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diff --git a/geopolitics.review.otx b/geopolitics.review.otx index e69de29..21e3031 100644 --- a/geopolitics.review.otx +++ b/geopolitics.review.otx @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +Book Review +THE GEOPOLITICS + +OF INFORMATION + +Anthony Smith +Oxford University Press + +B. P M¢non + +Echo: reansmutter-recesver stations. (Bell Labs). + +President Kennedy signing legislation to establish globe-circling +system of communscation satellites (August 31, 1962). Left 1o +;‘%ht: Congressman Oren Harris (D-Ark.), Senator Warren G. +agnusan (D-Wash.), Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.), +Senator Richard Russel (D-Ga.), Senator Hubert Humphrey +(D-Minn.), Joseph Beirne, President, Communication Workers of +America, Congressman William L. Springer (R-IIL), Senator John +0, Pastore (D-R.1.), unidentified, and FCC Chairman Newton +N. Minow. (Bell Labs). + +12?7 + +PI-l:.c first inkhing Lever had ot the geopoliucs of mformaton +came when [ was six years old, in the “first standard™ at Miss +B. Hartley's school in Calcutta. OQur textbook for geography, +a lefrover from the then recently extnguished British Raj, +described “hill stations™ as “places where white people go +dunng the hot surnmer months.™ Miss Graham., our teacher, a +leathery grey-haired white woman (whether Anglo-Indian or +not was a matter of speculavion), had us underline all the +important defimuons in the book. When she came to “hill +stations” she bowed to the realities of independent India and +had us underhne the sentence with the exception of the word +“white.” The underlined definition read “hill stanons are +places where people go during the hot summer months.” | +thought nothing of this definition till my mother chanced +upon it while supervising my homework. 1 heard her snort. +She muttered something under her breath, reached for my +pencil, and obliterated the entire sentence from the page. + +As far as [ can see, the call for a New World Information +and Communicauon Order, for which UNESCO is regularly +criticized in the Western press, is based on sentiments stmilar +to those of my mother—a desire on the part of the leaders of +the world’s poorer countries to protect their people from the +subtle and not-so-subtle racial and cultural propaganda of the +rich countries of Europe and North America. Most Western +journalists, especially those who have taken an interest in the +debate on this martter, will of course snort at my use of the +word “propaganda.” For them it is but “free flow of informa- +tion,” with good lads like themselves {(and increasing numbers +of lasses) doing their objective best to report the world as it is. +Artempts to discuss the imbalances in the flow of world news +(with most of it going now from the rich countries to the +poor), they see as a threat to the freedom of the press. And +UNESCO, they think, “under the influence of communists +and radical Third World governments™ is trying to “license”™ +journalists when it dares speak of acceptable standards. What +most Western journalists fail to notice is thar such reactions +provide the best example there is of the overtly propagandistic +role of Western mass media. The popular fears and suspicions +attached to the whole matter of the Third World's desire for +change in the global order of things are not acadental. They +have been deliberately fostered and are the defenses of an +entrenched moral and economic value system. lris not hard to +see that the fears raised by Western commentators on the +martter of Third World demands for change are bogevs. They +result either from a gross misunderstanding of facts or, in 2 +distressingly large number of cases, from deliberate distor- +tions and lies. For the benefit of those inclined to dismiss this +as (to use phrases I have heard in this regard) “wnreal,” +“paranoid,” or “super-sensitive,” let me present here some +concrete evidence, an annotated version of a “news story” +thar appeared in The New York Times on 28 Junc. diff --git a/implosion.otx b/implosion.otx index 15f9910..b23de4d 100644 --- a/implosion.otx +++ b/implosion.otx @@ -314,4 +314,3 @@ they are acting in accordance with the system, whose imperative today is the overproduction and regeneration of meaning and speech. - |