Category Archives: Journalism

Activism, British Columbia, Canada, Class War, Corporations, Executive Overdrive, Journalism, Media, Politics, Society, Soft Fascism, USA

We Need to Prepare for Those Worse Than Trump

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It’s one thing to lower the bar, but with Trump, someone pulled out the jackhammer and has dug through the floor.

Donald Trump Went On A Baffling 3AM Twitter Rant About Sex Tapes ...But let’s not assume that Trump is the low ebb or an aberration. He signifies another level altogether of political contempt.

Politicians have a sense of entitlement and natural objection to transparency and accountability, having spent generations rigging the system to let them slide easily into power. Add in rich, white and male entitlements and we see the majority of politicians more than doubling down on arrogance.

But we can’t just presume things will get better after Trump.

  1. He has established a new realm of political behaviour that will allow equally or more repulsive and anti-social miscreants to seek their populist masses to champion.
  2. Current contemptuous politicians will see new capacity to dig even further into the slime in the political culture of their region.
  3. Politicians with integrity will find even more competitors dealing in abject lies which will increasingly go unchecked by corporate media that has been whipped into submission/irrelevance by the brashness of lying politicians and the self-immolating corporate media and their brand new level of apathy towards to truth and fact-checking all to serve the profitability of the corporate media owners’ agenda to serve the interests of their political compradors.

Solutions!

  1. We need to support media with integrity. Don’t expect this to come from corporate media. Look for independent media and amplify their voices. Remember, it was CANADALAND that broke the Jian Ghomeshi debacle.
  2. Use your own personal social networks to share information critical for participating in our civic duty. Not Facebook posts which must meet the elements of their fancy algorithms to even reach your people, try email or text messages or cocktail parties [we should have more of these] or brunches or phone calls to talk about life. And include political truths your people need to know. You don’t have to BECOME the media, you just need to amplify the positive messages.
  3. Next, go directly to political parties’/candidates’ websites to see where they really stand and what they’re saying in particular and in context. Amplify that, criticize that, augment that, demand better policy than that. The same goes for the contemptuous politicians: read their policy, compare it with what they say, and note the contradictions.
  4. Remember, you and me and all of us are the employers of these politicians. They constantly try to encourage us to obey them. This is nonsense. We need to resist that abusive stance and recognize our own power.
  5. Bernie Sanders almost became the Democratic nominee for president. He did that despite the successful work of corporate media and the Clinton/Party coalition to shut down and censor his message. Once he lost the California primary, the Democracy for America movement mobilized to nominate progressive Senate and House candidates. Controlling/influencing Congress could be a powerful element in fixing America. You will encounter people of integrity and vision who could lead us, not necessarily as elected leaders, but mobilizers who can help liberate us all from our pasty, weak democracy and the rise of soft fascism.

Get busy, and don’t be afraid.

And plan a cocktail party!

Update, and a new solution:

Read this #FacePalm piece, and look at this:

trumpeducation

 

Canada, Class War, Journalism, Media

Permanent Delusion, Rex Murphy and Rob Ford

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I can’t watch this. I can’t.

Rex Murphy’s ode to Rob Ford includes this quote:

“Mr. Ford was one of the most remarkable ordinary people Toronto has ever produced.”

Here’s another perspective; you decide:

To create and solidify their base, Ford and his backers used a strategy that has proven successful elsewhere. It is a strategy that worked well, at least for a time, for George W Bush, for instance: playing up a persona that people make a personal connection with. Let’s call it the blue-collar-lunch pail-millionaire phenomenon — a persona ironically co-opted by men who never worked a blue collar job in their lives. But it conveniently divided and conquered to send Ford to the Mayor’s seat. It pitted the so-called “elite” — the intellectuals, the artists, the environmentalists, even the unionists — against the other supposed “ordinary” citizens of the Greater Toronto Area. Downtown versus the ‘burbs.

Source: Rob Ford and the blue-collar-millionaire myth | rabble.ca

Equality, Feminism, Gender Issues, International Relations, Journalism, Media, Morality

MORE Sexism Against Female Canadian Athletes!

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THIS picture respects the dignity of a tennis player. Not, “give us a twirl” demeaning, sexist abuse.

Today is a terrible day for gender equity in sports. What it looks like is either continued sexism, or increased anti-feminist backlash against women who have been asserting their human rights to safety and dignity around the world.

  1. Female World Cup soccer players have to play on plastic artificial turf while the men have played on actual…grass. They started a human rights complaint but have now dropped it.
  2. And last year at the Australian Open, an idiotic [female!] Australian media interviewer asked Genie Bouchard after she won a match who she would date. Because female athletes are meat, right? And today, an idiotic [male] Australian media interview ASKED HER TO GIVE US A TWIRL!

That’s twice in two years that the Australian media are living down to their country’s stereotype of sexist pigs while interviewing her.

I wonder if this media fellow was pondering what he could get her to do and settled for a twirl.

Bouchard later said, “I don’t know, an old guy asking you to twirl. It was funny,” she said. NO ONE should be put into this idiotic position.

This continues to be intolerable!

Corporations, Democracy, Feminism, Journalism, Media, Racism

The Election-Eve Racist, Sexist Attack on Olivia Chow

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If this cartoon were published, say, 2 weeks before the election, it would have been debated as a tool of racist, sexist propaganda and yet another blemish on corporate media. Her support would likely have grown after such a brutally immature attack.

But because politics is a dirty, disgusting, sociopathic game, it was published the day before the Ontario municipal election.

Read what Olivia Chow thinks of it below:

View image on TwitterChow told CP24 she thinks the cartoon is “disgusting.”

“Because I am Chinese-Canadian, I must be a communist and have slanted eyes and glasses … and since I am a woman, I must be inferior and therefore not good enough for the job of the mayor so I must rely on my deceased husband so it both racist and sexist,” she said.

via Toronto Sun’s Olivia Chow Cartoon Slammed As Racist (TWEETS).

Related articles across the web

Activism, Climate Change, Energy, Journalism, Media

Climate Change Science Deniers, Ignorance and Media’s False Balance

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Climate change deniers are science deniers.

That makes them either stupid, or so incredibly biased/conflicted that they are willing to ignore science and dodge accusations of their own stupidity to accomplish some other goal.

In BC we are producing oil, gas and coal and stunningly stupid rates, only to go up in the future.

Our corporate media is spewing this “false balance” at us. Journalists who deny the scientific truth of climate change should be fired. But corporate media want to keep them on.

We need to continually inoculate our against this wilful ignorance.

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Activism, British Columbia, Canada, Class War, Journalism, Media

Join Ricochet: A new take on independent media.

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Have you joined yet?

No? So, you’re good with corporate media spinning things for you, against your personal, community, national and ecological interests?

Oh. Ok. 🙂

Ricochet is an audacious response to a difficult context. Independent and in the public interest, Ricochet will provide a space dedicated to investigative journalism and high-profile opinion. Published in two distinct editions, English and French, Ricochet will illuminate the cultural and political diversity of this country.

via Ricochet: le journal nouveau genre. A new take on independent media. | Indiegogo.

Climate Change, Journalism, Media

People Should Stop Attacking The Margaret Wente

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It doesn’t matter that she hasn’t read Naomi Klein’s new book about climate change.

It doesn’t matter because the internet of things.

It doesn’t matter because most of what’s important in the world is in the comment section of news stories, not the stories themselves. We all know journalists are biased anyways.

She is a public intellectual and deserving of respect. Maybe you’re all just jealous. Or lazy.

Look, it’s easy:

Stephen Harper wrote a book about hockey in Canada, A Greater Game. It’s a sociological book about hockey’s place in our culture. It doesn’t matter that Stephen Harper doesn’t believe in sociology. In his book he talks glowingly about French Canadian hockey stars so he can improve the party’s chances in Quebec in the next election. He also talks about how important it is to privatize the CBC by making sure they didn’t bid on renewing the theme song to Hockey Night in Canada, and then didn’t bid to keep the entire Hockey Night in Canada franchise. So now Rogers runs hockey in Canada. He described why that was really important. He ended his book with a review of the great young NHL prospects from his riding in Calgary-Nose Creek.

So if you get over your laziness and jealousy of Margaret Wente, go to WordPress.com and start your own blog, you too can contribute meaningfully to the national discourse instead of wasting so much time attacking the National Post‘s greatest columnist.

Activism, British Columbia, Class War, Conservative Party of Canada, Cubazuela, Democracy, Equality, Executive Overdrive, Journalism, Justice, Media, Occupy Vancouver, Soft Fascism, Vancouver

Occupy, For Democracy

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Journalists protest the erosion of freedom of expression in Canada on Feb. 27 in Toronto. Photo Credit: Hiba Zayadin

When I write about soft fascism, I sometimes feel too Canadian. I don’t want to be impolite and talk about hard or old school or 20th century fascism because frankly, when people read that word, they think, “hey, is he talking about Hitler kinda stuff? Ok, then, so it’s not fascism.”

It is though. You don’t have to start a genocide for someone to consider your actions fascist.

It’s a kind, gentler, Canadian-style fascism with a hit of Tom Horton’s and a bonspiel on TV in the background.

Attempts to suppress democracy, though, ARE fascism. From the Conservative government’s voter suppression actions, and contempt of legislature and the courts, they seek totalitarian power.

This is why I Occupy.

And while we figure out what Occupy Vancouver is going to look like going forward, it is this kind of work to decriminalize journalism that we need to be mindful of. See below.

Now, more than ever, because there’s a federal election brewing and we know that the federal government will cheat again to keep its power because it thinks it’s right and they know best for all of us. Like the BC government’s election gag laws and the city of Vancouver’s pre-Olympics and Occupy era democracy suppression measures.

We can be vigilant or we can be sheep. If you want to be a sheep, fine. Stay away from me. If you want to be vigilant, sign up for email updates over there on the right. We’re all about vigilance around here. And I believe Stephen Harper is mentally ill, WITHOUT even having seen the Flanagan interview from Friday night.

And we’re about making Occupy potent, and unlike the governments, transparent and accountable and democratic.

Respect.

Culture of secrecy endangering democracy: CJFE

By Lynn Desjardins | english@rcinet.ca
Friday 2 May, 2014 , No Comments ↓

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“Canadians have lost even more ground in one of the fundamental elements of free expression—the ability to know what their government is doing and why,” says a news release issued by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The CJFE has just issued its 2014 Review of Free Expression in Canada and it gives the Canadian government “a failing grade.”

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Tom Henheffer of CJFE says there is a growing culture of secrecy in government. © Andrew Williamson

Government ‘defunding’ access to information

Access to information law means any Canadian can apply for access to any government document for a fee of five dollars. “It’s something that’s absolutely critical for the functioning of Canadian democracy because it helps to keep Canadians informed. It’s crucial for investigative journalism,” says Tom Henheffer, executive director of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.

“The fact is the government is intentionally dismantling it. They’re defunding access department so when someone files a requests there’s no response. Eighty per cent of documents that do come back are censored, many of the heavily censored,” says Henherrer, noting that there has been a 51 per cent increase in complaints about missing records in the past year.

‘A growing culture of secrecy’

“Even worse than that is the fact that there is this growing culture of secrecy in government, both federally and provincially and in some municipalities,” says Henheffer. He says politicians and civil servants are deliberating not keeping records, avoiding e-mail and sending messages from BlackBerry to BlackBerry that are erased every 30 days.

“In the past Canadians have had a robust access to essentially the decision-making process that goes into forming policy in Canada and that access is being taken away.”

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CJFE Review warns of a ‘dangerous’ decline in freedom of expression in Canada. © CJFE

Whistleblower protecting ‘ineffective’

Surveillance of citizens is another major concern listed in the review as well as a lack of any effective protection for whistleblowers. Henheffer says civil servants who flag problems in government lose their jobs. “That’s why we have such a culture of secrecy, part of the reason why, because we don’t have this protection so people aren’t coming like say Edward Snowden (American intelligence contractor who leaked documents revealing widespread surveillance of citizens by U.S. spy agency). We don’t have anyone like that in Canada because the sacrifice that they would make is too great and as a result we don’t know what we don’t know.”

– Culture of secrecy endangering democracy: CJFE.

Journalism, Media, Politics

17 Things To Do While Watching TV News

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There’s more than 17. Way more.

And you don’t have to do them all, you just have to start with a few.

Chances are, though, that you already do some of this. Click here, you’ll thank me:

“Never have I seen such a perfectly exquisite – and devastating – deconstruction of a ‘journalist.’”

via Watch This Perfect Dissection of Grief Lamprey Nancy Grace From HBO’s ‘The Newsroom’ – disinformation.