Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

On Saturday there was the Anarchist Dayschool over in Glasgow, organised by GAP, one of the splinter group of the former Printworks Social Centre.
I was scheduled in for a workshop about “sexism” – unfortunately i was never *really* asked, but I found my name on the programme aside of the mentioned workshop together with the name of another person. Anyway, it was a Rangers football match over in Glasgow, and we could have had the most practical workshop about sexism in the Underground that day, or on the buses. Lots of drunken male football fanes making obscene commentaries and gestures to every women nearby. It is really disgusting. But saying something? it is intimidating, too, and Rangers fans are known for being violent and even stabbing people who criticise them or even only wear football colours of the most feared competitor, which is Celtic, apparantly. There is also something going on with some religous background, and with unionism and seperatism, who knows, a bit like in Ireland, but not sure if that’s the Irish conflict swapping over to Scotland or a Scottish conflict as such.

At least nobody vomited over me, such as the last time I was stuck in a football fan crowd.

The Anarchist Dayschool has changed quite a lot over the last years; it used to be once every half year in Glasgow, the other half of the year in Edinburgh, with a potential to also go to Aberdeen or Dundee or whereever a committed group of people were thinking about taking it on, but nowadays, they seem to take place in Glasgow nearly bi-monthly, as we in Edinburgh didn’t really get our act together. Also it used to be pretty much always the same workshops: gender and identity politics, Chiapas Solidarity, Claimants stuff, Indymedia, IWW, Women’s health, Counter info, Class War, and so on, mostly around the groups existing in the central belt. Nowadays the programme is much more variable, but the collective organising and involvement of the groups has also diminished, and fewer people come to the event now, as well as the event is more frequent.
On Saturday i pretty much liked the workshop about Augusto Boal and the “Theatre of the Oppressed”, which included lots of theatre games and role play. There was also a workshop about the “Wimmin Vs. G8″ and an anti-hierarchical workshop, which looked interesting and well prepared from afar.

On the G8 issue, its slowly getting crazy here; the mainstream media has brought piles of pictures of rioting, smashing-up protesters and TV coverage, and at the same time everything seems to get more and more chaotic; police have shown Members of Parliament riot video footage from Genoa and basically frightened them into “this is how it could be like if you don’t spend more money on security”.

[ from the dept. ]

Nothing happening this week which was of particular intrest. Started cycling again, as we had the usual 2 days of snow last week, and now it seems to get warmer and friendlier again. Translated the first two articles of the anti-slavery magazine, which left me battling for a day with old english from 1774. Also trying to put in for some funding for a film society.
Hope this is successfull.

Also have watched “The tongue of the butterfly”, a wonderfull film about the start of the Spanish civil war. Anyway have cried a lot, because it was about this “anarchist” family, but the mother was quite conservative, always going to mass and so on, and they were in the part of Spain which became fascist early on, and the most hurtfull bit was when the Guardia Civil arrested the anarchists and communists, and the family, particularly the father and the sons cried insults at their former friends, teacher, musicians to save their own lives and to show distance from the ideology.

Also watched “Alba d’Oro”, and the boy acting in both the films is a fantastic actor, the only thing is that there is such a big gap in between the first love(s) and his death in the concentration camp, missing out the whole Spanish Civil War, basically, and it is so annyoing watching about 6 hours of film and missing out on such a vital gap. But at least it shows how unique every human being is, and what a waste war is.

“Exilio” is about the situation after the Spanish Civil War, when most republicans tried to flee Spain into other countries. It is actually quite sad to see that many were imprisoned in concentration camps in North Africa and France, that Britain took only on some thousands children and a few women, whereas Belgium and France took on a whole load more, but then they ended up in German concentration camps later.
Quite a lot managed to escape to Mexico, and apparantly that seemed to be the most lucky ones, as some escaping to Argentina were later on killed during the military dictatorship.

“The war of the memories” is about partisans in the Spanish mountains, who fought on even after the end of the Spanish Civil War, hoping for help from the allies which never came.

