bm162 Remembering Paul Wellstone

It has been 4 years since the sudden death of one of the most progressive and passionate voices the US congress has ever known. In this program, with help from guests from Carleton College, the school where Wellstone taught, we talk about who he was, what he stood for, and what can be learned from him.

John Schott, blogger & professor of new media, Carleton College
Karina Hill, videoblogger & grad assistant at Carleton College

Wellstone Action

 

bm159 Hungarian Political Lies

You may have seen images of angry citizens clashing with police on the streets of Budapest recently. But did you hear the real story of what happened and why the Hungarian electorate rose up? And what will happen from here, how will people, in the long run, feel towards a goverment that admitedly lied to them? A familiar theme in Eastern Europe and North America, Henrik of the blog Hungarian Accent helps explain was has happened and what can be learned from this.

Heres a Guardian article for further illustration

bm155 Learning About Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, His Profile and Policies

Vancouver has long been known as a very unique city. But has the world heard about its unique mayor and what he has done and intends to do for the city? Valerie Jenkinson, a friend and former candidate for Vancouver City Council, joins me to talk about Sam Sullivan.

 

Global Mayors Campaign

Dear longtime or recently new readers of the Communique:

Welcome! That’s the most important point I want to start with. Although my blog is very old (4 year anniversary just passed a few weeks ago), and you may notice alot of names in the comments, I want to make sure you understand this is one very open place, where you can comment and pick apart my sometimes not fully thought out ideas. You could insult too, but that’s fairly pointless if it isn’t backed by a real arguement. Still, I’m glad you stopped in and hope you’ll subscribe via RSS or at least bookmark me.

With that out of the way, I’d like to announce a new series I will be working on for my podcast. Throughout the remainder of 2006, I will be embarqing on a series of podcasts focusing on global mayors.

Why mayors? Because I’ve observed how all over the world, national governments rarely accurately represent their citizens. While I’ve also come to realize that the world’s cities are often led by very unique and wacky officials, who sometimes embody wonderfully creative and progressive ideals, or in other cases, do the exact opposite.

Therefore I will be focusing in on the personalities, who they are, and what policies they are implementing, all over the world. I will of course do my own research and presentations, but I also intend to find representatives from those cities to appear as guests on my program.

These programs should begin next week, as I already have a long list of some of the more well known cities and their famous mayors. But if you have a mayor that has either done very interesting or very terrible things for your city, and you’re willing to appear or recommend someone as a guest, please get in touch, either via comments or by emailing me: bicyclemark at gmail…

My purpose, by doing these programs, is for me personally, to learn about what is going on in different corners of the planet within urban centers, and more generally, I hope those following these interviews might learn something new as well, and perhaps we will notice some patterns regarding mayors and their policies.

So stay tuned.

I Speak a Different Kind of Football

I may or may not have mentioned that I’m involved in the We All Speak Football initiative that brings together a boatload of bloggers/vloggers/podcasters to produce content about the tournament and spend a few days partying in Berlin at some hipster penthouse apartment. Myself I leave for Berlin this weekend.

But contrary to the neverending amount of writing about the games and the players and the stadiums, I will be doing no such thing. While I like watching the matches; I suffer watching Portugal, I root for the Australians, I love the Côte D’Ivoireans, there are many aspects surrounding the games that I do not like.

First and foremost is the nationalism. The rabid, “we” beat “you”, rally around the flag, life will improve if we win, type spirit that surrounds so many games is not only alarming to me, it is sad. Sad because the world is a shadow of what it could be if governments and citizens had as much interest and invested as much money in infrastructure, education, science, etc, as they do in sporting events and of course – the other nationalistic passtime: making war.

I digress. Over the next few weeks, especially in my podcast and vlogs, I will be focusing on the theme of the social circumstances outside the games. Themes that address immigration and immigrant populations and their focus on the game. Economics, especially in the context of Berlin and Germany, and who benefits and who is left out in the cold during and after the tournament. And of course, the media, as the business of news reduces their attention on the real injustices and issues the effect people everywhere, and focus instead on people wearing funny makeup at the stadium in Leipzig.

All this and hopefully more, coming this month, so stay tuned, and better yet — subscribe to the feed. The first podcast of this series will be ready tonight later this week… unless I burst into flames during this Northern European heatwave.