Oh perhaps I have confused two separate but equally important issues in society right now. The feisty Victorian AFL club has now been eradicated by the need for yet another fear campaign. Who will win? It would appear from history, the need for paranoia rather than a happy story will triumph in the end. Hence the football club headed to its 3rd consecutive Grand Final tomorrow has lost its title to the doom of the Global Financial Crisis.
Speaking of the G.F.C. – did we really need another acronym? It seems to me that there is a certain level of convenience that leads to the fear campaigns spread through western societies by politicians and the multi-nationals that apparently own us now. If all major global issues are automatically given a corresponding acronym to appease their repetitive mentioning on the nightly news, was is Climate Change not called C.C.?
With the bombardment of fear spread through our systems from swine flu, ‘Global’ recessions, terrorist threats, population growth and salmonella from kebab stores, one has to wonder is any of this actually as imminent as politicians and nightly ‘current’ affairs shows threaten us with. Was it not only two long years ago that our P.M. (Prime Monster) was simply making up fearful threats so he could justify a war and scare ‘us’ (not me) into voting for him in 3 consecutive elections?
Paul Keating infamously stated that “it was a recession we had to have” and despite the backlash to this comment, the fact remains the same. Why is economic downturns and the cyclical nature of the financial sector suddenly coming as a shock. Not to mention why the effects of corruption, greed and inadequate public policy are seemingly coming as a surprise. I think the de-regulation of the markets and the notion of ‘free trade’ was not intended to result in 2 multi-nationals owning the world. Wasn’t there more to it than that?
One may even find that the convenient results of such extreme paranoia and repetitive notions is that large corporations who continually make millions if not billions in profits each year can suddenly increase their prices and say ‘it’s the G.F.C’ or sack thousands of employees in one hit and give the CEO a million dollar pay rise for steering the company into recovery the next day. And if you have a good, hard and honest look at the American economy, is it not the trillions tyrannical Bush spent of wars to blame for the economic aftermath we are now ‘all’ experiencing.
Written by Clare Peterson
© 2009
