Not Even Wrong

I love the phrase, “Not Even Wrong,” because it so aptly describes most of the spurious claims that dominate our informational space. When I’m in one of my frequent, cynical moods these days, it seems that U.S. culture – and I do mean that ironically – has morphed into a tacky, 24-7 media outlet featuring infomercials on all channels. Hucksters and their marks abound; everywhere I turn, someone is spewing face-palming nonsense to a poorly informed, intellectually inert, gullible public too immersed in their Facebook trivia and “reality” TV to think about, much less investigate, what they’re hearing. Much easier to go with the gut, accept whatever confirms their biases, whatever a favorite celebrity talk-show host/pundit/doctor/politician/pastor tells them is the belief du jour (e.g., the succession of Obama canards, including “anti-Christ”). On their end, the hucksters are busy mining their opinion polls and focus-group results to make sure they’re pandering to preconceived biases and superstitions, the better to persuade the marks to buy, or buy into, what they’re selling – from holographic bracelets to nutritional supplements to alternative-medicine quackery to trickle-down economics to praying for cures or rain in Texas. The main thing is to keep the messages brief, superficial and memorable, and repeat them often. Above all, avoid elite-sounding terminology, complexity, uncertainty, or anything that entails time and effort to understand. Americans just don’t want to deal with the inherent messiness and uncertainty of science and reality. And with the Internet facilitating all these self-reinforcing, tribal communities, we seem to be entering a post-modernist’s wet dream where everyone’s “truth” is just as good as the next guy’s opinion. To quote the great Isaac Asimov,

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Never mind that what is true has never been determined by popularity (the correlation is surely negative). But enough contemptuous sarcasm for the moment: let me explain my title phrase, since you may be reading it here it for the first time.

It originated with theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was the first to postulate the existence of the neutrino and went on to receive the Nobel Prize in physics in 1945 for his contributions to quantum theory. He was nominated for the prize by none other than Albert Einstein. A colorful personality, Pauli was also noted for pithy, often witty, expressions: He famously said of his colleague, Paul Dirac, “If I understand Dirac correctly, his meaning is this: there is no God, and Dirac is his Prophet.” A nice play on the Muslim mantra, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet.”

When Pauli said “This is not even wrong,” he was referring to purportedly scientific claims or theories that were so unclear and vague as to be untestable and thus did not belong in the realm of science. He thought that such claims were much worse than wrong because there was no possible way to falsify them and thus no good reason to take them seriously. Sound familiar?

In general I find Pauli’s concept of “not even wrong” to be useful in deciding which propositions are pointless to debate. If a belief or a claim cannot be tested or verified, then there seems little or no reason to argue about it. I put faith claims such as the existence of gods – or any supernatural spirit entity, for that matter – in this category. People who believe these things do so for reasons other than evidence, and they need to recognize that their faith has no greater claim to truth than anyone else’s. Many argue they have had personal experiences that provide all the evidence they need for their beliefs. I consider this to be arrogant and narcissistic, bordering on solipsistic. (Just think of all those right-wing Republican candidates who claim they have been “called by God” to lead the nation – people like George Bush, Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, et al. Or the right-wing dominionists who claim divine authority to take over the world for Jesus. Lamentably, in our times most people still seem to take this personal revelation nonsense seriously, at least when its consistent with their own beliefs.)

But if someone’s going to cite personal experience as valid evidence for their belief, they have to deal with at least two major problems: The first is other people who claim personal experience in support of conflicting beliefs. You can’t expect someone to accept your experiential claims unless you’re willing to accept theirs! A second insurmountable problem is simply that there’s no way to verify that a person actually had the revelatory experience they relate or that it means what they think it does. By now we know enough about the brain and states of consciousness to be skeptical of anyone making such claims.

It’s possible, in principle, that a reported personal “revelation” could constitute evidence worth considering. For instance, suppose someone reports having had a near-death experience and then reveals detailed information they could not possibly have acquired through any known normal process. There have been a few such claims, but as far as I know they didn’t hold up. A woman patient came out of anesthesia and reported floating outside her body, looking down on her surgery, and seeing something on a high shelf that wasn’t visible from the operating table. The surgeon was deeply impressed and claimed this was evidence of a genuine out-of-body experience. Unfortunately, the great breakthrough into the other realm turned out to be as simple as a reflection in a clock face. Nope, faith-based claims are not EVEN wrong and certainly not an acceptable basis for judging other people. And surgeons may be brilliant technicians, but that doesn’t mean they have been trained in critical thinking.

