@Fran – probably too early on Venezuela – where are the troops needed? The US generals would not like it.
Last time the Venezuelian army did not intervene heavily and now Chavez is even proping them up. So I just don´t see it now. Without Iraq, yes, definitly.

Posted by: b | Apr 6 2005 18:06 utc | 3

Friends of Dorothy not welcome in Kansas any more

Posted by: Toto | Apr 6 2005 18:24 utc | 5

good article from michael hudson in this month’s harpers – The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Why Social Security Won’t Be Enough to Save Wall Street

The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money. In fact, the only way the stock market is going to grow is if we the people put a lot more of our money into it. What Bush seeks to manufacture is a boom—or, more accurately, a bubble—bankrolled by the last safe pile of cash in America today. His plan is a Ponzi scheme, and in that scheme it is Social Security that is being played for the last sucker.

Posted by: b real | Apr 6 2005 18:46 utc | 7

The psychodynamics of occupation and the abuse at Abu Ghraib : An interpretation after one year of revelations

Posted by: Nugget | Apr 6 2005 19:00 utc | 9

LA Times They’re In — but Not Home Free

Herron put no money down for her tidy one-bedroom, borrowing the entire purchase price of $211,000. To keep her monthly payments as low as possible, she got an adjustable-rate mortgage that won’t require her to pay any principal for three years.
Thanks to her “interest-only” loan, the 911 police dispatcher was able to afford, barely, her first home. She now has a stake in California’s sizzling real estate market. As her home increases in value, she plans to use some of that equity to pay down her credit cards.
But Herron is also setting herself up for a day of reckoning: Nov. 1, 2007.
That’s when she has to start paying off her loan principal. If interest rates are higher than when she bought her home last fall — something many economists consider probable if not inevitable — her monthly payment will increase by as much as a third.
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” said Herron, 32. “I’m already working overtime to pay my bills.”

2004 – 48% of the homes bought in California were financed with interest only adjustable mortgage loans. Uchhh.

Posted by: b | Apr 6 2005 20:57 utc | 11

the Hebrew patriarch Abraham
What makes someone think Abraham was a Hebrew?

Posted by: b | Apr 6 2005 22:16 utc | 13

um, it is just me, or does it seem a bit ahistorial to read that passage and think that it was crude oil for that foot?
olive oil, maybe?
so, in other parts of the bible, when it talks about anointing someone’s head with oil, was that 10w40?
and, does this mean that John Ashcroft was not really blessed when he substituted Crisco?
who knows, maybe the guy will find oil, but boy, that sounds whole spiel sounds like it was taken from First Elmer Gantry, Verse 1: Thou shalt find a sucker born every minute, and if thou createst a ponzi scheme, though shalt rake in the dough. Just be sureth to park it offshoreth.

Posted by: fauxreal | Apr 7 2005 0:15 utc | 15

Do you want fries with that, lard-ass?
On obesity in currency expending units and rudeness among currency intake transaction enabling units.

