It Can't Happen Here (Until . . . . )

America's ongoing descent into a corporate state roused me finally to pick up "It Can't Happen Here", Sinclair Lewis' cautionary novel about the rise of a Fascist regime in the United States.  Published in 1935, when Fascism already had rooted itself in Europe, the story captures troubling tendencies in American popular media and popular mentality. Think demagoguery and mob psychology.

The passage below testifies to the timeliness of Lewis' cautions. Senator Windrip is a political rising star who runs for president and whose ascendance is fueled by his skillful exploitation of jingoism and other populist sentiments. Speaking is R. C. Crowley, the local banker of Fort Beulah. He is addressing an informal gathering of the modest town's professional class. But in particular he is addressing a skeptical Doremus Jessup, the local newspaperman and the novel's protagonist.

"I don't like all these irresponsible attacks on us bankers all the time. Of course, Senator Windrip has to pretend publicly to bawl the banks out, but once he gets into power he'll give the banks their proper influence in the administration and take our expert financial advice. Yes. Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again."

How well does this shoe fit the politics of the United States in 2012?

Then Lewis comments on the integrity of political campaigns, when a Windrip supporter admits that the candidate's promises amount to air, "just molasses for the cockroaches." 

Then there's this timely partisan snipe, from the mouth of Karl Pascal, the Communist,

". . . Freedom, Order, Security, Discipline, Strength! All those swell words that even before Windrip came in the speculators started using to protect their profits! Especially how they used the word 'Liberty'! Liberty to steal the didies off the babies! I tell you, an honest man gets sick when he hears the word "Liberty' today, after what the Republicans did to it!" 

I'm just sayin'.

The capitalist enterprise needs to rid itself of the monetary parasitism of private banking

The page at left is from Money and Banking, a publication in the Everyday Economics series put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. This section, called How Banks Create Money, begins,

"Banks actually create money when they lend it. Here's how it works: Most of a bank's loans are made to its own customers and are deposited in their checking accounts. Because the loan becomes a new deposit, just like a paycheck does, the bank once again holds a small percentage of that new amount in reserve and again lends the remainder to someone else, repeating the money-creation process many times."

This sounds innocent enough, but notice the peculiar nature of the money that banks create. The money exists entirely as debt. When you take out a loan from a bank, you owe the money back to the bank. With interest.

Notice that the bank does not loan you money that it has sitting in some vault. When you take out a loan, the bank merely credits your account. It makes credit appear. In exchange for your new indebtedness (that, after all is what your loan is, a debt that you owe to the bank), you get to put up collateral, often your home. 

If you pay back the loan, then the bank possesses the money (your payment), which it now owes to no one, even though your incurring a debt brought the money into existence in the first place. The bank also possesses the interest you paid.

If you don't meet the terms of the loan, then the bank takes possession of your collateral, a real asset that it acquires through no risk or sacrifice on its part.

For these reasons, it cannot be said that banks earn their money. To say that they do is to obliterate any sense of the word, "earn". The money-creation system described here (fractional reserve lending of monetized debt), subverts the capitalist virtue of earning one's money. Banks might "earn" their money, but they do not earn it. Banks are the enemy of capitalism, and the capitalist enterprise needs to rid itself of the monetary parasitism of private banking.

The Ballad of Marshall McLuhan

The Ballad of Marshall McLuhan from Randall Acronym on Vimeo, a footnote to very good lecture, below, by McLuhan scholar Arjen Mulder, on McLuhan's ideas with commentary on his Catholicism.  All from V2_, an interdisciplinary center for art and media technology in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?

After wasting pages on an ad hominen argument that belabors the New Age movement's adoption of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, Ward finally gets down to the serious business of trying to refute/debunk Lovelock's hypothesis.

The Gaia hypothesis, varying from weak to strong versions, involves the notion that Earth's biosphere actively regulates the chemistry and temperature of its fluid environment--the atmosphere and oceans--to keep the planet bio-friendly. Ward cites extreme fluctuations in atmospheric chemistry and temperature in Earth's past, ascertained from geological evidence, and proposes mechanisms by which the biosphere's own metabolic processes could have contributed to the extremes. The extremes reduced Earth's overall biomass, and, so Ward argues, the biosphere not only fails to maintain a healthy environment for itself, but positively contributes to disrupting the environment and reducing the planet's biomass. Hence, the Gaia hypothesis is disproven and Ward's Medea hypothesis, that life poisons its environment and so is inherently suicidal, is corroborated.

