Involuntary Servitude for the Financial Industry?

It was wonderful to see CNN's Situation Room do a short clip Oct. 23 featuring Dennis Kucinich, who wants to launch new legislation preventing those banks who were helped in the bailouts from granting bonuses to key executives. CNN interviewed some asshole economics professor who said that leading financial barons needed to be provided some sort of incentives to stay at distressed banks, or they'd go work for hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). Well, that's assuming that we don't place them in a position of involuntary servitude.

Why not modify the Thirteenth Amendment to say that slavery is abhorrent except when applied to key investment-banking executives, hedge-fund managers, and Nobel laureates in mathematics who work in the financial field? We lock in the financial services industry today, forcing everyone currently working in the industry to remain in place, working for minimum wage. They will be forbidden to switch to SWFs or hedges. Their $40 million apartments on the Upper West Side will be provided rent-free to community non-profits, and they will be given seedy apartments in Alphabet City, which they will be forced to travel to using mass transit. Weekend chain gangs will be led, not by Ben Bernanke, but by Saint Greenspan himself, for continuing to hew to the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman school, while giving only the mildest of mea culpas. Time for slavery! And no reparations in a century for financial robber barons!

Crooked Fingers in Denver

Eric Bachmann has reconstituted his stunning band Crooked Fingers, after releasing a solo album a year or two ago. On Sunday night, Crooked Fingers played the Bluebird in Denver, where I captured the newer version of the band playing "Crowned in Chrome" (above), "Devil's Train", and "Bad Man Coming." (I would recommend choosing the "Watch in high quality" option.) My Flip camera unfortunately insisted its memory was full, even though there was 15 minutes left, so I missed superb acapella duos of Elin Palmer (violin) and Miranda Brown (guitar) singing "Man O'War" and "Luisa's Bones." The band's version of "Let's Not Pretend to be New Men" was also stunning. Oh well, hope you enjoy what's here.

I should mention the marvelous new Denver band, Dust on the Breakers, that opened for CF, a sample video is here. This was only their second time playing live! Wonderful performances by all.

NSA to Soldiers in Iraq: We've Got Your Datebook!

The good old National Security Agency is at it again. An ABC report on the night of Oct. 9 said that cryptanalysts had been listening in to U.S. soldiers in Iraq phoning home to loved ones. Honestly, for being Upper Echelon, these guys are pretty low-class.

"We're Not Human" - Patti Smith, Birdland

After dealing indirectly this week with a couple acquaintances who showed sociopathic tendencies in the way they treated others, I thought back to the period 15 years ago, when pundits were talking in the aftermath of Rwanda and Croatia about whether human rights can be forfeited. At the time, I stuck adamantly to the view that human rights are not automatic and inviolate for those who fail to recognize the rights of others, but must be constantly re-won and re-earned through right behavior and right thinking.

Now, it's obvious in the aftermath of Nuremberg that humans are responsible for their actions, and cannot claim a law of obedience. It's equally clear, in the aftermath of the Vienna and Helsinki "baskets" in the UN on human rights, that certain rights are common across all cultures and circumstances. Mass murderers like Vojislav Selselj would insist that principles are not common, and that when Serbs are indicted, it's "us against the world." The International Criminal Court made it clear that, when 90 percent of a relevant population is opposed to your viewpoint, your alternative definition of sanity, and of torture, genocide, etc. has no relevance - you are insane by the consensus of the vast majority. Of course, now that the ICC has moved into indicting President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, you have to wonder - does such insistence on moral righteousness by vast majority aid anything, or does it make conditions worse?

The ties to personal behavior are obvious. Certain behaviors are expected of human beings interacting with other human beings, in a way that operates beyond cultures and race: nonviolence, honesty, some level of consistency of emotional response, etc. We can and should be cognizant of the limits to effective human behavior that alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness place on a person, but that should not be an automatic free pass for bad behavior. Nor should insistence that "I'm just that way." Making claims of being "naturally inconsistent," of being a "temperamental artist," of saying "I'm a North Italian from New York City, that's just the way we are," do not stand up as excuses or rationalizations. Do I want to see preventive detention of sociopaths? Not necessarily, though the use of repeat-offender statutes by criminal courts should serve as a guide. Rather, we should always remember that old line mommy and daddy gave you about, "With rights come responsibilities." Demanding human rights means showing appropriate human behavior, on a social level and an interpersonal level. Gross violations of mutually-agreed-upon standards should mean forfeiture of human rights. The next question is, what does it mean to forfeit your rights as a human? Is it open season to shoot the offender?

Cyber Command in Colorado Springs, Nuclear Control is....where?...Omaha?

Well, Tom Roeder from the Colorado Springs Gazette gave us the first report on why the Air Force Academy was on lockdown over the weekend, and what happens as a result of the Air Force officials getting spanked for not controlling their nuclear weapons. Cyber Command, the computer defense and attack unit temporarily housed in Louisiana, comes to Colorado Springs under the auspices of the Air Force Space Command - but will no longer be called Cyber Command, apparently. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons control leaves the Space Command's domain and now moves under.... well... it's not exactly clear. Roeder's article makes it sound like a new constituent command is formed under the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, but details are pretty sparse. In any event, the shit all comes home to roost at StratCom, where the bigwigs control nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, global strike, intelligence, and every other icky thing you can think of. But if your computer is hacked, blame the kids in Colorado Springs. And is this inside baseball? Maybe, except that it involves the future of the planet, indicating you just might want to pay attention.

Criminally Moronic People Run the Nobel Prizes

I'm a couple days late catching up with this, but I'm still astounded that the Nobel Prize committee's top jurist, Horace Engdahl, could say that U.S. citizens receive few literature awards because American writing is insular, and Europe is still the center of the literary world. Excuse me?! I'm glad that New Yorker editor David Remnick pointed out that the Nobels had snubbed Joyce, Nabokov, and Proust, making them all but insignificant in identifying great literature.

I read a lot of European, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Asian literature, and I am far from a rah-rah U.S. guy, but if Engdahl's short list doesn't include Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, the late great David Foster Wallace, Neal Stephenson, Richard Powers, etc., there's a permanent crease in his right and wrong. But then, Engdahl does not seem to be a man of great mental capacity.

John and Barack Sitting in a Tree...

The Progressive magazine always goes out of its way to be provocative in both artwork and essay content, regularly spurring squeamish readers to go through the "Cancel My Subscription!" ritual. They've topped themselves with the October issue's cover art by Sako Shahinian. Not sure what is being said here, but I'll cherish this issue as a collector's item.