Orchestration

A journalist turns her attention from defending her favourite billionaire:

Public service reform needed now as we’ve paid for it – The Irish Times – Wed, Mar 31, 2010

Still, whether their motives are base or not, the end of the campaign is good news for those depending on public services and for public sector workers who need saving from themselves. They were starting to compete with bankers in the unpopularity stakes.

The unions insist this is because their members are victims of “an orchestrated campaign” against them. It grates every time I hear the accusation.

Campaigns are by their nature organised, so the tautology is annoying. Worse, if there is a campaign, no one’s invited me to any of the meetings. Conspiring over a power lunch would be great fun, but not a smidgeon of orchestration comes my way. Either they’re taking me for granted, or there is no campaign. I can’t imagine they’d be silly enough to risk the former, so it must be the latter. There is no campaign.

If there is no “orchestrated campaign”, it is for this simple reason: there is no need for one.

The government and the plundering plutocracy it serves are well aware that it can rely on media organs such as the Irish Times to do what is required to ensure that their will be done without need for overt direction. They know that for the most part, the project of destroying organised labour and collective solidarity -with the aid of a burgeoning reserve army of the unemployed- is fervently supported by a critical mass of lackeys in prominent media positions. If there is one positive thing that can be observed about Ireland’s media lapdogs, it is the fact that they that well trained. Why hold power lunches when a Bonio every now and again will do?

Each of them look at public sector workers in possession of that priceless commodity – certainty – and wonder how they have the nerve to complain. No one needs to organise the communal sense of disbelief that rather than protesting, someone with a permanent job doesn’t get down on their knees at night and give thanks for their good fortune and that gold standard pension which will be determined on their pre-cut salary.

So: we shall mobilise the reserve army of the unemployed and bring you to your knees. Did I mention Denis O’Brien is a lovely chap: very much maligned and misunderstood?

Spectaculars

The Society of The Spectacle:

55. STRUGGLES BETWEEN FORCES, all of which have been established for the purpose of running the same socioeconomic system, are thus officially passed off as real antagonisms. In actuality these struggles partake of a real unity, and this on the world stage as well as within each nation.

Rescue plan a decisive move to solve crisis, says Lenihan – The Irish Times – Wed, Mar 31, 2010

Mr Lenihan and Mr Cowen both defended the decision in September 2008 to extend the guarantee to all Irish financial institutions, including Anglo Irish Bank. Mr Lenihan also rejected Fine Gael’s argument that Anglo should be wound down, asserting that such a move could expose the exchequer to up to €70 billion in commitments.

And while saying that recapitalisation issues were for the Financial Regulator, he indicated that his view was that the State would not have to take a majority stake in Bank of Ireland.

In response to questions about the bank guarantee, Mr Lenihan said that a guarantee had been the first response of the Swedish authorities when confronted with a similar crisis a decade ago.

He also said that calls to nationalise all the banks were not realistic. “If we were nationalise the system en bloc, we would not have been able to differentiate between the institutions. We would have said that all the banks have the same level of reckless lending when that is clearly not the case. Nama has allowed us to go in and see the exposure.”

Responding to criticism by Fine Gael deputy leader Richard Bruton that Anglo’s burden on the State had surpassed €40 billion, Mr Lenihan said that winding the bank down would cost more. “We heard in the [Dáil] that there are other options for Anglo. I am afraid to say, there are not,” he said.

The Society of The Spectacle:

THIS IS NOT TO SAY that the spectacle’s sham battles between competing versions of alienated power are not also real; they do express the system’s uneven and conflict-ridden development, as well as the relatively contradictory interests of those classes or fractions of classes that recognize the system and strive in this way to carve out a role for themselves in it. Just as the development of the most advanced economies involves clashes between different agendas, so totalitarian economic management by a state bureaucracy and the condition of those countries living under colonialism or semi-colonialism are likewise highly differentiated with respect to modes of production and power. By pointing up these great differences, while appealing to criteria of quite a different order, the spectacle is able to portray them as markers of radically distinct social systems. But from the standpoint of their actual reality as mere sectors, it is clear that the specificity of each is subsumed under a universal system as functions of a single tendency that has taken the planet for its field of operations. That tendency is capitalism.

David McWilliams: Like war in the trenches, NAMA plan is pure folly – Analysis, Opinion – Independent.ie

The alternative is the old fashioned rules of capitalism, which reward success and punish failure.