Happy Fitzmas, everyone. Here's something to divert you for a bit.
From the business section, famously sinister secret military-industrial-financial complex cabal The Carlyle Group is making a bid to acquire a donut company.
Why should you care? Because he who controls the donuts, controls the world. And I am only somewhat unserious.
More on the flip.
First, a little about the company in question, just because I have entered bizarroland in researching this diary. Dunkin' Donuts apparently has acquired a loyal and strange following. Witness the following poem:
Dear Dunkin' Donuts, you are my star
You keep me wide awake in class wherever you are, near or far.
I lovingly sip your luscious coffee
And sleep is exorcised like a demon from each deep dark corner of me.
Your aromas make me yearn for more, more and more, down to my core.
I answer your calls and sprint to my temple - your store
Buying more luscious coffee with milk
And spoonfuls of pure sugar white as driven snow, never making me ill -
On the contrary, they fill me
With glee
Your savory donuts, Boston Creme, French Cruller
Allow me to experience titillation on my taste buds, and become fuller.
This is only one of many odes and analyses that may be found on DunkinDonutsTalk.com, a site entirely devoted to the appreciation of Dunkin' Donuts. Don't afraid to check it out while you're waiting for something important to happen. There is a "Spiritual" section, which included this moving entry:
Last Friday, in a cemetery north of Philadelphia, off Route 1, across from a Radisson, around the corner from a Texaco station and behind a Dunkin' Donuts--we buried my best friend from the Miami Beach days. He was 43 years old. Breast cancer.
As I stood there looking at the quiet casket (traffic from Route 1 irreverently loud in the background), I thought about all that George Zifferblatt and I had done together as teenagers: the boating, the spearfishing, the lobsterpoaching, the wild boar hunting (I know, a wild boar hunter doesn't quite fit my nerdy image). And now for all these things (and so much more) to climax, to converge, and to end at a single point, a hole in the ground behind a Dunkin' Donuts? It makes no sense.
Yet because so much of the world does make sense, irrevocably so, in that it's logical, rational, purposeful (the sun gives us light and heat, plants make air, gravity holds us to the earth, the heart pumps blood), it's the height of absurdity for human life (the beneficiary of all these sensible, logical, and purposeful natural phenomena) to end in such meaninglessness. How can so many of the individual and finite things of nature--in and of themselves replete with points and opulent with purpose--so beautifully, precisely, and artfully climax into nothing more than a hole behind Dunkin' Donuts?
Well, so anyway. Dunkin' Donuts, besides converging with many of the great forces that make human life so beautiful and poignant, is also big and rich. They have enough to have a sports arena named after them in Providence, RI, home of the Boston (I mean the Providence?) Bruins (when the heck did that happen?). They sponsored a folk festival this August in Newport, RI, which featured crazy right-wingers like Elvis Costello, the Pixies, and Arlo Guthrie.
None of it, none of it makes any sense! All right, they're just a donut company.
But the Carlyle Group makes sense. You all know who they are, right? They're the insanely-rich private investment company managed and advised by a collection of big corporate CEOs, major political honchos, and former heads of state. Their offices, according to wikipedia, "are on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol building."
Carlyle's current chairman is Lou Gerstner, formerly CEO of IBM. He has also been CEO of RJR Nabisco, Inc., as well as president of American Express. He serves on the boards of Bristol-Myers Squibb, DaimlerChrysler & Sony, and has in past years served on the boards of The New York Times, AT&T, Caterpillar Inc., Jewel Companies, and the Melville Corporation. Additionally he is a Director of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Can you say "POWER," anyone? Other senior managers have connections to MCI, Sprint Nextel, Marriott, Pepsico, J.P. Morgan Chase, and... the Council on Foreign Relations.
More famous Carlyle members and alums, of course, include George H.W. Bush, Reagan defense secretary Frank Carlucci, James Baker III, some of the Binladins, Colin Powell, former British P.M. John Major, and several other ex-heads-of-state (e.g. Anand Panyarachun of Thailand, Fidel Ramos of the Phillipines, and Park Tae Joon of South Korea).
A brief perusal of the Carlyle Group's website gives one a sense of the extent of their investments, which are distributed among "focus industries" which include "Aerospace and Defense," "Energy and Power," "Telecom and Media," and "Opportunistic"(?), among other things. Their financial dealings reach tentacles into all kinds of places and businesses you might not expect (as well as those you might). Here are just a few things that Carlyle has recently acquired:
NP Aerospace, a UK manufacturer of "composite moulded products" such as ballistic resistant helmets, body armor, and light-armored vehicle structures.
Belden & Blake Corporation, a large oil and gas producer based in Canton, OH.
Universidad Latinoamericana, a private university based in Mexico City.
The Gakusei Engokai Co., a Japanese publisher of job placement magazines.
AxleTech, a Troy, MI supplier of axles, brakes, and drivetrain components "for off-highway and specialty vehicles to the commercial and military markets."
The Shionogi Qualicaps Group, a Japanese group that manufactures hard capsules for the pharmaceutical and nutritional industries.
A large office building in central London, close to Waterloo Station, to be developed into hotels.
Britax Childcare, a UK manufacturer of child safety seats.
An 85% stake in the Xugong Group, the largest construction machinery manufacturer and distributor in China.
Compusearch software systems, which are used by the federal government for "procurement automation and grants management."
For the record, they also own Dr. Pepper/7-up. And now they want to own our donuts.
The point is not that everything Carlyle owns is sinister, though some things are. The point is, they own a lot. They own it all over the world. And they have startlingly close ties to the U.S. government.
Here's what an October 31, 2001 Guardian story had to say about the Carlyle Group:
It should be a deep cause for concern that a closely held company like Carlyle can simultaneously have directors and advisers that are doing business and making money and also advising the president of the United States," says Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit-making Washington think-tank. "The problem comes when private business and public policy blend together. What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about US policy in the Middle East? What hat does he use when he deals with South Korea, and causes policy changes there? Or when James Baker helps argue the presidential election in the younger Bush's favour? It's a kitchen-cabinet situation, and the informality involved is precisely a mark of Carlyle's success. [...]
But what sets Carlyle apart is the way it has exploited its political contacts. When Carlucci arrived there in 1989, he brought with him a phalanx of former subordinates from the CIA and the Pentagon, and an awareness of the scale of business a company like Carlyle could do in the corridors and steak-houses of Washington. In a decade and a half, the firm has been able to realise a 34% rate of return on its investments, and now claims to be the largest private equity firm in the world. Success brought more investors, including the international financier George Soros and, in 1995, the wealthy Saudi Binladin family, who insist they long ago severed all links with their notorious relative. The first president Bush is understood to have visited the Binladins in Saudi Arabia twice on the firm's behalf. [...]
But if the Binladins' connection to the Carlyle Group lasted no more than six years, the current President Bush's own links to the firm go far deeper. In 1990, he was appointed to the board of one of Carlyle's first purchases, an airline food business called Caterair, which they eventually sold at a loss. He left the board in 1992, later to become Governor of Texas.
George... it's Fitzmas Day.
You may be looking for a new position soon.
But don't worry, Daddy has something all set up for you (in the "Opportunistic" category). We guarantee it... Dunkin' Donuts will accept your resume.