From The Free School University at OccupyBoston we have Professor Victor Wallis Speaks on the “Roots of the Current Crisis.” Video 1 of 3

There is much that Professor Wallis says that matches what I have been saying on this blog and in private conversations. I’ll name just a few below.

1. The existence of Socialist and Communist governments scared capitalists into making concessions to the middle-class. Once Communism was defeated, all hell was free to break loose
2. Politically educating the public is the first priority of a President or of a political movement

Some items mentioned in the video that I want to remember to follow up include:

Capitalism Hits the Fan – 1 hour lively lecture. Rick Wolfe

Open Media Boston

The “S” Word: A short history of an American tradition, Socialism – John Nichols book.

October 16, 2011.

Part 2 of the video has been posted.

I am not as infatuated with this part as I was the first part.

Alleged Iranian Assassination Plot Appears an FBI Sting comes from The Real News.

Gareth Porter: Evidence points to an FBI sting that creates rational for stepped up campaign against Iran

Here is the video.

I have shown my skepticism about this story in two previous posts, Petraeus’s CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot and War with The U.S. Is of No Interest to Iran; Who Invented This Absurd Plot?

Speedy neutrino mystery likely solved, relativity safe after all explains how the mystery was solved.

Those weird faster-than-light neutrinos that CERN thought they saw last month may have just gotten slowed down to a speed that’ll keep them from completely destroying physics as we know it. In an ironic twist, the very theory that these neutrinos would have disproved may explain exactly what happened.

…

Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands went and crunched the numbers on how much relativity should have effected the experiment, and found that the correct compensation should be about 32 additional nanoseconds on each end, which neatly takes care of the 60 nanosecond speed boost that the neutrinos originally seemed to have. This all has to be peer-reviewed and confirmed, of course, but at least for now, it seems like the theory of relativity is not only safe, but confirmed once again.

I had always suspected the issue would be in measuring the distance between two point 450 miles apart with enough accuracy to say that the small discrepancy was proof of a violation of the theory of special relativity rather than experimental error.

The article The Public Option in Banking: Another Look at the German Model by Ellen Brown is an extended explanation of the public option in banking. Just to prove to you that this can only be some far out European scheme, here are some snippets from the article:

In the US, North Dakota is the only state to own its own bank. It is also the only state that has sported a budget surplus every year since the 2008 credit crisis. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the country and the lowest default rate on loans. It also has oil, but so do other states that are not doing so well. Still, the media tend to attribute North Dakota’s success to its oil fields.

What about other example?

We don’t hear much about a public banking option in the United States, but a number of countries already have a resilient public banking sector. A May 2010 article in The Economist noted that the strong and stable publicly owned banks of India, China and Brazil helped those countries weather the banking crisis afflicting most of the world in the last few years.

So if the previous post Michael Hudson on the Need to Treat Banks as Utilities was more than you could take, the above article by Ellen Brown may be a gentler introduction to the idea.

I think the Occupy Wall Street movement is wise to be careful before it makes specific demands.  This goes right to one of the key failures of the Obama administration.  There is a long period of educating the public that must precede any attempt at huge change.  If you haven’t done the education first (as the right wing has done for their ideas over the past 30 years), then it will be too easy for the opposition to roll out their propaganda (that they have been pumping for 30 years) to steal the public support away from you.  If you still believe that Obama really wanted to make change you can believe in, then his  failure to understand the need for education first is his biggest failure.

For men to understand the concept, maybe I should call the education process forework and liken it to foreplay in sex.  If you still don’t get it, then ask a female significant other to explain it to you.  For homosexual couples I don’t know who to advise who to seek explanation.

Also tucked into this video is an explanation of why Occupy Wall Street wants to avoid making specific demands at this point in the life of the organization.

As I see it, there are two ways to treat the video below.  One way is to view it with the attitude that you are going to look for the flaws in the argument so that you can ignore what is being said. The other way is to try to learn something from what Hudson says and try to pick out the ideas that you find significant and worth more thought.

Even if you find these ideas more radical than your brain can manage, you can view this as only a mild extreme that could occur if the “system” refuses to respond to the concerns of the protesters.

In Nouriel Roubini’s article The Instability of Inequality, he recognizes the successes and failures of varous economic systems. (I have added the emphasis in quotes below.)

Some of the lessons about the need for prudential regulation of the financial system were lost in the Reagan-Thatcher era, when the appetite for massive deregulation was created in part by the flaws in Europe’s social-welfare model. Those flaws were reflected in yawning fiscal deficits, regulatory overkill, and a lack of economic dynamism that led to sclerotic growth then and the eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis now.

