http://www.jeffvail.net/2008/02/hierarchy-must-grow-and-is-therefore.html

from J Vail's latest

This civilizational selection for growth manifests in many ways, but most recently it resulted in the rise of the modern financial system. As political entities became more conscious of this growth imperative, and their competition with other entities, they began to consciously build institutions to enhance their ability to grow. The earliest, and least intentional example is that of economic specialization and centralization. Since before the articulation of these principles by Adam Smith, it was understood that specialization was more efficient—when measured in terms of growth—than artesian craftsmanship, and that centralized production that leveraged economy of place better facilitated growth than did distributed production. It was not enough merely to specialize “a little,” because the yardstick was not growth per se, but growth in comparison to the growth of competitors. It was necessary to specialize and centralize ever more than competing polities in order to survive. As with previous systems of growth, the agricultural and industrial revolutions were self-reinforcing as nations competed in terms of the size of the infantry armies they could field, the amount of steel for battleships and cannon they could produce, etc. It wasn’t possible to reverse course—while it may have been possible for the land area of England, for example, to support its population via either centralized or decentralized agriculture, only centralized agriculture freed a large enough portion of the population to manufacture export goods, military materiel, and to serve in the armed forces.

Similarly, the expansion of credit accelerated the rate of growth—it was no longer necessary to save first buy later when first home loans, then car loans, then consumer credit cards became ever more prevalent, all accelerating at ever-faster rates thanks to the wizardry of complex credit derivatives. This was again a self-supporting cycle: while it is theoretically possible to revert from a buy-now-pay-later system to a save-then-buy system, the transition period would require a significant period of vastly reduced spending—something that would crush today’s highly leveraged economies. Not only is it necessary to maintain our current credit structure, but it is necessary to continually expand our ability to consume now and pay later—just as in the peer polity conflicts between stone-age tribes, credit providers race to provide more consumption for less buck in an effort to compete for market share and to create shareholder return. Corporate entities, while existing at least as early as Renaissance Venice, are yet another example of structural bias toward growth: corporate finance is based on attracting investment by promising greater return for shareholder risk than competing corporations, resulting in a structural drive toward the singular goal of growth. And modern systems of quarterly reporting and 24-hour news cycles only exacerbate the already short-term risk horizons of such enterprises.

We live on a finite planet, and it seems likely that we are nearing the limits of the Earth’s ability to support ongoing growth. Even if this limit is still decades or centuries away, there is serious moral hazard in the continuation of growth on a finite planet as it serves merely to push that problem on to our children or grandchildren. Growth cannot continue infinitely on a finite planet. This must seem obvious to many people, but I emphasize the point because we tend to overlook or ignore its significance: the basis of our civilization is fundamentally unsustainable. Our civilization seems to have a knack for pushing the envelope, for finding stop-gap measures to push growth beyond a sustainable level. This is also problematic because the further we are able to inflate this bubble beyond a level that is sustainable indefinitely, the farther we must ultimately fall to return to a sustainable world. This is Civilization’s sunk cost: there is serious doubt that our planet can sustain 6+ billion people over the long term, but by drawing a line in the sand, that “a solution that results in the death of millions or billions to return to a sustainable level” is fundamentally impermissible, we merely increase the number that must ultimately die off. Furthermore, while it is theoretically possible to reduce population, as well as other measures of impact on our planet, in a gradual and non-dramatic way (e.g. no die off), the window of opportunity to choose that route is closing. We don’t know how fast—but that uncertainty makes this a far more difficult risk management problem (and challenge to political will) than knowing that we have precisely 10, 100, or 1000 years.

http://throwawayyourtelescreen.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/guns-germs-and-steel/

good stuff.

Based on Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, Guns, Germs and Steel traces humanity's journey over the last 13,000 years – from the dawn of farming at the end of the last Ice Age to the realities of life in the twenty-first century.

Inspired by a question put to him on the island of Papua New Guinea more than thirty years ago, Diamond embarks on a world-wide quest to understand the roots of global inequality.

*Why were Europeans the ones to conquer so much of our planet?
*Why didn't the Chinese, or the Inca, become masters of the globe instead?
*Why did cities first evolve in the Middle East?
*Why did farming never emerge in Australia?
*And why are the tropics now the capital of global poverty?

