There is a vast lacuna in the Apollo 11 Transcipts.
Woefully missing from the Onboard Voice Transcription-Command Module transcription is the on board conversation that takes place before a curious question is posed to Houston, which we find in the Technical Air-to-Ground Voice transcription, on pg. 190 (of pdf) at time stamp (day/hour/minute/second) 02 12 45 46:
"Do you have any idea where the S-IVB is with respect to us?"
Houston answers that the S-IVB (final stage of rocket) is 6000 miles away. But outside the capsule the astronauts were seeing something much closer, as Buzz Aldrin describes in Apollo 11- The Untold Story (beginning at around 4:00).
Three days of transcripts of the onboard conversations are missing; these were apparently not included in the original confidential document, as the page numbering indicates: page 51 ends with 00 03 29 21 and page 52 begins with 03 03 39 38.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Tapeworm
The tapeworm is a rather disgusting metaphor that Catherine Austin Fitts has employed in characterizing the prevailing economic racket of recent decades. As she defines "tapeworm economy," or "negative return on investment economy" in an interview for Karavans...
That's an economy with two classes of players, the insiders & the outsiders. The insiders are constantly subsidized at the expense of the outsiders, like a tapeworm, a parasite that eats through the body. The parasites engineer the economy to drain it for their benefit, consolidating wealth & economic power by liquidating wealth, people, environment, & economic productivity, all to fatten the Tapeworm.
Just as a tapeworm, lodged within the intestines, is able to produce and pump neurotransmitters through the blood-brain barrier that make its host crave the very nutrients that it requires at the expense of the host's nourishment, so does the economically parasitical "insider" utilize a broad variety of tools, anything from the mass media to high fructose corn syrup, for making "outsider" host consumers desire self-impoverishing things that concomitantly enrich the insider.
Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, explains this dynamic as it applies to the fast-food industry, in an interview on the NewsHour:
The food industry has been able to figure out the bliss point, the optimal combinations of fat and salt, fat and sugar, fat, sugar and salt that you think tastes good, but when you look at the science, we now know that those ingredients stimulate, they activate the brain's circuitry. They stimulate our intake. They condition us. They drive us to want more. They affect the neural circuits. For decades, the food industry has said, "We're just giving consumers what they want." But, in fact, now we know that what they're doing is excessively activating the brains of millions of Americans.
Such a dynamic is thus a foil to the classic law of supply and demand where, on the one end of economic transaction, a population of consumers by their own interest desire a product, to which desire producers respond by supplying that product in quantities proportionate to the demand. With tapeworm economics, the producers can modulate the desire of consumers.
Such a foil is really nothing new however. Thorstein Veblen perhaps described it in the "wasteful expenditure" of a leisure class which adopts behaviors (such as in the near religious following of sport franchises, for instance) having little intrinsic economic value.
Veblen is most famous for the term "conspicuous consumption." But, some 90 years before Fitts, we find Veblen employing the tapeworm analogy in an entirely different context, though utilized somewhat in the same sense. In his Imperial Germany and The Industrial Revolution (1915), we read on page 169 (of the 1939 edition):
...the uses of the dynastic establishment are seen to be of the same nature as the uses of a tapeworm; and the tapeworm's relation to his host is something not easy to beautify in words, or even to authenticate in such convincing fashion as will insure his affectionate retention on grounds of decorous use and want.
As Veblen employs the term, however, the tapeworm operates upon a body politic. Thus, from the late XIXth through the early XXth century, Prussian dynastic militarism reinforces itself through pan-Germanic engagement of industrial infrastructure, vocation, and all human capitol rendered available for recruitment through familiar habits of allegiance.
