Weekend's random thoughts: Mahmoud Darwish and Benjamin Barber

"When the market is encouraged to do the work of democracy, our culture is perverted and the character of our common wealth undermined. Moreover my sense of self- me as a moral being embedded in a free community -is lost"
Benjamin Barber, Consumed, p 127

"Inequality is built into the market system which too often becomes a race to the top for those who are wealthy and a race to the bottom for everyone else. Inequality is not incidental to privatization, it is its very premise.

The implicit tactics employed by the well off is to leave behind those who get more public services than they contribute as taxpayers is a residual public sector and throw in with those who have plenty to contribute in their own private commons. The result is two types of service- two societies- hostile, divided and deeply unequal.

Not surprisingly then privatization ultimately attaches to politics itself. Politics are merchandised and sold as commodities to a public regarded not as a body of public citizens but as a clientele"
Benjamin Barber, Consumed, p 157

" The Earth is closing in on us, pushing us through the last passage and we tear off our limbs to pass through
The earth is squeezing us........

Where should we go after the last frontiers?
Where should the birds fly after the last sky?
Where should the plants sleep after the last breath?
We will write our names with scarlet steam"
Mahmoud Darwish The Earth is Closing in on Us

Random thoughts is a weekly attempt to use the words and thoughts of others to illuminate aspects of contemporary life here in Australia and Western Australia.