Text – Page 45 – Citizen Reporter

Chomsky Breaks it Down

Production schedule is still not back on track, but close. Thursday the topic will be Philippines and the war in Mindanao with a correspondant there. More details and research can be discussed this week as well.

But for now I’ll do another recommendation, Monday’s edition of DemocracyNow featured Noam Chomsky talking about what happens now after the elections. He points out alot of details that are regularly passed over or ignored when it comes to what happened in these latest elections. I recommend listening to at least that segment, if not the whole program.? Obviously there will be some mention of the first appointments from the Obama team and the questionable financial and political backgrounds of some of those individuals. But it also gets into money, besides the donations we heard so much about, where alot of the money for the democratic campaign originated and what it means for the incoming administration. Follow the money… I recommend listening to it.

Story Core Time

Unfortunately my macbookp is in the shop getting some minor battery issue looked at, in hopes of avoiding larger problems later.? This means podcasting and vlogging are delayed and ye olde powerbook overheats and shuts down periodically.

But using my old computer also led me to go looking around for other podcasts from various sources, including that old American standby – National Public Radio.? To my surprise, one program I had once heard about but didn’t realize was a podcast is called Story Corps.? You may recall hearing about Story Corps, these audio recording booths deployed around the US where people could make appointments to come in and interview whomever they wanted: teachers, parents, siblings, neighbors, etc.

In each Story Corps podcast episode you get to hear one of these interviews, and thus far the result is inspiring and powerful.? I recently listened to a daughter interviewing her father about having served in the Vietnam war, and what is was like when he returned. Previously I’d heard an elderly couple, where the wife interviewed the husband about how he first met her and what his life was like at that time and what he was thinking.

Besides reporting and investigating, story telling is by far my most favorite use for podcasting. I think there is so much to learn and experience through anyone and everyone’s story, and hearing someone close to that person conduct that interview adds yet another layer to it.

Therefore while my computer is in the shop, I recommend you listen to Story Corps.

Health Consumers of Europa

Currently flipping through the European Health Consumer Index for 2008, which seems to rate nations (in Europe) based on how well the health system treats patients and how empowered patients are. Though as I flip through it, they frequently point out they are not trying to claim to know which is the BEST system in Europe, while still referring to the Netherlands as their winner for 2008.

Their biggest criteria seems to revolve around patients’ rights and subtopics like E-patient files, which indeed there is a pamphlet in my mailbox this week that seeks to explain how that new system works here in the Netherlands.? They also get into what countries are good with introducing new medicines, or which have long waiting lists, or infant mortality, etc etc.? Also following the Netherlands in the top three are Denmark and Austria. You may recall France being often heralded as one of the best health systems in the world, according to this survey, they rank 10th in Europe.. with ,interestingly enough, Estonia right behind them. What keeps France in 10th place? They say the medical system has been too slow in adopting new web based information sharing systems for patient files, and there is some reference to a very authorotarian ASK YOUR DOCTOR tradition that holds patients back.

Such studies are interesting, but as I’ve mentioned before on this bog, in my experience the Netherlands is not big on proactive medicine. Doctors number one reaction to anything is to send you home. That may be appropriate alot of the time, but it leaves me wondering how often patients with something important are turned away… that doesn’t sound very patients’ rights to me. But yes indeed, they’ve got this new e-patient file system and the hospitals seem well organized and nice, and as some of my favorite medical student friends remind me “the next generation of medical professionals in the netherlands are going to rock.” Still, does all this qualify as the best in Europe? I think I’ll keep reading and see if I learn anything more.

Before Rove, Atwater

There was a statement that caught my attention as I rode through museumplein in the middle of the night recently, listening to the latest edition of On the Media.? They were talking about the late republican strategist Lee Atwater, who Ive always remembered as the guy who trained George HW Bush in 88 to stand up straight to look tough in debates, and use divisive attack ads to destroy his opponent.? The item was about his legacy, and it was interesting to hear a specialist on his life and work talk about how he had been friends with Karl Rove and championed the playing upon people’s fears in a political campaign.

At one point they mention that many people saw what came after Atwater as a marketing of a candidate using sophisticated polling and focus groups. Something that would later be championed by the Clinton campaigns and set the pace for the next decade.? But they added that this most recent election, might have signified a return to a more grassroots direct-to-the people style politics.

All this reminded me of Century of the Self, Adam Curtis’s excellent documentary, which now more than ever deserves to be watched.? One can only hope an update will come soon.

Will War on Drugs Finally End?

The US government answered back to the Bolivian government’s charge that they have actively encouraged drug trafficing. The answer, as you would expect, was a denial.

It was earlier this week that Evo Morales announced that Bolivia was ending its cooperation with the so-called US war on drugs due to certian US agencies’ activities in the country.? He told reporters that his country would handle its own problems and policies when it came to drug trafficing.

Interestingly it was investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood who uncovered alot of the details on the US government acitivities in Bolivia, specifically evidence about the attempt to buy political and policy influence. There’s a good video of Bigwood’s presentation of this evidence, I recommend you check it out.

Bolivia is certainly not along in its frustration with US agencies and the drug war, and with a new more open-minded administration soon to take power in the US, the question is – will the US finally withdraw from the problem-plagued drug war?

Laying a Presidency to Rest

You don’t really need me to explain or describe the reaction to yesterday’s election here in Europa… so I’ll skip right past it.

Looking to the future yesterday, I was picturing how strange it will be for the world, after so many years of a US administration and an overall image of the United States government as this plotting, bumbling, profit greedy entity.? What I mean is, having the Bush administration was like having this internernational measurement standard; if you wanted to know what was a bad idea or some indicator of a poor government, you would look to the actions of the Bush administration.? Based on this, alot of people created careers and followings for themselves.. entire systems of meaning, I would venture to say.

Take Latin America, presidents of nations such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Equador, who have long said to their people – we do things contrary to that disfunctional US administration. They’ve experienced wide spread support using such rhetoric, and it is quite understandable that so many citizens looked at these leaders, and comparing them to the Bush group, said – Yes, we choose this guy.

Now with Bush leaving, and what seems like it will be a new kind of government, one more open to international cooperation, sustainable development, and rational thought, aren’t such leaders losing their number one reference point.. their rally cry?

Other comparisons can of course be made, looking at regions like the Middle East and of course the Africa, where it would seem people are, for the first time perhaps ever, excited and eager to work with this new president.. with the US.? Again, pulling the rug out from under a system that over the last decade, had become quite standard.

Still it isn’t only other nations that are entering a strange moment in history, many of us critics and concerned citizens, we’re losing the best evil emperor many of us have ever known. After so many years of not having to think hard about what is a good policy or a bad policy, suddenly we are now put in a position where we will have to look closer and work harder, as a new and potentially better functioning administration takes over power, no more reliably awful president.

This line of reasoning all started while listened to the most recent edition of On the Media, as they interviewed an author about the work of the great Hunter S. Thompson in the book that shaped alot of my journalistic thinking, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. The author, at one point, explains that when Nixon finally died, Thompson went into a strange kind of celebration, fearing the great task of having to put this president whom he so hated, to sleep once and for all.? For me it seemed he had lost his nemesis, which is not always the bliss you might expect.