The Academy Awards. Last night, a hundred-some-odd million viewers in over 106 countries watched the glitz-and-glam show. Personally, I don’t see the interest in watching rich, beautiful folks pat each other on the back. I’ve tried, but not once have I been able to sit through an entire Oscar show. These people already get way too much undeserved attention and money thrown at them for a what amounts to an easy job, too much freedom, and a "living the dream"-fueled superficial existence. There’s something very perverse about wanting to watch them gather in a room and getting singled out for this? True, there are more starving actors than there are wealthy ones, but, let’s be honest, the Oscars really isn't about hard facts and reality; Oscar Night is all about celebrating Hollywood excess and keeping those artificial wheels well greased.
Selection biases; complaints of cronyism; popular and pathetic pandering; all the usual criticisms aside, what baffles me is the dollar amount associated with this one evening. What other industry spends an estimated $35 to 40 million just to hand out statuettes?
The current ”world’s most expensive party” title is attributed to the luxury resort, Atlantis, The Palm, with a lavish grand opening beach party (Nov. 20, 2008) for over 2000 guests that cost $35 million. This included a $6.8M fireworks display and a $ 4M Kylie Minogue concert, as well as several other events. And yes, this was Dubai, where over-the-top extravagance rhymes with incredibly stupid spending.
So, how the hell does Hollywood manage to spend $40M for a 3-hour-21-minute awards ceremony? Proof that watching people receiving awards then thanking countless others, especially god, isn’t an exciting activity per se if it warrants spending that much to make it magical? And what are we to make of the fact that, according to ABC spokesperson Andrea Canning, more than a year’s worth of preparation goes into each Oscar Night? Before 2011’s show aired, ABC was already in the planning for 2012’s.
Only one thing can justify such expenditures: substantially larger revenues.
So one thing should be clear: it’s not really about the awards and recognition. Yet, the Academy Awards isn’t "big business" as much as it is the whole of Hollywood giving themselves a Holy Day in the grand sense of holiday. Oscar Night has become an inescapable tradition that, like Christmas or Easter, relies on and propagates a myth that is able to create a major and lucrative pre, during and post event buzz for such an otherwise mundane, subjective affair. I’ll leave it up to readers to draw parallels between The Academy and Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Christ, et al., but it should be noted that The Academy, like them, is able to generate massive and unjustified spending and revenue streams. This is why The Academy isn’t big business by itself, it sits above it, belongs to all those that can profit from this yearly celebration; it’s a make-or-break event for certain companies and the reason-to-be-for others. For celebrants, it’s an unreasoned reason to spend unjustified amounts and to spread the ol’ joy. How much joy?
According to CNN, had the 2008 Oscars been cancelled due to the writer’s strike, this “no-show” would have cost $400M to Los Angeles and the industry. That’s more than the GDP of at least 15 countries and Republics that’s generated out of one TV extravaganza.
The salary of show producers, organizers, engineers, and technicians notwithstanding, vast sums are pumped into pure frivolity. From hotels to caterers, airlines and limo drivers, hairdressers and jewellers to fashion consultants and designers, personal trainers and all ancillary trades taking advantage of people with too much money and the warped sense of values that one inherits in a la la land where image is as all, convinced that this evening is their fairy tale moment; this validates a need for thousand-dollar hair styles, and tens of thousands on a one-time-only wardrobe as well as for car and jewellery rentals, all this for just a few hours.
But does that include all the drugs and escorts and other big-bash necessities?
And there are the Paparazzi and tabloid magazines and gossip shows; Oscar-specialized publications and even “serious” news; betting pools and predictions of all sorts, all these and more generating billions of printed or broadcast words in the month that precedes and follows the event (which I’m partaking in, I know).
And then there’s all the advertising opportunities. Tremendous amounts of them. ABC was able to sell its 30-sec slots for an average of $1.4M, and that’s only one outlet—broadcast rights aren't cheap and offer plenty more 30-sec slots.
Next, there’s all the indirect product-placement type opportunities. It’s estimated that one good red-carpet picture can translate into $1M worth of sales for jewellers or fashions houses.
