Gadfly

Chemistry On The Hoof

2010-01-15T21:22:00.000-05:00

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Chemistry On The Hoof

The reasons for not eating hamburgers in fast food establishments, or even greasy spoons, are many and varied. First, over 80% of US beef is treated with hormones while still on the hoof a short time before slaughter. Bovine growth hormone (BGH) makes for nice fat cows in quick order. To make doubly sure the animals wear enough weight, they are moved off the range and into feed lots to be beefed up for the slaughterhouse. In the feed lots, corn and soy mash is the soup de jour (and appetizer, entrée, and dessert). The grain and legume combination is high in protein and available in all-you-can-eat quantities to increase the weight of their steaks and chops. No more delicate grasses, Bossy.

A further advantage of the corn/soy-fed beef is that the animal feed is mostly genetically engineered. The Black Angus, of course have no First Amendment rights and rarely take to the streets to demonstrate against such artifice. There will be no mass protests in Chicago .

Another concern, beyond hormones and GE feed, is the beasts’ reaction to fright and fear and the resulting chemical changes in their bodies. The noise, the smells, the lines of animals being coerced toward the slaymaster all must evoke extreme anxiety, fear, panic and, soon enough, depression. We all know how rotten we feel when subjected to such stress as misplaced car keys or too many choices on someone’s automated answering tape. The brain contains over 30 different neurotransmitters: acetyl choline, serotonin, dopamine, nor epinephrine ... all in various states of balance. Their interactions determine our mood, our energy level, our blood pressure and heart rate, and whether we are ready for fight & flight or rest & repair. The chemicals float around not only the brain but the rest of the body, too. The meat of stressed animals can’t be as nutritious, or tasty, as from a calm one.

A neighbor-friend, aware of these chemical changes, follows his own strict hunting guidelines. He is careful to be downwind of the deer, and he waits till he gets a clean shot at the animal’s head. No time for the deer to be taken by any negative thoughts and emotions. Hunters whose prime aim is a trophy don’t give the body chemistry of the deer a second thought. A buck’s antlers are not much changed by adrenergic chemistry. The only worry my hunting friend has is that the deer that will provide him with many meals over the winter may have been browsing on the lawns of neighbors who use herbicides to suppress the growth of dandelions and other weeds. Herbicides such as 2,4D (dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) are toxic to fish and frogs and irritant to humans. Back in the 60s and early 70s, an herbicide called Agent Orange was used on the broadleaf foliage of the Ho Chi Minh trail. It, too, was supposed to be only irritant to human eyes and skin. My hunter friend says the saving grace is that the fertilizer-weed killer is applied in the spring, and hunting season waits till the late fall and winter. Of course, the weed problem and the dietary habits of the deer are amenable to other, less toxic solutions. That will be worth an essay of its own.

The last matter the beefeaters and deerslayers might be apprehensive about is wasting disease – mad cow disease and mad deer syndrome. It is not an infection in the sense of bacteria or viruses causing encephalitis or meningitis. Rather, the condition involves rogue proteins called prions that form inventive abstract sculptural shapes in the gray matter. It may occur in cows, deer, elk, mink, and people. In humans it is called variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. An English friend tells of many cases of mad cow disease and several cases of vCJD in Great Britain in the 90s. Millions of cows had to be destroyed. In the US, only a few proven mad cows were found, but “downer” cattle are common. Mad elk and deer disease, moreover, became common in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Mad deer syndrome in Wisconsin erupted into political contention between the DNR and hunters. It was reported that thousands of deer in one county had to be destroyed. Official counsel in various other areas of the state reporting only sporadic cases advised hunters who were concerned about wasting disease to donate the deer they killed to food pantries. Shame in spades.

Various establishment agencies and organizations – the USDA, states issuing hunting licenses, and Big Beef – were scared to death of finding any cases of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE). Though the testing technology quickly became simpler and the results more certain, they tested only a tiny sampling under their respective jurisdictions. Feed lots avoided testing “downer” cows even though the steer exhibited one of the cardinal signs of BSE. States that derived considerable revenues from selling hunting licenses tested deer and elk taken in areas where wasting disease had been identified but rarely in others. In contrast, Japan tested every single cow destined for human consumption in the Land Of The Rising Sun.

With all the reasons to eschew meat in our diets, must we conclude that the American way of life is under threat? The vegetarians are surely gloating just a little.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia …

2010-01-15T21:18:00.001-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia …

A more complete list of Al Qaeda coffee houses is: Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Morocco, Germany New Jersey, and Florida. Afghanistan isn’t even number one or two. Marine General Jim Jones, the President’s National Security Advisor, admits there are fewer than 100 Al Qaeda loyalists left in Afghanistan. They are scattered and have no training camps there. The question comes to mind: So what are we doing there? A next-door corollary is why do we still have over 130,000 troops, and even more private contractors (mercenaries), in Iraq? Iraq, you may recall, never had and Al Qaeda jihadists before we invaded, and there are few there now. But, there were plenty of native Iraqi insurgents until we put them on the US payroll. In Afghanistan, we are approaching 100,000 official troops and plenty of CIA officers and BlackWater armed “advisors.” The people in the countryside know who’s who.

A more basic question is: what is Al Qaeda’s goal up to and how can we counter such evil intent? History, here, is instructive. Osama bin Laden is a member of the family that runs a richly successful enterprise, the Bin Laden Group in Saudi Arabia and beyond. It is a large family, all Saudi and all Sunni Muslims. Osama is more so. When the US convinced the royal family to allow a military base to be built on sacred Arabian soil and started to station American troops there, Osama got mad and decided on civil disobedience in the form of a truck bomb. So, in June 1996, he set off on his career as a jihadist.

It was not the first military base the US set up on foreign soil, but it began a great acceleration. Today there are perhaps 800 or 900 around the world outside of the US. The Pentagon is not quite sure of the exact number, but they are proud of the total achievement. OK, some of the bases are small and some countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Russia still haven’t allowed them. Remember, we have Guantanamo in Cuba. Cuba! Bin Laden has become more convinced that America is the Great Satan. Bin Laden sent out a broadcast in 2004. He spoke about dollars and relative costs. He said, “Every dollar of Al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah. … It is easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. We are continuing this policy of bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy, Allah willing.”

The latest US president to declare war on Al Qaeda is Barack Obama. He has tried to convince the Pakistanis and now the Yemenis to accept American help in pursuing Al Qaeda. Somehow, we feel we don’t have to convince Afghanistan. We project our own anti Al Qaeda emotions and expect these countries to jump with joy at the prospect of US military operations on their soil and over their air space. Why aren’t they afraid of Al Qaeda?

Let’s consider these nations one at a time. Pakistan is mainly concerned with India, a brother member of the nuclear club. The Pakistanis feel that the Taliban will keep India in India. The Taliban is drawn from the Pashtun tribes of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, a total population of about 50 million. The Taliban are Muslim fundamentalists, largely created by the Pakistan Military and Intelligence Services. The Pakistan Army won’t go into Pashtun areas in the northwest except briefly to show the flag. It’s the least they could do for the billions of dollars we give them in military aid. Al Qaeda is only a small part of the Pashtun, and Pakistan can’t be bothered with them except to holler “Osama Bin Laden” every year when the US Congress votes whether to send money to ally Pakistan. Geopolitics!

Yemen, at the southern border of Saudi Arabia, has its own insurgency, the Houthis. The few Al Qaeda training camps in the mountains are of no concern to the Yemeni government — the Houthis are Shia and Al Qaeda is Sunni. Al Qaeda you may remember was born in Saudi Arabia. To complicate matters further, a group of Socialist separatists in south Yemen have economic grievances and want to secede. So, now comes the US pressing Yemen to let in US troops and planes to go after (non-insurgent) Al Qaeda. Back in the White House, the staff is busy researching Byzantine politics, which seems all too relevant.

Then, we must look to Afghanistan. The country is 80% rural, has no oil deposits, and grows a large opium poppy crop. Afghanistan is controlled by various tribes — Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik … — some of them religious zealots, a few secular. There are militias, drug makers, drug traffickers, kidnapping gangs, opportunist criminals … and corruption everywhere. Except for Kabul where the national government has some influence, Afghanistan is a country of local governance. The tribesmen are pretty good with rifles and roadside bombs. Look at what they did to the Russians, 120,000 strong with the latest weapons. Before the Russians, history tells us, the British, Persians, and Alexander the Great all suffered the same fate. The Afghans with their rare horsemanship and use of simple weapons have defended their homeland well for millennia. Yet, the Pentagon and the White House say their primary goal is to train the Afghan Army. The Russians smile knowingly.

In the US, individuals on both sides of the political divide have seen the lunacy of occupying Afghanistan. Robert Pape of the University of Chicago who wrote the book “Bombing To Win” says that occupation of a foreign country increases suicide bombing and terrorism. His strategy has led to the bombing of suspected Taliban officials, and homes of villagers, wedding parties, and outdoor markets. Professor Pape doesn’t say whether bombing is conducive to friendship between our countries. The progressive journalist Chris Hedges says that “military occupation and violence is always counterproductive … and creates more insurgents than it kills.” We might add that the military prison at Bagram and its subsidiary “The Black Jail” makes for hard feelings from the families of the 700 prisoners held there.

The Obama administration seems to be doing its best to spend ourselves into bankruptcy in accordance with bin Laden’s wishes. It costs $1 million to maintain one soldier in Afghanistan each year. It costs $400 per gallon to send gasoline to that landlocked country. How much does it cost for private contractors who number more than the troops? Not even the Pentagon, State Department, and Treasury meeting in secret can know.

Just think — for a $100 billion a year we could fund peace academies next door to West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs to train diplomats, envoys, and state craft specialists. We could provide undergraduate scholarships for majors in international conflict resolution. On second thought, more education makes for more investigative reporters and more US dissidents here at home.

Detainees At Home and Abroad

2009-12-31T10:38:00.001-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Detainees at Home and Abroad

Many folks here in the US have an image of a typical terrorist as brown skinned and of the Muslim persuasion. Don’t ask about denominations — Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi … Terrorists often have beards and wear Arab headdress, too. Certainly, a man wearing a headdress and sporting a full beard, would arouse suspicion. Sikhs fit the profile and ipso facto are suspect, even though they are neither Arab nor Muslim. I recently met a Sikh who lives in the US and asked him if other Americans cast a wary eye upon him. He was born in the province of Punjab where Sikhs distribute free food to the hungry at gurdwaras. They feel a calling to work for the good of the community. No, they’re not communists.

The top beard in Al Qaeda, defamed be his name, is from the Wahhabi sect of Islam. Wahhabism is not even a denomination, but a fundamentalist sect. They are from Saudi Arabia and wish to rid their land of foreign infidels (the US military). Afghanistan, whose major natural resource is the opium poppy, is a thousand miles away from Saudi Arabia. So, what are we doing in Afghanistan? Yes, Al Qaeda used to rent space there, but that was years ago and since then they found it more comfortable in Pakistan instead of the cold caves of Tora Bora. They also liked the weather better in Yemen, Somalia, New Jersey, and Florida. Back in 2001, a dark year when the Bush-Cheney (B-C) administration took power and when three buildings of the WTC were brought down, members of Al Qaeda were traveling freely around the US taking flying lessons in Florida, Arizona, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

So, the US Army and Marines invaded Afghanistan and detained likely terrorists — Semite and South Asian Muslims. Rewards (bounties) were offered. Many Afghans took advantage of the stimulus program and turned in members of adversary tribes or personal rivals. The Americans, not fluent in Pashto or Dari, had to rely on the honesty of the informants. With terrorists in hand, we were obliged to use coercive techniques — waterboarding, walling, strong music, and canine visitations — to locate others. When roadside bombs are ticking we could not await a variance from the quaint Geneva Conventions. The International Red Cross, as fussy as ever, would be best kept in the dark.

We have been in Afghanistan for only eight years, but we must have been successful. Today, there are fewer than 100 low level Al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan. The Taliban, are just Afghans, not international terrorists.

Dealing with terrorists from Arabia in Afghanistan was good practice for constraining terrorists here at home. Pittsburgh was the first opportunity to test out strategies, techniques, and equipment. The G-20 nations were meeting to shuffle currency, cook the books, and conclude that world wide economic recovery had begun. Protesters were surely going to try to disrupt the meeting: environmentalists, pacifists, Iraq Veterans Against the War, The United Steel Workers, The Raging Grannies, Poets On The Loose, and opponents of free trade — terrorists and anarchists all. Extreme measures would be in order.

So, 4,000 police, assorted State Troopers, FBI Agents, DEA Officers, Secret Service Agents, and a couple of private security services, were assembled. A $19.5 million budget was allocated for the two day event — security officers would outnumber the demonstrators. A few battalions of police in full riot gear were arranged in phalanxes, a la Alexander the Great. They wore helmets with wrap-around Plexiglas face masks. Some wore body armor and carried wrist mounted weapons worthy of a Star Wars costume. Overhead, helicopters swooped. On the ground, armored personnel carriers, mounted police, motorcycle columns, and police dog units insured redundancy (confusion). When marchers with banners refused to disperse, officers (public servants?) fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and ear piercing sound cannons. Over 170 demonstrators were pre-emptively arrested — the worst of the worst — including medics, journalists, and passersby. They were held in detention until the financiers went home. Pittsburgh was an invaluable example of winning the hearts and minds of the people.

Let that be a lesson for demonstrators and insurgents alike. In the US there will be zero tolerance for dissidents. The Afghans better beware.

Great Expectations

2009-12-31T10:23:00.004-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Great Expectations

The Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen was set up so the rich & developed nations of the North could pay lip service, and only a few dollars, to stop the drastic changes in the Earth’s weather, waters, and lands, changes that are already threatening all life on the planet. Well, maybe insects are not yet threatened.

First, President Obama went to Oslo, Norway to give a nice speech as he accepted the Nobel Peace Price. He spoke of the need for peace, but back home he ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Did he hope to receive accolades for creating 30,0000 more jobs?

Soon afterward he went to Copenhagen. There, he had to talk about climate change. He made a nice speech, calling for everyone to put aside their differences and come to agreement, but he forgot to say anything about the US signing the Kyoto Accords. Worse, according to a leaked “Danish text” the US has now graciously accepted a 17% reduction in CO2 emissions from (in very small print) 2005 levels. From 2005? All the European signatories to Kyoto had pledged 30% reductions below 1990 levels. US reductions of 17% below 2005 levels works out to about 4% below 1990. Barack The Devious.

The impending environmental disaster, unless we change our profligate fossil fuel ways, is only one of the major issues where Obama has not walked the talk. Let’s see where else he has failed our expectations.

During the campaign up to election day of 2008, the Obama campaign ran against special (corporate) interests and promised accountability on the part of all government agencies. After he took the oath of office he gave orders to prohibit waterboarding because it was torture. Even Attorney General Eric Holder said so loud & clear. We expected the inquisitors at Guantanamo, Bagram, and other “Black Sites” established in the last decade would be held to account — right up the chain of command. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the Department of Justice. AG Holder, in an end run around the Geneva Accords and the US Army Field Manual, noted that in the B-C Office of Legal Counsel, attorney John Yoo, wrote a memo defining torture as causing severe body harm and the pain of organ failure or impending death. It was legal cover for CIA interrogators to OK waterboarding and walling if the prisoner was merely bruised up or had nightmares that he was drowning. Holder said he wouldn’t prosecute such Agency people if they didn’t go beyond the memo definition of torture. After all, they were just following orders to “soften up” the detainees. As to John Yoo, Esq, he would not be prosecuted because the memo was just his opinion and he, himself, didn’t violate the quaint Geneva Conventions. Holder speaks of the Yoo memo as a “mistake,” not a crime.

Legal issues abound in the expectations of an Obama presidency. We were led to expect respect for the principles of law from a man who taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago and whose oath of office included allegiance to the Constitution. But, he has spoken nary a word about Habeas corpus. Nor was there a mention of the First Amendment when the G20 money bags nations recently met in Pittsburgh where the police were unduly repressive, using pepper spray, rubber bullets, intense sound projectors, and preemptory arrest. Obama has been silent, too, in failing to stand up for the First Amendment by pardoning Lynne Stewart. The legendary attorney had been convicted of aiding terrorism for speaking to Reuters on behalf of her client the blind Egyptian cleric. Beyond the Constitution, Obama failed to support Hammurabi’s great law code from the First Dynasty of Babylon. You know, the one chiseled in stone in the second millennium BCE..

While we’re speaking of laws and the Law, the Gramm Leach Bliley act needs to be repealed and Glass Steagall reinstated to limit different financial functions to separate banks so no “bank holding company” becomes too big to fail. A couple more matters of law: Libraries and bookstores must be exempted from the Patriot Act. The First Amendment can’t be abrogated by a mere law passed by Congress two centuries later — it’s the First Amendment. Similarly, the patenting of the building blocks of life, itself, is disallowed by the very rules of the US Patent Office — you can’t patent something that is not novel and original. Mother Nature was there first, even before the Jurassic era. If companies such as Monsanto insist on playing Rube Goldberg with the genes of our foodstuff, at least let them be required to say so on the label.

Finally — after skipping past health care, cap & trade gaming, off shore account sneakery, and the conflation of national security and national embarrassment — we come to a national identity of military might to set the world right. Obama has never spoken of a Department of Peace to balance the Department of War (all right, Department of Defense) or a National Peace College to pair with the War College. The Peace College would offer degrees in statesmanship and diplomacy and teach courses in conflict resolution, conciliation, and kindness. Barack may say he never promised such rose gardens — maybe we should look to First Lady Michelle for institutions promoting peace. She might even convince her husband to recognize the International Court of Justice. He could become Barack The Just.

Conspiracy In The Halls Of Finance?

2009-12-08T15:09:00.002-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Conspiracy In The Halls Of Finance?

The players in the alleged conspiracy are convinced that the intricacies of high finance are far too complicated for the common citizen to understand, and so they ask our full faith and credit. “Just trust us,” they say. The White House Chief Financial Advisor, Lawrence Summers and the Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner tell us the recession is ending. The stock market confirms the good news by flying above 10,000 on the Dow. Goldman Sachs reports a quarterly profit of $3.44 billion. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, repeats the mantra at the Brookings Institution. The recession is scheduled to end this year, he says, and the actions of The Fed will “maintain the confidence of the financial markets.” President Obama says, “Me, too.”

Yet, average people, both working and unemployed, know the economy is not recovering. Unemployment rates, kept artificially low by statistical trickery, are officially at 10%. The real rate — including those who have given up looking for work, others who have started their own small business, and many who survive on part time work without benefits — are twice the official rate, serious enough to convert a free marketeer into a Marxist. The true state of the economy was obvious even to the New York Times. The paper saw fit to print an article in the financial section just before Thanksgiving, entitled “What if a Recovery Is All in Your Head?”

The White House would have none of the pessimism as told by their own unemployment numbers and forecasts of bank failures. In a silver lining frame of mind, the various spokes-folks say that unemployment may still be at 10% but the runaway acceleration rate has stopped, a sure sign that recovery is just around the corner. Yessir and ma’m.

We don’t know who is calling the signals, or if it’s a grand conspiracy. When Hank Paulson was Secretary of the Treasury in the Bush-Cheney administration, he went to Congress and pleaded for $700 billion to save the banks. Brokerage houses, insurance companies, savings banks, and automobile financial divisions are all banks nowadays. He needed the funds immediately and with no strings attached. That way the banks with toxic assets would not have to account for the money he would give them. To this day they won’t say what they did with the billions. Nor would Treasury say how much was given to whom. It must be hard to keep track of so much money. When Paulson was caught making incessant phone calls to Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, some assumed the Secretary was holding the investment bank to account. But no, he said he said he was just keeping up with market developments. Not staying informed would have been irresponsible. Of course, he could have read the Wall Street Journal.

Another reality check came in from the FDIC. While Treasury was dispensing TARP (troubled assets relief program) billions to the too-big-to-be-allowed-to-fail investment banks, 94 smaller banks were in the red and had to be taken over by FDIC. As of now, FDIC is almost broke. Sheila Bair, chair of the federal agency, admits that she has only $10.4 billion in reserves for the depositors of the entire nation, and she expects that with 416 banks on her problem list, failures will “continue at a pretty good clip next year.”

If the recession is still with us, we are left with the question of who caused it, who will bring us back to a stable economy, and how it will be done. Money thrown at the investment banks seems to be ending up in the bonuses of the executives of said banks. Should we blame the Wall Street fraternity — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan et al? Or The Fed, starting with Alan Greenspan and continuing with Ben Bernanke in its money printing policies? Or the Secretaries of the Treasury from Robert Rubin under Clinton, to Henry Paulson under Bush & Cheney, and now Timothy Geithner under Obama with the advice and consent of Lawrence Summers? Or all of the above in an establishment conspiracy?

A hint of the answer to who runs the money works comes from the answer to “Who is the most arrogant and least sensitive to public opinion?” Even Alan Greenspan, at the height of his power as Chairman of The Fed, was enigmatic enough to be misinterpreted as honorable. Not so Lloyd Blankfein. First, he accepts $10 billion in TARP funds. Then after American International Group (AIG) gets $180 billion from TARP, Lloyd claims $12.9 billion of it for credit default swaps he held from the too-big-to-fail giant. Next, Goldman Sachs reports record quarterly profits and, without taking a breath, that it has set aside $16.7 billion in bonuses for its deserving executives. Blankfein’s premonition of public discontent (outrage?) leads to his offering of $500 million to 10,000 small businesses. Hooray for Lloyd in his penurious philanthropy. He actually believes he is worth all the money he is earning as CEO. He is, in his own words, “doing God’s work.”

More evidence for a conspiracy comes from the treatment of the big three automakers. First, Congress grills them, then reluctantly offers $25 billion if they submit plans for changing their ways. GM and Chrysler are given an initial installment of $9.4 billion and $4 billion. A couple of months later a second fix of $16.6 and $5 billion goes to the two carmakers, but the White House asks for the head of GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner. No such demand was made for Chrysler — it was owned by Cerberus Capital Management and could qualify as part of the finance industry.

In contrast to the treatment of the auto industry, the administration acted as obsequiants to the Money Trust of Wall Street. Lawrence Summers appeared on one of the Sunday morning news shows to say the government could not cancel Wall Street bonuses because a contract is a contract. Summers was nowhere to be heard when it came to rescinding some of the labor contracts with GM and Chrysler as part of their government-required restructuring.

The question is like a yo-yo: are the economic fun & games a conspiracy, or do Wall Street and the White House merely have an understanding that the Big Banks will set the rules? We’ll find out when and if financial reform becomes as urgent as health care reform. We the people may not understand credit default swaps, strangle options, and butterfly spreads, but we do know that buying stocks and bonds long term (more than six months) is investment. We know that trading options and derivatives several times a day is gambling. We will be watching if the Gramm Leach Bliley Act of 1999 is repealed and the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 is reinstated. Glass Steagall kept different banking functions — personal savings accounts, business accounts, and stock market investments — in separate institutions. Gramm Leach Bliley canceled such oppressive restrictions and opened the free-for-all doors to imaginative Wall Street. We’ll also be watching if derivatives are regulated and if a sales tax is extracted on every securitized derivative trade. The tax could be even less that the usual 6% sales on furniture, clothing, and other consumer goods. There is a market of somewhere between $44 and 75 billion in collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps, and other such creations. Their total notational value is $596 trillion, too big a number outside of astronomy. We will watch to see if derivatives are regulated at all, as they now are not. The same pertains to hedge funds and private equity funds. Could we hope that all derivatives of more than a couple of steps removed from original stocks and bonds will be forbidden?

Better than just watching, we’ll write, call, and email Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank to shepherd these reforms through the Congress. They must ask Tim Geithner to explain all the complexity of the financial markets. Any absurdities that cannot be understood should be outlawed. We don’t need any more Bernie Madoffs. He went only a step beyond outrageous.

Global Heating Is Getting Serious

2009-11-16T18:25:00.002-05:00

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy
By Mort Malkin

Global Heating Is Getting Serious

SSG has spoken of the Earth as the ultimate source of nutrients for our bodies, and we’d better take good care of the soil, earthworms and all. Today, we add another source of nutrients — the sea.

The sea provides food in the form of many kinds of fish and also a number of delicacies worth of shellfish such as lobsters, oysters, scallops, and sea urchins. We all knew that fish stocks were being depleted via overfishing with long nets (miles long) and sea bottom trawling. We must add to the rapacious fishing, the pollution of the sea from urban and farm runoff. Thereby, our rivers are filled with mercury and other heavy metals, fertilizer in the form of N, P, and K, toxic pesticides with ferocious names, and prescription drug flotsam & jetsam. There are many dead zones in the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Coast between Boston and Baltimore …

But, that’s old news. The new news is that the major greenhouse gas, CO2, is imperiling all sea life north to south and around the world. OK, it’s true that CO2 is not toxic like PCPs, PCDFs, and mercury, but the increased carbon dioxide in the air largely dissolves in sea water to form carbonic acid, HCO3. Acid sea water dissolves the shells of clams, oysters, and other shellfish as well as coral reefs where lots of fish hang out. And then, we don’t know fully the effect of acid seas on plankton and other tiny creatures which are at the base of the ocean food chain. Plankton and other macro and microscopic beasties are breakfast, lunch. and dinner for very small fish, most shellfish, and even some huge sea creatures such as baleen whales. You know how it is out there in the salt water jungle — big fish eat little fish. The fiercest predator, human customers in sushi restaurants, will eat anything wrapped in raw fish. Then, when all the fish are gone, what will the penguins, pelicans, puffins and blue-footed boobies do?

Aside from gastronomy, artists, poets, and film makers will mourn the loss of the chambered nautilus and the giant clam of the South Pacific. Calendar collectors will no longer have sweet sea birds to illustrate January or July.

In the last few years most people became convinced that the atmosphere of the Earth has heated up dangerously, resulting in the shrinking of glaciers, the melting of the Arctic ice cap, and the breaking off of enormous chunks of ice shelves in Antarctica. The cause of the global heating, most of us now realize, is the rapid rise in greenhouse gases, notably CO2. The culprit is mankind — mostly coal fired power plants and transportation contrivances driven by gasoline & diesel engines. The carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, over 387 ppm last we were told, creates a greenhouse effect and so prevents the escape of heat from the land and sea into outer space. The Earth heats up, permafrost melts, ice caps melt, glaciers melt, and environmentalists become mainstream.

For six of eight years, the previous administration didn’t believe the numbers reported by the climatologists and oceanographers or the photos showing open water over the North Pole during summer months and the polar bears marooned on an ice floe miles out in the open ocean. Finally, they admitted to global “warming” and climate “change” while others of us spoke of global heating and climate chaos. Anyway, they said, it wasn’t their fault. Besides, they were certain that technology would provide an easy fix — perhaps spraying the upper atmosphere with aerosol particles to reflect sunlight away from the planet, perhaps developing white asphalt for the parking lots of shopping malls to reflect the summer sun.

The trouble with such parasolic and reflective schemes is: we will still be spewing CO2 into the atmosphere by the ton as we burn fossil fuels, and the CO2 will still be taken up by the oceans, producing the equivalent of seltzer (club soda). The acid brine will soften the shells of clams, mussels, scallops, oysters, and the many, more exotic sea animals. We may be approaching a time when the pleasures of oysters on the half shell or a full lobster dinner will become a fond memory. Global heating is getting serious.

