D. Grant Haynes

Hayward symbol of all that is wrong with capitalism

2010-06-19T17:25:00-07:00

Gulf residents and others that defend capitalism with its excesses of wealth and privilege should not be surprised that BP CEO Tony Hayward is participating in a "glitzy" yacht race in Great Britain this weekend.

Hayward reeks of insufferable British snobbery and a lifetime of privilege. His accent and delivery--his delicately sculpted profile--his snotty British reserve--all speak to who he is and what might be expected of him.

BP paid Hayward a salary of $1,478,940 and a bonus of $2,216,928 last year. I should imagine one could afford a yacht or two on those earnings.

That's what capitalism is about--excesses and inequities. Hayward has a yacht, while Louisiana fishermen have no reason now to pilot their hard-banging old shrimp trawlers out of port.

But, sadly, the ignorant Cajun fishermen now venting about Hayward would be the first to punch one in the nose if he mentioned "socialism" as an alternative to the present inequitable system of excesses. They send their sons to "I-rak" to fight for alleged "freedom and the American way" when that American way, as now formulated, is, in reality, their greatest enemy.

They have been indoctrinated for multiple generations by capitalism's propaganda machine to defend with their blood a system that is dumping millions of barrels of crude oil onto them even as BP CEO Tony Hayward sails his yacht during a lark back home. This speaks to the unworkable and futile nature of the American economic experiment.

Our nation has been hijacked by jackals and the common man defends those jackals as they rend him asunder.

D. Grant Haynes

Oil spill disaster should serve as sobering way marker

2010-05-17T01:45:00-07:00

The major and exponentially expanding disaster that is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could not have happened to a more deserving nation and culture, to be brutally honest.

Never in the history of mankind has one cultural or national grouping been as collectively greedy, self-serving, manipulative, hedonistic, heedless of warnings, and destructive of the Earth and of all other races getting in their ways as have Americans since the end of World War II.

Americans must learn the hard way that they cannot always have their ways and control outcomes--that they cannot consistently have the best and most of everything desirable, while running roughshod over all the world.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster will, hopefully, become a sobering episode and way marker in the national history of the United States of America.

D. Grant Haynes

Mark Twain Tonight

2010-03-25T23:51:15-07:00

"That California get-rich-quick disease of my youth spread like wildfire. And it produced a civilization that destroyed the simplicity and repose of life, its poetry, its soft, romantic dreams and visions, and replaced them with the money fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep that does not refresh.

It has produced a thousand useless luxuries and turned them into necessities and satisfied nothing. It has dethroned God and set up a shekel in his place. Oh the dreams of our youth . . . how beautiful they are and how perishable."

Mark Twain Tonight

How 'bout these apples, kick ass patriots!

2009-06-02T23:00:00-07:00

Hummer to be sold to Chinese firm

June 2, 2009

BBC News

General Motors is to sell its Hummer brand to China's Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery for an undisclosed amount.

It is part of GM's plan to reinvent itself by concentrating on fewer brands following Monday's bankruptcy filing.

GM says it hopes the deal will save about 3,000 jobs in the US. Hummer will remain based in the US.
Tengzhong specialises in making equipment for the road, construction and energy industries.

It is based in China's Sichuan province.

Hummers were originally built as military off-road vehicles by a company called AM General.

GM bought the Hummer brand in 1999. Its sales have suffered as the gas-guzzling performance and military image have become less popular... .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8080349.stm

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This lends new meaning to the concept of poetic justice!

I absolutely love it!

Hummers--symbols of all that was wrong in America during the Bush years--symbols of aggressive kick-ass U.S. capitalism that thought it could run roughshod over Iraq and as much of the rest of the planet as it wished--will be made by "Commies"!

Will all the bad boys I used to see cruising Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s Walton Boulevard in Bentonville, Arkansas, with their American flags flapping and the National Rifle Association and Pisces symbols appropriately displayed buy a new model Hummer made by "Godless Communists" in China?

D. Grant Haynes

On the anniversary of 911

2008-09-11T15:10:48-07:00

From Washington Post

Renewed Focus on Hunt for Bin Laden

Washington Post Berlin bureau chief Craig Whitlock discusses the U.S. government's push to capture or kill Osama bin Laden before President Bush leaves office, the failures and handicaps of the search to this point, and the state of al-Qaeda and the U.S.-Pakistani collaboration along the border with Afghanistan... .

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As with the CIA orchestrated murder of Che Guevara a generation ago, the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of Americans or American operatives will not stanch resistance by Third World peoples to domination and exploitation by the United States and her Western allies. Rather, upon his death, bin Laden will belong to the ages as a martyr who dared to stand up to the U.S. giant.

The United States of America is a greedy, exploitative, arrogant, hypocritical bully of a world economic and military power. Americans believe themselves to be exceptional—to be deserving of more than their fair share of all things they deem desirable. And Americans never mind seeing other peoples and cultures exploited and destroyed to prop up US hegemony for a few more years.

As long as America retains her present myopic geopolitical mindset, there will always be another Che Guevara or Osama bin Laden to tweak her tail and remind her of how wrong—how immoral—her trajectory has become.

An idea whose time has arrived cannot be destroyed by bombs, bullets, Special Forces assassins, or CIA drones.

D. Grant Haynes

When everybody gets a ribbon, ribbons lose meaning

2008-08-23T01:55:00-07:00

From Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia universities retain high marks in ‘Best Colleges’ guide

By ANDREA JONES The US News & World Report college rankings will hit the newsstands Monday and, with the exception of one local school that landed with a splash in a new category, many of Georgia’s colleges barely moved at all… .

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Well, for crissake. I’m already suspicious of the “Best Colleges” guide, a news release about which must have landed on the desk of every news editor in the United States this week.

This guide and the home town and regional chest beating it is eliciting remind me of one of those interminably long year end high school awards programs all former teachers have endured where almost every kid there gets to walk onto the stage and receive a token of recognition and a handshake.

When May weary teachers must give everybody a blue ribbon—or a red ribbon—or a yellow ribbon--or, worse yet--a tacky gilded plaque--nobody’s ribbon or tacky gilded plaque means much, except as a bonanza for the proprietor of the local trophy and ribbon shop.

If regional news organizations throughout the nation can lay claim to coveted positions for their favorite colleges and universities in US News and World Report’s “Best Colleges” volume, I have to wonder how significant that praise might be.

Maybe this guide represents another bit of that brand of rah-rah feel good self-congratulatory ego boosting to which American youths are subjected all of their pampered little lives.

Sorry I am so cynical nowadays. I have about seen it all in my time and much of what I have seen did not impress or please me.

D. Grant Haynes