Friday, October 26, 2007

USA vs. Iran and Cubazuela

When w.Caesar should be gracefully entering his presidential lame duck status and thinking about who to pardon [whoops, he already got on that with Scooter Libby], he is instead feeding warm, bleeding horse meat to the dogs of war.

From today's Washington Post:

In approving far-reaching, new unilateral sanctions against Iran, President Bush signaled yesterday that he intends to pursue a strategy of gradually escalating financial, diplomatic and political pressure on Tehran, aimed not at starting a new war in the Middle East, his advisers said, but at preventing one. ...With yesterday's actions, which included the long-awaited designations of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, Bush made clear that he is willing to seek such leverage even without the support of his European allies.

I seem to remember the rhetoric in late 2002. Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and that despite all the OCD midnight rifle barrel cleaning, w.Caesar only wanted peace, until the UN Security Council wouldn't sanction the US invasion plans making him invade with his ethereal Coalition of the Willing instead of Old Europe.

Life is rarely this simple: listen to politicians so that we can believe the opposite of what they say. w.Caesar is good for that.

Moving on to our own hemisphere, w.Caesar can't stand anti-neoliberal, democratically elected leftist governments in Latin America.

Responding to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that Hugo Chavez is a "threat to regional stability," Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Rodriguez affirmed that Hugo Chavez is indeed a "tremendous threat" to the "empires of the world," and assured they would continue to be a "greater threat" as time goes on. "Of course he [Chavez] is a threat to the stability of the empires of the world, for those who consider themselves the world police, for those who think they have a right to invade countries and massively murder the population," replied the Venezuelan vice-president to a recent statement made by Robert Gates during a visit to El Salvador. ...

Gates then warned that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was mainly a "threat to the freedom and economic prosperity of the people of Venezuela." According to Gates, Chavez "has been very generous in offering their resources to people around the world, when perhaps these resources could be better used to alleviate some of the economic problems facing the people of Venezuela."


Gates should have said the word "rich" when he called Chavez a "threat to the freedom and economic prosperity of the rich people of Venezuela." Conveniently, Gates ignored all domestic economic and social reform in Venezuela.

I'm not entirely comfortable with Hugo Chavez's desire to have decree power. When he has such legislative support, I'm not sure it's necessary. The USA criticizes Venezuela as being dictatorial, despite its electoral unambiguity compared with Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 and hundreds of other jurisdictions with Republican electoral fraud this decade. Add to this a steaming pile of soft fascism in the USA and we get a sense of US hypocrisy: w.Caesar's signing statements asserting which parts of legislation the executive branch will not obey, and this tasty list of Amnesty International's worries about the land of the free and the home of the brave that sounds quite a bit like Chile after 9.11.1973:
  • Secret detention
  • Enforced disappearance
  • Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
  • Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment
  • Denial and restriction of habeas corpus
  • Indefinite detention without charge or trial
  • Prolonged incommunicado detention
  • Arbitrary detention
  • Unfair trial procedures
So then yesterday when w.Caesar warned the world that there will be a transition coming in Cuba [presumably when Castro dies], but Cubazuela responded assertively:

"He spoke like an imperialist and a colonialist," said Venezuelan parliamentarian Saul Ortega about Bush's statements. Ortega assured that the reaction to these threats will be increased unity among the people of Latin America. "In response we have to close ranks in defense of the principles of sovereignty and self-determination," he said.

Vice-foreign minister Rodolfo Sanz assured that the United States was making a mistake with their statements towards Cuba and maintained that the "times have changed."

"We aren't going to sit here with our arms crossed before some diabolic adventure," he said. Sanz assured that the Cuban people can count on support from nations like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, among others, stating that "Cuba is not alone."

The boldness of the Latin American political economic agenda in the last decade is a testament to the recovery of economic shock, terror and genocide visited upon them by Milton Friedman and his neoliberal storm troopers over the last 35 years. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine's final chapter talks about how when people or cultures rebuild their communities and name their oppressors when they recover from shock. This is the spirit in which Cubazuela has responded to w.Caesar's signaling of regime change in Cuba. Let's be honest. The US corporate interests in Cuba are legion. Cuba will become the next Haiti as Canada and the US have squashed hope into desperation there.

Words like diabolic, imperialist, colonialist, sovereignty, self-determination and the simple phrase--times have changed--indicate that a Grenada-style hemispheric military excursion into Cuba will not easily guarantee the Republicans' retention of the White House or a recovery of Congress.

Cuba is indeed not alone. The whole hemisphere is tilted against w.Caesar with the exception of business/media elites and the apolitical or ignorant, RRSP-hoarding, gadget-worshipping [dwindling numbers of the] middle class in NAFTAland and Latin American compradors.

And with the record oil profits that w.Caesar has facilitated as he helped oil pass $80 a barrel, he has ended up funding Venezuela's upgrading of its military.

Back to Naomi Klein, however, to follow her thesis: war is good for corporate profitability and the GDP. Peace impairs economic growth. So it might not even matter to the disaster/conflict capitalists that a war with Iran or Cubazuela is just, desirable or winnable. It's just another opportunity to bankrupt governments and shift public wealth to global corporations.

Luckily the other Naomi [Wolf] and thousands of others including sitdownfortheconstitution.org have started what will hopefully be a 54 week campaign for Americans to steal back their constitution.

The rest of our hemisphere better get on [not off!] our asses and support them in their attempt to stifle w.Caesar's soft fascism before it grows horns and starts sending Blackwater mercenaries into US streets. Oh, I forgot. It is already be too late for that since they've been in New Orleans.

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Friday, October 05, 2007

I'm Done with the Olympics

So Bruce Allen is a xenophobic bigot. Nothing new there.

And having been turned off the Olympics from decades of drug scandals and corporate co-optation, VANOC's de facto copyrighting of the number 2010, not to mention the International Olympic Committee [a global entity owned by who, regulated by who and accountable to who?], and during my preparations to boycott the China Olympics next summer because China is a murderous, totalitarian regime [but then Hitler hosted the Olympics too] I find myself stuck with how to boycott the 2010 Olympics in my home town.

Not that I could afford to go, so that's something off my 2009 Christmas List. But really it's only the hockey I'd miss, but when I think about it, the Olympics are much like an all-star game. Curious, but not as compelling as the Stanley Cup playoffs. So now I'm feeling easy about skipping the whole nonsense.

But now Bruce Allen, the bigot, is connected to the Olympics. So I whip off a quick note to our Olympic organizers [whose meetings and financial books are not open to scrutiny, though they are spending public money] saying how I feel, then they reply, then I reply [I can't wait for their next reply, I suspect it will be a "we agree to disagree, respectfully"]:

Here's how I started it off:

bruce allen is an embarrassment to canada. there is no place for him representing us with your organization in any capacity.

his perspective of multiculturalism is shameful and an offense to all canadians.

And I receive a polite FOAD email saying not to fret, he's only a minor player:

Vancouver 2010 Info wrote:

Hello,
Thank you for your interest in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. We wish to acknowledge your e-mail. At Vancouver 2010, we welcome everybody's comments, ideas and opinions.

We're committed to creating spectacular Ceremonies that celebrate
Canada's diversity and rich heritage - Ceremonies that make all Canadians proud. We will also showcase some of Canada's top musical talent every night of the Games at the Victory Ceremonies.

Bruce Allen's participation on the Ceremonies team is limited to helping
us secure some of the biggest music stars in the Canadian music industry. There are other members of the Ceremonies team who will be responsible for developing our Canadian messaging, themes and tone.

Bruce Allen's work for the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee
(VANOC) is and will remain entirely separate and distinct from other work he does including his public commentary and opinions on the radio.

He has communicated his regret over the controversy and he has strongly
reconfirmed and emphasized his support for our goal of showcasing Canada's cultures and celebrating our diversity through the 2010 Winter Games Ceremonies.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your views.


Thanks again,

Vancouver Info


And then I replied:

true, he regrets the controversy [only someone of questionable sanity wouldn't], but he stands by his views that oppose the diversity and rich heritage you wish to celebrate.

having a limited role for bruce allen is no solution. his presence in your organization stains your whole organization.


you need to remove him from organization completely.


I have no respect for, or faith in our Olympic organizers. I also think that if someone not famous or in the music biz who works for them phoned up all the great Canadian [and the relatively unknown ones] and asked if they'd like to be involved in the Olympics, they'd jump at the free marketing. You don't need Bruce Allen to secure them.

Yet another reason for boycotting these pathetic games. We have last year a $4.1 billion provincial surplus, social service cuts that make Bill Vander Zalm look like Dave Barrett, thousands of homeless, tens of thousands living below the poverty line, and privatization galore. We also have what someone once said, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

And I'm supposed to support the Olympics? Get a grip.

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

Note to TransLink: Your Riders Are Not Customers

I went to the TransLink website just now to search for the word "customer". I found 376 references.

I also have noticed that in recent days a canned announcement pops onto Skytrains regularly asking "Skytrain customers" to not leave their lame faux-news free daily newspapers [Metro, 24] lying all over the trains cluttering them up and creating a slipping hazard for most everyone.

As part of the large trend to commodify all things public and common, riders are no longer riders, we are customers purchasing a service: mass transit. As customers we are told the class of our existence on what used to be public transit.

Now the new TransLink board is being appointed by a gang of mostly business-folk, a board not accountable to the token Council of Mayors who will be "consulted" on decisions. Public money spent by unaccountable directors appointed by mostly business interests.

If you resent being classed as a "public" transit customer instead of a co-owner of a commonly held public "public" transit system, you had better start paying more attention to the Campbell neoLiberal government's agenda to sell us [and everything held in common] down the river.

And it would help to read Naomi Klein's new book to get a primer on the last few decades of rationale behind the premier's manifestation of neoliberal cancer. And if you don't have time to read it all, you can get the 6 minute primer here.

And a few facts to make you wonder just what price we pay for a privatized, deregulated world.

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Global TV: Thoroughly Free of Irony

It's one thing to criticize Global for being the brunt of the corporate concentrated media nonsense that pretends to be a free press in this country.

It's another thing to watch them physically concentrate their media [see below] with the plan to create new monster broadcast facilities in four locations in the country allowing them to drop 250 jobs while adding 50.

Not to be too cynical, but why don't they just run with one office in Toronto and stop the pretense of actually providing local news. With the new internet machine, they can probably skip reporters all together.

=================

Global Television is cutting 200 jobs across Canada as it develops new "state of the art" broadcast centres in four cities, CanWest announced on Thursday.

The company said the centres, to be located in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto, will use the latest in broadcast technology. It will also mean local news programs can immediately begin the transition to high definition, CanWest MediaWorks Inc. said.

Although CanWest is adding 50 positions as part of the process, it will lose 250 jobs, meaning a net loss of 200.

Across the Maritimes, 30 positions in Halifax and 11 in New Brunswick are being cut.

Network employees in Halifax said they were shocked by the news.

"It came as a complete surprise. There was no warning," said Paul Saulnier, a union leader with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers and a technical director who's losing his job.

The layoffs take effect next spring around the time the first centre is planned to be opened in Vancouver. The other three are expected to be operational over the next 18 months.

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

More on the Myth of Media Objectivity

What the evening news shows need is less "objectivity" and more analysis. The problem with objective journalism is that it doesn't exist and never did. Molly Ivins disposed of the objectivity question for all time when she observed in 1993, "The fact is that I am a 49-year-old white female, a college-educated Texan. All of that affects the way I see the world. There's no way in hell that I'm going to see anything the same way that a 15-year-old black high school dropout does. We all see the world from where we stand. Anybody who's ever interviewed five eyewitnesses to an automobile accident knows there's no such thing as objectivity."

I've said it before and Molly Ivins has said it too [see above]. There is no objectivity in the media. Amira Hass has said it: being fair and objective aren't the same thing.

If you don't yet know who Keith Olbermann is yet, you owe it to yourself to YouTube him. Journalism with a soul. Don't bother settling for anything less.

If you don't believe what Ivins is talking about above, you probably don't understand the multiple subjectivity of post-modernism and your value to a 21st century world is limited. Time to get with the program.

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Maybe John Edwards Has Been a Progressive Democrat All Along?

[Doesn't he look a little bit like early Elvis here?]:
I'd like to think he's been progressive all along. I'd like to think the 2004 run was a time when he had to be just the running mate.

But now that Edwards is sounding all anti-Republican-Lite and anti corporate cronyism, I can't help but think that the Hegelian dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis is at play...from Dennis Kucinich.

Kucinich's messages of peace, multilateralism, progressive values and anti-graft...populist among a jaded American public...have been anointed by ABC's recent attempts to censor his airtime.

The messages are resonating and Edwards is sliding left to pull them to the media-designated top tier of candidates, perhaps only as a wedge to use against more establishment Democrats like Clinton and Obama.

Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but not when you're running for president, I think.

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Spreading Ignorance about Global Warming

Global warming deniers are really starting to annoy me. I've already compared them to Holocaust deniers because of their techniques and self-serving conflicts of interest.

Now I get to lump in the Media Research Center with them all. The MRC is a neutral, almost academic sounding institution that "tracks liberal media bias" ["liberal" used as a pejorative like commie] in their never-ending pursuit of "truth". They are a hyper-conservative spin organization whose regular emails inflame in me a clear sense of just how far the global corporate elites will go to maintain their stranglehold on power.

I enjoy the irony of rich, well-funded conservatives claiming there's a great media bias. With such intense corporate concentration of ownership in the media in the western world, there still exists a remnant of the liberal journalist. And I truly believe that many in the media are more liberal or left-wing than not, for why go into journalism if you don't believe in the responsibility of a free press for rooting out corruption, from the left or right.

And while self-censorship is clearly alive among journalists as they continually remember which corporate neofeudalist owns them and their work, there is occasionally some good work in the press.

But the MRC's approach to hunting down the liberal bias and balancing it out with another truth is astonishing sometimes. Today's missive from our MRC friends is called NBC's Today Show Champions Global Warming Alarmist. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.

They introduce their criticism thusly:

On Monday's Today show, NBC's Bob Dotson profiled Will Steger, a polar explorer who is indoctrinating America's youth about "collapsing" ice shelves and global warming. Dotson never doubted the explorer's theories, instead he chose to portray Steger's crusade as nothing short of much needed charity work: "Pitching back in between and forth between the Poles, Will began to notice our warming world, wrote one of the first books about it. Now the old explorer has set himself a new challenge. Here in his home of the great northern Minnesota woods he's teaching the next generation how to rally support and solve the problem."

Dotson didn't ask any skeptical questions or air any soundbites from global warming critics, preferring to set up Steger to pontificate about climate change.

Misrepresenting controversy about global warming, opponents who gain from denying it do a disservice to the truth and humanity's responsibility to fix our mess by cleaning up how we are treating our planet like a sewer.

What the MRC doesn't get is what Amira Hass does get: "being fair and being objective are not the same thing. What journalism is really about--it's to monitor power and the centers of power." They don't get it because they reflect the centres of power.

Fairness in reporting does not mean treating both sides of an issue as equally merited with equal time to both. Demanding identical treatment mis-represents the merit of the argument for the global warming deniers who are wildly outnumbered and often funded by corporations that profit from global warming.

It's important to watch the MRC though, because watching the watchers helps us all. And to top it off today, I just joined Ann Coulter's email list. That should be exciting.

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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

"Progress", Redux

Before I post my larger review of it, George Monbiot's new book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning has a poignant line about our sense of progress:

"We have come to believe we can do anything. We can do anything....Progress now depends upon the exercise of fewer opportunities." [p. 188]

If progress is an ever-improving standard of living, then faster double-decker jets, SUVs [or FU-V's], the mere existence of cruise ships, and 5000 square foot homes are just plain titillating. But if our recent centuries' industrial progress is destroying our environment, air, biodiversity and climate, we'd be fools to continue on as we are. If our relationship with ecology is going to suffer, we should stop doing things that will impede our survival.

Thus, progress means voluntarily embracing fewer freedoms if those freedoms are killing us. It's a no-brainer.

As one put it
, "progress isn't always inevitable":

Click Me:

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Psst, Wanna Buy a BC River?

September 30, 2007 is British Columbia Rivers Day!

This is a time to celebrate the role BC rivers has played in the history of our province, from before Europeans came [though we don't really seem to actually care too much about that] until today: British imperialism, economics, recreation, [ecology, yes], etc.

Wouldn't it be great in celebrating BC's rivers that you had the opportunity to, I don't know, buy the water rights in perpetuity for up to $10,000?

If that sounds like a nice way to spend $10k for the chance to make your own electricity plant, you know how to spot a bargain! Well, the government, anyway, sure knows how to offer a bargain...everyone's water at fire sale prices. Then you too can contribute to rolling brownouts, regional blackouts and price gouging just like the fatcats!

Green tags represent many of the 62 current water licenses for power generation or storage. Yell tags represent many of the 350+ pending applications. Red lines indicate parks.

Hurry! The offer doesn't last forever! Once BC rivers have all been bought up, there literally will be none left for you to snatch up. Get on it!

And if you aren't so much in favour of selling our water rights for any price, let alone less than $10,000, they it's time to get involved in stopping the continued privatization of the commons: Citizens for Public Power is a good place to start.

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Friday, August 03, 2007

The End of "Mayor" Sam Sullivan

Welcome Peter Ladner, NPA's next mayoral candidate.

Sam Sullivan has unofficially ended his term as mayor at 11:03AM today as CUPE announced a tentative settlement in North Vancouver. We have passed the tipping point in the regional dispute.

Sullivan's strategy has been absurd, ill-conceived and ill-informed at best, arrogant and destructive at worst. In fact, however, it is not a new strategy: it has a historic [and historically foolish] basis: Boulwarism.

It's all about rejecting bargaining entirely and starting "negotiating" with a final offer that won't budge from threats or strikes. It inherently opposes the rights of workers to negotiate with management.

In light of the Supreme Court of Canada's recent ruling that BC's Bill 29 is illegal and that collective bargaining is protected under the Charter, "Mayor" Sam's tactics are in the spirit of what the Supreme Court opposes, as are the abuses the HEU suffered earlier in the decade and BC teachers' loss of the right to bargain wages, working conditions and class sizes.

But "Mayor" Sam is always right. Until he is embarrassingly wrong. Here's how it looks today:


Richmond, Surrey, Delta, Burnaby and North Vancouver have got Vancouver surrounded with contracts that aren't punitively designed to punish labour because it is organized. Vancouver has had the strength to bargain unfairly with the GVRD's bargaining support, until now as the 5 largest municipalities around Vancouver have or will settle by tomorrow. Vancouver's bargaining strength is virtually gone. Richmond and Surrey, that do not use the GVRD bargaining stick, helped set a pattern that the other 3 cities have recognized, and in doing so have constrained the GVRD's scope to push Vancouver's agenda and support Vancouver's internal turmoil.

Keith Baldrey wrote in the Coquitlam Now on July 25, 2007, “the BC economy has undergone significant changes (forestry, while still big, is not the huge industry it once was) and the power of organized labour has diminished in the past two decades. …The economy is doing well, and employees consider themselves deserving of a bigger portion of that richer economic pie.”

The truth is broader though. Sure, the better economy means the workers ought to share in it. But the truth is that even when the economy was not so good in recent decades, corporate profits and management salaries have done well, often at the expense of workers, whose purchasing power today is close to half of what it was 30 years ago.

