Flesh and Stone

Stealing Ideas

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:07:00 -0600

Reading about Aaron Swartz’s most recent run-in with the law dredged up all kinds of feelings. I’m a long-time admirer of his work and was obviously saddened to hear of his troubles. At the same time, reading the indictment I was surprised by the seriousness of the charges and evidence against him.

I was also reminded of my own attempts at similar work, collecting and analyzing journal articles, patents, and various forms of metadata. I’ve lost count of how many hours I’ve spent sitting in basements of academic buildings, breaking federal laws in the pursuit of answers. And I was reminded of my colleagues who still spend their days painstakingly scraping data off the web–sometimes legally sometimes not–the name of academic inquiry.

None of us want to break the law. It’s simply that we don’t have a choice.

The mechanisms for sharing academic discourse are broken. They barely even function as systems for connecting interested parties within existing disciplines. Ask just about anyone who spends their time writing or consuming scholarly work and you will hear a litany of complaints about how poorly suited the academic publishing industry is to modern day collaboration.

I’ve spent most of my professional career just outside of the academy but have seen the failures of these systems first hand. I formed my opinion on the matter as a undergraduate assistant in a major neuroscience laboratory –- building publishing tools to help the lab’s director break copyright law.

His work regularly appeared in and on the cover of major journals. Yet he was in a field that was moving faster than the journals could help facilitate. He took matters into his own hands by publishing the articles on the laboratory’s site, almost always violating the licensing terms of his own work (rights now held by Elsevier or AAAS, not the author). I asked about the legality of what we were doing and was told not to worry. If the journals didn’t like him bending or breaking the law he’d publish elsewhere and it would be their loss.

As far as I know the publishers understood the bargain and never complained. Unfortunately this sort of non-aggression pact is available only to a select few. Your average untenured neuroscience professor doesn’t have the luxury of pissing off Science or Nature.

But for those of us interested in meta-analysis –- these questions about questions that people like Aaron and myself are forced to pursue from basement wiring cabinets, scraping large swaths of text from the web–the hobbled and clunky tools for downloading PDFs through research library proxy servers, one poorly OCR’ed page at a time, simply do not work.

If you want to understand the collaborative nature of a specific field or follow the trajectory of an idea across disciplines a reference librarian can’t help you. Instead, you have to become a felon.

What’s missing from the news articles about Aaron’s arrest is a realization that the methods of collection and analysis he’s used are exactly what makes companies like Google valuable to its shareholders and its users. The difference is that Google can throw the weight of its name behind its scrapers, just as my former boss used his name to set the terms with those publishing his work.

Aaron and the other “hackers and thieves” like him don’t have that option. But their work is no less important–they are collecting and organizing information in order to ask deep questions about the nature of academic discourse. Unfortunately for most, the structure of the publishing industry and the laws that surround creative works prevent these questions from being asked, at least without taking sometimes substantial risks.

It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be this way but there are at least two main issues holding back progress:

First, as a society we’ve forgotten the Jeffersonian ideal that intellectual property laws should enable and encourage the spread of ideas and creative pursuits rather than lock them away. Many have fought for a return to this vision, however, the prospects for such change seem dim. If there’s anywhere this idea should still have a fighting chance, it’s within the walls of universities.

However, it is this most basic failure, our inability to create a rational set intellectual property laws, that necessitates the creation of things like JSTOR. We shouldn’t need it in the first place. Nor should anyone curious enough to ask questions as big as Aaron’s ever need to break JSTOR or the law to find answers.

We should offer people with big questions more than a trip to jail–we should celebrate their willingness to explore our collective intellectual heritage. Universities should take the lead in building the platforms needed to support such inquiry. It is an embarrassment that JSTOR is the best the academy has to offer.

But this leads to the second and perhaps more fundamental problem: journals are only partly about communicating. They’re also about controlling academic discourse. The editorial power held by journals and those that run them (quite different from those that own them) shapes most academic careers and the very structure of disciplines. It’s almost certain that pursuing new forms of collaboration and communication will reshape these power structures–sometimes subtly, sometimes not. That’s the nature of change.

