We’re calling for a Pumpkin Pie Rebellion!
The logic is simple. Any world leader who has not lived up to their carbon commitments gets a pie in the face.
Check it out!
The Robin Hood - Tax -
This idea is not new — it used to be called the Tobin Tax, after the economist James Tobin, who first proposed it in the 1970s. And it’s not fringe-y freaky: No less than the Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz have thrown their support behind it — not to mention Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The idea is this:
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New Issue!
Covid-19 turned from an outbreak into a pandemic because of airplanes.
The virus shot around the world, instantly found new hosts, and replicated everywhere all at once. It was out of Pandora’s box before anyone could make a lid big enough to shut it down.
Speculative money has spread the virus of capitalism the same way. The throughput is out of control — because there are no borders or governors or effective laws to stop the money-from-nothing algorithm.
The speculative traders are like superspreaders, and the whole world is vulnerable.
Our only hope is to shut those guys down.
In this issue, we take a crack at flattening the speculative-money curve. If we can achieve this, then things for all of us all around the world will slowly get better — until eventually we reach financial herd immunity.
There’s a Pie In the Oven With Zuck’s Name On It!
October 1, 2021
This past summer, Mark Zuckerberg signed off on a new effort to boost Facebook’s public image. It’s called Project Amplify.
Designed to counter the spate of criticism the company has received lately, the project is stunningly simple: use Facebook’s own News Feed to “amplify" flattering stories about itself.
Executives have adopted a “no more Mr. Nice Guy” approach. They’ve drastically curtailed the amount of data available to academics and journalists, since it was routinely uncomplimentary. They buried a report on the platform’s most-viewed posts after it was found that the top performer was a news story suggesting a doctor had died after getting a Covid vaccine. And Zuck himself has shied away from controversies, casting himself as a benign “innovator”
At the same time, in the first half of 2021, Facebook spent a record $6 billion on marketing.
Psychowarriors of the Mental Liberation Front: It’s time to put these techno-propagandists on notice! Storm their headquarters. Pie the C-suites. Jam their algorithms with whimsical mischief. And let these mind-scramblers know that we’re going to keep coming at them, again and again and again, until their reality-warping algorithms come crashing down.
Do you smell that? There’s a pie in the oven with Zuck’s name on it.
We want you!
Join our team!
We're looking for an experienced and politically savvy Digital Editor to round out our Vancouver office.
Got the stuff?
Send us a cover letter with your resume attached.
Check out the full job posting here.
Music credit: Coltrane - In a Sentimental Mood
Students of the World, Unite! (PT. 4)
At critical moments throughout history, university students have catalyzed massive protests, called their professors and leaders on their lies and thrust their nations in brave new directions. It happened in the 1960s on hundreds of campuses around the world, and more recently in South Korea, China, Indonesia, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Chile and Argentina. Now...
Read Full StoryThe Reluctant Therapist: A 1-on-1 with AdBusters co-founder Kalle Lasn
Sometimes, there's a conversation that's worth diving into without the need for introduction. Join the Reluctant Therapist, Elizabeth Barrett, for a wide-covering conversation with Kalle Lasn, a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of AdBusters, which refers to itself as a "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age." The two discuss, among other topics, Lasn's work with AdBusters and its influence on politics, an exploration of the current climate crisis and what lies ahead for Generation Z.
“Live Every Moment Dangerously”
Hey all you wild hearts out there,
As you know, we’ve been ad-free since the very beginning — a business model that helps us sleep at night but makes our accountants very nervous.
It’s rebel spirits like you who have kept us going.
Now, in this time of crisis, we’re reaching out to you, our lifeblood. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. With your help, we can continue speaking truth to power without flinching.
Let's save this world, together.
Patreon
Featured Submission
Peak Stupidity
I started my career in 1975, drawing electrical schematics on pieces of paper taped onto a drafting board. The old-timers were still using protractors to draw circles, but the young guns were using circle templates. You got the same sized circle every time, and it didn’t leave a hole in the page. Back then, a pencil with an eraser on the end was considered high-tech.
In 1975 engineering was a slow, sedate business. It would be another decade before personal computers entered into most engineering offices and two decades before the last drafting board fell into disuse. The computer profoundly changed the typical design office. With computer-aided design techniques, it was now possible to screw things up 40 times faster than you could with a pencil. What used to take months of persistence and attention to detail could now be botched almost instantaneously.