And why else would all sorts of companies—even those not selected or affiliated with the official Oscar Bag—be willing to give merchandise to be included in “swag bags” (gift bag) to be given to all nominees, people who already have all? Anything from spa certificates to diamonds worth more than $100,000? In fact, this year’s losers in the Top Actor categories were, on top of the official goody bags, all offered swag bags worth $75,000 by Distinctive Assets, an independent swag bag broker (speaking of event-specific job creation...).
Let’s not forget the boost in DVD and ticket sales; nominated and winning movies automatically see their sales increase by 25% to 75%, and winning actors and directors invariably see a renewed interest in their filmography.
And I’m certain I’m forgetting to mention other areas... Feel free to point them out, below.
Oscars. A-world-of-illusions celebration that's more important than an all-too-real third-world economy.
*UPDATE: Please note that the crediting issue mentioned here has been fixed after this post was written, and a new version of the film, with credits, was released.
Since "Ethos" is Greek for, "guiding beliefs or ideas that characterize a community," the filmmakers chose their title well. Their film does more than talk about the manipulation and lies and lack of ethics it tries to expose, it embodies them.
"Ethos" is a newly available, feature-length documentary directed by Pete McGrain and released by the Santa Monica-based, Media for Action. This is their first official release, which boasts itself as powerful, controversial, and new.
I call it shameful; a lazy yet arrogant collage. Like students copying material from several sites and pasting it into one document, adding a bit of glue between paragraphs then calling it their own essay, that’s precisely what this film is. Totally unoriginal. A form of fraud.
Clearly, despite the fact that Media for Action loudly embraces the non-profit label, these people are full of crap, doing this for personal gain, hoping that the star-power of their host, Woody Harrelson, will attract a sufficiently large audience to eventually guarantee a worthwhile career and paycheck for Media for Action folks through Ethos. If Micheal Moore can make millions with this growing genre, why not us?
In short: people with absolutely nothing new to say who are trying to take an easy advantage of a market by ripping-off those who, before them, have worked very hard to deliver a worthwhile and profound message.
At the beginning, Harrelson specifies, “the material for this film is taken from facts available to the public, and from interviews with some of today’s leading thinkers.”
In truth, the material is entirely lifted from several documentaries, including all interviews, and presented here as if fresh, complete with a new voice reading a highly or directly plagiarized narrative text.
Amongst some of the documentaries "Ethos" directly steals from:
The Corporation; Zetgeist; Zeitgeist Addendum; Manufacturing Consent; War Made Easy; Beyond Treason; Invisible Empire; The Century of the Self; The Future of Food.
Ethos merely skims through one documentary before moving on to the next and as such offers only a basal overview and absolutely nothing new. From what I can tell, the film contains no more than 10% new material, all of it ‘glue’ to tie-in their “cut & paste” job.
No credits are given anywhere; the only people mentioned are the director and producers, all three names mentioned are clearly those of Media for Action founders. Slightly more info is offered on the official movie page, ethosthemovie.com, but again, the only credits for all the lifted source material is, "...and source material from the finestdocumentary film makers of our times." That's it. Press releases, websites, film et al. zero signs of respect and even less adherence to copyright laws.
In fact, the Media for Action website, despite being official looking, contains no real information whatsoever on the company and, surprise, their mission statement is just a series of clichés taken from several sources and strung together. No address and no members board; no organization breakdown and an anonymous contact form.
Further, the “recent articles” they present, and which, at first glance, we are led to believe are either by Media for Action people or about the company, are random articles on any subject of “independent media” taken from a wide variety of sources and reposted on their site (but with sources mentioned this time). There is however, a very contradictory and ambiguous though very carefully worded disclaimer which has absolutely no validity given that the film was made by an organization member and that they themselves do not abide to any copyright laws.
