… who just gave an interview on BBC world justifying (in the standard language of contemporary occupiers – ‘unavoidable collateral damage’, ‘regrettable loss of innocent lives’, ‘doing the uttermost best to avoid unnecessary suffering of the population’, ‘the terrorists are using women and children as human shields’, etc…) the controversial presence of Ethiopian troops in Somalia. At some point of the interview he pointed out that…

we have not gone into Somalia to drink milk but ready to make the ultimate sacrifice to preserve peace [emphasis mine]

for some reason i can really relate to this. Having this particular expression makes the Ethiopians much more sympathetic to me (plus, of course their food is much more imaginative than Iranian food).

Patrice has posted an extensvie piece to the nettime-l mailing list that describes a rather bizarre legal dispute between an Indian textile manufacturing company and two Dutch internet service providers (one of them being my own). It comes down to the Indian company arguing that hosting websites that criticize labor conditions in their manufacturing plants constitutes an ‘international criminal conspiracy’:

Now eight Dutch citizens, staff persons and directors of the [ISPs], are indicted and required to appear in person before court in India under a mendacious, but cleverly constructed ‘cascade’ of counts, starting with libel and diffamation, escalating into racism/xenophobia carried on by means of ‘cybercrime’, and culminating in an alleged “international criminal conspiracy”. The latter indictment constitutes an extraditable offense in the sense of international agreements on judicial co-operation between democratic, ‘rule of law’ states. The acting judge in Bangalore now needs only to sign an international arrest warrant for the real risk of deportation and delivery of these eight accused into an Indian remand jail to become effective. Though the Dutch minister of justice still would have the last word […]

Even better, it seems that the Government of India, is backing this rather ridiculous position and has discovered that such activism constitutes a Non-Tariff Trade Barrier:

This slightly out-of-control evolution of what would be in itself a fairly routinous incident in to-day’s globalised, highly competitive economy, might be taken as emblematic for the predicament into which the ongoing trend to lower procurement costs, outsource and delocalise industrial production has landed us. […] India’s minister of commerce, Shri Kamal Nath, has let it known that criticism of the modus operandi of the Indian textile export industry amounts to ‘hidden protectionism’ by parties unhappy with India’s competitive provess and resenting the consequent delocalisation of their own manufacturing base, theoretising a fresh form of NTBtIT (Non Tariff Barrier to International Trade in WTO-GATTese) in the same breath.

The entire text is available at the (slightly old fashioned) nettime-l mailing list archive.

After being in Iran for a week one of the biggest dissapointments so far (right after the food, which is the most unimaginative i have come across so far) is the fact that they seem to have banned ghalyun smoking in most places outside of Teheran. If you belive the daily star (which of course would be a foolish thing to do) this is part of the ‘toughest moral crackdown in years’ which is otherwise fairly invisible (at least to my eyes).

When we were looking for a tea house to have a smoke in Isfahan a couple of days ago we actually got a slightly different explanation: It seems like the governemnt (or the ayatollahs, or whoever runs this country) decided that young girls where smoking too much, to the extend of becoming addicted to smoking ghalyun/argileh (I have heard this concern in other middle eastern countries before). Therefore the wise rulers decided to ban women from smoking in tea houses which seems to have resulted in the girls rightfully pointing out that it was unfair that men were continued to be allowed to smoke in the tea houses. This in turn seems to have resulted in the tea houses being closed altogether (apart from Tehran), and now eveybody smokes at home or in the park or whereever one decides to have a picknic (which seems to be one of the favorite passtimes of the locals here, as long the picnic place is less than ten meters away from a mayor highway and less than 1 meter away form their own car)

This whole situation severly limits your options to pass time in the evening, which now basically consist of eating (unimaginative) or drinking tea and reading (which is actually a fairly relaxing way to spend a vacation).

Yet another (fairly ironic) proof of the fact that western societies are dependent on undocumented migrant labour (while at the same time everybody is busy pretending that it makes sense to keep migrants out, to the extent that we make it more or less deadly to enter Europe and the US): It seems that a detention center in Texas where undocumented noncriminal immigrant families are imprisoned because of their undocumented status has employed undocumented migrant workers as prison guards:

“The dirty little secret is out: The T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center, a detention facility for immigrant families in Taylor, has employed undocumented workers, as well as contractors with criminal records. The revelation has put Williamson County, which administers the center for owner-operator Corrections Corporation of America, in an embarrassing legal bind.”

via: State of Opportunity, original austin cronicle article here.

This website is (also) being blocked by the mindless web-content filter of the wireless network at einstein kaffee in Berlin.

So the Holland Herald (KLM’s in-flight magazine) runs a story about chess boxing, which is you guessed it a combination of chess and boxing. according to the article a match of chess boxing consists of alternating rounds of chess (4 minutes each) and boxing (2 minutes each). You can win by either checkmate or knockout. The game is inspired by Enki Bilal’s (who i have covered here before) 1992 comic book Froid Équateur and was apparently brought to the real world by some Dutchman (the reason why it is in the HH) who promptly became the first world champion in chess boxing.

