Vote? Why? What candidate in the quadiennial resurrection of the Mickey Mouse club wants to do anthing that I want done?
I want to roll back the onrushing police state and return to constitutional government. The plunge into totalitarianism is a far worse danger than World War Two, in which the US was never in danger of being invaded, and in which the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Who do I vote for? No candidate (except Ron Paul: ERP) is against sovietization.
I want to end our stupid wars, now. Yesterday. Who do I vote for? There is no anti'war candidate (ERP). Obama sends the troops anywhere he can think of, and all the Republicans want to attack Iran.
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Friday, February 3, 2012
The Cost of Britain's kleines Huhn
Britain's Minister for Climate Panic and Punitive Remedial Measures, Chris Huhne, aka kleines Huhn (Chicken Little, in English), has resigned from the Government after being charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice by having his former wife take the blame for a speeding offense.
Over at WUWT, Chris Monckton explains the sheer insanity of the former ministers trillion-dollar plan to cut Britain's carbon emissions 80% by 2042:
Under Huhne, the Climate Change Department has been indistinguishable from a lunatic asylum. I first came across him – or, rather, didn’t come across him – when he and I were due to debate the climate at the annual jamboree of a massive hedge-fund in Spain three years ago. Huhne only found out that I was to be his opponent when he reached Heathrow Airport. He turned straight around and went back to London.
When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.
There was a horrified silence. The birds stopped singing. The Minister adjusted his tie. The Permanent Secretary looked at his watch. Professor Mackay looked as though he wished the plush sofa into which he was disappearing would swallow him up entirely.
Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.” The biggest tax increase in human history had been based not upon a mature scientific assessment followed by a careful economic appraisal, but solely upon blind faith. I said as much. “Well,” said the Professor, “maybe we’ll get around to doing the calculations next October.”
Read more
Over at WUWT, Chris Monckton explains the sheer insanity of the former ministers trillion-dollar plan to cut Britain's carbon emissions 80% by 2042:
Under Huhne, the Climate Change Department has been indistinguishable from a lunatic asylum. I first came across him – or, rather, didn’t come across him – when he and I were due to debate the climate at the annual jamboree of a massive hedge-fund in Spain three years ago. Huhne only found out that I was to be his opponent when he reached Heathrow Airport. He turned straight around and went back to London.
When I visited the House of Lords’ minister, Lord Marland, at the Climate Change Department a couple of years ago, I asked him and the Department’s chief number-cruncher, Professor David Mackay (neither a climate scientist nor an economist, of course) to show me the Department’s calculations detailing just how much “global warming” that might otherwise occur this century would be prevented by the $30 billion per year that the Department was committed to spend between 2011 and 2050 – $1.2 trillion in all.
There was a horrified silence. The birds stopped singing. The Minister adjusted his tie. The Permanent Secretary looked at his watch. Professor Mackay looked as though he wished the plush sofa into which he was disappearing would swallow him up entirely.
Eventually, in a very small voice, the Professor said, “Er, ah, mphm, that is, oof, arghh, we’ve never done any such calculation.” The biggest tax increase in human history had been based not upon a mature scientific assessment followed by a careful economic appraisal, but solely upon blind faith. I said as much. “Well,” said the Professor, “maybe we’ll get around to doing the calculations next October.”
Read more
Clear Water At the North Pole: 1959
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| US Submarine Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959 |
1959: So where's the ice?
The NAZIS and FASCISTS who founded the THE EU and their influence today
Link via Aangirfan's: FASCISM, TOP FAMILIES, FALSE FLAG OPS, which includes an informative interview with Annie Machon, an MI5 whistle-blower.
What Is the Point?
This is my first blog post in over a week, which raises hope of an eventual full remission of the compulsive blogging disorder (CBD).
What I find most helpful in suppressing the blogging impulse is recognition that there really is no point in it: wait a day or two and someone is sure to make the case better than I can.
This was well demonstrated yesterday by Alex Kurtagic's demolition of a university-sponsored pseudo-scientific study proving that all right-wingers are dumb racists.
The study reminds one of those reports that students using Macs are dumber than those with IBM PC, or that folks who use Internet Explorer are dumber than those using Firefox.
But perhaps the study is a hoax to prove that liberal academics will believe anything. If so, we look forward to the follow up.
What I find most helpful in suppressing the blogging impulse is recognition that there really is no point in it: wait a day or two and someone is sure to make the case better than I can.
This was well demonstrated yesterday by Alex Kurtagic's demolition of a university-sponsored pseudo-scientific study proving that all right-wingers are dumb racists.
The study reminds one of those reports that students using Macs are dumber than those with IBM PC, or that folks who use Internet Explorer are dumber than those using Firefox.
But perhaps the study is a hoax to prove that liberal academics will believe anything. If so, we look forward to the follow up.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Europe's Iran Oil Embargo: Iran Strikes First
| ZeroHedge: In what is likely a long overdue move, Iran has finally decided to give Europe a harsh lesson in game theory. Instead of letting Euro-area politicians score brownie points at its expense by threatening to halt imports and cut off the Iranian economy, the Iranian government will instead propose a bill calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. Read more |
Has Iran dealt the EU a harsh lesson in game theory, or merely extricated itself from the consequences of its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz should Europe impose an embargo on the import of Iranian oil?
The European embargo was scheduled to go into effect in July. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz would have elicited the promised American military action to open the Strait. So by making meaningless any European embargo, Iran avoids the need to make good on its threat to blockade the Strait, and thus denies US/Israel the long hoped for pretext for a war that would likely have escalated to the use of nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.
Now US/Israel will need a different justification for nuking Iran to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons to deter US/Israel from nuking Iran.
The Unbearable Whiteness... ...of Being Mitt Romney
By Andy Nowicki
In my previous article "Defiant Chastity," I asked the plaintive question: Is there anywhere in the debauched landscape of postmodern America where one can still find determined cultural resistance to the wearisome blight of entrenched sexual permissiveness, or stiff defiance against the dully exasperating trend towards enforced tolerance for every conceivable brand of unwholesome carnal perversity?
I then met my own seemingly rhetorical question with a surprisingly concrete answer: Yes, I replied; there IS, in fact, just such an unapologetically unreconstructed, sexually reactionary culture still in existence! It lies in the American West, among the denizens of "Deseret" (that is, Utah), which is to say, among the Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons.
Indeed, beyond the so-called "Zion Curtain" of Mormondom, pre-sexual revolution mores still largely hold sway. Girls are taught to dress modestly and always to behave in a ladylike fashion; boys are raised to be chivalrous, courtly, and responsible breadwinners; young couples are expected to put off intimate relations until their Temple marriage—wherein they are "sealed" to one another, not just for life but for eternity (!).
The fact that these quaint old customs still endure in one sector of America must be upsetting enough to the average standard-bearing Zeitgeist enforcer, inclined as such a one is to bouts of hysterical outrage that anyone anywhere might choose not to accept "enlightened" cultural norms as... well, normative.
Yet there was one significant oversight in my "Defiant Chastity" piece, since I neglected to mention a crucial piece of the puzzle, one that goes far to explain the extent of the desperate fear and ardent loathing that Mormonism provokes in the hearts of our modern-day cultural commissars.
What truly renders the Latter-Day Saints beyond the pale is in fact the overwhelming paleness of their sweet, wholesome Latter-Day Saintly complexions. ...
Read more
In my previous article "Defiant Chastity," I asked the plaintive question: Is there anywhere in the debauched landscape of postmodern America where one can still find determined cultural resistance to the wearisome blight of entrenched sexual permissiveness, or stiff defiance against the dully exasperating trend towards enforced tolerance for every conceivable brand of unwholesome carnal perversity?
I then met my own seemingly rhetorical question with a surprisingly concrete answer: Yes, I replied; there IS, in fact, just such an unapologetically unreconstructed, sexually reactionary culture still in existence! It lies in the American West, among the denizens of "Deseret" (that is, Utah), which is to say, among the Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons.
Indeed, beyond the so-called "Zion Curtain" of Mormondom, pre-sexual revolution mores still largely hold sway. Girls are taught to dress modestly and always to behave in a ladylike fashion; boys are raised to be chivalrous, courtly, and responsible breadwinners; young couples are expected to put off intimate relations until their Temple marriage—wherein they are "sealed" to one another, not just for life but for eternity (!).
The fact that these quaint old customs still endure in one sector of America must be upsetting enough to the average standard-bearing Zeitgeist enforcer, inclined as such a one is to bouts of hysterical outrage that anyone anywhere might choose not to accept "enlightened" cultural norms as... well, normative.
Yet there was one significant oversight in my "Defiant Chastity" piece, since I neglected to mention a crucial piece of the puzzle, one that goes far to explain the extent of the desperate fear and ardent loathing that Mormonism provokes in the hearts of our modern-day cultural commissars.
What truly renders the Latter-Day Saints beyond the pale is in fact the overwhelming paleness of their sweet, wholesome Latter-Day Saintly complexions. ...
Read more
Racism in Britain: We Obsess Over Black Britons While Chinese are Ignored
By William Dove
January 12, 2012: Now that Britain has become a country with an unhealthy obsession with race and racism, as shown most recently by the ridiculous outrage over some nonsensical tweeting by Diane Abbott, it was nice to see in the Guardian an aspect of this issue which is almost never raised, namely that of racism towards Chinese and East Asians living in Britain.
Actress Elizabeth Chan complained that Chinese Britons such as herself are "virtually invisible in public life", that she had to endure people making strange kung-fu noises at her and that she had been denied roles which were deemed to be for white characters only.
She also noted that while TV in her youth provided a reasonable number of black and South Asian role models not a single Chinese or East Asian was to be found.
These days I suppose young Chinese growing up in Britain do at least have Gok Wan and the girl from Harry Potter to look up to but there is no denying that there does seem to be a lack of East Asians in prominent places in society.
Friends and relatives of an East Asian background have told me of how they have had to endure being called "Chinky" and such like while also getting the feeling that they are not being taken seriously perhaps in part because of their often weaker English skills.
What is also clear is that what some disparagingly call the "Race Relations Industry" seems to be concerned with just a few races in particular rather than in the status of all the races present in the United Kingdom.
For instance despite the fact that we have and have had in this country black and South Asian cabinet ministers and MPs not only are there no East Asian MPs at present but there has, so far as I am aware, never been an MP from an East Asian background.
Yet one never hears anti-racism campaigners call for more East Asian representation or for "all Chinese shortlists". Instead they seem to rather enjoy spending their time trying to segregate black Britons from the rest of the country by talking about something called the "black community", as something seperate from mainstream British society.
Does this "community", which apparently contains everyone from the Archbishop of York to the killers of Ben Kinsella, have a set of shared values? How does one join it or leave it if one wants to? When we hear talk of "problems in the black community" as we did after the riots (in which hordes of white people took part and which not a few black police officers attempted to control) are we talking about the Archbishop or other elements within this so called community? As Bim Adewunmi pointed out, the people chosen to represent the "black community" often seem to be ex-gang members, which must surely be offensive to the many black Britons who have never had anything to do with gangs.
Unlike in America most black people in this country are here because they or their not too distant ancestors came here by choice. This is also true of the large numbers of people of East Asian descent in the country. Despite this there is an overwhelming emphasis on the fortunes of black people with some regard thrown in for South Asians.
Instead of obsessing over one or a few ethnic groups we should have a society in which racial discrimination is outlawed and where people of all races are free to succeed or fail on their own merits rather than being told that they are victims of a racist society or that members of another race are attempting to, for example, "divide and rule" them. While black Britons do no doubt suffer racism in different forms from time to time, the fact that there are plenty of successful black politicians, businessmen, doctors, journalists and so on would suggest that white oppression is not (thank goodness) the force it once was.
We should also have a society in which people are able to withstand the power of words with tolerance.
As an Englishman when I go abroad I'm often told by foreigners things like "You must like the rain because it reminds you of home". This is not quite as bad as being called a "Chinky", but it is still mildly annoying and based on racial stereotypes. I always respond by saying "Oh so it never rains in the rest of the world?".
Jokes about the rain are of course not the worst forms of verbal racial abuse. John Terry recently got into trouble for allegedly calling Anton Ferdinand a "F****** black c***". Now it is a matter of opinion that Mr Ferdinand is a "F****** c***" but it is a matter of fact that he is what is generally regarded as "black". Strangely though it was the word "black" which was considered most offensive, presumably if Mr Terry just called Mr Ferdinand an "F****** c***" that would have been mere banter.
Mr Terry should not have to face charges for inserting the word "black" into a barrage of obscenities. On the other hand the "racist tram lady" Emma West should perhaps face charges for disturbing the peace and maybe for her threatening behaviour.
What was interesting about the West incident was that while she raged against "F****** Polish" and "F****** brown people" she was told by another passenger that she had "F*** all to say" and that "You're f****** waking my baby up". This response was praised by a government minister who apparently felt that liberal use of the F-word in a public place is reasonable behaviour so long as the word is not accompanied by words like "Polish", "brown" or "black".
It may be unpleasant at times, but proper tolerance means having to put up with things we don't like.
Never again do I want to hear of someone being arrested for singing "Kung Fu Fighting" on the grounds that it's offensive to Chinese (when I heard that story my first thought was that at least they were not singing George Formby, whose series of songs on the career choices of a fictional "Mr Wu" might be somewhat un-PC nowadays) and nor do I want to hear of people being denied their full potential because of racial discrimination.
Sadly I fully expect to hear more instances of both kinds of folly.
January 12, 2012: Now that Britain has become a country with an unhealthy obsession with race and racism, as shown most recently by the ridiculous outrage over some nonsensical tweeting by Diane Abbott, it was nice to see in the Guardian an aspect of this issue which is almost never raised, namely that of racism towards Chinese and East Asians living in Britain.
Actress Elizabeth Chan complained that Chinese Britons such as herself are "virtually invisible in public life", that she had to endure people making strange kung-fu noises at her and that she had been denied roles which were deemed to be for white characters only.
She also noted that while TV in her youth provided a reasonable number of black and South Asian role models not a single Chinese or East Asian was to be found.
These days I suppose young Chinese growing up in Britain do at least have Gok Wan and the girl from Harry Potter to look up to but there is no denying that there does seem to be a lack of East Asians in prominent places in society.
Friends and relatives of an East Asian background have told me of how they have had to endure being called "Chinky" and such like while also getting the feeling that they are not being taken seriously perhaps in part because of their often weaker English skills.
What is also clear is that what some disparagingly call the "Race Relations Industry" seems to be concerned with just a few races in particular rather than in the status of all the races present in the United Kingdom.
For instance despite the fact that we have and have had in this country black and South Asian cabinet ministers and MPs not only are there no East Asian MPs at present but there has, so far as I am aware, never been an MP from an East Asian background.
Yet one never hears anti-racism campaigners call for more East Asian representation or for "all Chinese shortlists". Instead they seem to rather enjoy spending their time trying to segregate black Britons from the rest of the country by talking about something called the "black community", as something seperate from mainstream British society.
Does this "community", which apparently contains everyone from the Archbishop of York to the killers of Ben Kinsella, have a set of shared values? How does one join it or leave it if one wants to? When we hear talk of "problems in the black community" as we did after the riots (in which hordes of white people took part and which not a few black police officers attempted to control) are we talking about the Archbishop or other elements within this so called community? As Bim Adewunmi pointed out, the people chosen to represent the "black community" often seem to be ex-gang members, which must surely be offensive to the many black Britons who have never had anything to do with gangs.
Unlike in America most black people in this country are here because they or their not too distant ancestors came here by choice. This is also true of the large numbers of people of East Asian descent in the country. Despite this there is an overwhelming emphasis on the fortunes of black people with some regard thrown in for South Asians.
Instead of obsessing over one or a few ethnic groups we should have a society in which racial discrimination is outlawed and where people of all races are free to succeed or fail on their own merits rather than being told that they are victims of a racist society or that members of another race are attempting to, for example, "divide and rule" them. While black Britons do no doubt suffer racism in different forms from time to time, the fact that there are plenty of successful black politicians, businessmen, doctors, journalists and so on would suggest that white oppression is not (thank goodness) the force it once was.
We should also have a society in which people are able to withstand the power of words with tolerance.
As an Englishman when I go abroad I'm often told by foreigners things like "You must like the rain because it reminds you of home". This is not quite as bad as being called a "Chinky", but it is still mildly annoying and based on racial stereotypes. I always respond by saying "Oh so it never rains in the rest of the world?".
Jokes about the rain are of course not the worst forms of verbal racial abuse. John Terry recently got into trouble for allegedly calling Anton Ferdinand a "F****** black c***". Now it is a matter of opinion that Mr Ferdinand is a "F****** c***" but it is a matter of fact that he is what is generally regarded as "black". Strangely though it was the word "black" which was considered most offensive, presumably if Mr Terry just called Mr Ferdinand an "F****** c***" that would have been mere banter.
Mr Terry should not have to face charges for inserting the word "black" into a barrage of obscenities. On the other hand the "racist tram lady" Emma West should perhaps face charges for disturbing the peace and maybe for her threatening behaviour.
What was interesting about the West incident was that while she raged against "F****** Polish" and "F****** brown people" she was told by another passenger that she had "F*** all to say" and that "You're f****** waking my baby up". This response was praised by a government minister who apparently felt that liberal use of the F-word in a public place is reasonable behaviour so long as the word is not accompanied by words like "Polish", "brown" or "black".
It may be unpleasant at times, but proper tolerance means having to put up with things we don't like.
Never again do I want to hear of someone being arrested for singing "Kung Fu Fighting" on the grounds that it's offensive to Chinese (when I heard that story my first thought was that at least they were not singing George Formby, whose series of songs on the career choices of a fictional "Mr Wu" might be somewhat un-PC nowadays) and nor do I want to hear of people being denied their full potential because of racial discrimination.
Sadly I fully expect to hear more instances of both kinds of folly.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
More Climate Skeptic Physics Nonsense
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| Perpetmo (Image source) |
I am not a physicist, but I believe that the second law of thermodynamics is rather widely accepted among physicists, which leads me to the conclusion that an unintelligible paper published in an obscure journal, which purports to refute the second law, should be regarded with considerable skepticism.
As discussed in an earlier post, such a paper was recently reproduced at Roger Tattersall's popular Tallbloke' Talkshop, prompting refutations over at Anthony Watts' WUWT, first by Willis Eschenbach and, today, by Robert Brown of the Duke University Physics Department.
But Hans Jelbring, author of this remarkable theory, has struck back promptly at the Talkshop with a new derivation of his theory. Unfortunately, the new derivation does not address the inherent absurdity of the conclusion, which seems to be contradicted by any number of simple observations.
Tallbloke, himself, is an advocate of the Jelbring "thermo-gravitational" hypothesis, asserting the Jelbring' thesis as follows:
... gravity causes there to be a temperature gradient from cold high up, because more of the total energy is locked away as gravitational potential energy compared to warm at the bottom where the near surface air is hotter than the average because less of the total energy is locked away. Again, total energy remains equally distributed throughout the troposphere, as the second law of thermodynamics demands, but because of the difference in gravitational potential energy between molecules at the bottom and top, there is a thermal gradient.My own off the cuff refutation of this was as follows:
Consider an airless, sunless planet without an internal heat source that passes through a cloud of gas, thereby acquiring an atmosphere.Tallbloke, to whom this argument was addressed, made no response. Several others did respond, but with what appeared to be spurious objections, for example, that my argument would be invalid if I made my planet spin, or if I added a sun.Other objections were no more compelling.
Initially the planet surface temperature will approximate to the microwave background temperature of 2.75 K. However, as gas accumulates around the planet, the gas is compressed gravitationally, with resultant heating in accordance with the gas laws. The warmth of the atmosphere will heat the planet surface, which will then radiate more energy than it receives from outer space.
Eventually, the thermal energy released in the gravitational compression of the atmosphere will be entirely dissipated, by which time the temperature of the planet surface will have returned to its original value of 2.75 K, though the atmospheric pressure gradient from the surface to outer space remains.
So the gravitational effect on the surface temperature is transient only.
According to this account, the internal temperature of large gas planets must be due either to residual heat acquired during the process of formation, or produced by nuclear reactions, such as as account, in part, for the Earth’s internal heat.
Is this not correct?
In his new derivation of the hypothesis, Jelbring considers:
...two air parcels of equal and suitable mass (a billion molecules) which have to carry an equal amount of total energy regardless of their altitude if an adiabatic condition is assumed.The proof that follows is mathematical, but the essence of it appears to be that as a parcel of air is raised or lowered in the Earth's gravitational field its gravitational potential energy is increased or decreased with a corresponding decrease or increase in temperature, thus maintaining total energy constant.
Now the concept of potential energy is not the easiest thing to grasp, and so the Jelbring hypothesis may have some plausibility. But if one considers the various implications, as does the above-cited Robert Brown, one sees that they flatly contradict the second law of thermodynamics, the law that outlaws perpetual motion machines and free energy.
