Overnighter… 1 December 2007
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
Baghdad stock market
I landed on this photo at a very interesting blog (tag “immaterial-labor”)… and this is a snip from the post, The Market of Spectacles, that includes the above pic:
When I was around 15, I worked at a currency exchange office in the world famous Grand Bazaar (satellite view), Istanbul. At the time, Grand Bazaar was the center for determining the gold and foreign currency exchange rate in Turkey. There were no electronics in the heart of the bazaar back then. Just bidders cheering the price of dollars at their hand. My job was to get in this crowd and learn the recent exchange rate between US Dollar and Turkish Liras, and report it back to the office. So that the office can update the exchange rate and sell or buy dollars from this new rate. There was no agency to track and announce the recent price. People were just learning the recent price from each other, face to face, right there in the crowd. Dynamics of this humane structure was one of the inspirations for me to implement a peer-to-peer stock exchange system.
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Now we know why Bloomberg is worth millions: his news service basically NYSE. In fact, all information on the market must be approved by him. It is quite the arrangement.
And now he may run for President with Obama.
Someone wake me from this nightmare.
And now he may run for President with Obama
An Obama/Bloomberg third party run would rock.
Lots of Democratic wailing and whing and knashing of teeth and Rudy as president.
I’ll laugh all the way to Gitmo.
I think he will run with Obama if Obama wins the nomination. Or at least this is the speculation, and notice that Obama had to find his Republican from New York in order to undermine Clinton.
An Obama-Bloomberg Democratic ticket is a nightmare. Or perhaps it will catapult McKinney into the White House. Maybe it will finally radicalize all the disaffected Democrats who no longer engage in the process.
I am sure you noticed the link in the last thread that leads one to Obama’s castigation of the Democratic Party for not allowing Republicans to engage in the primary process. This casts his meeting with Bloomberg in an entirely new relief.
I still say Obama is trying ot be the Senator Brooks of my childhood, a Black Republican senator.
That is exactly right, marisacat. It does not surprise me one bit that he utilizes Republican tropes of crisis and mandate when rationalizing his conservative proposals on health care and on social security.
Imagine if he had to debate McKinney. That is a spectacle I desire to behold.
This casts his meeting with Bloomberg in an entirely new relief.
Since white liberals in NYC voted for Giuliani and Bloomberg to protect them from the big scary negros and since everybody as Kos supported Bloomberg in 2005 (somehow the rule against plugging Republicans was broken those vew months), it will be the sweetest of poetic justice to see him cost Hillary the White House.
Ha Ha
Bloomberg Democrats, Reagan Democrats, Guiliani Democrats, Pat Murphy Democrats, Webb Democrats, Moulitsas Democrats: same concept, same people, just a different lubricant.
The one time I would have liked to have seen Kos go partisan Democrat and punish Bloomberg for the RNC arrests, he went soft and allowed his site to support the Republican.
Since Moon has about 6 Muslim bashing threads on PFF and seems to be demanding that we leftists go anti-religion, and since he lives in NYC, maybe he’d be interested in attending the Revolutionary Communist Party’s book party for Chairman Bob’s new religion bashing tome.
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/12/93150.html
Note. The cover is unintentionally hilarious for any old Slashdot troll because it will remind him/her of Goatse.
HCfM – Kos had to appear strong on defense. And besides, he does not believe in collective action unless it bankrolls his enterprise. This may explain why he ad Jerome Armstrong despise Obama: neither were invited to serve as mercenary bloggers for Obama’s campaign.
Kos had to appear strong on defense.
Bu But I thought the rulz said that it was a “partisan site dedicated to electing Democrats”?
utilizes Republican tropes of crisis and mandate when rationalizing his conservative proposals on health care and on social security.
welll that is most of them, on any one, two or three of the most critical subjects. Not just Obama, who is Adware, but they all are…
Geesh poor disgusting Biden was driven to [play act] that Iran strike would move him to impeach the duo… occasionally Dodd gets off an old style liberal comment or two… Richardson gets off a line or two about withdrawal…
Kuc has small chem trails he leaves.
Really for me Gravel was the closest to anything real… and then it was just a show run.
I think both sides are pathetic, both parties are just pwoer money games… and the faces running are just faces running. A blur.. fronting for transnationals, or religious hegemone wanna bes.
The whole thing is disgusting, but still turning on the rotisserie spit.
Kos desires to tap into Bloomberg’s wealth. Besides, Kos and the mindless drones who contribute to his bank account believe the Party’s tent should be so big the tarpulines will effectively shroud anything that resembles a glimmer of dissent.
Is it only me or did anybody else see Romney’s defense of torture *during the Republican debate* as a step up in the general depravity?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before. The Dems said that the nuke option was “on the table” but that was a little more vague. Ron Paul has some racist supporters but on national TV he tends to lead with his anti-war side. Tancredo bashes immigrants, but he doesn’t quite come out and say “kep the beaners out”. He still cloaks it in the legal/illegal frame.
But Romney came right out and said “my good pal Copher Black says waterboarding’s AOK with him and besides we can’t let the terrorists know exactly how we’re torturing people because it might give them ideas”.
I really thought my capacity for being shocked was gone. But that suprised even me.
Romney never fails to surprise. This spring he claimed the US did not torture. And he mindlessly subscribes to Grover Norquist’s attempt to give the multinationals free reign. A trust fund baby whose plastic surgery also included the suspension of his brain in a Republican vat, Mitt Romney is nothing more than wax statue that issues conservative slogans on demand.
The whole thing might have been set up as a softball for McCain to hit out of the park (I forget who asked Romney the question) but once that cat was out of the bag, it was out.
