More Bearish Food For Thought

I do not believe in "pure" technical analysis (i.e. in a vacuum). Knowing that we are in a secular general stock bear market and secular Gold and Gold stock bull market colors my views. A pure chartist may see blue skies from here to Dow 20,000, but a deflationary secular private sector debt collapse plus helicopter Ben and his crew does not equal a new secular general stock bull market in my opinion. While I understand that currency debasement can mask real losses by propping up nominal price levels, I am a long-term Gold investor - not a paperbug. I understand the game and how its played, at least as much as a retail ant is allowed to.

However, it is always important to remember that governments and central banks DO NOT CREATE THE PRIMARY TREND. They can distort it and prolong it, but they cannot change it. The secular turn in the private credit markets has already occurred. No banksta or apparatchik can change this fact. They can replace private sector debt with government debt, but the government is a lousy customer and makes the private debtor, in aggregate, look like a paragon of virtue. Governments will not only default without remorse, but will prosecute the lenders for lending them the money (and good luck repossessing any potential collateral backing the loan...)!

Let this chart of Japanese public versus private debt be a reminder of where we may be headed:



Just because the government steps up borrowing doesn't mean a recovery is going to take hold. I previously posted on a number of global stock indices, INCLUDING CHINA, that look like they might be breaking down. I'd like to continue the theme, as I see the U.S. stock market topping here, not continuing on to higher and higher levels in some type of eternal Keynesian bliss.

The poster child for all of people's economic and investing frustration (and not necessarily unjustly so) is Goldman Sachs (ticker: GS). Here's a 4 year 6 month weekly log scale candlestick plot of the price and volume action in this stock:



Not good when a bellwether breaks down. Rio Tinto (ticker: RTP), one of the world's biggest miners, also looks like it is getting ready to break down:



Speaking of base metal miners, which are an important sector to watch for the health of the global economy, the BHP Billiton (ticker: BHP) chart doesn't look so hot either:



I also wonder if the Brazilian stock market ($BVSP) is working on a double top here:



And to add to the technical data I posted when I asked if there were any stock market bears left the other day, the number of new 52 week lows in the New York Stock Exchange ($NYLOW) is showing a pattern unseen over the past 19 years (the data I have access to only goes back to 1991). I have heard many people speak about the number of new highs confirming the strength of this rally in general stocks. I would like to present the other side of the argument. To do so, I would like to show you the $NYLOW data using a 15 day moving average of this data over the past 19 years to smooth out the data using a linear scale chart. After that is a chart of the actual daily raw data on a log scale chart, which despite the noise gives a perspective on what we've been experiencing lately:





Those invested in Gold don't have to worry. While Gold stocks are volatile beasts, they have shrugged off many a cyclical bear market in the past. Of course, the Great Fall Panic of 2008 is still fresh in Gold stock investors' minds, but that doesn't mean a replay is in the cards. Gold is safer, but Gold stocks are due to outperform the metal even if there is a stock bear market about to begin. You can invest in the U.S. Dollar instead of Gold if you want, but I'll stick with real money for the next deflationary impulse, which is when the point of recognition that our international monetary system is going to fail reaches a critical mass of investors. Do you honestly believe the Portuguese, Irish, Italian, Greek and Spanish PIIGS-y investors (among other non-American global investors) are going to put their savings in the U.S. dollar rather than Gold? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Until the Dow to Gold ratio gets back to 2 (and we may get to 1 or less this cycle), there is little reason to be invested in the general stock markets. This may become apparent again soon if technical analysis is to be trusted.

WAITING FOR YOUR RESCUE.

The Knocks are our number one bros here in NYC, so it's with great pleasure that we introduce you to their debut single, "Blackout", out next week on their very own Heavy Roc Music imprint. Just in time for the weekend, it's a stupidly massive hands-in-the-air party anthem that's been soundtracking our nights out for months now. With big house pianos, buzzsaw synths and a sing-a-long chorus for the ages, it's the perfect soundtrack to an epic night on the rage. The Knocks seriously deserve a Nobel Prize for their outstanding contributions to raging on this track, this is music for your grind.

MP3: "Blackout" - The Knocks

Think Higher Silver Prices Are Coming?

Silver Wheaton (ticker: SLW) does. Here's an 8 month daily chart to show what could be coming in silver prices to a market near you:



I wouldn't buy SLW at its current overbought levels, but food for thought...

Cognitive Dissonance or Philosophical Subtlety?

The other e-mail I got yesterday was from another blogger whom I've sometimes debated in comment threads elsewhere, and sometimes conversed with in e-mail. Yesterday's message was brief and to the point:

Considering you wrote off officer Choi, I would have figured you to at least say the getEQUAL crowd was misguided for demanding an end to DADT.

This referred to some of my less than admiring remarks about Lieutenant Dan Choi, who seems to be the current poster boy for gays in the military, and to a recent post in which I praised getEqual activists for heckling President Obama for not pushing harder on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Well, I can understand why many people would see some cognitive dissonance there, even though I don't. But I also admit that it's taken me some time to clarify in my own mind why I feel the way I do. There's long been tension between gay activists who oppose US militarism -- one guy once wrote to the Village Voice that he supported the ban on gays in the military, and wanted it extended to heterosexuals; I concur -- and gay activists who want gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals to have the same chance to kill and maim innocent people in foreign lands that heterosexuals enjoy. Or, to put it a bit more tactfully, this latter faction wants equality of opportunity for military service while refusing to examine the uses to which America's armed forces are put. It's better public relations strategy, of course, and that's what is wrong with it.

Those who want the ban on gays in the military to end often seem to be those who express dismay that the gay movement in the US is associated with, or stereotyped as, The Left. That doesn't seem to me to justify embracing the Right. Some point out, accurately enough, that people often join the military for economic reasons, to get job training or money for college, or just a job, and they accuse those who disagree of looking down on working-class gays who lack the options in life that we supposed elitists have. This argument has lost some of its sheen since Bill Clinton's attempt to end the ban failed in 1993, when Americans who joined the military were less likely to have their legs blown off. Clinton's foreign-policy "successes," it should be remembered, were mainly due to his keeping American casualties low and foreigners' casualties high. And now, as new atrocities by American forces are being unearthed and publicized, I'm seeing the same demonization of American soldiers by liberals and even some leftists that attended Vietnam veterans a few decades ago. (See Vietnam vet Jerry Lembcke's important and still-timely book The Spitting Image: myth, memory and the legacy of Vietnam [NYU Press, 1998].) So, all you working-class gay kids should be free to join the military -- so we can denounce you as "pure human shit to begin with" when you do the job you signed up to do, the job that we told you was good enough for trailer trash like you.

