dipnote] state department blog revisited

Sean McCormack - State Department spokesman


On October 9th, 2007, I ran a tongue in cheek piece on the State Department's latest venture, the Dipnote blog, with such classic pieces as:

The Europeans walk through the lobby of our home for the week, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in their grays and blacks. The Americans in their shiny lapel pins, power suits, and blackberries. The Africans in their colorful garbs and stylish headdresses.

and:

The No. 1 improvement readers have suggested is to drop the blog's name: "The name DipNote has to go ... the blogosphere can be quite cruel sometimes ... you'll be referred to as Dip and another 4 letter word," writes SD in Washington.



The State Department responded with this in my comments section:


Granted, we're new at this, but just ask that you give the blog a chance. It's an open forum where you can actually discuss foreign policy issues with State Department officials and fellow bloggers. The question of the week this week is "What will life in Cuba be like after Castro?"

If you're willing to give Dipnote a chance, post a comment and see for yourself.

Well ... er ... fair enough, I mumbled at the time and posted an inconsequential follow-up. Now it's clearly time to revisit and see what's going on at Dipnote today. Sean McCormack states that the idea is:

With Dipnote we are going to take you behind the scenes at the State Department and bring you closer to the personalities of the Department. We are going to try and break through some of the jargon and talk about how we operate around the world.

And the title - Dipnote?

It looks like we broke our own rule and used State jargon in our blog title. "Dipnote" refers to a diplomatic note. It is one of the many ways in which governments formally communicate with each other.



The first thing which worries me is that many articles are written by "Dipnote Bloggers". The IDs are in the "About" section - Heath Kern, Tara Foley and Masharika Prejean - but how can one judge from whom a particular post is coming and how much veracity to ascribe to it?

To be fair though, the latest post on Colombia has a name to it - Charles S. Shapiro.

Their blogroll is also interesting and supports my contention about the influence of the CFR on American policy but that was a known known anyway.

Council on Foreign Relations

U.S. Diplomacy

American Diplomacy

Matel in Iraq

GWU Public Diplomacy Institute

... among others. Clearly the State Department has its own line on things and it would be churlish to question that - they are what they are and go in to bat for the State. Logical.

How much editorial independence the Dipnote Bloggers actually have, I wonder and I don't wonder cynically but openly.

There's a section with a photogallery of the Issue of the Day and that's a nice touch.




My own feeling about the blog is that it would be better with a light background, even white, to avoid connotations of Great Satan, that the authors should be more visible on the home page, as Sean McCormack is on his page, that the content is a little thin in places and they'd be better instigating some genuine discussion with a provocative quote or two.

They're getting nibbles but it would be nice to see some really heavy visiting. My own humble blog can pull in a few hundred readers - tops - but it needs the Malkins in the world and maybe the Dales in Britain to make themselves better known.

I wish them well, actually and will add them to my roll, for what that's worth - it's a venture and this little blog supports new ventures.

Good luck.


[blasphemy] another nail in the coffin



Python, Life of Brian, Stoning Scene - script here


Does G-d have a sense of humour? I certainly hope so, otherwise I'm in big, big trouble. If we are made in His image, then it must be so.

So when Ginro reports that Cranmer reports that Gerald Howarth gave his thoughts on the blasphemy bill, a smile played on the lips until I actually started reading:

There was a debate in the House of Commons on Tuesday 6th May about the blasphemy laws, of which the entire debate can be read in Hansard.

This nation has been forged and fashioned down the centuries by its Christian tradition. Every Act of Parliament is prefaced by reference to the support of the Lords temporal and spiritual and the Commons assembled.

That indicates that our Christian faith has played a hugely important part. Therefore, while I have enjoyed the frivolities of this evening’s proceedings, we should be under no illusions that a serious issue is at stake.

I am afraid that I am not interested in the Joint Committee on Human Rights or the European Court of Human Rights; I am interested in my views and beliefs, which are profoundly held and shared by a lot of people in this country.

Those of other religions who have come here down the centuries have done so in the full knowledge that this is a Christian country. One of the reasons why they come here is that our Christian faith is a tolerant faith—one that allows mosques to be built and that allows people to observe their traditions, to bring those traditions with them and to practise them.

It is a mistake that some of them should now assert that, because they have come here in rather large numbers, they should be entitled to overturn centuries of tradition in this country.

