BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO

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Aug. 2012-Aug. 2013: the Barbwire's Silver Anniversary Year
Barbwire by Barbano moved to the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.


   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.

Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen

John Wayne, Michael Moore & Andrew Undershaft
The guns of mythology
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 12-20-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 12-21 and 12-24-2012


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

BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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 8-30-2011
Reruns 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 selected on-demand re-runs from the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Barbwire.TV archives

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

BIG NEWS FROM THE 9-22-2012 NPA CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

Current calls for gun control confront an immortal adversary: mythology. Here's a checklist.

     1. CELLULOID COWBOYS. The American cowpoke is both legend and legerdemain.

Marketers morphed the Hispanic gaucho into John Wayne with hat brim heroically upturned for the cameras.

Gauchismo brought with it the macho myth that the truly rugged individual should aspire to become a law unto himself.

Wacko Tom Cruise's new movie recycles the always sellable cliché of the stranger who blows into town, rights wrongs, then rides into the sunset.

Who was that masked man?

And where's Tonto?

     2. RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM. Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover used the term to sell the shuck that any self-respecting loner can become Superman if he's willing to work hard enough.

A few years back, Dodge targeted macho studs who "break the rules," encouraging them to prove it by sidling up to the bar and going into debt for a new, overpriced cookie-cutter pick'em up truck.

America was actually built by teamwork, each citizen yielding some individual freedom to enact a system of laws establishing a civilized society.

     3. FEAR OF BLACKS. Film maker Michael Moore got it right in his Oscar-winning 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine, available free online (links below).

Michael Moore and Crackers the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken assert that they have been thrown out of better places.

FROM MIKE: I said what I had to say about guns 10 yrs ago. Nothing's changed. You can watch this pirated version of Bowling for Columbine for free. Also available free on Netflix.
UPDATE 12-21-12: The above YouTube link has now been blocked by copyright lawyers.
UPDATE FROM MIKE 12-24-2012: Celebrating the Prince of Peace in the Land of Guns

Other countries have more guns per capita but miniscule numbers of firearm deaths compared to us.

Guns became U.S. demigods based on irrational fear of freed slaves.

     4. UNSAFE SCHOOLS. As former Sparks Tribune writer Dennis Myers has oft-noted, schools are among the safest places in our society —> without teachers or students packing heat.

     5. WOMANLY WEAKNESS. Although comprising more than half the population, females remain laughably under-represented in government.

To demonstrate they had the chops to rule, first-wave women who won high office had to act more violent and war-like than men.

If and when the coming third wave achieves numerical parity, power may shift toward the peaceful.

Until then, Mao Zedong's 1938 words rule: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

George Bernard Shaw's 1905 play Major Barbara provided the highest irony of all and remains ridiculously relevant today.

The anti-war Shaw meant to demonstrate that military money is much better spent on peaceful pursuits.

Alas and alack, life did not imitate art. His anti-hero's philosophy prevailed.

Boy, did it ever.

Here is despicable arms merchant Andrew Undershaft (father of the title character, Salvation Army Major Barbara Undershaft), articulating the deranged and deregulatory gospel of the armorer's trust: “To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them without respect of persons or principles...to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes."

I give you USA 2012, armorer to the world.

CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE. President Obama cried on camera while consoling the nation.

"He's stealing my act," groused House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

ONLINE EXTRAS —>

HEAVYWEIGHT VOTING. In 2011, I compiled a list of the 11 most powerful Nevadans.

Veteran Las Vegas Review-Journal capital bureau chief Ed Vogel wondered why I failed to include Gomorrah South casino owner Sheldon Adelson.

I could only guess that I'm allergic to thinking about the madcap mogul.

Send me your nominations for the 12 most powerful of 2012.

VOTE FOR THE DONALD. I closed this political season undefeated.

I was honored to win a second term as first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP and I nominated and facilitated the election of Guy Richardson to the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

Both the late RGJ writer and the abovementioned Mr. Vogel made it on their first tries.

Looking over the NPA rogues gallery, I found another glaring omission: legendary photographic superstar Don Dondero (1920-2003) whose work appeared worldwide, including this newspaper.

So enlist in the campaign to install Big Don.

Please send me your memories and endorsements.

SUPPORT THE RETURN OF RENO-SPARKS COMMUNITY TV.

