ADBUSTING & CULTURE JAMMING

 The "sellout" of the hitherto-independent Huffington Post news website to corporate AOL, has angered many freelance bloggers who were responsible for providing [largely free] content for publication. HuffPo editor Arianna Huffington has been described by American Republican strategist Ed Rollins as domineering & "the most ruthless & ambitious person I'd met in 30 years of national politics". The HuffPo was established in 2005, by Huffington, & "has risen from being a marginal voice in the blogosphere to a prominaent outlet for liberal opinion, & one of the most influential new-media platforms in America" - NZ Herald Sat Feb 12, 2011 This media release from www.adbusters.org #HUFFPUFF " Arianna Huffington has betrayed us, so let's huff and puff her house down. She built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that the Huffington Post was

"Now something rather strange has begun to happen to the Arabic language news broadcaster al-Jazeera and the English language channel it launched nearly five years ago; American viewers have begun to demand it. It is clear some kind of watershed has been reached when the Kansas City Star publishes a cut-out-and-keep guide to the "easiest way to get al-Jazeera English". The Qatar-based channel's acclaimed coverage of the Egyptian crisis has been referred to as the broadcaster's "CNN moment", doing for al-Jazeera English what the first Gulf war did for CNN, pushing it to the forefront of the public's consciousness. Every global media story produces its winners. Egypt's drawn-out agony is a tailor-made opportunity for al-Jazeera English, which it has seized with careful on-the-ground journalism. If the US cable owners relent to the emerging public pressure, it will mark a coup for a news service that, until recently, was battling to prove it had

* another adbusting & culture jamming session with the Prof of Garbology* With the opening of another of these nightmares in my area, I thought I would share a couple of points from the book by George Ritzer "The McDonaldization of Society" which I have just read. The principles of the process Ritzer terms “McDonaldization” are rapidly coming to dominate more & more sectors of society, with predictable, generally adverse, results. It seems no sector of society is immune - not only the restaurant business, but also education, health care, work, travel, insurance, dieting, politics, the family and more are rapidly being remodeled into this new paradigm. Ritzer says:“The forces behind McDonaldization seem intent on replacing the laws of nature with a completely rational regime, making the world in every way efficient, calculable, predictable & controlled", and goes on to quote Jean Baudrillard: “The fundamental law of the social order is the progressive c

This blog will poke blunt sticks into the proverbial eyes of the media-crap we are fed each day.....we start with the true reality of cigarette addiction: