THE HIDDEN FACE OF CONSOLIDATION- A "VULTURE FUND" SPECIALIZING IN "event-driven opportunities," & "undervalued companies," Alden Global Capital LLC managed $2,243,686,000 in assets from 16 clients. Check out what this means for the BAY AREA NEWS GROUP.
Alden Global Capital 101 January 28, 2016 Digital First Media Workers Or, why is a secretive club of millionaires buying up America’s newspapers? First in an ongoing series on Alden Global Capital and Digital First Media It’s not easy to find information about Alden Global Capital, the firm that owns most of Digital First Media. Even Alden’s company website oozes an aura of secrecy. The site is accessible only to Alden’s private investors, the homepage displaying a client log-in form, a New York phone number, an email address — and nothing else, though there’s a lovely background photo of an evergreen forest. Because Alden is privately held, it rarely has to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and details are scarce. No investors are named, no specifics are offered as to what they’re investing in. But there are more layers to the shroud. Alden’s activities are especially hard to track because many of its funds have offshore headquarters and have changed or added names — and locations — multiple times since their parent company was founded in 2007. There’s the now-defunct Alden Global Capital Limited, and the currently operating Alden Global Capital LLC. There’s Alden Global Opportunities Fund (Cayman) LP, and Alden Global Hellenic Opportunities Fund LP. The list goes on. In all, 24 Alden-related entities currently have filings with the SEC. Though it’s often described by Bloomberg and others as New York-based, it’s clear from the filings that many of Alden’s offshoots are (or were) headquartered in places with reputations as international tax havens — specifically the Cayman Islands and the English Channel island of Jersey Last week, however, Alden briefly surfaced in the public arena when it reported for the first time on its investments in Greece. Invest in distress Though Alden is known for investing in distressed newspaper companies, it also invests in distressed countries. In 2014, the company launched its Alden Global Hellenic Opportunities Fund to take advantage of the economic collapse in Greece, and last week the Hellenic fund reported to the SEC that it had raised $12.9 million from 17 investors. This business of investing in nations or companies when they’re down and out is known in the financial world as a “vulture fund.” In its 2015 brochure for prospective investors, Alden’s stated strategies are to invest in “event-driven opportunities,” undervalued companies, and “investing in opportunities in Greece and benefiting from the recovery of the Greek economy.” When describing its financially distressed assets, the brochure says, “These obligations are likely to be particularly risky investments, although they also may offer the potential for correspondingly high returns.” As to Alden’s net worth, filings show that as of March 2015, the primary company Alden Global Capital LLC managed $2,243,686,000 in assets from 16 clients. That’s more than $2.2 billion for anyone not interested in counting those commas and zeroes. The minimum investment to get in on this action? That’s $100,000 to $2 million, Alden’s brochure states. There are also special arrangements for those who think such amounts are chump change: “Separately managed account relationships are subject to significantly higher investment minimums that are negotiated on a case-by-case basis.” Buying the news So how did this billionaires’ vulture fund come to own many of America’s newspapers? Soon after its inception, Alden began investing in distressed newspaper companies, including Gannett, McClatchy, Freedom, Tribune, PostMedia, Philadelphia Media, and Media General, according to Harvard’s Nieman Lab. When the Journal Register company emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, Alden bought shares. In 2011, it bought the company outright. Meanwhile, MediaNews’ parent company was coming out of bankruptcy in 2010. Alden acquired a large stake and several of its executives sat on the MediaNews board. Then, in September 2013, news releases announced that Journal Register and MediaNews were uniting to form Digital First Media, or DFM. There was no mention of the real mover behind this historic “merger without merging,” as the Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton calls it. That mover was, of course, Alden Global Capital. DFM became the second-largest newspaper company in the U.S. in terms of circulation. Once the promises of a bright digital future for newspapers died down, many of those papers’ considerable real estate and other assets were sold off. As layoffs and severe cost-cutting escalated (though, as media analyst Ken Doctor has noted, profits remained high), Alden began negotiating to sell all of DFM to the highest bidder in 2014. In 2015, another private investment firm, Apollo Global Management, was announced as the buyer. The deal abruptly went bust as buyer and seller apparently couldn’t agree on a price. Today, Alden still owns DFM with no clear plan in sight. To say Alden has invested in news media may be a misleading term. To many of us, investing implies an injection of capital, perhaps with the connotation of nurturing a fledgling business into profitability. In contrast, the Alden-DFM method has been described as a “chop shop” strategy of dismantling newspapers’ physical operations, stripping off assets and profits, then hoping to sell whatever’s left. Meanwhile, every day Americans are still waking up and expecting to read the news, whether it’s printed on paper or on their local newspaper’s website. Whether they read it on smart phone or a tablet, people still expect to find out what’s happening in their communities and what elected officials, nonprofit groups and businesses are up to. That fact appears to be unimportant to Alden and its investors — indeed, the word “news” appears nowhere in Alden’s investment brochure. There’s more to this story, much more, which we’ll be investigating and bringing to you in future posts. Coming next in this series, Hedge Funds and Newspapers — A Simple Primer.
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Tom In Paine
February 23, 2016 Hillary Clinton and the DNC's Super Delegate Fraud. The AP headline read: Super delegates Help Clinton Expand Her Lead Despite NH Loss. It was and is a complete fabrication. Another way of putting it would be fraud. Initiated by Clinton and the DNC and unfortunately aided and abetted by two ignorant AP reporters (and others like CNN) who didn't know ( or maybe didn't care) that they were being snookered and simply swallowed what was thrown at them. It would help if people who actually think they are reporters would check DNC rules regarding the use of super delegates. Especially since there has only been one time in the history of the Democratic party that super delegates ever cast a vote and that was 32 years ago in 1984. And even then it was to affirm the candidate who won the most pledged delegates in the primaries. Because as of this moment,all those super delegates claimed by Clinton don't actually exist in terms of real votes. The only delegates that count right now and in all probability ever will count are pledged delegates won during the primaries, not super delegates. CNN has also been doing it's share of inept reporting by perpetuating the fiction around Clinton's bogus superdelegate count . Super delegates do not count towards anyone's delegate total because they don't actually exist and will never be cast unless an extraordinary set of circumstances arises at the convention circumstances that so far has only happened once before in the history of the Democratic Party. So in all likelihood super delegate votes will never be cast, something CNN is both too inept to know and too lazy to find out about. Super delegate declarations are also non-committal so any declarations made now count for nothing and carry no force of action even if super delegates were ever asked to cast a vote which is unlikely. And it's not even purely their choice to vote. They have to be formally asked. Which is why superdelegates haven't cast a vote in 32 years. Clinton and the DNC know this. But it's clear that the Democratic party establishment is willing to create the fiction and false impression that Clinton has a big delegate lead. She doesn't. Ignorant, incompetent journalists who have more in common with parrots than Woodward and Bernstein just happily repeat the fraud they are fed. Hillary Clinton has no actual super delegate votes. Because based on Democratic Party rules and procedures super delegate votes don't count until the are cast at the convention, not before, and won't ever be cast unless they are asked to break a hopelessly deadlocked convention. They do not automatically vote as John King erroneously claimed on CNN and have never voted since 1984. In 2008 with much talk about superdelegates switching from Clinton to Obama then back to Clinton and with neither candidate even close to the 2/3 majority needed, even then superdelegates didn't vote. So the real story which CNN and other news organizations miss, is why is Clinton and the DNC claiming super delegate votes now as part of her delegate total when it's a sham, super delegates have no vote now, probably never will and the declarations are non-committal? It's as much of a fraud as looking at a house you might buy, keep it under consideration, decide to keep looking but include the house in your financial statement as an asset even though you don't own it. Or writing a check post dated four months from now, unsigned and on a bank account that's not even open and claiming it as an asset. It's not only fraud, it reeks of campaign dirty tricks in collusion with the Obama run DNC as part of Clinton's backroom deal with Obama, trying to give the illusion of Clinton leading by a substantial margin when she isn't. And it raises an interesting question: is Hillary Clinton and the DNC thinking about trying to steal the nomination? This nonsense about super delegates is sheer political dishonesty with the Clinton campaign along with the help of the DNC who, as even David Gergen pointed out is in the tank for Clinton, trying to make it look like she's way ahead when she isn't. The story as reported by two AP reporters, Hope Yen and Stephen Ohlemacher (yes, let's name names) had the opening line, "so much for Bernie Sanders big win in New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton has picked up endorsements from 87 super delegates to the Democratic Conventions dwarfing Sanders gain in New Hampshire" . Its total fiction since Sanders pledged delegates are real and the "endorsements" count for nothing in terms of actual votes so Clinton and the DNC establishment successfully played the two AP reporters for stooges. As well as John King and others at CNN. Clinton saying she picked up 87 super delegates after New Hampshire has the same affect and same weight and real influence on the nomination as if she had picked up 87 empty beer cans. Well,no, that's not true because the beer cans would be worth more if they had a 5c deposit. So here are the facts and the truth about super delegates based on Democratic Party rules and procedures that you won't get from Clinton or the DNC, and it seems from the news media, at least not now: Super delegates