This is quite possibly the best video I’ve  ever seen on YouTube. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce is a talk by Slavoj Žižek that challenges what I believe is one of the most fundamentally flawed assumptions in society today, that capitalist charity can ever overtake the destruction created by capitalism in the first place. An article from the November 2001 issue of the satire paper The Onion reads “70 Percent Of The World Could Use An All-Star Benefit Concert“. It was of course meant to be a joke but is actually quite truthful and what’s not funny is that number is rising exponentially thanks to so-called “free-market capitalism”. Žižek does a brilliant job here of explaining how charity and ethically-branded consumerism is keeping this unsustainable system on life-support prolonging it’s long term damage. I must warn you though, it’s not for the weak-minded. His ideas will be very uncomfortable for many.

Congolese liberation leader and first Prime Minister Patrice Émery Lumumba was assassinated in January 1961, less than seven months after coming to power. He aspired to make Congo an independent nation but was rejected by the US for help before turning to the USSR, igniting his assassination.

What I find most disturbing about this is doc is the cold sociopathic attitude of his killers, even after all this time for reflection.

How many sociopathic agents are active today?

I believe that Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is one of the most important nonfiction books written since the end of WWII. Here’s a lecture I filmed of Naomi in Dec. ‘07 talking about The Shock Doctrine.

Naomi Klein also wrote another ground breaking book entitled NO LOGO, which looks at the shift towards branding and away from manufacturing by the most recognizable corporations. The Media Education Foundation made a great documentary based on this book.

Check out Naomi Klein’s website to learn http://www.naomiklein.org