Terror in Bangkok

I wrote a bit about punk and underground culture in Bangkok for my brothers’ zine. Enjoy.

Abandoned skyscraper in Bangkok

Bangkok. Property boom. Then Asian Financial Crisis  ’97. No more  money. Construction halted from one day to the other, never to be picked up again. It’s still there, completely abandoned.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

49 storeys high.

A shrine to protect the workers during construction is still there. Seemingly untouched.

Nature takes over the balconies.

A tree growing, about 80m above ground level.

International Documentary Film Festival 2010

I really should post more on this blog. I have the intention to do so. My previous post was more than a year ago about the IDFA 2009. Funnily enough this post is going to be about the IDFA 2010. I guess it would be quite sad if the next post on this blog will be on the IDFA 2011. Hah.

Anyway. I volunteered at the IDFA this year and as a volunteer you can see documentaries for free next to the shifts you make. It’s good fun and I watched an awful lot of documentaries. To avoid completely forgetting the things I see it’s a good idea to briefly write my thoughts on them down. The festival is more than a month ago now, but I didn’t get to finish writing my short reviews, now I finally have.

Budrus *****

Documentary about a small Palestinian village close to the Wall. There are lots of documentaries about Palestina and I expected the usual depressing story about an issue you hear plenty about in the media already. But this was less depressing than expected. It follows the start of a non-violent social movement against the wall and interviews the Isreali soldiers that were protecting the bulldozing of olive-trees to enable construction of the wall as well. It shows the disagreements between Fatah and Hamas and how to approach the issue, with local people’s attempts to resolve these. At first you only see (predominantly male) villagers joining the protests, then the women joining in. After early successes in postponing the bulldozing more and more people join. Western activists join. And then Isreali peace activist join, leading to huge dilemma’s of the IDF soldiers that are not allowed to beat up Jews. Heartwarming to see a math teacher and Hamas member crying of happiness when he lets in Isreali Jewish peace activists in his house, not believing he would ever fight side-by-side with them. Really good documentary, and the protests at this village ultimately led to a wider protest movement all over Palestina and the relocation of the Wall’s border. Still heavy stuff, but a lot less depressing than I expected at first.

Inside Job *****

One of the bigger budget documentaries at the IDFA this year with matt Damon as narrator (who’s actually doing an alright job). It’s about the financial crisis and argues that it is basically one big inside job of the big Wall Street banks. It explains the whole story of deregulation and what lead to the crisis in a comprehensible way. It actually surprised me that I didn’t hear more about this documentary yet on reddit, as it is out in the US already for a few months and it’s basically one big call-to-action for the American people with also some harsh critique on the Obama administration. Best part are the interviews. Some of the biggest neoliberal professors and academics of Harvard, Berkely and Oxford get completely humiliated. For this reason alone it’s a must see. I’m sure this docu has wrecked some careers.

Client-9: The Rise & Fall of Elliot Spitzer ****

Quite a long documentary and also mostly about the financial crisis and the power of Wall Street. It’s a portrait of Elliot Spitzer and basically shows how dirty and Machiavellian American politics are. It reminded me of people like Clay Davis and Carcetti in the Wire, but then even more dirty and actually real. Pretty damn cool.

The Pipe *****

Movie about the conflict between a local community and Shell that wants to construct a pipeline at the West coast of Ireland. I loved it. Beautiful scenery and characters. Shows how close and tight these communities are, but also shows the problems in maintaining unity (happens when a big multinational tries to buy people out with thousands of euros). Plus heroic resistance of a local fisherman that made me all teary. Crazy to see the power of a big multinational in a developed country like Ireland so bluntly.

Cultures of Resistance **

There’s basically no subject that interests me more than the link between culture, politics and resistance. But this must be the worst documentary I’ve seen at the IDFA so far this year. Gives a panorama view of conflicts and social resistance in the third world by explaining these particular conflicts in 5 minutes. Bleh. 5 minutes Brazil, 5 minutes Rwanda, 5 minutes Palestina, 5 minutes Congo. Nice footage, sure, but it remains rather shallow. Some girls next to me thought it was brilliant, but I intentionally went to sleep to speed up the time a bit. Perhaps more interesting if you’ve never heard of these conflicts?

Search and Destroy: Iggy Pop’s Raw Power

I like the album and it’s a decent documentary about how this album was underappreciated for decades, it includes interviews with Henry Rollins, Mike Watt and Iggy himself. Basically your average music documentary and a must-see for Iggy Pop fans I guess.

Revolutions

Another music documentary, but now about Cuban hip-hop band Los Aldeanos. Very activist hiphop, DIY and political in a country where such a thing is somewhat dangerous. It’s really aggressive hiphop and I really like this sort of thing. Interesting stuff even if you don’t like hiphop.

The Other Chelsea – Shaktar Donetsk ****

Documentary about how football meets politics in Ukraine. As I’ve been there myself I recognize the sort of people and environment and therefore I really loved it. Lots of stuff on miners that are huge fans of Shaktar, but somewhat at unease with a man like Akhmetov spending millions on a club while public services remain utter crap. It also follows a young man that starts out in the city council of Donetsk and shows how being a politician in Ukraine is more like being a businessman.

