|
|
 |
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Simple Reform Proposal from a Recovering Derivatives Trader I have to confess that I have officially crossed over to curmudgeon status. I long for the days when bankers actually cared about relationships, when transactions were used to service customers, and when the word fiduciary meant something. It seems that granularity of a relationship is now defined as a single transaction and the time horizon of both buyers and sellers is limited by the conclusion of the deal. Aside from whining about being old, I am deeply saddened by the debate or more precisely the lack of intelligent debate about how to properly reform the financial sector. The wise old men of Wall Street (Volker et al) have more or less all said that we need some significant reform to create a value added financial service segment, and that we must return to an environment that is less about risk taking and more about service. While I agree with their sentiments, I don’t actually agree with the prescription that the answer (or even part of the answer) lies in separating proprietary trading from “customer servicing”. The days when pure brokerage can be separated from proprietary financial intermediation and risk transformation are LONG gone. Further the issue is not really with taking excess risk in the banks’ prop trading desk. Instead I would suggest the fundamental causes of the crisis and the current state of the financial segment are fairly simple namely too much leverage, too much credit exposure, not enough transparency, and of course pay practices that encourage speculation on the firms, and worse, the taxpayers, balance sheets. Of course these three things are interconnected as well, but let me do my best to put forward a segmented argument Too much leverage – We all know that the prop trading books are not the proximate cause of the meltdown. Rather is is the loan book and the inventory left on the shelf from a clogged securitization pipeline. We have all seen the numbers of the dramatic increase in leverage of all banks – whether Investment or Commercial – so the issue is not a return to Glass Steagall separation. Rather is is about charging properly for capital use, mandating that off balance sheet item be put back on the balance sheet (as in the final analysis these off balance sheet items are not off balance sheet) and encouraging the use of exchange and other standardized mechanisms to reduce net exposure, and increase transparency. While we all understand leverage caused the crisis we seem not to be able to agree on a solution. Further what I find lacking in the debate is recognition that even the management of these financial institutions did not understand their real exposure (go ask Marcel Ospel of UBS, if you doubt the truth of this statement) It seems absurd to me that if the management of the financial institutions didn’t understand the real risks that any regulator has a snowball’s chance in hell of understanding (and regulating) our way out of this mess. Too little of the debate has focused on the fact that financial instrument complexity coupled with the federally mandated power of certain rating agencies masked the real financial risk form both the internal mgmt team and to investors. So we need to attack the root causes of this excess leverage and lack of mgmt understanding of the real risks, i.e too much complexity. much more at Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism blog
The lingering of an absurd imperial reflex There were chuckles and sniggers in Qatar last month when Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned that a military dictatorship was imminent in Iran. Threatening America's most intransigent adversary, Clinton seems to have been oblivious to her audience: educated Arabs in the Middle East where America's military presence has long propped up several dictators, including such stalwart allies in rendition and torture as Hosni Mubarak. Of course, by her own standards, Clinton was being remarkably nuanced and sober: during the presidential campaign in 2008 she promised to "obliterate" Iran. An over-eager cheerleader of the Bush administration's serial bellicosity, Clinton exemplifies Barack Obama's essential continuity with previous US foreign policymakers – despite the president's many emollient words to the contrary. Clinton has also "warned" China with an officiousness redolent of the 1990s when her husband, with some encouragement from Tony Blair, tried to sort out the New World Order. But the illusions of western power that proliferated in the 90s now lie shattered. No longer as introverted as before, China contemptuously dismissed Clinton's warnings. The Iranians did not fail to highlight American skulduggery in their oil-rich neighbourhood. But then Clinton is not alone among Anglo-American leaders in failing to recognise how absurdly hollow their quasi-imperial rhetoric sounds in the post-9/11 political climate. Visiting India last year David Miliband decided to hector Indian politicians on the causes of terrorism, and was roundly rebuffed. Summing up the general outrage among Indian elites, a leading English language daily editorialised that the British foreign secretary had "yet to be house-trained". The US treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, provoked howls of laughter in his Chinese audience when he assured them that China's assets tied up in US dollars were safe. As foreign secretary of a nation complicit in two recent terrorist-recruiting wars, Miliband could have been a bit more modest. Resigned to financing America's massive deficits with Chinese-held dollars, Geithner could have been a bit less strident. But no: old reflexes, born of the victories of 1945 and 1989, linger among Britain and America's political elites, which seem almost incapable of shaking off habits bred of the long Anglo-American imperium – what the American diplomat and writer George Kennan in his last years denounced as an "unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable" tendency "to see ourselves as the centre of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world". more from Pankaj Mishra in The Guardian (U.K.)
