Sunday, December 05, 2004

Newshog 05-12-2004

Why doesn't the U.S. pre-emptively invade America as a threat to world stability and human rights? Also a must read! why Scrooge was unjustly persecuted for being a capitalist but Bob Cratchit should get off his ass and do better...plus more in today's Newshog Briefs.

  • Putin has backed India to become a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council in a move designed to strengthen ties. Remember I mentioned the new Russia/India/Brazil coalition?
  • New York in Mengele-style medicine: BBC alleges NY City forces HIV kids to take lethal experimental drug cocktails in foster homes.
  • The US Government says evidence gained by torture is OK by them. Meanwhile, there is horrified reaction to a recent Red Cross report on US torture.
  • Yet another matter Bush has a "mandate" for: reviews and possible demolition of three decades of environmental laws.
  • Up to 5,000 British troops may head for Afghanistan to police a drugs crackdown, replacing US soldiers.
  • Annan under attack, but the real target is the idea of a powerful UN. Opinion by Trevor Royle.
  • The Fallujah in Pictures website finally gets noticed by the Washington Post, and military types say it presents an accurate picture.
  • Would a European Union which was a "liberal, democratic, voluntary empire expanding continuously outward as others seek to join it" be a good thing for the U.S.?
  • Bah humbug! Capitalism Magazine runs this season's "Missing the Point" prizewinner as an essayist argues that Cratchit, not Scrooge, should have been visited by the ghosts.
  • Here is an oldy but thought provoking: conservatism boils down to the wish for cheap labour? (This one is for Kat.)
  • The neocons have added yet another country to their hit list, another one targeted for regime change: the Republic of Korea. Yes, that's South Korea.
  • Ukraine's opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has urged foreign nations not to interfere in the re-run of the presidential poll. Not much chance of that...
  • Another reminder that not all terrorists are muslims: ETA detonates bombs in Madrid on Friday.
  • Aid cuts threatened by US unless allies agree to shield Americans from prosecution at the UN permanent war crimes tribunal.
  • Don't you just love the good ole boys of Alabama? They keep a constitution wording promoting racism and introduce a bill to ban gays from all media representations...all in one week! What's for next week, round up the Jews and put them in camps then invade Poland?

Quote of the Day:

It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity.
Seneca

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link on the "cheap labor conservatives". I just spent 6 hours there.

Kat

Cernig said...

Hi Kat,

I had the feeling you might mean something like that when you mentioned on TDG that no-one would tell the outright truth about conservatives :-)

I remember having a T-Shirt during the dark days of Thatcher that said, simply, "Eat the Rich". How long before that could become a popular slogan in the U.S. under Bush?

Regards, C

Anonymous said...

Well actually, I spent 6 hours looking through his site for something even more direct. If I had the energy, I could produce a pretty good rant myself, but this'll have to do for now:

Yo, Fox addicts. Those neocon wingnuts, whose verbel prose you suck in all day, every day, as if it were the breath of life itself, think of you as ignorant, gullible, low-class trailer trash who'll believe anything if they repeat it often enough. And since you do believe them, they think their assessment of you is dead-on.

You've so completely bought into their promises of economic prosperity that apparently nothing short of having your house and cars repossessed simultaneously is going to wake you up to reality -- their economic plan is the political equivalent of a pyramid-scheme chain letter. The tax cuts they promise will go only to them -- and be paid for by you. The liberal programs they plan to cut from the federal budget will be your grandma's social security check, your unemployment benefits, funding for your kids' public school, the pay for those OSHA guys who keep you from getting your hand cut off while you cut up those Tyson chickens, and the workman's comp benefits that keep your family eating when those digits do get sliced off. They also plan to repeal all those business-stifling regulations that prevent them from stealing all your retirement money.

If you could read -- which you can't, or you wouldn't be watching Fox News all day -- you could check out Kevin Phillips book, The Politics of Rich and Poor, and find out that it's all happened before -- over and over, about every 50 years, throughout America's economic history. It's called a Republican heyday -- when they sucker the middle class into believing they want you to be prosperous too. The 'con' in 'conservative' stands for con job. It only happens every 50 years or so because no one who's ever lived through a Republican-caused depression would ever vote for them again, so they have to wait for everyone who was sucked before the last depression to die off.

About now, you're probably saying to yourself, 'But they wouldn't do anything to intentionally cause a depression -- cause it would hurt them too'. HA! Who do you think's gonna buy your house, your land, your cars, for pennies on the dollar after the bank repossesses them? Who will you be paying rent to after your house is gone? Why, the same people who, after they lay you off, are going to tell you they can't possibly afford to hire you unless you're willing to work for next to nothing, 'cause otherwise they'll have to move the job to China where people are locked inside the factory for 14 hours a day, working for 15 cents an hour.

I know you suckers too well to think you'll believe me. In the spring of '98, I got up at 5 am every day to find out what was happening in the stock markets overseas. I watched as the Asian markets fell, the Russian market fell, the European markets fell, and the South American markets fell -- and I knew what market would be next. So in May, I called up my buddy in Denver, who had all his retirement money in the Nasdaq, and explaining why, told him he'd better immediately switch all of it into bonds. He told me I was nuts. So month after month I called and said the same thing -- to the point he got really annoyed with me. But I cared about him, so I persisted. Finally he told me the only way he could retire with enough to live on, was to keep betting that the Nasdaq was going to keep rising. Then when the Nasdaq crashed, he put some of what was left into bonds. And by some twist of logic I haven't quite figured out yet, he decided I was to blame for his losses. I know you're of the same cloth -- you've just got to believe those Neocons mean you well because if the prosperity they've promised you doesn't materialize soon, you won't be able to keep up all those payments to the bank and the credit card companies. I understand why you need to hang on to that hope against hope.

As long as I'm in rant mode, I may as well address one of the more obnoxious sub-groups of Fox addicts: You snake-handling anti-abortionists out there don't fool me one bit. I grew up with you, and I know you don't give a damn about those dead fetuses. What you really want is a return to the good ole days when your daughters were scared shitless to go to bed with all those big-di#@ed niggers you hate cause they might have to endure your wrath (and supposedly the Almighty's too) after getting themselves pregnant with one of those abominable mixed-blood babies. And you think if you can just make abortions illegal again, you'll be back in control of everybody just like your daddy was in the 1950s. I maintain only the slightest sliver of hope for ya'll -- 'cause, even though there's not one yet, doctor's may someday have a drug to treat the mentally ill whose main symptom is persistent delusions.

In case the above explanation of neocon economics proved too complicated for some of you, there's a simpler way of saying it: You're about to become the cheap labor they say their businesses can't be competitive and profitable without.

Kat

Cernig said...

Hi Kat,

WOW! Wonderfully and aggresively put. I loved it. There must be a threshold at which it becomes finacially worthwhile to be a Republican. Exactly how rich do you have to be before it's actually a good idea rather than just fooling yourself that you are rich enough (i.e. being a wannabe cheap-labor-conservative a.k.a dupe)? I would love somebody with a financial brain to put a figure on it...either in annual earnings or net worth.

Regards, C