Conjecture that Israel would bomb Iran may return as the highjacked election that kept Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the President’s seat seems part of a plan to escalate tension by asserting Iran’s “right to power”. When it perceives enemies have nuclear weapons, then it naturally will pursue that course. Previously it may have appeared that Iran was claiming not to be wanting nuclear weapons but the world now knows that they do. So what will happen next? An arms race?

NY Times

350 economists agree, it is time to change the parameters of finance. A suggested tax on the transactions between banks of 0.05% and a suggestion of a tax on speculation to alleviate poverty in this unbalanced world are two ideas which may take hold. Conservative economics it is claimed are based on common sense, but the idea that the super-rich hold the economy together seems only true for the super rich. The fact is that there are more and more people being held in poverty year after year and it seems hardly necessary to support a system that is making the majority indebted to the very few or allows millions to live under the poverty line without hope of change.

Any attempt at health reform or changes to the status quo get met with cries of “communism!” or knowing claims that it is socialist dogma. It is about time that the super wealthy around the world invested in raising the bar for the many. This does not need to be communism but support of educational institutions, expansion of business employment of graduates and facilitation of public amenities by an honest engagement in the tax system.

It is not communism. It is essential human decency.

The Independent

Terrorism fails to exert political pressure on governments, as nobody in the world wants random acts of violence to take the lives of their children, or indeed themselves.

Where terrorism has succeeded is forcing Western governments to take actions that limit freedoms – but what the Osama bin Laden mentality that has gripped the radical Islamic extremes seems to not understand – is that the West was already reluctantly accepting of restrictions imposed historically (e.g. during WWII) and is better setup (especially the UK) for the police to keep watch on its citizens.

There is however an assumption that these restrictions, inspections and limitations on real freedom would be released once the terrorist threat is over. The day Osama bin Laden is caught and tried may be the token end that the voters are waiting for, but it probably means nothing; now that the Western governments have committed acts of war to try and prevent the terrorism threat. There is a growing discomfort that the acts of government are becoming the default stance and that freedom itself is being redefined to mean “freedom within limits”.

What I find truly disturbing is not the 2 million video cameras in London, or scanners that can see through my clothing, but the reaction of people to each other evident in today’s media. The judgementalism reflects a shift where distrust between people is the assumed stance and everyone is seen as a potential threat.

Our political forums are unbalanced, there is no respect for political leadership and with only more of the same on offer, a lack of imagination seems to have gripped the world in an economic cold war where bankers claim a natural right to 7 figure salaries and their actions put 5% more of the population out of employment and countless numbers of lives are damaged as foreclosures ruin the future hopes of far too many.

This we did all by ourselves, without the prodding of the insane suicide bombers. There is simply no heroics in those kind of tactics. Nor in the response to them.

A better path is the realisation of the great beauty of difference.

The year 2000 was a fine boundary, because of the mathematics of dates. 2010 seems a little more mathematical, in that the century count is double that of the year count. 2000 however exposed a hole in thinking shared by everyone who entered a two figure date into their computers. Time marches on, and it is necessary to record the details.

The 2000 decade was the decade that Tony Blair and GW Bush decided that the Geneva Convention prevented them from dealing with the threat of Iraq. There is a movement to bring them to justice as their actions were not legal or desirable. They appear to have been politically driven to protect energy consumption by Americans as that was the “engine of the world” economically. How wrong could they be? Far from being an engine, the West was empowering China and India by overextending greed.

And that is why the war in Iraq was a mistake of epic proportions. If a war was to be fought in Iraq, it’s timing was wrong. Iraq was the barrier between Israel and Iran, and two “dangerous” countries who were at war with each other for years seems more threatening than one tamed and one restricted. By weakening Iraq militarily, there is a weaker buffer zone separating Iran and Israel.

It is an imbalance of credibility to claim that certain countries have a “right” to nuclear weapons, and others do not. Nobody has a right to murder all life on the planet.

