BARBWIRE
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ANDREW BARBANO
Pirate Laureate of the High Desert Outback of the American Dream


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SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

Je Suis Charlie
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

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"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

HAPPY NEW YEAR / Feliz Año Nuevo
Frohe Weihnachten und beste Wuensche fuer 2018

¡Viva Chávez!
César Chávez Celebration XVI / Celebración de César Chávez XVI
Saturday 31 March 2018
/ Sabado 31 de Marzo 2018

Highlights from the record-breaking 2017 event at Circus Circus Reno

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An Alternative National Anthem

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes.
Everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that the boat is leaking.
Everybody knows that the captain lied.
   Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died.
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   And a long red rose.
Everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that you love me, baby.
Everybody knows you really do.
   Everybody knows that you've been faithful,
Give or take a time or two.
   Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
   Without your clothes.
Everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that it's now or never.
Everybody knows that it's me or you.
   And everybody knows that you live forever
When you've done a line or two.
   Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
   For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows.

   Everybody knows that the plague is coming.
Everybody knows that it's moving fast.
   Everybody knows that the naked man and woman —
Just a shining artifact of the past.
   Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
   That will disclose
What everybody knows.

   And everybody knows that you're in trouble.
Everybody knows what you've been through
   From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach at Malibu.
   Everybody knows it's coming apart.
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
   Before it blows.
And everybody knows.

Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows.


By Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson.
© 1988 CBS Records, Inc.

I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
Leon Russell, 1942-2016


The spirits of MLK and Bull Connor live right here
Terrorism in the Nevada outback

Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 1-10-2018 Sparks Tribune / Updated 1-11, 1-12, 1-13 & 1-14-2018 & 2-16-2019 / Expansions in blue

"The good Lord created the world. Mankind built the cities. And the Devil thunk up the small town."Auld folk wisdom


Greatest Hits Dept.

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH —> BARBWIRE NOMINEE GUY RICHARDSON INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME ON FIRST BALLOT

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8 the hard way!
Barbwire wins 8th Nevada Press Association award

GOLD 2017
Don't ask Renown Med for marijuana to help your chemo
10-4-2016
We Don't Need No Education
12-13-2016
Kate Smith & Lady Gaga
2-14-2017

Bronze 6-pack
In the Uber-Nevada legislature, words can kill
4-28-2015
On artificial turf, don't breathe unless absolutely necessary
11-24-2015
Leading questions, lead-headed leaders
1-19-2016

Hopelessly trying to win an earthquake
4-18-2013
2013 Loony Tunes Legislative Lexicon
5-30-2013
The politics of media ga-ga boosterism
3-20-2014

We Don't Need No Education—> Neverending Barbwire Series

1997 Pulitzer Prize entries

Barbwire.TV
Watch NevadaLabor.com for show times.
Help us get the word out.

Support the project at http://resurge.tv#donate

SUING FOR SCHOOLS
Reruns on Carson-Dayton 226

Additional programs
on Boulder City cable. Go to bcnv.org and then
go to the BCTV link.

If Reform Fails: Health Care, Jobs and Unions — new power to the people on the public airwaves

The program premiers were available to every television set in the region because of a high-mileage media hybrid.

The shows appeared on both commercial and community stations. The non-corporate entity produced the events, commercial TV greatly expanded distribution.

Thus began an ongoing series of sane public interest programs which generate both entertaining heat and more than a little light.

Please spread the word and consider contributing to the cause online at ReSurge.TV.

You may also take the public option known as the U.S. Postal Service and send a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

Your contribution will help fund the distribution as well as ongoing efforts at developing new media, including a regional, non-corporate community radio station and the return of community television to Reno-Sparks-Washoe.

You are present at the creation of what I hope can become a new media model where the programming accurately reflects what's happening on the ground and the media impact is powerful enough to forcefully pass the message upward.

Thanks.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew


Click here for selected on-demand re-runs from the Barbwire.TV archives

Barbwire.TV:
15-year overnight success

Daily Sparks Tribune 2-10-2008

The Barbwire's Greatest Hits
Highlights from radio days
mp3 file


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MLK WEEKEND FOR THE RECORD BOOKS. Look for SRO this Sunday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in south Reno, 780 Del Monte Lane, 89511. The annual interfaith service starts at 3:00 p.m. and no matter who's on the program, the stars will be Jayla Tolliver and Taylissa Marriott.

