0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures—both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald's, pressing nations into one commercially homogenous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart AND coming reluctantly together at the very same moment....
An unprecedented look inside one of the most powerful, secretive institutions in the country. The NY Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor big banks. But when Carmen Segarra was hired, what she witnessed inside the Fed was so alarming that she got a tiny recorder, and started secretly taping.
Interesting articles, thanks sciborg2.
Our governing classes are becoming ever more oppressive. Asbos, stop and search, punitive laws aimed at Muslims, migrants and the poor, control orders, rendition and various violations are accepted by millions of acquiescent citizens. The pre-charge detention period here is far longer than in most other functioning democracies, even Russia. We are watched and listened to by official agencies for no good reason. Human-rights laws and judges are maligned by ministers and the rightwing media. So far, none of the measures has ended terrorism or eased social dysfunction. By collating all these outrages and marshalling the evidence, Chakrabarti exposes the tyranny of the state we are in.In her campaigns, she skilfully brings together a cross-political coalition of the concerned (Melanie Phillips and Helena Kennedy are both named as good friends). Strategically, this is smart but in the end unsustainable and may defeat the mission. Liberty values freedom, equality, dignity and supports the Human Rights Act. The right enthusiastically buys into the first: freedom meaning small state, low regulation, individuality and autonomy (all virtues in Mill’s tract), though the Human Rights Act is anathema. The left, meanwhile, wants to enshrine equality and protect human rights for all with tough sanctions. The philosophical divide is unbridgeable. Those dissonances are not examined, though the author does assert: “Our rights and freedoms are not like those pick-and-mixes in old-fashioned sweet shops… the values are as interdependent as the people they protect.” Would Ms Phillips and her sort endorse such a declaration?
Regular readers of this blog will no doubt recall that, toward the beginning of last month, I commented on a hostile review of one of my books that had just appeared in the financial blogosphere. At the time, I noted that the mainstream media normally ignore the critics of business as usual, and suggested that my readers might want to watch for similar attacks by more popular pundits, in more mainstream publications, on those critics who have more of a claim to conventional respectability than, say, archdruids. Such attacks, as I pointed out then, normally happen in the weeks immediately before business as usual slams face first into a brick wall of its own makingWell, it’s happened. Brace yourself for the impact.The pundit in question was no less a figure than Paul Krugman, who chose the opinion pages of the New York Times for a shrill and nearly fact-free diatribe lumping Post Carbon Institute together with the Koch brothers as purveyors of “climate despair.” PCI’s crime, in Krugman’s eyes, consists of noticing that the pursuit of limitless economic growth on a finite planet, with or without your choice of green spraypaint, is a recipe for disaster. Instead of paying attention to such notions, he insists, we ought to believe the IMF and a panel of economists when they claim that replacing trillions of dollars of fossil fuel-specific infrastructure with some unnamed set of sustainable replacements will somehow cost nothing, and that we can have all the economic growth we want because, well, because we can, just you wait and see!PCI’s Richard Heinberg responded with a crisp and tautly reasoned rebuttal pointing out the gaping logical and factual holes in Krugman’s screed, so there’s no need for me to cover the same ground here. Mind you, Heinberg was too gentlemanly to point out that the authorities Krugman cites aren’t exactly known for their predictive accuracy—the IMF in particular has become notorious in recent decades for insisting that austerity policies that have brought ruin to every country that has ever tried them are the one sure ticket to prosperity—but we can let that pass, too. What I want to talk about here is what Krugman’s diatribe implies for the immediate future.
