"Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working."
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Gwen Stefani's tattoos
(or: The media is as liberal as the corporations that own it)
Mickey Z.
"They control the minds of the masses."
- Malcolm X (on American media power)
Perhaps my favorite illustration of life in a corporate propaganda state is the daily New York Times corrections box. Each morning, the newspaper of record comes clean about what it got wrong the day before.
For example, I remember a Times article that referred incorrectly to the status of Gwen Stefani’s tattoos. The next day, in the corrections box, came a dose of reality: Gwen Stefani has no permanent tattoos.
We can all sleep better knowing that Gwen Stefani has no permanent tattoosand secure in the knowledge that the media readily admits its mistakes. It’s all there in black and white—every single day—right?
Of course, the tacit message behind the daily New York Times corrections box is this: Besides a few minor typographical errors, everything else in yesterday’s paper was correct. It was accurate. It was, to use their phrase, fit to print... and has now passed on to become part of our official history. This is typical of life within a society dominated by a corporate-run press.
Whether you label them liberal or conservative, most major media outletsare large corporations owned by or aligned with even larger corporations, and they share a common goal: to make a profit by selling a product (an affluent audience) to a given market: advertisers.
Therefore, we shouldn’t find it too shocking that the image of the world being presented by a corporate-owned press very much reflects the biased interests of the elite players involved in this sordid little love triangle.
That’s why every major daily newspaper has a business section, but not a labor section. Why at least once a week, those same newspapers run an automobile section, but no bicycle section.
This is why when the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops, it makes headlines. But if the global extinction rate rises, it’s questionable if it'll even make the papers (and if it does, it’ll be buried in a small item on page 23).
If you created a blueprint for an apparatus that utterly erased critical thought, you could make none more efficient than the American corporate media.
Kill someone while wearing a uniform and you're a hero... do it in gang colors and you're a criminal. Hire a lawyer to help you find tax loopholes and you're a good businessman... make a few bucks off the books and you're a tax cheat. Sell cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets and you're an entrepreneur... smoke a joint and bet with a bookie: you're a menace to society.
Of all the beguiling propaganda tactics Corporate America has cultivated, the usurping of language is the greatest victory of all. Have you ever considered that also right after World War II the "Department of War" was renamed the "Defense Department"? Almost 70 years later, thanks to legions of pinstriped mountebanks, we exist in an age where helicopters named Apache are unselfconsciously used to quell (often alleged) ethnic cleansing.
It's all about setting standards and defining the accepted parameters. Yes, we can "have it our way," as long as we stay well within the range of choices being offered. We can “just do it” any time we damn well please. All we need is a $120 pair of sneakers. We've strayed so far from reality that even the most elementary truths have become obscured.
Show some flesh in a particular magazine and you're a pornographer…flash some skin on a public bus and you're a Calvin Klein ad. Collect food stamps and you're a welfare queen... hire a lobbyist to win government subsidies, tax breaks, and protectionist tariffs and you're a corporation.
Let's say you're a big city mayor and you want to institute a regressive tax on your city's poor residents. Easy, call it a "transit fare hike." Rich people don't ride the subway.
What if your company wants to dump toxic sludge on farmers to be used as fertilizer? Hire a massive public relations firm to give it a new image by renaming it "biosolids.”
There’s really nothing to it: Cars aren’t used, they’re pre-owned. Invasions aren’t invasions when they’re pre-emptive wars. Missiles aren't weapons, they're peacekeepers.
Claim that the Messiah regularly visits your suburban home and Mel Gibson’s faithful will beat a path to your door…claim to be the Messiah in Waco and they'll drive a tank through your living room. Serve the charred flesh of tortured animals and you're a gourmet…choose a lifestyle of compassion and logic and you're a zealot.
Since today's words have developed an uncanny knack for altering their meaning from situation to situation until they have no meaning at all, perhaps it's time for Americans to hold a mass dictionary burning. What good are definitions when they give peace prizes to men like to Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama—and so many of us believe these war criminals deserve such accolades?
As South African activist Steven Biko once said: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
Reprint State Department press releases verbatim and you're a respected investigative journalist... dig up the truth and you're gonna have a hell of a time trying to earn money as a writer.
With a nod to Guy Debord, I say it’s time we reinvent everyday life—steal it back from corporate propagandists and reintroduce the joy of living. Stop settling for less pain and start demanding more pleasure. Today’s progressives can provoke dramatic changes simply by refusing to submit to the societal formula they’re presented with.
