Monday, March 5, 2012
Monday, May 23, 2011
Supreme Court orders California to release 23% of its prison inmates
The AP reports:
The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly endorsed reducing California's cramped prison population by more than 30,000 inmates to fix sometimes deadly problems in medical care, ruling that federal judges retain enormous power to oversee troubled state prisons.
The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights to adequate care for their mental and physical health. In 2009, the state's prisons averaged nearly a death a week that might have been prevented or delayed with better medical care.
The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the 80,000 the system was designed to hold.
There were more than 143,000 inmates in California's 33 adult prisons as of May 11, so roughly 33,000 inmates will need to be transferred to other jurisdictions or released.
So that's the answer to not having enough prisons relative to your inmate population.
I suppose building more prisons would be out of the question.
The court's four Democratic appointees joined with Kennedy in upholding a court order issued by three federal judges in California, all appointees of President Jimmy Carter.
Justice Antonin Scalia said in dissent that the court order is "perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation's history" and that it did not comply with the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a 15-year-old law intended to limit the discretion of judges in lawsuits over prison conditions.
Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia's opinion, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote a separate dissent for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts.
Michael Bien, one of the lawyers representing inmates in the case, said, "The Supreme Court upheld an extraordinary remedy because conditions were so terrible."
The ruling comes amid efforts in many states, accelerated by budget gaps, to send fewer people to prison in the first place. Proposals vary by state, but include ways to reduce sentences for lower-level offenders, direct some offenders to alternative sentencing programs and give judges more discretion in sentencing.
"There's a growing consensus that there are better ways to run criminal justice systems," said Michael Mushlin, an expert on prisoners' rights at Pace Law School in White Plains, N.Y.
California did not immediately comment on the ruling.
Eighteen other states joined California in urging the justices to reject the population order as overreaching. They argued that it poses a threat to public safety. State attorneys general said they could face similar legal challenges.
Alito said he, too, feared that the decision, "like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see."
Kennedy acknowledged the concern, but said the judges gave state officials flexibility in complying with the court order, including offering "early release only to those prisoners who pose the least risk of reoffending."
The 23% of the inmates in California who pose the least risk of reoffending must be safe to release, right?
But it stands to reason that states in the past which were made by the court system to release inmates would've also tried to release the least dangerous subsets of their prisoner populations, and yet Stephen Levitt showed court mandated prisoner releases to be correlated with increases in the crime rate which were extremely large relative to the number of prisoners released:
The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence From Prison Overcrowding Litigation
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The Sinew of War
The following is a passage from former senior U.S. intelligence official Michael Scheuer's book Imperial Hubris:
Just under the noise, death, and rhetoric yielded by the foregone episodes lies a largely ignored factor that may constitute al Qaeda's main war effort-the steady bleeding of the U.S. economy. In late 2002, Abu-Ubayd al-Qurashi wrote an essay in Al-Ansar called "A Lesson in War" wherein he described al Qaeda's intention to follow Clausewitz's principle of attacking its foes "center of gravity." He said al Qaeda would unrelentingly focus on identifying that point and make "sure to direct all available force against the center of gravity during the great offensive." Al-Qurashi wrote that al Qaeda had studied North Vietnam’s victory over the United States, and found that Hanoi had “fully understood that America’s center of gravity lay in the American people,” and by killing America’s “dearest ones…the war ended with victory on the Vietnamese side.” Al Qaeda took this lesson to heart, Qurashi wrote, but believes that current center of gravity is its economy.
...A conviction has formed among the mujahedin that American public opinion is not the center of gravity in America. The Zionist lobbies, and with them the security agencies, have long been able to bridle all the media that control the formation of public opinion in America. This time it is clearly apparent that the American economy is the American center of gravity. This is what Shaykh Usama Bin Ladin has said quite explicitly. Supporting this penetrating strategic view is that the Disunited States of America are a mixture of nationalities, ethnic groups, and races united only by the "American Dream," or, to put it more correctly, worship of the dollar, which they openly call "the Almighty Dollar." May God be exalted greatly above what they say! Furthermore, the entire American war effort is based on pumping enormous wealth at all times, money being, as has been said, the sinew of war.
Leaving aside jargon about Zionists and conspiracies, al-Qurashi's depiction of al Qaeda's intent seems to mesh with reality. The 11 September attacks, of course, devastated the U.S. economy; it is only now, in early 2004, recovering. But beyond the immediate impact lie massive expenditures-at all levels of American government-that will add permanently to the size and cost of government. In addition to the cost of hiring thousands of federal employees for homeland security purposes; acquiring buildings, equipment, and training to make them effective; and requiring proportionate upgrading at state, municipal, and local level; there lie what must be substantial amounts of unpredictable expenditures for overtime wages-in government and business alike-whenever Washington raises the threat level, or when high levels of security are provided at public places or functions heretofore not seen as serious security risks.
Likewise al Qaeda is at the core of massive increases in defense spending, costs that are likely to accelerate as U.S. officials find the military is not organized, manned, trained, or equipped to fight the kind of wars being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, economic planning by government and business must be experiencing significant difficulty in projecting expenditures, given threats of a WMD attack in the United States; the enormous monetary, materiel, and manpower costs of running several wars; the steady diet of shocks thrown into business by steady call-ups of reserve-soldier employees; and-especially in the transport and tourist sectors-by such events as the "emergency" cancellation of flights from Western Europe to the United States in late 2003 and early 2004. Beyond the sound of bombs, then, al Qaeda's attack has continued since 11 September on its notion of the U.W. "center of gravity." Without a second 11 September-like attack, al Qaeda has stimulated immense unanticipated spending, much of which will become fixed in budgets at all levels of government. "Aborting the American economy is not an unattainable dream," al-Qurashi wrote in Al-Ansar. Perhaps he is correct.
It should be noted that even though what Scheuer writes here both was and is true, the fact remains that al Qaeda hasn't done nearly as much to attack America's center of gravity since 9/11 as they could have.
The basic cause of this is that apparently since the 19 hijackers were sent to America to perform the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda has refrained from sending another team into American soil.
So far all the post-9/11 attacks which could possibly be traced to al Qaeda have either been against non-American targets or have involved single individuals such as the underwear bomber.
While the underwear bomber did quite a good job of provoking an overreaction, the damage the Nigerian did was small potatoes compared to the kind of damage a team of terrorists could've done.
Also there's the issue that individual terrorists are profoundly vulnerable to entrapment by undercover FBI agents, as they so often are moved to seek help from people they met on their own.
In contrast self-contained terrorist teams are nearly invulnerable to undercover agents as they have no need to seek help from anyone but the confederates they met in this or that non-American training camp.
This raises the question: "Why has al Qaeda refrained from launching self-contained team based attacks on America since 9/11?"
I suppose the interesting issue here is whether it's a question of massive tactical failure on al Qaeda's part or rather a rational choice driven by some grand strategic insight which can only be guessed at. Read more...
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
The American Government's outstanding debt to GDP ratio (1790 to 2009)
As can be seen in the above chart provided by reader Marius, the American Federal Government's outstanding debt to Gross Domestic Product ratio has never, with the exception of WWII and its immediate aftermath, been higher than it is now.
It's of interest how the WWII debt was steadily paid off every year after the war ended until it was back to what it was before America got involved, and how sharply this contrasts with how the very large amount of debt incurred since 1980 has never been paid off more than fractionaly.
The threshold is when government debt rises above 90% of national gross domestic product (GDP), economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argue in a paper headed for publication in the American Economic Review.
After looking at data from 44 countries spanning 200 years, they’ve concluded that at ratios of debt to GDP up to 90%, there’s not much correlation between government debt and economic growth.
Above 90%, however, median economic growth rates fall by one percentage point and average economic growth rates fall by about four percentage points.
That makes the 90% level a kind of make-or-break point for countries that are hoping to grow their way out of debt. If the government debt load climbs above 90% of GDP, economic growth slows so much that growth is no longer a viable solution to reducing that debt.
Above the 90% level, governments serious about reducing their debt load have to increasingly rely on “solutions” such as reducing wages and depreciating their currencies, which might over time increase global economic competitiveness enough to give a boost to national economic growth. In the short to medium term, however, these “solutions” inflict real pain on the citizens of the countries since they reduce standards of living.
The scary thing about Reinhart and Rogoff’s conclusion is how close the United States and other major developed world economies are to the 90% cutoff thanks to the global financial and economic crisis.
The United States finished 2009 with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 85%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). On current trend, the United States will finish 2010 at 94% and 2011 at 98%.
According to the Reinhart and Rogoff study:
1. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of less than 30 percent, it's averaged GDP Growth of 4.0%.
2. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of 30 to 60 percent, it's averaged
GDP growth of 3.4%.
3. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of 60 to 90 percent, it's averaged
GDP growth of 3.3%.
4. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of more than 90 percent, it's averaged GDP growth of negative 1.8%.
The the study finds a similar pattern in the totality of twenty Advanced Economies it looked at, with a medium growth rate of 3.9% when they had less than 30 percent debt to GDP, a medium growth rate of 3.1% when they had from 30 to 60 percent debt to GDP, a medium growth rate of 2.8% when they had 60 to 90 percent debt to GDP, and a medium growth rate of only 1.9% when they had a 90 percent of more debt to GDP.
1. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of less than 30 percent, it's averaged GDP Growth of 4.0%.
2. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of 30 to 60 percent, it's averaged
GDP growth of 3.4%.
3. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of 60 to 90 percent, it's averaged
GDP growth of 3.3%.
4. When America has had a debt to GDP ratio of more than 90 percent, it's averaged GDP growth of negative 1.8%.
The the study finds a similar pattern in the totality of twenty Advanced Economies it looked at, with a medium growth rate of 3.9% when they had less than 30 percent debt to GDP, a medium growth rate of 3.1% when they had from 30 to 60 percent debt to GDP, a medium growth rate of 2.8% when they had 60 to 90 percent debt to GDP, and a medium growth rate of only 1.9% when they had a 90 percent of more debt to GDP.
Of course correlation shouldn't be assumed to prove causation here, as Paul Krugman has pointed out, but this fact may be less important than Krugman seems to think.
A correlation can have predictive power irrespective of whether it's based on one variable causing the other. Read more...
Saturday, April 2, 2011
An update on Hadji Murad's people
Auster recently wrote an entry entitled "The Islamization of Chechnya" containing the following quotation from an article by Aymenn Jawad:
A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), entitled "You Dress According To Their Rules," should highlight the growing need for policymakers in Moscow to counter the increasing entrenchment of sharia in Chechen society.
HRW's analysis documents extensively the enforcement of Islamic law vis-Ã -vis women's rights in Chechnya, as part of Chechen President Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov's "Campaign for Female Virtue." In fact, Kadyrov, who was first appointed president of the Chechen Republic by the Kremlin in February 2007, has never disguised his advocacy of sharia. Soon after becoming president, he defended polygamy as part of Chechen tradition, and in 2009 he praised the male relatives of seven young women whom they shot in the head and dumped by a roadside as part of a series of honor killings. Speaking to journalists on a Friday afternoon outside a mosque in Grozny, the capital of the Chechen Republic, Kadyrov said that the women had "loose morals," thereby deserving death, and that "no one can tell us not to be Muslims." Even so, polygamy and honor killings are unambiguously prohibited according to Article 14 of the third chapter of the Family Code of the Russian Federation.
A key aspect of Kadyrov's drive towards sharia has been forcing women to wear the hijab. By the autumn of 2007, the Chechen president had publicly stated on television that all women working for state institutions had to wear headscarves, and that such an unwritten law should be implemented immediately. The results were soon evident as female television anchors, government officials, teachers and staff-members of the ombudsman's office began wearing headscarves to work by the end of that year. In schools and universities, where the hijab was introduced under Kadyrov as part of mandated uniforms in 2007, students who refused to wear the hijab were simply denied entry to their respective offices and academic institutions, even though no legal basis existed for this new requirement.