The current usage of Pauli’s phrase has been expanded to include pseudoscience and bad science. I’m concerned that Indiscriminate use may rob the phrase of its usefulness, but I do favor applying it to claims that can and have been tested but have no scientific plausibility. Homeopathy is the best example: despite having the Royal Family’s endorsement, its claims are so absurd, so contrary to mountains of scientific evidence and theory, that it simply cannot work. (I was going to say “cannot work as claimed,” but I really mean cannot work at all, because it is, quite simply, absurd.) Other types of alternative-medicine are almost as absurd: acupuncture is based on the assumed flow of energy through nonexistent channels called meridians; similarly, chiropractic spinal “adjustments” that cure almost everything are based on invisible, totally hypothetical, nonexistent spinal “misalignments” called subluxations. In simplest terms, the prior plausibility of these hypothesized mechanisms has got to be close to zero.

So I favor adding beliefs and theories that flagrantly contradict well-established science to the “not even wrong” list. One problem is that even though most alt-med “treatments” make no biological sense, it is devilishly hard to put them to rest. Part of the reason is bad research, a topic I’ll take up next time. But I am pleased to report that recent, well-controlled studies are showing acupuncture and many of the ridiculous claims of chiropractic to be no better than a placebo.

Research using human subjects is notoriously difficult, and it has taken a long time – far too long – to develop and implement experimental protocols that control for the placebo effect and other sources of experimental error. I fully expect acupuncture and chiropractic to be widely classified as pseudosciences within the next few years. Sadly, even if this comes to pass, it will take much longer to put the Hydra of unscientific health care in its well-deserved resting place.

Finally, there are a multitude of religious beliefs like the abomination known as young-earth creationism or the foundational story of the Exodus. These myths have been around for ages and persist despite massive amounts of scientific evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that they are wrong. No, make that not EVEN wrong and no longer worthy of serious consideration. Still, we are treated to the spectacle of creationists coming up with bizarre arguments to deny the science and cling to the embarrassing fiction of a 6,000-year-old earth. Sadly, millions of Americans take them seriously. Similarly, archaeologists and Egyptologists have pretty conclusively shown that the 40-year Exodus of jews never happened. To quote the Wikipedia entry,

The archaeological evidence of the largely indigenous origins of Israel is "overwhelming," and leaves "no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness."

So there you have it, the concept of not even wrong, the idea that certain beliefs and claims do not merit serious attention, except, of course, for the social and political problems their adherents pose. As always, there is this scientific caveat: pending new and compelling evidence.

Next time I’ll take a look at several reasons why science as practiced so often comes up short of the ideal of best scientific practice and so often gets it wrong.

Massive Spending, Massive Debt, Massive Interest and a Cure

Someone asked me today to call them up this afternoon and please give them a lesson in what is going on in our financial world.  Does that bring a smile to your face?  It brings a crooked one to mine.  How could I possibly know?  I think at times that maybe the Illuminati doesn’t even know.  And word is they are supposed to know sh—from Shinola.  If those world barons of finance and government control really exist, right? Stocks have crashed this week almost 600 points on the Dow, Gold is down today, September 23, 2011 to $1666.00 per troy ounce (whoops, now at $1650 in less than 10 minutes) from a high 30 days ago of $1924.00.  Wait, make that $1648 in less than a minute!  Silver follows gold like a thirsty Heifer being led single file to the slaughter.  So what’s going on?  Precious metals seem to be on a tailspin death dive after climbing steadily without much of a hitch for many months now.  The boys in the back room of financial institutions recommend having lots of physical gold and some gold certificates in your portfolio.  Why?  Because, the smart money says, you might need it if paper fiat money inflates off the face of the earth and  your dollars burn up and go “poof” from the Fed’s printing too many of them.  Last count shows that the Fed has printed over 2 Trillion in new bills in the last 2 and a half years.  Such dilution of value is scary.  Prices at the grocery have already shot up like a rocket in just a year.  Is inflation beginning to rear its ugly head as we were warned it would?  And if gold and silver would replace dollars as a medium of exchange for gasoline, food, and other staples, would this be a world we would want to live in?  A chilling thought.

Greece, they say, is close to the edge of the world in default and is about to fall off.  So what does that mean?  Well, one of the proposals to get Greece on financial life-support once again mandates giving Greek bonds a 50% haircut.  What that means is that normally a bond matures and is worth a preset redeemable amount of 100 cents on the dollar.  That is called PAR.  So magic scissors come down with an unseen hand and cut the bond interest rate in half.

