Yesterday’s blog in German:
http://www.zib21.com/19438/anataj/wall-street-brennt/#comments
Posts Tagged ‘Crisis’
Wall Street Brennt
Saturday, November 5th, 2011Only Bad Mood?
Saturday, July 30th, 2011Norway: A right wing radical puts a bomb in the government building in Oslo and then goes to an island where he kills 77 teenagers in a summer camp organized by the social-democratic party. He wanted to warn the party, which he accused of letting too many Muslims into the country.
Austria: A yearly youth study shows that more and more young people support FPÖ, the right-wing party. FPÖ directly appeals to (and then nourish) their fears. The study shows that Austrian youth is increasingly anxious. It also shows that those sympathizing FPÖ are much more scared (than those more left oriented) of the future: of inflation, terrorism and one day not receiving their pension.
USA: In current debt-ceiling debate, the Republicans are bringing the country – and the world economic system to the verge of a catastrophe. The only thing they want to achieve is – ultimate power. Even if the world crashes.
Brusselles: EU is facing a political disintegration and economic collapse. We’re facing a catastrophe, hand in hand with USA.
See any links? Well I do. For me, all of these are puzzle pieces of the same story. In September 2008, our western system known as democratic liberal capitalism proved to have failed. Under the strong lobby of those who hold the money, but not officially the power, we didn’t do what seemed impossible but was the only solution – erase and start from scratch. It wouldn’t have allowed rich to get richer, as they did since the crisis. Instead, we took the corpse, dabbed on it some make-up (couple of trillions of dollars worth of make-up) and pretended it’s going to be OK. Well, it’s not. The corpse has rottened and there’s nothing left but a huge mess and unpayable debt.
Of course people are scared. This could be the end of the world as we know it. The systems, the beliefs, the rules, the rulers, everything that should keep us in place and safe from chaos and suffering – it has all proved (continuously) to have failed. In our globalized world that means there’s nowhere to escape. We fail, you fail.
One more time, the only solution would be to start from scratch. But how do you start from scratch and change the whole paradigm? How do you explain to people who speed up when you signal you’d like to change a lane, just so that they don’t have to let you in front of them (even if it means endangering yours and their life) that the only way this poor planet and its billions of people can survive is if we LIVE solidarity, respect, altruism and modesty? There’s no space here for greed and power games.
Either we reach that or we’ll go through a catastrophe in the scale of WW III. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we’ll need to experience such a tragedy to (re-)learn real value. It’s human nature.
Yes, I’m in a bad mood today.
G8 – The Fiasco of Change
Saturday, June 26th, 2010G8 summit has finished today. Conclusion: the financial transaction tax as proposed by the EU has been rejected. Also, we should restraint the public spending and reduce our budgets. In plain English: While rich continues being freed of paying taxes tax while getting richer, we get to save on schools, pensions, medical care, infrastructure, and other.
Great. Have we learned nothing from the financial crisis? Bravo, politicians. (Why don’t we just get rid of them?)
Please note that the news about the rejection of the transaction taxis is quite hard to find. G8 concluding that they are angry of Iran and N. Korea is so much more important.
P.S. What about the change Obama was promising? Anybody seen it?
Tajder in EMMA
Friday, May 28th, 2010I am happy to announce that my commentary about “Sex and the City 2″ is going to be published in the next issue of EMMA, the most renown feministic magazine in German speaking countries.
As announced on the Website:
“Alice Schwarzer hat für die nächste EMMA einen Kommentar zur Sache von Ana Tajder in Wien bestellt – und das Resultat begeistert uns EMMAs alle sehr.”
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
14 companies on Austrian stock exchange paid their share holders €2,3 Billion for the year 2008, the crisis year which cost millions of people their jobs, savings, homes, quality of life. And in which governments paid billions of tax-payers money to save banks/businesses which are again making profits that flow into someone else’s pockets.
This amount makes out 4 payment rounds for 410.000 employees at those very same companies. But these employees are still being fired or made to work “Kurzzeitarbeit” – basically working a bit less for much less money.
All together ¾ of earnings are being paid out instead of invested or kept in the company. Every second company paid more to the share-holders in the crisis year 2008 than a year before.
Noticing anything wrong?
Angry. Again.
Sunday, July 12th, 2009Last week, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader resigned out of the blue, leaving his obligations towards the country and its citizens from one minute to the other. He escaped the sinking ship, many commented. Just like that. Now he is resting on his luxury yacht.
Bush destroyed a whole country of 27 millions inhabitants, killed hundreds of thousands (some estimate million) of people, all under pretence that proved to be false and just to occupy the oil fields (which were sold out to foreign investors last week). And as a reward, he is now happily retired on a ranch in Texas.
The investment bankers who invented toxic derivates and created the crisis which took millions of jobs and destroyed lives of millions of people are stealing again (look at what is happening with the oil price). The only punishment for the created crisis was sending Madoff to prison for 150 years. This was obviously just a symbolic act – other hundreds of thousands of same thieves are still stealing and earning their million-dollar bonuses.
Why is it that if I go and steal or destroy someone’s home and kill their family, I would immediately end in a prison? And those who do the same crime, but on a much larger scale get rewarded?
How can it be that the politicians, the ones who should serve and protect us, are the only group of people with a total immunity? Why are there absolutely no consequences to their wrong-doing? Shouldn’t they be the ones who should be especially critically observed and especially punished if they betrayed the people who elected them and gave them power? Why are we accepting this? When I start a job, I sign a contract – if I am not fulfilling what I promised to or if I am stealing from the company that I signed a contract with, they will fire me, even prosecute me. Why do we treat our leaders differently?
What happened to the promised regulations of the financial markets? Where were the protesters at the G8? Why are we not able to get up and force the change? Are we already totally lobotomised?
Yeah, summer is here, let’s enjoy it. After all, we have more interesting topics to thing about. For instance, what did MJ look like when he died?
Consuming Love – Literally II
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009Sorry, I just can’t help it. Especially since Big Eye’s “if you can see love, there is love” which I did like. Well, there must be love if I cut paprika and this is what I see. Now that we almost have had a whole love salad on this blog, I promise to stop with heart-shaped food. Unless something really fantastic appears in my fridge. Like a heart-shaped cucumber.
………………….
And here some highlights from my today’s channel skipping between NTV (German CNN), Euronews and CNN. Some of which have warmed up my lefty heart (as my editor at The Vienna Review would say):
Obama’s Stimulus Package: The House is set to vote tomorrow. The guy really wants to put $825 billion into government investments to provide jobs (and someone protested when I said that his inauguration speech sounded socialistic)
Review Globalisation I: USA, the big uncle of free trade, starts protectionism and asks Americans to “Buy American”
Review Globalisation II: British workers protest for British jobs
Review Globalisation III: Germany so spoiled by it’s immense exports that it is wondering “what now?” as exports are due to stall because of the crisis and new protectionist wave. Yeah, what now?
UK loses $5 billion due to two (2!) days of snow: Come on! What a sissy country is that?
First Iranian satellite in space: And now we should worry about an Iranian flying saucer? Well, someone still has to explain to me why one country is allowed to have weapons, especially if it is already guilty for millions of deaths, and the other one not.
Porn Airs During Super Bowl: Just as Cardinals’ superstar Larry Fitzgerald watched himself sprint into the end zone on the stadium’s Jumbotron during Sunday’s Super Bowl, 10 seconds of eye-popping pornographic imagery “flashed” across the screens of those watching at home.
And now, let me go back to the beginning: “if you see sex, there is sex”.
In this grey world I can only conclude – yeepii for porn!
Davos: You are the Crisis
Monday, February 2nd, 2009Here my favourite banner after “Jump you fuckers” on Wall Street in November (see 6 Dec. 2008). It really needs no further comment.
That was 2008: pffffffffffff
Sunday, December 28th, 2008I just read a fantastic description for year 2008:
This was a year with a never-ending “Pffffffffffffff” sound.
(by Christoph Winder in Der Standard)
Although this was an exciting year, with my book and my articles coming out and this unexpected (and bombastic) proof that the system is not healthy and needs to be changed – I didn’t like it. I am happy that it is almost over and am looking forward to a brilliant 2009. I’ll just ignore the speculations about the recession….. It all virtual, anyway.
Reconnect
Saturday, November 26th, 2011Yesterday, Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving, when sales start in US), a woman pulled out pepper spray and injured 20 people in order to get a discounted Xbox. A man was leaving a store with his family and got shot when he didn’t want to give up his purchase. Another man was stabbed in a shopping mall.
Rihanna’s latest video, widely watched in US is banned in France. It is showing, and glorifying, a couple of drug addicts smoking crack, popping pills, drinking, having sex, tattooing each other. All to a funky beat, her happily singing “We found love in a hopeless place”. It looks like so much fun! Her “S&M” video was banned in Europe for glorifying S&M practices. A woman who has the status she could use to fight drugs and domestic violence is doing exactly the opposite. Let’s break all boundaries and just shock. I can see the creative meeting with an enthusiastic young director pitching the premise that hasn’t yet been seen and will break every rule. That’s how you get famous, isn’t it? And if you’re famous, you’re rich. You can buy a Xbox any time, don’t need to use pepper spray.
“The Muppets” just came out. A great film. How wonderful it is that they are back and entertaining kids in a human pace, without aggression, killing, fighting, chasing, explosions. Very refreshing after all latest kids’ movies, which are so packed with action and aggression that I’d leave a cinema hysterical and trembling like after 5 cups of coffee. Well, Muppets need to raise money ($10 million) to save their name and their studio. They don’t, but they get the equal – they get fame. They get streets filled with people screaming their names. So they win. Happy end. Money or fame. One of them will save your soul.
Rules (moral, religious, legislative) have disappeared. Barriers are lifted, nothing is holding us down and we are drifting in this weightless world of individual “I”s. We are completely free in our search for happiness. We can do everything and the only thing we have to do is take care of our own arse. Others don’t matter. The effects of our actions don’t matter. We are completely disconnected. And wonder why we are lonely and unhappy although there is so much around us. There is too much of everything, things, people, emotions, phases come and go, everything is here, everything is exchangeable. Why bind to something? It can always be different, better. So we need more! Of everything. Trying to cope with and find our way through this chaos we created, we are using ratio. We are analyzing, weighing, trying to understand. Trying to analyze the un-analyzable.
Just like the socio-economic system we created. Try to analyze that. Try to solve the mess. Impossible. We need to start from zero. In so many aspects of our society.
We need to reconnect.
Tags: Capitalism, Commentary, Consumerism, Crisis, System
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