You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2013.
It is important to periodically remind yourself of who the corporate media serves and how that focus bends what is reported and how it is reported into the fantastical shapes we observe today. Critical thinking, news triangulation and a healthy dose of skepticism are all required to make sense of what is actually happening in the world. One of the sources that I have found helpful in my quest for media awareness have been by the folks over at Media Lens – David Edwards and David Cromwell.
“Media Lens focuses on the media in the UK mostly, but the same lessons can be applied to your media consumption. I excerpt from their latest alert and recommend that you subscribe and support these two journalists who have the audacity to authentically practice their trade.
“In the last year, Media Lens has dissected corporate media performance on a host of topics including climate change, Iraq, the death of Hugo Chávez, the case for challenging corporate journalism, Israel and Palestine, WikiLeaks, Syria, Libya, the pharmaceuticals industry, US imperialism, the Leveson inquiry, North Korea, the NHS and Iran. We also publish Cogitations which look at the philosophy and spirituality underpinning our work, issues which are so often ignored and even derided by progressive commentators.
We were asked recently by author and journalist Ian Sinclair to contribute to a roundtable discussion for Peace News on the pros and cons of working with, or in, the ‘mainstream’ media. We first pointed out that we should dispense with the misleading term ‘mainstream’. Why? Because the corporate media is a powerful but mostly extremist fringe that supports the humanly-catastrophic goals of a ruthless, unaccountable elite. This system is not in business to alert humanity to the real risk of climate catastrophe and the need for immediate action to avert disaster. The corporate media has a proven, indeed astonishing, track record of suppressing public awareness on these crucial issues.
For years, left and green activists have argued that we should work with, or within, corporate media to reach a wider public. And for a long time the argument seemed reasonable. But after decades of accelerating planetary devastation and rapidly declining democracy, the argument has weakened to the point of collapse. By a process of carefully-rationed corporate ‘inclusion’, the honesty, vitality and truth of both the greens and the left have been contained, trivialised and stifled.
But while the internet remains relatively open, there is a brief window to break away from the corporate media, to build something honest, radical and publicly accountable. The first step is to build public motivation and momentum for this shift by exposing the corporate media for what it is. Climate crisis is already upon us, with much worse likely to come. The stakes almost literally could not be higher.”
Media Lens is well worth your time and support.
Fiscal conservatives give me a headache at the best of times. Having them opine about how availability of birth control is going to drive up costs and make every one sad, well…makes me sad. It would be nice, for once, if our conservative friends would base their opinion on something more than a dogmatic adherence to free-market wisdom. The air out here in empirical evidence land isn’t so bad, honest.
I love cartoons, and Discern4 has come though and delivered unto me what I love…it must have been an act of god. :>
Riiiiiiiiiight.
The last week or so my view of humanity world over has been severely soured. I’ve often expressed an attitude that Alberta is the ‘Texas of Canada’ when it comes to issues of equality and progressive society. Hidden in that stance is the inference that other places aren’t as backward, that in other civilized areas these issues are all but resolved. This inference, it turns out, is ill-founded. Hillbilly homophobia is running rampant even in “high culture” nations.
The French government in pushing through a bill that will legalize same sex marriage and allow same sex couples to adopt. It was one of the issues that got them voted in and, in a refreshing change of pace, they are taking steps to quickly make good on their campaign promise. Sounds great! Let’s celebr…what’s that going on outside?
On March 24th, hundreds of thousands of hateful French bigots (that’s pronounced bee-jo, the ‘t’ is silent) marched in protest of this bill. Police had to resort to using tear gas to keep the mob in control. Since then, things have not gotten better. Violence is rising. Notably a gay bar was attacked, windows smashed and patrons injured. Absolutely disgusting behaviour, a French red-neck horde branding monumental levels of idiocy and malevolence.
But surely, this is only the uneducated rabble, right? No such luck. In parliament, members of the opposition say this bill threatens children, one going so far as to say “You are assassinating children”. I would hope, even in our own ‘Texas of Canada’, such a disgustingly hateful statement would result in the immediate resignation/termination/ruination of any deplorable MLA that dared utter it.
