Some closure the morning after

November 6, 2024 ~ jlpagano

Latest Cenk/Ben discussion on Gaza

January 20, 2024 ~ jlpagano

Here is my comment on the YouTube channel…

Yet another critical discussion that really should be on national TV IMO.

But on a side note, while I am much more on Cenk’s side over the issue, I also have serious concerns about his health when he gets riled up by this. As for Ben, I can totally empathise with his desire to defend his people and I have no doubt he truly believes that is what he is doing. But IMO his view is evidence of a biased Israeli groupthink which can only perpetuate the actions of their current government.

I am reminded of what happened in Northern Ireland (different situations I know, but still many similarities) in that Netanyahu’s red line of “all Hamas must be destroyed” is along the same lines as the Unionists’ one of “decommissioning” which stated that there could be no peace until the IRA had given up all their weapons. Neither is a definable position. When would we know the IRA had given up all their guns? When would we know all Hamas members were taken off the board? They are both policies that can only prolong a conflict. BUT – eventually the Unionists did relent after a lot of diplomacy from all sides, so we can only hope that eventually something similar can happen in the Middle East.

Jeff the Irish Dragon

Justice is coming…so are more FPP posts (hopefully)

January 3, 2024 ~ jlpagano

My 2024 resolution is to get back to some kind of regular posting on this blog, and it’s not like there won’t be material for me with a US election plus maybe an Irish one as well.

As you can see above, I have something to get me started – I finally got my hands on the new book from Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks so needless to say I will be offering some thoughts here as I go. I’m only on the 2nd chapter at this stage but it seems good so far.

I am doing my best to be objective and critical where I can and so far my biggest complaint is similar to one I have about their TV show, namely Cenk’s habit of finishing off a well-laid out point by saying something like “if that doesn’t make perfect sense to you, then you must be deluded”. We’re not going to win people over by calling them stupid in fact if anything that will have the reverse effect.

Anyway I’ll be back soon with more critiques and I’m also hoping to get Keego back for the odd US Election podcast. JLP

TYT host has a legitimate point but goes too far with it

November 30, 2023 ~ jlpagano

I quote The Young Turks a lot on this site so in a way I’m glad to have the opportunity to show an area where I disagree with them. Although for the above segment, while I agree with the actual. point being made by the show’s Executive Producer Ana Kasparian, I really do think she devotes too much time expressing it.

Anyway I voiced my view in the form of a comment on YouTube, which will probably never be read, but for the record I’ll copy it here anyway…

Well I know Anna said she doesn’t care if someone disagrees with her but I’m going to do it anyway. Thing is, it’s not her main point of this segment where I disagree.

Of course it’s wrong to condone or defend or rebrand Hamas’ actions. I’m 100% with her on that, in fact to me it’s pretty obvious.

My problem is with the presentation. While her point is one that needs to be made, I totally disagree that it’s one that needs to be made in the A Block of the main TYT show, while finding about a dozen different ways to call people with those views “stupid” in the process.

For one thing, I find this hypocritical since having watched the show for years I know she often pushes back on Cenk when he goes too far on the intelligence of MAGA voters (and I also agree with her on this).

But what bothered me most about this segment was that Anna kept saying “I don’t know whether or not it’s a tiny minority who think this way” (paraphrase). If she didn’t have this information, maybe it wasn’t worthy of being the feature topic of the show, suggesting that this is the most important thing in the news cycle. My guess would be that this is a minority view on the Left so while it shouldn’t be ignored I don’t think it should be elevated to this extent either.

And one final point, Ana claims those voicing their opinions at the council meetings are “providing fodder for the right”, which is true, but I also think her segment does that because it would not be difficult for someone to either clip to make it look like TYT agrees with them, or at least highlight the left fighting among themselves.

To summarize, I love the show, I love both Cenk and Ana as well as all the crew, it’s just for this one segment I felt I had to push back a bit. Agree with the point, just not the framing. Keep up the otherwise excellent work guys!

