It’s a trifecta of moral corruption! Rex Murphy shills for Big Oil and Gas. Postmedia consigns its editorial control to the Oil and Gas Lobby[TM]. Postmedia, naturally, fires one of the best energy/environment reporters in the nation. Film at 11. Ok, it’s 11. Let’s drill down. Journalists should declare when
Continue readingTag: Corporations
Politics, Re-Spun: Jesse Ventura Is On Our Side On Racist Team Names
More support for changing the name of the NFL team in Washington comes from Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Yesterday, I wrote about how incredibly easy it would be to change the racist name of any kind of team. It’s really not that hard. Imagine the reverse, though. Imagine changing the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Capitalism: Swing Your Sledgehammer
It’s all about vision and hope, in an effort to envision how economics and markets can exist after the toxicity of capitalism is gone, gone gone. Are you up for it? Last night, John Holloway, author of Crack Capitalism, was the SFU Institute for the Humanities‘ guest lecturer, skyped in
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Mental Health and The Hypocrisy of #BellLetsTalk
Bell didn’t actually start any conversation about mental health, despite their PR. So now that Bell has enjoyed PR-pimping mental health as a self-aggrandizing excuse to give money to Canadian mental health programs, I didn’t actually expect to see #MentalHealth trending in Twitter like #BellLetsTalk did yesterday, and to a
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What’s With Pipeline-Loving Old Men?
High 5′s to people are aren’t old men! [on average, 19 times out of 20, +/- 3.6% of the time.] My apologies if you’re a man, or over 55, but those two demographics love the Big Oil, and they’re giving you all a bad name! Here’s why. I know lots
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Two Richmond Boycotts for 2014
Bill Zylmans, that awkward racist guy. First we have IKEA’s union busting, coming up on one year of locking out their workers because they won’t take major concessions in the face of billions in profits. Now we have the strawberry and potato farmer who worries about how few Caucasian farmers
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Who Is the Least Qualified to Evaluate Teachers?
Let’s say you don’t employ public school teachers. Let’s say you make millions of dollars. Let’s say you earn sometimes hundreds of times more money than the lowest paid worker in your organization. And let’s say you may not have even attended public school in Canada? So what should you
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: BC Is Actually “Missing” More Than 94,000 Jobs #SpinAlert
It’s not unusual to see unemployment rates of around 6-8% these days. But if you have always had the feeling that more than one in sixteen people is unemployed, you’re right. The capitalist machine likes to use that low number to avoid the greater reality that almost 30% of British
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Can We Stop Treating Women Like Meat? Now? Maybe? Please?
Women-as-sex-meat, 2014 edition begins now. The #FacePalm is appropriate. It’s nothing new, but when can media just stop. Maybe when it’s no longer profitable? We need a revolution in media by boycotting all venues that perpetuate the women-as-sex-meat theme. Here’s what’s new, this time with Eugenie Bouchard and Cate Blanchett.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: How to Spot a Good Journalist
It’s getting harder and harder, what with constant corporate media concentration, and corporatist convergence of messaging from right wing governments and their informal corporate media PR departments. But everyone once in a while we see evidence that there is a growing number of journalists who exist with integrity and can
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The NHL Gladiator Pimps
Risking player’s brain trauma for profit makes the NHL a gladiator pimp organization. At some point, as estimates continue to roll in, the NHL accountants and lawyers will realize that reducing concussion risk in the NHL will make the league more profitable. The NHLPA needs to do a better job
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Is Your Boss Sexist?
My very first job was at a pizza restaurant. I think it was common in those days to insist, on pain of firing, that workers don’t talk to each other about their wages. I didn’t see that as sexist, necessarily, but just as a way for the employer to not
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Curing Gender Imbalance in Media? MONEY!
Movies that pass the Bechdel Test…make…more…money. The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees. Media corporations love their money. And in a sexist society, common sense indicates that movies with lots of testosterone and no whiny women should make more money.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: More Clever Climate Change Awareness Actions!
…Burning oil caused the melting in the first place… A week ago [was it that long?] two climate change activists pulled a Yes Men on our greatest employee, Mr. Stephen Harper. But last summer, you may not have seen an equally clever, but more hi-tech, stunt by Greenpeace’s Save the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What Does Post-Corporate Media Look Like?
I know you’re wondering. But it’s hard to imagine. Kind of like a fish imagining life without water. We’ve known corporate media for generations. Since the advent of psychology and marketing, the influence/manipulation of corporate media is ubiquitous. And not in a good way. But let’s take a few moments
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Cheap T-Shirts Keep Harper in Power
Whenever I read stories about corporations wanting to do the right thing, I never hold my breath. Clothing corporations, the sector where “sweatshops” originates, want us to believe they care. They don’t. Read what nonsense they are trying to peddle to get us off their back for exploiting people so
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Come On, Let’s Really Increase Taxes on the Rich
Well, here’s something you don’t see [ever] in corporate media: a review of tax measures in the USA since the crash in 2008 that have succeeded in increasing taxes on the rich. And it turns out, tax increases that are regressive [sales taxes, etc.] or include the non-rich, seemed to
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Real Reason We Need to Get Rid of Corporate Media
Goodbye. While I’m also sad that the Kamloops Daily News is closing, I think Warren Kinsella is over-simplifying a few things [see below] with respect to how the media climate will be affected by the closing of this for-profit business, earning shareholder value by producing mass media content, while sometimes
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Yesterday’s Climate Justice Protest #SpinAlert
Sean Devlin, of ShitHarperDid.ca, had the temerity to interact with our employee, Mr. Stephen Harper. Yesterday, we saw a new level of action against climate destruction policy. In the style of co-conspirator Brigette DePape, two protesters crashed Harper’s contemptuous public appearance. Harper holds the media and the general public of
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Economic Growth? I Prefer Steady State
Economic growth suggests that infinite growth is possible. Even with a growing earth population and increasing climate breakdown, people still think we can continue growing. I like using the seasons analogy to describe that human economic activity ought follow the cycle of seasons, with a steadying imperative. This is why
Continue reading