You Should Check Out RSS -- BBC Primer

If you're new to RSS, here's a nice primer from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm

Freakonomics, Abortion, and the Death Penalty

Isn't Steven Levitt's provocative (and starkly essentialist*) one-to-one correlation of legalized abortion and less crime really a cry for expanding the use of the death penalty? In any event, you have got to admire his consistency. For once, here is a person who has a consistent point of view on the termination of life (since most of those who are pro-life seem to also be pro-death penalty and most of those who are pro-choice seem to be against granting the court system the choice of the death penalty). This post should make just about everyone mad. Oh well. Such is life.

*If it wasn't for essentialism (still popular as ever) then there really wouldn't be much of anything left in Levitt's Freakonomics. By the way, what exactly about Levitt's book is economics? It seems to be more a undergrad thesis on the use (or misuse) of statistical inference.

Supreme Court Strikes a Blow against P2P Sharing -- Link

Popular Science article

Who's Your Daddy?

The United States is deeply in debt to China. A consequence of our profligate spending on war, on tax breaks for the super-rich, on welfare for Halliburton and other buddy companies of the prez and veep is that we've had to borrow billions from China (and Japan and Germany and the Saudi Royal family (friends of G.W. who are making a killing from the higher oil prices), and more of those super-rich, etc.). We must now be willing to pay a price for our profligacy. So here is my response to those who complain that China is starting to use its dollars to buy American assets (rather than just buying our bonds), chill out! Capitalists will be capitalists, whether they are state capitalists or super-rich privo-capitalists. They will accumulate assets and use those assets to accumulate more assets. That's what capitalism's all about, right? You should all be hoping that China starts buying U.S. equity and real estate. It may be the only hope for avoiding a rather rude awakening in U.S. equity markets and keeping the air in the real estate bubble. Anyway, I think it's a bit humorous that people like Lou Dobbs are getting all worried about China's acquisitiveness. Alan Greenspan's not worried (Who's your daddy, Alan?). Secretary of the Treasury Snow is not worried (ditto). G. W. is not worried (triple ditto with oil on top). If these statesmen and patriots are not worried then why are you in such a tizzy?

Google Bubble?

Google just went over $300 a share. How much in cash flow does Google need to generate in order to justify that price? How much in cash flow per share can Google generate, based on the existing business plan for the organization and a best case scenario? Why are rational people paying $300 a share for Google stock?

And, on another front, oil prices just closed over $60 a barrel. Hmmm. How will these oil prices impact company cash flow this year (in the future)? Have rational investors in the equity markets fully priced in this impact? The impact of high oil prices, a real estate bubble (at least on either coast), American firms and consumers and governments borrowing and consuming at a pace that is far exceeding the capacity of the economy to generate value . . . Interesting. As I said back in January, this is the year of living dangerously.

China to outlaw sexual harassment (BBC)

Sexual harassment is soon to become a crime in China under new gender equality laws.

Rupert Murdoch Hates America

There are two theories about Rupert Murdoch: 1) that he doesn't really care about anything except money and he discovered that catering to the lowest common denominator (nudity on the cover of newspapers, etc.) is the most efficient way to use the media to make money (this is Rupert as 20th/21st century Elmer Gantry, with rightwing romanticism a substitute for a less political evangelicalism), and 2) that the former political Marxist Rupert is still alive and well in the older, meaner Rupert and that he is using his vast media empire to get revenge on the evil empire (USA), including by unleashing the Fox News (sic) Network to act as a sort of media cancer inside the belly of the beast, sowing division, pushing American politics to the extreme right and thus alienating the rest of the planet, exposing the worst about American society in an effort to isolate America (Rupert as the Manchurian media mogul). Either way, Rupert is making a ton of money (after having avoided bankruptcy only because of having friends in high places and bankers scared to call in their loans for fear their own foolishness/misfeasance would become an issue), has reshaped the American media (even CNN, which was already pretty darned conservative, has turned more to the right, abandoning its pretense of objectivity and the FCC is essentially a subsidiary of Newscorp) and political landscape, and played a pivotal (king making) role in the U.S. presidential election (Karl Rove owes him big time). As they say, nothing will ever be the same again. Thanks, Rupert.

In another sense, Rupert is just another general in the two pronged assault on modernity. He is leading the media forces in the romanticist wave against modernity, while the post-modernists come at the common opponent from the other direction. Fox News and post-modern critics of the media both assault the notion of objectivity and expose the underlying ideological content of all media representations. The notion of objectivity was fundamental to American journalism and the effectiveness of American propaganda. By attacking this notion of objectivity, the romanticists and post-modernists come together in tearing down the edifice of American propaganda, emasculating the propaganda machinery that has played a critical role in promoting the notion of the United States as ideal (near paradise) society. American media and politics now appears to be just as corrupt, undemocratic, and captive to economic elites and religious hardliners/bigots (ultimately therefore hypocritical) as that of many Second and Third World countries.