Posted by: Svelte | Apr 7 2005 1:12 utc | 17

Some thoughts on the ruling class and what we peasants can do about ’em, or what may be happening next… Catherine Sundburg muses on ‘What They Can’t Control’ — they can’t force us to watch TV, to buy useless/worthless stuff, to own SUVs, etc. — not yet anyway. Sundburg argues for personal, individual revolt against the hypercapitalist, hyperconsumer culture: ” We each have the power to change our own attitudes and actions; the choice is ours and ‘they’ cannot do a thing about it.”
For those who (like Kassandra here) are staring fixedly down the ski slopes of Hubbert’s Peak (Jerome worries about a Hobbesian, brutal expensive-energy future, Jared Diamond worries about the collapse of Anglo-American civilisation, etc), here are a couple of bar snacks.
What did Tainter really say? Well of course we should go read him in the original, but here’s a summary of what Tainter (the guy that Diamond mysteriously failed to mention let alone cite) said about the “collapse” of civilisations.
Here, a thoughtful blogger suggests that we “Imagine the end of the world in moderation. It’s hard. We tend to imagine that either the “economy” will recover and we’ll go on like 1999 forever, plus flying cars, or else one day “the apocalypse happens” and every component of the industrial system is utterly gone.” The author goes on to challenge this dichotomy (almost Manichaean in its extremism) and suggest that as seen from the perspective of an individual human lifetime, the peak oil event is likely to induce a “slow collapse”, not an Instant Mad Max [just add hot — I mean radioactive — water] movie scenario.
Lastly, in concert with these other three threads of thought, I return to Hakim Bey and his concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone. It may be that a collapsing (in the Tainter sense) future means a multiplication of TAZ — various flavours, some of which I would not care for myself — as centralised control and the fossil-intensive technology that enables it, start to fray.
Maybe the future looks not so much monotonically, systematically, consistently grim and violent [a monocrop of Mad Maxes], as bewilderingly kaleidoscopic, fractal, astonishingly diverse and unpredictable? What our corporate masters want is the Taylorised future — controlled consumers buying in controlled markets, working under close supervision in controlled workplaces, travelling only under the control of government agencies, using a controlled currency, investing in controlled and rigged financial schemes, etc. — Company World. But it takes an awful lot of fossil fuel to keep that game going. Maybe the first victim of peak oil will be, not ourselves, but the web of control which corporate/wingnut power-elites are trying to tighten about us even now (with their biometric passports, their high-tech and high-energy “superweapons” and the like.
Or maybe I’m just looking for a silver lining. But if “our culture is going down the tubes” that may, just possibly, mean not only bad things but potentially some good things. There are aspects of “our culture” that I could watch flow away down those tubes without a tear of regret.

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 7 2005 3:58 utc | 19

I can stop any time I want to…
Oh No — It’s Smellovision!
seriously, at one time (about 20 years ago) I would have said “Oh Boy! Nifty!” but now I think, “Oh Gawd — how far can I get from anywhere that this horrible technology might be installed?” it was bad enough when characters in the Matrix movies walked through and past whispering holographic ads (ugh, ugh, ugh) — just imagine them with scent, taste, and tactility. Jaysus. roll on, Hubbert’s Peak.

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 7 2005 4:17 utc | 21

Thanks DeA!
That blogger is really a good read.

Posted by: b | Apr 7 2005 5:52 utc | 23

Someones sneeking away
South Korea reducing troops in Iraq

South Korea, which has the third-largest contingent of foreign troops in Iraq, is cutting its military presence by 270 soldiers to 3270, defence ministry officials have said.
…
South Korean media reports quoted US sources as saying the cuts had involved more than 500 military personnel and that Washington had not been notified of the move.

Posted by: b | Apr 7 2005 8:04 utc | 25

@anna missed
also from the baltimoresun website, “curveball” redux. if the link doesn’t work use bugmenot.com to get to the story.Unfortunately, Iraq spy story seems destined to have a sequel

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 7 2005 13:14 utc | 27

HKOL, nice find on Bahrain; one really bad wing-nut acquantaince of mine is going there next week; hope the holiday isn’t spoiled 😉

Posted by: Friendly Fire | Apr 7 2005 14:14 utc | 29

temporary autonomous zones
find the rhizomes, baby.

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 7 2005 16:44 utc | 31

DeA, rapt –
Not coincidently John Robb (you may not like him, but he has some good thoughts)describes TAZ within his Global Guerilla concept. He says the pirate network’s temporary autonomous zones concept is used by todays guerilla networks and thinks about ways to shut them down.
If you prefer living in a TAZ read him to know what your enemy may do.

