cultural hegemony = skewed data

in an uncharacteristic and pretty much impulsive act ( which should have the marketers among you salivating since impulse is your god ) i bought a local newspaper today to go along with the n y times that comes to my door ( no i don't trust them either...but it is the paper of record...read it...check out the evening news...epiphany ) after being suitably unimpressed i began to look for crossword puzzles...one happened to be in the "jobs" section...some section...one piece of standard newsprint folded into the standard four pages you get out of one...the front page was consumed by advertizements and an article about the perfect resume and the back page was all adverts...page two was half consumed by an advice column on workplace interactions and the continuation of the resume article and a third of page three was the crossword...that left room for ads or 45 jobs...the "official" unemployed class in lake county indiana is 19,628...you can add ninety percent to that because politicians cook the numbers out of political expedient...not many jobs for all those poor sods...but the dow is soaring ( mostly because a bunch of bankers have sworn on a stack of bibles that they'll save the euro form the intrinsic nationalist loathings that have been on the loose in europe forever and a day...good luck you technocratic morons..irreducible ethnic nationalism will stick a shiv up your ass and smile while doing it )...but that bunch of penguins is no good as an indicator of the real world...they're just betting...and mostly against the rest of us...it's an election year and the whores are going to tell you it's better than it really is and try to sell you on how they can make it better while saying as little of anything substantive about things as they can...they are part of the hegemonic culture with a vested interest in keeping us uniformed about real conditions because if we start to change things they stand to lose wealth and power ( which would be a good thing as far as i can see...but i read a lot and that isn't healthy in the orthodox view of the elite )..so? start thinking critically people and work on the skills and shadow institutions you 'll need to save yourselves when the whole thing implodes ( when? who knows but resource substitution is idiocy and economists are the new alchemists trying to make gold out of base metals all the time not realizing that the ensuing glut would make it more worthless than it is as anything but a fair conductor of electricity...shiny lead...the rest is an abstraction...have a hard look at a natural economy and tell me it will withstand endless extraction...someone should teach these fools some biology)...in the end they are doomed to morph into fascists as they are faced by the threat of substantive change from below...then chicago becomes aleppo...and whoever is presidents turns int bashir al assad

fuck these people

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/08/magazine/can-the-democrats-catch-up-in-the-super-pac-game.html?hpw _____________________________ joseph schumpeter hit the nail on the head when he said there isn't any "common good' involved in american politics...only a contest for votes after which the needs and interests of "the voter" become secondary ( if that ) to the interests of those who fund the campaigns...and joe died in 1950 so there isn't much of anything new in this observation...the system has been seriously skewed since at least 1789 and it is humming along the way the framers intended...they couldn't have foreseen the technology or the obscene amount of money that would come to be involved but the basic strategy of marginalizing the political will of any majority would come shining through to them and their ultimate approval...jay madison and that ass hamilton belong at the center of the lake of fire with old bill maclay standing over them pouring on the brimstone...i don't care who is "in the white house... the interests they represent are not my interests and never will be...time to save your own damned self...these jokers don't give a rat's ass what happens to you once you cast a vote.

july 3rd 1790

"these yorkers are the vilest of people. their vices have not the palliation of being manly. they resemble bad schoolboys who are unfortunate at play: they revenge themselves by telling notorious thumpers. even the new england men say that (rufus) king's character is detestable...a perfect canvas for the devil to paint on; a groundwork void of every virtue." the journal of william maclay 1789-1791. july 3, 1790. _________________________________________________________________________ rufus king was a senator from massachucetts and one of those "new england men" who kept the tariff bill bogged down in committee after committee so that their "constituents" could profit by charging their "customers" for a tariff they had yet to have to pay...another of thst "nest of vipers" old bill had to serve with and whom he detested so much for their backroom deals and manipulations of public policy for private profit...as the foul slide into the cesspit of the 2012 presidential election gathers unrelenting speed and generates a massive amount of cash for the correctly placed public relations firms and media outlets let's stop to consider that the system isn't broken...its well oiled hamiltonian/hegemonic culture machinery is humming along just as it was meant to...not that the goebbels of his time could foresee the technological gizmos or the finely tuned and byzantine ethical rationalizations that would develop..but he'd surely recognize the spirit of the system as an old, familiar friend it is...swilling from the trough of public policy has deep roots in america...a storied tradition with the likes of roscoe conklin and william howard taft as leading characters...willing to sell out the "voter" at the drop of a five dollar bill much less a greasy paper sack of wilted hundreds...bath house john and hinky dink called it "honest graft"...but they were small-time operators in a chicago ward with a parochial outlookon "honest" that viewed the everleigh sisters as upright and charles tyson yerkes as a role model......i'm inclined to call it a corrupt system run for corrupt ends ...and if joe, barak, hillary, mitt, or that lame assed quitter from alaska don't agree send them around...i'll be happy to give them an anti-federalist tutorial on madison jay and hamilton that would leave the tea party hacks gasping for breath and stampeeding the exits.

