�Someone left the cake out in the rain��
Do you feel it? That auld MacArthur Park melancholy. In the spring of 1980, or was it 1981? In any case, Limited Inc remembers manning the paint counter at a Shreveport hardware store listening to Donna Summer dirging for this enigmatic gateau, since the radio station that was piped in for our customers� shopping pleasure was very big on Donna Summer. Is it an illusion, or is that same sweet sadness abroad in the US press? a feeling that the splendid little war our commander in chief, bless his 80 percent in the polls, has been all set to spring on Iraq, is now being derailed by a bunch of wankers over there in the Holy Land. I mean, the NYT, and in the Washington Post haven�t quite been open about it � rather, it�s the little asides, the way Tony Blair, for instance, seems to be abandoning ship at the very time we need him to buck us up, or the way the cartoon cutups at the Arab Summit mainstreamed the odious little Iraqis. And Kuwait, my God, what podunk little speed-trap in that whole damn sandbox owes us more? And here they are, closing off the pool, so sorry, boss, find some other place to stage your troops from.
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again�
Here�s atypical analysis in the WP from a couple of days ago:
�In the past few days, the president has defended himself against the sharpest criticism of his conduct of foreign policy since the attacks of Sept. 11. He and his advisers now must reckon with the prospect that the Middle East conflict will force a delay in, or substantial changes to, the next phase of the war on terrorism -- apparently aimed at Iraq -- that they have been planning for months.�
For months, folks! All that brain power � and George W. can�t really afford to waste too much brain power � and now the bastards are screwing everything up. The problem is that there are so many of them. We�d love Sharon to make the area Palestinian-rein, but it would be hard to hide the deaths of 2 million. And there are a lot of bleeding hearts out there, lefties and pinkos who will be in the streets, unappreciative that this genocide�s for you.
Yes, for months. The maps, the mock deployment of soldiers (all crafted in plastic and standing 1 ��� high, no doubt, for the president to, um, manipulate at his leisure late at night in the White House basement), the tough talk. It is so unfair!
And here�s the Times way of describing the trip of Tony Blair, who as late as last week was our well beloved sycophant, to the Crawford ranch:
Britain has scuttled plans to publish an intelligence dossier on Iraq's secret arms programs that it had planned to release on Washington's behalf. And Mr. Blair, traveling to Crawford, Tex. on Friday in his favorite role as the bridge between Europe and the United States, is confronting a gap so wide that it now prevents him from openly backing an American attack on Iraq.
"I think so far Blair has gotten away with being pro-American and a loyal European and not having to choose because America has not done something that is so awful that, if he supports the U.S., he will lose Europe," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform. "But the Middle East is possibly more dangerous for him now than Iraq, because public opinion across Europe is very, very anti-Israeli, and people all think the U.S. can do something about it. It's the time for Tony Blair to be constructively critical, to be a candid friend."
Yes, our commander in chief, mistaking his office for another episode in that quiz show, Family Feud, has really, really been looking forward to some kind of fall theater in Iraq. Like football, it would have been. His heroic stature in the polls, and the Democrats, the same old numbnuts, kowtowing to any expression of American imperial power we were crazy enough to come up with: yes, Peter, Tom, Dan, we are solidly behind the President�s decision to massacre Iraqi prisoners of war in order to avoid future American casualties.
It�s all a big dilemma, as Laura would put it � my God, that woman�s vocabulary! On the one hand, Sharon is clearly insane. As in, at some point that man was clearly bitten by a rabid dog. Hasn�t anybody noticed? His idea of peace has been, consistently, the peace of the grave, on which he could dance, while somebody else wrote the epitaph for the Palestinian �savages.� On the other hand, Mr. Sharon is backed by a powerful, although equally insane, contingent in the Republican party. Powerful, that is, in D.C. The truth is, the main body of the GOP could care less. But the clique around the Weekly Standard, which has become, by the weird alchemistry of betrayal (remember their early embrace of McCain?), the press chorus of the Bushie crowd � and this is of some importance, these people being heavily networked � are all set on killing that Arafat. They have no endgame. Implicitly, they would like the genocide option for the Palestinians mulled over. Perhaps they could be sold into slavery? Ashcroft of course would approve of that: talk about making those genuine reconstructions of Civil War battles even more genuine! But because of the climate of moral looseness since the sixties, the slide in family values, feminism, enviro-nazis, and squishy pinks, we know that isn�t going to happen. So really, the counsels of such bozos as William Krystol are singularly short of an endgame. At least George Will, in a recent column, came out foresquare for the only one consistent with the Sharon plan: the conquest of the West Bank and its annexation to Israel.
Well, our commander in chief isn�t the smartest boy in the class, but even he knows that is stupid. History is not going to rewind, suddenly, to the glorious colonial period when we kept wogs in their places, no matter what Will thinks, sitting in his little Virginia faux plantation. And then there is the little matter of oil. Today, a story from the AP that assures us that the possibility of an oil embargo is remote. And Limited Inc agrees that an oil embargo on the scale of the one that followed Nixon�s weird all points surrender to Israel�s demands in 1973 is unlikely to happen. For one thing, since then, the sheiks have so mismanaged their money that they would be hurt by any downturn in the EU and the USA�s economic indicators. Still, they would certainly do it to save themselves from the Shah�s fate.
And that fate, whether Bush likes it or not, is looming, as he simplemindedly cuts off every Middle East ally the US ever bribed into compliance with our provincial interests. (As a side observation: if Egypt blows up, does anybody really think Israel is going to benefit? Only that Masada strain in the Likud, which Sharon rather likes: toughen up the youth, or something like that.) God loves fools, and who knows, with an idiot at the wheel, we might avoid collisions that a more experienced, a more intelligent leader could not avoid. But the cosmic license that fools enjoy isn�t guaranteed. Bush is definitely on a political holiday, right now, especially for a man who slunk into office illegitimately, and has ruled like a corrupt CEO ever since. His opposition has all the backbone of a wet sand castle, which definitely helps him. Right now, with the emotion that still roils the American populace in the wake of 9/11, Bush can get away with things that in normal times would make his credit plummet in this country. He has, of course, blown it in other countries. But here�s a cruel fact: American interests aren�t the same as Israeli interests. The blowing up of caf�s in Jerusalem, like the blowing up of parlimentarians in New Delhi, is criminal; as, actually, is the assassination of Palestinian youth by the Israeli military (collateral casualties, alas, as the boys in Foreign Service say, going down to the lounge for their scotches). The US interest here, is partly moral, and partly structural: it is time to figure out how to establish institutions that will satisfy both the Israeli and the Palestinian thirst for justice (or, more vulgarly, revenge). This isn�t going to happen if the US doesn�t lean fairly heavily on Sharon. And if, instead of continually, self righteously, calling for Arafat to stop the suicide bombers, the American pitch was also for guaranteeing Palestinian rights �as in property rights, rights to be free from search and seizure of property, etc., etc. That would probably require setting up some kind of intra-state judicial system � in other words, some independent judiciary that could punish aberrant Israeli soldiers and Palestinian franc-tireurs alike.
LI makes this suggestion in the full realization that the sensible thing isn�t going to happen. The situation has really spiraled beyond the point at which liberal, Montesquieu like gestures are going to work. But somebody has to be out there, promoting whacky, stupid, sensible things. One obvious fact about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that, left wholly to the mechanism of the blood feud, it will never stop.
Friday, April 05, 2002
Thursday, April 04, 2002
Remora
Well, well. Limited Inc loves capitalism -- sometimes. The bottom line graphs, in its sphere, the very heartbeat of reason (though,as a proper lefty, we don't like to admit this too often). A Financial Times editorial sums up what is happening in Israel with admirable perspicacity. That means, companeros, that it adumbrates the essence of the 'wet' position, as Maggie Thatcher might have put it. Thatcher, of course, before she was the iron lady, was very much the dry lady. Dry down to the grayish bone. Acidulous, even.
Well, here is the first killer graf. This reads like something from Limited Inc.
"Ariel Sharon has embarked on a military folly that bears disturbing resemblance to his ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The US, which was seen by many at the time to have given Israel at least an amber light to pursue its destructive Lebanon war, should not repeat the same mistake. For Israel's sake, Washington must intervene to halt Mr Sharon's widening reoccupation of territories under Palestinian control."
Now -- why is it that not a single major American paper can see that? Is it some collective blindness, some 9/11 side effect? To ram home FT's point, and our own, let's throw in the last three grafs. As FT gets going, the City's apologist for an optimal level of profit makes an unusual amount of sense. In fact, LI is a little puzzled -- is this a major financial newspaper, or Liberation?
"The inconsistencies of the US approach are owed to a merging of the Middle East crisis into the global war against terrorism. Yet the current conflict is part of a more-than-50-year dispute that, by the US's own admission, must end with the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
Moreover, in the past 18 months of bloodshed and violence, tragic human rights violations have been perpetrated by both sides, with Palestinians bearing the brunt of the killings. Washington's friends in Europe should press for a wiser US approach and for immediate US pressure on Israel.
This is the most helpful message Tony Blair could carry to his meeting with Mr Bush in Texas later this week. The best way to help Israel today is to stop Mr Sharon from pursuing another senseless war."
Aaaahhhhhh. Precisely. How depressing that the obvious is, in these troubled times, also the subversive.
Well, well. Limited Inc loves capitalism -- sometimes. The bottom line graphs, in its sphere, the very heartbeat of reason (though,as a proper lefty, we don't like to admit this too often). A Financial Times editorial sums up what is happening in Israel with admirable perspicacity. That means, companeros, that it adumbrates the essence of the 'wet' position, as Maggie Thatcher might have put it. Thatcher, of course, before she was the iron lady, was very much the dry lady. Dry down to the grayish bone. Acidulous, even.
Well, here is the first killer graf. This reads like something from Limited Inc.
"Ariel Sharon has embarked on a military folly that bears disturbing resemblance to his ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The US, which was seen by many at the time to have given Israel at least an amber light to pursue its destructive Lebanon war, should not repeat the same mistake. For Israel's sake, Washington must intervene to halt Mr Sharon's widening reoccupation of territories under Palestinian control."
Now -- why is it that not a single major American paper can see that? Is it some collective blindness, some 9/11 side effect? To ram home FT's point, and our own, let's throw in the last three grafs. As FT gets going, the City's apologist for an optimal level of profit makes an unusual amount of sense. In fact, LI is a little puzzled -- is this a major financial newspaper, or Liberation?
"The inconsistencies of the US approach are owed to a merging of the Middle East crisis into the global war against terrorism. Yet the current conflict is part of a more-than-50-year dispute that, by the US's own admission, must end with the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
Moreover, in the past 18 months of bloodshed and violence, tragic human rights violations have been perpetrated by both sides, with Palestinians bearing the brunt of the killings. Washington's friends in Europe should press for a wiser US approach and for immediate US pressure on Israel.
This is the most helpful message Tony Blair could carry to his meeting with Mr Bush in Texas later this week. The best way to help Israel today is to stop Mr Sharon from pursuing another senseless war."
Aaaahhhhhh. Precisely. How depressing that the obvious is, in these troubled times, also the subversive.
Wednesday, April 03, 2002
Remora
McDonald's, McDonald's.
Do read the story of the bad burger in the NYT today. A Chilean woman named Carmen Calderon went into a McDonald's to complain that her son had gotten sick after eating some Mickey D special. Some employee said look, it is cleaner here than in your house. Calderon then went to the municipal health agency, got them to make a sweep of the place. And Mickey D's responded by suing Ms. Calderon for 1.25 million dollars.
Is this typical or what?
"Because one of the icons of globalization is involved, the dispute has become a cause c�l�bre in Chile. McDonald's says it is merely trying to defend its reputation against a slander, but consumer advocates see sinister motives at work.
"McDonald's doesn't have a prayer of collecting this money, so it is clear that what they really want is to send a message to every consumer in Chile," said Luis J�rez, legal director of the National Consumer Service, a government agency. "What they are saying to consumers is this: watch your step, be careful, think twice before you criticize us, because you'll get in trouble with the law."
McDonald's loves to do this kind of thing. Remember the McLibel suit? When Mickey D for Devil spent 38 million dollars going after two unemployed, pamphleteering activists in court in Britain? It was a circus: the two activists ran circles around the big corp, even going so far as to dig up a repentent Ronald McDonald. The guy in the clown suit wept for the slaughter of bovine innocents, of which he'd been the tool, as well as subtly directing the fragile infantile libido to alluring images of a bunch of animated dead animal sandwiches, fetishs the young tikes will take years to get over, if ever. Yes, tears, gentle tears, folks. The two activists now run a website, the Mcspotlight, which hoards anti-McDonald's news, along with the exhaustive and exhausting trial transcript of the whole bloody trial, which lasted years, and supposedly cost McDonald's 38 million dollars. Sad thing about the site is that you get the feeling, this was it for those two. The high point. The thing they can't get over. And the exploitation of it, even for the goodly purpose of throwing rocks at this mega-corps -- well, it isn't like this is Gandhi in India, exactly. To be an activist and to hit the exacta like that -- and then the life afterwards, in the guttering light of that thrill...
Years ago, my friend D. surreptitiously took a job at a Mickey D's. His junk food gig coincided with my arrival in town. I'd made the long trek from Santa Fe to New Haven. D. had promised me that when I arrived, we'd both get jobs as garbage men. This turned out to be rank optimism, on D.'s part, since the township of West Haven, as a matter of fact, was not keeping slots warm for us on one of their primo garbage trucks. Just as well, I guess. So there I was, Limited Inc., staying at D.'s place, which was the downstairs part of a house owned by a German ex-maid. Because D. was afraid that the maid didn't want me in his quarters -- I don't know, her paranoia, his rent, some concantenation of bad circs and money troubles -- he encouraged me to sort of hide by day. For instance, remaining in a closet might be a good idea, he hinted. Or had I thought of wandering aimlessly between the hours of dawn and sunset through the friendly streets of West Haven? Then he'd annouce that he had to do some task he couldn't talk about, and disappear. Eventually I wormed it out of him. He said that it was a pretty cool job. The employees value added to the pittances they were making, hourly, by boosting boxes of patties and buns. Easy way to do this was to hoist one of the boxes into the dumpster out back, then retrieve it and go home with it. Although I thought, theoretically, that the company should be bled in this way, given their adamant resistance to paying a living wage, on a more practical level I couldn't help but worry that diffusing the patties among the kids at home might not be the healthiest thing a parent can do.
McDonald's, McDonald's.
Do read the story of the bad burger in the NYT today. A Chilean woman named Carmen Calderon went into a McDonald's to complain that her son had gotten sick after eating some Mickey D special. Some employee said look, it is cleaner here than in your house. Calderon then went to the municipal health agency, got them to make a sweep of the place. And Mickey D's responded by suing Ms. Calderon for 1.25 million dollars.
Is this typical or what?
"Because one of the icons of globalization is involved, the dispute has become a cause c�l�bre in Chile. McDonald's says it is merely trying to defend its reputation against a slander, but consumer advocates see sinister motives at work.
"McDonald's doesn't have a prayer of collecting this money, so it is clear that what they really want is to send a message to every consumer in Chile," said Luis J�rez, legal director of the National Consumer Service, a government agency. "What they are saying to consumers is this: watch your step, be careful, think twice before you criticize us, because you'll get in trouble with the law."
McDonald's loves to do this kind of thing. Remember the McLibel suit? When Mickey D for Devil spent 38 million dollars going after two unemployed, pamphleteering activists in court in Britain? It was a circus: the two activists ran circles around the big corp, even going so far as to dig up a repentent Ronald McDonald. The guy in the clown suit wept for the slaughter of bovine innocents, of which he'd been the tool, as well as subtly directing the fragile infantile libido to alluring images of a bunch of animated dead animal sandwiches, fetishs the young tikes will take years to get over, if ever. Yes, tears, gentle tears, folks. The two activists now run a website, the Mcspotlight, which hoards anti-McDonald's news, along with the exhaustive and exhausting trial transcript of the whole bloody trial, which lasted years, and supposedly cost McDonald's 38 million dollars. Sad thing about the site is that you get the feeling, this was it for those two. The high point. The thing they can't get over. And the exploitation of it, even for the goodly purpose of throwing rocks at this mega-corps -- well, it isn't like this is Gandhi in India, exactly. To be an activist and to hit the exacta like that -- and then the life afterwards, in the guttering light of that thrill...
Years ago, my friend D. surreptitiously took a job at a Mickey D's. His junk food gig coincided with my arrival in town. I'd made the long trek from Santa Fe to New Haven. D. had promised me that when I arrived, we'd both get jobs as garbage men. This turned out to be rank optimism, on D.'s part, since the township of West Haven, as a matter of fact, was not keeping slots warm for us on one of their primo garbage trucks. Just as well, I guess. So there I was, Limited Inc., staying at D.'s place, which was the downstairs part of a house owned by a German ex-maid. Because D. was afraid that the maid didn't want me in his quarters -- I don't know, her paranoia, his rent, some concantenation of bad circs and money troubles -- he encouraged me to sort of hide by day. For instance, remaining in a closet might be a good idea, he hinted. Or had I thought of wandering aimlessly between the hours of dawn and sunset through the friendly streets of West Haven? Then he'd annouce that he had to do some task he couldn't talk about, and disappear. Eventually I wormed it out of him. He said that it was a pretty cool job. The employees value added to the pittances they were making, hourly, by boosting boxes of patties and buns. Easy way to do this was to hoist one of the boxes into the dumpster out back, then retrieve it and go home with it. Although I thought, theoretically, that the company should be bled in this way, given their adamant resistance to paying a living wage, on a more practical level I couldn't help but worry that diffusing the patties among the kids at home might not be the healthiest thing a parent can do.
Tuesday, April 02, 2002
Remora
Literally hundreds of my readers have been writing in demanding that I compare, point for point, Edmund Spenser's A Veue of the Present State of Ireland with the current discourse in the press about the 'terroristic" Palestinians.
