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Framing and Memetic Warfare

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

A recent email correspondent challenged a frequent assertion of mine: that one of the most effective weapons we have against corporate power and its intellectual mouthpieces is to demonize the neoliberals in terms of their own professed “free market values,” and show them up for the corporate welfare parasites they really are.

In response, he asked:

Really? Can you show me one shred of evidence that this approach has been effective?

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Posted in Democrats, Republicans, american history, corporate state, establishment media, free markets, liberalism, regulatory state, the media | 24 Comments »

AP Gets Loonier About Copyrights — In the Meantime Don’t Excerpt From Them Unless You Have $$

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Below I wrote about the wackiness at AP vis-a-vis copyrights, and it seems that entity is getting even more bizarre in the face of unhappy reaction. That wire service is proposing a fvcking schedule charging bloggers per word excerpted: (more…)

Posted in abuse of power, establishment media | 6 Comments »

Associated Press Generates a Blogospheric Kum Ba Yah Moment

Monday, June 16th, 2008

When a site such as LGF agrees with Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake on a matter, and the blogosphere rises in almost unanimous umbrage at an old media entity, it is quite likely that said media entity is behaving very badly indeed. In this case, it is the Associated Press, which has a history of sending cease and desist letters to various sites for publishing so much as one short graf from one of their lengthy stories in a blog post or comment, and screaming copyright infringement. (It was almost seven years ago that the mgmt at an atheist forum I participated in at the time announced commenters could no longer do anything but link to AP, so intimidated were they by a letter AP had sent to About.com — host of the atheist forum — threatening to sue.)

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Posted in establishment media, the blogosphere | 3 Comments »