Photo (cc) infomatique

Growing up a couple of hundred miles south of “The Troubles” in Ireland during the 80′s had its vagaries, which at this now twenty year vantage point, can hardly be believed, if recalled at all.

Whilst the closest we ever came to their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns was the deplorable Dolores (who incidentally didn’t get much closer herself), we were of course witness to the media battle front. A battle conducted using the deadly weapons of voiceover. In their wisdom, the British government declared that like errant Victorian children, Gerry, Martin and the rest of their Sinn Féin/IRA cohort could be seen but not heard. Picture the scene, it’s the morning after the night before. Another tit-for-tat nationalist/loyalist killing (translation: straight-up murder) and UTV or BBC Northern Ireland is looking for a quote of either condemnation or abhorrence from Gerry or Martin. Well, they weren’t going to get it. No, Gerry would wag his beard up and down with some animated affectation, but all we in TV land would hear was a passionless fob-off and some gibberish about  Ian Paisley being neither a real doctor nor authentic reverend. Whatever.

[One suspects all of this may in fact have been a result of intense Westminster lobbying by the Ulster Voiceover Artists union (commonly referred to as the UVAu), but we have no proof of this whatsoever. ]

We are remided of this over the festive period whilst reading some more World at Risk
. Beck proposes a simple thought experiment relating to “global terror” [yes cringe, cringe]. What, asks the German sociolagist, would be the result of a worldwide media boycott of the flash points of global terror. You know, a total worldwide ban on reporting the latest antics of underpants arsonists (do you see what we’ve done there) or shoe bombers. We’ll leave you alone to answer that one.

For Beck argues that it is the now ever present anticipation of terror incident, rather than the incident itself that is the goal of this 21st century terrorism. And it is the “glamour of terror staged in the West which transform terrorism into a power drug.” Beck goes on, when dealing with the discources of global subpolitics, to suggest this power drug is now the developing world’s best narrative in which to fight economic globalization. Certainly the only one in which the media industrial complex of the West will pay constant attention to. Take away that attention and perhaps we’ll get some interesting results.

The latest episode of TrashBlanc TV is up on TrashBlanc.com covering the current salt crisis in Britain. Some shocking findings.