China's Growing Economic Clout -- Link

"Beijing's Economic Clout," in The China Post.

China's Haier Bids for Maytag

I don't need to say much about the bid of Haier for Maytag. The New York Time's Business section has a nice piece by David Barboza on the subject. But this is another example of the rapidity of China's advance from the Third to the Second and the doorsteps of the First world.

China's Transnationals Developing Faster than Expected

One of the clearest signs that China's transnational corporations may be advancing faster than most people expected is the recent decision by British Telecom to buy equipment from a top Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer, Huawei Technologies. Huawei has been primarily a supplier to Chinese firms and to firms in other less industrialized nations, but it has also been developing more sophisticated telecom equipment at a relatively rapid pace, pouring increasing sums of money into R&D and technology licensing agreements. The victory of Huawei in the tough bidding to provide equipment to British Telecom's $10 billion 21st Century Project bodes well not only for this particular firm but for other Chinese transnationals who have been pursuing a similar course.

China's Oil Gambit

While our approach in the U.S. to solving our long term oil problems has been largely military, the Chinese have decided to use the Wall Street approach: a top Chinese state owned enterprise has made a bid for Unocal (which includes assets in Asia and Alaska). Chinese oil firms have also expanded their operations globally and signed a long list of agreements with foreign firms and governments, particularly in the less industrialized world (and Russia), where the U.S.A. has not been so feared and disliked since the Viet Nam War period. As the U.S. invasion of Iraq and close ties to Saudi Arabia have made abundantly clear, the struggle for oil is one of the pivotal (if not the pivotal) struggle of the opening of this millenia. China's leadership recognizes this but has decided to take an economic, rather than a military, approach to the contest for access to our planet's key source of human generated energy.

Jens

Had lunch with Jens (Christiansen) today. When I have lunch with Jens I can forget that I'm in New England and, for that time period, just as easily be in the Pacific Northwest or the Bay Area of California. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is one of the highest compliments of friendship I can give to anyone.

Father's Day Poem from Bayo

Being There
been there
      done that
this cliché ... that cliché
this that & the other
other
      to be the other
to be    or    not to be
be    anything
be    every thing
shape & be shaped
tasteshapes
smell    colors
los colores
milagros
beanfields!
fields of dreams...
what comes
this way
dreamyland
birdland
jazz hands
be bop a re bop
a rhubarb pie
3.14 15    Nine
the magical number
magical logic
patterns
checkered
or swirled
steeping like tea
Queen T
Amunhotep
1    2    3
shouts echoing donkeyboys
a play scribed by Kai
filmed by Lil Hawk
airing whenever
priorities remediate
yin and yang
down
    is

       up
energies redirected
mental judo
I do

       U do
moving forward
       collective
          from

          temporal permanance

Why do you exist here
       there

          any where?

Where do you exist?
          When?
Who are you this time?

          My Papa...

            Love
            Bayo
            6/19/05

Dale Tozier Discusses the Republican Coup D'etat and the Future of Democracy in America

Sat, Jun 11, 2005

Day by day, the American media come to resemble more and more the Soviet media in their heyday.

Here is yet another remarkable story on the ongoing Republican coup that was apparently deemed not worthy of coverage by the American media. I apologize in advance if I got any parts of this wrong, but I am writing from memory, as I could not find any internet news stories on yesterday's extraordinary and historical events. (I use the term "historical" lightly, because I guess it won't be history if no one reports what happened and was shown on internationally broadcast CSPAN.)

If you have been watching the news, you do know that the congress recently ostensibly held hearings on extending the Patriot Act. You probably heard President Bush defending the Patriot Act, saying, among other things, that the government has thoroughly investigated all complaints of alleged abuses under the Patriot Act and found no problems.

Unless you listen to Air America Radio, you probably did not hear this story from yesterday:

As is routine practice for this Republican government, Democrats were not allowed to hear testimony from any of their desired witnesses during the House hearings on the Patriot Act. Only witnesses approved by the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were allowed to testify. Historically, this has not been how the House operates, but that was before the coup began.

In response to being shut out during the full Judicial Committee hearings, the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee invoked House Rule 11, which guarantees the minority party the right to conduct their own hearings on pending matters if they so request, calling their own witnesses. Committee Democrats formally submitted their request. In response they were assigned an obscure time slot while the Congress was in recess, ensuring a minimal audience and scant congressional attendance. Those hearings were held yesterday. At least, they were supposed to be held yesterday.

The hearings began with personal testimony recounting horror stories of innocent people, some American citizens, whose rights had been grievously violated under cover of the Patriot Act. Most of the witnesses had traveled great distances to tell their stories. The hearings did not get very far.

When Republican Committee Chair, James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (Wisconsin), got word of what was going out over CSPAN, he raced to the hearing room, and gaveled the hearings to an abrupt adjournment on his own authority ... authority non-existent under House rules. When the Democrats objected and attempted to continue, he ordered the microphones shut off.

Think about it.

This is not the first time such things have happened since the coup began. The House and Senate are supposed to operate under the guidance of law and rules long established. This Republican leadership has regularly simply refused to follow the rules and will not recognize any objections from the minority ... or even dissenting members of the majority.

For example, another story you did not learn about from the news was exactly what Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist, was attempting to do during the filibuster fight. Per the media, you would think that Senator Frist was attempting to change the filibuster rules. In fact, Frist was simply attempting to make ignoring the rule official Republican Senate policy.

Changing Senate rules requires a two-thirds majority vote of the Senate. Frist never had the support of two-thirds of the Senate, so the filibuster rule could not be changed. Therefore, he intended to get a simple majority of the Senate to vote that the filibuster rule did not apply to judicial confirmations. That was, of course, patent nonsense, but this Republican leadership simply does not care about rules of order. There was the unpleasant complication for Senator Frist that the Senate parliamentarian (a Republican), whose job it is to rule on such disputed matters of Senate rules, was a man of ethics and did not agree that the filibuster rule does not apply for judicial confirmations. He told Senator Frist that he would object to such an reinterpretation of the rules. Frist saw no real problem in that. He would simply refuse to recognize the parliamentarian, ensuring that he could not object.

As one commentator on Air America put it, this ruse was as if a member had wanted to bring his dog on the floor, but was prohibited from doing so by a "no dogs on the Senate floor" rule. Lacking the two-thirds vote needed to change the no-dogs rule, a majority of the Senate would then simply vote that the dog was not a dog, and therefore not subject to the rule. Such a procedure makes a mockery of the rule requiring a two-thirds vote for a rule change.

This tactic works for two simple reasons: First, not only do the Republicans control all three branches of government, but they maintain such tight control over party discipline that even those moderate Republicans who are personally appalled at the abuses of power they witness daily are afraid to cross their party leaders. Therefore, who are the Democrats to turn to for relief from this coup which respects no rules? The obvious answer is that their only recourse is to turn to the public.

That brings us to the second reason why this works. For reasons so complex that they are better left to another essay, the media is incredibly docile and compliant when it comes to confronting this administration. So, the public simply does not know what is going on. The public could find out -- if it was curious enough to explore hints that there are major stories that are somehow not being covered by the mass media -- but the public is preoccupied with stories such as the Runaway Bride, Michael Jackson, and Brad and Angelina.

Hence we have the ongoing coup, where rules, laws, and the constitution are simply ignored in Washington. Not only does one party control all three branches of government, but it is running roughshod over the constraints under which it is supposed to govern. The rights supposedly guaranteed the minority are simply being denied and ignored. The Republican leadership has essentially declared itself to be the final arbiter of all disputes, and it operates in extreme secrecy and with an arrogance that would have given pause even to Nixon. The only antidote to such a coup is an aroused public, and the public is dozing. People in Europe are more aware of what is going on in America than are Americans.

To be fair, only part of the public is dozing. There is a segment that is paying close attention -- the extreme Christian right. But they fully endorse and are a driving force behind the coup. They actually believe that it is their God-given right to rule America according to their beliefs, without regard or respect for other opinions. Those who disagree are not seen as just in opposition, but are contemptuously regarded as the godless, errant Christians, and unpatriotic, unworthy to share in the running of America.

This situation is not only reprehensible, it is downright dangerous. To date, there is nothing going on that could not be reversed by a simple loud outcry from the public. But power grabs have a way of spiraling out of control. Hitler was democratically elected. The German public did not have to vote him in, nor did it have to look the other way as he began to dismantle democratic government. But it did, and their situation soon evolved beyond their ability to reassert control.

All forms of coups are dangerous ... even little coups that the public decides it is not too concerned about. When a political party is allowed to ignore some of the rules and laws under which it is supposed to operate, that party inevitably lets power feed its thirst for more power. Up to a point, in a democracy the public can rise up and put that party back in its place. But, there will come a point where even the public loses its say.

There is considerable evidence that the 2000 election was stolen by abuse of government power and that a similar steal was attempted in 2004 (though I am not convinced that Republicans would not have won even in an election which they did not try to fix). Of course, if the electorate had cared enough about the abuses to be outraged, those abuses could not then have happened. If we ignore these abuses, and continue to reelect the worst abusers, the day could easily come when they will simply ensure that they win future elections, whatever real public sentiment may be.

