Belgian Waffling

After my most recent trip to Brussels, I found myself extremely frustrated with articles I had read in the newspapers, conversations with my family and friends.. all revolving around what really does look like a country on the verge of breaking up.

It almost sounds like a relationship doesn’t it? Yes this old married couple called Belgium, more specifically Wallons and Flemish, seem to have reached a tipping point and will soon divorce. And like so many marriages gone wrong, the craziest part will be to negotiate who gets what and how.

But nevermind the analogy, Belgium is in a terrible funk that people in different parts of the world can probably never understand and even I, a frequent visitor to the country and someone who reads every bit I can on the topic, am still baffled.

Naturally a discussion of history is in order, to understand what happened in the past that resulted in the things we see today. Who took what from whom, who killed whom, and who deserves what, somehow, as a result. Like any European region there are plenty of wars, cultural differences, economic booms and busts, and yes … even a dash of colonialism.

But I’m not going to try to summarize the history right now.

For now all I have to say and I hope the world will take notice soon, is that there is a lovely country called Belgium, where people live a very admirable quality of life and have come a long way in terms of achievements as a nation. (look at their dominance of tennis!) But these same people are whispering about each other indoors. Their political parties spread untruths and revise history for the sole purpose of drawing on people’s anger and poor judgment. Everyone is convinced they’re being used, duped, or mistreated in some way. They fail to understand people who have been their neighbors and fellow citizens for many generations.

For all the achievements of the Flemish and all the achievements of the Wallons, in my eyes, the inability to stay together as a country or simply to view your neighbors as equals tells me that neither culture is as courageous or creative as I thought.

Weekend Thought On Media

Watching the French news channels all weekend, I have but one simple statement… more of a rhetorical question. It came to me as I watched the Bin Laden video, followed by a security analyst, a beard analyst, a nothing analyst, and a guy who wrote two books with the world security in the title.

If the TV news didn’t air the Bin Laden video… would it really matter?

Or does the Bin Laden video matter, because the TV news airs it.

bm222 Responsible Investment, Where is Your Money?

Most people put money in the bank and figure it stays there waiting for them. But everyday banks take your money and invest it in industries that are actually destroying lives and the planet. In this podcast we talk about that investment; ways of getting banks and investment funds to behave responsably and what power the client has to determine what is done with their money.

My first guest is Jens Nielsen from Friends of the Earth Netherlands who talks about the recent report on Dutch banks and Climate Conscious Investing

Next guest is Robert Rubinstein, CEO and founder of Brooklyn Bridge and the TBLI group, who talks about global investment funds, their motivatioions and behavior, and getting them to adopt sustainable, responsible, long term goals.

Topics Covered in this program:
– Dutch banks, large and small
– Why banks invest as they do
– What can be done to make them act responsibly
– The global picture
– Investment funds like the Gates foundation
– short term vision
– power of the customer
– herding cats, farming for the long term
– Green real estate

 

Calling the Arctic

During my occasional working days here in Brussels, I have lots of time on busses and trains to think about how much I miss my bike and the topics of my next podcasts.

For the next few months I will be frequently touching upon the topic of the Arctic and the race to exploit its resources, re-claim property rights, and the ongoing accelerating process of global warming effecting the region (and in turn, the world).

While mainstream media has dedicated the occasional article on this topic, they focus mostly on the horserace or “competition” between Russia, Canada, US, and Denmark (no mentions of Norway lately). Some tacit attention is given to the political conflict and the use of “submarines” by Russia to plant an underground flag or something to that effect.

What lacks is the real details that effect people’s lives. The information regarding exactly what these nations are doing and plan to do in the name of political power, economics, and what some call progress. They leave out the communities that live in and around the arctic, how they are being effected by all these activities. Rising sea level, melting of the ice caps, increased ship traffic.. these things all come with a price. And then take that to a global level, because the arctic is such an important place for everyone that exists on this planet.. and our collective future.

Some scientific magazines and organizations are indeed dedicating time and energy to bring this information to the public. But this still leaves a huge segment of the global population in the dark, those who continue to look to the media giants for knowledge about the world around them, including the activity of their government in far off places. So long as this disfunctional information relationship continues, it remains much too easy for the powerful governments to mount an aggressive campaign to pick apart the arctic no matter what the cost.

As a podcaster, journalist, and concerned world citizen, these next few months will be dedicated to more in-depth research on the arctic crisis. More interviews with people living and breathing the situation, and with the desire to share their knowledge and experiences with a curious and concerned audience.

KGB Baltic Documents

A new project came to my attention this week via global voices: The KGB Baltic document project. Decades and decades of secret KGB records and documents about activity in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

Just glancing through the list of documents, translated to English, there are titles like:

  • about the work done to expose Lithuanian and other bourgeois nationalists through the broadcast and print media.
  • about the constant attention which should be paid to known writers of anti-Soviet documents written anonymously, and to those who published and distributed them.

    • or

  • plan of the main KGB agency and operative measures on how to strengthen the KGB’s fight against ideological sabotage aimed at the country’s artists

Amazing to see the types of surveillance this secret and wide reaching agency was involved in. Just reading through these kinds of headlines, one might think to oneself “what a strange time that was”.

Yet what if we could get our hands on CIA and FBI documents from the last 2 to 4 years? Reading through info of how agents try to disrupt peace marches, or infiltrate groups organizing against the war. Artists and community leaders that are, as we speak, monitored and tracked.. in the name of “national security.”

For now Ill keep reading through the KGB documents and try not to see the parallels.

bmtv56 New Semester, New Message for Brooklyn C

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