consumerism

What, you say Comic-Connies aren't big spenders? Suddenly my regard for them has jumped!

NYT caption: "Comic-Con attendees lunching near the convention center. Spending by visitors to the five-day convention, San Diego’s largest by far, is about $603, a fraction of that of much smaller events."by KenHey, almost everything I know about Comic-Con comes from watching The Big Bang Theory -- and that hasn't made it seem any more like a gathering where I would want to, you know, gather.

De-Manufacturing Consent- The Evil That Men Do: Corporatism, Secrecy & America’s Exceptional Apathy

Guillermo Jimenez Presents Lee Camp
On this edition of De-Manufacturing Consent: Guillermo is joined by Lee Camp, stand-up comedian and host of Redacted Tonight on RT America. Lee talks about his new show, the comparisons to other comedy news shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and what sets his show apart from the “steam valves” that never truly challenge the establishment.

Materialism and Misery

We live under the omnipresent shadow of a political/economic system, which promotes materiality, selfishness and individual success over group wellbeing. It is a model of civilisation that is making us miserable and ill. Dependent on continuous consumption, everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, and competition and ambition are extolled as virtues. Together with reward and punishment this trinity of division has infiltrated and polluted all areas of contemporary life, including health care and education.

Global Justice, Sustainability and the Sharing Economy

If the sharing economy movement is to play a role in shifting society away from the dominant economic paradigm, it will have to get political. And this means guarding against the co-optation of sharing by the corporate sector, while joining forces with a much larger body of activists that have long been calling – either explicitly or implicitly – for more transformative and fundamental forms of economic sharing across the world.

When Looking Up for Birds, Bats is Wholey a Political Move

looking down, the new coltan blues
even hipster heroes
dotted with tattoos of dragons
origami etched on white skin
can’t find presence of mind
to espy great blue herons skimming
heat island waves above Portland
snippets of raptor persistence
hundreds fence-posted from Seattle
to Spokane, SUV winners’ prodigy
viewing head rest DVD CGI junk
is it a product of narcissism
blatant anthropomorphic stupidity
where endangered species only end
up cuddly white girl’s crib
inked on 24-Hour Fitness deltoid

Viva la Sharing Spring!

As the Sharing Spring kicks off, more and more people are participating in localised forms of sharing in response to the failures of government and big business. While this is right and imperative, it is equally vital that citizens call upon their political representatives to integrate the principle of sharing into governmental policies on national and global levels. 
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Fear in a Handful of Dust

From the picture window of our family’s eighth floor apartment, at the intersection of 23rd Street and Avenue C, we have a view of the inhuman currents of the East River and the dehumanizing, vehicular currents of the FDR expressway. The tenor of the river is timeless while the FDR’s voice is mindlessly urgent…an addict on a dope run — evincing the urgency of an errand undertaken to relieve distress but trajectory hurtles towards annihilation.