Tinman 2

Greetings good citizen,

I feel good today (despite the gods having gone mad!) Which seems to be today’s theme. Yesterday I complained about society losing its values, today we will take in the leading headlines and scratch our heads, wondering what ‘our betters’ were thinking…because it is obvious they weren’t!

Robot Makers Spread Global Gospel of Automation
By JOHN MARKOFF

Manufacturers of robots and similar machines gathered in Chicago, casting automation as an indispensable engine of economic growth.

Read the last line and marvel over the twit who stated it! Employers LOVE robots, they will work around the clock without taking a break, doing whatever it is they were designed to do, until they break.

The fly in this ointment is a society filled with robots needs nothing but the energy to power them, there is no ‘economy’ for robots.

Do we really need to ask HOW STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to not understand that?

And yeah, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t thoroughly enjoy kicking the capitalists in the shins every chance I get!

Because it is capitalist stupidity that gives us stories like this:

BUSINESS
Boeing's Battery Problems Cast Doubt on Appraisal of New Technologies
By JAD MOUAWAD and CHRISTOPHER DREW

The 787's difficulties have raised questions about how regulators certify new technology and how they balance advances in design and engineering with safety.

Hold everything! I thing we found the twit who think robots are the answer to the automation problem [idiots!]

Was it an accident or by design that the corporate owned media runs the ‘perfect’ follow up story next?

Share of the Work Force in a Union Falls to a 97-Year Low, 11.3%
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the percentage of American workers in labor unions fell to 11.3 percent last year, the lowest since 11.2 percent in 1916.

That’s the other thing employers LOVE about robots! They don’t join unions! So the union isn’t in their face demanding more humane working conditions and that demand they really hate, more wages!

Although it has become the hallmark of capitalist stupidity that people who can’t afford your products won’t buy them, so cutting heads when sales drop is not an ‘effective strategy’.

Oh, and since robots don’t get paychecks (or benefit packages) they also don’t buy your products!

Bottom line. The same people who can no longer afford to pay for your products will eventually STEAL them…but you’re insured, right?

And when the heads you’ve cut burn your plant down, same answer, right? (Naturally, you re-open in China!) But your new employee/customers won’t be able to afford our products either so what will you do?

Same thing as these guys?

Nokia Shows a Profit, but Shares Drop
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN 50 minutes ago

Investor hopes were raised when the Finnish cellphone maker said it would turn a profit, but sales of its flagship Lumia were less than expected.

The homeless don’t need a phone, nobody they want to talk to that isn’t within arm’s reach…which is the fertile soil revolutions are sown in.

How sad is it good citizen that we lack a unifying ideology? [Like A Simple Plan?]

Like a ticking time bomb, how long do you think we have before this bad boy blows?

Euro Watch
Data Point to Slow Recovery in Euro Zone
By REUTERS

While the euro zone economy moved a step closer to recovery this month, Spain’s unemployment rate surged to 26 percent.

Sure looks to me like that headline is missing an ‘s’, should read ’points’ but hey, I just cut and paste, ya know?

What’s up with the mixed message? On one hand they are, er, ‘asserting’ that conditions in the euro-zone are ‘improving’ then they point to sky-high unemployment and shrug…

Did I mention our civilization is SEVERELY ‘mismanaged’?

These people shouldn’t just be fired, they should be made to walk the plank into shark infested water (but that would constitute cruelty towards sharks!)

No living organism can eat that many ‘empty calories’ without being adversely effected.

I am no Luddite good citizen. In many cases automation is a larger boon to the employee than it is to the employer.

What I am pointing to is SOME things can tolerate automation and others CAN’T. Wisdom needs to be exercised rather than idiotic profit/loss ratios.

Our civilization is collapsing because society has become unbalanced due to the reckless/relentless pursuit of profits.

When profits supercede people without mitigating factors it is beyond destructive, it is catastrophic!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Strike!

Greetings good citizen,

Um, it’s more disturbing than anything else to see the markets (around the freaking world, the ones that are still open anyway) do a near vertical take-off that coincides roughly with the opening bell of the NYSE. (Nothing says ‘rigged’ like concerted action that is otherwise inexplicable!)

But you knew that, so I won’t waste any more time on the subject.

Today’s offering is a ‘sign’ that first reappeared last year…I say ‘re-appeared’ because ‘sympathy strikes weren’t always ‘illegal’.

Our corporate overlords got (their) government to ban ‘sympathy strikes’ because the Teamsters would inevitably go out ‘in sympathy’ with any major employee group.

Under the rubic of ‘endangering the national infrastructure’ they passed legislation to prohibit sympathy strikes in general!

And you see today the ‘end result’ of this legal dodging. Proof that United we stand, divided we fall!

Strikes that used to be settled quickly (because if you didn’t settle a strike quickly it would soon go national.) suddenly dragged on for weeks and months. In some cases they even resulted in lockouts…

And where was ‘our’ fucking government then?

Worse, the, er, prohibition against striking in sympathy (there were whopping fines that enforced this ban) meant there wasn't anybody (read union local) willing to strike in protest over their jobs being sent overseas.

And now here we are, the citizens of a ‘hollow land’, begging for scraps from our corporate overlords.

So what are we to make of this sudden resurgence of unity in the face of adversity?

Teamsters in Alabama went on strike against a giant garbage company--and in Seattle, New York and Ohio, workers joined them in solidarity, in a move that's usually illegal.

Is the answer as simple as the ‘fines’ that were once stiff enough to choke a horse (intended to drain a typical union emergency fund dry in a few days!) are now ‘chicken feed.’ Or have the few remaining unions seen the writing on the wall and decided to (valiantly) die on their feet rather than fade away into irrelevance on their knees?

