CONCENTRATED WEALTH AND POLITICAL POWER, A DANGEROUS MIX

THE GINI INDEX A KEY TO UNDERSTANDING OUR ECONOMY AND POLITY

GINI INDEX EXPLAINED

The Gini Index, (ratio or coefficient) is a measure of statistical dispersion first developed by the Italian sociologist and statistician Corrado Gini who in his 1912 seminal paper entitled: "Variabilita e mutabilita",used this function to measure inequality among values of sociological frequency distributions such as wealth or income levels. The function has been widely applied in social science, agronomy, chemistry and other fields. It is most frequently used as a measure of income inequality. Gini's calculation was based on the frequency distribution of total income of a population, where the y axis is the cumulative share of income earned, and the x axis is cumulative share of people from lowest to highest incomes. The plotted values approximate a convex curve (Lorenz curve) formed between the upper left arms of the x and y axes. A line constructed across the endpoint of these axes, forming a 45 degree angle relative to the x axis, would represent the line of perfect equality of incomes. The Gini ratio, coefficient, or index is a ratio of the area which lies between the line of equality and the curved line and the total area under the line of equality. The value can range from zero to one. The closer the value approximates 0 the more equal the distribution is and the closer to one the more unequal the distribution is. For ease of understanding the values are often expressed as a percentage. At G = 1, one person receives 100% of the income, while at G =0, every person receives the same income. E values can be expressed as a fraction or in percent, or as whole numbers. So Sweden is at times represented as having a Gini index of .23, 23, or 23%.

Other measures of income inequality are also in use that are even simpler and easier to calculate. The "decile dispersion' ratio is a simple concept and simple calculation. It is the comparison of the average income (or other measure) of the richest 10% of the population divided by the poorest 10% of that population.

Decile Dispersion (DD) at 10% = r10%/p10%.

This value is easily understood, since the computation results in a number which expresses the number of times that the income of te top 10% is greater than the bottom 10%. A DD 10% value of 16 for example would mean that the top 10% of that population (rich) have an average income sixteen times greater than the average income of the bottom 10% ( poor).

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

First we must be clear, the Gini index says nothing about the wealth of a nation. The index measure the dispersion of wealth within the nation. Cameroon, Bulgaria and the USA all have the same Gini index @ .45 but are poles apart in income, GDP and individual wealth. But the index does indicate that the disparity in wealth within those countries are similar, though the individuals themselves may have vastly different incomes.

An examination of the most recent CIA data (CIA World Factbook) reveals that for this recent set of data mostly from the early to mid 2000s, the Gini indices range from a low of 23 for Sweden to a high of 71 for Nambia. For the most recent CIA compilation of 111 nations, I could find, (See Wikipedia " Gini index") ranged from 34.5 for Albania to 71 for Nambia. I plotted these data on xcell and calculated the mean (43.2) and median (41.1) and determined the modality to be bimodal (39 and 40.1). I plotted a frequency graph which indicated that the values tailed off into low frequencies on the high (50-70) end of the Gini value intervals. The USA, at Gini index 45, plotted in the high end of the curve beyond the median and mean. Indicating that in comparison to all woord nations listed on the CIA tabulaton our brand of unmoduated capitalism has permitted incomes to become widely divergent, more similar to situations one would find in the third world. But see below.

WHERE DOES THE USA RANK IN INCOME INEQUALITY?

On closer examination of the world list indictes that most first-world, modern, (mostly) western, industrialized states have Gini values which range in the low 30s. How did the USA compare with this selected group of nations who have modern democracies and are our allies and trading partners. I tabulated sixteen of these nations from the latest CIA compilation. The list included: Austria-Gini index=26, Australia=30.5, Canada=32.1, France=32.7, Greece=33, Germany=27, Israel=39.2, Italy=32, Japan=37.6, New Zealand=36.2, Poland=34.2, Portugal=38.5, Spain=32, Suisse=33.7, Sweden=23, and the UK=34 and were chosen as typical of this western, modern-nation group. The mean value of the Gini indices of this selected group is 32.7. The Gini index of the USA is listed as 45. A number which is way out of the range of the other nations of similar wealth, level of development, industrialization etc., and more typical of third-world dictatorships and middle Eastern absolute monarchies. In fact our Gini value is 12.73 or nearly 13 points higher than the average industrialized western nation from my selected list. That departure suggests that our "income inequality level" is more than one-third higher, or 37% higher than the average of the selected "modern" nation list values. Over-all we rank above (where below would be better) the mean at 43 and the median at 41. I consider the variation between the USA Gini ranking in those of my selected "modern" nations to be a very significant variation. Why are our Gini values so far off the others of our allies and trading partners?

Some would decry the attempt at comparison of income inequality measures between nations and claim that there are inherent difficulties in evaluating Gini values from one country to another. And there are historic and demographic reasons (in the US ) for some of the circumstances we see in these tabulations. However a comparison over time of the same nation is valid and might shed light on the way our levels of income inequality have changed. Our Census Bureau has collected over the years aince 1968 and these data are available. This permits us to compare the US values over time. Such a compilation of US annual Gini values over the years show a disturbing trend of generally rising income inequality.

Comparison USA Gini Values from 1925-2009

(US Census Bureau Data)

1925-45 estimated

1947-37.8 estimated

1967-39.7 first year reported

1968-38.6 lowest value

1970-39.4

1980-42.8

2000-46.2

2005-46.9

2007-46.3

2008-46.7

2009-46.8

After:www.ruralvotes.com/thebackforty, M Williamson.

A graphic representation of these data reveal a troubling trend of rising Gini values beginning from the period of about 1970 when inequality values reached into the high 30s and continued to climb into the high 40s. The present value of 45 is what is estimated to have prevailed in this measure in the "roaring 20s" prior to the Great Depression. Then after WW II we had a leveling off of this measure for several decades during a period of manufacturing expansion and widespread income equality. ( It is noteworthy that even at our lowest level in 1968 --Gini @39--this measure does not approach the values of modern, democratic industrialized nations of @ 33). But by the late sixties when this measure of income disparity hit its lowest point, something changed (this has been termed the "great divergence" by economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman) and from that inflection point onward the graph of these data points indicates that income inequality has been steadily rising---up to 2005, when these US data lists the highest value of inequality and then continues to return to nearly that level again in 2009. The Great Recession has had some understandable but minor impact on this measure in the most-recent 2011 compilation which indicates that it has dropped back a few points to 45.

WHY WEALTH CONCENTRATION IN THE HANDS OF THE FEW IS TROUBLING

In a piece published in the Economist, Jan 20 2011, "Unbottled Gini. Inequality is it rising? Does it matter?"the author notes that the trend in inequality of income in America is increasing and quotes others who state that "countries (with high Gini values) have worse social indicators, a poorer human development record, and higher degrees of economic insecurity and anxiety." That is that the "haves and have-mores" (former President George W. Bush's self-described constituency) are grwoing in wealth and have now become the "have-even-more" group. Because it appears that for those that have been accumulating wealth at the very top, that process of wealth-accumulation becomes even easier and more effective, and the wealthier these individuals become the more they accumulate. A study published by the Census Bureau and noted in the Economist article indicates that the disparity in wealth is growing because the top tier income levels are accumulating wealth at a far faster rate than the lower rankings while those at the bottom are declining in real income.

Based on The Economist (op.cit above), in the US in the 1970s, the incomes of the top fifth (20%) of earners rose by 14%, while in the same period the bottom fifth rose only by 9%--not a huge disparity at only 5%! But by the 1990s, that disparity grew, in that period the incomes of the top fifth had increased by 27% and the bottom fifth by only 10%. So by the 199os, the difference between the top fifth and bottom fifth had grown to 17%, or more than three times what it had been two decades earlier. Thus the trend in income-disparity is one of increasing divergence between the top and bottom levels of earners. In regard to this phenomenon the USA can be imagined as on a "slippery slope" of income inequality in which that measure become smore extreme over time. And with it the negative social, economic and political impacts of income inequality will only increase.

Since the 1970s, due to these factors described above, an enormous amount of wealth has been transferred to the top percentages of the nation's earners---the wealthy elite. (So says, Les Leopold, author of "Looting America," Chelsea Green Publications, June, 2009). Leopold found that in 1973 the top one percent took home 8% of the nation's income, but by 2006 this same group was pulling down nearly three times more of the total pie at 23%. That was the highest percentage since the 1920s. In another analysis of this same phenomenon, an article in the Economist has noted that between 1979 and 2000 the top one percent increased their earning by about 275%, while the bottom 80% have had their real earnings reduced by half.

What is apparent is that old saying that "wealth begets wealth" is true. It is apparent that the super wealthy have greater access to the public media where they can change the economic and political story and circumstances to their advantage, and, also, in a nation in which money can purchase political power, they use their wealth to change and control the political environment to their advantage.

Its plain that this disparity in funds has had dramatic political effects. See:"Fear and Looting in America", Les Leopold (June 06, 2009) Huffington Post. Its obvious that the wealthy can spend on political campaigns and do so with abandon. They also support massive lobbying efforts to control legislation they see as advancing their financial goals, acess to power, and business aims--mostly to accumulate more wealth. Leopold states, that: "The shift in wealth in turn created an unholy cycle of more lobbying for more benefits for the super-rich and large corporations, who in turn paid for even more lobbying--a cycle that is till in motion." (Leopold, Huffington Post 2009). The same author gives several examples of what he describes aptly as the "appalling example of raw power of money" in the hands of a determined and wealthy constituency. Often the wealth which gets into the hand of the investor-class goes into off-shore accounts where they are sheltered from taxes, and these funds support no investments in a tangible, real-economy here in the USA which would help to keep Americans employed. All too often, the funds that do remain here are not invested in profit making enterprises but are slated to "fuel the derivatives casino on Wall Street", or "the exotic financially-engineered-products designed to soak up the investor classes' surplus capital". These funds "go to feed the orgy of fantasy finance investments, that led directly to the crash of the economy in 2007-2008." Op.cit.

WEALTH AND POLITICS

But in order to maintain and abet their accumulating habits, the super-wealthy often turn to politics to protect and enhance their wealth. (They are mightily afraid of the wealthy's so called "nightmare" scenario" which, for them occurred in 1932, during the Great Depression, when after a limp recover from the 1929 Wall Street crash, the public rose up in well-justified public anger and tried to bring down the oligarchs whom they rightfully blamed for all the ills of the Depression. See "The Wealth Report" by R. Frank, WSJ, Dec 23, 2011.) They are determined to prevent this "nightmare scenario" which brought to power anti-corporatists such as populist Senator Huey Long, and of course the nemesis of the Republicans...FDR. But recall that what they call the "nightmare scenario" they so fear ushered in the longest period (four decades) of continued growth and relative income equality (Gini values in the high 30s) in American history. )

The wealthy, through PACs and now anonymous direct support (after Citizen's United ruling) can literally purchase their own candidates for major government offices.

Take for example that of Newt Gingrich and his primary and seemingly only supporter Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas multibillionaire who has poured five million (of the 33 million dollars he is reputed to earn each day) into Newt's floundering campaign. He has threatened to make that 100 million or two-hundred if he needs it. Adelsons and his Israeli-national wife (and two daughters who are binational and carry Israeli passports) is notorious as a fanatical supporter of Israeli PM Netanyahu. Adelson famously purchased a newspaper (name?h which he distributes for free in Israel. It's purpose was to support Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu for his first election and since then, the daily (dubbed "Bibiton"a play on the Hebrew words which means "Bibi's newspaper"--where "Bibi"is a reference to Benjamin Netanyahu's nick name) has become one of the most widespread and widely read dailies. It is the "Washington Times" of Israel, existing for the sole purpose of supporting and advancing Israeli right wing causes and Netanyahu in particular. Now as a result of the Citizen's United ruling in the Supreme Court, and the tax structure in the USA which favors the super wealthy, Adelson has been able to amass great wealth, and to direct it into personal political goals which he favors. No one is denying his right to do so. But it does illustrate a disturbing trend.

During this presidential election cycle he has become the sole, big, financial supporter of former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Former Congressman Gingrich, who was a vocal Israeli supporter before , but now since his support from Adelson, has become more outspoken, even strident supporter of right-wing Israeli positions, perhaps to keep those millions of Adelson's dollars rolling in, which are the primary props of his campaign. During the campaign, Gingrich made several statements which were both intemperate and undiplomatic for a potential US president. The now infamous slur against the Palestinians as "an invented race" and his statement that all of the Palestinian leaders were "terrorists"were comments which caused a flurry of protests and embarrassing comments around the world, but were no doubt ment to please and encourage his prime supporter--Mr. Sheldon Adelson.

Now can you imagine what it might be like if these two men, Netanyahu and Gingrich, both of whom are proteges of and apparently under the influence of the same enormously wealthy and powerful man, were to actually serve contemporaneous and respectively as President of the US and PM of Israel. Would that be too much power in the hands on one man? I think we all instinctively know what that answe is. See: Salon.com. "The Adelson's other pet project:the Israeli right," February 09, 2012.

SOME THOUGHTS

The facts above, that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very few in this nation and that process of concentration is accelerating, strikes at the very heart of Republican political strategy and talking points.

1. Trickle down economics does not work. Wealth moves to the top and stays there...unless government intervenes by tax policies and other legislation which acts to level the playing field. The former also goes also for that old Republican saw, "a rising tide lifts all boats"--it aint true! It is well to recall that during the post WWII period of high employment, low Gini values, high profits and expanding economy the very wealthy paid as much as 60% on their earnings. They prospered very nicely then, now they pay less than 15%.

2. The basic Republican symphony has recurring strains of cutting taxes for the wealthy "for they are the job creators", all too often this is not true and that what we need now is selective raising of taxes for the wealthy so as to help to move funds downward into the hands of the vast majority of middle class and workers who actually do create jobs by increasing demand.

According to Professor William Domhoff, (Domhoff UCSC, in "Who Rules America", www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica,) in 2007, the top 1% of this nation held 35% of the total net worth of the nation, the next 19% had 51%, (thus the top 20% held @86%) while the bottom 80% had a net worth of only 15%. Got that? The top 20% held more than 85% of the nation's wealth while the bottom 80% held only 15%! Or look at it this way the top 1% held 35% of the nations net worth while the bottom 99% held 65%. Thus the vast majority of American are scrambling and competing among themselves for only 65% of the nation's wealth. One asks where have all the jobs gone? Why is the economy stagnating? With a major chunk taken out of the economic pie and reserved to circulate in Wall Street exotic financials, or to buy up vast estates in Brazil, or a second Lear Jet, or swap $90 million dollar Manhattan apartments for a chalet in Paris. There is a lot less wealth in the hands of those who circulate the money, purchasing homes, washingmachines, automobiles and services. If there is no money in the hands of the many there is little demand and the economy stagnates.

3. Some modern nation's have mastered the problem of wealth concentration by means of taxation and legislation, but the USA is not one of them. We have never approximated the ideal, (a Gini index in the low 30s) but now we are in a netherworld of inequality with Bulgaria and Cameroon. Some of our political leaders (at the behest of the very wealthy to whom they owe allegiance) are still mentally and politically stuck in the 19th century era of robber barons and impoverished slave-workers. We have yet to evolve into the idea that more equitable dispersion of wealth is best for our economy and for all of us-- rich, middle and poor alike.

The fact of income inequality and its cancerous growth is a real threat to our economy. Wealth concentrated in the hands of the very few, as noted above, distorts growth, stifles demand, and results in is less tax revenue, less cash in circulation in the hands of the many. It encourages the movement of surplus funds of the super wealty into exotic financial transactions and the "Wall Street casino" where wealth is circulated and accumulated, but too often with no tangible benefits to the nation as a whole, or positive effects on job creation--and in short forces us to face a generally less inventive, vibrant and les-than-thriving economy.

4. The political impact is troubling too, since accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few inevitably leads to the dangerous concentration of political power, to social unrest, and to political polarization and stagnation. We can see this today in our high levels of income inequality wqhich seem to be associated with the polarized, ineffective government we are saddled with right now. Are they related?--I think so.