Dan Choi told the Equality March in Washington last October, "We love our country, even when our country refuses to acknowledge our love! But we continue to defend it, and we continue to protect it, because love is worth it!" I pointed out at the time that Choi, a veteran of the Iraq War, was being disingenuous (putting it tactfully again). The US has not fought a defensive war in my lifetime, and a fortiori not in Iraq, which was a war of aggression, and is now a brutal occupation of the country our forces invaded. Choi was appealing to his audience's patriotism, and as I've also said before, patriotism is the first refuge of scoundrels. Still, it's missing the point to say that I "wrote off" Dan Choi. The door to my boudoir is always open to you, Dan. But the real issue isn't Dan Choi, or any other American soldier, sailor, Marine, or Blackwater operative.

None of this means that Don't Ask Don't Tell shouldn't be repealed. I don't think that fighting the military ban on gays has been a good use of gay activists' time or energy, but the policy is discriminatory and can't be justified on any grounds. Replying to my correspondent, I drew a few historical parallels: There were German Jews in the 1930s who were avid supporters of Hitler and insisted that they were as patriotic as any Aryan. Such people were fools and worse, but that doesn't mean that I support Hitler's anti-Jewish laws. The same applies to Proposition 8: I don't agree with the craze for same-sex civil marriage, but inscribing discriminatory policies in a state constitution is bad law.

The deployment of the word "equality" as a buzzword to push same-sex marriage and the repeal of DADT is misleading, a diversion from important questions that need to be addressed. If German Jews had been allowed to join the Einsatzgruppen openly, that would have been "equality," but I think few people today would agree that the first goal should have been equality for German Jews in military service, and then you could ask whether supporting Hitler and invading Poland was really a good thing. But that is what the more moderate opponents of Don't Ask Don't Tell argue: first we need to get formal equality for the LBGTQ Citizen, and then we can debate the propriety of invading Iraq, or escalating the US war in Afghanistan, or attacking Iran. That's just another diversion, of course: in reality, no such debate is acceptable to them.

Cognitive Dissonance or Philosophical Subtlety?

The other e-mail I got yesterday was from another blogger whom I've sometimes debated in comment threads elsewhere, and sometimes conversed with in e-mail. Yesterday's message was brief and to the point:

Considering you wrote off officer Choi, I would have figured you to at least say the getEQUAL crowd was misguided for demanding an end to DADT.

This referred to some of my less than admiring remarks about Lieutenant Dan Choi, who seems to be the current poster boy for gays in the military, and to a recent post in which I praised getEqual activists for heckling President Obama for not pushing harder on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

Well, I can understand why many people would see some cognitive dissonance there, even though I don't. But I also admit that it's taken me some time to clarify in my own mind why I feel the way I do. There's long been tension between gay activists who oppose US militarism -- one guy once wrote to the Village Voice that he supported the ban on gays in the military, and wanted it extended to heterosexuals; I concur -- and gay activists who want gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals to have the same chance to kill and maim innocent people in foreign lands that heterosexuals enjoy. Or, to put it a bit more tactfully, this latter faction wants equality of opportunity for military service while refusing to examine the uses to which America's armed forces are put. It's better public relations strategy, of course, and that's what is wrong with it.

Those who want the ban on gays in the military to end often seem to be those who express dismay that the gay movement in the US is associated with, or stereotyped as, The Left. That doesn't seem to me to justify embracing the Right. Some point out, accurately enough, that people often join the military for economic reasons, to get job training or money for college, or just a job, and they accuse those who disagree of looking down on working-class gays who lack the options in life that we supposed elitists have. This argument has lost some of its sheen since Bill Clinton's attempt to end the ban failed in 1993, when Americans who joined the military were less likely to have their legs blown off. Clinton's foreign-policy "successes," it should be remembered, were mainly due to his keeping American casualties low and foreigners' casualties high. And now, as new atrocities by American forces are being unearthed and publicized, I'm seeing the same demonization of American soldiers by liberals and even some leftists that attended Vietnam veterans a few decades ago. (See Vietnam vet Jerry Lembcke's important and still-timely book The Spitting Image: myth, memory and the legacy of Vietnam [NYU Press, 1998].) So, all you working-class gay kids should be free to join the military -- so we can denounce you as "pure human shit to begin with" when you do the job you signed up to do, the job that we told you was good enough for trailer trash like you.

Dan Choi told the Equality March in Washington last October, "We love our country, even when our country refuses to acknowledge our love! But we continue to defend it, and we continue to protect it, because love is worth it!" I pointed out at the time that Choi, a veteran of the Iraq War, was being disingenuous (putting it tactfully again). The US has not fought a defensive war in my lifetime, and a fortiori not in Iraq, which was a war of aggression, and is now a brutal occupation of the country our forces invaded. Choi was appealing to his audience's patriotism, and as I've also said before, patriotism is the first refuge of scoundrels. Still, it's missing the point to say that I "wrote off" Dan Choi. The door to my boudoir is always open to you, Dan. But the real issue isn't Dan Choi, or any other American soldier, sailor, Marine, or Blackwater operative.

None of this means that Don't Ask Don't Tell shouldn't be repealed. I don't think that fighting the military ban on gays has been a good use of gay activists' time or energy, but the policy is discriminatory and can't be justified on any grounds. Replying to my correspondent, I drew a few historical parallels: There were German Jews in the 1930s who were avid supporters of Hitler and insisted that they were as patriotic as any Aryan. Such people were fools and worse, but that doesn't mean that I support Hitler's anti-Jewish laws. The same applies to Proposition 8: I don't agree with the craze for same-sex civil marriage, but inscribing discriminatory policies in a state constitution is bad law.

The deployment of the word "equality" as a buzzword to push same-sex marriage and the repeal of DADT is misleading, a diversion from important questions that need to be addressed. If German Jews had been allowed to join the Einsatzgruppen openly, that would have been "equality," but I think few people today would agree that the first goal should have been equality for German Jews in military service, and then you could ask whether supporting Hitler and invading Poland was really a good thing. But that is what the more moderate opponents of Don't Ask Don't Tell argue: first we need to get formal equality for the LBGTQ Citizen, and then we can debate the propriety of invading Iraq, or escalating the US war in Afghanistan, or attacking Iran. That's just another diversion, of course: in reality, no such debate is acceptable to them.

Gold and Gold Stock Relative Outperformance

The concept of relative outperformance is an important one in a fiat paper world, where meaningless debt tickets that are constantly depreciating in value make it difficult to appreciate the meaning of nominal gains. We calculate value in our heads related to what other things cost. A gallon of gas or a loaf of bread is a stable and meaningful unit of value in our world. A fiat debt paper ticket/currency unit has a constantly changing value, which is the main reason prices are always changing, albeit at different rates and directions depending on where we are in the cycle of inflation.

People who say there was no inflation during the 1990s are totally and completely wrong. The inflation was in financial asset prices! People have been hoodwinked into thinking the only meaningful inflation in terms of end effects is when the price of hard assets like commodities rises. This is because when you can't afford to eat, you're screwed. However, if a dotcom stock goes to infinity, only stock investors care. In other words, the threat to society is different depending on the asset class that is being inflated. Was the recent housing bubble "problematic" inflation?

