Ibbitson & the Wild-Eyed by Louis Evan Palmer

The sad decline of John Ibbitson continues unabated as his stay in the United States seems to have dulled his sense of right and wrong while sharpening his desire to poke virtual sticks into the eyes of his perceived enemies.

In his April 20, 2009 article titled "Clinton, Bush booked for joint Toronto appearance", he betrays any sense of impartiality or clear-headedness when he states ".. and the wild-eyed are still trying to get Mr. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their handling of the war on terror."

So that there is no doubt, "wild-eyed" is as good as saying "crazy" or "nuts". Yet, there are very many who must belong to Ibbitson's cadre of the deranged. For starters, the FBI, a former high profile Washington chief of staff, and a well-respected Law professor.

There was such an abundance of evidence of criminality that the FBI opened a war crimes file against Bush & Cheney after witnessing the goings-on at Guantánamo Bay.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005 asserted that there were grounds for prosecution.

And Law Professor Jonathan Turley stated "It's the indictment of all of us if we walk away from a clear war crime."

Serious mock trials were held in several places.

One was held at “Camp Democracy,” on Washington's National Mall. On Sept. 13, 2006, Ann Wright, an ex-U.S. diplomat, read the “mock” verdicts. She was also one of the five jurists who heard the evidence compiled by the Bush Crimes Commission.“Guilty” verdicts were returned. As they were in a large mock trial run in Europe.

Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who sought to prosecute Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, has also called for US President George W. Bush and his confederates to be tried for war crimes over Iraq.

Bush & Company may also get tried for other crimes like illegal wire-tapping in the US itself and illegal killings (i.e. assassinations) at home and abroad.

While we're at it, maybe all the wild-eyed people can petition for Ibbitson not to return to Canada. That's something George would do.

Ibbitson & the Wild-Eyed, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2009 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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ARA (2) - Guiding Principles by Louis Evan Palmer

ARA is the refuge, the new utopia. It may still be in the design phase. It may be on the water or under the water or under the earth or in the middle of a desert or arctic tundra. There may be more than one refuge - this one is called ARA.

In ARA, people avoid generalizations - especially about other people. They still study culture and sociology but they do not allow themselves to slip into easy prejudgments about any single person. Every person and thing is unique.

There are no broad rules or religions in ARA. There are principles and guidelines. Action will be taken against persons who are harming or injuring other people or property but it will be defensive only and measured and fair and just.

ARA embraces harmony and beneficial action. It encourages living with an open heart and generosity. ARA believes and follows Hippocrates' first directive - "Do no harm." And it applies to everything. (This also covers financial transactions)

ARA tries to balance its society and actions between a maximizing of good and potential for the most people while maximizing personal freedom. There is no collective in ARA. There are groups and communities but they are voluntary and flexible. There is no forced membership.

In ARA, defense is one of the foundations of its foreign relations. It maintains no strictly offensive weapons or systems. It specializes in non-lethal defense which would include every kind of non-military means and ways. It does allow for defensive systems or weapons that will persist or pollute.

ARA does not allow for the death penalty but it does allow for life imprisonment and exile.

You may think or say that ARA is an impossibility. That maximizing freedom inevitably leads to imbalance and every kind of strife. It could but not in ARA. It is a place where the only Rule is that there are no Rules. Every thing is faced as if for the first time. It would need adjudicators. It would need a council of the wise. It would need methodologies and techniques. But it is possible.

It may even exist now.. somewhere.

ARA (2) - Guiding Principles, The Way It Can Be, Louis Evan Palmer, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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Anatomy of a Bubble by Louis Evan Palmer

Since no-one seems to know the mechanics of a bubble to the extent that it can be prevented or even agrees that bubbles exist and should be prevented, this article is not trespassing into an experts-only credentialed speech zone (another of the myriad ways to shut people up).

The initial insight in naming this type of phenomenon a "bubble" shows that it's regarded as a temporary unsustainable thing, something that's attractive but under pressure. No-one expects it to last, only long enough to make money.

Thus, it is clear that there is a psychological element to it - untempered optimism and greed. It is future-oriented and faith-based - my tomorrow is ensured, yours not so much. It discourages critical thought. It censors and self-censors. Nay-sayers come under hostile feedback attacks - who is willing to stand in front of the steam-roller?

Another essential ingredient is a lack of effective oversight and control. People will plead ignorance or benign neglect. Innovation will obfuscate the ritualistically diligent - those who don't really want to dig and pursue and explain, only to appear so in a court at a later date. For innovation, read racket, gimmick. Most of it a dressed-up Con 101.

Bubbles also need fuel and their fuel is personal riches. Fee-based transactions, outrageous compensation formulas, profits rule and overrule. Regimes where churn itself is the engine, the trade is the asset.

They also require capital. But not normal capital flows, they need excess capital to survive. It is their oxygen. As always, excess capital leads to over-investment and asset inflation. Typically, a reservoir of value feeds the early stages of the bubble. This generates the early winners and, as every casino knows, you need them to rope in the hordes of suckers to follow.

Another aspect of bubbles is the creation of unreal capital which is usually part of the innovation. These are sold as "instruments" or "packages" or other similarly-named products. But if you examine them carefully they are not tied to anything directly.

Like other rackets, bubbles always have a time-pressure element to them and only pay out to the few. They have much in common with a shell game - the movement, the lack of knowledge, the misdirection. But this is malevolent game which uses leglisation and policy and enjoins others in the mesh. It deliberately entwines itself across sectors and countries and currencies - partly to hid its dealings, partly to spread the culpability and increase the gain. Getting 100 people to pay for the same thing is more profitable than having only 1 person paying for it.

We can nip these destructive criminal enterprises in the bud. There are telltale marks. The postulate is that every bubble has a precursor, close to it in time and technique, displaced in location and industry. The precursor is smaller but it provides evidence of the susceptibility of the environment to this phenomenon. Also, look for people making a lot of money - that's the easiest method. We can tax certain types of speculative transactions. We can strictly control or outlaw certain classes of financial instruments or transactions. How was an entire shadow banking system allowed to exist? We must pay attention to the laws & policies being enacted from the perspective of beating the system. We should always be within one remove of an asset, ideally a tangible asset.

Bubbles are destructive and to be prevented. We know how to do it. Their existence proves massive corruption in the system. So we have two problems here.

Anatomy of a Bubble, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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Seeing Trees by Louis Evan Palmer

In this article, the trees are virtues and the forest is the whole from which they emerge.

Generally, a virtue is good, and a vice, which is opposed to a virtue, is bad. We, typically, don't see them existing on their own without relationships or connections or contexts. For example, seeing courage and loyalty as ideal independent virtues similar to Plato's ideal solids.

Because virtues are personal attributes, the sire of any virtue is the sense of self. A person, or personhood, manifests a virtue.

Sense of self, in turn, needs memory. The traditional memory but also tendencies, instinct & other innateness, each with their own memories possibly connected to the main traditional memory or other memories, possibly isolated. All enmeshed in a reality, an enormous web of relationships and laws transfixed by time and cravings.

This idea of memory is anchored in an uncharted ocean of speculation and ambiguous experimental results. There are persons with almost no physical brains yet they are smart and have an ability to remember indistinguishable from others with whole brains. One theory being that memories are not actually resident in our brain but rather are deciphered by our brain. It's not known exactly how memories are encoded or even if they're encoded. We typically think of them as constructed out of bits of concepts & images & words & sensations which is somehow captured in some kind of chemical & electrical soup but it's still mostly a mystery. If there is no self or no memory, there are no virtues - virtues being dependent emergent qualities.

It is something we deduce, conjured out of reflections, in actions & words & in our life-facing stance. But within the virtues themselves, at times, we wonder if there an order of precedence to them or if it matters? In living, it may not matter, but in trying to live better, it does. Say, in trying to nurture a virtue that, in fact, depends on other virtues.

Do our primal virtues simply proceed from our urge for self-preservation? Which are the finer virtues - the original primal ones or the ones farthest away on the tree of differentiation? The ones that issue forth from two or more virtues?

Many virtues like courage are defined in terms of a threat or a vice, in courage's case, fear. It's worth elaborating on the triggering threat. Fear, for example, springs from a threat to our sense of self and memory, our being. A vice like greed (or gluttony) engenders a fear of scarcity which drives a need for acquisition and a fear of loss. Again, this is a threat to being, where an aggrandized sense of self exists to which even a surfeit seems inadequate.

What does fear engender? More Fear, panic, hatred, anger. Fear can also generate Obedience. We can see more than one cause for a given virtue or state. While Fear can generate Obedience, Loyalty can also produce it. It is clear that obedience caused by loyalty would be of a different timbre and durability than that caused by fear.

So some states, like fear (causing more fear), can self-sustain themselves but like atomic fission, these states would need a critical mass. Direct threats to the self generate fear; normal fear generates the urge to flight or fight but a greater fear, will generate more fear and at a certain level will this newly augmented fear incapacitate.

