Medialternatives

Revelations that journalists at the Argus and Cape Times accepted money in exchange for influence have rocked the media over the past week. Being paid cash “in brown envelopes” to write and influence news stories for ­political ends is really just the tip of the iceberg. The international media group has a serious problem with sponsor representation at board-room level and has been caught a number of times with its pants down, juggling conflicting interests amongst its media, advertising, entertainment and public relations assets.

Despite criticism, Independent hold steadfast to the belief in its own virtue and ability of editors to tell fact from fiction. Indeed, as I write this, the Cape Times continues to refuse to correct a news-story about yours truly, a story whose accuracy, dare one say, is not exactly in the realm of rocket science. Time for the Cape Times to fire Karen Breytenbach and come clean about the Robbie Jansen scandal?

The crafty footwork at Independent can been seen everywhere. Boardroom tycoon Sam Montsi, a wealthy black entrepreneur doubling as a Sasol and Gensec board-member. Where does the man get the energy to balance the conflict between publishing the truth and publishing glowing advertorials which merely promote business opportunities for his fellow executives whilst discriminating against ordinary South Africans?

If throwing ethics out of the window was of any concern, then surely nobody will raise an eyebrow when we learn that ex-politico Mac Maharaj (Remember the Transnet scandal) was recently appointed to the renamed Clear Channel Independent after an international fiasco involving Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays. Oh the irony.

Mays, a staunch supporter of George W Bush and Republican financier is implicated in both the Halliburten and Blackwater scandals that ushered in the global housing bubble and economic problems of the Bush administration. For a period of at least five years Clear Channel Independent was the worlds’ largest influence peddler of outdoor advertising, public relations politics and theatre entertainment complexes, representing popstars such as Madonna and Elton John, sportstars like Beckham and the list goes on of who influenced who. But why should anybody care? Who really needs to know who determines what is news when the reality is the product called news is a global media empire that has created a world resembling George Orwells 1984?

The shenanigans of pro-war Clear Channel Independent really takes the cake, but second prize in the brown-paper-bag category surely goes to Brian Mulroney, he of the ongoing Canadian Oliphant Commission investigation into the affairs of the Independent director. Mulroney, once the former Canadian PM, still heads up the O’Reilly Independent’s “international advisory board”. In addition to receiving a hefty annual payment as a non-executive board member for the group, Mulroney’s exploits have received some scrutiny from rebel shareholder Denis O’Brien, who really couldn’t give a damn if all the Independent titles were sold off to pay mounting debt in a financial crisis that is partly O’Reilly’s own doing.

Mulroney’s crimes may not be as brown as they are made out to be – taking kickbacks whilst in office is really just the beginning. A web of dodgy international deals have been exposed by award-winning investigative news programme Fifth Estate. It is therefore not surprising that Transnet afficionado Mac Maharaj is now in bed with another scandal, and a man who has rather strange relationship with German arms-dealer Karlheinz Schrieber.

So enough of the charade. Independent ceased being a media company years ago. The stories which it publishes on a daily basis bare absolutely no resemblance to the truth. Most are the produce of a vast public relations entity wielding influence and exercising power behind the thrones of world leaders. Is this the face of the new media? Certainly not, you know as well as I do, that South Africa has a vast online presence with hundreds of blogs exactly like this one. Publish the truth. Share this article amongst friends. Don’t believe Independent’s lies

The arguments given by Eskom CEO Bobby Godsell for increasing tariffs are an insult to the intelligence of consumers. The former mining boss is quoted by Bloomberg as saying “South Africa needs to set electricity prices at levels that will attract companies into the industry and encourage funding for necessary expansion by the utility.” In other words, the tariff increase has nothing to do with providing consumers with cheap, economical and environmental-friendly energy. Rather the tariff increase is all about profit-making and the creation of a lucrative energy market in which capital will be able to make a sizeable return on investment.

In a country in which the majority of South Africans are still living in abject poverty, in which a disproportionate amount of income is spent on basic services such as water and electricity, Godsell should probably be shot. It is one thing to attract investment and open the market to competition but guaranteeing high tariffs so that capital expenditure will be guaranteed a fixed term on investment is a bit like taking the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism and banging them together into a new beast which is far worse.

At least under the former monopolistic regime prices were kept low by limiting consumer choice. White South Africans and the economy benefited from cross-subsidization. Although Black South Africans were essentially excluded from many economic activities, they benefited from low food prices as a result of the subsidisation of agriculture by the utility. Now Godsell is arguing the subsidies need to be removed, so that a new tariff structure can be introduced. One which will benefit foreign investment and the so-called “private entry” to the sector while pushing up input costs in a variety of key industries especially agriculture. (There is currently no feed-in tariff for less than 1MW projects. The new tariff scheme is solely for the benefit of projects which exceed 1MW.)

All good and fine, we need to find ways of expanding the base electricity available to the national grid, but surely not by forcing consumers to subsidise large capital projects which will not return profits to the consumer, but rather end up repatriating investment along with a guaranteed escalation and interest to parts unknown. South Africans are therefore likely to see an enormous outflow of Rands and increase in inflation because of Godsell’s decision, money which is taken out of the pocket of the consumer, merely because, like so many wealthy South African capitalists, Godsell refuses to distinguish between investment, and the duties of the utility to provide for the common good or benefit of all.

Eskom under Godsell will also be engineering its own demise, with aggressive capital expansion projects that do nothing more than shift power from government to a foreign banking sector, through a variety of unnecessary and capital intensive projects such as Nuclear Power and PBMR, while funding an unsustainable form of competition dependent upon a captive market – you the consumer. We should demand an open market in which energy providers can fail or none at all. We must also demand unsustainable projects such as PBMR be shelved.

Eskom, as the nation’s energy provider of last resort, has a mandate to provide cheap and affordable electricity for all. This can be seen by the relevant clauses in the constitution. It is all very well to open the market to competition but at what price? Our telecommunications sector has a similar history of phased deregulation, and provides us with lessons on what not to do. A big bang is preferable to a phased period of deregulation in which an artififical market is created which in turn acts to prevent the transition to the next phase. South Africa could end up with the worst energy sector in the world. One in which consumers pay triple or are overcharged for the same unit of electricity, merely because contracts entered into by our government no longer see to the best interests of the consumer.

Locking consumers into an aggressive expansion programme in which there are no conceivable benefits for at least another generation will doom South Africa to unsustainable and unfordable electricity for the foreseeable future. It would be far better if the utility was raising money to fund the purchase of hydrogen fuel cells, solar panels and wind generators for domestic homes. Instead, Godsell like so many in the ANC elite, is simply feathering his own nest and entrenching his class position.

With all this talk about the recent discovery of water on the Moon, and now Mars it seems a new age of space exploration is upon us. Could the International Space Station be the answer to the USA failed Constellation programme?

Sending a self-contained habitat to the distant shores of a new world, where sufficient water exists to replenish supplies, may be the quickest and most economical solution. Colonists from Earth would be able to escape conflict on our home world, where earlier periods of exploration and discovery have resulted in genocide and tragedy for ethnic people.

The ISS would make an ideal spaceship and sending an international team could prove to be the kind of gesture that creates peace and friendship amongst nations.

In fact the ISS, with a footprint close to a conventional nuclear powered submarine, is just the kind of size habitat needed for extended journies of human exploration to the outer planets. The ISS could even begin the slow journey to planets in the solar system, with a crew knowing full well, that return to earth was highly unlikely.

Here are 10 ways to stop the war in the Middle East. Hope you enjoy them.

