The US debt emergency is coming, and it is a man made Tsunami – after the erasure of an accumulation of massive fictional wealth – the complex debt structures borrowed with leverage against assumptions that have resulted in systemic deficiencies and bailouts – and may result in the collapse of one set of rules in favour of a new set.

The huge injection of funds into the US economy devalued the US Dollar, resulting in other currencies revaluing. If more and more dollars get printed the Euro may become the more stable international base currency.

Meantime we stare at the disaster unfolding after implementing short term solutions but taking too long to pass long term solutions. That aspect of human nature figures into our financial systems. There is a delay between action and payment allowed, a period of settlement when money is in transit. As though it did not exist.

The fact is that money is a self equalising sea that makes accumulation/wealth expensive, in theory. In fact poverty is made far more expensive by deceptive margin. The way in which human effort is rewarded compared with investment performance appears the basic problem.

Ruling humanity by a points system is absurd. As populations have risen, the money supply has been held back, the conservative “cure” for inflation. Economists must address symptoms or causes as a priority. President Obama ensured that the US would not drown in poverty (symptom) while figuring out what regulation would prevent any repeat of the derivative madness (cause).

Like a gambler perhaps there is a belief that another last burst of derivative action will right the problem. Regulation will stop that. An equitable financial system that serves commonly held goals and eliminates inequality through design rather than force may be a superior solution than regulating or extending instruments that base their logic on flawed theory.

The laws of supply and demand operate as clumsy filters. With online ecommerce – a standard could be reached so all markets are fully equal, so that poverty is not responded to with high interest rate traps, so that credit card companies that charge criminal rates (anything over 10% per annum is effectively slavery) are taxed harshly.

See also: Moneywatch

People face life every day. On very few of those days the plain shadow of death falls, and when it does it seems sudden, unexpected, incomplete.

Life is a book that ends in the wrong place. It could be on a train, after a steamy love scene or during a part of the life that the author correctly thought should be skipped entirely. A void from which the main character never re-emerges.

Death is not talked about, except when there are rules. Families suffer death and then it becomes the only thing talked about. Then the thing that must not be talked about. Eventually reflection is possible.

This cultural tendency to shun death, and keep it away from the subject of living seems a good strategy. Do not upset Grandma with that kind of talk, that sort of imperative. The fact that it usually approaches like anything, without an instruction guide, makes us all the more mystified by the obvious change it brings.

The psychological effects of death in the family should not be discounted. The gross effect of war, the intrusion of American forces into a culture that does not respect its intrusion, but associates the arrival of these badly dressed warriors with the death of many of their own family members.

The only time war is justified is to undo an invasion. There is no such thing as improving a culture by killing certain members of it. Enmity causes power to be invested in fighting adversaries.

War is a disease and the cure – it requires plenty of human intelligence. Is death the end game in Afghanistan? Will the bodies of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda leaders be the only product that America can win from this adventure of revenge?

Or will they further invest themselves in “reforming” a culture they do not own or even understand very well?

The big difference between today and thirty years ago – nobody needed passwords then. Just a drivers licence. Now they want our retina and finger prints. Next they will be after our memories and skills. Imprints of our personalities will become available online. Individuality will be lost in a miasma of traded iconography and ideas that betray no reason.

Or we will retain our individuality despite this assault of psychic interception. There is the Internet. And there is the Mobile Internet. People wonder why Facebook is full of these silly questions “What is your favourite colour” and then all your ads go blue.

Marketing could have intimacy as its goal but then it is not marketing. It is futile manipulation and as any manipulator will learn about humanity, they will not play ball. They change their minds and momentum often, and you will go on looking for holy grails.

Look inside an ant or a bee hive. What do you see? There are two things that immediately come to mind – first it appears the creatures are all the same, but if you watch it becomes apparent that pockets of mass specialisation occur within the mass of worker female eunuchs, functional components of what we call a “society” appear. We half believe the metaphor of being a cog in a survival machine, while lamenting the boring mundane role we play, we live.

