| that's rich |
[Aug. 11th, 2011|04:05 am] |
So the banksters spend the last three years pillaging the world's public assets, driving us all into serfdom, and the corporate media tell us we're simply to suck it up and tighten our belts. But if some povvo kids in London should spend three days organising to nick flatscreens, well that's the end of fucking civilisation as we know it, apparently. Perhaps they've internalised Chicago-school 'free-market' ideology? They're only following the example of their betters, surely?
And don't you just love the way the coverage focuses largely on the looters, while the grievances of the rest of the populace are mentioned dismissively, almost as an afterthought? The wide disconnect between the people at the top and people on the street is becoming more and more obvious. A few examples of what I mean:
I've heard a lot of idiotic statements regarding these riots, but particularly eye-popping was this from one Nigel Farage, former bullion banker and current MEP, who actually had the audacity and/or brain damage required to utter the following:
"What is so extraordinary and perhaps even more frightening about this is there is no real political motive, there is no real cause, this is just mass criminality on a quite unimaginable scale.”
Now wouldn't that be an apt description of multinational corporations? Putting irony to one side, though, I seem to remember, back in June, 750,000 public sector workers marching in the streets of London, protesting the cuts. How much airtime did they get? Did the government alter its plans at all? I put it to you, Nigel old boy, that if people's sociable communications are repeatedly ignored, they'll be more and more likely to resort to less sociable means of getting their message across. Nigel goes on to call for the government to set the army on the rioters.
Lest you think this an isolated case, check this myopic article in the Telegraph, all the more scary for taking a puported left-wing angle on events. For a true taste, however, of the manner in which our species is doomed, just skim through the comments.
Finally, for a little relief, we have writer/broadcaster and Brixton resident, Darcus Howe, railing against the condescension and manipulation of a BBC interviewer. My favourite quote: "I don't call it rioting, I call it an insurrection."
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| settings change: from easy to hard |
[Aug. 1st, 2011|12:12 pm] |
I made a guess in January and also back in 2008 that the US dollar would fall on 15 August 2011, a fortnight from now. We're talking a psychological marker here, like 1929's Black Thursday - this transition is, of course, taking longer than a day. Global monetary collapse was already well underway in 2008, so my remarks were less oracular vision, more attempt to bring concreteness to a concept: that sometime in the next five years say, the world's economy will shift from easy money to hard money. That is, from debt-based currency to actual commodities.
This fiat versus gold tussle has flipped back and forth throughout history, but historians are more eager to tell us about symptoms than causes. War, revolution, famine, massacre, mass-migration, plague; exciting reading. The economic crises which precede them? Dull. Rothschild could dare to say it explicitly - "Money's in the driver's seat, bitches!" - knowing that the dullness of economics would bite the peasants in the arse yet again, nonetheless.
Just ask the South Africans. Mandela may sign the Freedom Charter into law in front of the cameras, but if Mbeki's in the back room handing all the cash to the bankers, how's it gonna get funded? Johannesburg is the city of the future.
The GFC is, itself, a symptom of something deeper - the oligarchs are wrapping things up. Whilst they were busy colluding to steal everything off everyone else, debt was allowed to expand willy nilly. But as the paper storm settles, and they get a lock on all the gold, title deeds, IP and our serfdom, that's when they turn on each other, and things get feudal.
Can I provoke no discussion here? Are we all too busy 'liking' each other on Facebook and polishing our fucking iPhone screens to consider the battle of our era? Will we take our eyes off the Spike for long enough to notice the Crunch coming right in front of it? (What do you think Stephenson's been writing about all this time?) Must humans always wait until they're going hungry before they can get off their arses?
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| surreal news |
[Mar. 8th, 2011|02:36 am] |
On the subject of news, today's Democracy Now has, besides Hillary, several unusual interviews from inside Libya, and a rabble-rousing speech by Michael Moore in Wisconsin.
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| the Egyptian example |
[Feb. 12th, 2011|02:02 am] |
That's how it's done, people of Earth. Freedom is not granted, it is claimed. Now begins their long work, never complete, of growing and maintaining this newborn freedom.
How long before the rest of us recognise the common cause we share with the Egyptians and Tunisians? Omar Suleiman was right - this revolution was provoked by foreign powers - corporatism, acting through his puppet regime. This force is alien to Egyptians, and to all of us. It does not act in their interests, nor in the interests of any land.
The world's oligarchs have seceded into outer space (to quote Arundhati), and from these heights they've declared war on humanity. They plan to reduce us to serfdom. Will we let them carry out that plan? They almost managed it in the 1800's, but our ancestors had the guts to fight, to buy with blood what little freedoms we have today.
Freedom, though, is prone to entropy, like any living thing. We've become distracted, complacent, docile - no wonder things are falling apart. No government ever gave us anything we did not take to the streets to demand. That time has come again, to get out and find each other, to join our voices and realise: Them is Us. A culture of selfishness dooms us all to slavery.
