My Letter to the Irish News about the 'Occupy' protests

[Tyrones own]

Ok so let me ask it another way in attempt to ward off the straw man
Which law is it in particular and or differing circumstances that Stew
IM and myself are living under that are not readily available to the
"poor" that are camped out in Zuccotti park or those wreaking havoc
in Oakland 

If it was a law that was the problem it would be 'Occupy Washington' wouldn't it?

The differing circumstances are that you, for whatever reason, blame the easy target. Compare the military spend and the healthcare spends. Which are you rabidly offended by?

Lord Trevelyan did the same. According to him the famine was entirely the fault of the Irish and God was on his side.

Would you ever stand still for once FFS...from military spending
to health care to........................the famine 

Let me try again;
What opportunities are there out there that Stew, IM and myself are
offered or gifted that the Protesters are not?

[Tyrones own]

Fox is as reliable as any other news network

Maybe we should all subscribe to Ariana Huffington,
cause that's where the real news is...right Eamonn!

Tell us this:

Is Fox News as reliable as any other news network?

Wouldn't be entirely sure but if ratings are anything
to go by, then.........

Is Eamonn's own choice of news in Ariana reliable?

To

Tell us something you learnt on Fox. Like what do they say about the US economy ?  Or Afghanistan \
Did you like Beck  ? 
Do you like Ann Coulter ?

It's extremely rare that I watch the Fox news channel but tell me this
...would that be one of those assumptions that muppet regularly polices the board for?
He must just miss all the ones that are fired in this direction
Strange that!

[seafoid]

Fox is as reliable as any other news network

Maybe we should all subscribe to Ariana Huffington,
cause that's where the real news is...right Eamonn!

Tell us this:

Is Fox News as reliable as any other news network?

Wouldn't be entirely sure but if ratings are anything
to go by, then.........

Is Eamonn's own choice of news in Ariana reliable?

To

Tell us something you learnt on Fox. Like what do they say about the US economy ?  Or Afghanistan \
Did you like Beck  ? 
Do you like Ann Coulter ?

It's extremely rare that I watch the Fox news channel but tell me this
...would that be one of those assumptions that muppet regularly polices the board for?
He must just miss all the ones that are fired in this direction
Strange that!

Where do you get your news? 

[muppet]

Ok so let me ask it another way in attempt to ward off the straw man
Which law is it in particular and or differing circumstances that Stew
IM and myself are living under that are not readily available to the
"poor" that are camped out in Zuccotti park or those wreaking havoc
in Oakland 

If it was a law that was the problem it would be 'Occupy Washington' wouldn't it?

The differing circumstances are that you, for whatever reason, blame the easy target. Compare the military spend and the healthcare spends. Which are you rabidly offended by?

Lord Trevelyan did the same. According to him the famine was entirely the fault of the Irish and God was on his side.

Would you ever stand still for once FFS...from military spending
to health care to........................the famine 

Let me try again;
What opportunities are there out there that Stew, IM and myself are
offered or gifted that the Protesters are not?

If you work in Wall Street you are gifted a system whereby if you win you get rich and if you lose the taxpayer coughs up and you can try again.

[The Iceman]

Is that what you really think Muppet. Everyone who works on Wall Street falls into this statement or just the actual corporations themselves? Is it just Wall Street or would you include anyone who works for say a major private company or Fortune 500....?

[Declan]

Is that what you really think Muppet. Everyone who works on Wall Street falls into this statement or just the actual corporations themselves?

Not eveyone but the very top boyos

The Self-Attribution Fallacy
November 7, 2011
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.


By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th November 2011

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves(1). He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers, across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers across Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out they blanked him. "The illusion of skill ... is deeply ingrained in their culture."(2)

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgement, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses(3). They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact on these criteria they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded(4). Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family you're likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. CEOs now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are the chosen ones, possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed upon the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Thatcher and Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattoed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80% , while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%(5). In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%(6).

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%(7). The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009(.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived(9). Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, think tanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the Corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London(10). It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the Corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

[The Iceman]

I disagree with the majority of that Declan. I know self made millionaires in Ireland who took the chance and dreamed big and did everything they could to make it happen.
I make decent money in the U.S and always have made good enough money in any job I have worked in. None of it is by birth, or by exploitation of others. I'm not overly intelligent, I am not in any cliques or groups, I wouldn't be a good 'ole boy. And there are 1000s of us out there.

I remember being told by someone growing up that if you are rich someone else is living without. What a pile of shite.
The best thing you can do for poor people is not be one of them. If you have money you don't keep in a big stash in your mattress. Local businesses see it, barbers, butchers, restaurants, super markets, churches...it all trickles down.

I'll tell you what sickens me is the Irish begrudgery.

If I came home to Armagh tomorrow, broke and down on my luck I would have people lining up to pity and help me. Great fella there, God love him home from America without a penny. But if I come home with any sniff of success, and sign of doing well for myself, few people have anything good to say about you. Cnut home from America thinks he is the big shot.

And it isn't just people coming home with money. It's anybody at home who has money. They are begrudged. Business owners who have done well for themselves, shower of tramps.....

Some people are only happy when they are miserable and every else is too.

[stew]

Actually, my news source of choice is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The daily show has a liberal slant, as does John Stewart, you are a one trick pony then, thats what i thought. I think it is dangerous to listen to John Stewart and no one else, hell I am interested in what he has to say, he is an intelligent man and he is entertaining if not a little too  left wing for my taste.

Beck is a feckin fruitcake and should not be taken seriously but for every beck you have an equally moronic liberal.

There are a lot of lazy, smug gits on this thread, neandertals who seem to think FOX bad CNN good, you are a sad lot really but it explains a lot.

Riddle me this, do any of you think that there is a bad liberal news station out there??? probably not right!

