Speed Speed Saeed

Mini-Referendum

2010-06-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

Speed Speed Saeed is holding a mini-referendum: Do you think Quebec should separate from the rest of Canada? Yes or No?

After this referendum he will use the results to stimulate his Quebecois (if yes) / Canadian (if no) flag enterprise and sleep soundly, knowing how irrelevant a referendum question is to actual secession.

Brazil

2010-06-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

Features Article The McGill Daily

Sitting in the busy Miami International Airport (MIA (not missing in action)) I am preparing to board my plane to Brazil. I attempt to write this article a la famous Hunter S. Thompson style – as I go along my journey into the heart of darkness.

Already I have stuffed myself with Pizza Hut chicken wings and a small Hawaiian pizza. I am ready for any savageries that await me over the next four days at the Pre-Conference to the United Nations World Youth Conference. I am representing Canada along with four other people that I have not yet met.

Thus far I have not come into any kinds of problems except having to explain how the “objectives” of Youth Against Racism Inc. are not things that I could explain in five little minutes to a customs officer. There is an anecdote about the Columbia University Philosopher Morgenbesser on wikipedia that goes as follows: he was smoking as he was about to leave the New York subway, was stopped by the police, and when asked to put it out even though he was leaving the station, asked the officer, “who do you think you are, Kant?”, then got arrested for a couple of hours for offending the purblind uniform.

I just checked into my hotel: it’s the nicest hotel in the city. I’m on the 14^th Floor. I didn’t check whether it’s actually the falsely-named 13^th Floor on the elevator panel. The air here is so full. You can tell that you are only miles away from the Amazon Rainforest. This is what every person in the world dreams about having: the waves, the hotel room, the sense of doing something good for the world. I’m thinking about my wife and girl a lot. I wish they were here with me. I’m thinking already about bringing them back down here with me sometime. But when?

Brazil. Blessed spot of land. You could just lay-out on the beach and you’d be okay for like a week just because of the richness of every natural element around here. People look so much better here than anywhere else in the world I’ve been to. So much clean air, so much perfect weather. It’s paradise on Earth.

I could use a nice cigar though. Maybe I’ll have lunch outside since it is not provided to us here for the conference. It doesn’t look like there is going to be much to do for this period of time, except maybe unifying the Americas group in preparation for the World Youth Conference.

Later in day one, I find myself sitting with my feet up against a balcony view of the roaring sea, and I’m smoking a Brazilian cigar. I find it to have been a great honour to have been invited here by the Brazilian government to take part in all this. The work I’m doing is hugely important. And for all intents and purposes, so is the work of every McGill Daily reader.

I flew over Miami and saw how everything had become cooky-cutter. It was like looking at one big carpet woven by American machines. Salvador is a jungle in the truest sense of the word. I saw a bit of graffiti somewhere today that said Poesia Urbana, it is what holds this planet of the apes together. I wonder what Montreal would look like with perfect temperature, coconut trees, and endless beach? Would we have those chilly separatists to haunt us? Would we continue fighting each other on the ice and off the ice like we do now?

It is not merely a matter of how things work out for us in the end, but how we constantly make them work out for us in the present. What kinds of lives do we want for ourselves? Do we seek to be happy? How can we go on living in a world without…these people have everything and coconuts. It is time to plan a cultural invasion. Any volunteers to join me for a good old fashion Crusade into the past that has become Salvador de Bahia in 2010?

A whole day of listening to speakers talk about the same thing over and over and over again. All this is so petrafyingly boring. At least I have the ocean to listen to now that I’m back in my (cleaned) room.

Apparently you can buy an ocean-front property from as little as 60,000$! Amazing, considering average prices in the Laurentians are around 180,000$! I should convince my wife to move down here with me…if only more for these people spoke English. Yet another reason to invade this country. I can see it now: Nouvelle Quebec!

There really isn’t anything impressive about this conference, other than the fact that Canada decided to ignore it again, leaving me as the sole Canadian participating in it. It’s a lonely place sometimes at the UN when you don’t have your own government to talk to. You feel like a kind of orphan. All the other NGO’s get invited to Embassy parties and Mission meetings, but – thanks to the Ultra-Mundane Conservative party – I’ve nobody, once again.

Later the same day not really the same way: I’ve been drinking again. I tried to stay sober, but you know when all you want is a little break from a long day of work and two colleagues offer you a glass it’s really hard to turn down. I turned it down but then said okay. Does that make me any less of a man? Any more? It was a safe environment, I drank excessively and in moderation. Drinking in moderation…what a phrase – do you stop when you’re no longer thirsty or when you’re no longer sober or when you’re no longer a moderate? Can your views be allowed to change so abruptly that you allow yourself the pleasure of the moment, even though there is an ocean of waves just waiting to thrust upon the dashing rocks my seasick weary bark? Now I digest – all that barbecue! Wow! I had every kind of meat available. I even had chicken heart – by accident. It was so gross. It tasted like chicken hearts.

Tomorrow is an even bigger day than today was. But at least it will all be over and done with this time tomorrow night.

Drunken thoughts: I’m and Iranian-Canadian living the American Dream in Brazil; Canada is trying to kill me.

The morning after: not so bad when you wake up to such heavenly waves and everything is taken care of for you. Also gotta work.

The first stage of the writing of the declaration is through. I got the votes I needed to make it fly and it is flying. Much more work ahead but, a lot of fun. The moon is so high down here (below the equator) and it shines like a lamp at least 20 km out into the open sea. I wish Audrey were here to see it too…

Made it back. Upload on June 14, 2010.

Reflections on my first published work

2010-04-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

My life changed 7 days ago when I was published for the first time. It’s like losing your virginity in many ways. You think about it night and day, you prepare for it, but all along you never really believe it will ever happen. But then you score a date that really gets your hopes up with like a journal or something, and then you finally see your work in print. My sexual encounter lasted 7 days because of Easter. Usually The McGill Daily is published twice a week, but they canceled the Monday edition leaving mine on the shelves for twice as long. Tonight at around midnight the website is going to publish a new issue and tomorrow, around noon, the stands will be updated too.

It was a great run. Right now, I am the state of the arts. It is a glow. Everywhere I go, every problem I encounter, I just think back to the fact that there I am in print and things are trivial instantly. I finally became a writer.

Of course, this is not the last time I’m going to have sex, but I will always remember it best. Ah! Wow! I did it!

April 7, 2010, 8:50pm

Communism v. Democracy

2010-03-15T17:51:00.001-07:00

Intellectually speaking, Communism is a lot more Capitalist than Democracy. Communism requires a stock (or capital) of intellect, whereas Democracy depends on no such fixed codex. Instead, Democracy evolves according to its people.

For example, if an Afro-Descendant male should rise to the highest elected office in a democracy, then he and his attributes falls under the scrutiny of the society – in effect, he becomes a living codex by which the country runs. If Obama should be pro-abortion then institutions and laws change accordingly. However, it is not always the person elected to the highest office who alters the structure of the society the most. If Bin Laden should come out to be pro-abortion, then perhaps his views influenced Obama, who in turn influenced laws and mores in the country. Over time, a democracy not only imitates its finest trend-setter (be it, Obama or Bin Laden), but also reproduces him. After WWII, many people decided to name their sons Winston, after Churchill.

Communism depends on a stock of intellectual capital to move forward. Somewhere in the offices of every member of the Communist Party of China is a translated copy of Marx (not Groucho). Similarly, if we look at religions we can apply the label of “Intellectually Capitalist Communities,” since they general rely on some central, physical text, or codex.

The difference then becomes a question of how these differing societies move forward along the axis of Time. Bob Dylan, for example, may have played a large part, believe it or not, in the success of the Civil Rights Movement of Martin Luther King. That is, the prototypical baby boomer, Dylan, may have succeeded in rallying enough force to change segregation laws. That means, a large-scale shift in the sexual habits of the population in the 40’s actually had an impact on laws and customs towards Afro-Descendants twenty years later. Conversely, Marx’s texts have remained uniform for over a hundred years. The Five-Year Plan, turned into another and another and another. The question then becomes, how does a Communist nation (or an ICC) evolve? Much more slowly.

While Democracies change as rapidly as the biology of the people, Communism keeps a reserve of intellectual stock. That is why Democracies as so much more focused on happiness (“the pursuit of happiness”) and Communist Countries are more focused on the reconcilement of biology with doctrine (the people may suffer, but the nation shall flourish). That is why crafters of doctrine in Communist Countries are treated like gods (statues, posters, films, etc.): the nation is essentially their brainchild. The streets run this way because Mao envisaged the Guerilla Warrior in such a way, the buildings are so high because Lenin believed it to be right. That is why religions have a much harder time in Communist Countries than Democracies: the people have a hard time glorifying Marx at the same time as glorifying Jesus.

Religions in Democracies are almost comedic. There is the Easter Bunny that coincides with the holiest of occasions, the Resurrection. There even exists April Fools Day, and Groundhog Day. As soon as the Easter Bunny starts winning real votes in real elections, then it may start being treated more seriously. Then more people may start wearing bunny ears and searching for eggs. “Yes, we can,” would ring through every egg-hunters ears. The culture, in effect, dramatically – almost ridiculously (in fact, always ridiculously) – changes as a result of the election.

Communist citizens have a harder time suspending their disbelief: before rushing to the costume store, or to the lynching (for that matter), they turn to the sober second thought of men who rose, not because of a Baby Boom or a large Afro-Descendant demographic, but because of the longevity of their ideas – and in most cases, they speak from beyond the grave. Since no one wishes to imitate the dead, imitating doctrine is a welcome consolation prize. However, it is often Communist Countries who turn out to seem unrealistic in retrospect. Herein lies the inherit difference between the two methods of governing a country: the difference between what can be done in Fiction and what can be done in Reality.

While it is true that all political philosophy often falls in the non-fiction floors of libraries, when it comes to their application in reality, then the fictitious rises to the surface. While Marx may have believed, for example that “Man produces himself through Labour,” his neglect of specifying what kinds of labour produces men, or produces men more swiftly, attracts the label “Fiction.” Inversely, Democracies require living proof before they evolve. If President George W. Bush was able to survive his first term alive and without an across-the-board White House mutiny, then perhaps re-electing him for his second term “wouldn’t be such a bad idea.” Even though Kruschev spoke out against Stalin immediately after his death, Communism still persisted – why? because it was not the fault of the electors to have trusted Stalin (if ever they should have thought in terms of elections), but the fault of Stalin in not understanding the Soviet Union’s stock of doctrine (one book handily being called, Capital).

Such is the problem with Communist Countries: they raise scholars to political office. In America, it is often hardened generals or war vets – people who have seen the hell of life with their own eyes – who retire/rise into public office. Lenin had to be a scholar, Kruschev had to be a scholar, Gorbachev is still a scholar. In order for change to happen the scholars must allowed direct control of government. This is what has happened to Iran. Yet, in Democracies, as much as statecraft is divided from warcraft (strained civil-military relations), even politicizing and intellectualizing are becoming more and more divided. Public office seeks the most upstanding citizens, while scholars are often a little too eccentric to garner sufficient votes. It is that eccentricity that often leads to things like the Gulags Archipelago, and the Ministry of Propaganda.

Scholars have a hard job, but they must be allowed the time they need (sometimes several times the duration of their human lives), to be proven right or wrong by other scholars. Yet the problem with the world at the moment is that the schisms of scholars often play themselves out at the inter-state level. While Voltaire might still be at odds with Marx (even though they are both dead and even though Marx came after Voltaire), Marx has effectively mobilized most of Asia (the Russia and China swaths) against Voltaire-enamoured Canada. That is most certainly not the case, but it shows how, potentially, intellectual differences manifest themselves in the physical world (there are countless other good examples, but the one I chose is the most uncontestable I could find: Voltaire is not Communist, Marx is not Democratic (even though I don’t necessarily agree with this either)).

The example of bees can be of some use to us in thinking about this. Wild bees have a bee hive. Often there is a fight that involves the bees in a vicious war: this is what happens when intellects are forced to carry out their ideas themselves inside of nations. The other kind of bees are kept bees. If ever there is a disturbance, the bee keeper can come and slide racks around a little bit, or something: this is what happens when intellects, however heavy their burdens, are not forced inside the crowded confines of the bee community.

The problem arises when too many people want to be the bee keepers/intellects. Often the weakness of their arguments is compensated by the audacity of their rhetoric, the brawn of their organization, or the gusto of their public relations office. In the case of Bin Laden, you have an intellectual who seeks to delay being proven wrong for as long as possible via the use of extremist measures. This is a case in point for the general rule that extremism is always a filibuster. The bees should be happy to have a keeper who will help them sort out their affairs once in a while, and this keeper should rise organically from the bees. But once risen to a certain level, the scholar should be allowed space, time, and resources to do his business. It is worth noting that the great Marx himself was stricken his entire life with embarrassing monetary problems (I often think that the only reason that is a “Marx and Engels” is because the latter so often helped the former out financially).

Intellectuals that have reached a certain level within a society should be lauded with spoils as much as superstars like Paris Hilton and Brad Pitt are. They do important work and it doesn’t hurt for them to make the cover of magazines and the reels of entertainment news shows. Yet the major problem with reaching “a certain level” is that it has customarily taken most people most of their lives to comprehend the Bible, or even Marx. But there are cases when real genius is exhibited in academic circles and these individuals must be nurtured by society in general – not just frugal University Provosts.

Then, the Democratic nation could have a real model to use as its code-writer: the young, intelligent, and rich scholar who’s smile can light up any desolate spot. For, while it is important in Democracies to raise political leaders, it is equally important to maintain a wide array of quasi-farcical holidays and greater-than-life personalities. These nodes help the entire society deal with a constantly-changing situation. Thus far, living-intellectuals in Democracies have had silent, indirect influences on the code-writing process, but this does not have to always be the case.

There can come a time when an entire nation relies on a single person for all of its cultural code-writing (codes for dealing with new challenges to individuals and society as a whole). Once this process has become complete and the slightest blink from the meta-citizen impacts the lives of millions, then that individual becomes what the Iranians call the “Imam Zaman” or Nabob of Time. This makes sense only if we perceive Time as being a function of cultural progress: if everyone agrees that we have moved forward a month, then we have moved forward a month. If everyone agrees with the Nabob of Time about everything, including (but not limited to) the progress of time, then he/she becomes in control of Time itself.

However, this can only take place in a Communist Country where the final stock of intellectual “capital” is in the sole possession of the Nabob of Time’s memory. This is the case of the intellect who, not only knows all that was written, but has produced a large amount of new ideas himself; he need only keep a single idea out of the hands of the people to clinch his Communist control. In a Democratic context the Nabob of Time have even divulged this final idea and the saturation would be such that there would be a constant election of him by the people back into the center of the code-writing process. He could not be in control of time because each citizen would have the time stamped on the back of each ballot he/she casts before every election, which would take place before every increment of Time could go forward: while he wouldn’t be a Nabob of Time, he would at least be the Nabob of Culture.

