Isn't This Really Our Ultimate Choice?

As the world gets more an more twisted, it is starting to hurt all over. We always knew it would when we hit the boundary. Now in our culture wars, we have a big choice to make. And there will be no going back. The patriarchy is already going forward with their plan because they don't think sustainability can organize without compulsion. And they believe in their compulsory promises of 110% success rates. Yes, even after the list of failures making 110% impossible -- well at least for everyone.

So if your choice is in favor of faith in eco-balanced biotic environment, what choices must you make to ensure the likely success of that reality?

Similarly, if you think our best chance of survival is a self-consuming cybertransport sailing across the dimension of air as a ancestors did sea, looking for yet another promised land, let's see once and for all the detailed plan of how this is going to work and for how long. Let us judge for ourselves whether such a future is better than the historical divine or magical garden of earthly delights.

If enough of us believe in either option, let us evaluate and democratically debate the required social contract to ensure its success. Just giving one side all the money and means of production while the rest of the biotic world becomes disposable inputs is not credible in insuring success. You can't call an engineered solution to be divine inspiration or the invisible hand of a benevolent dictator. Similarly, the idea that we can let biology run lassez-faire unbalanced by empathetic compassion is humanistically devoid.

The world is not ending, a reality is ending. And we just don't know which one. My personal opinion is that we are juggling too many perceptions of reality that something has to give. This is a new day. This is the end of the culture wars. We will be on the same page.

This is a precipice - a tipping point - a commitment.

The feminine Mother Earth and God's creation versus the self-consuming engineered creation of what at best could be considered a life raft and at worst a pirate ship. I think given that choice, Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Lincoln, Gandhi, and a host of angels would make the same choice. The would also lament that after thousands of years of sacrifice by others, we couldn't keep from getting to this point. It is as if all of history was a struggle to avoid the big plastic inevitable, while living as comfortably as possible. I wonder what they did wrong. Why didn't they sell out? Why did they think they could trust us? We showed them, haven't we?

I know there is one thing most of them would agree on, that we need to avoid violence in making this choice. And most would probably also agree that the choice should be a democratic process, if not a striving for traditional unanimity.

And the patriarchs keep marching forward, because they are scared too.

Yu Na

If you have not heard of her before, think of Michael Jordan in his first NCAA tournament. (Except she won the MVP.)

BTW, Nike has heard of her.

London's Burning (April Fools)

So after the Battle in Seattle, the Tussle in Turin, and a decade of lies, the calm and quaint British capital is hosting the new international meeting of global leaders, or at least the important ones, on April Fools Day.

So what should be expected? This website is suggesting the visitors will be served more than tea and crumpets. they are planning a party at the Bank of England where they invite the public to feast on Bankers' Brains!



This is the schedule:

On April 1st, the G20 are coming to London to face up to economic crisis and political meltdown
Lost your home? Lost your job? Lost your savings or your pension? This party is for you!

At 12 noon, April 1st the Bank of England.

Capitalism has been heating up our world for years, melting the icecaps, burning up the rainforests, pushing the planet to tipping point. Now we're going to put the heat on them. At the London Summit , the G20 ministers are trying to get away with the biggest April Fools trick of all time. Their tax-dodging, bonus-guzzling, pension-pinching, unregulated free market world's in meltdown, and those fools think we're going to bail them out. They've gotta be joking!

We can't pay, we won't pay and we are taking to the streets
Many, many imaginative actions will be taking place across London on April 1st. One major focus will be four separate carnival parades culminating in direct action against the financial follies in the City of London among them carbon trading.

Full circle back to 1649? 'A very English revolution!'
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will lead themed processions starting at 11 a.m. from the following rail stations:

Moorgate
Red horse against War;
Liverpool St
Green horse against Climate chaos
London Bridge
Silver horse against Financial crimes
Cannon Street
Black horse against land enclosures and borders in honour of the 360th full circle anniversary of the Diggers
At 12 noon, April 1st, we're going to reclaim the City, thrusting into the very belly of the beast: the Bank of England.