As he peeled back the layers of history to uncover fundamental, environmental factors shaping the destiny of humanity, Diamond found both his theories and his own endurance tested.

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/28/pakistan_in_turmoil_after_benazir_bhuttos

i have very little knowledge of the whole situation, but thought this was pretty f-in interesting (via voltronscandide).

AMY GOODMAN: Tariq, explain that, how her father died and who was involved in his assassination, in his execution.

TARIQ ALI: Her father was probably the most popular politician in Pakistan, pledging massive social reforms. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had been elected in the 1970 elections, had won a large majority in the country that we now know as Pakistan and had been elected on a very radical platform. He came to power.

He implemented some of his reforms, not all, became extremely autocratic, clashed with the United States on a number of issues, including Pakistan’s right to have nuclear weapons. Henry Kissinger warned him in private that if you do not desist on the nuclear issue, we will make a terrible example out of you. That’s what Bhutto wrote from his death cell. The United States organized a military coup d’etat. General Zia-ul-Haq took power in 1977, organized a trial against Bhutto, charging him with an absurd charge of murdering someone. The judges were pressured, and they found him guilty, and Bhutto was hanged in April 1979. It could not have happened without US support and approval, because Zia was a nobody, and Washington clearly green-lighted the murder.

And Bhutto, from his death cell, wrote a very moving document called “If I Am Assassinated,” in which he said there are two hegemonies—these are his words. He said, “There are two hegemonies that dominate our country. One is an internal hegemony, and the other is an external hegemony. And unless we challenge the external hegemony, we will never be able to deal with the internal one,” meaning Washington is the external hegemony and the army is the internal one. And this is a problem which still haunts Pakistan and which, I have to say, has now created this new crisis.

And unfortunately, his daughter decided to collaborate with both of these hegemonies. One has to say this. Her second period in office was a total disaster, because not only did she do nothing for the poor or her natural constituency, but basically it became an extremely corrupt government, and she and her husband accumulated $1.5 billion through corruption. This is well known to everyone.

Now, when the United States decided they wanted to put her back in there, they told her, we are going to whitewash you so clean no one will even know. And this is what the global media and networks have been doing. Look, I knew her well. I’m very upset that she’s dead. But the piety being displayed on the global media networks is beyond belief. You know, it’s as if there’s no past, no history in this country or its politicians.

This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. Among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like "no to spilling red blood for black oil," yet he paid them no heed.

It is time for humankind to know that talk of 'the rights of man' and 'freedom' are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them.

Among the things which catch the eye of the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of 'justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism'. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons - especially in Iraq and Afghanistan- in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows. Americans statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions.

People of America: the people of the world have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to your disappointment.

And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?

The answer to this question is: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war. Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn't be any cause for astonishment in the Democrats' failure to stop the war.

You're the ones who have the saying which goes, "Money talks." After the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.

It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of your 'democratic' system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.

It has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations. Despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the resulting death and displacement of millions of human beings, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the 'democratic' capitalist system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.

And despite this brazen attack on the people, the leaders of the West - especially Bush, Blair, Sarkozy and Brown- still talk about 'freedom' and 'human rights' with a flagrant disregard for the intellects of human beings. So is there a form of terrorism stronger, clearer and more dangerous? This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.

If you were to ponder it well, you would find that in the end, it is a system harsher and fiercer than your systems in the Middle Ages. The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of "globalization" in order to protect 'democracy'.

Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa - all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.

So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is not the business of any class of humanity to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expense of the other classes as is the case with you, since the essence of the laws under which you live is that they serve the interests of those with the capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer. [+]

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=3958

in which he reminds us there was NO link to terrorism and NO WMDs and how they FAILED to find Bin Laden. he tells us the same people who are telling us that leaving Iraq would be a catastrophe are the same ones who told us going there in the first place would be a 3-month cakewalk financed by oil revenues. and that peace is more profitable for everyone than needless, undeclared, unconstitutional wars. TO THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE. W00T!

http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe80.html

on what sets Paul apart from the other candidates, Republican and Democrat.

Unlike the establishment’s candidates, Ron Paul is a freelancer running on three specific ideas:

1. The federal government must function within the strict guidelines of the Constitution.

2. America should deconstruct its empire, withdraw our troops from around the world and reestablish a foreign policy based on noninterventionism.