People often complain—especially during civic strikes like now--that union workers are lazy whiners who seek opportunities to strike while “real” workers in the private sector don’t have job security or finite hours of work or good working conditions. Their goal seems to be to make unionized workers have to suck it up and suffer the same kind of crappy jobs, wages, working conditions, hours of work and lack of protections that non-union workers are forced to endure.

Unions have spent the better part of two centuries agitating for change: weekends, a 40 hour work week [hopefully to decline further for quality of life concerns and higher meaningful employment rates], no children working 12-hour 7-day weeks in coal mines [except in BC now, thanks to Campbell’s neoLiberal regime, children as young as 12 can get their asses to work], overtime pay, holidays, vacations, health and safety provisions, etc. So many of these benefits have become so valued that society as a whole has adopted them into legislation: the Labour Code, minimum wages, collective bargaining rights to support democracy in the workplace. And now the Supreme Court has joined our side.

So while many non-union workers think unionized workers get too much, my question to them is don’t you deserve as much too? Why try to stop others from being treated with dignity at work because you aren’t. Should we all have a labour race to the bottom so we’re all back in sweatshops? Stop the insanity.

And as Baldry writes that the power of unions has declined, it is because unionization, particularly private sector unionization, has declined. Instead of trying to drag other workers down to lower levels of treatment, it’s time increase the level and breadth of unionization, particularly in the private sectors. Why aren’t bank workers unionized? They are often treated like moronic cogs on a product-shilling wheel while the big banks in Canada regularly post quarterly profits [not revenues!] in the billions?

Sam Sullivan doesn’t get it. Actually, he does get it. It’s just that he rejects it while claiming in his inaugural address to support it:

“Vancouver is blessed with highly skilled staff who maintain our status as the most liveable city in the world. Tightening labour markets will present challenges over the next five years to attract, retain and develop our work force. All of us should be grateful for the front line workers who serve us so well. Our recruitment theme ‘Powered by Innovation’ should be more than a slogan as we provide interesting and rewarding careers."

Intelligent city councils surrounding Vancouver get it too and they don’t reject it. CUPE workers get it because they know they deserve to be treated with respect…as do all other workers, despite what our arrogant, anti-social premier and mayor believe.

So thanks for the memories, "Mayor" Sam Sullivan. Let your lame duck mayoralty begin.

And, Peter Ladner, the tide is turning. Remember that as you build your NPA leadership campaign.

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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Post-Post-Modernist, Non-Ironic Self-Reflexivity in Advertising: It Bores/Annoys Me Already

Click on that image above to view it in a nice, big size. You won't regret it.

So, every once in a while, the free daily Metro does away with...I don't know how to say this...any actual news on the front page. It just puts an ad there. The whole page. And the next page too.

Then they start the "paper" on page 3.

When they first did it, I was flabbergasted, though I shouldn't have been.

On Tuesday, July 21st, 2007 they did it again.

But this time it was a highly self-reflexive post-post-modern joke about there being no news and alas there was no news on the front page.

The joke several layers deep, or maybe just 2 layers deep [it's hard to count] is that there is no real news in Metro. There is just soft news masquerading as substance and substantial news with so little length that depth and thorough understanding is impossible. It all just seems to be news: a simulacra.

So as they and all the other free dailies unapologetically offer fluff over real news, they are even content to mock their own emptiness by profiting from their vacuousness with an ad skating so close to the truth.

But what happens to the population when they "read" this paper with this ad. Do they get it? Do they just skate over it mentally? Do they not care? I'm afraid to know the truth.

Metro is hip and connected to the vibe of its people:

"Our reporters get to the point quickly and cover Vancouver politics, up-and-coming local artists, events and much more. Our columnists keep readers informed about the latest celebrities visiting our city, shopping and restaurants – everything readers want, right at their fingertips."

By quickly does that mean without any slow stuff like background or analysis? And news columnists write about news. I have a hard time seeing fluff topics as being covered by columnists. But then, I suppose if you get a column in a paper on shopping, then that's news[?].

"Which is great, because since the beginning our readers have maintained a special relationship with Metro."

What the hell kind of relationship have we got with Metro? Is Metro our barber, therapist, confidante, bookie, work-spouse? Who started this relationship? Is it consensual? Was I informed that I'm in a relationship? Is it one-sided, completely constructed by a newspaper, its marketing arm, its focus groups and studies of target audiences, and its will to determine for us what news is so when we're asked we say news is that thing we're fed?

"They’re an established and loyal group who believe in, connect with and respond."

Established by Metro? Who decides how that amorphous group is loyal to anything, let alone a newspaper? Is it loyalty like to the Canucks or an extended family or belief system? And what does this loyal group believe in about Metro? This is just lunacy.

In the end, Metro's self-description sounds like a church. Metro isn't a product we consume as much as a lifestyle we choose and identify with. Psychology + Marketing = Mind Control. And if we actually believe Metro speaks to us, I've got some Kool-Aid I'd like you to drink.

I tell ya, Pravda never had it so good: at least there, everyone knew it was all the same, here we have the illusion of a free press because the papers and media outlets have different names.

In the end, the CanWestMedia whore owns the Vancouver Sun, The Province, The National Post, the Times-Colonist, 14 lower mainland weeklies, Global and CH TV and Showcase [with their purchase of Alliance Atlantis], all of the Dose free daily paper and until recently, 1/3 of Metro. The CRTC without any real concern for corporate concentration of media [unless it impedes free advertiser access] gives us all a snapshot of the media empire [see below or see here]. And in the end, regardless of which media robber baron is in charge of the "truth" we are allowed to see, the corporate media filter censors reality daily.



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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Nexus Between Garbage Media and Climate Change



Rupert Murdoch, a ghoul of corporate concentrated media ownership, is appearing to be moved by criticisms that Fox Network is irrational and damaging to society, particularly on their flat earth approach to global warming opposition.

Brave New World Films has produced a 2.5 minute piece [above] in their ongoing campaign against the rationality-challenged, sensationalist Fox Network.

It is combined with a campaign to encourage green-positioned Home Depot to stop advertising with Fox. More information is at Brave New World Films' Fox Attacks site.

And if you have never seen the movie Network, or if it has been more than a few years, you truly owe it to yourself to see how this 1976 film predicted the irrational soup of media today that currently shackles the role of an intelligent, free press in a representative democracy.

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Sunday, July 01, 2007

Chevy, the Vanguard of Climate Change Activism!

I'm getting quite excited about Live Earth coming up on 7.7.07 next Saturday. I'm having a day-long open house house party. I'm pumping the pledge and I'm always encouraging people to go car free.

The Live Earth website is full of important information, but the MSN portal for Live Earth is a serious bother.

Chevy is the key sponsor of the online coverage. It's much like how Translink buses sell car advertising in and on its buses and trains. Irony? I think not.

Hyper consumerism...cars...greenhouse gas emission...I must be missing something here.

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Thursday, February 08, 2007

The Myth of Media Objectivity

Kevin Potvin's piece yesterday in The Vancouver Courier [see below] is a welcome summary of the annoyance and offensiveness of The Province newspaper in particular and corporate media in general as they perpetuate the myth of their objectivity.

It is offensive to our democracy that is supposed to be enhanced by a "free" press for such a paper to actively promote the stadium development, collect mountains of ad revenue from its proponents, hold an online poll to guage public opinion, then remove the poll when the untampered results do not support their political/marketing position.

I, however, enjoy the irony that the CanWest monster that owns The Province also owns the The Vancouver Courier where Potvin and others often take valid shots at the legitimacy of CanWest's major propaganda dailies.

A friend once mentioned to me that this proves that CanWest actually supports fairness and balance in the media because they own one paper that frequently criticizes the validity of its other papers. But with just over 250,000 copies distributed for free each week throughout the city, The Vancouver Courier does not quite have the readership or budget to authentically counter the mind-numbing propaganda of The Province, The Vancouver Sun, or The National Post, the first two with a circulation of 2,500,000 each week.

And in the end, even if allowing this criticism in a small community paper [that is incidentally outweighed each delivery day by the fliers contained within, making the paper ultimately possibly just a convenient delivery mechanism for advertising] proves CanWest actually listens to or respects its own internal criticism, they certainly do not change their illegitimate operations at their propaganda dailies. So it actually looks worse for them: CanWest owns a paper that legitimately criticizes its major dailies, yet it ignores the criticism and continues subverting the role the free press ought to play in a democracy.

=====

Whitecaps owe public a thank you

By Kevin Potvin

In the week before public speakers were scheduled to appear before council last fall to express their views on the waterfront stadium proposal, the Province newspaper staged an online poll asking what readers thought about it.

The Whitecaps sent an alert to everyone on its email lists urging them to go to the Province website and vote in favour. A link was conveniently provided. The results, which one could monitor as they were coming in, showed early support reaching up to 70 per cent.

But as the day wore on and other people besides those on the Whitecaps' lists were alerted, the tide began to shift. By 5 p.m., the vote was nearing 70 per cent opposed. That's when the poll disappeared from the Province website, replaced by a note apologizing for technical difficulties. Final results were never revealed.

I made phone calls and confirmed that Whitecaps president John LaRocca was in touch with a Province sports editor when the decision was made to pull the poll. When I talked to the Province the next day, the paper confirmed it had pulled it because the results did not look right to them, though their technicians could provide no evidence hacking had occurred. The Province is an official "sponsor" of the Whitecaps, and the Whitecaps buy substantial advertising in that paper. Editorials in the Province heavily endorsed the Whitecaps' waterfront stadium proposal.

It was the public that drew council's attention to the myriad problems the stadium proposal contained, and not just problems for the public but also for soccer fans and the proposed stadium's owners as well. Chief among public concerns was the obvious safety hazard involved in packing in 30,000 people above an inaccessible storage area for train cars carrying such things as propane, bauxite and chlorine-the three ingredients in a train derailment in Mississauga that caused the biggest evacuation in Canadian history.