Anyway, the point is that relative under- or outperformance of asset classes is an easy way to assess the significance of gains. Since we're all on the hamster debt wheel in a fiat paper-money-backed-by-nothing global system, we need to be constantly making our savings grow, otherwise they will evaporate. Not literally, but in terms of purchasing power. The reason our society is so focused on speculation is because the transactional currency we use has become very unstable. This breeds speculation and has throughout history. The end stages of a fiat system before the new dawn are always the darkest.

Even percentages gained are only meaningful when the rate of price increases is taken into account. For example, if you gain 50% in the stock market in one year but the price of food and gasoline increases by 100% in that same year, should you be proud of your financial achievement? The flat to declining stock market over the past 12 years or so has been a disaster when priced in real terms. This disaster is set to continue.

Investors who are bulls on the U.S. stock market should be experiencing intense cognitive dissonance now that the Chinese stock market has rolled over. For if China's economy is slowing, where is global corporate profit expansion going to come from? You can only fire so many people to keep the bottom line looking good!

Gold and Gold stocks are set to pick up the slack created by toppy stock markets. The relative outperformance by Gold and Gold stocks compared to global equities has been undeniable and impressive over the past decade. The secular financial pendulum slowly swings back and forth as it has over the past few centuries.

Here is a chart of Gold stocks, represented by the unhedged Gold Bugs Mining Index ($HUI), divided by the Dow Jones World Stock Index ($DJW) as a proxy for global equities (i.e. $HUI:$DJW ratio chart) using a weekly 12 year candlestick plot with a log scale:



And as sort of a global inverse of the Dow to Gold ratio, here's a chart of Gold divided by the Dow Jones World Stock Index ($GOLD:$DJW ratio chart):



The secular trend is your friend and that trend is set to resume in a MAJOR way.

Alliance for Justice report on potential Supreme Court nominee Leah Sears underestimates her hostility to gay and lesbian families

The Alliance for Justice released reports yesterday on thirteen possible nominees for the Supreme Court position being vacated by Justice Stevens. The Alliance for Justice is my favorite Washington DC-based group. (This year they are honoring long-time gay rights activist Urvashi Vaid at their spring luncheon, and cast members from Law and Order will be there -- so get your tickets now!)

Leah Sears appears on the AFJ list, and the report on her includes her connection to the Institute for American Values (IAV), and an op-ed she wrote, as reasons to be concerned about her commitment to marriage equality and the right of same-sex couples to raise children. I think the AFJ does not go far enough.

I've blogged on Leah Sears before, including once before she showed up on the list for last Supreme Court vacancy. She used her position as chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court to co-host a conference with IAV, at the Court itself, pushing a right-wing "marriage promotion" agenda. Her nomination to the Supreme Court would bode ill for gay and lesbian families, and for the social and economic support all women need to raise children.

There are many heroes on the AFJ list. Pam Karlan is exactly who we need, and is openly gay, but Obama has done nothing to suggest he would take on the right-wing opposition she would generate. Elizabeth Warren is the person I would most trust in the country to fix our financial woes; that makes her my candidate for Treasury Secretary, but that position is taken by one of the guys who got us into the trouble we're in. Carlos Moreno has the strongest track record supporting gay and lesbian parenting and same-sex marriage, as a result of his rulings while on the California Supreme Court (he was the sole member of the court to rule that Prop 8 was unconstitutional). Martha Minow has a long list of family law scholarship that includes support for same-sex couples raising children. Others on the list are likely good news for gay and lesbian families (and wishful thinking, I'm afraid), just not Leah Sears.

Contrast and Compare

So I finally bought a new monitor for my old Amiga 2000 computer, and so I started updating some files that I'd fallen behind on, and then began playing a couple of old computer games that I hadn't been able to play for about a year. Till past 2:30 a.m., two nights in a row. That's why I not only haven't written much here for a day or two, I'm also cranky and bleary from lack of sleep. Not that that's much of a change, as someone muttered in the back row.

But today I got a couple of interesting messages in the e-mail; I'll write briefly about one of them tonight (no computer games tonight! no, sir!), and the other one tomorrow.

This kind writer liked my previous post on people who show inadequate deference to the only President we've got, and sent me a link to a 2008 article from Harper's that I wish I'd seen before. The writer, Mark Slouka, shares my curmudgeonly disdain for reverence toward the Presidency, including this anecdote:

At a White House reception a couple of years ago, President George Bush asked Senator-elect Jim Webb how things were going for his son, a Marine serving in Iraq. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb replied. “I didn’t ask you that,” the president shot back. “I asked you how your boy was doing.”

Webb, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, had not only risked his own life in the service of his country but now had a child in harm’s way, serving in an ill-conceived and criminally mismanaged war sold to the nation under false pretenses by the man standing in front of him. One might expect this second man to be nice. To show a modicum of respect. Should he fall short of this, one could at least take comfort in the certainty that the American people would hold him accountable for his rudeness and presumption.

Which is precisely what many of them did—they held Jim Webb accountable. “I’m surprised and offended by Jim Webb,” declared Stephen Hess, a professor at George Washington University, in a New York Times article entitled “A Breach of Manners Sets a Tough Town Atwitter.” Admitting that the president had perhaps been “a little snippy,” Professor Hess went on to extol the democratic virtues of decorum and protocol, interrupting himself only long enough to recall a steel executive named Clarence Randall who, having once addressed Harry S Truman as “Mr. Truman” instead of “Mr. President,” remained haunted by it for decades.

"A little snippy"! The "breach of manners" was all on Dubya's part, and the President, Mr. Bush, Hizzoner, Sir, should've been taken out behind the woodpile and beaten with a razor strop. I noticed that the manner of Bush's retort was very similar to what Bill Hangley claimed Bush had said to him, which seems to me to be evidence in favor of Hangley's account of the encounter.

By the way, I'd recommend also reading the New York Times article Slouka linked to: it's critical of the fuss over Webb's remark, and has some interesting history. And while I share Slouka's distaste for this sort of craven deference, I'm not sure I agree that it's a new problem. Americans like to believe that we are tough, rugged individualists who have left the knee-bending flattery of the Old Europe behind for new frontiers of equality, but we are also fascinated by glittering royalty and its fairy-tale weddings. American Protestantism, especially the evangelical variety, claims to take seriously the inherent sinfulness of Man (unlike secular humanists who think Man can be perfected if he isn't already perfect), but is in practice a hotbed of personality cults that defer to charismatic preachers. I recently noticed that for all our independence and individualism, Americans seem to be less likely to organize and challenge our governments or other authorities than people in "traditional" collectivist societies.