The argument is not convincing for a few reasons. For one thing, life always participates in anabolic (building up) and catabolic (tearing down) processes. The two feed each other, and the combined system is called metabolism. To focus on the downside is not to discredit the circuit.

Ward settles on biomass as the "bottom line" measure of the health of the biosphere. But do we assess the health of any organism solely by mass? Evolution has produced advanced technological civilization. What more could be expected from a living planet? More and more and more bacterial tonnage? Biomass per se is not an indicator of anything in particular, except biomass.

In a previous book, Ward (and co-author Donald Brownlee) suggested that glaciations serve evolution as genetic filters, weeding out the less fit. So he's familiar with the idea that die-offs can serve a constructive evolutionary purpose, even if they reduce biomass.

What Ward fails to address, and what is central to Lovelock's original idea, is the anomalous resistance of Earth's fluid environment to entropy. Why are the atmosphere and oceans not sitting stable in a state of chemical equilibrium after all these millions of years? Volcanism, mineral erosion and other geochemical processes continually stir the pot, but surely it is an oddity that the random variability never has crossed a threshold that would've sterilized Earth.

Part of Ward's problem seems to be that he fails to connect Gaia with evolution.

A fetus also pollutes its environment, and up to a point it's not a problem, because the environment not only is set up to handle the toxins, but also positively to support the developing life. Up to a point. A fetus that stays in the womb too long becomes Medean--life threatening--at which time it needs to move to a more accommodating environment.

That's the situation we're in.

Ward has no enthusiasm for space colonization, but thinks it's wiser to try to adapt to this planetary womb. Such short-sighted thinking definitely is Medean. Ward's book presents a half-baked recipe for a self-fulfilling stew.

Occupy MN Launches Rally

Friday was a great kickoff for Occupy MN. 

500+ people convened in downtown Minneapolis at the Government People's Plaza. At 2:00 MPD's Segway Squad stopped traffic to accommodate a march to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.  The chant, "End The Fed" filled the air as the crowd asserted its numbers, and the banksters looked out over the protesters from inside their fortress. O, to be a fly on the wall by the watercooler.  


Corporate media say the movement has no concise message. But the last thing the movement needs now is a manifesto. Then it becomes about picking apart words. Keep it loose. Keep it free. And network, network, network.

Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground

The sell copy inside the front flap of Among the Truthers’ dust jacket calls Kay a journalist. But Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground evinces none of the objectivity that one would expect from a journalist. Canadian Jonathan Kay is an editorial writer and columnist who has been working to debunk the 911 truth movement essentially since its arrival. This book continues his quest.

In it, Kay sallies forth with a broad brush, surveying a mélange of familiar targets of ridicule—Senator Joseph McCarthy, purveyors of tales of Atlantis, anti-Semites, skeptics questioning the authorship of Shakespeare’s works, academic deconstructionists, and others, along with 911 truthers—targets that share no logical relationship. They share only an implication of being related every time somebody utters the phrase, "conspiracy theory".

One brand of glue Kay uses to try to hold together his conspiratorial herd of cats is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a scurrilous document that purports to be a collection of notes taken from lectures given by Theodor Herzl, in which the outspoken Zionist outlined a Jewish takeover of the world. Outside hardcore anti-Semitic circles, the document universally is dismissed as a fake. But the Protocols surfaces again and again in Kay's narrative as if he felt a need repeatedly to smear anyone who rejects official proclamations by associating them with this example of hateful propaganda.

Digging to the historical roots of his subject, Kay observes, "British colonial rule under King George III truly was designed to keep Americans in a state of perpetual subservience, and to steal the fruits of their industry. Over time, resentment of this fact grew into a deep suspicion of government power more generally."

