We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore LappĂ©, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Death and Joblessness

by Annie Lowrey from The Washington Independent

The author takes an intimate look at how unemployment is driving some in the US to suicide.
The stories show the deeper wounds of unemployment, and especially long-term unemployment. It is not just the loss of a job, but the loss of community, routine and purpose. It means worse health. It means higher rates of divorce. It means alcohol abuse. All of these are also risk factors for suicide.

Contradiction and the Law of Value (2 videos: 8:10m & 7:12m)

from Kapitalism101.

The videos (and transcript) explains the basic Marxist concepts of exchange and use value, surplus value (profit), and other related concepts important in understanding the capitalist system.
Society has enough food, housing and technology that the entire world’s population could work a lot less and still have all of the basic amenities of life. (Maybe we couldn’t all have mansions, fancy cars, and all the expensive cocaine we wanted, but we could live comfortable lives.) And they’d probably be more fulfilling if we didn’t spend our whole life working for someone else. But we don’t have such a society because our labor is not aimed at creating use-values for society but at creating profit for capital.

Pakistan flood catastrophe: West gives `billions for killing, little for life'

by John Passant from International Journal of Socialist Renewal.  

The sharp contrast between the aid the US is giving to Pakistan to allay the terrible suffering from the recent floods and the military spending in the "war on terror" shows, once again, that the Empire's real intentions in this war is the domination of that area of the world.

In this article the author argues that the US ruling class is not only terrorizing the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also the earth's ecological system. We can expect "blowback" from newly recruited "terrorists" as well as from a damaged ecological system in the form of more extreme weather incidents.

Time out

General McChrystal’s New Job: Dig a Bit, Please

by Russ Baker from Who, What, Why

The writer is an investigative journalist who authored Family of Secrets, which I highly recommend, about the Bush dynasty and its shenanigans. Here he takes a look at the hiring of the recently fired General McChrystal and his new job at Yale, one of US' leading universities.

The incident illustrates once again that the ruling class is insuring that those who serve the military-industrial complex insinuate themselves into the leading universities to maintain the latter's focus on serving the Empire. 

The incident also illustrates how the system works, and that it works as a system to insure that all of its components are working in harmony with the leaders of the system--those who profit from the private ownership of important economic property. 

In this example it involves a leading educational institution that trains and indoctrinates a variety of professionals who will be assigned leading roles in the various institutions of society. Once there they in turn insure that those institutions and their personnel serve the values and needs of the capitalist ruling class. 

Such a system depends upon a hierarchical system to enable a small ruling class to control all the components of a society. Thus unquestioning obedience to authority is one of the basic virtues that is inculcated in all citizens throughout their lives. Those whose behavior does not reflect that virtue almost inevitably find themselves marginalized occupationally, economically, and socially. But there are exceptions.

Although in this example the General was fired for insubordination, usually a key sin in a hierarchical system, during his career he has clearly demonstrated allegiance to the Empire and its ruling class. Thus the "authorities" don't really mind that he was insubordinate to another of their employees, the President of the US.

Crisis. What Crisis? Profits Soar!

by James Petras from Voltaire

In this article the author reports on the bonanza of profits that big corporations are enjoying by mostly exploiting the opportunities that this current economic crisis provides. And he is critical of progressives who keep claiming that the system will disintegrate due to its contradictions.
While Exxon-Mobile reaped over 100% growth of profits in 2010 and the auto corporations recorded their biggest profits in recent years, the workers’ wages and living standards declined and state-sector employees suffered harsh cutbacks and massive layoffs. It is clear that the recovery of corporate profit is based on the harshest exploitation of labor and the biggest transfers of public resources to the large private corporations. The capitalist state, with Democratic President Obama in the lead, has transferred billions to big capital via direct bailouts, virtual interest free loans, tax cuts and by pressuring labor to accept lower wages and health and pension givebacks. The White House plan for ‘recovery’ has worked beyond expectations – corporate profits have recovered; “only” the vast majority of workers have fallen deeper into crises.