If you hold $10,000 Greek bonds @ 8% interest per year worth of Greek bonds that were sold to you at Par yesterday, now the interest rate has been haircut to 4%.  So instead of getting $800 per year off your Greek bonds, you will now receive $400 per year.  Pay no attention to the $10,000 printed on neither the bond certificate nor the man behind the screen with the scissors.  Your $10,000 Greek bonds would be worth much less than $10,000 due to the arbitrary adjustment of interest downward.  Would it be apropos to say, hair(cut) today, gone tomorrow?  Or par today…….gone tomorrow?  It is indeed a messy business haircutting the value of bonds from Greece and other countries in the world just so the countries can stay afloat.

So what does this do for Greece?  It cuts their debt in half.  Instantly.  Greece is in business again.  The amount of interest Greece has to pay on its debt to maintain its life as a real country with traffic cops, mayors, sanitation workers, dept. of tourism, and national parks like the Pantheon, for example, is cut in half.  Buys more time quite neatly.  And those left holding the bag are the bondholders whose capital in Greece bonds is cut in half.  To get there, to reorganize Greece must default on its original bonds.

Greece is in the world spotlight, so how is this affecting world markets in other lands, and what is causing their markets to plunge, too?  The ripple effect of fear seems to be alive and well.  Simply stated, the rest of the world fears that they might be next.  And the stock markets in most all countries and their massive amounts of borrowed money in the form of bonds is susceptible to the same austere ring of “No tickee, no washee.”  Everything falls down in disarray when countries default on their loans.  And Americans are feeling a bit skeptical what with 14.3 Trillion dollars borrowed and spent and the compound interest that is accumulating with every tick of the clock.  So what might happen if the United States would ever default on its debt?  Perish the thought.  Things like government services would cease to be.  Social Security checks would not get sent out.  Hospitals would not accept Medicare.  Governor Rick Perry might be hard pressed to pay his electric bill, but not really because it is certain he has emergency generators in the wings. Buses would stop running.  There would be a run on banks with mobs seeking to get their money in their hot hands.  Police, firemen and garbage men would be without pay and fuel to get to their destinations.  Pandemonium would prevail.

How did we get to this place?  You know, on the precipice to disaster where many nations of the world have borrowed so heavily that they could just fall like dominos one after another?  More to the point, could we have prevented such a crisis?  Why did no one protest very strongly when all this borrowing began?  In a Cabinet meeting of Bush II, a question arose about borrowing more money to finance all the wars, the expensive toilet seats Uncle Sam buys.  Bush II was against it, but Cheney piped up that “It is our mandate now to follow through on military spending to defeat terrorism, and Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.”

A deficit is the shortfall of funds that you need to borrow to keep operating as a nation of governed people.  That is the amount short of federal income from taxes and royalties that is needed to keep the country running and the bills paid on time.

In Greece’s case, Goldman-Sachs propped the country up with derivatives, a temporary measure to buy them time, and derivatives turn out usually to be more disastrous than real cures.  And they were.  Goldman only made things worse.

When all the countries of the world are so accustomed to borrowing the shortfall amounts needed to run government services and then that ability to borrow is suddenly frozen, it becomes crunch time.  What to do?  Right now, Japan and China are making noises about not getting further into debt with the United States.  Those countries are threatening to stop lending to the United States to cover its needs in paying for services and commodities already on the books and a vital part of America’s existence as a nation.  China says it favors taking away the US dollar as the world currency.  Now, for example, if a country wishes to buy oil it first has to convert its currency to US dollars, then purchase the oil.  Many economists  predict financial Armageddon for America if that were to happen.  Who can say what the financial landscape would look like if it came to pass?  No one knows, but it looks grim.

The tough times began to come to our shores when borrowing and spending became a way of life.  Ronald Reagan borrowed 3 Trillion dollars in 8 years to defeat Russia, the Evil Empire, he called the Russians.  Then Bush II borrowed and spent an additional 4 Trillion dollars on attacking and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.  It has been over 8 years since that time and the debt has grown immensely.  We cannot pay just the interest on what we have borrowed from the Chinese.  We ran out of money.  And now it appears we will run out of lenders to help us stave off bankruptcy and shutting the government down.  See it’s not just Greece’s problem, it is ours and the rest of the world’s problem.  We borrowed too much and spent too much for our own good.  President Obama and the Congress have said much about the problem we face.  There has been much jaw-boning, but very little progress on meaningful solutions.  We borrowed too much and lived too high on the hog, that’s all.  Plain and simple.  So what will happen when the sh—hits the fan?  I don’t know.  Will angry people all over the world riot for food and water and medicine freshly ripped from their hands because now their respective government cannot pay the piper?  I hate to say it but I don’t know that either.  It is hard to know much after everything of real value gets shelled out and the husks discarded on the ground.

