Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

The black dog may have a form of rabies caused by the diamonds glare and the more the diamond grows, so the more rabid will the black dog become.

Of course there are many scenarios which arise with the current situation, yet the time may come when people stop buying, except for essentials and stop providing for the diamonds of the world, which of course will only widen the crack in the diamonds' ideologies. Diamonds, gold and oil held their power because of their unique qualities. Now we have better, cheaper, safer and more job intensive methods for doing the job they did. The black dog can see it's being conned again, that work and a future are there to be created if only the system would step out of the dark ages and into the necessary future of country self-sufficiency through small business. Concentrating on economic and ecological sustainability through price and environmental regulation and not profit growth is the only rational approach.

Whether people turn away from government and big business is irrelevant. A new system will evolve naturally and we will return to a cash / barter market as a decent really representative governmental system evolves from the ashes of democratic capitalism.

Where I live there's a large number of people living on various social services. Being more than 80 kilometres from the nearest Centrelink, many are forced to travel there regularly, with no public transport and very high fuel prices, just to put in forms. On other days they attend their mandatory meetings with the privately owned by vested interests 'No Jobs Agencies'. Luckily I'm not with Centrelink, but have the same problems with the bureaucrats as they are in total denial about what is fact. If you question them, they target you and harass whenever they can.

The people behind governments and big business, the bureaucracies, are totally incompetent, so inbred and controlled by politically correct psychopaths who don't know anything at all. No matter what happens to the markets, the black dog is getting madder. Even the most sceptical and don't want to know types have realised they are being screwed more and more with no sane outcome. The time will come when the elite has given away all our assets, GDP and put us so far in debt that we will be owned by the World Bank, which is owned by the same people who created this mess.

We vote for and elect idiots, who employ idiots to make us look like idiots. Is that the sign of a mature sane race, or a fatalist self centred one? Every service is in the later stages of collapse and chaos. The bureaucracy has seen to that.

Gerald Celente predicts the worst collapse ever - greater than the great depression.

This "political atheist " has a very good track record in predicting stuff.

 And more:

The National Security Agency (NSA) is developing a tool that George Orwell's Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.

With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

The vast growth of surveillance and data collection risks undermining freedoms vital to the British way of life, a group of eminent peers is warning today.

In a devastating critique of the spiralling use of CCTV, databases and information sharing, they warn that the growth of information collected about every man, woman and child in Britain is a "serious threat" to principles at the heart of the constitution. The Lords Constitution Committee, which includes the former law lord, Lord Woolf, and the former attorney generals, Lord Lyell and Lord Morris of Aberavon, call in a report for new safeguards to prevent government and private databases damaging historic rights to privacy and civil liberties...

The peers warn that the "collection and processing of personal information has become pervasive, routine, and almost taken for granted."

Radio-Frequency Identification:

...a new Intelligent Perimeter Defense system deployed by the FBI that uses covert Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to track people and assets without their knowledge.

That’s right, using RFID to track people without their knowledge. This system is exactly what the privacy advocates have long feared: Big Brother tracking us with spy chips. As Orwellian as this sounds, the undisputed fact is that this system catches thieves and does so at a fraction of the cost of traditional security solutions.

Thieves today, who and what tomorrow?

Just reread Justin Obodie's thread starter and the Adele Horin article it referred to, in thinking about how the thread has evolved.

Justin and Richard were referring to the long term brutalisation of unemployed that Adele Horin makes clear in the way only a good writer can .

From here, the thread moves to an argument about who was ultimately responsible for the upcoming recession, that is going to make conditions for the unemployed even more ridiculous, given that unemployment is going to increase.

From this point some cry foul, blaming neoliberalist alibiing for casino capitalism as the problem. This becomes more obscene when one considers the lucre the rich continue to pull compared the unemployed, often thru premeditatedly criminal means.

Others say no. Don't penalise smarter people for the benefit of possibly lazier ones. The state is to blame, nursing the unworthy and getting in the way of market forces so that some become un-self reliant. Capitalism hasn't failed, but social democracy, somehow intruding on creative forces has; by pandering to a capricious electorate that is something like the plebeians of Rome. How can our producers compete against harsher societies where labour is paid a dollar or two a day, they ask?

Personally, I can't see that our society seems very good at maximising efficient use of resources; neolib OR social democrat. Consumer capitalism thrives in our actually corporatist, economy, based on a tenacious notion that it is good to illogically use resources in fulfilling consumer fetishes, rather than producing that which is needed for essential living globally. Thus we maintain the tyranny of starvation that is the hallmark of a hierarchical essentially uncreative mentality and resulting society. The type of nutty response of a Westernised Israel dislocated from reality toward Gazans who are denied a stake in an economic process is significant, as typical of the west and the third world, rather than atypical.

I can't see how we can have a global economy and a genuine level playing field in a meaningful sense, unless resources are used to pull the poor up to a more healthy and productive level. But no stake is offered, only more stick. But a productive mentality is surely one that requires something more apt than the isolationist-deteriorating-to-narcissist Social Darwinist / Nietzschean / Hobbessian 'naff-you-jack mentality that Anthony Nolan described in an earlier post. Reeks of guard dogs and truncheons.

Perhaps Marx's notion of property as theft and the injustice implicit in this is just what keeps us in a primordial world "red in tooth and claw".

The problem remains this: solving of the contradiction between liberalism, of which socialism is but a variety and actually, conservatist feudalism which denies that a level playing field that is needed for a healthier global culture and that it is good that the many struggle under duress for the idle "divine right" few. So let them eat cake.

THIS is what Adam Smith was hoping for?

The unemployed have to justify every breath they take ( like the third world poor who are much worse off again ) and yet corporate looters and feudal landlords elsewhere, who have already swindled billions, are then rewarded by further largesse in the form of bailouts by governments saddled with the responsibility of tidying up their sh-t after them. The unemployed, who know this, are offered nothing more than another sadistic kick in the butt for misfortunes brought upon them by crooks both corporate and governmental who can't or won't exercise their minds and hearts despite fat incomes, in working on and for things real and productive.

I don't think altruism is the problem. I think the "selfish individualism" that English cultural critic Terry Eagleton describes, is the real black hole that drains imagination and initiative right throughout society. It’s just that some have to live with consequences and some don't.

Sounds fair, does it?

If not, it's no use trying to coerce people resentful of a double standard standing out like dog's balls, into being productive, because really what you’ve got is then the Hartz mountains forced labour factories of ww2 Germany as your socio cultural paradigm, rather than a system based on supposed free association and the level playing field.

Prof. Robert Reich interviewed by Kerry O'Brien last night on the 7:30 Report claimed that in 1980 the top 1% of earners took home each year about 8-9% of total US income whereas in 2007 the same top 1% of top earners took home over 22% of total income.

His point? When one is extravagantly wealthy that money is NOT put into circulation buying goods and services.  How's that for a market distortion of "let it rip" capitalism.  These characters behave like the "robber barons" decribed by Marx and in so doing erode the very market and social conditions on which they rely.

I'd be very interested to know what the numbers are in Australia.

Globalization was the one trend we could all count on in perpetuity (the world is flat, remember?), but now every metric of global trade is plummeting, and national leaders are worrying much less about lowering trade barriers than they are about how to protect their domestic economies from the cross-border plagues of currency collapse and banking failure.

Within a year or two we may even begin to see world population growth go into reverse—though not because of policy shifts.

We are in a new era. Welcome to the conclusion and consequences of the industrial growth bubble.

It's not the end of the world—yet. There is still opportunity to manage economic collapse in such a way as to lay the groundwork for a recovery to low-flow sustainability. But not if we concentrate our efforts on denial, blame, or the propping up of old institutions and industries that have no chance of survival—all of which are the obsessions of our current leadership.

We shouldn't get too depressed as we watch the economy collapse. We need to change and this crisis is just the trigger that will force change. 

Those that want to cling to the past will moan and groan. Those of us that have been pushing for change will see the opportunities to move into a brave new world.

Bring on the revolution!

Paul Walter: "Paul Morrella, was it the central banks that were the problem, or their undermining by opportunists unwilling to acept any limiting of their $buck-hunger ?

Of course central banks are the problem. I can't even believe this point is disputed anymore. And they're (central banks) all out there causing much, much more damage. The day of reckoning will soon be upon us.

Having earned vast amounts of money at the supposed market place actually degenerated to casino over the last decade, they correctly predicted that society would have to bail them out to the tune of $trillions and become willingly or unwillingly complicit in the Great Hijack.

I doubt anyone could have guessed that. The extent of these bailouts proves we've entered the land of stupid. Thirty years ago, you'd have been laughed out of room for even suggesting such a thing would take place (that's how far we've fallen). The quicker people come to the conclusion that we're being lead by third rate dummies, the quicker we'll all move forward.

I sincerely hope that Obama, Rudd and others who talk of a new Bretton Woods and an overdue reforming of the current "wild west " global economy characterised by unnacountability and vandalism, are not put off by the noise of vested interests.

I haven't heard Obama talk about Bretton Woods. Obama is now in the process of handing out government money (we'll borrowed money) for people to use lobbying for more borrowed government money. And this clown is our saviour?

Instead they could rebuild an international system that rewards that innovation, originality, cooperation, communication and hard work in creation of new and useful technologies typical of the original market place notion, rather than continuing the advanced burglary and  theivery of untalented criminal mentalities that an international system outmoded by a skewed version of globalisation creates.