I think the ‘wimps’ who sold the rest of us out were ultimately forced out of the union leadership across the nation and a new, more militant breed has taken their place!

Sadly it will take decades to ‘organize’ what remains of the civilian workforce…and we will unlikely regain our industrial workforce without a revolution that dissolves corporate charters everywhere!

I lived through the shameful time where the Union rep would stand before us wringing his hands and patiently explain that there was nothing the union could do, the company had the government on their side!

Which is a little fucked up considering WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!

Ironic how the weasels who make decisions in our name without ever consulting us work directly for the fucking corporations!

How nice it must be to draw a paycheck for performing the public’s work on one hand and watching your campaign war chest being filled by the very people you’re supposed to be protecting the folks who elected you from!

Why NONE of these snakes has been hung for treason remains a mystery…just like the (irrationally) rising stock markets.

Which is to ask what do you do when you see criminal activity occurring right before your very eyes?

How fucking sad is it that the answer is ‘nothing’ it’s not your job.

Yup, the answer is ‘not my job man. It’s not what I get paid to do.’

How sad is it that you are basically being paid to fuck yourself six ways to Sunday?

Let’s start with the 45% of the HOUSEHOLDS (not individuals) who receive some form of government ‘food assistance’.

How long can our civilization last, picking up the slack for fucking employers who refuse to pay YOU enough so YOU can feed yourself?

How the fuck long can that go on?

Did I mention that our social model, the way things are ‘supposed’ to work is FUBAR?

(That means 'Fucked Up Beyond All Repair' for you youngsters who don’t get WWII slang.)

The old folks knew the score but they were too chicken-shit to do what needs doing. That’s why, nearly a hundred years later we are standing in the exact same place where they stood…

And THEY BLINKED!

Let me assure you, it ain’t gonna happen this time.

This time there will be blood.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Huricane Irene, accident or tool?

Greetings good citizen,

Aren’t ‘bandwagons’ fun? The last true hurricane that made it north of Carolina was in 1938 yet our flip out over anything media is warning the public to take cover…again.

But wasn’t this how Katrina started out? A hurricane had never bulls-eyed New Orleans before so why was Katrina different?

Could it be because before 2005 the technology to both enhance and steer a major force of nature didn’t exist?

And what of the aftermath that shone a spotlight on the US’s new ‘third world’ status?

Is it me who is missing the significance of ‘warnings about the flooding of the ‘Swindle City’?

Many of New York’s largest investment banks have their headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, and thus fall outside the city’s designated flood zones. Citigroup’s 399 Park Avenue building, Morgan Stanley’s 1585 Broadway bureau, and JPMorgan Chase’s 270 Park Avenue offices are all outside the zones. Credit Suisse’s tower, located a little further south at 11 Madison Avenue, also carries a “no zone” designation.

But the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, located at 200 West Street in Battery Park City, is located in Zone A, the low-lying area that the mayor has ordered to be evacuated. So is American Express’s office in the World Financial Center. Deutsche Bank’s 60 Wall Street headquarters, several blocks away from Goldman, is in Zone B.
A Goldman spokesman declined to detail the bank’s hurricane preparations, but said that the bank had “plans in place to ensure the safety of our people and the ongoing operation of our business.”

A Deutsche Bank spokesman said in a statement: “We are monitoring the storm closely and keeping employees informed with regular updates. We have already taken steps to ensure that we can conduct business as usual while maintaining the safety of all our employees, which is of utmost importance.”

Will we all be scratching our heads come Monday morning wondering why all of these calamities seem to occur on the last weekend in August?

Will we be cursing our foul luck when all of the ‘evidence’ of financial mismanagement ‘accidentally Greetings good citizen,


Talk about your ‘windfalls’, how much ‘luckier’ could you get?

Even more stupefying will be how all of the corroborating evidence will also miraculously disappear!

Should we be thanking our lucky stars it wasn’t a tsunami, considering the recent earthquake that shook the seismically quiet East Coast?

Because the same technology that can steer storms can also trigger earthquakes…

Naturally, this begs a different question: How far will the guilty go to avoid prosecution?

One thing is certain, when the global financial system collapses, ‘the executions’ will begin.

How high up the ladder will you have to be to earn ‘protection’ from your misdeeds?

Many of the ‘rabbits’ know there is no escape, they went along with it purely for the ‘short-term’ gains. What of those for whom the gains were ‘too brief’?

Will they trade what they know in exchange for their lives?

And who would accept a deal like that?

Wouldn’t an act like that set us back down the same path we are trying to escape from?

Of course it would, meaning some of the ‘executioners’ will find the tables turned upon themselves after they wrongly execute the innocent on the word of the guilty.

Then there will be those who will be, er, tempted to ‘help themselves’ to some of the newly ‘liberated’ assets.

They too will find the harsh judgment of society upon them.

But enough of this grim talk.

It should come as little comfort to you that this ‘talk’ of retribution is trivial compared to the crimes that have already been committed and the body counts yet to come.

I suspect it is no coincidence that the ruthless capitalists have been ‘scheduling’ disasters to coincide with the ‘Labor Day’ weekend.

Now that they are moving to wipe Labor Day from the calendar…

It will be interesting to see how that works out considering the only ‘unions’ left are in the public sector.

It’s going to be nightmarish to see just how far the elite will go to ‘starve the beast’.

And perhaps that’s a good place to end today’s speculative piece…imagining what a world without unions would look like.

I suspect it would look very much like what Capitalist Utopia would…only without the buildings.

It’s the no cops and no firefighters thing…or how many hats will the Mercs be willing to wear?

Or would YOU be willing to fight off the world for a spot in the barracks and a plate full (or not) of unidentified mush?

How’s that for ‘short and brutish’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner