A Corporate Political Predator In Ohio

A local weekly rag in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio published a report on a Columbus woman whose story of a recent incident involving her and a Cincinnati-based retail chain --- a major Bush contributor --- might be a good example of McCarthyism in the 21st Century.

According to The Other Paper, a Columbus Obama supporter named Renee Barker had a heated political argument with the male cashier at a United Dairy Farmers store. She was verbally harassed by those employees and later subject to intimidation and threats by them and by the company itself. At one point, an hour after Barker called the store to report the harassment, she received a blocked call in which the caller told her, "Watch your back. I know where you live."

UDF's district head of security later sent her a threatening letter, citing her "harassing phone calls to Corporate offices," referring to calls she had placed to report their employees' verbal abuse and threats. The company also banned Barker from all their stores and tried to intimidate her with claims that they had filed police reports against her, (though it turned out that the Columbus police have no such reports on file).

This link will take you to The Other Paper's article. (They don't seem to archive their articles, so it might only be up on the website for a short time.)

Addendum to Cockburn The Penetrator...

By the way, I found a series of articles disputing global warming, written by Alexander Cockburn, and a series of responses by George Monbiot. The articles have the same sarcastic tone as the above interview. The beginning of Monbiot’s first response includes this admonition:

When a non-scientist attempts to dispute the findings of an entire body of science, a good deal of humility and a great deal of research is required. Otherwise he puts himself in the position of the 9/11 truthers. Though they might know nothing about physics, structural engineering, ballistics or explosives, these people still feel qualified to assert that the experts in these fields are wrong, and that the Twin Towers were in fact brought down by controlled explosions.

Links to the articles and reponses can be found here. Monbiot’s final response to Cockburn’s articles can be found Here. (The link from the page I posted above is dead.)

Cockburn The Penetrator can't penetrate global warming denial nonsense?

I think I first read leftist Irish-American journalist Alexander Cockburn's writing back in the late 80's or early 90's when I sought out some alternative reading on politics and found several editions of The Nation at the library. Though at the time I wasn't very politically savvy and I didn't understand a lot of what he wrote, even then I knew he was a sharp mind and spoke some penetrating truths.

So in the last 5 or 6 years, as my political awareness has grown by leaps and bounds, Cockburn's become one of the maybe ten or fifteen political observers I most look for and pay attention to, especially on issues of foreign policy. I listen to a metric tonne of progressive / leftist / liberal / independent (you get it) podcasts, and when his name comes up, I make sure I listen. He's a great interview -- lively, funny and sometimes sarcastic. When I found out that he and his brother Patrick -- another excellent political journalist -- are uncles to yet another outstanding journalist, Laura Flanders, that made sense to me.

So when I first heard Cockburn's written several articles denying the human factor in global warming (as well as the severity of the problem) I had a moment of denial myself. I could hardly believe it.

Cockburn The Penetrator? Same guy who went to Baghdad and said "You'd think you'd see some cranes in the sky if there were any actual reconstruction going on"? Yeah, sure enough. Same likeable, irrepressible character.

Recently I heard Alexander Cockburn interviewed on Robert McChesney's program Media Matters and responded this way:

It still baffles me that a crack journalist like Alexander Cockburn so brushes aside the whole idea of global warming being caused by human activity. The way he glibly blows off the contributions of thousands of scientists and observers who say that the evidence overwhelmingly points to human activity... his flip assessment of the "hockey stick"... etc.

I've had a lot of respect for Cockburn (actually, both Cockburns and their niece Laura Flanders) and his intellectual authenticity for some time --- especially on foreign policy --- so the way he doesn't just respectfully differ with the adherents of human-caused global warming science but outright ridicules them makes me wonder. Whose theories does he embrace? Has he done his own scientific study on the subject? What's the deal with the sarcasm?

I'm not a scientist and I haven't done my own research, so I weigh the arguments based on what I hear from people like Al Gore, Thom Hartmann, Bernie Sanders, Tim Flannery and other informed observers who agree on the overwhelming evidence of the human hand in climate change.

Yes, I get the story from one side, by and large, but I hear interviews of and by these people and I don't think they're stacking the deck. In fact, I've heard Hartmann debate openly and fairly with a number of global warming deniers, and I've heard Gore's testimony before the Senate, and I can't believe Hartmann and others are either so hoodwinked or have such a dishonest agenda as Cockburn implies.