My own attempt at a refutation at the Talkshop, is as follows:
If your packets of air are in rigid, sealed capsules, you can raise them or lower them in a gravitational field as much as you like and they will undergo no change in temperature, even though you have changed their gravitational potential energy.Whether that settles the argument for all reasonable people, I leave for reasonable people to decide, but at least my conclusion places me on the same side as the Duke University Physics Department, which I find encouraging.
From this we can infer that the change in gravitational potential energy of air with altitude does not explain the change with altitude in air temperature, which results from the work done as the gas is compressed or expanded with change in barometric pressure with altitude.
But in any case, if Hans Jelbring does not want to be affronted by non-physicists continually claiming to have rubbished his theory, he really has no one to blame but himself, since he has failed to put it to the test of the professional physics community by having it published in a reputable physics journal. He has, it is true, published his thesis, but in a sociology journal edited by a retired geography professor, which as I discussed in an earlier post, absolutely does not rate in the eyes of the scientific community.
So what are we to conclude? Seemingly, that popular websites dealing with scientific topics can be swamps of obscurity, nonsense and misinformation. Or is there something sinister at work here? Are we seeing an attempt to discredit the climate warming skeptics by associating them with bogus science, or perhaps part of a general effort to convince the public that the blogsphere as a whole is wasteland to be avoided for the safety and reliability of the mainstream media? But more on that in another post.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Some Climate Warming Skeptics Ready to Ditch the Second Law of Thermodynamics
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| Image source |
I am not a climate warming skeptic. I am a skeptic about everything, especially about scientific claims made by those, like Al Gore and the Coal Alliance, who have a political agenda. For that reason, I follow the climate change debate with a skeptical eye for claims made on either side.
Among those skeptical of alarmist claims about human-caused, or anthropogenic, climate change are some of undoubted ability whose critical evaluation of the work of the mainstream school of climate science, which is closely wedded to projections of massive climate disruption due to human activity, deserves careful attention.
However, because of the politics, much skeptic clamor is as preposterous as any of the nonsense with which Al Gore has managed to pervert the course of public debate and embarrass the scientific community. In some cases, the nonsense is surely propagated with the deliberate intent to deceive, but in most cases the spread of nonsense is likely driven solely by wishful thinking, something that is with us always.
An example of the apparent will of the climate skeptic to believe is provided by the ongoing debate at Tallbloke's Talkshop and at Anthony Watt's web site concerning the "Gravito-Thermal Hypothesis" of Hans Jelbring, a debate of such intensity as to create moments of severe inter-Skeptic friction (and here).
The Jelbring hypothesis is quite obscure. So obscure in fact, that it has been claimed that no one understands it well enough to explain it. But what the hypothesis asserts is that the greenhouse effect:
...can be explained as ... a consequence of known physical laws describing the behaviour of ideal gases in a gravity field.Now this is a radical claim, published it should be noted, in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. To understand why it is radical, one needs to be clear as to what the greenhouse effect is.
The so-called greenhouse effect has in fact little to do with greenhouses, but consists in the increase in the Earth's surface temperature attributable to the presence of the atmosphere.
The way that the atmosphere raises the Earth's surface temperature is not immediately apparent. Ignoring internally generated heat, the Eath's surface temperature is largely determined by the amount of radiation received from the Sun. Thus the surface is usually warmer during the day than at night and warmer during the long days of summer than during the short days of winter.
The Sun does not, however, raise the Earth's temperature continuously, because the Earth emits energy to space in the form of heat (i.e., infra-red radiation), at a rate proportional to its temperature. Thus the Earth's temperature fluctuates around a stable equilibrium value, such that planet-wide incoming solar radiation matches planet-wide outgoing infra-red radiation (averaged over the course of the year). Thus any warming tendency is counteracted by an increase in surface temperature and hence an increase in outgoing radiation. Conversely, any cooling tendency is counteracted by a decrease in surface temperature and hence a decrease in outgoing radiation.
Thus, the presence of an atmosphere will make no difference to the mean, planet-wide year-round temperature at the Earth's surface, provide it is transparent to all radiation.
However, the Earth's atmosphere does affect the temporal and spatial distribution of heat at the Earth's surface by acting as a thermal buffer. For example, it cools the surface during the day, while warming it night. But here we are concerned only with mean, year-round, planet-wide surface temperature which is dictated by the radiant energy balance, and so the temperature buffering effects of the atmosphere, or for that matter of the oceans and Earth's crust, can be ignored.
Moreover, the atmosphere does raise the temperature of the Earth's surface because it is not transparent to all radiation. Although nitrogen and oxygen, the chief constituents of the atmosphere are essentially transparent to solar and infra-red radiation, the atmosphere also contains trace amounts of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and ozone, the so-called greenhouse gases (plus water droplets in clouds), all of which absorb radiation, particularly in the infra-red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
When a molecule of greenhouse gas absorbs radiation, its temperature, i.e., its kinetic energy or velocity, is raised above the ambient temperature. In time, this energy is either transmitted through collision with circumambient molecules to non-greenhouse gases such as oxygen and nitrogen that make up most of the atmosphere, or it is emitted as infra-red radiation. The radiation may be emitted in any direction, which means that some will intercept the ground and cause surface warming. This is the greenhouse effect that keeps our planet at a temperature consistent with organic life, which is to say approximately 33 K above what it would be without a greenhouse effect. The effect is evident in the difference in temperature usually experienced between clear and cloudy nights. The clouds act as radiators, beaming infra-red radiation to the ground and substantially raising the temperature.
But not so, according to Hans Jelbring.
Jelbring contends that the greenhouse effect is almost entirely the result of a gravitational effect on the atmosphere. Unfortunately, precisely what this effect is supposed to be, no one, as noted above, seems able to clearly explain. However, without overly straining one's intellect to understand the theory, one can rather more easily consider its implications and the empirical evidence that would support it.
If Jelbring is correct, it would mean that even if a planetary atmosphere were entirely transparent, which is to say free of greenhouse gases and thus incapable of either absorbing or emitting radiant energy, it would nevertheless raise the surface temperature of the planet above what it would be without an atmosphere.
What does that imply? First, that by raising the temperature of the surface, the atmosphere must raise the outgoing radiant flux at the surface, which in turn, means an increase in radiant flux to outer space, if the atmosphere is entirely transparent (i.e., free of greenhouse gases). In fact, it means that the planet would be at least slightly luminous (i.e., outgoing radiation would exceed incoming radiation). But that is not what CERES (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System) experiment satellite measurements indicate.
There are other implications that raise even more fundamental issues. For example, if as Jelbring claims, gravity is responsible for the atmospheric temperature lapse rate, this implies a refutation of the second law of thermodynamics, the rule that outlaws perpetual motion machines and free everlasting energy.
It is not inconceivable, therefore, that excitement in the climate skeptic camp about Jelbring's thermo-gravitational hypothesis stems, at least in part, from wishful thinking, not sound scientific analysis.
Consistent with this conclusion, Jelbring's paper, published in 2003, has been cited in the scientific literature only twice, and both citations are in the same journal, Energy and Environment, as the original paper.
According to SCIMAGO, an independent journal ranking agency, Energy and Environment is a low ranking journal in terms of prestige and citations of articles in the rest of the literature. For example, on the Scimago journal prestige ranking index Energy and Environment ranks fortieth out of 49 journals concerned with energy and the environment with a score of 0.03 versus a score of 0.73 for the top journal in that category and scores of 7.8 and 10.0 for Nature and Cell, respectively.
If we turn to the journal itself, we see that the Editor is Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, who, if we look her up here, appears to be no mean scholar. She is the author of a number of frequently cited books and journal articles. However, she has not published in the fields of either climate science or physics. Moreover, according to Wikipedia, she is is an Emeritus Reader in Geography at the University of Hull in Kingston-upon-Hull England, which leads one to question her competence to determine the fate of a paper that challenges a fundamental law of physics. Wikipedia also tells us that the journal Energy and Environment, which she has edited since 1996 is aimed at, among others, "the international social science and policy communities," hardly a group liable to provide critical assessment of the thermo-gravitational hypothesis.
Wikipedia also states:
According to Fred Pearce, Boehmer-Christiansen is a sceptic about acid rain and global warming and calls the science reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "political constructs." Real Climate, a prominent blog run by climate scientists, asserted in 2011 that her journal once published a paper that claimed that the sun is made of iron; Boehmer-Christiansen responded that the claim was falseWe can say, then that Jelbring's highly questionable thesis was published in a journal of minimal scientific significance edited by a scholar of limited or non-existent credentials in the field with which Jelbring's paper deals [though we think Prof Boehmer-Christiansen, sure has the IPCC weighed up right].
The journal has an Editorial Advisory Board, but the membership does not appear strong in the physical sciences. For example, Maarten J. Arentsen holds a Master’s degree in political science specializing in scientific methodology and political modernization; David J. Ball, is Professor of Risk Management, Middlesex University, Hendon, UK; Max Beran, Independent Environmental Services Professional, Oxford, UK; etc.
None of which proves that Jelbring's hypothesis is unquestionably wrong. Perhaps the Earth really does glow in the dark, and perhaps the second law of thermodyamics will have to be repealed. But for now, mainstream science is ignoring the thing, and are probably none the worse for doing so.
Revised January 22, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Power, Propaganda, and Purpose in American Democracy
By Andrew Gavin Marshall
One central facet to the development of the modern institutional society under which we live and are dominated today, was the redefining of the concept of ‘democracy’ that took place in the early 20th century. This immensely important discussion took place among the educated, elite intellectual class in the United States at that time, and the consequences of which were profound for the development of not only American society and democracy, but for the globalization that followed after World War II. The central theme that emerged was that in the age of ‘mass democracy’, where people came to be known as “the public,” the concept of ‘democracy’ was redefined to be a system of government and social organization which was to be managed by an intellectual elite, largely concerned with “the engineering of consent” of the masses in order to allow elite-management of society to continue unhindered.
The socio-economic and political situation of the United States had, throughout the 19th century, rapidly changed. Official slavery was ended after the Civil War and the wage-slave method of labour was introduced on a much wider scale; that is, the approach at which people are no longer property themselves, but rather lend their labour at minimal hourly wages, a difference equated with rental slavery versus owned slavery. While the system of labour had itself changed, the living conditions of the labourers did not improve a great deal. With Industrialization also came increased urbanization, poverty, and thus, social unrest. The 19th Century in the United States was one of near-constant labour unrest, social upheaval and a rapidly growing wealth divide. And it was not simply the lower labouring classes that were experiencing the harsh rigors of a modern industrial life. One social critic of the era, writing in 1873, discussed the situation of the middle class in America:
As immigrants from Europe and Asia flooded America, a growing sense of racism emerged among the faltering middle class. This situation created enormous tension and unease among middle and working class Americans, and indeed, the industrialists who ruled over them. Yet many in the middle class viewed the lower class, which was increasingly rebellious, as well as the immigrant labourers – also quite militant – as a threat to their own standing in society. Instead of focusing primarily on the need for reorganization at the top of the social structure, they looked to the masses – the working people – as the greatest source of instability. Their approach was in attempting to preserve – or construct – a system beneficial to their own particular interests. Since the middle class survived on the backs of the workers, it was not in their interest as a class to support radical workers movements and revolutionary philosophies. Thus, while criticizing those at the top, the call came for ‘reform’, not revolution; for passive pluralism not democratic populism; for amelioration, not anarchy.
