London, Ontario becomes the first Canadian city to turf occupiers.
Continue readingTag: propaganda
DeSmogBlog: Bogus Job Numbers Used To Sell Keystone XL Pipeline
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As thousands of protestors gather at The White House today to voice opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline plan, one of the major selling points from the pipeline proponents…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Gas Industry Front Group Called Out By RFK Jr Attempts To Spin Facts Yet Again
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The oil and gas industry has a long history of resisting public accountability and protective standards, and generally avoiding tough questions about its practices and attacking its cr…
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Propagandistic Opportunism: The War of 1812
Great column from Jeffrey Simpson this morning on the propagandistic opportunism of the Harper Regime: Let’s Not Exalt the Folly of 1812. PBS is also broadcasting a documentary on October 10 on the so-called wa…
Continue readingMore on the Flogs Issue
BCL has more on the M THIRTY enviro flogs issue.Also, I’ve heard that PB is removing identified flogs.
Continue readingFunding Anti-Green Sock Puppets
Not all unions are in McGuinty’s pocket. The Ontario Power Workers’ Union (UPW) has bankrolled a campaign agaisnt McGuinty fighting the Green Energy Act.More and more, marketing companies are using social media to promote their clients. UPW is pushing …
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Koch Brothers "Secret Sins" Exposed In Bloomberg News Investigation
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Bloomberg has released a whopping 21-page investigative and historical essay on the many crimes of the infamous Koch Brothers, their company Koch Industries and its …
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: "Haynesville" Shale Gas Industry Documentary Exposed on AlterNet
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This weekend, AlterNet published a long investigative piece that I wrote on a documentary that has made the rounds at film festivals and conferences around the country.
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Oxymoronic ‘Ethical Oil’ Meets Irony
I hate promoting the severely flawed concept of ‘ethical oil’, so much so that I don’t even like using the phrase as it spreads the meme. Still, with the Keystone XL pipeline in the news these days, here’s a fact worth punting your way.The toxic, corro…
Continue readingArt Threat: 3D Hitler photo album launched in Germany
“The Face of the Dictatorship: the Third Reich in 3D” contains roughly 100 images of the dictator shot in 3D, originally used as Nazi propaganda beginning in 1936.
Continue readingPolitics and Entertainment: Deconstructing Hudak’s Weak Ploy
Any affirmative action initiaitve always draws forth twisted logic from its detractors. We’ve seen this response with language, race, and gender affirmative programs many times before. That Hudak’s advisors are using the old binary opposition ploy aga…
Continue readingDeSmogBlog - Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science: Death Of A Talking Point? Regulations Actually Create Jobs
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For years, the Republican Party in America has been on a crusade against what they call “job killing regulations.” A quick Google search for the phrase “job kil…
Continue readingredjenny: On Innovation and Capitalism
So in theory the profit motive drives innovation. Too many taxes, it is said, diminishes innovation. (Never mind that entrepreneurship – particularly among women – benefits from a strong safety net.) The government is supposedly inefficient and, having no incentive, incapable of innovation; this is a common justification for the
Continue readingredjenny: On Innovation and Capitalism
So in theory the profit motive drives innovation. Too many taxes, it is said, diminishes innovation. (Never mind that entrepreneurship – particularly among women – benefits from a strong safety net.) The government is supposedly inefficient and, having no incentive, incapable of innovation; this is a common justification for the
Continue readingredjenny: On Innovation and Capitalism
So in theory the profit motive drives innovation. Too many taxes, it is said, diminishes innovation. (Never mind that entrepreneurship – particularly among women – benefits from a strong safety net.) The government is supposedly inefficient and, having no incentive, incapable of innovation; this is a common justification for the drive to privatization.
Because of private enterprise and the profit motive, society benefits from such innovations as deep-fried cola and the donut burger. And 20 bazillion varieties of toothpaste. Such innovation brings us choice, more of which is always good, right? Right?
Never mind that it might be causing decision fatigue:
No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price. It’s different from ordinary physical fatigue — you’re not consciously aware of being tired — but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain. You start to resist any change, any potentially risky move — like releasing a prisoner who might commit a crime. So the fatigued judge on a parole board takes the easy way out, and the prisoner keeps doing time.
The ability to make meaningful choices, to exercise agency and control over one’s work and life, does correlate with an increase in wellbeing. As do civil liberties and the ability to participate in the political process. Of course, if we are all too exhausted from deciding which of 100 television channels to watch, perhaps we are not able to be fully engaged with personal and civic choices.
Some of the best innovations have come from motives other than profit — those inventions with necessity as their mother. Education, the arts, social innovation, nonprofits, open source are incredible producers of innovation (what if trendsetters went on strike?). Social innovation has given us libraries, microcredit, socialized health care, new ways of managing archival information. The profit motive gives us deep-fried butter-on-a-stick.
Continue readingDeSmogBlog - Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science: Mysterious Fracking Memo Encourages Employees To Deceive Landowners
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The Associated Press is reporting some new details about the mysterious memo that surfaced earlier this year which encourages buyers of oil and gas leases to lie to landowners abou…
Continue readingRedBedHead: Afghanistan In Disarray? Blame Iran Even If It’s B.S.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that at the end of a bad month for the client regime in Afghanistan and the NATO colonial project in general, that the US made the discovery that Iran was supporting al Qaeda and needed to announce it. I also believe ot…
Continue readingExcited Delirium: Media Madness & Politics
Getting out of the media mess created by our mainstream monopolies will be a real challenge. But we have to try.
Continue readingDeSmogBlog - Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science: Talisman Energy Shelves "Friendly Fracosaurus" Coloring Book After Colbert Smackdown
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Talisman Terry, the Friendly Fracosaurus, has been officially suspended from his duties as an unconventional gas mascot. The cartoon dinosaur was used to …
Continue readingTrashy's World: I BELONG!
…to the “anti-Conservative opinion elite”!!!
Woo-hoo! I am SO stoked!
We need a slogan! Ads! Buttons! T-shirts! Celebrity spokespersons!
The CPC is scared shitless, it seems, of those of us who DARE to express opinions that run counter to Con dogma. I fact, they are asking their mindless drones supporters to dig deep into their wallets to […]