Wednesday 23 March 2011
Joining all the dots
Fascinating lecture by 9/11 investigator Kevin Ryan on all the key figures and remarkable coincidences that have never been investigated around the intelligence and security companies involved in the 9/11 attacks. He doesn't come out and accuse anyone, he just points at things that are 'interesting'. Like the fact that British company AMEC had just finished refurbishing Wedge One at the Pentagon prior to 9/11. You guessed - the very same wedge hit by Flight 77! I know, crazy...AMEC then went on to clear away all the evidence - sorry rubble - from Ground Zero. Of course Mr Ryan may be making all this up. But if he's not...
Friday 18 March 2011
Ambition
I didn't write what is to follow and I don't agree with this post from a piece about rubbish jobs (not everyone in India and China is moving into high-tech nirvana) but there is some tiny kernel of truth in its bilious attack on the 'X Factor' culture:
"It's about time people realised that the majority of jobs are shit, and always have been. Is it seriously the job of the State to make everyone feel amazing all the time, in incredible life-affirming "make a difference" jobs? I don't think so.
Who would clean the toilets?
This line about "mental health" is just another line of bullshit. You don't need "research" to tell you that shit jobs make you unhappy. The thing is - traditionally people were brought up to channel this unhappiness into AMBITION - and use this to improve themselves through personal endeavour. You can see this attitude at work in China and India as millions strive their way out of the slums and into high-tech jobs.
Our problem is that the "Prizes for all culture" which has completely destroyed education in this country is now being applied to working culture as well. The fact is that in life some people come top and others come bottom. We've managed to shield children from this unavoidable reality of life in school, and now when they leave they are hugely disappointed to find that only shit jobs await them.
Perhaps rather than spending taxpayers money creating a fools paradise, fostering kids' sense of self-importance and entitlement, we could let a little reality
into the picture. Perhaps kids might value their education more if they had a true picture of what awaits them at the end. The fact is that thousands upon thousands of people seem to think their "talent" is somehow waiting to be discovered, and prefer to wait on benefits rather than put in the hard work.
And if another person on this site attempts to glorify "Manufacturing work", as some kind of workers utopia of community respect and shared values I might vomit. You've obviously never done a shit manufacturing job. Life on a production line, or in heavy industry is just as shit and low paid as anything else. Especially when you can see robots performing half the tasks and realise you are nothing but a cheaper version of the robot yourself. Don't make me laugh!
In reality most work is tedious and offers only fleeting or retrospective satisfaction. We can't all be rock stars or footballers. Just get a grip. Teach your kids to work hard. Teach them to lower the cretinously inflated sense of self-worth they have fostered in school, and lower their ludicrous expectations of fame and riches being handed to them at 16.
Oh yes - and cut the handouts. We'll soon find a resurgence of genuine ambition in this country - as those with the will and the gumption to get things done reject the drudge of shit jobs and work their way out of it. Frankly they are the ones that deserve to escape. Everyone else can get on with cleaning the toilets.
"It's about time people realised that the majority of jobs are shit, and always have been. Is it seriously the job of the State to make everyone feel amazing all the time, in incredible life-affirming "make a difference" jobs? I don't think so.
Who would clean the toilets?
This line about "mental health" is just another line of bullshit. You don't need "research" to tell you that shit jobs make you unhappy. The thing is - traditionally people were brought up to channel this unhappiness into AMBITION - and use this to improve themselves through personal endeavour. You can see this attitude at work in China and India as millions strive their way out of the slums and into high-tech jobs.
Our problem is that the "Prizes for all culture" which has completely destroyed education in this country is now being applied to working culture as well. The fact is that in life some people come top and others come bottom. We've managed to shield children from this unavoidable reality of life in school, and now when they leave they are hugely disappointed to find that only shit jobs await them.
Perhaps rather than spending taxpayers money creating a fools paradise, fostering kids' sense of self-importance and entitlement, we could let a little reality
into the picture. Perhaps kids might value their education more if they had a true picture of what awaits them at the end. The fact is that thousands upon thousands of people seem to think their "talent" is somehow waiting to be discovered, and prefer to wait on benefits rather than put in the hard work.
And if another person on this site attempts to glorify "Manufacturing work", as some kind of workers utopia of community respect and shared values I might vomit. You've obviously never done a shit manufacturing job. Life on a production line, or in heavy industry is just as shit and low paid as anything else. Especially when you can see robots performing half the tasks and realise you are nothing but a cheaper version of the robot yourself. Don't make me laugh!
