Consumerism is what happens when a smart ape

evolved for obsessive sexual self-promotion

attains the technological inventiveness

and social organization to transform

the raw material of nature into a network

of sexual signals and status displays

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Keywords: sexual, sex, consumerism, selection, theory, fuck, status

Earlier this month, Mattel, which makes Barbie dolls, was forced to recall millions of toys that were made in China because of lead paint and loose magnets.

So what's their next step in recovering from possible loss revenues? Attack poor little ChinaBarbie.com.

Yeah, that's right, rather than focusing on their own legal problems, this big bad major US corporation has decided to take aim at suing the assets from porn queen "China Barbie".

"The site’s been up for like five years, so it’s like why are they coming after me right now?" she questioned this week of the trademark-infringement lawsuit leveled at her Web site ChinaBarbie.com by the California-based toymaker.   more »

Globalisation, it is now clear, is run in the interests of a global financial class which has Western governments in its thrall. This class does not give a fig for the interests of savers, clients or wider workforces.

The rules of the game are set up solely to benefit the financiers whether in London, New York or Hong Kong.

The nonsense at the heart of the crisis - lending 100 per cent mortgages to borrowers with no income, employment or assets, packaging up the resulting debt and selling it to banks around the globe while taking a handsome fee on every transaction - can be launched with impunity.

Financial regulation, we are told, hinders the efficiency of financial markets.

But now that it has become obvious that the mainly American borrowers have neither the capacity nor intent to repay any of the mortgages in an era of higher interest rates and stagnating house prices, there is justified panic at the wider consequence of the global system holding trillions of dollars of valueless debt.   more »

As for a "Hillary with balls" persona

who voted for the war on Iraq and wholeheartedly

supports a zillion-dollar missile-defense system,

she may be just winning a war of political positioning

Or, heaven help us, she may actually mean it

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The brains behind this operation are former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who spent many hours on the press podium repeating the same misleading messages now promoted by Freedom's Watch.

Executing their strategy are the sharp public relations consultants at Jamestown Associates, a nationally known Republican firm whose clients have included dozens of GOP officeholders, a variety of conservative organizations and fronts, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

With people like these in charge, the Freedom's Watch advertising campaign -- expected to cost as much as $15 million in its first phase -- obviously has nothing to do with "politics."

Or else they have everything to do with politics, namely to bolster the embattled base of support for Bush and intimidate Republicans who might defect during the next phase of the congressional struggle over the war.   more »