News & Articles

Corporate greed

I assume everyone that pays Direct TV has noticed that they are not getting a local channel, Fox 21, on their TV sets and there is a blank screen that says their contract with this channel has expired and they are working to return the programing as soon as possible. This has been over a month. A person could fly to mars sooner. They are trying to get it as cheap as possible and then increase our bills double or triple for the program. I remember when you used to get local channels over the air with an antenna which is the only way to watch sports including football. They haven’t reduced the rate they bill us and are not providing what we are paying for and I am pretty sure whenever we get the station back on they will increase the price on our bills. This is a total disregard for their customers that they provided a service. It is just plain Greed to squeeze every dollar out of the consumer. 

Don’t forget Direct TV is owned by At&t. Will the greed of the big corporations ever stop?
Jerry Charlet
Superior. Wisconsin  

It’s time to lose the training wheels 

The highest-paid “journalists” get paid to determine what gets into the news to bolster corporate-friendly narratives. They are the enabling servants of corporatist social conditioning and the gatekeepers of the narrowing status quo. Through life-long social conditioning, Americans have been taught to think in terms of self-serving cliches that don’t question the status quo beyond some theatrical grumbling about the power of big corporations or big gubmint. It is impolitic to scrutinize or question the larger social-economic basis that underlies and produces our “culture.” A propagandized public can’t comprehend or even decode countervailing narratives and react emotionally and aggressively against uncomfortable history and facts. Even if they are aware of the validity of those facts they can’t synthesize them with the current unpleasant political reality and won’t perceive the obvious continuity of purpose of capital expansion and intensified exploitation. History in this culture is a fable of positive illusions altered, sanitized and redacted in the soon-forgotten past. The majority of political occurrences in our country have no connection to the truth. The political subjectivity that is cultivated in the “mainstream” by the constant reiteration of specifically-framed political narratives constructed by and for power instill a type of uncritical allegiance and emotional bonding to the status quo. Unquestioning conformity is the goal. We are in a postmodern moment where there is no permanence to the narratives we are fed.   Rapid-fired disinformation only has to refer momentarily to other previously inculcated lies and conditioned emotional responses – using those previous lies as a precedent and foundation for yet more lies. In our heavily propagandized corporate-mediated political landscape the function of the “sign” (the symbol, the word) is de-linked and doesn’t point to the “signified “(the real thing or action) it refers instead to other lies, instilled biases and fears. The west has buried itself under a mountain of ego-defensive lies and chauvinistic righteousness that mimic the biases and serve the interests of the genocide-administering ruling elite. If you question or confront that training it is often experienced as an attack on a true believer’s self-esteem and social conditioning followed by the predictable response of rigidity, suspicion, name-calling and ostracization. This too is part of the training. 

“One needs either a lot of strength or a lot of stupidity to not lose heart.” – Theodor Adorno
Rick Kurki
Highbridge, Wisconsin