March 18, 2008 archive

Docudharma Times Tuesday March 18



I see you slither away with your skin and your tail,

Your flickering tongue and your rattling scales

Like a real reptile.

Tuesday’s Headlines: Plunge Averted, Markets Look Ahead Uneasily: Obama speech will try to defuse race issue :  State TV switches to non-stop footage of Chinese under attack: 1,000 Tibetans arrested in Chinese crackdown: President Robert Mugabe ‘raises the dead’ to secure electoral victory in Zimbabwe: Ghanaian fashion accessory is plastic fantastic: UN forces face grenade and gun attacks from Serbs in Mitrovica: The Big Question: What is the role of the EU President:  Vatican in Saudi talks on building churches: Egypt army to tackle bread crisis: Mexican leftist’s ally appears to win party helm

Arrests after governor’s threat to deal harshly with resistance

Thousands of paramilitary police were massing in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas of unrest last night ahead of an ultimatum to protesters to hand themselves in.

Witnesses reported that arrests had begun long before a midnight deadline passed in the capital, and authorities in other provinces were cracking down both on protests and those who report them.

Hong Kong journalists were ordered to leave Lhasa, and foreign reporters have been turned away or ordered to leave Tibetan areas in the Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces in the past two days.

Tibet’s governor, Qiangba Puncog, said that protesters who turned themselves in would be “treated with leniency within the framework of the law … Otherwise, we will deal with them harshly.”

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

Reclaiming the Streets – Gabriel Lafitte

An excellent article by Gabriel Lafitte, advisor to the Tibetan Government in Exile, about the protests and riots, and what it means to the Tibetans themselves. What follows is his article in full (reprinted with permission).

The Tibetan revolt, like those of two and five decades ago, will be crushed by the overwhelming might of the Chinese military. No match could be more unequal: maroon-clad nuns and monks versus the machinery of oppression of the global rising power. In recent months, fast-response mobile tactical squads whose sole purpose is to quell the masses have been overtly rehearsing on the streets of Tibetan towns for just what they are now doing.

What is the point of revolt if it is almost certainly suicidal

Storytime with Pinche!

All the great men of import gathered around the table. Lunch had broken and the help swiftly took the service away so the captains of industry could tackle the task at hand. They were veritable whose who of plutocrats.

At the head of the table sat Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank. Lesser men flanked them down each side of the dark chestnut table. There was levity in the air. The Republic was in crisis.

They remember the Panic of 1907, the fourth panic in three score years. It was JP Morgan who stepped in then, the great man himself. He organized a team of bank and trust executives that secured international lines of credit and bought plummeting stocks of healthy corporations. The free market had saved itself that day, save the help from international friends.

Or that’s how they chose to remember it.

After brief rebout, they choose Richard Whitney to be there man who was to be their new Morgan. He would lead their resources into battle. They would buy large blocks of the falling stock of U.S. Steel. Then they would move onto other blue chip stocks. Unfortunately, there was no foreign capital to be had. So they decided to move forward as one, coordinated like the fingers of a hand.

This was at 1 p.m. on Friday, October 25.

Over the weekend, this meeting of the financial gods was splashed on every newspapers across the United States. The plutocrats were the Britney Spears of their day, and these group of elite was all but certain that their actions would fix public trust in the market. By Sunday, these men had convinced them that they were finally around the bend and good times were here again. The credit crisis of the late 1920s was over!

On Monday, October 28, the people bought none of what the plutocrats were selling, and even less stock. In fact, the public who had stock along with almost all other investors decided to get out of the market. At the end of the day, the Dow was down by 13%.

There were rumors that the Rockefeller family and other financial giants were set to buy large quantities of stocks. Even William C. Durant was on board. Surely the public would see that they had confidence in the market, so the public should to.

The next day was “Black Tuesday”, October 29, 1929, 16.4 million shares were traded.

The Dow lost another 12%.

The ticker did not stop running until about 7:45 that evening.

The lost for the week was $30 billion, ten times more than the annual budget of the federal government.

It was more than America had spent in World War 1.

The masters of Wall Street meet and discussed went wrong. They released that it was the foreign capital that JP Morgan had connected with domestic spending capabilities that had won the day in 1907. It was outside investors who bought the American credit. Without outside stimulus, the credit cycle would cannibalize itself until it was not only unruly, but also worthless.

The men laughed, realizing their folly. One junior raised a specter, “What if the country had already burned through its entire line of foreign investment and credit?”

Lamont looked up from his bourbon and muttered, “Not only would that be impossible, it would be sheer and utter madness. JP Morgan would never do anything as foolish as to prop up some industry again, unless there is a vast supply of cheap foreign investments. Mark my words young man, that would never happen.”

A cheer went up from the gaggle, and merriment. Sure, the country would be in a bind for quite awhile, but the absurdity of the junior executives comments gave them thanks that at least they were not that over a barrel.