5. In the USA, in recent years the top one-percenters, constituting only some 3.2 million of us, have vastly more money and more political clout than the remaining 317 million middle-class and poor citizens. That is not simply the case of the "cream rising to the top". There are potentially sinister economic and political forces at work here which are acting to distort wealth distribution and the democratic fuctioning of our nation. We ignore them at our peril.

Get the picture?

rjk

THE GREECE CRISIS: MAKING OF AN AEGEAN POTTERSVILLE

I spent each summer season during the decade of the 90s in Greece as an archeologist and a student of the Hellenic Republic, learning the language, the culture and its ancient history. It was a fascinating period of my life.--perhaps the best. Each year, of that decade I and my colleague spent months in preparation , studying and planning our annual forays to Greece. Then during the summer holiday with students in tow, we completed several weeks in the field, conducting courses in history, geology and archaeology. We made many friends and came to love and respect the people, their ways, their history and their foods.

Thankfully, our time in the Hellenic Republic occurred before the so called "Greek miracle" of the early 2000s when Greece had been permitted into the EU. The government could no longer manipulate the drachma to its economic advantage, but was able to secure EU loans at low rates to fund its overspending habits. That period of wild spending, uncontrolled development and big loans--we never observed. I do remember well that the Greeks themselves, were honest as the day was long, and worked very hard. In my, pre-Greek-Miracle, end-of the millennium-experience, the Greeks had little access to cheap bank loans and used only what cash they had saved. Each year we would observe in Athens certain private homes and apartment buildings under continuous construction for years. In the big cities and in the country side these building would go up in stages, by years, the poured concrete slabs riven through with rusty iron "re bar" rods sticking skyward as if a promise to the Gods and the hope of the next level to come would clearly indicate the owner's objectives--and lack of any more funds for that year. We observed many a building go up year by year from the basement, the first floor and then if money was available, the top floors.

It is sad to learn what has happened to Greece in recent years, since 2007 and it is especially hard for a true lover of the Greeks a Hellenophile (ελλενοφιλος) like me.

The New York Times article ("The Way Greeks Live Now," Russell Shorto, February 13, 2012) underscores some drastic economic consequences of the largely American-generated financial collapse of 2007-2008 which left the hapless Greeks high and dry with a big bills to pay from excesssive spending (180% of GDP some claim) a sharp drop in tourism, high energy costs and collapsing markets for its goods. The result was ruin.

The Times piece reviews some of the damage:

One-fourth of Greek enterprises have gone out of business.

Half of all small concerns in the nation can not meet present payrolls.

The suicide rate has increased by 40% in the first half of 2011.

While the offical rate of unemployed is at Great Depression-level of 20%, in some demographic groups it is worse. For example, nearly half the under-25 population is unemployed.

Greek bankers report that their customers have little confidence in the nation's banks and have withdrawn one-third of their savings, and either sent it abroad, or have it buried in their back yards. With little money in circulation, the economy has shrunk by a staggering 7% and a flourishing barter economy has sprung up.

Emigration has spurted, as Greeks with ties abroad leave their homeland like passengers leaving a sinking ship. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, a program which typically drew little interest and only 42 respondents in the previous year, was overwhelmed when 12,000 Greeks signed up.

Even more saddening, and more "transformational" as the Times article states, is the reality of what happens when the government is economically powerless and so desperate for ready-cash that it will sell anything or grant permits for almost anything that may possibly increase income or make even unsubstantiated claims to "provide jobs".

One such case reported by the NY Times piece describes how the cash-flush Chinese, have largely taken over Greece's main port in Piraeus, "with an idea to making it a conduit" to ship it own goods into European ports. The story began in 2009 at the ehight of the crisis when the giant Chinese Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) closed one of the largest investment deals in Europe when it leased a major portion of Athen's Port of Piraeus, its important container terminals, in the Greek main commercial port, situated about six miles southeast of Athens. The Chinese paid the equivalent of $5 billion dollars to lease the site for the next 35 years. The project in southeastern Europe will give them ready access to valuable markets bordering the Black Sea and in eastern Europe.

In 2009, the Greeks were facing bad times and they had to make a deal. The Chinese may have dangled the prospect of thousands of jobs for unemployed Greeks and perhaps also held out the possiblity at that time to buy Greek bonds at more reasonable rates than the European financiers were willing to provide. But after the deal went through, many Greeks may have seen the parallel with the wooden horse of their own ancient myths and history. For though the Chinese promised some five-hundred jobs to local Greek dock workers these promises were not fulfilled in the manner the Greeks imagined, and worse they seem to have introduced a Trojan horse with unforeseen and terrible consequences.

According to a June 8, 2011 NPR video program, written by Louisa Lim, there is much to complain about in regard to labor conditions for those who work on the Chinese docks in the Port of Piraeus. Cosco has brought its own "China rules" to labor practices. These are not of European standards or Greek, but are designed solely to keep a cap on labor costs. For one thing, Cosco does not allow collective bargaining or labor unions. All workers are temporary and all employees are hired with no benefits. Workers are employed by a subsidiary company which sets the harsh rules. And in present-day Greece with more than 20% of the workforce unemployed, who is going to complain?

But workers complaints, not withstanding the fact that workers who complain are summarily fired, have begun to never-the-less slowly filter out of the tightly enclosed and monitored Chinese work area. On the Chinese docks the workers get paid for an eight hour shift---about half of what they would on the Greek docks, or about 50 Euros a shift or @ 600 Euros a month. The eight-hour shift is exactly that eight hours with no coffee breaks, toilet breaks or lunch breaks. When men working in the "straddle derricks" (which load and unload the shipping containers to and from the ship decks) 40 feet off the ground complained about the need for a toilet break they were told by supervisors to pee into the sea, or use an empty coffee container. There is no night differential, no over time and no weekend shifts. All the workers are kept "on call" so they do not know when they will be notified of a change in schedule and must simply wait to be called. These complaints have been verified by inspections by the Greek Labor Department.

The Greek dockworker unions have complained that the Chinese have imported their own labor practices to Greece where it has infected the industry causing an erosion of wages and labor rights which cuts across the market. Furthermore the Greek unions claim that big, cash-flush Cosco is gaining unwarranted control by dangling promises of future investments, purposely slowing the (formerly) agreed to building of an additional pier in the Chinese zone, to limit its overhead, and using its clout with the Greek government to gain concessions such as exemptions from certain dock and port fees. Their behavior is tantamount to blackmail some claim and suggest that their aim is eventual full control of the port. Some also suggest that it was Cosco's bullying which prevented the port authority from signing a deal with a major shipping company which would have been a Cosco competitor.

Then too there are reports of additional new Chinese investments other parts of Greece. One is a in a tiny placid and pristine seaport, Kokkinos Pirgos, a place I have visited (in 1997) on the southern coast of Crete known for its pristine beaches, sea turtles, and fine tomato crops. The Chinese are proposing a giant container port for this lovely place. They promise the port would generate eight hundred jobs, but the locals say it would end tourism, and its fishing industry and cost a few thousand jobs so its a choice of who the Cretans want to work for--themselves or the Chinese. Will the changes that are being pressed onto the Greeks will be worth the alterations in lifestyles? Most Greeks are not sure. They should review the film "It's a Wonderful Life" to better understand the choices that they must make and to understand what they will get with development is an oil-begrimed Mediterranean Pottersville. Kokkinos Pirgos is not alone, the Chinese are also looking at more development in the big port of Thessaloniki in the east. (After NPR, All Things Considered, 10-3-2010, by Johanna Kakissis)

There are other vultures flying over the prostrate Greek carcass. Tiny but cash rich and well connected (to American interests) Qatar. Itty-bitty Qatar, about three times the size of Long Island, NY (and once a British protectorate and a former oyster-pearling capital, is today a minuscule, but phenomenally wealthy oil-and-gas-rich fiefdom of the Al Thani family, which runs it as an absolute monarchy, and with the consent and collusion of the American government which has a huge military presence and intimate relationship with the Emir, an American protege. With an enormous $200 billion GDP derived from oil and gas production and a nominal population of about 2 million, it has the highest per capita GDP in the world ($100,000 per person per year) and one of the world's highest economic growth rates at nearly 20%.) is looking to spend $5 billion dollars in Greece on various projects to which many Greeks might object. such as more tourism infrastructure (Greece has too much of it) and to turning some of the lovely, pristine Greek isles into a high rise "Florida of Europe" for the affluent of the Continent and elsewhere. I can imagine that as in the Cosco enterprises the Greeks might be employed as bell hops and cleaning staff in these places.

