February 2011: Steve Lendman Blog

When we are all required to become Truman Burbank, the only option left is for each of us to become Winston Smith. If we can prise ourselves away from buying things and playing games and sharing the intimate details of our lives for just one moment, we might use our time in front of our many screens to do some reading. 

This blog, by Steve Lendman, makes for very interesting reading. The posts are long and involved. They discuss war and empire, the nature of modern power and the corporate dominance of the planet. 

The voices of ordinary people online, voices of criticism and dissent, voices that challenge received wisdom, might lack the polish of professionalism, but can encourage a generation to ask uncomfortable questions about the world we inhabit. If we refuse the seduction of packaged reality and learn to read again, with scepticism, intelligence and doubt, we might even begin to resist the new Gods, who rule in the interests of a minority, and make of language an illusion and a trick, governing by the production of endless fear and endless entertainment.    

The internet is clearly the most extraordinary means of mass state surveillance that has yet been invented, but it is perhaps the only hope available for open discussion about the uncomfortable distance between events in the world, and the way those events are presented to us in the mainstream.