We’re like Nazi Germany now. We have the frontrunner of one of the major American political parties (the oldest liberal and anti-racist party in the world really) discussing the specifics of torture on national TV during a major party debate where you only get limited time to speak.
I don’t even think Pinochet or the Soviet Communists or the Argentine junta debated how you were going to torture people in public. I don’t even think Strom Thurmond did it in 1948 (discussed the specifics of lynching or castrating “nigras”).
It was a genuinely sick moment that went beyond the usual depravity (for me anyway). And it doesn’t give the Democrats an advantage either. They should have been all over the media the next day denouncing it.
But hey, you can’t say “General Betrayus”.
But all vow to uphold the Bible above the Constitution. I am sure you also noticed Huckabee’s Baptist justification of the death penalty. Yes, many cats were let out of the bag, and all of them are toms.
But all vow to uphold the Bible above the Constitution. I am sure you also noticed Huckabee’s Baptist justification of the death penalty.
Didn’t bother me as much as Romney’s waterboarding statements. I expect a certain amount of religious sanctimony in American politics.
But talking about the specifics of how you torture people. Uh, I guess it’s torture if you stick the red hot poker 4 inches up his ass and not three.
When Marx said everything happens twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, I don’t think he counted on Mitt Romney.
Re Clinton Monica and the Cigar and Waterboarding Mitt
History repeats itself. In this case, the first time as low, vulgar comedy. The second time as horror.
From “Porky’s” to “Saw” in a decade.
Yes, the Marxist trope of repetition as farce aptly describes many events of this decade.
LOL from the NYT (and it won’t be much different Jan 3 on The Big Day):
I take it the Marriott did not have either?
Seems Bloomberg also supped (or something) with Hagel…. who is not being shy, iirc he seemed to indicate he’d run with Hillary.
Too funny.
They are shuffling a deck with all the same marked cards. Spades remain spades, the clubs remain intact, everyone lacks hearts, and diamonds will never appear in the political rough. Perhaps I will visit the table where they are shooting craps.
What is the protocol for meeting Hiz Honner? Does one bow knee and kiss his ring, or just prick a finger and sign the loyalty oath in blood?
I’m drafting a proposal that will eliminate the charade of democracy we have now, and permit the Bloombergian class to just meet and select the President of the United States directly, without any of these need to pretend that our votes count.
It’ll be the College of Cardinals, American style. Minimum net worth for admission to the College of Vultures is $100 million. Gray smoke from the chimney of the chalet where they meet in Aspen means they haven’t yet selected Il Presidente; black smoke means “we have a sockpuppet”.
The beauty part? It’ll all be paid for by taxpayers, right down to the full-sized ice sculptures that grace the College of Vultures convocation. Hey, the rich don’t stay rich by writing checks….
another great picture.
i remember the first time i greally grasped that whole supply/demand thing, one time in ukraine in the 90s. the post-soviet currency was in a downfall, tens of thousands to the dollar IIRC, and you changed currency in some little kiosk on the edge of our local street market. exchange rates and prices in the market were posted, by and large, and noone really bothered to rip you off.
over the course of the summer, i watched as the exchange rate in our neighborhood respond to all the americans changing dollars into cupones by strengthening the local currency viz the dollar, while at the same time pushing the prices up in the nearby market because we were all willing to pay higher prices because everything was cheap in our economic context. two invisible hands moving in contradiction, at parallel levels.
Lenin’s Tomb “left turn” was at the World Against War Dec 1 in London:
somehow I missed this yesterday…..REALLY big strikes in Italy…..
26-
Wow! That takes me back a few years. Wandering wherever the weather led me I found myself in bella Italia. And almost immediately stranded, I learned my first word of Italian from a comely lad: sciopero!
And his description of Italian politics: Tutte in ordine, niente fa.
LOL melvin…. same thing here… I was trying to call thru to the airline in Rome from Venice and the operator kept saying sciopero… they were going on strike…
I remember times when a shopping street would declare a strike… and so on. Blockade themselves at either end…
what a hoot!
The best part of the revival is when the snake-oil salesman gets up on the back of his wagon and starts spinning his con:
Unlike Religion, Ratzi? There are many corn-holed altar boys and dead women unable to escape the pregnancy you would condemn them to who might take exception to that, the native nations who were subjected to the destruction of their world in the name of religion and greed.
Then we get to see that even someone purportedly chosen as the Cosmic Muffin’s emmissary thinks the best way to make an argument is to erect a straw unbeliever and then knock it down.
Really?
Perhaps we TREASURE the world we have, the beauty inherit in the temporality of existence. Redemption is in a lover’s arms, a baby’s smile, a songbirds song. Perhaps we have no need for the embrace of an imaginary friend because we embrace the sweetness of what we have here and now, as well as the bitterness of the bad things that border and highten the good?
I’m with the Japanese. There is more holiness in the fragile cherry blossom blown free from its branch than in all of your gilt objects and silken vestments and empty promises of eternal love with a mythical dead jewish revolutionary.
9/11: Before Everything Changed
The WaPo has sunk to a new low with this:
I really didn’t want to read that piece for the same reason I wouldn’t wade into a pool of raw sewage. I suppose the only things you can say about it are: that there probably isn’t a single truthful statement in that opening paragraph; the author is several million dead bodies ahead of Chavez in the tyrant/war criminal category, and; whatever he has to say has the same moral credibility as Ribbentrop’s thoughts about the less than democratic Polish regime that was in place in August 1939.
Words really don’t exist to accurately describe what this country is turning into.