The level at which incapacitation occurs will vary according to the person. Thus, virtue gets tied to a person's capacity - here, for endurance or perseverance which in turn are considered virtues - the ability to endure or persevere. And, where does that power come from? The power to endure? The power to persevere? Or, at the primal level, the power to live or to love.

It is again a question of the whole and the part where the part is a fiction created by partitioning. Yet, we see obedience or courage or loyalty. We clearly see the parts but not the whole from which it issues.

Seeing Tress, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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How to Hide Anything by Louis Evan Palmer

Hiding, covering, and obscuring comes easily to us. We do it constantly, consciously & unconsciously, for greater and lesser ends. It becomes a cause for serious concern when it gets elevated in its scope and takes on the mantle of the state. Then it jumps itself up and assumes dangerous forms like militarism and propaganda. What does militarism hide? Theft. What does propaganda hide? Truth.

But it's more than just a person hiding some thing. It's also about choice - choosing to perform actions in a way and at a time and involving things that will not attract notice. One can more easily hide when involving one self with persons or things that have no voice or when attacks are made on someone or something that has no voice or has been muted. And we in turn mute own voices. How can it be wrong if no-one objects? Paradoxically, the worst offenses engender a debilitating silence that envelopes and chokes those who come into contact with it.

It also involves a choice when interacting with persons or things that have no power or much less power than you. They can be overridden in a twinkling. We hide ourselves and our actions when we dominate or attack something that has no power. We trump their free will and dignity and if we do it fast enough no-one will know.

We can hide our actions and their consequences when we involve ourselves with people & processes that are not even visible to most people. They are technically, philosophically or intellectually wrapped in a way that most persons cannot decipher. If these things are not explained they remain hidden. This allows for impunity when people support or attack someone or something that has no visibility.

Hide it by suppressing knowledge of it - suppress witnesses, suppress reporting, suppress recording of it. You can't oppose that of which you have no knowledge. You can suppress yourself as well. It can become a reflexive society-wide action. Self-censor. Self-suppress.

Demean & demonize what you want to hide. Its real nature is covered by the hate & dirt you heap on it. You can't see it because it has been coated with venom. We don't want to know. Is that Adam's real sin? Was it knowledge or a refusal to know, a refusal to accept the truth. We only embrace self-tailored partial truths.

Hide it among other things, magnify them, minimize what is to hidden. Misdirect our attention. We can't see it for we have deliberately crowded a hundred other unimportant things around it. We would rather spend time and energy placing these distractions than looking deeply at the original thing we had.

Delay, delay delay. Spread it out over so much time that it becomes blurred and harmless, forgettable and best left alone. How to rage when all the players, both oppressors and oppressed, are dead? If it was reported and absolutely confirmed that a terrible conspiracy came to fruition some 40 years ago, what would come of it? Some huffing and puffing and then an embarrassed silence. Maybe increased vigilance today for something similar. But for how long? Truth (of this world) delayed is truth denied.

Express & publicize doubt about the information, the messengers and its importance. Impugn their reputations, threaten them, if necessary harm them, even kill them. Delay will make this less necessary. Selective removal is preferred over anything crass and obvious. We need things that can be denied and explained away. That's a here & there versus an everywhere. If it's an everywhere then we're at war and then, well, war is war.

And of course, lies, lies, and more lies and bribes and threats. This is the old stand-by. Deny, lie, delay. How obvious and yet vastly effective.

Do it more quietly. What noise? Make it look like something else. You say crime, I say accident.

We are experts at hiding things from each other and from ourselves. How else can we explain all the death and cruelty and poverty we don't see or talk about? The reasons don't matter. They are part of the hiding process. We cover something with reasons and then stand aside, or worse, we can be the ones who kill or steal.

Millions die every year as a result of things we do and don't do and we've hidden them away. We've buried them quietly under a cover of darkness and platitudes.

How to Hide Anything, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2009 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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Stephen Harper Outsmarts His-self - Lies & Anger from a Would-be Autocrat by Louis Evan Palmer

Stephen is angry. He didn't get his way. Worse, he made get sidelined. Now he's really mad. Now he may even subvert parliament to get his way.

It's a peek-a-boo routine worthy of old-school burlesque - first the anger, then the lies. Sometimes seamlessly interwoven but always both there. As a former professor of economics, Harper would be expected to know more about what's needed to deal with a full-blown international financial crisis than merely attacking various "enemies" with a parochial, head-in-the-sand economic statement.

