subversion minded news

on strike against the bankers

2008-12-10T22:58:00.000-08:00

well, the chicago window factory sit in that shook the nation's bankers with the thought that workers might start to attack the other source of their employers' profits -- the bankers with their loans -- has come to an end, establishment news sez: "The workers’ anger grew after they learned that the company owners had formed a new window company, Echo Windows LLC, and bought a new plant in Red Oak, Iowa, where labor costs are cheaper." what's next, mexico? indonesia? i thought they were strapped for cash and couldn't get a loan? well, i suppose they just wanted to maintain a steady rate of profit of some pre-set quantity... "A spokesman for the company would not comment about the Iowa factory. Union officials also said they were creating a foundation to collect donations to try to reopen the factory here." good old union, helping the employers out.

through their establishment-friendly "unions" (no more than interclass "unions" of interests, the robustly muscled left arm of the State), workers have made deals with employers that assumed that they had plenty of money that they skimmed off the top of the labor of the masses, that assumed that money and value really came from work and time. now the employers have been cut off from the teat of easy loan money, and the workers are left out in the cold. the protest signs, which read "you got bailed out, we got sold out," should have read "you got free money, we got expensive money." money is indeed expensive; it's paid for with hours that otherwise would have had a million possibilities, with a freedom that could have been anything -- freedom exchanged for an illusory stability. now all the stability's gone; the house and the factory and the car, all paid for with loan money, all never really yours, are now being reclaimed by the banks, whose time has apparently come. so many credit ratings, so little time, so much profit to be made ... and everyone's credit got thrown out of whack by the thousands of AAA ratings given to CCC packages of securitized loans, even the bosses'. Of course they have plenty money saved, I'm sure, but "what, you think i'm going to dip into my own pocket for that?"

When the boss acts like he can't pay, take it to the next level; because apparently the banks are the ones really profiting off our labor; the employers that workers have always fought with such ideology-softened gusto were not the ones creating money out of thin air by lending and re-lending and re-lending ad infinitum; they were just trying to pay back the high-interest loans created in that process that allowed them to have a business, and, using the machinery they got with your labor and their loans, to squeeze the most possible out of you whenever they get a chance.

everything costs so much, but those who build it all are still paid so little. the bigger the loan the more magical money out of nothing, so over time large scale projects have come to cost millions when they should only cost thousands... or nothing at all if we ever create a rational society where everyone gets whatever they want for free and works for fun, instead of paying for everything and living a work-gripped hell. this week the workers at republic windows perhaps foreshadowed with their saga a greater epic tale to come, wherein the workers of the world will unite, since they have nothing to lose but time and a fat loan to gain... or perhaps an even greater one where the employers of the world will break up, since they have nothing to lose but their gains and a new world to spin.

the banks and bosses are witches,
creating money out of nothing
and doing weird rituals in the woods of global commerce.
burn em at the stake
and see whether they melt like a pollution coated glacier!
throw em in the lake
and see if they float like an inflated dollar!

Bush 2006 credit system overhaul causes crisis:

2008-12-06T00:07:00.000-08:00

credit and credibility on PBS...

and then here's bush back in 2006...
the credit agency reform act of 2006.

figure out for yourself what's really going on... here's an article on it from CFO magazine (snicker).

here bush makes any credit agency with a few years' experience authorized to help throw the credit rating system completely off balance and build a mass of fictitious money for a bailout to make real... so that his proportional cut is that much of a fraction greater? so that his friends can live high off the fantasy-money hog? to be able to pay for a good credit rating? only time will tell, what hell they'll sell.

another victim of schooling

2008-12-01T03:38:00.001-08:00

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Kolkata_/Fear_of_failing_test_drives_girl_to_suicide/articleshow/3777457.cms

yemeni cops: "we fired only in the air"

2008-11-28T08:31:00.001-08:00

Once again the State uses deadly force to shut up those who still insist on dialogue in spite of all the incoherent rambling and lies they only ever get in response...
The world over, people seem to be getting tired of asking the State for reform. If they haven't yet, this kind of thing should hip them to what's really going on.