These are such great films, and I got them ages ago from somebody involved in ACE. I haven’t had time yet to watch them, but these films are of such depth, romance and love to people, but still very realistic, they are unmissable and some of the best films ever seen. Some films give so much to the viewers, that you wondered how you ever lived without seeing these films before.

I have some footage from last weekends women’s event. Unfortunately it is not much, but we did some interviews yesterday, and hopefully the other women stay involved. Untill next time, I tried to inspire the women to look out for some instrumental music to be used under the interviews and actions as a soundbridge. Also put out a call for further pictures and posters and footage, let’s see what is getting out of it, The deadline is 8th of march, international women’s day, when it should be screened at the Forest Cafe.

Am quite exhausted today.

Have been to the launch gathering of “Womyn vs. the G8″. It was brilliant. I love women gatherings. Not too many of them, but every now and then. They are just so lovely fluffy. And everybody takes care of things and helps out. Such there is always tea and coffee and food.
Yesterday it was chilli and I also brought 2 cakes, leaving my kitchen in an extremely messy state. The oven does not seem to work properly, as the lemon cake was in for 3 hours instead of half an hour and the cheese-/meringue cake for 4 hours instead of 1. This oven is really horribly unreliable. It was skipped, and I wish I could have skipped one with a better reliability.

I was a bit late, as the railways have been partly blocked. Some women were painting a banner and today there should have been some banner drops at the city walk. Workshops included “Why to protest against the G8″, “Tactical Frivolity”, “Trident Ploughshares”, Legal”, “Medical”, “Media” (me), “Womens Health”, an introduction and a plenary, and some others I had been too late for. The “Trident Ploughshares” workshop was quite a bit of fun, and I laughed my head off. Anyway there was quite a bit discussion about “violence and nonviolence” which is perceived very dodgy by some parts of the movement, so I had difficulties taking it seriously, e,g, in the “discuss with the cops the illegality of nuclear weapons” roleplay. In the evening we had a social and some women played a concert, but I already left by then to get back to get another delaying train back to Edinburgh.

The dogsitting was great last week, basically was running around for hours in the countryside and the city having much fun. Slight problem that the dog doesn’t listen to any orders, and likes to attack other dogs sometimes as well. When I let it of the lead, it was just running away and I thought I’ll never see it again. Luckily it came back after about 20 min, but could not get the lead back on him either untill I caught him in a door entry of somebody’s house. But the lack of education was apparntly longterm, as the dog was just some months at the friend, and taken out of the Cats and Dogs Home.

So after returning the dog back to its owner on Thursday, and after getting back from the short trip, I learned that it had a severe traffic accident and nearly died, as it was off the lead and run on the main road.
Luckily it has recovered now, and is said to be back home later today.

Some Indian nationalists are threatening the film festival in Ramparts in London. It is planned to show a film about the massacre in Gujarat, which raised quite a bit of controversy, with the BJP threatening to disrupt the screening. [Forum].

I have several new video projects, wanting to do a video about hillwalking, one about cats and politics, and one for our Social Action Research Project about our local areas and difficulties with employment and similar.

I am off dog-sitting for some days. Am quite looking forward to it, though here in Britain they have regulations that dog-owners have to pick up the dog-shit as there is a 500 pound fine (I think its 500, maybe this is the maximum). This dog shit fine is probably singular in the world.

Am looking forward to getting the promised camcorder, so desperately needed. Hopefully it is in my hand next weekend, and then it is off making videos!
There is an especially interesting article on the Centre for Social Media Studies.

Richard Stallman has a blog now, which is offering a write-up of quite extraordinary encounters, like e.g. with the President of Venezuela Chavez, and definitely worth a read; though I am really happy he did not write it yet when he was in Edinburgh, it might have been otherwise a bit embarrasing.

Am still trying to decide on which videos to screen where, when and how to partly finance the room and projector hire.
Have been offered to do one in Stirling and one in London, and am thinking about resuming screenings in Edinburgh as well as finding a place in Perth. Maybe I should also ask in Falkirk and Dunblane?
Perth poses most of the problems.
And it is difficult to decide the programme: for a start it can’t be more than 6-12 screening per place; and then it is the question what would be suitable best? As well as a variety of topics, and points of views.
I would be eager to also vary between feature films and documentaries, but it seems best to be focussing just on documentaries as not much screening opportunities left, the educational and discussion value and because of copyright issues.

