Does Rupert Murdoch own Everything?

Naomi Klein, I want to have a good ole cup of joe with you and talk, talk, talk. I wish you were my friend. I feel like you are my friend. You inform me, you care about me, you push me to feel passionate about things, you acknowledge me to believe in myself, and you don't lie to spare my feelings. You have opinions and you are brave enough to share them with me. I thank you Naomi, I truly do!

Here are a few notes I took while reading Fences and Windows the past two days.

~What is on trial is not trade or globalization but the global attack on the right of citizens to set the rules that protect people and the planet.

~Does Rupert Murdoch own everything? Corporations have swallowed our public spaces, our ideas about rebellion, and bought out politicians.
(Does he own the Simpsons too?)

~ The economic boom is being built on the back of low-wage workers, and our politicians are looking the other way because they are kept men and women, having been bought off by large corporations before even stepping into office.

~The alternative to capitalism isn't communism, it's decentralized power. Capitalism and Communism have something in common: they both centralize power in the hands of a few, and they both treat people as if they are less than fully human. Where communism sees people only as potential producers, capitalism sees them only as potential consumers; where communism starved people, capitalism has overfed them.

~ There is a whole new generation that grew up entirely under the marketing microscope. They were the ones with commercials in their classrooms; stalked on the Internet by voracious market researchers; with youth subcultures fully bought and sold; told that their greatest aspiration should be to become a dot-com millionaire at eighteen; and taught that rather than being a citizen they should learn "to be the CEO of Me Inc." These people are supposed to have grape Fruitopia in their veins instead of blood, and Palm Pilots instead of brains.

~It gave me another reason to feel uneasy about Michael Moore.

A good read all around! Let's all say it together-- "Down with IMF and Down with World Bank and *Down with Love!!"


*That has nothing to do with the mantra of this book, only the mantra of my life.