27 Aug 2012
Chris Hedges: The Mirage of Our Lives
25 Aug 2012
The Major Economic Ideas We Live By Are Shockingly Flimsy
August 19, 2012 |
In
his well-known textbook Economics, Paul Samuelson depicts our economic
world as being like the universe of Newtonian physics. Though he
concedes that deciding on policies may involve value
judgments—eliminating rent control may hurt individuals, even though it
benefits the economy—he promises to focus on the economic science of
cause-and-effect. “Positive economics describes the facts and behavior
in the economy,” he insists. The emphasis is his. Questions in this
realm may be “easy or tough,” but they “can be resolved only
by reference to facts.” In another popular text, Walter Nicholson
similarly tells students: “‘Positive’ economists believe that one reason
for the success of economics as a discipline is that it has been able
to emulate successfully the positive approach taken by the physical
sciences rather than becoming involved in the value-laden normative
approach taken by some of the other social sciences.”
Economists’ insistence that their discipline is like physics sounds a little nervous. Did you ever hear a physicist boast to the world that that physics is like economics? More important, when they talk about economics this way, Samuelson, Nicholson, and other economists are misrepresenting what they do and what economics is. From Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman, economists have sought to gain insight into economies by building models of them. They make simplified assumptions about the economic world we inhabit and construct imaginary economies—in other words, models—based on those assumptions. They use these imaginary economies to draw practical conclusions about the actual economies we inhabit.
Economists’ insistence that their discipline is like physics sounds a little nervous. Did you ever hear a physicist boast to the world that that physics is like economics? More important, when they talk about economics this way, Samuelson, Nicholson, and other economists are misrepresenting what they do and what economics is. From Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman, economists have sought to gain insight into economies by building models of them. They make simplified assumptions about the economic world we inhabit and construct imaginary economies—in other words, models—based on those assumptions. They use these imaginary economies to draw practical conclusions about the actual economies we inhabit.
Nearly everything economists do is based on some model. For example, the famous story that prices are determined by supply and demand is a model. Consider the price of oil. On the one hand, there is supposed to be an upward-sloping “supply curve”: the higher the price of oil rises, the more oil producers want to pump. This curve is an imaginary construct intended to describe the different amounts of oil that producers would pump at any given time, if oil prices were at different levels. On the other hand, there is supposed to be a downward-sloping “demand curve”: the lower the price of oil falls, the more businesses and consumers want to buy. This curve is likewise an imaginary construct intended to describe the different amounts of oil that consumers and businesses would buy at any given time prices were at different levels. The point where the imaginary curves intersect—where the price is such that the amount of oil producers would pump just equals the amount of oil businesses and consumers would buy—is supposed to determine the actual price of crude oil and the amount of oil that is pumped.
All we ever see is the point where the imaginary curves are supposed to intersect: the actual oil price. Nobody has ever seen supply or demand curves; they are models. They can be useful, but should not be mistaken for a literal picture of reality. If you trace, over time, the movement of actual gasoline prices versus consumption, you see loops and zigs and zags that don’t look anything like imagined supply and demand curves.
Moreover, some factors that affect oil prices are inconsistent with the model. For example, energy-intensive industries such as aluminum smelters may hedge against possible oil price increases by entering into contracts to buy oil at some fixed price at a given date in the future. Oil producers sell such contracts. They also speculate by buying such contracts. They have insider information about oil prices—if a platform explodes, the firm that owns it knows before the public gets the news—but are exempt from laws against insider trading. Alexander Elder, a commodities trader, describes visiting a friend at the trading desk of a multinational oil company: “After passing through security that was tighter than at Kennedy International Airport, I walked through glass-enclosed corridors. Clusters of men huddled around monitors trading oil products. When I asked my host whether his traders were hedging or speculating, he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’ I asked him again and received the same answer.” When oil companies speculate on oil prices, they move prices, but there is no supply or demand curve. Sophisticated tests of the supply-and-demand model can be framed, but they depend on other models, some of them statistical, that can in turn be challenged.
Textbooks make economics sound like physics by blurring the distinction between the idealized world of models, which does behave like a physics, and the messy real economic world, which does not. To make sense of economics, you can never ignore the distinction. Not only does Samuelson fail to make this clear in his textbook; he doesn’t even explain what an economic model is. Oh, let me not exaggerate! In the thirteenth edition—the one I happen to have read—Samuelson and his coauthor, William Nordhaus, provide a brief definition of a model in an appendix, on page 977.
Blurring the ideal world of model economies with the complex world of real economies deeply confuses students. Some feel cheated, as if they were watching a magician put on a stage show, the workings of which are hidden from sight. Others like the stage show better than the messy everyday world. As students thus encounter economics, David Colander of Middlebury College laments, “They either love it and think economists have something to say that they aren’t saying, or they hate it and think economists have something to say that they aren’t saying.”
A model is never a
full-dimensional hologram of real economies, but at best a partial
two-dimensional perspective. Much that I say will be controversial, but
this point should not be. Robert Lucas, one of the most creative
model-builders, tells a story about his undergraduate encounter with
Gregor Mendel’s model of genetic inheritance.6 He liked the Mendelian
model—“you could work out predictions that would surprise you”—though
not the lab work breeding fruit flies to test it. (Economists are not
big on mucking around in the real world.) Over the weekend, he enjoyed
writing a paper comparing the model’s predictions with the class’s
experimental results. When a friend returned from a weekend away without
having written the required paper, Lucas agreed to let the friend
borrow from his. The friend remarked that Lucas had forgotten to discuss
how “crossing-over” could explain the substantial discrepancies between
the model and experimental results. “Crossing-over is b—s—,” Lucas told
his friend, a “label for our ignorance.” He kept his paper’s focus on
the unadorned Mendelian model, and added a section arguing that
experimental errors could explain the discrepancies. His friend instead
appended a section on crossing-over. His friend got an A. Lucas got a
C-minus, with a comment: “This is a good report, but you forgot about
crossing-over.” Crossing-over is actually a fact; it occurs when
a portion of one parent gene is incorporated in the other parent gene.
But, Lucas’s anecdote brilliantly illustrates the powerful
temptation to model-builders—across the ideological spectrum—of ignoring
inconvenient facts that don’t fit their models.
