The Predator State  

Peter at Karavans has an interesting post on "The Predator State: When Capitalism Goes Bad" which looks at what happens when poltical systems slip into decay - a possible prelude to collapse. I like the description of James K Galbraith (son of John Kenneth Galbraith whose passing I mentioned last week) as an "evolutionary economist".

This new Mother Jones article is a must read. I've been in business since the mid-eighties and have never seen such unethical, predatory behavior as we have been witnessing in the marketplace over the past few years. It's not small business that's to blame. It's large business. Large global players are simply not accountable to anyone. If any one state attempts to clamp down on predatory behavior, they simply move to another jurisdiction. It's all become a big shell-game for the multinationals. (Yes, I know that I'm not saying anything new here.)

Here's a key section from this article, The Predator State, written by James K. Galbraith, who one might describe as an evolutionary economist.

When capitalism goes bad:

Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.

Our rulers deliver favors to their clients. These range from Native American casino operators, to Appalachian coal companies, to Saipan sweatshop operators, to the would-be oil field operators of Iraq. They include the misanthropes who led the campaign to abolish the estate tax; Charles Schwab, who suggested the dividend tax cut of 2003; the “Benedict Arnold” companies who move their taxable income offshore; and the financial institutions behind last year’s bankruptcy bill. Everywhere you look, public decisions yield gains to specific private entities.

For in a predatory regime, nothing is done for public reasons. Indeed, the men in charge do not recognize that “public purposes” exist. They have friends, and enemies, and as for the rest—we’re the prey. Hurricane Katrina illustrated this perfectly, as Halliburton scooped up contracts and Bush hamstrung Kathleen Blanco, the Democratic governor of Louisiana. The population of New Orleans was, at best, an afterthought; once dispersed, it was quickly forgotten.

The predator-prey model explains some things that other models cannot: in particular, cycles of prosperity and depression. Growth among the prey stimulates predation. The two populations grow together at first, but when the balance of power shifts toward the predators (through rising interest rates, utility rates, oil prices, or embezzlement), both can crash abruptly. When they do, it takes a long time for either to recover...

The Wikipedia entry for Galbraith I linked to above is also worth a read.

Galbraith has taken the view that Bush II-America has fallen prey to a wealthy, government-controlling "predatory class"...

Like his colleague and compatriot, economist Paul Krugman, Galbraith is highly critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy apropos of the Iraq invasion:

There is a reason for the vulnerability of empires. To maintain one against opposition requires war — steady, unrelenting, unending war. And war is ruinous — from a legal, moral and economic point of view. It can ruin the losers, such as Napoleonic France, or Imperial Germany in 1918. And it can ruin the victors, as it did the British and the Soviets in the 20th century. Conversely, Germany and Japan recovered well from World War II, in part because they were spared reparations and did not have to waste national treasure on defense in the aftermath of defeat...The real economic cost of Bush's empire building is twofold: It diverts attention from pressing economic problems at home and it sets the United States on a long-term imperial path that is economically ruinous.

He is also a merciless critic of his own profession:

Leading active members of today's economics profession, the generation presently in their 40s and 50s, have joined together into a kind of politburo for correct economic thinking. As a general rule — as one might expect from a gentleman's club — this has placed them on the wrong side of every important policy issue, and not just recently but for decades. They predict disaster where none occurs. They deny the possibility of events that then happen. They offer a "rape is like the weather" fatalism about an "inevitable" problem (pay inequality) that then starts to recede. They oppose the most basic, decent, and sensible reforms, while offering placebos instead. They are always surprised when something untoward (like a recession) actually occurs. And when finally they sense that some position cannot be sustained, they do not re-examine their ideas. Instead, they simply change the subject.

Jeff Vail has a look at a different aspect of the predatory state - its publically financed armies of privately controlled mercenaries, which effectively recycle taxpayer funds into private, well connected, hands - in " The Private Law of War".

“Security will become a function of where you live and whom you work for, much as health care is allocated already.”
- John Robb

Ten years ago, a common perception was that military logistics firms did little more than provide cafeteria services or laundry outsourcing to US bases overseas. Mercenaries, on the other hand, were seen as pariah outfits operating in African backwaters, but not employed openly by major powers or respected corporations. While such perceptions were never entirely accurate, today these two worlds have very publicly merged and exploded onto the international scene in the form of the modern Private Military Corporation (PMC).

