Reality Rewritten?

Well you've got to hand it to News Corp, they're certainly adept at manipulating the news agenda to get that inconvenient phone hacking scandal out of the headlines. And the lengths they're prepared to go to - organising those hospital murders, having a famine declared in Africa, is there no end to their power? Joking aside, the attempts to rewrite history have already started. Have you noticed how Cameron has widened the remit of the inquiry into media conduct to include the BBC and social media? It's all about balance, he'll undoubtedly say. The trouble is that it wasn't the BBC or Twitter who were illegally hacking people's phones, was it? However, both have been used to expose various scandals and broadcast information embarrassing to the government. But undoubtedly the public will be brainwashed into believing that News International are the injured party and that social media and the BBC require greater regulation. Just look at the way every government minister keeps repeating the mantra that the economic downturn is entirely the result of the previous government's spending - it doesn't matter what the question is, they always start their answer by parroting those 'facts'. Consequently, the role of the global banking community in destroying the world economy has been written out of history to the extent that public ire has switched from those fat banker bastard's obscene bonuses (which they're still awarding themselves), to the modest pensions of public sector workers.

Increasingly, I find myself entertaining the idea that we're all victims of some uber-conspiracy, of which the phone hacking scandal, the 'War on Terror', reality TV and celebrity culture are all part. The promotion of celebrity culture by the media had two purposes - to reinforce in the public mind the values of materialism and conspicuous consumption, and to establish that the concept of privacy was irrelevant, that it is perfectly normal to live your entire life in public with its intimate details laid bare for all to see. Clearly, the death of privacy - reinforced by things like Big Brother - normalised the harvesting of vast amounts of your personal data by corporations in order to better try and control your spending on their products. With the public softened up in this way, it made it easier for governments to sell the idea of restricting civil liberties in the name of 'security'. Just to make sure, if persuasion through celebrity culture didn't work, then they'd scare the shit out of you with the threat of terrorism. As for phone hacking, not only did it allow them to harvest more celebrity shit to brainwash us with, it actually helped legitimise the idea of super-injunctions. Whilst their use by celebrities to protect their dirty secrets might seem to run against the main thrust of the conspiracy, in reality, by legitimising super-injunctions, it meant that they remained available for multi-national corporations to use in order to hide their evil deeds from the public. As for the phone hacking enquiry, well, it's obviously designed to let us believe that we've finally uncovered the conspiracy, whereas, in reality, it will be used as a pretext to further muzzle the last vestiges of freedom of speech and a free press. It's obvious really, isn't it? But who are they, and what are their objectives? Who knows? Probably we'll never know - they won't allow it. In my most fevered moments I suspect that we're all being manipulated by vast alien forces, a giant reality TV show for the entertainment of the denizens of the real universe.