Saturday, November 22, 2008

8 reasons why capitalists want to sell you deodorants

1) Body smells are erotic and sexual. Capitalists don’t like that because they are impotent and opposed to all manifestation of sensuality and sexuality. Sexually awakened people are potentially dangerous to capitalists and their rigid, asexual system.

2) Body smells remind us that we are animals. Capitalists don’t wants us to be reminded of that. Animals are dirty; they eat things off the ground, not out plastic wrappers. They are openly sexual. They don’t wear suits or ties, and they don’t get their hair done. They don’t show up to work on time.

3) Body smells are unique. Everyone has her own body smell. Capitalists don’t like individuality. There are millions of body smells but only a few deodorant smells. Capitalists like that.

4) Some deodorants are harmful. Capitalists like that because they are always looking for new illnesses to cure. Capitalists love to invent new medicines. Medicines make money for tem and win them prizes; they also cause new illnesses so capitalists can invent even more medicines.

5) Deodorants cost you money. Capitalists are especially pleased about that.

6) Deodorants hide the damage that capitalist products cause your body. Eating meat chemical-filled foods sold by capitalists make you smell bad. Wearing pantyhose or eating meat.

7) Deodorant-users are insecure. Capitalists like insecure people. Insecure people don’t start trouble. Insecure people also buy room fresheners, hair conditioners, makeup and magazines about dieting.

8) Deodorants are unnecessary. Capitalists are proud of that and they win marketing awards for it.

What is capitalism any way? Text from “Days of war, nights of love Crimethink for beginners”

Capitalism, that’s like democracy, isn’t it?
(And aren’t the enemies of capitalism the opponents of democracy? Didn’t we defeat them in the cold war?)
Actually, capitalism and democracy are two different things. Democracy is, essentially, the idea that people should have control over their own lives. That power should be shared by all rather than put in he hands of a few. Capitalism is something altogether different.
In the western nations we’re used to hear that we live in a democratic society. It’s true that we have governments that call itself democratic (although wether each of really has an equal say, or much of a say at all, in such a bloated and atrophied “representative democracy” is worth asking), but wether our society is itself democratic is another question entirely. Government is only one aspect of society, of course; and it is far from the most important one, when it comes to consider day to day life. The economic system of any given society has more influence over daily life than any court or congress could: for it is economics that decide who has control over the lands, resources and tools of society, what people have to do each day to survive and “get ahead” and ultimately how those people interact with each other and view the world.
And capitalism is, in fact, one of the least democratic economic systems. In democratic economy, each member of a society would have a say in how resources are used and how work is done. But in capitalist economy, in which all resources are private property and everyone competes each other fro them, most resources end up under the control of a few people (today, read: corporation). Those people can decide how everyone else will work, since most of them can’t live without earning money from them. They even get to determine the physical and physiological landscape of the society, since the own most of the land and control most of the media. And at bottom they aren’t really in control, either for they let their guard down and stop working to keep ahead they will quickly be truly has freedom under the capitalist system: everyone is equal at the mercy of the laws and competition

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Statement on the G-20 Summit on the Financial Crisis, 15 November, 2008

From: http://casinocrash.org/?p=592

November 18th, 2008

By the Transnational Institute Working Group on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis

The summit of a selective group of 20 widely diverse countries meeting in Washington moved the discussion of a new global financial architecture a step further, but it was a baby step, not the giant leap that is urgently needed not only to reverse the financial crisis but also to restructure fundamentally the global financial and economic systems. Why was there so little progress?

First, George Bush, representing the country with the largest responsibility for the global crisis, is the lamest of lame ducks. He could not commit his successor to any real course of action. His insistence on free markets reflects a dangerous and outmoded ideology with regard to financial regulation – abundantly demonstrated by his speech prior to the G20 meeting convened in which he re-visited the ideas that are the source of the worst worldwide financial crisis of the past 90 years. These outmoded and discredited ideas were included, unfortunately, in the G20 Communiqué.