Change, however, doesn’t come easily within academic communities. It should be no surprise that universities have done far more to free the content of their courses than they have the content of their publications. The former has economic value, however, the latter holds the keys to the academy itself.

This conservatism is at least in part responsible for why, despite the new possibilities offered by the web, most scholarly work is still published as though it were 1580. It’s also responsible for allowing a handful of powerful corporations to gate access to this knowledge and make authors pay for the privilege of signing away rights to their own work.

Sir Tim Burners Lee invented the web to solve this very problem. Twenty years later it allows us to do almost everything imaginable–except get unfettered access to scholarly communication.

It is not technology that holds us back.

Aaron’s arrest should be a wake up call to universities–evidence of how fundamentally broken this core piece of their architecture remains despite decades of progress in advancing communication and collaboration.

The MIT staff who called the ~~FBI~~ police* would have been served better by calling the chancellor to ask, “How have we created a system that forces 24 year-olds to sneak around in the basement, hiding hard-drives in closets in order to ask basic and important questions about our work? Can’t we do better?”

Update: I’m not OK with scraping JSTOR or any other copyrighted data source for the purpose of re-distribution. Some, including ~~the FBI~~ federal prosecutors, have made the claim that’s what Aaron planned to with the data. Others have pointed to his past research analyzing influence in academic writing. I have no insight into his real intentions, however, I do believe the latter goal is important and likely not possible without breaking the kinds of laws discussed above.

Also, it’s true that JSTOR does offer a bulk interface for research users. That interface didn’t exist when I was doing my work. But it’s not clear it would have made any difference. There are many, many research applications, including mine, that are still not possible with approved means of accessing data. Giving researchers a straw is not a useful response to requests for open and complete access. We shouldn’t settle for less.

* For those interested in the blow by blow: since writing this post I’ve learned that no one at MIT called the FBI–in fact it’s not clear the FBI was ever involved. As I now understand it, the local police were called to investigate a break-in. Because this involved network equipment the Secret Service were called by the Cambridge police. After that the investigation took on a life of its own outside the MIT campus.

Originally published July 19, 2011, here.

Reaction to Osama bin Laden's death runs deeper than celebration videos

Thu, 05 May 2011 18:07:00 -0600

Video of Americans' first reaction to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, depict young men and women celebrating with joy at Ground Zero in New York and in front of the White House in Washington. Some of the footage looked out of context, like fans reacting to their team winning the Super Bowl instead of a sobering closure to a very bad chapter in history.

This is the image shown to the world. But it isn't the whole picture. Below are some thoughtful responses to the death of America's "Enemy Number 1" as well as American response from a psychiatrist, a Christian ethics scholar and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

In his short essay, "Celebrating Death," James Knolls, a forensic psychiatrist and editor of Psychiatric Times quotes the 6th Century Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, then asks:

Can this be something to celebrate? Should it be something to celebrate? What can this tell us about ourselves? What is the "proper" reaction?"

His May 4 article includes a photo of little girls with hand-scrawled signs celebrating the death of bin Laden. One can't help drawing a parallel between these images and those we've seen of young children in the Middle East shouting "death to America!" or little girls painting "love from Israel" on bombs that would be dropped on Lebanon.

David Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, asked in a May 2 essay that Americans reflect on their ideas on war and peace.

“Do Not Rejoice When Your Enemies Fall”

“Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble.”
—Proverbs 24:17

We feel compelled to respond today to the killing of Osama bin Laden by the United States and to the jubilant response across the nation.

A nation has a right to defend itself. From the perspective of the fundamental national security of the United States, this action is legitimately viewed as an expression of self-defense.

But as Christians, we believe that there can no celebrating, no dancing in the streets, no joy, in relation to the death of Osama bin Laden. In obedience to scripture, there can be no rejoicing when our enemies fall.

In that sense, President Obama’s sober announcement was far preferable to the happy celebrations outside the White House, in New York, and around the country, however predictable and even cathartic they may be.

NPR’s On Being program published the essay in its entirety.

