It can take years to break through in popular culture. Just ask any non-Idolesque singer. Ask any musician, actor, artist etc. Getting the word out there can be a long and arduous task and raw talent or appeal is not always a deciding factor. Timing is everything we are told, being in the right place at the right time. That of course implies luck as a factor, or “getting your big break” as some put it.
Others will say that you make your own breaks.
I’m sure it’s a combination of everything. Even heathens like myself like to imagine that every once in a while the “forces” align and something comes of it. Of course we heathens also like to believe that outside of science, there are no forces, and that the studies of alignment and coincidence are simply things people do to pass the time and to make themselves look much cleverer than they actually are.
Days Left to Register and Decide Ontario Tories Tory-Replacement
Hear Ye, Hear Ye! One left week to register as an Ontario Progressive Conservative Party member and vote!
(When it comes to the idea of provincial PC’s , the first thought that should enters the mind is “is there a differentiation between the federal and provincial parties anymore?” )
In any case, May 14 is the deadline to pony up ten bucks for party membership and a right to participate in the June 21 and 25 “preferential ballot” vote, in time for the Markham convention on June 26 - 28. [i]“An advance poll will open on Sunday, June 21st from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm “according to the official OCPC website, and “Voting day will be Thursday, June 25th from 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm at voting locations across the province.”
Midnight Special: Happy 90th Birthday Pete Seeger! Special
Please follow the link and have a few at our special tribute to Pete Seeger on his 90th Birthday!
We have renditions of Seeger classics, including submissions from Brant Bjork guitarist, an amazing new artist named Gravity Wave, and reminiscences from citizens and activists, such as the Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May.
Follow the links to the story and have a peek.
Editorial - Specter Paints Pennsylvania Senate Map Blue
So part of the reason Senator Specter made the switch to join the Democrats is so that he would not lose his place on the ballot as senatorial candidate of the Republican Party in 2010. The general consensus is that Specter will not have any serious Democratic primary opponents that could unseat him next year. I understand Senator Specter wants to win another term but I did not expect him to switch parties to do so.
Until at least the midterm elections next year, two Democratic senators will represent my home state.
Bulletin: War Resistor Sgt Chiroux successfully challenged his ‘Misconduct’ hearing, facing down the U.S. Army and offering a potential “green light” for other soldiers challenging the legality of U.S. action in Iraq and Afghanistan…And what about AWOL soldiers seeking asylum in Canada…
With a 2 - 8 week window open until oral arguments are heard, it could be almost be in May until the Minnesota Supreme Court hears any presentation of Norm Coleman’s appeal in the seemingly endless U.S. Senate race.
After a 7 week long trial by a three judge panel in the lower courts of Minnesota, Coleman refuses to concede his loss to challenger Al Franken. Coleman filed a notice of appeal declaring he want the Supreme Court of MN to overturn the lower court’s ruling.
Filing with the Minnesota Supreme Court, Coleman this afternoon appealed the rulings of the three-judge panel that declared last week that Al Franken received the most votes and that the 2008 U.S. Senate election was a properly executed election.
EXCLUSIVE Interview: Vet and Iraq War Resistor Faces “Misconduct” Trial in St.Louis,MO Special
Interview: Sgt.Matthis Chiroux -Veteran, war resistor, and outspoken critic of the both the Bush and Obama administrations Mid East and Central Asian Policy faces Military Hearing for “Misconduct” on April 21st. We spoke to Matthis about his upcoming case…
Stephen Dohnberg, who has been reporting on the IVAW since 2003, will join Sgt Chiroux on Toronto’s News/Talk CFRB 1010 AM to discuss the case, and the broader issues surrounding it on April 19th at 8 PM eastern standard time. Callers can phone toll free 1 800 561 CFRB.
excerpt:Combating Somali Piracy: How Many People Can We Afford To Kill?
You don’t have to be a serious news junkie to know that there is currently a lively debate ongoing in the media on the issue of combating Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden. Commentators from across the political spectrum have laid out countless detailed plans for fighting the pirates both at sea and on land, and some such as CNN’s Jack Cafferty and Rick Sanchez have even put the question directly to their audiences. However, all of the solutions presented seem to involve some level of military force used against Somalia, specifically US military force, and the major differences between the plans are over questions of financial cost and political willpower. To put it bluntly, the real question at hand is how many Somali people we really feel like killing right now.
