Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog

The Guardian has been running excerpts from Naomi Klein‘s new book: Disaster Capitalism, which is very impressive – both the book and The Guardian’s in depth coverage, including the videos. In fact, these excerpts are the really rare articles which are much nicer to read in print than online, as they are quite long and occasionally require some reading breaks to think about and it’s nice to show these other people and to discuss the issues and the articles with them.
Which might be the reason why they haven’t attracted any comments yet on CiF – most Internet bloggers have a short attention span.
I wasn’t that impressed with Naomi’s Klein “No Logo”about the social justice movement, but I hope that this book actually will tell me something new, and I hope that it is well researched and informative.

On the other side, The Guardian’s German correspondent Luke Harding (somehow he is always reminding me of the German comedian Hape Kerkeling) is regularily getting me to explode on CiF as it seems that he is
a) not focussing on the most relevant issues
b) his articles are riddled with errors, misinterpretations and summarising issues that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, such as the RAF and Islamic terrorists
c) doesn’t seem to put much research or effort into it
d) is more keen to focus on light superficial entertainment than on properly informing the public.
Anyways, I really wanted to dismantle his article, but lucky for him; the discussion closes after three days.

Another article, which is really infuriating me is the opinion piece of the Guardian’s longterm foreign correspondent:  “Backing the terrorists”. I got really angry about the accusations that lefties would support Osama Bin Laden. Somehow the Guardian seems to be the only newspaper that is happy to regularily insult its readers. Maybe it wants to fit better into the rest of the cut-throat profit-driven media landscape and the London upperclass city slickers? It’s really making me sad, and even worse, that the other bloody lefties don’t do anything against it. Where is this weird lefty Media complaint lobby group (Medialens) when you need them?
Anyways, I wont read this thread anymore, as otherwise I won’t be able to do anything else today, I would just be fuming around and writing more and more comments.
And, now that Bush will have to leave office in half a year it would really make sense to resist as much as possible so that he is running out of time with putting any more nasty politics in place. Now that has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden, believe you me, but everything with Guantanamo Bay, Irak War and Afghanistan invasion. Not to mention all the nasty stuff he’s done in the US, like cutting money for health care, for women’s refugees, repressing abortions and splitting the whole population into enemy camps at the last election.

Just received an invisible comment by El Chavo! and also found out that the BBC Slideshow damages the blog’s style sheet so that comments and contents don’t display properly.
When adding these links to the blog, unfortunately I discovered that both the URLs for the ethicaladventures blog by Neil and the Forest Cafe blog are not leading anymore to any inspirational websites, the same for Tasneem Khalil’s blog, so they have to be taken off. Upgrading the system also meant that all special characters fell out of their formatting and so all the old entries have to be reformatted. Ooops.
Dunno if I should start to correct it now or wait till the release of the WordPress 2.3 Version, which is planned for release on 23rd of September?

Jason has started his new blog on Blogcharm, they promise to pay bloggers for their entries somehow if they find advertising for their sites. Sounds interesting but tricky. But worth keeping an eye on this development.

Nina and her friend are still writing interesting things about Ecuador and OurWar is as usual documenting riots in Chile [riotporn].

Just got the new “Grow your Own” magazine and discovered unexpectedly and surprisingly that my letter to the editor has won the star letter £50 Harrods Horticultural Voucher. Yippieh.

And, even better, I got a week’s extension to hand in my dissertation, due to the Laptop crash.

The Gypsy-Punk Band Gogol Bordello produces some of my favourite music at the music.
They are (unfortunately) also getting increasingly popular [discussion], especially after playing Glastonbury and Live-Earth this summer. Now Madonna has made a film “Filth and Wisdom” with the lead member and the band, to be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival next year, and the band will be touring the US and Europe this winter, passing by in Glasgow on 13th of December.
[videos: Not a Crime, Wearing Purple, Wanderlust King ]

