Three Sigma Systems

NYT 8/31/2010 – Trapped Chilean Miners Forge Refuge

“…at 62 years old, Mr. Gómez is the oldest of the 33 miners trapped nearly half a mile underground here and has become the spiritual guide to his men…” Aside from Mr. Gómez, there is Luis Urzúa, the 54-year-old shift leader who organizes their work assignments, is helping to map the path of their rescue hole…”

I can think of no situation more likely to reduce a human being into a whimpering terrified animal greater than that of being buried alive almost 3000 feet underground. Given the generally accepted view of the economics of human nature we should expect initial panic to give way to a King Rat scenario in which the strong prey upon the weak and thereafter, even the strongest give in to the paralysis of terror and hopelessness.

But nothing of the sort is happening among the 33 Chilean miners trapped a half mile below the surface of the earth. What is happening is that these desperate men are acting out their human nature, which is to confront the challenges that life has placed before them with purpose and method. Given the problem they face, they have created a leadership hierarchy that defers to the wisdom of the eldest among them (Joseph Campbell’s “Gray Beards”). These elders have embraced the task assigned to them by willing followers, of focusing the group’s thoughts, deliberations and actions in ways that help them survive.

This self-organizing principle, in which human beings come together to confront the challenges that life puts before them with shared purpose and method is the essence of human nature. Over the millennia the forces of natural selection have built this modus operandi into our genome. This is what human beings do naturally —-unless that is, they are constantly bombarded with messages that intentionally obfuscate the nature of the challenges they face and systematically promote fear and loathing among them.

The misguided “sciences” of psychology  and economics base their sales pitch about human nature on the idea that humans function as economically self-interested individuals. But the economics of human existence are meaningless when regarded in terms of individuals. It is only in terms of our relations with one another in addressing life’s challenges, that human survival becomes possible. Then again, as Dr. W. E. Deming was fond of saying, “Survival is not mandatory”.

Current events should make it abundantly clear that the human race is in no less dire straights then the Chilean Miners buried deep in the earth. We need to stop listening to the “King Rat” claptrap that’s being dished-out in generous portions and come to grips with the challenges that life is putting before us. Once we do that, all that remains is for us to do what comes naturally.

NYT, August 2, 2010 – “F.B.I., Challenging Use of Seal, Gets Back a Primer on the Law”
The bureau wrote a letter in July to the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, demanding that it take down an image of the F.B.I. seal accompanying an article on the bureau, and threatened litigation: “Failure to comply may result in further legal action.”

What sets human beings apart from all other creatures is their penchant for investing inanimate things with transcendent power. In the early going the behavior of prehistoric man was shaped by animistic beliefs in which symbolic power was vested in the things of nature. Inspired by cautionary tales about the consequences of hubris, told and retold generation after generation, mountains, plants and animals, the clouds and the stars, where all vested with the powers of prediction, retribution, and forgiveness. These symbols served to shape man’s relation with nature into a moral whole that actually worked!

Incessantly innovative, it did not take a very big leap for animistic man to begin manufacturing his own transcendent symbols. These man-made symbols were also vested with power, but not the power of the natural world, but rather the power of men. Man’s MANufacturing of symbols marked the beginning of history, in which symbolic artifacts came to signify, legitimize and sanction differentials between human beings.

The symbolic power of manufactured artifacts — shamanic trinkets, totems, religious paraphernalia, badges, cash money, numbered accounts, and WMDs for example —  does not reside in the real and practical use of these artifacts, powerful though such use may be, but in imagined meanings experienced as inhering in these objects.  Once such objects become vested with meaning, their intrinsic meanings convey power to those who are able to possess and monopolize them. By this means, their possessors become able to exert dominion over others merely by displaying such objects. It stands to reason that if these manufactured symbolic objects can be readily reproduced by unauthorized agents, the system by which possessors exercise power and control over others is in serous danger of collapse.

The great revolution of the 21st Century is the ability to reproduce symbolic artifacts with great accuracy and ease, and to disseminate them at little cost. This is why for example, the U.S. Treasury has gone to such great lengths to protect the powers vested in our currency against high quality copying machines — an exercise in futility as Bernie Madoff proved and Goldman-Sachs continues to prove. It is likely that, in our digital age, the horses have already left the barn. Today the symbolic artifacts that embody power are readily counterfeited.  A fake Rolex and a fancy car purchased on no-down-payment credit can open locked doors. Need the powers of a Ph.D degree? Try here. Want to wield the priest’s cross? Go here. Want to flaunt the emblem of a United States Senator? Talk to Mr. Green. Need to instill fear and loathing with an FBI badge? Go here.

