I think that you should create a section of the website about what you’re reading, what you’ve recently read and what you look forward to reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lietaer

What are the implications for the US dollar given the currents emanating from the global financial crisis? What are the likely consequences and ramifications stemming from the rise of “hyper-fnancialism” for the world’s preeminent reserve currency, both domestically and internationally?

RD: You thought it was the money system and not just the governments?

BL: It’s a chicken and egg story: unstable currency equals unstable government. There is practically no way today for a developing country to have a reasonable monetary policy within the current rules of the game. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and formerly head economist at the World Bank, makes the same claims in his book Globalization and Its Discontents (Penguin, 2002). Whether you fix your currency to the dollar or let it float, you end up with an unmanageable monetary problem, like Brazil, Russia or Argentina have experienced. Eighty-seven countries have gone through a major currency crisis in the last 25 years. Their fiscal policies are imposed by an International Monetary Fund (IMF). I am afraid that if the United States had to live by the rules that are imposed on, say, Brazil, the United States of America would become a developing country in one generation. It’s the system that is currently unstable, unfair and not working.

The majority of humanity has gone through a recent monetary crisis at least once already. We’re living here, in America, in an island of perceived stability. And even that is an illusion. We could have a run on the dollar under the current rules.

We are dealing with an unstable system, an ailing system. Back in 1975, I had come to the conclusion that there would be a systemic series of monetary crashes, starting with Latin America. And that’s why I wrote my book on how the money system was not working and its impact on Latin American development, Europe, Latin America and the Multinationals (Praeger, 1979). I predicted that the first crash in Latin America would be in the early 1980s. It actually happened in 1981 in Mexico. Since then we have had more than 80 other countries undergoing similar monetary crises.

RD: So someone’s not connecting the dots-or are they?

BL: Let me put it this way. The powers that be have no interest in connecting the dots. If a new international monetary meeting like Breton Woods were held, the first point on the agenda would be the role of the dollar. So the United States has no interest in such a meeting. The dollar is in a very privileged position.

http://www.nexuspub.com/articles/2003/july2003/interview.htm

OK, sorry, I realize my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. If the comments are wildly (or even mildly) out of place here, please feel free to remove them. Otherwise, consider the posting some general commentary of my recollection of Mr. Lydon’s talents, and a suggestion upon which other visitors to the site might wish to expound.

But I shall also send the comments to the proper e-mail address, which I now realize was, sort of, given all along. Although I’m still not quite getting the “flag radioopensource.org” in e-mail-appropriate form. I tried “flag” and then the “at” symbol, followed by “radioopensource.org” and my message wasn’it sent. What am I doing wrong here? To what or whom at “radioopensource,org” should a message be addressed?

Otherwise, I just want to know if Christopher Lydon’s show is broadcast (I know it’s podcast, but I don’t have an iPod) on any radio station obtainable in the suburban Boston area, and if so, when it airs?

If not. have you or would Mr. Lydon consider pitching the sale of his program to WBZ, 1030 AM? The station seems to be currently going through a transition/upheaval, after first having lost longtime talk show host David Brudnoy after his long battle with AIDS, then Paul Sullivan to cancer; is currently employing TV news reporter Dan Rea. But his show’s a snore, and I think someone of Mr. Lydon’s stature could really be sold to this CBS-owned station.

With a powerful 50,000 watt reach, the station is virtually a national radio outlet, transmitting to 30+ states and some Canadian provinces. This station, of course, is where such talk show legends as Brudnoy, and Jerry Williams and Larry Glick before him, aired their programs for years.

Rea’s “Nightside” program airs 8 p.m.-12 a.m. weeknights, but perhaps WBZ would negotiate the hours, do a 50/50 split with Rea, expand the prime time talk show block either way (beginning at 7 p.m. or going into one hour of the graveyard shift. until 1 a.m.), etc? In any case, it’s an idea worth exploring, or at least finding out when Rea’s contract expires.

I think Mr. Lydon’s program would do very well on this station, and AM talk show listeners have become younger and more intelligent/savvy than in days of yore–not that Jerry Williams or David Brudnoy were exactly chopped liver in their respective styles. In fact, I think both these late legends of talk radio elevated the awareness and intellectual capacity of their respective audiences, even among the older demographic. I specifically recall Williams having such guests as George McGovern, John McLaughlin, Maya Angelou, Norman Mailer, and every Christmas Williams would read Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas In Wales.” Really, the excellence of Brudnoy’s and Williams’ shows on WBZ put one in mind of Mr. Lydon’s excellent radio programs over the years. Call me ridiculous, but I think Mr. Lydon and WBZ Radio would be a very good fit.

My starting point: I was in Portsmouth, NH last week, and there in the icy cold were a half-dozen or so protesters with placards criticizing Israel. And we know that there are demonstrations going on against Israel all over the world, not only in the Arab world, but across Europe, and even in cold Nw England towns. I cannot but wonder at what drives, what compels people to go out and protest on this particular issue?