In reality most work is tedious and offers only fleeting or retrospective satisfaction. We can't all be rock stars or footballers. Just get a grip. Teach your kids to work hard. Teach them to lower the cretinously inflated sense of self-worth they have fostered in school, and lower their ludicrous expectations of fame and riches being handed to them at 16.
Oh yes - and cut the handouts. We'll soon find a resurgence of genuine ambition in this country - as those with the will and the gumption to get things done reject the drudge of shit jobs and work their way out of it. Frankly they are the ones that deserve to escape. Everyone else can get on with cleaning the toilets.
Sunday 6 March 2011
Capitalism - an Islamic invention
When I studied economic history years ago I learned that commercial or mercantile capitalism originated in the Renaissance Italian city states such as Venice and Genoa between 1250 and 1600. Modern capitalism evolved in Holland and Britain with the development of the trading companies and national markets in the late 16th century eg the East India Company, which was formed in 1600. Industrial capitalism developed 2 centuries later.
However, what I did not know was that the institutions and rules of commercial capitalism, like notes of credit, banking and double bookkeeping, actually originated in the Islamic world - and were transmitted into Europe through the crusades (1100-1300). Mohammed himself was a merchant and the Koran sanctifies trade and business much more than the Bible does. This is of great significance given that since Max Weber and Marx it has been a commonsense that a combination of Protestantism and Enlightenment rationalism, based on classical Greek free thinking, gave rise to capitalism in western Europe in the 16th-18th century. But this appears to be a gross simplification.
Early forms of proto-capitalism and free markets were present in the Islamic Caliphate, where an early market economy and early form of merchant capitalism was developed between the 8th–12th centuries, which some refer to as "Islamic capitalism". A vigorous monetary economy was created on the basis of a widely circulated common currency (the dinar) and the integration of monetary areas that were previously independent. Business techniques and forms of business organisation employed during this time included early contracts, bills of exchange, long-distance international trade, early forms of partnership (mufawada) such as limited partnerships (mudaraba), and early forms of credit, debt, profit, loss, capital (al-mal), capital accumulation (nama al-mal), circulating capital, capital expenditure, revenue, cheques, promissory notes, trusts (waqf), savings accounts, transactional accounts, pawning, loaning, exchange rates, bankers, money changers, ledgers, deposits, assignments, the double-entry bookkeeping system, and lawsuits. Organizational enterprises independent from the state also existed in the medieval Islamic world. Many of these early proto-capitalist concepts were further advanced in medieval Europe from the 13th century onwards.
Of course it should be remembered that this early commercial capitalism co-existed with a predominantly agrarian society and one in which slavery was very widespread. It was only in the last century that industrial capitalism, wage labour and urbanisation became the norm in the majority of the world. Industry in the Islamic period was dominated by state factories, as it was in China. Free wage labour is also a recent development of capitalism, replacing slavery, feudal serfdom and independent artisans.
As an eminent French scholar of early Islamic economic history suggests, while similar capitalistic economic activities are to be found in the Greek and Roman world, India, China, Japan and even medieval Europe, early Islamic capitalism differs:
"A level does seem to have been reached in the Muslim world which is not to be found elsewhere at the time, or earlier. The density of commercial relations with the Muslim world constituted a sort of world market of unprecedented dimensions. The development of exchange had made possible regional specializations in industry as well as in agriculture, bringing about relations of economic interdependence that sometimes extended over great distances. A world market of the same type was formed in the Roman Empire, but the Muslim 'common market' was very much bigger. Also, it seems to have been more 'capitalist,' in the sense that private capital played a greater in forming it, as compared with the part played by the state than was the case in the Roman Empire. Not only did the Muslim know a capitalistic sector, but this sector was apparently the most extensive and highly developed in history before the establishment of world market created by the Western European bourgeoisie" (Rodinson, 56).
Further corroboration of such observations also emerges in the writings of numerous early Muslim scholars who wrote on economic issues. Thus, not only various techniques and methods of commerce, as well as the spirit of enterprise and adventure, spread to medieval Europe from the Islamic civilization, but, further, "the Muslim writers of this period do tend to be more sympathetic to mercantile activity than those of Christian Europe" (Cook, 219 and 226; also see Hitti). Indeed, capitalism and related institutions and practices represented the modus operandi of economic life in the early Islamic civilization, much before that transformations took place in Europe.
