The Giants

[borders]

We live in an age of giants. Unchecked, they stride across the earth consuming much that lies in their path, leaving behind them great trails of destruction. This is not pre-history I am describing, but today’s era of monopoly capitalism. There has been no levelling off of the global economy, as economists predicted. Although industrialisation has expanded to lesser-developed countries, it has generally been along lines determined by global corporations based in advanced capitalist countries. From colonialism, we have moved into the age of multinational corporate domination. The world’s largest retailer, Wal-mart, raked in $405 billion in revenue last year – that’s enough to buy Bangladesh! They have over 7,500 stores world-wide and employ 2 million people. Cargill, the world’s biggest company in the food industry, is larger than the economies of two-thirds of the world’s countries.

The world economic crisis has claimed a few victims, especially in the dodgy financial sector, such as the Lehman Brothers, but the process of monopolisation is continuing unabated. T-Mobile have just announced they’re to merge with Orange to create the UK’s largest mobile phone service provider, cornering 37% of the market. Japan’s Panasonic has just bought Sanyo, giving them 38% of the rechargeable batteries market. America’s Pfizer has just bought Wyeth for an amazing $68 billion, making the world’s number one pharmaceutical company even larger. According to the Times Rich List 2008, in the UK alone the top 200 companies have grown from a total value of £76 billion to £280 billion in only ten years. This has given rise to a rich elite unprecedented in history. Britain’s 50 richest people are collectively worth over £450 billion, up 26% from last year. The world’s richest 50 individuals are worth over £720 billion, up 22%.

[borders]

get a load of those figures, so very few people with sooooo much wealth !!! unbelievable and the media etc continues to attack ordinary people earning the princely sum of 20 grand a year .

[fishtank]

Welcome to the world stage,the new Superpowers.
How long before Wal-Mart recruits it's own private army and purchases a few knock-off nuclear weapons.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

No War: America's Real Business in Iraq (Paperback) http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-War-Americas ... 1903933579" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Visiting Iraq for the first time after the Invasion ended, Naomi Klein was immediately struck by a billboard going up advertising foreign goods. Contrary to what is commonplace thinking today, there always was a detailed long-term plan for postwar Iraq. The War which was supposedly started for reasons of a regime change to liberate the Iraqis from Saddam Hussein was really aimed at something quite different from the start - a culture change, the subjugation of the Iraqi population to a new belief that greed is good, and to overthrow its existing cultural order, not just its political order. Like giant corporations, the British and American governments marketed the war with the ultimate spin, freedom. Dishonestly brandishing values like democracy, the aim of the War was all along changing the way of daily life in Iraq that had existed for centuries. At the suggestion of Naomi Klein, No War further develops the theme of her essay with contributions by authoritative writers and thinkers Susan Watkins, Bryan Mealer and Walter Laqueur. In Dying for Dollars Bryan Mealer describes grippingly how the real Bush / Blair plan of a hostile takeover of Iraqi resources and culture was marketed by the US to investors as God s work with its distant echo of the crusades. He captures the extraordinary candour that is used to entice business man to invest in relieving a country of assets because an Iraqi making $15 a day thinks he is rich. Startlingly he describes how it is the US military that led the pitch. In A Puppet for All Seasons Susan Watkins shows that in the transfer of power to Iraqi civilians the US is developing a policy started in Afghanistan of filling the Iraqi Administration with Iraqi civilians who are part of the American security services complex and can still lay little or no claim to having any legal authority.

[smokerjim]

Welcome to the world stage,the new Superpowers.
How long before Wal-Mart recruits it's own private army and purchases a few knock-off nuclear weapons.

Nothing ever changes - ever heard of the British East India Trading Company? They had their own private army that fought in concert with, but was seperate from the British Army.

[POSTMAN]

Personally i have no problem with those who make oodles of cash,it's how they make it,screwing the little man and the workers and how they keep it for the chosen few that grates me.
The world is a shithole and it's getting shittier,profit is king,everything else is just an annoyance.

[smokerjim]

Personally i have no problem with those who make oodles of cash,it's how they make it,screwing the little man and the workers and how they keep it for the chosen few that grates me.
The world is a shithole and it's getting shittier,profit is king,everything else is just an annoyance.

Communisim is an extreme of Socialism, and in practice ( USSR & later Warsaw Pact ), it was later shown to not work ( although imo the theory is sound ) Free-Marketereeism is an extreme form of Capitalism, and for everyone I speak to ( from comfortably retired & upper middle class all the way down to working class & unemployed ) it ain't working....although again I think the theory is sound.....so why is it maintained at all costs.

Answers on a postcard from F. Goodwin, G. Brown, A. Darling, D. Cameron, A. Crozier, et al would be forthcoming

[La Poste]

There has been no levelling off of the global economy, as economists predicted.

What the hell is an economist anyway?
They do degrees and are supposed to be experts in this "science" and yet none can predict any of the real real problems coming. Take the finacial crisis, how many economists saw that coming.
They say that when times are good you can't move for them but when things go tits up you can't find an economist for love nor money.
It's a phoney science if you ask me, a science that does not really exist and economists are just yes men creaming what they can off the gravy train.

[borders]

how about this little article i came across ----------------Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, for once got it right when he commented, in a parody of Churchill, “Never in the field of financial endeavour has so much money been owed by so few to so many. And…with so little real reform.” This pillar of the establishment is now way to the left of the government. He went on to point out that we have now committed a total of “not far short of a £1 trillion, close to two-thirds of the annual output of the entire economy,” in order to prop up the banks.

[La Poste]

It's scarey when you think about it. Government needs to sell sell sell. Trouble is there's not a lot that hasn't been sold allready. We have two big things left. NHS and, hold on a minute, US???
Maybe the goverment will start selling off huge tracts of land like Cornwall to the French.
We'll probably end up with the UK being a tiny little Island somewhere in London.

[borders]

however for the people at the top nothing has really changed, Darlings one- off supertax will easily be dealt with------Despite having received incredible sums of state aid over the last eighteen months or so, it looks like many at the top will be enjoying bumper payouts this winter. As early as last summer, “mind blowing” payments (to quote the usually right-wing Daily Mail) were being promised to many in the City of London this Christmas. The Citywire site went on in October to calculate this largesse as being about £6 billion in total, up by 50% on last year and well in line with the huge payouts made during the height of the boom. For example, Goldman Sachs is expected to pay bonuses to their 5,500 London-based staff which will work out as representing an average of around £400,000 per ‘worker’.

[smokerjim]

however for the people at the top nothing has really changed, Darlings one- off supertax will easily be dealt with------Despite having received incredible sums of state aid over the last eighteen months or so, it looks like many at the top will be enjoying bumper payouts this winter. As early as last summer, “mind blowing” payments (to quote the usually right-wing Daily Mail) were being promised to many in the City of London this Christmas. The Citywire site went on in October to calculate this largesse as being about £6 billion in total, up by 50% on last year and well in line with the huge payouts made during the height of the boom. For example, Goldman Sachs is expected to pay bonuses to their 5,500 London-based staff which will work out as representing an average of around £400,000 per ‘worker’.

Can't see the office junior getting anything like a number followed by 5 ( or even 4 ) zeros, can you?