Provincial Tories’ Find New Leader’s Footing on Fractured Ground
Will the new, non-centrist Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario find success reaching back to the Mike Harris years? Or rather is it the Bill Davis Big Blue Machine that is the key to Progressive Conservative success?
Tim Hudak is the new leader of Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Since the announcement of his candidacy, it was generally assumed that Hudak would walk off with the gig. The only real surprise was that it took three ballots.
The voting was based on a “preferential ballot” system, where party members choose and simply cast one ballot. In the course of three tallies, Hillier, Elliott, and Klees fell as 25,429 participating party members made the 41 year old Niagara - West Glanbrook MPP their new leader.
In short, it’s been an odd ride for the PCPO – culminating in party leader John Tory stepping down, unable to get any momentum for the party, not to mention a seat in his own riding. Out of the gates of the final tally (Hudak 54.7%, Klees 45.5%) came the expected platitudes about party unity and unseating McGuinty’s wasteful, spend-happy Liberals.
I am more interested in what I found to be absent in the events surrounding the convention.
The lack of immediacy or urgency, and the lack of cohesiveness
There won’t be a provincial election until 2011 - something we’re reminded of on the widget (aka The Countdown Clock) of the Convention website, http://www.unitedandstrong.ca/: a countdown of 829 days, 8 hours, 43 minutes, and 9 seconds…
That is plenty of time for the Provincial Liberals to mess things up (more, or less, based on ones perspective), but it’s also a political eternity by any measure. With plenty of time the Ontario economy could be expanding in such a way that would help the Liberals sway or propagandize voters into thinking that they had had something to do with it.
But amid this lack I speak of, I also think there is a concern among members of the PCPO to define itself too narrowly. Although more often than not I spoke to (admittedly younger) party members who thought the ‘Progressive’ tag should be dropped from the name; there was a more pragmatic component of party membership that at least looked uncomfortable with this notion.
If anything, 829 days could be a dangerous thing for the PCPO and the new leader. Although it is six years since the merger of the Federal parties to make the ‘Conservative Party’, the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party at this new moment feels like an extension of the federal version.
But Klees and Elliot supporters seem to instinctively know that the party caucus is made up of more than Harperites hoping that playing from the right will differentiate their policies from their political rivals. However, this doesn’t mean that the policies will bring success with power. That’s a form of hubris that is as dangerous as it is foolish.
On various occasions, on various message boards over the course of the leadership campaign, culminating in the Cover it Live blog window employed by the Convention website on the convention day, people posted their hopes for a provincial party that would extend the mandates of the federal.
Would the Progressive Conservative Party not be more likely to achieve power if it maintains its progressive element, making it more inclusive to voters?.
Interestingly, as I participated in the CIL blog discussion, I saw that my more expansive observations about the party’s history were being moderated into the ether.
Tim Hudak is clearly a Mike Harris protégé. It was the campaign selling point. This is a good thing if you think Harris was a good thing. This does cast the new leader, whose campaign slogan was “Right For Ontario”, as exactly that: an overtly conservative party that really only seems to strike this chord and only this chord that emerged with the election of Mike Harris. When I attended the leadership conventions of Frank Miller, and Larry Grossman, no one walked away with a concern that although fiscal responsibility was a goal, it would mean sacrifices for the province’s have-nots.
So in essence, the party has a few heady weeks ahead of it with a new leader, a sort – of new legacy, and slightly over 2 years to convince Ontarians that it is the political machine to bring Ontario back into wielding the economic might that defines Ontario.
But the PCPO aren’t going to be as successful as they were between 1995 and 2002 by implementing the same playbook, as political situations don’t unfold like Rubik’s Cubes.
On the lone televised debate, featured on TVO’s ‘The Agenda with Steve Paikan’, candidate Elliott offered some closing remarks that were ones that those within the party’s confines might best heed, and that was a message of communication, of reaching the average Ontarian.
“We need to have a strong economy in order to be able to help vulnerable people.”
A more esteemed premier, Bill Davis who was able to govern from 1971 to 1985, was quoted by the Star as saying
“This party will not succeed unless (Hudak) sits down with the other candidates, with people like John Tory and others, and finds some form of consensus.”
An approximate 25,429 of about 43,000 eligible party members came out to vote in their respective ridings.
40,000 registered members in 2009 is down from the 100,000 registered members in 2002.