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IAVW) issued a public statement on May 3 urging Americans to respond with restraint and think of all the victims of 911.

"While it is right to remember those who died on 9/11, we should also be equally mindful of all those who have died as a result of our misguided wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The number of U.S. troops killed has topped 6,000 and estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan range in the hundreds of thousands.” -- Jose Vasquez, Executive Director, IVAW

Osama Bin Laden is Dead, What Next?

"Sunday night IVAW learned with the rest of the nation that Osama Bin Laden was killed and his body captured by a team of U.S. Special Forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In light of our resolution condemning the occupation of Afghanistan adopted in 2009, we have followed this important news closely and want to share our perspective with supporters, elected officials, policymakers, the press, and the public at large.

Like many other Americans, IVAW welcomes the news of this weakening blow to Al-Qaeda and its threat to our nation and the world. Our hearts go out to the thousands of survivors and family members of victims of the 9/11 attacks as they search for closure in this event.

As service members and veterans who have experienced the Global War on Terror firsthand, we respectfully encourage the American people to consider the killing of Bin Laden with a measure of restraint. His death is only a symbolic victory. Although there is no doubt Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians, the path chosen by the Bush administration following 9/11 and continued under President Obama’s watch has cost us more than any one terrorist mastermind ever could. While it is right to remember those who died on 9/11, we should also be equally mindful of all those who have died as a result of our misguided wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The number of U.S. troops killed has topped 6,000 and estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan range in the hundreds of thousands.

The elimination of Bin Laden proves that our nation’s security issues are managed more effectively through political diplomacy and small, targeted attacks than costly mass military action. Our government has spared no expense in carrying out operations with no clear objectives or an end in sight, squandering trillions of dollars in spite of our nation’s economic crisis. Any citizen who is serious about the consequences of our foreign policy, the rule of law, or a true sense of justice needs to ask, has it been worth it? Whether you measure the tremendous costs of these wars in human lives or dollars, our position is that it has not been worth it.

The president claims that, “we can say that justice has been done.’’ But achieving real justice will not happen until the U.S. has removed all occupying forces and returned the right of self-determination to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama administration now has an opportunity to bring our troops home and scale back our military commitments overseas. Americans must reflect on the injustice of our own actions through violating international law, committing torture, suspending habeas corpus, and not holding our own leaders accountable.

Clearly our attempts to solve all our problems militarily have not worked. It is our sincere hope that President Obama will not conduct business as usual. While the president and his advisors will seek to capitalize politically on Bin Laden’s killing, it remains to be seen whether our foreign policy will change to reflect these new developments. Having removed Bin Laden from the equation, President Obama has lost a major source of rationalization for our continued occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. We reject any plans to extend our commitments elsewhere and want to see a hastening of the time line for withdrawal."

Tea Party Crashes: The Most Unpatriotic Act

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:46:00 -0700

by Susan Lindauer

I confess that since November I've been holding my breath, watching the clock for how long Tea Party newcomers could hold out against the entrenched Republican elite on Capitol Hill. Collapse was inevitable, however I admit to feeling bitterly surprised at how rapidly they have thrown in the towel.

“My disappointment is particularly acute. Rather notoriously, I am distinguished as the second non-Arab American to face indictment under the Patriot Act, after Jose Padilla.” -- Susan Lindauer

For the record, most of the Tea Party quit their principles of liberty on February 14, 2011—20 days into the new Congress—when Tea Party leaders abruptly abandoned their opposition to the Patriot Act and voted to extend intrusive domestic surveillance, wire tapping and warrantless searches of American citizens. In so doing, they exposed the fraud of their soaring campaign promises to defend the liberty of ordinary Americans, and fight government intrusions on freedom. All those wide eyed speeches that flowed with such thrilling devotions, all of it proved to be self-aggrandizing lies.

The Tea Party didn't even put up a fight. Briefly they rejected a sneak attack to renew three surveillance clauses of the Patriot Act on a suspension vote. That filled my heart with hope. One push from the Republican elite, however and they went down with a loud thud.

My disappointment is particularly acute. Rather notoriously, I am distinguished as the second non-Arab American to face indictment on the Patriot Act, after Jose Padilla.

