Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

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All the recent natural disasters, compounded with ongoing International terror strikes and American leadership errors, are giving me a bad case of the Doomsday Blues. Let’s face it, with rampant population and its resulting poverty, global warming and its resulting catastrophes, and WMDs and their resulting mass destruction, it seems like without a whole lot of peace, love and understanding… we’re fucked!

I’ve been writing about the blending of media and politics, and it seems as though some really wealthy, powerful guys are thinking, “Hey, we didn’t amass a big fortune just to have the world blow up in my face!” So, wouldn’t it be great if Bill Gates and Paul Allen used their massive wealth to steer America back on track by the next big election? OK, we should also add Bill Joy, Steve Jobs and their companies to pitch in to redesign a smarter, better Operating System for the USA.

Meanwhile, a group of philanthropic statesmen are really doing something. They’ve organized NTI, The Nuclear Threat Initiative and produced a docudrama Last Best Chance which imagines the results of al Qaeda operatives striking with nuclear weapons. It gives some hope that successful influential people are working on solving hard problems.

Al Gore remarks on threats to American democracy and the marketplace of ideas at a conference at The Media Center at the American Press Institute.

Read or listen to the entire address. Here are a few quotes:

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

Keep in mind, your thoughts and opinions matter. Just because an event is not on major television, does not mean it did not happen. It still is valid, it exists. If it is covered on television, most likely it is not news and information with clarity, but planned out entertainment, advertising and propaganda.

The access to digital cameras and electronic publishing has produced a huge wave of amateur photographers posting on the web, including soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Abu Ghraib was just the tip of a bloody nasty iceberg.

Last week SF Chronicle columnist Neva Chonin published an article “Porn Wars, Part II”, pointing out a website and this backstory:

“For a year now, American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been posting photographs of corpses — insurgent corpses, civilian corpses, unidentifiable piles of guts in various stages of mutilation — on the site in return for free access to its porn cache.”

Caution: this website is for mature adults with strong stomachs. The combat images are labelled “General” others “Gory.” The gory ones show the true horrors suffered by humanity as a result of the weapons of war and violence. A dose of this might shock some folks out of their abstract theorizing over the merits of fighting this foreign war.

These photographs should serve as a reminder of the consequences of armed combat. Look at the carnage before leaping into war. Incredibly, Vietnam was not enough of a history lesson to radical conservatives. They see the Vietnam era as “America’s Second Civil War,” and new war in Iraq will provide vindication. I’ll talk in simple Texan language, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

If you are an electronic music fan like me, then you will appreciate this treat. Post Beatles Number Nine, Pre Nine Inch Nails, give a listen to 58 minutes of experimental Synclavier compositions by Frank Zappa during his Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention period. Labelled Resolver + Brutality by FZ himself, this music is now online at the Kill Ugly Radio Site’s Friday Boot. A word of warning, the Friday Boot offering changes week to week, so Resolver + Brutality tracks may not be there after October 14. More info at afka.net.