...actual distinct voices speaking in my mind? Or is it just the weblog of James Lindenschmidt? Here you can see me wrestle with this and other questions, while spewing forth my writings, opinions, and hallucinations.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

 

Democracy Now! on Maine Public Radio?

I saw Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! speak last night, here in Portland. There is a massive campaign to get her show onto Maine Public Radio; she was brought here by these folks. The topic of her talk was "Independent Media in a Time of War." It was a wonderfully moving and hopeful account from a veteran activist and journalist.

I think it's important for Maine Public Radio -- of which my family are members -- to decide who their audience is. If I understand correctly, MPR gets funding from government grants, corporate underwriting, and listener contributions. Put differently, there are three entities who support MPR: government power, corporate power, and popular power. Funding from two of these sources has strings attached, and there is a certain amount of control implied in their contributions. If the government decides to cut funding to public radio, then they will do so. Similarly, if a large corporate sponsor doesn't like something on MPR, they can pull their underwriting dollars. What this means is that MPR, by choosing to accept corporate and government funding, is motivated to program in accord with the wishes of government and corporate power.

Despite such motivation, government and corporate power is not the audience of MPR. People are, hence the term "public radio." And with popular contributions, there is less control implicit in the arrangement. Popular contributions are not a single entity with a single agenda; if one member decides to stop contributing because of programming decisions, then another member will hop on board to make up the difference.

MPR's mission page states the following:

"Maine Public Broadcasting is the only media service that reaches nearly all Maine people every day. MPBC uses the power of radio and television to bring ideas, information and lifelong learning to all people. This public service is available to everyone at no charge. It is the only universally accessible communications medium that does not differentiate between those who can afford it and those who can’t."

At minimum, there is a tension here. Because large financial contributors to MPR, whether wealthy individuals or government or corporate power, expect to see their funding used in ways agreeable to them, MPR does in fact differentiate between those who can afford it and those who can't.

Furthermore, MPR's mission makes this statement:

"Maine Public Broadcasting’s services will ... provide a wide and balanced spectrum of news, information and public affairs in order that citizens may form opinions, make choices and come to enlightened decisions on matters of importance."

This statement is key in terms of the decision of whether or not to run Democracy Now!. Despite silly and misleading claims by Rush Limbaugh that the media is controlled by "liberals," the fact remains that popular voices, such as those heard on Democracy Now!, are rarely, if ever, broadcast in this country. There is a homogeneity to the United States corporate-controlled media. I find it curious that many progressive individuals treasure BBC broadcasts, finding them to be a more objective voice than what is normally heard in this country. Remember, the BBC is the state broadcasting system of Britain. It is, to use the language of the BBC Charter, "Subject to the prior approval of Our Secretary of State." In other words, a state-controlled media system appears to most Americans to be more objective than the U.S. corporate media.

Choosing to broadcast Democracy Now! would be a strong statement for Maine Public Radio to make. It is an opportunity, in this time of crisis for our country, for MPR to take a leadership role in truly making sure that their stated mission -- to "provide a wide and balanced spectrum of news, information and public affairs in order that citizens may form opinions, make choices and come to enlightened decisions on matters of importance" -- is accomplished. Philosophically and ethically, therefore, running Democracy Now! is clearly the right thing to do, when viewed with the lens of MPR's own mission statement.

Furthermore, I'd wager that bringing Democracy Now! to the Maine airwaves would bring in many new members. There were hundreds of people at the talk in Portland last night (there were also 2 others in other parts of Maine last weekend), and many people indicated that they would be willing to join MPR if they ran Democracy Now!. In other words, this is an unprecedented opportunity for MPR to make a commitment to its audience, by expanding its audience. It has an opportunity to serve the people of Maine in a way that virtually no other major media outlet is doing.

I am sure that some people would be opposed to Democracy Now! being on Maine's airwaves. But the amount of popular support for the show is growing, in Maine and everywhere else. This is evidenced by the hundreds -- perhaps thousands, I only went to 1 of the 3 speeches -- of Mainers who braved a snowstorm to hear Amy Goodman speak in a jam-packed, standing-room-only Luther Bonney Auditorium at USM. The Peace movement, and the Progressive movement in general, is growing, especially among young people. Millions of people would stand and applaud MPR for running this program. Maine Public Radio should ride this wave of progressivism and build their audience for the future by airing Democracy Now!, and give thousands of Mainers yet another reason to tune in.

^ posted at 4:02 PM

 

Marching On

Sigh. I just typed a really nice blog entry, and then accidentally hit "refresh" in my browser. Three beautiful paragraphs, with links, gone. Such is life. This is my attempt to recreate what I had written:

According to my local AM radio ABC affiliate, "dozens" of people showed up at the Peace March in Portland on Saturday, Feb. 15. As you can see, they were technically correct. That photo was taken early in the rally, and already there were hundreds of people there. By the time the marches went through downtown Portland and reconverged in Monument Square a couple of times, there were by my estimation 2 or 3 thousand people participating.

The cops were cool. One of them even flashed the two-fingered peace salute when we marched by. Better than the one-fingered salute, I suppose. They pretty much followed the march, and anticipated it, directing traffic around it. Everything was peaceful that I could see. It was cold, so people kept warm by continuously marching up an down one block or another. The march went through the Old Port as well.

After much deliberation, I decided not to bring my drum. Too cold (subzero wind chill). Though in retrospect, I wish I would have. Even better would have been Mark's obnoxicator.

^ posted at 11:34 PM

 

From New York

' "This is so unconstitutional!" frustrated demonstrators kept exclaiming, as police kept blocking their passage. '

^ posted at 11:51 PM

 

It's started to snow

This weather system has just imposed itself upon my reality. It's a soft snow, the kind that you can hear in a dull, consistent puffing noise.

