USTV Media News & Updates
* STOP ACTA! (The European Version of SOPA & PIPA) *
Just because SOPA & PIPA have been derailed (for the moment) in the US doesn’t mean the fight is over. The giant media corps that are behind that are global in scope, and are pushing their same agenda in the EU, under legislation known as ACTA. The claim to excessive copyright protection serves as a great tool for information suppression. Once technology and blocking techniques are in place, virtually all information is liable to filtering and suppression due to “copyright violation.” You can read about it here, and then sign the petition to help stop it.
RT weighs in on this issue with its report: “ACTA, Secret Censor Tool Worse Than SOPA and PIPA”
Want to know what the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the PIPA (Protect IP Act) involve, and why they are such a threat to existing internet freedoms? Watch This.
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* OCCUPY WALL STREET *
The Occupy Wall Street Movement - Occupy Everywhere!
There’s no shortage of corporate media disinformation flooding our society. And that has rarely been more apparent than with the majority of reports regarding the nature and purpose of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This rapidly growing national (and international) movement is targeting the systemically corrupting influence Wall Street and the financialization of our global economy has had on America and the masses of people throughout the world.
As long-time critics of the inordinate power and undue influence these global financial entities have had on just about every aspect of our society, particularly our political system, we at USTV Media welcome the efforts of people to finally organize around demanding real, systemic change in our political systems. Followers of UnCommon Sense TV Media and readers of this website will find a lengthy and detailed record of attention paid to these issues over the years, particularly here and here.
If you’d like to better understand what is driving the OWS movement, and what are the issues which underlie its fundamental principles, this short video pretty much sums it up.
The politics in many ostensible democratic societies today have become practically Soviet in their open fraudulence as actually representing the democratic principles they claim to function upon. Rather, politics and politicians have become agencies of plutocratic power. They are, in our market fundamentalist societies, simply another item to be bought and sold by the highest bidder, who then use them to rig the rules to insulate their positions of powerful privilege even more securely. Government has become the very thing the American Revolution was initiated to end; that is the idea that government is a tool to confer privilege on insiders.
Here’s to the American Revolution, and to renewing our revolutionary vows in re-asserting a government that “derives its power from the consent of the governed,” and that its powers are organized in such form as to “most likely effect their [the people’s] safety and happiness.”
“So crowds gathered with sleeping bags to await a pop concert overnight or two pose no threat. Crowds gathered on the streets of Pasadena to sleep overnight reserving their Rose Parade viewing spots pose no threat. Only crowds gathered in public places overnight to protest economic injustice pose a threat to public order. Message: Be trivial?”
- Harry Shearer (via Twitter feed)
“The protesters are dismissed as dreamers, but the true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinitely the way they are, just with some cosmetic changes. The protesters are the awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare. They are not destroying anything. They are reacting to a system that is gradually destroying itself.”
- Slavoj Zizek
Look for a local initiative in your area - or help start one yourself!
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* USTV MEDIA PRODUCER PRESENTS AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE *
India boasts the world’s most linguistically diverse news landscape. The India Media Centre, located within the University of Westminster, is the world’s first academic center dedicated to study globalizing tendencies of media in India, and is organizing a pioneering conference to address the implications of this major media development. This international gathering on “The Changing Face of Journalism In India” brought together journalists and journalism scholars from around the world to examine the changing face of journalism in India and its impact on the rest of the world.
Invited to participate in this event was USTV Media producer Andy Valeri, who presented his work on “The Role of Mediated Communication in India in Support of Social Justice and Human Rights.” His report covered some examples of how community media is used as a tool for empowering grassroots movements towards righting injustices within society. Particular focus was placed upon the work of such groundbreaking organizations as Video Volunteers and their India Unheard initiative, as well as the outstanding work of WITNESS, originally founded by English musician Peter Gabriel. The work of these organizations has often been referenced over the years via USTV Media.
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* AMERICANS ELECT - BYPASS THE POLITICAL PARTIES *
What if there were a better way to choose our president? Americans Elect is harnessing the power of the Internet to ask every single voter one simple question: who would you nominate in 2012?
* You choose the issues.
* You choose the candidates.
* You nominate the ticket.
* And the winner will be on the 2012 ballot in every state.
Learn more and sign on at Americans Elect
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* USTV MEDIA PRODUCER WORKING ON NEW CURRICULUM & PUBLICATIONS *
As some friends and followers of UnCommon Sense TV Media have been aware of, producer Andy Valeri has been involved with developing and completing an originally designed graduate program at the University of Dayton in Media, Communications and Human Rights. The program has no direct precedent within either the groundbreaking Human Rights Studies program at the University (a program which is one of, if not the first of its kind in the country), nor within most programs of its nature around the world. It aims to bring concise focus within media policy and information access issues, as well as within all realm of communication studies (including all forms of artistic expression), the primacy of the fundamental human right to communication and the necessity for establishing that right within all levels of legal and social/civic practice.
This short video, commissioned by Global Partners & Associates, does an excellent job in summing up the thesis of this work in only a few short minutes. It sums up the primacy of the issue of why new communication technologies are making networks of mediated communication the forefront of human rights issues today. No efforts towards the sustenance and advancement of human rights can be considered serious if they do not incorporate the dimension of communication (and information) rights into the heart of their work.
A Networked World: What’s Next For Human Rights - Another short, related follow up video regarding the basis of this initiative.
For those interested in more information regarding this initiative, contact Andy Valeri at andy@ustvmedia.org
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* USTV MEDIA HOSTS PRODUCE RADIO TRIBUTE PROGRAM *
USTV Media producers Andy Valeri & Ed Lacy hosted a special edition of Around The Fringe, the popular, long running radio program heard weekly on WYSO 91.3FM in the Miami Valley region of Ohio (and globally via live streaming audio).
The program was a tribute to Gary Staiger, a committed political activist, military veteran and anti-war advocate, and music entrepreneur from the Dayton region, who passed away suddenly this November 25th. Gary’s loss is, and will continue to be, felt deeply by many whose public efforts, as well as personal lives, were touched so positively by Gary’s efforts.
The program is now available for online listening, thanks to the efforts of Juliet Fromholt and WYSO radio!
LISTEN HERE:
“Around the Fringe: A Tribute to Gary Staiger” (Part 1)
“Around the Fringe: A Tribute to Gary Staiger” (Part 2)
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“And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmurings of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.”
- John Steinbeck, from his novel The Grapes of Wrath (first published in 1939)
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* PEOPLE v. CORPORATIONS - MOVE TO AMEND THE U.S. CONSTITUTION *
Yet again the U.S. Supreme Court has sided with the ruling elite against the interests of the American people. Today in Citizens United vs. FEC they overturned the flimsy federal campaign finance reform laws afforded by the McCain-Feingold law. Corporations can now to spend unlimited money in buying our elections. The Court has legalized corporate bribery of our elected officials.
So if you were already disgusted by the fact that over $5 billion dollars was spent in the 2008 election, watch out. Because the floodgates are now wide open!
And once again, the Court relied on the illegitimate legal doctrine of “Corporate Personhood” in order to justify this profoundly undemocratic decision.
Corporate personhood is the notion that a corporation can claim to be a person, and therefore entitled to basic human rights‚ also described as political and civil rights and have courts overturn laws.
As this decision clearly demonstrates, corporate personhood is not an inconsequential legal technicality. Consider this– the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation was a “legal person” with 14th Amendment protections before they granted full personhood to African-Americans, immigrants, natives, and women.
And literally hundreds of laws‚ perhaps thousands‚ of local, state and federal laws that attempt to protect our environment, our elections, our safety and health, our right to organize have been overturned as a result of this erroneous doctrine.
The world is being destroyed, the federal government is engaged in unending war, and we live in an unjust, unsustainable and undemocratic country.
It’s time to take ourselves seriously– both about what is at stake and what it will require to actually assume and democratically exercise real power. We must address the reality that the federal courts have made real democracy impossible.
It’s time to follow the lead of the American Revolutionaries, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the trade unionists, and the Civil Rights activists and to build a broad-based, multi-partisan democracy movement in the United States.
It’s time to amend the U.S. Constitution to make it clear that only human beings can claim to be “persons” with constitutional rights.
We are under no illusion that this approach will fix the legal system, the political system, the economic system.
But we believe it is time we confront the current Constitutional framework
Are you with us?
1) Go to the website http://www.MovetoAmend.org to announce that you are joining the growing national movement.
2) Contact us at Democracy Unlimited at 707-269-0984 to organize locally to make the promise of democracy a reality.
For More Information on who to contact and how to get involved in this growing movement, go Here
Watch Free Speech Is For People
Visit USTV Media’s “Corporations, Democracy & USA, Inc.” for more information and research on this topic, as well as the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD).
Another excellent organization taking on the challenge of organizing local communities to assert their democratic rights from being usurped by corporations is that of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and the Democracy Schools.
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On Facebook? Join These Groups Today!
One Million Strong for the Separation of Corporation and State
Abolish Corporate Personhood NOW
A Luta Continua
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