Begging & Begging the Question

Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth. -- Lucy Parsons

Faced with massive beggary in Europe, the New York Times met the issue head on by begging the question. The Times reported that, despite austerity protests, Greece and Spain were proceeding with further budget cuts. In Greece, the government "agreed on an austerity package that includes some of the most severe cuts in public pensions ever imposed in a developed country." In Spain, the government "introduced one of the most draconian budgets in the country’s history."

"The markets need reassuring," the Times explained and the cuts were "intended to reassure international investors and demonstrate the fiscal discipline that the euro zone was demanding..."

foto per N.Y. Times

Unlike Greece which had slashed pensions 10 percent, Spain took its cuts of flesh from other parts of the body. "Politically, it is understandable that Mr. Rajoy would want to put a protective bubble around the country’s 10 million retirees at a time when people are marching in the streets," the Times sympathetically intoned before going on to warn that "the fact that Spanish public pensions are being enhanced is a reminder of one reason European debt and deficit problems have proved so difficult to resolve."

What deserves note is not that budget cuts are being made but rather that the Times simply assumes that the "deficit problems" can only be "resolved"  by starving pensioners.   Entitlements  (i.e., people entitlements) are the problem and once pensions are cut the difficulty will be solved.  Never once does the Times question whether perhaps people -- and not "markets"-- need reassuring. Never once does the Times question the Moloch that demands the sacrifice of babies.

For the past nine months or so we have been thinking about Marx's Fetish of the Commodity and have been whittling away at a chip on the subject, but the Times report -- which is simply a reflection of what the Establishment thinks -- about sums it up. And what the New World Order demands is a Shylockian "economy" on a ferocious scale. We are in need of a Portia or a Parsons. 

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