Armadillo *****

Probably the documentary that is having most political impact on West-Europe right now. A Danish documentary maker was allowed to stay with a Danish unit for 5 months in the British/Danish base Armadillo in Afghanistan, unlike the embedded journalists we’ve seen so much of, this is the real deal. Basically shows better what war is like and what it does to people than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s not the most enjoyable film, but if you want to understand Afghanistan and modern war you should not miss out on this. The blood rush and excitement of Danish soldiers that finally get to shoot some Taliban fighters from close by is sickening, but also understandable. The debriefing where the killers laughingly say they had liquidated them as humanly possible while the bodies had over 50 bullets in it caused a political shit-storm in Denmark. The morphine eyes of a Danish soldier that just got shot in his soldier is one of unforgettable images of Aghanistan for me. Trailer

The Green Wave ***

Stories from the Iran elections and aftermath in 2009. Uses cartoons to explain stories that are obviously well-made and mixes those with the cell-phone footage we can all find on youtube. It’s not bad, but I personally thought it was a bit boring. This might also be the result of me being a bit tired (happens with these festivals), but I didn’t like it too much. I had already seen most of the footage as well, as I followed it closely on the internet a year ago. 3/5

iThemba ****

Probably the funniest documentary on the IDFA. It’s about a group of handicapped Zimbadwean children that make music together and end up touring the US as well. Story sounds a bit like a cliché, but all the kids are brilliant and some of them are a bunch of stand-up comedians shooting witty one-liner after one-liner, also about the political situation in Zimbadwe. 4/5

You don’t like the truth – 4 days of Guantanamo ****

You think you sort of know already how bad Guantanamo is, but then the details of story still shock the hell out of you. It pisses me off that this stuff is still going on. And it’s not just the Americans, but Canada and most European countries are just as complicit. It’s one of these things that is just too outrageous to understand. More: http://www.youdontlikethetruth.com/

The Prosecutor *****

Another serious story, but now more uplifting in my perspective. Documentary maker followed the prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court for 1-2 years in probably the most eventful period of the Court’s brief history. It’s not one-sided, but also covers eloquent critics of the ICC and mister Moreno-Ocampo. Luis Moreno-Ocampo is brilliant, charming, but also makes you cringe a bit at times. The ICC, despite the many obvious flaws, is one of most uplifting trends that is currently going on and many people are completely clueless about it. I hope this documentary will make people understand and appreciate the ICC a bit more. Go see it if you can.

Mushrooms of concrete ****

Short documentary about the 750k bunkers that were made in the times of Enver Hoxha. I had never heard of this crazy story before and was pretty amazed. Because of Hoxha’s paranoia and fear for a Greek invasion he had the plan to construct a bunker for anyone that could handle a gun. The result was a huge construction effort in an incredibly poor country and now in 2010 the country is still filled with these concrete mushrooms all over the landscape. It’s pretty fucking crazy and the documentary shows how some of these old bunkers are being re-used for all sorts of purposes. Cool.

Lobotomy ***

The most anti-Russia documentary I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s a very very subjective documentary by the Belarusian director Khashchavatski. Somewhat entertaining, but a bit too pushy for my taste. Tears apart much of the propaganda that comes from the Kremlin. It’s a bit amateuristic as well and looks like your average youtube documentary. Still, if you’re interested in the Georgia war and Putin’s Russia, this might be thought-provoking. 3/5

An African election *****

About the elections in Ghana. The rallies and African enthusiasm is completely crazy. Thousands and thousands of people listening, shouting and dancing. Complete chaos at times and the election results end up being a tie with even more chaos and a threat of violence. The violence however thankfully doesn’t end up happening. It’s a beautiful documentary about the optimistic chaos of an election in Africa, it does not really go into how democracy in these places is a bit of a farce with foreign multinationals looting its natural resources while they people remain poor with their leaders being a bunch of kleptocrats. But that is okay. It focuses on the optimistic chaos of democracy instead, shows a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff and follows all the candidates personally and it’s awesome. Beautifully filmed as well.

The furious force of rhymes *****

Another hiphop documentary and this might just be one of the best music documentaries ever. It shows socially critical hiphop scenes in the US, Paris, Ost-Berlin, Palestina and Senegal. American Blacks, East German Skinheads, Israeli Jews, Palestinians, African Feminists and French Banlieusards. They all sound fucking amazing too. Really fucking good, I’m going to update my playlist with the artists featured in this doc. Also worth watching if you aren’t into hiphop too much, this might just change your mind on that.

Pushing the elephant ****

Follows the Congolese activist Rose Mepanda, who fled to the US in 2000 and is a mother of 10 children. One of her daughters remained and this documentary is about their reunion. The daughter is obviously rather traumatized and struggles in the US. The family as a whole and the mother are really amazing though. Nice portrait.

