http://ar.to/2009/08/inflation-and-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire

Now, we may wish to find some lessons in this tale of the monetary policies of the late Roman Empire. The first lesson, I think, must be that if war is the health of the state, as Randolph Bourne said, it is poison to a stable and sound money. The Roman monetary crisis therefore was closely connected with the Roman military problem. Another lesson is that the problems become solvable when a ruler decides that something can be done and must be done. Diocletian and Constantine clearly were willing to act to protect their own ruling-class interest, the military and the civil service. Monetary reforms were necessary to win the support of the troops and the bureaucrats that composed the only real constituency of the Roman state, and the two-tier system was designed to this end. It brought about a stable monetary standard for the ruling group who did not hesitate to secure it at the expense of the mass of the population.

The Roman state survived. The liberty of the Roman people did not. When freedom became possible in the west in the 5th century, with the barbarian invasions, people took advantage of the possibility of change. The tax burden remained burdensome even after the gold standard was re-established. The peasantry had become totally alienated from the Roman state because it was no longer free. The business community likewise was no longer free, and the middle class of the urban cities was no longer free.

The economy of the west was perhaps more fatally weakened than that of the east, and when we read in the writings of the early 5th century Christian priest Salvian of Marseille his account of why the Roman state was collapsing in the west — he was writing from France, Gaul — Salvian says that the Roman state is collapsing because it deserved collapse; because it had denied the first premise of good government which was justice to the people. And by justice he meant a just system of taxation. Salvian tells us, and I don't think he's exaggerating, that one of the reasons why the Roman state collapsed in the 5th century was that the Roman people, the mass of the population, had but one wish after being captured by the barbarians: that they would never again fall under the rule of the Roman bureaucracy. In other words, the Roman state was the enemy, the barbarians were the liberators. And this undoubtedly was due to the inflation of the 3rd century. While the state had solved the monetary problem for its own constituents, it had failed to solve that monetary problem for the masses and continued to use an oppressive system of taxation in order to fill the coffers of the ruling bureaucrats and military.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&hl=en

awesome documentary series about the Freud family and the use of psychoanalytic theory by governments and big business. interesting how you never see any Jungians inventing corporate propaganda and attempting large scale social control...

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings. His influence on the twentieth century is generally considered profound. The series describes the ways public relations and politicians have utilized Freud's theories during the last 100 years for the "engineering of consent".

Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed. Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as is one of the main opponents of Freud's theories, Wilhelm Reich, in the third part.

Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-henry-sterry/mexican-drug-lord-officia_b_179596.html?view=screen

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes' yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0812/S00437.htm

i like this piece. he ultimately says the organic intellectual will do what he can to promote solutions to the problems of the majority without going through elite hierarchical channels - a kind of NGO-rhizome model incorporating alternative economic methods and non-violent resistance. fun!

For many decades, society has been indoctrinated with the belief that liberal democratic capitalism was the benevolent solution to all world problems. Through this model of society, hunger was going to be eradicated, wars would come to an end, the environment would be saved, and justice would be distributed equally amongst all members of the human species. Entering the new century, western society celebrated the new millennium with the euphoria of success, once and for all; we had entered the final face of existence, the one, which would bring upon the earth the mythical wonders of the Kingdom of Heaven. However, without having witnessed the passing of the first decade of the 21st century, this dogma has been broken and as many across the globe struggle for survival and society is marred by the continuous threat of revolving crisis, the time for the revolutionary transformation of the western ideal is upon us. Yet, the fundamental questions remain to be answered, how can we act? What can we do?

It is the role of the organic intellectual to answer these questions. If there are any left who have not yet awaken from their slumber, the time has come for them to abandon the petit bourgeois existence of the petty professor attending wine tasting events, the government bureaucrat justifying the wonders of his mind while working on the golf swing at the local country club, or the 1960s hippie, that after a stint in the Berkeley student movements went on to become a prosperous businessman. In today’s holistic global crisis, one which threatens every single aspect of our existence – from the food we eat, to the air we breath, and to the way we interact between each other – those who in their youth considered themselves conscious individuals fighting towards change, can no longer hide behind the mask of the liberal democratic ideal of a capitalist society striving towards justice, peace and prosperity. All of these having remained ideals, while a reality of extreme misery for the majority, coexists today with the growing prosperity of a shrinking minority capitalizing on the growing pains of humanity.

http://www.slate.com/id/2195864/

you have to wonder if other fictional characters will start to set legal precedents. and you also wonder if Bauer's 12-times a day torture regimen was somehow inserted by the powers behind Fox to prime the populace to expect their heroic lawmen to torture the shit out of "bad guys". oh how the lines between fiction and reality blur...

The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist, international lawyer, or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both Jane Mayer's stunning The Dark Side and Philippe Sands' The Torture Team, I quickly realized that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of Fox television's 24: Jack Bauer.

This fictional counterterrorism agent—a man never at a loss for something to do with an electrode—has his fingerprints all over U.S. interrogation policy. As Sands and Mayer tell it, the lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Bauer more frequently than the Constitution.

According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial new interrogation techniques including water-boarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas." Michael Chertoff, the homeland-security chief, once gushed in a panel discussion on 24 organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show "reflects real life."

http://craphound.com/littlebrother/

so i stayed up till 3 am last night finishing Cory Doctorow's latest novel, Little Brother (on-line in its entirety for your reading and remixing pleasure, as usual). it is a very-near-future (in a world only slightly more dystopian than our own) techno-thriller starring a teenager who, after the Bay Bridge in San Francisco is blown up, is apprehended by Homeland Security and taken to a Guantanamo-like facility somewhere in the Bay Area. as a result of this incident, after the protagonist is let out, he begins a one-man crusade against the security state which kind of morphs into an open-source counter cultural-youth-movement cum direct action network. about a thousand Doctorovian themes are touched on: crypto, linux, MMORPGs, LARPing, civil liberties, Pirate Bay, sex, drugs, rock and roll, RFIDs, flash mobs, Emma Goldman, the list could go on and on. it's like an accidental post-BoingBoing teenage hacker resistance movement kind of novel. in other words, right up my alley. i was fairly riveted by it. the crazy thing is that this is like, a cross between an ideological manifesto and a revolutionary technology HOWTO guide - disguised as Young Adult fiction. the thought of masses of contemporary adolescents reading this thing floods me with an extreme sense of optimistic glee. as Neil Gaiman said:

I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year, and I'd want to get it into the hands of as many smart 13 year olds, male and female, as I can.

Because I think it'll change lives. Because some kids, maybe just a few, won't be the same after they've read it. Maybe they'll change politically, maybe technologically. Maybe it'll just be the first book they loved or that spoke to their inner geek. Maybe they'll want to argue about it and disagree with it. Maybe they'll want to open their computer and see what's in there. I don't know. It made me want to be 13 again right now and reading it for the first time, and then go out and make the world better or stranger or odder. It's a wonderful, important book, in a way that renders its flaws pretty much meaningless.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

a movie regarding mythology, spectacle, reality and political power in three parts: an exposition of Christianity as a Judeo-Roman encoding of the astrotheological solar cult inherited from Egypt and Sumer, historicized for political power; an investigation and thorough debunking of the official 9/11 myth; and a description of recent history in the context of the immense power of central banks to influence policy, promote warfare, accumulate capital and keep entire populations in debt slavery through interest, taxation, inflation, ownership of media and influence over political institutions. heavily mashed-up with lots of interviews, passages, luminary quotes, etc. highly recommended.