But the laissez-faire Anglo-Saxon model has also now failed miserably. To stabilize market-oriented economies requires a return to the right balance between markets and provision of public goods. That means moving away from both the Anglo-Saxon model of unregulated markets and the continental European model of deficit-driven welfare states. Even an alternative “Asian” growth model – if there really is one – has not prevented a rise in inequality in China, India, and elsewhere.

Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.

I often wonder why the global social system must swing from one extreme to another.  Of course it is true that conditions change and social systems must adapt.  However, the social system going to an extreme so that it sows its own seeds of destruction is a mal-adaptation that it would be nice to stop.

The article War with The U.S. Is of No Interest to Iran; Who Invented This Absurd Plot? casts lots of doubts about this latest alleged plot by Iran.  Here is a single example.

Iranian intelligence is famously efficient at hiding its tracks. Though many believe that it was the Iranians who blew up Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 — in retaliation for the shoot-down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the U.S. Navy ship the USS Vincennes — no convincing trail has ever come to light. Yet it is supposedly Iranian intelligence that wired $100,000 to the used car salesman, allegedly a down payment for Los Zetas, using a known Al Quds force bank account.

If the bid was a false flag operation mounted by the Saudis or Israelis, an open transfer of money would be one obvious tactic. The U.S. has made swift use of dubious “plots” in the not-so-distant past.

War with Iran is also of no interest of the people of the U.S., but the politicians might find it a useful distraction.  No more worries about cutting the deficit or creating jobs, just send the unemployed to fight a war in Iran no matter the cost.

The article Petraeus’s CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot by Ray McGovern just adds a little fuel to my existing suspicions of the latest Iran imbroglio.

Discussing the call between the alleged plotter and his alleged contact in Iran, the article says:

The call is recounted in the FBI affidavit submitted in support of the criminal charges against Arbabsiar, who is now in U.S. custody, and Shakuri, who is not. But the snippets of that conversation are unclear, discussing what on the surface appears to be a “Chevrolet” car purchase, but which the FBI asserts is code for killing the Saudi ambassador.

The article further goes on to say:

As for Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, some adult adviser should tell them to quit giving hypocrisy a bad name with their righteous indignation over the thought that no civilized nation would conduct cross-border assassinations.

The Obama administration, like its predecessor, has been dispatching armed drones to distant corners of the globe to kill Islamic militants, including recently U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki for the alleged crime of encouraging violence against Americans.

As I listened to Secretary of State Clinton and the FBI and Justice Department make their statements about all the things they were accusing Iran of doing, it was so easy for me to add “You mean just like the United States?” to each accusation. I was not  exaggerating with my addition.

We certainly want to stop Iran from perpetrating murders in the United States.  To act like they are doing something we would never do and have never done just destroys any credibility that the accusers have.  They would have been wiser to lower their tone of umbrage if they had really wanted the American people to believe them.  Apparently, belief in our government by the American people is not even a thinly veiled necessity anymore.

I have always thought that when you listen to a Republican claim that liberals want to do some heinous thing, you can be assured that they got the idea for making such a charge from something they thought of doing themselves.  Well, at least Obama has learned something from his dealings with the Republicans.  No sense wasting all that torture and assassination plotting when you can get double duty out of it by accusing others of planning to do what you have already thought of and done.

I just realized that I have to add that to be upset that other countries would try to stop us from carrying out murders in their country is the height of obtuseness.  Obtuse on the part of the American public that cannot understand it.  Certainly, our own government leaders are just pretending that they don’t understand.

Even George Bush didn’t believe that they hate us for our freedom.

As I watched the news reports yesterday about the three trade bills and the claims that they would increase jobs in the U.S., I was very skeptical. I am afraid President Obama has lost his credibility with me. So even when he says it, I have my doubts.

I am not saying that the video from Denis Kucinich below proves anything, but I am more likely to believe what he says these days than what comes from the Republicans in Congress or the President who leans toward them.

The Occupy Wall Street movement and credibility train are leaving the station on the same train, Obama had better hop on before he is left behind in the dust.

Why is it that so many of the bills passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama are touted as one thing, but turn out to be something else? I am not surprised that this comes out of the Republican minds in Congress, but I am disappointed in President Obama. The innocuous sounding name of the bill makes Governor Deval Patrick look bad when he refuses to go along with the idea. Maybe this show will help explain the position that Deval Patrick is taking.

I’d feel safer if law enforcement spent more time locking up drunk drivers and bank robbers no matter what is their immigration status or the color of their collars, than in going after families whose only crime is violation of the immigration laws. Saying that we have to get our priorities straight in where we focus our limited law enforcement resources, is not the same thing as condoning violation of immigration laws, so don’t even go there.