While the first Gulf War had a ratio of government soldier to private contractor of over 100:1, the current conflict in Iraq has a ratio of less than 10:1. In fact, The Economist called this conflict “the first privatized war.” The awarding of multi-billion dollar logistics contracts to firms like Bechtel and Halliburton was highly publicized, but there was much less publicity about the direct combat role played by private contractors in today’s conflicts, or about the extensive use of PMCs beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite the lack of publicity, this expanded role led to increased concerns by several observers that PMCs were increasingly committing human rights abuses, and that the lack of transparency, regulation, and clear rules on liability for their operations was facilitating such behavior. At present, the legal status of Private Military Corporations is largely ambiguous. The rapid pace of innovation and the huge profit potential within the industry has outpaced the development of legal norms and regulations, resulting in a dangerous legal vacuum where PMC operations proceed largely unchecked.

Wayne Madsen also has a post on PMCs and the reservations some (ex) members of the US military have about their use (though not as many as I'd like to see):

May 12, 2006 -- Yesterday, former Central Command commander Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke at the National Press Club and answered a question about the burgeoning role of private military contractors (PMCs) that George W. Bush could not answer during a speech a few weeks ago at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. The question, posed by this editor, was on Zinni's opinion on the growing reliance in PMCs, some with close political ties to the Republican Party, in places like Iraq, Africa, and even New Orleans. Zinni said there must be oversight on these companies but conceded they have a role in maintenance, security, and logistics in the operation of pre-position sites, such as those in Kuwait and other Middle East nations. Zinni said there is a cost benefit to using PMCs in such roles. Zinni also agreed that PMCs play an important role in personal security in supplying drivers and people with shooting skills.

However, Zinni emphasized there must be controls on PMCs and that these must take into consideration international, U.S., and host country laws. He said PMCs have been overused in some places, especially where they have been interchanged with combat military units. For example, Zinni said there should never be cases where active duty military units and PMCs are jointly engaged in firefights with the enemy. Zinni also said there is a need for accountability of PMCs to prevent corruption and he agreed that PMCs have become a ballooning cottage industry in places like Iraq. Zinni said that PMCs in Iraq tend to sub-contract to third parties who are not Iraqi and that has fueled anti-U.S. attitudes. The use of Filipino, Pakistani, and Indonesian truck drivers by PMCs in Iraq "irritates Iraqis," Zinni said.

In response to a question about an Iraqi solution for the United States, Zinni said such a plan cannot be summed up in a one-page white paper. He declared, "every wonk with every alphabet soup organization in this town has crapped a one-page solution for Iraq."

Zinni also said he was surprised by recent right-wing reactions to his criticisms of the Bush administration. He said since his comments, he has been told by higher ups in the Bush administration that the Uniform Code of Military Justice still applies to him, that he couldn't write books, couldn't go on TV, and the First Amendment didn't apply to him. He said he has not coordinated his remarks with the other generals who have spoken out against the Rumsfeld regime at the Pentagon and that seven days in May have not been picked out by the generals to march on Washington. Zinni joked that he couldn't even get his grand kids to do something like that.

Zinni was also promoting his new book, The Battle for Peace: A Frontline Vision of America's Power and Purpose.

While predatory corporations get a lot of attention in the passages above, it is also possible for arms of the government to become predatory in their own way, as the totally out-of-control (by the elected representatives of the people at least) NSA is demonstrating - Past Peak ("The Largest Database Ever Assembled"), Bruce Schneier, Wired (Report: U.S. Spies on Everyone), Glenn Greenwald, William Gibson and probably everyone else in that 1% of the population with a passing interest in personal liberty and freedom are all having their say.

From Past Peak (who also has an interesting post on 200,000 weapons gone missing in Iraq):

You're no doubt aware that USA Today is reporting that AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth have, since shortly after 9/11, been supplying the NSA with detailed information on every phone call made by any of its customers, private or commercial. From USA Today's article:

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

If it's really the largest database ever assembled, it's a hell of a lot more than phone records. The phone companies, after all, already have databases of phone records. This would have to be something much bigger. It would have to be data-mining on a colossal scale. As I wrote immediately after it was revealed that NSA was listening in on calls without getting FISA warrants:

The reason the White House didn't just go get FISA warrants for their wiretaps is almost certainly because they weren't doing wiretaps in the usual sense of the word. They were doing automated, broad-based scanning of enormous numbers of calls. For all we know, they were scanning every phone call in the country. Think Echelon and Total Information Awareness. Think data mining.

