Linking To Squirmelicious

I was introduced to Squirmelicious a few days back by my news filter, Psyche. He correctly, correctly so far at least, sensed the 'Gang of Four' (Gore, Dean, Kerry, Kennedy) support for Obama. He runs an astute, objective political blog mixed with some current affairs. As he describes it:

Squirmelicious is a daily jam on politics, culture, technology, sports, or whatever the hell is clogging my noodle.

After waiting a decent interval and reading more of his excellent posts, I decided to link away. Welcome, Mr. Squirmel! I'll try to come up with a more flattering yet evocative cephalopod image.

The Idiocy Of Hope

"Hope" is a conspicuosly deridable catch-phrase, almost as chumpy as "Change." Why would anyone who wished to be taken seriously choose to use such words?

"America is just a country, and Obama is just a politician," says ueber-blogger IOZ. Comedy writer Jon Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution even quotes him in the context of criticizing the liberals:

American liberals understand the invasion and occupation as a terribly aberrant, uniquely un-American act foisted on a frightened country and unprepared world by the avatar of awfulness, notre dauphin, Gee-Dub Bush. Their liberalism is essentially personality-driven—ironically, given their loud disdain for the Bushite personality cult. It is the liberal-progressive conviction that the necessary component for good government is good people. People, you know, like them.

Yeah. True enough. We're all idiots, all in denial of our worser selves. Yet maybe there's a basis for wanting people more, as Jon and IOZ say, like us. I'm as skeptical as they come; disillusions have piled up on me like six feet of snow. Schools, cities, churches, friends, nations, sanities, businesses, bodies. I'm wanted in four countries, and know it's all lies, and I know evil, too, up close and personal, in places IOZ or Jon Schwarz will be lucky to never get near.

The only chance at redemption is borne on faith. Faith requires hope. Hope is the lottery, the little lies you tell yourself to keep moving, striving for something better. Hope is "I believe, O Lord, please help me in mine unbelief." Hope needs goals, things to live and take that next tired step for, and it doesn't take a genius to know that a "necessary component of good government is good people." When you're freezing and dying and wondering what's the point, every step becomes a harder choice, and that's where our country is at. We are ruled by robbers, murderers, and corporate rapists who know they are poisoning us. Let us now come out and speak the unspeakable, my friends: America is dying, and may be past hope.

Great leaders study possibilities, and know how to nurture and coax out the best. Tyrants simply destroy these qualities and rule on fear. And what have we lived under for the past 7 years but tyrants so craving and ghastly they'll cheerfully kill their own people as a ruse? Smart people keep telling me the election doesn't matter, that there's no policy differences between Clinton and Obama, and McCain is on the same kabuki stage anyway, nothing will change. I say "Bullshit!" Answer me some questions on this day, and tell me leadership and goals make no difference:

1) Would having John Edwards as Attorney General instead of Abu Gonzales have made a difference in the Justice Department's actions, and to the poor bastards we've tortured and threatened across the world in the name of gilded freedom?

2) Would having Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of State make a difference when dealing with other countries, versus dealing with hissing oil wraiths who fly in on Nazguls?

3) Do you want to have lived for 36 (8+4+8+8+a possible 8) years under White Houses continually occupied with Bushes and Clintons, and do you think Hillary Clinton will throw her precious lobbyists over for you? (Of whom she says, "Lobbyists are constituents, too.")

4) Will you want to call yourself an American after Bomber McCain's elected?

5) What would the rest of the world think if they see America has elected a black man? Might that not send a message that the American people can CHANGE?

Yeah, I'm playing the race card, and it's a bad-ass ace, an ace of spades who is the most successful disciple of a populist radical (see Alinsky, Rules for Radicals). To those who dimiss symbology, I say it's paramount; why do you think Ronald Reagan chose a fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered, to give his "states' rights" speech promoting segregation in August, 1980? And if you think that was coincidence, what was he symbolizing when he later laid wreathes on the graves of SS soldiers in Bitburg? I'll tell you a secret: it wasn't "Up With People."

As Peggy Noonan said yesterday, she who wrote the speech for the thousand points of Bush-light, "Barack Obama isn't Bambi. He's bulletproof." She also said the democratic party doesn't know what it's got with him. I used to link to Peggy Noonan, even though I despise everything she stands for, because she's an oracle of the Other Side. And she's right. Most Democrats don't know just how powerful and radical Obama is. Most have even forgotten that he demonstrated on the streets of Chicago in October 2002, and stood to speak against the coming invasion of Iraq. Whereas is opponent was the first one to use the post-9/11 phrase, "if you're not with us, you're against us." Don't believe me? Use the Google.

Only one remaining candidate actually has goals for this country, goals like single-payer health care. For one possible motivation, he said, "On the day she died of cancer at the young age of 53, my mother's biggest worry was her health care bills." Is that somebody too LIKE US, IOZ? Does that strike you as manipulative, pro-lib cult-of-personality shit to you, Jon Schwarz? Whereas, let's examine the Clintons' goal for health care...having previously failed, they think the only path is to alleviate corporations of the burden of paying for benefits, and keep the insurance companies happy. But that's a goal for corporations, not for people. Does that goal matter?

In studying how to keep uppity countries under foot and thumb, intelligence agencies in the 20th century codified a principle which was intuitively obvious, yet highly profound: the most resource-efficient way to suppress opposition is to eliminate its reasons for hope. In fact the doctrine was called Killing Hope. All through a system, you must allow your opposition no chink easily exploited through non-violent means. Control the unions, break the strikes, control the ballot boxes and the vote-counts. Usually, this will frustrate the opposition into violence, and once they resort to it, you have them: you can call overkill down upon them. Get them to give up hope, to despair, and all you'll have to put up with is the bitter laughter which takes suppression's hand out for an occasional dance. It worked all over South and Central America, in the Caribbean, in Africa. Getting people to despair on voting and collective action worked.

Lord Wife and I are heading out the door to go caucus for just a politician, in an America that is just a country. We don't even have to hope. We don't have to look forward to airing all the gangrenous sins of the Bush Administration. We just have to admit that every other actor remaining to wear a mask on our annoying, dissonant, decrepit kabuki stage is a ghoul, a proven carrion-eater who will work with immortal entities called corporations to kill our hope and our children. The difference is, Barack Obama might not be.

Rules For Radicals: Saul Alinsky

Page 78: A well-integrated political schizoid:

The organizer must become schizoid, politically, in order not to slip into becoming a true believer. Before men can act an issue must become polarized. Men will act when they become convinced that their cause is 100 percent on the side of the angels and that the opposition are 100 percent on the side of the devil. He knows that there can be no action until issues are polarized to this degree. I have already discussed an example in the Declaration of Independence--the Bill of Particulars that conspicuously omitted all the advantages the colonies had gained from the British and cited only the disadvantages.

What I am saying is that the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts--one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 percent difference--and yet both parts have to live comfortably with each other. Only a well-organized person can split and stay together. But this is what the organizer must do.

Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) is known as the father of community organizing in the United States.

Information Warfare: Mid-East Has Its Intertubes Tied

It's worth wondering why the fiber optic cables to Iran, Egypt, and Dubai were cut. While making some sport of it in my first post, and the title of this one, it's also cause for serious concerns. Ones I didn't vent at first. Conspiracy theories? Uhn-uh. To think 5 cables got cut in a total of 6 places from ships dropping anchors, the only explanation offered thus far, is to buy a lifetime membership in the Ignorance Is Bliss Gated Community.

Under current US and Israeli war doctrines, knocking out the enemy's communications infrastructure is Priority One. Those undersea cables would be the first thing to go, because if you're making war, crippling them is risk-free, high-payoff. It not only seriously degrades the enemy's advanced communications, but it also gives you mastery of the public relations message to the world. Al-Jazeera can't transfer, upload, or air video over the internet in real time. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), not to mention the virulent nation itself, knows that it is first and foremost a propaganda machine. An awesomely effective one. (Remember, it's The Holocaust, and none other holocausts shalt come before it.)

Israel has to be the prime suspect in this gig, with the US a close second or an outright participant. Various other possibilities readily present themselves: countries wanting more censorship, Islamic extremists, a self-inflicted test, a psy-op...but each of these is also relatively easy to dismiss.

Naj from Iran Facts finds the censorship angle ludicrous, since manual, ad hoc measures are fully effective in the eyes of her former government. It's highly doubtful Islamic extremists possess the coordination or inclination to carry out such an operation, nor with such a light touch. A self-inflicted test on infrastructure effects carries some appeal, yet it's a stretch to imagine exactly what multinational Mid-east body would've wanted to conduct one. An intelligence psy-op study is even more appealing, but it would almost have to be a rogue operation, one whose scale makes it unlikely; the Mid-East is an active war zone where the military takes precedence.

A telecommunications professional of long acquaintance briefly mused that the cables may be tapped; while technically possible, bouncing light signals out of thousands of underwater optic strands is arduous and, due to signal loss, obvious, compared to sniffing right on the server nodes. Still, surveillance can't be ruled out, with resulting service disruption playing nicely into multiple purposes.

While very bad, I don't think the internet vasectomy signals immediate war as an attack would've (probably) already happened. It would be difficult to imagine, even granting the past and current imperial wooden-headedness in the region, giving an enemy so much time to re-adjust. This incident reads more like a message of mastery, an ape beating its chest and thumbing its nose. Strategically, it's an excellent way to signal you're escalating the threat level up another notch. You can safely sit back, gleefully gauge the reaction, and send a witty note to make your point. As mentioned in the first post below, the countries in the region are about to break down the fence and stampede off the dollar farm, and giving them electric collar shocks is just about the only means of non-violent control either primary suspect has left.

Unfortunately, the move is openly aggressive, illustrates what a wider regional war would first look like, and gives the Mid-East abundant and well-founded reason to stock up on three things: paranoia, desire for payback, and making communications infrastructure and procedures more redundant and secure.

Psyche's News Roundup

Time: Romney quits race ("Clinton and Obama: ... cannot be a part of aiding a surrender to terror"

TheMishMash.com: Religious Zealots Say the Darndest Things

Media Matters - Matthews, Russert ignored record Democratic turnout in suggesting lack of broad appeal

TPM Muckraker | administration has blundered its way into its recent pro-waterboarding PR offensive

Emptywheel - » Mukasey Refuses to Say Whether He Was Instructed Not to Enforce Subpoenas

BBC NEWS | UK | Sharia law in UK is 'unavoidable'

Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches - washingtonpost.com

Bloomberg.com: Exploding ARMs Roil Bernanke's Drive to Calm Markets

LiveNewsCameras.com - Watch Live Streaming News From the USA & World - Beta Version

The Potential for Danger in Particle Collider Experiments

Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web | Threat Level from Wired.com

Horizon: What on Earth is Wrong With Gravity?

TheStar.com | sciencetech | Turning physics on its ear - Has dropout created a perpetual motion machine?

Clintons Claim Super Tuesday Victory

Present circumstances often remind one of wonderful anecdotes from the past's trove. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's economic advisor, John Kenneth Galbraith, was sent to debrief Albert Speer after Germany's surrendur. Speer had been his "opposite number" in terms of wartime economic planning. In an aside, Speer mentioned that it was perfectly obvious to him since 1943 that Germany would lose the war. By what economic metrics, Galbraith asked, did he arrive at the conclusion? Was it grain prices? Synthetic oil costs? The lack of rubber? "No, no, not at all," Speer answered. "It was because our heroic victories kept getting closer to Berlin."

After steady and nearly complete erosion of a seemingly insurmountable early lead, the Clinton camp's claims of victory on Super Tuesday bear comparison. It was the Clintons who had pushed for a Super Tuesday in the first place, planning it as a knockout punch. Crying "hooray!" while hauling ass off the terrain of your choosing is always incongruous, often unbecoming. The same day it claimed victory, the campaign announced it wouldn't cover most upcoming states, rather planning to concentrate its resources on Ohio. Today staffers started passing rumors that the Clintons believe caucusing is undemocratic cheating, and one described an atmosphere of desperation and rage. While dipping into their personal fortune for a $5 million loan and asking staffers to go unpaid, the Clintons started openly pointing at all the Florida and Michigan delegates, saying they're way ahead if you count those.