It's notable that the only part of the Russian Federation socially conservative and patriarchal enough to produce a president like Ramzan Akhmadovich also has a Total Fertility Rate far higher than other parts of the Russian Federation:
Total fertility rate (TFR) in Chechen republic exceeds the replacement level.
In 2008 it was 3.40 per woman at the age of 15-49.
For comparison, in the same year TFR in neighboring Republic of Dagestan was 1.95, in Republic of Ingushetia it was 1.96, in the whole South Federal Districtit was 1.67 and in the whole Russian Federation it was 1.49.
Note I do not deny the possibility that the Chechans are taking social conservatism too far under the leadership of Kadyrov.
However, two things need to be pointed out:
1. They certainly aren't taking things too far in one direction more than the West is taking things too far in the opposite direction.
2. The Chechen way of doing things is more adaptive and natural than the current Western way of doing things.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
We So Excited
I think Bob Dylan is really singing about how Society as a whole only appreciates the reward of a task and not the process. It's looking toward "The Weekend" and sees the week as something to be suffered through.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Winds of Change
A German Newspaper reports:
An opinion poll in France found that right-wing politician Marine Le Pen would defeat President Nicholas Sarkozy, Le Parisien reported on Saturday, March 5.
The poll results, to be published in the Sunday edition of the French daily, showed the 42-year-old leader of the Front National party would receive 23 percent of the vote in the first of the two rounds of presidential elections due to occur in France next year.
Center-right Sarkozy would only receive 21 percent of the vote according to the poll.
"This poll makes me believe that Nicolas Sarkozy will lose this presidential election," Marine Le Pen said at a news conference in northern France.
Part of Le Pen's platform so far has included comparing Muslims in France to an occupying force. Meanwhile, Sarkozy has initiated a national debate on the role of Islam in France, a move that some feel is designed to neutralize Le Pen.
No margin of error was published for the poll, conducted between Feb. 28 and March 3 with 1,618 people aged 18 and up.
France's next presidential elections are set for May 2012.
It would be huge if Marine Le Pen was elected President of France. I'm not aware of anyone in the last 60 years being elected head of a European state as restrictionist on immigration as she is, and certainly nobody has ever been elected head of an EU member on a platform of pulling out of the European Union.
"She [Marine Le Pen] echoes traditional FN calls to halt immigration, wrest French sovereignty back from the European Union, restore the death penalty for certain crimes and practice "national preference" to reserve jobs, financial aid and public housing for French citizens over foreigners..." -Time MagazineGiven that the EU is an entity which was brought into existence by a coalition of French and German financial elites, there's reason to think losing France would lead to the EU's demise. Read more...
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
At Least the EU is Consistent in its Raving Insanity
I can hardly believe this, it's like some kind of joke:
The European Union's highest court on Tuesday barred the insurance industry from charging different rates for men and women, saying the widespread practices amounts to sex discrimination against millions.
The ruling ordered changes effective Dec. 21, 2012, to auto insurance, life insurance, medical coverage and other plans, potentially affecting tens of millions of customers across the continent. For example, many women driver would see their car insurance costs rise even though they are considered safer on the road.
EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said it was "now clear that an insurance company must not distinguish between women and men; all customers must be treated equally."
"This is a matter of respect for fundamental rights. It is now also becoming a matter of good business practices," Reding said.
Insurers grudgingly accepted the ruling, but say their current policies are statistically fair and the change will be bad for customers because it will force cost hikes across the board.
The whole point of insurance is that you charge different people a different rate based on how likely you are to have to pay out to them!
But there's more:
Currently millions of insurance policies take gender into account, with insurance companies arguing it is typically easy to check and is statistically sound. The court said that is inappropriate, since there are myriad other factors that could also be considered.
What?
"Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination," the court said in a statement.
The Belgian consumer group Test-Achats, which brought the case, said the decision is a "historic ruling."
"The equal treatment of men and women must be absolute," the group said in a statement.
Why exactly?
Even if women are considered safer drivers, the question remains whether a man should be punished by paying more despite taking special care to drive safely. Test-Achats says there are other ways insurance companies can make a distinction, for example, by taking the accident history of a driver more into account.
