7/30/12

On Britain's Place in the Economic World

Occasionally I have interacted with American Anglofiles that seem unaware that British and American economic policy directions are not necessarily coincident. When Americans allow themselves to be led down the primrose path of fish, chips and footsie forsaking their national independence the U.S. economic profits suffer. The Aristocracy is happy to have groveling millions of ill-led minions abroad.
My opinion about Britain is that it is a minor landmass off Europe that exploits European and U.S. economics to best advantage. The United States is something of a soft economic target to them and it is best not to be so Anglo-centric as to be daft about world affairs generally.
Russia and Argentina are vast land areas-peers of the U.S.A. in that regard that we can do beneficial business with in economics and ecospheric conservation. Britain on the other hand is a small land mass with too many people that needs to keep the rest of the world in turbulence to extract abstract profits and send them to their financial houses maintaining their high-life style.
It is possible even for Brits to be self-sufficient in resources, and they should instead of scarfing up those of everyone they can leverage. Britain led the industrial revolution after the malaise of centuries of plague infested stagnation in European growth after the end of the classical era with the fall of Rome.  Now they are not nearly as inventive as they were formerly and rely on slick financial fraud and leveraging schemes plus hostile takeovers in business for gain. The United States is beginning to follow their lead down that road to ruin.
It is worth developing different economic value theories in order not to  be ecospherically nihilistic and simply obsessed with the trade value theory of cash economics. Cash as a medium of exchange has worked well in the past however social value theories are not reliant upon a blind obsession with that abstract medium of exchange instead to the detriment of awareness of things-in-themselves. It is possible to view the woods and the trees simultaneously-although very difficult for those with introverted political philosophy and an inflexible economic value theory.

The U.S.A. should follow George Washington's farewell address admonition that the United States of America should beware of permanent foreign alliances. U.S. and British aristocratic interests do not preponderantly coincide on geopolitical matters.

Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1865 because it didn't want Britain to get it-sound reasoning the present Alaskan political leadership seem to have forgotten in their support for British resource exploitation of Alaska minerals.

The United State evicted a few British pirates that were in the Malvinas that slunked back in later perhaps while the U.S. was preoccupied with rebuilding the national capital after the British burned it to the ground.

The United States does not need British aristocrats for another grafted skimming class of leaders, yet should be on good terms with such homest supporters of abolishing aristocracy as can be found as we are with Madagascarians and the Taiwanese. The United States has a nominal democracy and a dumbed down Democratic party incapable of sound economic reasoning nationally.

Britain does not have a true democracy. Now and then the Aristocrats can step in to Orwellianize things as they had the right forever to rifle postal letters and packages and now have closed circuit T.V. so that the disguise sales business is probably going up in London. People wonder if Princess Diana was an inconvenient truth that and Her Majesty's subject flunkies.

Some wonder if Britain was sporting rather than technically manipulative if it would have allowed a Princess Diana to marry a Saudi Royal and given that oil kingdom a rival claim on the Windsor Throne. LIBOR is a technical tool opportune for corruption. Britain could have sought to prove the world champion Olympic swimmer with a strait cross channel and back event. In fact every Olympic should have a local element to give the home team a fair advantage using its own natural resources. If the Olympics occur in the U.S.A. again the marathon run should be across Eisenhower pass at 10,000 feet.

Europe and the British have different inter-bank lending rating agencies. The European Central Bank has about 900 billion in assets at no interest and there isn't much inter-bank lending, instead it goes through the ECB. The United States uses the different London rating and that isn't helpful.

In the United States and Europe (with London somewhere advantaged in between) banks are becoming a kind of seperate and unequal financial class that are supported by taxpayers bailing out there egrgious excessses in speculating and swilling up the common assets held by private owner-commoners  and I do not believe that the Brits are generally against that sort of economic aristocratic development.

The U.S. democratic party of economically challenged without leadership since the first Clinton administration have followed the British path toward neglect of U.S. national interests. Clinton was big on British Thermal Units and making American home mortgages available for sale globally.

The Obama administration asked that two Federally supported home mortgage lenders that took heavy losses in the derivatives crash forgive billions of bad debts that Americans and others have and the administrator of those- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-declined. What else could he do? How could he write off debts when those two agencies have sold hundreds of billions of dollars of shares to the Communist Chinese and in effect write off debt owed to the Communist Party of China?

