Category: Politik

Økonomisk liberalisme for dummies

Markedet ordner det hele, hører vi ofte. Hvis bare man tager folks sygesikring og kontanthjælp fra dem, skal de nok finde et job, det virker jo så godt i USA og Indien. Er der andre end mig, der har svært ved at følge med i, hvordan det virker?

Så er det godt, vi har Bad Tux, der tilbyder et lynkursus:

Okay, first of all, economies are like magic zoos, see. There are lions and tigers and bulls and bears, oh my, and stuff goes in and stuff goes out and like everybody lives happily ever after and such. So how do these “economy” thingies work? Well, first of all, meet the Free Market Fairy:


Now, the first thing the Free Market Fairy does is, like, jizz magic free market fairy dust all over the place by waving her (his?) magic wand around. This free market fairy dust is then gathered together by the Invisible Hand (no picture, because the Invisible Hand is, like, invisible, like God and Dick Cheney’s conscience and stuff like that), which turns it into magical Competition Unicorns which then excrete magical substance called Choice that makes all goods cheap and widely available. Here is a picture of a Competition Unicorn:

Now, as you can see, the magical substance is excreted at the nether end and then consumers get all the benefit of this “Choice” thingy, which is, like, rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs, oh my, and guarantees that you’ll always get great service at a great price, sort of like those TV preachers who guarantee that if you send them a million billion dollars you’ll go to a place where magic unicorns live and some hairy old dude has a lot of mansions for everybody to live in.So anyhow, these magic unicorns poop this “choice” stuff and then we get all the benefits of low prices and good service. Like, at my house, I have a lot of this Choice stuff when it comes to high speed Internet — I have Comcast, and I have, err, Comcast. Hmm. I must be wrong, because these magic Competition unicorns are EVERYWHERE, even though nobody’s ever seen them outside of narrow marketplaces for consumer baubles, and thus there’s ALWAYS a choice, just like my choice between Comcast and, err, Comcast, for high speed Internet. The Competition Unicorn *does* exist, like Santa Claus, magically bringing gifts to all the deserving people. And if you don’t get gifts from this magic competition unicorn, why, it just means you’re a bad person and probably deserve to get coal in your Christmas stocking, ho ho ho!

And that’s right wing economics in a nutshell.

Link: Right wing economics in a nutshell.

Ulandsbistand – til ulande?

Følgende fakta burde få enhver illusion om Danmark som et specielt civiliseret og ulands-venligt land til at fordufte:

690 millioner nåede i 2010 ikke længere end til Sandholm Lejren.
Cop15-mødet i København modtog flere penge fra u-landsbistanden, end hvad børnenes ulandskalender har kunnet samle ind i løbet af de sidste 50 år.
400 millioner bistandskroner blev brugt til at købe sikkerhed i Afghanistan.

Burde man ikke bruge ulandsbistanden på ulandene,frem for Lars Løkkes PR-fremstød i København? Støt Billig Bistand kampagnen og giv en underskrift her:

Mere velfærd er “symbolpolitik”

Berlingske og deres bloggere formår endnu engang at spinne verdenen så alle bliver rundtossede.

Sørme om ikke de 1.500 ekstra pædagoger som regeringen og Enhedslisten vil give den stærkt udsultede kommunale sektor nu bliver udråbt som “symbolpolitik”. Ingen – hævder Krause – vil opdage at der er kommet en ekstra pædagog i vuggestuen. Næh det vil blot gøre den offentlige sektor større og underskudet værre.

Sikke en omgang liberalt hø. Man kan godt se at Krause og co. ikke har børn i offentlige institutioner mere. Det er simpelthen forkasteligt at sammenligne flere varme hænder i vuggestuer og børnehaver, med opsætning af grænsebomme og krav til flæskestegssandwich på Nørrebro.

Danmark – og herunder især den borgerlige del – bør vænne sig til at vi i de næste 4-10 år skal snakke realpolitik – ikke ligegyldige eller diskriminerende stramninger af udlændingeloven. Og det skal den nuværende regering og dens støtteparti have et kæmpestort klap på skulderen for. Hip hurra for den ny regering.

Krauses rablerier

ETA R.I.P.

Den baskiske separatist- og terrorbevægelse ETA har opløst sig selv – besejret af den spanske stat, den bekæmpede, og en baskisk befolkning, der ikke vil vide af den.

