Category Archives: Text

Happy Birthday Beeb

The BBC turns 75 today.

Why is that important?

Because in this world where everything can be privatized and no matter where you go there are commercials in your face trying to convince you to buy something, there is an alternative way to have a news channel. It is called public service, and back in 1922 some smart people in the United Kingdom realized why this would be valuable.

And while I know lots of Brits who will complain about the BBC.  I also know that those same Brits don’t want to lose their public service broadcaster.  They don’t want their news laced with wall-to-wall advertizing.  The BBC remains a model for what mainstream media COULD be like in the world, if certain world leaders and citizens were brave enough and resourceful enough to start their own BBC’s, instead of holding telethons or hoping that some mega-media corporation will be interested in reporting the news.

Happy birthday BBC. You may be mainstream, but you serve the world… and I salute you for it!

Prison Life In Ohio

On my way back from Washington DC I was listening to a recent edition of Off the Wall, one of the two radio programs / podcasts that 2600 produces. The program featured an interview with a friend of Emmanuel and 2600 who is currently incarcerated at an Ohio state penitentiary. Besides the alarming story of how he found himself in such a place for 6 months for doing very little besides being at the wrong place at the wrong time and then misreading an order to “not leave the county” as “do not leave the country”, even more eye opening is his experience in prison.

I highly recommend listening to this episode of Off the Wall, Emmanuel does a good job asking questions and bearing with the difficulties of just talking on the phone with someone in prison, and Lurid – the friend – gives a vivid picture of what is a violent and terrible place that isn’t doing much in the way of rehabilitation as the prison system once was supposed to.

Another Journalist Dies

Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi. You’ve never heard me mention that name before. I’ve never written the name before. Yet Ali was a colleague of mine. He was someone who participated as a correspondent for one of the greatest independent news reporting projects today: Alive in Baghdad.

Like everyone who works for AiB, he reported from Iraq about the reality of people’s lives there and what they were living through under a foreign occupation, being subject to all sorts of terrible acts by their own government, the US military, or the various other types of criminals one finds in Iraq. As an independent project, they receive no funds and do what they do at great personal risk as every jounalist knows full well that if they try to expose injustice and report about war crimes that they will often be targeted by the military.

Ali was killed yesterday. Reports say it was 31 bullets from the Iraqi national guard. The national guard that was trained by the US military. The national guard that is supposed to be for the good of the people, to protect freedom or whatever nationalist slogan they’ve adopted lately.

Ali’s murder is a tragedy to add on to this neverending list of tragedies. Perpetrated while the whole world COULD be watching, but lets be honest, most of the world isn’t watching, they’re probably Christmas shopping.

This post is to offer my heartfelt condolesces to a colleague that probably did not know I existed or how much his work meant to me. This post is also to renew my pledge as an independent internet based journalist and podcaster; I will not forget the importance of his work… and if I may be so bold as to compare… of our work… I will remember Ali.

Homeless America

On my way down the street in one of Washington DC’s hippest neighborhoods, I look at all the houses and the people, in search of what I can say about this place at this point in history.  I ride the metro here and there, out to the lovely suburbs, and I wonder if this region represents the United States in a small scale.  Some friends and I walk into a local liquor store to buy a bottle of wine, and we have a brief exchange with various homeless people out front, and step over the passed out man on the floor of the shop before paying the cashier through a bullet proof glass window.  Yet we walk down the street and see beautiful homes, people walk their dogs and say hi to you sometimes.  Behind the cast-iron bars on the windows and doors, there are families, college kids, artists, and people of all walks of life.

Does DC teach us something about what the United States is all about? Or is it an anomaly of a city that doesn’t even have a state?

One thing deserving of more attention, in this city and beyond, is the amount of people living on the streets.  The Los Angeles Homeless Coalition says that 3.5 million Americans will be homeless in a given year.  3.5 million.  On the streets. In a shelter only in the rarest of cases.  They also say 1 in every 5 suffer from a severe mental illness, no where is that more apparent then in our nations capital. Much like the shelters that are nonexistent or inadequate, so too are the public mental health institutions, places where people can go to get treatment and off the streets.  People in DC tell me about them. They have names for them “stabby dancer” for the guy who would dance around and occasionally stab people with a pen knife.  “Blanket guy” for the man wrapped in a blanket who you see on your way down the street each morning.  They notice them, yet in many ways, these people are not at all noticed.  Ignored and deemed invisible by their community and by their government… both of which seem to hope they’ll simply disappear.