The United States needs to get is house in order ecosherically and with employment and quit being so Anglo-centric. U.S.  women and homosexuals may like the Britain over much perhaps because of charisma of the Queen, secret desire of girls to be princesses instead of municipal waste removal workers and the safety of an English speaking nation with fairy tale castles. The problem with democracy as Aristotle pointed out is that the demos is dumb and eventually collapses into tyranny. With Obamacare and other tag the poor tactics the nation is slowly moving in that direction.

7/28/12

Common Gun Ownership is Necessary for a Democratic Society

The United States has always had common gun ownership and it has always been a free society; that is not a coincidence. Nations such as Russia before 1990 never allowed common gun ownership and the people were always enslaved. The same applies to China during the Imperial and Communist era.
Some might find examples in the world of nations that still exist that outlawed common gun ownership yet its improbably difficult. What nation in South or Central America hasn't has copious revolutions, civil strife and corruption sufficient that it could serve as a realistic example for the United States? 
Some point to Canada as a society that allows only guns yet it has a small population and a land area larger as large or larger than the U.S.A. Canada also turned down a potential  Soviet agent highly placed in science in the U.S.S.R. when he knocked on the door of their embassy in Finland. As a second choice the Russian contacted the British and supplied them with Soviet data about as important to American interests in ending the cold war as two American spies giving U.S. Naval communication codes to the Soviets was to the Evil Empire. Canada was pursuing a policy of inoffensiveness or something maybe and that can be a good thing.
Eastern Europe under the Soviets didn't have common gun ownership, and certainly the Jews in Warsaw and western Europe hadn't enough guns to resist arrest and shipment to the extermination camps of the 3rd Reich.
Some might point out Arab nations or those with Islamic law in some cases as examples of nations where restricted gun ownership in some cases works. The legal system required to keep a disarmed populace in check in the absence of gun ownership tends to be fairly strict-probably to much so for the United States.  China and Saudi Arabia execute citizens a lot quicker than the U.S.A. James Holmes in China perpetrating such an act would probably not last a couple of months before death.
Nations that allow or even require gun ownership tend to be free nations. Switzerland is free and so is the U.S.A. If one day a disarmed citizenry has armed state agents knocking on their doors to remove them for some purpose, gun ownership resistance one home at a time would make the arrest of millions a little more difficult. Americans might need not only armed improvisational militias, they might need to personally resist squads of government or corporate agents themselves some day.
Obviously if the United States become a corporate serfdom intimidated and controlled by vague imperial powers from wherever even with disclaimers and small print regulations oozing out of thin air restrictions on common gun ownership will be one item on their agenda for hostile takeover of society and expropriation of whatever it is that Americans might have as equal citizens on the Earth.
The recent Aurora Colorado massacre of twelve and shooting of 70 people has been exploited by perennial disarmament advocates as a reason to impinge on common gun ownership, and the examp0le is the worst they could make. There are very, very few and rare killing of complete strangers in mass by individuals crazy or not. Of about 12,000 annual murder victims in the U.S.A. annually most occur in real circumstances that might not be stopped by elimination of common gun ownership.
The F.B.I. murder victim chart at the url above shows the distribution numbers of relatives, acquaintances and circumstances such as gang killings  that happened in the year 2010. Few homicides are killings by complete strangers, and those that are tend to be those in select social roles. The F.B.I. hasn't provided amidst their 4,656 killings for unknown reasons a breakdown on the number of those that were simply unilaterally done for no sociallyproximal interactive causal factor.
Not all of the 12,000 murders were made with firearms of course. There is a table delineating the type and quantity of weapons used in murders per state in 2010.
Mexico, a nation with severe restrictions on common gun ownership has an annual murder rate during the drug wars higher than 10,000 people per year. With the people disarmed the power of those gangsters with weapons is far greater of an impact upon society. One should not take Mexico as a good example of the positive value of restricted gun ownership.


What is freedom one might ask? Definitions and the philosophy of language about word meanings afford quite a lot of latitude in creating personalized and meaningful word designators. 


If you think about it, freedom on the physical and intellectual level is something like a range of motion or movement in all directions without intentional obstruction-by-others. Certainly Sartre believed freedom can't be restricted at all-one always has the ability to say no even of shot for it, yet Sartre was also a prisoner of war of the Nazis, so his meaning too has a limited range.


A weapon to defend freedom from those that would bind or shackle it can be spiritual and physical. If the slaves had been given gun ownership rights in the U.S.A. they would not have been captive long. If a potential kidnap victim has a home pump riot shotgun handy when the home breakers come through the door it can create a continuum of personal liberty.


The examples are without end in the political to the criminal realms of potential human experience. In fact the examples extend beyond the just human realm.