Okay, okay, maybe not literally hundreds. Maybe LI doesn't even have hundreds of readers.
But still, if hundreds had written in to suggest this idea, it would have made sense to me. Since many of the rhetorical arguments rehearsed, in Spenser's text, to justify the English occupation of Irish territory and the abridgment of Irish rights, under common law, up to and including seizure of property, imprisonment, and death, resurface periodically like a chronic neural disease in the Western body. LI was thinking about this while perusing the bloodier effusions of the Washington Posts marching corps of conservative apologists, especially Michael Kelly and the always delightful Charles Krauthammer. For instance, here is Chalie me darlin' talking about the kvetching bolshies and the war:
"Just five days into the war, for example, Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, demanded that U.S. bombing stop so she and her indispensable cohort could feed the hungry. Had we listened to them, tens of thousands of Afghans would have died. As it was, the bombing defeated the Taliban -- whose cruel and catastrophic misrule was the source of the famine -- and thus saved the Afghans from starvation.
By year's end, with Afghanistan liberated and the Bill of Rights still intact, the opposition moved on. To military tribunals.Alas, no luck. And no legs. Americans have not much appetite for giving al Qaeda the run of a massive judicial apparatus designed for those who live by the American Constitution. They sensibly want to keep the number of years-long, jury-endangering, media-circus civilian trials for terrorists down to the bare minimum. Already three -- John Walker Lindh, American Taliban; Zacarias Moussaoui, "20th hijacker"; and Richard Reid, shoe bomber -- will enjoy O.J. levels of media coverage."
This is amazingly good stuff. I love the moral outrage about the Taliban's cruelty to the Afghans -- a cruelty rediscovered, with alacrity, after 9/11, by the same people who were, well, a little blind to it before. Before then, of course, there was, shall we admit it? a bit of softness for the Taliban on the right. A bit of admiration for this offshoot of the one good war, the Gippers war in Afghanistan. This article in Counterpunch quotes a 1997 London Telegraph story about Texas hospitality and the Taliban, at that time the legitimate guv, or so it seemed, sitting on a strategic area that Unocol in particular would like to put an oil pipeline through. According to that article, the "Taliban was learning how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph, "stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus." The Taliban representatives "...were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.
Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is."
As the Good Lord's son said, though, the wind blows where it listeth. Or time and tide wait for no man. Or something like that. In any case, we shouldn't underestimate the revelation that Krauthammer is four square against mass starvation. This is a distinct softening of the Bush's favorite organ, the heart-- it is even, dare I say it, compassionate conservativism at work. That Krauthammer now believes that the mass starvation of those without the law is, well, plumb wicked, is a step up the moral ladder. Isn't that Maslow's term? Soon, who knows, he might come out with some aberrant position against taking the bread from the mouths of orphans. I doubt it, however. There's a coloring, in that phrase, of the dread welfare state. Don't want that back, do we?
But this is mere icing on the cake. What we really, really love is CK's irritated assent to the jury tradition in common law. He of course knows that it is a bad thing, an encouragement to minorities to get uppity, and an impediment to throwing people in jail without having them get all that publicity. The Argentine military had a way of handling these things that, in grave times, one has to admire. It causes a guy like Krauthammer extreme pain to see the guilty being accorded rights. Rights, of course, are for the non-guilty. Silly. All the fault of the Warren court. But goddamn it, let's not start giving everybody rights. That would definitely be the decline of civilization, or the triumph of the wogs, one. Incidentally, we love the 20th hijacker label too, especially since the guy inconveniently didn't hijack anything. Luckily, in the current climate in America, a middle eastern sympathizer with Satan isn't going to get away with not hijacking an airplane -- he's obviously guilty, in his dreams, and so let's hang him high. That the death penalty is shirked at for people who, uh, haven't hijacked planes but wanted to is the kind of lily livered thing lefties are famous for. Along with their well known affection for sher'ia. How this coheres with their other affections (for lesbians and gays and environazis and degenerate art) is a question for the psychoanalyst more than for poor CK. He's a simple guy, who knows perversion when he smells it.
Ah, and this takes us back to our man Spenser: compare the rantings of Krauthammer with this oaken appeal to sophistry in the service of imperial power in VPSI. The Speakers in this dialogue are colloquying together about the Irish, and in the course of this dialogue an astonishing number of the myths that have justified occupations, imperialism, and the unequal treatment of peoples in their own Heimat are, if not shaped for the first time, at least collected together. In particular, Spenser comes up with a mythical history about the English ownership of Ireland, which was apparently conceded to the English long ago, and the craft of the natives, who hied to the hills in the fourteenth century and waited until the War of the Roses distracted the noble Brits. Then, you know it, bingo, like white on rice, the so called natives are all over the true possessors of the land. There is much in this story that corresponds to the Israeli myth that the Palestinians just picked up and fled in '48, without the stimulus of the Israeli militia. And in the same way that myth relies on two natural characteristics of the native -- cowardice and craftiness -- so, too, it feeds into the justification for inequity in the justice system. A la our man Krauthammer.
"Iren: The comon law is, as I before said, of it selfe most rightfull and verie convenient, I suppose, for the kingdom for which it was first devized; for this, I thinke, as yt seemes reasonable, that out of the manners of the people, and abuses of the countrie, for which they were invented, they tooke theire first begynninge, for else they should be most unjust: for no lawes of man, accordinge to the straight rule of right, are just, but as in regard of the evills which they prevent, and the safetie of the common weale which they provide for. As for example, in the true ballancinge of Justice, it is a flatt wrong to punishe the thought or purpose of any, before it be enacted: for true justice punisheth nothing but the evill acte or wycked worde, yet by the lawes of all kingdomes it is a capitall cryme, to devise or purpose the death of the King: the reason is, for that when such a purpose is effected, it should be too late to devise of the punishment therof, and should turne that common-weale to more hurt by suche losse of theire Prince, then suche punishment of the malefactors. And therefore the lawe in that case punishes his thought: for better is a mischief, then an inconvenience. So that jus polliticum, though it be not of it selfe just, yet by applicacon, or rather necessitie, it is made just; and this only respect maketh all lawe just. Nowe then, if these lawes of Ireland be not likewise applied and fitted for that Realme, they are sure verie inconvenient.
Eudox: You reason stronglie; but what unfitness doe you fynde in them for that Realme? shewe us some
particulers.
Iren: The common lawe appointeth that all trialls, aswel of crymes as titles and ryghtes, shall be made
by verdict of Jurye, chosen out of the honestist and most substancal free-holders: Nowe all the ffree-holders of that Realme are Irishe, which when the cause shall fall betwene an Irishe man and an Englyshe, or betwene the Quene and any ffreeholder of that countrye, they make no more scruple to passe against the Englisheman or the Quene, though it bee to strain theire oaths, then to drinke milke unstrayned. So that before the jury goe togeather, it is all to nothing what theire verdict will be. The tryall thereof have I so often sene, that I dare confidentlie avouche the abuse thereof: Yet is the lawe of it selfe, as I said, good; and the first institucon thereof being given to all Englishemen verie rightfull, but nowe that the Yrishe have stepped in to the rowmes of the Englishe, who are nowe become so hedefull and provident to keepe them forth from thensforth, that they make no scruple of conscience to passe against them, it is good reason that either that corse of the Lawe for trialls be altered, or that other provision for juries be made.
In other words -- by all means have trials, if the guilty verdicts are assured. Otherwise, trialls must be altered. So let's have some tribunal action, or fix the juries. Otherwise Krauthammer is going to be looking for lefties under his bed. .
Literally hundreds of my readers have been writing in demanding that I compare, point for point, Edmund Spenser's A Veue of the Present State of Ireland with the current discourse in the press about the 'terroristic" Palestinians.
Okay, okay, maybe not literally hundreds. Maybe LI doesn't even have hundreds of readers.
But still, if hundreds had written in to suggest this idea, it would have made sense to me. Since many of the rhetorical arguments rehearsed, in Spenser's text, to justify the English occupation of Irish territory and the abridgment of Irish rights, under common law, up to and including seizure of property, imprisonment, and death, resurface periodically like a chronic neural disease in the Western body. LI was thinking about this while perusing the bloodier effusions of the Washington Posts marching corps of conservative apologists, especially Michael Kelly and the always delightful Charles Krauthammer. For instance, here is Chalie me darlin' talking about the kvetching bolshies and the war:
"Just five days into the war, for example, Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, demanded that U.S. bombing stop so she and her indispensable cohort could feed the hungry. Had we listened to them, tens of thousands of Afghans would have died. As it was, the bombing defeated the Taliban -- whose cruel and catastrophic misrule was the source of the famine -- and thus saved the Afghans from starvation.
By year's end, with Afghanistan liberated and the Bill of Rights still intact, the opposition moved on. To military tribunals.Alas, no luck. And no legs. Americans have not much appetite for giving al Qaeda the run of a massive judicial apparatus designed for those who live by the American Constitution. They sensibly want to keep the number of years-long, jury-endangering, media-circus civilian trials for terrorists down to the bare minimum. Already three -- John Walker Lindh, American Taliban; Zacarias Moussaoui, "20th hijacker"; and Richard Reid, shoe bomber -- will enjoy O.J. levels of media coverage."
This is amazingly good stuff. I love the moral outrage about the Taliban's cruelty to the Afghans -- a cruelty rediscovered, with alacrity, after 9/11, by the same people who were, well, a little blind to it before. Before then, of course, there was, shall we admit it? a bit of softness for the Taliban on the right. A bit of admiration for this offshoot of the one good war, the Gippers war in Afghanistan. This article in Counterpunch quotes a 1997 London Telegraph story about Texas hospitality and the Taliban, at that time the legitimate guv, or so it seemed, sitting on a strategic area that Unocol in particular would like to put an oil pipeline through. According to that article, the "Taliban was learning how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph, "stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus." The Taliban representatives "...were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.
Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is."
As the Good Lord's son said, though, the wind blows where it listeth. Or time and tide wait for no man. Or something like that. In any case, we shouldn't underestimate the revelation that Krauthammer is four square against mass starvation. This is a distinct softening of the Bush's favorite organ, the heart-- it is even, dare I say it, compassionate conservativism at work. That Krauthammer now believes that the mass starvation of those without the law is, well, plumb wicked, is a step up the moral ladder. Isn't that Maslow's term? Soon, who knows, he might come out with some aberrant position against taking the bread from the mouths of orphans. I doubt it, however. There's a coloring, in that phrase, of the dread welfare state. Don't want that back, do we?
But this is mere icing on the cake. What we really, really love is CK's irritated assent to the jury tradition in common law. He of course knows that it is a bad thing, an encouragement to minorities to get uppity, and an impediment to throwing people in jail without having them get all that publicity. The Argentine military had a way of handling these things that, in grave times, one has to admire. It causes a guy like Krauthammer extreme pain to see the guilty being accorded rights. Rights, of course, are for the non-guilty. Silly. All the fault of the Warren court. But goddamn it, let's not start giving everybody rights. That would definitely be the decline of civilization, or the triumph of the wogs, one. Incidentally, we love the 20th hijacker label too, especially since the guy inconveniently didn't hijack anything. Luckily, in the current climate in America, a middle eastern sympathizer with Satan isn't going to get away with not hijacking an airplane -- he's obviously guilty, in his dreams, and so let's hang him high. That the death penalty is shirked at for people who, uh, haven't hijacked planes but wanted to is the kind of lily livered thing lefties are famous for. Along with their well known affection for sher'ia. How this coheres with their other affections (for lesbians and gays and environazis and degenerate art) is a question for the psychoanalyst more than for poor CK. He's a simple guy, who knows perversion when he smells it.
Ah, and this takes us back to our man Spenser: compare the rantings of Krauthammer with this oaken appeal to sophistry in the service of imperial power in VPSI. The Speakers in this dialogue are colloquying together about the Irish, and in the course of this dialogue an astonishing number of the myths that have justified occupations, imperialism, and the unequal treatment of peoples in their own Heimat are, if not shaped for the first time, at least collected together. In particular, Spenser comes up with a mythical history about the English ownership of Ireland, which was apparently conceded to the English long ago, and the craft of the natives, who hied to the hills in the fourteenth century and waited until the War of the Roses distracted the noble Brits. Then, you know it, bingo, like white on rice, the so called natives are all over the true possessors of the land. There is much in this story that corresponds to the Israeli myth that the Palestinians just picked up and fled in '48, without the stimulus of the Israeli militia. And in the same way that myth relies on two natural characteristics of the native -- cowardice and craftiness -- so, too, it feeds into the justification for inequity in the justice system. A la our man Krauthammer.
"Iren: The comon law is, as I before said, of it selfe most rightfull and verie convenient, I suppose, for the kingdom for which it was first devized; for this, I thinke, as yt seemes reasonable, that out of the manners of the people, and abuses of the countrie, for which they were invented, they tooke theire first begynninge, for else they should be most unjust: for no lawes of man, accordinge to the straight rule of right, are just, but as in regard of the evills which they prevent, and the safetie of the common weale which they provide for. As for example, in the true ballancinge of Justice, it is a flatt wrong to punishe the thought or purpose of any, before it be enacted: for true justice punisheth nothing but the evill acte or wycked worde, yet by the lawes of all kingdomes it is a capitall cryme, to devise or purpose the death of the King: the reason is, for that when such a purpose is effected, it should be too late to devise of the punishment therof, and should turne that common-weale to more hurt by suche losse of theire Prince, then suche punishment of the malefactors. And therefore the lawe in that case punishes his thought: for better is a mischief, then an inconvenience. So that jus polliticum, though it be not of it selfe just, yet by applicacon, or rather necessitie, it is made just; and this only respect maketh all lawe just. Nowe then, if these lawes of Ireland be not likewise applied and fitted for that Realme, they are sure verie inconvenient.
Eudox: You reason stronglie; but what unfitness doe you fynde in them for that Realme? shewe us some
particulers.
Iren: The common lawe appointeth that all trialls, aswel of crymes as titles and ryghtes, shall be made
by verdict of Jurye, chosen out of the honestist and most substancal free-holders: Nowe all the ffree-holders of that Realme are Irishe, which when the cause shall fall betwene an Irishe man and an Englyshe, or betwene the Quene and any ffreeholder of that countrye, they make no more scruple to passe against the Englisheman or the Quene, though it bee to strain theire oaths, then to drinke milke unstrayned. So that before the jury goe togeather, it is all to nothing what theire verdict will be. The tryall thereof have I so often sene, that I dare confidentlie avouche the abuse thereof: Yet is the lawe of it selfe, as I said, good; and the first institucon thereof being given to all Englishemen verie rightfull, but nowe that the Yrishe have stepped in to the rowmes of the Englishe, who are nowe become so hedefull and provident to keepe them forth from thensforth, that they make no scruple of conscience to passe against them, it is good reason that either that corse of the Lawe for trialls be altered, or that other provision for juries be made.
In other words -- by all means have trials, if the guilty verdicts are assured. Otherwise, trialls must be altered. So let's have some tribunal action, or fix the juries. Otherwise Krauthammer is going to be looking for lefties under his bed. .
Friday, March 29, 2002
Remora
LI gives way to nobody in his utter contempt for the Bush administration. But you have to give them credit for moving the Middle East a giant step closer to peace. Sending Dick Cheney on his '002 Let's Roll tour apparently so alarmed the governments he visited (there's nothing like madness in a great power to make the satraps nervous) that the Saudis, of all people, have cemented a little peace, love and understanding between the monstrous minions of Hussein and the cold blooded plutocrats of Kuwait:
Attempts to reconcile Iraq and Kuwait at previous Arab summits failed � from the 1990 meeting immediately after the Iraqi invasion when a Kuwaiti sheik famously hurled plates at the Iraqi delegation to last year's summit in Amman, Jordan, when talks again collapsed. The annual gatherings of Arab heads of state were suspended throughout the 1990's because of the sour relations between Iraq and Kuwait. The Beirut meeting showed all the signs of following the usual pattern, with the Kuwaiti minister of state for foreign affairs summoning the press to his suite Monday to declare that Iraq was up to its old tricks.
But the existence of two major regional disputes � the Israeli-Palestinian turmoil and a looming conflict over Iraq � seems to have pushed through a compromise.
In order to avoid being attacked, the Iraqis were willing to be more flexible on Kuwaiti and other Arab demands. The other Arab states were eager to find a way to express their discontent over their perception that the United States is so little involved in the region that it could not even ensure the presence of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, at the summit."
Remember all those stories about the competence, ah, the admirable competence, of the crew around Bush, in the wake of 9/11? Let's add up the bill: Israel looks like Algeria, circa 1957; Iraq, led by one of the biggest mass murderers of our time, is now being welcomed into the fold of the former plate hurling alliance; the insane missile defense system, which has shown its irrelevance to the current world posture of threats for all to see, is being generously funded once again by the incorrigible folks in the White House (no doubt we would find, if we looked, long cozy meetings between the guys at General Dynamics and Donald Rumsfield's people before the Bushies fired up their Star Wars Defense propaganda machine); Pakistan and India look, more than ever, like two nations on the verge of nuclear war; and Br'er Rabbit, ie Osama Bin Laden, has apparently gone back into the briar patch -- notwithstanding the mythical ability of the US armed forces to see, hear, and know everything. And of course there's the little matter of the out standing anthrax monster, who all the king's horses and all the king's men can't seem to find. Instead, we get the FBI pressing some klutz who treated one of the hijackers for some infection on his leg until the man says, gee, that musta been anthrax. Yeah, right.
LI is a believer in the Reality principle, hard as that faith is to maintain in our present perilous times. So this is what we think: the sheer incompetence of the Coupsters is eventually going to leak through our shining victory over the Taliban. That is, unless they do something right. Like, for instance, catching Br'er Rabbit. Or catching the anthrax guy. Or coming up with some magic in Israel - the longest shot of all. Chance favors nobody in the short term-- and in the long term, to paraphrase Pasteur, "dans les champs de battaille, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits pr�par�s
."