But then again, Harper is a also a former president of the Ayn-Rand-ist National Citizens Coalition (guess he didn't have a problem with coalitions then) who are against a lot of things including our national health-care system. Presumably, Harper was also against our national health-care system for his entire NCC tenure and likely some time before assuming their leadership position. Is he really for it or against it? Hard to tell with Stephen as he has this lying problem. Has he formally renounced this recent deeply-held position?

What about his former support of the Iraq war? Our Stephen wrote to the Wall Street Journal when he was the Leader of the Official Opposition to berate Canada and Canadians for not participating in what most would categorize as an illegal war. That qualifies more as a betrayal than an act of leadership. He ran to the US for approval and to cheer them on, undercutting his own country in his haste to curry favour with the self-appointed big bad wolf of the world.

Harper is the type who agrees with the individuals & groups who feel that Canada does a poor job teaching Canadian history. However, I don't think our Stephen or his reform rabble knows much about Canadian history other than the anecdotal fireside chats of Albertan premiers and the like. If they did, they would not be cuddling with the Americans - it's not something we've done in our past or admitted to or openly embraced. One of the reasons for that being America's own history of attacking and controlling every nation it thinks it can or needs to. Ask Stephen if he thinks the United Empire Loyalists were right; or, perhaps more appropriately, if they're still right?

When Stephen and his Mike Harris retreads and rabid reformers start barking that coalitions are an abomination, and that the Bloc are even worse than the Alberta separatists who'd like to build firewalls and other walls, while they tried to do the very same thing themselves, it's really too much. Lucky for them no-one knows even recent history including the news media. Stephen & Company tried to form a coalition with the NDP and the Bloc not once but twice. The naked brazenness of this type of serial lying is breathtaking and nauseating. In 2000, Stockwell Day was the leader of the Canadian Alliance (very similar to coalition) and he had a document all prepared and ready for signatures. A scant 4 years later, our Stephen tried the same thing - again without success. The NDP could not stomach allying with a bunch of nouveau fascists so it fell through.

Coalitions are infrequently used in Canada but it's available and totally legitimate especially in the cause of avoiding unnecessary elections. However, closing parliament is not legitimate. Parliament is the fundamental control on the exercise of power in our confederation. We vote for MPs. Parliament is comprised of MPs (members of parliament). How they organized themselves is distinct from what we vote for. The names of the parties were not even on the the ballot until 1960. MPs can drop out of parties. They can join other parties. They can form new parties. But, at the core, we don't vote for parties, we only vote for the MP. The rest is an assumption, a point in time.

Coalitions act as a form of representational voting in that people who voted for parties that would have not had an active role in government can participate to some degree.

Stephen has shown in his intemperate attacks on the Bloc that he does not have the grace and magnanimity to be a true leader. He can be a loathsome fear-monger posing as a leader but not a true leader. He does not lift the people up but rather he knocks the people down - who gets knocked depends on the day and the battle. Not only does Stephen not play well with others, he brooks no opposition. Perhaps living in the one party state of Alberta is part of that mindset especially the no opposition part. It's one thing to always form the government but quite another to have an unbroken series of majorities - makes one get a little loose with all that rights and accommodation stuff.

Stephen says he's worried that Canadians are not getting what they voted for. Like when they voted Reform and got Canadian Alliance? Or, when they voted Canadian Alliance or Progressive Conservatives and got the Conservatives. (Dropping the "Progressive" was telling)

Stephen won't let his Cabinet Ministers talk on their own. His underlings surreptitiously tape meetings. They manipulate campaign monies and then attack the Electoral Officer. They release secret information when it suits their political aims. It's obvious by now that they're in it for the power and they'll sing any song to get it.

They cry "less government" but that's not it at all because those various functions they decry have to be done by someone. What they really mean is not "less government", it's less "public" government. They want to privatize as much government as possible. We'll still have government but it'll be in the hands of the few and far less accountable. How do you say "conflict of interest"?

I'm afraid our dear little Stephen has shown himself to be a dissembler and a divider and there's nothing to be done but to send him home.