Should we buy US Treasury Bonds now?  The yield is at an historic 60-year low in yield because of great world demand in panic scenarios.  But why would they want US bonds when we have a 14.3 Trillion dollar debt?  Does it seem like the US is a good risk right now on paying interest and making good the principal of its bonds?  It would appear that that is true as the world flocks to US Treasuries like never before.  Apparently the world still sees the United States and its recently downgraded Standard and Poor’s paper as a better risk than any other time in history.  But why?  I wish I knew that answer too.  But I don’t.  These are new times.

A Blackjack dealer in Vegas told me once that if the world ever fell upon hard times there were 2 staples to own and hoard.  These 2 items, she said, would never lose their luster and demand, and would sit on the shelf forever with no tending.  I begged her to tell me about these 2 items, and she said with a wry smile, “Whisky and Cigarettes.”  Hmmm.  In lieu of the great financial gurus and geniuses that have led us to this dark crossroads in our history, and their track record, maybe Whisky and Cigarettes would be one of the best hard-times investment vehicles one could buy.  To trade, of course, for like food and gasoline.

Shadow Warriors: Movin’ On Up

FPIF For decades the U.S. military has waged clandestine war on virtually every continent on the globe, but, for the first time, high-ranking Special Operations Forces (SOF) officers are moving out of the shadows and into the command mainstream. Their emergence suggests the U.S. is embarking on a military sea change that will replace massive deployments, like Iraq and Afghanistan, with stealthy night raids, secret assassinations, and death-dealing drones. Its implications for civilian control of foreign policy promises to be profound. Early this month, Vice Adm. Robert Harward—a former commander of the SEALs—the Navy’s elite SOF that recently killed al-Qaeda leader Osma bin Laden—was appointed deputy commander of Central Command, the military region that embraces the Middle East and Central Asia.  Another SEAL commander, Vice Adm. Joseph Kernan, took over the number two spot in Southern Command, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean. The Obama Administration has been particularly enamored of SOFs, and, according to reporters Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post, is in the process of doubling the number of countries where such units are active from 60 to 120. U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Col. Tim Nye told Nick Turse of Salon that SOF forces would soon be deployed in 60 percent of the world’s nations: “We do a lot of traveling.” Indeed they do. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOC) admits to having forces in virtually every country in the Middle East, Central Asia, as well as many in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. But true to its penchant for secrecy, SOC is reluctant to disclose every country to which its forces are deployed. “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where were at,” Nye told Turse. SOF forces have almost doubled in the past two decades, from some 37,000 to close to 60,000, and major increases are planned in the future. Their budget has jumped from $2.3 billion to $9.8 billion over the last 10 years These Special Forces include the Navy’s SEALs, the Marines Special Operations teams, the Army’s Delta Force, the Air Force’s Blue Light and Air Commandos, plus Rangers and Green Berets. There is also the CIA, which runs the clandestine drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish civilian from military operatives. Leon Panetta, former director of the CIA, is now Defense Secretary, while Afghanistan commander Gen. David Petraeus—an expert on counterinsurgency and counter terror operations—is taking over the CIA. Both have worked closely with SOF units, particularly Petraeus, who vastly increased the number of “night raids” in Iraq and Afghanistan. The raids are aimed at decapitating insurgent leadership, but have caused widespread outrage in both countries. The raids are based on intelligence that many times comes from local warlords trying to eliminate their enemies or competition. And, since the raids are carried out under a cloak of secrecy, it is almost impossible to investigate them when things go wrong. A recent CIA analysis of civilian casualties from the organization’s drone war in Pakistan contends that attacks since May 2010 have killed more than 600 insurgents and not a single civilian. But a report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at City University in London found “credible evidence” that at least 45 non-combatants were killed during this period. Pakistani figures are far higher. Those higher numbers, according to Dennis C. Blair, retired admiral and director of national intelligence from 2009 to 2010, “are widely believed [in Pakistan] and, Blair points out, “our reliance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our soldiers is