As Lucas says, “The construction of theoretical models is our way to bring order to the way we think about the world, but the process necessarily involves ignoring some evidence or alternative theories—setting them aside. That can be hard to do—facts are facts—and sometimes my unconscious mind carries out the abstraction for me: I simply fail to see some of the data or some alternative theory.” Often I disagree with Lucas, but I like the transparency with which he discusses models. He has said that a model is a “mechanical imitation economy,” a “robot imitation of people,” a “thought experiment.” It must be distinguished from reality because “in practice all axioms for models we can actually solve will be crude approximations at best, and determining which axioms produce reliable models will involve judgment, testing, and luck.”
Copyright 2012 Harvard University Press. Reprinted via Alternet with express permission from the author.
20 Jun 2012
Institutul Cultural Roman. Miscarea papioanelor
--- On Tue, 19/6/12, NECHITA MIRCEA wrote:
From: NECHITA MIRCEA nechita_mircea@yahoo.com
Subject: Institutul Cultural Roman. Miscarea papioanelor
Este bineştiut, arhiştiut, arhicunoscut, faptul că cei mai de seamă (sau de frunte, sau reprezentativi) ’telectuali, oameni de cultură şi de bine (bineinţeles) ai ţării, s-au strâns, ba chiar s-au inghesuit aş zice, în parlament, ca să pună umăru’ , mâna cu pixu’ sau neuronu’ la propăşirea scumpei noastre (poate chiar si a lor) patrii si a preaiubiţilor ei cetăţeni. La înflorirea, prosperitatea, şi ridicarea ei pe noi culmi de civilizaţie si progres.
Chiar dacă destui şi-au găsit un binemeritat loc călduţ si confortabil printre nemuritorii Academiei/academiilor, de unde nu vor mai ieşi decât cu dricu’ , grosu’ ’telectualităţi românesti e in parlament... Deci aburcarea în cârca suprasolicitatului nostru parlament a grelei, dificilei si de mare răspundere îndatorire, de a oblădui şi îndruma I.C.R.-ul , pare absolut logică şi firească, chiar dacă Preşedintele este şi el un intelectual de marcă, (sau de mărci, celebre, vreau să zic) şi poate primul actor şi performer al celor aproape (dar din ce in ce mai departe) 20 de milioane de spectatori plătitori...Mă rog, aţi promis că nu mai guvernaţi prin ordonanţe de urgentă, da’ aia a fost doar o obişnuită promisiune electorală, normal că nu se pune, iar ăsta-i doar Institutul Cultural Român, deci, clar, nu se pune...
Domnu’ prim procuror, sau prim ministru, al guvernului Ponta, cre’că prostimea n-a înţeles (sau o fi înţeles altceva decât trebuia) şi aţi pierdut nişte procente de viitori votanţi...nu-i nimic, că aveţi de unde, da’ poate puţină prudenţă şi spoială de democraţie balcanică (sau originală-românească) nu strică, până trec şi alegerile generale...Poate ar fi util să explicaţi că-i firesc şi democratic ca şi cei care fură să fie schimbaţi între ei din când in când. Fiecare cu hoţii ’telectualii sau genialii lor... În definitiv, spre deosebire de comunism, când cei care tăiau şi spânzurau , păreau înţepeniţi pe vecie în fotelurile lor de mare răspundere, în capitalism se mai schimbă între ei, în cazuri extreme chiar mai des decât din patru in patru ani...asta ar trebui să dea o plăcută senzaţie de schimbare, evoluţie şi progres...
Mircea Nechita, cetatean cu drept de vot, degeaba
Re: Institutul Cultural Roman. Miscarea papioanelorWednesday, 20 June, 2012 9:38
From: "Bogdan Lepadatu" bogdanlepadatu@yahoo.co.uk
Perfect de acord, Maestre! Doar ca, asa cum bine pare sa stii (... asta judecand nu doar dupa gravurile tale), ceea ce nu transpare imediat dintre randurile de mai sus (dupa cum nu transpare nici din corul eminentelor voci ultragiate de schimbare!) este tocmai subiectul informarii tale: Miscarea "pinioanelor" sau, mai bine zis, a "pionilor" in "usa rotativa"... pe care "pleac-ai nostrii, vin ai nostrii"!
Totusi, nu chiar toate lucrurile legate de fosta "Republica" cvasi-autonoma a ICR-ului merita sprijinul neconditionat al intelectualitatii romanesti... Un exemplu ar putea fi cazul burselor ICR pentru traducatori in formare - vezi http://www.cennac.ro/anunturi/traducatori-in-formare-4/prezentare-18.
Desi sunt constient de faptul ca m-as putea molipsi de indigestia cu "struguri acrii" a perdantilor ultimelor alegeri din Romania, voi reproduce mai jos "monologul" cu "demna" institutie pe tema contestatiei rezultatelor "concursului" organizat de aceasta si ramas pana in prezent fara vreun raspuns:
Wednesday, 18 April, 2012 14:42
From:
"Bogdan Lepadatu"
View contact details
To:
icr@icr.ro
Domnilor,
Este nevoie sa ma adresez direct instantei pentru primirea unui raspuns?
Kind regards,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer)
--- On Thu, 12/4/12, Bogdan Lepadatuwrote:
From: Bogdan Lepadatu
Subject: Fw: Re: bursa ICR
To: icr @icr.ro
Cc: "Florin Bican", "Florin Bican"
Date: Thursday, 12 April, 2012, 9:58
Doamnelor/ Domnilor,
Va rog sa considerati prin prezenta contestarea rezultelor comisiei de jurizare pentru traducatori in formare din 11.04.2012, asa cum mi-au fost ele comunicate neoficial.
Va solicit, in consecinta, publicarea transparenta a modului in care s-a desfasurat acest proces si rezultatele oficiale, in ordinea punctajului oferit candidatilor la acest program bursier.
Cu stima,
Kind regards,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer)
--- On Thu, 12/4/12, Bogdan Lepadatuwrote:
From: Bogdan Lepadatu
Subject: Re: bursa ICR
To: "Florin Bican"
Date: Thursday, 12 April, 2012, 9:24
Draga Florin,
Asa cum spuneam anterior, iti multumesc pentru informatie dar nu-mi pot ascunde neincrederea in modul in care a fost organizat procesul de jurizare...
Cred ca, dincolo de mesajul standard oferit de tine, ar fi corect si necesar sa fie transparentizat modul in care arbitrii desemnati au punctat candidatii si, mai mult, sa fie facut public lista tuturor candidatilor, si notele/ media de admitere.
As dori, din acest motiv, sa inregistrezi raspunsul meu ca pe o contestatie legala si, in masura in care acest lucru este posibil, sa le comunici tuturor membrilor juriului profunda mea neincredere in judecata lor.