Second, this meeting – sometimes called Bretton Woods II - was so hastily put together that unlike Bretton Woods I, its principal outcome was merely to reveal the fault lines of the debate, defined by the U.S. and European positions, although not that of Great Britain. The Europeans, led by president Nicholas Sarkozy of France, argued that since the 1980s, finance has become a quintessentially global phenomenon with money and credit washing across borders. Financial entities are thus able to exploit the inability of nation states to tax or regulate them effectively. Consequently, the Europeans call for a new global financial architecture that starts with, and gives primacy to, new cross-border global financial regulatory authorities. These global institutions are not now in place, must be constructed, and should be the G20’s core project for the immediate future. The Europeans note that existing international regulatory institutions, like the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the Financial Stability Forum, have very limited membership, cannot issue binding standards and rules, are heavily influenced by the financial lobby, and have proven to be totally inadequate both in predicting the financial crisis and in acting to stem it.

The United States’ counter-argument rests on the nation state, locates the primacy of regulatory authority in national governments, and adds new, cross-border forms of transnational collaboration and co-ordination. It starts with existing national regulatory regimes, upgrades them considerably, and expands them to encompass new financial instruments and institutions heretofore unregulated. The North Americans argue that this system offers the best tools for the broadest possible political control because it is rooted in national governments – their executives and parliaments, which are themselves subject to popular oversight, however imperfect. Behind these arguments, however, lie both ideology and the desire to protect the U.S.’s and UK’s financial sectors’ competitiveness as global financial industry centres.

The G20 Communiqué avoids this debate and attempts to diminish the distance between the U.S. and European positions. Several other fault lines emerged at the G20 meeting. Europe wants to go faster, broader, and deeper with new regulations than the U.S. and wants more co-ordination of policy intervention. The weakness of the G20 Communiqué also indicates that governments are paying more attention to the interests of their financial lobbies than to the interests and urgent needs of their own citizens and citizens worldwide.

Pushing all these divisions into the future and giving the new U.S. administration the necessary space to formulate its own positions, the G20 limited its scope to some broad general principles and an action plan for the next four and a half months that includes only measures that should have been taken long ago to correct the most obvious gaps in transparency and regulation. Whether or not these meagre measures are implemented will depend mainly on how aggressive civil society is in holding the G20 to their limited commitments.

No set of basic but effective principles, guidelines and criteria is yet on the official agenda. We offer four that should be minimum demands in exchange for the unprecedented taxpayer bailouts:

  • Total transparency – all financial instruments and all financial institutions to report fully on their activities and this information made available to the public;
  • A 10 percent rule – all financial instruments require a minimum 10 percent collateral, capital reserves in order to eliminate the uninhibited leveraging (sometimes only 1 dollar actually held for every $30-$40 lent to borrowers) that is a major source of the meltdown;
  • All current and future financial instruments should be brought under the umbrella of financial regulation;
  • New national and global regulatory systems to be subject to the widest and deepest democratic participation, including oversight, monitoring, and access to decision-making.

In our view, the global financial implosion is but one of several converging crises caused by government neglect and an ideology celebrating an individualist- based, free-for-all market fundamentalism over the need for civic responsibility. This irresponsible neglect has permeated governing regimes at every level: local, national, regional, and global. Consequently, two other enormous global problems now worsen and converge with the financial crisis: the planetary climate crisis and inequality within and across nations. The same political recklessness that has brought us financial default is also guilty with regard to the global climate and inequality crises of the 21st century.

Furthermore, the financial crisis has now become a crisis of the real economy. The private financial institutions receiving taxpayer bailouts should be obliged to lend to the real economy in order to ease the transformation towards an environmentally robust economy. They must be prevented from further indulging in exotic financial instruments that have greatly contributed to the current worldwide financial meltdown. We support the call for a minimum fiscal stimulus of at least 2 percent of GDP. The earlier anaemic attempts at fiscal stimulus of the G7 were far too small to have any effect.

