Friday, May 28, 2010

Will this be the next courtroom exhibit?

He bears a passing resemblance to the Grim Reaper, the dead are his business and the media even calls him "Doctor Death." His Body Worlds exhibition of human bodies and animals -- preserved and displayed in often bizarre poses in a method he invented and calls plastination -- has been seen by over 30 million people around the world.

But this week, Gunther von Hagens, 65, will be attracting attention at home in Germany, where he is set on Friday to reopen a plastination facility and exhibition in the town of Guben in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. More controversially, von Hagens' Plastinarium will also be selling some of Dr. Death's work in what German tabloids have dubbed a "supermarket for bodyparts" and a "cabinet of horrors."

Euler’s Identity: Mathematical crop circle

It is perhaps little known that the beautiful county of Wiltshire, famed for Stonehenge and the white horses carved into its hills, is the most active area for crop circles in the world, with nearly 70 appearing in its fields in 2009.

It is unsurprising then, that the appearance of a phenomenally complex 300ft design carved into an expanse of rape seed on a Wiltshire hillside has caused excitement. But it's not just the eye-pleasing shape which has drawn attention to it. The intersected concentric pattern has been decoded by experts as a “tantalising approximation” of a mathematical formula called Euler’s Identity (e ^ ( i * Pi ) + 1 = 0), widely thought be the most beautiful and profound mathematical equation in the world.
The Independent/UK

Little hope left when Catholic banks go bust

This past weekend, the Bank of Spain took over the operations of CajaSur, a savings bank run by the Catholic Church in Cordoba, in southern Spain. The bank, which lost €596 million in 2009, was undone by the collapse in construction and property values. It had some €2.2 billion in outstanding bad loans, according to reports.

The bank is relatively small, but investors fear that its condition is symptomatic of broader problems in the Spanish banking system. Four other savings banks reported a merger, under pressure from the government in Madrid, which has given the “cajas” until the end of June to apply for help from a rescue fund.

In a note May 24, Santiago Lopez, an analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG, commented that the seizure of CajaSur “may raise concerns for the financial system, for the sovereign risk profile and for the economy in general.”

The Wall Street Journal cited the remarks of Hans Redeker, chief currencies analyst at French bank BNP Paribas: “This is not about Greece any more… It’s about the European currency union and how it's kept together.”

The New York Times quoted the global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman & Company, Marc Chandler, to the same effect. Chandler wrote in a note, “If there was a doubt about it, there isn’t any more… The European debt crisis is not simply a Greek phenomenon.” Ben Potter at IG Markets referred to concerns “that European banks—notably those in Spain—may be staring into something of an abyss.”
WSWS

Alaotra grebe gone: 6th Great Extinction underway

One more step in what scientists are increasingly referring to as the Sixth Great Extinction is announced today: the disappearance of yet another bird species. The vanishing of the Alaotra grebe of Madagascar is formally notified this morning by the global conservation partnership BirdLife International – and it marks a small but ominous step in the biological process which seems likely to dominate the 21st century.

Researchers now recognise five earlier cataclysmic events in the earth's prehistory when most species on the planet died out, the last being the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event of 65 million years ago, which may have been caused by a giant meteorite striking the earth, and which saw the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

But the rate at which species are now disappearing makes many biologists consider we are living in a sixth major extinction comparable in scale to the others – except that this one has been caused by humans. In essence, we are driving plants and animals over the abyss faster than new species can evolve.
The Independent/UK

US secretly readies for new wars in Near East

Issued in September 2009, the order calls for the creation of a network of covert task forces and intelligence-gathering units which will “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” any target within any country designated by the US military. These forces will carry out clandestine operations which “cannot or will not be accomplished” through other military means.

Once inside the targeted country, US forces will also “prepare the environment” for full-scale military assaults. In addition to military personnel, the Times reports, Petraeus’s order enlists “foreign businesspeople, academics or others” in “persistent situational awareness” efforts—in other words, in spying.
WSWS

Also

Book shoplifters well read, have good taste

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Twain, gold and California

Twain’s long banned tell-all bio out in November

Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends.

One thing's for sure: by delaying publication, the author, who was fond of his celebrity status, has ensured that he'll be gossiped about during the 21st century. A section of the memoir will detail his little-known but scandalous relationship with Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who became his secretary after the death of his wife Olivia in 1904. Twain was so close to Lyon that she once bought him an electric vibrating sex toy. But she was abruptly sacked in 1909, after the author claimed she had "hypnotised" him into giving her power of attorney over his estate.
[--]
Their ill-fated relationship will be recounted in full in a 400-page addendum, which Twain wrote during the last year of his life. It provides a remarkable account of how the dying novelist's final months were overshadowed by personal upheavals.
The Independent/UK

How much of this gold-mongering is hype?
And who cares, when you can cash in on it?

For more than a century, gold has held a special allure for the conservative fringe. Amid economic downswings and social upheaval, the precious metal has come to be seen as a moral and political statement as much as an investment. Ever since the late 19th century, when the gold standard became the center of a ferocious debate about the country's financial future, gold has been mythologized as bulwark against inflation, federal meddling, and the corrosive effects of progressivism. In the late 1970s, South African Krugerrands became a refuge from soaring interest rates and oil prices. In the '90s, militia groups fearful of big banks and the Federal Reserve hoarded gold.

And now, with the economy limping along and a black Democrat in the White House, gold mania has gone mainstream. Gold prices hit a recent high last December and remained strong as the European debt crisis unfolded this spring. John Paulson, the hedge-fund giant who made billions bundling and betting against Goldman Sachs subprime mortgage securities, has invested heavily in gold, even starting a new fund devoted solely to it. A recent New York Times poll found that 1 in 20 self-identified Tea Party members had bought gold in the past year. Cashing in on all this is a raft of entrepreneurs who have tapped into financial insecurity and fever dreams of approaching tyranny. Nearly every major conservative radio host, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, has advertised gold. But none has done more to cheer on the new gold rush than Glenn Beck.
Mother Jones

Worst deal since Great Depression only gets worse

The governors of California, New York and dozens of other US states have submitted drastic budget-cutting proposals for fiscal year 2011, which begins on July 1, 2010. Reeling from the economic recession, high rates of unemployment and the sharpest decline in tax revenue on record, states are eliminating essential services that will have a devastating effect on children, senior citizens and working people.
[--]
In the US, the Obama administration has shifted much of the burden of the economic crisis onto the states and municipalities. While handing over trillions to fund the bailout of the Wall Street banks and finance two wars, the White House has starved state and local governments, and what little money was made available in the federal stimulus is drying up this year.

In fiscal years 2010-2011, the states have faced combined shortfalls of $375 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Over the last two years, at least 45 states have slashed health, education and low-income assistance programs; 30 raised regressive sales taxes and fees; and 42 cut their payrolls through layoffs, unpaid leaves (furloughs) and hiring freezes. Since August 2008, state and local governments eliminated 192,000 jobs.

The new round of budget cuts will be even deeper, even as the need for government assistance reaches the highest level since the Great Depression.
Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger outlined plans to cut $12.4 billion in the country’s most populous state. Included in the draconian cuts is the elimination of the state’s CalWORKS welfare program that serves 1.4 million people, two-thirds of whom are children. Billions more will be cut from payments to poor residents caring for disabled family members, food stamps, medical care, mental health, education and state workers’ wages and benefits. Access to health care for the unemployed and poor will be restricted by stiffening eligibility requirements for the state’s Medi-Cal program, raising co-pays, limiting doctor visits to ten per year and reducing funding for hearing aids and other medical equipment.
WSWS

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Sick rich exploit well poor

A Beijing court is prosecuting a man for illegal organ trafficking, local media reported, putting the spotlight on a grisly black market in body parts in a country where demand for transplants far outstrips supply.

Half a liver can be bought for 45,000 yuan ($6,590), while an entire transplant including operation and recovery costs, can be completed for 150,000 yuan [or about $19,800], according to a defendant from another organ trafficking trial prosecuted at the same court last month.

[Editor's note: Or as the old saying goes, "Half a liver is better than nothing".]

China in 2007 banned organ transplants from living donors, except spouses, blood relatives and step or adopted family members, but only launched a national system to coordinate donation after death last year.

Its efficiency has yet to be proved. Nearly 1.5 million people in China need organ transplants each year, but only 10,000 can get one, according to the Health Ministry.

The defendants in the two Bejiing trials face up to five years for their role as go-betweens between donors and buyers, which could "damage society and moral values", the Procuratorial Daily reported. They are still waiting for their verdict.

But at least two of them say they are being unfairly hounded for playing a vital role in helping both the sick and poor.
The Independent/UK

Breakup mechanics: love takes work

The results of the mathematical analysis showed when both members of union are similar emotionally they have an “optimal effort policy,” which results in a happy, long-lasting relationship. The policy can break down if there is a tendency to reduce the effort because maintaining it causes discomfort, or because a lower degree of effort results in instability.

Paradoxically, according to the second law model, a union everyone hopes will last forever is likely break up, a feature Rey calls the “failure paradox”.
According to the model, successful long-term relationships are those with the most tolerable gap between the amount of effort that would be regarded by the couple as optimal and the effort actually required to keep the relationship happy. The mathematical model also implies that when no effort is put in the relationship can easily deteriorate.
physorg.com

Appointment pick showing O’s true colors again?

Former copyright lawyer Don Verrilli is the leading candidate to replace Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as Solicitor General, the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported last week. You may not have heard of Verrilli, but file-sharers, "copyfighters," and activists who question America's restrictive copyright regime sure have. Verrilli, who's now serving as an associate White House counsel, is best known for convincing the Supreme Court that file-sharing networks could be sued for copyright infringement—a win that earned him the ire of copyright reform supporters and a reputation as the “the guy who killed Grokster," a file-sharing service.

Verrilli represented a group of 28 entertainment companies that sued Grokster and another file-sharing company, Streamcast, in 2003. The plaintiffs argued that the companies should be penalized for the large amounts of copyrighted music and movies that were downloaded by their users. Critics of the Grokster decision argue the company itself wasn't infringing copyright, although some of its users were.

Grokster's defenders added that not all of the sharing was illegal. The Supreme Court sided with Verrilli's clients—the eventual settlement cost Grokster $50 million and effectively shuttered the site.
Mother Jones

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Out with the insiders, in with the outs
Haircut and murder, two bits
Miss USA flap: politicizing the already trivial
Stolen statues: 'I see nussing; I know nussing'

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Man wakes up to oil damage

Gulf oil spill impact remains a mystery

Paul Montagna, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University Corpus Christi who studies the coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, explained that the underwater impacts of the spill are likely to be much greater than what has appeared on the surface, itself a slick the size of the state of Delaware.

“There is now a great deal of concern that oil is moving up and down the entire water column in and around important ecological areas,” Montagna told the World Socialist Web Site. "To the northwest is the Pinnacle reef complex, and to the east is the Esoto canyon. These are very rich breeding grounds for a large number of marine species."

Montagna pointed out that the behavior of the oil under deep water conditions is likely to be very different than on the surface. In particular, it is unlikely the oil will break down as it does when it is exposed to the heat and light of surface conditions. "It’s a cold, high pressure environment, which should act to preserve the oil," Montagna said. "I think of my refrigerator. I put my fruit in the cold so it won’t spoil."

Scientists also warn that the underwater oil will remove large amounts of oxygen from the water, effectively suffocating parts of the sea. The removal of oxygen from the sea by microbes that feed on the oil will threaten coral reefs as far away as the Florida Keys. Reefs, some of which are hundreds of feet beneath the surface, providing critical habitat for numerous species, including blue fin tuna and the endangered sperm whale.
[--]
Dr. George F. Crozier, a marine biologist and the head of Alabama’s Dauphin Island Sea Lab, told the WSWS that he believes the first species to suffer from the oil plumes will be the simplest life forms in the sea. "Within two or three years, the microbial community can degrade that oil," he said. "But like us, they use oxygen to eat, putting carbon into the water that can cause other forms of life to asphyxiate. Some of the bigger forms of sea life will avoid the plumes, but the very bottom of the food chain, like plankton, could be wiped out in whole layers of the sea." Damage to the lower life forms will work its way up the food chain, Crozier said.

There is also the question of what becomes of crude oil’s toxicity in deep sea conditions. Crozier said that two weeks ago he asked BP an important question. "If much of the spill is under the water, and not on the surface, where is the toxicity?" he asked. "They still have not explained that."
[--]
A number of scientists have warned that both the massive size of the spill—very likely tens of millions of gallons—and its location close to the Gulf loop current make it likely that it will move far beyond its current location.

"All the water moving into the Gulf of Mexico passes through between Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and Cuba, charting a course northward toward the Gulf Coast," Crozier said. "At a certain point it encounters the continental watershed coming from the Mississippi and Mobile Bay. It turns right—currents in the northern hemisphere tend to turn right—and passes out of the Gulf between Florida and Cuba. Here it becomes the Gulf Stream, and goes up the Atlantic Seaboard."
WSWS

Canada’s tar sands oil damage could be bad as Gulf’s

As the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico destroys habitat and livelihoods, the extraction of oil from Canadian oil sands deposits is having a similar impact on fragile ecosystems and communities deep in the North American interior.

The dramatic impact of oil sands expansion should give the companies involved and their investors pause, cautions a new report commissioned by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, and authored by the financial risk management group RiskMetrics.

Oil sands development is "kind of like the gulf spill but playing out in slow motion", said report co-author Doug Cogan, director of climate risk management at RiskMetrics. He called it a "land-based" version of the gulf disaster.

The value in the oil sands is bitumen, a thick, heavy form of petroleum with a tar-like consistency that requires energy-intensive processing to separate it from clay and sand. The bitumen is not drilled for but mined, and that mining has led to the razing of boreal forests and fouling of water supplies in parts of the 140,000 square kilometres of Alberta in which the oil sands are found.

Cogan drew the connection between the huge amount of seawater being polluted in the Gulf of Mexico and the huge amount of freshwater that is polluted in the course of extracting oil from the oil sands.
IPS

Natural disasters altered history often

Humans may owe their place on the planet to a mass extinction of fish 360 million years ago, it was claimed.

The cataclysmic event reset the evolutionary starting point for all vertebrates living today, said US scientists.

If it had not occurred, humans and their ancestors may not have evolved - or could have evolved very differently.

Key features shared by all modern mammals, birds and reptiles - such as five-digit limbs - originated when life re-emerged after the mass extinction, the experts believe.

"Everything was hit, the extinction was global," said researcher Lauren Sallan from the University of Chicago. "It reset vertebrate diversity in every single environment, both freshwater and marine, and created a completely different world." The Devonian Period, which stretched from 416 to 359 million years ago, is also known as the Age of Fishes.

A broad array of species filled the oceans, rivers and lakes, but most were unlike any alive today.

Armoured placoderms, such as monstrous 30-foot carnivore Dunkeosteus, and lobe-finned fishes similar to modern lungfish dominated the waters. Ray-finned fishes, sharks and four-limbed tetrapods were in the minority.

But the picture changed abruptly with the traumatic Hangenberg extinction.

"There's some sort of pinch at the end of the Devonian," said Professor Michael Coates, from the University of Chicago. "It's as if the roles persist, but the players change: the cast is transformed dramatically.

"Something happened that almost wiped the slate clean and, of the few stragglers that made it through, a handful then re-radiate spectacularly."

New fossil finds and analytical techniques brought to light the full impact of the Hangenberg event, said the scientists. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What happened to trigger the mass extinction remains an unsolved mystery.
The Independent/UK

Also

Yes, ‘Something Happened’ and ‘Time’s are a-changin’
Varied history of word ‘toilet’ all comes down to wiping
Remember Hotmail? It’s warming up a comeback

Sunday, May 16, 2010

F..k'd stands for Facebook'd

A friend of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asked him, back in 2004, after the 19-year-old had casually mentioned in an online conversation that 4,000 people had uploaded their personal information to his fledgling website: "How did you manage that?" He typed back: "They just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'," then indiscreetly described them as "dumbfucks".

This week's reporting of that conversation, brushed off by Facebook but not denied, comes at an awkward time for the social networking site, whose 400 million members have made it the second most popular online destination behind Google.

Its privacy policies, inextricably coupled with it urging that we share our information with the world, have regularly hit the headlines, but in the past fortnight the privacy debate has developed into what some excitable commentators are calling a "firestorm of anger".

Prominent technology bloggers have publicly deleted their accounts, and an EU data protection body has issued a strongly worded statement criticising the website. Anyone busy using Facebook probably will not have noticed, and that is essentially the problem.

The biggest charge levelled against it is that users simply are not fully aware of changes that are regularly made about who can see our information, which search engines can catalogue that information, and which companies can advertise products to us based upon it. At the end of last year, certain categories of data belonging to over-18s were made visible to "everyone" (Facebook and non-Facebook users) by default.

This was presented in a benign, socially inclusive way, but it did not take long for concerned users to urgently forward instructions to their friends explaining how to revert these changes. In addition, more widespread use of Facebook Connect (a system where we can permit external websites to link to our Facebook account to improve the "user experience") has furrowed many brows, particularly when we see pictures of friends unexpectedly popping up next to gossip columns or cricket scores.

But the recently introduced "Instant Personalisation" service has pushed things too near the edge. Facebook describes it as "magical", but the wider consensus is "creepy": three websites (namely docs.com, pandora.com and yelp.com) now know that you are a Facebook user and welcome you as such on your first visit, unless you have specifically turned the option off within Facebook.

But making decisions and taking action over these privacy issues isn't easy. Facebook's commitment to providing "granular" privacy settings for each type of information results in a fiendishly complex system. About 50 settings are spread across several pages, with important and alarming-sounding sections such as "what your friends can share about you" buried within a submenu of a submenu.

Each external website you approve with Facebook Connect provides another potential information leak and yet another screen of privacy options, and the privacy policy governing all this runs to some 5,830 words.

People are choosing to close their accounts (another seven-step process that, ironically, does not actually delete your information from Facebook's servers.) Signups to the site have also reportedly slowed, albeit to a colossal 20 million per month.

But for many, Facebook has become indispensable. It is a one-stop address book; it is a diary of upcoming events, from gigs to birthdays to political rallies; it is a place to chat with friends when you are having an evening in, and it strengthens bonds between people who might have become estranged through laziness or forgetfulness.
The Independent/UK

The near future for US?

"We are all very afraid," Somchai Sanwong said as he manned the barricades, a few hundred yards from troop positions.

The redshirts have piles of rocks and Molotov cocktails stashed to hurl at troops when they finally advance. They also have gallons of motor vehicle oil to make the road slippery. Deeper inside the camp, sources say, the redshirts have dozens of M79 rocket-launched grenades. Several were fired last night at an inner-city police station.

"Obviously we're outgunned, outnumbered. In the worst case, if the soldiers come, we'll just burn the barricades," Somchai said.
The Guardian/UK

Also

All about boobs, bras and related biomechanics

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Last Ziegfeld girl dies

The young Doris Eaton Travis performed in feathers and silk, and sported Cupid lips and bobbed hair embellished with saucy curls.

President Woodrow Wilson once waved to her from the audience and George Gershwin ("a nice young man") composed at her family piano. By the time she died, she was not only the last of the legendary "Ziegfeld girls" but one of the few remaining links to the Broadway of the Jazz Age. And Doris was still dancing.

Her final performance on the Great White Way came on April 27 2010, during the Easter Bonnet Competition, Broadway's annual charity show to help Aids victims that she regularly attended. Steadied by two bare-chested young male dancers – at the age of 106, a more than permissible concession to physical frailty – she managed a couple of kicks before departing the stage under her own steam.

How different it had been back in 1918, when Doris was taken on as the youngest ever dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, the most famous show of its time on Broadway, created by Florenz Ziegfeld 11 years earlier as New York's answer to the Folies Bergère of Paris. The girls were hand-picked by the boss. On his business card Ziegfeld termed himself "Impresario Extraordinaire", an accurate description of a man of boundless energy and ambition, who as much as any other invented modern American show business.
The Independent/UK

Cod’s conservation comeback

North Sea cod, once on the brink as a result of decades of over-fishing, has now recovered to an extent that the public should start eating it again with enthusiasm, one of the world's biggest wildlife charities has said.

In a rare wildlife conservation success story, the charity WWF said the fish renowned for its flaky white chunks was being caught sustainably off the shallow cold waters of north and eastern Britain for the first time in a decade. Stocks of the fish have risen by 52 per cent from their historic low four years ago because of a combination of cuts in landing quotas, and conservation techniques which have reduced the number tossed back dead into the sea.

As a result, the EU has increased the British quota for North Sea cod by 16 per cent this year, from 11,216 tonnes to 13,000. Although stocks are still low by historic standards, the recovery could prompt British supermarkets to start stocking North Sea cod again. Most cod in grocery chains and fish and chip shops at present comes from Iceland and the Barents Sea.
The Independent/UK

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Friday, May 14, 2010

Alas, BP PR guys, one can know simply by looking

BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that.

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.

A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day -- much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.
NPR

The over-looked, uncounted, long-term unemployed

Rampell's story focuses on Cynthia Norton, 52, an administrative assistant in Jacksonville who's been unable to find work for the past two years because companies have been shedding clerical workers during the recession and then finding that they can get along fine without them even when the economy improves. So Norton is working as a Wal-Mart cashier and she's not happy about it:

Because of the Wal-Mart job, she has been ineligible for unemployment benefits, and she says she made too much money to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid last year.

“If you’re not a minority, or not handicapped, or not a young parent, or not a veteran, or not in some other certain category, your hope of finding help and any hope of finding work out there is basically nil,” Ms. Norton says. “I know. I’ve looked.”

I'm not quite sure what conclusions to draw from this, but the recession's extreme effect on a small class of long-term unemployed seems like it deserves more attention than it usually gets. What's more, if that class is mostly 50-something workers, not 20-somethings, that's significant too. Politically, it might explain why tea party activism — which skews older — has taken off so strongly, and economically it might explain....what?
Mother Jones

The rich prosper until they prosper too well

It is rich to hear demands for sacrifices and lectures about “the people” living beyond their means, particularly from the likes of …[NY Times columnist Thomas] Friedman … who is paid $50,000 per speaking engagement, is married to the heir of a multi-billion dollar real estate fortune. According to the Washingtonian magazine, the couple owns “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house” in suburban Washington, DC, valued in 2006 at $9.3 million.

In these circles it is taken for granted that massive cuts must be imposed on the living standards of the working class, but not a word is said about the hundreds of billions that are funneled into the personal fortunes of the financial aristocracy and the subordination of the entire economy to increasing their piles of wealth.

The events of the last several years have revealed to the world that the greatest burden on society is not ordinary working people but the anti-social activities of an unproductive and parasitic financial elite. The grotesque consumption and appropriation of social wealth by this oligarchy is not a minor factor in the crisis of the global capitalist system itself.

The bankrupting of whole countries—chiefly through the transferring of the bad debts of the financial speculators onto the books of various governments—is being used to demand austerity from workers and ever-greater riches for the elite.
[…]
The unbridled greed of America’s ruling elite—and the complete subservience of the political establishment, from Obama on down, to its needs—can only be compared to the ancien régime in France. The parasitism and extravagance of the aristocracy became a major factor in the country’s breakdown, and ultimately the eruption of the French Revolution in 1789.

Workers must reject the demand for austerity. The working class did not create this crisis and must not pay for it. Instead, the ill-gotten gains of the ruling elite must be confiscated and used to meet the interests of society as a whole, instead of gutting social programs and destroying jobs.

This must include a multi-trillion dollar program of public works to put the unemployed to work—at decent wages and full medical care—to rebuild the cities and suburbs, repair the nation’s infrastructure and provide high quality housing, medical care and education for all.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the founder of the Fourth International, Leon Trotsky, argued in the Transitional Program that it is “impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy—which supplement one another in their work of destruction—if the commanding posts of the banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investment and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material, resources—and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources—for economic planning.”

The nationalization of the banks, however, will produce positive results, Trotsky explained, “only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers.”
WSWS

Also

Population explosion: just don’t mention it
Nation’s 10 top crooks also its 10 least punished
Lizards that survived the dinosaurs disappearing fast

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Bageant: 'Big Brother got the ju-ju, Gaia the blues’

That common womb of American consciousness is dying. Slowly or rapidly, depending on how you assess the global ecocide and peak everything, it is dying. There will be resuscitations along the way, more massive infusions of money, fear and the rawest sort of fantasy fed to a mood and commodity drugged public. Still, its condition is terminal, because the hyperdrive consumer culture it was built to sustain, is itself unsustainable. Its appetite ate the world. In fact, so voracious is its appetite that even if our "consumer economy," (legalized feudal theft) sees a recovery, and resumes the level of growth required just to keep capitalism alive, it will die just that much faster. It is not in capitalism's DNA to care about the death of the earth. Nor is it in the brain chemistry of an American satiated on prime beef and sailing across the landscape at 70 miles per hour in a $40,000, steel exoskeleton from General Motors, to care. Hominid gratification is what it is -- hard wired -- and there is no circumventing it.

The system has just begun its crash, and already we are seeing an armed infantilized nation wail, hurl blame and do horrific things, the worst of which we do to one another (excluding sending predator drones after Middle Eastern school kids). Surveillance, witch hunts, destruction of civil liberties, and the government inching toward star chamber trials for those who do not display correct traits. Citizens embracing totalitarianism as stability in the face of the ultimate instability -- the death of the planet.

The political regime or philosophy does not exist which can turn this scenario around. Slow it down, maybe, but put things in reverse, nope. Not when six billion mouths are munching at one end of the last noodle, and at the other end a fraction of a billion well armed technological people want the entire noodle. Not when life is already so damned cheap you can buy a girl slave in Haiti for twelve bucks, or 50 child slaves for your Asian sweatshop for less than the cost of a new car. Or an American working man for half of what it takes to support a family, then throw his ass over the company fence when he's no longer needed. Or bury him in mines as he cries out in Jesus' name, blow him up in Iraq, and Stelazine his kids minds and souls under the hot lights of the hologram, readying them for "the labor market." Schenectady or Soweto, life is dirt-cheap and getting cheaper everywhere on the planet.
Joe Bageant

Virutal reality puts men into women’s minds

Scientists have transferred men's minds into a virtual woman's body in an experiment that could enlighten the prejudiced and shed light on how humans distinguish themselves from others.

In a study at Barcelona University, men donned a virtual reality (VR) headset that allowed them to see and hear the world as a female character. When they looked down they could even see their new body and clothes.

The "body-swapping" effect was so convincing that the men's sense of self was transferred into the virtual woman, causing them to react reflexively to events in the virtual world in which they were immersed.

Men who took part in the experiment reported feeling as though they occupied the woman's body and even gasped and flinched when she was slapped by another character in the virtual world.
The Guardian/UK

World banks’ war on the working class"

The extent of the powerful wave of speculation against the euro was made clear by Jochen Sanio, head of the German financial supervisory board Bafin, speaking to last week to the budget committee of the Bundestag (parliament). Sanio spoke of a “war of aggression by the speculators, against the euro zone”, which involved “crazy sums” running into tens of billions. In the case of Greece, speculators exploiting CDS (credit insurance) were able to reap about 500 percent profit in three to four months.

These record profits are also reflected in the balance sheets of the major investment banks. The Deutsche Bank recorded a pre-tax profit of €2.8 billion in the first quarter of 2010, a return on investment of 30 percent. In the same quarter, Goldman Sachs, for the first time in its history, reported a profit on each day of trading, on most days amounting to $100 million.

The working class will now pay for these huge sums of money in the form of welfare cuts, wage cuts and unemployment. With the new euro rescue package, the European governments have placed themselves completely at the mercy of international financial capital. If they do not drastically reduce their budget deficits, the next wave of speculation will inevitably follow. If the financial guarantees are then called upon, the holes in the state budgets will grow, demanding even greater austerity measures.

Experts therefore agree that the euro rescue package is only the beginning of a massive European-wide austerity program, which will spell the decimation of the European welfare state. This shows the real character of the European Union as a tool of the banks and the most powerful sections of the European bourgeoisie.

