dont duck the revolution by autotelic

Obama already has  the Presidency in the bag so what's next ? Sainthood?

rosie's occupational terror management theory by autotelic

one click to entice investors,

one click to automate the marketting process,

one click to achieve unending growth,

one click to abstract the exploitation of the environment,

one click to create new markets

one click to secure unlimited credit,

one click to set interest rates ,

one click to ensure innovation ,

one click to buy and sell shares

one click to facilitate more borrowing ,

one click to de-regulate the market

one click to corner futures

one click to stimulate consumption  

one click to increase executive salaries,

one click to intensify political lobbying

one click to obtain hedge fund leverage,

one click to arrange credit swaps

one click to keep the shareholders happy,

one click to equate supply and demand,

one click to manipulate commodity prices,

one click to simultanously trade on different continents,

one click to lower wages and stave of cheap imports,

one click to achieve full employment equillibium.

one click to foreclose,

one click to file for bankruptcy,

one click to fire the one in the chamber,

one click , instant gratification  .

 Oxfam's new tv ad campaign with voiceover by Annie Lennox 

The ad reminds me of Soviet revolutionary imagery  , the iconic poster of the siren proletariat calling to the downtrodden masses to rise up and  cast off their chains or the old woman with the glasses in the famous steps scene in  Battleship Potemkin , it has that same rousing  heroic social realism feel about it , the same silent film era out of sync dubbing   just a modern digital HD update without the Shostakovich score . What struck me about the campaign is that it's a real time  reaction to rising food prices and global  economic instability and  inequality as the future  of capitalism is openly questioned against the background of certain recession and a resurgent interest in the iconography and economics - if not politics - of the revolutionary left. .This is the second time within a week where i've seen a mainstream  effort - first was th.2058 at the  Tate - and thought if lifeisbrutallyunfair.com  ran an installation or ad this is what it would probably look like! 

this land is our land by autotelic

A report in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine shows that US suicide rates appear to be on the rise, driven mostly by middle-aged white women and maybe the relentless fucking  pressure of trying to live up to the superhuman all singing and dancing  hockey mom thing.  . 

The overall suicide rate between 1999 and 2005  rose 0.7 percent , with  the rate for white men aged 40 to 64 up 2.7 percent and for middle-aged women 3.9 percent.

"The biggest increase that we have seen between 1999 and 2005 was the increase in poisoning suicide in women -- that went up by 57 percent," said Susan Baker, a professor in injury prevention with a special expertise in suicide.


"The results underscore a change in the epidemiology of suicide, with middle-aged whites emerging as a new high-risk group," Baker said in a statement.


"Definitely these are not just little blips," she said in a telephone interview. "We are looking at a big population change."


"Are these people living alone, with no major responsibility or others to take care of, or are they people overwhelmed with all of the jobs and responsibilities they have? We need to find out more about the conditions under which these people are living."
.
In September researchers confirmed an 18 percent spike in youth suicides in the United States in 2004 persisted into 2005 after more than a decade of decreases.

And international research published in January found that the young, single, female, poorly educated and mentally ill are all at higher risk of suicide.

According to the World Health Organization, suicide rates have increased by 60 percent in the last 45 years. Depression is the leading cause of suicide.

Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States

digital materialism by autotelic

" Capitalism as we used to know it is on its deathbed. And those who predicted that the old brand, the unfettered, American-promoted system, was a danger to the world, are being vindicated. They include Karl Marx, whose thinking on banks seems oddly contemporary these days.

The credit crisis  that began in August last year and turned into near-catastrophe this month is not over, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars that governments are spending to save banks in the United States and Europe from collapse and thereby prevent a global depression. But there is an emerging consensus that capitalism needs a 21st century overhaul, not just emergency rescues, to save it from itself."

Bernd Debusmann