Water Protectors vs. the Dakota Access Pipeline (photo: Your Call)
This week on CounterSpin: In their feature “What to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests,” Time magazine told readers that “environmental activists say” the pipeline would contribute to man-made climate change; “they insist that fossil fuels—including the vast reserves in the Bakken Shale—need to be kept in the ground to protect the world from the worst effects of climate change.”
Presenting what has been the world scientific consensus for many years as the insistent opinion of activists is one way to undermine the significance of what’s happening in North Dakota, but corporate media’s main method has been to simply ignore it. If that maneuver is failing, it’s due to independent media, working to get the stories from Standing Rock out, despite on-the-ground intimidation and big media’s studied disinterest. We’ll get a report back from Rose Aguilar; she’s the host of Your Call, the daily call-in show on KALW in San Francisco. She’ll join us from her second reporting trip, where she’s filing dispatches from Standing Rock for 48hills.org and The Nation.
Transcript: ‘It’s About Embracing a Different Way of Life’
Samsung ad (image: The Nation)
Also on the show: Fossil fuels aren’t the only industry presenting real harms and risks to the planet and human beings in their production. But unlike oil or grapes or even clothing, relatively few people think about where their cell phone comes from. The story of Samsung smartphones catching fire brought that company into the spotlight for a minute, but our guest explains that stories on the potential danger to some consumers missed a bigger, deeper story about the dangers Samsung—and corporations like them—pose for their own workers and the countries where they operate. We’ll get that story from Michelle Chen, contributing writer at The Nation, contributing editor at In These Times and Dissent magazine, and co-producer/co-host of Dissent‘s podcast, Belabored.
Transcript: ‘What Open Borders Mean for Corporations Is Really About Restricting Workers’ Rights’
SOURCE LINKS:
- “Live From Standing Rock: Oil Pipeline Rejected Near a White Town…” by Rose Aguilar (48hills, 10/31/16)
- “Exploding Phones Are Just One of Samsung’s Safety Liabilities,” by Michelle Chen (The Nation, 10/27/16)
We are all given a different level of intelligence so that those in a higher class can have compassion, pity and charity for those of a lower class, so that those in a lower class can produce a grateful response. So, why is it that most people are so self-absorbed as to only practice mutual gratification with those in their class, with those of equal intelligence only giving equal gifts to those in their class?
But surely, to help those of a lower class when it only inflates pride, it only inflates pride and makes society all the more ingrate.
So, either evolution devolved into an impossible situation by giving the majority an ingrate conviction that they deserve more then the wealth needed to have a comfortable life, or by intelligent design, planet earth was created to show what happens when people are so self-absorbed as to think they deserve to be rich.
For example, to post this comment I had to know that 5 x 6 = 30. Problem is, most people in the laboring-class lower-half of society do not know the answer.
I have worked with lots of people in the “laboring class” over the years (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, bricklayers) who most certainly know that 5 x 6 = 30.
They use math in their job every day. Could not do without it.
Can you imagine what a house would look like if it were built by people who did not know what 5 x 6 was? I can. It would be a bunch of 2 x 4’s cut at random lengths and nailed together at random locations.In other words, it would look like something built by a journalist or lawyer.
The funny thing is that many of the people in the “laboring class” could skate intellectual circles around many of our “elites” (journalists, lawyers, politicians, etc)
One big difference between working class folks and those in the upper class is that the latter think they know everything when the reality is that in many cases they know very little. There is even a name for the phenomenon: It’s called the Dunning Kruger effect.