Or wearing barrels, which would surely be the case.

Bonus:

Richard M. Salsman:

“As late as April 1942, U.S. stock prices were still 75% below their 1929 peak and would not revisit that level until November 1954-almost a quarter of a century later.”

THE GOLDEN PEACH

With all of the horrors inflicted upon us-as so well documented here at DD and elsewhere-it’s good to take a mind-break and go somewhere else.

This is a short story I wrote about 12 years ago. It was published in Bricolage, which has about 500 readers, in 2002. It used to be online but has since been taken down (along with everything else from 2001 and thereafter.)

I’ve been thinking about posting this here for quite a while and have finally decided to do so.

I recommend that you have a dictionary at hand or have another browser window opened to an online dictionary. (My brother laughed when I made this same recommendation to him, but later admitted that a “few” of the words were unfamiliar to him.)

I wrote the last sentence of this story first. Originally it had almost 500 words, but for the purposes of the story I edited it down to a mere 365 words. (Bonus points for anyone who can guess why it was originally just under 500 words.)

I hope y’all enjoy reading The Golden Peach as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Wearing Of The Green
O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!

No more Saint Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his color can’t be seen

For there’s a cruel law ag’in the Wearin’ o’ the Green.

I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand

And he said, “How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?”

“She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen

For they’re hanging men and women there for the Wearin’ o’ the Green.”

So if the color we must wear be England’s cruel red

Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed

And pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod

But never fear, ’twill take root there, though underfoot ’tis trod.
When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin’ as they grow

And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show

Then I will change the color too I wear in my caubeen

But till that day, please God, I’ll stick to the Wearin’ o’ the Green.

You can listen to it here.

Gallup: 80% disillusioned

According to a new Gallup poll, a whopping 80% of the American people are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. at this time. Only 19% answered the opposite, the lowest rating registered since January of 1992 (the start of the final year of George Bush Sr.’s term in office). The only time the poll has ever found a lower number was in 1979 (tail end of the Carter years, during the Iranian Hostage Crisis, soaring gas prices), when a 14% rating occurred.

You might be thinking, “hey, why’s the number gotten so low now…. I’ve been dissatisfied with the direction of the country for awhile“. But see, all that means is you’ve been paying attention for the last five years… The extreme number of 19% has only been reached because Republicans have finally turned. Yeah, that’s right, even the GOP is uncomfortable now! Gallup sayeth:

Since January 2007, U.S. satisfaction has dropped by nearly half, from 35% to 19%. However, it has dropped much more among Republicans (from 60% to 33%) than among Democrats (from 16% to 7%).

The 33% of Republicans satisfied with the country today is the lowest Gallup has found for members of President Bush’s party since he took office in 2001.

Racist Reaction Accelerates Against Obama

Right-wing reactionaries thought manna had fallen from heaven along with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s denunciation of the crimes of America. That’s because Rev. Wright is Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama’s personal preacher. But while the demagogues falsely label Wright’s sermons as racist and anti-white, his remarks express truths that resonate with the experience of black Americans and cannot be forever hidden.

Anyone can go and watch excerpts from Rev. Wright’s sermons, edited for maximum incendiarism by arch-conservative, Fox Network Hyas muckamuck, Bill O’Reilly. Yet, all the editing tricks in the world cannot paint Wright’s sermons racist. But then that’s the cry raised when African-Americans say anything on the mark about the experience of racism in America, an experience that has made them sensitive to the crimes and injustices of this country perpetrated abroad, as well.

As if four hundred years of slavery, and one hundred years of Jim Crow state segregationism were not enough to prove the racist legacy of this country, African Americans are still subject to discrimination across the entire society, with inferior schools, inferior health care, wage discrepancies, housing discrimination, racist assaults, unfair drug laws and a still racially insensitive judicial system. CalexanderJ over at Daily Kos hit the mark with this quote from the comedian Chris Rock:

Radley Balko must-read on drug prohibition

America’s most valuable blogger (which I’ve been saying for a while, but it is great to see much bigger bloggers than I agree), has a must-read post countering some of the worst anti-drug legalizations arguments out there.

It wrongly assumes that the all of the problems we associate with drugs–the bloody turf wars, the presence of particularly potent drugs like meth, the lengths to which dealers will go to get their premium, etc.–are the product of the drugs themselves, and not the product of them being prohibited. This chart helps slay that argument. When was the last time you heard about a Michelob deal gone bad?

Read the whole thing.

Assholianism 2007

I have not posted reports about the Bilderburg 2007 conference so even though it’s very late it will give you things to watch for.  The summation

$6 a gallon gas

UN control of everything in, and under the sea(oil)

A North American Union, just like the EU.

A green light has been given by Bilderburg to bomb Iran, no troops, just bombs.

Henry Kissinger says “Americans have to remain in Iraq”.

Global carbon trading remains top priority.

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