Year Of The Rat

This year it's the 'Year of the Rat", according to the Chinese. Rats are appreciated as intelligent creatures by them, while in the Western world and most civilized parts of the world they are considered as vermin.
Whereas dogs are popular companions for Westerners, they are popular in China for their meat.
The rotten communist regime of China, responsible for millions of Chinese and Tibetans being killed for political reasons, during the "Cultural revolution" in China and the occupation of Tibet, is desperately trying to keep the Chinese and Tibetan people in mental slavery.
Like in Aldous Huxley's "Animal farm", a satire on communism, some pigs, or rats, are.more equal than others; Although communism was meant as a system where all are equal and everything should be in the benefit of all, the communist party of China considers itself as an elite, guiding the ordinary people. This communist elite is much better off than the people.
They try to keep them satisfied by giving them the freedom of consumerism, but that won't work much longer.
Because of the Olympic Games, this year in China, the gouvernment tries to put up a facade of civilisation and prosperity, demolishing poor neighboorhoods in Beijing (Peking) with little consideration for those who live there, locking up dissidents to keep them away from journalists...
Dissidents like Lu Gengson, who got 4 years of prison for writing about corrupt politicians.
If you are a dissident in China you may end up as an unvoluntary organ donor.

A few days ago the Chinese occupiers crushed protests by Tibetans of whom maybe up to 100 were killed and others who were captured shown to the public in a humiliting way.
The Tibetans are victims of a cultural genocide, since their peaceful nation was brutally put under Chinese rule. The policy is to make the Tibetans a minority in their own country and their relegion is submit to communist rule..
The Chinese communists showed their ugly evil face once again. Bad publicity for them of course.
But the civilized world could now force a breakthrough for (more) freedom and independence for Tibet. Until now the Chinese occupation of tibet wasn't much of an issue in international politics, because - specially the Western nations - have economical interests in China.

Let's free Tibet and the Chinese people from communist slavery!

Life / Live

Life

Some people are not satisfied with one (real) life and create a (virtual) Second Life.
But real life is more and more intruding in the virtual world.
People are making money in it buying/selling virtual land or property - Anshe Chung became the first SL millionair - and companies are exploring the possibilities of product marketing and job recruiting in Second Life.
Virtual political riots have taken place and even an bomb attack.
Musicians like AIR, Jay-Z and Suzanne Vega performed for a public of avatars.

Live

Paradiso, the concert hall in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, publishes video recordings of live concerts at fabchannel.com.
At video.google.com you can find lots of concert videos and video clips too, including historical footage of Woodstock and The Beatles for example.
If you are a jazz fan you should check out Jazz Tube.

Global Warming

In Europe we are having the warmest Fall in centuries. Is that caused by the 'global warming'?
The ski resorts in the Swiss and Austrian Alps may have a bad season because there isn't much snow, nature is confused and trees blossoming like it's Spring.


According to some scientists there's no global warming but a shift of the thermical balance between the North and South Pole; the northern part of our world is getting warmer with more rainfall and the southern part is becoming colder and dryer. Wanna see the effect of Global Warming? Get the Global Warming Mug!
Politicians in Europe suddenly are interested and worried about envirenmental issues after Al Gore's visit to Europe, where he did his presentation of "An unconvenient truth". The prime minister of the Netherlands, where I live, Harry Potter, and Tony Blair felt the need to write a letter about it, although they really don't give a shit about it.
Usually they are more interested in unlimited economic growth.

I M 9/11 - 5 Years Later

Like millions of people all over the I saw the unthinkable horror of Nine-Eleven live on tv; the first tower was burning and then the second plane crashing into the WTC.

Now it's 5 years later and it still is in our minds, not only because what happened that day, but also because it was an introduction to years of more terror, wars, governments deceiving the people. Citizens of the free world are more and more restricted in their freedom and checked for suspicious behauvior for 'security reasons', so the islam fundamentalists who envie our freedom can be satisfied.
The press in the western world, specially in the US, was limited in it's search for objective information and got false information from governments. By saying "Either you're with us or you're against us" president G.W. Bush suggested that any critizism on his policy was suspicious.
And most of the US media were (more than) willing to comply with this rule.

These days you can read and watch many articles and documentaries about 9/11, about how it happened, what went wrong, conspiracy theories and the aftermath.
Here are some links to information and comments:

The 9/11 Commision Report
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, an educational comic strip version of the report
There was also a Spiderman and Superman 9/11 comic and Art Spiegelman's "In The shadow Of No Towers".

Joel Meyerowitz published a book, "Aftermath", with photo's of Ground Zero. In 9 months he made about 8.500 photo's of the scene. On the 5th of September he had took a picture of the Twin Towers in all their glory, from his loft-window in Manhattan.

911 Digital archive, a collection of personal stories, pictures, drawings expressing feelings and comments on 9/11.

The Memory Hole, a site with recordings of conversations of airtraffic-controllers, policemen, firefighters in the World Trade Center, radio, reports and articles.

Mobile photos

Now I don't have a normal internet connection anymore (only through my mobile phone or at the public library) I have to explore new ways to post new items to my weblogs.

One way is to use a mobile phone, with a camera built-in, and that's what I started to do recently. I've send cameraphone pictures to my photo site at Flickr and I have setup a new site at Msn Space (bilingual, English & Dutch) where I send them to also.

New Orleans - The Aftermath

Months after Katrina hit New Orleans, people are trying to rescue their homes from total destruction, by the authorities if they are 50% or more damaged.

Lots of N.O. residents still forced to live temporary elsewhere.
But the Mardi Gras was celebrated anyway, although it was a "bitter sweet" one, said the Mayor.

The Dutch connection

Civil engineers of the Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch authority on waterways and the protection of them, were invited to the US to advise on the subject of the protection of New Orleans and a delegation from Louisiana visited the socalled "Delta Works", the system of protection against flooding of the Netherlands, built after the catastrophic flooding in 1953.
Dutch architects made designs for rebuilding New Orleans

More links about New Orleans after Katrina:

Metroblogging New Orleans N.O. flickr group (photo collection)

The World In Pictures

Still without internet connection at home (entering this post at the public library) I find some interesting links in magazines and newspapers occasionally.
Like this website that show the world's hot news in a collection of pictures.

At this date it goes back to 2004 (click on 'History') and you can choose a photo collection by clicking on one of the words from the list on the right.

Interesting concept.

More pictures that showed what was going on in the world can be found at World Press Photo, which has a yearly contest for professional photographers and recently choose a new selection of meaningful photos