Last train home ****

About the world’s biggest yearly human migration of millions of Chinese workers that leave their factories to back to their rural families for Chinese New Year. A really nice unpretentious documentary where a family is followed for a few years. Mother and father work in the factory and grandmother takes care of the children. The parents work so their children can go to school and have a better life than they had, the children are thus on immense pressure to study hard. Once a year the mother sees her children again and every time the first thing she asks her children is to show their school reports. The oldest daughter cannot really take it anymore and rebels against the parents. I liked it a lot. 4/5

Blood in the mobile ****

Documentary maker investigates how the global consumption of mobile phones fuels the war and exploitation in Congo and tries to find out how Nokia, reported as the most ethically minded company in the mobile phone industry, deals with the issue. And he has guts, he travels to one of the mines in Congo where the rare minerals are extracted, which is basically hell-on-earth and very very dangerous. The docu doesn’t really unearth any new facts (at least not for me, a person who’s interested in the issue), but does give images of what is going on. The mining camp operation is fucked-up insane. The mine is surrounded by fences and a rebel group that dominates the area demands money to everyone that wants to enter or leave the mining camp and the mine attracts people looking to make money from all over the region. Inside the mining camp the prices for food and drinks are insanely high (a beer for 8 dollars…). People going in often aren’t able to get out of the camp and are in a way slave workers. The documentary maker actually enters one of the extremely dangerous mines and the images from that are rather scary. After the trip he goes back to the Nokia HQ to ask how they deal with it and it’s clear that they have no clue on what is truly going on in those mines and don’t have an interest in finding out. Actually, the way the Nokia employees at first respond to the documentary maker is really shocking. As he stated in the Q&A, you can view the movie as a guide for multinationals of how not to do PR. Anyway, this documentary is certainly worth watching.

All for the good of the world and nosovice ***

Movie about how Hyundai constructs a gigantic factory on former farm grounds in a small Czech town named Nosovice and how the villagers respond to it in different ways. Shows the conflict and how big money splits a community. It’s basically a big dilemma, a lot of villagers preferred the old days where they farmed the land together, others are sad about it but considered the change to be inevitable and are happy about the economic opportunities. It does not get really exciting anywhere, but it’s still interesting to see how these processes (similar dilemmas can be found all over the world) play out.

A screening of tastry ***

Short movie of a beginning film academy student that still has to graduate. About a Polish man with his own cinema, without any passion for movies, that struggles to keep the place going. He’s basically a man that grew up in communism and struggles to adapt to modern Poland. Rather funny.

The gamester *

Movie about the Belarusian president Lukashenko. Highly subjective and ‘pushy’. I find the subject very interesting, but it’s simply not a very good movie and people that do not know much about Belarus (which includes me I guess) it’s not too enlightening. 1/5

My heart of darkness **

A white South African confronts his past in the South African special services during apartheid and his operations in Angola. He basically does his own heart of darkness trip by finding one person of the other two sides of the conflict, travel with them by boat over the river and reflect on their experiences in the war. Didn’t find it too interesting. Felt a bit awkward too at times.

The devil operation ***

Movie on the mine industry in Peru and the resistance against it. A local priest tries to mediate between the mining company and the angry indigenous farmers and eco activists. It’s a rather shocking story, involving private security hired by the American and British mining companies that intimidate, spy, torture and even murder one of the eco activists. It’s the typical David vs Goliath tale. Not as good as something as Budrus (or last year’s Crude on oil companies in Ecuador), but the story and footage definitely make an interesting viewing.

The world according to Ion. B. *****

Brilliant movie about the alcoholic bum Ion Barladeaunu, who on his own secretly made hundreds of the most brilliant art collages on the political situation in Romania in the last three decades. As the son of a loyal Stalinist local organizer, he left his home village to work in Bucharest. And after he was put into prison by the Ceausescu for working in the private sector…. as a grave digger. If his collages would’ve been discovered in those times, they would have had him killed, so he always kept them to himself. The art brilliant, it has bits of pop art, Dada, Warhol and Hieronymus Bosch (looks a bit like some Crass album covers as well for example), but he has never heard of any of them. An incredibly unlikely story. In 2008 he’s finally discovered and has his first exhibition in Bucharest, and afterwards to the most esteemed art galleries all over the world. You see him struggle with his recent fame and the awkwardness he feels when he, a formerly alcoholic Romanian bum that does not speak a word English, stands between the most fashionable art gallery visitors. A portrait of an amazingly charming and amusing artist. The final movie I saw of the festival and probably my favorite. Info and art: http://www.theworldaccordingtoionb.com

International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

The yearly IDFA festival is always around this time of the year, which is supposedly the world’s biggest documentary festival. It’s a pretty cool thing. There are so many documentaries running and so much extra stuff (debates, masterclasses, presentations etc), that it’s actually impossible to see everything even if you take 10 days off. The problem is that it is really hard to make a choice on what you actually want to see and some of the stuff you really want to see is quickly sold out. This time I actually booked tickets in advance and ended up seeing quite a lot of documentaries. I felt like shortly writing about the stuff I’ve seen:

The Red Chapel ***
I first went to see the Red Chapel, a Danish tv-serie turned into a movie, which is about a bunch of Danish comedians going to North Korea to play a comedy show and to make fun of the regime. As all stuff is censored (you got to hand in your cameras at night and then they delete the footage they don’t like before giving it back in the morning) and as the N-K regime is likely to have Danish interpreters, they took a Danish-Korean spastic with them as spastic Danish is probably impossible to comprehend for the North-Korean interpreters. In short, it’s a hilarious but also scary documentary. From time to time you burst out laughing while watching, at the same time North Korea is so unreal and frightening that it never gets really funny. The Danish documentary maker (/leader of the small group) constantly pushes for the limit, trying to find the footage that shows the evilness of the regime, and he is clearly uncomfortable at times, questioning his own consciousness; was it a good decision to come here? Am I not misusing the young spastic guy? Do I put people at risk? And those questions kind of remain unanswered when the docu finishes, I couldn’t help but wonder if this sort of documentary has consequences for the North-Korean woman who guided them during their stay.

