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.

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 4-18-2013 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 9-21-2014 and 6-3-2016 and 6-7-2016

LAST CHANCE TO SEE IT AND WEEP
From Amy Roby 6-3-2016:
For its final showing,
Always Lost will be displayed in the Main Gallery of Western Nevada College-Carson City from June 3-July 29, 2016. Gallery hours are 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Saturdays. The gallery will be closed in honor of Independence Day on July 4, 2016.
Adios and thanks from the curators, 2016.

2014 Nevada Press Association Award Winner

   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


BRONZE 2014
<— Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake / 4-18-2013

The 2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon / 5-30-2013

The politics of media ga-ga boosterism / 3-20-2014

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

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Support Dondero next

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

BRONZE 2014
<— Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake / 4-18-2013

The 2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon / 5-30-2013

The politics of media ga-ga boosterism / 3-20-2014

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

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

Support Dondero next

I publicly wept when they looked at me.

More than 6,500 young men and women fed into the military meat grinder since 9/11.

Come prepared to cry when you stare into the faces of the snuffed.

Always Lost: A Meditation on War plays at the Nevada Legislature in Carson City through May 3.

The name comes from Gertrude Stein who once opined that "war is never fatal but always lost."

I could not disagree more with the former.

I prefer the obviously accurate opinion of Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against both world wars: "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

She paid dearly for speaking truth to power.

Western Nevada College Prof. Marilee Swirczek started this as a class project a couple of years ago.

It's since gone national.

The Wall of the Dead displays individual names and photos of U.S. warriors killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also provides some recognition of the several hundreds of thousands of brown people wasted by our very red war machine.

Dallas Morning News photographers David Leeson and Cheryl Diaz Meyer were embedded with U.S. troops and in 2004 won a Pulitzer Prize for their professional jeopardy.

Their shots include the butcher-shop gory face of a U.S. soldier trying to stop his own bleeding a
nd a brown little kid with a bloody abdomen hopscotched by bullet wounds.

Prof. Swirczek said she feared that the child's photo might be too much for U.S. minors viewing the work.

No.

Truth must hurt.

At the Tribune's centennial celebration a few years ago, I asked the paper's owners to give it to me if they ever wanted to again make it a major factor in the market.

When Randy "Take No Prisoners" Frisch was editor and publisher a quarter century ago, people lined up at news stands all over the region just to see whose ass we were kicking.

I never got to make a formal proposal, but one of the things I would have included involved "Brown Paper Wrapper Thursdays."

Among the taboo topics, I would have printed in living and not-so-living color the goriest, sloppiest, most sickening shots of war I could find.

You can get them all over the web, but generally not via U.S. corporate media which sanitize mankind's follies to look like the gleaming kitchens of TV soap commercials.

The writings of Army Specialist Noah Pierce, late of Minnesota, are featured in the grateful dead exhibit.

"My anger destined me to hell...Now I drink and cry...Don't want to die. Don't want to live but should be dead. I'm already in hell. Two tours in Iraq."

The handsome young soldier took his own life in 2007.

You may read more of his profound poetry in the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

May he rest in peace among earthquakes.

Be well. Raise hell.

WEB EXTRAS...

 

SWIRCZEK: Donations needed to keep the Meditation intact and traveling

The lonely poetry of the late U.S. Army Specialist Noah Pierce




 


 

...LAGNIAPPE (a little something extra)

HONOR YOUR DON. Keep sending comments supporting legendary Nevada photographer Don Dondero (1920-2003) for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

His life's work appeared worldwide, including this newspaper.

Enlist in the campaign to install Big Don.

Please send me your memories and endorsements via e-mail or to P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

The Barbwire got the late RGJ columnist Guy Richardson elected last year.

Let's go for a repeat.

BARBWIRE.TV. Support the return of community TV to these parts.

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

Join up. You may donate at ReSurge.TV or contact me.

This is important. Thank you.

VOTE FOR THE LUCKY 13, the most powerful Nevadans of 2013. Send nominations to <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>

Last year's rogues gallery will be linked to the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

LET'S GET IT ON. E-me to get on the Barbwire News bulletin list for information not filtered through corporate lenses.

I broke a bushel of major stories last year which the above lead item will very probably top.

Turn on, tune in and tell a friend.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

____________

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...

Muhammad Ali: Winning against earthquakes
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the Tuesday 6-7-2016 Sparks Tribune

ADIOS AND THANKS FROM THE CURATORS, 2016

MEMO FROM MERILEE
4-18-2013

Thank you so much!!

We're hoping that all the great news coverage (front page this morning in the [Carson City Nevada] Appeal with a photo of [State Senate Majority Leader] Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas) will send us an angel.

We exist entirely on donations and will run out of money in June. Might have to make some very hard decisions regarding the existence of the exhibition.

But it's been an honor to see this idea of personalizing the longest wars in our history take root in my classroom and bring awareness and healing across the nation as long as we could. In that light, we especially appreciate your column, Andy....

Look through the guest book while you're at the exhibition. We have nearly four years of guest book comments in our office — what an American story those comments reveal — Amy (Roby) and I cry a lot in our office each time we receive a new batch.

My class set out to create a humanities exhibition — something that would provoke visitors to think about the costs of war, both personal and collective, and also provoke discourse about the role of a civilized society in the modern world, and our obligations to each other as human beings in that civilized society.

We wanted to explore the role of the artist in society, in this case, my students as literary artists. We never imagined the chord we would strike in the hearts of Americans across the country. We are amazed, daily, at the diverse — all positive and grateful — reactions to the exhibition. So we set out to make the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts personal to just us — a class of 40 people — and we ended up reaching across America.

As a classroom teacher, that is the highest service — to see students apply their skills and knowledge in the world.

Now my students know that they can make a difference.

It's been my honor.

Marilee Swirczek
Professor Emeritus, English/Creative Writing
Always Lost: A Meditation on War Project
775-445-4243; Fax 775-445-4472
Western Nevada College
2201 West College Parkway
Carson City, NV 89703

We have three names: the name we are given at birth, the name we are called, and the name we make for ourselves.

—  from the Midrash


There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.

—  Sun Tzu [aka Sun Wu], Chinese general (6th century BCE)

United States Army Specialist Noah C. Pierce
Dec. 5, 1983 - July 26, 2007
(Oxymoron alert) Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2002-2006

Been home a year and a half physically.
Mentally, I will never be home.

Two tours in Iraq
(handwritten on a fishing map from home)
Friends

   Was it right?
Was it wrong?
   I don't know
My anger
   destined me to hell,
Now I drink
   Now I drink and cry
Relive my life when asleep
   So many dead
So many killed
   Now I question God
is it disbelief
   or is it fear
I don't know
   Don't want to die
Don't want to live
   but should be dead
I'm already in hell

Two tours in Iraq

   I feel bad for the kids
Can't blame them for begging
   Can't give them anything
They beg for more
   This one is different
He is seven
   I let him sit
next to me in the
   Bradley
I give him water
   He gets me food
It's great compared to the MRE's
   No English
No Arabic
   Yet we still understand
each other
   then it's time to leave.
He wraps his
   arms around me
crying
   I say it will be OK
I still wonder if
he is


War is the continuation of politics by other means.

—  Prussian Major Gen. Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

 

...and more ammo...

We Don't Need No Education
The continuing Barbwire series

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


Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest
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


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Copyright © 1982-2013 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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