The importance of the blog and the blogger.

People ask me why I spend time blogging. What is the purpose of railing against the powers that be, be they political or big business. Why not relax and spend ones energy on the things that I can effect like choosing events to go to, shopping for things I convince myself I might need, ring fencing my mind around the 'me' factor and isolate the issues that effect us all, to the margins. The thrusting nature of the news as it floods our screens with potential catastrophe around the world can be ignored  we should switch to a game show or a wildlife documentary, cops and robbers or a romantic drama.  
The bulk of the people who inhabit western type homes have largely decided that the stories coming in, are outside their ambit of influence and therefore why get worked up about them. There is also the element of distrust that has accompanied global power where massive organisations can bend and manipulate a story to fit a corporate agenda and anyone going up against them is threatened with the might of the corporate law suite and the deep pockets of the corporate lobby.
One such story was of Dole Food Company based in California and their attempt to quash a documentary film made by the Swedish film maker,Fredrik Gertten depicting the conditions in the Nicaraguan banana plantations where insecticide was infecting the plantation workers. The documentary was due to be shown at a film festival in Los Angeles when Dole threatened a law suite on the organisers and eventually on the makers of the film. The multinational company had an image problem to solve and they did this by threats and innuendo placed in the main media. The weight of the lobbying both corporate and in government and the fear of the financial consequences if a case was presented in court was a massive disincentive to air what the documentary makers had filmed, first hand and believed to be a true representation of the facts. It was only due to the faithful backing of the Swedish Political System (there is no chance of the British doing the same) which refused to back down to American Corporate pressure that the film was shown first in Sweden and eventually in the US its self. After a great deal of filibuster and costly delay a US Court found the film to be perfectly acceptable and Dole withdrew its affidavit.
The reason for my writing this is that a turning point in the run up to the case going to court was a 'blogger' who raised the issue on his blog and got people, outside the mainstream media, talking. The power of the internet brought the case to the public's attention and they voted with their feet to get the supermarkets to take the Dole products off their shelves and the rest, as they say is history !!!     

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/