There is not all that much that sets this book apart from all of the other anti-corporate books that have been released, except that at the end the writer says that this is not so much a book to help us look for a way forward and a way to get out of this mess that we have found ourselves in, but rather as a means to vent her frustration over the ever encroaching corporate and technocratic domination of our lives. The thing is that Penny doesn't actually say anything new in this book, and does not really point out anything that we don't already know, and there are much better books out there that do just that (such as [author:Naomi Klein]'s [book:No Logo]).

The thing about the corporation is that there are two sides to every issue. Corporations are able to raise huge amounts of capital to be able to produce things that normal people like us are not able. They are also able to make life easier and to provide avenues for us to be able to get things that we like and need. Without the corporation we would not have supermarkets, or multiplex cinemas, or even the vehicle to get you to these places.

On the flip side, they have what is effectively unfettered power of control. Corporations control what we see and what we do. With the amount of money they are able to raise they are able to influence governments and elections. We have seen this recently in Australia where one media company pretty much dictated the election result by printing newspaper articles with views that they wanted people to see. For instance, opposition leader was pictured as the saviour that Australia needed while every move that the government made was plastered everywhere, and was given a negative twist (while this has been the case for a long time with elections, it has never been to this extent previously in Australia). Now, what we have is a government that is effectively secret and media shy, and bowing to corporate interests for what they believe is in the best interests of the country.

There is one thing that I have noticed that is coming out of this recent election and that is a law banning boycotts. This law is clearly aimed at promoting and protecting corporate interests and denying the citizens of Australia the right to freedom of speech. The question is how is this law going to be implemented. Am I going to be forced to eat at McDonalds, and am I going to be forced to do all of my shopping at one of the major supermarkets because if I don't it will be considered a boycott. Or is this law going to fall flat on its face because there is no way to actually determine whether a consumer's buying behaviour is a boycott or simply choice.

Another thing this book raises is the idea of the phone maze. I work in a glorified call center (meaning that we need to have decent training to be able to work where we are working) and the idea of the phone maze is to try and direct us to where we want to go. With the number of calls I make out, I encounter either the switchboard, or the phone maze. Having navigated lots of phone mazes, one becomes proficient in getting to where you want to go, or at least working out how to speak to a person because a computer simply has no intelligence and only responds to commands. Otherwise you hit the switchboard which, unless you are ultra-specific, they end up sending you to the wrong department anyway.

One thing that I notice in my workplace is how people are being forced to specialise. The work duties are slowly being narrowed down in the same way that the manufacturing sector has narrowed down the tasks that the workers perform. Before the industrial revolution, blacksmiths used to be multi-skilled, however now all you do is the same repetitive task day in and day out. The same is the case with office work, and with file management, as the specific tasks on each file are farmed out to specialists. Being somebody who likes variety in my work, and to be able to be challenged from multiple different sectors, this is something that I do not particularly like.

I picked up this book probably within the first few months of getting my first fulltime, degree related job. Going from unemployment benefits to a steady wage at the time felt like rivers of gold had opened up and started pouring wealth onto me, and unfortunately I ended up spending it as if it was limitless. One of the things that I began doing was buying lots of books that I had never had the opportunity of being able to afford previously, and I can remember coming home regularly with more books to cram onto my bookshelf. At the time I also loaded up on anti-corporate, left-wing leaning books, and in a way I still like the style, but it has also reached the point where there is really nothing new to be said. That does not mean that I have walked away from it, but rather have shifted my attention elsewhere.

I found this book to be a quick and quite easy read, and it is one of Michael Moore's earlier books, which means that he did seem to be a little more level headed at the time. It was also written during the reign of Bill Clinton, which also means that he was receiving less flack from the Republican Right than he received during the reign of George Bush Jnr. However, what is interesting is that there was little difference in the contents of the books over the period, with the exception that there was a greater concern over the intrusion of corporate interests into the government sphere. However, we need to be aware that in American politics at least, both parties tend to lean to the right, though the Republicans tend to lean further to the right than do the Democrats.