Question...why would Dims in Florida and Michigan knowingly violate their own party's bylaws, thereby invalidating all their delegates? And why would Clinton be the only name on the ballot?

Strange Mid-East Intertube Outages

What are the odds all these undersea fiber optic cables got cut by burrowing mollusks?

Mena Report:

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

A hundred million people in the Mid-East are without fast internet:

Internet connectivity still remains slow in several Middle East countries due to the cable damage near Egypt, Iran and Dubai. An improvement is not expected soon as operators claim there are many complexities involved in fixing the problem. In addition, all voice calls, corporate data and video traffic were also affected.

The first two cables, off Alexandria in Egypt, were cut on January 23. Over the weekend a looped cable in the Gulf waters was cut in two points, off Dubai and off Iran's Bandar Abbas. The cuts have raised many conspiracy theories on their reasons.

However, the International Cable Protection Committee, an association of 86 submarine cable operators dedicated to safeguarding undersea cables, has declined to speculate on the cause of the breaches, adding investigations were underway.

In possibly related news, Saudi Arabia unpegged its interest rates, not following the September 18th drop by the Federal Reserve Bank. The Saudi currency (the riyal) has risen to a 20-year high against the dollar. A meeting of the Saudi financial advisory council is scheduled for February 17th, when it is widely expected that other oil suppliers will decide to revalue their currencies against the dollar. Maybe on the verge of connecting too many dots here, but somebody cut those cables, and I doubt it was "The Evil-Doers."

The "Tribal Belt"

My friend Still Life Living alerted me to analysts on NPR who kept referring, in the kind of catchy-code from which surges are spun, to a "tribal belt" in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Perhaps by that phrasing we are meant to believe that pesky tribes, though poorer than Africans, are the problem. (Oops. Pardon me. Hang on a sec while I spray my office with Rant-B-Gone.....ok, it seems to be helping. Aaaah. Blood flow, good. Air, check. Al-righty, then.)

It would probably be best to simply look at a few maps. This is the most volatile border in the world, territory where our past sins, unknown as they may be, are manifold; clicking on any of the maps shows closer views. The conflict locus:


The tribe probably targeted most by the "tribal belt" descriptor, which is but one of more than thirty others in 'Afghakistan:'


The Federally Administrated (Unaided, Uncontrolled) Tribal Areas:

Pakistan is unwilling to let the tribal areas inside its borders go because of a deep love for denuded, arid mountains, increasingly hostile refugees, dust, and a bracing climate. (All maps courtesy of the helpful Jesus del Norte.)

Squirmelicious Insights On Men Behind The Dim Curtain

From blogger Squirmelicious:

The Gang of Four, a quartet of influential and rabidly anti-Clinton Democrats, are waiting for the perfect time to drive a stake through the heart of Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions. The question is, with 72 hours to go before the Super Tuesday primaries, is time slipping away? The cadre—Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and John Kerry—has vowed personally and collectively to do whatever necessary to keep the nomination from Clinton, each possessing compelling reasons to revile the former First Lady.

Kennedy and Gore have long hated the centrist ground staked out by Bill and Hillary, and were disgusted with the Senator’s support for the war in Iraq. Gore further resented the Clinton’s lack of support in his own presidential campaign of 2000, feeling crucial democratic resources were diverted to Hillary’s New York Senate campaign in that same year. As for Dean, it is well known that Bill Clinton worked feverishly behind the scenes in keeping fellow democrats from supporting Dean’s candidacy. Fearing that a Kerry win in ‘04 would choke off any opportunity for Hillary to run in ‘08, Clinton provided little support for that campaign as well, incensing John Kerry, and perhaps making the difference in George Bush’s razor like win that year. Obama’s campaign gained significant momentum when Ted Kennedy, on the heels of Obama’s sweeping victory in South Carolina, joined Kerry in endorsing the candidate.

Dean and Kerry Gore have held their preference close to the vest thus far. As chairman of the DNC, Dean’s work in promoting an Obama candidacy would likely be done behind the scenes leaving it to Gore, whose endorsement could truly define this race. The buzz in political circles is that Gore is waiting to see if Obama wins Super Tuesday and will then endorse, perhaps driving the final nail in Hillary’s coffin. Our question is, why wait? If Gore endorses, it could provide the final burst of momentum to insure an Obama win Tuesday. Recent polls show that Obama has closed the gap to 4 points. Can he make up the balance in the remaining hours? With Gore’s help it would be more likely. Go for it Al.

Found this searching on my hunch on a Howard Dean Vendetta against Team Clinton, one that could play out in back rooms well before the Convention. Interesting speculation, and I'll ask him about why the Kennedys publicly left their long association with B/Hill to endorse Obama.

Exxon Mobil Makes Monster Profit

Wonder where all this money will end up going...

(AP) Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday posted the largest annual profit by a U.S. company - $40.6 billion - as the world's largest publicly traded oil company benefited from historic crude prices at year's end.

Exxon Mobil also set a U.S. record for the biggest quarterly profit, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of 2007, besting its own mark of $10.71 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005.

The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, which Exxon Mobil reported for 2006.

The eye-popping results weren't a surprise given record prices for a barrel of oil at the end of 2007. For much of the fourth quarter, they hovered around $90 a barrel, more than 50 percent higher than a year ago.

Crude prices reached an all-time trading high of $100.09 on Jan. 3 but have fallen about 10 percent since.

Super Tuesday Eve

1,668 delegates are at stake tomorrow for the Democratic presidential nomination. (No matter what happens, we won't have to put up with the creatures cutting up the cake above.) That's excluding super-delegates, who don't respond to actual votes, just to their own whims or to "cash support" given to them by the Hillary or Obama campaigns. Hillary Clinton paid off the campaign debts of (Iowa Governor) Tom Vilsack, in addition to cash donations, insisting there was no quid pro quo in garnering his early support and making him a campaign co-chair.

Divvying up campaign money is the simple part; probably only professional pols and staffers can begin to fully understand nominational mechanics, which vary widely depending on state. Michigan, for example, carried only Hillary on its ballot because it violated convention rules, rendering its substantial number of delegates technically unallowable. Same for Florida. Why, one might ask? Here's One Shoe Dropping:

Trying to ramp up the importance of Florida's Democratic presidential primary, Hillary Clinton on Friday called for her Democratic rivals to join her in helping get Florida delegates seated for the national convention.... "I hear all the time from people in Florida and Michigan that they want their voices heard in selecting the Democratic nominee," the New York senator said in a statement. "I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election, and so I will ask my Democratic convention delegates to support seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan."

In other words, the Clintons want to count Florida's 210 delegates as their own, probably Michigan's as well, even though those two primaries went so far out of bounds (violating Party rules) that no other Democratic candidates would appear on the ballots. To me, allocating those delegates to either candidate would negate their nomination's legitimacy. Michigan and Florida decided to violate their party's rules, so their delegates should be disqualified. If not, shouldn't the Party just ignore all their other rules? Howard Dean will play a powerful role in deciding what to do.

While I will take these people over the Bushes any day, I keenly remember who they are. So do others:

"Mrs. Clinton claims that her time in that role was an active one. (Bill) can hardly be expected to show less involvement when he returns to the scene of his time in power as the resident expert. He is not the kind to be a potted plant in the White House...Which raises an important matter. Do we really want a plural presidency? " (Garry Wills, a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern)

"Do Bill Clinton’s red-faced eruptions and fact-challenged rants enhance or diminish his wife as a woman and a candidate?...Absent from this debate is any sober recognition that a Hillary Clinton nomination, if it happens, will send the Democrats into the general election with a new and huge peril that may well dwarf the current wars over race, gender and who said what about Ronald Reagan." (NYT: Frank Rich)

Most of Bill’s tantrums were behind closed doors. But during Hillary’s presidential campaign, we’ve seen the real Bill boiling with rage... But don’t think that he can’t stage blowing his top when he thinks it will be strategically useful...Bill’s tantrums are causing the press to focus on him and not Hillary. That’s what he wants. No more questions about her experience, her ethics, her flip-flops. Now it's all about Bill. (Former Clinton advisor, Dick Morris)

"The Clinton camp knows what it’s doing, and its slimy maneuvers have been working. .. But the damage to Senator Obama has been real, and so have the benefits to Senator Clinton of these and other lowlife tactics." (NYT: Bob Herbert)

I remember when Bill Clinton personally ordered, without convening the Chiefs of Staff, the bombing campaign in Kosovo; it started 8 hours before the Senate was meeting to impeach him, the House having already done so. The Senate said impeachment would be inappropriate during a time of war. Yes, Bill and Hillary were subject to Republican jihads for Whitewater and Monica, but it must also be admitted that clearing up the first merely required handing over a few financial papers, and clearing up the second would've been easier without Bill's history as a sexual predator.

I can see why people would vote for Hillary, and respect the position. She's a policy wonk, and at least she's an adult. Tactical handling of issues will improve, and the Clintons are better than the Bushes. But let's not kid ourselves: these people, both of them, are dirty. They're not going to roll back the Patriot Act, Iraq, FISA, torture, or much else. They're not even very good leaders, and we're going to need great leadership. Which happens to be a quality Barack Obama has consistently exhibited over his entire adulthood.

If Hillary Clinton is elected, it would unify Republican reaction to such an extent as to literally endanger the union. For that reason alone, I cannot welcome their return to the Presidency of this country. They had their chance. But there's another, even bigger reason: I would not welcome John McCain, who would have an excellent, unthinkable chance of winning against a Hillary ticket.

Petroliana, Part Two

In Part One, I related the pleasant memories of my grandparents filling up their Mercury Comet at the Atomic station north of Mayfield, New York, with me in the backseat killing brain cells, huffing the intoxicating fumes of leaded gas. For a decade and more thereafter, the long-chain benzene smell of gasoline would fairly infuse my being with happiness, building into full consciousness. The characteristic smell is tinged at this remove with varied resins of regret--for declined villages of my youth; for the freedoms of the travels I later embarked upon; and for the creeping realization of the oft-gruesome lengths to which I and my culture have gone to procure and command the substance itself.

It was gasoline ripped apart my village. My family. Me. To my undiscerning, innocent eyes, my world was still a serene harbor of middle-class, working-class enjoyments, rather than a small failing mill town basking in the temporary wake of a Great War which had won a prosperous respite. Despite my illegitimate situation, the insecurity of which has never left me, my family loved me, and I dearly loved them even if I felt apart from not having or knowing my dad. But I had a family, it was just there, pre-packaged, and I didn't have to go and figure out how to build another like some idiotic refugee.

It was deemed perfectly safe to walk to kindergarten, a lovely anachronism compared to a city where even in the safest neighborhoods children of any description hoofing it down a sidewalk are about as common as meteorites. In my village, near inhabitants were known of long acquaintance, and by force of sustained probity, civic duty, or commonality, virtually all were well-liked. I will not sketch paradise, not at all, there were those who were marked as those to be avoided, but the structures and scales of the village were decidedly more Victorian than modern, more early industrial than late. Although delight in internal combustion engines and their shiny steel envelopes was in full bloom, walking across town was still very common among adults.

And it wasn't all delight. No. Cars killed and maimed more people than died in wars, and I was not even allowed to ride with my great aunt Lil. Nor with my neighbor, mentor, and dear, dear friend Walt Allen who first taught me, starting when I was 4 years old, how to mow lawns and women. Going with them was forbidden, their driving techniques demonstrably learned on inappropriate things, she on stagecoaches delivering mail in the Adirondacks, he on bulldozers making airfields on the Aleutian Islands.

Driving had not fully defined my local environment, and nationally, Eisenhower's Interstate Road System (intended for rapid nuclear missile deployments) was not yet complete. My path to school would usually cross between three imposing, four or five-storied wooden buildings, leather mills sited along a stream, two of them nearing a hundred years old, one for rendering, one for tanning, and a newer one for cutting animal hides. The stream had strained to aid industry since Colonial times, and its noxious sludges and vapors ran the visible gamut of a chemical rainbow, and smelled like something which could probably dissolve you. Nonetheless it was still common for five-year olds to cross a train trestle over the Cayadutta creek in Gloversville, New York, hopping from tie to tie over the pickled waters below. That was the tiny scale of our commute, a naughty word most of us would learn only much later in adulthood.

