Media Archives - Macska Moksha Press

Why I Quit Social Media

March 8, 2023 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Thumbs down on Facebook, Image by sue seecof

Image by sue seecof, Creative Commons license, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

This morning I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. I’d been thinking about it for a months, and I scheduled the date a few weeks out so I could use the medium for a few more things—helping a friend find garden help, announcing a new website, inviting people to subscribe to my other projects.

I got on Facebook in 2015 because I was going to start self-publishing books and people said if you’re going to do that you have to be on social media. You know, so you can get a following and hopefully go viral. Seven books and as many years later, I can say that this never worked as hoped. A following didn’t materialize, nothing went viral, and book sales were never impressive. Thousands of hours that I’ll never get back went into “content creation”—all the secondary and tertiary stuff that people are expected to do to “build a brand”: photos, memes, videos, a podcast, etc., etc. All to call attention to the real thing, the writing. These days, Tik Tok has upped the bar and you have to be a video personality too. <eye roll> Not interested.

War in the Age of Bernays

March 8, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Map of Ukraine with Edward Bernays and a Mushroom Cloud, collage by the author

War offers us an intense if perverse spiritual experience with its myth-making drama of life lived at the extremes of human experience. America has always been susceptible to this kind of religious fervor particularly when we need to forget all of our deep internal divisions and our failure to address even the most elementary social problems. We have pushed the uneasy knowledge of our own wars and war crimes deep into the recesses of our souls but we still long for absolution. There is nothing like a really nasty enemy to restore a sense of our own high moral character. Of course, the thrill of this spiritual revival is usually experienced from the comforts of home far from the blood, guts, and gore. ~Richard Moser

I’ve seen this movie before and it sucks.

The first time was 1979. I was ten years old, in Omaha, Nebraska, which was an intolerant, ignorant place, and insolent about it, to boot.

It was called, “Hostage Crisis.” In Iran, some students took over the US embassy and held a bunch of Americans captive for 444 days. The bad guy was the Ayatollah Khomeini. Everybody hated him. Everybody hated “Eye-Ran.” It was popular, this hatred. It was a bandwagon you were supposed to jump on.

I didn’t get it. It felt faked. I mean, people were really into it—very enthusiastic with their stupid jokes and name-calling and all that—but the way it was suddenly everywhere, like flipping a switch, seemed artificial. How could everyone despise someone so much who they’d just heard of for the first time?

I was smart enough to keep these doubts to myself, or rather, intimidated enough. I could tell that asking questions could get me into trouble, and maybe beaten up.

The map is not the territory; the media coverage is not the event

March 2, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Collage by the author

They say “the map is not the territory” and I might add that “the media coverage is not the event.”

Maps are limited by their scale, age, level of detail, intended purpose, and who made them. You wouldn’t take a road atlas on a hike. We can learn useful things from maps but to truly know the territory, we have to go there. I think we all know that.

Media coverage can be judged by similar factors: degree of context, date, level of detail, intended audience, and who paid to produce it. We won’t learn about socialism from the capitalist business press. We can learn useful things from media coverage but to truly know what’s going on, we’d have to be there. I think we forget this.

I’ve seen this movie before and it sucks

February 27, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Uncle Sam bomb mural, Berlin, by Sebastian Spindler, Public Domain

War offers us an intense if perverse spiritual experience with its myth-making drama of life lived at the extremes of human experience. America has always been susceptible to this kind of religious fervor particularly when we need to forget all of our deep internal divisions and our failure to address even the most elementary social problems. We have pushed the uneasy knowledge of our own wars and war crimes deep into the recesses of our souls but we still long for absolution. There is nothing like a really nasty enemy to restore a sense of our own high moral character. Of course, the thrill of this spiritual revival is usually experienced from the comforts of home far from the blood, guts, and gore.
~Richard Moser

I’ve seen this movie before and it sucks.

The first time was 1979. I was ten years old, in Omaha, Nebraska, which was an intolerant, ignorant place, and insolent about it, to boot.

My favorite alternative media columnists

February 7, 2022 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

My favorite columnists: Clockwise, starting from top, left: Margaret Kimberley, Chris Hedges, Sarah Baker, Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Vijay Prashad

Clockwise, starting from top, left: Margaret Kimberley, Chris Hedges, Sarah Baker, Jonathan Cook, Caitlin Johnstone, Vijay Prashad

The corporate media is a frequent target of my criticism, so I want to share some of my favorite columnists in the alternative media. These are folks I read the most regularly right now. Their viewpoints definitely contrast with with each other, and the sum total of their collective work is anything but monolithic. Neither do I agree with 100% of what I read, but that’s not the point; for me, the purpose of reading is to inform myself and to expand my views. What I think I know and what I think I believe are both territories with fuzzy borders, and the more comfortable I become with the fact of that flux, the more I’m able to learn.

Here then, are my ten favorite columnists currently, plus three honorable mentions.

Margaret Kimberley
Senior columnist and executive editor for the Black Agenda Report, as well as an activist for peace and justice issues. She wrote the book, “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents.” Margaret’s work is a political and moral touchstone for me, both informing and inspiring me. Her weekly column, “Freedom Rider,” which comes out every Wednesday on the Black Agenda Report, is required reading.

Sarah Baker
Enigmatic yet Sarah Baker, but her writing resonates with me personally more than any other writer at the moment. I greatly value her big picture perspectives on civilization, perception and values. She doesn’t get distracted by the small stuff but is able to use the mundane as a path to the universal. She’s made a minor art form out of the long-form Facebook post, and unfortunately, that seems to be the best place to find her stuff. If you’re not following her yet, start now.

Caitlin Johnstone
By far the most controversial person on this list, this Australian blogger is actively disliked by other people on this list (and loved by at least one of them). I am aware of the critiques of her but in my opinion, she has addressed past mistakes sufficiently, with both candor and humility, far more directly than most writers bother to do (especially male ones). I appreciate her because she just keeps relentlessly pounding away on two of my most important issues: US imperialism and the corporate media. Uncompromising antiwar sentiment and incisive media criticism have both become too rare in left-of-center media circles, and she’s carrying the torch. She’s also a vocal supporter of Julian Assange who helps keep him and his plight in the public eye. But she’s not limited to politics, and also writes about issues of individual and collective spiritual transcendence. The fact that she sometimes stumbles is part of her appeal to me; it makes her more accessible, somehow, and I see myself mirrored.

I podcast too

December 28, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Featuring “Voices for Nature & Peace,” an interview podcast and “Kollibri’s Weekly Column” in which I read my essays out loud, plus “Farmer K’s Diary” an irregular video series. [ more… ]

Content also available at my YouTube channel

Trying to Go Deep on Social Media is Like Trying to Dig a Hole from a Moving Vehicle

June 3, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Collage by author. Social media logos courtesy Ibrahim.ID, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

What’s happening at all the George Floyd protests around the country? How many people are showing up? What are the demographics? How many cops are there? Which community organizations are involved? Are local elected officials helping or hurting? Who really broke that window or set that fire? What about these reports of incitement by white supremacists?

Mainstream media doesn’t answer all these questions. They frame everything so narrowly, with an inevitable pro-establishment bias, even when their own reporters are mistreated. Trying to sift out the facts from the spin is a challenge, especially if the media you’re reading is local to someplace you’ve never been. You never know what they’re leaving out.

It’s not like reporters are smarter than other people, wither. These days, it’s more about who could afford journalism school. Plus, 40% of all newsroom jobs in the US have been eliminated since the year 2000. The resources simply don’t exist to provide good coverage.

But what about social media? People are posting all sorts of pictures and videos and rants! Yes, they are. However, wading through all of the posts, status updates and tweets trying to find the Who, What, When, Where and Why is not only time-consuming and frustrating but rarely effective for assembling a picture that’s anything like complete.

True, one will get an impression of events, but this is primarily emotional rather than factual. I’m not dismissing emotion; just recognizing it’s not enough by itself.

After scrolling through social media trying to follow the current events, I often end up feeling waves of depression, rage, and helplessness with a sprinkling of hope (probably false). And with no clear sense of what actually happened. So much is illusion, so it’s easy to find oneself in delusion. I see why the ludicrous conspiracy theories thrive in that environment, as well as the silly misunderstandings, the petty us vs. them thinking, and the irrational adolescent outbursts.

Was social media effective in spreading the initial news about George Floyd’s death? Yes, absolutely. But for documenting the reaction, which is a complex set of events with a multitude of actors, not so much.

The Propaganda Virus: Is Anyone Immune?

March 24, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

Art by author, based on public domain image by Wags05

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
—Carl Sagan

I haven’t eaten fast food chicken since 2001, or a fast food burger since 1995. Giving these things up was part of an ongoing process of cleaning up my diet in terms of both health and ethics, and I haven’t missed either of them. Yet regularly, when I catch a whiff of KFC or McDonalds, I’ll experience a momentary pang of desire, even though I’m sure I’d get sick if I actually consumed any of that crap at this point. The reason for this is simple: many aromas released by fast food restaurants are scientifically developed in laboratories for the purpose of triggering physiological responses.

My craving is not a sign of missing fried chicken (I don’t) or reflective of an inherent bodily need for beef (there’s no such thing) or even an instinctual response to the smell of cooking meat (that claim lacks scientific consensus). Rather, it ironically points out that my senses function normally (as in, within the range of the average or conventional) because they are responding as they are supposed to. Obviously, as with everything else, different people will react more or less strongly to such stimuli, with some percentage instead experiencing the opposite of the intended reaction (distaste). Despite such exceptions, the rule stands. These companies wouldn’t be using these methods if they weren’t more effective than not. A tremendous amount of money and time goes into developing these things, and it’s not wasted.

Propaganda is analogous.

Russiagate: The Toxic Gift That Keeps on Giving

February 24, 2020 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

"I have to ask: Is the Russian collusion in the room with us right now?"

“All smears are boomerang smears. That is why anyone worth a damn does not engage in it. That goes for the Russia-Gaters, the left/right smears on Gabbard, the years of left/right smears on Assange, the attacks on the Green Party and now the Russia narrative attacks on Sanders. Falling into line with the secret police will not save anyone. Red Scares target dissenters and promote war. Isn’t the history clear enough?”
Richard Moser

The despicable exhuming of “Russia!” to smear Sanders recently smacks of desperation and dishonesty.

Of course, the role played by the preposterous Russiagate conspiracy theory has always been the same: to be a distraction from issues that really matter. At best, it makes a mountain out of molehill. At worst, it’s straight up political psy-op.

For those just tuning in, a re-cap:

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