In five years; either the media will 'brainwash' French voters into believing things are better under Sarkozy or the voters will get rid of him. Either way; nothing will be the same in France as 'takeover'targets will be reported in the French media in the same way as 'horseraces or competitive sports' just like the machinations of KKR etc in the US and UK media. Little notice will be given to how many people get laid off from these takeovers as the focus will be on the great wealth attained by the company heads and the takeover organizations. Not a pretty picture but a realistic one if France follows the US and the UK toward 'globalism and free markets', just two words synonymous with destruction of the middle class for the enrichment of the top 10%.
in other words they have been bribed. bought off.
what is the difference between a corporate bagman walking up to a civil servant, scientist, doctor, banker etc and offering a big fat bribe to cheat the system, or a corporate bagman funding a politician who promises to bend/break the system for his bosses and incidentally hand out hush money bonuses to the professional strata? legally, a world of difference. morally I ain't so sure.
how much do you have to pay the average person to secure their compliance with an agenda that will surely result (from proven track record) in deprivation, preventable illness, ignorance, humiliation, even premature death for large numbers of their fellow citizens? the answers seems to be a pathetically small amount. not even 30 pieces of silver...
it's like some nation-sized Milgram experiment.
I feel for some reason compelled to quote the late lamented Mark Jones, pbuh, who maintained his lucidity and his compassionate anger to the last...
Incidentally, and also about ingenuity, as Alf Hornborg pointed out, the technical ingenuity of the West did not succeed in creating 'growth' except at the price of impoverishing the peripheries: machinery embodies entropy, which is another thing that neither you nor Y seem to take on board. Your Panglossian optimism is based on one of the oldest, most cherished and most pernicious of bourgeois illusions: the 'trickle-down' idea that 'prosperity' can be shared. It cannot, and on the contrary, capitalist growth has, as Freeman points out, only increased inequality and social injustice on a world scale. It is usual to try to counter this fact by pointing to increased longevity etc in the Third World, but such arguments are mendacious and cynical, and it is easy to show why [...] The global Hubbert-peak is already happening. World per capita commercial energy consumption already peaked several decades ago. This is the real reason why development became de-development, why more than 2bn people live on less than $2/day, and why their fate is certain to continue to worsen. The global Hubbert Peak is already happening. Energy shortages interact with capitalist accumulation to produce a long plateau rather than a sharp peak and decline. Life on this plateau is an attritive and basically losing struggle, against chronic and growing energy shortage, a struggle conducted by the imperialist ruling classes on many different fronts simultaneously, from the recomposition of the working class, the reconstruction of the capitalist labour process, the inflection of accumulation dynamics, to the reconstruction and of the architecture of imperialist hegemony, the reconstitution of subalternity between and within subject national cultures and states, the preparation for war and the final closure of civil society and its replacement by surrogates based on the surveillance state, and more. The ruling class, contemptuous of its social enemies which it defeated conclusively in the 20th century, is not afraid to conspire openly against the day when an avalanche of change is no longer avoidable. It is bracing itself for a battle which it does not intend to lose. Since it does not face any real organised opposition and enjoys near-total ideo-hegemony, the only thing imperialism does fear is the possibility that the cascade of change will become completely uncontrollable.
The global Hubbert-peak is already happening. World per capita commercial energy consumption already peaked several decades ago. This is the real reason why development became de-development, why more than 2bn people live on less than $2/day, and why their fate is certain to continue to worsen. The global Hubbert Peak is already happening. Energy shortages interact with capitalist accumulation to produce a long plateau rather than a sharp peak and decline.
Life on this plateau is an attritive and basically losing struggle, against chronic and growing energy shortage, a struggle conducted by the imperialist ruling classes on many different fronts simultaneously, from the recomposition of the working class, the reconstruction of the capitalist labour process, the inflection of accumulation dynamics, to the reconstruction and of the architecture of imperialist hegemony, the reconstitution of subalternity between and within subject national cultures and states, the preparation for war and the final closure of civil society and its replacement by surrogates based on the surveillance state, and more. The ruling class, contemptuous of its social enemies which it defeated conclusively in the 20th century, is not afraid to conspire openly against the day when an avalanche of change is no longer avoidable. It is bracing itself for a battle which it does not intend to lose.
Since it does not face any real organised opposition and enjoys near-total ideo-hegemony, the only thing imperialism does fear is the possibility that the cascade of change will become completely uncontrollable.
Sarko's family were petty aristocracy back home in Hungary... he's never forgiven the Reds for the armed overthrow of feudal aristocracy there.