The Minister relied, as Ministers of course do, on the assertion of the Government’s new religion, which is discrimination: anything that is discriminatory is to be resisted, if not completely rejected.

Of course the law of blasphemy is discriminatory—but then, as was pointed out to her, so is the fact that the Church of England is the established Church. That discriminates against everybody else ... We are discriminating every day of our lives; we discriminate when we go to the shops.

Furthermore and as has also been pointed out, we have Christian prayers in this place, which you, Mr. Speaker, of course preside over ... Clearly, this is an undisguised attempt at promoting the case for the disestablishment of the Church of England ...

[A] Jewish headmistress, whom I was sitting next to at a lunch ... said, “It is very important to our school that there continues to be an established Church, because it provides some protection to us in the practising of our religion.”

That message must not be forgotten.

It is a time when we desperately need to reassert moral values in this country. The fact that the archbishops have deserted the field is unfortunate, because that again sends out the wrong message, but my simple role in the Church is as a mere church warden.

Our children will not understand if this House says that it is not important, because why then should anything be sacred? That would send a dreadful message to the young people of our country…

“I think that this is no time to be abolishing the law of blasphemy.

When I go to a synagogue, I wear kipar and the prayers are in Hebrew. When I go to a mosque, I dress accordingly and show reverence. When in Rome ...

This dismantling of the rule of law does not really stem from the devout - it stems from Them - the ones this blog has long been railing against. It was so at the Wren Chapel, it was so at Harvard, it is so here. In Robert Bolt's Man for All Seasons, this exchange took place:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's!

And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

The most fundamental mistake you can make, if you are atheist, agnostic or of another religion, is to think that to go along with this dismantling of a nation's legal and societal underpinning will not rebound on you. I'm talking directly here to fellow libertarians who are anything but Christian.

The most fundamental mistake you can make is to sit back and let this bill go through unchallenged because you disagree with Christianity per se and it's going to come back on you - it is just another nail in the coffin of all our freedoms which the Christian religion has had the decency to allow us in some small measure over the centuries.

The enemy is at the door, his weapon is divide and conquer and far too few realize it.

[when champions age] it's sad to see




It was the MCG in a year I can't even recall. On a visit to Melbourne, my mate had tickets for the Test match with the Windies and we went along on a perfect day for cricket.


The Aussies were batting and the new ball was not given to Malcolm Marshall from the other end, as I'd supposed but to other bowlers. I wanted to see Marshall bowl, recalling the terror he'd inspired from a few years earlier with that whippy action and lethal projectile.

After lunch they threw him the ball and it was a different man. Line and length, medium fast, he was hit away by, at that time, only reasonable Australian top order batsmen. The essential thing I could see was that there was no fear any more in the opposition's eyes.

The Third Umpire sums up Marshall's gifts:

Malcolm Marshall was their finest quick during their 1980s heyday, seriously rapid, hostile and extremely consistent; but he complemented these gifts with subtlety and real cricketing intelligence.

Plus he was a lovely man off-field, by all reports.

Cue Schumacher. As the BBC said in 1996:

The seven-times world champion celebrates his 36th birthday on Monday, but the German said he is confident of continued success.

"I have the odd small ache or pain every now and then but they are only small ones," he said. "I am not getting worn out and especially not psychologically. I still enjoy what I do immensely. "In sport, you can't rest on your past victories. You have to take the challenge again and again."


Ian Botham, Denis Lillee, Michael Jordan, Tyson,
Martina Navratilova, Gary Ablett Snr at Geelong - they all started playing smart or not so smart with age. It's truly sad to see a magnificent champion no longer able to cut it when he could have blown away the current opposition on his day.

Yes, they know it one day has to end. Yes, they know they must be a bit more subtle, a bit more roguish these days. They see the writing on the wall. As champions, of course, they'll get over it, come to terms with it [excepting Ablett and Tyson and to an extent - Jordan].

So is that what we're seeing now with Federer, a truly wonderful player, as Sampras was before him? One commenter's thoughts expressed at BBC Online:


It is the SIXTH defeat by six different players in SEVEN tournaments for Federer this season. This also credits all the analysts who clearly previewed the end of unilateral dominance of Federer since last year as all the guys know he is no longer unbeatable.

