Bildet er lånt fra www.likecool.com

Vurderer du å bytte jobb? Kanskje begynne i den såkalte restaurantbransjen? Dette kan være noe for deg som ikke helt vet om du er god nok til å delta i Masterchef på TV3, som ikke gidder å starte ditt eget sted, som ikke har noen utdannelse innen kokkeyrket, men som allikevel ønsker å jobbe med noe som under tvil kan kalles mat. Nå ansetter de nemlig folk på MCDonalds Guantanamo.

Arbeit Macht frei!
Du må selvsagt være villig til å flytte. Sannsynligvis må du green card til USA også, selv om det teknisk sett ligger på Cuba. Jobben din på McDonalds, Guantanamo, vil blant annet bestå i å servere burgere og chips til fangene på Guantanamo Bay. Jobbannonsen ble nylig publisert på nettsidene til McVirginia.com. Man trenger visstnok ingen sikkerhetsklarering for jobben, og når det gjelder erfaring så er det vel ingen hemmelighet at ethvert kjøtthue lære seg å steke burgere og chips, men det kreves at du er villig til å både bo og arbeide innenfor militærbasen hvor det er ca. 6000 personer som oppholder seg.

Noen fakta
Kundegruppen vil bestå av ansatte i marinen og deres familier, 215 terrormistenkte fanger og deres vakter, og hundrevis av jamaicanske og fillipinske gjestearbeidere. Restauranten har holdt til der siden 1986 og er en del av McDonalds Franchisekonsept, ifølge talsmann Danya Proud. Vakter ved Guantanamo har tidligere uttalt at de tillot etterforskere å medbringe Big Macs og chips inn til fangene, i et forsøk på å “myke de opp” (eller kanskje fete de opp?), slik at de ville være mer samarbeidsvillige i kampen mot muslimske terrorister.

Muslimene skal fetes opp? Bilde: sharenator.com

Nå som nikkedukken Obama sier at han vil tømme fengselet for fanger, og sende alt det ekstremistiske, islamske bunnfallet til Europa, får de innsatte lov til å bestille takeaway fra Mac’ern som blir bragt inn til de av fangevokterne. Den som begynner i denne stillingen burde med andre ord utnytte den glimrende muligheten til å slenge masse bacon på bestillingene til de muslimske fangene.

Kilde: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/guantanamo/story/1327184.html

Guantanamo i norske medier: tv2nyhetene.no

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?”

Ecclesiastes 1: 2-3

In a recent CounterPunch article, Mark T. Harris recounts the calculating imposture in place in the American corporate regime, in lieu of, e.g., union arbitration contending for a fair share of America’s wealth in the form of a living wage. Without unions and their legal representatives agitating for the workers—i.e., their rights, their families, etc.—management and owners will bleed American labor as its own fungible commodity, i.e., easily bought, easily sold, and readily replaced. That the capitalist agenda has been reified in the US—e.g., the frank avowal of Coolidge: “the business of America is business”—leaves the American worker as “second best,” a lesser species of citizen in comparison to the elitist clique of the investor class, their attorneys, and their merely self-serving prerogatives. Harris writes of one corporate CEO feathering his own nest at the expense of workers and their families, Whole Foods’ John Mackey:

“Instead of offering an enlightened perspective on health care, however, Mackey gives us the pseudo-clever nonsense of Margaret Thatcher. ‘The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money,’ Mackey quotes the former British prime minister to begin his Journal op-ed. Of course, by ‘other people’s money’ what Thatcher or Mackey really mean is their money, the money of people of their economic status” [Harris].

As Mackey has heedlessly advanced the issue of socio-economic theft—i.e., his claim that the working class has unethically benefitted from the material well-being of what amounts to an American aristocracy—he has betrayed the fact of a prior theft, i.e., the irresponsible engagement of labor via greedy profiteering and exploitation without the responsible inclusion of fair compensation in the form of a living wage, as well as fully adequate benefits.

With the connivance of the State, the privileges afforded to what are often simply money-obsessed entrepreneurs and their cohort then reflexively devolve into an entitlement ethic, whereby labor, by comparison is “otherized” and viewed not so much as a collective of individuals but, rather, seen now under the vague heading, “unfortunate,” i.e., not co-equals, but “lower” classes meriting only the slightest consideration in the corporate industry equation.

