BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO

Barbwire
Archives


Clinging to the Ledge: Cold War
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-22-2011 Daily Sparks Tribune

Updated 5-26 and 6-1-2011
Site map
Corporate Propaganda Research Archive

Barbwire.TV —> View webstreaming video here
Since they're blaming the victims, it's high time for the victims to fight back.
LIVE 7-8:00 p.m. PDT 5-17-2011 / 02:00 ZULU-GMT 5-18
The archived show is available at the above link.
Thanks.

Barbwire.TV REGIONAL REBROADCAST SCHEDULE ANNOUNCED

Barbwire banned in prime time
5-31-2011

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows.
— Leonard Cohen


HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

Barbwire.TV

Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times. Help us get the word out.

Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate

SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Updated 3-21-2011
Lawsuit gains support

If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves

The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution of the Dec. 6 and Feb. 21 programs as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.

Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew


Click here for on-demand re-runs from the 2009 and 2011 Nevada legislative sessions

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file


HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

The best thing I did last week was kidnap a girl.

After setting up for my Tuesday live TV show in Carson City, I headed to the frigid tent campground on the legislative lawn to see if I could convince one of the university freedom riders to participate.

Her fellow students nominated Emma Guerrero, 18, a UNLV sophomore majoring in political science who wants to go to the Boyd law school after graduation.

"What will my degree mean if UNLV isn't there anymore?" she told me.

She was born in Tijuana and is a legal resident, having lived in southern Nevada most of her life. She is a true Nevadan who cringes at the thought of having to seek education and a livelihood elsewhere.

Ms. Guerrero represents all the young people the Silver State stands to lose if the assassination of our education system is completed by state lawmakers and our retro governor.

My other guests were equally as eloquent. Sheralynn Kern, a DMV employee and member of AFSCME Local 4041/AFL-CIO, told heart-wrenching stories of state employees working for minimum wage and in constant danger of homelessness.

Paul McKenzie, executive secretary-treasurer of the Sparks-based Building and Construction Trades Council of Northern Nevada/AFL-CIO, previewed many of the points included his moving Thursday speech before the legislature.

In the finest Nevada tradition, lawmakers are poised to penalize the victims and reward the perpetrators of the crime.

Charter cable victims may view reruns of the program on Carson/Dayton channel 226 or Sparks-Reno-Washoe channel 216. Those with digital converters for analog over-the-air TV sets may be able to get the show on 80-295. Here are days and times this week: Sunday, May 22, 8:00 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Saturday — 11:00 p.m. Friday, May 27 — 8:00 p.m. You may also view the show online via the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com.

Turn on, tune in and tell a friend.

UPDATE — The program will rerun in prime time from 10:00 to 11:00 p.m. PDT on Thursday, 26 May 2011, on Reno CW Network affiliate KRNS TV. It will repeat from 4:00 to 5:00 a.m. PDT on Saturday, May 28, and Tuesday, May 31.

The CW is available on Nevada cable systems at channel 6. Satellite (Dish, Direct et al.) or AT&T UVerse subscribers in the telecast area noted herein should consult their program guides for the dial position of KRNS TV from Reno.

If you are searching your TV guide programming database, be advised that we are pre-empting Tyler Perry's House of Payne at 10:00 p.m. and Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns at 10:30 p.m. the CW. So search those titles. It takes six weeks to two months to get a listing in the big computer back east and I never have that much lead time.

KRNS is accessible through the airwaves on digital 27.2 or analog 46. It is receivable over the air from just east of Sacramento, Calif., to Pershing County, Nev., and to the south through Fallon, Yerington and Mineral County (Hawthorne), Nev.

Viewers with analog TV sets without digital converters, cable or satellite may access the program over the air with rabbit ears at UHF channel 46. Viewers in Susanville, Calif., may receive CW-Reno over the air at analog channel 29, again with no converter necessary.

A coverage map may be accessed at NevadaLabor.com.

The program will be rerun on various public and commercial stations statewide. Click here for the rebroadcast schedule and be sure to check local listings.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS and then some. Last Wednesday, I met a young man with a clip board standing in front of the Washoe voter registrar's office.

Non-partisan candidates had until midweek to submit at least 100 signatures of registered voters to qualify for the September congressional ballot. B. Harding Gremban, 50, wants to start a neo-Federalist Party. The last one of their guys to occupy the White House was John Adams some years ago.

Gremban is the son of an old adversary of mine, the late Joe Gremban, former CEO of Sierra Pacific Power/NV Energy. I signed the younger Gremban's petition.

While we were talking, a group of people came out including another young man with a clipboard. Yep, just filed. Christopher Simon, 28, is big on the economic development potential of the Yucca Mountain nuclear dumpsite. Ah, impetuous youth.

Earl Ammerman IV (775-843-9099) also filed. Soon to graduate from UNR with an anthropology major and political science minor, he grew up listening to the long lost talk radio shows of Tribune denizens Travus 'n' Andy. He's anti-war and pro-universal health care.

My kinda kid.

