Why should Indymedia readers care? We're shedding no tears for HP (HPQ), Microsoft (MSFT), Intel, etc., that's for sure. But this development -- deflation in electronics -- throws at least one monkey wrench into the globalists' plans. It's maybe as big as the Battle of Seattle because of tech's importance to US-based globalization. Twenty to 30 *brands* of $149 (and under) netbooks / notebooks / laptops -- almost all made by one company, Exon International Technology based in Hong Kong -- ARE HEADED OUR WAY and the globalists' way (at CES). How are Steve Ballmer and HP, etc., going to extract enormous profits from us, on the backs of low-cost labor overseas, in the face of such deflation? It's a serious hitch in their nefarious globalization scheme, as explained below.

Another reason everyone should care, esp. techies at Indymedia: Steve Ballmer and his media lackeys like Ross Rubin are trying to take cheap lapatops-netbooks away from all of us.  http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=hardware&articleId=274899&taxonomyId=12&intsrc=kc_top

PHOTO:  http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ALPHA-400&cpc=SCH
 http://arkansas.indymedia.org/newswire/display/23266/index.php
 http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2009/01/33929.php

The US rulers aren't going to like what they see at the CES 2009 (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas next week. Why? The thing globalists fear most is deflation, esp., in high-tech prices. So they will hate the plans of a Taiwanese distributor of the so-called "Exon Wonders" laptops (Belco, in the photo), which are getting down to the $100 barrier. Basically the current globalization / exploitation plan is: "We think (USA) -- they sweat" (foreigners, esp., the poor in sweatshops). In Marxist terms, the plan is a way of maximizing "relative surplus value" to extract the most profit out of *both* US and foreign labor (surplus value out of other people's labor is where all profit comes from).

US brand-name companies, which dominate the world economy by dollar hegemony, do the thinking (securing capital, planning products, designing, engineering, marketing, etc.) and contract with Taiwanese "manufacturers" of electronics, which employ low-cost labor in Mainland China to do the actual manufacturing. Such plans have proved disastrous since the 1970s for US workers in many industries.

Asian labor has been able since the 1960s to make electronic gadgets cheaper than even robots could in the US. A computer must cost very little indeed to make if a notebook (laptop, netbook, or whatever) can be sold in the US for $149.95 ($89 wholesale, per Exon International). Companies like Hewlett-Packard (world's largest electronics company), Intel, and Microsoft extort their obscene profits out of the whole world by maintaining monopolies based on controversial US patents and copyrights.

Cheap computers for the masses ($150, $100, or less) threaten the profits. At this price, who will pay $35 for a Windows XP license or $18 for a CE license? A $149 PC, like the ones being introed at CES 2009, threatens intellectual property: the more computers out there, the more informal "pirates" (as opposed to real ones like Microsoft).  http://arkansas.indymedia.org/newswire/display/23276/index.php

Foreign electronics prowess threatens the US / Israeli war machine, which is able to employ a relatively small army because it has the most and best high-tech weapons of "Shock and Awe, with "Intel Inside"of course. ("Intel" doesn't just mean "integrated electronics"; it means intelligent systems and military intelligence.) At the same time, Microsoft threatens to lay off 15,000 peoople (2009's labor-control method, stateside?)  http://www.dailytech.com/Rumor+Microsoft+to+Cut+15000+Employees+this+Month/article13841.htm because of their software being bypassed by many of the ultracheap notebooks.

SOME BACKGROUND

As Information Week reported on Dec. 21  http://www.infoweek.ca/index.php/CIO-Central/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1&category_id=81&flypage=shop.flypage〈=en&page=shop.product_details&product_id=3823&vmcchk=1 , a New York company called COBY (sells electronics on bubblepack cards at Big Lots, CVS, etc.) had planned an even cheaper netbook-laptop -- $100. Earlier in the month, a story had been leaked on these plans. Coby Electronics execs denied them when the story came out. Ross Rubin, who works for a market-research company in New York, was the front man for squelching the story. He helped Coby strongarm bloggers, even the search provider Yahoo, into suppressing the story.

However, in a story a week or so later, Rubin admitted that $100 was not that crazy after all, that "as life quickly moved to imitate art" (as he put it), there was now a $170 netbook-notebook  http://www.engadget.com/tag/Alpha400/ . It's the same one that was recently advertised for $149.95 (photo). This shows how bloggers as well as the mainstream media hate price deflation -- it's bad for business.

Now comes Richard Goldberg, presumably Ross Rubin's counterparty at Coby during the Coby netbook-PC flap, who resigned last week!  http://www.twice.com/article/CA6625466.html And that was just 3 weeks after the story and one week before the all-important Consumer Electronics Association 2009 show.

Now really -- Ross, Richard -- was it worth it? Are we going to be in denial on this? Let's face facts so we can do some good in the world.

For the capitalist elite to save globalization is going to take much more than fighting deflation. It will take re-regulation of deregulated businesses, but on a worldwide not nation-state scale. Finally, One World Government shows its true face.
 http://www.indymedia.ie/article/90459  http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2009/01/33929.php  http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=161387