The Financial Times commented on the package: “Most of the European Union is living beyond its means.... Many Europeans have come to regard early retirement, free public health care and generous unemployment benefits, as fundamental rights. ... Yet if Europeans do not accept austerity now, they will eventually be faced with something far more shocking—sovereign debt-defaults and collapsing banks.”
WSWS

Expect Greek pension ploys to be repeated here
Turn the page; pass the biscuits; let freedom wave
US citizens: all rights gone

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Hung jury in Archer trial on sex charges

by Tom Nadeau

A Yuba County jury declared itself hung, 7-5, Tuesday in the alleged child molestation case against Earnest Rex Archer, news reports indicated.

The bare majority favored a guilty verdict, the jury foreperson told Yuba County Superior Court Judge Julia Scrogin. Scrogin declared a mistrial.

The jury of 10 women and two men debated behind closed doors for four days. That was longer than the trial itself lasted, the Appeal-Democrat newspaper reported.

A former reserve deputy with the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department and narrowly unsuccessful candidate for Yuba County supervisor, Archer faced seven criminal charges altogether. The jury split different ways on the various charges, but the vote reportedly ran 7-5 on the most serious charges.

Archer is accused of molesting two foster children -- minor girls aged 11 and 10 – who lived in his Linda home.
Notable Trials

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Recall what I said about ‘official’ figures being fake?

Respected economist John Williams agrees. His hard numbers closely match the eyeball "guesstimates" Dan Gougherty and I have previously posited.

And the truth, Williams claims, is that the economy has always performed much more poorly than the federal numbers indicate. Prices are higher, fewer people are working, and the economy is growing at a much slower pace. Even now, when the nation faces its greatest crisis since the Great Depression, the real dimensions of the disaster are still being obscured by gimmicks. It's a message that has earned him an odd bit of notoriety, to the clear frustration of some of the country's most prominent economists, who claim that Williams has built a career misrepresenting complex mathematical models and spreading panic.

Take February, for example. What does Williams think was the true state of the economy? The official unemployment rate was listed at 9.7 percent, but according to Williams' models, the real number, including part-time employees and workers who have just given up in despair, is closer to a staggering 21.6 percent. The official February inflation rate was 2.1 percent; Williams argues that it's really around 5.5 percent. And GDP for the fourth quarter of 2009 was not 5.9 percent, as the government claims, but 2.9 percent.
--
But it's when the feds report the results of the payroll survey, Williams claims, that the major distortions show up. The number that gets all the headlines, the so-called U-3 Measure, is the number of utterly unemployed people. A broader measure of unemployment, which is called the U-6 Measure and includes part-time workers and "discouraged workers," or people who have recently stopped looking for work, usually puts unemployment at a little less than twice what we usually read about.

But Williams claims that even the broader measure is erroneous because sixteen years ago, the feds changed the definition of so-called discouraged workers. "Up through 1994, this was the definition of discouraged workers: You met all the other qualifications, but you haven't looked for work in the last four weeks," Williams said. "In '94, they changed the definition so that in order to be discouraged, you had to have not looked for work in the last four weeks, but you had to have worked in the last year. The result knocked several million people out of consideration. ... Those who hadn't looked for work in the last year just weren't counted." The result, he said, is an army of unemployed workers that the government simply redefined out of existence.
--
Williams' most controversial critique concerns inflation, expressed as the Consumer Price Index. The CPI is an index of commodities you need to buy in order to live the average American life: a gallon of gas, a slab of steak, etc. Once upon a time, measuring CPI was simple; you took the price from the year before of all the goods in the index, compared it to the price today, et voila. But in the 1980s, Alan Greenspan and others tweaked the model, adding an assumption known as "product substitution," i.e., that consumers would switch to cheaper but essentially equivalent goods if the price of any given commodity got too high.

"They said that if the price of steak went up too much, people would buy hamburger, and the cost of living would go down instead of up," Williams said. "But the CPI is designed to measure what you need to maintain a constant standard of living. It moved the measurement of CPI away from measuring a constant standard of living to something less than that." And Williams imputes a rather sinister motive behind the change: if you lower inflation with gimmicks, you can reduce everything from interest payments on the national debt to cost of living adjustment to Social Security payments. Suddenly, national leaders had a more transparent interest in arcane CPI minutiae.
AlterNet

**So? How can a poor man stand such times and live?**

A five-minute walk improves health, study shows

The blooms appear because the weather is warming and the days lengthening, and those factors, in their turn, spark a hormonal change in us all. "The brain's chemistry alters," says Dr Holmes, "notably in banishing what used to be called 'winter blues', but is now more accurately labelled seasonal affective disorder or SAD. A hormone is released called melatonin which wakes us up from what you could see as akin to a period of hibernation and lifts our mood."

But the benefits of spotting an eye-catching wisteria, whether it be on a Notting Hill mansion or a council house in Kirkcaldy, may also improve our mental and physical health, according to a study published last week by a team from Essex University, headed by Professor Jules Pretty, in the American chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology. "We all feel," says Pretty, an environmental scientist, "that spring is a wonderful time for nature, but what we have been trying to do is measure that feeling accurately and therefore lift it out of the realms of quackery."

His paper, A Dose of Nature, finds, in a sample of some 1,250 people, across a range of age groups, that both mood and self-esteem improve significantly in quantifiable ways from contact with nature, especially if that contact includes "green exercise" – i.e. walking, gardening, cycling and countryside sports. "And self-esteem and mood," he says, "are strong indicators of good mental health, and also, in the long-term, of good physical health."

