"Dear George, The ideology of free market fundamentalism rests on three pillars..."

Open Letters to George W. Bush
Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones

21 Oct 2007

 

Dear George,

 

The ideology of free market fundamentalism rests on three pillars of bullshit:  deregulation, privatization, and the elimination of the social safety net.  They are all scams, but the one that tickles my follicles is deregulation.  In that one word, Orwellian language transcends itself and in doing so establishes a new aesthetic standard for duplicity.

 

If done honestly, deregulation is a misnomer.  Instead of deregulating, business is simply exchanging the benign regulation of the government for the harsh and unyielding regulation of the market.  Under the millstone of pure market regulation, if you screw up, you go under and take a lot of people with you.

 

Ronnie kicked the whole thing off the second he’d sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution.  No sooner had he began his orgy of deregulation then the Continental Bank of Chicago started to go under because of a cluster of bad loans it had made.  Right away, we learned our first lesson about deregulation:  corporations can’t handle freedom.  Immediately the wails and lamentations arose that Continental couldn’t be allowed to go under because its financial web was spread so wide it would cause irreparable damage to the economy!

 

So, the government bailed them out, deregulation became a scam, and the savings and loan industry took note.

 

However, there was one area in which business had total, unregulated freedom:  the creation of financial bubbles.  And, oh, how they blew those babies up until they popped.  There was the 1990 bond bubble, the dot.com bubble, the housing bubble, the subprime bubble that was followed by a liquidity crisis and a credit crunch.  Our financial adventurers could move with impunity knowing that the Fed and Congress stood ready to pump more cash into the system should their fuckups overtake them.

 

You see, personal responsibility is an individual virtue, not a corporate one.

 

Once again, the Fed is coming to the rescue as the banks sink beneath reams of Asset Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) nobody wants.  So, we are seeing the creation of a $100 billion Master-Liquidity Enhancement Conduit (M-LEC).  This fund will buy the banks bogus paper and put it on hold, thus moving the banks’ liability off their books.  Otherwise, they’d have to increase their cash reserves, which would give them less money with which to fund the next bubble. 

 

Nobody has quite figured out what to do with the other $400 billion in toilet paper they are holding (there’s a lot of give and take in that figure because nobody is really sure just how deep in shit the banks are).

 

It really doesn’t matter because the benevolent hand of the government will bail them out.  Might I suggest that when you give your radio address next Saturday you thank America’s taxpayers for their generosity in allowing their tax dollars to be used to fund corporate ineptitude? As a reward,  allow their pensions funds to invest in the next bubble. 

 

What the hell, no matter how many bubbles pop, we still have the national security bubble, and that will keep the economy humping along the road to oblivion. 

 

Your admirer,

Belacqua Jones

 

~ Link ~

"War costs may total $2.4 trillion"

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-10-23-wacosts_N.htm

Putting Life First

Yes! Magazine

Fall 2007

 

Living Wealth: Better Than Money
by David Korten

If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth. This requires building economies with heart.

 

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1834

 

 

"No other novelist cuts so incisively to the heart of contemporary ennui"

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books
The boring brilliance of JG Ballard
Lee Rourke
25 Oct 2007

 

Who is Britain's greatest living novelist? If pressed, I would have to say JG Ballard. No other contemporary writer, in my opinion, has engaged with modernity and our urban environment quite like Ballard. And with Crash, his startling novel of 1973, he tackles the evident intersection of our prevailing psychological, philosophical, sexual and technological violence - so engrained is it in our modern age - in a way that nobody else has managed.

Crash is the definitive novel of technocentrism: where the blurring of our technologies and functionality is evoked through a cultural and political desert in the urban environment, revealing a society governed by the car and the - mostly sexual - violence we are left with. A crumbling world where we are dwarfed by a new machine age that has no real need for us - a world we are ill-equipped to understand as it leaves us standing - forcing us to worship its gleaming by-products and ignoring its manipulation of us. To put it simply: Ballard understands that modernity has left us to our own basal needs - and we're not coping too well.

Interwoven through this dazzling narrative is the palpable, all too human, presence of boredom. It is the glue that binds the sequence of events in Crash together: behind its synthesis of crumpled fenders, chrome headlights, semen, brake fluid and oil, Crash is a book about boring people who are simply bored; these people cling to the one thing they can control. The car is the symbol of a limited body, and through the motorcar - through its actual prostheses and a series of repeated collisions - these bored individuals can begin to understand the things ordinarily beyond their own control: sexual urges, the realisation of death, violence and desire.

Crash serves to remind us that we can never fully grasp the meaning of modernity. We are ruthlessly exposed as limited vessels in its presence. For me it is the most telling and damning novel of our age: in a world that is devoid of all meaning it is extremism that dominates as the prevailing alternative to the collective ennui that binds us together.

Full post>>

"Mad about memory"

http://blog.bioethics.net/2007/10/mad-about-memory/

"Judges impose secrecy on remake of ethics rules"

By Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

25 Oct 2007

 

WASHINGTON — As the federal judiciary embarks on a historic revision of its rules against judicial misconduct, the panel of judges that's overseeing the drafting of new regulations refuses to disclose the public comments that could help shape the overhaul.

After requesting public comments about the proposed rules, the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability refuses to say how many responses it received, who commented or what was said.