However, it was not always that way, and though one may suggest that it was when Regan was elected president that the Republicans took a sharp move to the right, we also must remember that the United States has always been a country with right wing tendencies. Remember that there was no labour movement in the United States and there was no formation of a Labour Party, as had happened in both England and Australia. In Australia, and England, the Labour Party evolved out of the Union movement, and in many cases, it was seen as a necessary move to attempt to halt the progress of communism. In England, the Conservative Party was the party that introduced health care and education, as well as pushed through the labour laws that are taken foregranted today. However, this never happened in the United States, and while there are labour laws, many of them have been watered down significantly. In fact, throughout the 1920s, while the Union movement was being supported in other countries, it was being attacked and undermined in the United States. Yet we must not forget that it was a Republican President that abolished slavery, and went to war to do so, and it was also a Republican President that also went to war against the monopolistic corporations of the early 20^th Century and won. The Republican party of today is not the Republican party of yesterday, nor will it necessarily be the Republican party of tomorrow. While, to an extent, I respect the beliefs of Republicans, there are many aspects (such as their opposition to paying tax) that I find quite self-centred and offensive.

However, I should consider some of the ideas that come out of this book, and as the title suggests, it is about how companies downsize their workforce, shift factories overseas, simply for the short term profit of the balance sheet and the shareholders. I have mentioned elsewhere though that corporate profits do not necessarily benefit only a handful of people, but also benefit the wider community who have their life savings stored up in superfunds. That does not necessarily mean that we all benefit from it, and that our life savings are safe, but we must remember that those of us who have savings, particularly in superfunds, do benefit from corporate profits.

The question is whether it is right for a company to sack all of its workers and to shift its manufacturing base to a country where the cost of labour is cheaper. In a way it makes economic sense to do so, and if you are a company that insists on employing a native workforce and are competing against a company that is using cheaper, foreign labour, then you are going to be on the backfoot and are unlikely to be as competitive. The question is then raised, is it right for us to keep an unprofitable operation going simply to keep people employed? My answer would have to be no, since if we are running an unprofitable enterprise, then the enterprise is going to be doomed to failure, and it will affect a lot more people. Michael Moore laments the destruction of his home town as General Motors pulls out, but the question really is raised as to whether this enterprise was profitable. It turns out that it isn't, and it wasn't. General Motors went bankrupt, while Toyota was opening new plants and making more profits. However, the catch is that General Motors was saddled with liabilities towards its workers, especially since in the United States the company runs the pension plans. Guess what, they got out of that liability, and it ends up leaving those workers who were relying on the company for their retirement income pretty much up the creek without a paddle.

Then there is the idea that Moore talks about with regards to the Welfare Mothers. These are people that are accused of having children, and not marrying, so that they may live off government pensions. To be honest, that type of attitude is simply unacceptable. There are many reasons why a mother lands up as a single mother (maybe the father was killed in one of the US's illegal wars). However, while these Welfare Mother's are being attached and accused of bludging off of the sweat of hard working people, the corporate masters are being given multiple handouts to survive. Okay, there are issues of keeping a company afloat so as to keep people employed, but a company that exists relying on government handouts is a company that probably doesn't deserve to exist. Anyway, half of these companies, even with a government handout, still ended up sacking workers, however I still don't believe that a company should keep workers simply to keep people employed, especially when the job no longer exists, or is unproductive. As for a company scamming government handouts, well, that to me is not the purpose behind free enterprise. The idea of free enterprise is that a good company survives and a bad company gets wiped out. If the company is not performing, it needs to adjust itself internally instead of running to the government cap in hand. While the idea of the bailouts during the GFC are contentious, I am leaning more on the side that these companies should have been allowed to fail, even if they were too big to fail.

