Your Eyewitness must confess that when it comes to social media – even though he recognises it’s the future of news dissemination – he’s not up to snuff as he’d like to be. There’s only so many hours in the day to keep up with his internet browser and Facebook account that he signed on to so many moons ago!! So he flirts with Twitter and Instagram but feels he’s cheating on the “long read” compulsion that’s in his bones!!
Anyhow he couldn’t help noticing the beef between billionaires Facebook’s Zukerberg and Tesla’s Musk – since the former – who also owns Instagram – launched a new app Threads through his parent company Meta to compete directly with Twitter. The loud-mouthed Musk took over the latter last year in a messy stockholders’ battle. He eventually paid US$44 billion for the right to set the policy for Twitter usage and push his own looney philosophy!! He immediately altered the platform’s algorithm, fired thousands and vowed to make it more “unrestricted” – like reactivating Trump’s account – even as he introduced a cost to be a preferred “Blue” customer!!
Threads soon became the fastest downloaded app EVER – with 70 million users in a few days!! Of course it helped that Instagram has 2,4 BILLION users and they can just transfer their account details to Threads!! Facebook’s almost 3 BILLION users – the largest block of social media users in the world – were also bombarded by Threads info!! Be as it may, we have two of the richest men on planet Earth who got so personal with their business rivalry that they have seriously considered mixing it up in a no-holds-barred caged fight!! And here your Eyewitness thought the best these two nerds could pull of was a hair-pulling and face scratching tango!!
But seriously folks, we should be concerned that the internet is increasingly being dominated by the handful of men who form richest top 1% – what with owning more that 50% of the total wealth. More insidiously, with their algorithms steering the news we receive, they really control how we think. After all we can only think about things based on what was put into our heads – or what will be put these by these behemoths!!
So what are we to do?? Sadly, precious little in our little pond!! All we can do is to cultivate a permanent attitude of cynicism towards what we’re fed – and try as best as possible to get alternative viewpoints and facts. Then in addition to the big guns like Musk and Zukerberg who try to control the world’s thinking, there are the local Goebbels who use their social media platforms to create our local reality!!
Evidently, Big Brothers will spawn Little Brothers!!
…armed forces
Back in the day, Burnham had increased our military manpower from a Police Force of 2600 in 1964 to a 23,000 “Disciplined Forces”by 1976 that gave us the dubious distinction of having the highest civilian-military ratio in the world. To their credit, the PPP further reduced this ratio – which the destruction of the economy had already started by 1992. Now this doesn’t mean that armed forces are necessarily bad – it’s just that they gotta just protect the country and its citizens!
But how best for our (small) country?? We’ve got a good model from Israel – which has proved that this aspect of performance, size is also not everything!! The Israelis focused on boosting their military capabilities – not necessarily their military size. And because of this they were able to stave off attacks from much larger armies – to this day!!
Your Eyewitness is pleased that evidently, the PPP has adopted this strategy and continues to improve the capabilities of our armed forces rather than its size.
…agro mix
Unquestionably, with our vast land and freshwater , resources we have a comparative advantage in agriculture. The only question is what should we be producing?? The government’s obviously learnt our lesson on monocropping and now promotes a healthy mix!!