...

And the thing is, you know this isn't all of it. Probably not even close. They're probably data-mining everything they can get their hands on: credit card records, bank statements, Internet usage.

And Cafferty's right. The fact that the NSA told the Justice Department to take a hike because it didn't have a sufficient security clearance to investigate them — and the fact that the Justice Department agreed — is the stuff of dictatorships.

Anybody who says it's ok that the government has completely shredded all civil liberties guarantees with respect to privacy and search and seizure, who says that it's ok because they've got nothing to hide, just doesn't have a clue what the US Constitution and the rule of law are all about. No one can be trusted with unchecked power. No one. Ever. That is why we have a Constitution and a body of laws that limit governmental power. Civics 101. This was the bedrock principle on which the Founders built the nation. People who want to consent to let all that go are just sheep voluntarily marching to slaughter.

Perhaps the most ludicrous thing of all is that Bush and his ilk declare themselves to be conservatives, when they are destroying every fundamental check and balance, every basic right, that a real conservative would be trying to conserve.

From Bruce Schneier (who also has a semi-related piece on "Computer Problems at the NSA):

This is important to every American, not just those with something to hide. Matthew Yglesias explains why:

It's important to link this up to the broader chain. One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself.

Judicial oversight is a security system, and unchecked military and police power is a security threat.

From the Gibson interview:

I can't explain it to you, but it has a powerful deja vu. When I got up this morning and read the USA Today headline, I thought the future had been a little more evenly distributed. Now we've all got some...

The interesting thing about meta-projects in the sense in which I used them [in the NYT editorial] is that I don't think species know what they're about. I don't think humanity knows why we do any of this stuff. A couple hundred years down the road, when people look back at what the NSA has done, the significance of it won't be about terrorism or Iraq or the Bush administration or the American Constitution, it will be about how we're driven by emerging technologies and how we struggle to keep up with them...

I'm particularly enamored of the idea of a national security "bubble..." Technologies don't emerge unless there's someone who thinks he can make a bundle by helping them emerge...

I've been watching with keen interest since the first NSA scandal: I've noticed on the Internet that there aren't many people really shocked by this. Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway.

I keep seeing that in the lower discourse of the Internet, people saying, "Oh, they're doing it anyway." In some way our culture believes that, and it's a real problem, because evidently they haven't been doing it anyway, and now that they've started, we really need to pay attention and muster some kind of viable political response.

It's very hard to get some people on-board because they think it's a fait accompli...

I think it's [the X-Files, Nixon wiretapping, science fiction]. I think it's predicated in our delirious sense of what's been happening to us as a species for the past 100 years. During the Cold War it was almost comforting to believe that the CIA was reading everything...

In the very long view, this will turn out to be about how we deal with the technological situation we find ourselves in now. We've gotten somewhere we've never been before. It's very interesting. In the short term, I've taken the position that it's very, very illegal and I hope something is done about it.

Greg Palast's rant on the topic is quite entertaining too - see "The Spy Who Shagged Us" - as he says, fear sells better than sex (especially when you have a captive market).

I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.

Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?

ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.

I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.

And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply rewarded by the man the company elected.

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records.

And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI.

"And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape case evidence ... that didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 credit card records.

But it won't stop, despite Republican senators shedding big crocodile tears about "surveillance" of innocent Americans. That's because FEAR is a lucrative business -- not just for ChoicePoint, but for firms such as Syntech, Sybase and Lockheed-Martin -- each of which has provided lucrative posts or profits to connected Republicans including former Total Information Awareness chief John Poindexter (Syntech), Marvin Bush (Sybase) and Lynn Cheney (Lockheed-Martin).

Bruce Schneier (who you really should read regularly if you don't already) has another post related to the predatory state - in this case on the predators at Diebold (also noted at Boing Boing), who are busy devouring democracy itself - "Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines". I'm sure none of these vulnerabilities have been exploited in recent elections, even if that would explain some of the weird results reported in Ohio and Florida in 2004, for example...

This is a big deal:

Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a "dangerous" security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.'s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.

The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide.

Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.

Maybe all this stuff explains why this guy is so angry...

