Obama divides the waters of Hurricane Gustav

His Holiness the Dalai Obama demonstrates his power against flooding in pre-hurricane Louisiana.

"We are deeply concerned," Obama told ABC News' Ann Compton at the Yankee Kitchen family restaurant in Boardman, Ohio.

Although the formality of his apotheosis is still more than two months away, His Holiness has ordered the federal government to stand by for further orders.

"I've instructed my senate staff to monitor the situation closely. Make sure we've contacted both FEMA but also private relief organizations just to make sure that whatever happens people are prepared."

The Dalai Obama's advisors are working on proposed legislation that will go beyond outlawing global warming to include action to prevent hurricanes. Bumper stickers declaring WINDS OF CHANGE, NOT OF AIR are expected to be distributed next week.

"It's well known that despite the good they do, such as destroying oil refineries that leave global carbon footprints, hurricanes have a disproportionate effect on Muslims, blacks, and women," His Holiness said as he prepared to board a helicopter en route to a Louisiana pre-destruction site on a slogan-finding mission.

"In remaking the United States, I will bring a hurricane-free future as we end climate change by stamping out hydrocarbons."

Michael Prescott's Blog

I've run across Michael Prescott's Blog, which he subtitles "Occasional thoughts on matters of life and death." It includes a number of intelligent postings about psychical research.

His writing on that subject is like what I originally envisioned I would be doing in Reflecting Light. It hasn't turned out that way. Although you will find some postings from this blog under the heading "Paranormal," they have been relatively few. I regret the neglect. It does not represent any diminished interest on my part, just practical necessity.

Since resigning from the Society for Psychical Research, for reasons I won't go into here, I no longer receive the Society's Journal or annual Proceedings. That's too bad, because they were a useful source of knowledge about interesting experiments and knowledge in the field. Nor have I been to London, where the Society is based, in several years and so have been unable to go to any of its excellent sponsored lectures.

The SPR isn't the only source of information, but I've found precious few sites on the Web with regularly updated content — those linked to on the blogroll, fine as they are, are basically static. Meanwhile, the mainstream media with very few exceptions remain proud in their ignorance of serious psychical research. They only carry rare stories on paranormal phenomena when there is a sensationalist aspect or they can make fun of the subject. Our respectable journalists won't lower themselves to write about research into the inner nature of our life on earth and what follows our brief visit.

In short, I'm out of the circuit these days. Now and then I encounter something worth commenting on, but I don't have the leisure to do a lot of ferreting about.

So I welcome Michael Prescott's blog. I've read a few of his postings (by no means all) and like his attitude. He takes the paranormal seriously, has clearly read extensively in the field, and seems to have more time than I do for scouring the media to come up with material. He has a healthy skepticism, which anyone who aspires to write about psychical phenomena needs, but it's not the obstinate refusal to deal with facts that have been demonstrated countless times that is the standard position of scientific materialists.

Prescott also writes clearly. His bio says that he is the author of suspense novels and "thrillers." (I have not read any.) He doesn't say if he is psychic.

I was especially interested to read his posting about the late Montague Keen and his purported after-death communications through his widow, Veronica, and other mediums.

Monty was the lead author of the Scole Report, an account of perhaps the most remarkable physical mediumship circle in modern times. (Physical mediumship involves spirits who produce tangible phenomena.) I met him at the first SPR conference I attended, where he took the initiative in making my acquaintance — a remarkable thing for an Englishman to do — which I appreciated, since at that point I knew no one in the Society. I got to know him over the course of several other SPR conferences and when he visited the United States a couple of times for other conferences related to mediumship.

I'm afraid I have to agree with Prescott about the site Veronica has created around Monty and the alleged messages from his astral self. They simply do not ring true based on what I remember of Monty's personality. Obviously, Veronica knew him much better than I did, and it was evident that she was deeply devoted to him. On the other hand, she can't view the claimed communications with objectivity or independence of judgment.

Monty was an SPR member for more than half a century. If he were communicating from the Other Side — and, for all I know, he may be doing just that through another medium or mediums — he would be giving us very specific information and evidence about postmortem survival. There is nothing of the sort in Veronica's collection. The messages read like notes from a lovelorn teenager. Monty loved Veronica, and I'm sure still does. But while any communications from him would include words of affection for his wife, the psychical researcher in Monty wouldn't limit himself to billets-doux if he found himself in a position to open the door between worlds.

It's also a dubious sign in alleged after-death messages when they predict earth changing events, Great Work taking shape, and all that, which "Monty's" transmissions include in abundance. That sort of grandiosity just doesn't fit with the man I remember.

I'm sorry to have to say this, because Veronica was gracious to me both before and after Monty passed over, even inviting my wife and me to dine with her at Monty's club in London after he'd gone. Frankly, I hope she doesn't read this, but if she (or Monty) does, it's no reflection on the good I wish them both.

Monty: I'm not psychic, as you know, but I'll be listening. If you feel like trying to get through to me, please give it a go.

USA: the next Argentina?

Americans fixated on the Democratic Circus this week, and the Republican Circus next month (or whenever it is; I don't care enough to pay attention) are wasting their time on irrelevances. Whatever slogans generate the most tumultuous, calculated applause, whatever promises are made, whatever visions of change are released into the ether, have nothing to do with the country's true crisis. Neither party will touch that one, because to acknowledge it would set off a panic. The party wheelhorses are either ignorant themselves or figure that for the public, ignorance is bliss.

The most immediate crisis is neither Islam (excuse me, "terrorism") nor the Mexican Invasion. Not to discount the importance of either, but another snake will bite first, and leave us even more anemic and unable to cope with them. It is the likelihood of the imminent breakdown of the dollar-based — that is, the funny money–based — worldwide financial system.

Much of the world, but above all the United States, has for years acted as though credit is money. And the no. 1 credit card provider is the U.S. government, because of its ability to create credit by printing money and convincing everyone that the money is actual wealth, when in reality since 1971 it has been backed by nothing except the word of the U.S. treasury. It is what economists call a fiat currency (from the Latin fiat — "let there be"). That faith-based money then gets passed down the line through the banking system and commerce.

It worked reasonably well for a long time, because the world did trust the word of the U.S. Treasury. Lately, though, the rubes have been catching on to the con game.

Darryl Schoon writes, at the "alternative economics" site www.financialsense.com:

While bankers do control the issuance of credit, they cannot control themselves. Bankers are the fatal flaw in their deviously opaque system that has substituted credit for money and debt for savings. The bankers have spread their credit-based system across the world by catering to basic human needs and ambition and greed; and while human needs can be satisfied, ambition and greed cannot—and the bankers’ least of all.

I have a bad feeling about what’s about to happen. The Great Depression is the closest that comes to mind. I, like most, was not alive during the 1930s when it happened. Nonetheless, what once was feared in private is now being discussed in public. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to make high school seem like fun.

Predicting Sturm und Drang is of course an easy way to command attention. The Financial Sense web site and others like it specialize in this kind of apocalyptic thinking, and to many it will seem over the top. Maybe they're right. I've been reading money manager Ken Fisher's The Only Three Questions That Count, and have no doubt he would scoff at predictions like Schoon's.

Perhaps the most impressive single thing in Fisher's book is a table in which he lists the shocks and crises the country experienced each year since 1935, while in most years (about 70 percent) the stock market was up, often way up. But while Fisher is a very bright guy, I can't help wondering if his market smarts were acquired when the game had different rules.

Schoon notes:

In 2006, in an article published by the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank, Professor Laurence Kotlikoff stated the US was “technically bankrupt” as there was no way the US could pay the $65.9 trillion it owed.

Evidently, Professor Kotlikoff was conservative in his estimate or we’re going downhill faster than he knew. Just three months ago, on May 28, 2008 Richard W. Fisher, President and CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank estimated the obligations of the US to be actually $99.2 trillion, 50 % higher than Kotlikoff’s figures.

Schoon, admittedly, goes off into Black Helicopters territory with accusations of connections between the CIA and the banking establishment, plots to keep the poorer countries in debt, etc. Whether he is right, wrong, or somewhere in between on that score (I have no way of knowing), I wish he hadn't gone there in this article, because much of what he writes on our present situation is worth pondering — at least as part of your own due diligence.

This time default will come to both banker and debtor alike. The bankers’ system itself is now collapsing under the weight of debt that the bankers’ debt-based money has produced.

Banks are finding themselves increasingly bankrupt as are the governments the bankers used to debase the world’s currencies. This time, not only will Argentina possibly suffer another sovereign default, so too will its creditor, the US, as will many of the US banks that issued that debt.

When I started this blog three years ago, I didn't expect to be writing so much about politics, and the idea of blogging about economics never crossed my mind. But I've come to feel that both have become so critical to our future that, my own lack of expertise notwithstanding, to short change them would be a kind of irresponsibility to my readers, including those I've never heard from and don't know from Adam.