"I have never heard of public comments being made confidentially," said Abner Mikva, a retired chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. "I'm trying to think of an explanation, but this strikes me as very strange."

What's known is that several chief circuit judges across the country are among those who weighed in, sparking speculation that the judiciary is debating the merits of the proposed rules, which would impose unprecedented oversight over how federal courts handle complaints.

Legal experts said they weren't surprised by the reticence to release the information. By tradition and necessity, the federal judiciary often weighs some of its most important decisions behind closed doors and without public input...

Read full article >>

Proposed GM maize ban in Europe

Friends of the Earth Press release
Thursday 25 October 2007

Friends of the Earth has today welcomed the news that EU Environment
Commissioner Dimas is for the first time proposing to ban two types of
genetically modified (GM) maize because of the risks they pose to the
environment. The environmental group is urging the whole of the European
Commission to put environmental safety first and support the proposed
ban.[1]

The two GM maize varieties (Syngenta's Bt11 and Pioneer/Dow's 1507) are
engineered to produce a toxin (commonly called Bt) that is poisonous to
certain insect pests. However, scientific studies show that these GM
maize are toxic to certain butterfly species and may also affect other
beneficial insects and have long term negative effects on soil health.

The proposal is apparently based on clear scientific evidence proving
that the cultivation of these two GM crops has the potential to cause
environmental harm. Commissioners Mandelson (Trade), Verheugen
(Industry) and Fischer Boel (Agriculture) are among a small group of
Commissioners that are expected to oppose the proposal and the
application of the precautionary principle to this case.

Several scientists have recently published studies showing that the
effects of GM Bt maize are far from predictable and that their potential
risk is greater then previously thought. These studies demonstrate that
the current EU risk assessment procedure is not able to evaluate the
risks posed by GM Bt crops.[2]

An announcement is expected shortly as to whether France will also ban a
Bt maize on similar environmental grounds.

In addition, during the World Trade Organisation dispute over GM
products, the EU had already argued that Bt crops should not be
currently grown because of the incomplete knowledge about their
long-term environmental impact. [3]

Friends of the Earth GM campaigner, Clare Oxborrow said:

"This is a major blow to the GM industry. For the first time there is a
European Commission proposal that GM crops should not be approved in
Europe - and crucially this relates to two maize varieties for
commercial growing. The Commission has raised serious concerns about the
environmental impact of growing these crops."

NOTES

[1] See http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRU00606620071025

[2] For example:

* Recent research shows that GM crops producing Bt toxins could
seriously affect aquatic ecosystems, since pollen and agricultural
wastes from Bt maize enter streams where they may become toxic to
aquatic life. This toxicity pathway for Bt toxins has not been
considered previously

* The level of Bt toxin produced by one of these GM varieties varies
strongly between different locations and between plants on the same
field. The reasons for these differences are not known. This raises
serious questions about the current capacity to assess the impact of Bt
toxins on the environment.

* Unexpectedly, another recent study found that one type of GM Bt maize
has significant higher amino acid levels compared to its non-GM
counterpart, which made it much more susceptible to aphid infestation.
Again this is another demonstration that Bt maize is subject to
unexpected and unpredictable negative effects.

(All references to the studies are available from Friends of the Earth)

[3] European Communities - Measures affecting the approval and marketing
of biotech products (DS291, DS292, DS293). Comments by the European
Communities on the scientific and technical advice to the panel. 28
January 2005. See Friends of the Earth summary:

http://www.foeeurope.org/publications/2006/hidden_uncertainties.pdf

BBC: Humans failing the sustainability audit

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

25  Oct 2007

 

With its Geo-4 report, the United Nations tells us that most aspects of
the Earth's natural environment are in decline; and that the decline will
affect us, the planet's human inhabitants, in some pretty important ways.

Feel like you have heard it before? Of course you have, not least from the
UN.

So what, you might ask, is special about this report? Why is it worth any
more than a cursory headline glance before returning to the party?

Well, first there is the sheer scale. Hundreds of researchers from a huge
variety of disciplines have compiled, written and analysed its 572 pages;
thousands more have reviewed the various chapters.

Second, Geo-4 covers the whole range of environmental issues, and the
links between them.

In these climate-obsessed times, it is often forgotten that issues like
forestry, fresh water supplies, agriculture, biodiversity, and the spread
of desert land all connect to each other and to climate change.

READ THE REPORT IN FULL

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_10_2007_un.pdf

In the language of James Lovelock's Gaia theory, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that have punctuated 2007 allowed
us to take the planet's temperature; Geo-4 shows us what is going on in
the blood supply, the lymph system, the intestines and the immune
defences.

Third, it explores the links between social trends and environmental
decline in a way that is not often done. Which other body, for example,
asks whether the divergence we are seeing in the wealth of the richest and
the poorest is good or bad for the environment?

And fourth, it is a staging post on a journey which in principle the
international community embarked upon 20 years ago; a chance to see how
far society has come, and in which direction.

Sustainable commitment

1987 was perhaps the year when the international community, through the
United Nations, began to sound as though it were serious about the
environment.

Our Common Future contained fine words, and fine sentiments; Geo-4
suggests they have not been acted upon...   Full article >>