neoliberalism in rolling stone.

insight into "market stalinism" and an incipient police state (via jason grote, whose 1001 i will be seeing tomorrow night):

>>American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" — a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining.<<

this is scary stuff, but there's a sort of cold-war era feeling about the construction of china as the new bogeyman that's a little weird-tasting. i don't heart the panopticon anymore than anyone else does, but:

>>Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric.<<

hmm.