To be blunt, there is really nothing in this book that cannot be found out with a little research. However, in relation to the contents of this book, whenever I try to bring these issues up in conversation, a number of my friends accuse me of propagating conspiracy theories. To rebut those statements I will simply suggest that while they may be a conspiracy, they are not a theories. Even then, now that I think about it, they are not actually a conspiracies either. The [book:Macquarie Dictionary] defines conspiracy as '1. the act of conspiring (gee, great definition) 2. a combination of persons for an evil or unlawful purpose, a plot'. Now while the things that this book talks about involve combinations of persons, what they are doing are not necessarily evil or unlawful. Unfortunately I do not have my legal dictionary here, but what I can say is that in a legal context, a conspiracy is what is considered an attempt to commit a crime, or more precisely, a group of people who come together for the purposes of planning the commission of a crime. The difficult thing with regards to attempts (and conspiracies) is that because no crime has been committed it is actually harder to prove guilt, or intention.

Take the changes to the laws after September 11. The difficulty was that it was only after the act that a crime had been committed, and since acts of terrorism can be wide ranging and very destructive, simply waiting until after the act has been committed is not possible. However, the current law of attempts makes it hard to convict somebody of planning to commit an act of terrorism (hey, I really do have a lawful purpose for those fifty bags of fertiliser). It is easy to change the law, but the problem is, that by changing the law, you can catch people that were actually acting legitimately. However, I will not go too much further on that because the whole War on Terror is discussed elsewhere.

What this book is about is the failures of corporatism. Now, I mentioned previously that for there to be a conspiracy there has to be an intention by a group of people to commit a crime. One such crime is creating a monopoly and the misuse of market power (at least here in Australia under the <i>Trade Practices Act</i>). However, in some instances the monopoly comes about naturally. I would suggest Bill Gates, but that is a large grey area because while Microsoft is not strictly a monopoly, it does dominate the market. It is impossible to buy a laptop or a desktop PC that does not have Windows installed upon it. However, once again, that is not necessarily a crime, rather it is business acumen. Further, Microsoft does have challenges to its marketpower. Google has trumped its attempt to enter the smartphone market through their use of the Android system, and Linux and Apple are slowly eating away at its control of the computer market. These days most people that I know (with the exception of my brother) use the Firefox browser (okay, work uses Explorer, but that is work, and I generally don't expect much from corporations).

However, I haven't said all that much about this book, but one of the reasons is that I don't have it with me, and secondly, I really do not want to regurgitate everything that it says. For instance, there are two corporations that pretty much own 90% of the world's fresh water supply (and I can't remember their name off hand, however I do know they are both French). Two of the reasons for this is because they have been buying up smaller players and because of the high barriers to entry for new players. It is a debatable issue as to whether they are acting in a moral way or not, though I would suggest that corporations are, in all intents and purpose, amoral entities. Some have attempted to take a moral standpoint (such as The Bodyshop) however it generally does not last long, especially when one enters into the stock market to raise funds.

I do want to finish off with a discussion in this regards. Now, you will probably be surprised to know that the largest shareholders in pretty much every major company, are the superfunds and investment houses. I had a look through the annual reports of some of the companies that I own, and the story is generally always the same: 1% of the shareholders hold between 60 to 90% of the company. Is this wrong? Oonce again that is debateable. It is sort of a conundrum since people put their money in investment houses to protect their wealth as well as to increase it. However while the investment houses have the wealth to be able to put into the stockmarket in such amounts, their wealth also give them the power to be able to influence the directions of this company, and as such, if being ethical is not cost effective, they ditch ethics in favour of profits.

Governments do have the power to restrict corporate abuse, however there is another catch. In a modern democracy political parties require huge amounts of money to be able to get elected and in turn win government, and the only entities that are able to provide funding are the corporations. However, you may ask what does a corporation get from a political donation. Quite a lot actually. Take for instance a corporation, that has an annual turnover of $100 billion, and gives a political party $20 million for election expenses. The company pays, say, 30% of its earnings in tax, being $30 billion a year, however, the party, once elected, cuts the tax rate to 28%, which means that instead of paying $30 billion, they are only paying $28 billion. Therefore, by spending $20 million dollars, the company has just made, and will continue to make (as long as the turnover remains static) an extra $2 billion a year after tax.

