Capitalism – Page 10

So Much For Solidarity: That Comments Policy Revised & Expanded, And Other Bloggy Digressions

Published on February 14, 20073 Comments

To make Martin’s terse announcement below a little more multilateral and a little less unconsultatory and patriarchal (let’s practice what we preach) here’s my view on it.

I’m not a moderation fan, unless the blatant trollery gets really bad; what’s an argument without opposition? But that seems unlikely given our current level of comments, so I regard initial moderation as a currently necessary but temporary experiment. In my case “moderated’ boils down to “Are you a fuckwit or not?” which is a subjective standard, I admit. But Blogger is free (or at least the front-end is, the back-end is that Google owns you) so if you have a firm opinion of whatever stripe, you can add your voice to the cacophony.

I do wish more people would blog: there are so many sharp and incisive commenters out there that the world could do with hearing more from.

I do hope that potential political bloggers are not being disouraged from using their voices because of what a certain element in center-left (and that only by warped right-wing big media standards) US political bloggers have been up to lately. Using their predominant market power to skew the blogging market by exorcising ~~censorship~~ blogroll amnesty on their blogrolls, they are, in essence, acting as a cartel to knock out potential competitors for future Democratic political funding.

My evidence for this is admittedly circumstantial, but nevertheless compelling.

Post the Edwards blogger brouhaha the Kool Kidz of ‘leet blogging seem to have been conducting something of a purge.

The big US political blogs, the ones that are run as business concerns for their owners – recently described by Max Sawicky as also “a mostly brainless vacuum cleaner of donations for the Democratic Party” – have been divesting themselves of connections with what they apparently consider to be ‘lesser’ bloggers. What ‘lesser’ is in this case is hazily defined: it seems to be a combination of readership level, shade of opinion and the vehemence with which that opinion is expressed. Teh Kool Kidz might protest to the contrary, but the bloggers who have been cut certainly see themselves as being dropped for having inconvenient opinions. (And to some of those jettisoned it actually means a drop in vital ad income.)

Neither site has a blogroll even close to being in the thousands, but thousands of bloggers link TO them. I have seen many of these links from little blogs that for some reason feel compelled to put kos on their blog roll. It does them absolutely no good, but it’s great for kos.

Let’s turn the tables and talk about equality. Suppose YOUR site just happens to have a good post, will it ever see the light of day on kos? Of course not, that is unless you sign on to be a “diarist.” That’s why reciprocity is important. If you list the kos site, even though he won’t list yours, he makes money. And you? You are as much a sucker as someone playing the slots in a casino.

In what was once the blogoshere, there was a certain etiquette, that, although unwritten, revolved around reciprocity. I list your blog, you list mine. In blogdom, that is gone. With little money to go around-and some bloggers, feeling that money even corrupted the process-what made the blogosphere function was an evolving cooperative community. Like all communities it had its quirks and certainly its share of eccentric characters but it also had folks like the Wampum site that publishes the Koufax awards and sites like Crooks and Liars and My Left Wing that saw as part of their mission to encourage new voices and to recognize those of us out on the fringe. Maryscott O’Connor came by her nickname of blog mother, the old-fashioned way-she earned it.

You could ask why the surprise at this: we’ve seen recently that passion and strong feeling is frowned upon in US progressive politics , or should I say Democratic politics. The Edwards blogger situation was a demonstration of that. Campaign consultants for the Democratic Party must’ve been watching the ‘Edwards bloggers’ dog and pony show intently, as a foretaste of how this new campaign/blogging interface would be dealt with by the media at at large – that it was all a bit of a fiasco must’ve set them totally atwitter.

Co-incidentally, right afterwards the self-described ‘big bloggers’ (the ones intent on moving up in the informal Democratic power-broking hierarchy, beginning to consider themselves kingmakers and hoping for a bit of that consultancy dosh) started divesting themselves of inconvenient former connections.

Hmmm. Blogroll purge – presidential candidate/ blogger scandal, campaign war-chests: could they by chance be related? I think we should be told.

