Just say no to corporations

Thursday, May 26, 2005

The Aviator: A Tribute To American Capitalism

The Aviator, while very well made, offers a very one-sided view of the life of Howard Hughes in an effort to glorify ruthless, American capitalism.

The film most obviously demonstrates this underlying theme when Hughes meets Katherine Hepburn's family, who proudly claim to be socialists. The film portrays them in the worst possible light. They never listen to each other while they are speaking, and there are always at least three conversations going on at once. They speak with a sort of lazy intonation, revealing their nature as lazy and out-of-touch. It is implied that they have never worked a day in their lives, and, ironically, survive only off of inherited wealth. When asked a question, Hughes is interrupted, and after a few minutes, he has had enough. In true American fashion, he loudly demands that everyone listen while he is speaking. He denounces socialism by saying that he works for a living, and storms off.

The film also glosses over some of the most ruthless acts of Hughes. During the filming of Hell's Angels, mechanic Phil Jones was strapped to a spinning plane and instructed to operate smoke pots to give the impression of a burning plane. The pilots working on the film warned Hughes that this was too dangerous, but he didn't listen. Jones was killed when he failed to eject on cue and the plane crashed. The film fails to dramatize the tragedy, and only mentions very briefly that people were killed in the making of the film, when a journalist confronts Hughes. The information is intended to be quickly dismissed as simply the unwarranted criticisms of a few nay-sayers who are standing in the way of the great visionary [link].

The film also portrays as fact the bribing of Senator Owen Brewster by Juan Trippe, the president of Pan Am. In reality, the evidence of the bribes consists entirely of information leaked to journalists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson by Hughes himself. There was nothing factual to support his claims [link].

Hughes did, in fact, waste 40 million dollars of government funds. That fact is not in dispute by the film. It is shown, however, not to be war profiteering because Hughes did not make a profit from the money. Wether this is true or not, Hughes still used the government essentially to finance his reckless and childish adventures. While this may not fit the technical definition of profiteering, it is still exploitation.

The worst aspects of his life were completely absent from the film. In the late 1950's, Hughes' chief of staff, Robert Maheu, working with two heads of organized crime, orchestrated an attempt to assasinate Fidel Castro. The attacks on Cuba were carried out on several islands leased to Hughes from Zapata Off-Shore, an oil company owned at the time by former president George Bush [link].

Hughes was also a strong supporter of Richard Nixon. According to a handwritten memo from Hughes during the 1968 presidential campaign:

"I am determined to elect a president of our choosing this year and one who will be deeply indebted, and who will recognize his indebtedness. Since I am willing to go beyond all limitations on this, I think we should be able to select a candidate and a party who knows the facts of political life...If we select Nixon, then he, I know for sure knows the facts of life." [link]

According to a 60 Minutes story, there is evidence to suggest that the break-in to the office of Larry O'Brien at the Watergate by five men working for President Nixon was an effort by Nixon and Hughes to cover up a $100,000 bribe paid to Nixon by Hughes [link].

The film certainly did not portray Hughes as a saint, but his shortcomings were always in his personal life. Professionally, he was always shown to be a visionary. He was the personification of American ideals. Througout his life, he risked all he had to pursue his goals, and he always came out on top. In fact, however, this great entrepreneur was really a ruthless, greedy man. He believed himself to be above the law, and there was nothing he wouldn't do to further his interests.

Friday, May 20, 2005

Why Can't American Politicians Be More Like British Politicians?

I found this on Chicago Life. It is, as Ramsin put's it, "one of the most wonderful things you'll see all month." It's a video, so you need Window Media or Real Player to watch. Sorry to those of you without sound cards, which I estimate make up between 50 and 100% of my readers.

To sum it up, George Galloway, a former member of the Brittish Labor party, was called to testify before a senate committee investigating corruption in the oil for food program. He was accused by the committee of paying bribes to, and in general supporting Saddam Hussein. He really doesn't hold anything back. I especially like the part where he talks about how, despite the unfounded claims of the committee, he only met with Saddam Hussein twice - once in 1994 as part of a campaign against the sanctions, and once in 2002 to persuade him to allow Hans Blix and UN weapons inspectors into the country. He said that was exactly the same number of times that the current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, met with Saddam Hussein, only Rumsfeld was there to sell him weapons, including chemical weapons, and maps to help him aim them at Iran.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

The Number One Domestic Terror Threat

Is it the KKK? Is it right-wing extremists? Is it radical anti-abortion groups? Is it domestic Islamic extremists? Is it individuals like Timothy McVeigh?

No. The Number One domestic terror threat is much more dangerous than any of the above groups. They are worse than any previously know domestic terrorist group, even more dangerous than the NAACP. According to an FBI official who testified before a Senate comittee, the Number One domestic terror threat is... Environmental and Animal Rights activists!

While they do not have any history of actual violence, unlike the groups mentioned above, and show no signs of violence targeting human life, the FBI has observed "an escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics." The two worst terrorist groups, the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty, aim to stop animal abuse by taking "direct action" to rescue animals and cause financial loss to animal abusers through damage and destruction of property.

Action must be taken immediately to stop these "eco-terrorists" before they destroy the very fabric of our American society.

It is believed that these groups receive most of their funding through "mainstream activists" in tax-exempt organizations. According to the FBI, "Just like Al Queda or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media." So the best way to stop this threat, the single greatest threat we have ever faced since gay marriage and the civil rights movement, is to avoid support of any activist group, because you never know if they might have secret ties to animal rights or environmental activism.

Just cutting off their direct support is not enough. We have to show them that it is not acceptable in American society to preserve the environment and stop animal cruelty. I recommend that all of my readers go home tonight in the least fuel efficient way possible, crank up the air conditioning, cook a nice veal steak, watch American Idol, and always remember to spend, spend, spend, because spending money is the most patriotic thing you can do.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

More On Koran Desecration

According to Worldview on Chicago Public Radio today, there has been significant desectration of the Koran at Guantanimo, it was only in the Newsweek case that it was unproven. According to the NPR report, the information came from a senior level official at Guantanimo, and Newsweek showed the information to two other senior officials, and they did not deny it.

Intelligence Failures

A memo that has caused much controversy in the UK but has received little attention here in the US shows that the Bush administration decided to go to war about eight months before the invasion. The reason that it has received so little attention here in the US, I believe, is that pretty much everyone knows that. It was obvious. That is why it is completely unbelievable that the focus of the investigations is limited to the intelligence community.

The investigations serve as nothing more than a distraction. They do nothing more than take the focus away from the real criminals, and blame their lies on procedural and administrative errors.

Such Hypocrits

According to an article this morning in the Chicago Tribune, the Bush administration is pressuring Newsweek to do more to atone for incorrectly reporting that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. From the article:


"Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the magazine should decide for itself how to undo what he called 'serious consequences' and 'lasting damage' from its reporting, but he repeatedly offered a suggestion.

'One way is to point out what the policies and practices of our United States military are,' McClellan said. 'Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care.'


This is the same response that they had when Dan Rather used documents that turned out to have been forged in a story about Bush's "service" in the Texas Air National Guard, although in that case, I believe, they never denied the accuracy of the story, just that the evidence was faulty.

They demand accountability when journalist's story turns out to be factually incorrect, but show absolutely no accountability when they misled the entire country and went to war over ridiculous claims of Weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq. What are the "serious consequences" and "lasting damage"? If there are any, do they even begin to compare to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed as a result of the US invasion and occupation?

Friday, May 13, 2005

Blackouts and the Free Market

As a power systems engineer, I think it is about time that I posted some information on the current state of the power industry, and how the free market has jeopardized the future of reliable power.

I'll start by describing the way things used to be...

In the old days, each power company was essentially a monopoly. In every region of the country, customers could only purchase power from one company. This sounds bad initially, but prices were strictly regulated, so customers could not be exploited in the way that monopolies typically do. Under this system, since each company was entirely responsible for all aspects of power, from generation to transmission to distribution, it was in their best interests financially to maintain a sescure, reliable, and efficient system. Here in Chicago, for example, the Commonwealth-Edison power transmission system was known to be one of the most reliable systems in the country. This reliability came at great financial expense to the company, but it was determined based on the structure of the power market at the time, that this reliablility was much more cost effective than an unreliable system, due to the high costs and lost revenue of outages.

A crucial aspect of the old power market was that each company was required to generate all of the power for their market. In the case of outages, companies could essentially borrow power from neighboring regions, and return it at a later time when they have excess generating capability. Because of this feature, the power transmission system was designed regionally, rather than nationally. Each region was connected to neighboring regions through tie lines, intended only to serve the needs of occasional shortages.

Starting in the early 1990's, in an effort to eliminate the monopolistic aspect to the power market, deregulation has been implimented in almost every state, starting primarily in California. The intention was ultimately to to seperate the regional monopolies into individual generation, transmission, and distribution companies. This was done officially because laissez faire capitalists have such a tremendious faith in the "free market" that they believe that competition will solve everyone's problems and ultimately lead to the most efficient way of doing things, but of course the main reason was just that the giant corporations wanted more freedom to exploit their customers and funnel more money up to the already wealthy executives and investors.

Now, under the current market structure, companies are no longer required to generate their own power. In fact, companies are not required to generate any power at all. Many companies exist entirely to purchase energy from regions with excess generation, and sell it to regions with higher demand, at greatly inflated prices, of course. This new traffic has put a tremendous burdon on the tie lines connecting neighboring regions. Building new transmission is extremely expensive, and there is very little financial reward, so the national transmission system has remained at nearly the same capacity as it was before deregulation, only now, instead of being used to maintain the system in the case of outages, it is needed to supply the base load in many cases due to the increase in buying and selling across the network.

This was a major contributing factor to the Northeastern Blackout in 2003.

Power systems are monitored constantly through sensors placed throughout the network. It is assumed that this data could contain errors, so a sophisticated software system, often involving multiple processors, very quickly combines all of the data and makes an estimate of the actual state of the system. The process is usually updated every thirty seconds. What happened in Ohio was that this system went down, I believe for about seven minutes, and the operator did not notice it. During that time, there was an outage, and since the operator was unaware, he was unable to take immediate action to disconnect the local area from the rest of the national network. A large amount of power flowed in from the region to the east to supply the power that was no longer available from the west. The generators in the east could not ramp up their power output quickly enough to supply the load, and they went out. Now, all of the northeastern United States was drawing power from the network in Canada. Of course, it's generators also could not handle the load and were disconnected. This all occured in a matter of a few minutes.

This outage, while due in a large part to human error, would never have happened if the Ohio region hadn't been relying on the neighboring regions to supply its base load. Also, under the current market structure, companies can not reveal outages to neighboring companies, because as soon as the companies find out that a company has no choice but to purchase power from them, they raise their rates to thousands of times what they normally charge in a competitive market in an effort to put their competition out of business.

This is just one example. In California, blackouts were an almost daily occurance throughout the 1990's. Reliability has been sacrificed completely for the sake of profit. This is the essence of capitalism. There is no incentive to sell a good product, only a product which will sell and generate a good profit. This is evident in every major industry. Auto makers will only recall an unsafe car like the Ford Pinto, or a rollover-prone SUV, if it is deemed to be less expensive than the expected cost of lawsuits for injuries and wrongfull death. Merck just put Vioxx back on the market, despite the fact that it was proven to double the risk of heart disease. This list could go on and on.