Pondscum McKrill, Very funny to an old aquarist. I wondered what had happened to Robert Parry. He was the one talking about the CIA putting drugs into American Ghettos for Iran/Contra and Reagan before Michael Rupert's documentary. Thanks for letting me know where he is.
You know Mike, I wonder if the economics folks both public and private have any idea what the artists on this list talk about? It's like we were a different species. Do they even know that you taught at MIT? One wrote me off list about his publishing, didn't feel I was being respectful. I've been in this business publishing, performing and dealing with idiotic private and public folks for fifty years. Only when I'm speaking to my buddies from the U.S. Army Chorus and what they have done with their lives do I get a feeling that we may all be homo sapiens. Strange when the most significant success comes from those who were in the military but I have friends in Real Estate who were in WWII who are the same as well. But business does tend to forget its mother. I did the same when I was working real hard to succeed in the "industry of music." What a grim world! How could economics and business be so mono-tonal about work and it's varieties? I wouldn't give a fig for most of the societies they preach about. There is no harmony or beauty there, just survival. When I was deciding to live or die after that open chest surgery my wife bought a tiny Ipod and recorded all of the piano works of Beethoven on it and stuck the earphone in my ear right out of surgery. Beauty makes me want to live. My environment is beautiful for me. My students complain that they can't get me out of my two rooms. But I do go out to Lincoln Center and for nice walks and a good meal. It's beauty that makes life amount to something. Those people on facebook from Turkey and the Sudan who send travel programs about the countries seem to have it about right. They don't have shit but they sing, dance and have community, love and good thoughts. That's the way it was with the Iranian students I had as well. It was the song. The music. The aural abstractions that give one a sense of meaning and depth to existence. How can you contemplate the death of the world or of people blithely with music all around you? You have to kill or debauch music for that to happen. Music teaches you that you choose your emotions like masks that you put on the energies of life. Not that you are stuck in it like the tar pits or a heron in the BP spill or that you were caught by it. You didn't choose the external world but you certainly choose the emotion that you will wear in relation to it. I like these guys and gals on the list but they make it easy to choose depression. I wouldn't have struggled back from the surgeon's knife for that world. It took Beethoven and Glen Gould screaming in my ear. When Gould was finished he just left. I will do the same but not before its time unless I should happen to get trapped in one of these economic terrariums with no place to go. Then you couldn't keep me here. Prison with the bikers would be more fun. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Spencer Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2010 4:42 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Re: Poachers turned gamekeepers Ray wrote: > Business once had a contract with the society to supply jobs when > they could get by with less. That's the original reason for the > advantage being given to the private sector through tax incentives > like the Oil Depletion Allowance to the Oil companies. That was > when business considered themselves members of a community. That > was being a good citizen. They MADE work as well as a product. > That is all changed in my lifetime and businesses sole purpose today > is to provide profit to the shareholders. See also: http://www.truth-out.org/american-corporations-want-more-consumers-less-work ers61422 American Corporations Want More Consumers, Less Workers Thursday 15 July 2010 by: Robert Parry A hard truth about the U.S. economy is that corporations don't need as many of us as workers but still need us as consumers. That dilemma helps explain why unemployment is stuck near 10 percent and why the economic recovery is stumbling toward a double dip. The Washington Post reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion – about one-fourth more than at the start of the recession – but won't add personnel in part because they're waiting for consumer demand to pick up, which isn't happening because many Americans don't have jobs or are afraid of losing theirs. [snip] > Being declared citizens by the court they have supra-right to move > on or off shore with none of the responsibilities of a normal > citizen. The little-lamented MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) of a dozen or so years ago was an attempt to ensure, by treaty that supervened over domestic law, the rights of these super-citizens. Under the MAI, only "investors" would ultimately have rights. The world would then be populated by a few thousand corporate and other institutional entities, a few hundred enormously wealthy individuals or families and perhaps a few sovereign entities. The rest of us would be reduced to the status of biomass. The right even to "potential profit" from an investment would have trumped the right of signatory governments to protect their citizens or territory from the harmful -- even disastrous -- consequences of exploiting that investment. And whole flocks, covens and congeries of politicians, lobbyists, financiers, lawyers and the other things that live under the same rocks were involved in putting this all together. It was (AFAICT) happenstance that a draft of the document was leaked and inspired global resistance. But the things under the rocks are still working on it. They have the money, the expertise, the political influence and the selrighteous passion to keep plugging away at making the world safe for investors. I don't like occupying the role of biomass any more than Ray does. FWIW, - Pondscum McKrill -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
