However up until today I never knew the details of how the Mayo Clinic works, how it was founded, and what truly makes it unique in the world.   As I listened to Armand Dimele’s recent program which focused not only on how the Clinic works but also on what lessons any of us can learn from how healthcare could be delivered, I found it to be very inspiring.  Even if I live in Europe, where people often sing the praises of the health system compared to the US, I find the details of how the Mayo Clinic is run to be well worthy of emulating.

Highly recommended listening, because you don’t have to live in Minnesota to have a vision of how quality healthcare should be delivered.

My guests include Benny Wenda, West Papuan Independence Activist in exile in the UK
Octo Mote, Journalist and Researcher exiled to the United States
Joe Collins, of the Australia West Papuan Association, Sydney.

All music in this episode is by Laurent Rochelle, who’s permission I did not ask but who’s work I respect and recommend. You can find him on archive.org

So slowly I’ve been collecting these articles. Looking into West Papuans who have gone into exile in different corners of the world, getting in touch with them to hear what information they’ve been receiving.  I’ve also been looking into the history of the region, going back to its days as a Dutch colony and how it went from colony to possession of the Indonesian government.  A history filled with conflict, strife, oppression, violence and untold suffering.

In an effort to put together a podcast or 2 on this issue, I’ve interviewed a hand full of people to hopefully be a part of these programs. My hope is that we not only get a more detailed picture as to what is going on in West Papua and more importantly, WHY.  The puzzle is slowly coming together with, as I mentioned, participation from so many corners of the planet.

Just as I’m working on these programs, I read the news that today Al Jazeera was supposed to air a documentary entitled Pride of Warriors, on the political and social struggle in West Papua. Amazingly, at the last minute the channel pulled the film.  No announcements or statements have been made about why or who influenced the decision. But once again it keeps West Papua as a highly undereported conflict that has effected so many lives for so many decades.

The topic comes about 14 minutes into the interview, where Juan starts on about how the US could easily expand to 55 states. He points to situations around the world like Catalunya or the Basque region in Spain, Scotland or Wales in the UK, Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium, etc.  Examples of places where regions are calling for more autonomy, in most cases moreso than they have in a long time.  In the case of the United States he cites Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii as examples where either the governer or increasingly influencal politicians are talking about more autonomy if not completely breaking away from the Union.

Few of these cases are news to anyone who has been paying attention in the last decade. Yet the words that Juan uses are worth thinking about:

If we aren’t careful of how we treat each other, if we aren’t careful about stopping this us vs. them mentality… There might come a point where some people decide those people over there really are baby killers, or godless people, or whatever you want to call them on the other side.

Despite his interesting words, it is of course not the full story, especially when it comes to Europe.  While many regions are shouting louder for autonomy, many others are calling to be part of this thing we call the Europe Union.  Again, there are many layers to this issue.  But thinking about that, the amplification of the Us vs. Them in this day and age… it really does seem everywhere.  It really does seem like some people have been profiting and building careers on convincing you that those people over there are godless or a threat to you, or whatever inspires you to seperate yourself from them.  At some point its not just a concern that nations might break apart, but that people are being convinced in such large numbers that there is some other group out there that is a threat to them.

Bonus: Juan Enriquez’ Ted Talk

Then came the month of June and statements by certain members of the Senate Armed Forces Subcomittee’s. The most loud among them being Saxby Chambliss of Georgia*. In his frequently quoted statement earlier this month, Chambliss declared the budget with its reduced spending on certain programs like the F-22 fighter “puts execution of our current national military strategy at high risk in the near to mid term.” This high risk he points to is because out of the 2,286 fighter jets the US Air Force has, the budget calls for the fleet of F-22’s to be kept to 187.  The Air Force agrees with Chambliss, they want 380 at least. According to Chambliss’s reasoning, these planes are important in case – and I’m paraphrasing- nations like North Korea, Iran, or Venezuela use surface to air missiles against American military aircraft.