Addendum,
The people of Venezuela are indeed voting on a constitutional referendum today, so there is one truthful statement in Rummy’s despicable screed. My bad.
The agitprop about Venezuela was horrible all week. I hope the leftists get a huge win.
Oh, and Miss D, here’s a knitting project for you.
oh, and I think I have a thing about Nazi Ratzi in moderation.
31–that’s impressive. but catnip is the one with needle skills.
Enjoyable news from the ancestral homeland:
Aberdeenshire Council says No Dice to the Donald, Derailing Disneyesque Development on Dunes.
Local Hero-style story’s complete with a tie-breaking council chairman and a holdout landowner named Forbes, who told Trump to stick his money.
Local opinion is very much divided (and contentious), so appeals and pro-resort scrambling may follow. But for now, birds trumped condo-building turds in the game of Oceanfront Knock-out Whist.
Some nice pix of Balmedie Beach and the dune system here and
here.
just let Madman and JJB out of Moderation (sorry!)
************
IB
I caught a snippet on the big NO to Donald on news yesterday… the stretch of beach and dunes is incredibly beautiful. I hope it holds..
8)
36–
Shocker. In Scotland? When I asked an old gentleman from Fife what he thought of independence, he said he would be all for it if he didn’t have to take “this bunch” along, referring to Glasgow.
Hammer Meet Nailhead
Erna Bennett
A couple more dune photos and a sweet-faced seal at Peterhead, a bit further north and east.
melvin – Aye weel, true enough.
BTW – Are you familiar with the Aberdeenshire band Old Blind Dogs? They won best folk band in the 07 Scots Trad Music Awards, and just released a new album. You can hear a few songs (including a tune called “Terror Time”) here. If you ever get a chance to see them live, they’re a treat.
On the Burnett vid link –big miss re Stalin opine, but Avery good series overall IMO
Avery= a very
40– Never OBD live – they should go to the Glasgow festival in Jauary more often! Great memories btw of Susana Sevaine burning down the Barrowlands.
Thanks for that, BHHM. Now I’m scouring around looking for just the right tune from Dick Gaughan. . . .
44–
nominee:
United for Russia, Putin’s party, loping in with 62 %…
No international elections observers, their visas were not approved in time………
- Jim Maceda from Moscow for NBC
*******
on to Venezuela…
Chavez with a narrow win, counting not finished…
Is Paul in San Francisco a paid AIPAC operative?
http://www.myleftwing.com/viewRating.do?rateCommentId=272760
Everyone should read this comment:
http://www.docudharma.com/showComment.do?commentId=57813
Some please tell Carl Levin that it is his support for the war that is destabilizing the Western Hemisphere. And why do Democrats feel obliged to denigrate Chavez, when Chavez is probably the only real glimmer of hope in our hemisphere?
Levin is disgusting.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-12-02-voa28.cfm
In Washington, Democratic Senator Carl Levin denied President Chavez’s claims, saying there are no such plans to act against Venezuela’s government.
“First of all we are not seeking to destabilize him,” said Senator Levin. “His policies, his efforts at dictatorship, to amend the constitution so he can stay there for life, that is what is destabilizing Venezuela, not our policies.”
oh how funny, when I followed the Wingless link, i noticed she now lists the site Atlas Shrugs on her “Must Reads”… a site belonging to a well known (online) nut case conservative woman.
How. appropriate.
Venezuela will vote on the following:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iWgqniGVu_qgHdpEc-G1xEbgi5xgD8T9GINO0
Lengthening presidential terms from six to seven years. Eliminating terms limits to allow the president to run for re-election indefinitely.
_ Redrawing the country’s political map and allowing the president to handpick provincial and municipal leaders.
_ Allowing the president to declare a state of emergency for an unlimited period, as long as “the causes that motivated it remain.”
_ Prohibiting large land estates. Allowing the state to provisionally occupy property slated for expropriation before a court has ruled.
_ Prohibiting foreign funding for “associations with political aims.” Critics warn this could be used to strangle human rights groups.
_ Creates three new classes of communal property, in addition to private and state property.
_ Establishing a socio-economic system based on “socialist, anti-imperialist principles.”
_ Granting the president control over the Central Bank, which previously had autonomy.
_ Reducing the official workday from eight to six hours.
_ Reducing the minimum voting age from 18 to 16.
_ Creating a fund to pay social security benefits for the first time to workers in the informal economy, such as maids and street vendors.
I agree with most of this. Anyone else have an opinion?
45 – Ha! Agree, that’s a beaut.
I’m very partial to this tune too – Erin Go Bragh – which someone has (hamhandedly, not to mention ironically) used for a bit of Scottish Independence agit-prop. (The song’s actually about Lowland Scottish prejudice against both the Irish and Highlanders, and includes a cop-killing via blackthorn bludgeon. Lyrics here.)
Another YouTuber did quite a nice job with Tom Paine’s Bones.
Blackthorn bludgeon and Tom Paine’s bones in spam.
Guardian: Chávez’s referendum gamble hangs in balance.
AFP: Venezuela awaits result of close-fought referendum.
United for Russia, Putin’s party, loping in with 62 %…
Does anybody else see at least *some* similarlity between Putin and Chavez?
They’re both heads of state with enornmous oil reserves. Chavez is mildy authoritarian. Putin is basically a dicatator.
But neither would be getting demonized right now if they weren’t rebelling against the neoliberal consensus.
I don’t really know a hell of a lot about Russia but it seems Putin is taking some of that money back from the oligarchs who stole it in the mid-90s. And you can’t do that if you’re not a bit of a gangster.
a site belonging to a well known (online) nut case conservative woman.
And Nazi.
Even that fat turd at Little Green Footballs distanced himself from her. It seems as if there’s an ex Nazi collaborationist party in Belgium that decided to drop its anti-semitic platform and concentrate on hating on Muslims and Pam was all too eager to go there and party with them.
sorry… Arlas Shrugs caused my computer to crash.
Will check Spam now that i am back up…
SORRY!!
It seems as if there’s an ex Nazi collaborationist party in Belgium that decided to drop its anti-semitic platform and concentrate on hating on Muslims — HC
Bingo… exactly.
Yes Atlas is a freak and nutter. No question.
There are a couple there that are questionable (the Central Bank thing and the handpicking local leaders thing), but things OUR Congress has passed, NOT subject to a public ballot, are far more troubling than ANY of that.
Hell, the term limits thing? I remember so-called conservatives calling for that here when Reagan was President.
That is NOT the same thing as making himself dictator.
Thanks, Marisacat.
I guess your PC has a gag reflex, too!
54
well in a sense. Putin is ex KGB thug however. Chavez has some time to prove himself. Putin, imo is a ‘known known’. To use a Rummy and Jack Straw approved luntic phrase…
And you know, FDR was authoritarian as well.
I found John Dean’s mind blowing (for him, LOL) discoveries about the authoritarian model, well … a bit silly, as he still loves Goldwater.
Amazing what people refuse to see.
59
I crashed from some PajamasMedia sponsored site, just the other night (I was reading back and around on Hillary rumors, LOL, so the joke is on me).
Makes you wonder about some of the code being passed around in various circles…
Amazing what people refuse to see.
I think the problem is that people in the USA don’t see class/economics as one variable to consider along with the other variables.
Naomi Klein really proves that neoliberalism requires repression.
But reversing neoliberalism?
Can you be totally pure and democratic? I guess you could argue that the more people you bring into the political process, the easier it is. And Chavez has done both, turned to a sort of mild authoritarianism while at the same time bringing the underclass into the political process. Maybe that makes him Huey Long. I don’t know.
But he doesn’t send journalists to Gitmo like a certain other country I know does.
Huckabee up by 3 pts in Iowa. Romney is now gonna make The Kennedy Speech (ABC Evening News)… last I read they wanted to put that speech off to next year.
GOOD LUCK HORSES!
None of them can make the Kennedy speech because Kennedy was secular and they’re all religious loons.
I think the problem is that people in the USA don’t see class/economics as one variable to consider along with the other variables.
What people? Who is that does not see class and economics, soci0-economic, as playing into everything?
USSR/Russia had problems before they ever rejected neoliberalism. And that is a model that has destroyed a lot of economies and people.
i am just sick of dilletantish ideology that leaves out people.
If John Dean understood authoritarianism, for real, like, you know, he’d eschew Goldwater.
his hero! as his heart goes pitty pat, and tons of Democrats read him like mad…
The narrowness of what we are served gets so old.
I’d be more impressed with the “my religion doesn’t matter” speeches if they kept it to themselves ALL THE REST OF THE FUCKING TIME.
64
yes I agree… but yo know what I mean. The thing that is called The Kennedy Speech.
I like to read John Dean on Republican corruption like I like to read former burglers about how to secure your home. Takes one, etc …
USSR/Russia had problems before they ever rejected neoliberalism.
Well yes. That’s the point. Yeltsin had to suspend parliament and shoot a couple of hundred people to put his neoliberal “shock therapy” through. Jeffrey Sachs promised him huge amounts of aid from the USA that never came through.
Then the oligarchs stole half the country and it fell apart.
Putin seems to have recognized that neoliberalism just doesn’t work and keeps Russia in a semi-colonial state of decay. He was originally put in to maintain Yeltsin’s program. But he seems to be a nationalist who’s onto the scam that the “west” was playing on them. So he’s cracking down on the oligarchs and taking back (at least some of)what they stole. So he went from being Bush’s number one guy to McCain’s “I see three letters KGB”.
How do you deal with the mafia if you’re not a gangster yourself?
The thing that is called The Kennedy Speech.
What would a Wiccan Kennedy speech look like?
“If ever it got to the point where I was tempted to cast a spell that went against the interests of my country, I would resign my position immediately”.
I agree Dean is very impressive on some things… and his testimony in Watergate remains one of the MOST impressive things I have seen.
But I also read him in the near run up to 04, within two weeks [prior] of election. he was buying all, and I do mean all, of the Dem spin. he believed they would fight the post election hard, if there was the least issue iwth the voting. I just rolled my eyes.
well we have so much of the Russian mafia there, the various Russian gangs, he will probably jsut dump more of them on us.
Given that democracy is a phantasm, I doubt anyone can determine what is and what is not democratic, for all attempts to attain it are complete and utter failures. Perhaps different criteria should be utilized when we adjudicate what is and what is not an ethical mode of governing.
let’s put i thtis way, I don’t see the suffering of the russian peoples ending any time soon.
It seems endless, no matter who runs that huge slab of land.
_ Establishing a socio-economic system based on “socialist, anti-imperialist principles.”
This is perhaps one method of proceeding. I am also fond of Chavez’s proposal to requisition large tracts of private land on behalf of the state. Reducing the voting age to 16 seems promising, especially as these youth will actually vote correctly now that they have been exposed to something that resembles socialism.
he doesn’t send journalists to Gitmo like a certain other country I know does.
Hats off to that!