The study shows, for example, that being in a green environment is better than being in an urban one in terms of a measurable positive effect on blood pressure, hormones and stress levels. Intriguingly, it also concludes that the biggest beneficial boost from exposure to nature is gained within the initial five minutes of each encounter with the great outdoors. While it continues to reap a harvest thereafter, the crop of positives diminishes. So, it will be the first few steps of a walk through a spring garden that changes your mood most, rather than clocking up the first mile.
The Independent/UK

WWOOFING for room and board

It is a taste of the good life for the iPhone generation: more rewarding than InterRailing, safer than kibbutzim. It even has a catchy name, wwoofing. Record numbers of environmentally conscious young people are volunteering through the organisation Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (Wwoof).

In the UK alone, volunteer numbers have doubled in the past three years; providing a stream of free labour that is proving a godsend for some of Britain's struggling organic farmers. At the moment 400 of the UK's 5,000 organic farms participate in the scheme – under which more than 3,000 volunteers work for up to 30 hours a week, weeding, planting and fruit picking in exchange for board and lodging. But the organisation says more farms are needed. "We've had a surge in people wanting placements, and quite a few branches around the world have been swamped and have stopped taking on new members," said Katherine Hallewell, a spokeswoman for Wwoof UK.

"We have the young gap-year types," she added. "And those who use it as a life-changing step. It is a fantastic way to learn about growing, and a good way to learn an alternative lifestyle."
The Independent/UK

Also

The economics of organic farming in US

Saturday, May 08, 2010

Grim California jobless stats tell only half the story

The “official” 12.6 percent unemployment rate reported in Golden State probably represent only one-half of the actual number of people somehow getting by without jobs or income, “unofficial” sources calculate.

Those “unofficial” sources would be much higher, according to myself and Dan Gougherty,

who have been keeping a close eye on this issue for about eight years now.

State and federal agencies have been playing it very close to the vest with jobless rates since the Clinton administration started tinkering with the way the numbers are collected, tabulated and published.

Among the more obvious gambits they have been employed is to assume that anyone has been collecting unemployment has found a job when their unemployment period expires. It’s a very convenient Republican-spirited method of keeping the books.

By close reading of news stories and constantly comparing separately reported numbers from various agencies we have eyeballed and guesstimated the true rate to be somewhere between 22 and 25 percent, with an outside possibility that the actual rate especially among the older worker groups – 50 to 65 – to be far higher, in the 30 to 33 percent range, perhaps.

Finance officials for the US state of California reported a precipitous drop in April tax collections Tuesday. The state government, which has already pushed through crippling reductions in spending on education and social services, will use the figures to demand more cuts.

Actual collected revenue in April lagged projections by nearly 30 percent, or approximately $3 billion, officials said, prompting an upwardly revised estimate of the state’s projected multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.

During the months of January, February and March, revenue collections slightly exceeded expectations. However, the gains were easily wiped out by the April figures.

The drop in April revenues only accounts for personal income tax collections. Once corporate and sales taxes are reported, the shortfall is expected to increase even further.

Income and sales tax collections were particularly hard hit by the state’s massive number of unemployed. The official unemployment rate in California currently stands at 12.6 percent, the third highest in the nation. This amounts to 2.8 million unemployed individuals, with more than 1.3 million having lost their jobs since 2007.

The state legislature is required to address the deficit by July 1 of this year. Governor Schwarzenegger will undoubtedly incorporate the April revenue collections into his May budget, which will be used to influence state policymakers’ decisions.

With state lawmakers in both parties ruling out increases in taxes on the rich, the budget retraction will mean even deeper cuts in government services. Certain measures proposed by Schwarzenegger in January will most likely make their way into the next round of negotiations. This includes nearly $3 billion in cuts to public education, the sacking of up to 26,000 school teachers, massive cuts to Social Security Income, layoffs and pay cuts for state workers, and cuts to Medi-Cal and the Healthy Families insurance program for children.
WSWS

Juxtaposition of 2 foothill shows reveal
how Americans enjoy living in 2 fantasies

By wiggling around the facts, Americans get to glorify the military while they blissfully vacation in a never-ending dreamland ofchildhood fantasies.

When they are finally figure out – as they surely will within the next few years – that their nation (newly re-dubbed their “homeland”) has artfully been reduced to a banana republic where the few fat rich rule over the increasingly hungry majority that continues to struggle in a collapsed economy heavily policed by a corporate-controlled fascist regime the remaining “Americans” will find themselves to be the sorriest-assed bunch of who’d-a-thunk-it flag-waving TV watchers in the world – and proud of it. (See above.)

New opera: It ain’t over ‘til the plastic surgeon sings’

It used to be the case that a night at the opera entailed predictably high-voltage romantic melodrama on stage, with plots filled with unrequited love, murderous passions and a fat lady's swansong.

Now, the modern face of opera, it appears, is dealing with themes that are more "kitchen sink realism" than the classical topics usually regurgitated for traditional audiences.

Operas have dealt with such gritty themes as pregnancy, murders arranged on the internet and plastic surgery, and one performance featured simulated oral sex on the stage of the Royal Opera House.
The Independent/UK

Friday, May 07, 2010

When economy goes down, intolerance goes up…

Most American voters think Arizona was right to pass its own immigration law, and think the Obama administration should wait and see how the new law works rather than try to stop it, according to a Fox News poll released Friday.

The new poll finds 61 percent of voters nationally think Arizona was right to take action instead of waiting for the federal government to do something on immigration.That's more than twice as many as the 27 percent who think securing the border is a federal responsibility and Arizona should have waited for Washington to act.

Most Republicans (77 percent) and independents (72 percent) support Arizona taking action. Democrats are divided: 43 percent think the state was right, while 41 percent think Arizona should have let the federal government take the lead.
Fox News

…But not everywhere

Polls have shown that there are close to two thirds of Americans that want the government to do a better job when it comes to securing the border around the United States. However, those same people seem to be forgiving to the illegal immigrants that have come to America and are working hard to support their families. Americans seem to be welcoming to the people that come to work, don’t get involved in bad habits and stay out of trouble. The USA Today/Gallup Poll has shown a lot of promising results when it comes to immigration reform and discovering what the people in America truly want.