Posted by: b | Apr 7 2005 17:18 utc | 33

Casualties in Cairo blast

Posted by: Nugget | Apr 7 2005 18:29 utc | 35

Behind the New Iraq
It’s emerging that the real meaty matters in Iraq – federalism, who gets oil-rich Kirkuk, and, crucially, what happens to the oil industry overall – will be settled by the constituent assembly. But two developments are ominous. The attribution of ministries for the “new” government once again will be sectarian. And every faction will remain armed to their teeth. The Kurds keep their independent peshmerga militia, and financed by Baghdad. The SCIRI keeps its Badr Brigades. The Da’wa Party also keeps its own militia. None of these will answer to Baghdad – which mobilizes its own, US-trained Iraqi security forces. Cynically, one might add that outside the political process, the Sunni resistance will also keep its thousands of fighters.
Lebanonization?
It’s too soon to perceive the substantial details of the Shi’ite-Kurd deal – between them they hold more than two-thirds of the 275 seats in parliament. But what’s happened since January 30 is definitely not a good omen.
Among the 275 parliamentary players involved in the nine-week political football, there were only 17 Sunni Arabs, as the majority of Sunni Arabs boycotted the elections. Clearly, these Sunnis are unlikely to be representative of the Sunni Arabs, who make up 20% of the population. The crucial Sunni Arab grievance is that because they are a demographic minority – although nobody really knows for sure, there is no census and there may be more Sunni Arabs than Kurds – this does not mean they have to accept their political marginalization as a fait accompli. The fact that Sunni Arabs involved in the political process are viewed by many Sunni Arabs as illegitimate explains why former president Yawer didn’t want to become parliamentary Speaker.
Indeed, the manner in which the new Sunni Arab parliament Speaker, Hajim al-Hasani, was picked upset the Sunnis. Of the 17 Sunnis in parliament, three contested the elections on the UIA list – so they were unacceptable to the Sunnis themselves. Of the remaining 14, 12 were parliamentarians under Saddam Hussein or had some kind of Ba’athist credentials, so they were unacceptable to the Shi’ites and the Kurds.
So there were only two Sunnis with standing: Yawer and Hasani. Both are non-Ba’athist former exiles. Hasani, a native of Kirkuk and a former member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a successor of the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood, studied and lived for years in the US. And that goes to the heart of why he was not the Sunni first choice for Speaker: he had been an exile for too long; and to make matters worse, during the leveling of Fallujah – when he was one of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s ministers – he refused to resign, unlike the leader of the Iraqi Islamic Party, Muhsin Abdul Hamid (the party later expelled Hasani).

Posted by: Friendly Fire | Apr 7 2005 19:24 utc | 37

pbs and npr haven’t attempted to be fair & balanced for a long, long time. executives that come from such straight-up propaganda operations as voa and radio marti have no place in a true public sphere. schulz will fit right in w/ his anti-commie fanatacism.

Posted by: b real | Apr 7 2005 20:03 utc | 39

Apropos of not much except the craziness of the times — Joe Bageant in a real, or imagined, correspondence with a crazy — or sane — man.
A slower pace and a more moving, moody tone than Bageant’s signature style. He chides the Left for its lack of affect and its blanket rejection of the spiritual. Basically comes down to a rampaging rewrite of “Yea though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not charity…”

Meanwhile, the sheer carnage of our terrible national enterprise is staggering! Yet no one mentions the back rooms of research facilities filled with mutilated tortured beings kept alive for study or force-fed Drano to see how long it takes fifty-percent of them to die. I am always astonished at how very few people know what goes on in medical and corporate research labs, not to mention the meat industry. “For every action… ” It’s the nature of reality. It’s physics. There will be a reckoning for the culture that creates a holocaust of that magnitude. The fact that there is something terribly wrong with anyone who does such a thing, and that this same “lack” will therefore affect EVERYTHING he/she does, eventually creating magnificently awful problems. Elevating carnage to cultural protocol is very dangerous. And official rationalization of it is disastrous. Why isn’t someone talking about these things?” We have no examples. We have no ideals. We have only corruption and self-justifying silliness in service of capitalism as it runs further and more terribly amok.

Thus spake Bageant’s “crazy man”. But how crazy is he?
Elevating carnage to cultural protocol is very dangerous. And official rationalization of it is disastrous.
Sounds pretty darned sane to me.

