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 Barbwire Archives |
Princess Cassandra's neverending labor
Expanded from the 9-4-2011 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 9-6-2011
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Corporate Propaganda Research Archive
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.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award
In 2011, we go for the SombreroBarbwire.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 8-30-2011
Now rerunning on Carson-Dayton 226
Additional programs on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then
go to the BCTV link.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 as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.
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, 2010 and 2011 Barbwire.TV archivesBarbwire.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
In 2011, we go for the SombreroI now know how Princess Cassandra felt when no one would listen to her warnings against bringing that big wooden horse inside the gates of Troy.
Most people see only what they want to see until reality bites them in the ass or more sensitive southerly spots.
Hereinbelow, you will find excerpts from the Barbwire of 29 May 2005. I've had it linked ever since to the front page of BarbanoMedia.com, with the following preface: "The elements are now in place for a major economic contraction and perhaps worldwide depression. Nevada is the most urban state in the nation. Washoe-Carson-Douglas in the north and Clark County in the south host well over 90 percent of the Silver State's population. They currently enjoy the boomtimes of rapid growth. The greatest potential error for any for-profit or non-profit organization lies in assuming that any boom will sustain itself. Life doesn't work that way. Planning for the status quo is both naive and toxic. If today's balance sheet dominates your gaze, you're flying blind."
From the column: "America is the land of disposable workers, military and civilian. For profiteers, we provide a paradise of replaceable consumers, whether they expire via automobile, cigarette or AK-47...
"There is no government spending more corrosive than war bucks because we get nothing in return for our capital investment. A tank does not plow a field to produce something, unless you count tilling military graveyards.
"Our warlike ways warn of a perfect storm...As economist Paul Krugman noted in The New York Times, the dot-com bubble was replaced by the real estate bubble. Once the housing boom busts...we have nothing else available to prop up a faltering economy.
"World War II deficit spending and tax hikes are often credited for pulling the U.S. out of the Great Depression. But we have been on a full war footing for four years, so the military remedy will not be available come the next crash.
"The ancient Mayans, who accurately predicted their civilization's destruction by Spain, have warned us about 2012. Nikolai Kondratieff, a Russian economist writing in the 1920s, issued similar medium range warnings. We are now at the edge of the fabled Kondratieff Wave which forecasts a cyclical tsunami, a major economic contraction followed by a flood of widespread destruction.
"I don't know if Krugman, Kondratieff and the Mayans will prove correct, but I am certain that the only way to honor the dead of war is to make no more. Peace pays well."
I have been quoting the late conservative economist Pierre Rinfret since college. You will find his 1966 Look Magazine "peace is bullish" interview linked to the web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com.
BACK TO THE FUTURE. For the past several years, every candidate from dog catcher to dog robber has chanted the jobs-jobs-jobs mantra.
President Obama will address the nation sometime before Thursday's NFL opener. (Who says we don't have our priorities straight?)
Rumor has it that he will propose more lugubriously slow-coming but sorely needed infrastructure spending plus payroll tax cuts and extended unemployment compensation.
All well and good, but too little, too late.The 2009 stimulus was too small in a high stakes game where size really mattered. As Tribune writer Joshua Silavent wisely opined, we now face "the postdated recession" as federal dollars run out.
A new poll finds that 82 of 100 Americans agree that double-dip recession has scooped up the nation.
Sam Shad and his guests on Nevada Newsmakers last Monday went so far as to concur with right wing shill UNR Prof. Tom Cargill in genuflecting to the oft-stated lie that Keynesian economics is a demonstrable failure. (Trickle Down Economics for all and forever!)
Lord Keynes' remedy was simple and efficient: Government needs to prime the pump when no one else can or will.Like now.
Extending the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the rich may have been turning a trick but won't turn the trick.
We need quick and aggressive action. President Franklin Roosevelt's Keynesian policies are tried and proven: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration for starters.
What did such scurrilous government job spending bring us? Try Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, Virginia Lake and thousands of smaller projects that quickly put people to work.
Come Thursday, we will see if President Tiger Wuss can morph into the alpha male we hoped for in 2008.
FROM LAST WEEK. Clarification: Nevada's unique "none of these candidates" ballot option is not available in the current congressional contest because the law only applies to fully statewide races. The district does not include a big chunk of populous Gomorrah South.
The law was passed a few decades back because State Assemblyman Don Mello, D-Sparks, had his shorts in bunch against Supreme Court Justice Al Gunderson.
Correction: Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez-Masto's term expires in 2014.
U-TUBE. Check the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com for the latest statewide Barbwire.TV schedule, viewable 24/7 online.
Support the return of community radio and television in these parts. Go to ReSurge.TV to volunteer your time or treasure or both.
It's now more important than ever — > unless you think corporate-controlled media is all you need. Stay tuned for updates.
Enjoy a glorious non-laborious Labor Day.
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.
Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced 9-18-2010.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place for third year in a row.
This 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
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 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 © 1982-2011
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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