We know what we feel…so no longer should we allow Hollywood, Madison Avenue, the government, or Corporate America to define us. We must trust our own instincts and break free from manufactured needs and illusory goals in order to cultivate new American Dreams (yes, plural):
Dreams not for sale
Dreams not based on celebrity
Dreams not based on material consumption
Dreams not based on physical beauty
Dreams not based on military conquest
Dreams that promote unity and collective action while maintaining individuality and independence
Dreams that challenge us to think for ourselves and about others
Breaking away from the omnipresent message of “work, consume, and obey authority without question” can be this generation’s way of challenging—and smashing—a culture that has us programmed to be more concerned with Gwen Stefani's tattoos than the corporate pirates raping the planet and controlling our minds.
Comrades, it’s time to rediscover the subversive pleasure of thinking for ourselves…
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.
Project Censored
P.O. Box 571
Cotati, 94931
United States
Mickey Z.
"They control the minds of the masses."
- Malcolm X (on American media power)
Perhaps my favorite illustration of life in a corporate propaganda state is the daily New York Times corrections box. Each morning, the newspaper of record comes clean about what it got wrong the day before.
For example, I remember a Times article that referred incorrectly to the status of Gwen Stefani’s tattoos. The next day, in the corrections box, came a dose of reality: Gwen Stefani has no permanent tattoos.
We can all sleep better knowing that Gwen Stefani has no permanent tattoosand secure in the knowledge that the media readily admits its mistakes. It’s all there in black and white—every single day—right?
Of course, the tacit message behind the daily New York Times corrections box is this: Besides a few minor typographical errors, everything else in yesterday’s paper was correct. It was accurate. It was, to use their phrase, fit to print... and has now passed on to become part of our official history. This is typical of life within a society dominated by a corporate-run press.
Whether you label them liberal or conservative, most major media outletsare large corporations owned by or aligned with even larger corporations, and they share a common goal: to make a profit by selling a product (an affluent audience) to a given market: advertisers.
Therefore, we shouldn’t find it too shocking that the image of the world being presented by a corporate-owned press very much reflects the biased interests of the elite players involved in this sordid little love triangle.
That’s why every major daily newspaper has a business section, but not a labor section. Why at least once a week, those same newspapers run an automobile section, but no bicycle section.
This is why when the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops, it makes headlines. But if the global extinction rate rises, it’s questionable if it'll even make the papers (and if it does, it’ll be buried in a small item on page 23).
If you created a blueprint for an apparatus that utterly erased critical thought, you could make none more efficient than the American corporate media.
Kill someone while wearing a uniform and you're a hero... do it in gang colors and you're a criminal. Hire a lawyer to help you find tax loopholes and you're a good businessman... make a few bucks off the books and you're a tax cheat. Sell cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets and you're an entrepreneur... smoke a joint and bet with a bookie: you're a menace to society.
Of all the beguiling propaganda tactics Corporate America has cultivated, the usurping of language is the greatest victory of all. Have you ever considered that also right after World War II the "Department of War" was renamed the "Defense Department"? Almost 70 years later, thanks to legions of pinstriped mountebanks, we exist in an age where helicopters named Apache are unselfconsciously used to quell (often alleged) ethnic cleansing.
It's all about setting standards and defining the accepted parameters. Yes, we can "have it our way," as long as we stay well within the range of choices being offered. We can “just do it” any time we damn well please. All we need is a $120 pair of sneakers. We've strayed so far from reality that even the most elementary truths have become obscured.
Show some flesh in a particular magazine and you're a pornographer…flash some skin on a public bus and you're a Calvin Klein ad. Collect food stamps and you're a welfare queen... hire a lobbyist to win government subsidies, tax breaks, and protectionist tariffs and you're a corporation.
Let's say you're a big city mayor and you want to institute a regressive tax on your city's poor residents. Easy, call it a "transit fare hike." Rich people don't ride the subway.
What if your company wants to dump toxic sludge on farmers to be used as fertilizer? Hire a massive public relations firm to give it a new image by renaming it "biosolids.”
There’s really nothing to it: Cars aren’t used, they’re pre-owned. Invasions aren’t invasions when they’re pre-emptive wars. Missiles aren't weapons, they're peacekeepers.
Claim that the Messiah regularly visits your suburban home and Mel Gibson’s faithful will beat a path to your door…claim to be the Messiah in Waco and they'll drive a tank through your living room. Serve the charred flesh of tortured animals and you're a gourmet…choose a lifestyle of compassion and logic and you're a zealot.
Since today's words have developed an uncanny knack for altering their meaning from situation to situation until they have no meaning at all, perhaps it's time for Americans to hold a mass dictionary burning. What good are definitions when they give peace prizes to men like to Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama—and so many of us believe these war criminals deserve such accolades?