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 7 2005 20:39 utc | 41

when using inflamed language i imagine people forget the barbarism that lies behind language & the english languase as used by the vast majority of journalisys
it is a language that speaks of the massacre & deaths of the ‘other’ as if it is nothing. if they are mentioned & that is mostly not the case – they never have names, histories or destinies. i find that far crueler & less ignoble than the crude thought of lenin’s ghost. it is impulsive & stupid & i imagine that that poster knows that having written posts here of quality. but the language of death is very considered & even on the left there is a speaking as if the death of a people or a culture are not worthy of anything other than a peripheral regard
as i sd here last week the natural death of the pope worries me not at all except in its pornographic pomp & its jangled jingoism. let me be clear on this christian culture is a peace of lying shit. mendacious in its morality. erroneous in its ethics
the murder of the hassan family at a ‘checkpoint’ in iraq is to me far more important in every detail. this family is as worthy of life as you & i yet they are dusted under the carpet of our civilisation as if they are nothing of note
we are going to pay for this reign of murder. we are going to pay for our neglect. we are going to pay for our informed detachement from the facts
& the fact are these – we are carrying out a war of anhilation against the arab people. it is being carried out in a way – that these ghosts will haunt our days & nights. they will not be forgotten.
& here i will again upset slothrop because i remember in detail & precision the suffering of the vietnamese people. the 3,000,000 dead while the american wept & wept ober their war – their self centred solipsistic songs about themselves. always about themselves. there is not one cultural project from america that treats what was done to the vietnamese people. not one. the films produced in america on this subject are beneath contempt – even when their approach is thought of as critical. they are not. they are deeply comprimised. the legitimise the deaths of the ‘other’ in all their works
latin americans are forgotten. in costa gavras’s ‘missing’ it is the american we are supposed to care about meanwhile many thousands of others are forgotten in chile & all over latin america
the deaths of indonesians does not matter. ‘the year of living dangerously’ is about a journalist
on & on the deaths of others of the ‘other’ is used to create tears for the americans. i cannot & will not. the film maker will say we use the american subject as a means of opening up the question to the greatest number of people. this is simply never true. the films, the books & the art legitimise murder.; they are ‘fascinatin’ fascism. the real people are forgotten. always forgotten. that to me is obscene.
but it is considered. it is not an accident that american culture cannot remember. refuses to remember.
american culture was borne in genocide & it has continued in this vein ever since. that cannot be seriouslly doubted
yes yes. i am an olf fashioned fellow. the ‘spiritual truths’ of the indigenous people on many continents are the real treasure of the country. they are the real memory. they constitute the honourable impulse
white christian culture celebrates death in as orgiastic a way as any islamic fundamentalist
it is rotten to the core & its language merely the obscene clothing to hide the most terrible deeds
as my old american comrades would say – john brown – live like him

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Apr 7 2005 22:32 utc | 43

b – i guess you can delete this – I was just curious.
Who Links Here

Posted by: DM | Apr 8 2005 1:58 utc | 45

Bolton under investigation for trying to muddy intelligence re Cuba’s biological weapons capabilities
These guys have always been itching to invade somebody, haven’t they?

Posted by: Nugget | Apr 8 2005 3:21 utc | 47

They decided to detain the pair before they could become involved, the official added.
@Nugget – you shouldn’t worry too much – not until bloggers and barflies start mysteriously disappearing. I keep an eye on people like Kurt Nimmo – and don’t even start to worry unless he stops posting for more than 3 or 4 days.

Posted by: DM | Apr 8 2005 4:02 utc | 49

Iraq Falls Apart.
Surely some partition arrangement benefits U.S.?
Damn. Where’s Pat?

