Blackout Sheds Light on Democracy

Considering the way the news has been lately, the reaction of Canadians and Americans to the loss of electricity in their neighborhood was stunning and disheartening. Democracy depends on an actively involved citizenry. Yet, instead of participating, most of us merely weathered the discomfort with good humor, kindness and a help-thy-neighbor attitude.

How sharply this contrasts to the more robust display of participatory direct democracy we see from our brothers in Iraq. There, the lack of electricity results in swift community action.

Instead of passivity, we see real civic involvement! Rocket-propelled grenades launched at those engaged in repairing the damage to the electric grid, snipers shooting at policemen, hand grenades lofted into cafes where fellow citizens have retreated to make the best of the situation, and the occasional car bomb aimed at an embassy. Why, compared to their enthusiastic engagement in the system, the cheerful camaraderie displayed yesterday and today in North America suggests that the grand traditions of the founding fathers (and our northern Tory friends) are on their last legs indeed.

How can a people raised in a tradition of freedom like ours just sit back and let their elected officials concentrate on the business of getting the power back on? Shouldn’t someone at least make a symbolic effort to blame someone else for this mess? A quick round fired at a policemen directing traffic to help prevent tragedy would be the least I would expect. At least in trend-setting California, they’re making the effort to recall the single individual totally responsible for their mess!

Sometimes a charitable spirit of self-sacrifice is just not enough for those trying to help. Clearly, Iraqis have learned this lesson well. They’ve remained steadfast in their commitment to consistent complaining, riots, anarchy and targeted killings of these workers. Doubtless this will help these repair folk concentrate all the more on their reconstruction efforts.

Besides, it is not as if the trouble with the Iraqi power grid, and other essential services, is the fault of those who live there, is it? Who attacked their neighbors for almost 20 years at great cost in blood and treasure to themselves and the rest of the region? Did they accept the rule of a terrible dictator? Do they, even now, do everything they can to wind up once again under the rule of corrupt strongmen, instead of a government that might include their fellow citizens whom they consider unworthy of an equal share of power?

Not the Iraqis! Such claims, says the conventional wisdom on the their “street,” are mere propaganda by infidels from outside. The very same whose fault all the Iraqi misery is.

If only these outsiders would all leave now. Every day, Iraqis mass in the streets, a mob of eager volunteers offering to pitch in to help, together with their true allies who have flooded the country bearing all manner of small arms and bounty money.

As I say, the contrast is all too clear. We should take a page in civic involvement from our Iraqi brothers. Their lesson to us? If you are going to fix an electric system, you better work fast. Otherwise, someone may just have to urge you on by making a concerted effort to kill you.

That’s real democracy at work. We can hope that their point will be driven home to all of us: that everything is all the fault of whoever is in charge. That the only way to get things fixed is to hold everyone else accountable.

What a contrast to the degenerate citizens of North America. We should all be ashamed.
¶ 6:42 AM

  On Media
(Odd bits about the business)

SOME FEEL BRITS BETRAYED BY BBC MORNING SHOW - THE TELEGRAPH, UK

"Lately that definition has narrowed. Now Today is simply the platform from which, on May 29, Andrew Gilligan broadcast grave allegations about the truthfulness of the Government's case for war with Iraq. Gilligan's claims have put Today's journalistic standards under unprecedented scrutiny."
So sayeth Tim Luckhurst, reflecting on the morning show on “the tele” that BBC puts on. Spin trumped reporting, according to at least one BBC reporter. And she was the one who got to talk to Kelly, the key source who later killed himself. Getting the thing right about bogus nuke claims concerning Iraq wasn’t enough. It had to be spun up a few notches to satisfy the BBC higher ups. Everyone knows Saddam was trying to get nukes. Hell, I wouldn’t mind having one, either. Guess a confession by Tony Blair would have been better.
All in all, a nice way to get the focus off the main question. Namely, whether preemptive war is the American, or even the smart, way.
You decide.
A more balanced report can be found in the Daily Times piece, “ BBC under pressure over dead UK weapons expert.”

ONWARD WESTERN JOURNALISTS - CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Kim Campell reports on, “Building a free press in world's hot spots.” A growing industry, she says. Many apply, but only a few are experienced and sturdy enough to do the job. Those who do face rewards—and also anti-Americanism and the suspician that they may be spies.

THE NINE MEDIA FIRMS THAT DOMINATE THE WORLD-AL JAZEERAH (sort of)

Funny, but this showed up on Al Jazeerah’s website. Apparently it was expropriated from Robert W. McChesney of globalpolicy.org. Who knows if it will actually get through to those who watch the “unbiased” reportage from this source. Can’t hurt.
“In some ways, the emerging global commercial media system is not an entirely negative proposition. It occasionally promotes anti-racist, anti-sexist or anti-authoritarian messages that can be welcome in some of the more repressive corners of the world. But on balance the system has minimal interest in journalism or public affairs except for that which serves the business and upper-middle classes, and it privileges just a few lucrative genres that it can do quite well--like sports, light entertainment and action movies--over other fare. Even at its best the entire system is saturated by a hyper-commercialism, a veritable commercial carpetbombing of every aspect of human life. As the C.E.O. of Westinghouse put it (Advertising Age, 2/3/97), ‘We are here to serve advertisers. That is our raison d'etre.’”

AGE NO WORRY TO THE WEST'S NEW CHIEF- THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

Paul Armstrong, the new editor of The West Australian plans to inject life into what this article alleges “some” say is a sleepy pub that doesn’t stand for anything. His take on the business, as follows: “Age is irrelevant," Armstrong says. "Experience is relevant. And whether I have the experience will be for others to judge." Besides, he says, Piers Morgan was made editor of the Daily Mirror in London at the age of 30 – "and he's still there seven years later.”

SMUG JOURNALISM - WASHINGTON POST, DC

Robert Samuelson, WP political columnist opines, “no place in American journalism is so smug and superior as the New York Times.” He makes a good case. But WP is probably No. 3 (Wall Street Journal gets my vote for second place.)

MINORITY JOURNALISM ORGANIZATIONS: DO THEY MATTER? YES! - Poynter.org, FL

Typical navel gazing and lack of historical or social context afflicts this piece. After becoming, at the ripe age of 31, a features design editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune, this Asian-American learns that respect for his elders, being modest and all that stuff he thought was proper was…an impediment to his progress and came from his inappropriate cultural heritage. A workshop at the AAJA taught him the error of his ways. “I could, for the first time in my life, do things my way and do things for me. I could self-promote without seeming cocky. I could ask for what I want without seeming greedy. I could finally walk into a room, chin up and chest out, and feel like I belong.”
In short, he had been helped to become a typical gen-Xer. How wonderful for him…and terrible for journalism.

VHS JOURNALISM TEACHER SORMAZ ATTENDS HARVARD MEDIA WORKSHOP - MUNSTER TIMES, IN

One of 90 secondary school educators from 31 states, Gordana Sormaz of Valparaiso High School made the cut and took the seven-day program at the prestigious institution. Favorite quote from the story? “Participants described the institute as “invaluable.” QUOTE FROM SORMAZ IN HERE”. No kiddin’.

SIDING WITH THE POWERLESS: IDEAS FROM 60 YEARS IN JOURNALISM - SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, UT

Uncle Walter (Crionkite) speaks plain in his column. The last journalist trusted by most talks about the heart of the matter. “We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful.” The shrill neocon nabobs of jingoism’ll probably crush him, but at least a sober voice now speaks in the wilderness.

OHIO STATE TO REVISE JOURNALISM PROGRAM IN 2004 - DAYTON DAILY NEWS, OH

Not enough fellows applied, so the funding got pulled until 2004. The aim: attract for seasoned fellows to do more independent research by nixing required courses.

