Putting a name to a story

I work in an area of the city where there are a lot of homeless people, and a lot of people living on the edges.  Over the past few months, I have slowly become acquainted with one of them.

She is older than me, a while ago she mentioned that she is 74.  I see her outside the building where I work most days.  She is standing there with a paper cup soliciting spare change from the people waiting for the bus.  I try to always have a dollar to give her when I see her.

Unlike many of the people I see begging in the neighborhood, I never see her smoking or drinking, and she never appears intoxicated.  She is never carrying a load of possessions, so I suspect that she probably at least has a roof over her head.  There are an abundance of residential hotels in the neighborhood, so perhaps whatever social security she receives covers all or part of that.

When I arrived at my building last Thursday, she was already there.  It was before 7 o'clock in the morning.  I don't recall her ever being there so early before. When I saw her I stopped a moment, and got out my wallet, pulled out a dollar bill.  Then I walked up to her and handed her the dollar as I prepared to enter my building.

Reaching inside of her coat, she pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.  She wished me Merry Christmas and I think I thanked her, I don't remember exactly what I said.  I put the envelope into an inside pocket of my overcoat.

When I got to my desk, I pulled out the envelope.  It was a little crumpled, closed with a piece of tape.  Inside was a Christmas card.  The only thing she had written inside was to sign her name.  It was Barbara.

Maybe her name is not Barbara, and she found the card already signed.  I don't know.  But I am am pretty sure that it was me she was waiting for to give the card to,

What kind of a world have we made, where just giving someone a dollar three or four times a week is so important to them?  And what sort of a monster really believes that we should be solving our financial woes by cutting social security, and throwing more people out onto the street?

The Devil's greatest trick

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist.

This was from a short story by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. And it was never more true than today, although not quite the way he meant it in that story.

In 1985, Rupert Murdoch became a US Citizen. He was not an immigrant in the traditional sense, coming to the United States to forge a new life for himself. There was no loyalty or patriotism involved.  This was a business decision, as US law dictated that only citizens could own television stations.

Back in 1996, Rupert Murdoch offered cable operators $11 per subscriber, to place his soon to be launched Fox News Network onto basic cable. He understood that getting his station on basic cable gave him a wider audience. Over the course of time he has also entered into contracts with hotels, trucks stops, etc, paying to have Fox News on the TV's playing behind the counter, in lobbies, wherever there was a captive audience.

So it should come as no surprise when the emails revealed that news reporters have been directed to slant the news, regardless of the facts. It does put a lie to his 'fair and balanced' slogan, and shows that the network is what many have been saying for years. It is not a news network, but a propaganda machine. Opinion, or in the case of climate change, outright lies, have become a substitute for information and news.

So the devil is revealed  for what he really is.  Fox News exists for the sole purpose of molding America into Rupert Murdoch's idea of what America should be. And no, it is not conservatism he espouses. It is feudalism.

How many times should you pay for the same thing?

Access to the Internet is not free.  Yeah, you can go to an Internet cafe or Peet's Coffee and get free WiFi, but that does not mean it is free.  That just means somebody else is paying for it.  So this is the part I never hear people talking about when they argue for Net Neutrality.

Look at the latest uproar with Comcast extorting money from Level 3 to continue carrying the Netflix streaming videos.  What does not get mentioned?  Comcast customers are already paying Comcast, to get those streaming videos!

So, do you want to pay your Internet service provider to decide what content they will deliver?  Or do you expect that having paid them, they will deliver that content to you, at the speed that you have contracted for?

So do something about it.  You could start here by telling the FCC that you believe in Net Neutrality.

Blood on who's hands?

I keep hearing that Wikileaks has 'blood on their hands'.  So let me get this straight. 

Dick Cheney outs one of our CIA agents, essentially passing a death sentence on any of the contacts she had been working with. Bush and company lie us into a war that costs Irag the lives of about a hundred thousand civilians, as well as costing the US the lives of a couple thousand soldiers, strengthens our biggest rival in the region (Iran), drives thousands of Muslims into the hands of the jihadist radicals, oh and bankrupts our country in the process, and it is Wikileaks that has blood on it's hands?

Access to information is what allows us to to see past the propaganda.  That is the job of news organizations around the world.  If a news organization is not pissing off governments and politicians, then it has become a just another propaganda machine itself.

Wikileaks is a news organization.  They did what they are supposed to do, which is publish the truth.  And the only people that are bothered by the truth being published, are those who count on lies to convince people to follow them.