March 31, 2012

Let’s Stop Big Media’s (B)AD Behavior

There is some good news. The White House opposes this latest bid by the broadcasting oligarchy to further eviscerate the public interest. And the fate of the House bill in the Senate is uncertain at best. In the meantime, as far as those political ads go, we’re not totally helpless. Here’s what you can do: Under current law, local television stations still have to keep paper files of who’s paying for these political ads, and they have to make those files available to the public if requested. You can even make copies to take away with you. So just go down to your nearest station, politely ask for the records, and then send the data online to the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative or to the organization of investigative journalists called ProPublica. Both have mounted campaigns to get the information online.

Each is pulling together all the information on political ads they get from you and others — crowdsourcing — and making it available to the entire country via the Internet. If you’re a high school teacher or college professor of journalism, have your students do it and maybe give them classroom credit for collecting the data democracy needs to work.

Full piece by Bill Moyers here http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/30-1

March 30, 2012

Robert Reich: Wall St. hasn’t changed its ways, despite ‘Occupy’ protests

A study conducted by Echo Research and Makovsky found that the “Occupy Wall Street” movement had an impact on marketing and communications executives at financial services firms.

However, professor Robert Reich said Thursday that marketing specialists might understand how angry the public has become at Wall Street, but CEOs and major traders — “the real power” — have probably not been effected.

“The kingpins on Wall Street see this as a public relations problem,” he explained on Current TV.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/29/robert-reich-wall-st-hasnt-changed-its-ways-despite-occupy-protests/

March 17, 2012

Livestream: Occupy Wall Street Celebrates 6 Month Anniversary

Source: http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/9824271

Read more: http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/livestream-occupy-wall-street-celebrat

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Occupy Wall Street is out and about celebrating their 6 month anniversary with a march, and they've got beautiful weather for it, too. Several "mic checks" already mentioning the "American Spring," and a "Resurgence" of the movement, and a powerful year.

March 13, 2012

Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein - A Short Film

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth.

Today, these trends have reached their extreme - but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.

This short contains some visuals from the upcoming feature doc Occupy Love http://occupylove.org

March 13, 2012

Capitalism

Was a good way to do trade for centuries before Smith, all he did was condense an ancient economic system into some books. What we need a is democratic participatory economy. Forget about socialism, think democracy and you will never lose.

March 13, 2012

What Is Russia Today?

Russia Today was conceived as a soft-power tool to improve Russia’s image abroad, to counter the anti-Russian bias the Kremlin saw in the Western media. Since its founding in 2005, however, the broadcast outlet has become better known as an extension of former President Vladimir Putin’s confrontational foreign policy. Too often the channel was provocative just for the sake of being provocative. It featured fringe-dwelling “experts,” like the Russian historian who predicted the imminent dissolution of the United States; broadcast bombastic speeches by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez; aired ads conflating Barack Obama with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; and ran out-of-nowhere reports on the homeless in America. Often, it seemed that Russia Today was just a way to stick it to the U.S. from behind the façade of legitimate newsgathering.

So it was fairly unremarkable when Russia Today, in a July 8 segment called “Fox News stirring up racial fears in America,” interviewed the chairman of the New Black Panther Party, Dr. Malik Zulu Shabazz, who lambasted Republicans for playing on people’s fears in an effort to dominate the fall midterm elections.

But then Russia Today did something out of character. When Fox’s Glenn Beck attacked the segment, asking why Russian state-run TV was suddenly “in lock-step” with the Obama administration, Russia Today fired back in a way that was puzzling to anyone familiar with the channel. On July 9, Alyona Minkovski, who hosts a daily program called The Alyona Show, laid into Beck—“the doughboy nut job from Fox News”—with patriotic American fervor: “I get to ask all the questions that the American people want answered about their own country because I care about this country and I don’t work for a corporate-owned media organization,” she said, her voice rising.

Read more here: http://www.cjr.org/feature/what_is_russia_today.php?page=all

March 1, 2012

Occu-Spy, with Matt Taibbi - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Big plans for the growing Occupy Movement, with two of the good guys.