Audio – Page 94 – Citizen Reporter

bicyclemark79: Controlling Water, Exposing Bechtel

Examining the forces behind the push for water privatization and the track record of one company that makes unbelievable profits and is made up of current and past government officials.

AudioCommunique #79(mp3)
30min+, 80kbps, 17Mb+

Discussed:

The world water reality
Public Management versus private
Reasons and actors behind the push
Bechtel – the long list of huge contracts since 1900
CEO’s of Bechtel – The Oligarchy
Boliva 1999 – struggle and victory
Oscar Oliveira’s testimony
My firefighting story-comparison
– This may be part 1 or 2… we’ll see…

Music:
Madeleine Peyroux – Cry Baby
Dresden Dolls – Perfect Fit
Sweet Honey & the Rock – When I Rise
Harry Belafonte – A Hole in the Bucket

bicyclemark78: Children of the Stones; Refugees in the West Bank

An interview with an excellent photojournalist, social scholar, and friend of mine who recently returned from working in the West Bank, where he interviewed children and their families about the culture and practice of throwing stones at soldiers and tanks.

AudioCommunique #78(mp3)
29min+, 80kbps, 17Mb+

Discussed:
Why he decided to go to refugee camps in Palestine
How children explained their role in Palestinian society
What their parents said about this practice
The children’s vision and hope for the future
Stratos’s Photo Website

Song in this show:
Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros – Minstrel Boy

Simply Exhausted

Instead of blabbing about how tired I am and speaking about Haloween in Amsterdam and frisbee. I’ll simply share images of my day. We lost all our matches, my excuse is I belong playing outside amongst the dirt and wind. Sniff sniff… I smell.

MC throws

Game Time

group shot.

Hmm... drunky?

Bicyclemark Launches Fatwah Against Temp Agencies

That’s right. Read the title. Circumstances in my own life and all over the world have left me with little choice. Bicyclemark hereby declares a personal nonviolentFatwah against Temp Agencies around the world.

They started it. With their shitty benefits, fake smiles, and insulting -nee – degrading salaries. With their staff of young good looking hipsters and promises of pie-in-the-sky, temporary employment agencies are destroying quality of life worldwide, with a smile and a cool soundtrack in the background. And the blame doesn’t merely lie with them. Mais non! They have accomplices: businesses, organizations, institutions that contract them! use their slave labor as a shortcut in the realm of paperwork and that pesky process of “hiring workers.” And the culprit list continues; the governments – who should have outlawed these evil entities from the get-go.

And so it has come to this. My Fatwah. Hear me, Temp Agencies everywhere, take note — I AM YOUR ENEMY. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I will nonviolently and perhaps passively work to make you miserable. How, you might ask? I’ve got some ideas. Smear campaign on my blog, for starters. Incriminating photos of your employees and directors sitting at their hip I-Macs while electronically stealing money from the average ex-student. Bags of dog poo, perhaps sometimes burning, left at your door. Or maybe I should recruit young punk-rockers to borrow a page from the fur movement and throw red paint on your post-modern glass facade. Another idea running around in my head is to hire homeless people to sit outside your doors with signs reading “former temp” and “temp agencies hurt baby jesus”. Oh yes.. lemme write that one down somewhere besides this blog.

In closing, you’re in big trouble you son of a bitch temp agencies. Whether you’re in Europe, North America or the friggin Galapogos Islands, my wrath knoweth no hemispheric limits.

bicyclemark77: Jazz Legends Remembered, and East Timor Revisited (REPOST*)

(REPOST Due to hurricane damage)Shirley Horn and Elvin Jones Remembered. While East Timor seems to have been forgotten.

AudioCommunique #77(mp3)
28min+, 80kbps, 16Mb+

Discussed:
Shirley Horn Died
Elvin Jones Died and Carlos Santana Reflects on Popular Culture’s Ignorance
East Timor – The Post-Colonial History
Henry Kissinger and the invasion of East Timor
The mass murder of Timorese with no US, Portuguese, or Australian Intervention – 1975
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (documentary)

All Music from the Shirley Horn Album: The Main Ingredient

Health, Can Anyone Afford it?

I’ve been thinking alot lately about work, unions, health insurance. Three terms that long ago, went hand in hand. Long, long ago. Before my time actually. Several sources have triggered and fueled my thoughts on this topic, among them:

Bill Maher shutting down that bow-tie wielding simpleton Tucker Carlson, on the subject of 44 million uninsured Americans versus Canadian national health insurance.

The BC government’s attempts to paint teachers on strike as criminals. and while we’re at it, I found the fairly negative history of organized labor-government relations in Canada – pretty shocking. I’m naive like that, always believing things are more civil under the maple leaf.

Jamie from the known-universe, the great blogger and author, confessing that his health insurance has run out, and as a diabetic – how unaffordable his health conditions have become. 500 bucks at the pharmacy? That should be a crime against humanity.

But this is where the world is headed. The US is much further down the road of union-less insurance-less citizenry. But Europe and the rest of the world aren’t too far behind. Threats to the great traditions of organized labour and national health, which helped this continent achieve the highest quality of life in the world, are almost inevitably going to win. And what the hell happens then? Bad things I say… bad things.