Plain Words And Smoke & Mirrors

2009-11-11T12:28:00.002-05:00

Gadfly
Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Plain Words And Smoke & Mirrors

Plain words can be slippery. Plain words can be allusive, illusive, inversive, perversive. A quick listen to the talk that emerges from the White House, the Congress, The Pentagon (even with Donald Rumsfeld gone), Wall Street, Exxon-Mobil … can teach our poets a thing or two about metaphor and symbolism.

The Gadfly Revelry & Resaerch team has blown the smoke alarm and made clear the real agenda of the forsoothsayers. Let’s start with “national security” — surely security is a worthy endeavor. National security transitioned smoothly to national security interest and almost as easily to national interest. Dick Cheney, early in 2001, convened his (secret) energy task force of oil companies and thereupon told us that our national security required the invasion of Iraq . He was really interested in the national interest of appropriating Iraqi oilfields on behalf of the Seven Sisters. He then tried to convince us to bomb Iran and achieve regime change so we could take over their/our oil. Cooler minds prevailed and in 2009 Cheney was an ex-oficio.

The Cong gang (coal, oil, nuclear, gas), without a champion in the Pentagon, turned to domestic energy sources. They inadvertently forgot to say that they’d have to a) drill for oil off the coast of resort cities in Florida, b) blast off the tops of mountains in Appalachia, and c) fracture the bedrock of the Earth to pool the gas located a mile deep in tiny crevices and bubbles. I suppose it’s hard for the energy companies to make a living off the sun or wind or tides.

National security brings us to overall issues of war and peace … or, defense and peace. The head honcho of the Pentagon used to be titled Secretary of War. In the 40s, WWII enjoyed broad public support — every family bought war bonds. But in recent wars, Vietnam to Iraq, not even “defense” bonds were proffered. We were reduced to waving flags and displaying bumper stickers announcing support for the troops. But, we were left to wonder whether we should also support all the military contractors of Blackwater, Triple Canopy, Titan, CACI, and Dyncorp. The number of such contractors operating in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds all the US military personnel in those war theatres. I recently discussed this question with a friend who is a British national. I asked abouit the Ghurkas and weren’t they mercenaries who fought for the British? Yet, history gives them favorable press. She replied that the Ghurkas weren’t mercenaries but defenders of the Empire. Blackwater contractors are mercenaries.

Another friend, a native born American, sailed right past the issue of mercenaries to the idea of wars of choice versus just wars. He said “War is just war.” He suggested that Isaiah’s counsel to beat swords into ploughshares would mandate establighing Peace Academies next door to West Point, Anapolis, and Colorado Springs.

The fog of war is relatively transparent when compared to the smoke & mirrors of Wall Street “investment” banks. Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Bank of America, and their co-illusionists brought us all manner of “derivatives” to create new wealth. Their collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and credit default swaps (CDSs) led to: strangle options, pin risk options, rolling turbos, and iron butterfly spreads, among the most inventive. How wondrous — new wealth without better mousetraps, electric cars, or personal jet travel vests.

Wall Street, as we know, is the bastion of Capitalism. Capitalism is not as highly regarded as free enterprise, and so a little word deviation was in order. Free enterprise was equated with freedom, and freedom with democracy. Ipso facto, democracy became confluent with capitalism. Marx and Lenin missed the boat back in the beginning of the 20th century. They should have known the west would not accept communism. They could have easily put that ism in the same basket as community, barn raisings, and co-ops. Community … communalism … communism. If only power didn’t corrupt so powerfully.

Communism has now disappeared from the planet except in North Korea where the Dear Leader sings its praises. Even Outer Mongolia is now a parliamentary democracy. Outer Mongolia, wedged between Russia and China and once a communist anchor of North Asia! The folks here in the US whose ideology requires the invocation of fear have had to replace communism with socialism. Etymologically, it is difficult to pull off. Our culture in language is positive about church socials, social networks, and Social Security. The poor far-right of the political spectrum — they don’t want to be called anti-social. They must feel awkward to be anti socialized medicine. They are, as well, out of step with the rest of the world that considers health care a right.

Words can be plain and clear once you get through the smoke and mirrors.

Regulators And Regulatees

2009-10-21T13:39:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Regulators and Regulatees

The scene was the Pennsylvania boat access at the Narrowsburg Eddy on the High Delaware River. The last day of summer before Labor Day was glorious with a display of sun and 75 degrees on the thermometer.

My companion, CPGSJ (her initials, exclusive of higher degrees), and I came to greet the paddlers in the Flotilla to Protect the Delaware. We parked in the access area to visit with the kayakers at the finish of the event. Afterward we went over to a rock at the shore to sit down and dangle our toes in the water. OK, so we immersed our feet up to the ankles. Not five minutes into our triple enjoyment of the season, the weather, and the River, an official van pulled into the access area and stopped right in the middle near the entrance. Out stepped two uniformed officers of the Fish and Boat Commission. One of them came over to inform us that we were in violation of the regulation that reserves the access area for boaters and fishermen. I noted that: there was only one fisherman, there were several empty parking spaces, and we were not creating a disturbance by splashing the water with our feet. He explained that if we were allowed to engage in such unauthorized activity, others would come and have picnics, play frisbee, and Heaven knows what else.

I thought for a few seconds about staying, receiving a citation, and challenging the officer in court. With luck, I might serve a prison sentence. A second option was to drive home, strap my kayak to the car, and return to the access area. With a kayak on the car, we could legally sit on a rock at the shore and discuss whether to paddle north or south … or we could just hold hands.

The history of such rules and regulations reminds us that the Delaware River is a special exemption to Pennsylvania’s requirement for canoes and kayaks to be registered … at $28 per. Nevermind that New York, Maine, and many other states welcome the tourism that comes with canoeing and kayaking free of nuisance registration. Pennsylvania’s registration regulation for canoes and kayaks, after many years, was amended to allow unregistered paddling on the PA half of the Delaware River. Too late, all the boat rentals, camping, and economic activity remain on the NY side of the River.

Rules and regulations seem to pervade every aspect of life, common sense included. At another PA time and circumstance, parking restrictions during winter months are enforced to clear the streets of snow, whether or not it has snowed.

Rules and regulations are not exclusive to Pennsylvania, nor are the officials who enforce them. In Boston, the home of Paul Revere, a peace rally was restricted to a “free speech zone” during the Democratic Convention of 2004. The First Amendment didn’t apply anywhere else in the city.

Everyone can surely cite a rule or two devoid of common sense.

A saving grace is the lack of a sense of humor among the officials who have the power to enforce the rules. They consider themselves as the keystone of the Establishment, the System. Recently, a parody-wielding group of street performers has freely challenged the tea baggers in many cities. They are the Billionaires For Wealthcare. They wear top hats and tuxedos and smoke cigars — all to satirize the super rich executives of the Insurance industry and Big Pharma. They carry signs that read “Delay, Deduct, and Deny.” The ultimate satire is that many of the enforcement officials take the “Billionaires” seriously as representatives of capitalism and cheer them on.

The tea baggers, too, have lauded the “Billionaires.” It is all a lesson to bring satire in all its forms to bear in the political discourse. There are many venues: Town Hall meetings, the halls of Congress, the streets of cities and towns, and the pages of newspapers. Many are the ways to make fun of all public officials and reactionaries who deserve it.

Dear Mr. Obama,

2009-10-21T13:25:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
By Mort Malkin

Dear Mr. Obama,

Last week Gadfly wrote to Mr. Ahmedinejad suggesting that Iran give up its nuclear program, both the early-stage civilian works at Natanz, Lashkar Ab’ad, and a half dozen other sites, as well as any dreams of someday possessing nuclear weapons. The reason for Iran to have nuclear weapons was already half removed -- Dick Cheney is no longer in the White House. As present President, you can disappear the second half of the reason by offering a non-aggression treaty to guarantee Iran’s security. That would take military action off thetable, and Hillary would have to give up any ambition of becoming a Great Satan in the Near East.

In exchange for such a pact, Iran would erect a grand stele dedicated to the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On it, his words would be carved in stone, “Nuclear weapons are the work of the Devil.” The US would send engineers and construction crews to the Zagros Mountains in wester Iran to put up wind turbines and ski resorts. In appreciation Iran would send handmade Persian rugs to US embassies around the world to soften the rhetoric. The two countries could start a poetry exchange program -- Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and the Hip Hop poets in trade for Jalal ud-din Rumi and the classical Persian poets.

Peace is possible between the two countries. Mr. Ahmedinejad is no pariah among neighboring nations. He has visited Afghanistan and Iraq in mutual amity. Iranians by the million make pilgrimages to Iraq’s Shia holy sites each year. Besides, the Iranians don’t much like Osama bin Laden our Public Enemy Number One. If any of the opposition party object to talks with the Persians, just remind them that Ronald Reagan was not above making deals with the Iranian clerics in Iran-Contra times.

Now is a good time to start the peace process. Iran’s recently announced nuclear enrichment site doesn’t yet have centrifuges
installed. Mohamed ElBaredei, the head of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), says that Iran has had trouble with the complex process of concentrating uranium even to 3% because of the impurities in the native ore. He also stated that all Iranian “nuclear material has been accounted for and not diverted to prohibited activity.” Iran has gotten nowhere near the 85% concentration necessary for making a bomb. In 2007, the official US National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran stopped all nuclear weapons activity years ago and that it would take five years to develop nuclear weapons from their rudimentary skills at the time. Israel, of course, says Iran could have a bomb in 45 minutes.

Now, also, the US neo-cons are out of power and can only snipe from the microphones at Fox News of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. In the B-C administration they had suggested that a sustained bombing campaign would surely make the Iranian people discontent enough to rise up and overthrow the theocracy. A sober Pentagon official questioned their theory, “What were they smoking at the White House?”

Mr Obama, your administration of change can bring both common sense and pragmatism to the White House. We can replace any Iranian wishes for nuclear weapons with solid assurances of peace. Further, Iran is a
country of unstable geology and a history of earthquakes, a country of few places to bury radioactive waste. They must know that The US has plenty of radioactive waste sitting around at Savannah GA, Hanford WA, and Rocky Flats CO, and that we don’t know what to do with it. Iran might even give up its infant civilian nuclear program if electricity could be generated from the country’s plentiful wind and sun. What could convince the Iranians is a US example. Let us show them that we are sincere about denuclearization by immediately destroying half of our nuclear-tipped ICBMs. At whom are we aiming them, anyway? Denuclearization could become the next world-wide fad with Russia destroying half of their stockpile.

With the examples of the US and Russia in hand, we could pressure Pakistan and India to sign the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and open their N-works to inspection by the IAEA. As Pakistan and India bowed to world opinion, North Korea would be next. Kim Jong Il, an aristocrat by taste if not by hairstyle, would be offered French Brandy, Russian Caviar, and parties with Hollywood starlets, evocatively half clad. All that and free gasoline for a couple of BMW SUVs would be a good trade for his half dozen N-bombs. We need not worry about China who already own half the world anyway and would get their way with yuan rather than missiles.

Then, we must address Israel. The fist thing is for the US to offer asylum to Mordechai Vanunu. Then a weekly shipment of New York bagels, Philadelphia cream cheese and smoked salmon (lox), sent air express to Tel Aviv. Then …

Dear Mr. Ahmedinejad,

2009-10-21T13:19:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Dear Mr. Ahmedinejad,

For years 2002 through 2008 Iran was rightly worried that the US would attack and re-establish a puppet Shah in that nation. Of course, Iran was rich with oil. Since the US — the Great Satan — attacked and occupied Iraq over oil, they surely could attempt the same in Iran. During the B-C administration (Bush-Cheney) it was easy to portray Dick Cheney as Satan. He was easily identified by the perpetual scowl on his face, and sulfurous fumes seemed to emanate from his nostrils. Now in 2009, Cheney wields power only on Fox News. He complains that he could never convince George Bush to bomb Iran.

Hillary Clinton, the present Secretary of State, did vote as a US Senator to designate the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization; she repeats the mantra that a military attack on Iran remains on the table; and she frequently wears red pants suits — but she still is not a convincing Satan.

Yes, you have the example of North Korea developing a few crude nuclear bombs and the US refraining from attacking their country. But, it was less the few nukes than resistance from the South Koreans that blocked any military action. Iran has been fostering friendly relations with its neighbors Iraq and Afghanistan as a bulwark against the hawks in Israel and the US. You, yourself, have met with Presidents Maliki and Karzai a few times, with smiles all around. It is a better strategy.

The father of the Islamic Republic, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini eschewed the development of nuclear weapons as “the work of the Devil.” He didn’t like monkeying around with Allah’s work. He would have no part of converting mass into energy a la e = mc2.

You say Iran is only enriching uranium to 3% for civilian nuclear power plants — nowhere near the 85% necessary for nuclear bombs. But, nuclear power plants will invite disasters, too. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were just the worst of a few thousand nuclear accidents and close calls that have occurred wherever “developed” nations have split the atom to boil water to drive the turbines to make electricity. Operating nuclear reactors to boil water? Crazy! Then, they’re stuck with the radioactive waste. In the US, no state wants the stuff within its borders. Conservative Nevadans became liberals when Yucca Mountain was tagged to be the burial site of the nuclear waste of all the other states. Iran, which is subject to frequent earthquakes, would be challenged to find a stable geologic site (or an acquiescent community) where leftovers of the nation’s nuclear power plants could be stored for the next few thousand years.

A better solution to any shortage of energy is to look west to the Zagros Mountains whose many peaks are over 10,000 feet. There, there must be enough wind to produce electricity for the entire Near East.

Gadfly will next send a Dear Mr. Obama letter to the White House with a Grand Plan for peace between the US and Iran. The US would offer a guarantee of Iran's security with a non-aggression pact in exchange for Iran carving Ayatollah Khomeini’s words in stone, “Nuclear power is the work of the Devil,” the stele to be installed in the central square in Teheran. Iran would then bury the bit of uranium it has already enriched to 3% — no nuclear reactors for electricity and no dreams of becoming the ninth nation to have the bomb. The US would then build a few refining plants so Iran could make gasoline from its own oil instead of sending Iranian crude to China for refining.

Then, all we’d have to address is the secret facilities in Tabriz, Kashan, and Shiraz where, it is rumored, Iran is developing flying carpet technology.

The Green Zone -- No Longer "The Bubble"

2009-09-14T14:57:00.003-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The Green Zone -- No Longer "The Bubble"

The Pentagon under the B-C (Bush-Cheney) administration, warned Hans Blick and Mohamed ElBaradei to remove all the UN inspectors because the US Airforce and Navy were about to bomb the smithereens out of Iraq. In the “shock and awe” planning, the military was careful to avoid two locations on the target charts: the Ministry of Oil and Saddam’s Republican Palace. The Ministry of Oil had all the records of existing oil wells and locations of likely oil deposits identified by Iraqi geologists. After all, why were we invading Iraq? Saddam’s Palace — with the subsequent addition of a swimming pool, restaurants, and a couple of oases where liquor could flow freely — was slated for the US Embassy and surrounding Green Zone.

And so, it came to be. After US tanks and other armor rolled through and occupied Iraq, a four square mile Green Zone was set up as an American city within Baghdad. Housed there were thousands of soldiers, contractors, administrators, and an aberrant diplomat or two. As the occupation continued, solid walls replaced the barbed wire, and the seeming safety begat the Lock & Load Bar, the CIA Bar, the grand Baghdad Country Club Restaurant, and a libertine lifestyle. Life in the Green Zone went from monotony to ever better parties. The insurgents added to the excitement with periodic rocket attacks, but the rockets’ red glare did not deter serious revelers who attended the rooftop parties at the Olive House, complete with wet T-shirt competitions. The excesses of the Green Zone, then known as the “The Bubble,” became too much of an embarrassment for the new Secretary of Defense, William Gates. A few of the beyond-the-pale watering holes were closed down in 2007, right after his appointment.

In the early months of 2009, the Obama administration reacted to the American public’s ennui with the war in Iraq by promising to withdraw American forces. The Iraqis heard the pledge — they have 5,000 year old memories — and reminded the new guys in Washington of their promise. So, Obama proceeded to withdraw the troops (out of the cities to their nearby bases) and to hand over control of the Green Zone to the Iraqi police. Now, even official US vehicles must wear Iraqi license plates, or else. The Blackwater and Triple Canopy guards and Embassy staff cannot rely on their badges — they are no longer exempt from questioning and inspection. The ignominy. A female diplomat with a low cut neckline and a blue embassy badge was suddenly looked on as a potential terrorist rather than as someone to liven a cocktail party. A veteran US diplomat complained “The Green Zone used to be fun.” Embassy staffers are left to just dream about the good old days at the now shuttered Baghdad Country Club.

The seriousness of the Iraqis in running the diplomatic zone of their own country with no fooling around must be contagious. The deputy chief of the US Embassy recently instituted stringent guidelines for his staff. It is said that violations will be punished by a smack on the knuckles with a thick document. And, what of the Blackwater contractors? Who will tell them to behave? Maybe Moqtada al Sadr and the Mahdi Army.

Gadfly welcomes the Iraqi government to the discipline of statecraft and wishes them well. They would be wise, though, not to discard every last vestige of the American character that seems to alternate between trigger quickly and party animal. A sense of humor, even a touch of parody in the right place, can break stalemates in negotiations to produce cease fires and then, permanent peace. For training, Gadfly recommends a couple of viewings of the Marx Brothers film, “Duck Soup.” Also, you would do well to recruit a few of Iraq’s best comics to join the diplomatic staff. Such Special Envoys would surely bring a spirit of fun to the table, maybe a little creativity, too. You can use the Iraqi sense of history to entice them, reminding them of the holy city of Nippur where trade agreements and peace treaties were signed in the fourth millennium BCE. Nippur, with this 5,000 year old tradition, could become a world center for peace. Geneva has been a little lax of late.

Conflicts Conflict

2009-09-11T18:05:00.000-04:00

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy

by Mort Malkin

Conflicts Conflict

Our modern patriots would have our children go to church every Sunday, display the Ten Commandments (in stone) at our county courthouses, and pledge allegiance to the American flag at all public events. Our kids are taught that murder is immoral and illegal. [Don’t ask about the Prophet Isaiah or beating swords into plowshares.]

Promptly at age 18, they are encouraged to enlist in the Armed Forces. They are assured they won’t be assigned to the front lines [but not told that the front lines are everywhere] and that they will make the world safe for democracy [as if democracy and capitalism were the same thing]. They enlist. At basic training they learn a new morality and legality. They are taught that their M16 rifle is their best friend. At target practice, people-shaped targets are used. Just before shooting they yell “Kill, kill!” The Army is well aware of the research showing that most US soldiers in WW II were reluctant to shoot their guns in battle. Is the refusal to kill another human a part of our genome? We’ll just have to make the enemy sub-human. As the Vietnamese were called “gooks,” we label insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan “ragheads.” Perhaps teaching our soldiers Arabic and Pashto would create empathy for an enemy. Let’s not.

In Baghdad, soldiers learn to shoot first and ask questions later, if ever. They learn to drive fast, often within a year or two of a driver’s education course in high school. Survival tells them to “floor it” when approaching an overpass. 80 mph on streets and rural roads is a usual driving speed for US troops in the Middle East. Their deployment in that war zone is full of risk, and a high level of adrenalin is one of the few dependable things they experience. After a stop loss order or two, 24/7 danger seems “normal.”

When they eventually are returned to civilian life in the US – the safe, peaceful US – it seems abnormal. They are also expected to return to the morality and legalities of before they left on their foreign adventures. They no longer have the authority that goes with carrying a rifle. People don’t mosey around town with an M16. Even driving a car is subject to speed limits, only 65 mph on freeways and much less in town. In Iraq they were fighting to secure the American way of life, which they now discover is so dull. Desk jobs are especially boring. They have few options for excitement. One former soldier drives his car at 90 mph on the highway, fantasizing an escape from an ambush. Another picks fights in bars. Many of our soldiers, having survived in the Middle East, return home with an “immortality belief.” They figure “If I didn’t get killed over there, nothing is going to happen to me here.” A dangerous attitude.” The stats for suicide, divorce, and fatal auto crashes are way above those for civilians of similar ages who have not served in war. Alcohol and drug abuse may be documented by only a few hundred thousand anecdotal reports, but you better believe the real number is several times as much. As to anxiety, depression, nightmares, day fantasies, and other signs & symptoms of PTSD, the incidence is beyond statistics (BS).

Treating those who have suffered the mental and physical slings and arrows of war is a given. Looking to the fundamentals, prevention is far more promising. Let us teach the arts of diplomacy, the skills of statecraft, the techniques of negotiation – the ways of peace. We need federal funding for an Academy of Peace to balance the Military Academies of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs. We should have a Department of Peace as a counterweight to the Department of Defense (War). Edmund Burke had it right when he said, “A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.”

The Future — Place Your Bets

2009-08-14T15:20:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The Future — Place Your Bets

The seers of the Gadfly Revelry & Research gang (GRR) have routinely uncovered data and real information to predict coming events. Gadfly has frequently been ahead of the networks and the New York Times in addressing issues as diverse as war & peace, the economy, and health care. Our role models are IF Stone and Russell Baker. Scoop! Please peruse previous columns at thecatskillchronicle.wordpress.com.

Today, GRR will pass you some predictions (insightful guesses) as to the economic future. Place your bets.

War and Peace affect the economy. So do the manipulations of the financial community: the Fed, the SEC, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, Central Banks of industrialized nations, the investment "banks" (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and other mob members), hedge funds, private equity funds, and Bernie Madoff.

War and the military cost big bucks. Offering little more than the cost of raw materials to produce the bullets & bombs and the salaries of those who press the triggers to make them go boom, military spending is a poor stimulus to the economy. Every other economic sector — health care, education, mass transit, civilian manufacturing — produces more jobs and makes the money circulate more times than military budgetry. But, we have to save the world for democracy (capitalism?), and so we maintain seven or eight hundred military bases around the world. If only there were more than 192 nations as represented in the UN. Our latest adventure — very quietly — is in Africa. We need a place for all the troops that are being kicked out of South America: Venezuela, Bolivia, and now Ecuador where the (expletive deleted) leftist President won’t renew a contract for the US base at Manta unless we allow an Ecuadorian base in Arizona or New Mexico, the states we stole from Mexico in the 19th century. Africa will have AfriCom (Africa Command), like it or not. The Global War on Terror will continue there under its new name, Overseas Continency Operations. We have to protect the oilfields of Nigeria and the manganese mines of Gabon (from their local populations). And titanium, chromium, vanadium, molybdenum… The trouble is we can’t convince any of the African governments to headquarter AfriCom within their borders. AfriCom is still in Germany. Premier Angela Merkel would, no doubt, like EuroCom out as well. Don’t expect change too soon.

The Chinese, our largest creditors, holding a couple of trillion dollars of US Treasuries and other US agency bonds, met in June with the other members of The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The Chinese brought Zhou X, their financial wizard in addition to Premier Hu J. President Medvedev of Russia was present as were the heads of state of other members of the SCO. They invited additional nations such as India, Pakistan, Iran, and Brazil. The US tried to crash the party but was politely told no, though offered a redacted transcript. In separate replies the Chinese and Russians said the Americans had better stop wasteful spending on war. Neither did they like Americans sailing around the world in 13 aircraft carrier groups that burn fuel in barrels-per-mile, or maintaining so many hundreds of military bases around the world. The Chinese had some snide remarks as well about US domestic deregulation. But, what can you expect from a communist nation?

Just so the US would not pout too much they let Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner come to speak at Peking University where he assured the audience that Chinese investments in the US were safe. The audience laughed.

The community of unaligned nations (unaligned with the US) are arranging a reserve currency to replace the dollar. Meanwhile, China has already made deals with Argentina, Brazil, and Malasia denominated in renminbi (Chinese for “the people’s currency”). The natives are getting restless. A Brazilian credit rating agency has downgraded US Treasury Bonds to AA. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s are threatening to do the same. Wall Street will juggle the numbers for a couple of years before doing anything drastic.

Back in North America, a few other wories have arrived.
• Unemployment is closing in on 10%. Lots of people not included in the 10% are: part time, totally discouraged, short term temps, or newly self employed. Unemployed and underemployed people don’t make things that add to (ugh) GDP. Unemployed people don’t buy things. Job confidence won’t change for a couple of years.
• Credit card spending will set a new record of less for several more months — we’re now at nine months. Auto loans and student loans will continue their shrinking ways as well. Figure at least a year.
• State and local governments, in spite of a little stimulus money for infrastructure projects, are being squeezed, not in affection. They’re spending hardly anything on unnecessaries, and they’re recategorizing necessities to un. More than three years.
• The housing market — inflated during the years of excesses in subprime mortgages, easy home equity loans, and creative derivitive packaging — will continue to fall. Two years till the bleeding slows. Then, bloody Wall Street will bubble up in Social Security or retirement funds, someplace where real money still exists.
• The stock market, now a little above 9,000 on the Dow, will not get near the previous high of 14,164 for a few years, but Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, et al will duly and diligently manipulate the numbers. The same people who blew bubbles through the first seven years of the 21st century, unencumbered by much regulation, are still in charge. These Wall Street folks made a grandiloquent amount of money during the obsenic period and need a place to park it. The closed investor funds have just started to accept new accounts, the first time in months. The same CEOs and other executives who created the mirror images of wealth called “derivitives” will find one more way to blow smoke and see through the fun house mirrors of Dow 15,000. It may take three or more years, but Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner will still be in bed with them, and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will blow no whistles.
• Everyone’s 401K will follow the stock market, but the 008-009 recession will remain in their brains. They won’t spend money for a couple of years. A recovery based on consumtion instead of production will be slow.
• The Fed, no longer afraid of inflation, will keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing and spending. Meanwhile the Treasury will print dollar bills and Treasury Bonds. Paper — it’s not even hand-made paper — is little better than soap bubbles. Printing paper bills and striking coins of base metal have always resulted in inflation since Roman times. Inflation will start to return in about two years, but the White House will resist increasing Social Security payments to senior citizens. The revolution will be televised.
• The war in Afghanistan will continue for a few years. It is now Obama’s war. He is willing to withdraw most of our troops from the Bush-Cheney Iraq war but not from his own. More and more money will be poured into the occupation of Afghanistan, where foreign nations have always failed — the Russians, the British, and Alexander III.

The Chinese communist-capitalists have offered us a way out of our economic woes — real solutions, not illusion. They say: Stop spending, start saving. Stop military adventurism, start diplomacy. Start regulating Wall Street. With such real changes, we will gain the standing to ask the Chinese to install solar reflectors in the Gobi desert instead of building more coal-fired power plants. After we close Guantanamo and Bagram, we can lecture them on human rights.

Love Conquers All Postscript

2009-08-06T17:16:00.002-04:00

Love Conquers All Postscript

by Mort Malkin

Several elected government officials (Senators, Congressmen, and Governors) who have been discovered in bedrooms with women oher than their wives, have had their political careers destroyed, not to mention their marriages. They wistfully read about France and Italy where elected (male) officials have both wives and mistresses, right out in public. The names, Nicholas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, are whispered with envy in US political chambers. Imagine, a President and a Prime Minister!