The bias of solidarity...is a solidarity subservient to an extraneous initiative; an initiative not necessarily alien to the spontaneous consensus of the group, but also not necessarily coincident with or germane to the ends of life comprised in the consensus of the community... Where the popular consensus so comes to coincide with the line of the State's initiative and unfolding power, as in the Prussian case, it will commonly happen that this happy consummation is reached through the community's accepting the State's ends as its own, and also commonly without such knowledge of the State's ends in the case as would enable the community to take stock of them and appreciate what has been accepted or assented to... (Pg. 164/5)
That's an economy with two classes of players, the insiders & the outsiders. The insiders are constantly subsidized at the expense of the outsiders, like a tapeworm, a parasite that eats through the body. The parasites engineer the economy to drain it for their benefit, consolidating wealth & economic power by liquidating wealth, people, environment, & economic productivity, all to fatten the Tapeworm.
Just as a tapeworm, lodged within the intestines, is able to produce and pump neurotransmitters through the blood-brain barrier that make its host crave the very nutrients that it requires at the expense of the host's nourishment, so does the economically parasitical "insider" utilize a broad variety of tools, anything from the mass media to high fructose corn syrup, for making "outsider" host consumers desire self-impoverishing things that concomitantly enrich the insider.
Dr. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, explains this dynamic as it applies to the fast-food industry, in an interview on the NewsHour:
The food industry has been able to figure out the bliss point, the optimal combinations of fat and salt, fat and sugar, fat, sugar and salt that you think tastes good, but when you look at the science, we now know that those ingredients stimulate, they activate the brain's circuitry. They stimulate our intake. They condition us. They drive us to want more. They affect the neural circuits. For decades, the food industry has said, "We're just giving consumers what they want." But, in fact, now we know that what they're doing is excessively activating the brains of millions of Americans.
Such a dynamic is thus a foil to the classic law of supply and demand where, on the one end of economic transaction, a population of consumers by their own interest desire a product, to which desire producers respond by supplying that product in quantities proportionate to the demand. With tapeworm economics, the producers can modulate the desire of consumers.
Such a foil is really nothing new however. Thorstein Veblen perhaps described it in the "wasteful expenditure" of a leisure class which adopts behaviors (such as in the near religious following of sport franchises, for instance) having little intrinsic economic value.
Veblen is most famous for the term "conspicuous consumption." But, some 90 years before Fitts, we find Veblen employing the tapeworm analogy in an entirely different context, though utilized somewhat in the same sense. In his Imperial Germany and The Industrial Revolution (1915), we read on page 169 (of the 1939 edition):
...the uses of the dynastic establishment are seen to be of the same nature as the uses of a tapeworm; and the tapeworm's relation to his host is something not easy to beautify in words, or even to authenticate in such convincing fashion as will insure his affectionate retention on grounds of decorous use and want.
As Veblen employs the term, however, the tapeworm operates upon a body politic. Thus, from the late XIXth through the early XXth century, Prussian dynastic militarism reinforces itself through pan-Germanic engagement of industrial infrastructure, vocation, and all human capitol rendered available for recruitment through familiar habits of allegiance.
The bias of solidarity...is a solidarity subservient to an extraneous initiative; an initiative not necessarily alien to the spontaneous consensus of the group, but also not necessarily coincident with or germane to the ends of life comprised in the consensus of the community... Where the popular consensus so comes to coincide with the line of the State's initiative and unfolding power, as in the Prussian case, it will commonly happen that this happy consummation is reached through the community's accepting the State's ends as its own, and also commonly without such knowledge of the State's ends in the case as would enable the community to take stock of them and appreciate what has been accepted or assented to... (Pg. 164/5)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Death of Laissez Faire
Thirty years ago this week, Michel Foucault delivered the first of his lectures under the course title The Birth of Biopolitics at the College de France (the eighth of a winter quarter stint of public lectures he had given throughout the '70s and early '80s). The title as it would turn out was a bit misleading... if any thing, "the gestation of biopolitics" might apply. Really these lectures were a continuation of those of the year previous - Security, Territory, Population - which focused upon the development of governmentality and Raison d'Etat (State Reason) in the 17th Century. In picking this up in the '79 lectures, governmentality is found to be relaxed in the 18th Century and homo oeconomicus is permitted and indeed facilitated by governmental action and inaction to drive the modern state. So what we have is a rough history of liberalism (in the economic sense of the term). The first lectures begin with the 18th century adaptation of governmentality to market dynamics. Then we quickly jump to post-WWII Germany and the thriving of "ordoliberalism"; contemporary French economic policy and American neo-liberalism (or the "anarcho-capitalism" of the Chicago school) are examined; and in the last two lectures, we return to the 18th Century, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" and the like...
In his course summary (after the fact), Foucault writes, in somewhat of an apologetic tone for the digression:
The theme was to have been "biopolitics," by which I meant the attempt, starting from the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems posed to governmental practice by phenomena characteristic of a set of living beings forming a population: health, hygiene, birthrate, life expectancy, race ... It seemed to me that these problems were inseparable from the framework of political rationality within which they appeared and took on their intensity.
This means "liberalism"...
We have previously quoted a key passage (see Manufacturing Freedom ), which offers a greater grasp of the situation that Noam Chomsky analyzes (but misses in all of its implications) as "manufacturing consent". Chomsky fails to capture the more comprehensive answer to the question: consent to what? - Presumably, consent is manufactured to facilitate an exploitative foreign policy on behalf of multinational corporations, whose sole interest is to make more money. That is a bit too simplistic.
Those on the Right might reply to Chomsky: 'the way of life you and your fellow whiny liberals enjoy is made possible by the policies you lament'. Economic neo-liberalism (and its accompanying neo-conservative muscle) is the cradle that coddles begrudging social liberalism. Those who do and those who do not consent (provided the former enjoy some semblance of a majority) have had a dominion of freedom carved out for them, whether they find it ethical or not. So, the core question is how this freedom is "manufactured" or made possible. Consent is only ancillary to the question.
Foucault, then, is able to meet the neo-lib (and neo-con) on its own turf. In his characteristic non-committal way, as if approaching a Sphinx, he is not oppositional and lamenting (for the most part), but simply trying to get a grasp of the situation... to capture the riddle.
To get a grasp of things, Foucault introduces two conceptions of freedom: revolutionary (Rousseauian), based on fundamental right, and radical (utilitarian), of "the independence of the governed vis-a-vis governmentality" (pg. 42). These coexist heterogeneously in a "non-dialectical logic." It is the latter freedom, and its place in the liberal tradition, that is Foucault's primary focus. He characterizes liberalism as a naturalism, "inasmuch as the freedom that the physiocrats and Adam Smith talk about is much more the spontaneity, the internal and intrinsic mechanics of economic processes than a juridical freedom of the individual recognized as such" (pg. 61). So the task of government, then, is to comprehend the processes, and to do so it must gather accurate evidence of the economic mechanisms at play. Once it does, governmentality then knows its limits (demarcated not by right, but by utility). Government is hence mainly concerned with making itself useful, without meddling in the natural course of economic processes.
What governmentality can do, as an agent of utility, is to constitute a framework more conducive to the flows of economic relations. There are differing approaches as to how to achieve this contingent on geo-political or even purely geographic circumstances. For instance, in the 19th Century, the liberal economic policy employed as a tactical instrument suitable to a maritime power, namely Britain, would not have been suitable to a continental power like Germany (Pg. 107-108). For its part, Germany adopted in the post-WWII period (which Foucault gives considerable focus) the Ordo-liberal model. Here, the approach is to intervene as little as possible on the market itself, while carefully crafting its framework: "...to the same extent that governmental intervention must be light at the level of economic processes themselves, so must it be heavy when it is a matter of this set of technical, scientific, legal, geographic... broadly social factors which increasingly become the object of governmental intervention" (Pg. 140). Even to the point of altering climate; Foucault cites Walter Eucken's Grundsatze der Wirtschaftspolitik: "Finally, if necessary, we will have to be able to intervene on the climate" (Pg. 141).