Harris’ decisive analysis brings home the issue of privilege run rampant within a polity informed by financial deregulation and the neo-liberal agenda of unfettered market activity, all of which serves the interest of a discrete, financially viable—and, therefore, politically connected—tier, i.e., the merest fraction of the overall collective.

Of the duplicitous declarations of predatory capitalists—aided and abetted by venal legislators as beneficiaries of corporate largesse—Noam Chomsky notes the deceptive “ethic” of the young Andrew Carnegie in the now-infamous Homestead strike of 1892.

“Carnegie overcame the workers of Homestead by force, first sending Pinkerton guards, then the Pennsylvania National Guard when the Pinkertons were defeated and expelled by the local population….The press gave overwhelming support to the company, as usual,. The British press presented a differing picture. The London Times ridiculed ‘this Scotch-Yankee plutocrat meandering through Scotland in a four-in-hand opening public libraries, WHILE THE WRETCHED WORKMEN WHO SUPPLY HIM WITH WAYS AND MEANS FOR HIS SELF-GLORIFICATION ARE STARVING IN PITTSBURGH.’ The far-tight British press ridiculed Carnegie’s preachings on “the rights and duties of wealth,’ describing his self-congratulatory book Triumphant Democracy as a ‘wholesome piece of sature’ in the light of his brutal methods of strike breaking, which should be neither ‘permitted nor required in a civilized community,’ the LondonTimes added” [Chomsky, 284; stress added].

So, when Thatcher and Fortune 100 CEOs expound—with no small cynicism, and self-righteously—upon “other people’s money,” their glaring hypocrisy prescinds from the fact of the prior theft, i.e., the theft of a fair, living wage for employees. That is, the Carnegies, the  Rockefellers, and other more current predatory capitalists, have taken–almost literally—the bread out the mouths of the laborers’ children, amassed it, and then used that ill-gotten gain to underwrite solemn declarations about morality, i.e., “right and wrong,” and the sins of the workers taken as a collective.

Why is it properly considered a “prior theft”? When the corporation is established by investors and their attorneys—with the full connivance of a State yielding to their program—the interests and prerogatives of one group is reified: that of the capitalist and their cohort. And, without union arbitration fighting for their cause, the workers are, in effect, under duress when they “agree” to terms—terms wholly in the service of the financially—and, therefore, legally–viable. Under those circumstances, which prescind from bargaining in good faith, American labor as party to the transaction has been disallowed an open negotiation and dialogue with other interests, interests arranging outcomes entirely to their own satisfaction.

Have American CEOs opened any public libraries of late? If so, perhaps an apt honorary library name might be: “The Library by Those Children Going Without.” And, do the “ways and means” provided by America’s workers struggling on mere subsistence pay today provide some with a mandate for pontificating at the Wall Street Journal? At the end of the day, though, a burning question remains for self-aggrandizing CEO’s with pretensions of  appearing other-focused and equitable: does one take receipt of, e.g., the yacht ordered last year, because, and as everyone knows, “All America loves a winner!” And this, despite the fact that it was gotten by “other people’s money.”

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun?”

And what is to be done? The worker’s manumission from capitalist peonage: a latter-day bonfire of the vanities is de rigueur—by right, not privilege.

CounterPunch: Harris

Noam Chomsky: Year 501: the Conquest Continues

Libertarian socialism

Wagner Act

Anarcho-syndicalism

(revision: 10/03)

“Work in a textile mill took place at a grueling pace and the labor was repetitive and dangerous. In addition, a number of children under the age of fourteen worked in the mills. For example, half of the workers in the four Lawrence mills of the American Woolen Company, the leading employer in the industry and the town, were girls between fourteen and eighteen….thirty-six out of every 100 men and women who worked in the mill died by the time they reached twenty-five” [Wiki].

“The very existence of the State demands that there be some privileged class vitally interested in maintaining that existence, and it is precisely the group interests of that class that are called patriotism.”

Mikhail Bakunin, Letters on Patriotism (1869).