With this technically very limited backhand,it is obvious that Federer will not win the FO this year again bacause there are better clay-courters like Ferrer, Almagro, Davidenko and Nalbandian who will cause him all sorts of trouble on the surface.

Maybe it would be better for Federer to start thinking now about defending his title in Wimbledon which will be very difficult. I expect many more defeats for Federer to come this season as winning a serious title this year (Master Series or GS) looks so laborious for him.

Martina on aging:


"I did this for the enjoyment of the game and that still is there. I'm pleased with how I'm playing. I can still put it together at this age and not having played for four years. I'm having a great time. It doesn't get any better."

Navratilova said she was moved when she spotted an elderly woman with a walking support who came to watch her play in Eastbourne.

"How honored can you get for people to be making an effort like that to see you play tennis?" she said. "It's a treat and why there will never be any regrets if I don't win."


And a comment all former champions could relate to:


I've been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.

Friday, May 09, 2008

[thought for the day] friday evening


I think I see some light at the end of the tunnel but maybe it's just an oncoming train.
If you haven't yet read it, good messieurs et mesdames, might I suggest this for your bedtime reading tonight?

[st louis ghost train] mystery solved ... perhaps


The legend

One night in the 1920s, a CNR engineer was checking the tracks near St. Louis when he got hit by a train and lost his head. Now, at night a light from a phantom train or lantern appears - it's the engineer looking for his head.

Some people checked it out:


St. Louis Saskatchewan
Mayor Emile Lussier, who runs a hotel at the foot of an iron bridge once used by the old trains, did not believe tales of the nightly ghost train. So he once went with his brother-in-law to the crossroads with a somewhat daring plan in mind.

"So far as we knew, nobody had actually walked the tracks. So we did," says Lussier.

They walked about a mile along the old track bed, without seeing anything. Then suddenly, "there was a light right at our heels -- a strong light that cast shadows. When we turned around, it was gone."

Lussier's son and some friends decided to go out to the old track bed to see for themselves. Lussier stayed at the crossroads as the boys hiked off down the old track bed. As he watched them in the distance, something very strange occurred.

"The light lit everyone up. It looked just like a globe -- really bright. And yet, they didn't see a thing."

Lussier points to that episode as an indication the "phantom light", as some people in St. Louis prefer to call it, "appears in two very different ways".

Serge Gareau took some visitors from Alberta one evening for the midnight phenomenon.

"We sat there for about an hour, and nothing was happening," Gareau recalls. "And then all of a sudden we saw this light. It was just like a train coming. A bright light coming at us, with a little red light towards the bottom."

Enthralled, the Gareaus and their friends watched "for a good two hours" as the steady white beam and its crimson companion appeared to approach, but never arrive.

The solution to the mystery is quite possibly in white below.

Click here

All right, that appears to be that. Well, what about this then?

"I don’t think it’s car lights," says Rita Ferland, one of the few people who’ve seen the phantom beam in broad daylight.
... or this?

Scientists on the scene have also confirmed sighting this apparition. They saw the light of the train on the tracks and saw it get closer like the train was travelling forward.

The Ghostlight

Windows Media - Low Quality (3.2 Mb for dial-up connections)
Windows Media - Mid Quality (10.6 Mb for faster connections)
RealPlayer - Low Quality (1.1 Mb for dial-up connections)
RealPlayer - Mid Quality (15.1 Mb for faster connections)

Well I've looked at everything available now and the footage is not exactly conclusive. I don't see everything flooded with light although they all report it does sweep around the trees at them. Why not photograph that? If true that it does flood the area in light, can't see how that can be headlights 5.3 miles away. And why not everyday? And how in the middle of the day?

Two teenagers reported their alternator caught on fire. Again - their word. I can see the taillights might be the red lantern but why not two lanterns? The light splitting could be car headlights front on at a dip in the road.

Wish we could see a vid of the whole thing.

[new nationalism] the writing on the wall


There is most definitely a new trend around the world. Actually, the feeling was always there but now it is more articulated at governmental level:

Foreigners go home.

Starting with an extreme example, Burma:

Burma wants supplies but not foreign aid workers, its foreign ministry says, hours after the UN chief urged military leaders to prioritise relief work. Burma was "making strenuous efforts" to get aid to affected areas by itself and was not ready for foreign teams, a statement in a state daily said.