1. Send everyone to Sweden, where the girls are easy and nobody has to worry about not being good looking.
2. Turn the map upside down, that way the Middle East will no longer be in the Middle East.
3. Convert Jews, Christians and Muslims to an open-source Religion like Yo. That way, nobody will kill each other over proprietary code, yes those funny books they carry around are filled with code, that’s why they called it the Bible Code.
4. Drop leaflets announcing a massive Turban and Veil sale in East London, the Muslims will flock. Then do something similar over Jerusalem. Drop leaflets about massive savings on Gefilte Fish and Herring with a map and directions to Iceland. Jews will find themselves compelled to leave the city. Finally, let on that Jesus was actually Chinese, the Christians will be forced to scoot off to Beijing.
5. Send the Palestinians on an all-expenses paid holiday to Mauritius. Then steal their shoes and make off with the return tickets. They will find themselves demanding an independent state in the Middle of the Indian Ocean.
6. Sponsor Indian head massages for the Holocaust Survivors and hope the Israeli Army flakes out on incense and candles.
7. Create an advertising campaign around the return of the Messiah. Schedule a date for his return but instead leave instructions on how to build a giant space rocket. True seekers will be compelled to blast off into space.
8. Build an exact replica of Jerusalem in the Karoo desert but made out of better quality material. Hand it over to the faithful who will thank you for fulfilling lousy promises of ownership in the good books, and giving everybody better plumbing.
9. Better yet, develop a wayward timeshare scheme in which Muslims and Jews get to own the whole of Jerusalem 15 times over, then when they all start kibbitzing, offer them all a Bigger, Greater, Opportunity of a Lifetime, an even Buffer Jerusalem in a Disneyworld Themepark. They will realise the miraculous and thank you.
10. Israel can be the Palestinian Homeland every other day and vice versa. Run the relevant flags up and down vigorously and demonstrate how two countries can actually live as one. It worked in South Africa, hey, we even had a flag made out of four whole flags and some stitching, but that was during apartheid. You kidding me? I guess nobody’s perfect.

Been thinking about the problem with Mahmoud. Perhaps we should be putting up “I love Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” signs and calling for him to surrender to the infinite virtue and forgiveness of the universe. Then when he’s not looking, pack him off to the funny farm?

Not only does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad think that he is GOD, he is literally GOD. Quite obviously. I am waiting for the next sura to emanate from his very lips. The metaphysical truth – There was no Holocaust. The 20th Century is a myth. How very postmodern. I know a few people who sound like him sometimes, most of them are nuts.

Obviously if he was actually ON, speaking the TRUTH, he would be saying: There was NOTHING and there was EVERYTHING. THE HOLOCAUST MEANS NOTHING AND IT MEANS EVERYTHING at least from an existential perspective.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the all-powerful, all-knowing and all-seeing. Mahmoud the TRUTH. The unmoved mover, the causeless cause of all causes. GOD on EARTH. Surely the man is immortal? Able to prove to us his indestructible nature? I say, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can stop a bullet with his teeth?

Virtues ascribed to the Prophet Mohemmed, which can be ascribed to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a man of good lineage, clear conscience, able to pass the various tests put to him. Let’s test him now.

One has got to feel a little sorry for the fact cats at Independent right now. No sooner had they restructured the company to spin off their South African billboard advertising operation with the renamed INM outdoor, when the man who owns 26% of the company Denis O’Brien blocked the sale by calling a shareholders meeting. The result could put a permanent end to the O’Reilly dynasty. In order to bankroll the conglomorate, and keep titles such as Independent and Independent on Sunday afloat, the O’Reilly’s have to pay banks some 50 million Euros this month, which would have come from the sale of INM Outdoor.

It appears billionaire investor O’Brien wants to get rid of the O’Reilly shareholding once and for all by masterminding a collapse of the company which would allow him to cherry-pick assets. Needless to say, INM CEO Gavin O’Reilly is accusing O’Brien of having no interest in the core-business, which is surely newspapers and the newspaper industry?

Although the group has some 135 titles, when it comes to business, it is all about baked beans and crystal and O’Reilly whose interests in Heinz and Waterford Wedgewood, no longer amount to anything, will surely realise the time to make an exit is now.

