Waltz with Bashir

Last night we viewed this animation documentary in Rialto, a cosy and pleasant cinema in our neighbourhood. I can be short: Waltz with Bashir is impressive. The combination of documentary and animation is a very effective way to visualize personal experiences, in this case in war situations. The film is situated in Libanon. Although it shows more about Israel and its country’s politics in the 80’s.

Walz with Bahir tells the story through the eyes of young soldiers.  A former army friend tells Ari Folman about his recurrent nightmare in which he again is a soldier in the Israeli army.  They were both 19 years when they witnessed a mass killing in the Libanese refugee camps Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.  In a combination of comics and videogames the films shows the madness and confusion of the war. When you are in the opportunity; go and see this film. Other people will have to do with the beautiful website: Waltz with Bashir.

Barcamp Bishkek August 08

On You Tube you can find several short scenes for example of the opening of Barcamp Bishkek, photo’s and reports of bloggers.

The Asus EEE PC

I bought this Asus two weeks ago in NYC. It weights less than a kilo. In the hotel room this cute notebook was on line in about five minutes. At home it takes more of an effort. Could be the Linux software, concluded the XS4ALL helpdesk: ‘Better replace it by MS Windows’. That would be a downer. I will do some research on this first.

heavy Google user

Vrij Nederland, a prominent Dutch opinion magazine, published an interview with Jeroen van de Wiel. (16 Febr. 2007) This heavy Google user claims to be a Google watcher. He did built, for example, a ‘Google Startpagina’. Contrary to the people behind googlewatch.org, Van de Wiel is not a conspiracy thinker. He rather sticks to the facts, he says.

In the interview Van de Wiel minimized issues like censorship and privacy. Issues that were heavily debated when Google entered the Chinese market in 2005 and seemed to contradict its credo ‘Don’t be evil’. Did the interviewer know of this ‘China syndrome’, as David Vise named it in his book The Google Story?

The interview closes with: `Ach, er zijn meer regeringen die filteren welke informatie via internet beschikbaar is. (..) Maar dat kan je Google toch niet kwalijk nemen? Google is alleen doorgeefluik van meningen. Het heeft zelf geen mening’. So he concludes with stating Google only transfers opinions, it has no opinion of its own.

To end an interview with a statement like this, is lazy journalism. It really is a pity that a critical magazine like Vrij Nederland can not report in a better informed way about internet, a medium hardly to be called new anymore.

Fill the Gap-5

Hivos and IICD organized for the fifth time Fill the gap, a network meeting concerning for everyone accessible information society. A society in which an important role has been put aside for information and communication technology (ICT) the gap between poor and to stop richly. This time we met in De Balie, in Amsterdam.

Some digital follow ups:

A photo report (Dutch) on the website Afrika Nieuws

A post on the blog (Eng) of Ethan Zuckerman

Another blog post (Eng) by Jonathan Marks

An article (Dutch) on the OneWorld site

A literature list (Eng) of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam