The rabble looks on

I recently re-watched all episodes of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. The show feels tantalizingly close to the truth about how the world works, and it offers a brief glimpse at the puppet masters. Much (if not all) can be explained if interpreted in the context of garnering votes (politicians) and maintaining power (politicians, bureaucracy, corporations) -- with multiple factions within these power structures vying for larger and larger portions of the pie (ad nauseam). They're all uniformly nefarious, but what's scarier long-term is that they are predominantly dumb and greedy creatures (the mountain of evidence just keeps piling up). They aren't the least bit concerned about the very distinct possibility that the entire planet could go down in flames, as we hurtle unaware towards our inevitable Götterdämmerung.

The Trilateral Commission may have tried to establish a New World Order (hell, giving them the benefit of doubt, there is a minute possibility that they may even have had our best interests at heart, in their own twisted way), but all we got was Full Spectrum Disorder. The Military-Industrial complex must surely be completely psychotic;only that can explain the production of cluster bombs and other assorted weapons that the military beast mercilessly wields in order to subjugate, maim, or murder the unfortunates.

The rabble is just expected to watch the show in awe -- vote and sacrifice when called upon to do so.

The Han River is very broad, Mr. Kim.

Tony Hayward (the head of BP) recently had this to say regarding the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."

So where have we heard this before? Remember the Korean movie The Host? The movie begins with the following scene:

US Doctor in Morgue: Why don't you dump this first?
Young Korean Doctor: That's formaline.
US Doctor in Morgue: Formaldehyde, to be precise. To be even more precise, dirty formaldehyde. Every bottle is coated with layers of dust. Pour 'em into the sink.
Young Korean Doctor: Excuse me?
US Doctor in Morgue: Just empty every bottle to the very last drop.
Young Korean Doctor: It's just - They are toxic chemicals, and the regulations state -
US Doctor in Morgue: Pour them right down the drain, Mr. Kim.
Young Korean Doctor: If I pour them in the drain, they'll run into the Han River.
US Doctor in Morgue: That's right. Let's just dump them in the Han River.
Young Korean Doctor: But, you know, this is not just any toxic chemicals -
US Doctor in Morgue: The Han River is very broad, Mr. Kim. Let's try to be broad-minded about this. Anyway, that's an order. So, start pouring.

Ah, yes, corporations will say anything to justify all their criminal actions. "You're in good hands," they whisper softly into your ear, while the earth goes to pieces.

Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side is a good documentary which details the American policy on torture, specifically focusing on Afghanistan and Iraq. The US shows utter contempt for the Geneva Convention. The technique administration officials use to evade prosecution after they leave office is to "redefine" torture. Redefining a term is just a weasel way of escaping all responsibility for their heinous crimes.

The other laughable claim made by the administration is that the torture/sadism is limited to certain "rogue officers" and that there is no high-level policy condoning torture. Right ...

I forget if the "ticking time-bomb" justification is mentioned in the documentary. This justification is that "a terrorist knows the whereabouts of a bomb that's going to go off in an hour or so and thousands of people may die, so it's OK to torture". The problem with this justification is that such a scenario has NEVER occurred ever except on stupid TV shows and Hollywood. Additionally, once torture is condoned for this dubious reason, it's only a matter of time before it becomes a routine tactic under a variety of other circumstances. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that torture will produce information of any value.

Also shocking is how the social sciences are used (abused) to futher military and political ends. Completely despicable and total lack of respect for humanity.

In more recent developments:

Here is some of the wording from the Executive Order signed by Barack Obama on Jan 22, 2009 for ensuring lawful interrogations:

“…an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict…”

This article by Allan Nairn points out two MAJOR problems with this wording:

• Majority of the torture is done indirectly through US proxies, hence not covered under this executive order
• A lot of torture also happens when there is no armed conflict therefore also not covered under this order

The article also discusses other disturbing facts.

Death Note: The Complete Rules

This is relevant only if you've watched the "Death Note" anime series. The series centers around a notebook which can be used (by the owner) to declare judgment and kill who he or she thinks is undesirable. However, the Death Note comes with a thick user guide which should ring some warning bells.

The most basic rule is "The human whose name is written in this note shall die. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject's face in mind when writing his/her name. This is to prevent people who share the same name from being affected." But there's a lot more complexity to this.