Yet, in a press release, Isabella Michelle Marles, Co Producer and Founder of Media for Action, is bold enough to claim, “Proper journalism is about asking tough questions. Having a constant eye to the bottom line or corporate agendas compromises good journalism. Operating as a non profit lets us negotiate that dilemma.” In fact, the entire press release is one egotistical piece of propaganda considering the film’s content and their own manipulation of information and facts.
Keep in mind that their slogan is, “Sponsoring Truth in Media Across the Globe.”
True, the film may be passing on a diluted but worthwhile message, but still, that's no reason to encourage the Media for Action folks. No other industry would tolerate such blatant plagiarism, neither should documentary makers and enthusiasts, no matter how granola or good-hearted. I reluctantly include the film here; for you to judge:
In a recent post, Petitions: Making the World Go 'Round... in Circles, I expressed a certain disdain towards our current obsession with e-petitions and the false sense of action and participation they tend to provide. They've become so widely abused that they now represent an empty tool to pacify any intolerance, hereby stripping "the petition" and the act of "petitioning" of any real worth and weight.
Apps and sites now make it easy for anyone to create a far-reaching petition within a few minutes, and as expected, there are plenty of silly petitions and groups out there on the Web. However, today, on Facebook, I stumbled upon what, in my mind, epitomises all of my complaints, especially so due to the meta nature of the cause. So much so, that I had to vent; here we are.
This cause, filed under, “Public Advocacy; Voter Education and Registration”, is the following:
“Please do not limit the amount of neighbors you can send gifts to. It's not fair to have to choose.”
The cause description: Most games limit how many names you can send gifts to. Get this changed to unlimited amount of friends.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Facebook, under the obvious layer lies an intricate web of games and virtual worlds and virtual exchanges of all sorts that exploits one’s network. In this parallel world, apparently, there’s a limit to how many virtual gifts—anything from cutsy hearts to pointless, insipid rubbish, including cows and spankings—one is allowed to give to their virtual friends.
This, what some have called a “worthy cause”, is upsetting users.
If only a handful of misfits had joined the cause, that would be one thing, but, in its short life—barely ten days old—this cause has already garnered 23,283 supporters (at time of posting), having gone semi-viral just in the last few days; over 1000 joined the cause in between the time I became aware of it and the three hours it took me to find the twenty minutes to complain about it.
Besides the fact that the most vapid, pointless subjects always attract easy attention, what’s really disconcerting here is that people are treating this like a real and viable cause. Albeit the majority of supporters are, no doubt, just voicing a meaningless ‘wish-list’ preference, a clear portion, as seen by the comments and posts, are equating game limitations in a game world with democracy and freedom; people "should have the right to choose the number of friends they want to send [virtual] gifts to"—limitations is oppression and control. And nope, this isn't one of those The Onion moments where you realize it's a joke.
There’s so much wrong with this picture, and it belittles any real and urgent cause whilst reducing democracy and freedom to: the right to do what I want, anywhere.
Equally unsettling is the slew of comments which can best be summed up by these two examples:
“I believe all my good neighbors should get a daily gift from me. It used to get confusing on who did\didn’t get a gift.”
“People have to keep track one way or another of who sent and who didn't and it's not right to have to pick and choose [...] We have enough issues to deal with.”
Right. Of course. Machine-generated love on free applications needs to be made easier. Silly me. Why send a few personalized words or anything that demands just a bit of real effort when, with just a few clicks, you can send totally impersonalized, overly-shared, pixelated virtual kitsch to hundreds of strangers at the same time to show each how much you care?
Rejoice! Someone was kind enough to post a link to a solution: behold, GiftAuto! The app that automatically accepts Facebook gifts and sends a gift in return so you can truly show that you do care, without keeping track.
An open letter to that much touted, "American pursuit of justice":
It would appear as if Obama’s definition of “change” offers us a new class of Robber Barons, one that is entirely above reproach. That, or an entirely new approach to justice. Either way, the question, “where are the handcuffs,” (see video, below) should rise out of the American public like excess bile, forcing a collective need for relief that isn’t easily appeased. Yet, nothing. It wasn't all that long ago that we witnessed the destruction of lives at the hands of the Savings and Loans Associations (S&L) and their dirty dealings. It was a gut-wrenching tragedy to witness, leaving a bitter taste of just how unconscionable a certain class of men-in-suits can be; life savings had vanished, the sweat and toil of entire lives dissolved in the hands of a ravenous few. That debacle cost the American government a hefty $87.9 billion to cleanup. Guess who was left holding the bill? Although thousands implicated in the S&L crisis were arrested and jailed, once the dust had fallen, how does the quasi-cozy institutionalization of a thousand patsy employees and a few upper-management fall guys even compare to the systematic bankruptcy of hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting Americans? Although not offering anywhere near a balanced form of justice for such a huge hammer of destruction, and even though, naturally, the majority of the top echelon, give or take a few scapegoats, escaped to pillage another day, we could feel that, at least, something had been done. Today, we’re witnessing something altogether different. This new wave of fraudulent banksters have outdone the criminal bunglers at S&L, and in so doing, they’ve stumbled upon a secret formula for becoming the invisible men of financial fiefdoms. Seriously, an image of Lloyd C. Blankfein, C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs, unraveling bandages in maniacal glee as he pushes the American public down the stairs doesn’t seem farfetched. Frankly, I'm gobsmacked at the lame reaction of the American government to this blatant, public greed fest, which, inevitably, leads to this question: who's deluded and who's colluded? Come on America, wake up and smell the dirty greenbacks! Let's whip justice back into shape! It's time to put these criminals where they really belong, in a good old fashioned pauper's workhouse.
Hopefully, this recent coverage (by corporate media, to boot) will spur a real call to action:
According to the most recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 61% of Americans strongly oppose laws taking away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions such as those currently debated in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor such laws. Earlier today, Fox TV host Brian Kilmeade carefully rephrased matters, pulling the ol' switcheroo on audiences, bending facts to corporate needs. Silly misunderstanding or, to paraphrase Machiavelli: a successful power broker must be cunning like a fox and ferocious like a lion. And, by the way, only 5 states, not "many", do not have collective bargaining rights. Listen carefully:
Thanks to the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization who got a whole bunch of well-paid scientists together, policy makers now have proof of the obvious... Probably why this big breakthrough didn’t cause the slightest ripple and why hardly anyone cares that the assessment report is to be released this week.
The two groups, above, summoned a team of 70 experts that were directed by climatologist Drew Shindell of the New York City-based Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and led by NASA GISS, the European Commission's Joint Research Center in Ispra (Italy), the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok (Thailand), Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, (US) and the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago (Chile); the efforts were coordinated by the Stockholm Environmental Institute in York (UK). (Source: NASA, Cleaning the Air Would Limit Short-Term Climate Warming02/20/11).
That’s a whole whack of people and groups meshed together in what must have been a bureaucratic nightmare that probably cost as much as healthcare for countless, basically, just to tell the world: yes, indeed! We’ve known for a while that black carbon and ground-level ozone are, like carbon dioxide, toxic-killers of humans, and, without a doubt, we’ve always really strongly suspectedthat they were really harmful to the earth’s climate, but we just didn’t really know just how right we really were! It turns out that health, earth, and climate are closely linked.
In Shindell’s words: What we really need to know is not the percent of black carbon that a particle filter can take out of, say, diesel truck exhaust, but what the net effect of putting particle traps on all the world’s diesel engines would be for the whole suite of pollutants that diesel engines produce. And we also wanted to know how much emissions control measures like that would influence specific changes such as global temperatures, human health, and crop yields. And why do we need all this quantitative data to prove the obvious, what ecologists have already proven, but without UN money? After all, the "technology is already out there." According to Shindell, to please policy makers.
Their brilliant efforts focused on these radical ideas: “[for black carbon] we looked at the impact that replacing traditional cook stoves with cleaner-burning options, putting particle filters on vehicles, or banning the burning of agricultural waste might have. For ozone, we looked at measures like fixing leaky gas pipes, limiting methane emissions from mines, upgrading wastewater treatment systems, and aerating rice paddies.”
