Defend Paper Books Against the Electronic Menace!

by Andre Vltchek- Pacific Free Press

Do not trust them when they repeatedly tell you that the era of paper books is ending, that they would soon become as obsolete as vinyl records or coal-fired train engines.

Books, printed on paper and sold in bookstores, have been our best friends for many centuries. They have educated billions of people worldwide, they have strengthened resistance, and have made people dream about better political and economic systems.

There would have been no revolution without them, no intellectual development, and no deep understanding of the world.

Fascist dictators - from German Nazis to Indonesian cronies who took power after the Western-sponsored coup on 1965 – were known to burn books, publicly and shamelessly. To them the books stank of progress, of the aim for social justice, and of the ‘nightmare’, the specter, of egalitarian societies.

Of course, not all books have been written and published for the purpose of educating the masses, calling for revolution or exposing inequalities. There are the memoirs of people like Henry Kissinger as well as countless volumes of the economic theories of Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek and their ilk calling for the implementation of market fundamentalism and its global dictatorship.

There are even books written by such people like mass murderers as Adolf Hitler. But this generalized formula is probably indisputable: more books, more knowledge, more desire for progress and therefore better societies.
Now we are being told that the era of paper books is over, that in a few decades we should not even hope to have books as we have known them which help to shape our lives. We are being warned to get ready for life without books.

Full essay here.