Source: Newsmax

White House Science Czar Involved in Climategate

Friday, November 27, 2009 2:21 PM

By: L.D. Breen

You haven’t heard it from America’s mainstream media yet even Fox News hasn’t covered it but the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. John P. Holdren, is a key player in the Climategate e-mails flap, which is shaping up as the biggest scandal in the history of modern science.

Holdren is an intractable global warming activist with no time for climate change skepticism. In a New York Times article, he contended that such questioning has delayed and continues to delay the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge.

He has also become something of a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood luminaries at President Obama’s state dinner Tuesday night honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and repeatedly appearing as a guest on the David Letterman show.

But the Canada Free Press this week revealed that the former Harvard professor and Al Gore global warming adviser features prominently in the thousands of e-mails and other files made public after the hacking last week of a computer server used by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.

The most embarrassing item for the Obama Administration may be a 2003 exchange between Holdren and TCSDaily.com editor-in-chief Nick Schulz. Schulz challenged Holdren on whether downplaying the significance of the Medieval Warm Period required what lawyers call the burden of proof.

Holdren’s retort contained a remarkable assertion coming from a scientist: In practice, burden of proof is an evolving thing it evolves as the amount of evidence relevant to a particular proposition grows.

Canada Free Press columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball says of the correspondence with Schulz that Holdren’s entire defense and position devolves to a political position.

The CRU documents also find Holdren disparaging solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, contrarians regarding surface temperatures over the past millennium, who were colleagues of Holdren at Harvard, and Ball wonders if Holdren may have intimidated the two scientists before they suddenly and politely withdrew from the fray, as Ball describes it.

As Newsmax has previously reported, Dr. Holdren has a history of alarmingly extremist views. He co-authored a 1977 book, Ecoscience: Population Resources, Environment, advocating compulsory abortion for purposes of population control, mass sterilization, government-dictated family size like China’s one-child policy, and a planetary regime to be policed by the United Nations.

Not long before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion-on-demand throughout America, Holdren co-authored Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, which seems to argue that even years after birth a baby is not yet a human being.

The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, claims the book’s Population Limitation section, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being.

Holdren’s Human Ecology warns of large-scale disaster that might require involuntary fertility control to stop population growth. Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying, the Holdren book suggests.

As a member of President Bill Clinton’s Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology, Holdren chaired a study providing the groundwork for U.S.-Russian cooperation on securing nuclear materials in the aftermath of post-Cold War disarmament.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago, the National Post was granted a stay of execution by the company’s creditors, who decided that the paper that had lost $139.1 million over the last seven years was more valuable alive than dead to the 12 other dailies and 22 non-daily newspapers owned by the company. Journalists, particularly the 277 directly employed at the National Post, were understandably relieved by the news that Canada’s second national daily wouldn’t be closing its doors. Generally speaking, more news is good news, be it for consumers, journalists, or the society in which they both exist. But those who happened to read the editorial in today’s edition of the National Post can be forgiven for wondering if its closure would really represent much of a loss.

Today’s editorial, titled “Money can’t end poverty,” was an example of the Post’s editorial board’s habit of privileging their ideological convictions above the facts of the matter about which they’re writing. This one, though, was so bad that to call it a turd would be an insult to the product of a proper bowel movement.

The piece pays particular attention (if one can call it that) to child poverty, the subject of another unwelcome reminder by Campaign 2000 that Canada has done virtually nothing to fulfill the lofty promise made twenty years ago to end child poverty by the year 2000. The editorial is openly dismissive of the group’s focus, noting that “they likely could have purchased a software program to spit out their latest predictable, formulaic report card without having had to go to the trouble of regurgitating the key findings themselves.” It argues that measures like raising the minimum wage, building a national daycare program, or creating a national income support program for low-income families “will do nothing to make a dent in child poverty,” although it provides no support for that puzzling conclusion. Instead, it argues that child poverty “is not merely or even mostly the result of a lack of money. It is just as often a result of single parenthood, unemployment and addictions.”

The Post’s editorial board gets even nuttier in writing that abolishing “excessive taxes and regulations,” rather than targeted programs and consistent funding, is the path to poverty reduction. Arguing in favour of trickle-down, supply side economics as the panacea for all of society’s problems is such an old Conservative habit that it borders on nostalgia, but the Post’s editorial board indulges in it all the same. “If Campaign 2000 really wanted to get at the tragedy of children living poor,” they argue, “it would push for the abolition of those taxes and regulations that stand it the way of private sector economic expansion.” That such a strategy would do more to enrich society’s wealthiest people than help its poorest is, I’m sure, simply a coincidence. All the same, it is an argument that even George W. Bush would have a hard time making with a straight face.