There was also the matter of there being only two exits from the proposed building, with no marshalling area outside the doors, meaning 30,000 fans would plug the streets of the Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood with few people who could afford to go to events at the proposed stadium. And then there was the sheer ugliness of a massive stadium wall blocking the neighbourhood from any hint of the waterfront.

I spoke with the head designer of the project who reacted with indignation at my suggestion that it would be a blot on the landscape. He dismissed my safety concerns as those of someone who knows nothing about architecture.

Council voted unanimously to back the proposal.

Well, looks like the public was right. Last week, the Whitecaps, citing the same safety and public access issues the public speakers brought to their attention, abandoned the original waterfront stadium proposal-the same one the leading papers in the city, the leading councillors, the biggest of billionaires, the huffiest of architects and the most defensive of company presidents all assured me was not only the brightest idea in a decade, but the last possible chance we had to be blessed by the largesse of so wonderful a philanthropist as Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot.

The new proposal, to be built over the Seabus terminal, looks a lot better, better for the Whitecaps, for their customers, and for the neighbourhood. I'll be checking the Whitecaps website daily for the "thank yous" to the public.

published on 02/07/2007

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Monday, September 04, 2006

Class War: A Labour Day Greeting Card!

Last year at Labour Day I wrote about how I began reading Mark Steyn's pearls of shit.

He was waxing on about how the world is so great and technology will save us and humans can trump an instant karma planet that may not endure us much longer. We should all stop whining and have faith in the Fortune 500 R&D divisions to conjure up the next fuel for global pillaging.

But class war is on my mind this year. And since it's Labour Day, it's important to point out that your labour is worth more shit and less value than ever before in recent generations. AND IT'S OUR FAULT because we are letting "them" do it to "us."

And I know that it sounds like the "typical" bleeding heart anti-establishment tone to blame some "them" but there is a "them", and Greg Palast has defined "them" quite neatly [see his whole piece below]. And as much as all this data relates to the USA, Canada is a syncophantic replica of this economic beast.

Just a few timbits of a sense of "them":

50.4% = amount of US income earned by the richest quintile

5.9% = the amount the US median income dropped since Bush's election-rigging machine stole the White House

83% = the amount of stock market shares owned by the richest US quintile

53% = the amount of stock market shares owned by the richest 1% of the US

3% = the amount of all US private assets owned by the poorest 50% of Americans

As a country's economy grows and wealth increases, the Gini Index measures the income disparity within that nation. One of the things that demonstrates who gets the benefit from economic increases is to examine the relationship between wages and productivity. When a nation's productivity increases, you would think that the wages of the workers who are producing more effectively would reflect that improvement.

Since 2003, the reverse has happened in the US. Productivity increased while median wages declined 2% after adjusting for inflation. In the first half of the decade, worker compensation [wage plus benefits] has been half of US productivity increases. However, the share of wage income earned by the richest 1% of Americans nearly doubled to 11.2% in the last 30 years.


"As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the [US's] gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s." Wages 6 months ago reflected just 45% of the US GDP, while 36 years ago wages represented 53.6% of their GDP. In fact, a Goldman Sachs report concluded, "the most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income."

Corporate profits are predominantly earned by the richest quintile of Americans these days. They are "them".

"Since last summer, however, the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data."

Dividends per share rise when large and small corporations cut benefits to workers. Dividends are largely distributed to the top income quintile of Americans.

But maybe "them" have been hurting by this as well. "At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising." OK, maybe not.

But why is it so easy to blame "us" for "them" screwing us out of living or just wages?

If you think people deserve a share in the value or wealth they create, you understand the Labour Theory of Value, and you are in good company with two of the fathers of capitalism: Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Sadly, though, neoliberal free trade economics of global corporate neofeudal rape and pillage reject such quaint notions and liken you--in your support of the Labour Theory of Value--to Karl Marx: not so much a fan of classical or neoliberal economics.

And when I say that it's our fault that we continue to allow ourselves to be abused by the richest quintile or 1% of Americans [or Canadians or OECD world], it is because of how Marx connected the Labour Theory of Value to social order. More egalitarianism comes when more people are able to share in the fruit of their labour. This is not happening so much anymore. During the communism scares of the early 20th century, labour was able to make great gains in wages, benefits and social welfare as capital feared Red Revolutions across the industrial world. With the Evil Empire gone, and only a few marginalized "Red" nations remaining, there is less incentive to buy off labour.

"Polls show that Americans are less dissatisfied with the economy than they were in the early 1980’s or early 90’s. Rising house and stock values have lifted the net worth of many families over the last few years, and interest rates remain fairly low." Plus, "global trade, immigration, layoffs and technology — as well as the insecurity caused by them — appear to have eroded workers’ bargaining power. Trade unions are much weaker than they once were."