Projectile and other weapons are physical agents in the material world. If a brown bear approaches one early spring to dine on one's breathing carcass a mag load can correct the bear's breakfast behavior. A weapon can keep a crocodile from harvesting a conveniant foot or hand for munch, and the mighty puma leaping onto a jogger might be converted into a potential carpet in the air with a timely application of weapon diversion.


Obviously it is incumbent upon humanity to restore a rightful place for wildlife in-the-world without just eradicating them. If RTF chips and other devices were placed into animals and human dwelling areas were equipped with wildlife presence scanning devices professional handlers could capture and relocate the critters safely. It would also be possible to place metal devices in wildlife that grow hot if they venture into zones for exclusive human use, etc.


Projectile weapons commonly owned all serve the function of keeping spiritually misguided souls from encroaching upon the human rights of others. Until the time arrives that their is a true brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity it is best to know that the common gun ownership can keep the evil of gangs, corrupt government and other evil doers at a respectful distance.

Britain So Far Skunked in Medals on Day 1 of Olympics


China has won six medals presently with Italy placing a close second with five and the U.S.A. next in the running with four. Seventeen nations have taken medals so far. The host nation-Britain probably hopes to find their way to the finish line faster another day.

7/27/12

Romney's Best VP Picks: Rice & Ryan


Mitt Romney has the opportunity in the next two weeks before the Republican Convention to select the next Vice President of the United States if the voters approve. Former Sect. of State Condi Rice and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan are the two best choices, and they are good ones.
Each prospect is articulate, intelligent and will take public stands on principle. Condi Rice has a rated IQ of 165 and will probably put up an intelligent idea or two for the benefit of the nation over a four year period of time. With the weight off her shoulders of being down in the Bush I hierarchy without much opportunity to creatively express herself the liberation of the Vice Presidential office may let her think outside the box and get a few ideas through to improve American prospects for full employment, no public debt and a recovering ecosphere.
Paul Ryan being from Wisconsin naturally encounters the same leftist stimulation that drives people to take an opposite view. The late Senator Joe McCarthy was from that state too and it drove him over the edge seeing communists in every closet. Representative Ryan is merely challenged to develop national budget balancing straitway and that is good. While a lot of ox's get gored in the process with intelligent leadership the pork can be cut out from redundant entitlements instead of the vulnerable being tossed under the wheels

Paul Tillich's 'What is Religion?'


Paul Tillich died in 1965 in the era of the rise of space science and with a world full of regional wars and conflicts. For non-commerical or vocational Christians it was failure easy to overlook his work. Tillich was very well known along with Karl Barth to most Protestant Christians, yet I wonder how well read he was to philosophers.
Reading Tillich's essays published in 1926 (and thtis version in 1965) brings an awareness of his role in bridging the gaps amidst many philosophical systems that grew in that time. One may find an empirical and epistemological vein following science and an avenue of the development of the philosophy of logic and language regarding the empirical. Tillich developed a way of regarding a scientific worldview and of culture concurrently existing with alternative and even trancending ontology. That is the unconditional.
Before the rise of science when the world was not well understood from a mechanical point of view it was simpler for the religious inclined to have a naive view of the world-experience as a manifestation of the unconditional. The maya or illusory nature of temporal things was self-evident and stimulated even the Athenian philosophers such as Aristotle to find underlying principles of material changes and to develop structures in logic and language to represent those relationships. That inquiry was parelled in plain materrial scientific research.
Religion can be a cultural affair as well as an encounter with the unconditional. Modern afficiandos of science have often attacked the cultural aspects of religion, yet the scientific worldview fails  in its essential voacation to grasp the worlod-experience of things-in-themselves-the unconditional. Paul TIllich's early work in his career helps to illuminate the tripartite classification of human epistemology regarding ontology.
I enjoyed finding Tillich's excellent comments on Kant and Hegel and of the formulation of meaning-reality paradigmata within a subjective database for regarding reality. Sure science provides excellent data-yet it isn't exclusive and exhaustive informing a human being about the meaning or being of reality for-itself.
Tillich provides a way of regarding metaphysics as a religious intuition rather than of a greater physics such as I have prevalently considered it to be in recent times. For example one has a variety of cosmological theories and might extrapolate what is 'beyond' the known. Tillich's parameter for metaphysics is not like that.
Having read Schopenhuaer, Kant and Hegel it is helpful to to find Tillich to be a philosopher of religion able to place traditional classical westernn metaphysics within a context that isn't antipathetic to Plotinus' Enneads and view of the One.
The wikipedia page below on TIllich refers to Origin as having a view of the 'unoriginate' that is probably something like Plotinus's idea about 'The One'. In the book I am reading I think the translator uses the term 'the unconditional' to mean 'the unoriginate'.
That idea of God as not requiring anything to prove he exists, or scientific classification that would reduce Him to some sort of creature is as valid now as then. The immanence of a transcendent point of view of reality is always a good thing to have about in the busy world of secularism and science today.