On the other hand . . . .
let’s put i thtis way, I don’t see the suffering of the russian peoples ending any time soon
Or the Chinese people. Both countries are so huge it’s a double edged sword.
Either one organized well is pretty much immune from US and western colonial interference if it wants to be.
But both are so vast that the democratic process in either would be so easy to subvert and so complex that American money could play a role for the bad.
On the other hand, India’s a functioning democracy and has been for decades.
On the other hand, India’s a functioning democracy and has been for decades.
And is perfectly happy with 300 million in a emerging and general middle class.
And the rest, but for the emerging and established wealthy, in abject poverty. But, no problem!
78 – exactly
But then again, India needs spare flesh if it is to wage war with Pakistan again. And notice Obama will be right there to help them.
What would a Wiccan Kennedy speech look like?
Don’t Worry! Be Happy!
But then again, India needs spare flesh if it is to wage war with Pakistan again.
And India’s currently being undercut economically by the global sweatshop that is China.
I wonder what it would take for a democratic revolution in China?
The USA’s ability to meddle would be pretty minimal compared to the Middle East but, then again, Indonesia had a couple of hundred million people in a vast, complex archipeligo and the good old US of A still made sure a nice friendly fascist stayed in power.
Better yet, Freaketh Not! Be Ecstatic!
Whoops, wrong Reporters Without Borders link at 76.
Here’s the most recent: Constitutional reform seen as “dangerous watershed” for press freedom.
Age of Wal Mart Doc on CNBC is good so far for the first 10- 15min….
showed Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks feigning reticence.saying how they’re integral to DVD and CD .Yeh Jeff on the Left…
actually is pretty good so far into 30 min….
Looking for the formulaic hardsell company counterspin.
I dunno, maybe about an orphan, lead poisoned , XYZ fire victim with a new tree house ( her primary residence) built FREE! by company associates for the big finish. Then, the narrative conclusion that they have a “mixed record”…
Maybe Katzenberg, Spielberg, and Geffen will cartoonize Little Miss Lead Poison’s life, stamp it out and have it in the impulse buy cheapo bins for Christmas…
.
Anybody read Naomi Klein’s defense/praise of Hezbollah at the end of the Shock Doctrine?
Ignoring the fact that Moon is probably lurking right now and that some people think any involvement of Muslims in the political process is bad, I don’t know exactly how I think about this.
What’s her standard? It’s not the Answer “if it’s against the USA it’s good” standard. And I doubt she’d want to live under Hezbollah.
She seems to be a left Burkean (as in Edmunde Burke), a left conservative. You don’t fuck with the organic development of someone else’s culture (provided, and this is probably where she’d part from Edmun Burke) it’s “democratic” with a small “d”.
If the Lebanese Shiites want Hezbollah, so be it. If the Venezualans want Chavez, so be it.
Maybe I’m caricaturing her a bit but what if, for example, the American south wanted segregation? The Israelis want apartheid?
Snippet from same:
“Gaza is a prison” isn’t a metaphor
If the Lebanese Shiites want Hezbollah, so be it. If the Venezualans want Chavez, so be it.
Sounds right to me. Hell, theofascists were (sorta) elected to run our country, after all. Who are we to throw stones?
Sounds right to me. Hell, theofascists were (sorta) elected to run our country, after all. Who are we to throw stones?
The most interesting parts of that book in some ways are the sections on the recovery from the Tsunami.
That’s where you really get the conflict between neoliberalism/imperialism and native/indigenous cultures.
She doesn’t even really go into what the subsistence fishing cultures in a lot of these places (Maldives, Thailand, etc.) are like. But the process still offends her. Cultures are like species. Assuming you can bulldoze a whole culture because it’s “backward” is arrogant and evil.
I started reading “Reflections on the French Revolution” after reading the Shock Doctrine and you’d be seriously amazed at the similarities in some of the language.
I dunno, maybe about an orphan, lead poisoned , XYZ fire victim with a new tree house ( her primary residence) built FREE! by company associates for the big finish. Then, the narrative conclusion that they have a “mixed record”…
LO freakin L. (Especially the treehouse.) I’ve had to listen to a family member’s defense of the company on the grounds that a local manager happened to treat a brain-damaged epileptic stepdaughter – a cashier – reasonably well. Gave her a Wal-Mart Scout Good Conduct Badge or the like, on top of her $8 an hour. Oh, and they let RV-ers use their parking lots at night.
On the bright side, this particular family member no longer tries to claim that the Waltons buy American.
LOL HC
Maybe I’m caricaturing her a bit but what if, for example, the American south wanted segregation? The Israelis want apartheid?
What if?
: D IB
omigd. isn’t the pattern here Vietnam, let them self determine, let it evolve.
I had no desire to live in Vietnam after we pulled out nor when we warred/occupied/followed the French etc.
Let them determine. Same with Hizbollah… Same with Moqtadr… I don;t have to endorse people to see a function inside a society, a society that is not mine.
And really as long as we war, invade, kill, murder, destroy, assassinate, plot destruction thru IMF and WB, what can we say? We always have an agenda.
Somalia is a good picture… many many reports indicated that the ruling islamic courts (of last year sometime, iirc) brought some measure of peace. is this necessarily optimum? no, but: Let it be and work appropriately for a better day.
Instead we are warring on Somalia from three directions, at least.
Our biggest thing in Africa is abstinence and war. Think of it.
“our” way is horrific.
I will have to read that book.
IOZ
Somalia is a good picture… many many reports indicated that the ruling islamic courts (of last year sometime, iirc) brought some measure of peace.
Yeah. That was an especially grotesque intervention. Use Ethiopian troops, kill a bunch of people, put the warlords back in power, ship some people to black sites for torture and interrogation and create a refugee problem.
I think she escapes being a conservative though by the radical emphasis on democracy with a small “d”. Organic isn’t good enough. It has to be democratic with a small d and organic.
But if you look at history, compare the Paris Commune, for example, to the Soviet Union, what happens? Who beats the imperialists and who loses? The democrats with a small d tend to lose and the authoritarians tend to win.
And win only to create the conditions that make it easy to flip the whole society back to capitalism and a more grotesque form of capitalism (ie Mao paved the way for China as a global sweatshop, even though he did liberate China from western imperalism and even though the typical Chinese has it better now than under the British).
The genius of the American system is rooted in the fact that the Founders were Rome groupies to the man. By aping Roman forms they created a remarkable and sophisticated form of self-maintaining timocracy that was in its time, as much as the Roman Republic at its political height, a model of political equity, though by no means egalitarian.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm
When we think about this conjuring up of the dead of world history, a salient difference reveals itself. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases. The first one destroyed the feudal foundation and cut off the feudal heads that had grown on it. The other created inside France the only conditions under which free competition could be developed, parceled-out land properly used, and the unfettered productive power of the nation employed; and beyond the French borders it swept away feudal institutions everywhere, to provide, as far as necessary, bourgeois society in France with an appropriate up-to-date environment on the European continent. Once the new social formation was established, the antediluvian colossi disappeared and with them also the resurrected Romanism – the Brutuses, the Gracchi, the publicolas, the tribunes, the senators, and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its sober reality bred its own true interpreters and spokesmen in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants, and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind the office desk and the hog-headed Louis XVIII was its political chief. Entirely absorbed in the production of wealth and in peaceful competitive struggle, it no longer remembered that the ghosts of the Roman period had watched over its cradle.
well I don’t think anyone denies the French Revolution… went more than a little insane.
I got a big hoot out of Joe Ellis in some talk after his last book, band of Brothers think that was the title, talked of how after the fact, after their death Jefferson and others had some of their writings amended or removed. They had praised the French Rovolution so highly, so passionately and then whooooops, just a lot of mad bloodletting at peak. Hilarious, esp considering what Joe Ellis was nabbed for doing. LOL
However US business practices in recent years are making big inroads on a more low key environment. Sad to say, and now Sarko will speed this up, esp at the top.
Smartest Drug Story of the Year
oh stop the presses! I nearly forgot.. LOL:
Mme Chirac has endorsed Hillary.
Soo relieved.
The Rolling Stone piece is here
The foregoing said, I’m under no delusion that the Dem Pols Edwards and Obama hopped up on the dias, the various local hacks around he country—- for the big time pols it simply BullShit produced not surprisingly for wholesale consumption
On the local level.it all about the shakedown, a few contracts carved out for somebodies brother in law, maybe a parking lot paving contract some concrete pours for curb cuts….the envelopes of cash, the 50 inch flatscreens for the local zoning board and union hacks to take a walk etc…
Going into 2008…. nothin’ to worry about for The Company from Bentonville, Arkansas …. Not with “Aw Shucks” Hill , Bill ,and Huck quite down with the deal…Not that anyone else hasn’t been as easily rolled…
#99 –Fainting couch available if needed Mcat. LOL
well I don’t think anyone denies the French Revolution… went more than a little insane.
Interestingly enough, 2500 people died in “the terror” of the first French Revolution.
80,000 died when the French capitalists suppressed the Commune in 1871. 3000 died in the “June Days” in 1848 when the capitalists suppressed the workers and 25,000 were shipped of to Algeria.
But what I think Marx is saying is that the Roman groupieism wasn’t insane. It was what they had to do to smash feudalism.
IOZ seems to be making a slightly differerent argument. Marx is saying that the French revolutionaries used Roman forms to smash feudlism, then threw it away and became simple capitalists.
IOZ seems to be saying that it became a permanent part of American politics and it kind of does make sense because of slavery and the way the Southern democrats dominated American politics through seniority etc.
well I am n ot saying that the French Revolution was the Greatest Bloodletting Ever. It was not, and frankly, it had to happen.
I am nto interested, personally, in formenting violence, but all forms of it are in human nature and it will surface for reasons other than State waged conscription war.
fomenting. Lose the ‘r”
I’m more interested in what we remember.
When I read the Shock Doctrine what really suprised me was the fact that I had never even heard of how Yeltsin disbanded parliament and killed several hundred people in the process.
I vaguely remember something about the “turmoil” in Russia but I think I just bought the idea that there were some ex communists causing trouble.
But we really do all remember how the old drunk stood on the tank.
But we really do all remember how the old drunk stood on the tank.
taht was on CNN.
you have to look hard to get the real story, and usually look BACK.
That’s true of everything, every place, and you’ll never know it all.
The biggest difference btwn the American and French revolutions is that the Americans baked into the structure a distrust of everybody, including themselves, while the French Revolutionaries made themselves the Law. I’m under no illusions that our founding fathers are the saints we’re all taught that they are … the plain fact of the matter is that they didn’t trust the people, they didn’t trust each other and they didn’t trust themselves. They set up a system for perpetual conflict because of those facts.
I find most troubling, out of so many troubling things, all of this talk about how our politics is too contentious, too partisan. BULLSHIT. It’s not contentious enough. It’s broken and not working because there is TOO MUCH consensus. One War Party, in pursuit of hegemony and perpetual profit.
I’m gonna buy a copy of Klein for the Yuletide potlatch, and read as much as I can, before purchasing more and/or handing it off.