At It Again Our 'liberal' paper of record, that is... On Sunday, February 28th the New York Times published an outrageous oped by Efraim Karsh full of lies, distortions and mistakes. Karsh describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an urgent foreign policy matter for the United States. It doesn't appear to be urgent. One more American administration has prostrated itself before Israeli arrogance and expansionism. Karsh mentions some sort of "100-year war between Arabs and Jews." There is no 100 year war between Arabs and Jews. There is a 100 year colonial struggle between Zionist Jews and the Palestinian people (and briefly the Lebanese as well). He hopes that the "Islamic nation can make peace with the idea of Jewish statehood in the House of Islam." Its not about Jewish statehood in the house of Islam. Its about Zionist Jewish settlers dispossessing the Palestinians and occupying Palestinian land. And killing Palestinians. Its not a religious conflict. Its a territorial one, an anti-colonial one, a national liberation struggle, even if the discourse used these days to describe it is often religious. "Muslim states threaten Israel's existence not so much out of concern for the Palestinians, but rather as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam," he says. He is lying. Who is he talking about? Iran? Even if that was a real threat and not merely grandstanding, who else is there? the Saudis, the Turks, the Egyptians, the Jordanians and others all collaborate with Israel. Syria? Hardly a threat and eager for peace as long as it can regain the occupied Golan heights. And the Israeli police force could conquer Syria in a few hours. Hizballah? Not a state and not trying to destroy Israel but merely protect Lebanese territory. Hizballah threatens a bloody revenge if Israel attacks Lebanon, but that's it. And he is also lying when he says that Muslim states believe in some kind of holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the house of Islam. Which Muslim state? Nobody talks like this or says these things. Most Muslim states either collaborate with Israel or just don't care (like Iraq today). Karsh is a third rate academic who clearly has not visited much of the "Muslim World" about which he writes with generalizations, clichés, racism, Orientalism and a right wing pro Israeli agenda. more from Nir Rosen, a real journalist who actually knows about the Middle East
Gin Bottle Blues The music of Sam “Lightnin” Hopkins influenced many later artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Townes Van Zandt, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. more from David Dobbs' blog
Whatever Happened to "We the People"? The twin swelling heads of Empire and Oligarchy are driving our country into an ever-deepening corporate state, wholly incompatible with democracy and the rule of law. Once again the New York Times offers its readers the evidence. In its February 25, 2010 issue, two page-one stories confirm this relentless deterioration at the expense of so many innocent people. The lead story illustrates that the type of massive speculation—casino capitalism, Business Week once called it—in complex derivatives is still going strong and exploiting the weak and powerless who pay the ultimate bill. Titled “Banks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide,” the article shocks even readers hardened to tales of greed and abuse of power. Here are the opening paragraphs: “Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.” “Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American Insurance International Group /AIG/, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.” “These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company, or in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.” “It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house—you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich. more from Ralph Nader at Counterpunch
Ethan Bronner and Conflicts of Interest A recent assignment of mine covering Israel’s presumed links to the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh provoked some more thoughts about the New York Times reporter Ethan Bronner. He is the Jerusalem bureau chief who has been at the centre of a controversy since it was revealed last month that his son is serving in the Israeli army. Despite mounting pressure to replace Bronner, the NYT’s editors have so far refused to consider that he might be facing a conflict of interest or that it would be wiser to post him elsewhere. more from Jonathan Cook
One Possible Solution Chris Floyd is one of the most outspoken (some would say radical) journalists whose work I have excerpted on this site. Today he addressed in a simple, straightforward fashion, a criticism that is often made of dissidents. Dissidents and critics of the powers that be are often accused of being negative – tearing things down, undermining, never offering a positive alternative vision. Now, I happen to disagree with this. I believe that people who work in waste management – clearing away the garbage, the poisons, the crap – are just as important to the life and health of a community as, say, an architect who makes the community beautiful, or a teacher who educates the young, or doctors who heal the sick and so on. But – it so happens that I do have a positive program to offer, a viable, workable, practical approach to many of our problems. This is what my program offers: Lower taxes What's more, this program requires no social upheaval, no political turmoil, no violence – no revolution from either Left or Right. It can be accomplished entirely within the existing political and economic system. It needs no new government powers, no new bureaucracies, no new taxes. All it requires is simply this: Bring America Home. End our worldwide military empire. As I noted the other day, ending America's imperial wars and dismantling America's global military empire – and its global gulag -- would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from cuts in direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants -- and inciting revenge and resistance. This would release a flood of money for any number of new domestic initiatives, while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be better off, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced, our infrastructure could be repaired and strengthened, our environment better cleansed and cared for. The end of empire would also mean an end to the horrendous economic distortion wrought by our war-profiteering industries. Other businesses would inevitably come to the fore, economic activity would be spread more evenly across more sectors. In short, people could keep more of their own money while government spending could be directed toward improving the quality of life of all the nation's citizens. more from Chris' Empire Burlesque
vintage Japanese matchbox art, and much more from Agence eureka
Barack Obama and the ideology of power Barack Obama is an eminently reasonable man. Not an ideologue of the left or right -- you know, one of those people with actual core beliefs and convictions -- he's a pragmatist interested only in what works. Or so that's what he's sought to convey in every major speech and policy decision: President Obama, Mr. Centrist -- his only ideology is his commitment to being non-ideological -- carefully crafting official policy with the help of a panel of wise elders. Consider his speech last week announcing more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees for a new nuclear plant in Georgia, a move that on the face of it seems to be continuation of the bipartisan corporatist ideology that has dominated Washington for decades, if not since the founding of the republic, but which the president carefully lectured the class actually reflects the fact he has yet again transcended all political labels and beliefs: "Now, there will be those that welcome this announcement, those who think it's been long overdue. But there are also going to be those who strongly disagree with this announcement. The same has been true in other areas of our energy debate, from offshore drilling to putting a price on carbon pollution. But what I want to emphasize is this: Even when we have differences, we cannot allow those differences to prevent us from making progress. On an issue that affects our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we can’t keep on being mired in the same old stale debates between the left and the right, between environmentalists and entrepreneurs." For people that praise this man's intellect: how not only tired is this rhetoric, but superficial and frankly incoherent is it -- much like his Nobel (War Is) Peace Prize speech? Loans for new reactors equals progress, according to Obama, and differences -- such as whether using tax dollars to help build expensive centralized power plants on behalf of private corporations is really the best use of limited resources -- mustn't block progress, children. I can't help but wonder, though, if the reason some of the debates have become "stale" is because they might have never been resolved, so the arguments become familiar. Like, just what does one do about all the radioactive waste nuclear power plants produce? Well, Obama has an answer, of sorts, for that: As the CEOs standing behind me will tell you, nuclear power generates waste, and we need to accelerate our efforts to find ways of storing this waste safely and disposing of it. That's why we've asked a bipartisan group of leaders and nuclear experts to examine this challenge. And these plants also have to be held to the highest and strictest safety standards to answer the legitimate concerns of Americans who live near and far from these facilities. That's going to be an imperative. The technocratic liberal voice inside my head wonders, why no blue-ribbon commission? And are Lee Hamilton and Brent Snowcroft available? Also, notice the use of "we" above, referring to Obama and the energy company CEOs standing behind him: these businessmen are crafting policies designed to save their industry billions of dollars by externalizing problem of nuclear waste, which probably seems reasonable enough to most in DC but demonstrates the extent to which state policy is crafted with an eye not toward restraining and regulating corporate America, but aiding and abetting it, usually under the guise of restraint of regulation. more from Charles Davis
Freedom of Speech Wanes in Israel NAZARETH // The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say. more from Jonathan Cook