It is more useful to have a Nabob of Culture (a Democratic Structure) than a Nabob of Time (a Communist Structure) simply because it ensure that Time does not get ahead of the biological elements (people) that compose it. Once the Nabob of Culture gets exhausted, another can be elected; yet if the Nabob of Time gets exhausted, Time itself slows down and may even stop (the final datum dying with him/her).

It is a paradox then that both Communist and Democrats accept Time, even though Time is the ultimate Democratic force, since it requires the watches of every citizen to make the public clock tick.

Time is the tempo/rhythm/tattoo of cultural progression: a culture that keeps an intellectual stock in reserve (Communist Nabob of Time Scenario) is one that believes in the manipulation of God. The externalized bee-keeper metaphor can also be used for God in a Communist structure – a God which may be summoned with enough perturbation among the bees themselves. It can be conceived that the ultimate trend-setter in a Communist structure can influence all other parties to work in concert (his concert) in a sustainable way long enough to draw the bee-keeper’s (God’s) attention. Marx can be seen as such a long-term trend-setter. A very famous book recently, called The Da Vinci Code, might suggest that Leonardo Da Vinci was such trend-setter: touching so many different areas, so profoundly that he actually wired in a new code for all of human culture (one simply need to think about the perfect geometrical lines around the Vitruvian Man to appreciate how our biology can be crossed and surrounded by intellectual lines).

If such a Code to Culture exists, then can it be deliberately, even collaboratively, manipulated? In theory, yes, but that is the subject of a different paper.

The differences between Communist countries and Democratic countries are very palpable. In Communist country, it is not as important to your happiness what you know, but what you feel is right; in Democratic countries, the populace must be kept constantly informed about the actions of its trend-setters (from Oprah’s newest dog to Obama’s newest speechwriter). As long as Mao is watching you, you are still okay; you don’t need to focus on much more than the back of a seat in front of you on a bus. On a Democratic bus, you usually consider what you just read about the state of the union and so on. The problem with the Communist structure of Intellectual Capitalism is that it does not encourage a population to learn: not knowing the ultimate secret of the Nabob of Time may allow for the Nabob of Time’s Utopia to surround him, but, like all utopias, it marks a stagnation. Thus, using the ultimate secret, the Nabob of Time (Communist) can manipulate God by first stunting its growth and development.

The great risk that the Nabob of Culture who depends on a constant electoral process based on complete unanimity in the votes faces, is the likelihood of one voter voting “No.” This shows that consensus is lost and an investigation into the reasons of the naysayer must be carried out. The investigation may prove certain tenets of certain sub-tenets of the Nabob of Culture’s to be in need of modification: the can be resolved thanks to a quick modification, or the “naysayer” being in the possession of knowledge not formerly owned by the Nabob of Culture can replace the Nabob of Culture as the new Nabob of Culture. The only time that the Nabob of Time can possibly lose control is if God interferes in his Utopia. That God is the Nabob of Culture.

Every voter in a Democracy is a Nabob of Time living his own Utopia, holding on to his own knowledge (usually the image of the Nabob of Culture) until he strolls through his Utopia and one day find the image of God himself: the Nabob of Culture. Then his memory is filled to its capacity once again. What the Utopia is good for is a slow process of forgetting. Once all information is synthesized by higher-capacity information, then all that is left is a single thought: the vote. The ultimate decision of Free Will: Yes or No, to go or to stop, to be or not to be. And the highest triumph of life is very simply its desire to live.

That is why Communism can never fully replace Democracy. Democracy set biological limits as the highest test of any idea. Therefore, in a Democracy, while God may help the process, may even be the process, he shall never rise above the Nabob of Culture.

The Nabob of Time is constantly in a state of forgetting while the Nabob of Culture is in a constant state of remedying his amnesia, collecting memory. Every “Yes” vote, is a new memory. What happens then when there is a “No” vote?

What happens is that the Nabob of Culture see himself in the form of the Naysayer. That Naysayer would have had to have gone forward in time by fooling both the Nabob of Culture and the electorate in thinking they were around for lo for a shorter period of time then they were around. The “No” vote would have to be dealt with immediately by the Nabob of Culture and the higher intelligences, perhaps an artificial intelligences would have to be understood. Once this higher intelligence is understood by the Nabob of Culture, if ever, since this is a very intelligent human, then the Nabob of Culture would negotiate with this higher lifeform and barter a deal for the entire Universe. From that point on, the higher intelligence is given the title of God, and the Nabob of Culture is turned into a historical agent, who himself holds an encrypted key which he will reveal once his terms are met by God. This is the creation of a higher, better species. Humanity will be kept around in the form of archiving techniques in either a museum or a zoo or a paradise refound. The apocalypse is hen the Nabob of Culture, being already given this mandate by the Democracy from which he rose, accepts the retirement deal, the Golden Handshake of God.

To borrow from one of David Reynolds’ book titles, this former Nabob of Culture now becomes “in command of history.” Physics, Biology, Law, Fiction, Theology, and Philosophy all work in synchrony to carry out his contract with God. “This is the way the world will end…not with a bang, but with a whimper,” (to borrow from The Waste Land).

History is not just something that happens and goes away. Everything that happens changes everything else in a permanent way. For a system like the Earth to have lasted as long as it has is because certain things have been working themselves out, without necessarily canceling each other out in the process, until the present consciousness (or consciousness of the present) was permitted to take place. Free Will only developed after the Ice Age happened first; it is conceivable then that we may one day look back at the Age of Free Will as yet another self-contained Period: one marked not by mammoths, but by “Yes or No”er’s. And this too may seem obvious one day.

Yet History is never something that has been marked by inevitability. It is not certain that the future can live up to the preparations of History. It is not even certain that Time alone, however positive and democratic, may ensure the dismissal of Communism or ICC’s – it would be primitive to presume it will. They say the devil can cite scripture to his purpose, so the devil can be a scholar too.

Sometimes the most violent, sadistic, criminal minds are nestled comfortably on the shelves of libraries around the world. It would take too long to list them all, but suffice to say that these authors do more harm than good to the people who read them. Take, as just one example, Nietzsche. This is not a good person, nor a kind person, nor a generous person. He may be intelligent, but his bottom line ends with: “there will never be a mind greater than me.” That to me is nothing if not unproductive.

It is the very purpose of academic life to encourage the process of questioning. But in Communist Countries and in ICC’s, where intellect is seen as something of inherent value, much like any other commodity, new ideas are discouraged for they flood the “markets” and diminish the value of the stock in the possession of the aforementioned parties. But this kind of procedure, of stifling new ideas, causes a large-scale inflation in the “price” of good ideas. They become harder and harder to come by. It is like saying that China not only pegs its Renminbi to the U.S. Dollar, but also pegs its ideas to Karl Marx: it does wonders for asserting control over the markets, but it only encourages scholars to keep Karl Marx as dominant. Instead of finding gaps in this argument, they turn to layers in his meaning. “In fact, Marx meant this when he spoke about labour.” But the curious Chinese student is not encouraged to ask, or even wonder, “Then why didn’t he write that down as well?” This may (emphasis definitely mine) be what Dante meant when he said, “there is no knowledge without retention.” The Devil, as always, is in the details.

In reality, there are all kinds of labour. Not only is there the production of needles, but also the production of poultry and harlequin romances. There is a big difference between spending your life in a cage, producing flesh on your bones, and sitting down and writing sappy pulp fiction. Intellectual contemplation, discovery, discourse is as much a “bodily function” as “sexual activity” – which Marx categorizes as “the highest bodily function” – therefore it is important, when thinking about how man produces himself through labour to prioritize the differing kinds of labour involved in that production. Otherwise, the Communist regime can cite one line of Marx (usually the same line) to convince the youngling construction worker that what he’s producing is not just aches in his back and pains in his neck, but “himself.” The Devil will talk to you for ever, but will tend to repeat himself often enough to make you work at the same time. That is why every utopia is always a distopia outside the mind of its creator.

Our complex reality demands much more than simple sequential arguments; it requires constant feedback. Everytime you blink you receive confirmation from the universe around you that your continue to be a micro-Nabob of Culture. Every moment of self-awareness, whether conscious or sub-conscious or both, is an electoral victory for you as a micro-Nabob of Culture, for an extra increment of time towards your experience in the present.

But sometimes you experience something that makes you momentarily forget everything. This is the “No” vote in the democratic process of the universe around you; that one that sends our macro-Nabob of Culture off to a negotiation with God (the anthropromorphized artificial intelligence). This can even happen to you while you are doing something as mundane as reading your only copy of Karl Marx. That moment teaches you a great number of things about all of your presumptions up to that point and demands an immediate process of reappraisal: “perhaps the possessing idea of Gravity in itself cannot, indeed, save me from drowning after all” (from Marx’s The German Ideology). This new idea then replaces and overcompensates for all of your previous memories. With it, you enter into a higher level of self-production, where new ideas need to be of much higher value for them to be purchased by you. The value of your new ideas will then be “pegged” in value to the “No” idea. Even your conception of Time changes because your conception of Infinity improves. To paraphrase from St. Paul, “when I was a child, I spoke and acted as a child. Now that I am a man, it is time to be childish things aside.”

If you placed a squirrel in the mind of a human for a single day, that squirrel will have thought he lived for a million years by early-afternoon. There is so much more happening in the mind of a man than in the mind of a squirrel that time actually goes faster in men. If then there exist exceptional intellects, they should, as mentioned above, be segregated from the general population and allowed to bloom. This is a method by which the human species can send emissaries forward in Time to allow for safe-passage – which explains why how some of the greatest thinkers in history have been said to have been, “ahead of their time.” It is no accident, it is humanities way of testing powerful ideas before committing to them entirely.

Hitherto, the only “license to kill” that has been conventionally handed out in democratic nations have been to spies and assassins. Nearly unlimited budgets, very little oversight, and tremendous mobility among the government’s higher ranks has been bestowed upon James Bondesk figures. It is arguable that this kind of overgenerosity and trust in spies and assasins is responsible for incredibly well organized terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden, who, it is widely agreed, benefited from CIA financing and support of insurgents against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Often, highly-advanced scholars who are far ahead of their time are the subject of incredible castigation by their peers: they are tortured (like Machiavelli), kept in extreme poverty (like Ramanujan, a great mathematician who dies in his thirties of lead poisoning thanks to too many years of using filthy pots and pans), or forced to put on an “antic disposition” (like Prince Hamlet). This is where the pivotal role of Universities comes into play.

War is, in its purest form, a contest over Truth. Extremism, it would follow, is always a filibuster. Violence, being subjective, can be said to have University campuses as its primordial breeding grounds. In actual fact, universities are often the scenes of the closest thing to Clausewitz’s conception of “total war.” Not only do scholars work in the production of themselves, but also of other people. The Cold War may never have taken place had Marx not succeeded in being so domineering, even boorish, in many of his university discussions. But his arguments not only survived the onslaughts of the “Young Hegelians” but even made tangible headway. What we, as a people, learned from the great wars of our past, such as WWII, remain with us forever; equally true are the lessons learned after the major intellectual wars past us. For example, Zoroastrianism was once the dominant religion of Persia; this has been replaced in large parts – except for some pockets around Esfahan – by Islam. While Marx may have posited that “religion is the opium of the people,” the same can be applied to Marxism – that it too is an opiate of the masses. The bees are calmed best by the bee keeper, not civil war; yet, the struggle, here personified by Marx and Mohammed is one that needs to be decided well before the bees start to grumble. In times when a clear victory cannot be decided, it often falls on the weaker party to hunker down and operate a filibuster via extremist measures – this often takes the form of ad homonyms, where one intellectual refutes not only what he disagrees with but also some of the things he agrees with in the hope of wearing down his fellow intellectual in a process of destruction (as Liddell Hart describes war).

Thusly, biological intellectuals are often the victims of ideological dialectic. This is why promotion in the academic world cannot be decided purely by peer-review: it must involve the proletariat. Ideas are often measured in blood, but they also have to be tempered by warm-blooded individuals. What is the use of engaging in a Lilliputan war that would cost millions of lives only if it turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory? Was it really necessary to mobilize the young men and women of Oceania to destroy all of Eurasia only to ensure the murder of one man, Goldstein? While philosophers may have to infinity to “talk of Michelangelo” (T. S. Elliot), historians often buttress most of what they say with the promise: “how this is going to help you pay your rent.” It is like investing in a bricks-and-mortar venture (say, Baskin Robbins) versus the emblematic Pets.com during the Internet Bubble of the late 90’s. In times of great change it is easy to be convinced by those most zealous about their own righteousness. For example, all of the enemies of Caesar were successful in banding together, killing Caesar under the banner of “ambitious dictator”, and asserting control. It was not until Mark Antony (if we may depend on Plutarch) reminded the masses of the real changes Caesar had brought about in their lives and what he had planned on bestowing them in his will, that zeal took a backseat to the tangible results brought about by the Julians.

Wisdom comes when we convert the painful details of history into everyday facets of our behaviour; when we incorporate them into our Standard Operating Procedures (the much-vaunted SOP’s most militaries live by). It is for this reason that the Nabob of Culture usually has very few personal problems. Foremost on the list of the Nabob of Cultures values are transparency, accountability, and sustainability. It is much more sustainable to be love than to be feared. Compare this to Machiavelli’s advice in The Prince that it is better to be feared than to be loved. This is Machiavelli’s way of crafting the ideal Nabob of Time, who is de jure ruler of a princedom. But it is a rule enabled by a fraud: he takes this to its extreme in his play, “The Mandrake”, where an old doctor’s wife is lured away by a younger man who had hired a cast of actors to mislead the doctor – power is here asserted via the propagation of a lie. While Machiavelli pens a happy ending to the story, with the doctor not bitter, reality could never accept such a process as acceptable. Human beings, like lambs, accept their fates only when the shepherd is not a fox.

Thanks to the possession of memory, pure Communism or pure Chaos are impossibilities among human communities. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say that the ideal comes true and suddenly all of humanity looks and acts exactly alike and finds itself on a plane of infinite nothingness. The first thing that every person would do would be exactly the same as every other person and so on: they would start walking around and be struck by the number of identical-looking individuals also walking around and being equally taken aback. It would look something like a perfect chain reaction with an unknown number of human walking around in seemingly perfectly random directions. They would talk to each other, but they would all talk at the same time and say the same things to each other. The first thing that they would attempt to do to find some order within themselves is to find out how many they are. But this idea would come instantly to the minds of everyone at the same time, and there would be no sequence in the numbering process, for every individual – thinking herself – supreme would shout out “One!” over and over and over again. They would keep walking about hoping to at last find some sense of orientation. Then each individual would clue into another possible way of creating order within themselves: geographic origin. They would walk around for as long as it takes until suddenly they all feel that they have finally return to where they started. This is where the first instance of collective memory is triggered: at that instant they would all turn towards the center and close in until, squeezed between three evenly spaced out individual, the center individual is announced. The first thing everybody would then do would be to sit down, leaving the center individual standing. Thus would begin the number process, thus would begin the ordering process, and thus memory (individual and collective) would inevitably lift the collective out of pure Communism, and pure Chaos. Then the first thing they would do would be to figure out how in the world they all got there in the first place, and then where they want to go from there. Thus Democracy, rising from collective memory and action, raises the collective out of Chaos and permanent repetition.