Let's hope that it's not going to be as bad as I fear, but I'm far from alone in my concern right now. Plenty of information and ideas are available on the web and elsewhere. Learn what you can. Do what you need to.

Library patron does the perp walk

A certified Obama-free posting™ !
No artificial ingredients

Here is the latest instance of an evergreen story that appears in the news every few years:

Woman cuffed, booked for not paying library fines

A Wisconsin woman has been arrested and booked for failing to pay her library fines.

Twenty-year-old Heidi Dalibor told the News Graphic in Cedarburg that she ignored the library's calls and letters as well as a notice to appear in court.

Still, she was surprised when officers with a warrant knocked on her door, cuffed her and took her to the police station to be fingerprinted and photographed.

Come to attention, civics class. Do you believe this is justified or not? The incident is trivial, but it says something about the state of play of the social contract. While feeling fairly mindless at the moment, I'm of two minds (good trick, what?) about Ms. Dalibor's arrest.

For the defense: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is a bad joke at my client's expense. Arrested! Handcuffed! For what? A few overdue library books. Is there no real crime in our fair city that our police could not better employ their time in preventing or solving?

A girl of 20 summers subjected to humiliation and a night in jail with hardened criminals, maybe even bloggers who have questioned the multi-cultural imperative? Is there one Hmong you, excuse me, I mean among you, who would not go to any lengths to save your own daughter from that experience? Such things can scar a person emotionally for life.

I ask you to reach into your soul and examine your conscience. Can you tell me, before God, Darwin, or Nothing (your choice), that you have never neglected to return library materials on time? Have you never put aside an overdue notice thinking, "My basement is flooding, I'll deal with this later" or some such? How would you feel if, some days later, the long arm of the law appeared at your door, the neighbors gathered on the street wondering what a police car was doing there, and were herded off to the jail under their gaze? This is a travesty, a gross breach of common sense and an abuse of power that can only presage totalitarian rule.

What next, ladies and gentlemen? I ask you, what next? Is our community to devolve into a snowy Singapore, our young people -- your own sons and daughters -- caned for chewing gum? Perhaps my learned opponent would have them, or you -- or you! -- subjected to the lash for overparking. Make no mistake, this is a slippery slope, a slippery slope! Or perhaps you believe capital punishment is the only way to deter those who, amid the press of business, have forgotten to pay their library dues?

I ask you to send the district attorney, who cares about nothing except the number of convictions he can ring up (may I remind you there is an election later this year?), a message: [Walks to jury box, looks one juror after the other in the eyes] We, the citizens, draw the line! This is over-reaching, this is a power play, and we will not allow it!

For the prosecution: Ladies and gentlemen, after you have wiped from your eyes the tears called forth by the learned counsel for the defense, may I present -- if it may be admitted into this soap opera scripted by the defense -- a few facts, followed by some observations on civic responsibility.

Let me point out that Ms. Dalibor is not charged with having overdue library materials. Of course you (and I freely admit, I) have occasionally failed to return items to the library on time. But, as the good citizens I know you are, you have not behaved like Ms. Dalibor. You have taken responsibility. I have no doubt that, the next time you visited the library, or even if you only received a notice by mail, you have paid up -- not out of fear of punishment, not only so you could continue to benefit from the services of our fine public library system, but because you knew it was right! Because you are citizens, with all that implies about the very basis of our ability to live together in a just and fair society.

[Tapping table with knuckles] Fact: The defendant was notified of her overdue fine by letters. Fact: The defendant was notified by phone calls. What did she do? Nothing! Finally, in desperation, our shamefully underfunded library system, which relies on overdue fines for a significant part of its operating budget, turned to the very institutions that the law has in its wisdom, since the earliest days of the Republic, counted on to restore the balance. She was served with a notice to appear in court.

What did the defendant do, when confronted with the summons? Nothing! Ladies and gentlemen, what you see in the dock is [pause] a scofflaw! A person who believes that she is above the rules of society -- enshrined in law, mind you -- that the rest of us take seriously, as our strongest safeguard against anarchy. The learned counsel for the defense has exercised his wit in trying to persuade you that the defendant's actions, or rather inactions, are so trivial as not to be worthy of police time. His argument is jesuitical (no offense, those of you who are Roman Catholics).

You have no doubt heard of what is known as the "broken windows" theory of policing, put into practice by Mayor Giuliani's police chief in New York City in the 1990s, and which is widely credited with restoring a large measure of safety and order to that burgh, formerly abandoned to criminals. The theory is, in essence, that broken windows and such forms of vandalism are symbolically far more important than their immediate effects. They symbolize that the social contract itself has broken down, that authority is powerless and can no longer protect ordinary citizens.