Jeg har en masse meninger om dette, men ikke så meget igen at have dem i. Jeg vil i stedet citere Luistxo Fernández, der med base i Donostia (San Sebastián) er helt anderledes tæt på:

So, ETA ended its war. The ergative energy worked. Even Tony Blair had something prepared for the occasion, though he couldn’t come to town. Fresh air in the city. A sense of relief for almost everybody, that’s what I feel among the Basques. Lots of interesting analysis and posts have been written over the last days, and one feature in common among those that are most interesting (imho) is that they’ve been written from a personal point of view. I have some examples in Spanish at hand, if you can read the language: Juan Carlos Etxeberria, Mitxel Ezkiaga and Ander Iza. (3 journalists).

I feel like I could also write from that perspective, ’cause this also has affected my life (I’m 44). But I’m not in the mood. There will be pieces from our lives that won’t be written.

Will I or my two children see an independent Basque Country some day? I want that to happen. The defeat of ETA was a prerequisite for that, I believe.

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lterqqAgVw1qion5qo1_500.jpg

Some newspapers, this friday. A photo that had to be taken long ago, by a fine Basque photographer, Juan González Andrés, El Humilde Fotero del Pánico.

Et paradoks, men Luistxo har uden tvivl ret: ETAs undergang var en forudsætning for, at Baskerlandet kan blive uafhængigt. Vil det så ske? Who knows – den form for nationalisme er måske lidt gammeldags i vores globaliserede verden, men det ser uden tvivl anderledes ud i en trængt kultur som den baskiske eller walisiske for at nævne to oplagte eksempler.

TV-folk: Vi laver en ny sæson af The Wire, hvis I legaliserer narkotika

Den amerikanske justitsminister Eric Holder appellerede i sidste uge til, at der bliver lavet en ny sæson af den fænomenale TV-serie The Wire.

David Simon’s og Ed Burns’ svar? Ja, hvis I standser “krigen mod narkotika”:

“I want to speak directly to [Co-creator Ed] Burns and Mr. Simon: Do another season of The Wire,” Holder said, adding, “I have a lot of power Mr. Burns and Mr. Simon.”Late last week, Simon replied with a counteroffer:

The Attorney-General’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated. I’ve spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.

Hvilket selvfølgelig får én til at tænke på miseren i sæson 3, hvor en enkelt politichef beslutter sig for at afkriminalisere stoffer i et enkelt område, Hamsterdam. Og naturligvis endte med at blive fyret og degraderet, for det går jo ikke. Heller ikke selv, om kriminaliteten i området nærmest forsvandt.

Palæstinensiske aktivister tager “whites-only”-busser til Jerusalem, bliver anholdt

Hvad gør myndighederne i “Mellemøstens eneste demokrati”, når medlemmer af den forkerte etniske gruppe vil tage bosætternes busser fra Vestbredden til Jerusalem?

De slår ned, præcis som myndighederne i de amerikanske Sydstater gjorde i 60erne:

Six Palestinians seeking to emulate the “freedom rides” in the segregated southern United States of the 1960s by travelling in a West Bank-to-Jerusalem bus alongside Jewish settlers were arrested by Israeli police yesterday.

The Palestinian activists managed to board a number 148 bus outside the West Bank settlement of Psagot, near Ramallah, but the bus was halted and the activists taken off near the Hizma entry terminal to Jerusalem.

Three walked off the bus under police escort but another three, including one woman, Huwaida Arraf, resisted and were dragged off it by force amid shouts of “Stop the apartheid”, and “I have the right to go to Jerusalem”.

Police had earlier boarded the bus at the checkpoint to persuade the activists to leave of their own accord as supporters waved banners, including one – in an echo of the famous speech by civil rights activist Martin Luther King – proclaiming: “We have a dream.”

Two of the activists were told by a police officer: “You are detained. Please get off the bus. If not we will have to use force.” One of the Palestinians, Nadim Sharabati, a 33-year-old blacksmith from Hebron, told the officer: “This is racial discrimination between me and the settlers. Why don’t you take permits from the settlers when they come to us?”

When the police officer told the men: “I am asking in a civilised way, with respect,” the other man, Badiya Dweik, replied: “If you respected us you would treat us like [you treat] the settlers.” When the officer asked if he had a permit, Mr Dweik replied: “Why do you not ask the settlers for a permit?”

Another of the Palestinian activists, Fadi Quran from El Bireh adjacent to Ramallah, asked the officers, in an apparent reference to the settlers: “Why are you protecting the Klu Klux Klan?”

Link: Palestinians board settler’s bus