The UK’s pro-Israel lobby in context.

[slimmouse]

How wonderful it is that in 25 years of wrting books, someone has taken the time to cherry pick about 4 pages of contentious quotes to "highlight" the dangers of David Icke to world peace. Usually from around 10 years ago ( I see this was 2000, so in this case 14 years ago)

Thank heavens our Corporately owned politicians and their Corportately controlled media are keeping us all up to speed with the real truth.

And thank heavens I guess theres people like AD, to offer a balanced critique !

[American Dream]

Slim- speaking of cherrypicking, in the first post you made then retroactively erased yesterday, you presented the Balfour Declaration as proof of Rothschild/Jewish power/control but what about this:

6. Lord Shaftesbury and Restorationism

Zionism would probably have remained simply a religious ideal were it not for the intervention of a handful of influential aristocratic British politicians who came to share the theological convictions of Darby and his colleagues and translated them into political reality. One in particular, Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885) became convinced that the restoration of the Jews to Palestine was not only predicted in the Bible,[9] but also coincided with the strategic interests of British foreign policy.[10] Others who shared this perspective, in varying degrees and for different reasons, included Lord Palmerston, David Lloyd George and Lord Balfour. Ironically, this conviction was precipitated by the actions of Napoleon, in the spring of 1799. The European Powers became increasingly preoccupied with the ‘Eastern Question’. Britain and Prussia sided with the Sultan of Turkey against Napoleon and his vassal, Mehemet Ali. The necessity of preventing French control had led not only to the battles of the Nile and Acre, but also to a British military expedition in Palestine. With the defeat of Napoleon, Britain’s main concern was how to restrain Russia. The race was on to control Palestine.

...Balfour was a Christian Zionist: Speaking of "in context."

8. The Balfour Declaration and Promise of Jewish Homeland

Probably the most significant British politician of all, however, was Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), who pioneered the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Like Lloyd George, Balfour had been brought up in an evangelical home and was sympathetic to Zionism because of the influence of dispensational teaching.[26] He regarded history as ‘an instrument for carrying out a Divine purpose.’[27] From 1905 Chaim Weizmann, then a professor of chemistry at Manchester University, began to meet regularly with Balfour to discuss the implementation of that goal. At Balfour’s invitation, in July 1917, the Zionist Organisation offered a suggested draft to Balfour:

‘1. His Majesty’s Government accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people.
2. His Majesty’s Government will use its best endeavours to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss the necessary methods and means with the Zionist Organization.’[28]

Balfour amended this to emphasize the prerogative of the British government. On the 2nd November 1917, Lord Balfour made public the final draft of the letter written to Lord Rothschild on the 31st October which became known as the Balfour Declaration:

‘His Majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of that object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish Communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’[29]

Balfour was in fact already committed to the Zionist programme out of theological conviction and had no intention of consulting with the indigenous Arab population. In a letter to Lord Curzon, written in 1919, Balfour insisted somewhat cynically:

‘For in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country …the Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land … I do not think that Zionism will hurt the Arabs … in short, so far as Palestine is concerned, the Powers have made no statement of fact which is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.’[30]

Both quotes from here,

[slimmouse]

And when has anyone ever question the complicity of Empire, along with the few at the top of that continuous chain, working all of this out together?

Certainly not me.

[American Dream]

And when has anyone ever question the complicity of Empire, along with the few at the top of that continuous chain, working all of this out together?

Certainly not me.

What kind of response is that in regards to your thesis of Jewish/Rothschild control of world affairs and the Balfour Declaration as proof positive?

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

[slimmouse]

Wait right there, Mr "not slippery"

who's thesis are you talking about there.

Cos it aint fukn mine?

And then you ask me if I Am sure what Im talking about ?

[American Dream]

Wait right there, Mr "not slippery"

who's thesis are you talking about there.

Cos it aint fukn mine?

And then you ask me if I Am sure what Im talking about ?

Are you saying that you didn't make a post suggesting that Baron Walter Rotschild's role as recipient of the Balfour Declaration was proof of your ideas about a world Jew- er- Zionist/Bankster/Illuminati conspiracy?