so is this freedom or indoctination

the "nanny" is part of a full page ad in today's new york times attacking bloomberg's proposed ban on "sugary" drinks over 16 fluid ounces, placed by something called consumerfreedom.com ( if you're going to propagandize people why not turn a profit while you're at it? nothing dr. goebbels wouldn't approve of...he wasn't stingy when it came to taking care of himself...why should these guys? )telling me i have a right to induce type 2 diabetes if i want and who is the government to tell me what i can and cannot pound down? the fact that most of those "sugary" drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup ( the drink of the devil ) seems to be eluding ( or is being obfuscated )most of these bozos...fuck the indoctrinators...watch "king corn"...read some of marion nestle's blogs on hfcs...and make your own choice...i've dropped fifty pounds in the last few years mostly by avoiding anything with hfcs in it like the plauge...i don't much like government or its institutions but the empirical evidence tells me that consumerfreedom.com is a scam front for the hfcs syndicate and they can go get bent.

objective journalism and the new gladiators

"in what the bbc called the 'rumble in the rada', parliamentarians tumbled over their desks in the parliament chamber in kiev, the capital, on thursday night, trading blows, tearing shirts, and choking on another as reporters and specatators in the balconies whistled and cheered. one deputy, thrown head first into a chair, turned ans tunbled back into the melee. another flipped over a bannister, feet flailing." new york times 5-26-2012 ____________________________________________________________________________ this is where the political system in this country is seriously lacking...all the heated ( albeit pointless ) rhetoric and personal attacks are only really used during campaigning...after the elections the whores get down to the serious business of defending the interests of their handlers which leaves them pretty much on the same side...difficult to work yourself up into a bludgeoning fury with someone you're on the same page with...the ideological orthodoxy of the congress is a major roadblock to the expansion of political bread and circuses in whoretown...there needs to be a sharper philosophical contrast across the aisle...there hasn't been a good caning in congress since preston brooks beat the daylights out of charles sumner on may 22, 1856...a one hundred and fifty-six year drought...bringing the style of the ufc to the floor of congress would generate a good deal of political interest and strengthen c-spans dismal ratings..a little mayhem could recharge the system without really compromising the special-interests-r-us basis for legislative activity...earmarks, campaign finance reform, and closer oversight by the sec would not be high on the lists of concerns of the new class of "voter" this sort of entertainment would generate and it would vastly expand the donor base for politicians...think of the marketing potential for tee shirts and iron-tipped walking sticks emblazoned with the name of the latest political victor in a debate turned battle royal..there's a goldmine in this people...and if there's one thing that captures a politician's interest it's gold...another opportunity missed because of the growing decadence coupled with a lack of vision and political fortitude that has gripped the nation's capitol...another american tragedy.