It’s possible that the Post’s editorial board decided to take an early long-weekend and left Thursday’s column in the hands of an over-anxious and under-informed intern. But it’s more likely that the column was written and sanctioned by the editorial board, who yet again allowed their ideological agenda to define their thinking and writing. Child poverty is a serious issue, and it demands serious comment. The Post’s contribution to the discussion doesn’t come close to qualifying as such.

Over at Poetix Dominic has an interesting post up responding to Pete’s recent discussion of normativity over at Speculative Heresy. Dominic writes:

The crux here seems to be that “man” is not in himself a normal animal: normative accounts of human being are best taken as descriptions of the commitments we make to ourselves and others as preconditions for various kinds of social being, and the capacity to bear such norms is rather haphazardly instantiated in our animal selfhood.

This split between the normed human being and the ab-normal human animal plays out in Badiou, for example, as a tension between the “de-subjectivising” pull of egoic self-interest and the possibility of constructing a political “subject” which affirms (or “verifies”) egalitarian norms. But there’s a problem here: egoic self-interest is arguably also a normed expression of human being – neo-liberalism explicitly affirms it as a norm, as a precondition for higher forms of social organisation (e.g. those based on competitive markets). The conflict between Badiou’s ethical “good” (tenacity in the construction of truths) and “evil” (de-subjectivation, the saggy victory of the flesh) can be seen as a conflict between rival normative commitments rather than between committed and uncommitted being as such. What Rowan Williams calls the “false anthropology” of neo-liberalism does not merely declare, in social Darwinist fashion, that human beings are intrinsically self-seeking creatures: it also goes to considerable lengths to modify the “soul” of society (its basic normative commitments and symbolic co-ordinates) so that individuals will perceive this to be their true nature and act accordingly.

There’s a good deal more in Dominic’s post, especially with respect to heteronormativity and discussions of heterosexuality coming out of the Christian Right, but I wanted to draw attention to this passage in particular as I think it represents something that is truncated or underdetermined within the framework of critiques of neo-liberal capitalism. While I do not disagree with Rowan William’s thesis that the picture of the human as an intrinsically self-seeking creature constitutes a false anthropology, I have noticed that there is a tendency to treat the core of neo-liberal capitalist ideology as consisting almost entirely of this false anthropology.

read on!

What is missing in this conception of neo-liberal ideology is the legal and normative framework that underlies this way of relating to the world and others. On the one hand, in order for neo-liberal capitalist ideology to get off the ground it requires what what might be called a “pure subject” or a “subject-without-qualities”, not unlike Descartes’ cogito or Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception. At the heart of neo-liberal capitalist ideology (NLCI) is not so much a subject pursuing self-interest, as a legal subject functioning as the substrate of property, commercial obligations and debts, and divorced from social context and conditions of production. If this subject must necessarily be a pure subject or subject without content or particularity of any form, then this is because NLCI must establish the equivalence or identity of all subjects populating the social field. In other words, for this social system to present itself as just– and I am not suggesting that this social system is just, far from it –it must be able to hold 1) that the lowest subject is equivalent to the most privileged and successful subject in both the eyes of the law and how the system functions (i.e., that the lowliness of the low is the result of her failure and is her responsibility), and 2) that distributions of wealth are not systematic effects of social structure and how it is organized, but rather is an effect of the individual industry of agents within the social field. These claims are dependent on the positing of a pure subject or subject-without-qualities as the essence of what social subjects are, ignoring any discourse about fields or milieus of individuation (in Deleuze and Simondon’s sense) out of which subjects emerge or are produced.

Second, for NLCI to function it is necessary that the law have a particular form that governs social relations among agents. While the self-interested or self-seeking nature of neo-liberal subjects is certainly one of the key notes of NLCI, this false anthropology is not, in and of itself, sufficient to establish the NLCI as a (dis)functioning system. Were the system composed only of agents pursuing their self-interest we would not have the NLCI, but rather the state of nature so vividly described by Hobbes and Spinoza. More fundamental than agents pursuing their own self-interest is the normative and legal system that mediates relations between agents in pursuing this self-interest. In its minimal form, this normative and legal system is one that revolves primarily around the attribution of duties and debts. That is, it is a normative and legal system that is particularly focused on the grounds under which contracts are maintained. Just as the subject-without-qualities of NLCI is a subject divorced from milieus of individuation, transcendentalized, and universalized in a false transcendental anthropology, the form of the law as the grounds of contractual obligation and debt is a normative system divorced from any milieu of individuation and premised on a subject-without-qualities whereby the equivalence of all subjects is guaranteed so that the law might effect itself despite the inequality inherent in the functioning of the law at the level of concrete social relations. Likewise, such a structure of legality also underlies the structure of private property. These two features, the form of the law and the subject-without-qualities, are, I believe, the fundamental notes of NLCI, not the picture of social relations defined by the pursuit of self-interest.