My status was pretty close to an enemy non-combatant. One would presume that I must have joined some terrorist conspiracy? Or engaged in some brutal act of sedition, such as stock piling weapons and munitions to overthrow those crooks in Congress?

You would be wrong. I got indicted for protesting the War in Iraq. My crime was delivering a warm-hearted letter to my second cousin White House Chief of Staff, Andy Card, which correctly outlined the consequences of war. Suspiciously, I had been one of the very few assets covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations for seven years. Thus, I was personally acquainted with the truth about pre-war intelligence, which differs remarkably from the story invented by GOP leaders on Capitol Hill.

More dangerously still, my team gave advance warnings about the 9/11 attack and solicited Iraq's cooperation after 9/11. In August 2001, at the urging of my CIA handler, I phoned Attorney General John Ashcroft's private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism to ask for an "emergency broadcast alert" across all federal agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings. My warning cited the World Trade Center as the identified target. Highly credible independent sources have confirmed that in August, 2001 I described the strike on the World Trade Center as "imminent," with the potential for "mass casualties, possibly using a miniature thermonuclear device."

Thanks to the Patriot Act, Americans have zero knowledge of those truths, though the 9/11 community has zoomed close for years. Republican leaders invoked the Patriot Act to take me down 30 days after I approached the offices of Senator John McCain and Trent Lott, requesting to testify about Iraq's cooperation with the 9/11 investigation and a comprehensive peace framework that would have achieved every U.S. and British objective without firing a shot. Ironically, because of the Patriot Act, my conversations with Senator Trent Lott's staff got captured on wire taps, proving my story.

You see, contrary to rhetoric on Capitol Hill, the Patriot Act is first and foremost a weapon to bludgeon whistleblowers and political dissidents. Indeed, it has been singularly crafted for that purpose.

“The Patriot Act is first and foremost a weapon to bludgeon whistleblowers and political dissidents. Indeed, it has been singularly crafted for that purpose.” -- Susan Lindauer

The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a "white supremacist group." Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged "civil rights violations."

All of these are American activists engaged in lawful disputes of government policy. All of them got victimized by the surveillance techniques approved by Tea Party leaders, because they pursued a policy agenda that contradicted current government policies. The Tea Party swore to defend the freedom of independent thinking in Congressional campaigns. One presumes those promises are now forgotten until the next election.

I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing.

I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington --- independently and collectively verified my story--- then falsified testimony to Chief Justice Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed "classified."

I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be "cured" of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.

Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. The Patriot Act would be right at the top of that list. Nobody who has supported that wretched law should ever be allowed to brag of defending liberty again. That goes for the Tea Party. By voting to extend surveillance of American citizens, they have abandoned the principles of freedom that brought about their rise to power. They have shown their true face.

It is a face that we, the people, will remember. I, for one, have no intention of allowing them to forget.

Susan Lindauer is the author of EXTREME PREJUDICE: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

Revolutions Know No Color

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 02:03:00 -0700

By Michael Collins

The legitimate demands of the people everywhere have no color, nor do their revolutions. These are not the revolutions arising from staged events by the White House, the National Endowment for Democracy, and other meddlers. We are witnessing what Mark Levine called human nationalism. The people of Tunisia, now Egypt, are, "taking control of their politics, economy and identity away from foreign interests and local elites alike in a manner that has not been seen in more than half a century." (Image)

Somehow, we are supposed to believe that the English speaking peoples have a corner on democracy. The rest of the world is still learning. When the oppressed of a nation, particularly of the third world, stage an uprising, it is neatly packaged and color coded. That way it's easier to follow. The Western leaders and press assume an avuncular pose and pass judgment on how the various colors pass along the path to self-determination -- not too fast, not too rowdy, and certainly not too disruptive to first world markets, especially oil.

These assumptions need to be thrown overboard immediately.

When a people have had enough of mistreatment and government corruption, when they have struggled and starved long enough, when they see their children die shortly after birth and their elders pass well before their time, they've had enough. They can be white, brown, yellow or any combination of colors. They may be in an industrialized or developing nation or living in one with little development.