Think about those Democratic House members who yesterday found their "guaranteed" rights as legislators gone ... simply stolen by a tyrant with no respect for Senate rules ... with no one to turn to for redress. How helpless do you suppose they felt? The day could come when we are all that helpless.

It's pretty simple. We are either going to rein the Republican leadership in and force them to respect due process, or they are going to continue grabbing power until we, the voters, no longer have the power to rein them in. The Republican leadership is presently out of control. Republicans are not inherently evil people, but control of the party has been captured by zealots. The problem is that we, the voters, have, with our inattention, given them the impression that we don't care and will forgive all; and they are running with that impression. If we wise up, they will wise up. If we doze too long, we will one day awake to find our democracy gone.

Dale E. Tozier


July 17 Postscript:

If what I have since heard on Air America Radio is correct, Chairman Sensenbrenner has now put out an edict that House Democrats are not to be allowed to use any room on Capitol Hill for any independent public hearings on any subject. They may go off the Hill if they so desire, but they may not call those meetings "hearings". They must call them "forums".

The Democrats held their "forum" on the Patriot Act this past week. The forum was not covered on any major-network news program that I watched. The "News Hour" on PBS did cover the forum.

Coincidentally, on June 9th a House subcommittee also voted in favor of eliminating all federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting over the course of the next two years, beginning with a 25% cut for next year's budget.

DET e-mail your comments

Nader and Greens Should Join Republican Party

If Ralph Nader and the Greens, who may be trying to distance themselves from Nader, want to impact American politics, economics, culture, and the future of the global natural environment in a positive way, then perhaps they should join the Republican Party and attempt to do the same thing that the right-wing evangelicals did --- gain influence over the Grand Old Party and, by that approach, influence public policy. I don't expect them to do this, however. They are far too conservative for such a bold strategy.

Lacantunia enigmatica -- Chiapas Catfish

New family, species and genus of catfish dating back to the time of the dinosaurs but still living (a "living fossil") in the Chiapas region of Mexico:

Chiapas Catfish

Permanent War aka War on Terror

George Orwell understood the relationship between war, patriotism and the suppression of democracy. He summarized his sentiments in a little book called 1984. Orwell's warning has been taken as a how-to manual by the Bush administration. If you claim to be at war you can do just about anything you want: suspend civil liberties, suppress information, lie at will, coerce the vestiges of a free press to get in line with the vast majority of the captive press, attack your political opponents as unpatriotic, and so on. Let's face it folks. We are NOT at war. We are making warfare, but that's not the same thing. The Philadelphia police bombed an entire city block a few years ago, but they were not at war. There were a lot of shots fired and heavy armor in abundance at the North Hollywood shoot out between the police and bank robbers (the subject of a number of television and movie scripts) but this was not a war, nor is L.A. County, North Hollywood, or the state of California at war. If we were at war, then it would be clear what would constitute a victory. We would know when the war was over. For example, the war with the Iraqi government ended when we destroyed their army and took over as occupation force. We're fighting insurgents, but that's not a war. It's an insurgency. They want the foreigners out. Not an untypical way that occupations proceed. Are we at war with terror? That would be interesting. How do we defeat terror? In other words, this isn't a war, it's a propaganda story to mask abuses of power. It isn't the administration that is most to blame, however. It is the media. The media continues to repeat the phrase "war on terror" as if this actually had content or meaning other than as a propaganda phrase.

Bush, the Environmentalist President

President Bush may be a closet environmentalist. His policies have generated a dramatic increase in demand for hybrid automobiles by pushing up oil prices. Brilliant! Bush policies may ultimately be the best thing that could have happened to the alternative energy sector, producing new inventions and innovations that would not have happened if we'd continued with the cheap oil strategies of the Democrats. Give the man credit.

Chinese Space Program

Star Trek (in movie and television forms) and other sci-fi movies and television shows have spread a vision of permanent American dominance over space around the world. The reality may be very different. The idea that U.S. hegemony over space exploration is permanent is short-sighted and arrogant. These traits (short-sightedness and arrogance) are self-terminating because they produce just the sort of behavior (including, but not limited to, complacency and ill considered aggression) necessary to eliminating the conditions for the existence of the arrogance. The U.S. government and, far more powerful, corporate elite seem not to know what to do with the current position of global hegemony (one superpower and a "New World Order"). In a way, we seem to be floundering in a manner reminiscent of the Romans just over the edge of their apex. The Chinese, on the other hand, remain quite humble and eager to do whatever is necessary to advance their society to the level of the exalted United States. This has sparked a widespread wave of innovation within the country and has even been a central motivating force in the development of the Chinese space program, which has ongoing plans for a moon mission within three years. In other words, you with that smug look on your face, pay attention, someone's coming up from behind.