For better or worse, the legitimized power that resides in manufactured artifcats is fast becoming obsoleted into meaningless gibberish by technology. In a new age of constant con, the symbolic power that is generated by virtue of shared meanings invested in manufactured artifacts, can no longer be trusted. Perhaps we are in need of a new paradigm by which to organize our relations. Maybe there is a way to move forward towards a system of shared-meanings vested on our creative powers rather than in mystical objects of our own manufacture.  Such a system would not be built upon our belief in the power of our artifacts but upon the power of our responsible relations with others. This idea is not really all that novel.

Do you remember a few months back, when the U.S. media was busily burying Toyota’s reputation as the be-all and end-all of automotive quality? To me, the media’s myth-busting paroxysms came off more like a witch-hunt than investigative journalism. Now that their fear-mongering Toyota-bashing is no longer in the headlines comes this from NHTSA, who have been carefully investigating Toyota unintended acceleration reports.

“The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes.”

And,

“In spite of our investigations, we have not actually been able yet to find a defect” in electronic throttle-control systems, Mr. Smith told the scientific panel, which is looking into potential causes of sudden acceleration.

In the wake of the great Toyota panic of 2010, Toyota’s senior managers have tearfully apologized in public and Toyota’s engineers have created numerous fixes for problems still not found. As of February of 2010, Toyota estimated that their cost for recalls and lost sales at about two billion dollars.

In past posts on this blog I have expressed my feeling that there was a hidden agenda designed to play on the xenophobic tendencies of a declining nation that has squandered its edge in quality manufacturing and is now trying to claw its way back, not by rededicating itself to creating great products, but by denigrating its competition.

As I have said before, Toyota is just another automaker in business to make a profit. Their products are far from prefect, but have thus far been much better than anything produced by U. S. automakers. To begin to understand why this is the case we need only study Toyota’s corporate response to the media witch-hunt. Rather than dig their heels in with denials and blame-shifting (see BP oil spill), they bowed, apologized, bent with the wind and went on about the business of improving their products. Their response reflected what has come to be known as “The Toyota Way”. Meanwhile GM, having learned nothing, is giving lip services to digging itself out of the grave it dug itself into with a taxpayer funded sham product called the Volt (see NYT “G.M.’s Electric Lemon“)

No design is perfect and the imperfect design of Toyota vehicles certainly contributed to crashes. After all, if the operator of a vehicle can accidentally apply the gas rather than the brake, the gas-pedal next to the brake-pedal design could stand improvement. But the two billion dollar rush to judgement in the media was most certainly fueled by a desire to take the number-one automaker in the world (not made in America) down a few notches rather than a legitimate concern for product safety.

This is the same con as the one being used by the Republican Party in the U.S.  Rather than earn the respect and loyalty of customer-audiences by creating great product and improving it continuously, the Republican party spends all their effort attacking the other party’s products. This method has the benefits of being cheap, requiring no thought, and by creating nothing, immunizing it perpetrators from responsibility for their (not) products.

But there’s a downside to this technique as well, and I am not defending Toyota. I am attacking the con-artistry of U.S. business interests and media lackeys and more importantly, the gullibility of American audiences who mistake creating nothing for doing something. People who are lost in the funhouse had better wake up soon. These con-artists are shoveling dirt into our grave faster than we can dig ourselves out!

Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.

T. S. Eliot, “The Cocktail Party”

To love and be loved and to hate and be hated are two sides of the coinage that makes us real. Love and hate do not exist on a quantifiable continuum. We do not love a little less or more nor do we hate by degrees, inches, or yards. Our experience of love and hate makes us real because, at great risk to our “self”, we give ourselves over to the others we love and hate and allow them to become a part of ourselves. Loving and hating is being and becoming.

It may be that half the harm that is done in the world comes from the hate that is the flip-side of love but the other half most certainly comes from that absence of either that attends our futile, risk-averse struggle to think well of ourselves by measures of gain.

