Despite the $millions pumped into it by Billionaires, climate change deniers are losing the argument. The young are certainly concerned about man made climate change. There is no climate change skepticism in China. KV
Jonathon Cook
Below is a fascinating 9-minute segment of Al Jazeera’s programme The Listening Post on why climate scepticism persists only in what it terms the Anglosphere media – those in the United States, UK, Australia and Canada. Paradoxically, the media in other big polluters, such as China and India, offer climate change deniers no houseroom at all.
The answer, the programme concludes, relates primarily to where political and economic power resides in each system.
In China, the media follow the party line, which is to accept the scientific evidence for approaching climate meltdown. In India, the corporations are so dominant, and political accountability so weak, that big business need not expend energy and waste money on manufacturing popular consent for its policies of rape and pillage of the planet.
In the Anglosphere, on the other hand, far more is at stake for the corporations. Ordinary people hold potentially more power, if they ever chose to exercise it. Science-based debates about climate change are, therefore, dangerous. So the corporate media seek to sow doubt, confusion and apathy by downplaying the science and conferring credibility on the deniers.
The issue of climate change is revealing about the key role of the media – and why I keep banging on about it. Given the science, there really should be zero room for doubt about imminent climate meltdown. Our confusion and apathy exist only because they have been manufactured by the media in the face of the overwhelming factual and scientific evidence.
So if we are being duped by the Anglosphere’s “free” media on climate change, where the facts are known and the consequences devastating for all of us, imagine how much easier it is to deceive us on other, less scientific matters – ones that occur far away and rarely touch directly on our own lives.
How reliable then is that same western corporate media likely to be in covering, for example, the endless resource wars that have been packaged and sold to us as wars on terrorism and instances of humanitarian intervention? The stakes, after all, are just as high for the corporations – the plunder of other countries’ resources and the maintenance of sky-high profits for their military industries.
7 comments:
"the plunder of other countries’ resources "
Well then why dont those resource nations just develop the resource extraction systems themselves?
That's right, Matt, why don't they? If they don't have the expertise they could hire it.
What typically happens is that the rulers sell the franchise to neocolonists and pocket the rent. Case in point is the Saudi "royal" family.
Yes, that's what I thought, Tom.
Kevin
Since those at the top pocket the gain, the rest of the country remains a shit hole.
This is also happening in the developed countries now that the elite is colonizing the home country, too.
I never thought it would come to this, I believed in the 'enlightened new future' where people were modern thinking. We read Charles Dickens and saw the films and we had moved on so much from then. Now I find he media lies and spreads propaganda on behalf of the elite.
We're not enlightened anymore. ' Greed is good' and it seems that being really greedy is better. We have people saying that the build up to WW3 is good because the elite are making a lot of money out of it. What! This world is nuts and it seems to be entirely evil.
Most people are nice and believe in fairness and being reasonable. But the ruling elite put out propaganda that the other side is evil and so people - who are on the whole good - get worked up and go to war for the ruling elite.
Is man's nature so bad that there is no hope, or do we just have a rotten lot in power?
“Is man's nature so bad that there is no hope, or do we just have a rotten lot in power?”
Hope is a shield.
It’s like the breath that comes in and out – without it you would curl up and die. We have hope because the essence of a human being is good. You know this because you can feel it inside of yourself; and you can see it in others too. And feeling this, we hope.
But hope needs mental discipline too, a strong heart, stable emotions, and right motivation to stay the course. Hope would like to see the whole of mankind benefit – not just one individual. We know it is only possible through cooperation and respect; not separation.
Well, all of that that is inside of us too, in abundance. I don’t think people really understand just how deep is this well; until they start to use it.
People only have power over you if you give it to them. This is because the self inside of you is your master. Its inner domain is your heart; its outer domain is you (when you recognize it). The greatest fault-line in selfishness is that it is only possible through force. Force masks fear. A human being must first learn how to love themselves; only then is it made possible to learn how to love others. There is the human key. Unity first; then stripped of ego and selfishness, the ideologies can clarify and merge.
For me, this sun is rising in the human heart everywhere, all over the world, if you know where to look, and listen. You can hear it in the music …. As a little ninety-six year old polish man I know says: - ‘Life is a beautiful thing’.
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