Happy May Day?

Today is May Day, the original Labour Day throughout the world (including Canada and the U.S.).  And, despite the conscious policy decision to divorce Labour Day in Canada and the U.S. from May 1st, the day should still hold meaning for us to reflect on the democratic victories that our struggles have won but also on the work that needs to be done.

So, in the spirit of the importance of recognizing how much work we have yet to do, how’s this for a ‘happy May Day’?

From The Guardian:

“Italy’s new parliament met for the first time yesterday with applause for Rome’s mayor-elect, Gianni Alemanno, a day after followers celebrated his triumph with straight-arm salutes and fascist-era chants.

Alemanno, a former neo-fascist youth leader, took 54% of the vote in a run-off on Sunday and Monday, crushing his rival, Francesco Rutelli, a deputy prime minister in the last, centre-left government.

[…]

On Monday night, the area around Rome’s city hall rang to chants of “Duce! Duce!”, the term adopted by Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, equivalent to the German “Führer”. Supporters of the new mayor gave the fascist Roman straight-arm salutes.”

But, despite this little tidbit of news that I came across today, May Day wasn’t all bad news this year.  Earlier today on the internets, in my travels amongst its many tubes, I found a fantastic list of Marxist webcasts by university professor named Ron Strickland.

So, if any of you comrades need to wash the unpleasant taste caused by seeing modern-day Italians give fascist salutes, I recommend one of two things:  Booze; or Marxist webcasts.

I for one have decided to partake in both.

You can access Strickland’s Marxist webcasts here.

Happy May Day comrades!

What’s more powerful: Blogs or the mainstream media?

What’s More Powerful: Blogs or the Mainstream Media?

A funny thing happened the other day, for those of you who missed it. I had just come home from a long trip to our friendly neighbours to the South and I posted a quick little blog post to let my regular readers know that I’d returned. My plans were to wake up the following day and write the blog post that I’d planned to write on the occasion of my 100,000th hit which I received sometime on Christmas Eve while I was away.

Well, it turns out that I missed my 100,000th hit (which took 1 year, 1 month and 4 days to achieve).

And my 200,000th hit (which took about 16 hours to achieve).

And my 300,000th hit (which took about 14 hours to achieve).

So I figured that now was as good a time as any to reflect on blogs as an institution by comparing the power of blogs to the power of the mainstream media.

A quick comparison of the reach of blogs versus the mainstream media results in some interesting findings.

Let’s start with just this blog here, which is as far from being a widely read blog. In the past 48 hours, this blog received approximately 240,000 hits. While it is impossible to draw direct comparisons because some of those hits were undoubtedly repeat hits just as it is also true that some of people will leave their television set on while they are not paying attention or have left the room. But, ignoring those caveats, what does that compare to in terms of the viewership of mainstream media broadcasts?

Breakdown according to the 2006 year-end Neilsen Media Research report.

240,000 is a greater reach than the total viewship of the following top-rated TV programmes (in 2006):

THE ABRAMS REPORT on MSNBC (238,000 average viewers)

MSNBC LIVE on MSNBC (207,000 average viewers)

SHOWBIZ TONIGHT on Headline News (170,000 average viewers)

THE MOST on MSNBC (196,000 average viewers)

ROBIN & COMPANY on Headline News (198,000 average viewers)

CNN HEADLINE NEWS on Headline News (190,000 average viewers)

PRIME NEWS W/ ERICA HILL on Headline News (184,000 average viewers)

MAD MONEY on CNBC (158,000 average viewers)

THE SITUATION WITH TUCKER CARLSON on MSNBC (128,000 average viewers)

BIG IDEA WITH DONNY DEUTSCH on CNBC (138,000 average viewers)

COVER TO COVER on CNBC (118,000 average viewers)

THE SUZE ORMAN SHOW on CNBC (118,000 average viewers)

Now, keep in mind, that’s just this relatively insignificant blog.

When we expand our search, we see some interesting statistics. Even if we ignore all independently hosted blogs, as well as all blogs hosted at blogspot and other popular blog hosts and focus only on all the blogs hosted at WordPress.com (including this blog), it isn’t even a contest.

