Month: June 2007

George Marshall’s speech after World War II:

“It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.

Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.

Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”

via michael parekh

Fish farming is growing at 9% per year.

? a freshwater farm in Serbia produces 80,000 carp.

The director of a fish farm in Hawaii says, “Farming the oceans, instead of chasing down wild fish, is the only sustainable way to meet the world’s rising demand for seafood.”

Others say fish farms will reduce genetic quality and pollute – becoming unmanageable “feedlots of the sea”.

About 1 billion people rely on fish directly. And about a quarter and a third of the world’s fish are converted to animal feed each year.

A ship lifts a ton of wild fish an hour but the hunt requires a major policy overhaul in order to preserve species and the environment. Nevertheless, an extra 40 million tons of seafood per year is needed by 2030. Will we float 1,000s of extractive ships or install 1,000s of new fish farms?

China sells 70% of the world’s farmed seafood. The USA is well behind other nations while Congress is hamstrung over how to stimulate current plans for a $5 billion offshore aquaculture industry.

Worrying many, the waste produced when thousands of fish eat and excrete together in a small patch of the sea is equivalent to discharging untreated sewage. On the other hand, if farms are correctly located and their excess nutrients and nitrogen carefully diluted, nearby waters can support an improved ecology.

Farming in deep water with highly separated facilities may be a better approach, but a new system of international cooperation is required.
[Environmental Science & Technology]

Dirty snow melts polar ice 90% faster than the effect of greenhouse gases.

“When we inject dirty particles into the atmosphere and they fall on to snow, the net effect is we warm the polar latitudes,” said Professor Charlie Zender. “Dark soot can heat up quickly. It’s like placing tiny toaster ovens into the snow pack.”

Zender and his team found that since the Industrial Revolution dirty snow has caused more than one third of the total global warming.

Black carbon from forest fires and clearing also darkens snow and sea-ice surfaces plus increases solar absorption in the atmosphere. In some regions and seasons, dirty snow reduces snowpack depth and cover by 50%. The models and research are over several years, simulating the distribution and effects of natural aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere.

If much of the global warming is caused by dirt generated primarily from industrialized regions in Asia, Europe and the USA, the new solutions are cleaner-burning fuels, additional particle controls, and a shift in our focus only on carbon dioxide emissions.
[tip to Future Pundit]

Delight in each prolific rendering of beauty,
as if the earth a brew of tea
and beauty its steaming wisps.

This an inalienable wonder proved in either dirt or star.

Repel to deny to learn too little so often
as is each infinity of beauty!

Beauty they say caresses the tender, arouses the dormant, excites the innocent, tempers the strong, guides the wise, binds the wicked, comforts the good, so why then do we so often ignore and abuse beauty?

If I walk slowly on soft earth amidst a native meadow, tongued by light, by tufts of breeze, touched across my chest and shoulder, back and thigh with warming sun, drawn by the incessant celebration in twists of leaf, spiked grasses and the willing exposition of the flowers, will I not know of beauty and be caressed, excited, comforted? May I not add this taste of beauty to myself? Or will I remove myself, another new reminder that such is not nor ever will be me; that human is apart?

To see and then be blind, to touch and then be empty, to join and then be separate, is to find and then to lose our precious human birthright, for we are smothered in the revelation of beauty, as awakening to each day within these stars must surely be.

If we must, we are charged to take our birthright privately rather than be pelted with the dusts of contempt, of incoherent denial, of jealous resentment, of the darker splendored substitutions fashioned from culture, and politic, and war. We are to strive in all our breadth to know the even more intolerable and secret splendors of beauty.

If we rise each day and in our civilian duty declare no other purpose than the exploration of beauty, would we then find the beauty in the purpose of ourselves?

Remember
That to have the eyes of an artist,
That can be enough,
The ear of a poet,
That can be enough.
The soul of a human
just pointed
in the direction of the divine,
that can be more than enough.
I tell you this to remind myself.
Every gesture is an act of creation.
Even empty spaces and silence
can be the wings and voices of angels.
– Michele Linfante

“Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack.

“Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims.”

Arundhati Roy, accepting the Sydney Peace Prize, offers choice criticism of the Bechtel Group:

Time was when weapons were manufactured in order to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured in order to sell weapons.

