THE NEW RULERS OF THE WORLD
 Dick Jones' Patteran Pages introduced me to the remarkable work of writer, film-maker and award-winning British investigative journalist John Pilger. I recently picked up his prescient book The New Rulers of the World,
written shortly before the US decided to invade Iraq.
The book consists
of four very substantial essays and an introduction that pulls them all
together. The introduction, a scant 14 pages, is a breathtaking and
articulate summary, a perfect snapshot, of the political and economic
world we find ourselves in right now.
Here's how it begins:
When American
Vice-President Dick Cheney said that the 'war on terrorism' could last
for fifty years or more, his words evoked George Orwell's great
prophetic work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. We are to live with the threat
and illusion of endless war, it seems, in order to justify increased
social control and state repression, while great power pursues its goal
of global supremacy. Washington is transformed into 'chief city of
Airstrip One' and every problem is blamed on the 'enemy', the evil
Goldstein, as Orwell called him. He could be Osama bin Laden, or his
successors, the 'axis of evil'.
In the novel, three slogans dominate society: war is peace, freedom is
slavery and ignorance is strength. Today's slogan, 'war on terrorism',
also reverses meaning. The war is terrorism. The most potent weapon in
this 'war' is pseudo-information, different only in form from that
Orwell described, consigning to oblivion unacceptable truths and
historical sense.
Dissent is permissible within 'consensual' boundaries, reinforcing the illusion that information and speech are 'free'.
The attacks of September 11, 2001 did not 'change everything', but
accelerated the continuity of events, providing an extraordinary
pretext for destroying social democracy. The undermining of the Bill of
Rights in the United States and the further dismantling of trial by
jury in Britain and a plethora of related civil liberties are part of
the reduction of democracy to electoral ritual: that is, competition
between indistinguishable parties for the management of a
single-ideology state.
Central to the growth of this 'business state' are the media
conglomerates, which have unprecedented power, owning press and
television, book publishing, film production and databases. They
provide a virtual world of the 'eternal present', as Time magazine
called it: politics by media, war by media, justice by media, even
grief by media.
The 'global economy' is their most important media enterprise. 'Global
economy' is a modern Orwellian term. On the surface, it is instant
financial trading, mobile phones, McDonald's, Starbucks, holidays
booked on the net. Beneath this gloss, it is the globalisation of
poverty, a world where most human beings never make a phone call and
five on less than two dollars a day, where 6,000 children die every day
from diarrhoea because they have no access to clean water.
|
You can read the entire introduction here.
But buy the book. The research is impeccable and well-documented, and
Pilger has an uncanny ability to bring what look like disparate and
unrelated events into blinding focus, and expose the terrifying,
systematic and ruthless logic behind the activities of the massively
powerful business/political elite, the New Rulers of the World.
MEDIA CENSORING NEWS OF THEIR OWN UNPOPULARITY?
Last week there was a rash of
news stories lamenting an across-the-board disastrous drop in
viewership of television. The drop was most marked in young men, a key
demographic for advertisers, and in viewership of the season's new,
mostly dirt-cheap 'reality' shows. There were dire warnings that if
viewers didn't return soon, huge rebates would be owed to advertisers
who had been guaranteed a certain minimum number of passive consumer
eyeballs. What's interesting is that all of these 'bad news' stories have disappeared behind the 'pay-per-view' archive windows of the newspapers and network websites. All that's left are choppy abstracts. Are the media prematurely burying stories that threaten to hurt their own advertising revenues?
CAMILLE ON WHAT BLOGGERS NEED TO DO BETTER
In her semi-annual revisit to Salon.com, Camille Paglia takes shots
at Bush, Rumsfeld, Clark and some other Democratic presidential
candidates, Hannity, and Madonna, and then dismisses blogs as "endless
reams of bad prose" with "a lack of discipline" and "dreary
meta-commentary". I can only assume that Ms. Paglia hasn't done much
research on the subject, and has (as many others have done) judged all
bloggers by a handful of unrepresentative A-listers. She says a good
blog should have:
- a sense of drama and theatre, energy and vision
- a flair for language
- strong use of visuals
- conversational style, an antidote for "the inept writing of glossy magazines"
- less focus on political minutiae and "gotcha" arguments and more attention to broader cultural issues
I'd argue that the best blogs have all this, and more. Maybe Ms. Paglia
should look more closely, or at least hire a better researcher. It's
too bad interviewer Kerry Lauermann didn't show her what some of
Salon's own bloggers have been doing.
TECHNOLOGY THAT MAKES THE WORLD BETTER
The annual Tech Museum award
winners have been announced. Winners are those that have developed and
deployed innovative technology that improves the world: in education,
equality & diversity, environmental protection, third world
development or health. Read the stories: They're modest but inspiring
successes, and demonstrate that not all businesses are greedy and
careless, and not all technology is bad.
WHAT HAVE WE LOST SINCE 9/11?
This multimedia flash presentation is a year old, but still relevant and moving.
CARD COUNTING FOR FUN AND PROFIT
The MIT Blackjack team's amazing story is now a best-seller. Wired broke the story last year. Mezrich is an engaging writer, and if you've watched the new James Caan series Las Vegas you'll get a kick out of Mezrich's view from the other side of the surveillance cameras.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