But the big bloggers only found themselves in their current positions because of the anticapitalist and antiglobalist left overseas bloggers linking to them and quoting approvingly from their posts and comments – those on the US left who looked outside the country for their news and opinion found that here was someone. actually on their own doorsteps, speaking their language. But there’d been like-minded leftists talking to each other online way before Blogger was invented, on Indymedia, Usenet, IRC and the Well: online political discussion is hardly a new thing and political bloggers were about way before Atrios or Kos typed their first anti-Bush diatribe.

What made them different? Timing and a eye to marketing.

Kos’diary model was timely – it came along just at the right time, when there was a dearth of political space for US liberals against the war to speak their minds and discuss their position. It was a niche market: a discussion forum run by Americans for Americans and in which Europeans and others could actually speak to Americans about politics and it was a safe space when a safe space was badly needed.

The likes of Kos and Atrios and others may see themselves as having been in the blogging vanguard but their success is built on the work of thousands. When or how they began to see blogging as a money-making platform for their own ambitions I couldn’t say for sure, but I suspect around the time the Liberal Ad Network was formed.

Kos’ success in my opinion has been a matter of historical happenstance, (plus hard work – there’s no denying he’s given it that ) plus the fact that when he started there was no US progressive blogosphere to speak of. The market was ripe for the plucking: but had he come along at another time under another president but Bush, it would’ve been a bust.

But most essential of all to Kos’ success has been an educated, eloquent and dogged group of diarists. For many of those diarists it was the first time they realised they could speak out in public and the sky wouldn’t fall; many went on to become bloggers themselves, loyally linking to Kos and back and to their fellow diarists and bloggers. Thus circular linking built a readership, a blogosphere and a sucessful Kos brand.

But Daily Kos isn’t and has never been a democracy, for all its ratings systems: it’s exactly what I said, a brand, and a brand has an image to protect if it wants to attract investment.

Atrios’ rise is slightly differently explained: he became popular initially because of linkage from non-USAnian and expatriate bloggers against the war – it was “Look- here’s an American economist who agrees with us, and he’s funny too”. The fact that he worked for Media Matters for America also gave his opinions added credibility. That he writes with a wry self-deprecation and an eye for the ridiculous and the in-joke made him even more popular – and as with Kos, linkage gave him prominence.

Then the early adopters and those with a little clue amongst the mainstream media started asking “who are these people?” and slowly the bigger blogs started to have some actual influence. But the moment they stepped into fund-raising for the Democrats they stopped being outside critics of the political system and started working within it.

One of the first blogs I ever read, and I’ve been reading and contributing to blogs before they were blogs, was American Samizdat. I always thought samizdat was exactly the right description of political blogging -information and politics that was outside the mainstream channels, uncontrolled and unfiltered by editors or party apparatchiks – people’s actual voices and personal knowledge. Whistleblowing on a grand scale.

The big blogs got where they are on the back for the hard work of those whistleblowers – iIf it weren’t for them, they’d’ve had no content and no links. To have to have bought in what the diarists and commenters brought to the big blogs would’ve cost plenty at investigative journalists’ and pundits’ rates.

But the commenters and diarists did it for nothing, because of their political commitment, and in the process they made Kos and Atrios well-known and influential; so much so they think they deserve a slice of the presidential campaign war-chests.

I’ve seen the phenomenon of the free-marketisation of political blogging described as the natural consequence of a lack of the progressive equivalent of wingnut welfare. I see it as a lack of thought and participative discussion about how an online political community could have actually explored a new model of democratic participation. If there’s that much concern about supporting progressive bloggers financially, all that money raised for unsuccesful candidates could have been put into a progressive blogging foundation, along the lines of the trust that runs a couple of British newspapers, with a membership organisation, a democratically elected board, regular meetings and votes. Grant money could have been applied for on that basis.

But no, the basic premise for the US center-left – and they have the loudest online presence – is and has always been the free market, so that’s how they’re running their blogs.

That’s fine, it’s their blog, we can all get our own. But we can all also choose who we participate with and link to, and those who live by the market die by the market. Death for any blog is no content and no links and this is the hidden power the so-called ‘lesser blogs’ have over the Kool kidz. How much influence would they have then? Would Democratic politiciams still take their phone calls without those comments and links?

To adapt a free-market truism, the Kool Kidz should remember that bloggers can go down as well as up. And isn’t there some saying about being nice to those you meet on the way up, because you can be sure you’ll meet them on the way down?

I don’t care whether we’re linked to by the self-chosen elite big blogs or not, so this can’t be dismissed as sour grapes. Martin may feel differently, but it’s enough for me that a handful of people read this blog – it’s nice to look at stats and have a little internal smugness because the hits are high, but really in the long run it’s irrelevant. Popularity is such a fleeting thing – it’s what you do politically, not what you say, that actually matters.

If only one person were to change their way of thinking or understand the world a little better because of something Martin or I’ve written or done, it’ll do for me.

I could be accused of being a moral prig because we don’t need to make money from Prog Gold and have no plans to do so, and maybe that’s true.

But if we ever were to decide to collude with the political establishment in maintaining the capitalist status quo, personally profiting from doing so whilst simultaneously shitting on the people who made us what we are, you’ld be the first to know.

Tiptoe Through The Tax Shelters

Published on February 4, 2007

Champion of the poor my arse – when it comes to tax shelters, that sanctimonious professional Irishman and hypocrite Bono’s could house the world’s homeless. Unfortunately one of the places where he and his greedy peers stash all their cash virtually tax-free is Holland, and more particularly Amsterdam.

The NYT has a long, informative and well-worth-the-read article on the way the Amsterdam has become a popular tax haven destination for celebrities and dictators alike, because of the right-wing, neoliberal, Balkanende government’s lax attitude to corporation tax and exemptions.

Here’s some of the best bits: the whole article is behind registration but you can read the whole article below the fold, as it were..

[…]

The Rolling Stones are not the only celebrities sheltering income in the land of tulips, windmills and Rembrandt. The rock powerhouse U2 has transferred lucrative assets to Amsterdam, as have other pop singers and well-known athletes, all of whom have used or continue to take advantage of the Netherlands’ tax shelters, according to a Dutch tax lawyer who requested anonymity because of client confidentiality agreements.

Entertainment companies and others that benefit handsomely from the Dutch shelters include EMI, the giant record label, and CKX Inc., the entertainment company that owns stakes in “American Idol,” the Elvis Presley estate and the soccer pin-up idol David Beckham.

[…]

Many of the world’s multinational corporations, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Ikea and Gucci, have set up holding companies here in recent years to take advantage of tax shelters nearly identical to the ones that the Rolling Stones and U2 use. An additional draw is the Dutch Finance Ministry’s recent willingness to issue advance rulings that effectively bless the tax shelters, a fast-track process that has lured in companies and individuals seeking to use the Netherlands as a tax shelter.

[…]

The Dutch shelter is simple: royalties that flow into or out of a Dutch holding company are exempt from taxes. Although the nominal corporate tax rate in the Netherlands is around 30 percent, analysts say that domestic tax shelters bring that rate down substantially.

[..]

Some experts see a darker side to the emergence of the Netherlands as a sought-after tax shelter. In 2000, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, black-marked the country as one of the world’s top five industrialized tax havens for promoting “treaty shopping” for low-tax jurisdictions. The Netherlands tightened certain rules, requiring more substance for Dutch companies set up solely to reduce or eliminate taxes. But some analysts say that troubles persist.

In its report last fall, SOMO, the research group, said the Dutch shelters affect “both the capacity of developing-country governments to supply essential services to their populations and the capacity of developed-country governments to provide finance for development in the form of debt relief and official development aid.” The report also said that “tax haven features of the Netherlands also facilitate money laundering and attract companies with a dubious reputation.”

Was That A Paradigm Shift, Or Is My Underwear Just Bunched Up?

Published on January 30, 20071 Comment

Sometimes I loathe blogging and I hate blogs. At the moment I can’t stand all this waiting, it’s driving me absolutely, nailbitingly nuts. My refresh button is wearing out.

Although nemesis is approaching both the Blair and Bush governments in the form of prosecutions for corruption and for perjury respectively, it’s taking it’s own sweet bloody time about it.

I want poodle and chimp blood and I want it now!.

Maybe I’m projecting my own feelings about the endless grey tedium of January but the UK and US news media and punditerati seem to have gone oddly quiet of late. I don’t mean there’s no news, that’s patently absurd what with wars and massacres and plagues all over the place – but there’s a faint whiff of tense anxiety emanating from the political reporters and commentariat. I wonder why?

They do have cause to be tense: both the accelerating Cash for Honours and Plame investigations and subsequent prosecutions will result in large part from the persistence of bloggers on both sides of the Atlantic. Unpaid citizens have been doing the job that the pampered, self-perpetuating mediocracy should’ve been doing. The media’s passive collusion in propping up illegal government and facilitating the obstruction of justice is about to be exposed and it won’t be pretty; no wonder they’re nervous. (Or maybe they’re just desperately trying to catch up on the story. That’s why they’re quiet – they’re reading blogs.)

That doesn’t mean there are no bright, persistent reporters on the big papers, it means they are exceedingly rare pearls of rare price amongst the cosy insiderdom and casual venality that are the modern Cranfords of Westminster and Washington, those murky little worlds of interlocked party-politics, thinktanks, op-ed columns and off-the-record-socialising, where political reporters and pundits work, go to the same schools, live in the same neighbourhoods, go to the same dinner-parties and social events and help each others children do the same in their turn.

That this state of affairs exists is due both to the way patronage, largesse and plain access has been managed by political parties on both sides of the Atlantic in modern times, most recently and blatantly by Blair and Bush. But it also testifies to the media’s willingness to be patronised and managed by politicians, providing there is sufficient personal advantage.

It’s been a long comfortable ride for the pundits so far, but the papers they write for are losing circulation and profits as fewer people turn, not to the papers or tv for news and political analysis, but to the internet and bloggers.

The trouble is that the small world of political blogging is, though supeficially wide-open, actually self-regulated and just as parochial, narrow-minded and self-interested as any other self-selected grouping.

Liberal blogging is already producing its own insider elites even though it’s that which brought us to this pass in the first place. Although they’re much less well-paid (if paid at all) than the right bloggers, the money is coming. With the ascendancy of the Democrats in Congress and a record-funded presidential race on the way, bloggers are no doubt already anticipating a tasty slice of the ad-spending and political-consultancy pie. The Hillary blogads are all over the place already.

I suppose they might argue that that’s the way the system works and what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander., t’was ever thus, blah blah blah, don’t blame us, a blogger’s got to live and so on. Fine, make your living from politics if that’s what you want to do. I’ve no problem with that, it’s your choice.

But remember that the moment you start to make your living from politics you are part of the political establishment, not the counter-establishment, on the inside not the outside, and expect to be treated accordingly. (I think finding yourself on a Murdoch paper like the Times’ list of 10 bloggers most likely to sink Hillary Clinton signifies that you are indeed, Established.)

Athough superficially separate, the walls between the big liberal blogs. Democratic party politics and paid opinion, already paper-thin, are crumbling. What does this mean for smaller, less exalted left political blogs?

It means that their role as political samizdat is even more important than ever.

US Democratic bloggers argued recently in criticism of the US antiwar march on Saturday that the left is dead, ineffectual and out of date and that party politics, not protest is where the actions’s at. Other big blogs have bought into this too. Observer journalist Nick Cohen has argued the same thing, though from a different perspective ( that of someone who supported the invasion of Iraq and now must spend the rest of his life justifying it by attacking the war’s opponents).

