16/01: Who really helps Haiti?
After listening to a lot of debates lately on who should give more and who has given a lot to the earth quake effort in Haiti, I decided to do some number crunching myself. Arguments such as "Denmark only gives 10 million, but it should give 50 million Danish Kr." make little sense if one has nothing to compare it to. This overview excludes all help that is not given in the form of money and or that does not come from a country. Also, in case aid has not been listed on Wikipedia yet, or in case aid that was promised and never materializes, it will skew the picture on this overview as well. I may try to update it a few times, but can not guarantee that it represents an accurate reflection on what is being listed on the corresponding Wikipedia page at all times.
If you want the Open Office spreadsheet file I used to create this image or want to send in corrections, please use the above email.
Status 25th of January 2010:
Brazil gives twice as much as the US in total amount of support
If you want the Open Office spreadsheet file I used to create this image or want to send in corrections, please use the above email.
Status 25th of January 2010:
Brazil gives twice as much as the US in total amount of support
The Young Honduran Revolution - the DVD
Finally the DVD of the Documentary on Honduras "The Young Honduran Revolution" is available to be bought online for only USD10.99 (+shipping). The money recovered thereby will go towards recovering some of the costs I've run into traveling around and showing it around in the United States and Mexico.
Th DVD can be shipped to most destinations world wide, with the exception of Central America (how ironic).
Click here to buy!
Prices are, including shipping (*):
| US | USD14.99 |
| Norway | 84kr |
| Denmark | 75kr |
| Euro-zone | Euro 10 |
*) The final price is calculated in USD. All other prices will vary with the change in value of the USD.
An interview about the documentary with TeleMax of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico (in Spanish):
14/11: ALBAstryde
ALBAstryde -- combining textual with statistical data
For eight months I have been working on this (January 5th - September 5th), together with the nice people of Simas.org.ni. It had been my dream for a few years to be able to build something similar to Cuyberstryde/Cybersyn and this year I finally was able to do so.
Read the entire article at Linux Journal!
Update: The online version now includes subtitles in English!
Finally, after the premier on Saturday in the Cinemateca Nacional of Nicaragua the final version is available online. This version has a length of 90 minutes.
There is also DVD image and various downloadable versions available from here.
A shorter version will be used on September 28th in front of all the embassies of Honduras in Latin America when the radio network Puente Sur arranges convocations against the military coup.
Update:
Posters for the 28th of September including advertisement for the documentary:
28th of September 2009, all across Latin America
28th of September 2009, Ecuador
28th of September 2009, Dominican Republic
Finally, after the premier on Saturday in the Cinemateca Nacional of Nicaragua the final version is available online. This version has a length of 90 minutes.
There is also DVD image and various downloadable versions available from here.
A shorter version will be used on September 28th in front of all the embassies of Honduras in Latin America when the radio network Puente Sur arranges convocations against the military coup.
Update:
Posters for the 28th of September including advertisement for the documentary:
28th of September 2009, all across Latin America
28th of September 2009, Ecuador
28th of September 2009, Dominican Republic
15/08: Honduras trailer
I went to Honduras for a few days, and so now here is the trailer. I've been incredibly busy lately, but please let me know if you have further suggestions, can offer me free music rights, etc.
Update: in the media:
Radio Bemba: Y sin embargo se mueve Sep 30 (last few minutes): low/high
Radio Puente Sur: Entrevista con Johannes Wilm, Director del documental La Joven Revolución Hondureña
Monthly Review Zine: The Young Honduran Revolution
Junge Welt: »Auch Unpolitische fühlen jetzt, was eine Diktatur ist« (Michael Böhmer und Johannes Wilm)
Posters for opening in Nicaragua:
Cinemateca Nacional 12 de Septiembre 2009, 6pm, GRATIS
Article in El Nuevo Diario about opening at Cinemateca Nacional (almost everything correct):
September 10, 2009
Update: in the media:
Radio Bemba: Y sin embargo se mueve Sep 30 (last few minutes): low/high
Radio Puente Sur: Entrevista con Johannes Wilm, Director del documental La Joven Revolución Hondureña
Monthly Review Zine: The Young Honduran Revolution
Junge Welt: »Auch Unpolitische fühlen jetzt, was eine Diktatur ist« (Michael Böhmer und Johannes Wilm)
Posters for opening in Nicaragua:
Cinemateca Nacional 12 de Septiembre 2009, 6pm, GRATIS
Article in El Nuevo Diario about opening at Cinemateca Nacional (almost everything correct):
September 10, 2009
Hey, I am currently in Berlin on a minor holiday away from Central America, and then this stuff happens! I phoned the Honduran embassy here, but they were not quite sure which side they were on yet, and the Nicaraguan embassy asked me if I could try to help them get their statements out to the big media.
I do not particularly care about the legal situation much more than many other aspects of this, but the reporting on this has been equal also in many other European countries, and so I thought I would translate and repost this Norwegian response to the allegations that are made:
I do not particularly care about the legal situation much more than many other aspects of this, but the reporting on this has been equal also in many other European countries, and so I thought I would translate and repost this Norwegian response to the allegations that are made:
01/06: European elections
I was first asked to send them a video of myself speaking, however it seems that they did not manage to put it all together that way.
Anyways, a very un-traditional, but interesting way of trying to convey a political message. If you know German, watch it. If you can vote in Germay, vote for us!
Anyways, a very un-traditional, but interesting way of trying to convey a political message. If you know German, watch it. If you can vote in Germay, vote for us!
04/03: Two small video items
While working hard on my thesis and another project for the Nicaraguan ministry of agriculture, I've also found a little time to go visit some of the productive countryside here in Nicaragua.
As part of that, I've made these two tiny videos together with Jason Glaser from the La Isla Foundation.
Sugarcane burning in Chichigalpa
The smoke from the annual sugar cane burning contains gases that are everything but healthy for those living around.
We interview the local headmaster of a school. And interestingly, he tells us that the burning of the cane is not the worst thing of living around the sugar cane fields.
English
Spanish
See also the discussion here.
9 year old girl working in Estelí
We picked up a group of workers at a tobacco farm in Estelí, Nicaragua and gave them a ride. One of the three was a nine year old girl. And the owners of the farm are, to our knowledge, Cuban-Americans residing in Miami, Florida.
The three explained to us that the father of the family was making 7.50 USD/week, and therefore had no choice but to send his daughters to work. The nine year old is working eight hours a day, six days a week, earning 50 US cents an hour. She does not have time to go to school.
English
See also the discussion here.
Both of these have been taken with a regular handy cam, so the sound quality is marginal. But both have been subtitled. You may have to enable that manually in the lower right hand corner of the video.
As part of that, I've made these two tiny videos together with Jason Glaser from the La Isla Foundation.
Sugarcane burning in Chichigalpa
The smoke from the annual sugar cane burning contains gases that are everything but healthy for those living around.
We interview the local headmaster of a school. And interestingly, he tells us that the burning of the cane is not the worst thing of living around the sugar cane fields.
English
Spanish
See also the discussion here.
9 year old girl working in Estelí
We picked up a group of workers at a tobacco farm in Estelí, Nicaragua and gave them a ride. One of the three was a nine year old girl. And the owners of the farm are, to our knowledge, Cuban-Americans residing in Miami, Florida.
The three explained to us that the father of the family was making 7.50 USD/week, and therefore had no choice but to send his daughters to work. The nine year old is working eight hours a day, six days a week, earning 50 US cents an hour. She does not have time to go to school.
English
See also the discussion here.
Both of these have been taken with a regular handy cam, so the sound quality is marginal. But both have been subtitled. You may have to enable that manually in the lower right hand corner of the video.
04/12: A Sandinista pig
I wrote this story some two-three months ago, originally in German, then translated to Danish and then to English. I was trying to find a place to get it published in paper form. But the information is likely a bit to obscure for anything mainstream, and no normal person reads the academic journals (and in addition I would need to throw a whole bunch of aca-gibberish on there before anyone would take it). I was busy with all kinds of other things and just about forgot about it. But I noticed this list of the Top 100 anthropology blogs (worldwide?) with this blog being listed (sorry, but I don't think that list is to be taken serious, really) and that this blog still receives a few hundred hits daily (despite almost no new content for a year). And so I just thought this might be as good a place as anywhere to put it. So please, enjoy. And if you need the German or Danish version for anything, please contact me!
A Sandinista pig
Blanca Nella is a poor woman. She lives on the island Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua in the Central-American country of the same name.
In this country, the socialist Nationalist Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) came to power through a revolution in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, the country had to fight counterrevolutionary insurgencies financed by the Unites States with the help of Cuba and Eastern Europe. At the national elections in 1990, the Sandinistas lost, and for sixteen years the country was ruled by three neo-liberal governments, until the FSLN won the presidential elections in the fall of 2006. Daniel Ortega, who was elected president once already during 1984–90, now rules the country.
This is the story of a person who witnesses these times.
Nella would like to receive a pig from the government, but unfortunately she doesn't have enough land to grow the food for it. Now that Ortega is president, there is such a program, called ‘zero hunger’.
The program is directed towards women and consists of a cow, a pig, a rooster, five hens, the building of the housing for cow and pig, seeds and food for the first few months as well as training in how to treat the animals. Altogether this is supposed to have a value of 1,500USD and the producer agrees on giving back 300USD of the income to other projects in the area, such as micro-credits.
Blanca Nella and her son are full of hope for Daniel Ortega's programs
A Sandinista pig
Blanca Nella is a poor woman. She lives on the island Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua in the Central-American country of the same name.
In this country, the socialist Nationalist Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) came to power through a revolution in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, the country had to fight counterrevolutionary insurgencies financed by the Unites States with the help of Cuba and Eastern Europe. At the national elections in 1990, the Sandinistas lost, and for sixteen years the country was ruled by three neo-liberal governments, until the FSLN won the presidential elections in the fall of 2006. Daniel Ortega, who was elected president once already during 1984–90, now rules the country.
This is the story of a person who witnesses these times.
Nella would like to receive a pig from the government, but unfortunately she doesn't have enough land to grow the food for it. Now that Ortega is president, there is such a program, called ‘zero hunger’.
The program is directed towards women and consists of a cow, a pig, a rooster, five hens, the building of the housing for cow and pig, seeds and food for the first few months as well as training in how to treat the animals. Altogether this is supposed to have a value of 1,500USD and the producer agrees on giving back 300USD of the income to other projects in the area, such as micro-credits.
Blanca Nella and her son are full of hope for Daniel Ortega's programs
This is a campaign I started a little over a month ago. And yes, I happened to take the initiative, but the fact that the name wasn't very well chosen was something many people had been thinking about before. Basically, it's this Danish company that's taking over a piece of property that had belonged to the army previously and builds a Danish school on it for 70 million Euros, and everybody gets all excited about how great they are. The problem is just that the company doing it is the shipping giant MAERSK and it's named after their founder Arnold Peter Møller, who died in the 1960s. Now this guy and this company happen to have a history on earning their money on wars (selling arms to the Nazis and earning high profits on services to the Pentagon in connection with the Iraq war) and using union busting tactics against their workers.
The A.P.Møller-school of today might be the Gilberto-Soto-school of tomorrow.
Just in terms of numbers If they were to pay the same tax percentages for their oil exploration in Denmark to the Danish government as private companies have to pay to the Norwegian government, that would amount to 6 Billion Euros more in tax income from today until 2045. But the queen, and the Danish minister of education thank them so much for giving 70 million!
When I first wrote this, I wasn't aware of several points that appear in the final version. That is because the first ten people signing it had a say in the contents of it, and several of them added things I didn't have a clue of.
Arnold Peter Møller -- weapon producer for the Nazis -- is now being honored with a school named after him.
The reaction in the borderland has been like it would be anywhere in Soviet Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall: the newspaper Flensborg Avis refused to print it with the argument that the fond paying for the school had been "giving a lot of money to Southern Schleswig in the last couple of years". Other people employed by the Danish institutions either were told that they could not sign such a thing or they were afraid of signing it due to past reaction from the system. The text was allegedly also spread in the intranet of the teachers down there. One guy went as far as calling me six times on my Nicaraguan cell phone and some 20-30 people sent me hate mails of various kinds. A reporter from Flensborg Avis went on and on in Facebook forums, trying to find some or other problem with the text. Unfortunately for him, he just revealed thereby that his investigative skills weren't all that developed.
Still, despite some (unfortunately very uninformed) criticism I and we received so far, I am sure that in a few decades the call will come to fruition in some form or another. Here you can read it in four languages:
The A.P.Møller-school of today might be the Gilberto-Soto-school of tomorrow.
Just in terms of numbers If they were to pay the same tax percentages for their oil exploration in Denmark to the Danish government as private companies have to pay to the Norwegian government, that would amount to 6 Billion Euros more in tax income from today until 2045. But the queen, and the Danish minister of education thank them so much for giving 70 million!
When I first wrote this, I wasn't aware of several points that appear in the final version. That is because the first ten people signing it had a say in the contents of it, and several of them added things I didn't have a clue of.
Arnold Peter Møller -- weapon producer for the Nazis -- is now being honored with a school named after him.
The reaction in the borderland has been like it would be anywhere in Soviet Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall: the newspaper Flensborg Avis refused to print it with the argument that the fond paying for the school had been "giving a lot of money to Southern Schleswig in the last couple of years". Other people employed by the Danish institutions either were told that they could not sign such a thing or they were afraid of signing it due to past reaction from the system. The text was allegedly also spread in the intranet of the teachers down there. One guy went as far as calling me six times on my Nicaraguan cell phone and some 20-30 people sent me hate mails of various kinds. A reporter from Flensborg Avis went on and on in Facebook forums, trying to find some or other problem with the text. Unfortunately for him, he just revealed thereby that his investigative skills weren't all that developed.
Still, despite some (unfortunately very uninformed) criticism I and we received so far, I am sure that in a few decades the call will come to fruition in some form or another. Here you can read it in four languages:
