Category Archives: Text

A Place Like Lloret

As the bus drove further and further out of Barcelona, I stared out the window, following the coastline as it occasionally disappeared behind a hill or houses.  I watched the Costa Brava unfold in front of me, just as the sun was going down at the end of a beautiful spring day in March.  Looking at the landscape on the way to Lloret, I found myself wondering if that beach town up ahead was it, hmm not this one, perhaps its the next one. After doing this several times, I dosed off.

Waking up not 20 minutes later, it was now clearly dark out and the bus was moving slowly along regular two lane roads.  The sign ahead read “Lloret de Mar – Centro” or something to that effect.  As I scanned the lights outside, I noted an abundance of neon signs: “Go-Go Dancers”, “Exotic Dancers”, and so on.  Welcome to the outskirts of Lloret, just a little tap from a city that when you arrive after nightfall, the atmosphere punches you in the face.

It punches you in the face with neon signs, blasting club music, and teenagers screaming, singing and chanting about anything and everything.  I’m making my way from the bus station to the beach by walking down what should be the glorious mainstreet of this vacation hotspot, where the elderly come to stroll leisurely during the day, and adolescents come to go wild, in many cases, for the first time ever away from home.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and we have a 3 hour break between games.  I walk away from the beach to buy some food supplies at a local supermarket, which happens to be on that infamous avenue with all the neon and vomit.  The crepe man is smiling as people queue up in front of him, he greets me and starts showing me how many industrial size containers of batter he made fresh this morning. “I make them fresh every morning” he assures me while opening many different cabinets behind him revealing tall white 5 liter jugs.  I start asking a bit more about his business when we’re suddenly interrupted by a loud cheering.  Behind me a bus had pulled up, the doors open and out pour dozens upon dozens of Portuguese teenagers, ripe from a 12 hour bus ride from Porto.  They look up and around as if they’ve landed on another planet, clinging to their hand luggage on wheels and travel pillows.  The crepe man motions towards them with his spatula: “New groups arriving everyday, twice a day… even more next week for Easter vacation, they come here in their last year of high school- thousands of them.” He says this with half a smile. For him it means more business.  But it also means tonight after he closes up, countless kids will smash bottles and urinate on the wall next to his crepe stand.

Its all in the game, people working in Lloret seem to say without saying it.  This is what their city does, as an infamous and celebrated destination for youth from Portugal, England, the Netherlands, etc.  They are there to cook the food, make the beds, run the nightclubs, and oh yeah – wash the streets every morning once the kids have passed out.  Just in time for the elderly who get up for their daily constitutional along the beach.

Lloret could be any spring break town in many countries around the world.  The place where the kids want to go, the place that although I may look upon with a sense of disgust, to them represents freedom and excitement.

On my way home from the obligatory post-frisbee party on my first night around 2am, I take the long way home, passing through some of Lloret’s narrow streets and alleys.  Weaving through the bodies that seem to be strewn around randomly, I run into a thick crowd of kids singing in Portuguese.  I take off my headphones to listen closely…. “Viva.. Viva Lloret” they sing.  Why would anyone feel like they needed to sing praises to the city they are in, late at night, I wondered.  Then I walked on past the kids making out here and there, and the groups of 6 and 8 kids laughing and walking arm-in-arm.  I realized right there was the inspiration for their songs of praise, a thank you to the place that they feel has given them what they wanted.

Away throwing discs

Something I rarely do, I’m on hiatus for the next three days. Off throwing plastic discs in some tacky part of Catalunya.

Til I get back I recommend you browse the archives and categories; after more than 9 years of producing content for the internets, there’s plenty here to discover or revisit!

Hiding ACTA From the World

The first time I heard about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was in a news report on EURACTIV.com about how something called ACTA had suffered a defeat in the EU parliament.  I figured it was one of these anti-file sharing, increase-internet surveillance type bills you hear about here and there in the media and through online discussions.  Measures of that nature have been threatened and in some cases passed over the past decade with limited coverage and even more limited understanding among the general public.

A little further reading and it turns out that report out of parliament was just the tip of the iceberg. ACTA isn’t a European Union initiative, it turns out – ACTA is an international trade agreement which claims to create international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement throughout the participating countries.

Sound boring? It gets exciting.  This trade agreement is being shopped all over the world in an attempt to convince nations to sign on because this will be the agreement that brings effective and up-to-date control over counterfeit goods, generic medicines, as well as “piracy over the Internet”. The terms to achieve these goals are being laid out during rounds of negotiations that have been going on since 2008.

Such an agreement that addresses so many areas of our lives, surely both we and our representatives should be able to read the terms and policies as they take shape? Nope. The negotiations are being handled through closed door sessions, the proceedings are kept secret. Since 2008 some information has leaked and a handful of corporations and organizations have been allowed to look over the treaty. Or so it seems according to some reports.

I have plenty more to learn about this treaty, but one thing that already has me concerned, is the power of this treaty, and the dangerous secrecy with which it is being pushed. In the coming weeks I intend to interview individuals who have insight and knowledge into this treaty and see what more can be learned. This will begin this week with a podcast interview with Michael Massnick of techdirt who has been following ACTA for the past few years.

Dangerous Lobbying

Lobbying is a strange practice when we’re talking about how a government works.  In theory, lobbying is what citizens can do to try and influence what their representatives do; write a letter, make a phone call, organize a meeting or rally… in some way, you’re lobbying your government.  But of course when you see the word lobby in the context of government these days, it means something else. It refers to these groups of professionals, using various tactics to get government officials to vote a certain way. These lobby groups usually have a funding source, and it is very much a full time job. Lets try the webster dictionary definition:

Main Entry: 2lobby
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): lob·bied; lob·by·ing
Date: 1837

intransitive verb : to conduct activities aimed at influencing public officials and especially members of a legislative body on legislation transitive verb 1 : to promote (as a project) or secure the passage of (as legislation) by influencing public officials
2 : to attempt to influence or sway (as a public official) toward a desired action

Whereas lobbying could be a legitimate and respected tool in different types of democracies, it can be, and has been, abused.  Abused when groups with large amounts of money, mount concentrated and constant campaigns to get a representative to act in favor of their goals. Commonly “their goals” are connected to the interests of a corporation or a group of corporations, like the telecommunications, banking, or arms manufacturing industries.  For such lobby groups the concern for the nation or society, is secondary to their business goals.

While this isn’t the only kind of lobbying that exists, it is certainly the type that has become must common and most well funded in capitals of nations around the world.

Unique from most other capitals in the world, Brussels is a city with a booming lobbyist population. The seat of the European Parliament and Commission, among other institutions, the decisions that come out of Brussels have impact in not just 1 nation, but in 27 member states. Yet while it has tremendous reach with its decision making, it is not as often or as closely scrutinized by its citizens the way their individual state governments are.  Thus making it all the more easy for powerful interests with deep funding sources to expand and entrench their lobbying activities with little notice and even less criticism.

According to the Corporate European Observatory and a recent article in the EU Observer, the situation described above is actually far worse.  Two years ago, in an attempt to get a handle on who is a lobby group and for whom,  the EU commission created a voluntary registry system.  Even after two years in existence, it seems more than 60% of Brussels based European Lobby Consultancies have not signed up.  Another blatant sign that the lobby machine at the European level has settled in and feels no need to be accountable or transparent to the EU government or its citizens.

Dutch Municipal Elections Article

The following is an excerpt from a piece I wrote this past week for the Guardian CiF, to read the full text, click the link below:

The media have recycled the same headlines following Dutch elections for about a decade now, and similar observations are regularly trumpeted in international newspapers. Part of me thinks they actually just run the same articles, updating the picture, changing a few names, and maybe touching up a few percentage points. The political landscape is changing in the Netherlands, it is true. “How could this happen in this bastion of a liberal democracy?” commentators ask in an accusing tone.

I shall go against the international headlines and some of the Dutch media when I say to you, please remain calm. This sudden explosion of intolerance and fragmented politics is nothing new; we have been reading about it for decades. The myth maintained by international media outlets and perhaps the Dutch bureau of tourism, which parrots the Netherlands as an open-minded leftwing paradise, has long kept a smoke screen over the well-established and not always tolerant tradition of smaller parties, extremist or moderate, left or right, which rise up suddenly, gain power and occasionally disappear into obscurity as fast as they came.

The international press summed up the results of yesterday’s Dutch legislative elections as a major victory for the far-right, anti-Islam and ironically named Freedom Party (PVV). They are also quick to point to the two cities (out of the entire country!) where the PVV managed to top the polls in local elections. But while The Hague, where the PVV is now the second-largest party, is certainly a city of international and national importance, gaining control of it, along with the little-known city of Almere, does not equal an electoral sweep.

The PVV’s sporadic success is significant not so much because of the small number of votes they won, but because of the xenophobic, nationalist rhetoric that has managed to get them votes. While this development grabs the headlines, several Dutch political parties on both the centre and the left have made just as many – if not more – gains. In the cities of Utrecht and Nijmegen, the Green-Left party (GroenLinks) gained enough to become the largest party. The more moderate D66 party made the biggest gains nationwide, becoming the largest party in Leiden, Haarlem, and Hilversum. The socially progressive and fiscally conservative party’s success was far greater than that of the PVV, but since they don’t say controversial things about the Muslim faith or try to convince people that the country is being taken over, they’re just not as fun for the front page.

[read full text]

Spike in Airline Prices

The last night of February 2010 has me looking forward and asking the difficult questions about just what I’m going to focus on, push myself to do that is new and innovative, and where I will take this here journalistic project as the year matures. What topic in what corner of the world do I feel needs better coverage, more explaining, and increased understanding on the international scale? What can I do? What is within my power, as a reporter with connections or in terms of making new contacts- to get more information to present to you reading this.

Naturally for the sake of learning and first hand reporting, I want to do more than bring you information from the comfort of my always interesting Amsterdam life… I want to travel.  Nevermind wanting, when you’ve got family and a life in 2 other countries besides the one you dwell in, travelling isn’t a luxury it is a necessity somewhere behind food, shelter, and clothing on the life-list of what is needed.  But while I’d normally be looking at flights to Portugal for the spring or summer to visit my family and take care of my responsibilities there, this year presents a bigger challenge than ever in the last 8+ years. While I’d like to fly off to New York to visit family and speak at The Next Hope this July, again looking at the options, it is looking increasingly unlikely.

Whether it is for good reasons or not, airlines across the board are raising their prices. With flights within Europe and crossing the Atlantic (that I know of) costing double what they did last year.  And combined with a general decrease in my already extra-modest income this year, even flying at normal rates would have posed a budgetary challenge for this alternative voice in the media wilderness.

All this to say, suddenly the road ahead looks foggier than I had expected.  And while ironically I’ll soon announce several exciting journeys to new corners of the globe, those will be funded by third parties. Because the truth is the combination of my intercontinental life choices, journalistic goals, and an economy that sees little monetary value in what I (or anyone these days) do.. makes for a very difficult road ahead.

What’s the plan then? I’m working on it…