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POPSRecommendations for anti-consumerism books & documentaries
Also (click through to the source for the links on these): I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs Weapons of the Weak a book called The Hidden Injuries of Class by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, and it's more about how capitalism defers and damages people's dreams definitely check out Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism by Daniel Harris. The section on the grotesque lurking within cuteness is hilarious and right-on Heath & Potter's Rebel Sell (Also known as Nation of Rebels,) which makes the distinction between mass society (capitalism as monotonous efficiency, everyone buying the same thing) and consumerism (I am what I own, I must own something new and different in order to be young and unique.) I think it's a really important distinction that a lot of books…totally miss…beware anti-massification arguments masquerading as anti-consumerism arguments Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne
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POPSThe Rise Of A Conspiracy Theorist In an excellent piece in the Weekly Standard, Cathy Young does the important leg work of debunking Naomi Klein, mother of the "shock doctrine" doctrine, which purports that every catastrophic event of the last three decades, economic or natural, was part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. I think the comparison of Klein to Chomsky is a bit unfair to Chomsky, since he was at least a ground-breaking linguistics professor early in his career. Nothing I've ever read by or about Klein suggests that she's much of a critical thinker.
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POPS Obama's Shock Doctrine And that’s the strategy behind the sweeping agenda that President Obama laid out. The president called his budget “a blueprint for our future,” and as my colleague John Samples notes, “A blueprint is a plan for the society as a whole just as a real blueprint is a plan for a building…. a plan for the remaking of America. The metaphor reveals a habit of mind at odds with a free society.” Obama promised that the federal government would impose comprehensive redesigns on energy, health care, and education. But the success of America has always been rooted in individual enterprise and free markets. Obama blames free markets for our problems, when it was cheap money from the Fed and misguided federal incentives that caused the mortgage debacle.
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POPSBAIL-OUT OR STICK-UP If, according to McCain, Europeans are socialists, he will make more enemies because they are proud to be CAPITALISTS, JUST THE KINDER AND GENTLER ONES. With some sense of social responsibility. No socialism in the European Union and the EURO
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POPSNaomi Klein The homepage of Naomi Klein, author No Logo and The Shock Doctrine. The Shock Doctrine is a must read.
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POPSNow Is the Time to Resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine
(cont.)In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling. It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right's ability to use this crisis -- created by deregulation and privatization -- to demand more of the same. Don't forget that Newt Gingrich's 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave of success from its offshore drilling campaign, "Drill Here, Drill Now!" Just four months ago, offshore drilling was not even on the political radar and now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed supportive legislation. Gingrich is holding an event this Saturday, September 27 that will be broadcast on satellite television
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POPSMore on The War in Georgia It should be clear by now, the EU slept at the wheel, US egged Saakashvili on, Russia responded with a vengeance. There is no just war, and never has been, never will be.
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POPSOUR BRAVE NATION Are we brave enough, AGAIN, to be accounted for? Do we show up or just complain? Where are the protesters? Where are the participants? America once was the beginning of a world wide MOVEMENT and now we seem to be at the end. Let's meet at the next rally, outside, not web side. Or are we that afraid of looking ridiculous? What is stopping us now? Participation required, not just mental masturbation and making our feelings some room.
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POPSNaomi Klein: Bush Sees Crises in Fuel, Food, Housing and Banking as Chance to Exploit Us More
... Food, fuel, housing, climate change -- talk about these crises. First, start with oil. Klein: There really is a kind of a tsunami of shocks facing not just the economy but people's lives, people's real lives. They're all intersecting. They're making each other worse. And I think we really are seeing some very live examples of what a write about in the book, which is how there is a strategy. And this is what I mean by "the shock doctrine." There is a clear political strategy, and has been for several decades, to exploit these moments when people are desperate for quick-fix solutions and more inclined to believe in a kind of a magical cure, to push through very, very unpopular policies that don't actually solve the crisis at hand, that don't actually help people, but are incredibly profitable for multinational corporations. And I think we are seeing a very vivid example of this with this speech from George Bush yesterday, where he is taking a very real crisis, which is demandi
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POPSShock Doctrine A friend sent me this link - a compelling start to an argument for rational, informed decision making and a plea for the public to stay involved and aware.
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POPSThe scourge of global neoliberalism and the need to reclaim democracy With power loosened from traditional modes of politics, public policy has been hijacked by global corporate elites and the state has been forced to abandon its comprehensive social welfare agenda in order to cater to the needs of the plutocrats. Wedded to the belief that the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and economic decisions, neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public institutions, and non-commodified values. Privatization, deregulation, commercialization, and cuts in social spending rule the day and the prevailing mentality is that everything is for sale and what is not has no value as a public good or practice.
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POPSThe Internet Business Manifesto (a.k.a “The Schefren Slap”) The past few months have brought me to a boiling point. As I couldn’t find any worthy freebies to review, I went head-first into my treasure chest of long-lost free reports and retrieved something worth reviewing: Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto.
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POPSShock Doctrine Explained--How We're Manipulated Howard Zinn says the following in his advance review: "Naomi Klein is an investigative reporter like no other. She roams the continents with eyes wide open and her brain operating at full speed, finding connections we never thought of, and patterns which eluded us. This is a brilliant book, one of the most important I have read in a long time."
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POPSA Nightmare That Won't End "We believe the cause of trying to wake up our little area of the Midwest to the raging lunacy of the Bush Administration's plans to launch war on Iran is worth our work, our paint, and our possible inconvenience. So all this pre-Halloween weekend, we will be at work to stencil as many of these fluorescent orange banners as possible. Then, on Monday, it'll be time to synchronize our watches and hit the Twin Cities pedestrian overpasses. Maybe it's not Mission Impossible after all--it's scary stuff alright but not that hard to do something, to hold a banner and communicate with our fellow citizens AND our elected leaders."
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