Too Late To Stop Now 
RICHARD NEVILLE contemplates HomepageDAILY's reason for being.
Another website. Why? Because everything seems to be coming together and falling apart simultaneously. The world is poised between catastrophe and re-birth. While millions of citizens are aware we are shifting from the industrial era to the age of ecology, transparency and creativity, our politicians cling to an imperial paradigm, focused on resource wars, growth-at-all-costs and Biblical fairy tales.
These could have been glory days for the mainstream media. What if they had pursued the war criminals in high office, or campaigned against cluster bombs, renditions, or torture? But no, they chose to embed themselves with the perpetrators, leaving Amnesty, Seymour Hersh and the blogs to flush out the facts.
Sometimes the media are the perpetrators. During Israel's vicious air strikes on Lebanon last July, depicted by an editorialist in Murdoch's The Australian as "doing Lebanon a favour", another Murdoch editor, William Kristol, was mounting a campaign for a "military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?" Another member of the News Corp axis, Norman Podhoretz, has just said "there is no alternative to military action" against Iran. Rupert's record on climate change was equally foul, until the U-turn.
What you see here is illegal; a rendition in action. Has such an image ever appeared in your daily newspaper?
LOCKED IN THE FORTRESS
On the positive side, such failures have served to multiply the range of alternative voices. There is no going back. A million tongues wagging on the web, a million eyes glued to incriminating videos. Cyberspace is both a tower of Babel, as well an extensive network of truth telling at the speed of light. Essentially, this is a digital version of Indra's net, stretching indefinitely in all directions, which "speaks to the hidden interconnectedness and interdependency of everything and everyone in the universe." It is the future.
How scary and thrilling to be living in a time when the ancient insight that "everything is connected" is percolating into the mainstream. Perhaps we are in the throes of a global mind shift. We are what we think. Waste equals food. The true role of business is doing good. Information is free. Fair trade. Micro lending. Salary caps. Open source. Life after fossil fuels... On and on it goes, the overdue blooming of a post-modern mental ecology that is vital to restoring planetary health and humanity's sanity. The Old Guard is still locked in the fortress turning back clocks (as I write, the US is trying to derail and censor a climate change summit), but few people are fooled. It's too late to stop now.
A WHOLE LOTTA MONEY
Some say the future will be a Long Emergency, while others foresee a Long Boom. Isn't it likely to be both? Arms dealers in gold plated Lear jets serving Bollinger to presidents, while the rest of us dirty our hands in the backyard vegie patch. Social injustice is escalating so rapidly, that when the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, was asked how he felt about bank execs getting an annual bonus of $30 million, his tongue turned to lead. "It's a lot of money", he said, several times, "a lot of money, you bet". The interviewer wanted more, and got this: "But I'm still a great believer in the capitalist system". Thanks John, that's helpful. End of discussion. Like my laptop, the Australian nation is quick to revert to sleep mode.
You can't blame us, really. Signs of Alzheimer's are leeching into the national psyche, boosted by Government spoon feeding of lies, platitudes and fear mongering, three times a day after meals. Everyone is supposed to sleep soundly on Howard's watch, as the US airforce continues its pounding of mud villages in Afghanistan and the urban zones of Iraq, while of course "regretting" the escalating deaths of women and children. Zzzzzzzz.
Next morning the news will lead with the latest statistics on "soft tissue injuries" among football players. Sometimes an NGO such as Amnesty will publish a report that accuses the PM of ignoring human rights and treating asylum seekers like shit, but nothing will change. In fact, it could win him votes. On with the show. Look, another pirate movie. Let's dress up. Oh, that sounds a bit sour. We all need to escape from time to time, and who hasn't got a soft spot for pirates? At least they're honest about their dishonesty.
So why did I throw my lot in with HomepageDAILY? Certainly not to win recruits to my way of thinking (warning: a bad career move). In fact, I'm looking forward to being shocked and illuminated by views expressed on this site that are contrary to mine.
Part of this project is to facilitate a mental escape from Fortress Oz. As we pick up steam, visitors are invited to play a part in shaping the news, offering ideas and evaluating key issues of the future unbounded by National borders. A globalised world requires a globalised consciousness.
The perils ahead are breathtaking, but so is the surge of creativity and social awareness among people not blinkered by a need to woo voters or to win fortunes. Fundamentalism of any kind, be it market, Marxist or military, is a curse upon the world. No God higher than truth. Our aim is to be upstream from the mainstream, and you are welcome aboard.
Richard Neville, co-publisher, HPD
NOTE: "In Indra's net hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude....if we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite"
FRANCIS H. COOK - HUA-YEN BUDDHISM : THE JEWEL NET OF INDRA (1977)