Am reading now the last German book I got in 2004 – about the Zapatistas in their anniversary year. It is brightly orange, but have forgotten the title, and it has lots of testimonies by the Zapatistas themselves. It is absolutely brilliant. “20 +10 – The Fire and the Word”. By Gloria Munoz Ramirez.

Just watching videos as having bad cold. “Surplus” is absolutely great, will try to get an english version to screen in Edinburgh and somewhere else. “Hacktivists” is great, too, also a german version by ARTE. “Aljazeera exclusive” is also brilliant, by BBC world, should be seen by every journalist student. “El Che- investigating a legend” is very educating, but would be even more so if the interviews would be subtitles in english. The film includes lots of rare footage, unfortunately I still don’t know what exactly happened in Bolivia as the interviews with the eye witnesses weren’t translated, and there was no footage.
Also watched “Linux-The Code”, subtitled swedish. Unfortunately some interviews, such as with the Open Source movment in China, and with Linus Torvalds parents, are also untranslated in the original language.
Furthermore I watched “Exilio” a documentary film about the Spanish Civil War by Spanish Television, focussing particularly on the end of the Spanish Civil war, when most of the Republicans and Anarchists fled into Exile, and what became of them later. It is quite a sad film, to see, that the people fleeing to Mexico seemed to be the best of. Some fleeing to Argentina were later tortured to death, many were put into concentration camps in Spain, France, North Africa, and later transported to Nazi Germanys extermination camps.

What a pity british television is so crap. Though better than US American. At least most of the TV on Saturday is about sports, in the evening it is gardening, house and holiday programmes, sometimes an antique show and occasionally some news and really bad TV series here by BBC Scotland, which tries to give a romantic flavour to living cut off and isolated. Not that much violence at least nor advertising.

Have found some old articles I previously haven’t published because of these being so long, about my experiences at various protests and similar. Maybe will post them in the blog.

The blog is erroring further. Even the link to this blog seem to be erroring. Well, now that hardly anybody reads it maybe I could just publish the 17 pages long article “My experience of the Evian G8 protests in 2003″.

Just finished reading Stuart Christie’s “Granny made me an anarchist”.
This is the first time in ages I managed to finish reading a book.
I bought the book after Stuart Christie was up here for presenting his book for Word Power.
It is quite interesting to read his account of the sixties and seventies here in Britain and the anarchists, autonomists and even trotzkyists behaving in these times.

Actually this book is quite interesting for people who like reading autobiographies. Of course, in autobiographies, the protagonist is always portrayed in a positive light, sometimes maybe even too positive.
However, I do like the account of Stuart Christie that he hardly ever meet bad people even in prison. I do think this is quite important in the way, that nobody can ever be purely bad or purely evil, and nobody can ever be purely good.

We can only all be humane.
We even can not be perfect.

On Saturday 23rd I was most likely the last one to recognize:
“The momentum of the G8 protests is over.”

After the G8 we were busy tidying up spaces and places, then the prisoner support and so on, and now we are having a physical indymedia centre in the Forest Arts and Events Space.

A spam bot has been attacking Indymedia Scotland.
30 pages of comments were posted including “viagra” in several spelling variations and betting advertising.

I am not sure why this blog has so many error messages.
Indymedia Scotland CMS also gives many error messages.

I really like the Indyblogs though because of so much insignificant stuff being posted – especially by Wildhunt and Funferal and Allanx and others who take up so much space, I have gone of it a bit.
I really like Ana’s contributions and I like reading jebbas stuff and seeing pictures and jacobito travel reports in Chiapas were really good to read.

Oh, maybe i could state in that context that i personally am more interested about people’s thoughts, and political projects and events in their cities and how indymedia works there and how they live then about abstract or theoretical things.
Could you blog about this maybe sometimes?