Down with the flu.
I shall return.
cw
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
This is why it's so easy.
Dear George,
Listen up; I want to let you in on a little secret. The reason Wall Street is having such an easy time looting the U.S. Treasury has nothing to do with corruption or lobbyist or campaign payoffs to their congressional employees.
It all has to do with rhymes, as in nursery rhymes.
Millions, billions, trillions—they sound the same, so in the public’s eye they are pretty much the same.
Right?
Not necessarily.
There’s a handy little trick that puts the difference between the three into perspective. If you substitute seconds for dollars, you get the following relationship:
· A million seconds equals 11.7 days
· A billion seconds equals 32 years
· A trillion seconds equals 32000 years[1]
The following paragraph gives of summary of some of the looted funds that have found their way to Wall Street. After each figure, I have inserted the equivalent time in parenthesis:
The U.S. government has pledged more than $11.6 trillion (371,200 years) on behalf of the American taxpayers over the past 19 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Changes from the previous table, published Feb. 9, include a $787 billion (25,184 years) economic stimulus package. The Federal Reserve has new lending commitments totaling $1.8 trillion (57,600 years)…The U.S. Treasury also added $200 billion (6,400 years) to its support commitment for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…
Anyhow, you get the idea.
With a rhyming game like that it’s as easy as taking candy from a baby.
No wonder nobody pays attention.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Blastland & Dilton. The Numbers Game.
Listen up; I want to let you in on a little secret. The reason Wall Street is having such an easy time looting the U.S. Treasury has nothing to do with corruption or lobbyist or campaign payoffs to their congressional employees.
It all has to do with rhymes, as in nursery rhymes.
Millions, billions, trillions—they sound the same, so in the public’s eye they are pretty much the same.
Right?
Not necessarily.
There’s a handy little trick that puts the difference between the three into perspective. If you substitute seconds for dollars, you get the following relationship:
· A million seconds equals 11.7 days
· A billion seconds equals 32 years
· A trillion seconds equals 32000 years[1]
The following paragraph gives of summary of some of the looted funds that have found their way to Wall Street. After each figure, I have inserted the equivalent time in parenthesis:
The U.S. government has pledged more than $11.6 trillion (371,200 years) on behalf of the American taxpayers over the past 19 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Changes from the previous table, published Feb. 9, include a $787 billion (25,184 years) economic stimulus package. The Federal Reserve has new lending commitments totaling $1.8 trillion (57,600 years)…The U.S. Treasury also added $200 billion (6,400 years) to its support commitment for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…
Anyhow, you get the idea.
With a rhyming game like that it’s as easy as taking candy from a baby.
No wonder nobody pays attention.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
[1] Blastland & Dilton. The Numbers Game.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Constructive Anxiety
Dear George,
Hear, now, as I sing the praises of anxiety, that state of mind that is so dreaded it has become a permanent part of our collective psyche.
Power goes to him who can see anxiety as a constructive contribution to social stability. Because the drones can’t stand uncertainty, they seek the stability of escapism. Disneyland never changes, and that is their comfort and their succor.
This same dynamic produces the short-term thinking that is the bedrock of our “free” society. When the future looks like shit, all the proles want to do is stay in the “now”. For the anxious, the world shrinks and is reduced to the mantra, “I’ve got mine!” as they close their ears to the coda that whispers, “…for now.”
Anxiety has a bracing effect on religion. In the face of it religion jettisons God and replaces him with a pathological need for a dogmatic fortress. This creates the siege mentality in which all that is different is seen as a toxic threat.
In a world threatened by fantasies of the unknown and the unseen, the only viable response is untrammeled aggression. It is a world that demands torture, not treatment. Our rampart must be earthen works of violence. We must rain fire upon the earth, purging it of its impurities that threaten our freedom.
The state must keep the proles off balance. Let them have faith in nothing that they might embrace the empty and the vacuous with greater vigor. Let their jobs be swept away; let their children seek meaning with the pierced and the inked in the Holy Temple of the Mall. Let them see in the evening news the many threats, seen and unseen, that strangle their well being.