Gavin O’Reilly’s father, Tony is world renowned for taking an Irish brand of yellow journalism worldwide, in an aggressive expansion of interests which blurred the boundaries between what was considered acceptable practice in the industry, and outright manipulation of news — what media critic Noam Chomsky calls the “manufacture of consent”.

Under the O’Reilly’s control, the Independent Group became merely another advertising and publicity department of commerce and real estate which was allowed to dictate and in certain circumstances fabricate news to conform with editorial policies that were driven by a boardroom populated with neo-conservatives and members of the oil industry.

Full story can be found on the Guardian

ZA-FREE started out as a simple request to end the R152 surcharge on Internet access. In effect we are asking for the right to use any of the competing DSL and VOICE services available in the country and to stop Telkom’s practice of insisting that users pay rental on Voice as well as Data on the same line, in effect a policy of double-dipping.

I still believe this demand is a good one and the argument for doing so is valid. However, shortly after instituting the campaign, I realised there was another solution which would probably achieve a better outcome, since it dealt with the existence of the current regime and merely requires that Telkom institute the same kind of practices already at play in the wireless sector.

Everybody knows that when you buy a cellphone, some phones are network locked. This is called carrier preselect. Your phone in all likelihood is already locked to a particular carrier who bills you for services.

Likewise, when you order a landline (from Telkom) it comes with services that are already preselected. It is impossible, as far as I am aware, under the current system to dump voice services and to have a data-only line in the household market. If one is a business, such a possibility exists at a premium.

If Telkom carrier preselect was ended, and your household landline were no longer network locked for voice services, we would be able to prevent Telkom from double-dipping and extorting various surchages.

For example, the line rental would probably be a basic R152 discounted to R100 and that would be that. Cable would be just like any rented device, and you could then choose which services you needed based upon a fair market which was open to competition.

If you needed voice services from another company, you would purchase these services on top of the basic infrastructure supplied by the cable company. Yes, this is what has been left out of the equation all along, the damn cable. Its a word that became associated with network television companies in the USA, and with the digital migration that is occurring everywhere, it is a good word to describe Telkom, South Africa’s Cable company.

In the old days, a phone line would come with a free telephone. Then Telkom decided to charge rental for the phone before shopping this out and turning the devices into another market. Telkom thus no longer provides you with a telephone as such. In fact what is it that the company actually does? How many subsidiaries are profiting from the simple provision of cable services to households, without actually providing any value to the consumer?

If ZA-FREE demands were met and implemented Telkom would probably become three separate companies/divisions.

The first division would merely supply the cable and the basic switching infrastructure needed to access Voice and Data services.

The second would supply data services.

The third would supply voice services.

A competitive environment created by such a restructuring would result in greater bandwidth and better services for consumers. We would not have to choose between cable and wireless, because the system would be integrated and allow consumers to make educated decisions based upon economic need.

A consumer might decide that the only cable services required in a household are data, and use wireless for voice services. Likewise, another consumer might find voice on cable to be cheaper, and data on wireless to be a better option.

In fact there is an argument to be made that Telkom should only be a cable company and nothing more. It should be restricted from supplying voice and data services altogether because these services would be better off if they were supplied by an open market instead of a government monopoly or parastatel.

End of the day, it is the consumer which benefits, not simply shareholders and fatcat CEOs. The Internet surcharge which has characterised the South African telecoms landscape would therefore come to an end and be replaced by a legitimate charge for cable.

Telkom would be furthermore forced to acknowledge that charging line rental for voice services and line rental for data services via carrier preselect was an unfair and invalid practice that resulted in double-dipping and even tripling of costs for the consumer down the line.

I therefore urge you all to demand an end to Telkom Carrier PreSelect! Down with the surcharge on Net Access!

Feel free to circulate and forward this message. Please use the group as a forum for discussion and debate. VIVA ZA-FREE VIVA.