Jeff the Irish Dragon

Three examples of important content for understanding the true nature of the Israel/Hamas conflict

October 14, 2023October 14, 2023 ~ jlpagano

Following the disgusting and senseless actions of Hamas we are now in yet another time of war involving Israel.

But it’s not merely the reports on the atrocities that instigated this latest crisis that we need to discuss. It’s also the actual reporting of it. Just a couple of weeks ago my wife told me she wanted to watch the movie 1984 with John Hurt and Richard Burton. And while the term “Orwellian” might be overused these days, it certainly has to be said that large portions of the mainstream media have reverted to 1984-style propaganda from the moment news of the (again, reprehensible just in case it isn’t clear how I feel) Hamas action broke.

I could go on about my feelings on this matter but the purpose of this post is to share some media which has been produced by people who understand the situation much more than I do yet find themselves able to approach it with a holistic view rather than a “we stand squarely behind Israel no matter what, and anyone who doesn’t totally agree with us is an anti-Semite” one.

So here they are, I hope you either have the time to watch/listen or at least have been able to find similar open-minded discussions and presentations out there.

Apologies for not posting for so long, I could literally produce multiple posts every single day but most of my online time has to be taken up with rugby, especially now. I’m hoping to start a TikTok account for this site soon. JLP

1. POD SAVE THE WORLD

First we have a podcast from Pod Save The World, an excellent production featuring Tommy Veitor (of parent show Pod Save America) and Ben Rhodes (who worked with the US State Department under President Obama) which generally talks about world news from a US perspective, which some may see as a contradiction as the vast majority of the population is definitely ignorant of anything to do with global politics. They normally have a show during the week but they got together for this special one immediately after the news broke, and this is why I appreciate their extremely balanced view which pointed out the actions of the Netanyahu government as well.

2. THE YOUNG TURKS

Next up we have The Young Turks, generally hosted by Cenk Uygur and Anna Kasparian, but for their first show after the Hamas attack, Anna gave up her seat to occasional guest Ben Gleib, and Israeli-American comedian who is always promoting Progressive values, a fact proven by his very existence as a TYT host. But with a lot of his family members living in Israel and some directly affected by the Hamas attack, he is of course extremely well placed to offer that perspective.

So for this protracted debate, which I would recommend you watch in its entirety, we not only have the standard “anti-Occupation” viewpoint offered by Cenk, but it also comes with strong rebuttals from someone speaking for Israeli citizens in the aftermath of a horrific atrocity.

Unfortunately the video is age-restricted so I can’t share it directly to the page, so instead I will add the link below.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE YOUNG TURKS DEBATE ON YOU TUBE

3. THE DAILY SHOW

Even with the terrible nature of a story like this, it is actually possible to turn to comedy for both solace and, most crucially, information.

This clip may not be a current one from The Daily Show (it first aired in 2014), but it is still perfect for illustrating just how polarized the media landscape becomes whenever Palestine is in the news.

https://www.tiktok.com/@themadhatter0718/video/7288398930067377439

One media story, three media clips, three media opinions

May 17, 2023 ~ jlpagano

The “one media story” is all about the GOP and what they’ve done since they’ve taken over the House of Representatives (albeit barely).

We all knew that serving the American people was furthest from their minds, and in a way it’s to their credit that they didn’t even bother hiding the fact that a major priority of theirs was to use the subpoena power of committees to find, or at least create, enough dirt on Joe Biden & his family to trash his name as much as possible in the build up to the 2024 election.

Now to the “three media clips” in question. One is from MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, the second one is from “The Young Turks” and the reason you don’t see a third in this post is because it is the clip the other two are talking about, namely one from Fox News as Maria Baritiromo interviewing James Comer who is the GOP Chairman of the House Oversight Committee that is one of many gunning for the Bidens.

Most of the time it would be counter-productive to share rhetoric from people like Comer, not just because it’s designed to smear, but also because it is so boringly predictable. Naturally we know it boils down to “Biden=bad” which is the red meat Fox viewers want to hear and at this stage they don’t even need to have found actual evidence to do an interview like this, all they need is for Comer to say something like “We are hearing reports that….” and their work is done.

For these clips, the story is about a “whistleblower” that they claim has information about Biden supposedly working for the Chinese government. They announced this a week or two ago, but now it seems the whistleblower has “gone missing”???

Which brings us to the other two clips. First, here’s Morning Joe, hosted by former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough. He now hosts the morning show on MSNBC which would make you think he’s a Democrat now, but I reckon he’s the guy on which Aaron Sorkin’s character Will McAvoy in The Newsroom was based. But that’s a debate for another day, for this clip Scarborough plays the exchange between Bartiromo & Comer before having a long laugh about how the GOP “lost” a whistleblower, like that’s the biggest takeaway from the Fox clip.

So I watched this on Monday, and I couldn’t believe that even though Joe goes from his monologue to talk to about eight different “co-hosts” about the clip, none of them appears to notice the obvious. They make it out that “even Maria is disgusted” by the disappearance of the whistleblower, when IMO it doesn’t take a whole lot of grey matter to see that what Maria is doing is trying to make it look to the viewers that Biden, who they’re trying to maintain is some kind of Don Corleone figure, somehow had the informant “whacked”.

Thankfully by Wednesday we had this coverage by The Young Turks where they see it for what it is. Now THIS is proper analysis.

The girl on the left, Emma Vigeland, usually isn’t on TYT anymore this was a guest appearance – she was a host up to a few years ago but now she works with Sam Seder at The Majority Report, another quality outlet I must say. And actually in another clip on this show, she vehemently disagrees with Cenk on the Debt Ceiling crisis, which is always good to see in these videos because if everyone agrees on everything life would be pretty boring.

But overall I’ve done this post to highlight the difference between right-wing media, “corporate” (or as they’d call it “centrist” media, and progressive media. You can probably tell which I feel is the most reliable. JLP

Pushback on buybacks… 🙄

May 4, 2023 ~ jlpagano

Over on my rugby site I recently saw a link on Twitter to an article I wanted to read and to read it I had to get a free subscription to the publication so I signed up with a view to cancelling once the money was about to kick in.

Well, that time is approaching so I thought I’d share this “article” with you because I thought the headline was hilarious.

“BUYBACKS AREN’T BAD”???????????

One of the reasons they ARE bad is that corportions used govt handouts after COVID to buy back their own shares rather than to help their customers by lowering prices. This article tells us it’s a good thing because it helps provide a good dividend for investors. Well DUH!!!! That’s like a bank robber saying the theft was good because it helped him buy a Rolls Royce!!!!

The argument laid out in this argument is essentially “trickle down economics” which is all I need to know that I should NEVER pay for subscription, Shame, because they do have quite a few rugby articles, although if anything that fact helps underline the contradiction of a Progressive following rugby union! Might as well move into golf and Polo as well while I’m at it!!!

I have copied a bit of the article just to show I’m willing to let the author make his own argument, while respecting the firewall by not publishing the whole lot.

When companies buy back their shares, as AIB did two weeks ago, it’s common for them get stick for it. You’d expect criticism of the practice from The Guardian, but even the Harvard Business Review is piling on.

Their argument goes like this: it’s bad when companies buy their own shares back because it’s money that could have been used for wages or investment. The argument is that buybacks reduce wages and investment, so they’re bad for society.

But buybacks are good for investors. And more importantly, they’re good for society.

A company is doing a good job when it’s maximising its value. Obviously that’s true from the perspective of the company’s shareholders. But it’s true for society too.