It is the universal right of all people to live in peace, freedom, and dignity.

This right knows no bounds of education, class, race, status, or religion.

Aspiration to the universal right has an enduring and compelling narrative throughout history.

When Philippine President [dictator] Ferdinand Marcos was seriously challenged in 1986, the people demanded and got a fair election. This did not sit well with the Marcos faction. Snipers shot at voters as they stood in line to cast their ballots. The demand for universal rights displayed by those citizens became clear when they absolutely refused to move away from the voting lines despite the shootings.

When the 2006 Mexican presidential election turned on what many believed to be election fraud, the opposition party offered a strong statement of protest and an affirmation of the rights of self-determination. Three assemblies took place in Mexico City with over a million people at each rally protesting massive fraud.

When Iranians protested the outcome of their 2009 presidential election, stick, knife, and gun wielding representatives of the ruling faction besieged them. Kidnappings and show trials continues today. followed. The movement never backed down and

When the people of Egypt saw the change of government in Tunisia, they rose up in a spontaneous protest targeting three decades of dictatorial rule that produced nothing for them. Worsening food shortages, growing unemployment, and an absence of the most fundamental rights of safe childbirth and reasonable longevity provided the spark. Their continuous protests and clear demand that the immediate removal of the self-selected president and his cabinet were finally met with violence. What else would we expect from a regime that tortures its own people? .

The response in the West was cautious at first, as though the United States and the mature democracies had special rights to broker the end of the Mubarak regime. This was less obdurate than the response to the Tunisian uprising when the State Department said, We don't take sides. With regard to Egypt, we heard the expected calls for nonviolence and tentative endorsement of the claims of the people. When it was more than apparent which way the wind was blowing, there were calls for Mubarak to hold elections, be more reasonable, etc.

The people in Egypt were and are capably articulating their demands and staging their rebellion. They want Mubarak out along with his henchmen who preside over the crony capitalist state that lavished riches on a very few at the expense of the many. They have their own notions of an orderly transition and, likely, don't care too much what the White House suggests. They have had enough. To the dictator, now murderer, Mubarak, they say, just leave and we'll do the rest. It is the same position repeated over and over, day after day.

Our leaders need to get a few things straight.

You don't broker the fundamental rights of the people. You don't act as though there are two legitimate sides of a conflict when one side commits torture, oppresses the people, and now, with the veil of faux civility lifted, shoots them down. You don't talk about an honorable legacy for such a leader without profoundly offending his victims. The willingness of that regime to cause citizens to suffer at the hands of state authorized thugs diminishes and negates any good act the leader might have done in the service of others.

There is such a thing as right and wrong. That choice occurs wherever and whenever people have simply had enough and rise up to assert their rights.

Indulging oppressive leaders simply because they are convenient for the ownership of brand democracy is wrong. In addition, oppressive leaders are highly inconvenient to those who choose to ally with them. We're finding that out every day in Egypt.

U.S. leaders and their servants in the media and academia should take a good look at the crowds in Egypt. The citizens of the United States are more than aware of the massive inequalities in opportunity and wealth. They notice when millions are forced into foreclosure by a Wall Street-big bank real estate bubble. They notice the accumulation of wealth in the midst of a financial crisis by the very people who created the crisis. They see those around them get sick and die without health care. They notice as millions lose their jobs with little opportunity on the horizon, left with a severely restricted ability to provide for their most basic needs and those of their families.

Brokering fundamental rights is outdated, here or overseas. It opposes the best instincts and values of the people of the United States.

The ruling elites throughout the world must respect the universal rights of peace, freedom, and dignity. The people have had enough.

END

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themoneyparty.org

5 reasons Mubarak can’t silence Egyptian democracy demonstrations

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 20:29:00 -0700

1. An army captain joins the protesters in Cairo on Saturday, Jan. 29:

Robert Fisk: Egypt: Death throes of a dictatorship

2. YouTube:

“We will not be silenced. Whether you’re a Christian, whether you’re a Muslim, whether you’re an atheist, you’ll demand your goddam rights, and we will have our rights, one way or the other! We will not be silenced!” – Protester on YouTube video

3. Twitter - @moftasa Mostafa Hussein

"when the internet is back in egypt, youtube will collapse from the number of videos people will upload."