A more comprehensive integrated set of proposals is therefore needed:

  • Closure of tax havens in countries of convenience and attention to other forms of tax evasion that allow global companies and wealthy individuals to avoid their statutory tax obligations in their countries of origin;
  • A commitment that no country be allowed to become insolvent;
  • Refusal of the nearly bankrupt and discredited IMF as the global dispenser of funds. The failed IMF ideology contributed to this global financial crisis in the first place;
  • Integration of southern countries as well as experts from NGOs and other parts of civil society into all discussions of a new global financial architecture;
  • Introduction of taxes on cross-border financial transactions – such as the Tobin Tax – that are new sources of tax revenues for government to pay for the financial bailouts, dampen financial speculation, and slow down the turnover of financial transactions in the global economy;
  • Limits to the riskiness of any new financial product or instrument, for example, by public governmental certification of a risk assessment of the product before it comes on market;
  • Suspension of the financial services negotiations within the GATS section of the Doha Round on trade liberalization. The deregulation and anti-regulation orientation of these negotiations is totally at odds with the premises of the G20 discussions for re-regulation and new regulation of the global financial sector;
  • Public disclosure of all lobbyists before national and global regulatory authorities;
  • Limits on excess compensation of top level management of financial institutions and elimination of forms of incentive compensation that reward excessively risky behaviour;
  • Involvement of global institutions other than the International Financial Institutions discussions concerning the new global financial architecture, including the UN and its appropriate agencies.

The world is not undergoing a crisis in the system but a crisis of the system in which the real economy has become subservient to the financial economy. All solutions must be based on this underlying truth. Nothing less than a Global Round on a Reconstructed Economic Order is required to address an integrated reform and restructuring of the global economy – including finance, trade, investment, production, corporate codes of conduct, labour standards, systemic risk and environmental regulation. The efforts of the G20 are puny compared to the comprehensive and serious process appropriate to the scale of these converging crises of the 21st century.


by Susan George, Barry K. Gills, Myriam Vander Stichele and Howard M. Wachtel for the TNI Working Group on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis, Amsterdam, 17 November
2008

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Global day of action - November 15th 2008

Resisting Capitalism and it ' Financial and Ecological ' crises during the
G20 richest nations summit.

Other worlds are possible - A Grassroots Anti-Capitalist call for action.

On November 15, the G20 richest nations will convene in Washington to try
to put the financial meltdown behind them and repair the international
capitalist system. The factories continue to be closed, jobs cut, pensions
destroyed, houses evicted, unemployment rises, uncertaintity, horrible
anti-immigrant measures are pushed for by right-wingers, homelessness
increase, relationships break down and food and basic housing spiral beyond
the reach of the poor the world over while the environment around us
collapses. We are living through a profound period of rapid and terrifying
change, an intensification of the long crisis that is capitalism and this
time the meltdown really is global. Even conservative media and staunch
economic-rationalists are saying this could be the worst since the great
depression... and they are trying to re-organise a Bretton Woods II project
for a new capitalism. World over there is direct action and civil
disobedience resistance taking many forms and proposals of many types
circulating as always and now with new consideration given the cost we will
be asked to pay to bail-out this rotten system - food riots, strikes for
wage increases and backpay of stolen wages, price reduction campaigns,
radical discussions on the crises, fuel protests,the sharing of radical
everyday strategies for living in hard times, looting of supermarkets, as
yet sporadic but hopefully growing resistance to evictions, sit-downs,
protests at financial institutions and districts are spreading, thousands
of the italian universities occupation movements saying " we will not pay
for your crisis. " As the money and environmental crises intensify so too
hopefully the struggles, with this as the stage we offer a humble proposal
for this global day of action against capital, the G20 - hoping to see
another thread of struggle emerge.

- Another thread that calls for common and grassroots control of our lives,
an alternative to the left or right hand of capital or to put it another
way an alternative to private enterprise or the state management of capital

- neither a future regulated capital or the free market versions often
known as 'neo-liberalism.' A world in which we create old and new commons
based on our real needs as an alternative to the capitalist and state
system.

- Another thread that recognises that these crises have been bought down on
us by not only bankers and speculators, but also by bosses, landlords and
petty bureaucrats as well as all politicians and other members of the
ruling classes. They made it and it is for us to create new relationships
and egalatarian forms of organisation to push beyond capitalism. We must
stop them. Their arrogance is limitless. After having caused the worst
slump since the Great Depression, the same fuckers have thrown the world
into insolvency would now like to appear as saviors of the world economy:
hypocrites full of bullshit, that's what they are!

- A thread that knows they are part of hundred of years of resistance to
the rule of money, contrived panics, exploitation, poverty, disorder,
repression, annihilation and the destruction of the earth on which we
depend for survival.

- A thread that recognises the need for the interlinking of global social
and labor conflicts.

- A thread that is interested and actively debating and possibly trying to
create proposals for other worlds, - should we push for our trillions too
perhaps to be used as seeds to set up grassroots alternatives, what would
debt resistance or anti-eviction movements look like in our areas, what of
price reduction campaigns or other ways of providing for our basic needs
and freedom?

Perhaps massive globally co-ordinated anti-lay-off campaigns, community
building, unemployed workers movements, the blocking of cities, growing
homeless and temp-worker resistance, reclaiming of space for social
activities, strategies that asks questions and learns from other seemingly
unrelated struggles - a movements of networks ...the eventual occupation of
all life by your desires... there are many other proposals being
considered. *

The can be no capitalist fix or new capitalist deal to the ecological and
capitalist crises- we will not beg, but create new worlds.

The tactics or actions are open to you, mobilisations, blockades, sit-ins,
a few dignified placards - some leaflets or an teach-in, sabotages and
other attacks - we have limitless desires and long history to draw upon.

For this global action we call on the global anti-capitalist movements and
all those from below that are feeling the destruction of their lives and
our world, those already resisting from the grassroots or seeing the need,
to organise for and beyond November 15th 2008 - grassroots,
anti-capitalist action... Make plans. We hope this day will enrich the
many ongoing strategies of resistance that are going beyond protest **

* http://cutdump.blogsome.com/2008/11/07/more-crises-proposals/

**
http://cutdump.blogsome.com/2008/11/07/beyond-once-of-protests-of-the-crisis/

Thursday, November 6, 2008

POST U.S. ERECTION WRAP UP 2008

Farewell to the terrorist monkey
who nuked the legitimacy of the United Nations.
Here comes Obama, the new corporate lackey,
so stay tuned to the farcical spectacle on your favourite TV station.

Farewell to the imbecile puppet
who waged war with reckless abandon in the face of worldwide opinion.
Here comes Obama, the guy who will stop it.
Ha! Not likely! For he is right under the thumb of the corporations.

Republican, Democrat: two sides of the same coin,
both batting for the position of slavery incorporated.
Obama, McCain: better cover up your loins,
both wouldn't stop waging wars until the whole world is decimated.

Do you want the puppet on the "right:
or the puppet on the "left"?
Well you got the muppet on the right,
masquerading around as the saviour of the disadvantaged.
What a fucking farce!
Another godalmighty blast from the past!

Come January 20, watch the bombs keep dropping
and the war debt keep increasing
and the loss of innocent life keep increasing
and the U.S. economy keep collapsing.

The end is nigh for the terrorist incumbent.
Children blown sky high in countries rendered defenseless.
Obama, you're the guy to keep the massacre going.
When your time comes, go hunt down them terrorists.

Obama, Osama, Obama, Osama.
The end is nigh! Blow them sky high!
Obama, Osama, Obama, Osama.
The end is nigh! Blow them sky high!

Obama is a Zionist!
Obama is a Zionist!
Obama is a Zionist!
Obama is a Zionist!

