Dialectics of History

[Spiralman]

For China’s new left, old values
Young movement views state power as remedy for free-market inequalities
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30290632/pr ... mode/1098/

Some Chinese posters from the past:
http://chineseposters.net/gallery/index.php

Below are a few from during the Cultural Revolution, which is reemerging as much as a source of inspiration for Chinese as the American 1960’s movements and insights are resurfacing and being reinterpreted by the younger generations. These images are as significant to Chinese historical consciousness as images of JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, Woodstock, Vietnam war protests, free love, recycling and hippy communes are to Americans. Just as Americans are giving a second look to the 1960’s and 1970’s for seedlings of values that they want to recycle today, so too does China look to the many complex philosophical tendencies that battled it out during the Cultural Revolution.

1969
Firmly grasp large-scale revolutionary criticism
Zhuajin geming da pipan
Factory workers shout phrases from the Little Red Book to a stage where 'rightist' managers are forced to stand, sometimes for hours, to be accused, insulted and beaten.



1970, January
Greet the 1970s with the new victories of revolution and production
Yong geming he shengchande xin shengli yingjie qishi niandai!



1971, January
Imperialism and all reactionary forces are paper tigers
Diguo zhuyi he yiqie fandongpai dou shi zhi laohu
The poster, recalling a scene from the Korean War, shows what will happen when the Americans invade China - which they have no intention of doing in these years. On the contrary: in 1971 secret diplomacy between China and the USA starts, leading to Nixon's famous visit to Mao in 1972.



1971, April
Turn philosophy into a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses
Rang zhexue bian wei qunzhong shoulide jianrui wuqi
In the background, terraces for agriculture are laid out on mountain slopes, as in Dazhai.



1976, August
Bombard the capitalist headquarters
Paoda zichan jieji silingbu
The title of this poster quotes a big character poster by Mao, in which he accuses other party leaders of treasonous and capitalist points of view and urges his supporters to overthrow his enemies. Big character posters were used extensively during the Cultural Revolution.



China no longer cashing in
NBC News' Adrienne Mong reports on a unique group of workers, known as scrap peddlers, who are barely eking out a living in the wake of the worldwide recession.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 4#30232074

Modern China in pictures
A click-through history from the last emperor to the present day.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11112443/di ... /1107/s/2/

[Spiralman]

Susan Boyle's Fairytale Ending; Why is no one suspicious of Simon Cowell's Latest Creation? & Goodbye Bland Affluence; Get ready for authenticity chic.

Susan Boyle's Fairytale Ending; Why is no one suspicious of Simon Cowell's Latest Creation?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04182009/po ... tm?&page=0



APRIL 17, 2009
Goodbye Bland Affluence
Get ready for authenticity chic.
By PEGGY NOONAN
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123992073614326997.html



[The ordinary, unglamorous, down and out person, trying to make a comeback is becoming a recurring theme of various recent movies that recount scenes from the past:

Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls (2006)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGib_Rka ... re=related

Cinderella Man (2005)]


During the Great Depression, a common-man hero, James J. Braddock--a.k.a. the Cinderella Man--was to become one of the most surprising sports legends in history. By the early 1930s, the impoverished ex-prizefighter was seemingly as broken-down, beaten-up and out-of-luck as much of the rest of the American populace who had hit rock bottom. His career appeared to be finished, he was unable to pay the bills, the only thing that mattered to him--his family--was in danger, and he was even forced to go on Public Relief. But deep inside, Jim Braddock never relinquished his determination. Driven by love, honor and an incredible dose of grit, he willed an impossible dream to come true. In a last-chance bid to help his family, Braddock returned to the ring. No one thought he had a shot. However Braddock, fueled by something beyond mere competition, kept winning. Suddenly, the ordinary working man became the mythic athlete. Carrying the hopes and dreams of the disenfranchised on his shoulders, Braddock rocketed through the ranks, until this underdog chose to do the unthinkable: take on the heavyweight champ of the world, the unstoppable Max Baer, renowned for having killed two men in the ring.

[Spiralman]

When the Real Estate Game Cost $9.95
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/busin ... wanted=all





[These days, going into the real estate game only costs $1 !]



"Yeah, well, where was I going to go? Detroit?"
South Park, Do the Handicapped Go to Hell? & Probably.
- Saddam Hussein says this to Satan after Satan’s new boyfriend has killed Saddam, and he ends up back in Hell.

Reminds me of the Geithner Plan for toxic bank assets.