Now unfortunately the photos in the holland herald do not even come close to Bilal’s imagination and i would guess that chess boxing is a pretty sad affair. However there is a little box next to the article that really triggers my imagination:

What a wonderfully whacky scenario: a riot police officer called frank “anti terror” stoldt fighting for the chess boxing world title to the tunes of junkie-xl…

Since i am going to iran in less than two weeks i thought it might be useful to go take the sharia exam at paradiso tonight. but as i was kind of late, i did not get a chance to participate (no more voting machines). the whole thing was about screening recordings of questions posed to TV imams (like Yusuf al-Qaradawi) who have shows on arabic TV stations such as Al Jazeera. After a questions was shown you would be given three possible answers and had to decide which of the three answers would be given by the imam (typical questions are something like ‘is it allowed to kiss my husband while i am fasting?’ with ‘yes, the prophet did this himself’, ‘no, humans are too easily tempted for more intimate conduct’ and ‘yes, but only on the cheek’ as possible answers’).

Both questions and answers were highly entertaining and it is hilarious to see how blunt these TV imams are: generally someone would pose questions in third person (‘my friend has not been doing his prayers since….’) and the imam or TV anchor person would respond by directly addressing the caller (‘so you have not been doing your prayers…’).

After the show there was the possibility to pose questions to 4 locals imams which made me go and ask 2 of them if downloading/copying things from the internet is considered equally bad as stealing (which clearly is considered to be haram). the first imam (Yassin el Forkani) expressed the opinion that this can only be considered stealing if it is done while there are other ways to obtain the work that do respect the interest of the author to get paid (e.g if i am downloading a film that is not available legally, it is ok, even if the film is protected by copyright). guess this means that there would be no orphan works problematic under sharia law.

Now unfortunately the other imam was of a slightly different opinion, as according to him downloading/copying is haram if it violates other peoples copyright regardless if there is actual harm being done to them. Sounds a bit strange to me to make the interpretation of the sharia depended on local copyright legislation, but then the guy works as imam for the Dutch prison service so i guess he values local law a bit more than your average imam. Guess i will stick with the first interpretation for now…

Finally managed to source a copy of Beaufort (בופור) with english subtitles yesterday. Had been waiting to find a version that i could understand for a while and it was definitely worth the wait.

Beaufort tells the story of the last IDF unit occupying Beaufort castle in Southern Lebanon in the days before the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon in the spring of 2000. It is one of the most impressive war movies i have seen in a while, also because it is the only war movie that i remember that does not show ‘the enemy’ (in this case the enemy is Hizbullah) at all. This seems to confuse some people a great deal, but i think it worked very well. As a whole, the movie does not really take a position on the israeli occupation policy but generally portrays the situation as fucked up and senseless, which works pretty well for me (plus i somehow like the look of the Mitznefet (a.k.a clown’s hats) that the IDF soldiers are wearing most of the time (picture here)).

When i was in Lebanon in May 2005 (exactly 5 years after the liberation of the south by Hizbullah) we went to visit Beaufort Castle (which apparently exists since roman times, but in its current incarnation is a crusaders castle). It occupies an amazing location, overlooking the southern end of the Biqa’a valley (to the North), the Golan heights (to the East), the South Lebanese Mediterranean coastline (to the West) and the north of Israel (to the South). According to the official beaufort movie website, it also overlooks Damascus but that is pretty much impossible if you ask me.

There is one particular exchange in in the movie that made me think back to our visit to Beaufort a lot. it is an exchange between Liraz, the young outpost commander and an unnamed combat engineer, who has just been send in to blow up the outpost so it won’t be of use to Hizbullah after the departure of the IDF:

Combat engineer: It will be quite a job blowing all of this up Liraz: I just can’t imagine it. Combat engineer: What is the problem? Imagine a mountain with no outpost Liraz: can’t Combat engineer: You got a girlfriend? Liraz: Why? Combat engineer: Answer me, i asked a simple question Liraz: Yes i do Combat engineer: Imagine yourself with her. Here on the mountain, sunset, the most amazing landscape on earth. You are holding her hand, walking around with her, showing her: here was ‘green’, the observation post, here was the gate. She looks around and all she sees is nature, a tourist attraction, no sign of any of this, paradise. Liraz: I just can’t picture this. Combat engineer: It will come, don’t worry…

Now the irony is that these days the place looks pretty much the way that the combat engineer described it (although there are some remains of the outpost, that serve as some kind of memorial of the Israeli occupation) but that a real-life Liraz and his girlfriend will probably never have the opportunity to go there in their lifetime as the IDF has caused way too much harm in Southern Lebanon for any Israeli to be welcome there any time soon…

From the BBC: Monkeys kill Delhi deputy mayor – The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi died on Sunday after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys.

Spotted on the arm of some lost Italian lady who strolled into the opening of the video vortex exhibition at montevideo inquiring for directions to envy. The tiles are almost the same as the ones of the mah-jong set i own:

makes me slightly envious.