Oil City Confidential ***
Documentary by Julian Temple about an old R&B band Dr Feelgood, who had some success in the UK charts in the 70s. I didn’t even know the band, it is seen as a sort of missing link towards the punk years (It inspired Joe Strummer to buy a guitar for example) and underrated in music history. Even while I didn’t know the band I kind of enjoyed it. Wilko Johnson is constantly being interviewed and he hyper-actively walks and jokes around all the time. Plus he’s even more amazing live as a guitar-player, watch this. After he and the singer couldn’t get along anymore he left and Dr Feelgood never really got popular anymore.

The Most Dangerous Man In America *****
The title refers to the words Henry Kissinger used to describe Daniel Ellsberg. I had never heard of the man and his story before, making the movie even more mindblowing for me. Daniel Ellsberg worked for the Pentagon as a military analyst during the Vietnam war, in 1971 he leaked a top-secret 7000 paper document about background and run-up of the Vietnam war to the NYT and to several other newspapers which showed how 5 succeeding US Presidents lied to the public and much more. After this he was declared public enemy nr 1, he was hiding in a hotel, even giving interviews to TV, while the FBI was looking for him. For 2 weeks the news broadcasts constantly opened with new tidbits of the story. Nixon was so mad he used his political power against Ellsberg personally, which also lead to the Watergate being discovered. It’s a fascinating story of a brave man, who spend the rest of his life as a peace-activist, but it also had a huge effect on the relation between the government and media. It’s well-structured, full of archival footage and makes a call for people in the government to leak revealing papers that might for example reveal the government deception about the Iraq and Afghanistan war (you could argue that the docu came out 6 years too late, something on which the documakers concurred in the Q&A afterwards), but the docu also makes an argument in favor of the anti-war protest-movements and the docu works kind of activating.

A hilarious, but scary, element of the documentary are the soundbites of President Nixon (as Nixon recorded everything between ‘ 71 and ‘ 73). It brilliantly shows the ‘other side’ of Ellsberg’s narrative, we hear Nixon and Kissinger madly talk about Ellsberg and the NYT. We also hear soundbites of Nixon suggesting to use nuclear weapons on North-Vietnam  and how he not gives a damn about civilians, with Kissinger being against that and diplomatically responding “I also do not care about civilians, sir, I just do not want the rest of the world… to think of you as some kind of butcher” and then Nixon “but Henry, we have to think big for-christ-sakes”. It’s rather mindblowing. Personally I do not believe in some Biblistic (or Star-Wars like) good and evil or any of that nonsense, which is why I’m always kind of amazed when real people make themselves look so much like real villains. In a weird way I’ve got mad-respect for people like Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney.

Sadly people like Kissinger and McNamara aren’t interviewed for the documentary, they were asked but rejected according to the makers in the Q&A.

The Yes Men Fix The World *****
I had heard of these two guys for the first time a year ago or so when I read about one of their pranks. I was a fan of it immediately, but somehow didn’t watch the previous Yes Men documentary (that is supposedly not so good as this one). These guys create fake websites of international organizations (as the WTO) and corporations (like DOW Chemical) and then get invited for conferences via these websites, there they show up and impersonate spokesmen and give a speech in which they tell the brutally honest truth (their truth) and pull off some hilarious stunts. It’s an original way of protesting against the big powers in our capitalist world.

I was a bit worried about the actual documentary, would it not get a bit boring and their pranks a bit childish? Thankfully it didn’t. I’ve seen them being described as the political alter-globalist version of Sacha Baron Cohen and I think it’s a good description. It’s probably the funniest documentary I’ve ever seen, I was entertained throughout the full 90 minutes. As for the political side, it’s not very deep or anything but it shortly explains the the economic neo-liberal ideology and takes aim at Milton Friedman and his followers (Milton Friedman as the guru of greed with his own cult in their words). Nothing new, but enough for people not acquainted with this critique to understand it and why the Yes Men do what they do. Especially funny is how they viciously ridicule the corporate-funded think-tanks spokesmen and tear apart their bullshit.

It also takes balls to do this. Not just standing there and giving a fake speech, but also the consequences when you’re busted. The big problem is whether you’re actually right, do you speak truth? I mean, corporations aren’t evil, the people who work for them are usually full of good intentions, so are the people organizing the conferences. It must be rather uncomfortable to come up and be so mean towards them. Is what you’re doing actually justified? That to me seems the hardest part of the whole thing. The pranks featured in the documentary however all made perfect sense to me, with the background info provided in the docu, they all seemed to be perfectly justified.

Anyway, it is a hilarious documentary. It works kind of activating, just like The Most Dangerous Man In America, with a positive portrayal of the protest movement and an ending with a call to action; if two guys can pull off all this there is no excuse to not take at least some action ourselves. It’s also a good introductory docu for for people not acquainted with the neo-liberal critique and the whole alter-globalist movement. When the movie ended people gave the longest ovation (with people standing) I’ve ever seen in a cinema and the Q&A with both Yes Men (one via web-cam) was also rather funny. It does seem the Yes Men are becoming ‘bigger’, they also spread sign-up lists for people to join and help out with their actions. I’m curious if they’ll be pulling off something at Copenhagen.

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country ****
Saw this movie after the Yes Men and it’s completely different. Not much jokes in this one. It’s a movie that was also at IDFA last year and mostly focuses around the mass demonstrations in autumn 2007, when the monks joined the protests and received international mass-media coverage. This is about the people who made the coverage possible; a Burmese organization that secretly video-tapes demonstrations and spreads them via satellite internet or smuggles them out of the country. And jesus christ, these guys are brave. Filming riot-police from a couple of meters distance, even filming the time their secret hide-out got busted and some of their members get arrested. Insane. I think the footage cannot leave anyone cold. The documentary also tells the story of the makers and their hopes when the monks joined the protests, Aung San Suu Kyi showed her face in public for the first time in years, and the country saw the biggest mass-demonstrations in Burma since 1988 when thousands of people got killed on the streets. It all ends badly and nothing has really changed so far. This movie probably leaves nobody cold.

The Shock Doctrine ***
Documentary on Naomi Klein’s best-selling book, which tells an alternative narrative on free-market economics of what happened in the world in the previous decades. I haven’t read the book, but I knew the argument it tries to make and was looking forward to the documentary. I didn’t really like the documentary, the American style voice-over annoys the hell out of me. It’s the same with those PBS documentaries; great stuff and freely available online with lots of info, but I just can’t stand the voice-over. The music is also overly dramatic from time to time. The footage however is interesting and so is the argument of course. The alternative narrative is convincing and quite ehm.. shocking; from Pinochet’s economic shock theory to Yeltsin to New Orleans to Iraq being sold out to private corporations and the army being increasingly privatized in Iraq. It’s interesting, the link between torture-shock treatments and the economic neo-liberal shocks seems a bit exaggerated to me though. While it’s not a good documentary, the mix of footage and lectures of Naomi Klein also feels a bit off, I guess it’s a good introduction to Naomi Klein’s argument for people who are too lazy to read the book.

Crude *****
Documentary about a lawsuit against Chevron for polluting the Ecuadorian Amazon, where kids swim and drink the water and where lots of people died of all sorts of diseases; the “Amazon Chernobyl”. It sounds like one of these many documentaries where against big corporations, you usually think you already know what is going to be the message before you start to watch, but this one is beautiful. It takes a rather objective approach in which both sides are interviewed, but after a while it’s for you as a viewer not hard to back up the young Ecuadorian lawyer that takes it up against the 5th biggest corporation of the world. It shows Chevron employees, like an environmental scientist, doing their work and seeming completely convinced that Chevron is doing the right thing, I couldn’t help but think that it shows how humans are capable of rationalizing the most horrible behavior.

To briefly explain, it’s a lawsuit against Texaco of over 20 years ago when they polluted the area there in order to cut down costs (Texaco merged with Chevron, so Chevron takes over the lawsuit). Texaco sold its stuff to PetroEcuador in the early 90s and basically bribed officials to get away with the behavior. The documentary is there at the right time as the case is opened up for field inspections in which the judge and attorneys of both sides move through the jungle to proceed the lawsuit. Everything is in it, the negatives of both sides are shown and the whole dubious system around these cases is explored. Chevron gets away with it by slowing things down in court while the Amazon continues to be polluted by the oil pools they’ve left behind, they have hundreds of millions in legal costs, but that’s nothing compared to the possible 28$bn fine. So they basically make use of their deep pockets and as long as they don’t have to pay they have more than enough interest on that 28$bn to cover the legal expenses. The other side however has lower legal expenses, but have still spend over 12$mln so far. They money they get is from a dubious sue-firm in the US that would get a big share of a possible ruling. This whole legal part is however not what could be really scary for Chevron, as the case is basically completely ignored by the corporate media and American public, what can however get really scary is when celebrities get involved like Sting’s wife who gets involved, starts speaking about the injustice in interviews and starts seriously hurting Chevron’s public image. It’s a sad world, although if you consider the fact that the most marginalized people of the world are now in a position to seriously hurt one of the world’s most powerful corporations you could say we’ve come a long way. Also interesting is how Chevron uses Web 2.0 for their propaganda on this case, they just started their own fucking youtube channel to explain how sympathetic Chevron is to the plight of the Ecuadorian citizens. I wonder if this new documentary has something to do with it…..

Anyway, highly recommended.