One central facet to the development of the modern institutional society under which we live and are dominated today, was the redefining of the concept of ‘democracy’ that took place in the early 20th century. This immensely important discussion took place among the educated, elite intellectual class in the United States at that time, and the consequences of which were profound for the development of not only American society and democracy, but for the globalization that followed after World War II. The central theme that emerged was that in the age of ‘mass democracy’, where people came to be known as “the public,” the concept of ‘democracy’ was redefined to be a system of government and social organization which was to be managed by an intellectual elite, largely concerned with “the engineering of consent” of the masses in order to allow elite-management of society to continue unhindered.
The socio-economic and political situation of the United States had, throughout the 19th century, rapidly changed. Official slavery was ended after the Civil War and the wage-slave method of labour was introduced on a much wider scale; that is, the approach at which people are no longer property themselves, but rather lend their labour at minimal hourly wages, a difference equated with rental slavery versus owned slavery. While the system of labour had itself changed, the living conditions of the labourers did not improve a great deal. With Industrialization also came increased urbanization, poverty, and thus, social unrest. The 19th Century in the United States was one of near-constant labour unrest, social upheaval and a rapidly growing wealth divide. And it was not simply the lower labouring classes that were experiencing the harsh rigors of a modern industrial life. One social critic of the era, writing in 1873, discussed the situation of the middle class in America:
Very few among them are saving money. Many of them are in debt; and all they can earn for years, is, in many cases, mortgaged to pay such debt… [We see] the unmistakable signs of their incessant anxiety and struggles to get on in life, and to obtain in addition to a mere subsistence, a standing in society… The poverty of the great middle classes consists in the fact that they have only barely enough to cover up their poverty… their poverty is felt, mentally and socially, through their sense of dependence and pride. They must work constantly, and with an angry sense of the limited opportunities for a career at their command.[1]
As immigrants from Europe and Asia flooded America, a growing sense of racism emerged among the faltering middle class. This situation created enormous tension and unease among middle and working class Americans, and indeed, the industrialists who ruled over them. Yet many in the middle class viewed the lower class, which was increasingly rebellious, as well as the immigrant labourers – also quite militant – as a threat to their own standing in society. Instead of focusing primarily on the need for reorganization at the top of the social structure, they looked to the masses – the working people – as the greatest source of instability. Their approach was in attempting to preserve – or construct – a system beneficial to their own particular interests. Since the middle class survived on the backs of the workers, it was not in their interest as a class to support radical workers movements and revolutionary philosophies. Thus, while criticizing those at the top, the call came for ‘reform’, not revolution; for passive pluralism not democratic populism; for amelioration, not anarchy.
US Democracy: Iowa Republican Party Too Incompetent or Currupt to Count the Caucus Vote
(CNN) -- Rick Santorum finished the Iowa Republican caucuses 34 votes ahead of Mitt Romney, but results from several precincts are missing and the full actual results may never be known, according to a final certified tally released Thursday by the Iowa GOP.American democracy is now a joke on multiple levels. Not only are the candidates bought, but election outcomes can be manipulated in multiple ways through the absence of simple, straight-forward, open and observed vote counting methods.
And the US Government is committed to the spread of democracy. LOL.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Ron Paul, a Weak Candidate But the Only One Representing the Ideas of Ron Paul
For a seventy-six-year-old, Ron Paul does OK.
He has remarkable stamina, he speaks to the point, he is unwavering in his adherence to the US Constitution, his defense of individual liberty, and his opposition to preemptive wars for empire.
And he is a man of courage. By reminding Americans of their rights under the Constitution, and by drawing their attention to the emergence of domestic tyranny and the cost of criminal wars of aggression, Ron Paul challenges America's bi-partisan ruling class in a way that invites an assassin's bullet.
Against all that, Ron Paul wears a remarkably ill-fitting suit, speaks less well than many a high-school principal, and lacks the chief elements of charisma other than courage, consistency and dignity under attack. What is more, his ideas about money seem distinctly out of date.
He has remarkable stamina, he speaks to the point, he is unwavering in his adherence to the US Constitution, his defense of individual liberty, and his opposition to preemptive wars for empire.
And he is a man of courage. By reminding Americans of their rights under the Constitution, and by drawing their attention to the emergence of domestic tyranny and the cost of criminal wars of aggression, Ron Paul challenges America's bi-partisan ruling class in a way that invites an assassin's bullet.
Against all that, Ron Paul wears a remarkably ill-fitting suit, speaks less well than many a high-school principal, and lacks the chief elements of charisma other than courage, consistency and dignity under attack. What is more, his ideas about money seem distinctly out of date.
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Eurozone and the Curate's Egg: Both Good in Parts
 |
| Punch cartoon by George du Maurier (November, 1985). Bishop: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones"; Curate: "Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!" |
The joke about the curate's egg (see image) never struck me as particularly funny, but it is bizarre, and in a macabre way funny, to hear the same logic advanced by the President of Europe to assure the World of the soundness of the European economy and financial system.
The complexity of Europe's financial difficulties as discussed in fascinating detail by John Ward, to whom I am indebted for the above quote by Von Rompuy, is far beyond my comprehension, but to reduce matters to a thumbnail sketch, the problem seems to be as follows.
The Greek’s (and sundry others able to get away with it) are lazy bums who won’t work (LBW3), or if they work they pretend not to, so as to avoid paying tax. Then they demand a huge pension or a government job punching tickets on the Athens subway at an annual salary of $96,000 a year.
Contains Milk, Egg and Fish
In search of a decent sherry, we invested recently in an Australian product of the Emu brand, which is pleasant flavored and moderately dry. Curious to know more about this very reasonably priced wine, I was astounded on examining the label to read as follows: "contains milk, egg and fish."
How can that possibly be?
For very good reason, according to this short article by Richard Gowel: it is to "fine" the wine; fining being the process of removing harsh tasting phenolics, or unwanted color from wine made with the final squeeze of the grape. There you are then!
Or to be more specific, the milk protein casein is a fining agent that precipitates phenolics, as does albumen, a protein from egg whites. But of all, the best fining agent, apparently, is isinglass, a protein obtained from the swim bladder of certain fishes.
From this we can infer that Emu sherry is made from a juice so rough that it requires the combined fining power of all three agents, derivatives of milk, egg and fish, to make it drinkable. But drinkable it certainly is, with a distinctive and likable flavor.
How can that possibly be?
For very good reason, according to this short article by Richard Gowel: it is to "fine" the wine; fining being the process of removing harsh tasting phenolics, or unwanted color from wine made with the final squeeze of the grape. There you are then!
Or to be more specific, the milk protein casein is a fining agent that precipitates phenolics, as does albumen, a protein from egg whites. But of all, the best fining agent, apparently, is isinglass, a protein obtained from the swim bladder of certain fishes.
From this we can infer that Emu sherry is made from a juice so rough that it requires the combined fining power of all three agents, derivatives of milk, egg and fish, to make it drinkable. But drinkable it certainly is, with a distinctive and likable flavor.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Mitt Romney's Top Campaign Contributors
Goldman Sachs: $367,200
Credit Suisse: $203,750
Morgan Stanley: $188,800
Source: Zero Hedge via WRH.
Credit Suisse: $203,750
Morgan Stanley: $188,800
Source: Zero Hedge via WRH.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
The New World Order and the Drive for an Independent Scotland
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| Will Scotland be free or just a manageable chunk to be fed into the Euro-blender? (Image source) |
What such calculations ignore is that if regions are free to split from larger political units to maximize resource revenue per capita, then why won't the Highlands and Islands split from Scotland and take the bulk of the oil revenue with them?
By tradition, the Highlanders never liked those lowland bastards and will be happy to let them freeze in the dark.
Then why would London, which subsidizes most of the UK, not split too? The bankers may be crooks but they generate a lot of income, and as a city state, London would have more cred than almost any other metropolis.
After that, maybe the SouthWest could separate, establishing themselves as a homeland for the Celts: no immigrants, thank you.
The net result of this kind of anti-nationalist politics will be the disintegration of geopolitically significant nation states into trivialities at the mercy of the world's great powers, most notably, in the case of the remnants of a UK breakup, the undemocratic EU and US/NATO.
When US/NATO tells the Scotch or the Welsh or the Cornish what weapons systems are to be located on their territory, or how many troops they are to supply for the next war of imperial aggression, how much independence do these people think they'll have?
A saner route for those who want greater autonomy, would be to work for regional devolution within a federal state. The Blair scheme for Scotch and Welsh Parliaments while England remains governed in all matters above the municipal by the Parliament in Westminster, an institution often dominated by Scotch or Welsh politicians, was either a work of monumental incompetence, or a devious scheme to destroy the United Kingdom: the latter surely being the case, since Blair is nothing if not a creature of the New World Order, which requires the destruction of the nation state.
A rational scheme for devolution in the UK would divide the country into a dozen provinces including Scotland, North and South, Wales, North and South, England, East and West, top, middle and bottom, plus London and Northern Ireland. Most powers would be devolved to the regions with the exception of control over the central bank, foreign policy and defense. Logically, the newly devolved nation would provide the Republic of Ireland with a standing invitation to join, as one or two additional provinces for a total of probably 14 self-governing regions within a Confederation of the British Isles.
But now the Scotch have latched onto the idea of getting rich at the expense of the English and gratifying what that son of the Manse John Buchan called their "narrow nationalism," it is doubtful if the tide undermining the Union can be stemmed.
But beside finding themselves a very small fish in the EU, US/NATO world, the Scotch may find that after independence the broad high road to London, or what Sam Johnson called the only fine prospect in Scotland, is beset with many hurdles, particularly if the breakup of Britain provokes an English nationalist backlash. For the four million Scots who have already taken the high road South, that might prove troublesome indeed: visas, passports at the border, the Scotch Groat not accepted as currency in England, passenger manifests required for all flights over England originating or ending in Scotland, English control of Naval bases Clyde and Faslane, US control of anti-missile radar installations, and much, much more.
Here, Peter Hitchens explains how Scottish nationalism will transform Britain into a collection of manageable chunks to be fed into the Euro-blender and destroyed for ever.