ngos, neo-colonialism, and you

this 'attention economics' is a two-way business. while western societies become involved only if old colonial ties are still a factor or if a vital source of materials is affected, the local combatants in protracted wars gamble more and more on triggering mass poverty and refugee flows to spur the west into relief initiatives that can be fed back into the economy of violence." ____________________________________________________________________________ harald welzer. Climate wars:why people will be killed in the twenty-first century. ____________________________________________________________________________ "the manner in which humanitarian aid is given can also influence opportunities for corruption. aid given in the context of humanitarian relief can assume a number of forms. the current predominant model is that of direct project implementation by international agencies. this model has partly developed due to the perceived risks involved in transnational aid resources delivered to national actors...aid recipients have very few powers of sanction in relation to aid providers, while the latter can choose for themselves the level at which their work is subject to scrutiny." ___________________________________________________________________________ corruption in humanitarian aid. transparency international. ___________________________________________________________________________ so...ngos are hip to the "economy of violence" which is simply a variation of extortion in which unscrupulous elites wage war on some minor segment of their population to generate internally displaced persons and a humanitarian crisis that will draw aid agencies like flies and provide them with the means of making a decent living at the expense of the balance of their people...nothing new in that...capital has refined the mechanism to the point that violence is only necessary when they are faced with the threat of substantive change form below...then they simply declare the pursuit of change criminal and build more jails...nations in the southern hemisphere often lack the resources to enact this sort of subtlety and so are forced into the cruder methods discussed above...in an effort to curb this sort of thing ngos have developed a sort of neo-colonial approach well suited to the bureaucrats-in-waiting that those who staff then are..a sort of proxy for the "western societies" that have grown sensitive to the criticisms of their former subject peoples and the need to present an enlightened facade to the world while still finding a way to engage in exploitation..rather than turn the aid supplies over to omar al-bashir, sharif sheikh ahmend, or mahinda rajapaksa, they'll go in and set up their own little satrapy independent of any sort of local input or oversight and distribute aid to whomever they deem worthy of help...a sort of "thin red line" for the twenty-first century holding the carrot of humanitarian aid instead of the traditional musket ( this, of course, is still available for use if the area contains a resource that is "vital" or if it is in a position to impede access to said resource...these, rather than the conservative bugbear of "nation building" or the equally fatuous contention of "spreading democratic ideals", have been the driving force behind the imperial wars of the last decade...the empire is finding its extended borders more and more difficult to defend and the imminent financial collapse won't be simplifying the task of maintaining the empire's power base...the "american century" is truly over...reality simply eludes the knee-jerk reaction of the elite...give it time ) maintaining an old tradition of subjugation to the colonial master's needs with new methods...there may have been a time when i felt that the good groups like amnesty international and oxfam did outweighed my misgivings about, among other things , how much of my donation they applied to their ostensible "work" and how much they used to solicit further donations from me and anyone else that found their way onto their mailing lists...that view has fled screaming into the night...pretty soon oxfam will be a pentagon sub-contractor.

pundit plays catch-up

"all these tensions over land, water and food are telling us something. the arab awakening was driven not only by political and economic stresses, but, less visibly, by environmental, population, and climate stresses as well." thomas l friedman. n y times 4-8-2012 ____________________________________________________________________________ "in 'revolution and rebellion in the early modern world' university of california sociologist jack goldstone makes an excellent case for how the english revolution of 1640, the french revolution of 1789, the various revolutions in central europe in 1848, the jelali revolts in the ottoman empire, and rebellions in imperial china all emerged from the inability of regimes to deal with problems arising from sustained population growth and natural resource depletion." robert d kaplan. "the ends of the earth: a journey to the frontiers of anarchy." 1996. p.117 ____________________________________________________________________________ "elements of modernization and judicial dispute resolution, which were introduced in more peaceful times thirty or so years ago, swept away traditional strategies for problem solving or reconciliation without establishing new or functioning forms of regulation." harald welzer. "climate wars: why people will be killed in the 21st century" 2012 p.59 ___________________________________________________________________________ looks like old tom finally got around to reading bob's 1996 tome on the subject of the connection between resource depeletion and conflict...maybe he picked up a copy of the "post-carbon reader" or, better yet, read some richard heinberg...this bozo has been stumping for the globalitarian elite for decades folks and his sudden conversion is suspect in my eyes...it is the west's concept of "progress" that destroyed the traditional cultures in much of the world to benefit an economic elite that could then exploit the vacuum left behind as the displaced fled to urban slums ( see mike davis's book "planet of slums" for a detailed account of the destruction and subsequent "horizontal" proliferation of unholy slums around cities like lima and lagos ) and became cheap labor and fodder for anything you can do with expendable humans...the egyptians had a traditional culture that farmed the nile river valley for millenia tapping into the yearly deposit of rich silt delivered by the annual nile flood until old gamel dammed it up at aswan...now the delta is eroding and sinking...and how much chemical fertilizer do egyptian farmers now use and who sells it to them? seem my point? there's no whore like a reformed whore and if this isn't some sort of scam to increase the leverage of tom's economically well placed handlers i eat my hat with no salt...someone needs to kick tom in the nuts if for nothing other than being so far behind the curve on something i have been reading about for decades...maybe we could get bob kaplan or thomas homer-dixon to tutor the poor fool and get him up to speed...or get the n y times to banish him to the globe or the national enquirer where he belongs.