What Alison Says About Librocon Assault on Democracy

This is what I've wanted to write about but haven't had the time. I agree with Alison and the blogs she links to.

Financialization Again

Just putting a bug in people's ears. I agree with the folks at Monthly Review who explain that the phenomenon of the financialization of the economy is a response to the declining rate of profit in practical economic activity in the developed countries, and that it isn't a policy decision that can be changed by persuasion or by government fiat. Very simply, the declining rate of profit at the end of the capitalist "golden age" from 1945-73 was met with a trio of policy responses: liberalization, globalization, and financialization. All three were meant to lower the operating costs of capitalism, but all three simultaneously demolish the foundations of the wealth of the society from which capitalism (like a parasite) feeds.

Liberalization removed rules, regulations, restrictions, that impeded immediate profit maximization in the capitalist centre. Taxes, unions, environmental regulations, barriers to trade, etc., all had short-term costs to capital but all contributed in one way or another to creating a stable, equitable, and therefore wealthy society from which capitalism reached unprecedented heights of prosperity.

Globalization removed the barriers to capital moving about the globe putting labour into competition again and putting governments on notice that there was now a competition between regulatory and taxation regimes. These are the "free trade" deals which have always been more about the competing centres of world capitalism (USA, Europe, and Japan) constructing their own economic zones wherein their capitalists were free to create systems of domination over weaker national "partners." This influx of capitalists' rights has raised living standards in some cases (South-East Asia, China) while lowering them in others (Mexico, India). I don't think the prosperity of any of these places is guaranteed. China itself is building its future on supplying dirt-cheap labour to North American and Japanese capitalists to supply North America's debt-drowned consumers.

Financialization has been the capitalists' attempts to sever their bonds from all this messy bothersome business entirely and to create fortunes out of thin air called derivatives made up of esoteric products designed by complex mathematical equations. Alas, for them, these derivatives have to be based on something in the real world and since there's really nothing going on to satisfy the needs of this increasingly huge pool of liquid capital, this leads to speculative bubbles that inevitably explode. These bubbles have been getting increasingly large and increasingly unstable.

The point though, is that this response is RATIONAL from a capitalist's point of view. There's no other option for them. That's why there needs to be a revolution so that the wealth of society is not controlled by profit-maximizing elites but by the whole of society itself. How to run this society is in dispute but it MUST be as democratic as imaginable.

Suppression of the Left

From CommonDreams, Lydia Howell's "Is Progressive Dissent Public Enemy #1?"

The pretext for the raids was investigating “material aide to terrorists”, resulting in grand jury subpoenas and confiscation of computers, books, music CDs and from one home, a Martin Luther King poster. The targeted Minneapolis activists have openly protested US military policy since the 1980s. The FBI certainly knows they have nothing to do with terrorism. These activists simply have the audacity to challenge bi-partisan US invasions, occupations and support for dictatorships and human rights abusers. Dissent on the left has long been seen as ‘criminal behavior’. Where once “the communist threat" was the argument for such repression, now, “terrorism” is.

Read the whole thing. It's chilling. And testimony to what I said long ago:

It's pretty obvious that the mainstream media fears the left more than it does the right. For all their talk of "rebellion" the armies of the right-wing don't really call for anything that threatens the elites. True, the right-wingers are racist and angry/stupid, and they need to be controlled like unruly dogs, but they can generally be counted on to line-up behind a status-quo political party, and do what they're told to do. If they have complaints, it's generally that the political party isn't as enthusiastic enough in pursuing wars that it wants to pursue, and in trashing the social safety-net that many of these right-wing jerks actually depend on or would benefit from.
...
The elites fear the left, because the left has more brains, uses those brains to actually expose the workings of the system, and calls for changes that genuinely threaten the position of the elites. Exposing imperialism and imperialist wars. Thwarting the "divide and conquer" racist policies of the right-wing, capitalist class. Resisting the police-state powers that would give them greater control over our lives and allow them to crush genuine protest. Renouncing the materialism that the elite's fortunes are based on. And calling for the equitable division of society's wealth with all of humanity, which threatens their entire position.

I believe that's even more true today.

Would You Kill Hitler to Save the Planet?

Just thinking about stuff after reading this:

If the Arctic becomes six degrees warmer, then half of the world's permafrost will likely thaw, probably to a depth of a few metres, releasing most of the carbon and methane accumulated there over thousands of years, said Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and a world expert on permafrost.

Methane is a global warming gas approximately 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO₂).

That would be catastrophic for human civilisation, experts agree.

As a culture, we are apparently quite content to let ourselves be ruled by a business-government-media elite that will spend (in Canada) over $10 billion propping up narco-pedophile-torturers in Afghanistan, but which refuses to acknowledge the real crisis of global warming.

What is to be done?

Bill Maher on Islam

Now Bill Maher is an okay guy so far as US-American liberals go. I don't agree with everything he says by any stretch, but for such a backward, indoctrinated political culture he's done a good job of establishing an independent viewpoint.

