Paradigms of our time

Two recent documentaries. This one from the BBC talks a bit about the financial crisis with its root causes and consequences. Very entertaining even though it's not quite a fun issue.

To download the movie on torrent click here.

This one is a really must-see, a closer look at what the multinational Monsanto has been up to lately. No weird conspiracy theory here, just maybe the most successful story of any corporation in the planet. It has all the ingredients of our post-free market era (anybody dare to say that it's a free market?): the patent and propriety control of technologies, the ruin of the weakest, the concentration of power and the environmental holocaust... just think about it when you eat your next meal.

This is just a fragment, to download the whole movie on torrent click here.

Three strips from 'El Roto'

I asked for a loan to build an anti-capitalist website. And I got it!

If growth continues we will devour the planet and if it halts to stop we will devour each other.

They build our identity over the oblivion of what we are.

taken from El Pais (www.elpais.com)

Another kind of Vertigo

So Fast

The drummer was so fast that you couldn't see
his hands move the sticks
so fast that you couldn't see
the sticks hit the drums
you couldn't hear
the music
just a continuous hum of skin and wood

The guitar player was so fast that you couldn't see
his arm move his hand
so fast that you couldn't see
his hand touch the strings
you couldn't hear
the music
just a continuous hum of skin and nylon

The singer was so fast that you couldn't see
his mouth move
so fast that you couldn't see
his lips
you couldn't hear
the music
just a continuous hum of wind and flesh

They were the fastest band
and they played faster every time
and their songs were shorter
and their sets ended sooner
every time
until they reached perfection
the fastest speed
an instant of music which was eternal:
the smallest fragment of time
holding all the notes

So fast in fact
that our eyes fail to see
and our ears fail to hear
but don't be fooled,
they play all the time

Check out this website!

This is taken from http://theuniverseas.com/
Great stuff, this is from their series "The Truth about Economics":

Federal Reserve Inflation
The Federal Reserve (FED) is the unconstitutional, quasi-governmental private organization that is responsible for managing the supply of money and credit in the United States. The FED is theoretically supposed to keep prices and the economy steady by setting interest rates, and by buying and selling bonds. Consequently, if there is inflation, the Federal Reserve isn’t doing its job. Because, after all, if there is inflation, the FED is actually causing it, since they manage money supply.
Why doesn’t the FED do its job?
The simple answer is that, inflation is a hidden tax. Instead of directly raising taxes to spend copious amounts of money on things like, big government, pointless wars, corporate bailouts, and government goodies, the government instead goes into debt. And by going into debt, that increases the money supply. in the Federal Reserve System, money is made from debt. And since money is no longer backed by a hard asset like gold, there is no limit to money supply growth. The more debt, the more money. As debt increases, more money is needed to pay off that debt, and so interest rates are lowered and the money supply is increased by making more debt. It is an explosive feedback loop. In a real, free-market economy, excesses (malinvestments) would be wiped out automatically. But in a managed economy, excesses are able to be maintained by making more excesses, which leads to a perpetual growth, perpetual debt economy. The growth feeds the debt and the debt feeds the growth.
The Real Environmental Problem
Since the current economy is dependent on perpetual debt and perpetual growth, it must perpetually consume resources to stay alive. In other words, it is unsustainable. Environmentalism is a losing battle until there are fundamental changes into the nature of the economy. Debt begets debt. Growth begets growth. Thus, the economy is like an ouroboros: a serpent consuming its own tail.

Alan Watts and the creators of SouthPark? Why not?

"It hurts me too" by Karen Dalton

It is surprising to be surprised by surprisingly good and surprisingly old stuff like this.
What a voice! If you get the chance listen to the album "It's so hard to know who's going to love you the best" (1969) melts my heart into hot lava...

Another day another rapture

There is something about this film of Norman Mclaren that transports me somewhere else. Yes, another rapture...

This is only the first part, go to Youtube and look for "Pas de Deux" for the second part, and better in full screen! I would just put another dozen of Mclaren's films, but you can check them out yourself. Enjoy!