3. America should abolish the Federal Reserve Bank, eliminate fiat currency and return to hard money.

This is not a political agenda. This is not a party platform. It is a revolution. The entire ruling oligarchy would be swept away if these ideas were ever implemented. Every sentence, every word, every jot and tittle of this agenda is unacceptable, repellent and hateful to America’s ruling elite.

The reasons for this are fairly obvious.

Through its control of the Federal Reserve, the banking elites make billions of dollars in unearned profits and exert enormous influence over the American economy. Countless industries and special interest groups (both foreign and domestic) have sprung up around our defense and national security budgets. The bureaucratic elites who dominate the federal government despise the Constitution’s limitations on their power and view the document as just an archaic "piece of paper."

http://rs65.rapidshare.com/files/36394893/Johan_Galtung_-_Decline_and_Fall_of_American_Empire.mp3

an hour-long alternative radio podcast featuring Johan Galtung. he predicted the decline of the Soviet empire within a decade in 1980, and predicts an end to the US Empire by 2020. he defines empire as having four components: economic domination, political supremacy, cultural influence and military power. none of this is particularly novel, but he does put out some interesting ideas. one being that the greatest beneficiary of the decline of American empire is the US Republic itself. he notes the distinction many world citizens make between loving the American Republic and hating the US Empire (i myself of course make that distinction). he makes the related point that criticizing the Empire is not un-American (i'd argue that supporting it is).

he gives a four-point plan for ending US Imperium:
1) stop the killing, withdraw military bases
2) stop extremely unjust international economic deals
3) join the world: give up "US as chosen people of God" idea
4) enter into dialogue with many countries, i.e. participate in a multipolar world

of course, even if these don't happen, the conjoined clusterfuck of peak oil, climate change, economic woes, negative international opinion and the accelerating death spiral of military and unconventional violence will take a toll eventually.

also, according to Galtung, the US is the #1 believer in Satan worldwide, which i thought was interesting. it's a pretty good talk. if you want even more detail, or just prefer reading to listening, there's a document detailing all the contradictions fatal to the Empire.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070625/miller

maybe it's time for that Euro-denominated Swiss bank account i always wanted.

No matter how the Iraq War ends, it is clear that the United States is incapable of militarily securing territory against the wishes of a hostile population. And the Iraq War is at the heart of two alarming trends that are likely to have a negative impact on America's position in the world: The demand for oil is rising while the supply is declining, and the demand for the US dollar is declining while the supply of dollars is rising.

While we continue to import goods of much greater value than those we export, thus flooding the world with dollars, Bush has pursued a policy of what some have dubbed "military Keynesianism"--that is, the combination of low taxes and high military expenditures. This dynamic forces the Federal Reserve to print money and foster easy credit policies, which will eventually result in higher interest rates, inflation or both.

So the printing presses are spewing out more dollars, which are being collected by China, Japan and others. And those countries are showing signs of concern that they have too much of their foreign exchange reserves tied up in our currency. Likewise, certain other nations are evidencing a declining interest in accepting the dollar as a medium of exchange. It was in October 2000 that Saddam insisted that Iraq's oil be paid for in euros. But now Russia wants payment for the energy it exports in rubles. Venezuela and Iran insist on euros. Kuwait has recently unpegged its dinar from the dollar in favor of a basket of currencies.

The dollar has indeed shown symptoms of its decline in popularity during the Bush years. The dollar has weakened against the euro, gold, copper and other hard assets and currencies. When Bush came in to office, for example, you could get .987 euros for every dollar. Now you can only get .75. You could say that at $65 per barrel, oil is getting more valuable... or you could say the value of the dollar has declined as measured by oil.

Mainstream economists seem to agree that best-case, the dollar will continue a stately decline, but in a world where the United States has lost so much respect, where we continue to flood the world with dollars and borrow to finance our consumer habit, we could find that one of those sharp, depression-inducing discontinuities occurs--like, say, a run on the dollar.

http://anthropik.com/2007/06/neocolonialism-the-new-map/

this article presents a pretty compelling picture of the contemporary geopolitical/economic sitation and the factors that have lead up to it: the decline of the classical territorial empire (Britain), the shift from coal to oil, Western economic hegemony advanced by Western-backed dictators and warlords all over the global South, the emergence of multinational corporations and terrorist networks, etc.

If there is a common, uniting theme to the nightly news, it is the legacy of colonialism. Civil war often followed independence, as the arbitrary boundaries drawn by Europeans became sources of contention for the people living there. More often than not, Western-backed despots rose to power out of these civil wars and enforced the European order with brutal military regimes. From this pattern, we inherit the world we have today: mostly ruled by Western-backed despots and broiling with rebellion ruthlessly and continuously put down. The pattern is quite similar to that of ancient Rome, with peace and prosperity bought for the imperial core by exporting violence and poverty to the periphery.

The corporation is an entity created from economic relationships, without notions of political sovereignty or Cartesian territory, and as such, it poses a direct challenge to the traditional view of the state. Meanwhile, the constant failure of rebellions to unseat the Western-backed dictators that emerged from the deliberate post-colonial instability Western powers hoped to exploit has created a new breed of rebellion, typically labeled as "terrorists." They have adopted the same approach as corporations, favoring networks over territory, and have used these networks—most famously al-Qa'ida, or "the Base," a loose network of various localized efforts against various U.S.-backed dictators, most notably the Saudi regime—to challenge state power. However, as networks, they cannot offer an alternative to the state; rather, they create "hollow states."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/29/1495/

Cindy has come to learn the Democrats are largely little more than the snivelling deferential Colmes to the Republican Hannity.

I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070423/bacevich

there used to be this GURPS book i liked quite a lot. it was a near-future society which featured a fascist USA, maintained by a President-for-life under the excuse of the "Permanent Emergency". of which this article reminded me plenty.

Democrats bemoan the failures of the Bush Administration, and with good cause. Yet none of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of checks and balances. In this regard, the views of Republicans and Democrats align precisely. The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them.

In Washington and in national politics more generally, the Schlesinger Rule remains sacrosanct. Named in honor of the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr., eminent historian and on-again, off-again enthusiast of presidential activism, the rule goes like this: When the other party does it, it's an abuse of power; when my own party does it, it's dynamic leadership.

The press plays the role of enabler. Having had a field day recording President Bush's triumphal procession from one spectacular blunder to the next--with Iraq, Katrina and now Walter Reed vying for top honors--reporters can't be bothered to assess the implications of these gaffes. They are already turning to the next Big Story: handicapping the imperial succession. Is it Hillary's turn? Will Obama's allure last? Can McCain and Giuliani sell themselves to the Christian right? For as long as members of the media can recall, the presidency has been the biggest story in town; they have a vested interested in preserving it.

But in their contempt for politicians and journalists, Americans should not be too quick to let themselves off the hook. Any serious effort to reduce the presidency to its pre-imperial proportions would imply rethinking the premises of US foreign policy, based on self-aggrandizing assumptions about American wisdom, competence and prerogatives and about the capacity of others to manage their own affairs. Given our chronic inability--or is it unwillingness?--to see the world as it is and to see ourselves as we really are, such a reassessment seems exceedingly unlikely. In an age of the citizen as consumer-spectator, Americans care enough to complain, but not nearly enough to act. Long live the emperor.

http://www.exile.ru/2006-May-19/the_cold_war_timeline.html

this a pretty sweet article detailing US-Russian relations since 2001. what's interesting is that there is a sort of new cold war going on in central Asia, focusing on who gains political clout and therefore control of the region's vast oil reserves. he talks mostly about the two figures of Cheney and Putin: both viscious imperialist petrocrats weilding the force of their respective states to topple governments and grab the black gold. revolutions against dictators when it serves the interests of the "great game", revolutions to install them in the name of "democracy" as well.

"Democracy" isn't about giving people the right to vote, giving them a say in their lives and a sense of dignity. It's about serving America's interests. And serving America's interests, to the current regime, is defined as serving the interests of the oil oligarchs in Houston, where Cheney spent the previous ten years of his cartoon-villain life.

In fact, the definition of "democracy" is even more narrow than that. America's interests are Cheney's interests. Il est l'etat. In that sense, Putin is indeed a menace. And that's what makes this Cold War so different. Whereas the last one was a mortal struggle over two different systems, this is a struggle between two short, balding, bloodless men, and the oil - other people's oil - that made them as powerful as they are today.