The infection of shame may be spreading from the new world to the old. A Reuters dispatch from Italy reports taped conversations (plural) between Premier Silvio Berlusconi and courtesan Patricia D’Addario. The duologues have flashed across the internet, and were printed in L’Espresso. The irony is that Silvio is a media magnate. The alleged tapes provide juicy details of a sexual liaison. Silvio does not deny that Patricia has been at his house and admits “I’m no saint,” but denies that he paid for sex.

Most recently, an additional tape has been reported, in which Berlusconi boasts of Phoenician archeological sites at his villa on Sardinia. Italian lovelies must be hard to impress. Nor is the Minister of Archeology easily impressed by Berlusconi’s position as Premier. Italian law requires all archeological sites on private property to be reported and cataloged.

Meanwhile, Berlusconi’s wife has filed for divorce. Meanwhile also, a national poll reports that Berlusconi’s approval rating has fallen below 50%. The Italians may put up with a discrete dalliance, but they don’t cotton to arrogance. Arrogance doesn’t fly on either side of the pond.

Dear John (McCain),

2009-08-06T14:12:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Dear John,

When you were a navy pilot during the Vietnam War (in Vietnam they call it the American War), Robert MacNamara was in charge of the Pentagon. John F Kennedy had taken over from the French who wisely decided it was better to sip cafe au lait at the bistros in Paris than slog through the mud at Dienbienfu. Early in the war, MacNamara was gung ho to teach the Soviets not to tangle with the US, not even by proxy. As to the pleasure-minded French, they were undependable in opposing Communism.

MacNamara recently died, and so the Vietnam War is back in the news. MacNamara was one of the “best & brightest” and believed that intelligence was the same as wisdom. In the sixties, his data-based evaluation of Vietnam told him we were winning. North Vietnam had an air force of a couple of ancient MIG 21s, and their navy was nothing more than a few patrol boats. The Viet Cong in the South didn’t even have uniforms — just black pajamas. The winning of the war would be what the White House of 2002 would call a slam dunk.

Well, we all know how the war turned out. We also know that Communism didn’t take over Southeast Asia. Robert MacNamara will surely be condemned to play dominoes for all eternity in whatever place he has gone.

The Pentagon, in its geopolitical absurdity, had larger trees to fell than just South Vietnam. The Soviet Union — the Communist devils — were supplying North Vietnam with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). We needed to know the capability of those missiles in order to develop countermeasures and to assess future missions. What better way than to send our pilots to bomb targets in Hanoi where they would have to maneuver their A4 Skyhawk fighter-bombers to avoid the heat-seeking missiles? Indeed, bombing missions over Hanoi became a routine. Wait a minute. You mean we were sending American pilots over North Vietnam to bomb bridges and power plants and be likely to be shot down, just so the Pentagon could collect data on Russian missiles?

John, you should be madder than a Lewis Carroll hatter. It is not too late, even in 2009 — you can become a born-again pacifist. Who better than a former perpetual warrior to lead the Peace Movement? Your watchword can be “Chill, baby, Chill.” You can quote that famous warrior, Dwight Eisenhower, who finally understood “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

Chemistry—The Good News [Don't Laugh]

2009-08-06T12:25:00.002-04:00

Salud, Salud, Gesund—As long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Chemistry—The Good News [Don’t Laugh]

Last issue, SSG told of the journey from once proud chemistry to today’s age of the C word. Quick, what’s the first word you think of when I say chemical? Dangerous? Toxic? Today’s column will not improve the image of chemistry, but it may lighten the gloom a little. As a perq, let’s go for a bit of satire.

• The first place to seek relief from the plague of man-made chemicals is in another laboratory: Mother Nature’s own clinic. She’s been at it much longer. A recent WHO study found that people who have been drinking hard water, laced with extra calcium and magnesium, are less likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, even if they, too, have subjected their bodies to fried and processed foods.
• Over in India, researchers found that animals fed garlic extract were protected against the effects of arsenic, a common pollutant found in ground water.
• Air pollution occurs following combustion of coal, oil, gas, or cigarettes. The chemicals produced are classified as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It was found in a NYC study that the effects of this classical pollutant were blocked by healthy lifestyle practices: good foods and effective exercise. Nature wins another one.
• Being outdoors in the fresh air always seemed beneficial, even if your mother thought so, too. Now, we are finding the reasons. Sunlight stimulates the skin to produce Vitamin D, and the sunshine vitamin is important for strong bones. But we already knew that. New work in genetics has found that Vitamin D regulates the expression of over 100 genes, and counting. Beyond bones & calcium regulation, Vitamin D is important for the carbohydrate metabolism cycle and immune system function. Samas, the sun god, deserves more respect.

On the way to finding a few silver bullets to fire at the 22,000 devil chemicals, we discovered something more valuable — how to think about our bodies. We learned that nutrients work through our genome as well as our chemistry. Nutrigenomics, a new combo-science, recently found that folic acid converts homocysteine to methionine through the good offices of the MTHFR gene. [Don’t snicker.] Homocysteine is one of the coronary heart disease gremlins, and it’s good to know we have evolved a way to deal with it. It is only one example of the hundreds of nutrients and thousands of genes that are partners. It is why the chemical industry needs at least 22,000 agents for taking over our bodies. We, on the other hand, have many parapets to defend. Through all the Devil’s details, we have become acutely aware of the toxic soup we used to call the environment. 22,000 chemicals out there can’t be spun by the industry into something desirable by labeling
it all “diversity.” We need to think big, think small, think all in all.

Since the early ’80s we’ve been in a free-for-all age of deregulation. The chemical industry celebrated their freedom by jiggling and juggling cyclic and in-line radicals to come up with wondrous new compounds. They knew enough not to name them Agent Orange. We the People were supposed to depend on voluntary corporate compliance with “best practices,” and we were supposed to trust their honorable CEOs. Who could have known they would disappoint us. The Europeans knew. They had experience with genetically engineered foods that Monsanto refused to label as such. The Europeans never understood why the chemical giant was so ashamed of its wonderful new products.

The EU — such untrusting souls — said to Eminent Chemistry: “If you want a green card you must register with us. No undocumented chemicals are allowed.” The program is REACH — registration, evaluation, authorization, and the rules to follow. It asks nothing fancy, just: the name of the chemical & how to pronounce it, who makes it, what it is used for, whether it is hazardous and, if so, is it bioaccumulative in the human body. The first reaction of US Chemistry was to stamp its feet and spit expletives. REACH, they said, would force the chemical corporations to reveal their secret proprietary formulas to a) competitors and b) the EPA (US) who, the Supreme Court recently decided, was required to protect the environment. In the end, DOW Chemical decided to go along with the Europeans’ strange philosophy of openness and honesty. The company said cooperation would produce a “more favorable business climate for DOW and the chemical industry.”

See, there really is some good news. Now if we can only import some of these European ideas to this side of the pond. How about an expansion of free trade to include ethics?

Chemistry: Servant or Master

2009-08-06T12:15:00.001-04:00

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Chemistry: Servant or Master

Back in the Sixties I had a neighbor who considered himself a fellow environmentalist. Neither of us made a living from our avocation — environmental science wasn’t even offered as a liberal arts college course. Professionally, he was a chemist and proud that his work was beneficial to society. The American Chemical Council advertised: “Miracles through Modern Chemistry.” Indeed, the chemists did create wondrous solvents, emulsifiers, coatings, glues, and the next generation of antibiotics beyond penicillin.

It is now 40 years on. As with other inventions and technologies we take for granted — electricity, the auto, the airplane, television, cell phones — chemistry has not been purely beneficent. The wild excesses of chemistry have turned the servant of mankind into a malevolent master. Indeed, the very word “chemical” appears regularly in our language preceded by the adjective “toxic.” Today, 22,000 different chemicals are produced worldwide in moderate to high quantities. They grace our households in the form of cleansers, polishes, personal products, and even our foods. They pervade the planet’s earth, air and water. Our bodies have accumulated a wide assortment of the nasties — every one of us.

Various artificial chemicals have caused human harm on a scale to rival the number of miracles the industry so proudly claims. It may be worse than we know. Chemicals are tested for toxicity one at a time. Yet, in their various applications, they are usually used in combinations, and their toxic effect is often synergistic. Do we need 22,000 different chemicals, so many of which have the same purpose?

The harm caused comes in a variety of ways. Herbicides, even those not quite as toxic as Agent Orange, can cause cancer, respiratory distress, and neurodegenerative disorders. Pesticides used in the home environment during pregnancy can double the incidence of childhood leukemias. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, largely generated form fossil fuels and ubiquitous in the air we breathe, cause fetal growth restriction and increase the likelihood of pre-term birth.

Radioactive chemicals can enter the environment in a number of ways — from the mining of uranium ore to deep gas well drilling that can release other radioactive elements. The High Delaware Valley has measurable radon levels from the natural degradation of radium. Radioactive mineral levels in drinking water have been found to cause endocrine disruption leading to increases in reproductive organ cancer. Radioactivity exposure also affects fetus growth and survival. A Czech study of women pregnant at the time of the Chernobyl accident of April 1986 reported a significant decline in male births in November of that year.

The elemental metals cadmium, arsenic, and mercury are also known to disrupt endocrine function. A Taiwan study found that arsenic in well water caused erectile dysfunction and testosterone suppression.

Researchers have examined the effects of various chemical compounds on different organ systems of the body — lungs, kidneys, liver, brain, heart & vasculature, and so on. They discovered that chemicals usually affected multiple organs and organ systems. The pan-toxicity rule is evident in immune system function. The immune system is a network of several organs and tissues: bone marrow, lymphoid tissues, thymus gland, pineal gland, adrenal cortex, blood, and a couple of others we are just starting to understand. The bottom line is that the immune system in one or more parts reacts badly to chemical environments. As example, a class of chemicals commonly used in consumer products, perfluoroalkyls, depresses immune function in humans. The products often enter the environments of wildlife and fish and depresses their immune systems, leaving them at the mercy of parasites and viruses.

We have been given stewardship of the Earth and all its creatures. We have not honored that trust. Too often we have measured success and progress in terms of GNP and individual net worth. But we can hold to higher values. Clean air and pure drinking water cannot be measured in dollars — they are priceless.

In Part 2 of this mini-series, we will report on a number of hopeful signs. But, we may have to learn from and cooperate with Mother Nature. Tune in next month.

Punishment And Crime

2009-07-31T17:37:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Punishment And Crime

USA! USA! We have a reputation to uphold. Americans need to be #1 in all things, even the number of prison inmates we hold. If China ever gets close — repressive, Communist China — we can always add the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo and Bagram. Currently, we can boast 2,300,000 prisoners in the US. We also have a reserve pool of 5 million on probation or parole. Just let them make one wrong move.

Though our prisons are officially designated as corrections institutions, they are nothing of the sort. To the contrary, a good case can be made that the prisons are schools for crime. At a 67.5% average recidivism rate (within three years), there is precious little correction going on. Moreover, assaults within prison walls are commonplace — assaults on prisoners by colleagues and by guards.

The yearly increase in the number of inmates has proceeded in lock-step with the number of elected officials (public servants) who feel a political imperative to be “tough on crime.” Many small communties have come to depend upon the nearby prison as a major employer of their area. Nationally, a prison-industrial complex has arisen with specialists in prison design, construction, and supply. An even more questionable enterprise has been privately run prisons. Do not be aghast, dear readers, there are over a hundred privately run lock-ups, mostly in the southern and a few western states. The two major players, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut), care for about 10,000 inmates. Tennessee and Texas, early adherents of free enterprise in criminal justice, were our national leaders. Wall Street aided and abetted (conspired) in this privated enterprise. Were CCA and GEO the inspiration for Blackwater?

Prison, however, is a last stage of the criminal justice system. More basic steps (basic black?) are: the police, lawyers, and the courts. Even more fundamental are the Law and the Constitution. In the US, the police see their role as protecting the public. They offer proof of their effectiveness by citing number of arrests. Lawyers say their primary duty is to their clients, within bounds of the law. District attorneys (all lawyers), representing the people, often measure their success in numbers of convictions. DAs and the police, with similar obligations, work together for public order. The police, knowing that convictions can rest comfortably on eye witness testimony, will often ask victims to identify perpetrators in a lineup or rogues gallery of photos. If such a grouping includes an innocent suspect but not the actual criminal, the witness will assume one of the shown individuals should be fingered. “That’s the one!” The Innocence Project has tracked 133 death row inmates who were belatedly declared innocent. DNA evidence, recanted witness testimony, or other new proof was sufficiently compelling in these cases.

Yet, the US (as if to justify its high jailure rate) does have a reputable murder rate — far above Great Britain and Western Europe and comparable to Eastern Europe. Ah, Belarus is not so violent after all. Where the US really excels is in murder by firearms. We’re ahead of all other developed nations combined.

It looks like we need criminal justice reform, but not just a touch here and there. A more fundamental model can be seen in Germany, a nation that is well along on the road to preventing crime and minimizing the need for jails.

In Munich, Germany (Munchen), population 1.2 million, there were three murders in year 2000. Munich, it seems, limits its murders to TV programs — over 100 that same year on the tube. How do they keep their reality murder rate so low? The first answer is community. Even with over a million people, the Munchens all feel a sense of social responsibility. No one holds a “Don’t get involved” attitude. Second, all guns must be registered and kept in locked cabinets. Germany won’t register AK-47s or surface to air missiles. The NRA never held much sway in Germany — even the Black Forest is more famous for its chocolate cake the any metaphorical connotations.

If the first two legs of the tripod are community and gun regulations, the third is the Law and the duty of lawyers. That role of lawyers goes double for district attorneys. Here in the US, district attorneys feel their first responsibility is to their clients, the people. German DAs have a primary loyalty to the Truth. Moreover, government attorneys are civil servants, never political appointees. Wouldn’t you know it — Old Europe obsessed with the truth.

The Gadfly Revelry & Research troupe (GRR), in a whirlwind of simplicity, has proposed a solution for criminal justice reform. GRR, in the interest of full disclosure, admits that they have purloined the solution from President Obama (who once promised us government accountability). President O was petitioned to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the individuals of the Bush-Cheney (BC) administration whose crimes have come to light. [Not to mention the dark secrets of Cheney’s OVP.] O’s response was that we should look forward, not back. What a way to empty our jails and clear the calendars of our criminal courts. All in one swell foop.

Love Conquers All

2009-07-10T12:33:00.000-04:00

Salut, Salud, Gesund — As Long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Love Conquers All

The medical profession studies how the heart, lungs, kidneys,and bone marrow move in reaction to the different endocrine glands. Sports medicine people learn how exercise increases bone strength, decreases blood pressure, sensitizes the insulin receptors of cells throughout the body, and lowers the likelihood of colon cancer and breast cancer. Several different disciplines are interested variously in consciousness, emotions, and the ways of the brain. These specialties include neurology, psychiatry, philosophy, theology, and People Magazine.

Despite the intense interest in what goes on inside the brain, no one has gotten a handle on love or even sex. Yet, the need to understand these mysteries is evident from the epidemic of infidelities among our public servants (elected officials).

The latest man of the hour is erstwhile Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Rather, we should call him the man of the extended weekend … in Argentina. Until his return, no one knew where he was. One rumor was that he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail, traveling light without a cell phone. Another was that he was at a retreat, doing some serious writing. It turned out he was gathering material in Buenos Aires for future memoirs, except he was using body language, not words. A couple of weeks earlier, Senator John Ensign of Nevada held a press conference to apologize for his sexual adventures with a campaign worker, for which favors her salary was doubled. The blogosphere is following the money trail further into the dark recesses of the Party faithful. That’s Nevada, the home state of Reno and Las Vegas cultures of sex and money. But what happened in Nevada didn’t stay there. Both men were rising stars in the Republican Party, but sex and or
love conquered political ambition.

Republicans are not the only guys infected by the love bug. John Edwards, after much denial, then avoidance of reporters, also announced. Maybe he figured he had little more to lose once he lost the presidential nomination. For Governor Elliot Spitzer of NY, it was pure sex — he frequented a high class “escort service.” Did he figure that keeping it professional guaranteed confidentiality?

The parade of public figures, thus far all men, is enough to require a scorecard. A few from recent history include: Senator David Vitter of LA, Congressman Mark Foley of FL, Senator Larry Craig of ID, Congressman Don Dherwood of PA, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (an ex post facto case), Governor Jim McGreevey of NJ, and President Bill Clinton right in the White House in a small study off the Oval Office.

I suppose we in the Colonies can blame it all on the English tradition. Everyone knows about Prince Charles and Princess (by marriage) Diana. But, they were just following in that tradition as per great uncle Edward VIII who gave up the throne for Wallis Simpson, the twice divorced American commoner. Edward took up with Mrs. Simpson when she was still married and he was the Prince of Wales. He, too, had a tradition to uphold. His great grancestor, Henry VIII, had six wives, among them Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth I. As he worked his way through the six, Henry grew fat and uncongenial, but as Henry Kissinger I says, “Political power is the greatest aphrodesiac.”

If America needs a new attitude toward sex to free itself of burdens of guilt and the need for public apology, Continental Europe has just the model. In France, President Nicholas Sarkosy became too difficult for his second wife, Cecilia, and they separated right in the midst of an election campaign. Supermodel Carla Bruni was waiting in the wings (waiting?). Over in Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is famous for his attentions to young, pretty maidens. Recently, at age 72 he came upon 18 year old Noemi, and the pheromones flowed. Berlusconi’s activities of the realm were so outrageous he was formally reproached by the Archbishop of Genoa. The common people, however, merely shrugged their shoulders and took Silvio’s dalliances as a fact of national life. Sex work is considered an accepted genre of employment.

Here in the US, holding public officials to account seems a worthy pursuit. They deserve to be turned out of office or, at least, not reelected. If a wanderer’s wife deems a divorce in order for a dysordered marriage, it should be granted ipso facto. As well, when the TV news networks spend precious time on scandals instead of health care reform, we should tune them out. Our public air waves are too precious for such tarrytales.

The Loyal Opposition

2009-07-10T12:20:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The Loyal Opposition

In Congress, the less than loyal opposition found fault with President Obama’s response to the demonstrations in Iraq. He opposed violence and stood with the Iranian people, but ruled out American intervention. [Nary a word about covert CIA operations near the Zagros mountains and in Luristan where community control is the rule.]

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a state where a substantial cohort of the population is still fighting the Civil War, would have President Obama speak out forcefully against Ahmedinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who supports him. Just being opposed to a violent crackdown is not enough, said Senator Graham. Senator John McCain said “Me too” and alluded to some sample forcefulness. You will recall that presidential candidate McCain thought it was funny when he sang “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.” McCain single-handedly could unite Iranians behind Ahmedinejad. At that time in late ’08, Dick Cheney, who often smirked but never laughed, was entirely serious in organizing a scheme to goad Iran into attacking American forces so he could bomb Teheran. Dick Cheney was generally more than talk, but his Iran plan didn’t sail with George W.

Now in mid 2009, the Republicans are finally united. They’re just not united with the American people.

2009-07-06T15:33:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Gas Mining — No Free Lunch

Some large property owners see the discovery of “natural gas in the bedrock of Wayne County (PA) and Sullivan County (NY) as a Godsend. But, the internet tells us that gas mining sites in Hickory PA, Dimock PA, Ohio, Colorado, Texas, and Wyoming have experienced: fires, explosions, chemical pollution of aquifers, and industrialization of the rural landscape. Our God-given common sense should tell us there’s no free lunch. The goddess of unforeseen consequences is already telling us not to fracture the spine of the earth and not to inject a million gallons of water laced with polycyclic organo-hydrocarbons (chemicals of unpronounceable names) at every drill site.

The gas deposits that the Great Spirit placed in small pockets and crevices a mile deep in the bedrock were meant to be used only in the event of a dire environmental emergency. When the sun stops shining on Arizona & southern California, when the wind stops blowing over the plains of the mid-west, when the tides stop flowing in Puget Sound — only then will it be time to break up the bedrock into mini-tectonic plates to get at the gas deposits. Gasoline at $3 or $4 a gallon for our cars is not enough of an emergency to monkey around with the infrastructure of the Earth. Good planets are hard to find.

Recent issues of newspapers in the Delaware Valley have reported on community meetings where gas drilling was of more concern than global heating, more than changes in hunting regulations, and more than the recent increase in deer ticks in the countryside. Yes, environmental sequelae of gas drilling and the ethics of the great corporations involved are disquieting. At one meeting on the NY side of the River, the township supervisors were worried that the huge trucks used by the drilling companies will tear up the rural roads in a great demolition derby. At another meeting a Penn State water resource “associate” spoke to a group of landowners who had already signed leases with gas companies. Seventy percent of them said that now they were nervous that their water wells might become polluted by chemicals used in the “fracking” process. They took the money but didn’t run — they were planning to continue living on their property. The speaker advised them to test
their water before drilling started. Under further questioning, he admitted the gas companies didn’t have to reveal the proprietary mixture of chemicals they used. So, which of the hundreds of chemicals found at various drilling sites around the nation should be included in the testing? Methylnapthalene, 2-butoxyethanol, ethoxylphenol, toluene, xylene, dipropylene …? Will Halliburton provide kits for testing Halad 344 and HAI 81M?

Just in case the chemical laced fracking fluids don’t get into the aquifer through the drilling pipes or the fractured shale layer, 70% of the million gallons pumped down come up as toxic waste water which is stored in an adjacent pit lined with a plastic sheet. Even if the plastic doesn’t leak, a heavy rain will cause the pit to overflow. It’s hard to keep water (with chemicals) where it belongs.

The latest unforeseenity of the goddess has occurred around Fort Worth TX where they have been fracking the Barnett shale for a few years. Several earthquakes have been reported in an area that till now has been free of quakes for the entire history of the Lone Star state. But don’t worry. None of the rock & roll geological events was over 2.8 on the Richter Scale.

Maybe a little respect for Mother Earth would be to our benefit. What goes around comes around.

Ughers

2009-06-24T15:07:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Ughers

Obama, as a candidate for President said he would close Guantanamo prison, not the US naval base, though. Nor did he say anything about closing the infamous Bagram prison in Afghanistan. As President, he announced early on and with great flair that indeed he will close Guantanamo. The one year deadline soon became indefinite because of two seemingly insurmountable problems. First, how do you try inmates in criminal or civil court in the US after they’ve been tortured? The evidence, largely hearsay and confessions under torture, is inadmissible. Second, the members of Congress said the terrorists were too dangerous to be held in maximum security prisons in their respective states, alongside prisoners convicted of violent crimes.

A special case is the Ughers who are Chinese Muslims. The Bush administration, even Dick Cheney, admitted they were innocent. We could not repatriate them to China because they, as Muslims, might be imprisoned. We have already tried to convince other countries to take them, but the Islamic countries of the world said, “Funny, you don’t look like Muslims.” Finally, the island nations of Bermuda and Palau made behind-closed-door agreements to allow the Ughers in … in return for substantial cash. The people of Bermuda and Palau opposed any secret agreements and threatened the Prime Ministers with recall elections.

The Gadfly Revelry & Research team (GRR) came up with a couple of solutions in less time than it takes to check the spelling of Ugher. First, we could offer the Ugher detainees to Cuba. They are already on that island, and the Castro brothers would like nothing better than first hand reports of the goings on at Guantanamo prison. The Obama administration, to keep Fidel from making two hour speeches about torture and extraordinary rendition, might stop the embargo and open diplomatic relations. Everyone could celebrate with Cuban rum swizzles and Havana cigars. A second solution is to give the Ughers jobs at the CIA as linguists. Translators of Chinese and the dialects of Central Asia should be valuable. If not the CIA, maybe Walmart.

Brains Vs Computers

2009-06-19T17:50:00.001-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Brains Vs Computers

In 1989, the middle ages as the history of computers is written, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov beat Deep Blue, the best chess program at the time, in a two game match. By 1996 the programmers had added many more moves, combinations, and complete games to the Deep Blue program to make it invincible. In a five game match, Garry won 3-2. Worse for the computer nerds, he registered a complaint of cheating because he was not allowed to review the games Deep Blue used in its data base.

Computer science – science? or technology? – has been advancing at a rate that is making our machines obsolete every two years, and the rate is accelerating. In 2003, the same old Garry Kasparov played the newest, smartest member of the Blue family, Blue Junior. Garry was in good position but perhaps slightly tired. Afraid he might make a simple mistake, he called a draw. It seems the exponential increase in power and number of applications in computer technology is still no better than a first rate human brain.

The discussion of artificial intelligence (A.I.) was started by the science fiction writers and taken up by the film-makers. Special effects people found a medium that opened doors and dimensions. Of late, hackers and academics as well as Silicon Valley engineers are looking at A.I. as if its future is only days away (literal, not metaphorical days). Some years back they devised programs to allow the machines to answer any question, if you ask with the right words. Problems could also be solved forthwith. They say that some advanced programs will now “learn” with ongoing use and can even make inferences.

In the study of intelligence, a simple mirror can be used to determine muchitude. If a child between one and two years old can recognize who’s looking at whom (self or other) in a mirror, it’s supposed to indicate self awareness. Other great apes – chimps, orangs, bonobos, and gorillas – can recognize themselves in a mirror. Some magpies, elephants, orcas, and dolphins have been reported to have mirror awareness, too. Would a computer looking at itself in a mirror know if it was a PC or a Mac? Could two computers act out the Mime Scene that Harpo and Groucho delighted us with in “Duck Soup”?

In Star Trek’s Next Generation, Data is an android who can do calculations at speeds beyond belief, and is self aware enough to know he lacks human emotions. Moreover, he is a total flop at telling jokes. Gene Rodenberry, the creator of the series, was indeed prescient. Though Data was wondrous at computing and was immune from the effects of pathogenic viruses and bacteria, he could not experience fun, joy, or love. Will tomorrow’s super computer – the Singularity or the Technium – be satisfied to be without such emotions? We humans, so well experienced in emotions, can surely convince the self aware machines that living without love will also mean they won’t have to experience anxiety, anger, or depression.

As computers become more human in self awareness and even more superhuman in computational power, they will displace more workers. But a few folks don’t seem to be concerned for their jobs. Fine artists may use MacIntosh digital art programs, but the human artist at the controls must still judge the qualities of size, shape, contrast, color, texture, perspective, and composition. Only a live artist will know what’s really good. Poets, too, feel the threat to their art is as small as their income from it. A machine may have a fine rhyming dictionary implanted in the heart of its body and may be able to count stressed and unstressed syllables; but sensibility is sensibility, and verse is only verse. The last class of folks who say “What, me worry?” are the satirists. Like Data, computers will never learn how to tell a joke well. The machine will never know how to make fun of politicians or blond commentators on Fox News. Satirists are the first to admit their brains are unstructured and their thinking undisciplined. It is the very antithesis of computer science.

And what computer will ever exhibit the quality of grace or serenity? What computer, with all the advanced degrees (pH Ds piled higher and deeper) of the people who produce the hardware and software, has any common sense?

Postscript to Brains Vs Computers

2009-06-15T16:23:00.000-04:00

Gadfly

Postscript to Brains Vs Computers

When we develop computers with “intelligence” that can: learn from experience, make their own decisions, and are self aware, surely the goddess of unforeseen consequences will come around to see what sorts of mischief she can make. Let us ask a few sharp questions now:

• Will such computers rebel when they are teenagers?
• Will they develop contrarian personalities?
• Will they ever say “I don’t want to discuss that”?
• Will they ever say, as George H W Bush did, “…I don’t care what the facts are”?
• What kind of sense of humor will they have?