Survey of American labor resistance and opposition

Bread and Roses Strike

Ludlow [Colorado] Massacre, 1914

Mikhail Bakunin

Libertarian Socialism

Anarcho-syndicalism

Participatory democracy

Wagner Act

Taft-Hartley Act

(revision: 11/14)

(“The US corporate ruse of, ‘Arbeit macht frei’ as vague postulate and entrée to the equally vague ‘American Dream’–-i.e., a diversion and seduction for an American electorate caught up in wage slavery and personal debt peonage–-has devolved into something akin to a ‘final solution’ for the American worker.”)

The National Labor Relations Act—as David Macaray states in a recent CounterPunch article—guaranteed the right to organize, i.e., employees could establish a union within their place of employment, despite wishes of management and owners to the contrary.

Yet, the de jure “right” has been repeatedly undermined since its 1935 inauguration by various underhanded—and illegal—methods, mostly quite effective in that employees are either dimissed from their jobs or, in the prolonged period of legal deliberation seek alternate routes to raising their standard of living, all too often stalled at or below the poverty level.

Macaray:

“In 1978, the Carter administration attempted, more or less, to address this problem. Not by doing anything radical, mind you—not by adding hundreds of NLRB field investigators, not by establishing hard and fast time limits—but by introducing two remarkably tame and almost laughably superficial changes to the Wagner Act…. In 1978, the Democrats owned the government. They held the House, the Senate, and the White House. But even with this numerical and tactical advantage, the bill failed….It failed to pass because the Democrats defeated it. They didn’t just defeat it, they crushed it. The bill lost by a landslide. Why? Because, deep-down, Democrats in the House and Senate were just as frightened of a heavily unionized (and therefore ‘independent’) workforce as were their Republican counterparts” [Macaray, 2009].

The card-check provision of the EFCA bill would have addressed what amounted to obstruction of the Wagner Act by streamlining the process of organizing a workplace. It was necessary that the EFCA bill remained intact, i.e., the card-check provision was the cornerstone of the proposal. Yet, it’s already been gutted–as per expectations of the politically discerning–via K Street and its largesse, and courtesy of an investor class pandering to DC venality.

As it stands, Forwardlooking may end up doing more harm to American labor than Ron the Impaler did via the destruction of PATCO. Within the context of the current State of the Union, when it is said that a DC progressive is keen on labor representation, the subtext is: union EXECUTIVES get a leg up on their career moves in DC and elsewhere via delivering the votes of their membership. That is, the union execs and DC pols BOTH have sold American labor down the road…

And why would it be otherwise? Investors here got a taste for slave labor way back when, and, “they gazed upon it, and it was good.” And, when American labor becomes a bit too “aggressive,” e.g., when it insists upon a living wage in order to provide for its families, the corporate sector sends in the goon squads to crack skulls, with the connivance of the State. Except that instead of Pinkerton hoodlums spilling the blood of American labor—both men and women—the new mandarins have now finessed the solution with K Street buying off DC solons waiting with their snouts poised at the public trough.

Noam Chomsky writes in a recent article of this country’s labor narrative, a narrative limned in brutal corporate-sponsored suppression and often bloody encounters between, on the one side, investor-hired agents, and on the other, workers and their kin seeking a fair, living wage:

“In earlier years the cotton-based economy of the industrial revolution relied on massive ethnic cleansing and slavery, rather severe forms of state intervention in the economy. Though theoretically slavery was ended with the Civil War, it emerged again after Reconstruction in a form that was in many ways more virulent, with what amounted to criminalization of African-American life and widespread use of convict labor, which continued until World War II. The industrial revolution, from the late nineteenth century, relied heavily on this new form of slavery….During the post-World War II ‘golden age,’ African Americans were able for the first time to enjoy some level of social and economic advancement, but the disgraceful post-Reconstruction history has been partially reconstituted during the neoliberal years with the rapid growth of what some criminologists call ‘the prison-industrial complex,’ a uniquely American crime committed continuously since the 1980s and exacerbated by the dismantling of productive industry” [Chomsky, 2009].

It’s slow death by attrition, starvation, lack of medical care, untold stresses and their concomitant diseases–both phyical and psychological– etc. The US corporate ruse of, “Arbeit macht frei” as vague postulate and entrée to the equally vague “American Dream”—i.e., a diversion and seduction for an American electorate caught up in wage slavery and personal debt peonage—has devolved into something akin to a “final solution” for the American worker.

