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Mare Tranquillitatis, Moon, 20 July 1969. The whole earth is
holding its breath. The LEM is communicating “one-to-one” with
Capcom based in Houston. Some background crackling, a few word
exchanges punctuated with “beeps” confirming moon landing.
Armstrong is speaking to the world “That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind”: communication "one-to-many". These
words are engraved forever in history of mankind. Earth seems so
amazingly small, beautiful and fragile from Moon.
2006, Internet. Google Earth. A virtual walk-over on a real
world, more fragile than in 1969. Certainly more fragile. On this
map spots are multiplying. They are running along the Transiberian
line and seem to cover entire areas in Asia. Another line is
linking Asia to Eastern Europe. A few spots seem to betray
agglutinating unities and wander through Africa and Western
Europe. Each spot locates a seat of H5N1. The surface of Earth has
no centre, neither have the crisis shaking our planet. And if
there are some global crises overstepping any distinctions and
ignoring all sorts of borders, avian flue is one of these. And
this issue cannot do without it.
Other seats. Other maps, shocking ones, away from Google Earth.
Maps showing the shortage of drinking water, world hunger, spread
of AIDS, latent conflicts, circulation of guns, violence suffered
by women all over the world, drug business, prostitution incomes
marbling luxurious villas on the French Riviera, children at work
whose products are displayed in our shops, complicity between
unrestrained neoliberalism and a restraining Chinese regime,
melting of the ice cap, decline of Amazonian forest. From the Mare
Tranquillitatis our little planet is living a crisis, a crisis of
the system, of the running system, I should say. A global one!
For over 5 years this magazine has been striving to explain the
inner workings of the communication and the management of the
crisis. Our columns are in no way partisan but open to tendencies.
But they all accord to acknowledge the idea that crisis seem to
make a continuum. And the denser the means of communication, the
more complex the crisis communication. Adolescent crisis?
Discipline is moving to a sensitive communication and to the so
Anglo-Saxon “issues management”. We were to offer you an issue up
to the stake of global nature, that is to say an issue that would
be less purely French.
How can I thank our contributors who give up some valuable free
time to share their knowledge? How can I express my pleasant
surprise, so constantly renewed, to see many of them respond our
entreaties spontaneously whereas they do not need our magazine to
build their reputation?
According to Christophe Roux-Dufort, “a crisis results from
accumulations of fragilities, plus ignorance”. Our modest magazine
is powerless against the fragilities of the world. But step by
step our contributors take part into this long march as well as a
number of media online and this slowly moves us away from
ignorance.
D.H.
(c) Tous droits réservés par les auteurs
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Crise
financière et économique mondiale
