Mediaboss Marketing

Guest post written by Abraham Miller

Mr. Miller is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Cincinnati.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel appears to have won a Pyrrhic victory over SodaStream, resulting in 900 Palestinian workers, who received Israeli wages and benefits, being thrown out of their jobs. SodaStream is putting a good face on the potential closing, saying it is not submitting to the terror-aligned BDS campaign. But two hundred Palestinian workers have already been let go, and to many observers in Israel, the handwriting is on the wall.

In the front ranks of the campaign against SodaStream has been the sanctimonious Oxfam, which proudly reminds us that it does not support BDS, but it is for boycotting SodaStream.

The thing most to be admired about the left is how they are so good at achieving moral clarity, enunciated sometimes with an Oxbridge accent, as long as it is someone elses pocket to be picked and someone elses job that is on the line.

Whether youre a California Central Valley farmer who has been driven into ruin by a man-made drought to save the Delta smelt, a bait fish, or a logger sent to the unemployed lines to save the spotted owl, rest assured that your personal economic disaster was part of a noble venture celebrated by trust fund babies and effete liberals who never got their hands dirty save when changing the ink cartridge on a printer.

Now the left can celebrate sending 900 Palestinians into poverty, people who made four times the going rate for wages in the Palestinian Territoriesthat is if they could have found jobs in an economy with 40% unemployment.

In the Berkeley hills, the peace and justice crew and the gaggle of assorted leftists are opening fine bottles of California wine, looking out over their million-dollar views, and clinking crystal glasses in celebration. Meanwhile some of these 900 former factory workers will find their way into the territories sole thriving industry, terrorism.

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in The Old Regime and the French Revolution, there is among some segments of society a true absence of the heart, an inability to comprehend or care how their actions affect the lives of others.

The leftist retort is that the settlements are illegal and they impoverish the Palestinians. Like most things that come from the left, the legality or illegality of the settlements is far and away more complex than stated, especially in the SodaStream case, which operates in Area C, an area legally under joint Israeli/Palestinian administration.

Go here to read the rest:
Western Progressives Successfully Prevent Israel's SodaStream From Employing Palestinian Workers

Even the dystopias have gone bad.

Thats the conclusion from a much-shared piece by Ewan MorrisoninTheGuardianyesterday. Morrison surveyed the young adult fiction advocated by a left-leaning friend and did not much like what he saw:

Books such asThe Giver, DivergentandtheHunger Gamestrilogy are, whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality.

Morrison compares such stuff unfavourably to the fiction of H.G. Wells and Philip K. Dick. It was those earlier books, he decides, that his buddy (a progressive parent friend of mine) must have been contemplating when he declared dystopian YA a great left-wing educational tool.

By contrast, in todays bestsellers the bad guys are not the corporations but the state and those well-meaning liberal leftists who want to make the world a better place.

Lets back up here.

Like all mass cultural products, the titles Morrison lists are thoroughly over-determined. We might equally declareThe Hunger Gamesan allegory for Bushs War on Terror, with young people from poor rural backgrounds forced to fight in meaningless struggles for the benefit of a pampered elite. But that too would be crass. Were dealing with sprawling franchises accessed across an array of formats (books, films, games, fan sites, etc), and its simply not sensible to pin their meaning down so glibly. TheHarry Potterempire might, as Morrison says, fill childrens heads with right-wing dreams of public schoolsbut thats not all it does.

In any case, progressive dystopias warning about an all-powerful state run by those who say they want to bettersociety are scarcely new (think of Orwells1984).

Its not the dystopias that have changed so much as the worldand the attitudes of so-called progressives.

A fortnight or so ago, the little American town of Ferguson was rocked by scenes that might have come straight from a dystopian movie, as Robocop paramilitaries dispersed demonstrators protesting against the killing of an unarmed teenager. In the context of Edward Snowdens NSA surveillance revelations, its scarcely surprising that faith in big government and social planning has plummetedblack kids in America dont need a book to mistrust the state.

