NAMA Wine Lake, the blog that has tracked NAMA – National Asset Management Agency - since Ireland's bad bank was created in 2009, has closed . It is another win for the establishment elite including the mainstream media.
Citizen activism is very important when the people running the show are
generally older men who just some years ago thought that the free lunch had been
invented. Today with the support of generous safety nets and the security of the
euro, they are making crucial decisions or not, that largely do not impact them.
So best wishes to Jagdip Singh.
That is easy to say even though well meant. However, warm words do not butter
parsnips in the modern money economy.
Jagdip Singh provided an important service but no number of consequence would
pay for it, no matter how low.. Meanwhile, Tumblr, the blogging platform like
WordPress, the host of this site, has been acquired by Yahoo for $1.1bn.
These blogging platforms depend on free content and this model has been compared
with the California Gold Rush where most of the money was made by the suppliers
of shovels and pickaxes.
Not all citizen activism is good - just think of Nimbies who want to have their
cake and eat it.
A stunning example of the success of positive citizen activism was provided at
the weekend when Eric Schmidt, Google chairman, conceded that international
corporate tax loopholes should be closed. He didn't say what role his paid
lobbyists in Washington would have.
Just over two years ago, protesters against tax avoidance, mainly women, from a
group called UK Uncut began occupying the high profile retail stores of the
Arcadia group such as Topshop, BHS, Burton, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins,
controlled by Sir Philip Green, one of Britain's richest men.
I say controlled because over £1bn in dividends had been extracted from the
privately held Arcadia without paying any tax, as the owner of Arcadia was
Green's wife - a tax resident of the casino statelet of Monaco.
http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/
Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev puts the struggle of outsiders against the Irish establishment elite well:
"I can attest from my own & others' experiences that those of us who run anything independent of the officialdom mouthpieces (regardless of political / ideological orientation or even the lack of one) have near-zero support (moral or citations- and links-wise) from our internal (not to be confused with international) media and all businesses.
Those in our society, including the traditional media, who only benefit from the free analysis and the climate of openness and debate the independent analysts help to create prefer to endlessly endorse and support, including via advertising revenues, cross-links, citations and readership, those who offer no alternative but consensus."