Ian Welsh on America's Future 1) employment is not going to recover to pre-great recession levels for at least a generation, maybe more, in terms of % of people employed. The late Clinton economy is the best you or I will see in our working lives. 2) Politics will continue to be dominated by monied interests and that dominance will increase, rather than decrease. They will use their power to fight over the shrinking pie, rather than to increase it, and will make any real systemic restructuring of the economy essentially impossible. 3) a right wing “populist” will get in after Obama. Since the only sort of stimulus they can do is war stimulus, they will pick a war with someone. Who, I’m not sure. In economic terms they will have all the wrong solutions to various real problems. 4) Under both Democrats and Republicans the deterioration of civil liberties will continue. 5) Median standards of living will take at least a 20% drop within 10 years or so. Maybe more. Not sure exactly when, but if anything, the % may be an underestimate. 6) Resource nationalism will continue to rise as will 1/1 deals between countries. China has already restricted rare earth sales, for example. Countries will start insisting on doing the value add in their own countries rather than shipping raw materials overseas, if they have the ability to do this. 7) As state and local governments loose their ability to govern (a process which will proceed in cycles), there will be cyclical of cuts in basic services, including police, road repair, schooling and so on. Get thee to a very affluent neighbourhood, if you can. I'm afraid that I basically agree... read on at Ian's blog
The The debate about the US’s penchant for murdering people in foreign countries has become tiresome. At this point, with no meaningful declaration’s of war, a “war” against a tactic, the assumption the US can kill anyone anywhere, who cares? The US is just the biggest bully on the block, declaring “we can violate international law and sovereignty, and kill tons of civilians during our assassination attempts, because we’re too strong for you to do anything about it.” Oh, and so many “leaders” of “al-Qaeda” have been killed over the years that I always put quotation marks around both words in my head. America is very good at assassinating people. So’s Israel. I notice that neither of them are succesful at solving the actual problem they’re supposedly trying to address. Maybe the US should stop copying tactics and strategies that don’t work.
We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves. Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
Chris Hedges: Democracy in America is a Useful Fiction
some related notes from James Fallows of The Atlantic
Sovereign Default and Self Delusions When psychologists evaluate human behavior, one of the most prevalent observations regarding any activity is the all too often flawed basis of perceived versus realistic outcomes that dictates our every action. As imperfect creatures, we tend to construct theories that conform with our worldview, which are subsequently reinforced by our confidence (or lack thereof) in the future. This is true in any discipline: finance, politics, gambling, mating, etc. There is hardly a better example of this than the very basis of modern economic theory where assumptions about the validity of fiat currencies determine the actions of central banks, which in turn spill over into every aspect of modern society. Yet what if the very basis of core assumptions is wrong? What if every activity exhibited by humans in the post gold-standard world has a flawed assumption at its core? Austrian economists have, of course, claimed this for ages, usually seeing their efforts conclude with a dead-end as the attempt to change the status quo hits the brick wall of quadrillions of (arguably worthless) pieces of paper which dictate the status quo. However, with the recent turn for the worse, courtesy of sovereign bail outs (as confused as they may be) could the day of reckoning be fast approaching? With each passing the day an affirmative answer seems closer at hand. Today SocGen's Dylan Grice shares his perspectives on popular delusions, and why these may soon be coming to an abrupt end. Dylan begins: Behavioural psychology applies to central bankers, regulators and politicians as much as it does to investors. In promising to ‘fiscally retrench tomorrow’, finance ministers are exhibiting the behavioural phenomenon of overconfidence in their future self-control. The bitter fiscal medicine required to stabilise debt levels won’t become more palatable today relative to tomorrow until the bond market makes it so. It can only do this through higher yields. Thus, Ireland and perhaps now Greece lead the way. For the Japanese it’s too late. Why should behavioural psychology be seen as something applying only to investors? "Behavioural" finance is a well defined sub-discipline in its own right. But where is behavioural politics, behavioural central banking, or "behavioural" regulation? Remember the Fed policy statements around the end of the 1990s? The ones that kept referring to the "technology-enhanced" rate of GDP growth? Wasn't this herding around a bad idea the very same herding then fuelling the NASDAQ bubble? Nowhere is self delusion more prevalent that in the workings of the Federal Reserve duo of Greenspan and Bernanke. The issue is that any weakness, or any affirmation of faulty policy by the head money printer, will immediately be seen as weakness that could destabilize the reserve currency format. For a monetary system based on flawed assumptions that would be the beginning of the end. As the housing bubble inflated, Bernanke in a quite staggering display of logical sloppiness, concluded that the risk of a housing collapse in the future was small because there had never been one in the past. Weren't they then guilty of "framing" their analysis in a way guaranteed to preclude an uncomfortable conclusion? If you don't expect to see something, you're less likely to see it. Similarly cringe worthy logic was used when sub-prime rolled over, and Bernanke concluded that there was no risk of contagion to the rest of the economy because... er... there had been no contagion to the rest of the economy yet... wasn't this textbook "recency bias" whereby the importance of recent events is over-weighted? It probably was, and it probably demonstrates that central bankers are as prone to be as systematically silly as the rest of us. Indeed, just last year a study by yet more of Bernanke's "best and brightest" concluded that “monetary policy was not a primary factor in the housing bubble”. I don't want to pretend I'm any kind of behavioural expert, but isn't this the well documented "attribution bias" by which people attribute positive outcomes to themselves, but negative ones to others? So with nobody willing to take blame for the massive errors of the past 3 decades, and what's worse, nobody attempting to place the blame, we happily plough along as if nothing has changed. much more from Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com
The Last Station: Surging Into the Savage Past in Afghanistan The current Nobel Peace laureate is continuing his noble and inspiring work of war this week in the latest PR blitz in Afghanistan: "Operation Moshtarak," the much-ballyhooed, extravagantly telegraphed "attack" on the city of Marja. Is it even worth discussing this monstrous sham? The perpetrators of the attack know full well that there will be no "battle." Even the American commanders cannot be so sealed in their arrogant ignorance that they do not know their insurgent opponents will do what every guerrilla army does when facing concentrations of conventional military force: disperse into the countryside, and into the urban populace, biding their time until the occupiers draw down their forces -- and in the meantime launching small ambushes with sniper fire and roadside bombs aimed at the sitting-duck cannon fodder placed in harm's way by their publicity-driven commanders. And yet, the Western media has fully bought into the hackneyed, transparently false narrative of "the largest military operation of its kind since the American-backed war began eight years ago," with a plucky band of Marines and their faithful Afghan allies facing down "hundreds" of hardened fighters in the "largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan." The embedded media tracked the countdown to the attack as if they were hunkered down in the landing craft on their way to Omaha Beach. Except, of course, when one is genuinely planning an actual major attack on a strong, entrenched enemy -- as at Omaha Beach -- one does not normally advertise it around the clock for weeks on end beforehand. If, however, one is attempting to galvanize public support for a long, grinding, bloody war of domination and occupation that has no discernible purpose (none that can be stated in public, anyway), why then, a nice set-piece "battle" which will end in a guaranteed, low-cost "victory" is just the ticket. It will demonstrate that the "new and improved" strategy of your "new and improved" president is "working," and that we are "winning" -- so we can't quit now! This is of course the same message conveyed many years -- and many thousands of lives -- ago by the fall of Kabul, the "conquest" of Kandahar, and other great triumphs that "cleaned out" the various "largest Taliban sanctuar[ies] inside Afghanistan." But as any ad man can tell you, a commercial brand needs to be refreshed periodically in order to keep pulling in the profits. And the Afghan War brand has been a veritable bonanza, a cornucopia of contracts, corruption, profiteering and political pull for all of the interested parties involved: the various militaries and security apparats (and their contractors), the political elites, the many insurgent factions (loosely and falsely given the single rubric "Taliban"), the warlords, the druglords, organized crime, violent religious extremists -- in short, all those who traffic in hate, death, conflict and fear. Or as "retired American military officer working in security in Afghanistan" put it to Nir Rosen in Mother Jones: "Every time our boys face them, we win," he told me grimly. "We're winning every day. Are we going to keep winning for 20 years?" Read the rest of Chris Floyd's piece at his Empire Burlesque
Simplicity is complexity resolved. – Brancusi
Back to the Future Lamborghini 350 GTV, introduced in 1963
more at cartype.com
