After well over 100 hours of community radio, Digital Crossroads aired for the last time on Boise Community Radio, Radio Free Moscow and other stations in May.
Stay tuned for transcriptions and audio highlights in the coming months.
Posted in Radio, tagged Boise Community Radio, Digital Crossroads, Radio Free Moscow on May 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »
After well over 100 hours of community radio, Digital Crossroads aired for the last time on Boise Community Radio, Radio Free Moscow and other stations in May.
Stay tuned for transcriptions and audio highlights in the coming months.
Posted in Radio, tagged Billy Corgan, Boise Community Radio, Digital Crossroads, Eric Alterman, Internet for Everyone, Megan Tady, Michael Arrington, Radio Free Moscow on March 17, 2009| 1 Comment »
I had to run a repeat show last week… So finishing this was a relief.
CLICK HERE to download or stream Digital Crossroads, produced live by Radioactive Gavin in the studio at Boise Community Radio, and carried by affiliates Radio Free Moscow and Media Island Olympia.
This week’s show features stories on rural broadband, the criminal Bush administration, and the future of the music industry. Relevant links:
Posted in News, Radio, WWW, tagged AM/FM, Boise Community Radio, Digital Crossroads, Internet radio royalties, Jonathan Lawson, performance royalty, Radio Free Moscow, Radioactive Gavin, RadioBoise.org, Reclaim the Media, streaming radio on February 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »
On Monday February 9, Digital Crossroads featured an interview with Reclaim the Media executive director Jonathan Lawson.
Listen to the entire 30-minute show, hosted by Radio Active Gavin, by clicking HERE. The show airs live at 9pm MST on Boise Community Radio, which is streaming at RadioBoise.org 24 hours a day.
Reclaim the Media has started a grassroots public assistance phone line in Seattle to provide answers to folks with DTV problems. SeattleDTV.com is such a unique project, Lawson says local TV stations are actually referring folks to them.
Also on the show, the Internet radio royalties debate enters its final week for negotiation. Plus, Congressmen in the House and Senate have re-introduced bills to begin charging AM and FM stations a new performance royalty. It would only amount to $1000 annually for small community radio stations like Boise Community Radio or Free Radio Moscow, but half of that money will go straight to the record companies. The broadcasting lobby is calling it a bailout for the record industry.
Posted in Radio, tagged Boise Community Radio, Digital Crossroads, Disability Media Initiative, Gordon Fuller, Idaho Legislature, Independent Living Council, Radio Free Moscow, RadioBoise on January 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I did a tough yet inspiring interview with Gordon Fuller of the Idaho State Independent Living Council and the Disability Media Initiative, which will air on the next Digital Crossroads, debuting Monday 730pm MST on the stream at RadioBoise.org you know!
We were fortunate enough to get time and a quiet place at the Boise Center on The Grove for recording a long interview. Gordon reminds me of me, he can talk about his passion for changing the powerful media institutions all day. I have some editing to do for the show! More on what he was doing in town, and what is happening with the Idaho Legislature budget cuts on the next Digital Crossroads! Tune in to Boise Community Radio and Radio Free Moscow.
Posted in News, Radio, WWW, tagged Aasif Mandvi, Adrian Quesada, BBC, Boise Community Radio, Center for Media and Democracy, community radio, Diane Farsetta, Digital Crossroads, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ernest Gonzales, fake news, FCC, GAO, Indecision 2008, Jon Stewart, Jonathan Adelstein, Martin Eisenstadt, Mike Bonanno, Miller Gallery, Mordecai Briemberg, Ocote Soul Sounds, Ooah, Pew Research Center, propaganda, Radio Free Moscow, Radioactive Gavin, Robert Jensen, Robert Lichter, Robert Niles, Savitri Durkee, Seriously Free Speech Committee, SourceWatch, Studio for Creative Inquiry, The Daily Show, The Onion, The Tasteful Nudes, Time Warner Cable, Viacom, VNRs, Wells Tower, Wikipedia, Yes Men on January 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The first Digital Crossroads of the year premiered Monday evening on Boise Community Radio. Listen to host and producer Radioactive Gavin focus on Fake News and Propaganda.
Download or stream the entire 30-minute program by clicking here… Digital Crossroads Fake News and Propaganda.
To view the spoof New York Times, go HERE.
If you want to hear the entire interview with Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men, click HERE.
To view the Indecision 2008 video, go HERE.
Music on the show is used with permission from Ooah, The Tasteful Nudes, Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada, and Ernest Gonzales.
Here is the transcript for Digital Crossroads 2009 Episode 1:
Posted in News, Radio, Video, WWW, tagged "Ima Vote Obama Way", 2008 election, After Downing Street, Boise Community Radio, Center for Media and Democracy, Charles Stone III, Colorado Common Cause, Daedelus, Digital Crossroads, Ellen Bukstel, FCC, Greg Palast, Hacking Democracy, Kanye West, Radio Free Moscow, Radioactive Gavin, Shepard Fairey, SourceWatch, Steal Back Your Vote, Supreme Court, Taz Arnold, Velvet Revolution, Video the Vote, voting on October 31, 2008| 3 Comments »
Crossroads October 31 LISTEN or DOWNLOAD HERE
Digital Crossroads is a weekly program covering media democracy, press freedom, technology policy, radio and the record business, privacy & surveillance and voting. I’m producer and host Radioactive Gavin. Each week I bring you headlines, clips and original interviews trying to help you understand the connections between your life, powerful media companies, government officials and activists.
On today’s program the 2008 Election. Voting trouble is a nationwide problem. From state governments kicking people off the roles illegally to errors with touch-screen voting systems, Americans are seriously doubting all votes will be counted accurately this year. Leading election integrity experts outline some problems and reporter Greg Palast offers advice for Stealing Back Your Vote. Also today some good news from around the country, and a bunch of clips including the original actors from the Budweiser “Wassssup” campaign, LA electronic musicians and folk singer Ellen Bukstel going political.
All this and more on today’s Digital Crossroads, stay tuned!
We start today with a clip from Video the Vote who investigated ES&S brand touch screen systems in West Virginia. The video makes you even less confident as county clerk Jeff Waybright re-calibrates a machine, then it still gets the vote wrong.
After mocking the idea that anyone clicking on a Democratic ticket vote would get the Republican ticket vote, he shows how to correctly calibrate the machine, showing how easy it is to fix the “problems” of the miscalibrated machine. When he’s done, to prove it works, he touches the box to vote for a straight Republican ticket… and, wouldn’t you know it, Ralph Nader’s name is highlighted as the voter’s choice. His response? “Oh, that’s out of calibration!” as if it was no big deal, apparently missing the fact that he had just calibrated the machine. Commentary from TechDirt.
Next up, Experts outline e-voting problems–
Blogger Jim Cirile assembled a panel of 13 leading election integrity (EI) experts for Velvet Revolution.us and asked their advice on myriad aspects of the e-voting problem. Their recommendations are wide-ranging and should hopefully serve as a wake-up call, since candidates’ political futures, not to mention the future of the U.S. and the entire planet, could be decided on error-prone and worse, easily tamperable electronic voting systems.
The question put to each of the experts was, “How can candidates best protect themselves from potential electronic voting problems and manipulation?” Here are some of their conclusions-
At least 55 percent of Americans voting this November will vote on paper ballots that will be counted by optical scanners, according to Virginia-based Election Data Services, Inc. Jim Cirile of VelvetRevolution.US put together panelists who agree that it is critical to election safety that a significant percentage of these paper ballots be randomly audited by hand — at least 5 to 10 percent. Other key recommendations include urging the use of paper in any way, shape or form over touch-screens, increasing awareness of candidates, election officials, and the media as to e-voting vulnerabilities, and most importantly, urging the candidates not to concede until every last ballot has been counted and counted accurately.
But there is one other problem with taking on the machines. “Candidates are incredibly vulnerable to allegations of being a poor loser or conspiracy theorists if they challenge,” says Simon Ardizzone, who made the DVD Hacking Democracy. “Many candidates who want a political career often choose not to challenge, but to keep their credibility for the next election. It’s just unrealistic to ask them to sacrifice their political career for a completely non-vote-winning issue like election reform.” Despite that, he recommends candidates ask as many questions as possible when discrepancies occur, and they should make the answers public.
Ardizzone raises one more intriguing point: “There are certain candidates who don’t stand a chance of being elected and so have nothing to lose by rocking the boat. There is one candidate on the presidential ballot who is incredibly well-versed in the issue and who I am sure would participate in any investigation, because we filmed her extensively during the 2004 election cycle in Georgia (she’s in one of the extra features on the ‘Hacking Democracy’ DVD). That candidate is Cynthia McKinney. Cynthia has rights to a recount almost anywhere in the country. Interesting thought.”
What can you do? Get active, writes Cirile. Get in your candidates’ faces. Forward this report far and wide — to candidates and their staff, friends, neighbors.
And wake people the hell up. “How do you break through the sleep of the American electorate?” ponders Florida election official Ion Sancho. “In my opinion, they simply don’t want to question elections simply because it’s too difficult, too untidy, and causes problems.” Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog adds, “There is a school of thought which I find bizarre and twisted and totally without merit, that if you talk about these issues, people will give up and not vote at all. I have found absolutely no evidence of that, and in fact, the contrary is true.” He notes that in 2006, Democrat Debra Bowen ran for Secretary of State in a year that Schwarzenegger was very popular. “Her big issue was election integrity and concerns about the voting machines. She shouldn’t have won that election, but she did because she spoke about these issues of electoral integrity that nobody else is speaking about. So the people get it, but the media and the politicians don’t. The politicians need to start talking about it.”
David Jefferson of Livermore National Laboratories says that election officials need to step up. “They have the responsibility to demand better voting systems and, in the meantime, create and enforce strong security procedures. And it is federal officials who need to have their consciousness raised about standards, certification, and the need for meaningful auditability requirements.” And that means we need to force them to do just that.
David Swanson of After Downing Street concludes, “All of us should make clear ahead of time that we will denounce and shame any candidate who either wins or loses a questionable election and does not seek to find answers to those questions.”
Writer Jim Cirile’s conlusion: Be the media. That means every one of us. Jim Cirile is a freelance screenwriter, musician and journalist living in Los Angeles.
Next up let’s listen to a clip from Center for Media and Democracy‘s Weekly Radio Spin from last week- According to Princeton, despite their own study showing elections in New Jersey can be hacked in a matter of 7 minutes, voting is too important to watch…
In Colorado, public interest groups fought purges and won-
The Colorado chapter of national non-partisan non-profit Common Cause has fueled one voting victory before the election takes place. From a press release available on their website an agreement was reached on October 29th before a federal judge in Colorado ensuring that tens of thousands of Colorado voters illegally purged from the registration lists will have their votes counted. Colorado Common Cause, Mi Familia Vota and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed a complaint contending that the Colorado Secretary of State had violated the National Voting Rights Act by removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election. In addition to about 1900 voters removed for permitted reasons such as death and incarceration for a felony, approximately 30,000 voters were scrubbed. The state sent non-forwardable mail that was returned as undeliverable, but a voter doesn’t lose their rights simply by not receiving mail. For more on this go to http://www.JustVoteColorado.com
There is also some encouraging news about citizen journalists protecting the election–
The New York Times reported October 27th, “There are at least two wikis intended to let voters collaborate to collect examples of problems with voting, whether exceptionally long lines or more direct actions meant to scare off voters — the Voter Suppression Wiki and SourceWatch’s Election Protection Wiki. Since 2006, the Video the Vote project has sent out volunteers to monitor voting around the country, and this year the group expects to dispatch at least 2,300 volunteers with cameras in all 50 states to videotape potential trouble spots. … The ultimate home for much of this content could be the video-sharing giant YouTube, which has created a channel, Video Your Vote, in collaboration with PBS, to encourage submissions. … While his organization is partnering with YouTube (and received 300 cameras as part of the Video Your Vote project), [project founder Ian] Inaba says he sees their missions as different. ‘YouTube is there to generate content, to generate eyeballs,’ he said. ‘We came at this from more of an election protection framework. We want voters to oversee the election process – it requires citizen oversight.'”
Investigative Reporter Greg Palast sent an email to his mailing list this week with tips on what he calls stealing back your vote.
It’s time for a break, here’s Ellen Bukstel with “They Lost My Vote”
You’re listening to Digital Crossroads, produced in the downtown studio of Boise Community Radio, now airing on affiliate KRFP Radio Free Moscow.
Let’s listen to a couple of interesting clips about the election. First up Change 2008-
The original actors behind the super famous Budweiser “Wassssssssssup!” commercials recently got back together to make a new political ad that’s an update on the original Bud ad. The commercial makers make it clear that the message of the commercial is not in any way endorsed by or associated with Anheuser-Busch. Charles Stone III, who created the whole Wassup concept, directed the first commercial and stars as the first guy who picks up the phone. According to TechDirt he never gave Anheuser-Busch full control over the Wassup concept. Rather, he sold them an exclusive on it for 5 years for a grand total of $37,000. He admits that people laughed at him at the time for selling so “low,” but he’s quite happy with how it worked out: He says- “That I’m able to use an idea distributed by a huge company, who made a lot of money off it, so that now when I put out what I want to say, it’s recognizable, and it sparks — that’s worth $1 million to me.”
Next up, the viral video that has people dancing in the streets for Obama. The video is hilarious, though the song is kinda repetitive. Taz Arnold of Sa-Ra Creative Partners and other LA-based musicians and dancers put together a video featuring celebrity appearances by rapper Kanye West, artist Shepard Fairey, and music producer Alfred “Daedelus” Darlington.
Here’s Taz Arnold with “I’ma Vote Obama Way”
You’re listening to Digital Crossroads…
Well, November 4th is not only Election Day. It is also the day when the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in the FCC vs. Fox case, which is the first time the Federal government’s ability to regulate language on the American airwaves has come before the Supremes since FCC vs. Pacifica, also known as the George Carlin case. Its kind of amazing when you realize the issue of so-called “indecency” is back on center stage again the same year when comedian George Carlin passed away.
The issue of “Fleeting Indecencies” or bad words uttered over the air unintentionally on awards shows and so-called reality TV may not even get “AIRTIME” with the Supremes, because they have the option of ruling very narrowly on whether the FCC handled their own procedures correctly and then the First Amendment issues could be left out of the discussion. Tune into Digital Crossroads next week to hear an interview with Free Expression Policy Project director Marjorie Heins, a friend of the program.
Last but not least on this Election special, the Federal Communications Commission is having a controversial day of policy decision-making on November 4th. One of the big issues on the docket is White Spaces. This issue presents a very real opportunity for the Federal Government to address Bridging the Digital Divide, and I have for you a clip featuring Minnie Ingersoll of Google, talking about WiFi on steroids and what this all means. The video is available on Free the Airwaves.
Theme music by Ooah of the Glitch Mob.