A Day of Internet Silence is taking place today in which hundreds of radio stations and web-only stations, including KBOO, are silencing their internet broadcasts to protest the planned royalty fee hikes that will be implemented on July 15th.
More information on this issue can be found online at www.saveinternetradio.org
Michael Moore’s new film ‘Sicko’ premiered this past weekend throughout the country, despite challenges from the Bush Administration on Moore’s travel to Cuba. The film challenges the privatized health care model in the US, and contrasts the US system with nationalized health care in Canada, England, France and Cuba.
While activists leaflet outside hundreds of movie theaters promoting the single-payer healthcare system, the media has been largely critical of the film.
Jim Naureckas (now-REEK-ahs), with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, claims that this is because the pockets of the mainstream media have been lined by the pharmaceutical industry.
SissyBoy is a group of Portland-based performance artists. They refer to themselves as “drag terrorists” or “gender terrorists.” Their over-the-top shows in bars and clubs are both political and comedic. Last year, they were part of the Time Based Art Festival and they recently returned from their first west coast tour. KBOO producer Julie Sabatier caught up with SissyBoys Zebra and Jeffrey Darling at a photo shoot for Outlook Magazine in May and she put together this excerpt for the OutLoud show.
Dream us again, won't you? We could feel your dreams last month. They were sensual, weren't they? The skin of your malt-covered leaf muntjac was delicious. Boom-Boom is recovering nicely, thank you. We present oneiric thrills in a silky collection, waiting for you.
This show has discussions of the role of religion in the environmental movement, Socialism and Feminism in the life of Lynn Siegel, and the criminalization of immigrants.
1. ‘You Can’t Go Home again’: As Oregon legislators feverishly clear their desks in preparation for decamping to their ‘second home’, their ‘summer place’, ‘the beach house’, a bill that would have put $20 million dollars into a fund for affordable housing. (Never mind the fact that some Oregon houses cost just that - $20 million….). The bill was demolished by Republicans at the bidding of the developers and real estate lobbies. Essentially it would have upped the filing fee for real estate transactions. But, look, if you are buying a $500 thousand dollar house, you can afford another $250 dollars….I mean, put it this way: That’s a month’s wages for the Hispanic man who does the gardening, right?
2. Warm and Fuzzy and Green: Legislators did manage to pass a greenhouse gas emissions bills…And why not! By the time the thing really takes effect they’ll all be out of office and it will be too late to slow the freight train even enough to wave good-by to the world we once knew.
3. Case in point: It’s that time again. The Portland Water Bureau is going to have to start blending groundwater and Bull Run water early this year. Last year the draw-down did not begin until August 15th.
4. Oregonians are concerned about education, immigration and the environment, failing once again that they are all part and parcel of the same problem: Our obstinate refusal to limit our consumption.
5. The Oregon News Service has a piece on the damage war does to poor and minority communities. (But really, actually wearing a uniform and carrying a gun are the extreme end of a spectrum of trauma that poverty inflicts on society’s less privileged members.) And let us not forget the majority communities we wage war against…What it must be like to be on the receiving end America’s economic frustration…
6. Portland is searching for a new school superintendent. This time let’s look smarter rather than harder. We dredged Vicki Phillips out of the murky waters of scandal and corruption flowing from her prior to Portland job.
7. Forty years of Israeli occupation of Palestine. An indigenous Arab population is still paying the ultimate price in land and blood for what was essentially a European crime. And America has been a willing – even eager – accomplice to first the crime, and then the punishment…
8. In Washington, Democrats for once are getting out in front. Republican Dino Rossi’s 2004 run for governor gave rise to a variety of entities – some more campaign like than others. Rossi says he isn’t running but his organization Forward Washington definitely is.
9. The massive fire currently storming its way around Lake Tahoe has done a lot more than toast the tourists’ marshmallows: It has dumped tons of ash into the lake poisoning fish and fisherfolk alike.
10. The Other Iraq War: The Bush administration is looking into ways to gracefully compromise with cooler heads on the situation Over There.
11. No less a luminary than Senator Richard Lugar says that Bush’s Iraq “strategy” isn’t working. But you have to take into account, this “strategy” had nothing to do with the actual nation Iraq as it exists in the real world. Any “strategy” was concerned with favors to contractors, fear of the State Department, Wall Street and polls…..probably some drugs and few hookers involved somehow…but “strategy”? No. No, I’m afraid it never came into play.
