Two world meetings took place last week, both organised by organisations independent of government or world institutions, writes Vincent Browne.
One got massive coverage in our media with both RTÉ and The Irish Times sending correspondents to cover the proceedings. The other got almost no attention at all that I have been able to discern through media websites - The Irish Times published one short news piece last Friday and a feature article by Helen Shaw yesterday and, as far as I can glean from the RTÉ news website, there was no coverage at all.
One of those meetings took place in Mumbai (Bombay), India. It was attended by over 80,000 people, representing 2,660 organisations from 132 countries around the world. The proceedings were conducted through 13 languages.
The international council that organised the event was drawn from trade unions, women's groups, ecological organisations, citizens' associations, indigenous people's associations and aid organisations.
While the conference did not profess to be representative of the people of the world, it must have represented millions of people around the globe.
The other international meeting was attended by about 2,000 people. The organising committee consisted of the chairman of Exsultate, a personal investment and management holding company, accounting for over €1,000 million; the chairman of Deutsche Bank, the largest financial institution in the EU; the CEO of Nestlé, the world's leading food company; the chairman of a Hong Kong investment company; the founder and CEO of Dell Computers; the chairman of Unilever; and such like. And Peter Sutherland, of course. Two thirds of those attending this meeting were business "leaders", representing no one but themselves and a few of their ilk.
Political leaders of the world flocked to one of these meetings. They included the presidents of Iran, Mozambique, Switzerland, Argentina, Pakistan, Nigeria and Peru, the prime ministers of Ireland, Turkey and Canada, the vice-president of the United States, the secretary general of the United Nations, and a former president of the United States.
And to which of these gatherings did the political "leaders" of the world and the Irish and other western media flock? The conference attended by 80,000 representatives of organisations from 132 countries or the one attended by around one fortieth of the 80,000 attending the first conference and organised by a coterie representing a tiny fraction even of the populations of their own countries?
Yes, you got it. They went to the meeting of the most exclusive club of the world's rulers and owners, the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland. And they did so without a twinge of embarrassment or a whisper of explanation.
At the meeting in Davos they talked about world poverty all right and they wrung their hands at the failure of the world trade talks in Cancún, Mexico, a few months ago. But the interests they (the organisers and members of the World Economic Forum) represent are as far removed from the interests of those they profess to care about as could be imagined.
And their respect for the organisations that are close to the impoverished of the world could hardly be more dismissive. For the Davos meeting, the World Economic Survey published a survey they did among their own members of their perceptions of their personal and corporate interests.
They grandly titled it Voices of the Leaders Survey. They were happy enough with their personal security but apprehensive that the next generation will be a little less safe than theirs.
They were pretty optimistic about the global economy. Asked which of nine factors they thought as important measures of corporate success, the least important factor was "corporate social responsibility". Asked which of eight different "stakeholders" they thought had the most influence on corporate reputation, they ranked lowest non-governmental organisations - i.e. those organisations that, in the main, are closest to the most vulnerable. Second lowest in their estimation, incidentally, were religious and environmental movements.
The owners of the world don't control the world just through their wealth and corporate power, they do so by setting the agenda for world debate, an agenda dutifully complied with by the corporate media, aped in turn by what is known as public service broadcasting.
That free markets and privatisations are the sole legitimate economic strategies is now no longer challenged by the thrust of media coverage and comment. Sure, freakish dissent is tolerated, even encouraged, to advance the perception of a "free media" but the overall thrust of coverage and comment is compliant. That a consequence of such free market strategies is the impoverishment of most of the Third World and much of the First World is an aside to be noted but not deployed as a challenge to the orthodoxy. For the reality is that the people of the world do not matter, except as objects of rhetorical concern. The world is of, for, and by the rulers and owners.