Former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger was a Bechtel general counsel. Former Deputy Secretary of Energy, W. Kenneth Davis was Bechtel’s vice president. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President’s Export Council. Jack Sheehan, a retired marine corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel and a member of the US Defense Policy Board. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, was the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

Bechtel has successfully sued war-torn Iraq for ‘war reparations’ and ‘lost profits’. It has been awarded 7 million dollars.

So, all you young management graduates don’t bother with Harvard and Wharton – here’s the Lazy Manager’s Guide to Corporate Success:

1. First, stock your Board with senior government servants.
2. Next, stock the government with members of your board.
3. Add oil and stir.

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you’ve created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.

ONTHEBUS – Charles Bukowski

Plato makes the following observations in his account of divine madness in the Phaedrus:

There is a third form of possession or madness, of which the Muses are the source. This seizes a tender, virgin soul and stimulates it to rapt passionate expression, especially in lyric poetry, glorifying the countless deeds of ancient times for the instruction of posterity. But if any man comes to the gates of poetry without the madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone (techne) will make him a good poet, then shall he and his works of sanity with him be brought to nought by the poetry of madness, and behold, their place is nowhere to be found.

Enthusiasmos, inspiration, is required…

Technique is not sufficient; one has to be inspired.
[via Spurious]

Who needs an Immigration Bill?

If you live next to the Mexican border, minus public property, which is usually a 60 feet easement from the actual border, or are separated from the Mexican border by not more than two miles and receive an inundation of illegal crossings and activity from intruders believed to be from Mexico, you can qualify for a high tech security fence, designed to meet local requirements typical designs include:

·10-foot-separated poles 14-feet high, 4-feet planted in ground with cement
·Anti-Climb welded wire mesh panels 14-feet high
·Integrated vehicle barrier
·Concertina wire at top
·FOMGuard Fiber Optic Fence Mesh Fencing 8-feet high early illegal alien detection
·Surveillance cameras linked to early waning system with Registered Minutemen Volunteers to monitor and report illegal aliens, includes web based monitoring, automatic email messaging, remote web controls and precision satellite map location.
·Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Security patrols.

Clipped from klipz who points out via paynter, ” there’s spooky shit from Minuteman Border Fence”…

The $50 Registration fee can be waived if you have a current license
to Carry a Concealed Weapon (CCW).

NBC News reported that the border fence being built and planned across 2,000 miles is costing $2,000,000 per mile – almost $400 per foot! Gee whiz!

The folks from the town that’s not there
with something they’re not saying.

When a bacterial population is placed under a stressor — such as an antibacterial chemical — a small subpopulation armed with special defense mechanisms can develop. New lines of bacteria survive and reproduce as their weaker relatives perish.

Scientific American reports that antibacterial products may increase our risks,

Traditionally, people washed bacteria from their bodies and homes using soap and hot water, alcohol, chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide. These substances act nonspecifically, meaning they wipe out almost every type of microbe in sight—fungi, bacteria and some viruses—rather than singling out a particular variety.

Soap works by loosening and lifting dirt, oil and microbes from surfaces so they can be easily rinsed away with water, whereas general cleaners such as alcohol inflict sweeping damage to cells by demolishing key structures, then evaporate. “They do their job and are quickly dissipated into the environment,” explains microbiologist Stuart Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine.

Unlike these traditional cleaners, antibacterial products leave surface residues, creating conditions that may foster the development of resistant bacteria. After spraying and wiping an antibacterial cleaner over a kitchen counter, active chemicals linger behind and continue to kill bacteria, but not necessarily all of them.

As bacteria develop a tolerance for these compounds there is potential for also developing a tolerance for certain antibiotics. This phenomenon, called cross-resistance, has already been demonstrated in several laboratory studies using triclosan, one of the most common chemicals found in antibacterial hand cleaners, dishwashing liquids and other wash products.

For additional worry, please note:

Antibacterial compounds, triclosan and its close chemical relative triclocarban, are present in 60 percent of America’s streams and rivers.

I try my best to make a contribution for peace of mind, which is the key thing for a happy person and happy family, and this is everybody’s right to be a happy person.

Being part of six billion human beings, my only interest depends on all other human beings, from my selfish viewpoint I have to take care of other human beings, so if humanity understands happiness and peace, I get maximum benefit. – the Dalai Lama

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I enjoyed reading the story about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Australia. It’s a ‘weekend piece’, written with a fine journalist’s rhythm and depth.

