Wow! A Self-Service aisle in the supermarket where I can code-bar swipe and bag my items on my own! This promises to save workers from performing such mindless drudgery like swiping and bagging my items for me! I check out my items under the watchful eye of the clerk. I ask her what she is doing there if this is a “self-service aisle.” She replies that while she no longer has to perform the code-bar swiping and bagging functions, she must spend her day watching customers self-service to ensure sure no-one steals the goods. So a trivial and boring...
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The recent suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that took four more innocent lives remains a nauseating reminder of the brave lengths individuals will go to protest injustices in capitalism, but also remains an important lesson of the futility of protesting them in such violent ways. Israeli Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said Abbas, the new Palestinian leader, must move quickly. “This time, words are not enough. He has to combat terrorism,” Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, told Israel Army Radio on Saturday. Of course, the terrorism that the terrorists are themselves reacting against is never raised in the press, namely...
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A recent episode of the PBS program Now, broadcast nationwide in most states on 4/22/2005, announced gravely not only that “scientists are convinced our Earth is warming, and with scary consequences,” but also and even more gravely that “meanwhile industry funds a campaign to do nothing.” The program quoted Dr. Richard Alley, professor at Penn State University, a paleoclimatologist, one who studies the Earth utilizing data from glacier ice and ice sheets. According to Dr. Alley, our planet has on numerous occasions previously experienced a phenomenon known as “abrupt climate change.” His concern, and that of scientists whom the...
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Few institutions illustrate the oppression of people in capitalism better than prisons. Millions of people, almost completely members of the working class, in the United States and around the world, are presently wasting away for violations of the laws of private property or for crimes that stem from residing in a society based on want for some and privilege for others. There is no question that the vast majority of crimes today for which individuals are incarcerated are crimes of property. The Crime Index for 2001 makes it clear that somewhere in the region of 84 to 90 percent...
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HAPPY WAGE-SLAVE-OFF DAYS!
Isn’t it nice to have a few days off from work, warming the cockles of our overgenerous souls after spending the past year producing large sums of wealth for the parasite class, singing Santa songs by the hearth, drinking mulled wine and pretty much anything else that will get us tipsy, opening our presents, and living those few golden days of celebration that we would wish for the other days of the year as well? But these holidays will end all too soon. We have barely begun to relax in our holiday mode when the alarm clock awakens us...
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