>>If they were really educated, they may start thinking, and then may even start asking wrong questions, and there goes the system of free explo... trade. My goodness, they may even get to recognize their own interests, and (what would be unbearably worse) get organized to do something about it.
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>Yup. School does it's part and the media takes care of the rest.
>You noted earlier that because of work people 'over there' demonstrated in the evening. Here, of course, evenings are reserved for "quality time with the kids" and to infringe on that is to make one a bad parent.
In this case, I went with the kids. Our little daughter, who was about four at the time, still remembers the water someone spilled over our heads from the 4th floor. About 100m later, when the word about this spread, we all returned to that place and called the guy out. The water was actually warm (it was January, cold would have been worse), so we shouted at the guy "what are you doing washing dishes at this time, go watch your pharoah's TV".
>A pharmaceutical company tried to invent the sickness of SHYNESS to sell a pill that "helped". They got the traditional media play in your "news" magazines and on the "news" itself, then launched their advertising blitz. This is one that, apparently, didn't work. But we know they'll try again and again.
They'll rename it and sell it as a sure cure against something else. They'll invent some danger that this is protecting you for, and nobody will wonder how did we survive these thousands of years without it.
>There is consistently common thread in news/talk/advertising media lasting weeks at a time. A concerted effort by some power somewhere to 'sell' something, be it a product or a point of view. The media, by and large, maynot even know that they are pawns in many of these conspiracies. They've cut budgets and, with present school training, short-cuts like press releases or canned video that's a commercial in disguise is too tempting. Don't THINK about the content - just fill some space with my name in the by-line.
The need to fill the space and sell it has gone way beyond common sense. What's the purpose of advertising tomorrow's news? They won't be new tomorrow. There are actually no news on regular commercial channels - or at least I can't watch them. They're so interspersed with commercials, that I lose my patience halfway between the announcement ("and we'll see how this happened after these messages") and the actual news. And then, as you say, the imposed threads are just sales pitches, most of the time, or just distractions, to keep people's minds away from the real issues.
Take the Enron case - all we hear is the dispute about the accounting practice, people losing their retirements/savings/stock, but I haven't heard a single word on what actually happened to those 200+ offshore companies, what were they doing, what happened to the money invested in them, who owes them money and who owns the debtors. Looks like a great scam to get the money out of the country, and the focus always seems to be on the magician's wrong hand.
>"Globalization" seems at odds with the ongoing (still, I believe) push by different cultural groups around the world to stake out their own territory. Like Quebec or Northern Ireland or Kosovo or Iraq or East Timor or.... (lots in Russia, Africa, Asia). These seem to want to shrink themselves rather than globalize themselves.
They suffer from media manipulation as well. They are led to think that breaking free from their local (perceived) masters will really set them free, while they're really running into the lion's mouth - the areas devastated by yesterday's wars are today's free hunting grounds for the globalization missionaries. Guess who's looking for oil in Bosnia or which companies are doing construction work in Kosovo. Not local companies, not at all.
>The money, of course, only sees that it can pay much lower wages and crap all over the local environment, all the while leaving local labour laws alone
Nope, IMF (plus WTO plus World Bank) force the local labour legislature to conform to their standards.
>(most favourable to them, of course), all out of "respect" for local custom. Local custom almost always involves bribes and payoffs too.
>But if that's what it takes 'to spread democracy' then that's OK. Remember, globalization is nothing more than the compassionate spread of democratic principles. Better to win them with "kindness" than to win them through war. "A rising tide raises all boats', and the tide is money. It just looks like exploitation to the uninformed. Just to be sure... if you buy any of this paragraph then I do have a very nice bridge to sell you. In fact, you can pick the bridge.
If I was a true proponent of globalization, I would sell the bridge to you with the money I'd borrow you (with heavy interest), you'd end up owing me some more, plus I'd be charging toll on that bridge untill you pay it all back. That's called "financial aid to the countries in transition".
