What Wired USA CutIn Response to Albert Brussand and Peter Schwartz's "One World" Dream Summary:"What we need from the new comunications technology is not "one world" but tools for our communities - as they are, with their very local, human, and sane self interests - to assert control over those who by accident or design or a combination of both find themselves in control of a superhuman concentration of assets." - Ken McCarthy This is what Wired USA left out Finally, I have to question Wired's standards when it chooses to publish a piece like this that is so riddled with obvious factual errors as to be ridiculous. It's especially mystifying since the magazine manages to studiously ignore well informed analysts like Noam Chomsky and Michael Parenti whose provocative perspectives are rooted in impeccable scholarship. Peter Schwartz, as some of your careful readers may note, is founder of the much hyped Global Business Network, which puts cash into the pockets of many people who also happen to write for Wired Magazine. Perhaps not as well known is the fact that before starting the Global Business Network, he was an executive for Shell Oil. I imagine at this point it is common knowledge that Mr. Schwartz's former employer and current client appears to have tacitly endorsed the monstrously corrupt government of Nigeria's decision to put a rope around the neck of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and educator whose sole crime appears to have been to object to Shell's ecological destruction and economic devastation of his homeland. Long before this disgraceful event, I had a conversation at a party with one of the members of the Global Business Network. He told me about a client, a top minister of an African nation, who was vexed by the power independent tribes and families wielded within "his" country and was seeking advice on how to neutralize their authority. I asked this man how he could in good conscience contribute to the undermining of functioning social structures that supported and gave voice to the lives of millions of people for the benefit of a single man and his supporters. He was visibly amused at my naiveté. Billable hours uber alles, I guess. The murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa is the logical outcome of the "globalization" movement for which "thinkers" like Bressand and Schwartz are paid cheerleaders. Contrary to the pleasant, utopian impression it conveys, "globalization", in practice, means multinational corporations free to "take care of business" as they see fit unrestrained by any legal or ethical standards. It's a colossally bad idea but one that pays certain people very well. To its credit, Wired Japan has no such squeamishness about telling it like it is as this picture from it's October issue (not published in Wired USA) shows. For those of you for whom these are new ideas, you might check out this excellent introduction to the consequences of corporate globalziation by Jeff Pooley Other sources: See also: It's Your Internet - Don't Give It Away |