Notice how any part of the UK can have a referendum on reducing the powers of London (and Northern Ireland can vote to leave the Union altogether, any time it wants to).
But nobody can have a vote of any kind on reducing the powers of Brussels, let alone on leaving the EU.
The truth is obvious, but nobody observes it.
Brussels rejoices to see Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland becoming ever more separate from England.
It would like to see England itself Balkanised into ‘regions’ – and the new multicultural republic of London under President Boris is a major step towards that.
THE UNSOLVED RIDDLE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE
| Stephen Leacock, best known in Canada as a humorist, was a learned man, an author of scholarly works, and a professor of political economy at McGill University. His discussion in this short work of the economic relationship between man and society remains as relevant today as when first published almost 100 years ago. e-Book and other versions of this work are available at Project Gutenberg. A Kindle e-book is available from Amazon at not charge. |
By Stephen Leacock B.A., Ph.D., Litt.D., F.R.S.C.
Professor of Political Economy at McGill University, Montreal
Copyright, 1920, John Lane Company
I.—The Troubled Outlook of the Present Hour
The wheels of industry are threatening to stop. The laborer will not work because the pay is too low and the hours are too long. The producer cannot employ him because the wage is too high, and the hours are too short. If the high wage is paid and the short hours are granted, then the price of the thing made,[10] so it seems, rises higher still. Even the high wages will not buy it. The process apparently moves in a circle with no cessation to it. The increased wages seem only to aggravate the increasing prices. Wages and prices, rising together, call perpetually for more money, or at least more tokens and symbols, more paper credit in the form of checks and deposits, with a value that is no longer based on the rock-bottom of redemption into hard coin, but that floats upon the mere atmosphere of expectation.
But the sheer quantity of the inflated currency and false money forces prices higher still. The familiar landmarks of wages, salaries and prices are being obliterated. The "scrap of paper" with which the war began stays with us as its legacy. It lies upon the industrial landscape like snow, covering up, as best it may, the bare poverty of a world desolated by war.
Under such circumstances national finance seems turned into a delirium. Billions are voted where once a few poor millions were[11] thought extravagant. The war debts of the Allied Nations, not yet fully computed, will run from twenty-five to forty billion dollars apiece. But the debts of the governments appear on the other side of the ledger as the assets of the citizens. What is the meaning of it? Is it wealth or is it poverty? The world seems filled with money and short of goods, while even in this very scarcity a new luxury has broken out. The capitalist rides in his ten thousand dollar motor car. The seven-dollar-a-day artisan plays merrily on his gramophone in the broad daylight of his afternoon that is saved, like all else, by being "borrowed" from the morning. He calls the capitalist a "profiteer." The capitalist retorts with calling him a "Bolshevik."
Friday, January 13, 2012
Ron Paul Does Not Exist
By CanSpeccy
According to the NY Times, speaking of the contest for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, Mr. Romney is:
In the New Hampshire Republican primary, according to this CBS poll, eventual second-place winner Ron Paul simply wasn't in the race, so no point, really, for anyone who's for the US Constitution participating:
Over in Blighty, Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and seemingly a Pied Piper of the seriously deluded liberal-left, today joined the Ron-Paul-does-not-exist movement with this blog post, which I quote in full:
But Jon Stewart, discussing who would be the first mainstream media pundit to dismiss Ron Paul's New Hampshire second place finish, explodes the Ron-Paul-does-not-exist lie to the greatest effect (But watch this soon before U-Tube takes it down):
Ha! Viacom blocked that one. But this is good too.
And now the vid that Viacom does'nt want you to see has been re-uploaded to U-Tube:
But that's been flushed down Memory Hole like all the rest. U-Tube is well named.
According to the NY Times, speaking of the contest for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, Mr. Romney is:
... the only veteran of a previous presidential campaign."The only veteran of a previous presidential campaign?" asks Dan Amira in New York Magazine:
Wait a second, isn't there some squirrelly little guy running this year who also ran on a very unique and memorable platform in 2008? Jon ... Don ... Don Knotts? No, that can't be right.The Times subsequently altered its story to acknowledge the existence of Ron Paul.
In the New Hampshire Republican primary, according to this CBS poll, eventual second-place winner Ron Paul simply wasn't in the race, so no point, really, for anyone who's for the US Constitution participating:
Over in Blighty, Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and seemingly a Pied Piper of the seriously deluded liberal-left, today joined the Ron-Paul-does-not-exist movement with this blog post, which I quote in full:
Americans pissing on murdered Afghans – a description of every Republican candidates’ debate and every Clinton and Obama speech.The post has prompted vigorous debate among the usual followers, but so far no response has been offered as to why Murray implicitly denies the presence in both the current debates and those in 2008 of Ron Paul, a strict constitutionalist, who has consistently and explicitly condemned America's military engagement in Afghanistan and stated that as Commander in Chief he would immediately bring the troops home.
But Jon Stewart, discussing who would be the first mainstream media pundit to dismiss Ron Paul's New Hampshire second place finish, explodes the Ron-Paul-does-not-exist lie to the greatest effect (But watch this soon before U-Tube takes it down):
Ha! Viacom blocked that one. But this is good too.
And now the vid that Viacom does'nt want you to see has been re-uploaded to U-Tube:
But that's been flushed down Memory Hole like all the rest. U-Tube is well named.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
America's Inevitable Doom
By Bill Bonner
The show goes on!
We are watching the destruction of an empire. All empires must go away sometime. They are natural things. And nature puts a time bomb in everything she creates.
The US empire is doomed. Just like all the others that went before it. It is doomed by nature herself – condemned by the gods to blow up and die.
None of this should be surprising to you, dear reader. We’ve seen this movie before. Hundreds of empires have come and gone. We know how this movie ends. More or less.
What we know for sure is that the US is going broke. There is hardly any other plausible outcome. We’ve gone over the numbers so often we don’t need to repeat them.
Yes, it is true that the feds could still save themselves….if they had the will. They could cut taxes to a flat 10%…and spend only what they raised in tax revenue… That would do the trick from an economic point of view.
But it’s too late for that – politically. Empires have lives of their own. They go forward…expanding…spending…stretching…until, boom, they go too far. Empires do not back up.
Some merely go bankrupt. Others are defeated in war. All end disastrously.
Only one candidate favors rescuing the nation’s finances and pulling the empire back from disaster. Ron Paul. He is considered such an unelectable kook that the newspapers barely mention him. And the papers are right. He is unelectable. Because he is opposed by the zombies.
The show goes on!
We are watching the destruction of an empire. All empires must go away sometime. They are natural things. And nature puts a time bomb in everything she creates.
The US empire is doomed. Just like all the others that went before it. It is doomed by nature herself – condemned by the gods to blow up and die.
None of this should be surprising to you, dear reader. We’ve seen this movie before. Hundreds of empires have come and gone. We know how this movie ends. More or less.
What we know for sure is that the US is going broke. There is hardly any other plausible outcome. We’ve gone over the numbers so often we don’t need to repeat them.
Yes, it is true that the feds could still save themselves….if they had the will. They could cut taxes to a flat 10%…and spend only what they raised in tax revenue… That would do the trick from an economic point of view.
But it’s too late for that – politically. Empires have lives of their own. They go forward…expanding…spending…stretching…until, boom, they go too far. Empires do not back up.
Some merely go bankrupt. Others are defeated in war. All end disastrously.
Only one candidate favors rescuing the nation’s finances and pulling the empire back from disaster. Ron Paul. He is considered such an unelectable kook that the newspapers barely mention him. And the papers are right. He is unelectable. Because he is opposed by the zombies.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
World Without End: Why we can disregard the Mayan doomsday prophecy
With the great vacuum of ignorance that enshrouds the future, it is not surprising that this long dead civilization with an astronomical bent has been sucked into the role of providing gnostic hints of what is to come. It was either that or Madame Zaza’s tea leaves.
According to a lot of breathless twats on the Discovery Channel, the Mayans saw something very important lined up for 2012, namely the end of their Grand Cycle, scheduled to end on the 21st of December this year. Depending on who you speak to this will precipitate either the end of the Universe in a cataclysm of fire, a new age with everyone being very nice to each other, or the election of Ron Paul as President of the United States.
But before we get carried away with the impending sense of momentous cosmic change, shouldn’t we pause to ask the all-important question, “Who the heck were the Maya?” just in case they turn out to be a bunch of jungle bums stoked up on fermented coconut juice rather than credible prognosticators of the end of humanity.
Like any semi-barbaric, non-European people, the Maya are nowadays talked about in the hushed reverential tones dictated by political correctness as one of the great civilizations, even though they lacked metal tools and wheels, and enjoyed a spot of human sacrifice.
Rather than evidence of their primitiveness, their lack of tools is often cited as proof of their civilizational superiority, as only a truly higher culture could have built pyramids with so little in the way of technology. In such encomiums little is said about the possibility that the threat of human sacrifice probably served as an extremely important motivator for the toolless masses.
Rather than evidence of their primitiveness, their lack of tools is often cited as proof of their civilizational superiority, as only a truly higher culture could have built pyramids with so little in the way of technology. In such encomiums little is said about the possibility that the threat of human sacrifice probably served as an extremely important motivator for the toolless masses.
The Uses of Economics Revealed
A Survey of the Labor Market for New Ph.D. Hires in Economics reports that:
Among fresh economics PhD's hired in 2010-2011, 62.4 % found jobs in academic institutions.
LOL
Or as John Kenneth Galbraith remarked:
"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."
Or as John Kenneth Galbraith remarked:
"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."
Monday, January 9, 2012
Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state: Part 3
Robert Henderson
Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3rd January. She will stand trial on two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court – Croydon Crown Court - on 17 February 2012.
The charge with “intent to cause fear” arises because a passenger, Ena-May Eubanks, claims Miss West hit her left shoulder with a closed fist. This charge comes under section 31A of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37/section/31). It carries a potential sentence on conviction on indictment of “imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine, or to both”.
Anyone who has watched the video on YouTube will think the idea that she intended to cause fear when she was a white woman surrounded by hostile ethnic minorities laughable. The CPS are clearly playing the pc game by hitting her with the most severe charges possible. (The official line on what is a racially aggravated offence can be found at http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/racially_aggravated_offences/).
Miss West has yet to plead, but the fact that she has opted for a Crown Court trial (which will mean the case is heard before a jury) rather than a hearing in a magistrates court strongly suggests she will plead not guilty ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/03/woman-accused-tram-race-rant). This is because she risks a heavier sentence in the Crown Court and it would make little sense to opt for the case to be heard in the Crown Court if she does not intend to plead not guilty. There is of course the danger that she may be intimidated into pleading guilty by the promise of a lighter sentence.
