http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3173247273890946684&hl=de

pretty interesting talk about black ("deviant" or "illegitimate") globalization. according to him it's growing 2-3% faster than legit market and is composed of things like illicit drugs, black and grey market arms running, organ traffic (!!), malware (botnets,virii,spamming,phishing,ID theft,etc), human trafficking and black finance funneling the whole thing into legit business acquisitions.

he posits some principles:

1-legitimate demand can produce deviant sources of supply
2-uneven global regulations create more illegit business opportunities
3-pathways for legit globalization help illegit business too
4-once an industry becomes professionalized, cracking down merely increases profit for those actors who remain
5-states actively undermine the difference between legit and illegit activities
6-unchecked, illegit business interestes will take over the legit economy
7-illegit business operators are inherently inimical to the state system

some points i thought were interesting:

--for drugs, most profitable step is crossing border SO more border security = more lucrative drug trade
--malware jobs pay far more than legitimate software jobs in eastern Europe...
--in Brasil a hacker crackdown has lead to the best ones there becoming so elite that their services are globally desired
--in some places the local mob owns all the legit business
--as states decline and cease to provide social services, loyalties break down into corporate/government (as exercised through powerful members thereof) or to family/gang/church
--these people are not revolutionary, just getting around the state for business purposes
--in much of the world, the states role of providing of social services falls to non-state actors (tribal leaders, globalista gangsters, corporations, NGOs, churches)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151&hl=en

awesome documentary series about the Freud family and the use of psychoanalytic theory by governments and big business. interesting how you never see any Jungians inventing corporate propaganda and attempting large scale social control...

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings. His influence on the twentieth century is generally considered profound. The series describes the ways public relations and politicians have utilized Freud's theories during the last 100 years for the "engineering of consent".

Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed. Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as is one of the main opponents of Freud's theories, Wilhelm Reich, in the third part.

Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitude to fashion and superficiality.

When authorities resort to propaganda confidence building instead of substantive action in response to an actual crisis, you know you are in real trouble (Katrina, Iraq, etc.). We are seeing this again today in regards to the global economic crisis, with media amplified whispers of green shoots and bald pronouncements of immanent recovery.

It won't help. The underlying fundamentals are toxic: US gross debt as a percentage of GDP (currently at 375%) is still climbing, housing prices are still falling (wealth destruction as far as the eye can see), un/underemployment is still rising (an inability to service debt), the financial industry is back to its old tricks (bonuses are shooting through the roof again, etc.), China is still manipulating its currency (dashing prospects of future jobs), commodities (higher costs for daily life) are shooting up again, etc. Worse, what action has been taken is largely short term masking of symptoms and not a cure. Our government "brain-trust" is using all of its financial powder on deprecated 20th Century economic measures to prop up the industries that got us into this crisis: like the greasing of palms in the bloated construction industry (what relation that industry has to our future prosperity is a big mystery) and the flooding of a failing oligopoly (the financial industry) with free money.

In short, the economic decline we just experienced is being primed to continue (perhaps with greater force), when the spin eventually fails to convince. Without a means to rectify our course except for spin economics, the trend towards a post-Westphalian century replete with neo-feudalism and global guerrillas is on an inexorable march. [+]

these Rushkoff BoingBoing guestblogs are badass

Today, in essence, the central bank lends money to a federal bank, which loans it to a regional bank, and so on, each bank paying interest to the bank above, and charging more to the one below. By the time the person or business who needs the money gets it, they're paying an awful lot of interest - so much, that it amounts to a drag on their ability to do business. The speculative economy, rather than fueling the real economy, drags it down.

The only way for banks - who run such an economy - to make more money is to lend more out. So they looked for more borrowers, as well as more places to park their cash. As a result, the things you and I depend on in the real world became investment vehicles. Homes, oil, resources...you name it. So the costs of all these things went up not because of any real laws of supply and demand, but because they had become new classes of investment.

As for finding new borrowers, well, that's why Bush kept talking about "home ownership" as the right of every American, why lending standards were lowered and, of course, why bankruptcy for individuals was made so much harder. They wanted to lend more money, but didn't have any more qualified borrowers. By changing bankruptcy laws, they meant to make it impossible for borrowers to cry uncle. (This was a 150-million-dollar lobbying effort by the credit industry, over the course of an entire decade.)

