wenn ich groß bin, werde ich science fiction autor: 2004-10-07

Donnerstag, 7. Oktober 2004

Ich kann verstehen warum er sich bei Grapes of Wrath so aufgeregt hat. Jedenfalls aber: One More Month!

For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in 2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's oldest and most powerful democracy.

[...]

"He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a phone call seeking comment.

In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"

[...]

Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy." - Mary Jacoby, The Dunce, Salon

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The Shape of Things to Come (I)

21:40h — ‹public service announcements›

The EU needs to move more towards the US social model if it is to close the productivity gap with America and reach its economic goals, the Dutch economics minister and Chairman of the EU's competitive council said today (7 October).

[...]

"We will simply have to work longer", said Mr Brinkhorst, calling for "incentives to seek work and work longer".

He also called for more flexible labour markets, stimulating innovation, improving regulation and lowering taxes as a way to boost growth and productivity. - Richard Carter, Dutch minister calls for move towards US social model, EUobserver.com

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I’m not going to say a lot about Henwood’s chapter’s on work and income, but they alone represent enough reason for buying and reading the book. They represent a tightly argued demolition of claims that the New Economy provided prosperity for all, a humanisation of work and so on. Henwood is excellent on technical issues such as hedonic pricing and multifactor productivity as well as on the broader social implications of increasing working hours and work intensity

[...]

More original and interesting is Henwood’s discussion of the body of rhetoric centred on the trope of ‘weightlessness’. This term is used to encompass a range of real and illusory trends, from the growth in the service sector to corporate restructuring designed, in large measure, to replace unionised workers with subcontractors. - John Quiggin, Long after the New Economy

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Das bin nicht ich. Das ist Bruno Kreisky. Ich für meinen Teil bin 28 Jahre alt und ein kurzsichtiger, wenig- und langsamlesender, aufmerksamkeits- und noch vielgestalt andersgestörter, ungeschickter, linkshändiger, unausdauernder, übergewichtiger, un-unaufgeregter und unkonzentrierter stummer Schwätzer ohne Führerschein (sowie ohne Ehrgeiz, Ziel im Leben, eigene Wohnung, geregeltes oder sonstwie geartetes Geschlechtsleben, usw …), dafür mit unregelmäßigem Bartwuchs und Stoffwechsel sowie dem starken Wunsch, Drängen und Verlangen, der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft doch noch ein Ende zu bereiten (warum dennoch der Sonnenkönig dort oben hängt, darf jeder für sich selbst ausknobeln). In Ermangelung eines besseren ist mein Lebensmotto ‹wenn schon, denn schon›, was angesichts meiner Defizite im menschlichen, zwischenmenschlichen und übermenschlichen Bereich niemanden wundert, der mich kennt. Ich weiß nicht, was ich mit diesem Blog eigentlich will, aber ich schreibe es mit kleineren und größeren Unterbrechungen doch schon seit 2715 Tagen, und so lange es mich noch freut, wird weitergeschrieben. Das letzte Mal hat es hier am 11.12.2011 um 23:33 irgendetwas neues gegeben.

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