If this year's elections didn't convince you, the 2013 legislature certainly will.

Join up.

You may donate at ReSurge.TV or contact me.

This is important.

Thank you.

HIE THEE TO MY MAILING LIST. About half a dozen major news stories have originated in this column either in print or online over the past several weeks.

If you're into non-corporate filtered news, sign up.

Happy High Holly Days to you and yours.

Be well. Raise hell.

____________

Andrew Barbano is a 44-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 and JoeNeal.org. 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...

John F. Kennedy's 2013 inaugural address
Excerpted from the original full text from 12-29-1991 (.pdf)
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 11-22-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

JFK, Jr.: Hope dies hard and yet springs eternal
Barbwire by Barbano / Daily Sparks Tribune / 7-25-1999

Your better life today had President Kennedy lived
Barbwire by Barbano / Daily Sparks Tribune / 12-28-1997


We Don't Need No Education
The continuing series

Please don't cook or eat the books
ITALIAN STEREOTYPE VALIDATED: Aiazzi and DiLoreto almost throw blows
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-27-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

The flipside from an old fry cook
Legit media stenographers fail to pop the corporate welfare question
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-20-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

A great week for scandals
School district master chefs continue cooking the books
Tenth in a continuing series on the collapsing future of Nevada education
Teachers' business tax petitions hit Nevada streets while Chicago teachers do likewise
Damning inspection report brings union call to oust Reno VA hospital leadership
State ignores voter registration lawsuit until the day after this column printed
I defy you to find all of the following elsewhere either in depth or in context.
NEEDED NOW MORE THAN EVER: New community TV channel

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-13-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune
Humongously updated on 9-14, 9-15 and 9-17-2012

Life and Death at the Reno Veterans Hospital
American Federation of Government Employees Local 2152/AFL-CIO Press Release
Union Executive Summary of Inspection Report
Office of the Medical Inspector Report
All Adobe Acrobat Reader (.pdf ) documents


...and more ammo...

The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

The Post-dated Recession
By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011

Union decline and rising inequality in two charts
by Colin Gordon
Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012

Used in
journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. Not included in the RGJ online edition.

WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES
The Barbwire Labor Day column
Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012

Followed by a moon shadow

TRAVUS T. HIPP, 1937-2012

ADIÓS, COMPADRE — Our friend Travus, 75, passed away peacefully between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. PDT on 18 May 2012 at his home in Silver City, Nevada. The sun is in eclipse as I write this at 6:30 p.m. on May 20.

CHANGE OF VENUE (5-22-2012) — Adiós in Silver City, Nevada, Saturday, May 26, 2012 —> Updated 5-27-2012 — > The auld church where Travus lived and died proved too small for the expected multitude, so gathering, gnoshing and remembering commenced at the Silver City Community Center, 385 High Street, at 10:00 a.m. PDT. The graveside memorial service began at High Noon. Travus was buried next to his rock star companion Lynne Hughes, a short walk away. My remembrance of Lynne from the 3-21-1993 Daily Sparks Tribune has been linked to Travus' formal obituary at this website. All memories accepted for permanent posting hereat. Stay tuned for pictures and stories of the appropriately rainy day.

Thanks for all your kind words. Keep up the good work and the good fight.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano

Travus T. Hipp & Tales of Nevada's Futures Passed
Expanded from the 6-3-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

     At bottom, he was an artist who used his voice to soar and slice, a tenor for the tenor of our times. Many of his mourning California listeners talk about the vocal spells he wove, how he soundly organized the noise of daily life into music that entertained, engaged, enlightened, educated, enthralled and occasionally enflamed. [From the saga of Travus T. Hipp and contributions by The Barbwire to the May 25 Reno Gazette-Journal and May 26, 2012, Daily Sparks Tribune.]

Nevada Press Assn. annual award winners announced.
HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row.

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 yet

Economist: This is a true depression
Elliott Parker Guest Editorial / Las Vegas Sun / 11-27-2011

The plight of the paper pushers
The great recession made bashing public workers a national sport
Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review / 11-23-2011

Bury the Bad News with Rose-colored Reporting
How urgent can economic troubles be if leaders say things are getting better?

Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review / 11-23-2011

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 © 1982-2012 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 44-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 moved to the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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