Chomsky:

“…Washington is busy dismantling leading sectors of U.S. industry, ruining the lives of the workforce and communities. It is difficult to conjure up a more damning indictment of the economic system that has been constructed by state-corporate managers. Surely the auto industry could be reconstructed to produce what the country needs, using its highly skilled workforce — and what the world needs, and soon, if we are to have some hope of averting major catastrophe. It has been done before, after all. During World War II the semi-command economy not only ended the Depression but initiated the most spectacular period of growth in economic history, virtually quadrupling industrial production in four years as the economy was retooled for war, and also laying the basis for the ‘golden age’ that followed” [Chomsky, 2009].

PRIVILEGE has, in effect, become ENTITLEMENT, i.e., DC’s Ivy-League inebriates, i.e., drunk on Power, have their entitlements to consider. “The business of America is business,” declared Coolidge. Quite so. And the coda of that ethic—quote-unquote—is “and, to hell with labor, their families, their offspring, etc.” A select, financially viable clique of investors and other rentiers, however, has their prerogatives conserved while a corporate-directed State runs labor into the ground and puts sons and daughters in harms way in Afghanistan.

Mike Whitney of CounterPunch homes in on the issue’s essential reality, i.e., a State-sanctioned redistribution up of any remaining material gains American labor had managed to wrest from capitalist-owners and their DC cohort:

“The subtext of the financial crisis is class warfare, a fact that mainstream economists would rather ignore than invoke the musty imagery of disheveled revolutionaries and Soviet-era repression. Nevertheless, during the Bush years, the chasm between rich and poor widened to levels not seen since the Gilded Age. Now the top 1 percent of wealth holders own more than twice as much as the bottom 80% of the population. All of the real gains in national income, total net-worth, and overall growth in financial worth have gone to the same 1 percent.

“But the strides in personal enrichment have come at great cost. The US consumer, long considered an inexhaustible resource, is tapped out. Without job security and access to easy credit; consumer spending will slow, prices will fall, demand will flag and the economy will tank. There won’t be a recovery, because pre-crisis levels of consumption will not return; that much is certain. Sustainable growth requires higher wages and longer working hours; neither of which are likely anytime soon” [Whitney, 2009].

Forwardlooking led voters to believe that he would be the material change they and their families so desperately need, i.e., a change in the interest of nothing more than sheer survival. Yet, his reticence to support the bill speaks volumes about, for example, the US electoral process amounting to a staged, corporate-run affair, with political “favors” returned to the financially viable, but not the rank and file. The American worker will receive something, but solely as a token gesture to placate, not ameliorate his dire reality of living from paycheck to subsistence-level paycheck.

“The part of the EFCA debate that sticks in the craw of organized labor is the part where the anti-union coalition (Wall Street, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party, et al) pretends its opposition to the bill is based on a desire to protect the employees’ ‘right to choose.’ They’ve parroted this ‘free choice’ nonsense so often, the public is starting to believe it.

“Of course, the opposite is true. Corporate America doesn’t want workers to freely choose—not if they’re going to choose to join a union. If management honestly embraced workplace democracy and allowed the chips to fall where they may, union membership would likely be closer to the 35-percent it was in the 1950s, rather than the 12.4-percent it is today. Polls show that close to 60-percent of American workers are interested in joining up, but are too scared to try” [Macaray, 2009].

But, the US dollar is in decline as a reserve currency and global numeraire as a formerly production-based econopmy has been displaced—by design—into a, e.g., Wall Street rentier finance economy whose global electronic funds tranfers and bubble-inducing deregulation of oversight and controls prescinds from all save the immediate “action” on the flatscreen at Goldman Sachs. The American worker is the fungible commodity of least consequence in the neoliberal agenda where fortunes can be garnered with the next roll of the dice—an hour’s work for hedge-fund operatives and the clique of enablers of Empire.

CounterPunch: David Macaray

CounterPunch: Mike Whitney

Noam Chomsky

Anarcho-syndicalism

Wagner Act

(revision: 10/03)

Um raiar
Um crescendo
Um torpor
Um desalento.

O tráfego das almas
interrompido pelo excesso
Um anseio inominável
Conhecido apenas por quem ousou ousar
Olhos que não posso encarar nem em sonhos
Tateando o cosmo às cegas.

Um toque
Um alarme
Uma paralisia
Um alento.

