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Sep 23, 2008

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Sep 23, 2008

Slavoj Žižek v. Bernard-Henry Lévy

The New York Public Library hosts a debate that sounds like it was narrated by Werner Herzog:

Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s “rock-star philosopher,” and Slavoj Žižek, the Slovanian “Elvis of cultural theory,” will scrutinize the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those of the future, as they argue for a new political and moral vision for our times and investigate the limits of tolerance.

Does the advent of capitalism cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbor? asks Zizek in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.

Are human rights Western or Universal? How is it that progressives themselves-those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism-have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes? asks Lévy in Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against New Barbarism.

Audio available here. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Sep 23, 2008

Bailout Talking Points

Posted at 5:22 PM

The blogosphere reacts!

  • David Brooks thinks we should take this opportunity to completely overhaul the financial system by hoping for the appearance of a financial oligarchy of “bipartisan” Economic Wise Men who will fix everything. Glenn Greenwald reminds him that this was basically the guiding idea before the entire financial market collapsed!
  • Kos asks why some of the planned $700 bn. bailout will go to banks that aren’t even failing. TPM has more thoughts on this.
  • Doubt is cast on whether or not we’re really in a “crisis.”
  • Jonathon Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution sums up what I will likely find to be the most fucked up part this entire scheme:

Whatever happens with the Wall Street bailout, I hope the recipients will take $30 million and endow a Hank Paulson Chair in Free Enterprise at AEI. Then the person in that position can spend the next forty years writing op-eds and going on TV telling us how if we just deregulate Wall Street it will make us all rich! rich! rich!

I think it’s clear that the Fed/Treasury is in the wrong: for one, the problem is not simply “liquidity,” it’s rather that the financial institutions, which had little oversight, were using bad loans as collateral. Some have used that argument to assert that the people who took out subprime mortgages are fundamentally at fault, but this perverted logic ignores the fact that the entire solipsistic speculation started with Wall Street.

Now all of the die-hard free-marketeers are becoming socialists, and so it’s at such a time that socialists should be extremely skeptical: is institutional oversight really the answer? What kind of punishment should be administered? How will a bailout close to $1 trillion affect social benefits and public programs? It seems that, if anything, this period of crisis offers us a chance to rapidly re-politicize politics against the quasi-religious view that capital needs to be “sacrificed” to the totemic Market Deity. As Glenn Greenwald writes:

This was one of the central arguments of David Sirota’s book — Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington: namely, that while cultural wedge issues have divided ordinary American on the Left and Right, there is a growing, angry populism among both factions against the dominant Washington establishment elite that is so transparently running the Federal Government on behalf of the tiny group of corporate elite which funds and owns them. The backlash against the Paulson plan on both the Left and Right is a function of that same anger and resentment.

The Left ought to take advantage of this populist resentment and transform it into a political movement, rather than side with liberals calling for more oversight or modifications of the Republican financial agenda, such as Chris Dodd. How they might go about this, I’m not quite sure.

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Sep 23, 2008

The Pantheon of Capital

Premediation:

So where does the agency of the market to prompt the federal government to hand over nearly $1 trillion to bail out Wall Street come from? This agency, I would argue, in some sense comes from, participates in, the agency of premediation. The tone of this mediation is urgency. We are to be on the alert, to be concerned, and ultimately to be scared. The agents that we should fear are called “the market” or “Wall Street” or “the Dow.” “The market will not be happy if too many limitations are put on this bailout.” “Wall Street is worried that unless the Fed acts, more turbulence lies ahead.” “The Dow is demonstrating its concern about the terms of the bailout.” Not unlike the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods, these powerful creatures need to be feared and respected and pacified. The mediasphere is filled with the priests and votaries of these gods, warning the public of the danger that could come if they are angered or their will is flaunted.

…But the gods of Wall Street are in turmoil and they are still at the present moment more powerful than the collective voices of Main Street. Only when the premediation of Main Street’s agency begins to compete with the premediation of Wall Street’s agency will it be possible to imagine an economic future in which the US government acts to bail out the overwhelming majority of the American public who are threatened by this financial crisis, not the minority of those whose investments and livelihoods depend upon the financial markets.

—Bryan Klausmeyer 6 Comments

Sep 23, 2008

One more Debbie Harry video. In this one’s she’s with Iggy Pop singing Cole Porter.

Here’s Tom Waits from the same album:

And lastly, David Byrne.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Sep 23, 2008

Top Sample Sources

Scoring Rules:

0 points per sound effect sample.
1 point per sample.
3 points per extra song if more than one song from the same group.
5 points per extra group if more than one group.

Note: A song, or group, is not counted if it only uses pure sound effects.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Sep 23, 2008

Youtube is Videodrome

I just wanted to be the first person on the internet to say this:

Youtube is Videodrome.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Sep 23, 2008

Dammit, George Michael!

What he won’t be doing any time soon is a movie version of a certain quirky TV show. He hasn’t heard of any plans for an Arrested Development film.

“I don’t think I would want to see a movie of the series if I was a fan, anyway,” Cera says. “And I don’t really see a need for it if you can get the three seasons on DVD.”

Ohh, COME ON!

Do we really have to put up with a bunch of shitty hipster movies by Michael Cera without the reward of an Arrested Development movie?

A bonus for your sorrow:

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Sep 22, 2008

‘All of a Sudden’

Senator Bernie Sanders:

For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford — that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.

Watch the video interview here. (Via Daring Fireball.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer 3 Comments

Sep 21, 2008

Ethnic Cleansing Stops Iraqi Violence

I have no idea how reputable this is but it seemed worth posting.

“By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left,” geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.

“Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning,” said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Sep 20, 2008

Here is Jobriath, the American record company response to David Bowie. Apparently there was a billboard in Times Square and a massive publicity campaign behind Jobriath but he never took off.

I can see why. The introduction to his performance promises “[a]n unusual and exciting theatrical event” which fails to materialize. He seems to be wearing springs and at one point he does flying leaps around the stage. The voice is also second rate Bowie derivative. This isn’t exactly Width of a Circle.

I would imagine the biggest obstacle to Jobriath’s success is that he got to the patent office second (or 72nd considering glam was already waning when his first release came out). Strangely he shares a given name with actor Bruce Campbell.

—Mark Elliot Cullen

Sep 20, 2008

Is Karen O the new, Overt version of Chrissie Hynde?

—Bryan Klausmeyer 1 Comment

Sep 20, 2008

Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

William Greider in The Nation:

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses—many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What’s not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public—all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called “responsible opinion.” If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics—exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

(Via A Tiny Revolution.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Sep 20, 2008

Bons Mots and Bêtes Noires

Christopher Hitchens reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism in the Times. There are a number of interesting anecdotes in the article, such as the ones about how several prominent French ex-Communists supported Sarkozy against Royal in the most recent French presidential election. But then it kind of fizzles out at the end with a tired, signature diatribe against GOD and FUNDAMENTALISM. (Via Lenin’s Tomb.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Sep 19, 2008

For your considertation:

—Mark Elliot Cullen