Eyes Wide Open **
The final movie I saw and probably the worst, although I still enjoyed watching it. It’s about a tour through Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil; all countries that got new elected leaders that finally stand up for their own people, are able to stand up against American corporations and improve public health, education and other services. I’m very interested in what is going on there, how it’ll continue and it could very well be end up as some sort of model for the rest of the world. While I don’t live there and follow it all that closely, I got a lot of respect for people like Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. The latter is the president of Ecuador and also played a very positive role in the Crude documentary. So this documentary should be very interesting for me, but it was a bit disappointing. The maker doesn’t try to really assess the situation, but basically gives his own subjective one-sided narrative on the situation and interviews ‘unimportant’ people in all these countries, shows footage of the leaders and interviews Eduardo Galeano (the writer of the classic Open Veins in Latin-America, the book Hugo Chavez gave to Barack Obama). Some of the footage is really interesting, a highlight is seeing Diego Maradona and Chavez sharing the stage during an antisummit against G.W. Bush, in which they both jump around and sing together with the massive audience and tell Bush to fuck off.

The problem for me with the documentary is that it is completely uncritical towards for example Hugo Chavez, even while the maker himself said in the Q&A that there are indeed some serious problems. The maker claims it is his own narrative and that he does not attempt to be objective, that’s all fine for me, the problem with this completely uncritical narrative is that you do injustice to reality and basically make a propaganda movie in favor of people like Chavez. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Hugo Chavez is often also incorrectly portrayed in Western media. The man does a lot of good things there, the situation for the poor drastically improved; improved health care, education, housing, jobs etc etc. But the man is also rather dangerous and I’m afraid for increasing dictatorial tendencies in the future. I would’ve preffered a more objective assessment of what is going on, the interviews with ‘common people’ also seem a bit too much for me, it’s not always all that interesting.

ardo Galeano

European Elections are not really European

I’ve been wanting to get something off my chest for a while, so let’s finally do it. It’s about Europe. No, it’s not about the Netherlands and how an extremist party got the second most votes here a few of days ago, nor is it a rant about the disgustingly stupid tv debate that night on Dutch public tv, which I thankfully haven’t seen. Because no matter how frustrating and annoying it is, in the long run it matters little and I predict Mr Wilders will bite the dust sooner or later anyway. It also is not about the BNP receiving two seats in the UK, or how “the Left” lost some seats.  I want to address a broader and more general issue about the European Elections, an issue that is also one of the reasons for the negative reaction and apathy from the public towards the elections.

And that is because there’s something that makes not much sense at all. How did they ever think that allowing people to only vote for national parties during European elections was a good idea? I believe it might hurt the EU actually more than it does good.

Because when you can only vote for national parties it automatically becomes some sort of second-grade national election, some sort of official poll for the upcoming elections, where people primarily vote on domestic issues and often use their vote to protest against the incumbent government. The media also interpret it as such.

The best result from these elections is that it does start off a debate on Europe. It does make people think about it and that’s a good thing. The problem however is that this debate is within country, which automatically limits the scope of the debate. The more ‘extreme’ (usually opposition) parties hijack the debate with simplistic oneliners (“Oh no, Turkey!”, “Oh no, Polish immigrants”, “Brussels is one big costly and corrupt bureaucracy” etc) that play into national sentiments against Brussels, while the more moderate parties that usually support European integration do not really respond to the EU-bashing for strategic reasons. They usually go for a “yeah, we are more-or-less for the EU, but not too much” route and hope for enough of their traditional supporters to show up and vote. It’s not surprising that the EU isn’t all that popular to the masses when their elected leaders avoid explaining and promoting it.

What Europe needs debate among Europeans, not a debate between among Dutch people, not a debate between Welsh people and people from London, but a debate between Polish and Brittish people, between Italians and Lithunians etc etc. How else can the public create an understanding of the common long-term interests we share, how else can those Polish workers that come here to take over jobs (uhu) defend themself, how else can you even have a sensible public debate of what role the EU should play as an actor towards USA, China and the Middle East? There has been a debate for decades about the lack of a common European identity, about the lack of a ‘demos’ that is necessary for a democracy, but how can an European identity progress when the European elections for the people themself is institutionally biased in favor of the nation-state, which impedes the international debate that is so much needed? (Or well, there are other ways of promoting European identity of course, but a shared democracy can be one of the biggest instigators in the process of creating an European identity)

Another problem in European politics that results from the lack of international debate is the psychological bias that everyone automatically feels towards their own national leaders when they are in conflict with other European leaders. When Sarkozy and Balkenende are in disagreement on something, I also am more likely to automatically support Balkenende, despite me considering him to be a horrible Prime-Minister and despite me perhaps agreeing with Sarkozy in this hypothetical issue. The problem is that national leaders are only accountable to their own population and that there is barely a debate between the people of different nations. National parties and politicians have their own interests that often not completely coincides with the interests of Europeans.These national politicians are however the main players with most power in the EU, but they are only indirectly accountable for their actions within the EU and often get away by playing the blame-game (“Constantly push EU policies, but when backfires “Brussels did it, not me. Oh, and didn’t I say I want less Brussels so vote for me in the next elections”").

