Call yourself a friend...

[glenatron]

So I've been reading a book by a bloke called Greg Palast. It's very interesting. He's an investigative reporter, investigating stuff and then reporting it. The book is called The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and it is genuinely shocking. I always thought I was fairly cynical about politicians and the people in power, but I was mistaken. Things are worse than I thought, by several orders of magnitude.

The world genuinely is being run by a malevolant cabal of the incredibly rich, everyone who matters has already been bought and those who wont play the game are attacked through every available method, some subtle and some less so. The globalisation stuff is deeply shocking, the deliberate destruction of country after country by the IMF/World Bank/World Trade Organisation combination and their incredibly stupid far right economic dogma (it may be good theory but if it has never been successful anywhere in the world maybe it's time to try something else?) which pretty much serves to channel money from the developing world into the US Federal reserve. It makes me angry.

The corporate connection things are very interesting too- there is a very good chance that money from your electricity bill went into Dubya's campaign kitty. Along with the money you spent on petrol and quite possibly your water rates. Doesn't it make you proud?

It struck me yesterday that maybe the reason that conspiracy theorists all seem to lean so far to the right is that if your political views incline towards the centre chances are you have provable facts.

There is one thing that we Britons can be proud of, though. In the BBC and the Guardian newspaper groups we have two of the only not-for-profit professional news organisations in the world. That means they can put news stories out without an owner intervening because they conflict with their commercial interests, unless they cover dossiers full of obvious lies anyways. Judging by the utterly cowed state of American journalism, that is a very good thing indeed.

It's a good book, I recommend reading it. I don't know what the solution is to the consequent despair.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I mentioned this a while back, in a confused and slightly rubbish previous post, but Monbiot's book Age of Consent covers a lot of the same ground (by the sound of things) and suggests some ideas for change. Broadly he's arguing for a global (as opposed to international - nation states being too easy for corporations to fuck over, whereas in a global system there's no where left for destructive-captial to run) democratic system of government, economy and security... If one is feeling optimistic it's almost possible to believe that it might be possible. His clear arguments make a lot of sense, and in theory don't require bloody revolution or economic collapse and a return to the stone age. He usefully trashes lots of lame wooly eco-think. The trouble is, it'd all take a lot of effort and belief from lots of people (who like me are probably too busy downloading the Dharmas onto their ipods!), and as with probably all institutions, however well thought-out the checks-and-balances, there's always a (huge/likely) risk that a 'democratic' system would end up controlled by a self-serving elite.

But whilst being as shocked and dismayed as Glenatron by some of the current practises exposed (yes, the IMF/WB/WTO/UNSC!) I found the Monbiot book at least offered HOPE for a future world where the currently destructive forces of power/capital could operate in a more accountable/controllable form.

Ben

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I started reading Monbiot last night based on your previous recommendation- I bought it a while back but then accidentally gave it to my mum for her birthday so I bought myself a new copy on account of Amazon's free postage thing mean't it effectively came free with the new Tori Amos cd and the Sufjan Stevens Illinoise album, about which I remain unsure.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm just reading Alistair McIntosh's 'Soil and Soul' (recommended in the Monbiot book) which I think is probably great, but I need to digest it a bit (he gets quite into religion which I usually try to ignore) before I'm sure about that. But (although you probably know these stories from the horses mouth) he frames his arguments around the Eigg Trust and don't-build-a-big-quarry-on-Harris campaigns from the 90s which are both quite compelling tales of people overcoming capital/corporate powers.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

The horse maintains that he wasn't there, he never saw a thing and even if he was you can't prove anything.