12. Take A Few Deep Breaths: Ex-EPA chief Christie Whitman was booed and hissed right from the start as she coolly informed her audience at a hearing yesterday that her agency hadn’t lied to New York when it told people working, walking and breathing near the ruins of the world Trade Center that they were perfectly safe. (And the owner of the Center, fellow who had a demolition crew right there on site and ready to pull sown anything else left standing….don’t see much of old Larry Silverstein these days…But Silverstein Properties has some other lovely buildings for lease. And if you decide you don’t like yours, Well, Bango! Give Larry a call and down it comes…)
13. Charles Schumer, Senate Democratic Vive Chairman thinks that Alberto Gonzales should just get out of the way during this ‘Attorneygate’ investigation. (Alberto, they’ll call you when the arraignment date is set.)
14. As it happens, whether Rahm Emanual meant the move in jest or not, many of his colleagues agree that if Dick Cheney says he’s not part of the government, we ought to take the man at his word and get our money back.
15. Yesterday the Supreme Court pulled the rug out from under campaign finance reform, handed the president’s faith-based franchisees a free-bee; And the Mighty Scotus told a kid in Alaska that he can’t display his ‘Bong Hits For Jesus’ banner across the street from the school…not even for the Olympic torch. (Maybe he just needed a light…)
16. A man in Texas sentenced to die by lethal injection is planning to use his final moments in the land of the living (That would be the non-Texas parts, I presume) as a stage to showcase his abilities as a comic. No disrespect to the family of the victims. He just wants to make a tense situation go a bit smoother.)
17. Sloppy Seconds: Tony Blair is going to be our new International Middle East Peace Envoy. Loads of luck, Tony! Give my regards to Alan Johnston…
18. The Pentagon’s plans to create a new US military command based in Africa have hit a wall of hostility and outright disbelief – ‘You want to put a what? Where? –from governments all across the region. (You see how this ‘Global War on Terror’ Works, eh? More a sort of ‘Terror War on the Globe’ really…)
19. Robert Zoellick was stealthily, under cover of a thick cloud of money ushered into the World Trade Organization.
20. Hugo Chavez says he expects the Americans to invade any minute, now that they have “softened up” the country by sending in all matter of Black Ops destabilization crews. (A “second home”/”summer place” for the School of t he Americas? The National Endowment for Democracy’s computer camp?
21. Britain is flooding. (Well of course it is; This is June. But this time around it is deeply disturbing extreme weather and it has killed people and even though having one’s holiday ruined on an annual basis may be cause for mortal violence, still, this is very odd weather for Britain in June…
22. And, as Rick says in the last scene in ‘Casablanca’, “We’ll always have Paris”
1. Senate Majority leader Kate Brown is moving on. Her name has come up as a possible candidate for statewide office next year…Secretary of State? Attorney General? All it takes is money. The clearest indication that we have forfeited Democracy is not the USA Patriot Act, not state-sanctioned torture, not the corruption of the judiciary. Close, but no cigar…The real canary is election money. Your vote doesn’t count unless your candidate can back it up with cash…
2. The Pros versus the Cons: This November we all get to vote on an 85 cent cigarette tax. Tell me how much the pro-tax campaign has and how much the con side has and I can tell you what the outcome will be.
3. All that money Oregon managed to round up and dedicate to education isn’t going to make much difference. The anti-tax people say it is all going to teachers salaries and healthcare. But here’s the thing: The money in the school budget just barely restores the system to its pre-recession level. If we were really serious about educating children, we would have raised taxes and doubled the current budget. (But who needs educated citizens when money is going to decide the outcome of all future elections and the only role people play in the scheme of things is to serve as trained monkeys pushing the lever and eating the food pellet that is instantly forthcoming…)
4. Sea lions are eating too many salmon…But that’s just what sea lions do. And have been doing for thousands for years. Sea lions eating salmon is only a problem when fish stocks are dangerously low thanks to agribusiness run-off, industrial pollutants, logging and let’s not forget the most alarming threat of all: the failure of the ocean systems known as ‘up-welling.’ You want to eat salmon? How much is it worth to you? Can you stop buying at ‘Big Box’ stores? Stop driving a car? Live your carbon footprints at t he door?