Pleading guilty myself, sitting, eating a Russian breakfast while I posted this weeks ago, there does seem to be a new nationalism afoot, a new withdrawal into the national self. Applying that old chestnut to any country you care to name:


It might be a hopelessly disorganized cesspit but it's OUR cesspit!


So while the whole thrust of the sphere is global - look at the visitors to this site for a start - in RL there is an opposite discernible trend. According to The American Conservative, in a recent piece in the FT , Larry Summers, Clinton's old aide, warns that:


…growth in the global economy encourages the development of stateless elites whose allegiance is to global economic success and their own prosperity rather than the interests of the nation where they are headquartered. As one prominent chief executive put it in Davos this year:

“We will be fine however America does but I hope for its sake that it will cut taxes and reduce regulation and put more pressure on young people to study in the ways that are necessary for it to be able to keep competing successfully.”

The AC goes on:

Similar concerns about the way the “rise of nationalism” frays global economic ties, have been raised by Bob Davis in another anti-business daily, the Wall Street Journal on Monday:

During the long march toward globalization, international borders and trade barriers came down. Communism fell. Protectionist walls in Latin America and elsewhere were dismantled. Governments — long prone to meddling in trade — took a back seat to broader market forces.

In a globalization manifesto, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman declared that the Internet and other planet-spanning technologies were erasing national boundaries. The world, he said in a 2005 best seller, was flat.

No longer. The global economy appears to be entering an epoch in which governments are reasserting their role in the lives of individuals and businesses. Once again, barriers are rising. Call it the new nationalism.


And:
Now borrowers shun the IMF and World Bank. Trade talks are shelved. Barriers to foreign investment are rising around the world. State-owned companies are expanding, particularly in oil and gas. Public support of immigration restrictions is growing in countries from the U.S. to India.

Sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Middle East are now propping up wobbly financial institutions in the U.S. and Europe, and may hunt next for real-estate bargains.
All three presidential candidates say they would pass tougher financial-market regulation and would also boost government programs to retrain workers battered by the global economy.

In rich and poor countries alike, immigration has become a powerful political issue, as improved transportation makes it easier for people to move across borders and compete for jobs with locals.

Where does that leave a person who resides outside his own country? I'd like to think it comes down to how deeply integrated he's become in his host country, what roots he's put down and how committed he is to putting back into that host economy. In the end it is how the host country perceives him and his value.

But other factors come into play as well - the new nationalism, the need for governments to be seen to be working in the best interests of its own natives and the lumping in of all "foreigners" together, irrespective of who they are and what their purposes are.

This spills over into the restriction of foreign influences. The Chinese are not the only ones planning to control the net:

A September 25 statement from the Ministry of Information Industry banned “subversive” material—including pornography, criticism of the government, and sensitive topics like Tibet and Taiwan independence—from the country’s computer networks.

Instead, only “healthy, civilized news and information beneficial to the nation” can be posted, the ministry said. It is already a crime in China to defame government agencies, divulge state secrets, or promote separatist movements.

This plus Tibet, in the lead up to an Olympics which is looking increasingly like 1936. The pornography issue is interesting in itself if you can put the moral aspect to one side for the moment and concentrate on the strategy:

While the rest of the net is reeling from crumbling ad revenues, the sex industry has not even taken a hit because its main revenue stream is subscriptions, not advertising.

Yet companies such as
Yahoo! are opting out of the porn industry. Given the demand, the big business and the job security,this seems like a mad decision. Why?




Especially as the
slavery issue is closely connected to such big business:

It is estimated that 2/3 of women trafficked for prostitution worldwide annually come from Eastern Europe, three-quarters have never worked as prostitutes before. An estimated 500,000 women from Central and Eastern Europe are working in prostitution in the European Union alone

...
Sexual slavery in Pakistan is one of the worst in South Asia. Young girls (sometimes as young as 9 years old) are sold by their own fathers to brothels as sex slaves in big cities. Often this happens due to debt accumulated from gambling, whereby the father has no other way to raise the money than to sell his daughters.

Yahoo clearly reads either the force of public reaction to the glut of porn or else it sees a closed market of high stakes and surmises that there are better ways to turn a relatively safe profit or else it knows something and isn't saying.

