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 Barbwire Archives |
Larry Evans: The most interesting man in the world
Expanded from the 11-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune / Updated 10-22-2015
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins third straight Nevada Press Association first-place award
COMING SOON: The new season of Barbwire TV. The first show will be about (what else?) jobs. The lack of them is well documented. How we've blown them and where they can be regenerated, that's something else. I guarantee you'll get mad enough to want to get even. Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times. Help us get the word out.
Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate
SUING FOR SCHOOLS: Click here to view the show on your desktop
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 legislative sessionBarbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success
Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award
Larry Evans was my friend. The chess grandmaster and former Daily Sparks Tribune columnist died in Reno last Monday at age 78.
I first became acquainted with his step-daughter Karin Seiver (later Zimmerman), who preceded him in death.
In 1971, cute Karin worked at a small law firm on the 13th floor of what is now Reno City Hall. I was the brash kid from Gomorrah South with the big corner office across the hall.
A short time later, I met Karin's mother, Ingrid Evans, and her famous husband. I was and remain an Italian kid from exciting Fresno. In glaring contrast, Larry and Ingrid were — there was no other way to describe them — cool. [UPDATE 10-20-2015: Ingrid Evans dies]
The lovely blonde artist with the sexy German accent married to the mysterious international man of mystery. If you've seen the current Dos Equis Beer commercials featuring "the most interesting man in the world," that guy minus the accent could be Larry's brother.
1932-2010
Simultaneously at work and at playManhattan-born Larry Evans walked with giants.
He defeated or tied chess world champions (they require no first names) Euwe, Karpov, Petrosian (his first name was Tigran — now that's macho), Spassky, Smyslov and Fischer.
The latter, of course, was the troubled genius Bobby Fischer, for whom Larry acted as second on his way to winning the world championship from Russian Boris Spassky in 1972.
The family got to know the reclusive Fischer very well.
"He's asexual," Karin once remarked to me.No wonder that a DNA test on his exhumed remains in Iceland last June confirmed that he was not the father of a young girl.
Larry wrote many books, was named chess journalist of the year and inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.His complete obituary will appear with the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com, where you may send remembrances which will be posted in perpetuity.
Larry and Ingrid got involved in local politics, most notably for the late, great Sen. Mary Gojack, D-Reno.In 1974, Larry conducted an all comers chess tournament fundraiser for Mary. He simultaneously played more than 20 opponents, including an aggressive and nervous UNR student.
I told the kid he had Larry in a bad spot but that he could work out of if.
"He's never going to get the chance," snapped the brash young man.
The grandmaster couldn't lose, could he?
Working his way around the room one move at a time, Larry finally perused the kid's play, scratched his beard, knocked over his king and shook the young man's hand.
It was Larry who recommended that the Tribune submit my 1996 series on the University of Nevada scandals for Pulitzer Prize consideration.High praise indeed from the most interesting man in the world.
Rest in peace, great grandmaster and dear friend.COMING SOON: The new season of Barbwire TV.
The first show will be about (what else?) jobs.The lack of them is well documented.
How we've blown them and where they can be regenerated, that's something else.
I guarantee you'll get mad enough to want to get even.
Help us get the word out and watch NevadaLabor.com for show times.
You may support the project via http://resurge.tv#donate
Remember, the 2011 Nevada legislative session is just around the corner.
ANSWER TO THE PROFESSOR. It's a rare week when I don't have a lively e-mail exchange with my longtime Tribune colleague in columny Jake Highton.Worried about his true love, the journalism professor posed a concerned query a few days back: "Are newspapers really dying, as I have written in my column years ago? The Reno Gazette-Journal is fat from Thursday to Sunday. Even the tiny Trib is heavy with stuffers on Sundays."
My answer to his question brought this response: "Far be it from me to tell you what to put in your column, but I suggest your e-mail to me on newspapers could be printed in toto. I liked especially the (Thomas) Mitchell comment that print newspapers are easier to read and more efficient. But I still ask: What about when oldtimers like Mitchell and Jake Highton die?"
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?Answering the last question first, I advised Jake that old newspapermen never die.
They are the composers of the first draft of history.
Words and ideas are immortal.
If Prof. Highton thinks my answer worthy of publication, that is both high praise and an order.
Here it is:
Newspapers will not die.
Back as far as Gutenberg's innovation and probably long before, few if any envisioned the depth of human passion to make copies of our stuff.
I have been told that back when printing was young, itinerant printers alone among the great unwashed were allowed to carry swords. That's how much they were valued by society — at least, I suppose, until they started publishing ideas the crown didn't like.
The Eisenhower White House ordered two — two! — Xerox machines in 1960, figuring there would not be much use for them, what with all the efficiency of the steno typing pool and its copious quantities of carbon paper.Nobody forecast how many copies of our stuff we would make if we had the chance.
In the 1990's, the computerized "paperless office" was said to be upon us. One union guy's dingbat wife opened a major new union office in LV and ordered almost no filing cabinets because she believed the bullshit that paperless was here. That union organizing project failed.
As Las Vegas Review-Journal editor Thomas Mitchell said years ago, reading the paper in print is faster and more efficient.
Just because we have new electronic gadgets to facilitate the wider distribution of our stuff does not mean we will stop making copies by every means possible.We've been doing it for millennia and are showing no signs of letting up.
Ink-stained wretches of the world, unite!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, second 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.
Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced on Sept. 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 desktopRED flags flying low over Sparks
Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks TribuneThe wrath of self-righteous racism
Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune
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
The price of a piece / 6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
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 SeriesBarbwire Corporate Welfare Archive
Cabellyup.com
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 suckersLabor Day 2009: Rise of the Vampire Corpobots
Expanded from the 9-6-2009 Daily Sparks TribuneAngry Americans and Freudian fraud
Using war to market cigarettes
Expanded from the 8-23-2009 Daily Sparks TribuneBARBWIRE Nevada Corporate Welfare Archive
Propaganda fuels gasoline price fixing
Barbwire 8-14-2005Donate 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 5-20-2007Johnson, 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 AustraliaThe 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 CareyBARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchyThe 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
Copyright © 1982-2010
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 second 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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