I’m throwing around alot of numbers and military jargon, I realize, which may seem trivial at first glance.   Yet if you look at it, this is the state of things in the US congress.  A congress that is supposed to help bring about change you can believe in.  Where 187 of the deadliest fighter jets on planet earth are not enough for an Air Force that already has over 2,000 fighter jets.  Where an elected official sits in a position of power to make decisions about war machines to be used in imaginary conflicts with nations he believes are interested in fighting a war with the United States.

Kind of hard to imagine change of any kind in such circumstances.

*F-22 parts are manufactured in Georgia.

Is this program Ruud explains how, as a journalist, he organizes such a trip, and what he learned while there.  From the streets of Mogadishu to the port where once hijacked ships unload vital food aid, he explains what is going on.

Watch all his reports on his website

The videoreporter group on Facebook

Music:

• K’naan – Until the Lion Learns to Speak
• K’naan – Somalia

By the end of the interview Anna-Maria asks Joe what he thinks about journalism now as compared to then. Despite being an old man, he gets into the benefits that now anyone can report via the internet directly to audiences around the world. At the same time he warns about reporters not being there, not truly understanding a situation they are supposed to be explaining. When asked about the economic troubles of today, he took a route I didn’t expect. He talks about how even through the economy is bad, the fact that so many people in the world are living better than they were when he was a kid, he points to this as clear progress.

But there’s so much more in this interview than can be described in this post. Especially interesting to hear him talk about escaping Czechoslovakia during the Nazi Occupation and then returning only to have to escape again, this time from Communist control. Highly recommended listening, and someone I now very much admire.

The headlines on Friday morning in Amsterdam looked not unlike those in the international press around the world: “Far right wins big in Holland”. This was followed by a few paragraphs of analysis, or at least background as to why a leader who says he won’t even show up for work if he is elected could progress in a party in a country that some people still consider as a beacon of open-mindedness.

Yet no matter how big the font or how many exclamation points they use, the power of the far-right voters in the Netherlands is not the only development in 2009. What failed to get much more than a two-line afterthought in all these reports over the weekend is that the Freedom party (PVV) was not the only party to have made gains for the Dutch. Among them, the D66, a progressive-liberal party that has historically championed issues like gay marriage, euthanasia, legalised prostitution and the decriminalisation of drugs, also gained seats. While the PVV leapt from zero to four seats, the most pro-European party in the Netherlands went from one to three seats. According to the party’s platform, it favours a federal Europe, with more co-operation in regards to the environment, immigration and foreign policy. A far cry from a PVV that wants the Dutch to reduce the amount of money and resources the country dedicates to the European Union.

With more modest gains than either the PVV or the D66, little recognition has been given in the international press to the Groen-Links (Green Left) party, which also made gains in this election. The party will now have a total of three seats in Brussels. Once again, the news about steady growth by a pro-European party from the Netherlands which favoured the European constitution and more co-operation on issues like climate change, immigration, and peacekeeping is overshadowed by the story of the far right.

( Click here to read it in full on the Guardian’s website.)

D tells me this as we drive back from a day trip to Austria today, as we drive past dozens of dusty, abandoned booths and buildings. The sign reads “Slovakia” with the EU blue around it, and the speed limit through the mess of former guard posts reads “40″.  In less then 2 minutes we’re back to regular speed, back in Slovakia, and over a border that when it comes down to it, no longer exists.  And although plenty of people young and old have stories of how the border crossing used to be, you can bet they would all think it insane to go back to the old way.

It is an amazing thing for a tourist like myself to stand high above the city of Bratislava and look across the Danube towards Austria. You look across this powerful creamy green river and before your eyes get to the border area, there is still several kilometers of Slovakia. Most of it is tree’s and fields. Tree’s and fields that only a couple of decades ago where a buffer zone between 2 highly armed empires, both of which were completely paranoid about one another. I see tree’s and fields, but some older Slovakians probably still see a buffer zone, probably worry about being shot if you find yourself strolling through that chunk of nature.