My grandparents and their contemporaries, in fact most adults I knew, were part of 'the greatest generation,' the one celebrated for winning a war advertised as Good. They were heroes enough to me, for sure, but they would've shared a good laugh at both appellations. Then, they would have paused and looked up to solemnly thank their luck. Not only for making it through ok, but for the houses they bought, the families they grew, the businesses they started, and any educations they pursued were financed with easy-going GI Bill loans--worth more than $100,000 is today, available to every veteran.

My Uncle Franz, or Frank, affectionately known to his two older brothers as "the Professor," went to college and later became Controller of a national timber and paper company. The veterans and cronies felt lucky to be Americans, not Japanese, Russians, or Germans. They were well aware that if any single thing had made the fighting easier, it was America's ability to fill tankers with abundant petroleum products and send them off, on bargain-basement terms, to dodge torpedoes and fuel the foreign allies. To serve deep purposes. To them, it was simple. They won because the enemy had run out of fuel. Dick Guggenberger was a marine from Guadalcanal until Okinawa, everybody knew without him saying so that he'd killed more Nips than seismic activity, and he said, "Shooting them took way too long. We only won because we hit the refineries and sank the tankers, just like with the Krauts."

Five-year olds can remember things like they were yesterday. America was gushing oil in the 1940s. Germany was decidedly not, and amongst other powers such as the United States, it was conniving for control over unimaginably vast Mid-east oil fields. When I once asked assembled vets why the Nazis lost after instigating such dreaded perturbations, my uncle Hank, or Heinrich, answered: "No gas."

By contrast, in early 1945 he had enough spare juice for his halftrack to once drive a considerable distance east to his aunt's house in Czechoslovakia, clear outside a war zone (I assume as part of Patton's "Creeping Offensive"), to personally deliver Red Cross packages to her. Here is Uncle Hank's full dissertation on his lengthy participation in the Battle of the Bulge, all the firefights, the unthinkable attacks into the Hurtgen Forest, winning his medals and capturing scores of German soldiers: "It was cold." Then he took a few gulps of Genessee in the firelight. US control of the region's oil was secured by secret coup in 1953 Iran (see Iran's Short, Iterative History), then by British/French humiliations at the Suez Canal, by their indebtedness to America, and by secret unilateral treaty with Saudi Arabia in 1958 (see The Return Of Containment).

It was my pleasure to be the Bringer of Cold Beer to these men and their friends, who in my mind's eye still sit around a stone chimney they had built on top of the long reddened pine needles on summer evenings, fire-flies phosphoring, mosquitoes trying to brave the smoke, men analyzing news of the world with ancient heat under an overarching canopy. They joked and and reminisced while I fed needles into the fire, listening waiting for the smoke to come and the sudden burst into flame. I got to hear them talk unguarded, so their thoughts, as honestly as they would share them with each other, were shared with me and absorbed. When I die, theirs is the council fire to which I will return.

Not an officer among them, but they all grasped the conflict's essential nature, and each voiced measures of horror, disgust, skeptical perspective...from what they said, I suspect they knew the Second World War was fought over access to energy. As was the First, somewhat less obviously. They would not have known, nor desired to know, the energy's exact extent and particulars which had been won. But they knew victory was huge, they had been used and got lucky in some ways, they knew defeat would have been more huge. Their lives had been bet, they won, and it all had to do with oil.

Modern war runs on combustion, and the extent of petroleum's importance in deciding the 'Good War' is difficult to overstate. One example: Franco, the fascist victor of the Spanish Civil War, stayed neutral in exchange for oil, making Allied victories less costly and perhaps saving my beer quaffers' lives. As they served in uniform, the US agreed to supply 80% of Spain's pre-1940 rate of consumption, so it may be surmised that from 1940-1945, nearly all petroleum used in that country came from the US (and, technically, Britain). When in 1942 Franco supplied "volunteers" to the Eastern Front, encouraged a vehemently pro-Axis press, and victualled German subs at Vigo, the spigot was shut off, and Franco was quickly forced to acquiesce. Again. He beseeched Germany for oil, but none came. Not a drop.

Had Spain not been neutralized, Gibraltar, the British Navy's bottle cap to the Mediterranean, would probably have been taken by the Germans, who itched to undertake Operation Felix. It never came off, the price, oil, too steep for Hitler. And not taking Gibraltar was the same as not taking Russia. Churchill's desperate war in North Africa to wall off the oil fields was nearly lost despite keeping that maritime keystone, and it must have been lost if a fascist dictator who owed his very rule to Hitler and Mussolini, his country a mere rope's length across the Straits of Gibraltar, had not been bribed away.

The year I remember best under the pines was probably 1968, when America's relative prosperity and oil productio happened to be near their peaks. Sometimes before fetching my grandfather's beer, a Genesee, I asked if it was ok to take a sip. He said yes, but just a little. I will bring you a six-pack when I come back, grandfather. Before he came home in 1945, the US was producing 1.7 billion barrels of oil per year, and as I popped the top in 1968, output had doubled to 3.4 billion barrels per year, all downhill from there. My grandparents would soon upgrade from their Comet to a big-ass Chevy Impala. It was the hay-day of the muscle car, auto manufacturers were engaging in horsepower wars and, in all earnestness, trying to figure out...how to consume more gasoline.

There was a good deal of uneasiness about Vietnam around the evening fireplace, even disagreement, both about the military conflict itself and the bubbling fallout, social discords fully or semi-connected. My mother, uncle, and aunt were each in their own way harbingers of dislocation, my mother by having me, my uncle by commuting to General Electric an hour distant, my aunt by running entirely away with a hippie who could've played the role of Jesus in a movie.