Her bail conditions are that “she does not travel on a tram within Croydon and Sutton, lives and sleeps at her home address and does not comment on the case.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16394046).
Bearing in mind that Miss West was remanded in custody against her will for “her own safety”, it does seem rather rum that the same court is insisting she stays in her own house when her address was read out in open court.
The ban on travel on the local tram system could be pretty penal. She has two small children and the tram system may be the only means she has of taking them with her when she has to leave her house.
Her blanket gagging so she cannot comment on the case is remarkable. Engaging in any of the following can breach the sub judice rules and constitute contempt of court:
1. obtaining or publishing details of jury deliberations;
2. filming or recording within court buildings;
3. making payments to witnesses;
4. publishing information obtained from confidential court documents;
5. reporting on the defendant’s previous convictions;
6. mounting an organized campaign to influence proceedings;
7. reporting on court proceedings in breach of a court order or reporting restriction;
8. breaching an injunction obtained against another party;
9. anticipating the course of a trial or predicting the outcome; or
10. revealing the identity of child defendants, witnesses or victims or victims of sexual offences. (http://www.out-law.com/page-9742)
Only 4, 6, 7, 8 would seem to have any application in the context of banning her from commenting on the case. Number 9 might seem to have relevance, but by pleading one way or the other the outcome of a case is anticipated. It would be absurd if it applied to a defendant.
Nos 4,6, 7,8 could have been dealt with by banning those specific acts, although it is unlikely she would be in a position to do these things. For example, it is wildly improbable she could mount an organised campaign to influence proceedings. It is also true that cases can be discussed while a case is active in the context of a discussion of public affairs, for example, it would be acceptable to discuss Miss West’s case as part of an examination of how the justice system treats black on white offences compared with white on black offences.
What does her general gagging tell us? Simple. The liberal elite are truly terrified that the politically correct house of cards they have built will be blown over if any of the vast resentment and anger at mass immigration and its consequences within the native British population is allowed into the public fold.
Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3rd January. She will stand trial on two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court – Croydon Crown Court - on 17 February 2012.
The charge with “intent to cause fear” arises because a passenger, Ena-May Eubanks, claims Miss West hit her left shoulder with a closed fist. This charge comes under section 31A of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37/section/31). It carries a potential sentence on conviction on indictment of “imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years or to a fine, or to both”.
Anyone who has watched the video on YouTube will think the idea that she intended to cause fear when she was a white woman surrounded by hostile ethnic minorities laughable. The CPS are clearly playing the pc game by hitting her with the most severe charges possible. (The official line on what is a racially aggravated offence can be found at http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/fact_sheets/racially_aggravated_offences/).
Miss West has yet to plead, but the fact that she has opted for a Crown Court trial (which will mean the case is heard before a jury) rather than a hearing in a magistrates court strongly suggests she will plead not guilty ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/03/woman-accused-tram-race-rant). This is because she risks a heavier sentence in the Crown Court and it would make little sense to opt for the case to be heard in the Crown Court if she does not intend to plead not guilty. There is of course the danger that she may be intimidated into pleading guilty by the promise of a lighter sentence.
Her bail conditions are that “she does not travel on a tram within Croydon and Sutton, lives and sleeps at her home address and does not comment on the case.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16394046).
Bearing in mind that Miss West was remanded in custody against her will for “her own safety”, it does seem rather rum that the same court is insisting she stays in her own house when her address was read out in open court.
The ban on travel on the local tram system could be pretty penal. She has two small children and the tram system may be the only means she has of taking them with her when she has to leave her house.
Her blanket gagging so she cannot comment on the case is remarkable. Engaging in any of the following can breach the sub judice rules and constitute contempt of court:
1. obtaining or publishing details of jury deliberations;
2. filming or recording within court buildings;
3. making payments to witnesses;
4. publishing information obtained from confidential court documents;
5. reporting on the defendant’s previous convictions;
6. mounting an organized campaign to influence proceedings;
7. reporting on court proceedings in breach of a court order or reporting restriction;
8. breaching an injunction obtained against another party;
9. anticipating the course of a trial or predicting the outcome; or
10. revealing the identity of child defendants, witnesses or victims or victims of sexual offences. (http://www.out-law.com/page-9742)
Only 4, 6, 7, 8 would seem to have any application in the context of banning her from commenting on the case. Number 9 might seem to have relevance, but by pleading one way or the other the outcome of a case is anticipated. It would be absurd if it applied to a defendant.
Nos 4,6, 7,8 could have been dealt with by banning those specific acts, although it is unlikely she would be in a position to do these things. For example, it is wildly improbable she could mount an organised campaign to influence proceedings. It is also true that cases can be discussed while a case is active in the context of a discussion of public affairs, for example, it would be acceptable to discuss Miss West’s case as part of an examination of how the justice system treats black on white offences compared with white on black offences.
What does her general gagging tell us? Simple. The liberal elite are truly terrified that the politically correct house of cards they have built will be blown over if any of the vast resentment and anger at mass immigration and its consequences within the native British population is allowed into the public fold.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Christophobia”—The Prejudice That Barely Has A Name
The problem here is that there’s no vocabulary for discussing this issue.
The word “Christophobia” (meaning hatred, fear, and contempt for Christians and Christianity) was discussed by our Tom Piatak recently in his The War On Christmas After Ten Years.
But it’s a word that barely exists in the public consciousness—unlike racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, or even Islamophobia.
Nevertheless, the thing itself obviously exists.
The word “Christophobia” (meaning hatred, fear, and contempt for Christians and Christianity) was discussed by our Tom Piatak recently in his The War On Christmas After Ten Years.
But it’s a word that barely exists in the public consciousness—unlike racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, or even Islamophobia.
Nevertheless, the thing itself obviously exists.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Members of the US Congress Just Signed Their Own Arrest Warrants
By Naomi Wolf
I never thought I would have to write this: but—incredibly—Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The amendment is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention — but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one’s lawyer’s calls are monitored, witnesses for one’s defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books.
They may have supported this bill because—although it’s hard to believe—they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that ‘at most’, low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves.
Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy — those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else — as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest.
I never thought I would have to write this: but—incredibly—Congress has now passed the National Defense Appropriations Act, with Amendment 1031, which allows for the military detention of American citizens. The amendment is so loosely worded that any American citizen could be held without due process. The language of this bill can be read to assure Americans that they can challenge their detention — but most people do not realize what this means: at Guantanamo and in other military prisons, one’s lawyer’s calls are monitored, witnesses for one’s defense are not allowed to testify, and one can be forced into nudity and isolation. Incredibly, ninety-three Senators voted to support this bill and now most of Congress: a roster of names that will live in infamy in the history of our nation, and never be expunged from the dark column of the history books.
They may have supported this bill because—although it’s hard to believe—they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that ‘at most’, low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves.
Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy — those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else — as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest.
Why the National Defense Authorization Act Now?
By Marti Hiken and Luke Hiken
Barack Obama just signed into law one of the most repressive and right-wing pieces of legislation ever passed in the history of the country: the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It allows the military, a.k.a. the Pentagon, to determine who is a “terrorist” and to detain that person in prison, indefinitely, without trial, under its jurisdiction. It makes no difference whether the person is a U.S. citizen or a foreign “enemy combatant.”
The NDAA takes the civilian judicial system out of the equation regarding who is a “combatant” or “terrorist” and substitutes military command over every person inside or outside of the United States. By defining the entire U.S. as a battlefield, all the Pentagon needs to do, in order to exercise this power, is get the approval of the sitting president.
Historically in the U.S., questions of criminality were determined by civilian tribunals. The country has now yielded the principle of arrest, detainment, punishment, and imprisonment to executive privilege. This catapults American jurisprudence back into the reign of George the Third.
Barack Obama just signed into law one of the most repressive and right-wing pieces of legislation ever passed in the history of the country: the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). It allows the military, a.k.a. the Pentagon, to determine who is a “terrorist” and to detain that person in prison, indefinitely, without trial, under its jurisdiction. It makes no difference whether the person is a U.S. citizen or a foreign “enemy combatant.”
The NDAA takes the civilian judicial system out of the equation regarding who is a “combatant” or “terrorist” and substitutes military command over every person inside or outside of the United States. By defining the entire U.S. as a battlefield, all the Pentagon needs to do, in order to exercise this power, is get the approval of the sitting president.
Historically in the U.S., questions of criminality were determined by civilian tribunals. The country has now yielded the principle of arrest, detainment, punishment, and imprisonment to executive privilege. This catapults American jurisprudence back into the reign of George the Third.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
David Cameron THE LEGAL Terrorist By Taxi Driver
Political Incorrectness Warning:
Not Suitable for Bankers, Zionists, NeoCons, or Other Wankers
As the fraudulence of liberal democracy, a form of government spread chiefly by the likes of alleged Nazi Jew, George Soros and the various foundations and color revolutions that he supports, the phone bugger, Rupert Murdoch and his stable of pornographic, religious and supposedly serious news publications and broadcast outlets, and by US/NATO carpet bombing of countries rich in oil and gas or with territory suitable for oil and gas pipelines and oil export terminals, there seems little that the citizen can do other than make rude noises to detract from the dignity of the thieves, frauds and psychopaths who stand atop the manure pile.
Harmless though such childish behavior no doubt is, an end to it will surely soon be made, either by legal prohibition or by the simple expedient of designating those foolish simpletons carried away by the fun of it as "enemy combatants" to be detained indefinitely without rights or trial.
So, let us enjoy making rude noises while we can:
Video link via http://govermentterrorism.blogspot.com/
Not Suitable for Bankers, Zionists, NeoCons, or Other Wankers
As the fraudulence of liberal democracy, a form of government spread chiefly by the likes of alleged Nazi Jew, George Soros and the various foundations and color revolutions that he supports, the phone bugger, Rupert Murdoch and his stable of pornographic, religious and supposedly serious news publications and broadcast outlets, and by US/NATO carpet bombing of countries rich in oil and gas or with territory suitable for oil and gas pipelines and oil export terminals, there seems little that the citizen can do other than make rude noises to detract from the dignity of the thieves, frauds and psychopaths who stand atop the manure pile.
Harmless though such childish behavior no doubt is, an end to it will surely soon be made, either by legal prohibition or by the simple expedient of designating those foolish simpletons carried away by the fun of it as "enemy combatants" to be detained indefinitely without rights or trial.
So, let us enjoy making rude noises while we can:
Video link via http://govermentterrorism.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The Euro: A Weapon of Economic Mass Disruption
By CanSpeccy
As if the peoples of Europe weren't already sufficiently screwed, seventeen European states joined the Euro currency union in 1999.