If this Aegean Pottersville is what the future holds for Greece, I might suggest to my intelligent, wise and industrious friends in Greece, get out of the Eurozone. Default, it is no shame. Return to the drachma. Devalue your currency, as you did in the past, to make all your products and enterprises competitive on the world market. Tourism will revive and with it the thousands of small businesses throughout Greece will come back. Kick out the Al Thanis, and the Chinese and keep Hellenica for the Hellenes.

Get the picture?

rjk

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH EGGS

Some things just stay with you, however you change, or age. That's how it is with eggs and me. I grew up eating and savoring eggs of all kinds, prepared in all manner of ways: hardboiled, poached, fried hard, fried with drippy yellow yolks, served with bacon, with ham, with potatoes and of course sausage of all kinds. Even prepared raw in an egg nog, with milk, sugar, and vanilla extract. I loved deviled eggs and could eat them one after the other with abandon. My favorite sandwich was egg-salad with plenty of hard-cooked yolks and salad cream. In England, I learned how similar my tradition of eggy breakfast was with that of the "mother country" and of the delicious breakfast-eggs they served there. My favorite "fry up" was fresh farm eggs with black and white sausage, "doorstep toast" (similar to our "Texas toast") and fried tomatoes and of course baked beans are always served as the accompaniment to eggs. There too they have " real bacon" not the streaky, belly bacon we serve here but more meaty back-bacon of the Yorkshire hogs. In France, I learned about the delicate, sophisticated omelette, with fine herbs, and others with various meats and cheeses. In Spain, I found that the egg could be used as a main meal, as a tapas or "pincho" to accompany wine and beer in a tapas bar or even as a main meal in a torte, with potatoes and cooked with a tomato sauce. I loved them in every form and in every way. I also had the experience of raising hens to lay eggs. As a young man, then living and working on a back-to-nature farm, my wife and I raised Rhode Island Red hens (and some roosters) for their eggs. In those days, we produced enough eggs to give them away each day and had abundant eggs to use in every way and form.

As a child, on Easter mornings we all feasted on hard-boiled eggs and kielbasa, toast and butter. The eggs were started from cold water and boiled until just done, then mom would dump the entire batch into icy cold water to loosen the shells. The yolks were pure yellow when opened and the shells slipped off like a loose winter coat. The whites came away clean and neat. On these occasions, I would watch my grandpa eat his eggs. He always sliced his eggs open with his dinner knife so he had the two halves in front of him on his plate. Then he would slather the top of each with a bit of soft butter and then salt and pepper the top. He then slid the prepared egg out of its shell with the round point of his table knife and ate each one down in one bite. I had never seen anyone else eat eggs in this manner, until years and years later when I was at a quite fancy French resort in Provence where a man at the next table, apparently of central European origin (from his appearance) did exactly the same thing. Later in the day, on Ester Sundays we hunted for more hardboiled eggs in our grden and ate them cold when we found them.

Francis O. my paternal grandpa on a occasional early in the morning visit to our home was invited for breakfast and would easily down six eggs, a stack of toast, plus bacon and sausage too--all at one sitting. My Dad started his day, every day with eggs and bacon, or eggs and ham, eggs and Canadian bacon or eggs and scrapple, or eggs and corned beef, or on Saturday or Sunday steak and eggs-- all of these were accompanied with dark-toasted white bread, slathered with butter and all washed down with jugs of dark coffee modulated to a steamy brown with fresh,creamy milk.

As a child, my first awakening thoughts each morning was of my breakfast---and eggs. Sometimes I would have the enjoyment of being awakened by the aroma of frying bacon. But at other times, it was just the thought of bacon swimming in its sizzling fat and surrounded by cooked eggs that would rouse me. Then I would stumble down to the kitchen to stand next to mom as she cooked breakfast at the big white gas range. I watched her crack the brown eggs and gently drop them into the hot fat in the pan. And I listened to them sizzle and crackle as she lightly salted and peppered each firm, plump, bosomy, upright yolk. She often let the egg whites get a little too brown and crinkly around the edges for my tastes, but I never complained and could forgive her for that. For then she would expertly flip each egg over with a well used, shiny, iron spatula, then turn off the gas flame to continue the frying for thirty seconds more to permit the pan contents to reach a steamy doneness, and only then slide the eggs smoothly off into a oven- heated plate. Her finishing touch, just before I took over with knife and form, was to poke each yolk at the very center to form a tiny hole with the corner of the spatula to let the still-runny yellow seep out temptingly. Then, with my hair still bed-tousled, I would eagerly sit down on the hard kitchen chair in front of the steaming plate of eggs garnished with bacon, (not too crispy!) and a side dish heaped with dark toast, cut in half to form triangles and slathered with slightly salted deep yellow butter. Then slowly, with great care and anticipation, I would start my feast by poking the sharp corner of my toast into one of the tiny weep holes of runny yellow in the yolk to take my first taste of my morning egg.

The best part of camping trips of course was breakfasts of fresh eggs and thick slabs of bacon cooked over the open fire. At the age of ten years old, I cooked my first eggs and bacon on my own camp fire made of dry willow sticks in under a giant drooping willow tree that created a great umbrella over my campsite. The hot, fast fire quickly cooked the bacon to a savory sizzling crispness in the long handled folding-frying pan, I had. (It was a treasured gift from, our kind old neighbor Mrs Franza, whose son had used it first as a Boy Scout and who had tragically died in a swimming accident off of the 69th Street pier in Brooklyn. She gave it to me one day over the back yard fence, saying "Here Robbie, I want you to have this, it was Ernesto's, I think he would like to know it was being used again." ) The bacon strips were just at the perfect crispness and emitting a mouth watering aroma when I took them out of the pan with a willow stick and laid them on the metal plate next to the fire. I cracked each country-fresh egg (filched that very morning from grandpa's hen house) and let each one down carefully into the sizzling bacon grease in the pan. They crackled over the high fire and were just ready to be slid out of the pan when I heard a loud pricing cry that made the hair on the back of my young neck stand up.

"FIRE," screamed my Aunt Olga in a piercing terror-stricken voice. She sounded as if she was at the clothes line only a short distance from where I was cooking my rustic breakfast.

"There's a fire in the willow tree!" yelled my aunt Yolanda, from the back porch of my grandfather's house, only fifty feet away.

"Where?" yelled an anxiously hoarse voice, I immediately recognized as my grandfather's.

"Smoke is billowing out from the top of the willow tree in the garden," yelled one of my older cousins excitedly.

"Call the police!" yelled someone else.

In a nervous panic and fear of discovery, I dropped the sizzling frying pan with its nearly cooked eggs, the contents skidded out onto the dusty soil under the tree as I hastily kicked soil over them. Then stomped out the small campfire, scattering the smoldering firebrands and ashes this way and that. But that did not disperse the thick blue-white cloud of willow smoke that drifted up very slowly into the tree top where it continued to filter out of the topmost branches. As I turned back to scatter some more dirt on my campfire site, I looked up just in time to find my fear-stricken grandfather parting the thick drooping branches of the big old tree and staring in disbelief at his youngest grandson.

"It's only me," I said plaintively and guiltily.

When I matured to high school age, in the 1950s, the medical profession was just beginning to study diet in relation to heart disease. Their findings about hard fats in the diet, indicated that too much of these substances were likely to produce heart and circulatory disease. The reports were quite tentative at the beginning and I wondered about my penchant for egg and bacon breakfasts. I kept hoping that the researchers and scientist would discover that bacon fat and egg yolks were a great boon to health. They would clear the fats from your arteries and were great for your brain development. But those results never appeared in the reports.