However, what I did not know was that the institutions and rules of commercial capitalism, like notes of credit, banking and double bookkeeping, actually originated in the Islamic world - and were transmitted into Europe through the crusades (1100-1300). Mohammed himself was a merchant and the Koran sanctifies trade and business much more than the Bible does. This is of great significance given that since Max Weber and Marx it has been a commonsense that a combination of Protestantism and Enlightenment rationalism, based on classical Greek free thinking, gave rise to capitalism in western Europe in the 16th-18th century. But this appears to be a gross simplification.
Early forms of proto-capitalism and free markets were present in the Islamic Caliphate, where an early market economy and early form of merchant capitalism was developed between the 8th–12th centuries, which some refer to as "Islamic capitalism". A vigorous monetary economy was created on the basis of a widely circulated common currency (the dinar) and the integration of monetary areas that were previously independent. Business techniques and forms of business organisation employed during this time included early contracts, bills of exchange, long-distance international trade, early forms of partnership (mufawada) such as limited partnerships (mudaraba), and early forms of credit, debt, profit, loss, capital (al-mal), capital accumulation (nama al-mal), circulating capital, capital expenditure, revenue, cheques, promissory notes, trusts (waqf), savings accounts, transactional accounts, pawning, loaning, exchange rates, bankers, money changers, ledgers, deposits, assignments, the double-entry bookkeeping system, and lawsuits. Organizational enterprises independent from the state also existed in the medieval Islamic world. Many of these early proto-capitalist concepts were further advanced in medieval Europe from the 13th century onwards.
Of course it should be remembered that this early commercial capitalism co-existed with a predominantly agrarian society and one in which slavery was very widespread. It was only in the last century that industrial capitalism, wage labour and urbanisation became the norm in the majority of the world. Industry in the Islamic period was dominated by state factories, as it was in China. Free wage labour is also a recent development of capitalism, replacing slavery, feudal serfdom and independent artisans.
As an eminent French scholar of early Islamic economic history suggests, while similar capitalistic economic activities are to be found in the Greek and Roman world, India, China, Japan and even medieval Europe, early Islamic capitalism differs:
"A level does seem to have been reached in the Muslim world which is not to be found elsewhere at the time, or earlier. The density of commercial relations with the Muslim world constituted a sort of world market of unprecedented dimensions. The development of exchange had made possible regional specializations in industry as well as in agriculture, bringing about relations of economic interdependence that sometimes extended over great distances. A world market of the same type was formed in the Roman Empire, but the Muslim 'common market' was very much bigger. Also, it seems to have been more 'capitalist,' in the sense that private capital played a greater in forming it, as compared with the part played by the state than was the case in the Roman Empire. Not only did the Muslim know a capitalistic sector, but this sector was apparently the most extensive and highly developed in history before the establishment of world market created by the Western European bourgeoisie" (Rodinson, 56).
Further corroboration of such observations also emerges in the writings of numerous early Muslim scholars who wrote on economic issues. Thus, not only various techniques and methods of commerce, as well as the spirit of enterprise and adventure, spread to medieval Europe from the Islamic civilization, but, further, "the Muslim writers of this period do tend to be more sympathetic to mercantile activity than those of Christian Europe" (Cook, 219 and 226; also see Hitti). Indeed, capitalism and related institutions and practices represented the modus operandi of economic life in the early Islamic civilization, much before that transformations took place in Europe.
Thursday 3 March 2011
Tunisia. Egypt. Libya...Mexico?
All eyes are on Libya now. But five years ago Mexico had an Egypt type event, except the revolution - following a fixed election - did not succeed despite millions going on to the streets. But as conditions worsen for ordinary Mexicans, they could be the next to shake the world. It is a nightmare for the US elite, and the reason the mainstream media and western governments said nothing about it in 2006.
James Cockcroft in Washington explains: “I talk to audiences all over this country… and you’d be surprised how many questions I get from the public [asking], ‘Well, what would Mexico do without us?’ And I gasp, and most Mexicans on the Left would gasp, because without the U.S. calling the shots down there, Mexico would be free for crying out loud. They’d have a democratically elected president, for example, [Andres Manuel] Lopez Obrador.