Are you sure you know what you're talking about?

[slimmouse]

Oh Im sorry, I thought you were talking about Icke.

What Im actually suggesting is that the Rothschilds are key members of the Global elite. Now you can please yourself if you accept that, based upon Searchers evidence that they are, or MIBs "proof" that they arent.

Meanwhile Im pretty certatin what Im talking about when it comes to your personal miserable double standards of evidence. Cos Ive seen it over and over for the last 6 or so years.

Do you get that ?

[seemslikeadream]

Is Russel Brand an anti-semite or not ...that's all I want to know

[American Dream]

Oh Im sorry, I thought you were talking about Icke.

What Im actually suggesting is that the Rothschilds are key members of the Global elite. Now you can please yourself if you accept that, based upon Searchers evidence that they are, or MIBs "proof" that they arent.

Meanwhile Im pretty certatin what Im talking about when it comes to your personal miserable double standards of evidence. Cos Ive seen it over and over for the last 6 or so years.

Do you get that ?

I'm going to be copying all your posts from now on, as you're such a slippery eel and I clearly can't trust you to leave your comments up after I make a response that you're, well uncomfortable with. So are you therefore retracting your claims about Balfour and Rothschild as somehow proving that They rule the world? You know- the Satanic, Blood-Sucking, Reptoid, Elders of Zion and Masters of Banking?

Here is my response to that post which you sneakily removed:


The Balfour Declaration is the smoking gun- proof positive that They rule the world- You know, Them- it's all Them. It's not the Jews- oh most are Jews and Jews do run it, but they're not really Jews and not all Jews know that they're being used. Some of my best friends are Jews, I'm not bigoted or anything- I'm just against the bad Jews who run Everything!- They are vermin, the cause of all our problems. But anyway, it's all about Love...

And, evidence?, You've got to have to have faith! All is lost without faith! Besides, there's lots of books on this! People have been saying this for a long time! The Icke site has a huge board!

Don't be a square. Never mind about evidence...

[seemslikeadream]

DECEMBER 17, 2013

The Sycophantic Palestinian Solidarity Movement
The Scourging of Roger Waters
by GILAD ATZMON
In the Palestinian Solidarity Movement we really love celebrities – those famous, rather special people who write great books, play musical instruments (drums included) or even just think great thoughts. We like those people to stand up for Palestine and denounce ‘Zionism’, ‘Israeli Colonialism’ and ‘Apartheid.’ We love them – as long as they don’t say what they really think.

Here’s the problem. Celebrities are often famous and successful because they’re clever and independent. Unlike our progressive, dysfunctional activists, who in most cases lives on income support and repeat our ‘party line’, the celebrity is a confident, career-oriented, self-sufficient subject and, because of their capacity to make autonomous decisions, he or she is assertive and thriving . In short, the activist and the celebrity are made of very different stuff – so a collision is inevitable.

Time after time it happens to us in the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. We manage to pull in a great human being, we tell them what to say and they comply. For a while, they call to boycott Israel and, like parrots, they repeat our slogans. But then, against all odds, these damn, self-centred stars start to speak their minds.

Roger Waters is obviously such a celebrity. For the last two years we were so proud of our Pink Floyd comrade rallying for Palestine. For a while, he repeated our slogans, denouncing colonialism and Israeli Apartheid. But then, the inevitable happened. For no obvious reason he told the truth. In an interview on CounterPunch he equated Israel with Nazi Germany and, speaking about Jewish power, he even mentioned the ‘J word’.

Within hours, all hell broke loose. Every Jewish media outlet, including The Guardian unleashed its venom in order to bring Roger to his knees. Rabbis, Holocaust memory merchants and even artists were recruited to join the choir. But guess what? Not one single Palestinian activist stood up for Waters. Neither Electronic Intifada nor Jewish progressive Mondoweiss supported the legendary bassist. Their silence was deafening. The progressive, Cohen Blumenthal also didn’t show any support for the truth teller. Is this a coincidence?

Our sycophantic Solidarity Movement dropped Roger Waters like a stone as we’ve done so many times before because, in our little progressive ghetto, we love celebrities – but not when speak their minds or tell the truth.

WEEKEND EDITION DECEMBER 6-8, 2013

On Music, the Political Role of Artists and His Activism for Justice Around the World, Including in Palestine.
An Interview with Roger Waters
by FRANK BARAT
Frank Barat: When did you make the decision to make the Wall tour (that ended in Paris in September 2013) so political ? And why did you dedicate the final concert to Jean-Charles De Menezes ?

Roger Waters: The first show was October 14th 2010. We started working on content of show with Sean Evans in 2009. I had already decided to make it much broader politically than it had been in 1979/80. It could not be just about this whinny little guy who didn’t like his teachers. It had to be more universal. That’s why ‘fallen loved ones’ came into it (the shows are showing pictures of people that died during wars) trying to universalise the sense of grief and loss that we all feel towards family members killed in conflict. Whatever the wars or the circumstances, they (in the non western world), feel has much lost as we do. Wars become an important symbol because of that separation between ‘us and them,’ which is fundamental to all conflicts. Regarding Jean-Charles, we used to do Brick II with three solos at the end and I decided that three solos was too much, it was boring me. So sitting in a hotel room, one night, I was thinking about what I could do instead of that. Somebody had recently sent me a photograph of Jean-Charles De Menezes to go on the wall. So he was in my mind and I thought that I should sing his story. I wrote that song, taught it to the band, and that’s what we did.

FB: A lot of artist would say that mixing arts and politics is wrong. That their goal is only to entertain. What would you say to those people?

RW: Well it’s funny you should say that because I just finished yesterday the text of a new piece which will be a new album of mine. It’s about a grandfather in Northern Ireland going on a quest with his grandchild to find the answer to the question: “Why are they killing the children?”, because the child is really worried about it. Right at the very end of it, I decided to add something more. In the song, the child tells his grandpa: “Is that it?” and the grandpa replies “No, we cannot leave on that note, give me another note”. A new song starts and the grandpa makes a speech. He says: “We live on a tiny dot in a middle of a lot of fucking nothing. Now, if you’re not interested in any of this, if you’re one of those “Roger I love Pink Floyd but I hate your fucking politics”, if you believe artists should be mute, emasculated, nodding dogs dangling aimlessly over the dashboard of life, you might be well advised to fuck off to the bar now, because, time keeps slipping away.” That’s my answer to your question.

FB: When will album be out?

RW: I’ve got no idea. I’m working away furiously on lots of old projects. I’m going to give a first listen to this to Sean Evans. He’s coming to my house tomorrow to listen to it. I’ve made a demo which is one hour and six minutes long. It’s pretty heavy I confess, but there is also some humor in it, I hope, but it’s extremely radical and it poses very important questions. Look, if I’m the only one doing it, I am entirely content. I mean, I’m not, I wish there were more people writing about politics and our real situation. Even from what could be considered extreme points of view. It’s very important that Goya did what he did, same for Picasso and Guernica and all those anti-war novels that came out during and after the Vietnam war.

rogerWaters

FB: You’re talking about yourself being one of the only one, in your position, taking radical political positions. When it comes to Palestine, you are very open about your support for a cultural boycott of Israel. People opposing this tactic say that culture should not be boycotted. What would you answer to that?