Maybe that thing it knows is that morality also pays and will increasingly pay as parents and other concerned citizens turn savage and demand better porn filters but when it is seen that these are useless, in steps a regulatory agency offering a two tier internet - one protected and restricted by the agency and the other free and unfettered, eventually to be closed down, once it's served its purpose.

Meanwhile we bloggers blithely type away and post things like this article, eventually read by 2 or 3 hundred people and we feel pleased that we are doing society a favour. Actually we are pretty irrelevant and riding on the back of a game with far higher stakes. That game is the new feudalism:

The new Middle Ages will be worse for most of humanity than the older ones were for the serfs; the latter were at least needed in productive processes and thus received employment and a certain amount of maintenance.

So-called progress in technology and management methods is reducing this need, a fact currently masked by migration of formerly productive employees to service sectors, which, in the long run, are unsustainable.

In general terms, tomorrow's serf will find himself not only sub- or unemployed, but socially excluded from state-of-the-art living, be it in communications, transportation, health care, education, or recreation.

We're moving to a stage now where people are either integrating fully [i.e. citizenship] or else are being repatriated. The days which Martin Kelly refers to are rapidly coming to a close, the same days Tom Paine refers to here:

100% or more of all my contacts with clients (I am a lawyer) are by phone and email, but it's just not conceivable to execute complex deals without spending time together. If those deals are across borders, that involves travel.

I very much feel these days are rapidly drawing to a close and that if we are propertied, hopefully multi-propertied, we'll be part of the "
state-of-the-art living" referred to above but if we are in credit-delusion land, we are the new serfs.

I'm already rapidly adjusting my sights and coming to terms with the future. Here is an old post dealing with this.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

[thought for the day] thursday evening


As the cow said after attempting to jump the moon and crashing ignominiously to the earth:


The old legs just haven't got that spring in them any more.

[odd one out] all entertainers


Firstly - identify them.

Secondly - who is the odd one out and why? [There could be any reason - female, black, French or whatever but this is an unusual reason.]

Their names, clockwise from the top:

Eva Green, Elvis Presley, Vin Diesel, Michael Jackson

The odd one out?

Michael Jackson - the only one without a twin.

[ve day] victory in europe


Which date was VE Day?
The final document of unconditional surrender was signed at General Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims on 7 May. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and King George VI wanted Monday 7 May to be VE Day, but in the event, bowing to American wishes, victory was celebrated on 8 May. The USSR waited an extra day before beginning their formal celebrations. New Zealand also celebrated on May 9th.

In Russia, the Day of Victory is tomorrow and in Victory Park in this town a crowd will gather early tomorrow morning for the service and parade.

As you'd know, this is also Israel's 60th on the 14th and tomorrow, May 9th, is Verlin Martin's birthday - congrats to him too. The first sales of Coca Cola were at Jacob's Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886.

Speaking personally, the second worst case scenario was laid out for me today. If I do have to leave in late May, the invitation to return can't be made until mid July. This means that my summer work where I recoup most of my cash disappears and I lose the clients I've built up. I also won't qualify for the summer holiday pay from the university.

With assets inaccessible in my homeland [won't go into that], I would then need to stay outside Russia [where?] for a month and a half on tea money whilst my flat here requires it's monthly payments. Wonderfully black joke. I'll find some country to visit and live on the beach I suppose.

Also troubling was looking for evidence that Britain plans any celebrations for VE Day and came up with this. However I did find a 2007 reference to Gordon Brown suggesting the new Britain Day where he could "reclaim the flag from the right".

Anyone or anything I've missed on this day?

[caption time] everything's just fine

[lizard queen] damaged but still dangerous

Everyone and his dog is commenting on this so why should I be any different?

It's over for her. Here are the reasons: There really is no mathematical chance for her to win; her campaign is virtually out of money - and it will be difficult for her to raise significant amounts of money after last night; not enough happened last night to give her any hope, so continuing would only give the appearance of wanting to damage Mr Obama.

... and yet ... and yet:

She is a Clinton and the Clintons do not have the word "lose" in their playbook. A down and out Komodo is a dangerous creature. All sorts of deals are going to be struck now and there is still the pro-woman factor and the anti-black, right through till the end.

Today I read this:

So far she has received endorsements from 271 superdelegates, to Mr Obama's 256, with 270 still undecided, according to the Associated Press.

Many super-delegates say they will vote for the candidate chosen in the primary of their home state.


