I better do not mention that at the immigration control. My iPod mini seems to have a rather ahistoric view on partition: It seems to assume that it never happened, instead all of India became Pakistan. consequently there is no Indian Standard Time option in the ‘change time zone’ menu (closest thing is indeed Karachi time). on the other hand this could also be a well deserved punishment for having a half hour time offset to almost all the rest of the world and thus be without any geo-poitical implications but try to explain this to the RSS… (no not the feed stupid!)

So i am back in Europe for four days and today the whole concept of Europe (and its sick permutations) has been omnipresent wherever i went. In the afternoon i went to the dutch pre WSIS event ‘fill the gap 3’ organized by a couple of Dutch development NGOs in an apparent attempt to get some kind of public backing for their presence at the upcoming summit in Tunis. The whole event was dominated by a discussion around ICT, human rights and related to that the fact that the summit will take place in a country with a rather poor human rights record. Consequently one of the questions posed to the members of the final panel was something to the extend of if Europeans can demand compliance with human rights from developing countries at a time when human rights are curtailed in the same European countries.

To illustrate this the moderator pointed at the data-retention directive, that the EU council wants to get adopted in order to more effectively combat terrorism. Now is respect the work edri and its members are doing to fight this (and i am both donor to bits of freedom and a signatory of the petition against this stupid piece of legislation) but this is hardly the most drastic human rights violation (if at all) that Europe is capable of. It is something that mainly effects european citizens who at least on paper can influence this through democratic processes (and lets not forget that most people are stupid or paranoid (or both) enough to find this a perfectly fine instrument in the ‘global war on terror’).

Real human rights violation look a lot different if you ask me. How about looking up people who have done nothing wrong that coming to europe in fire unsafe cells and the threaten to shoot them when the express the desire to help their co-detainees who are burning to death in their looked cells, as reported in yesterdays volkskrant:

“We wanted to save others, but we were not permitted to do so. They pulled out guns and pointed them at us” said Afghan Momen Nouri, who had been released from cell 8 in wing K. “I heard ‘Help, Help’! A policeman replied : ‘I shoot you’.” “Then we were sitting in wing J and six or seven policemen arrived, who pointed guns at us, handcuffed us and locked us up in a cage”, said Algerian Mohammed Tahir from cell 2 in wing K. “The fire came nearer and nearer, and we heard screaming and yelling.” […] A fireman who arrived at the shift change around six o’clock, couldn’t believe his eyes. “There was a fascist atmosphere. Heavily armed men surrounded the poor bastards. It looked like Guantanamo Bay.”

Or even more cowardly getting so-called safe third countries so far that their security forces are willing to shoot people who are desperately trying to enter europe in the back. apparently this is more or less a prerequisite to receive European development help or to become a member of the European union (as seen in a less publicized incident involving turkish forces).

And then i am not even talking about yesterdays washington post report that claims that eastern European countries allow the CIA to run sekr!t torture prisons for ’terrorists’ on their soil.

Data retention might be a troublesome and stupid thing (and during the discussion someone made the very valid point that once the necessary software is written it will probably find its best customers in authoritarian regimes outside of the Europe) but it hardly is the most drastic human rights violation going on in Europe right now.

But back to the beginning of the post. The other thing that made me think of europe was the premiere of the theater piece Europe an alien by andcompany&co in the gasthuis in Amsterdam. the piece itself is quite interesting (although the first half could be a bit more dense or faster or both if you ask me) and the sound-design is really amazing (it is still running on friday and saturday night) but more importantly it made me remember a text the ‘temporary association everyone is an expert’ published as a call to the noborder camp in Strasbourg back in 2002: ‘Let’s talk about Europe’

I still think that this is one of the best texts that we have ever published and given the situation described above it has lost none of its importance.

…i want to be buried here:

Walked past the catholic (this might constitute a ideological problem) graveyard on Consolação today and to my immense joy realized the paranoid citizens of this fine city have had the ingenious idea to put razor wire on top of the sky blue walls that surround it. Until now i have never really known where i would want to be buried but now i am sure (other places i have briefly considered can be seen here and here). I will feel much safer here than on any other graveyard once i am dead.

Also i feel a bit sad that i have to leave as well. São Paulo has been really great. I must come here more often. I spend the last 2 hours at an amazing place: Prestes Maia 911. it is 23 story building in downtown that has been squatted by 458 families associated with the roofless movement (they do not say homeless because what they are missing is a roof or a dwelling and not a home with all its non material implications). It is a very organized place with an incredibly warm and friendly atmosphere. In fact it is the only squat i have ever been to that smells good (i was there around dinner time and the smell of all the different families cooking is absolutely mouth watering. The families live in separate little rooms that are made from wood and other discarded materials. in a way it is pretty much 23 favelas (by lack of a better word for collections of tiny makeshift housing units) stacked on top of each other. The whole place embodies the anarchic, organic chaos of the city on a miniature scale. Being there and talking to some of the inhabitants has been quite an experience. unfortunately it looks like the place is going to be evicted pretty soon.

Thanks to everybody who invited me into their ‘apartments’ and thanks to Fabiene for taking me there.

Unlike everything else on this pages this image is licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons attribution non commercial license. I have always found the non-comercial licenses slightly stupid as the whole concept is incredibly difficult to define (but we are working on it). Now i wonder what the maker of this mini-dv camcorder had in mind when they slapped this sticker on it. and how in hell are they going to enforce this? (message to panasonic the camera in question is used by a non-profit operation). And since when is it possible to restrict the use of tangible things of technology after it has been sold? i always thought this was a more or less exclusive privilege that Hollywood imagines in it’s wet dreams.

For some reason the hotel staff got the reservation a bit wrong and though that Monica, Vishwas and me are all called monica. at least they started addressing us like this when we checked in yesterday night. This already reminded me of the penguins in madagascar, but things got even more Madagascar-like a bit later. We had inquired about a japanese restaurant that would be open on a sunday night (which given how serious they take their sundays here is a bit of a difficult thing to find) which resulted in one of the ladies from the reception volunteering to walk us to one near Avenida Paulista that according to a friend of hers would be definitely open.

Now it is quite a trip to go from downtown to Paulista by subway (it involves changing lines twice) and a bit strange to be accompanied by someone from your hotel reception on high heels who is apparently eager to brush up her english by chatting to us. As one could have predicted the restaurant was closed and by the time we got back (t(stay) = 0 in this case but the rest of the equation being confirmed once more due to the fact that we took a cab on the way back) even the most reliable downtown restaurants were closed as well so we ended up in the hotel restaurant which managed to makes us wait for pasta for about one and a half hours. The whole hotel staff definitely resembles the slightly evil madagascar penguins a lot:

Completely unrelated i was wondering the other day if the vicious character of the penguins in madagascar is part of a secret plot by hollywood to discredit tux

Right now I am at the submidialogia event in Campinas organized as part of the Waag Sarai Exchange Platform on the campus of the local university Unicamp. It is a pretty impressive gathering of all sorts of Brazilian media / open access practitioners ranging from free radio activists to government officials involved in the digital culture projects the Brazilian government is deploying throughout this vast country. Parts of the event are streamd live although without the marvelous simultaneous translation services by lots of volunteers the Portuguese only stream will probably be pretty much useless for most readers of this post.

The place where Unicamp is located – Barão Geraldo – is a bit surreal. It is a pretty wealthy settlement that reminds me a lot of California. Accordingly the hotel where some of the participants are staying is called Funcamp:

Update (26 feb 2006): A short report about the conference is available on the exchange platform blog.