And when the US withdraws from Iraq, Iran is far more likely to try and annex the Shi’ite zones of Iraq and thus raise the stakes by presenting a more polarised fundamentalist Sunni and Shi’ite division. Iran lies between the two GW Bush war zones. The Taleban are anti-Shia, therefore America has strengthened Iran and is in essence attempting to defeat Sunni fundamentalism with its continued war against the Taleban. Afghanistan is 99% Sunni, therefore acceptance of the Taleban is a very likely consequence of the failing war effort. That is why the Obama administration are ramping up the war against Sunni extremism. Iran is being defended by America. The rational however for Iran’s nuclear capability is clear.

The cause of international law and justice continues to be of terrible importance. The injustice of the Iraq invasion is reflected by a new generation of terrorists, some home grown. The unpredictable threat of a suicide bomber on air-plane flights is inviting Western governments to screen the skin surface of all passengers, so Al Qaeda has now managed to terrorise huge numbers of Muslims.

This insensitivity is due to the nature of Islamic militancy: most evident in the Teleban movement. Young men controlled the government of Afghanistan with ultra strict Sharia law enforcement. When the toll of continuous war is considered, it is no wonder that the Taleban arose. They were the children of the war with the USSR.

The absence of justice for reckless or ill considered actions by these leaders implies that they were infallible and somehow above all that. Remember, justice is a balance and if Blair or Bush were to be found not guilty of war crimes, at least it would explain their rationale. And if they were found guilty?

The first year of a National (conservative) government has been able to say that economic recovery is on its way, is all smiles and champagne – as we managed to survive – see NZ Herald.

Economic recovery in terms of trade is an excellent mark of progress. The economic boom times we thought we were enjoying as property prices went up and up was due to international capital rather than money NZ was making itself, although growth in the local economy has been enormously encouraging, that is not the capital supply that underpinned our property boom.

The problem seems that prices have not dropped, but increased. If they had dropped, then a recovery would mean them adjusting, but despite the fact that there were no bail outs, property prices sort of held and are now rising again. In other words, if there is an adjustment, it is yet to happen. But the inevitable drift will inevitably be upward, so this is not so much a problem, but a risk to locally sourced capital availability. Real growth comes about by correct investment and if those investment decisions are not part of the locality, the rationales for decisions tend to lack local benefit. This does not really matter, we are living in a global economy, already.

The Government want to reduce its investments in the community and that path has been to subscribe to foreign ownership to keep demand stimulated as NZ people find better opportunities open up in the global market.

A population constriction, when the population is forcibly reduced by war, disease or policy requires a different set of release valves than a growing economy. Instead of inflation vs interest rates, it is deflation sets in because decreasing numbers of people create demand, in other words nobody is there to buy things. It is hard enough to sell your products into a niche in competition, but when your customer base erodes, there is a sense of that being economically troubling.

In the case of China, it is simple fact that can not be escaped. Is there a way that continually dropping demand can be harnessed as an economic imperative? Why buy today if the prices drop tomorrow? Why buy at all? When things get too cheap, it becomes an imperative. The rest of the world stocked up on cheap things the nearly universally smaller families enabled more people to go out to work.

Now that the two parents are being replaced increasingly by a single child, there will be an oversupply and slackening of demand in China’s ability to earn foreign exchange. The currency crisis now is shortening the market ahead of that expectation.

China may be surging ahead now to fund a future inevitable collapse of its manufacturing capacity. In a climate of reduced world demand, China keeps its currency shielded and thus its government is effectively creating a superstructure economy and shielding the population from wealth.

See Feer.com

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

Recent near misses by asteroids, when you think clearly about them, clearly present two dangers:

1. the object is large enough and slow enough to be influenced by gravity and survive the atmosphere

or

2. the object is moving so fast, the opportunity to change its path using gravity is very short lived.

Fortunately the ones in the second category are usually too small to survive the atmosphere.

Cat 2: very fast, tree house size, VERY close (14,000 kms, about the diameter of the Earth, so you could say it missed us by one day, though it would not be accurate). 3rd closest non-impacting asteriod on record.. More about this event.