I know, why don't we just cave and become liberals, that way we will all think alike, be on the right side and that way i can get my cred back, whatever the fcuk that is.

You are like a flock of sheep and have about the same amount of imagination, FOX news, Fox news. Fox new's, you idiots think that is all we do and were we get our information from, you are wrong.

Rant over.

Everyone have a nice day now. (except you liberal motherfcukers) 

One last thing, once again America needs a third party option.

[stew]

Attention liberals....................... your commander in chief has something to say!

French President Sarkozy called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a liar in a conversation with President Obama caught on an open mic at last week's G-20 summit.

"I can't look at him [Netanyahu] anymore, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, the French media website Arret Sur Images reported.

"You've had enough of him, but I have to deal with him every day," Obama is said to have responded.

The private conversation happened last Thursday in the southern French city of Cannes, heard by half a dozen journalists whose headphones were still receiving audio from the presidents' wireless microphones.

The handful of reporters included one from the Reuters news agency who confirmed the quotes.

"By the time the team from the Elysee [presidential palace] realized, it must have been three minutes," one of the journalists told Arret Sur Images.

Reporters who overheard the remarks decided not to report them because they were intended to be private, but the news leaked out on the Internet nonetheless.

"We didn't record anything and using them [the comments] would admit that we cheated," an anonymous reporter told the website.

It also quoted another member of the media saying, "there were discussions among the journalists there who decided not to do anything. It's a sensitive subject: it's annoying to not publish this information, but at the same time we have agreed to precise ethical rules and printing these sentences would mean violating them."

Netanyahu's office declined ABC News' request for comment and the White House has yet to respond.

Sarkozy and Obama were discussing the recent admission of Palestine to UNESCO, part of its bid to get recognition at the United Nations. The U.S. opposes the Palestinian efforts and Obama was reportedly chiding Sarkozy for not telling him France would vote in favor of Palestine in the UNESCO vote. The U.S. later withdrew its funding for the cultural body which amounts to $70 million annually.

The conversation then turned to Netanyahu, which is when Sarkozy is said to have called him a liar.

At least publicly, the three countries are united on the issue of the day: crippling sanctions for Iran when the International Atomic Energy Agency releases its latest report this week.

Though Iran was the top story in the Israeli media on Tuesday, the main newspapers also ran the Arret Sur Images report.

The Jerusalem Post reported that a spokesman for the opposition party Kadima -- whose last campaign slogan was "Bibi [Netanyahu's nickname], I don't believe him" -- declined to comment, saying, "What Sarkozy said is more than enough."

Nice of the Liberal President to be led by the nose by Israel. America needs a president who will take no shite from Israel, clearly Barak is not that man.
Also Read

[Fear ón Srath Bán]

Great article Declan, and see it has a few coin-tossing chimps in a tizz! 

The Self-Attribution Fallacy
November 7, 2011
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 8th November 2011

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy.

...

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers across Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out they blanked him. "The illusion of skill ... is deeply ingrained in their culture."(2)

...

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Thatcher and Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattoed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But between 1979 and 2009, productivity rose by 80% , while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%(5). In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%(6).

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%(7). The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009(.

...

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, think tanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing.

...

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

[Declan]

I disagree with the majority of that Declan. I know self made millionaires in Ireland who took the chance and dreamed big and did everything they could to make it happen.

Fair enough - I know plenty of lads who have done well for themselves as well and I wouldn't classify them in the same bracket - Look at the headline again
Intelligence? Talent? No, the ultra-rich got to where they are through luck and brutality.

Local businesses see it, barbers, butchers, restaurants, super markets, churches...it all trickles down

The evidence doesn't support that trickle down effect Iceman - look at the stats again in the article

Your point re begrudgery I think is a separate discussion but there's a reason people are "occupying" places across the world and it's not because they've been brainwashed or are lazy good for nothing hippies etc. They are becoming aware that the game is rigged and are complaining against the basic injustice of it all - As Geroge Carlin famously said - Its called the American Dream because you'd want to be asleep to believe it!! 

[The Iceman]

What is ultra rich? the 1%?
What about the boys in between? Is there a category for them because the way I feel its a case of "if you're not with us you're against us"

I would have figured millionaire in Armagh was ultra rich..... and you couldn't meet a nicer lad.....

[heganboy]

Attention liberals....................... your commander in chief has something to say!

What are you talking about?

FOX bad CNN good,

Riddle me this, do any of you think that there is a bad liberal news station out there??? probably not right!

You think CNN is either liberal or good?

[Tyrones own]

Ok so let me ask it another way in attempt to ward off the straw man
Which law is it in particular and or differing circumstances that Stew
IM and myself are living under that are not readily available to the
"poor" that are camped out in Zuccotti park or those wreaking havoc
in Oakland 

If it was a law that was the problem it would be 'Occupy Washington' wouldn't it?

The differing circumstances are that you, for whatever reason, blame the easy target. Compare the military spend and the healthcare spends. Which are you rabidly offended by?

Lord Trevelyan did the same. According to him the famine was entirely the fault of the Irish and God was on his side.

Would you ever stand still for once FFS...from military spending
to health care to........................the famine 

Let me try again;
What opportunities are there out there that Stew, IM and myself are
offered or gifted that the Protesters are not?

If you work in Wall Street you are gifted a system whereby if you win you get rich and if you lose the taxpayer coughs up and you can try again.

Ok now were getting down to the point of where its blatantly obvious that you
once again are over your head and have no clue as to how to even make a point
...merely humming along with the choir here in a big boy conversation
in yet another attempt to show how smart you are...not!
What if (for a third time) I was to let you in on the wee secret that none of the three of us work on Wall St...how does that factor in to your non answer?

[seafoid]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-davis-elcentro-20111108,0,6445667.story