LI gives way to nobody in his utter contempt for the Bush administration. But you have to give them credit for moving the Middle East a giant step closer to peace. Sending Dick Cheney on his '002 Let's Roll tour apparently so alarmed the governments he visited (there's nothing like madness in a great power to make the satraps nervous) that the Saudis, of all people, have cemented a little peace, love and understanding between the monstrous minions of Hussein and the cold blooded plutocrats of Kuwait:
Attempts to reconcile Iraq and Kuwait at previous Arab summits failed � from the 1990 meeting immediately after the Iraqi invasion when a Kuwaiti sheik famously hurled plates at the Iraqi delegation to last year's summit in Amman, Jordan, when talks again collapsed. The annual gatherings of Arab heads of state were suspended throughout the 1990's because of the sour relations between Iraq and Kuwait. The Beirut meeting showed all the signs of following the usual pattern, with the Kuwaiti minister of state for foreign affairs summoning the press to his suite Monday to declare that Iraq was up to its old tricks.
But the existence of two major regional disputes � the Israeli-Palestinian turmoil and a looming conflict over Iraq � seems to have pushed through a compromise.
In order to avoid being attacked, the Iraqis were willing to be more flexible on Kuwaiti and other Arab demands. The other Arab states were eager to find a way to express their discontent over their perception that the United States is so little involved in the region that it could not even ensure the presence of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, at the summit."
Remember all those stories about the competence, ah, the admirable competence, of the crew around Bush, in the wake of 9/11? Let's add up the bill: Israel looks like Algeria, circa 1957; Iraq, led by one of the biggest mass murderers of our time, is now being welcomed into the fold of the former plate hurling alliance; the insane missile defense system, which has shown its irrelevance to the current world posture of threats for all to see, is being generously funded once again by the incorrigible folks in the White House (no doubt we would find, if we looked, long cozy meetings between the guys at General Dynamics and Donald Rumsfield's people before the Bushies fired up their Star Wars Defense propaganda machine); Pakistan and India look, more than ever, like two nations on the verge of nuclear war; and Br'er Rabbit, ie Osama Bin Laden, has apparently gone back into the briar patch -- notwithstanding the mythical ability of the US armed forces to see, hear, and know everything. And of course there's the little matter of the out standing anthrax monster, who all the king's horses and all the king's men can't seem to find. Instead, we get the FBI pressing some klutz who treated one of the hijackers for some infection on his leg until the man says, gee, that musta been anthrax. Yeah, right.
LI is a believer in the Reality principle, hard as that faith is to maintain in our present perilous times. So this is what we think: the sheer incompetence of the Coupsters is eventually going to leak through our shining victory over the Taliban. That is, unless they do something right. Like, for instance, catching Br'er Rabbit. Or catching the anthrax guy. Or coming up with some magic in Israel - the longest shot of all. Chance favors nobody in the short term-- and in the long term, to paraphrase Pasteur, "dans les champs de battaille, le hasard ne favorise que les esprits pr�par�s
."
Thursday, March 28, 2002
Remora
This just in from the Times.
Washington, March 27 -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced today that the Energy Department is renaming itself. "From now on, we will be the Energy Company Department," Mr. Abraham said in a conference call with business journalists. A consortium of energy industries, lead by Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former top executives of the Enron Corporation, will oversee a tightening of the newly renamed department. Abrahams conference call was interspersed with his trademark gutsy humor. "Christ," he said, "we weren't even elected. We have to work fast to make sure you guys get some of that ROI in our coup." Abrahams was referring to the offer made by a SATANSPAWN, a limited liability corporation, to swap policy options with the Republican party. In a surprising use of this so far barely tested financial instrument, SATANSPAWN (consisting, reportedly, of 18 top energy CEOS) optioned a "put" on the so called "American energy policy" for $16.6 million, in return for a Stripped Mortgage-Backed Florida Election Security, or SMBFES (commonly called SMURF BALL FESTS by traders). These mortgage backed issues are indexed to two election market options: the value of non-felons erased "accidentally" from Florida voting rolls, and the amortized value of deteriorations among voting machines in the Miami metro area. Guaranteed by the Florida government, Smurf Ball Fests have not been as popular among hedge funds as was first hoped when they were issued in November, 2000.
The decision to rename the department is a welcome clarification of the Bush administration's end of the year projections. The pressure to speed up the Department's restructuring has increased as energy equities have languished this quarter. Analyst Dick Scheiner of Killemandsellem Consulting, said the announcement was expected, but welcome. "Since the coup, the Department has been re-configured away from any long term Eco concerns, but it has not been doing the big things the industry wants. Drags on the overall profit picture during the last five years have included forcing oil companies to pay taxes, to pay at least 5% of the tab on major oil spills, and protecting so called "environmental areas," such as the coast of the US, national parks, and even rain forests. What we are seeing now is a welcome signal that the administration is pushing the "rape of the earth scenario," which has been carefully worked out with more than 100 energy industry executives, trade association leaders and lobbyists, into high gear."
In a related development, Dick Cheney released his first single, "Blow-off da stratosphere, what you say?," on his four CD contract with Interscope records. His spokesman, Orah Reilly, said, 'with all the downtime in the cellar, when like the terrorists were getting all bitchy, DC started scratchin his Lawrence Welks. And it just like totally converged."
Mr Abrahams was credited as a turnround expert when first appointed by Commandante Bush, but since the rocky start of his tenure, many analysts have complained about the pace of change. "What we look at is the rate of species extinction," Mr. Scheiner explained. 'We were looking for a big bounce there. But so far, it has been pitiful -- a bird here, a mammal there. We were hoping for some robust SE in this quarter, frankly." Although the renaming to Energy Company Department is not a major policy change, it does send a signal that the Bush administration is serious about environmental degradation. Still, there are questions over the speed at which Bush can completely overturn democracy and all it stands for, which have depressed the Republican Party's share of energy company contributions to around 85% compared with a 12-month high of 100% in January last year. Democratic spokeswoman Jill Coleburn said that the Democratic Party would consider renaming other departments in a bid to remain competitive in the Policy option market. "We pioneered the Lincoln's bedroom thing, and I don't think the Republicans have anything to tell us about marketing," Ms. Coleburn claimed. "How about this? The Bill Gates Attorney Generals Office? We think it puts a more human face on oppressing the vast majority of the electorate in favor of enriching a few plutocrats, don't you?"
This just in from the Times.
Washington, March 27 -- Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced today that the Energy Department is renaming itself. "From now on, we will be the Energy Company Department," Mr. Abraham said in a conference call with business journalists. A consortium of energy industries, lead by Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former top executives of the Enron Corporation, will oversee a tightening of the newly renamed department. Abrahams conference call was interspersed with his trademark gutsy humor. "Christ," he said, "we weren't even elected. We have to work fast to make sure you guys get some of that ROI in our coup." Abrahams was referring to the offer made by a SATANSPAWN, a limited liability corporation, to swap policy options with the Republican party. In a surprising use of this so far barely tested financial instrument, SATANSPAWN (consisting, reportedly, of 18 top energy CEOS) optioned a "put" on the so called "American energy policy" for $16.6 million, in return for a Stripped Mortgage-Backed Florida Election Security, or SMBFES (commonly called SMURF BALL FESTS by traders). These mortgage backed issues are indexed to two election market options: the value of non-felons erased "accidentally" from Florida voting rolls, and the amortized value of deteriorations among voting machines in the Miami metro area. Guaranteed by the Florida government, Smurf Ball Fests have not been as popular among hedge funds as was first hoped when they were issued in November, 2000.
The decision to rename the department is a welcome clarification of the Bush administration's end of the year projections. The pressure to speed up the Department's restructuring has increased as energy equities have languished this quarter. Analyst Dick Scheiner of Killemandsellem Consulting, said the announcement was expected, but welcome. "Since the coup, the Department has been re-configured away from any long term Eco concerns, but it has not been doing the big things the industry wants. Drags on the overall profit picture during the last five years have included forcing oil companies to pay taxes, to pay at least 5% of the tab on major oil spills, and protecting so called "environmental areas," such as the coast of the US, national parks, and even rain forests. What we are seeing now is a welcome signal that the administration is pushing the "rape of the earth scenario," which has been carefully worked out with more than 100 energy industry executives, trade association leaders and lobbyists, into high gear."
In a related development, Dick Cheney released his first single, "Blow-off da stratosphere, what you say?," on his four CD contract with Interscope records. His spokesman, Orah Reilly, said, 'with all the downtime in the cellar, when like the terrorists were getting all bitchy, DC started scratchin his Lawrence Welks. And it just like totally converged."
Mr Abrahams was credited as a turnround expert when first appointed by Commandante Bush, but since the rocky start of his tenure, many analysts have complained about the pace of change. "What we look at is the rate of species extinction," Mr. Scheiner explained. 'We were looking for a big bounce there. But so far, it has been pitiful -- a bird here, a mammal there. We were hoping for some robust SE in this quarter, frankly." Although the renaming to Energy Company Department is not a major policy change, it does send a signal that the Bush administration is serious about environmental degradation. Still, there are questions over the speed at which Bush can completely overturn democracy and all it stands for, which have depressed the Republican Party's share of energy company contributions to around 85% compared with a 12-month high of 100% in January last year. Democratic spokeswoman Jill Coleburn said that the Democratic Party would consider renaming other departments in a bid to remain competitive in the Policy option market. "We pioneered the Lincoln's bedroom thing, and I don't think the Republicans have anything to tell us about marketing," Ms. Coleburn claimed. "How about this? The Bill Gates Attorney Generals Office? We think it puts a more human face on oppressing the vast majority of the electorate in favor of enriching a few plutocrats, don't you?"
Wednesday, March 27, 2002
Remora
Are the hard times over for Burger King? Actually, LI doesn't care. We just wanted to write that sentence, which has a vaguely biz-o-lect sound. Apparently Burger King is suffering the pangs and arrows of outrageous customer dissatisfaction. They've turned against the whopper. Those bastards. Turns out BK is run by a giant British conglomerate -- you never know who owns the toys nowadays -- that also puts out the Smirnoff vodka. The Brits, showing rare good sense, have decided to concentrate on their intoxicant, and find a buyer for the ailing King.
When Limited Inc was a dewy youth, he preferred Burger King to McDonalds and especially to Dairy Queen. The royalty of cheap food -- how it studs the American highways and byways! Basically, LI's preference was swayed by the paper crowns you sometimes got at Burger King. And the shakes. As I remember it, the shakes were better than those plastic-y tasting concoctions you'd get at MacDonalds.
Time has not been kind enough to marry LI off ... Having no children to watch, wide eyed, as the tv shows grotesquely magnified burgers being whisked off grills, thus activating the Pavlovian impulse in the little dears, LI has no reason to return to the foods of yesteryear. Oh, now and then the rare visit to Schlotzky's, but besides that, fast food just isn't in our orbit. Nothing, though, conjures up repulsion like the thought of going into one of those boites and chowing down on the burgers. The LA Times, which has several unintentionally funny stories today (one about a "smear campaign" re Beautiful Mind, accusing the movie of covering up some of the facts about its subject, was particularly amusing -- it quotes Neal Gabler, a Hollywood intellectual whose brain stretches from Variety all the way to the spiritual heights of, say, Alan Toffler -- a giant, in other words, in every way, and a true credit to the industry -- as saying that the campaign, and Russell Crowe's failure to secure an Oscar, was -- well, I must quote the graf:
"I think, in the future, when people are thinking about using biopics, they'll be more cautious on how they use the facts," Gabler said. "I happen to think this is a tragedy. To think we have this new chilling effect. That artists are going to have to be bound by facts. ... Imagine if Shakespeare was bound to the real character in 'Richard III'? If he were alive today, would Shakespeare be called upon to revise that play?"
LI will not gild this lily with comment ), but the BK saga is tops. Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, are the grafs that particularly amused LI:
"In recent months, Burger King has made its shakes creamier and thicker by adding ice cream. It dressed up the Whopper with larger pieces of lettuce, thicker slices of tomatoes and pickles with a stronger dill flavor.
Mike Aldredge, 36, a Burger King regular for the last 15 years, has noticed the difference. The Costa Mesa resident, who eats at Burger King twice a week, said he liked the new and improved food so much he might easily double his visits.
"This is the best fast food I've ever had," he said, clutching a double Whopper with cheese. "And it's getting better."
However, new products and variety might not be the sales drivers Burger King executives expect. McDonald's much-hyped New Tastes Menu, which rotates new products year-round, has failed to attract hordes of new customers. In a recent national survey, Villa Park restaurant consultant Robert L. Sandelman found fast-food customers ranked cleanliness, taste and food flavor ahead of choice, which placed 11th out of 12 categories."
Question: where did that Mike Aldredge, 36, come from? Was there some kind of casting call? Second question: how much does he weigh? The vision of him, clutching his double whopper with cheese, is going to remain with LI the rest of the day. Sadly enough.
Are the hard times over for Burger King? Actually, LI doesn't care. We just wanted to write that sentence, which has a vaguely biz-o-lect sound. Apparently Burger King is suffering the pangs and arrows of outrageous customer dissatisfaction. They've turned against the whopper. Those bastards. Turns out BK is run by a giant British conglomerate -- you never know who owns the toys nowadays -- that also puts out the Smirnoff vodka. The Brits, showing rare good sense, have decided to concentrate on their intoxicant, and find a buyer for the ailing King.
When Limited Inc was a dewy youth, he preferred Burger King to McDonalds and especially to Dairy Queen. The royalty of cheap food -- how it studs the American highways and byways! Basically, LI's preference was swayed by the paper crowns you sometimes got at Burger King. And the shakes. As I remember it, the shakes were better than those plastic-y tasting concoctions you'd get at MacDonalds.
Time has not been kind enough to marry LI off ... Having no children to watch, wide eyed, as the tv shows grotesquely magnified burgers being whisked off grills, thus activating the Pavlovian impulse in the little dears, LI has no reason to return to the foods of yesteryear. Oh, now and then the rare visit to Schlotzky's, but besides that, fast food just isn't in our orbit. Nothing, though, conjures up repulsion like the thought of going into one of those boites and chowing down on the burgers. The LA Times, which has several unintentionally funny stories today (one about a "smear campaign" re Beautiful Mind, accusing the movie of covering up some of the facts about its subject, was particularly amusing -- it quotes Neal Gabler, a Hollywood intellectual whose brain stretches from Variety all the way to the spiritual heights of, say, Alan Toffler -- a giant, in other words, in every way, and a true credit to the industry -- as saying that the campaign, and Russell Crowe's failure to secure an Oscar, was -- well, I must quote the graf:
"I think, in the future, when people are thinking about using biopics, they'll be more cautious on how they use the facts," Gabler said. "I happen to think this is a tragedy. To think we have this new chilling effect. That artists are going to have to be bound by facts. ... Imagine if Shakespeare was bound to the real character in 'Richard III'? If he were alive today, would Shakespeare be called upon to revise that play?"
LI will not gild this lily with comment ), but the BK saga is tops. Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, are the grafs that particularly amused LI:
"In recent months, Burger King has made its shakes creamier and thicker by adding ice cream. It dressed up the Whopper with larger pieces of lettuce, thicker slices of tomatoes and pickles with a stronger dill flavor.
Mike Aldredge, 36, a Burger King regular for the last 15 years, has noticed the difference. The Costa Mesa resident, who eats at Burger King twice a week, said he liked the new and improved food so much he might easily double his visits.
"This is the best fast food I've ever had," he said, clutching a double Whopper with cheese. "And it's getting better."
However, new products and variety might not be the sales drivers Burger King executives expect. McDonald's much-hyped New Tastes Menu, which rotates new products year-round, has failed to attract hordes of new customers. In a recent national survey, Villa Park restaurant consultant Robert L. Sandelman found fast-food customers ranked cleanliness, taste and food flavor ahead of choice, which placed 11th out of 12 categories."
Question: where did that Mike Aldredge, 36, come from? Was there some kind of casting call? Second question: how much does he weigh? The vision of him, clutching his double whopper with cheese, is going to remain with LI the rest of the day. Sadly enough.
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Dope
Is it only Limited Inc's imagination, or should economists take more of an interest in "small-world" theory, associated with Duncan Watts and Stephen Strogatz?
Yes, my readers roar, in numbers too big to ignore. Read your Watts and Strogantz and sin no more! or something like that.
Well, to explain...
These two wrote a paper a few years ago, in which they tried to find the minimum path length for an undeterminately large network. They called these networks, with their improbably small dimensions, small worlds, after the Milgram experiment that supposedly showed that there are six degrees of separation or less between any two randomly selected people in the world (well, the experiment didn't make a claim that vast, but it has been made since then). The problem, from the perspective of networks, was that most individuals are connected to a cluster of individuals, in which each individual has a high chance of sharing acquaintances. So how do you break out of the cluster to connect to random, unfamiliar individuals? Here's a quote about the system set up by Watts and Duncan from a September, 1998 Physics Today article
"This result is actually quite general," says Watts (who will shortly be moving to the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico), "and does not depend on the choice of a ring substrate used in the model. All that is required to generate the small-world phenomenon is a network that is locally ordered (which means simply that two nodes with a mutual 'friend' are significantly more likely to be connected than two randomly selected nodes), and which has a small fraction of long-range shortcuts. The effect also does not depend on the specific nature of the network nodes or connections--only their topology--so the small-world phenomenon ought to arise in all sorts of large, sparse networks."
To check this, Watts and Strogatz examine the length and clustering properties of three real networks: the collaboration graph of movie actors (including approximately 225 000 actors of all nationalities since the start of motion pictures); the power-transmission grid of the western US; and the neural network of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans (the only organism whose neural network is completely known).