I should be in bed

I should should be in bed but i read that the world will grow less this year, that the FMI said the world is not growing as it should be, that it is slowing down, and this, as usual, gets me thinking about what this growth is about. Growth has a good press, the bigger the percentage the better, we are very impressed with china, c'mon, 13% of growth, for the last 5 or 6 years. Shiiiit, you know, with a 13% you only need 5 years to double, so basically china has doubled its economy in the last 5 years. Dangers of exponential growth. Now that is vertigo, that is the REAL vertigo. I don't even want to go into it now. But back to where I was: growth, strange equations:

WE grow, their forests SHRINK,
we GROW their OIL depletes
and its not so simple anymore
THEY GROW they start to live like we do (who can blame them for wanting what we want!)
more cows and pigs die and with them rainforests are transformed to pastures for them
not to give them a good life no, to give US a good life
the quicker the better, the better the bigger, the bigger the faster
like a JUNKIE who gives himself a QUICK FIX

after the pastures are eaten away and the weather follows the physics, we will be left with no forest and no pasture and no rain.... the wise and wonderful science, the marvelous and unbelievable technique all to the service of mankind... the more we progress the less time we have, the less is available, the fewer species left.

deadly equations silently agreed and signed by delusionated minds again and again. and the faster and faster gets us closer and closer inversely like the turtle and aquiles only I wish this was never a race... grow in a finite world and you will hit its limits, grow in a finite world and you will OUTgrow its limits making its limits SHRINK,
outgrow its shrinking limits, yeah cowboy....

faster and faster.
Now I should really be in bed.

Kaoru Abe

Kaoru Abe was a Japanese saxophonist active in the 70's. He died in 77' at the age of 29 by a stomach rupture, due to his heavy usage of booze and pills and, that's my guess, to the intensity of his playing. Legend says that at his last concerts you could see blood fly out of the sax, and its kind of true that this man put as much as maybe anyone has put into his playing. During his career he played mostly solo, because of his wild behavior and playing, but he did play with some groups successfully, one of them with Masayuki Takayanagi an extreme guitarrist... together they did the 'mass projections', which consisted in everybody playing as hard and loud as they possibly could actually ignoring the rest of the band, the result is a jawdropping wall of noise, a battle to death between a guitar and a sax... i'll post it as soon as i get my hard drive fixed, but for the moment here goes a beautiful shot of him playing on the river side. He used to practice as well in busy highways, playing to the roar of the big trucks, playing above the horns and the motors. He is possibly the most free of all 'free' players.

Here goes as well a couple of quotes of him:

“Sound that stops the capacity for judgment. Sound that never decays. Sound that breaks free from every possible image. Sound that comes from both death and birth. Sound that dies. The sound around me. Sound like the symptoms of eternal cold turkey. Sound that resists private ownership. Sound that goes insane. Sound that spills over from the cosmos. The sound of sound.”

“I want to become faster than anyone. Faster than cold, than man alone, than the Earth, than Andromeda. Where, where is the crime?”

The Lunatics are in the Central Banks

Al-Jazeera kicks ass, and Max Kaiser in Al-Jazeera kicks banker's ass!
What seemed to be a financial storm starting last year, when the subrprime mess in the US started unwinding, then continuing with the run on the bank of Northern Rock and now has its last chapter with the bailout of Bear Stern by the Federal Reserve (of wich JP Morgan is one of the owners) one has to ask what the hell are they doing? It is indeed taking out a fire throwing in more fire, if one of the principal causes of the credit crisis is low interest rates, lowering them now is only creating an even bigger bubble in the future, its like you have partied hard for two nights, and insted of collapsing in your bed, you want to party more and take another hit of acid, mdma, coke or whatever you like to keep it going, but you know that the comedown is going to be much worse. So it looks like it is just a matter of time until the debt swallows the economy, and I don't have the faintest idea of what that is going to look like.

And now that we are at it, this is possibly the most educative video of all time, very well explained for such a complex issue, I recommend, if it goes too fast, to pause it once in a while to take on all what's being said, the animation is crappy beyond belief, but it is very effective in transmitting the ideas exposed, for a full screen go here.

If you like it, next you can watch the money masters which is much more like a history lesson on how fiat currencies came to be and how the bankers came to have so much power. Great stuff, you will never see a pound note the same way.

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."
Josiah Stamp (1880-1941 director of the bank of England in 1928 and second richest man of England at the time)

Yosuke Yamashita Trio 1972

from "ecstacy of the angels" by koji wakamatsu, 1972

Carmen Amaya

At the end she said: "If I ever have to stop dancing I will die."
More clips.
A bit of her Bio.

Alvien Lucier "I am sitting in a Room"

One of the most elegant pieces of conceptual sound art you can find. All self contained, all self-explanatory, all sound. Feedback: Somehow everything relates to this concept, from being trapped in it to the liberation from it. Get out of the room Alvin!

I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.

Its Raining in the Bible

I was going to put a video of some strayed dog dying of hunger in an art gallery of Managua (it was actually one of the pieces, and it died a day after the inauguration) but then I found this youtube clip of a marine in Iraq throwing a puppy as if it was a hand grenade, and still then I found these footage taken by members of PETA in China of dogs and cats being collected, treated worse than US cattle, and then killed for their fur, but finally I decided to save you from seeing all of this and instead put a piece of the Bible here (Ecclesiastes I) that has nothing to do with it all, so recite with me:

The words of the Teacher, [a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?

Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.

All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

Manufactured Landscapes

Watch it if you get the chance!! Another peek into our global (ir)reality. It focuses mainly in China, which is were most of the materials go to be assembled into cheap Chinese goods, which traditionally were plastic stuff like trainers, toys and cheap bracelets, but now they build it all, from computers to microphones. It has effectively transformed into the factory of the planet, and into its junkyard too. I wonder what kind of life these Chinese workers had before being slaved into this factories... was it so bad? In some ways I'm glad this is all going to be over, but unfortunately we are going to leave such a mess behind and nobody to clean it except eons of time.

From "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

This is the ending of the book, that way you don't have to read the whole thing. Basically Bartleby is this character that works in a firm in Wall Street as a Scrivener. And although being effective at the beginning, he eventually starts to turn down work just saying 'I'd rather not' . He just stays in the office looking out the window which looks out to a brick wall. Classic of classics. I would strongly recommend too Vila-Mata's book, "Bartleby and Co." Which talks about writers who decided not to write.

Strangely huddled at the base of the wall, his knees drawn up, and lying
on his side, his head touching the cold stones, I saw the wasted
Bartleby. But nothing stirred. I paused; then went close up to him;
stooped over, and saw that his dim eyes were open; otherwise he seemed
profoundly sleeping. Something prompted me to touch him. I felt his
hand, when a tingling shiver ran up my arm and down my spine to my feet.

The round face of the grub-man peered upon me now. "His dinner is
ready. Won't he dine to-day, either? Or does he live without dining?"

"Lives without dining," said I, and closed his eyes.

"Eh!--He's asleep, aint he?"

"With kings and counselors," murmured I.

Seeds, Genetic Engineering, and Our Future

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/03/20080306_a_main.asp

This is one of the most interesting radio shows i've heard lately, if you got some time give it a go. The underlying issue here is how to feed humanity; if industrialized agriculture, including or not GM seeds, is really necessary for this task. Because there seems to be a payoff with industrial agriculture or agribusiness, which is mainly an environmental one. Large scale agriculture requires high inputs of chemicals for it to work which means pollution, and the massive mono crop fields mean loss of biodiversity (animal and plant) on the other hand it seems that organic agriculture does not offer enough yield -production- to feed everybody... but all this is debatable. It all ties up with the theme of sustainability: since the discovery and use of oil at the end of the 19th century we started a path into unsustainability which goes in several directions, first is the issue of depletion: with increasing popultation and increasing consumption we not only deplete the hydrocarbons that are our energy base, but as well all of the other resources: minerals, forests, water, you name it, and all this generates pollution, which degrades the base where we get the resources from.... but I'm extending from the issue here, if anybody is interested in this issues I really recommend "Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update by Donella H. Meadows , Jorgen Randers, Dennis L. Meadows" The original book was released about 34 years ago, and it used system dynamics to put different models of what would happen resource-wise in the future if trends continued.
http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/confs/meadows_abstract_21_08_04.pdf
This makes a better synopsis... This book has had a great impact on me, maybe you will think that it is full of pessimism, and it is to some degree, but the Authors offer solutions and rays of hope at the end.

That is no ship. That is no forest. This is no Arrow.

Another Trillion

This time is the credit card debt that Americans have managed to raise. How? In part because now they don't even have enough for rent or food it seems, and because of this individualist consumer society. (please read: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR24.3/schor.html) And who is going to pay it if they can't? Any answers?