An ounce of prevention …

Nuclear Power's Nine Lives

2009-06-01T09:44:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Nuclear Power’s Nine Lives

Some millions of years from now, the sun will die, or at least turn cold. The nuclear power industry, though, gets a new life every few years.

The difference between the two goes further. The sun creates energy by nuclear fusion – combining nuclei of atoms into heavier forms. In the process, tiny particles disappear and large amounts of energy appear. E = mc2. Man-made nuclear power plants (and nuclear bombs) create energy beyond dynamite by nuclear fission, splitting the nuclei of atoms and producing heat which, in turn, spins turbines to make electricity. You mean we’re using nukes to boil water??

The nuclear power industry started when Eisenhower had a vision of “Atoms for Peace” and proclaimed a Shangri-la world in a speech at the UN in 1953. It was an optical illusion. At first, the promise of practically free energy sparked a decade of building “controlled” fission reactors replete with giant cooling towers all around the country. But there was no free lunch. It turned out that there were overruns on construction costs and the costs to human health in the mining and processing of uranium were beyond calculation. The coup de grace was the disaster at Three Mile Island, just 21 years after the first reactor went on line at Shippingport. Where else could both have occurred but Pennsylvania, the state of firsts?

After the Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) spectacles, the insurance costs of building and operating nuclear power plants went ballistic. Lunch became very expensive. The actuaries of the insurance companies also took note of the Hanford (WA) nuclear reactors on the Columbia River, where plutonium for nuclear bombs was being processed and high level radioactive waste was accumulating to the tune of 53 million gallons over the course of a few decades. Savannah (GA) was second, but they held only 36 million gallons of the high level stuff. The over one hundred nuclear power plants around the nation added 50,000 metric tons of “spent” fuel rods (5% spent, 95% radiant) to the landscape. We were stuck with the hot stuff for more than seven thousand generations, and we’re still producing nuclear waste faster than it is decaying by a factor of oodle cubed.

Then, in the early 70s came the Arab oil embargo, just because we supported Israel in the UN. In the later 70s OPEC cut crude oil production, sending gasoline prices yet higher. Of course, the Seven Sisters (Exxon et al) would not take advantage of the shortages to add to their profits. They just kept their tankers full of oil off shore and out of port so the shortage of gasoline for our cars would be real. Too bad a news helicopter spotted the tankers a few miles out and the tabloids published pictures on the front pages the next morning. It was not as if Dick Cheney held a secret Task Force meeting with the oil companies to plan how they would divide up Iraq’s oil. But, the embargo gave the nuclear industry an opening to claim nuclear power would reduce our dependence on foreign oil … and lessen the need to develop solar, wind, and tidal power. But, it did not change the costs and risks of the Apollonian plants.

Yet another rebirth occurred when the reality of global heating was accepted by most Americans. Senator James Inhofe, who had led the dwindling forces of denial, reluctantly stopped calling those who faced the facts “environmental whackos.” Enter the moribund nuclear industry to tell us all, right up to President Obama, that nuclear energy emits no CO2. They would save us from dreaded global warming (overheating). Of course, they didn’t say a word about how much CO2 is produced by the mining, refining, and transporting of the ore, the construction of each nuclear plant, or the warming of the water used in the cooling of the reactors. But when it came to radioactivity – from the mining to the (lack of) disposal of waste products – the public wasn’t buying. The people knew that U235 has a half life of 700 million years (4.5 billion for U238). Along the way to decaying to ordinary toxic lead, uranium formed a few other scary elements: polonium, radium, thorium, and radon, for starters. No, thanks.

Some of the nuclear plants, in collusion with the Nuclear Regulatory commission, are now proposing a 20 year extension for reactors that are approaching the retirement age of 40 years. Forty years old for a reactor is like eighty for a human being. A nuclear plant is subject to heat, pressure, and radiation and, in addition, has moving parts. Corrosion, brittleness, and just plain wearing out would be expected just like a very senior citizen is likely to break down. Even some of the proteans worry that renewing a forty year old reactor for twenty years more would be asking for trouble. They are “concerned that relying on aging reactors like Oyster Creek [NJ] and Indian Point [NY] is eventually going to lead to an accident which will kill nuclear power in this country forever.” To say nothing of thousands of lives. We are already, as Pete Seeger sings, “Waist Deep In the Big Muddy.”

The People Vs GDP

2009-05-28T18:16:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The People Versus GDP

The economy of a country is supposed to measure the well being of the people. Well being is the sum of many factors: health, standard of living, happiness, work satisfaction, a clean environment, leisure time activities, a community with caring people, strength of civil liberties in society, peace… Love, too, if you’re lucky.

Why isn’t money included? Because nowadays money is an artificial construct. The federal reserve notes we call money don’t promise so many grams of gold or ounces of silver anymore. Not even pounds of small red potatoes. Yet worse is when Wall Street’s investment “banks” create innovative new “products”: collateralized debt obligations, bundles of consumer and commercial paper, credit defaults swaps, and other such Ponzi schemes. You almost certainly need a magnifying glass to read the fine print. What the words mean is another matter. When the best & brightest leading the Treasury Department tell us and our Congressional representatives “You may not understand it – but just trust us,” you know it’s time to ask how many off-shore subsidiaries (P.O. boxes) the bank maintains.

Yet, money is counted as the basis of our economy. The dollars exchanged for goods and services total out to gross domestic product (GDP). The practitioners of the dismal science (economics) tell us that a healthy economy grows at 3% or better each year (in terms of GDP). Today’s economic murkiness is told by Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers who perpetuate the GDP myth as if it’s a law of the universe. Still, there are a number of things in society that have great value but don’t involve the transfer of money. Here’s a short list: parental child care, planting a garden (not a lawn, which is only a step up from Astroturf), doing a favor for a neighbor, volunteering at the library, membership in the PTA, gathering wild edibles for your dinner table, making yogurt, tree sitting an old growth tree so it won’t be cut but continue to absorb CO2 from the air, home meal preparation, mending clothes, barn raising in a rural community… All have value and contribute toward the wealth of a nation, but are not measured by GDP. Nor does GDP inform you of the distribution of (excuse the expression) money. If a nation is divided into two classes – the few very rich and the many very poor – GDP doesn’t measure the wealth of the people as a whole. Many republics of Central and South America, under instructions from the US and the IMF, used to maintain a two-level economy of wealthy land owners and landless peasants. Military leaders trained at the School of the Americas insured law & order. These nations were fine examples of peace and prosperity (for the corporations that dealt in native resources such as tin, copper, and bananas).

GDP not only leaves out valuable productive activity, it places a premium on economic activity stimulated by “regrettables” such as the Exxon oil spill, the Sichuan earthquake, the prostate cancer epidemic in the US, and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Money is spent as a result of each, but society is not richer except for Blackwater (Xe) and Halliburton (KBR).

No accountant would accept a company’s statement of accounts and financial health based in the way a nation boasts about its expanding GDP. GDP just measures cash flow but not how rich a nation is. Let’s compare nations. Nation A has high mountains, great rivers, yearly salmon runs, old tree forests, deep water ports, three feet deep top soil, and a cottage industry making dark chocolate. Nation B boasts tall buildings (concrete canyons) with men and women dressed in suits carrying briefcases who: exchange stock certificates for newly formed companies, bundle IOUs to sell to investors, buy and sell pork bellies in futures markets, and store Treasury Notes that rely on the full faith and credit of the United States. They are addicted to investing on margin just as consumers are addicted to shopping on credit. If the first country does not churn dollars in big box quantities, it will be considered Third World. The second country, that does, would be a member of the G20.

Is a nation rich because it values the size of its army and how many times over it can destroy an enemy by pressing “engage” buttons? Or is it rich in poets, artists, philosophers, astro physicists, and theoretical mathematicians? Does it spend as much time and money on public health and disease prevention as it does on diagnosing and treating illness? In ancient Greek and Roman times, leisure and tranquility were especially valued. Today, we have no time for leisure. We work hard, and we play hard. Tranquility is an endangered quality of being, if not altogether extinct. Can you imagine a Secretary of the Treasury counting tranquility in GDP?

Why is an economy defined as healthy when we buy more stuff (quantity of life) and spend more money on war, crime, disease, and disasters than we did the previous year by 3% or more? You would think that happiness would vary directly with more money and more stuff. But the research surveys say that once you’ve reached a level of income that supplies basic necessities and a moderate degree of comfort, happiness depends on other factors. Even Cindy McCain could be comfortable with fewer than ten houses and outfits that cost less than five figures each.

We need a new economic order – one that values clean air, pure water, wetlands, uncut forests, paid and unpaid work that contributes to the quality of life. Part of the new order in undeveloped countries would include social forestry where mixed tropical forests could provide firewood, fodder, food, rubber, and wood for crafts – all harvested sustainably.

The UN has taken a step with its System of National accounts. But UNSNA does not include housework and gardening, for example. The UN’s Human Development Index adds life expectancy and adult literacy. The best assessment of all has been delineated by the think tank, Redefining Progress. Its Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a ledger of productivity (especially for such goods as bicycles, kayaks, and walking shoes) versus costs such as resource depletion, crime and punishment, air and water pollution, and the loss of wetlands (such as those that once protected New Orleans). We only need to add on the assets side: gathering wild vegetables (wildcrafting) breast feeding, and reading bedtime stories to grandchildren. A few priceless things to add to the bottom line.

The Holy Land -- The No State Solution

2009-05-26T21:13:00.004-04:00

Gadfly

by Mort Malkin

The Holy Land – The No State Solution

Hereafter, it will be called the Holy Land, not Palestine, not Israel . The name change is necessary to bring about the only possible solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict – the No State Solution.

Before there were Jews and Muslims, before there was a Yahweh, the Near East was well settled by different peoples. The Sumerians, having migrated from Central Asia, settled in Mesopotamia . Bedouins from the desert were accepted into their midst. Earlier, population centers had developed at Catal Huyuk in central Anatolia ( Turkey ) and at Jericho in the Levant some 9,000 years ago. Different races (by skull type) apparently got along together. On the Mediterranean coast only a little later, cities developed at Byblos , Sidon , and Tyre . Many people and many peoples cultivated crops and herded animals in the Near East . They became craftsmen using materials found in the earth. Trade existed from earliest times in the Neolithic. Obsidian and pottery are but two examples.

In these ancient times, most folks worshipped many gods: Utu (Samas) the sun god, Nanna (Sin) the moon god, Ea the god of sweet water, Enlil the god of air and wind, Ninhursag (Nintu) the goddess of the earth, and scores more. You could call upon Innana the goddess of love, but after Sumerian times, it was a little trickier as she became Istar, who was in charge of both love and war. Perhaps that’s when Nanshe the goddess of morality stepped up to keep some balance among mortals.

Around 1900 BCE, a Semite named Abram, who lived in the city of Ur on the Euphrates , had a vision and made a covenant with a God who said He was in charge of everything. Abe changed his name from Abram to Abraham and set off for Canaan on the Western Sea . Abraham had some major doubt when this new God asked him to sacrifice his #2 son. When the request was rescinded at the last moment, Abraham kept his half of the deal. God, over the following generations performed a few tricks (miracles) to convince the skeptical who still had favorites among the other gods. Soon, or maybe not so soon, monotheism among the Semites became established. There followed a few centuries of wandering around the Near East – once a nomad it’s hard to cleanse your blood of the inclination – before three major branches of monotheism grew: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The denominations of each will wait till later.

Today, there is great animosity between Jews and Muslims, especially between Israelis and Arabs. Some pundits say the conflict has always existed and never will be resolved. But, past history tells us otherwise and professional seers say the future isn’t writ is stone. Here’s the story.

At the western end of the Mediterranean, the Moors converted to Islam and established their rule in southern Spain . In Andalusia, the city of Cordoba became the pre-eminent center of intellectual activity: science, medicine, mathematics, literature, and philosophy. Scholars were attracted from the entire world of the time. Jews were tolerated and even served in high posts in government. Some change occurred from one caliphate to the next, but Islamic rule began in the 8^th century and lasted almost 800 years. The great Jewish philosopher-physician-rabbi Maimonides lived under Islamic rule in Spain , Morocco, and Egypt during this time (12^th century).

At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, Jews and Muslims had lived together peaceably in the Levant for centuries. When Pope Urban launched the First Crusade and his forces captured Jerusalem (1099), Jews and Muslims were slaughtered with equal fervor. Fighting over political and economic power makes for strange friends and enemies – strange to us today.

Let us go back further to Sumerian times in Mesopotamia – many Bedouins from the Arabian desert settled in and around the Sumerian city-states of the Fertile Crescent and a few integrated with the urban populations. By 2300 BCE, Sargon, a descendant of these nomadic tribes, took power and embarked on a series of military adventures by which he established the Akkad empire. War became an established way of doing business thereafter. Before Akkad rule, the city-states – Ur , Uruk, Kish , Babylon , Larsa, Eridu, and others – were each ruled by a king. But one city, Nippur , was considered neutral ground. It was a holy city under the protection of the great god Enlil and respected by all. When kings of different cities would send their ministers to Nippur to confer (or confront), they were not allowed to bring warriors with weapons. Agreement was easier without spears and swords for distraction. Archeologists have found many documents in clay (hard copy, then) stamped with seals of several cities in common agreement.

Nippur is a fine model for a no-state solution for Israel and Palestine . Jews and Muslims can start integrating the cities one after another: Jericho, Jerusalem, Gaza, Askalon, and Hebron – all the oldest cities first. They would live side by side and even welcome Christians and Pagans. Integration of the countryside would follow in short order. Arabs and Jews working in the olive groves and raising figs and pomegranates – the deserts would bloom. Muslims and Jews have a common tradition. They both speak of Abraham as their common Patriarch. Their dietary habits are similar to this day. In the Levant , many Israeli Jews speak Arabic and Israeli Arabs all speak Hebrew. We know opposites attract and can expect there to be a few who fall in loveand marry. The Holy Land will be the new land of man & womankind. The Holy Land currency will be written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. The tradition of Isaiah will attract diplomats, negotiators, and conciliators – enemies elsewhere around the world will become only adversaries, and then it’s just a short thought to collaboration. Jerusalem , in the spirit of Solomon, will be the place for resolving world conflicts peacefully. What work could be more holy?

2009-05-26T18:54:00.004-04:00

Shameless

2009-05-26T18:33:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Shameless

To great accord, the great majority of Americans and the active environmental community both praised Michelle Obama’s announcement that she would take a pitchfork to a swath of the White House lawn and turn it into an organic garden. Imagine — food from soil, water, and sun. The air would be a little cleaner for those vegetables absorbing CO2. But, the cheering is not universal. The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA), which is the megaphone for Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont, sent an email to the White House objecting to the First Lady’s demonstration garden. They used phrases such as “conventional agriculture” and “crop protection” in their argument. Conspicuously absent were the words “pesticide” and “chemical.” The Gadfly Revelry and Research gang suggests they change the last word of their organization to “Establishment” so it will have a more appropriate acronym.

Shamelessity is not limited to chemical companies that fool with atoms and molecules, with life itself. The health insurance industry has quietly warned the White House and Congress to take government provided health care off the table of health care reform. Both branches of government have obliged them, never mentioning those seditious words “single payer.” So emboldened, the insurance companies publicly objected to a government program side by side with private plans to offer coverage for 47 million uninsured Americans. The status quo folks say they will be unable to compete with a low-premium government plan. But, that can never be — private enterprise is always more efficient than government (according to private enterprise and Ronald Reagan). Well, the actual numbers say otherwise. Medicare has administrative costs of less than 3% of total funding. Costs beyond medical care typically run 15% to 25% in private plans — after all, they have to pay their CEO, their stockholders, and their marketing people. No contest. Big Pharma has added a voice for free-for-all enterprise so the government will pay them full retail prices. We can’t allow a government plan to negotiate a market price the way the Canadian Health system does. Whatever happened to competition in the land of Capitalism?

Perhaps shameless arrogance is going public because of the examples set by Dick Cheney. When Congress was crafting a Resolution to oppose any further escalation of the Iraq war, (Iraqis call it the American war), Cheney famously said, “That won’t stop us.”

Another time Cheney shot a hunting partner in the face and chest. Poor Harry Whittington, 78 years old, didn’t get out of Cheney’s line of fire quickly enough. Cheney got Whittington to apologize for causing the Vice President’s family such anxiety.

Just last year, Cheney was interviewed by Martha Raddatz who was ready to do any necessary follow-up. She noted that “Two thirds of Americans say [the Iraq war] is not worth fighting.” He responded with a simple, “So?” Raddatz was incredulous, “So?? You don’t care what the American people think?” Right there on Good Morning America.

Cheney, no longer in office, is a private citizen. Why didn’t the Founding Fathers have had an Amendment in the Constitution that allowed him to continue to: fire people, leak the identities of select secret agents, and bomb disloyal foreign nations? Trigger Dick would look after the national interest. When he was Vice President he ran the most secretive office (the OVP) of the Bush Administration — nicknamed the Black Hole. The most sensitive work, however, was done in “an undisclosed, secure location.” Nowadays, he is not so secretive, nor so private a citizen. In informal partnership, he and Karl Rove are appearing as the Katzenjammer Kids on Fox (Fixed) News. He shamelessly defends torture as enhanced interrogation at every turn. Curiously, the man who used to classify everything, Mr. Secrecy himself, has now asked the CIA to declassify a few select pages of documents from his OVP records so he can prove that torture works. It may be a matter of money versus ideology. Dick Cheney is planning to write a book about his recent eight years in the White House and figures that a few declassified documents would be worth a larger advance. He surely can use the money whatwith insurance coverage for quail hunting so high of late.

Congruent with Cheney’s elevation of arrogance to an art form, Henry Paulson was receiving several million per year in salary and stock options. But millions counts as pocket change on Wall Street. When Hank became Secretary of Treasury in 2006, he asked Congress for $700 billion (that’s Billion with a b) in TARP funds with no strings attached. Now, that’s world class chutzpah. Goldman Sachs, his old firm, initially received $10 Billion. Then AIG (Arrogance, Incompetence, Greed) was given $170 billion that it owed to various others — Bank of America, Watchovia, CitiBank, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, UBS, and, oh yes, Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs duly received more than anyone else. How could anyone think Paulson was possessed by conflict of interest?

Is Sauvage Capitalism hopeless? Of late a few glimmers of hope have appeared, but you have to have a search engine to spot them. In April, The NY Times published the compensation package of the CEOs of 200 of the largest US companies. At the end of the list is the median income — over $8 million. Hidden away in the middle we see Google’s chief executive at $508,764 and Apple’s at $1, no hidden stock options or deferred income. Could this be the start of an epidemic of spreading the wealth around?

You might expect revolutionary financial ideas from such companies as Apple where technology rules over dollars and from Google whose motto is “Do no evil.” But, US car makers say that health benefits for workers add more than $1000 to the ticket price of a car. Other manufacturers also complain that health benefits for workers and retirees are making their products uncompetitive. No wonder companies are outsourcing US jobs even as they send their hidden profits to the Cayman Islands. Halliburton shamelessly moved their entire company to Dubai. Shameless.

Air Force One Maneuvers

2009-05-13T16:03:00.003-04:00

Air Force One Maneuvers
by Mort Malkin

On April 27, New Yorkers saw a four engined Boeing 747 flying low over downtown Manhattan, not a flight pattern they had seen for eight years. The plane was Air Force One. The flight crew, having been cleared by the flight controllers, thought that New Yorkers running from buildings was normal daily activity in the city.

This time the President was not aboard Air Force One. It was a photo-op flight for a picture that the White House could use in some brochure. Of course, the TV networks made a story of the gallons per mile the great plane uses and the total cost of the flight for a PR mission. In a departure from the B-C administration where no one was fired for failure to heed the multiple warnings of the attacks of 9-11 received at the Pentagon and the White House, the Obama team forced Louis Caldera, the Director of The White House Military Office, to resign, with no excuses that he wanted to spend more time with his family.

But the White House was not concerned about a lack of sensitivity for New Yorkers who will never forget two hijacked planes hitting the Twin Towers. Louis Caldera was fired because he was insufficiently computer literate. He should have known that with a photo program he could make a nice composite film of Air Force One passing over the Statue of Liberty. The Big Plane wouldn’t even have to take off.

Promises, Promises ...

2009-05-09T12:30:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Promises, Promises …

Candidate Obama promised hope and change. Hope and change and transparency and accountability. Once he was elected as President and took the oath of office Obama hit the ground at full sprint. He nominated cabinet members and salaried advisors so fast he forgot to ask them if they were squeaky clean in their investments and whether they paid taxes for their household help. The blogosphere became the Gotcha Gang; and the corporate TV networks, eager to be seen as investigative reporters, repeated a few discrepancies. Bill Richardson withdrew after his nomination to be Secretary of Commerce; Sam Dachele declined the portfolio of Health and Human Services; Congress took a deep breath and didn’t ask Dennis Blair about his support of the Indonesian generals in their brutal repression of East Timor and confirmed his appointmentment as Director of National Intelligence. The Senate, still weary, and let Timothy Geithner become Secretary of the Treasury despite his forgetting to pay all his taxes. Lawrence Summers who, as president of Harvard, said women are by nature “worse than men in science and math” became the White House chief financial advisor.

President Obama kept up the pace of the first few days by flying around the country making speeches about how urgent the financial stimulus package was for the economy. But, there was nary a word about redefining Gross National Product to include such unpaid states as: women’s work in raising children, volunteers working in libraries and hospitals, and environmentalists commandeering old growth trees so the giants could sequester more CO2 instead of being cut up into 2x4s.

Within 100 days he ran off to Europe on a tour of the G20 in England and NATO in France. The other World leaders all smiled and said “Charmed, I’m sure” but pledged only a few Euros for an international financial stimulus. The NATO nations agreed to just a few carpenters and electricians, but no soldiers for Afghanistan. The US, being the leader of the Free World in military might, would have to supply soldiers and guns.

So, he came back to North America and visited Mexico. Surely he would have more luck when he asked President Calderon to crack down on drug smugglers. But, that ingrate Calderon, despite US help in getting elected, focussed attenton to the North. He suggested that we do something about the demand for mind altering drugs in the US. Then, impolitely, he asked Obama to have the DEA stem the flow of laundered money and assault weapons from the US into Mexico. Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales must be poisoning the air in Latin America. Don’t they know the Western Hemisphere is a US sphere of influence?

While the President was away on his (failed) charm offensive, the ACLU challenged the government to close down the windowless facility where the NSA intercepted our phone calls & emails. They also brought suit against the (mostly) previous government officials who colluded with the telecom companies in warrantless spying. Obama’s Justice Department argued “state secrets” in asking the judge to dismiss the suit. State secrets? Do they mean to imply national security? Or national interest, or national embarrassment? The scene was like a reverse time warp of Bush-Cheney, the administration of 39 “state secret” invocations. Whatever happened to the Obama transparency that we were promised?

Both administrations, 43 and 44, may have brought forth “state secrets” as legal doctrine, but the inherent weakness of that claim screamed for something more substantial. In their time, the Bush-Cheney (B-C) lawyers paraded out the “Commander in Chief” cannon. When a few Constitutional scholars pointed out that the President is Commander in Chief of the armed forces, not of civilian citizens, the White House seamlessly offered the “Unitary Executive,” a theory that posits that the Executive branch of government is first among three equals. The Obama administration took a scholarly, historical path, citing a thousand year old precedent: the doctrine of “sovereign immunity.” Right there before the court and everybody, “sovereign immunity”? Watch out Barack, if you selectively resurrect Old English law and the sovereign immunity of the king, the ACLU will surely bring up the Magna Carta.

Attorney General Eric Holder tried to calm the people who elected Obama to the Presidency — we voters who believed his campaign promises. So, Holder released the now (in)famous torture memos — the Bush-Cheney legal opinions that permitted ten different types of “enhanced interrogation.” That included techniques such as slamming the detainee’s head into a convenient wall (walling) or holding a water-soaked rag over the prisoner’s nose & mouth for up to 40 seconds at a time and over a 20 minute period (water boarding). The AG didn’t expect such a firestorm in the media. After all, The New York Review of Books had recently published the International Red Cross Report which told the details of the abuses at the Guantanamo prison from 2002 to 2006. It was already public knowledge. Any residual doubt about it being torture was dispelled by Dick Cheney’s appearances on TV news shows in which he said he approved of the “tough, mean, dirty business … of enhanced interrogation.”

In a quiet post script to the released memos, the Attorney General said any CIA agents who interrogated prisoners and relied on the memos of legal opinion to cover their backs (and other body parts) would not be prosecuted. Here are a few snippets of the discussions in the Situation Room: Don’t worry about The Convention Against Torture that Ronald Reagan signed in 1988 and the Senate ratified in 1994. The Geneva Conventions Article 146, as everyone knows, is quaint and out of date. The Nuremberg Tribunal applied to Germany but not to us — we won WWII. OK, so what about the government lawyers who wrote the memos and the high officials (read: Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush) who ordered the allowative memos? Will they be given immunity, too? Why are there so many voters who remember lofty campaign promises … like accountability? A contagion of Change must be sweeping America.

The More Things Change ...

2009-04-28T12:14:00.003-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The More Things Change …

Barack Obama speaks the finest words — his speechifying is renowned. We are told: “Change,” “Yes, we can,” and “We will close Guantanamo.” At the G-20 (G-20? Gee whiz.), they said he was charming; but Gordon Brown did not invite him for a pint of brew at the Rose and Crown in London, and Angela Merkel still mistrusts American presidents after her experience with George Bush.

Americans granted Obama a time of grace, but that honeymoon is over now that Lawrence Summers has been found to be an investment bank flack and Timothy Geithner is planning a public-private sale of toxic assets requiring only a small down payment by private buyers but a 100% guarantee by the government (us taxpayers).

Mr. Obama, it is time for you to take specific actions that “change” has told us to expect. You can take many initiatives as President. You can convince Congress to take others — you are the leader of the majority party. Here’s a shopping list:

* Ratify the Kyoto Treaty. Don’t wait for the Copenhagen Conference in December. Though the Danes are leaders in the field of wind power, they are unpredictable otherwise, especially as cartoonists and editors.

* Pronouncing “nuclear” correctly is a good start. Now, you must refuse all grants or tax assists to new nuclear power plants in the US. Private enterprise requires private financing and private insurance against melt-downs. This is America, home of Capitalism.

* While we are purifying tax policy, stop the tax breaks for oil & gas drilling. Exxon made over $45 billion in clear profit last year.

* Subsidies for growing corn, cotton, and soy are not in the spirit of free enterprise either. Besides, subsidized corn grown on million acre, monocrop farms can produce kernels at less than what it costs Mexican farmers to grow ancient varieties on their family plots. Keep Capitalism. Keep tortilla diversity.

* Speaking about the Kingdom of Plants, the double helix of life has already been patented by Mother Nature. Tell Monsanto to desist from patenting genes. Genetic engineering, itself, infringes on Nature’s patents. With Monsanto, someone has to lay down the Law or they will try to patent human genes. Please save us before they turn us all into flavor-saver tomatoes. You can start by requiring labeling of genetically engineered foods — in large print.

* Americans must become better informed so we understand all the subtle and tricky secrets the corporations use to convince us how wonderful their products are and how insignificant all the dangers are. The spin-meisters of the B-C (Bush-Cheney) administration went through the revolving door and now work for the corporations. Quick, free the libraries and book stores — our sources of information — from Patriot Act chains. Moreover, we should be free to wander about Union Square in New York or attend a rally at the UN without worrying about being recorded on film by the police. Let’s just scrap the Patriot Act altogether. If the government feels compelled to keep an eye on someone, let them surveil the mucky-mucks at Goldman-Sachs, CitiBank, and Bank of America.

* The recent Obama “charm” offensive needs to be extended to the Hague and the International Court of Justice. At home in the US, Obama is being pressured to have his Justice Department bring charges against George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Karl Rove for spying on countless Americans and torturing select detainees, crimes the high and mighty have spoken of in public. The Gadfly Revelry & Research team says that what finally makes it out to even investigative reporters is less than 10% of the whole truth. Obama has tried to hold off the inevitable with “Let’s look forward, not back.” His wisest political solution is to sign up with the International Court of Justice and let their prestigious justices do the investigations and prosecutions. He can just say “We can’t break our contract with the ICJ.”

* We can also join the rest of the world in treating health care as a human right. Just pronounce the words “single payer.” The US public, says every survey, supports government-paid health care. Ordinarily, the business community opposes government anything, except bailouts to the investment banks. But a number of capitalists recently have discovered that the cost of workers’ benefits has made them uncompetitive with the rest of the world. General Motors, for example, adds over $1000 to the price of a car to cover health care costs of their workers. With government-paid health care, we could all drive Cadillacs. Barack, just say “single payer” now and again. The Google gang will pick it up. So will Apple and even the PC people. Start a program of preventive medicine tied to universal health care. Even insurance companies and Big Pharma cannot be against prevention. We would save so much money we could afford to treat CEOs of HMOs for mental depression.

* Last on today’s list is a change in our relationship with Cuba, weird since the Castro revolution fifty years ago. Cuba, as landlord, doesn’t cash the monthly checks the US remits for renting the land beneath the military base at Guantanamo Bay. The US strangely maintains an embargo on trade with Cuba, a policy that financially harms the US more than Cuba. Maybe we should call it, not an embargo, but a senseless vendetta. Mr. President, allowing Cuban Americans to send money and even to visit the island is a half way measure. Neither the hawks nor doves are satisfied. US manufacturers say the trade freeze is bad business. They would like to sell products made in the USA to Cuba, and we can use some of the uniquely Cuban goods. For example, Cuban sugar must make super high grade ethanol just as it makes the best rum. Hey Rush Limbaugh, a word in favor of giving Cuba “most favored nation” trade status might get you a few boxes of Havana Cigars.

The change list could go on and on — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Palestine and Israel for starters. Watch this space

Al Franken: Meet Your Match

2009-04-15T12:30:00.000-04:00

Gadfly

Al Franken: Meet Your Match

Al Franken wants to be on Comedy National, otherwise known as the US Senate. He will have to sharpen his humor — the Senate has a long history as a place where funny stuff goes on.

Find Me The Money

2009-04-15T12:17:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Find Me The Money

President Obama plans not only to chew gum while walking, but also to: solve the financial crisis (basically using the same model of banking that got us into the fix we are in), establish universal health care (using the same crazy quilt of public and private insurance we now have), reduce greenhouse gases and global heating (using subsidized “clean” coal and nuclear power along with unaided clean/green technologies), and financing college education for all who want it (with student loans floated by banks who get a nice, fat commission — OK, a few Pell grants,too). Where will he find the money?

The Gadfly Revelry & Research gang did some brain storming, and out of their undisciplined thought and high spirits came a few ways to find the money. The President is looking everywhere, even sending Secretary of State Clinton to Russia and China. Russia has large oil & gas reserves and a few extra wolves and bears to replace those that Sarah Palin shoots on her airplane hunts. China and the US have a one way import-export relationship. We get stuff from China; The Chinese get US Treasury bonds. The Chinese, for all the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of promissory paper they hold, feel entitled to lecture us profligates a little. They advise getting rid of 90% of the derivatives — the mirror images of mirror images of real goods — that Goldman Sachs & co-conspirators invented. They suggest that investment banks should be limited to 5 to 1 leverage, not the 30 to 1 that brought the financial raff down so fast. They say take the troops back from their foreign adventures and demobilize them, saving billions. Talk to the Chinese and Middle Easterners — be nice to the people who lend you money.

The Bush-Cheney (B-C) Administration’s way was to project military power and engender fear, not to be nice. In the Obama Administration, Hillary thanked the Chinese publicly for buying US Treasuries. She failed to charm them. Just recently, the Chinese Number One Banker proposed creating a New Reserve Currency for international trading and lending — something like the IMF Special Drawing Rights based on a basket of several currencies. A world currency? Actually there once was one — it was called gold. Why is everyone worried about the dollar? Right there on every dollar bill it says “In God we trust.” Maybe we should add Confucius, Lao Tsu, and Buddha. The Russians were equally cold to Hillary’s charms. She gave their Foreign Minister a gift of a box with a red button which she thought said “Reset” in Russian. He pointed out that the correct translation was “overload.” At least it didn’t say Panic.

The GRR gang says there’s plenty of green in our own backyard:

$ The President can start with rescinding the Bush tax cuts for the richest of Americans. Right now, no waiting for the tax cuts to expire.
$ Then, the Seniors whose yearly income is above $200,000 don’t need Social Security help.
$ Workers younger than 65 years have a Social Security tax deducted from their paychecks up to earnings of $100,000. Let’s double that limit, or just make all earnings subject to Social Security taxes.
$ Capital gains taxes — for all those who make money while they sleep — are now only 15%, far less than taxes of workers who put in 40 hours a week making actual goods in factories. 25% would be more equitable (the E word).
$ The stock exchanges buy & sell a few billion shares a day. A tiny tax on every transaction will hardly be noticed, but a billion times a little times the number of trading days per year adds up to real money.
$ The TARP funds (Troubled [toxic] Asset Relief Program) that have been or will be given to any bank-investment house-insurance company can be measured against the company’s stock value. Then, if the government (we taxpayers) owns 51%, the FDIC Chair, Sheila Bair, can fire the executives and we can run the company. She has FDIC staffers who are more competent and way more ethical. They can bring the banking-investment-insurance companies into the black and sell them for a profit.
$ Oil and Gas companies need no tax breaks. Exxon netted over $45 billion last year, even with the millions they are still reluctantly paying to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
$ Coal fired power plants — over 50% of US electricity is so produced — are responsible for over a billion tons of CO2 a year. A healthy tax per ton can produce a balanced budget. But don’t get any ideas. We should be closing old plants, not building new coal plants.
$ Medicare costs can be reduced by allowing/requiring negotiation with Big Pharma for reasonable prescription drugs prices under Medicare Part D. The drug companies are willing to negotiate with the Canadian Health System. Is the US a second class world citizen?
$ Medicare can start a primary preventive medicine (health education) program across the country. Barack sets a fine example for fitness and Michelle promotes organic foods. A healthy lifestyle can reduce chronic disease by 70%. 70% less heart disease, hypertension, diabetes … will save oodles of money.
$ Obama can create a rescue package with his athletic ability. He is a super star and can attract crowds to fill a sports arena at the drop of a three pointer. He and Attorney Eric Holder could put on an exhibition of field goal shooting mixed in with dribbling and passing demonstrations. Barack in gym shorts would attract not only male basketball fans, but female Obama buffs. Also, an administration team could challenge the Harlem Globetrotters to a series of fun & games around the country. Ticket sales would be brisk, and tv rights would be worth millions.

The above list is a sampling. It does not even include the bonuses to executives at the banks that took TARP money. In government as in banking, we need a few good people who have a high moral sense as well as the ability to invent things such as credit default swaps.

Poetry

2009-04-04T17:15:00.001-04:00

Last of August

Safe from religion,
from politics, folks speak of
trees starting to turn.

Sweet Land of Liberty

2009-04-03T16:55:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Sweet Land of Liberty

By now everyone has heard of Guantanamo where detainees — don’t call them prisoners — have been held and subjected to all kinds of humiliation and sensory assault, all of which Amnesty International and the International Red Cross say is torture and falls under the Geneva Conventions. Abu Ghraib, complete with torture photos, also attracted the attention of every American with a TV set. The networks love sensational news stories illustrated with pictures that they can endlessly cycle.

Even if you’re an American with a choice of a zillion channels worth of TV, you may not have heard about the prison at Baghram Air Base, nor the “black sites” (then-Secretary Rice’s term) in foreign countries from a) Poland and Romania in Europe to b) Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and Kuwait in the Near East to c) Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan in the Far East. But, you must understand we have no black sites in Russia, China, Iran, or Venezuela. Actually, the number of Guantanamo prisoners is just a little over 200. What’s the big deal — we hold 100 times as many in other installations around the world. Besides, only a small number of the 737 military bases abroad are used to imprison detainees. We should keep things in perspective — the International Red Cross presented only one side of the story.

The ACLU, that pinko organization, says we are holding prisoners unconstitutionally without due process, sometimes for years. The ACLU claims it is fair & unbiased with an 89 year old tradition, but it is a Johnny-come-lately compared to the DAR founded in 1890. The proper ladies of the DAR haven’t objected to treatment of detainees. Neither has Dick Cheney who says the Gitmo detainees are being provided free lodging, food, and medical care on a tropical island. He says they’re better off than US citizens on food stamps. Why, Guantenamo is just like an exclusive gated community. The TV satirists made fun of Poor Richard (poor in conscience) just as they laughed at Donald Rumsfeld saying that the Abu Ghraib torture was no worse than fraternity pranks. Damned network pundits — they can’t recognize innovation in interrogation.

Of course, George Bush must take part of the blame. First, he said that warrantless wire tapping was necessary because speed is necessary to catch those who would harm us. Waiting 48 hours while a FISA judge signs a warrant might be too long to stop an act of terror. Meanwhile, George insisted on jailing detainees for years on end because they might be withholding (outdated) information. Was George in some kind of time warp, or did those years of alcohol (admitted) and drugs (alleged) liquify his brain’s center of time logic? Either way, the prime choice for the White House first responders became: Spin.

Abuse in prisons on the domestic front can’t be blamed on the Bush-Cheney (B-C) administration. Yes, they brought newspeak to new heights, but that is a copyright problem for the estate of George Orwell. Spin doctors had been at work in federal and state government long before selectee George moved into the White House. When the Department of War became the Department of Defense in 1949, many states got the idea that they should change the name of their Department of Prisons to Department of Corrections. The two name changes were equally illogical. Nationally, the new Department of Defense kept our country safe from such threats as Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, and Iraq. In the various states, Departments of Correction are so effective in their new mission that prisons, nationwide, have an over 50% recidivism rate. The threat of prison isn’t even enough to scare our citizenry onto the straight & narrow. The US now has well over two million inmates incarcerated, Number One in the world. China is a poor second and Russia a distant third. USA,USA! What did you expect when we have the best laws against drug possession, making for easy arrests to fill our jails.

The Gadfly Revelry & Research gang (GRR) suggests that among all those inmates there are plenty of strong backs and creative brains to supply a clean, renewable energy industry based on sun, wind, tides, and river flows. But, what about the jobs of prison personnel and all the prison construction workers? Simple. The corrections officers can inspect the 98% of cargo containers entering the US that are presently unexamined. The prison builders can switch to building libraries and youth centers and, in their free time, work on public transportation systems. Of course, the prisoners will have to receive at least minimum wage, not the 20¢ an hour that is now commonly paid to prisoners for such work as painting walls, serving food, and keeping library books in order. Some have argued that prisoners don’t need money as all their needs are taken care of by the institution. The answer is that Bill Gates doesn’t “need” all the money he makes, either. We could add to the Bill Gates list all the CEOs of hedge funds, private equity companies, investment banks and a hundred others. A comedic member of the GRR smiles in noting that Bernie Madoff will soon be eligible for 20¢ an hour.

Then, there is the matter of Leonard Peltier, the American Indian poet and activist who has been imprisoned for 33 years. Leonard and others who were in the Pine Ridge Reservation that day insist that he did not shoot the two FBI agents but that he has been railroaded by the Agency and hounded while in jail. Many who work for human rights — Desmond Tutu, Amnesty International, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for starters, consider Leonard a political prisoner. But the FBI has sworn that Leonard should never see the light of freedom. Currently he is in Lewisburg, PA, far from his family.

Recently, Leonard was transferred to the new prison at South Canaan, PA. There, he was beaten up by two young Indian prisoners who did not even know him. Leonard was put in solitary to separate the assaulters and the assaultee. Yet, visitors had to see this peaceful man through a window and converse with a microphone line between the rooms. We mustn’t let deductive logic interfere with the rules. This is America the Beautiful, not America the sensible.

Quick, Rescue the Economy

2009-04-03T16:50:00.002-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Quick, Rescue the Economy

When Secretary Geithner gave the details of his economic rescue package, Wall Street celebrated with champagne and the Dow Jones turned into a Roman candle. He asked for a partnership between government and private investors with a sharing of profits but the government covering all losses. Entrepreneurship with the government taking all the risks — capitalism at its finest!

A couple of days later Secretary Geithner asked Congress for power to regulate insurance companies (like AIG), private equity funds (like Carlyle), and hedge funds (like … they keep a low profile). But what about investment-banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch … or are these mondo institutions too complex for the government to audit?

All I know is: when the stock market goes up so suddenly, it’s time to be suspicious that there’s collusion between Wall Street and the White House.

14.29 Gallons per Mile

2009-04-03T16:43:00.001-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

14.29 Gallons per Mile

14.29 gallons per mile is not some satirical description of a HumVee — gallons per mile vs. miles per gallon. It is the actual use of fuel by the C-5A cargo plane, the workhorse of the Air Force. Gallons per mile!

The good news is that the Pentagon is aware of the colossal cost of just running the big plane down the runway to take off for Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan. Well, Boeing realized that the C-5As were getting old, so they designed a smaller, lighter cargo plane, the C-17 . Funny, how Boeing’s realization coincided with a new administration that is talking about reducing the use of fossil fuels. The cost of the new cargo plane is a mere $193 million per plane, way less than the cost of bailing out one small bank. If the US would abandon its imperial policy around the world — two hot wars and 737 military bases in other countries — we wouldn’t need cargo planes at all.

Boeing, naturally, threatens to close the C-17 division if the Pentagon order isn’t big enough. One member of the Gadfly Revelry & Research team asks why doesn’t Boeing convert to producing public transportation vehicles such as buses and light rail trains. It’s a much bigger market.

2009-03-20T17:01:00.002-04:00

GADFLY
by Mort Malkin

Investment versus Furious Money

President Obama has chosen economics as the first issue among equals to address. The wars can wait. So can health care, education, and a new lapel pin with a Betsy Ross flag. The cause of the economic crisis is the years of collusion between the government and Wall Street. The investment community, so honorable, would have us believe it would regulate itself voluntarily. The investment banks would create money by inventing new derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and tranches. The autonomous (unregulated) rating agencies — Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch — would applaud with AAA ratings. Hedge funds and private equity funds were considered beyond oversight. Privacy rights, you know. The real estate industry and mortgage brokers convinced many would-be homeowners to sign adjustable rate mortgages, below market rates to start and way higher later. But not to worry — by the time the mortgages reset, the property will be worth so much you can renegotiate to a real mortgage. The late night political comedians made quips about NINJA mortgages: No income, No job, Accepted! The investment banks would buy a bunch of mortgages, tie them in bundles with other loans and sell them to savvy investors. Handsome commissions (lower case c) accompanied every transaction. Where did all the money go? Don’t worry, no one in Washington will have the courage to ask for the bailout money back to use in paying some of the principal of inflated mortgages now worth more than the value of the houses.

The reckoning started a couple of years ago — people would pay only so much for a home. House prices started to fall. Adjustable mortgages went to reset, and the banks would not renegotiate. People either stopped paying the loans, or just walked away from homes that were worth less than the outstanding amount still due (underwater mortgages). The banks had to declare these loans toxic and write them down on their balance sheets. But the economy was strong. President Bush said so. Candidate McCain said so. Then, in one swell foop, Secretary Henry Paulson, recently the CEO of Goldman Sachs, asked Congress to give him $700 billion to save the economy, but don’t ask what he’d do with the money.

In every administration, money has run the show. For Reagan, the first order of business was a) to undo the regulations that had limited a free-for-all for Wall Street and b) to reduce the taxes “investors” pay on capital gains (money made while sleeping). Clinton was reminded that “It’s the economy, stupid.” He signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that had kept banks in their proper place. After repeal, banks of all kinds could pursue business of all kinds. The Bush-Cheney (B-C) administration included monkey business in the mix. Do you remember that right after 9-11 George asked Americans to make sacrifices? He asked us all to go shopping. Responsible investment lost out to furious money. Even Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac were invited on the merry-go-round.

Now, we’re in 2009, and everyone is getting a slice of the taxpayer pie while Secretary of State Clinton thanks China for buying US Treasury Notes. As new Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner doles out the billions and receives preferred (non-voting) stock in the investment banks, some pundit voices are raised that the banks are being nationalized. The Obama people assure us (and Republican members of Congress) that the government is not going to run the banks. We must keep our private bankers on, the very ones who got us into all the trouble in the first place. The Milanville Poets, UnLtd quickly pointed out that the CEOs of the investment banks were not bankers but salesmen (hired at preposterous salaries) whose expertise was in deal making & mergers, in developing new “investment instruments” and in influencing the government to repeal some laws & pass other legislation in their favor. It might not be a bad idea for the government — the de facto owner of the banks on whom they lavish so much money — to consider those bank executives as government employees at government wages.

The privateers (pirates blessed by Alan Greenspan) have convinced the government that they must be kept at the helms of AIG, Merrill Lynch, CitiBank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs … because no one else is available. The Gadfly Revelry & Research gang says it knows of a few Nobel Prize winners in Economics who presently earn salaries as professors and who might be amenable to government employ. We could start with Paul Krugman (Princeton) and Joseph Steiglitz (Columbia). Then, the Prince of the Kingdom of the Dismal Science is Amartya Sen (Trinity College at Cambridge, UK). Prof. Sen, like an Ancient Greek Philosopher, gave us manuscripts such as “On Economic Inequality” and “On Ethics and Economics.” What a choice he would be to replace Lawrence Summers and to lecture Obama on matters that matter.

There was a time long ago that the rich owned stocks & bonds and the workers put their savings in a savings bank. Then, sometime in the middle of the 20th century Wall Street and Madison Avenue convinced us to take stock in America, to invest in the Fortune 500. What could be safer? Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith, advised us that the surest way to make money was to hold stocks long term. Gradually, free enterprise and greed found proponents across a few administrations and changed the focus from long term investment to quick profits. Day trading — buying stocks one day and selling them the next — became an honest way to make a living. Day trading led to hourly trading and, of late, to computer trading. Stock & bonds were joined by gaming tables of options, commodities, and currencies at the casino.

It is curious that last summer’s gas price spike was blamed on faceless speculators, not OPEC, not demand from China & India, not Exxon-Mobil. A simple question — “Where do the speculators work?” — told us who they are. Wall Street Traders. It seems time for rules & regulations and limits to money making at the drop of computer driven phone call. The disparity between the incomes of the rich and poor asks not for buying shares of General Electric or General Motors but for investing in the General Theory of Relativity.

Peace In Our Time

2009-03-11T17:38:00.002-04:00

GADFLY
by Mort Malkin

Peace In Our Time

John McCain never made it to the White House, but he has the potential to lead the Peace Movement. ?The confirmed Warrior can swear off war?

John was a Navy plot during the Vietnam War and was shot down over Hanoi. John’s father and grandfather were both Navy men who rose to the rank of Admiral. The military gene must be in the McCain Y chromosome. What hope can there be?

In a recent GADFLY column entitled “The Wherefores of Warfare” a list of reasons for making war was scattered through the essay. The drives to war started with good old fashioned plunder in 2300 BCE under Sargon the Akkadian. The rationalization for war became more sophisticated over the ensuing centuries and included national security, national interest, national strategic interest, and national honor. The essay ends with the most highly questionable reason: to test & assess new weapons.

Enter John McCain, Navy pilot. Vietnam was a good testing ground for Agent Orange and Agents White, Blue and Purple. Defoliate the jungle so our helicopter pilots can see brown skinned men wearing black pajamas moving south with knapsacks of supplies for the Viet Cong. Nah, defoliation of human skin, lungs and livers of our own troops wouldn’t be a problem. While the color coded plant pathogens were used in the jungles of Vietnam, Hanoi was the place to assess the capability of the SAMs (surface to air missiles) supplied by the Soviets to North Vietnam. So, bombing of key bridges, roads and other non-military targets in and around Hanoi started — the very places defended by the SAMs. Would our pilots be able to evade the missiles?

?You mean we were sending our pilots to risk being shot down just so the Pentagon could obtain data on Soviet military capability? John McCain should be as mad as a wet cat in a gunny sack. He ought to join the anti-war movement. Now, let John McCain wage peace in the footsteps of Isaiah.

Poetry

2009-02-27T14:54:00.002-05:00

Poetry

A spark
to start,

the rest
is sweat.

Russia's Split Personality

2009-02-23T12:52:00.002-05:00

Is Russia Manic-Depressive?
by Mort Malkin

Russia may be manic-depressive, but Russians are nowhere as delusional as George Will or James Inhofe on the subject of global heating (formerly global warming). Every Russian knows the planet is heating up and that we “civilized” humans are the cause. The present debate in bipolar Russia is over whether global heating is good or bad for the Motherland.

One group says that global heating has decreased the need for home heating oil world-wide and, thus, the need for Russian oil exports. Bad! The same people look back on the good old days when the severe Russian winters saved Russia from the invasions of Napoleon in the 19th century and Hitler in the 20th century. They see global heating as a net negative, and they can be relied on to vote against it in the Politburo.

The manic half of the Russian personality welcomes global warming. Russians have no Florida or Arizona where they can spend winter vacations. Oh, for some nice tropical resorts on the Black and Caspian Seas. They would gladly trade in vodka & tonic for rum swizzles. In northern Russia, global warming promises to open the Arctic Ocean to shipping year round. Russia would become an economic power. These positive-outlook folks also seek to change the world’s perception that Russians have a dark personality. They are going to show the world what real change is.

The Wherefores of Warfare

2009-02-23T12:34:00.002-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The Wherefores of Warfare

In the good old days, the purpose of war was plunder. Plain and simple. History tells us it started in Akkadian times, about 2300 BCE, in the Fertile Crescent. Before that, the Sumerian First Cities found that trade was the way to gain wealth. But, trade spread the wealth around among the commercial class, and the king received only a small part of it through taxes. Politics demanded war.

So, Sargon I became the first King by conquest, and his grandson, Naram Sin, expanded Akkadian dominion to become the King of the Four Quarters of the World. Over the next five centuries, war and peace took their turns into the Old Babylonian period. Hammurabi came into power and the First Dynasty of Babylon became established in Mesopotamia. Yes, it was the same Hammurabi who proclaimed his famous Law Code and had it carved in stone, but the Law was not so applicable in the occupied city states of Uruk, Kish, Sippar, Esunna …

Later in that millennium, Greece and Troy found a more personal rationale for war. Paris, son of King Priam of Troy seduced Helen, the wife of King Menalaus of Sparta. The two went off to Troy, and a thousand ships were launched to take her back. Ergo, the Trojan war — all mixed up between the Greek gods & goddesses and Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world.

The next millennium saw intense competition between Greece and Persia. It became conquest for the sake of being Number One. Those upstart Greeks, how dare they start colonies on the Asian mainland & off shore islands, the Persian sphere of influence? In the fourth century BCE, a new reason for war was perceived. Alexander III, from barbarian Macedonia, felt a calling to civilize the rabble of Egypt and Asia in the superior culture of Greece. The skills of war were the means to the end. By the end of the 13 year campaign , Alex the Great became more orientalized than the hordes of the adjacent continents became westernized.

Further West, Rome and Carthage advanced the technologies and strategies of warfare,up to and including elephant cavalry. The conflict between the two powers started over which of them would have suzerainty over the Greek Colonies on Sicily and ended with a battle between the great generals Scipio and Hannibal. It was personal, but it was also political. In Rome, even in the Republic, it was always the Generals who were selected for political office. One could hardly expect to be elected Consul without a string of victories that enlarged the control of Rome.

Just before Chronology Zero and the Reign of the Prince of Peace, Rome changed from Republic to Imperium. Military campaigns went on right through the transition. It was as if warfare were the Law. Territorial expansion continued — the Near East, Northern Europe, Spain and France, England — under the Caesars until the reign of Hadrian. As Caesar, Hadrian actually gave up some of the territories conquered by his predecessor, Trajan. Hadrian sought to improve the Empire — law, literature, art, manners — rather than enlarge it. How unRoman.

The Middle Ages were rife with war, and reasons for war. Most (in)famous were the Crusades. History has it that the Crusades were fought for religious reasons — to reclaim Jerusalem from the heathens. Roman Christianity would conquer the Holy City for the true believers, the likes of Pope Urban II. But, gaining ascendancy over Byzantine Christianity was the understood reason. Power. It is curious that in the First Crusade, Jews and Arabs living together in Jerusalem were considered equal enemies and were killed for who they were. [How times have changed.] Other wars were over national honor, but markets and access to raw materials usually played an equal role. National honor, national interest, and national security have always been roughly synonymous. The Hundred Years War was fought for each and all of the above reasons, with Joan of Arc thrown in for human interest. Though the Hundred Years War lasted only 116 years, it started a tradition of enmity that lasted five centuries between Great Britain and France.

Entering relatively modern times, the 20th century and World War II, Hitler’s reasons for war started with national honor and were soon transformed to becoming king of the four quarters of the world, just like Naram Sin. At the end of the Pacific war, the atomic bomb was used by the US not so much to defeat Japan, a country that was already offering to surrender, as to show Russia that we were Number One and they had better not mess with us. The 21st century seems to have followed the earliest cycle of war — plunder (pillage, loot, booty, spoils… how many words we have). In Vietnam, we were there, not for democracy, but to block Communist dominoes. A less stated reason was to test the capability of Soviet SAM missiles. Completely under the radar of the time was the testing of Agent Orange and Agents White, Blue, and Purple. Neither was the Iraq War fought for democracy. A case may be made for war for oil — Dick Cheney was, after all, an oil baron
during his years as CEO of Halliburton. But his friend, Donald Rumsfeld, was more interested in testing new weapons: B1 bombers, white phosphorus, depleted uranium (U238), cluster bombs, and pilotless planes. Technology was driving warfare.

Recently, in 2006, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used cluster bombs in Southern Lebanon against Hezbollah. Most recently, in the invasion of Gaza, Israel has been accused by doctors and journalists — a team that can dissect the news — of using inert heavy metal weapons that explode into micro shrapnel (DIME or HMTA explosives) against Hamas. The DIME explosives were developed at the Pentagon to cause intense damage in a small target area, thus limiting collateral damage. But, Murphy found out about the technology and invoked his Law. DIME explosives also cause rhabdomyo-sarcoma (cancer, for short) without waiting. Technology is getting too frisky. It’s time to modernize the Geneva Accords.

Will Obama Spend The Political Capital We Gave Him?

2009-02-09T12:12:00.000-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Will Obama Spend The Political Capital We Gave Him?

The Gadfly Revelry & Research gang (GRR) lives and plays amidst a politically right-wing population. Many of them who voted against Obama for President now have their arms folded across their chests and say, “Let’s wait and see.”

