It's nearly time for the annual jamboree for World Government and Globalised Capitalism at Davos where they celebrate their liquidity, snort copious amounts of high-grade Colombian cocaine and plan their shared strategies and agendas for the next year. Fortunately for the rest of the planet, there will be a few individuals present that don't exhibit the short-termism associated with psychopathic personality disorder (PPDs) - for explanation see post at: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/01/psychopathic-personality-disorder.html. We can only hope that Hank Paulson, George Soros, Bill Gates, Lula, Warren Buffett, Joseph Stiglitz et al counterbalance the rest.
Nearly 200 years ago Percy Bysshe Shelley penned "The Call To Freedom" to highlight the abuses of capitalism in the workhouses of Lancashire, the prison ships sailing to Botany Bay and the plantations of the West Indies. His words seem surprisingly relevant for our current globalised system which offers us Vietnamese workhouses and Private Equity Firms.
From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold -
From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares -
Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around
Those prison halls of wealth and fashion
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale -
Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to be behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold -
Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -
And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thunder doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
