Satirical
News And The Build Up To The Third World War
By Pablo Ouziel
29 August,
2008
Countercurrents.org
Perhaps a couple of decades
from now we will all be praising the mainstream media for the wonderful
work they have done reporting on our collective insanity. If we could
all leave aside for a minute our nationalisms and ideologies, we could
see through every page printed, every word aired, or every media image
shown, that global confrontation is just around the corner. The media
seems to be seeing what its readers, viewers and listeners are not
able to grasp. A large scale war is now unavoidable, and we have all
contributed to it through our obtuse obsession with ourselves and
our ideals, and our lack of holistic understanding of human interaction.
That said, it could be that news are no longer news, and are just
part of the 21st century satirical entertainment culture. If that
is the case, we can
safely say that once the television is turned off, the war ends.
Week after week, escalation is the game being played by ³our²
governments. Every country flexing its muscle to see what it is able
to obtain, as the cake of global resources is safely being distributed
between those with access to the knife. The British fighting for the
little bit of oil which they might be able to extract, if they push
the boundaries of their empire past the legal 200 nautical miles from
the shoreline of its colonized Ascension Island. The Americans pushing
for their famous missile shield in the ex-soviet states, which for
years now professor Chomsky has been labeling as a declaration of
war. The Israelis focused on their territorial expansion on Palestinian
land, through their now world-renowned settlements. The Russians with
their personal conflict in Georgia, which the ³international
community² of hypocrites is unanimously condemning, with the
same might as they unanimously support every aggression they personally
wish to impart.
Literally every country in the world, no matter where we look, is
bent on this culture of aggression. Nobody is able to trust anybody,
because deep down we all know that we are selfish, and as soon as
we can, we are going to do everything possible to get on top of the
game. But the worse thing of all, is that we look at ³our²
countries as if they were people with a life of their own -- we talk
about America as if it was a conquering woman, the pom-pom girl of
world aggression, we look at Britain as the wise old fashioned conservative
who thinks he knows everything, while Russia is the head of the Mafia
and Israel the holder of the truth, the bearer of humanity¹s
suffering.
Farcical stereotypes have been continuously set up by very effective
spin-doctors with enough resources to govern the world. Put a barking
dog behind a herd of sheep and they are bound to go in the direction
you plan for them to follow. That is what we have today - barking
dogs disguised as politicians, and sheep seeing themselves as citizens
with a right to vote. The problem is that in this equation there is
no shepherd to guide anyone to greener pastures. This is status quo
necessary for those in power to remain in power, building fraudulent
imagery about the true state of the world.
It is this Status quo, which allows popular debate to remain framed
in words like ³hope² and ³change² for Obama, as
he sits in the foundations of corporate America, presenting his strategy
for change, while demonstrators outside of Denver¹s ³freedom
cage² are getting arrested. The same status quo, which constantly
reminds us of McCain¹s bravery as a POW, in a war which was unjustified
and which killed many innocent Vietnamese civilians. The status quo,
which allows for 90 Afghan civilians to be killed in one day by American
troops, without a single minute of mourning by civilized Americans
who claim to be helping them.
In Spain, there is a saying which says, ³no lo cogería
ni con pinzas², which translated to English could mean something
like ³I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole², and sadly
that is the state of our political systems worldwide. The problem
is that global populations seem either too naïve, too ignorant,
too indifferent, or too powerless, to reject this social reality and
confront it with serious intentions for change.
As our politicians keep fighting for power while rallying the national
flag, millions of people are confronting each other without knowing
each other. Yet, as the suffering keeps mounting with the ringing
of war bells, none of those firmly behind their candidates are gaining
much from these paramilitary adventures. Only the corporate interests
of a very small global elite keep pushing ahead, as their lapdog politicians
keep barking, and the herd of sheep keeps moving towards what Samuel
P. Huntington coined as ³the clash of civilizations.²
Mired in our own limited sphere of thought, dealing with our own personal
problems, we are too disconnected from each other to ever get a grasp
of the fact that no matter what our politicians tell us, Americans
and Iraqis, French and Afghans, Iranians and Israelis, Russians and
British and the rest of us, we are not all that different from each
other. Yet, because most of us only know each other through the imagery
of the television set, we allow our barking politicians to lead the
way towards conflict.
Make no mistake about it, last century¹s great depression ended
with the build up to the Second World War, and the unacknowledged
economic depression of today will give way to the official beginning
of the Third World War. When that happens, the whole of humanity will
be subjected to the kind of depression which can only be felt with
the destruction of social existence. We must be thankful to the media
for all those images of reality which they have been streaming endlessly
through their networks, for only the accumulation of those images
allows us to see where the world is heading. I wish the media was
satirical, then I could turn off the television set knowing we are
not heading towards global war. However as things stand, it might
be in one year, it might take five or ten, but sooner or later imperial
attitudes lead to major conflict.
Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer
