Babylon Falling-Blog-

Mussolini-Style Corporatism in Action: Treasury Conference Call on Bailout Bill to Analysts

“Various readers wrote us, and it was confirmed by a detailed report on the call at DealBreaker, that the Treasury Department held a conference call this evening for analysts on the bailout bill. A memo was evidently sent to SIFMA members; others may have been contacted by other means. But the report I got from one person who was on the call was the the questions came from financial services industry members. In other words, this was most assuredly not intended to be a call open to the public at large. If anyone from the media or other member of the great unwashed was listening in, it was by accident.

This is simply scandalous. To have a group of interested parties get a privileged briefing by government officials on a matter of keen public interest flies in the face of what a democracy is supposed to be about.

Click Here to read the full article over at Naked Capitalism complete with a link to download the audio as well as live blogging from some sympathetic soul sitting in on the call.

Click Here to listen to a conversation with Slavoj Zizek recorded this past Tuesday, September 23rd.

His retainer speaking style is iller than the G Rap lisp. Can’t recommend this enough. He really is on some shit.

The Elvis of the intelligensia, Slavoj Zizek, hot-links in our one-way conversation…

…from nominating George W. Bush (for his trillion-dollar bail-out) to the Communist Party to Kung-Fu Panda,

…from John McCain (”Bush with lipstick”) to Naomi Klein,

…from Barack Obama’s risk of the “John Kerry syndrome” to the experience we’re all having of putting on the reality sunglasses in John Carpenter’s “They Live,”

…from the movies “Fight Club” and “300″ (which he says left-populists should be studying) to his reading of gold-digger Kate Croy in Henry James’ Wings of the Dove as a plausible model of political militancy,

…from Immanuel Kant’s notion of the sublime, to racist jokes with a moral purpose.

via www.radioopensource.org

Matt is still on his road/rail trip around the country and is now in NYC. You can follow his trip at his photo blog here.

Below are a few of the pictures he got from the bailout protest down on Wall St. yesterday.

Spectacle.

Shaun just dropped off the photos from last night’s opening reception, Two Sides To Every Boxcar, with buZ blurr. Click the picture above to go the Events page to a slideshow of the photos. My favorite picture is the one of buZ and Emory Douglas…nowhere else at no other time would those two paths ever cross. Saw buZ signing books, dvds, stickers, paper bags, flyers, etc. A good turnout and it was all love.

buZ it was a pleasure to meet you…I owe you a shit load of mail…and some keys.

Take5…one of a kind for real. Respect for coming out.

Respect to everyone that helped get everything together.

A reading list for the times.

End of America - Naomi Wolf.

10 steps that comprise the blueprint to dismantling democracy utilized by all “would be despots”. When you’re through with this one make sure to check the recently released Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries , also by Naomi Wolf.

I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 - Victor Klemperer.

Watch it all unfold day by day. Key date: March 23, 1933 - Reichstag passes Hitler’s Enabling Act.

Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein.

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change.” - Milton Friedman

Blackwater - Jeremy Scahill.

Battle tested and coming to a neighborhood near you.

Heavy stuff here but Scahill keeps it light with the occassional anecdote. My favorite being the fact that former Inspector General of the Department of Defense, Joseph Schmitz, is the brother of that infamous cradle robber Mary Kay Letourneau.

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression - Studs Terkel.

Break Their Haughty Power: Joe Murphy in the Heyday of the Wobblies - Eugene Nelson.

Hobo etiquette for the uninitiated.