Anytime you find yourself at an open air international hacker festival you are sure to be surrounded by people from all over the world. Being located in the Netherlands, most campers come from somewhere in Europe, though plenty of North Americans and a few South Americans as well as Asians manage to make the trip.
With the mainstream media abuzz with reports about the struggle in the United States to adopt a public health insurance option, I have been wanting to present testimony from regular people who have lived their entire lives in nations with national healthcare or other kinds of healthcare systems. How does it work in their country? What are the problems? How much do the basic things like doctor visits, hospital stays, and so on, cost? I set out to find campers from different countries, to ask them these questions. This is part 1 of what I learned.
Hacker Camp 2009 Impressions
In many ways it is as if we never left. 2 years ago I sat at a picnic table under a tarp on the Polish-German border on the site of a former East German military base with a couple of thousand hackers and general purpose nerds. 2 years later here I sit, this time somewhere in the Netherlands, in the infamous Metalab tent filled with Vienna’s creative and hilarious geek crew. To my left and right, tiny laptops connected to several layers of wires. In front of me, beyond a few more piles of wires and what looks like a virtual reality unit from the 80’s, several pale and half-asleep campers are tending to the Austrian breakfast. It’s 12:36pm. 2007, 2009, its as if we just unpaused after the last camp.
It is always difficult to properly describe the scale and degree of amazing these gatherings are. I’ve only been a member of the community since 2005, but in these few years I’ve fallen in love with the attitude, atmosphere, and insanity of hacker camp and hacker gatherings in general. Yet when it comes up in conversation with those who have never experienced it, my words are met with giggles and eyes rolling, again- how to explain what happens here?
Last night as I stopped by the Italian embassy tent, I was greeted, as per tradition, by Italian hackers with grappa and cookies. Earlier they were surely cooking pasta in huge vats right next to their own huge pile of wires and laptops. As I attempted to drink the powerful drink, cheering from the Austrian village caught my attention. Overhead, some kind of balloon creation consisting of mass quantities of glow sticks and a well designed frame powerful by 3 oversized helium balloons. 2 members of the lab climb atop the circa 1980’s Austria Telecom phonebooth to get a better vantage point for holding the rope the balloons are tethered to. In the semi-dark, hordes of hackers stop to cheer on the flying contraption, some calling on the rope holders to “set it free!” Eventually nature takes control and the cord snaps, the flying spaghetti monster fights its way through a line of trees and floats up into the night sky like some kind of rainbow creature heading towards the moon. More cheers, campers move on to the next big tent and whatever project those people are working on.
Blinking lights, house music, machines copying themselves, French hackers making crepes, and the last remaining imaginary soviet republic with its own tent embassy, the list of creative or uncreative ideas is neverending here. I spent much of my second day walking from tent to tent asking different groups about their healthcare system. I ran into enthusiastic Scandinavians, a Brazilian sitting between tents on his laptop, a Slovak on his way to the bar, and a friendly Romanian gentleman who has found the perfect shade trees under which to position his tents. As he and I discuss the healthcare system in Romania, hacker children splash around in the small lake around which the camp is set up. Just behind us is the rather un-camp-like American house, where a group of American hackers are housed, I can hear their loud conversations about some technical topics I don’t understand. I’m told the American hacker house makes good breakfasts, something to keep in mind for my last few days here.
It is now 1pm. The sun is blazing and even more people are filing into this tent. They’re coming to watch the replicator machine replicate itself. It is behind me and the constant buzz buzz sound of plastic being cut or drilled or whatever that thing does, it provides great writing music. Time to load up on water, grab my mobile internet device and camera, and head out to see how camp looks after yet another night of beautiful madness.
Aye Aye Amsterdam
I was recently taking a boatload of guests around the area of Amsterdam known as Prinseneiland, my favorite neighborhood. As I pointed to the old buildings and the site of former ship builders and tobacco warehouses, I noticed some tiny signs in a few windows. Bringing the boat a bit closer to these beautiful homes, I read the title of the flyer out loud “Ai Amsterdam”. The flyer spoke about being tired of the city of Amsterdam’s excessive rules about every little thing someone can or can’t do, from walking your dog in the park without a leash, to standing at an outdoor bar with a drink in your hand. The flier said to join the movement if you shared these concerns. I slowly pulled away thinking about all the increasingly heavy handed policies effecting seemingly every activity in this once unique and free spirited town.
A few days later, my buddy Mindcaster of Amsterdamize links to an article in the Dutch press; Ai Amsterdam was meeting with members of the city council. Again the article spoke about the attempted regulation of where you can stand outside a pub with a drink… actually more like how you can’t anymore – something to that effect.
After seeing so many cities around the world carry out their “clean up” campaigns to try and give their town a family friendly super tidy image where everyone is happy and ready for your tourism, Ai Amsterdam has certainly caught my attention. I believe it was on their website where they pointed out that with all the over-regulating of life in the city, we also lose something very special about who we are and how we live.
I’ve only begun reading about Ai Amsterdam and in the end it might just be a flash in the pan. But I’ve heard enough to know I’d like to sit down with some of the organizers and layout what is at stake and what can be done in the name of leaving some things outside the reach of city hall.
ctrp309 Will California Agriculture Survive?
People in the US and around the world are used to getting their fruits and veggies from California. But will Cali be able to deliver if their water system collapses?
My guest Dr. Juliet Christian-Smith, Senior Research Associate with the Pacific Institute’s Water Program, joins me to discuss their report “Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future”. The report lays out how the state’s agriculture can survive through water conservation and new irrigation methods.
We get into large and small scale farms as well as the role of the federal, state, and local government. Above all is the question of whether or not producers will do what needs to be done, or are we looking at the end of an era.
The Report: Sustaining California Agriculture in an Uncertain Future
John Walker Lindh, The Story
It is a name that many people have already forgotten, but when the US invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, his capture made headlines around the world. “American Taliban” they called him, and everywhere you looked there was a photo of him looking all evil and dangerous.? He was imprisoned at facilities for some of the most dangerous criminals in the US.? It seemed the public, much like the media, had accepted the story that he hated the US, he trained with the Taliban, and was therefore rightfully imprisoned and this most despicable type of terrorist.
I hadn’t thought much about John Walker since those first years of his imprisonment, though like alot of the lackluster reporting on the activities of the US military, I’d long figured we were only informed about a fraction of the full story.
So last friday when DemocracyNow interviewed John Walker Lindh’s parents, I was curious to hear the parents account of how John got to be who, what and where he was.? Some will say “well they’re parents, they want to defend their son”, which is fine to keep in mind. But when you read about how he became interested in Islam after watching Spike Lee’s Malcolm X Film, and later went to Yemen with the goal of becoming fluent in Arabic. Then comes the part where he consults his parents for their support for him to study the Koran in Pakistan. Even these few steps show alot about where his interests were and how he found himself in that part of the world.? Even if it isn’t 100% true and doesn’t excuse his actions later, my point and the larger point is that the story of John Walker isn’t as simple as they painted it years ago.
Perhaps it isn’t interesting to you to hear the testimony of two parents all these years later, who actually don’t seek to portray their son as some kind of saint or martyr.? However I feel their words are compelling and very much worth hearing.
ctrp308 From the Mountains of Minho
Coming to you from the mountains of Northern Portugal. A travel log of things going on in Portugal and around the world.