bitterly resented.” Rather than re-examining the policy of night raids and the use of armed drones, however, those tactics are being expanded to places like Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. The question is, who’s next? Latin America is one candidate. A recent WikiLeak release demonstrates that there was close coordination between right wing, separatist groups in eastern Bolivia—where much of that country’s natural gas reserves are located—and the U.S. Embassy. The cables indicate that the U.S. Embassy met with dissident generals, who agreed to stand aside in case of a right-wing coup against the left-leaning government of Evo Morales. The coup was thwarted, but Bolivia expelled American Ambassador Philip Goldberg over U.S. meddling in its domestic politics. The U.S. has a long and sordid history of supporting Latin American coups—at times engineering them— and many in the region are tense over the recent re-establishment of the U.S. Fourth Fleet. The latter, a Cold War artifact, will patrol 30 countries in the region. Given the Obama administration’s support for the post-2009 coup government in Honduras, its ongoing hostility to the Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and now the WikiLeak revelations about Bolivia, the idea of appointing a “shadow warrior” the number two leader in South Command is likely to concern governments in the region. SOFs have become almost a parallel military. In 2002, Special Operations were given the right to create their own task forces, separate from military formations like Central and Southern Command. In 2011 they got the okay to control their budgets, training and equipment, independent of the departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. If one reaches for an historical analogy, the Praetorian Guard of Rome’s emperors comes to mind. There is a cult-like quality about SOFs that the media and Hollywood has done much to nurture: Special Forces are tough, independent, competent and virtually indestructible. The gushy New Yorker magazine story about SEAL Team Six, “Getting Bin Laden,” is a case in point. According to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, the story will be made into a movie-for-TV and released just before the 2012 elections. There is a telling moment in that story that captures the combination of bravado and arrogance that permeates SOF units. An unidentified “senior Defense Department official” told author Nicholas Schmidle that the bin Laden mission was just “one of almost two thousand missions that have been conducted over the last couple of years, night after night.” And then adds that these raids were routine, no big thing, “like mowing the lawn.” But war is never like “mowing the lawn,” as 38 American and Afghan SOFs found out the night of Aug. 6 when their U.S. CH-47 “Chinook” helicopter flew into a carefully laid ambush just south of the Afghan capital of Kabul. “It was a trap that was set by a Taliban commander,” a “senior Afghan government official” told Agence France Presse. According to the official, the Taliban commander, Qari Tahir, put out a phony story that a Taliban meeting was taking place. When Army Rangers went in to attack the “meeting,” they found the Taliban dug in and waiting. Within minutes the Rangers were pinned down and forced to send for help. The Taliban had spent several years practicing for just such an event in the Korengal Valley that borders Pakistan. According to a 2009 Washington Post story—“Taliban Surprising U.S. Forces With Improved Tactics”—the Valley is a training ground to learn how to gauge the response time for U.S. artillery, air strikes and helicopter assaults. “They know exactly how long it takes before…they have to break contact and pull back,” a Pentagon officer told the Post. “The Taliban knew which route the helicopter would take,” said the Afghan official, because “that is the only route, so they took position on either side of the valley on mountains and as the helicopter approached, they attacked it with rockets.” According to Wired, the insurgents apparently used an “improvised rocket-assisted rocket,” essentially a rocket-propelled grenade with a bigger warhead. As soon as the chopper was down, the Taliban broke off the attack and vanished. According to the U.S., many of those Taliban were later killed in a bombing raid, but believing what the military says these days about Afghanistan is a profound leap of faith. SOFs are not invulnerable, nor are they a solution to the dangerous world we live in. And the qualities that make them effective— stealth and secrecy—are in fundamental conflict with a civilian controlled armed forces, one of the cornerstones of our democracy. As Adm. Eric Olson, former head of Special Operations, recently said at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, having Special Forces in 120 countries “depends on our ability to not talk about it,” and what the military most wanted was “to get back into the shadows.” Which is precisely the problem. Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com