Fuck you Bush!
Fuck you Obama!
Fuck you McCain!
Fuck you Biden!

by Stephanie Chen

http://poeticiansparadise.blogspot.com/

6/11/08

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Some quick thoughts on Obama's win and what it means

Some immediate random thoughts on the momentous events that transpired today, in no particular order:

1) Needless to say, I am extremely glad not only to see Obama elected as the first African American president in history but also to see the end of the Reign of Terror of George Bush and the neoconservative fringe lunatics of the past eight years... The economic crisis and hypocritical response of world leaders marked the death blow to neoliberal ideology, and the ousting of the Republicans from the White House marks the death blow to the extremist far-right ideology of neoconservatism which has held sway since the end of the Cold War. For that I am happy.

2) One thing to keep in mind is that Obama is not the creator of change, but rather a SYMPTOM of changes that have already been underway for some time. I am happy that he won the election, not so much because of him as one man, but because America has changed enough to have made his election possible. If this is possible (and many people thought it wasn't), just imagine what else is possible.

3) Through this election, ordinary people have said enough to extremist neoconservativism and unfettered neoliberal economics. One way in which they expressed this is voting for Obama, but they will express this in many other ways too.. Time for social movements to sieze the moment.

4) Obama is not left by any means - he is a centrist with progressive rhetoric... but there is no denying the fact that there was been a leftward swing in the attitudes of the American people.. this is good news for radicals, who can work to deepen and extend this leftward progression and capitalise on it to raise more radical critiques. The environment within which social movements operate is now much more conducive.

5) Obama himself will be limited in the change that he can implement in Washington; If change is going to happen it will be because of a groundswell of ordinary people at the grassroots, not because of Obama as just one man... at the same time, however, I wouldn't under-estimate the symbolic power that Obama's election has on the psyche of African Americans.. Obama's presence in the White House will alter the way in which African Americans and other minorities see themselves.. This is huge. A crack in history has opened.

6) This is huge for the Iraqi people too. Finally they are going to see the end of the occupation. Obama won't change the world as much as some of us would like, but his election will have real material effects.. Iraq is just one example. This is one small victory for the anti-war movement (yes there is still the issue of Afghanistan, but that's where grassroots accountability comes in), as well as a belated victory for the civil rights movement all those years ago.

7) What Obama's election means is a radical change of context. It is that context - the sum of the myriad interconnected relationships of millions of people across the world - through which change will take place, but this change cannot come from any single centre - not even Obama himself. Obama has merely been the catalyst. Just think of Gorbachev's modest reforms in the Eighties, known as Glasnost and Perestroika. They were modest reforms, but after Gorbachev opened that crack in history, the floodgates were open, and he was soon overrun by revolutionary upheavals which didn't stop until the entire Soviet bureaucracy was overturned. It is up to us to exploit the crack that Obama has now opened, and turn it into a floodgate.

8) With regards to the economic crisis, we know that all Obama will do is to try desperately to save capitalism. I am certain that he will try to pacify/contain any unrest with a Roosevelt-style New Deal (a new contract between capital and labour).. Americans will probably be too busy worrying about not being able to afford their decadent consumerist lifestyles anymore to push for more radical changes..

9) Lastly, I just want to say that even though I'm a revolutionary Leftist, I do not think that being extremely happy about this election win compromises my revolutionary integrity in any way (as some of my more cynical comrades would have it). Any sophisticated analysis must take into account the potential for change inherent within the CONTEXT in which Obama's win was made possible, and not just the potential of Obama as one person to make that change. It is this new context - a veritable paradigm-shift - that I'm most excited about.

Obama

Fox News interviewed Ralph Nader as soon as it became apparent to them that Obama had won. Nader had said earlier that Obama is either going to be an 'Uncle Sam of the people' or an 'Uncle Tom for the corporations'. Fox went after him, accusing him, basically, of being a racist and bringing down the celebrations of the rest of 'us' (apparently, now including Fox who until that point had been attacking Obama and his 'radicals').
Nader handled it all very well, he stood his ground and noted that Obama had been meeting with corporate reps, that he had an atrocious policy on Afghanistan, that he voted for the bailout, that he speaks only for the nebulous 'middle class' but it is clear that he doesn't have a solution for the poor or working class, etc.