[Spiralman]

Walls of green: Vertical, hydroponic gardens are good for the air and for design

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/h ... nwall.html

[Spiralman]

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/16/news/co ... e.fortune/
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/16/news/co ... index2.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/16/news/co ... index3.htm

[Spiralman]

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr09/hou ... atrick.net

[Spiralman]

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... f-but.html

[Spiralman]

'It's a pirate's life for me': interview with a 25-year old Somali & Interstate Commerce Taxes on the Great Lakes of Arabia

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8010061.stm

A 25-year-old Somali pirate has told the BBC's Mohamed Olad Hassan by telephone from the notorious den of Harardhere in central Somalia why he became a sea bandit. Dahir Mohamed Hayeysi says he and his big-spending accomplices are seen by many as heroes.

I used to be a fisherman with a poor family that depended only on fishing.
The first day joining the pirates came into my mind was in 2006.
A group of our villagers, mainly fishermen I knew, were arming themselves.
One of them told me that they wanted to hijack ships, which he said were looting our sea resources.

'National service'
He told me it was a national service with a lot of money in the end. Then I took my gun and joined them.

Years ago we used to fish a lot, enough for us to eat and sell in the markets.
Then illegal fishing and dumping of toxic wastes by foreign fishing vessels affected our livelihood, depleting the fish stocks.
I had no other choice but to join my colleagues.


My ambition is to get a lot of money so that I can lead a better life.
Now I have two lorries, a luxury car and have started my own business in my town.
I only want one more chance in piracy to increase my cash assets, then I will get married and give up.

Piracy is not just easy money - it has many risks and difficulties.
Sometimes you spend months in the sea to hunt a ship and miss.
Sometimes when we are going to hijack a ship we face rough winds, and some of us get sick and some die.
Sometimes you fail in capturing and sometimes you come under threat by foreign navies, but all we do is venture.

Heroes
Let me give you a good example.
Thousands of young desperate Somali [migrants] continue to risk their lives in the sea in search of a better life abroad.

So it is no surprise to see us in the same water, pirating in search of money - there is no difference.
We have local support; most of the people here depend on pirates directly or indirectly.
Because if there is a lot of money in the town they can get some through friendship, relatives or business.
Also our work is seen by many in the coastal villages as legal and we are viewed as heroes.
The only way the piracy can stop is if [Somalia] gets an effective government that can defend our fish.
And then we will disarm, give our boats to that government and will be ready to work.
Foreign navies can do nothing to stop piracy.

Life in Somalia's pirate town
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7623329.stm

.......
Given all the other people involved in the piracy industry, including those who feed the hostages, it has become a mainstay of the Puntland economy.
Eyl has become a town tailor-made for pirates - and their hostages.
Special restaurants have even been set up to prepare food for the crews of the hijacked ships.
As the pirates want ransom payments, they try to look after their hostages.
When commandos from France freed two French sailors seized by pirates off the Somali coast in September, President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had given the go-ahead for the operation when it was clear the pirates were headed for Eyl - it would have been too dangerous to try to free them from there.
The town is a safe-haven where very little is done to stop the pirates - leading to the suggestion that some, at least, in the Puntland administration and beyond have links with them.
Many of them come from the same clan - the Majarteen clan of the president of Somalia's transitional federal government, Abdullahi Yusuf.

Money to spend
The coastal region of Puntland is booming.
Fancy houses are being built, expensive cars are being bought - all of this in a country that has not had a functioning central government for nearly 20 years.
Observers say pirates made about $30m from ransom payments last year - far more than the annual budget of Puntland, which is about $20m.
.......
More than 30% of the world's oil is transported through the Gulf of Aden.
......

[
If the Arab language speaking world was a single nation, the pirate’s and their local government’s needs for capital to build their local businesses and infrastructure could be provided for via interstate commerce taxation to regionally redistribute the wealth from Arab provinces that generate oil wealth to those that don’t, and from the non-Arab countries whose commerce passes through to an Arab national government as a whole.

As the map below demonstrates, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are virtually the Great Lakes of Arabia (The Persian Gulf is misnamed, since it is really more of an Arab Shiite Gulf).
America and Canada treat their Great Lakes as sovereign territory, and tax all trade that passes through them.

The Somali Piracy is an embryonic form of PanArab governmental taxation of international trade passing through the Great Lakes of Arabia.
]



Somali piracy: Global overview
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8003124.stm

[Some examples of the PanArab character of the pirate operations]

Dubai
Wealthy businessmen in the emirate, which has a large Somali community, are suspected of having funded the pirates in the past through the informal Islamic finance system of Hawala. They also provided equipment like speedboats and GPS devices. But the pirates are now thought to largely manage their own affairs.

