He spoke too soon

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

27 November 2013

I have seen the future; and it works.

Observation by American journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) in a letter to Marie Howe on 3 April 1919 following his visit that year to the recently formed Soviet Union.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Politics, Russia | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

War without end

Posted on November 26, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

26 November 2013

Contrary to the propaganda disseminated for years by deferential western media, the United States is not proposing to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in 2014.

Sure, the mandate of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – the coalition of troops from the US and its western satellites now occupying Afghanistan – will end then.

The primary purpose of the withdrawal is to persuade a war-weary public in the US that the troops are coming home, their “mission accomplished”.

The problem is that they will not be coming home, at least not all of them. Some of them – a number as yet not defined – look likely to be staying on indefinitely.

The occupation is scheduled to continue under a new Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) currently being negotiated between the US and Afghanistan that will authorize a coalition of troops from the US and its western satellites to remain in the country for another ten years “and beyond”.

The purpose of the continued presence of these western troops will be to “train, advise and assist” the still useless Afghan army and to conduct counter-terrorism operations (presumably including the continued dispatch of drone bombers across the Pakistan border).

So what’s new, pussycat?

What will change, essentially, then, is the name of the operation.

Instead of being called the ISA force, it will be called the BSA force.

Big deal, you might think.

On the ground, the only significant change being considered is a proposal to cutback the strength of the western occupation force from its reported current level of 75 000 troops to perhaps 15 000, who are to be billeted in nine bases at strategic vantage points throughout the country.

But even the number of troops that will remain has not yet been fixed.

In a BBC report on 21 November 2013, White House spokesman Josh Earnest maintained that no decision had yet been taken on the presence of US troops in Afghanistan after 2014.

 

So what are they negotiating about?

 

Since, by its own account, the US has not yet decided whether to station troops in Afghanistan after 2014, the number of troops it intends to station there must also be in doubt.

 

Will there be a reduction in current levels?

 

All we can say with certainty is “perhaps”.

In any case, any western occupation force that remains in the country after 2014 will be able to call in reinforcements at the drop of a hat. So the actual figure to be agreed with the Afghan Government is irrelevant.

 

The US put it about last week that a deal had been cut, but this weekend Afghan president Hamid Karzai blindsided the Americans with a new set of preconditions.

 

Faced with US insistence that, for logistical reasons, the agreement be signed by the end of 2013, Karzai now says that it will not be signed until after the Afghan presidential election on 5 April 2014.  One reason is Karzai’s apparent desire to thwart any interference by the Americans in the election process – as happened when the last presidential election was held in 2009.

 

Pulling another rabbit out of the hat, he also says, according to reports, that he will only sign the treaty once the US has brought peace to his country.

 

That could mean waiting a very long time indeed.

 

Karzai is also said to want an assurance that the US will not obstruct peace talks with the Taliban. This would presumably mean an end to drone attacks by the US on Taliban leaders – involving, in a recent instance, the assassination of a Taliban chief who was about to meet officials for peace talks in Pakistan.

 

The Afghan president is also reported to want the repatriation of Afghan prisoners being held in the US gulag at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

 

So much then is still on the table. What is more, the personal chemistry between the US and Afghan sides is not of the best.

 

As Karzai said at the weekend, “I don’t trust them and they don’t trust me.  The last 10 years has shown this to me. I have had fights with them and they have had propaganda against me.”

 

 

A meeting of a loya jirga – an assembly of 2, 500 tribal  elders – held last weekend endorsed the continued presence of western troops in Afghanistan. However, the delegates are said to have been vetted in advance to ensure that they were Karzai loyalists. A lone dissident delegate who spoke against the continued American presidence was unceremoniously turfed out of the meeting.

 

Free speech is a luxury that they have so far been able to dispense with in Afghanistan.

 

Antigone1984:

 

Under the slogan “Operation Enduring Freedom”, The US launched the occupation of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 – a month after the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York by Muslim terrorists on 9 September 2001.