Stephen Harper Outsmarts His-self - Lies & Anger from a Would-be Autocrat, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http:twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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NYT's Thomas Friedman Equates Nature with "The Market" by Louis Evan Palmer

Andy Barry, CBC Radio's morning host, recently quoted Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, in another of an increasing number of live-radio faux-intellectual moments. Mr. Barry's efforts were directed at sharing what to him seemed to be observations that verged on the transcendent. (One can tell as much from who one quotes as what one quotes) In this case, Andy quotes from one of premier apologists of the American Imperium. Even some 3 decades removed, perhaps Mr. Barry is still too much of an ex-pat American to be hosting the flagship show on the flagship Canadian network and he can't help but drag us into the pontifications of one of America's key propagandists.

In the article from which Mr. Barry's reads, "The Post-Binge World", Thomas Friedman quotes from his friend, the head of EcoTech International, certainly as ominous & threatening of a corporate name as one can imagine. The head of EcoTech equates "Mother Nature" to bits of science and nothing more. "Chemistry, Biology & Physics" to be exact. There is a simple name for this way of looking at things and it is neither new nor obscure - it's called the mechanistic view. To be sure, there is no "Mother" in this "Mother Nature".

It's at this point that Thomas starts drawing parallels. In Mr. Friedman's world, a contrivance called "the market" not only exists but exists on the same scale & majesty as "Mother Nature" and with as mechanistic a heart as well. There is no deliberate mis-reporting in Thomas' domain, no skewed inflation rates or GDP or dubious debt & deficit figures. There also is no realizations or actions on the part of the largest investment banks that they could use interest rate derivatives to manipulate national and international rates. Sure, millions of small-time lemming investors can be jerked into a cascade of selling and buying, but the surreptitious suppression of commodity or gold prices is ignored. Thomas also willfully neglects to allude to the rampant conflicts of interest rotting through the whole system and the ethics-destroying complicity it not only fosters but insists upon.

Mr. Friedman's naive adherence to a mythic "market" is merely cant, a vicious ideological cant, the same kind that can refer to a million dead children as an "acceptable" loss. He may not have said that particular statement but he apologized for it, maybe even as an unstoppable force of nature. Again, Thomas is merely asserting another mechanistic viewpoint. This time he elevates this sorry patchwork of agreements and debts and contracts and a myriad of goods and services and den-of-thieves stock & commodity exchanges that we call "the market" onto the same level as his un-motherly Nature. What others call the "globalization of poverty", Thomas calls the "democratization of finance".

Thomas and his ilk offer prosperity but deliver a vast casino economy where the game is rigged in favour of the super-wealthy and their lackeys. Friedman asserts "The World is Flat" and it certainly is in the sense that it has lost its diversity and depth as it is distorted by a new-conservative house of mirrors. In this world, torture is used to protect freedom, and freedom is taken away to protect law and order and Mother Nature is the same as "The Market".

NYT's Thomas Friedman Equates Nature with "The Market", Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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If the World is created by the Songs of Whales by Louis Evan Palmer

We think we know and that's usually where the problem starts. We think we know about space and time. We think we know about our own existence. We think we know about history, identity, the reasons for things, and truth and consequences.

"Realisticism" replaces reality. Realisticism doesn't need to know the whole truth or even most of the truth. It gets mixed in with, and mixed up with, pragmaticism. "Results" become the barometer of truth and results, as we quickly discover, are very relativistic.

In the 1960s, the Milky Way was the Universe. The experts said so as did the textbooks, the newspapers and the scientists talking on the movie newsreels. This was after "E=MC2" and nuclear bombs. We knew the Universe and we described it and we taught it and it was spectacularly wrong. It is incredibly instructive to listen to old recordings of the experts as they tell us without any equivocation that the Milky Way is the Universe and describe various aspects of it including its approximate size and the number of stars inhabiting it. It was not only wrong, it was wrong in such a fundamental way that it highlights our profound ignorance of the type of which Francis Bacon warned - "a little knowledge". The heady arrogance of the slightly enlightened.

For hundreds of years we had three spatial dimensions. Then some eighty years ago, we determined that we also had had one temporal dimension the whole while but didn't realize it. This obvious theory of three spatial dimensions had the status of conviction that was so deep and hidden to us that alernatives were not even imagined let alone discussed. String or membrane theory now postulates that we might have as many as eleven dimensions. No-one really believes it. They can only exist without our noticing them because they're very small. The ramifications are enormous.

Some scientists claim that if quantum mechanics is completely true then our universe is constantly splitting off into each of the possibilities that arise in every moment so that we are actually in the flux of an incomprehensible raft of universes and selves.

Who's to say it cannot possibly be true? What about an Electric Universe? Is there another set of universes composed of anti-matter? Does Dark Energy or Matter exist? Or, other sentient beings?

Gerry O'Donnell is a remote viewer and a teacher of remote viewing who claims that whales sing the world into existence and without them the world would fade away. The idea of sound as a generative force has been around a while but has been subsumed by the more recent and forcefully promulgated idea of ours of light as that force. Is there a music of the spheres? Is it at all possible that whales could do such a thing? If we say "no" what's it based on other than ignorance. We must admit "we don't know". Our understandings must widen and deepen and lengthen as must our memories and our feelings.

If we pause long enough and deep enough, we might almost hear those haunting calls in far-off cold waters. Rather than safely saying "no", we should cautiously ask "how?"

A-U-M.

If the World is created by the Songs of Whales, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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What Market? Program Traders Feast on Other People's Wealth by Louis Evan Palmer

The market, popularly thought of as thriving industrious individuals who behave rationally and collect relevant information and make informed decisions - or not. It's not true in today's market if it ever was. Today's market is electronic and hierarchical, the small trades feed into the bigger trades feed into the trades which qualify as program trades. A standard definition being over $1 million worth of 15 or more stocks. But even that is piddling compared to the real movers and shakers.

The big investment banks employ more staff on their IT side than on their trading side. As do the hedge and mutual funds. The volumes and percentages of all trading done by a few behemoths is increasing. The danger from hackers especially well-placed insiders is far greater here than elsewhere. Siphoning off even a hundred million a day is within rounding errors. The small and decreasing circle of those who trade the bulk of the world's financial markers wield enormous unaccountable power with access to vast sums of computer entries representing value, ultimately money, goods & services. What better place from which to launder proceeds of crime and illegal black ops funds. What better place from which to manipulate the world exchanges and economies for profit and towards ends other than those publicly stated.

Who really counts in the world trading forums, who has access to the truly huge funds? Maybe 2,000, maybe 3,000. A few clicks here and there and a national economy crashes, or a company, or a currency. Jerk it up, jerk it down, make a pile. Mostly anonymous, certainly unaccountable.

Is there any control over who has the rights to trade and how much they can move? Is it right that "traders" and their host of speculators and financial jackals can ravage economies at their whim, for their own reasons, for their own benefit? Making money off of people's fear & greed, juicing it out of them just like that.

Who's driving this soon-to-be train wreck?

What Market? Program Traders Feast on Other People's Wealth, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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The Rightness of Incrementalism by Louis Evan Palmer

It's October 2008 and we're in the midst of another financial crisis. If we count wars as social crises then it's safe to say, that crisis mode is our norm. Although its impact varies.

One of the key characteristics of a financial crisis is an obvious imbalance usually in the form of an excess of one type or another. Too many sellers, too many buyers, not enough, too much product, etc.

The incrementalism I'm calling on is not just gradualism in terms of economic growth but an anti-revolutionary brake on any rapid expansion. That is, even "good" expansion which seems favourable should be measured out. We currently have all kinds of controls and visible and invisible brakes on various types of activities. This would bring that into the open and cover gaps and make it work for the benefit of the many.

We should not allow events, specifically financial events, to go their own way. Up 100%, down 300%, etc. Whatever the so-called free market dictates. It would more like up 5% or down 5%, closed for the day.

We put controls in place to regulate the numerous flows in an advanced economy. This is nothing more than prudent management. Why should we allow speculators to move vast amounts of currency and financial instruments around in a given economy or among nations and larger economic units at will?

Prudence and common sense tells us that we should not allow financial instruments to be created or allowed to enter our economy unless they are well understood - especially in their negative implications. The starting position is that a given financial instrument is probably going to have a negative effect on the ecomony over time. The onus would be to prove that this is not the case. It might be a good idea to have the creators of these instruments, if they are approved for use in a given economy, to post the equivalent of bonds that they forfeit if damages are incurred. Again, we should only allow a small number of new instruments to enter the economy with controls on how much value they can have, they can affect, etc.

Secondly, if they are permitted to enter a given economy, it should be done in a gradual and controlled way. It should also be controlled in terms of its ups and downs. We should only permit a small percentage uptick or downtick in individual stocks and indexes. If that gets exceeded, trade in that stock or index is over for the day.

Flows of currency and other financial instruments should be taxed. In addition, the flow size and its variance from day to day and week to week should be stipulated.

This is also meant to apply to wages & prices although this seems to be what is happening already to wages right now.

This is not as difficult or intrusive as it might seem. It's going on now except it's being dictated by a much smaller unaccountable group of hedge fund managers, high bank officials, government & government agencies and criminal & intelligence organizations.