My beloved cousin David, who was so kind to me, was a new college-graduated engineer at Dow Chemical. He was Uncle Hank's son, and his Corvette went off the New York State Thruway with his fiancee' when he was driving his beautiful fiancee home late one night, two weeks away from their wedding. No skid marks. Both dead. My family never recovered. His mother my aunt Sophie walked to his headstone every day for the rest of her life and prayed over it in snow and rain, and my Uncle Rocky his brother asked, "Why couldn't God have taken me?" That was my first worst day, when I first contemplated nothingness, terrifying nothingness, I saw it and asked my mother, "What happens when we die?" I can still hear my grandmother's cries just as they occurred, perfectly preserved, when she answered the phone that morning in the still-dark-outside, her voice, always disposed to kindness, begging god and fate itself for another chance, another reality. Because sometimes it's best to deny this one.

Gasoline. Enough of it to burn the bodies of my heroes and my village and their children with. Still, nothing seemed directly, fundamentally amiss in greater Petroliana. How could it? "There's nothin' like the face, of a kid eating a Hershey bar," sang a jingle on TV, and my grandfather would then watch hippies on the nightly news and be moved to yell, "Get your hair cut!" I would peer out happily from underneath the coffee table and wait for a visitor to drop in by the expediently unlocked back door and say, "Hi, how ya doin'? Whatcha got cookin', Evvy?" I wanted to screw Mary Anne on Gilligan's Island first I saw her, and can't turn down such bread and circuses.

We dimly apprehended the intrusion of another dimension, an entirely additional plane on which we would have to compete, one trumping the familial interdependence and community fellowship we so took for granted. There's a lot of ways to kill a man, there's a lot of ways to die. Few of them are quick. Humans are pretty tough. But we had no idea our domain started to end in 1971, and when it happened, it wasn't on the nightly news, or if it was, it was beyond the ken of us and Walter Cronkite. We couldn't identify the source of the calamities to come, sufficiently numerous and significant to require a Part Three.

A Valentine's Day Reminder, And Where Those Flowers Come From

I'm one of "those" people who only have a vague idea of when holidays or birthdays occur, and get by through the kindness of strangers, relatives, and the collective unconscious. When is Mother's Day? Sometime in the spring. Christmas and New Year's Day, got those down, but Thanksgiving is ever-elusive, and the mnemonic for my wife's birthday is "D-Day plus 6." A friend alerted me that Valentine's Day is coming up in a couple weeks, so I started griping about how we're expected to plunk down $75 for a dozen roses despite flowers having been outsourced like everything else.

Turns out my friend knows a lot about the cut flower business, the globalized state of which is much worse than even I suspected. Basically, imported cut flowers are grown in toxins like banned ozone-depleting methyl bromide, tended by impoverished campesinos in factories, hosed down with enough pesticides to kill said campesinos, and the carbon footprint of each frantically delivered bouquet 5 lbs. Hoo boy. "Happy Valentine's Day, honey--here's your environmental devastation! Complete with human rights abuse." I asked for a good info source and he sent over a white paper:

The Environmental Impact of Cut Flower Imports

Analysis, Publication Review and Reference Guide

By William Armshaw

Beautiful cut flowers, harvested in mountainous regions of Columbia or Ecuador, refrigerated, then rushed to delivery in the US, are a miracle of our modern globalized economy. As with any other mass-produced imported agricultural good, there are significant environmental costs, both in production and in transport, that are not readily apparent to the American Consumer or legislator.

Since the Andean Trade Preference Act of 1991, cut flowers from Columbia and Ecuador are allowed to enter the US duty-free. The act has failed in its original intent, to encourage campesinos to grow crops other than Coca. However, it has supported a robust market for flowers grown for the US Market.

Summary of Findings:

ß The cut flower industry is huge, with Americans purchasing annually some $6.4 billion worth of stems and bouquets. The Society of American Florists estimates 215 million roses alone are sold at Valentine’s Day.

ß The vast majority of cut flowers are imported. 80% are imported from Columbia or Ecuador, including roughly half of all roses and more than 90% of carnations and chrysanthemums. Colombia alone has over 100,000 flower workers toiling under many square miles of greenhouses.

ß Flower importing is a “Race Against Time” – cut roses survive for only 10 days under optimal conditions: they are refrigerated throughout their journey from the Andes to the Miami distribution hub, where they are usually put onto a 2nd airplane for distribution within the US – all at the optimal temperature of 34 degrees F.

ß A bouquet of flowers has a high lifecycle carbon footprint: conservative estimates suggest that the air transportation to the United States alone creates 3.1 pounds of carbon per bouquet – and that does not include carbon released via constant refrigeration, by distribution within the US, in production, or in the manufacture of fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemical agents. The New York Times, reviewing PepsiCo's efforts to identify the carbon footprint of Tropicana brand orange juice, found that the “production and application of fertilizers” and other chemical agents accounted for a far larger share than had been predicted. It is safe to say that the lifecycle carbon footprint of each bouquet of flowers is at minimum 5 pounds of carbon.

ß As with most monoculture agricultural production, large amounts of dangerous chemicals are used in growing operations, including many agents, such as methyl bromide and methyl parathion, which the United States and European Union deem to be too dangerous or too toxic for use within the US. Florverde, the primary Colombian growers' association, claims that exporters there apply nearly 90 pounds of active ingredient per acre per year. 36% of the toxic chemicals applied by Florverde plantations in 2005 were listed as extremely or highly toxic by the World Health Organization.

Major Environmental Issues Related to Imported Cut Flowers:

Global Warming Effects
ß Carbon released from Fossil Fuels used in cultivation
ß Carbon released from Fossil Fuels used in fertilizer production
ß Carbon released from Fossil Fuels used in refrigeration
ß Carbon released from Fossil Fuels used in transport
ß Methane release from rotting flowers (Methane has a stronger climate change effect than carbon – about 24 to 1).

Environmental Effects within Host Countries
ß Contamination & environmental effects of fertilizer runoff
ß Pesticides (production and ancillary contamination)
ß Fungicides (production and ancillary contamination)
ß Refrigerant (production and ancillary contamination)
ß "Off Gases" from nitrogen-based fertilizers, greenhouse sanitizers, etc.