When Marx argues that Hegel must be turned on his head or describes Kant as a priest of the State, it is this which Marx is referring to. It was Kant, of course, who theorized the subject-without-content and who transcendentalized the structure of debt and obligation underlying contractual relations in the social field. If Kantian normativity and conceptions of the subject are priestly relations to the State, then this is because it ignores the manner in which these conceptions of normativity and the subject are themselves contingent products of certain modes of production, instead turning these forms of normativity and subjectivity into fetishes (in Marx’s sense) that have effaced their own milieu of individuation in order to effectuate themselves all the more forcefully, unjustly, and insidiously while undermining the possibility of any critique of these structures of normativity by transcendentalizing them and thereby treating them as universal and essential structures of all social relations. Likewise, if Hegel must be turned on his head, then this is because he treats these social relations as issuing from the domain of the ideal, the subject, thought, or spirit, rather than structures of production. In both cases effective modes of critique and engagement are undermined by virtue of these structures being detached in thought from their real conditions of production. This, I think, is part of the reason that a focus on ideology within political theory is such a danger for actual political praxis as it tends to obscure this material base and render it invisible to the theorist, creating the illusion that social organization is merely a matter of ideas, the ideal, or signifiers. It is also the reason I see great promise in something like Vitale’s “mediology” (what I would call onticology) and his networkology as at least these forms of analysis, focusing as they do on material mediations, have hope of getting at the base through which these ideal forms are individuated or come into being.

Fox News Makes the Best Pie Chart. Ever. | FlowingData.

Actually, the poll itself is not flawed, but the local affiliate who aired this segment may need a little help.   This screen capture has been going viral on many lefty sites today, including prominent blogs such as that of J. Bradford Delong. … who titled his post “Yes, Fox News Really Is This Bad!”.

Of course, this is an deliberate attempt by Fox News to skew the data. Or perhaps is shows the outright stupidity of the network?  LOL    Isn’t it obvious from the anchor’s strong delivery and the quality of the graphics (Opinions Dynamic?).

There may have been a better way to display the data (hint: bar chart instead of pie chart), and perhaps a better explanation of  just what the numbers represent-

Palin has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2012, along with a host of other Republicans. Among self-identified Republicans in the survey, Palin gets the highest favorable ratings (70 percent) amid a group of other possible contenders for the GOP nomination, including Mike Huckabee (63 percent), Mitt Romney (60 percent) and Newt Gingrich (58 percent).

Speaking of national news networks, has anyone noticed the quality of ESPN broadcasts recently?

As the uncertainty of the world and our national government are seemingly spinning out of our control, we should take this day to be reminded that no matter how frustrated we may feel – We still live in America! We are still the most blessed country on earth. We have the highest standard of living and more individual freedoms than any other country on the planet despite all our recent setbacks.

This Thanksgiving, our country faces many game changing decisions. These decisions will affect future generations of Americans and could “fundamentally transform America” in ways we have never really considered. At this pivotal time in our history we should take a moment and reflect on what made America the place that draws freedom seeking people to its’ shores from all around the world.

As a citizen of the world we have been a good and giving nation. Can we be a better citizen of the world? Of course, so can every other country on the planet. However, to do that does not require that we throw our heritage and sovereignty out the window. So what can we do differently?

It is time for a change! We must find a way to return to our core national values. We need to restore a feeling of pride in America, a feeling of a national community, the desire to help your fellow citizens. Doing the right thing does not mean establishing an enormous federal government to provide nanny state oversight so that everything is equal among the citizens. Doing the right thing is creating an environment that fosters opportunity, charity and community.

Don’t take our way of life for granted. Give thanks for your blessings.  Pray for those who serve our country. Pray for our leaders, that they receive God’s guidance and wisdom. Pray for those on hard times.  Be accountable for yourself and your family. Treat your fellow citizens with the same dignity you want to be treated with. Lend a helping hand where ever you can.

 As I said earlier, we are at a turning point. The choice is ours. We will swim or sink together. I wish for all a better 2010. Thanks to God for all he has blessed our nation with and may he continue to bless America.

“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.” — Alan Greenspan

“It makes no difference to a widow with her savings in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation or pays no income tax during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is ‘taxed’ in a manner that leaves her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 100 percent income tax but doesn’t seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent.” — Warren Buffett “How Inflation Swindles the Investor,” Fortune, May, 1977

Ironically Greenspan was directly responsible for inflation while serving as Fed chairman and Buffett now advocates, and profits from, inflationary bailouts.

I mentioned in one of my Games That Changed My Life blog posts that Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is one of those. For those who don’t know… go read up on it!

Just kidding. I am not talking about the game itself… more the lore within its story… specifically that of the ideologies of the various factions that come into play.

So anyway… the original game has seven factions, with the Alien Crossfire expansion pack, there are five more, plus two alien ‘factions’ (they don’t count… at the risk of sounding ’speciesist’ I’m sticking with humanity here).

