Some may have noticed the tag I applied to the economics posts lately. I labeled those as “econopocalyshit” and thought myself very clever. Looks like a bunch of other people have been equally or even more creative. Below is a list by Bruce Sterling culled from Twitter, I think. Enjoy:
Meltdown, Credit Crunch, Great Recession, Econolypse, Depression II, D2, Compression, Subprimicide, Economic Debacle, Great Restructuring, the Bailout, TEOTWAWKI “The End of the World As We Know It,” The Long Emergency, The New Dark Ages, The New Austerity, the Inflection, The Great Disruption, Housing Crisis, Market FAIL, The Great Re-Skilling, Global Economic Restructuring, Tsunami, the Enronicom, The Great Ponzi, the Great Fake, Bush’s Legacy, Great Reset, Global Reboot, Unreal Estate, Wall Street Blues, Uncapitalism, Capitalism Eats Itself, the Deep Economic Wrinkle, Collapsonomics, Econocataclysm, Uneconomy, The Opportunity, Economy 3.0, The Crisis, The Credit-Shrink, the Lost Decade, the Economic Slump, the Black Swan, The Great Mistake, Communism 2.0, Moneyquake, Yuppie Famine, vapor margin-call, Ponziconomy, dinosaur culling, Crashmob, World Wide WTF, Revaluation, Reevaluation, Runoffonomy, Crisisonomy, Sythonomy, Economy 101, Econopocalypse, Force Restart, the Crater, Unconomy, Reconomy, Decredit, Crudit, Crunkit, Devaluation, De-globalization, the Asset Bubble, the Long Doom…
Nach dem alten Spruch über das Essen scheint unser Dasein auch davon beeinflusst, was wir trinken. Zumindest längerfristig, wie’s scheint. Soweit die neusten Erkenntnisse über Stoffe, die aus PET-Flaschen in deren Inhalt übergehen und uns… sagen wir mal, unserer weiblichen Seite etwas näher bringen.
Die Biologen stellten dabei in Mineralwasser aus Plastikflaschen eine deutlich erhöhte Konzentration an hormonähnlichen Substanzen fest. In manchen Proben fanden sich bis zu 75 Nanogramm pro Liter an östrogenähnlichen Substanzen. Dies sind höhere Werte als in manchem Abwasser, das unter anderem durch die Antibabypille als zum Teil stark belastet gilt. Insgesamt war das Wasser aus PET-Flaschen etwa doppelt so hoch östrogenbelastet wie jenes aus Glasflaschen.
Ein Grund mehr für Männer, auf die Beibehaltung der Bierflasche aus Glas zu bestehen…
Just like the so-called Jim Crow laws managed to take away voting rights from newly-liberated blacks in America and thus to practically revert the abolition of slavery for another 100 years, much the same mechanism is used again (and has been used in the last few US presidential elections) to make some of those unwelcome Democrat voters go away on paper.
Quote of the season:
“If Democrats are to win the 2008 election, they must not simply beat McCain at the polls – they must beat him by a margin that exceeds the level of GOP vote tampering.”
Read more about it on Greg Palast’s wonderful website. He’s one of those people who’ve been saying it for years now. It’s no miracle that Bush was elected and re-elected. They simply removed Democratic voters from the voter lists, so they wouldn’t count. Revoked registration, no vote, no say. That and delivering faulty voting computers to strategically interesting states…
But so far I don’t see people up in arms about this ridiculous travesty that is the Bush administration and what may very well be the McSame administration.
“Since Batman is getting rave reviews its time to contextualise his heritage with modern right wing politics.” Something like this must have been the motivation for what follows below.
Remember Exxon Valdez? Hundreds of thousands of dead sea animals, over 2000 km of contaminated coastline round the Alaskan Prince William Sound, native Alaskan communities, the original owners of the very Prince William Sound, stripped of their livelihoods and laughed into their faces — an eco system that still today, 19 years afterwards, is affected.
But worst of it all: the biggest oil slick disaster in American history was not an “accident”. It was not a tragic mishap that could’ve happened to anyone. The reef the tanker ran aground on did not move there over night. And Exxon is not even doing the least it could do: pay the $5 billion in punitive damages, as ordered by the court back in 1994.
Greg Palast reports that the Supreme Court has just recently slashed Exxon’s liability down to a meagre and outright ridonculous half a billion. That’s a 90% discount off the original price. The actual verdict of 1994 had in the meantime already been lowered to $2.5 bn, but even that was too high a price to pay for the recklessly neglectful and lying-ass oil giant.
In San Diego, I met with Exxon’s US production chief, Otto Harrison, who said, “Admit it; the oil spill’s the best thing to happen” to the Natives.
His company offered the Natives pennies on the dollar. The oil men added a cruel threat: take it or leave it and wait twenty years to get even the pennies. Exxon is immortal – but Natives die.
[…]
In today’s ruling, Supreme Court Justice David Souter wrote that Exxon’s recklessness was ”profitless” – so the company shouldn’t have to pay punitive damages. Profitless, Mr. Souter? Exxon and its oil shipping partners saved billions – BILLIONS – by operating for sixteen years without the oil spill safety equipment they promised, in writing, under oath and by contract. (emphasis mine)
The official story is, “Drunken Skipper Hits Reef.” But don’t believe it, Mr. Souter. Alaska’s Native lands and coastline were destroyed by a systematic fraud motivated by profit-crazed penny-pinching.
