LEFT IN EAST DAKOTA

My brother and sister-in-law's very cool website: http://www.handsomefoto.com/

(a sketch) Two men are pressed close to each other in a long line waiting to get into a sold out concert. The line is tight and people are being bumped.  Tensions are running high. Bouncer (shouting): Doors open in 2 minutes! Please have your tickets ready so this line will move as fast as possible! Everyone is quite uncomfortable. Eventually the underlying tension is released and a confrontation is initiated. Near the middle of the line, a man unleashes on another man who is directly behind him.  Man 1: What the fuck man!?! Stop fuckin’ touching me! Man 2: Fuck you! I can’t move at all! Go fuck yourself you fuckin’ bitch! The two men are nearly touching noses; ready to fight. Man 1: Fuck you jerk off! I’ll fuck you up! Man 2: Dude. I’ll kick your ass. Seriously. Man 1: Fuck off. I’ll break your fuckin’ nose. Man 2: Go fuck yourself! I’ll break your fuckin’ face! Both men back up a small amount and share a brief moment of silence. Man 1: Really? My face...

Historically, Charles Taylor isn’t that interesting. History certainly has produced no shortage of despots. What makes him a likely footnote in future textbooks is that he got caught. He, like Bernie Madoff, was tried and convicted.  Mr. Taylor, it would appear, was big enough to be a bastard to many, but not big enough to be “our bastard,” as the famous quote goes. It’s been a few years since Hollywood made us associate Leonardo DiCaprio’s boyish grin with the phrase “blood diamond,” but the diamond industry hasn’t forgotten. I never gave it much thought until I went looking for a ring for my soon to be wife. Given her family is from diamond-rich west Africa, we both decided it would be the height of poor taste to not at least have some idea of where our public display of love came from. Don’t get me wrong, I have no illusions in global capitalism creating an equitable structure to extract and trade shiny rocks rich people collect, but if I can get a cup of “fair trade” coffee o...

Despite what we've been told , the real reason behind the British banning of the slave trade is more economics and less Christian-inspired morality. The following is a brilliant passage (found on page 53 and 54 in the second edition revised) from C.L.R. James' classic book, The Black Jacobins :  It was the growth of San Domingo that was decisive. Pitt [William, "the Younger"] found that some 50 percent of the slaves imported into the British islands were sold to the French colonies. It was the British slave-trade, therefore, which was increasing French colonial produce and putting the European market into French hands. Britain was cutting its own throat. And even the profits from this export were likely not to last. Already a few years before the slave merchants had failed for £700,000 in a year. The French, seeking to provide their own slaves, were encroaching in Africa and increasing their share of the trade every year. Why should they continue to buy from Brita...

The vertebrate brain seems to operate as a device tuned to the recognition of patterns. When evolution grafted consciousness in human form upon this organ in a single species, the old inherent search for patterns developed into a propensity for organizing these patterns as stories, and then for explaining the surrounding world in terms of the narratives expressed in such tales. For universal reasons that probably transcend the cultural particulars of individual groups, humans tend to construct their stories along a limited number of themes and pathways, favored because they grant both useful sense and satisfying meaning to the confusion (and often to the tragedy) of life in our complex surrounding world. Stephen Jay Gould- "Jim Bowie's Letter and Bill Buckner's Legs"

Generally, I am not in favor of reducing things to their most digestible. We live in a complex world and reducing things to "good vs. bad" is rarely helpful. Topics take time to sift through and understand. This is only natural. Although, I also agree, sometimes a step back to the fundamental issues at hand is helpful. With few notable exceptions ( Alan Woods , Martin Wolf ), commentary surrounding Europe's debt crisis has been muddled at best and purposefully confusing at worst. If you aren't fluent in the technocratic economic vernacular of the various talking heads, things can get a bit distorted. First off, it should be noted the crisis in Europe is not simply an "economic" crisis. It is a crisis of a certain kind of economics- a certain way we produce and distribute goods. It is a crisis of Capitalism. What started as a banking crisis in the United States has morphed into a national debt crisis in Europe. This has been complicated further due to the s...