The rules are organized into the following sub-categories:

• Entering Names
• Entering the Causes and Conditions of Death
• Alterations
• Limitations
• Other Things to Consider
• The Beginning of Ownership
• Multiple Notebooks
• The Shinigami Eyes
• The Shinigami Rules
• Using the Death Note
• Shinigami Life
• Fake Rules

As you can see, it's hard to use the Death Note! As they say, "The Devil is in the details", or in this case, "The Shinigami is in the details". I wouldn't want that kind of responsibility. Let the battle between "good" and "evil" rage of its own accord :-)

Cybernetic Totalism

Interesting article on Wired (appeared back in 2000, I think) by Jaron Lanier titled 'One-Half of a Manifesto Why stupid software will save the future from neo-Darwinian machines.'

It's a somewhat long read that requires some patient plodding through, but it's all quite coherent in general and I tend to agree with his points. Lanier makes some convincing arguments against "Strong AI" and criticizes the "Cybernetic Totalists" for their rigid beliefs. He envisions the future as a dystopia where cybernetic totalists enforce an ideology which they would then claim to be the only right one (sound familiar?)

A key point he makes is that software (in general) isn't necessarily getting better, rather, reality has to stoop to the level of software to make the software look smarter. Another interesting point he makes is that evolution isn't the whole picture as evidenced in this paragraph:

The first two or three generations of artificial intelligence researchers took it as a given that blind evolution in itself couldn't be the whole of the story, and assumed that there were elements that distinguished human mentation from other earthly processes. For instance, humans were thought by many to build abstract representations of the world in their minds, while the process of evolution needn't do that. Furthermore, these representations seemed to possess extraordinary qualities like the fearsome and perpetually elusive "common sense." After decades of failed attempts to build similar abstractions in computers, the field of AI gave up, but without admitting it. Surrender was couched as merely a series of tactical retreats. AI these days is often conceived as more of a craft than a branch of science or engineering. A great many practitioners I've spoken with lately hope to see software evolve but seem to have sunk to an almost postmodern or cynical lack of concern with understanding how these gizmos might actually work

A book I've read that explores the same topic is "The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High-Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking" by Theodore Roszak. The concept of reality stooping to the level of software is discussed in this book as well.

Life and Debt | A Film By Stephanie Black

Life and Debt - Recently watched this documentary which clearly chronicles the havoc wrought by IMF 'Structural Adjustment' programs imposed (or rammed down their throats) on Jamaica since the 70s. The relentless and demented logic of the IMF inexorably and in deadly slow motion leads Jamaica into into its current desperate situation that is many times more desperate than when it had to accept the stringent IMF conditions in the 70s.

Roughly speaking, the 'tricks' of the IMF are elucidated via the specific Jamaican example, the main points of which are outlined below.

1. Make sure the country that approaches the IMF is already very desperate (say due to sudden increases in oil prices)
2. Being desperate and/or naive, the country is likely to accept the most stringent terms on the loan.
3. The money loaned can only be used in very specific ways (it cannot be used for local infrastructure development, education, health care etc.). This prevents the country from becoming self-sufficient eventually (which anyone who has any sense would agree should be the primary goal of the loans ... but not in the IMFs book)
4. Expose and destroy local industry to foreign competition (such as cheap potatoes from Idaho etc.) (i.e advocate free market for Jamaica by removing tariffs etc.). However, note that the potatoes produced in America are heavily subsidized by the government, hence America is able to export them and sell them to Jamaica cheaply, hence undermining the local industry. So, the IMFs strategy: powerful government to protect the rich, and market discipline and tough love for everyone else.
5. Use the loans to build free trade zones where workers slave under horrid conditions. The purported reason being to provide employment and manufacture goods using LOCAL raw materials. In practice, the free trade zone avoids local taxes and uses only imported materials thereby undermining the local economy. And the working conditions, less said about that, the better.
6. To service the interest on the loans, take on further debt, and so on, ad nauseum.

"War on Drugs"

Great interview (with Noam Chomsky) exploring the meaning of the "War on Drugs" and who it benefits.

A few excerpts:

The enormous rate of growth of the prison population has been mostly drug related. The last figures I saw showed that over half the federal prison population, and maybe a quarter in state prisons, are drug offenders. In New York State, for example, a twenty-dollar street sale or possession of an ounce of cocaine will get you the same sentence as arson with intent to murder. The three-strikes legislation is going to blow it right through the sky. The third arrest can be for some minor drug offense, and you’ll go to jail forever.