Effects on Health of Workers in Host Countries
Note: wages in flower work in Colombia and Ecuador are about $150/month, which is a sustainable wage for source country economies. Issues of “Economic Justice,” while significant, will not be considered here
Andean monoculture rose production requires ample and frequent does of herbicide, nematicide, and fungicide. Worker rights and worker health are not a priority: A 2007 study by the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) found that more than 66% of Ecuadorean and Colombian flower workers were plagued by work-related health problems -- including skin rashes, respiratory problems, and eye problems -- due to toxic pesticides and fungicides. ILRF, drawing on the work of Harvard School of Public Health researcher Philippe Grandjean, also found that "flower workers experience higher-than-average rates of premature births, congenital malformations and miscarriages."
Environmental Health Perspectives found that "[o]ver 50 percent of respondents who worked in fern/flower farms reported at least one of the symptoms of pesticide exposure -- headache, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, skin eruptions, fainting and so on."

Richard Wiles, vice president of research for the Environmental Working Group, says that consumers are buying roses that, toxicity levels suggest, should be handled by workers wearing gloves. Wiles suggests that pesticide residue on the petals of imported roses is fifty times that allowed on food imports.

In summary, Imported Cut Flowers are Beautiful, and the speed at which they are flown around the world is nothing short of a modern miracle. However, both the farming practices used and the sheer number of miles of refrigerated rapid transit involved mean that South American cut flowers are a luxury we can no longer afford, and certainly are not worthy of favorable trade incentives.

Add imported flowers to the list of things to NOT buy.

Psyche's News Roundup

Web exclusive: 'Obama the conservative' by Johan Wennström | Prospect Magazine January 2008 issue 142

Obama pulls ahead in rout -- baltimoresun.com

George W. Bush, Jr. - The Dark Side - Bush Jr.'s Skeleton Closet

iComment: Be Heard BBC Documentary: al-Qaeda "Organization" is a fiction with no basis in reality

Countrywide Financial Earnings - 1 in 3 Subprime Mortgages Delinquent

What Our Top Spy Doesn't Get: Security and Privacy Aren't Opposites (like liberty vs control)

Is the Tipping Point Toast? -- Duncan Watts -- Trendsetting

YouTube - Bill Hicks on Marketing

Foreign Policy: The List: The World’s Biggest Military Buildups

This Modern World, by Tom Tomorrow | Salon Comics (Dems united as never before)

AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: The End of Privacy

Think Progress » Bush: ‘Life’s pretty comfortable inside the bubble.’

Interrogator Shares Saddam's Confessions, Tells 60 Minutes Former Iraqi Dictator Didn't Expect U.S. Invasion

Wall $treet Week with Fortune| PBS | Buffett: Why I'm not buying the U.S. dollar

The great fiscal stimulus package ... of 1929 - MarketWatch

Target Tells a Blogger to Go Away - New York Times

The Autumn of the Multitaskers Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy

AlterNet: Health and Wellness: How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

Hunter-gatherers | Noble or savage? | Economist.com

The murky demimonde of Amazon's Top Reviewers. - By Garth Risk Hallberg - Slate Magazine

Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless - New York Times (Steve Jobs: "people don't read anymore")

Ashura & The Shiite Passion Plays

Naj, a friend and Iranian ex-pat who runs Iran Facts (link at right margin), has written an enlightening summary of the Ashura festival in Iran, one which bears similarities to Christian passion plays held around the world. As celebrations re-enact the martyrdom of Jesus, so Ashura commemorates the martyrdom of Hussein, inspiration of the Shi'ite faith. Naj explains Ashura's significance, in particular the basis of the schism between Shi'ite and Sunni forms of Islam, as expressed in the street plays known as ta'ziyeh (lit. "compassion, mourning"):

As a dramatic form it has its origins in the Muharram procession commemorating Hussein's martyrdom and throughout its evolution the representation of the siege and carnage at Kerbela has remained its centerpoint. Ta'ziyeh has never lost its religious implications. Because early Shi'ites viewed Hussein's death as a sacred redemptive act, the performance of the Muharram ceremonies was believed to be an aid to salvation; later they also believed that participation, both by actors and spectators, in the Ta'ziyeh dramas would gain them Hussein's intercession on the day of the Last Judgment.

People, Sunnis much included, have criticized Shi'ism as medieval, gruesome, superstitious. Again, parallels between Shi'ite and Sunni conflicts are fairly comparable to those between Protestantism, expressive folk forms of Catholicism, and the body with claims originating authority over all things Christian. In the late 1700s, the Catholic Church banned passion plays in Europe, particularly Germany, as being too bloody, boisterous, and pagan-bordering. Oberammergau soon gained a passion play monopoly through a deal in which they changed their celebration's title, toned down the edgy displays, and charged for tickets, drawing about half a million visitors once a decade ever since (and for a one-time 350th anniversary in 1984). Outside Germany, the popularity of passion plays has spread, and are practiced in South and North America. Shi'ites are by no means alone in re-enactments of suffering, or in practices seen as beneath the dignity of other groups who supposedly share the same religion.

Demographically, Shi'ites are the fastest-growing segment of Islam and already significantly outnumber Sunnis, a fact which gives the lie to the deterministic 'Clash of Civilizations' logic. (Which goes, in short: other religions are quickly out-breeding Christianity, ergo the West must attack while the chances for success are still high. Thus the Iraq grab and the Iran end game.) Naj again provides a quick history check:

In the first years of the sixteenth century, when under the Safavid dynasty, Persia, which had always been a strong cultural power, again became a political power, Shi'ite Islam was established as the state religion and was used to unify the country, especially against the aggressive Ottomans and Uzbeks who were adherents of Sunnite Islam.

All anecdotal evidence indicates that religions exhibit a strong tendency to schism over time, not to unify. Judah was but one tribe of Israel, and ten went missing somewhere. Islam is technically an off-shoot of Judaism, and recognizes Christ as an important prophet. (How about "United" Methodists? Ha!) Islam is about to schism further, and of course the Bush Doctrine is based almost entirely on the opposite assumption. Wahabist philosophers may have correctly diagnosed and exploited the West's weaknesses, but they overlooked their own glaring problems: their chances of unifying Islam are extremely low in the absence of a Western Crusaders, encouraging a personal relationship with the Koran invites the attendant dangers of differing interpretations, and Iran is a bigger threat to al-Qaeda than the US ever will be.