I have mentioned it before, but the thing that impressed me the most so far is the facts that people actually travel by helicopter within the city. There are lots of heli-pads on buildings in the city and if you find yourself placed high enough to oversee a bit of the city you actually see helicopters taking of somewhere and landing elsewhere on a heli-pad. Of course this is kind of sick (someone told me that you can actually commute by helicopter from the north-zone to downtown for R$ 5000 per month (the minimum income is something like R$ 500)) but it is also poetic in al its shabby futuristic-scenarions-have-come-true glory.

I guess the bigger a city becomes the harder the kids are forced to develop some kind of group identity. São Paulo with it’s 18 million inhabitants seems to be a pretty good example. The kids seem to be much more devoted to individual youth cultures than in most European cities. This is pretty much obvious on the streets or on the subway but the prime spot to witness this is the rock-gallery in downtown. It is a multiple story shopping gallery from the 70ties (or so) that neatly sorts youth cultures per floor:

In the basement you have shops that carter to afro /reggae clientele, the ground floor is all about hip-hop/streatwear, the 1st floor is suddenly all gothic/dark metal the 2nd floor is alternative (with the humming of tattoo needles echoing throughout the space) while the 3rd floor caters to yet some other variant of rock music (and for some reason i cant figure out the 4th floor is all occupied by silk screen printing shops).

Every floor covers all your youth cultural needs: there are clothing stores, shoe stores, accessories stores and record stores (plus tattoo & piercing parlors where the culture requires it) all of them exist at least in threefold and all are selling the same stuff. It is quite an experience to climb the stairs from one level to the next and travel through these different universes of style. As the whole thing has a very 90s feeling it really feels like a living museum of youth cultures. The only thing they should change is to replace the labels on the buttons in the elevator. instead of having ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’ …. they should have signs saying ‘hip-hop’, ‘gothic’, ‘alternative’.

One little gem from one of the shops on the ground floor is this package of nike wristbands with the word original written in clumsy handwriting by the owner. Apparently the shop is selling so much fake stuff that the fact that these are indeed originals has to be communicated to the clients.

Both time & distance seem to have rather flexible meanings over here. Now after 5 days i think i have found the formular for calculating the total length of a trip

T(total) = T(waiting) + (T(travel) x 3) + T(travel) + T(stay)

where:

T(waiting) => 20min AND = T(travel) = the actual travel time on the shortest route from A to B

T(stay) = the time spend at the destination

of course the most intresting thing is the ‘(T(travel) x 3) + T(travel)‘ part of the equation. this is based on corroborating evidence gathered while going with Alexandre from the hotel to the Berlin bar and back (way out 30min way back 10min both in light traffic) and with felipe to the metareciclagem center in Santo Andre (way out 90min way back 30min both in medium traffic). somehow the city seems to be extremely difficult to navigate outward bound while inbound traffic is virtually sucked towarads the center.

We went on top of the Edificio Italia building yesterday afternoon. It is one of the tallest buildings in the city and located smack in the middle of it. They have a ridiculously overpriced executive bar on the 41st floor with the worst piano player i ever had to listen to. The whole thing feels distinctly 80-ties, but if you want to have access to the outside gallery you have to order drinks in this bar.

The view from the bar an the gallery is absolutely breathtaking. Tthe Sao Paulo metropolitan agglomeration extends to the horizon (and probably beyond) in all four direction. The city seen from above is a collection of high rises of all shades of gray all states of decay and pretty much any architectural style imaginable. extremely beautiful if you ask me.

Being in a cities of this size always make me lament the fact that i was raised in a provincial nest where you could cycle to the country side in 5 minutes and to the ‘city center’ in another 15. places like that should be called what they are: villages. That place also prides itself in having the largest inside the city forest in germany which is even more stupid. since when does a forest belong into a city? If you ask me people should either live in places that are so big that you cant see the end of it when you are standing on a 45-story building in the middle of it or they should live in villages and raise cows and chickens. Most stupid thing is this idea of living in the green and commuting into the city to work at the sparkasse or some similar place every day.