Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts

Monday, April 17, 2023

Ideological Soulmates

 

 

Well, it appears Pierre Poilievre, that would-be master disinformation-trafficker, has found his true soulmate in another man-child, Elon Musk. They have had a meeting of the minds when it comes to the CBC - dearest Elon has agreed to PP's request that the publicly-funded networked be labelled "government-funded media," a tag that used to apply only to propaganda outlets like RT (Russia Today).

"Government-funded media is defined as outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet's funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content," according to Twitter.

National Public Radio in the U.S. announced earlier this month that it is leaving the platform after Twitter labelled its account as "state-affiliated media," saying that doing so undermines their credibility by "falsely implying that we are not editorially independent."

U.S. public broadcaster PBS followed suit, also leaving Twitter after it received the "government-funded" stamp.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre recently called on Twitter CEO Elon Musk to add a "government-funded" label to accounts that promote "news-related" content from CBC.

Such a designation will undoubtedly provide sweet succor to the simple  amongst PP's clan of followers (but aren't they all a bit simple?) and will undoubtedly raise his 'street cred' with them. And just in case some of them missed the significance of this label, PP tweeted out that the CBC has been "officially exposed" as "Trudeau propaganda, not news."

The CBC was quick to admonish the thinking behind this assault of the media:

The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm's length from government.

In a statement Sunday night, CBC corporate spokesperson Leon Mar emphasized the government does not influence CBC's editorial content.

The CBC is a Crown corporation, wholly owned by the state but operated at arm's length from government.

Such machinations, of course, only help to illustrate PP's discord-sowing ways that make him manifestly unfit to sit in the prime minister's office; they also, however, demonstrate something else a credulous electorate should bear in mind: his hypocrisy:




Friday, April 14, 2023

Angry Talking Heads

 

When I was a teacher, it used to bother me to no end that it only took one or two ignorant, badly-behaved kids to spoil the atmosphere and discourse in a class. For those who think it should have been a simple matter to silence those voices, well, let's just say they don't understand the reality and the dynamics of teaching.

I feel the same frustration today when I see angry men-children like Elon Musk and his Canadian counterpart, Pierre Poilievre, spreading their mischief to gain either attention or political advantage. Take, for example, Musk's impish decision to label publicly-funded media as government-funded, the implication being that they are merely organs of government propaganda. In the United States, this has led both NPR and PBS to close their Twitter accounts.

Not to be outdone, our own domestic mischief-maker, Pierre Poilievre, wants the same designation for the CBC. This is perhaps not surprising, coming from the man who is trying to exact as much political mileage as possible out of his promise to defund the CBC.

Like the problem students I dealt with, they clearly have too much power to influence the agenda. Unlike the classroom, however, all of us have a role to play in mitigating such madness, as pointed out in the following letter from a Star readers:

Trying too hard to make CBC the enemy, April 13

Bruce Arthur is right to pay attention to Elon Musk and Pierre Poilievre championing the word freedoms in order to destroy it when it comes to the public funding of national media like the CBC. Clearly these two are not reformers but transformers and destroyers of our democracy. As antistatist freedom fighters they appeal to everyone’s sense of liberty while bringing about its end in the media.

Like the typical 1980s neo-con U.S. President Ronald Reagan who identified government as the enemy of the people, Musk and Poilievre regard publicly funded media to express the national will of its people as illegitimate. They demand that the marketplace is the only way to provide free and balanced reporting.

The fact that such free enterprise thinking resulted in Fox News, becoming the lying propaganda media for Republicans only is ignored.

The fact that Musk bought Twitter promising to free it up so that everyone would be heard but turned it into the embodiment of censorship is overlooked. (Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opposition is censored in Indian and Substack notes’ links are censored in the U.S.)

The fact that magical thinking that freedom bestows legitimacy on anything done in its name has proven to do major harm to democracy is ignored.

History has shown that public funding for national media like the CBC is the only democratic economic system that allows individuals to vote for how their money is to be used in the media. They can vote out the government and replace it with a different policy about its funding.

Musk can’t be voted out. Poilievre with such anti-democratic views should not be voted in.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

Perhaps a tall order from Mr. D'Andrea, but one that none of us who believe in a healthy democracy can afford to shirk.

