John Pilger often gets short shrift from the conservative cohort of OLO (and beyond) who don't have a clue that they're they're the same (only lesser; even more credulous and to be pitied) kind of political eunuch as the professional minions Pilger paints here.
Indeed these are the most conservative of times, where the pursuit of wealth and shallow materialism utterly defeats idealism, whose last refuge is the church, itself possessed of the same materially-compensated defeatism.
Neoliberal ideology reigns supreme and even most of those who squirm uncomfortably in their intellectual confinement are resigned that there is "no alternative" to the rapacious corporate dispensation in which we serve.
It's not only the executive and managerial classes that have been "incorporated" with share options, but what amounts to token financial interest, in the form of shares in the modern company, discounted or distributed as largesse, have for decades been distributed down the employment chain by savvy employers. Governments meanwhile have commonly dumped accords in favour of contract labour or contract bargaining—often ludicrously one-sided negotiations between management and representative employee committees.
Even the lowliest workers are patronised with "career paths" and "team responsibilities". Blue-collar workers supposedly emerge as winners from such organisational enhancements, less ‘alienated’ than before, because they're made "responsible" for their mop and bucket, their work is thereby ‘enriched’.
What really cuts the deal of course are the lounge-room rewards--the latest entertainments.
What Pilger is lamenting is the increasing inability, en masse, of people to radically criticise institutionalised neoliberal patronage

Dear John, one of the great tragedies of modern activism is that is has actually caused much of what it sought to avoid.

It has taken the emergence of Arab opposition to despotic dictatorships for activists to realize the harm activists have done.

In focusing western media attention upon such issues as Israel/Palestinian conflicts, activists have for many years diverted attention away from the fact that it is the despotic dictatorships that are actually responsible for the lack of social equity and justice and not the big bad “West”. This is evidenced, much to your disappointment, by the fact that they are rebelling against their own leaderships and not the West.

This leaves you with the unpleasant recognition that activists have and continue to encourage the Palestinians to fight your activist causes by proxy. Painful though this may be, it is time for pulling back the Palestinians from the “march of folly” upon which you have encouraged them to embark.

As you can clearly see from the declining equity the Palestinians have in any negotiations, the longer this goes on, the less equity they have. It is western activists that have encouraged this protracted conflict at the expense of the Palestinians.

Now the activists face the awful reality of what they have done “to” the Palestinians rather than doing something “for” them.

This reality is not being driven by the Palestinians or the Activists. It is being driven by the oppressed nations of the Arab world. That leaves you and your activist brethren out in the cold light of reality, facing some very hard scrutiny.

In shifting the new battle front against the “big end” of town and related public policy, are we to interpret this as another diversion whilst you work out what the real world is doing to your credibility?

IMHO it is time for a context and relevance check.

Probably for the first time in my life I found myself nodding in agreement as I read one of Pilger’s rants.

What is happening here?

Am I going senile? If so, how would I know?

Has Pilger changed?

Have I changed? I’m not aware that I have.

Is this just a fluke?

I think the last is probably correct. Pilger is a prolific writer who expresses a wide variety of views on a multitude of topics. I’m quite opinionated myself. Just occasionally, by sheet chance, our opinions would be in broad, though far from perfect, agreement.

On a more serious note I do think that the current paradigm in many Western countries serves corporate interests TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE CITIZENS.

I’ve capitalised the last part of the above sentence because it’s an important qualifier. This is not a zero-sum game and quite often corporate interests and human interests are aligned. Often what’s good for business really is good for most people.

But right now, from pollution to taxation to trade policy to media policy corporate interests seem to be running roughshod over people’s rights.

I suppose where we would differ is in the solutions we espouse. I think a dirigiste approach would make a bad situation worse. In some cases less government might be better.

For example I think the banks should have been allowed to fail. I'm not blind to the short-term catastrophe that would have unleashed but I think that could have been managed. We'd be over the worst by now.

By bailing out the banks I have a feeling we've prolonged the agony and the catastrophe has not been averted, merely postponed.

Spindoc.

The despotic dictatorships are aided and abetted wherever possible by the "big bad West" - under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank which in turn represents Western corporate interests.

One doesn't have to look too far to see the profits from structural reforms in Arab countries have been funnelled straight into the pockets of the ruling elite and also to foreign corporate interests.

http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/31-2010/1083-arab-uprisings-show-the-impact-of-the-world-bank-and-the-imf

"John Pilger often gets short shrift from the conservative cohort of OLO (and beyond) who don't have a clue that they're they're the same (only lesser; even more credulous and to be pitied) kind of political eunuch as the professional minions Pilger paints here."

Happiness stakes

Conservatives - 1
Progressive hand wringers - 0

It's why we rule .. we don't have a clue, yep, no clue, which makes you losers what?

Pitied, no thanks, crank up the Plasma screen that I use now as a PC display, you have sit across the room though, and away we go!

You suck at capitalism, get over it and stop whining all the time. Go bother someone about carbon whatsits or something, please.

Steven

>> By bailing out the banks I have a feeling we've prolonged the agony and the catastrophe has not been averted, merely postponed. <<

"Instead of pumping $700 billion to $1.3 trillion (nobody knows the real number) into economic stimulus and bail-outs, the U.S. government could have simply paid everyone’s mortgage — EVERYONE’S — for six months.

There are 51 million mortgages in America and the average mortgage payment in 2006 was $1686, so paying everyone’s mortgage for six months would have cost $516 billion — hundreds of billions less than the Bush/Paulson/Obama/Geithner/Bernanke plan, and quicker, too.

The money that people would otherwise have used to make their mortgage payments could have gone in part for other things, making it effectively a huge economic stimulus in its own right. With mortgages paid in full there would have been no foreclosures OR bank failures during that six month period. Yes, there would still have been problems with the banking system that needed correction, but there would have been six months to do the correcting."

http://www.cringely.com/tag/wall-street/

Imagine if they bailed out mortgagees instead of banks....