The mole...

I'm sure you know about the mole (or moles) who have infiltrated your "closed" or "secret" groups. 

Given my opinion for reading your comments and the fact that you THINK I have no idea of what your arguments against gun control might be.

Wouldn't it be a lark to find out I'm actually the mole: spewing the rubbish that you believe at you knowing all the time that it is sheer bollocks. 

Got that:

SHEER BOLLOCKS

You're thinking you're so smart, while I'm having a laugh at you chasing your tails and proving what I have been saying all along: you're a bunch of idiots who couldn't tell your arses from a hole in the ground.

Seriously, you can't handle a computer--what makes you think you can handle a gun?

Then again, if I were a superhacker: I'd turn your pages into Teletubby fan sites with a heavy emphasis on Tinky-Winky.

Now, go play with your purple purses and stop pouting.

Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays

Brenda Spencer opened fire with a rifle at the Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, killing two adults and injuring nine children. She later explained her actions with the statement, “I don’t like Mondays” back in 1979.

The Boomtown Rats were at a US radio station for an interview when the story of Brenda Spencer came over the news wire. As a loud mid ’70s rock band, the Boomtown Rats were (respectfully if not completely accurately) branded punks by the media. As the Sex Pistols and the Clash became the voice of young London punks, The Boomtown Rats carried the flag for the youth of Dublin. After their debut album saw respectable sales in 1978, they recorded “I Don’t Like Mondays,” their most successful and most enduring hit despite the fact that many US radio stations refused to play it.

I wonder why?

Since Brenda Spencer went “postal” there have been many shootings like this. School shootings like this happen all the time, but they are treated as local news, unless they are like Columbine or yesterday’s Virginia Tech shootings.

I mean 32 dead. Wow, that’s a new record.

I guess the next big school shooting is going to have to top that to become news.

There are other songs which pinpoint the real instrumentality which allows for this carnage: Guns. Cheryl Wheeler’s “If It Were Up To Me”, Wall of Voodoo’s “Shouldn’t have given him a gun for Christmas”, Captain Sensible’s “Yanks with Guns”, Robert Bobby “Guns across the USA”, The Beatles “Happiness is a Warm Gun”, Johnny Cash “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town”, Lynyrd Skynyrd “Saturday Night Special”, Harry Chapin “Sniper”, Indigo Girls “Don’t Give that Girl a Gun”, various versions of “The Devil’s Right Hand”, I Can Lick Any Son Of… “Dear Mr. Heston”, Ian Hunter “Gun Control”, Pearl Jam “Glorified G”, Robert Bobby “guns Across the USA”, any other suggestions out there?

Anyway, Cheryl Wheeler’s “If it were up to me” which ends with “If it were up to me, I’d take away the guns.” is also not played on the airwaves. The pro-gun crowd is too scared of it.

Why, let’s face it, more guns does not equal less crime. If it were the case, Philadelphia would be one of the safest places in the nation with the largest number of NRA life members and amount of concealed carry permits. Also, Virginia, they can just strap on a gun there, but this is the second time they have been victimised by maniacs with a gun on a large scale (anybody remember Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad?).

I mean those last two paralaysed the nation’s capital with only one gun. Shit, the East Coast!

Not bad.

It is the guns and I don’t hear many people talking about gun responsibilities!

Sorry, but 28 years is too long and too many bodies have piled up from guns. It’s costs this country too much to treat all the gunshot victims.

It’s time for guns to be put under strict regulation--after all Heller-McDonald says that's Constitutionally OK.

The only thing stopping that happening is the gun lobby.

For a great piece on Brenda Spencer listen to Mike Pesca‘s piece from Day to Day, January 31, 2005.

Add on the following songs:
Stephen Sondheim: Gun Song, Bobby Bare Jr.: Gun Show, Railroad Jerk: Gun Problem, Kittens For Christian: Gun Country, D.R.I.: Gun Control , Guess Who: Guns, Guns, Guns, Junior Reid: Gun Court, Boy Wundah: Change (The Anti Gun Crime Song), 311: Guns (Are For Pussies), Gorillaz: Kids With Guns, Robert Bobby: Guns Across The U.S.A and Bigger Guns., UB40: Guns In The Ghetto, The Damned: Gun Fury, The Tannahill Weavers: At The End Of A Pointed Gun, Steely Dan: With A Gun, Buju Banton: Mr. Nine, Aerosmith: Janie’s Got A Gun, Indigo Girls: Don’t Give That Girl A Gun, and Julie Brown: Homecoming Queen’s got a gun

MORE SUGGESTIONS ARE ALWAYS WELCOME!

BE SURE TO CALL IN AND REQUEST THEY BE PLAYED ON THE RADIO IN AFTER THE NEXT MASS SHOOTING!

The Liberal Media are as Liberal as the large corporations that control them.

This rant was caused by a comment made elsewhere about my So much to be pissed at post as well as a shitload of other things.

” I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. “
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 – 1859, French political thinker and author of Democracy in America

I am curious about why the founders put the First Amendment in the Constitution in light of the de Tocqueville quote above:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It pisses me off that the first time I came to Philadelphia in 1980 and went to Independence Hall to see the US version of “speaker’s Corner” that (a) no one was speaking, and even more disappointing, (b) a young lady made a comment that “if anyone said anything bad about the US she would punch them in the nose”.

Compare that to Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park which has a vibrant history of oratory, discussion, debate, humour and madness. Rarely do people make comments about punching others in the nose no matter how much they may disagree in London. Of course the remark about London’s Speakers’ Corner that “the older generation of Socialists who have battled for their ideas here many for more than half a century” might go a long way to explain why the US version of Speakers’ Corner is silent.

While looking up material on Media Control and Propaganda I came upon the Third World Traveler’s Media Control and Censorship page. THIRD WORLD TRAVELER

is an archive of articles and book excerpts that seek to tell the truth about American democracy, media, and foreign policy, and about the impact of the actions of the United States government, transnational corporations, global trade and financial institutions, and the corporate media, on democracy, social and economic justice, human rights, and war and peace, in the Third World, and in the developed world.

My interest is the point that the US media are controlled by a very small group of people. Five companies control 80% of what you see on TV, and 10 companies control two-thirds of what you hear on the radio in the United States! We can get into how this affect the accuracy of US Commercial media, but you can find that in very fine detail at this site.

“As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy idea in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody’s supposed to think that. … Since there’s no way to get together with other people who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don’t pay any attention to what’s going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl.”
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic

The concept of freedom of speech is to get out ideas which normally wouldn’t be heard. Unfortunately, the US media tends to play up and dwell on stories that are sensational – murders, car crashes, kidnappings, sex scandals, and so on. This is why the idiot preacher in Florida was able to get a vastly disproportionate amount of attention. Likewise, the Media chooses who it wants to support. As I mentioned in my Feeling “Left” out post:

the Tea Party Convention this February received more coverage than the U.S. Social Forum convention held last June, five days of strategizing, organizing and activism inspired by the 2001 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The Social Forum, in Detroit, drew an estimated 15,000–20,000 progressive activists from around the country, while the Tea Party Convention in Nashville hosted a meager 600 attendees. Compare the two “activist” gatherings striving for political and social change, one at least 25 times larger than the other—but the smaller one received the larger share of the media coverage. Across 10 major national outlets in the two weeks surrounding each event, the Tea Party got 177 mentions to the Social Forum’s three. Per participant, the Tea Party got 1,500 times as many mentions!

The Internet, in some ways, is just as bad since googling “gun control” nets you more pro-gun sites than ones that address the issue of gun control. The amazing thing is that the “gun rights” message is heard vastly out of proportion to its level of support.

“You have presented to stations around the world a model for freedom of speech and the unhindered availability of information… You have shown that despite media monopolies and manipulations it is possible to preserve a spirit of tolerance, freedom and truth and to allow dissenting voices to be heard… Your struggle to preserve your autonomy… has revealed an unexpected similarity between the media in the US and Serbia today, the freedom of speech is being stifled in a similar manner, journalists are being .. intimidated and progressive radio stations are prevented from operating. The character of media repression is virtually the same under openly totalitarian dictatorships as it is under democratic systems which are increasingly influenced by conservative structures.”

