Archive for February, 2009
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Quote of the Day: Truth for the Animals
Dmitry Orlov says it’s boondoggles chasing boondoggles. The late, great Marvin Harris simply labeled it “intensification.”
Either way, the point is that overclasses do one thing and one thing only — pursue the tactics and strategies that carried them to the top of the societies to which they dictate the terms of life.
Alas, as both Orlov and Harris argue, this reliance on doing the same-old-same-old only gets stronger after class decrepitude arrives and the underlying conditions for further exploitation (and further life for the proles) begin to erode themselves. Just when they most need fresh ideas, established overclasses instead only redouble the old ones.
Any brush with the news of the day provides ample proof of this thesis.
My task for today is to pass along the sub-news that the point applies to big business marketing as well as to macro-economic policy and geo-politics.
Consider this comment from Douglas Brooks, Senior Vice President of the Aegis Group’s Media Marketing Assessment unit:
When the fish get finicky, it makes you a better fisherman. The presentation of the bait and how it’s delivered — getting it in the right spot at the right time — becomes critical.
This quote comes in a February 23, 2009 Advertising Age column reporting on how television marketers are seeing the effectiveness of their profit-seeking behavior-modification efforts increase, despite the times. [Article title: "Guess Which Medium is as Effective as Ever: TV"]
Notice the reduction of the supposedly holy and wholly sovereign “consumer” here. In this case, it’s to “fish” swimming past baited hooks. Just as often, it’s to dogs, frogs, pigs, or chickens.
Them’s the terms of the trade inside the leading institution of cultural planning in America, folks…
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Going “Green”: Cartoon of the Day
From the great Andy Singer:
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
Obamanocchio With a (Literal) Bullet
Revelation of the day:
Compare and contrast this announcement of a permanent 50,000-troop occupation to both NerObama’s political marketing stimuli from Election ‘08 and the repeatedly expressed, crystal clear will of the Iraqi people.
Chris Floyd, whose invaluable work keeps getting better and better as the world staggers toward the capitalist cliff, has a rather apt observation:
No indeed, that is “not going to happen.” One of the most remarkable aspects of Obama’s “war lite” plan is its brazen and absolute disregard for the agreement signed between the United States and the supposedly sovereign Iraqi government guaranteeing the complete withdrawal of all American troops by the end of 2011. Of course, this “agreement” was always considered a farce by everyone – except for the American corporate media, which kept reporting on the “tough negotiations,” as if the pact would have any actual meaning in the real world. The agreement was vitiated by escape clauses allowing the Iraqi government to “request” a continued American military presence after the 2011 deadline; and considering that any Iraqi government in place in 2011 will be helplessly dependent on American guns and money to maintain its power, such a “request” has always been a dead certainty. So I suppose we must at least admire the Obama Administration’s candor in dropping all pretense that U.S. forces are going to leave Iraq at any time in the foreseeable future.
But the hypocrisy – the literally murderous hypocrisy – of claiming that this plan “leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war,” as Obama asserted in his State of the Union speech, is sickening. It does no such thing, and he knows it.
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Reification of the Day
Even as “the market” implodes and again refutes its own totalitarian worshippers’ dogmas, our “mainstream” (read “overclass”-serving) leaders continue to talk about “it” in terms that would embarrass any self-respecting third-grader.
What am I talking about? Treating “the market” as an actual, real thing, rather than a euphemistic abstraction for aggregate capitalist endeavors.
Check out this headline from yesterday’s New York Times:
Trying to Break Cycle, Markets Rise
It’s remarkable to watch how utterly imprisoned by its own ideologies our super-decrepit overclass is. The rotten, impotent twaddle pours forth, even as the Wile E. Coyote feet keep scrambling on canyon air. Don’t ever look down, o brave entreperneurs!
They don’t know themselves vewwy well, do they?
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
A Decent Proposal: No More Olympics
Seems the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, built in Beijing for last summer’s Olympics, is now unused and will be knocked down and replaced with — of course — a new shopping mall. Wikipedia cites sources saying China spent $423 million building this monstrosity, and that that staggering figure is a mere “one-tenth the cost that it would have cost to build the Bird’s Nest in the West.”
And what do the people of China and the world get in exchange for tolerating the construction of these $4 billion disposable boondoggles? The usual Olympics agenda — another dose of extreme distraction, commercialism, and nationalism.
The world can hardly tolerate much more of those increasingly dangerous things, to say nothing of the colossal ecological wastefulness of things like building more Bird’s Nests and flying the world’s game-players and upscale spectators into thoroughly pointless, quickly forgotten quadrennial crypto-fascist schlockfests.
Let’s stop this madness, shall we?
Friday, February 20th, 2009
What’s Leaving YOUR Wallet?
Click here to peruse the credit-card “change of terms” notice I got yesterday from Capital One.
“The rate will be determined by adding 26.15% to the Prime rate.”
This game is so over, folks…
Don’t hold your breath for help. Hit the shred button instead.