The corollary is that if you enforce the law against lesser anti-social individuals (graffiti painters, window breakers, squeegee pests at traffic lights), you send a signal that the rule of the streets is over! There's a new sheriff in town and the horse thieves had better make tracks so that decent, law-abiding folks can walk the streets without fear.

I ask you to send a message to all the scofflaws, the people who think they are too important to be bothered with the ordinary claims that we as members of society owe to one another: [Walks to jury box, looks one juror after the other in the eyes] We, the citizens, draw the line! Ms. Dalibor has shown contempt to the library from which she has obtained the benefit of its collection, she has abused its trust, and we will not allow it!

Kristi Stassinopoulou

Eclecticism is big in popular music — any day now we will hear about a disc of minimalist bluegrass or Cuban-Tibetan fusion — and some of it seems like a desperate pitch to be different at all costs. But Kristi Stassinopoulu (whom I will henceforth take the liberty of calling Kristi, so as not to get writer's cramp from continually typing "Stassinopoulu") has developed an eclectic style that is original, evocative, and often very beautiful.

If you, like all sensible people, are bored to stone with long discussions of an artist's various influences, I'll just say that Kristi does electronica — but with heart. I sometimes enjoy electronica, especially the genre known as Goa trance, but it too often is numbingly repetitious: music for machines to dance to. But Kristi usually produces an exhilharating sound palette that uses psychedelic rock, synthesizers, Greek traditional music, Byzantine vocals, ambient sound effects, and the unclassifiable in varying combinations. (Well, I guess I just did list some of her influences. Hard to avoid when you're trying to describe something unusual.)

The Secrets of the Rocks cover

I have three of her albums: Echotropia, The Secrets of the Rocks, and Ifantokosmos. I believe she has a more recent one out, which I haven't heard. The three all seem to me to display her prodigious inventiveness and soulful vocals, with excellent backing from other musicians on modern and exotic traditional instruments. Her singing sounds both contemporary and ancient at the same time, something like Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance and soundtrack fame. Echotropia and The Secrets of the Rocks have been released on an American label (I expect on a British one as well). If I had to recommend just one I think it would be Secrets, but if your tastes are anything like mine you won't go wrong with either.

I bought Ifantokosmos when I was in Athens. It is on a Greek label, and the cover and notes are entirely in Greek. I could make out kosmos (world) in the title, but the rest was incomprehensible — you did think I was going to say "Greek to me," didn't you? A very charming young woman clerk in the CD store tried to translate it to me, but her English wasn't up to it. She could explain kosmos easily, but for the rest she fumbled, then tugged at the sleeve of her dress. The Sleeve of the World? Didn't seem likely. Later I looked it up online and found that it means "the woven world." No wonder she was at sea. You have to really know a language to be able to find the equivalent of "woven." I wouldn't even know how to say it in French.

Here is a video of one of the songs on The Secrets of the Rocks. It sounds better than it looks, and the sound is far better "shaped" when played from a CD than from the compressed audio files of a YouTube video.

Fannie and Freddie: friends in low places

The American taxpayers are, in essence, guaranteeing $5 trillion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt. The Federal Reserve stands by to subsidize Fannie's and Freddie's stock in the stock market. Fannie and Freddie continue to pay dividends to their shareholders. All the profit goes to the shareholders and management. The taxpayers get no compensation or payback for saving all of Fannie and Freddie’s equity and essentially guaranteeing their income. The management of Fannie and Freddie get to keep all their compensation and bonuses. They get to spend as much as they want on more lobbyists and law firms. They and their foundations can continue to hand out money to universities and not-for-profits. [Emphasis added]

— "The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008," an analysis by Catherine Austin Fitts (see Part VI)

Past recipients of money from Fannie Mae, whose bail you are posting if you are a U.S. taxpayer:

Harvard University, $5,031,000; Brookings Institution, $3,906,000; Acorn, $797,000; Citizenship Education Fund (Rainbow Coaliltion/PUSH), $660,000; Center for Policy Alternatives, $635,000; Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, $608,000; Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, $600,000; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, $400,000; Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, $285,000. (Source: wwwfanniemaefoundation.org)

In helping to save Fannie, you can be proud of your charitable giving, voluntary or not. Well, not. Harvard certainly needs the money, and as for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Rainbow Coalition/PUSH, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, etc., your money is creating a more "vibrant" America.