Pritisak

Iz "Briefinga":

Ponudu uprave T-HT-a da prihvate stimulativne otpremnine za odlazak iz tvrtke prihvatilo je 2.300 zaposlenika, izvijestio je T-HT. Otpremnine iznose od 129.000 do 221.000 kuna neto za one koji su u T-HT-u proveli više od pet godina, a Republički sindikat radnika hrvatske pošte i telekomunikacija tvrdi da je dio zaposlenika ponudu prihvatio pod velikim pritiskom.

Da, pritiskalu su ih tiskajući im u ruke otpremninu o kakvoj "obični" radnici koji ostanu bez posla mogu samo sanjati. Zašto se sindikati nekadašnjih (i sadašnjih) državnih monopola ponašaju kao svete krave?

Metro full of Da Vinci

Alas, the Dan Brown's novel, not the Italian master's works. The fact that the novel which, in my opinion, does not deserve special attention, manages to comprise perhaps half of Paris commuters' current library is really a tribute to literary marketing.

On Graphomania

My current book for the metro is Milan Kundera’s “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” (“Kniha Smichu a Zapomneni”) from 1978. It’s interesting that the English translation I am reading was done in 1995 from “the authentic French edition”, as Kundera put it, not from the Check original. Anyway, instead of a review (which I might yet attempt), I am noting here several thoughts the author had about writing:

That conversation with the taxi driver [who said he was writing a book but his children weren't interested in what he was doing] suddenly made clear to me the essence of the writer’s occupation. We write books because our children aren’t interested in us. We address ourselves to an anonymous world because our wives plus their ears when we speak to them.

The paragraphs that follow this might very well be applied to weblogs and bloggers who write them (except, perhaps, the bit about there being no dramatic social changes), and therefore, to myself:

You might say that the taxi driver was not a writer but a graphomaniac. So we need to be precise about our concepts. A woman who writes her lover four letters a day is not a graphomaniac. She is a lover. But my friend who makes photocopies of his love letters to publish them someday is a graphomaniac. Graphomania is not a desire to write letters (to write for oneself or one’s close relations) but a desire to write books (to have a public of unknown readers). In that sense, the taxi driver and Goethe share the same passion. What distinguishes Goethe from the taxi driver is not a difference n passion but one passion’s different results.  

Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions:

1. an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
   
   
2. a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
   
   
3. the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life. (From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is twenty-one times higher than in Israel. Bibi [a young woman intending to write “a book about the world as she sees it”] is, moreover, right to say that looked as from the outside, she hasn’t experienced anything. The mainspring that drives her to write is just that absence of vital content, that void.)

But by a backlash, the effect affects the cause. General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized graphomania in turn intensifies and worsens isolation. The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside.

[Quoted from Milan Kundera: “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”, translation by Aaron Asher, Faber and Faber, 2000; used without permission]

Yes, 'Daily Mirror', sadly, ...

... 59 million people really can be so dumb! (Go here, look for Nov 4 2004 at the bottom if it fell off the page.) It's not so simple, of course, and it did help that Karl Rove is clearly a genius, but still....

So, it is over now, and no post can change anything (as if anybody reads this), but I will nevertheless post the list of Dubya's accomplishments that I got (via multiple forwards) from one of Democrats' "flying lawyers". Some on the items are slightly tongue-in-cheek, some might not even be completely true, and some, most frighteningly, will be considered real accomplishments by those 59 million. But at least they won't be able to say in four years that somebody else screwed them...

Anyway, here it goes:

• I attacked and took over 2 countries.
• I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.
• I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).
• I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in a 12 month period.
• I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
• I am the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
• In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president. (Tough to beat dad's, but I did).
• After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.
• I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.
• In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.
• I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.
• I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period.
• I appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
• I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.
• I signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any other US president in history.
• I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
• I cut health care benefits for war veterans.
• I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.
• I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
• I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.
• Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleezza Rice, has a Chevron oil tanker named after her.)
• I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.
• I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.
• I am the first president in US history to order a US attack AND military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.
• I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security"(only one letter away from BS).
• I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history (Ronnie was tough to beat,but I did it!!).
• I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.
• I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.
• I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.
• I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.
• I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
• I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.
• I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
• The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
• I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
• I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.
• I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
• I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
• I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
• I set the all-time record for the number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling their huge investments in corporations bidding for gov't contracts.
• I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.
• I entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.
• RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
• I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).
• I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.
• I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.
• All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
• All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
• All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.
• Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

(Update from 2020's: we thought we saw it all. And then came Agent Orange...)