Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Mob Murders CEO in Delhi: Couldn't Happen Here?

The Times of London reports that Lalit Kishore Choudhary, the CEO of the India operations of Graziano Transmissioni, an Italian concern, was killed by a angry mob of factory workers who had been laid off in a suburb of Delhi:

The incident, in Greater Noida, just outside the Indian capital, followed a long-running dispute between the factory's management and workers who had demanded better pay and permanent contracts.

It is understood that Mr Choudhary, who was married with one son, had called a meeting with more than 100 former employees - who had been dismissed following an earlier outbreak of violence at the plant - to discuss a possible reinstatement deal.

A police spokesman said: "Only a few people were called inside. About 150 people were waiting outside when they heard someone from inside shout for help. They rushed in and the two sides clashed. The company staff were heavily outnumbered."

Other executives said they were lucky to escape with their lives. "I just locked my room's door from inside and prayed they would not break in. See, my hands are trembling even three hours later," an Italian consultant, Forettii Gatii, told a local newspaper....

The murder has stoked fears that outbreaks of mob rule risk jeopardising the subcontinent's economic rise.

This couldn't happen here, right?

I mean, it's worth asking, given the workers' revolt now brewing among many of the netroots lumpen blogetariat, seen for example, in Chris Bowers post "
There Is No Crisis - Where's My Pitchfork?":

I thought there was a crisis. Now the government has to step in and help out hugely profitable firms just because one aspect of those banks is as profitable as the rest? Whenever rich people make a mistake, taxpayers have to plug the gap, even if those rich people are still making huge amounts of money?

This is all a lie. They are lying about how much trouble these firms are in. They are lying about their desire for oversight. It is just a big frakkin' lie. I doubt there is a crisis at all. They have done such a good job lying, however, that a majority of the country thinks a bailout is needed.

They are just lying, and looking to make the biggest single rip off in history. If there was a pitchfork and torch event taking place anywhere right now, I'd join in. This seems a helluva a lot like Louis the XVI demanding more money from the Estates General. When does the march on Versailles begin? It might seriously be time for a few hundred thousand people to start sleeping in two shanty towns, one surrounding the Capitol and the other surrounding the White House. If they can get away with this, then they can get away with anything.

The French Revolution got pretty bloody, if I recall.

Look, radical leftist Larisa Alexandrovna called for an insurrection earlier in the week, and now an outraged Bower's is pledging solidarity to a pending violent pitchfork siege of the capitol.

That just crazy talk, no doubt ... there's no risk of mob rule on the North American continent ...


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UPDATE: Well, maybe we'll see a little mob action after all, for example:
Not that we are suggesting this sort of thing is really a good idea, but I bet labor likes the idea quite a lot. It's a bit more brutal than litigating a fallen CEO into a heart attack (or a faked death) but it has a certain... honesty to it. That makes it, if nothing else, damn refreshing. And if anything is going to get murder condoned, it's a credit crunch and high gas prices in the United States. Ouch.
Ouch? The guillotine's supposed to be painless, so who knows?

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