But wait! Now that we have models and percentages and statistics leading to Republican-proof, anti greenhouse-is-an Al-Gore-conspiracy-theory-worthy, Rockefeller-grade hard-cold data in hand, we should act now!
And so, this panel will soon be offering 16 steps we should follow to improve matters, and hey! quicker than policy makers wanted us to believe.
These 16 wonderful recommendations, the fruit of this costly study? Shindell: “Many nations are already pursuing many of these measures for air quality, but perhaps the recognition that there’s a climate impact as well will help prod nations, states, and cities to take air quality more seriously.”
OK. Maybe now we’re ready to spend less on studies and move on to the next step: certified “Pollute Less” banners, hats, and bumper stickers. Don’t worry, World, we’ll get there.
Yesterday, in a release made by Agence France-Presse (AFP), World Bank President Robert Zoellick finally “mentioned” what the Earth has been screaming for over a decade: “I mentioned [to the G20] that we are reaching a danger point."
The G2o and related World Bank Group chiefs and cohorts met in Paris, France, on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 18 and 19, 2011, hoping to reach an agreement on indicators measuring global economic imbalances. (source: Reuters)
According to Zoellick, rising food prices, the cause of the most obvious of imbalances, “would eventually result in increased food supplies but in the intervening couple of years, ‘there could be an awful lot of turmoil and governments could fall and societies could go into turmoil.’” (Agence France-Presse)
Now, does that sound like an intelligent statement to you? It’s just missing the “like”, “man”, “and totally” to sound like it was uttered by a naive, isolated teen who’s just learned the word “turmoil” in between doing nothing more than play video games for most of his life. World Bank President. Wow! Really?
And isn’t the rising price of food, especially as it pertains to grains, directly related to a worldwide shortage that’s made itself wholly evident in the 80’s and has very clearly continued to worsen since? Naysayers have been warning us about this for decades, and even Henry Kissinger long ago pointed to this reality while also adding that controlled food shortages was the best means to control a people. And here we are... The abusive and warned trying to be the warn-ers.
According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), this shortage, fuelled in great part by government-sanctioned corporate exploitation of the third-world (encouraged by the World Bank Group), is responsible for food prices going up as much as 181% since 2007 alone.
The only way that this increase in price can lead to an increase in food supplies is that certain entities would rather retain food and allow people to starve to death than sell it at a cheaper price. Of course this surplus will drive prices back down, but all that supply/demand stuff is just greedy, silly yo-yo talk when one considers the real reasons behind the situation.
That the World Bank made such a statement during yet another G20 meeting and more than a month after the FAO announced that food prices have reached a record high, putting millions at risk of death by starvation, is just empty, carefully planned PR put out by the very people who are greatly responsible for all this mess. Nice spin, Bob! Beyond the, “the problem isn’t us and the despots we support, it’s food” approach, surely, what we’re meant to read behind Robert Zoellick’s statement is: Oops! We’ve gone too far; we’ve lost all control; we’ve reached that point.
And their solution is to feed us fake concern as they gather in posh surroundings to agree on statistical tools and indicators so they can continue to play god, but now do it in a more informed manner?!
They've got "green" living all wrong. Their slogan should be: We're Monsanto. Fuck You All!
This company oozes evil. It's poisoned the globe and all living organisms for nothing more than a buck. It blows my mind that we've tolerated its existence for so long.
Other than the young, hip-wannabe-yet-nerd-filled software firms or indie mags where I have worked, all other working environments that tolerated a radio being played always had to have the dial set at one of the more popular stations. This would drive me crazy after a while; I could set my watch according to the some of the songs that were aired. Musical tastes aside, I personally can’t understand why anyone would want to listen to such stations at work – makes the daily routine even more obvious.
However, what deeply annoys me about commercial radio stations can best be described by the picture, above. Call me weird but yes, I like hearing a song from beginning to end! When such and such an artist composed his song, I really don’t think he had intended for any instrumental space to be used as backdrop for announcers and radio personalities, or as advertising space, nor as mixing or fading in or out space to allow for more commercial time.