“The U.S. is meddling all over the map of Mexico and the U.S. investments are sucking money out of Mexico. They’re not creating jobs for Mexicans,” said James Cockcroft, author of “Mexico’s Revolution: Then and Now.” “NAFTA laid off millions of workers. Two, three million peasants have been made landless by NAFTA because cheap corn imports from agribusiness in the north drive them out of business. They can’t even sell their corn down there at a competitive price. Corn being an original Mexican invention.
“Small and medium businesses have had to close down, laying off over a million workers. Why do you think there are eight million unemployed youth today? That didn’t happen overnight. That came from fifteen years of NAFTA strangling the economy or sucking it dry, if you will… Foreign companies come in, make their profits on cheap labor and send it back north. It’s not being reinvested in Mexico. There’s no internal market anymore in Mexico. Walmart controls it, and other large merchandising houses of the United States. Costco is down there, and so on.”
Cockcroft sat for an interview Feb. 10, shortly before his talk at the DC Arts Center, which was sponsored by Dream City Collective, Monthly Review Press and SOA Watch. At that moment, halfway across the world in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s reign was quickly coming to an end. Cockcroft said, “There’s a huge, unusual, never-before type of revolution [taking place]. It’s the first revolution in the twenty-first century and it’s unlike any other revolution in history. It’s extremely self-organized and it’s spreading block to block, town to town, city to city.”
“The forces behind the uprising in Egypt are similar to the forces bubbling beneath the surface in Mexico: downwardly mobile middle classes; professionals, university graduates who can’t get jobs; unemployed youth; and, of course, an impoverished mass at the bottom; and a struggling, unionized or de-unionized flex labor force at the top of the poverty pile and at the bottom of the middle classes.
“All those segments – 70 percent of the population, or 80 percent in the case of Mexico – are angry. And in Egypt they’re coming together… In Mexico, no. It’s not coming together in Mexico… But it could. We just don’t know when the spark will set it all off. Who could have predicted Tunisia? Who could have predicted Egypt? So no one can predict Mexico or who will be next in Latin America.”
If an(other) uprising were to occur in Mexico, the country’s “mainstream” media may be unlikely to cover it from the perspective of the protesters. In his book, Cockcroft writes, “Only 2 percent of Mexicans read a newspaper, and only 4 percent ever buy a book. Everyone has television, and the two TV monopolies, Televisa and TV Azteca, known as the media ‘duopoly,’ are under the iron control of two billionaires topping Mexico’s wealthy elite.”
Cockcroft said, “According to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – the candidate who won by between half a million and two million votes in the 2006 presidential election but had the election stolen from him by the powers that be in the Electoral Council – the media, or the duopoly, is the biggest obstacle to social change in Mexico today… [Lopez Obrador] had a huge sit-in, it was just like Egypt, after the election was stolen from him. It wasn’t covered by the duopoly so the rest of the population didn’t know about it. It ranged from half a million to a million or more people occupying all the downtown streets of Mexico City and the central plaza, the Zocalo, for three months and one week.
“When he realized that this type of social mobilization was not being covered by the duopoly and that in the hinterlands and the rest of the [country]… the word wasn’t getting out about his movement, he launched a newspaper… and he’s trying to create an independent TV channel, but has not been able to. The duopoly is too powerful.”
“Mexico is the second trading partner of the United States and the third largest provider of ‘black gold’ to the northern giant,” Cockcroft writes. “For decades, Washington, D.C. has been pouring military aid into Mexico. In 2008 there were 6,000 U.S. troops on the Mexican border, and in 2010 President Barack Obama decided to send in more… Drones routinely fly over Mexican soil. In the United States, video games show American troops invading Mexico.”
The U.S.’s “War on Drugs” is used to justify sending military aid to Mexico. “The United States is not interested in winning a war on drugs. It’s interested in militarizing countries in the name of the war on drugs… and get[ting] United States private investors’ hands on oil and energy resources,” Cockcroft said. “It’s a war that economically the United States would never want to win. And let me tell you why. The three largest sources of cash flow in what you might call the motor of the modern capitalist economy for more than ten years now has been, in the case of the United States: … the armaments trade…; number two was narcotrafficking; and number three was the sex trade which now many authorities believe is tied with narcotrafficking.
“Keep in mind that there are trillions of dollars involved in narcotrafficking, but all that money has to be laundered. It has to be decriminalized… [and it] ends up in the coffers of… U.S. banks… The laundered money dwarfs the money that was used by the Obama administration, the U.S. taxpayers’ money, to bail out the big banks… These banks, as you know, are doing super well these days. But not just because of the U.S. taxpayers’ bailout, [but also] because the narco money keeps flowing in. There’s an economic vested interest, if you will, behind [the] U.S… championing a war on drugs that they know… cannot be won.”
