Housing as a commodity has suddenly been the economic engine in major parts of North America, and a brand new way for YOU to die in a snowbank.

Why pretend otherwise?

Living in the second great age of monopoly capital

state-controlled media in the isolated, nuclear-armed regime of hereditary ruler Elizabeth II forced to admit nationwide shortages of chicken meat

The future is wow!

You will not be able to stay home, comrade.

HOW GOOD WAS THE SHIT. EXTREMELY? KINDA? NOT AT ALL?

A Piketty-Graeber Dialogue: how to get out of debt. Translated from the French.

The youth unemployment debate generally ignores the rapidly changing nature of the US economy. Youth unemployment is the highest in recorded history.

the answer is creating a shadow state that delivers community services and then kicking out the state legislatures and seceding from the union, or at least renegotiating the terms of being a part of it.

if you like sick burns, then "the imperial messenger" by belén fernández is where you want to go, she provides them by the spoonful, sometimes it seems as though they'll never end. you're caught up in a whirlwind of sick burns, ascending to heaven as she delivers killing blow after killing blow against the great mustachioed master of the new york times op-ed page.

So the question is, where does the United States go from here? The transnational capital class (TCC) has not just taken flight, it has turned the American population into a festering sore it can suck on whenever it needs to. OWS was great, but unfocused. It turned cannons on the TCC, rightfully so in some cases, but gave the government a pass. Many who were involved or supported it will no doubt vote for Obama again in the coming election. The major problem I can see is that the citizenry believes that the government is still accountable to the people, that it remains an impartial mediator between capital and labor.

In March 2012, the McRib returned. It's back. The pinch of juicy onions, the two slices of pickle, and the main attraction: the finest pork available slathered with premium BBQ sauce. All of it's back for a limited time only at your local McDonald's restaurant. Just remember: we are not responsible if you get a speeding ticket on your way over there.

It took Martin Scorsese almost three decades to make "Gangs of New York" (2002), but that means that it had plenty of time to incubate. And is there any better story to explain America than a story located in the notorious Five Points neighborhood?. While many of early American settlers are as the poor and dejected, they are generally depicted as hard workers, visionaries, and selfless noble whites. But this is not only a gendered and racist depiction, but also dishonest at heart. We are not bright and shining new humans, we are deeply stained in blood and terror.

Many first world communist parties have attached themselves to the "1% vs 99%" analysis of capitalist society. However, they have done so uncritically. A 99% v 1% analysis is fundamentally too vague to be useful as an analytical tool when looking at how policy is formulated and carried out in any political system. This is reflected by occupy's focus on campaign financing and relatively inconsequential legal fictions like corporate personhood.

We have arrived, as a species, at a peculiar juncture in the development of our shared world-system. An interdigitating set of political-economic and ecological crises looms large, threatening centuries of deprivation for our descendants, if not outright extinction. An absurdly unjust system of global capitalism, benefitting a tiny minority of kleptocrats and criminals, staggers mindlessly toward oblivion. As unrest grows and these crises intensify, it has become painfully obvious that no reform of this revolutionary state-capitalist machine is possible. It will destroy itself, and us with it, plunging us into debt-serf neofeudalism or worse, if we do not stop it.

In "Is The Red Flag Flying" (1979), Al Szymanski examined empirical research on the Soviet Union and came to the conclusion that the USSR was socialist, but that technical and professional intelligentsia (those "who develop and disseminate knowledge and skills and who provide professional services") had disproportionate influence over policy. However, "the managerial stratum appears to be significantly closer to the manual working class than is the scientific-technical intelligentsia". "Socialism Betrayed" by Keeran and Kennan noticed that this intelligentsia was dominated by right-opportunists who wanted to introduce capitalist "reforms".

