Above: a project of mine that is almost finished. It may just come in handy…
Ever want to just get away from it all? Things just south of where I live seem to be getting a little dodgy. I’m not following it closely – bad for my health – but I get the impression that we (the entire Planet) are in for a frightening amusement park ride, kind of like being on a rickety contraption that has needed maintenance – no, out-and-out modification – for waaayyy too long. Circumstances beyond our control, such as locked iron bars across our laps, forbid escape, yet we might have avoided the crisis by Continue reading “A Voyage… Of Sorts”
A delightful, irreverent, Aussie phrase for unthinking submission to the status quo, blind faith in the “experts.” I got the expression from a great CBC Ideas Podcast called It’s the Economists, Stupid on the scary B.S. and hubris of this pseudo-science.
Sometimes I picture a worker bending over in a field… or something more bawdy… The powerful like us that way.
Come on folks! We owe some difficult work to our grandkids. We all must do more than trust the “news” fed to us by any mainstream paper, radio station or channel to be accurate. Should we trust respectable sources like the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, the Guardian? The CBC? PBS? BBC?
Hell, no! We need to use alternative sources of news.
Why alternatives? While the traditional sources will point out some negatives about political figures and policy through their token liberals, on some of the huge issues of geopolitics (like, for one, the US/NATO/Ukraine/Russia debacle) even the most respected media are presenting the neocon-approved side almost all the time. They were wrong in unison with Bush and Cheney on Iraq’s WMD; only Canada’s PM, Jean Chretien, was brave enough to disagree publicly in 2003. And there are many more abject failures that most of us aren’t aware of – Libya, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Honduras, etc.
Not to do some fact-checking as an elector is failing to fulfill your duty as a citizen – your duty to your grandchildren and future generations.This is because our democracy is on life support.
Never before in history has so much been asked of the average citizen.
Check my blogroll for some of the truly alternative news and opinion sources.
The respected MSM are all singing essentially the same tune as the tabloids – though the harmonies may be more complex – a few more flat 9ths and a smattering of augmented 5ths, perhaps. They distract us with cute human interest stories, advertising, endless repetition of items sanctioned by the powerful and not even daring to mention other key viewpoints on hugely important issues. They serve the tiniest fraction of the population: the 0.0001% who corporately control all US presidents and everything else on our planet.
Many billions are spent every year on false news to keep the corporate ball rolling.
In the U.S. they offer Americans the choice between Democrat and Republican, which really means “You can have your choice of two candidates in November, neither of whom will rock the deadly neocon destroyer skippered by the super rich.” Significant differences are basically imaginary. Neither the erratic Donald Trump nor the closet neocon, Hillary Clinton, will make the world a better place. You can have strawberry or vanilla, but it’s ice cream only, folks, and there are only two flavours.
And Justin Trudeau just may turn out to be on the wrong side of the two biggest issues, for me, in Canada: punitive trade deals like the TPP (bad) and true Proportional Representation (good).
***
What politics do I read?
Tweets and their linked articles. Following the Arab Spring got me started.
Following the farcical, phoney, Dutch-led, America-run (let’s face it), investigation into the MH17 incident devoured my time for over a year and still brings me back to Twitter. Ukraine, one suspect of the shoot-down, has a veto over what gets published!
Robert Parry, via consortium news.com. Parry won awards in the 80’s when he exposed Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal and one in 2015 from Harvard for distinguished investigative journalism. He still has CIA contacts who give him the scoop on stuff.
John Kerry… just kidding…
Noam Chomsky. In the 80’s I discovered him on US exploitation of its Central and South American back yard.
Naomi Klein of no-logo and BDS fame, and a recent convert to environmentalism.
The New Republic, thought-provoking for more than century (since 1914).
Lots of other stuff.
To what do I listen? CBC podcasts, particularly three:
Writers and Company, the wonderful in-depth interview skills of Eleanor Wachtel interviewing so many of the great writers.
Ideas, on every night from 9 PM until 10, hosted by the great Paul Kennedy
The Sunday Edition, with its illustrious, long-time host Michael Enright.
These three, at their best, almost make me feel guilty, glancing sometimes over my shoulder in fear of the Orwellian thought police. Try them; you’ll like them. The link to CBC Podcasts is also in my blogroll.
What do I watch on TV?
Almost nothing. It is not the best, or the healthiest, use of my time (it makes me curse). Mainstream TV news is entertainment and, much worse, propaganda, increasingly styled à la WW II.
***
So for the sake of your grandchildren, get off your intellectual ass and find alternatives to the easy stuff. We OWE our descendants a better chance at survival.
We peasants of the “free world” have totally surrendered.
We no longer care to know what is happening, and essentially have said to our sloppily elected “leaders,” who are the minions of the Very Very Few:
Pick our enemies for us.
Scuttle them by whatever murderous and evil ways you can.
Keep us safe and “prosperous.”
Just do it!
Propaganda?
Go for it.
Blanket media censorship?
Huh?
Paramilitary thugs?
Sure.
Black ops?
Of course.
Displacement, enslavement and bombing of innocent foreigners?
Whatever.
Destruction of the biosphere?
If you/we must.
Anything, now, back to my toys.
After following MH17 politics for six months and devoting many of my best hours to trying to guess at, and point out, more alternatives to the Western mainstream version of the “truth”, the penny described in the above “dialogue” finally dropped.
And the decay is not just among the typical couch potato. It exists, to differing degrees, among people who, in their youth, cared for justice and peace. They are not presented with all sides when they open a newspaper or turn on the radio or TV.
From my heart to yours… Cai Bé floating market – 2008
I can’t let this lie.
Two tragedies (out of the myriad people on our planet suffer regularly) stand out in my mind and grieve my heart:
Gaza and Malaysia Flight MH17.
Many others exist, but these two are the worst for me because they involve unimaginable grief and they fuel the fires of long-standing hatreds. An earthquake or flood can bring people together. These two drive people apart.
Both involve bad political decisions made in the 20th century and both are being used in the 21st century to fan the flames across these two centuries.
Then I reconsider what effect my blunt, certain-to-be-misunderstood-by-many “truth-telling” will have on my ability to continue to do the other things I love that make a real differences to a limited number of very important people.
And I frequently take the post down and pick up the guitar.
Above: a project of mine that is almost finished. It may just come in handy…
mightyturk 