Unlike seasonal flu, the H1N1 flu continues to pose more problems for younger people, Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said. “There are a higher attack rates and hospitalizations in younger adults and children,” she said, during a press conference held in July 2009.

A number of Peninsula High Schools reported incidents of swine flu, and today’s absenteeism associated with the H1Ni strain, amidst signs of a growing media panic about the “pandemic” on various City campuses is cause for concern.

New Scientist, reports instances of the H1N1 prior to 2008. “In 1977, an accidentally released mild H1N1 virus simply circulated alongside the existing flu, H3N2.”

Death toll in the US from 1958 “Asian” flu was approximately 69,800, according to the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) quoted in Greene Jeffrey. Moline, Karen. [2006] (2006) The Bird Flu Pandemic. ISBN 0312360568.

Last month, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that, unlike seasonal flu, the new H1N1 flu strain attacks younger people and can be more severe and deadly in that group.

SOUTH AFRICA’s media suppresses dissent and drowns out opposing views in a manner that has turned into simple but efficient marketing. While we are constantly told how are opinions are valued, most opinion is formed by a small elite who are given a disproportionate amount of time and space to air their views. Take the gerontocratic journalist Alister Sparks who drives most of the Cape Times op-ed pages, with nobody else in sight except perhaps John Scott who takes the prize for “that funny guy you stopped reading back in 1972″, or eighties columnist and Uncle Tom, Jon Qwelane who has slowly progressed into becoming His Masters Voice, along with the bigotry and audacity of pride needed to expurgate on his views about homosexuality , which he believes is akin to bestiality, and therefore should be outlawed.

The so-called “marketplace of ideas” is really a “cartel of hatred”, pumped out by the O’Reilly marketing machine and former apartheid heavies. A press which cannot be bothered with the truth, is no press at all. Lies are allowed to go unchecked. Blatant fibs stand without correction. South African journalism has reached its lowest ebb, and it is therefore not surprising that readers are turning to the Internet, and blogs like this one, in order to get a more balanced view on subjects which are often completely ignored, or written off as the ravings of a lunatic.

Here are my views on the various titles and channels that claim to represent “the media”

DAILIES

Business Day - a good read if you are a bigoted, monied racist.

Cape Times – we don’t like Jews any more than we have to, in fact if you are a Heimie or a coolie, don’t bother submitting your cv.

The Times - News with all that serious, critical stuff taken out. If it were any less chewier, it would be bubblegum

Sunday Times - weekend entertainment for the whole family, not your family dammit, the other family, you know the one with two cars, a second house and a DSTV decoder.

Sunday Independent - If this is the O’Reilly flagship, then I guess a limp dick on a poop deck surrounded by faggots must be evidence of the ultimate failure to raise circulation which has resulted in the thinnest Sunday paper in SA. compared to the bulging, phallocentric Sunday Times, I would rather gag on the Weekend Argus than shit on a paper nobody can afford.

Weekend Argus (Sunday)- overweight and cluttered with trivia compared to the Times, more influential than the Independent, because, Independent is a vanity read brought to you by people who think Britain is the centre of the universe.

Weekend Argus (Saturday) – budget Saturday paper for people who can’t afford to buy the weekly.

Die Burger – a must if you want to catch up with the Volkstaat, DA politics and believe Zille is God

Daily Voice – gutter journalism at its worst and worser. Independent Groups’ pathetic attempt to cater to a “working class” market under the false impression SA working class can’t spell, have no command of English and are only interested in sex and “Sabela” i.e. prison talk.

Sun/Son - Media24 attempt to milk the working class by offering a slightly classier read than Daily Voice, brought to you by your former jail-keepers, the Apartheid System.

Mail & Guardian - former leftist rag which outgrew its audience by decades, then developed into a ‘whose who’ for Oil Sheik waBenzis before converting to radical armchair Jihadism. Great paper if you need to keep up on the mindless prattle that passes for academia or still think the world can be changed by buying bleach-free toilet paper and supporting the PLO.