Cockcroft concluded by urging those in the U.S. to stand with Mexican unions this week. “Starting on Feb. 14th… we have five days of international solidarity with the independent unions in Mexico… The people in Washington can act in solidarity with the brothers and sisters in Mexico… because this is all linked… We’re linking some of our earlier international efforts around NAFTA. We’re linking now with the consequences of NAFTA… This is just a small step… and we’ll need much more in the future. People should get in on the ground floor and take that small step with us [this] week.”
James Cockcroft in Washington explains: “I talk to audiences all over this country… and you’d be surprised how many questions I get from the public [asking], ‘Well, what would Mexico do without us?’ And I gasp, and most Mexicans on the Left would gasp, because without the U.S. calling the shots down there, Mexico would be free for crying out loud. They’d have a democratically elected president, for example, [Andres Manuel] Lopez Obrador.
“The U.S. is meddling all over the map of Mexico and the U.S. investments are sucking money out of Mexico. They’re not creating jobs for Mexicans,” said James Cockcroft, author of “Mexico’s Revolution: Then and Now.” “NAFTA laid off millions of workers. Two, three million peasants have been made landless by NAFTA because cheap corn imports from agribusiness in the north drive them out of business. They can’t even sell their corn down there at a competitive price. Corn being an original Mexican invention.
“Small and medium businesses have had to close down, laying off over a million workers. Why do you think there are eight million unemployed youth today? That didn’t happen overnight. That came from fifteen years of NAFTA strangling the economy or sucking it dry, if you will… Foreign companies come in, make their profits on cheap labor and send it back north. It’s not being reinvested in Mexico. There’s no internal market anymore in Mexico. Walmart controls it, and other large merchandising houses of the United States. Costco is down there, and so on.”
Cockcroft sat for an interview Feb. 10, shortly before his talk at the DC Arts Center, which was sponsored by Dream City Collective, Monthly Review Press and SOA Watch. At that moment, halfway across the world in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak’s reign was quickly coming to an end. Cockcroft said, “There’s a huge, unusual, never-before type of revolution [taking place]. It’s the first revolution in the twenty-first century and it’s unlike any other revolution in history. It’s extremely self-organized and it’s spreading block to block, town to town, city to city.”
“The forces behind the uprising in Egypt are similar to the forces bubbling beneath the surface in Mexico: downwardly mobile middle classes; professionals, university graduates who can’t get jobs; unemployed youth; and, of course, an impoverished mass at the bottom; and a struggling, unionized or de-unionized flex labor force at the top of the poverty pile and at the bottom of the middle classes.
“All those segments – 70 percent of the population, or 80 percent in the case of Mexico – are angry. And in Egypt they’re coming together… In Mexico, no. It’s not coming together in Mexico… But it could. We just don’t know when the spark will set it all off. Who could have predicted Tunisia? Who could have predicted Egypt? So no one can predict Mexico or who will be next in Latin America.”
If an(other) uprising were to occur in Mexico, the country’s “mainstream” media may be unlikely to cover it from the perspective of the protesters. In his book, Cockcroft writes, “Only 2 percent of Mexicans read a newspaper, and only 4 percent ever buy a book. Everyone has television, and the two TV monopolies, Televisa and TV Azteca, known as the media ‘duopoly,’ are under the iron control of two billionaires topping Mexico’s wealthy elite.”
Cockcroft said, “According to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – the candidate who won by between half a million and two million votes in the 2006 presidential election but had the election stolen from him by the powers that be in the Electoral Council – the media, or the duopoly, is the biggest obstacle to social change in Mexico today… [Lopez Obrador] had a huge sit-in, it was just like Egypt, after the election was stolen from him. It wasn’t covered by the duopoly so the rest of the population didn’t know about it. It ranged from half a million to a million or more people occupying all the downtown streets of Mexico City and the central plaza, the Zocalo, for three months and one week.
“When he realized that this type of social mobilization was not being covered by the duopoly and that in the hinterlands and the rest of the [country]… the word wasn’t getting out about his movement, he launched a newspaper… and he’s trying to create an independent TV channel, but has not been able to. The duopoly is too powerful.”