The poll concluded that close to 8 of every 10 Americans feel that illegal immigrants bring down society especially in schools, hospital and government services. 77% of people in America agree that illegal immigrants are bringing down wages for the citizens of the country. However, that same 77% of people feel that enforcing strict laws and securing the border would mean that the illegal immigrants who have families and have done quite well in the United States would have to leave.
Newsopi

Of course, we’ve been through all this before

That's Flaco Jimenez on the accordion.

Elsewhere

Joe Bageant on the 'big hasta la vista'
Greek dog is a political action junkie
African Queen restored, recalled, re-released on DVD
Gulf faces ecological disaster as oil spill spreads

Thursday, May 06, 2010

The past was better than the future

Marine scientists have discovered that despite modern trawlers being 50 times more effective than their sailing equivalents in the 19th century, they only catch a third more fish.

Stocks of some varieties of fish such as halibut are so decimated that it takes 500 times as much effort to pull them from the sea as it did in 1889.

Britain's fleet of trawlers – mostly powered by sail – netted 300,000 tons a year in the 1880s compared with 150,000 tons now.

The fishing fleet in England and Wales was much larger then but each vessel still netted 80 tons of fish a year. This compares with 110 tons on average per boat now despite advances in technology and far more powerful boats.

The "dramatic" and "worrying" drop is due to extreme and aggressive overfishing and researchers from York University said the problem is "far more profound" then previously thought.
Richard Alleyne

Mickey Mouse mortalities: suicides at Eurodisney

Even the moderate unions, however, insist that something has gone desperately wrong behind the scenes in the Magic Kingdom. Over the last five or six years, they say, a younger, mostly French, top management has taken over at Eurodisney, as the parent company is called.

The number of jobs in restaurants and hotels on the site has been sharply reduced, unions say. The number of visitors – attracted by cut-price deals – has increased. The hiring of seasonal workers has been slashed. A whole tier of middle management has been removed or "reduced to secretary status", unions say, leaving lower-level employees feeling undervalued and ignored.

Longer hours and six-day weeks are frequently demanded of everyone from pastry chefs to the "cast members", who earn just above the French minimum wages to play Goofy or Donald Duck in the daily Disneyland parades. The number of industrial accidents on the site has risen to 1,500 a year – one for every 10 employees – a higher rate than in the legendarily accident-prone building trade.
John Litchfield

Elsewhere

Athens is burning: 'All of us are angry, very, very angry'
But here we knuckle under to the government again
Sam Smith: three wars that can’t be won
Retirement rethink: Do a crime for better time?
The Leonardo 'let's not be petty about this' da Vinci dispute

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Was destruction of economy a plot?
Or was it just 'in everyone's interest'?

Many people now believe that the financial crisis was not an accident. They think that the Bush administration and the Fed knew what Wall Street was up to and provided their support. This isn't as far fetched as it sounds. As we will show, it's clear that Bush, Greenspan and many other high-ranking officials understood the problem with subprime mortgages and knew that a huge asset bubble was emerging that threatened the economy. But while the housing bubble was more than just an innocent mistake, it doesn't rise to the level of "conspiracy" which Webster defines as "a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act." It's actually worse than that, because bubblemaking is the dominant policy, and it's used to overcome the structural problems in capitalism itself, mainly stagnation.
Mike Whitney

Also of interest

Kent State 40 years on
Hemingway spins in grave: BP oil to hit Florida Keys
Hell in a hand basket #3,829: pickup truck gets stoled
Politics goes 'fist to face'
’Four Lions’: serious comedy about Muslim terrorists
TV stars of ‘50s, ‘60s dropping like flies
In fact, massive baby-boomer die-off commencing
New Mexico: hot, dry heaven

Monday, May 03, 2010

A dose of what Homeland Security really means with toe-in-the-water deployment of troops in US

Last week, two Illinois state representatives, John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford, both Democrats from the Chicago area, called on Governor Pat Quinn and Mayor Richard Daley to deploy the National Guard in the US city’s western and southern neighborhoods.

The state Democrats pointed to the deaths of 113 people, mostly African Americans, in street violence since the beginning of the year to justify their call to send in military troops. Such an action has nothing to do with stopping crime, however, which is the product of mass unemployment and poverty and the dismantling of public education in the city.

Crime is being used as a pretext to employ state violence and intimidation against the working class population of the city. If it were to occur, the dispatch of troops in America’s third largest city would mark a new and ominous stage in the decay of US democracy.

Well aware that popular anger and class tensions are reaching a breaking point in Chicago—where the gap between the wealthy elite and the masses of working and poor people has never been larger—the proposal to dispatch the National Guard is part of an ongoing debate within the political establishment on how to best deal with potential “civil unrest.”

Like the anti-immigrant law in Arizona, the call for the National Guard is being used as a trial balloon nationally, in order to shift the debate further to the right, undermine constitutional prohibitions against the use of the military for domestic policing and legitimize the widespread use of troops in the cities for the first time since the ghetto rebellions of the 1960s.
Cont’d at WSWS

Also of interest

We're talking hell in a hand basket here

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by Tom Nadeau

Sunday, May 09, 2010

So? How can a poor man stand such times and live?

Also

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Juxtaposition of 2 foothill shows revealhow Americans enjoy living in 2 fantasies

Friday, May 07, 2010

Of course, we’ve been through all this before

Elsewhere

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A dose of what Homeland Security really means with toe-in-the-water deployment of troops in US

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**So? How can a poor man stand such times and live?**

Juxtaposition of 2 foothill shows reveal
how Americans enjoy living in 2 fantasies