I’ll be presenting each of the twelve human factions of the expanded game, comparing my old attitudes from my Statist days with a fresh perspective from my current Anarchic standpoint. But before I do that I should probably give an introduction to the setting to provide context.

The story begins with an international effort from within the United Nations to construct a starship capable of reaching the Alpha Centauri system (the closest star system to our own). The resulting ship, the Unity is launched amid global turmoil. You never really learn what happens back on Earth, but many assume that ecological disasters, combined with global economic collapse and nuclear war wipe out the population there. Needless to say, the colonists aboard the Unity have to operate under the assumption that they are humanity’s only hope for survival.

Anyway, at some point in the Unity’s journey, there is a mutiny, the captain is assassinated and catastrophic system failures lead to a need to jettison from the ship very quickly. Amid this turmoil, the colonists and crew divide into seven factions divided by ideology (I never figured out where the five other human factions in Alien Crossfire entered the picture, but whatever).

So seven colony pods eject from the Unity as it crash lands on Chiron, the earth-like planet in the Alpha Centauri system, and on this planet, most often referred to simply as ‘Planet’, these seven factions build their societies according to their faction’s ideology.

Dierdre Skye, the Unity’s chief xenobiologist formed the Gaia’s Stepdaughters, who, you can imagine are the environmentalists determined not to repeat the mistakes we made on Earth that screwed up its ecology.

Sheng-ji Yang, the Unity’s chief of security formed the Human Hive, which is basically a neo-Maoist collective ruled under a police state.

Prokhor Zakharov, the Unity’s chief science officer formed the University of Planet, who seek a life of unfettered scientific research and progress.

Nwabudike Morgan, an African prince turned corporate mogul is the C.E.O. of Morgan Industries, who are a ruthlessly monopolistic corporation with a so-called ‘free market’ ideology.

Corazon Santiago, a security officer on the Unity formed the Spartan Federation, who are a militant faction of survivalists, living mostly to be soldiers.

Miriam Godwinson, the ‘Psych Chaplain’ of the Unity formed The Lord’s Believers, who are an evangelical Christian theocracy… nuff said.

Dr. Pravin Lal, the Unity’s chief surgeon formed The U.N. Peacekeeping Force, hoping to salvage the original mission according to the U.N. Charter. As well as being the last remnant of the U.N. (apparently) they also established themselves as a constitutional democracy.

So anyway, when someone comes into contact with every other faction, they can hold the first Planetary Council meeting to elect one of the faction leaders as the ‘Planetary Governor’. Of course, he/she isn’t really in control once they are Governor… the position has about the same amount of power over individual factions as the U.N. Secretary General has over individual countries. Though he/she does have the power to veto decisions made in the Council.

Despite the original mission going awry, the U.N. Charter still governs inter-factional relations, unless a faction leader can muster enough votes in a Planetary Council meeting to repeal it (and by enough votes, that could mean enough votes to surpass a veto). Atrocities include the use of nerve gas in warfare, use of ‘Planet Buster’ missiles, extermination of bases, and Nerve Stapling.

Nerve Stapling is a tool of coercion and control which isn’t fully explained in detail… but suffice it to say, it suppresses rebellious tendencies, and is probably painful, and probably causes permanent harm to someone’s brain.

As well as having to contend with each other, the factions also find themselves contending with the native wildlife. The surface of Planet is teeming with a strange pinkish red type of fungus called Xenofungus. This fungus is often teeming with creatures called Mind Worms, which congregate in ‘Boils’ and employ psychic terror to paralyze their prey and seed their larvae in their victim. Eventually, the technology exists to breed mind worms, these boils are controlled by psychically gifted ‘Talents’… and communication with the Planetmind: the collective consciousness of all of the native life eventually leads to learning about a painful cycle of annihilation and rebirth the life on Planet goes through. One of the options for victory in the game is the project known as Ascent to Transcendence, which apparently involves a form of evolution and rising state of consciousness for humans of that faction and planet life that supposedly averts the cataclysmic end to the cycle.

So anyway, I did my best to explain the background… next post I’ll start my musings of the social engineering options in the game… and after that, I’ll address the original seven factions and the five other human factions added later.

Edwin Nafarin - dpavilion principal

As an architect practicing in Indonesia, a developing Asian country with world’s largest muslim population, I surely have a design ideology that differs from those of other architects in other countries. I always try to observe and understand the surrounding condition, then create something with possesses a “soul” which is harmonious with local life.

Indonesia, as a developing country with a “less” stable economy, still leave many of its citizens in poverty. This is the basis for my architectural idealism. I want the poors to be able to have facilities and entertainement, just like the affluent ones. This is termed as “kere bisa hore” (the poors can say yeah); the poors have the rights to be happy.

Yet I am not 100% altruist. I support the idea that architecture is a commodity. In a situation where economy is regarded as the basis for everything, commodification is unavoidable. However, I believe architecture should be a commodity with high-quality, instead of a low-quality one.