No The most honest rejection letter I ever received for a piece of writing was from Oregon Coast Magazine, to which I had sent a piece that was half bucolic travelogue and half blistering attack on the tendencies of hamlets along the coast to seek the ugliest and most lurid neon signage for their bumper-car emporia, myrtlewood lawn-ornament shops, used-car lots, auto-wrecking concerns, terra-cotta nightmares, and sad moist flyblown restaurants. “Thanks for your submission,” came the handwritten reply from the managing editor. “But if we published it we would be sued by half our advertisers.” This was a straightforward remark and I admire it, partly for its honesty, a rare shout in a world of whispers, and partly because I have, in thirty years as a writer and editor, become a close student of the rejection note. The shape, the color, the prose, the tone, the subtext, the speed or lack thereof with which it arrives, even the typeface or scrawl used to stomp gently on the writer’s heart—of these things I sing. • • One of the very best: a rejection note sent by the writer Stefan Merken to an editor who had rejected one of his short stories. “Please forgive me for not accepting your rejection letter,” wrote Merken. “At this time I cannot accept a rejection of my short story. I accept more than 99 percent of the rejections I receive. Many I don’t agree with, but I realize that accepting a piece of fiction for publication is a very subjective judgment call. My acceptance of your rejection letter is also a subjective process and therefore I am returning your letter to you. I did read your letter. I read every letter I receive. Your letter was well-written, but due to time constraints from my own writing schedule, I am unable to make editorial comments. I do make mistakes. Don’t you, as an editor, be disheartened by this role reversal. The road of publishing is long and tedious. You need successful publications and I need for successful publications to print my stories. I will expect to see my story in your next publication. Good luck in the future.” more from Brian Doyle
The U.S. Endangers the World Further Osama Bin Laden's favourite son, Omar, recently abandoned his father's cave in favor of spending his time dancing and drooling in the nightclubs of Damascus. The tang of freedom almost always trumps Islamist fanaticism in the end: three million people abandoned the Puritan hell of Taliban Afghanistan for freer countries, while only a few thousand faith-addled fanatics ever traveled the other way. Osama's vision can't even inspire his own kids. But Omar Bin Laden says his father is banking on one thing to shore up his flailing, failing cause -- and we are giving it to him. The day George W. Bush was elected, Omar says, "my father was so happy. This is the kind of president he needs -- one who will attack and spend money and break [his own] country." Osama wanted the US and Europe to make his story about the world ring true in every mosque and every mountain-top and every souq. He said our countries were bent on looting Muslim countries of their resources, and any talk of civil liberties or democracy was a hypocritical facade. The jihadis I have interviewed -- from London to Gaza to Syria -- said their ranks swelled with each new whiff of Bushism as more and more were persuaded. It was like trying to extinguish fire with a blowtorch. The revelations this week about how the CIA and British authorities handed over a suspected jihadi to torturers in Pakistan may sound at first glance like a hangover from the Bush years. Barack Obama was elected, in part, to drag us out of this trap -- but in practice he is dragging us further in. He is escalating the war in Afghanistan, and has taken the war to another Muslim country. The CIA and hired mercenaries are now operating on Obama's orders inside Pakistan, where they are sending unmanned drones to drop bombs and sending secret agents to snatch suspects. The casualties are overwhelmingly civilians. We may not have noticed, but the Muslim world has: check out al-Jazeera any night. more from Johann Hari in The Independent (U.K.)
Don't Always Believe Your Eyes
See those green and blue spirals? Well, they are exactly the same color! Find out how that is possible in Discover Magazine
Henry Kissinger, Master of Treachery It is amazing how Henry Kissinger has been able to retain his aura of invincible genius in international relations, continuing to counsel presidents, foreign governments and major global businesses, while occasionally writing lofty Op Ed pieces advising the U.S. on what it should or should not be doing next. This mind you, despite Kissinger’s own history of monumental cynicism and duplicity when he was guiding foreign policy for President’s Nixon and Ford. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the ability of mainstream American media to forgive and forget. The latest example is an Op Ed piece Kissinger just wrote for the New York Times warning American leaders that they are no longer giving Iraq the attention it deserves. The fact is, however, when Kissinger was in charge of U.S. policy for Iraq, the results for its people, particularly the Kurds, were disastrous. I wrote about it in my book "Web of Deceit-the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Over the decades, the Kurds quixotic struggle for some form of independence doomed them to a seemingly endless cycle of rebellion followed by incredibly vicious repression. Those uprisings were usually encouraged by enemies of Iraq’s rulers who made use of the Kurds to destabilize the regime in Baghdad. It was a ruthless, deceitful process, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Kurds being slaughtered and displaced over the years. And it was an ideal playing field for Kissinger. For years, the Shah of Iran had been secretly supporting the Iraqi Kurds to put pressure on Baghdad. So were the Israelis, who hoped to distract Iraq’s increasingly virulent leader from joining an Arab attack on the Jewish state. In 1972, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, motivated by fear that Iraq was becoming too cozy with the Soviet Union, agreed to a request from the Shah to help back the Kurds. For the sake of deniability, the U.S. supplied the Kurds with Soviet arms seized in Vietnam, while Israel provided Soviet weapons that it had captured from the Arabs. According to the Washington Post’s Jon Randal, the clandestine operation was kept secret even from the U.S. State Department, which had argued against any such support. The Kurd’s news friends, however, did not want their protégées to win their struggle. An independent Kurdish state would be much too disruptive for the region, they felt. Their support was carefully doled out—enough to keep the revolt going, but not enough to take it to victory. The Kurdish leader, Mustafa Barzani, was hard-headed enough to understand his people were being used by Iran, but not worldly enough to comprehend that his American backers could be equally duplicitous. “We do not trust the Shah,” Barzani told reporter Randal in 1973. “I trust America. America is too great a power to betray a small people like the Kurds.” It was to be a fatal error of judgment. read the rest of Barry Lando's piece, especially for the quote at the end
Heading to a Gunfight? Don't Draw First In Western films, the gunslinger that draws first always gets shot. This seems like a standard Hollywood trope but it diverted the attention of no less a scientist that Niels Bohr, one of history's greatest physicists. Taking time off from solving the structure of the atom, Bohr suggested that it takes more time to initiate a movement than to react to the same movement. Perversely, the second gunslinger wins because they're responding to their opponent's draw. Now, Andrew Welchman from the University of Birmingham has found that there's something to Bohr's explanation. People do indeed have a "reactive advantage", where they execute a movement about 10% more quickly if they're reacting to an opponent. Of course, ethics committees might frown on scientists duelling with the pistols in the name of discovery, even if the people in question were graduate students. So Welchman designed a laboratory gunfight, played out using buttons rather than guns. Two opponents faced each other and had to press a series of three buttons as quickly as possible. To begin with, they held a central "home key" with their trigger fingers and they had to wait for a short spell before before starting the round. The point where they were allowed to begin varied from trial to trial and the players weren't told how long it would be. There was no starting pistol or countdown. Either player could start the race but if they went too soon, an alarm would sound to signal a false-start. These button-mashing duels revealed that, on average, the players completed their sequence 21 milliseconds faster if they reacted than if they initiated. That's an improvement of around 9%, and most of this advantage came at the very beginning, when they pressed the first button. It's an interesting result and like all good scientists, Welchman systematically considered and ruled out several possible explanations for it. Ed Yong explains further
Liquid Glass? Apparently So... Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products. Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption. The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass. more from physorg.com
Kidnapped by the State What do you do if a young man who was a student in your class is thrown in prison on a terrorism charge? Jeanne Theoharis teaches Political Science at Brooklyn College. In June 2006, when British authorities detained 29-year-old Syed Fahad Hashmi at Heathrow Airport, she remembered the youth from her class several years ago. Back in 2002, in the days following the 11 September attacks, Hashmi had been a student in Professor Theoharis’s class on race. He was articulate and very critical of the ways in which the civil rights of US citizens, especially Muslims, had been curtailed by the Bush Administration. When Theoharis heard that Hashmi had been arrested by the British police because there was a warrant out for him in the US, she was struck by the irony of it all. A part of her former student’s thesis had been about the government’s surveillance and harassment of four or five Muslim groups in the US. Now, he was himself behind bars on suspicion of having aided and abetted terrorism. Less than a year later, when Hashmi was extradited to the US, the FBI revealed that the detainee had supplied ‘military gear’ to people who had delivered these materials to Al-Qaida members in Pakistan. Then, Hashmi’s lawyer found out that the items being labelled as ‘military gear’ were socks and rainproof ponchos. The rest of the details of the indictment remain shrouded in mystery. The FBI has revealed nothing more. more from Amitava Kumar at openthemagazine.com
Kasparov on the Influence of Computers on Chess There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it's no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played. The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers. more from Kasparov in the NYT Review of Books
want more? you're in luck! • archives
|
|
books
daily reads
film
favorite posts pinter on politicians' language
music
art
archives
|
| ©2005 Tony. All rights reserved. | Website
designed by JSVisuals.com |