You might be saying “Man, what are you so angry about, Angry Liberal Guy?”

I’ve compiled a short (and by no means complete) list just so I could see it all in one place:

I’m angry about the shredding of the constitution…illegal wiretaps…falsified intelligence…secret prisons… use of torture as an accepted means of interrogation…Terry Schiavo…the war on science…denial of Global Warming…the fascistic secrecy of our elected officials… presidential signings that declare the President above the law…the breakdown of the wall between church and state…the outing of a clandestine CIA agent for purely partisan political gain…the corrupting influence of K Street… the total sell-out of the legislative process to corporate interests… appointments of unqualified cronies at every level of government…Harriet Miers…Brownie…Abu Ghraib… Scooter …the complete mismanagement of the war in Iraq…the lies about the complete mismanagement of the war in Iraq…the grotesque budget deficits… the pathetic response to Katrina… a civil rights division dedicated to undermining civil rights…an environmental protection agency that refuses to protect the environment… (Take a breath, Angry Liberal Guy.)

And I’m angry about a smug, simple-minded, incompetent, unqualified President, and a press that denies the obvious fact that we have a smug, simple-minded, incompetent unqualified President.

If these things don’t make you angry, I have to ask -- what the hell is the matter with you?

Steve at Deconsumption has a post on "The Fourth Turning" which I've mentioned before (mostly to complain about various wingnut commentators who use it as evidence of the coming triumph of the will for the coming "hero generation" - read, cannon fodder). He sees the book quite favourably, viewing it as backing up the idea that Gen-X's relatively egalitarian and non-hierarchical approach to life will become the new cultural backbone (instead of the generation after us). As an almost stereotypical Gen-Xer I've got no complaints about that scenario - though I'm not so sure of its validity; my reading of the Fourth Turning concept is that us Nomads get shafted by historical forces - but maybe thats because I've only read "conservative" interpretations of the book thus far...

The basic theory outlined in The Fourth Turning is that a study of history shows that there exists a repeating cycle of four archetypal generational "types", and that the transition between one cycle and the next represents a particularly dramatic and inflammatory break between the "unraveling" of a previous cultural era--grown too aged and infirm to continue--and the emergence of a radically new one. These "eras", then, last for four generations or roughly 80 years before "turning" again, and an examination of the specific turning-points throughout the line of American history even back to pre-Colonial times forms the bulk of the book.

It evidently appears, according to the authors, that this crisis and resulting rebirth of a new culture must necessarily occur as a profound "shock" to the social structure if it is to provide sufficient force to overcome the atrophy and inertia which characterize the previous era. Fittingly then, they note that these crises almost invariably begin to develop at a point only just past the peak of the era's cultural fruition, and for this reason they usually catch the bulk of society unawares. More often than not then the resulting qualities and character which come to define the newly emergent culture may have been completely unforseeable just a few years before. But most notable for our present purposes is that this cultural schism is reflected in (and partly inspired by) a pivotal "wresting of power" that must proceed between two specific and contrary generations (archetypally labelled the "Prophet" generation and the "Nomad" generation--and in our present generational cycle called the "Boomers" and "Gen-X" respectively). Thus "Fourth Turning" systemic crises almost invariably unfold in parallel with gut-wrenching civil crisis, say the authors, of a kind that has real potential to tear the society apart. Written over a decade ago, they forecast that the next such Turning should be just beginning about now. And perhaps as early evidence of the theory I would point to the rapid rise of the "weblog revolution" as a foreshadowing of the coming transition of authority: weblogs are most primarily a voice of the Gen-X generation, and in that generation's mindset have already acquired greater legitimacy than the institutional "Boomer controlled" media--and we can see that they've already begun to challenge the legitimacy of what the mainstream media chooses to report or ignore.