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| 100 元 |
[Jan. 9th, 2011|01:11 pm] |
(That's 100 RMB, or 100 yuan, if you prefer)
Great Recession? Come on, a little honesty in labelling, please. The Greater Depression, at least. Or, if we don't get off our arses soonish, The New Dark Ages, perhaps.
In 2008 I asked if any of you would care to guess the date of the demise of the US dollar. I put 100 RMB on 15 August 2011. That bet still stands. Are there no takers?
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) tcpip, you said at the time that I'd made an educated guess. Now, you've a fair bit of education yourself, I do believe, so what would your guess be?
We're talking a psychological date here, obviously. The Great Depression took around three years to go from peak to trough, starting around August/September 1929. Even the precipitous Wall Street crash that began on 24 October took over a month, but it was 29 October they called Black Tuesday - the day people realised they were in free fall.
Of course, our current slide is following a somewhat different trajectory - the world's nation states being extorted into up-ending their treasuries into the banks has produced a long pause, for instance. The money from this shake-down is beginning to wear off, however, while the conditions that formed the original crisis have been left pretty much unchanged, so sooner or later, something has to give.
strangedave, you said, twice, that America would opt for a soft landing via deflation. I didn't get the chance to ask you what you meant back then, but it didn't make sense to me. Three quarters of US dollars are owned by foreigners, with vanishing hopes that the US can ever make good on the value of these. When the currency in which you owe a debt deflates, the debt grows in real terms. For a soft landing, the US needs a long steady inflation.
( The dollar is... ) |
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| signs and portents |
[Dec. 7th, 2010|10:34 pm] |
trickle down - we read their email
net polarity - commons enclosure stage two
dead peasants - fucked coming and going
dollar bubble - forty years in making
have won - Buffett might now say
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| quotes for our times |
[Nov. 23rd, 2010|11:10 pm] |
You know, I have stopped being able to think of things like
Americans and Indians and Chinese and Africans.
I don't know what those words mean any more.
Because in America, as in India and in China,
what has happened is that the elites of these countries
and the corporations that support their wealth
have seceded into outer space.
They live somewhere in the sky,
and they are their own country.
Arundhati Roy
Money is a new form of slavery,
and distinguishable from the old
simply by the fact that it is impersonal,
there is no human relation between master and slave.
Leo Tolstoy
There's always free cheddar in a mousetrap, baby.
Tom Waits, God's Away On Business
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| mindless propaganda |
[Aug. 18th, 2010|06:40 pm] |
My sticker campaign for this election.
Being broken-legged,
I didn't spread them about as much I'd like,
but it still brought me a little happiness.
In the spirit of the major campaigns,
I aimed at the emotions rather than the intellect.
( more mindless propaganda ) |
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| fickle mush-heads |
[Aug. 17th, 2010|04:38 pm] |
[flist: please ignore, ranting at nation]
They're telling Dick Smith to stay out of politics.
I guess reasoned argument has no place in politics,
just like facts have no place in organised religion.
Is it just me,
or is this election campaign particularly stupid?
I mean, I know, catering, as they do
to the fleeting, skittish moods of the swinging voter,
they generally are. Stupid.
But this...
the relentless repetition of focus-grouped keywords
to the point of gibberish,
the figurehead obsession,
the mind-numbing fear ads,
the insistent pro-money media cant,
and so on, all turned up to 11,
unrelieved at any point by even a moment of soul.
We kneejerk our way to the polling booth,
presented with a surreally irrelevant selection of ( issues: ) |
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| something i never thought i'd think |
[Apr. 9th, 2010|05:02 am] |
Just watched the latest MediaWatch on iView,
a special edition of interviews with newspaper bigwigs
talking about the death of their industry.
Rupert Murdoch tells us that if we want quality journalism,
we'll have to pay for it.
Next, I watched WikiLeaks latest feature video,
and I thought to myself, Rupert, you may be right.
So I made a donation to WikiLeaks.
There's your new business model, you fucker.
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| burning the kids' dinner? |
[Feb. 8th, 2010|05:07 pm] |
peak natural gas = peak food
the more succinct version:
peak energy = peak population
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| pocahontas in space |
[Jan. 2nd, 2010|05:18 am] |
Saw Avatar recently, with mixed feelings.
I tried to stay focused on the excellent graphics,
the intriguing and textured milieux,
but in the end, the story bugged me too much.
They coulda done so much with that premise,
and only managed a ripped off colonial tale;
no alien story here, just an all too human one.
That the viewpoint was sympathetic to the noble savages,
and equated corporatism with colonialism,
couldn't quite console me -
they didn't do anything very daring in that arena,
and I couldn't manage to forget that
the whole spectacle was sold to us by 20th C Fox.
At least WB, with the Matrix, showed some gaul
in their marketing to the subversive demog.
( Cameron's developed Lucas' Syndrome ) |
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