It is a shame that Nader has only so far received 1% of the vote.

However it will be interesting to see how the American people react in six months time when it becomes clear that Obama does not intend to change a goddamn thing.

Anyway here is more optimistic view from US Socialist Worker...

History is made
11:00 p.m. CST

AS SOON as it became clear that Obama was over the top, the tone of the media changed to one of reverence in recognition of the historic significance of the election of the first African American president.

And yet, coming out of the mouth of someone like MSNBC's Chris Matthews, it was a travesty. Matthews used the opportunity of Obama's moment of victory to brag about how great America is--having done, he claimed, what no other advanced country had in electing a Black head of state.

What hollow cant in the face of America's long and vicious history of racist barbarism--a country founded on slavery and made into a "great power" with the use of systematic racism.

But not even this hot air could overshadow the sense of exhilaration and tear-filled celebration among ordinary people, wherever they were gathered:

In Harlem in New York City, Brian Jones reports:

Several solid blocks of people celebrating. A giant mural depicts Malcolm X and Obama. Out of a sound system came the song "Ain't No Stopping Us Now," and the streets turned into a giant dance party. On the jumbo-tron, McCain is conceding, but the sound is breaking up. But no one wants to hear him anyway, so they put on Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours."

Outside the White House, a spontaneous crowd gathered to celebrate Obama's victory and jeer George Bush, who is reported to have called Obama to congratulate him. The contrast between Obama's sweeping win that has transformed the so-called "electoral map," and Bush's theft of the White House in 2000, on the basis of the disenfranchisement of African American voters in Florida, could not be more stark.

And in Grant Park in downtown Chicago, there are at least 1 million people, maybe 2 million, filling every visible corner of the huge lakefront area. The pictures on media really are worth a thousand words: dozens of young people with their fists raised in triumph, whole families dancing in the cramped space, tears flowing down the faces of older African American women, flags waving, singing and chanting.

As Lee Sustar described from downtown.

As Obama was headed in his motorcade to speak, people were still streaming toward Grant Park. The crowd is very racially mixed. All ages, though mostly young.

I just encountered a group of 10 Sri Lankan sisters and brothers, non-citizens who came down. "This is a moment to remember," they told me. "We're living through a moment of history. I want to be able to tell my children and grandchildren I was here to cheer on Barack Obama."

To them, Obama's victory represents something that they have seen only very rarely in the past generation. They know that the door is closing on an old era, and that a new one is beginning.

--Alan Maass

Poems by Stephanie Chen

I know this is a discussion board but I though I'd throw in a few poems just to inspire people. It's also for self-promo I guess but who isn't guilty of that. One has to get one's name/work out there somehow. Enjoy people...

GETTING MARRIED AND RAPED ON A PANE OF GLASS

the condemned do not smell
nothing nothing nothing
the fools are out to sell
something something something

the doctors go to hell
golfing golfing golfing
the condemned do not smell
nothing nothing nothing

like your hopes: nothing
like your shopping malls: nothing
like your idols: nothing
like your politicians: nothing
like your sports heroes: nothing
like your artists: nothing
like your religions: nothing
like your policemen: nothing

i will sell my arse to you for nothing
nothing nothing nothing
but stay the fuck away from my soul
nothing nothing nothing

i will sell my arse to you for nothing
nothing nothing nothing
but stay the fuck away from my soul
nothing nothing nothing

hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare
hammer to the bride stripped bare

by Stephanie Chen

28/10/08

http://poeticiansparadise.blogspot.com/

LATTE WITH A DASH OF CREAM

bar code scanners and table manners
art school trendoids and Northbridge drunkards
is there no escaping this nightmare
it's like an asylum drugged funfair