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 8 2005 15:45 utc | 51

BushMath: 1+1 = minus $1.7 Trillion

Posted by: Fran | Apr 8 2005 16:02 utc | 53

haven’t found a jukebox in this joint yet, but in the meantime here’s a good feature on afrobeat

Posted by: b real | Apr 8 2005 17:51 utc | 55

Looks like under the radar of the Iraq events a lot of stuff is happening in South America.
Who’s Afraid Of Venezuela-Cuba Alliance?

For a long time there was only one country in Latin America offering free health care to all its citizens. Now there are two. The governments of both countries regard health care as a basic human right. So Cuba, rich in health care, and Venezuela, rich in oil, have arranged a barter deal for the benefit of each population. This would seem to be a major historical example of beneficial free trade. Who could possibly object?
…
One example is literacy: “Both parties will work together and in coordination with other Latin American countries to eradicate illiteracy in third countries” (Article 5). The Cuban teaching method known as “Si se puede” (Yes I can) is rapidly increasing literacy among Venezuelans and is already used in many other countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Mozambique, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and Peru. What could be more conducive to creating the democracy that George Bush claims to want to bring to the world? Why should Washington not support the expansion of literacy that is a necessity for true democracy?
The aim “to eradicate illiteracy in third countries” strikes fear in the Bush administration. In that same interview last October, Rice said “the key” to stopping Hugo Chávez “is to mobilize the region to both watch him and be vigilant about him and to pressure him.” She explained, “We can’t do it alone….But the OAS (Organization of American States) can do a lot.” On November 20, with Rice on her way to the State Department, The Washington Post followed up with an editorial called “Watch Venezuela,” advising that Rice’s plan to isolate Chávez “sounds like a wise policy.”
…
With Cuban doctors making a difference in the world, fear of the Cuban example increases among those who have no intention of dealing with the great challenges of our time: the millions of people around the world without health care and without literacy. Writing from Honduras in her February 18 column, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, The Wall Street Journal’s senior editorial page writer and one of the most vociferous opponents of both Castro and Chávez, reports that Cuba sent 350 doctors to Honduras in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch wreaked havoc in a country already poverty-stricken. O’Grady is concerned that the Cuban doctors have stayed to look after Honduran people and that 600 Hondurans are studying medicine in Cuba so that they can return to provide medical care for their people. O’Grady calls the Cuban doctors “Fidel’s foot soldiers” with “the potential for soft indoctrination, a kind of tilling the soil in the poor countryside so that it is ready when political opportunity presents itself as it has in Venezuela of late.” To a rational human being, Cuba’s ability to provide health care and Venezuela’s eagerness to work with Cuba to provide health care present quite a different potential: that is, human potential for unselfish cooperation.

And the Bush paranoia seem to increase.

Posted by: Fran | Apr 8 2005 20:06 utc | 57

What A Difference Three Years Can Make: Bush Rebuffed in Venezuela (Again)

Though the U.S. has tried to diplomatically isolate Chavez, with State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher accusing Venezuela of playing a “destabilizing role” in regional affairs, these efforts have not yielded tangible result. To the contrary: U.S. efforts to pressure Venezuela through third parties such as Spain seem to have backfired.

Posted by: b real | Apr 8 2005 21:06 utc | 59

Who forged the Niger documents?
Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion …
I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case …
If I said “Michael Ledeen” ?
You’d be very close . . .

Posted by: Nugget | Apr 8 2005 21:52 utc | 61

Is this General Satler headed to Camp Pendelton for good? Is he going against his will? Wouldn’t he rather stay in Fallujah, and finish the job as he sees it?
What’s with these American generals? They no sooner perfect their Arabic than they head off for some Anglophone post or other….
This can’t be the best example for junior officers to follow….

Posted by: alabama | Apr 8 2005 22:43 utc | 63

Mike Ledeen is a very helpful chap – at least since he got thrown out of academia & dumped his wife & child/children, happily for them, and found his true calling of eroticizing & implementing male violence. His writings are the most fun of any of the clowns ‘cuz he most overtly expresses the Pornography of Power. I wish I had my favorite one handy to link, but if you google about you can get the idea.
So, it’s hardly surprising he’d do whatever is necessary to advance his sexual agenda of getting all those virile young men marching off to war, as he expresses it. Read him a bit, & you’d bet anything that he’s the one who introduced Gannon-Guckert to Rove. (He is/was Rove’s adviser on Iran.)