Jingoism Isn’t Journalism! Why I Don’t Trust CNN & Corporate Media To Cover Iran
~Linda Milazzo
As a critic of media, in particular of cable/satellite “news,” I’m troubled by American corporate-media, in particular CNN’s near non-stop coverage of the turmoil in Iran. Not because the story isn’t important. It’s critically important and warrants the personal coverage it’s getting from the Iranian people as they bypass corporate channels to tell their stories on facebook, youtube, flickr and twitter.
Thanks to Iran’s tech-savvy society, old-time corporate media is now relegated to the position of new-media aggregator, whoring its visibility to co-opt the Iranian people’s new-media messages to America and the world. Old-media, and specifically CNN, are learning the difficult lesson that with or without their vast resources and state of the art studios, the Iranians’ stories will be told. And they’ll be told to tens of millions more viewers than cable and satellite programs tend to reach.
Despite CNN’s attempt to co-opt the scope of new-media in the Iranian social justice movement and present it as a novel approach, social networking venues have been used by activists around the world to broadcast and document grassroots activities that corporate-media either buried or refused to report. Youtube and flickr have long been used by grassroots organizations in the United States and elsewhere to document and corroborate socio-political actions such as marches and rallies which opposed the Iraq war, Bush administration policies and corporate greed, but weren’t in corporate-media’s interest to cover since they challenged their power elite: their corporate advertisers and their government cronies.
As a participatory journalist who’s been present at a multitude of marches and rallies that were spurned by corporate-media, I’ve consistently used new-media to document corporate-media ignored or buried events. Witness in this article written in August ‘08 during the Democratic National Convention, the baton bashing of a woman anti-war activist in Denver by a Colorado law enforcement officer that was virtually ignored by corporate-media. For the past several years the anti-war movement has photographed for flickr and video’d for youtube the number of attendees at its events to counter the reckless underreporting by corporate controlled print and TV news.
As reported by Indymedia, the St. Paul police routinely beat and arrested progressive protesters during the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minnesota when they protested the improprieties of their government, yet these events got little corporate-media coverage and no visible anchor sympathy was shown for the beaten. Instead, Americans who have challenged the policies of the US government have been mocked and overlooked by their own country’s media, while those in other nations who challenge the leadership of non US allies like Iran, Argentina and Bolivia get enthusiastic coverage. The hypocrisy is astounding.
Why is corporate-media so willing to provide wall-to-wall coverage of the people’s movement in Iran and graphic images of the Iranian government’s brutality, but unwilling to cover the progressive anti-war movement in America and the police brutality here?
Jingoism isn’t journalism!
Again, I don’t mean to diminish the momentousness of the socio-political happenings in Iran, nor the valor of the Iranian people as they face off against their tyrannical government. I’m in awe of their patriotism and heroism and I want them to prevail.
Still I question whether corporate-media’s intense coverage and uncharacteristic emoting are in the best interests of the people of Iran. As the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s graphic violence against the people is continually televised, some in this country may soften to the idea of American intervention in Iran, as happened with Iraq after ongoing corporate-media/Bush administration/anti Iraq indoctrination.
Absurd inflammatory statements have already been made by corporate-media representatives, notably by CNN, that can drive the case to support military action. Witness the video below of CNN anchor Don Lemon’s wanton assertion of a correlation between Iran and Rwanda, suggesting that Iran may be the new Rwanda and the United States may suffer similar regret for non-action as it did for not interceding in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Here’s the video of Lemon making that ludicrous comparison, which he has made more than once:
I question the motives and involvement of the same corporate-media that sold an unnecessary preemptive war and profited from its prosecution. I’m suspect of a corporate-media that co-opts people’s personal media reports, then re-frames and retells them using the same corporate launch pads that propelled an illegal war. I’m distrustful of the same corporate-media that refuses to show graphic murders in Iraq that involve our American military, but broadcasts murders by the military of a nation America opposes.
And worse, I’m infuriated by that same Corporate News Network, CNN, that had the temerity on Sunday to feature Paul Wolfowitz being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer in a discussion on Iran. The same Paul Wolfowitz who was a principal architect of the Iraq war, and who on Sunday used the ominous words “the darkness is falling” to support his argument for outside “assistance” for Iran.
Really, CNN, have you no shame?
I’m nervous folks. I hear the drums of corporate-media pounding to engage Iran — and they aren’t pounding diplomacy. I see a clear and present danger. I hope I’m wrong. And I sincerely hope Barack Obama maintains his politically sound disengagement and doesn’t follow the drum beats to war.
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