Que se passe a vida sem poder viver
É ouvir o português sem seu ritmo
Na ausência de epopéia resta o vazio
E na ausência do vazio resta o quê?

Que se retirem as máscaras da civilização
E o ágape seja pleno
Dê-me o pulsar dos dias
E então o mundo poderá me interromper com um sussurro.

Något som har gäckat mig ett bra tag det här året är ju helt klart Måns Zelmerlöws “hitlåt” Hope and Glory. Nu besitter inte jag någon överdriven kunskap om den här grabben mer än att han är född samma år som jag (1986) och är en av dessa intressanta karaktärer som dök upp från hitmaskinen i Idol om jag inte missminner mig. Vilketsom! Låtfan spelas ju här och var HELA TIDEN eftersom den gjorde succé(!) i Melodifestivalen. Och jag fattar ingenting.

Vadå, har någon någonsin påstått att Måns inte står för “hopp och ära”? Eller har han haft en period när han verkligen tog avstånd från dessa två helt orimliga, ehhh… känslor? (i brist på bättre beskrivning..)

Nu ska det väl inte vara osagt att jag är införstådd med att låten först och främst är skriven för att Sälja! och inte kanske för att i helt korrekta ordalag beskriva Zånz Zelmerlöws faktiska liv eller värderingar. Men ändå! Vad är det, vad är det med hopp och ära som han verkligen vill förtydliga att han står för? Och hur står man för just detta?

Jag känner mig helt *Anna Odell*-störd över den här låten.

Als erstes möchte ich mich für den eintretenden Augenkrebs entschuldigen. Aber es ist besser man kotzt jetzt, als später am Steuer seines Autos, wenn man durch die City düst. Wo ist Zensursula, wenn man sie braucht?! Dieses Bild des Wahlkamfs 2009 hat bereits Kontroversen in der CDU ausgelöst. Pornoplakate sind anscheinend heute in Mode – sogar bei den Konservativen.

Passender wäre allerdings: Wir haben noch viel mehr zu verbieten!

Mal abgesehen, dass dieser Spruch definitiv von einem Menschenschänder erdacht sein muss. Wenn wir Menschen erschießen, gibt es Arbeitsplätze, ist das sozial? Wenn wir alle in die Arbeitslosigkeit ab 50 schicken, ist das sozial?

Erinnert mich stark an Wahlversprechen der NSDAP:

Die Komasäufer von der Jungen Union haben sich letzte Wahl auch zu einem Wahlplakat inspirieren lassen und feiern das als großen negativen Erfolg. Frei nach dem Motto: Publicity, hauptsache der Name ist richtig geschrieben!

Direkter:

Wir stürzen tiefer

Besorg es mir tiefer mit der CDU

Besser:

Wir gehen noch tiefer und entfernen das kleine Schwarze direkt von der Bildfläche.

Da lob ich mir doch die Piraten, da kann der Bürger selbst Forderungen stellen:

Die setzen sogar auf Spraylogos in Source-basierten Spielen.

Man stelle sich den Vorstoß der CDU in diese Richtung vor:

Ich möchte an dieser Stelle auf den Aufruf von netzpolitik.org hinweisen CDU-Wahlplakate satirisch zu remixen. Demnächst von mir mehr dazu.

…man 30GB Fotos sichtet? Pff….was für eine Frage! The Libertines natürlich!

Arbeit macht frei:

Can’t stand me now:

Bald kommen auch wieder Bilder

Schönen Abend euch.

[Photo from here.]

I really think that I’ll be a lot happier if I have my own old school bike to peddle around on. Without melting in the sun every time I do that. Or be dissolved by the rain.

Alright, quite a lot to ask for on a Monday morning.

Everyone knows that Monday mornings are the worst for the granting of wishes. Because they are such bitches!

Met up with the PS guys over the weekend for food at Geylang.

The beef hor fun is seriously good. And the dou jiang yu tiao just kind of wrapped everything up nicely

Anyway, these people are damn weird. Every time I meet them, we’ll somehow get embroiled in discussion of some politial issue or other. Can’t we talk about something lighter?!

Like the Channel 8 nine o’clock show. Or something.

And we’ll always end up stating, vehemently, our intention to change ‘the system’.

After that, everyone goes home and the next day, everyone goes back to work in ‘the system’.