The Dalai Lama also says, “To cultivate altruism, tolerance and patience … you need someone to create trouble for you, so your enemy is your genuine teacher.”

I think his stance is heroic and brave and true. Any other, even war, is shaped from vanity and puffery.

Our world is built when we take the example of unbent conviction. One by one, a better world.

Expected to succeed Tony Blair, Britain’s upcoming Prime Minister Gordon Brown has tabled a suggestion to create Britain’s first Constitution. [link] [link] [blog]

I’m sad. I’ve been proud of Britain’s heritage of scattered writings. As the first culture to restrain authority and maintain the great feature of common law, the civilizing force of living within an average of endless arguments might be at risk if mere statute is elevated over top.

I’m afraid. Drafting a constitution makes room for new ideas. No one says this is an age of profound social cooperation or statesmanship. Most people seem utterly worried and unsure about their neighbors. What if Britain is over run with nerves and inserts a national system to allow a surveillance webcam in every kitchen?

But I mustn’t fret. I should relax in full confidence that our friends in Britain might create a torch that re-lights the world’s willingness to live with each other. Modern Canada achieved a new national charter in 1982. The first line states that Canada is ‘founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law’. Not to worry, it seems that God and Canada’s lawyers agreed to assure several rights and freedoms for everyone else.

I’m still nervous. Can we really trust anyone to tinker with fundamental rights in an age where we can hardly agree if we can keep our shoes on at an airport? Oh yes, I know that soul sole security is only an American matter. Not every western society is cuffed by rude and petty ideologues bureaucracy.

But what will occur in Britain?

The Telegraph has launched a brave venture for a newspaper. It’s building provocative feature stories, online and offline forum, plus several blogs and chats into a national conversation called “ThinkLocal, Who should run Britain?“

The hook:

The British public is more disillusioned with politics and disappointed with public services than ever. But here the Telegraph is launching a debate on what is wrong with the way our country is run, and how to fix it, based on the localist idea of returning power to the people.

The features already published argue that “power needs to be devolved to give us all a decisive say in running our lives.” Another feature asserts that “free-market ideas are vital for protecting the environment”. A guest author chimes that the supermarket culture is damaging the planet. Another likely report will show that an organic block of wood and a conventional block of wood each cause the same emissions during delivery. Soon, a panel report will argue that pumping dioxide smog under unused coal mines near the Beatle’s first venue in Liverpool is unconscionable. Within a few short months of open debate, every argument will be on Britain’s table for resolution. Within a few short months, the facade of British civility will tumble. Out of nowhere, a newly formed Constitutional Committee of the Gang of Nine will announce a dramatic reduction in the discretionary money supply causing tens of thousands of restaurants and markets and spa to shut down. The culture will darken. A flaming orator will rise to despotism. The proposed Constitution will be symbolically burned at a beach bonfire rally near Kent. Headlines will shout that an uniformed brigade of armed…. So thus I remain nervous.

I think Britain has done pretty well as a cacophony. About one thousand years of parchment creed and napkin decision making have built a firm and reputed society. Britain’s many many rules and laws are its secret and its secret is its disputes. The thought of repairing a national argument with a national agreement seems too untimely and risky.

Try to name a new currency for North America.

Keep trying. There’s the euro. What about the nora?

If your lucky and creative, your name for a new currency may be noted in history because there’s important planning for a new single currency for the USA, Canada and Mexico.

Media coverage of a possible North American monetary union is not mainstream although a new single currency is part of today’s intergovernmental trade and security discussions and part of the public record in government, business and academic archives.

Neighbors can be promoted as ‘natural allies’ easily able to fuse tradition with innovation under a friendly banner, but any effort to abandon the dollar will likely lift more conspiracy theories than Texas has dirt. Nevertheless a currency unification program is on the table. Is economic integration the end of national sovereignty? Will inventing new currencies provide new powers for American banking?

Our Fed is restrained only to domestic monetary policy. Some say that if the US Fed makes no effort to renew its charter to allow a global reach in the next several years, governing the vast majority of dollars that are overseas may become impossible in this recent unfriendly climate. Perhaps merging currency can be a new method of extending reach. Cross boundary trade agreements are useful administrative improvements, but unified currencies that are continentally defined might be much more potent.