I appreciate Bob McChesney's silence when Cockburn makes these dismissive comments. He reminds me of Brian Lamb or Terry Gross at those moments, letting the guest's words stand or fall on their own. In this case it seemed to me the silence was deafening after Cockburn's scorn for thousands of honest scientists and thinkers fell with a shocking thud, like a David Horowitz "Islamofascism" speech at a gathering of Palestinian refugees.

Reform The Media

This man is Bob McChesney. He's a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Urbana, a media historian, and a co-founder of Free Press and perhaps the top media activist in the United States.

I first learned about Bob McChesney back around 2002-2003. I kept seeing his name pop up when I searched for information on media criticism. I understood that something was askew with the news media in the U.S., but I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. So when I first listened to a lecture he gave for the Mountain Area Information Network, lo and behold, it was like the clouds lifted and the sun broke through. It was powerful. Bob McChesney's understanding of the problem of American journalism, it's history and role in democracy, is vast and compelling, and something about his offhanded, sensible Midwestern style, just got through to me. It all started to come together, and I began to understand that the U.S. media have a number of biases stemming from their place in the U.S. class structure, their obsession with ratings, their political ties and so forth.

Since then I've listened to that lecture and the accompanying interview with MAIN's Wally Bowen at least 8 times. Each time I learn something, some historical detail or enlightening perspective on the media that I didn't have before. That lecture's so packed.

For years before I heard and read Bob McChesney and began to understand where he's coming from, I had my criticisms of the media and their bias, but I could never quite put my finger on what they were doing. I wasn't clear on what the game was and the rules were. I think I tried to see the bias in the news media in terms of Democrat vs. Republican, as many progressives and liberals do today, but that model often didn't fit. McChesney made me see how the bottom line was usually power and the media's constant protection of the powerful and wealthy.

AT MSNBC, VOTER IGNORANCE IS GOAL ONE.

Chris Matthews and one of MSNBC's reporters demonstrate yet again how they would, if they could, skip grade school to instead go stick the guy's head in the toilet who suggested putting the words "an informed electorate" into the Constitution.

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On candidates for a humane and moral society

This is something I wrote back in, I think, 2005, following the awful crush of disappointment and anger that so many of us felt after the 2004 election.

I think what the Dems need to do is run candidates who bring the message with them that what the Republicans are doing to the country is morally wrong. Enriching the rich while leaving others to rot, sending people to kill and die without just cause, obstructing health care insurance reform, destroying the social safety net, torture --- these are all moral issues.

Humanity should be more important than corporate profits or political power. Compassion should be a higher priority than saving some money. Good citizenship does more good than correct political incorrectness.

Religion should be a private matter and empathy should be built into public policy. Human and civil rights should be our top priorities.

We need leaders who can take a People First message out to the people here and abroad and proclaim it loudly. We need someone who can get Americans out of this selfish mindset and make them feel like being good citizens, like pitching in for the cause.

The core values of a more generous and trusting society should be front and center. (This is what Arianna Huffington calls "going big" --- carrying a big moral message that draws people together, the way Bobby Kennedy did during the Viet Nam war.)

I think a lot of liberals have known in the backs of their minds that liberal policies tend to lead to that more trusting, engaged, decent society anyway, but not everyone knows this.

I think many "red" voters who really do care about people, but were sucked in by Bush's phony promise of morality, would go for a big message like this.

Wasserman's Solartopia

I saw Harvey Wasserman speak at a downtown Columbus church March 25th. He spoke in a basement room where a small group had gathered. He talked about his book Solartopia, which lays out a near future in which everything's powered by green, renewable energy. No fossil fuels.

We'd seen his Free Press (not Bob McChesney's media reform group) partner Bob Fitrakis whip up some anti-Bush anger in 2004 in front of the statehouse and at a few other gatherings. Bob gets lit positively on fire when he speaks at rallies. But Harvey always seemed to be kind of elusive.

A few years ago, I read his book A Glimpse of the Big Light: Losing Parents, Finding Spirit. Tanya had bid on it at Columbus Montessori's yearly fundraising gala, knowing that I was a fan of Harvey's work with the Free Press. It's one long poem about the death of his parents and what his family went through. It's an inspiring book, surprisingly positive.