In traffic-choked Rome, Antonello Parenti welcomed the ruling.
"Men and women are equal, so it has to be a matter of equal opportunities, so it's not fair that women pay less," he said.
I don't blame the Italian gentleman for feeling this way. After all, it's so strange for the principle of equality to be used to help men at the expense of women, as opposed to the other way around.
But this doesn't change the simple fact that the ruling is insane. It's based on illegalizing the technique which allowed the insurance industry to arise in the first place.
If it's not fair to discriminate in insurance based on sex, why not also make it illegal to discriminate by age?
If you do that no young person is going to be retarded enough to get insurance and thus be forced to subsidize the elderly.
Test-Achats also questioned why a woman who smokes and lives more dangerously should be assessed for medical or life insurance by the standards of an average woman while a man who works out, eats healthily and does not smoke cannot see his lifestyle taken into account.
Because it makes more sense to do it that way on average, obviously. Women live longer than men on average. Unless a man is willing to have a very thorough physical to prove that he's so much healthier than the average man that he'll outlive the average woman of his age, there's absolutely no reason not to charge him more than the average woman.
You set insurance rates with the data you have, not the data you might want or wish to have at a later time.
"You have to complement the statistical approach but one which is more respectful of the rights of each individual taking lifestyle into account," the group said.
Never mind that this will make getting insurance an invasive and hellish ordeal!
There's also the issue that this will make it more expensive for insurance companies to set rates, an added expense they'll undoubtedly pass on to their customers:
Philip Jarvis, head of insurance at the international law firm Allen & Overy, said it was tough to put financial figures on the change, but that it was clearly a major ruling.
"It is nontrivial, it is a significant change to the industry," he said in an interview.
He expects overall charges to rise. Since the gender analysis is out, insurers have to spend more money figuring out pricing. Insurers could push up charges across the board to protect themselves or fine tune other, more expensive ways to differentiate between people, he said.
Parting thought: If the EU says insurance discriminates against men because it makes them pay higher premiums than women, can Affirmative Action for white basketball players be far behind?
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Disparate Impact
Richard Spencer writes:
In 2007, the advocacy group Adversity.net examined the racial hiring practices of Washington’s Executive Departments and Independent Agencies, from the Department of Education to NASA. The group discovered that with a very few exceptions, federal entities dramatically overfulfill their “Diversity” quotas. Indeed, the best agencies at hiring Blacks put the Post Office of lore to shame: the Controlled Substance Ordering System, the Government Printing Office, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, for instance, overhire Blacks at 800, 500, and 400 percent, respectively. Even the “worst” agency for employing African-Americans, über-nerdy NASA, overhires Blacks at a clip of 50 percent.
Spencer thinks this explains why on January 8 the chief of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernake, announced publicly that there would be no Fed-led bailout of state and local governments.
His idea is that they think they need to keep all the money they can in the Federal system, where it can be used to pay off Blacks not to riot.
One problem with the presentation of this theory is that, with the exception of Wisconsin, Spencer failed to provide information on the demographics of the public employees in States which are facing budget problems.
Of course Bernake wouldn't have said what he said just based on the demographics of Wisconsin.
At the same time it's very doubtful to me that any state has employee demographics as slanted toward Blacks as the Federal Government does, much less the average state in need of a federal bailout to avoid layoffs.
So whether it's intentional or not, there is an element of racial favoritism to be found in the Federal Reserve's privileging of Federal Government over State Government.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Twilight of the Teen Idol: Justin Bieber's Sinister Ideology (Plus Thoughts on Lara Logan)
The website CafeMom reports the chilling news:
Did Bieber Fever just take a turn for the super-scary? Earlier today, Slate joked that Justin Bieber could easily grace the cover of Lisa Simpson's beloved Non-Threatening Boys Magazine, but then Rolling Stone magazine released a bit of a racy interview with the pop sensation, in which he strongly states he doesn't believe in abortion. Whoah. That's no catchy, non-threatening pop song.
What Justin Bieber must not understand is how this anti-choice statement, however nonchalant (and naive) it might have been, is going to travel at lightning speed around the Internet, and all his bazillion teen-aged girl fans are going to ponder it. I don't have a problem with girls pondering this topic, of course. Please ponder it!