The Financial Post reports that Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge said it was “possible” there could at some point be a unified North American currency similar to Europe’s euro. Dodge also pointed to the immigration and border issues saying the countries involved would have to “tear down borders in terms of labor flows” to make a joint currency work. Perhaps more coy, he reminded us about American unsteadiness – debt and Asia’s increasing wealth to purchase US debt. A bloc of three might put weight into the weakening dollar.

An abstract by Michael Chriszt discusses specific criteria for a single currency for North America as well as the pros and cons of a monetary union. His paper is part of the University of Connecticut’s IDEAS economics database, providing more than 475,000 freely browse-able papers. His conclusion is a question, probably the only conclusion when he published seven years ago, and the most likely question today: Are the NAFTA countries ready for monetary union?

Wiki’s entries about the new Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) are probably often revised while its authors argue about citations too eagerly pointing to Canada, the U.S. and Mexico becoming a ‘single country with a single currency’.

As August’s meeting to move the SPP forward takes place in Montreal, we can expect to learn more about integrating the economies of North America. The immigration bill will be completed, wage adjustments will be slowly toying with mortgage markets, and fuel spending over summer’s vacation will be slicing holiday retail projections. But the noise of daily living won’t drown the headlines. There’s a growing resistance to North America’s deep integration.

Death and Taxes 2007 by Mibi at DeviantArt is one of the top illustrations showing federal government spending.

Each part of the graphic is proportional, providing a ‘one stop picture’ to educate us quickly.

I’ve used Mibi’s two-megabyte illustration as a desktop image as I learned how our dollars are distributed although the 2007 version makes viewing difficult,

There’s also a poster version.

While the science advances, observing eye contact and body movement are the top telltale ways to look for liars. Police are trained to analyze these visual cues and to compare verbal and non-verbal responses during ‘small talk’. Plus they often use a list of questions where liars will often answer while exposing cues.

But these methods are not usually accurate.

Professor Aldert Vrij conducted the ‘Interviewing to Detect Deception’ study to find that liars are convincingly adept.

He also found detection can truly be improved by increasing the cognitive load, “… by asking them to tell their stories in reverse order.”

Professor Vrij explained:
“Lying takes a lot of mental effort in some situations, and we wanted to test the idea that introducing an extra demand would induce additional cues in liars. Analysis showed significantly more non-verbal cues occurring in the stories told in this way and, tellingly, police officers shown the interviews were better able to discriminate between truthful and false accounts.”

Research in the use of lie detection is important. MotherJones discovered in 2002 that government employees are routinely subjected to tests that can ruin careers.

Not Volker or Greenspan or what’s his name, this post is to point out that central bankers are not the same in every nation.

Alan Bollard, Reserve Bank Governor of New Zealand, provides advice to citizens well in advance.

“New Zealanders be warned. Interest rates are going up and there are no signposts indicating any relief in the medium or near term.”

In December Dr Bollard warned Kiwi battlers not to keep ramping up their housing prices. They paid no apparent heed.

In March Dr Bollard put his boot into the banks telling them that unless they played ball… he might be forced to take other measures.

And so Dr Bollard will make no friends today.

Householders will be angry that their latest pay rise has just magically vanished into the morning breeze.

Exporters will be angry that this decision will put even more pressure on the high exchange rate.

And politicians will be angry that everybody else is angry.

“It does not take rocket science to figure out that this is going to hurt.” [link]

If you were there, what’s true?

If you were somewhere else, why?

A junket of journalists are invited to the press facilities at the meeting of the G-8. Together in a bus while on the way, I’m guessing they begged to see the protesters before hobnobbing near the more elite.

Judging from the height and angle of the camera lens, they stayed on the bus.

Judging by the lack of depth and vigor in the reporting – mere minutes of composites rapidly sold to downstream syndication – neither the people in uniform nor the people in protest are heard.

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Update:
I finally discovered a report filed by a journalist not being fed; at the Guardian by Patrick Barkham. He took the effort to watch 24 hours of the biggest demonstrations outside the G8.