It is not novel to say that socialism is dead. My argument is that its failure has brought a dark liberation to people who consider themselves to be on the liberal left. It has freed them to go along with any movement however far to the right it may be, as long as it is against the status quo in general and, specifically, America. I hate to repeat the overused quote that ‘when a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything’, but there is no escaping it. Because it is very hard to imagine a radical leftwing alternative, or even mildly radical alternative, intellectuals in particular are ready to excuse the movements of the far right as long as they are anti-Western.

Of course the ‘left ‘, at least as Cohen defines it – in terms of the Labour and Democratic parties – is dead: modern party politics is now merely a televised battle of who can raise most to spend on advertising, and electoral platforms are informed by market research, not political principle. Left? What left?

Those allegedly lleftist parties that liberal media and the big blogs argue and raise money for are all in thrall to to the free market. It’s the baseline from which all their political argument springs and it may not be gainsaid. Only in that sense is Cohen’s point valid; the Labour party left, that wanted to change the world is dead and gone, as are the New Deal Democrats. What remains is a bunch of middle-class policy wonks who beleive they can both simultaneously enjoy the fruits of the free market and assuage their liberal guilt by tinkering around the edges so things are a just a little nicer for the poor folk overseas and the blacks and the gays at home and they don’t have to feel so bad that they live so well.

But there is a another left – that’s iinternational and internationalist, that doesn’t trust any existing party, that’s comprised of people who would not necessarily call themselves leftists but who loathe injustice and lies (local or global) who abhor hypocrisy, cruelty, corruption and greed, who see that the free market as a panacea for all social ills doesn’t work and who are not afraid to say so, loudly and often, through any means they can find. They’re not seduced by power because they know they are powerless.

Blogs have given them a voice.

They might forget it now but that’s how the big blogs started too; Kos is only as big as he is now because of all the diarists. That made him and his site dangerous. That he’s now lauded in the media as a Democratic power-broker is the political establishment using the old ‘inside the tent pissing out’ strategy. By neutralising Kos they neutralise the his readers and diarists too, goes the thinking.

Power is very seductive, so I’m not at all surprised by the continuing co-option of the big blogs into the political establishment. It’s the way elites always work: co-opt, absorb and neutralise. Just so long as those bloggers co-opted remember that that they are no longer outside the system but within it and we’ll all get along fine.

But back to my original point, the current nervousness of the media. I may be entirely wrong about the reason why they’re so subdued. Maybe this is all an excuse for self-absorbed metablognoodling and they’re all just waiting for Bush to drop the Big One on Iran.

Now that really would be a paradigm shift
.

An attack on Iranian nuclear infrastructure would signal the start of a protracted military confrontation that would probably grow to involve Iraq, Israel and Lebanon, as well as the USA and Iran. The report concludes that a military response to the current crisis in relations with Iran is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further. Alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be.

Yes, that might certainly make the subject of the co-option of liberal blogs somewhat irrelevant.

“The results of philanthropy are always beyond calculation.”

Published on January 7, 2007

If you’re looking for an in-depth informative read this morning you could do little better than not to bother with the Sundays and read yesterday’s LA Times investigative article on Bill Gates’ essentially sham philanthropy.

It lays out in devastatingly thorough terms the way the Gates’ Foundation charitable giving is funded by billions invested in the very drug companies and energy industries whose effects in Africa his much-publicised charity spends so much on visibly treating.

The reporters give chapter and verse on Gates Foundation investments in companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, happily polluting away virtually unrestricted in Nigeria, and drug manufacturer Abbott, whose lobbying of industry-friendly intellectual property rights law has priced many AIDS drugs out of the reach of the very sufferers the Foundation aspires to help.

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation

By Charles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon, Times Staff Writers

January 7, 2007

Ebocha, Nigeria ? JUSTICE Eta, 14 months old, held out his tiny thumb..