As South African activist Steven Biko once said: “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
Reprint State Department press releases verbatim and you're a respected investigative journalist... dig up the truth and you're gonna have a hell of a time trying to earn money as a writer.
With a nod to Guy Debord, I say it’s time we reinvent everyday life—steal it back from corporate propagandists and reintroduce the joy of living. Stop settling for less pain and start demanding more pleasure. Today’s progressives can provoke dramatic changes simply by refusing to submit to the societal formula they’re presented with.
We know what we feel…so no longer should we allow Hollywood, Madison Avenue, the government, or Corporate America to define us. We must trust our own instincts and break free from manufactured needs and illusory goals in order to cultivate new American Dreams (yes, plural):
Dreams not for sale
Dreams not based on celebrity
Dreams not based on material consumption
Dreams not based on physical beauty
Dreams not based on military conquest
Dreams that promote unity and collective action while maintaining individuality and independence
Dreams that challenge us to think for ourselves and about others
Breaking away from the omnipresent message of “work, consume, and obey authority without question” can be this generation’s way of challenging—and smashing—a culture that has us programmed to be more concerned with Gwen Stefani's tattoos than the corporate pirates raping the planet and controlling our minds.
Comrades, it’s time to rediscover the subversive pleasure of thinking for ourselves…
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on an obscure website called Facebook.
Project Censored
P.O. Box 571
Cotati, 94931
United States
AT&T’s New Text Plan Overcharges You by 10,000,000 Percent. Literally.
Sam Biddle
Aug 18, 2011
http://gizmodo.com/5832245
AT&T's killing their $10/1,000 text plan. Now, you'll have to choose between $20 for unlimited, or forgo a plan and pay $0.20 per message. AT&T calls this "streamlining." We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam.
It's important to note, before considering anything SMS, that text messages are essentially free. Not for you, of course, but for companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Unlike uploading a video to YouTube from your phone, which eats mobile bandwidth, text messages ride the same itsy bitsy communication channel your handset uses to check in with local towers to make sure it's turned on. Each text hitches a ride on an infinitesimally small data packet, chugging through traffic that would've been there anyway. For AT&T, it's basically a freebie—160 bytes of data. A trifle. Compared to the rest of what they're transmitting, AT&T's texts are like amoebas on the back of a tyrannosaurus.
For you, it's quite the opposite. For you, text messages cost money. A lot of money. How much money? Well that all depends. Starting next week, the only texting options for new AT&T subscribers will be a $20/month unlimited buffet, or paying per text, which is insane.
And here's why it's insane. Absolutely, skull-implodingly, village-razingly, jump-out-your-window-into-spikes insane.
AT&T offers a 2 gigabyte per month phone data plan for $25. By breaking this down, we can find out how much they think each text's worth of data costs. And according to this value, when you're using the same amount of data to send a text without a messaging plan, they're charging you 100,000 times more. Yes. Blink a few times and read that again. When AT&T calls data texting, it costs 100,000 times more than when it's in the form of photos, music, email, or anything else. They're ripping you off with the force of a nuclear bomb.
Here's how it breaks down:
AT&T charges $25 for 2 gigabytes of mobile data, which states how much they think their bits and bytes are worth. That comes out to 80 megabytes per dollar. 80 megabytes will get you 500,000 text messages—assuming you're writing the largest possible message, which you're often not (i.e. "Hey" "Nothing" "lol").
Now divide that dollar by the 500,000 potential texts. That comes out to $0.000002 per text—two ten thousandths of a cent. A very, very, very small amount of money.
Now, let's say you send 5,000 texts a month. That's a large, though wholly realistic number. Multiply that by the above worthless cost per text, and you've got—hold onto your wallet!—$0.01. A penny for five thousand texts, according to how much AT&T says its data is worth in a data plan.
But outside of the data plan? Oh boy! Things get very different very fast. And by very different, I mean inordinately overpriced. Those same 5,000 texts, at a rate of $0.20 per message, will cost you $1,000. Not a penny—a grand. Two very different prices for literally the exact same thing.
They're not alone—every other carrier charges similarly grotesque rates for texting without an SMS plan. The difference here is that AT&T's taken away new customers' option to spend less, whereas carriers like Verizon still offer tiered texting plans for varying budgets. (Though don't be surprised if they follow suit—AT&T's been leading the industry in its data/pricing, often in the worst ways.)
When the blue curtain's pulled back and you see the enormous money tree they're shaking, there's nothing to conclude but outrage. Texting messages are as costly to AT&T as blowing bubbles, but they sell them to you like they're vomiting molten gold.
Aug 18, 2011
http://gizmodo.com/5832245
AT&T's killing their $10/1,000 text plan. Now, you'll have to choose between $20 for unlimited, or forgo a plan and pay $0.20 per message. AT&T calls this "streamlining." We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam.
It's important to note, before considering anything SMS, that text messages are essentially free. Not for you, of course, but for companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Unlike uploading a video to YouTube from your phone, which eats mobile bandwidth, text messages ride the same itsy bitsy communication channel your handset uses to check in with local towers to make sure it's turned on. Each text hitches a ride on an infinitesimally small data packet, chugging through traffic that would've been there anyway. For AT&T, it's basically a freebie—160 bytes of data. A trifle. Compared to the rest of what they're transmitting, AT&T's texts are like amoebas on the back of a tyrannosaurus.
For you, it's quite the opposite. For you, text messages cost money. A lot of money. How much money? Well that all depends. Starting next week, the only texting options for new AT&T subscribers will be a $20/month unlimited buffet, or paying per text, which is insane.
And here's why it's insane. Absolutely, skull-implodingly, village-razingly, jump-out-your-window-into-spikes insane.
AT&T offers a 2 gigabyte per month phone data plan for $25. By breaking this down, we can find out how much they think each text's worth of data costs. And according to this value, when you're using the same amount of data to send a text without a messaging plan, they're charging you 100,000 times more. Yes. Blink a few times and read that again. When AT&T calls data texting, it costs 100,000 times more than when it's in the form of photos, music, email, or anything else. They're ripping you off with the force of a nuclear bomb.
Here's how it breaks down:
AT&T charges $25 for 2 gigabytes of mobile data, which states how much they think their bits and bytes are worth. That comes out to 80 megabytes per dollar. 80 megabytes will get you 500,000 text messages—assuming you're writing the largest possible message, which you're often not (i.e. "Hey" "Nothing" "lol").
Now divide that dollar by the 500,000 potential texts. That comes out to $0.000002 per text—two ten thousandths of a cent. A very, very, very small amount of money.
Now, let's say you send 5,000 texts a month. That's a large, though wholly realistic number. Multiply that by the above worthless cost per text, and you've got—hold onto your wallet!—$0.01. A penny for five thousand texts, according to how much AT&T says its data is worth in a data plan.
But outside of the data plan? Oh boy! Things get very different very fast. And by very different, I mean inordinately overpriced. Those same 5,000 texts, at a rate of $0.20 per message, will cost you $1,000. Not a penny—a grand. Two very different prices for literally the exact same thing.
They're not alone—every other carrier charges similarly grotesque rates for texting without an SMS plan. The difference here is that AT&T's taken away new customers' option to spend less, whereas carriers like Verizon still offer tiered texting plans for varying budgets. (Though don't be surprised if they follow suit—AT&T's been leading the industry in its data/pricing, often in the worst ways.)
When the blue curtain's pulled back and you see the enormous money tree they're shaking, there's nothing to conclude but outrage. Texting messages are as costly to AT&T as blowing bubbles, but they sell them to you like they're vomiting molten gold.
Libya: "Investment Surge Sparks Nationalist Rhetoric, Policies"
Robalini's Note: This cable from Wikileaks perhaps explains the motivations behind the not-so-completely covert operation this year in Libya better than any establishment piece...
The regime has made a point of putting companies on notice that "exploitative" behavior will not be tolerated. In his annual speech marking the founding of his regime, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi in 2006 said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them -- now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son, Seif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, said in March 2007 that, "We will not tolerate a foreign company to make a profit at the expense of a Libyan citizen."
Beyond the rhetoric, there are other signs of growing resource nationalism. -- Some IOCs with local subsidiaries have been forced to adopt Libyan names this year, including TOTAL (now officially titled "Mabruk"), Repsol ("Akakoss"), ENI ("Mellita") and Veba ("Al-Hurruj"), although these names have yet to catch on. -- The Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) is currently in the process of reworking long-standing oil concessions with several different IOCs (Ref B), in an effort to wring more favorable terms. There is a growing concern in the IOC community that NOC, emboldened by soaring oil prices and the press of would-be suitors, will seek better terms on both concession and production-sharing agreements, even those signed very recently. -- Libyan labor laws have also been amended to "Libyanize" the economy in several key sectors, and IOCs are now being forced to hire untrained Libyan employees. The Libyan National Oil Company (NOC) has recently begun insisting that deputy general managers, finance managers and human resource managers in local offices of IOC's be Libyan.