Let them taste the naked truth that ours is a feral economy that devours its children, and let them turn away from this truth and cover its face with the bland shroud of their anxiety.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Hear, now, as I sing the praises of anxiety, that state of mind that is so dreaded it has become a permanent part of our collective psyche.
Power goes to him who can see anxiety as a constructive contribution to social stability. Because the drones can’t stand uncertainty, they seek the stability of escapism. Disneyland never changes, and that is their comfort and their succor.
This same dynamic produces the short-term thinking that is the bedrock of our “free” society. When the future looks like shit, all the proles want to do is stay in the “now”. For the anxious, the world shrinks and is reduced to the mantra, “I’ve got mine!” as they close their ears to the coda that whispers, “…for now.”
Anxiety has a bracing effect on religion. In the face of it religion jettisons God and replaces him with a pathological need for a dogmatic fortress. This creates the siege mentality in which all that is different is seen as a toxic threat.
In a world threatened by fantasies of the unknown and the unseen, the only viable response is untrammeled aggression. It is a world that demands torture, not treatment. Our rampart must be earthen works of violence. We must rain fire upon the earth, purging it of its impurities that threaten our freedom.
The state must keep the proles off balance. Let them have faith in nothing that they might embrace the empty and the vacuous with greater vigor. Let their jobs be swept away; let their children seek meaning with the pierced and the inked in the Holy Temple of the Mall. Let them see in the evening news the many threats, seen and unseen, that strangle their well being.
Let them taste the naked truth that ours is a feral economy that devours its children, and let them turn away from this truth and cover its face with the bland shroud of their anxiety.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Hidden Face of Military Genius
Dear George,
Many are the critics who accuse our military establishment of being sadly out of date. They charge that the Department of Defense is still geared to fight a traditional war against a de jure nation state with its compact political and industrial centers, complete with armies and navies engaged in set-piece battles.
The critics point out that such a strategy is as archaic as it is useless when confronting a guerrilla insurgency or when waging a war on terror. What the Pentagon has to do, they say, is lose all its expensive hi-tech hardware and concentrate its resources on labor intensive counterinsurgency operations.
These critics have a firm grasp on a half-truth. Yes, the face of warfare has indeed changed, but it is not the change the critics envision. Traditional warfare’s sole objective was once victory; now it is continuation. War is no longer an extension of policy, it is a revenue stream, and the longer it can be perpetuated, the more revenue will stream into our corporate coffers.
What we are seeing now is the birth of a new strategy known, unofficially, as the strategy of eternal continuance. This strategy is composed of the following components:
· An all-volunteer army
· A well behaved press corps that raises its hand and asks permission to speak
· Shiploads of useless, hi-tech military hardware
· A complete absence of either mission or purpose
· The employment of obsolete and outdated tactics
We are seeing this new strategy in use on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border (now known Afpak, a neat exercise in linguistic reductionism that makes the whole affair sound smaller than it really is.)
The overriding goal of the CIA’s covert war is to “decapitate” al Qaeda’s leadership by using Predator and Reaper drones to drop Hellfire missiles on them. As one critic points out:
What is hard for Washington to grasp is this: “decapitation”…is not a particularly effective strategy with a decentralized guerrilla or terror organization.
Of course it isn’t, and it was never intended to be. This brings us back to war as a revenue stream. Every Hellfire missile we drop on a gaggle of civilians costs taxpayers $70,000, and that money goes into the pocket of the defense contractor that has to replace the missile that was fired simply to require its replacement.
Couple that with the fact that the MQ-1 Predator Drone is a military beach bunny that can only go out when weather conditions are perfect. The Predator is so hi-tech it can’t function in bad weather, which is why they keep crashing at an additional cost to the taxpayer of $4.5 million each. To date, 12% of the Predator fleet has been lost.
Can’t you just hear that stream gurgling away?
Yes, George, what critics brand as military ineptitude is really military genius, and we can all sleep soundly knowing that even as our economy crashes, our defense industry will continue to thrive.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Many are the critics who accuse our military establishment of being sadly out of date. They charge that the Department of Defense is still geared to fight a traditional war against a de jure nation state with its compact political and industrial centers, complete with armies and navies engaged in set-piece battles.
The critics point out that such a strategy is as archaic as it is useless when confronting a guerrilla insurgency or when waging a war on terror. What the Pentagon has to do, they say, is lose all its expensive hi-tech hardware and concentrate its resources on labor intensive counterinsurgency operations.
These critics have a firm grasp on a half-truth. Yes, the face of warfare has indeed changed, but it is not the change the critics envision. Traditional warfare’s sole objective was once victory; now it is continuation. War is no longer an extension of policy, it is a revenue stream, and the longer it can be perpetuated, the more revenue will stream into our corporate coffers.
What we are seeing now is the birth of a new strategy known, unofficially, as the strategy of eternal continuance. This strategy is composed of the following components:
· An all-volunteer army
· A well behaved press corps that raises its hand and asks permission to speak
· Shiploads of useless, hi-tech military hardware
· A complete absence of either mission or purpose
· The employment of obsolete and outdated tactics
We are seeing this new strategy in use on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border (now known Afpak, a neat exercise in linguistic reductionism that makes the whole affair sound smaller than it really is.)
The overriding goal of the CIA’s covert war is to “decapitate” al Qaeda’s leadership by using Predator and Reaper drones to drop Hellfire missiles on them. As one critic points out:
What is hard for Washington to grasp is this: “decapitation”…is not a particularly effective strategy with a decentralized guerrilla or terror organization.
Of course it isn’t, and it was never intended to be. This brings us back to war as a revenue stream. Every Hellfire missile we drop on a gaggle of civilians costs taxpayers $70,000, and that money goes into the pocket of the defense contractor that has to replace the missile that was fired simply to require its replacement.
Couple that with the fact that the MQ-1 Predator Drone is a military beach bunny that can only go out when weather conditions are perfect. The Predator is so hi-tech it can’t function in bad weather, which is why they keep crashing at an additional cost to the taxpayer of $4.5 million each. To date, 12% of the Predator fleet has been lost.
Can’t you just hear that stream gurgling away?
Yes, George, what critics brand as military ineptitude is really military genius, and we can all sleep soundly knowing that even as our economy crashes, our defense industry will continue to thrive.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Guilt--who needs it?
Dear George,
I just read a piece about a bleeding heart who claims that if we fail to “master the past” by coming to terms with our nation’s crimes through law, atonement and reconciliation, then even those who did not participate in the crimes share the guilt. This speaker was German, so it follows that he’s really into atonement. We've not yet attained their numbers.
The writer goes on to say that, “In fact, buried deep in America’s moral high ground are the bones of millions of victims of whom most Americans seem oblivious.” Of course there are! What do you expect, given our pathological fetishization of power? No nation can achieve greatness without grinding up a few bones.
I fail to understand why people get worked up over atrocities. First off, they aren’t atrocities; they’re how we secure our entitlements whenever they are threatened. We’re entitled to Mideast oil, so we snuff anyone who gets in our way. As the Big Dick said, the American way of life is non-negotiable, and because it represents the highpoint of Man’s moral development, we are honor bound to defend it by fair means or foul.
All we have to do is reposition atonement by giving it an imperial spin. Obama seems to understand this. The same article tells us:
Several weeks ago, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed the establishment of a truth commission to investigate illegal practices by members of the Bush administration. Yet President Obama has repeatedly stated his opposition to this, instead declaring that he wants to “get it right [by] moving forward.”
There you have imperial atonement: put it behind us and get busy ramping up our next atrocity. There’s no need for guilt or atonement as long as one Predator drone is still in the air looking for another wedding party to snuff.
World War II showed the world that we are the hero in a white hat that gunned down the outlaw. The simple fact that the hero went postal after that and started knocking off innocent bystanders in no way negates the good he did in killing the outlaw.
Guilt is only for those who remember the past. This is why America enjoys such a guilt-free life.
What past?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
I just read a piece about a bleeding heart who claims that if we fail to “master the past” by coming to terms with our nation’s crimes through law, atonement and reconciliation, then even those who did not participate in the crimes share the guilt. This speaker was German, so it follows that he’s really into atonement. We've not yet attained their numbers.
The writer goes on to say that, “In fact, buried deep in America’s moral high ground are the bones of millions of victims of whom most Americans seem oblivious.” Of course there are! What do you expect, given our pathological fetishization of power? No nation can achieve greatness without grinding up a few bones.
I fail to understand why people get worked up over atrocities. First off, they aren’t atrocities; they’re how we secure our entitlements whenever they are threatened. We’re entitled to Mideast oil, so we snuff anyone who gets in our way. As the Big Dick said, the American way of life is non-negotiable, and because it represents the highpoint of Man’s moral development, we are honor bound to defend it by fair means or foul.
All we have to do is reposition atonement by giving it an imperial spin. Obama seems to understand this. The same article tells us:
Several weeks ago, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed the establishment of a truth commission to investigate illegal practices by members of the Bush administration. Yet President Obama has repeatedly stated his opposition to this, instead declaring that he wants to “get it right [by] moving forward.”
There you have imperial atonement: put it behind us and get busy ramping up our next atrocity. There’s no need for guilt or atonement as long as one Predator drone is still in the air looking for another wedding party to snuff.
World War II showed the world that we are the hero in a white hat that gunned down the outlaw. The simple fact that the hero went postal after that and started knocking off innocent bystanders in no way negates the good he did in killing the outlaw.
Guilt is only for those who remember the past. This is why America enjoys such a guilt-free life.
What past?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Monday, March 2, 2009
Are they serious?
Dear George,
It looks like you’ve got to take you minions out to the woodshed. And while you’re at it, tell Rush change his medication. The pills he’s popping are rotting his brain.
I see in the Sunday Times that the newest tactic of the Rabid Right is to brand Obama as a socialist.
Ewwww! Isn’t that a scary word? At least it was fifty years ago. However, that hasn’t stopped the Right from churning out bumper stickers that read, “Comrade Obama—USSA."
The problem with this tactic is that the only logical reply is to ask, “So, what has capitalism done for us lately?”
What has it done?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
It looks like you’ve got to take you minions out to the woodshed. And while you’re at it, tell Rush change his medication. The pills he’s popping are rotting his brain.
I see in the Sunday Times that the newest tactic of the Rabid Right is to brand Obama as a socialist.
Ewwww! Isn’t that a scary word? At least it was fifty years ago. However, that hasn’t stopped the Right from churning out bumper stickers that read, “Comrade Obama—USSA."
The problem with this tactic is that the only logical reply is to ask, “So, what has capitalism done for us lately?”
What has it done?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Why Trees Dance
Dear George,
Have you ever noticed how a tree dances, even on the stillest of days? The dance begins quietly at the base of the trunk and curves slowly upwards until it explodes as the leaves catapult into the sunlight.
Trees dance because they snookered humanity. When Adam ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he swallowed a seed. The seed took root, germinated and became the label, the epithet, the sobriquet, the designation and the grouping with which we mark, classify, categorize and dub the “Other”.
Without the label, there could be no slaughter or oppression. We can’t oppress Marilyn, but a “bitch” is easy. We’ll think twice about murdering Sam, but offing a “nigger” is a cakewalk.
If the state commits an atrocity against a label or a category, it is not an atrocity; it’s policy.
As Zappa’s talking dog once opined, “The crux of the biscuit is in the apostrophe.” The apostrophe makes the denial of our denial possible. Never say “don’t” (as in, we don’t murder, we only defend) because a denial is a tacit admission that what is denied might exist, but since we refuse to acknowledge the possibility of its existence, we cannot allow the possibility of its denial. (Have Laura explain that one to you.)
I mention this because the state is going to have to do a hell of a lot of labeling as we enter the Deindustrial Revolution.