'Foreign policy' means getting other countries to do what you want. If a capable diplomat keeps the principle of religious disunity mind, much can be quickly done with little more than travel vouchers and a free hand to first extricate a mired foot from the Mideast, then a leg, then maybe two. Not to mention greatly improve relations with Iran, which shouldn't be further driven into Russian or Chinese embraces; Iran should be engaged and helped in their goal to generate nuclear power, unravelling their biggest knot of anxiety: depleted oil fields.

A policy of de-escalation in rhetoric and force re-deployments will work immediate wonders, eroding support for mirror-image radicals who stir the embers of conflict. Iran may have old vendettas with the US and fully share in Islamic enmity for Israel, but it hates al-Qaeda, and in the equation of Realpolitik, it can be a policy anchor, a successful, eventually friendly counterbalance for non-violent containment.

Immigration Officials Detaining And Deporting US Citizens

First, they came for the people with funny names...

Marisa Taylor, McClatchy News - Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

On Thursday, Warziniack was told he would be released. Immigration authorities were finally able to verify his citizenship.

The story of how immigration officials decided that a small-town drifter with a Southern accent was an illegal Russian immigrant illustrates how the federal government mistakenly detains and sometimes deports American citizens.

Read More...

Bush's Legacy

There you go, hard stats in one handy chart to go along with all the anecdotal doo-doo. I knew Boosh's rep was heading south when I heard my 80-some year old genuine-conservative aunt say plaintively, "I wish someone would just shoot him."

Click on chart to enlarge, or you can go to Think Progress for a clearer view.)

We've Already Tried A Retarded President...Why Not A Vegan?

The word "jeremiad" used to be employed off-handedly conversations, back when more people were subjected to the morality-building rigors of seminaries and Sunday schools. The word was coined for the prophet Jeremiah (lit. "god throws"), who was reviled by the people of Jerusalem for loudly calling them to righteousness. He explained Babylon's hold over them could be thrown off but for their iniquities, and Jeremiah would commonly walk in public wearing a wooden oxen yoke over his neck. He advised his king, Zedekiah, not to plot against Babylon, rather to focus on strengthening his own people. The advice was rejected.

Jeremiah was quite the killjoy, writing a book about how badly the Jews were screwing up, followed up by the Book of Lamentations. Finally in 591 BC, a short-changed Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem for three years. King Zedekiah was forced to watch all his sons murdered just before his eyes were put out. Jerusalem was sacked and burned, the ark of the covenant was lost, the residents carried off into captivity for 70 years. When the Jews went to Egypt, they insisted on taking Jeremiah with them, having become accustomed to his rants, and to him being right.

We have our own Jeremiah here. I didn't realize Kucinich is a vegan, until 'Because he was right' was published by The Stranger. Dennis Kucinich's jeremiad are things of beauty, really, and I'd even been thinking of sending him some money. Maybe he can bribe a news agency to let him into a debate someday, rather than getting excluded. Money is probably a bit late for this cycle, but Kucinich pretty much sealed the deal for me by calling Bush a liar on the floor of Congress today, and announcing he would file articles of impeachment on Bush next Monday. (See article at: Rep. Kucinich creates commotion in House, claims President 'lied')

The article at The Stranger is a hoot, and worth a read. A snippet:

This is a candidate who announces, on national television, that he would refuse to shoot a Hellfire missile at Osama bin Laden if given the opportunity; a guy who prattles on about the interconnectedness of humanity and his plans for creating a cabinet-level Department of Peace; a man who brags about the wonderfully low blood pressure his animal-cruelty-free diet has brought him (memo to the Kucinich campaign: Americans like their leaders carnivorous and on the verge of cardiac arrest, thank you very much—see, for example, our last two presidents: Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney).

It tells the story of a rather remarkable man, one from a region (Cleveland) that's being gutted and carried off into the modern version of captivity, yet who gives us both a lesson and a reason for hope. Read more.

Psyche's News Roundup

Rep. Kucinich creates commotion in House, claims President 'lied' (you know, "lied" as in "lied")

In Private, Bernanke Tells Horror Stories - Washington Whispers (usnews.com)

The Anonymous Liberal: Why Ignore Clinton's Obvious Deficiencies as a General Election Candidate?

Why Hillary Clinton Should Withdraw From the Race Today - 2parse/blog

Woke up it was a FISA morning - The Seminal

Feingold: "I Really Do Disagree" With Reid On FISA - Politics on The Huffington Post

NPR: U.S., Iraq Ponder Long-Term Treaty (don't need no steenking Congress)

Justice Nomination Seen as Snub to Democrats - NYT: Bradbury Wrote Pro-Torture Opinions)

The Fifth Columnist - How Bill Kristol landed that 'Times" gig

EconLog, Why Do the Poor Commit More Crime?, Bryan Caplan: Library of Economics and Liberty

BBC NEWS | Business | Rogue trader to cost SocGen $7bn

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide N.Y. Regulator Pushes Banks to Rescue Bond Insurers

Corporate Personhood

Teen changes immune system | The Daily Telegraph

Gazans knock down border, flee to Egypt - Yahoo! News

Study: False statements preceded war - Yahoo! News (935 lies)

Independent Study Finds Bush "Unequivocally" Lied U.S. into War with Iraq

George Soros On The Markets (Breathe, Markets! Breathe!!)

The financial wizard and Bush basher extraordinaire, George Soros, sent me an email:

Dear Colleague,

I thought you would be interested in my article on the market crisis that appeared in today's Financial Times.

George Soros

The worst market crisis in 60 years

By George Soros --- Published: January 23 2008
The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.

The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks' commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

Sheesh, I really have to be more careful about giving out my personal e-mail. George is such a crank, but unfortunately the old chap seems to be right about everything above, except for the part about the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy without filling long-term bond yields with helium. They're already out of room, and this is going to hurt.