2009 VA mag=12.2 Nov 06 21:00, dist=0.000136 A.U. Nov 06 21:36, speed=4392.12 arcseconds/min Nov 06 21:00, diam=5-11 m

Cat 2: fast, truck size, about 1/2 distance to moon

2009 WJ6 mag=15.3 Nov 20 09:00, dist=0.001187 A.U. Nov 20 09:36, speed=1284.9 arcseconds/min Nov 20 11:00, diam=8-19 m

Cat 1: slow, city block size, over 6 million miles away

2000 XK44 mag=13.4 Nov 05 03:00, dist=0.07395 A.U. Nov 04 09:36, speed=8.45 arcseconds/min Nov 04 18:00, diam=637-1425 m

Intellectual Ventures – a group of scientists who are coming up with viable scientific ideas that can help quell the effects of arctic ice loss due to global warming but imitation of volcanic spewing of sulphur dixoide into the stratosphere at about 60 degrees north, should cool the atmosphere.

Scientists love to isolate a problem and think outside the box.

Polluting in a controlled way introduces new chemistry into the delicate balance. It is like smoking menthol cigarettes, you are adding to the cause but suffer the effects less as the menthol sooths your lungs. In this case it reduces the length of the teeth as we ask the atmosphere to bite us.

It means that industry now has an excuse to pollute the air even more, adding to the real problem which is not arctic ice melt so much as destruction of the atmophere’s chemical composition. Is that really such a good idea?

The Intellectual Ventures invention that maintains the ice caps, saves both the polar bear and New York City.

The Green movement seek a reduction in emissions which is also helpful.

By addressing the symptoms of the problem, we will never really solve it. By allowing for greater industrial pollution, we open the door to more imbalances. What if the calculations are wrong and an ice age is triggered? How do you test for it?

Intellectual Ventures is a large and impressive group of inventors and I applaud their wonderfully different ideas, their hurricane buffers that also cool the air by encouraging natural processes treat hurricanes as inflammation of the atmosphere and work like a steroid drug may, cooling everything down a couple of notches as the injury makes everything swell. If we invent to allow pollution to continue as a viable possibility then we need also to invent ways of transporting people, warming our homes and powering our consumption industry, deal with nuclear waste and keep the rain forests viable.

Where is the no emissions standard car for the world? Where is free electricity? Can scientists invent with a political imperative: “do no harm”? Or for general good, or do we need a sense of common destruction to do much to quell the grand hunger of our ambition?

A need to view the end of civilization expressed by the film 2012 fulfills the same basic need. We want fireworks, a big bang to go out on, the idea that Armageddon fury may rain down on our generation seems to lie behind the criminal destruction of nature.

A “its going to go, anyway” is pervasive in the subconscious direction of a human race that has doubled in size in the first forty years of my lifetime. The second 3 billion new humans were born in forty years. The first 3 billion living humans took millions of years to achieve. The third 3 billion will be achieved about 35 years later. Although the rate of growth is declining, the effect is still a problem.

All it takes is a different economic model. Japan’s has “suffered deflation” for years. It also has slowed population growth. But it’s economics are stagnant.

We only really need invent an economic model that works for human contraction, instead of growth. Uncontrolled human population growth is doomed as a survival strategy.

This blog presents a view of nuclear proliferation I have never seen before. Is it correct? I suppose I had better find out. LiveMint suggests that Russia gave China nuclear capability and that was transferred by China gifting it to Pakistan, which in turn criminally proliferated to Libya, North Korea and Iran.

On one hand, the simple fact that nuclear proliferation is a far too dangerous set of circumstances to experiment with, on the other, the surprise nature of the two most destructive known earthbound explosive forces: volcanoes and nuclear weapons – both are subject to extraordinarily chaotic principles that inevitably ensure outcomes. The same principles apply to financial bubbles. The building blocks of dishonesty lie in the first times compromises are made.

How can a country develop nuclear arsenal without compromising their integrity with others? Owning nuclear weapons is a crime of extortion against the rest of humanity in exchange for self destruction.

How do we find the value of the nuclear deterrent? We define the result as undesirable. What organisation with terror as its mantra can resist, reason the CIA.

Eventually, if the “terrorist” organisations are not neutralised they may try to hijack the nuclear process, or worse, develop its own.

Complete outlawing of nuclear weapons is the only solution. How can it be achieved? Or is there something about the threat of nuclear weapons that operates with enough mutual fear that it is simply impossible?

Wishful thinking.