I don't even take much issue with most of what he says in this "New Rules" segment wherein he basically says that of all the world's religions, it is really only Islam that wants to kill infidels and blasphemers:



Except that I want to add the following. I think people in India might have something to say about religious violence. And Maher had best read Jeremy Scahill's writings on Christian-fanatic-violent-deranged-nut-job Eric Prince and his gang of murderous Jesus-freaks in Blackwater:



Like Maher, I wish all religion would simply evaporate until there's only the awe at the MYSTERIES of creation left. But let's try to think of all the examples we can of religious insanity first, before we utter such triumphant praise for our culture and way of life.

Financialization

The folks at the Marxist journal Monthly Review have some important things to say about the INEVITABILITY of financialization for a mature capitalist economy. Financialization refers to the growing importance of the financial sector in the economy (a process most exemplified by the USA and UK economies) wherein investment stops going towards manufacturing and towards speculation and the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sectors.

The authors point to writers who say that financialization increases the likelihood of economic bubbles and underlying stagnation but disagree with them for saying that financialization is an avoidable, reformable problem within capitalism. In fact, they write, financialization is the most sensible, rational course for a mature capitalist economy that has produced all the wealth that it is going to under present political-economic conditions:

Yet, the idea of the “crowding out” of investment by financial speculation makes little sense, in our view, when placed in the present context of an economy characterized by rising excess capacity and vanishing net investment opportunities. There are just so many profitable outlets for capital in the real economy of goods and services. A very narrow limit exists with regard to the number of profit-generating opportunities associated with the creation of new or expanded automobile or appliance manufacturers, hair salons, fast food outlets, and so on. Under these circumstances of a capital accumulation process that lacks profitable outlets and constantly stalls, the amassing of more and more debt (and the inflation of asset prices that this produces) is a powerful lever, as we have seen, in stimulating growth. Conversely any slowdown in the ballooning of debt threatens that growth. This is not to say that debt should be regarded as a cure-all. To the contrary, for the weak underlying economy of today no amount of debt stimulus is enough. It is in the nature of today’s monopoly-finance capital that it “tends to become addicted to debt: more and more is needed just to keep the engine going.”32

Still, as important as financialization has become in the contemporary economy, this should not blind us to the fact that the real problem lies elsewhere: in the whole system of class exploitation rooted in production. In this sense financialization is merely a way of compensating for the underlying disease affecting capital accumulation itself. As Marx wrote in Capital, “The superficiality of political economy shows itself in the fact that it views the expansion and contraction of credit as the cause of the periodic alterations of the industrial cycle, while it is a mere symptom of them.” Despite the vast expansion of credit-debt in the capitalism of today, it remains true that the real barrier to capital is capital itself: manifested in the tendency toward overaccumulation of capital.

So, we don't need to reform capitalism. We need to replace it.

James O'Keefe (Nothing Important)

Still have a lot to say about a lot of important stuff, but no time. No time. No time.

So, just for shits n' giggles, I present (for those who missed this mini-event) this guy:

James O'Keefe's plan to "punk" a female CNN reporter who wants to do a story on young conservatives.

James O'Keefe is the infamous video-fraud who pretended that he strutted into ACORN offices dressed like a 1970s pimp to get their help setting up a bawdy house with his teenage hooker girlfriend in order to smear that worthy organization. He took video footage of ACORN workers answering different questions, or refusing to help him altogether, and sliced and diced things so as to be able to allege that ACORN was helping run a nation-wide child prostitution ring.

Then the dipshit got arrested trying to bug a US Senator's office.

But enough of all that. Let's just read this guy's:

"Seduction" scenario:

James was supposed to tape the following script before the meeting on the boat.

"My name is James, I work in video activism and journalism. I've been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort..."

"Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath."
[...]
It goes on to explain how James should "adapt" to my mood on the boat.
"As the operation is going on, James will have to adapt and adjust to her mood and her reaction. If she is pulling away, withdraw and pull her back in. If she's unsure, comfort her and reassure her. Vacillate between somewhat serious interview and the come-hither persona as needed in order to confuse her judgment and also keep her on the boat."

The boat in question was going to be decorated as some sort of tacky 1970s-ageing bachelor's "love-nest" with dildos, champagne, strawberries, etc., etc., while James himself:





Was going to be all suave and debonair with the unbuttoned shirt and the gold chains.

Pretty much everyone who has commented on this story has commented on the bizarre, pointless, ridiculous, incomprehensible nature of O'Keefe's "sting." Okay, so you get the female reporter who wants to do a story on young conservatives, and you then lure her onto a boat and act like a creep trying to seduce her. And then??? Let's say she was going to do a hatchet-job, what are you accomplishing by looking like a revolting pervert? She gets uncomfortable? She gets mocked for having trusted you? What?

Methinks that young James O'Keefe constructed this ridiculous scenario in such detail because what was really going on in the back of his deranged mind was that he'd be engaged in a form of sexual seduction (however sick, twisted, pathetic, dishonest, idiotic, ridiculous, sad, laughable) with a real live GURLL!!!

Here was James' "quarry":

Dream on O'Keefe. One of these days, James O'Keefe will find himself in a lasting, close relationship with someone. I'm afraid it'll be in prison though.

ETA: Ha-ha-ha! Tom Tomorrow hits another one out of the park!