You are currently browsing the monthly archive for June 2010.
Media Lens offers a valuable service of presenting the news that does not make the front page of the newspapers (or even the back page) and providing analysis and edification that does not come with the mandatory business class prism. This excerpt can be found on their web page.
Beyond Corporate Propaganda
In his latest excellent book, ‘Beyond the Profits System’, the British economist Harry Shutt observes that one of the most striking features of the financial crisis has been:
“… the uniformly superficial nature of the analysis of its causes presented by mainstream observers, whether government officials, academics or business representatives. Thus it is commonly stated that the crisis was caused by a combination of imprudent investment by bankers and others […] and unduly lax official regulation and supervision of markets. Yet the obvious question begged by such explanations – of how or why such a dysfunctional climate came to be created – is never addressed in any serious fashion.”
Shutt continues:
“The inescapable conclusion […] is that the crisis was the product of a conscious process of facilitating ever greater risk of massive systemic failure.” (Harry Shutt, ‘Beyond the Profits System: Possibilities for a Post-Capitalist Era’, Zed Books, London, 2010, p.6)
In several books and articles, David Harvey, a social theorist at the City University of New York, has cogently written of how capitalism has shaped western society, risking and even destroying nations, populations and ecosystems. Not only are periodic episodes of “meltdown” inevitable, but they are crucial to capitalism’s very survival. The essence of capitalism is self-interest; and any talk of reforming it through regulation or by imposing morality – a kinder, gentler capitalism – is both irrational and deceitful.
The bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008 triggered the latest crisis of capitalism. Drastic action was required to save the system. And so, observes Harvey, a few US Treasury officials and bankers including the Treasury Secretary himself, a past president of Goldman Sachs and the present Chief Executive of Goldman, “emerged from a conference room with a three-page document demanding a $700 billion bail-out of the banking system while threatening Armageddon in the markets.”
Harvey continues:
“It seemed like Wall Street had launched a financial coup against the government and the people of the
Things they do not teach you in Economics 101.
United States. A few weeks later, with caveats here and there and a lot of rhetoric, Congress and then President George Bush caved in and the money was sent flooding off, without any controls whatsoever, to all those financial institutions deemed ‘too big to fail’.” (David Harvey, ‘The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism’, Profile Books, London, 2010, p. 5)
Shutt translates “too big to fail”, that over-used defence employed by capitalists and their cheerleaders, as meaning that a tiny super-wealthy clique recognised that they risked losing vast fortunes if the markets were allowed to take their course free of intervention from the state. Wholesale nationalisation of insolvent banks would have posed an existential threat to elite power; or even led to the collapse of the capitalist profits system in its entirety. Rather than accept such a fate, rich investors tried to ensure that their toxic assets be “largely transferred to the state, thereby adding unimaginable sums – officially estimated at $18 trillion world-wide – to already excessive public debt.” (Shutt, op. cit., p. 36)
As ever, the public were made to pay the price for private greed. In simple terms: it’s socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the rest of us.”
Make no mistake, capitalism for the rest of us, is no happy place.
The more I blog, the more I reveal about my dark seedy underside and nerdulous past. I cannot help it, I am greatly amused by this.
Read the entire comic here.
Water Closets raided! It could happen to you!
The long arm of law has been plunging the depths of the criminal world and victory has been achieved; the CBC reports the following:
“OTTAWA – Ottawa police have arrested a man with an apparent penchant for toilet flushers.
Police allege a man stole flushing mechanisms from public and private toilets across the capital.
The targets included restaurants, shopping malls, hospitals, medical clinics and private sector facilities.
Police say the electronic and manual flushing mechanisms have an estimated value of about $100 to $1,000 each.
Robert Morissette, 51, was arrested last Tuesday and is charged with 24 counts of theft under $5,000, 24 counts of mischief to property under $5,000 and 24 counts of breach of probation.”
24 counts! That is awesome! Let it be known here in Canada we will not be acommodating toilet thievery of any kind!
When toilet thievery just is not enough, summon the awesomness of Chuck Norris!
Can you feel the cultural acceptance?
Usually I start with the text and add the pictures later. Not today, the image via Sociological Images, pretty much tells the entire tale by itself, but I will add my two cents anyways.