So whats the big deal bicyclemark? So what if one effect of the EU has been that a bunch of national borders are no longer as significant as they once were? To many who live this reality on a daily basis, they probably think it boring to hear this discussion again. Clearly I’m from out of town.

But when I think of what they’ve built on the Mexican-American border, a wall of cameras and guard towers complete with a volunteer militia that aim to round up anyone that dares cross. Or the Canadian-American border where people seeking to go from one country to to the other, countries that have so much in common, are harassed with questions and check points and background checks. Or perhaps more depressing is to think of places in the world where people die to defend a border, or die trying to cross it. So much blood spilled and so much energy wasted.

That’s what I think as I look out the window at the beautiful fields of Austria as they turn into the beautiful fields of Slovakia- all the wasted blood and energy for imaginary lines that we some how assume keep our world from falling into chaos.

Maybe I’ll write a postcard to someone: “Greetings from Slovakia, there’s no border control with Austria anymore. Everyone here is still alive so far.”

Now besides recommending you hear these beautiful and gut wrenching stories, I would also recommend you support the StoryCorps Mobile Tour.  The program has long been great, but being able to hear, for example, prisoners reflect on what their lives are like and how they see the world since being behind bars… that is a rare oppertunity and worth supporting. But getting the recording booths into the prisons requires funds, and thats what I hope they manage to raise. Take a second and click over to their site, consider supporting the mission.

Although GMO crops have only been in use for about a decade, the  report looks at this decade in terms of yield/production  as well as the impact these crops have had on the environment. The results, as you can read and hear about, are poor for a technology that is supposed to save the world from hunger. In fact, it turns out there are a few other methods that have proven far more productive than genetically modified crops.

In this video entry I go over the biggest conclusions of the report. I recommend you also have a look for yourself, don’t just take my word for it.

Today some of my ambitious colleagues asked if I wanted to sit in and give my 2 cents at a meeting regarding the future of television programming (on Dutch public TV specifically).  What started as a meeting of 4 warped into a meeting of 8, with various people coming from TV, radio, documentary and backgrounds of all kinds.  Everyone got a chance to say their piece regarding what they think the future of television should be, what their media consumption habits are, and what kind of programs they would like to see.

I sat there completely conflicted. My blanket answer, without thinking too hard or too long, is that television is dead. Ignoring for a moment the fantastic programs that I’m addicted to being put out by channels like HBO, I still get the feeling that when it comes to creativity and diversity, it is better to look to the internet than to the tube. Plus I’d rather consume my favorite programs (TV or otherwise) using my computer or what would better by called my media station which uses my laptop as its brain.

But then comes that question. What kind of programs would you like to see more of on TV? Other than wishing I could see my favorite internet programs, I just blurted out my favorite public-tv/radio style programs of the past few years: This American Life, Story Corps, and 30 Days.  I fell back on my usual preference of wanting more stories about people’s families. Families that have gone through interesting times and changes, being able to look back and compare then to now, maybe even teach us something to help better run this world in the present.   I talk about my favorite StoryCorps episode, or my favorite TAL episode, but I feel like it sounds like a soap opera. Even though its not at all. Its more about real stories, complete with the mundane or the complex, the raw story that someone has lived. Unlike traditional TV, no dressing it up, no focus groups or panic about how many people will watch, no attempt to be hipper than hip. That would be my program.

But is TV, public, private or otherwise, willing to throw away such long established conventions? Do they even know how to function in the kind of world we who live our lives and publish content all over the internet, could they understand and thrive in our world? I’m not convinced.

Time to go re-watch an episode from The Wire -Season 2.

This month Hugh returned to the Netherlands from his home in Canada, to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary. Together we sat down to do this podcast, part 1 of 2, on what he remembers from his childhood during the war, his experience as an immigrant in Canada, and how he went about putting together this book.