This looks like a good analysis, written before the latest primaries but predicting them well.

Can anyone tell me what sort of tally that works out to overall?

[id cards] gordon's subterfuge


Not happening, you believe? More here.

I try but can see no flaw in his reasoning.

[eco-misery] the search for a sustainable solution

You silly moo


[Chesterton, in the] 1910 What's Wrong with the World ... advocated a view called "Distributism" that is best summed up by his expression that every man ought to be allowed to own "three acres and a cow."

The economic pillar of this distributist idea entailed:

Private property

Under such a system, most people would be able to earn a living without having to rely on the use of the property of others to do so. Examples of people earning a living in this way would be farmers who own their own land and related machinery ... [and] the "co-operative" approach ... recognise[ing] that such property and equipment may be "co-owned" by local communities larger than a family, e.g. partners in a business.

Guild system

The kind of economic order envisioned by the early distributist thinkers would involve the return to some sort of guild system. The ... existence of labor unions promotes class interests, whereas Guilds are employers and employees cooperating for mutual benefit.

Banks

Distributism ... eliminates ... the current private bank system, or in any case, its profit-making basis. This does not necessarily entail nationalization.


The fine detail, unfortunately, still involves government or social coercion in a plethora of legislation but at least it appreciates the great social dilemma - given the ideal that a free market needs to be also a fair market, that private property should be recognized for all members of society and that the system favours people of enterprise, nevertheless the system will always tends towards monopolization and cartels.



Would you not agree that a healthy society is one in which a man and/or woman can labour to produce direct betterment of their condition, in a climate where this is not swamped by prices driven up by price fixing?

Eliminate the banks and the cost of a house would sooner or later become "affordable" for the average family and would require no borrowing. It is the borrowing which is the problem. To borrow to improve your condition is one thing - it involves usury - and yet to legislate against usury is again state coercion.

At base level though, with no borrowing whatsoever, the cost of a basic house should still be affordable on the mean wage and this needs to be somehow enshrined in society.

So it's a pretty problem.

It also fails to take into account two other things - the mushrooming population, with its consequent strain on natural resources plus greed and evil in high places [Ephesians 6:12].

I keep quoting that verse and argue that it very much must be taken into consideration in developing any sustainable economic theory and yet most economists, by nature, would reject the notion. Therein lies the potential failure of any social order - from capitalism to communism - if you won't accept the existence of some sort of malicious cynicism up top.

The system must, therefore, necessarily fail because it does not recognize "malice" as a factor, as a motive. Not just "incompetence", not just "selfishness", not just "greed" but actual malice in high places.

Well all right, let's call it instead "deep cynicism".

It knows that certain policies such as sub-prime lending and the inevitable effect of credit availability for the masses, leading to skyrocketing costs, must inevitably also lead to crunches, crashes and war, which devastate the masses and in fact criminalizes the ordinary citizen. However, for a certain class - it turns an obscene profit.

It's this profiting from human misery, under the banner "business is business", which is the most troublesome in my mind, a mind which, in principle, embraces the Coolidge maxim that the business of the state is business.

Small government, therefore, needs to run four things:

1. defence; 2. social security for the truly needy; 3. facilitation of enterprise within its borders; 4. anti-cartel, anti-monopoly legislation and anti-price fixing.

But who will do Point 4? The people who rise to the top of government, by definition, meet the old money and are seduced by the elite ideals. I was on my way to this at one time in the distant past. Which is worse - state slavery or business cartel slavery?

Choose your flavour.

How can we devise a system which will actually work and yet does not involve government in any but those four areas?

The problem or the solution?

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

[thought for the day] wednesday evening

This post is dedicated to Calum Carr, Bendy Girl and all the others out there who are in similar positions.

Cheer up - the worst is yet to come!

[Philander Chase Johnson - 1920]

Before you get angry with me, let me explain:

In 1989, in Finland, I came off the end of a bobsleigh run, sailed through the troposphere and landed halfway down the hill.

In the hospital, two orderlies took my hand, braced their feet against the bed and hauled it so that the wrist bone went back inside the skin.

What gets you through things like that are prayer and cracks like, "Hey doc, they're trying to steal my hand," and other such corn.

Zero to do with courage - just a simple defense mechanism - true fear in fact.