RW: I would say that I understand their opinion. Everybody should have one. But I can’t agree with them, I think that they are entirely wrong. The situation in Israel/ Palestine, with the occupation, the ethnic cleansing and the systematic racist apartheid Israeli regime is un acceptable. So for an artist to go and play in a country that occupies other people’s land and oppresses them the way Israel does, is plain wrong. They should say no. I would not have played for the Vichy government in occupied France in the Second World War, I would not have played in Berlin either during this time. Many people did, back in the day. There were many people that pretended that the oppression of the Jews was not going on. From 1933 until 1946. So this is not a new scenario. Except that this time it’s the Palestinian People being murdered. It’s the duty of every thinking human being to ask: “What can I do?”. Anybody who looks at the situation will see that if you choose not to take up arms to fight your oppressor, the non violent route, and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (B.D.S) movement, which started in Palestine with 100% support from Palestinian civil society in 2004-2005, a movement that has now been joined by many people around the world, the global civil society, is a legitimate form of resistance to this brutal and oppressive regime. I have nearly finished Max Blumenthal’s book “Goliath: Life and Loathing in greater Israel”. It’s a chilling read. It’s extremely well written in my view. He is a very good journalist and takes great pains to make sure that what he writes is correct. He also gives a voice to the other side. The voice, for instance, of the right wing rabbinate, which is so bizarre and hard to hear that you can hardly believe that it’s real. They believe some very weird stuff you know, they believe that everybody that is not a Jew is only on earth to serve them and they believe that the Indigenous people of the region that they kicked off the land in 1948 and have continued to kick off the land ever since are sub-human. The parallels with what went on in the 30’s in Germany are so crushingly obvious that it doesn’t surprise me that the movement that both you and I are involved in is growing every day. The Russell Tribunal on Palestine was trying to shed light on this when we met, I only took part in two sessions, you took part in many more. It is an extremely obvious and fundamental problem of human rights which every thinking human being should apply himself to.

FB: The scary thing is that the extreme Rabbinate you were talking about with the extreme right wing views about the Palestinians and the non-Jews are having a more and more prominent place in terms of the Israeli society, regime and power structure and that is very scary.

I wanted to follow up on the Cultural Boycott and about the fact that you are one of the only ones who take such a stand. You could, as many others do, I guess enjoy the benefits of your success and lead a quiet, at least politically, non-controversial life. Why do you do it but more importantly why do you think not more people are doing it? Why a lot of artists who often take position against wars, why don’t they touch Palestine?

RW: Well, where I live, in the USA, I think, A: they are frightened and B: I think the propaganda machine that starts in Israeli schools and that continues through all the Netanyahu’s bluster is poured all over the United States, not just Fox but also CNN and in fact in all the mainstream media. It’s like a huge bucket of crap that they are pouring into the mouth of a gullible public in my view, when they say “we are afraid of Iran, it is going to get nuclear weapons…”. It’s a diversionary tactic. The lie that they have told for the last 20 years is “Oh, we want to make peace”, you know and they talk about Clinton and Arafat and Barak being in Camp David and that they came very close to agreeing, and the story that they sold was “Oh Arafat fucked it all up”. Well, no, he did not. This is not the story. The fact of the matter is no Israeli government has been serious about creating a Palestinian state since 1948. They’ve always had the Ben Gurion agenda of kicking all the Arabs out of the country and becoming greater Israel. They tell a lie as part of their propaganda machinery whilst doing the other thing but they have been doing it so obviously in the last 10 years . For instance, even after when Obama went to Cairo and made that speech about Arabs and the Israelis, everybody was like “Oh, this is a step in a new direction at least”. But as soon as he visited Israel, they said. “Oh by the way, we are building another 1200 settlements”. Exactly the same when Kerry went last year saying, “Oh I am going to try to get the sides together and talk peace”. Netanhayu said “Fuck you. We are going to build another 1500 settlements and we a going to build them in E1, this is our plan.” This is so transparent that you’d have to have an IQ above room temperature not to understand what is going on. It is just dopey.

You know I read some piece the other day where it said “apparently only the Secretary State of the United States, believes that these current peace talks are real, no one else in the world does”.

It is a very complicated situation which is why you and I and all the other people in the world who care about their brothers and sisters and not just about the people of our own faith, our own colour, our own race or our own whatever, have to stand in solidarity shoulder to shoulder. This has been a very hard sell particularly where I live in the United States of America. The Jewish lobby is extraordinary powerful here and particularly in the industry that I work in, the music industry and in rock’n roll as they say. I promise you, naming no names, I’ve spoken to people who are terrified that if they stand shoulder to shoulder with me they are going to get fucked. They have said to me “aren’t you worried for your life?” and I go “No, I’m not”. A few years ago, I was touring and 9/11 happened in the middle of the tour and 2 or 3 people in my band who happened to be United States citizens wouldn’t come on the next leg of the tour. I said “ why not? Don’t you like the music anymore?” and they replied “no, we love the music but we are Americans and it’s too dangerous for us to travel abroad, they are trying to kill us” and I thought “Wow!”.

FB: Yes, the brainwashing works!

RW: Obviously it does, that is why I am happy to be doing this interview with you because it is super important that we make as much noise as possible. I’m so glad that this right wing newspaper in Israel, Yedioth Ahronoth, printed my interview with Alon Hadar. At least they printed it. Although they changed the context and made it sound different that what is actually was but at least they printed something. You know, I would expect to be completely suppressed and ignored.

You know that Shuki Weiss( preeminent Israeli promotor) was offering me a hundred thousand people at hundred dollars a ticket a few months ago to come and play in Tel Aviv! “Hang on, that’s 10 million dollars”, how could they offer it to me?! And I thought Shuki are you fucking deaf or just dumb?! I am part of the BDS movement, I’m not going anywhere in Israel, for any money, all I would be doing would be legitimizing the policies of the government.

I have a confession to make to you. I did actually write to Cindy Lauper a couple of weeks ago. I did not make the letter public but I wrote her a letter because I know her a bit, she worked with me on the Wall in Berlin which is why I found it super difficult to understand that she is doing a gig in Tel Aviv on January the 4th. apparently, quite extraordinary, reprehensible in my view, but I don’t know her personal story and people have to make up their own mind about these things. One can’t get to personal about it.

FB: For sure but you can help them, I guess by what you are doing, by writing to them. You can open their eyes because that’s what they need I think.

RW: Yes but if their eyes were going to be opened they would need to either visit the Holy land, visit the West Bank or Gaza or even visit Israel or any single checkpoint anywhere and see what it’s like. All they would need to do is visiting or, read, read a book! Check out the history. Read Max Blumenthal’s book. Then say “Oh I know what I am going to do, I am going to play a gig in Tel Aviv”. That would be a good plan! (sarcastic tone).

[American Dream]

What's conflation?

[American Dream]

Just as context is sorely needed in questions regarding Balfour and Rothschild, context is essential in examining ideas about Finance Capital and "Banksters":

http://theexpropriationist.org/2013/12/ ... -your-bed/

Capital Is Not the Monster Beneath Your Bed

It’s hard to believe that after almost two centuries of analysis, there is still more to learn about capitalism. As Murray Bookchin so aptly described, much of this is solely reserved for academics, with little worth as praxis. Karen Ho’s “Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street” is different though. It provides some unique insight into the very heart of Capitalism. The book is an ethnography of the Wall Street firms which have dominated the global economy and changed the face of global capitalism over the past few decades. I won’t summarize the ethnography in its entirety (no ethnography can be summarized; they’re one of those things you must read in their entirety) but there are some important points that elucidate our world, our position in contrast to capital, and our tactics.

An important, but not new, lesson from “Liquidated” is that capitalism can be subdivided into financial capital and productive capital. Financial capital is what we’re seeing today. This is an extremely important position because the two forms of capital are, in some ways, antagonistic to one another. Productive capital is what you or I think of most often when we think of the word capital – it is tangible capital. It’s processing plants, fisheries, farms, factories, etc. Financial capital on the other hand is represented by Wall Street, by firms which make money without making tangible goods.

Karen Ho describes productive capital (post War) as a “social institution”. While it certainly stood opposite to labor, it understood labor as a resource to be used. This is where the idea of job creators comes from. If a corporation expands, it creates new jobs. It’s easy to see how Karen Ho takes this a step further and argues that production capital is a social institution. In Ho’s argument, productive capital sees itself as looking out for the shareholder in the long term. This means offering competitive, superior products; investing in the community and society around it; offering employment to the local community; and resisting the leveraged buy outs and divestitures that represent financial capital’s takeover attempts. This is not to say that productive capital didn’t partake in financial schemes but that by and large, shareholders were seen not as temporary investors, but backers to the company. A part of this caricature of productive capital is that it has brick and mortar locations, be they factories or stores or whatnot they are tied to a geographic location. Relationships are continuously formed and reinforced with employees and customers; companies interact regularly with the same people around them. In this sense, even though productive capital stands in direct contrast to labor, it is a member of a community. How destructive or helpful a figure it was is a question of history. Regardless, this characteristic means that those who oppose productive capital have a target. Bosses can be confronted, factories can be occupied, goods can be boycotted, and lines can be picketed.

In Ho’s understanding, the most important characteristic of productive capital is this: companies were interested in long term profit and held a long term view. For example, once it became evident that the exploitation of the 19th and early 20th century were no longer possible, productive capital supposedly buckled down and came to the table, producing the “glory” of the post War years. This is the story we’re commonly told and shows up somewhat in “Liquidated”. Let’s not forget that productive capital is also represented by the Pinkerton Agency. I’m more inclined to side with Murray Bookchin and believe that the state forced minor concessions from capital in order to curtail the threat of Soviet influence over the unions. But, all in all, I think that Ho’s description of productive capital is an important one. It highlights the economic long term view, the geographic location, and the community. Regardless, for Ho, this focus on long term profit represents a certain historical America, one with an extra dash of apple pie and summer baseball.

Now, financial capital is very different characteristically than productive capital. Financial capital is geographically displaced. It has no ties to one community or another. Offices in New York City deal with corporations all over the country and even internationally. There are no brick and mortar locations meaning there are no interactions with any one community. The clients of JPMorgan Chase and Lehman Brothers are CEOs, dispersed across the world. The firm managers themselves live in Connecticut. The employees are from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens. Even the offices themselves are no longer restricted to geographic Wall Street or even Manhattan. Occupy Wall Street may have “occupied Wall Street (well, nearby anyways)” but it didn’t disrupt very much. Even if they’d stormed Lehman Brothers (not actually on Wall Street) they’d have done little to disrupt the bank’s business. Ironic for the anarchists, financial capital is dispersed. It is dispersed because its products are immaterial.

Whereas productive capital managers regularly saw and were forced to interact with their employees, decision makers at financial firms regularly interact only with CEOS and their own corporate circle. You can see how in the case of the former, a manager of a store could empathize with or be the target of employees. They are from the same town perhaps or maybe even grew up together. They have a relationship that is based upon daily interaction and encountering each other’s’ way of life. I would say those relationships exist in financial capital too. Decision makers at financial firms cultivate relationships with CEOs; they golf together, rack up $1,000 dollar meals at NYC restaurants, and meet at extravagant international business outings and conferences. Where the relationships of productive capital may inclusive, forcing cross class interaction, financial capital relationships are the opposite. They are exclusive and potentially have led to the culture of wealth we see today. With neoliberalism, CEOs make hundreds or thousands times the average worker and are no longer confronted with the reality of what life is for most people. They don’t take public transportation, their children don’t go to public schools, and their idea of a business dinner may be taking a jet plane to London. Ho describes how seniors at the firms would Jet to Iceland for a game of golf. That is their day to day life and that is their reality.

In contract to productive capital, which saw itself as invested in long term gains (maintaining customer relationships, increasing product quality, even occasionally appeasing labor), financial capital has a different goal. Its goal is not necessarily to profit over the long haul but to increase stock prices and shareholder value. Leveraged buy outs are a perfect example of this: a few investors buy a company for a fraction of its price, using the company’s revenue as collateral and backing their offering price with leveraged bonds (the infamous so called junk bonds). The investors then sit on the company for a few years, laying off employees and cutting product quality to increase revenue to expenditure and pay off their leveraged debt, increasing their own equity percentage. Three or so years down the line, the company is sold off to the public once again for a massive profit. This profit never gets reinvested in the company, much less the local community, and does nothing to “create jobs”. Instead, it lines the investors’ pockets.

