Side 1:

El Pecador – Alberto Vazquez
El Rey – Lola Beltran
Derrumbes – Raul Irigoyen
Me Caiste del Cielo – Yolanda del Rio
La Sangre Caliente – Gilberto Valenzuela

Lo Mejor De Nuestra Musica Volume 2 Side 1

music

Statistic 1:

40: Estimated percent of the world’s consumer electronics manufactured by Foxconn.

Statistic 2:

70: number of psychiatrists employed by Foxconn to prevent suicides, according to a 2010 announcement by CEO Terry Gou.

Comment:

Sounds like a fun place to work.

Let’s say you get 1/2 hour with the suicide hotline/company shrink.  Each pyschiatrist can see 16 patients a day times 70 shrinks that’s 1150 people a day, 7 days a week.

That doesn’t sound like a dehumanizing operation at all.  At least they’re allowed to live and they’re not chained up.  That we know of.

In the face of such self-destructive behavior, it’s worth asking: Why is overconsumption still the preferred “normal” in America? The flippant answer is that it’s simply hard for shopaholics to break old habits. But while that’s certainly true, it’s not the whole story when enablers are everywhere.

My conclusion:

People over-consume to distract themselves from their own unhappiness, and since it’s an addictive drug you have to keep taking/consuming over and over over time to get the necessary distraction.

Side 2:

Mucho Corazon – Amalia Mendoza
En Un rincon Del Alma – Manolo Munoz
Volvera el Amor – Virginia Lopez
Amor Indio – Los Delfines
Acuerdate de Mi – Sonia Lopez

Lo Mejor De Nuestra Music Volume 2 Side 2

music

Oh, and then there’s South Carolina debate audience…to which I would like to write a very short open letter:

Dear South Carolina Republicans,

If it weren’t for Charleston–which is admittedly awesome and not just ‘cuz I was born there–I would be happy if you seceded. You are a bunch of classless neanderthals. Your behavior at the debates made me cringe, made me ashamed of our nation. Hooting and hollering as if you were at a high school pep rally while attending a presidential nominee debate is something that just isn’t done. Not in a civilized society. I know those racist dogwhistles got you all riled up, made your ears perk up, and your fur get all vertical…but you should have contained yourself. Save your vulgar displays of contempt for your fellow Americans for the next Secession Ball. And until then, kindly go FUCK YOURSELVES.

Much Obliged,

A Southern Belle You Don’t Want to Tangle With

Comment:

I’m actually a little jealous of that excerpt.  This is some high end and well phrased bile.

Excerpt:

It’s sort of amusing reading various articles about, for example, generational divides in the housing market, otherwise known as “young people don’t think they’ll ever be able to buy a house.” There’s too much of a desire to attribute to preferences instead of income, prices, and access to credit. I’m not saying preferences for such things can’t change, but right now what’s happening, both in the US and much of Europe, is that younger people are getting screwed. The game has changed for them. They’re facing crap job prospects, crap income, no possibility for defined benefits pensions, and perpetual threats to completely gut retirement systems.

Additional comment:

Not only do you have a generation of young folks facing a difficult economic future, you have a group of people in control of business and politics who benefitted greatly from the bubble.

A perfect formula for one generation to be out of touch with another.

Not a good environment for political and economic stability.

Deep in the Music

Excerpt 1:

When the New York City banker James Brown tallied his wealth in 1842, he had to look far below Wall Street to trace its origins. His investments in the American South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.

Brown was among the world’s most powerful dealers in raw cotton, and his family’s firm, Brown Brothers & Co., served as one of the most important sources of capital and foreign exchange to the U.S. economy. Still, no small amount of his time was devoted to managing slaves from the study of his Leonard Street brownstone in Lower Manhattan.

Excerpt 2:

This recognizably modern capitalist economy was no less reliant on slavery than the mercantilist economy of the preceding century. Rather, it offered a wider range of opportunities to profit from the remote labor of slaves, especially as cotton emerged as the indispensable commodity of the age of industry.

Comment:

See that part there in bold from excerpt 2?  Apple just disclosed record blowout earnings and reported they have $97 billion in cash.  They have those Chinese factories going 24 hours a day, and the owner of the company that assembles Apple products had a management seminar where he called his employees animals.

How different in its economic repercussions is this remote exploitable labor than black American slavery?

The main difference that I can see is that it’s very far away and easy to folks from when you put a shiny iPad in their hands.

My advice is not to trust the geeks with your privacy or your rights.  They have shown repeatedly they don’t give a shit, they will not stand up for you, they are not a principled crowd and they just want to do business.

Of course they will take credit for any positive social change that occurs that they play a role in, but when the going gets tough they will throw you under the bus.

We live in days where people admire and love and respect the geeks, but I think that respect is sorely misplaced.

You can support my blog ravings by buying some music from my label:

Side 2:

He Shall Redeem
Coming Again So Soon
Long Way to Go
How Many Times
If I had a Hammer

Beverly Glenn: Coming Again So Soon Side 2

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