An ink spot certified that he had been immunized against polio and measles, thanks to a vaccination drive supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But polio is not the only threat Justice faces. Almost since birth, he has had respiratory trouble. His neighbors call it “the cough.” People blame fumes and soot spewing from flames that tower 300 feet into the air over a nearby oil plant. It is owned by the Italian petroleum giant Eni, whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Justice squirmed in his mother’s arms. His face was beaded with sweat caused either by illness or by heat from the flames that illuminate Ebocha day and night. Ebocha means “city of lights.”

The makeshift clinic at a church where Justice Eta was vaccinated and the flares spewing over Ebocha represent a head-on conflict for the Gates Foundation. In a contradiction between its grants and its endowment holdings, a Times investigation has found, the foundation reaps vast financial gains every year from investments that contravene its good works.

In Ebocha, where Justice lives, Dr. Elekwachi Okey, a local physician, says hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, and asthma and blurred vision in children. No definitive studies have documented the health effects, but many of the 250 toxic chemicals in the fumes and soot have long been linked to respiratory disease and cancer.

“We’re all smokers here,” Okey said, “but not with cigarettes.”

The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day and contribute to global warming than to sell it. They deny the flaring causes sickness. Under pressure from activists, however, Nigeria’s high court set a deadline to end flaring by May 2007. The gases would be injected back underground, or trucked and piped out for sale. But authorities expect the flares to burn for years beyond the deadline.

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France ? the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Gates’ charitable vehicles own so much stock in these companies that by socially responsible proxy voting in shareholders meetings the Foundation could have a significant effect on companies’ policies – if they chose to – which would tackle some of the health issues they champion at source. But they don’t choose to, because that would not be good for the markets or for Microsoft.

It’s fashionable these days, (and I’m as guilty as the next blogger) to decry the major papers as festering backwaters of old media, but every now and then there are still twitches of life and good reporting gets a prominent position.

That despite its own troubles balancing the conflicting demands of capital and news reporting, the LA Times is willing to take on Gates and Microsoft, the oil industry giants and the pharmaceuticals to show the public exactly what their respected household names are doing to the world has to be a good thing.

Dance, Proles, Dance For Your Betters

Published on January 2, 2007

I heard this story on the news a little while and the more I think about it the more outraged I am. This story has really got to me. The thought of those tosserish HR types treating genuine job seekers as performing monkeys for their own entertainment says all you need to know about the wealth gap in Blair’s New Britain and the state of class relations in the UK. It’s one of the most disgusting jobseeking-related stories I’ve read in a long time.

B&Q want employees who can dance
Tuesday, January 2, 2007

B&Q: They blame it on the sunshine, the moonlight, and quite possibly also the good times.

If you’re going for an interview as a van driver at B&Q in the coming days, you’d better put on a sequined outfit and brush up on your dance moves.

The DIY giant seems to want drivers who can do a passable Passa Doble as much as it wants ones with basic road driving competence.

Several jobseekers attending interviews at the firm’s store in Norwich were faced with a bizarre request to do a jig as The Jackson 5’s hit Blame It On The Boogie was played. Some were even photographed by managers.

One of those interviewed said he felt like an ‘idiot’ as well as being embarrassed by the unusual request.

Union bosses are not happy with B&Q’s antics. ‘This is utterly bizarre,’ Ed Blissett, an official of the GMB union. ‘It seems to reduce jobs our members do to some kind of joke. It is time that B&Q stops this nonsense.’

B&Q said in a statement: ‘This session was run as the Norwich store was looking to recruit a large group of store based staff. The candidates were offered tea and coffee when they arrived and this was followed by a light hearted exercise before the formal interview process began.

‘This practise isn’t a formal part of our recruitment policy although our stores are encouraged to make sure candidates are relaxed before going into the interview process.’

Neither Bruce Forsyth or Tess Daly were available for comment.

Next year New Labour is to bring in welfare reforms that will force the chronically sick and disabled to engage in ‘work-related activities’ (up to and including forced medical treatment) or have their benefits cut, the decision to be made by medically unqualified outsourced benefits offocers, with no judicial oversight.

Dance, monkeys.