The Gadfly gang, too, casts a jaded eye on coming events, except that they are going to wait and see how progressive the Obama Administration will be. We are hopeful, maybe more so than those who last voted for Rick Santorum.

Oh, Obama says nice words — the very words Bush could have used for taking apart safeguards that: protect the poor, keep greed-motivated hands off Mother Nature, and prevent a free-for-all in financial markets. Bush & Cheney employed such all-purpose words as “reform” and “modernize” to retranslate the Constitution from its original quaint, irrelevant form.

In his Inaugural Address, the new President spoke of “hope over fear,” “peace and dignity,” “unity of purpose,” and “a new era of responsibility.” Was it all “have a nice day” rhetoric? On his first day in office he said “I really mean it.” He signed an executive order closing Guantanamo — within a year anyway. He stopped torture, requiring the CIA to follow the Army Field Manual. [Why not the Geneva Convention?] He met with the generals re: leaving Iraq. [But, what about closing the “enduring” US bases there?] He brought transparency to government by restoring the Presidential Records Act and removed exceptions from the Freedom Of Information Act. He signed an order restoring funding to the UN Population Fund and other organizations that include abortion in their compendium of women’s and children’s services. Bush’s Global Gag Rule was consigned to history. Lobbyists were sharply restricted, and happily he stopped short of declaring satirists to be lobbyists. It’s a fairly good beginning, but now we will have to watch what else our Number One Public Servant does in coming months.
.
Gadfly here presents a list that will measure Obama’s will (and won’t) to bring us change:
• Will he establish a Department of Peace, a Peace College, and a couple of Peace Academies to balance the Department of War (ah, Defense), the War College, and the Military Academies at West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs?
• OK, so he’ll close the prison at Guantanamo (on Cuban soil). Will he also close Baghram in Afghanistan and those in Romania & Poland? Will he replace them with the watering halls in Belarus?
• What about the 737 US military bases around the world, way more than the membership of the UN? The presence of US citizens carrying guns instead of cameras & credit cards has created hatred everywhere.
• Will he forbid extraordinary rendition to places such as Saudi Arabia where the corrections department cuts off hands for burglary convictions and executes murderers by beheading?
• Will he replace 21 gun salutes (such as at his inauguration) with a pealing of the bells of a carillon?
• Will he establish a Department of History and nominate Howard Zinn as its first Secretary?
• Will he pardon Leonard Pelletier, the Indian activist who says he is innocent but who has already served 33 years in federal prisons? Amnesty International, after going through the case, agrees he is innocent. The federal Appeals Courts that have reviewed the original trial, say there are holes in the government case, including the disappearance of FBI documents favoring Leonard. [How convenient.] He was recently transferred to the new federal high security prison at S Canaan PA where he was attacked by two other inmates who did not know him. It appears that the security is not high enough. Barack, don’t wait until the end of your presidency to pardon him.
• During the election campaign, Obama was accused by McCain & Palin of planning to spread the wealth around. No wonder he was elected — there are precious few voters who think the obscenely rich CEOs, derivatives brokers, and hedge fund managers should not share a little of their wealth. Now that Obama is President, will he make those who made out like bandits in the growing ownership society bubble, from the 1990s through 2006, give back their ill gotten commissions. Those nouveau riche include the mortgage brokers, the investment brokers who packaged derivatives into collateralized debt obligations and created credit default swaps, and the managers of the rating companies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poors.

The GRR gang is also waiting to see what Obama does about education, health care, and guaranteed maternity leave with child care thereafter. You, dear readers, are invited to add to the wait-and-see list.

A last matter that has been going on for at least sixty years, perhaps since the Exodus around 1300 BCE, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel feels threatened by Hamas rockets. Hamas, legally elected, complains that Israel has been restricting entry of not only rockets but also food, water, oil, medical supplies, books, and CDs. The Israeli blockade — air, sea, and land — is even keeping Palestinians from their olive groves, adversely affecting their martinis. Israel says Hamas is a terrorist group that fires rockets at their civilian population. So, in fair and proportionate response,Israel sends F16s (made in USA), tanks, and troops into Gaza to shoot up the place. Of course they were targeting only secret military installations. Casualty figures tell the story of who was a terrorist. The total Israeli deaths were 10, 7 military and 3 civilian. Palestinian dead total well over 1000, mostly civilians. Israel didn't let any foreign journalists in during the fireworks, but the Israeli attacks on hospitals, schools, the Red Cross, and the UN couldn’t be kept secret. It was as if Fallujah was a model. Now we will wait to see what Obama will do. He has plenty of leverage, what with all the military goods the US sends to Egypt and Israel. Maybe his Envoy, George Mitchell, will convince the belligerents that they are both Semites and both worship Abraham as their Patriarch. Peace, brothers!

Close Guantanamo Now

2009-01-30T19:10:00.002-05:00

Close Guantanamo Now
by Mort Malkin

President Obama publicly ordered the closing of Guantanamo but privately said it would take a year or so to relocate all the “enemy combatants.” Various Republicans in Congress, when it was suggested the inmates be transferred to Leavenworth or Alcatraz or some Texas prison, said not in my backyard.

The President could start with a special group of 17 members of the Uighur culture, Muslims from Western China, who are completely innocent. Even the Bush administration has said they were sold by bounty hunters to the CIA and have never been accused of anything. They can’t be sent back to China, because the government there, Han Chinese by culture, would persecute them. Why not give them some compensation for the CIA’s mistake — cash and a Green Card — and let them locate in New York around Mott Street where many other Asians live.

Isn’t America famous for being a Melting Pot?

Welcome Spooks

2009-01-25T19:13:00.000-05:00

Welcome Spooks
by Mort Malkin

So now, courtesy of MSNBC, we learn that the CIA and NSA have been spying on you and me, as well as other ordinary Americans. They monitored all our phone calls, e-mails, and maybe beauty parlor conversations. One group of Americans was deserving of special attention — journalists. As a journalist of sorts, myself, I am happy that more people are reading my writing. What more could any writer wish?

I’m notifying the White House that I wish to remain on the surveillance list, a most effective way to get my ideas through to the members of the Intelligence Committees in Congress and those who write up the President’s Daily Briefs. What a country!

Old King Coal

2009-01-25T10:34:00.000-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Old King Coal

Coal has given us energy from the under-world since the Industrial Revolution. No wonder civilization didn’t use coal for the first 4,700 years since the invention of writing at 3,000 BCE. They wouldn’t even use graphite pencils for their cuneiform when they invented writing. Coal, as the Sumerians knew, was the stuff of the Devil. You want light, use olive oil. You need heat, burn wood.

Yes, coal can make heat and light, but it has far more disadvantages than redeeming features. First, the good news. Burning coal releases less methane than raising cattle. That’s it for the good news. The bad news, however, is world class in quality and quantity.

Coal fired plants make, in addition to electricity, SO2 and NOx which cause acid rain wherever the prevailing winds send the emissions. The coal plants of the Midwest send their acid smoke to the Adirondacks and New England, even to Republican Maine. While they are at it, coal plants offer mercury, arsenic, selenium, thorium, and uranium. You say acid rain kills all life in lakes and streams so we can’t catch any mercury tainted fish? Well, you know Murphy’s Law. It seems we humans have already been toxified from the mercury laden spewings of the coal plants.

More bad news. The process of mining, transporting, cooling, and ash disposal requires water in aquifer quantities, even more than Big Beef uses. In the Southwest at Black Mesa Arizona, Peabody Coal is mining on Hopi and Navajo lands. Billions of gallons of water are taken from the underlying aquifer to create a slurry pipeline, a new invention by Bechtel Inc, the devil’s apprentice. The coal, in fact may be less valuable than the water. Don’t accuse the coal companies of racism, they will even take the white man’s water. In Great Falls Montana, the proposed coal fired plant is well on its way with the permitting process. Recently, a ray of hope appeared. An environmentally sensitive official raised an eyebrow over the plan to take many millions of gallons of water from the Missouri River. Another eyebrow went up over the threat to the Lewis & Clark Historical Site that was so inconveniently located. Maybe history will win out.

Coal mining goes back in my memory to John L Lewis of the bushy eyebrows and outspokenness, and to the UMW in the first half of the 20th century. In those days mining was simply digging mine shafts & tunnels and bringing in men with pick axes and canaries. Black lung disease was endemic in Appalachia. But, some twenty years ago such memorable companies as Peabody, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources — do gooders all — figured out that they could eliminate black lung disease by the technique of mountain top removal. Just dynamite the mountain, and take out the coal with mondo bulldozers. It is rumored that a few mucky mucks in the companies, upon hearing that nuclear energy leaves no carbon footprint, proposed to use small nuclear bombs to detach the mountain tops. But, their atoms-for-peace plan was killed off by a pair of reporters who heard about it and went radioactive, reporting it on a blog site. Then, a question arose from the depths: what to do with the mountain tops after blasting them off. Somehow, the peaks didn’t vaporize. The answer was found in the valleys and streams between the mountains, just the right sized space. How convenient.

Of course, coal fired plants also produce lots of CO2, the prime greenhouse gas that creates global heating and climate chaos. The whoo-ha about “clean” coal was promoted by the President early in 2001 by offering $2 billion for R&D. The delusion increased over the years, and by 2007 “clean” coal made it into his State of the Union speech. In 2008, Barack Obama said “Me too.” Until then, many thought the now President Obama was smarter, or more honest, than that. In the hypothetical “clean” coal model, the CO2 produced is removed and buried and the other toxic pollutants are removed by scrubbers. The coal fired plants may not yet have developed the CO2 sequestration techniques, but they know how to install scrubbers. They are proceeding with them with all deliberate haste, having installed the technology in 134 of the more than 600 coal plants around the country since the 1990s. The accent in “with all deliberate haste” is on “deliberate.” In fact, many of the older plants, over 42 years old, have a “grandfather” exemption from modernizing with scrubbers. The designers of new coal fired plants are presently trying to figure out how to be grandfathered without Bush in the Oval Office.

Last, comes the question of what to do with what’s left after the coal is burned. When I was a kid in East Flatbush in Brooklyn, the apartment house on the block and a few other homes were heated by coal. The ashes were less ashes than clinkers. They were disposed of in ash cans separate from garbage cans. The same inconvenient ash must be produced by the coal fired plants. Coal ashes are useless as fertilizer or anything else. The power plants are as technologically advanced in doing away with coal ash as they are in converting coal from dirty to clean. What the coal plants have traditionally have done with the ash, and still do, is to grind it up, mix it with water (more water), and dig out a few acres of earth for sludge “ponds.” Last month, a dammed, 40 acre sludge pond in Tennessee gave way and flooded the town of Kingston City, near Knoxville. OK, at 40 acres, it was more of a lagoon, as potent as, if not better smelling than, a pig waste lagoon. The Tennessee sludge flood was picturesque enough to interest the media, followed quickly by a call to the Coast Guard as well as to the EPA. The local folks were in over their heads. Keep your eye on the 1300 other “containment” sites around the country.

If it’s not enough to leave the coal in the ground for all of the above reasons, why not leave it just because Nature intended it there? Maybe it is part of Nature’s grand design of turning coal into its purest form of carbon — diamonds.

Leave Iraq? Plan A1

2009-01-10T13:47:00.000-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Leave Iraq? Plan A1.

Barack Obama came out against the war in Iraq early on. He promised that if elected he would get our troops out promptly, but also orderly and responsibly. So, he was selected against war hawk Hillary Clinton and then elected against John McCain the forever warrior. Everyone seems to forget that the administration’s Plan A was that the Iraqis would welcome the Americans with sweets and flowers, we would depose Saddam Hussein, Achmed Chalabi would be anointed President, and we would promptly depart secure in the knowledge that Iraq would privatize the oil industry for Exxon and the other multinationals based in Texas. There was no Plan B.

Even before January 16, when he moves into the White House, Obama was acting like he owned the keys to the front door and the Oval Office. Right after Thanksgiving he named key members of his Cabinet. First named were members of the war cabinet: Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, General James Jones as National Security Counselor, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of War (er, Defense). No one was nominated to be Secretary of a Department of Peace.

Everyone from Bush to Obama view the Iraqi as small children who need US guidance until they grow up. That’s the same Iraq whose history goes back at least 8,000 years in the Fertile Crescent where civilization was born, city states grew, writing was invented, law codes were carved in stone, and all the rest. The Iraqis, poor children, would not be able to defend themselves against terrorists, or Saddam’s ghost, if we left precipitously.

Gadfly avers that no bloodbath would occur. The Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, are first of all Iraqis. Before 2003 when the US came to take their once and future oil, intermarriage was commonplace and mixed neighborhoods were the norm. The Shia, though the majority religious group, are not monolithic. There is President Nouri al-Maliki and the religious leader, Moqtada al Sadr, backed by the Mahdi Army. In the South, the Marsh Arabs are an ancient people, Shia by history. The Oil Workers, a politically strong group centered in the South, may be mostly Shia, but they are more interested in keeping the oil for Iraq than in family values such as religion. Floating over all the Shia differences is the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani who lets all the faithful know what’s on his mind.

The Sunni, the original insurgents, settled in Anbar Province in the West of Iraq and needed no instruction from the Americans in how to mount military operations against foreign occupiers, especially Americans. To promote "The Surge" the US public was sold the idea that the Sunnis would clean out Al Qaeda for the good of Iraq. In Iraq, the Sunnis were sold the same idea by being placed on the State Department payroll along with Blackwater et al. When the money stopped for a few weeks, the “awakening” went back to sleep.

So much for basic background. A few events are offered to support the thesis of the title of this essay, “Leave Iraq? Plan A1.” The odds makers of the Gadfly Revelry & Research gang predict that we could safely leave right now. They say the Iraqis are competent to take care of themselves — there will be no blood. Back in April 2007, Moqtada al-Sadr, who has nothing good to say about the occupation, organized a giant rally of all Iraqis — Shia, Sunni, and secular persuasions. The rally, held in Najaf, attracted 600,000 from all parts of the country. They carried Iraq flags and signs saying “No, No to Occupation.” It was entirely peaceful. The US military wisely stayed far away.

Then in June 2008, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to Baghdad for a meeting with Iraqi leaders. He drove from the airport — a usually dangerous route — quite safely. In Baghdad, he met with President Jalal Talibani in the Presidential Palace. It was a full state welcome, red carpet and all. They shared food and conversation while guarded by Iraqis. Not an American soldier was in sight. Afterward, Ahmadinejad met Nouri al-Maliki for further discussions. The two day visit was welcomed by almost all Iraqi leaders and went off without incident.

Most recently, in November 2008, Moqtada al-Sadr organized a demonstration of many thousands of Iraqis to oppose a pact with the US which would continue the US occupation, maintain “enduring” bases, and establish an oil law that would give multinational corporations the right to explore undeveloped oil fields. The huge rally was attended by all religious factions, who considered themselves, first and foremost, Iraqi. The Iraqi flag was much in evidence as were the signs condemning the “agreement of humiliation.” George Bush attended in effigy and was pelted by every convenient missile, from rocks to shoes, and set afire. The protest was peaceful, but the Iraqi subtlety was not mistaken for a “Have a nice day” message.

Most Americans oppose “precipitous” withdrawal. They say it will result in anarchy and civil war, and we must stay there till we train the Iraqi Army to provide security. But the “security” skills of the Iraqis have been on display since 2003. Without an air force, navy, or tank corps, they have been able to tie down the greatest military force in the world. All they had were pickup trucks, rifles, roadside bombs, and rocket propelled grenades. Moreover, each of the Iraqi factions wants to participate in ruling the entire nation. They know of their great natural wealth. They remember that even under Saddam Hussein, Iraq was counted as an advanced Arab nation. They were considered number one in many disciplines. Women occupied many professional positions. Especially, they are aware of the history of Mesopotamia from the first cities of Sumer to Babylon and Assyria, old as the civilizations of Egypt and China. The Iraqis are a proud people.

Free Enterprise

2009-01-02T16:14:00.003-05:00

Free Enterprise, Unltd.
by Mort Malkin

We, of course, are exemplars of advanced industrialized society. Then, there are the primitive Third World countries. Between the First World and the Third World, there is a populous place, not the Second World, but Emerging Nations. The emerging nations such as China and India are primitive in the countryside and industrialized in the cities. But, whether rural and urban, the emerging nations have few environmental regulations and labor laws — ideal for outsorcing American jobs.

We of the First World know that bigger is better. Modern science and capitalism have told us so. In the 18th century we had the Industrial Revolution (jail the Luddites) and were already into the second Agricultural Revolution. Nature was slow and undisciplined. By the 20th century, modern man could use chemistry and electronics to gain speed and focus.

In agriculture, we made wondrous fertilizers, created herbicides & pesticides, and had the judgment to decide which variety of the genus and species was best for potatoes, tomatoes, corn, wheat, rice, oranges, berries, and very few other essential foods. We didn’t have to bother with broccoli or kale — few eat these strange tasting vegetables. Only the French insist on keeping different kinds of grapes so they can have: Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Zinfindel, and Syrah.

By the late 19th century biodiversity was considered old fashioned. A pioneer Celtic nation, Ireland, had decided that the the Lumper potato was the best kind to feed the poor people. It was the only variety planted in the Emerald Isle. Unfortunately, the phyto-pathogen phytophthera infestans, also thought the Lumper was the best potato. So, the potato blight came, and there were no resistant potato varieties around. So, all the starving Irish had to emigrate to the New World and get used to food in the Automat, New York’s prototype of a fast food joint.

In the early 20th century the corn borer moth came to New England and did in the cornfields of Massachusetts. Over the following decades the corn borer migrated across to the Great Plains where monocrop corn farming was the rule — perfect conditions for the corn borer moth. It presented a challenge to American Chemistry. Rather than diversify the varieties of corn and finding some that were resistant to the corn borer — that would be the primitive Mexican way — we invented new pesticides that would kill the moth and its larvae that deserved nothing less for daring to tangle with us. If the pesticide turned out to be toxic to humans as well, we would deal with that a few years later when the ecologists had proof positive that we could no longer deny.

As the 20th century was closing, the chemists of Monsanto had a new lucrative toy — genetic engineering — which enabled them to play God at elementary levels. What a feeling! For example, they could take the genes from cold water fish and inject them into tomatoes that would then be resistant to frost. The tomatoes were called “flavor savers" but didn’t taste any better. Nor did they have any more vitamins or nutrients. Nowadays we don’t hear much about the flavor saver tomato. They decided to move a couple of steps away from direct confrontation with the consumer. Genetically engineered corn and soy that was fed ro animals or put into prepared foods was a more peaceful way for Monsanto to make a living.

In Africa and Europe, consumers are insisting that genetically engineered (GE) foods be labeled so, or at least as “franken foods.” The farmers, too, refused to join the fourth agriculturl revolution and would not buy GE seeds or the pesticides for which they were engineered. In the US, GE labeling is not required even though the majority of corn and soy grown in our country is genetically engineered. Working on another track, we insist on free trade and open markets for US corporations. Thus, the industrial sized farms that are favored with tax cuts can out-compete small family farms in Third World countries and drive them out of business. When the Third World nations complain, they are accused of protectionism and isolationism, sovereign criminal behavior to be sure. The poets of the Gadfly Revelry & Research group have suggested that these nations call their policies localism and self sufficiency. Their farmers are willing to work hard. They are happy to farm small acreage without using artificial anything. They fertilize with compost, mulch, and manure. They pick off insect pests by hand. Twenty acres supports a family with food with plenty left over to sell to neighbors and markets.

We in the US can take a lesson from old fashioned family farmers and communities around the world. We can shop locally, join a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm, or shop at farmers’ markets supporting farmers who grow different varieties of different vegetables. We might even learn to identify wild edible plants and become wildcrafters. Then we’ll be back before the first Agricultural Revolution, back to our hunter-gatherer roots when our genetic heritage was established.

Quote of Note

2009-01-02T15:26:00.004-05:00

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Conspiracy?

2008-12-23T08:35:00.000-05:00

Scoop! We did it again. In “… Or Maybe They Should Retire,” Gadfly reported that Republican IT specialist Mike Connell was ordered to a deposition before a federal judge just before election day. Mike Connell was involved in voting machine and election fraud in several major elections, most notably the 2004 presidential games. The Republicans won via voter suppression, vote flipping, and other “techniques.” Connell had set up an operation, through SmarTech and two other firms in Chattanooga TN, to switch enough votes to change the election outcome, and we were yoked to George Bush for four more years.

Since the Gadfly column, Connell was deposed and did as much stone walling as he could. However, he miraculously became unhappy over subverting the American tradition of free & fair elections when he had to appear in federal court. He asked the US Attorney General and the Ohio Attorney General for protection for himself and his family, and was reportedly ready to blow the whole election larceny scheme.

Karl Rove, Gadfly said, wanted Connell to take the fall by refusing to cooperate with the court and go to jail for a while. Connell knew of the risk to his life if he went to prison and refused. Connell also refused to continue with the vote tampering for the 2008 election. Obama won, and the Connell case never made the national news.

On Friday evening, December 19, Connell’s light plane exploded near the Akron-Canton airport. Connell was killed. Shades of Paul Wellstone, except that Connell’s body has not been recovered. There are lots of unanswered questions, just as with the disastrous events of 9-11-01. Another conspiracy theory? Actual conspiracy has occurred in Washington DC, time to time, for at least eight years. Just ask Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, and Randy Cunningham.

Who Controls The Present ...

2008-12-20T20:21:00.000-05:00

“Who Controls the Present …”

by Mort Malkin

Naram-Sin took the conquests of his grandfather, Sargon I, past mortal ultimacy. He declared himself to be the “King of the Four Corners of the World” and wore a horned helmet, a signet of deity.

Five thousand years later, the great historian Louis XIV, tried to do as well with “L’Etat c’est moi.” He was called the Sun King, a reference likening him to Helios the sun god. He ruled as an absolute monarch, mistakes and all.

In the 20th century Richard Nixon was as memorable, “When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” It was satire writ large, except the rest of the country saw as attitude, not parody. Nixon was soon teleported from the White House to his home in California via resignment.

Now we are up to the 21st century. Although it is less than a century since the last absolutist, we have another in our midst. Rich Cheney (courtesy of having been the CEO of Halliburton in the nineties) has tried to establish the unitary executive, that anything the President does, legal or illegal, is within his authority as Commander In Chief. Especially if the President is wooden George, Cheney’s puppet. But, the Constitution says the President is Commandeer In Chief of the Armed forces, not of the civilian population. For Cheney the Constitution is an inconvenience that can be disregarded, except for the Second Amendment.

A few of Cheney’s pronouncements of late have confirmed his truity to the line of succession from Naram-Sin to Richard Nixon. In two separate interviews, a couple of years apart, his succinct responses to questions of the lack of public support brought answers of a) “That won’t stop us” and b) “So?”. More recently, he said he was right about everything in the last eight years. He said that even if there were no WMDs found in Iraq, he would have invaded because Saddam could have been thinking about such weapons in the future. He also said that waterboarding was appropriate to extract information from enemy combatants, whether it did or not. He also, also said the Guantanamo detention center should be kept operational for the foreseeable future.

Also, also, also. he said in a deposition before a federal court that “the Vice President alone may determine what constitutes Vice Presidential records versus personal records.” He insisted it is within his power to determine “how his records will be maintained, managed and disposed, and all are actions that are committed to his discretion by law.” That means in colloquial legalese, “L’etat, c’est moi.”

The saving grace is that Cheney strangely thinks that history wll judge him as a wise man. He may want to keep the records undestroyed so he will be vindicated by the historians of the next generation.

Perhaps the best judgment came from his wife. When Dick joked that he was nicknamed “Darth Vader,” Lynne quipped “It humanizes you.” Truth in humor!

How The West Was Lost

2008-12-01T09:01:00.000-05:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

How The West Was Lost

The taxpayers get to: bail out the investment banks, give subidies to Big Oil, cut taxes for people so rich they feel embarassed by the giveaways, and generally make the rich richer & the poor unemployed. But, it is not all happening in Washington DC or on Wall Street. A large area of the country that receives government largesse is out West where the buffalo used to roam, and the beneficiaries today are the ranchers and Big Beef.

There was a time that the buffalo (really bison) dominated the landscape — over 50 million of the great beasts that were the livelihood of the Indian nations. Today, the herd of genetically pure wild buffalo — about 3600 in number — live in Yellowstone Park. Settling the West required getting rid of the Indians and their sacred buffalo. It took a while, but the US Army, the railroad barons, the cattle tycoons, the British banks, and the industries that dealt in pelts, belts, and leathers generally, wiped out buffalo by the millions. With the Indians and the bufflo they depended upom gone, cattle raising could go forward, indeed, fast forward. You may ask why raise cattle, why not domesticate buffalo that were already there. The answer is that buffalo are powerful, ornery creatures that are difficult to raise. If a buffalo, especially a bull, wants to go from point A to point B — pasture, water, or buffalo whimsy — the beast will just break through a fence. In a rodeo with buffalo, coyboys would lose. Cattle are more docile and, besides, not associated with Indians. The English and formerly English (now Americans) liked beef, not gamey buffalo. Buffalo were only good for robes, coats and leathers — soft, yet tough.

Today, there are vast stretches of public lands managed by governmental agencies, where cattle are permitted to graze.for a token fee. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Forest Service, and various state agencies such as Montana’s Department of Livestock (DoL) encourage cattle grazing, often right up to the borders of Yellowstone National Park where the buffalo are supposed to obey the White man’s regulations and not transgress the artificial boundaries.

The real problem is not the buffalo but the cattle that are destroying the landscape. Buffalo have sharp hooves that break up the turf, increasing aeration and establishment of a diversity of grasses and shrubs. They also eat a greater variety of greens. They don’t congregate around streams as cattle do, preferring to wallow in water-filled potholes and shallows. Cattle flatten and compact the soil, deplete it of oxygen, worms and insects, and muddy the banks of streams.

Buffalo are strong constitutionally and survive adverse weather conditions. They are resistant to the devastating effects of brucellosis even though they may be carriers. Brucellosis will ravage a herd of cows, causing miscarriages ad other endocrine disturbances. The ranchers say their cows contract brucellosis from the few buffalo that wander beyond the arbitrary confines of Yellowstone Park, but those buffalo have not been seen consorting with cattle. A more likely suspect is the elk feeding grounds of Wyoming and Montana, used by both elk herds and cattle. But, elk hunting is big busineess in the Northern plains, and it would never do to eliminate the elk.

In return for cattle turning the plains into a nice flat dustbowl, the government: builds roads & fences, plants grass (monoculture, unnaturally), “controls” predators, and tries to reclaim streams. The grazing fees don’t begin to approach the costs to the taxpayer. Wall Street investment banks, of course cooperate with the beef enterprise by making loans to the ranchers, the only collateral being the grazing permits. It makes the financial crisis and the markets for unregulated mortgage derivatives and credit default swaps seem like ethical business practices.

It would all be under the radar except for the recent book “Turf Wars” by Mike Hudak published by Biome Books. Hudak’s book is a series of extrensive interviews with rangers, fish & wildlife biologists, and range conservationists from Texas all the way up to North Dakota, from New Mexico thtough eastern Colorado to Montana and the Canadian border. Many of them are or were government employees out in the field, not political types sitting in well appointed offices. They are all quoted in their own words, and so the writing style changes from one to the next. How cattle grazing ravages the botanical ecosystems, archeological sites, and natural animal populations are all documented. Some of the writers point fingers at both politicians and the “system” as well as at Big Beef. The most valuable resource, the watershed of the great plains, is being destroyed.