Yemen
A number of pirates have pounced close to the Yemeni shores but it is not known if any are actually based there. The gangs have been known to seize Yemeni fishing boats and use them to fool naval patrols. The pirates are believed to source much of their heavy weaponry, like rocket-propelled grenades, from Yemen.

[Spiralman]

Abolish the UN Security Council: The Iranian Leader's Speech that led to 23 nations to walk out

April 21 2009
President Ahmadinejad's speech at the Durban Review Conference on Racism
http://votersforpeace.us/press/index.php?itemid=1379

[
The allegedly offending passage of Ahmadinejad’s speech:

.....
Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.
.......

The same theme and more is sounded in the following book by Avraham Burg, the Former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset.

The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes
By Avraham Burg (Former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset)



http://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Over-Mu ... 0230607527

In fact, I recommend watching the movie Fiddler on the Roof from two standpoints, 1) to see conditions in Russia in the 1890’s, and 2) to note that the historic role of the Jews as oppressed in Russia, is today played by the Palestinians in Israel, and that the Cossacks in Russia are equivalent to the Jews in Israel today.

I actually don’t believe that the walkout on Ahmadinejad’s speech was solely about his position on Palesrael.
Instead, I think that it was the following passage that highlights the biggest cleavage, and which will ultimately be one of the factors that destroys the UN:

.....
Ladies and gentlemen, let us take a look at the UN Security Council which is one of the legacies of World War I and World War II. What was the logic behind their granting themselves the veto right? How can such logic comply with humanitarian or spiritual values? Would it not be inconformity with the recognized principles of justice, equality before the law, love and human dignity? Would it not be discrimination, injustice, violations of human rights or humiliation of the majority of nations and countries?

The council is the highest decision-making world body for safeguarding international peace and security. How can we expect the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized and the origin of the law is dominated by coercion and force rather than by justice and the rights?

Coercion and arrogance is the origin of oppression and wars. Although today many proponents of racism condemn racial discrimination in their words and their slogans, a number of powerful countries have been authorized to decide for other nations based on their own interests and at their own discretion and they can easily violate all laws and humanitarian values as they have done so.
.......

The two issues of Palesrael and the UN Security Council veto rights are connected.
Since 1967 there have been 131 UN Security Council Resolutions critical of Israel.
List of United Nations resolutions concerning Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Un ... ing_Israel

Number of resolutions vetoed by each of the five permanent members of the Security Council between 1946 and 2007.

Ahmadinejad, although focused on Palesrael, is targeting the fundamentally undemocratic character of the UN Security Council. The coming period of world wars and civil wars will be partly defined by a demand which is equivalent to Down With the King! Convene a direcly elected Global Constituent Assembly. The terms of the struggle will then between those who want a Global Constitutional Monarchy vs those who want to have Global Citizenship and a Global Parliament, Global Central Bank, Global Currency, Global Property Tax, World Wide Wage System, Global system of militias, etc.
]

[Spiralman]

Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home & Slump Creates Lack of Mobility for Americans

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/busin ... f=business

......
Spain, with a unemployment rate of 15.5 percent, has adopted a similar program, but immigrants are allowed to reclaim their residency and work visas after three years.
.......
The plan came as a shock to many, especially after the government introduced a number of measures in recent months to help jobless foreigners, including free Japanese-language courses, vocational training and job counseling. Guest workers are eligible for limited cash unemployment benefits, provided they have paid monthly premiums.

“It’s baffling,” said Angelo Ishi, an associate professor in sociology at Musashi University in Tokyo. “The Japanese government has previously made it clear that they welcome Japanese-Brazilians, but this is an insult to the community.”

It could also hurt Japan in the long run. The aging country faces an impending labor shortage. The population has been falling since 2005, and its working-age population could fall by a third by 2050. Though manufacturers have been laying off workers, sectors like farming and care for the elderly still face shortages.

But Mr. Kawasaki said the economic slump was a good opportunity to overhaul Japan’s immigration policy as a whole.

“We should stop letting unskilled laborers into Japan. We should make sure that even the three-K jobs are paid well, and that they are filled by Japanese,” he said. “I do not think that Japan should ever become a multiethnic society.”

He said the United States had been “a failure on the immigration front,” and cited extreme income inequalities between rich Americans and poor immigrants.
.....

Slump Creates Lack of Mobility for Americans
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23 ... f=business



[
With the collapse of Peak Credit, the game of musical chairs for housing is coming to an end, but it is also trapping even those who were not scheming houseflippers, to go back to or stay in locations where they have legal status of citizenship, ie similar to feudalism on a global scale where they are formally and heritably bonded to a land and vice versa. And even within a country, as jobs, pensions and social safety nets evaporate people are forced to go back to or stay nearby where they have supportive social arrangements.