Obviously my experience of the protests is not comprehensive – mini demonstrations are breaking out all over the place within a 20-mile radius of the G8…

The protesters are like a cross between a medieval army, a modern music festival crowd and performance theatre. They straggle across fields and then break into song, dance or aerobics when confronted by lines of riot police. Almost all of them have been admirably peaceful so far.

Contrary to press reports, I’ve not witnessed any rocks or bricks or dangerous missiles thrown by protesters. (Grand total of missiles thrown that I have seen: one plastic bottle.) I’m not denying it’s happened but it has been rare, so far.

In case you think I’m getting all cuddly with the protesters, from what I’ve seen, the police operation has also been fairly intelligent and certainly effective.

From what I’ve seen, however, there has certainly been more violence used on the police side. The authorities would say that is their job – to stop the G8 being disrupted. So they tend to be the ones trying to force the issue, charging at protesters and beating them with batons to move them back from the roads around the resort.

They also use the water canons fairly liberally and if you think water is some kind of fluffy anti-riot option, it is not, especially when laced with pepper spray.

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Media lives in the neighborhood of State; visits, drinks and marries. Ben Franklin knew better. Jefferson said we should move our Capital each generation. Worried about comforting the great, our Founders are begging for another contrition: To repel error, our civilization is in our hands.

It will happen again because it is happening now. Knocking our front door is a uniform.

Children will tell you, elders will warn you, generations have said, unless you come home with joy, you are shopping for danger.

Our steps are simple.

We walk toward.

Leaders from the U.S., Russia, Japan, Britain, France, Italy and Canada, hosted by Germany, are at the G-8 soon to talk about climate change, economics, poverty, and a roster of other now-familiar and perennially unsolved issues, reports Stan Persky at The Tyee.

The barbed wire costs $20 million.
The meeting will cost more than $200,000,000.

I was searching for a public photo of the G-8 players or facilities, but I think Castro’s chagrin is oddly ironic if not merely because his hot air costs less.

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Update, with bonus warning:

Reading Stan’s column, he warns that we must not be led to believe that protest isn’t precious.

Reading other reports of the G-8 meeting, I’ve noticed the sugared feed of syndicated media that Stan Persky is warning us about.

I can see that walking along with the protesters, or as courageously with the police, will invigorate a journalist quite differently than commercial reports prepared from a prepaid hotel room or during cocktails downstairs.

A healthy curiosity about the allegations that are worth a march or worth a trouncing would serve us better. People can despise a protest merely because it’s aggravating. Groups can be unpopular merely because they are groups. Crowds can be rude, their cause unformed, and their leaders pathetic. Police can be sent to calm, to disperse, to inflame and to injure. Authority and power can be trite and callous and dangerous, and most often has proved it.

Observing in detail is important, even if only to empathize. There’s much to discover from both the people at risk and the police at point. There are policies we need to probe.

Reading Stan’s column, I’ve learned two things. One, to distrust arms-length media reports that are produced only for downstream syndication. Two, to rekindle a commitment to our right and our requirement to assemble and to protest. So then we address our grievances as in the past. So then we invent a better world.

To protest is an important right and is to be preserved always.

Sally Peck in her post The Slaughtered Lamb tells us about purchasing food in London with a very little cash.

She points to Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a report by a fellow journalist who “joins the millions of Americans working for minimum wage and describes her experience. Her income barely covers survival, she nearly ends up in a shelter, and she applies for government food aid, which ends up including things like candy bars but no fresh fruits and vegetables.”

Good ol’ government of error!

It’s not only government food programs for the poor where we are failing. While eagerly pilfering pay checks, the marketplace is failing as well. Several studies show much lower quality food is put on sale in lower income regions – and often sold at at higher prices than folks pay in wealthier regions.

We may invest more for outlets selling costly food than wholesome food. Guiding farmers from the helm of the city of New York, candidate Rudolph Giuliani has made this an issue in the past. Clinton’s Agriculture Secretary has made this an issue, saying that too many neighborhoods pay more for lower quality food.

The quality, variety and cost of our food supply is a persistent signature of our social growth, and our shortcomings. In the long view, I know we are most often improving our human lot, but there are many haunting errors.

Several studies show much lower quality foodstuffs are put on sale in lower income regions. There are tremendous improvements and for much to be grateful, but our producers and vendors can easily neglect providing quality and price for most of us and the poor of us

It surprises me always while scouring a retail store for nourishing food only and good price only. Were these the only food category, the store might be ninety percent smaller! If we were to replace products that entice and profiteer with only products of top value and mere goodness, excess shelf space might cause a national commercial land crash.