On the 15th of this month my appeal is decided. If successful, things continue pretty much as they were. If not, for reasons I can't publicly write here, it's the end of the line [smiles to himself].

My mate, not being appraised of the fine print, felt it was less dramatic than that until I explained the ... er ... complications of me going out there.

He's in more shock now than I actually am and looking for solutions.

The interesting thing is the effect on the psyche when something is hanging over you - you've all had it at some time or other - and you almost wish to get it over and done with. Sometimes a strange levity comes over a person.

And so the days of May drag on and nice things happen like an angry sunset this evening after today's storm, a girl who unexpectedly didn't wish me to leave this afternoon, many friendly faces and a nice cheesecake.

You have to laugh.

Just to make us all feel better, here's a photo, courtesy of Julie, of tomorrow morning's sunrise.

And a giggle from Brummie Mum.

Each night for this week until he 15th, I'll try to present one musical piece:

boomp3.com

Lyrics here if you're interested.

Have a nice night, readers.


[komodo] looking for a pet?

Why run this post again? As Jim Carrey said, in The Mask:
Because I just gotta ...

Some Wiki facts to set us straight [I know you all swear by Wiki]:

The largest verified wild specimen was 3.13 metres long and weighed 166 kg, including undigested food. Komodo Dragons have a tail that is as long as the body, as well as about 60 frequently-replaced serrated teeth that may be 2.5 centimetres in length.

I love this next bit:

They have red, blood-like saliva, because their teeth, which are almost completely covered by their gums, slice their own gums while feeding. This creates an ideal culture for the virulent bacteria that live in their mouths. It also has a long, yellow, snake-like tongue.

Think you can outrun them?

With the help of a favourable wind, they may be able to detect carrion up to 8.5 kilometres away. They are capable of running rapidly in brief sprints up to 20 kilometres per hour.
Outswim them?

They are excellent swimmers, diving up to 4.5 metres.

What about climbing a tree?

They climb trees proficiently through use of their strong claws. To catch prey that is out of reach, they may stand on their hind legs and use their tails as a support. As they grow older, their claws are used primarily as weapons, as their great mass makes climbing impractical for adults.

Although they eat mostly carrion, studies show that they also hunt live prey with a stealthy approach followed by a sudden short charge. When suitable prey arrives near its ambush site, it will suddenly charge at the animal and go for the underside or the throat.

What if you escape by some miracle?

The bacteria in the mouth cause septicemia in their victim; if an initial bite does not kill the prey animal and it escapes, it will commonly succumb within a week to the resulting infection.

Still, little chance of that, eh?

Komodo Dragons eat by tearing large chunks of flesh while holding their food down with their forelegs, then swallowing it whole. The copious amounts of red saliva that the Komodo dragons produce help to lubricate the food, but swallowing is still a long process (15-20 minutes to swallow a goat).

But all is not lost:

Because of their slow metabolisms, large dragons may only eat 12 meals a year. Whew! So you're as safe as houses. First you'd have to go to Indonesia. Then you'd need to be present around the time of its monthly meal. Then again, if you threw it a goat, you'd be fine.

Have a lovely night. Sleep tight.

[heraldry] blogger family crests

You'll possibly recall this recent post and it appears some of our fellow bloggers already have crests:

Wonko, who's about to fly off to Gordotaxland:

First found in Lancashire where they [the Parrs] were seated from early times and their first records appeared on the early census rolls taken by the early Kings of Britain to determine the rate of taxation of their subjects.


Cherie, who shares a very famous surname:

I did a little check and it seems 'We Jeffersons' have one already! But my ancestors seem to have been from the Whitby area! That being the case I can't tell you which county I was born in!!!


It appears JMB has a few as well but she's not showing.

Lord Nazh appears to have one though:

First found in Leicestershire, where the Martin family was seated from very early times. The family was granted lands by Duke William of Normandy, their liege Lord, for their distinguished assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D.

For many English families, the political and religious disarray that plagued their homeland made the frontiers of the New World an attractive prospect.


[food crisis] price fixing, deregulation and other goodies


Quite frankly, we are in the grip of gonzo-economics right now when speculative funds poured into wheat futures and stockpiling in the U.S. and Europe cause a Japanese butter shortage.

There was always bilateral and multilateral trade and there've been depressions but the rhetoric now is about "global" food prices and "global" downturns - everything global, including good old monopolies, of which more later.

