Category: Uncategorized

I got this in my email box today:

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Radio Free Maine
presents
Noam Chomsky
speaking on
The Militarization of Science and Space

Response from Noam Chomsky to a question about the
invisible hand in capitalistic market forces.
Recorded by Roger Leisner on February 15, 2004.
To order this recording, go to www.radiofreemaine.com
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First of all, you know what we have today does not
remotely resemble what’s supposed to be capitalism.
Capitalism is supposed to be what Jagdish Bhagwati
was discussing in this abstract model he had in mind
in the op-ed this morning. And what you study in
neo-classical economics with free markets and
entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice, what
Greenspan is talking about, but we don’t have anything
resembling that.

I should say that even that one quote I gave about
oligarchic competition, strategic integration, etc.,
etc. It said that’s what we have, not the “invisible
hand” of the market.

Well, I don’t know how many of you have ever read
“Wealth of Nations”, the famous, what you’re supposed
to worship at. The phrase “invisible hand” does
appear in “Wealth of Nations”, exactly once. And it’s
an argument against what’s now called “globalization”.
It’s an argument against free movement of capital.
Smith argues that argument that although it would be
very harmful to England, what he cared about, it will
be stopped by an “invisible hand” because merchants
and manufacturers will have a home bias. They’ll
prefer to invest at home. So, don’t worry about it,
even though it’s dangerous. That’s the one use of the
term in “Wealth of Nations”.

You know, so what we have is nothing like capitalism.
But can we have a system in which the poor benefit and
the rich don’t have to be made happy. Why not?!?

There’s not a law of nature that the economy, hence
most of the society and the political system, are in
the hands of high concentrations of capital which are
granted by the state. They’re granted by state power,
enormous rights. You know rights that are granted to
corporations are an incredible blow against classical
liberalism and classical economics. Adam Smith would
turn over in his grave to see what’s been granted to
these basically totalitarian systems. And they have
basically been granted the rights, not only of
persons, which is outlandish, but of pathological
persons. They’re required by law to be utterly
pathological. It’s a legal requirement, deeply
embedded in anglo-american corporate law. That the
managers of corporations must be brutal. They must be
the kind of persons who we would lock up if they were
flesh and blood. They got to, they’re only, they are
legally required to maximize profit and market share
and not to do anything decent. The only exception,
and it’s a long history of corporate law, is they’re
allowed to do something decent if it’s hypocritical.
So, if a pharmaceutical corporation wants to improve
its image by giving free drugs to people in Africa or
something, it’s allowed to do it as long as it’s pure
hypocrisy. That is, it is a way to improve your image
to increase profit. Otherwise, it’s legally culpable.
You’re much more likely to get thrown in jail for that
than, you know, ENRON style corruption. And I think
that’s really the core of the system.

Well, you know, that’s just, it’s not even
legislation, these are just decisions by courts.
Which have become the core. Do we have to accept
that?!? Almost like saying that people had to accept
bolshevism or fascism or other kinds of
totalitarianism. Of course not!!!

Makes me want to rush right out and buy the recording….

It’s been over a year now since a decision was announced in the Eldred v. Ashcroft copyright extension case. Lawrence Lessig the chief counsel in that case, has written a retrospective analysis of what went wrong, and why the decision went against the commons and for the copyright holders.

An excerpt:

The morning of January 15, 2003, I was five minutes late to the office and missed the 7 a.m. call from the Supreme Court clerk. Listening to the message, I could tell in an instant that she had bad news to report. The Supreme Court had affirmed the decision of the court of appeals. Seven justices had voted in the majority. There were two dissents.

A few seconds later, the opinions arrived by e-mail. I took the phone off the hook, posted an announcement of the ruling on our blog, and sat down to see where I had been wrong in my reasoning. My reasoning. Here was a case that pitted all the money in the world against reasoning. And here was the last naïve law professor, scouring the pages, looking for reasoning.

I first scoured the majority opinion, written by Ginsburg, looking for how the court would distinguish the principle in this case from the principle in Lopez. The reasoning was nowhere to be found. The case was not even cited. The core argument of our case did not even appear in the court’s opinion. I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading. I had said that there was no way this court could reconcile limited powers with the commerce clause and unlimited powers with the progress clause. It had never even occurred to me that they could reconcile the two by not addressing the argument at all.

Ginsburg simply ignored the enumerated powers argument. Consistent with her view that Congress’s power was not limited generally, she had found Congress’s power not limited here. Her opinion was perfectly reasonable—for her, and for Souter. Neither believes in Lopez. But what about the silent five? By what right did they get to select the part of the Constitution they would enforce? We were back to the argument that I said I hated at the start: I had failed to convince them that the issue here was important, and I had failed to recognize that however much I might hate a system in which the court gets to pick the constitutional values that it will respect, that is the system we have.

In the Washington Post, Gertrude Himmelfarb writes:

I have experienced a conversion of sorts as a result of “The Passion of the Christ,” although hardly the conversion Mel Gibson had in mind. I hasten to say that I have not “personally” seen that film (rather like not having “personally” read a good many books that I have the illusion of having read from a multitude of reviews). But my own reaction to it has to do not so much with the film itself as the phenomenon — what it represents in the culture and what it is making of the culture.

I agree with this observation. The phenomenon around this film — which I have been sucked into myself — is very intriguing. But my thoughts on the subject have taken a new turn.

Mel Gibson is getting quite a bit of attention, some good, some bad, for the spectacle of violence on the silver screen. Rumors of the pope saying “it is as it was” about the film gives it a certain amount of legitimacy. Others are outraged by the gore, and can’t get past it to judge the film on other merits.

But I am wondering about the spectacle factor. Crucifixion itself is a spectacle, albeit a horrific one. In the film, and possibly in the Bible, one can see Golgotha (“the place of skulls,” the site of the crucifixion) from the city walls. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment, given only to non-Romans. This historical fact, combined with the spectacle, means that the primary function of crucifixion is social control. “Watch youself under Roman law, or this could happen to you.”

It was horrible then, and it certainly looks horrible on the 100′ screen. So something I’ve been thinking about: to what extent is this movie, portraying a horrific method of social control, also itself a method of social control?

There are many layers to this question, one of which is to examine the extent to which Christianity — or indeed organized religion on the whole — is a method of social control. This is a legitimate question, but to me is not primary. I am more concerned with the political implications of the crucifixion itself, rather than the theological implications of Christ’s death and rebirth.

I’m sure I’ll think about this some more…

Steve Hogarth of marillion sent an email today. It’s a new chapter of a very interesting story of a band and its relentlessly loyal fanbase. Their new album, marbles, is mixed and mastered:

Mr h here.

The mixes are done, the mastering is done, folks – have we got an
album for you.. sounds like not one second of the last two years
were wasted.

Now then – you know how whenever we send you an email, it’s usually
because we want something from you.. well this is another one of
those. Only joking! In fact I’m only joking about only joking!
OF COURSE we want something from you!

We’re going to release a single, it’s going to go in the charts,
and with a little help from y’all we think it could go Top Ten
here in the UK. (At the moment the UK have committed to a single
release, but if it charts high here, then other countries may well
follow on.)

The single is our new baby “You’re Gone”. It’s released on April 19th.
The single will be available in 3 separate versions, all track listing
are available at www.marillion.com/single

By our calculations, in the current UK single market, if you go out
and buy one single each, we’ll go Top 40. If you go out and buy two
versions, we’ll go Top 20. If, however, you’d like to make an old dog
very happy, you could dig-deep, get into eight quids-worth of debt
and buy 3 copies or more of our single, in which case, we’d almost
certainly go Top 10 and I’d have my first ever Top 10 single just
before my 45th birthday!! (bizarre, or what?!) Marillion would become
a household name and not simply remembered by Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs
for “Kayleigh”. There is no better time for this to happen, as it
would set up perfectly this PEACH of an album that we’ve just
finished, and this PEACH of a tour that we’re about to embark upon.

We are currently spending the pre-order dosh on the best marketing
campaign we’ve had in a decade. Hopefully, you’ll see evidence of
this soon – it includes our hiring of a radio plugger who assures us
we chose the right single, and is confident of airplay at national
radio. Obviously the higher up the chart the single goes, the greater
our chances of airplay and the odd TV appearance. Basically, Marillion
would be introduced to a new generation of music fans and you lot
could welcome them to the family and show them how we do things
round here.

So now we’re off to shoot the video for “You’re Gone”..
Exciting times..

h

OK, so books have been written about Marillion’s history. And I confess, I’ve been a fan of this band since 1985. But it’s a remarkable story.

Recently, they let it be known via the Internet that they were taking pre-orders for the next album. They ended up selling well over 10,000 preorders at 28 pounds (about $40US). So that’s about a half-million pound budget for the album. As far as expenses, the same preorder scheme from their last album, anoraknophobia, financed the business venture (a cottage industry). Now marillion has a recording studio, shipping department, and an in-house data center. They also have a small staff to run it. Bottom line, anoraknophobia was a practice run. They learned how to distribute an album that time, but perhaps the more valuable lessons were those on how not to. They built and ironed-out, in other words, a viable infrastructure. Now they’re ready to use it.

The difference is, this time they can use roughly the same amount of capital in promotional expenses, to gain visibility for their product. Last time, they bought the infrastructure and couldn’t afford much else.

I hope they tour the states. I’d love to hear them live again.

I really wish them well, and hope marbles is successful, in whatever way the band define as successful. I’ll be watching, and of course listening when they ship the album in a month or two. I really liked the last album, especially quartz and this is the 21st century. I wonder what direction they will go with marbles?

Last night, Matt and I were riding back to my place after having done some Freakwitchery in our studio. We had on NPR, trying to gauge how “Super Tuesday” had gone. They introduced a Congresswoman from Silicon Valley, Zoe Lofgren.

Well, in the state of mind we were in, we both thought they said “Zoloft Grin.”

Maybe you had to be there…

I’ve been a fan of Utah Phillips for several years now. His album, made with Ani DiFranco, called
The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere is one of my all time favorites. He sent Ani 20 years worth of cassette recordings of his rants and speeches while performing, and Ani compiled them, picked out the best parts, and set these spoken word snippets to music. It’s a brilliant collaboration.

I recently came across
An audio letter from Utah Phillips, which is available as mp3s (part one, part two, part three, part four). As explained on the website, “Utah prefers to communicate in the spoken word. The tape was going to be transcribed, but the printed word is a poor representation to the feeling and emotion expressed in this spoken form.” I agree completely with this assessment, however a few transcriptions of some relevant parts are, in my view, in order. Especially since my main goal is to entice some of you to go get the mp3s and take a listen on your own. Here are some snippets from part 3 and part 4:

I’ve always said that the long memory is the most radical idea in America….

So, yes, it’s pretty dire. What we’ve experienced is a corporate takeover of the executive branch of the government. The megacorporations have always tried, through lobbying, through outright bribes, through campaign contributions and so on to control the government. Well now, they’ve sort of staged a coup on the executive branch, and it’s behaving like a corporation. Corporate fascism, we’re in it, we are in it, and we are of it….

Are corporations democratic institutions? Well, of course not. No, they’re not. They’re hierarchical institutions. It’s shut up and do what you’re told institutions. Are corporations anti-democratic institutions? Do they hire companies to help bust the union, do they try to drive the unions out, do they try to get the wages down as far as they can without any benefits? Well, yeah. That’s true….

Fascism is here. It’s not something we worry about coming. Fascism is here. The question is, what are we going to do about it?…

I do know now that these people in Washington are not Republicans and they are not Democrats, they’re a different kind of thing. They’re fascist ideologues. And they’re the most dangerous people the country — and maybe the world — has ever seen. And they’ve got to get out of there, we’ve got to get them out of there….

