Project Censored Updates

During the last quarter of the 20th century, the industrialized world was swept by a resurgence of "free trade" ideology that had its roots in late19th century England. In his novels, Charles Dickens cataloged the frightful inequalities and widespread misery that free trade brought to the people of England, but, unfortunately, the modern resurgence of free trade has no Charles Dickens telling its story. Nevertheless, the inequalities and misery are spreading around the globe, largely unreported by the corporatized media. The main thrust of modern free trade ideology is to weaken national governments and give freedom to transnational corporations to do as they please. As a result, social safety nets, even in the advanced countries of northern Europe, are being dismantled. The forms of democratic self-governance at national, state, and local levels are losing substance as power shifts to the private sector. This long-term shift away from democracy, away from governmental control of corporate behavior, is the sweeping backdrop against which history is unfolding in our time. My story merely described a few details of this backdrop.

Of course the widely reported "Battle of Seattle" coincided with the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late November 1999. For the first time since the Vietnam War, churches, labor unions, environmentalists, democracy activists, and students joined forces to assert their opposition, this time to the corporate agenda called "globalized free trade." Thus for the first time the battle lines were drawn: those favoring popular control of governments (and of democratically set standards for labor and environment) versus those favoring corporate control of such matters. As a result of the Battle of Seattle, a worldwide network of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) has developed, using the Internet for communication, aiming to reassert democratic controls over corporations, economies, and standards affecting workers and the environment. A titanic struggle is thus under way worldwide -- the forces of popular democracy vs. the forces of corporate control, again largely unreported in the corporatized media.

The mainstream media largely ignored this story. As Ben Bagdikian has documented in the sixth edition of Media Monopoly, the mainstream press in the U.S. is now controlled by just six corporations. It should come as no surprise to learn that these six corporations report very little about the most important story of our time -- free trade ideology undermining the role and power of national and subnational governments worldwide, giving corporations free rein to do as they please.