The sisters, both 14, have become national figures with a little help from the Reno-Sparks NAACP, the Barbwire (starting Oct. 18) and the Reno Gazette-Journal (Nov. 19).

Taylissa Marriott, left, and Jayla Tolliver

The African-American youngsters have been living a modern version of the 1955 deep south right here in the fabled Mississippi West.

The Yerington High School students have been subjected to bullying, overt racism and continuing death threats all for the crime of being born with skin the color of café au lait. (That means coffee with milk.)

Despite complaints by the NAACP to Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, Yerington's top cop has not been held accountable for illegally shredding police reports. Chief Bull Connor's defense is that hate speech is a First Amendment right kinda like hollering "fire!" in a crowded theater or threatening to kill somebody, which is the legal definition of assault. Which is how the girls continue to be threatened.

At Nevadalabor.com, you will find original Snapchat photos of a teenager armed with guns and a knife captioned "The redneck god of all gods we bout to go nigger huntin". (The Barbwire and the Tribune do not sugarcoat hateful words, leaving them to wither in sunshine, the best disinfectant.)

The father of the Snapchat boy is a former Yerington police officer and now a local athletic coach. Yerington High suspended the kid who posted the photo. That student's father is an active Lyon County Deputy Sheriff. The girls' dad has been threatened with trespassing charges if he shows up at the Yerington HS campus.

Lyon County parents have recently been defending their ill-educated offspring. It gets worse.

"Yerington Mayor George Dini dismissed them as the act of teenagers who meant no harm and were ignorantly unaware of what they were doing," rgj.com reported on Nov. 18. 

“This is a case of some kids acting badly," Dini told reporter Siobhan McAndrew.

Regrettably, that statement has yet to see ink in the Reno paper.

World class civil rights attorney Terri Keyser-Cooper filed federal civil rights litigation last Thursday (no hometown judges and juries allowed).

She also asked the court for a preliminary injunction to protect the family which remains terrorized.

The court filings may be accessed hereinabove, regrettably compelling reading.

UPDATE 12 JAN. 2018 — BACK TO THE FUTURE IN NEO MISSISSIPPI WEST. The Pizen Switch poison proliferates. Taylissa and Jayla were charged by a kid in a truck in a McDonald's parking lot while another kid screamed "nigger! nigger! nigger!" The blackguard driver slammed on his brakes just before he would have hit the girls. They were understandably terrorized anew.
     The hatred has proliferated on anti-social networks (sieg heil!) with demonstrably derelict parents joining in, one shown embracing a confederate flag.
     The Reno-Sparks NAACP has received additional reports of overt racist threats in other parts of Lyon County. None of this would appear beneficial to Yerington/Lyon economic diversification efforts.
     Perhaps a campaign needs to be mounted to persuade Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev. CD2, to stop his legislation to hand Lyon County humongous amounts of public land for development purposes.
     No matter what madcap Cliven Bundy and his under-educated secessionists might claim, Nevada's track record with public lands is dismal. At statehood, Congress gave Nevada almost 4,000,000 acres to support our education system. Through corruption and cronyism, almost all has been sold off. Nevada education got a whole $19,000 in a recent two-year period. Only 3,000 acres are left and Silver State public education remains starved.
     "Among small Western states, none has a worse record than Nevada for holding onto its original trust lands. The trust lands held by Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Idaho are all in the millions of acres." (Dennis Myers, Reno News & Review 7-18-2013)
     Lyon County and Yerington are demonstrably retro governments content to go back to the future circa 1955 Alabama. Until they prove they can be responsible stewards of the public trust, Rep. Amodei's land grab should be stopped.

MORE MLK. The 20th Onie Cooper Memorial MLK Highway Caravan forms Monday at 9:30 a.m. at the LDS church, 2955 Rock Blvd. at McCarran, Sparks.

On Monday evening, most PBS stations will air the Oscar-nominated "I Am Not Your Negro," a film which "envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a revolutionary and personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends." Legendary author Baldwin (1924-1987) wrote "The Fire Next Time" and "Nobody Knows My Name."

KNPB TV-5 in northern Nevada will air the program at 9:00 p.m. PST on Monday, Sept. 15, with reruns as follows: Tuesday 1/16 2:00 a.m. Wednesday 1/17 4:00 a.m. Friday 1/19 12 midnight. Sunday 1/21 12 midnight and 3:00 a.m. All times Pacific Standard.


Check local listings and go tell it on the mountain.

OPRAH FOR PRESIDENT? In 2016 BCT (Before Czar Trumpsky), she said she didn't know enough. Not to worry. This guy has lowered the bar so that anyone who got past third grade is qualified for the job.

PREDICTABLY DESPICABLE. Employing the tactics of the tobacco, oil and sugar lobbies, a bunch of legal drug dealers paid for a Jan. 6 Reno Gazette-Journal full page blaming hospitals and surgeons for the opioid epidemic. Actually, blame Congress for neutering Drug Enforcement Administration authority and President Obama for signing the bill, as "60 Minutes" reported twice last year.

TRUMP UNDER OATH? Grand Inquisitor Robert Mueller won't know what hit him. As the late AFL-CIO leader Lane Kirkland said in Las Vegas about President Reagan in 1984, "The presidency has come a long way, from George Washington who couldn't tell a lie, to Nixon who couldn't tell the truth, to this guy who can't tell the difference."

Déjà vu all over again.

Be well. Raise hell. Esté bien. Haga infierno.
_______
Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org/ He serves as first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own.
Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

Online Extras & Smoking Guns—>
Lyon/Yerington Racism Archive. Unjoy.


All the Money in the World: The greatest story never told
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 1-3-2018 Sparks Tribune
Blast from the past: Pierre Rinfret on the ill effects of war spending
COVER YOUR YEAR-END:
Those with crystal balls should cover their glasses

Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 12-27-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 12-28-2017
Princess Cassandra and perpetual war machines
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 12-20-2017 Sparks Tribune

Christmastime investment advice from Al Capone
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 12-13-2017 Sparks Tribune
Fake news Valhalla: Putin, my president and me
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 12-6-2017 Sparks Tribune

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is. A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

Ready for Trump TV? Inside Sinclair Broadcasting’s Plot to Take Over Your Local News
Its mix of terrorism alerts, right-wing commentary and “classic propaganda” could soon reach 3/4 of the US.
By Andy Kroll/Mother Jones Oct.-Nov. 2017

How Sinclair Broadcasting puts a partisan tilt on trusted local news
By William Brangham/ PBS NewsHour 10-10-2017

Top-down Democrats haven't learned
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-10-2017

More Faux than Fox? Corporate octopus Sinclair moves to dominate Nevada and U.S. television
By Dennis Myers / Reno News & Review 8-3-2017


  Stay tuned.

  I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/ The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet.

  This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.

END OF TIMES SURVIVAL KIT. Defend yourself with humorous or humorless but always-peerless predictions for 2018 by subscribing to the Barbwire Confidential News Service.

Hush Hush!



"Media is the plural of mediocre."
— Jimmy Breslin (1928-2017)

Last year's dark foreshadowings unfortunately became reality. I thus suggest inoculation by signing onto the HushHush! list at BallotBoxing.US/

It's cheap as well as enlightening entertainment. I suggest coming aboard now. Subscription prices go up soon. Thank you kindly for your support.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its 8th Nevada Press Association award and 5th first-place at the 30 Sept. 2017 NPA annual convention in Carson City. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

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All the news you never knew you needed to know 'til now: Tell your friends and friendly enemies to subscribe to Barbwire Confidential for warm laughter, cheap thrills, hot scoops and occasional cold logic at BallotBoxing.US/
Cheap at twice the price. (Hush Hush!)


SITE NAVIGATION TIPS: When all else fails, read the instructions (A favorite John Hanks aphorism I've been using for decades)

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Copyright © 1982-2018 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and SenJoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee. He is the executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

Betty J. Barbano
2-7-1941 / 12-27-2005

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