We can be distracted. Our efforts are drawn to entertain our profitable customers, today’s plutocracy, leaving a great number of folks gathering not the bacon but the drippings under the so-called ‘wealth effect’.

The last decades seem writ for the elite – more wine than grapes. I think we lose our purpose when we rely too much on doing too much for fashion and cash rather than for the prosperity of the entire community.

It’s a better day when we celebrate better living: better peaches, better apples, better berries… and always better prices to us all.

In the 1970s, I co-founded a food purchasing cooperative – a “food conspiracy” in Marin County – that organized community volunteers to discover regional farms and top quality producers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I quickly learned what we were not getting in our local supermarkets. These days, the local food movement is a growth sector, as it must be, although we must be aware that local food may not be either the highest quality or the most ecologically produced.

When the rich steal from the rich, it’s Good Business.
When the rich steal from the rich for the poor, it’s Noblesse Oblige.
When the middle steal from the middle, it’s Corruption.
When the rich and the middle steal from the poor, it’s Fiscal Responsibility.
When the poor steal from the rich and the middle, it’s Crime.
When the poor steal from the poor, it’s Tough Luck.

The US uses more than 140 billion gallons of gasoline and almost 40 billion gallons of diesel fuel annually. Sixty percent is imported and likely to climb to eighty percent.

The Department of Energy projects the U.S. could produce 90 billion gallons of corn and cellulosic ethanol a year by 2030. This represents 60 billion adjusted energy gallons of fuel.

General Motors says it will offer half of its production bio-fuel capable in 2012 – provided there is ample availability and distribution of E85 -85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. I do not praise GM or any automobile maker for failing to prepare their production or their customers

Working for more than 30 years on ways to turn cellulose into ethanol, Bruce E. Dale, director of the Biomass Conversion Research Laboratory at Michigan State, states that “cellulosic ethanol – combined with the billions of gallons of corn-based ethanol already produced today – could potentially replace up to 30 percent of this nation’s demand for energy by the year 2030.

Said Dr. Dale, “Grassoline is domestically produced, environmentally sound and helps support rural and regional economic development.” Cellulosic ethanol could be produced for around $1 a gallon by 2020.

Cellulosic ethanol must be pre-treated and then broken down into sugars before they can be fermented, a step called cellulosis. He estimates that by 2012 the cost of ethanol production will be nearly halved, to about $1.30 per gallon. [Petroleum Alternatives, autospectator.com]

“There is among politicians too much bickering and recrimination. We should work together and build a world beneficial to all people. Politicians should think about this – about why people hate politics which divide people.

A successful, mature society creates health, education and life for the next generation.

That means we should be particularly concerned about young children.” – Mikhail Gorbachev

Every person who improves his or her status in life does so at the expense of another.

Perhaps plutonomy, where we rely upon social power and economic power to establish policy and drive markets, is an upside down hierarchy. The few have the most.

Generally, we think that this is OK. There’s a number of explanations we use to justify hierarchy.

says, “Each upward movement must be matched by a downward one, the contentment generated by the former offset by the misery of the latter.”

“It’s frustrating to think how many Mozarts never picked up a violin because their fathers were carpenters rather than composers.”

meritocratic society meritocracy

“I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time,” Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said after a recent speech in San Antonio, Texas.

Independent News, South Africa – The man who led coalition forces in Iraq during the first year of the occupation says the United States can forget about winning the war.

“I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will – not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat,” retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez said in an interview.

“We’ve got to do whatever we can to help the next generation of leaders do better than we have done over the past five years, better than what this cohort of political and military leaders have done.” adding that he was “referring to our national political leadership in its entirety” – not just President George W. Bush.

Sanchez called the situation in Iraq bleak and blamed it on “the abysmal performance in the early stages and the transition of sovereignty.”

He’s the highest-ranking military leader yet to say Bush fails. Frankly, I can’t determine if he’s hawkish and criticizing a lack of adequate aggression or more sensibly criticizing lame operations and political tactics. There seems to be a litany of failure on his radar.

Perhaps it may take a few days, but this item is ignored in the USA.