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Paddy Shannon

Wage Slavery

Some people don't like the term "wage slavery". It's not nice to be called a slave. They think you're insulting them and they might want to smack you in the eye. Other people recognise how accurate a phrase it is. They get all bitter and maudlin about their "wasted life". They normally want to smack their boss in the eye. (The boss, unconcerned, smacks his lips and carries on counting).

But "wage-slavery" is what we are in, whether we admit it or not –even those accountants in their fancy cars are only a few months from the breadline if their boss decides to dispense with their services, as well they realize. For the kind of money they're on, they've got to pull out all the stops. The family? Leave it to the wife. Interests? Two hours on Sunday and be thankful for that. Peace? Relaxation? Self-determination? Forget it.

Never a follower be

The Greek phrase "an-archon" or "no leader" gave us the word "anarchy". Yet "anarchy" to most people is another name for chaos, or disorder. The assumption is that without leaders, there can be no civilisation. Our contention is the opposite. Leaders, and the followers who create them, are holding us back from any real global civilisation.

Think what some of these leaders have accomplished for humanity. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Margaret Thatcher, Mao Tse Tung, Saddam Hussein--it would be perverse indeed to claim that such leaders have benefited the human species, and yet stubbornly the leadership cult persists. Anyone can write a long list of "bad leaders". But try writing a list of "good leaders" and see how far you get.

Paper Money, Paper Tigers

A Malaysian student posted this question recently on the Internet:

"Forgive me being stupid but can somebody tell me why is our economics suddenly become like this? I thought all the while we are having very good economics growth but why within such a short period everything crash?"

The suddenness with which the "Tiger Economies" became "paper tigers" has left many people baffled and bemused. One minute the Asian economy was being talked up as a "new economic miracle", the next minute it has fallen in like a house of cards. What on earth is going on?

Global capitalism, in two words. For years Western banks, looking for good returns, have pumped tens of billions into Thailand, Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia, creating a huge boom in the area. Investment in the region had always been encouraged by the US, as evidenced by their tactic during the Cold War:

History as mystery

That’s what our rulers want because while we remain ignorant of our past they remain unchallenged. While we remain indifferent to history they reign supreme

The interruption of the Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon on Easter Sunday by gay rights activists caused a flurry of media attention that would normally have been absent from such a pointless event. In the ensuing babble about the Church's hostile attitude to gay sex the content of the original sermon was more or less overlooked. Dr Carey's scholarly and sophisticated contribution to the Millennium Agenda was that we have all forgotten our historical Christian values, and that is why the world's in a mess. His view is that we should "remember history".

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