Most troubling of all for an egg lover, was the fact that my favored food--or at least that lovely, tasty yolk--was one of the most offending of all foods since each yolk contained about as much cholesterol that a full-grown physically active man should have in one day (@300 mg). These finding were soon to have a devastating effect on my eating habits or at least what I thought I should eat or not eat. But since I was not the most rigid of dieters --all my new knowledge caused me was a lot of anxiety and guilt.

My new found knowledge was rejected by my egg loving parents. No one could or would believe that the lovely yolk of an egg could possible be harmful. My mother never did acquiesce to my thinking on that issue. She continued to believe that the yolk was necessary for good digestion of the white and that they were both "good" for you. When I explained my findings to my dad he simply ignored me. He happily went on eating his favored breakfasts without guilt or worry. I had no hope to sway grandpa's thinking and he kept eating his six or eight or ten eggs a day. But I tried mightily to reduce my egg yolk count. First limiting my eggs to just two. Then later to trying to eat only the whites and not the yolks. But all too often I would cheat. I did cut back on thick-cut bacon, and tried to find butter substitutes that were composed of less saturated fats. All in all I was not too successful. But then grandpa died of a stroke at age 64 and a decade later my own father died of a stroke at age 52.

I tired harder. But old habits are difficult to extirpate. Today I am restricted to egg beaters, or egg whites only, and eat no butter or margarine. When I order an omelette in a restaurant I make sure to say "egg white omelette" not egg beater since I can not trust them to actually use the egg beaters .....but no one can fool you with white eggwhites.

Today that old flame with eggs has not left me. I continue with my l'affaire. Now and then I will have a nice poached egg and cook it hard so the yolk and white can be separated. But I continue to yearn for a whole egg with a drippy, tasty, fatty, cholesterol soaked yolk. If I eat one, I know I will enjoy it, but then, I will suffer guilt pangs all day thinking of those long chains of cholesterol slinking through my arteries to find a nice plaque to adhere to and cause a blockage.

Ahh if only I had been brought up to savor Cheerios rather than eggs...it would have been a safer life, less guilt and worry----but oh so less satisfying.

Get the picture?

Rjk

HUMAN HEIGHT AND DARWINIAN SELECTION

HUMAN HEIGHT AND DARWINIAN SELECTION

or In defense of the hobbit.

Perhaps this idea struck me when, after purchacing two expensive tickets, my wife and I found ourselves seated behind two quite tall and large young gentlemen at a Manhattan theater. Crane our necks this way and that as best we could, we still could attain only a partial view of the stage, framed by a the men's big shoulders and heads. When we stood at the finale to applaud the actors, they stood too, completely blocking our view. We clapped as we stared at the rumpled butts of these young men, and might have as well been standing facing a brick wall. As we left the theater, I found myself rubbing shoulders (well not quite, perhaps my shoulders were rubbing their elbows) with these two offending over-sized young men, and others who were on average much taller than we were. I have come to the conclusion that in comparison to the present population of young people I am seriously height challenged.

As a man with more than seven decades of observational experience, I can well remember times more than six decades in the past, in the late 1940s. In those days, a guy like me at 173 cm, 1.73 meters, 68 inches, or five-feet-eight-inches tall was just about "average" height. At maturity, I was taller than my paternal grandfather by a few inches, and about an inch taller than my own dad. Pap'a, my maternal grandfather was an inch or so taller than I.

In school, true, I never seriously considered playing basketball, but did shoot hoops with the other kids on the park court and played quite well. I was average height, but not in "tail end" of the bell curve on height that commanded the respect of the neighborhood toughs. To make up the difference I needed strong, fast legs to get me out of altercations with the bigger kids, some of whom in my Brooklyn neighborhood were serious bullies. For fast get-aways, my smaller frame and shorter but strong legs were a distinct advantage. I generally out-distanced the big guys in sprints. But I knew I had to put some distance between me and them fast. To facilitate these escapes, I studied and memorized the terrane and with my size and height I was particularly good at hopping hedges and slipping through breaks in board fences--where they could not easily follow. Thus, in this way, I adapted to being in the middle of the height curve as a boy.

But as I moved on into maturity and middle age I entered into a wider world, where other factors counted more than just how high your eyes were above the ground. Important too, thankfully, was intellectual attainment, sucess, wealth, status, etc. Height decreased in importance during this period of my life. It was OK to be just average--at least in this category. Who cared? But as time went on, and new generations sprung up around me, I have been forced to conclude that among these new cohorts my just-average height-status has clearly diminished into sub-average. Was it me shrinking, or these youngsters getting taller? Now in my seventies, I have had to admit that I am short. Of course, I have shrunk a bit as well, due to the many years of unrelenting gravity, pounding the turf as a habitual jogger, and insisting on walking and carrying a bag to play golf. Over time gravity has compressed those elastic tissues in my skeletal system. But that is expected.

The medical study of stature, termed auxology, is grounded on the assumption that height is and has long been considered one of the characteristics of good health. This assumes that wellness and adequate nutrition and health-care may promote greater stature. But perhaps there is more to it than simply good care and nutrition.

According to my own personal observations the world around me is getting taller. But are human populations actually increasing in stature? And if so, what are the causes? Is there an ongoing spurt in height as a result of a plentiful supply of food in modern industrialized nations? Or is it more than that?

That the stature of populations are in fact altering has been documented by several studies. One of particular interest is that of Professor Joerg Baten an economist and economic historian of Tubingin University, Germany who achieved distinction on his study of the long-term development of human capital and living standards (See: Joerg Baten* "Global Height Trends in Industrial and Developing Countries, 1810-1984: An Overview.") In this report, Professor Baten, and his colleagues at Tubingin University used anthropometric historical means to document changes in human height (measured as you would expect as the distance from the top of head to bottom of feet) from 1810 to 1984. Professor Baten's goal was to use height as a measure of long-term human living standards.

Data included in the report reveal that in almost all countries examined by Baten's study, the trend in human stature is upward. Populations world-wide are growing taller by the decade. Baten (no date) includes a graph which reveals that world average heights (for men) climbed from about 160 cm (5' 3") in 1810 to just about 170 cm (5'7") in 1984, or about ten centimeters or four inches in 174 years (174/20 = 8.7) or an average increase of four inches in nearly nine generations. That is a rate of increase in height of approximately one-half inch per generation. The rate of change that one might actually notice over a human lifetime of between three and four generations. In regard to male heights in industrialized nations (where the population was likely to be less often stressed by food scarcity and presumably have better nutrition and health care) Baten's data indicates that male heights rose from about 166 cm (5' 5") in 1810 to above 178 cm (5'10") in 1984. That is about five inches in nearly nine generations and supports the concept that better nutrition plays a role in height. Baten's data also indicates that only two populations he tabulated do not follow the general upward trend, South Asia and South East Asia populations. Both of these groupings either remained nearly steady over that time or rose only slightly.

Some of Baten's conclusions are the following: Ignoring medical conditions such as gigantism and dwarfism, human populations which share a genetic background and are found in similar environmental circumstances appear to demonstrate similar stature.

Also: Alterations in nutrition caused by extreme poverty, long term warfare, and climatic disruptions may alter adult stature.

Baten also examined the relationship of human height to nutrition and to the gross national product of the states in which the data was collected. And he found that these factors do show some level of correlation.

Baten's data supports my personal observations that our youth are taller than in the past. But my hypothesis is that the changes noted are not simply related to better nutrition or health care (or being umped up with vitamiins) but is a classic case of Darwinian selection. My reasoning is thus: Over thousands of generations human-kind has been subjected to the stress of normal seasonal scarcity (winter food shortages), droughts, as well as prolonged famines related to climatic and other natural variations. Over time, human populations slowly evolved to adapt to nutritional stress by reductions in size and height. Smaller individuals were more likely to survive famines and food stress and live on to reproduce. These, naturally selected, individuals gave rise to generations of smaller, shorter more-efficient individuals better adapted to an environment with uncertain food sources. But times change and besides physical change humans are capable of social and intellectual change. Thus it was that during the Roman and Persian empires and the islamic agricultural revolution of the 8th century as well as industrial revolution of the mid 18th century man discovered new, crops, more-effective ways to produce food and more importantly new sources of energy which changed the human energy balance. No longer did man live on the knife-edge between abundance and starvation. In the post-industrial revolution, when food supply has remained constant for many generations and in some nations the food supply is actually an over abundance, due to cheap energy costs, the stress of food scarcity has disappeared and the natural genetic variability of humans is able to be fully expressed with more taller individuals surviving and reproducing.