Kind regards,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer)
--- On Wed, 11/4/12, Florin Bicanwrote:
From: Florin Bican
Subject: bursa ICR
To: "Bogdan Lepadatu"
Date: Wednesday, 11 April, 2012, 14:22
Draga Bogdan,
In urma sesiunii comisiei de jurizare pentru traducatori in formare din 11.04.2012, va anunt cu parere de rau ca cererea dumneavoastra de bursa a fost respinsa. Punctajul pe care l-ati obtinut se situeaza sub punctajele carora li s-au acordat cele zece burse disponibile. V-as recomanda totusi sa reveniti cu o noua solicitare de bursa pentru sesiunea viitoare (1 octombrie - 30 noiembrie 2012). Va doresc mult succes.
Cu cele mai bune ganduri,
Florin Bican
Cu stima si... cu scuze anticipate pentru lungimea mesajului,
Yours sincerely,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer) PFA
From: NECHITA MIRCEA nechita_mircea@yahoo.com
Subject: Institutul Cultural Roman. Miscarea papioanelor
Este bineştiut, arhiştiut, arhicunoscut, faptul că cei mai de seamă (sau de frunte, sau reprezentativi) ’telectuali, oameni de cultură şi de bine (bineinţeles) ai ţării, s-au strâns, ba chiar s-au inghesuit aş zice, în parlament, ca să pună umăru’ , mâna cu pixu’ sau neuronu’ la propăşirea scumpei noastre (poate chiar si a lor) patrii si a preaiubiţilor ei cetăţeni. La înflorirea, prosperitatea, şi ridicarea ei pe noi culmi de civilizaţie si progres.
Chiar dacă destui şi-au găsit un binemeritat loc călduţ si confortabil printre nemuritorii Academiei/academiilor, de unde nu vor mai ieşi decât cu dricu’ , grosu’ ’telectualităţi românesti e in parlament... Deci aburcarea în cârca suprasolicitatului nostru parlament a grelei, dificilei si de mare răspundere îndatorire, de a oblădui şi îndruma I.C.R.-ul , pare absolut logică şi firească, chiar dacă Preşedintele este şi el un intelectual de marcă, (sau de mărci, celebre, vreau să zic) şi poate primul actor şi performer al celor aproape (dar din ce in ce mai departe) 20 de milioane de spectatori plătitori...Mă rog, aţi promis că nu mai guvernaţi prin ordonanţe de urgentă, da’ aia a fost doar o obişnuită promisiune electorală, normal că nu se pune, iar ăsta-i doar Institutul Cultural Român, deci, clar, nu se pune...
Domnu’ prim procuror, sau prim ministru, al guvernului Ponta, cre’că prostimea n-a înţeles (sau o fi înţeles altceva decât trebuia) şi aţi pierdut nişte procente de viitori votanţi...nu-i nimic, că aveţi de unde, da’ poate puţină prudenţă şi spoială de democraţie balcanică (sau originală-românească) nu strică, până trec şi alegerile generale...Poate ar fi util să explicaţi că-i firesc şi democratic ca şi cei care fură să fie schimbaţi între ei din când in când. Fiecare cu hoţii ’telectualii sau genialii lor... În definitiv, spre deosebire de comunism, când cei care tăiau şi spânzurau , păreau înţepeniţi pe vecie în fotelurile lor de mare răspundere, în capitalism se mai schimbă între ei, în cazuri extreme chiar mai des decât din patru in patru ani...asta ar trebui să dea o plăcută senzaţie de schimbare, evoluţie şi progres...
Mircea Nechita, cetatean cu drept de vot, degeaba
Re: Institutul Cultural Roman. Miscarea papioanelorWednesday, 20 June, 2012 9:38
From: "Bogdan Lepadatu" bogdanlepadatu@yahoo.co.uk
Perfect de acord, Maestre! Doar ca, asa cum bine pare sa stii (... asta judecand nu doar dupa gravurile tale), ceea ce nu transpare imediat dintre randurile de mai sus (dupa cum nu transpare nici din corul eminentelor voci ultragiate de schimbare!) este tocmai subiectul informarii tale: Miscarea "pinioanelor" sau, mai bine zis, a "pionilor" in "usa rotativa"... pe care "pleac-ai nostrii, vin ai nostrii"!
Totusi, nu chiar toate lucrurile legate de fosta "Republica" cvasi-autonoma a ICR-ului merita sprijinul neconditionat al intelectualitatii romanesti... Un exemplu ar putea fi cazul burselor ICR pentru traducatori in formare - vezi http://www.cennac.ro/anunturi/traducatori-in-formare-4/prezentare-18.
Desi sunt constient de faptul ca m-as putea molipsi de indigestia cu "struguri acrii" a perdantilor ultimelor alegeri din Romania, voi reproduce mai jos "monologul" cu "demna" institutie pe tema contestatiei rezultatelor "concursului" organizat de aceasta si ramas pana in prezent fara vreun raspuns:
Wednesday, 18 April, 2012 14:42
From:
"Bogdan Lepadatu"
View contact details
To:
icr@icr.ro
Domnilor,
Este nevoie sa ma adresez direct instantei pentru primirea unui raspuns?
Kind regards,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer)
--- On Thu, 12/4/12, Bogdan Lepadatu
From: Bogdan Lepadatu
Subject: Fw: Re: bursa ICR
To: icr @icr.ro
Cc: "Florin Bican"
Date: Thursday, 12 April, 2012, 9:58
Doamnelor/ Domnilor,
Va rog sa considerati prin prezenta contestarea rezultelor comisiei de jurizare pentru traducatori in formare din 11.04.2012, asa cum mi-au fost ele comunicate neoficial.
Va solicit, in consecinta, publicarea transparenta a modului in care s-a desfasurat acest proces si rezultatele oficiale, in ordinea punctajului oferit candidatilor la acest program bursier.
Cu stima,
Kind regards,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer)
--- On Thu, 12/4/12, Bogdan Lepadatu
From: Bogdan Lepadatu
Subject: Re: bursa ICR
To: "Florin Bican"
Date: Thursday, 12 April, 2012, 9:24
Draga Florin,
Asa cum spuneam anterior, iti multumesc pentru informatie dar nu-mi pot ascunde neincrederea in modul in care a fost organizat procesul de jurizare...
Cred ca, dincolo de mesajul standard oferit de tine, ar fi corect si necesar sa fie transparentizat modul in care arbitrii desemnati au punctat candidatii si, mai mult, sa fie facut public lista tuturor candidatilor, si notele/ media de admitere.