I obviously hold The Fourth Turning in high regard, both intellectually and experientially, and it's largely why I don't believe that future years will simply unfold along the continuing Orwellian nightmare that the present times seem to promise. Because Generation X is fundamentally opposed to accepting the self-centeredness and self-serving-ness mentality that signifies this era, the love for black-or-white ideological causes, and the blanket judgmentalism that Boomer leaders so comfortably buy into. Not to mention that they largely hate corporatism and authoritarian control in any form. Morford's diatribe about gas prices is not anything unique to my experience: in their hearts Gen-X'ers have always hated the status quo they've grown-up within, and they long for a chance to burn the whole system down and try to remake it in more equitable terms. Not because they're smarter, or right-er, or even capable of doing that well...but simply because they've never really felt were at home in any of it. And that's also largely their problem--having never felt at home in it, they've also never felt they had a foothold from which to oppose it. In fact, many corporations are starting to quietly lament the management vacuum they're coming up against in recent years as the best and brightest of the new generation turn their backs on the corporate ladder.... Still, Time marches relentlessly on, and this generation is going to be stepping up to the plate whether they like the game that's being played or not. So regardless of whether Strauss & Howe are right in their theory of generational cycles, it's not hard to sense that the cultural revolution is coming, and it's going to be dramatic--and probably not altogether peaceful--as the next generation begins to inherit an America they never made.

I'd love to cover The Fourth Turning at greater length because over the past 12 years or so since it was written it's fast proving itself to be a study of monumental importance--and I certainly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet. I've even found myself returning to certain chapters in recent weeks, and one idea that's jumped out at me lately is the authors' caution to the Gen-X generation that they resist their eagerness to see big changes happen quickly. After the crisis has begun in earnest, they say, society will be more prepared to embrace the radical solutions they offer...but until then there will be only limited acceptance of anything that goes against the prevailing status quo (an outlook well illustrated by the tone of Morford's piece above). So until that time, they caution, it is best to simply explore, experiment, and only quietly advocate new ideas and solutions to our mounting problems. That way, when the collapse is decidedly underway, the most viable and appropriate responses can be offered--and offered with greater authority and a more unified voice.

I guess I should post a few links less tangentially related to my core themes - here goes...

New Scientist has two interesting (but paywalled) articles - one on kicking the oil habit and another one on Mikhail Gorbachev's journey to becoming a green (as he said of the Soviet Union - "we cannot go on like this").

RealClimate has a review of Al Gore's new movie "An Inconvenient Truth" (TreeHugger points to Grist's interview with Al), along with a review of a number of global warming related books.

WorldChanging has posts on coconut biodiesel and a new possibility for the "future of lighting" - Organic LEDs (also at Transmaterial).

We've been saying that LED's are the future of energy-efficient lighting. What if we're wrong? Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED's) have been emerging for years, but they are gradually getting more and more exciting, starting to give traditional LED's a run for their money. In a few years you might be able to wallpaper your home in light-emitting sheets, or maybe turn all your windows into heads-up displays. Why you'd want to do this might be a different question, but there are obviously useful applications, too, such as flexible displays (the roll-up computer or the e-ink newspaper; there's also talk about sewing them into clothing, too, but no one's done it yet like they have with LED's.) Cambridge Display Technology and Epson have also used OLED's to make color printers faster, higher-resolution, and smaller. OLED's also promise to ubiquitize displays: already a keyboard has been prototyped whose keys change according to what alphabet you want to use, or what program / game you have running. When any surface can become an interactive display, what will we want to display where?

... as we mentioned before, OLED's are greener to manufacture than LED's or fluorescents, and can even be printed by inkjet, instead of requiring vacuum chambers, high temperatures, and bevies of toxic chemicals like lead or mercury. This is a big reason to keep an eye on them for the future. Because of these facts, they will also end up cheaper to make than today's technologies.

For now, though, the main advantage OLED's have is not brightness or efficiency as a light source, it's the extremely high resolution and fast switching, which make for good displays. They are already better for displays than LCD's, because they're emissive displays (i.e. they give off light, rather than blocking light coming through them from a backlight), and because they switch faster than LCD's. But it will be some time before they can compete as an illumination source with other home / office products, especially until manufacturing cost comes down from economies of scale. OLED's also don't stack up to LED's in terms of robustness: they are shorter-lived, and are easily damaged by moisture. People are of course working on this, but it remains a vulnerability.

The next revolution after flexible lighting, if you ask me, will be paintable lighting. OLED's basically work by having a phosphorescent layer of material between two charged electrodes. Why not have five layers of paint, where the bottom and top layers are insulators (transparent), the second and fourth layers are conductive (also transparent), and the middle is the phosphor? Put a voltage across the conductive layers of paint, and the entire surface of your room/object/whatever can glow uniformly.

And finally, if you're worried about collapse and think you'll be heading for the hills one day soon, here's a housing option to consider - Mongolian cloud houses (ie. yurts).

