Johannes Wilm - a blog on social science, activism, politics, programming, etc.

Johannes Wilm

Author: johanneswilm

  • shoot at sight?

    OK, so everybody must have heard about Katrina and the lootings in New Orelans, that were connected with it by now.

    However, it seems that the news picture is differing quite a bit depending on where on the planet you are. I first encountered this when I send a mail to a bunch of US Americans about my analysis of the situation, in which I was referring to the shoot-at-sight orders, that I had heard had been issued to the National Guard by Democratic governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana. The replies I got from some, made me dig further into the difference of the news picture in the US and the rest of the world.
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  • activism for the sake of itself

    The mobilization for September 3rd (Oslo, but Trondheim’s site is better) is about to come to an end. That is pretty much the end of the election campaign for me for this time. With the peace group we had one last stunt yesterday, which was sort of co-ordinated with activists in Germany and Copenhagen, but we still haven’t seen any pictures of their actions.

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  • The tent thing…

    went great! We were the stars out there, and won most of the stuff we had hoped for. The most important thing was probably a resolution condeming the sitting government and their cuts on student financing. Now we thought we could get the social democrats to agree on condeming the government, but then not to agree with our progressive demands. Fortunately, we got it almost all through – although they cut our demands for a 100% and no loan for students to a demand of 60% stipend and 40% loan. See here, here and here (all Norwegian).

  • Douglas calling

    Ok, so we had one last day of sumemr today, so I used the chance to consume the last soft ice this summer. But now we’re going for the cold and dark time of the year… and Douglas is calling.
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  • fall…

    hmm, I worte earlier this summer that my Norwegian sumemr would be over. While that turned out not quite to be the case back then, by now it definitely has. While one could walk aorund with just a T and a pair of short as recent as last week end and be completely comfortable, at this time, wearing short sleeves and no jacket is probably more something of a statement, or a sign of a hope for summer to return once more, rather than appropriate clothing.

    But what will fall bring? Well, elections, both here and in Germany. But elections and politics are not everything. I wonder what more, other than rain, I can expect coming up. And how is one to make fall a tiem to look forward to?
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  • going camping…

    Ok, so now at semester start there is this student parlament thing comming up. First thing is a stay at a hotel to decide upon a paper that, quite frankly, does not really have all that much contents, and more importantly, really won’t have much of any effect. Now for that, they’re planning on spending the weekend at a hotel with whirl and swimming pool outside of town – listening to speeches of themselves and various other people that are important enough to wear ties. And they’re all really concerned about it all working out well, and everybody being friend across political fractions etc.; it’s ridiculous.
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  • Douglas Dispatch

    Ever been bothered by your local “yellow press” – just making headlines out of nothing? Well, meet the Douglas Dispatch, where everything is a bit different. It’s the newspaper of the 12000-people village I did my field work on. It’s right in the border to Mexico, and it’s brand mark is really that it’s just filled with crime of any sort imaginable (much of it though ‘white crimes’ or within families). Now most of the people there are really nice, and they have this common project of making Douglas look really nice. That is why the top story of the Dispatch today is:

    Wal-Mart has donated a Pioneer HDTV Projection Monitor television set to the Southeast Arizona Medical Center to be used as a prize at their Silent Auction to be held October 22 at Club 3000. […]

    Then, under that, with small types you can find the following story (on the web page as a link)…

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  • oil profits

    Want to know a secret about me that even I had no clue of? I got a tip on this comment on Indymedia:

    Det går rykter på børsen om at økonomiansvarlig i Blindern Fred og Johannes Wilm har lånt og solgt DNO aksjer (shortet) for å proffitere økonomisk på offensiven mot det irakiske folk.

    (ENG: there are rumours on the stock market that the economically responsibel in the Blindern Fred (name of organization) and Johannes Wilm have been borrowing and sold DNO shares (shorting) in order to profit economically on the offensive against the Iraqi people.)

    It’s several months old, but I only got tipped on it today. Det norske Oljeselskap (DNO) was the first Norwegian company that went into Iraq publically this spring. The thing is that it was us from Blindern Fred that occupied their office after that, and a few days later it was also us who revealed that a whole range of other companies had chosen to attend a meeting by the Norwegian foreign ministery on “possibilities on investing in Iraq” – amongst them such companies as Hydro and Statoil.

    I guess that makes some of those questions on why we in Blindern Fred “are so rich”, that I got this spring explainable…

  • reforming the time systems?

    In these times of constant reform, one might wonder we nobody seems to try to reform the time system that we have had for seemingly ever. And now I’m not talking about how the various units are divided up, but rather the fact that they are divided up at all – or at least that they are divided up in a very static and regular manner. Now I have thought of two different time systems that we could employ: the people-centered time system (PCTS)and the capitalism friendly time system (CFTS).
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  • German elections and Iran

    The NY Times talks
    about Schröder saying that there will be no military intervention with
    German participation:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/16/international/europe/16germany.html?hp .

    The most important part in the article though is what it doesn’t mention:
    all parties currently in parliament, including the opposition, say that
    they rule out the military option in the case of Iran. I can’t find this
    anywhere in the international press, but here it is in Der Spiegel:

    http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,369874,00.html .