Sarkozy absolutely hates the left -- in part because the Communists burned his aristocratic family's chateau in Hungary (from whence his family emigrated to France) in 1944. And, in a major campaign speech just days before the election, Sarkozy surprisingly devoted 20 minutes of his discourse to a violent denunciation of the May 1968 student-worker revolt (Sarko was only 14 at the time of that rebellion.). The heritage of May '68, Sarko thundered, must be "liquidated." He blamed it for a generalized attitude of "laxisme," for France's having become a country "in which work has no value, in which people think they can do anything they feel like doing, in which people are lazy," and on and on. May '68 was, of course, the fountain of social ferment that led to the sexual revolution, to women's liberation and the legalization of abortion, the gay liberation movement and the eventual repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality, the relaxation of censorship laws, and a whole series of other cultural changes that opened up a stuffy, paternalistic, arteriosclerotic French society. But May '68 was also a general strike by 11 million French workers that gained union recognition in many factories, higher wages, and that won a reinforcement of the social safety net in an agreement (negotiated on behalf of then-President Georges Pompidou by a young Jacques Chirac) that became known as "les accords de la rue de Grenelle" (the agreement of Grenelle Street). What was unstated in Sarko's anti-May '68 speech was that all that sort of thing, too, must be "liquidated."
May '68 was, of course, the fountain of social ferment that led to the sexual revolution, to women's liberation and the legalization of abortion, the gay liberation movement and the eventual repeal of laws criminalizing homosexuality, the relaxation of censorship laws, and a whole series of other cultural changes that opened up a stuffy, paternalistic, arteriosclerotic French society. But May '68 was also a general strike by 11 million French workers that gained union recognition in many factories, higher wages, and that won a reinforcement of the social safety net in an agreement (negotiated on behalf of then-President Georges Pompidou by a young Jacques Chirac) that became known as "les accords de la rue de Grenelle" (the agreement of Grenelle Street). What was unstated in Sarko's anti-May '68 speech was that all that sort of thing, too, must be "liquidated."
if my darker moments I fear that Mark was right, and that the trendiness of the Security State and the (guided and channelled) enthusiasm of the bourgeoisie (and even a chunk of the proles) for xenophobic strongmen figures -- like Sarko, Putin, Dubya, PT -- are evidence of this bunker mentality starting to gel in country after country. there are roughly speaking two ways to approach a survival situation where resources are tight. one is for everyone to share a fairly equal reduced ration, and the other is to kill or starve the majority so that the strongmen and their pets and liegemen can feast.
we shake our heads and cluck our tongues over the tragedy of places like Darfur or Afghanistan where social order fails, scarcity is painfully felt, and warlordism, mafia rule, paternalist armed enclaves, reiving and raiding replace a civil society. I see the politics of the Bushies, the Sarkites, the Blairites as the same pig with some Western techno-lipstick liberally applied: building walls and detention centres as fast as they can funnel money to their crony contractors, invading other people's homes to raid the larder and steal the cattle [i.e. minerals, oil, water], and posting armed guards at every possible border and gate to keep the unwanted out and the peonage in, posting spies and listeners everywhere to catch the first whisper of opposition. warlordism and the apartheid bunker mentality can wear a suit and tie and speak in mellifluous cadences. same pig, just with an MBA.
maybe I should change my online handle to Marvin the Paranoid Android... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
Actually, in the US in 2000, it proved to be a $300 tax refund. Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes
Last index for silver was $13/oz average in March 07.
The thirty pieces paid to Judas are commonly believed to have been Tyrian shekels at about 8.5 grams each -- fact-check me on this, someone -- and 8.5g is about .3 ounces, right?
So Iscariot was paid about 9 ounces of silver (30 x .30), or about $117 US today.
OTOH given the average price of housing and food in Roman Palestine, that $300 tax refund may be a stingy bribe by comparison... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
I think this is where the DuBois concept of the "psychic wage" is essential to understanding. If we try to measure the material payoff to middle- and working-class voters, their support for Sarko/Reagan/Thatcher/Berlusconi looks flat-out insane. But when these candidates can posture as the defenders of some impalpable value against a perceived threat, homo economicus takes a nap and his ideological twin pulls the voting lever. The 84% turnout is really disturbing, as is the suggestion that Sarko will try to form an alliance with LePen's outfit as Berlusconi did with the Allianza.
wouldn't it be ironic if the marketoids. with their singleminded insistence on money as the metric of all things, had to appeal to extra-economic ideas to get some chunks of the electorate to vote -- in a very "irrational" way -- against their own economic interests? The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
