The ‘corporate empire’ Strikes Back

Having planned to dive straight into Haruki Murakami’s latest book, I’ve found myself side-tracked into reading Noam Chomsky’s ‘magnum opus’, Understanding Power. It takes the form of a collection of transcripts / essays from talks Noam has given over the years, and provides an enlightening and rather frightening / depressing examination of the politics of power in the last of the last 60 odd years. A core target for attack is the idea that we live under a free market economy. The information presented through the book make it clear that current western economic model is anything but ‘a free market’; rather massive state intervention & indirect subsidy’s through, for example, the Pentagon & NASA research grants form the backbone of scientific research & development providing jobs for many & seed the market for later exploitation by corporations. Another target is the corporate media machine, showing how rather than providing broad ranging & honest reportage, it focuses its output within a tightly controlled range, ommitting vast swaves of news. Countries at the height of communism never had such an all-encompassing propaganda system – the general populous is completely unaware that the news is anything by balanced.