[…]
It begins in 1969 when big shots from Humble Oil and ARCO (now known as Exxon and British Petroleum) met with the Chugach Natives, owners of the most valuable parcel of land on the planet: Valdez Port, the only conceivable terminus for a pipeline that would handle a trillion dollars in crude oil.
These Alaskan natives ultimately agreed to sell the Exxon consortium this astronomically valuable patch of land — for a single dollar. (emphasis is mine)
[…]
In a secret meeting in April 1988, Alyeska Vice-President T.L. Polasek confidentially warned the oil group executives that, because Alyeska had never purchased promised safety equipment, it was simply “not possible” to contain an oil spill past the Valdez Narrows — exactly where the Exxon Valdez ran aground 10 months later.
Now let’s compare Exxon’s own statement, as found on their “Our History” section of the Exxon website.
“On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince Williams Sound in Alaska. The Valdez oil spill was a tragic accident that ExxonMobil deeply regrets. The company took immediate responsibility for the spill, cleaned it up and voluntarily compensated those who claimed direct damages.”
So in Exxon’s newspeak, “voluntary compensation” means breadcrumbs for the desperate, and now, after fighting tooth and claws, a tenth of what they were supposed to pay?? Really? They must be very proud of themselves.
Honestly, I can wholeheartedly understand this guy:
A travesty of unbelievable cheek and hypocrisy. And all this in view of the US (and other nations) pondering the prospects of drilling into their continental shelfs for more gas, more money and more fuel-guzzling trucks to go pick up a hot dog down on the corner. And if something goes wrong… hey, at least we know we’re safe and that those who muffed up will be subject to justice regardless of whose politician’s leg they hump.
.
Listen to Shannyn Moore of KUDO 1080AM and Greg Palast on the Exxon Valdez Verdict
So, I went down to the Ticketcorner booth in Basel in order to get tickets for Dinosaur Jr.. Having looked up the price on the web before, I was somewhat taken aback by the bill. Ticketcorner’s webpage put the the price at 39,80 CHF each. The bill read 39,80 per ticket plus 1,60 Systemgebühr, plus 4,30 Vorverkaufsgebühr each!!!!
Ex-you-fuckin’-cuse me…That’s an increase of 5,90 per ticket. They got to be off their fucking rocker. Adding insult to injury, the 4,30 are a fee for buying the ticket early. I might be wrong here, but wasn’t the entire idea of buying early to get it cheaper. A bit off the price as a reward that people at the club would have an inkling as to how many people were going to show up.
Unfortunately, I had already paid by the time I realized I had been robbed (bought some other stuff too, long story). Ticketcorner is clearly profiteering of their quasimonopoly, giving it to the consumer up the rearend – bastards.
Now there are two things one can do about this. One: don’t buy Ticketcorner if you don’t have to. Starticket is a pretty good alternative for the nonexclusive stuff. Dinosaur incidentely is only 37 per ticket, and that’s it, if you do print at home.
The other thing one can do is point one’s fellow human beings toward the basic truths behind the Ticketcorner business. But please don’t believe me, believe DRS1. On Monday at 8:18 “Kostenpflichtige Info-Nummern: Zahlen fürs nichts!”
Bei den kostenpflichtigen Info-Nummern von Ticketcorner und SBB läuft der Gebührenzähler bereits dann, wenn der Kunde in der Warteschlaufe auf das Beratungsgespräch wartet. Sowohl Ticketcorner wie auch die SBB haben zwar schon vor Jahren in Aussicht gestellt, dieses Kundenärgernis zu beheben – passiert ist aber nichts.
Since my esteemed collegue kind of set the theme for the week, I´ll try to sing along. If you follow the link below you will find a timeline delineating the activities of the Junior Bush within the realm of civil liberties. With very little doubt these all are nadshots too…
Presidential directive delays indefinitely the scheduled release of presidential documents (authorized by the Presidential Records Act of 1978) pertaining to the Reagan-Bush administration. Link
Bush and Cheney begin process of radically broadening scope of documents and information which can be deemed classified. Link
February
The National Security Agency (NSA) sets up Project Groundbreaker, a domestic call monitoring program infrastructure. Link
Spring
Bush administration order authorizes NSA monitoring of domestic phone and internet traffic. Link
Was auch immer man so sagt, wenn man soeben einen neuen Blog eröffnet hat, ich werd’s uns vorerst mal ersparen. Alles weitere, Gedanken zum Namen, edle Absichten zur Häufigkeit der Postings, ein anständiges Design und sonstiges kommt dann mal später, sobald meine Mitschreiberlinge mit an Bord sind.
Um dem ersten Posting aber gleich den nötigen Schwung zu verleihen, vielleicht ein erster Link zu einem passenden Blog
Was die “nads” sind, könnt ihr euch ja ausmalen, spätestens, wenn ihr die Bilder gesehen habt. Der Blog widmet sich ausschliesslich Comic-Darstellungen von Kicks genau dort rein, wo’s richtig wehtut. Schliesslich braucht ja jeder ein Hobby. Und besser als an der Strassenecke Schnaps zu trinken ist es allemal… (das Bloggen, nicht das Nüssetreten…)
Schreibkrampf 