The Monarch’s Court might have replied to Kay’s assessment as follows:

The oppression of the king was "truly" a "fact"? No, Mr. Kay. You don't understand. Good King George sought only to protect and care for the vulnerable colonists. Conspiracy theories swirled through the colonies, and this was unfortunate, but the colonists were a peculiar sort of people, prone to delusions and paranoia. Certainly your own ruling class acts always and only in the best interests of your laborers, as did King George. Why would you imagine that the rulers of the past were differently constituted from your own? You seem to have imbibed the kool-aid of Messrs. Jefferson, Franklin and Paine. They are such rabble as needs to be debunked in a book about the wrong-headedness of mistrusting authority.

During his quixotic journey, Kay effectively achieves the opposite of his intended effect, because he repeatedly admits that history provides many real-world precedents for the events and official narratives that raise eyebrows among today's conspiracy theorists, ". . . including the unsatisfying Warren commission Report on the JFK assassination, the secret bombing of Cambodia and the military cover-up of My Lai, a program of foreign coups and assassinations by the CIA, and other questionable activities officially denied and only brought to light after the fact [.]" Add to this list the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the plots hatched under Operation Northwoods, and you’ve got plenty of reasons to dismiss blanket dismissals of conspiratorial suspicion. The theorists too often are on target.

The More Things Change . . .

You can read the article about the ruling class' appetite for human flesh here:      http://bit.ly/kerva1

Now we know what those little hors d'oeuvres-y things at the royal wedding were.  Corpse medicine.

What, Me Worry? - and these are the people who set sail to civilize the savages? Now Prince Charles claims a lineage that links the British Monarchy to Vlad the Impaler! The bloodline that connects the bloodthirsty royals to Vlad branches off into the Bush family.  Just saying.


. . . The More They Stay The Same.


The ruling class still contracts with traffickers in human flesh. The missing money? The purchase of horrors? Recall, Rumsfeld was defense secretary under President George W. Bush.

The Wirehead Problem and Money as AI

Here is a potential problem facing engineers of artificial intelligence: A sufficiently intelligent agent will work to tap its reward source directly, without doing otherwise useful work.  In this video Tim Tyler invokes the heroin addict for comparison. He concludes that a superintelligent agent will calculate the long-term effects of becoming a junkie and likely will conclude, as most people do, that it's not worth it.

Tyler goes on to counter this argument by conjuring a monopolistic threat.  What if the superintelligent agent wiped out its competitors?  Then, under the dynamics of a monopoly, it would grow flabby and careless, because there would be no reward in making effort in any other direction. And this situation would become conducive to its yielding to the tempation to become a junkie.

It looks like the threat already has landed. The U.S. dollar/federal reserve note is the superintelligent agent Tyler warns against. The U.S. dollar has tapped it own pleasure center, and in an accelerating cycle of masturbations it has exhausted itself.

Each step in the deregulation of the U.S. banking system brought the dollar closer to its source. Finally, when the real-estate bubble burst, the fallout revealed that the originators of money, the private banks, had crossed a deregulatory threshold, and they had exploited the lifting of essentially all conditions on the granting of loans. Because banks originate dollars by crediting loans, unconditional lending became the U.S. dollar's unfettered tap into its own pleasure center, its source. Now the junkie is going through withdrawal. And if the U.S. dollar gets fired from its job as the world's reserve currency, losing its monopoly privileges? Cold turkey.

Money as superintelligent agent reveals a bias in AI theory, or at least in AI practice, insofar as AI focuses on circuits and programs and patterns of atoms. But money is pure abstraction. It can take any form: seashells, printed paper or electronic accounting entries. Higher intelligence doesn't get bogged down in precise material specifications. It is conceptual.

Consider that money can do many things that you cannot. Indeed, it uses you, and the rest of us, to do its bidding. It is not an enabler, as we're taught to think. We are its enablers.  Look at the wonders it has created with our help.

The terrors that it has instigated? Our myth systems teem with wrathful deities and gods of destruction. Maybe the religious sensibility knows something about the superintelligent abstraction that provokes and persuades and thereby gives form to the world. G-d is a junkie?    

Can Natural Selection explain cell differentiation?

Darwin used the phrase "Descent with modification" to summarize his theory of evolution. Despite many particulars that more recent science has amended to Darwin's theory, the basic idea of descent with modification remains. The descendant modifications are taken to be driven by varying degrees of "fitness" to environments. Even according to today's NeoDarwinian (or Modern Synthesis) model, the modifications observed in descendants are taken to be the result primarily of adaptations to environmental contingencies, operating under the mechanism of variation + selection, which runs without the benefit of any plan or program that might provide direction. And this "blind" process has produced all the phenotypes that were or are or will be. (An emerging Extended Synthesis model relies less on exogenous factors to explain phenotypes. Its influence on the discipline of evolutionary biology is yet to be known.)

However, another case of biological descent with modification apparently does benefit, or is assumed to benefit, from a guiding plan, or program. That is the descent of various tissue types from an undifferentiated zygote during ontogeny. This poses a paradox.

If natural selection is so powerful a causal agent that it can generate all the phenotypes that make up an ecosystem, then why is it necessary to suppose that there occurs in a zygote some sort of genetic plan or program that guides development of the organism? Why not just chalk it up to natural selection -- competition and cooperation among the cells in the organism? What evidence is there of a developmental program?

All the cell types that make up the body of a complex organism share the same genotype but differ as to which genes are active and which not. And that info must be heritable, hence a source of variation ("copying errors"). But any variation among cells in an embryo might provide an advantage to some cells and/or disadvantage to others. So, the stage is set for natural selection.

The tissues that make up a complex body and their symbiotic interdependencies are just the happenstance of competition among the cells -- is that a defensible proposition? The fit survive and go on to take their place in the somatic ecosystem of the body. The unfit go extinct. A clear case of unguided evolution. No need for a developmental program.

I am NOT proposing that this is what happens. I am only asking the question: What OBSERVATION could disprove this argument -- that the cells descend with modification from their common ancestor, a zygote, through a process of variation + selection?

  comments at

http://www.thescienceforum.com/Can-Natural-Selection-explain-cell-differentiation-30656t.php

Darwin Eclipsed & The Rise of Evo Devo

The development of any complex organism reveals a weave of relationships between the organism's phenotype and its genotype. I will focus on four of these relationships and argue for a new interpretation of the genetic data:

First, although the skin, liver, muscle, brain and other cell types that compose a body are morphologically and functionally diverse, they are not genetically diverse. They all inherit the same genotype from their common ancestor, a zygote. That is, during the descent with modification from a zygote to its descendant cell types, DNA is conserved. Diverse phenotypes do not require diverse genotypes.

Second, Because all cells in a body (excluding parasites and symbionts) inherit the same genotype, they necessarily inherit many genes that they do not need. Skin cells don't express genes specific to the functioning of liver cells, for example. Neither do muscle cells express genes specific to the functioning of brain cells. And so on. The excess DNA in each cell type includes genes needed to create and operate all the other types. But from the point of view of a given type of cell, the DNA for the other types is junk.

Third, the expression of genes in any particular cell type, and the timing of their expression, is controlled by other genes that act as on/off switches. This is how a single genotype expresses multiple phenotypes (skin, liver, muscle, etc.) in a single body -- by turning various genes on and off here and there at various times.

Fourth, a zygote carries genes that will be required by its descendants. The zygote anticipates the needs of the skin, liver, muscle, and other descendant cell types and carries their genes, even if the zygote itself does not express them. These, then, are some of the characteristics of development. They include conservation of DNA, junk DNA, switches that conrol the expression of cellular phenotypes, and genes that anticipate the needs of descendants.

Now, when we look at the genetics of evolution, we find all the same hallmarks. Since genetic sequencing and analysis have come online, the parallels between development and evolution--between ontogeny and phylogeny--have come sharply into focus. A new discipline within evolutionary biology, called evolutionary developmental biology, or Evo Devo, is trying to shoehorn the new genetic data into the old, Darwinian, paradigm. But comparative genomics is rewriting the book of evolution into something that readers of the first edition might not recognize as the same work.

Consider:

First, insects, fish, birds and primates are morphologically and behaviorally dissimilar, but not because their genotypes are to any comparable degree dissimilar. Genetic sequencing and analysis tell us that these creatures all inherited same basic genetic toolkit from a common ancestor. That is, despite all the phenotypic variation, DNA is conserved across species during evolutionary descent.