I have been away for a week, as my mum’s idea to celebrate her 65th birthday in style was to assemble her whole family on a houseboat. My sister then contributed to the holidays by cooking strictly themed diet meals – the first days we had only potato-based dishes, then soups, then beans and then rice, and then we had a bit of a diplomatic family crisis which was solved by going into a restaurant (puh, finally!!!)
My sister can be so enthusiastic that she is quite good at overdoing everything she is passionate about, and this time it was definitely diet-ing. And, as a very serious Christian, it was even spiced with praying at least three times a day before we had a meal, which upset me even more as the topics of the prayers weren’t particularily interesting or news worthy, mainly weather and stuff.
Driving the houseboat was fun but difficult, I managed to panic every time before a lock and got it spinning around in big circles till someone helped me out, and continued to crash it onto bridges and everything else which was in the way. The boat just takes ages to respond to the steering and then its too late and too much!! On Thursday we got stuck on a sandbank, and on Saturday an old tree managed to get into the rudder and got the boat out of control.
The houseboat was very luxurious, it even had three bathrooms with showers. And a small kitchen. However, the toilets were very sensitive as everything got hacked and swirled into small pieces and…. put back into the canal. igittigitt.
We saw some dead fishes swimming around, as the locals tried to reintroduce fishing as a tourist attraction into the canal, but it did not really seem to work out that well.
We visited an old famous abbey on the way and an old castle, lots of old washing houses and a ruin; it was very good we had the bicycles with us as the whole canal was accompanied by a bicycle path and we could zoom off to do some shopping or have some private time or do some sightseeing.
As a last attempt to save my dissertation I took the laptop with me, however, it seemed to have had a bad experience travelling as the harddisc controller was gone by the time we arrived on the boat, taking most of my already done work with it. Hopefully it will be sorted out under the warrenty.
Micah was invited to accompany us, it was odd to see that he did not seem to share our family’s humour values. His family’s humour seems to be more centred around “outclevering” each other, my family’s humour is more situation-based simple comedy. As my mum was recovering from several broken rips due to a head-over-handlebars bicycle accident, she wasn’t allowed to do any sports, leading to the new invention of “joggle-woggle” a mixture between jogging and walking. However, it soon became “joggle-wobble” after consulting the dictionary, some wine and the size of our bellies.
I did some pictures, but the old-fashioned way with the old SLR, so have to get the films developped and printed. The digital camera uses SmartMedia, which isn’t produced anymore, and the adapter solution doesn’t work with the old Olympus. Prices on ebay reach mega-highs, and I only have got a 16 MB card left, after the 64MB one gave up working during the G8.
In contrast, my Dad’s old SLR has been working fine most of the time for the last 35 years or so. Now the digital camera is just about three years old, and already it is impossible to replace the memory card. Maybe it is worth rediscovering and working with good old films for a while, till it is sorted out which kind of memory cards will stay around in future before buying some new digital photo equipment.

Tasneem Khalil, fellow political blogger, had been arrested for his writing, but then released and his wife send an email thanks round to everybody who showed solidarity. Somehow the arrest and repression did not come to my attention as I wasn’t on the email list and just linked to and read his blog every now and again, so I am very sorry about not being able to help him and get the news and calls for solidarity published on Indymedia. His former blog is now offline, what a pity, as it gave valuable insights into life in Bangladesh.

” It took all of us 22 hours to get him out of DGFI hq. And we as a family will always remember what have all of you done for us. It was exactly 12:45 am 10th may midnight and from that point on the whole thing started. Tasneem had been working on a project with Human Rights Watch that month with two other researchers. One was out of Dhaka and another came to my rescue from my flat where I was all alone with my six month old son then. I started calling people and tried to spread the word as much as possible. All I knew I cant let this go this way.I knew Tasneem had friends who would fight for him. And I mailed you. I mailed using his Gmail account as I knew the pass but after a few hours I saw I couldnt log in. Later I came to know from Tasneem he had to surrender his email passwords. To some of you I could reply earlier and to some of you I couldnt. I am sorry for this. I should have thanked all of you earlier.
After getting out of detention we were in hiding for a month, always changing places and by this time Human Rights Watch was negotiating with the authorities for his passport. After long negotiations we flew out of Bangladesh for safety abroad. And trust me it was not easy. I dunno how many of you can think of life as running away with a six month old kid and no money.
I was deeply hurt to see some false news against Tasneem using and fabricating his emails and statements given while being tortured. I was always his partner in everything he did and never I saw him in anti-Bangladesh activities. I was also surprised to see that DGFI is basically trying to defocus the whole issue by using these fabricated news and tried to create confusion between the huge circle of friends Tasneem has. They chose a few peoples name whom and whose family members are deeply respected by me and Tasneem and have always supported us, and planted provocative news around media saying things which was never there. Although I was concerned at some point that as we weren’t in any position to speak and defend ourselves, we would be misunderstood. But thanks to all of you, you are the people who knew the difference between truth and false.
I would always be grateful to Human Rights Watch, CNN, Bloggers in Bangladesh and International platforms, Drishtipat, Somewhere in Blog, Newspapers around the world and everyone who received my call at odd hours and tolerated my screams and shouts.
Anyways I just wanted to thank everyone and with the promise that this effort you have put after Tasneem will not be wasted. Although we are still homeless, lost our country, this very incident has made Tasneem more stronger and with all your best wishes we will survive definitely. I hope Tasneem will surface very soon with the truths he needs to say and to clear away any confusion created. “

Apparently, the documentary film by some Indymedia activists, about the killing of the Ambazonian students protesting for a student union and about half a year later against unequal access to university is now finished and seeks distribution via social and autonomous centres, student unions and similar [ Standing with the students ]. As usual, the event in Cameroon was ignored by the mainstream media when it was news, and so might the documentary be, as it does not follow the production guidelines of the industry alias: engaging characters or interesting story told entertainingly and produced for the mainstream.

The Guardian had a good article yesterday about sweatshop labour clothes produced for and sold by High Street shops such as GAP but also Marks and Spencers and even Mothercare. Somehow the article seems to have lawyer’s pen written all over it – it is littered with verbs such as “claimed”, “were accused”, “according to”, “denied”, “alleges”, “says”  and so on, as if the facts were flimsy, but it is fear of libel law suits rather than lack of proof.