Decolonising our minds
“I wish you Egypt so you can decolonise your minds” says the Palestinian Human Rights Campaigner Omar Barghouti, to a packed plenary in Shoreditch Town Hall. It is the final rally of the 6 Billion Ways Conference, a day of workshops, speakers and music from across the world. In so doing he captures the mood of a day in a single sentence. Both decolonisation of the mind and the revolution in Egypt have proven central themes of 6 Billion Ways conference as a whole, as they will during the final rally.
Money, power & austerity
The story of money is long, so I hear. credit, debt and even blood debt have existed as a way of long-distance trade, but its influence has always been in a way that has culminated in its collapse.
Put it this way: standardised capital is usually a method of control. Money represents that capital control, symbolising not only the value of exchange but the value of political structure that ensures that exchange. Thus, when the value of that money denigrates, the power of that authority is weak and open to fall apart.
Which only makes you question – when the gold standard was removed from monetary policy, were we glimpsing the beginning of the fall? Certainly Samir
Amin would say so.