Genes for limbs are pretty much the same from limbed species to limbed species, whether the wings are on a dragonfly, a bat, or a bald eagle. The underlying genes are about the same. Evolution, like development, conserves DNA. Researcher Sean Carroll, an architect of Evo Devo, comments, “Comparison of genomes tells us that not only do flies and humans share a large set of developmental genes, but that mice and humans have nearly identical sets of about 25,000 genes, and that chimps and humans are almost 99 percent identical at the DNA level. The common tool kit and the great similarities among different species genomes present an apparent paradox.” (All Carroll quotes are from his book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, The New Science of Evo Devo.) Yes, the great similarities do present a paradox. Because they make evolution look like a large-scale development.

What Darwin Got Wrong

Life evolves seemingly endless varieties. To account for the varieties, Charles Darwin invented natural selection. He gave his invention the task of bestowing upon organisms whatever traits they have or had or will have.

What Darwin Got Wrong argues that the mechanism of natural selection is inadequate to this task. The book’s authors, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (avowed atheists we learn), argue that Darwin overstated the power of natural selection, that it cannot account for how organisms got to be how they got to be. The authors don’t cite missing fossils of transitional forms or appeal to irreducible complexity, a la intelligent design argument. They just pick away at the putative logic of natural selection until nothing remains but grandma’s common-sense intuitions. They conclude that Darwin granted a truism wings to which it was not entitled.

The book attacks selectionism on various fronts, from its inability to field counterfactuals (if the arctic environment had been green, would polar bears have green fur?) to limitations placed on creaturely form by physical mechanics. But the star larvae hypothesis is interested primarily in the accounts of internal, or endogenous, constraints on the variability of phenotypes, the observable forms of organisms. The internal constraints leave environmental, or exogenous, influences with little from which to select. As the authors put it, natural selection at most can tune the piano; it cannot compose the melody.

The book, in short, is about the conceptual rigor, or lack of, of the NeoDarwinian theory. The Neo- part is important, because the authors support their case with findings from genetic sequencing and analysis. In particular, they lean on a new discipline called evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo, which has evolved from the discovery that DNA is conserved during evolution. This means that the genetic makeup of organisms, their genotypes, varies little across species, relative to the great diversity of phenotypes across species. How does a relatively limited genetic toolkit translate into so many forms of creatures? That is the question.

Loose Science or Tight Magic(k)?

I snapped this at the Met. Engraving on the side of an Egyptian tomb. What is this fellow up to? Recharging his battery?

The Illustrated McLuhan #2

 

 "What remains to be recognized is that a very able person may often choose to freeze or anesthetize large areas of his mind and experience for the sake of social and practical success or the pleasures of group solidarity."

from 

The Mechanical Bride

By Marshall McLuhan

DNA Says Evolution is Not as Contingent as Imagined

(Darwin Isn’t Dead. He Just Smells Funny.*)
*Apologies to FZ

Something funny is afoot in the biological sciences. Labs peering into DNA are seeing things that nobody expected. And because the received view of evolution failed to predict these findings, and because it has little room to incorporate them, a crisis is brewing for the theory. Something more than selecting random variants is going on in evolution.

The data coming out of DNA sequencing and analysis suggest that the something more has to do with a preferred direction in evolution. Phylogenetic descent seems now to be a developmental unfolding. Several discoveries point to this conclusion:

1. Junk DNA. This is not a particularly new discovery. It’s been known for some time that all species carry around a lot of junk, DNA that appears to lie dormant. What aspect of evolution theory predicts that long stretches of inactive DNA would coast along inside organisms, seemingly contributing nothing to their survivability? Nobody saw it coming. It was an empirical surprise.

But in the context of ontogeny, the development of organisms, it is exactly what is to be expected. Each cell in the body of a complex organism inherits the same genes from the ancestral zygote, the original fertilized ovum. Despite all possessing the same genes, brain, liver, kidney, and skin cells, for example, distinguish themselves phenotypically. Each cell type looks and acts differently from the others. But, because they all inherit the same genes, there must be a lot of junk DNA in each type of cell. Brain cells don’t need genes that function uniquely in liver cells, nor do kidney cells need genes that function uniquely in skin cells. But all the cells inherit all those genes from their common ancestor, the zygote, whether they need them or not.