It is long past time when every progressive organization in the country — from animal rights, to the feminist movement, to peace, anti-nuclear — every progressive force in this country has got to come together, for once, in one united front, we stop hammering on each other, stop confining ourselves to our own gig — “oh that’s not my issue” — no, this is all of our issue, right now, and if we don’t build a united front, and if these Democrats don’t sort themseleves out pretty damn fast, we’re going to marching lockstead into heavy-duty fascism. That’s looking at it from the top down. That’s looking at it from the national news, from The Nation magazine, and of course I get frightened when I do that, I get frightened when I take the world from the top down….

I have to realize that there are too many good people doing too many good things for me to afford the luxury of being pessimistic, so I’m not and I won’t be….

They tell me that those under the crosses in the military cemetaries made the ultimate sacrifice. There is a world of difference between sacrificing, and being sacrificed. Those who lie under those crosses, and those found frozen to death in the street, were sacrificed on the altar of human greed. Those who benefit from that sacrifice, in the workplace, in the field, in the prison, on the battlefield, those who benefit from that sacrifice, have got to understand that the harvest of greed is not wealth but rage. And it can’t go on. It all has to be repaid. It all will be repaid. I am a peaceful man, I am a man of peaceful means because I have to be. I don’t want the world to blow up. But that rage is there, and it builds and builds. And if it is not repaid, those who benefit from these sacrifices are simply going to perish. I don’t know when. There’s no way to predict what time. But I’ll tell you, they fight with money, and we fight with time, and they’re going to run out of money before we run out of time.

OK, enough transcribing. Go get these files and listen.

I just read this article:

Be warned that the information comes to us through one unnamed source. But considering that most of our military information comes to us from one source — the government — time will be the judge of what is true or not: Two British papers, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Express, reported Osama Bin Laden is surrounded by U.S. Special Forces in an area of land bordering northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The claim is attributed to “a well-placed intelligence source” in Washington, who is quoted as saying: “He [Bin Laden] is boxed in.”

The papers say the hostile terrain makes an all-out conventional military assault impossible. The plan to capture him would depend on a “grab-him-and-go” style operation.

“U.S. helicopters already sited on the Afghanistan border will swoop in to extricate him,” The Telegraph wrote. It claims Bin Laden and his men “sleep in caves or out in the open. The area is swept by fierce snowstorms howling down from the 10,000 foot-high mountain peaks. Donkeys are the only transport.”

The U.S. Special Forces are “absolutely confident” there is no escape for Bin Laden, and are awaiting the order to go in and get him. The timing of that order will ultimately depend on President Bush, the source said. “Capturing Bin Laden will certainly be a huge help for him as he gets ready for the election.”

Yeah. Go figure. This idea has been around for a while, that Osama would magically appear in US hands at the most opportune time for Bush. Time will tell…

A few days ago, a good friend who has had a very rough winter asked me, “is it spring yet?” My response was, “no. Go back to sleep.” But now I think spring is imminent. There are signs of it everywhere. I was walking with my daughter the other day, and we stopped for a moment.

“Shhhh. Listen,” I said.

“What?” Mo asked.

“It’s running water. Look, it’s coming from that drain pipe there from that church. All the water on the roof of the church is melting, and it comes down the gutters, into the pipe, and down to the ground.”

“Cool!”

“You know what this means, don’t you? It’s warmer now. Spring is coming. Mama Earth is waking up.”

“Awwwwww, yeah!”

It’s been a long winter. Very different in character from last year. Last year there was a ton of snow. This year, we didn’t get all that much. But, it was a very cold winter. I think it only rose above freezing once in the entire month of January, and it spent way too much time in the single-digits or below zero. But now it’s warmer. It’s been in the 40s most of the week, and this week it’s supposed to go into the 50s.

I can feel spring coming after all. Nature is calling to me again. The warmer weather, whether it be summer here in Maine, or travel to another place, beckons. This is timed with my increased walking as of late; I really want to be outdoors more this year.

I just noticed that 2 weeks ago, on Friday the 13th, I wrote “I’m thinking of reconfiguring my hard drives on my local computer.” Heh. Little did I realize….

Be careful what you ask for indeed…

I just added comments to this blog, so that anyone with interesting thoughts can interact with me. Thanks to mw for suggesting it, and to HaloScan for providing the infrastructure.