Monday 8th February 2010
»German pensioners took financial adviser hostage, court hears | guardian.co.uk
A retired architect and four other pensioners took their financial adviser hostage and held him in a purpose-built prison in Bavaria after their stock market investments failed, a court has heard.
The 74-year-old architect, identified only as Roland K, told a court in Traunstein, southern Germany, that he and his accomplices thought their financial adviser had “cheated and taken the piss” out of them after their investments in the US property market evaporated. As a result, he told the court, they had “decided to invite him for a few days’ holiday in Upper Bavaria”.
Can they run for office when they get out of prison? I’d be tempted to vote for them. I think I’d like their policies on financial regulation.
»David Cameron vows to tackle 'secret corporate lobbying' | guardian.co.uk
Did he think up this policy on Murdoch’s yacht, or did Osborne come up with it on Oleg Deripaska’s? Please.
»New split in Church of England over women bishops | guardian.co.uk
Conservative evangelicals in the Church of England today became the latest group to threaten to split the church if it decides to consecrate women bishops.
At the start of this week’s meeting of the General Synod, the church’s parliament, in London, they warned that their clergy would in future be trained outside the Church of England if the proposals go ahead later this year.
The pressure group Reform, which claims to represent 350 ordained clergy and which has a track record of threatening action unless it gets its way, claimed its parishes would raise money to train their own clergy and would accordingly reduce payments to the Church of England.
What are these guys, 5 years old? No, we don’t want to play with girls, girls smell! We’re going to build our own den and it’s no girls allowed! What tremendous dicks.
»Yarl's Wood women on hunger strike 'locked up and denied treatment' | guardian.co.uk
A controversial immigration removal centre was reported to be in a state of chaos today, as at least 50 women entered the fourth day of a hunger strike, with several fainting in corridors and almost 20 locked outdoors wearing few clothes.
Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire, which houses 405 women and children, was in lockdown, leaving women in communal spaces without food, water or toilet facilities.
Several women who tried to escape through a window were then locked outside, according to one detainee, including one whose finger was almost severed as she escaped but who had not received medical treatment.
[Economist, Samuel] Bowles offers a key reason why this is so. “Inequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources,” he says.
In short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping the lower classes obedient and productive.
Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls “guard labor.” In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.
The job descriptions of guard labor range from “imposing work discipline”—think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online—to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.
The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.
The problem, Bowles argues, is that too much guard labor sustains “illegitimate inequalities,” creating a drag on the economy. All of the people in guard labor jobs could be doing something more productive with their time—perhaps starting their own businesses or helping to reduce the US trade deficit with China.
Guard labor supports what one might call the beat-down economy. Community Action’s Porter sees it all the time.
“We have based almost everything we have done on the idea that we always need a part of our workforce that is marginalized—that we can call this group into action at any time, pay them nothing and they will do anything that needs to be done,” she says.
More discouraging, perhaps, is the statistical fact that a person born into this workforce has little chance of rising beyond it.”
Born Poor? Santa Fe economist Samuel Bowles says you better get used to it. | Santa Fe Reporter
Just got around to reading this. This was my favourite part. Funnily enough, it’s quite difficult to account for your lacklustre work ethic by explaining to your boss that ‘society is broken, and though it’s not your fault that you’re the unwitting tip of the cock that is fucking me and my class up the arse, the only shit you’re going to get me to give is this little nugget that I’m currently clenching into your gaping meatus.’ Perhaps I’ll try the economic terminology next time.
»Colored Revolutions: A New Form of Regime Change, Made in USA
In 1983, the strategy of overthrowing inconvenient governments and calling it “democracy promotion” was born.
Through the creation of a series of quasi-private “foundations”, such as Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), Freedom House and later the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict (ICNC), Washington began to filter funding and strategic aid to political parties and groups abroad that promoted US agenda in nations with insubordinate governments.
Behind all these “foundations” and “institutes” is the US Agency for Inter- national Development (USAID), the financial branch of the Department of State. Today, USAID has become a critical part of the security, intelligence and defense axis in Washington. In 2009, the Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative became official doctrine in the US. Now, USAID is the principal entity that promotes the economic and strategic interests of the US across the globe as part of counterinsurgency operations. Its departments dedicated to transition initiatives, reconstruction, conflict management, economic development, governance and democracy are the main venues through which millions of dollars are filtered from Washington to political parties, NGOs, student organizations and movements that promote US agenda worldwide. Wherever a coup d’etat, a colored revolution or a regime change favorable to US interests occurs, USAID and its flow of dollars is there.
