2012 - "I got out of bed for this?"

copyright @Wacondah - photo taken in Dakar, Senegal, December 2011


"I got out of bed for this?"

Serendipity. a field visit to a Dakar slum 3 weeks ago.
This young girl was carrying water from a standpipe.
I felt rather uneasy, as an hour later we were suppose to meet up with the Minister of Water, so we were quite overdressed to go on a field visit.
But someone needs to take those pictures, right?
And someone needs to publish them, comment them.
And before you publish, you review, and that's when I stumbled on this great slogan....

When you look into these kids' eyes,
unfathomable as they are in their beauty.
You understand once again what our job is all about.

I wish her, and all of you and your loved ones, that in 2012
the slogan on this girl's shirt may just reveal itself a little bit more untrue.

Count your blessings. Happy New Year

Field Visit to Senegal: we can't facebook our way out of the statusquo (N.Stephenson)

 

Back from a field visit to Dakar, Senegal.
It is where you meet the woman who carry water.
The girls in the slums, the daily chores.
Where the "borne fontainier" acts like a grandfatherly garden,
and where in spite of gross inhumanity, kids still smile.
And where, in spite of gross adversity, people still do a good, an excellent job.

In Dakar also the island of "La Gorée", as the Dutch GoedRaad was named.
Witness to centuries of exploitation, of "la Traîte", of the inhuman slave trade.
Where do we stand nowadays?

Are we better off, in terms of gross humanity happiness index?
An answer can only be speculative this weekend, given the failing of the COP17 in Durban,
the complete lock-out of the UK from an ever-advancing European lifeboat project.
It seems that cynism, egoïsm, speculation are driving History, just like 400 years ago in Gorée.


Reading: "Spartan", and getting pschyched for Stephenson's Reamde
Viewing: Contagion
Listening to: Gabriël Rios Compilation CD: thank you for putting "Ausencia" on it! What a track, what a vibe!
Thinking: we can't facebook our way out of the statusquo (N.Stephenson)
Travelling: Maastricht, Dakar, Paris and beyond the horizon maybe Zürs, Vegas, Marseille etc...

A new Hope?

author Neal Stephenson nails it (once again)

When he was asked, toward the end of lunch, where he thought computing might be headed, he paused to rephrase the question. “I’ll tell you what I’d like to see happen,” he said, and began discussing what the future was supposed to have looked like, back in his 1960s childhood. He ticked off the tropes of what he called “techno-optimistic science fiction,” including flying cars and jetpacks. And then computers went from being things that filled a room to things that could fit on a desk, and the economy and industries changed. “The kinds of super-bright, hardworking geeky people who, 50 years ago, would have been building moon rockets or hydrogen bombs or what have you have ended up working in the computer industry, doing jobs that in many cases seem kind of ignominious by comparison.”

“What I’m kind of hoping is that this is just kind of a pause, while we assimilate this gigantic new thing, ubiquitous computing and the Internet. And that at some point we’ll turn around and say, ‘Well, that was interesting — we have a whole set of new tools and capabilities that we didn’t have before the whole computer/Internet thing came along.’ ”

He said people should say, “Now let’s get back to work doing interesting and useful things.”

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/out-of-neal-stephensons-imagination-came-a-new-online-world.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&adxnnlx=1323183633-0j5l3nPjZr4rnCaXDNHXcA

Speaking in Forked Tongues

De betogingen van vandaag zijn een schande,
de vakbonden brengen het land ter rande.
Wil men echt de toekomst veilig stellen,
dat zullen zij allen mee de centen moeten tellen.

Waar eendracht en hoop en gezonde duurzaamheid gelden
hoeven dramatische acties niet te velde.
De vakverbanden dienen enkel de eigen zaak
meer nog, zij vergeten maar al te vaak

dat zij in ons model véél te véél
in tel genomen worden, méér dan het geheel
van arme dwazen zoals u en ik
die zich verslikken in de arithmetiek.

Voorwaar ik zeg, sta op, gij burger
kies voor vooruitgang en aanpassing
voor een nieuw club'ke van samenzang
en laat de bonden voor wat ze zijn
een overblijfsel uit 19eeuws navelstarend gezwijm.

-----

Wist u
dat in België 3,4 miljoen "gesyndiceerden" rondlopen, op een bevoling van 11.
Vergelijk dat met 1,5 lidkaarten in Frankrijk of 6,5 in de VSA.
Dan begrijpt u direct
- waarom Cortebeeck bestuurder is in de overkoepelende internationales
- waarom men hier geen komaf kan maken met een ziek-makend, verstard sociaal overlegmodel.

3,5 miljoen burgers die altijd maar weer voor het eigen groot gelijk stemmen,
dat is een democratisch deficit,
want iedereen weet, dat vakbonden NIET opkomen voor de gewone mens,
maar enkel voor hun vetpotten, hun para-statale structuren, hun "perks", hun "ledenbestand" en niet voor de maatschappij staan.
De illusie die naar voor geschoven wordt, en gekwalificeerd als het "Middenveld", is een verzuiling van de democratie, gericht op conservatisme, op het in stand houden van bepaalde verhoudingen.

Wil men in dit land écht vooruitgang boeken, dan moeten de grondbeginselen van ons solidair model op een nieuwe leest geschoeid. Het is voor mij, en mijn kinderen, onbetaalbaar geworden om die parasitaire gedragingen te dulden.