Early a.m. April 2nd, we're going to bang on their hotel doors, @ the Excel Centre, Canning town to deliver our message of a world beyond capitalism.

I doubt bankers' brains taste all that good, but I think people are getting angry and many in the upper MBA classes do not know the pain except from an intellectual perspective. There's a hard rain going to fall and wash the trash off the sidewalk.

Big Big DOG

When I have a dog, I want it to go "woof woof" and mean it.

And then I went fishing...

Zombie MBAs (Part 2)

The Financial Times has a good column on MBA grads, discussing the role and quality of leadership training the schools espouse. It is a good read.

There was a time when management was just management, the science of providing organisational support for innovators and salespeople to win customers and revenue.

Managers tracked resources, physical, financial and human, and tried to improve efficiency. Occasionally they made an acquisition or pushed into new markets, and this was strategy.

But somewhere along the line management morphed into the sexier-sounding "leadership". Managers were globe-trotting executives - catalysts for change. They had a business press eager to turn them into icons, to photograph them in their penthouses, preening over their empires as if they, rather than their shareholders, owned them.

Business schools were eagerly complicit in this super-sizing of management. They no longer educated mere MBAs. They were churning out "future leaders".

If Waterloo was won, as the Duke of Wellington claimed, "on the playing fields of Eton", then the triumphs and disasters of our recent global economic history had their roots in the classrooms and cafeterias of Harvard , Wharton , Stanford, Insead and other leading schools.

It is not a legacy any of these schools may wish to boast of at the moment. In fact, it may be time for all of them to cool it with leadership and return to more modest goals and language. To recognise the truth that it makes no more sense for a business school to claim it teaches leadership than for a school of Byzantine studies to make the same claim.

What business schools can teach is organisational behaviour. They can teach compensation systems and recruitment processes. They can offer classes on cash and non-cash incentives, on training, promotion and the value of a corporate culture. They can offer frameworks for negotiations, strategy decisions and implementing change. But when they bundle this up and call it leadership, they risk leaving their students with the faulty impression that they are now qualified, if not obliged, to go into the world and lead. It breeds the arrogance for which MBAs are mocked.

Not all MBAs can be leaders, nor need they be. Every business needs followers: people who are good at what they do, who are able to implement the plans laid out by leaders.

Great leaders tend to be those who can synthesise, simplify and persuade. They provide clarity so that those below them can do their best to achieve a common goal. But leadership should not be the brass ring at the climax of every business career. It is a function, like finance or marketing, at which certain people excel and others do not, and should be treated as such.

Every MBA course must be re-evaluating what it does these days. The rise of the MBA almost exactly mirrors the rise of the economic system that is now in the hospital emergency room.

Leading business schools have tried to distance themselves from the fiasco, offering prescriptions to cure the illness without ascribing blame for its cause. Anyway, it's just a few bad apples, they say. Nonsense. Business schools cannot trumpet their role in educating business leaders, then go quiet when their alumni are caught captaining the Titanic and manoeuvring the iceberg. Their alumni were derivative traders and regulators, collateralised debt obligation salesmen and corporate raiders. They were in this up to their necks, partly because there was no one higher up the ladder to stop them. They were leaders, so they led.

The recent officer class of global capitalism has been the MBA class. But it was a case of lions led by donkeys, at least in the financial industry. Honest individuals and businesses came to rely on a system that betrayed them.

Business does not need any more leadership courses - particularly not at the MBA level. It needs people who are competent, entrepreneurial and ethical,tough enough to make a buck yet modest enough to accept that free markets and businesses are simply components of healthy societies - not all that matters.

The Fall of a God

Those damn communists are at it again. This time they are attacking free market economics where we are strongest and most vulnerable. They are going after the symbol of America that is bigger than apple pie, old glory, or the New York Yankees. These guys are gunning for George W. (Washington that is.)