The obvious solution would be making the European elections truly European by allowing people to vote on European parties. So why are there no pan-European parties to vote on you may wonder. Well, there are and there aren’t. Real European parties that you may vote on in every member state are prohibited. National authorities are in charge of the elections, so a political party needs to register as a national party to reach the voting lists. So the only way for a political group to become truly European is to register in several countries as a national party, which all have their own rules and barriers. Then there are huge thresholds to access representation and the distribution of the seats to the European Parliament that is being done on a national level as well. There are several pan-European parties that passed these barriers, but even the most well-funded one, Libertas, failed to get a single seat. I personally voted for Newropeans, but they did not even receive one percent of the votes here in the Netherlands. The only true European movement that is going to enter the Parliament is the Pirate Party that received a seat and 7.1 percent of the votes in Sweden. And that’s a good thing at least.

Still, the European Union needs a real democracy, it’s too important and has a too big influence on people’s lifes. It’s in desperate need for a reform. Also, I really want to be able to vote for a German. No really, just being able to do that should be a right for any European citizen.

Clever Monkeys

I haven’t posted here in a while, I was tempted several times to post my thoughts on some stuff that is going on, but I kind of lacked time or at least did not prioritize blogging very highly. Anyway, there’s something I need to get off my chest. I just saw the most amazing nature documentary of my life. It’s an episode of Natural World of the BBC with David Attenborough as narrator (just like Planet Earth, which is also rather awesome). And it is about monkeys. Clever monkeys.

I’ve always thought that it was very very very likely that we humans descend from monkeys, but I didn’t know -that- much of monkeys, a lot of stuff was new for me and rather mindblowing. This documentary could be seen as an all-out attack on creationism and it succeeds wonderfully. It shows how much humans and monkeys are alike. They go deep into monkey culture. Yes, culture. They show monkeys ‘farming’ (putting holes in a tree, to harvest it’s juice several days later) and different tribes contesting this resource from time to time as if it’s oil in the Middle East (or moons in EVE Online..). They show a ‘United Nations’ of monkeys, with completely different monkey races cooperating with each other and some of the monkey races being able to speak in different languages, constructing simple sentences with a rudimentary form of grammar. They show monkeys being capable of deception (which requires one to think how someone else would think and take advantage of it, a form of awareness), although that bit wasn’t new for me.

Then they go on to show Machiavellian power-politics of baboon tribe dictators and the lust for power that is part of their nature (and arguably also ours, of course), monkey societies with groups of hundreds of monkeys and how some monkeys set up traps for jaguars.

That’s not all however. In the ending they go on to show monkeys doing something that looks – very – similar to some scenes in 2001: A Space Odyssey (best movie ever) with exactly the same music from that movie! Fucking brilliant.

I’m sorry for spoiling some of the highlights for people that are interested in watching it now, although I can assure you it’s still worth it. I just wonder how thing swould look if you’d fast-forward a few thousand years to see if the baboons would’ve ended up dominating the savannah. At the moment I also kind of wonder how long they’ve been there, couldn’t find it on wikipedia, but have they been there 6 thousand years already or are they rather new?

Anyway, trailer is here. Full episode torrent here (I’m sure the BBC is fine with it. ).

Also this TED talk on chimpansees I saw a while ago is mindblowing, those creatures are arguably just as empathic as us humans.

Ministry

Just a few more weeks and Mr Bush will be president no more, so I’m just in time to discuss some music related to the Bush administration. It’s been often said that music actually gets better the worser the situation is (in people’s perspective of course, think about: vietnam anti-war music, Reagan/Thatcher era and now Bush). The same is true for Ministry who made their best albums during Republican leadership and they gave that as reason to let their 2008 album be their final album in an interview, as it cannot get any worse than Bush.

Ministry made an anti-Bush trilogy of albums and for as far as I am aware it’s easily the most hatefilled music about the Bush presidency produced. I love it. It’s filled with samples of Bush speeches and other people and it’s amazing to see how they fit in a different context. It’s rather powerful to hear Bush say “By our actions we have shown…. what kind of nation we are.. we have shown the noble aims and good hearts of Americans…” with an incredibly aggressive up-beat tempo under it. Let the fool speak for himself, right? There are a lot of gems like that. They also go into Loose Change and the whole New Order conspiracy stuff, of which I’m not a big fan, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

And ending with the final song “End of Days Part Two” is magnicifent. It uses the full sample of President Eisenhowever’s farewell speech, where he warns for the “military-industrial-complex”, which is probably more fitting than ever today.

Anyway. Here’s a song for you all. It’s about TV influences people. Make sure to not miss the Bush samples in the middle.

[ Or youtube ->  ]

Politics 2.0

Earlier this year in the Netherlands we had our former incompetent minister of Immigration and Integration starting a new political party Trots op Nederland (translation; Proud of the Netherlands, which I find a rather hilarious and at the same time disgusting party-name) and she also initiated ‘Politics 2.0′ (reference to the term Web 2.0) with her own new website and wiki page where people could submit their own ideas of what should happen. Which is of course totally ridiculous, I mean, anyone with some common sense can see that forming your party’s agenda on what random people submit on the internet is just not going to work. So when the wiki page came online, many random people on the internet (including me) had some fun by submitting the silliest ideas and offensive jokes. After this fiasco reached the headlines in the national newspapers the wiki page quickly went offline for “technical reasons”.

So after seeing “Politics 2.0″ fail so miserably in this little country it’s rather interesting to see how it works out in a country where the people that operate it actually have a clue. If JFK was the first “television-president”, then Obama is going to be the first “internet-president”. I would actually argue it would’ve been very unlikely for Obama to win if the internet and sites like youtube didn’t exist.