Or if you're looking for politically oriented entertainment, Billmon is in fine form (and I'm glad to see he's covered that Zarqawi video which surfaced recently and had me shaking my head at the sad state of our propaganda machine).

You can't blame drowning men for grasping at straws (after all, what's the alternative?) so I probably shouldn't be too hard on the Bush Fedayeen for snatching up the Pentagon's latest propaganda "proof" that it is, despite all appearances, winning the war in Iraq.

But if they're going to grab straws, you'd think they would at least reach for fresh dry ones -- instead of the same old soggy lies that have already failed them (and us) again and again.

The straws in this case are an alleged trove of documents and videotapes supposedly captured in a raid on an Al Qaeda in Iraq safehouse last month. According to Centcom, these materials definitively prove that:

* The dreaded terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is actually a weeny and poser with a taste for American footwear.

* The mighty Iraqi security forces have the enemy on the run.

* Al Qaeda in Iraq is having trouble recruiting local fighters because "the people of Iraq do not support its cause."

And yes, according to Centcom, that last bit is a direct quote, or rather, a translation of one. Al Qaeda operatives, it seems, like to refer to themselves in the third person singular and freely admit to each other, in writing, that their cause is both hopeless and unpopular.

For the pro-regime bitter enders (ours) this is a forlorn flash of light in a sky that otherwise seems to be rapidly darkening towards Das Gotterdammerung -- or a Democratic Congress, which is even worse. So of course they're all talking about the story, in much the same way that ultra conservatives of another era and a different country once spoke of miracle weapons. Here's Powerlie's Assrocket, for example:

Put it all together: al Qaeda in Iraq is failing. It has little military strength, and the Iraqi people "do not support its cause." It has succeeded in one arena only: the American media.

And it's true, the verminous Fifth Columnists of the MSM are generally ignoring Centcom's big scoop. There is, however, a good reason for this -- one that doesn't necessarily reflect a craving to stab the Reich in the back. Even gullible journalists can and sometimes do learn from experience, and in this case they have plenty of experience to draw on.

You'd think that for the money the Pentagon is shelling out for this crap, they could come up with something more believable than Salafist jihadis who praise democracy and refer to themselves (again, according to Centcom, in a direct quote) as: "groups of assassins without any organized military capabilities." I mean, please.

Then again, the stuff's apparently good enough to keep the diehards chattering away about final victory, even though the biggest problem facing Operation Iraqi Fiasco isn't al-Zarqawi and his band of religious lunatics, but the fact that everybody in the freaking country now hates or mistrusts us (and our British satellite troops) almost as much as they hate and mistrust each other. Claiming that Zarqawi is just a little old lady in tennis shoes doesn't do a thing to change that equation, even if it's true. But if it helps the crazies in Right Blogostan self medicate, I guess it's at least serving some useful social purpose.

There is a larger -- and more important -- story here than the neocons pulling another con job, this time on their own deluded followers. If Ricks and Filkins and reporters like them were originally inclined to give Centcom every benefit of the doubt (and they were) it's a reflection of one of the lessons the military thought it had learned from Vietnam: Don't lie to the media. Control them, yes, restrict access to the battle zone, yes, feed them reams of "Control Room" spin and carefully pre-masticated facts, yes. But don't flat out lie to them, because in the end they will find out, and from that point on you can kiss your credibility -- and your ability to influence the coverage -- good bye.

By and large, the military held to that credo over the next thirty years, and regained most of the credibility and respectful, or outright fawning, press coverage it had squandered away in Vietnam. And that respect and credibility proved extremely valuable assets -- in the first Gulf War, in Afghanistan and in the opening phases of Gulf War II.

However, Donald Rumsfeld, in his infinite wisdom, clearly decided long ago that telling the truth (or at least not lying) was one Vietnam lesson the Pentagon needed to unlearn. As I've noted before (back when Ricks and Filkins were still slurping up the Kool Aid) Rummy made it clear early on that he and his cohorts reserve the right to lie (ah, I mean, to engage in strategic information campaigns) if they believe it is in the national interest. Naturally, this also means if it's in their interests.

This may even be the smart way to play it, given the ineptness and corruption of our modern Big Media. Who cares if they find out they've been lied to? They don't seem to care, so why the hell should the liars?