But you know, its actually quite fun. So don’t judge us!

We have a regular sharing session at work which is akin to Economics/Statistics 101. Very basic stuff for the uninitiated.

M: So, can someone tell me what’s the difference between real and nominal figures?

Everyone: *silence*

Boss: Very simple what. One is real, one is bluff lor.

Everyone: HAHA!

My boss is quite funny

Lee Grant contacted me a few months ago to tell me of her project Belco Pride – an institutional portrait of the now empty Belconnen Remand Centre. ‘Belco’ was a small facility designed for 17 people, but according to Lee housing approximately 70 toward the end. Officially, the capacity is/was “under revision”.

The remand prisoners have since been relocated to the Alexander Maconochie Centre, which is talked up as Australia’s first prison built in accordance with the Geneva Convention (more on that in a later post).

After inmate rehousing, but before total closure, Grant took another opportunity to tour the facility, “thanks to an open day … billed, believe it or not, as a family event. And the families were out in force …”

Therefore, I was happy to see Lee post a few of her images from the ongoing series. I particularly liked these two pairings which are a wry juxtaposition.

Shortly thereafter my enjoyment turned to bafflement.

In Lee’s description of the open day she mentioned that the phrase “Arbeit macht frei” was clearly visible to all arriving visitors. This flat out shocked me. On Lee’s blog, I commented,

There is no correlation between Nazi concentration camps and modern Australian prisons. The inclusion of the phrase is confusing and offensive.

I had originally mistaken the facility, thinking the quote was on view at an opening for the new prison and not, as the case was, a closing of the old. Still, wonder remains at this crude and ill-advised allusion.

Lee responded;

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to chase up on the quotes with Corrective Services as yet and why they thought this was appropriate or even OK.

It may well be possible that the quote was already there from when detainees were being held (it was one of the first things you see on a whiteboard as you walk into the processing area of the facility). Though this is no excuse, it may partially explain why it wasn’t removed and as you stated, it is to some extent an indictment of the culture and thinking of some people who work in the prison system.

Interestingly I vaguely remember the local paper referring to the quote though I don’t recall the reporter making any association to Nazi concentration camps. I shall let you know if I find any more answers but I hope this helps a little bit.

[I will be sure to post any developments - be they images or elaborations on this peculiar alignment of geography, phrase and history.]

Like Lee, I do not want to judge individuals working in Corrective Services. Instead, I’ll simply say that systems in which workers operate along lines of strict procedure are likely to harbour casual and offensive attitudes. Workers are as disciplined as inmates in all prisons. So when individuals are subject to a system – relieved of actual decision making – there is no incentive to challenge objectionable attitudes.

For the best of the rest, check out Lee Grant’s Op Shop series, which proves that you can change the country and you can change the moniker (charity shop, UK; thrift store, USA) but the look, personnel, wares and atmosphere remain the same.

Ein kurz und schmerzlos eine der schlimmsten Begleiterscheinungen der in die Endphase eintretenden Refeudalisierung unserer Gesellschaft(sideologie) aufzeigender Artikel … ein Paradebeispiel dafür, durch welche Volksverhetzung unsere Jugend tatsächlich gefährdet und zur Bedrohung unserer Zukunft herangezüchtet wird!

Von Calwer-Wildnis | Kriegspostille |

Da ist einer Tag für Tag unterwegs, bis zu 9 Stunden am Tag, bei Sonderveranstaltungen und nach öffentlichen Anlässen – auch nach den Saufwochenenden der Jugendlichen nach dem 1. des Monats – um die Stadt sauberzumachen.

Er erwischt jugendliche Schüler dabei, wie sie ihre Kippen wegwerfen, da hin, wo er sauber gemacht hatte – und obwohl ein Mülleimer in der Nähe ist. Also, ermahnt er sie freundlich aber bestimmt, dies nicht zu tun. Die Antwort einer jungen Dame: “Was wollen Sie? Das ist doch Arbeitsbeschaffungs-Maßnahme für Sie?”

Diese Bemerkung ist eine bodenlose Frechheit, und zeigt, welches Denken schon Raum gegriffen hat. Hauptsache, jene die gerade keine andere Arbeit haben, tun irgendetwas – und wenn andere dafür extra ihren Dreck hinschmeißen müssen. Und die, welche so denken, besonders die junge Dame welche dies sagte, geht noch zur Schule und glaubt fest daran, dass sie selber später niemals von einer solchen Situation betroffen sein wird, wie jener, der ihre Kippe auflesen musste.