TELEVISION

ETV – Rupurt Murdoch’s Trojan Horse, the Fox Network, not too shabby, allows Debra Patta to keep a handy supply of tampons while giving enema’s to her victims.

SABc 1 2 3 – bouquet channels for overweight plebs who haven’t anything better to do than watch daytime soaps, Wielie Walie reruns and old American TV series. Out of date by a decade TV that isn’t any more interesting because its old. The evening viewing isn’t any better, and as for news, switch off before we bore ourselves to tears with ANc infomercials.

DSTV - can’t comment since I never got MNet during the Struggle and now we have democracy, still can’t afford a dish and the subscription to Toss off TV.

RADIO

Heart 104.9 – easy listening for victims of cardiac arrest brought to you by people of colour who wish they were white and whites who wish they were black.

Good Hope FM - its roots in bland, white South Africa, for a time it became hip somewhere over the turn of the Millennium. Last track with its audience when everyone converted to Satellite.

capetalk – meaningless talkshow radio for pensioners, has one or two good programmes on Alzeimhers and Lime disease.

METRO - for loudmouth DJs who wish they were on 5FM

5FM - providing the kind of sound young folk would have listened to in the 90s if they had been born back then. Whatever happened to the sound of today? What, no SA Top Twenty, you kidding me?

THE news is no longer what it once was. Increasingly, news stories are being broken online and social media such as Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook, have become an important part in the new social discourse whose starting point is not the staid and dusty offices of Newspaper House or SABC, but rather, the web of interconnected relationships and electronic communication that we call the Internet.

Some glaringly obvious errors in how news is being conveyed are becoming apparent in the process. Take the Air France disaster. It took SA media two days to wake up, while online, the story about a South African man on the passenger list of the “missing plane” was already a day old, when the news broke in Paris. Or the Boyle entertainment story, written off as a purely British affair by local news editors until it turned into one of the top global stories of 2009 according to Mashable, then there’s the arrest of well-known activist Mzonke Poni, who became the subject of online email, Facebook updates and tweets, causing an international incident that was entirely skipped over by a racist media who cannot be bothered to get out of bed for anyone who happens to be black and homeless, least of all, an activist.

South Africa’s media has always suffered from  parochialism and self-censorship. The media down here has never managed to escape the propaganda, restrictions and prohibitions of the eighties and now labour under the belief that the only good international South African story, is a story about one of the Big Five. Why should whales make the front page and not police brutality in Macasser?

Thanks to social media, however,  the grey, old men at Newspaper House can no longer dictate which news story of the day is more important. In fact, the fabrications, concoctions and outright lies of brands like Independent News, SAPA and Associated Press, no longer influence a world which has grown up with social media and which has quickly learnt how to expose blatant distortion and outright mendacity in telling the truth. Social media is unhindered by self-appointed “gatekeepers” who are out of step with the times, who can’t be bothered to keep themselves informed.

This loss in prestige must surely way heavily on newsrooms, who fail to see the future is not simply online but social. Readers are not merely following whichever news source they happen to stumble upon, and relating this information to their peers who in turn share the information, but rather engaging in a collective storytelling and narration that involves newsgathering. Any restriction on such an activity which involves information sharing is bound to be unpopular. Take the way the P2P Pirate Bay story has played itself out in local newspapers (as a cautionary tale of what happens to those who disobey patents and copyright) verses the reality online and the truth which is Sweden’s Pirate Party has just gained a seat in the European Parliament, confounding the dumbest of critics at the Cape Times.

Editors of large and stuffy media organisations may therefore find themselves out of a job, especially if they continue to ignore the growing influence of social media.

The days when media proprietors could simply dictate news headlines to slavish hacks who in turn only showed us what they want to see on the front page are over.

Social media has even begun to exposes the shenanigans of the O’Reilly Clan and the Mulroney Clear Channel connection to Blackwater and like they say in Hollywood, the Emperor has no clothes.