7/26/12

Romney Realism, British Snubs and Foreign Policy Pragmatism

Mitt Romney's experience as an Olympic organizer brought an NBC media guy to ask what the prospects for the London Olympics are. Being a forthright and honest businessman with experience in staging an Olympic Games in Salt Lake City several years ago he replied with candor-something that the Obamanite era politicians and media aren't used to. It seemed rather shocking to get an honest answer. Romney said;
"You know, it's hard to know just how well it will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting, the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging. Because there are three parts that makes Games successful.
"Number one, of course, are the athletes. That's what overwhelmingly the Games are about. Number two are the volunteers. And they'll have great volunteers here. But number three are the people of the country. Do they come together and celebrate the Olympic moment? And that's something which we only find out once the Games actually begin."
That realistic appraisal is the source for much ado about nothing on the Bizantine political side interpretants in the U.K.
Mitt Romney's reply to a question by an NBC newsperson-a left leaning news organization was truthful, logical, plain and off the cuff. He in no way intended to give offense or even criticize the failures of preperation of the London games. Instead he expressed the points of concern that had been in media for months.
The President of the United States cannot be ignorant of the facts generally, and if a petty dictator or puffed up PM expects everyone to naturally kow-tow or biden their tongue on anything that might seem 'insolent' to a supremacist class of predators that expectation cannot be met or anticipated by reasonable people. One never knows when a corrupt politician will pull a Beria or Stalin on the people and find offense in what someone's tone is real or imagined.
Alexander Solzshenytsin in the Gulag Archipelago Three described the crime of 'anti-Soviet activity' ( that people were given a ten year sentence for automatically). It was applied to those such as had stolen a crust of bread and hidden it in their coat because of hunger and other horrible crimes.
The evil imperial tradition is always seeking to encroach upon human liberty and bend public discourse to its nefarious designs whenever it's opportune.
Margaret Thatcher was opposed to Reagan's desire to eliminate nuclear missiles. Yet she at least seemed to argue in favor of democracy and had a clue about how people normally present themselves as peers socially. She wasn't an imperious idiot like David Cameron.
It is a wonder that dueling was ever outlawed. Stanley Kubrick's film Barry Lyndon had one resolution of an unresolvable dispute in it. Sometimes with the broadcast media paradigm heir is no lawful way to get satisfaction from louts getting under the legal structure-especially if they are the legal structure or have an imperial advantage within it such as aristocrats possess.
Argentina is a democracy today and is not placing demands on owning the Shetland Islands. The Malvinas are just a couple hundred miles offshore of South America, and though the United States has the best lawful claim to ownership of the Malvinas iit will probably support an Argentine renormalization of the non-interference policy expressed in the Monroe Doctrine.
Plainly the United State would consider supporting Falklandian Independence if it sought to be an Independent State
The Candidate has moved on to visit an ally nation in the Middle East. Mitt Romney's possible VP picks are of interest as are speculations on his foreign policy agenda.

Foreign affairs unavoidably impact the U.S. economy and ecosphere. It is useful to establish domestic policy that benefits Americans prevalently and ecospheric restoration instead of nefarious imperial global extractors of American resources and opportunities. There are innumerable options, more even than Fisher had in game nine of the 1992 rematch against Boris Spassky.

The Candidate if elected would likely talk over select international affairs on joint issues of interest with friends such as the Presidents of Argentina and Russia. A Romney meeting with President Putin Arctic Char fishing on the north slope of Alaska's Brooks Range to informally discuss Arctic ecosphere and security issues exists in addition to a possible Romney security and ecosphere rectification issue tete et tete with Argentine President Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner.


