April 25, 2009
North Star Nonsense
I've hesitated to comment on Minnesota's never-ending Senate race. Basically, I like Minnesota, I like people from Minnesota, and I have the greatest respect for the progressive role that Minnesota has played historically in American politics. Having said that, have they gone nuts up there, or what? The only conclusion one can draw is that people in Minnesota really don't give a damn whether they have two sitting U.S. Senators. Yeah, maybe for the sake of propriety, but not so much that they actually put a high priority on resolving a close election quickly. At this rate, it may well take a year. Worse, the Democrats nationally seem equally paralyzed in the face of archaic election machinery. You'd think that they would want to seat Franken because, well, there are important things to do in the U.S. Senate these days. But, no, the Democrats have kept their mouths shut. Another telling marker as to how far American democracy has decayed.
Clever Boots
For those who relish such things, here's Nightwatch, a free open-source intelligence digest, put together by one John McCreary, for AFCEA International (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association). I'd stumbled over Nightwatch about a week ago by accident, then thought of a relatively minor hack — inputting the URL manually with the desired date — which gave access, but I didn't find the much more convenient link above until Friday night. It's not something AFCEA really publicizes. For a $35 membership fee you can get the digest delivered straight to your in-box; I'm not so sure that's worth it as opposed to clicking a link whenever you want but I'm half inclined to become a member just to support the effort. Anyhow, reading the Nightwatch product I must say, I like the way that McCreary thinks. This is a highly valuable news/analysis resource. [5/08 Actually, reading him for a while I see too many reactionary tendencies — so caution is in order — but I still like him.]
April 24, 2009
Tripping the Light Fantastic
If there is any hope for Af/Pak land, it doesn't include an Israeli attack against Iran. Indeed, I continue to be amazed that public discussion of the fallout of such an attack doesn't automatically generate scenarios regarding Af/Pak. These are not separate boxes. An Israeli attack on Iran doesn't affect just Iraq and the Gulf states. The fact is, such an attack would seriously undermine all U.S. policy in the Af/Pak area and further destabilize what many informed analysts are calling the most unstable situation in Pakistan in many decades. I'm sure that the State Department is telling the Israelis, "No Way!" I'm not so sure the Israelis are capable of listening, though I'm inclined to think that for their own reasons they're not going to strike. We'll see. In any case, whenever some pundit beats the drum for Israel to attack Iran — which happens all too often — somebody should ask them if they really want a Pakistani nuclear device (or devices) in the hands of Islamist extremists.
April 22, 2009
JFK and the Unspeakable
From early days at EP listeners have urged me to do interviews on the subject of the JFK assassination. I've resisted. It's not that I accept the official narrative, I don't. For as long as I can remember I've thought preposterous both the "magic bullet" theory and the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I'd never, however, seen the story put together in a compelling way. It seemed to me one practically needed a Ph.D. in JFK assassination theory to make sense of the many pieces. Until now.
April 21, 2009
Down on the Farm
When I was a kid, summers on the family farm in downstate Illinois meant bailing hay and picking weeds. Weeding was the worst. Walking up and down endless rows of soybeans, bending over, pulling the tough little buggers out of the ground. I guess nobody's figured out how to mechanize picking weeds, perhaps because a machine would spread weed seeds — and that can be up to thousands per plant, depending upon the weed — all over the place. Whatever. But no wonder farmers flocked to Monsanto's Roundup ready crops: they could saturate their fields with herbicide and presto, no more weeds. Less back-breaking work. For many reasons I've never liked genetically modified seeds and I suspect that previous generations of the family's farmers would have been skeptical too, but the current generation are a greedy bunch for whom higher yields with less work was too great a temptation. Unfortunately I'm implicated as well as it makes no sense to take my share, the size of a postage stamp, out of production. But here's an "I told you so": Roundup resistant pigweed — a truly terrifying superweed — is starting to spread. Monsanto's advice? Mix Roundup with 2,4-D (a component of the infamous Agent Orange used in Vietnam, both also Monsanto products). Fortunately I'm too old now to be drafted again into picking weeds, but I doubt that my cousins' kids and grandkids, if and when they're introduced to weeding on a magnificent scale, will like it much.
April 20, 2009
Play Now, Pay Later
Everybody sees that money is a problem in American politics. There's all that money going into getting elected. And then there's all that money that comes after leaving office: where the real payoff happens. Reformers often propose federally funded election campaigns. My own preference is to shrink the size of congressional districts. But there's another solution, an obvious one, if you think about it. A flat prohibition on all elected federal officials from ever working again in the private sector. That would require giving even a one-term congressman an annuity for life, but in the bigger scheme of things wouldn't paying retirement benefits for elected federal officials be cheaper than the social costs of former office holders conniving to cheat the taxpayer? It may seem an un-American proposal — no doubt in many ways it is — yet such a system is clearly better than having the federal government run by a set of competing crime syndicates, which is essentially what we've got now.