As Watts explains, they show that, in each case, the characteristic path length of the network is close to its theoretical minimum (that of an equivalent random graph), yet the clustering coefficient is far from minimal, indicating the presence of significant local order. So all three networks exhibit the small-world phenomenon. "
There is a book coming out in May from Mark Buchanan, Nexus, that not only explains Watts and Strogatz' work, but expands on it, explaining that Watts and Strogatz had stumbled on one form of small world network, and that there is at least one other possible form of small world network. This other form is related to the principle of "the rich get richer" -- that certain individuals are more connected, and by that very fact will become more connected. There is a network form for the fact that wealth is unequally distributed. Among network people, this is known as preferential attachment.
Now here's the question. One of the big rightwing pushes right now is to promote the idea that poverty in the third world is rather a mirage. Or, if not a mirage, caused by ... as you might have guessed, big government. The idea comes from Hernando de Soto, and it isn't quite as silly as it sounds. In two books he has promoted the idea that small, informal vendors and makers and homeowners need a system that recognizes them as free economic agents with capital. That is, if we strip away the onerous bureaucracy and government thievery, we could unleash, in the third world, value that is already there. This, after all, is partly what happened in the French Revolution. Anybody who reads Le Rouge et le Noir is going to have some sympathy with de Soto's point, because Stendhal is very conscious of the effect of liberalism, ie stripping away big guv and its thievish attachments, on the French landscape.
Is the rightwing idea going against the rule of preferential attachment, or seeding it?
Hernando de Soto is being presented to the American public as some kind of third world guru. The NYTimes magazine, last year, presented him as the answer to our dreams (insofar as our dreams involve giving up none of our stuff and not feeling guilty about it). But the earlier image of de Soto wasn't so heroic. Tina Rosenberg wrote a review of The Other Path in the New Republic, in 1991, that pretty much blasted de Soto as an egomaniac and a crony of Fujimori. Here is what she said about de Soto's grand vision:
"To Reaganites, however, the most marketable aspect of The Other Path is what it does not say. It does not talk about helping small businessmen acquire the infrastructure, technical assistance, or capital they need. It does not propose improving education, health care, or other programs that could get Peru's poor off to a better start in life. It does not address discrimination against Indians, which has shut Peru's poor out of many opportunities. Most informals are one rung above beggars. Redefining them as entrepreneurs doesn't cure what made them poor, especially in an economy that has experienced one of the worst declines in modern history. (The informal sector exploded in part because traditional jobs dried up; only 9 percent of workers in Lima earn a salary they can live on.) Not even legal businesses can get credit. But the book asserts that legal reforms alone will suffice to unlock the informal sector's engine of growth. De Soto compared the state to a dying emergency-room patient and told me, "I want to burn down the hospital."
The burning down the hospital phrase has been toned down, lately, and there is a little bit more heed being paid to infusing capital. There is an organization, Trickle Up, which just announced its association with the ubiquitous De Soto. Trickle Up is dedicated to making micro grants to the third world street neediest. Because it promotes the solid virtues of entrepeneurship and self reliance, Trickle Up has become a favorite for conservatives trying to summon up a little chic compassion.
"Grants are made by TUP to selected groups of five or more people after a business plan is reviewed for them by unpaid TUP project coordinators. The maximum grant is $100, and recipients must pledge to reinvest at least 20 percent of their profits in their businesses. In the past ten years, more than 90,000 individuals have participated, 15,000 businesses have been started in 86 countries, and over $7.5 million in profits have been generated from TUP-funded businesses. All of this has been achieved without the involvement of governments, large staffs, or social researchers. By now, you probably see why it's called the "Trickle Up Program." Funds aren't lavished upon government entities in poor countries with the hope that a small portion will somehow "trickle down" to the very poor. The grants go directly to the cagey entrepreneurs of the streets, including those in Port-au--Prince, Haiti.
Now, LI is fascinated with the project here: can beggars become choosers? It all looks very much like... like the 1966 War on Poverty project. One of the oddities of contemporary conservativism is this adoption of sixties forms, from classical rock to agit-prop. Hmm. In any case, LI is going to go further into this issue, this grassroots wealth issue, in another post soon.
Is it only Limited Inc's imagination, or should economists take more of an interest in "small-world" theory, associated with Duncan Watts and Stephen Strogatz?
Yes, my readers roar, in numbers too big to ignore. Read your Watts and Strogantz and sin no more! or something like that.
Well, to explain...
These two wrote a paper a few years ago, in which they tried to find the minimum path length for an undeterminately large network. They called these networks, with their improbably small dimensions, small worlds, after the Milgram experiment that supposedly showed that there are six degrees of separation or less between any two randomly selected people in the world (well, the experiment didn't make a claim that vast, but it has been made since then). The problem, from the perspective of networks, was that most individuals are connected to a cluster of individuals, in which each individual has a high chance of sharing acquaintances. So how do you break out of the cluster to connect to random, unfamiliar individuals? Here's a quote about the system set up by Watts and Duncan from a September, 1998 Physics Today article
"This result is actually quite general," says Watts (who will shortly be moving to the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico), "and does not depend on the choice of a ring substrate used in the model. All that is required to generate the small-world phenomenon is a network that is locally ordered (which means simply that two nodes with a mutual 'friend' are significantly more likely to be connected than two randomly selected nodes), and which has a small fraction of long-range shortcuts. The effect also does not depend on the specific nature of the network nodes or connections--only their topology--so the small-world phenomenon ought to arise in all sorts of large, sparse networks."
To check this, Watts and Strogatz examine the length and clustering properties of three real networks: the collaboration graph of movie actors (including approximately 225 000 actors of all nationalities since the start of motion pictures); the power-transmission grid of the western US; and the neural network of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans (the only organism whose neural network is completely known).
As Watts explains, they show that, in each case, the characteristic path length of the network is close to its theoretical minimum (that of an equivalent random graph), yet the clustering coefficient is far from minimal, indicating the presence of significant local order. So all three networks exhibit the small-world phenomenon. "
There is a book coming out in May from Mark Buchanan, Nexus, that not only explains Watts and Strogatz' work, but expands on it, explaining that Watts and Strogatz had stumbled on one form of small world network, and that there is at least one other possible form of small world network. This other form is related to the principle of "the rich get richer" -- that certain individuals are more connected, and by that very fact will become more connected. There is a network form for the fact that wealth is unequally distributed. Among network people, this is known as preferential attachment.
Now here's the question. One of the big rightwing pushes right now is to promote the idea that poverty in the third world is rather a mirage. Or, if not a mirage, caused by ... as you might have guessed, big government. The idea comes from Hernando de Soto, and it isn't quite as silly as it sounds. In two books he has promoted the idea that small, informal vendors and makers and homeowners need a system that recognizes them as free economic agents with capital. That is, if we strip away the onerous bureaucracy and government thievery, we could unleash, in the third world, value that is already there. This, after all, is partly what happened in the French Revolution. Anybody who reads Le Rouge et le Noir is going to have some sympathy with de Soto's point, because Stendhal is very conscious of the effect of liberalism, ie stripping away big guv and its thievish attachments, on the French landscape.
Is the rightwing idea going against the rule of preferential attachment, or seeding it?
Hernando de Soto is being presented to the American public as some kind of third world guru. The NYTimes magazine, last year, presented him as the answer to our dreams (insofar as our dreams involve giving up none of our stuff and not feeling guilty about it). But the earlier image of de Soto wasn't so heroic. Tina Rosenberg wrote a review of The Other Path in the New Republic, in 1991, that pretty much blasted de Soto as an egomaniac and a crony of Fujimori. Here is what she said about de Soto's grand vision:
"To Reaganites, however, the most marketable aspect of The Other Path is what it does not say. It does not talk about helping small businessmen acquire the infrastructure, technical assistance, or capital they need. It does not propose improving education, health care, or other programs that could get Peru's poor off to a better start in life. It does not address discrimination against Indians, which has shut Peru's poor out of many opportunities. Most informals are one rung above beggars. Redefining them as entrepreneurs doesn't cure what made them poor, especially in an economy that has experienced one of the worst declines in modern history. (The informal sector exploded in part because traditional jobs dried up; only 9 percent of workers in Lima earn a salary they can live on.) Not even legal businesses can get credit. But the book asserts that legal reforms alone will suffice to unlock the informal sector's engine of growth. De Soto compared the state to a dying emergency-room patient and told me, "I want to burn down the hospital."
The burning down the hospital phrase has been toned down, lately, and there is a little bit more heed being paid to infusing capital. There is an organization, Trickle Up, which just announced its association with the ubiquitous De Soto. Trickle Up is dedicated to making micro grants to the third world street neediest. Because it promotes the solid virtues of entrepeneurship and self reliance, Trickle Up has become a favorite for conservatives trying to summon up a little chic compassion.
"Grants are made by TUP to selected groups of five or more people after a business plan is reviewed for them by unpaid TUP project coordinators. The maximum grant is $100, and recipients must pledge to reinvest at least 20 percent of their profits in their businesses. In the past ten years, more than 90,000 individuals have participated, 15,000 businesses have been started in 86 countries, and over $7.5 million in profits have been generated from TUP-funded businesses. All of this has been achieved without the involvement of governments, large staffs, or social researchers. By now, you probably see why it's called the "Trickle Up Program." Funds aren't lavished upon government entities in poor countries with the hope that a small portion will somehow "trickle down" to the very poor. The grants go directly to the cagey entrepreneurs of the streets, including those in Port-au--Prince, Haiti.
Now, LI is fascinated with the project here: can beggars become choosers? It all looks very much like... like the 1966 War on Poverty project. One of the oddities of contemporary conservativism is this adoption of sixties forms, from classical rock to agit-prop. Hmm. In any case, LI is going to go further into this issue, this grassroots wealth issue, in another post soon.
Sunday, March 24, 2002
Remora
William Easterly. As in, who is William Easterly?
Right now, Easterly is on the screen as the World Bank economist who came in from the cold. He's written a book that points out (for those who haven't seen it) that the World Bank has failed to stave off poverty in the third world. He's being touted in conservative circles as the man who wants to cut aid, and make those third world slacker nations pay their debts on time. His article in Foreign Policy, which supposedly got him in dutch with his bosses (along with the book that came out of it, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics) is about the second of those two concerns. In it, he makes three of claims:
1. That debt relief is already happening, and in fact has been inscribed in the world system since the early eighties.
2. That the refusal of a nation that has a legitimate "democratic" government to pay back debts incurred by previous military or corrupt governments is a perverse incentive, insofar as the money loaned, at the same time, to "good governments" must be paid back. In effect, we are rewarding bad behavior.
3. That making debt relief conditional on a nation's having a democratic government, or the beginnings of a civil society, creates incentives to make the World Bank and the international lender entities more, rather than less, intrusive in the internal affairs of third world countries.
Now about these claims. Readers know that LI loves nothing better than setting up claims, like ninepins, and bowling them over. Arguing in the oxygen tent -- we take up all the air, you get the fun result.
But seriously, folks. All three of the claims are actually valid only insofar as debt relief is viewed from one side only: that is, from the side of the debtors. Take point 2. To claim that debt relief will send a perverse incentive, insofar as it will tip the parity between the debts of good nations and of 'bad" nations to the side of bad nations, is to ignore the disincentive sent to lender agencies if, in fact, the debts of military dictatorships and the like are voided. The perverse incentives in place, pace Easterly, have really been the other way: given the lack of discussion, or the lack of the organs necessary for discussion, in a military dictatorship, in fact lending agencies have a perverse incentive to loan to these nations. They can better negotiate terms with juntas than with democratically elected governments, and they can better envision the objectives of those loans -- say some unnecessary dam -- rather than the other type of loans -- a medical infrastructure, say. Meanwhile, there is, as we all know, an immense system of kickbacks in place, a system Easterly doesn't even touch on. Take Nigeria. We know that the loans that went to the rebarbative Abacha government. Here's a press release from, of all places, the American embassy to Nigeria:
"Jack A. Blum, an attorney who specializes in controlling bank fraud, government corruption and money laundering, said May 25 that "solving" Nigeria's long-term debt and corruption problem "will take a lot more than conferences on civil society and how to make people more honest."
To solve the problem, he told the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy in the U.S. House of Representatives, "You have to bring criminal justice and recovery of money into play. That is absolutely essential." That, he said, means "getting at the proceeds of corruption, going after the billions (thousands of millions of dollars) that (Former Nigerian Head of State, General Sani) Abacha took and the billions more that prior governments looted from the country."
Blum, who was called to testify on the Nigerian debt and corruption situation, said "Many of those people (who took those public funds) are sitting in London as some of the wealthiest people in England. Those assets cannot be overlooked.... Four billion (four thousand million dollars) with Abacha, $40 billion ($40,000 million) at least since independence," with some estimates running as high as $90 billion."
As a matter of fact, LI has talked to Jack Blum about this issue. We did a piece on money laundering for a magazine, the Globalist, which went funny on us and never paid for the piece. Blum's point is that the experience of Nigeria has been repeated over and over again. It isn't just that a place like Nigeria doesn't have infrastructural projects supposedly justifying the loans that were earmarked for them -- it is that the lending agencies knew, even as they were making the loans, that a significant portion of the money was being kicked back to the West, in the form of transfers to Western banks.
This is an area Easterly, supposedly the boldest and the baddest economist ever to walk away from the World Bank, doesn't even discuss.
Since his book was published eight months ago, one might wonder why he is being profiled, now, in the press. The reason is, he is dear to the Bush administration's heart, endorsing their position on foreign aid. Here are two grafs from his profile in the Washington Post:
"From 1988 to 2001, he was senior adviser to the World Bank's Development Research Group, the in-house brain trust charged with gauging the success or failure of the bank's development efforts around the world. In the process, he's trekked through slums from Karachi to Cairo and wears the good-humored but weary resignation of a lifetime idealist mugged at last by reality.
"He rejects the notion that he's any kind of whistle-blower. He still believes in both the World Bank ("there are a lot of really smart, really committed people there") and aid to developing nations, which he would like to see increased from the current level of $56 billion. In fact, foreign aid has been declining in recent years after peaking at $64 billion in 1991. Although private capital has taken up some of that slack, Wolfensohn has been calling for a $10 billion increase from the bank's member countries in each of the next five years."
Get the "mugged by reality line" -- was it William Krystal who said a neo-conservative was a liberal mugged by reality? Reality, you can be sure, is operating behind this metaphor in a very sooty skin. The American dilemma is, as it has always been, that no matter how elevated the supposed issue of the debate, it is always just one step away from a minstrel show. LI is infinitely depressed about that.
William Easterly. As in, who is William Easterly?
Right now, Easterly is on the screen as the World Bank economist who came in from the cold. He's written a book that points out (for those who haven't seen it) that the World Bank has failed to stave off poverty in the third world. He's being touted in conservative circles as the man who wants to cut aid, and make those third world slacker nations pay their debts on time. His article in Foreign Policy, which supposedly got him in dutch with his bosses (along with the book that came out of it, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics) is about the second of those two concerns. In it, he makes three of claims:
1. That debt relief is already happening, and in fact has been inscribed in the world system since the early eighties.
2. That the refusal of a nation that has a legitimate "democratic" government to pay back debts incurred by previous military or corrupt governments is a perverse incentive, insofar as the money loaned, at the same time, to "good governments" must be paid back. In effect, we are rewarding bad behavior.
3. That making debt relief conditional on a nation's having a democratic government, or the beginnings of a civil society, creates incentives to make the World Bank and the international lender entities more, rather than less, intrusive in the internal affairs of third world countries.
Now about these claims. Readers know that LI loves nothing better than setting up claims, like ninepins, and bowling them over. Arguing in the oxygen tent -- we take up all the air, you get the fun result.
But seriously, folks. All three of the claims are actually valid only insofar as debt relief is viewed from one side only: that is, from the side of the debtors. Take point 2. To claim that debt relief will send a perverse incentive, insofar as it will tip the parity between the debts of good nations and of 'bad" nations to the side of bad nations, is to ignore the disincentive sent to lender agencies if, in fact, the debts of military dictatorships and the like are voided. The perverse incentives in place, pace Easterly, have really been the other way: given the lack of discussion, or the lack of the organs necessary for discussion, in a military dictatorship, in fact lending agencies have a perverse incentive to loan to these nations. They can better negotiate terms with juntas than with democratically elected governments, and they can better envision the objectives of those loans -- say some unnecessary dam -- rather than the other type of loans -- a medical infrastructure, say. Meanwhile, there is, as we all know, an immense system of kickbacks in place, a system Easterly doesn't even touch on. Take Nigeria. We know that the loans that went to the rebarbative Abacha government. Here's a press release from, of all places, the American embassy to Nigeria:
"Jack A. Blum, an attorney who specializes in controlling bank fraud, government corruption and money laundering, said May 25 that "solving" Nigeria's long-term debt and corruption problem "will take a lot more than conferences on civil society and how to make people more honest."
To solve the problem, he told the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy in the U.S. House of Representatives, "You have to bring criminal justice and recovery of money into play. That is absolutely essential." That, he said, means "getting at the proceeds of corruption, going after the billions (thousands of millions of dollars) that (Former Nigerian Head of State, General Sani) Abacha took and the billions more that prior governments looted from the country."
Blum, who was called to testify on the Nigerian debt and corruption situation, said "Many of those people (who took those public funds) are sitting in London as some of the wealthiest people in England. Those assets cannot be overlooked.... Four billion (four thousand million dollars) with Abacha, $40 billion ($40,000 million) at least since independence," with some estimates running as high as $90 billion."
As a matter of fact, LI has talked to Jack Blum about this issue. We did a piece on money laundering for a magazine, the Globalist, which went funny on us and never paid for the piece. Blum's point is that the experience of Nigeria has been repeated over and over again. It isn't just that a place like Nigeria doesn't have infrastructural projects supposedly justifying the loans that were earmarked for them -- it is that the lending agencies knew, even as they were making the loans, that a significant portion of the money was being kicked back to the West, in the form of transfers to Western banks.
This is an area Easterly, supposedly the boldest and the baddest economist ever to walk away from the World Bank, doesn't even discuss.