In the above scenario, a tremendous war (the hurried scramble back to individual geographic origin) brought about the primal truth: who is One. From that point on the number system can begin, and thus the act of nomenclature. But it does not need to stay at simply numbers, each name can be a fusion of number and location. From there a society can be built, peace can be maintained, thanks to the use of memory and collective consensus. This is why, while War in its purest form is a contest over Truth, Peace in its purest form is the process of Art. Perhaps all it requires to raise themselves out of limbo is the act of interlocking arms and catching an inter-galactic breeze to salvation.

Humanity does not have the luxury of knowing anyone “outside the galaxy” who can answer the question of how we ended up in such a mess in the first place. But that does not mean that the answer isn’t somewhere out there and that we shouldn’t strive to pool our aspirations to someday find it. In the meantime there is a seemingly-infinite number of ways we can name ourselves, arrange and rearrange ourselves. However, worst-case scenarios like the above thought-experiment and unanswerable questions like do not force us to abandon those things that make each of us unique and special: not just in our appearance and aptitudes but also in our irreproducible place in space and time. Thanks to our present consensus on what time it is, we have at least one collective, ongoing memory on which we can all count on. But it is not enough to make you quit your day job.

Marx’s observation that familiarity with the concept of Gravity alone cannot save you from drowning is the basis of Historical Materialism. Reality is far less forgiving to the body than it is to the idea. Hedonism and consumption will never fully be satisfied by parables; instead they demand fish and wine. Another reason for not rebelling against your shepherd or bee keeper is because he helps you get fed. That is what the Nabob of Culture would have to include in his negotiations with God (the vocalized artificial intelligence that arose from the process of conscious democratic society): whatever terms must include a substantial amelioration in the experiences of life (fewer back aches, more self-production). This is what Vico may have meant by his verum factum principle. Truth, the result of War, can only be sustained in Peace if it is turned into Art – that is, if it is retained (to borrow from Dante again) in some physical way. But humanity, however democratically it may be structured, is more than a handy mnemonic – it is a species with a desire to flourish (to borrow from Charles Taylor’s phrase, “human flourishing”).

The only way Communism can overcome Democracy is via an Opium War. Like the hapless Doctor in “The Mandrake” Democracy may fall victim to a cleverly conceived hoax by Communism long-enough to fall permanently in a drug-enhanced hypnosis. Simply thinking about the 15 Billion Dollars that falls into the hands of drug-cartels every year in Canada, is enough to reconsider the nature of threats posed by organized crime. In order to maintain power, Mafia Bosses corrupt democratic bulwarks such as the judicial system and even elected officials. Society often looks the other way because of the significant amount of drugs they are credited with providing the citizens. Money collected in this manner goes directly towards financing more and more sophisticated espionage equipment and capacities; as well as quasi-military brute. Most shockingly similar to the con of “The Mandrake” is how unnoticed they remain within Democracies. The electorate becomes powerless in pursuing them. For example, the 21 year-old son of Montreal’s top Mafia Boss was recently shot “gangland style”: the police openly conceded to the news media that the mafia would carry out its own investigation and, the not-so-subtle implication was, justice. What stops such well-financed, enterprising, organization from corrupting psychiatric institutions as well? Where the diagnosis of “psychotic” is applied to anyone who points fingers to corruption? With “psychotic” comes forced incarceration and medication. Soon, the upstanding citizen is turned into a doped-up vegetable. Today, looking at the awesome breath of drug-cartels, Marx may have been more apt to say, “Opium is the opiate of the masses.” Who is to day that a country such as North Korea is not delighted at, if not encouraging/financing/directing such examples of growing parallel powers within Canada and other Democratic Countries? More importantly, how can Democracies defend themselves?

Essentially, at its root, the difference between Democracy and Communism is a difference accentuated between Vico and Descartes: while Democracy depends on the verum factum principle of how ideas have shaped the Nabob of Culture into first among equals, Communism requires a momentary suspension of disbelief to accept the cogito ergo sum principle and an elevation of creation above creators. Once again, Communism depends on the acceptance of a Codex for its functioning, while Democracy depends on the election of a Code-Writer for its functioning. The latter is the union of survival of the fittest in both thinking thing and thing thought. It is why, often, the most alluring part of a U.S. President is his smile (one can’t deny that, however many his foibles, George W. Bush had an amazing smile). But the threats posed by drugs requires that scholars begin to play a more this-worldly role in state-craft.

Paris Hilton and Brad Pitt are iconic figures not by accident. Hollywood not only depends on that natural elevation of its talent to the top, but has set up several deliberate mechanism of selection in the form of various industry-related award ceremony such as the Academy Awards. Universities across the United States should orchestrate a similar contest where, on an annual basis, the top essays and essayists (scholarship and scholars) are voted on, not only by their peers at the school they go attend or the journal they help to edit, but by every university in the country in a large-scale contest. One example of how this could work could be a million-dollar prize awarded to the best 10,000-word article on any subject voted on by one representative of every university; the public could become involved by submitting papers to the contest as well as voting as part of a single “Public Vote”, which could possibly break a tie. With the money comes also prestige – enough to afford many disenfranchised intellectuals with a long-awaited “room of one’s own” (Virginia Woolf). This would send a clear message: SCHOLARS OF THE WORLD UNITE!

In conclusion, intellectual capitalism, as practiced by Communism and ICC’s (including drug cartels) may provide stability and idealistic order, but it is Democracy’s activity of backing up its doctrine with living examples that will best ensure human flourishing. While Time, agreed upon all over the world, is now on the side of Democracy, it is possible that via use of “The Mandrake” the Communist Nabob of Time can even pervert this facet of human development, thus sending the Nabob of Culture like Ulysses to Calypso’s Island, where years are traded in for days. The free flow of ideas, unpegged from sine qua non canon, must be hotly, sometimes violently, warred over inside the hallowed cloisters of institutions of higher learning in order to invigorate – not replace – the never-ending process of self-production, re-production, and amelioration. While, it is hard to imagine Communism with Karl Marx, it is conceivable it imagine Democracy without Voltaire, without Obama, or even George Orwell – this is the resilience of transparent, accountable, and sustainable processes. It is a process that takes for granted that all parties will remember to check their watches against the public clock, not be afraid to ask for the time from passersby, and, when necessary, demand for the installation of more clocks from elected officials. Without consensus, we lose not only Time, but risk to lose language, laws, habits, customs, and History itself.

Email subject: "Speusippus and Chomsky"

2009-09-04T15:56:00.001-07:00

Speusippus and Chomsky

Saeed Fotohinia

Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 6:52 PM

To: Noam Chomsky

What I find most affronting about your ideas is that they are always non-committal. But you are not the first to have mastered this concept - that of building ideas off other ideas. Speusippus (Plato's successor of the Academy in Athens, and Aristotle's less-famous peer), also believed in the concept of "fluxion". Take the following:

"Speusippus believes that _conceptually_ we derive the line from the point, the plan from the line, and the solid from the plane. This is the meaning of his statement that the point is the first principle of magnitude, the line the second, the plane the third, the solid the fourth. The conceptual derivation of magnitudes ultimately from the point he probably explained by his theory that the line is the 'fluxion' of the point, the plane of the line, and the solid of the plane...." (p. 55, _Speusippus of Athens: A Critical Study with a Collection of the Related Texts and Commentary_, by Leonardo Taran, E.J. Brill Publishers, Leidon, The Netherlands, 1981).

But if we follow this derivative quasi-scientific mode of thought, then we will always remain in the infinitude of 9's that exist between material integers; example: 1.999...,2.999...,3.... The Golden Key to your entire body of work is as follows: you overlook the useful element of vanity, which is potential productivity in the future. Thus the Cult of the Personality is important thanks to its bond to possible prosperity for Life.

Saeed Fotohinia

Transcript of Video-Meeting Noam Chomsky and Saeed Fotohinia Oct 29 2008

2009-05-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Chomsky: How’s it goin?

Fotohinia: Yes. Yes.

C: Good.

F: So, that’s the camera over there.

C: Oh.

F: Alright. Well –

C: Get this out of the way.

F: Umm.

C: How is this, What is this, what is this gonna be for?

F: It’s gonna be for YouTube.

C: So, Um, before we get started, I’d like to read a passage from 1984

F: Uh. To the future or to the past. To a time when thought is free. When men are different from one another and do not live alone. To a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone. From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink, greetings.

F: Uh. So. Uh. Professor can you come forward please.

NC: Sure

F: Thanks. Uh. So. Hello YouTube. This is Professor Noam Chomsky, whose reputation in the Who’s Who ranges…goes on for almost half a page…the 2008 Who’s Who. My name is Saeed Navid Fotohinia. I’m someone who’s been doing a lot of work with the United Nations. Uh. For example: this is a picture of me with Thabo Mbeki. Uh. This is a picture of me with Jean Chretien.

C: Getting around.

F: This is Castro. This is the Chief of Defence Staff, when I was in the military, when I was in the Canadian Forces. I was a Second Lieutenant and this is our only General in Canada, General Rick Hillier. And this is an article in the military, the Post Gazette entitled, “Message of Muslim Soldier Intended to Help Troops See Humanity”, and it starts off with: “By his own admission 2Lt. Saeed Fotohinia’s appearance is a contradiction: ‘Take a minute to see the image before you. First you may notice I am Middle Eastern by appearance; then you may notice I am military by dress. As an image I at once fit the profile of a terrorist and an anti-terrorist,’ he said, ‘a vivid oxymoron in green and brown juxtaposed against a glorious red and white.’” In fact, that paragraph is what I was whispering to Rick Hillier when we took that picture. Uh, so, I worked with the United Nations as the kind of organizer of the first youth summit in the history of…to be accredited in the history of the UN. And that took place in 2001 in South Africa and was a great success. However, 9/11 took place right after that, and uh…I’d like to read something from Michael Baer Terrorism get into a little bit of discussion: “Terrorism systematically undermines trust in a context of increasing mutual dependence. As systematically unsystematic violence, terrorism undermines trust on two levels: it undermines the citizen’s trust in their government’s ability or will to protect them, and b) it undermines the citizens trust in one another as individuals. Terrorism thus has the effect of deligitamizing and destabilizing the social institutions and relationships with ones that are based on fear or coercion. Now I bring that up because I know that a young man, who said he represented the voice of young people, whose real name is Sacha Baron Cohen, but who called himself Ali G, came and interviewed you in the same way that he interviews a lot of other very influential people in the world; and that is by asking questions that are very insincere and that don’t real seek a true answer, and just, instead, lampoon the person who is trying to answer it [sic.]. And um…do you think that 9/11 is a similar breech of the rules of etiquette by one party with a certain ideology on a different…uh…uh…plane.

C: I’m afraid I don’t see any comparison. 9/11 was a huge criminal atrocity. It was aimed at killing thousands of people…massive destruction…I don’t see anything amusing about it or anything ironic about it. It’s just a major crime. I must say I wasn’t terribly impressed by Ali G either. In fact I continued the interview only out of politeness; my immediate instinct was just to terminate it.

F: Well that’s what I mean. I mean, if Al Qaeda were polite (quote, unquote), they’d go to the United Nations.

C: That’s like saying if the United States were “polite”, it wouldn’t invade Iraq. It has nothing to do with politeness.

F: Well, I mean.

C: This is a matter of achieving political ends. And that, in fact, fits the definition of Terror.

F: But..

C: It’s the “threat or use of force to attain ideological, political, religious or other ends.”

F: How about friendship though? I mean, like a conversation doesn’t need to be about attaining political ends, or a tit-for-tat. It can be about mutual gain. And terrorists as much as the sham voice of young people are equally guilty..or..uh…you know..on a very specific level of…uh…bad manners.

C: You see I don’t think it’s “bad manners” to slaughter thousands of people. That’s not the right category. Or let me continue, you quoted someone, I’ve forgotten who, about the effect of Terror…

F: Michael Bauer.

C: Yeah. There are other comments on the effect of Terror. For example, one important comment is that Terror, if intensifies, tends to leave a culture of Terror, which domesticates the aspirations of the majority of the population and keeps them from even dreaming of pursuing their own ends. That’s an effect of Terror. I happen to be quoting from a Jesuit-led conference in San Salvador, where they’re talking about Reagan’s War on Terror – namely a hideous terrorist war which devastated El Salvador, killed tens of thousands of people, and happened to be, in significant measure, directed against the Church. This conference was led by the surviving Jesuits, many of them were slaughtered by Reagan’s terrorist forces. But I wouldn’t use the word impolite for that.

F: Well…

C: Would you use the word impolite for the Holocaust?

F: Would I?

C: Yeah.

F: Um. What I mean is…Uh I’m coming from a Linguistic approach, and I definitely share with you the deep sorrow as a person for what happened on 9/11. Personally, as someone who worked at a conference against racism a week before 9/11, I was very much affected by it because, here we were, at the United Nations speaking, writing – you know, young people, seven hundred young people from around the world – writing a declaration against racism and then, on my way back to Montreal, when I was in Heathrow, I hear about these terrible events that actually have changed the entire world. Um, there is no doubt in my that that was an extremely violent and an unmitigated crime against humanity.

C: Then why bring up the issue of politeness?

F: It’s a question of words. And you recently wrote a foreword to Andrea Moro’s The Boundaries of Babel, and he speaks of a kind of universal language, an approach to a universal grammar, and to give the audience in YouTube a flavour of what he talks about I’ll quote just a little bit from his Preface: “This book is the history of an encounter of the cultures Linguistics and the Neuroscience, or more precisely the Cognitive Neurosciences. It is also the attempt to expose a hidden revolution in contemporary science: the discovery that the number of possible grammar is not infinite, and that their number is biologically limited. I say hidden because, despite the fact that concepts…,” and he goes on from there.

C: You’re quoting Moro?

F: Yes.

C: Yeah.

F: Yeah. Is there a root to meaning? Has Terror lost all sense all value as a word? How can we approach the word “God” or swear words…a four-letter word…in a way that encompasses the new biological connection that is being uncovered in Linguistics?