I am also fascinated with Nusantara (the archipelago between Asia and Australia) which possesses myriad of phenomenal architectures. I try to adopt the forms or the values  of Nusantara architectures in order to create contemporary architectural forms.

Our design results at dpavilion architects are combination of idealistic works and commercial works. It is a matter of cross-subsidy, so to speak. An architectural bureau needs sufficient budget to operate, and I am aware that not all projects can be carried out with high idealism. But I guarantee that we shall not produce architecture with low-quality or no-quality.

Several of our works in dpavilion architects which have made me proud to be an architect of “kere bisa hore”, are, among others: Contertainer in Batu, Wisata Bahari Lamongan in Lamongan, Jawa Timur Park in Batu, Playground de Rumah in Malang, and Batu Night Spectacular in Batu.

One of the more worrying American imports in recent years is the so-called ‘internship’.  The trend was recently highlighted by the BBC in relation to MPs use/misuse of them.   The beeb have now followed up with a timely article explaining how the trend is spreading across numerous industries in the UK.
For anyone with no idea what a internship is – basically employers offer a program that gives students, new graduates or ‘gap-year kids’ the opportunity to get ‘work-experience’ for the company, unpaid, often for a University summer, sometimes for much longer.   The argument goes that that the company is doing the kid a favour – these aren’t real jobs, really just admin – but it gives the interns a ‘foot-in-the-door’, a ‘network of contacts in the industry’, the chance to check it is really the right industry for them and most importantly the magic ‘experience’ to add to their CV.  This helps escape the job-seeker’s paradox that you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job.  The employers are often so impressed with interns that at the end job offers may be made. When presented like that it sounds like the company is doing a great social good.  ‘Helping job-seekers!’.  Very worthy.  The reality isn’t quite so straightforward nor is it the win-win for all it first appeared. 
I am a huge advocate of the importance of both meritocracy and competition (see my philosophy page).  Meritocracy is key to social mobility, which in turn is key to attaining social justice.  As we drift to internships becoming a ‘cultural norm’ in the UK we’re creating a blocker to meritocracy.  In the long run this will harm our economy and society.  
When you listen to the work that interns really do they are typically not ‘work-experience’ in the sense of shadowing someone doing their day-job or having a go while the incumbent looks on.  No, more normally they have interns doing ‘real jobs’.  They’re expected to arrive and work set hours, and often kicked out of the program if they do not.  They have set administrative duties to perform which keep the business going.  To me this crosses the line from ‘work experience’ to outright exploitation.  If the interns weren’t doing this work then somebody in paid employment would be.  That person would then be off the unemployment register and paying tax and NI and pumping those earnings back into the economy.  Instead we have them still on the dole whilst the student extends their debt and works for free with no guarantee of any reward at the end.   I can only spot one real winner in the arrangement.
We need to consider who has the means to take internships:  Who can offer three months of their lives working without pay, living in a big city?  Only people with alternative financial support.  Straight away that excludes a whole chunk of society.  The kids from the estates to who we’ve been preaching  if they work hard they can achieve anything; who then put their heads-down, ignored the peer-pressure, worked hard, got the GCSEs and A-Levels, went to Uni and got the 2-1  or first degree’s now find themselves stuck in the old job-seeker’s paradox and flipping burgers,   angry and disenchanted with society and saddled with university debt.   Meanwhile, the well-to-do kid who scraped through their GCSEs and A-Levels thanks to the kind of one-on-one educational attention you only get at the best independent schools, who drank their way through uni but pulled their socks up just enough to get an OK 2:2 sails into the intern post because they can stay with Mum and Dad and have an allowance.  They get the magic experience on the CV, they get the contacts and the reference, they get the end job.  Now,  they may well be ‘able’ enough to do the job, but the ‘better’ candidate has missed out.  That stinks to me every bit as much as those well meaning, misguided affirmative action plans companies have in place.   Both spit in the face of the idea of meritocracy.
The trend is embedding.  In some industries it is almost becoming a pre-requisite to entry that you have done an internship.  We must level this playing field.  It pains me to say it, because by nature I’m against regulation but  to get proper meritocracy and competition working we should legistlate that if the internship has the characteristics of real employment then legally it must be treated as such with a formal contract, fair selection process, and at least a minimum wage salary.  In the long run this will be a real win-win for every player in the economy. 

Rather than wait for such regulation I hope the companies realise now that they are being short-sighted by saving pennies here which could cost them pounds later.  The barrier to entry means they’re potentially missing out the very best, hungriest talent.  The outlay of paying minimum wage for administrative support is minimal.  The return on genuinely recruiting the best people into your firm for the long-run will pay back that tenfold.    Meritocracy is not just good for society – it is good for business too.

“Demokrasi adalah sebuah benda yang aneh sekali bentuknyadalam biologis; ia tidak sebaris dengan proses perkembangan.