In this way, one could see great potential in Cybersyn, at least on the surface, in that the aim of regulating value is essentially an exercise of trying to bias the system, i.e. society, towards some goal by the system controller, and that could theoretically be done by a true democratic vote. We could have our cake and eat it too... In contrast, the market is an autonomous entity, a beast prone to roam wild until it is attacked and consumed by some other beast, more vicious and powerful. However, it is also precisely because of that potential for control that Cybersyn suffers a fatal flaw: it will never be able to maintain itself in balance while maintaining an accurate representation of the underlying economy it seeks to model.

right wing parties worldwide point to this migrant labor as the cause of many ills. crime, disease, increased cost of services, depression of wages, whatever. while some might argue we need to drop the "PC" pretenses and man up to these challenges, generally approaching the subject in this way results in passing laws about giving water to "Illegal Humans" dying of thirst in the desert.

Post 1970's abandonment of the Bretton Woods system there came about a fantastic chain of events that threw the entire world on the fast track to destruction. Neoliberalism had been incubating at the University of Chicago for some years, but they were suddenly tapped to provide answers for where a sudden glut of gulf oil revenue should go. Their answer: To The Third World! After all, Mr. Woods was no longer around to lend a helping hand, the Soviet Union was lolling around like fat idiots getting ready to melt, and there's no better time like the present to introduce finance into every market available.

At the end of March 2011, the Bloc Quebecois polled at 36.8% of the Quebec vote, which would give it about 45 seats in an election if it were held that day. Alas, the vote was held just over a month later: in the May 2011 election, the Bloc Quebecois won just four (4) of Quebec's 75 seats. It received 23.4% of the Quebec vote. With Bloc Quebecois fading from relevance, the future direction of the Quebec Sovereignty Movement is up for grabs.

“Every country has the government it deserves.” Or, at least, they will eventually, for only the form of government suited to that nations specific circumstances will endure more than a few years. Anything else is an aberration. This all seems like common sense, of course, but becomes problematic when applied specifically, which is to say critically. For example, let us consider the “long counter-revolution” to borrow a phrase, of American social-politics: that is, the last 40 years.

Over the past 10 years, it has become all too common to see more and more Western intervention in the countries of the world, specifically against countries which happen to be inhabited by Muslims. The Imperialist nations now occupy Afghanistan, Iraq and continue a bombing campaign either directly or indirectly via proxies in Libya, Somalia and Palestine. Imperialism aims itself like a gun at Libya at present, that being its apparent priority. As MP Ali Qanso of Lebanon stated, it seems that if their actions in Libya are a success, that Syria seems to be next on the hit list. Why Libya then? Why has Libya been chosen to be the target of the Imperial powers of the world including the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Netherlands amongst others?

As the plague preceded the renaissance so too the scourge of the satellite precedes the the birthing pains of an unknowable new era of global economy and endless war. There are many kinds of technology but the technology that reigns supreme is INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, the wooden horse that brings along open markets, apache helicopters, and the apocalypse of culture as we can relate and know it. The richest men in the world are those that deal in communication, be it in the transmission or architecture of words, feelings, desires, or standards. Whoever owns the satellites, the media monopolies, or the IT hubs also directs the ebb and flow of events.

I've basically been working through some books on poststructuralist marxism and friends. Mostly stuff about Laclau and Mouffe, but some stuff about Zizek as well. Mostly I've been thinking about the three-part set "liberalism -Chantal Mouffe-, marxism -Slavoj Zizek- and anarchism -Richard Day-", and trade-offs that each one makes. So basically a convergence between Lacanian psychoanalysis (which all three lean on to different degrees) and certain situated traditions within (pots)modern society.

The rich of this Gilded Age are isolated and live in jets and fortresses. They don’t just hire security – they hire media firms and think tanks and create a culture of docile security. Our prisons are overflowing and our heads are empty. We elected a man who ran on “change” and he delivered us more of the same but in the way of a grotesque pornographic minstrel show for the rich. Do we see how tight the noose gets before we start thinking how to get out of this?