 

They have been fighting there now for more than 12 years and the result is thousands and thousands of deaths, rampaging poverty and a country lawless and in chaos.

 

One might have thought that enough was enough.

 

But no.

 

A cursory glance at an atlas shows how well positioned Afghanistan is strategically in the dead centre of Central Asia. Iran, Kazakhstan, southern Russia, Pakistan, northern India and western China are within easy military reach.

 

The US is said to have military bases in some 130 countries. No location is better placed to serve its global interests than Afghanistan.  Even a small force stationed there, equipped as it will be with the latest hi-tech weaponry, could have a major impact in a military crisis.

 

This is why the US is determined to maintain its foothold in Afghanistan.

 

For the wily Karzai, too, the continued US presence is essential. He was groomed for the presidency by the US invaders and is widely seen as a US puppet, even if he sometimes kicks against the goad when the strings are pulled. In addition to US aid, he also needs physical protection from his myriad enemies.

 

So, in the end, he is likely to cave in to the US demand for a continuing presence in Afghanistan “up to 2024 and beyond” and let the Americans get on with their unending “war on terror”.

 

He has already conceded that US troops will have immunity from prosecution in local courts, whatever crime they commit.

 

In return, the US has agreed to that its troops will “not enter Afghan homes for the purposes of military operations, except under extraordinary circumstances involving urgent risk to life and limb of US nationals”.

 

“Except under extraordinary circumstances” ?

 

Belquis Roshan, the woman ejected from the loya jirga for bearding Karzai, complained that every situation was exceptional for the US, adding that “all those people who have been killed by American soldiers were exceptions”.

 

Not that this means that we have any time for the Taliban.

 

We do not.

 

However, we venture to suggest that, given the failure of 12 years of non-stop warfare, it might be an idea to start talking to them.

 

As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill no less said in a speech at the White House on 26 June 1954, “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”.

 

It costs a lot less as well.

 

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Military, Pakistan, Russia, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Democracy? No thanks!

Posted on November 25, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

25 November 2013

Enough is enough, the Greek government has finally told the triad (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) that is seeking to impose further public spending cuts and public sector redundancies on an economy that has been in recession for six years, thanks largely to earlier cutbacks imposed by that same triad in exchange for emergency bail-out loans to offset the country’s public debt mountain.

According to an article in French daily Le Monde on 23 November 2013, the rightwing government led by Antonis Samaras, which clings to power with a wafer-thin majority of only four votes in parliament, is threatening behind the scenes to plump for the nuclear option if the triad persists in demanding further belt-tightening in exchange for the latest batch of bail-out funds that Greece desperately needs in order to plug a black hole in its 2014 budget.

And what is that nuclear option?

It is none other, according to Le Monde, than “the threat of snap parliamentary elections”.

For the one thing most feared above anything by the banksters and technocrats of the European Union and the International Monetary Fund is – democracy!

The idea that the people of Greece should be consulted on whether they are happy that their living standards continue to plummet towards levels last experienced under the Ottomans  – real disposable income has fallen by 40 % in the past six years and unemployment now nudges 28 %  – is anathema to the trio of inky-fingered bean-counters from Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington.

Democracy? No thanks! And this in that European country where, 2 500 years ago, democracy was first introduced!

It is not as if the European Union in particular does not bear a heavy share of responsibility for Greece’s indebtedness by cheer-leading it in 2001 into the strait-jacket of a high-rolling low-interest eurozone at a time when the unmodernised uncompetitive Greek economy needed the brakes of tight monetary and fiscal restraint.

In any case, it seems likely that the Greek government’s threat will work.

An early parliamentary election would almost certainly bring to power the left-leaning opposition party, Syriza, which has vowed to reject externally imposed austerity and renegotiate the triad’s entire bail-out package.

For the banksters, that is the worst-case scenario. Better to fudge the issue and cave in to the current government’s demands for a let-up in the pace of belt-tightening.