But anyway! Since Slouka's article was published we've had Representative Joe Wilson breaching protocol by calling out "You lie!" during President Obama's address on health care. This produced a similar frenzy of tongue-clucking by manneristas and decorum mavens, especially since Rep. Wilson had the bad luck to accuse Obama of lying on one of the few occasions when he was telling the truth. At least it showed that the corporate media don't require slavish deference only to Republican presidents. As for vice presidents, Dick Cheney recently boasted that telling Senator Pat Leahy to go fuck himself was "sort of the best thing I ever did." That sets the bar pretty low, but as usual, it is all about form, not substance, isn't it? It's bad form to lobby the President to save the whales at a photo-op called to try to defuse opposition to his policies; it's bad form to tell the President that you think he's doing a bad job and you hope he won't be re-elected; it's bad form to tell the President that you'd like to get American troops out of Iraq. This allows media and Presidents alike to dodge the question of whether those criticisms are merited, assuming that they could be expressed in a more suitable place, like an isolation cell at Guantanamo. Because, you know, the trouble is that those criticisms tend to be "animated by principles that may be right, but aren’t really very helpful: the pacifists, the isolationists, the reflexive opponents of Republicans or the US military." So mind your manners, keep in your place, tug your forelock, and vote early and often.

Contrast and Compare

So I finally bought a new monitor for my old Amiga 2000 computer, and so I started updating some files that I'd fallen behind on, and then began playing a couple of old computer games that I hadn't been able to play for about a year. Till past 2:30 a.m., two nights in a row. That's why I not only haven't written much here for a day or two, I'm also cranky and bleary from lack of sleep. Not that that's much of a change, as someone muttered in the back row.

But today I got a couple of interesting messages in the e-mail; I'll write briefly about one of them tonight (no computer games tonight! no, sir!), and the other one tomorrow.

This kind writer liked my previous post on people who show inadequate deference to the only President we've got, and sent me a link to a 2008 article from Harper's that I wish I'd seen before. The writer, Mark Slouka, shares my curmudgeonly disdain for reverence toward the Presidency, including this anecdote:

At a White House reception a couple of years ago, President George Bush asked Senator-elect Jim Webb how things were going for his son, a Marine serving in Iraq. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” Webb replied. “I didn’t ask you that,” the president shot back. “I asked you how your boy was doing.”

Webb, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, had not only risked his own life in the service of his country but now had a child in harm’s way, serving in an ill-conceived and criminally mismanaged war sold to the nation under false pretenses by the man standing in front of him. One might expect this second man to be nice. To show a modicum of respect. Should he fall short of this, one could at least take comfort in the certainty that the American people would hold him accountable for his rudeness and presumption.

Which is precisely what many of them did—they held Jim Webb accountable. “I’m surprised and offended by Jim Webb,” declared Stephen Hess, a professor at George Washington University, in a New York Times article entitled “A Breach of Manners Sets a Tough Town Atwitter.” Admitting that the president had perhaps been “a little snippy,” Professor Hess went on to extol the democratic virtues of decorum and protocol, interrupting himself only long enough to recall a steel executive named Clarence Randall who, having once addressed Harry S Truman as “Mr. Truman” instead of “Mr. President,” remained haunted by it for decades.

"A little snippy"! The "breach of manners" was all on Dubya's part, and the President, Mr. Bush, Hizzoner, Sir, should've been taken out behind the woodpile and beaten with a razor strop. I noticed that the manner of Bush's retort was very similar to what Bill Hangley claimed Bush had said to him, which seems to me to be evidence in favor of Hangley's account of the encounter.

By the way, I'd recommend also reading the New York Times article Slouka linked to: it's critical of the fuss over Webb's remark, and has some interesting history. And while I share Slouka's distaste for this sort of craven deference, I'm not sure I agree that it's a new problem. Americans like to believe that we are tough, rugged individualists who have left the knee-bending flattery of the Old Europe behind for new frontiers of equality, but we are also fascinated by glittering royalty and its fairy-tale weddings. American Protestantism, especially the evangelical variety, claims to take seriously the inherent sinfulness of Man (unlike secular humanists who think Man can be perfected if he isn't already perfect), but is in practice a hotbed of personality cults that defer to charismatic preachers. I recently noticed that for all our independence and individualism, Americans seem to be less likely to organize and challenge our governments or other authorities than people in "traditional" collectivist societies.

But anyway! Since Slouka's article was published we've had Representative Joe Wilson breaching protocol by calling out "You lie!" during President Obama's address on health care. This produced a similar frenzy of tongue-clucking by manneristas and decorum mavens, especially since Rep. Wilson had the bad luck to accuse Obama of lying on one of the few occasions when he was telling the truth. At least it showed that the corporate media don't require slavish deference only to Republican presidents. As for vice presidents, Dick Cheney recently boasted that telling Senator Pat Leahy to go fuck himself was "sort of the best thing I ever did." That sets the bar pretty low, but as usual, it is all about form, not substance, isn't it? It's bad form to lobby the President to save the whales at a photo-op called to try to defuse opposition to his policies; it's bad form to tell the President that you think he's doing a bad job and you hope he won't be re-elected; it's bad form to tell the President that you'd like to get American troops out of Iraq. This allows media and Presidents alike to dodge the question of whether those criticisms are merited, assuming that they could be expressed in a more suitable place, like an isolation cell at Guantanamo. Because, you know, the trouble is that those criticisms tend to be "animated by principles that may be right, but aren’t really very helpful: the pacifists, the isolationists, the reflexive opponents of Republicans or the US military." So mind your manners, keep in your place, tug your forelock, and vote early and often.

Good Day For Gold Stock Bulls

Great day today in the Gold mining patch. Haven't seen many good strength days in the major Gold stock mining indices on days when Gold is flat to down lately. We are going to re-test the December highs in the Gold price soon, but the exact path is uncertain. After two big volume days in major miners and mining indices, we may need a day of rest in major Gold stocks.

With that thought in mind and given the very short-term overbought condition they were in during today's session, I took profits today in my Goldcorp (ticker: GG) and GDX mining index option positions near today's highs. I am letting my bullish option positions in GDXJ (25 strike price August calls) and Yamana Gold (ticker: AUY; 10 strike price July calls) ride. I am also letting all my various individual Gold mining stock and ETF positions ride. My hope is to take the money from the options trades I closed today and put it into more GDXJ calls. I may get back into GDXJ as soon as tomorrow morning depending on the price action. I'll start buying GDXJ if it gets back into the 28 range.

Here's a 15 day GDXJ intraday 15 minute chart thru today's close to show the recent chart action and my micromanaging thoughts:



And here's about where I think we are in Gold stocks for this intermediate-term move, using a 4 month 60 minute intraday chart of the palladium ETF (ticker: PALL) thru today's close as a potential rhyme:



Short term noise aside, we are in a perfect spot for Gold and Gold stock bulls. I believe it would take a market crash to derail the pending move higher in Gold stocks. In such a scenario, Gold would be a better play than Gold stocks. I think it's too early for another crash, but we are certainly going to resume the bear market in general stocks soon in my opinion.

Speaking of resumption of bear markets, several markets look to have rolled over on 18 month daily charts, which is a bearish omen for all the global stock markets that haven't rolled over yet. In no particular order, here are a bunch of them.

First up, Shanghai ($SSEC, see previous post here):



Hong Kong ($HSI) also looks like it is breaking down. I think my previous prediction on this index was pretty good (if you agree, click on one of the ads on this blog and make your not-afraid-to-ask proprietor a few pennies so he can buy more Gold!):



Next up, Portugal ($PTDOW):



And here's Spain ($SMSI):



The final PIIGSie is Italy ($INE, see previous post here):



No need to show the Greek stock market chart - they are suffering enough! An important lesson is learned using the current examples of the European markets above. People think if the Dollar is trashed that the U.S. stock markets will rise. These countries prove it is foolish to rely on this relationship between currency and stock markets. The Euro is going down hard, bond rates are going up for these European countries, and the stock market is also going down. Where the heck should these folks put their savings? I assume you know my answer to this question. If you're not sure, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here's the Euro Gold price over the past 6 months thru today's close (chart courtesy of goldprice.org):



Gold defeats paper. It's just the cycle we are in, homie. The Dow to Gold ratio will get down to 2 (and we may go below 1 this cycle) and then things will reverse and other investments will outperform Gold. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Go ahead and buy general stocks for the long haul if you want to. I'll stick with hoarding a shiny, barbarous relic.

Non-bio dad win in Colorado bodes well for non-bio moms

A Colorado Appeals Court ruled earlier this month that a man with a six-year father-child relationship was the child's parent for all legal purposes, including joint legal custody and visitation. Although it's not obvious that such a case would be a win for the children of lesbian couples, in fact the basis for the court's decision is applicable by analogy to the situation in which a non-bio lesbian mom raises a child with the child's bio mom.

Nicholas Rueda and Lavern Davis had been romantic partners. They separated. Lavern gave birth to a daughter, A.D., in 2001. Eleven months later, Davis and Rueda reconciled, and they lived together as a family until 2007. For the next year, A.D. spent several nights a week with Rueda. Davis discontinued the relationship in February 2008, and weeks later Rueda filed a parentage action. Davis conceded that Rueda "received A.D. into his home and openly held her out as his natural child." This made him a presumptive father under Colorado law.

The mother, Davis, argued that because Colorado defined the parent-child relationship as the legal relationship between a child and his/her "natural or adoptive" parents, that Rueda was not a parent because he was not a biological or adoptive parent. The court declined to interpret the statute in that manner since the "holding out" parentage presumption does not require a biological tie. The court explicitly cited a California Supreme Court ruling upholding parentage for a nonbio dad who raised the child with the child's biological mother; that case, in turn, provided support for the California Supreme Court's later ruling that the lesbian partner of a biological mom is also a child's parent if she takes the child into her home and holds the child out as her own. Hence my optimism that after this ruling Colorado courts will recognize dual parentage for a child raised by a same-sex couple.

This month the Michigan trial court ruling in favor of a non-bio lesbian mom also declined to interpret "natural" parent as requiring a biological tie. When people refer to the husband of a woman who gives birth as a "natural" parent they don't actually know that he is the child's biological parent. Like every word in a statute, "natural parent" has a legal definition. If a statute does not make biology a necessary component of "natural" parentage, then a court is free to consider other factors. And when a statute creates parentage for a person who receives the child into his home and holds the child out as his own, that can certainly be a woman as well as a man.

Rothschild gold price manipulation explained

LM Rothschild gold price manipulation explained

Clash of the Titans

Gold will trump paper debt tickets this cycle. There is no point in fighting the trend. It was unwise to invest in Gold from 1980 thru 2000 and it was unwise to not invest in financial assets from 1980-2000 for the average investor. Similarly, it has been and will continue to be unwise over the longer 10-20 year period that began in 2000 to not be invested in Gold or to be invested in financial assets for the average investor. These are the truths the market has provided and the obvious trends in place.

Today was a great clash of the titans in the market. I am talking about King Dollar versus Gold. Like a death cage match with lots of twists and turns, today was only one day in the long battle for supremacy. To put it bluntly, Gold left the aging current paper champ in a daze today. Gold is re-asserting itself as the preferred currency among global market participants during a crisis.

In round one, which occurred during the Great Fall Panic of 2008, the U.S. Dollar came out swinging hard and fast and knocked Gold to the canvass shortly after the opening bell. But like a 12 round fight in a Rocky movie, Gold got back up as if nothing had happened and was back at $1000/oz by February of 2009. Today's "mini-crisis" is a preview of what's to come this round. Gold will win by decision (possibly a narrow one) with lots of jabs and counter punches, triumphing despite a valiant effort by the U.S. Dollar to score points and stay on its feet.

The point of recognition occurs this round. The people watching the match realize the aging paper champ is no match for an eternally youthful and always shiny Gold opponent. The bets on the outcome will shift to Gold as people realize the inevitable will occur in the late rounds. The U.S. Dollar has some fight left in it, however, at least relative to the other paper contenders out there.

But, alas, the final round will see the knockout blow that ends the paper champ's career. This clash of the titans is an important one. You can be sure that the handlers and promoters for Gold and the Dollar, who are one in the same, already know the outcome as well. The younger members of the promoters' staff, known as paperbugs, think the old champ will find a way to sneak through with a narrow victory, but the more experienced head promoters know that the only question related to the pending Gold victory is the timing.

On a slightly more serious note, Newmont Mining (ticker: NEM) blew away earnings estimates today. Barrick Gold (ticker: ABX) reports earnings before the market opens tomorrow (and Goldcorp [ticker: GG] after the market close tomorrow). The strength of Barrick and Goldcorp today on heavy volume, despite a big and panicky drop in general stock market indices around the world, suggests both of these blue chip miners are ready to blow away earnings estimates. This would light a fire under the Gold stock sector as people finally start to witness ACTUAL LEVERAGE to the price of Gold in the senior Gold miners. If Barrick's earnings are as good as Newmont's and the general stock market indices make even a weak bounce higher tomorrow, we could see a 5-10% upside day in the major Gold stock indices.

Compare and Contrast

2010. Today John Caruso posted this story at A Distant Ocean. Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, was invited to the White House to meet President Obama.

He walked person to person, saying hello, as advocate after advocate threw him softball questions. I shook the President's hand, and said:

"Mr. President, I am Phil Radford from Greenpeace. We are concerned that your administration is overturning the ban on whaling."

"I know" he replied. "I've seen your ads in the papers."

"Great," I replied. "What is your plan to change your administration's position?