UNC JOURNALISM PROFESSOR SAYS POLS LIE, PEOPLE OK IT - DURHAM HERALD SUN, NC

At the Society for Ethical Culture, Chuck Stone, UNC's Walter Spearman Professor of Journalism, reveals that politicians lie, and we let them. Heck, pretty much every walk of life (talked to any businessmen lately?) is full of liars these days. Ironically, Stone refers to Socrates in his shtick, a man who had to deal with a few liars in his day.


¶ 11:37 AM

  The Secret is Timing

Buddy Hackett had a joke where he would get you to ask him, “What is the secret of comedy?” and then right when you said “secret” he would shout out “timing!” Old joke.

But still a good one. Some things, like “timing!” don’t change that much over time. That said, some things do—and have, like timing, itself. We live at a dizzying clip. Many who long for the “good old days,” whatever they were, say it is the decay of morals, etc., etc.

It isn’t. Actually, it is all a matter of what Marshall McLuhan called “the medium.” (Less famously, he also said, “Invention is the mother of necessities.”) That is, the biggest change has come, now that we are in the post-atomic “information” age, from information itself. Not the content, but the medium—more specifically—the speed at which information flows.

Sounds pretty obvious? Wish everyone was paying more attention to it, then. Because a lot of our societal policy decisions, both domestic and foreign, hang on the speed of the medium, the invention of this new technology. And the folks running the various shows seem at a genuine loss to deal with it.

It’s a new reality and almost no one is even looking at what it’s doing. How fast did the LoveSan.worm sweep the planet today? Answer: one day. That’s how fast the Internet can go down and cripple the global economy. Not to be morbid or in bad taste, but how fast can a terrorist blow something up and bring the world markets crashing down, even if only for a while? Answer: one day.

Then consider, for example: It took almost ten years to turn the public off to the carnage in Vietnam. Right or wrong isn’t the point. Just, “Why?” Short answer: Because for most of that time folks didn’t get to see the war over dinner. And even when they did, towards the end, it was in little “three network” news snippets on the evening news.

It’s all different now. We can pretty much watch a war in real time on cable TV, or via the Internet, or both simultaneously, multimedia-izing it like crazy…and until it makes us crazy. An interconnected world is even more fragile, it turns out, than a more chaotic, and less globalized one.

We are about two generations (I mean the 18-month computer kind) away from taking it to the next step. Namely, virtual reality depictions of real combat that you can immerse yourself in at home, like a videogame. We will be not only watching war that way; we will also be waging it that way, using drone aircraft and robotic tanks and the like to fight against live opponents from the air-conditioned comfort of a Florida control room. I make no moral judgment on this—after all, this is war I am talking about. To me, the idea that there is a more moral way to wage war vs. a less moral one is questionable at best, ludicrous at worst. But I digress.

Our leaders have totally failed to work this burnout rate for the acceptance of war into their war-waging equations. Clearly, they are talking about staying the course, a regrettably resonant historical term, in terms of five years. I give it five months, max. If we aren’t out of Iraq, or more accurately, if Iraq isn’t out of my living room by year end, the present Administration better be get ready to pack its boxes and clear out.

Likewise the half-life of Bull and Bear markets. The chart today looks like the brain waves of a seizure victim. Up and down, ratcheted by every scrap of information at the speed of a bit rate. No kidding. This is a long understood phenomenon on the Street. First came the carrier pigeon (the originator of this technology was Reuters himself). Then the telephone arrived (which gave rise to the growth of Wall Street, and increased volatility). Now we have the era of the computer (which began to move into mainstream business, all brokerages, in the mid-1960s). Each in their time “sped” information faster by a quantum leap—and led to ever-quicker market actions. The Internet created an explosive volatility for markets in the later 1990s when online trading really took off. You can see how difficult it has proved for the “leaders” to stay ahead of that curve!

Another example of information acceleration comes from the present California recall campaign. A day after Arnold declares he’s running he’s already being pushed by the pundits (Schwarzenegger so far avoids specifics in race) because he hasn’t already put forward his complete plan for the State. He took a few days to get his tax returns out to the public—and he didn’t yet reveal every little thing. You’d have thought he was ducking the issue.

The point is, things move at the speed of the information. Always have. When it took weeks for news to travel by horseback, then we all had weeks to adjust to it. Now everyone, including society’s leaders, shakers, movers and the like, has to take it in and respond to it in a matter of seconds.

Today a breaking news story, a scoop, an analysis piece has a lifespan measure in minutes…and not that many of them either. If Buddy was still here, you’d ask the question, “What is the secret of reality, of truth or just of the news?” And just when you said the word “secret,” he’d yell out “timing!”

And he’d be right. Before you even got to the reality, truth or news of a thing, its time would have already past.


¶ 4:41 PM

  Liars All

The gums of August are flapping like mad. Hot air from slips to outright lies (with evasions holding the middle) is everywhere. Starting from the top is the Russian cosmonaut marriage flap. Yuri Malenchenko, 41, commander of the current International Space Station mission tied the knot with naturalized American Ekaterina Dmitriev, 27. He was up there, she down at NASA in Houston. The vows took place via the radio.

Their little whopper? They snuck their plans over on NASA and the Ruskies. And both bureacracies seemed, for reasons that are strange at best, to be concerned over security. Thought that was supposed to be the bride’s job. Besides, you'd figure the space program could use a bit of upbeat publicity.

In lieu of best wishes, Russian Space Agency spokesman, Sergei Gorbunov told AP , "He wants it, and he will have it - that's his problem."

And speaking of Houston, there’s Crawford. There, you can move from the little lies of love to the giant whoppers of governance. Cause that’s where the President is hip deep in “donor maintenance,” a medium whopper that means thanking the boys for the $170 million raised for the primaries he won’t use it for (he’s running unopposed).

It’s also a good chance to take a month-long rest where it is 106 degrees after a hard year of lying about Iraq (no WMDs, trailer claims bogus, no nuke deal in Africa, etc.). That means all those SOBs from the White House press corps get to stand around in the heat like fools waiting for the latest spin from the our jet-jockey President.

But Bush can’t rest, as pre-emption in now the rule—in war, writs of habeas corpus, and even attacking your allies, like Colin Powell, who knew better than the rest of those draft dodgers and chicken hawks about how to fight terrorists from day one. So it’s been a quick denial of the obvious, that Powell is on the outs with the ideologues who have mired us in the sand of the Middle East.

True, Bush invited Powell to lunch. But that hardly makes up for the neo-con inspired attacks on Powell that recently surfaced and suggested he was too soft to play on the same team as the ideological, inexperienced warmongers who decide which brave soldiers we put in the harm’s way they assiduously avoided.

The jet-jockey’s brave invitation certainly paled compared to the President’s lavish praise for obvious national security liar Condi Rice.

In fact, Dick Cheney better start worrying about his job. Rice appears destined for an even bigger role: “A testy Bush replied that Rice was ‘an honest person, fabulous and America is lucky to have her service.’” (For her side of the Africa uranium fiasco, courtesy official government mouth-piece FOXNews.com.)

That said, Cheney won’t have to worry too much about life after being VP. It's not like he'll get indicted for Halliburton shenanigans or anything. After all, the three of them (Bush, Rice and the VP) are up to their eyeballs in the earlier Angolagate affair, and we wouldn’t want that popping up…some lies are best forgotten, eh?

And now, speaking of preemption, with the backdrop of the roasted Arizona fire areas behind him, the First Jet-Jockey proposes a preemptive campaign for our wilderness areas. Personally, I am all for whatever works to manage the forests, and there is plenty of room to debate leaving them alone or using more management, controlled burns, etc. to keep them healthy. But to use the devastation as an excuse to let loggers take taxpayers’ trees and not even pay a fair price for them…well that’s just a real hot summertime kind of lying, ain’t it?
¶ 11:07 AM