Some Japanese John Doe once had a criticism of money. Not that the average person always has too little of it and has to work long and hard to earn it. His criticism was that its price fluctuations make it unreliable for private payment transactions, and that it does not really belong to "all of us" who want use money to pay and exchange because all kinds of authorities from the central bank to speculators are involved and misuse it. The solution was quite simple: he invented a free money for free citizens on the Internet, bypassing the demonized authorities, and christened it Bitcoin. Now, a few years later, the stock market professionals from radio and television will explain to you how the price jumps of Bitcoin make it such an exciting investment opportunity, which, however, it is better for ordinary people to keep their hands off. On the other hand, if you have enough money left over that you don't need to spend, you can become filthy rich with a little luck by speculating on this strange something that the financial critic has put into the world. But actually, money is there for something other than what the critics of state-money imagine. Our article explains Bitcoin's career from digital monstrosity arising from a false criticism of the state's money to object for speculation.
Those who run businesses are said to have certain tasks, expected to achieve this and that, and sometimes accused of neglecting their duties. However, the members of this profession don’t perform any of the positive or negative functions attributed to them unless they do their job. And that is to increase the wealth at their disposal — regardless of whether a nation’s public credits them with creating jobs or blames them for destroying jobs, whether public opinion says they are protecting the environment or damaging it, contributing to growth or jeopardizing it…
The journalists of the world have two closely related adjectives for Trump’s style of rule: unseemly and undemocratic. The editors of GegenStandpunkt do not want to make the new resident in the White House more decent than he is. But a look at his conduct in office during his first hundred days shows quite clearly that there is nothing un- or even anti-democratic in Trump’s style of rule; and the standards that the guardians of democratic decency bring against Trump are not one bit better.
Facebook, the social network, has been extremely popular with its members: 900 million registered users worldwide tap away at their keyboards, making the site one of the most visited on the web. Facebook, the company, is no less in demand among investors: they look forward to its IPO, estimating its value at $100 billion.
But there are also critical voices: politicians and the media denounce the lack of data protection. The German Consumer Protection Minister has indignantly deleted her user account while warning users to be more careful with their data.
Meanwhile, the “Facebook generation” is said to have instigated the revolutions in the Arab world that have been named after it, thus having advanced global democracy a great deal. The Pirates, the recently founded German internet party, has congratulated them on it.
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The motherland of democracy is proud of its independent media: “British journalism has been — and is — some of the best in the world” (Ed Miliband, Labour Party leader, speaking for all in the New Statesman, July 8, 2011). Now one branch of this free press, headed up by the left-liberal Guardian and public broadcaster BBC, has revealed that another branch, a paper owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, has broken the law. Some reporters at News of the World (NoW), the Sunday tabloid owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation, obtained their stories by intercepting mobile phones and bribing policemen. For months on end, an excited public has indulged itself in exposed details of the ‘phone-hacking scandal,’ the deceptive manufacturing of opinion, and the intimate relationship between Murdoch’s media empire and British administrations. It has even been suggested that as a result of this intimacy, the decisions made by the government over four decades under Thatcher, Blair, or Cameron have been determined by a ‘media mogul.’ Right.
Preface on the objective role of consumption in capitalism
Curious but revealing messages are in circulation about consumption. For example, it often must be “stimulated.” Consumption is actually demanded to get growth going. That already says a lot. Under capitalism, supply is obviously not the purpose, nor is production the means to provide needs with the desired goods. It’s the other way around: consumptive need is the means to advance the purpose of corporate growth.
On the occasion of NATO opponents’ wrong criticism of the celebrations of NATO's sixty year anniversary, we published a leaflet criticizing their arguments. In response, we received the following letter.
The Norwegian parliament, which awards the world’s most important peace prize in memory of one of the biggest weapons manufacturers and war profiteers, has made a worthy choice, like always. Since a warlord who had just finished his job and made peace simply couldn’t be found, a different sort of benefactor of mankind has been honored: Mohammed Junus from Bangladesh, banker.
A small-scale cultural war has broken out in the feature pages of Europe’s newspapers. The authors are taken aback by the militant way in which America has begun to reorder the world. They are repulsed by the narrow-minded partisanship with which the majority of U.S. citizens support war and vent their hatred at the enemies and opponents of America’s wars. They are delighted by every critical voice emerging from the United States that has something — anything — to criticize about the “stupid white men” in charge.
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Whenever the official delegates from around the world travel to the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank, they are regularly accompanied by thousands of uninvited guests intent on disturbing the meetings of these world market agencies, or if possible preventing them from taking place. The reason: they hold these institutions responsible for the tremendous misery throughout what is truly, since the end of socialism, "one world." In the name of poverty and those afflicted with it, this anti-poverty movement protests — and is thereby proud of maintaining "no ideology" and of making no attempt to clarify its understanding within its own ranks. Its protagonists are of the opinion that any theoretical dispute over the correct explanation of the conditions they denounce would only jeopardize the breadth of the movement. Those affected by poverty ought to know best what they suffer from and what their needs are. However, anyone claiming to have no "ideology" but rather to be directly challenged by poverty and guided by the righteousness of the poor without any mediating thinking, is already following a logic, if only a false one — a real ideology so to speak.