Short version: Life is not worth living unless you are skinny.
Everyone wave now, let us bid good bye as the culturally accepted norms of fashion and beauty leave the real world and enter into the magically untouchable Platonic ideal. The story, philosophically speaking, would end here because Platonic forms are just that; a interesting story and a fascinating thought experiment. Unfortunately for us the dictates of fashion and beauty transcend the theoretical with grievous consequences for the typical imperfect-Platonic being.
The culture meme that thin=sexy, healthy, desirable etc. and fat = ugly, gross, repugnant is perpetuated daily by the fashion and beauty industries (and of course the weight loss industry). These spheres of intent are completely invested in the theme of “your body is grossly imperfect, but if you buy or do “X” from us we can fix it”. Let us examine some of the more hurtful motifs that arise from these industries:
People who do not fit the cultural norms of beauty hear this ALL the time.
Sadly, I was going to preface one of my paragraphs with that little nugget of wisdom in the lower right hand corner(*). Why is that on the fat hating bingo card? Why are any of the responses there? They are there because they are used to shame and discriminate against the outliers of cultural normalcy. These phrases are crucial to the “othering” process and establishing the in-group/out-group distinction that is so profitable for the fat-shaming industries.
Observing fat-shaming in action one can see how artificial and contrived the entire process is. The consequences though are far from artificial as peoples’ lives are destroyed as they desperately try to conform to some manufactured cultural ideal that they will almost never achieve.
* sometimes I forget that people are not me and my experiences. The bottom right corner square is generally true for me: When I increase my activity level, I tend to lose weight. However, this is not necessarily the case for everyone as everyone brings a distinctly different package of genetics and environment to the able.
quag·mire
1.
an area of miry or boggy ground whose surface yields under the tread; a bog.
2.
a situation from which extrication is very difficult: a quagmire of financial indebtedness.
3.
anything soft or flabby.
Sometimes it is good to get back to basics when dealing with complex issues like our ongoing colonial occupation war in Afghanistan. The CBC reports:
“A dramatic increase in the number of homemade bomb attacks is part of an “alarming trend” in Afghanistan, a UN report released Saturday said.
The report to the UN Security Council said bombings and assassinations have soared in the past four months amid ramped-up military operations in the Taliban-dominated south.
The number of attacks involving improvised explosive devices increased by 94 per cent over the same period in 2009, while assassinations of Afghan officials rose by 45 per cent.
“The rise in incidents involving improvised-explosive devices constitutes an alarming trend,” the report said.
Suicide attacks occurred at a rate of about three a week, half in the restive south. Such bombings have tripled this year compared with 2009.”
Is any of this really surprising? I mean, Afghanistan is the anvil on which Imperial armies go to be smashed. It has happened before, and will happen again. So why is Canada still there? Are we really preserving freedom and democracy? Fighting terror? It is all rather nebulous.
“Nevertheless, the UN found the number of security incidents had “increased significantly compared to previous years,” in large part because of more military operations in the south early this year. NATO spokesman Brig. Gen. Josef Blotz told reporters in the capital on Saturday that despite negative assessments, the international force was making steady strides.
“Tough fighting is expected to continue, but the situation is trending in our favour as more forces flow into the area,” Blotz said.
“It has to be tougher perhaps before it goes easier,” Blotz said.”
I think the only statement that contains a grain of truth is Blotz’s final one. It will get tougher and I highly doubt it will get easier as time passes.
Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan ends in 2011. Not a moment too soon.
I am going to use the discussion points found on RichardDawkins.net as the basis of this feature.
Calilasseia is the author of the post and deserves many rich accolades for assembling so much useful information in one spot. This constitutes an open thread of sorts, please leave your opinions and observations in the comment section.
I get this one, or variations on it on many discussion threads. The confounding of religion and science is all to common as methods used to criticize one are not necessarily suitable for critiquing the other.
Enjoy!
[2] Science is NOT a branch of apologetics.