A Few Kind Words for Merciful Endings

The infamous GOP presidential debate from Tampa last week (but aren't they all?) had many lowlights. The depths were plumbed when CNN's moderator, the "Situation Room" blowhard Wolf Blitzer, asked Rep. Ron Paul about a person who elected not to purchase health insurance but later needed expensive medical care to survive. Ron Paul replied, "That's what freedom is all about - taking your own risks." Blitzer, seeking clarification, then asked, "So society should just let him die?" The Tea Bagger audience went wild with acclaim for that idea. A loud "Yeah!" was heard above the clamor. None of the other Republican presidential candidates offered a softer, more nuanced perspective. I was hoping Blitzer would ask one of the candidates about assisted suicide, which I prefer to call "merciful assistance" in checking out. Here, too, Republicans distinguish themselves in the worst possible ways. Republicans, being religious extremists, wholeheartedly support death without dignity, no matter the pain, costs or  suffering. The "let the market decide - if you can't pay, too bad" Republicans prefer intrusive in this instance, rather than supporting freedom to choose one's time and method of death. They oppose giving Americans the right to qualified assistance to put an end to suffering, even when there is no hope for cure, no relief from pain, no prospect for quality of life. Remember Clint Eastwood’s recent film “Million Dollar Baby?” The movie provided a dramatic look at assisted suicide. Many religious leaders were outraged, angry at the idea that humans, not their sky god, can any right to take a life, even one's own, under any circumstances. If God wanted us to die peacefully without pain in dignified ways, he would have made such arrangements. Earl Wettstein, President of the "Final Exit Network," cites polls that show more than 70 percent of Americans support an individual's right-to-die. Under circumstances similar to those depicted in "Million Dollar Baby" and sketched above (i.e., a terminal person suffering unremitting pain with no prospect for recovery), most Americans would choose to die – and would want qualified assistance in doing so. I have asked countless friends and nearly all my relatives about this, and the view seems unanimous that everyone people want to be able to choose and insist upon the right to help those they love and support to die. People want to eliminate legal barriers to merciful endings. One of my heroes, a man who suffered greatly because of his commitment to merciful endings, was Dr. Jack Kevorkian. But there are other advocates for the right to this final freedom, the liberty to choose when and how to die. One prominent advocate for merciful endings is Philip Nitschke, an Australian doctor who believes everyone over 50 should have an end of life plan - and the legal right to carry it out. At present, he cannot assist provide merciful endings, but he can and does offer the ultimate form of self-help knowledge. You an learn about Dr. Nitschke and his approaches in this interview. What are your ideas about merciful endings? Do you support this concept in general and would you want to have such an option yourself in your final moments? What do you think is the likelihood that all Americans and other free people around the world will have such a right in the future?

THE ONWARD MARCH OF NEO-LIBERALISM FALTERING?

Commenting on British elections in the late nineteenth century, Frederick Engels remarked that British voters go to the polls every four or five years to decide which section of the ruling class will continue to exploit them. In similar vein, Dutch anthropologist Joris Luyendijk, writing about the City of London last week (15.09.11), says that “in some countries democracy is beginning to look like the system by which electorates decide which politician gets to implement what the markets dictate.” Plus ca change. The last Letter from the UK (09.11) noted the absence in Britain and throughout most of Europe of any effective opposition on the left to the harsh austerity measures that in country after country are impacting so disastrously on the lives of working people. Part of the explanation for this, it was argued, had to do with the legacy of Stalinism. With the demise of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement, the resurgent right was able to assert that socialism = totalitarian tyranny, and that there was not and could never be any  socialist alternative to “free-market” capitalism, that did not replace democracy with dictatorship. The neo-liberal onslaught was directed not only against the defunct Soviet bloc but against the whole social-democratic heritage. Marxism and every variant of socialism were declared bankrupt. Nationalization, mixed economies and Keynesian economic theory and practice were lumped together and damned as statist constraints on the “free market” and on human freedom itself.

It is extraordinary, particularly after the financial crash of 2008 and the subsequent manifest failure of the remedies that were supposed to stimulate economic recovery that the neo-liberal enterprise is still on the road. Can it really be that all our futures are to be shaped by the operation of  this threadbare and discredited ideology? Is there really no alternative to a profoundly unequal, conflict-ridden world lurching from crisis to ever more intractable crises? It is becoming daily more evident that this is the road to economic and environmental ruin. But, sadly, it seems that for all its self-evident bankruptcy, neo-liberalism remains ideologically hegemonic. This is the opinion of British cultural critic Stuart Hall. If so, it looks like an example of an ideology that retains its mystique for a ruling class and its media-minions, despite the fact that it is no longer able to guarantee the future survival of the economic system it is supposed to advance.

