The latest from Media Lens is a tour de force highlighting the continuing failure of the lamestream media, particularly in regard to the censorship by omission and failing to hold those in power to account.
It also discusses the unfolding ecological crisis in no uncertain terms:
However, if governments really were motivated to protect the public, as they always claim when amplifying the threat of terrorism, they would have already announced a halt to fossil fuels and a massive conversion to renewable energy. A landmark study recently showed that global pollution kills nine million people a year and threatens the 'survival of human societies'. If terrorism was killing nine million people every year, and the very survival of human society was threatened, the corporate media and politicians would be reacting very differently. But because it's global pollution, merely an economic 'externality', private power can continue on its quest for dominance and profits.
The situation now is truly desperate. We are literally talking about the survival of the human species. There will be those who declare, either with black humour or a morally-suspect flippancy, that 'the planet would be better off without us'. But we surely cannot so casually dismiss the lives and prospects of literally billions of people alive today and their descendants too.
Government policies are driven primarily by short-term political gain and corporate power, so there needs to be a massive public demand for control of the economy towards sustainability. The alternative is no human future. But just at a time when public resistance and radical action are most needed, social media networks owned and controlled by huge corporations are suppressing dissent. A major part of the struggle for human survival, then, will be to overcome the unaccountable media corporations and tech giants that are attempting to define what is deemed 'acceptable' news and commentary.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools - Douglas Adams.
Yesterday Oxford street went into full terror alert panic with 23 injured when an altercation between two men on a tube platform led to the announcement that the station was being evacuated after 'an incident'.
PS_RalphW wrote:Yesterday Oxford street went into full terror alert panic with 23 injured when an altercation between two men on a tube platform led to the announcement that the station was being evacuated after 'an incident'.
It seems like social media enhanced mass hysteria reminiscent of ergotism. In the vacuum of msm information concerning the nature of the "incident" people feared the worst and reacted accordingly. A lot of folk were probably already hyped up with all the black friday crap.....
I worked just off Oxford St for a number of years and avoided the street and tube station like the plague.
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