But the crime-control industry, as it’s called by criminologists, is becoming the fastest-growing industry in America. And it’s state industry, publicly funded. It’s the construction industry, the real estate industry, and also high tech firms. It’s gotten to a sufficient scale that high technology and military contractors are looking to it as a market for techniques of high-tech control and surveillance, so you can monitor what people do in their private activities with complicated electronic devices and supercomputers: monitoring their telephone calls and urinalyses and so forth. In fact, the time will probably come when this superfluous population can be locked up in private apartments, not jails, and just monitored to track when they do something wrong, say the wrong thing, go the wrong direction.

The Machine Speech

This is a video of Mario Savio's famous Machine Speech @ Sproul Hall, UC Berkley (1964). Savio became the prominent leader of the newly formed Free Speech Movement. Don't know if the speech is impromptu; I find it amazing and inspiring.

A transcript of the speech can be found here.

Handouts

This is an excellent article on the 'free market' myth by Stephen Lendman. It also goes into a brief history of government handouts for business.

A quote from the late Howard Zinn in the article sums it up quiet nicely:

Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a 'free market,' we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. These titans of wealth hypocritically warned against 'big government' but only when (it) threatened to regulate their activities, or when it contemplated passing some of the nation's wealth on to the neediest people.

Health Care Deform

I think the so-called health-care reform proceedings are farcical. The "reformists" will almost certainly leave the system in private hands without any serious consideration of the single payer option (also see Why NPR Refuses to Report on the Single Payer Movement). The really frustrating part is the whole pretense of changing the system. The system (and the laws and violent forces that sustain it) is designed by the elite, controlled by the elite, and benefits the elite. Everyone else is rabble which supposedly participates in a profoundly democratic process. It's wise not to have any illusions about this.

On a side note, feel free to check up on Sen. Max Baucus's political "donations" (or bribes in clearspeak) in the last five years. That won't influence him at all, right ...

Also see Dave Lindorff's article titled 'Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform' here

What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream

This is an analysis, by Noam Chomsky, of the mainstream media and the framework in which they operate. In short, the analysis leads to an inescapable conclusion:

"... the product of the media, what appears, what doesn’t appear, the way it is slanted, will reflect the interest of the buyers and sellers, the institutions, and the power systems that are around them."
"You virtually never find anything in the social sciences that so strongly supports any conclusion."

Megadeth Smackdown Edition

Huckabee's rant against the United Nations is comical. Apparently, Huckabee considers himself to be a "civilized" person living in a "civilized" country as opposed to barbaric despots from other "less civilized" countries. This also reminds me of the Megadeth album United Abominations. I'm a big fan of Megadeth, but I'm not very big on the lyrics on United Abominations. Mark Leon Goldberg on the United Nations affairs blog to the rescue though. See the Megadeth Smackdown Edition

Can SETI Succeed?

Interesting debate on the chance of success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The late Ernst Mayr of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology argues that the Earth is probably the only technological civilization in our galaxy, while Carl Sagan defends the more optimistic view.

One of Mayr's interesting hypothesis in the article which doesn't bode too well for us:

... high intelligence is not at all favored by natural selection, contrary to what we would expect. In fact, all the other kinds of living organisms, ... read more millions of species, get along fine without high intelligence.

Scenes from the Slaughterhouse

Scenes from the Slaughterhouse: a selection from Sue Coe's Porkopolis.

See Meatpack and Factory

This artwork is seriously grim. Sue Coe is a 'graphic witness.'

Mismanagement?

My comments on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

The fact that the Iraqi occupation was bungled is not in much doubt anymore, and Rajiv Chandrasekaran documents the mismanagement well. That said, any book that doesn't challenge America's divine right to interfere in the affairs of other countries and not letting them choose for themselves leaves a lot to be desired.

Mismanagement? Yes -- we can all agree on that. But there is a more fundamental problem that has nothing to do with whether the occupation (illegal, of course) was managed or mismanaged, and that is the problem of imperialistic, military aggression and preemptive wars based on highly dubious pretexts (mushroom clouds, democracy etc.)

As a simple thought experiment (not a perfect analogy, but close), imagine a British correspondent wrote a book about the brutal Indian occupation and about how it was being mismanaged. Yes, the British would spend endless hours debating how they were managing their Raj, but as an Indian bearing the brunt of the occupation, I would find the mismanagement arguments rather irrelevant and farcical.

Benevolent drug companies? Really?

