|
|
Around the world today, a single economic model or system has effectively eclipsed every other. This model is based upon use of capital, in any of several forms, to create more capital, in the form of profit. The model has a mantra, productivity and efficiency, whereby more and more profit is to be made, preferably with fewer and fewer hours of labor input. According to the model, anything that interferes with productivity or efficiency is an “externality” and may be ignored, no matter how harmful such an externality may be. Continue reading It Has a Name
This morning (Wed Oct 1 2008) the cable news shows (and C-Span) are discussing the “features” of the Senate version of the financial “bailout” package. Seems to me that this bailout (some prefer to call it a “rescue”) puts enormous power in the hands of the Treasury Secretary, presently Henry Paulson. They actually are seriously considering enacting legislation wherein decisions of the Treasury Secretary cannot be challenged in court or anywhere else.
Continue reading Senate Rescue Package (1)
Well, now. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is going to cut the umbilicus. “Blue sky” research by the elite of computer scientists will be cut drastically. The crying and moaning can be heard all the way from Livermore Labs to the Courant Institute. DARPA has funded loads and loads of projects with some very handsome results. Now they want to emphasize classified and sharply delineated work. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
To my mind, the uproar voiced by the elite scientists over this plan only points out how they are addicted to violence, although they will not see it that way. These scientists, most of whom are university staff and faculty, have been sucking at this sugar tit for so long, they have no regard or even care for the implications of such work. What is the mission of DARPA? Let’s not guess. Here is the mission statement of DARPA, taken directly from the DARPA Web site:
“DARPA’s mission is to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use.”
So, the mission of DARPA is to make sure that the U.S. is better at killing than all the others. It follows that anyone working for DARPA is working to make better killers. Continue reading Sucking at the DARPA teat
“We are not allowed to kill innocent people. We are not allowed to be complicit in murder. We are not allowed to be silent while preparations for mass murder proceed in our name, with our money, secretly. … Thou shalt not kill; we are not allowed to kill. Everything today comes down to that – everything.”
Daniel Berrigan
Court testimony during the trial of the Plowshares Eight, 1981
see http://ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/daniel-berrigan-essential-writings
Today’s NY Times has the left front page above the fold headline “BUSH PANEL FINDS BIG FLAWS REMAIN IN U.S. SPY EFFORTS.” No doubt. But the problem is not that supposed. There are indeed problems with U.S. spy efforts, but it is not that intelligence is so poor, although it is certainly that far too much of the time. Rather, one problem is that the intelligence agencies are willfully wrong. That is another way, of course, of saying they are lying. This is nothing new. That is what they do, their mission, so to speak. It is in the nature of spook work to obfuscate, to mislead, and to direct history toward their particular world-view. The work of the CIA, for decades, since the forming of the agency after WWII, has been to direct events to increase the power of the U.S. Truth and “intelligence” have nothing to do with it. The FBI? Well, for most of its existence it was run by J. Edgar Hoover. ‘Nuff said.
It is foolhardy or willful to pretend that intelligence agencies are only trying to keep government (read executive) leaders informed. Intelligence agencies have an agenda. It isn’t even hidden. But it is deceptive.
But this is not what is troubling me today. I see another problem, a more serious problem in the immediate context. Continue reading What Problem?
|
|