Behind the Hamptons Hedges

by Jessica Flint from Vanity Fair. This week's visit to the habitats of our fellow Americans referred to as the 1%. Check out their lives and see how much we have in common with them.
The Hamptons  were once an idyllic enclave where Manhattanites decamped to escape the bustle of city life. But in recent summers, the sleepy community on the Atlantic Ocean has become infested with pop-up shops, bass-thumping nightclubs, and publicity parties. If you look for it, though, the romantic charm of Long Island’s South Fork does still exist. We asked eight young people who do the East End right to show us around their Hamptons habitats.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Global Empire and the International Banking Cartel (part 2)

by Damon Vrabel from Council on Renewal. This is a continuation of last week's article--see my post regarding Part 1. 

From my cursory review of this website, it appears to me that he comes from a libertarian point of view in company with Ron Paul, Ellen Brown, etc, but his understanding of politics in the broadest sense appears to be very limited. I do not share his libertarian perspective as I've argued previously in this post. But much of the work exposing the banking scams have been done by libertarians, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.

The author makes some very interesting observations and assertions, but I need far more study of the subject to evaluate his points. I don't think that the subject of banking and money is all that difficult; but because it has been so obfuscated beyond recognition and the difficulty in finding reliable, informed sources of information, it takes time to unravel. To be sure, it is a vital, necessary-to-understand subject if we are to create a world safe for working people.

For a European coordination of struggle against the debt and austerity plans !

from CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt). (Why not abolish all world debt owed to the large banking cartels?) This article reports on European efforts to join together to fight back against the austerity measures that the European elites are imposing upon their societies.
With the help of the IMF and of the European Commission, Capital and the leaders of European countries are resolved to have the lower classes pay for the crisis.

What is at stake is social regression, rising unemployment, and a challenging of peoples’ fundamental rights.

Top Expert: Geology is "Fractured", Relief Wells May Fail ... BP is Using a "Cloak of Silence", Refusing to Share Even Basic Data with the Government

from Washington's Blog

It seems to me that corporate secrecy over a major catastrophic event such as the oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates so dramatically how private interests (corporations, ruling class) today thoroughly trump the public interest. BP's secrecy has been carefully hidden from public view and revealed by this source.

Is WikiLeaks the antidote to the Washington K Street Kool-Aid?

by Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould from Boiling Frogs. More cogent observations about the recent WikiLeaks revelations.
The logic train of the war on terror and its fundamental rooting in Afghanistan had finally become clear. The perpetual Taliban/Al Qaeda threat fueled a perpetual war that could never be won, justifying an endless string of restrictions on civil liberties and governmental transparency, which then prevented Americans from seeing how their money was spent. Locked out of this “alternative geography of the United States,” Americans have become helpless to stop their democracy and their economy from being lifted right out from under them.
 

Stop Talkin' Bout a Green(washed) Revolution

by Sandy LeonVest from Toward Freedom

I think the author makes the very relevant point of targeting liberal environmentalists who refuse to target the US war machine in order to remain "respectable" to ruling class authorities. Educated middle class people who engage in activism of any sort are often exceedingly careful not to go against the interests of the ruling class. Such people pose a major problem for activist groups. Their expertise is needed, but their views often shield the real underlying problems.

Most of these people have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the values and viewpoints of capitalism by their extensive educational experience. Read Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt for details on this important subject.

Then when highly trained middle class people get into their careers they must play it safe in order to advance their careers. They play it safe by remaining within "acceptable" opinion limits. Jeff Schmidt's firing from the American Institute of Physics after his book was published illustrates what happens to people that stray.
When it comes to “connecting the dots,” European activists have it all over their peers in the US. In Europe, coalition-building between single-issue groups has long been a primary strategy. Most European activists view war, climate change, privatization and globalization as part of the same problem – corporate control of the political system.

Time out

Net-neutrality talks resume in DC without the FCC or Google

by Sara Jerome from The Hill

Private interests are circling the internet like vultures honing in on their prey. This does not bode well for open access to the internet for views that capitalists disagree with. If these corporations and their lobbyists succeed, the internet will be transformed into what radio and TV has become--information and cultural wastelands. 
Media Access Project, a net neutrality proponent, panned the development.