But the campaign is over, Obama is President-Elect and it seems they aren’t going to give up on the internet and the massive campaign structures for volunteer that are in place. They set up a new website where people can apply for a job in the new Administration, where people can submit ideas and where Obama just posted his first weekly video-blog. An American president with a weekly vlog (video-blog) on youtube, what the fuck! Hahah, that’s just amazing. I don’t think anyone expected that to ever happen. I guess Google (who owns youtube) must be thankful for worldleaders using their platform like that. Funnily enough Google CEO Eric Schmidt was also quite involved in the Obama campaign (Oooh, conspiracy theories; Big Brother Google is going to support Obama constructing a New World Order with their massive personal-information-filled databases and power over the internet!).

I’m really curious to see how this will develop. Looking at how the campaign was done I don’t expect them to pull off disastrous silly things. But this really seems to be something that has never been done before. It’s been argued that by keeping their grassroots campaign structures intact, they have a lot of enthausiastic volunteers available that can help putting pressure onto things and force the powerful lobbyists to release their firm grip. I don’t know. Internet hypes and excitement usually doesn’t last long, I wonder how long you can keep all those volunteers excited anyway. Well, we’ll see.

Election results and thoughts on ‘change’

It’s over. I’m happy. Even while I feel a bit like the xdcd guy, even while the election process was hilarious and I’d love to see more fun political stuff + Sarah Palin madness (that prank call, I’ve watched it over 5 times and still laugh out loud every time I see it) coming out every few days, I’m relieved that it finally is over with pretty much the same results as predicted in the polls.

I watched it last night and morning with a big group here in Amsterdam, which was a lot of fun. McCain finally looked like 2000 McCain and gave his best speech so far. Obama speech was good as usual and gave me goosebumps. Finally went to bed 10am this morning after being awake for about 24 hours. Ah well, historic moments are worth that I guess.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what this ‘change’ is exactly going to be. He’ll probably undo many of the Bush policies (also Guatanamo Bay etc), the taxes will become a bit fairer. Healthcare and education will have some reforms, it’ll be interesting to see how successful these are going to be and if it’ll be of New Deal proportions. I hope so. Other things that seem to be priorities on Obama’s agenda are ending the division between ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ and investing in alternative energies to make the US energy independent, both things are complimentary.

Then there’s the imminent change of course. The fact that an Afro-American with a funny name can become president is just… mindblowing. It’s inspiring for all ethnic minorities in the US, but also all over the world. It really does seem that with all this ‘positive emotion’ all over the world, the color and ethnic background of a person did become less important. Africa is dancing, Asia and Europe look at it with great respect and the fundamentalist mullahs will have troubles inciting their religious base against Americans when they’re lead by Hussein Obama (with both names having positive Arab meanings). And that’s good. Very good. Just this was enough to hope and support Obama to become president.

But I wonder if there’s more. How ruthless is Obama going to pursue the US’ national self-interest? I’m sure he will, and I’m sure the national self-interest of the US will coincide with the self-interest of the rest of the world most of the time. I’m also sure he’ll be more diplomatic and the US isn’t going to start a new Iraq-like war. But will there be more? Will Obama go against the US’ self-interest in some situations to make this world a better world? Will they finally accept the International Criminal Court, sign climate proposals that don’t favour the US (Kyoto etc), nuclear arms control, give up power in international insititutions (UN, IMF) to democratize and improve them? I do not know, but I certainly hope so as the EU isn’t strong and coherent enough as power bloc to force these changes upon the world even if the willpower is there, neither are countries like France, Germany and the UK. Whatever you say, I’m afraid we need the United States for this. I would love to see some sort of Geopolitical New Deal and I hope Obama is up for this, but I’m not sure about this at all.

(Oh, I think Desmond Tutu pretty much nailed it here as well, what a man)

Some stuff worth reading:
Views of smart people in different countries on the outcome. Time.com
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167582
There’s much more of course, but these are the best two articles I’ve read today. Also check the McCain and Obama outcome speeches on youtube of course.

Soundtrack of the day is The Evens – Everybody Knows. Just two more months Mr Bush, let the door hit you on the ass.

You arrive with empty duffel bags, hungry eyed
You looked around taking measurements to move inside
The capital it is your proving ground, your centering
You and yours can keep your scores, but Washington is our city

Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar

Too much technique with no texture below
You fabricated your way in here and everybody knows

Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar
Everybody knows you are a liar

Too many distractions just obscure what should be shown
Stop with the abracadabra ’cause everybody knows

You return via machinery and public lies
You broke to break, you’re breaking everything, it’s no surprise
The capital it is your playground now, your center ring
You and yours can keep your scores, Washington is our city

You and yours and all your wars have run your last campaign
You’re fired from a job you never should have had
That hideous strength absolutely sinks
You better watch your back

Let the door hit you on the ass

Anyway, from the bottom of my heart: Thank you for making it happen, yankees. Good job.

Two party system democracy

I’ve written more than enough about consensus democracy versus majoritarian democracy myself this week, I’ll just link two funny youtube videos on the subject.