This was a disaster in waiting dreamt up by, among others, Edward Heath (U.K. Prime Minister, 1970–74), who could also claim responsibility for establishing the politically correct view on mass immigration to Britain by kicking Sir Cyril Osborne out of the Conservative Party caucus for stating that Britain was a white country for white people and by firing Enoch Powell from the cabinet for warning about the peril of civil strife if mass immigration continued.
Heath who, in 1971, took Britain into the European Economic Community under the false claim that it was a free trade association not a proto-political union, advocated a common European currency because, in trading with Europeans, he asserted, it would save the trivial inconvenience of changing one's money.
Fortunately, for Britain, Heath's Conservative successors rejected membership in the Eurozone, and Tony Blair feared to arouse the anger of the electorate by reversing their decision.
The countries entering the Eurozone did so without provision for fiscal union or any other basis for adapting their widely differing economies to dynamic shifts in relative performance.
As a consequence, the Eurozone constitutes a potent mechanism for economic destabilization. Here's why. All nations engage in foreign trade, not merely to obtain commodities or industrial products that they lack, but to enjoy a diversity of goods and services beyond the basic necessities that they are unable to produce economically for themselves.
Thus, America, for example, which produces perfectly acceptable California wine, imports wine that is rarely superior to the Californian product from France and Spain, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, Chile and Peru among many other countries. Likewise, Canada, with more trees than any nation save Russia and Brazil, nevertheless imports American Christmas trees and wooden power poles.
To purchase from abroad one must first buy a foreign currency. The price of one currency in terms of another is largely a matter of supply and demand, which means that a country that becomes increasing competitive in international trade will see its currency appreciate in value against other currencies, thereby checking exports and encouraging imports. Conversely, a country that loses competitiveness will see its currency fall in value relative to that of others, thereby checking imports and boosting exports.
Although there are complications as, for example, when a country hoards foreign currency, or engages in the export or import of substantial quantities of investment capital, the effect of such actions are ironed out in due course.
However, if countries join together in a currency union, there is no mechanism to adjust imports and exports on a country-by-country basis so that exports and imports of each country roughly balance. On the contrary, the use of a common currency creates an instability leading to runaway economic distortion resulting in the disintegration and collapse of the least competitive economies and the accelerated expansion of the most competitive economies.
For example, when the international competitiveness of one country in the currency union declines, it tends to lower the exchange value of the common currency, which in turn stimulates the exports of the strongest members of the union, while reducing its imports.
Conversely, the success of the most competitive countries in raising exports and limiting imports tends to raise the exchange value of the common currency, which in turn depresses the already poor export performance of the least internationally competitive members of the union, while increasing their imports.
This means that a currency union guarantees an exchange rate that is too low for the most competitive member states and too high for the least competitive member states, and this unavoidable mispricing of the currency leads to runaway economic growth and falling unemployment for the the most competitive members of the union at the cost of declining output and rising unemployment for the least competitive members of the union.
This is precisely what is happening within the Eurozone now. Germany and several other North European states are growing fast as the southern Eurozone states, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain see their economies contract, their government revenues shrink and their public debt explode.
The problem could be solved through the creation of a fiscal union which would permit tax revenue to be siphoned from the strong economies to cover welfare costs or to increase investment in the weak economies. This is what happens within most national jurisdictions, but it is a fairly stupid solution, and in the context of the Eurozone, it is naturally uncongenial to the Germans and other prospering members of the union who believe that inhabitants of the less prosperous states need to work harder and earn less.
Another solution would be for the unemployed in Greece or Spain to migrate to Germany or Netherlands where employment opportunities are more abundant. But due to language barriers (not every European is multilingual, and few indeed speak Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovak, Bulgarian or Romanian) and generous unemployment pay and cultural factors, ready internal labor mobility is not a feature of the Eurozone, as the current unemployment statistics bear out. In Spain, unemployment now stands at 22.9%, whereas in Germany unemployment is at a "record low" of 6.8%.
A further possibility would be the adoption of a process whereby wage rates are adjusted country by country at regular intervals to reflect changes in national unemployment rates. Thus, where unemployment is high, all wages and benefits would be adjusted downward in accordance with an appropriate formula. Conversely, where unemployment is low, wages would be adjusted upward in accordance with the same formula. The result would be to balance competitiveness and employment rates in all countries.
And the formula could be extended within nations to even out regional differences in employment. Thus those in regions of high unemployment would have the option of accepting work at below national average wages or moving to a more prosperous region.
Although this is a perfectly viable scheme for which I readily accept public acknowledgment, it is presumably beyond the intellectual grasp of most bureaucrats and politicians and is unlikely, therefore, to receive acceptance in less than a hundred years.
In the meantime, one can expect continued buggering around that makes the leadership of Europe look increasingly incompetent.
Perhaps the result will be the withdrawal from the Eurozone by those countries most adversely affected. Greece, apparently, is already threatening: give us 130 billion Euros or we split. This could be the prelude to a return to the happy days of independent, democratic, self-governing European nations, each with its own currency, but joined in a free trade association and a mutual defense and non-aggression pact.
Throw in a consultative committee of heads of state operating under the motto "Independence Forever", or just "Never Again", and it might work.
See also:
What's Wrong With Europe and What Needs to Be Done About It
As if the peoples of Europe weren't already sufficiently screwed, seventeen European states joined the Euro currency union in 1999.
This was a disaster in waiting dreamt up by, among others, Edward Heath (U.K. Prime Minister, 1970–74), who could also claim responsibility for establishing the politically correct view on mass immigration to Britain by kicking Sir Cyril Osborne out of the Conservative Party caucus for stating that Britain was a white country for white people and by firing Enoch Powell from the cabinet for warning about the peril of civil strife if mass immigration continued.
Heath who, in 1971, took Britain into the European Economic Community under the false claim that it was a free trade association not a proto-political union, advocated a common European currency because, in trading with Europeans, he asserted, it would save the trivial inconvenience of changing one's money.
Fortunately, for Britain, Heath's Conservative successors rejected membership in the Eurozone, and Tony Blair feared to arouse the anger of the electorate by reversing their decision.
The countries entering the Eurozone did so without provision for fiscal union or any other basis for adapting their widely differing economies to dynamic shifts in relative performance.
As a consequence, the Eurozone constitutes a potent mechanism for economic destabilization. Here's why. All nations engage in foreign trade, not merely to obtain commodities or industrial products that they lack, but to enjoy a diversity of goods and services beyond the basic necessities that they are unable to produce economically for themselves.
Thus, America, for example, which produces perfectly acceptable California wine, imports wine that is rarely superior to the Californian product from France and Spain, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, Chile and Peru among many other countries. Likewise, Canada, with more trees than any nation save Russia and Brazil, nevertheless imports American Christmas trees and wooden power poles.
To purchase from abroad one must first buy a foreign currency. The price of one currency in terms of another is largely a matter of supply and demand, which means that a country that becomes increasing competitive in international trade will see its currency appreciate in value against other currencies, thereby checking exports and encouraging imports. Conversely, a country that loses competitiveness will see its currency fall in value relative to that of others, thereby checking imports and boosting exports.
Although there are complications as, for example, when a country hoards foreign currency, or engages in the export or import of substantial quantities of investment capital, the effect of such actions are ironed out in due course.
However, if countries join together in a currency union, there is no mechanism to adjust imports and exports on a country-by-country basis so that exports and imports of each country roughly balance. On the contrary, the use of a common currency creates an instability leading to runaway economic distortion resulting in the disintegration and collapse of the least competitive economies and the accelerated expansion of the most competitive economies.
For example, when the international competitiveness of one country in the currency union declines, it tends to lower the exchange value of the common currency, which in turn stimulates the exports of the strongest members of the union, while reducing its imports.
Conversely, the success of the most competitive countries in raising exports and limiting imports tends to raise the exchange value of the common currency, which in turn depresses the already poor export performance of the least internationally competitive members of the union, while increasing their imports.
This means that a currency union guarantees an exchange rate that is too low for the most competitive member states and too high for the least competitive member states, and this unavoidable mispricing of the currency leads to runaway economic growth and falling unemployment for the the most competitive members of the union at the cost of declining output and rising unemployment for the least competitive members of the union.
This is precisely what is happening within the Eurozone now. Germany and several other North European states are growing fast as the southern Eurozone states, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain see their economies contract, their government revenues shrink and their public debt explode.
The problem could be solved through the creation of a fiscal union which would permit tax revenue to be siphoned from the strong economies to cover welfare costs or to increase investment in the weak economies. This is what happens within most national jurisdictions, but it is a fairly stupid solution, and in the context of the Eurozone, it is naturally uncongenial to the Germans and other prospering members of the union who believe that inhabitants of the less prosperous states need to work harder and earn less.
Another solution would be for the unemployed in Greece or Spain to migrate to Germany or Netherlands where employment opportunities are more abundant. But due to language barriers (not every European is multilingual, and few indeed speak Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovak, Bulgarian or Romanian) and generous unemployment pay and cultural factors, ready internal labor mobility is not a feature of the Eurozone, as the current unemployment statistics bear out. In Spain, unemployment now stands at 22.9%, whereas in Germany unemployment is at a "record low" of 6.8%.
A further possibility would be the adoption of a process whereby wage rates are adjusted country by country at regular intervals to reflect changes in national unemployment rates. Thus, where unemployment is high, all wages and benefits would be adjusted downward in accordance with an appropriate formula. Conversely, where unemployment is low, wages would be adjusted upward in accordance with the same formula. The result would be to balance competitiveness and employment rates in all countries.
And the formula could be extended within nations to even out regional differences in employment. Thus those in regions of high unemployment would have the option of accepting work at below national average wages or moving to a more prosperous region.
Although this is a perfectly viable scheme for which I readily accept public acknowledgment, it is presumably beyond the intellectual grasp of most bureaucrats and politicians and is unlikely, therefore, to receive acceptance in less than a hundred years.
In the meantime, one can expect continued buggering around that makes the leadership of Europe look increasingly incompetent.
Perhaps the result will be the withdrawal from the Eurozone by those countries most adversely affected. Greece, apparently, is already threatening: give us 130 billion Euros or we split. This could be the prelude to a return to the happy days of independent, democratic, self-governing European nations, each with its own currency, but joined in a free trade association and a mutual defense and non-aggression pact.
Throw in a consultative committee of heads of state operating under the motto "Independence Forever", or just "Never Again", and it might work.
See also:
What's Wrong With Europe and What Needs to Be Done About It
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
What's Wrong With Europe and What Needs to Be Done About It
By CanSpeccy
Europe has three key problems, debt, unemployment and immigration, all of which derive from the 1994 GATT agreement, which opened the way for global wage arbitrage and unrestricted free trade.
Off-shoring of jobs drove up unemployment and welfare costs, while driving down tax revenues, thus creating public sector deficits.
Cheap imports of both goods and services kept inflation low even as interest rates were reduced to counter deflation. Cheap credit created a Ponzi economy in which credit drove asset prices, mainly houses, and asset prices drove credit demand.
As with all Ponzi schemes, the trajectory of growth in debt and asset prices reached its apogee and set off a vicious cycle of declining prices and debt default which destroyed bank capital, squeezed consumption and drove unemployment even higher.
Mass immigration is just another aspect of wage arbitrage: bringing the cheap labor in, rather than sending the work out.
As Cambridge University economics Professor Ha-Joon Chang explained (1):
Let me say that again: European governments deliberately pursue immigration policies that displace their own people from gainful employment by importing people from elsewhere who are more competitive than the least productive members of the indigenous workforce.
And let those "tolerant" middle-class liberals living in leafy white suburbs, who love diversity and call Emma West a racist remember, it could be their job next, for if it pays to rob the lowest paid of the opportunity to work, how much more profitable would it be to do the same to university professors, engineers, doctors, and most public sector employees.
Understanding this last point might go a long way toward pricking the bubble of political correctness that so distorts perception and prevents intelligent discussion of European immigration policies.
But how are European states handling the triple crisis of debt, unemployment and mass immigration?
With the usual combination of stupidity, short-sightedness and brutality that characterizes "liberal" democracies fronting for globalist corporate oligarchs.
With declining revenues and the need for bank bailouts to avoid economic chaos, government deficits have massively increased, taxes have been raised, welfare benefits cut, the unemployed left to r(i)ot, and mass immigration, both legal and illegal, facilitated to drive wages even lower.
The net result?
A reduction in GDP, living standards, and workforce skills and the progressive destruction of the racial and cultural identity of the European peoples.
What should the European states do instead?
There are only two ways to deal with debt.
One is to quit borrowing, spend less, work harder, create a surplus and repay the loan.
The other is to borrow from Peter to pay off Paul, while ripping off all your creditors with haircuts, payment in debased coin, or outright default.
Sloughing off the debt by money printing and negotiating haircuts is already in progress. It will leave Europe poorer, demoralized and internationally less competitive.
The route to repayment requires two things.
First, massive cuts in government spending to liberate resources to repay debts. Program cuts should focus on reducing the size of the public sector, bringing public sector wages back in line with private sector wages and eliminating benefits for the the middle and upper classes such as grants for higher education, and subsidies for windmills that don't work just when you need the juice.
Second, getting the unemployed off the dole and into jobs where they contribute to the creation of wealth and acquire skills that enhance their productivity and hence market worth.
Th problem of unemployment cannot be solved as long as (a) welfare pays as well or better than the minimum wage, (b) the wage an employer must pay exceeds the value -- in a globalized market -- of the available labor, and (c) the state permits mass legal and illegal immigration of those who will displace the least competitive indigenous citizens from the workforce.
To make the unemployed worth employing at a living wage will require a wage subsidy scheme such as I've discussed elsewhere.
Briefly, employers would compete for subsidies through a public auction in which the higher the winning bids, the lower the subsidies.
Such a scheme, in the absence of mass immigration, would make virtually every able-bodied adult employable and would gives employers a level playing field upon which to compete internationally.
The cost of a wage subsidy scheme will be largely offset by the savings in welfare spending (including the indirect costs of unemployment such as elevated rates of crime, prison incarceration, and mental illness) that will result from bringing tens of millions of Europeans back into the workforce. It will also increase GDP, as off-shored work is brought home; improve the balance of payments through import substitution; increase corporate profits and hence government revenue; enhance workforce skills; create the surpluses necessary for the repayment of both private and public debt; and not of least importance, end the genocidal program of mass immigration to among the most crowded nations on Earth.
(1)Ha-Joon Chang. Things they don't tell you about capitalism. Bloomsbury Press. 2010.
See also:
The Euro: A Weapon of Economic Mass Disruption
Europe has three key problems, debt, unemployment and immigration, all of which derive from the 1994 GATT agreement, which opened the way for global wage arbitrage and unrestricted free trade.
Off-shoring of jobs drove up unemployment and welfare costs, while driving down tax revenues, thus creating public sector deficits.
Cheap imports of both goods and services kept inflation low even as interest rates were reduced to counter deflation. Cheap credit created a Ponzi economy in which credit drove asset prices, mainly houses, and asset prices drove credit demand.
As with all Ponzi schemes, the trajectory of growth in debt and asset prices reached its apogee and set off a vicious cycle of declining prices and debt default which destroyed bank capital, squeezed consumption and drove unemployment even higher.
Mass immigration is just another aspect of wage arbitrage: bringing the cheap labor in, rather than sending the work out.
As Cambridge University economics Professor Ha-Joon Chang explained (1):
If there were free migration, most workers in rich countries could be, and would be, replaced by workers from poor countries.What that means is that immigration creates unemployment among the indigenous population.
Let me say that again: European governments deliberately pursue immigration policies that displace their own people from gainful employment by importing people from elsewhere who are more competitive than the least productive members of the indigenous workforce.
And let those "tolerant" middle-class liberals living in leafy white suburbs, who love diversity and call Emma West a racist remember, it could be their job next, for if it pays to rob the lowest paid of the opportunity to work, how much more profitable would it be to do the same to university professors, engineers, doctors, and most public sector employees.
Understanding this last point might go a long way toward pricking the bubble of political correctness that so distorts perception and prevents intelligent discussion of European immigration policies.
But how are European states handling the triple crisis of debt, unemployment and mass immigration?
With the usual combination of stupidity, short-sightedness and brutality that characterizes "liberal" democracies fronting for globalist corporate oligarchs.
With declining revenues and the need for bank bailouts to avoid economic chaos, government deficits have massively increased, taxes have been raised, welfare benefits cut, the unemployed left to r(i)ot, and mass immigration, both legal and illegal, facilitated to drive wages even lower.
The net result?
A reduction in GDP, living standards, and workforce skills and the progressive destruction of the racial and cultural identity of the European peoples.
What should the European states do instead?
There are only two ways to deal with debt.
One is to quit borrowing, spend less, work harder, create a surplus and repay the loan.
The other is to borrow from Peter to pay off Paul, while ripping off all your creditors with haircuts, payment in debased coin, or outright default.
Sloughing off the debt by money printing and negotiating haircuts is already in progress. It will leave Europe poorer, demoralized and internationally less competitive.
The route to repayment requires two things.
First, massive cuts in government spending to liberate resources to repay debts. Program cuts should focus on reducing the size of the public sector, bringing public sector wages back in line with private sector wages and eliminating benefits for the the middle and upper classes such as grants for higher education, and subsidies for windmills that don't work just when you need the juice.
Second, getting the unemployed off the dole and into jobs where they contribute to the creation of wealth and acquire skills that enhance their productivity and hence market worth.
Th problem of unemployment cannot be solved as long as (a) welfare pays as well or better than the minimum wage, (b) the wage an employer must pay exceeds the value -- in a globalized market -- of the available labor, and (c) the state permits mass legal and illegal immigration of those who will displace the least competitive indigenous citizens from the workforce.
To make the unemployed worth employing at a living wage will require a wage subsidy scheme such as I've discussed elsewhere.
Briefly, employers would compete for subsidies through a public auction in which the higher the winning bids, the lower the subsidies.
Such a scheme, in the absence of mass immigration, would make virtually every able-bodied adult employable and would gives employers a level playing field upon which to compete internationally.
The cost of a wage subsidy scheme will be largely offset by the savings in welfare spending (including the indirect costs of unemployment such as elevated rates of crime, prison incarceration, and mental illness) that will result from bringing tens of millions of Europeans back into the workforce. It will also increase GDP, as off-shored work is brought home; improve the balance of payments through import substitution; increase corporate profits and hence government revenue; enhance workforce skills; create the surpluses necessary for the repayment of both private and public debt; and not of least importance, end the genocidal program of mass immigration to among the most crowded nations on Earth.
(1)Ha-Joon Chang. Things they don't tell you about capitalism. Bloomsbury Press. 2010.
See also:
The Euro: A Weapon of Economic Mass Disruption
Monday, January 2, 2012
Per ardua ad astra: Why not?
By CanSpeccy
A post over at Tallbloke's Talkshop argues that we need global governance to restrict hydrocarbon energy use if we are to avoid civilizational collapse when supplies of hydrocarbon fuels abruptly run out.
The idea makes a change from the "if we don't stop burning so much oil we'll all die an 'orrible death from global warming" argument for the Global Soviet Socialist Republic, but seems hardly more convincing.
Of interest, though, is the argument in an article to which the author links, which states:
But wait, is it really inconceivable that we could harness the sun's entire output of energy?
Not to the visionaries:
Absolutely. In theory, anyhow. A means proposed by the legendary mathematician, Freeman Dyson, would be to build a sphere surrounding the sun, which would intercept every emitted photon and converts its energy to human use.
Let us abhore global governance, but instead "boldly go where no man has gone before": each small group in its own independent, self-governing, hollowed-out solar-powered asteroid.
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| Escher Dyson Sphere |
The idea makes a change from the "if we don't stop burning so much oil we'll all die an 'orrible death from global warming" argument for the Global Soviet Socialist Republic, but seems hardly more convincing.
Of interest, though, is the argument in an article to which the author links, which states:
No matter what the technology, a sustained 2.3% energy growth rate would require us to produce as much energy as the entire sun within 1400 years.In other words, so we are to assume, our present course of ever increasing energy use is totally unsustainable.
But wait, is it really inconceivable that we could harness the sun's entire output of energy?
Not to the visionaries:
When we physicists look at outer space for alien life," says Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics at City of New York University, "we don't look for little green men, we look for Type I, Type II and Type III civilizations. A Type I civilization has harnessed it's planetary power ... A Type II civilization is stellar ... they get their energy directly from their mother star. Eventually, they exhaust the power of a star and they go galactic" (i.e., become Type III)So could we evolve in a mere 1400 years to the point of going galactic, of evolving from a Type I to a mature Type II civilization?
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| Freeman Dyson |
A Dyson sphere (or shell as it appeared in the original paper) is a hypothetical megastructure originally described by Freeman Dyson. Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output. Dyson speculated that such structures would be the logical consequence of the long-term survival and escalating energy needs of a technological civilization, and proposed that searching for evidence of the existence of such structures might lead to the detection of advanced intelligent extraterrestrial life. (Maveric Universe Wiki)So why not?
Let us abhore global governance, but instead "boldly go where no man has gone before": each small group in its own independent, self-governing, hollowed-out solar-powered asteroid.
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