bm158 Orgins of Asbury Park

Obviously Ive become obsessed with this Jersey shore forgotten city. The truth is there is a very important story there with lessons for the whole world regarding development, religion, and community. In this program I begin to tell the story of how it all started. This was my last recording during my recent visit to New Jersey and note that Im driving as I’m explaining things which makes it harder dammit.

Read a version of the history on the net
The book Im learning from is 4th of July, Asbury Park by: Daniel J. Wolff

 

Im Big in Boston

As so often mentioned, Radio Open Source is an excellent podcast, not mention a regular radio show on NPR in Boston. I not only listen, but I throw in my 2 cents in the comments and recommend guests when possible. In the past few months, some of the staff have gotten in touch to ask me certain questions and pick my brain on some topics. As you can imagine, I love contributing to their show.

Well last night I stepped up and helped them get most of their guests as the topic was related Tolerance, Radicalism, and the Netherlands. I also sent a big email talking about my own reflections on the country’s general attitude in relation to terrorism, extremism, and all those nice things.

I stayed up extra late listening to the show live, and it was very exciting to hear my own name in the credits. Made me want to call my mom and say “listen to this!”. As a bonus, it is also fun to see my email is featured on their site. I guess I should say welcome if you’ve come here from there. This is my blog, wipe your feet, browse around, try to play nice in the comments.

Lastly, thanks to everyone at ROS (Robin, Greta, and former intern Henry), for all the work you do and for involving me.

The Evidence Mounts Against Electronic Voting

In getting back to some of my favorite Amsterdam habits, last night around 2am I decided to turn on the television and see if anything interesting was on. Dutch public television tends to re-run the days programs, so I always check there first for news or investigative reports of any kind. While usually they involve a police officer writing a ticket for a parking violation or some other lame infraction, I was very excited to see a report on voting machines.

You may recall a few months ago, when my podcast was focused on the Dutch movement Wij vertrouwen Stemcomputers Niet (we don’t trust voting computers). I went over to Rop Gonggrijp’s interesting house and he explained the trouble with voting machines, especially the very prominant Dutch machine maker Nedap.

Sure enough, last night one of the star witnesses of the program was none other then Rop! During the segment, they got their hands on one of the machines, and in a matter of minutes, had managed to open it without a key and using very un-sophisticated methods, change the configuration so that all votes no matter what button your press, go to one party.

The camera crew also went to one of the storage places where these machines are kept, and found little to no security watching over the machines. When they tried to speak to the minister in charge of these things, he was away on vacation. When they showed the program to a pair of parliamentarians, they were both shocked and had new questions for the practice of using electronic voting in the Netherlands.


All in all, it was exciting to see this investigation, and I very much felt a part of it. Such a shocking example in such a supposedly model democracy, should send shockwaves around the world, and further bury these voting machine companies that are trying to make big money in exchange for throwing away fair and secure elections.

I will not be jetlagged, or silent.

Landed in the wee hours of the morning, here in Amsterdam. And since it’s October, it stays nice and dark until at least 7am, so I just pretended it was night time and I had a meal, read some blogs, and unpacked. – Which explains why I woke up in the middle of the afternoon.

On the flight over I had a chance to catch up with podcasts, mainstream and alternative. One of the podcasts that made me gag and foam at the mouth was, as usual, Meet the Press. They had a senate candidate debate between two Ohio politicians. Now I know I’m a broken record on this subject, but I cannot and will not remain silent when I see and hear fraud, hypocracy, and distraction disguised as an election.

These two candidates are the same. That is clear from the basic fact that they spend alot of time and energy trying to prove that they are not the same. Hard work when you’re both warmongering, wealthy, and puppets of two parties that share a common goal: having power and pleasing the powerful.

To some extent I blame Meet the Press for giving this a stage and pretending there is a debate to be had. Tim Russert should have spent his time exposing both men for being poorly informed on international affairs and completely vague about their domestic agenda.

I turned off the interview after 20 minutes and somewhat appropriately, selected the film “American Dreamz”.

bm157 The Mayor of Bogota, His Profile and Policies

In the third installment of the series on global mayors, we turn to Bogota, Colombia. The city is run by the man they call Lucho, and with help from a guest in Bogota, we will learn who this mayor is, what he is doing for the city, and what he isn’t doing. And perhaps — why?

More info on Lucho

 

Torture Museum USA

During a conversation with an old friend at William PAterson U today, I was telling her about Amsterdam’s torture museum. Suddenly it just came to me, I said to her: “I guess soon the US will have lots of torture museums as well.” And I laughed. She looked unpleased, and said — I know.

On that note, my flight leaves in 12 hours. So Ill sleep, pack, take one more spin around this one horse town, stopping off to give a big hug to the owner of my favorite cafe. then its back to Amsterdam and back to real pod-journalism and world news commentary.