Archive for the ‘ Political comment ’ Category

Will the Chinese be Supreme?

NY Review

I hesitate to refer you to another article in the Review – when I already referred you to another one today - Afghanistan: The Way to Peace.

I only mention it in case you are interested in the subject – as I am.  This is also a review of three books – all with different conclusions.

The most common view (the one in the first book) is that China’s coming dominant position in the world’s economy will automatically lead to political dominance.  The other two authors are not so sure – but for entirely different reasons.

I am hopeful that America’s lead in software – will compensate somewhat for its weaknesses elsewhere.

The Review’s online presence is a perfect reproduction of what you get on paper. You can easily read it for yourself – and come to your own conclusions.

2013
03/27
CATEGORY
History
Political comment
Sociology
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How Does Greg Palast Get Away With It?

The only answer I can think of is – because he is telling the truth! It may surprise you to know that, in this day and age, the truth can still be spoken – but he is living truth that it can be done. And in some detail.

The following is taken from his book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits – and the Chapter Penny’s from Heaven. It explains how Obama became President – something I have always wondered about.
—
Barack Obama means “The Blessed one we have been waiting for.” But who was waiting for him?

We never heard of this guy before 2004. Less and three years before taking the Oval Office, he was in the Illinois State Senate. a swamp of scammers, backhanders, and Party Machine tools, not a stellar lanchpad for the Presidency.

Then One day the Blessed One was visited by his fairy godmother. Her name was Penny Pritzker.

Plenny’s net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic want in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in the 1990s the federal government fined her $400 million for the predatory, deceitful, and racist tactics of the bank she owned on the South Side of Chicago.

Penny did not like that. No, not one bit.

What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would Change the banking laws to let her get away with this crap.

Pritzer introduced the neophyte state senator to the Ladies Who Lunch (that’s really what they call themselves on Chicago’s Gold Coast). Obama got lunch, gold, and an introduction to Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury, former Chairman of both Goldman Sachs and Citibank. Even atheists recognized Robin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street…

What did Rubin get for showering the Blessed One with gold? Obama agreed to take care of Rubin’s poodles, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. They became Obama’s first cabinet picks, Summers as economics czar and Geithner as his czarina, Secretary of the Treasury.

These were the two gents who, under Treasury Secretary Rubin, and deregulated and decriminalized the kind of banking activity that had got Penny in so much hot water. Despite their banking-law destruction spree having brought the planet to its financial knees, Summers and Geithner we back in the saddle – Obama’s horse but Rubin’s saddle.
—
This give you a feel for his style – muckraker. He can get away with telling the truth – because he is restricted to a small audience. The Official Media never heard of him.

Reading him is not an elevated experience. He dishes up dirt, dirt, and more dirt. While all of it is the real stuff – I can only stand in it small doses.

He provides no context for what he says – which is simply that America the Great has fallen. And may take the rest of the world down with it.

2013
03/22
CATEGORY
Morality
Political comment
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Anarcho Syndicalism in Software Development

Varoufakis on Valve, Spontaneous Order, and the European Crisis

I got this link from Slashdot, a good source for the latest news in the software world. And this one is especially good, loaded with information.

I used to think software development contained skills that would be useful for the rest of the world. That people who were skilled there had skills that would help save the world. I found out that this was not the case. That software development is a kind of black hole that sucks in resources from the world without giving anything back.

Its product, software (especially networked software), is the biggest problem we have ever had – and from which we are unlikely to recover. Humans are addicts and Software products have become our most latest addiction. In Costa Rica, for example, the cell phone has taken over, and people spend a lot of time with them – which subtracts from their time with each other.

Computer gaming is one of those addictions that appeals especially to the young. I have a nephew who is completely addicted – and works for a gaming software development company in Austen, Texas. He gets treated like a piece of machinery – which, in effect he is. He ships their product – strictly a routine matter, done over the Internet.

His mother tells me he keeps hoping his company will give him a better job. But that will never happen. He is perfect for the job he has – where he never has to think. A software developer has to think all the time – but think like a computer. Outside of his specialty, he knows nothing.

This article is about a software development company, Valve, that is different. So different it is useless to explain it to people in backward countries – such as Costa Rica, where I live. Or, for that matter, to most people in America – who are as ignorant as mud – and determined to stay that way. Largely, as I keep saying, because they have been steamrollered by over-development – and longer exist as people at all.

Valve was started by two men who were committed to anarcho-syndicalism as a way of life and a way of production – post-industrial production – software production. The podcast, by the Library of Economics and Liberty, interviews Yanis Varoufakis, who worked with Valve and got to understand how it worked.

Varoufakis is a study in himself. He is an economist , a native of Greece, but now with the University of Texas. He has some nasty things to say about Greece, the EU, and the economics profession – and much of the podcast (an hour long) is about that. He is saying – as many other experts have been saying, that the Euro crisis is far from over and will probably end an serious economic crisis that will effect the whole world.

But the main subject of interest, anarcho-syndicalism at Valve, is really fascinating. It seems to be an very advanced way of running a company – based on a very old idea going back to the mid-19th Century in France. It could never work in the Industrialized world – but it might work in the Post-industrial world.

It might even be the only method that works – as the world is headed into anarchy.

I can hear you now – asking me to explain it – in about six seconds. Tough luck, you got to learn it for yourself, and Yanis’s explanation is a good place to start.

Don’t expect it to be easy.

2013
03/06
CATEGORY
Economy
Political comment
Sociology
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Bacevich on Wolfowitz

Harper’s Magazine (entire article only for subscribers)

The title of the article in the March issue of Harper’s, on page 48, is A Letter to Paul Wolforwitz – Occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War. The Author is Andrew J. Bacevich, a military man who has reemerged as a academic and a political writer.

I like the writer part best – there are plenty of guys who have plenty of ideas, some of them very good ones – who cannot write their way out of a wet paper bag.

Here is a sample of the article, where it speaks of the Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) of 1992, which Wolforwitz helped write:

The draft DPG announced that it had become the “first objective” of U.S. Policy “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” With an eye toward “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role,” the United States would maintain unquestioned military superiority and, if necessary, employ force unilaterally. As window dressing, allies might look nice, but the United States no longer considered them necessary.

Unfortunately, you and your team assigned to draft the DPG had miscalculated the administration’s support for your thinking. This was not the time to be unfurling grandiose ambitions expressed in indelicate language.

What I like about this article is two things – how clever it is, and how useful it is. America has indeed become enamored of war – as he says in his book How Americans are Seduced by War.

And as I keep saying – Americans have become nobodies – but violent nobodies.

2013
03/03
CATEGORY
History
Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan
Morality
Philosophy
Political comment
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The Religion of Our Time

This is not about the fundamentalist religious passions that are so prominent all over the world, I regard these as a smoke screen for a movement that is much more important – but is not considered a religion at all. But nevertheless absorbs all our energies and passions.

First of all, what is Religion? I am going to define it as belief in the supernatural. This definition is not comprehensive (indeed, it is offensive to religious people), but it has important implications – as you will see.

Next we will have to consider Science – and its derivative, Technology. Science began as the opposite of religion – it concentrated on ordinary reality, and insisted that everything could be understood by recourse to that alone. This does not explain everything about Science – but like my definition of Religion, it is a good start. Science did not believe in the supernatural.

Fine. Now what happened as Science produced all the Technology that the Industrial Revolution depended on? What happened to the people that made these part of their lives? They changed, and they changed fundamentally. But they were completely unaware of these changes.

This is a big assertion, and I must unpack it – one technology at a time.

The first Industrial technology, as I have said, was the Sailing Ship. Its effect on people was enormous. But we were so close to what was happening, we could not understand this. We just changed ourselves completely to meet its demands.

And this is what we did for each succeeding technology – we changed completely without being aware at all. At one level, we were aware of how we were changing – but, at a deeper, more fundamental level, we denied it completely – because, we thought, our fundamental selves (our souls) were unchanged. But these supernatural souls did not exist.

Only our human selves (our bodies and our minds) existed – but we were fast denying them – one step at a time.

The next technology was a big one – the Steam Engine, with its biggest manifestation being the Railroad. Which used fossil fuels – first Coal, and then Oil. Then the Automobile – the combination of the Internal Combustion Engine and the Pneumatic Tire – and the public roads to run them on. We quickly became Car People – and could not imagine being anything else.

But something even bigger had already happened – Electricity and Photography. Which, with Mass Communications, completely changed our world – and drove us completely crazy.

I have probably gone too fast here – condensing one hundred years into a single paragraph. But I will let it stand because it makes a basic point – we went crazy in the 19th and 20th Centuries. But this was topped off with the next Technology – the Computer.

We had not the slightest idea what this was. But that does not matter. What matters is what we thought all this technology was.

It was our new religion.

We were on to something really big, that made everything else look paltry by comparison. And this was embodied by The Organization (the Corporation) – the church of our new religion.

2013
02/21
CATEGORY
Business
Political comment
Religion
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The Ignorance Caucus

NY Times – Paul Krugman

You guys must be getting tired of listening to me. Here is another voice crying in the wilderness – in this case the Wilderness of New York City.

Here is a choice quote:

Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

My sister, who lives in Texas, says candidly admits that it “only marginally qualifies as part of the Union.” But she wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Here is an article in Mother Jones about the Benghazi controversy. Someplace else the Ignorance Caucus is ignorant about – and is determined to stay that way.