Almost everything would be the same except with leeway for only small specified upward or downward movements in price, supply, and other relevant factors. The economy changes in a healthy controlled way.

Incrementalism would also apply to the money supply, taxes, government expenditures and the whole gamut. If strenously implemented, this would act as a tremendous brake on war and military expansion as they both need rapid expansion of the public debt and spending. This would also act as a brake on criminal & black-op intelligence operations spending and hopefully by extension, their extent and power.

The thing about incrementalism is that it can be implemented over a long period if that's the only way to do it. Let's bring it to the fore and make it work for us in building stable steady peace-based economies.

The Rightness of Incrementalism, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

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What Puppets Can Teach Us by Louis Evan Palmer

For a long time, puppeteers were to be heard but not seen. They worked the strings above a stage or behind a curtain. The often given observation being that puppets could say things people couldn't. The audience would laugh at a puppet's remark but might shiver or cringe if it was said by a person. The less you saw of the puppeteer, the more leeway the puppet had. For a while now, however, puppeteers have come in from the shadows, and perform fully visible beside their puppets. An example of this is the hit play “Avenue Q” an adult version of Sesame Street.

Initially, the audience is distracted by the visible actors beside their puppets but then an amazing thing happens. The visible actor become invisible to the audience - but not really. The audience picks up emotional clues from the actors and projects them into the puppet yet all the while, they are not consciously seeing the actors; focusing on the puppet.

This seems to be another instance of the miracle of “attention”. We direct our attention. We decide what we're going to see and hear and care about and what is outside that periphery we don't attend.

Another thing about this phenomenon and its manifestation in a puppet play is that it is strongly analogous to what sages and mystics describe as the illusion of our life. Could it be that we play the role of a puppet and the source or Tao is the cosmic person holding all the strings, being the strings? And, that somehow we have allowed our attention to shift to our version of a puppet, this body and soul, and we don't see or hear or know that which animates us? And, we are our own audience; we all have shifted our attention to the puppet's play.

What Puppets Can Teach Us, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com

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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

• OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
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Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations by Louis Evan Palmer

Another Olympics, Beijing 2008, has finished with an especially sublime opening ceremony to remember it by. And world records by Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt. Even if Michael's unlikely run seemed a little too luck-struck by half. How long was the Croatian swimmer suspended in the water about a single millimeter from the touch bar?

There has been the requisite chest thumping and teeth gnashing. Medals counts broadcast and fawned over. Reporting that probably can't help being boosterish although a few stars so overshadowed everyone else that we could cheer for them without impairing our patriotic credentials. Usain Bolt leaps to mind.

We were told ad nauseum that the USA “won” the 2008 Olympics because they won the most medals. This is almost equivalent to saying that if China won 49 gold medals and the USA won 50 bronze medals then the US “won”. In effect, we are weighting gold, silver and bronze the same which doesn't make sense even to the great unwashed hordes.

Simon Forsthye, a researcher in Brisbane, Australia has worked on several more logical ways of representing medal counts. The first mandatory step is to weight the medal count. He and others rate gold as twice the value of silver which, in turn, is rated twice the value of bronze – therefore, gold counts as 4, silver as 2 and bronze as 1.

Refer to related articles listed below:

http://www.howardwfrench.com/archives/2008/08/22/the_olympics_an_alternative_medals_table/

http://s.wsj.net/article/SB121883421021145439.html

http://simon.forsyth.net/olympicsGDP2008.html#WMSPM

We can be sure if the ranking was more favourable to the USA if it was weighted, we would have seen it that way instead. The mass audience would have been educated as required. The slant in the western media is, in this case, blatant. If they can educate people about some of the obscure “sports” they have in the Olympics like biathlon or equestrian or sailing then a simple weighted medal count is child's play.

Some argue that medal counts should only focus on gold. In fact, this is completely backwards, For some sports, where there is a lot of competition and it is therefore more difficult to place, we should have more than just 3 medals. Marathons with hundreds of runners and some other track events come to mind. For those events, 5 medals seems more appropriate. Say, a brass medal for fourth place and copper for fifth place.

Here is a partial table using data on Simon Forsythe's site. The first column showing an unweighted medal count is the tally that was almost exclusively used by the mass media. Followed by the rank if the medals are weighted (4 for gold, etc). The last 2 ranks are by population, per 1 million persons, and by GDP (per 1 trillion $). It attempts to account for population and wealth assuming that it is easier for a populous or wealthy country to compete well.