However, how do we talk to our teens about abortion after their favorite teen idol makes such a strong statement against it?
Indeed. How will we talk to our children about how wonderful abortion is now that the evil Justin Bieber has poisoned their minds with his regressive worldview?
But as important as this news is, it's still only the second most popular story on Cafemom today. The top rated story is a thought provoking piece entitled: 'Lara Logan Was Right to Put Her Career Before Her Kids'.
After all, what have Lara Logan's kids ever done for anyone? Why should their so called needs encumber the right of their mother to galavant all over dangerous areas of the World for months at a time?
They have a father, for all I know, so what right would they have to complain if their mother was gunned down in a war zone?
Friday, February 11, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Racism's Forgotten Victims
A blogger, The Cold Equations, points out that "nobody sheds a tear for racism's forgotten victims - white drug abusers who go to the ghetto to buy drugs."
It turns out these drug abusers are profiled by police.
But of course The Cold Equations isn't really wording things correctly. Usually when people talk about someone being the "victim of police profiling" they do so in reference a person who lacked illegal intent but was treated with suspicion by authorities for probabilistic reasons.
At least I hope that's what people complain about, as opposed to complaining about the fact that profiling made it harder for this or that criminal to commit his chosen crime.
So racism's real forgotten victims are whites who visit the ghetto for some reason other than to buy drugs, but who are hassled by police due to the stereotype that whites in black ghettos are more likely to be there to buy drugs.
This is similar to the stereotype that Westerners in Thailand are more likely to be there to abuse children than random Thai who are there just because it's where they come from and live.
Both are contexual stereotypes based on the concept of selection bias.
The fact that police are sophisticated enough to use a context dependant stereotype, and in the case of the many police officers who are white to use it against members of their own group, is interesting.
For one thing it shows how foolish it is to think that police profiling is merely an expression of "institutional racism".
It is true that innocent people are sometimes subjected to profiling.
But it's important to understand that the alternative to profiling is not the cessation of this phenomenon, but rather the extension of it to the entirety of the population.
Well, at least in certain situations where the prevention of violence and mayhem is of great monetary importance to large corporations:
Friday, February 4, 2011
Monday, January 31, 2011
Malthusian Egypt?
Steve Sailer just had a post entitled "Malthusian Egypt", and I think it's much more pro-Malthusian than the evidence warrants.
If a country was actually pushing the limits of its land's carrying capacity, you'd expect the per capita food production to decline.
But it looks like per capita food production in Egypt has actually expanded.
In 1961 Egypt had a population of 28.5 million and a food production per capita index of 51.
By 2007 Egypt's population had expanded to 80 million, and in spite of this the food production per capita index doubled to 102.
This suggests that Egyptian agriculture is under less strain now than when the population was only 36% of what it is now.
It is true that Egypt imports a lot of food. However, it's worth noting that World food production per capita has also increased in spite of the profound increase in overall population:
And really, if Afghanistan could have a DECLINE in its food production per capita index from 1961 to 2007 without it leading to a slackening of their population growth, Egypt with its increase in food production per capita doesn't look to have anything to worry about anytime soon. Read more...
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Sailer called it (Lebanon)
Steve Sailer on June 24, 2005:
"The Babe Theory of Democracy: Babes or Babies?"
The chaos ground on for another half dozen years, turning into a Mad Max struggle between clan-based neighborhood gangs, until Syria conquered most of the country in 1990.
In early 2005, during the Beirut demonstrations against Syrian occupation, there was much fatuous commentary in America about the inevitable triumph of democracy. One blogger got a lot of publicity for a expounding the flattering idea that pro-American democracy must triumph in Lebanon because all the hot babes go to the anti-Syrian demonstrations. Babes attract TV cameras and television rules the world, right?
This was particularly ironic because the weakness of the Babe Theory in Lebanon was that those hot babes haven’t been having enough babies. For generations, the stylish Christian women have been losing the Battle of the Cradle to the Shi'ite women, who are too covered up to have to worry about losing their babealicious figures. If there were real, one-person one-vote democracy in Lebanon instead of the "confessional gerrymander", the hot babes would be wearing shapeless sacks tomorrow.