Hukum perkembangan adalah mendakinya kita dalam derajat perkembangan sentralisasi yang baik; perbedaan bagian tubuh memberikan kelainan pada fungsi. Otak mengontrol semua bagian organisme.

Demokrasi adalah anti perkembangan. Ia tidak memiliki sistem sentral yang ditakuti. Tidak ada satu badan bagian politik, yang bisa berpikir dan merancang semua organismenya; ia mengira bahwa otak bisa dialokasikan dimana- mana dalam organisme.”

The latest Theory Talk features an interesting interview with James Ferguson, Stanford political anthropologist and outspoken critic of the “development” doctrine. In the talk, he offers insights to his work and vita, but he also talks more generally about social science approaches to global studies:

One of the things that bothers me about a lot of what I read the in social sciences that’s, as you say, ‘globally oriented’, is that it seems to start with a bunch of certainties, a bunch of assumptions – a kind of Western liberal common sense – that we know how countries ought to be organized. They ought to be democracies; they ought to respect human rights; they ought to guarantee the rule of law; they ought to be at peace with their neighbors. And then you look at, say, a country in Africa and all you’re able to see is a series of lacks – of things that should be there but aren’t. And you end up constructing huge parts of the world as just sort of empty spaces where things ought to be there but aren’t. And it leads to a kind of impoverished understanding, I think, because you don’t really understand what is going on here. How do people conduct their affairs? How is legitimate authority exercised? How are rules made and enforced? You know, all the kinds of questions that ought to be the starting place tend to disappear or recede into the background. So, I think the real challenge is to approach this whole question with a sense of openness, a willingness to be surprised and learn something new and not to be so deductive.

This is pretty much the criticism of “development” and the subsequent category of “development countries”, which was discussed here before. From this angle the analysis of social relations — using the analytical unit of the state — focuses on an abstract ideal that reality is supposed to be molded into. The strategy can be likened to a literature critic who trashes a novel because its is different from what the critic had expected. Such linear concepts often blur one’s vision on what’s crucial.

The President’s numbers are tanking again. He is making such a mess of things that he has lost ground in almost every major area. Things are so bad that even MSNBC’s Chris Matthews a normally staunch supporter of President Obama recently referred to him as “Carteresque”.

Here is a transcript from the that show:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Welcome back. The word these days is optics, visuals, signals. In the Carter presidency, the optics were not exactly robust, and Ronald Reagan rode that to a big victory in 1980. Is the Obama White House sending some Carteresque signals these days? Some see that in the deep bow to the Emperor of Japan, an unforced error say critics. Then there was, there was what happened in China: Obama got nothing in the way of concessions over there in spite of playing the polite visitor. And his effort to speak directly to the Chinese was jammed by the government. Third, that decision to try the terrorists up in that federal court in New York City. Again, nothing that had to be done, and critics say it shows that Obama, his team doesn’t understand this is a war we’re in. David, that’s the question. These optics are everything in a president. Carter used to carry that garment bag over his shoulder. This president is he making mistakes like in China like in Japan? 

DAVID IGNATIUS, WASHINGTON POST : I think he is coming across as stiff. He is talking too much sometimes and communicating too little. So the opposite of what we saw during the campaign. Although the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York apparently was Eric Holder’s, it strikes me that it really is a mistake. I mean, there are too many bad things that could happen. There is no reason to have to have done this. And, you know, it’s a political feel for decision-making. That wonderful thing you just did about President Johnson’s feel for the moment. That’s what I think is missing now with this group in the White House. I don’t know where it’s gone. They certainly had it during the campaign. Maybe they’ll get it back. But it’s missing now.

MATTHEWS: It’s the political touch. You were in China. You just got back. Tell me about that. The president tried to speak to the Chinese people and apparently it was jammed. Tell me about that.

ANNE KORNBLUT, WASHINGTON POST: This was the big moment of the whole trip to Asia in fact, eight days in Asia he was going to speak to Chinese students in Shanghai unfiltered at least in his answers, and in fact the Chinese government, you know, they allowed the event to take place, but it was only shown locally on Shanghai television. People didn’t see it. The one piece of news he made in it saying that the internet should be free and people should have access dribbled out to the Chinese public and then started being deleted from all the Chinese websites. So, then, the following day he held a quote unquote press conference with the Chinese President Hu Jintao in which there were no questions and they read statements. Now, this is of course, this is the Chinese, it’s their home turf. They were allowed to do what they wanted to. That was the White House’s argument. And the White House haggled with them to get it more open. 

MATTHEWS: The White House got jammed here.

The once untouchable president is beginning to struggle with the public’s growing discontent with his policies and job performance. This administration has demonstrated an ongoing attitude of superiority and an apparent disregard for the wishes of the people by continuing to push unpopular programs and spending down our throats.