Since his book was published eight months ago, one might wonder why he is being profiled, now, in the press. The reason is, he is dear to the Bush administration's heart, endorsing their position on foreign aid. Here are two grafs from his profile in the Washington Post:
"From 1988 to 2001, he was senior adviser to the World Bank's Development Research Group, the in-house brain trust charged with gauging the success or failure of the bank's development efforts around the world. In the process, he's trekked through slums from Karachi to Cairo and wears the good-humored but weary resignation of a lifetime idealist mugged at last by reality.
"He rejects the notion that he's any kind of whistle-blower. He still believes in both the World Bank ("there are a lot of really smart, really committed people there") and aid to developing nations, which he would like to see increased from the current level of $56 billion. In fact, foreign aid has been declining in recent years after peaking at $64 billion in 1991. Although private capital has taken up some of that slack, Wolfensohn has been calling for a $10 billion increase from the bank's member countries in each of the next five years."
Get the "mugged by reality line" -- was it William Krystal who said a neo-conservative was a liberal mugged by reality? Reality, you can be sure, is operating behind this metaphor in a very sooty skin. The American dilemma is, as it has always been, that no matter how elevated the supposed issue of the debate, it is always just one step away from a minstrel show. LI is infinitely depressed about that.
Remora
The romantic hero degenerates into a mere bundle of boorshness in Dostoevsky's Pere Karamazov. Having gone through the Byronic geste of having no limits, Pere Karamazov really does live without limits -- except those fears generated by the police and superstition. We thought of that dissolute father of four, today, reading another story about the ideological and fiscal corruption of the Bush administration -- surely, Bush is ushering in the age of Gall, the age of limitless affronts to democracy, honesty, and good taste. Pere Karamazov was moved to act by his capacity for lust. Dick Cheney is moved to act by his taste for collusion, something that develops in those who find positions in the higher echelons of the power industry. The story in the NYT, today about Exelon Corporation (Ex-es and En-s are seemingly Texas Greek), the controller of 20% of the nuclear power in this country, details how by a gosh almighty fortuitous circumstance, the Bush folk and Exelon's management rehabilitated of one of their dead in the water schemes to get nuke power rolling again. The age of Gall is particularly galling because it is presided over by a man who, every day and in every way, demonstrates the wisdom of the American people in not electing him. Exelon, according to the Times, cast its bread on the Republican waters, and just as in the Bible, got back threefold. Cheney for reasons that have to be protected by executive privilege saw pebble bed reactors as worthy recipients fo American bucks. And guess what? Exelon has the world monopoly on pebble bed reactors. Wow, is that lucky or what?
Is LI being unfari? Exelon has an explanation:
"Don Kirchoffner, a spokesman for Exelon, said campaign contributions had nothing to do with the pebble-bed reactor's mention in the report. "We didn't influence anybody," Mr. Kirchoffner said. For Exelon, the paragraph [in Cheney's report, extolling pebble bed nuke reactors] was seen as "a good thing," Mr. Kirchoffner said, but he insisted that the mention of the reactor's design did not necessarily represent a boon for the corporation.
"A good thing for the industry and the country was the fact that the administration came out with a recommendation for new forms of nuclear power, and our pebble-bed modular reactor is a byproduct of that," Mr. Kirchoffner said. "We just happened to have it. They took a look at what we gave them and they said this kind of makes sense."
Exelon owns and operates about 20 percent of the nation's nuclear capacity. Its co-chief executives, John W. Rowe and Corbin A. McNeill Jr., who has since retired, were among a group of about 75 energy executives who met with Mr. Cheney in March 2001. Along with other participants of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, Mr. McNeill also met that month with Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, and Lawrence B. Lindsey, the president's top economic adviser. "
However, far be it from LI to suspect that the half a million diverted into Republican pockets by Kirchoffner's employer had anything to do with the Cheney report. While companies are expected to cough up the dough in our pirate democracy, still, let's get real. These are people who have to restrain themselves from recommending nuke reactors in all the national parks. These are people who itch to see the global climate raised just to see if they can do it. Hell, buy a bunch of a/c stock and you are sitting pretty. This was a decision in line with the century long conservative policy of socialism for the rich -- especially if the rich have reactors. Cindy Folkers of the Nuclear information and resources service has produced a nice comparison of our government investment in different energy technologies. There is a canard that is sometimes heard on the WSJ editorial page -- which is where canard come home to roost -- that somehow, the energy biz was forced by the government to fork over incredible billions to create worthless green energy sources, like ethanol. But that isn't the truth. The truth is, nuke money comes from the government, goes into the energy industry, and in return the industry builds vast, costly behemoths that reinforce a dying grid idea -- that power will be generated from these expensive hubs and that end users will simply, passively recieve it. So here is what happens on the subsidy scene when the pretence is made that deregulation is going to give us consumer choice. There is this thing called stranded costs. These costs are for things like, well, pebble bed nuke plants. Stranded as in help me, I'm an old energy company too weak to get up myself. And our compassion is poured out upon them -- part of the deal of deregulation is taxpayers doling out sums to power companies of up to 25 billion dollars, in the case of California, for all that overbuilding, or ill planned building, they did in the seventies, eighties and nineties. It is only fair, of course. As in fair return on investment, the only justice Bush's people seem to recognize. It is interesting -- the conservative outcry about restitution that is owed to black americans for slavery is now standard boilerplate on the chicken wing circuit, but there's an awful lot of silence about the restitution owed to energy companies. The one isn't real, the other is all too real. So guess which one gets discussed most on the talk radio shows?
Anyway, thus speaks Folkers:
When comparing U.S. government subsidies for nuclear, solar, and wind, the nuclear power industry has received the majority (96.3%) of $150 billion in investments since 1947; that�s $145 billion for nuclear reactors and $5 billion for wind and solar. Nuclear subsidies have cost the average household a total amount of $1,411 [1998 dollars] compared to $11 for wind. The more money we spend on nuclear power, the less greenhouse gas reduction benefit we receive, while we hurt sustainable technology investment.
The romantic hero degenerates into a mere bundle of boorshness in Dostoevsky's Pere Karamazov. Having gone through the Byronic geste of having no limits, Pere Karamazov really does live without limits -- except those fears generated by the police and superstition. We thought of that dissolute father of four, today, reading another story about the ideological and fiscal corruption of the Bush administration -- surely, Bush is ushering in the age of Gall, the age of limitless affronts to democracy, honesty, and good taste. Pere Karamazov was moved to act by his capacity for lust. Dick Cheney is moved to act by his taste for collusion, something that develops in those who find positions in the higher echelons of the power industry. The story in the NYT, today about Exelon Corporation (Ex-es and En-s are seemingly Texas Greek), the controller of 20% of the nuclear power in this country, details how by a gosh almighty fortuitous circumstance, the Bush folk and Exelon's management rehabilitated of one of their dead in the water schemes to get nuke power rolling again. The age of Gall is particularly galling because it is presided over by a man who, every day and in every way, demonstrates the wisdom of the American people in not electing him. Exelon, according to the Times, cast its bread on the Republican waters, and just as in the Bible, got back threefold. Cheney for reasons that have to be protected by executive privilege saw pebble bed reactors as worthy recipients fo American bucks. And guess what? Exelon has the world monopoly on pebble bed reactors. Wow, is that lucky or what?
Is LI being unfari? Exelon has an explanation:
"Don Kirchoffner, a spokesman for Exelon, said campaign contributions had nothing to do with the pebble-bed reactor's mention in the report. "We didn't influence anybody," Mr. Kirchoffner said. For Exelon, the paragraph [in Cheney's report, extolling pebble bed nuke reactors] was seen as "a good thing," Mr. Kirchoffner said, but he insisted that the mention of the reactor's design did not necessarily represent a boon for the corporation.
"A good thing for the industry and the country was the fact that the administration came out with a recommendation for new forms of nuclear power, and our pebble-bed modular reactor is a byproduct of that," Mr. Kirchoffner said. "We just happened to have it. They took a look at what we gave them and they said this kind of makes sense."
Exelon owns and operates about 20 percent of the nation's nuclear capacity. Its co-chief executives, John W. Rowe and Corbin A. McNeill Jr., who has since retired, were among a group of about 75 energy executives who met with Mr. Cheney in March 2001. Along with other participants of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's trade group, Mr. McNeill also met that month with Karl Rove, President Bush's chief strategist, and Lawrence B. Lindsey, the president's top economic adviser. "
However, far be it from LI to suspect that the half a million diverted into Republican pockets by Kirchoffner's employer had anything to do with the Cheney report. While companies are expected to cough up the dough in our pirate democracy, still, let's get real. These are people who have to restrain themselves from recommending nuke reactors in all the national parks. These are people who itch to see the global climate raised just to see if they can do it. Hell, buy a bunch of a/c stock and you are sitting pretty. This was a decision in line with the century long conservative policy of socialism for the rich -- especially if the rich have reactors. Cindy Folkers of the Nuclear information and resources service has produced a nice comparison of our government investment in different energy technologies. There is a canard that is sometimes heard on the WSJ editorial page -- which is where canard come home to roost -- that somehow, the energy biz was forced by the government to fork over incredible billions to create worthless green energy sources, like ethanol. But that isn't the truth. The truth is, nuke money comes from the government, goes into the energy industry, and in return the industry builds vast, costly behemoths that reinforce a dying grid idea -- that power will be generated from these expensive hubs and that end users will simply, passively recieve it. So here is what happens on the subsidy scene when the pretence is made that deregulation is going to give us consumer choice. There is this thing called stranded costs. These costs are for things like, well, pebble bed nuke plants. Stranded as in help me, I'm an old energy company too weak to get up myself. And our compassion is poured out upon them -- part of the deal of deregulation is taxpayers doling out sums to power companies of up to 25 billion dollars, in the case of California, for all that overbuilding, or ill planned building, they did in the seventies, eighties and nineties. It is only fair, of course. As in fair return on investment, the only justice Bush's people seem to recognize. It is interesting -- the conservative outcry about restitution that is owed to black americans for slavery is now standard boilerplate on the chicken wing circuit, but there's an awful lot of silence about the restitution owed to energy companies. The one isn't real, the other is all too real. So guess which one gets discussed most on the talk radio shows?
Anyway, thus speaks Folkers:
When comparing U.S. government subsidies for nuclear, solar, and wind, the nuclear power industry has received the majority (96.3%) of $150 billion in investments since 1947; that�s $145 billion for nuclear reactors and $5 billion for wind and solar. Nuclear subsidies have cost the average household a total amount of $1,411 [1998 dollars] compared to $11 for wind. The more money we spend on nuclear power, the less greenhouse gas reduction benefit we receive, while we hurt sustainable technology investment.
Friday, March 22, 2002
Remora
James Kenneth Galbraith � the Galbraiths are our favorite dynasty, much superior to the Kennedys and the Bushies � has a nice article in Daedalus entitled A perfect crime: Inequality in the age of globalization. Unfortunately, the article isn�t available on the web, but here are Galbraith�s points:
1. An old view of development and income inequality held that there was a archetypal pattern
that applied to developing economies, in which a primitive stage of industrialization would correspond to an increase in income inequality, which would then begin to level out as the
economy matured.
2. This view was disputed in the eighties and nineties, and displaced by a cultural view, which
held that one should concentrate on land holding, the level of protectionism, the willingness to sacrifice for an advantageous export position, and so on.
3. Galbraith gives us evidence to think that the older view is more realistic. Furthermore, he
holds that the increase in global income inequality since 1982 has not been the effect of the mystical machinery of globalisation, where the allocation of manufacturing effected by the magic invisible hand and the temporary availability of cheap labor � temporary in the historic sense, stretching over a generation or century or two - in diverse locales organizes itself spontaneously. His idea is that the Keynesian system fell apart on the backs of the poor. Here is
the core of his piece:
�Global inequality fell in the late 1970s. In those years, poor countries had the benefit of low interest rates and easy credit, and high commodity prices, especially for oil. Indeed, in the 1970s,
the UTIP [the University of Texas Inequality Project, headed by Galbraith -- LI] data shows that it was the lower-income workers in the poorer countries who made the largest gains in pay. But
in 1980--1981, the age of low interest rates and high commodity prices ended. In 1982, the repression took hold - a financial repression, to be sure, but not less real for having taken that form. And while the debt crisis was not accompanied by overt violence -- coups are,
indeed, often very limited in their overt violence --the effects were soon felt worldwide, and with a savage intensity that has continued for two decades. In sum, it is not increasing trade as such that we should fear. Nor is technology the culprit. To focus on "globalization" as such misstates
the issue. The problem is a process of integration carried out since at least 1980 under circumstances of unsustainable finance, in which wealth has flowed upwards from the poor
countries to the rich, and mainly to the upper financial strata of the richest countries. In the course of these events, progress toward tolerable levels of inequality and sustainable development virtually stopped. Neocolonial patterns of center-periphery dependence, and of debt peonage, were reestablished, but without the slightest assumption of responsibility by the rich countries for the fate of the poor.
It has been, it would appear, a perfect crime...�
Limited Inc should point out that there are some problems with Galbraith�s thesis. The major
one is that, as he admits, it does not account for China and India � a huge exception. But as a general thesis about the background dynamic of our present state of things, I�ll buy it.
So it is with the hauteur characteristic of inhaling theory that we read today�s NYT story about the coy corporate use of tax havens to cut down on their oh so substantial burdens. Senator Baucus and Senator Grasseley from Iowa have been tut tutting over Stanley Works decision to
�relocate� spiritually in the Bahamas � a shift in citizenship that costs the company nothing, but is a considerable tax savings. The Senators are even proposing doing away with this tax haven business. Horrors. Government interference with business once again! Here�s a couple of grafs:
�Gerard J. Gould, a Stanley Works vice president, said he had not known about the hearing. The company, he said, "feels there is nothing unpatriotic about following existing law and reinvesting the tax savings to grow the company for all of its shareholders."
In a statement, Ingersoll-Rand said, "Our move to Bermuda was approved by our shareholders, was a taxable transaction and is consistent with U.S. laws."
"We believe that upon further analysis, the committee will conclude that aspects of the U.S. tax law drive U.S. companies to change their place of incorporation in order to compete on a level playing field with international peers," it added.
Ingersoll-Rand�s idea, apparently, is that the tax rate should go down to, what? Rather like King Lear�s daughter: �What need you five and twenty, ten, or five� percent? There�s a Business Week story from March 4th that gives reports a study of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found that �52 of the 250 biggest U.S. companies paid effective tax rates of 10% or less in 1998.� Indeed, there�s competitiveness for ya! But as the Repugs in the House will suggest, their mouths full of steak, this is just too great a burden for the wealthy to bear! And of course Dumbo, the commander in chief, will march off in that general direction.
So it goes on the tax front.
James Kenneth Galbraith � the Galbraiths are our favorite dynasty, much superior to the Kennedys and the Bushies � has a nice article in Daedalus entitled A perfect crime: Inequality in the age of globalization. Unfortunately, the article isn�t available on the web, but here are Galbraith�s points:
1. An old view of development and income inequality held that there was a archetypal pattern
that applied to developing economies, in which a primitive stage of industrialization would correspond to an increase in income inequality, which would then begin to level out as the
economy matured.
2. This view was disputed in the eighties and nineties, and displaced by a cultural view, which
held that one should concentrate on land holding, the level of protectionism, the willingness to sacrifice for an advantageous export position, and so on.
3. Galbraith gives us evidence to think that the older view is more realistic. Furthermore, he
holds that the increase in global income inequality since 1982 has not been the effect of the mystical machinery of globalisation, where the allocation of manufacturing effected by the magic invisible hand and the temporary availability of cheap labor � temporary in the historic sense, stretching over a generation or century or two - in diverse locales organizes itself spontaneously. His idea is that the Keynesian system fell apart on the backs of the poor. Here is
the core of his piece:
�Global inequality fell in the late 1970s. In those years, poor countries had the benefit of low interest rates and easy credit, and high commodity prices, especially for oil. Indeed, in the 1970s,
the UTIP [the University of Texas Inequality Project, headed by Galbraith -- LI] data shows that it was the lower-income workers in the poorer countries who made the largest gains in pay. But
in 1980--1981, the age of low interest rates and high commodity prices ended. In 1982, the repression took hold - a financial repression, to be sure, but not less real for having taken that form. And while the debt crisis was not accompanied by overt violence -- coups are,
indeed, often very limited in their overt violence --the effects were soon felt worldwide, and with a savage intensity that has continued for two decades. In sum, it is not increasing trade as such that we should fear. Nor is technology the culprit. To focus on "globalization" as such misstates
the issue. The problem is a process of integration carried out since at least 1980 under circumstances of unsustainable finance, in which wealth has flowed upwards from the poor
countries to the rich, and mainly to the upper financial strata of the richest countries. In the course of these events, progress toward tolerable levels of inequality and sustainable development virtually stopped. Neocolonial patterns of center-periphery dependence, and of debt peonage, were reestablished, but without the slightest assumption of responsibility by the rich countries for the fate of the poor.
It has been, it would appear, a perfect crime...�
Limited Inc should point out that there are some problems with Galbraith�s thesis. The major
one is that, as he admits, it does not account for China and India � a huge exception. But as a general thesis about the background dynamic of our present state of things, I�ll buy it.
So it is with the hauteur characteristic of inhaling theory that we read today�s NYT story about the coy corporate use of tax havens to cut down on their oh so substantial burdens. Senator Baucus and Senator Grasseley from Iowa have been tut tutting over Stanley Works decision to
�relocate� spiritually in the Bahamas � a shift in citizenship that costs the company nothing, but is a considerable tax savings. The Senators are even proposing doing away with this tax haven business. Horrors. Government interference with business once again! Here�s a couple of grafs:
�Gerard J. Gould, a Stanley Works vice president, said he had not known about the hearing. The company, he said, "feels there is nothing unpatriotic about following existing law and reinvesting the tax savings to grow the company for all of its shareholders."
In a statement, Ingersoll-Rand said, "Our move to Bermuda was approved by our shareholders, was a taxable transaction and is consistent with U.S. laws."