His Book: Bombers in the Night Sky

The music of Utah Phillips used throughout this program. (Trooper’s Lament and Enola Gay)

So what you know ’bout the pirates terrorize the ocean,
To never know a simple day without a big commotion,
It can’t be healthy just to live with a such steep emotion,
And when I try and sleep, I see coffins closing.

This is the chorus of the song I’m listening to as I read the news from around the world. The lyrics of the great Somali hip-hop artist who immigrated to Canada and is dedicated to performing songs about his hometown, Mogadishu, and the reality he grew up in and the experience of immigrating with his mother, to Canada, leaving behind a country falling into an ever more violent abyss.  I’m listening to K’Naan sing these lines:

So what you know ’bout the pirates terrorize the ocean,
To never know a simple day without a big commotion,
It can’t be healthy just to live with a such steep emotion,
And when I try and sleep, I see coffins closing.

Meanwhile the stories come down about what is happening in the Niger Delta. A conflict that goes back more than 50 years. A region with significant oil that western oil companies in cooperation with the Nigerian government, have been drilling for decades. And as long as they’ve been drilling, they’ve also promised the people of the Niger Delta that the benefits of their oil would soon come. Yet most indigenous people in the delta still have no access to basic sanitation, electricity, or medicine. The long touted benefits have never materialized for the very people who’s land they are drilling under. This combined with a systematic use of private and paramilitary forces to crush any sort of opposition or protest to the oil drilling, has helped fuel a desperation on the part of many people who have armed themselves and regularly attack oil platforms and take oil workers hostage.

Although its a region of the world that gets little love from western news outlets, the story of western workers being kidnapped and big oil companies being chased out at gunpoint does manage to make the back pages of the global section every now and then.  The tone of the so-called objective reporting typically focuses on the armed militants and their shocking actions. There’s not much that see’s the light of day about how minority groups have been neglected, abused, and oppressed for decades by big oil companies and the Nigerian government.

I’m thinking about this as I listen to K’naan.  What do you (we) know about pirates that terrorize the ocean? What do you know about Ijaw militants that occupy an oil platform and kick out Shell? It is easy to write the articles about what a crime and what a shame it is. But looking into how people live and what injustices are being committed on the other side, that’s not as easy.

A Somali pirate pleaded not-guilty to the charges against him in a Federal Court in NYC this week. I haven’t read the article yet. I’m sure plenty of people declared him insane and delusional. Me, I think he might have a case…. what does the court know about life in Somalia?

We cover:

• Acting, planning and reflecting, organizations and their use of digital activism
• Some recent cases around the world
• Future focus
• The failures of digital activism

Music:

• K’Naan – Somalia
• Ani DiFranco – Present Infant

Michael Pollan is an author that many of you recommended to me during the time I was focused on the soy industry, and over the last few months he has certainly made the rounds on the radio.  For the last few months I myself have been skipping around his book, the Omnivore’s Dilemna, going back and forth between chapters.

Pollan was a guest on Democracy Now last thursday and he gets into alot of important issues. Among them, genetically modified crops, high-fructose corn syrup, farm subsidies, swine flu, and the FDA.  Interestingly he points out that for the first time in a very long time, the FDA (food and drug regulator of the US government) is actually investigating food companies and enforcing rules on nutrition and production.

He also gets into a recent study on genetically modified food and production statistics that warrants a post and perhaps a video unto itself.  For now I simply recommend, if you’re concerned about what you and your children eat, and also concerned about how food producers are behaving, listen, read or watch this segment.

So it might come as a surprise and certainly ironic when I tell you I hated David Simon’s testimony before US Congress during the recent session on the state of the media industry. Hmm, saying I hated it is kind of silly, the basic fact is that based on Simon’s words before congress, I don’t agree and would argue some of his statements/facts.