"These ‘negotiations’ are illegitimate. They do not involve representatives of people who use the Internet for free expression and commerce, and they lack representation from the infant businesses that depend on an open Internet to build the future Ciscos, Microsofts, and Skypes," said MAP senior vice president Andrew Jay Schwartzman.

Mississippi Shrimpers Refuse to Trawl, Fearing Oil, Dispersants

by Dahr Jamail from IPS

The author reports that local fisherman are not taken in by US government authorities who insist that the Gulf fisheries are in fine shape. They are doing their own testing, and the results are discouraging.
 Miller and Stewart, who were both in BP's Vessels of Opportunity programme and were trained in identifying oil and dispersants, have been accused by some members of Mississippi's state government of lying about their findings.

"Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able to fish here?" Miller asked IPS. "I want this to be cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live. But it doesn't make sense for us or anyone else to fish if our waters are toxified. I don't know why people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We're not the ones who put the oil in the water."

The fruit of sharing

by Joanne Poyourow from Transition US


The article illustrates some small steps by local neighborhoods to secure a source of food. Such local efforts promotes valuable lessons in cooperation through communities taking responsibility for food security.

3 Pillars of a Food Revolution

by Anna Lappé from Yes! Magazine

I think she has some great ideas about how the food/agricultural system will need to be revamped to fit into the sustainable world that working people will create--or maybe I should say, "must create" if the human race is to survive capitalism. 

However, she seems to suggest that we can change this subsystem without changing capitalism. This viewpoint illustrates a typical liberal shortsightedness, an inability or resistance to looking at social issues from a systems perspective.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The assault on US workers’ wages

from World Socialist Web Site

This article does a good job of illustrating how this globalization phase of capitalism is working its magic on US working people. 

The US capitalist ruling class whose wealth was created in large part by the sweat, toil, and creativity of US workers has become increasingly integrated with a global class of elites. To be sure, this global elite is being led by US capitalists whose military is by far the most powerful in the world. However, they all share the same interests of exploiting labor and the environment to enrich themselves and increase their power to insure their continued domination over working people and the earth. Thus the tendency is to have all workers in the world compete over jobs and wages so that capitalist enterprises get the best rates, hence greater profits. 

Therefore it is becoming less and less important as to where a worker lives than what he/she can offer employers for the least wages. For US workers this tendency has resulted in stagnant wage increases from the 1970s till the latest economic crash in 2008, and now we are beginning to see the decline in the wages of workers.

Have you noticed that whereas the barriers to capital movements throughout the world have been largely removed, control of the movement of workers has been sharply curtailed? 

Control of working people has always been in the interest of capitalists. When needed, they can always move highly skilled workers and others to serve their enterprises anywhere in the world. But when it is in the interests only of workers to move where the jobs are, the latter face huge obstacles. 


There are several reasons for this that come readily to mind. The ruling elites instill fear of foreign worker competition in order to keep wages low and also respond to these fears by passing onerous immigration laws, to cast blame onto foreign workers for the problems that domestic workers face, and to encourage the increase of desperate but "illegal" immigrant workers who are usually very compliant because they have no protections whatsoever.

Like Warren Buffet once admitted, "yes, there is class war and my class is winning". Well, they have been winning, but for how long is anybody's guess.



Phantoms in the machine: GM corn spreads to Mexico

from The Age (Australia). This is an edited extract from the recently published book entitled, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Politics and Power, by Marie-Monique Robin. 

I found this excerpt to be most fascinating in its details about the apparent political impact that biotechnology industry has had on scientific research, academia, and science publications in addition to the spread of trans-genes to other varieties of corn and their unusual effects.

Tensions Rise in Greece as Austerity Measures Backfire

by Corinna Jessen from Der Spiegel.
The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.
I think that it is a good idea to keep an eye on Greece to get a preview of events in other Western capitalist countries that are instituting programs of austerity.