The economic decline is a pause. What went wrong with the machine? Why did it break? Now let’s construct another excuse for our normal accepted behaviour. The banks and AIG that paid executive bonuses with tax payer money were breaking the natural laws of mutual suffering. They caused the problem in their own books in competition with each other, fully aware in the same way that when we say “society” we submit to the constraints on our lives.

We can not just kick back and enjoy the recession, but we have to think of new ways to function – new patterns of ants form as old ones finish their task and a new mutual shape and function is agreed upon with chemical communication or dance. I have not heard ants sing, so I expect their forms of communication evolved in their own fashion. It is conceivable their communication is a little more sophisticated than we are prepared to credit.

California is coming apart at the seams economically. The blame can be laid in all sorts of places, but it is logical that in times of an shared tidal suck of liquidity the most indebted would have the most difficulty as all their income goes to the most wealthy. The onset of economic malaise (the reduction in asset value, generally) is avoided by governments meticulously at the cost of the social order. We are “regrouped” from the lifetime of preparation as an expert on a specialisation that is no longer required.

If we try and move our economic progress so fast that everyone has to retrain – are we not starting to press at a natural limitation? Are we not better to do that which we love for as long as we want, and progress to be modulated to the rhythm of our lives?

Apparently not. We instead try to cram more into our fragile selves, full of aspiration as the bank approves a lifetime of debt so you can protect your family in a wooden box, and when you are successful and the birds leave the nest, progress defines us by interruptions and upheavals.

War is unnecessary. If Governments learned to flip a coin and live with the consequences (if political hegemony was merely a game of luck) then the world would be a little more equal and progress would slow down. If we increase the frequency of progress, then we increase the demand to retrain everybody. Is that a good thing? Increased challenge is evolutionary, up to a point. Retraining every five years is hard. Every six months is itself counter productive. Returning to Plato, we could simply choose to preserve certain arts and not negate their value, because someone is so good at doing it. The print media industry logically could be completely replaced by mobile phones. But I would be happier if both existed side by side for most of the rest of my lifetime. I accept they won’t but the values of the print media must not be lost in a sonic miasma of advertising. Information is.

There is thus a natural tendency, or a social fabric that we knot ourselves into increasingly duping ourselves into believing it is of value when a vast wave comes in and nothing but the skin we were born with is available as a resource to protect yourself. Then you have to retrain and adjust. If we controlled the effect of those collapses but also allowed progress to exist the social fabric would have to be more elastic.

The very idea that progress itself be modulated may infact therefore be what is actually happening. Secret government research is the stuff of fanciful television, but it is also logical that as well as financial reserves, a nation devises a reserve of military and intellectual development. That an academic class structure exists.

The politicians of the world face the constant problem of over population and consequential climate change. To pretend that the answer is not selective annihilation while sitting on nuclear bombs is irrational. What other function do they serve, exactly? “They keep the peace.” Really, what peace?

Look again at that ant’s nest. Their apparent strong social fabric adjusts to change, but it does not deal with progress. Human culture can. Trade was interesting enough to distract us from war and for years America was winning that game. The challenge will be to see in the recovery a return to human value as opposed to the needs of a market fiction.

As predicted, the Kurds in Iraq are asserting their right to a state. And since the USA has occupied Iraq for six years or so it does rather mean that it is inevitable that they will leave the country with a displaced people, a people who have difficulty or who are conflicted with government that works against their own interests. We hope this is not a recipe for disaster. We hope that the Iraq Kurds gradually increase integration with other peoples peacefully but where religious feudalism seems to define things political pressures build. Cultural blurring requires religious openness. The non-acceptance of the beliefs of the “other” maintains the barriers between communities. Ultimately cultural assimiliation – the continental drift that redefines societies and corrodes empires – will change the boundaries not just of Kurdistan, but of the entire Middle East. So what. It is the lives of the people who live now that are restricted or affected in ways that they can not agree with, how do you solve that? It becomes the same question as any displaced people. It is the sharing of art, aesthetics and stories that ultimately dissolves cultural barriers.

People sharing admiration is like religious belief – it is cohesive. We do not share religious beliefs so there has to be a better common ground as religious sensitivity dictates the maintenance of barriers between people. These barriers do melt ultimately. When political questions are settled by death, it is hard to maintain political objectivity.

The world requires a path for displaced people towards self rule. Persecution due to the barriers between peoples just means that people suffer. The United Nations has been said to lack teeth. That is only because it does not wholeheartedly exist in the minds of the Governments of the largest countries. Kurdistan is an ethnic region rather than a political entity. It covers border areas of Iraq, Iran, plus about a third of Turkey and a little Syria as well and some of Turkmenistan.

In these countries Kurds do not dictate their own destiny. A country of 20 million displaced people that Turkey will not allow to form a political entity. A victim of war.

See NY Times

Kurdistan historical site

Sarah Palin has been published in the Washington Post criticizing Barack Obama’s “Cap and Tax” energy policy. This appears to be an early evidence of why she resigned her appointment as Governor of Alaska. To take over the role of “Leader of the Opposition” as the now disheveled GOP Republican Party seems to have nobody but the ineligible Dick Cheney to foster its support base? That certainly seems the case, or Dick would have been less assailable in the media. Sarah Palin fares no better.

When she says (and I quote):

“In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.”

“The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.”

If it is tempting to swim not against the stream of this logic – maybe if we understood supply-side economics or not seems to be an idea solved by education rather than conversion.

Her next statement widens the gaffe. Skip the bit where she attacks Obama as she rightfully should, providing more than a pipsqueak of embarrassed opposition – at least she is willing to take a lead in actually arguing against ardently liberal policies. Ignoring any actual effect but instead a fiction of safety wrapped nuclear and predictable oil outcomes as sources of cheap energy that is the right of every American (ignoring any future).

She goes on:

“We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.”

If God created the energy underfoot, then in her idea of the world that was created 6000 years ago – there is an end date and the popular belief of her brand of this philosophy appears to think that it is our birthright (and probably, duty) to expend all the energy (or, God may be offended). Ignoring science, as science is not clear. If we ignore science, the enforcement of “end times” upon the language of culture can be glossed over and missed.

It only makes sense to continue along the path of global destruction if you believe in no future for far future generations. If however you disagree with “end time” thinking, and see a future that potentially goes on for millions of generations of humanity – then you find this sort of faith rather dispiriting, as it limits the future to a desolate struggle for dwindling resources and polluted air. Who wants that?

It is not that we can not use oil. But using all the God-given oil means polluting our atmosphere to such an extent that all humans would die as the food chain is no longer supported. All life depends on the light of the sun reaching the ground.

But humans will die before trees. The winds from temperature imbalances will be more destructive in ensuing centuries. The floods will be far more devastating. When major cities become consistently drenched, the costs will be outlandish. And Sarah Palin will quote the Bible saying that will happen and then do everything in her power to make darn sure she is right.

Her logic reeks of judgmental aggression that tilts more liberally minded people over the edge into ardency.

But is she correct? Is Obama’s Cap and Tax policy going to consign America to being owned by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? How so? Is not the goal to reduce energy reliance upon oil, not to increase it?

Sarah Palin’s policy is wrong as it creates infrastructure that is dependent upon oil and requires the consumption of oil to support it. It is like keeping a heart patient alive by forcing blood through their veins.

The patient etherized on the table is not the economy, that has proven how resilient it is to profound shocks. If the international economy could absorb Bernie Madoff much less Bear Sterns much less Lehman Brothers then the structures of the economy are more profoundly elastic and solid than we may have believed.

The thing that democracy got right is the constant ability to adapt to overcorrection. Obama’s policy is designed to reduce the stimulus to produce oil and increase expenditure on sustainable means that the US can export for hundreds of years.

Sarah Palin needs to review the long term economics. Her plan has immediate benefits over the medium term and long term excessive costs. There comes a stage in the future when the costs will outweigh the benefits.

Obama’s plan reduces returns for carrying on with oil, encourages investment and progress in other sources of energy. Without that innovation, oil will remain the currency of power.

I predict instead that within ten years water or hydrogen energy sources, or solar energy collection or something we have yet to find will provide plenty of free energy and the new currency will be technology. The real economic risk for the USA is that someone else gets there first.

Sarah Palin’s Washington Post article

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned protesters in Iran that violence and bloodshed will follow if protests against the false election results continue.

Threatening to kill people for voicing their protests is not spiritual leadership. This man who is called “Ayatollah” speaks of death for his own people? These are not the words of God. It is not convincing to declare an election with such evidence of fraud.

He makes it sound like he wants the world to see him only as a man. As a despot.

His threat to his own people shatters the illusion of spiritual authority. He appears to merely be lowly man who says he represents the word of God, but would a man of God say such terrible things against his own? Using supreme authority to commit criminal acts upon the people of Iran is not in God’s interests. Who’s interest do his words serve?

Pretending to be a man of God when you are in fact a man who wields the sword upon his own is lower than being an honest criminal. If the West has interpreted him wrongly, then comment below – I honestly hope someone does. After a fatwah was issued by this leadership model upon a foreign writer, it became more than obvious that this was not a man of God but a man who wanted to control the minds of others.

If the police and army in Iran are good Muslims, they should refuse to follow his orders. Following a false prophet does not get you to heaven. It is more than blasphemy to slaughter people instead of counting the votes.

These threats fracture any confidence that he speaks with spiritual authority. He is a man. His speech may mark the start of a civil war in Iran – as the Government attempts to quell protest – it will force the popular movement underground. Nobody wants this. At least in America they counted the votes. But he is a spiritual leader, and the people must listen to him unless they see that his religious values are quite different to their own.

The acts of a self-appointed totalitarian government are now there for the world to witness. The consequence of this display of despotism is the collapse of any support Iran may have been able to germinate from the rest of the world for trusting them with their nuclear power aspirations.

Sanctions will proceed over the nuclear issue. This man has ensured the rest of the world can not trust the basic humility of the leaders of Iran, like North Korea they mistreat their own people and lavish the military.

The rest of the world increasingly includes modern Russia and modern China. The concept of division as the source of competition driving growth as a model for economic well being has failed.

Ali Khamenei has done more to set the stage for a “justified” attack upon their nuclear programme than even his little boy blue Ahmedijebad. The fear generated by threatening his own people with violence after the world has witnessed an unbelievable nightmare week of killings, mayhem and destruction by government black-shirted military police, means that even the most lily-livered liberal will cheer on military strikes against Iran’s potential nuclear capability.

His words against his own ended any external support for Iran’s nuclear power aspirations. The world will no longer stand by and watch thugs gain any power over their neighbors’ fortune.

Both sides of the political coin are answerable to the supreme leader, who’s unquestioned right to power relies more on fear than faith. To revolt against him, he had to differentiate himself from the Holy Koran. He appears to have done just that.

It is sadly therefore predictable that a civil war could result, unless the mandate of authority of the religious status of this dictator is relinquished, Iran seems destined for continued strife and continued violations of human rights.

There is a Stratfor article going around the the mainstream media covered it here in New Zealand with this article in the NZ Herald.

Disturbing Trends does not agree with a primary assumption that military dominance will maintain relevance, as the future all rather depends upon what individuals do. “Disturbing Trends” represent a few of those decisions – as they start to show their ugly signs. Predicting the future is not so much a science, as an art and if one is to be very good at it then there is a need to consider more than one side of the coin.

Military dominance only has so much value. The age of military dominance will eventually fade – like the human crime of pollution of the natural environment will be corrected by a burp by nature eventually, and in a few billion years – we really will be forgotten history as no evidence of our existence or crimes could remain unchanged.

Once military dominance is established then trade competition replaces war, so goes the conventional or political wisdom. But eventually, can “dominance” be the successful way for humanity to survive? War is no longer survival of the fittest. It is the random death of people. Anyone will do.

My prediction is that the current climate in our thinking will thaw, that we as humanity will be forced to stop thinking that we can damage our environment without destroying ourselves.