What's the point of asking questions when the answer is a gun butt to the face? What's the point of believing in your country when your country doesn't believe you ...or in you? The state, eternally authoritarian and suspicious, allied with Capital, eternally pandering and deceitful, and with the Socialists, eternally arrogant and power hungry, have once again defeated the people. "What happened in San'a today was a strong expression of the popular rejection of authorities' attempts to falsify the elections," the socialist bureaucrat-in-training Yaseen No'man said. "It's clear evidence that people rejects anyone forging their will." He doesn't realize that elections themselves are forgeries of the people's will, and that the people also reject functionaries taking credit for their actions and "explaining" them.

The Socialists are the second biggest party and used to rule in Yemen; if the vote-rigging the yemenis were protesting yesterday were to be banned, as the Socialists who 'organized' the protest want (obviously the people organize everything real for themselves, and the socialists take the credit) and the Socialists ushered back into control, the only difference would be a socialist gun butt in the face. Hopefully the people of Yemen and the world will see this brutality as just another example of why protest needs to go further than the simple demand for honest elections and arrive at the demand for a radically different society, and not just a more well-regulated and slightly less hypocritical one. When people realize they need to see an end to representation itself instead of being told they want to see more fairly chosen representation, then and only then will we have an end to the violence of the dominant politics and its loyal opposition.

bureaucrats: "This one was significant; this one got our attention,"

2008-11-28T08:11:00.000-08:00

The age of computerized, non-feeling warfare with the press of a button run by agents of the state has its necessary corollary in viruses such as "agent.btz," which apparently has pretty badly messed up the computer systems of the department of offense. The establishment media says that though "Defense officials would not describe the extent of damage inflicted on military networks...they said that the attack struck hard at networks within U.S. Central Command, the headquarters that oversees U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and affected computers in combat zones. The attack also penetrated at least one highly protected classified network."
A ban on flash drives everywhere has been the result, as subversive programs ...or ideas... might be contained on them: not in response to actual virii, but in response to potentially viral videos, the mil has also blocked youtube and set up "trooptube," where everything gets filtered through the pent-a-gone. As the authoritarians press further into their endless war, I won't be surprised if we see more and more of these kinds of attacks. Anti war soldiers (the number is apparently steadily growing) put an end to Vietnam; with the recent rejection of the SOFA by the rebellious little toy soldiers of the iraqi puppet parliament --not that it's good enough, since they're still not ALL OUT RIGHT NOW-- and the growth of the IVAW, not to mention the increased frequency of hack-attacks and virii, the reign of the technocrats and their electronic wars is feeling the heat. Perhaps they will get the hell out of the kitchen and let the people get a chance to have something to eat.

thai police chief lets his masters down, gets the boot

2008-11-28T07:47:00.000-08:00

the protesters who have taken over two main airports in bangkok seem to be saying no one can fly in and out of this country without acknowledging the misery the government inflicts on the people...

from the establishment media:
"People's Alliance of Democracy activists have said that they are prepared for violent clashes with the police after Prime Minister Somchai declared a state of emergency at the airports. The activists, who regard Somchai as a puppet of ousted former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, are demanding that he resign. Somchai has refused to do so, saying that his democratically elected government is legitimate. Thousands of holiday makers have been stranded by the stand-off."

The "poor handling of the situation" (i.e. not massacring them all?) led to the firing of the police chief, whose job was to make sure that people could go on having their nice holiday in other people's oppression without hassles. "Gen Patcharawat Wongsuwan said Monday he was sorry that police's dispersal on protesters on October 7 resulted in deaths and injuries." Perhaps his apology made him look too soft to the dictator Somchai, who probably should have been banned from politics for 5 years like his wife, whose violation of election laws cost her her right to participate in buggering the people. The corrupt Somchai is of course no worse than Cheney, since both do plenty private business with public funds, and get contracts for their companies from the governments they run.

somali pirates seize saudi oil tanker

2008-11-17T16:34:00.000-08:00

The gigantic oil tanker seized by Somali pirates today is perhaps to become the first in a line of seizures of the system's favorite, most precious commodity. Somali pirates could potentially disrupt the entire global economic system by their attacks on shipping lines; a suitable revenge for the international community's abandonment of that country in the past years because of its low saleability. An Auschwitz's worth of starved Africans every day (20,000 persons) isn't considered an economic crisis, perhaps it will now begin to have to be.

Starvation pushes people into a corner, and when they finally fight back everything's fair game. The oil cartels, speculators, and oil corporations kill and steal daily; now it seems that at least some people have had it, and are taking a radically new kind of action, interrupting the dialogue of commodities (free trade) with the clatter of pirate gunfire. In the pirate haven of Eyl, pirate money seems to be the only thing financing any infrastructure or services, since no government exists and the capitalists don't care about the people any more than the Islamic Court system does.

Contrary to anarcho-capitalist rantings, anarchic Somalia is certainly not a free country; it is a country in chaos -- but it is indeed finding non-coercive self-organization and a kind of civil self-governance through Xeer 'law', which pre-dates the arrival of 'civilization,' and keeps society functioning (to a degree) without a central government. Cooperation from what little 'government' exists in Puntland (perhaps friends of the pirates) apparently helps them sell off their bounties.

Military vessels, oil tankers, chemical ships have all been seized; but many more of them have repeatedly spilled their 'goods' into the ocean anyway, polluting it irreversibly as the commerce they were intended to be integrated into pollutes all life. It's no great loss when the captain of the ship fouls the job and spills oil across hundreds of miles of coastline, and they certainly won't take responsibility for it; will they pretend to care now? Will they negotiate with these pirates for their precious, world strangling 'product', thereby recognizing the real seizure of political power these hijackings imply? 11 ships are currently held by Somalian pirates.

Hostages don't do the trick anymore; you can't use them for bargaining, since people don't matter in the society of the spectacle -- only commodities do. Perhaps they should just give up and figure it in as an "externality;" after all, they've externalized life itself.

From the BBC (bullshitters broadcasting cliches)

"In the past week alone:

• A Russian warship in the Gulf of Aden drove off pirates who tried to capture the Saudi Arabian merchant ship Rabih

• Pirates hijacked a Japanese cargo ship off Somalia

• A Chinese fishing boat was seized off the Kenyan coast

• A Turkish ship transporting chemicals to India was hijacked off Yemen

• The UK's Royal Navy shot dead two suspected pirates attacking a Danish cargo-ship off the coast of Yemen"

G20 accomplishes nothing but a lot more money spent and pollution caused

2008-11-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

The Argentine delegation arrived late, prompting another delegate to remark, "see, this is why we can't have a G20" since obviously all those third world bureaucrats are only a third as punctual as the rest in arriving at the necessary conclusions or fantastically decorated destinations; the short duration of this spectacular show of hands approving of their master's voice (bush: "more deregulation") guaranteed that nothing would be done, but that the carbon footprint of the event would be huge... financial times remarks "perhaps they were trying to demonstrate their superpower status by traveling in their huge planes with a superpower-sized entourage. They'd already proven how good they are at wasting everyone's time and money, and now they've proven how good they are at wasting gas.

Air France strikes follow Alitalia wildcat

2008-11-14T22:15:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7729586.stm

Today the pilots of Air France struck for four days to protest a retirement age change of five years passed in parliament, while Alitalia came to the fifth day of their wildcat, creating what appears to be an uptick in momentum for the working class in the airline industry. Their industry has been taking a series of hard hits lately, and now the workers, in protest not only against the company, but against the state, have seen the class enemy weaken and advanced against it. After all, the ruling class is still on the offense: "'The economy is in tough shape,...'What you want to do is to be able to manage down your capacity so you don’t have to lower your prices,'" said Delta President Ed Bastian.

In times of crisis, the proletariat must hit hard against the weakened bourgeoisie, and, like these workers, punish the State for its attempts to ease the financial blowback from the frenzied loaning and invented money that started the corporations. The State, in this case apparently colluding with the money-desperate owners of Air France and other airlines to squeeze another few years of wage-slavery from their pilots, always makes the workers into a cushion for the moneyed class to fall back onto when it trips on the piles of loans it scatters everywhere to decorate its world.

The company's chairman wrote an open letter to the workers, telling them the strike was dangerous because it might destroy the company financially and end up "damaging their careers." But whether workers voicing their legitimate demands through strike action, one of the few weak weapons allowed them, will end up causing them to lose their jobs because of the economic collapse of the industry as a whole is of course an absurd question, since the capitalist system is in fact destroying itself, and always blames it on the workers. Proletarians can only rid themselves of the blame and guilt complexes educated into them by speaking out and revolting, since in their silence only the patronizing, other-blaming voice of the system is heard.

Bush: "free market principles have delivered prosperity and hope to people around the world"

2008-11-13T16:53:00.000-08:00

Today Bush had mental diarrhea and we got to catch a whiff of some of his finest defecations yet. What prosperity and hope has been given to the people of the world by the princes of the world with their principles of free trade? None; the people of the world have given prosperity and hope to the free traders with their principled submission and slavish work-ethic.

Bush is quite concerned that even though you can fix most everything by just saying "mistakes were made," you can't go on doing that forever, and for some reason he acted as if it were important that people realize that the answer is "not to try to reinvent the system".

Perhaps he's feeling the heat; perhaps he is sensing that the political system is irrelevant and outdated, like a fundamentally authoritarian system feeling for some reason the need to hold 'elections' to justify itself to the ruled, but one way or another, today Bush felt the need to inform us that even though capitalism is "not perfect", it is nonetheless "by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy". But without capitalism, what is left of economy?

Only the economy of human dialogue and self-management, where a supply of ideas and energy balances harmoniously with a demand for abundance and prosperity... but is that anywhere near Bush's conception of 'economy?' of course not. When Bush thinks 'economy,' he's thinking of everything that exists, everything that's 'structured.' The world is reduced to economics in Bush's brain just like it is in the brain of a typical communist bureaucrat, but the former likes things as they are, whereas the latter wants to turn them downside up... which of course is still off kilter, and of course never simply smashed. Are any of these magical characters worth listening to?

According to the news, Bush's message was: "while financial markets do need some new regulation and more transparency, free trade should not be restricted." According to the bureaucratic false opposition: "while the economy does need some new managers and more bureaucratically managed welfare systems, hierarchy should not be restricted." According to the subversion-minded: "while capitalism and all its 'economy' do need to be completely abolished, all hierarchies done away with and religions given up, freedom should not be restricted."

Obama inherits imperial slaughterhouse

2008-11-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

Every time you pull the voting-lever, press the touch-screen, or pop out a chad, a flag covers another coffin.
I won't vote to indicate my preference for one or the other of the puppet bureaucrats in the farce.
I won't dip my hands in the blood.

Now that Obama has inherited the war machine's controls (or at least a seat in front of The Button), all one can really do is laugh to think that so many people believe in politicians and, emotionally invested in their fate, cry with joy to see them gain power.

All the electoral confidence-brokers (politicians on the ballot) are essentially gaming for the same kind of power over people and 'honors' as 'heroes,' for a license to dictate morality and force. Plus, though we attach ourselves to a given candidate, it's never really them we're putting in power by fabricating their authority with votes; we're putting in all his favorite lobbyists and clients, his whole stock portfolio, and all his business and political colluders.

I hope the new ownership doesn't let down all the people that believe so much in the Obama campaign (political drug-party), but I doubt any politician could come up to such messianic expectations.

