"Employer of the year, grandmaster of fear / My blood flows satanical, mechanical, masonical and chemical / habitual ritual "

"I deal in the market, every man, woman and child is a target / A closet full of faceless, nameless pay more for less empitness /I’ll make you scrounge, in my executive lounge / you pay less tax, but I’ll gain more back"

Corporate Cannibal ~ Grace Jones



"Writing in 1930, Keynes was most interested in the process of deflation and in countering the dangerous advice of conventional finance. Orthodoxy put the pound back on gold at a punishingly high rate in 1925, torturing British industry and pushing up unemployment in the name of sound money. Central banks, Keynes feared, were being too timid about bringing down interest rates. Against orthodoxy’s austerity nostrums, Keynes celebrated booms in a manner that would do a Texas populist proud. Shakespeare, said Keynes, died rich, and his days were 'the palmy days of profit — one of the greatest "bull" movements ever known until modern days in the United States…. [B]y far the greater proportion of the world’s greatest writers and artists have flourished in the atmosphere of buoyancy, exhilaration and the freedom from economic cares felt by the governing class, which is engendered by profit inflations' (CW VI, p. 137). The Shakespeares of the era of junk finance have yet to be discovered, unless Bret Easton Ellis qualifies."

Wall Street (1997) by Doug Henwood

Life After Lehman Brothers

"What I miss most...paying bums to blow each other. It never got old."

Operation W.A.N.T. (We Are Not Toys)

"Last month, the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) waged a guerilla-advertising war against what they call an illegal one in Iraq. Early on October 11, a seven-member brigade from its LA chapter formed Operation W.A.N.T. (We Are Not Toys) and set a dramatic stage for early-morning customers at a local gas station.

"In black t-shirts and ski masks, the group arranged 4,200 miniature toy soldiers on the pavement accompanying signs that read, "The Price of Gas: 4171 US Soldiers." (On its website, IVAW is quick to point out that since the action, that number has grown to 4,193.)"

From POST ADVERTISING*





10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military

IRAQ WAR ENDS

New York Times Special Edition Video News Release - Nov. 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.


B-roll of fake New York Times Distribution, November 12, 2008 from H Schweppes on Vimeo.

The New York Times

One Nation Under Debt

WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN from ABOVE on Vimeo.

Pasolini's "Canterbury Tales"

It must be something like 20 years ago that I originally took in Pasolini's Canterbury Tales at the Empire Cinema in Surry Hills. I walked out of the film absolutely stunned and reinvigorated at the possibilities of pure cinema. A few years after that I took in Salo as part of Sydney's Mardi Gras, which also made an indelible impression. So many memories; I wasn't sure I'd ever see this again, particularly the sequence in this clip that totally blew me away. Before you ask ahuthnance, no, it is not the commercial that would have screened had John Howard defeated Kevin Rudd in the election, but in a way it's not unrelated. As a dedicated communist, Pasolini was fascinated by feudalism, and his work should be seen as consonant with that of later critical theorists warning of a "back to the future" scenario, in which we find ourselves living in a new [sic] Middle Ages. For example:

The Middle Ages ended when the rise of capitalism on a national scale led to powerful states with sovereignty over particular territories and populations. Now that capitalism is operating globally, those states are eroding and a new medievalism is emerging, marked by multiple and overlapping sovereignties and identities -- particularly in the developing world, where states were never strong in the first place.

Having digested these thoughts, watch the clip, then immediately rewatch it just to be sure of what you have witnessed....

Mike Davis: "Against the Grain"