Antigone1984:

As we have consistently pointed out – see our archives on Europe, Greece and Italy  – the European Union has a problem with democracy. It suffers from a – hopefully terminal – illness known as the democratic deficit.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Europe, Germany, Greece, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Mutual Assured Destruction

Posted on November 24, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

24 November 2013

So the Romans have cut a deal with the Persians.

Teheran will limit its enrichment of uranium to 5 per cent and accept other restraints on its nuclear activities to convince Washington that it does not intend to build a nuclear bomb.

In return Washington will relax economic sanctions against Teheran.

The deal, clinched this morning in Geneva, is supposed to last six months to allow the conclusion of a comprehensive permanent treaty.

Antigone1984:

Well, we shall see.

The deal buys time for the Americans who will cite it when they veto any attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear plants.

It also buys time for the Iranians, who will do what they can to circumvent its restrictions while benefiting, at the same time, from the relaxation of sanctions.

However, we have a basic question to put.

The number of states in the world that are known to possess nuclear weapons is as follows: the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. South Africa can probably be added to this group and possibly Brazil as well.

That makes 11 countries. There may be others we don’t know about.

The number of countries in the world is just south of 200.

Why should the 11 states mentioned above be allowed to retain their nuclear weapons, while other countries are prevented from acquiring them?

Surely, in the interests of equity, justice and global security, the existing nuclear weapons states should divest themselves of their weapons of mass destruction if they want others to refrain from developing them – thereby making the world a safer place for everyone?

Stands to sense, dunnit?

Which, of course, is why it will never happen.

There is more chance that the moon is made out of green cheese than that the existing possessor states will voluntarily relinquish their nuclear weapons.

In any case, Iran claims its nuclear programme is focused solely on the development of nuclear energy for non-military purposes. It maintains that it has no intention of exploiting its nuclear research to make a bomb.

Well, it would say that, wouldn’t it?

Antigone1984 thinks it quite likely that, alongside the non-military development of nuclear energy, Iran will also be pulling out the stops to produce a nuclear bomb.

No one in the Middle East is unaware that when, at the behest of the West, Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi voluntarily abandoned nuclear development he became toast.

The whole world is also aware that the one reason the tinpot dictatorship of North Korea is able to cock at snook at the mighty United States is the fact that it has produced its own nuclear bomb.

Antigone1984 thinks it likely that, with the proliferation of scientific knowledge and the globalisation of trade, it is only a matter of time before more states acquire the knowledge and materials to produce nuclear weapons.

Trying to stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons is like putting one’s finger into a hole in the dyke at a time when the main is about to surge over the top.

However, the possession of nuclear weapons does not mean that those weapons will necessarily be used.

There is a military doctrine, moreover, which purports to ensure that they will never be used, in particular, against states which themselves have nuclear weapons and so are in a position to retaliate. This is the doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

Any state which attempted to use its nuclear weapons in those circumstances would be mad.

Take Iran, then.

Iran and its near neighbour Israel are not, unfortunately, on the best of terms. Nor are they on an equal military footing. Israel has a nuclear arsenal, Iran does not. Israel, therefore, can attack Iran with impunity, even if restricting itself to the use of non-nuclear weapons, knowing that Iran’s reaction will be inhibited by the knowledge that Israel can, in the last resort, use nuclear weapons against it.

However, if both parties had nuclear weapons – Iran as well as Israel – the possibility of war recedes dramatically since, in a conflict, both countries would be faced with the likelihood of Mutual Assured Destruction.

It is this motivation, we believe, that will lead not to a reduction but to an increase in the number of countries striving to acquire nuclear weapons.

However, there is another way out: universal nuclear disarmament.

Unfortunately, this is not remotely on the cards, politically speaking.

One final question.

What is the name of the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons – and this not once but twice – against their enemies during a war?

Yep, you’ve got it. Not rocket science, was it?

Technical note:

Enrichment involves increasing the proportion of the fissile isotope uranium 235 to the non-fissile isotope uranium 238 in natural uranium.

