During my recent visit to Berlin, BaghdadBrian and I visited the stasimuseum and recording this videoblog entry. It also features the most excellent tour guide who not only gave tremendous insight into what life was like in the GDR and the activities of the Stasi, but also gave these great personal stories of how she felt and what she remembers. Oh and here’s the museum website.
Author Archives: bicyclemark
Videos from Jersey
Having missed my flight, waited a day for another flight, and then arrived here in Lisbon only to have my luggage misplaced for the rest of the day, there was lots of time to catch up on podcasts and especially new video content.
So while I try to figure out where the leak in my roof is coming from, I wanted to recommend one of my favorite new video podcasts (new to me): tvjersey.com. Not only does it provide excellent segments about things happening in New Jersey, it does something unique… using photos instead of video, with audio to put those photos into context. In effect, these are news slideshows.
One of the lastest video-slideshows that I enjoyed was about a homeless-assistance center in Hackensack that is being shut down. The images and the sounds from that center, and the voices of the people who work and go there, I get a real sense of what it means to them and what a dramatic turn of events it is that the city is pushing to close it down.
If you’re remotely curious about a unique audio-visual way to report news and tell a story, watch tvjersey.com, as you may find something about it interesting and educational.
Economies and Plants
During my lunch break on Myesonday I made my way over to a plant store near Olympic Stadium, here in Amsterdam. Usually working past the time places stay open, I thought it best to buy my spring plants during my work day, plus I’d seen this shop several times since starting my new job, seemed like a good place.
I choose my spring flowers and bring them inside to pay the extremely tall, grey haired gentleman with the glasses. As I pay him I look down at the pansies and ask (in Dutch), I’m from the New York area, where normally pansies don’t make it once the weather gets warm; I’ve always wondered, does that work the same way here, or do they last longer since its slightly cooler weather here?
The man looks down at the little plants and begins to explain using alot of hand motions: We’re on a very similar level compared to New York, on the globe relatively speaking. So the same, technically, applies, you only get flowers for a few months and its over.
From there the man seemed to jump into a larger conversation:
It is all related. Plants in the US, plants in the Netherlands. Mortgage crisis in the US, mortgage crisis here. Whatever happens, his tone gets louder, in the US, we will always feel the effects here. Then he looks at the ground, although, I think we’re better equipped to survive the crisis, as people don’t use credit to but things the way they do over there. But mortgages, oh the mortgages, these prices in this country have been out of control for too long, it had to stop. Again he returned to his earlier statement, I think we can survive it, we are a small country and people can be very smart about not borrowing and not getting into debt schemes, I hope we survive it with minimal damage. But again, it is all relative. Pansies, economic crisis….. US, Netherlands.
Have a nice day and good luck with the planting, he waved to me as I stepped out of the shop.
Followup On Newark
In keeping with the issue of what is happening in the city of my birth and childhood, I noticed Ken over at the DailyNewarker has just posted an interesting podcast. It is an interview with someone who works for the Ironbound Community Corporation, the Ironbound being my community.
During the interview Ken builds on what we talked about in our podcast together, just before they closed St. James hospital, about the impact of closing medical facilities on a community.
For my part I will continue to track the closing of hospitals in not only Newark but anywhere in the US or the world. For now, click over to the Daily Newarker if you want to hear more details about what is happening around the issue of community hospitals and financial constraints.
On a slightly related note, I thought to also mention that for the first time in my lifetime, there will be no Portuguese parade in Newark this summer. Why? -No money.
Corporate Influence in EU Governments
It is that feeling that never really goes away. No matter how often you might look around at how things work in Europe and admire things, there is the ever present feeling that politics, business, and everything in between is heading in the same direction as the United States.
Yet another piece of evidence to that effect appeared in the Financial Times recently, in an article about the intricate role of business executives within the German government. In a story that sounds identical to what has been going on in the US for decades, one German executive from a hedge fund was said to be working in the ministry of justice in the area of hedge fund policy. Another classic example, reminiscant of the Reagan years, executives from BASF (the chemical company) are working in the ministry of environmental protection, also in the area of policies – of course.
But the infiltration of government by business experts from large corporations goes beyond the national level. As the article points out in its conclusion, within the European Commission there is also a strong presence of corporate experts working in the area of policy and regulation.
Just as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, for all the reasons we might admire Europe, there are plenty of reasons to worry about a continent whose governments are allowed to repeat the kind of dysfunctional corporatist capitulation that we saw in the United States over the last 30 years or more.
The Audience That Wasn’t There
My presentation about the problems facing citizen journalists and citizen journalism today. PArt of my talk given at Re:publica’08 here in Berlin. Lots of podcasts being prepared as part of this event, and later I might have video. For now as I continue visiting with my favorite citizens of Berlin, I give you my brief presentation (minus the Wire clip about doing more with less.)
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