President Francois Hollande's government has signed off on a bill that could legalize same-sex marriage in France. The move comes as leaders from major religious groups are sharply criticizing the change.

Same-sex couples in France have been able to enter into civil unions for over a decade, but the government set a bill into motion on Wednesday that would broaden their rights. Under the proposed legislation, approved by Hollande's Cabinet, all couples would have the right to marry and to adopt children.

Hollande told Cabinet members that the bill represented "progress, not just for a few, but for all society," a government spokeswoman said to reporters after Wednesday's meeting.

The spokeswoman, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, also quoted the French president as saying that the bill "resolutely takes into account the greater interest of the child."

Greek workers have entered the second day of a national strike to protest a vote to approve new austerity measures. The vote is needed to unlock a tranche of international aid and stave off bankruptcy.

A general strike was expected to paralyze Athens for a second straight day, causing major disruptions to public transportation.

The country's two biggest trade unions, the GSEE and ADEY, called the 48-hour work stoppage, which started Tuesday, to protest against the latest austerity measures that the Greek parliament is scheduled to vote for on Wednesday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on EU leaders to solidify plans for economic integration over two to three years. She spoke in Brussels en route to London for talks with PM David Cameron on the 2014-20 EU budget.

In a speech to the European Parliament, Merkel said the eurozone must press reforms and draw a roadmap for unity. Ahead of a December EU summit to deal with the debt crisis, Merkel told lawmakers that countries must allow the European Union to police budgets when necessary if the bloc is to maintain prosperity.

"Much still has to be done to win back trust in the European Union as a whole," Merkel said. "We cannot stop halfway. We have to be creative: We have to find our own new solutions."

She also said policies need to become "more common," adding that a pan-EU supervisory body with the power to police banks to avoid risks must be effective. She said budgets across the EU must be determined with a one-for-all outlook.

The Czech Republic's center-right government has survived a taxation vote that turned into a "no-confidence" motion. Rebels from the prime minister's own party eventually backed down, fearing a snap election.

Lawmakers approved a 1 percent increase in sales tax on retail goods and a 7 percent increase in taxes for the highest earners by 101 votes to 93 on Wednesday.

"This vote confirmed confidence in the government," Prime Minister Petr Necas said.

The bill, aimed at helping to bring the country's budget deficit below 3 percent of GDP, was originally rejected in September. Six members of Necas' Civic Democrat (ODS) party had said the measures went against their center-right principles.

Deconstruction of a banking union: Draghi says no deposit insurance

It is becoming increase improbable that the EU will end up with a banking union that can make even a slight dent to the crisis. The two issues that matter are resolution authority, and deposit insurance. The first is not likely to be proposed for a long. And now the ECB is also giving up on the latter. As Boersenzeitung reports, Mario Draghi says deposit insurance can stay national The article says that the German banks have reacted with enthusiasm to Draghi's clarification, as they would not have to levy higher deposit insurances fees/taxes on their customers.

Eurointelligence commentary:

(This is really bad news. It seems to us that the debate about banking union is now reduced only who gets to do what - not about content, and especially not about economic incentives. Without joint deposit insurance, Spanish savers continue to have a rational incentive to put their money in German banks, whose deposit insurance is more credible than that of Spain.).

Hands up if you're surprised German banks are enthusiastic.

The Greek parliament voted with a slim majority of 153 out of 300 MPs in favour of the austerity and reform package; Pasok ejects six MPs, reducing its number to 27; to ensure that the vote could go ahead, the finance minister had to withdraw a plan to cut the number of parliamentary employees; the vote was accompanied by mass protests outside the parliament; the Greek Supreme Court ruled that the cuts in the pay of judges were unconstitutional; Bloomberg reports that the Bundesbank managed to set tough conditions to any OMT programme, which now act as a disincentive for Spain to apply; Mario Draghi says there is no need for a European-wide deposit insurance scheme, as national schemes are good enough;  the European Commission disputes the IMF's multiplier analysis, arguing that it was a lack of austerity that triggered the panic among investors; in its autumn forecast, the Commission says Spain will miss its deficit targets by a wide margin, with a rising deficit in 2014; France is also projected to miss its targets in 2013 and 2014; the French Senate yesterday rejected the multi-annual budget framework; Belgium and France inject €5.5bn into Dexia; Ireland seeks more austerity to make up for a fiscal shortfall; the Spanish government and opposition are discussing measures to tackle the home repossession crisis; MEPs tell Merkel that Spain is about to go down the tube, like Greece; there are signs that foreign investment funds are returning to Italy; Paolo Manasse, meanwhile, has done the math on Italian politics, and concludes that Mario Monti is most likely to stay.

EXCLUSIVE: The EU pledges funding worth billions of euros to the automotive industry up 2020 in a leaked draft of its cars strategy, to be presented today (8 November). The new strategy comes amid a wave of announced factory closures and lay-offs in the sector but was criticised by Green activists for lacking ambition on CO2 emission cuts.

Antonio Tajani, EU Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, is due to present the `Cars 2020' strategy on Thursday (8 November).

In the draft document, seen by EurActiv, the EU executive says it intends to support the growth of the automotive sector into 20% of European GDP by 2020, from its current level of 16%, laying out a number of financing mechanisms for the sector.

The document earmarks a share of the planned €80 billion `Horizon 2020' research and innovation fund and the €2.5 billion Competitiveness of Enterprises and SMEs programme, as well as support for workers laid off as a result of "industrial adjustment" in the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF)

The presenter Phillip Schofield passed Cameron a piece of paper listing names he had gathered from the internet, telling Cameron "you know the names on that piece of paper, will you be speaking to these people?".

Cameron replied: "There is a danger if we are not careful that this can turn into a sort of witch hunt, particularly about people who are gay, and I'm worried about the sort of thing you are doing right now, taking a list of names off the internet."

Subtle!

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Wednesday 16:00 GMT. Stocks on Wall Street slumped, while demand for Treasuries jumped, as investors' attention switched to the fiscal problems in the world's largest economy after Barack Obama was re-elected the US president.

Mr Obama''s victory boosted speculation that further stimulus may be added to the US economy as it faces the potential "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts next year -- which can further weigh on the country's recovery.

All three major benchmark stock indices in the US fell sharply, with the S&P 500 trading below the 1,400 points mark for the first time since September as the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 300 points to below 13,000.

The sell-off in the US helped drag global stocks lower, with the FTSE All World index down 1.3 per cent.

In contrast, investors flocked to the US Treasury market, with the securities headed for their biggest advance in almost three months. The yield on the 10-year note fell 12 basis points and was last trading at 1.62 per cent.

The European Commission has unveiled its closely watched autumn forecast for the economic development of the 27-member bloc. Good news is few and far between as the debt crisis lingers on.

On Wednesday, the EU's executive released its autumn forecast looking at the prospects of economic growth in the bloc. It painted a rather bleak picture of developments in the months ahead.

The European Commission anounced that it expects the economies in the 17-member eurozone to contract by 0.4 percent this year, before recovering only slightly by 0.1 percent in 2013. In the wider 27-member EU, gross domestic product (GDP) would drop by 0.4 percent this year to be followed by meager 0.3 percent growth in 2013.

"Europe is going through a difficult process of macroeconomic rebalancing which will still last for some time," Economy Commissioner Olli Rehn said in Brussels, adding that unemployment in the EU would reach a new peak next year, at a little below 11 percent.

Law & Disorder / Civilization & Discontents The Russian underground economy has democratized cybercrime You can buy a botnet for $700, or rent one for just $2 per hour.

by Ian Steadman, wired.co.uk - Nov 4, 2012 8:00 pm UTC

• Black Hat
• Internet Crime

38 Javier

If you want to buy a botnet, it'll cost you somewhere in the region of $700. If you just want to hire someone else's for an hour, though, it can cost as little as $2--that's long enough to take down, say, a call center, if that's what you were in the mood for. Maybe you'd like to spy on an ex--for $350 you can purchase a trojan that lets you see all their incoming and outgoing texts. Or maybe you're just in the market for some good, old-fashioned spamming--it'll only cost you $10 for a million e-mails. That's the hourly minimum wage in the UK.

This is the current state of Russia's underground market in cybercrime--a vibrant community of ne'er-do-wells offering every conceivable kind of method for compromising computer security. It's been profiled in security firm Trend Micro's report, Russian Underground 101, and its findings are as fascinating as they are alarming. It's an insight into the workings of an entirely hidden economy, but also one that's pretty scary. Some of these things are really, really cheap.