C: Well, first of all, the discoveries that Moro is talking about in Linguistics and Neuroscience are quite real, but they don’t impinge on these issues. The connections are so remote that it’s hardly worth drawing. With regard to Terror, we can have a perfectly sencical discussion about it, if we are willing to free ourselves from ideological constraints. So just to be concrete, I’ve been writing extensively about Terror – books, and articles, and talks, giving talks and so on – ever since 1981. That’s when Ronald Reagan came to office and declared that the focus of his administration would be a War on Terror. And it became a huge issue after that. War on Terror. The way the administration described it was, you know, a plague of the modern age, a return to barbarism, and in time, destruction of civilization, so on and so forth. That’s been effaced from history, but the reason is, it instantly turned into a murderous, vicious, terrorist war, which slaughtered tens of thousands of people in Central America, hundreds of thousands in Southern Africa, and all sorts of other atrocities. And that’s not nice to remember, so therefore Reagan’s is off in the…George Orwell’s Memory Hole. But it was there. And, in fact, the Jesuit conference that I cited was referring to Reagan’s War on Terror. But we’re not supposed to think about that. Well, in writing about Terror I’ve committed a serious crime, and it’s denounced bitterly by American…Western intellectuals: namely I use the literal meaning of the term as it’s defined in the U.S. code, in the British…British Laws, in Army Manuals, and so on. Which is a perfectly sensible definition. The…I can’t repeat it verbatim, but something like um, “the calculated threat or use of force against civilian populations to achieve goals that are to..to intimidate…to achieve goals that are political, religious, or ideological in origin, and so on.” Yeah, fine definition of Terror.

F: Safe.

C: But you can’t use it.

F: No.

C: You can’t use it for a very simple reason: it doesn’t make a crucial distinction. It doesn’t distinguish between the terror that we carry out against them, which you’re not allowed to talk about…

F: Yeah.

C: And the terror which they carry out against us, which is a return to barbarism in the modern age, and so and so forth. So if the official definition is unusable and anyone who does use the official definition is a dangerous radical, and so on and so forth. Ah, but this, and therefore you have academic conferences trying to define terror, UN conferences and so on.

F: Actually…

C: It’s very hard to find a definition that makes the distinction that’s required: it excludes our terror but it includes their terror.

F: It’s a inverted psychology, where the, uh, to quote or paraphrase you: the oppressed is not the one who has a jackboot on his throat, it’s actually the one…uh…the one with the jackboot on the oppressed’s throat actually makes himself seem out…seem like the oppressed. Uh…so…to deal with that, I think the United Nations – and that’s why I interjected there – is arming itself with an arsenal of linguistic power…um…and in this Review Conference to the World Conference Against Racism of 2001, which is taking place on April 20^th to 24^th in 2009, in Geneva, the slogan for it is, uh, “Dignity”…”United Against Racism: Dignity and Justice for All.” And I think that, when it came…was agreed upon – I was there – when the High Commissioner for Human Rights was a former Canadian Chief of…sorry, not Chief of…Chair…Uh…Supreme Court Justice, whose name is Louise Arbour…and when it was announced, there seemed to be – for the first time in my experience with the United Nations – consensus! No…

C: There won’t be consensus as soon as you get down to particulars. So take Louise Arbour.

F: Okay.

C: She was the…ah…if I believe I am remembering correctly…I think she was the first prosecutor in the International Tribunal on the crimes in Yugoslavia…forgot the exact name. I believe it was…it might have been her successor – I don’t remember which. A group of International Lawyers, led by Canadian Lawyers, incidentally, brought to the Tribunal extensive documentations of NATO crimes: that was excluded from the discussion. And, in fact, the prosecutors simply said, “We take NATO word for it, that they didn’t commit any crimes. Okay so that was excluded from the discussion. Yeah, that’s what happens when you get down to details. We can talk about the crimes of others, but we cannot be honest about our own. Just like Terror, just like aggression. And there’s nothing sophisticated about this, you don’t need any Linguistics.

F: You have to…you can’t conflate…I mean…you know…an insult with an attack…a crime against humanity.

C: That’s why…

F: Like Ali G and Al Qaeda.

C: That’s why I objected to your original statements. Yes you cannot conflate them. We’re talking about totally different things: you insult somebody, okay; slaughtering them is quite different from insulting them. They have nothing to do with each other.

F: But the “Dignity and Justice for All” is a very powerful…

C: If you mean it.

F: …group of words.

C: If you mean it.

F: I mean.

C: On the other hand, if you what you mean is: ‘dignity and justice for all that we care about,’ it’s quite different.

F: Well let’s think about…

C: So let’s take 9/11 again.

F: Yeah.

C: Everybody agrees: terrible crime, changed the world.

F: Yes.

C: Could have been worse. Let’s do a thought experiment.

F: Okay.

C: Let’s imagine that on 9/11 that Al Qaeda had bombed the White House, killed the President, carried out a military coup, installed a vicious military dictatorship, which killed something like fifty to a hundred thousand people, tortured 700 000, established an International Terrorist Centre in the United States, which carried out military coups all over the world…

F: Right.

C: …assassinated people, and so on…

F: How much power would they have though?

C: Well…it’s…just listen to me for a minute.

F: Ok.

C: Suppose that that had happened.

F: Ok.

C: It would have been worse than 9/11, right?

F: It’ be…yes, it would be worse.

C: K. It happened. It happened on 9/11.

F: Ok.

C: It happened on 9/11 1973.

F: Ok.

C: That was the U.S.-backed coup in Chile. The only thing I’ve changed is…

F: Is that it’s the U.S.

C: …is per capita equivalence.

F: Yeah.

C: I’ve changed per capita equivalence – which is the right way to compare them. Other than that, it’s the same. Now why didn’t…that’s what called…

F: Well that’s the psy…inverted psychology of oppression.

C: It’s not inverted psychology; this is straight simple thinking, nothing sophisticated. Here is a huge crime (much worse than the second 9/11) – did it change the world, do we know about it, is it part of our consciousness? No. Cause we carried it out.

F: Well...we…I mean the United States and NATO…and Western…NATO…ah…developed countries…have a great deal more power than a Latin American…

C: So, it’s a very simple point. We don’t have to bring in Neuroscience or anything else. Nothing sophisticated. Are we willing to apply to ourselves the standards we apply to others? Very simple. Do we accept the principle of Universality? Namely, if it...if something’s a crime

F: There have to be responsibilities…

C: …it’s a crime when they commit it or when we commit it. Can we accept that or not? That’s a yes or no question. If yes, okay, then we’re in the same moral arra…

F: The system is not united. There has to be a united system whereby all agents who have a wield power can have some kind of…

C: No. I’m talking about a decision that individuals have to make: “Am I willing to accept the principle…

F: Okay.

C: …that if something’s a crime when they do it, it’s a crime when I do it.

F: Is it a Capital Crime?

C: That’s a separate question.

F: The United States is a Capital country.

C: Is it the same kind of crime when they do it than when I do?

F: Linguistically yes.

C: Am I willing to accept for myself the standards that I apply to others?

F: Okay.

C: If not, you’re out of the moral universe. There’s nothing to discuss.

F: There isn’t.

C: No. And if…and if it is then we can proceed sensibly.

F: And that’s what’s taking place.

C: The sophistication is just blowing smoke.

F: Let’s talk about oil. I mean…uh…within oil rich countries there seems autocracy that is reigning…no seems to be…no seems, there is. And so, the country…the entire world, becoming more and more dependant on oil producing countries, seems to be becoming more and more influenced, by that autocratic method of…uh…delivering a product, but, at a price – and it’s not a fair price. It’s not a…

C: Which? There’s many prices, which one are you talking about?

F: The degra…uh…degradation of democratic institutions.

C: That’s one price. Another price is destroying an environment in which our grandchildren might survive. Yeah, cause we’re using fossil fuels…

F: We’re using…

C: That’s another cost.

F: And the United States military, which I mention in my…uh…third book, Conditional Love, uhm, is transferring to the same type of synthetic oil for their Air Force that the Germans were using during…to back like over 50% of their military during World War Two, that happens to be a lot more harmful to the environment….Um…

C: Well, I’m missing your point.

F: Well, it…it’s not just fossil fuel use, but it’s also the breakdown of democratic institutions and institutions of negotiation, and replacing that with…

C: It’s also…

F: …institutions of military force.

C: It’s also the reason for atrocities like invading Iraq, killing a million people, driving out several million, destroying a country…

F: Yeah, it’s…

C: …a lot of crimes involved.

F: It’s a classic “anatomy of revolution” and I have at my disposal a perfect quote from Crane Brinton: “Dictatorships and revolutions are inevitably closely associated because revolutions to a certain extent break down or at least weaken laws, customs, habits, beliefs, which bind men together in society.

And when laws, customs, habits, beliefs bind men together

insufficiently force must be used to remedy that insufficiency.

Military force, is for short terms the most efficient kind of force

available for social and political uses, and military force demands a

hierarchy of obedience culminating in a generalissimo. As Ferrero

[another author] has put it, when ‘silken threads’ of habits,

tradition, legality are broken men must be held together in society by

‘iron chains of dictatorships.’ All this, however, is pretty much a

common place of our times.” Um…given that….

C: I don’t know why you’re reading it to me. I mean, a fraction of

that I agree with but I don’t see the relevance of it to what we’re

discussing.

F: Well, given that there seems to have been a kind of revolution

after 9/11 – I don’t think many people would disagree with that…

C: Why wasn’t there a revolution after the first 9/11, which had far

greater consequences?

F: Um…maybe it was because of the political impact that was so closely

tied to it, and, you know, media coverage.

C: It’s just that there’s a difference when you commit a crime against

rich and powerful people, and when the rich and powerful commit a

crime against others.

F: I agree with you.

C: Okay, so, that’s the difference. Let’s be honest about it.

F: No…I mean, definitely.

C: Fine.

F: Yeah, like I just quote you.

C: It has nothing to do with Crane Brinton – who I don’t happen to agree with.

F: Oh you don’t? Oh. Well I sometimes don’t understand what you write,

like in your Syntactic Structures – to get back to Linguistics – your

Preface starts off by: “Obscure and intuition-bound notions can

neither lead to absurd conclusions nor provide new and correct ones

and hence they fail to be useful in two important respect. I think

that some of those linguist who have questioned the value of precise

and technical development of Linguistic Theory may have failed to

recognize the productive potential in the method of rigorously stating

a proposed theory and applying it strictly to linguistic material with

no attempt to avoid unacceptable conclusions by ad hoc adjustments or

loose formulation.”

C: What’s problematic about that?

F: It’s just very difficult to understand.

C: I’m sorry…but I can’t spell it out more fully. But it sounds

straightforward to me.

F: “Avoid unacceptable conclusions by ad hoc adjustments or loose formulation.”

C: In other words, if you have some premises and they lead to an

unacceptable conclusion.

F: Okay.

C: You should either change your premises, find a mistake in your

reasoning, or do something rational. It doesn’t happen…you

shouldn’t…what you shouldn’t do is introduce some ad hoc assumption

that will get you that right…the conclusion you want…that would

deval…you know…change the premises, which would lead to a wrong

conclusion.

F: So “absurd conclusions are useful?” Um…. “Obscure and

intuition-bound notions can neither lead to absurd conclusions nor

provide…”

C: Oh that can sometimes be useful.

F: Absurd ones?

C: Sure.

F: Okay.

C: It shows that your assumptions are wrong.

F: Yeah, yeah.

C: You know, that’s standard. Don’t forget that’s talking about

Science, not talking about Human Affairs, where you can’t hope…it’s

too complex to hope for…ah…precise, formalized notions. We don’t

understand about ‘em.

F: Well…ah…this is where I get into your Cartesian background. I

disagree I’m from a Isaiah Berlin, Vico camp, Giambattista Vico, and

Vico was a adament opponent to Descartes. I mean mathematical

Cartesian Theory of Mind…Um…

C: We don’t know what Descartes’s Theory of Mind was because he

destroyed the Volume in which it was presented after the fate of

Galileo at the hands of the Inquisition.

F: Oh.

C: But I don’t accept the Cartesian framework, you’re picking the

title of a book, which was…the title of the book was about a certain

development in intellectual history…

F: No.

C: …which was heavily influenced…

F: It’s actually…

C: …by Descartes.

F: No, it wasn’t published in text, it was your debate with Foucault.

C: Oh. Okay.

F: In that debate, which was recently published…again, I think…you say

– and I know, you know, it’s a lot…very different to say something

than to…

C: It’s fine. Quote it.

F: …right it down. Okay, but the quote is…and this might be refreshing

to you… “but then that poses”…I can…can I?...okay…um… “Of course

Descartes failed where Newton succeeded, that is, he was unable to lay

the groundworks for a mathematical theory of mind, as achieved by

Newton and his followers, which…”

C: Not for mind…

F: Uh…

C: …as was achieved for mechanics of motion…

F: Uh…yeah, yeah.

C: Yup.

F: Uh…I don’t know if Newton…is that what you mean.

C: That’s what it says I’m sure.

F: But, “as achieved by Newton and his followers,”…whatever.

C: Yes. As achieved by Newton in the domain of which of physical theory.

F: But, um…we’re at thirty minutes…

C: Pardon?

F: We’re at thirty minutes. I’d like to talk about Newton, so we can scrap this.

C: Okay.

F: Okay. In my second book…uh…I’ll have to scrap that….um…I

actually…uh talk about Newton and his discussion of li…optics…very,

very…uh…critically. Basically, I look at refraction of light, as being

kind of misleading in how it treats the movement of light. Newton ends

up describing light as moving like a corpuscle: neither like a wave

nor a particle…some kind of corpuscle…and even like in the period of

Maxwell – Quantum Theory – they still haven’t dis…you

know…electro-magnetic force is so far the description of the behaviour

of light. So, I went back and I looked at refraction and wavelength,

and in the rainbow (a rainbow is just a refraction of light, like a

triangular prism) you have light coming in and being refracted into

the major colours, which is red, orange, green, blue, indigo…oh

wait…red, orange, yellow, green, blue…green, blue, indigo…and violet,

but indigo & violet are very similar. So this is the order that they

come in. And red is between wavelengths – and this is all sourced –

760 to 647. Let’s go from the other way, from the bottom, purple has

the shortest wavelength, fastest oscillation; so it goes from 380

nanometers to 424. So that’s purple. 424 to 491…

C: Yeah…why don’t you get to your point cause I don’t understand what

this is...where this is leading.

F: Okay. Basically this is the order that you come to in wavelength

range. No, just wavelength...you know, just median size. That’s

roughly where it is, after refraction. But if we look at the range of

each of these colours – I went to the Academy of Visual Arts…

C: Yeah, ok, yeah…

F: …in…in Vienna, and in front of it, besides the statue of Schiller,

there’s a statue of Goethe. And Goethe was adamantly against Newton:

in 1988 there was a book called…

C: That’s true, but what is the point?

F: …Goethe Contra Newton…well basically, if we look at the range of

these colours we’ll find that they’re not ordered hierarchically as

the rainbow is. There are certain colours that have a smaller range,

like yellow, than the third place. So if we re-organize these

according to the second spectrum of colour: you get red, green, blue,

orange, purple, yellow. Okay? So that’s one sensical arrangement of

colours, and the rainbow is another sensical arrangement of colours

amid the…hundreds of thousands?