"We believe that upon further analysis, the committee will conclude that aspects of the U.S. tax law drive U.S. companies to change their place of incorporation in order to compete on a level playing field with international peers," it added.
Ingersoll-Rand�s idea, apparently, is that the tax rate should go down to, what? Rather like King Lear�s daughter: �What need you five and twenty, ten, or five� percent? There�s a Business Week story from March 4th that gives reports a study of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found that �52 of the 250 biggest U.S. companies paid effective tax rates of 10% or less in 1998.� Indeed, there�s competitiveness for ya! But as the Repugs in the House will suggest, their mouths full of steak, this is just too great a burden for the wealthy to bear! And of course Dumbo, the commander in chief, will march off in that general direction.
So it goes on the tax front.
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
Dope
The Odd, Old decencies
Lefty nostalgia always makes Limited Inc nervous. It makes sense that it is rampant: another defeated ideology compensating for losing the future by claiming the past. Alas, these consolation prizes don't bring much comfort. That said, I am as wet eyed about the world we've lost as any old Wobbly. I've been reading Richard Lourie's biography of Andrei Sakharov for a review, and I was struck by one passage. When Sakharov met Brezhnev, who was, at that time, the Commisar for military research, Brezhnev told him a story. In his father's opinion, Brezhnev said, the people who invented new weapons should be hung from gallows on hills, pour encourager les autres. Brezhnev, of course, didn't follow his Dad's advice.
Still, Brezhnev's daddy was just displaying sans culottes common sense, if you ask LI. The feeling of a value beyond the value of political or economic power -- well, it dies a little every day. But we still catch glimmerings of it in the damnedest places.
Which leads us, by a cerebral by-way that might not be entirely clear to the rest of you, to today's news about Avon. It seems that they are firing 3500 people. These people are the packers in their plant. They aren't the Avon ladies themselves, who number, worldwide, something like 3.4 million people. To each of whom, when the order is written up, an individual package is sent off. WNET did a nice piece about Avon a while back, calling it the Company of Woman. I particularly liked the quote from Andrea Jung:
For all the effort Avon is putting into the U.S., the most dynamic growth is taking place overseas. Jung claims, "One of our fastest-growing regions of the world has been the entire Eastern European region. We've grown at 43 percent in dollars compounded over the last several years, with 45 percent more reps every year. We call it Avon heaven. Down the road I think China's an enormous opportunity."
I know all about Avon Heaven, since my mother and grandmother were part of the Avon work force. Sobel, in his history of the Great Boom, as he calls the last fifty years in America, rightly points out that the effect of franchising in American culture hasn't really been publicized. It isn't just the potential owners of small shops who took, instead, the franchising route, but also housewives, or in my Mom's case secretaries, retirees -- the great American muddle. My grandmother persevered long after my Mom had abandoned Avon heaven. So my memories of her, my grandma, are fused with the sickly sweet smell of Avon perfumes, or the sheer wierdness of soap on a rope. My grandmother was a connector because of these products.
The Avon Lady reversed the old trope of the travelling salesman, his bibles or cleaning products in his briefcase, his penis some fabulous cuckolding engine. Yes, in the old days we were all just a doorbell away from a dirty joke. In place of that mythology, the Avon Lady instantiated another one: that of the harem. Briefly, all too briefly, the split level suburban ranch (2 ba, 3br, covered garage) was transfigured into some female tropic.
And, not incidentally, my grandmother earned enough to handsomely supplement the inadequate pension her husband received from Smith Corona.
It has to be remembered about capitalism: it is a way of life. It also has to be remembered that, just like the revolutionary tribunals that accompanied its birth in the West, capitalism is very prone to irrational capital punishment, condemning ways of life to sudden extinction, eroding our sense that any way of life is grounded, or an intrinsically good thing. Human nature at its finest, the economist says. MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN, as Adam Smith once said. I don't know. I'd like to consult Leonid Brezhnev's daddy on the question.
The Odd, Old decencies
Lefty nostalgia always makes Limited Inc nervous. It makes sense that it is rampant: another defeated ideology compensating for losing the future by claiming the past. Alas, these consolation prizes don't bring much comfort. That said, I am as wet eyed about the world we've lost as any old Wobbly. I've been reading Richard Lourie's biography of Andrei Sakharov for a review, and I was struck by one passage. When Sakharov met Brezhnev, who was, at that time, the Commisar for military research, Brezhnev told him a story. In his father's opinion, Brezhnev said, the people who invented new weapons should be hung from gallows on hills, pour encourager les autres. Brezhnev, of course, didn't follow his Dad's advice.
Still, Brezhnev's daddy was just displaying sans culottes common sense, if you ask LI. The feeling of a value beyond the value of political or economic power -- well, it dies a little every day. But we still catch glimmerings of it in the damnedest places.
Which leads us, by a cerebral by-way that might not be entirely clear to the rest of you, to today's news about Avon. It seems that they are firing 3500 people. These people are the packers in their plant. They aren't the Avon ladies themselves, who number, worldwide, something like 3.4 million people. To each of whom, when the order is written up, an individual package is sent off. WNET did a nice piece about Avon a while back, calling it the Company of Woman. I particularly liked the quote from Andrea Jung:
For all the effort Avon is putting into the U.S., the most dynamic growth is taking place overseas. Jung claims, "One of our fastest-growing regions of the world has been the entire Eastern European region. We've grown at 43 percent in dollars compounded over the last several years, with 45 percent more reps every year. We call it Avon heaven. Down the road I think China's an enormous opportunity."
I know all about Avon Heaven, since my mother and grandmother were part of the Avon work force. Sobel, in his history of the Great Boom, as he calls the last fifty years in America, rightly points out that the effect of franchising in American culture hasn't really been publicized. It isn't just the potential owners of small shops who took, instead, the franchising route, but also housewives, or in my Mom's case secretaries, retirees -- the great American muddle. My grandmother persevered long after my Mom had abandoned Avon heaven. So my memories of her, my grandma, are fused with the sickly sweet smell of Avon perfumes, or the sheer wierdness of soap on a rope. My grandmother was a connector because of these products.
The Avon Lady reversed the old trope of the travelling salesman, his bibles or cleaning products in his briefcase, his penis some fabulous cuckolding engine. Yes, in the old days we were all just a doorbell away from a dirty joke. In place of that mythology, the Avon Lady instantiated another one: that of the harem. Briefly, all too briefly, the split level suburban ranch (2 ba, 3br, covered garage) was transfigured into some female tropic.
And, not incidentally, my grandmother earned enough to handsomely supplement the inadequate pension her husband received from Smith Corona.
It has to be remembered about capitalism: it is a way of life. It also has to be remembered that, just like the revolutionary tribunals that accompanied its birth in the West, capitalism is very prone to irrational capital punishment, condemning ways of life to sudden extinction, eroding our sense that any way of life is grounded, or an intrinsically good thing. Human nature at its finest, the economist says. MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN, as Adam Smith once said. I don't know. I'd like to consult Leonid Brezhnev's daddy on the question.
Monday, March 18, 2002
Remora
The fight about Intellectual Property goes on. Listen to the shots outside your window in the lonely night, listen to the sirens coming closer. Converts to the Open source idea, which is also the idea of the commons, come out of their closets, in the business world, are attacked, and then go back in. One such is the Michael Capellas, CEO of Compaq, who made a slip the other day. He was speaking before a biotech conference in Boston. Here's a couple of grafs from the Globe report: "The hundreds of biotech executives and venture capitalists at yesterday's conference hope to make immense profits by turning that processed data into salable products. Some aim to do this by obtaining patents on genetic information that they discover along the way. But this is a controversial idea, with some critics arguing that because genes are a part of nature, businesses shouldn't be able to own them.
In a comment that stunned the audience into several seconds of silence, Capellas responded to a question on the issue by flatly saying that companies shouldn't be able to patent genes. But he quickly backed away from the comment, pleading ignorance of all the ramifications of the issue. ''If you're asking me what should be patentable,'' Capellas said, ''I don't know.''
In a later telephone interview, Capellas stressed that companies had a right to control their scientific discoveries. ''I absolutely believe that the intellectual property must be protected,'' he said. Original processes and products growing out of genetic research should definitely be subject to patent protection, he said.But he repeated his concern that patent law might not be the best way to deal with basic genetic information. ''I'm not sure if the best way you do that is taking individual components and patenting them,'' Capellas said. ''That process doesn't lend itself well to this new world of bioinformatics.''
Catch that explanation of open source resistance: since genes are "a part of nature,' businesses shouldn't be able to own them. There are, as my puss-in-boots readers will know (oh you heady slicers and dicers of the dialectic!)
two major problems with that sentence. The first is that opposition is based on businesses 'owning nature." If a business exists, it is going to own nature somehow -- unless, of course, it is one of those Enron style "asset-free" companies, in which case its claims (and its year end accounting) are more super-natural. No, the question is about particular kinds of nature. The question is about the commons.
The other mistake resides, of course, in the verb "own." As in the equivalence between patent and own. Patents, as we have said before (and said and said) are grants of monopoly. They are inventions of state governance. Unlike contracts, monopolies of this type have a time limit. The reason for this is simple: the perpetual ownership of things intellectual, whether it is the sentences in a book or the method for clicking through the webpages to own the book, are eventually common property. The patent office is borrowing from you every time they issue a patent. The copyright people are doing the same. And you -- you out there, scribbling a poem, or working on a new fuel cell, are continually borrowing from the commons to do what you do. There is no work of art or man that refers only to itself. Well, outside of a nuthouse. This isn't a controversial point. It is, in fact, the reason nobody had ever heard of the phrase Intellectual Property until a couple of decades ago. If we go back to the discussion of patents in the Constitutional era, as Lawrence Lessig has shown, you will see that Jefferson, like Adam Smith, viewed patents as monopolies, and was accordingly reluctant to encourage their growth. Only lately has this insidious ownership idea crept out of the teeming minds of Monsato, Microsoft and their ilk. This isn't the new economy, this is the Hubris Economy. Only in the current atmosphere would it be possible for a company to actually think it can buy the idea of corn seeds -- which is what Monsanto has done in Mexico. And the reason this is happening is that the conservative judiciary, far from displaying that fealty to the past which they like to entertain themselves with at the Federalist Society banquets, are actually wildly, promiscuously legislating.
SO: sorry LI has to be so casuistical, so ... boring. But let's go over it. In the sense that I own the apartment I am living in -- that is, I rent it -- yes, one can talk of ownership. But owning in the sense of my ownership of the computer I'm using is out of the question. Ah, the thing is to prevent, by semantic means, the question from even being posable. So the question won't be posed, the question will be perpetually distorted, as long as Business Journalists go along for the ride and quietly seed the ownership-patent equivalency in their little business stories.
The fight about Intellectual Property goes on. Listen to the shots outside your window in the lonely night, listen to the sirens coming closer. Converts to the Open source idea, which is also the idea of the commons, come out of their closets, in the business world, are attacked, and then go back in. One such is the Michael Capellas, CEO of Compaq, who made a slip the other day. He was speaking before a biotech conference in Boston. Here's a couple of grafs from the Globe report: "The hundreds of biotech executives and venture capitalists at yesterday's conference hope to make immense profits by turning that processed data into salable products. Some aim to do this by obtaining patents on genetic information that they discover along the way. But this is a controversial idea, with some critics arguing that because genes are a part of nature, businesses shouldn't be able to own them.
In a comment that stunned the audience into several seconds of silence, Capellas responded to a question on the issue by flatly saying that companies shouldn't be able to patent genes. But he quickly backed away from the comment, pleading ignorance of all the ramifications of the issue. ''If you're asking me what should be patentable,'' Capellas said, ''I don't know.''
In a later telephone interview, Capellas stressed that companies had a right to control their scientific discoveries. ''I absolutely believe that the intellectual property must be protected,'' he said. Original processes and products growing out of genetic research should definitely be subject to patent protection, he said.But he repeated his concern that patent law might not be the best way to deal with basic genetic information. ''I'm not sure if the best way you do that is taking individual components and patenting them,'' Capellas said. ''That process doesn't lend itself well to this new world of bioinformatics.''
Catch that explanation of open source resistance: since genes are "a part of nature,' businesses shouldn't be able to own them. There are, as my puss-in-boots readers will know (oh you heady slicers and dicers of the dialectic!)
two major problems with that sentence. The first is that opposition is based on businesses 'owning nature." If a business exists, it is going to own nature somehow -- unless, of course, it is one of those Enron style "asset-free" companies, in which case its claims (and its year end accounting) are more super-natural. No, the question is about particular kinds of nature. The question is about the commons.
The other mistake resides, of course, in the verb "own." As in the equivalence between patent and own. Patents, as we have said before (and said and said) are grants of monopoly. They are inventions of state governance. Unlike contracts, monopolies of this type have a time limit. The reason for this is simple: the perpetual ownership of things intellectual, whether it is the sentences in a book or the method for clicking through the webpages to own the book, are eventually common property. The patent office is borrowing from you every time they issue a patent. The copyright people are doing the same. And you -- you out there, scribbling a poem, or working on a new fuel cell, are continually borrowing from the commons to do what you do. There is no work of art or man that refers only to itself. Well, outside of a nuthouse. This isn't a controversial point. It is, in fact, the reason nobody had ever heard of the phrase Intellectual Property until a couple of decades ago. If we go back to the discussion of patents in the Constitutional era, as Lawrence Lessig has shown, you will see that Jefferson, like Adam Smith, viewed patents as monopolies, and was accordingly reluctant to encourage their growth. Only lately has this insidious ownership idea crept out of the teeming minds of Monsato, Microsoft and their ilk. This isn't the new economy, this is the Hubris Economy. Only in the current atmosphere would it be possible for a company to actually think it can buy the idea of corn seeds -- which is what Monsanto has done in Mexico. And the reason this is happening is that the conservative judiciary, far from displaying that fealty to the past which they like to entertain themselves with at the Federalist Society banquets, are actually wildly, promiscuously legislating.
SO: sorry LI has to be so casuistical, so ... boring. But let's go over it. In the sense that I own the apartment I am living in -- that is, I rent it -- yes, one can talk of ownership. But owning in the sense of my ownership of the computer I'm using is out of the question. Ah, the thing is to prevent, by semantic means, the question from even being posable. So the question won't be posed, the question will be perpetually distorted, as long as Business Journalists go along for the ride and quietly seed the ownership-patent equivalency in their little business stories.
Sunday, March 17, 2002
Remora
Limited Inc has been quiet about the Middle East for a while. Since despair is the only rational response to the confluence of American inanity and Sharon's wet dream of a frontier war, we've been driven into internal exile on this one.
Still, even in the sea of distant bloodshed, there are humorous points to be made. LI has particularly liked the new patriotic strategy of the American press. As Quick Dick Cheney makes his grand tour of the world, '002 (get your t shirts now!) the NYT in particular has been interlarding every article with assurances that the unanimous hostility of both Arabs and Europeans to Bush's potential cavalry op in the badlands of Iraq conceals unamimous agreement with every burp and growl of the Heimat's foreign policy. This is truly a unique defense. We have to go way back to the Soviet-German peace treaty to find rhetoric that peculiar in the foreign policy sphere. Not that circular logic doesn't have a good and honorable place in our hearts. Remember the old Freudian argument that any objection to Freud's theory is really 'resistance" to the theory. And resistance stems from (hey presto) the unconscious id. Which proves there is an Id, which proves that Freud's theory is legitimate. QED. We all agreed with Freud, then, and we agreed more the more we disagreed.
Alas, there is another phrase of Freud's that occurs to LI: the reality principle. The reality principle seems to be breaking into the Heimat lovefest. Witness this last report from Saudi Arabia:
"American officials said before Mr. Cheney's trip to the Middle East that they thought Arab leaders would eventually acquiesce in an American military campaign against Iraq, even if they made a public show of disapproving of it. But the persistence and calculated nature of Arab response show how Middle East politics has intruded in Mr. Cheney's mission."
Is that the darndest thing? Middle Eastern politics intruding into OUR WAR! Why there ought to be a law.
However, not to fear. The more Bushypoo presses the war with Iraq button, the more he will maintain his ultrapatrotic poll numbers. Life is good for the former cheerleader!
Limited Inc has been quiet about the Middle East for a while. Since despair is the only rational response to the confluence of American inanity and Sharon's wet dream of a frontier war, we've been driven into internal exile on this one.
Still, even in the sea of distant bloodshed, there are humorous points to be made. LI has particularly liked the new patriotic strategy of the American press. As Quick Dick Cheney makes his grand tour of the world, '002 (get your t shirts now!) the NYT in particular has been interlarding every article with assurances that the unanimous hostility of both Arabs and Europeans to Bush's potential cavalry op in the badlands of Iraq conceals unamimous agreement with every burp and growl of the Heimat's foreign policy. This is truly a unique defense. We have to go way back to the Soviet-German peace treaty to find rhetoric that peculiar in the foreign policy sphere. Not that circular logic doesn't have a good and honorable place in our hearts. Remember the old Freudian argument that any objection to Freud's theory is really 'resistance" to the theory. And resistance stems from (hey presto) the unconscious id. Which proves there is an Id, which proves that Freud's theory is legitimate. QED. We all agreed with Freud, then, and we agreed more the more we disagreed.
Alas, there is another phrase of Freud's that occurs to LI: the reality principle. The reality principle seems to be breaking into the Heimat lovefest. Witness this last report from Saudi Arabia:
"American officials said before Mr. Cheney's trip to the Middle East that they thought Arab leaders would eventually acquiesce in an American military campaign against Iraq, even if they made a public show of disapproving of it. But the persistence and calculated nature of Arab response show how Middle East politics has intruded in Mr. Cheney's mission."
Is that the darndest thing? Middle Eastern politics intruding into OUR WAR! Why there ought to be a law.
However, not to fear. The more Bushypoo presses the war with Iraq button, the more he will maintain his ultrapatrotic poll numbers. Life is good for the former cheerleader!