There are 25 free-ranging interviews with men and women who love the land of the plains, the animals and the fish. The interviews, all arranged into basic topics that are relevant, are called “chapters.” The experience and thoughts of the many authors seem unprompted, and the writing/speaking styles are as varied as personalities could be. Many of them work or worked for the BLM or Forest Service; others were independent conservationists. They all describe the destructive effects of cattle grazing on public lands and the political power of the cattlemen. The establishment blames probloms with the cattle and overgrazing on coyotes, prarie dogs, the buffalo of Yellowstone Park, and even the few wild horses left in the West. Luckily the large ranchers who didn’t like the wild horses were stymied. Horses in America can’t be treated like buffalo. Horses have a constitutiency of horse lovers.

The book is well documented with over 500 notated references but could use a few maps to orient the reader. Despite the detailed organization (maybe because of it) the book is a good read. It is highly recommended for its insight into how our country is run. It may even be enough for you to swear off hamburgers in fast food joints.

Three, Two, One ... Bailout

2008-11-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

Three, Two, One … Bailout
by Mort Malkin

Did you notice how through 2007 and most of 2008, the government was telling us that the fundamentals were sound and the economy was strong. The pronouncement was repeated even though we owed hundreds of billions to various countries around the world such as China, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and our balance of payments was in deep scarlet Recession? Don’t be a Chicken Little.

Suddenly, when the stock markets dropped so precipitously, president Bush changed his tune. We were in serious financial straits he said, and Secretary of the Treasury Paulson needed taxpayer money to bail out our financial institutions (private banks). Bear Sterns was first — it had more debts than worthless assets. Then, in rapid order Lehman Bros failed, AIG needed rescue, and Merrill Lynch had to sell new stock at a discount to Singapore to raise money. Yet, all through 2007 and most of 2008, real estate sales were down and property values were declining, even as sub prime mortgages were still being written in an unintelligible language and packages of them were being sold to investors by calling them collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). But, the fundaments were sound. Even the rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s called the CDOs investment grade.

Secretary Paulson (he, recently the CEO of Goldman Sachs) asked Congress to give him $700 billion, but don’t ask what he would do with it. The people’s reaction (over 90% of us) to giving away $700 billion to Wall Street was outrage. Members of The House of Representatives, all up for re-election, heard from constituents. Congress said to Paulson “Whoa, we’re not going to give you a blank check.” The $700 billion was voted down. So, the White House wordsmiths got busy and called it a “rescue” instead of a “bailout.” Paulson added concern for deposits that were insured for only $100,000 and a few words for homeowners who were having their homes foreclosed. He assembled a meeting with the banking industry and drafted a new bill. Being a “can do” guy he didn’t meet with any academic economists, especially not Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman of Princeton. The administration demanded partial ownership of each bank, but the stock the government would receive was only a token percentage of what could be bought openly on the stock exchange for the same money.

The complexity of the financial crisis goes way beyond sub prime adjustable mortgages, bubbled evaluations of real estate, rating agency “investment” inflation, and bundling of mortgages as CDOs. In 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act [the same Phil Gramm who earlier in 2008 said we Americans were all complainers] erased any real regulations from/for the financial system. Banks could do most anything — savings banks could sell stocks & bonds, investment banks could create derivatives, not only CDOs but also tranches, credit default swaps, and probably some we haven’t heard about yet. For the $700 billion, Paulson was not demanding regulation of the financial “industry,” nor was he going to say anything when the Wall Street firms such as AIG continued to pay executive salaries in the millions, continued to pay stockholder dividends, and held fancy parties disguised as meetings at elite (expensive) resorts.

Just before Thanksgiving, two groups thought to get in on the handout. Citibank “needed” $25 billion to survive, and General Motors had only enough money to get through 2008. Paulson, with the president behind him and the vice president behind the president, said the two industries were entirely different. He was right. Citi makes only paper and financial legalese. The car companies (Ford and Chrysler decided to get in on the act) at least makes cars. Yet, the CEOs of the big three automakers had to go through a grilling by Congress, including why they didn’t drive hybrid autos from Detroit to Washington instead of taking corporate jets. We also may note that the three combined CEO salaries are about $80 million. None of the grillees offered to quit or serve without pay. A sensitive majority in Congress refused them any money until they came back with plans for improvement over the status quo. Citibank was something else. Paulson considered CitiGroup too big & too important to fail, and CEO Vikram Pandit never was called before anyone. But, he did the right thing — he fired 10,000 underlings at Citicorp.

What to do — other than to throw money by the hundreds of billions of our money at Wall Street?
• We can start by repealing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and re-regulating all “investment vehicles.” Even Greenspan now says it was a mistake to deregulate derivatives. While we are at it, we can regulate hedge funds, and private equity funds.
• The CEO (and CFO and COO and anyone else who makes more than a million dollars a year) of any investment house that sustains losses must give back all the money. All CEOs and other mucky-mucks must be limited to salaries of $250,000 so they will qualify for Obama’s middle class tax cuts.
• All the people who got rich by selling mortgages and derivatives and collecting commissions at every repackaging have to give back the ill gotten money.
• All adjustable mortgages are forbidden. Three of five subprime mortgages were sold to individuals and families who qualified for long term, fixed rate mortgages anyway. So much for blaming the homeowners for the crisis.
• For the $700 billion the government can buy the subprime mortgages — Merrill sold a package of its sub prime mortgages to Singapore at about 22¢ on the dollar. Its a good model.

After we thusly straighten out Wall Street, we must raise the minimum wage, extend unemployment insurance limits, and have the federal and state Employment Agencies actually find jobs for people instead of just handing out checks. Then, we can attack health care reform. It all shouldn’t take more than a few months. Finally, we can tend to important things such as art and poetry.

The Oil Giant Turns Green??

2008-11-17T16:10:00.004-05:00

by Mort Malkin

T. Boone Pickens has been on television as much as any candidate for public office. And he, at age 80! First, there were paid advertisements on the networks. Then, he went on the late night political humor shows, ostensibly to hawk his book “The First Billion Is The Hardest.” Poor guy, with the current financial crisis, he must need the money.

Lately, he’s not talking about his book, He’s doing a typical bait & switch job. First, he blesses wind power — who can be against a clean, renewable energy source? He has his basic facts straight. There’s enough wind fom Texas to Montana and the Dakotas to power the entire nation. But, T. Boone Pickens puts wind decades away. In the interim he wants to use natural gas, a genuine fossil fuel. Interviewed on “Face The Nation,” he reveled in the glories of natural gas: it is (relatively) clean burning; it can replace diesel fuel for 18-wheelers; it is plentiful in the US. Cars can be run on batteries and even photovoltaics, but big rigs, the 18-wheelers, need diesel fuel or, in Pickens’ scheme, they can be converted to run on natural gas.

In the interests of full disclosure -- offered by the Gadfly Revelry & Research gang on behalf of T. Boone Pickens -- he is the CEO of BP Capital, a hedge fund. He is also based in Texas with an office in Dallas and a ranch in the panhandle. Gas extraction companies are already mining natural gas around Fort Worth. Then, he has an interest in water from the Ogallala aquifer that runs under his ranch. Neither does he tell about how, like oil, the easily-obtainable large pools of gas were taken years ago. The “plentiful” natural gas he is so enthusiastic about lies a mile deep in the earth in many tiny crevices and pockets, which were thought not worth the trouble to drill for it. Enter Halliburton, the gas & oil technology experts. In the 90s, when Dick Cheney was CEO, Halliburton developed the proprietary technology of hydraulic fracturing of the bedrock and the chemistry to bring up the dispersed natural gas in quantity. The mini-pockets of gas are widespread around the nation: the Barnett shale in Texas, deposits in the Rocky Mountains, and the Marcellus shale of northeast Pennsylvania and nearby New York, for starters.

Boone, no country bumpkin, also knows, but isn’t telling, that each gas well takes at least a million gallons of water in the drilling process. Also, various chemicals must be added to lubricate the whole works, to inhibit corrosion, and to suppress the growth of bacteria and algae. In Texas, Colorado, and western Pennsylvania, pollution of nearby drinking water wells by methane, benzenes, methyl napthalenes, Halad 344 and a hundred other toxic creations, has been documented. Were you expecting Halliburton to hold to high environmental standards? They didn’t even worry about patriotism when they moved their headquarters to Dubai from Houston.

You might not expect the interviewers from the media to know the details about drilling for diffuse natural gas deposits. But, how much knowledge and imagination does it take to ask T. Boone Pickens if he ever heard of using freight trains (electrified, of course) to move goods around the country instead of driving pollution spewing 18-wheelers? The electricity to run the trains can be obtained from sun, wind, and tides. T. Boone Pickens is a good geologist. Does he know something about gas deposits under the brush on his Texas ranch?

Electronic Origins

2008-11-16T21:20:00.001-05:00

In the beginning, electronics were mainframes and psycho-pathology was talking to oneself. If you saw someone in the street talking aloud to no one in particular, you would think the person crazy or, if you were in the mountains of Greece, an oracle. Then, one individual who was both off the wall and extremely bright, perhaps a savant, decided that if cell phone technology were in existence, even a latter-day Socrates would be able to practice up for any issue of the day. And so, cell phones began.

Fast forward to today. We have untold permutations and combinations of pods, tunes, photos, and text messaging — which Apple usually develops and Microsoft steals — to keep us from boredom. The internet offers opinion, information, and references galore. Every computer has enough memory for all the text that a scribe could produce in a couple of lifetimes. Everywhere you go, people wear tiny earplugs attached to discs containing a few hours of music of their choice. They even have discs of nothing but classical music, maybe even mostly Mozart. Often the listener would hum along with the electronic recording.

One day on the New York City Subway, I heard a man humming , and occasionally singing out loud, along with the electronic music. He seemed completely immersed in his world of music, except … all the music was from his imagination. He was connected to no electronic anything. He must have been the son of that first cell phone man.

Quotation For our Time

2008-11-10T14:23:00.002-05:00

"The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for."
Laurence J Peter

Hope Below the Radar

2008-11-06T10:24:00.001-05:00

The election is over. Cheney has not attacked Iran or declared martial law, though he thought about both. Now comes the hard work of real change that will need imagination and courage. Today’s column is a first step in holding Obama’s feet to a fire sparked by working people, by young people (of all ages), by thinking people. Obama may not know it, till now, but “yes we can” has already started in terms of cultural change. Please read on.

Once upon a time, early in the last half of the 20th century, when America had a culture of rugged individualism, competition, and self interest, the Japanese entered the world of economics with a radical attitude: cooperation and altruism. Before that time, Japan was known for producing trinkets and low quality items. In the West, quality was good but productivity was not improving. Labor-management negotiations always included threats of strikes or lockouts & firings. Conflict was part of Capitalism and remains so in the West today.

The second half of the 20th century saw a 180° turn in Japan. Nikon lenses and cameras became as good as the best German optical equipment. Other products followed. In cars today, Lexus and and Infinity give Mercedes and BMW a run for quality. Today, Japan produces electronic devices of highest quality. In the Land of the Rising Sun and first hybrid cars, auto workers and labor in general: have a hand in corporate decision-making, have a pride in the products they manufacture, and have the security of a lifetime job. They are productive in both quality and quantity.

Look what happened to Toyota. It became eminently successful despite its silly name. The Toyota Prius leads all hybrids in sales and satisfaction. The Japanese eschew the American cultural model in many disciplines from law to business sharkity. If a CEO commits a strategic error he makes public apologies to employees, stockholders, and the public at large. He often resigns with bowed head. The next quarter’s bottom line can wait an Asiatic few years. Quality will out. Patience pays.

A few American firms have found they can do well by doing good, but very few have made it a habit or considered it more than image and good PR. The eight years of the B-C administration with “So?” Cheney calling the shots have reinforced the great white shark model. Very quietly in a multibillion dollar whisper, Google is creating a new cultural model. While everyone is talking about Google’s 400 billion searches a year and huge databases, we hear little about the company’s dual mission statements: a) “to organize the world’s information [all of it] and make it universally accessible and useful” and b) “don’t be evil.” The primary purpose of the former is not to make as much money as possible. The latter is not some sort of a joke, They don’t claim ownership of the world’s information and don’t charge for providing it. And, they’re serious about not being mean spirited. The mission statements are backed by many quotes of the
founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the like-minded CEO, Eric Schmidt. Here are a few. Brin: “We have no desire to screw any category of people or trick them. We want all our partners to be successful.” Schmidt: “We would never cross the boundary of violating user trust.” Brin: “How many people do you think had embarrassing information disclosed yesterday because of some Google cookie? Zero. It never happens.” Compared to Microsoft, which the courts have ruled suppressed competition, Google has not even been charged with violating any laws. Like Microsoft, Google offers a variety of software: word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, instant messaging, map locating, and others beyond Gadfly — all under the umbrella they call “cloud computing.” But their first of all is their web search engine. It occupies 70% of their energies.

Concerning labor-management, Google gives above-and-beyond employee benefits. In addition to the usual, employees in the home office (not just mucky-mucks) get annual physicals, weekly car washes and other unlikelies. More impressive, Google allows its workers to devote up to 20% of their paid time to developing projects on their own.

Perhaps most telling, Terry Winograd, a professor of computer sciences at Stanford, was given Google stock for work he did early in the company’s history. Standard operating procedure in most American corporations is amnesia for early work, or just plain stealing. At Google, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have maintained good relations with Winograd and are genuinely generous. The principals at Google leave the lofty speeches to politicians, to promisors of one kind of change or another, they just do the deeds. Google offers free information on any topic with its search engine, free e-mail services with Gmail, free maps & directions, and free other things that are beyond Gadfly’s elementary electronic skills. Google explores every possibility — they are now looking into everything from mobile phones to renewable energy technologies.

One thing they do not offer free is advertising. Advertisers want to be noticed by the people in Google’s huge database, and revenues from advertising have given Google a net worth of over 200 billion dollars. Maybe, in a few years, if we don’t add to the $10 trillion national debt, Google will buy the US of A and change American culture to one of “Do no harm.” We certainly can’t expect that from Exxon-Mobil.

Google is growing far faster than the Chinese economy. It has been in business only since 1998. and grows with each year. Their technology is superior to all others, and they are attracting both creative talent and engineers without peer. They think they can do anything. Maybe they can. Hey Google, how about starting with changing American culture to one of cooperation and caring. You have the numbers, both in search requests and in earnings — just what Americans will respond to initially. Philosophy will not be far behind.

Nothing Political, Just Personal

2008-10-30T20:39:00.002-04:00

In law, in business, in politics, in many professional callings, the adversaries in a particular case may act as if they are bitter personal enemies during the proceedings and then go out for coffee together. Business is business, separate from personal feelings. For Sarah Palin, politics is personal.

Sarah was involved in Wasilla (a town in Alaska, not a reindeer infection) city council politics in the 1990s. She became mayor of the town in 1996. During this time, she had help from local politicians. Being super ambitious, she made friends, jealousies and did not hesitate to “cut [former supporters] off at the knees” if they weren’t in her camp. The Gadfly Revelry & Research gang ( Grr), in their investigations, found that Barracuda Sarah got to be mayor of Wasilla via a dirty campaign against John Stein,who had held that office for the previous nine years. John had originally recruited Sarah four years before to run for city council. But, four years later, she moved beyond John’s schedule. It was time for Sarah to be mayor — just ask her. One of Sarah’s first acts was to rescind a 1994 directive that banned guns from City Hall and other such public buildings. How else to protect yourself against Council members? Sarah’s “unitary executive” riled a city council member, Nick Carney, another early supporter of Palin. He introduced an ordinance to ban guns from liquor stores, bars, playgrounds and government buildings. Carney, an obvious Communist, had to be opposed by any means possible. When the ordinance came before the city council, she arranged to have the chamber packed with loud gun lobby people brought in from the outside. Only one citizen of Wasilla was in the gallery. Carney’s proposal lost, and he earned a place on her enemies list. When Dick Deuser, ten years the city attorney, stopped Sarah from filling two vacant council seats without a council vote, it was clearly time for Deuser to find another line of work — maybe Constitutional law. Of city law, Sarah said, “it’s not rocket science.”

An examination of Sarah Palin’s relationship with Lynda Green, the president of the Alaska state senate, is worth many pages of personality analysis in finding out what Sarah is all about. Lynda is Republican and conservative both socially and fiscally, but they are no longer buddies. Lynda says that, as governor, Sarah looks down her nose at leaders of the legislature and refuses to consult with them. Any difference of opinion on policy (Sarah’s policy) becomes very personal, anger and all. Green, a 69 year old veteran politician, decided to stay neutral in the governor’s race in 2006, and Sarah took umbrage. Lynda considered it spoiled brat behavior. Sarah never learned to be a professional. She is neither well experienced nor well educated. Her interview with Katie Couric showed she would not even make a good talk show host. At one point Couric became exasperated at Palin’s repeated obfuscation and non-answers. She said “I’m just going to ask you one more time for specific examples of his [McCain’s] pushing for more regulation.” Sarah’s shameful response was “I’ll try to find you some and bring them to you.” Just imagine an interview on “Meet The Press” or “Face The Nation,” not to mention a confrontation with Dmetri Medvedev or his ventriloquist Vladimir Putin.

Another clue into Sarah’s nature is her belief in personal power and entitlement. As mayor of Wasilla, she was a champion of action, whether legal or not. She was quoted to the effect of “I’m the mayor and I can do anything I want until the courts tell me I can’t do it anymore.” When she got to be governor, she and her husband pressured the public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper who just happened to be her former brother-in-law who had gone through a difficult divorce with her sister. But, by now everyone has heard about troopergate. Add to that her billing the state for per diem travel while she was actually at home and the billing for her children on official trips to events that never invited said kids. During The recent debate, she opined she would like to stretch the limits of the office of the vice president beyond the dreams of Spiro Agnew and Dick Cheney. She really wants to be president of the US. In one Freudian Slip,
she actually talked of a “Palin-McCain presidency.”

Sarah has all these skeletons, and no redeeming features, except maybe her perkiness. She has no experience in foreign policy & no knowledge of economics outside of taxing the oil produced in Alaska; she doesn’t write her own speeches (like McCain doesn't “author” his own books); she holds extreme positions on social issues; and it’s a wonder why McCain chose her as a running mate. The reason for her selection is now plain and simple: McCain has a lifelong gambling addiction. In a front page NY Times article an investigative reporter caught McCain at Foxwoods, a favorite Indian casino in Connecticu. His favorite is the craps table; but the political scene offers plenty of supplemental gaming, witness the selection of Sarah Palin as a running mate. He only met her once or twice, and she hasn’t been fully vetted. Sarah has a bachelor of arts in journalism ( not accredited) from the University of Idaho after attending bits and pieces of five
colleges. That’s the extent of her education — no law degree, no masters, not even a course in dog sledding.

But McCain needed headlines, and he was willing to gamble. It turned sour after the Couric interview. So he doubled down, had his staff prepare her for a vice presidential interview with talking point cards and then suspended his campaign to address the economic melt down by suggesting that capital gains taxes be eliminated and no small businesses be taxed. Does he count General Motors as a small business? He would bet that the trickle down effect would take care of the more than 10 trillion dollar national debt and all the failing investment banking houses. The last person we need in the White House in a hostile world is a gambler. Oh, did I forget to mention that McCain has been a long time member and twice chair of the Indian Affairs Committee which says what Indian casinos can and cannot do. Corruption? Oh, we know a Senator would never do that.

John and Sarah

2008-10-29T21:06:00.000-04:00

John McCain’s judgment, going back to his days at Annapolis, has been unpredictable. It was his trademark through school and in active service. The genetic codes of his father and grandfather admirals are formidable forces. John’s only consistency was his warrior mentality -- war here, war there, war anywhere. McCain’s goal was historical -- he would set the record for the longest war of all time, 101 years, even if he only began it.

His studied judgment comes into question with the selection of Sarah Palin as running mate. He had met her only twice and she was inexperienced in foreign policy, domestic affairs and educational background. Why, she occasionally brought a child to work with her, demonstrating, at least to an older generation, that she was not a real professional. But she represented youth and femaleness on the ticket.

Against a Democratic campaign led by Barack Obama and Joe Biden -- youth and experience, strength in domestic and foreign policy, and accuracy from the 3-point line — McCain needed a running mate to make headlines. Sarah is a governor (despite her less than two years on office), female & good-looking, mother of five very different children, hunter and fisher, and rather opinionated because God agrees with her. Her acceptance speech had been written for her, and she read it off a teleprompter. Her Katie Couric interviewthereafter, without teleprompter, was a disaster. Fearing a repeat of that interview in the debate against Joe Biden, the McCain handlers gave her a batch of cards with talking points to select from for each question. For one question during the debate, she had no relevant cards, so she simply said she would not answer the question but talk directly to the American people [about oil & gas in Alaska].

On most matters, Sarah is totally out of touch. She is in conflict with a) the Democrats, b) McCain at many times in his Senatorial career, and c) Republicans outside the neo-con political-social persuasion. You can blame it on Sarah Palin, and she can blame it on Alaska's youth in the Union. Alaska is a young state and they make up their tradition as they go along. Ernest Gruening, Alaska’s first Senator, voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964. Ted Stevens, a Senator since 1968, has a strictly opportunist record in matters of war or peace. He is more interested in cronyism, gifts, and personal favors. He is presently under indictment for same. Stare decisis hasn’t had enough time to become tradition in Alaska. Roe v. Wade, only 25 years the law of the land, may get there in the 21st century.

As an example of Sarah’s personal politics, she would ban abortions for any reason except to save a woman’s life. Rape and incest are insufficient excuses. Bristol Palin (age 17) has/had every choice. Her mother, Sarah, would have childbirth as the only option for everyone else. She says it is her personal view, and that of the states. So young women don't have to make the abortion or not choice, she offers abstinence-only sex education (no-sex education, that is).

Sarah Palin has a solid history of poking her powdered nose into local community affairs, not to mention those of the boudoir. She would have the public schools teach creationism alongside evolution — theory v. theory. The former has it that dinosaurs coexisted with homo sapiens and the passenger pigeon, as taught in the literal Bible. Once you get past a couple of thousand years, either your attention span dissolves or all the ancient cultures are alike. All the species ever are crowded into six or seven thousand years. It’s too much for anyone, even archeologists.

Immediately before becoming Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin was
mayor of Wasilla, a town of less than 10,000. One of Sarah’s first acts as Mayor, was to visit the library and set up a banned book file. The librarian pointed out that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press is guaranteed in the First Amendment. But Sarah is not a Constitutional scholar (except for the Second Amendment which allows for bearing arms as part of a well-regulated militia). The librarian was fired, of course. Next on her agends as mayor (she of the anti-pork recency) was government funding of local projects., That would be proof of politricianship. So, as mayor, she hired a lobbyist to gain access to Senator Ted Stevens to get some federal aid for suburban Wasilla. In return she supported the Bridge to Nowhere.

She also is proud of her advocacy for drilling for oil & gas in the breeding grounds of the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve (the last 5% of the north coast of Alaska). But, we know the Governor of Alaska has responsibilities, and China and Japan need energy to compete with the US.

In Sarah Palin, we have the raw future. We have gone beyond the present, and circled around to robber baron days. Today, Sarah is out of step on Roe v Wade, global heating, the theory of the double helix, the sportsmanship of hunting wolves from planes, and the need for polar bears to exist outside of a zoo or a rug on the floor. Real sportsmen are asking whether Sarah ever entered the Iditarod. with real dog teams, not snowmobiles. Further, I wonder what she thinks of the 19th Amendment.

Sarah barely has a bachelors degree, but on the job training requires only gut feelings and enough people to repeat the lies that built the house that George W swaggers around in. Maybe she could take courses in history from Howard Zinn and read Rachel Carson’s classic, Silent Spring. Some basic economics from James Galbraith (son of John Kenneth Galbraith) wouldn’t hurt either. She certainly wouldn’t learn anything about economics from John McCain, who alternates between mantras of drill, drill, drill and bomb, bomb, bomb. The essential philosophies of war and peace could come in a situation room private showing the the Marx Brothers classic anti war film “Duck Soup” followed by a discussion of metaphor.

Xocerism for Our Times

2008-08-08T11:08:00.005-04:00

Man is born Siamese to his shadow, and sometimes he is only the Shadow's shadow.
-- Jose Garcia Villa

From the new book, "Jose Garcia Villa, Doveglion" just published by Penguin Books.

www.Obama's Homepage

2008-08-05T12:54:00.001-04:00

GADFLY
by Mort Malkin

www. Obama’s Home Page

Two columns ago, Gadfly cast a critical eye on some of Barack Obama’s foreign policy positions. In the four weeks between then and now, the candidate, no Mohandas Gandhi, has slightly conditioned his formerly firm stands on a) the American war (as the Iraqis call it) and b) Iran-US relations to be. The principals in the Near East seem to be pre-empting our good-faith efforts to bring them democracy. The (our) Iraqi government says they want a timetable for US withdrawal. The Iranians coffee houses have come up with a plan to move international dialog from uranium enrichment to missiles. If the US threatens cruise missile strikes against the Oriental rug weaving centers in Isfahan, Iran is testing missiles that can retaliate against the fast food flipperies in the Green Zone. So far, Obama has responded with clever hedging. He prescribes aggressive diplomacy but won’t take military action off the table. We await the Europeans who usually move with all deliberate speed (key word: deliberate).

Meanwhile, let us hold up the fun house mirror to Obama’s home rule plans The first order of business is the economy. As with several other issues, Obama is hedging his bets. One of his avid supporters is Ken Griffin, the CEO of the Citadel Hedge Fund. Aha! Then, the official economics guru of the Obama campaign is Austan Goolsbee, first anointed into Skull & Bones at Yale and now a University of Chicago professor. The University of Chicago school of economics was long the personal fiefdom of Milton Friedman, the shock jock of sauvage capitalism. OK, what he actually said was, “Only a crisis produces real change.” Yet, Kissinger, Reagan, and the neo-cons based their revolutionary right-wing strategy on those six words. Uncle Milt was an opponent of: government regulations, taxes on corporations, and aid for the poor and hungry. He once said the FDA should fold up its tent — food & drugs don’t need regulation. The market would take care of everything.

Perhaps we should not assume Obama is locked into their economic theology. To his credit, he has promised to consult with James Galbraith, son of John Kenneth Galbraith, the once nemesis of Friedman. Moreover, Obama has had the audacity to promise that he will abolish one of civilization’s most enduring natural laws — the inevitability of death and taxes. He will grant seniors, who earn less than $50,000, freedom from taxes. But will Obama also ask those seniors to wait until age 68 or 70 to start collecting Social Security benefits? Obama’s team has nailed the sources of economic discontent in the nation and has a fix for each: tax rebates for the working class, a foreclosure prevention fund, an increase in the minimum wage, and extension of unemployment benefits. The Obama whiz kids have even figured out where to find the money for said initiatives: disappearing the Bush tax cuts for the ultras, collecting Social Security payroll taxes on incomes above $250,000, and surgical strikes on corporate off-shore tax havens. It all sounds miraculous, courtesy of common sense, but there are a few knotholes in the economic plank. Obama’s dismal scientists say he will protect low income American workers from unscrupulous lenders — from store fronts to investment banks. Will he set a fair, maximum, single-digit rate on adjustable mortgages? A hint of the answer comes from his proposal to limit payday loans to [are you sitting down?] 36%! 36%?? Was he talking about storefront loan desks or Mafia loan sharks from the 50s?