When it comes to cell types in a body, an invariant genetic inheritance necessarily is the case, with lots of junk in each cell as a result. Ontogeny demonstrates that diverse morphologies, or phenotypes, need not correspond to any proportionate diversity of genotype. “Adaptive radiation” of cell types in a body proceeds just fine without genetic variation.

Evolution appears to operate similarly.

The Illustrated McLuhan #1

"The automated presidential surrogate is the superlative nobody."

from
Take Today, The Executive As Dropout
by Marshall McLuhan  
   

  

911 Controlled Demolition: If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck . . . .

That's Grosz!

Artist George Grosz captured the decadence and corruption of Weimar Germany in his satirical paintings. 

This painting he titled "Circe" after the goddess who used drugs to turn loathsome persons into animals. 

I don't think my editorial captioning needs any comment.

Feel free to disagree.

The Swastika is the Lowest Form of Graffiti

WTC7

See for yourself! Watch the emperor's new clothes drop to the ground ::: http://buildingwhat.org/

Dismal Wretched Bliss

in anticipation of the New World Order ::::::::::

As the world awakens to startling news, tumult:

“. . . nouncement coming out of a government laboratory that is sure to shake things up.”

“That’s right. Apparently everybody’s been wrong about something we all took for granted. Who could imagine that two and two is anything but four? That’s old-school thinking now. Unless you’re up to arguing with the government’s new RBC, the Really Big Computer, you better get used to the idea that two and two is really . . . five.”

“Great. I'm supposed to balance my checkbook now?”

The cohosts cut their titters short.

“For more on this remarkable development, let’s go to economics correspondent, Lilly Cunningham,  at the RBC facility, outside Washington D.C.” 

“Thanks, Dianne. I’m here at the RBC, the Really Big Computer, where government scientists say they’ve discovered that two and two is five. This is a . . . well, a . . . shocking . . . announcement, to say the least. It’s hard to believe, but the proof is solid, according to Dr. Anton Wilson, who oversees the RBC facility. He says it all comes down to a deeper understanding of numbers.”

A prerecorded Wilson explains.

“Ve haf taken great care to check our results, and ze accuracy of ze program has been verified by ze uhzer government computers, and at zis point ve are completely confident of our results. Ve realize zat zis discovery vil haf fundamental consekvences for our society, und ve are now sharing zis invormation vis ze public so zat ve can begin ze process of a smooze transition to ze new arismatik.”

As the news spreads, it ignites waves of disbelief. The president addresses a befuddled nation when he goes before the cameras that evening.

“Last night, I conferred with top advisers in the White House and the Pentagon about a remarkable discovery made at the RBC, the Really Big Computer. And based on those discussions I authorized the technical staff in charge of the RBC to begin informing the public about those discoveries. I know that today was a confusing day for many of you. But, by uncovering a longstanding error in simple arithmetic, Dr. Anton Wilson and his team at the RBC have made a valuable contribution to the knowledge of mankind. We owe them our thanks.”

The president summarizes the research and spreads more kudos, then gets to the point.

“. . . therefore I am establishing a new cabinet-level department, the Department of Arithmetic Security. This department will serve the critical function of ensuring for the nation the numerical integrity of all calculations, scientific, financial, and those involved in the serious enterprise of . . .”

The People Must Believe That They Are Not Manipulated

"The people must believe that they are not manipulated—in order for them to be manipulated effectively." 

So says Winston Smith, protagonist of George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984. Orwell/Smith was echoing a sentiment attributed earlier to Goethe:

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

u believe u r not manipulated? u believe u r free? 

The Problem with America's Debt Problem

In a recent Washington Post column, Michael Gerson says, "America's debt problem is mainly an entitlement spending problem."

He is WRONG.

There is NO shortage of money--for the simple fact that the government can create as much money as it needs out of thin air. Somebody in the Treasury Dept just has to enter the correct character strokes on the right computer and - wa-la - the Federal Reserve conjures into existence as much money as is needed.

Inflationary you say?

HA - you haven't been paying attention. We're in a DE-flationary spiral. The money supply has been steadily SHRINKING. This economy needs NEW MONEY, not a redistribution of tender from my pocket to Lloyd Blankfein's.

Increases the debt?

OK, eliminate the step involving the Federal Reserve. Instead of issuing Treasury Bonds and trading them for legal tender, just declare (Congress can do this) the bonds themselves to be legal tender. End the Fed, and one more parasitic bureaucracy bites the dust. Good riddance. Call in and retire the existing bonds, and say goodbye to the national debt.

Comrades, when you hear corporate mouths, such as Gerson, tell you to sacrifice and accept austerity, look the [expletives] in the eye and reply calmly, "No thanks."

That's all.

Just Say No.

Connecting the Dots

Somewhere between the propaganda-spewing corporate mainstream media and the UFO-tinged Illuminati-mongering conspiracy networks is an informed core of sane, honest whistleblowers, connecting the dots to create a helluva ugly picture, which might be titled, Global Machinations of the New Feudal Lords.

Join in the dot connecting. Anyone can play. Here’s how to get started:

www.deepcapture.com
michael-hudson.com
baselinescenario.com

If you'd rather watch a PowerPoint, try this introduction:

www.deepcapturethemovie.com/

BUST THE TRUSTS: Tax the Rich to Break Up Demand-Side Monopolies

What’s the matter with monopolies, anyway?  Do we need anti-trust laws?

For one thing, capitalist theory goes, monopolies foul up the supply-and-demand dynamic that keeps a market economy honest. Industry delivers the most value and prosperity to the most people if we just leave pricing, production, and quality to be sorted out by supply and demand, goes the theory. Alternatively, a centrally planned, communist, economy can seem to work fine—if you’re one of the oligarchs in charge. But centralized controllers tend not to spread the wealth around, as centralized banking in the United States demonstrates.

Competition, in particular, is a key cog in the machine that distributes wealth, by keeping supply and demand in balance. Suppliers without competitors are free to disregard the demands of consumers. Monopolies have no incentive to keep prices down or product quality up or customer service responsive. They put a drag on the free-market economy by defeating the self-correcting mechanism of supply-and-demand.

So, a monopoly system flunks the test of delivering the full benefits of a market-based economy. But the traditional idea of a monopoly covers only the supply side. An equally pernicious market distortion can occur when there’s a demand-side monopoly. That’s when buying power (demand) is concentrated in too few private hands.

Social Mediation

Social Media = Social Mediocrity:

rue
or

alse?

Chirality of Ethos

Chemists call molecules chiral when the molecules come in mirror-image pairs.  The term is applied to molecules that share a common chemical formula and are built from the same numbers of the same kinds of atoms. They differ in the geometrical arrangement of the atoms. That’s all. Same content, just rearranged to create mirror-image reflections. The right- and left-handedness of chiral chemistry provides a handy metaphor for the politics of Left and Right: mirror images built from a common substance and a common formula.

For reasons probably unimaginable, chemistry came to mind when I found the movie Return Engagement on the Internet Archive (it follows the Bob Costas interview). The movie documents a series of debates between notorious pitchman for the colorful ‘60s psychedelic counterculture, Timothy Leary, and G. Gordon Liddy, notorious henchman for the disgraced U.S. president Richard M. Nixon. This odd couple toured the U.S. in the 1980s, staging debates that pitted Leary’s libertine individualism against Gordo’s conservative authoritarianism.

In debate Leary preaches a gospel of self-discovery and invites individuals to liberate themselves from the suffocating conventions of polite society, to spread their wings and fly free from the strictures of the hive. Liddy counters by accusing Leary of reckless self-centeredness and hedonism. He argues for the duty of individuals to subordinate their desires to the needs of social orderliness. Gordo preaches a communitarian, collectivist ethos.

WAIT A MINUTE.

Liberal? Conservative? Is anybody paying attention?

Tune into partisan polemic today and you get a mirror image of the Leary-Liddy debates. The Left is all about community, and if you hear invocations of freedom and liberty, it’s more likely coming from the Right. Listen to right-wing talk now and you’d think community was synonymous with gulag. So, between 1984, a fitting year to make such a movie, and today, what happened to political Left and Right?

They became what they beheld.

The Right adopted the “Do your own thing” ethos and adapted it to the cult of the business entrepreneur. The Left internalized a tut-tutting stance, condemning the “greed” of the self-centered striver, while striving itself to be “socially responsible.”