The approach to framing market economies which had gained ascendancy from the late 20th century until very recently was the Anarcho-capitalist model of the Chicago school, with which we, having lived in its midst, are overly familiar. The dogma: let us privatize as much as we can get away with, and then just sit back and watch the markets work their magic. In this formulation, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is invoked profusely (though it was used only once in his own Wealth of Nations). Yet, are these "invisible hand" invokations really applicable to neo-liberal models? Foucault: "...for the neo-liberals, the most important thing about the market is not exchange, that kind of original fictional situation imagined by eighteenth century liberal economists. The essential thing of the market is elsewhere; it is competition" (Pg.118).
But, somehow, lately, this model has fallen into disfavor... So much so, that classical Liberalism itself is being declared dead, as we find Nicolas Sarkosy expressing on the occasion of the meltdown of September '08:
Laissez-faire is finished
But to this, "laissez-faire" might say: rumours of my demise are highly exagerated; it is simply a particular approach that is being cast aside.
In its place, we might anticipate a more muscular ordo-liberal model, given to much heavier interventions upon society, upon bodies, upon climate...
In his course summary (after the fact), Foucault writes, in somewhat of an apologetic tone for the digression:
The theme was to have been "biopolitics," by which I meant the attempt, starting from the eighteenth century, to rationalize the problems posed to governmental practice by phenomena characteristic of a set of living beings forming a population: health, hygiene, birthrate, life expectancy, race ... It seemed to me that these problems were inseparable from the framework of political rationality within which they appeared and took on their intensity.
This means "liberalism"...
We have previously quoted a key passage (see Manufacturing Freedom ), which offers a greater grasp of the situation that Noam Chomsky analyzes (but misses in all of its implications) as "manufacturing consent". Chomsky fails to capture the more comprehensive answer to the question: consent to what? - Presumably, consent is manufactured to facilitate an exploitative foreign policy on behalf of multinational corporations, whose sole interest is to make more money. That is a bit too simplistic.
Those on the Right might reply to Chomsky: 'the way of life you and your fellow whiny liberals enjoy is made possible by the policies you lament'. Economic neo-liberalism (and its accompanying neo-conservative muscle) is the cradle that coddles begrudging social liberalism. Those who do and those who do not consent (provided the former enjoy some semblance of a majority) have had a dominion of freedom carved out for them, whether they find it ethical or not. So, the core question is how this freedom is "manufactured" or made possible. Consent is only ancillary to the question.
Foucault, then, is able to meet the neo-lib (and neo-con) on its own turf. In his characteristic non-committal way, as if approaching a Sphinx, he is not oppositional and lamenting (for the most part), but simply trying to get a grasp of the situation... to capture the riddle.
To get a grasp of things, Foucault introduces two conceptions of freedom: revolutionary (Rousseauian), based on fundamental right, and radical (utilitarian), of "the independence of the governed vis-a-vis governmentality" (pg. 42). These coexist heterogeneously in a "non-dialectical logic." It is the latter freedom, and its place in the liberal tradition, that is Foucault's primary focus. He characterizes liberalism as a naturalism, "inasmuch as the freedom that the physiocrats and Adam Smith talk about is much more the spontaneity, the internal and intrinsic mechanics of economic processes than a juridical freedom of the individual recognized as such" (pg. 61). So the task of government, then, is to comprehend the processes, and to do so it must gather accurate evidence of the economic mechanisms at play. Once it does, governmentality then knows its limits (demarcated not by right, but by utility). Government is hence mainly concerned with making itself useful, without meddling in the natural course of economic processes.
What governmentality can do, as an agent of utility, is to constitute a framework more conducive to the flows of economic relations. There are differing approaches as to how to achieve this contingent on geo-political or even purely geographic circumstances. For instance, in the 19th Century, the liberal economic policy employed as a tactical instrument suitable to a maritime power, namely Britain, would not have been suitable to a continental power like Germany (Pg. 107-108). For its part, Germany adopted in the post-WWII period (which Foucault gives considerable focus) the Ordo-liberal model. Here, the approach is to intervene as little as possible on the market itself, while carefully crafting its framework: "...to the same extent that governmental intervention must be light at the level of economic processes themselves, so must it be heavy when it is a matter of this set of technical, scientific, legal, geographic... broadly social factors which increasingly become the object of governmental intervention" (Pg. 140). Even to the point of altering climate; Foucault cites Walter Eucken's Grundsatze der Wirtschaftspolitik: "Finally, if necessary, we will have to be able to intervene on the climate" (Pg. 141).
The approach to framing market economies which had gained ascendancy from the late 20th century until very recently was the Anarcho-capitalist model of the Chicago school, with which we, having lived in its midst, are overly familiar. The dogma: let us privatize as much as we can get away with, and then just sit back and watch the markets work their magic. In this formulation, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is invoked profusely (though it was used only once in his own Wealth of Nations). Yet, are these "invisible hand" invokations really applicable to neo-liberal models? Foucault: "...for the neo-liberals, the most important thing about the market is not exchange, that kind of original fictional situation imagined by eighteenth century liberal economists. The essential thing of the market is elsewhere; it is competition" (Pg.118).
But, somehow, lately, this model has fallen into disfavor... So much so, that classical Liberalism itself is being declared dead, as we find Nicolas Sarkosy expressing on the occasion of the meltdown of September '08:
Laissez-faire is finished
But to this, "laissez-faire" might say: rumours of my demise are highly exagerated; it is simply a particular approach that is being cast aside.
In its place, we might anticipate a more muscular ordo-liberal model, given to much heavier interventions upon society, upon bodies, upon climate...
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Prophet of Depopulation
Quoting some of the central points of J.J.Spengler's review of M.Moheau's Recherches et considérations sur la population de la France (1778):
Moheau looked with favor upon population growth chiefly because, in his opinion, such growth served to augment the political and the fiscal power of the state. Population growth had this effect for two reasons: (a) man constituted the principle, the source, the creator of "wealth"; (b) human efficiency increased and technological culture progressed by virtue of growth in the density of population. -Pg. 651
Moheau qualified his emphasis upon the desirability of population growth... with the proviso that such growth be confined to classes of the population of use to the state. -Pg. 654
...presented an essentially biological theory of population growth... Moheau... noted that the procreative response of a people to any given actual or potential fund of subsistence was conditioned in a marked degree by the cultural medium within which that people lived. -Pg. 676
So, when Malthusian worries of overpopulation gain the upper hand; when growth generally or growth in certain useless classes no longer "augments the political and fiscal power of the state," modulations of the material and cultural medium of population may be injected to bring about its reduction.
And if that doesn't work: Death Camps!
Moheau looked with favor upon population growth chiefly because, in his opinion, such growth served to augment the political and the fiscal power of the state. Population growth had this effect for two reasons: (a) man constituted the principle, the source, the creator of "wealth"; (b) human efficiency increased and technological culture progressed by virtue of growth in the density of population. -Pg. 651
Moheau qualified his emphasis upon the desirability of population growth... with the proviso that such growth be confined to classes of the population of use to the state. -Pg. 654
Believing that prevailing institutions impeded population growth, that population growth was necessary and desirable, and that factors conditioning population growth - e.g. climate, the desire to marry and procreate, the geographical and occupational composition of the population, etc. - were subject to directed modification, Moheau devoted much attention to means whereby population growth might be stimulated. -Pg. 669
How is it that Moheau is a "Prophet of Depopulation"? Simply by applying the appropriate measures of "directed modification" to the conditions of population (climate, desire, etc.), the opposite of that which Moheau advocated can be acheived. He is contrasted with Malthus & Adam Smith in that as they......presented an essentially biological theory of population growth... Moheau... noted that the procreative response of a people to any given actual or potential fund of subsistence was conditioned in a marked degree by the cultural medium within which that people lived. -Pg. 676
So, when Malthusian worries of overpopulation gain the upper hand; when growth generally or growth in certain useless classes no longer "augments the political and fiscal power of the state," modulations of the material and cultural medium of population may be injected to bring about its reduction.
And if that doesn't work: Death Camps!
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