Words failed me in the face of this level of soul crushing mindless hate. I was aghast. I started writing this article a week ago but could not finish.
The other day, however, I found a brilliant ray of hope from across the globe. On April 17th New Zealand passed a Marriage Amendment Bill which that defines marriage as a union between two people. This made New Zealand the thirteenth nation in the world to legalize same sex marriage. And how was this legislation toward equality met by onlookers? Unfounded hate, violent riots and tear gas? Nope. Instead the Parliament House erupted in applause. Then, in a fantastic display of humanity affirming beauty, the spectators in the house broke into song. A Maori song of love.
If you’ve ever witnessed the cut-throat farce that is question period in our own parliament, you may well appreciate my amazement that such a thing could happen. My heart swelled and my eyes got misty.
Props, respect, accolades, honour, acclaim and kudos to New Zealand for its monumental step forward and to New Zealanders for their wondrously appropriate reaction. May your shining example wake up a few French hate mongers to just how full of vile depravity their despicable conduct truly is.
Today let us look at Science Fiction and examine the experiences of two individuals. Then think about your ‘objective truths’ and notions that ‘good arguments are judged on their merit alone’ and other liberal white dude fappery, and then try and tell me I’m wrong.
You’re fourteen and you’re reading Larry Niven’s “The Protector” because it’s your father’s favorite book and you like your father and you think he has good taste and the creature on the cover of the book looks interesting and you want to know what it’s about. And in it the female character does something better than the male character – because she’s been doing it her whole life and he’s only just learned – and he gets mad that she’s better at it than him. And you don’t understand why he would be mad about that, because, logically, she’d be better at it than him. She’s done it more. And he’s got a picture of a woman painted on the inside of his spacesuit, like a pinup girl, and it bothers you.
But you’re fourteen and you don’t know how to put this into words.
And then you’re fifteen and you’re reading “Orphans of the Sky” because it’s by a famous sci-fi author and it’s about a lost generation ship and how cool is that?!? but the women on the ship aren’t given a name until they’re married and you spend more time wondering what people call those women up until their marriage than you do focusing on the rest of the story. Even though this tidbit of information has nothing to do with the plot line of the story and is only brought up once in passing.
But it’s a random thing to get worked up about in an otherwise all right book.
Then you’re sixteen and you read “Dune” because your brother gave it to you for Christmas and it’s one of those books you have to read to earn your geek card. You spend an entire afternoon arguing over who is the main character – Paul or Jessica. And the more you contend Jessica, the more he says Paul, and you can’t make him see how the real hero is her. And you love Chani cause she’s tough and good with a knife, but at the end of the day, her killing Paul’s challengers is just a way to degrade them because those weenies lost to a girl.
Then you’re seventeen and you don’t want to read “Stranger in a Strange Land” after the first seventy pages because something about it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth. All of this talk of water-brothers. You can’t even pin it down.
And then you’re eighteen and you’ve given up on classic sci-fi, but that doesn’t stop your brother or your father from trying to get you to read more.
Even when you bring them the books and bring them the passages and show them how the authors didn’t treat women like people.
Your brother says, “Well, that was because of the time it was written in.”
You get all worked up because these men couldn’t imagine a world in which women were equal, in which women were empowered and intelligent and literate and capable.
You tell him – this, this is science fiction. This is all about imagining the world that could be and they couldn’t stand back long enough and dare to imagine how, not only technology would grow in time, but society would grow.
But he blows you off because he can’t understand how it feels to be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen and desperately wanting to like the books your father likes, because your father has good taste, and being unable to, because most of those books tell you that you’re not a full person in ways that are too subtle to put into words. It’s all cognitive dissonance: a little like a song played a bit out of tempo – enough that you recognize it’s off, but not enough to pin down what exactly is wrong.
And then one day you’re twenty-two and studying sociology and some kind teacher finally gives you the words to explain all those little feelings that built and penned around inside of you for years.
It’s like the world clicking into place.
And that’s something your brother never had to struggle with.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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