New York Times on January 24, 2011:
"Hezbollah Chooses Lebanon’s Next Prime Minister"
A prime minister chosen by Hezbollah and its allies won enough support on Monday to form Lebanon’s government, unleashing angry protests, realigning politics and culminating the generation-long ascent of the Shiite Muslim movement from shadowy militant group to the country’s pre-eminent political and military force.
Hezbollah’s success served as a stark measure of the shifting constellation of power in this part of the Middle East, where the influence of the United States and its Arab allies — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — is seen by politicians and diplomats as receding, while Iran and Syria have become more assertive.
American diplomats tried to forestall the triumph of Hezbollah’s candidate, Najib Miqati. Although the final votes will be cast Tuesday, Mr. Miqati won the decisive vote from a politician who said he had to deal “with the reality on the ground.”
Read more...
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Uncharted Territory
Comparing America's Outstanding National Debt to its Gross Domestic Product, we find that in 1900 the outstanding debt only came to 10.4% of GDP.
In 1910 outstanding debt came to only 7.9% of GDP.
Then partly because of World War I, by 1920 outstanding debt came to 29.3% of GDP.
But by 1930 a lot of debt had been paid off, and outstanding debt was down to 17.8% of GDP.
Then because of the Great Depression reducing tax revenues, and FDR's "New Deal" ramping up federal government spending, in 1940 outstanding debt went up to 42.4% of GDP.
On account of war spending associated with World War II, in 1950 outstanding debt went up to 87.6% of GDP.
But very significantly this debt was greatly reduced by the time we got to 1960, by which time outstanding debt was down to 54.4% of GDP.
Then in 1970 outstanding debt was down even further to 35.7% of GDP.
This was certainly high by the standards of the first couple decades of the 20th Century, as well as by the standards of all of the 19th Century other than the Civil War and its aftermath.
But it still showed willingness on people's part at that time to actually not just "break even" in economically good years, but to actually PAY OFF a significant amount of the old debt.
As will be seen, the economic good times of the 1990's didn't lead to a single penny in net outstanding debt being paid off.
In 1980 outstanding debt decreased slightly to 35.6% of GDP.
By 1990 the deficit spending policies of Ronald Reagan, policies inspired by the delusions of a madman named Laffer, helped outstanding debt increase back up to 55.7% of GDP.
Then the boom times of the Clinton years in the 1990's actually involved outstanding debt increasing, in spite of all his meaningless crowing about "balancing the budget", to 57% of GDP in 2000.
Incredibly, the relatively peaceful 2000's saw the largest decadal leap in unpaid debt since World War II, as outstanding debt increased to 92.7% of GDP by 2010.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Stuxnet + Election
Outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan recently concluded his term saying Iran was still far from being capable of producing nuclear weapons and that a series of malfunctions had put off its nuclear goal for several years. Therefore, he said, Iran will not get hold of the bomb before 2015 approximately.
If he's right, then it makes the 2012 election result absolutely crucial from a geopolitical standpoint.
If someone at least somewhat capable of independent thought, like Obama or Romney, is elected it would almost certainly give Iran enough time to get a nuclear deterrent.
On the other hand, if someone less capable of independant thought is elected, it stands to reason it would mean war.
In Spring of 2010 Pew did a poll of global attitudes showing that 66% of Americans surveyed were willing to consider military action to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
That's the highest rate of 22 countries they surveyed, with the exception of Nigeria.
This must mean that a large majority of Republicans support the idea.
So if a Republican crazy enough to go through with it wins in 2012, and Iran doesn't get a nuke before the swearing in, there's every reason to think said Republican would go through with attacking Iran.
But if a crazy Republican president is all it takes to get a war with Iran, why wasn't there one at the end of Bush's term in office?
The answer is partly that George W. Bush was less crazy than Dick Cheney, who tried to talk him into doing it.
If Bush was incapacitated and replaced by his vice president, that would've led to war with Iran.