Saturday, March 16, 2002
Remora
Dostoevsky said that you could measure the degree of humanity of a civilization by its prisons. Limited Inc would like to suggest that you can measure the degree of literacy of a civilization by
its encyclopedias. If this is the case, the race is on and it looks bad for our culture. Right now, ancien regime France and Edwardian England come in at about no. 1 and no. 2, while contemporary American culture, despite its micro Britannicas and its multi-media Funk and Wagnalls, is back there with the melange of misinformation and rumor Isadore of Seville put together around 800. This isn�t good.
So you can, perhaps, understand Limited Inc.�s joy when we went to the On-Line book page, to
see what was new, and found a link to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Joy turned to ecstasy
as we went to the link and behold, it worked! (which does add points, admittedly, to our culture).
A few days ago, Limited Inc was corresponding with a friend, and trying to press this friend
to go to the site -- Limited Inc has a used car salesman�s view about pressing our site upon people. And the friend asked, reasonably, what was this site about? Like, was it a personal diary? Limited Inc, horrified at the thought, explained that the idea goes back to the New Yorker�s Talk of the Town � little quasi personal, quasi journalistic pieces. Well, the Encyclopedia Britannica,
1911, unlikely as this may seem, is to us as the madeleine was to Proust � it unlocks every memory.
Here�s why. When Limited Inc was a mere stripling, a dewy suburban lad, there was a woman across the street, a Mrs. Brooks, who was, to the dewy lads dewy eyes, an ancient woman. Now,
of course, being closer in age to Mrs. Brooks than I ever thought possible, I estimate she was in her late fifties, early sixties. Like her, I'm getting ropy and rheumy -- although unlike her, I have no interest in what hymns are sung at my funeral. This was a constant obsession, as I remember. Her husband, Doctor Brooks, died, and Mrs. Brooks gave me his 1911 encyclopedia.
Probably no gift in my life has been as significant as that encyclopedia. It crashed like a meteor
into my suburban Atlanta habitus, one that had been bounded, on the one side, by Life magazine, and on the other side, by my parents native Republican Party mores. And then I get these blue-ish volumes, speckled with some gross mold, and it was well, Alice�s wonderland. I got my stock of cultural capital from going unsystematically through those books -- much more than I got from, say,
going to Tulane, later on.
By common consent, or maybe not common -- Borges says something close to this, and so does LI, so it is authorative around here - the 1911 encyclopedia was the greatest collective product of the British Empire. The Empire, which has lately become the object of much imperialist nostalgia on the part of the Weekly Standard crowd, was, let's face it, an organized crime against humanity, a much more successful theft than any mounted by the Mafia. Add up the casualties, throw in that nasty business of the opium trade, and it rather disturbs Rudyard Kipling hour in the bungalow, in spite of the Bushypoo nostalgia for the white man�s burden.
So what makes this encyclopedia worth the encomiums I�m lavishing here? The only way to understand it is to sample. So here is a comparison. LI went to another encyclopedia site, at Bartleby, picking a random entry � Quevado � and then picked that entry in the wondrous �11. Go down to the next post, where have put our excerpts. They are too long for one post.
Dostoevsky said that you could measure the degree of humanity of a civilization by its prisons. Limited Inc would like to suggest that you can measure the degree of literacy of a civilization by
its encyclopedias. If this is the case, the race is on and it looks bad for our culture. Right now, ancien regime France and Edwardian England come in at about no. 1 and no. 2, while contemporary American culture, despite its micro Britannicas and its multi-media Funk and Wagnalls, is back there with the melange of misinformation and rumor Isadore of Seville put together around 800. This isn�t good.
So you can, perhaps, understand Limited Inc.�s joy when we went to the On-Line book page, to
see what was new, and found a link to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Joy turned to ecstasy
as we went to the link and behold, it worked! (which does add points, admittedly, to our culture).
A few days ago, Limited Inc was corresponding with a friend, and trying to press this friend
to go to the site -- Limited Inc has a used car salesman�s view about pressing our site upon people. And the friend asked, reasonably, what was this site about? Like, was it a personal diary? Limited Inc, horrified at the thought, explained that the idea goes back to the New Yorker�s Talk of the Town � little quasi personal, quasi journalistic pieces. Well, the Encyclopedia Britannica,
1911, unlikely as this may seem, is to us as the madeleine was to Proust � it unlocks every memory.
Here�s why. When Limited Inc was a mere stripling, a dewy suburban lad, there was a woman across the street, a Mrs. Brooks, who was, to the dewy lads dewy eyes, an ancient woman. Now,
of course, being closer in age to Mrs. Brooks than I ever thought possible, I estimate she was in her late fifties, early sixties. Like her, I'm getting ropy and rheumy -- although unlike her, I have no interest in what hymns are sung at my funeral. This was a constant obsession, as I remember. Her husband, Doctor Brooks, died, and Mrs. Brooks gave me his 1911 encyclopedia.
Probably no gift in my life has been as significant as that encyclopedia. It crashed like a meteor
into my suburban Atlanta habitus, one that had been bounded, on the one side, by Life magazine, and on the other side, by my parents native Republican Party mores. And then I get these blue-ish volumes, speckled with some gross mold, and it was well, Alice�s wonderland. I got my stock of cultural capital from going unsystematically through those books -- much more than I got from, say,
going to Tulane, later on.
By common consent, or maybe not common -- Borges says something close to this, and so does LI, so it is authorative around here - the 1911 encyclopedia was the greatest collective product of the British Empire. The Empire, which has lately become the object of much imperialist nostalgia on the part of the Weekly Standard crowd, was, let's face it, an organized crime against humanity, a much more successful theft than any mounted by the Mafia. Add up the casualties, throw in that nasty business of the opium trade, and it rather disturbs Rudyard Kipling hour in the bungalow, in spite of the Bushypoo nostalgia for the white man�s burden.
So what makes this encyclopedia worth the encomiums I�m lavishing here? The only way to understand it is to sample. So here is a comparison. LI went to another encyclopedia site, at Bartleby, picking a random entry � Quevado � and then picked that entry in the wondrous �11. Go down to the next post, where have put our excerpts. They are too long for one post.
QUEVEDO Y VILLEGAS, FRANCISCO G6MEZ DE (1580-1645), Spanish satirist and poet,
was born at Madrid, where his father, who came from the mountains of Burgos, was secretary to Anne of Austria, fourth wife of Philip II. Early left an orphan, Quevedo was educated at the university of Alcala, where he acquired a knowledge of classical and modern tongues �of Italian and French, Hebrew and Arabic, of philosophy, ;heology, civil law, and economics. His fame reached beyond Spain; at twenty-one he was in correspondence with Justus Lipsius on questions of Greek and Latin literature. His abstruse studies influenced Quevedo's style; to them are due the pedantic traits and mania for quotations which characterize most of his works.He betook himself to the court and mingled with the society that surrounded Philip III. The cynical greed ofministers, the meanness of their flatterers, the corruption of the royal officers, the financial scandals, afforded ample scope to Quevedo's talent as a painter of manners. At Valladolid,where the court resided from 1601 to 1606, he mingled freely with these intrigues and disorders,
and lost the purity of his morals but not his uprightness and integrity. In 1611 he fought a duel in which his adversary was killed, fled to Italy, and later on became secretary to Pedro Tellez Giron, duke de Osuna, and viceroy of Naples. Thus he learned. politics�the one science which he had perhaps till then neglected,�initiated himself into the questions that divided Europe, and penetrated the ambitions of the neighbours of Spain, as well as the secret history of the intriguers protected by the favour of Philip III. The result was that he wrote several political works, particularly a lengthy treatise, La Politico, de Dios (1626), in which he lays down the duties of kings by displaying to them how Christ has governed His church. The disgrace of Osuna (1620) compromised Quevedo, who was arrested and exiled to his estate at La Torre de Juan Abad in New Castile. Though involved in the process against the duke, Quevedo remained faithful to his patron, and bore banishment with resignation. On the death of Philip III. (3ist of March 1621) he he commended himself to the first minister of the new king by celebrating his accession to power and saluting him as the vindicator of public morality in an epistle in the style of Juvenal. Olivares recalled him from his exile and gave him an honorary post in the palace, and from this time Quevedo resided almost constantly at court, exercising a kind of political and literary jurisdiction due to his varied relations and knowledge, but especially to his biting wit, which had no respect for persons. General politics, social economy, war, finance, literary and religious questions, all came under his dissecting knife, and he had a dissertation, a pamphlet, or a song for everything. One day he is defending St James, the sole patron of Spain, against a powerful coterie that wished to associate St Theresa with him; next day he is writing against the duke of
Savoy, the hidden enemy of Spain, or against the measures taken to change the value of the currency; or once more he is engaged with the literary school of G6ngora, whose affectationsseem to him to sin against the genius of the Castilian tongue. And in the midst of this incessant controversy on every possible subject he finds time to compose a picaresque romance, the Historia de la Vida del Buscdn, Ilamado Don Pablos, Exemplo de Vagamundos, y Espejo de Tacanos (1626); to write his Suenos (1627), in which all classes are flagellated; to pen a dissertation on The Constancy and. Patience of Job (1631), to translate St Francis de Sales and Seneca, to compose thousands of verses, and to correspond with Spanish and foreign scholars.But Quevedo was not to maintain unscathed the high position won by his knowledge, talent, and biting wit. The governmentof Olivares, which he had welcomed as the dawn of a political and
social regeneration, made things worse instead of better, and led the country to ruin. Quevedo saw this and could not hold his peace. An anonymous petition in verse enumerating the
grievances of his subjects was found, in. December 1639, under the very napkin of Philip IV. It was shown. to Olivares, who exclaimed, �I am ruined �; but before his fall he sought vengeance on the libeller. His suspicions fell on Quevedo, who had enemies glad to confirm them. Quevedo was arrested on December 7, and carried under a strong escort to the monastery of St I~Iark atLeon, where he was kept in rigorous confinement till the fall of the minister (January 1643) restored him to light and freedom, but not to the health which he had lost in his dungeon. He had
little more than two years to live, and these were spent in inactive retreat, first at La Torre de Juan Abad, and then at the neighbouring Villanueva de los Infantes, where he died September 8, 1645.
Okay, now tell me that doesn�t hop out at you like one of the Arabian Nights Tales? It is the
same mindset with which Richard Burton doggedly penned his translation and footnotes of the
latter. The "betook" is good -- there's a certain Victorian antiquitarianism about the locution that is, at this distant, not as terrible as it would have been for the Bloomsbury crowd. And how about the napkin, man? This isn't an encyclopedia entry, it is a mini-Dumas novel, and Errol Flynn should definitely play Quevedo. Still, the tensions within the monument shouldn't be overlooked. It is easy to see how it would seem to the Edwardians that this was the way to impart the sum of knowledge. Knowledge was itself an imperial form. This entry couldn't have been written by a person who was not aware of the globetrotting spirit that animated his own society -- one that sought profits in Africa and Asia, one that depended on free trade, and hypocrisy, to pull through.
Now, here is the Quevado entry from Colombia Encyclopedia:
�Spanish satirist, novelist, and wit, b. Madrid. In 1611 he fled to Italy after a duel and became involved in revolutionary plottings. When Philip IV ascended the Spanish throne, Quevedo narrowly avoided a long prison term. He was later imprisoned (1639��43) as the presumed author of a satire on the king and his favorite, the conde de Olivares. Quevedo was one of the
great writers of the Spanish Golden Age. Los sue��os [visions] (1627) is a brilliant and bitterly satiric account, after Dante and Lucan, of the inhabitants of hell. Other major works include the philosophical treatise Providencia de Dios (1641), the political essay Pol��tica de Dios y gobierno de Cristo (1626��55), and the important picaresque novel La vida del Busc��n (1626). Also a major poet, his verse was collected in El Parnaso espa��ol (1648). His Ep��stola sat��rica
y censoria (1639), a poetic satire against Olivares, is well known. Quevedo was a determined
opponent of Gongorism (see G��ngora). 1 See studies by D. W. Blesnick (1972) and J. Iffland
(1978).�
was born at Madrid, where his father, who came from the mountains of Burgos, was secretary to Anne of Austria, fourth wife of Philip II. Early left an orphan, Quevedo was educated at the university of Alcala, where he acquired a knowledge of classical and modern tongues �of Italian and French, Hebrew and Arabic, of philosophy, ;heology, civil law, and economics. His fame reached beyond Spain; at twenty-one he was in correspondence with Justus Lipsius on questions of Greek and Latin literature. His abstruse studies influenced Quevedo's style; to them are due the pedantic traits and mania for quotations which characterize most of his works.He betook himself to the court and mingled with the society that surrounded Philip III. The cynical greed ofministers, the meanness of their flatterers, the corruption of the royal officers, the financial scandals, afforded ample scope to Quevedo's talent as a painter of manners. At Valladolid,where the court resided from 1601 to 1606, he mingled freely with these intrigues and disorders,
and lost the purity of his morals but not his uprightness and integrity. In 1611 he fought a duel in which his adversary was killed, fled to Italy, and later on became secretary to Pedro Tellez Giron, duke de Osuna, and viceroy of Naples. Thus he learned. politics�the one science which he had perhaps till then neglected,�initiated himself into the questions that divided Europe, and penetrated the ambitions of the neighbours of Spain, as well as the secret history of the intriguers protected by the favour of Philip III. The result was that he wrote several political works, particularly a lengthy treatise, La Politico, de Dios (1626), in which he lays down the duties of kings by displaying to them how Christ has governed His church. The disgrace of Osuna (1620) compromised Quevedo, who was arrested and exiled to his estate at La Torre de Juan Abad in New Castile. Though involved in the process against the duke, Quevedo remained faithful to his patron, and bore banishment with resignation. On the death of Philip III. (3ist of March 1621) he he commended himself to the first minister of the new king by celebrating his accession to power and saluting him as the vindicator of public morality in an epistle in the style of Juvenal. Olivares recalled him from his exile and gave him an honorary post in the palace, and from this time Quevedo resided almost constantly at court, exercising a kind of political and literary jurisdiction due to his varied relations and knowledge, but especially to his biting wit, which had no respect for persons. General politics, social economy, war, finance, literary and religious questions, all came under his dissecting knife, and he had a dissertation, a pamphlet, or a song for everything. One day he is defending St James, the sole patron of Spain, against a powerful coterie that wished to associate St Theresa with him; next day he is writing against the duke of
Savoy, the hidden enemy of Spain, or against the measures taken to change the value of the currency; or once more he is engaged with the literary school of G6ngora, whose affectationsseem to him to sin against the genius of the Castilian tongue. And in the midst of this incessant controversy on every possible subject he finds time to compose a picaresque romance, the Historia de la Vida del Buscdn, Ilamado Don Pablos, Exemplo de Vagamundos, y Espejo de Tacanos (1626); to write his Suenos (1627), in which all classes are flagellated; to pen a dissertation on The Constancy and. Patience of Job (1631), to translate St Francis de Sales and Seneca, to compose thousands of verses, and to correspond with Spanish and foreign scholars.But Quevedo was not to maintain unscathed the high position won by his knowledge, talent, and biting wit. The governmentof Olivares, which he had welcomed as the dawn of a political and
social regeneration, made things worse instead of better, and led the country to ruin. Quevedo saw this and could not hold his peace. An anonymous petition in verse enumerating the
grievances of his subjects was found, in. December 1639, under the very napkin of Philip IV. It was shown. to Olivares, who exclaimed, �I am ruined �; but before his fall he sought vengeance on the libeller. His suspicions fell on Quevedo, who had enemies glad to confirm them. Quevedo was arrested on December 7, and carried under a strong escort to the monastery of St I~Iark atLeon, where he was kept in rigorous confinement till the fall of the minister (January 1643) restored him to light and freedom, but not to the health which he had lost in his dungeon. He had
little more than two years to live, and these were spent in inactive retreat, first at La Torre de Juan Abad, and then at the neighbouring Villanueva de los Infantes, where he died September 8, 1645.
Okay, now tell me that doesn�t hop out at you like one of the Arabian Nights Tales? It is the
same mindset with which Richard Burton doggedly penned his translation and footnotes of the
latter. The "betook" is good -- there's a certain Victorian antiquitarianism about the locution that is, at this distant, not as terrible as it would have been for the Bloomsbury crowd. And how about the napkin, man? This isn't an encyclopedia entry, it is a mini-Dumas novel, and Errol Flynn should definitely play Quevedo. Still, the tensions within the monument shouldn't be overlooked. It is easy to see how it would seem to the Edwardians that this was the way to impart the sum of knowledge. Knowledge was itself an imperial form. This entry couldn't have been written by a person who was not aware of the globetrotting spirit that animated his own society -- one that sought profits in Africa and Asia, one that depended on free trade, and hypocrisy, to pull through.
Now, here is the Quevado entry from Colombia Encyclopedia:
�Spanish satirist, novelist, and wit, b. Madrid. In 1611 he fled to Italy after a duel and became involved in revolutionary plottings. When Philip IV ascended the Spanish throne, Quevedo narrowly avoided a long prison term. He was later imprisoned (1639��43) as the presumed author of a satire on the king and his favorite, the conde de Olivares. Quevedo was one of the
great writers of the Spanish Golden Age. Los sue��os [visions] (1627) is a brilliant and bitterly satiric account, after Dante and Lucan, of the inhabitants of hell. Other major works include the philosophical treatise Providencia de Dios (1641), the political essay Pol��tica de Dios y gobierno de Cristo (1626��55), and the important picaresque novel La vida del Busc��n (1626). Also a major poet, his verse was collected in El Parnaso espa��ol (1648). His Ep��stola sat��rica
y censoria (1639), a poetic satire against Olivares, is well known. Quevedo was a determined
opponent of Gongorism (see G��ngora). 1 See studies by D. W. Blesnick (1972) and J. Iffland
(1978).�
Friday, March 15, 2002
Our far-flung correspondents.