Bill O’Reilly’s popular programme The O’Reilly Factor averages 2,094,000 viewers per night. O’Reilly’s programme runs 5 days a week (when he’s not defending himself against sexual harassment charges from his co-workers). Assuming O’Reilly takes two weeks off per year, that translates to approximately 523,500,000 total viewers per year (keeping in mind that those who watch his show regularly would be counted separately for every time they tune in)

Here is the data on only the blogs hosted by wordpress for the month of November alone:

416 million pageviews for blogs hosted with WordPress.com, and another 169 million on blogs hosted with WordPress.org. Total: 585 million pageviews. (source)

So all of the blogs on just one of the blog hosting sites, in one month alone exceed the total annual viewership of Mr. O’Reilly’s #1 ranked television programme by 62 million.

When we compare the two in terms of annual reach, we see the following results.

So the question remains as to how long the mainstream media can continue pretending that blogs are insignificant? I believe I’ve shown the evidence to the contrary to be abundant.

Top 100 Canadian political blogs

Here’s a sort of ‘top 100’ list for the Canadian political blogs which I compiled for fun (I know, I’m at work right now and I’m bored and I have a really distorted sense of ‘fun’). Actually, the idea wasn’t really mine, I stole the idea from a post that Greg from democraticspace.com did back in 2006 and I decided to expand it to a top 100 list, take out the now defunct sites, and update the rest.

Just a few caveats to keep in mind when going over this list. First, about one third of all blogspot blogs that I entered into alexa.com‘s traffic analysis generated no data. For some reason though, all other blog hosts such as wordpress (and all people who host their own blog) seemed to register just fine. So, if you don’t show up on the list, don’t take it personally, it’s possible that alexa just doesn’t have data on you. Second, I believe that the traffic ranking at Alexa is based on the past 4 months or so, so if you’ve been taking the summer off (as I believe Rick Mercer has) then your traffic rank will probably reflect that more than your normal traffic flow. Third, this isn’t an exhaustive list. What I’ve done is taken Greg’s list, deleted all the blogs which no longer exist, and then simply went down the list of blogs at Bound By Gravity, starting at the top, until I filled in enough empty slots to equal 100.

If I’ve left out some blogs that generate data on Alexa.com (and are, say, under the 7,000,000 mark) and you’d like them included in the list, feel free to comment below with the Alexa url of the blog traffic overview and I’ll add it as soon as I get a chance.

.