Humans are tough enough for a few to survive the worst effects of climate change and after a few million years to climb back into dominance. Distopian fiction seems to be about that hope, for example we used to fear authority (before 9/11) now we fear the disruption of authority (the mad king syndrome).

If Barack Obama were elected in ten years either side of when he was, then he would not have been expected to be a “saviour”. What does it mean? Some want to give him super powers so that he can be seen to fail even if he is merely successful. That is an old trick. Politics.

China’s rise to power is not in itself a new thing. It being able to dominate the world militarily is a Western fear. Look at this politically, here we have an authoritarian government of a successfully exporting nation, huge diversity and the same problems of poverty that other nations (USA, Russia, Eastern Europe, the UK) suffer as well.

There is definitely a set of priorities where much of the national spending (i.e. collective effort) of major economies is military potential far beyond the necessary. Not in so much in successful societies like Norway, Sweden or Switzerland where national wealth is not squandered on military display.

The US fall from its “superpower” status is fiction. It maintains military dominance. Yes, China is restricted by conventional issues like the shape of the land. It does not have military dominance except over its own people.

Something unexpected (alien invasion, plague, another flood, etc.) could disrupt things and make military dominance less of a survival tactic (for example, strong earthquakes could corrupt the US military).

For humanity to survive its own folly, it must rise above greed for the sake it self. The only way it could ever evolve is for its very existence to be threatened.

Humanity blinds itself to self created threats that evolutionarily proves to itself it can exercise power like that a God may wield.

The world of the future depends upon more individuals evolving beyond greed, acting as humanity for the cause of the common good. Our economic traps are designed to enable governments to finance conflict, the purposes of which are often remote to the humans living within the geopolitical borders being argued over.

If governments were not thus funded – if that were the product of the UN – it could only be due to a matter of more urgent concern. The trouble is that our military might is the junior cousin to the fact that we appear to be blind to the inevitable.

Over population is a strategy that has consequences that are impossible to avoid. No matter how many bloggers say “overpopulation”, no matter when the media talk about it, even if world leaders talk about it, it will not stop the human instinct and religious imperatives that have produced – the most successful of breeding instincts – look how much cleverer we are compared to just 3 thousand years ago. Or just 300 years ago. Or even three years ago.

The long term trend that we have to solve for a happy future for our great great grandchildren would mean an end to growth and competition as a way of measuring progress. Sustainability means we stop consuming natural resources.

It simply is not going to happen with our growth religion. Humanity is not going to sacrifice progress willingly until the select few have their DNA launched into space as a last wild attempt to avoid the final chapter of our story.

A dystopian future is likely to be the disruptor as we threaten the ground we walk on, their air we breath, and the food chain we rely upon.

Real civilization means living in accord with nature, not in competition with it. Real civilization means appreciating other human beings, not wreaking each others time on Earth with missiles and threats. War is not progress. It indiscriminate destruction is not natural selection.

Human nature exists. But there are two human natures – the clawing for survival – that can result in a humble nest and garden, or the murder of competitors that results in a freezer full of high protein snacks.

There are choices and there are ways that individuals think. The choice is easier to make now, than it ever will be again. There is an unusual combination of intellectually capable individuals on the world stage. More talk, less action. That is pretty good medicine.

Climate change scientists have asked policy makers to think again about their approach to climate change.

Instead of “carbon reduction targets” they say it is global temperature targets that need to be considered as reducing CO2 output will not stop the inexorable rise in temperature, and that is the problem.

It is not until we replace coal as our main source of energy that we reduce the inevitable chaos that climate change and global warming would cause. Denial will not change simple physics. Natural processes buried masses of carbon over millions of years. Ice ages freeze methane in Siberia. These events are not within human control. If we undo them, we can not restore them.

We live in a balanced environment. Why tip it over?

The Oil Companies continue to invest in oil exploration and recovery is barely news and their reticence to invest in new sources of energy is their own fate.

When hydrogen powered electric cars are the norm, they will be the ones paying more for a scarer resource. If they fail to invest in renewable clean energy, they will die. Oil companies do not matter so much if they do not invest in what we have to do.