Day: March 10, 2014

Our Cracker Jack Media

I know I have railed on and on about the media and how it handles different stories….some of us think the media has a liberal bias and then there are others that think it is some sort of mind control by the government……belief what you will….but the facts seem to support that their main function is to protect those of us that are most worthy…..the corporations.  There is very little independent news anymore, it all has a bias.

Would you like an example of why I make such a claim?

Gladly.

This past weekend an airliner from Malaysia was on route to Beijing when it disappeared off radar and all contact was gone…..I am a news geek so I was looking at breaking news that might be worthy of a post on IST…..and I got the news of the missing plane….I immediately went to the different news channels fr more info…..every channel I visited had the same early report……”the plane is a Boeing 777 which has a sterling safety record….and then it would go on about the flight plan and people and such……the media made damn sure to inject the safety record into its early reports.

The media was giving Boeing some cover knowing that their will most likely be a run on lawsuits soon.  They want to blame terrorists or pilot error….it may well be the case but at the time NO one knew for sure …..but the 777 has a sterling safety record.

I have been suspicious of the media since corporations were allowed to own them…..I saw the news as a entertainment weapon not a informative weapon.

I agree with Nate silver….for those who are not political wonks and do not know who Silver is let me help…..Silver was the most accurate predicter of the 2010 election…not just prez but he chose almost all the races that were being run across the country….but now that you know Silver here is what he has to say about op-ed writers……

The graph consists of qualitative and quantitative evaluations of prospective candidates. “The bottom two quadrants belong to the dregs of American journalism: on the left, sportswriters who cherry-pick statistics without thinking through them, and on the right, op-ed columnists,” TIME revealed.

“That’s the crap quadrant,” Silver said. “Two-thirds of the op-ed columnists at America’s major newspapers are worthless.”

I would expand it to a lot of the on-air personalities as well…..looks like some saw this coming before it arrived….I believe it was Antonio Gramsci that said….”media will drive the hegemony of the wealthy”….sorry that is a paraphrase….his analysis was spot on and it is getting worse by the year….

What Good Are Principles Anyway?

Our politicians when running for office are just oozing over with principles especially principles that appeal to the voter………and in recent elections illustrate that these people have NO principles or what few they have are for sale.

Let’s look at the recent elections, the ones that brought Obama to the seat of power, in the beginning I liked him for his high principles, I especially liked his stand on the environment and green technology.  Sadly, since he was elected those principles have taken a backseat….I cannot blame him alone….the Congress has a lot to do with the loss of principles….but his rhetoric lead me to believe that he would fight harder than he did…….I felt disappointment and a sense of betrayal.  My disappointment deepened when the issue of the Keystone Pipeline came to the forefront.

The lowest point was when, and that has just recently, the pipeline passed its first obstacle.  With that news and the Prez reaction I knew then that principles be damn….it is a slam dunk.  And then I read this piece that made me think about writing this post…..

President Obama’s environmental record is a “tremendous improvement” from the Bush-Cheney days, but he’s on the verge of destroying it with the Keystone XL oil pipeline, writes Democratic congressman Raul Grijalva in the New York Times. The proposed pipeline is a perfect example of how such projects came to be in the bad old days, when politicians trotted out phrases like “streamlining” and the industry could “game the system” with huge infusions of money, writes the Arizona lawmaker. Take the obvious conflict of interest with the contractor that concluded the pipeline posed no environmental risks—Environmental Resources Management previously worked for pipeline parent TransCanada. The recent report by the State Department’s inspector general on ERM’s selection should not be interpreted as an exoneration but as an “important example of the problem,” argues Grijalva. This is about more than a proposed pipeline, he writes. If ERM’s decision stands, “it will re-establish the Bush-era habit of tipping the scales in favor of corporations that want special treatment.” And it will ruin Obama’s environmental legacy. Click for his full column.

It is all too sad for words….even though I did find a few of them lying around……I hope that I live long enough to see a return to principles in our politicians….but I far I am waiting for nothing…..money is the new principle and all flows from there.

Is a principle nothing but a political prop?

Emma Goldman: A Woman Of Her Time

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Women’s History

Another tradition I try to keep going is to post a woman that few know that has contributed greatly to the advancement of women and their rights…….

As an aged radical I learned of Emma at an early age mainly from her participation in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and her work demanding equal rights for women in the early days of the 20th century….but for those who have never heard of this lady…let me assist you…….

I would like to thank americanswhotellthetruth.org for this profile of Emma Goldman……

Emma Goldman was born in Kovno, Russia and emigrated to live with a sister in Rochester, New York when she was fifteen. Her family’s financial hardships forced her to leave school and work in a factory; her first job in America was as a seamstress in a clothing factory.

Goldman´s political consciousness was shaped by reading (Cherychevsky, Kropotkin), by her first-hand knowledge of miserable working conditions and, most dramatically, by the violent outcome of the 1886 Haymarket demonstrations on behalf of the eight-hour workday at Haymarket Square in Chicago, when, despite an absence of proof, four Anarchists were executed for allegedly causing the deaths of seven policemen. In 1889, Goldman moved to New York where she became a protégée of Johann Most, the editor of an Anarchist paper. From 1906 until 1917, she and her partner, Alexander Berkman, edited and published their own paper, Mother Earth. She wrote five books: Anarchism and Other Essays (1910); Social Significance of the Modern Drama (1914); My Disillusionment in Russia (1923); My Further Disillusionment in Russia (1924); Living My Life (1931).

In her writing and public speaking Goldman was a gadfly. She championed free speech, birth control, women’s equality and labor unions. She said: “The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or the woman’s right to her soul.” Today we take these rights for granted, but a century ago her words challenged the national conscience. Another of her bold statements still resonates today: “…if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it cannot do without that life.”

Emma Goldman was arrested and detained several times for her activism, but her most severe punishment–two years in prison–was for obstructing the draft during World War I. In 1919, she and Berkman were deported to Russia where she was able to witness the aftermath of the 1917 Revolution. At odds with Bolshevik dictatorship, she left again in 1921. She was permitted to re-enter the United States on a speaking tour in 1924. Marriage to a Welshman gained her English citizenship, and she lived in London during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Goldman visited Spain several times during the conflict, where she sought refuge for women and children displaced by the war and spoke out against the forces of Fascism. She died in Toronto in 1940 and is buried in Chicago, not far from Haymarket Square.

https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/

One may not approve of her political ideology but her work on behalf of women is legendary……she is a woman that we should be proud of because of her work for women….women are better off today because of her work…..and her work is NOT finished….there is more that needs to be done….and done NOW!