BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO

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Aug. 2012-Aug. 2013: the Barbwire's Silver Anniversary Year
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.

Blogging with the rabble on the Tower of Babel
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-11-2013 Sparks Tribune

   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 the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen

"Media is the plural of mediocre."
                              — Jimmy Breslin



HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

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
Updated 8-30-2011
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 2009, 2010 and 2011 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


HAT TRICK: Barbwire wins 3rd straight Nevada Press Association First-Place Award

WE WON: BIG NEWS FROM THE NEVADA PRESS ASSOCIATION CONFAB IN GOMORRAH SOUTH

Blame the media, down to the last splinter and shard.

Every so often, somebody says something despicable and the reviled American Civil Liberties Union knee-jerkedly defends the perp.

The ACLU's panacea for offensive speech is "more speech."

Be careful what you wish for — you just might get it.

The United States is big and complex.

Mass media used to provide the glue holding democracy together.

We've now moved from broadcasting to narrowcasting.

Back when the number of media was far smaller, we had a better sense of national unity, a common frame of reference.

God has apparently imposed upon us sinners a latter day Tower of Babel, a cacophony of voices who rarely, if ever, understand each other.

The splintering of the means of communication increases our fragmentation as a nation.

About 40 years ago, the average political soundbyte on network TV news was almost two minutes.

A decade ago, it had shrunk to seven seconds.

Debate has devolved to dueling bumper stickers at 20 paces.

The semi-literate shorthand of Twitter is not the low ebb.

I just got an e-mail headlined "Tweeting is so 2012."

It noted that "Twitter launched a fast-growing video app called Vine which enables users to cram as many clips as they can into a six-second video frame."

Modern communication has thus been reduced to the likes of comedian Henny Youngman's greatest one-liner: "Take my wife. Please."

But the joke is on us.

Smart dictators know that the great unwashed must be allowed safety valves.

The Soviet Union allowed the continued existence of the Catholic Church as the only forum of dissent in Cold War Poland.

Americans get lots and lots of freedom of speech.

Anybody can become a published journalist by blogging —> among several billion websites.

Not surprisingly, the average blog has a readership of one.

The prisoners of the Tower concede so much power.

Analysts have long pointed out that the public has an attention span usually limited to the top three issues of any day.

Edward Snowden and the Kardashian family are bumper-sticker rarities that can be encapsulated in six or seven seconds.

For anything less identified, you can almost hear a billion clicks morph into a vague yawn.

The Federal Communications Commission is now expanding the Tower, opening up licensing of hundreds of low-power fm community radio stations. (This would have happened a decade ago save for the lobbying power of the National Association of Broadcasters and NPR. Even public radio hates competition.)

I'll soon become part of the problem when I re-establish Reno-Sparks-Washoe's community TV channel.

We can apparently have all the freedom of speech we want just as we can have all the guns we want.

But since we no longer understand each other, just check your rights at the door.

Be careful what you wish for.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

WEB EXTRAS...

HONOR YOUR DON. Keep sending comments supporting legendary Nevada photographer Don Dondero (1920-2003) for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame.

His life's work appeared worldwide, including this newspaper.

Enlist in the campaign to install Big Don.

Please send me your memories and endorsements via e-mail or to P.O. Box 10034, Reno NV 89510.

The Barbwire got the late Reno Gazette-Journal columnist Guy Richardson elected last year.

Let's go for a repeat.

BARBWIRE.TV. Support the return of community TV to these parts.

If last year's elections didn't convince you of the need, the 2013 legislature certainly should have.

Join up. You may donate at ReSurge.TV or contact me.

This is important.

Thank you

VOTE FOR THE LUCKY 13, the most powerful Nevadans of 2013. Send nominations to <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us>

Last year's rogues gallery will be linked to the expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/

LET'S GET IT ON. E-me to get on the Barbwire News bulletin list for information not filtered through corporate lenses.

I broke a bushel of major stories last year and 2013 has gotten even better.

The bad guys really make it easy sometimes.

Turn on, tune in and tell a friend.

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

____________

Andrew Barbano is a 44-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, 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 JoeNeal.org. 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 Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Guns...

Death panels hard at work right here in River City
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-4-2013 Sparks Tribune

Clarence Thomas, Little Anthony & the Imperials
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-27-2013 Sparks Tribune

Rosy the poll dancer's destructive seduction
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-20-2013 Sparks Tribune

Googling for liquid Romanian castanets
Other than doing our laundry, what should we do about
Big Brother peeking into our collective lace undies?

Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from
the 6-13-2013 Sparks Tribune

Barbwire Corporate Welfare Archive
Barbwire Corporate Propaganda Archive
Cabellyup.com

Enron II: Nevada's Battle-Born Toxic Event
Indigence and indigestion from ingestion of Warren Buffett's buffet
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from
the 6-6-2013 Sparks Tribune

Longing for the wisdom of the grateful dead
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-23-2013 Sparks Tribune

Star-stuck: Dirty deals for dirty movies
Ghostrider Nicolas Cage sticks it to school kids
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from
the 5-16-2013 Daily Sparks Tribune

Mr. Wynnderful waxes wealthier whilst we wither
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 5-9-2013 Daily Sparks Tribune

FROM HUGH JACKSON
THE LAS VEGAS MEANER GLEANER
The best Nevada political commentator alive

Policy with the stars
Of Wynn service, lip service and Cage fighting
Las Vegas CityLife / 5-15-2013

Rules of Disengagement
Gov. Veto El Obtúse struck dumb, but with a smile
Las Vegas CityLife / 4-17-2013

 

...and more ammo...

We Don't Need No Education
The continuing Barbwire series

The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later
Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune

The Post-dated Recession
By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011

Union decline and rising inequality in two charts
by Colin Gordon
Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012

Used in
journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. Not included in the RGJ online edition.

WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES
The Barbwire Labor Day column
Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012


Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest
HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row.

The winning entries
Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck

Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune

Click here to view the show on your desktop

RED flags flying low over Sparks
Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune

The wrath of self-righteous racism
Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune





The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries
And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?

 

The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners
Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL
Barbwire / 11-30-2008
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Barbwire / 8-3-2008
Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here?
Barbwire / 6-15-2008


...and more ammo yet


 

 

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Copyright © 1982-2013 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 44-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster 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.

Site composed and maintained by Deciding Factors, CWA 9413 signatory

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