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Oracle Dumps PeopleSoft Employees
curtain writes "The first move in Oracle's dismantling of PeopleSoft has begun. The cuts will affect about 9% of the 55,000 staff of the combined companies.
From the article:
"We're mourning the passing of a great company," Peoplesoft worker David Ogden as saying. Other employees said they would rather be sacked than work for Oracle."
In the old way, you could also pack what you could of all your family's belongings and smuggle yourself to apply for refugee status in some other country. In case of many families today in many businesses the hardships involved are on a comparable scale. In some places in the 3rd world where the multi-nationals run the show (own the police and government) you do not have even that choice and you are simply an indentured slave.
there isn't a whole lot of bloodshed.
Unless we are talking oil (Middle-east) or diamonds (Africa) or some other resource in short supply such as geographical location (Panama, Suez).
In short the original poster was 100% correct, all that has changed are the names and the same ugly, vile and evil ways of some people only got a pretty, cheery wallpaper pasted over them to make them more pallatable for those who wish to ignore the facts as not to "clutter their beautiful minds" (quoting Barbara Bush) with such trivia so that they can keep on living in their McFantasy world.
Getting from Oracle and Peoplesoft to Bush is an asshole in the middle east in two easy posts.
Sure, where big money can be made and legitimate law and order are scarce - thugs with guns will profit on expensive goods. Be they diamonds or cocaine. Some multinationals actively support these activities, others avoid them at all costs and hold themselves to a higher standard. Most just try to avoid the most obvious interactions with the thugs and will allow themselves to be "duped" by middlemen.
I never really bought into the concept that the war in Iraq was mostly an oil thing. It just doesn't make sense. If the priority was to get the oil, it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper and easier just to drop sanctions and buy some. Is Iraq even producing as much oil now as it was under OfF? Iraqis don't exactly love us these days either. Will they really let US companies control the oil fields in 10 years? Just doesn't make sense to me.
I think Bush geniunely believed that he could make the world a better place by invading Iraq. I'm not saying oil interests weren't a factor, or a factor for those around him, I just don't think they were the prime motivation.
That is probably correct (although I would hesitate to put "Bush" and "thinking" in one sentence) but I was referring to Middle-east in generic terms, Iraq not being specifically mentioned. While oversimplification is always a danger, one can safely assume that most of the morass of problems would not exist there if it were not for the West and the USSR fighting it out for control of oil in that region for decades and before that the Western powers between themselves. Toss in a bunch of stark raving mad, batshit insane religious lunatics on all sides (Israeli Jews, Wahhabists, Fundamentalist Christians in the US) and you will get what we have now: a total crapfest.
As to Bush, I think that what he was believing is of far lesser consequence as compared to what his masters and handlers (Rove, Cheney, Wolfovitz, Pearle etc) were believing, a major part of which was insane, miltaristic, imperious, messianic, Israel-flavoured ideology comibned with a heavy dose of corporate greed.