THE KUNG! SAN OF THE KALAHARI

Several anthropological studies indicate that in primitive conditions humans lived harsh lives constantly threatened by famine. In the natural state, prior to developing a settled agricultural life style, human labor and effort or caloric output had to equal the amount of calories exploited from the environment to survive and for reproductive purposes, that exploitative ability had to be slightly greater for at least some time of the year. For example, a well-known seminal study of the Kung San (Bushmen) completed in the 1960s by Richard B. Lee ("The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society"). Lee documents the fact that Kung women (with their children in tow) often must complete a seven-mile long walk every several days thorough the Kalahari desert to harvest enough calories from widely dispersed foods such as nuts, (mostly the common mongongo nut), roots and berries for her and her family to survive on a day to day basis. Lee calculates that the women collected the majority of the caloric component of the Kung San diet, while the men, who subsisted on the women's vegetal foods for most of the month, using their hunting prowess and the calories provided by the women to provide the small amount of high quality fats and proteins from their hunting forays on an infrequent basis of about once or twice a month. These small additons of meat were critical for survival. To survive in the harsh Kalahari the !Kung San were under constant natural selection pressure. Smaller individuals were more likely to survive periods of drought and food scarcity. While taller more robust individuals were more likely to be weakened by food shortages and were less likely to survive and more likely to succumb to disease. The result was a diminutive race, only 147cm (4ft 10 in) in stature. Larger and taller individuals would not be able to sustain themselves on the widely dispersed and low caloric content that is exploitable from the Kalahari.

THE CASE OF EDGAR EVANS

The interesting case of Petty Officer Edgar Evans of the Robert Falcon Scott Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1911-1912. Edgar Evans was one of the five men Scott chose to accompany him on the final leg of the ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Scott chose Evans as one of his five companions probably mostly for his height and girth. He was described as a "huge, bull-necked, beefy man...running to a bit of fat", Evans was taller and heavier by far than his co-explorers. The five man team including Evans reached the Pole on January 17, 1912 to find there a tent with a note in it of the Roald Amundsen Expedition, the rival Norwegian team of explorers who had beat the Scott team there by a mere 33 days.

The return trip back to base camp was a desperate, depressing affair with the knowledge of their failure to be first to the South Pole weakening the will and spirit of the team. The weather turned on them as well. On the way back, their plight became desperate when they lost their way in a storm and missed one or more of their previously deposited food caches. The men were forced to severely ration their food on the return trip. Each night, Scott divided the scarce rations into six equal parts. Unknowingly, due to his disproportionate size relative to his co-companions, Evan's portion was inadequate to meet his greater caloric needs. Providing him with only an equal share, his team mates were in fact slowly starving Evans to death. With his size, he needed many more calories than they did. His one-sixth portion was not sufficient to sustain him and he slowly deteriorated both physically and mentally. During the arduous descent of the Beardsmore Glacier, Evan's condition delayed the team which had to make at least nine miles per day based of the food supplies they had. Evans, often complaining of hunger, and while suffering from low blood sugar and mental disorientation, he critically failed to properly cover his body. The exposure resulted in severe frostbite on his face and hands. In his famine-induced weakened state he stumbled into a crevasse and suffered a mild concussion. He soon became too weak to travel and collapsed on the 16th of January, and died the next day --17 January 1912. Evan's size, which Scott thought would be an asset to the team's effort was in fact a fatal deterrent in circumstances where food was scarce. His body simply required much more calories than his co-explorers...calories that were not available to him--as a result he was the first to succumb to starvation. The team struggled on until March 29, 1912 when, only eleven miles or about a day's march from their base camp and food, they too succumbed to starvation.

HUMANS WERE UNDER CONSTANT SELECTION FOR SIZE

Through almost all of human history, people lived on only the bare minimum caloric intake. Prior to the development of labor-saving technology and agriculture advances human labor was capable of only providing a bare existence. For thousands of years humans survived on just enough calories to survive but no more.

Like all other animal populations humans for thousands of years lived on the knife edge between feast and famine. Each year during the winter when food became scarce, famine stalked the land. Those who did not consume sufficient calories, weakened, their immune systems failed, and they were more subject to disease and were more likely to succumb to the disease and die. As in the case of Edgar Evans, when food stocks declined, it was the smaller, shorter, more lithe i.e. more "efficient" sized humans which were more likely to survive over the winter. Taller larger individuals whose mass required greater numbers of calories suffered disproportionately during times of scarcity. Over time, these food scarcities tended to favor more efficient size individuals who would be more likely to survive the winter famines, or as in the case of the Kalahari Kung! The vagaries of climate and natural scarcity in a harsh region of the earth.

FAMINE--THE CAP ON HUMAN GROWTH

Thus natural annual fluctuation in food availability and quality, and resulting famine kept a cap on human size. Humans tended toward the size that the environment in which they lived permitted. In the nutrient deficient Kalahari, humans were slowly selected to be diminutive. While in more nutrient rich northern Europe the species attained greater height. But as the pressure-cap of famine abated or was removed during the technological revolutions of the industrial age and the age of coal and oil those restrictions on size slowly altered.

TECHNOLOGY REMOVES PRESSURE ON SIZE

As technology aided human production of food, annual famines decreased and eventually disappeared from the scene. Today rather than the threat of famine, food production and excess availability due to the wide availability of coal, oil and other fossil fuels which have supplanted animal and human labor, have advanced to the point that the incidence and threat of famine and food scarcity is gone. (Today, the threat is of too much food rather than too little. Obesity has arisen as the most severe thereat to health rather than famine. Part of the obesity problem is that in the past times of famine humans evolved physiological adaptations to scarce food supplies which increased their food efficiency. They evolved to be food efficient. During periods of food surplus these individuals are predisposed to store fat and become obese.) The evolutionary pressures which had kept a cap on human size have been removed and the human gene pool continues to produce phenotypes of larger individuals with similar frequency as in the past, but, absent famine and annual periods of scarcity, these individuals are able to grow to maturity and reproduce.

The result is that old guys like me claim to see more tall people than they had before. It's true, but disconcerting to average height individuals who have to keep craning their necks upward to speak to the young inefficient giants. We older "hobbits" are proud to be the result of thousands of years of natural selection. We are the efficient ones, that use up less oxygen, less food, and need fewer yards of fabric and leather to cover our nakedness. With the coming crunch of shortages in resources as our world population tops seven billion (this year) and our food, air, water and other resources get scarce, you big fellas will be all looking back at us and giving us credit for being a more "green" and more efficient-sized form of human. And I'm sorry to say by that time, most of us "just average" sized folks will be gone from the scene.

Get the picture?

rjk

AMERICA'S TITANIC--THE GREAT RECESSION OF 2007

THE GREAT RECESSION--AMERICA'S TITANIC DISASTER

ECONOMIC INJUSTICE and SOCIAL CHANGE

April 15 of this year will be the 100th anniversary of the tragic Titanic disaster. Thinking about that event (and perhaps the popular British TV series Downton Abbey, in which the Titanic plays a significant part) I was struck by the similarities between the sinking of the great ship in the early 20th century and its impact on the years that followed, and the Great Recession of the early 21st century. Both man-made tragedies came at watershed moments in the history of their respective nations and each epitomized the errors of the age, poor judgement, underlying social injustice, and inequality of wealth-distribution.