trade in your days off for pints of beer
stay in the same shit job out of fear
when you knock off it's time for soma
spend all your spare time in a coma

we are all afforded our affluence at the expense of the other
we sit in trendy cafes sipping latte while our sisters suffer
we are all guaranteed our survival at the expense of our brothers
we sit on comfy couches watching tv while their children suffer

leftist banners and Marxist pamphlets
bombs are falling down in the desert
is there no defeating the US
one nation consuming to excess

no-one likes the price of oil these days
but it's the price for war we all must pay
talk that talk but never look within
drive your car all the way to the gym

we are all afforded our affluence at the expense of the other
we sit in trendy cafes sipping latte while our sisters suffer
we are all guaranteed our survival at the expense of our brothers
we sit on comfy couches watching tv while their children suffer

are you afraid of dying in a plane crash?
are you afraid of dying in a car crash?
are you afraid of another stock market crash?
are you afraid of dying from boredom?

are you afraid of dying in a plane crash?
are you afraid of dying in a car crash?
are you afraid of another stock market crash?
are you afraid of dying from boredom?

we are all afforded our affluence at the expense of the other
we sit in trendy cafes sipping latte while our sisters suffer
we are all guaranteed our survival at the expense of our brothers
we sit on comfy couches watching tv while their children suffer

by Stephanie Chen

29/10/08

COMATOSE TV JUNKIE CRACK WHORE

dollar signs are all that you see
rather be free, rather be me
see the deception when you plead
you are bound by the chains of greed

in your mind: insecurities
i have my own, rather be free
sycophant, get down on your knees
such a tool, always out to please

gimme gimme gimme gimme another fix of tv
soma soma soma soma: opiate of the masses
gimme gimme gimme gimme another hit of money
coma coma coma coma, decadence and affluence

dollar signs are all that you see
rather save trees, rather be free
fill the void, retail therapy
commercials in your memory

nothing inside, you are empty
fuck the homeless, keep your pennies
you have no heart, keep them hungry
you bow down to your enemies

gimme gimme gimme gimme another fix of tv
soma soma soma soma: opiate of the masses
gimme gimme gimme gimme another hit of money
coma coma coma coma, decadence and affluence

welcome to the new world order
the same as the old world order
the rich get rich, poor get poorer
the same as the old world order

welcome to the new world order
the same as the old world order
the rich get rich, poor get poorer
the same as the old world order

gimme gimme gimme gimme another fix of tv
soma soma soma soma: opiate of the masses
gimme gimme gimme gimme another hit of money
coma coma coma coma, decadence and affluence

by Stephanie Chen

24/10/08

http://poeticiansparadise.blogspot.com

What could $700 billion do for the rest of us?

Civil society statements on the crisis

Statement on the proposed “Global Summit” to reform the international financial system
http://www.choike.org/bw2/index.html

"The global economic crisis: An historic opportunity for transformation" - An initial response from individuals, social movements and non-governmental organisations in support of a transitional programme for radical economic transformation
http://casinocrash.org/?p=235

Some articles on the crisis

Walden Bello, "Primer on the Wall Street meltdown"
http://casinocrash.org/?p=11

Noam Chomsky, "The financial crisis of 2008"
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19111

Barry Gills, "An opportunity to put radical options on the table?"
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=18729

Robert Wade, "Financial Regime Change?"
http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2739

Martin Crutsinger, "Greenspan says flaw in market system"
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jSSJzC1UNusL4eW21xsZ7HJcM8WQD9409R0O4

The gift economy

With neoliberalism having failed spectacularly due to its own inherent contradictions, now is the perfect time to start showing people what alternatives would look like...

On this note, I just wanted to share this really inspiring article entitled:

The really really free market: Instituting the gift economy

As this article says, the "really really free market" gives people a concrete example of anarchist economics. During the last Great Depression, people survived through the pooling and sharing of resources and through anarchist-style "mutual aid"... if there is to be a new Great Depression, then we must show again that only mutual aid makes sense.