Rik Ferguson, Trend Micro's director of security research and communications, explains to Wired.co.uk that Russia's cybercrime market is "very much a well-established market." He says: "It's very mature. It's been in place for quite some time. There are people offering niche services, and every niche is catered for." Russia is one of the major centers of cybercrime, alongside other nations like China and Brazil ("the spiritual home of banking malware").

The Dollar Index rose to a two-month high as investors sought safety amid concern President Barack Obama will struggle to convince Congress to avert the so-called fiscal cliff after his historic re-election.

The euro fell to its weakest in two months versus the dollar after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the region's crisis is affecting Germany. The U.S. currency declined against the yen as Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney, who disagreed with current Federal Reserve policy of monetary stimulus. U.S. stocks fell the most in a year as Obama faces the fiscal cliff, $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to be implemented in 2013, which may push the U.S. back into recession.

"It's still the same problem and there is no magic solution, and that is a big part of the selloff today," said Greg Anderson, the North American head of Group of 10 currency strategy at Citigroup Inc. in New York. "We're skeptical of the ability of Congress plus the president to pass some grand bargain, at least before Dec. 31."

The president, who won reelection late Tuesday, must now confront the "fiscal cliff," nearly $500 billion in automatic tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in January that could throw the nation back into recession.

If Obama can engineer a compromise to avert the cliff with the freshly reelected Republican House, he could set the stage for progress on other second-term priorities, including immigration reform, climate change and investments in education and manufacturing. Such a compromise could also infuse fresh energy into an economic recovery that has suffered from uncertainty over the future of federal budget policies.

...

Obama has threatened to veto legislation to avert the cliff that extends the Bush tax rates for the wealthy. After a campaign focused heavily on that pledge, Democrats say the president is prepared to draw a firm line in the sand, even if it means letting one of the largest tax hikes in U.S. history take effect on Jan. 1.

Long time readers will recall that with respect to the "fat tails" debate, I occupy something of an extreme left-wing position. I don't think that big stock market crashes or bond defaults are "tail events", because I don't think there's any probability distribution for them to be in the tails of [2]. They're not draws from any underlying distribution[3]. They're individual historic events which have individual causes and effects. In so far as we understand them at all, then we understand them by their family resemblance to other things that have happened in the past, but this doesn't at all mean that our way of reasoning about the likely future effects of (say) a combination of rising real estate prices, stagnant real incomes and increasing debt ought to be expressed in the form of a stochastic process.[4]

...

I think people are underestimating quite how well-tested Keynesian theory is, by now, in the Popperian sense. It not only works, as shown in dozens of recession cases, it's also seemingly the only thing that works, also demonstrated by many of the same cases. It explains why alternative solutions don't work and nearly all of its bad effects exist only in hypotheticals and fairy stories. It doesn't provide particularly accurate point estimates of future states of the economy's stochastic process, but as suggested above, I don't think that's a reasonable thing to ask for. If this was a medicine, you'd have stopped giving placebo to the control group by now on grounds of pure ethics. Certainly, human behavioural and institutional regularities might change, but we can deal with them when they do. For the time being, Keynesian theory (and I emphasise theory here - Simon Wren-Lewis has changed my mind here on the value of empirics without theory, which would have given you completely the wrong steer in terms of guesstimating the fiscal policy multiplier) is a toolkit that works. We should be dealing with the future by predicting it based on the best theory we have, coupled with a sensible range of assumptions for the unpredictable course of events, and making policy in response to what we think is going to happen. Sometimes we will be wrong, sometimes we will be disastrously wrong, but I don't think anyone thought that this was going to be easy. Resilience and robustness in economic arrangements aren't basically an engineering concept - you guess the range of storms that might hit your levee, then build it for twice or three times the worst case. They're much more like steering a ship into a difficult harbour with moving sandbanks; you react to conditions as they occur, based on training, understanding and common sense.

...

[2] Personal hobby horse alert - economists, decision theorists and moral philosophers are always helping themselves to probability distributions where there's no very obvious reason to presume that they exist at all, let alone exist in the well-behaved and stable form that would be required for the "expected utility" of one or another course of action to exist. There's just no reason to believe a priori that the set of possible outcomes can be put in one-to-one correspondence with the real numbers.