I'm listening to the mp3 stream of Monday's Democracy Now. Amy Goodman is coming to town this weekend. I can't wait to hear what she has to say.

^ posted at 11:22 PM

 

marching on

Late on Saturday afternoon, my local ABC station on AM radio reported that "dozens" of people attended the peace rally in downtown Portland.

Ummm, yeah.

As you can see, they were technically correct. There were actually, by my estimate, between 2 and 3 thousand people marching in the streets of Portland. It was by far the largest march I've ever seen in Maine.

Some friends of mine went to the NYC march; we actually watched their kids for the weekend. It was a good weekend, all in all. Very optimistic for me.

I'm still researching the Intellectual Property story. I have some writing that I'm revising. I hope to make time to write the article soon. But first, more research and reading.

^ posted at 8:22 PM

 

Blogging in a culture of fear

There is a rumor floating around that claims that we will be "code red" in a terrorism alert by Friday (tomorrow). Supposedly, the alleged target will be New York City.

Gee. What a surprise. Hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people are gathering to show support for peace in Manhattan. I wonder how the numbers at this rally will be affected by the terrorism alerts.

Do the math ...

^ posted at 11:39 PM

 

Grrrrrr.....

OK. So much for being greedy. :-)

I was trying to install the latest and greatest version of some new software that just came out, and I completely hosed my KDE desktop. GNOME still works; I'm writing this from within GNOME.

I've been using Mandrake Linux, which is a commercial distribution of Linux. Previously, I have used Debian GNU/Linux, and I really liked it on several levels. First, its not commercial. It is governed by ethics and a commitment to the Free software community, as opposed to turning a profit. Secondly, it's very easy to maintain. Debian is a modular system, and each part of it is maintained by one of hundreds of volunteer developers. It is easy to upgrade, and software installation is painless.

However, installation has traditionally been tricky. But there is a new way to install that looks quite simple. Knoppix is a version of Linux that runs live from a CD. It is based on Debian, and it turns out that it can be permanently installed onto your computer, creating a perfectly functional -- and mostly already configured -- Debian install.

So I may spend a bit more time in GNOME, but ultimately I think I'm going to have to go back to Debian, via Knoppix.

^ posted at 1:05 PM

 

Emotional Rhythms and Health

It's been an interesting time for me this week. Since last October, I've lost about 25 lbs, mostly due to (duh) exercising more and eating less. I've lost weight in the past, but I would typically get to a point where I'd start seeing results, and say "OK, good enough," and stop doing what I was doing. Not coincidentally, my cycles of emotional well-being were tightly aligned to these moments.

So the past few days, I've had much less enthusiasm about going to the gym. And I started eating more, going back to some old bad habits. But, this time I've caught it. I realized I'm on the brink; the choices I make over the next few days are crucial. Rather than weeks or months from now realizing that I've backslided, I'm observing that I'm about to backslide, and re-asserting my own physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

I don't know if that makes any sense or not. It's almost like I'm feeling "OK, time for me to be depressed," but refusing to play along. I think I'm making some serious progress here. Time will tell.

^ posted at 10:34 PM

 

Someone in the NARAS gets it ...

Embrace File-Sharing or Die, written by John Snyder, is right on the money. Hopefully the recording industry will heed his excellent advice. This is well worth reading.

^ posted at 2:46 PM

 

George W. the Preacher?

I am increasingly concerned about religious fanatics holding political power. After all, the attacks on the World Trade Center were allegedly carried about by religious fanatics.

But increasingly, George W. Bush is using rhetoric of the religious fundamentalists in his speeches. For example, in yesterday's speech about the Columbia disaster, Bush quotes extensively from the Bible and offers us these words of wisdom:

The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.

May God bless the grieving families, and may God continue to bless America.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for turning to the divine for comfort in trying times. But this is the most blatant christian invocation I've seen in a while coming from a government official. We have, at least in theory, a separation of church and state, don't we? Is it the President's job to offer interpretation of christian scriptures?

Moreover, his use of religious dogma and rhetoric takes on more destructive ends elsewhere. For example, during the State of the Union Address, Bush said the following:

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. (Applause.)

We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know -- we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.

May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

OK. Several things about this one. First of all, Bush has taken it upon himself to define and champion God's gift to humanity in terms of the "freedom" that America imposes upon the rest of the world. It must be noted what exactly Bush means by "freedom." Given that the Bush administration is threatening civil liberties and privacy more than any other administration in history, we must conclude that what he means by "freedom" is not what is typically meant by the word. I suspect that for Bush, "freedom" means something like "economic freedom," which means that multinational corporations must be free to conduct their business everywhere in the world that a profit can be extracted, no matter what negative effects on the population there are.

Furthermore, Bush's adherence to simplified christian dogma allows him to speak using rhetoric such as "good and evil", "you're with us or you're with the terrorists" and other such nonsense. It apparently hasn't occured to him that terrorism is a very complex entity that must be understood in terms of multiple causes and effects; it is not just done on the whims of "evildoers" as he would have us believe.

We are indeed, as Bush points out, "in a time of great consequence" for the future of America and the world. I hope that more people see through the nonsense that is spewed by the Bush administration. Bush is the biggest threat to peace and national security in years.

^ posted at 12:45 PM

 

Reiki

Yesterday I took a class in Reiki, a form of natural healing techniques. It has an interesting history. The class was very gentle, and I could certainly feel the energy flowing. I am now beginning to practice Reiki on myself, mostly, and also my family.

It is yet another tool in my metaphysical toolbelt ...

^ posted at 12:18 PM