As dori, din acest motiv, sa inregistrezi raspunsul meu ca pe o contestatie legala si, in masura in care acest lucru este posibil, sa le comunici tuturor membrilor juriului profunda mea neincredere in judecata lor.
Kind regards,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer)
--- On Wed, 11/4/12, Florin Bican
From: Florin Bican
Subject: bursa ICR
To: "Bogdan Lepadatu"
Date: Wednesday, 11 April, 2012, 14:22
Draga Bogdan,
In urma sesiunii comisiei de jurizare pentru traducatori in formare din 11.04.2012, va anunt cu parere de rau ca cererea dumneavoastra de bursa a fost respinsa. Punctajul pe care l-ati obtinut se situeaza sub punctajele carora li s-au acordat cele zece burse disponibile. V-as recomanda totusi sa reveniti cu o noua solicitare de bursa pentru sesiunea viitoare (1 octombrie - 30 noiembrie 2012). Va doresc mult succes.
Cu cele mai bune ganduri,
Florin Bican
Cu stima si... cu scuze anticipate pentru lungimea mesajului,
Yours sincerely,
Bogdan Lepadatu (PhD)
Cambridge ELT (Teacher/Trainer) PFA
12 May 2012
Che Casino Capitalism!
picture by John Wardell
At Stake?
T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” has to be one of the starkest reminders of the terminal spiritual alienation afflicting the contemporary individual’s condition... For over five centuries, the Western capitalist machinery has been colonising, raping and pillaging under the pretense of “civilising” other much older civilisations…
The implosion of the “Shylockian” economics' paradigm and the hollowness of this commercialised era of hyper-inflated exchange value may be the soundest reasons for my calling it The Age of Ghost-Modernism.
The boom-bust-ic credit and interest Ponzi schemes of unsustainable growth - turning humans into human resources, consumeristic clones or mere canon-fodder for the Military-Industrial Complex’s Permanent War Economy - have finally reached their Marxian prediction.
Whilst doing their utmost to delay the sistem's inevitable denouement, capitalism’s shareholding agents are simultaneously employing distracting new media outlets while codifying the human species’ most primary instincts (such as greed, violence and other sociopathic traits) to mask the propensity to use all available means in this most selfish and pointless quest for ever larger profits.
The current economic crisis is slowly revealing how its corporate profit-seeking perpetrators (whom I've described before as “utopian liberal agents”) have unleashed a barrage jamming of morally and ethically bankrupt signifiers (reducing critical thinking to its lowest common denominator) whilst promoting an ecocidal cult of “free” marketeering economics (which disfigures the environment while fragmenting society) as the ultimate meta-narrative to be had.
Among sunch weapons of mass distraction employed to jam people’s critical thinking abilities, the new media “social” platforms, such as Twitter (reducing people’s argumentative abilities to 140 characters-long slogans!) or Facebook (aka Fakebook or, better still, Faecesbook) are some of the most effective.
Unwilling to succumb to the perversity of the Faecesbook machinery, drowning-out critical thinking in a sea of gormless, mostly private (at best, local) concerns, in a tabloid rendition of the Babel Tower cacophony through the use of its "news" feed gimmick, I couldn't help but release a virtual salvoe against its virtual yet no less perverse bows, shot in a wishful-thinking attempt to Occupy this commercial platform and turn it into a real Agora for social change…
Despite being painfully aware of its uselessness, it still wanted this protest to be a reality-check for those Romanians identifying themselves as "monarchists", an antidote to their raucous clamour for their idols: blue-blooded (err, rather funny blood type, init?), tax-avoiding, hereditary "civil servants"...
via Occupy Corporate Capitalism/ Ocupaţi Capitalismul de Cumetrie... Fairy tales (poveşti nemuritoare) or furry tales, tall tales, what have you... religioase, ideologice, prozelitizatoare sau născătoare de spaime existenţiale, poveşti care ne transformă din fiinţe raţionale, în sclavii propriilor minciuni!... Domnul-Zeu, "creatorul" Pământului, acum... 6000 de ani (muaha-ha-ha!), într-un moment de cruntă plictiseala (deh, angoasele eternităţii!)......
Alte detalii, cusute cu aţă albă: Adam şi "coasta" sa fracturată, Eva, umblând sexy-dezbrăcată prin "Raiul" situat în stratosfera cu ozonul subţiat dintr-atâta poluare; Extraterestrul sfânt şi "Fecioara" hymenală; căsătorii aranjate (că doar nu întâmplător spun unii australieni, "Jesus was a hard act to follow"!...), patimi moderne şi chinuri medievale, urmate de levitaţii private (Beam me up, Scotty!) şi alte demonstraţii "ştiinţifice" ale efectului de turmă...
Apoi, urmează colonialismul Occidental "civilizator" şi monarhiile constituţional-neplătitoare de taxe - că, deh, "aleşii" Domnului-Zeu (regii, reginele şi odraslele lor princiare nu trebuie să-şi tulbure seninătatea de "funcţionari publici ereditari" cu problemele electorale cu care se confruntă puţin... Putin, securistul patriot al 'mamei Rusii'!) au grupa de sânge "Albastru +"... către violet!
Violetul "slujitorilor" (pedofili ai...) Domnului-Zeu, ceilalţi scutiţi de plata taxelor care susţin existenţa statului, a educaţiei, sănătăţii, reţelelor de transport şi restul bunurilor publice în baza cărora putem pretinde că suntem fiinţe sociale...
Şi uite aşa ajungem la "sfârşitul istoriei", propovăduit de ideologii capitalismului corporatist/ de cumetrie, a exploatării omului prin cămătăria creditului şi dobânzii, a transformării sale în resursă (dezumanizată), credincioasă şi ascultătoare, o simplă piesă de schimb peste care se va pogorâ "duşul de aur" şi "blenoragia bunăstării" (aşa-numitul trickle-down effect)...
Fericiţi cei săraci cu duhul... şi cu acces la internet! V-a plăcut "povestea"?
"Before you can break out of prison, you must first realize you're locked up."
1 May 2012
Welcome to the Asylum
Posted on Apr 30, 2012
By Chris Hedges
When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”
The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.
When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.
The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism.
Marx, though he placed a naive faith in the power of the state to create his workers’ utopia and discounted important social and cultural forces outside of economics, was acutely aware that something essential to human dignity and independence had been lost with the destruction of pre-modern societies. The Iroquois Council of the Gens, where Indians came together to be heard as ancient Athenians did, was, Marx noted, a “democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it.” Marx lauded the active participation of women in tribal affairs, writing, “The women [were] allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own election. Decision given by the Council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois.” European women on the Continent and in the colonies had no equivalent power.
Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The pre-modern societies of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—although they were not always idyllic and performed acts of cruelty including the mutilation, torture and execution of captives—did not subordinate the sacred to the technical. The deities they worshipped were not outside of or separate from nature.
Seventeenth century European philosophy and the Enlightenment, meanwhile, exalted the separation of human beings from the natural world, a belief also embraced by the Bible. The natural world, along with those pre-modern cultures that lived in harmony with it, was seen by the industrial society of the Enlightenment as worthy only of exploitation. Descartes argued, for example, that the fullest exploitation of matter to any use was the duty of humankind. The wilderness became, in the religious language of the Puritans, satanic. It had to be Christianized and subdued. The implantation of the technical order resulted, as Richard Slotkin writes in “Regeneration Through Violence,” in the primacy of “the western man-on-the-make, the speculator, and the wildcat banker.” Davy Crockett and, later, George Armstrong Custer, Slotkin notes, became “national heroes by defining national aspiration in terms of so many bears destroyed, so much land preempted, so many trees hacked down, so many Indians and Mexicans dead in the dust.”
The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”
The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.
In William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Prospero is stranded on an island where he becomes the undisputed lord and master. He enslaves the primitive “monster” Caliban. He employs the magical sources of power embodied in the spirit Ariel, who is of fire and air. The forces unleashed in the island’s wilderness, Shakespeare knew, could prompt us to good if we had the capacity for self-control and reverence. But it also could push us toward monstrous evil since there are few constraints to thwart plunder, rape, murder, greed and power. Later, Joseph Conrad, in his portraits of the outposts of empire, also would expose the same intoxication with barbarity.
The anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who in 1846 was “adopted” by the Seneca, one of the tribes belonging to the Iroquois confederation, wrote in “Ancient Society” about social evolution among American Indians. Marx noted approvingly, in his “Ethnological Notebooks,” Morgan’s insistence on the historical and social importance of “imagination, that great faculty so largely contributing to the elevation of mankind.” Imagination, as the Shakespearean scholar Harold C. Goddard pointed out, “is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two. ... Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets.”
All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that have the power to transform us, is being steadily extinguished by our corporate state. Art. Education. Literature. Music. Theater. Dance. Poetry. Philosophy. Religion. Journalism. None of these disciplines are worthy in the corporate state of support or compensation. These are pursuits that, even in our universities, are condemned as impractical. But it is only through the impractical, through that which can empower our imagination, that we will be rescued as a species. The prosaic world of news events, the collection of scientific and factual data, stock market statistics and the sterile recording of deeds as history do not permit us to understand the elemental speech of imagination. We will never penetrate the mystery of creation, or the meaning of existence, if we do not recover this older language. Poetry shows a man his soul, Goddard wrote, “as a looking glass does his face.” And it is our souls that the culture of imperialism, business and technology seeks to crush.
Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism is not only a formation “conditioned by religion,” but is an “essentially religious phenomenon,” albeit one that no longer seeks to connect humans with the mysterious forces of life. Capitalism, as Benjamin observed, called on human societies to embark on a ceaseless and futile quest for money and goods. This quest, he warned, perpetuates a culture dominated by guilt, a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. It enslaves nearly all its adherents through wages, subservience to the commodity culture and debt peonage. The suffering visited on Native Americans, once Western expansion was complete, was soon endured by others, in Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed. There is a kind of justice to this. We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.
By Chris Hedges
AP/Mahesh Kumar A.
People scavenging in a rubbish tip, in Hyderabad, India.
When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied of life. Let one useless war after another be waged. Let the masses be thrust into extreme poverty and left without jobs while the elites, drunk on hedonism, accumulate vast fortunes through exploitation, speculation, fraud and theft. Reality, at the end, gets unplugged. We live in an age when news consists of Snooki’s pregnancy, Hulk Hogan’s sex tape and Kim Kardashian’s denial that she is the naked woman cooking eggs in a photo circulating on the Internet. Politicians, including presidents, appear on late night comedy shows to do gags and they campaign on issues such as creating a moon colony. “At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”
The quest by a bankrupt elite in the final days of empire to accumulate greater and greater wealth, as Karl Marx observed, is modern society’s version of primitive fetishism. This quest, as there is less and less to exploit, leads to mounting repression, increased human suffering, a collapse of infrastructure and, finally, collective death. It is the self-deluded, those on Wall Street or among the political elite, those who entertain and inform us, those who lack the capacity to question the lusts that will ensure our self-annihilation, who are held up as exemplars of intelligence, success and progress. The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression—which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide. Welcome to the asylum.
When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of “primitive” societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology. Those who held on to pre-modern beliefs, such as Native Americans, who structured themselves around a communal life and self-sacrifice rather than hoarding and wage exploitation, could not be accommodated within the ethic of capitalist exploitation, the cult of the self and the lust for imperial expansion. The prosaic was pitted against the allegorical. And as we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.
The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire. This struggle between belief systems was not lost on Marx. “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” is a series of observations derived from Marx’s reading of works by historians and anthropologists. He took notes about the traditions, practices, social structure, economic systems and beliefs of numerous indigenous cultures targeted for destruction. Marx noted arcane details about the formation of Native American society, but also that “lands [were] owned by the tribes in common, while tenement-houses [were] owned jointly by their occupants.” He wrote of the Aztecs, “Commune tenure of lands; Life in large households composed of a number of related families.” He went on, “… reasons for believing they practiced communism in living in the household.” Native Americans, especially the Iroquois, provided the governing model for the union of the American colonies, and also proved vital to Marx and Engel’s vision of communism.
Marx, though he placed a naive faith in the power of the state to create his workers’ utopia and discounted important social and cultural forces outside of economics, was acutely aware that something essential to human dignity and independence had been lost with the destruction of pre-modern societies. The Iroquois Council of the Gens, where Indians came together to be heard as ancient Athenians did, was, Marx noted, a “democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it.” Marx lauded the active participation of women in tribal affairs, writing, “The women [were] allowed to express their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own election. Decision given by the Council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois.” European women on the Continent and in the colonies had no equivalent power.
Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels. The pre-modern societies of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—although they were not always idyllic and performed acts of cruelty including the mutilation, torture and execution of captives—did not subordinate the sacred to the technical. The deities they worshipped were not outside of or separate from nature.
Seventeenth century European philosophy and the Enlightenment, meanwhile, exalted the separation of human beings from the natural world, a belief also embraced by the Bible. The natural world, along with those pre-modern cultures that lived in harmony with it, was seen by the industrial society of the Enlightenment as worthy only of exploitation. Descartes argued, for example, that the fullest exploitation of matter to any use was the duty of humankind. The wilderness became, in the religious language of the Puritans, satanic. It had to be Christianized and subdued. The implantation of the technical order resulted, as Richard Slotkin writes in “Regeneration Through Violence,” in the primacy of “the western man-on-the-make, the speculator, and the wildcat banker.” Davy Crockett and, later, George Armstrong Custer, Slotkin notes, became “national heroes by defining national aspiration in terms of so many bears destroyed, so much land preempted, so many trees hacked down, so many Indians and Mexicans dead in the dust.”
The demented project of endless capitalist expansion, profligate consumption, senseless exploitation and industrial growth is now imploding. Corporate hustlers are as blind to the ramifications of their self-destructive fury as were Custer, the gold speculators and the railroad magnates. They seized Indian land, killed off its inhabitants, slaughtered the buffalo herds and cut down the forests. Their heirs wage war throughout the Middle East, pollute the seas and water systems, foul the air and soil and gamble with commodities as half the globe sinks into abject poverty and misery. The Book of Revelation defines this single-minded drive for profit as handing over authority to the “beast.”
The conflation of technological advancement with human progress leads to self-worship. Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction. The Native Americans understood there are powers and forces we can never control and must honor. They knew, as did the ancient Greeks, that hubris is the deadliest curse of the human race. This is a lesson that we will probably have to learn for ourselves at the cost of tremendous suffering.
In William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” Prospero is stranded on an island where he becomes the undisputed lord and master. He enslaves the primitive “monster” Caliban. He employs the magical sources of power embodied in the spirit Ariel, who is of fire and air. The forces unleashed in the island’s wilderness, Shakespeare knew, could prompt us to good if we had the capacity for self-control and reverence. But it also could push us toward monstrous evil since there are few constraints to thwart plunder, rape, murder, greed and power. Later, Joseph Conrad, in his portraits of the outposts of empire, also would expose the same intoxication with barbarity.
The anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, who in 1846 was “adopted” by the Seneca, one of the tribes belonging to the Iroquois confederation, wrote in “Ancient Society” about social evolution among American Indians. Marx noted approvingly, in his “Ethnological Notebooks,” Morgan’s insistence on the historical and social importance of “imagination, that great faculty so largely contributing to the elevation of mankind.” Imagination, as the Shakespearean scholar Harold C. Goddard pointed out, “is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two. ... Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets.”
All that concerns itself with beauty and truth, with those forces that have the power to transform us, is being steadily extinguished by our corporate state. Art. Education. Literature. Music. Theater. Dance. Poetry. Philosophy. Religion. Journalism. None of these disciplines are worthy in the corporate state of support or compensation. These are pursuits that, even in our universities, are condemned as impractical. But it is only through the impractical, through that which can empower our imagination, that we will be rescued as a species. The prosaic world of news events, the collection of scientific and factual data, stock market statistics and the sterile recording of deeds as history do not permit us to understand the elemental speech of imagination. We will never penetrate the mystery of creation, or the meaning of existence, if we do not recover this older language. Poetry shows a man his soul, Goddard wrote, “as a looking glass does his face.” And it is our souls that the culture of imperialism, business and technology seeks to crush.
Walter Benjamin argued that capitalism is not only a formation “conditioned by religion,” but is an “essentially religious phenomenon,” albeit one that no longer seeks to connect humans with the mysterious forces of life. Capitalism, as Benjamin observed, called on human societies to embark on a ceaseless and futile quest for money and goods. This quest, he warned, perpetuates a culture dominated by guilt, a sense of inadequacy and self-loathing. It enslaves nearly all its adherents through wages, subservience to the commodity culture and debt peonage. The suffering visited on Native Americans, once Western expansion was complete, was soon endured by others, in Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed. There is a kind of justice to this. We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.
Mâna de lucru...
by Mana Delucru
... dacă sintagma alienanta a "resursei dez-umanizate" a înlocuit, în corporatismul neocon post-industrial în care ne-a fost ipotecat viitorul, sintagma "mâinii de lucru", astăzi, pseudo-ştiinţele "free marketingului" (sic!), ale managementului şi restului reinvenţiilor eufemistice ale roţii au aceeaşi menire: să ascundă realitatea exploatării omului de către elitele corporatiste, prin intermediul creditului şi dobânzii!... Dar, Nu! Nu ascultaţi aceste îndemnuri de trezire la realitate... Oh, Nu! Trăiţi-vă clipa, cheltuiţi azi şi gândiţi-vă mâine (... de unde veţi da banii înapoi!)... Fiţi mobili social şi poluaţi natura şi mediul înconjurător, în numele "creşterii economice" producătoare de profit pentru elitele parvenite şi de inechităţi sociale marcante, că "mâine va fi şi mai rău"... Zâmbiţi tâmp şi credeţi-vă propriile minciuni în coconul de căcat (de unde şi Faeces-book!) în care aţi fost prozelitizati să proslăviţi capitalismul privatizărilor abuzive ale cumetrilor conectaţi la pârghiile de putere şi... Asistaţi pasiv (aspiraţional!) la devalizarea activelor sociale care ne dau calitatea de cetăţeni... Creaţi-vă stilul "propriu" ascultând muzakul pop pentru mase... Distraţi-vă în mall-uri cumpărând lucruri de care nu aveţi altă "nevoie" în afara eliberării de anxietăţile existenţelor depersonalizate, şablonate să creadă în Noroc, în Domnul-Zeu, în clerul neplătitor de taxe, în reţelele sociale ale celui mai primar numitor comun, în manele şi telenovele şi în câte şi mai câte modalităţi în care Complexul Militar-Industrial al corporatismului Occidental vă dirijează şi vă distruge vieţile...
16 Apr 2012
Fiți Oameni, Nu Resursele Dezumanizate ale "Capitalismului de Cumetrie"!
S-a mai scris (chiar dacă, timid şi sporadic!) pe tema "capitalismului de cumetrie" din Balcani - o sintagmă discreditată prematur din care lansării sale, așa cum era evidențiat și în op-ed-ul lui V. Duma, de "tătucul" Iliescu, la scurt timp după rocada securiștilor și nomenclaturiștilor - câștigători ai "revoluției" de partid și stat, din decembrie 1989.
S-a bătut de-atunci destulă monedă speculativă pe tarele presupuse genetice, ori geografice ale "urmașilor" mioritici ai "românilor" Burebista, Decebal sau Traian, păstrându-se însă cu sfințenie limba de lemn în care a fost narat cadrul cultist al revizionismului cu referințe istorice.
Să luăm, de pildă, exemplul cărturarilor Școlii Ardelene de secol XVIII, care sunt printre primii și, poate, şi cei mai articulați instigatori ai instinctelor primare de organizare statală pe criterii etnico-naționale. Dincolo de zgândărirea așa-zisei "conștiințe naționale" aceştia reușesc "serigrafierea" latină a codrului frate cu... "bradul, brânza, viezurele" și restului contribuţiei autohtone la formarea latinei vulgarizate mai abitir în urma vizitelor "hoardelor" de "turiști" slavi, huni sau tătari.
Această pasteurizare mitizantă a folclorului este "colectivizată" ulterior prin intermediul pașoptiștilor, al elitelor interbelice și, surprinzător, al comuniștilor - care-i păstrează elementele constitutive fundamentale într-o conștiință naționalistă, diferită de internaţionalismul afişat în blocul sovietic din care făcea teoretic parte.
Continuitatea acestor elemente patriarhale (de încăpățânare funciară!) nu poate fi întreruptă nici de recenta mobilitate socială a românilor, obligați să își ia lumea-n cap în căutarea unui trai mai decent decât poate oferi o Românie afectată profund de virusul neoliberalismului.
Ceea ce s-a putut observa empiric a fost faptul că nici măcar angrenarea în economia serviciilor (din țările aflate în căutare de mână de lucru ieftină) nu a reușit să modifice semnificativ tarele de mentalitate ale unei excepționalități de o particularitate halucinantă. Desigur, sforăielile patriotarde, de genul "Acolo este țara mea și neamul meu cel românesc..." nu sunt specifice doar unor trubaduri ca Tudor Gheorghe, ele putând fi întâlnite în orice alte "comunități inventate" de pe glob unde sunt negate realitatea și adevărurile filosofice pronunțate de Kant sau Rawls.
Potrivit acestora, statul ar fi trebuit să fi încetat de mult să mai fie o problemă de geografie sau etnicitate (evident, cu excepția "Israelului Mare" - un stat creat artificial pentru adresarea atrocităților Holocaustului, în care au fost înglobate succesiv majoritatea teritoriilor palestiniene (și nu numai) și în care sunt continuate politicile de apartheid de către cei care se autointitulează "aleșii" Domnului-Zeu...)
Dincolo de aceste considerații de ordin general, acest pamflet se dorește a fi un semnal de alarmă destinat solidarizării locale cu mişcările anti-capitaliste din lumea întreagă şi concentrării atenției (distrasă de la problemele cetății printr-un asediu - atât al mass-mediei tradiţionale, cât şi al noilor platforme virtuale, de genul Faecesbook (sic!) sau Twatter - cât se poate de insidios, de continuu și de real!) asupra parveniților tranziției capitalismului de cumetrie autohton către globalizarea neoliberală.
O mână de nomenclaturiști
O mână de nomenclaturiști direct conectați la pârghiile de putere şi deţinând accesul la activele economiei naționale profită de starea de derută generală și de lipsa de cultură politică a populației pentru a socializa pierderile economiei "multilateral-dezvoltate" și privatiza (în propriile buzunare!) activele economiei de stat printr-o serie de abuzuri flagrante.
A trecut atât de puţin timp de când stăteam la Cărturești, la două mese depărtare de I.M. Vlas - țapul ișpășitor al schemei Ponzi a FNI-ului. Dar, astfel de întreprinderi (destinate devalizării activelor României!), precum SAFI, Caritas ș.a. pălesc prin comparație cu adevărații coloși, de genul Bancorex sau restul scheletelor din dulapurile sale, așa cum au fost Întreprinderea „Carpaţi" sau ICE „Dunărea", firma MAI-ului, controlată de fosta Securitate, Tehnoforest, Agroexport, Crescent, Vitrocim, Terra, Delta și câte altele.
Singura soluţie?...
Înc-o Rev... erificare a conformităţii declaraţiilor fiscale ale posesorilor autovehiculelor de lux înregistrate la Direcţia Regim Permise de Conducere şi Înmatriculare a Vehiculelor (DRPCIV) sau poate o Rev...erificare a legalităţii autorizaţiilor de construcţie ale viloaielor ostentative ale aşa-zişilor câştigători ai tranziţiei, ori a valorii activelor acestora... atât din ţară, dar mai ales din refugiile tarifare în care au fost ascunse de organele fiscale din România ş.a.m.d.
Absenţa unor astfel de gesturi de voinţă politică, atât de simple şi de fireşti într-o democraţie care ar fi trebuit să se consolideze în cei peste 21 de ani petrecuţi într-o "libertate" lipsită de etică, echitate şi de cele mai multe ori, legalitate, evidenţiază faptul că doar o schimbare calitativă de proporțiile unei Revoluții mai poate adresa problema tragerii la răspundere (penală!) a noii burghezii post-ceaușiste...
A sosit vremea Ocupării agenților și agențiilor Complexului Militar-Industrial şi Renaționalizării activelor acaparate de soții și soțiile, de fiii şi fiicele, de cumnații, finii, verișoarele și nepoatele sistemului de sorginte mafiotă, în vederea democratizării economiei inechităților flagrante și înlocuirii minusculei cleptocrații corporatiste neoliberale cu o democraţie participativă, deteritorializată şi generatoare de sustenatibilitate şi eficiență Paretiană!
E timpul să ne eliberăm de reflexele consumeriste condiționate, care ne-au fost inoculate subtil de către agențiile corporatismului, pentru redobândirea calităţii de cetățeni ai societății civile, capabili să-și negocieze nemijlocit viitorul lor şi al întregii planete!
A sosit momentul reflecției critice prin renaţionalizarea sistemului de educaţie, privatizat şi transformat din incubatoare de cercetare în copiatoare industriale de diplome academice contra cost. Doar perfecţionarea continuă a cunoştinţelor teoretice dobândite acum va permite edificarea unei societăţi meritocratice, în care să fie încurajate valorile integrităţii, solidarităţii și respectului pentru drepturile celorlalți!
Mult succes!
S-a bătut de-atunci destulă monedă speculativă pe tarele presupuse genetice, ori geografice ale "urmașilor" mioritici ai "românilor" Burebista, Decebal sau Traian, păstrându-se însă cu sfințenie limba de lemn în care a fost narat cadrul cultist al revizionismului cu referințe istorice.