In Britain at the moment it seems that in spite of the grim prospects their policies have imposed, the position of the Con-Dem coalition remains fairly secure. The deficit-cutting austerity measures are now beginning to bite; there is no sign of economic recovery; unemployment has topped 2.5 million for the first time in two years (a long predicted outcome, which the prime minister finds “disappointing”, of severe cuts to the public sector), and youth unemployment has reached almost 1 million. There have been serious riots in the streets by thousands of disinherited young people deprived of jobs and hope. Decline in purchasing power and in living standards has been steeper than any experienced for eighty years. Social inequality has reached levels not seen since Dickensian times. In spite of this the government ploughs on regardless, sticking dogmatically to its austerity program, without a “plan B”. Of course, for the wealthier and wealthiest sections of society there has been no recession at all. Those making over £150.000 a year may grumble about the 50%  tax rate on their incomes – still reluctantly retained by the government – but their discomfort is not such as to seriously affect their style of life.

For the pessimistically inclined, there seems a lot to be pessimistic about. In spite of everything there are grounds for optimism, but optimism must be grounded in realism if it is not to be mere wishful thinking. That there will be no easy way out of this crisis – which is at root a systemic crisis of global finance capitalism – is obvious. But a way out must be found.

One weakness of much, including some of the more sensible, commentary on the ongoing financial crisis is a tendency to treat it primarily, or solely, from the standpoint of the governing elites involved. For example, for the past week or so there has been a growing sense of alarm about the prospect of a Greek default on its debt and the impact this will have on the Euro-zone and possibly on the survival of the EU itself. Commentators opine solemnly about whether “the Greeks” will be able to avoid a default; whether they will be sufficiently robust in imposing the further severe austerity measures and privatization necessary to persuade “the markets” and their EU paymasters of their seriousness. “The Greeks” referred to are the Greek government and the elites, who will not bear the burden of mass impoverishment that has fallen on the millions. The plight of the Greek working people is either not considered at all or dismissed as an irritating factor that should not be allowed to get in the way of “doing the right thing”. Whatever unimaginable pain has to be endured by those who were not responsible for causing the crisis, that’s just too bad; it has to be borne.

The same goes for the millions who are suffering from the “deficit-cutting” austerity measures in Ireland, in Spain and Portugal and who will soon be suffering in Italy and France. To the rulers of these countries, supposedly proud of their democracies, it is perfectly acceptable to wipe away at a stroke the rights and livelihoods of the workers, to slash their wages and pensions, to relegate their youth to the scrapheap before they have had a chance to work. The crisis brought on by the systemic failure of casino capitalism must be solved at the expense of millions of working people who were not responsible for its failure. If they protest and organize to resist the erosion of their livelihoods, to protect their pensions and to fight to retain their jobs by taking industrial action, they are accused of “holding the country to ransom” and “acting against the public interest”. All those who take such actions are, it seems, no longer members of “the public.”

In Britain, the Labour Party opposition in parliament has been lily-livered in its response to the Con-Dem government’s assault on the public sector. In the absence of any well-organized mass party of the left, a great deal of hope rests on the trade union movement. And, to their credit the main public sector unions have signed up to a program of industrial action against the cuts, with a coordinated strike on 30 November and expressions of support for civil disobedience. Yet Ed Miliband has refused to support such actions. He condemned the one day strike by teachers and civil servants in June. Although there are welcome signs that he has moved to dissociate himself from the disastrous legacy of New Labour, there is no sign that he intends to support extra-parliamentary action against the government. If he were to do so it would be seen as a decisive break with the Blairite past and it is likely that he would have widespread public support. With or without Miliband and the parliamentary party, if there is to be effective and sustained opposition to the government’s cuts, a broadly based popular movement must and can be built.

Another respect in which much of the commentary in the mainstream media in Britain fails to come to terms with the seriousness of the ongoing crisis, is the apparent inability to grasp its global implications. For example, in this country there is a certain smugness about being outside the Euro-zone, as though somehow this will shield British banks from the impact of a Greek default because they are not as exposed to Greek debt. But the inter-connectedness of British and other European and US banks which will suffer as a result of a Greek default means that British banks will also be exposed. Likewise, the deepening debt crisis in other Euro-zone countries will result in the drying up of Britain’s main export market, putting the final nail in the coffin of the Con Dem government’s elusive economic recovery. The fact that US Treasury secretary Geithner is due to attend the emergency meeting of EU finance ministers in Wroclaw, Poland, this week, is a pretty clear indication that the seriousness of the Euro crisis has not been lost on the Obama administration. This is the biggest crisis in the history of the European Union and no-one has any idea about how it is going to end. If the European banking system goes down as a result of the Greek debt crisis, Obama’s recovery program is finished too and the US will be plunged back into recession.