Deceptive Economic Statistics: While Economists Lied the US Economy Died...

by Paul Craig Roberts from Global Research

The author surveys a number of current lies that government employees (Obama, Congressional and federal agency spokespeople) of the ruling class spread through the latter's media to manage the minds of the American people. 

The only solution is to either take back the media and make them truly public airways or build alternative media. The internet has supplied some opportunities for independent sources of information, but the ruling class is rapidly trying to shut that door by giving the big telecommunication companies such as Comcast the right to marginalize such access. See this and this.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Government Lies to the American People About the Safety of Gulf Seafood

from Washington's Blog

Once again the "government of the people, by the people...." lies to its people. But this is because that statement from the Declaration of Independence was a promise that was never kept. Instead what we got was a government of, by, and for the owners of economic property that have managed to concentrate all of the latter into just a relatively few hands--people who constitute a ruling class. 

Also, read an article from the World Socialist Web Site entitled, "Scientists estimate nearly 80 percent of oil remains a threat" in which we find this interesting paragraph:
According to Kindra Arnesen, of Louisiana’s Coastal Heritage Society, fishermen in the Gulf are being forced by dock owners to sign waivers that would make them and not BP potentially liable for any contaminated seafood. Arnesen notes that if the Food and Drug Administration “has waved this magic wand and says that the Gulf is clean and that the seafood is safe, let’s get some FDA mobile units on our docks and let’s do some chemical testing.”
A similar, and most egregious example of "your" government lying to you was when Christine Whitman, Bush appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency, publicly announced to the people of New York shortly after the 9/11 attack that 
the toxins released by the attacks posed no threat to their health. On September 18, the EPA released a report in which Whitman said, "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink." She also said, "The concentrations are such that they don't pose a health hazard...We're going to make sure everybody is safe."
Soon people became aware of the lie.
Countless people exposed to the pollution are suffering from symptoms of respiratory illnesses today, years after the attacks, like difficulty breathing, coughing, asthma, and even lung cancer and mesothelioma. As the years pass, more and more it has become obvious that more and more of our citizens have been infected with cancer and respiratory disease.

A Different Kind of Ownership Society

by Marjorie Kelly and Shanna Ratner from Yes! Magazine.  The authors provide an interesting survey of various creative efforts across the US to establish local, sustainable, coops or worker-owned enterprises.

The Ascent of Middle East Food and Energy Demand

by Gregor MacDonald from The Oil Drum. While oil exporting less oil, Saudi Arabia needs more food for its fast growing population.

While Africans starve, it is not only Saudi Arabia that is grabbing their land for food production. See also this:
Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13-million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least three million hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.
And this:
"The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly. The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands.

"All the land round my family village of Illia has been taken over and is being cleared. People now have to work for an Indian company. Their land has been compulsorily taken and they have been given no compensation. People cannot believe what is happening. Thousands of people will be affected and people will go hungry."

The "Other" Carbon Problem — Ocean Acidification

by Dave Cohen from Decline of the Empire

I wish that the only issue were the "decline of the Empire". I would then sleep much easier at night. Actually, I'd be ecstatic!
Alarmingly, the pH drop observed so far and the predicted trajectory under current emissions trends are 100 times faster than any changes in prior millennia. Left unchecked, CO2 levels will create a very different ocean, one never experienced by modern species. Adaptation is even more unlikely because the effects of acidification, and the other struggles creatures face, interact. For example, increased CO2 levels can narrow the temperature range in which an individual can survive. We already see such constraints on corals and some algae, which become heat-stressed at lower temperatures than normal if exposed to higher CO2.



Time out

New Reports On 9/11 Interrogation Tapes Underscore Need For Full Accountability And Transparency

from American Civil Liberties Union
An Associated Press report today provided the first public details about CIA tapes of interrogations of accused 9/11 conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union requested information from the government about these tapes, specifically asking why the CIA appears never to have noted the tapes' existence in the ACLU's long-running litigation over records relating to the treatment of detainees. The government has not yet responded.
 