When a company is maximising its value, it’s combining a bunch of inputs like land, labour and machinery in such a way that the whole is more useful than the sum of its parts. Society gets more value from a bakery than it does from flour, workers, vans, ovens and land. The extra value created for society is reflected in the value of the combined entity, relative to the value of the separate inputs.
Sean Keyes on investing: Buybacks aren’t bad bad

Why did Just Stop Oil do that snooker thing?

April 19, 2023 ~ jlpagano

Before I get on with the subject matter, apols for not posting since July 2022, the simple reason is that I completely revamped the rugby site around that time and once the season kicked off there wasn’t a lot of online time for anything else. I have tons of things I’d like to do with FPP going forward but little or no opportunity to do it but at very least I’m hoping to get to a stage where I can at least produce one piece of content per week. We’ll see how that goes in a Rugby World Cup year….

No, I don’t actually condone the action being taken above, nor do I condone the Van Gogh soup thing, nor anything similar. No matter how strongly I felt about a particular issue, it’s very unlikely I’d ever go to those lengths.

That said, I do think a bit of perspective is required. Is anyone at least ASKING why people were driven to plan incidents like this? I mean nothing is black or white, nor is it pink, blue, brown, green, yellow or even orange despite this guy’s best efforts.

So what I’ve done is have a quick Google, found a press release from the Just Stop Oil site and copy/pasted it here.

Yes, I know that makes it look like their stunt “worked”, but the ere’s the thing…between the jigs and the reels, damage to a baize cloth or a bit of Campbells chucked on a glass pane in front of a painting doesn’t QUITE match up to the damage being done by the fossil fuel industry and those world leaders it has bought.

So great cause, shame about their methods, but still here’s to faster progress towards better public ownership of valuable resources. JLP

“New oil and gas will snooker us!” : Just Stop Oil supporters disrupt the World Snooker Championship

Press / April 17, 2023

Two supporters of Just Stop Oil have disrupted the World Snooker Championship, climbing onto the snooker tables and throwing paint over one. They are demanding that the government stop all new UK fossil fuel projects and are calling on UK sporting institutions to join in civil resistance against the government’s genocidal policies.

At around 7:20pm, two Just Stop Oil supporters stormed onto the snooker tables at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, interrupting play. The pair proceeded to cover one of the tables in orange powder paint, before being removed by security and arrested.

One of those taking action, Margaret Reid, 52, a former museum professional from Kendal, said:

“I did not take this action lightly, but I cannot remain a passive spectator while our government knowingly pushes us down a path to destruction. They are giving handouts of £236 million per week of our money, to the most profitable industry on earth, during a cost of living crisis. I can no longer justify watching from the side lines.”

“I am angry and heartbroken that I have found myself in a position where taking this sort of disruptive action is the only way to get heard.”

Another of those taking action Eddie Whittingham, 25, a student at Exeter university said:

“I don’t want to be disrupting something that people enjoy, but we’re facing an extremely grave situation. Europe is experiencing its worst drought in 500 years. We’re seeing mass crop failure right now. We’re facing mass starvation, billions of refugees and civilisational collapse if this continues.”

“We can’t continue to sit back and act as if everything’s OK. If you want to do something to prevent the greatest crisis we’ve ever faced, go to juststopoil.org and sign up for a slow march from April 24th in London.”

In moments of emergency, we must stand up and be brave, we must stand up for good over evil, life over death, right over wrong. Just Stop Oil is calling on everyone to pick a side. Either you are actively supporting civil resistance, fighting for life, or you are complicit with genocide.

The time is now. Join us and slow march, while you still can. Our indefinite campaign of civil resistance begins on April 24th and will not end until our government ends new oil and gas.

Podcast : US media “forgets” that governing is for everyone

May 24, 2022 ~ jlpagano

Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia says one thing, US media spins it as another – and not just the right wing media either.

An article on what Stacey Abrams actually said > Georgia GOP attacks Stacey Abrams … for speaking the truth (msnbc.com)

How Fox News covered the same speech > Stacey Abrams calls Georgia ‘worst state in the country to live’ | Fox News Video

Category: Media