[3] Not even some mega-mega-mega hierarchical True Probability Distribution known only to God and Victor Niederhoffer. My slogan has always been that the Great Depression and the Russian Revolution did actually happen - they weren't just particularly inaccurate observations of the true underlying economic growth rate.

[4] This is the difference between my background in financial markets and NNT's. I don't come from a derivatives background - I made my career in cash equities research. That's a part of the industry which requires surprisingly little in the way of advanced mathematics, but a whole load of institutional detail and accumulated newsflow, a certain streetwise instinct for the way the world works, and a constant willingness to accept that if you're only wrong half the time, you're doing well[5]. We deal in personalities, educated guesses and rules of thumb. Scientists tend to hate us, and genuinely rigorous financial economists often spend a surprising amount of their time proving to themselves that we add no value and are just meaningless journalists[7]. On the other hand, cash equities brokerage is one of the only business lines in investment banking where people regularly set up in business using their own money.

he feud within the Republican Party after the shock of losing to an incumbent president weakened by four years of economic discontent started before the votes were even counted.

The political trauma over Republican Mitt Romney's defeat by President Barack Obama was compounded by the party losing ground in the U.S. Senate.

"If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn't conservative enough, I'm going to go nuts," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a Nov. 5 interview with Politico. "We're not losing 95 percent of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we're not being hard-ass enough."

Republicans, who haven't won the presidency since 2004, are headed for an internal battle over whether the party's future rests in reaching back to a tradition of moderation or pressing ahead with the anti-government tone of a Tea Party movement that dominated its primaries and alienated critical voting blocs -- notably the Hispanic community.

Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have requested the sale of up to $7.6bn in Lockheed Martin Corp missile-defence systems to counter perceived threats and lower their dependence on US forces, the Pentagon announced.
 
The Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which oversees foreign arms sales, formally notified lawmakers on Friday that it had approved the possible sales, which come against the backdrop of heightened tensions with Iran.

The notifications were posted to the agency's website late on Monday.
 
Lawmakers now have 30 days to block the potential sales although such action is rare since deals are carefully vetted with lawmakers weeks before the notifications are posted.
 
The sale is part of Washington's ongoing effort to deepen its co-operation with Gulf nations on missile defence and increase pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

Coal companies in South Africa have signed a surprise wage deal with unions in an effort to avoid a wave of deadly illegal strikes that have rocked the country's gold and platinum sectors.

The Chamber of Mines said on Wednesday that the companies, which include Anglo American, had agreed to raise certain entry-level wages by up to 5 per cent and offered one-off payments to higher categories of workers.

The main wage agreements in the coal sector do not expire until the middle of next year, but restless unions have ignored existing contracts in platinum and gold, leading to rolling wildcat action that has led to the killing of over 50 people so far this year, most of them shot dead by police.

Phillemon Motlhamme, deputy head for industrial relations at the chamber, said the body that represents the industry was approached by unions in September to ensure that illegal strikes would not spread to coal.

Around 85 people are missing after another boat carrying Rohingya refugees towards Malaysia sank off Bangladesh, the second such tragedy in less than a fortnight, officials have said.

Bangladesh Border Guard commander Lieutenant Colonel Zahid Hasan said the vessel was carrying around 110 passengers when it went down off early on Wednesday around 15km off the southern Cox's Bazaar coastal district.

"We have now rescued 25 survivors with the help of local fishermen and a search and rescue operation is underway," Hasan told AFP.

"The boat was heading to Malaysia illegally," he added.

Hasan confirmed that at least two of those who had been rescued were Rohingya and that they were all being kept in custody.

Bahrain's government has revoked the citizenship of 31 opposition activists for "undermining state security".

An interior ministry statement published by state media said Article 10 of the Citizenship Law permitted the "re-evaluation of nationality".

Those affected include Jawad and Jalal Fairuz, former MPs for the leading Shia movement, al-Wifaq, and Ali Mushaimaa, son of al-Haq's imprisoned leader.

Last week, the government banned all public gatherings and rallies.

Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Al Khalifah said "repeated abuse" of the rights to freedom of speech and expression could no longer be accepted.

However, the UN said the restrictions "could aggravate the situation in the country" and urged the government "to lift them without delay".