Madman – meant to thank you for the yarny brainform way upthread at 33. Talk about taking on the ravelled sleave of care!
Must pass that link on to a friend – her daughter’s a neuroscience PhD candidate, too. Maybe she’ll take up knitting, as well! (BTW – Does anyone know if peeder applied the Barrett gun to Lord Stomach Flu? Or did Alan Smithee run him off barehanded?)
Oh, and catnip, if you’re out there – thanks again for the crossed fronds. Passport came in from the birth country last week.
Bon soir, salonly comrades. Thanks as always for the unrated space, light, and fun.
Mme Chirac has endorsed Hillary.
And so has Bobby Kennedy the Younger.
(BTW – Does anyone know if peeder applied the Barrett gun to Lord Stomach Flu? Or did Alan Smithee run him off barehanded?)
LOL Think Smithee did it, solo…
It was fun to watch. DB has always been a wuss. He was rolling in clover at PFF…
111
right moiv… and you know when I raed that I thought of his big fancy expose of Ohio………and that of course he knew/knows every little thing the strangle tangle twins, the Clintons, did to triangulate voter/voting issues in 04.
yvw, IB.
Boing Boing links to knitting sites frequently. I thought the brain was cool.
Going into 2008…. nothin’ to worry about for The Company from Bentonville, Arkansas …. Not with “Aw Shucks” Hill , Bill ,and Huck quite down with the deal…Not that anyone else hasn’t been as easily rolled…
And remember that Michelle Obama served on the board of a major WAL-MART distributor. All of them are members of the Walton empire, especially Michelle Obama, who cut her deep ties with WAL-MART after O’Barry claimed he would never shop there when speaking to the AFL-CIO in Trenton, New Jersey on May 14, 2007.
Notice that this is now a part of Michelle Obama’s Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama
And notice that Daley, a major Obama backer, vetoed the Big Box Ordinance that would have forced WAL-MART to pay Chicagoans a living wage. So much for O’Barry’s community organizing.
Obama, Daley and Michelle Obama are all on the payroll of the Waltons. Is anyone surprised?
LOL I am hoping it gets quite nasty between Hillary and Obama. madman pointed out it, the animosity that is building, is one reaosn obama sat in the window at the Manhattan luncheonette where he had breakfast with Bloomberg…
I was sorry to fall back asleep this am and miss Wolfson and Axelrod on Face the Nation.
I am still offering to hold the bucket to catch the run off.. LOL, if they will both go for big arteries…
8)
Raise the hammer hammered Kennedy pretty hard, pointing out that everyone else seems to be giving him a pass.
I imagine all of you have already read this:
http://skepticalbrotha.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/obama-08-a-black-bourgeois-fantasy/
These sentences are particularly pithy:
He rejects reparations, played footsie with Chicago’s corrupt Daley Machine and ignored its police brutality, caved to the Israel Lobby, voted for Condi Rice, equivocated on war funding (voting for it before he was against it), and his health care plan isn’t universal. The only thing he hasn’t done is walk up and down the streets of America peddling his ass like a prostitute.
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a black middle class fantasy, an idealistic delusion of epic proportions that those outside of the black community have hijacked to achieve their own malevolent ends.
112 – Those “e”s must stand for “extra-efficient.” Clover patch to skunkweed rash in 60 seconds flat!
Leaving One Sad Donkey Behind – bereft with blowpipe and up-skirt agenda. Doo Wacka Doo Wacka Doo!
Skunky roadrash, I mean.
8)
So, I finally watched “Flags of Our Fathers” on cable.
How can Eastwood make movies like this and still be a Republican, at least as that party has comported itself since the end of that war? This is not to say that the Donklephants aren’t as culpable for the state-delivered terrorism, the militarism, but just to recognize that the Reps REVEL in the blood and gore and human sacrifice.
Still, though, how can you produce something like this and not recoil in horror from the status quo?
People shouldn’t be thrown away cheaply. Soldiers shouldn’t be reduced to mere tools of the state (though I know, intellectually that this is precisely what they are).
Why won’t we learn, why won’t we stop doing this?
It’s by no means a great film, or anything like that, but it does focus more than many such films on the human cost. It’s sick that our media, our citizenry, our two-faced political leadership, are so blythe about it.
No, we make some movies about it, write some books about it, then go ahead and needlessly start the slaughter anew.
This nation is insane.
Chavez seems to have lost the referendum.
I imagine Chavez already has a successor or two.
CNN on Venezuela… will find other things over night…
from the cnn link:
Business Day, South Africa, 8 mins ago, per Google upchuck… it equivocates.
Most report headlines indicated he was winning til about an hour ago…
And panegyrists for capitalism and imperialism who staff the American media will view this as an augury of American global hegemony of capitalism’s final triumph. Sarkozy will be paraded about once again; Bush’s approval rating will experience a temporary spike; gas prices will fall for two days; a Democrat will file a bill commemorating Venezuela for rejecting socialist terror. Wake me when the social nightmare is over.
should be interesting to see how it pans out. a lot depends on the integrity of the vote (no way for me to figure it out).
Kitchen sink here, from Biz TV, Warren Buffet to Marx,
and “Marriage”
I was simultaneously going through some reading while i rolled from the Wal Mart doc on CNBC into a piece on Warren Buffett. (Please don’t ask why…)
If you fall into a Biz Channel, it’s relentless.
On my cable line up here, CNBC is sandwiched between CNN and MSNBC. followed by Fox ..
Anyways,The puff piece has a lot on his move into Israel and China…Goes on about the Israeli tooling Investment and their critical position into Chinese manufacturing robotics, etc..