The problem is that humans don’t think any faster than they used to. Intelligent thoughts need time to bore through bone, gristle, and rummage around, searching for an active synapse to stimulate. That process is far slower than most would believe. Unintended consequences often do not surface for weeks or months after a project is completed. It seems that mankind has been set on a path toward peak stupidity, a journey that modern computer technology has shortened considerably.
Unprime Day
Prime Day, Amazon’s yearly deal-hawking hoopla for its swindled subscribers, begins on June 21. And there’s never been a better occasion to cancel your Prime membership and boycott Amazon and all its subsidiaries (which include AbeBooks, Amazon Studios, Audible, Book Depository, ComiXology, Goodreads, IMDb, Twitch, Whole Foods, Zappos, and dozens more).
Prime Day, Amazon’s yearly deal-hawking hoopla for its swindled subscribers, begins on June 21.
And there’s never been a better occasion to cancel your Prime membership and boycott Amazon and all its subsidiaries (which include AbeBooks, Amazon Studios, Audible, Book Depository, ComiXology, Goodreads, IMDb, Twitch, Whole Foods, Zappos, and dozens more).
As you can tell from the list above, Amazon owns a huge number of companies whose products and services millions use every single day.
. . . whether they’re walking to work in their Zappos shoes with an Audible audiobook in their ears, or watching streams on Twitch while scarfing down premium Whole Foods goodies, or binging Amazon Studios–produced TV shows while looking up the name of “that guy who looks like that other guy” on IMDb. And that’s true even when you leave Amazon itself out of the tally.
The point, in short, is not just that megacorporations are taking over the world, but that one monolithic corporation named Amazon controls an ever-increasing share of our mental environment.
Think that sounds exaggerated? Think again.
Amazon’s dominance is funded by an illegal price-rigging racket that disguises the costs of its “free shipping” promise to Prime members. As a result, it has oodles of capital to spend on ventures well beyond its e-commerce perview. (Remember when all it sold was books?)
Today, Amazon has its finger in cloud computing, streaming, electronics, home security, A.I., surveillance — and yes, even the defense industry. (Oh, and did I mention that it’s now a bank, too?) As one of the ten biggest corporations on the planet, it’s power to influence you is therefore enormous. It’s meddling in areas of your life you’re not even aware of.
With all this, what are the chances that Amazon has your best interest at heart? Ask yourself: Are you being empowered — or exploited?
Don’t be naive — after all, we’re talking about the same company that is set on hanging workers out to dry, chucking the environment in the bin, forcing you to foot its tax bill, and distorting democracy itself. And it’s no friend of whistleblowers, either.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Amazon’s fate lies in one person’s hands . . . one person with the power to make or break the gargantuan tech tyrant, by either shopping from it — or dropping it altogether.
And that person is you.
We’ve long called for unswooshing the swoosh. This Prime Day, ditch your membership and boycott the mother of all tech-corp crooks (and every one of her brats).
It’s time to #unprime Prime — not just for one day, but for good.
The
#TrueCost
Revolution
What's in a price?
Raw materials. Labor. Equipment upkeep. Rents and fees. Supply and demand. Taxes.
Those things influence how much you pay at the till. But what about the cost of the wrapper you throw away, toxic run-off leaking into lakes and streams, carbon released into the atmosphere — in short, all the noxious side-effects of using or producing everyday things in a capitalist world? Who pays for that?
The short answer: We all do.
Read Full StoryThe
#TrueCost
Revolution
Where you Fit In
Over the last couple of generations, we in the so-called “developed” world have eased into a very cushy way of living. We love our dish washers, spin dryers and microwave ovens. We love our throw away diapers, pre-washed veggies and ready-to-eat dinners delivered right to our door. And we love cruising in our cars with our favorite music playing. The idea of living more austere lives is anathema. We’re hooked on all of this stuff now. Whatever it takes, we gotta have our Doritos.
That’s just the way it is.
Or is it?
Read Full StoryRead
the
introduction
to
Adbusters'
forthcoming
book.
The Third Force
The hierarchical, top-down power structures that ruled the world for thousands of years are collapsing before our eyes. The street now has unprecedented sway.
Nous sommes sur le point de vous donner les codes.
Are you ready?
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Music credit: Coltrane - In a Sentimental Mood
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Whatever Happened to Occupy - Joey Chaos ft. Kimmortal
Adbusters #156: Battle for the Soul of Economics
World Revolution
Join Us
Third Force Collective
We’re caught in an existential crisis with no obvious way out. It’s time to question the hidden coordinates of our reality and launch a new operating system for Planet Earth. We're about to give you the codes . . . Are you ready?
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blackspotcollective@adbusters.org