Imagine if museums had a similar approach and sold off any canvas space they deemed to be unnecessary to the appreciation of an artistic piece.
Sure, it's hard to defend the fact that this wasn't a naughty, incompetent, lazy thing to do. But let’s not turn this “not” into what it’s “not”: an act so foul and evil that it deserves our collective spit and hate.
While many articles and posts and related comments are spewing revulsion, asking for a public beheading, clamouring that many other Ministers and public workers have been forced to resign for far less, aren’t these people looking at this all wrong, twisting the reality of Oda’s actions out of proportion? For in reality, we’ve tolerated—and continue to do so—way worse acts of government that still go unpunished. Rather, we should be seeing this as nothing more than a comic-albeit-stupid act that, ironically, shines a light on the complexities of bureaucracy, subjective popular partisanship, and our all-too-common tendency to be distracted from the real and pressing issues.
This is turning into misdirected bloodlust placing Bev Oda as nothing more than a cheap target for any hatred we currently harbour towards Harper and his Conservative cronies. Meanwhile: the Harper government continues selling our sovereignty down south; the TMX is still planned to merge with the LSE; the CRTC is pressured (some coming from the Tories) into changing its false-news regulations, to name just a few.
It’s become a Liberal-fuelled witch-hunt inline with the tacky, childish political games of negative campaigning we normally criticize. The only e-petition (with 18,762 signees at the time this was posted) that’s currently circulating was created by Liberals; it’s hosted on party servers. It’s shameful propaganda in an attempt to take advantage of a silly situation and sway public opinion and votes.
The bold caption on the Liberal's petition page is a ridiculous, sensationalist exaggeration. And please! That opening line, “The credibility of our democratic institutions is on the line,” is a lark. Does anyone else remember the Sponsorship Scandal? What about Shawnigate, in which the PM’s good friend, Claude Gauthier, earned his company, Transelec, a shady CIDA grant that was eventually questioned by the Auditor General and even CIDA? Did we scream for the PM's resignation? Nope. The list of Liberal scandals that put into question “the credibility of our democratic institutions” is long.
In fact, here’s a list, compiled in 2005, of 199 Liberals offenses that easily qualify to be filed under that very same “crooked credibility” category: A Dubious Day
What should concern people doesn’t seem to. Nowhere is anyone interested in details about the grant; for all we know, the Liberals are probably happy or just don’t care that funding may not go through. What was the funding for? Sadly, I’m willing to bet that only a very small percentage of signees can answer this. So whether we're personally disappointed that Oda believed that this particular organization shouldn't receive funding is moot; this aspect hardly seems to be of concern for the vast majority who are "upset" over this matter.
And did anyone notice that it's only the Liberal-sanctioned media that cry out for her resignation whilst they also offer only vapid, concept-challenging, tabloid-worthy slams but no real, objective assessment of that silly insertion and its real implication?
So what did Oda really do? She did what she was allowed to do, but went about it in a really silly way. She had the right to refuse to sign the document and she had a right to disagree with the wording—isn’t this the type of thing, the type of individual freedom, that people fight for and get all riled up about? And as Minister, she certainly had the right to disapprove the grant; she was, after all, the last person required to sign-off on it. Are people really saying she simply should have signed because someone put her name at the bottom of the document, whether or not she agreed with the decision? And who cares if the document “was already signed off by CIDA department officials”? Does CIDA control the government and its "boss"? No, it's a government-run agency. And Oda was the last to sign off for a reason. Carefully read what the document says and asks: sign to indicate approval.
So, either she has a hard time with directions (unlikely), or she changed her mind or had it changed for her after having signed off. Rather than voiding the document properly, she did an oopsy! But the "falsifying documents" angle is ridiculous—with such an insertion, clearly, a forger she is "not". However, Oda didn’t follow the proper, complex procedures and this, what we all ridicule when it suits our purpose, is the real reason why we’re condemning her. She didn’t file the slew of necessary paperwork and go through all the proper, costly channels to voice her "after signature" disagreement. Rather than simply refusing to sign off, she signed anyway and inserted a “not”—and worse, she didn’t initial it and it took a while before she accepted responsibility. Her behaviour is more akin to a shame-filled, heedless teenager who realizes the gravitas of one’s juvenile actions too late than that of an evil, democracy-destroying mastermind. If not that, then she's politely willing to take one for the proverbial team and, again, our concern needs to be on considerations other than those even the Liberals want us to focus on.