How long before the mirrors switch again and Lefties snap, “Don’t tell me what to do” with Righties castigating them for shirking their responsibilities?  Stay tuned.

Banality of Evil

I can’t tell if the bigger threat is government taking over private corporations or private corporations taking over the government. The two processes seem to be on a collision course.

Under the influence of neutron-star-dense concentrations of private capital, the public sector squirts out from the political Right as “protection” and from the Left as “care.” These two ostensibly benevolent wings eventually coalesce into an iron fist that claims for itself all the rights and privileges of personhood and the authority to tax, regulate, and conscript, a creature parasitic on Arendt’s “banality of evil.”

All of the monarchy,

With none of the royalty. 

"The new facts made imperative a new examination of all past history, and then it was seen that all past history was the history of class struggles, that these warring classes of society are always the product of the modes of production and exchange, in a word, of the economic condition of their time; that therefore the economic structure of society always forms the real basis from which, in the last analysis, is to be explained the whole superstructure of legal and political institutions, as well as of the religious philosophical and other conceptions of each historical period."

Frederick Engels

From Herr Eugen Duehring’s Revolution in Science

Sex and Death: Evolution Undefined

Conceptually, evolution theory seems simple: 

Individual organisms vary in their various traits. Some are better adapted to survive in their environmental niche than others, because they possess (more and/or more highly) adaptive traits. Because the better adapted organisms succeed disproportionately in begetting offspring, the adaptive traits become more prevalent in the next generation. Over many generations, this process of filtering and concentrating the heritable traits of organisms has spawned diverse forms of life, with genes transferring traits from parents to offspring. 

I think I squeezed in all the relevant keywords.

This description works at an abstract level, but close up, the theory's fuzziness becomes apparent. What is a niche, anyway? Or an adaptation? Or a trait? Or an organism? Or a gene?

These questions make Kim Sterelny and Paul E. Griffiths’ Sex and Death a worthwhile read for anyone interested in probing the rigor of the received view. It turns out that researchers in the biological sciences have yet to settle on agreed-upon definitions of the above terms. Evolution theory is compromised by its own hazy vocabulary.

For example, do ecological niches exist independently of the organisms that fill them? Or are they defined by their occupants? Is average temperature sufficient to define a niche? Temperature and water salinity? Temperature, salinity, and the density of predators? “Niche” is, if not an essential, at least a supporting concept in evolution theory, but it amounts to a conceptual blur. Nobody can say what the necessary and sufficient conditions are to define a “niche.”

Corporate Personhood, the sequel

Now that the Supremes have granted full, or nearly full, constitutionally protected personhood to corporations, publicly owned companies won't need SEC or other legal approval to merge. Just a marriage license from the local court house. We might expect other interesting fallout, too: 

"Nix the anti-trust and anti-collusion laws, because we, as the corporate members of the American Price-Fixing Institute, are simply exercising our right peaceably to assemble. Now get out of here, and close the door."

"Speaking for myself, I am innocent of all crimes related to the atrocities being investigated, but speaking as Unspeakable Weapons Corp. Inc., the company pleads the fifth and refuses to answer any more questions. Nyah-nyah!"

"As CEO of Racketeer and Extortionist Bank, I have no issue with legislation that places a ceiling on my compensation. However, the bank itself argues that placing limits on executive compensation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment."

"I am here to cast two ballots in this election, one on behalf of myself, and one on behalf of Frankenfood Bioswill Industries, Inc."

Down the Memory Hole

On the “Today” show, a friend of John Edwards talked about Edwards’ admission that he fathered his mistress’ child. According to the Washington Post: "Today" reported that Edwards did not come on the show himself because of the ongoing federal investigation into whether he used campaign money to cover up the affair. 

Wait a minute. The feds are going after Edwards because they think he might have used campaign money to hide his mistress? What happened to priorities?

Remember when Attorney General Eric Holder was poised to investigate the truly heinous crimes of the Bush administration? Once upon a time, Holder was going to hold W and his minions accountable. That story turned into just another piece of media flotsam that got flushed down the memory hole.

So, the Justice Department lacks resources to pursue torturers, but finds time to investigate misuse of campaign funds?  Change we can believe in?