"Success is not measured by what you accomplish but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds."
Owner of PaleoRadio LLC, previously heard on WOLY, WOCR, and WPRR. He has served as chief aide to N.J. League of American Families president John Tomicki, was the president of Olivet Young Americans for Freedom, recognized/honored by Leadership Institute as one of the top-conservative student activists in the country; Currently on hiatus to write a book about his daughter’s life & death with childhood cancer.
Expanding and sharpening my skills as a writer and public speaker are at the top of my to-do list this semester. My plan includes having a functional literacy of programs such as Photoshop, iMovie, and others relating to the editing of video and audio.
It is also my goal to better familiarize myself with the Associated Press Stylebook. I am making an effort to incorporate what I have learned from the stylebook into my Web logs and various other writings.
Lastly, I am working on fine-tuning my radio program. I am diversifying the content of the program by including a larger list of topics and expanding my guest list. The hope is that these moves will provide the kind of information and entertainment that would have a broader public appeal.
My two years at Olivet College have provided me with moments best described as good, bad and ugly. I presume that it is safe to say that this is a rather common assessment and that my experience may not be all that different from many other students. At any rate, regardless of whether an experience is good, bad, ugly or even a strange mixture of two or more, I have found reason to view them as experiences meant for my betterment, both as a student and as a man.
The "good" is relatively easy to point out. I have spent two years working towards establishing myself as a reliable source of news and commentary, both on campus and the Internet. My YouTube has come along quite well, and I am seeing an ever-increasing number of people interested in what I have to say on current events. I am regularly complimented on the visual aspects of my video production. This is particularly satisfying given the fact that I have dedicated vast amounts of time and energy into better choreographing the pictures to match the topics under discussion.
I have also put a decent amount of time into my Web site. I have spent years working with various blogs, attempting to determine which is best for me. In the past I have stuck with layouts that were full of color, catching the eye, but leaving much to ask in the way of space for text.
This trend changed with the advent of The Paleocrat Tribune. The decision was to keep it simple. It is black and white, allowing color pictures and videos to really stand out from the rest of the page. Best of all is the vast amount of room for text, links, categories, tags, and comments. All of this has created a site that is both stylish and professional.
The "bad" aspects of my time at Olivet are also easy to identify. This may be true on account of the fact that problems have trailed me every step of the way. Whether it is making it to class on time, turning projects in on their due date, or even making good on promises to do one thing or another for a teacher or a classmate.
As much as I may wish to pawn this off on my having to travel 30 minutes to school everyday, I would never dare use that same line of reasoning in attempt to justify tardiness to a place of vocation.
The "ugly" elements of my life as a student are certainly the hardest for me to face. These things may not be as numerous (Thank God!), but they are extremely important. I have found myself not taking my future as serious as I ought. Pursuing internships, jobs, and contacts has taken backseat to temporary satisfaction with the status quo. Where I should be working on a diverse selection of clips, I have ignored the need to work diligently on traditional news stories. Instead, I have willfully restricted myself to opinion columns and Web logs. As fun and as easy as these may be, it is not necessarily helping form me into a top-notch journalist. The basic, the most fundamental elements of the craft have fallen to the cutting room floor, and I can only hope that it will not come back to haunt me.
In conclusion, glancing over my shoulder at the two years I have spent at Olivet College has shown me a picture made up of events best described as good, bad, and ugly. While I do not believe it possible to fully eradicate the bad and the ugly, I must begin, and begin as soon as possible, to minimize those things that would fall within those two rather unfortunate categories.
This is a video of my opening remarks at a panel discussion on embryonic stem cell research hosted by Michigan State University. My taking part in this forum allowed me to broaden my understanding of this particular controversy as well as to educate those in the audience as to the traditionally conservative and Catholic position.
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This exhibit reflects my best work in the areas noted above.
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This exhibit reflects a high degree of professionalism in general writing skill, grammar and organization.
NARRATIVE
This exhibit came about at the behest of a student organization at Michigan State University. Their goal was to present to the student body a well-rounded discussion concerning the issues surrounding embryonic stem-cell research. I was asked to represent the so-called Republican position. I was also the only student on the panel attending a college other than Michigan State University.
It was a pleasure and an honor to participate in the event. It took a lot of research, speech preparation, and working with others. I also had the chance to hear from those who disagreed with my position. All of this helped, albeit in a very small way, to show me that I am duty-bound to respect various positions at odds with my own, but also that I have a responsibility to educate others as to why I take the particular position that I do.
1. Cover the lecture concerning the economic hitman
2. I covered the event, wrote the story for the Echo and submitted it for Seminar.
The goal of this project was not only to cover the story for the Echo, but also to satisfy the requirement of my seminar assignment.
The lecture was a real eye-opener. I have been skeptical of Wall Street and corporations for many years now, but the stories he told were well beyond anything I had imagined.
Hearing him talk about what he had done, what continues to go on and what we can do was inspirational. It reinforced my internal commitment to bettering not only myself but also other people through my actions and my words.
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This exhibit reflects my best work in the areas noted above.
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This exhibit reflects a high degree of professionalism in general writing skill, grammar and organization.
ECONOMIC HITMAN ON CAMPUS By Jeremiah Bannister Originally printed in the Olivet Echo
“A good hit man has no conscience at all.” This famous quote from Pete “The Greek” Diopoulis in a 1976 interview on 60 Minutes was echoed by author and activist John Perkins during his Oct. 22 lecture at Olivet College. Perkins, author of the best selling “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” gave students a first-hand account of the Orwellian activities and Machiavellian characters he was associated with over the years. He also discussed what he believes must be done if citizens, both national and global, wish to overthrow the rich and powerful currently running the world as “the first global empire.”
According to Perkins, individuals are being trained by the rich and the powerful, a group he referred to as the “corporatocracy,” to identify Third World countries with rich natural resources. These resources, oil being amongst the most prized, are the envy of politicians and entrepreneurs alike. In hope of taking control of these sought after resources, Western nations would offer lopsided deals to host countries. These deals would typically be rejected by leaders not willing to have their resources taken from them in what they believed to be a grossly unfair trade agreement.
Enter the economic hit men. After being rejected by the host country, the corporate interests would commission men and women to work with international money lenders such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). They would coordinate with these banks to create tailored loans that would, at least in wording, play on the economic hardships and populist frustrations of the host nations. The principle focus of the loans would appear to seek little more than economic betterment of the nation with the sought after resources. In short, these loans were meant to be, as Don Vito would say in “The Godfather,” offers they could not refuse.
Perkins went on to admit that aside from the appearance of altruism, these loans were attempts to undermine the host nation’s initial refusal to allow the pillaging of their resources by the rich and powerful. These funds were strategically distributed to create little more than a crushing debt for the nation it was supposed to help. “We coordinated huge loans,” he said, “but they went to our corporations.”
This would inevitably leave the debtor countries unable to pay back the lenders. “The rich become rich on the backs of the poor,” he said, leaving the poor little choice but to succumb to the new demands of repayment. The lender, wishing to get the money back one way or another, offers new terms for repayment. These new terms are almost always identical to the initial demands of the unfair deal first advanced by Western interests, with the inclusion of new, more expansive demands.
In his concluding remarks, Perkins insisted that this reality and that these tactics could be overturned, but that the citizenry bears the brunt of responsibility as they are the core to the solution.
Seeing what he believes to be a modern movement much like populist movements that ignited the Agricultural outcry of the 19th century as well as the call for humane labor conditions during the Industrial Revolution, Perkins considers civilization to be on the verge of what he referred to as the “Sustainable Revolution.” This paradigm shift is, in his estimation, driven by the ever-increasing demands of globalization and national interconnectivity. “We need to be globally minded,” he said, “we are citizens of one world.”
While granting the slow nature of incremental reform and social change, Perkins is confident that humanity will shake itself free of its adolescence and boldly move towards maturity. “We can move forward,” he said, “and we will.”
NARRATIVE
This exhibit was rather unique. I not only had the responsibility of attending a lecture about economic shenanigans (which just so happens to be a curious fascination of mine), but I was also under obligation by the Olivet Echo to write a story about the event.
With a laptop, a notepad, and a press pass, I was ready to go. The next hour and a half were spent attempting to pace with the speaker, knowing that my shorthand would be a handicap. At any rate, I did rather well, catching key facts and noteworthy quotes.
The actual article took only a few hours to write. This was the case on account of my difficulty with details. While Nichole Babcock told me that she wanted the story submitted for the upcoming edition of the paper, I was under the impression that I had much more time. Suffice it to say that it turned out being a last minute project, and one that I believe to have turned out very well.