We’ve all done things that can be paralleled to Oda’s action. But while were hanging her, real acts of iniquity are going unnoticed and unpunished. Oda's action should go under the heading, "Bad Office Jokes." That's it.
Yes, I myself am strongly opposed to many of the decisions made by our current government; conservatives are currently giving us something that’s all too reminiscent of the U.S.’s corporation-loving Reagan years—all for the rich, who cares about the poor and the arts. Today, the lessons of Mulroney’s brash arrogance are countered with Harper’s devious cunning; the long-term results truly terrify me.
Oda is a scapegoat and now, a Liberal tool. She's a minor, inconsequential distraction while the real "players" aren't even receiving spittle from all this public spitting.
This “not” should force us to question a heck of a lot more than why this woman isn’t resigning.
Yep. For those who have been paying attention to world events these past decades, this dead-on, clear and concise video doesn't teach us anything new; it just lays it bare.
Realizing that this is a sick, demoralizing and dehumanizing reality is the first step. However, the second step shouldn't be where most of us are at, i.e. blaming corporations.
These corporations aren't plucking money out of the sky; whether as investors or as consumers or both, we willingly give them our money and find weak, self-centered justifications for doing so, constantly closing our eyes on this very reality. It is our collective yet individual-driven consumer lifestyles that create, support, and tolerate this.
Blaming corporations is too easy--it's even become an important industry and genre.
But, in this reality, it all starts with the "I", not with finger pointing.
Only once each of us is willing to play an active part at the individual level can we truly unite towards a real, positive change.
It seems to me like today's modern, popular and unquestioned modus vivendi is: stay oblivious, wait 'til it's too late, then bitch & moan and sign tons of ex post facto petitions. Thanks to the Web, every single concern, real or imagined, now boasts at least one e-petition. There's even specialized sites that make it quick and easy for anyone to post and manage Internet petitions. But is this really how we choose to unite across the globe, through appeals? Rather passive, no? And because one signed doesn't mean one cares. It's become an empty, reflexive click that's now greatly simplified thanks to Auto-Fill and the wonders of Web 2.0; a feel good action that's performed in between e-shopping and sharing viral pictures and videos of fools and accidents, and cute animals with atrocious spelling while not bothering to learn about the cause beyond the bold headline. It provides a false sense of action and participation; it dissipates anger but rarely leads anywhere. "Hey! I clicked, I care; now it's up to fate." The people that follow up are few and far between. Makes me wonder if targeted entities and governments aren't behind some of these petitions, and how many are fronts to steal info and sell mailing lists. If we really want a change, firstly, we have to look within and change our own attitudes and behaviours that support all those entities whose very attitudes and behaviours we condemn. Everyone is quick to click against child labour and third-world slavery, but the same people all want really cheap prices or are willing to overpay for exploitative status symbols from companies who are legally bound to their 'public' shareholders to do whatever it takes to give 'em a bigger buck. Likewise, no one wants to see cruelty being done to animals while we blindly eat our share of millions of chickens that are killed daily. etc., etc. I could go on. And how come we can all rally together when a determining World Cup soccer goal is contested, yet we've allowed a company like Monsanto to exist for so long? Some petitions do have their place, but why do we generally have to wait until it's too late to react? The info is out there before, but it only seems to become relevant and genuine when it's taken the form of a third-party petition. If we were all just a little more proactive, all a little more actually involved, perhaps we wouldn't need so many petitions; reactive attitudes can only lead to more of them.
Together, we can do far more than fill databases by clicking on petition buttons.
Although it may seem inappropriate this time, it is my catch phrase: Keep on clicking! PDL