Productive capital infamously has attempted to resist these buy outs, often having to make layoffs of their own to raise stock value. But Wall Street, when it offers shareholders inflated stock prices, claims it is doing what productive capital couldn’t – increasing the stock price. Ho mentions that this is consciously done by Wall Street firms. They aimed to eliminate the managerial work force and make managers invested in shareholder value. In the Wall Street mindset, people who work normal jobs (even the secretaries, janitors, mailmen, etc. at the Wall Street firms themselves) lack the “smartness” (a term Ho demonstrates is heavily used in a particular way by Wall Street) and work ethic that financial managers possess. The financialization of the American economy was a part of this. Many leveraged buy outs were conducted by groups made up of one or two corporate CEOs and several outside investors. Thus, the manager was no longer worried about his or her own job or even salary but about shareholder value (where his wealth was really stored). Managers no longer managed but used corporations as a tool to increase shareholder value. They supposedly returned corporations themselves to the market. Thus, a company no longer sells a product. The product is secondary to corporate value – it is nothing more than a means to pay down debt. Now, the company itself is the product. Ho describes how some CEOs have directly addressed the differing goals of financial and productive capital, warning their stock holders and employees of incumbent layoffs, a fall in product quality, and the misuse of the corporation once it is bought out by financial firms. In the eyes of financial capital, Traditional methods of increasing shareholder value, through profit and outcompeting rival firms, is far too slow and finicky a method. It’s susceptible to seasonal variations, people’s changing desires, and other factors in a corporation’s environment. One might say that traditional profit-seeking is unacceptably susceptible to the very market that Wall Street claims to worship. Financial America has found a way to avoid this unruly and uncooperative market.

Ho goes much more deeply into Wall Street’s logic and it makes for an interesting story. Much of the book discusses how Wall Street employees consider productive labor as wasteful and lazy, even self-serving. Managers were inexcusably worried about their own wages and the bottom line, leading to self-serving policies and bureaucratic corporations. Wall Street pats itself on the back for returning these businesses to the so-called-market where corporations are solely beholden to the shareholders. This is a short term view that directly contrasts with productive capital’s long term view. Wall Street is about nothing more than making investors more money. The byproduct of capitalism that is often used as its defense, of producing goods, researching and developing new technologies, and increasing the standard of living, stands in direct contrast to the goals of financial capital. The most regular recommendations made by financial firms on behalf of their corporate clients is downsizing (“cutting the fat” is the term Wall Street employees use). This causes the company’s employees to have to do more work often for less pay so that the corporation appears more efficient and stock prices go up. It’s interesting to note that Wall Street even employs the technique internally, and the financial firms themselves are often downsized like the rest of America. The difference being though, on Wall Street it is really just a reshuffling and more of a rite of passage for young analysts to be fired then immediately rehired by another firm rather than fall behind on medical bills or a mortgage and lose their home.

“Liquidated” is a really interesting book and I can’t recommend it enough. It takes an ethnographic look at what is most usually treated economically or historically. It delves right into the heart of the capitalist forces that built the world around us. It does all of this while looking at what drives these agents of capital psychologically and culturally. “Liquidated” tells a story that isn’t often told, it’s an internal but critical look at the powerful, not just lambasting from outside their walls. Overall, I think the book tells us a few important things. First (1), Capitalism is not an internally cohesive system. It has its own politics and competing blocs and factions. Occupy Wall Street is a great example of this. The people who would, and historically did, fervently support productive capital were working with anarchists, communists, and socialists because financial capitalism had slimmed down their piece of the pie. This partly explains the dynamics of the American Tea Party as well. Off course, Occupy was no success and in only a few cities was it truly radical in any sense of the word but it is a demonstration of the internal divisions of capital and making use of those internal divisions. Another such example is the American Revolution: American capitalists no longer wished to be financially subservient to and politically dependent on their colonial superiors. In the case of Occupy, the middle class eliminated any radical potential. In the case of the American Revolution, local productive capital organized a flat out coup. Understanding these internal divisions is important to be more active and less reactive as a movement.