4. Facebook

Women of Egypt

5. Political cartoons:

Happy New Year!

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 15:55:00 -0700

Sending our best wishes for the coming year. Thank you for stopping by Flesh & Stone to read and comment.

Glad to have you and hope to see you often in 2011!

Peace Prosperity Courage

Decline and Fall (Maybe) January 1, 2010

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 02:41:00 -0700

The Happy New Year Edition (with some good news about 2011)

Michael Collins

The best thing about 2010 is that it's over. It was a year filled with utter stupidity, mendacity, and greed beyond all bounds on the part of our rulers, also known as The Money Party. Lots of fiddling while Rome and the rest of the world burned. Knowledge is power and among the ruling elite in the United States, the power was off. Somebody forgot to pay the bill or paid with a bad check, no doubt.

A Decade of Job Stagnation In 2000, 135 million citizens were employed. In 2010 there were 139 million Americans employed. Given the 9.7% increase in population since 2000, we would expect to see at least 148 million citizens with jobs. Nobody much wants to talk about this or the true unemployment figures produced by the US Census called "U6". That measure accounts for, "Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force." Bureau of Labor Statistics

The "U6" unemployment figure is 17%, well above the official 9.8% we hear all the time. The official number accounts for 15 million citizens. But when we use U6, we add 9 million citizens forced by economic conditions to work less than they want in part time jobs and 2.5 million marginally attached to the work force - those who gave up looking and get no benefits. That gives us a real world total of 26.5 million citizens out of work or working part time against their will.

Using more refined, politically neutral measures (closer to those in the Great Depression), the over all unemployment percentage is 22.5%, a total of 34.6 million citizens without employment. Shadow Government Statistics calculates the real unemployment rate by adding in "long term discouraged workers" (those who stopped looking), a measure the government no longer uses.

If people don't have jobs they suffer more, have less advantages to offer their children, and drift quickly into poverty. They face homelessness and risk falling so far behind they'll never recover. Thanks to the dreadful members Congress who voted for the new bankruptcy bill in 2007, those unemployed will always have their medical bills to pay. Thoughtful bunch.

The Response - Crackpot Economics You'd think that the government would have the most able hands on deck for this economic storm. But we've got the same old crew, dominated by Wall Street insiders and big bankers without credibility. These are the folks creating MPD (multiple personality disorder) economics. They argue that we have to focus on the deficit and get that down (even that policy was disastrous in the Great Depression). Then they argue that we need to give away $900 billion in tax revenues so the top 1% will have enough wealth to trickle down on the rest of us. .

They can't have it both ways. Lowering the deficit while lowering income at the same time is simply absurd logic. They think nobody is paying attention. It's important to know that the people behind these policies know exactly what they're doing. They just think we're stupid, a fatal error. The key players now include Obama, the Bush Clan, Bill Clinton, and the usual suspects from Wall Street and the big banks.

They have their own media monopoly to crank out the nonsense. The Fed is doing its part with Quantitative Easing 2 which, as Numerian says, "… is experimental and unprecedented, except when it was used in Weimar Germany with disastrous results, or more recently in the hyperinflationary economy of Zimbabwe."

Other Major Failings We got health care reform but Congress forgot to do anything for the people. The elimination of "preexisting conditions" as a means to open up more coverage for adults was postponed until 2014. The self-employed are totally screwed with their rates doubling and tripling in some cases. And there was no action to curb the outrageous cost of pharmaceuticals thanks to a major cave in by the president. Medicare, for example, is barred by law from negotiating discounts from big pharma. That about sums it up. The only reform was a massive bailout for the health insurance companies.

Nothing has been done to address the rapid increase in citizens in poverty. That would require jobs. The only jobs those in power produce are for themselves and their cronies.