C: ….as many as you can find….many other ways. There are lots of

criteria for arranging facts.

F: Yeah, but…

C: So what?

F: Well it hints to a new understanding of science.

C: It doesn’t lead to a new understanding of science. I mean that’s

familiar science. Yes, you can organize data on the basis of many

different criteria.

F: Yes, but, some of them are sensical and some of them are not.

C: Some of them happen to fit within explanatory theories, others are just data.

F: Yeah and Newton himself says that all observations…all theories

have to be based on the hypothesis, otherwise they’re…uhm… “Whatever

is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis.” So

this being deduced from the hypothesis…uh…is a new ordering of the

colours. But what’s interesting, is not this.

C: I think you’re misunderstanding Newton’s methodology. First of all,

he didn’t literarily mean deduced from the phenomena, nothing can be

deduced from the phenomena. Uh. He meant, we have to be clear about

when we’re talking about phenomena and when we’re introducing

assumptions.

F: Yes…

C: And we want the assumptions to be such that we can deduce from them

truths about the world we can verify…facts about the world we can

verify.

F: Yeah, but I mean if you look at this for one second, I’ll show you

how blue and green – blue, being detracted from orange, swings green

towards orange because green is attracted to orange’s yellow. That

momentum carries the swing around and orange is attracted to red,

because of it’s red. Blue is attracted to purple because of purple’s

blue, and that sticks purple to blue…

C: …yeah, I’m afraid you’ve lost me. I also don’t see what this has to

do with what we’re talking about.

F: …and then that swings again…hold on, and then, one more swing, like

this, in a similar fashion….

C: I’m sorry! I don’t follow what you’re trying to do and I also don’t

see where this is leading.

F: Well, I’ve given this to some people at McGill.

C: And what is you’re conclusion? Why are you mentioning any of this to me?

F: Well, basically that light and science, as explained by Newton, is

not as foolproof as they may seem. Light actually going as a corpuscle

is a hurricane.

C: Nobody believes that Newton has anything like a complete theory of

light, but at the most what you’d be saying is that Newton didn’t

explain everything you can imagine in the world. I think everyone

agrees to that.

F: Okay…um…

C: But…so what?

F: It’s a whole book. That’s my second book: Looking for Ultraviolet.

C: Okay.

F: Um…now let me ask you a question.

C: Yeah.

F: Um…what word do you think came first: chicken or egg?

C: That’s not a serious question because…

F: Why not? You hear a chicken, you can’t hear an egg. Like you reproduce…

C: You want to know about the evolution of chickens and eggs, well we

look into the…

F: No. I’m just talking about the word, like the human word for

chicken and egg.

C: There’s no first. I mean…

F: We can think about that…

C: We can trace the history of…etymology…the history of words back a

couple of thousand years.

F: Okay.

C: But, uh…in fact, language has been essentially unchanged for more

than fifty thousand years.

F: Yeah.

C: So what does it tells us if we find the origin of the English word

“Chicken” and the English word “Egg”? Doesn’t tell us anything.

F: Well, if, I mean, maybe, you know, some hunter-gatherer reproduced

the sound of a snake before the sound of an egg to another

hunter-gatherer.

C: There’s no evidence that the origins of language has anything to do

with things like that.

F: Well, Bio-linguistics has nothing to do with any of this?

C: Bio-linguistics does not deal with such questions. We cannot look

back 75000 years, roughly, and see how the language faculty developed.

F: Okay.

C: We don’t have tape-recordings from that era, we don’t have

evidence…we can sort of construct theoretical accounts, which have

some plausibility of how language might have possibly developed but

its not gonna talk about how individual words entered the language.

F: Right, and I don’t mean. I mean like the Chicken or Egg question

can answered if we think about the word.

C: I don’t think there’s a Chicken or Egg question, but let’s go on.

F: Okay. Where would you like to go on? We can go on…I have few fields

we can go into. I discovered a new way help back problems, or reduce

heart pressure…or control heart pressure.

C: Well it seems to me like you’ve got a wide range of interests and

concerns but I don’t know what it has to do with me.

F: Okay.

C: I can’t. I have nothing to say about it.

F: So…let’s go on.

C: I mean it’s fine. You should be doing all those things.

F: Well, you definitely opened up the field to non-experts to, maybe

like, cross the aisle, between science and social science. And that’s

what I think I’m trying to…

C: Yeah…I’m afraid, looking at the clock over there, I’m afraid we’ll

have to stop.

F: Okay, well, one more.

C: Yeah.

F: In your debate with Foucault.

C: Pardon?

F: In your debate with Foucault, you talk about how…you say: “…so one

might say that I’m looking at history, not as an antiquarian who’s

interested in finding out and giving a precisely accurate account of

what the thinking of the 19th Century was (I don’t mean to demean that

activity, it’s just not mine), but rather from the point of view of,

let’s say, an art lover who want to look at the 17th…uh…Century to

find in it things that are of particular value…”

C: Yeah.

F: “…that obtain part of their value, in part because of the

perspective with which he approaches them.” And I’m very grateful for

your time, so I brought you a….

C: Oh! [Unfold large drawing]

F: It’s called “State Thugs”

C: I’ll have to ponder that. Thank you. It was good to talk to you.

F: It’s been the conversation of my life.

Audrey Nude. Oil paint on wood (48" on 55"). 4000$

2009-05-29T18:11:00.000-07:00

Piracy, Pompey, and Panama

2009-05-28T22:24:00.001-07:00

The escalation of piracy and the predicted parallel escalation of NATO
military intervention off the coast of Somalia can be as devastating,
on a global scale, as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by
Gavrilo Princip, which cast the die for WWI.

As we all know, piracy dates all the way back to the age of Julius
Caesar, when Pompey Magnus got exceptional powers to rid the
Mediterranean impudent pirates. Things invited immediate attention
from the Senate and the People of Rome when the pirates mocked Rome by
groveling before captured Romans and begging for mercy before making
them walk the plank. Rome (capital R) was not to be slighted in such a
manner. In the words of Robin Seager:

One man, chosen from among the consulars, was to be given the task of
clearing the sea, with the right to appoint fifteen legates with
praetorian imperium, to fit out a fleet of two hundred ships, to levy
troops as requires, and to draw upon the treasury of Rome and the
resources of the publicans in the provinces. The command was to last
three years. The commander’s imperium was to cover all the sea east of
the Pillars of Hercules, all islands, and the coasts of the mainland,
including Italy, up to a distance of fifty miles inland.

The powers that were temporarily bestowed upon General Pompeius turned
out – thanks to the Baby Face’s exceptional success solving the piracy
problem – to pave the way for his ilk (Caesar, Crassus, et al.) to
rise above the checks and balances of the senate, a bloody civil war
to ensue, and the Senate to be sidelined by a succession of Emperors.

To have US Navy Seals off of the coast of Somalia thanks to a handful
of non-state actors set a course towards the repetition of history:
some ambitious Five-Star General is going to be bestowed with
temporary powers to rid the world of a common threat to create an even
greater threat. To borrow from Karl Marx, it is like the husband and
wife who called the doctor to help them resolve a fight only to end up
with the wife having to break up a fight between the doctor and the
husband, then have the husband break up a fight between the wife and
the doctor.

But that is the benign scenario. A much more sinister one lies in
ambitious enemy states engaging an over-abundant portion of the US
Armed Forces by orchestrating a series of similar pirate hijacking of
ships. Much like Lawrence of Arabia was able to occupy much of
Germany’s military force by bombing strategic train routes in Saudi
Arabia during World War I, so can an agent from, say, North Korea,
hinder NATO global interests by praying on such a weakness.

It is widely agreed upon that had Japan bombed Panama instead of Pearl
Harbour during WWII the devastation caused to the Allies would have
been far more incapacitating. This is because trade routes running
through Panama were the lifelines of the West throughout most of the
war. A few aircraft carriers, without sounding insensitive to that
“day in infamy”, were far less crucial to a world war than a major
artery, such as Panama. So is it the case with the Persian Gulf. As a
result of this elevated importance, the final element of caution the
world must apply to this new threat is to not overly romanticize the
pirates and the story, in order to minimize the number of copycats and
sympathizers in the world.

Pirates off Somalia should never been construed with Johnny Depp-like
pirates of the Caribbean, for fear of causing a global shipping
paralysis – and this is all in peace time!

Mr. Fotohinia is a former Second-Lieutenant in the Canadian Forces and
a student of War Studies at both McGill University and the Royal
Military College of Canada. He has recently returned from Vienna where
he attended the Academy of Arts.

Canada and the Peg

2009-05-28T22:21:00.000-07:00

If I were the Prime Minister of Canada today, I would pick up the phone and call Obama.

“Hello, Mr. President? Yeah, it’s your neighbour upstairs. Would it be alright if we pegged the Loony to your Dollar for the next Quarter?”

My reasoning is not simple. The world economic situation is in a state of disequilibrium caused by a breakdown in fiat money. To understand this let us think of a privately-owned merry-go-round with six ends. Let’s say that this particular merry-go-round is owned by the American boy’s parents. As a result, the other kids don’t mind paying a little tribute to him by allowing him to stop pushing first and start pushing last. Five of the six kids can easily compensate for one rich lazy boy. But then let’s say that the Chinese girl has a big crush on the American boy and only starts and stops pushing according to his pace and not that of the other four. She is able to get away with it because she is situated opposite the American boy on the merry-go-round. While the pace may be substantially slower than if all six were pushing in sequence, and even if only five were pushing in sequence, the merry-go-round still sustains the disequilibrium.

At the risk of applying too many real-world concepts to this analogy, I will discontinue it with only one more: Canada, finding itself directly between China and America, could potentially re-establish optimal equilibrium in the fiat money system by also fixing its rate to the American boy’s for a limited period of time. This would nullify any advantage in pushing that the Chinese girl may have gotten by pegging to the American boy, while lightening the burden and maximizing the enjoyment of the remaining three children.

China’s Renminbi has been pegged to the U.S. dollar for the majority of the ‘50’s, ‘60’s, and since 1992 – when the Chinese central bank bought and sold as much currency as needed to change the exchange rate from 5.76RMB/$US to 8.62RMB/$US. What this means is that, since very shortly after WWII, the People’s Republic of China has picked the victorious Americans as the merry-go-round of choice; but by artificially selling Mao Zedong-stamped Renminbi at a much lower price than that determined by market forces (the push and whims of the other children) China is effectively flooding the market with its currency – it is selling money “cheap”.

My analogy is misleading because it presumes that it is only a generic crush that motivates the Chinese girl to mimic the American boy: it overlooks clear advantages on the merry-go-round and even suggests that the crush will continue off the merry-go-round. In 1964, much to the dismay of the United States and the Soviet Union, China tested its own nuclear bomb. At this very period in China’s history, slave-societies continued to thrive in its remote South-Western borders. For example, of the 56 000 inhabitants of the city of Norsu, in 1959, 47 per cent were slaves. If we consider the economic coercion China practices against Taiwan and the fact that China’s only reaction to adamant American demands to stop pegging has been to filibuster, then the utility of such a mode of economic statecraft within grand strategy becomes crystal clear.

Nevertheless, it is not the Canadian way to kick anyone off the merry-go-round. That doesn’t mean that we have or should take a laissez-faire approach to the problems that have and can afflict the world. Especially when we look across at the Rwandan boy, see the new-found light in his eyes; or the Iranian girl laughing with her hair in the wind, against the swirl of the outside playground, the gaze of the not-too-distant guardians.

“Why don’t you fly on down, and we can see what we can do.”

“Sure thing, Mr. President. Have a pleasant afternoon.”

China's Peg: A Trojan Horse

2009-05-28T22:20:00.001-07:00

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE; DISTRIBUTION UNLIMITED

March 6, 2009

Dear Prime Minister Harper,

I am writing to you today to present an option that could not only resolve our present economic malaise, but set the stage for multi-fold growth for the decades to come. That option is pegging the Canadian dollar to the U.S. dollar à la People’s Republic of China.

China’s Peg: A Trojan Horse

In Virgil’s Aeneid, Father Aeneas recounts the story of the capture of his city by the Greeks:

But if so great desire

Moves you to hear the tale of our disasters,

Briefly recalled, the final throes of Troy,

However I may shudder at the memory

And shrink again in grief, let me begin.

Knowing their strength broken in warfare, turned

Back by the fates, and years – so many years –

Already slipped away, the Danean captains

By the divine handicraft of Pallas built

A horse of timber, tall as a hill,

And sheathed its ribs with plankings of cut pine.

This they gave out to be an offering

For a safe return by sea, and the word went round.

But on the sly they shut inside a company

Chosen from their picked soldiery by lot,

Crowding the vaulted caverns in the dark –

The horse’s belly – with men fully armed.¹

The main idea behind this proposal is that the PRC is flooding the currency markets of the world with Renminbi by selling it at a lower price than that determined by market forces. This works well for the PRC’s long-term objectives.

To mark the bi-centennial of the United States, Herman Kahn, William Brown, Leon Martel and the Staff of the Hudson Institute published The Next 200 Years: A Scenario of America and the World. In the preface we have:

Often contemporary issues are not fully understood until they have become history and can be seen in a historical context. To some degree futurology can furnish such a context now by giving us an artificial vantage point from which to look backward; examined in this long-term perspective, current issues look quite different and can be better comprehended.

…

Mankind is now operating on such a grand scale that many current activities and programs raise issues that – at least conceptually – can be dealt with only in a much longer time frame. There is an obligation for all – but especially for the most advanced nation on earth h- to define the problems of our future and suggest the means for dealing with them. In effect we are suggesting that both publish and private institutions try to act as an early warning system and as a lobby for the medium- and long-term future; for we believe, to rephrase Santayana, that those who neglect the future risk losing it.²

To finish the story of Father Aneas:

‘The offering must be hauled to its true home,’

[The crowd] clamoured. ‘Votive prayers to [Minerva]

Must be said there!’

So we breached the walls

And laid the city open. Everyone

Pitched in to get the figure underpinned

With rollers, hempen lines around the neck.

Deadly, pregnant with enemies, the horse

Crawled upward to the breach. And boys and girls

Sang hymns around the towrope as for joy

They touched it. Rolling on, it cast a shadow

Over the city’s heart. O Fatherland,

O Illium, home of gods! Defensive wall

Renowned in war for Dardanius’s people!

There on the very threshold of the breach

It jarred to a halt four times, four times that arms

In the belly thrown together made a sound –

Yet on we strove unmindful, deaf and blind,

Then, even then, Cassandra’s lips unsealed

The doom to come: lips by a god’s command

Never believed or heeded by the Trojans.

So pitiably we, for whom that day

Would be the last, made all our temples green

With leafy festal boughs throughout the city.

…

Opened wide,

The horse emitted men; gladly they dropped

Out of the cavern, captains first, Thessandrus,

Sthenelus and the man of iron, Ulysses;

Hand over hand upon the rope, Acamas, Thoas

Neoptolemus and Prince Machaon,

Menelaus and then the master builder,

Epeos, who designed the horse decoy.

Into the darkened city, buried deep

In sleep and wine, they made their way,

Cut the few sentries down,

Let in the fellow soldiers at the gate,

And joined their combat companies as planned.³

In a chapter entitled “Exchange Rate Diplomacy” in his book Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post-9/11 World, John B. Taylor writes:

In the hours immediately following the 9/11 attacked, I called my counterparts in the G7. When I reached Haruhiko Kuroda of Japan, he first expressed his condolences and then got right down to business. He suggested that Japan and the United States should by dollars in the foreign exchange market to prop up the value of the dollar. I said that it was best to let the exchange markets adjust to the new information on their own, without government intervention. I would never completely rule out foreign exchange market intervention, but I had followed the markets closely for years and had spent time on the trading floors in New York and Tokyo. My experience made me reluctant to intervene, and that was a policy position held throughout the Bush administration.

In fact, the United States did not intervene in the currency markets during my tenure at Treasury. This set a new record, and it was a big change from past administrations. The Clinton administration intervened twenty times in the foreign exchange markets, the last time just before the 2000 president elections. Kuroda had worked with the U.S. Treasury during that intervention, so it was not surprising that he would ask the United States to intervene just one year later. The first Bush administration also intervened in the foreign currency markets, as did the Reagan administration, the Carter administration, and so on. However, I believe that adopting a policy of non-intervention was for the better. Traders soon adjusted their expectations to be absence of the U.S. government in the markets, and as a result the markets have worked more smoothly and with less volatility.

…

Japan was not the only country to intervene heavily in the currency markets during this period. The Chinese intervened in even larger amounts. The Chinese were more secretive about their interventions than the Japanese, who regularly informed me of their interventions, a common practice in the G7. In contrast, the Chinese did not inform me of their interventions on a daily basis, but their purpose was no secret. They wanted to prevent the Chinese currency, the yuan, from rising in price against the dollar. The appreciation of the yuan would make Chinese exports more expensive abroad.⁴

History of the Peg

Renminbi/US Dollar exchange rate, 1952-2007⁵
Year	RMB/$US	Year	RMB/$US	Year	RMB/$US	Year	RMB/$US
1952	2.26	1966	2.46	1980	1.50	1994	8.62
1953	2.62	1967	2.46	1981	1.70	1995	8.35
1954	2.62	1968	2.46	1982	1.89	1996	8.31
1955	2.47	1969	2.46	1983	1.98	1997	8.29
1956	2.46	1970	2.46	1984	2.32	1998	8.28
1957	2.46	1971	2.46	1985	2.94	1999	8.28
1958	2.46	1972	2.25	1986	3.45	2000	8.28
1959	2.46	1973	1.99	1987	3.72	2001	8.28
1960	2.46	1974	1.96	1988	3.72	2002	8.28
1961	2.46	1975	1.86	1989	3.77	2003	8.28
1962	2.46	1976	1.94	1990	4.78	2004	8.28
1963	2.46	1977	1.86	1991	5.32	2005	8.19
1964	2.46	1978	1.68	1992	5.51	2006	7.97
1965	2.46	1979	1.56	1993	5.76	2007	7.61

When CNOOC (a state-owned Chinese company) made a bid to buy Unocal Corporation in June 2005, the PRC’s fiscal policies attracted widespread criticism from Congress. Wayne M. Morrison, of the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service, published “China-U.S. Trade Issues” shortly thereafter, which contained the following:

U.S. Trade with China

U.S.-China trade rose rapidly after the two nations established diplomatic relations (January 1979), signed a bilateral trade agreement (July 1979), and provided mutual most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment beginning 1980. Total trade (exports plus imports) between the two nations rose from about $5 billion in 1980 to $231 billion in 2004; China is now the third-largest U.S. trading partner. Over the past few years, U.S. trade with China has grown at a faster rate than that of any other major U.S. trading partner.⁶

…

China’s Currency Peg

China pegs its currency, the yuan, to the U.S. dollar at about 8.3 yuan to the dollar. It is able to maintain this peg because its currency is not fully convertible in international markets and because it maintains restrictions and controls over capital transactions. As a result, China’s exchange rate is not based on market forces. Many U.S. policymakers and business representatives have charged that China’s currency is significantly undervalued vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar (with estimates ranging from 15 to 40%), making Chinese exports to the United States cheaper⁷, and U.S. exports to China more expensive, than they would if exchange rates were determined by market forces. They complain that this policy has particularly hurt several U.S. manufacturing sectors (such as textiles and apparel, furniture, plastics, machine tools, and tool and die), which are forced to compete domestically against low-cost imports from China, and has contributed to the growing U.S. trade deficit with China. They have called on the Bush Administration to pressure China either to appreciate its currency (by increasing the band in which it is allowed to be traded in China) or to allow it to float freely in international markets.

During the mid-1990’s, Chinese officials indicated that they were considering making the yuan fully convertible by 2000. However⁸, these plans were abandoned as a result of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, when the economies of East Asian countries experienced⁹a number of economic shocks, including a sharp depreciation in their currencies. China’s currency peg and capital controls were a major factor in enabling China to maintain economic growth and stability, while many of its neighbors experienced sharp economic declines. While Chinese exports suffered somewhat from sharp currency depreciations in several East Asian countries, China pledged not to devalue its currency, a policy that many analysts claim helped stabilize the effects of the economic crisis in Asia and gained China high praise from U.S. officials.

Chinese officials argue that its currency peg policy is not meant to favor exports over imports, but instead to foster economic stability. They have expressed concern that abandoning the peg could cause ¹⁰ an economic crisis in China and would especially hurt its exports industries sectors at a time when painful economic reforms (such as closing down inefficient state-owned enterprises and restructuring the banking system) are being implemented. Chinese officials view economic stability as critical to sustaining political stability; they fear an appreciated currency could reduce jobs and lower wages in several sectors and thus could cause worker unrest.

U.S. critics of China’s currency peg contend that the low value of the yuan is forcing other East Asian economies to keep the value of their currencies low (vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar) in order to compete with Chinese products, to the detriment of U.S. exporters¹¹ and U.S. domestic industries competing against foreign imports. They further note that while China is still a developing country, it has been able to accumulate massive foreign exchange reserves ($659.1 billion at end of March 2005) and thus has the resources to maintain stability of its currency if it were fully convertible. They also argue that appreciating the yuan would greatly benefit China by lowering the cost of imports for Chinese consumers and producers who use imported parts and machinery. Finally, critics of the peg argue that China’s accumulation of large amounts of foreign exchange reserves (in order to maintain the currency peg¹²) could better be spent on investment in infrastructure and development of poor regions¹³.

Some economists are skeptical over the wisdom of pushing China too hard to appreciate its currency. They note that a significant share of U.S. imports from China is produced by foreign multinational corporations that are increasingly shifting production to China (and other countries) to take advantage of low costs¹⁴ there and that a change in China’s peg would do little to reverse this trend. Many warn that, given the weak state of China’s banking system, moving to a fully convertible currency might actually cause the yuan to depreciate, rather than appreciate. Such analysts have called on the United States to press China to implement currency reform in stages over time. Finally, economists note that China is the second-largest purchaser of U.S. Treasury securities ($223.5 billion as of March 2005), which helps the U.S. federal budget deficit and helps keep U.S. interest rates low.

Legislations Addressing China’s Currency Policy. A number of bills addressing China’s currency have been introduced in 109^th Congress:

S. 14 (Stabenow), S. 295 (Schumer), and H.R. 1575 (Myrick) direct the Secretary of the Treasury to negotiate with China to accept a market-based system of currency valuation, and imposes an additional duty of 27.5% on Chinese goods imported into the United States unless the President submits a certification to Congress that China is no longer manipulating the rate of exchange and is complying with accepted market-based trading policies. H.R. 3004 (English) would require the Treasury Department to determine if China manipulated its currency and to impose additional tariffs on Chinese goods comparable to the rate of currency manipulation.

S. 377 (Lieberman) directs the President to negotiate with those countries determined to be engaged most egregiously in currency manipulation and to seek an end to such manipulation¹⁵. If an agreement is not reached, the President is directed to institute proceedings under the relevant U.S. and international trade laws and to seek appropriate damages and remedies for the U.S. manufacturers and other affected parties.

H.R. 2208 (Manzullo), S. 984 (Snowe), and S. 1048 (Schumer) adds changes to the criteria that the U.S. Treasury Department is required to consider when making a determination on currency manipulation (including a protracted large-scale intervention in one direction in the exchange markets) in its bi-annual reports on International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies.

H.R. 2414 (Rogers) would require the Treasury Department to make a determination whether China’s currency policy interferes with effective balance of payments adjustments or confers a competitive advantage in international trade that would not exist if the currency value were set by market forces¹⁶. If such a determination were made, the President would be required to bring a WTO case against China to seek across-the-board tariffs¹⁷ on Chinese goods in order to offset the subsidy effects of undervaluation.

Some Members of Congress support changing U.S. law to apply countervailing laws to nonmarket economies so that U.S. firms are able to take action against unfair government subsidies, especially in regards to China.¹⁸ They contend that China’s currency peg constitutes a government export subsidy that should be actionable under U.S. countervailing laws. H.R. 1216 (English) and S. 593 (Collins) would apply U.S. countervailing laws to nonmarket economies. H.R. 1498 (Tim Ryan) would apply U.S. countervailing laws to countries that manipulate their currencies¹⁹.

On April 6, 2005, the Senate failed (by a vote of 33 to 67) to table an amendment, S.Amdt. 309 (Schumer) to S. 600 (Foreign Affairs Authorization Act), which would impose a 27.5% tariff on Chinese goods if China failed to substantially appreciate its currency to market levels. In response to the vote, the Senate leadership moved to allow a vote on S. 295 (which has same language as S.Amdt. 309) no later than July 27, 2005, as long as the sponsors of the amendment agree not to sponsor similar amendments for the duration of the 109^th Congress. However, on June 30, Senator Schumer and other sponsors of S. 295 agreed to delay consideration of the bill after they received a briefing from Administration officials and were told that China is expected to make significant progress on reforming its currency over the next few months.²⁰

President Bush on a number of occasions has criticized China’s currency peg, stating that exchange rates should be determined by market forces, and he raised the issue in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on October 19, 2003. On October 30, 2003, the Treasury Department released its semiannual report on exchange rate policies. Although Treasury was under intense pressure from several Members of Congress to state that China “manipulated”²¹ its currency (which by U.S. law would have required Treasury to negotiate with China to end such practices), it did not make such a designation²². However, the Bush Administration pledged to pursue the issue with China, largely under the auspices of a joint technical cooperation program, agreed to on October 14, 2003, to promote the development of China’s financial markets and to examine ways China can move more quickly toward a floating exchange rate²³.

The Administration’s position on China’s currency peg appears to have toughened recently. In April 2005, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow stated at a G-7 meeting that “China is ready now to adopt a more flexible exchange rate.” On May 17, 2005, the Treasury Department released its latest International Economic and Exchange Rate Policies report to Congress. The reported [sic.] stated that China’s currency peg policy “is a substantial distortion to world markets” and that “China is now ready to move to a more flexible exchange rate and should move now.” The report warned that Treasury would closely monitor China’s progress over the next six months, but did not precisely spell out what moves it expected China to take to make its currency more flexible.²⁴

In 2005 the U.S.-China Commission argued that across-the-board tariffs were permitted as per Article XXI of the World Trade Organization, “which allows members to take necessary actions to protect their national security.”²⁵

Possible Outcomes

In his attempts to avoid a possible Japanese-esk “lost decade”, President Obama has taken a page out of inter-war history and has okayed a stimulus fund meant to build U.S. infrastructure and get America and the rest of the world out of the present economic crisis. This may help stabilize the current crisis somewhat, but let us recall more of the thinking that Cold War-hardened “deep thinkers” such as Herman Kahn et al. have left in The Next 200 Years:

We frequently find that what is well know is poorly understood, and what is taken for granted is taken without thought. We also disagree with much of the thinking and discussion in academic, intellectual and literary establishments today. Therefore, for both the common and academic wisdom we offer uncommon analysis. The exercise may please some, jar others and perhaps upset more than a few. But we are confident that it will open a new perspective on the issues we discuss. For America and the world – in this anniversary year – we could hardly ask more or offer less.²⁶

China has an up-to-date and impressive nuclear arsenal:

When China detonated its first atomic bomb on October 16, 1964, the United States and Soviet Union faced a new and potentially destabilizing change in the Cold War balance of power. Both countries, along with Britain, had signed the limited nuclear test band treaty in 1963. Both countries had reason to fear the consequences of China’s possession of the bomb. The United States saw China as an uncompromising adversary, and had threatened to use nuclear weapons against the communist state on more than one occasion [The note for this reads as follows: “Such threats were made through statements or nuclear deployments in the Korean War and the Taiwan Straits crises of 1954-1956 and 1958. See Richard K. Batts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1987), 31-47, 54-62; John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Stanford: Standford University Press, 1988), Chapter 2; and Melvin Gartove and Byong-Moo Hwang, China Under Threat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 82]²⁷. The Soviet Union viewed Mao Zedong, China’s leader, as warlike and imprudent. In 1959 it had formally reneged on a promise made in 1957 to give China a prototype atomic bomb. Relations had been deteriorating since that time, and within five years of China’s first nuclear explosion, there would be serious border clashes between the former allies.²⁸

Just as a refresher, let us look at some classic scenarios for a nuclear escalation:

Cases of ambiguity, because of either uncertainty of definitions or doubts about the facts or whether the nuclear taboo had indeed been violated

Cases with minimal or no collateral damage to civilians, in which the weapons were used mostly or entirely against military targets

Cases with uncertainty about the responsibility for the decision to strike, ranging from simple accident, to insubordination, to outright madness and nuclear terrorism

Clear and highly destructive nuclear escalation, with definite government responsibility with the world begin inclined to retreat thereafter

Clear and highly destructive nuclear escalation, with definite government responsibility, launched by a rogue state, but with a braver outside world response

Clear and highly destructive nuclear escalation, but in an ongoing context where two opposing sides are hitting each other with nuclear weapons

Clear and highly destructive nuclear escalation, but where the perpetrator retains a major residual nuclear force, with the aftermath perhaps having to take the form of “limited strategic nuclear war”.²⁹

Besides the impressive outcome of WWIII, another likely outcome of the breakdown of a stable global trading environment is that the world be thrown into a Dark Age.

The following is an excerpt from Alan Winnington’s account of the slaves-societies of the remote South-Western borders of China (published only five years before the PRC tested its first atomic bomb):

This was indeed the heart of the Norsu area and I was said to be the first non-Chinese to reach it. I spent more than a week in this hamlet of a town, drinking buttered tea from daybreak to late at night, and talking with Norsu slave-owners, slaves and commoners, Communist Party leaders, people responsible for trade, education and medicine, before leaving…By the time I left the town I had a pretty clear picture of Norsu slave-society.