have only cast a vote once in the history of the Democratic party, 32 years ago in 1984 when Walter Mondale beat Gary Hart by less than 500 delegates won in the primaries but didnt have the 2/3 needed for the nomination. But even then they didnt play a role in the nominating process for president. They cast their votes for Mondale who had 1,606 pledged delegates won in the primaries to Hart's 1164 which only affirmed the results of the primaries and allowed Mondale to get to the 2/3 threshold as required by DNC rules.. They have never cast a vote since. And as of now have no certain role. Pledged delegates do . So any declarations are bogus. Super delegates would not cast a vote unless an extraordinary set of circumstances arises at the convention, not before, a set of circumstances which only occurred in 1984,the only time super delegates voted since they were created. Which is what makes any non-binding declarations now bogus. And Clinton and the DNC know that too. Those circumstances are as they occured in 1984, that neither candidate finishes the primary season with the two thirds majority of pledged delegates needed for the nomination that are won in the primaries - if they did the nominating process is over without superdelegates casting a single vote - the delegate count is so close as to make them virtually tied, AND the convention is hopelessly deadlocked with neither candidate or party officials able to persuade delegates on the other side to switch after the first ballot. Super delegates could be used to break a hopeless deadlock when neither candidate is able to get the two-thirds delegate count needed. Or if a candidate finishes with a clear delegate lead but not enough to reach the 2/3 needed as per DNC rules. Then superdelegates could be used to get them over the top and to avoid what Democrats were afraid of when they created super delegates - a contentious convention and floor fight. Without being needed to vote superdelegates wouldn't vote and wouldn't dare vote in a way that would reverse the votes of pledged delegates won. When Obama finished the 2008 primary season with a paltry 65 delegate lead over Clinton and it looked like the nomination could go either way if superdelegates voted , Nancy Pelosi said super delegates were obligated to vote for the candidate who won the most delegates if they were to vote at all. So where does Clinton get off claiming over 440 super delegates when whether they will vote at all is yet to be determined, their "endorsements" are non-committal,worthless as votes, and in all probability super delegates will never vote at all? Delegates won in primaries, called "pledged delegates", are actually committed to vote for the candidate they are sent to the convention to vote for as a result of vote counts in the primaries. Without getting too esoteric, it's actually delegates that are elected during primaries, either Clinton or Sanders delegates who are then sent by voters to the convention to vote for the candidate they were elected to vote for on the first ballot. They are the only delegates that actually count now. And are real. And the delegates that traditionally, and to date have decided the nomination. So until and unless those extraordinary set of circumstances occur which only ocurred once, in 1984, super delegates will not vote, don't count now and for all intents and purposes dont even exist. When the first roll call vote is called there will be no super delegates voting. All of which shows the depths of dishonesty and deception Clinton is willing to go. And with her the Obama run DNC who look like they are trying to do what they can to rig the process and create false impressions. If Bernie Sanders finished with 2000 pledged delegates won during the primaries and needed another three hundred to get the two-thirds majority with Clinton say, 1,000 delegates behind, there would be some horse trading to get the remaining 300 delegates needed from Clinton perhaps making a deal on picking a vice presidential running mate. But its inconceivable super delegates even those declaring for her now ( which again, don't count) would cast votes for Clinton to give her the nomination.Super delegates casting their votes for the second place finisher never happened even in 1984. It would bring the Democratic party to its knees if they tried to crown a queen instead of nominate a president.and Sanders voters would never vote for Clinton no matter what histrionics DNC officials pulled over Supreme Court nominations etc etc. Super delegates would only vote to break an otherwise hopeless deadlock and to give a clear winner the votes required by rules to officially get the nomination. They are a last resort and most importantly as mentioned earlier, super delegates have only once in the history of the Democratic party ever cast a single vote and that was 32 years ago And if a hopeless deadlock never occurs super delegates will have no role. To count them now is pure fraud. So why is Hillary Clinton putting out the fiction that she is ahead on delegates even though she isn't because of super delegates? Because she is being underhanded and so is the DNC run by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Obama's hand picked chair of the DNC