“Mexico is the second trading partner of the United States and the third largest provider of ‘black gold’ to the northern giant,” Cockcroft writes. “For decades, Washington, D.C. has been pouring military aid into Mexico. In 2008 there were 6,000 U.S. troops on the Mexican border, and in 2010 President Barack Obama decided to send in more… Drones routinely fly over Mexican soil. In the United States, video games show American troops invading Mexico.”
The U.S.’s “War on Drugs” is used to justify sending military aid to Mexico. “The United States is not interested in winning a war on drugs. It’s interested in militarizing countries in the name of the war on drugs… and get[ting] United States private investors’ hands on oil and energy resources,” Cockcroft said. “It’s a war that economically the United States would never want to win. And let me tell you why. The three largest sources of cash flow in what you might call the motor of the modern capitalist economy for more than ten years now has been, in the case of the United States: … the armaments trade…; number two was narcotrafficking; and number three was the sex trade which now many authorities believe is tied with narcotrafficking.
“Keep in mind that there are trillions of dollars involved in narcotrafficking, but all that money has to be laundered. It has to be decriminalized… [and it] ends up in the coffers of… U.S. banks… The laundered money dwarfs the money that was used by the Obama administration, the U.S. taxpayers’ money, to bail out the big banks… These banks, as you know, are doing super well these days. But not just because of the U.S. taxpayers’ bailout, [but also] because the narco money keeps flowing in. There’s an economic vested interest, if you will, behind [the] U.S… championing a war on drugs that they know… cannot be won.”
Cockcroft concluded by urging those in the U.S. to stand with Mexican unions this week. “Starting on Feb. 14th… we have five days of international solidarity with the independent unions in Mexico… The people in Washington can act in solidarity with the brothers and sisters in Mexico… because this is all linked… We’re linking some of our earlier international efforts around NAFTA. We’re linking now with the consequences of NAFTA… This is just a small step… and we’ll need much more in the future. People should get in on the ground floor and take that small step with us [this] week.”
Wednesday 2 March 2011
American socialism - for the defence corporations and banks
America's national security budget is between $1.2 and $1.6 trillion . That's about $7000 for every taxpayer. It cant go on!
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone strikes again
Megacrime pays!
"As for President Obama, what is there to be said? Goldman Sachs was his number-one private campaign contributor. He put a Citigroup executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in Chase stock, his new chief of staff. "The betrayal that this represents by Obama to everybody is just — we're not ready to believe it," says Budde, a classmate of the president from their Columbia days. "He's really fucking us over like that? Really? That's really a JP Morgan guy, really?"
Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses.
So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?
The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.
"As for President Obama, what is there to be said? Goldman Sachs was his number-one private campaign contributor. He put a Citigroup executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in Chase stock, his new chief of staff. "The betrayal that this represents by Obama to everybody is just — we're not ready to believe it," says Budde, a classmate of the president from their Columbia days. "He's really fucking us over like that? Really? That's really a JP Morgan guy, really?"
Which is not to say that the Obama era has meant an end to law enforcement. On the contrary: In the past few years, the administration has allocated massive amounts of federal resources to catching wrongdoers — of a certain type. Last year, the government deported 393,000 people, at a cost of $5 billion. Since 2007, felony immigration prosecutions along the Mexican border have surged 77 percent; nonfelony prosecutions by 259 percent. In Ohio last month, a single mother was caught lying about where she lived to put her kids into a better school district; the judge in the case tried to sentence her to 10 days in jail for fraud, declaring that letting her go free would "demean the seriousness" of the offenses.
So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?
The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.
Tuesday 1 March 2011
Bank of England governor blames spending cuts on bank bailouts
Mervyn King tells MPs: 'The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it'
MISSIVE FROM THE RANTING BLOGGER:
Mervyn King has let the fat cat out of the bag. I think this commenter put it well and he's talking about me too. I hope he is wrong:
What sort of a people simply stand back after being hammered by the worst financial crisis (far worse than the rest of Europe), have the worst governance in Europe, the worst levels of crime, the biggest gap between rich and poor in the EU, a mindlessly plebian popular culture filled with cookery programmes and reality TV and simply do nothing? What is it about the British people in 2011: a race who seem to have apathy, spineless, blandness, coldness, rabid selfishness, arrogance and inertia pretty much hardwired into their DNA now and only get passionate about 11 grown men kicking a fucking ball around an acre of green turf, or the amount of money they can personally screw out of their fellow man - usually through landlord/tenant bondage?