Excellent article over at International Political Will on food prices.

So, for example, just as an interesting thought for you, there are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population,” Bush said.

Not so fast:

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the number of middle class Indians is only 50 million (defined as having an annual income between $10,000-20,000). It’s difficult to claim that just 50 million Indians are having more impact than 300 million Americans…so Bush went ahead and “fudged” the numbers.

The Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said: “Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics. And he has just proved once again how comprehensively wrong he is. To say that the demand for food in India is causing increase in global good prices is completely wrong.”

More importantly, there is the matter of scale. The average American consumes 1,046 kilograms of grain each year – the average Indian consumes 178 kg. That means in terms of global impact, each American equates to ten Indians.

So here is a blatant example of hypocrisy, of apportioning blame elsewhere and of course - price fixing. If you feel price fixing is a myth, look at one of the areas less on the media's mind just now - the Roche, BASF and Rhône-Poulenc vitamin monopoly:

[T]hese are the same two global giants that masterminded the most rapacious price-fixing cartel in modern business history during the 1990s and got nailed with the largest criminal fines ever levied. Roche paid $954 million and BASF more than $500 million after entering guilty pleas with the US Department of Justice, Canada, Australia and the European Union.

When the cartel was exposed in 1999, Roche, BASF and Rhône-Poulenc (now Aventis) -- which escaped charges because it was the first cartel member to cooperate with the DOJ -- controlled about 75 percent of the $6-billion-a-year global vitamin business. They had used their industry dominance to pressure at least twelve smaller vitamin makers in Europe and Asia into an arrangement that top executives had taken to calling "Vitamins Inc."

But now, three years after the cartel was exposed, instead of having been reined in, Roche, BASF and Aventis/CVC (in November Aventis sold its vitamin business to CVC Capital Partners of London for an undisclosed sum) are close to grabbing a near-monopoly in the global production and distribution of vitamins, having increased their dominance to at least 85 percent of the global market.

Why should this be of concern? Because these vitamins are blended into feed grains for animals and that's global trade. Buy your vitamins from this cartel or be undercut. Business is business.

China itself is in the grip of price fixing:

The government accused Chinese instant noodle makers in August of pushing up food costs by illegally colluding to raise prices by up to 40 percent. It has given no indication whether it has evidence of illegal behavior by other producers.

The price surge, which began in mid-2007, has so far been limited to food and is blamed on shortages of pork and grain. The government raised gasoline and diesel prices in November to curb rising demand, but said that should add only 0.05 percentage points to monthly inflation.

The surge in food prices has been especially painful for China's poor majority, who spend up to half their incomes on food.

In simple terms, the mechanism is - deregulate markets, in move the cartels, monopolies are created and prices fixed - all causing immense instability. Example:

Deregulation in agricultural markets, like economic deregulation in many sectors, reached full tilt in the eighties and nineties. Trade and development economists preached the wonders of open markets, unfettered production, and industrial agriculture. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund conditioned loan policies on the elimination of government intervention in agricultural markets.

Global commodity agreements, price supports, and other mechanisms which helped keep global supplies and prices stable were dismantled. The World Trade Organization's Agreement on Agriculture, together with multi-lateral and bilateral agreements including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), slashed agricultural tariffs in the developing world, and opened up markets for a growing global agribusiness industry.

In the U.S., the 1996 Farm Bill eliminated the last vestiges of domestic price supports for most commodities and replaced them with a massive system of subsidies-the only thing left to prop up a farm economy in perpetual crisis. Market liberalization and the dumping of cheap commodities swamped small farmers here and abroad, pricing them out of local markets.

Cheap feed crops fueled industrial livestock production, increasing meat consumption and driving out small producers. The few independent farmers who stayed in farming shifted production to a few commodities including corn and soy that can be stored and shipped to distant markets.


Wonderful idea in an ideal world, deregulation but it cannot work. An analogy is livestock in a corral in a clearing. Stretching the analogy, imagine ravaging wolves in the surrounding forest. The fences are dismantled to allow the livestock to roam free and the result is pretty obvious.


Can we appeal to the wolves to act altruistically? So how can we regulate the wolves? With subsidies? And that's why we're paying more and more and can do absolutely nothing about it.

A previous article on the matter is here.