The Gulf of Mexico was polluted by the worst oil company by a long shot, BP. The president surrendered national sovereignty over the 200 mile off shore exclusive economic zone by allowing BP to run the cleanup. That included permission for the use of a highly toxic oil dispersant, one that they knew toxic. But it did the job required. It kept the evidence off the surface. Shame about the rest of the Gulf. They don't care. They don't have to.

Presidential Hit Squads This year saw a radical shift in power from everyone else to the White House. The president's national security advisor revealed that the White House had a hit list of US citizens abroad determined to be terrorists. Never mind the time honored process of arrest, indictment, trial, and sentencing. If some bureaucrat nominates a "bad guy," he's toast. Shame if that turns out to be one of us. There's no reason this needs to be limited to citizens overseas since it's the ultimate in lawlessness from the start. Piss off the wrong person and you're in the crosshairs.

The Good News The best news out of 2010 is that the forces in control, The Money Party, have been unable to crush the will of the people to survive and see future opportunities for improvement. All over the country families are helping each other weather the storm, parents and adult children are opening up their homes to others in need, adjusting their retirement plans, taking extra jobs, and working harder to stay afloat. Ad hoc communities of care and compassion are emerging to buck the tide of government indifference, malfeasance, and fraud.

The United States has an inverted pyramid of intelligence. The vast majority have far greater talents, knowledge, and wisdom than the ruling elite, who have failed miserably at every turn over the past year and decade, for that matter. The goal is to wrench power from the fumblers before they do totally irreparable damage.

Perhaps those in the under thirty generation are the key. They were told to work hard, go to school, and acquire skills. They were also sold on the magic of the stock market. All they've seen over the past decade is a flat job market, stock manipulations, wasteful wars, and hysteria about terror - all at the expense of rebuilding the nation's infrastructure (which would spark a real recovery) and producing work worthy of a people who want the best for their families, friends, and the country.

Happy New Year. Time to throw the bums out.

END

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Winnie the Spoof: Presidental Executive Order Renames Black Friday

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:20:00 -0700

In a stunning announcement from the White House, President Barack Obama issued an executive order banning all future references to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday.

From now on it will be known as Red Friday.

In explaining the drastic change, the president said, "In the past, Black Fridays might have put merchants in the "black" and boosted a year's lag in profits, but the pre-season shopping extraviganza puts far more American consumers in the red, therefore we deemed it proper to give the day a more appropriate name that conveys its true meaning."

Saturn accused of 'murder' and other violent acts

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:27:00 -0700

Ya gotta love press release writers, especially those of the astronomical science persuasion. I’d say they are frustrated fiction novelists, but I think their real goal is to get people interested in things astronomical and the mysteries of the universe.

Case in point: Two versions of the same story I ran across on aol.com (the long in-depth version) and the Los Angeles Daily News (the simplified, shorter version), both of which were taken from a new theory by Robin Canup, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which was published online Sunday, Dec. 12, in the journal Nature.

From both stories, (and about 400,000 others): “…those spectacular and colorful rings are the only evidence left. As the doomed moon made its death spiral, Saturn robbed its outer layer of ice, which then formed rings.” And, “One of the leading theories has been that either some of Saturn's many moons crashed into each other, or an asteroid crashed into some of them -- leaving debris that formed the rings. The trouble is Saturn's moons are half ice and half rock and the planet's seven rings are now as much as 95 percent ice and probably used to be all ice. If the rings were formed by a moon-on-moon crash or an asteroid-on-moon, there would be more rocks in the rings.”

Since their discovery, Earthlings interested in our solar neighbors have been trying to figure out how Saturn’s spectacular rings came into being, a mystery that may never be solved. But to make an actual murder mystery out of it?

The accusation that one of Saturn’s many moons deliberately and with malice of forethought crashed into another, therefore causing it to plummet to the planet’s surface leaving behind icy debris, is just going a bit too far to get us to read the story. It’s a fanciful description, but anthropomorphizing inanimate outer space objects just as they do meteorological storms to get the readers attention is really comedy of the absurd.