Subhead: Obama's second term may lead to a bigger economic crisis than 2008/The dollar, that rose to greatness via capitalism, may develop under the president to a mega-bubble

Accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning has offered to submit a partial guilty plea on charges of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks in return for the government agreeing to pursue lesser charges. Manning's attorney David Coombs says he is prepared to plead guilty to some of the charges, but not the entire case as a whole. Manning is reportedly ready to admit to leaking the documents to WikiLeaks, but is refusing to plead guilty to the charges of espionage or aiding the enemy. He has been held in military custody since May 2010 following his arrest while serving in Iraq. We are joined by Denver Nicks, author of the book, "Private: Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History."

After two decades of contentious court battles, a group of indigenous Ecuadorian communities clinched a $19 billion judgment against Chevron in 2011 for the destruction its subsidiary Texaco oversaw in the Amazon rainforest. Chevron has fought bitterly against the enforcement of the payout--one of the largest ever handed down in an environmental suit--and is attempting to build up evidence for a fraud case it's leveling against the Ecuadorians, their legal advisor, and his associates.*

In its latest effort, Chevron has effectively sucked a whole cast of environmental activists, attorneys, and journalists into the vortex of the litigation with a series of wide-reaching subpoenas for private email data. Most of the dozens of targets of Chevron's massive "fishing expedition" are not directly tied to the original lawsuit against the company or its current legal claims; they include the plantiff attorney's summer intern who only worked on the case briefly in 2007, a writer who worked for a non-profit on behalf of the affected Amazon communities, and an environmental activist in Ecuador who fears that Chevron could use information about his whereabouts to intimidate or harass him or pass it along to third parties "that could do the same or worse."

Revealing data for more than a hundred private email accounts over the span of nine years will fall into Chevron's hands if federal courts in New York and California fail to dismiss what legal experts call "sweeping" and "invasive" subpoenas the oil giant has issued to service providers Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

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In briefs filed on behalf of 32 clients late last month by the digital civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and environmental organization EarthRights International, attorneys argue that Chevron is threatening constitutional rights to free speech and free association with its "chilling" requests for sensitive information about individuals not accused of any wrongdoing in the company's  legal claims against the plaintiffs. "They just basically drag the net through these set of activists...and just basically [say], 'Let's get what we can and see what it turns up,'" says Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.

The invitation to the White House in the spring of 2009 struck Barack Obama's allies in the environmental movement as a big moment: a clear sign that climate change was on his radar and that the president was eager to get to work.

The event was indeed a turning point, but not the one campaigners expected. Instead, it marked a strategic decision by the White House to downplay climate change--avoiding the very word--a decision some campaigners on the guest list say produced the strange absence of climate change from the 2012 campaign, until Hurricane Sandy blew it right back on the political agenda.

The storm--which interrupted campaigning for three of the last eight days of the presidential race--may even prove the decisive factor in the elections, with voters watching how Obama handles Sandy's aftermath. The devastation has already sparked debate about America's present-day vulnerability to climate change.

But back in 2009, the off-the-record event with the White House green team at the old executive office building offered the first chance for the White House to share its plans for getting a climate change law through Congress. Aides handed round a one-page memo of polling data and talking points.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2012) -- Global warming could cause frequent and severe failures of the Indian summer monsoon in the next two centuries, new research suggests.

The effects of these unprecedented changes would be extremely detrimental to India's economy which relies heavily on the monsoon season to bring fresh water to the farmlands.

The findings have been published November 6, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Potsdam University.

They found that as we move towards the end of the 21st, and into the 22nd, century, increasing temperatures and a change in strength of the Pacific Walker circulation in spring could cause more frequent and severe changes in monsoon rainfall.

The Walker circulation usually brings areas of high pressure to the western Indian Ocean but, in years when El Niño occurs, this pattern gets shifted eastward, bringing high pressure over India and suppressing the monsoon, especially in spring when the monsoon begins to develop.

The researchers' simulations showed that as temperatures increase in the future, the Walker circulation, on average, brings more high pressure over India, even though the occurrence of El Niño doesn't increase.

The number of English counties suffering outbreaks of a deadly tree disease in the wild has more than doubled, the government said on Wednesday.

As forestry and plant health experts met at a summit convened by the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that ash dieback had been confirmed in the wild in six new counties: Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Sussex and Yorkshire.

The findings add to the discovery of ash affected by the fungus, Chalara fraxinea, in Essex and Kent on Monday, bringing the total number of counties where it is found in the "wider environment" to 10. A total of 115 sites have been confirmed now, with the number in forests and woodlands (61) now outnumbering those in nurseries and recent plantings.

The council of the UN's airline body, ICAO, will today (9 November) grapple with the dispute over how to make airlines pay for their carbon emissions, just months before EU law is due to oblige airlines to comply with its Emissions Trading System (ETS).

A statement is expected by International Civil Aviation Organization [ICAO] President Roberto Kobeh González at the group's council meeting in Montréal. It could have profound consequences.

"This is the crunch meeting," said Bill Hemmings, the aviation specialist for Transport & Environment, a green activist group. "ICAO will either commit to a proposal next year, or go back to declarations on whether a market-based mechanism (MBM) is feasible or not."

EurActiv understands that the ICAO Council will be presented with a working group paper outlining progress on three potential measures:

• Mandatory offsetting of aviation emissions;
• Mandatory offsetting of aviation emissions plus a revenue generating mechanism;
• A global cap and trade scheme, similar to the ETS.

None of these though, is likely to come to fruition before the EU's 30 April 2013 deadline for ETS compliance, and officials say that a timetable for action is needed to prevent the dispute from spiralling then.

In surprising numbers, women in climate science in particular and the physical sciences in general are abandoning academic careers. 

The reasons are as varied as the individuals - some leave for maternity issues or other family pressures, others give up in the face of subtle gender bias within the academic world. And others feel there are better platforms than a university position to apply the science they love and to speak out to a broader audience, with greater impact.

Regardless of the cause, the female brain drain from the academy has an impact on climate science, say researchers. A 2008 study found that while 34 percent of all geosciences doctoral degrees were awarded to females, women comprised only 8 percent of top-ranking geosciences faculty positions at U.S. colleges and universities.

Scientific inquiry is surely at stake, said Mary Anne Holmes, a mineralogist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and former president of the Association for Women Geoscientists.

It turns out Paris has not only been the long-standing destination of choice for lovers, artists and tourists, but also for shaggy pre-historic elephants. French archeologists say they have marked a milestone after digging up a rare complete skeleton of a mammoth along the Changis-sur-Marne riverbanks near Paris.

Researchers at the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) told AFP Tuesday that the remains, which date back to some 200,000-500,000 years ago, include a femur, a complete pelvis, jawbones and four connected vertebrae.

They christened the animal "Helmut" and said it was in its 20s at the time of its death, AFP reported.

"Such a discovery is extraordinary in France, since only three specimens have been unearthed in 150 years," the archeologists wrote on the INRAP website.

According to the INRAP researchers, two flint axes were also found near the skull, which suggest that the mammoth was in touch with the Neanderthals, French magazine L'Express reported. The flint tools could have been used to cut up the animal, while it was already dead or when it was trapped in a quarry.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

There's a lot of documentation about psychopathology and creativity but I think it's all from a central pool, kind of a well-spring of the creative imagination that we can draw from. It equally gives its strength to psychosis in one sense, or breaks through in creativity, theological revelation in the world of the near-dying and people who are seriously ill, and so on. All of that provides us with a look into this cauldron, this very dynamic, efficacious part of the brain, that for some reason or other is kept away from us by a semi-permeable membrane that could be ruptured in different ways, under different circumstances. I recall reading that James Joyce had a daughter named Lucia who was schizophrenic. She was the sorrow of his life. Upon persuasion from Joyce's patron, both of them were brought to Carl Jung. This was against Joyce's wishes because he didn't like psychiatrists. Jung examined Lucia, then finally came in and sat down with Joyce. Joyce said to him that he thought Lucia was a greater artist and writer than he was. Can you imagine? So Jung said, "That may be true, but the two of you are like deep-sea divers. You go into the ocean, a rich, interesting, dramatic setting, with your baskets, and you fill them up with improbable creatures of the deep. The only difference between the two of you is that you can come up to the surface, and she can't."

Basically it's like the difference between being able to swim in the ocean or being....

Caught by the waves and dashed to pieces, right.

The Shouters is a Finnish male choir that has been performing their angry chants for 25 years. I still have one of their black-ties-made-out-of-an-inner-tube given to me by founder/conductor Petri when the choir performed with Bonk in Stockholm nearly 20 years ago.

You can't be me, I'm taken