China thinks just because we as a nation have sold ourselves into indentured bondage by issuing trillions in bonds and bad subprime bank assets, that we will actual repay them. (Please, no sniggering - show some respect to the new overlords.) But one of their first items of business is to replace the dollar with a global basket of currencies.

Now I know what you are thinking: how quaint of a socialist notion that a plurality of nations should take precedence over the demands of one. Yes, we Americans have a proven track record of truth and justice, fighting the good fight making the world safe for freedom and democracy. And we have done such a good job creating peace, love, and harmony in this world, that we have nearly bankrupted ourselves. And now, when we are down and wounded, China decides that they can't trust us anymore.

US! Can you believe it? I mean besides police actions in Iraq, Grenada, Panama, Pakistan, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, and Vietnam, we have been a country of model behavior. Well, unless you count our economic policies that have failed to achieve their stated objectives in Haiti, the Palestinian territories, Georgia, Guatemala, Africa, and Wall Street. But overall, we have a pretty good track record of being that shining light, that beacon on the hill.

So what's up China? You are is a nation that we propped up on the back of WalMart and our empty downtowns, and now you are turning on us? We were friends. Remember Nixon? Can't you show a little Christian compassion?

How dare the Chinese take on the U.S. Dollar? Next thing you know, they will be making a movie, comparing the destruction of the Dollar to the time Elijah's God destroyed Ba'al in the first recorded Divine Smackdown. The fall of a post-modern God. Bastards!

Once again, the Marxist (pre)dictum that the capitalist will sell the communists the rope is too close to our collective necks for comfort.



By the way, don't fret over the image of the dollar shrinking. I was talking to an economist recently and he said inflation isn't a bad thing if it is expected. That is a big relief.

There is a God(dess)

Just cancel the Olympics. I don't know how you can get better than this.

Zombies R US(ofA)

As Stephen Colbert used to ask:

George W. Bush - Great President or Greatest President?

On the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Obama tried to inform America why AIG was so pivotal in the Rape of Lady Liberty. He said AIG was just a normal insurance company until, in the search for more and more profits, grafted an investment bank on its back. And that investment bank operation got over involved in derivatives and other risky assets, primarily associated with the subprime mortgage market.

Yesterday I watched a video clip of Barney Frank, where he suggested that we file a shareholder lawsuit against AIG for fraud, as we as a country are the biggest shareholder in AIG.

Then it hit me: we as a country and economy are just like those Zombie Banks that are technically, non-technically, hypothetically, and every other -ally so beyond life support that they are undead. Not even Mary Shelley or all the King's men can bring them back to love and life.

At first I thought such a lawshit against AIG would serve some cathartic need, it is pointless. There is nothing to sue for. Our investments in these banks and financial institutions, call it a bailout or whatever, is dead. There may be marginal money there for operations, but a lawsuit by the United States would be frivolous because there are no assets in priority. What I mean is this: AIG, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, etc etc etc became involved in fraudulent activity years ago. And although Obama said what they did wasn't against the law, he did suggest that these financial institutions did not act in their shareholders' best interest. And they lost trillions.

If you know anything about shareholder lawsuits, a plaintiff attorney only has to find one person (and preferably a few) to file a lawsuit against a corporation along with a request seeking class certification. A class action lawsuit against AIG, BofA, Citibank, Wells Fargo, or General Electric's finance arm would bring any of these companies down. And hard. Now I can think of at least a hundred million people who could serve as lead plaintiff. And I am sure there is a Weil Gottshal, or a Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, or a Bernstein Liebhard & Lifshitz willing to take such a case.

And what is the chance that such a lawsuit would be successful? Would it be that hard to show fraud? The only thing the companies have going for them is that such a massive discovery process would likely bankrupt a plaintiff firm, even one well capitalized. And any such suit would take priority over a suit by the Attorney General's office. So, all the 'good' money we have poured into these bad financial service firms will become attachable assets in such litigation. I mean if Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner couldn't remember to put strings on the money, do you think they protected the money against shareholder lawsuits? (And if they did, what did they know and when did they know it?)