To describe comets as “killers” or storm as “vicious” implies that they have brains and human intent on doing destruction when they are doing no more than carrying out a natural confluence of events.

The science channels are just as bad. Ratings driven, they have to exaggerate everything: The sun is going to burn itself out in a massive explosion killing off Earth and all of its inhabitants! If you’re a newbie to the study of astronomy you may want to run for hills or start digging a backyard bunker, because it takes a while for the producers and writers of these shows to get around to the fact that our sun won’t go nova for another 4.5 billion years. Who cares? This is one case where we can all be Scarlet O’Hara and worry about it tomorrow…or the day…or next year…or the next hundred, million, billion millennia.

Not only that, but two billion years before that, our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is scheduled to come crashing into our Milky Way. Now there’s something to worry about! After all, that’s only two-and-a-half billions years down the road.

Despicable Them: Fewer Buses, Higher Fares, Subway-to-Sea Do Not Make a Transit System

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:26:00 -0700

Los Angeles -- One million trees, greenest city in America, 12-2 building permit process, they all have one thing in common: They are all empty political slogans put forward for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's political advantage without him having any intention or ability to deliver them.

You can add to that list the subway-to-the-sea and mass transit project 30/10, which are far more sinister, costly and destructive. Ballot Measure R was the mayor's greatest fraud, another half-percent sales tax increase on top of the 1 percent the public has generously supported to improve what is one of the worst big city public transit systems, if not the worst, in America.

Transit systems are supposed to move people from one point to another efficiently. That is, efficient to the degree that the price is right and buses, trains, subways and shuttles connect with each other with short wait times. The MTA (Metropolitian Transit Authority) system doesn't do that. There simply is poor inter-connection between the various lines and long wait times -- a problem that has gotten worse as bus lines and frequency have been reduced, most dramatically by the drastic 5 percent cut now being implemented to save $30 million.

Even the trains and subway lines don't connect, which is why the downtown connector is the single most valuable project that is on the drawing boards. From its conception, critics have called the rail system the subway-to-nowhere (except downtown), because it doesn't deliver people to the airport, Coliseum, Hollywood Bowl or other major venues. Its purpose was to spur downtown development, to allow developers to make tens of billions of dollars in profits from skyscraper project subsidized by the public through the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Even as light rail lines have been extended, total traffic on the MTA remains only slightly above the million passengers achieved decades ago with more than 80 percent using buses, not trains. The only time that number changed was in the mid-1980s when fares were cut in half for a year and the number of passengers doubled. If MTA officials had followed through on what they learned from that experiment, we would now have less traffic congestion and a vast network of bus lines, busways and rapid buses moving people from where they are to where they want to go and could be adding trains where the cost and lengthy time of construction justified them.

A case in point is how city and county elected officials took advantage of a small constituency's objections and broke the promise to build a subway across the San Fernando Valley. Instead, the Valley got an anagram of subway -- a busway -- in three years at a fraction of the cost of light rail or subway, and passenger use is twice what was predicted while rail lines carry fewer people than projected. If busways had been built on the Expo line and in other high-traffic areas, we would now have a system that works for people and could be in the process of upgrading segments to rail. Instead, we're taking the money saved from this round of service cuts and putting it into a rapid bus line down Wilshire Boulevard -- except in this area of the hoi polloi in Westwood -- and then we're going to replace it with a subway that will take years and never get to the sea at all.

The Valley, the South Bay and other parts of the county are getting little or nothing from Measure R and 30/10, the plan to get the federal government to front the tax revenue from the sales tax increase to speed up construction. All the projects planned will never be built before the money runs out so they will be coming back for yet another tax increase when that happens even though the half-percent is still being paid off for 20 more years. What they are building is not a public transit system. It is a boondoggle for contractors, lobbyists, construction unions and all the rest who profit from these major public works projects and it will only open the door to massive densification on the Westside and wherever else there's a train or subway stop.

The MTA's own studies show traffic congestion will only be worse when all these billions are spent and construction completed. Nothing is going to stop this train from running over us but we should all be clear: We need a transit system that works now and we'll need it even more in 10, 20, or 30 years from now.