Many unforgetable words have been written from the prisons of the world, yet in today’s world of internet publishing, will there be a place for prisoners as well? Independent journalist and San Francisco mayoral candidate Josh Wolf joins me to talk about his experience and the Prisonblogs.net project.
Josh’s Website, currently focused on the Mayoral Campaign
Media Sphere
We Discuss:
– Prisoner options for communicating or publishing
– How he handled internet posts
– Internet access in prison?
– 2 places where we normally can’t hear from people
– How P-Blogs works
– Pressuring the Gov’
– Prisoner issues in his mayoral campaign
Ever since Lindsay started writing for In These Times, I’ve become a regular reader of their work. One recent article on food donations from the US and how the food donation system works has sparked my attention as a topic for an upcoming podcast.
According to their investigation, the US food aid system, which is supposed to feed starving people throughout the world, actually works against that goal. By selling off much of the food, encouraging factory farming, using genetically modified foods, and seeking to boost US influence in different regions, the food aid program can actually increase the level of hunger in the world.
50% of the world’s food donations are said to come from the US… but clearly that fact in itself does not tell the whole story. And while you often hear about how a country donates food to help starving people, there is significant evidence that what is really happening is the creation of a corrupt and inhumane shadow economy where political agendas and profit seeking supersede the aim of assisting those in need.
More on this topic coming soon in a podcast.
In my world, podcasting is my primary method of getting information and learning about what is happening now or in the past. Sometimes it gets so that I forget there are still plenty of people who listen to regular radio in an effort to get similar information. Recently here in Amsterdam I find myself spending time with people who produce material for regular radio, and it is a funny sort of reminder… of the significance that radio still has and to some extent will always have.
Then I read the words of the great Amy Goodman as she talks about the situation in the United States and how for various reasons, there is a chance next month for community groups to apply for FM radio liscences. This is extremely rare, as I recall, having a community station on FM is extremely difficult not to mention expensive. But of course, radio is going digital in the US, so the old-school analog spectrum is going to loosen up, leaving room for groups that have been routinely shut out, to have access to the kind of audience you get with radio.
There is even a useful website where you can get informed on how to get your own community radio station. Which makes me think there are lots of groups that might not know about this and would like to have a radio station. I think about the various Portuguese communities throughout the NorthEast US, or the cool land cooperatives like the MLC which I visited in Florida this past spring… so many types of communities could benefit from finally being able to broadcast on the FM dial.
Naturally I’m still a proponent of podcasting as the best way to reach people and ensure the freedom that people can listen when they want and where they want. Not to mention having diverse and passionate voices and points of view. Still– it is good for me to get out of my terrestrial radio denial, and see that not only is radio alive and well, but in the case of the US, there’s a new chance to start up new stations that will truely serve communities and encourage diversity.
The media has reported on the recent rush by various countries to gain access to more territory in the arctic. Yet they fall short of discussing what is at stake for the earth if companies start extracting resources or using the region as a shipping lane. In this program with the help of guests in Moscow, Alaska, and New York, we look at just what is going on, why, and how are communities being effected.
James Cochran in New York; Doherty Senior Research Scientist, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University.
Pamela Bumsted in Bethel, Alaska; Researcher, Scientist, and blogger.
Olaf Koens in Moscow; journalist and blogger.
Topics covered during the program:
– Why now?
– What lies beneath?
– Territorial claims
– New Shipping lanes
– Rising sea levels
– Effects on communities in and around the region
– Effects on the globe
– Russian political and scientific goals
– Public perception
– Media coverage of the issue
I’m relieved that international cliché day has now passed.
I don’t want to hear anymore “I remember where I was when JFK was killed” style stories.
No more using people’s deaths as an excuse to kill.
People who are close to us and people we don’t ever think about are dying everyday, and on most of those occasions… it is also unnecessary.
In previous years I tell stories and record podcasts related to how I remember that day and how our community took action and how things looked from my house.
But I’m tired of the cliché. Especially from the mouth of allegedly qualified political leaders. Tired of pointless war and torture and violence in the name of another cliché.
Even writing these words becomes redundant and fake-sounding. So I’ll stop. I’m just relieved that date has again passed.
I yield my time to the gentleman from the city of Angels.