5. Is it, for example, worth doing without a little heating in the winter and cooling in the summer months? A federal judge has nailed the BPA for miscalculating energy demand. And selling more electricity than it could generate. So what did the BPA do? The choices were, adjust turbines to boost power – thereby pureeing the fish or cut off power. Hellllloh, salmonburgers!
6. Loggerheads: The US Fish and Wildlife Service offered timber titan Weyerhaeuser the golden opportunity to “edit” a letter the agency was sending to that selfsame timber company regarding “concerns” about Weyerhaeuser logging on land designated spotted owl habitat (Not to mention the thousands of other creatures who call it home….)
7. Cutting ‘Timber’ to Save People: The US Senate cut the extension of the county timber payments. Ron Wyden has chosen to build his nest on this very, very safe issue. We now await the egg.
8. In Seattle the NAACP has asked the police chief to resign. Seems there was some chiefly involvement in a controversial internal investigation of an instance of excessive force…..Hmm, probably nothing serious, eh Chief?
9. Activist Martha Odom has this: Police at the G8 summit admitted they had agents provocateurs urging protestors to throw rocks and bottles. – no doubt even provided said rocks and bottles… And in Texas, Texans4Peace want you to know that there is a detention facility – not unlike our many other detention facilities spread out around the world like a tide of tears and blood – where more than 200 families are being held. And specialist Eli Israel has become another military voice refusing to fight in Iraq.
10. Last week Vice President Dick ‘Dick’ Cheney came out with the statement that his office is not part of the executive branch of the government and therefore not subject to oversight. But that was then and this is now: Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel plans to introduce an amendment to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill to cut funding for the VP’s office. Emanuel: “He should return the salary the American taxpayers have been paying him since January of 2001, and move out of the home for which they are footing the bill.”
11. Forty-one percent of Americans think Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. It’s all there in a recent Newsweek poll, and I assure you, it gets worse than that.
12. California is facing what forecasters are calling the ‘Perfect Drought.’ (And the Colorado River is facing what climatologist are calling a ‘Shit Out of Water’ event.
13. The big immigration vote is on the way. Here’s where the glorious spectacle of money and politics conspire to generate some of the worst legislative behavior we have seen in a while. (Behold the writhing, roiling contortions lawmakers are putting themselves through as they attempt to make donors and voters of every stripe happy. And imagine if legislators had read the USA Patriot act, or the authorization to go to war…imagine the furor if anyone had been paying attention, if anyone cared…)
14. Britain’s new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown says he really cares. Protestors to Brown: ‘Enough to pull out of Iraq?”
15. There’s a video out now all over the internet featuring BBC journalist Alan Johnston wearing a suicide bomb belt…and it doesn’t seem to be the lamentable result of a bout of ‘Stockholm Syndrome.’
16. Meanwhile, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is wondering if he too will have to strap one on in order to get the world’s attention.
17. Israel is still in the process of telling the world that it is giving the Palestinians the money it took from them. (Israel is telling the world slowly and giving the money back slowly in order to make the good vibrations last…)
18. In Karachi, Pakistan, the weather is up to its new tricks. Heavy rain and thunderstorms killed at least 228 people….and counting.
19. Six United Nations peacekeepers were killed by a car bomb in southern Lebanon yesterday.
20. Checking Out: And in Iraq, a suicide bomber targeted a meeting of Sunni-allied Sheiks. The bomber managed to get through the layers of security surrounding the Mansour Hotel and blew himself up in the lobby. The Mansour is a stone’s throw from the hallowed Green Zone. The blast killed at least twelve people and messed up a great many others. Among the dead was noted Iraqi poet Rahim al-Maliki. So it goes…
The U.S. Senate began debate on the Employee Free Choice Act this week. Supporters in Oregon are urging lawmakers to pass the bill. Labor leaders, Oregon lawmakers and others hope Senators follow the state’s lead and allow a majority of workers to sign cards agreeing to form a union. KBOO’s Scott Pham reports, in collaboration with the Oregon News Service.
Africa On Fire! interview with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and the world's first black female president. Original air date: June 7, 2007.
On the Recovery Zone, June 7th, Stephanie Potter featured Ole & Maitri Ersson who use humanure compost on their garden plants--including their fruits and vegetables. All they need is a bucket, wood chips and a compost bin. They have safely been doing this for 15 years.