Eventually, the tension between the speculative economy and the real economy simply had to become too great. Lending money, in itself, doesn't actually produce anything. On the contrary, it strains those few who are still attempting to produce things. It's what turned so many companies into balance-sheet-driven outsourcing operations. Only so many bankers and investors can be supported by industry and homeownership.

We're not really watching an entire economy fail. We're watching a particular program fail. Only because it's not sandboxed like a bad plug-in in Google's Chrome browser, the resource leak sucks money from everywhere.

If we can adopt what we Boingers might call the "Happy Mutant Approach" to this crisis, however, this is not an entirely hopeless situation. Yes, corporations may lose the ability to keep us employed as the banking investment they depend on to operate dries up. But this corporate activity was always extractive in nature, getting (or, historically, forcing) people to buy mass-produced, and nationally distributed food and other goods that were once produced locally.

The collapse of centrally controlled commerce and currency simply creates an opportunity for local commerce and currency to revive. For people to learn to work and live together on a human, local scale - as the original free market advocate, Adam Smith, actually suggested. Admittedly, this would be a painful transition for many - but it's better than maintaining dependence on a fiscal system designed from the start to turn people and communities into extractable corporate assets. (Think about that the next time you're called up to "human resources.") [+]

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12212007/watch.html

they talk about a range of issues, but mostly that capitalism is now less about meeting the needs of all and more about creating more want in those who already have what they need. but also how "the market" is often considered to be the highest authority in our society much like "the state" is in a totalitarianism or "the church" in a theocracy. etc.

Well, there are two things at stake here. First of all, capitalism itself is at stake. Because capitalism cannot stay indefinitely in business trying to manufacture needs for people in the middle class and the developed world who have most of what they need. It has to figure out how to address the real needs of people.

And it's not just in the third world. We have real needs here for alternative energy. And I would want to reward corporations that invest in alternative energy. Not just bio fuels and so on, but also that look at geo thermals, that look at wind, that look at tidal. Tidal is an amazing new field where you use the tides and the motions of the tides. It's expensive, difficult right now. But that's what you get the profits for, by investing in that.

So there are lots of things we can do. Coastlines around this country with global warming are rising. We know hurricane damage. Housing that can withstand water. Big thing. You could make a lot of money figuring out how to build inexpensive housing that withstands hurricanes, withstands flooding. Very few people are doing it. That's the way capitalism ought to be working.

So number one then capitalism itself is in trouble. But, second of all, capitalism has put democracy in trouble. Because capitalism has tried to persuade us that being a private consumer is enough. That a citizen is nothing more than a consumer. That voting means spending your dollars spreading around your private prejudices, your private preferences. Not reaching public judgments. Not finding common ground. Not making decisions about the social consequences of private judgments, but just making the private judgments. And letting it fall where it will.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

a movie regarding mythology, spectacle, reality and political power in three parts: an exposition of Christianity as a Judeo-Roman encoding of the astrotheological solar cult inherited from Egypt and Sumer, historicized for political power; an investigation and thorough debunking of the official 9/11 myth; and a description of recent history in the context of the immense power of central banks to influence policy, promote warfare, accumulate capital and keep entire populations in debt slavery through interest, taxation, inflation, ownership of media and influence over political institutions. heavily mashed-up with lots of interviews, passages, luminary quotes, etc. highly recommended.

This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. Among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn't like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like "no to spilling red blood for black oil," yet he paid them no heed.

It is time for humankind to know that talk of 'the rights of man' and 'freedom' are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them.

Among the things which catch the eye of the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of 'justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism'. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons - especially in Iraq and Afghanistan- in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows. Americans statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions.

People of America: the people of the world have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to your disappointment.

And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?

The answer to this question is: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war. Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn't be any cause for astonishment in the Democrats' failure to stop the war.

You're the ones who have the saying which goes, "Money talks." After the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.

It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of your 'democratic' system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.

It has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations. Despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the resulting death and displacement of millions of human beings, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the 'democratic' capitalist system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.

And despite this brazen attack on the people, the leaders of the West - especially Bush, Blair, Sarkozy and Brown- still talk about 'freedom' and 'human rights' with a flagrant disregard for the intellects of human beings. So is there a form of terrorism stronger, clearer and more dangerous? This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.

If you were to ponder it well, you would find that in the end, it is a system harsher and fiercer than your systems in the Middle Ages. The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of "globalization" in order to protect 'democracy'.

Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa - all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.

So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is not the business of any class of humanity to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expense of the other classes as is the case with you, since the essence of the laws under which you live is that they serve the interests of those with the capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer. [+]