In the Cool Mountains – now officially Ninglang County – the Norsu live on the highlands and the other nationalities live in the level basins between the mountains. People who actually are Norsu, those who reckon themselves as Norsu and those who have descended from abducted slaves and claim no other nationality, make up a total of 56,294 as far as they have been counted. Possibly a few others exist in remote valleys by they cannot be many.

Of these 56,000, fewer than 3,000 are nobles, the hereditary aristocracy and ruling class, alone having full political, citizenship and property rights. They are tall, healthy and warlike, with a strong belief in the inferiority of all other human beings couple with an exaggerated view of characteristics they think they possess. They call themselves the Nor which means “black” and claim to have “strong black bone”, in the same way as English aristocrats refer to their “blue blood” and think it better than the vulgar sort. (Since su means “people”, Norsu means “black people”.³⁰

…

About 47 per cent. Of all the Norsu living in the Cool Mountains are slaves. Most of these are descendents of other nationalities captured and enslaved, though a very large number are first generation slaves, captured within the past few decades as children. This reflects the intensified abduction of slaves since the early ‘twenties.

Slaves exits in two categories: “house-slaves” who live in the owner’s house; “separate-slaves” who live in an uncertain state of matrimony in separate households.

These are the two aspects of the Norsu slave’s life-cycle.

Separate-slaves are called in Norsu Apa-i-su, which means “people sleeping on the side”. Their “marriages” are formed by the master and can be liquidated by him at any time. The slave-owner pairs off male and female slaves, provides a wattle “house” and some land and allows the slaves a small part of their time to cultivate for themselves. This encourages the reproduction of what has now become the main form of wealth in Ninglang – slaves. As one separate-slave said to me: “In the daytime we produce in the fields for our masters and at night we produce for him in our beds.”

Children of separate-slaves become house-slaves.

House-slaves are called Gashigalu which means “those at the lower end of the fireplace”. They are also know as A-i-zen or “small children”. They enter the master’s house at the age of five or six, when they can perform simple tasks, and their education stops at that point. A slave-owner with enough slaves and a big household may keep one slave doing nothing but carrying water, another milling grain or getting firewood and able to do no other work.

House-slaves are divided among their master’s sons and daughters of the same generation when these marry. Boy slaves go to the sons and girl slaves to the daughters. On marriage the girls take their girl slaves to the home of their new husband, who has his share of male slaves. The male and female slaves are paired off as separate-slaves and the cycle begins again.³¹

In 1789, Adam Smith wrote the following:

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, [the merchant] intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intentions. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.³²

In a book called Grand Strategy, published in 1941, there is the following segment on “Nationality and the Problem of Continual Change”:

Watch the everlasting flow of buses in New York, or the unloading of the multifarious merchandise on the docks with the cries of the worker as the long arms of the cranes swings backward and forward in the sunlight. Watch the precision of the traffic lights as the stream of vehicles check and passes on. Move to the suburbs with their comfort-seeking houses, their search for personal pleasure, their gardens, their endless radios and automobiles, each home alike, perhaps, but each expressing an individual’s attempt to furnish and furbish it in a way that pleases him. Go further out, to the fields and hills, to the sound of singing birds in the thickets, the plowing of land, the cutting of trees, the new attempt to make the soil of each farm produce more by the teachings of science, the country towns and villages, the inland cities, the ports and seaside resorts, the blackened industrial areas and the high wind-swept mountains. Imagine the network of roads, railways, canals, and telegraph wires connecting them, the busy broadcasting stations, the movement of people between work and home, between toil and leisure.

These glimpses of society might be taken not only from America but from almost any part of the civilized world, for everywhere, despite local differences, men have adopted primarily one method of organizing this vast conglomeration of activities – that of nationality. We have in effect all of us accepted the national structure as the framework within which we shall live and work, take our mates in marriage for better or worse, pay our taxes and grumble, lie down in our beds and die. We are all primarily Frenchmen, Americans, Englishmen, Germans and so on, rather than rich men, poor men, or middle-class workers. “The nation is the political unit, and nationalism the group symbol of the present stage of civilization.” It is this fact which gives the modern world its peculiar character and forces upon it many of its special problems.

In a world of competition, one of these problems is the question of development. Imagine a modern nation which fails to move with the times. Gradually it will fall behind in its scientific discoveries. Its factories will no longer be equipped with the latest techniques. Its products will cease to appeal in the markets of the world. Its financial and other resources will have to be extravagantly drawn upon to maintain an adverse trade balance. Soon its war potential and power of armed resistance will be sapped. Its whole safety will be in danger. Thus in the last resort a modern nation finds itself dependent for its entire existence upon this basic ability to evolve – so much so that whatever induces progress is of vital national importance as the key to the everlasting struggle for survival. Yet how is such progress to be ensured? After all, it is not the normal wish of those in control to have incessantly to be making changes and adjustments. Would a signalman on a railway be particularly pleased to have the signals he already understands changed to a set he does not know? Surely only when his own system is proved so bad that the new effort is adequately compensated for by the extra efficiency it brings. But that moment in a world of struggle is often too late. Changes which have been put off for too long bring no lasting benefits.³³

Possible Solutions

To consider the three possible solutions available to Canada at this stage, it would be a good idea to consider some concepts about money:

Fiat money is a type of paper or symbol with which any individual may buy most things by law. It has virtually no intrinsic value but immediately assumes a trading value when its shortage (i.e. when it is no longer a stack variable to everyone in the appropriate set of simultaneous programs) can prevent trades that would have been deemed profitable in a monetary competitive equilibrium system.³⁴

An equilibrium system based on fiat money is no longer globally enjoyed due to the massive commodification of the Renminbi (translated as “the people’s money”). In lieu of this development we must consider the Quantity Theory of Money. Unfortunately:

Hardly any theory in economics has been so long debated as the quantity theory of money. Yet, no thorough analysis of its original content and purpose, of its historical development, and of all its numerous misinterpretations has been undertaken. Thus there is still no unanimity as to the formulation and interpretation of the quantity theory. Almost every economist has written something about the quantity theory, but only a very few have manifested a correct understanding of it. This lack of clear definition is, curiously enough, very much due to the simplicity of the theory; it has occasioned a vagueness in its formulation which has lead to innumerable misinterpretations of its content. Indeed, the poet’s words: ‘the simple thing is the difficult thing’, seems to be more than a rhetoric phrase.³⁵

The first solution is moot: make no change. This will lead to the PRC continuing to filibuster about it’s currency exchange strategy, more and more U.S. dollars to concentrate in the Chinese Central Bank’s reserves, and an even larger amount of Mao Zedong-stamped RMB’s propagating throughout the world.

If Canada does not make economic accommodations now for China’s preponderance, it will soon have to make social and political ones.

The second solution is the Amero. This, would lead to a European-style socio-political imbroglio. Let us consider some common language on the European Economic Union monetary union issue:

The plans for a common currency and the economic union were treated in the EEC in an organic unity. The maintenance of fixed exchange parities is in itself an irrealistic [sic.] aim. The inflation of the national currencies, which is very likely to develop differently both in size and rate, will result in a relative over- and undervaluation of the individual currencies. The different growth rates of efficiency and productivity would yield the same results. And the under- or over-valuation of the currencies may give rise to cumulative tensions in respect of both the equilibrium of fixed exchange rates and balances of payments and, in the long run, of growth, modernization and export expansion. Therefore, the maintenance of the equilibrium of the balances of payments within the area presupposes collective aid and reserve funds, as well as comprehensive co-ordination of financial policies (issue of banknotes, interest and credit conditions, etc.) and budgetary policies (taxes, state expenditures, etc.). In connection with the long-run problems, the necessity of harmonizing structural differences, of co-ordinating regional and social policies also emerges. Thus, monetary union based on fixed exchange rates and economic union can only jointly be achieved. This is also reflected in the plan of the economic and monetary union of the EEC.

The plan of the monetary union accepted in 1971 set the aim of realizing a common currency and economic union by 1980. In the interest of fixed exchange rates, the member countries narrowed down, on the one hand, the respective floating margins of their currencies. They had planned to reduce these margins to 0.60 per cent, but it failed to materialize because of the international monetary crisis. In 1972, a ±2.25 per cent floating margin was introduced on a mutual basis, which followed from halving the ±4.5 per cent floating margins accepted in the currency reform of December 1971. The central banks of the member countries set up in 1970 a short-term support fund of 2 billion dollars to tide over the temporary balance of payments deficits. In April 1973, with more than a year’s delay, the so-called European monetary co-operation fund was created, which started its activity with 1.4 billion units of account in July 1973. The fund was assigned as its primary task to organize multilateral settlements relating to the ensurance [sic.] of the narrowed-down margins of floating exchange. Included in the aims of the fund is the elaboration of a concerted reserve policy, which may lead in the future to the gradual merging of national reserves. The fund has also taken over the task of operating the system of a common short-term support. Many regard the fund as the core of a common central bank of the EEC. To keep the floating of currencies within a “channel”, common intervention mechanisms have been set up at the short- and medium-term co-ordination of the economic policies of the member countries, especially for a collective action against inflation.³⁶

However highfaluting the sound of Economic Union may seem to Canadians today, it would still not address the advantage proffered unto the PRC by the RMB/$US peg.

The third solution is to peg the Canadian dollar to the U.S. dollar³⁷ for three month, in order to maintain and stimulate growth in all sectors of Canadian industry.

For those who are concerned by the notion of setting too much store by the Americans, I will conclude with the following passage from Livy:

…The city [of Rome in 492 B.C.] was in great apprehension; all business came to a halt from mutual dread: the plebs left behind feared violence from the senators, while the senators, wary of the plebs who remained, could not decide whether they preferred them to have stayed or to have departed. Besides, how long would the multitude that had seceded remain quiet? And what would happen if some outside military emergency arose in the meantime? They became convinced that no solution existed except in concord among all citizens: the plebs must be reconciled to their country at all costs.

So they decided to send to the plebs Menenius Agrippa as their spokesman, a forceful speaker whom the plebs liked, for he had come form their ranks. On being admitted to the camp his speech is said to have consisted simply of the following parable, couched in old-fashioned and homely language. Once upon a time man’s bodily parts did not work as one as they do now, but each limb went his own way and had his own voice. The other parts unhappily complained that the belly received the benefit of their care, help, and hard work and that it stayed contentedly in the middle doing nothing but enjoying the good things they gave it. They then concocted a plan: the hands would not carry food to the mouth, the mouth would not accept food if given, the teeth would not chew it. They aimed to starve the belly into submission, but their anger brought the limbs and the whole body close to wasting away completely. Then it dawned on them that the belly’s job was important: it received as much nourishment as it gave back, carrying everywhere that by which we live and breathe – our blood, which, enriched by the food we digest, spreads through the blood vessels to all parts of the body. By comparing the internal revolt of the body with the anger of the plebs against the senators, Agrippa brought the plebs round to his way of thinking.³⁸

I send your, dear Excellency, the expression of my highest consideration and remain meanwhile,

Yours sincerely,

Saeed Fotohinia

Representative

Youth Against Racism

P.S. Special thanks must go to Prof. Desmond Morton, Prof. Noam Chomsky, and the Library Staff at McGill University.

Gerhard Richter's "Blumen" Redux

2009-05-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

A short play

2009-05-24T20:14:00.001-07:00

On the eve of inspiration I wander drunken but unshaken.

There is no sleeve I must lift, no miles I must walk.

I have done it all! Excited and unhappy still.

Other: But you cannot be unhappy in such a festive state of mind!

First: I have and always will be that which I was and ever shall continue to be.

O: My friend, you words ring like bells in a tower of some neglected Russian bluish, over-impressionistic church. Gather your things together and see here the damsel that comes our way. Perhaps she can lift your spirits.

F: Hey there pretty lady!

Damsel: I have wandered far and wide and have met many men. Some have used jewels and pretty words to charm me, others have taken by force, and others still have cried. None has ever managed to hear me for who I am.

F: I have looked for that which I cannot hear. That which I have no fear of. Can you say something that will make my heart leap above the thousand corpses I have left behind on the battlefield. I remember an attack at Aleppo. This very simitar, I used to cut and thrust my way through many ranks of the enemy. That day I was captured by them and spent the next twelve years as a prisoner of war.

D: General! Freed and fierce. Take from me that which you want, but expect not to hear my voice.

O: It seems perhaps your spirits are at war, even though your eyes have been fixed like two invisible serpents. The winds are blowing harder. It is nighttime. The innkeepers have warned of monsters preying the woods. Our fire is weakening. We must carry what we have and move now if we are to survive the night. Damsel, join us, and we will protect your from the lions of the night.

D: I have walked through woods at night and day. Have even slept under a frozen star, I’ve lost my emerald necklace to the scavengers of the haunted woods. Little troles that see nothing other than shine. Stinky breathes, rude manners, and a tendency to hollers at unfairness. I want to engage my body with this bruised soul, but am worried his knife shall cut deep if I undress my mind further.

F: I have conquered entire armies, never caught, by my forearm’s strength, my brow’s sweat and the fortune of the ages. I have traveled through blood and flesh and hair and spit, streams of it!, to hear the silence broken by a single note. I spent some time with a band of musicians, learned to tune my flute, read music, and yes, to play. I was harmonious and tactile. We spent many nights engaged in delicate sounds. That was before the alarum bell of the camp deranged my mind into a thousand different foe, each with a thousand different hands, armed with a thousand different scimitars.

O: I pray the both of you to release each other from your entanglement and let us all move forward to the Inn. It is only over there on the hill. We can make it through the darkness with this torch I have fashioned. I have packed our belongings onto the horses, and we can lead them like friends on a journey across a frozen lake.

D: Perhaps there I can give my body to this man, to both of you at once, perhaps, and I can rid myself of this curse for all. Like a little disease that visits me, once in a while. Nothing a little ointment doesn’t fix. I have many odious tales of dysfunctional body parts.

F: Then let my companion take you now to the inn. I will sleep here, under the moon, unclothe myself in the silver light and send milky streams into the ghost infested night. Perhaps it was only a nightmare that made me drop my flute, made me hear silence.

China and the Current Crisis: the Impact of the Peg.

2009-02-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

The following is an email correspondence I started with two acquaintances of mine:

1. Noam Chomsky, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at MIT

2. Desmond P. Morton, Emeritus Professor of History at McGill University

The topic is China's practice of "pegging" her currency (RMB) to the US's currency.

The question remains: how big of a world-wide impact has this "manipulation" of the capitalist open-market system produced? My contention: not negligible.

While we may be distracted by China's horrible domestic human rights record -- what record?! --, the great danger to the free world is letting the Chinese government get away with economic risks that would, in some textbooks, be considered an act of war.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Noam Chomsky

Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:23:49 -0500

Subject: Re: The Economy

To: "Saeed Fotohinia (by way of Noam Chomsky )"

I only partially agree. As for China, it has incredible internal problems,

far beyond anything known in the West: massive poverty, ecological disaster,

etc. It ranks about 80th in the UN human development report, and would

probably be considerably lower if it were open to investigation, as India is

(India ranks 127th).

It's been almost 40 years since the gold standard was abandoned and

currencies began to float, with some manipulation of course; China is hardly

alone.

Noam

----- Original Message -----

From: "Saeed Fotohinia (by way of Noam Chomsky )"

To: "Noam Chomsky"

Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 10:02 AM

Subject: Re: The Economy

> When I was in Beijing last year, I saw the development all around. I

> was with a friend who had visited the city frequently over the

> previous ten years; he told me how a decade ago, Beijing was cluttered

> with wooden shacks. There was no such thing left to see. And it wasn't

> just because of the Olympics the city was gearing up for at the time.

> It was because there was a lot of people knew that the Yuan was

> getting stronger by the second (not only because of their own labour,

> but, in part, due to the aggressive fiscal policy of their government

> towards others nations). The fact is that it has worked wonders for

> China.

> And I truly believe that the "correction" the world markets are

> presently experiences (and have been experience since September 2007

> (roughly around the time of the runs on Northern Rock Banks in the

> UK), has been in large part due to this never-before-seen practice of

> basing a currency neither on gold, nor on silver, nor on (as in the

> case of the US, in my estimation) the projection of power, but on a

> _competing_ currency.

> The cleverest part is how she's been able to get away with it for so

> long. Perhaps there is a Chinese agent working at the Fed, or even

> CNN, or even Wall Street. And why not, they have got a strong enough

> propaganda machine, and they've already purchased (in cash) American

> oil companies, entire automotive factories (shipped piece by piece

> from Brazil), and even IBM laptops - and let's not forget Maytag (oh

> yes, and of course...Wal Mart!).

> This is all done in extra cash.

> The success of China lies in its cleverness. We don't need to revisit

> Sun Tzu to know that it is wise to "appear empty when full; full when

> empty."

> Yours, still empty, truly,

> Saeed

> PS but still smiling :)

> On 2/11/09, Noam Chomsky wrote:

> > I'm skeptical, frankly. But maybe.

> >

> > Noam Chomsky

> >

> > ----- Original Message -----

> > From: "Saeed Fotohinia (by way of Noam Chomsky )"

> >

> > To: "Noam Chomsky"

> > Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 9:51 AM

> > Subject: The Economy

> >

> >> Dear Prof. Chomsky and Prof. Morton,

> >>

> >> Here is my take on the Economy:

> >>

> >> Currencies fluctuate according to markets. To control the markets China

> >> pegged. The world economic crisis is because of this practice of

> >> pegging.

> >> The solution to the world economic crisis is important because it could

> >> lead to a global conflagration of devastating proportions.

> >>

> >> Possible solutions include: 1. other countries pegging to other

> >> currencies, or 2. disallowing the practice of pegging world-wide

> >> (highly

> >> unlikely).

> >>

> >> Should Canada peg to the US dollar?

> >>

> >> Yours truly,

> >>

> >> Saeed Fotohinia

> >>

> >> PS I am still hunting for a fearless publisher.

> >>

> >

The Fog

2009-02-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

I was about to go to bed tonight but felt a little hot so I opened a window. When I looked outside I saw how foggy it was and decided to go for a walk. It was really foggy and the street lamps were all blurry. I walked and walked about town and realized I hadn’t been out this late in many months. I seem to have forgotten how different of a crowd prowls the city after midnight. Mostly a lot of degenerates and security people. What happens to an entire city at night?

Everybody is home asleep, like I would have been had I not walked to the window. I would have been dreaming. The city was dreaming while I walked in the shadow of day.

It is not a pleasant experience. The only way it can be a pleasant experience is if you walk through the sleeping city as though you too are in a state of sleeping and dreaming.

I am home now, typing this. I’m about to eat the snack I picked up at the 24-hour pizza deli. I can smell it, very greasy stuff. I also got a can of Coke. It is covered in humidity.

Ode to a rhapsody in blue jeans

2009-01-30T21:22:00.000-08:00

As if in fast thick pants were breathing,
So said what's his name in a Woolfian stream of thought
But I digress
Coleridge my boy! Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Or Shakespeare they say.
You speak of things beyond your purview
Tybalt! King of Cats!
But there was more Horatio!
More ginger on my fingertips, more flips, tricks, and triptorrents
Two florents for his friend
A coin for the boatswain
And thus the river stix to us like a bad conscious, a smell
Aghast at the nihilist peering into the glossy black abyss of some narcissistic reflection in some dim dew covered pond.
i have sailed to Mount Abora
And on a dulcimer she played

The Lady of Shalott.

But forget-me-not!

Ah nevermore!

Quoth the Raven on the bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.

They say i have good memory, but only rosemary is for remembrance

Like our friend Waterhouse painted both Ophelia and

The Lady of Shalott.

Beauty is no longer Dead

2009-01-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

Roughly one year ago, today, I made this painting in Vienna. The idea for it struck me like a lightning bolt. Of course "Beauty is Dead" as I looked at the world around me. Why? I haven't been able to figure it out. The TRUE source, you might say. Until today...well last night... It's Hemingway. That's the problem. John F. Kennedy's rise to stardom can be rooted in the success of his first book: _Profiles in Courage_. In it, we find a definition: Hemingway's: Courage equals "Grace under fire" or "Grace under pressure" (as originally stated by Ernest). He committed suicide BTW The point is: he had it all wrong. He mixed up something as fundamental as 'Courage' with something even more fundamental: 'Beauty'. The definition should read: _Beauty_ is "Grace under Pressure." Will this change the world? Words are more important than we give them credit for.

Another thought on Bush's Farewell address

2009-01-17T12:28:00.000-08:00

another point is that while Bush has constantly reminded the American people that history will remember him having made the right decisions, he says the following: "President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, 'I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.'" So according to this, Bush decision-making process involves a history, in the future, he won't like thinking about. fail

A thought on Bush's Farewell address

2009-01-16T19:06:00.001-08:00

i have thought about this address. at first i was overcome by the imperial rhetoric. Almighty God! Powerful stuff.

but this is a very dangerous farewell address for one reason that i can think of: the tradition of petitioning that it fosters.

the example of the surgeon who petitioned the president to bypass the age limit. once some of the rules are bent by such a petition, then the precedent for future "acts of heroism" is set and the process of petitioning will hijack the presidency far more than anti-terrorism. the rules must be respected, the toughest decisions aren't always the biggest ones.

Text of Bush's farewell address Thursday

2009-01-16T10:32:00.000-08:00

Text of Bush's farewell address Thursday

By The Associated Press – 15 hours ago

Text of President George W. Bush's farewell address Thursday, as transcribed by the White House:

___

Fellow citizens: For eight years, it has been my honor to serve as your president. The first decade of this new century has been a period of consequence — a time set apart. Tonight, with a thankful heart, I have asked for a final opportunity to share some thoughts on the journey that we have traveled together, and the future of our nation.

Five days from now, the world will witness the vitality of American democracy. In a tradition dating back to our founding, the presidency will pass to a successor chosen by you, the American people. Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose history reflects the enduring promise of our land. This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle, and their two beautiful girls.

Tonight I am filled with gratitude — to Vice President Cheney and members of my administration; to Laura, who brought joy to this house and love to my life; to our wonderful daughters, Barbara and Jenna; to my parents, whose examples have provided strength for a lifetime. And above all, I thank the American people for the trust you have given me. I thank you for the prayers that have lifted my spirits. And I thank you for the countless acts of courage, generosity and grace that I have witnessed these past eight years.

This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house — September the 11th, 2001. That morning, terrorists took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock. I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon, and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. I remember Arlene Howard, who gave me her fallen son's police shield as a reminder of all that was lost. And I still carry his badge.

As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11. But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe.

Over the past seven years, a new Department of Homeland Security has been created. The military, the intelligence community and the FBI have been transformed. Our nation is equipped with new tools to monitor the terrorists' movements, freeze their finances and break up their plots. And with strong allies at our side, we have taken the fight to the terrorists and those who support them. Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored al-Qaida and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school. Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.

There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil night and day to keep us safe — law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, homeland security and diplomatic personnel, and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

Our nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend us in this time of danger. I have cherished meeting these selfless patriots and their families. And America owes you a debt of gratitude. And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight: There has been no higher honor than serving as your commander in chief.

The battles waged by our troops are part of a broader struggle between two dramatically different systems. Under one, a small band of fanatics demands total obedience to an oppressive ideology, condemns women to subservience and marks unbelievers for murder. The other system is based on the conviction that freedom is the universal gift of Almighty God, and that liberty and justice light the path to peace.

This is the belief that gave birth to our nation. And in the long run, advancing this belief is the only practical way to protect our citizens. When people live in freedom, they do not willingly choose leaders who pursue campaigns of terror. When people have hope in the future, they will not cede their lives to violence and extremism. So around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights and human dignity. We're standing with dissidents and young democracies, providing AIDS medicine to dying patients — to bring dying patients back to life, and sparing mothers and babies from malaria. And this great republic born alone in liberty is leading the world toward a new age when freedom belongs to all nations.

For eight years, we've also strived to expand opportunity and hope here at home. Across our country, students are rising to meet higher standards in public schools. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled. Every taxpayer pays lower income taxes. The addicted and suffering are finding new hope through faith-based programs. Vulnerable human life is better protected. Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled. America's air and water and lands are measurably cleaner. And the federal bench includes wise new members like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. All Americans are in this together. And together, with determination and hard work, we will restore our economy to the path of growth. We will show the world once again the resilience of America's free enterprise system.

Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks. There are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I've always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.

The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are some guiding principles that should shape our course.

While our nation is safer than it was seven years ago, the gravest threat to our people remains another terrorist attack. Our enemies are patient, and determined to strike again. America did nothing to seek or deserve this conflict. But we have been given solemn responsibilities, and we must meet them. We must resist complacency. We must keep our resolve. And we must never let down our guard.

At the same time, we must continue to engage the world with confidence and clear purpose. In the face of threats from abroad, it can be tempting to seek comfort by turning inward. But we must reject isolationism and its companion, protectionism. Retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. In the 21st century, security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.

As we address these challenges — and others we cannot foresee tonight — America must maintain our moral clarity. I've often spoken to you about good and evil, and this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense — and to advance the cause of peace.

President Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." As I leave the house he occupied two centuries ago, I share that optimism. America is a young country, full of vitality, constantly growing and renewing itself. And even in the toughest times, we lift our eyes to the broad horizon ahead.

I have confidence in the promise of America because I know the character of our people. This is a nation that inspires immigrants to risk everything for the dream of freedom. This is a nation where citizens show calm in times of danger and compassion in the face of suffering. We see examples of America's character all around us. And Laura and I have invited some of them to join us in the White House this evening.

We see America's character in Dr. Tony Rehcasner, a principal who opened a new charter school from the ruins of Hurricane Katrina. We see it in Julio Medina, a former inmate who leads a faith-based program to help prisoners returning to society. We've seen it in Staff Sgt. Aubrey McDade, who charged into an ambush in Iraq and rescued three of his fellow Marines.

We see America's character in Bill Krissoff — a surgeon from California. His son, Nathan — a Marine — gave his life in Iraq. When I met Dr. Krissoff and his family, he delivered some surprising news: He told me he wanted to join the Navy Medical Corps in honor of his son. This good man was 60 years old — 18 years above the age limit. But his petition for a waiver was granted, and for the past year he has trained in battlefield medicine. Lieutenant Commander Krissoff could not be here tonight, because he will soon deploy to Iraq, where he will help save America's wounded warriors — and uphold the legacy of his fallen son.

In citizens like these, we see the best of our country — resilient and hopeful, caring and strong. These virtues give me an unshakable faith in America. We have faced danger and trial, and there's more ahead. But with the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great nation will never tire, never falter, and never fail.

It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your president. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the greatness of our country, and uplifted by the goodness of our people. I have been blessed to represent this nation we love. And I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than any other — citizen of the United States of America.

And so, my fellow Americans, for the final time: Good night. May God bless this house and our next president. And may God bless you and our wonderful country. Thank you.

(as found on: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iKp-PAHfW8z5mhmIkpOvVAesxgdgD95NV5C00)

Hudson Plane CNN Coverage vs. Facebook

2009-01-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

The following are comments on my friend "Mary's" recent status update:

Mary just saw a plane crash into the Hudson outside her window...

Fred at 4:03pm January 15
Holy shit. I'm speachless beyond "holy shit".

Paul at 4:10pm January 15
thankfully, its apparently more of a 'water' landing than anything. apparently the pilot flew into a flock of birds or something. its all sirens up in here!

Paul at 4:10pm January 15
http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-011509-mw-usairways_crash.759d7dc.html

Saeed at 4:17pm January 15
birds scare me

Fred at 4:20pm January 15
People don't even die in plane crashes in the Obama Age! Wahoo! Er, at least it sounds like everybody got off.

Luke at 7:27pm January 15
Well at the very least I'm glad you're staying indoors.

Peter at 10:20am January 16
DUDE! i just read about this in the SFGATE.... the pilot is from the bay area... just amazing everyone frikin survived!

2008-12-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

My Follow-Up Email to my recent conversation with Prof. Nima Arkani-Hamed

2008-11-15T17:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Prof. Arkani-Hamed, It was a pleasure meeting you. Please view the basis of my theory (the experiment) in the following video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZcZUZ2qV30 My prediction was that the Rainbow spectrum could be transformed into the Fotouhinia Spectrum (and vice-versa) in a sensical, quasi-mathematical way. And it turns out it can. The ramifications of this are the debunking of Quantum Theory (or at least the explanation of it), the replacement of Gravity, and the eradication of Mass in the famous e equals mc squared formula. Black Holes are not holes but Fotouhinia Hurricanes. This is about a hundred double-spaced pages of theory, including more possible experiments (_Looking For Ultraviolet_). Ultimately history will show if i am right or not, but maybe you could expedite the process of getting me much-needed credibilty. Yours very thankfully, Saeed Navid Fotouhinia CC: Prof. Edward Witten

Fotouhinia Theory of Light

2008-11-11T21:26:00.000-08:00

See youtube video:

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=RZcZUZ2qV30

After our Conversation (Noam Chomsky and Saeed Navid Fotouhinia at MIT)

2008-11-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

McGill Celebs Article

2008-11-10T10:18:00.000-08:00

http://media.www.mcgilltribune.com/media/storage/paper234/news/2004/09/21/Features/Mcgill.Celebs-724556.shtml?norewrite200610272222&sourcedomain=www.mcgilltribune.com

Chomsky interview

2008-11-04T09:39:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/speedspeedsaeed