Then there is the lobby industry. I remember going to Canberra once and somebody pointed out at the suburb of Fishwyck and said, 'this is Canberra's industrial zone' and I looked at them oddly and said, 'but I thought there was only one industry in Canberra, the lobby industry'. Now, I still have trouble distinguishing the difference between a lobbyist and a bribe, but basically a lobbyist is paid to approach politicians, take them out to dinner (as well as other entertainment), and then convince them to either pass, or block, a piece of legislation that the client does not like. Now, lobbyists are not supposed to pay money to the politician, however this does not seem to include wining and dinning (and, as in some cases, outright bribary).

The other aspect is what is called the revolving door. This happens throughout the Western World, but was most noticeable duing the Bush Administration. Australia is quite different in that when you sit in parliament, you are not actually supposed to have a second job (and you are unlikely to have the time for a second job) and most Australian politicians, once elected, stay on until either they resign or are sacked. However, this is not the case for the public service (or political staff). In the United States, the office of the President works differently as the executive is not formed out of congress (as it is in Britain and Australia). However, the idea is that the captains of industry will jump from public to private jobs, but retain their contacts and friends in the government. When they are in the private sphere, they have numerous colleges in their industry, so when they take up a position, say on a politician's staff, or in the public service, they still have these connections, and their friends can use them as a back door to the politician. However, while they are in the public sphere, they are making more friends, so when they return to the private sphere, they have multiple contacts that they can approach for favours.

Now, I will finish off here by simply mentioning that while the world seems to be governed by corrupt and greedy individuals, we must remember that we live in a sinful world, and while I will never say that we should not confront and challenge these individuals, we should also remember that a charismatic leader promising a return to the Garden of Eden is probably going to be a lot more dangerous. Two things: these people are in power, so they want to maintain the status quo, which means not annoying the constituents too much; and they need us to survive. By bankrupting and driving the middle class into poverty means that there is no money for them. Remember the causes of the French revolution. The monarchy had taxed the population to the brink of poverty, and where still spending more than they were earning and were on the brink of bankruptcy, so instead of cutting back on their luxuries, or paying taxes themselves, they decided to jack up the taxes on the population. However, the population was already taxed to the hilt, and as they say, you cannot get blood from a stone. We all know (I hope) what ended up happening.

Well, this is the second of the Cat's Cradle trilogy, and I have only vague memories of what actually tied these novels together. The Timewyrm series were tied together with the Timewyrm (and ended up being cyclical with the end of the series coinciding with the beginning) and I suspected that these were tied together as well but I simply cannot remember what the relevance of the Cat's Cradle was (and I suspect that it has nothing to do with the book of the same name by Kurt Vonnegut).

This book is set in the near future where everything goes to hell in regards to Earth. It is very dark and gritty and in a way different to what a lot of fans would normally expect from Doctor Who. Many of the episodes are very light hearted, high-science fiction with the occasional commentary, but in general it was mostly for entertainment purposes. In fact, I found it difficult to see if there was really any indepth commentary within any of the Doctor Who stories of the past. However, come the novels, this begins to change.

Environmentalism is something that I care about. While there is a debate over the legitimacy of global warming, this debate seems to push a lot of the other issues to the background, such as poisoning the air and water supplies. I have known people who go out of their way to bombard us with anti-global warming propaganda, however refuse to listen to any other aspect of the argument. Me, I try to steer away from the global warming debate as there are other, more serious, things that we need to confront and I will go over some of them briefly (at least to the extent that they relate to this book).

One I have mentioned about is of particular concern to me and that is poisoning the air and water supplies. It is a proven fact that toxic chemicals that are pumped into the atmosphere do not bode well for people living in the proximity of the factory. In fact, in a lot of cases (but not all), toxic chemicals do not rise, but they fall. Take mustard gas for instance. The most dangerous aspect of mustard gas during World War I was that it was heavier than air, so it will fall into craters and trenches where people would be sheltering. This is not taking into account the amount of damage it would do to one's respiratory system.

The poisoning of water supplies is also a serious concern. Just like pumping toxic smoke into the atmosphere, dumping toxic chemicals into the rivers, or even on the ground where it can sink and become mixed with the ground water, is just as, or more, damaging. We need both air and water to survive, but whereas toxic air can slowly kill us (and it is interesting to note the rise in cancer throughout the 20th Century) toxic water can be even worse. Consider what will happen if all of our water supplies become poisoned. All of the sudden, not only will we have nothing to drink, but we will also have great difficulties growing things.

This is where the rise of the mega-corporations come into play. There is only one thing that they care about and that is profit. If it is too expensive to properly dispose of waste, then they automatically go the cheaper way. Sure enough wealthy people can get around the problem of poisoned water, but those of us who are stuck on limited wages simply get stuffed around. Where as in the past (I remember) we could easily, and cheaply, get our hands on clean drinking water, that has changed a lot. I remember a time when the corner store did not stock drinking water in their fridges, but as our natural water supplies become more toxic, bottled water becomes more popular, and in the end it could be argued that it is more beneficial for corporations to poison natural water supplies as it means that they can then charge more for clean, drinkable, bottled water (unless, of course, you have a water tank, like my parents).

It is interesting that this is the third Heinlein book that I have read and a quick flick through some of the reviews I notice a lot of people carrying on about how outdated and sexist this book is. Look, come off it, not only was this book written in 1963, meaning that it was before our own 'enlightened' society in regards to sexual equality (and come on, while I am all for sexual equality, putting a completely unskilled woman into the role of director of a multinational company just so that the company can reach its quota of women on the board is just ridiculous), but the fact that the main character, who is a woman, is complaining through the book about the how glass ceiling that will make it very difficult for her to become a space pilot makes me think that there is more to this book that most people care to see.

The story is the journal of a young adolescent lady, Podkayne, who is going on her first space flight from Mars to Earth via Venus. As a book I found that there was a lot of detail as to who she was, who her family was, and the particulars of the voyage, though I was quite surprised that they only got as a far as Venus. To me, I found that the end was pretty much tacked on to create some conflict within the book, and a part of me felt that Heinlein could easily have dropped the conflict and simply carried on with her experience of her first space flight. Oh, and I found the ending to be quite disappointing as well.

As I was reading this book I suspected that there would be allegations of sexism, but I suspect that too many people are reading too much into many of the books that they are attacking. In fact I feel that Heinlein is actually criticising the existence of the glass ceiling, suggesting that Podkayne is not only desiring a role only males occupy, but that she has the courage to make it happen. In fact I did not really find anything all that wrong with the character, though she may have been a little on the innocent side (though it is clear that Mars is a puritanical society).

Heinlein does a wonderful job at creating the societies in which Podkayne visits (though we are told about Mars and she visits Venus, and that is about it). I note that his Venusian society is an incredibly liberal society in once sense, and very conservative in another. I say conservative because the corporation controls everything. In fact nobody can open up or run a business without the corporation getting its cut. He is also scathing of casinos, in that he suggests that casinos will purposely allow you to win giving you a false sense of being able to beat the house, before they pretty much bleed you dry.

I do not believe Heinlein is out to 'put women in their place' in this book, but rather to attempt to write a story through the eyes of a woman, and the struggles that she faces. I do not believe it is sexist, and the fact that one of my bosses at work (who is a feminist by the way) said that she quite liked Heinlein, and even quoted this book as one that she had read. This makes me think that it is nowhere near as sexist as some people claim that it is. The only thing that I really did not like about it was the rather rushed and contrived ending.