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
United States	1	2	43	65
China	2	1	65	50
Russian Fed.	3	3	34	38
Great Britain	4	4	22	44
Australia	5	5	6	27
Germany	6	6	33	52
France	7	8	32	51
Korea	8	7	24	42
Italy	9	9	37	53

On the vein of Olympic sports, the Olympic head body should publish the criteria for what constitutes a “sport” or “event” including requirements such as a certain threshold of persons who actually play or participate in a given sport or event. For example, should we continue with equestrian events – very expensive with relatively few participants, it seems to qualify as the epitome of elitist events.

The weighted medal count rank is shown below. Countries like China and Jamaica with high gold medal counts benefit from this more accurate tally.

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
China	2	1	65	50
United States	1	2	43	65
Russian Fed.	3	3	34	38
Great Britain	4	4	22	44
Australia	5	5	6	27
Germany	6	6	33	52
Korea	8	7	24	42
France	7	8	32	51
Italy	9	9	37	53
Japan	11	10	54	71

Using the GDP as a way of weighting medal counts does reflect at a high-level a country's ability to fund excellent training. Typically, though, GDP is not evenly allocated so we can, and do have, wealthy countries that relatively speaking underspend while some very poor countries redirect inappropriately large amounts of scarce resources to glamorous propaganda-rich events like the Olympics.

Using population also suffers from problems as a measure in that most world-class athletes train around the world. Many get scholarships and sponsorships and train in the best facilities with the best coaches wherever they may be. Being born poor does not mean anything at a certain point and at a certain level. At the highest levels, it becomes difficult to attribute where the resources used by a given athlete come from.

Another phenomenon that's been emerging for a while now is the effective buying of athletic excellence by offering citizenship and other benefits including money. This is well-funded fast-track stuff well beyond the easy immigration policies of the past.

The next 2 charts show ranking by population and by GDP. Zimbabwe would be a case in point regarding misappropriate use of funds. Their winning athlete apparently trains abroad all year.

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
Jamaica	20	18	1	2
Bahamas	59	72	2	7
Iceland	81	80	3	23
Bahrain	74	61	4	24
Norway	22	21	5	36
Australia	5	5	6	27
Slovenia	40	40	7	17
New Zealand	24	26	8	20
Estonia	62	54	9	14
Mongolia	45	33	10	3

Adding a population component to the medal weighting formula seems legitimate but again if we look at poverty-stricken disease-burdened peoples, does it matter how many of them there are? Does it really contribute to their pool of top athletes?

Country	RANK Unweighted Medal	RANK weighted medals	RANK Weighted medals per million POP	RANK weighted medals per billion GDP
Zimbabwe	44	39	44	1
Jamaica	20	18	1	2
Mongolia	45	33	10	3
Cuba	12	14	13	4
Georgia	37	31	14	5
Kenya	18	17	42	6
Bahamas	59	72	2	7
Armenia	35	55	20	8
Belarus	13	16	12	9
North Korea	34	32	52	10

At the very least, the common reporting practice should become weighted medal rankings.

In the interest of demilitarizing the Games and lowering the jingoism potential, maybe the Olympics should start allowing “clubs” to compete where the clubs can have members from anywhere in the world. This would be similar to professional sports teams in that the club would have the best team they can afford and manage with the widest pool of talent possible – basically, the entire world. If they win, play club anthems and raise club flags.

On a practical note, instead of marching in nation by nation at the beginning, let's have teams / nations march in from all four stadium entrances at 60 second intervals. Over each minute, four teams enter. This has got to be the most tedious part of the opening ceremony.

Finally, people must really wonder about the cost of staging this type of spectacle. Did China really spend over $70 billion dollars?! We must pare it down dramatically. Fewer, more popular events. Perhaps 8 days instead of 16. We should think about capping spending. Revisit the idea of always holding the Olympics in Greece. Or, having a set of sites we rotate through. The games should inspire and uplift us not confuse and bankrupt us.

Olympic Bragging – Medals, Medal Counts & Other Observations, Louis Evan Palmer, The Way It Can Be, http://twicb.blogspot.com
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Copyright 2008 Louis Evan Palmer lives in Ontario Canada. His short stories have appeared in numerous publications.

BUY BOOKS BY LOUIS EVAN PALMER

• OAKLANE WOODS - Amazon Kindle Book
• TALES TOLD TO A TREE - Amazon Kindle Book
• 40 POEM FRAGMENTS - Amazon Kindle Book