I actually plan to develop my response further, possibly putting it out as a video entry, but for now I wanted to begin to break-down what problem I have with Simon’s words and to properly lay out my own responses.

So here’s about the moment where one of my hero’s of television writing lost me:

High end journalism is dying in America, and unless a new economic model is achieved it will not be reborn on the Web, or anywhere else. The Internet is a marvelous tool, and clearly it is the information delivery system of our future. But thus far it does not deliver much first generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth.

That high end journalism is dying, no one can argue. At least when it comes to the kind of high end journalism that was carried out by investigative reporters who were paid a professional wage and kept on staff at respected newspapers.

First generation reporting. Now here it is my turn to testify. If by first generation reporting, we mean first hand gathering of facts and persuit of information on a topic or theme, then we have lots of it on the internet. YES, we do. I can generate a list right now, but I’d rather continue with this statement.  The type of first generation reporting delivered by the internet is not being produced by the same people who used to; the big name newspaper, the media corporation, the full time on staff journalist; these are not necessarily the producers anymore.  The producers of today’s internet first-generation reporting, you’ve probably never heard of. It isn’t necessarily your fault, as their content is buried in the search engine among the mountains of other people and information out there. These producers are often, though not always, part-timers, splitting the time they take for content creation and investigation, with side jobs that help fund their journalism.  These producers aren’t from the traditional schools and institutions of journalism; they may have never set foot in the halls of a prestigous newspaper. They may not have even majored in journalism at university.  It is even possible that they are the type of writers that don’t capitalize or use punctuation as perfectly as their journalistic ancestors.

But there commitment can be just as great, no, even greater then that of those who once had cushy work contracts and health insurance plans.  Their passion for seeking the truth and being crtical of power is as strong as any journalists that came before them.  Again, that passion, it could be argued, probably has to be stronger as there is no promise of a paycheck or the glory that traditional journalists could count on.

But again, you wouldn’t have heard about them.  They are in Baghdad, in Nairobi, in Moscow and beyond. They may not do things in the style or method you see as “best practices for journalism” but their goal is the same. Their method for delivery is the internet, and they’re out there working as you read this.

Now the fact that you’re unlikely to have heard from them, is one of many that truely does warrant concern. Its not that good journalism can’t come from independent net based journalists, the problem is that the world doesn’t value this work in the right way. It doesn’t get funded. It doesn’t get recognized. It doesn’t have the institutional support and respect that the investigative reporters of the old days had. That is more than sad, it is a matter of concern that should indeed be remedied.

But to say the internet- “leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth.”, that is simply your opinion and clearly your limited exposure to all that is going on via the internet. Not to say you shouldn’t be crticial of what is happening, and surely recommend ways to preserve traditional reporting- go for it.  But don’t toss everything we the journalists of the internet are doing under the bus, as there is definitely more going on here than you realize.

Links Geraldine recommends:

• Mental Acrobatics
• Afrigator

Music:

• Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Bloodless Coup
• Steve Earl – Someday

DemocracyNow recently played an old interview with Boal from 2007, I would highly recommend you listen to his words, they’re brief but meaningful.  Also I wanted to include my favorite part of the interview which is better in audio format, but for those who prefer to read:

What we think sometimes, we don’t think that there is a difference between moral and ethics. Moral is mores. It’s customs. And it was moral in this country, my country—slavery. It was moral. It was moral to buy a human being. So I’m not moralist, because I know that in moral there are horrible things. But I am ethical. We need to create an ethos. In Greek, it means the tendency to some kind of perfection. And my kind of profession is solidarity, is dialogue, is democracy—real democracy, not one that we see. That’s my—I want to—not to accomplish, because to accomplish—not to accomplish, to go on. To go on.

There is a poet, a Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, who says, “The path does not exist. The path, you make by treading on it. By walking, you make the path.” So we don’t know where the path leads, but we know the direction of the path that we want to take. That’s what I want, and not to accomplish, but to follow, until I can’t.