Să luăm, de pildă, exemplul cărturarilor Școlii Ardelene de secol XVIII, care sunt printre primii și, poate, şi cei mai articulați instigatori ai instinctelor primare de organizare statală pe criterii etnico-naționale. Dincolo de zgândărirea așa-zisei "conștiințe naționale" aceştia reușesc "serigrafierea" latină a codrului frate cu... "bradul, brânza, viezurele" și restului contribuţiei autohtone la formarea latinei vulgarizate mai abitir în urma vizitelor "hoardelor" de "turiști" slavi, huni sau tătari.
Această pasteurizare mitizantă a folclorului este "colectivizată" ulterior prin intermediul pașoptiștilor, al elitelor interbelice și, surprinzător, al comuniștilor - care-i păstrează elementele constitutive fundamentale într-o conștiință naționalistă, diferită de internaţionalismul afişat în blocul sovietic din care făcea teoretic parte.
Continuitatea acestor elemente patriarhale (de încăpățânare funciară!) nu poate fi întreruptă nici de recenta mobilitate socială a românilor, obligați să își ia lumea-n cap în căutarea unui trai mai decent decât poate oferi o Românie afectată profund de virusul neoliberalismului.
Ceea ce s-a putut observa empiric a fost faptul că nici măcar angrenarea în economia serviciilor (din țările aflate în căutare de mână de lucru ieftină) nu a reușit să modifice semnificativ tarele de mentalitate ale unei excepționalități de o particularitate halucinantă. Desigur, sforăielile patriotarde, de genul "Acolo este țara mea și neamul meu cel românesc..." nu sunt specifice doar unor trubaduri ca Tudor Gheorghe, ele putând fi întâlnite în orice alte "comunități inventate" de pe glob unde sunt negate realitatea și adevărurile filosofice pronunțate de Kant sau Rawls.
Potrivit acestora, statul ar fi trebuit să fi încetat de mult să mai fie o problemă de geografie sau etnicitate (evident, cu excepția "Israelului Mare" - un stat creat artificial pentru adresarea atrocităților Holocaustului, în care au fost înglobate succesiv majoritatea teritoriilor palestiniene (și nu numai) și în care sunt continuate politicile de apartheid de către cei care se autointitulează "aleșii" Domnului-Zeu...)
Dincolo de aceste considerații de ordin general, acest pamflet se dorește a fi un semnal de alarmă destinat solidarizării locale cu mişcările anti-capitaliste din lumea întreagă şi concentrării atenției (distrasă de la problemele cetății printr-un asediu - atât al mass-mediei tradiţionale, cât şi al noilor platforme virtuale, de genul Faecesbook (sic!) sau Twatter - cât se poate de insidios, de continuu și de real!) asupra parveniților tranziției capitalismului de cumetrie autohton către globalizarea neoliberală.
O mână de nomenclaturiști
Credit: Mediafax - Stefan Micsik
În ultimii doi ani, românii au achiziţionat 815 autoturisme premium de la brandurile de lux Aston Martin, Bentley, Cadillac, Ferrari, Jaguar, Lamborghini, Maserati, Maybach, Porsche şi Rolls Royce, potrivit datelor Direcţiei Regim Permise de Conducere şi Înmatriculare a Vehiculelor (DRPCIV) centralizate de Ziarul Gândul.
O mână de nomenclaturiști direct conectați la pârghiile de putere şi deţinând accesul la activele economiei naționale profită de starea de derută generală și de lipsa de cultură politică a populației pentru a socializa pierderile economiei "multilateral-dezvoltate" și privatiza (în propriile buzunare!) activele economiei de stat printr-o serie de abuzuri flagrante.
A trecut atât de puţin timp de când stăteam la Cărturești, la două mese depărtare de I.M. Vlas - țapul ișpășitor al schemei Ponzi a FNI-ului. Dar, astfel de întreprinderi (destinate devalizării activelor României!), precum SAFI, Caritas ș.a. pălesc prin comparație cu adevărații coloși, de genul Bancorex sau restul scheletelor din dulapurile sale, așa cum au fost Întreprinderea „Carpaţi" sau ICE „Dunărea", firma MAI-ului, controlată de fosta Securitate, Tehnoforest, Agroexport, Crescent, Vitrocim, Terra, Delta și câte altele.
Singura soluţie?...
Înc-o Rev... erificare a conformităţii declaraţiilor fiscale ale posesorilor autovehiculelor de lux înregistrate la Direcţia Regim Permise de Conducere şi Înmatriculare a Vehiculelor (DRPCIV) sau poate o Rev...erificare a legalităţii autorizaţiilor de construcţie ale viloaielor ostentative ale aşa-zişilor câştigători ai tranziţiei, ori a valorii activelor acestora... atât din ţară, dar mai ales din refugiile tarifare în care au fost ascunse de organele fiscale din România ş.a.m.d.
Absenţa unor astfel de gesturi de voinţă politică, atât de simple şi de fireşti într-o democraţie care ar fi trebuit să se consolideze în cei peste 21 de ani petrecuţi într-o "libertate" lipsită de etică, echitate şi de cele mai multe ori, legalitate, evidenţiază faptul că doar o schimbare calitativă de proporțiile unei Revoluții mai poate adresa problema tragerii la răspundere (penală!) a noii burghezii post-ceaușiste...
A sosit vremea Ocupării agenților și agențiilor Complexului Militar-Industrial şi Renaționalizării activelor acaparate de soții și soțiile, de fiii şi fiicele, de cumnații, finii, verișoarele și nepoatele sistemului de sorginte mafiotă, în vederea democratizării economiei inechităților flagrante și înlocuirii minusculei cleptocrații corporatiste neoliberale cu o democraţie participativă, deteritorializată şi generatoare de sustenatibilitate şi eficiență Paretiană!
E timpul să ne eliberăm de reflexele consumeriste condiționate, care ne-au fost inoculate subtil de către agențiile corporatismului, pentru redobândirea calităţii de cetățeni ai societății civile, capabili să-și negocieze nemijlocit viitorul lor şi al întregii planete!
A sosit momentul reflecției critice prin renaţionalizarea sistemului de educaţie, privatizat şi transformat din incubatoare de cercetare în copiatoare industriale de diplome academice contra cost. Doar perfecţionarea continuă a cunoştinţelor teoretice dobândite acum va permite edificarea unei societăţi meritocratice, în care să fie încurajate valorile integrităţii, solidarităţii și respectului pentru drepturile celorlalți!
Mult succes!
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