You’ve heard all the talk about dot.com bubbles, housing bubbles and asset bubbles. Forget them all! They were mere blisters on the mother of all bubbles, the Industrial Revolution. Yes, George, that great outburst of human ingenuity and technological wizardry was little more than a bubble facilitated by cheap oil and a population that lived is sod huts and log cabins.
The tremor you feel under your feet is the mother bubble deflating. The markets are saturated, the consumers are tapped out, the oil wells are starting to run dry, and refinflation is a pipe dream. There ain’t no more return on investment other than funny money expressed as the numbers that dance across the financial world’s computer screens.
As one writer puts it:
It seems normal to most people that they should be able to invest their money and, as a matter of course, get back more than they put in. This reflects the dynamics of an expanding economy; if the production of real wealth is increasing, investments on average will increase in value over time to match the growth in real wealth, and the payback on investments reflects this. Outside of the special conditions of a growth economy, though, that logic no longer applies.
Guess what, Big Guy; the days of an expanding economy are no more, and that’s going to piss off a lot of people. So when granny straps a bomb to her chest and heads for the nearest Duane Reade because her drug coverage has been cancelled, she ain’t granny no more, she’s a “grey terrorist” whom the state can gun down with impunity.
And all the riff-raff that rises up and begins burning and looting are no longer our neighbors; they are “insurgents” who can be strafed and droned in the name of national security.
The tree did us a great favor when it gave Adam that seed. That’s why it dances; it got rid of it.
Have you ever seen a policymaker dance?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Have you ever noticed how a tree dances, even on the stillest of days? The dance begins quietly at the base of the trunk and curves slowly upwards until it explodes as the leaves catapult into the sunlight.
Trees dance because they snookered humanity. When Adam ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he swallowed a seed. The seed took root, germinated and became the label, the epithet, the sobriquet, the designation and the grouping with which we mark, classify, categorize and dub the “Other”.
Without the label, there could be no slaughter or oppression. We can’t oppress Marilyn, but a “bitch” is easy. We’ll think twice about murdering Sam, but offing a “nigger” is a cakewalk.
If the state commits an atrocity against a label or a category, it is not an atrocity; it’s policy.
As Zappa’s talking dog once opined, “The crux of the biscuit is in the apostrophe.” The apostrophe makes the denial of our denial possible. Never say “don’t” (as in, we don’t murder, we only defend) because a denial is a tacit admission that what is denied might exist, but since we refuse to acknowledge the possibility of its existence, we cannot allow the possibility of its denial. (Have Laura explain that one to you.)
I mention this because the state is going to have to do a hell of a lot of labeling as we enter the Deindustrial Revolution.
You’ve heard all the talk about dot.com bubbles, housing bubbles and asset bubbles. Forget them all! They were mere blisters on the mother of all bubbles, the Industrial Revolution. Yes, George, that great outburst of human ingenuity and technological wizardry was little more than a bubble facilitated by cheap oil and a population that lived is sod huts and log cabins.
The tremor you feel under your feet is the mother bubble deflating. The markets are saturated, the consumers are tapped out, the oil wells are starting to run dry, and refinflation is a pipe dream. There ain’t no more return on investment other than funny money expressed as the numbers that dance across the financial world’s computer screens.
As one writer puts it:
It seems normal to most people that they should be able to invest their money and, as a matter of course, get back more than they put in. This reflects the dynamics of an expanding economy; if the production of real wealth is increasing, investments on average will increase in value over time to match the growth in real wealth, and the payback on investments reflects this. Outside of the special conditions of a growth economy, though, that logic no longer applies.
Guess what, Big Guy; the days of an expanding economy are no more, and that’s going to piss off a lot of people. So when granny straps a bomb to her chest and heads for the nearest Duane Reade because her drug coverage has been cancelled, she ain’t granny no more, she’s a “grey terrorist” whom the state can gun down with impunity.
And all the riff-raff that rises up and begins burning and looting are no longer our neighbors; they are “insurgents” who can be strafed and droned in the name of national security.
The tree did us a great favor when it gave Adam that seed. That’s why it dances; it got rid of it.
Have you ever seen a policymaker dance?
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
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