And that’s just looking at the financial/economic crisis. The US and the UK are still up to their necks in Afghanistan, a war which has cost billions of dollars, countless lives and is clearly lost. The Anglo-French-US intervention in Libya which amounts to a Nato-led revolution for secure oil revenues, has all the hallmarks of a fiasco. The civil war looks like continuing for some time and even if it doesn’t, the motley conglomerate of tribal, sectarian and Islamist militias constituting the NTC is already in considerable disarray and doesn’t look like the basis of a stable government.

It’s still too early to guess the outcome, but the Arab awakening has already thrown up some interesting prospects for the Middle East. The flowering of democratic forms of expression and the mass participation of its citizens has focused attention on Egypt.  The emergence of a likely new accord between Turkey and Egypt at Israel’s expense,  and the forthcoming vote in the UN General Assembly on a Palestinian state, is likely to alter the whole landscape of the Middle East and put increasing pressure on Israel to reach a just and long-lasting agreement with the Palestinians. In South Africa, pressure is growing on the ANC government to jettison the neo-liberal shock program adopted post-apartheid at the behest of the multi-nationals in place of the promised Freedom Charter. This was a betrayal of everything the movement had fought for and resulted in the continuation of economic apartheid to the present day. Now there is a demand to return to the Freedom Charter with a program of large-scale nationalization.

These are just a few signs of a growing restlessness throughout the world. It is to be hoped that such resistance to the depredations of neo-liberal shock doctrine will continue to grow and, before it is too late, help to achieve a future more conducive to human development.

Justice Delayed - Justice Denied

When are the war criminals and treasonous perpetrators of false wars going to trial? The millions of lives lost, the trillions from the treasury, the loss of national prestige, and economic collapse brought to us by these thieves … Where’s justice? Meanwhile echoing in the hallowed halls of the sacred Reagan Library, Republicans applaud deafeningly the execution of innocents and guilty alike in Perry’s gallows. Yet the true Texas crooks go free – George W., Turdblossom Rove, and Halliburton’s Cheney.

Cheney will never face justice, at least not in this life. He'll die first of a bad heart, literally and figuratively.  A stable national image means more to the White House for all time than serving justice to any of their elite. [Is that also true of Tony Blair’s Britain?]

How did Cheney avoid justice? Firstly, rightwingers are combative defenders of their own. Secondly, leftwingers will never pursue justice against high-profile opponents, much less defend their own successfully against barbs from the hateful right. They have no guts. Thus, America is caught in a vice between the brainless and the balless. Washington's gridlock is a manifestation of a deeper schism in this nation. The historic fault lines are in motion again, and we are all feeling the tremors. Gridlock’s victims are ‘We the People.’

The right is successful only because they are determined. Like a rock. Plus they're full of religion, albeit the hateful derivative, which fuels the movement.

The left is a failure only because it is undetermined and indecisive. Like a wet noodle. Plus it has no set moral charity to give its politics authority. The left has no religion, per se, just an ambiguous acceptance, a situational ethical standard never certain.

The other side is a false cult. They base decisions on myths set by skewed tradition and corrupt corporate influence. But fallacy is no factor; perseverance overcomes defective product. It's proven over 4 decades of American politics. Rove knows it; why don’t Democrats?

One side is based on facts and logic. But truth is no guarantee to success in today's climate. Lack of tenacity defeats good intentions. If only we had a Truman, Rogers, or Roosevelt leading the charge. But we don't. Our leaders capitulate and wave the white flag before the actual battle begins. There is no voice of strong reason, no one to speak truth to power. (Anthony Weiner did but got caught playing with his. Democratic leaders capitulated; rightwingers celebrated.)

We’re stuck betwixt meanies & wienies.

We waited and waited for our Knight in Shining Armor to rescue us from the Evil Empire of the Right.... only to be sorely disappointed when that Knight turned on us in quest of acceptance from enemies determined to destroy him (and us). We've been thrown under the bus for the sake of an attempt.... an attempt to persuade the Right of its evil ways and appeal to their better angels (which they have none) to come to the table in good faith and compromise to achieve solutions. We told our Knight over & over it wouldn't work. But he refused to listen. Now we're in pickle.

Justice denied will lead America further down the path to decline. Failure to counteract the Bush era’s errors will certainly lead to Depression, followed by fascism leading to civil unrest and a Third World America. One evil begets another if not corrected along its stream. Obama has refused to correct; so, America proceeds down that path.