2013
02/11
CATEGORY
Philosophy
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The Obama Coalition vs. Corporate America

NY Times

This is a really good article – one that every American should read – but few will. Once again, the preacher is preaching to the choir – in this case, the informed public. Perhaps 20 percent of the population.

As I said in my first posting this morning The New Meaning of Revolution, I am reading about the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks succeeded because they caught the mood of the crowd (page 43).

The Crowd is just another word for The Mass - who, as I have said, were created by Mass Production in the Industrial Economy who, as I have said, were created by Mass Production in the Industrial Economy - although the Peasant class in Russia and the Frontiersman in America easily fell into this category.

This article and this one claims a new power has arisen – called variously coalition of the downscale or the rising american electorate - consisting of unmarried women, young people, Hispanics, and African Americans.

Can they save America? Having known a few of them – I am skeptical. They may be able to vote against Corporate America – a welcome development – but the Corporation still has the jobs – something everybody knows all too well.

2013
01/11
CATEGORY
Business
Economy
Political comment
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Chuck Hagel, Under Attack Again

NY Times

In an amazing fluke, Chuck Hagel and his brother Tom fought side by side in a unit of 12. At times, because of casualties, the squad was reduced to just the two brothers and four other men. Now Mr. Hagel, a Republican former senator from Nebraska whom President Obama has nominated to be secretary of defense, faces another battle — as a maverick who was once a foot soldier in the conservative Congressional ranks. Attacks have come from hawkish former colleagues, pro-Israel advocates angered that Mr. Hagel once referred to them as “the Jewish lobby,” and gays offended by a 1998 reference to an ambassadorial nominee as “openly, aggressively gay,” a comment for which Mr. Hagel recently apologized.

The writer of this article is clearly on Mr. Hagel’s side. But after reading it – I am too.

2013
01/10
CATEGORY
Political comment
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Forcing the World to be Better

I am listening to Ten Days that Shook the World – when the Bolsheviks took control of Russia in 1917.  I am struck by how reasonable and simple their demands (and therefore their appeal) was. They insisted on control by the peasants, the workers and the military – in all cases by those on the bottom, not the top. It was a revolt against authoritarian rule – and in favor of democracy in its most fundamental forms.

The world was horrified – and still is.

They say their revulsion is based on the Bolshevik’s use of military power to gain control, and then stay in power. But they are also more than willing to use military power themselves – against both external and internal enemies. And to use a form of power always present in a society dependent on jobs – taking away jobs from those it disagrees with.

The Bolsheviks used a tactic familiar with any observer of modern politics – embrace and subvert. Which always means turning public aims into private ones (suitably disguised). The powers that be know perfectly well that the people can easily be managed.

In a corporation (or any contemporary organization) this is facilitated by blurring the line between the top and the bottom. Plenty of well-meaning people have been enticed into managerial positions because they wanted to do things better. But they were immediately shot down in flames from both directions. From those above them, who were eager to grab the goodies for themselves. And from those below them, who wanted to grab smaller goodies for themselves.

Greed, dear boy and girls, has become universal. And not surprisingly – has not been noticed. As long as everyone gets his little piece of the pie – no one worries about the pie getting smaller.

If this happens (as it is happening) everyone agrees that it cannot be helped.

2012
12/31
CATEGORY
Economy
History
Political comment
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The Revolt of the Masses in Russia

The more I learn about Human history, the more I am amazed by Human ignorance.

This is hardly a new observation – almost everybody has seen it in one form or another. But no one seems to have connected the dots and drawn a conclusion from them.

So I will do so myself. In the world of globalization, with global markets and a global economy – not being able to coordinate the different economies (caused by local conditions) can easily lead to out-of-control situations – where everybody loses, and loses big.

This is even true in much smaller situations – in the European Union, for example. Which is slowly falling to pieces. Slowly falling off the wall, where all the King’s Men and all the King’s horses…

But this is not what I started to write about. I was very impressed by Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses - written in 1930. I am now listening to John Reed’s Ten Days that Shook the World: Russia 1917 - published even earlier in 1919. Every page speaks of the masses – organized (and disorganized) in every form imaginable! John Reed was an American, but his Americans were not interested in these events – which would have a big effect on their future.

Ortega was not familiar with the events in Russia either – even though the USSR was active in the civil war that wrecked Spain and caused him to leave his country and live in South America. And he was part of their intelligentsia!

I have also listened to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, where he fought on the side of the masses – and nearly died for them. He moved Heaven and earth to get his book published – but was ignored. The British public was also ignorant, and determined to remain so.

The masses in Russia were as well-educated (and vociferous) is they could possibly be. Which in the long run did them no good. But at least they tried.

2012
12/29
CATEGORY
History
Philosophy
Political comment
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