In a recent interview conducted at the University of Oregon, Seymour Hersh (no relation), a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist who writes for the NYT and New Yorker, invokes the Quaker wisdom that the moral imperative of the journalist is to “speak truth to power”. As I see it, the Quakerism applies to more than just journalists.

Hersh goes on to discuss two subjects of great interest to me: the myth of objectivity and the reality of our futile wars of adventure that prove most tragically, that we do not learn from history! I see his comments against a backdrop of ideologues and fools battling over petty self-interests in which we become caught up in deadly games of lies and deceits that render us helpless in solving the problems that threaten our survival as a nation and a species.

For a breath of fresh air, watch and listen to this interview.

Jeremy Rifkin gives a provocative lecture, supported by some entertaining graphics, in which he asserts that the human species is essentially defined by it empathic powers.

In other words, the process of evolution has selected for human nature that “feels” with others and thereby enables us to bridge the physical boundaries between individuals. The faculty of empathy allows us to synchronize our actions in dance, music, conversation, and in building in infinitely creative ways. We humans, as a whole, have survived 50,000 years because we have, for the bulk of that time, behaved in a manner that made us effectively greater than the sum of our parts.

I am largely in agreement with Rifkin. Our penchant for constructing the world though knowledge is based in our empathic interactions with one another. Our very consciousness depends upon our ability to share symbols and experience shared feeling about our constructs.

So why have we come to embrace the “scientific” ideas proffered by social Darwinism, that the nature of the human condition is rooted in every man for himself? The answer to this mystery is as simple as “follow the money”. Who stands to gain from this false science?

Rifkin’s thesis is that we must make an effort to organize our society in a manner that promotes empathy. It may be even simpler than that. Maybe all we need do is systematically remove the obstacles that have been placed in the way of doing what we do most naturally.

Thanks to John Dowd, who called this link to my attention, along with his comment: “You will like this.  I’m not buying it, but you will agree with it.”

He was right. I do like it!

Who is the enemy?

So McChrystal is out and Preteaus is in! It looks like Obama and I were on the same wavelength. It was the only tactical maneuver possible under the circumstances, but the strategic problems still loom large, and given our “accomplishments” thus far, they may be intractable. Time, which is required to heal all wounds, is not on our side.

We need to examine the track record or our “accomplishments” if we want to understand how we got into this mess and how we can begin digging out.

1. We lifted the Taliban to power, by way of the Mujahideen as our proxy warriors in our battle with the USSR. We armed them. We trained them. (See “Charlie Wilson’s War” for Hollywood version of this story.)

2. Following the defeat of the Soviet invaders, the Taliban coalesced  and exercised authority throughout Afghanistan and were qute popular with the Afghan people. They restored order, built roads, quashed reliance on opium, and organized and provided schools and other social services, and were supported for several years by the U.S. It is true that they were a bit strict — sort of like towns dominated by fundamentalist Christians in Bible-Belt America — but they did bring order to a people who had been brutalized by the Soviet military machine and thereafter by inter-tribal warfare.

3. Having “achieved” our objectives with respect to the USSR, the US reneged on promises of assistance and squandered away the ties and influence that had been built with the Taliban and the Afghan people in general, for economic rather than ideological reasons. There’s no oil in Afghanistan.

4. Al-Qaida was no more than a blip on the Taliban radar prior to our invasion of Afghanistan. The evidence indicates that the Taliban had little interest and no part in the agenda of Bin Ladin and his small group of jihadists bent on avenging the US presence in the Saudi Arabian holy land during the Gulf War.

5. Had we kept our eye on the al-Qaida ball circa WT Center I (1993) prior to our invasion of Afghanistan, there was very little preventing us from using intelligence and covert ops to systematically undermine them in concert with allies. A few intelligence agents did keep their eye o the ball, and several opportunities to dismantle him and his group out were missed. But both Clinton and Bush II were frying other fish ($$). Surprise, surprise when the 911 attacks actually stung us!

6. During our inglorious post-911 invasion of Afghanistan, which was in itself mostly political posturing designed to appease US public opinion that we “do something” to get the bad guys, we attempted to repeat our anti-Soviet proxy strategy, this time by recruiting the Taliban’s enemies, the “Northern Alliance”, to unseat the Taliban who were supposedly allied with al-Qaida. The narrative of al-Qaida = Taliban was a contrivance of the same sort used in the Iraq invasion that claimed Saddam = al-Qaida. Although these equations were dubious in the extreme, they did provide a justification for “shock and awe”, spending billions and putting American youngsters in harm’s way.

7. As was the case with Iraq, we transmuted the identity of our adversaries from a small group of dangerous radicals into a wider theater of military conflict involving not only the Taliban, but the whole of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and ideologically, Muslim populations throughout the region and the world. To this day, it remains very unclear as to why we are leveling cities made of mud, who we are supposed to be killing and why they need to be dead.

8. From the beginning, we have resorted to using proxies to fight our battles and then we discard the proxies and resort to massive military theater ops designed to use our throw weight to subjugate whole populations while minimizing loss of US lives at the cost of necessary ”collateral” damage. By trying to MAXIMIZE our ROI rather than by optimizing the complex interactions between peoples and cultures, we have failed utterly to understand the true nature of our enemy, and in doing so, we have created exponentially more enemies and made it impossible for us to devise effective methods for confronting the initial threats.

Simply put, our methods, designed to shock and awe the world into submission to our values, our interests, and our rage, have magnified our problems a thousand-fold and even if we come to the realization of our foolishness, we cannot simply change the channel. Nevertheless, pressing on with bigger guns and more massive military ops will only multiply our enemies, intensify their resistance, and dig our hole deeper.

Sadly, along with his predecessors, President Obama has fallen into the trap, laid in large part by the US military that cleaves to Clausewitzian doctrine that eschews intelligence; built upon relationships of shared interest, and espouses military might as the most effective means of extension of political will. Give people a really cool hammer and everything looks like a nail. But the nature of today’s enemies, who though small in number, have the means to turn our own inventions back against us and do us great harm, does not lend itself to this 19th Century doctrine of “a bigger hammer”.

My solution to our problem:

Step one to reversing our problem-amplification system is to withdraw from the situation that makes us “fact-on-the-ground” invaders. Only then can we begin to rebuild the relationships, resources and means needed to address substantive threats posed by enemies who have no clear national alignments or central authority.

We must address a decentralized threat with a decentralized solution.

NOTE: This entry has been updated to more accurately reflect the sequence of events involving our role in arming and supporting the loosely organized alliance of Mujahideen freedom fighters and subsequent rise of the Taliban as a religious-civil authority in the otherwise lawless expanses of Afghanistan. Tip of the hat to John Dowd.

In news that should not come as news, Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone magazine submits to readers his article, “Runaway General“, in which he profiles Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan — a movie star blood-and-guts warrior “…who prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else) — shows, in his leaked “candid moments”, nothing but contempt for his weak-kneed and waffling Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama.

War Dog

It doesn’t take much effort to surmise that the only weak-kneed and waffling coward in this tragic play is Gen. McChrystal himself, who is scrambling to spin his losing game plan by blaming the Obama administration.

From the very beginning, Obama was faced with an impossible never-ending, never end-able, “War on Terrorism” with a front-line drawn in the deserts and mountains of the mythically unconquerable Afghanistan. Then McChrystal blindsided Obama with his leaked report and speech asserting that, “If we didn’t send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of ‘mission failure’.”

“The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president’s ass.”

If the “mission” was to pacify the tribes of Afghanistan and make them our allies with our big stick military might and our carrot of dollars, we were doomed to failure from the outset. As anyone who has spent time in Afghanistan knows, outside of Kabul the tribal people of Afghanistan are not motivated by fear and greed, although they will take money when offered and hide from bombs when dropped, they are guided by honor, loyalty, and revenge.

“As Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. “The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.”

So the ambitious Gen. McChrystal, born and bred to be an attack dog, has been barking up the wrong tree since day one, and now, having realized this, he is barking up another tree with easier pray, attacking his nation’s leadership on the sly.

As I have written time and time again in this blog (e.g. Dancing in Afghanistan), we have been traveling a hopeless path toward self-destruction in Afghanistan. The generals are wrong and Obama is wrong to listen to them. We continue to dig the hole we have been digging still deeper, and we will be lucky if instead of being buried in it, we manage to crawl out and get on with more important matters than converting Muslims to our somewhat dubious way of looking at the world.

Obama should fire McChrystal with great fanfare and then work out a method for calling off the dogs of war against, against — who is we’re supposed to be fighting?. Muslims? Afghans? The Taliban? The Karzai government? Ourselves? I don’t think anyone knows for sure, and certainly not Gen. McChrystal.

Obama needs to find Osama bin Laden and kill him three times. He needs to stop killing Afghan and Pakistani innocents, even if they are just collateral damage. He needs to stop alienating every Muslim on the planet so that maybe they will be willing help us thwart the fanatic terrorists from all religions and walks of life who actually pose a threat. Getting down to basics, he needs to curb the oil barons who have addicted us to oil, embroiled us in wars of adventure in the Middle East and enraged those populations, poisoned our oceans and coastlines, polluted our water and skies, changed our climate and enshrined greed as the noblest of human callings.

My action plan for Obama:

This is actually an opportunity for Obama to dig himself out from the deadfall we are trapped in. With great fanfare, he should fire the  McChrystal, who deserves it in spades (Truman-esque). Next, he should order Gen. Preteaus, the warrior’s warrior, to the Afghan theater to hold the fort until a new plan can be devised. Then he should implement a plan to draw down conventional forces, start building a narrative that makes some sense of the debacle, and build up on-the-ground intelligence and covert ops in the region so that he can get after the guys that are actually plotting against the U. S.

Clive Crook, senior editor of The Atlantic, opened his commentary today with, “Obama’s address was surprisingly bad“, and closed with the following observation.

“He (Obama) looked nervous too, don’t you think? It was an unconfident performance. He moved his hands too much. He did not look strong. It was a bad night for his presidency, and he would have been wise to give no speech rather than this speech.”

Here’s what I saw in the man.

Obama on BP from the Oval Office

What struck me most powerfully while watching his speech was a sense that the 48 years-young Obama’s sense of cool self-confident composure is on the verge of a collapse under the weight of impotence. Our audaciously hopeful young leader is coming to the awareness that the presidency of the United States of America is NOT the most powerful position on earth. Neither he nor we-the-people, through his agency as our elected leader, are in control of the ship.

Since the years following World War II, when America was at the height of her global military power, political influence, and moral authority, our nation has been transformed by the success of her economic dominance, into a host nation for the world’s most powerful corporate oligarchies. As the wealth of the nation has been transmuted into the wealth of amoral corporations and their profit motivated shareholders, the power of the presidency and body politic, have become powerless handmaidens to Corporate interests.

In watching the most recent tit-for-tat between BP’s CEO and our president, it became clear to me that it is not that corporatist leadership is smarter, more competent or more right than Obama. It is that in their single-minded voraciousness, they are simply more powerful than Obama and the instruments of government at his command. BP’s Hayward doesn’t lie and cheat out of malice. He lies and cheats because that’s his job. BP exists to produce profit and nothing more than that enters into the calculus of his actions.

BP CEO Hayward

Obama’s audaciousness filled us with the hope that our nation might be steered back onto to a course shaped by our moral compass that embraces compassion for our fellows, environmental responsibility, parsimony, patriotism, and a vision for a better future, but each time he has attempted to wrest the helm from corporate oligarchies, he has been undermined, beaten down and rendered ineffectual by the machinations and maneuverings of oligarchical power.

• Underlying the un-winnable wars of adventure in Iraq and Afghanistan has been the corporate desire to achieve military and political hegemony in the Middle East. Among the most powerful of motives was the desire to make the region safe for exploitation by corporate America. While young Americans have been dying in combat and mercenary corporations have been profiting from government contracts, Obama’s high-minded plans for withdrawal from both theaters of action are already hopelessly mired in equivocation.

• Underlying the economic debacle that Obama inherited from the previous administration’s anti-regulatory polices — the only good government is a dead government — are the unbridled money changing schemes of large corporate interests seeking to leverage the vig and by producing nothing, increase profits at an ever-increasing rate. At every turn, Obama’s efforts to redistribute wealth, rebuild the middle-class and re-regulate corporate greed, have been gutted of substance. His accomplishments have consisted principally of paying a dollar for every nickel won.

• Underlying our rapidly collapsing healthcare system, are the corporate entities that harvest their wealth by acting as middlemen between the essential healthcare needs of the American people and the resources needed to meet those needs. In the face of corporate power, Obama’s healthcare accomplishments have been reduced to shuffling chairs on the Titanic while locking the middlemen even more tightly into the system by which their profits come before American lives.

• Underlying the current BP gusher that threatens our nation and the world’s environment, is corporate willingness, in pursuit of short term gains for shareholders, to turn a blind eye to devastating long-term risks that accrue to the public. Obama’s response reflects the fact that he, like the rest of us, is hostage to the big oil corporations who provide the gunk that turns the wheels of industry. He can no more unchain the American economy from big oil than plug the hole 5000 feet below the surface of the ocean.

In yesterday’s Oval Office speech, I saw a man who is much less hopeful now than before. Young Obama finds himself trapped and impotent against the forces of oligarchy that wield their wealth and power with the single-minded will of ruthless battlefield generals. What he has been unable to address with sufficient audaciousness is that a war is raging right here and right now. It is a war between the innate, mindless greed of powerful corporate oligarchies and the people’s moral authority to do what is necessary to make our nation and the world, a better place.

My sense is that, at this moment, we are adrift in the abyss.

I really hope that Jeff Corriveau, the creator of the comic strip Deflocked, will forgive me for reproducing his strip that ran today in my local paper (Santa Cruz Sentinel). It was just too good to pass up. Depending on your point of view, letting free markets work could have a downside.

Those of a liberal mind are appalled and morally offended by Israel’s militant intransigence in the face of hostile acts by its neighbors. For the most part, their solutions suggest that Israel must adopt a more peaceful and passive approach to accommodating the aspirations of its neighbors. Their recommendation is for the Israelis to seek a series of stepping-stone solutions by which to achieve a final solution. Give a little, get a lot.

Stepping-stones to where?

In Germany during the 1930’s and throughout Europe as a whole during the 1940’s, there were numerous stepping-stone “solutions” to what was called, the “Jewish problem”:

• Stop gathering
• No flags
• Relinquish national service
• Relinquish citizenship
• Stop shopping at non-Jewish businesses
• Stop teaching
• Relinquish professional activities
• Stop fraternizing with non-Jews
• Wear identification badges and carry “papers”
• Relinquish personal property
• Move residences to areas within prescribed borders
• Stop complaining, no protection of law, no right of habeas corpus, no self-defense
• Relocate to “work” camps

The world outside of Europe stood by and watched as the Jews, little by little, took all of the steps “recommended” as solutions, and when these were not enough, the world stood by while the Germans and complicitous others implemented their Final Solution. Six million Jewish men, women, and children, give or take, obediently marched into gas chambers disguised as showers.

Fifty-five years later, the Jews that survived the Holocaust have moved and set up shop in a tiny region of the Middle-East ceded to them by the world community as another “solution”. Today, five and one half million Jews live closely surrounded by half a billion people who have also declared their intention to implement their own version of a “Final Solution”. By various and sundry means, these people have been diligently and consistently trying to work their Final Solution since 1948.

The difference between the 30’s and 40’s and now is that the Jews have learned through the bitterest of experience that the little by little “solutions” offered by people are often just stepping-stones to someones Final Solution.

The harsh reality of life is that sometimes when you are outnumbered and surrounded, with your back to a wall, the only possible solution when confronted by those who openly profess a desire to destroy you, is a strong and even peremptory offense.

As recent history demonstrated with absolute clarity, the alternative is death, little by little. From this experience comes the resolve, “never again”.

In the State of California, the useful idea called “amnesty” has been murdered.

Today, May 17th, Don Thompson, Associated Press Writer, wrote:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Dozens of California parole violators showed up to claim a very attractive offer: $200 and amnesty. And dozens of parole violators found themselves in handcuffs and, for most, headed back to prison.

The idea of amnesty can be quite useful. It is defined as:

An official pardon undertaken by authorities to take no action against specified offenses or offenders during a fixed period

Amnesty is offered by representatives of the state, usually because they believe that some greater good can be served by temporarily suspending retribution for some unlawful actions. This perogative of the state represents a tool by which the state can address a situation in which the letter of the law does not serve the best interests of the community at large.

For example, in 2005 California officials offered amnesty to people who had violated state tax laws. By offering to overlook the penalties for such violations, they hoped that people would come forward and make restitution. The promise of recovering lost revenues was better than the desire to punish offenders. Not a bad idea.