Posted by: jj | Apr 9 2005 2:01 utc | 65

Mike Whitney is in full-on Doom Mode

The country has been intentionally plundered and will eventually wind up in the hands of its creditors as Bush and his lieutenants planned from the very beginning. Those who don’t believe this should note the methodical way that the deficits have been produced at (around) $450 billion per year; a systematic and orderly siphoning off of the nation’s future. The value of the dollar and the increasing national debt follow exactly the same (deliberate) downward trajectory.
This same Ponzi scheme has been carried out repeatedly by the IMF and World Bank throughout the world; Argentina being the last dramatic illustration. (Argentina’s economic collapse occurred when its trade deficit was running at 4%; right now ours is at an unprecedented 6%.) Bankruptcy is a fairly straight forward way of delivering valuable public assets and resources to collaborative industries, and of annihilating national sovereignty. After a nation is successfully driven to destitution, public policy decisions are made by creditors and not by representatives of the people. (Enter, Paul Wolfowitz)
Did Americans really believe they could avoid a similar fate?
If so, they’d better forget about it, because the hammer is about to come down big-time, and the collateral damage will be huge.

OK, I continue to be schizoid on this subject of “whether it is time to panic yet” and I wish someone could convince me one way or the other. I know a teeny bit about the collapse of Argentina, having for a while had a pen pal there who reported (when the power was on and the networks were up) via email. It was not slow (as Ran Prieur suggests the American collapse will be) and ordinary Argentinians (politically astute ones anyway) knew damn well what was happening and whose fault it was. So I have evidence that the IMF can and does crash national economies when it deems them “naughty” and in need of “discipline” (i.e. ripe for skinning and wholesale piratisation) — and that the human suffering was considerable and is not over. Economic collapse can happen fast.
However, there is always the cynical possibility that vocal Prophets of Doom on the US financial scene are those who have already invested in gold, or are buddies with folks in the precious metals investment biz, trying to talk up a Perfect Storm scenario so as to spook everyone into rushing out and buying the yellow stuff. OK, that’s pretty damn cynical. But a lot of people made out like bandits during the Y2K scare (not to mention the duct tape and Visqueen boom courtesy of Ridge and his stupid “alerts”) by purveying falling-sky predictions.
Sometimes it is hard to tell whether the prophet on the street corner is trying to warn us or just to herd us. B, Jerome, and some of our other regulars are far more “in touch” with the weird world of abstract money than a prole like myself; I’d sure like to know whether they consider this alarmism a kind of tinfoil hattery, or words of warning to be taken seriously. Is there really any substantial chance of a major market crash w/in the calendar year? Not that there is much I could do about it anyway 🙁 but I’d kinda like to know whether to dismiss Whitney as a Chicken Littlist or take him seriously and maybe buy a couple more solar panels 🙂
inquiring (and anxious) minds would like to know. is it any comfort to identify the engine plate on the train that barrels down on you as you lie tied to the tracks? maybe so…

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 9 2005 4:11 utc | 67

US attempts to redefine China as “illegal currency manipulator”

Posted by: DeAnander | Apr 9 2005 5:48 utc | 69

15 Iraqi soldiers killed near Latifiyah
Will that put a damper on today’s ‘anniversary celebrations’? Probably not. In a parallel universe it IS an ‘anniversary celebration’.