No one can save the country from the morass that Bush and a dying capitalism have plunged it into except the people themselves, and with such star-studded, superficial, prejudice-laden, spectacular elections, where a VP candidate can be picked only for her "gender" and a big deal can be made of one of the candidates because he's "black" (though indeed he appeared quite orange on TV), it's obvious that our interest in the whole system is waning if not gone.

McCain: "we never hide from history"

2008-10-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

If the War Zero thinks America doesn't "hide from history" he should consider the way it's dodged the Native Americans.

Here's a little history America likes to hide from:
TRAIL OF BROKEN TREATIES

Veterans trampled underfoot

2008-10-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

"Ten members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)were arrested and trampled outside the final presidential debate at Hofstra University on Wednesday, October 15." ...And the blood-streaked horse-drawn imperial cart trundles along to the slaughterhouse, crushing those who pave its road under its treads.

... "The veterans and their supporters were met by riot police as well as police on horseback. After a tense standoff for five minutes, police used their horses to attack the crowd, knocking over and trampling several — including Army Sergeant Nick Morgan (pictured), who suffered a broken cheekbone." You break your back for them... They break your face. You paint their bulkheads and polish their brass... and they paint the asphalt with your ass.

They didn't want much, just a chance to ask a few simple questions of the elites in charge, who push their lives around like chess pieces. "The questions IVAW wanted to ask were:

"To Obama: 'As President of the United States of America, are you prepared to back up your own words [about the illegality of the Iraq War] and the U.S. Constitution by supporting service members refusing to participate in what you describe as an illegal occupation?'
and to McCain: 'What promises are you willing to make, as a veteran, as a senator, as a presidential candidate, to the veterans of the United States, to prove that you will ensure the V.A. is fully funded, staffed and capable of preventing troops from suffering as they are now?'" Demands in full

I hope those guys are all reading http://militaryproject.org. Support the troops that refuse to fight... Nurture your newly regimentation-liberated minds, former soldiers, as you learn to fight for freedom and not for power.

Chomsky: "The roots [of the crisis] go back to the liberalization of finance in the early 1970s."

2008-10-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Loan to em all and let the market sort em out. The massacre goes on... Chomsky tells us what's happening in the economic collapse today. The word "Credit" comes from the latin 'credere' meaning 'to believe' or 'to trust.' The banks don't trust each other anymore, the government doesn't trust the people, and the people don't trust the government, much less each other. The general collapse of trust in society goes hand in hand with the general collapse of magic 'credit' money; the only way we've known how to help one another out is by promising to pay back the favor, and unthinking gift has been taken over by exchange. Is it any wonder that we've become so alienated? We have an ideological crisis as well as a financial one in this country: America doesn't trust itself, doesn't believe in itself, and is lashing out aimlessly like a scared child who can't be the big tough bully anymore. American politicos and financiers wanted money for nothing, and they created massive amounts of fantasy money on top of their unstable holdings. Now a lot of the safety valves appear to be broken.

Hunsinger: "The credit crisis is devastating and has done a lot of damage in the real economy,"

