A Monstrous Class of Parasites
Somewhere a Banker Smiles
Joe Bageant

It’s hard as hell to keep conspiracy theories out of one’s mind these days. And I’m not talking about “Who really brought down the Twin Towers? or the “Are Zionists behind the Iraq War?” kind of stuff. Both camps are pretty clearly dug in into their hardened bunkers on those issues. But the booger stalking my ragged old mind these days puts both of those in the shade because of its sheer scale. And it runs like this:
Is the consumerist totalization of this country and the world really a conscious plot by a handful of powerful corporate and financial masters? If we answer “yes” we find ourselves trundled off toward the babbling ranks of the paranoid. Still though, it’s easy enough to name those who would piss themselves with joy over the prospect of a One World corporate state, with billions of people begging to work for their 1,500 calories a day and an xBox chip in their necks. It’s too bad our news media quit hunting with live ammo decades ago, leaving us with no one to track the activities and progress of what sure as hell seem to be global elites, judging from the financial spoor we find along every pathway of modern life. …

Also, you will be assimilated:
Weapons for the ‘New American Century’
Check out the list of ‘nice’ weapons at the end of this article.
Make no mistake about it: The Pentagon will use whatever weapons it has at its disposal. Are you ready for a future of Moscows?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 8 2006 18:36 utc | 3

@uncle (3) – could you please use ot for ot?

Posted by: b | Dec 8 2006 18:56 utc | 5

anyone know if apples from China grow during the same season as Europe’s ?

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Dec 8 2006 19:47 utc | 7

The apples are from China’s northwestern province of Shaanxi. Shaanxi is a mainly agricultural province, and is famous as the base of Mao’s communist party in the period before and during WWII before the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.
The Shaanxi provincial government is helping Shaanxi apple farmers to introduce their products to European consumers beginning this year. The apples you have seen and maybe tasted are part of this test marketing to Europeans, who are considered to be the most knowledgeable and demanding when it comes to eating apples.
The objective of this exercise is also to get feedback to improve future shipments of apples to Europe, and later North America and Japan. I believe that the apples come a little later in the season than European apples; this gives Chinese apples a seasonal advantage.
Did you notice that some flowers being shipped to Europe are coming from China too? You can expect to see many more Chinese flowers to Europe (mostly shipped to Italy); these come from the southwest Chinese province of Yunnan.

Posted by: Paul Denlinger | Dec 8 2006 20:16 utc | 9

China is expected to start mass exports of cheap cars soon. This could make todays trade deficits look like lunch money.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Dec 8 2006 20:28 utc | 11

What a shame! Most of the supermarket-variety apples available in the US (Red and Golden Delicious, Gala, Granny Smith, etc.) have been industrialized to shp well that there is little flavor. It’s like eating wet sawdust.
When I’m able to treat a visitor to one of the tree-ripened heirloom varieties growing on my property, you can see their eyes widen on the first bite. Apples can be wonderfully tasty with complex flavors–if you don’t buy them in the supermarket.
I can’t imagine that the Chinese apples are anything but the bred-to-ship variety.
…and don’t get me started on supermarket tomatoes!

Posted by: cpg | Dec 8 2006 20:45 utc | 13

An important rule of economics is that if your current account deficit is larger than your GDP over a sustained period, you eventually end up having to sell off your assets.
cough

Posted by: annie | Dec 8 2006 20:55 utc | 15

@uncle (3) – could you please use ot for ot?
Uh, if you had read the goddamned article b, you would have seen that it was on topic.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 8 2006 21:16 utc | 17

@cpg #13:
My wife, from Indonesia, commented that all American fruit is really big, but tastes flat. When she tasted an orange grown in my parents’ yard she was astounded!