For some reason, for the last week Limited Inc is getting an alarming amount of traffic. In the high 20s, messieurs et mesdames. Yes, the views we ventilate here are slowly seeping into the Weltgeist, where, like CFCs in the stratosphere, they will do their silent and peculiar damage.
The last post elicited a nice little letter from D., who said he liked it, and his wife, who said what are you thinking of, describing D. as drinking like a fish. We replied that we were not saying D. was in any way an alky: "A drunk is a guy who is always longing for a drink; this is the exact reverse of the true artiste of drinking - in which case, the drink is always longing for the guy. The act of drinking, in the latter case, is just obliging the angel of history. Who is always saying: another round for my friend!" That post also elicited this opinion from the habitual scourge of Limited Inc's ill thought out attempts at humor, Alan C., who said he could reply to me in a on the one hand, on the other hand manner, but would be "brief and
polemical instead:"
"Freud said that the goal of psychoanalysis was to free people from neurotic
misery and to make it possible for them to experience ordinary human
unhappiness. Antidepressants and other psychiatric medications can in fact
do that, a lot more effectively than psychoanalysis ever could. Some of
your remarks seem to me to reflect an inability to understand the
distinction."
Our favorite Memphis-ite, M.B., who once had to travel through Round Rock on her way to a teaching gig in some Texas outpost town, liked the Round Rock post. As did the particular European woman mentioned in it. So, Limited Inc is just love festing with the good vibes, right? Well, we must be doing something wrong to please people as much as we have this week. Hmm. We'll try harder in the next couple posts to be really contrarian and mean-spirited.
For some reason, for the last week Limited Inc is getting an alarming amount of traffic. In the high 20s, messieurs et mesdames. Yes, the views we ventilate here are slowly seeping into the Weltgeist, where, like CFCs in the stratosphere, they will do their silent and peculiar damage.
The last post elicited a nice little letter from D., who said he liked it, and his wife, who said what are you thinking of, describing D. as drinking like a fish. We replied that we were not saying D. was in any way an alky: "A drunk is a guy who is always longing for a drink; this is the exact reverse of the true artiste of drinking - in which case, the drink is always longing for the guy. The act of drinking, in the latter case, is just obliging the angel of history. Who is always saying: another round for my friend!" That post also elicited this opinion from the habitual scourge of Limited Inc's ill thought out attempts at humor, Alan C., who said he could reply to me in a on the one hand, on the other hand manner, but would be "brief and
polemical instead:"
"Freud said that the goal of psychoanalysis was to free people from neurotic
misery and to make it possible for them to experience ordinary human
unhappiness. Antidepressants and other psychiatric medications can in fact
do that, a lot more effectively than psychoanalysis ever could. Some of
your remarks seem to me to reflect an inability to understand the
distinction."
Our favorite Memphis-ite, M.B., who once had to travel through Round Rock on her way to a teaching gig in some Texas outpost town, liked the Round Rock post. As did the particular European woman mentioned in it. So, Limited Inc is just love festing with the good vibes, right? Well, we must be doing something wrong to please people as much as we have this week. Hmm. We'll try harder in the next couple posts to be really contrarian and mean-spirited.
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Dope
D. called up this morning. He told Limited Inc a funny tale.
Seems D. and his wife went to a cowboy dancehall a couple of days ago.
Now, D., like Limited Inc, is an unhibited dancer. He dances like he has fishes in his britches, he flails galvanically, he pogoes to the sweet strains of trucker nostalgia coming over the loudspeakers, and he isn't afraid to dance alone.
He also, it should be said, drinks like a fish. Of course. He's a friend of mine.
Anyway, a good time was being had by all when D.'s wife was approached by a woman who identified herself as a school teacher. As you know, you can go through the education department at many of our illustrious institutions and come out without a clue as to how to do, say, long division. But one thing you can't skip is the class on how to drug the a- and anti-socials. Dumb em down, drug em up -- is this a win-win situation for your local school board or what? So, being a good diagnostician, this teacher had immediately spotted D. for what he was -- a sufferer from ADD. D.'s wife is doing the slow burn when the teacher, sly as a cat, made off with D.'s drink. Apparently, she didn't want this ADD guy running around drunk, who knows what he'd do.
D. told Limited Inc this story partly because he wanted to make us laugh. ADD is Limited Inc's current favorite designer disease. It is more than a state of mind, it is the state of the union, baby! If America pays attention to anything for more than two days, we all agree that it is world history, there's never been anything like it before, and, in short, "everything (as they say) will be different."
A designer disease is such a money maker that I feel it a public duty to reveal to my select audience, entrepeneurs all, how a designer disease work. Take any assortment of bad habits and aches and pains, package it, and baptize it with a nifty acronym. SDD, XDD, whatever. You need to link it to some neural jargon, and thence to a neuro-toxin, which can be had for x bucks a pill. Or as a wonderous site on ADHD puts it, licking its lips and rubbing its hands: ADHD in adults is very responsive to pharmacotherapy. Very, very big boy. Can't you just hear the pharma guys purring that line into the local doc's ear? Throw in eye of newt, whiskers of cat, and bingo:
"Research and clinical experience have shown that the antidepressants Norpramin (desipramine) and Tofranil(imipramine) effectively increase attentiveness.' In Limited Inc.'s case, attentiveness is also increased by the promise of large sums of money or ready sex, but alas, the pharmacist doesn't purvey such things.
Still, once you have your SXXD, you need a market. To get it across, most trained medical personel feel that you need to tell some tales of the tribe. Brochures, books, stories about people just like you and me, people who are sufferin' terribly from life dysfunction. A guy I know who is convinced he has adult ADD once proved it to me by telling me of a story he'd come across in a book on the subject. The guy in the book had a presentation to make, but kept putting it off, putting it off, couldn't concentrate until the last moment, did it, then, exhausted, fell asleep and slept through the time scheduled for the presentation. And, here's the killer, the reader told me, he'd done exactly the same thing . Is this Q.E.D. or what?
Tales like this are glommed onto by the great mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation. Now they suddenly understand that their desperation is a medical condition, and so they become much less quiet -- become positively noisy. This is the second phase of the designer disease profile -- the viral stage. It spreads from mouth to mouth, as people compare anecdotes and recall their own multiple failures and unhappinesses. It turns out it was this scoprion lurking in the shadows! ADD is just sitting there, in the biography, waiting to strike.
The importance of the anecdote can't be underestimated in this process. In this, it reminds me of fortune-telling. Fortune telling is a communicative emblem, really, because all of the cues plug in to a good fortune telling session. First, the fortune teller casts back into the past. Relationship problems? perhaps with a man who didn't appreciate you? perhaps this man, though, he had some good qualities? Of course. Play the averages, here. If you are dealing with a lesbian audience, the bad boyfriend thing isn't going to work, but you simple have to shift the gender stuff around, plug into a different regime of sentimentality. Ditto if you are dealing with a guy. Then some unusual circumstance that is statistically distributed: she told me all about that time X (the relationship reject in question) threw a fit about the car. about the dishes. About the insurance. About the vacation. Fortune telling relies on the odd relationship between our self consciousness and our unconsciousness of our fit into regular social patterns. The broad shapes of our fates within a population in which like social constraints apply are really not so different. Plug in the variables, take a ride on the wild side. But fortune telling also depends on vanity. The fortune teller who predicts, I see you marrying a man who will go bald and pudgy in ten years, pick at his food, and watch way too much television is not going to get a big tip, even though she gets points for truthtelling. You can only play the odds so much. L'amour propre is still the goddess.
D. called up this morning. He told Limited Inc a funny tale.
Seems D. and his wife went to a cowboy dancehall a couple of days ago.
Now, D., like Limited Inc, is an unhibited dancer. He dances like he has fishes in his britches, he flails galvanically, he pogoes to the sweet strains of trucker nostalgia coming over the loudspeakers, and he isn't afraid to dance alone.
He also, it should be said, drinks like a fish. Of course. He's a friend of mine.
Anyway, a good time was being had by all when D.'s wife was approached by a woman who identified herself as a school teacher. As you know, you can go through the education department at many of our illustrious institutions and come out without a clue as to how to do, say, long division. But one thing you can't skip is the class on how to drug the a- and anti-socials. Dumb em down, drug em up -- is this a win-win situation for your local school board or what? So, being a good diagnostician, this teacher had immediately spotted D. for what he was -- a sufferer from ADD. D.'s wife is doing the slow burn when the teacher, sly as a cat, made off with D.'s drink. Apparently, she didn't want this ADD guy running around drunk, who knows what he'd do.
D. told Limited Inc this story partly because he wanted to make us laugh. ADD is Limited Inc's current favorite designer disease. It is more than a state of mind, it is the state of the union, baby! If America pays attention to anything for more than two days, we all agree that it is world history, there's never been anything like it before, and, in short, "everything (as they say) will be different."
A designer disease is such a money maker that I feel it a public duty to reveal to my select audience, entrepeneurs all, how a designer disease work. Take any assortment of bad habits and aches and pains, package it, and baptize it with a nifty acronym. SDD, XDD, whatever. You need to link it to some neural jargon, and thence to a neuro-toxin, which can be had for x bucks a pill. Or as a wonderous site on ADHD puts it, licking its lips and rubbing its hands: ADHD in adults is very responsive to pharmacotherapy. Very, very big boy. Can't you just hear the pharma guys purring that line into the local doc's ear? Throw in eye of newt, whiskers of cat, and bingo:
"Research and clinical experience have shown that the antidepressants Norpramin (desipramine) and Tofranil(imipramine) effectively increase attentiveness.' In Limited Inc.'s case, attentiveness is also increased by the promise of large sums of money or ready sex, but alas, the pharmacist doesn't purvey such things.
Still, once you have your SXXD, you need a market. To get it across, most trained medical personel feel that you need to tell some tales of the tribe. Brochures, books, stories about people just like you and me, people who are sufferin' terribly from life dysfunction. A guy I know who is convinced he has adult ADD once proved it to me by telling me of a story he'd come across in a book on the subject. The guy in the book had a presentation to make, but kept putting it off, putting it off, couldn't concentrate until the last moment, did it, then, exhausted, fell asleep and slept through the time scheduled for the presentation. And, here's the killer, the reader told me, he'd done exactly the same thing . Is this Q.E.D. or what?
Tales like this are glommed onto by the great mass of men who lead lives of quiet desperation. Now they suddenly understand that their desperation is a medical condition, and so they become much less quiet -- become positively noisy. This is the second phase of the designer disease profile -- the viral stage. It spreads from mouth to mouth, as people compare anecdotes and recall their own multiple failures and unhappinesses. It turns out it was this scoprion lurking in the shadows! ADD is just sitting there, in the biography, waiting to strike.
The importance of the anecdote can't be underestimated in this process. In this, it reminds me of fortune-telling. Fortune telling is a communicative emblem, really, because all of the cues plug in to a good fortune telling session. First, the fortune teller casts back into the past. Relationship problems? perhaps with a man who didn't appreciate you? perhaps this man, though, he had some good qualities? Of course. Play the averages, here. If you are dealing with a lesbian audience, the bad boyfriend thing isn't going to work, but you simple have to shift the gender stuff around, plug into a different regime of sentimentality. Ditto if you are dealing with a guy. Then some unusual circumstance that is statistically distributed: she told me all about that time X (the relationship reject in question) threw a fit about the car. about the dishes. About the insurance. About the vacation. Fortune telling relies on the odd relationship between our self consciousness and our unconsciousness of our fit into regular social patterns. The broad shapes of our fates within a population in which like social constraints apply are really not so different. Plug in the variables, take a ride on the wild side. But fortune telling also depends on vanity. The fortune teller who predicts, I see you marrying a man who will go bald and pudgy in ten years, pick at his food, and watch way too much television is not going to get a big tip, even though she gets points for truthtelling. You can only play the odds so much. L'amour propre is still the goddess.
Remora
From the WP a story ostensibly detailing another instance of environmental degradation:
"The first nationwide study of pharmaceutical pollution of rivers and streams offers an unsettling picture of waterways contaminated with antibiotics, steroids, synthetic hormones and other commonly used drugs.Of the 139 streams analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey in 30 states -- including Maryland and Virginia -- about 80 percent contained trace amounts of contaminants that are routinely discharged into the water in human and livestock waste and chemical plant refuse."
But only the naysayers, the nattering nabobs, will jump on this story from the pollution side. Because this is a classic good news/bad news story. See how the liberal press typically showcases the bad side -- when the good news side of it is right in front of their collective noses: here's the solution to the pesky problem of universal health care! The compassionate conservatives can now make the case that health is just a glass of tapwater away from even our poorest citizens! Is this a great country or what? In other countries, to get your steroids, you have to know a doctor. You have to go through the state socialism of a bureaucracy. It is all the Soviet Union out there in the world where the parts aren't American (except for Britain, of course. They love us in Britain. They kiss our butts in Britain. They're crazy to go along with us when we do the darndest things -- oh, like attacking the axis of evil --in Britain. They have Tony Blair in Britain, and he understands our sorta sometimes hostile needs like perfectly!), and people have to queue up at the steroid store to get those necessary muscle builders. Imagine!
There was a story back in October (a month devoted to recoil from 9.11, and thus essentially a blank, as far as news goes, in Limited Inc's mind) in Salon http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/25/drugs_water/print.html that has a lot more fun facts to know and tell. For instance, the author, Mark D. Uehling, quotes some water honcho as saying: the presence of "endocrine-disrupting chemicals in potable and nonpotable water has not been established."
But Uehling
notes:
Scientists in Minneapolis presented abundant evidence to the contrary. For one thing, most farmers liberally dose pigs, cows and chickens with hormones. Those male and female hormones are definitely reaching the environment in both liquid and solid animal wastes. Birth control drugs, even steroids used by body builders and pro athletes, are making similar deposits. The question is what effects the chemicals are having, and whether the water (or something else) might be the source. One new clue came from the Mississippi River, where James Levitt of the University of Minnesota studied a variety of fish coping with endocrine mimic-molecules. Levitt compared walleyed pike upstream from a lock, where there were no endocrine mimic-molecules, with fish caught downstream from the lock, where there was plenty of sewage effluent and no shortage of estrogen disrupters.
The male fish swimming in the dirty water had no sperm, and malformed testes. The female fish in the same water had similarly degenerated ovaries
."
The old joke, from W.C. Fields, was that he didn't drink water, because fish fuck in it. The new joke is something like, I don't drink water, because fish can't fuck in it. As they say in the Reader's Digest, humor is the best medecine.
From the WP a story ostensibly detailing another instance of environmental degradation:
"The first nationwide study of pharmaceutical pollution of rivers and streams offers an unsettling picture of waterways contaminated with antibiotics, steroids, synthetic hormones and other commonly used drugs.Of the 139 streams analyzed by the U.S. Geological Survey in 30 states -- including Maryland and Virginia -- about 80 percent contained trace amounts of contaminants that are routinely discharged into the water in human and livestock waste and chemical plant refuse."
But only the naysayers, the nattering nabobs, will jump on this story from the pollution side. Because this is a classic good news/bad news story. See how the liberal press typically showcases the bad side -- when the good news side of it is right in front of their collective noses: here's the solution to the pesky problem of universal health care! The compassionate conservatives can now make the case that health is just a glass of tapwater away from even our poorest citizens! Is this a great country or what? In other countries, to get your steroids, you have to know a doctor. You have to go through the state socialism of a bureaucracy. It is all the Soviet Union out there in the world where the parts aren't American (except for Britain, of course. They love us in Britain. They kiss our butts in Britain. They're crazy to go along with us when we do the darndest things -- oh, like attacking the axis of evil --in Britain. They have Tony Blair in Britain, and he understands our sorta sometimes hostile needs like perfectly!), and people have to queue up at the steroid store to get those necessary muscle builders. Imagine!
There was a story back in October (a month devoted to recoil from 9.11, and thus essentially a blank, as far as news goes, in Limited Inc's mind) in Salon http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/25/drugs_water/print.html that has a lot more fun facts to know and tell. For instance, the author, Mark D. Uehling, quotes some water honcho as saying: the presence of "endocrine-disrupting chemicals in potable and nonpotable water has not been established."
But Uehling
notes:
Scientists in Minneapolis presented abundant evidence to the contrary. For one thing, most farmers liberally dose pigs, cows and chickens with hormones. Those male and female hormones are definitely reaching the environment in both liquid and solid animal wastes. Birth control drugs, even steroids used by body builders and pro athletes, are making similar deposits. The question is what effects the chemicals are having, and whether the water (or something else) might be the source. One new clue came from the Mississippi River, where James Levitt of the University of Minnesota studied a variety of fish coping with endocrine mimic-molecules. Levitt compared walleyed pike upstream from a lock, where there were no endocrine mimic-molecules, with fish caught downstream from the lock, where there was plenty of sewage effluent and no shortage of estrogen disrupters.
The male fish swimming in the dirty water had no sperm, and malformed testes. The female fish in the same water had similarly degenerated ovaries
."
The old joke, from W.C. Fields, was that he didn't drink water, because fish fuck in it. The new joke is something like, I don't drink water, because fish can't fuck in it. As they say in the Reader's Digest, humor is the best medecine.
Monday, March 11, 2002
Note:
The usual process of putting out my posts involves proofreading them once they are up on the web page. For some unknown reason, the Blogger won't go into editing mode. So in the post below, there are several mistakes. For instance, "were does this woman, this woman flying around the Middle East alienating Egyptian journalists,. come from..." would have been edited to "where does this woman, jetting around the Middle East and alienating Egyptian journalists on US government time, come from..." Anyway, I apologize in advance for certain inelegancies.
Limited Inc.
The usual process of putting out my posts involves proofreading them once they are up on the web page. For some unknown reason, the Blogger won't go into editing mode. So in the post below, there are several mistakes. For instance, "were does this woman, this woman flying around the Middle East alienating Egyptian journalists,. come from..." would have been edited to "where does this woman, jetting around the Middle East and alienating Egyptian journalists on US government time, come from..." Anyway, I apologize in advance for certain inelegancies.
Limited Inc.
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