I first met Bob and Harvey, and Suzanne, Bob's wife, at the Free Press media reform conference in Memphis last year. (This one is the McChesney group.) I'd rented a wheelchair --- a really good idea because it helped me keep blood in my upper body and avoid a lot of lightheadedness --- and driven 13 hours straight --- a really bad idea which raised my pain level and kept me in my hotel room the entire second day of the conference.

Bob (pictured right, with Harvey) and Suzanne were the first people I talked with there, and I'd never actually met Bob before, so I introduced myself. Later, Harvey (above left, with me in my wheelchair) showed up and I talked with him. He and Bob and Norman Solomon were giving a presentation on energy and the media, but it must have been a more or less last-minute thing, as it wasn't in the NCMR program.

The media reform conference was a major galvanizing experience for me. A whopper. I'll post more about it later.

I later saw Bob and Harvey at other events, including the Columbus town meeting with Federal Communications Commissioners put on by Free Press in March last year. I also took part in a Columbus City Of Peace plenary session, chaired by Bob (and moderated by Suzanne), which resulted in a resolution and statement on the war, among other issues, presented to the Columbus City Council a few weeks ago.

So, anyways, Harvey's talk at the Columbus church: He spoke about his vision of what can be done to head off global climate disaster, about the politics and technology of energy and a little bit about the history of these issues.

I took Solartopia home with me and began reading it right away. Right off the bat, it struck me as very readable and interesting. Wasserman writes from a hypothetical, 2030 a.d., post-fossil fuel perspective. He tells us what life is like when the world's societies are powered by wind, wave, geothermal, biomass, and of course, decentralized home-grown solar power-- with all the political, economic, technological and social ramifications. Freedom from Saudi oil bucks, petro wars, and the tyranny of the global petroleum trust; climate disaster headed off; air, water and food poisoning clipped, etc.

Though I thought Solartopia's start was a bit disorienting, we quickly understand what the narrative is: we're flying around the world in a jet fueled by hydrogen, first over Denmark's solar-paneled rooftops and wind turbines, tripping across the world and through recent history leading to A.D. 2030, to gain an understanding of the new life and how we got there. And we get it pretty fast, because it's so compelling and free of technical jargon, despite all the technical implications. Before I picked up this book, I'd never read anything with subject matter so potentially bo-ringgggg that held my attention so firmly.

Solartopia is one of the most hopeful books I've ever read. I highly recommend it.

Shouting over the walls of power

The following video shows an event I took part in during February 2007 in front of Senator George Voinovich's downtown Columbus office, graciously video'd and uploaded to YouTube by Columbus activist Greg Hoke.

It was cold and windy as hell. We were there to demonstrate our conviction that Voinovich must support efforts to end the occupation of Iraq. MoveOn initiated the action, which took place in numerous states all over the country. They provided us with page after page of petition signatures and comments from a long list of concerned dissenting Ohioans, and we read them over the p.a. system, chanted and conversed.

Eventually, we were allowed into a meeting room in Voinovich's office and were given an audience by a seemingly sympathetic and concerned assistant. Voinovich had been expressing misgivings about the war for a while and seemed to be ready to make a serious move, but each time we thought he was ready, he only disappointed us.

I first appear in a big orange coat at about 6 mi. 42 sec., then several times after, reading petition signatories' names and comments.

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Freaked out and hopeful

This is weird. I've finally decided to keep a journal, a blog, but it may be hard to decide what to write, because it's so wide-open. No agenda. I've thought for a long time that I'd write a political / social blog - okay, socio-political - because I've become so politically aware in the last so-many years. But, at the end of the day, I have too much to say about being alive that won't fit into a strictly political blog.

To borrow from Todd Rundgren, "Sometimes I can't help seeing all the way through." That sure applies to my political views. I always want to look beyond politics, into the social aspects, and beyond that into the personal parts - why do I feel this way or that way? - and, of course, beyond that too.

So let this blog be not bogged down by details or negativity or endless mind mining. Let it be as light as zen (yeah, like that's gonna happen!). Let it blow sideways through life. And produce some good ideas that people can latch onto. Amen. Wow.