Everything Is Fine! Keep Shopping.

     There are a limitless number of ways and means of spreading ideas, and we have to continually trawl the stream to find new and interesting ways of reach people with our ideas. You can always come up with your own or borrow one.

This is one from Adbusters

       Last week we challenged you to create widespread cognitive dissonance around the world by putting our Everything Is Fine, Keep Shopping poster up in malls everywhere.
        Cognitive dissonance is a high tension state between two opposing beliefs. It works like a pie in the face, first inducing confusion, then anger, and finally an intense desire to correct the imbalance — to recover the consonance that has been lost.
           It’s an incredibly transformative force . . . a way to get people to reconsider what they hold dear and what they take for granted . . . the jolt that gets people to rethink their life choices.
         Cognitive dissonance feels like low level grass roots fun, but it could be a way to kickstart a world revolution: we ambush people, first in malls, then in gasoline stations, then in supermarkets and all over the physical and mental environments . . . we inject radical ideas into people’s heads and set the tone for a new world order to come.
          Culture Jammers have always messed with consumer culture, and that’s what we are doing with this latest jam. Already posters have gone up in malls and schools around the world. Let’s keep the dissonance going for another week. Print the poster, put it up somewhere and share it with your friends. Check out some of our other spoofs below – or create your own. And send us pictures of your jams and let us know how it feels.

  

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IT IS ONE BIG JOINED UP STRUGGLE.

      The world is rapidly changing, no longer are we involved in isolated struggles in our own backyard. We have a world vision, through the means of modern communication we are a joined-up struggle, it is no longer the boss-man, it is the world corporate system that we see as the enemy. We can support and show solidarity across the planet as we see the struggle unfold, we can relate each struggle to our own struggle, it is one gigantic struggle for freedom, justice and sustainability. Anger and resistance is growing, we gain strength from knowing others are struggling with us for the same aims, that makes victory all the more certain. 

This from AdBusters:

Look at what's happening in Quebec ... the boldness of the media democracy movement in Mexico ... the teenagers leading an education revolt in Chile ... the Pussy Riot inspired art war unnerving Putin in Russia ... and the new post-capitalist ways of living being forged in Greece and Spain. Witness the growing tempo of green riots across China, the South African miner strikes, the corruption protests of India, the freedom fight in Bahrain, the tremors of dissent in Saudi Arabia, the total loss of confidence in America's corporate-funded Coke-Pepsi election show. Then, add to that the crippling droughts, looming food scarcity, the end of easy oil and the tipping points hovering ominously on the horizon ...

Read the full article HERE:

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WHO WILL SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY?

         As I have often said on this blog, crisis can be an opportunity to re-shape our world to a better place for all. However  we of the left are not the only ones that see this crisis as an opportunity. Capitalism itself, is a beast of renewal and can fashion itself from the rubble of its own creation. Also the far right will seize the moment and pray on the fears and anxieties of the people.

This from AdBusters:

  Venerated investment banks have vanished overnight, titans of industry have permanently shuttered their doors, and rich nations have lurched perilously close to default. The ideology of the free market, once seemingly unassailable, lies in tatters. While the death knell of capitalism may not yet be tolling, the crisis is undoubtedly of a different order of magnitude than anything seen in decades.

Read the full article HERE:

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SITUATIONISTS AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENTS.

     

        A extract from an interesting article from the Bureau of Public Secrets, on the Occupy movement.

  

       "One of the most notable characteristics of the “Occupy” movement is that it is just what it claims to be: leaderless and antihierarchical. Certain people have of course played significant roles in laying the groundwork for Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations, and others may have ended up playing significant roles in dealing with various tasks in committees or in coming up with ideas that are good enough to be adopted by the assemblies. But as far as I can tell, none of these people have claimed that such slightly disproportionate contributions mean that they should have any greater say than anyone else. Certain famous people have rallied to the movement and some of them have been invited to speak to the assemblies, but they have generally been quite aware that the participants are in charge and that nobody is telling them what to do.

     This puts the media in an awkward and unaccustomed position. They are used to relating with leaders. Since they have not been able to find any, they are forced to look a little deeper, to investigate for themselves and see if they can discover who or what may be behind all this. Since the initial concept and publicity for Occupy Wall Street came from the Canadian group and magazine Adbusters, the following passage from an interview with Adbusters editor and co-founder Kalle Lasn (Salon.com, October 4) has been widely noticed: ---"

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

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