The Venezuelan government recently sanctioned three TV stations including RCTV, the network that played a key role in organizing the coup that briefly overthrew the Venezuelan government in 2002. The three TV stations refused to comply with Venezuela’s broadcasting laws and had their licenses temporarily suspended. The broadcasting laws in Venezuela are similar in scope to CRTC regulations in Canada; they establish standards for child and adult programming, prohibit racist, sexist or inflammatory content and incitement to violence, place limits on commercial advertising, and require stations to broadcast important government announcements. As recently as three weeks ago, RCTV had aired an interview with Noel Álavarez, the president of the bosses’ union FEDECAMARAS where Álvarez had called for another “military solution” to the political situation in Venezuela. Surely, the CRTC would have suspended any TV or radio station that sanctioned a “military solution” to the Stephen Harper government!”
However the case for invading Jersey is made even more compelling by whistle-blower Stuart Syvret, the longest-serving senator and “father of the house” in the Jersey parliament. Syvret recently posted documents on his blog claiming that the island’s political elite were refusing to investigate malpractice in the health service. He was rewarded with a morning raid by 10 police officers who searched his home (without a search warrant), confiscated his computer (holding his constituents’ private data and communications) and imprisoned him while they did so. Syvret now lives “in exile” in London and says Jersey should be invaded “for regime change” – although he prefers the term “liberate” to invade.”
Vice magazine did a shoot where all the dudes have boners. I especially like #3, in the blue suit, with the WSJ and coffee. Nice! (via sexismandthecity//natashavc//frangry)
Vice magazine or SugarApe magazine? One day they will actually do a men urinating shoot.
»Iraq war was illegal, says former lord chief justice | The Guardian
An interesting interview.
Sunday 7th February 2010
The Twilight Zone, People Are Alike All Over, 1960
Cosmotopian: The ladies of Cosmotopian Magazine pitch ideas for the latest sex tips column.
24 hours in pictures | News | guardian.co.uk
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn’t terribly impressed by Avatar’s post-colonial cop out narrative either. Here he is photographed turning to his minister of culture saying, “What the fuck is this shit? First the sparkly anaemic kids, now this? What are you going to take me to see next? The one where Sandra Bullock adopts a black guy? For fuck’s sake.”
»Alastair Campbell in emotional defence of Blair on Iraq | BBC News
Can you imagine if that was Paxman? I think he might actually have cried to avoid answering the question.
Somehow, they have been reborn as a tooled-up army of Schwarzeneggers. And I don’t think we did discuss it. I think we gradually noticed it happen and we subconsciously thought: “Well, yes, terrorist threat, 9/11, 7/7, WMD, homegrown assassins in our midst, few more armed police about, hope I get to Tesco before the semi-skimmed milk runs out.”
But that’s not a reason. Even if you believe the country is riddled with terrorists waiting to explode, that shouldn’t spell official, widespread guns. When I was a kid, the newspapers fuelled our fear of IRA bombs. The impression was, you could hardly walk down Oxford Street without getting blown up. But I remember, I remember, how proudly people spoke about our unaffected lives. We shopped there anyway. We carried on as normal, assuming we wouldn’t get unlucky.
Not now. We accept, somehow, even though we must understand how vast are the statistics against our being at a bomb scene, that we will queue for three hours at the airport, won’t carry water, won’t carry toothpaste; we will fill in extra forms and hand out extra personal information whenever we hear the words “heightened security”; and we will see armed police on the street. Why? How will that help? Unless we put 20 armed police on every street, they’re never going to be in the right place at the right time – and if the right place at the right time is an underground train carriage where a man unexpectedly blows himself up, a gun wouldn’t stop him anyway. That’s just firing bullets into the stable door after the horse has detonated.
And he stood there, Tony Blair, he stood there, well, he sat there, and he made that little church-and-steeple out of his fingers and he said the Iraq war had “made the world a safer place”. Really? Really? If it’s so much safer, how come we need all these hired gunmen that we didn’t need before?”
