@GeorgeMonbiot takes down the corporate media

George Monbiot – Unmasking the Press:

'via Blog this'

Too bad about Hitchens, but the best thing I've found about the corporate media this week comes from Monbiot. Everything you need to know, including the essential 99 percent versus 1 per cent dynamic, is in here.

The Sun's effect on our national conversation is obvious, but what about the Globe?

It's a straightforward question: what are people talking about? What's capturing their attention and imaginations? Public conversation. Nothing gives you a better sense of a community or a society than gauging what people are talking about. (24/7 on Kim Kardashian? That's got to tell you something.)

It's been one of this little corner's favourite hobby horses for as long as I can remember. Public discourse. National conversation. Provincial. Municipal. Whatever. You want civic ambition, you need to look at the quality of the conversations people are having. (I'm focusing on civic ambition because in a recent piece, the Globe's ideologically reliable urban-affairs curmudgeon Marcus Gee was complaining about the lack thereof. More on that in a minute. )

Thoughts for Remembrance Day, and Matt Taibbi figures out the Occupy movement

It's a big man who can start a national column with an admission that he got it wrong.

This little corner's been relatively silent on the whole Occupy thing, but now that it's gotten the Masters of the Universe sufficiently rattled, they're cranking up the apparatus of repression. At encampments everywhere, the cops are moving in.

@LacyMacAuley and my namesake: This is where we juxtapose, redux | #G20

"Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal."
She thought it over. "They can't do that," she said finally. "It's the one thing they can't do. They can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
"No," he said a little more hopefully, "no; that's quite true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them."

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Chapter 7 


Related posts:

• @TorontoPolice Tweeter guy weighs in | #G20
• Mistakes were made, Bill Blair says | #G20
• G20 asshole cops = schoolyard bullies

Class warfare and the corporate media

In a comment on the preceding post, JJ (is she returning to the blogosphere? Be still, my beating heart!) observes the near-total blackout on coverage of the situation in Michigan.

Egypt and the death of the American Empire

What was I saying a few weeks ago about Tucson?

Looks like Thomas Walkom's thinking the same thing. Bet he's not the only one, either.

A 'terrorist fist bump' to Alex Hundert

That's right. Give the wanktards something to get all excited about.