2008-10-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Florent Hunsinger works for Cantor Fitzgerald Europe as an 'equities analyst.' What does an equities analyst do? Does he analyze the 'quality of being fair and impartial' (definition 1) like Fux news? Or is he looking at 'stocks and shares with no fixed interest' (def 2)? I think the latter. So what with the way they jacked up interest rates behind people's backs in this submortgage ripoff, this whole deal would then be his specialty...: "The credit crisis is devastating and has done a lot of damage in the real economy," he says - way to pat yourself on the back there pal. Good work! It's speculators like him that created the credit freeze, which is colder than the Prez' heart of stone as he kills another Iraqi by proxy.
In their scared little world, every time Paulson or Bernanke burp the shares drop. So what happens when a whole chorus of 'mortgage securitizers' start a-farting up a storm and all of a sudden your country's sitting on a throne of junk paper? As the ever-hip New Yorker magazine depicts, Mr Suit's eyes start bleeding as he watches his precious stores of other people's money dry up. And wheeling his wheelbarrow full of dollar bills down to the Savings & Loan, Greenspan appears to have had second thoughts and dropped out of the picture... good; it's his fault too that all this is happening. At the summit I mention in an earlier post, "leaders from the G20 group of nations - the world's leading industrialised countries and major developing nations - will attend." They will talk about what their friend 'the market' is up to. Whoever that is. The G20 people will bicker and hassle one another about the portion of their respective bailouts of the rich speculators will go into the coffers of which of their favored campaign contributors, and the portion that will go into their own pockets, and then cuss and discuss the whole 'actually doing something about it' deal. Meanwhile someone else from the lower economic echelons just got foreclosed on, a squatter took over a bank-owned 'asset,' and the rumblings of protest were muffled once more.

India looks for water on the moon, Ganges not cutting it

2008-10-21T19:49:00.000-07:00

"Despite significant economic progress, a quarter of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40 per day. In 2004–2005, 27.5% of the population was living below the poverty line." 74 percent live on less than 2 dollars a day. Meanwhile this mission to the moon is costing " 3.8bn rupees (£45m; $78m)." So that's where all the money goes! What high-octane hypocrisy!
Like people living near the Ganges, the rest of humanity is also dumping its corpses in the water supply and suffering the consequences of a world that has been reshaped to keep sacred cows alive and let people die. So, instead of rectifying the problem, they seek to escape it, with a "satellite [that] blasted off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota ... One key objective will be to search for surface or sub-surface water-ice on the Moon, especially at the poles." Now that we've polluted this planet's rivers, streams, sources, etc. (as the near-cliché goes), let's get our water from the moon. And anyway then we'll know if there was ever life on the moon. At least we're sure of one thing: there ain't much life here.
The Scientists seem very concerned about the history of stellar bodies; "The ratio of magnesium to iron for the whole Moon tells you to what extent the Moon melted and what it did after it formed." That'll be good to know while people are starving here on this planet for such vitamins and minerals. It probably also tells them to what extent the moon contains such important 'resources.' Maybe we can mine the moon next in keeping with the exploitation-riddled history of this planet.

Gates: "'Dramatic consequences' if Washington and Baghdad do not agree a security deal"

2008-10-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

In Korea, where the SOFA (status of forces agreement) allows soldiers to rape, insult, rip off, and even murder people with impunity, the US have gotten what they want to have now in Iraq.
"Failure to finalize the Sofa or renew a UN mandate would mean US operations would have to be suspended. The UN mandate for US-led coalition forces expires at the end of the year." Good! Maybe then they'll have to face the people of the world and bald-facedly tell them they're doing this unilaterally and with no real backup from anyone. (The UN mandate thing is of course a joke, pressure-grouped into existence by the American money-bag-swingers, who've beaten the UN and everyone else into submission with their sacks of oil streaked coin.) "The pact is said to grant Iraqi judicial authorities limited ability to try US troops and contractors for major crimes committed off-duty or off-base - and only then if a joint US-Iraqi committee agrees."

If local "justice" systems can't do anything about US soldiers hassling the locals because their jurisdiction is stolen from them by a SOFA deal, it's just another aspect of the theft of space by American military bases in foreign lands; theft of jurisdictional space. So much land -- so little (prosecutable) crime.
Apparently Gates doesn't want our boys to be held responsible for a little mischief now and then. An ex-soldier I spoke with recently bragged to me about his 43 confirmed kills, and complained that in the military too many laws and regulations kept him and his platoon from 'getting the job done;' now he's in Blackwater, where he doesn't have to worry about pesky 'laws' and 'regulations' getting in the way. I realized about half-way through the conversation that I was talking to a mass murderer. Listening to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, we ought to be clear on the fact that we're listening to one, one who'd like to don judge's robes on top of his blood-stained uniform.