In England, the early 20th century was a period of vast social, political and economic upheaval. By the time of Queen Victoria's death in 1901, the UK industrial advantage was in decline and other nations such as Germany and the US had their own competing industries. The world was a more competitive place for the English worker. The nation began a period of slowed economic growth which was to have dramatic and far ranging effects on its social system, politics and economy. The Boer War had just ended. New technology and inventions such as the light bulb, first commercial radio transmissions, the automobile and the new assembly line invented by the Ford Motor company which produced them, gave rise to a sense of optimism in the future and the inevitability of technological advance. Across the Channel in Europe, political and social discontent were the seeds which sprouted radical political movements such as socialism and communism. These movements reverberated around the world. In England, Lloyd George champion of the English working man was just beginning a long career of fostering the English system of social justice and welfare, which were in part designed to blunt the force of the more radical political solutions to economic injustice growing in central Europe, Germany and Russia.

It was with these circumstances as background, that on the night of April 15 1912, the largest, fastest, most luxurious passenger ship in the world, sailing on its maiden voyage and built to be "unsinkable" sank ingloriously in the cold Atlantic just less than 400 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The"Titanic'" named after the Titans (the twelve Greek gods of mythology) who in modern times have come to symbolize great size, but for the Greeks these gods had other characteristics. Names often do have deeper meanings and subtext significance. The Titans, were reputed to be the progeny of Gaea and Uranus. As to the name, some scholars suspect the word "Titan" may be derived from the Greek "temno" (to stretch) for according to Hesiod, the Titans "stretched out their power outrageously" (Hesiod, Theogony (207-210 BC).

The event, in which 1,517 perished, was an inglorious end to a luxurious ship. But as a manifestation of British engineering, British naval power and British society (for almost all of the passengers were of that nation) it was a symbol and microcosm of that state. The foundering of this Titan which "stretched" its power outrageously, also coincided with the end the age of opulence and optimism and the outmoded concepts of a rigid class society which spawned it, and which had obscured and submerged the social unrest, injustice and discontent of large swaths of the British population.

The vessel itself in its size, opulence, and on-board societal patterns epitomized the inflated and perhaps unjustified confidence in technology, the strictly stratified and unjust social system and outmoded concepts of the early 20th century, as well as the excess, opulence and luxury of the age. The ship was huge, (the largest in the world at the time) nearly 900 feet long, and with over 90 feet of beam and a gross weight of 46,330 tons. It's draft was nearly 35 feet. The designers included nine decks within its over 175 feet of height from keel to its four great funnel tops. Three huge bronze propellers pushed it through the water at a maximum speed of 23 knots or about 26 miles per hour. It could carry 3600 passengers (and crew) in three classes, but on its maiden voyage it had only 2,453 men women and children. On that fateful cruise there were 833 passengers in First Class suites and cabins, in Second Class: 614, and 1006 people occupied its Third Class cabins. Its life boat capacity of only 1200, was about half of its passenger capacity, and notably with none apparently for its sizable ship's crew, servers and staff. Its technology was at the zenith of its period. The vessel was epitome of all that was to exemplify British excellence. Its upper class facilities were the ultimate in luxury and opulence of the age. The first class section had a lending-library, a swimming pool, a huge barber shop and coiffure parlors for first class women, a gym, squash court, Turkish bath, and verandah cafe. The Cafe Parisien served French haut cuisine. A one way ticket (according to Wikipedia) would cost a first class passenger about $31,000.00 dollars in today's currency.

The vessel, as is well known, hit an iceberg and sunk within a few hours. After the disaster, reports of the crew and survivors, and government inquiries underscored the ugly facts concerning the nature of British society of that time. It clearly exposed the injustices and hypocrisy of Britain's stratified society. When the British press published the survivor lists it clearly showed how the rich and powerful in first class survived the disaster in far greater numbers than the more numerous bourgeoise and working class passengers in second and third class. The physical arrangement of the vessel with all the life boats situated on the upper, first class deck, where the fewest but "most important" passengers were, was one cause for the skewed survival pattern. The lifeboats, too few for all passengers, were found adjoining the first class cabins and suites and easily available for the women and children of these privileged few. But the third class passengers in the lower decks had to climb long, crowded and confusing stairwells and passages to reach the lifeboat deck----only to find that the boats we filled with others and many of them had already been lowered.

As the story of the tragedy played out in public press, the British nation had a clear, unsettling and unflattering view of itself. For the Titanic was a microcosm of British engineering, technology, and its rigid class-structured society. The privileged classes survived while the others went down with the ship into the cold Atlantic. The event crystallized in the minds of the disenfranchised and under-privileged of society and made it clear where they stood in importance in their homeland. The tragic foundering of the great ship which occurred off the coast of Halifax was a clear expose of what would happen in a national disaster to the lower classes of British society on the larger ship of state Britain tethered off the coast of France. That national perception gave the nation's underclasses pause...and soon ushered in new ideas concerning British social patterns and mores. The Titanic sinking acted as a stimulus which was to initiate drastic changes as a result of these revelations. Some of the developments the labor movement, greater impetus to improve social justice, men's suffrage and women's suffrage and the end of the power of the House of Lords to block progressive legislation.

The USA of the early 21st century, sailed forth on its own Titanic, the great financial ship of state which was like the Titanic new, huge, and totally a US product. It was based on new technology and had the complete and utter confidence (unfounded) in its continued safe sailing. As did the Titanic disaster, and its aftermath, the Great Recession in 2007-2010 occurred near the end of a two long, unnecessary and debilitating wars, at a period of rising inequality in incomes, and when the US nation was experiencing a flush of unrestrained irrational financial ebullience. The financial growth was fueled by increased business efficiency derived from new electronic technology, cheap labor from immigration, and increased numbers of women in the workforce, and development of complex securities known as derivatives (most importantly the mortgage-backed security). This latter derivative, was, as was other such "paper" assets, bundled together as "collateralized debt obligations"into more complex security offerings, but considered a boon to investors since this species of paper served to disperse risk over a large cohort and thus would (theoretically) decrease risk to individuals. Banks and other financial institutions eager for the rich financial rewards from these implements lobbied heartily to keep such securities free of government regulation. As a consequence, the shortcomings and weaknesses of derivatives were never adequately assayed. In fact, since mortgage backed securities were traded widely world-wide and were unregulated, their chief weakness was that their risk could not be accurately assessed. This fact led to disaster and greater global insecurity (when the housing bubble that these securities helped to create---burst and the economy collapsed). Greed of banks and institutions fed the growth bubble causing many to sell mortgages to sub-prime lenders. Eventually, these sub-prime mortgages (bundled in with good securitized debt) would constitute as much as a third of the total world collateralized debt. These high risk securities were spread far and wide across the world. Banks were not able to assess how much actual "junk" bonds were in the assets they had purchased.

But we have surged far ahead of our story. Prior to the crash of 2007, and until that time optimism was was the watchword of the day. Growth was seemingly assured and investors burbled about the economy continually expanding. The nation's low interest rates were controlled and maintained by a complicitous Fed, kept the view of business future bright and cheery. Some claimed that we had "mastered the business cycle" with deregulation and free, unfettered global markets.

But as in the Titanic disaster, the US ship of state sailed on unmindful of the hazards ahead or the weaknesses and injustices within its system. It failed to recognize the dangers of unrestricted and unregulated greed, or the growing inequality of income and wealth. Or of the fact that middle class workers, with stagnant incomes were increasingly using cheap interest rates to leverage up funds from the equity they had in their homes. Here too the globalized economy and one foreign nation in particular, China, which kept the value of its currency low and pumped out cheap products for the US domestic market added fuel to the fire as it worked in lock step with the Fed and the US government to sustain the unsustainable. Low wages, stagnant incomes forced families to send spouses and younger members into the workforce. People were working longer hours for the same pay and for decreased benefits. If a child needed support for college, a loan taken out on house equity might paper-over the shortfall in funds for tuition. If one's roof leaked, an equity loan could be secured to pay for it. The result was growing national debt. All of these economic weaknesses were masked by an irrational optimism and faith in the "new" unregulated economy. The US nation's Titanic. The nation kept spending and buying houses, paper assets and commodities at higher and higher prices while it kept partying on the ship of state which was set on a collision with an unseen mass in its path.