Why has extreme weather failed to heat up climate debate?

by Bill McKibben from the Guardian
Right now the energy companies are winning, and winning easily. Because they're the most profitable business the world has ever seen, they have enormous influence. And because all they need to do is delay, so far they've barely even been bothered by environmentalists.
The author grossly underestimates the problem. It is not just the energy companies that are the problem. It is the capitalist system which is built upon the use of fossil fuels that is the problem. This system requires ever increasing production and consumption in order to generate profits for the ruling classes. Fossil fuels have provided that; to end their use would destroy it. The power and the enormous wealth that private owners of the the world economy enjoy depend on the continuation of the system.

The major problem is the widespread disinformation campaigns that the ruling classes have used, and continue to use, to hide the truth from working people. (Read Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes and Conway) As a result I fear that by the time most working people realize that it is the capitalist system that is preventing any real sustainable solutions, it will be too late.

Thus, it is very disappointing that major environmentalists like McKibben don't get it. Too many educated members of the middle class depend upon the ruling class for their careers, and are thus inhibited from going beyond surface causes such as energy companies to the real problem--the capitalist system itself.

What we have is a ruling class that is so addicted to wealth and power and who, like many other drug addicted people, are willing to do anything and sacrifice everything including human existence, to satisfy their addictions.

Genetically Manipulated Crops: The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World

by F. William Engdahl from Global Research.  
Farmers across the United States are reported to be going back to conventional non-GMO crops instead. According to a new report from the US Department of Agriculture, retail sales of organic food went up to $21.1 billion in 2008 from $3.6 billion in 1997. The market is so active that organic farms have struggled at times to produce sufficient supply to keep up with the rapid growth in consumer demand, leading to periodic shortages of organic products.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

The fear campaign and Social Security

by Glenn Greenwald from Salon

I had not heard about this radio address in which Obama warned about the Republicans attack on Social Security. This is truly astonishing as Greenwald explains. 

However, it is not so much that the Obama administration is cynical as it is the US ruling class, which always works behind the scenes as in a puppet show manipulating the characters. Their favorite way of attacking working people is to use the Democratic party to pass legislation on the unsuspecting public who naively believe that this party works for them.

Racketeers for Capitalism

by Cindy Sheehan from Common Dreams

This courageous, tireless activist, mother of slain US soldier is inspired by General Butler's attacks in the 1930s on the budding US Empire, and she valiantly carries on the anti-war struggle. 
Well, "they," the ones that give the wars are not going to stop. "They" have too much at stake to give up the cash cow of wars for Imperial Profit, Power, and Expansion. "They" use the toady media to whip up nationalistic and patriotic fervor to get our kids to be thrown together with the victims in a meat grinder of destruction and we just sit here and allow them to do it.

The Empire preys on our kids using all the tools at its disposal: Economic panic, high college tuition, high unemployment and a mythology that the U.S. has some existential right to steal the resources of other nations.

Social Tensions Erupt in Bolivia

by Frederico Fuentes from Upside Down World

A common problem faced with all new revolutionary governments is staffing their government agencies with trained people. This was experienced by the Russian Revolution in 1917 when they had to use many holdovers from the Czarist government. This has been pointed out as a problem for the Chavez revolution in Venezuela. See this and this. Now this phenomenon appears to be causing problems for real changes in Bolivia. 
In many cases, due to the lack of trained professionals in the peasant and indigenous organisations, Morales was forced to rely on “invitees” from the already existing state bureaucracy to run the government.

Most of Morales’ first cabinet came from these sectors, causing concern among the founding organisations of the MAS, who felt they were not being treated as they should be, with quotas in the government.

...Now in government, many of these groups began to view the MAS as a vehicle to access employment in the public service, just as the middle classes did with their parties when they were in power.
 
Also, see this.



Skepticism vs. denial about climate change [11:24m audio]

from PBS. 

Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is interviewed on a PBS program regarding the difference between skepticism and denial from a scientific point of view in the context of climate change. In the interview he refers to a group of scientists and non-scientists who have been deliberately spreading disinformation about acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, etc., but this government sponsored program interviewer carefully steers away from exploring the details of this serious charge. 

For a detailed explanation of this disinformation campaign that Schmidt referred to, you simply must read Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes & Conway.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Workers Let Go by China’s Banks Are Putting Up a Fight

by Andrew Jacobs from the NY Times

Another report from China of workers fighting back against China's version of capitalism as it throws more workers on the scrapheap of obsolescence. Note that this capitalist source sees their struggle as futile because, of course, they wish it so. We shall see.
For a government determined to maintain social harmony, the protests and petitioning are vexing. Compared with farmers angry over seized land or retired soldiers seeking fatter pensions, the bank workers — educated, organized and knowledgeable about the Internet — are better equipped to outsmart the public security agents constantly on their trail.

‘Abandon affluence’ — 25 years on

by Simon Butler from Green Left

On the 25th anniversary of Trainer's book in which he forecast the incompatibility of capitalism and sustainability, the author of this article interviews Ted Trainer to get an update on his views of the current state of affairs. For a brief sampling of his views which I very much support, this is an excellent read. For more information about The Simpler Way, read this.

Did Consumers Cause the BP Oil Disaster?

by Ian Angus from Climate and Capitalism

When things go right (although rarely) under capitalism, the ruling class extols the virtues of the system, but when they often go dramatically wrong for working people, the ideologues blame the people. This article is an antidote, should you need one, to that kind of rubbish.

Time out


‘Spotlight’ on Police Violence Fails to Illuminate

by Janine Jackson from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

The article looks at how integrated news media owned by a few corporations are with police departments resulting in coverage favorable to police while instilling a sense of fear in the minds of their viewers and listeners.

America's Biggest Jobs Program -- The U.S. Military

by Robert Reich from TPM Cafe. The current economic depression has a lot of benefits for the ruling capitalist class. The most important are the following:
  • It provides an opportunity for cut backs on all social benefit programs and other government programs which do not directly benefit capitalists.
  • It disciplines working people so that they will behave subserviently to their bosses, won't ask for pay raises or increase of benefits, will even tolerate pay cuts, and won't strike.
  • It provides an abundant supply for their imperialist armies. The armed serves are now for the first time filling their recruitment quotas. 
  •  It directly feeds huge profits to the military-industrial complex characterized by a few monopolistic corporations that rule the US. The ruling class does not want to outsource this highly profitable sector to other cheap labor countries for obvious reasons.The article focuses on this benefit. 
The author, who was formerly the Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, is the consummate liberal as illustrated by this article. He complains about the present government policies that are being continued under Obama and describes them as "insane" or "nuts". 

Well, he's right from a societal point of view. But he should well know that our society does not function for the benefit of society as a whole, but for those who rule over us because they own all the significant components of our economy. And I'm sure he does know, but poses as a critic because it pays to have some critics around as long as they don't delve too deeply into how the system really works. The system needs to support its democratic mythology by having liberals who provide some semblance of opposing views.

That is the main difference between fascism and capitalist "democracy". The former doesn't pretend to tolerate views that are not supportive of private ownership of the economy. Hence it doesn't need to play to the democratic myths that are so prominent in US indoctrination programs found in corporate media and educational institutions. Fascism plays up other myths such as fear of foreigners, threats from other countries or groups (terrorists, Muslims, immigrants). As is obvious, there is a strong element of fascism in today's society.

The End of Poverty ? - Movie Review

by Ron Wilkinson from CADTM. I've seen this film recently and regard it as a must-see film.
The international banking industry and the international corporation have joined forces to create what is the modern large scale version of the old American “company store.” Best known in isolated mining towns, the corporation would build the company store to provide the necessities of life to its workers in the town. The wages of the workers and the prices in the company store would be aligned so that the workers never had any money left over at the end of the month. This ensured that the workers would never have the capital to be independent of the company or, even worse, to compete against it.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

I've taken today off.