A message of solidarity from banned independent radio station B92 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia to Pacifica Radio Stations in the US, expressing support in their struggle to preserve progressive community radio in the United States – July 1999

The problem is that with media control in the hands of a few and no outlet for opposing viewpoints, the First Amendment guarantees are basically shit blotter. It’s roughly like the Second and Third Amendment guarantees against a standing army being trampled by an out of control military machine. One wonders in retrospect why did the founders bother to write all this down if it would become meaningless in a few years?

There’s quite a lot to be angry about here, but I am not sure of where to direct all this anger.

I will add a couple of links here for non MSM news:

• http://www.pacifica.org/
• http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Independent_Media/Internet_News_Information.html
• http://www.celticguitarmusic.com/links_liberal.htm
  

Mark Hertsgaard, Climate Cranks, and "Conservativism"

This little factoid really bothers me:

There is a major paradigm shift in the climate story, in the climate problem. What changed, sometime around the turn of the century, was that global warming triggered outright climate change, and it did so a hundred years sooner than scientists expected. And so that huge shift in the problem – the fact that now we're locked into a significant amount of climate change, even if we do everything right--Mark Hertsgaard

Mark Hertsgaard and the Climate Cranks from Mark Hertsgaard on Vimeo.

The problem is that Conservative parties outside of the US have admitted to climate change, as this screen capture from the UK Conservative Party shows:


UK Conservative Party (You know, the Party that produced Margaret Thatcher) Policy on Climate Change:

Climate Change and Energy

The Government believes that climate change is one of the gravest threats we face, and that urgent action at home and abroad is required. We need to use a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions, decarbonise the economy and support the creation of new green jobs and technologies. We will implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy.

* We will push for the EU to demonstrate leadership in tackling international climate change.
* We will seek to increase the target for energy from renewable sources, subject to the advice of the Climate Change Committee.
* We will continue public sector investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology for four coal-fired power stations.
* We will establish a smart grid and roll out smart meters.
* We will create a green investment bank.
* We will retain energy performance certificates while scrapping HIPs.
* We will establish an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage.
* We will cancel the third runway at Heathrow and refuse permission for additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted.
* Through our 'Green Deal', we will encourage home energy efficiency improvements paid for by savings from energy bills.
* We will reform energy markets to deliver security of supply and investment in low carbon energy, and ensure fair competition.
* We will give an Annual Energy Statement to Parliament to set strategic energy policy and guide investment.
* We will work towards an ambitious global climate deal that will limit emissions and explore the creation of new international sources of funding for the purpose of climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Now, why can't the US Republican party and other "Conservatives" get on the same bandwagon?


See also:
Generation Hot
Mark Hertsgaard
Generation Hot on Facebook
Why Are Republicans Against The Science?
The Conservative Party | Policy | Where we stand | Climate Change and Energy

Conservative or Liberal?

I mentioned this post over at Opinione in my previous post, but feel it deserves special mention on its own.

Opinione discusses how the terms liberal and conservative have different meanings depending one where one is in the world. He also points out that: "Looking at Barack Obama from a European perspective, the only issue Obama is considered a liberal on is the support and endorsement of liberalism as an economic model and his liberal support of continuing the perpetual use of military power."

Opinione also says that "After spending a considerable amount of time of living in Italy, it is safe to say that even the most liberal American politician would be a candidate from the conservative polity party of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or the political party of Pier Ferdinando Casini and the Union of Christian Democrats." One doesn't need to go to Italy or other Continental European country to see that the US is far more right wing than Europe. One can go to The United Kingdom to see that even the Conservatives would seem liberal by US standards.

I have to admit that I find it amusing at the misuse of the term "liberal" in US politics. Even more amusing is the abuse of the term "socialism". Fortunately, it is quite easy to get the American public to work against their own self interests.