www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4yt3rH6lcQ

This youtube thing now has movies you can see and movies that are not allowed in your country kind of thing… who comes up with this stuff? Well instead of the original video clip I choosen the live performance made available by the Vintage revolution, Enjoy!

“Butane in my veins and I’m out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose”

This time however, things seem to be changing. I’ve been advised by more than one person to start taking all my “fancy clothes” out of the wardrobe an get them ready for FLAD and the PEW meeting. True  is I don’t really have many of them so it seems that I need to get someone (my friend Susana) to get me geared up for the gig. It will be funny!

Damn am I manning -up?  Wow!

Some new documents are now online:
Agenda of the meeting
Biographies of the invitees
List of experts

Sign the petition here and maybe BBC will think twice.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Burma-Campaign-Action

For more infoi check: http://burmadigest.wordpress.com/

Here some fact and figures:
- 1.1 billion: US dollars invested in the tourism industry in Burma since it opened up to tourism in 1988.
- 100 million: US dollars earned annually by Burma through tourism.
- 56.7 million: current population of Burma (IMF 2007), 75 per cent of which earn a living through agriculture. Of the remaining 25 per cent, just a small proportion benefit from tourism.
- 8 million: number of men, women and children conscripted as forced labour, often for the development of tourism infrastructure, by the military regime since it seized power during a coup in 1962. This is often imposed under threat of beatings, torture, rape or murder.
- 1 million: number of people displaced under the current regime to make way for tourism developments, often with just a few hours notice and little or no compensation for the loss of their homes and businesses.
- 1,300: number of political prisoners thought to be currently held by the military regime. This may include people who have expressed dissent at being displaced to make way for, or conscripted to help build, tourism developments.
- 650: acres of rice paddy recently converted into a golf course for tourists by a western company.
- 60: percentage of Burmese people earning less than 60 pence a day.
- 40: percentage of national budget spent on the military. Just 19 pence is spent per person on health by the regime annually.
- 15: number of UK tour operators continuing to promote tourism to Burma.
- 12: percentage of income cited by Burma’s Minister of Hotels and Tourism in 2002 as being received by the Government from tourism services, including private businesses.
- 12: number of years democratically elected leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, had been under house arrest in Rangoon as of 24 October 2007. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and her National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory at the elections in 1990 but the military have always refused to relinquish power.
- 1: number of democratic elections held in Burma in over 42 years.

Transparency International released (some time ago) the report on their project – Corruption Perceptions Index 2007: Persistent corruption in low-income countries requires global action
It has 179 countries with 1 being the less corrupted.
On the top 10 of less corrupted countries we have: Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada and Norway.
The ten more corrupted are: Somalia, Myanmar, Iraq Haiti, Uzbekistan, Tonga, Sudan, Chad, Afghanistan and Laos.

Portugal is on the number 29, Uruguay on the 25 and Argentina on the 105th position.
Sao tome and Principe the country I’m work on at the moment is on 118.

See the press released and other interesting facts

The magazine New Internationalist of June 2007 reads: Darfur, Don’t look away. Well that is exactly what we have done so far.

Darfur civilians have suffering a State sponsored ethnic cleansing. The articles provided by New Internationalist come to shade some light on the issue and reveal why some outside countries profit from Sudan’s instability and civil war; like China very interested in Sudan’s oil reserves.

Check out and read the pieces on Darfur here (also look for the “other articles of this issue”:
http://www.newint.org/features/2007/06/01/keynote/

My personal revenge will be to make you see
The goodness in my people’s eyes,
implacable in combat always
generous and firm in victory

My personal revenge will be to greet you
‘Good Morning!’ in streets with no beggars,
when instead of locking you inside
they say ‘Don’t look so sad’.
When you the torturer,
daren’t lift your head,
My personal Revenge will be to give you
these hands you once ill-treated
with all their tenderness intact.

Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy
translated from Spanish by Dinah Livingstone

Nicaraguan singer/songwriter Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy wrote this song, using the words of the Sandinista freedom fighter Tomás Borge.
People like Borge gave the lie to Washington’s propaganda of the Sandinistas as militant despots. Borge underwent seven years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Somoza dictatorship’s National Guard; his wife was also tortured, sexually abused and eventually died at the hands of her tormentors.
After the Sandinista Revolution in 1979 Tomás Borge became Nicaragua’s Justice Minister. Many of the former National Guard were now prisoners from whom he was responsible. Under Borge’s direction the prison system was completely overhauled. Prisoners received progressively more humane treatment for good behavior until they could visit home at weekends and guard themselves. The story goes that Borge came face to face with his torturer and responded by saying “For your punishment, I forgive you.” When the man was freed, he went to Miami and became a leader of the counter-revolutionary contras. Borge reflected that the man didn’t understood forgiveness.
On a larger scale Sandinistas ‘revenge’ was a vision of an inclusive, humane society for a country they all too briefly governed. In 2006, the Sandinistas again achieved power in Nicaragua when Daniel Ortega was re-elected president with nearly 40% of votes.

(article taken from the 400th issue of the new internationalist)

The only place I’ve been in Africa is Egypt and that is a very different Africa from the one she described to me. I have many stories visualized in my head from her narratives, about people, places and situations. I learnt to understand her perspectives and emotions regarding that ancestral place, their character and motivation. However, most of us see Africa only as a place stained by bloodshed, hunger and poverty.

I decided to write this small opinion-article (sort of thing) after the convergence of many stimuli arriving from different directions.

It started with some e-mails exchange with a dear friend of mine, Ariane Kunze, a German lawyer, now in Kenya doing some voluntary work with the community there. By chance the World Social Forum (WSF) this year – from the 20th to 25th January 2007 – took place in Nairobi, where it was held for the first time in Africa since its first edition in 2001. At this last gathering there were 66,000 registered attendees, and 1,400 participating organizations from 110 countries, making it the most globally representative WSF so far. But things weren’t running as expected…

The WSF is an annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalization movement to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and their issues. It tends to meet in January when its “great capitalist rival”, the World Economic Forum is meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

However, the meeting in Nairobi was excluding the people it was meant to protect and help, the poor and oppressed, so things were a bit grim at the beginning to start with. Fees were too high for the Kenyans to attend; food at the venue was 3 times higher than outside; security and armed soldiers everywhere; not to mention the sponsors. So Adam Ma’anit who was present was very righteous in wondering “Anti-war yet surrounded by soldiers? Anti-corporate yet brought to you by Celtel and Kenya Airways? Anti-capitalist yet food and water too expensive for most Kenyans and southerners to afford? WSF or WEF?”

But come on, it was the WSF, so one day everyone woke up to a spontaneous and powerful protest, people from Kibera (the biggest slum in all Africa that was back to back with the place were the WSF was taking place) came up, invaded the area and demanded the right to express themselves. Outcome; entry fees were lowered than abolished, street vendors were allowed at the venue and a Pakistani group sold “chapatis against Bush” and “anti-capitalist curry” at affordable rates, sweet!

Also according to Ariane: “Concerning the WSF my feelings are split. On the one hand this big event was not very well organized. Very often I did not find the workshop or seminar I wanted to attend. Also the contents of the speeches were sometimes very poor – very populist, just empty slogans. On the other hand, this event was a very good opportunity for different organizations to get to know each other and to extend their networks. What I also liked was that for the first time the forum did not just talk about the poor but also went to them. Many activities took place in the slums with slumdwellers.”

“In the last few days, the forum was invigorated with a new vitality.”This is the World Social Forum, not the World Economic Forum,” was the chant. We made the most of the time we had left. It is just unfortunate that it had to be this way. After seven years of being the de facto AGM of the global justice movement, perhaps the World Social Forum organizers need to do some soul-searching and reconnect with its founding ideals. Moi’s stadium (who ironically banned the teaching of Marxism under his 20-year reign) is where activists put the “social” back in to the World Social Forum. Let’s keep it that way.” Adam Ma’anit stated.
More articles about the WSF can be found at:
http://interact.newint.org/tags/world-social-forum

Another factor that leads me to write this article is the movies… what the hell is wrong with Hollywood these days? Relieving consciences or just a gold mine they found? And why is always the mzungu (meaning white people in Swahili) saving the day? Why is not an native African resolving their own problems? Maybe, because it doesn’t sell as good…

There are many examples some with gold status attached to their covers: “The Constant Gardener” (Fernando Meirelles, 2005); “Lord of War” (Andrew Niccol, 2005); “Shooting Dogs” (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005); The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald, 2006); Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006); and Blood Diamonds (Edward Zwick, 2006).

We have witnessed that the interest for Africa goes through phases: slavery, the colonial period, and now the democratization processes. I believe that the movies we have been watching are just another example of how Africa continues to be deceived and hoodwink with good intentions. The Occident makes a “mea culpa” without openly assuming any effective responsibility for what is happening. It calms down consciousnesses – about the past and present – instead of awake them…

Estoy harto!! De que dejen todo por la mitad, de que nadie haga lo que tiene que hacer y estoy más que hastiado de mis propias reclamaciones. Este país que tanto quiero vive del futbol, de los EuroMillones y de la ilusión de que la semana que viene nos vamos a quedar millonarios. Una cultura de extrema obsesión por los VIP (Very Inútil People): se casan, se descasan, lo que visten, cuando sacan a la ropa, lo que comen, lo que no comen, lo que va en la cabeza y se olvidan de su propia condición, de su expresión de sus ideas y creatividad, nos limitamos a copiar…
Hay que bancarse las cosas, necesitamos de una revolución, de cambiar de verdad, y parar de servir a los intereses extranjeros!