Another example for how street art spirit becomes corrupted through commercialisation: a Rambo movie poster - yuk. And most distasteful: Rambo looking like Che! What are the associations here: guerrilla art, guerrilla warfare, Rambo what? Eliminating guerrillas through warfare. Rather absurd!
[Sydney Morning Herald] [The New York Times]
AS the price of oil surges above the symbolic milestone of $US100 ($106) a barrel - with Malaysia’s TAPIS crude hitting $US100.54 yesterday - it is creating new winners and losers across the globe. In southern China, high oil prices forced Wang Pui, a truck driver, to wait in line 90 minutes the other day to fill up, just to be told he could pump only 98 litres, as China faced spot shortages of petrol and diesel. When Vladimir Putin was making Russia’s bid to be host of the 2014 Winter Olympics last July, he reached into the country’s deep pockets, bulging with oil profits, and pledged $US12 billion to turn a Black Sea summer resort into a winter-sports paradise. Russia, which was nearly bankrupt a decade ago, won the Games.
The prospect of triple-digit oil prices has redrawn the economic and political map of the world, challenging some old notions of power. Oil-rich nations are enjoying historic gains and opportunities, while major importers - including China and India, home to a third of the world’s population - confront rising economic and social costs. Managing this new order is fast becoming a central problem of global politics. Countries that need oil are clawing at each other to lock up scarce supplies and are willing to deal with any government, no matter how unsavoury, to do it.
In many poor nations with oil, the proceeds are being lost to corruption, depriving these countries of their best hope for development. And oil is fuelling gargantuan investment funds run by foreign governments, which some in the West see as a new threat. “Five months ago, readers would not have recognised SWF as meaning sovereign wealth fund,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, referring to the funds set up by Russia, Norway and others to invest their oil profits. “And yet now,” he said, “they’re recognised as one of the fundamental forces of the global economy.”
The basic calculus of expensive oil still holds: exporters enjoy a windfall and importers bear a heavier burden. But some unexpected countries are reaping benefits, as well as costs, from higher prices. Consider Germany. Although it imports virtually all its oil, it has prospered from extensive trade with a booming Russia and the Middle East. German exports to Russia grew 128 per cent from 2001 to 2006; exports to the US grew just 15 per cent.
Throughout Europe, the rise of the euro has acted as a hedge against fluctuations in the dollar-denominated oil market, while the heavy taxation of fuel has made rising oil prices less jarring to motorists. “For Europeans,” said David Fyfe, a senior oil market analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, “$US100 oil is mostly symbolic.”
Elsewhere, it is much more. For developing countries, oil can be a tool of national transformation, whether the goal is a middle-class standard of living or a utopian society. In Venezuela the President, Hugo Chavez, is pouring oil proceeds into a socialist revolution, creating free health care, free education and cheap food; enabling heavy public spending that has helped fuel four years of economic growth.
The trouble, says Theresa Paiz, a Latin American director for the Fitch ratings agency, is that it’s not really clear how the money is invested. Mr Chavez’s government is steering large chunks of money to development funds and state-owned companies not subject to audits. Transparency International, an organisation that tracks corruption, ranks countries from least to most corrupt, and in its 2007 index Venezuela was at 162 out of 179 countries.
Concerns about corruption are even more pronounced in Nigeria and Angola. Oil-rich Angola is taking in 2½ times the cash it did three years ago. Hotels in the capital, Luanda, are booked months in advance, largely by foreign oil companies. Sales of luxury cars are booming and the International Monetary Fund projects the economy will grow 24 per cent this year, one of the world’s fastest rates. Yet analysts for the Catholic University of Angola’s research centre say two in three Angolans live on $US2 or less a day, the same ratio as in 2002, when the country’s decades-long civil war ended. The Government of Angola is eager to show that oil wealth is benefiting ordinary citizens. It has rebuilt 3800 kilometres of roads, refurbished four airports, and laid 690 kilometres of railroad tracks. But many Angolans take it as a given that oil has enriched public officials most of all. In 2003 a newspaper in Luanda identified the 20 richest people in Angola: 12 were government officials and five were former officials.
Angola’s growing muscle means it is now the biggest oil supplier to China and the sixth biggest to the United States. This is leading it to rethink its global position. It recently joined the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and is limiting its cooperation with the IMF. China has become Angola’s financier, lending Luanda as much as $US12 billion for the country’s reconstruction, in return for guaranteed oil supplies.
The contest among importers to secure access to oil supplies has become fierce. China, a one-time oil exporter that now must import half its oil, is facing politically troublesome shortages of fuel from Shenzhen to Beijing, as Chinese refining companies refuse to supply diesel at unprofitable state-regulated prices. To head off a crisis, China raised retail prices for fuel nearly 10 per cent on November 1.
India is potentially even more vulnerable than China. Although it consumes a third as much oil as China, it imports 70 per cent of its oil. It also has no strategic reserves and demand is growing faster than in any other economy except China’s. Like China, India subsidises fuel, particularly the kerosene used by lower and middle-class families for cooking, a policy that costs it some $US12 billion a year. If oil reaches $US100 a barrel and stays there, analysts say, India will be forced to roll back those subsidies. Sooner or later, prices are going to bite, said Subir Gokarn, Standard & Poors chief economist in Asia. Without an increase in retail prices, officials at the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas warned recently, they might no longer be able to buy adequate supplies of crude for India’s refineries. Unless consumers are paying for what they consume, said M. S. Srinivasan, the petroleum secretary, the ministry is going to be left with a big hole in its pocket. But raising fuel prices could ignite even greater civil unrest in India than in China, where a man was killed recently after jumping a line to buy petrol in the city of Xinyang, in Henan province.
Even in developed countries like Canada, rising oil prices can cause dislocation. The region around the oil sands in northern Alberta is the closest thing the developed world has to a 19th-century boom town. The influx of workers has created a shortage of skilled labour in neighbouring British Columbia, where construction is under way for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In comparison, the problems faced by other oil producers seem almost benign. For them, the most burning question is what to do with all the money. Norway, the world’s 10th-largest oil producer, wants to guarantee every child a subsidised kindergarten spot by the end of 2008. It has increased spending on kindergarten to $US3.3 billion this year, from $US2.75 billion, partly using money transferred from its $US350 billion State Pension Fund, once known as the Petroleum Fund. Most of the fund is earmarked to pay the future pensions of Norway’s 4.6 million people. The discipline is structural, said Johan Nic Vold, a consultant and former executive at Royal Dutch Shell. Without it, the demands on politicians to use the oil revenue would be almost insatiable.
Dubai has taken a similarly long view. Treating its oil reserves as temporary, it used the proceeds to expand pell-mell into tourism, trade, real estate and construction. The oil sector now accounts for only 5 per cent of Dubai’s gross domestic product.
But perhaps no country has revelled in its oil wealth like Russia. NetJets Europe, the private-jet company, plans to open an office in Russia because the traffic between Moscow and London has become so dense. “Russians have kept London’s high-end real estate market buzzing. There are a lot of Russian buyers around who are prepared to pay a vast amount of money,” said Michael Chetwode of the Home Search Bureau. Back home, Russia’s oil wealth is trickling down. Mr Putin is using it to finance priority national projects, like improved health care and education, and access to affordable housing. Oil may also help Mr Putin cling to power. As he noted recently: “We all remember what state the country was in seven, eight years ago.” (When oil was $US16 a barrel.)
[What this article isn’t talking about are other aspects of oil and wealth: the unsustainability of our dependence on oil, the profit-driven resistance of oil companies and other oil dependent industries to switch to sustainable forms of energy and raw materials, the wars being fought over oil and the suffering they cause to people like those in Iraq, or possible future scenarios arising from a possible more fierce fight over access to oil. It is quite interesting to see how power relationships are redefined or to become aware of which countries care for their citizens, but the real questions are systemic ones -asking them might help guarantee the planet’s survival].
More signs for how street art is moving towards high art. Under the title “Art sales: Graffiti draws a new crowd“, the Telegraph in Britain published an article on burgeoning market for graffiti, stencil art and the like. More and more galleries are opening in their doors to keen buyers, with works from famous street artists like Antony Micallef, José Parlá, Swoon or Banksy selling from £35,000 to £323,000. Only celebrity of course can splash around that kind of money, or smart investors. So it’s not surprising to find well-known figures such as designer Paul Smith, artist Damian Hirst, rock star Eric Clapton or actress Angelina Jolie joined by City traders and small-business executives lining up to get their mansions and bank safes filled with the popular wares.
Where does all of this leave urban art? First of all, let’s not forget that this is not the first commercial assault on urban art. For years now artists have been working for example for the fashion industry as well as for marketing products from mobile phones to cars. Yet street art is still alive and kicking. So, with the move from the street to the gallery, we’ll probably lose some of the great street artists to the wealthy end of town . But, even if, in the worst case scenario, street art’s purpose might be totally and utterly blunted, like that of many other forms of grassroots cultural expression and political resistance before it, I doubt that commercialisation and commodification will spell its end any time soon. While some corporatisation of the rebellious and often anti-corporate element is happening, and while graffiti is being transformed into tourist attractions, there is still so much passion, energy, creativity and a strong spirit of civil disobedience and subversiveness left which not only creates great urban art, but that for various reasons will never be for sale - let’s continue to celebrate that!
By MIKE WHITNEY (@ Counterpunch) - Wouldn’t you like to know where Dick Cheney puts his money? Then you’d know whether his “deficits don’t matter” claim is just baloney or not.
Well, as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney’s financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly. The article is called “Cheney’s betting on bad news” and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in “a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation.”
Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in “Old Europe”. As Blackburn sagely notes, “Not all bad news’ is bad for everybody.”
This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation’s wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.
Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is “intentionally” skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney’s portfolio? It doesn’t. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn’t a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that’s what’ll happen.
The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP. This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness.
Last month the trade deficit climbed to $70 billion. More importantly, foreign central banks only purchased a meager $47 billion in treasuries to shore up our ravenous appetite for cheap junk from China. Do the math! They’re not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We’re sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and “American Celebrity”.
The American manufacturing sector has been hollowed out by cutthroat corporations who’ve abandoned their country to make a fast-buck in China or Mexico. The $3 trillion housing (equity) bubble is quickly loosing air while the anemic dollar continues to sag. All the signs indicate that the economy is slowing at the same time that energy prices continue to rise. This is the onset of stagflation; the dreaded combo of a slowing economy and inflation.
Did Americans really think they’d be spared the same type of economic colonization that has been applied throughout the developing world under the rubric of “neoliberalism”? Well, think again. The American economy is barrel-rolling towards earth and there are only enough parachutes for Cheney and the gang. The country has lost 3 million jobs from outsourcing since Bush took office; more than 200,000 of those are the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are the life’s-blood of every economy.
Consider this from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) June edition of Foreign Affairs, the Bible of globalists and plutocrats:
“Between 2000 and 2003 alone, foreign firms built 60,000 manufacturing plants in China. European chemical companies, Japanese car makers, and US industrial conglomerates are all building factories in China to supply export markets around the world. Similarly, banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies are building R&D and service centers in India to support employees, customers, and production worldwide.” (”The Globally integrated Enterprise” Samuel
Palmisano, Foreign Affairs page 130)
“60,000 manufacturing plants” in 3 years?!? “Banks, insurance companies, professional-service firms, and IT companies”? No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state. Welcome to Bush’s 21st Century gulag; third world luxury in a Guantanamo-type setting.
Take another look at Cheney’s investment strategy; it tells the whole ugly story. Interest rates are going up, the middle class is going down, and the poor dollar is headed for the dumpster. The country is not simply teetering on the brink of financial collapse; it is being thrust headfirst by the blackguards in office and their satrapies at
Federal Reserve.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com
[ZDNet Blogs posted this little piece of useful information. It looks like I haven’t been conned so far, but I was always wondering how to tell apart fake from genuine cards - the link below could be quite helpful (although the scammers will have read this info by now as well).]
Posted by Robin Harris @ 6:29 am
Counterfeiting is a huge business. Handbags we know about. Car parts, maybe. But flash memory cards? It’s true.
Real flash cards - Compact Flash (CF), SD and the rest - are a great deal. Flash memory manufacturing plants cost billions and should be run at near full capacity for maximum efficiency. But flash product demand peaks around Christmas - all those cameras, MP3 players and cellphones - meaning a lot of flash product gets shipped at below full cost.
Translation: we get very good deals on real flash memory cards.
The cost of the flash chip is about a quarter of the retail price. Packaging, shipping and margin account for the rest. That doesn’t leave counterfeiters much margin to cut costs. So they cut out the flash quantity and/or quality.
Flash chips are programmable devices, so small flash chips can be programmed to report that they are large flash chips. Or slow flash chips substituted for the high-speed chip you thought you were buying.
They also cut corners on printing, plastic molding, packaging and card cases.
Ebay sellers have been a major outlet for counterfeits. An Ebay user has published a guide to the counterfeits to help buyers identify counterfeits - see FAKE SanDisk Ultra Compact Flash Cards Exposed - but scammers don’t like to give refunds.
Your best bet is to avoid counterfeits in the first place.
The plummeting price of flash make flash a great deal. Avoiding counterfeits make it an even better deal.
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| ENTP - "Inventor". Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative. 3.2% of the total population. |
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