There's an earthquake in Taiwan,
2 people are dead, many injured
most of the Asia Pacific is left with no Internet access

but wait...oh, thank god! The stock markets are okay!


All that matters is capitalism.

shaking hands with totalitarianism

India-Singaporean consortium signs oil, gas deal with Myanmar
The Associated Press
Published: December 8, 2006

YANGON, Myanmar: An Indian and Singaporean consortium has signed a deal with the military junta in Myanmar to jointly drill for oil and gas off the country's west coast, state-run media reported Friday.

The contract signed Wednesday between the consortium of Gail India Ltd. and Silver Wave Energy of Singapore and the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise calls for the companies to jointly explore, drill and produce oil and gas in offshore Block A-7 off Myanmar's western Rakhine coast, the Kyemon daily reported.

Financial details of the contract were unavailable.

More details about Singapore's happy connections with the Burmese elite available here

12 Days of Christmas

I can't decide if I find this hilarious or offensive.

Stan Goff talks some serious shit about marxism, feminism and the united states left

"With some sadness and with not the least desire to devalue the experiences I have had with comrades, nor to minimize the hard work, nor the consciousness and concience, nor the friendship of many comrades, I am herein announcing and explaining my definitive rejection of Marxism in its current organizational forms, be they called Marxist-Leninist or Trotskyist or Maoist.

This decision comes after months of intense reflection. I will not attempt to separate the personal from the political reasons. My personal life, as a spouse, father, grandfather, friend, and member of local and poltical communities, is my most direct window on the world, and the experience against which I have to measure any political belief or organizational theory. Even moreso, as I now find myself indefinitely caring again for an infant; and thereby bound to the house in the same way as many women, constantly being confronted with the most immediate and practical necessities. The kind of politics that does not take these constraints as the starting point of all politics is what I am now taking under long review.

One of my primary disappointments has been what I consider the failure to take seriously the struggle against patriarchy, and to give it the same weight in our organizing as we do class and national oppression. There have been only token efforts in this regard, and no serious initiative that I have seen to go outside the canon to understand this system. Worse, there has been a reactive embrace of liberal-libertarian “feminism” by many comrades… which I consider to be a sly academic reassertion of male power in the consumer-choice package of “freedom,” undermining the whole analysis of gender as a system. But this is not the crux of the issue for me. Feminism was the gateway to a number of other interrogations of the assumptions of organized Marxism."

Read the whole thing (long and very very chewable) here