Canadian Political Blogger rank. Site name (& url) / site’s global Alexa ranking

1. Paul Wells / 70,893
2. Small Dead Animals /133,987
3. Matthew Good /187,454
4. Le Blogue du Québec / 210,363 (blogue francophone)
5. The Politic / 274,126
6. Progressive Bloggers / 283,480
7. Steve Janke / 318,783
8. Antonia Zerbisias / 324,154
9. Garth Turner / 356,627
10. Blogs Canada / 378,886
11. Blogging Tories / 396,832
12. Damian Penny / 455,529
13. Vues d’ici / 460,543
14. Vive le Canada / 461,727
15. Amériquébec / 469,643 (blogue francophone)
16. Emotion Creator / 484,553
17. Andrew Coyne / 551,817
18. Warren Kinsella / 593,125
19. CalgaryGrit / 614,119
20. Western Standard / 664,824
21. Ken Chapman / 683,125
22. Samantha Burns / 732,689
23. Gen X at 40 / 735,226
24. Werner Patels / 738,070
25. Joseph Facal / 821,472 (blogue francophone)
26. Montreal Simon / 840,565
27. Stephen Taylor / 850,234
28. Colby Cosh / 889,912
29. Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations / 911,369
30. Bound by Gravity / 912,488
31. Dust my Broom / 939,419
32. Abandoned Stuff / 949,762
33. Scott’s DiaTribes / 954,036
34. Canadian Cynic / 1,013,469
35. David Akin / 1,070,642
36. James Bow / 1,104,491
37. Getting it Right / 1,113,156
38. Girl on the Right / 1,166,381
39. Red Tory / 1,175,715
40. Far and Wide / 1,360,164
41. Rick Mercer / 1,372,926
42. April Reign / 1,387,411
43. Prairie Wrangler / 1,440,822
44. The Galloping Beaver / 1,455,318
45. La Revue Gauche / 1,486,069
46. Jordon Cooper / 1,518,839
47. Canadian Cerberus / 1,553,403
48. Buckdog / 1,591,003
49. Big Blue Wave / 1,715,540
50. Daveberta / 1,762,705
51. The Blog Quebecois / 1,772,550
52. Liblogs.ca / 1,870,127
53. Jason Cherniak / 1,929,394
54. Big City Lib / 1,960,969
55. Larry Borsato / 2,065,636
56. Section 15 / 2,065,958
57. The Monarchist / 2,066,261
58. The London Fog / 2,067,851
59. Jay Currie / 2,190,102
60. Stageleft / 2,238,667
61. Green Bloggers (Canada) / 2,252,729
62. democraticSPACE.com / 2,391,081
63. Quebec Politique / 2,575,012 (blogue francophone)
64. Un homme en colère / 2,653,297 (blogue francophone)
65. Urban Refugee / 2,661,034
66. Accidental Deliberations / 2,717,441
67. Devin Johnston.ca / 2,718,187
68. Idealistic Pragmatist / 2,725,501
69. My Blahg / 2,800,670
70. Uncorrected Proofs / 2,891,152
71. Adam Daifallah / 3,018,846
72. Political Staples / 3,222,345
73. Marginalized Action Dinosaur / 3,302,191
74. Rootleweb / 3,327,246
75. Dr. Roy’s Thoughts / 3,622,245
76. The Vanity Press / 3,622,958
77. Crawl Across the Ocean / 3,625,835
78. JimBobbySez / 3,632,287
79. Bill Doskoch / 3,637,532
80. Verbena-19 / 3,672,713
81. The Spirit of Man / 3,787,343
82. Cathie from Canada / 3,789,273
83. Peace, Order and Good Government, eh? / 3,794,370
84. Odd Thoughts / 3,796,069
85. Canadiana’s Place / 4,020,291
86. Unrepentant Old Hippie / 4,284,573
87. A BCer in TO / 4,802,829
88. Dawg’s Blawg / 4,817,302
89. Red Jenny / 4,838,538
90. East-End Underground / 4,874,982
91. The Cylinder / 5,185,136
92. Maxwell’s House / 5,533,134
93. WingNuterer / 5,563,968
94. Woman at Mile 0 / 5,610,425
95. Begin Each Day… / 5,623,330
96. HarperBizarro / 5,626,895
97. Liberal Catnip / 5,776,892
98. Antagoniste / 5,797,151 (blogue francophone)
99. Blogging Dippers / 6,135,616
100. Fuddle-Duddle / 6,238,129

On the futility of governing pop-culture

Who ever said capitalists were intelligent?

McDonald’s and a cabal of capitalists have been pushing the Oxford English Dictionary for some time now to remove its official listing of the word “McJob” in their publication.  But, AFP wires are now reporting that that’s not enough for McDonalds et al.  They now are seeking to actually ‘flip’ the definition of McJob (an irony in and of itself) from it’s current definition of:

“an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector.”

And they want the new definition in the Oxford English Dictionary to read something along the lines of:

“a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression.”

Now, it is no secret that capital has for years saught to subsume pop-culture and trends under its aegis.  However, what McDonald’s et al are ignoring is the fact that to the extent that capital succeeds in this goal, it does so not by dictating and governing from above what ‘popular’ ought to look like, but by so-called “cool hunting” and the subsuming of what is already pre-existingly popular into a corporate programme.

When capital or any heirarchical structure attempts to artificially manufacture from scratch what ought to be ‘popular’, the results are often ridiculous (and painful) as demonstrated by this ad by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario:  

(WARNING:  For those of you who don’t live in Ontario or who have never seen this ad, I must caution you – watching this may cause seizures, dimensia, decreased IQ and/or temporary insanity.  Proceed at own risk!) 

The capitalists seeking to change the definition of ‘McJob’ therefore are ignorant of two things.  First, obviously, the Oxford English Dictionary does not, like the ‘Newspeak’ dictionary makers in Orwell’s 1984, actually make-up definitions and construct the English language.  It merely reflects the pre-existing usage of the English language.

And second: you may be able to co-opt culture jamming, as the raging success of MTV and “cool hunting” demonstrates, but you cannot govern popular culture from above as these executives are foolishly attempting to do with “McJob”.

As insipid and asinine as many of us may consider the bulk of pop-culture to be, it nevertheless is one of the very few phenomena (along side activism and dissent) in our culture which finds its genesis in genuinely grassroots movements.

And that is a dynamic power which no capitalist and no government can either suppress or govern.

Authoritarianism is NEVER progressive: Scott Tribe should resign

For those of you who don’t follow Canadian blogging drama, ProgressiveBloggers.ca, a blog which, as the name implies, bills itself as “progressive” has recently expelled a good progressive comrade, Joanne from Marginal Notes for making sense and not being pliable enough for chief moderator/El Presidente Scott Tribe.

Now, far more eloquent discussions of the problems with ProgressiveBloggers.ca in general and Scott Tribe specifically have been made by other bloggers, so I will not attempt to re-invent the wheel too much here.  Specifically, I recommend Joanne’s (the person at the centre of the controversy) posts on the subject here and here as well as Scott Neigh’s post available here.

Rather, what I would like to talk about here is what I see as the problem with ProgressiveBloggers.ca.

First, unfortunately the bulk of El Presidente Tribe et al.’s authoritarianism  cannot be illustrated as it occurred in the private moderator’s section of the web page (which itself is authoritarian…. ironic that authoritarianism breeds authoritarianism isn’t it?).  However you can get a taste of what I’m talking about in Joanne’s two posts above as well in this public thread in which true progressives are threatened by El Presidente Tribe’s apologists Saskboy and Steve V (click here) — the former of whom actually attempts to pull a Hulk-esque “you’re making me angry” line so that a person he disagrees with wouldn’t test his patience. 

Second, in addition to the aforementioned authoritarianism, it’s obvious to anybody who reads history that, by definition, liberalism has not been ‘progressive’ since the victory of liberal capitalism over feudalism (most notably following the French Revolution).  Thus, the brand of liberalism practised by the bulk of the moderators (and since the moderators are the ones who admit affiliates, many of the affiliates also unsurprisingly practice this same insipid brand of liberalism) does not, by definition, seek to progress beyond liberal capitalism.  Therefore, I’d say the second problem with ProgressiveBloggers.ca is that it’s a misnomer.

But, that said, just because the name is a misnomer does not mean that we should throw the baby out with the bath water.  As Scott Neigh eloquently put it, irrespective of whether ProgressiveBloggers.ca is or is not progressive, “a community like PB is useful because it allows me to easily encounter material that I would not otherwise search out and it allows people who would not search out my kind of stuff to see what I’m up to.”  I couldn’t agree more with Scott Neigh on this front and I think that therein lies the real redeeming quality of PB.

So, it seems to me like there’s little way to solve the second problem with ProgressiveBloggers.ca.  PB is what it is and it seems that there’s little that can be done within the community on this front as Joanne is by far not the first person to try and to have received a black eye for her efforts.  That said, this is where my idea for a true progressive aggrigator (discussed in length here) for fellow progressive comrades to use in addition to Progressive Bloggers, can actually help and I hope to be working on this project more over the course of the summer.

However, there are two things which can be done within the community to solve the first problem.  First, abolish the authoritarian secrecy of the site.  Second, Scott Tribe, for the good of the ‘progressive’ community, should resign his post.

Not in my name!

There are the beginnings of a growing grassroots movement underway in the blogosphere which I felt was necessary to add my voice to.

The nature of the growing controversy stems from a pro-life rally which was held in Ottawa this past week.  It’s not the ideological content of the march which stirred the controversy since it was pretty much what one would expect from this sort of rally:  anti-choice, super-philosophies seeking to authoritaritatively impose their morality on everyone else.

No, what was unexpected about this rally, however, was that the trademarked Government of Canada logo (so-called “wordmark” with the Canadian flag over the final “a” in the word “Canada”) would show up on the pro-life rally’s banners.

Take a look for yourself:

According to the Federal Identity Program (FIP) legal standards, the “Canada” wordmark can only be used by the Government of Canada or by non-governmental partnerships sponsored by the Government of Canada.  So the question is: did the Government of Canada sponsor an anti-abortion rally or did the rally plagerize and illegaly display Government of Canada property?

Here’s where the plot thickens.  I did some hunting around, and I found a Government of Canada website (here) which documents some specifics about how/when the “Canada” workmark ought to be used.  Interestingly, this Government of Canada page links to the specific section of the FIP Manual (Section 1.1) which details the legality of displaying the wordmark, however, when you attempt to click on the hyperlink pointed to by this governmental website, you see that the .pdf file has either been moved or deleted and you get an error message.