As in the Titanic disaster, when the "survivor-lists" of the 2007-8 disaster were published, America's middle-class and workers were faced with the facts regarding the aftermath and government response to find that all the big bankers and financiers and their political facilitators got into the "life boats" safely. Once ensconced, they commanded the Bush and Obama crew to quickly shove them off so that as the ship went down they would not be unduly rocked about by the turbulence caused when the big vessel actually slipped below the waves. They had the ship's crew row them to shore safely, and were reported all doing extremely well. Many had climbed out of their lifeboats with massive bonuses and, ignoring the faults of the old "Titanic" these wise investors immediately began rebuilding a sister-ship called the "Olympic" which was (some considered it unwise) designed by the same old architect on the same lines and of the same size as the old vessel, whose wreck lay clearly visible to all strewn, belwo them on the sea bottom. These events were vieweed by the water-logged second and third class passengers, who watched as they floated on a sea-surface littered with debris as the one-percenters rowed away.

Nothing had changed for the top-hatted, silk-scarfed, Gran Habano-smoking, first-class set. While the second and third class passengers slowly succumbed to drowning or starvation, the elite, one-percenters got to shore where they blithely went on buying new Lear jets, diamond encrusted Stauer Graves watches, Roger Vivier shoes for their ladies, and Delaware-sized estates in South America.

Soon the financial fires in the boilers were burning again and the Olympic, which now served only first class passengers (all lower decks were vacant) was launched and set sail again. It began its cruise on a smooth moon-lit sea, its bow-wave pushing through a sea, scattered with debris of the old Titianic, and the helmsman steered his unchanging rightward course, unmindful of small clusters of determined survivors still clinging to barnacle encrusted, made-in-China, wood crates in their path.

Get the picture?

rjk

CIA BOOBY-TRAP DRONE ATTACKS MAKE LOCAL HEROS OUT OF TALIBAN

No, its not going well in Afghanistan. Two recent press reports tell of troubling circumstances in that turbulent and mountainous land, and foretell problems for our young inexperienced and uncertain President.

Reuters, (February 1, 2012) revealed the contents of a "secret" study composed by the US military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, about a month ago. The report, prepared for NATO commanders, countered the official story-line which states according to our President and his smiling, optimistic military advisers that the Taliban are "on the run everywhere in Afghanistan". This document states instead that the Taliban are strong, motivated, united and not going anywhere. The source of the information is taken from own US military, those stationed in the war zone in Afghanistan, and is based on four thousand interviews with captured Taliban and detainees. It concludes that the Taliban are certainly not on the run. Instead they are characterized as confident, optimistic and ready to take control again once the US led forces leave. I lived through a lot of US wars (sorry to say), WWII, Korean , Vietnam, etc., etc., etc., in each instance, I learned the truth only long after the fact. In times of war one becomes very circumspect, experience teaches us that the military and our political leaders often lie, or at very least were prone to twisting the truth to meet their own political needs and purposes of the moment. The old saw stating: "Truth is the first casualty of war", is incomplete. "Truth is the first and continuing casualty of war" is more accurate. At the present time, our leaders have a political motivation to paint a rosy picture--it's an election year.

Thus based on this in-house military analysis, after eleven years of devastating war, half a trillion dollars spent on direct war costs, the loss of nearly two-thousand American troops to date, the demise of countless Afghan fighters of various hues and stripes, and the killing of uncounted, innocent Afghan women and children, we are set back to square one. We are back to where we were when George Bush led the charge into the dry, cold and dusty mountains of Afghanistan, known as the graveyard of empires. When Bush left, Obama, who campaigned as an anti-war candidate, but, upon election became fearful of that role, and took to waving the saber. He promised to get us out of Iraq ("the wrong war") and back into Afghanistan (the supposed "right war" and cradle of al Qaida) with a surge of new forces. Today, al Qaida is essentially extinct in Afghanistan, and thus our nearly one-hundred thousand troops with perhaps a 1000:1 ratio of good-guys vs Taliban had to have some reason for being there, so imperceptibly and stealthily our objective of cleansing al Qaida has morphed over the last decade, so today, we find our forces hunting and killing Taliban (as perhaps the target du jour), a group which had no bone to pick with us--before we invaded their mountainous lair.

So our Afghan war-goals are not going as planned. We are not winning, and yet there is both strong economic and political imperatives to end this tragic episode and get out. But no-one, especially a weakened, election-year president, wants to be the one to blow the "retreat" on the nation's bugle and be blamed for a "lost" war. Thus, we are stuck continuing to fight a war we are losing, which bleeds our wealth and blood. A war we borrow 40 cents on the dollar to pay for. So what has our President done? He has turned in desperation to a robotized air-war against the Afghans which targets supposed enemies, yet in the process kills and maims innocents. Why are the Taliban strong, united, and unbowed as the Bagram report indicates? The Americans with their drones and tendency to indiscriminate use of firepower continue to make the enemy look like local heroes.

Today, February 5, 2012, Scott Shane wrote in the N Y Times that British and Pakistani journalists members of the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalists have completed a study published in the Times of London which charges that US drone strikes--seemingly in imitation of some of the most vicious terrorist bombers--have begun to use a double whammy or booby trap kill by striking an initial target with a Reaper or Predator drone, then remain lurking in the area to fire rockets at those (innocents) who come to the aid of the injured, dead and dying. In addition, to such atrocities, local witnesses state that the drones often fire on mourners gathering for subsequent funeral processions! They are reported to have fired at any group of men who may appear armed (even if they are only carrying farming implements). Such indiscriminate use of firepower make it impossible for the Afghans to distinguish between who is more vicious, the Taliban insurgents or the Americans supported by the CIA who control the drones. Apparently, from the results of the Bagram Air Base secret-study, they have decided. Perhaps they have concluded that both are equally evil, and would rather go with the home-grown evil rather than the foreign one. With the administration's stupid and counter-productive drone attacks as our only strategy, we have lost the hearts and minds of the Afghans (can you blame them?) and with that loss--we can not win. What we are doing now with our high-tech drone attacks is simply senseless killing--often, too often, of innocents and children. Such killing must stop!

According to Scott Shane's report in the N Y Times, Obama himself has approved of over 260 drone air-strikes on Afghan targets in the last three-plus years. That is on-average a drone strike about every four days. According to journalists and observers on the ground, these strikes have killed many, many Taliban (which our young, insecure, military-dominated and uncertain President often brags about), but he says little about the fact that his CIA has killed between 300 to 500 innocent civilians. That is roughly one, or two, (or more) civilians for each strike. Sadly sixty (60) of those civilians were children! President Obama (and the stooges that play at killing at the joy-stick-controls of the drones) will have the lives of these sixty kids on his conscience..or should have. Perhaps one day the World Court of Justice will revoke his unearned Peace Prize and finally be constrained by his continued inexplicably inhumane actions in Afghanistan to charge him with war crimes.

But let's look at a tragedy closer to home. Recall the encomiums and heart-felt press reports concerning the tragic, violent shooting death of lovely nine-year old Christina Green. She was killed by a deranged Arizona gunman on a maniacal rampage who killed five others and grievously wounded former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Little nine-year-old Christina was a young American, but was no different, no more innocent, no more full of youthful potential, and deserving of life than any one of those sixty Afghan kids who were unintended targets of CIA drones. The loss of her life was widely reported, but there is hardly a sentence written in the press about the sixty Afghan kids. Ironically, Obama honored the memory of that lovely little girl and the anguish of her parents in his State of the Union address. But the death of those sixty kids was just as much a valid part of the State of the Union address as young martyred Christina's was, but President Obama was silent and dumb on the sixty kids of similar age and innocence who died by American-made technology and hardware in Afghanistan just as violently and tragically. We too remain dumb and uniformed. And few in the major press or media made mention of it. Is the reason that this is some special hierarchy of innocent children...I think not.

What are Obama's objectives for this nation? Has he thought of anything beyond reelection? Is he attempting to out-macho Bush, so as to impress the Republicans? One must ask of him, who is in control of his CIA? And finally, who of us would agree with the apparent weird and irrational cost-benefit analyses formulated within the White House, that somehow permits our CIA to set up booby-trap drone strikes which kills innocents and children in Afghanistan? What is wrong with us?

Get the picture?

rjk