An Appeal

Spiked to the top until 5/25


I consider myself fortunate, in that I can pay my own way through life. I don't need to borrow much money, and when I do, I can pay it back easily. So I don't need friends for that, and my friendships are based on mutual attraction and emotional support.

I consider myself doubly blessed to have access to information on a scale that my forefathers and foremothers could never have imagined. It's easy in any organized society to lose track of what's going on around you and when your interest encompass the world, it is infinitely harder to sort out truth from rumour and fiction.

This is why I consider alternative media to be among the most critical resources an American citizen can have. We get spoonfed our CNN, and have FOX News' point of view injected under our skins from our encounters with the great unwashed and disintellectuals that surround us.

The past twelve months saw the demise of Air America Radio, one of the biggest progressive media outlets available. AAR served its purpose: it let liberals in red states know they are not alone, that the radios glued to Rush and Hannity did not mean that America was against them. As Barack Obama said, there are no red state or blue states, just United States. But you'd never know that from commercial, for-profit media.

Indeed, when Erick Erickson becomes a pundit on CNN, well, you can only count the weeks before the braodcast news from mainstream media sources yet again turns incrementally fascist.

This is why I feel lucky to have DISH Network for my television viewing needs. There's a reason the competition between cable and satellite providers is heating up: people are growing tired of having corporate America rammed down their throats anytime they want to watch TV. The only lifeline on cable for an interested populace is public access, which sometimes broadcasts true progressive programming like Free Speech TV and LinkTV.

On DISH, these are twenty four hour networks. DISH provides progressive programming that no cable outlet, and not even DirecTV, provides.

But I'm not here to sell you a dish. I'm here to sell you on information.

Free Speech TV is a true progressive network that survives solely on viewer donations: no commercials, no grants from the government. You make it work, which means you have a voice, and it means you get to make decisions about what you see.

Here's the good news: while FSTV is available (for now) on DISH only 24/7, you can view it streaming on the Internet. So there's really no excuse for missing programming like Democracy, Now!, GRITtv, or Greg Palast's important reports from troubled areas like Haiti or New Orleans or the Amazon basin. He's currently following an interesting story of American and western "vulture" capitalists preying on Liberia in the wake of world debt forgiveness, and he's doing this for BBC News.

So it's not like he's got no street cred. Why he's not on American television is reprehensible.

LinkTV is just what the name implies and what its slogan says: "Television without borders." Not only do you get full documentaries on a variety of subjects from the comparison of the human and gorilla genomes to the battle for the soul of the Anglican Church worldwide, you get hours of world music videos, scads of news programs from Al Jazeera and Middle Eastern sources from like Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, Deutsche Welle from Germany, and movies from around the world like 35 Shots Of Rum, an engaging look at five relationships, set against the backdrop and involving the Paris Metro.

LinkTV is available on DISH, of course, but also on DirecTV, so if you feel uncomfortable throwing off your quilt of corporate media dominance, you can upgrade to Murdoch's finest.

Either way, both of these networks provide important and informative programming, most of which is available on-line for free. What is that kind of programming worth to you each year? You pay $10.99 each month for the HBO multiplex, and still won't learn as much as you learn here. Yet, that same $10.99, just once, will make you feel like you've got a voice in the world around you.

I urge you to give now. I know I have.

Free Speech Link(TV)ed

(post pinned to top of blog until 10/26)

First, I have to badger you: if you don't have DISH Network, you are overpaying a corporatist titan who is determined to keep you from finding out the truth.

I urge you to toss out your cable box, get rid of Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV with its hidden fees and open agenda, and get thee to DISH!

Why? Well, in addition to LinkTV, which I featured twice on my blog last week, you get Free Speech TV.

Even better, if you're too mind-numbingly zombified by the blinking lights on your cable box, you can now watch it streaming on-line.

For free.

Oh. But they are holding a fund raising drive, so please give a few bucks to keep them going.

But I digress...

Hat In Hand

No, not for me. I'm fine and doing well, and have enough.