It could just be a coincidence, but the Conservatives have deleted websites in the past to avoid embarrassment, so it’s possible that it’s something more as well.

Either way, the grassroots movement is attempting to get the government either to admit that they funded an anti-abortion rally or to get them to state publicly that they did not support this anti-abortion rally.  The highest profile blogger to take up this cause is maverick MP Garth Turner (here), however JimBobby has a really good piece on this (here) as does the Unrepentant Old Hippie (here).

It seems to me more likely that the logo was used without permission.  However, even if it was the group which was at fault for illegally brandishing the legitimizing symbol of the collective,  the government must still be pressed to prosecute these usurpers to the fullest extent of the law.  Irrespective of whether the government funded this or not, the illegal attachment of a government logo — our logo — to this movement cannot be allowed to go unprosecuted.

Not in my name.

Fun with google

I recently came across two interesting posts which both used google in what I considered to be an ingenious fashion to demonstrate interesting points about the superficiality of our society and the marginalization of women in dialogue.

First, Uncorrected proofs had a post last week on using google to discern the “he”/”she” ratio of a given website or blog.  The idea, borrowed from Philipp Lenssen (here), in my mind is elegant in the simple and straightforward way in which it not only demonstrates, but quantifies, the marginalization of women in our discourse.

There are two ways of calculating the “he”/”she” ratio of a website or blog, you can use Lenssen’s application above, or you can do it manually via a google advanced search yourself.

Paulitics: Paul’s Socialist Investigations, has a “he”/”she” ratio of 59%/41%

As an interesting exercise, I decided to compare websites on both ends of the spectrum to see whether there’s a difference.

Le Revue Gauche “he”/”she” ratio = 83%/17%

Dr. Roy’s Thoughts “he”/”she” ratio = 81%/19%

Accidental Deliberations “he”/”she” ratio = 81%/19%

Stageleft “he”/”she” ratio = 77%/23%

Calgary Grit “he”/”she” ratio = 72%/28%

Jason Cherniak “he”/”she” ratio = 73%/27%

www.Conservative.ca “he”/”she” ratio = 86%/14%

www.Liberal.ca “he”/”she” ratio = 79%/21%

www.NDP.ca “he”/”she” ratio = 78%/22%

www.GreenParty.ca “he”/”she” ratio = 64%/36% (most “she” references refer to Elizabeth May)

News Media:

Far Right:

CanWest Global (Canada.com) “he”/”she” ratio = 76%/24%

Right-Wing:

CTV.ca “he”/”she” ratio = 72%/28%

Globe and Mail “he”/”she” ratio = 77%/23%

Centre-Left:

Toronto Star “he”/”she” ratio = 67%/33%

Left-Wing:

Democracy Now! “he”/”she” ratio = 48%/52%

——————————————————

Second, Surplus Value had an interesting post wherein google was used to attempt to quantify the value our society places on abstract concepts and then to rank-order these abstract terms in terms of their supposed ‘worth’.  I’ve added to the list linked to above in order to come up with a larger ranking of what we apparently value in our society:

1.  1,500,000,000 – Business
2.  1,360,000,000 – “Man” OR “Men”
3.  1,260,000,000 – TV
4.  1,100,000,000 – Music
5.  1,060,000,000 – Company
6.  976,000,000 – Life
7.  951,000,000 – Love
8.  892,000,000 – Sports
9.  826,000,000 – Family
10.  785,000,000 – Technology
11.  768,000,000 – Education
12.  702,000,000 – “Woman” OR “Women”
13.  670,000,000 – Money
14.  644,000,000 – Friends
15.  636,000,000 – Food
16.  575,000,000 – Beauty
17.  508,000,000 – Fitness
18.  441,000,000 – Hope
19.  414,000,000 – Sex
20.  313,000,000 – Success
21.  272,000,000 – Rich
22.  258,000,000 – Hate
23.  249,000,000 – Religion
24.  241,000,000 – Failure
25.  234,000,000 – Career
26.  231,000,000 – Politics
27.  204,000,000 – Meaning
28.  197,000,000 – Goals
29.  174,000,000 – Fear
30.  94,600,000 – Integrity
31.  55,000,000 – Happiness
32.  51,900,000 – Equality
33.  27,600,000 – Compassion
34.  6,980,000 – Fulfilment