who are trying to build a phony aura of expectation and inevitability and the illusion that she will be the nominee and then if she doesn't have the actual votes from the primary battles try and steal the nomination by using super delegates with Obama and Wasserman-Schultz driving the getaway car. The New York Times acting like the long arm of the law put their arm on Clinton in a recent editorial making it clear that super delegates can have no role in the outcome of the nomination which needs to be decided by whoever wins the most delegates in the primaries. But there is another reason the Clinton campaign is putting out these super delegate numbers as if they count now when they don't. Its the kind of outrageous political tactics we've seen from Republicans -- a tactic to suppress the Sanders vote. There is little doubt that the Clinton campaign with the help of the DNC, by putting out these fictitious super delegate numbers are trying to create some false idea that Clinton has such a huge lead her nomination is inevitable. The hope is this will dampen the spirit and enthusiasm of Sanders voters (enthusiasm Clinton cant match) and hopefully hold down their turnout in the hopes of making them think Clinton's nomination is inevitable because of super delegates and there is nothing they can do to affect the outcome. Which of course is not true . Its more of a Republican style dirty trick, the kind they have tried in the past in the hopes of holding down the African American vote in certain communities. The principle is the same. The Clinton campaign and the DNC needs to be called out for this kind of dishonest manipulation when she is actually tied with Sanders 51-51 in pledged delegates, the only delegates that matter. This idea that super delegates have declared anything for her carries no authority, no weight, no certainty. Nothing a super delegate says now is binding. They could change their minds a hundred times between now and the convention, and no one would know so how can they be counted now? And if Clinton is putting out these phony super delegate numbers to try and grease the skids for an attempt at stealing the nomination at the convention, it might be a good idea for Sanders voters to remind her and everyone else of one other thing: In 2008 when it looked like Obama might lose the nomination to Clinton because of a super delegate vote, Donna Brazille, an Obama supporter and former chair of the DNC said publicly that if super delegates decided the nomination she would quit the Democratic party. If Donna Brazile can quit the Democratic party if super delegates decided the nomination so can Sanders voters. And they can make it clear that they will. Which means if Clinton and the DNC tries to steal the nomination from Sanders using super delegates if he has the majority of pledged delegates they can count on Sanders voters staying home. Clinton putting out the word that she has 469 delegates which include over 400 super delegates that she can't ethically or even by DNC rules count is almost a veiled threat as if to say, "okay I got buried by the voters in New Hampshire and it was razor thin in Iowa and Nevada but so what? I have a trick up my sleeve." If Clinton, Obama and the DNC think they are greasing the skids now so Clinton can pull a fast one at the convention later, they better not try. If they do anything to try and rig the nomination, Sanders voters can just vow never to support it, just like Donna Brazile threatened which will bring the Democratic party down like a house of cards and do Clinton no good in the general election. Let Sanders and his supporters put Clinton and the DNC on notice that if they do anything to rig the nomination, if the nomination does not go to the candidate who won the most votes and most delegates in the primaries as Nancy Pelosi in 2008 said it must, then the Democrats will have to face the music and take another drubbing like they did in 2010 and 2014 essentially over Obama's unscrupulous sell out of the health care public option to the insurance companies. Make it clear that if Clinton can't win honestly she is not going to win at all. And if Sanders voters stay home in the face of a corrupt process it will wipe out Democratic down ticket candidates also, and if that's what it takes to throw open the windows, let in the fresh air and purge the Democratic party of those corrupting the system, so be it. No amount of whining or scare tactics by Democratic big wigs about what will happen if Clinton loses and begging Sanders supporters to go along with the corruption will ever work. Its called making your own bed and lying in it. With the double meaning of the word "lying" very clear. ADDENDUM: This article has been updated to include the 1984 Democratic convention which is the only time super delegates have ever voted and then voted for Walter Mondale who won the most pledged delegates during the primaries, 1606-1164 confirming that pledged delegates won during primaries is the standard for nominating a presidential candidate. And does not change the fact that super delegate votes do not count unless cast at the convention and non-binding declarations that Clinton includes in her totals are completely bogus. James Troup with Gina Free.
