MONEY
I'm often asked how good is the money system? Folks mention George Soros and how 'risky' he says things are.. and yes there are others like him.. At the same time - recently anyways - when securities dive in price and 60 per cent of americans own them it's natural enough for folks to want to know the best alternative.
So here let me try to assist. Though, for asking, you are required to see a more constructive approach to money and its uses. Let's do it as a wee series so you get to take it up in understandable pack sizes and can mail in any ? for relevant discussion as we go along.
Okay, part 1: - clearing the ground..
Today's official monetary system has mostly nothing to do with the real economy. For example, stats say how the volume of currency exchanged globally (1995) was $1.3 trillion a day. This is 30 times more than the daily GDP of all of the developed or OECD countries together. For the US the GDP equivalent is turned every 3 days!

FACT - VERY IMPORTANT - Only two to three per cent of that volume relates real trade or investment. The rest comprises a speculative global confection.
The real economy is relegated to a mere
frosting on this cake.
Exactly the opposite on intentions for it just twenty years ago.
This means that power has shifted irrevocably away from governments toward financial markets.
According to Lietaer, a European authority on money, when a government does something not to the liking of the market - like the British in '91, the French in
'94 or the Mexicans in '95 - nobody sits down at the table and says "you shouldn't do this.Instead, " A monetary
crisis simply manifests in that currency. And a few hundred people, who are not elected by anybody and have no collective responsibility whatsoever, decide what your pension fund is worth - among other things
Ends part 1. (more next week)

SO WOT for the RULE of LAW
The U.S. Justice Department is ordered to reveal the names of people "arrested and detained in connection with its Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist investigations" within 15 days by a federal judge. The U.S government argued disclosing who is being held might deter witnesses from cooperating with its investigation.
Comment: Too many irons or too few and vigilante attitudes in such places?

CULTURE CRUNCH - David Nunn, a London orthopedic surgeon, was forced to stop midway through an operation when the attending foreign surgical nurses could not understand his requests in English for specific instruments. Nunn was accused of racism for placing patient safety over the sensitivities of those with a poor command of English, and he is facing disciplinary action from his hospital superiors.

GOOD QUESTION BY THE PENN MINERS:
"Somebody screwed up down the line and we don't know who,
but we're going to find out."

AND in THIS AMERICA
Among the bigger Republican donors: as usual, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which has sent a slew of $25,000 checks to the GOP House campaign committee's non- federal account since May.
Ends -jonz-

New Zealand went to the polls yesterday to elect a new government line-up. Incumbent Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was returned and her Labour Party NZ folded a strong hand of 41 per cent of the country's party vote with which to resume control. This brought 52 seats, 61 being needed to rule. In the coming days the PM will doubtless negotiate with a bit-player party (2 seats); the Green Party whose elected List or Party vote-only Reps constitute a variety of views across the political spectrum; and the new phenomenon UNITED FUTURE NZ party which perf-ormed well on a truly center party platform in the course of the Election.Its 9 seats would be, I believe, a useful attribute in the needed international perception NZ will foster for high stability in trying times to come. We wish them and whatever new government forms the very best of luck!

Visiting New Zealand just now is the US citizen, nonstop circumnavigator balloonist Steve Fossett, who, in an interview on radionz this morning was described as an "adventurer" for his seemingly nonstop determination to take challenges in high gliding and whole day trip air records. And even if his attempt here is against all odds not a single listener, I'm sure, would have wished him ill luck or wind!
Literary American adventurer was author Ernest Hemingway who at age 18 became a reporter at the Kansas City Star. Deemed 'defective sight' he missed drafting to WWI, but determined to serve, opted into the American Red Cross. Later he took up writing to gain the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. In his "For Whom the Bell Tolls" there is a telling dialogue. Tks to (chiasmus.org) we can ponder what Pablo says to Anselmo.
"Coward, ... You treat a man as a coward because he has a tactical sense. Because he can see the results of an idiocy in advance. It is not cowardly to know what is foolish."
Another voice, this in a comment about literary celeb, Gertrude Stein, in a 1933 letter to his friend, Arnold Gingrich:
"Then she got the idea that anybody who was good must be queer...
But what was worse she got the idea that anybody who was queer must be good."
I added this last one because in the BBC movie "IRIS" - about author Iris Murdoch - we see her seeming obsession about being good. And it made me wonder whether one woman was influenced by the other.. either way.
The movie suggests that Iris was perhaps a 'cuckoo' of sorts, her sexual exploits necessary to access 'good' minds. Elsewhere the script enabled 'her' to say that novelists are entitled to other peoples' secrets. Which, until the above thought, suggested to me deliberate method to her (earlier) exploits.. but mebbe not, mebbe not so rational as supposed.. ? yr comment/ideas most welcome.
please send to: - (john) - alors01@yahoo.com