If you need proof look no further than the numbers below from the most recent Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll. Also note that Republicans are currently beating the Democrats in every policy category and that leaders on both sides of the aisle in Congress have major problems with their “Unfavorable” ratings. For the record, the Republicans have done nothing to deserve this turnaround. The country is mostly conservative and independent – this is more a vote against the Democrts than for the Republicans. See numbers below:

Perceptions of Obama

Obama Approval Index -15

Strongly Approve 27%

Strongly Disapprove 42%

Taxes Will Go Down 19%

Gov’t Spending Will Go Up 66%

Obama on Economy – Ex/Good 34%

Trust on Issues

Education  Dem 38%   GOP 43%

Health Care  Dem 40%   GOP 46%

War in Iraq  Dem 38%   GOP 45%

Social Security  Dem 37%   GOP 45%

National Security  Dem 37%   GOP 50%

Economy  Dem 36%   GOP 48%

Taxes  Dem 35%   GOP 50%

Abortion  Dem 35%   GOP 47%

Immigration  Dem 33%   GOP 45% 

Gov’t Ethics/Corruption  Dem 31%   GOP 34%

Congressional Leadership

Nancy Pelosi  Fav 33%   Unfav 57% 

John Boehner  Fav 27%   Unfav 34% 

Mitch McConnell  Fav 26%  Unfav 32%

Harry Reid  Fav 25%  Unfav 47%

The numbers speak for themselves with 64% of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track. It’s time to go back to what works; a constitutional government and a free market economy.

Restore the Republic, Reject the Agenda of the Radical Left!

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” — Patrick Henry

The President’s personal popularity may be holding but his job performance and policies are starting to come under fire from all directions. Over the last few weeks even NBC has allowed SNL to take the gloves off and PBO is finally starting to feel the pressure of his office. Kudos for nailing the policy problems in the skit. Originally I had the skit posted but shockingly NBC pulled it back!

Sometimes the truth is UGLY!

Are we on the edge of financial disaster as a nation? Is the entire economy a house of cards? Has a recovery really begun? Whether you believe it has or not read the article below from the New York Times. Even given their normally liberal stance, it is clear that the growing deficit raises fear everywhere – even at the N.Y. Times! This is an excellent explanation of the problem.

NY Times – Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: November 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true.

But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

Even as Treasury officials are racing to lock in today’s low rates by exchanging short-term borrowings for long-term bonds, the government faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The potential for rapidly escalating interest payouts is just one of the wrenching challenges facing the United States after decades of living beyond its means.

The surge in borrowing over the last year or two is widely judged to have been a necessary response to the financial crisis and the deep recession, and there is still a raging debate over how aggressively to bring down deficits over the next few years. But there is little doubt that the United States’ long-term budget crisis is becoming too big to postpone.

Americans now have to climb out of two deep holes: as debt-loaded consumers, whose personal wealth sank along with housing and stock prices; and as taxpayers, whose government debt has almost doubled in the last two years alone, just as costs tied to benefits for retiring baby boomers are set to explode.

The competing demands could deepen political battles over the size and role of the government, the trade-offs between taxes and spending, the choices between helping older generations versus younger ones, and the bottom-line questions about who should ultimately shoulder the burden.

“The government is on teaser rates,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates lower deficits. “We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

The government’s average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.’s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.

“All of the auction results have been solid,” said Matthew Rutherford, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary in charge of finance operations. “Investor demand has been very broad, and it’s been increasing in the last couple of years.”

The problem, many analysts say, is that record government deficits have arrived just as the long-feared explosion begins in spending on benefits under Medicare and Social Security. The nation’s oldest baby boomers are approaching 65, setting off what experts have warned for years will be a fiscal nightmare for the government.

“What a good country or a good squirrel should be doing is stashing away nuts for the winter,” said William H. Gross, managing director of the Pimco Group, the giant bond-management firm. “The United States is not only not saving nuts, it’s eating the ones left over from the last winter.”

The current low rates on the country’s debt were caused by temporary factors that are already beginning to fade. One factor was the economic crisis itself, which caused panicked investors around the world to plow their money into the comparative safety of Treasury bills and notes. Even though the United States was the epicenter of the global crisis, investors viewed Treasury securities as the least dangerous place to park their money.

On top of that, the Fed used almost every tool in its arsenal to push interest rates down even further. It cut the overnight federal funds rate, the rate at which banks lend reserves to one another, to almost zero. And to reduce longer-term rates, it bought more than $1.5 trillion worth of Treasury bonds and government-guaranteed securities linked to mortgages.

Those conditions are already beginning to change. Global investors are shifting money into riskier investments like stocks and corporate bonds, and they have been pouring money into fast-growing countries like Brazil and China.

The Fed, meanwhile, is already halting its efforts at tamping down long-term interest rates. Fed officials ended their $300 billion program to buy up Treasury bonds last month, and they have announced plans to stop buying mortgage-backed securities by the end of next March.