March 13 at 11:23am · (the guy in the suit is a Trump Secret Service agent) This is what I will say about the Trump rally I attended Saturday...alone. It was scary. This man knows just what to say to fire up his crowd, no matter how factually inaccurate it may be. Wall! ISIS! Kill Them! Mexico! Then there was the blatant fear mongering. He told Ohioans that only oil was propping up their state, and that their economy was in serious trouble. He said this over and over again. He also told the crowd that ISIS was out to kill them. That ISIS was putting 50 people at a time in cages and drowning them in the ocean. And that we had to kill them first. Cheers for water boarding. Cheers for torture. Calls to cut off their heads. If this was a brown person saying the exact same things in the Middle East, we'd call them a dangerous terrorist. But since it's a white man in America, we call him a Presidential Candidate. The scariest part was the crowd. They loved everything that was being said. The calls for the wall. The calls to blow up oil fields. The calls to torture and kill people. And the protestors. Every time a protestor was kicked out, they were yells to get them out of here, even to KILL THEM!!! Really? Kill them? For protesting? When Trump brought up Obama, a teen even exclaimed "FCUK THAT NI&&ER!!!!" I felt like at any point, the crowd was going to light torches and grab their pitchforks, and spill out into the streets. The worst part was when their venom turned toward me. There were protestors around me who got ushered out, and then people started pointing at me, motioning for the Secret Service to "get him out of there". Now mind you, I hadn't uttered a single word the entire rally, but people still said things like "Well what about this one? He needs to go too!" At this point, the black kid that grew up in the projects, surrounded by drugs and gunfire, felt CONCERNED for his safety...at a Donald Trump rally. At that rally, I saw the scary underbelly of America. I saw unadulterated hate, fueled by intentional misinformation. These people who, just 2 hours ago, seemed like good and kind people, were now cheering for blood. The worst part is Donald Trump knows EXACTLY what he's doing. He's patterned his campaign after a WWE match... And it's working. Andy Caffrey Green Democratic U.S. Presidential Candidate for President 2016 Super Tuesday results show Bernie on the way to winning Democratic nomination! Other than Massachusetts, which she only won by a razor slim margin of 50.3% to Bernie’s 48.5%, Hillary Clinton could only win Super Tuesday victories in conservative southern states with large numbers of minorities. There are not many more states yet to vote with huge numbers of minorities. Bernie Sanders won all four of the other five states outside of the south, including Oklahoma, which has the most conservative Democrats out of all the Super Tuesday states. The pundits are clueless and missing all of this. They just look at the large advantage in delegates that Hillary has today and her Super Delegate advantage, but that is no indicator of things to come. This is: Despite Hillary’s victories today, if you add up the votes of all the Super Tuesday states, Bernie won white men 54-44%. That’s in all the states! Mostly southern states! The socialist did that! But Hillary won white women, blacks, and hispanics: White Women: only a 50% advantage to Bernie’s 48%. So it’s already almost a 50:50 split with white women! Hillary has almost lost her advantage with women! Blacks 83% to Bernie’s 15% Hispanics 67% to Bernie’s 33% So this bodes well for Bernie! He’s not going to drop below 48% among white women, and he can only go up among blacks and hispanics, and he’s creaming Hillary with white men. Even before Super Tuesday the writing was on the wall: Hillary’s only big win was also in a heavily black southern state, South Carolina 73.5% to 26%. Other than that, she won Iowa by a coin toss 49.9% to 49.6% and the Nevada caucus by a slim 52.6% to 47.3%. Bernie crushed her in New Hampshire 86.2% to 13.6%. The nation has known Hillary for 25 years. They’ve only known Bernie for less than one. ~~~ Hillary Trump Clinton reveals disconnection from reality in Super Tuesday speech Hillary Clinton last night: “America never stopped being great!” Wow! Could she be any more out of touch with reality? I guess she thinks that when the Supreme Court Republicans overthrew the Al Gore presidency that it was GREAT! She makes my case that she is an unrepentant mass murderer with her support for George Bush’s Iraq war. I guess she really thinks that war was GREAT! But I thought she said it was “a mistake.” Afghanistan and Libya destroyed by America, that was GREAT! When she empowered Dictator Bush in the world’s greatest terrorist assault since the Vietnam War, that destroyed the nation of Iraq, murdered a million people there, wiped out Christianity in Iraq, and irradiated it with depleted uranium mutating thousands of babies, well that was all GREAT to Hillary! Oh, and the resultant creation of ISIS? How freakin’ great was that?!! 35 years of climate denialist obstruction of climate action causing the now “unstoppable” collapse of the polar ice sheets and 20-66 feet of global sea level increases, that’s GREAT to Hillary! As was her husband sending Al Gore to Kyoto in 1997 to gut the climate treaty! Wonderfully GREAT! The crash of the economy deregulated by her husband and advocated by herself, man was that GREAT! The nation’s entire black community losing half of its total wealth since 2007 because of that crash, and