"Look," said the president, sounding like his Saturday Night Live doppelganger, "I love whales. I will do what I can to protect them."

"Will you reverse your administration's position?" I asked.

The President responded "Oh come on, don't lobby me here right now..."

2001. A freelance writer named Bill Hangley told this story.

So when the President was here on July 4, I had the opportunity to shake his hand. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not but I did it anyway, and said to him, "Mr President, I hope you only serve four years. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."

He kept smiling and shaking my hand but answered, "who cares what you think?" His face stayed photo-op perfect but his eyes gave me a look that said, if we'd been drinking in some frat house in Texas, he'd've happily answered, "let's take it outside." A nasty little gleam. But he was (fortunately) constrained by presidential propriety.

But that was the end of it, until I turned away and started scribbling the quote down in my notepad, so as to remember The Gift forever. When he saw me do that he got excited and craned his neck over the rubberneckers to shout at me, "who are you with? Who are you with?" People started looking so he made a joke: "make sure you get it right." But he kept at it: "Who do you write for?" I told him I wasn't "with" anybody and pointed to one of his staff people, who knows me a little, and said, "ask him, he'll tell you." Then I split.

Half an hour later, my boss (who had helped organize the event we were at) came up to me and said, "did you really tell the President that he was doing a 'lousy f***ing job'?" No way, I said, I was very polite, I just told him what I thought. Fortunately, he believed me. He wasn't happy with me, but he believed me.

I first read this story in Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon, but later found it on the site Snopes.com, which researches rumors and urban legends. The Snopeses concluded, reasonably enough, that there's no way to decide whether the story is true or not. But then they decided to editorialize:

Our opinion? There are plenty of traditional outlets for expressing dissatisfaction with the policies and actions of elected representatives, but walking up to the President at a public function and telling him he's doing a lousy job isn't one of them. Such behavior demonstrates a lack of respect for the office of President of the United States, an honor that should be maintained whether or not one respects the man who currently holds the office — just as the well-mannered citizen doesn't express his disagreement with the political views of a American-flag-carrying protester by spitting on the flag he bears, because that act displays a contempt for everything Old Glory symbolizes, not merely for the person carrying it. The President isn't above criticism, but freedom of speech isn't an excuse for ignoring the ordinary civilities of choosing an appropriate time, place, and manner for the expression of that criticism.

This reminds me of that scene in Woody Allen's Love and Death, where Allen's character marries Diane Keaton's character after a long determined pursuit. In their marriage bed he puts his hand on his bride's breast, and she says, "Please -- not here." After years of dealing with people in various corners of the Internet who protest that discussion forums designed and intended for just that purpose aren't the right place to debate politics, religion, or anything else, I am still boggled by the Snopeses' attitude. If Radford could call up the President for a few hours of golf and talk to him man to man on the links, reminding him of campaign contributions received and (hopefully, if he flies right) campaign contributions to come, I'm sure he would. But mere mortals don't usually have the options reserved for the great.

I suppose there are "plenty of traditional outlets for expressing dissatisfaction with the policies and actions of elected representatives," but (especially where the President is concerned) most of them seem to be designed to ensure that those representatives never hear the dissatisfaction expressed. I have a better chance that my criticisms will reach the ear of my Congressman, though, than that of the President. Most citizens are never going to meet the President face to face, and it seems to me that anyone who has that opportunity should use it responsibly. Expressing one's dissatisfaction with the actions and policies of my elected representatives, politely and rationally, seems to me the prerogative of a citizen of a nominally free and democratic country. If Hangley said to Bush what he says he said (and I see no reason to doubt it), I don't think he behaved inappropriately at all. (Dick Cheney's notorious "Go fuck yourself" to a member of Congress took place long after Hangley's encounter with Bush, by the way. Hangley behaved much better -- with more "propriety", if you like -- than our elected representatives.)

From the way the Snopeses express their disapproval, I suspect they believe that Hangley did cuss at Bush: they compare his remarks to "spitting on the flag". Or maybe not; they seem to think that just mildly telling the President that you don't like his performance is lèse-majesté. (Which is evidently still a crime in some countries, but we don't have a king here, remember? In fact we fought a revolution to get rid of ours.) This is hysteria. I'm not a flag idolater either, and "everything Old Glory symbolizes" includes some history that should be spit on as far as I'm concerned, like slavery and the genocide of the Indians. The President of the United States is not a king; the office (let alone the person) of the President is not sacred. Perhaps the Snopeses would be happier living in England or another monarchical (monarchized?) country.

I'm sure that both Bush and Obama would agree with the Snopeses, of course. From the look on Bush's face when Stephen Colbert roasted him at the National Press Club in 2006, to the look on Obama's face when gay protesters heckled him recently, our elected representatives need to be confronted more. (And do I need to point out that Hangley, Colbert, and the GetEQUAL protesters still behaved better than our current right-wing dissenters?) Two American political cliches come to mind: If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen; and The buck stops here.

Compare and Contrast

2010. Today John Caruso posted this story at A Distant Ocean. Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA, was invited to the White House to meet President Obama.

He walked person to person, saying hello, as advocate after advocate threw him softball questions. I shook the President's hand, and said:

"Mr. President, I am Phil Radford from Greenpeace. We are concerned that your administration is overturning the ban on whaling."

"I know" he replied. "I've seen your ads in the papers."

"Great," I replied. "What is your plan to change your administration's position?

"Look," said the president, sounding like his Saturday Night Live doppelganger, "I love whales. I will do what I can to protect them."

"Will you reverse your administration's position?" I asked.

The President responded "Oh come on, don't lobby me here right now..."

2001. A freelance writer named Bill Hangley told this story.

So when the President was here on July 4, I had the opportunity to shake his hand. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea or not but I did it anyway, and said to him, "Mr President, I hope you only serve four years. I'm very disappointed in your work so far."

He kept smiling and shaking my hand but answered, "who cares what you think?" His face stayed photo-op perfect but his eyes gave me a look that said, if we'd been drinking in some frat house in Texas, he'd've happily answered, "let's take it outside." A nasty little gleam. But he was (fortunately) constrained by presidential propriety.

But that was the end of it, until I turned away and started scribbling the quote down in my notepad, so as to remember The Gift forever. When he saw me do that he got excited and craned his neck over the rubberneckers to shout at me, "who are you with? Who are you with?" People started looking so he made a joke: "make sure you get it right." But he kept at it: "Who do you write for?" I told him I wasn't "with" anybody and pointed to one of his staff people, who knows me a little, and said, "ask him, he'll tell you." Then I split.

Half an hour later, my boss (who had helped organize the event we were at) came up to me and said, "did you really tell the President that he was doing a 'lousy f***ing job'?" No way, I said, I was very polite, I just told him what I thought. Fortunately, he believed me. He wasn't happy with me, but he believed me.

I first read this story in Mark Crispin Miller's The Bush Dyslexicon, but later found it on the site Snopes.com, which researches rumors and urban legends. The Snopeses concluded, reasonably enough, that there's no way to decide whether the story is true or not. But then they decided to editorialize:

Our opinion? There are plenty of traditional outlets for expressing dissatisfaction with the policies and actions of elected representatives, but walking up to the President at a public function and telling him he's doing a lousy job isn't one of them. Such behavior demonstrates a lack of respect for the office of President of the United States, an honor that should be maintained whether or not one respects the man who currently holds the office — just as the well-mannered citizen doesn't express his disagreement with the political views of a American-flag-carrying protester by spitting on the flag he bears, because that act displays a contempt for everything Old Glory symbolizes, not merely for the person carrying it. The President isn't above criticism, but freedom of speech isn't an excuse for ignoring the ordinary civilities of choosing an appropriate time, place, and manner for the expression of that criticism.

This reminds me of that scene in Woody Allen's Love and Death, where Allen's character marries Diane Keaton's character after a long determined pursuit. In their marriage bed he puts his hand on his bride's breast, and she says, "Please -- not here." After years of dealing with people in various corners of the Internet who protest that discussion forums designed and intended for just that purpose aren't the right place to debate politics, religion, or anything else, I am still boggled by the Snopeses' attitude. If Radford could call up the President for a few hours of golf and talk to him man to man on the links, reminding him of campaign contributions received and (hopefully, if he flies right) campaign contributions to come, I'm sure he would. But mere mortals don't usually have the options reserved for the great.

I suppose there are "plenty of traditional outlets for expressing dissatisfaction with the policies and actions of elected representatives," but (especially where the President is concerned) most of them seem to be designed to ensure that those representatives never hear the dissatisfaction expressed. I have a better chance that my criticisms will reach the ear of my Congressman, though, than that of the President. Most citizens are never going to meet the President face to face, and it seems to me that anyone who has that opportunity should use it responsibly. Expressing one's dissatisfaction with the actions and policies of my elected representatives, politely and rationally, seems to me the prerogative of a citizen of a nominally free and democratic country. If Hangley said to Bush what he says he said (and I see no reason to doubt it), I don't think he behaved inappropriately at all. (Dick Cheney's notorious "Go fuck yourself" to a member of Congress took place long after Hangley's encounter with Bush, by the way. Hangley behaved much better -- with more "propriety", if you like -- than our elected representatives.)

From the way the Snopeses express their disapproval, I suspect they believe that Hangley did cuss at Bush: they compare his remarks to "spitting on the flag". Or maybe not; they seem to think that just mildly telling the President that you don't like his performance is lèse-majesté. (Which is evidently still a crime in some countries, but we don't have a king here, remember? In fact we fought a revolution to get rid of ours.) This is hysteria. I'm not a flag idolater either, and "everything Old Glory symbolizes" includes some history that should be spit on as far as I'm concerned, like slavery and the genocide of the Indians. The President of the United States is not a king; the office (let alone the person) of the President is not sacred. Perhaps the Snopeses would be happier living in England or another monarchical (monarchized?) country.

I'm sure that both Bush and Obama would agree with the Snopeses, of course. From the look on Bush's face when Stephen Colbert roasted him at the National Press Club in 2006, to the look on Obama's face when gay protesters heckled him recently, our elected representatives need to be confronted more. (And do I need to point out that Hangley, Colbert, and the GetEQUAL protesters still behaved better than our current right-wing dissenters?) Two American political cliches come to mind: If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen; and The buck stops here.

RING RING RING.

Last summer we put on one of Clock Opera's first-ever live shows opening for Marina & The Diamonds at a birthday party we threw at Notting Hill Arts Club. They killed it, and though we'd only heard bits and pieces from them to that point, you could tell there was something really special in Clock mastermind Guy Connelly's one-of-a-kind approach to pop songwriting. We'd just released Marina's Crown Jewels EP at that point and had the remix parts for "I Am Not A Robot" chilling on our hard drive and figured he could do something magical with them, so we broached the idea to him, he seemed up for it, and we passed them his way. Four months passed and we pretty much forgot about it, and then one day in late November he got in touch to say he'd finished the remix and sent it over to us. It was worth the wait.

Simply put, this is our favorite remix of all time. It's no secret we've got a penchant for hyperbole in these here pages, but after nearly six months of living with this remix we can honestly say that this is a once in a lifetime kind of track, a veritable holy grail of emotional pop perfection. "I Am Not A Robot" was already a masterful pop song in it's own right, but the Clock Opera remix takes it above and beyond, to soaring new heights of heartwrenching brilliance. Keeping the blueprint of the original verses more or less intact, Clock draws you in with all manner of pulsing strings samples and dramatic piano stabs until that chorus hits, in which Connelly masterfully splices together Marina's vocals to invent a new vocal melody and an altogether new refrain of "our. love's. fading. our. love's. fading.". Forget tugging, this'll rip your heartstrings straight out of your chest and then some. Trust us, it really doesn't get any better than this.

MP3: "I Am Not A Robot" (Clock Opera Remix) - Marina & The Diamonds [exclusive]

All Animals Are Equal

(Click on the image for its source and more information)

Homo Superior points to a piece on George Orwell's Animal Farm by Christopher Hitchens at/in the Guardian -- but mainly, it seems, to complain about "all these passive-verb sentences". (Maybe he's alluding to Orwell's admonition "Never use the passive voice where you can use the active"?) I'd be grateful for the link simply for a related story sending Hitchens up for using "lesbian" as some kind of insult, with a link to a wonderful (or maybe terrifying) site that I'm going to add to my blogroll. And I'm taking it as an opportunity to post here a piece I wrote on Animal Farm in the 90s for the local student newspaper.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION

If I had to point to one decisive influence that swung my politics to the left, it would be easy: George Orwell's Animal Farm, which I discovered in the fifth or sixth grade. I read it on my own, not in school, which is probably why it wasn't until years later that I encountered the prevailing interpretation of the book.

Both Right and Left agree that Animal Farm is a Cold War tract, an attack on Stalin's USSR and a vindication of Churchill and Truman's national security states. When they're feeling charitable, my fellow leftists dismiss it as a product of tubercular delirium in Orwell's last years. Right-wingers see Animal Farm as a sign that Orwell was abandoning socialism in favor of a mature anti-Communism, like that of Joe McCarthy or Francisco Franco. Both sides assume that anti-communism equals fawning pro-capitalism, but that's not how I understood Animal Farm, so this summer I went to the library and reread it.

The introduction to the Time-Life edition I read declares that when Animal Farm was published in 1946, "already it was becoming brutally clear that wartime hopes of peacetime cooperation between the West and Russia had been dangerously naive." If that was Orwell's message, he didn't manage to get it into Animal Farm, which states clearly that the rulers of capitalist society will find peaceful cooperation with totalitarian states brutally easy.

