He has pledged to give away all his wealth, half of it while he earns it and the rest when he dies. Like the protesters, Soros is no fan of the bank bailouts and subsequent government purchase of the toxic sub-prime mortgage assets they amassed in the property bubble. The protesters say the Wall Street bank bailouts in left banks enjoying huge profits while average Americans suffered under high unemployment and job insecurity with little help from Washington.
They contend that the richest 1 percent of Americans have amassed vast fortunes while being taxed at a lower rate than most people. He urged the Obama administration to take bolder action, either by recapitalizing or nationalizing the banks and forcing them to lend at attractive rates.
His advice went unheeded. The magazine is the top-selling Canadian title in the U. Leafing through a copy of Adbusters , however, the typical book-browser is likely to be shocked.
The publication is a sort of MAD Magazine for the pretentious — but much more sinister. There are always parodies and rip-offs of well-known ads. And there is art: sometimes obvious, sometimes incomprehensible. One recent issue included a picture of adolescents giving the finger, and a photograph of hair being plucked from a human nipple.
Sometimes Adbusters can seem disjointed, including polemics against tobacco companies, food companies, logging, fashion designers, and more. What unites this motley crew and keeps them working together? At the heart of Adbusters is hatred of big business, in any form. This leads Adbusters to its animus: the desire to make corporations extinct. We want them to have a hard time looking their kids in the eye and explaining exactly what they do for a living. Self-described culture jammers are typically also rabidly opposed to economic globalization and harbor virulent hatred for multinational corporations.
The group holds a special contempt for marketing. Advertising does not exist to inform or persuade, in their view, but to coerce and control. The idea that advertising is essential to a free society — that without it, markets would collapse and consumers would be information-starved — is alien to them.
So in an effort to scare us away from advertising, Adbusters offers the shocking information that companies study ways to provide consumers with what they want, the better to make profits.
And where food producers and restaurants are concerned, the size of these industries alone makes them worthy of attack. Despite all its bluster about the virtues of an advertising-free world, Adbusters uses the very techniques it excoriates corporations for. It uses marketing to try and kill marketing. Adbusters runs a number of increasingly high-profile campaigns throughout the year. The best known is Buy Nothing Day. Its form and content represent everything he hates about America.
And because our broadcasting system is largely controlled by commercial interests, television is one of the root causes of our ecological crisis as well. With it, Adbusters seems to be branching out into foreign policy. Published on July 3, , the ad consists of a page of fake stock-market listings underneath a big black dot with the words:.
But he appears oblivious to the fact that the corporations he despises have the same right to advertise that he claims sacred. No doubt the success and persistence of Occupy Wall Street will eventually attract some big donors.
But so far it appears there is no shadowy financier committing class-treason by financing Occupy Wall Street. Skip Navigation. How McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast food brands are dealing with labor shortages. Ian Thomas 3 hours ago. VIDEO His advice went unheeded. The Hungarian-American was an early supporter of the election campaign of Barack Obama, who will seek a second term as president in the November, , election.
Liberal film maker Michael Moore has also pledged to donate money. Dressed in anarchist black, the battle-ready mob is shrouded in a fog suggestive of tear gas or fires burning.
Some are wearing gas masks, others wielding sticks.
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