See the rest here:
Katniss Everdeen is not turning your kid into a right-wing nutjob

The All Progressives Congress says it has begun strategising on how it will manage the misinformation and lies being peddled by the Peoples Democratic Party ahead of next years elections.

The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who was represented by the Lagos State Publicity Secretary of the party, Joe Igbokwe, said this during the APC Publicity Secretaries summit in Lagos on Tuesday.

The event, which had in attendance all the APC publicity secretaries from the 36 states, was themed, Repositioning for Change.

Mohammed, who lamented that the PDP had failed woefully at the federal level, said information dissemination was crucial because the PDP was using propaganda to deceive voters ahead of next years election.

He, therefore, urged the publicity secretaries to brainstorm and come up with strategies on how to ensure that members of the public are not deceived.

He said, The PDP has created a mess at the federal level and it is now employing propaganda and misinformation in an attempt to deceive voters. The PDP uses poverty to control the people so that they can buy their votes through stomach infrastructure during elections.

As managers of information, it is our job to ensure that we enlighten the public especially in this age of social media. We must be able to communicate effectively with members of the public.

Addressing the publicity secretaries at a separate event, the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, charged the publicity secretaries to go and work for the success of the party in their different states in the 2015 general election.

He urged them to go and work and synergies on how to vote out the ruling party in the forthcoming election.

Fashola said that it was shame that after many years of democracy the ruling party had not been able to tackle many problems confronting the country saying if there is no power factory wont run and if factory dont work there will be no job. If you dont have job you will be poor. You must help make this connection.

Continue reading here:
PDP increasing propaganda ahead of 2015APC

The All Progressives Congress has challenged President Goodluck Jonathan to arrest and hand over a former governor of Borno State, Senator Ali Modu Sherriff, and a former Chief of Army Staff (names withheld) to the International Court of Justice for prosecution for being sponsors of terrorism in the country.

The National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, gave the challenge on Tuesday, at a media briefing in Abuja.

He spoke about the partys stand on a recent revelation by a Federal Government appointed negotiator that the duo were among sponsors of the terrorist group.

According to Oyegun, the truth about the seemingly intractable insurrection is finally out and that the APC has been vindicated.

He explained that it was now clear that contrary to an orchestrated plot by the ruling party and officials of government, the APC had no hand in the Boko Haram insurgency.

Oyegun said, The sponsors of Boko Haram are within the PDP and the Presidency. They are known friends of President Jonathan. He knows them and they know him.

The man who exposed these Boko Haram sponsors is a Jonathan-appointed negotiator. He has no axe to grind, neither does he have any motive to shield the APC or portray the PDP/Presidency in a bad light. In fact, if he had any sympathy at all, it is for the man who hired him, President Jonathan.

We have said it all along. Boko Haram was politicized purely for one reason, and one reason only: To be used as a trump card for President Jonathan to win another term.

The party said in a desperate bid to make this strategy work, the PDP which saw the APC as the only stumbling block to its victory in 2015, had employed the tactic of maligning and labeling it.

Oyegun accused politicians under the platform of the ruling party such as the partys spokesman Olisa Metuh, of orchestrating this strategy by calling the APC a janjaweed and Islamic party.

See the original post:
Hand over BHaram sponsors to ICC, APC tells Jonathan

Every time I read that the All Progressives Congress wants the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, as its presidential candidate, I ask; is he a member of the APC? The truth remains that the APC has no candidate yet that can face Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. Muhammadu Buhari is a spent force. Abubakar Atiku is an unstable politician that cannot be trusted. Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has eloped and degraded. Who is left?

Except the APC is able to come out with a vibrant candidate, it is good luck to Goodluck again. Even as we speak, no serious person in the APC has shown interest in contesting the presidential election, apart from that spent force. The Peoples Democratic Party has it, so we shall continue inside the dark tunnel for the next four years under the PDP corruption. Jonathan may be good but the PDP remains the most corrupt party in Africa.

Idemudia Fred,

201, Murtala Muhammed Way,

Benin City, Edo State,

+2348036699.

Visit link:
APC and 2015 elections