Eventually, though probably not until at least mid-2010, the Fed will also start raising its benchmark interest rate back to more historically normal levels.

The United States will not be the only government competing to refinance huge debt. Japan, Germany, Britain and other industrialized countries have even higher government debt loads, measured as a share of their gross domestic product, and they too borrowed heavily to combat the financial crisis and economic downturn. As the global economy recovers and businesses raise capital to finance their growth, all that new government debt is likely to put more upward pressure on interest rates.

Even a small increase in interest rates has a big impact. An increase of one percentage point in the Treasury’s average cost of borrowing would cost American taxpayers an extra $80 billion this year — about equal to the combined budgets of the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.

But that could seem like a relatively modest pinch. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, estimated that the Treasury’s tab for debt service this year would have been $221 billion higher if it had faced the same interest rates as it did last year.

The White House estimates that the government will have to borrow about $3.5 trillion more over the next three years. On top of that, the Treasury has to refinance, or roll over, a huge amount of short-term debt that was issued during the financial crisis. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead.

To lock in low interest rates in the years ahead, Treasury officials are trying to replace one-month and three-month bills with 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities. That strategy will save taxpayers money in the long run. But it pushes up costs drastically in the short run, because interest rates are higher for long-term debt.

Adding to the pressure, the Fed is set to begin reversing some of the policies it has been using to prop up the economy. Wall Street firms advising the Treasury recently estimated that the Fed’s purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities pushed down long-term interest rates by about one-half of a percentage point. Removing that support could in itself add $40 billion to the government’s annual tab for debt service.

This month, the Treasury Department’s private-sector advisory committee on debt management warned of the risks ahead.

“Inflation, higher interest rate and rollover risk should be the primary concerns,” declared the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, a group of market experts that provide guidance to the government, on Nov. 4.

“Clever debt management strategy,” the group said, “can’t completely substitute for prudent fiscal policy.”

Look at numbers, they speak for themselves: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Don’t fall for the recovery line. We need to remain vigilant and continue to fight for fiscal responsibility. We must shut down the runaway government spending and let the free markets “fix” the economy. It is time to worry about the future of our children. If we don’t get the economy back on track our children and grandchildren will be condemned to a country with a European style economy and a substantially reduced standard of living. Is that what we want our legacy to be?

Wakeup, America! Speak up and be heard. Hold them accountable, they had their chance, it didn’t work – time to return to what works; the private sector, a free market economy less government and lower taxes. To save the country we love, we must revive the original American Dream, we must trust the structure of our constitutional government and the freedom it nurtures or the dream will not survive.

I’ll close with some words of wisdom from a few of our founding fathers and great leaders:

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy”. – Thomas Jefferson

“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison

As Thomas Jefferson said, “I sincerely believe… that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”  And…“With respect to future debts, would it not be wise and just for [a] nation to declare in [its] constitution that neither the legislature nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years? And that all future contracts shall be deemed void as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 19 years from their date?”

Restore the Republic, Reject the Agenda of the Progressive Left!

While I thought that Dr. Pound did a great job explaining Ideology today in class, if you’re still having some trouble with Althusser, try reading the article by Fiske.  When I read them yesterday, I read Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” first.  Althusser’s article started off as a relatively straightforward read, but as it went on it got more and more convoluted, especially in regards to the subject.  When I finished the article, I put it down and immediately did something else just to give my brain a rest.  Eventually I felt brave enough to attempt the Fiske article.  I sat down in my chair, took a deep breath, and was pleasantly surprised.  Fiske’s “Culture, Ideology, Interpellation” was written in more accessible language.  Part way through his paper, he starts talking about Althusser in that same accessible language.  He made Althusser sound so easy that I couldn’t believe I was originally confused. 

So if you’re having trouble, try giving Fiske’s article a read!

Terrorist Attorney Refuses to Say Innocent Americans Were Murdered – Says 9-11 Killers Will Put US Foreign Policy on Trial (Video)
November 23, 2009 by Gateway Pundit

9-11 terrorist attorney Scott Fenstermaker said that the 9-11 terrorists will put the US foreign policy on trial. He refused to say that innocent civilians were murdered on September 11th by the Al-Qaeda killers. He also said he will be pleased if the terrorists are released and the rule of law is followed.

Dick Cheney said today that Eric Holder wants a show trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
It looks like he’ll get one.

Democrats, government, ideology, justice, left wing, liberalism, nanny state, news, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, politics, scandal, terrorism, war

Unreal. Katie Couric Recites Holiday Health Care Poem on Nightly News (Video)
November 23, 2009 by Gateway Pundit

bias, government, health care, ideology, indoctrination, left wing, liberalism, marxism, nanny state, news media, pandering, philosophy, political correctness, politics, propaganda, video