 

 

 

Thursday, November 3, 2022

Mr. Musk Unmasked

Once more, Unlearn16 reveals something important, and her observations I could not disagree with. Yesterday, she pierced the facade perpetrated by the Ford government about the soon-to-be striking school support staff in Ontario. This time, she turns her laser-focus on Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter. 

Well-worth the three-minute listen.

 



Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Theatre Of The Absurd

I'm feeling too burnt out these days to put thoughts to words, my ever-constant cynicism about people and politics reaching new levels. Therefore, allow me to post some editorial cartoons that help to capture the absurdity of what we call politics and life.


H/t Graeme MacKay

H/t Patrick Corrigan
H/t Theo Moudakis


Saturday, April 27, 2019

Who Is Really Running The Show In Ontario?



There is little question in my mind that in the depths of his shallow soul, Doug Ford, like his philosophical father Mike Harris, believes that government 'interference' is what makes the lives of people difficult. Indeed, that could help explain the following remarkable exchange, posted by Daniel Enright on Twitter. As you will see, it appears that within his own government, Ford seems to have contracted out his policy-making. That, of course, begs the question, "Who is really running the show in Ontario?"

Please forgive the duplication of each preceding message, as that is what the Twitter embed codes gave me.
























Thursday, August 16, 2018

Jack Dorsey, Hypocrite

I am posting less these days, likely because I am losing faith in the possibility of positive change. I realize now, more than ever, that our fate is not in our hands, but rather in those of the powerful that have captured government and will protect and enhance their profits until the bitter end.

While this fact is most evidenced by the refusal of national governments to enact measures to meaningfully combat the ever-growing peril of climate change (disaster capitalism is alive, well and thriving!), it is also seen in less obvious ways. To get a taste of this truth, watch the following interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, conducted by Lester Holt. The interview initially revolves around Twitter's suspension (cutely called a 'time-out' by Dorsey) of hate-monger Alex Jones. The suspension itself, of course, is hardly a brave or principled stand, given Jones' removal from other social-media platforms already.

Dorsey's moral vacuity, bottomless hypocrisy and capacity for spin are pretty obvious here. And the fact that the CEO, a stand-in for so many other 'movers and shakers', will not let the public good interfere with his ceaseless march for greater and greater profits becomes very clear in the second part of the interview, when Holt asks him about Donald Trump and his Twitter account.

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Time To Be Atwitter?

I couldn't help but think of this story concerning trolls spreading fake news about Black Panther-related violence when I saw this:



Do I detect a pattern developing?

Monday, February 3, 2014

Herr Harper: Master Of The Twitterverse



Given the Prime Minister's penchant for control, I suppose this story should come as no surprise, but does rather conspicuously give lie to his claim of running an open and transparent government, doesn't it?

OTTAWA - Pity the poor government tweet, nearly strangled in its cradle before limping into the Twitterverse.

Newly disclosed documents from Industry Canada show how teams of bureaucrats often work for weeks to sanitize each lowly tweet, in a medium that's supposed to thrive on spontaneity and informality.

Most 140-character tweets issued by the department are planned weeks in advance; edited by dozens of public servants; reviewed and revised by the minister's staff; and sanitized through a 12-step protocol, the documents indicate.

Insiders and experts say the result is about as far from the spirit of Twitter as you can get — and from a department that's supposed to be on the leading edge of new communications technologies.

The documents, obtained through the Access to Information Act, show such a high level of control that arrangements are made days in advance to have other government agencies re-tweet forthcoming Industry Canada tweets, because re-tweets are considered a key measure of success.

In turn, Industry Canada agrees to do the same for tweets from the Business Development Bank of Canada and others.

Formal policy for the department was set into a protocol last October, with a 12-step process that requires numerous approvals for each tweet from Industry Minister James Moore's office or from the office of Greg Rickford, the junior minister.

Public servants vet draft tweets for hashtags, syntax, policy compliance, retweeting, French translation and other factors. Policy generally precludes tweeting on weekends, and the minister's personal Twitter handle must be kept out of departmental tweets, though his name and title are often included.


Friday, August 10, 2012

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

If This Is The Best They've Got...

My daughter just sent me this link. After reading a few of the comments, I couldn't help but remember Charlton Heston's famous line from the original Planet of the Apes:

“Look on the bright side: if this is the best they’ve got around here, in six months, we’ll be running this planet.”