Quite frankly this country is finished and the Tories, the Labour Party (basically now no more than the visionless public sector arm of the Tory Party), the aristocracy, the right wing tabloid press, the chavs, the bankers, the privatised utilities and most of the 0.45% 'superior race of mutants' who go to Oxbridge - which entitles them, almost as if by divine right, to 90% of the most important positions in the land have pretty much reduced the majority of us to the level of feudal villeins. Anyone who is decent, kind, intelligent, works hard, pays their taxes and tries to do the right thing but comes from a family without money and earns between £15K and £30 K is effectively beaten into meek submission, treated like medieval villeins and reamed hourly by the above mentioned gallery of grotesques. What a sad country this has been reduced to!
Will it ever change? Will we as a nation ever acquire any backbone? Sadly, I don't think so. And what is most of the herd's answer to this miserable situation at the moment? To endlessly eulogise about that wonderful and moving examplar of British culture 'The King's Speech' is: a film which harkens back to the glory days of 1936: the year not only of King George VI's accession but also of the Jarrow marches. Why didn't they make a film about that instead? Because Helena Bonham Carter wouldn't exactly look right in a North of England back to back scraping lard onto the cat's boil. That's why!
Oh, and let's not forget the royal wedding! People (excepting Americans) must just look on us overseas and just think we're bonkers for putting up with such a system. And who is the most militantly pro-royal section of society. The right wing working class! Is it any wonder there has never been a revolution in this country? Even my Indian housemate is now saying that he thinks Britain is an unjust country. The aristocracy must be laughing their heads off when, they in fact, they should be having having 'em lopped off.
Well, on 29th April this one ranting blogger certainly ain't 'gonna party like it's 1789!'
Anyone up for a Republican Street Party? My blog or yours?
MISSIVE FROM THE RANTING BLOGGER:
Mervyn King has let the fat cat out of the bag. I think this commenter put it well and he's talking about me too. I hope he is wrong:
What sort of a people simply stand back after being hammered by the worst financial crisis (far worse than the rest of Europe), have the worst governance in Europe, the worst levels of crime, the biggest gap between rich and poor in the EU, a mindlessly plebian popular culture filled with cookery programmes and reality TV and simply do nothing? What is it about the British people in 2011: a race who seem to have apathy, spineless, blandness, coldness, rabid selfishness, arrogance and inertia pretty much hardwired into their DNA now and only get passionate about 11 grown men kicking a fucking ball around an acre of green turf, or the amount of money they can personally screw out of their fellow man - usually through landlord/tenant bondage?
Quite frankly this country is finished and the Tories, the Labour Party (basically now no more than the visionless public sector arm of the Tory Party), the aristocracy, the right wing tabloid press, the chavs, the bankers, the privatised utilities and most of the 0.45% 'superior race of mutants' who go to Oxbridge - which entitles them, almost as if by divine right, to 90% of the most important positions in the land have pretty much reduced the majority of us to the level of feudal villeins. Anyone who is decent, kind, intelligent, works hard, pays their taxes and tries to do the right thing but comes from a family without money and earns between £15K and £30 K is effectively beaten into meek submission, treated like medieval villeins and reamed hourly by the above mentioned gallery of grotesques. What a sad country this has been reduced to!
Will it ever change? Will we as a nation ever acquire any backbone? Sadly, I don't think so. And what is most of the herd's answer to this miserable situation at the moment? To endlessly eulogise about that wonderful and moving examplar of British culture 'The King's Speech' is: a film which harkens back to the glory days of 1936: the year not only of King George VI's accession but also of the Jarrow marches. Why didn't they make a film about that instead? Because Helena Bonham Carter wouldn't exactly look right in a North of England back to back scraping lard onto the cat's boil. That's why!
Oh, and let's not forget the royal wedding! People (excepting Americans) must just look on us overseas and just think we're bonkers for putting up with such a system. And who is the most militantly pro-royal section of society. The right wing working class! Is it any wonder there has never been a revolution in this country? Even my Indian housemate is now saying that he thinks Britain is an unjust country. The aristocracy must be laughing their heads off when, they in fact, they should be having having 'em lopped off.
Well, on 29th April this one ranting blogger certainly ain't 'gonna party like it's 1789!'
Anyone up for a Republican Street Party? My blog or yours?
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