Now California has used the idea of amnesty to lure unlawful actors (parole violators) to come forth voluntarily, the idea being that, given the current budgetary crisis, it would be better to get these violators back into the system, even if doing so would mean not punishing them for jumping parole. Again, not a bad idea. But this time, when the amnesty seekers came forth, they were told, “just kidding”, and placed in handcuffs.

It is unlikely that the really serious violators would take the amnesty bait. Murderers and rapists tend to be a bit suspicious of offers for a free ride. It would be the small time crooks and dope smokers who would come forward in hopes of getting back onto the straight and narrow path. And the $200 carrot? Definitely the small timers. But never mind! California officials were just kidding.

The next time you see the State of California offer amnesty for anything — tax amnesty, parking violation amnesty, or any amnesty—- I suggest you think twice before stepping forward. They are probably just kidding.

My good friend and colleague, John Dowd, called my attention to an April 7th speech by Richard L. Trumka,  President, AFL-CIO, at the Institute of Politics, Harvard Kennedy School. The speech was titled “Why Working People Are Angry and Why Politicians Should Listen”.  Trumka’s speech sums things up quite nicely and you should read it, but I can’t help but wonder if the messenger is too dead to be heard.

Trumka strikes many of the right notes. The sad thing is that, generally speaking, the American union movement has been so undermined, mainly by savvy corporate opponents, but also by internal corruption and internecine conflict, that it has lost its ability to galvanize public opinion. Even worse, the union messenger has been so thoroughly discredited, that his message is presumptively declared DOA.

Trumka casts his net in the right direction by appealing to the national intelligentsia to stop serving economic elites, but history is not on his side.

First, the intelligentsia are deeply beholding to elites and those who have strayed have been rewarded with reduced funding and even excommunication by the institutions that charter them.

Second, the intelligentsia have long been regarded with suspicion and loathing by the American electorate — a fact that has been well exploited by corporate elites.

As I continue to argue on my blog, the science of economics (science in name only) is nothing more than an elaborately contrived apologetic for the exploitation of labor and ever-increasing polarization of wealth.

During the Great Depression, when workers actually understood that they were “workers”, unions were able to construct a cause célèbre around that shared identify. During the post-war boom, those same unions became part of the system, and thus were co-opted into the the negotiating game — “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” — and thereafter systematically vilified as greedy obstructionists. It is highly unlikely that they will be able to rise from those ashes.

Today there is no center of gravity around which a new cause célèbre might take shape. “Workers” have become absorbed. Academia remains elitist. Politics remains the art of compromise with power. Disenfranchised youth live in confusion, fear and loathing.

Where might a new center of gravity be realized? I have no idea.

I finally got around to watching Michael Moore’s movie, “Capitalism: A Love Story“.

Moore builds his story around case studies that illustrate the abuses of power that occur when wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of groups who are absolved of responsibility to their community by the amoral dictates of increasing profits. His story is not so much a polemic about the theory of Capitalism as a call to conscience. How is it, he asks, that human beings can act in ways that do profound harm to others, and not be overwhelmed by paralyzing shame? Read more…

I was strolling the sidewalks of downtown Santa Cruz one evening this weekend. To all appearances, life along Pacific Avenue, our “main street”, was as pleasant as ever. Then I noticed something interesting. As is the case in many American towns, quite a few commercial buildings are unoccupied, but rather than leave dark gaping holes behind the plate-glass storefronts, owners or some other business savvy people, had placed attractive objects to mask the depressing emptiness. As I peered behind these little white lies, a sense of foreboding welled up in me. As I thought about it, it was not the unoccupied buildings that disturbed me. It was the lies that were being used to deceive me into complacency.

I was reminded of Dr. Washington Dodge’s account of the Titanic’s sinking just a few short days after the tragedy:

“We had retired to our stateroom, and the noise of the collision was not at all alarming. We had just fallen asleep. My wife awakened me and said that something had happened to the ship. We went on deck and everything seemed quiet and orderly. The orchestra was playing a lively tune.

(The crew explained that) “[A]s a matter of extra precaution the women and children should be placed in the lifeboats.”

“They started to lower the lifeboats after a lapse of some minutes. There was little excitement. As the lifeboats were being launched, many of the first-cabin passengers expressed their preference of staying on the ship. The passengers were constantly being assured that there was no danger…” Read more…