BLOWBACK

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking." Voltaire
HUGE SIGH, I WISH...

aloha again,
blackouts, huge thunderstorms and lightning rolling in regular as commuters,
it has been quite a week.
i sit here, berobed, trying to distinguish between the symptoms of carpal tunnel and Lyme disease, either way i am a mess.so far i have not done anything stupid or crazed due to ambien, on the other hand my insomnia does not seem much improved either.but enuff about me..

ROGUE ECONOMICS by Loretta Napoleoni c.2008

saw her on CSPAN bout 18 months ago and she was impressive, her book was written before The Great Meltdown so is somewhat prophetic and very sad in terms of human suffering.the skinny is that for 30 years we have been told BUSINESS IS GOOD & GOVERNMENT IS BAD, she quotes Reagan's I'M HERE FROM THE GOVERNMENT TO HELP YOU.she shows this is all crap by taking a microscope to the failed Russian Economy and the booming Red Chinese.a mistake i seen common among TV pundits is to equate Capitialism with Democracy like Siamese twins WRONG!!!

GOT $$$
Capitalism in Russia gave rise to the oligarchs and the Russian Mafia who filled in the spaces left unregulated during the kleptocratic transfer/looting of the old Soviet Union. not surprisingly the old KGB merely switched hats and bought better suits to stay in control. think of AIG looted by spies & criminals instead of Old Money plutocrats and criminals... its been a couple of months since i read this so i'm trying to do it justice okay? one of my few GOP friends ,whose worldview is even darker than mind (imagine that) swears by how great this book is when not forecasting his own death by 2020.SIGH & CRY..

TIDBITS
she proposes two different ways of doing government/business...
WESTERN
we take an idealized society like Sparta or Athens democracy and we strive to repeat or achieve this,often failing due to impracticality or corrupt society,whatever.

EASTERN
chaos theory, say anything to get thru the moment or day. i was impressed that even not knowing either Japanese or Chinese she got to the kernel of Asian thot processes, of which i am steeped (as i'd like to believe) e.g. "HAI" in Japanese is often mistranslated as YES but it actually means YES,I AM LISTENING -POLITEY. she even refers to a man who wrote a book about his failures trying to do biz in China over ten years. BRILLIANT!
she even considers the shift of meaning when a westerner says NATION STATE & when an easterner hears MARKET STATE. China is NOT a NATION STATE it is a timeless insular arrogant culture with a looong memory of its colonial abuse and forced humiliating opium addiction.

"The Fascist State organizes the nation,but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential: the deciding power in this question cannot be individual, but the state alone."
thus Mussolini defined his Fascist State but this could've been said by Mao or Stalin.

Napoleoni posits that the state is the coffer of power & politics even as it manipulates the "free market" to encourage commerce. she says the only way the state has to respond to irrational cries for liberty is violence-Iran,China,Tibet,the Taliban,Freedom Zones anything undercutting is monolithic authority.
and like a speeding train hitting the brakes on a dangerous curve or pre derailment, even when the Wall Street Economy returns it takes 3 to 5 years for the Main Street Economy to thaw, so the lumpen teabag stoked displeasure of being outsourced and downsized will continue, just as i predicted before reading this marvelous & often depressing book.she speaks at length about market economics and white slavery...

speaking of slavery, once every seven minutes STILL a house is foreclosed on.
thanx Capt.Compromise and what happened to DON'T ASK DON'T TELL?
same old same old....HUGE SIGH HERE.

ssdd
namaste y'all
semper grumpy
mega