Natural uranium contains around 1 % of uranium 235.

You cannot increase the actual amount of uranium 235 that is present in the sample of natural uranium that you are using. What you have to do is remove part of the uranium 238 that is present. The result will be an increased proportion of uranium 235 relative to the remaining uranium 238.

Enrichment for use as fuel in commercial thermal nuclear reactors involves increasing the proportion of uranium 235 to 3 % or 4 %.

In order to be able to make a nuclear bomb, you have to increase the proportion of uranium 235 to around 90%.

——-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Africa, Brazil, China, India, Iran, Israel, Korea, Libya, Pakistan, Russia, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Books do furnish a room

Posted on November 23, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

23 November 2013

The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish.

Comment by A. Edward Newton (1863-1940), US book collector.

Antigone1984:

An observation which will be readily appreciated by the dwindling band of ageing bibliophiles who have whiled away many a pleasant hour in dusty secondhand bookshops  – now sadly all but extinct – but which will probably leave today’s e-book readers baffled.

A. Edward Newton would have had much in common with Gerhard Gerhards , better known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), priest and humanist, to whom is attributed the following remark:

“When I get a little money, I buy books. If there is any left over, I buy food.”

Erasmus wrote mostly in Latin. Unfortunately, the above English version of what he is supposed to have said is somewhat at variance with the original Latin, which seems to have been selectively translated in the quest for a more punchy soundbite.

The quotation in question is thought to be based on the following excerpt from a letter Erasmus sent to his friend Jacob Batt of Bergen op Zoom on 12 April 1500 (Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 1, 1974) :

Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque, ut pecuniam acceptero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.

An accurate English translation might read as follows:

I have turned my entire attention to works in Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, USA | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Breaking through the glass ceiling

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

22 November 2013

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.

Observation by Charlotte Whitton (1896-1975), a Canadian feminist who served two terms as mayor of Ottawa, in the publication “Canada Month” in June 1963.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Canada, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hatred and politics

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

21 November 2013

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

Observation by Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918), American man of letters, in chapter one of his study “The Education of Henry Adams” first published, privately, in 1907.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, Politics, USA | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Prison for profiteers as prices plummet

Posted on November 20, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

20 November 2013

Exemplary news from Bolivarian socialist Venezuela.

The government has just jailed 100 businessmen for profiteering.

What a contrast with the limp-wristed response of capitalist Angl0-Saxon governments to the profiteering which triggered the international economic slump and banking meltdown from 2007 to 2011.

At the core of the crisis in the north was the fraudulent repackaging by banksters of dodgy non-performing mortgages so that they could be sold as bona-fide blue-chip securities on the financial markets.

How many banksters have gone to jail following the resultant near-collapse of the world economy?

To our knowledge, none. Least of all those bank kahunas who were each paid a king’s ransom in bonuses and salaries to ensure that their businesses stayed shipshape.

In Venezula, however, they do things differently.

President Nicolás Maduro is taking a leaf out of Lenin’s book. After the overthrow of the Romanovs in 1917, the Communist leader launched a campaign to dispossess the rich farmers, the kulaks, who for decades had grown fat on the backs of the serfs.

“We can’t just close businesses,” Maduro said in a televised speech on 10 November. “The owners have to go to jail.”

He has described businessmen who exploited Venezuelans with unjustified price hikes as “unscrupulous criminals”.

Maduro first cracked down by arresting the managers of an electronics chain that was charging 54 000 bolivars (around $ 8 636 or £ 5 350) for a washing machine. Soldiers from the national guard then occupied the stores and forced a dramatic markdown in prices. A fridge that the chain had been selling for 50 000 bolivars was reduced to 16 000.

Maduro has warned that his crackdown on electronics stores is just the “tip of the iceberg” in a nationwide drive against speculators. Shoes and clothes shops are apparently next in the firing line.

Antigone1984:

Hats off to Nicolás Maduro, who is proving a worthy successor to the late Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death last March. Maduro took over in April.

