It Is Time We Recognized

An Elite Group Of Less Than A Billion People Now Take More Than 80 Per Cent Of The World's Wealth.

Classic Nineteenth Century European Imperialists Believed They Were Literally On A Mission. I Don't Believe That The Imperialists These Days Have That Same Sense Of Public Service. They Are Simply Pirates. Yes, There Are Fundamentalists, Christian Fundamentalists, Who Appear To Be In Charge Of The White House At The Moment, But They Are Very Different From The Christian Gentlemen Who Ran The British Empire And Believed They Were Doing Good Works Around The World. These Days It's About Naked Power.

Secretive Power Loathes Journalists Who Do Their Job: Who Push Back Screens, Peer Behind Façades, Lift Rocks. Opprobrium From On High Is Their Badge Of Honour.

We Are Beckoned To See The World Through A One-way Mirror, As If We Are Threatened And Innocent And The Rest Of Humanity Is Threatening, Or Wretched, Or Expendable. Our Memory Is Struggling To Rescue The Truth That Human Rights Were Not Handed Down As Privileges From A Parliament, Or A Boardroom, Or An Institution, But That Peace Is Only Possible With Justice And With Information That Gives Us The Power To Act Justly.

Since September 11, The Mirror Has Reached Back To Its Roots, And Decided, It Seems, To Be Something Of Its Old Self Again. I Received A Call Asking If I Would Write For It Again, Which I've Done. It's A Pleasure To Be Able To Do That. It's Become An Important Antidote To A Media That Is, Most Of It, Supportive Of The Establishment, Some Of It Quite Rabidly Rightwing. The Mirror Is Breaking Ranks, And That's Good News.