The dollar keeps falling, markets tumble and oil production might be in decline, but I don't want to talk about that, but about two other nice things for the pleasure of listening and learning, and although they might seem very different, they are related. As of lately I've been listening again to Elaine Radigue, she is a French composer and musician, quite an unusual one as she has basically only played (and plays) one instrument, the synthesizer ARP2600, it has no keyboard, just buttons, dials, cables and faders. Her compositions are long pieces sometimes over an hour long and consist of very subtle electronic frequencies or drones developing at a very slow but constant speed. It is one of the most engaging, profound and delicate music I've ever heard, and I have to admit that I almost only use it when I go to sleep... makes a fascinating introduction into the dream realm. Well, her most celebrated work is called "trilogie de la morte" and it is based on the Tibetan book of the dead and her experience of the death of her only child and her Tibetan master. Here is a link where you can download it, although I am aware that it has some sound problems (I didn't upload it, maybe will do it soon)and you can hear a small excerpt, bad quality but you get the idea.

And I want to recommend as well the listening of this audio-podcast-book, 'Geoff and Me'. You can find it here http://abuddhistpodcast.com/past-shows/ but to get all the episodes you would have to load it into Itunes, to make your life easier I will load the first chapter here. I find the music terribly cheesy too, it almost put me off listening to it, but the actor that makes the voices is really good, and yes, its about buddhism, but its explained in a very easy, practical and entertaining way.

and one last thing! here is the gamelan workshop I go to practicing the song for our performance in April. I don't play any instrument, but I do on some parts the monkey chanting (out of camera...), better called 'ketjak' with a few others. It's still sounds like a mess, but its improving.

Let Us Climb Shit Mountain

Let the image sink in
if there is any space
for it to sink in
because maybe your mind
is already so full of s£!t
that there is no way you can swallow more.
Like the earth:
saturated
with crap

You did this
I did this
we all did this
and everyday
we do it
faster and harder
until one day it really sinks in
because it will weight more than you
or than me
more than the earth itself
and it will make the loudest and
most disgusting fucking sound
ever heard.

And the last one too.

85 Trucks of food, 35 tons each, full of money.

Dear Family and Friends,
Headline news on the propaganda mill one day this week was that three trillion Zimbabwe dollars had been raised for President Mugabe's 84th birthday party. I thought about what you could do with that much money but before I could work it out I had to check in a dictionary just exactly how much a trillion was.

My sources say that a billion is a thousand million and a trillion is a million million. This means that for the President's birthday celebration being held in Beitbridge, there is a pile of money which on paper is a 3 followed by 12 zeroes. Even in Zimbabwe's collapsed state, 3 trillion dollars is a huge amount of money. It didn't take long before my kitchen table was littered with bits of scrap paper covered with handwritten sums. Why didn't I just use a calculator you might ask? That's simple, there are too many digits and so this sum had to be done by hand.

The calculations took some time to perform and the results were shocking. For three trillion dollars I could buy three million kilograms of maize meal at the present Grain Marketing Board price of a million dollars a kg. This, of course, is assuming that the GMB had any maize meal for sale, which they say they haven't. Allowing half a kg of maize meal per person, 6 million Zimbabweans, half the population of the country, could have had one decent meal with the President's birthday party money. A friend who is far more mathematically minded than me, and had more patience with all those lines of zeroes, worked the figures out a different way. 85 trucks, each holding 35 tonnes of maize, could have been filled with the three trillion dollars of birthday party money.

Moving away from the dollars, I went in search of ingredients usually found at a birthday party. Three major supermarket chains which have outlets all over the country were visited. The cake came first on my list but there was no flour, sugar, margarine, baking powder, milk or eggs in any of the supermarkets.
Puddings and sweet treats were next on my list but there was no jelly, instant pudding, custard, biscuits or tarts to buy. Sandwiches, I thought, they are good for parties but there was no bread or rolls, no spread, cheese, cold meats or sandwich fillings to buy. What about a hot meal I thought but there was no maize meal, rice, pasta or potatoes and so that idea was also a non starter.

The shopping list and the search for ingredients was a pointless exercise but at least it was easier than trying to understand the latest official inflation figures. In January 2008 inflation was one hundred thousand, five hundred and eighty percent - it is the stuff of hellish nightmares and the reason why we parents can't sleep at night.

Trying to understand three trillion dollars was utterly absurd for an ordinary mum in a collapsed country. Hardest of all though was knowing that half the population of the country could have gone to bed tonight on a full stomach if the birthday party had been sacrificed for the suffering, hungry people of a country whose 84 year old ruler has been in power for almost 28 years.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

From Cathy Buckle @: http://www.cathybuckle.com/thisweek.shtml

More about food

I relink the guardian news about food production here, because I think it is very important and its well written and researched. It's a scary piece of news I admit, but I would like to add a few things that are not mentioned in the article. One, maybe a minor one, is the fact that fish stocks around the world are being depleted, that means that fish are being taken out of the water at a faster rate than they can procreate, and this has being going on for quite a few years, a consequence of this is that fish stocks close to developed countries have pretty much maxed out, and in turn our ships go far away, even to underdeveloped countries coast's to 'harvest' their fish, as a result villages and cities that depended a great deal on their fishing have to look elsewhere for food, and that probably means grain imports. (haven't really researched this one, its pure speculation)

Another issue they don't mention is water, as you know, water is an absolute necessity in order to grow food, and intensive agriculture requires intensive irrigation which requires water that many times is sourced by withdrawing water from aquifers faster than they naturally recharge. Result: water tables are falling pretty much everywhere: Citing Lester Brown: "Over-pumping is occurring in an alarming number of countries throughout the world. In parts of the North China Plain, water levels are dropping by ten feet per year, which is particularly disturbing since this region produces half of China's wheat and one-third of its corn. India is over-pumping in every state except in the northeast. There is extensive over-pumping in the southern Great Plains of the U.S. In fact, over half of the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling." And what is one of the effects of global warming? Yes, droughts in dry places and floods in wet places (quite generally).

And now add to this that energy is more expensive: They do mention as a factor that high oil prices will have an effect on the aid budget, that is obvious. Another fact is that high oil prices (and overall high energy prices) makes irrigation and all the harvesting process even more expensive, possibly pricing out farmers in poorer countries with no access to subsidies, which maybe will turn to subsistence agriculture instead of feeding the locals... that will just increase demand for grains making them more expensive until people will not be able to afford it. Another thing the article fails to mention is that the turn to bio-fuels is actually caused by high oil prices, maybe somebody will think that it is due to global action against global warming and maybe up to some extent it is (although some research has come to the conclusion that growing bio-fuels is actually worse due to the CO2 emitted by deforestation and other factors) , but the main cause is the dependence on the every-day-more-expensive oil imports. And why is that? well fellas, that is one of the first consequences of peak oil. More about this another day.

Well that' enough for now, I know I leave so many things out but I have to get some work done... Please does somebody has anything optimistic to say?

Now for some real Vertigo

Here is an excellent article that makes the obvious connexion between the subprime crisis and the rise in the price of oil with all its consequences, between them the transfer of wealth to the middle east and the fall of the dollar.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=85606

On the same line this piece looks at the massive US trade deficit through the increase of the military budget. Analyzes the so-called "military Keynesianism" that is, the economic policy consisting of putting huge amount of resources on building an ever increasing military force to sustain economic growth. As we can see now, what is maybe considered the richest country in the world may have the biggest and most advanced army, but at the expense of being a country that is being now sold off to the middle east like parts of a car in a junkyard, at the expense of public health and education, and of the middle class going down the gutter. The article is quite long, but I really recommend its reading.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=82203

And more about this on an excellent article by Peter Schiff.
http://www.europac.net/externalframeset.asp?from=home&id=11910

How the financial instruments got so complicated, and the derivate market so messed up, that some mortgage companies can't even tell who owns what.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aejJZdqodTCM&refer=home

More about the global credit crunch... economic mayhem may very well be round the corner.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/25/economics

And from the Financial Times, something that was waiting to happen, first signs of the real food crisis. The blunt equation is: More people that need more food, on soil that is increasingly eroded and degraded by industrialized agriculture and deforestation, used inefficiently to feed even more cattle and, now, cars, and even add to all this ever increasing chaotic weather! Do you feel the vertigo now?
http://cryptogon.com/?p=2088
More about this on the guardian today (26/02/08):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/26/food.unitednations
"WFP officials say the extraordinary increases in the global price of basic foods were caused by a "perfect storm" of factors: a rise in demand for animal feed from increasingly prosperous populations in India and China, the use of more land and agricultural produce for biofuels, and climate change."
Just as I was saying, except that they don't add to the 'storm' population growth or land degradation.

And just a few more things about the military industrial complex,
you can watch this documentary "Why we fight" on Google video, just click here, (i can not recommend it enough, it's a real eye opener!)
and you can listen to the last on point radio program which is about the same thing. But nothing better that to listen to Eisenhower's speech in 1960, you can read it here or listen to it.