35 Afghans dead the day after NATO said 'read my lips - less new air strikes.'

2008-10-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

"Residents said at least eighteen bodies, [ranging from six months to fifteen years old] were pulled from the rubble, with another twelve said to still be buried underneath." That six month old was a real threat to NATO... but so is all life, I suppose. The forces of regimented, robotic, impersonal slaughter from aircraft from Afghanistan to Alaska have struck another heroic blow for the great, grand, glorious 'coalition.' Whether wolves, men, women or babies, when you destroy their lives with weapons beyond all sense you can't even know whether they'd done anything wrong, much less whether they'd had beautiful dreams on their last night alive, whether they ever had a chance to smile at a sunset, ...nothing.

Jamaica puzzled by theft of beach

2008-10-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

Ever since the Arawak and Taino peoples were eradicated from Jamaica a little after the Spaniards came, so they could use those islands as a base to attack the rest of the Americas, they've been beach-thieving down there... Of course this one actually has to do with a hotel being planned there. It would be nice if it were a spontaneous bunch of people trying to stop the tourist machine cutting out new pockets in the impoverished island's pants.

Strauss-Khan: "With my full support, the I.M.F. is examining an incident which occurred in my private life"

2008-10-18T17:02:00.000-07:00

Well well well, if it isn't another friendly sex scandal in and out of high offices. “This is a very bad time for a leadership distraction,” said Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the I.M.F. Leadership distractions, of course, are like pie, and there's always room for pie. Delicious cyanide pie, like all the other ever bigger (or smaller) slices of the pie we're served. ...Of course the pie is full of crises, genetically engineered into the sickly body of capitalism from the start.
The great white I.M.Father got it on with "Piroska Nagy, who was a senior official in the I.M.F.’s Africa Department. Ms. Nagy left the fund in August as part of a buyout of nearly 600 employees instituted by Mr. Strauss-Kahn to cut costs." And him and his IMF were always experts at cutting costs (as well, of course, as throats, water, trees, corners, etc.) in Africa. Another story that cries Wolfowitz. But as for old man Paul, "by contrast, Mr. Strauss-Kahn is generally liked and respected at the agency."
Too bad to lose a good apple in such a barrel of fun as the mosquitolike plague of foreign lands, the IMF... What the world-monopolists can't kill with guns, they kill with loans. It's obvious by now what happens with a system based on loans.
I guess the managing director got a loan with just a little too much interest on it from old Ms Nagy.

Bush: "it is essential that we preserve the foundations of democratic capitalism"

2008-10-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Today, in a great access of hypocrisy, Bush, having smashed those "foundations," gets offered and agrees to take the grave responsibility of hosting another futile summit.

"On Friday, Mr. Sarkozy said, 'Together we need to rebuild a capitalism that is more respectful to man, more respectful to the planet, more respectful to future generations and be finished with a capitalism obsessed by the frantic search for short-term profit.'"

Sarkozy, champion of short-term profit, certainly a great disrespecter of persons, if not of "man," is now itching to be finished with "A" capitalism (capital-was-m), though certainly not capitalism itself. Does perhaps that "a" stand for "anarcho" capitalism? We'll be screwed by either this that or the other. May their summit fail harder than a thousand WaMus.

"Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Barroso contend that the financial crisis presents a good opportunity to tighten oversight and better coordinate the financial markets around the world." Yes, and the political crisis presents a good opportunity to frighten sheepish types and better pollute our mentalities around the world. The crisis -- they conveniently forget, is also their own total discredit, for having basically pulled a katrine response team on the whole deal. What a laugh. We'll see how badly it goes after a few weeks i guess.

subversion minded news

2008-10-18T16:44:00.000-07:00

here i will be reporting on reports, making news new, and generally casting a corrosive derisive glance at miscellaneous self-absorbed spectacles of misery and happiness.