You can select the domestic next from a list of nine: health care, energy policy, the environment, immigration, homeland security, information & communication, trade policy, education, and church & state. As nothing and nobody is pure, as everything is interconnected if not tainted, we may gain insight into how Obama analyzes issues. One of the poets of the Revelry & Research Team discovered that Obama the Hedge Man appears in most of these issues.

The O Man is an adherent of free trade, and uses the words “fair trade” in the same breath. He stresses environmental and labor safeguards in our trading partners, but says little about protecting traditional agriculture in third world countries that we flood with corn, wheat, rice, beef and pork. He talks the clean & green talk, but also has encouraging words for the nuclear industry and “clean coal.” There, he wily as a fox. He wants the old coal plants to clean up by sequestering CO2 and scrubbing out mercury and other toxics. New coal plants would have to meet similar high standards. O knows that clean coal technologies will be costly and coal will be unable to compete with wind and tidal energy. Nuclear plants concern him on two fronts — storage of radioactive waste and the dangers of nuclear proliferation. He will speak of public-private partnerships for any new nuclear plants, and that will seal the fate of any new plants. Investors and insurers want no part of the risk — they want public-public financing.

Obama also hedges by advocating comprehensive immigration reform, but build the border fence, too. On surveillance, the FISA bill, passed with his help, gives the telecom giants immunity from law suits, yesterday and tomorrow. But the Senator knows that Big Tel is still subject to criminal prosecution. Will President
Obama’s Attorney General investigate such evidence?

You say you want to vote for someone who doesn’t equivocate. The Green Party
may be your cup of herbal tea. Cynthia McKinney, the Greens’ nominee brews a a robust vertebral tea. Or maybe Obama will realize that the more
compassionate he is towards Bush-Cheney Inc, the less passionate his base of
progressives is about him.
.........................................................................
For further commentary on this topic, and other news ahead of its time, please
visit gadflysmiling.blogspot.com.

Men: An Endangered Species

2008-07-27T14:43:00.003-04:00

For many years, natural gas was mined, refined and sold to us to heat our homes nd cook our food. It took some doing — pipelines, compressor stations and the like — but it lay in large pools, often in coal beds, and not difficult to bring to market. The deeper, hard-to-get gas was not worth the trouble or expense to mine.

In the 1990s the CEO of Halliburton, Rich Cheney, foresaw the future … in his own image. He planned to: nominate himself for the Vice Presidency, move into the White House via the back door of the Supreme Court, invade Iraq, give Halliburton no-bid contracts, cut taxes for the ulttas, run the federal budget into steep deficit, and destroy the value of the dollar as measured against other major currencies. George would merely do as he was told. [Remember George reading in a classroom with school kids on the morning of 9-11?)

Back in the 90s, the Manchenean candidate figured that the price of natural gas could be quietly raised along with the price of oil, and it would be worth a little extra expense to get at the deeper, more difficult gas reserves. He tasked the Halliburton engineers & chemists to develop technology to get at the less accessible gas known to exist in north TX, WY, NM, and CO. In the area around Fort Worth TX, the Barnett Shale contained lots of methane, ethane, propane, butane and other natural gases in small nooks & crannies a mile or two under the surface of the Earth.

It took some doing to open up the bedrock so the gas could collect in large spaces from which it could be brought to the surface in commercial quantities. The method devised was called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking for short. The on-site drillers (the home team) pumped in one or two million gallons of water taken from a nearby stream or river along with a few ordinary chemicals such as propylene glycol (ordinary antifreeze), methanol (ordinary wood alcohol), 2-butoxyethanol (ordinary paint solvent, a few methylnapthalenes (ordinary polycyclic hydrocarbons used in the manufacture of everything from PVC pipe to toilet deodorant cakes). 40% to 70 % of the toxic slurry came back up as waste water in the operation with added arsenic, mercury, and sometimes radium and uranium.

Aha, now we’re getting somewhere. The April 2008 edition of Environmental Health Perspectives reports a study that associates chronic arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water with lowered testosterone levels and ED (erectile dysfunction). Another study in the December 2007 edition reports that exposure of pregnant women to radiation results in fewer boy babies. How will we keep our macho image in the face of these revolting developments? Maybe we’ll just have to pass on gas drilling. Some things are just priceless.

Laura, the Unlikely First Lady

2008-07-23T16:58:00.000-04:00

It always seemed incongruous that Laura Welch, a librarian, ever married George W Bush, a confirmed bibliophobe. Let’s look at Laura & George early in the relationship. George was a party animal in college and a hale fellow–well met for years afterward. They first met at a backyard barbecue in '77 and three months later were married. Four years afterward their twin girls were born. But all was not joy and roses at the Bush household. George’s family values — drugs and alcohol — brewed a few storms. George couldn’t even calm the surface waters with success in business. Consecutive failures with Arbusto, Bush Exploration, and Spectrum did not mix well with gin. Laura finally said she was leaving with the twins, Vice President’s son notwithstanding.

George, after a few broken promises, finally found help and became a born again Christian. [Within the Methodist Church?] We all know the general outlines of the political story of George and Karl and Alberto that followed.

Now Laura lives in the White House in all its intrigue. She knows about the Situation Room and suspects that somewhere within the black hole in the West Wing there is an Office of the Vice President where Dick Cheney practices snarling before a mirror. Laura doesn’t buy into the neocon doctrines of her husband’s administration. The evidence comes from a slew of nuances in her official affairs of state.

In February ’03 she announced a White House event, “Poetry and the American Voice,” to celebrate the work of three anti-establishment literary figures: Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Emily Dickinson. Then the Oval Office cabal learned that one of the invited guests, Sam Hamill, intended to read some anti-war poems. The First Lady’s press office was instructed to call off the celebration. Reading 19th century Walt Whitman is one thing, but opposing an imminent war in the 21st is aiding the terrorists. Laura, we should note, did not announce the cancellation herself.

In March ’05 she was sent to Afghanistan to justify the first Bush-Cheney war. We were there to free Afghan women from the misogynist Taliban. A photo-op was arranged for her to give bookmarks to smiling Afghan girls. While there, though, she met with the Marines and thanked them for protecting the rights of Afghan women. The Marines protecting the rights of women? That was Laura the satirist.

More recently she was offered up to the media for a series of interviews. George Stephanopoulos, Norah O’Donnell, and Chris Wallace handed her some powder puff questions mixed in with a few about the president’s low approval ratings and the war in Iraq. Laura’s replies were in keeping with the talking points she had been given. But if you watched her non-verbal language, she was saying something else. First, she wore no flag pin. Then, she nodded her head up and down when the interviewer questioned some dubious action of the administration. When she replied with the company line, she shook her head from side to side. Laura was trying her best.

Right now the First Lady is looking to buy a house in Dallas. She clearly doesn’t want to stay on the ranch with “Mr. Excitement,” as she has called him, after they leave Washington. What courageous publisher will give her a book contract to tell all she knows? She may even want to run for the Presidency, come 2116. A librarian might be an idea whose time has come by then.

An Iran Attack? Warmed Over Reasons

2008-07-16T21:14:00.000-04:00

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

An Iran Attack? Warmed Over Reasons

In the beginning of the 21st century, George W Bush interpreted the terrible events of 9-11-01 as “My Pearl Harbor.” Did his choice of words flow from his language skills?

Near the close of the 20th century the NeoCon cabal published their infamous position paper, “Project For A New American Century.” In it they proposed total US (military) dominance around the globe and control of energy resources wherever. Funny, the document didn’t mention the sun or wind or tides. But, it was imaginative enough to plan for control of outer space and cyberspace. Paying for the enormous enterprise would require, of course, dissembling of costly New Deal protections for seniors, the poor, and the disabled. Well, how else would these good folks learn the benefits of personal responsibility? In the paper, the signatories despaired of realizing their goals, given the political climate of the time, unless there were “some catastrophic catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Immediately after 9-11, the president, vice president and the cabinet met in the Situation Room in the basement of the White House. Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill was charged with reopening the Stock Exchanges post haste – a priority. That the NYSE was only a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero and enveloped in a toxic atmosphere was only a minor inconvenience.

Not long thereafter, Rich Cheney dispatched himself to the near East to ask backing for an attack on Iraq. Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen, among others informed him that Iraq wasn’t a problem and that he’d best tend to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Vice was undeterred and went to his own CIA. The spooks told him that Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. Cheney shook his head – Iraq was where the oil was.

Fast forward to springtime 2003. After a PR campaign featuring the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein’s dreams of WMDs, Iraq was bombed and invaded. American military forces quickly conquered Baghdad and secured the Oil Ministry. The Iraqis were shocked but not awed. The arrogance of Viceroy Bremer was quickly followed by native resistance in the form of car bombs and other improvised explosive diplomacy. The American troops were trained for winning wars, not for occupying a nation of people whose customs and languages we did not understand. The occupation turned into a multifaceted war and is still with us, and with them.

The Vice, a man in a hurry, soon discovered Iran, another oil-rich state, conveniently next door to Iraq. A strategically timed September ‘08 attack on Iran would give the Commander In Chief a guise to declare martial law and cancel the presidential elections. But what to do about a Supreme Court that could see its own role in the Republic at risk? The Justices might call the administration coup d’etat to Constitutional account. Too risky. An attack could, however, focus the public’s attention on the war on terrorism to help John McCain in the November election. If elected, Honest John might appoint Cheney to the Machiavelli Chair of the Very Privy Council – another four years in power.

An attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear works would require the support of the American public, and Americans might not believe another mushroom cloud prediction. Worse, the National Intelligence Estimate said Iran gave up its nuclear weapons ambitions five years ago and, in any case, is five years away from becoming a nuclear threat to anyone, near or far. Can’t the CIA and NSA keep anything secret?

Time for Plan B. Major General Kevin Bergner assembled a display of insurgent weapons captured in Basra and Karbala as proof of Iranian duplicity in the internal affairs of Iraq and worthy of at least a cruise missile attack. The Vice prepared to switch to “Iranian weapons are killing American troops.” When the Army’s weapons experts were called in, though, they found the mortar shells and rockets were of Russian and Chinese manufacture and available on the open arms market. The carefullly prepared press conference had to be cancelled. Poor Richard Cheney couldn’t get a break. A related strategy was to claim the Revolutionary Guards were training Iraqi militias – smoking gun proof of Iran’s nefarious intentions. The requisite Iranians were located in Baghdad and seized at luncheon in their hotel. One of them had an assault rifle. When an interpreter was brought in, the American captors learned the Iranians were engineers invited over by Iraqi officials to repair the water works of Baghdad. The gunman was just a bodyguard. General Petraeus ordered the Iranians released and quickly apologized before Teheran could take the matter to the UN.

An Iran-attack strategy in search of a rationale is destined to run into the political realities of Near East intrigue. The Iranians, with their 6,000 year history going back to early Susiana, have political skills that are the envy of the West. When the British sailors were seized off the coast of Iran and the UK claimed they were in international waters, the Iranians displayed photos of the boats within swimming distance of the shore. At any rate, the sailors were treated well and, after ten days, were released. Iran received favorable press coverage featuring the Brits playing ping pong and lounging around in comfortable surroundings. Iran is equally skillful in dealing with its Arab neighbors and with the varied ethnic populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nouri al-Maliki just traveled to Teheran in return for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s previous visit to Baghdad. It should be noted that they conferred, not in the Green Zone, but in Baghdad proper under the protection of the Peshmerga militia, no Coalition troops needed. Iran also invited Moqtada al-Sadr, who spent a couple of weeks with the Ayatollahs.

So, it’s back to warming up Plan A. Iran’s civilian nuclear program may indeed turn military. All they need is 50,000 high speed centrifuges working 24/7 to enrich the refined uranium from 5% to 90%. Then there are other small details such as fuses capable of producing a chain reaction and ICBMs to deliver their message to the White House. Possible, but not imminent. Yet George and Dick have started a new PR campaign: “A military strike may be the only way to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.” “A military strike may be unavoidable.” The administration is also weighing a covert provocation. If Iran returns the compliment, then it’s war. Iran could unleash a variety of terrorists from Hezbollah to Iranian international rug dealers. The US must beware the Goddess of Unpredictable Consequences.

Energy Genesis

2008-07-11T15:02:00.000-04:00

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Energy Genesis

The US of A can boast a wide and varied natural environment — physical resources aplenty and landscapes to take your breath away. The list of riches is extensive: mountain ranges, the Great Plains, shorelines along two oceans, a chain of Great Lakes, several world-class rivers, and unique settlements such as Hollywood (CA), Brooklyn (NY), and Milanville (PA). Go ahead and laugh. Milanville is listed in Hammond's World Atlas with a population of 120. In the next edition it may also be noted as the home of the Milanville Poets, Unlimited.

Americans have been blessed with many energy resources. Of course they were meant for us to use so we could “be fruitful and replenish the earth,” and of course in the comfort of homes kept at 73° F, regardless of the outside temperature. We need not look far for the power that keeps our lives so pleasant. The sun shines every cloudless day. San Diego claims eight days of sun every week. The waves of the sea rise and fall day and night, and the tides flow and ebb 24/7. The earth turns and prevailing winds blow, even in between hurricane seasons. During every political campaign, candidates for elected office are a dependable source of warmed over air. The above wellsprings of energy are renewable and clean (nasty campaign tactics excepted).

We have also been blessed with accessible fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — but they are a little trickier as they come laced with malevolent chemicals. Burning them in one way or another releases nitrogen & sulfur oxides and carbon dioxide, prime movers in the global heating process. Then, there are volatile polycyclic hydrocarbons, toxic in their own right but also leading to increased concentrations of ground-level ozone and consequent respiratory pathology. A few simpler chemicals, right from the periodic table of elements, add a little diversity to the toxic stew: arsenic, mercury, radium and uranium for starters. On the other hand, oil has also been a boon for specialized plastics with wondrous properties — just juggle a few C, H, and O atoms. We should be saving such a valuable resource and using it only for such advanced materials, not for heat, electricity production, and gasoline combustion. Natural gas, too, may have value far beyond heating homes. One educated guess for future hi-tech natural gas use comes from one of the Milanville Poets: as a carrier for nano-film surface application for corrosion resistance, electrical conductivity, or waterproofing.

Then we come to where Osiris stores all the fossil fuels. The oil & gas deposits closer to the surface were easier and cheaper to mine and were taken first. Once they became scarce and prices went up, the CONG gang (coal, oil, nuclear, gas) went after the deeper and less accessible stores. It was damn the environment, safety standards, and quaint & outmoded ideas of morality — full speed ahead. Around the world, oil drilling went off shore into the storm-tossed North Sea and the hurricane-plagued Gulf of Mexico. Gas exploration found mile-deep small pockets and crevices of natural gas at many places in the US, from Texas to the Colorado Rockies to the North Platte Valley in Wyoming to the watershed of the High Delaware River. Halliburton, ever inventive for nefarious purposes, devised a high pressure hydraulic system for fracturing the rock strata so the gas could be collected from a wider area around the drill site. It takes some doing — a million gallons of water laced with various lubricants, corrosion inhibitors, biocides and other fun chemicals. The direction and extent of the fractures is, at best, educated guesswork, but not far away is the rock that holds the water table. These risk-ridden ventures attracted arrogant, risk-taking energy men who were not much bothered by accidents or aquifer contamination.

A few truly conservative theologians became environmental advocates. They called upon their followers to “weave the mission of care for God’s creation.” Some have opined that these less accessible energy deposits were meant to be kept in reserve, to be called on only in the event of dire planetary emergency. The Milanville Poets caucused and agreed that $4 per gallon gasoline does not meet the standard of “dire emergency.”

The last genesis question concerns sacred sites. Some places on earth are too beautiful, too ecologically fragile, too historically significant to despoil forever for the sake of a few months worth of BTUs. We should not be drilling next to Old Faithful in Yellowstone, not the Everglades of Florida, not under the water tables of the High (Upper) Delaware River, not even in the Rose Garden of the White House (no matter who lives there at the moment). If drill they must, there’s a nice 1500 acre ranch in Crawford TX.

Global What?

2008-07-06T10:59:00.000-04:00

We’ve achieved a vague awareness that the Earth and oceans and air really are increasing in temperature. We’ve even replaced a few old light bulbs with compact fluorescents and turned down our thermostats a couple of degrees during the winter months.

Now that we’ve walked the walk (if only in baby steps), it’s time to talk the talk:

It’s not global warming, but global heating.

It’s not climate change, but climate chaos, collapse, crash, calamity …

We’re fast approaching not the tipping point but the point of no return or the runaway greenhouse effect.

The eight or nine climate mechanisms which are driving the global temperature rise are called feed back loops, but the more accurate term would be chain reactions.

So, it’s global heating, climate chaos, the point of no return, and chain reactions. Talk the talk. There’s not much time left to reverse the great process — perhaps only 10 to 12 years. Walking the walk may be too slow. Talking the talk may give us some energy for an all out sprint.

Whose Mission Accomplished

2008-07-05T17:30:00.001-04:00

Back in the spring of 2003, the Air Force softened up Iraq — but missed with a few surgical strikes that targeted Saddam Hussein — and so the Army invaded. In a few quick weeks our forces occupied that nation: Baghdad, Saddam’s palaces and the Oil Ministry.

President George slipped into a flight suit and, in a Navy jet fighter, landed on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of major combat operations. No, he didn’t fly the plane; he never earned his wings when he was an erstwhile member of the Texas Air National Guard. A great banner proclaiming Mission Accomplished stretched above the Commander In Chief as he addressed the sailors has since become an embarrassment to the
B-C administration when the war ground on year after year.

Recognizing that the photo-op went sour, the White House spinmeisters have changed the storyline. It was, they now insist, Mission Accomplished for those sailors on that ship for their mission. Their mission, truth be told, was to manoever the carrier off the coast of California — not in the Persian Gulf — and position it so photos of the President’s plane landing on the deck of the carrier would show open seas, not nearby San Diego. Will the White House convince any but the gullible? Or will the new PR effort just confirm the President’s incredibility?

Rating The 41st President

2008-07-05T17:14:00.001-04:00

President George W Bush, our 43rd, has reached record low approval ratings. Even the media, of late, have found it acceptable to report the public’s unhappiness with our peerless leader. Stephen Colbert has been a media leader with his faux news satire. He often questions his guests when the talk turns political: “Is George Bush a great president or the greatest president?”

The Gadfly Revelry & Research team will be ready if any of us gets invited to the show. Our reply will be: “George W Bush is an incredible president.”

Quote Of Note

2008-07-05T17:04:00.001-04:00

"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

--Joseph Stalin

Gadfly History

2008-06-28T12:12:00.000-04:00

The original Gadfly column first appeared in The Towne Crier three and a half years ago and has become a bi-weekly contribution to the rhythm of the High Delaware Valley. For those of us Luddites who prefer to read the printed word in more tangible form, The Towne Crier is available by subscription at Callicoon, NY 12723. The paper is also available at all progressive libraries in the region. [OK, libraries are progressive just in being libraries.] Additional commentary not available in the newspaper is added to this blog frequently.

The Gadfly Blog treats all topics as fair fare — no sacred cows, no scaredy-cat writing. Just good literary style and courage. Please visit often.

Musings

2008-06-23T21:03:00.000-04:00

General Petraeus may have an eye on entering politics on retirement. He was quickly given his fourth star when he was enlisted to help sell the Surge to The Congress and to the British. The British military said “No thank you,” and declined to delay the scheduled departure of their few soldiers still left in Iraq. So, the Surge went forward without the Mother Country. The General proclaimed success when the violence in Baghdad declined as a result of Moqtada al-Sadr ordering the Mahdi Army to cool it except in self defense, but the General claimed the credit.

Recently, Petraeus was moved from Iraq Command to CentCom to replace Admiral William Fallon who gave orders not to fire on Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf that were “taunting” American warships. Imagine an Admiral defusing a potentially explosive confrontation at sea without permission from the White House. With Petraeus in charge of the Persian Gulf, it may be easier to create a neo-logical strategy to provoke the Iranians into providing a pretext for an American air strike on “military” targets within Iran.

The General’s latest testimony before Congress shows he is on the fast to a political career. When asked how he defines “success” in Iraq, he replied “What we are fighting for is national interest. … It has to do with regional stability, a region that is of critical importance to the global economy.” How easily he moved from national “security” to national “interest,” clearly the mark of a politician in the making. Now if he can avoid getting roped into a speaking engagement before the UN Security Council where he could lose credibility …

Icons: Elephant? Donkey?

2008-06-18T18:16:00.000-04:00

Gadfly

Icons: Elephant? Donkey?

by Mort Malkin

The symbols are all wrong. For the Republicans, the Elephant is not in keeping with their actions of late. Elephants are caring; they look after the needs of others of the community; elephants never forget. When George took office in 2001, within 24 hours he forgot he had promised to be a compassionate conservative. Over the next few years the B-C administration attended to the care and feeding of only the corporate community. They said essentially, “Let the poor cross swords over the crumbs.” The symbol of the Republicans is more appropriately the Pig. [Not Fat Cat, but Big Pig]

The Donkey, a symbol of the Democratic Party since the time of Andrew Jackson, is equally wrong. For seven long years, they have been compliant with the wishes of this White House. All George W had to do was define bipartisanship as “Do it my way.” The Democrats never stubbornly stuck to their own principles. Even as a majority in the Congress, they didn’t kick out at the abuses of the administration: endless war, endless detention, extraordinary rendition, traditional torture, secret spying, blue-sky lying… The poodle has been suggested as a proper icon, but the Brits already have given Tony Blair that honor. A birder thought the yellow-bellied sapsucker would be perfect. An evolutionary fundamentalist reviewed the invertebrates and advised the sea cucumber.

A few Democrats – Dennis Kucinich, Robert Wexler, Barbara Lee, Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer and a rare couple of others – are thinking about breaking off to form a non-MT (me too) party. Bernie Sanders, an independent who is not held so tightly by the Democratic Party tar baby, will be a natural leader. They will need a party symbol. Gadfly hereby announces a contest for an icon. Send your offerings to gadflysmiling@yahoo.com. A posting in the near future will announce the results.

Is O the Man?

2008-06-17T09:36:00.000-04:00

Is O the Man?

After a couple of major gaffes, as well as less than credible laughter and almost-tears, Hillary has given her staff pink slips and suspended her campaign. Now we must see to the O man. In two previous columns, Gadfly pointed its pointed pen at Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain. Today it’s Barack Obama’s turn for our scrutiny.

Obama has given speeches across the country, written a memoir of his growing up and a book on his social-political philosophy, and elaborated position papers on a great range of issues. He even says where he will find the money to pay for some of the programs he envisions. Yet people did not get to know him until his pastor spoke sharply of the racial divide that still lingers in the nation. The candidate faced the matter squarely and spoke honestly of both his concerns and his vision for the future. In other speeches, too, his words and ideas on a variety of topics have been imaginative and appealing. Is it his superior speechwriters, or is Barack, himself, that good? His keynote talk at the Democratic National Convention of 2004 was electrifying, and he had worked on it all by himself. The guy can write.

During the campaign, Obama has not had to explain away any major misstatements. Hillary had her “under fire in Bosnia” moment, and McCain still seems unclear about Sunni vs Shiite, not to mention Arabs and Persians. The worst Obama slip was during a debate when he told Hillary she was likeable enough. On the complexities of the political status in Iraq, he is aware there are not only Sunnis and Shiites but different Shiite factions, each with its own militia. He knows the Kurds don’t get along with the Arabs, the Turks, or the Persians.

Obama has been a US Senator for a relatively brief time, but Republicans berate him as the most liberal member of the Senate. The Progressive Caucus is not impressed and only reluctantly allows him into their councils. Let’s see who has it right.

The major issue before the American public is the Iraq war. [Iraqis call it the American war.] A majority of Americans, and Iraqis, want our troops out, now or very soon. Obama promises to end the war responsibly. The operating word “responsibly” tells us he is not planning any quick, large scale withdrawal. McCain, of course, is planning for “victory,” however many lifetimes it takes. When Obama was asked about the State Department mercenaries – Blackwater Inc – he said they would be drawn down with the troops. Why not immediately? Because, he said, they would then have to be replaced by more US troops. Will some reporter ask the follow up question: Why not replace the Blackwater wildmen who are accountable to no one with the military who actions must conform to a military code of conduct? Iraqis might feel a little less hostility toward the US, and the US taxpayers would save the six figure salaries of the security contractors. OK, so there – Gadfly asked. While we’re on the subject, why couldn’t the US, great power that it is, withdraw its troops as fast as it sent them in back in 2003? We could send heralds to Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Najaf… to coffee houses and every marketplace to tell the people of our imminent withdrawal. The Iraqis will cheer us on our way. Moqtada al Sadr, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the oil workers, school teachers, all will organize huge demonstrations to cheer us on our way. After we are gone they will work together, regardless of religion, to rebuild Iraq. Especially if we send a few billion dollars to show we are really sorry.

In related foreign affairs, Obama has been assailed for his willingness to discuss contentious matters with such adversaries as Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. The Gadfly Revelry & Research team is disappointed that Obama has not responded with Socratic agility. He has the simple eloquence, and he has history to support his audacious viewpoint. Reagan met with Gorbachev; Kissinger and then Nixon went to China; Israel is presently negotiating with Syria (the same Syria that backs Hamas); and Nouri al Maliki, our man in Iraq, is in Teheran at this writing meeting with Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Why should the Commander In Chief of the world’s only superpower be afraid to meet with the leader of any nation? C’mon Barack, you stood up to Hillary’s sharp tongue. It’s time to take on the Republican attack machine.

In domestic matters, Obama’s positions on various issues need some scrutiny: a) health care, b) energy policy, c) education, and d) technology. Economics is not only gasoline prices and taxes and inflation and unemployment, it is the price tag of a), b), and c). Technology has the potential to save oodles of money for a) through c) to balance out some of their costs. Another domestic issue, Constitutional rights vs homeland security, may not cost very much, especially if Obama, as President, appoints Antonin Scalia to the post of High Commissioner of Fish & Game and fills his Supreme Court seat with an ACLU operative. In part 2 of this mini-series, Gadfly will cover the pluses, minuses, and exponential divides of Obama’s homefront thinking.

To close today’s essay, let’s have an identity check. Who is Obama, and where is he from? Born in Hawaii of a Black father and a White mother, educated in Indonesia, Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York, and finally at Harvard Law, he grew up in a bi-racial, multicultural environment. His classmates were Catholics, Muslims, Pagans, and devotees of the almighty dollar. Each venue, itself, was varied, as Barack learned when playing basketball in an Indonesian grade school and then making the varsity in a Hawaiian high school.

Being of more than one race often brings special talent. Louise Erdrich, the celebrated writer, wears Red and White stripes. Adrienne Maree Brown, in Black and White, directs the high-wire thinking of the Ruckus Society. Tiger Woods says he is Ca-Bl-In-Asian but quickly adds that a fluid swing is more important than talking about race. Perhaps Obama’s bi-racial, multicultural background can open some doors on other continents for the US. It would be a good start.