So it appears that we may be at risk of having to bail these companies out again again again. Is this why Obama and the Fed are setting up a shadow banking system? Whether it is a class action lawsuit or a smoking gun or a butterfly flapping its wings in China, we are at big risk.

The only way out is to collectively agree that the zombies are not only bad, but that they can't be rehabilitated without the baptism of bankruptcy for the remission of sins (and obligations). And a truth commission. It is well known that if you are attacked by a zombie, you will become one. And as we are under attack, we must be very careful.

And there is something else too: we need to be able to say what it is that we want and then build it. We are so afraid to sit down and imagine what type of community, nation, or world we want to inhabit. Very few people have been having that discussion, although that seems to be changing. As Terrence McKenna says: "if you can't describe a reality, you can't inhabit it."





As we are on the topic of zombies, what are corporations anyway? Fictitious individuals granted to possiblity of immortality? WTF.

Definition In Exquisite Detail

Entomologist Justin O. Schmidt drew up an index to categorize the discomfort caused by stinging insects. The attack of the bald-faced hornet is "rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door." A paper wasp delivers pain that's "caustic and burning," with a "distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut." The sweat bee, on the other hand, can hurt you in a way that's "light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm." In bringing this to your attention, Gemini, I hope to inspire the rebel in you. Your homework is to create an equally nuanced and precise index of experiences that feel good. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you will be able to call on tremendous reserves of intelligence as you identify the numerous modes of pleasure that are available to you, and define them in exquisite detail.

I have always enjoyed Rob Brezsny's horoscopes. I like the free will part - nothing good can happen without some degree of freedom. Otherwise any pronouncement about the future would be a curse: the rhythm of life would be the great inevitable. In such a reality, the bad guys win. I refuse to accept their depression. We do have a choice. This you know in the part of you that can't be denied.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Water

You would think that after AIG got their latest trillion, the banksters would be getting fat, dumb, and happy. Well, it seems that the commercial real estate market is going to test their resolve. According to that ultra left-wing investment company Apollo Management, the other shoe is about to hit. (given the number of shoes that have been dropping, the beast must be a millipede.)

The Financial Times, you know that pinko newspaper is reporting Apollo's concern that the commercial crap has not even hit the radar:

Leon Black, founder of the firm, said the extra costs of cleaning up the US banking industry could total as much as $2,000bn, putting further strain on the economy. He said the woes of the commercial property had not yet been reflected fully on bank balance sheets.

“You have the black hole of commercial real estate and that hasn’t happened yet,” said Mr Black in a wide-ranging interview on FT.com.

“There you are sitting with $4 trillion of debt and you know not all of it’s bad but a lot of it is diminished and that really hasn’t yet been addressed.”

He warned it would be 12 to 18 months before there are lasting signs of US economic recovery.

If you are interested in this topic, go here to watch his interview.

What is the Past Tense of Twitter?

Flat is the New Up

I was chillin' on the digital leash last night with my Hyde Park GSB homie Bondmaster BK, and he dropped a rap floating around his gim homebase: Flat is the New Up.

He and his korporate krew have made big-bad giving sweet taste of 30 forty 50 cent per. You do that and the burbpunks come begging for more. Please baby baby please.

Now burbsters are hooked, nutting on a derivative jones. Need it, want it, gotta have it. Subpunkhookedsters ain't got rhyme or rhythm, just reason. Can't tell if the George W was a bum, a bridge, or a buck. History slam. Can't tell if it is up. Can't tell if it is down. BYOI. Bring your own "it".

Flatlined. Zombie Power. The End of History is nigh'.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Michael Steele's Rap Battle Response
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

Bladerunner

Only God Can Move Mountains

Reading tea leaves in Appalachia has never been one of my hobbies, but they are there to be read. I think the second coming is at hand if the religious right start making sense. LEAF is a fundamentalist Christian Fellowship in Tennessee that has begun an environmental campaign to stop mountain-top removal "in order to preserve God's creation."

If Cows Could Fly...

Outlawing Childhood

I sometimes joke that if I sent my 8 year-old daughter three blocks to the neighborhood grocery store by herself if I would probably get arrested. Yes she would have to cross a major street, but there are traffic signals and crosswalks, but I never ever see kids out walking free. I just chalked it up to living in Los Angeles. (BTW, my neighbor says he nearly has a heart attack each time he sees my daughter playing in our front yard because of all the crazies. But then again, having a heart attacks is his hobby.)

But last night, I was listening to As It Happens from the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (to listen, the story is in part one of the link at 14:50 to 27:50). They told the story of Lori Lavarre-Pierce from a small town in Mississippi. Lori was supposed to take her 10 year-old son to soccer practice last week. He asked his mom if he could walk. He had walked the same route the night before with his dad and sister, a route that he had taken many times. He knew the route. Mom said okay and gave him her cell phone. The kid left, and since she had to go to practice to meet a parent, she showed up 15 minutes after practice began. What she didn't know, was that in that period of time that he son walked to practice and she arrived, all hell broke loose.

It seems that people FREAKED OUT!!! A number of people reportedly called 911, and the police went to her home, and then to the soccer field. the first thing the police officer told her was "Do you know that you could have been charged with child endangerment? Your child is too young to walk alone." The kid only made it a few blocks from home before he was intercepted by the police. The police then drove the kid to soccer practice and then went looking for MOM.

Now being a DAD, I can appreciate divine justice, but this can ruin the kid too. The Canadian program did not play gotcha journalism. They followed up with an interview of Dr William Byrd who studies how children lose more and more freedom in each subsequent generation. More importantly, the study shows how such loss of autonomy, specifically the freedom to roam, screws up the kids brain and social development. Basically, kids who do not roam free by age 12 have more difficulty dealing with stress -- and they have much more difficulty connecting with their environment.

And we think AIG was a catastrophe....

Would You Trust This Man With Your _________?

If AIG only lost $100 billion, then why did they get much more than that in a bailout? WTF?

Temple of Wall Street: WWJD?

Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:
Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?
And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Matthew 18:32-35

You go Jesus! Throw those muthers out of the Temple of Wall Street

Sunday in East Pakistan with George

THE BIGGEST LOVE

Barb attends the Veil Ceremony inside the temple and is lead into the Celestial Room where Nancy and Cindy wait for her. Realizing this may be the only glimpse she sees of what it will be like to be with her family in the afterlife, Barb breaks down, explaining she's facing a disciplinary hearing the next day.

I am coming out the the closet as a mormon. I was born one and will always be one. Can't do a damned thing about it, and boy have I tried. I have generations of mormon dna exploding in my jeans. Even if I am not tethered to the mothership via a lifeline, mormonism is a reality for me.

I really enjoyed watching the portions of the endowment ceremony on the show last night. I was in awe of the raw primeval purity of the snippet of the endowment ceremony that was actually shown. Last night I saw the entire ceremony in a totally different light. It was a beautiful thing. But to the eyes of someone on the outside, they go: “WOW!, this ain’t any category of religion I have ever seen before” (except for some jews and masons).

Lets ponder this: if Mormons are as unique and different as what was shown in camera, what do you really know about Mormons? How many other cultures are out there that you do not show the least curiosity about? And why do you think so many people are afraid of Mormons? Are you afraid? If so, why? If you saw this episode, you saw as deep as anyone can see without living the life. You observed ground zero of a faith, in living color.

If you are mormon, how do you feel about this being shown? Why are you afraid of having people see it? Jesus said "judge not, lest ye be judged". Are you being judged? Did you judge first or second? If it was a judgement, was it an eye for an eye or the other cheek?

If one can know the truth and the truth can set one free, does this mean all truth? That rabbit hole is calling all Alices. Mormon, Hindu, Jew, Muslim and Iroquois. Some people believe the yogis and zen masters helped dig the rabbit hole. Jesus liked rabbits too.