No, I'm asking for a friend. Free Speech TV.

I'm always going on and on about the mainstream media and how we have to live with their filters.

Well, here's a station that is NOT filtered, that carries Amy Goodman and Laura Flanders AND Greg Palast. Free Speech carries programming about the weaponization of the space over your head to the tragedy of mining accidents in Kentucky.

You say you want a revolution? How about putting down a few bucks, doesn't have to be much, on that very thing? How about turning your back on CNN and MSNBC and especially Fox News, and spending some time with Free Speech TV, and you'll see why it is vitally important to bring this programming to the people.

Please. Give now.

And if you don't get the channel, call your cable provider and ask for it.

Or switch to DISH Network, one of the last surviving independent television providers on the planet.

Periodic Appeal Time

Stickied until October 22

By now, long time readers of "Simply Left Behind" have probably grown tired of the seemingly endless pledge drives run by Free Speech TV and LinkTV, which take about a month and are run about three times a year.

Well...it's that time again. And it seems that these two channels, available on DISH Network (stop paying good money to a corporate oligopoly or a mad Australian fascist and sign up today. Tell them I sent you.) exclusively together and seperately on various cable outlets across the nation for portions of the broadcast week, have begun to make a difference in the political dialogue of the nation.

LinkTV covers the world from a European perspective, and brings that sensibility to domestic stories it covers. Here, you'll see retrospectives of Tianamen Square followed by South African killer whales followed by indigenous Peruvians and their struggles to reclaim water rights, capped off by Greg Palast covering the United States political theatre.

Free Speech TV is more focused on domestic issues, and is unafraid to present both sides of a story, particularly since the mainstream media, including NPR and PBS seem to shy away from showing the unvarnished truth. Here, you can see the KPFA forum on alternative 9/11 scenarios (including the really bizarre theories) followed by Gay USA, capped off by discussions of maintaining capitalism in America but fixing it, or why we shouldn't even bother.

This is gold for any thinking progressive who wants to get a better understanding of the complexities of the world around us. Too often, we rely on the proclamations of someone who specializes in one field or other and ignore the influences that everything has on everything else, from art and politics to the environment and farming.

Please. Go give now, and then make sure you go to the DISH Network website and order your service today.

Fund Raising Appeal

NOTE: This will be stickied until May 18. Please scroll down to view current topical posts

It's time again. Free Speech TV, available nationwide exclusively on DISH Network (please stop paying money to warmongers like Time-Warner and Comcast, and get DISH Network...they also have Al Gore's "CurrentTV", as well as "LinkTV"), is one of the few independent progressive TV outlets in the nation.

As such, it deserves our full-throated (and open-walleted) support during this, its thrice-yearly fundraising drive.

Please click on the Free Speech link above or in my blogroll to peruse the listings of this great network, and to donate, and thank you for your time.

Just one example of their programming:
NOTE: Before you click to watch, the film runs an hour and 49 minutes. But it will be the scariest, most enraging hour and 49 minutes of your life

Aaron Russo's AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM

Sticky Post: Fund Raising Time

Once again, it's time to support progressive television. Both LinkTV and FreeSpeechTV are holding their semi-annual fund raising drive.

You aren't going to see the stories on LinkTV and FreeSpeech in the newspapers or the main stream media. That story I posted this morning about the conflict in Jerusalem? They'll cover it for a half hour. The networks? Fox News? Five minutes. Why?

LinkTV had a four hour special called "The End of Oil" which included the world premiere of "Global Impact," about the impact that oil exploration and exploitation has had on indigenous people and developing nations around the world, Willie Nelson on biodiesel fuels (you read about that here at Simply Left Behind last week), and the first report that uncovered the fact that the Bush administration was deliberately supressing scientific information regarding global warming.

These are worthy causes. Please give as much as you can.

Ground Control To Major Tom

I meant to post about this over the weekend, because I was watching "Arsenal of Hypocrisy" FreeSpeech TV on DISH Network (channel 9415, and really, if you aren't a DISH Network subscriber, you're missing out on two of the best progressive media outlets in the nation).

"AOH" deals with how the public has been misled about the origins and true purpose of the Space Program. Not saying I agree with all the premises and/or conclusions of the producers, however some of the evidence is compelling and it is a must-see, because it was during this show I discovered something I had not know, something that affects me personally. And you.

I missed this story on Sunday, which would have nailed it down that I needed to post about this:

For decades, space experts have worried that a speeding bit of orbital debris might one day smash a large spacecraft into hundreds of pieces and start a chain reaction, a slow cascade of collisions that would expand for centuries, spreading chaos through the heavens.

In the last decade or so, as scientists came to agree that the number of objects in orbit had surpassed a critical mass -- or, in their terms, the critical spatial density, the point at which a chain reaction becomes inevitable -- they grew more anxious.

Early this year, after a half-century of growth, the federal list of detectable objects (4 inches wide or larger) reached 10,000, including dead satellites, spent rocket stages, a camera, a hand tool and junkyards of whirling debris left over from chance explosions and destructive tests.

Now, experts say, China's test Jan. 11 of an anti-satellite rocket that shattered an old satellite into hundreds of large fragments means the chain reaction will most likely start sooner. If their predictions are right, the cascade could put billions of dollars' worth of advanced satellites at risk and eventually threaten to limit humanity's reach for the stars.

OK, fair enough: near-earth space is full of debris, most of which would burn up upon re-entry anyway, and couldn't we simply move the working satellites to higher orbits?

Well, there are other concerns we have to address:

The United States has launched 22 missions with RTG (Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generators) power sources. Three accidents have occurred, though only one has resulted in release of radioactive materials.

That release?

In the single instance of radiological release from a U.S. NPS, the RTG performed as designed. The SNAP 9-A RTG (Space Nuclear Auxiliary Power) was launched in 1964 aboard a Department of Defense weather satellite that failed to achieve polar orbit. The SNAP 9-A, designed to burn up and disperse its nuclear inventory in the upper atmosphere during re-entry, performed as planned. The release of radioactive materials was measured by scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission in air and soil sampling efforts.

Care to take a guess at what it's fuel was?

Plutonium, specifically, two pounds worth. The dispersal? Worldwide by the year 1970. No place on the planet was left untouched by this most deadly of radioactive materials:

[P]lutonium may be extremely dangerous when handled incorrectly. The alpha radiation it emits does not penetrate the skin, but can irradiate internal organs when plutonium is inhaled or ingested. Particularly at risk are the skeleton, where it is likely to be absorbed by the bone surface, and the liver, where it will likely collect and become concentrated. Approximately 0.008 microcuries absorbed in bone marrow is the maximum withstandable dose. Anything more is considered toxic. Extremely fine particles of plutonium (on the order of micrograms) can cause lung cancer if inhaled.

Not good. Not as bad as we were led to believe all along, but still, not something I want to walk around inhaling. Given that plutonium's half-life is either 88 years (Pu238) or 25,000 years (Pu 239), I think it's safe to say we're all walking cancer machines. It doesn't surprise me that 100% of men develop prostate cancers, if they live long enough. Goodness knows what else we've ingested.

So this is a pretty important issue (thanks, "Arsenal of Hypocrisy"!), since there are at least another 19 United States nuclear satellites orbiting the planet, and goodness knows how many former Soviet satellites. What to do about it? Call in "The Terminator" is one solution. Once the satellite's active life has passed, the Terminator will automatically extend a tether down to the atmosphere, which would then drag and slow down the satellite, bringing it into the atmosphere. Obvoiously, this is not something we want to do with nuclear-powered objects, but it will clear significant amounts of non-nuclear debris which might collide with nukes. One other use of tethers might be to fling satellites to higher orbits, and perhaps out of earth's gravity well and into the sun.

Stay tuned. This is one of those problems we don't think about that will come back to bite us in the ass.