It's true that the rebellious animals of the Manor Farm are betrayed by the pigs, who represent the Communist elites who ruled the Soviet Union. But if Animal Farm is a defense of Western democracy and free enterprise, where are the benevolent democratic leaders of the West? They can only be represented by the vicious, drunken farmers, who have no redeeming qualities at all. By Cold War values, the ending of Animal Farm is a happy one. The pigs have seen the error of their ways and become just like their farmer counterparts, who in turn see at Animal Farm "a discipline and an orderliness which should be an example to all farmers everywhere.... [T]he lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the county." I can imagine Winston Churchill expressing such views, or the architects of NAFTA.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." This hardly depicts a radical difference between England and the USSR, Churchill and Stalin: it says that they are indistinguishable. East and West can meet, if not altogether amicably: "Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress.... The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously." Cheaters both. For me this scene calls up images of Nixon meeting Chairman Mao, or Reagan dining with Deng Xiaoping.

"But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally." Is this Stalinism -- or is it Reaganism, the Era of Diminishing Expectations? Grandiose dreams of increased comfort and leisure were bruited about when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s; now we hear that the postwar boom was an economic aberration, and we had better adjust to the idea that things are going to get worse, not better.

No, Animal Farm is a subversive book. If the adults who allowed it into my school's library had really read it, they'd have made sure I never did. The right-wing censors who want to purge the curriculum of any real political incorrectness don't realize that their hero, George Orwell, is laughing at them from his grave.

Hitchens's column does include some interesting information about Animal Farm's publishing history and its reception worldwide, for which I thank him. He crows over having noticed "one very salient omission":

There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig. Similarly, in Nineteen Eighty-Four we find only a Big Brother Stalin and an Emmanuel Goldstein Trotsky. Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).

He's right, though I think I recall having noticed the omission myself. Never wrote about it, though, and while it's interesting if you demand that your allegories walk on all four feet, I'm not sure it means anything. (Hitchens has nothing to say about its significance either.) I think what I pointed out is more meaningful, especially with regard to Animal Farm's reception by the anti-Communist West. Someone must have noticed it before, but I don't recall ever reading anyone who did. People like Malcolm Muggeridge (who wrote the introduction to the Time-Life edition that I quoted in my column) didn't realize that the leaders of the US and Britain during the Cold War were Orwell's farmers, every bit as vicious and corrupt as the Soviet Union's pigs.

All Animals Are Equal

(Click on the image for its source and more information)

Homo Superior points to a piece on George Orwell's Animal Farm by Christopher Hitchens at/in the Guardian -- but mainly, it seems, to complain about "all these passive-verb sentences". (Maybe he's alluding to Orwell's admonition "Never use the passive voice where you can use the active"?) I'd be grateful for the link simply for a related story sending Hitchens up for using "lesbian" as some kind of insult, with a link to a wonderful (or maybe terrifying) site that I'm going to add to my blogroll. And I'm taking it as an opportunity to post here a piece I wrote on Animal Farm in the 90s for the local student newspaper.

HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION

If I had to point to one decisive influence that swung my politics to the left, it would be easy: George Orwell's Animal Farm, which I discovered in the fifth or sixth grade. I read it on my own, not in school, which is probably why it wasn't until years later that I encountered the prevailing interpretation of the book.

Both Right and Left agree that Animal Farm is a Cold War tract, an attack on Stalin's USSR and a vindication of Churchill and Truman's national security states. When they're feeling charitable, my fellow leftists dismiss it as a product of tubercular delirium in Orwell's last years. Right-wingers see Animal Farm as a sign that Orwell was abandoning socialism in favor of a mature anti-Communism, like that of Joe McCarthy or Francisco Franco. Both sides assume that anti-communism equals fawning pro-capitalism, but that's not how I understood Animal Farm, so this summer I went to the library and reread it.

The introduction to the Time-Life edition I read declares that when Animal Farm was published in 1946, "already it was becoming brutally clear that wartime hopes of peacetime cooperation between the West and Russia had been dangerously naive." If that was Orwell's message, he didn't manage to get it into Animal Farm, which states clearly that the rulers of capitalist society will find peaceful cooperation with totalitarian states brutally easy.

It's true that the rebellious animals of the Manor Farm are betrayed by the pigs, who represent the Communist elites who ruled the Soviet Union. But if Animal Farm is a defense of Western democracy and free enterprise, where are the benevolent democratic leaders of the West? They can only be represented by the vicious, drunken farmers, who have no redeeming qualities at all. By Cold War values, the ending of Animal Farm is a happy one. The pigs have seen the error of their ways and become just like their farmer counterparts, who in turn see at Animal Farm "a discipline and an orderliness which should be an example to all farmers everywhere.... [T]he lower animals on Animal Farm did more work and received less food than any animals in the county." I can imagine Winston Churchill expressing such views, or the architects of NAFTA.

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." This hardly depicts a radical difference between England and the USSR, Churchill and Stalin: it says that they are indistinguishable. East and West can meet, if not altogether amicably: "Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress.... The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously." Cheaters both. For me this scene calls up images of Nixon meeting Chairman Mao, or Reagan dining with Deng Xiaoping.

"But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally." Is this Stalinism -- or is it Reaganism, the Era of Diminishing Expectations? Grandiose dreams of increased comfort and leisure were bruited about when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s; now we hear that the postwar boom was an economic aberration, and we had better adjust to the idea that things are going to get worse, not better.

No, Animal Farm is a subversive book. If the adults who allowed it into my school's library had really read it, they'd have made sure I never did. The right-wing censors who want to purge the curriculum of any real political incorrectness don't realize that their hero, George Orwell, is laughing at them from his grave.

Hitchens's column does include some interesting information about Animal Farm's publishing history and its reception worldwide, for which I thank him. He crows over having noticed "one very salient omission":

There is a Stalin pig and a Trotsky pig, but no Lenin pig. Similarly, in Nineteen Eighty-Four we find only a Big Brother Stalin and an Emmanuel Goldstein Trotsky. Nobody appears to have pointed this out at the time (and if I may say so, nobody but myself has done so since; it took me years to notice what was staring me in the face).

He's right, though I think I recall having noticed the omission myself. Never wrote about it, though, and while it's interesting if you demand that your allegories walk on all four feet, I'm not sure it means anything. (Hitchens has nothing to say about its significance either.) I think what I pointed out is more meaningful, especially with regard to Animal Farm's reception by the anti-Communist West. Someone must have noticed it before, but I don't recall ever reading anyone who did. People like Malcolm Muggeridge (who wrote the introduction to the Time-Life edition that I quoted in my column) didn't realize that the leaders of the US and Britain during the Cold War were Orwell's farmers, every bit as vicious and corrupt as the Soviet Union's pigs.