I like all of them because their candidacies threaten to monkey wrench the system. I am not alone in that observation.

According to Mr. Simon, one of his potential opponents, Democrat Nancy Price of Sparks, signed his petition a few days ago. The former university regent and wife of 28-year former Assemblyman Bob Price, D-North Las Vegas, Nancy wields a mean wrench herself.

She singlehandedly strengthened the state open meeting law by taking her fellow regents to court for violating the statute.

Alas and alack, Price may not make it to the ballot if Judge James Todd Russell's ruling stands. Unless the Nevada Supremes sing a different tune, all partisan nominees will be selected by party central committees, which means most Democrats and Republicans will not make the starting gate.

The statewide congressional district has never been held by a Democrat since it was established in 1981.

Currently, Republicans hold a registration edge of more than 30,000.

Democrats have had only three realistic chances to win. In 1982, former State Sen. Mary Gojack, D-Reno, let a 23-point lead slip away in the last month. Barbara Vucanovich, longtime office manager for U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt, R-Nev., defeated Gojack and held the seat for 12 years.

Reno Mayor Pete Sferrazza ran against Vucanovich twice, in 1986 and 1992. He had her beaten the second time, but mistakenly took his negative TV spots off the air three weeks before the election.

In 2006, Vucanovich's successor Jim Gibbons filed for governor. Republican secretary of state Dean Heller defeated former university regent Jill Derby to replace Jim the Dim. Derby's campaign never used the unspeakable label of Democrat in presenting herself as an anti-Washington sorta-Republican cowgirl.

Gojack, Sferrazza and Derby proved that the statewide congressional seat is winnable by a Democrat. Their campaigns were proof of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi's most basic observation: The team that makes the fewest mistakes wins.

I'd rather see a multi-candidate free-for-all rather than Republicans running their streak to 15-0, which would basically mean that the mining industry keeps the congressional seat in its gold-lined wallet.

BACK FROM THE ASHES DEPT. Support the return of community radio and television stations. The first step toward restoration has been taken.

After going dark for six months, the public access channels now broadcast live legislative hearings and floor sessions fed to Reno-Sparks-Washoe from AccessCarson. (An obscure East Reno newspaper columnist got it started.)

Charter cable victims can watch on digital channel 216 or over the air on digital 80-295.

If you harbor a morbid interest in witnessing the assassination of the Nevada education system and most public services, turn on and tune in.

Go to Barbwire.TV for more information, to join the club and contribute via the web.

It's important.

Be well. Raise hell.
______

Andrew Barbano is a 42-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Guns

Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced 9-18-2010.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place for third year in a row.
Next year, we go for the sombrero.

The winning entries:

Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck
Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune

Click here to view the show on your desktop

RED flags flying low over Sparks
Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune

The wrath of self-righteous racism
Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune





The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?

 

The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008


...and more ammo

Fact-free nation: Inside the lie machine
Mother Jones Magazine May-June 2011 / Cover story and in-depth analysis

Bill Moyers: Welcome to the Plutocracy
Money fights hard and it fights dirty
Speech delivered at Boston University on 29 Oct. 2010
Part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series

Barbwire Corporate Welfare Archive
Cabellyup.com

From clear-cut forests to dirty Gulfstream waters, this land belongs to old BP
TOLJASO LONG TIME AGO

BP/ARCO: The greasy root of our evils

Barbwire / Daily Sparks Tribune 9-10-2006

The awful truth — Read it and weep, fellow suckers

Labor Day 2009: Rise of the Vampire Corpobots
Expanded from the 9-6-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune

Angry Americans and Freudian fraud
Using war to market cigarettes
Expanded
from the 8-23-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune

BARBWIRE Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive

Propaganda fuels gasoline price fixing
Barbwire 8-14-2005

Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund at our PayPal-enabled ReSurge.TV Consumer War Room


Phillips, Kevin; Numbers Racket: Why the economy is worse than we know

Harper's Magazine; May 2008; page 43
Phillips has authored numerous books on history and politics over the past 40 years. His most recent, Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, was published by Viking on April 15, 2008.

NAOMI WOLF: Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps
There are some things common to every state that's made the transition to fascism. Author Naomi Wolf argues that all of them are present in America today.
Alternet 5-20-2007

Johnson, Chalmers; REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE? A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States; Harper's magazine; January, 2007. I love it when heavy hitters validate what I've been saying for years in the tiny Sparks Tribune.

Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.; America: What Went Wrong? (1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America: Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal Press Syndicate.

Review of Alex Carey's Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and Australia

The Orwell Diversion by Alex Carey
Excerpted from the book available below

ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press

     SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.

     By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)

     Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.

Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006; Free registration may be required.

      BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex Carey

      BARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchy

The sands of time do not cloud the long memories of the sheiks of Araby
Barbwire 9-10-2006

      Rinfret, Pierre A.; Peace is Bullish; Look magazine, 5-31-1966

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Copyright © 1982-2011 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 42-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano premiered in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in those parts ever since. Tempus fugit.

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