BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream


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Je Suis Charlie

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¡Viva Chávez!
César Chávez Celebration XV / Celebración de César Chávez XV
Wednesday 29 March 2017
/ Miércoles 29 de Marzo 2017

2017 info and highlights from the record-breaking 2016 event at Circus Circus Reno

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   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...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.


I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
Leon Russell, 1942-2016


2017 Nevada Press Association first-place award winner

Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-14-2017 Sparks Tribune / Expansions in blue / Updated 2-16, 2-17, 2-21 & 10-4-2017, 6-1-2019

Feliz al dia de Santo Valentino

When Lady Gaga opened her Super Bowl halftime extravaganza with Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," I got up to make a sandwich.


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 Don Dondero
and Jake Highton next

8 the hard way!
Barbwire wins 8th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017
10-4-2016
12-13-2016
<—2-14-2017

BRONZE 2016
4-28-2015
11-24-2015
1-19-2016

6-pack: 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

1996-97 Pulitzer Entries

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

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

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

SUING FOR SCHOOLS
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 Barbwire.TV archives

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

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The New York City Italiana superstar, born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, had no idea of the pain that song evoked in my family.

My father arrived at Ellis Island from Italy just a few years after Berlin who "was put in a pen with his brother and five sisters until immigration officials declared them fit to be allowed into the city," according to the BBC.

Piling irony on irony, Berlin donated millions in GBA royalties to the Boy Scouts who today are grudgingly emerging from a century of bigotry. (id)

The legendary composer (born Israel Isidore Baline in Imperial Russia) gave "God Bless America" to songstress Kate Smith who made it her signature hit.

Growing up as the son and grandson of Italian immigrant farm workers in Fresno, California, I was told repeatedly and passionately about Kate Smith supporting internment of Italian-Americans in WW2 concentration camps.

Like Japanese-Americans, my family would have lost everything earned after decades in the fields. My father and mother likely would never have married.

So an Italian girl singing Kate Smith's goldest oldie sent me to the kitchen.

"During World War II, 600,000 undocumented Italian immigrants in the United States were deemed 'enemy aliens' and detained, relocated, stripped of their property or placed under curfew. A couple hundred were even locked in internment camps," the San Francisco Chronicle reported in the emotional aftermath of 9/11/2001.

"Ironically, 500,000 Italian Americans were serving in the U.S. armed forces at the time of the crackdown — the largest ethnic group in the military. One serviceman returned from the war to find his family's home boarded up. One woman received an evacuation order the day after she learned her son and her nephew in the U.S. military had been killed at Pearl Harbor," the Chronicle noted.

Baseball Hall-of-Famer Joe DiMaggio's father lost his job on a fishing boat. Italians were subjected to every indignity short of being forced to wear the equivalent of a yellow Star of David.

A fraudulent threat assessment by some racist general caused The American Century's most shameful chapter.

Because of the aggressive deportation policies of our first black president, the average immigrant concentration camp today holds 41,000 prisoners for years on end. Half a million await their day in court in 2017. Tsar Trump has a huge expulsion record (2.4 million) to break. (Harper's Magazine, Feb. 2017, page 49)

Piling irony on irony, some African deportees are sent to countries where they are not citizens despite hard evidence to the contrary. (id)

Sparks' Kate Smith Elementary School opened in 1963. She was a product of her times. [CORRECTION BELOW.]

Now that storm troopers from an increasingly authoritarian government are indiscriminately rounding up immigrants, it's time to remember that it can indeed happen here.

It already has, in the United States of America, with liberty and justice for some.

Dio benedica l'America.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
______________
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

During World War II, the U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security
By David A. Taylor / Smithsonian.com 2-7-2017
"By the 1920s, pseudo-scientists and polemicists in the 1920s popularized the notion that Italians were a separate race from Anglo-Americans. 'There’s no doubt those ideas were still around in 1942.' ”

CORRECTION FROM THE 5-22-2019 BARBWIRE: CROW DEPT. When I make a mistake, I own it and eat it. Two local librarians informed me last week that Sparks' Kate Smith Elementary School was not named for singer Kate (Katherine Elizabeth) Smith of "God Bless America" fame, just defrocked by the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Flyers for recently revealed racist recordings. The longtime Sparks school was named for local educator Kate M. Smith. I apologize and sincerely regret my error. Mea maxima culpa.

ONLINE EXTRAS —>

END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous or humorless but always-peerless predictions for 2017 by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service.

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/

Subscribe today to get the exclusive End of Times Retrogression, a Procession for Progression, an Obsession to relieve Depression, Proselytizing Prayer for Divine Intercession at the Legislative Session. Don't wait— procrastination is the devil's dislocation. Hie thee hence to BallotBoxing.US/

THE GOOD DON. Nominations are afoot for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

Time to ramp up for world-famous Tribune photographer Don Dondero. Details at the Barbwire.US web edition.

SMOKING GUNS —> Reidless or Rudderless?
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-21-2017 Sparks Tribune
The Gorsuch Nonesuch: Poison Annie's Revenge
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 2-7-2017 Sparks Tribune
Smoot, smut and stash
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-31-2017 Sparks Tribune
The last question
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-24-2017 Sparks Tribune
Patient Zero Plagues
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-17-2017 Sparks Tribune
Democrats in Margaritaville
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-10-2017 Sparks Tribune
Regressions, Transitions and Predictions
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 1-3-2017 Sparks Tribune

TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: FEEL UP YOUR FIRE METER. The Reno Gazette-Journal did big spreads on three consecutive Sundays (Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 2014) on NV Energy smart meter fires. Welcome aboard. Barbwire readers were two years ahead on the fire meter issue. (Touch a Smart Meter, Go to Jail — 11 October 2012)

FIRE METER UPDATES: THE NEVADA FIRE MARSHALL'S INVESTIGATION concluded "don't worry, be happy." I'm still worried and will continue fondling NVE's precious equipment —> If your smart meter feels very hot, not just from sunshine, call 911. In its Sunday 21 Dec. 2014 front page headline major story, the Reno Gazette-Journal published results of the NVEnergy-commissioned "don't worry, be happy" echo study. On 1-27-2015, the RGJ published an analysis based on veteran reporter Anjeanette Damon's review of more than 1,000 pages of documents.

Barbwire
bottom line: NVE handles this like auto manufacturers handle defects —> It's cheaper to pay legal settlements after people are injured or killed than to fix the problem.

Don'tcha worry 'bout a thing! If you can't trust your power company, whom can you trust?

Smoking guns: Rooftop solar assassination
NevadaLabor.com Energy War Room

DIDN'T THEY MAKE A MOVIE CALLED "THE INCREDIBLES"? On 2-6-2015, the RGJ reported that the Public Utilities Commission has ordered NVE to hire an independent laboratory to review the material.

UPDATE: The report said all is well. I still recommend feeling up your fire meter on a regular basis.

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is. A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
                              — Jimmy Breslin

  Stay tuned.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/ The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet. This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.

Get ahead of corporate-influenced news—>Subscribe to Barbwire Confidential

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


Andrew Barbano
is a 48-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 and DoctorLawyerWatch.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 Sparks Tribune since 1988.

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Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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Copyright © 1982-2017 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 48-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 Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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