Science is as far removed from apologetics as it is possible to be. Science exists to subject erected postulates to empirical test with respect to whether or not those postulates are in accord with observational reality. As a consequence, science is in the business of testing assertions and presuppositions to destruction, Those that fail the requisite tests are discarded. Science modifies its theories to fit reality. Apologetics, on the other hand, consists of erecting convoluted semantic fabrications for the purpose of trying to prop up presuppositions and blind assertions, involves NO empirical testing, and seeks to force-fit reality to the aforementioned presuppositions and blind assertions. Therefore, treating science as if it constitutes a branch of apologetics is dishonest, and those who engage in this pursuit will be regarded with due scorn and derision.
Among the more duplicitous examples of such dishonesty, all too frequently seen here in the past, is quote mining of scientific papers or scientific publications. There are entire websites devoted to the exposure of this particular brand of dishonesty, and anyone making the mistake of erecting quote mines here will have their buttocks handed to them in a sling.
Religion is dangerous.
One can arrive at that conclusion just by reading the sundry magic books and see the horror that they proscribe. Rape, slavery, torture and genocide round out biblical and koranical ‘solutions’ for societies problems. A rational being must question the veracity and utility of texts written some two thousand years ago. How does bronze age wisdom ‘fit’ with modern times and the challenges we face? Put simply, there is no fit, yet these fictive texts possess remarkable traction with many people. One must credit the church’s programs of propaganda and the institutional indoctrination of the young for religions’ unfortunate longevity.
I think the problem that religions are facing today is that the mendacious rosewater the major religions have been using to mask the river of shit routinely fed to the devout masses now simply fails to hide the intrinsic cruelty and barbarity that is inherent in religious belief. The one thing that religions cannot tolerate is careful rational examination. The Internet allows for the safe uncensored debate of almost any religious issue; and subsequent analysis is then generally free from religious reprisal. People can freely discuss the merits of the magic books openly and are not meekly accepting any particular religion’s claims at face value.
The Internet is where Religions come to die, because their rotten structures can be exposed for the malicious structures that they are. One of the more diabolical religious practices comes from the ‘religion of peace’ otherwise known as Islam is the so called honour killing of women who bring shame to their families. To expunge this shame, women who are raped, violate arranged marriages or even dress inappropriately can be killed to restore ‘family honour’.
People who say that Feminism has ‘achieved its goal’ really need to open their eyes and take a look at the world around them. Patriarchy thrives within the suppuratingly rotten edifice of religious belief. The struggle for women’s rights in far from over because things like this still happen within our supposedly civilized society.
“The father and brother of Aqsa Parvez, 16, have pleaded guilty to killing the Mississauga, Ont., teenager in 2007.
Muhammad Parvez and Waqas Parvez pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Tuesday and now face automatic life sentences.”
Father and son, both religiously frakking deluded embark upon the grizzly task of cleaning their families’ honour by killing Aqsa Parvez. It make perfect sense after all, she went against her Father’s wishes. And what were the great stains against the Father and the Son?
“Aqsa Parvez wanted to get a part-time job and be allowed to dress and act like other teenage girls in her neighbourhood… [Furthermore Aqsa] “did not have a door on her bedroom, her freedom to talk on the phone with friends was restricted, she was required to come straight home from school and expected to spend her evenings and weekends at home as well.”
Wow, just like in the Old Country where Men were people and Women were slaves. And we do know the consequences for habitually disobedient chattel women:
“On Dec. 10, 2007, Aqsa was taken from the school bus stop by her brother at approximately 7:20 a.m. It was just 36 minutes later that her father called 911 and told police he had “killed his daughter.”
Police arrived and found Aqsa on her bed.
“She was fully clothed and had her jacket on. She had no vital signs. There was blood coming from her nose,” according to the statement. She was pronounced dead later that evening.”
Aqsa had been staying away from home, she had known before that her life was in jeopardy, and had taken refuge at friends houses and a shelter. Her demise was hastened by religiously addled relatives who convinced her to go home again.
“In an interview with police, she says her husband told her he killed his youngest child because “this is my insult. My community will say, ‘You have not been able to control your daughter.’ This is my insult. She is making me naked.”
A big hat tip to Islam for being so frakking rational. Religion enables this sort of gross violation of human rights, and needs to extirpated from rational secular democracies such as ours.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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