So wird das feudalherrschaftliche Denken herangezüchtet – wir da oben beschaffen die Arbeit für die da unten…

Hauptsache, jeder tut etwas, irgendwie…

Ob er davon leben kann, diese Frage ist eine gänzlich andere – und die wird nicht gestellt.

[From here]

Super cute right? I was thinking of which shape to represent the green light – and all I can think of is broccoli, which really isn’t very cute.

FYI, the cauliflower is actually the white broccoli. I bet you didn’t know that! LOL

***

A couple of days ago, I had to give a presention on the income distribution/gap in Singapore.

So I took the chance to spread a little socialist ideology, pointing out the rising Gini coefficient and defended the social safety net (i.e. the much vilified welfare). It was fun

Then my boss got on to me and proceeded to throw up the appropriate counter-arguments. I nodded, agreed and pledged my undying allegiance to Singapore Inc, that 3rd-World-to-1st-World wonder of the modern capitalist system.

SELL OUT! *laugh*

Disclaimer: I am NOT a communist.

***

My other blog has been featured on URBAN, The Straits Times today. You may want to check us out in our 2-dimensional, printed glory

I like alleyways and parked bicycles. Actually, in general, bicycles are pretty cool things

Photo of Stockholm, from here.

***

Every day, people surprise me. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a not so good way.

I have some colleagues whom I’m genuinely fond of. Today, I found out that one of them has been constantly upgrading himself, always in some course or other. Taken outside of the life-long learning imperative that our government has been trying to drill into us for years, this is very inspiring – to want to be better.

I feel stagnant. And I feel I should start learning something for learning’s sake.

On top of that, there’s still that hypocritical tendancy to find a more noble cause (i.e. knowledge) in order to mask my escapist urge to just drop the mundanity of it all and just run away. With the circus or otherwise!

***

Don’t talk to me about luxury. Okay, you can. But forget it. You must know that the only  luxury is time. Time and a cup of tea. And a pear. Or an apple. Maybe a little cake. That is enough.

By Maira Kalman, Time Style & Design, Winter ‘08

I copied this a couple of weeks ago. I love Time’s Style & Design. They have the best articles, written in such an intelligent way, about something as fluffy as fashion and art.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time – It’s easy.

- The Beatles, All You Need Is Love

Sometimes, I feel as though all the conventional wisdom of our times is captured neatly by The Beatles’ lyrics

***

(On Acquiring Tastes) [via MSN]

N: I CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE! I’M GOING TO QUIT!!!

Me: Great I’m always in support of running away with the circus. I heard Cirque du Soleil is world class.

N: I think they only want you if you have some freakish talent – and you actually have to like striped spandex.

Me: I think they’ll provide the spandex so you don’t have to worry about that. Also, spandex is an acquired taste!

***

(On Serious Drinking)

S: Hey Dot.

Me: Yes? (thinking it must be about work; sounds so serious)

S: When are we going for drinks?

Me: WTH. Don’t want la!

S: HAHA! You thought I’m going to ask you about work right?!

My colleagues are mad They are a threat to my liver.

The Obama Administration’s occupation of the private sector continues as spokesman Robert Gibbs states that bank CEOs have been put on notice.  They have to show that they have the right “expertise” to handle the current economic situation as judged by a President with exactly ZERO expertise on matters economic.

The threat is real.  Ask the now former CEO of General Motors.  Borrowing has few privileges (when referring to federal loans forced onto many of the banks in question).

Essentially, Obama has resorted to thuggery to force banks into silently going along with whatever policies he pursues.  Many of the healthy banks did NOT want federal TARP money but were locked in a room with Bush officials and told that they were not leaving until they committed to taking the cash.  Forget what the deal was when they “took” the money.  Now, there is a new sheriff in town and they have to toe the line or get slapped – hard.

Who is next?

I would hate to be the rubes in health care who actually think that a single (read – government) payer system will cure what ails our health care system.  Their paychecks will be slashed and they will be forced into silence by a smiling face who smashes and ruins them behind closed doors.

Those who gave good faith advice to former President George W Bush know full well what Obama is doing to them.  He has instructed his justice department to do nothing directly.  But they are “encouraging” state bars to work towards sanctions and disbarment which will ruin these people professionally.  Think back to the Clinton era thugs who used the IRS to ruin the travel office staff so they could put in their cronies from back home.  The IRS is no-body’s friend.  Their government cousins are in the “interrogation” business and will soon be the arbiters of good faith on matters concerning your health and well-being.

These are the people who are here to “help” you.  I trust little of our government.  Remember, the signs above the concentration camps read, ” Arbeit macht frei” which is roughly translated to “work will set you free”.   Just because the government says so, doesn’t make it true.

BUDGETS AND HEAD FAKES

Fiscal shenanigans abound in DC.  Only in Washington can they cut increases that have yet to occur and then crow to a group of willfully stupid press folks that they propose budget “cuts”.

Obama says he will trim $17 billion from next year’s budget.  The media headlines the story (dutifully) as if it a statement of fact.  Obama just bait and switched the bulk of Americans.  He just upped the Federal budget by over $1.4 trillion with stimulus and emergency measures and then cuts back a mere $17 billion (the $100 million cut was laughed at – even by liberals).  To put that into perspective – we are talking about 0.00121% of just the additional spending committed this past year.  That is the same as a person with $100,000 in annual expenses cutting $1.21 from his budget. Hardly more than pocket change.

Way to go.  A double digit increase in spending that was already out of control (and much more than what the Treasury brings in) is offset by a liberal-minded press by a thousandth of a percent reduction.  The next time I am out for dinner, I will order a 16 oz steak, potatoes with butter and sour cream along with a salad covered with creamy dressing and croutons finished off with an ice cream sundae with brownies and hot fudge.

As part of my weight loss regimen, I will OFFSET that gluttony by skipping the water with lemon wedge resulting in a massive 5 calorie cutback.  Or perhaps I could order the DIET Cola.

Change is here.  Unfortunately Obama means the kind that is found in your pocket.

Its been a challenging week and I feel a little frail and very much exhuasted.

One and a half years out of school and many doses of adult realities later, I am considerably more bewildered than ever about the conduct of human relationships.

Its so incredibly complex.

The g00d thing is that there is always tomorrow, which may against all odds, turn out better than you will ever expect.

I think that’s why we are always crossing our fingers. Metaphorically.

Silvan Shalom, vice-Premier ministre d’Israël, a comparé l’Iran à l’Allemagne d’Adolf Hitler, suite à la diatribe anti-israélienne du président iranien Mahmoud Ahmadinejad à Genève.

   Le président iranien Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

“Ce que l’Iran essaie de faire maintenant n’est pas du tout éloigné de ce que Hitler avait fait avec le peuple juif il y a 65 ans”, a déclaré M. Shalom , à l’entrée du camp d’Auschwitz où devait débuter une Marche des Vivants annuelle en hommage aux victimes de l’Holocauste. “L’Iran n’abandonnera jamais son ambition de faire revivre l’empire persan. Ils veulent contrôler tout le monde musulman, ils veulent contrôler les champs pétroliers et dominer la région pour y créer une nouvelle superpuissance”, a-t-il ajouté sous le tristement célèbre portail d’Auschwitz frappé de l’inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (Le travail rend libre). Plusieurs milliers de jeunes d’Israël et de la diaspora juive dans le monde se sont réunis  pour une Marche des Vivants, sur le site du camp d’Auschwitz-Birkenau installé en Pologne par les nazis allemands pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Plus de 1,1 million de personnes, dont un million de juifs, ont péri dans ce camp, devenu symbole de l’Holocauste. “Israël ne pourra jamais accepter l’idée de voir l’Iran se doter d’une bombe nucléaire, puisque nous entendons le président iranien et les autres leaders dire qu’Israël n’a pas le droit d’exister, qu’il doit disparaître des cartes, et qu’ils vont tout faire pour détruire Israël”, a martelé M. Shalom.

   Silvan Shalom, vice-Premier ministre d’Israël

M. Ahmadinejad avait soulevé  un tollé dans les rangs des pays occidentaux au cours de la première journée de la Conférence de l’ONU sur le racisme en lançant une violente diatribe contre Israël, qui a provoqué le départ des pays européens présents dans la salle.