According to press reports, with the annual rate of inflation at over 50 %, Maduro’s decision to send in the troops to force price-cuts has proved popular, at least for the time being.

A report in the London Guardian on 16 November 2013 says: “For many people, buying a refrigerator or a wide-screen TV was a distant dream that Maduro has now made possible.”

However, there are clouds on the horizon.

First, there is the distinct possibility that businesses, fearing that they will have to sell at sacrificial prices, may decide not to replenish inventories in the short-term with a resultant drying-up in the supply of goods.

Secondly, while stocks of imported goods have so far been plentiful, sucked in by the lure of high profit margins, there are widespread shortages of locally produced staples, such as sugar, milk and flour, where suppliers lack the same opportunity to make a fast buck. Unless dealt with urgently, this could easily led to serious social unrest.

Thirdly, there is a flourishing illegal currency market outside government control which exploits the difference between the low official rate of exchange for the bolivar and the rate at which the currency changes hands on the black market, which is ten times higher than the official rate. Maduro needs to stamp out the black market if his currency controls are to work.

Fourthly, the government faces a blizzard of non-stop political criticism from rightwing political circles aided and abetted by Washington, which was involved in an ultimately unsuccessful coup to unseat Chávez in 2002.

Venezuela has one major asset, however. It is one of the world’s biggest oil exporters at a time when the price of oil is riding high.

——-

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in USA, Venezuela | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Off message

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

19 November 2013

If there is a message, I want to be off it.

Characteristically dissident remark by straight-talking nonconformist political interviewer Jeremy Paxman published in the London Daily Telegraph on 3 July 1998. The context is the intense pressure to be “on message” – that is to say, to follow the party line – placed on journalists by aggressive spin doctors seeking to stifle criticism of the authoritarian Labour Government led by the self-righteous Anthony Blurr, who was UK Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Art and Aid

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

18 November 2013

The art market has shot off the radar. Stratospheric prices are being paid for creative art – paintings and sculpture in particular. Albeit, to no one’s surprise, this for artists who are established household names, not for talented young contemporaries still eking out a meager subsistence in garrets.

Thus, on 12 November 2013 plutocrat buyers forked out more than one billion dollars at two art auctions in New York.

A Francis Bacon triptych fetched $ 142.4 million at Christie’s – setting a new world record for the most valuable work of art ever sold at auction.

At the same auction a sculpture, Balloon Dog, by Jeff Koons, uncontestably the most over-rated phoney that ever disgraced the art world, raked in $ 58.4 million – the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist.

Further auction price records were set for works by Willem de Kooning and Lucio Fontana.

The next day, 13 November 2013, Sotheby’s set new auction records for seven more artists, including Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. Warhol’s 1963 painting “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” fetched $ 105 milllion.

Melanie Gervis of the Art Newspaper said: “This is billionaires having fun. Art, essentially, has become the accepted elevating hobby of the super-rich. It’s a lot more sophisticated than a yacht.”

Antigone1984:

Fun it is.

Let’s all have fun!

Let’s have a look, all the same, at the figures for the disaster relief pledged to the Philippines in the wake of the Haiyan hurricane this month which, as we write, has claimed 4 000 lives and counting as well as involving untold destitution for hundreds of thousands of survivors.

Remember that our benchmark is the figure of $ 142.4 million paid last week for a Francis Bacon painting.

So what was the sum pledged by China, the world’s second largest economy, for Philippine relief?

Less than $2 milllion, according to reports.

What did Japan, another East Asian neighbour of the Philippines, pledge?

Just $ 10 million (while also , admittedly, offering to send troops, ships and planes).

The United States, the world’s strongest economy, is said to have promised a mere $ 20 millon.

The United Nations –  grouping no fewer than 193 nations,  virtually every country in the world  –  has managed, according to reports,  to stump up only $ 25 million.

Makes you think, dunnit?

Where are our priorities?

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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