Source URL:
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2007/11/07TRIPOLI967.html
The regime has made a point of putting companies on notice that "exploitative" behavior will not be tolerated. In his annual speech marking the founding of his regime, Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi in 2006 said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them -- now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son, Seif al-Islam al-Qadhafi, said in March 2007 that, "We will not tolerate a foreign company to make a profit at the expense of a Libyan citizen."
Beyond the rhetoric, there are other signs of growing resource nationalism. -- Some IOCs with local subsidiaries have been forced to adopt Libyan names this year, including TOTAL (now officially titled "Mabruk"), Repsol ("Akakoss"), ENI ("Mellita") and Veba ("Al-Hurruj"), although these names have yet to catch on. -- The Libyan National Oil Corporation (NOC) is currently in the process of reworking long-standing oil concessions with several different IOCs (Ref B), in an effort to wring more favorable terms. There is a growing concern in the IOC community that NOC, emboldened by soaring oil prices and the press of would-be suitors, will seek better terms on both concession and production-sharing agreements, even those signed very recently. -- Libyan labor laws have also been amended to "Libyanize" the economy in several key sectors, and IOCs are now being forced to hire untrained Libyan employees. The Libyan National Oil Company (NOC) has recently begun insisting that deputy general managers, finance managers and human resource managers in local offices of IOC's be Libyan.
Source URL:
http://wikileaks.org/cable/2007/11/07TRIPOLI967.html
Woman allegedly raped in Iraq sued by defense contractor KBR
Eric W. Dolan Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/23/woman-allegedly-raped-in-iraq-sued-by-defense-contractor-kbr
Defense contractor KBR has filed a lawsuit against Jamie Leigh Jones, a former employee who sued the company in 2007 after allegedly being drugged and raped by a group of co-workers in Iraq.
The lawsuit seeks more than $2 million to cover their legal fees, and accuses her of making fabricated and frivolous claims, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A Houston jury deliberated for more than 10 hours before deciding there was not enough evidence against the defendants.
“They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us,” her lawyer, Todd Kelly, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them.”
Jones had filed suit against KBR, its former parent company Halliburton, and former co-workers. All parties involved denied the allegations and the co-workers insisted the sex had been consensual.
She acknowledged that she had no memory of the alleged rapes but claimed it was because she had been drugged prior to the assault. Jones said the company imprisoned her in a shipping container after she reported the rape.
She had promoted her own case on her website and had asked for $145 million from KBR for allegedly failing to enforce its sexual harassment policies and not telling her of the danger of rape when she signed her employment contract.
Jones had sued the defendants for negligence, negligent undertaking, sexual harassment and hostile environment under Title VII of the Civil rights Act of 1964, breach of contract, fraud in the inducement to enter the employment contract, fraud in the inducement to agree to arbitration, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment.
KBR had attempted to keep the case from going to a jury trial, because Jones' contract required arbitration in the case of workplace disputes, but the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she had the right to sue in court.
The Crime Victims Office at the Department of Justice was unable to investigate the incident because of a lack of jurisdiction over private contractors in Iraq.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/23/woman-allegedly-raped-in-iraq-sued-by-defense-contractor-kbr
Defense contractor KBR has filed a lawsuit against Jamie Leigh Jones, a former employee who sued the company in 2007 after allegedly being drugged and raped by a group of co-workers in Iraq.
The lawsuit seeks more than $2 million to cover their legal fees, and accuses her of making fabricated and frivolous claims, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A Houston jury deliberated for more than 10 hours before deciding there was not enough evidence against the defendants.
“They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us,” her lawyer, Todd Kelly, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them.”
Jones had filed suit against KBR, its former parent company Halliburton, and former co-workers. All parties involved denied the allegations and the co-workers insisted the sex had been consensual.
She acknowledged that she had no memory of the alleged rapes but claimed it was because she had been drugged prior to the assault. Jones said the company imprisoned her in a shipping container after she reported the rape.
She had promoted her own case on her website and had asked for $145 million from KBR for allegedly failing to enforce its sexual harassment policies and not telling her of the danger of rape when she signed her employment contract.
Jones had sued the defendants for negligence, negligent undertaking, sexual harassment and hostile environment under Title VII of the Civil rights Act of 1964, breach of contract, fraud in the inducement to enter the employment contract, fraud in the inducement to agree to arbitration, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment.
KBR had attempted to keep the case from going to a jury trial, because Jones' contract required arbitration in the case of workplace disputes, but the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she had the right to sue in court.
The Crime Victims Office at the Department of Justice was unable to investigate the incident because of a lack of jurisdiction over private contractors in Iraq.
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