Older and As Critical As Ever

Today I am 28 years old. Before I get into the topic on my mind, big thanks to all those who took the time on facebook or here or in email.. to wish me well. Made me feel very special, I appreciate that. But nevermind me and age.

In discussions, both online and off, people often want to place one another in a little box – to summarize the person’s beliefs in one or two words. You’ve heard them all, they sometimes appear in blog comments “you leftists…. you neoconservatives… you christians.. you scientologists.. you commies” etc. These types of labels are an effort not to see someone as complex as they probably are or to simply write off whatever they have to say due to some predetermined belief system. Obviously I seek to advocate the idea that people are more complex, even if the tagline at the top of this blog uses some adjectives, I am both some of that and none of that.

This comes to mind as I listen to more and more analyses of the referendum in Venezuela a few weeks ago. For those not keeping score, president Chavez and his supporters in government put forward a proposal that would give him some greater powers and supposedly allow him to stay president long past the normal term limit. The proposal included several other measures, which the president has called necessary in order to carry out a socialist revolution. Actually I don’t even know if that is completely true as all I read lately are analyses and I’ve never seen with my own eyes, these documents.. but Ill accept that this is what they are essentially about as I have listened to a few Chavez speeches on the topic. The proposal was put to referendum, where citizens could vote if they were for or against it.

The verdict was NO. Citizens voted down this measure, and various media and leaders throughout the world have pointed to this as a great defeat or Chavez (who many of them hate with a passion) or as a victory for democracy in Venezuela.

Much like one of the correspondents on a recent edition of Uprising (the podcast), despite my frequent admiration or support of Chavez’s words and actions, in this case I’m with all those people who were against the measure. I’m a firm believer, with plenty of history in every part of the world to support the idea, that power corrupts. And while I do believe its necessary to stand up to bullies, whether they are in Moscow or in Washington DC (where Im headed in the morning), I also believe that no human should be given divine and unlimited powers. This proposal sounded like too much power and an invitation for corruption and injustice on a mass scale.

I listened attentively to Chavez’s reaction following the vote. I wondered if he would call the No voters terrorists, using that now cliché strategy. But he didn’t. He sucked it up and conceded defeat. Which is encouraging to me. He is certainly no Gandhi, and this may not be the last troubling measure he puts forward, but I’m glad to see he can admit when he has lost something, and I hope that everyone understands that whether you’re considered a “leftist” or a “conservative”, ideas and values are not that simple and cannot be summarized so easily.

Mislead Over and Over

Greetings from Philadelphia, where I’m spending a few days with good friends.

Upon my arrival in the US this month, I did notice a reasonable amount of buzz in the media and the occasional conversation about toys that had been discovered to have dangerously high levels of lead. Manufactured in China, these toys made the news and toy companies carried out what is called a re-call; requesting that people who have purchased them please return them as they could be dangerous.

My favorite shop on earth for buying food is Trader Joe’s, it is the first place I go when I arrive in the US.  The thing I most like is that I can look at the ingredients of anything, and read the short list.  Normally the ingredients are words that I know and never is there artificial colors or preservatives of any kind.  The thing that is strange, is that Trader Joe’s is considered “Alternative” in many ways.  Normal supermarkets have the big commercial products that have a long list of ingedients many of which start with the prefix poly or mono.  That is considered standard, and many people use those products all their lives.

Whether it is toys, food, or other products that we use regularly in our lives, it seems to me one of the mostparadoxical realities of this society we’ve created in much of the world; we sell each other goods made from materials that can ultimately poison someone, often times while tasting good or smelling good or bringing some short term joy.

Not that I’m against the joy of a nice cookie or a children’s toy. But it seems perposterous that in regular mainstream thought, you buy the cookies or the toys made by the big manufacturer that has uses some really questionable, incomprehensible ingredients to produce them.

How did the world get this way? Why didn’t the masses cry foul and take these producers to court or simply demand they clean up their act? Why is it that even in 2007, with all the experience and time that has passed that humans exist on this earth, that asking for a product made from healthy and simple ingredients is considered somehow alternative or “different”.

Just to add one more thought to all my semi-rhetorical questions today, many people will point to the new kinds of supermarkets and alternative companies that are emerging like the body shop that do things in a sustainable and healthy way. I would agree this is a positive development and a sign of some sort. But what still baffles me is that these companies are so small in terms of the big picture.. so once again.. too little and for many people suffering from the health problems this type of consuming has brought, too late.