Posted by: Dr. Wellington Yueh | Dec 8 2006 22:14 utc | 19

if you had read the goddamned article ouch! you would have seen that it was on topic.
i’m assuming the reference was to the ‘you will be assimilated:‘ piece, which could be seen as straggling away from the main topic of the thread.
but then understanding how you view things uncle a link of new weapons on any thread might seem appropriate. ;O

Posted by: Anonymous | Dec 8 2006 23:27 utc | 21

from US’s first link:
Meanwhile, the money for both is obtained through extraction practiced upon the world’s laboring poor. But the big money, the “juice” as street people used to say, comes from squeezing the orange of American society for more work, more production and tax money.
apples? oranges?

Posted by: dk | Dec 8 2006 23:37 utc | 23

Apple Day, 21 Oct 06.
Apples are good because you can mash them up and drink them. Also, pears – in one of the pix in the link above there’s reference to a perry (like cider but made w/ pears) called Impeared Vision.
Golden Delicious are shite, taste like cotton wool. I never bought them because they used to be flown in from apartheid South Africa. The Chinese are big on genetic modification, have they managed to stop them tasting like crap? That would be a real scientific breakthro’.
Apples are in glut here in the UK at the moment. I have heard tell of people not even being able to get the local farmer to take them for cider-making at the moment. Why the hell roast the planet bussing the things in from Shaanxi when they are plentiful as b says all over?
Cotton wool with a side order of climate destruction.
Fucking brilliant.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Dec 9 2006 1:48 utc | 25

will watch for chinese apples in nueva york. since it is apple season in the northeast it seems foolhardy to be importing apples from china, but sadly it wouldn’t be the only foolhardy thing we do the planet.
me, i hike to the green market every weekend and buy absolutely scrumptious granny smiths and then eat them all week hoping that there is some veracity to the the old adage.

Posted by: conchita | Dec 9 2006 3:42 utc | 27

@dk, annie, b, et al…
No, I was thinking along the lines of financial super-elites, Camp Davos, bankers, laboring poor, etc, from Bageant’s article he writes, ” Put another way, the global decision makers, international planners, financial institutions, political parties, media conglomerates, corporations, banks, a hegemonic, accumulative bloc working in concert to coordinate the extraction of wealth from first and third world alike.” Perhaps, –because I see things in a macro paradigm–, the things such as the fading boundries between international markets trade, goods etc, that this was a case of China flexing it’s rising economic fortitude and unity, as well as utility. A formula conveying, here we come, we’re here, and mean to stay sort of thing.
I took somewhat of a cue from slothrop’s first few comments on migrant slave labor etc. And as b says in #4 “…the apples from China were not the cheapest ones in that shop“; I would assume from that, some business conglomerate had gotten them below wholesale e.g. cheap, for a mass quantity and wasn’t worried about loss, as the price was higher than local.
It could very well be a crucial movement in China’s transition to a market economy. As as formerly known in anthropological terms as the nuances of prestige items. Questions of distribution, surplus and disposition of pre-capturing markets. Economic anthropology comprises three major subject areas: production (making goods or money of some sort), consumption (using up goods or expending funds), and exchange (transferring goods or money between people or institutions). The term economic system refers to a particular way of organizing production, distribution, and consumption. Kind of a Potlatch ego thing.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 9 2006 5:06 utc | 29

p.s. I didn’t mean to come across as so darn persnickerty, it just seemed a curt response from b to my post –seemingly, to me anyway– as I felt it pertained to the topic at hand, and reacted expeditiously.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 9 2006 5:26 utc | 31

@ mimi
Braeburn apples in the US – from Washington state and New Zealand.

Posted by: small coke | Dec 9 2006 5:47 utc | 33

I hope German apple orchards survive. It’d be Great to see Germans rebel & organize an “Apple Party” – dumping the damn things in the nearest river or compost pile. Scratch compost pile ‘cuz goddess only knows what chemical trash is on them. In Ca. whole regions of apple orchards were driven out of business. In an age of global warming, can anyone give one good reason for expending oil to import apples from some slave labor depot halfway around the globe?
But, alas, even China isn’t slave enough labor for xAm. Predators.
A big reason for the change is rock-bottom wages. As labor shortages in some regions of China drive up costs, factory hands in parts of the mainland can earn more than five times the $55 per month that Vietnamese workers in foreign-owned factories are paid. That differential is a big reason why Sparton Corp. (SPA ) of Jackson, Mich., chose Vietnam over China last year when it made its first investment outside North America. It sank $8 million into a 50,000-square-foot plant to produce chemical diagnostic equipment. “I think productivity and quality will far exceed the U.S.,” says Jason Craft, managing director of Sparton subsidiary Spartronics Vietnam Co.
Hence the House just passed a Predators on the Rampage Destroy America Now “treaty” w/Vietnam, trumpeted by Repug in Dem robes, Ellen Tauscher.VOTE ALERT: House Passes Vietnam Free Trade Agreement

Posted by: jj | Dec 9 2006 10:09 utc | 35

Many readers may find this hard to believe, but there is a major labor shortage in the eastern coastal provinces, especially in Guangdong, bordering on Hong Kong.
Major buyers such as Wal-Mart are having to raise prices they offer to manufacturers so that they can turn out the products they want to buy. Eventually these price rises will be passed on to US and other buyers around the world.
This is one reason why Chinese officials are interested in developing rural exports, such as flowers from China.
While the wages in China are much lower than in the US, it would be wrong to characterize them as slave wages, because costs (and wages) are roughly one-eighth what they are in the US. In Shanghai, the cost for a FT live-in cook/maid is US$110. And she is not a slave; she can easily save at least half of her wages to send home to her rural family in Anhui (or other province) every month.
That is why quality of living in China is often higher than in the US. On US$2,000 a month you can live very comfortably.

Posted by: Paul Denlinger | Dec 9 2006 18:12 utc | 37

sheesh, me

Posted by: annie | Dec 9 2006 18:25 utc | 39

Winesaps are good but Northern Spy from western Mass. is the best I’ve ever had.

Posted by: biklett | Dec 9 2006 21:38 utc | 41

what i read of chinese factory workers was they were making $740 a year for 10 hour days (approx. $0.20/hr) with 1 day off per month
technically not a slave, one could argue

Posted by: gmac | Dec 10 2006 10:38 utc | 43

those apple orchards were ripped out & replaced w/vineyards, along w/the ones in the Alexander Valley, ‘cuz of the damn Chinese imports.
i assume your snarking. they were ripped out becuase someone could make more money on the land. now in germany, i don’t know the proxinity of this area to the vineyards or if the real estate in the adjoining areas is doubling or tripling. but if it is, it may be in the intersts of someone to start introducing apples from china. like people who want to develope the apple region into something else. on the other hand, places like yakima and wenache wa have little chance of becoming hot real estate anytime soon. i doubt there are chinese apples in yakima.

Posted by: annie | Dec 11 2006 1:49 utc | 45

oh, i totally agree w/you about rich folks and vineyards. none the less, there are an abundance of rich folks in the area just dying to have their own little showpiece. i know a few of them. still, the estates go for bundles. so, its true you say? the chinese apples are what drove the gravenstiens out?
i know the property taxes are wild on that land, unless of course one is protected by prop 13 and bought theirs years ago. something tells me that is not the case w/the old apple farms. much better deal for the county taxwise, having those ultra rich trophy vineyards. having a property in the bayarea i am familiar w/the tactics the cities put you old landowners thru if you don’t have a big moneymaker. modest homes don’t bring in the bucks. i wonder who was behind bringing in the china apples? appletime?

Posted by: annie | Dec 11 2006 2:26 utc | 47

To be clear: Thailand’s national focus on agriculture really helped the populace (in general) during the financial crisis.

Posted by: n | Dec 13 2006 17:04 utc | 49

If you are interested in China’s food exports, you might want to read this post from someone working in China.

Posted by: Paul Denlinger | Dec 24 2006 19:41 utc | 51