This is my response to this article titled Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pledges cheap medicine for world's poor

Whatever their real goals (humane or just a calculated ploy), a few observations below:

The US government already spends around $30 billion a year (for basic bio-medical research) via the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This is a taxpayer ... read more subsidy to pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical companies always make it sound like it's all their investment and all their hard work, but $30 billion a year is from us public (the market itself could never generate enough money for research). So how come they still have so many strong patents ? The public has a right (it's not a lousy favor from someone) to the benefits of such funding in the form of cheaper drugs and limitations on patents. The government can even increase the funding via NIH and allow the public to gain even more control over the benefits accrued.

It's not clear to me who "patent pooling" is going to benefit and if there are better options such as allowing developing countries to manufacture generics. If "patent pooling" just means just sharing patents among competing pharmaceutical companies, then it may reduce wasteful duplication of research effort by the companies, but will it ultimately reduce the cost of the drugs the same way generics do?

If you read carefully, the article says that this might actually undermine the generics market. From the article -- "Campaigners privately say the move is remarkable, although they worry that it may undermine the generics industry which currently supplies the cheapest drugs in poor countries." and "Campaigners gave a cautious welcome to GSK's strategy. But Oxfam and Médecins Sans Frontières both said the company should go further and include HIV drugs in the patent pool, and warned that generics companies have always been able to offer lower prices than big pharma, because of their lower production costs."

The pharmaceutical companies will readily outsource "discovery" efforts to Bangalore etc. and reap the benefits of outsourcing, but when it comes to allowing Indian companies to manufacture generics cheaply, they get a heart-attack because it cuts into their profits (the fact that it saves lives is not a priority). The US will generally not purchase generic drugs from other countries where it is cheaper to produce (under the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, of course), and organizations like the WTO etc. will prevent companies in other countries (the standard example is CIPLA/Tamiflu, but there are probably many such examples) from manufacturing generics

In general, we should look at the solutions being provided by pharmaceutical companies (no doubt due to public pressure) and consider their possible benefits, but also stop to consider: "Are there better solutions?"

Objectified

Objectified is a fairly interesting documentary about the design of objects in our daily lives and the designers who make them. The film features interviews with a variety of influential designers discussing their thoughts about the meaning of design, the objects that get produced, and the relationship between objects, humans, and the environment.

Sustainability gets some brief treatment which can be summarized by Alice Rawsthorn's comment that sustainability is not driven by the designers, rather it's consumer driven -- and that supposedly Walmart has embraced sustainability. If she's using Walmart as a prime example of sustainability, it's quite worrisome. Also, according to Rawsthorn, "design tends to be the indulgent medium of the developed economy and a mature culture." Apparently, other "developing countries" aren't as mature.

Jonathan Ive talks about how incredibly hard design is. Mark Newson heavily criticizes children's products, and can't wait to get rid of his child's high chair. Paolo Antonelli has collected 172 definitions of design. Andrew Blauvelt defines design as anything that is touched by man, transformed by man. Chris Bangle goes on and on and on about the design of the BMW X6.

Dieter Rams makes an interesting statement: "If I had to do something in this world again, I would not want to be a designer anymore, because I believe, in the future, it will be less important to have many things, but more important to exercise care about where and how we live. And to think carefully how we can preserve nature."

Rob walker talks (critically) about how "good design" is considered to be a mark of progress, and how if you can recognize good design, it distinguishes you from all the naive and corny bourgeois of the past -- the past being everything up to that minute. Corporations don't necessarily design what people need, but rather their goal is to simply produce more stuff.

Some objects are downright fetishized such as a BMW X6, a valentine typewriter, and an Alessi spoon that will supposedly stimulate four out of the five senses. There are some interesting discussions on how an object should go beyond its functional aspect and establish a meaningful emotional relationship with the human being. Unfortunately, I think this is just wishful thinking. The novelty of objects dies fast, and any supposedly meaningful relationship with an object is always fleeting and unsatisfactory. In fact, a designer in the film admits that most of the products he's designed will end up in a landfill pretty soon.

The documentary ends with the following quote: "The value, and especially the legitimization of design will be in the future measured in terms of how it can enable us to survive."

Overall, I think the film presents a decent coverage of the various points of view on design, but unfortunately, it also reflects an obsession with materialism, a perceived sense of superiority, and a state of affairs that has a long way to go before it can reach any level of sustainability.

Don't forget to watch the special features on the DVD which includes a whole bunch of interesting interviews.