Lot of footage how he was coaxed “reluctantly” into Foreign investment, the unquestioned given that capital will seek low wage production….Lot of footage on the BizJet so…ah…so much for going coach on a common carriers I guess..Before they’re even finished waxing about investment in China they’re already talking about the necessity of moving to capitalize on lower wage workers available in Viet Nam…..
How are the profits of Manufacturing and Energy Congloms who fuel it to be secured with unfettered Globalization and Peak Oil???
Costs ensuring a clean, safe Environment? OFF THE TABLE.
Every Dollar of Living wage denied is a dollar of Profit accrued…
It’s so very fucked…. Globalization and Peak Oil are a Planet killing crisis..Everything is subordinated to an insane Money Religion. The presentation of Buffet-as-Happy-Grandpa is a real piece of work as is the notion of participatory accessible markets: A single share of his conglom, Bershire Hathaway is a HUNDRED GRAND. It’s a King’s market the sucker’s are left in the dirt.. Pension Funds , whose rules can change, and whose retirees can be left in an altered economic landscape arejust their for the raping and benefit of the Trustees and ther scaddling of Union goons who still preside over them here and there…
I know I’m jumping around here but I’ve been giving thought to how any group or coalition is to counter this momentum, especially in a Capitalist Police State with such heavy media propoganda…
It really comes down to a fight for the minds of youth. This is hardly exclusive to “Communist Propoganda” — what a joke, THAT meme, THAT Bogeyman that was beaten into my head at least in Catholic grade school and High School…..
The Apeshit response to “Gay” Marriage &Families Adoption, etc and Polygamy too is a Capitalist given defending the “Nuclear” family (never more of an appropriate term now , no? )
WTF would happen if you had a notion of “marriage” and family based on something else while Western Capitalist society tries to keep up the privileges for it as an institution??? It means that communities of conscience would flourish, some pervo loon groups to be sure…
But “families” would also mean that if you were down ideologically with any number of iterations of people. You could then “marry- in” _________________<<<<—whoever mutual hearts and minds desire.
The wedding announcements would certainly be interesting:
The presentation of Buffet-as-Happy-Grandpa is a real piece of work — BHHM
BINGO…
and tell me, in what world, does George Clooney (who really is no one) calls up Eric Prince and says, what could you and your guys do to help out in Darfur? (which is dying from malignant attention).
And of course they are both at charlie Rose, two days apart to promote the phone call as part of Happy Blackwater (no no NOT mercenaries, nice guys who ‘help”).
GMAFB!!
***********
well you know when the Clintons went in in 92, there was general talk around that “any household should be a family” … forget parsing wh is under the roof.
Two maiden sisters, a gay family, a loose knit group of people who live together, a married hetero couple, an unmarried couple, who cares… and whatever else… as in, let people be, and don’t fuss so damned much.
It seemed sort of early gentle conditioning to maybe opening marriage, at least to gay couples.
Musta driven the righties nuts.
LOL Rove memo to Obama (no really) In the Financial Times:
LOL it was in the FT in December of 03 that I read some R oeprative quoted that if Kerry was the nom they’d eviscerate his war record, by the time they were done, no one would know what side he had fought on. And that they had a comprehensive plan for anyone who got the Dem party nom.
All you can do is laugh.
ooo the close is the kicker… yum! POPCORN…
Phone call to hrh (aka, “supervixen,” Registrar of Band Names):
Is Pervo Loon Group already taken?
Good night!
Irish Times has a round up on Iowa, mostly on Hillary (they menton the incident where she was boo’d) v Obama battle.
IB,LOL ,Re Pervo Loon groups— we have that now…Warren Jeffs is no far distance from the Catholic Church …
In Light of Immigration laws and privileges, The Legal Definition of Marriage and Family as Headed by Monogomous Heteros ( as if thats real, in practice) prevents political breeding as it were…
IB wanna get married ??? I’ll send Chavez and Morales and Ahmedinijad flowers…Okay so maybe Ahmedinijad is out…So we send for Hugo and Evo, get em citizenship , man the grille for dinner…
When the campaigns call closer to the 2008 Election we can say
I still think the Rove M.O. is to keep the D nom away from Edwards.
White male, drawl, little kids, dead son, and breast cancer in the family talking about the “great divide” —yayaya
Doesn’ t even matter as much that it is coming from a millionaires perch as that can easily be spun into the American Dream fantasy, a morph on Clinton’s “Hope”…
But Rove needs a Viet Nam Era candidate or Deep D baggage referendum candidate ..Hill’s the preferable candidate to run against win or lose for the GOP …a fundraising winner to Battle the Anti Christ
Obama he can kill off with race baiting aside from what the polls show. And kill off much of the young idealists who support him right along with it..In the Event of an Obama Acendency and with whatever proxy they’d have to come up with to do it, Barack would have some CrackHo’s “for Truth” Committee set up against his ass…
With Edwards, Rove’s got Haircuts and Hedgefunds against a sympathetic narrative…The Coulter “faggot” meme the “sissy” with the haircut is the tell tale tip off to the direction they’d go …
The hair/ the dandy= Vain, distracted, and ambitious both as context over his support of AUMF. and subtext to EE’s illness..
Nasty business over who gets the MIC car keys for a spin….
112-Smithee wiped the floor with DB.
new post, thread…
LINK
BHHM – Monday morning and the florist’s van approaches through the sleet and freezing rain . . . The card in the carnations reads: I NEED to give birth to your HEATHEN PAN-AMERICAN HORDES!
LOL, IB