If McCain won the 2008 election, that would've led to war with Iran.
It's quite possible that a McCainesque war hawk could win the 2012 Republican primary. In that case, it seems Obama's reelection would be the only thing standing between the world and utter catastrophe.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
A Conflict of Visions
"But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end."
— Aldous Huxley
"But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end."
— Aldous Huxley
— Aldous Huxley
Point
The Future Will Be A Totalitarian Government Dystopia
I am sad to say that for all our efforts in the name of freedom, the future shall be a bleak one, indeed. Such visionary authors as George Orwell and Robert Heinlein have mapped out the hellish future that awaits. By the end of this century, the Earth will be controlled by a single unified world government–a government solely dedicated to perpetuating itself and keeping the populace under control. The first and greatest casualty of this New World Order shall be personal liberty.
Humans will live in identical, low-ceilinged, one-roomed concrete dwellings, outfitted with little more than a bed and a telescreen, arranged in endless grid patterns stretching to the horizon. Our bleary-eyed descendants 100 years hence shall shuffle between their assigned tasks in gray, one-piece coveralls. What few possessions they enjoy will be meted out by the government, and even these spare trinkets will be small and inexpensive–a plastic comb, a morsel of chocolate, a new pair of shoes when the old ones have worn to unwearability.
Citizens will be assigned to various vocational fields, the most common being propaganda, bureaucracy, and the police. Those who perform with unerring loyalty will be rewarded with slightly larger dwellings and the right to lower the volume of their telescreens.
Unremovable electronic trackers will be implanted in our brains, monitoring our whereabouts and thoughts at all times. Citizens who harbor anti-authoritarian sentiments will be swiftly seized by jackbooted secret police and either put to death–a procedure filmed and displayed via telescreen as a grim warning to other would-be dissenters–or rehabilitated into blind servitude through torture and brainwashing.
Food will be prepared by machines and served in drab public mess halls. No fruits and vegetables for future-man: Every meal will be a flavorless, grainy paste designed to provide just enough nutrition to sustain life and nothing more–any more energy and the powers that be risk rebellion.
Oh, how I dread the future.
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Counterpoint
The Future Will Be A Privatized Corporate Dystopia
I beg to differ with my colleague. Having read the futuristic accounts of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Philip K. Dick, the path our future shall take will be bleak, indeed–but in a much different way. When the ongoing trend of corporate mergers reaches critical mass in 2030, the scant handful of corporations that remain will be too powerful to resist and will ultimately supplant all government. National borders will crumble, replaced by warring corporate armies who deploy vat-grown Yakuza assassins to take down enemy CEOs in the name of commerce.
The future will be every color but gray–not that the future will be worth living in. Giant videoscreen billboards will cover the exposed surface of every skyscraper, bombarding our consciousness with advertising for anything and everything. Looking up will expose us to giant orbiting mylar superscreens bearing more logos and slogans. A citizen will be unable to walk down the street without encountering roving clouds made up of billions of microscopic nanoprobes that form corporate logos right before their very eyes.
Which is not to imply that the average citizen will do much walking: When every inch of space is privatized, it will cost money to walk from your living room to the kitchen. The average citizen will spend nearly all of his waking hours neurally jacked into the futuristic grandchild of the Internet, roaming cyberspace rather than moving and interacting in the inelegant, inconvenient three-dimensional world.
When we do log off the CyberNet, the very walls of our apartments will teem with droning media messages. Tolerating such in-home advertising will be the only way the average citizen will be able to afford an apartment at all. Only the wealthiest will be able to afford a quiet, dark room in which to sleep. The rest of us will simply become desensitized to the 24 hours of stimuli attacking our minds.
All media will consist of some form of advertising–print, audio, video–with some actually beamed directly into our brains. The theme song to every TV show will be a product jingle. Newscasters will segue straight from war reports into soft-drink pitches without batting an eye.
To the powers that be, a citizen will be no more than a potential receptacle of consumption, only as valuable as his or her electronically catalogued personal wealth. All transactions will be conducted instantaneously by retinal scan, and credit fraud will be a crime worse than murder.
Oh, how I pity future generations.
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