American workers’ wages frozen flat for four decades while the richest one percent went from taking in 8% of the nation’s wealth to sucking up 23%? GREAT!, that’s all GREAT! The Republicans dismantling our democracy and shutting down Congress during the entire Obama administration is GREAT! Hillary the psychopath really needs to drop out of the race NOW! She is mentally incompetent, morally corrupt and a tyrant, a planet killer, and destroyer of the black and Latino communities with her call to jail the “Super Predators” who live there. The devastation to the black community with mandatory minimum sentences? GREAT! The water in Flint, Michigan? GREAT! Come on, Hillary supporters! Your vote for her is a deadly weapon! How many people do you want to kill with it? How horrible and murderous does Hideous Hillary have to be for you to wake up and abandon her cause and join the revolution against the ruling class? So I was informed last night that our Congressman Jared Huffman, who has accomplished absolutely nothing during four years in Congress other than get us a hiking trail and suck up $700,000 of taxpayer money is a Hillary delegate. So this Congressional ballot you have a true choice: Huffman for Hillary or Andy Caffrey the nation’s first Sanders Democrat. Which side are you on? "The rise of Donald Trump to the presumptive Republican standard bearer for president in 2016 is an indictment of, and a profound danger to, the American republic.
The Founding Fathers were afraid of the excitability of the voters and their vulnerability to the appeal of demagogues. That is the reason for a Senate (which was originally appointed), intended to check those notorious hotheads in Congress, who are elected from districts every two years. But it isn’t only the checks and balances in government that are necessary to keep the republic. It is the Fourth Estate, i.e. the press, it is the country’s leaders and it is the general public who stand between the republic and the rise of a Mussolini. The notables have been shown to be useless. Donald Trump should have been kicked out of the Republican Party the moment he began talking about violating the Constitution. The first time he hinted about assaulting the journalists covering his rallies, he should have been shown the door. When he openly advocated torture (“worse than waterboarding”), he should have been ushered away. When he began speaking of closing houses of worship, he should have been expelled. He has solemnly pledged to violate the First, Fourth and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution, at the least. If someone’s platform is unconstitutional, it boggles the mind that a major American party would put him or her up for president. How can he take the oath of office with a straight face?" -Juan Cole I will always believe in “The Revolution”. But I am becoming very frustrated with modern “activist” culture.
First of all, I’m tired of watching people turn into pretentious assholes who think their activism makes them better than everyone else, even those oppressed and marginalized groups with whom they claim “allyship”. If you’ve ever worked in the shelter system, or any field that serves those deemed as oppressed or marginalized in any way, such as abuse victims, the homeless, or people who struggle with addictions and/or mental illness (just a few examples)…one of the first things you learn is that they usually do not frame their worldviews in terms of academic theories you learned in gender studies classes in University. For the most part, they tend to not analyze their experiences in terms of systemic power and privilege, concepts such as “the patriarchy”, “white privilege”, or “heteronormativity”. While many of these folks are directly impacted by class inequality and do realize it, they are likely not spending their days and nights reading Karl Marx, educating themselves on the intricacies of capitalism. They do not sit around pondering the effects of “problematic behaviours” in radical communities. They are not concerned with checking their privilege. No. They are busy trying to survive. Getting through the next day. Meeting their basic needs such as food, shelter and hygiene. They do not bother with policing their language and worrying about how their words might unintentionally perpetuate certain stereotypes. They are more concerned with their voices being heard in the first place. And yet I witness so many “activists” who claim to care about those at the bottom of society ignoring the realities of oppression, as if being offended by a person’s speech or worldview is equal to prison time or living on the streets. They talk about listening, being humble, questioning one’s preconceived notions about other people and hearing their lived experiences…and yet ignore the lived experiences of those who don’t speak or think properly in the view of university-educated social justice warriors, regardless of how much worse off they really are. That is not to say that we should accept bigotry in any form — far from it. But I would go as far as saying that the politically correct mafia on the left perpetuates a form of bigotry on its own because it alienates and “otherizes” those who do not share their ways of thinking and speaking about the world. I’m tired of the cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others, and the power imbalances that exist between people who claim to be friends and comrades. I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander. It is disgusting that we claim to be building a new world, a new