Because, here’s the problem: it seems to me that any objective analysis of the situation would tell us that even if one thinks Israel is wrong or unjust or immoral in its effort to defend its own citizens, one cannot realistically rank Israel among the worst of the worst in the 20th and 21st centuries. Inasmuch as one can compare horrible things, the death and suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from a purely quantitative perspective, pales compared to so much else going on right now, let one over the last decades.

So, how is it that so many people can earnestly believe that Israel is among the worst abusers of human rights, that it is engaged in atrocities? Does Israel really compare to a Mugabe? What about a comparison with how Arab countries have traditionally dealt with their “Palestinian Problems”? See, e.g., Black September–in a very short period the Jordanians killed far more Palestinians then the Israelis have killed in war over decades.

And beyond the quantitative, it’s hard to understand how Israel can objectively be deemed such a villain on qualitative grounds. Is there any other country that would tolerate rocket fire on its citizens, even if “only” a few people are killed? Any other countries that would tolerate suicide-homicide bombers without a vigorous response? Would any population tolerate its government failing to protect? Would these same protesters not demand as much of their own governments? Finally, is there really no moral difference between Hamas intentionally targeting civilians and explicitly calling for the destruction of Israel on the one hand, and Israel killing civilians in the attempt to stop militants from attacking (and going to such extents as texting and calling civilians to warn them)?

And so, we get to the question of Israeli exceptionalism. Is Israel (are Jews) held to a different standard than everyone else? How can we explain the protesters coming out in the cold against Israel but not against Mugabe or Iran or so many other rulers and places? Is there not something else going on, something that at least appears to defy the natural laws of human history and sociology? Is there an element of Anti-Semitism here? Or something, perhaps, of Nietzsche’s hate/criticism for the Jews for bringing morality to the world?

I would suggest a show on this topic, trying to get to the roots of these issues. Perhaps you could look both to experts/academics, but also go to the ground level, see how such protesters rationalize their fierce commitment against Israel in particular.

For this show, you might even consider Bernard Henri-Levy, the French thinker who is both a strong Leftist and a strong critic of Anti-Semitism on the left. Like him, I am someone on the left/liberal side of most issues, but I fail to understand the singling out of Israel for criticism.

—

An Open Letter from Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry

Dear Friends,

There are moments in a nation’s—and a planet’s—history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived, and we are writing to say that we hope some of you will join us in Washington D.C. on Monday March 2 in order to take part in a civil act of civil disobedience outside a coal-fired power plant near Capitol Hill.

We will be there to make several points:

# Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA’s James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level—below 350 parts per million co2—lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity.

# Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue.

# Coal is filthy at its source. Much of the coal used in this country comes from West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies engage in “mountaintop removal” to get at the stuff; they leave behind a leveled wasteland, and impoverished human communities. No technology better exemplifies the out-of-control relationship between humans and the rest of creation.

# Coal smoke makes children sick. Asthma rates in urban areas near coal-fired power plants are high. Air pollution from burning coal is harmful to the health of grown-ups too, and to the health of everything that breathes, including forests.

The industry claim that there is something called “clean coal” is, put simply, a lie. But it’s a lie told with tens of millions of dollars, which we do not have. We have our bodies, and we are willing to use them to make our point. We don’t come to such a step lightly. We have written and testified and organized politically to make this point for many years, and while in recent months there has been real progress against new coal-fired power plants, the daily business of providing half our electricity from coal continues unabated. It’s time to make clear that we can’t safely run this planet on coal at all. So we feel the time has come to do more–we hear President Barack Obama’s call for a movement for change that continues past election day, and we hear Nobel Laureate Al Gore’s call for creative non-violence outside coal plants. As part of the international negotiations now underway on global warming, our nation will be asking China, India, and others to limit their use of coal in the future to help save the planet’s atmosphere. This is a hard thing to ask, because it’s their cheapest fuel. Part of our witness in March will be to say that we’re willing to make some sacrifices ourselves, even if it’s only a trip to the jail.

With any luck, this will be the largest such protest yet, large enough that it may provide a real spark. If you want to participate with us, you need to go through a short course of non-violence training. This will be, to the extent it depends on us, an entirely peaceful demonstration, carried out in a spirit of hope and not rancor. We will be there in our dress clothes, and ask the same of you. There will be young people, people from faith communities, people from the coal fields of Appalachia, and from the neighborhoods in Washington that get to breathe the smoke from the plant.

We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day—it is but one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point. The worldwide daily reliance on coal is the danger; this is one small step to raise awareness of that ruinous habit and hence help to break it.

Needless to say, we’re not handling the logistics of this day. All the credit goes to a variety of groups, especially the Energy Action Coalition (which is bringing thousands of young people to Washington that weekend), Greenpeace, the Ruckus Society, and the Rainforest Action Network. A website at that latter organization is serving as a temporary organizing hub: http://ran.org/get_involved/powershift_and_mass_civil_disobedience_updates/. If you go there, you will find a place to leave your name so that we’ll know you want to join us.

Thank you,

Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben

P.S.—This is important: Please forward this letter to anyone and everyone you think might be interested.

Thanks.

http://www.selftransformation.org/