If you're thinking about world-wide socialism, it aint happening, outside of a Hollywood script. And that you can take to the bank (solvent or not).

Anthony Nolan: "Hooray for the end of the radical neo-liberal Hayekian experiment." 

I wouldn't be celebrating just yet. Obama has already started to hit some major stumbling blocks. In the end this current idiot ecocomic disaster, will have to be paid for, by somebody. I really can't see too many people putting up their hand, can you? A return to the classics is very much a wind that'll grow stronger in the coming years. Political cycles work the same as economic cycles.

There's been nothing "Hayeksian" about the last thirty years. For a start he never believed in central banks (a very important point) - the real and only reason for this mess in the first place.

There exists a website devoted to the intricacies of a life under Centrelink.

 A generation of  Australians has suffered a decade of  Centrelink and of JobNet. The mere notion of  a job has become a commodity,  to be milked by middlemen;  and compliance replaces self-reliance and self-empowerment. This Net  is not the safety-net it purports to be; it  thoroughly entangles and suffocates the unemployed.

The system, so finely tuned as to "embugger" the unfortunate few, is now primed to deliver it's own brand of retribution on those who might yet now  blindly fall into its clutches. Like the song says, never smile at a crocodile.

The long march through the institutions is complete.  Watch the Parisians!

A whole new ball game - the right no longer able to argue that social democracy is socialism as the USSR is a defunct failure and the left, which is to say the social democrats, no longer in any way interested in socialism (or not with any credibility anyway). 

A globalised economy and a brand new, in historical terms, knowledge of our shared responsibility and vulnerability on  a small planet.

Hooray for the end of the radical neo-liberal Hayekian experiment. 

Social democracy or barbarism!

"Explosive anger is spilling out onto the streets of Europe. The meltdown of the global economy is igniting massive social unrest in a region that has long been a symbol of political stability and social cohesion. It's not a new trend: A wave of upheaval is spreading from the poorer countries on the periphery of the global economy to the prosperous core...

At least in Western Europe, cries of "burn the shit down!" are being heard in countries with some of the highest standards of living in the world -- states with adequate social safety nets; countries where all citizens have access to decent health care and heavily subsidized educations. Places where minimum wages are also living wages, and a dignified retirement is in large part guaranteed.  

.. people, out of their own distress and anger, will organize their own politics, and they will make themselves seen and heard around this country."

Just, in response to Richard's comments, one can live with the overall thrust of the package, given the times. But a sense of bafflement overcomes me, on a quick reading of the Advertiser's summary.

Vast amounts are to spent on roads, yet in spite of the laughable performance of rail, trams and buses recently in Melbourne in particular, over time in Sydney and to a lesser extent in Adelaide, nothing seems on offer.

Has something already been fed into public transport, or have I missed something?

Is it all about propping up greenhouse intensive roads, to avoid the collapse of the automobile/ engineering sector, at the expense of (relatively) more eco-friendly public transport?

I could understand the sort of studied ignorance in government planning as against the prerequisites of ecological sustainability if this was the nineteen- eighties. But in this stage in proceedings this denialist idiot response seems positively malignant.

If you think I'm exaggerating concerning mentalities, consider the ridiculous attack on Prof. Garnaut by the buffoon Bill Ludwig in today's Oz (4/2/09) .

No, am not saying I prefer roo to beef - that's such a crude, petty, coathanger on which to hang the real purpose of the attack, an attempt to ridicule an educated man who leads the call for rational polices involving most efficient use of scarce resources and capital; before people start writing in grumbling about roo meat which is not the main object of my comment.

We need efficiency in the use of resources to set examples in the avoidance of squander both personal and social, and keep unemployment down. So why is undue attention given, in the press, to an illiterate like Ludwig?

I read this just now; It’s Not Going to Be OK, the black dog is savilating:

 Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won’t have to wait long to find out.

Hey Richard, the question, to the answer to life the universe and everything, was 6x9.

It makes a lot of sense really - to mice, but to humans it makes no sense at all. In short even if humans were told the answers we wouldn't understand anyway.

And from memory HHGTTG ends like this, and makes sense, well the song does, the images, like 6x9=42, make no sense at all.

"No man owns a fortune," he said. "It owns him." It was the motto of his life.

The albatross, as I have previously mentioned, believes that you don't own things - they own you. Being an albatross such a belief comes naturally.

I read the above quote last night and thought it had to be an albatross quote, but to my surprise it was a humanoid quote.

A banker no doubt. 

A banker who understood the intrinsic nature of money, and put it  to use and the best possible way

He had his enemies - this bitter sweet short story about Amadeo Peter Giannini will bring you joy - and sorrow.