Multi-Verse Ethics, James Holmes, Massacres and Contract Renewel in Post-Rem Parapsychology


It is difficult for a malfunctioning society to pass laws to correct their drift toward dissipation. The spectacular meltdown of the Aurora Colorado killer-joker is a case in point.
The broadcast media has recovered the 'story' salting 'clues' about the 'suspect' that might explain his behavior. Discovery of behavior causality and motivation is more important for news purposes when the ending is already post hoc. It is at least better than the day of breaking news that the people are beyond a yellow tape and seeking to disarm the 'bombs' within networked with a maze of 'tripwires'.
The 24 year old killer does have subjective knowledge stages written all over his terrible actions that midnight. He used classical tripwires instead of batter-operated motion sensors for his improvised anti-personnel mines as might a modern land-mine warfare improvisor.
One could imagine encounter a smiling bullfrog of death along a trail at 15,000 feet before its solar rechargable batteries powering the motion sensor impulsed a pound of RTX to explode. The youthful apprentice psychiatrist of the top rank of the epistemological relativist ladder went for the soft underbelly of social fantasy with crude yet costly weapons-at least $3000 worth.
We learn that that James (Joker) Holmes was a top of class graduate in neuroscience from The University of California at Riverside. A brilliant kid studying to be a psychiatrist in the post-REM era of social detachment is detached to the Denver area and stuffed with psychological relativism. Evidently he sent a package of why-I-shoot data to his psychiatrist graduate school instructor.
If weapons are restricted more the psychiatrist class and their apprentices would be exempt and given the REM-Boston awards for moral excellence instead.
The post-modernist era of Dewian epistemology can have consequences for the young. It can create moral and philosophical conundrums, alienation and confusion about reality itself. Being stuffed with psychiatric training in the Denver area may have prompted a kind of intellectual nausea for James Holmes in which he could reassert his normalcy by becoming an actor in the fantasy world of Democratic-Republican socialist-corporatist politics that makes a fiction of moral coherence and national sovereignty.
There is a multi-verse ethical theory that speculates that if Universes are made for the entertainment of superior beings the chances of having one's contract renewed to appear is best if one makes a big impression (as in a soap opera or reality T.V. show). In that context being a significant villain such as James the Joker Holmes is a good way to appear in another episode of a recurrent universe-what these kids believe!
 President Obama made a speech on the shooting in which he said that AK-47s should be in 'the hands of soldiers rather than criminals'. Apparently he considers civilian ownership of AK-47s criminal. He would further Leninize society and ban AK-47s from the private sector-a legalists solution if there ever was one. So I will write something about an alternative course.
In then late 19th century human innovators and inventors learned how to make mechanism that would permit extraction of a bullet from a chamber, recocking of the trigger mechanism and feeding of another bullets into the chamber. It isn't a brilliant thing and any machine or auto shop or garage mechanic can make his own automatic weapons or automatic shotguns with 50 barrels if he likes that can be used once and perhaps blow up thereafter. It isn't really possible to turn back the historical clock and prevent the manufacture of spears or swords either.
AK-47s and AK-74s can be changed to have only 5 shots with a welded on magazine that one must feed bullets in to like one does an old Winchester or Marlin from the side. Even if someone jimmied up the semi-auto function to full auto they would only get five shots. Of course criminals or revolutionaries could alter that with more work-yet as I pointed out it isn't very difficult to make a one time shotgun or a grease gun from plumbing supplies or whatever. The I.E.D. people go for bigger weapons. It is as if the President believes Americans are stupid.
Possibly there are more Ak-47s in the world than any other weapon and they are very fine weapons. They are the cheap Mauser of our era. For hunting dear or bear with the 7.62 round they are good field weapons that function well when dirty, muddy or wet. They are also cheaper than the weapons the rich and middle class can afford. If one is hunting a 300 pound feral Russian bore in the hilly brush beyond Laredo one wants a kill on first shot I would think.
In Alaska long ago at a drill I climbed over a ten-foot cyclone fence with an M-60 machine gun to flank at practice killing the NCO instructors. I actually got behind them and stood there a second before pulling the trigger. When I did I got one shot and the machine gun jammed because I had got dust in the barrel. In the real world I would have been standing there without hope of evading the retaliation from the survivor. Yet if I were firing real bullets instead of dummy bullets maybe the recoil would have been enough to let the weapon recycle automatically. I never went to a war and never found out.
Later the instructors ambushed us all and unloaded full magazines from M-16s upon us in a little valley below. That was how it was supposed to work.
Securing the nation's borders and modifying good jobs for American citizens would be a far better political course to take than to continue a psychological program of disarming the citizens and regarding them as pig meat with minds that don't matter and are subject to infinite programming because there isn't an objective reality.






Pragmatism , Utilitarianism and Taking a Poisoned Pawn En Passant

  The war in Ukraine, from the Biden-Blinken perspective, is necessary for two or three reasons of a dubious moral character. One is that fu...