News Gloss

CFR eats PBS

Although this is old news, clearly the Council on Foreign Relations, the power-center of apologists for US foreign & economic policy, has taken over US public television. In a very direct way.

The CFR's slick publicist Fareed Zakaria has a new show Foreign Exchange, where Zakaria regularly attacks movements against exploitation as "backwards". While the US government, the World Bank, IMF, NAFTA etc. steal all possible resources around the world (including within the US) for the benefit of a few, propagandists like Zakaria steal language such as "free trade", "democracy", "civil society" and "progress" to cover the appalling reality.

Last night, on Wide Angle, I saw a piece of the superb documentary "Control Room", followed by what can only be considered a rebuttal of reality, by Richard Haass of the CFR. The only way to fight these ad-men is outside of the TV bubble. They have the media wrapped up, including public radio & television. And they're trying very hard to control the news on the web as well. Let's find ways for the voices of the majority, of people on the ground, to collectively push reality back into public discourse.

posted by Greg Bryant @ 12:03 PM 0 comments

Real collaboration

This "advertocumentary" for giant US military contractors, and their expensive new collaborative systems, was on the PBS show "Innovation: life, inspired". It's about war, specifically about the invasion of Iraq, so it should have been "death, inspired".

The show included details about the new "non-hiearchical" approach to US military operations, letting soldiers see each other on the battleground, and coordinate their efforts, using network technology.

Of course, this technology doesn't let soldiers coordinate a rebellion against the war itself. It's only "non-hierarchical" in certain ways.

The US government understands "divide and conquer" quite well, because they use it on their own military. The show included soldiers saying "war is hell", and obviously they don't want to be there. But five soldiers can't desert effectively. If 50,000 of them decided to quit at once ... using their collaborative systems ... now that would be an interesting movie.

posted by Greg Bryant @ 9:58 PM 0 comments