Second (2) and perhaps most importantly is this: no economic recovery is in sight. No economic recovery is meant to be in sight. The policies which financialized the global economy were put in place to achieve that end. The policies which lead to the 2008 bubble achieved their goals; they destroyed labor and increased the wealth gap. The bubble was an unintended side effect but it’s important for middle class America to learn that economic policy is put in place for a reason. The post War period is truly over and we will never return to it. Full employment has been replaced by the lean-mean, budget slashing machines that corporations became under the direction of financial firms. David Cameron’s recent call for permanent austerity is the first explicit political acknowledgment I’ve seen of such policy though scholars have been referencing it for at least the past decade (Paul Pierson’s “The New Politics of State Welfare”). Previously, such policy has been branded as temporary, or as “deregulation” or “privatization,” labels which put a pretty veneer over the reduction of social services and people having to work two or three jobs. It is not a matter of putting the right people in office, or protesting enough. Occupy demonstrated the latter and the Supreme Court is making sure of the former with its Citizens United ruling and possibly extending that ruling to state level elections with McCutcheon v. FEC.

You may go “Sure, yah, so what. The state collaborates with capital, what’s new?” and they’re correct to. Nothing is really new. America’s economy has fallen to finance before. But what the above suggests is that in the near future, record numbers of people can potentially be radicalized. And that is something to be excited about.

[seemslikeadream]

Yes, the brainwashing works!

[bluenoseclaret]

The American Studies Association has never before called for an academic boycott of any nation’s universities, said Curtis Marez, the group’s president and an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. He did not dispute that many nations, including many of Israel’s neighbors, are generally judged to have human rights records that are worse than Israel’s, or comparable, but he said, “one has to start somewhere.”

He argued that the United States has “a particular responsibility to answer the call for boycott because it is the largest supplier of military aid to the state of Israel.” While acknowledging that the same could be said of a number of oppressive governments, past and present, he said that in those countries, civil society groups had not asked his association for a boycott, as Palestinian groups have.

And:

The Sycophantic Palestinian Solidarity Movement....Gilad Atzmon

"In the Palestinian Solidarity Movement we really love celebrities – those famous, rather special people who write great books, play musical instruments (drums included) or even just think great thoughts. We like those people to stand up for Palestine and denounce ‘Zionism’, ‘Israeli Colonialism’ and ‘Apartheid.’ We love them – as long as they don’t say what they really think.

Here’s the problem. Celebrities are often famous and successful because they’re clever and independent. Unlike our progressive, dysfunctional activists, who in most cases lives on income support and repeat our ‘party line’, the celebrity is a confident, career-oriented, self-sufficient subject and, because of their capacity to make autonomous decisions, he or she is assertive and thriving . In short, the activist and the celebrity are made of very different stuff – so a collision is inevitable.

Time after time it happens to us in the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. We manage to pull in a great human being, we tell them what to say and they comply. For a while, they call to boycott Israel and, like parrots, they repeat our slogans. But then, against all odds, these damn, self-centred stars start to speak their minds.

Roger Waters is obviously such a celebrity. For the last two years we were so proud of our Pink Floyd comrade rallying for Palestine. For a while, he repeated our slogans, denouncing colonialism and Israeli Apartheid. But then, the inevitable happened. For no obvious reason he told the truth. In an interview on Counterpunch he equated Israel with Nazi Germany and, speaking about Jewish power, he even mentioned the ‘J word’.

Within hours, all hell broke loose. Every Jewish media outlet, including The Guardian unleashed its venom in order to bring Roger to his knees. Rabbis, Holocaust memory merchants and even artists were recruited to join the choir. But guess what? Not one single Palestinian activist stood up for Waters. Neither Electronic Intifada nor Jewish progressive Mondoweiss supported the legendary bassist. Their silence was deafening. The progressive, Cohen Blumenthal also didn’t show any support for the truth teller. Is this a coincidence?

Our sycophantic Solidarity Movement dropped Roger Waters like a stone as we’ve done so many times before because, in our little progressive ghetto, we love celebrities – but not when speak their minds or tell the truth."

[American Dream]

What's conflation?