society, a better way of dealing with social problems — but if a person makes a mistake, says and/or does something wrong, they are not even given a chance to explain their side of what happened because the process of conflict resolution is in itself driven by ideology rather than a willingness to understand facts. Actually, in today’s activist circles one is lucky to be given any sort of due process at all, while everyone is put under social pressure to believe everything they are told regardless of what actually occurred in a given situation. This is not freedom. This is not social justice. There is nothing “progressive” or “radical” about it, unless you are referring to fascism. Speaking of Fascism, there is also a disturbing trend on the left nowadays that involves rejecting free speech/freedom of expression as a core value, because that speech could possibly be hurtful to someone, somewhere. This is not only dangerous but it also works against us, because as leftists we are often labelled as threats by the state and at the very least, we are unpopular by society in general. Does this not mean that freedom of thought and expression are crucial to our struggles? That we should always defend our right to question what we’re taught, our right to be different? As Noam Chomsky put it: “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” Freedom of expression and the like does not mean we have to agree with what another person says…in fact, it means that when we do not, we certainly have the right to challenge it. But what myself and many others are seeing is the shutting off of dialogue entirely, for the purpose of “safety”. What could possibly be safe about censorship? What could possibly be safe about a group of people who claim to be freedom fighters dictating who can speak and what can be said, based on whether or not we agree with them? Study any kind of world history and you will find that censorship has never been on the right side of it. More to the point, the world is not a safe place. It is extremely dangerous, flawed, full of bloodshed and corruption. By sheltering ourselves from its harshness we are doing nothing meaningful to change it. If we are serious about confronting power we must throw ourselves into the danger and hurt that so many people have no choice but to live with. While self-care is necessary to sustain us in the long run, avoiding the darkness entirely is nothing more than a cop out. Folks, do the world a favour…stop with the safe spaces and trigger warnings, and get serious about changing the world. It is not always going to be fun and pleasant. We are not always going to feel liberated. It is going to hurt. It is going to scare the shit out of us at times. But if the struggle is worth it to you, if activism is not just a trendy thing for you to be involved with so you can convince yourself that you’re not complacent in injustices, then you will step out of your comfort zone and finally understand that comfort is in itself a sign of the power and privilege you wish to challenge. Well, here we go again, is it David Bowie's; Panic in Detroit, or John Trudell's; Bombs over Baghdad- How ever you slice it, something is rotten in Denmark. What are we to do? My feeling is that gathering information is still a valuable pursuit, and boy, do we have a lot of information at our finger tips these days. But how to use that value remains a mystery. A snippet I heard tonight on the local progressive radio station KMUD, as I pulled up to my home, forced a proverbial driveway moment. I was curious what the answer would be when a guest was asked if there is anything we can do in our personal lives to, you know, help climate change? The guest, presumably a guest with some information or authority on the subject offered that of course we should do all we can in our personal life to be aware and make good decisions and all, but it was also very important to be engaged in the global conversation, about the changes we need to make...O.K. right, we need to turn lights off when we don't use them, recycle, drive Prius's (Prii?) and talk among ourselves about this important issue. And these simple actions will turn the Juggernaut of over a century of industrialization and environmental exploitation? With an ever growing avaricious population, that shows absolutely no interest in changing enough of anything. I'm sorry, sure we should all live groovy conscientious lives, of course we should. But, some are just trying to survive, others don't give a shit, and still others, the big boys, the ones that really make the difference are every day planning and building the next pipeline, mine, highway, smart consumer appliance, time wasting computer game, new consumer experience, action movie, armed conflict, and coup.
The important conversation, the great hope for the future of the world, the usually fraught and ultimately ineffectual United Nations Climate Change Conference , in it's 21st annual meeting is scheduled for Paris next month. It certainly will be a different show this year taking place in a capital city on lock down, in a nation that has stated "We are at war." And then it is full steam ahead; a year of presidential candidate side show.....Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends, we're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside..... Waking dogs want your news, views, & input: comment. Waking dogs want your news, views, & input: comment.
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February 2018
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