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“It is working class people organising a bottom-up and leaderless campaign that is setting the agenda in Liverpool, not the opportunist snake oil salesmen from the Labour Party. It is the grassroots campaign that will support a non-payment campaign, occupy housing associations, occupy Bailiffs offices, defend communities, and prevent Bailiffs from evicting people. The involvement of the Labour Party is being seen for exactly what it is - feeble tokenism and faux outrage, which is more concerned with giving a platform to the ‘chosen faces’ and to enable them to climb the party ladder on their way to a safe council seat - than genuinely fighting a pernicious tax, that let’s not forget was introduced by Labour in 2008, and that they intend on keeping albeit with some modifications. “

Liverpool Grassroots Anti-Bedroom Tax March & Rally (via thesubversivesound)

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What large organizations are really more efficient at is control. The giant corporation is much better than a cottage producer at obtaining subsidies from the state, externalizing its operating costs on the taxpayer, and lobbying for regulations to cartelize the industry. It’s much better at strong-arming its suppliers and outlets. This latter is sometimes called “market power,” but that’s a misnomer. If size were the legitimate outcome of superior effectiveness in the free market, it would be accurate to call this “market power” and say it was a well-earned payoff from past performance. But when the large size results from government cartelization, government subsidies to the inefficiency costs of large-scale organization, and government subsidies to accumulation, R&D and technical training that promote large size and capital-intensiveness, and thus artificially raise market entry barriers–why, in that case, such “market power” is just another form of ill-gotten gain.

Kevin Carson (via thinksquad)

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“It’s like a Flash Mob of stupidity.”

- Ice-T on the new wave of “Harlem Shake” videos. (via wateroveruncookedgrain)

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“Finance capitalism is fatally flawed in theory and in practice. Its ultimate product is that which is before us: a global plutocracy dependent on state capture, power and control to plunder and loot what will become, by necessity, increasingly resistant populations.” Rob Urie

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The United States has always had an ambivalent attitude toward Europe. It wanted Europe to be unified, so it could serve as a more efficient market for U.S. corporations, offering great advantages of scale; but it was always concerned about the threat that Europe might move off in another direction. Many of the issues about accession of the eastern countries to the EU are related to this. The United States is strongly in favor of this accession process, because it is hoping that these countries will be able to undermine the core of Europe, which is France and Germany, big industrial countries that could move in a somewhat more independent direction. Also in the background is a long-standing U.S. hatred of the European social system, which provides decent wages, working conditions, and benefits. The United States doesn’t want that model to exist, because it’s a dangerous one. People may get funny ideas. And it’s understood that the accession of eastern European countries, with economies based on low wages and repression of labor, may help to undermine the social standards in western Europe. That would be a big benefit for the United States.

Noam Chomsky - Imperial Ambitions (via noam-chomsky)

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… But Some Are More Equal than Others

by Lars Stenberg

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GREG JOHNSON

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O Analfabeto Político

O pior analfabeto é o analfabeto político. Ele não ouve, não fala, nem participa dos acontecimentos políticos. Ele não sabe que o custo de vida, o preço do feijão, do peixe, da farinha, da renda de casa, dos sapatos, dos remédios, dependem das decisões políticas. O analfabeto político é tão burro que se orgulha e enche o peito de ar dizendo que odeia a política. Não sabe, o idiota, que da sua ignorância política nasce a prostituta, o menor abandonado, e o pior de todos os bandidos que é o político vigarista, aldrabão, o corrupto e lacaio dos exploradores do povo. Bertolt Brecht - dramaturgo e poeta alemão (1898 - 1956)

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Happy birthday, Jimi Hendrix! The guitarist would have turned 70 today.

From the All Things Considered archives, hear the story behind “Purple Haze,” with thoughts by original Jimi Hendrix Experience engineer Eddie Kramer and this quotable nugget from Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid: “He was unabashedly sexual. He didn’t apologize to black people for being wild, and he didn’t apologize — he certainly didn’t ask for permission from white people. He laid down a gauntlet, you know, he said, ‘Are you prepared to be free?’”

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Fantastic blunder from UK pseudo-libertarian and top Tory mouthpiece, provoke hilarious claims of "independent content".

More here http://politicalscrapbook.net/2012/10/guido-claims-kawczynski-defects-to-labour/#comment-302942

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