And then there's Wheel of Fortune, reality television and the other elements of what make up today's religion as the opiate of the masses. Class warfare belongs to another time and place. We see Hummers driving down our street and we think we're in the blessed world of economic birthrights. "We" are "them" so warfare is against ourselves. Except the economic statistics show we're being bled like the frog in the pot on a slow heat.

But then again, in a global sense, the OECD world is the world's top economic quintile. If the workers of the industrialized world unite against our oppressors, that's just us in the top 2-19% income group going after the top 1%. Is that really a class war?

Horatio Alger, Jr, 19th century American pulp novelist, championed the great American rags to riches dream. As long as the poorest four quintiles of North American population continue to think that we're just one raise away from getting our Hummer, we will refuse to recognize that class politics that allow the irony-free American "president" to chuckle while claiming to be the president of the "haves" and the "have-mores".

And if the Irish saved western civilization after the fall of Rome and through the Dark Ages, perhaps the ascendent political movements of Latin and South America with their focus on human over corporate centred economic development will save the myopic greed of the class rulers of North America.

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TODAY'S PIG IS TOMORROW'S BACON (a Labor Day recipe)

By Greg Palast
September, 3 2006

Some years from now, in an economic refugee relocation "Enterprise Zone," your kids will ask you, "What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?"

The trick of class war is not to let the victims know they're under attack. That's how, little by little, the owners of the planet take away what little we have.

This week, Dupont, the chemical giant, slashed employee pension benefits by two-thirds. Furthermore, new Dupont workers won't get a guaranteed pension at all -- and no health care after retirement. It's part of Dupont's new "Die Young" program, I hear. Dupont is not in financial straits. Rather, the slash attack on its workers' pensions was aimed at adding a crucial three cents a share to company earnings, from $3.11 per share to $3.14.

So Happy Labor Day.

And this week, the government made it official: For the first time since the Labor Department began measuring how the American pie is sliced, those in the top fifth of the wealth scale are now gobbling up over half (50.4%) of our nation's annual income.

So Happy Labor Day.

We don't even get to lick the plates. While 15.9% of us don't have health insurance (a record, Mr. President!), even those of us who have it, don't have it: we're spending 36% more per family out of pocket on medical costs since the new regime took power in Washington. If you've actually tried to collect from your insurance company, you know what I mean.

So Happy Labor Day.

But if you think I have nothing nice to say about George W. Bush, let me report that the USA now has more millionaires than ever -- 7.4 million! And over the past decade, the number of billionaires has more than tripled, 341 of them!

If that doesn't make you feel like you're missing out, this should: You, Mr. Median, are earning, after inflation, a little less than you earned when Richard Nixon reigned. Median household income -- and most of us are "median" -- is down. Way down.

Since the Bush Putsch in 2000, median income has fallen 5.9%.

Mr. Bush and friends are offering us an "ownership" society. But he didn't mention who already owns it. The richest fifth of America owns 83% of all shares in the stock market. But that's a bit misleading because most of that, 53% of all the stock, is owned by just one percent of American households.

And what does the Wealthy One Percent want? Answer: more wealth. Where will they get it? As with a tube of toothpaste, they're squeezing it from the bottom. Median paychecks have gone down by 5.9% during the current regime, but Americans in the bottom fifth have seen their incomes sliced by 20%.

At the other end, CEO pay at the Fortune 500 has bloated by 51% during the first four years of the Bush regime to an average of $8.1 million per annum.

So who's winning? It's a crude indicator, but let's take a peek at the Class War body count.

When Reagan took power in 1980, the One Percent possessed 33% of America's wealth as measured by capital income. By 2006, the One Percent has swallowed over half of all America's assets, from sea to shining sea. One hundred fifty million Americans altogether own less than 3% of all private assets.

Yes, American middle-class house values are up, but we're blowing that gain to stay alive. Edward Wolff, the New York University expert on income, explained to me that, "The middle class is mortgaging itself to death." As a result of mortgaging our new equity, 60% of all households have seen a decline in net worth.

Is America getting poorer? No, just its people, We the Median. In fact, we are producing an astonishing amount of new wealth in the USA. We are a lean, mean production machine. Output per worker in BushAmerica zoomed by 15% over four years through 2004. Problem is, although worker productivity keeps rising, the producers are getting less and less of it.

The gap between what we produce and what we get is widening like an alligator's jaw. The more you work, the less you get. It used to be that as the economic pie got bigger, everyone's slice got bigger too. No more.

The One Percent have swallowed your share before you can get your fork in.

The loot Dupont sucked from its employees' retirement funds will be put to good use. It will more than cover the cost of the company directors' decision to hike the pension set aside for CEO Charles Holliday to $2.1 million a year. And that's fair, I suppose: Holliday's a winning general in the class war. And shouldn't the winners of war get the spoils?

Of course, there are killjoys who cling to that Calvinist-Marxist belief that a system forever fattening the richest cannot continue without end. Professor Michael Zweig, Director of the State University of New York's Center for Study of Working Class Life, put it in culinary terms: "Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon."

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