Posted by: Nugget | Apr 9 2005 7:19 utc | 71

Somewhere in a recent thread it was argued nazism was popularized by improvements in the standard of living. This claim intended to disprove the role of fascist ideology in cultivating popular legitimation for a fascist tyranny.
This is partly true, however, more important, is the conjunction of fascist ideology (statism, external threat, nationalism, racism) with the very deep exploitation of labor intended to improve profits.
Mandel:

If, on the other hand, capital succeeds in decisively weakening, or even smashing, the trade unions and all other organizations of the working-class – including their political organization; if it succeeds in atomizing and intimidating the proletariat to such an extent that any form of collective defence becomes impossible and workers are once more relegated to the point from which they started – in other words, the ‘ideal’ situation, from the point of view of capital, of universal competition of worker against worker, then it is quite possible 1) to use the pressure of unemployment to bring about a significant reduction in real wages; 2) to prevent wages returning to their previous level even in the phase of upswing following a crisis, i.e., to lower the value of the commodity of labour-power in the long term; 3) to force the price of the commodity of labour-power down, by means of manipulations, deductions and various swindles, even below this already diminished value; 4) simultaneously to achieve a significant increase in the average social intensity of labour and even to attempt, in tendency, to prolong the working day. The outcome of all these changes can only be a rapid and massive rise in the rate of surplus-value.
This is exactly what occurred in Germany following the victory of Fascism under Hitler. The pressure of mass unemployment had forced German workers to bear with significant wage reductions in the years 1929-1932. These were less catastrophic in real than in nominal terms, for there was a simultaneous fall in the price of consumer goods – but they were nonetheless considerable. The average gross hourly wage fell from the index figure of 129.5 in 1929 to 94.6 in 1932, i.e., by more than 35%. The average hourly wage of skilled workers in 17 branches of industry dropped from 95.9 pfennigs in 1929 to 70.5 pfennigs, i.e., by 27%; in the case of unskilled workers the drop was less severe: from 75.2 to 62.3 pfennigs, or only 17%. These percentages must be multiplied by the fall-back in the hours worked. However, since the price of foodstuffs declined by nearly 20% in the same period, and the price of industrial goods fell by a similarly high percentage, the decline in real wages was not as steep as would appear from the abrupt plunge of nominal wages. At any rate, it was not as grave as might have been assumed with unemployment near the 6,000,000 mark and a catastrophic collapse in profits.=” The rate of surplusvalue fell – as it mostly does in severe economic crises – partly because of the devalorization of the commodities embodying surplusvalue, and partly because a portion of the surplus-value produced could not be realized, but most of all because the production of surplus-value was itself declining due to part-time work and the decrease in the number of hours worked, since it is not possible to reduce the number of working hours necessary to reproduce labourpower exactly as much as the length of the total working day.

Thus, fascism is an excellent means of extracting profits via the ideologically justified exploitation of workers.
Now just consider all those, especially white-collar, workers taking it on the chin now, making the necessary sacrifices to realize the “American Dream” always under attack by muslims, et al. …

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 9 2005 21:24 utc | 73

@ ASKOD It is his coalition
partners bailing out, especially
the UDC, the part of the old
DC that migrated to Berlusconi’s
party, Forza Italia, and to a lesser extend the neo-fascist
Alleanza Nazionale. The left (or at least what passes for
“la sinistra” these days) won
some rather amazing victories
in these “regional elections”,
including Nicchi Vendola in Puglia, an openly gay candidate
from Rifondazione Communista who won in Puglia, one of the most culturally and politically conservative parts of Italy. In Lazio (Rome) too there was a surprising victory of the left
against Francesco Storace, a neo-fascist who had the
open support of both Cardinal Ruini and Giulio Andreotti (but
was bitterly opposed by il duce’s granddaughter Alessandra
Mussolini after a rather clumsy attempt by Storace’s allies to keep her party off the ballot) .
The leftist victory was surprising in its scale, and has sown confusion, discord and
near panic
within the ranks of Berlusconi’s rightist coalition. One hopes that finally Berlusca has become “just another politician”, and not the charismatic political star he has been for many here in Italy. Still, if history is any guide, by the time next years parliamentary elections roll around, the left will have found a way to dissipate its present popularity.
advantage.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Apr 11 2005 10:31 utc | 75