The cause of the crisis and the opportunites it presents
international |
anti-capitalism |
opinion/analysis 
Thursday October 02, 2008 17:46
by Paul Bowman
wsm_ireland at yahoo dot com
A very detailed talk on the cause of the current world financial crisis that starts off by explaining the background economics in an easy to understand manner, moves on to the role the war and other events apart from the sub-prime crash played and concludes with a look at what opportunities have been created for anarchist by this sequence of events.
This initial posting is an m4a file which means if you listen to it on an iPod or similar device you can watch the slides referred to in the talk on the screen. You don't have to see the slides to follow the talk, it just helps. In a short while we'll be posting a mp3 version for those who can't listen to m4a files. We'll also be posting the recording of the question and answer session - the 20mb file limit of indymedia.ie audio files meant it wasn't possible to include this with the talk itself.
The first few slides that accompany the talk have been posted with the article, the remainder will follow with the additional files.
The causes of the economic crash and the opportunites for anti-capitalist
The causes of the economic crash and the opportunites for anti-capitalist
18.25 Mb
Comments (14 of 14)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14Attached is the mp3 version which does not include the slides, obviously the m4a would be better if you can view this.
I'd highly recommend not only listening to it but also using it as a basis for collective discussion and forwarding links to it far and wide. After you listen to it you'll not only understand just what is happening but will have a critique of what happened well beyond the 'its all down to greed' moralism of the main stream media.
Causes of the crash and opportunities for anti-capitalists - mp3
Next five - all slides are in the order they are mentioned in the talk
Plenty more to come
Next set
and five more (nearly there)
Just two more to come
Audio of discussion will have to wait till tmorrow
as it is there is no source listed - who gave talk - when where? Wsm? Someone else? Ireland? Someplace else?
talk was given by Paul Bowman to a WSM meeting. You can read another one of Paul's articles on the financial crisis at the link below.
Sorry I forgot to post the normal 'WSM personal capacity' tag to identify the source, I was rushing to get this edited and up before a meeting. Maybe it could be edited in?
Also because of the length of this talk (109 minutes) I had to knock the quality way down to 32 mono, ideally it should be 64 stereo or better but the 20mb file limit wouldn't allow that - that would need 32-35 mb.
This is the discussion that followed the talk which includes some concentrates on the specifics of the situation in Ireland.
Discussion of the economics of the crash talk posted to indymedia already
The video version has now cleared google, for those without iPods etc easiest way to hear the audio and see the slides in sequence with each other
I've embedded it but the direct link if you want to comment or rate it is at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=692063054715025716
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First off, many, many thanks to Andrew to doing the hard graft to get all of this online.
While we're on the subject of analyses of the crisis and, more specifically, ideas of what kinds of tactics we could use to take the initiative against the usual capitalist tactic of making the workers pay for their crisis, here's a link to notes from a recent talk on this topic by my old Yorkshire comrades from the Free Association (also known for their part in the Turbulence project).
The Fair Price campaign is an interesting idea, especially since if "Exception times = exceptional measures" can allow the government to grant the top bankers in this republic 100,000 euros for every person in the state. Need some consideration though.
As we know the cops are generally part of the instrument of corporate rule. They are generally accepted by the people because they think their primary purpose to is to protect them and investigate crime etc. And a few cops even believe it too that they are there to serve the people.
However there is a report today that an Illinois Sheriff is defying the bankers and they don't like it one bit. Here's the details:
An outraged sheriff in Illinois who refuses to evict "innocent" renters from foreclosed homes criticized mortgage companies Thursday and said the law should protect victims of the mortgage meltdown.
Sheriff Thomas J. Dart said earlier he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago....
...Many good tenants are suffering because building owners have fallen behind on their mortgage payments, he said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning.".....
...."The people we're interacting with are, many times, oblivious to the financial straits their landlord might be in," Dart said. "They are the innocent victims here, and they are the ones all of us must step up and find some way to protect.
So it looks like people who have been paying the builder owners their rent are still being evicted because the owner himself is behind on payments. Predictably the best bit is this quote from the baking cabal:
The Illinois Bankers Association opposed the plan, saying that Dart "was elected to uphold the law and to fulfill the legal duties of his office, which include serving eviction notices."
The association said Dart could be found in contempt of court for ignoring court eviction orders.
So why is this an important development? Because it represents the point on the ground where the enforcers of power on the ground know that if they continue with this policy that they are facing an explosive social situation and they will be right in the middle of it. Not the bankers. So either the bankers give in or there has to be a showdown between them and this sheriff to stop this happening all over the US.
Full report at CNN below. Maybe people should save the full text of the report because for all we know CNN might remove it to stop news of this spreading.
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