April 18, 2009
Waiting for The Crash
There's an awful lot not to like about the administration's handling of our Great Recession. As economists from Paul Krugman to Jamie Galbraith keep pointing out, government stimulus must be much larger if it's to get us anywhere near full employment. And almost everybody agrees that the bank bailout, as currently structured, is more a give away than a fix, at best being a stop-gap measure. Moreover, I keep worrying about the derivatives overhang — I notice at least one prominent neo-liberal economist (Bill Clinton's favorite, which is really no recommendation) agrees — and the 'make-it-up-as-you-go-along' so-called market in derivatives. Then there's the current account deficit, always a problem, and so many other structural problems, including not least things like health care and oil dependence. The U.S. economy is a giant mess. At the same time there's something of a silver lining that as far as I can tell very few people are talking about. "Very few" being a qualifier: in fact, I haven't noticed anybody talking about the role that technology plays in driving today's economic growth.
April 16, 2009
Justice Denied
There's no point recapitulating all the dispositive arguments about why people who torture other people should be punished instead of being given immunity. My question is, given that rule number one in Washington seems to be "the cover-up is worse than the crime," what happens in this case to those doing the covering up? To what extent do Mr. Obama, Mr. Holder, Mr. Panetta, and all the rest now face criminal complicity? Let's suppose that, as a direct result of official U.S. inaction, some foreign government decides to prosecute individuals from the previous administration. Might such prosecutions have new potential to bleed over into the current administration? And where would things stand in our own criminal justice system if its machinery were working properly? These are questions that won't easily fade away.
April 7, 2009
Carrying Coals to Newcastle
Doesn't Obama Have Enough Crises to Worry About?
By Werther*
We suppose that the reader is aware by now — as if he could avoid the news — that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea launched a ballistic missile last Sunday. According to reports, North Korea's three-stage Taepodong-2 missile failed during its second-stage burn and fell into the Pacific Ocean about 800 miles east of Japan.
April 5, 2009
Mr. Obama Campaigns Abroad
Billed as a major speech with new departures on nuclear arms control, it seems puzzling that Mr. Obama's remarks in Prague aren't (yet) available on the White House web site. Puzzling until one reads the text, which is fluff combined with a few good ideas and a few really bad ones. Presumably the White House doesn't want it under any great scrutiny. More than anything — and in keeping with his domestic practice — the speech is of the sort one hears during a political campaign. In Prague it isn't clear what campaign, exactly, but Mr. Obama often seems to prefer a cheery campaign style over coherent policy.
April 4, 2009
More 9/11 Evidence
At the time, to a lot of people the thought of a "conspiracy" behind 9/11 was just too much to contemplate. Now, however, in light of the Thief in Chief giving hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions) to Wall Street, and every other kind of mega-scandal, the idea of making 9/11 happen begins to seem almost like a trivial exercise. Something on the order of a "Las Vegas Plus" magic show. And if you think about it, most of the objections to 9/11 skeptics weren't about the arguments, per se, so much as the general plausibility of a conspiracy. Anyway, for those who've kept an open mind, here's an important new, peer-review study (.PDF) from the Open Chemical Physics Journal, proving the presence of super high-tech, exotic thermite at ground zero. Now, I suppose the 9/11 myth busters may argue that particles of exotic thermite are commonly found in lower Manhattan but it looks to me like the official story is starting to have holes big enough for a Wall Street gangster to drive a Ferrari through. I should add, I don't know much about the Open Chemical Physics Journal except that it's clearly a serious publication. And Kudos to all the study's authors!
April 3, 2009
Derivatives Bombs
When I really don't understand something I think I should understand, it nags at me. What the hell are these derivatives? According to several news reports of a couple days ago the "notional value of derivatives held by U.S. banks climbed $24.5 trillion in the fourth quarter [2008] to $200.4 trillion." Ahhh — OK, so that's trillion with a "t"? Two hundred trillion?! What?? What does that make the leverage on these things? Is that even a sensible question? Are there frequent "off the book" side agreements that invalidate them (as is now being reported in some economic blogs)? Are they (as I suspect they are) highly toxic? What does this so-called market mean for the rest of the economy? I keep saying I'd like for the government to impose a "derivatives holiday" until there's some transparency and regulation, and that perhaps at the end of the day we should make derivatives illegal. But maybe I'm completely wrong about this, as barely an eyebrow, anywhere, is being raised. If anybody knows of somebody who has experience with derivatives, who can talk about them sensibly, please let me know.
NATO Nonsense
At a glance it looked like an April Fools joke: Albania joining NATO. But it's a real news item, worth noting as a milestone in the dissolution of a once-important organization. NATO had its role during the Cold War but once the Warsaw Pact fell apart, and the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO should have been disbanded or mothballed. Instead, as an organization in search of a mission, NATO started promiscuously adding new members. So now the U.S. is bound by treaty to defend the security of Albania. How sensible is that? If Albania were a base on the moon maybe it wouldn't matter. But lest we forget, there were some nasty wars in the Balkans in the 1990s and many observers, including me, don't believe that everything's been settled yet. Indeed, round two may well include rearrangement of borders to better suit the Albanians spread across Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. In an odd way it might be fitting to require NATO to clean up that mess but I can't think of any good reason why the U.S. should be involved...
