Con­duc­ted cul­tural raids on inner-city stores by demand­ing to know whether the clothes I was buying were made in sweat­shops, and asking for the com­pany’s work­place guidelines. I know they were and that I’m a hypo­crite, but right now, I’m low on time and money. Haul: Bonds under­wear, 100% cotton, made in China; black mole­skin bootcut jeans, 96% cotton, 4% elastane (and there­fore made by the evil Dupont) made in China; T‑shirt with Malcom X on it, slogan “the revolu­tion will not be tele­vised”, 100% cotton, made in India. Some­how this last is the truly hypo­crit­ical one: sweat­shop work­ers forced to sew a T that tells them that. The tele­vi­sion is not inter­ested in their suf­fer­ing either. This has re-ignited my resolve to *do* some­thing about this. News at 10.

Inspir­ing docu-music video on Manu Chao on sbs. What an incred­ible poet-soul. Polit­ics and sass. Dub meets salsa with folk res­ist­ance on top. ”What they say is all a lie. The moon will rise again.”

Saw on the SBS news that Ukraine won the Euro­vi­sion song con­test. Had a weird feel­ing of “hey, those are my folks’. Had to watch it then (had no inten­tion to before that; thank­fully Ruslana from Ukraine came on in the first hour and I was able to switch off after that.) She was *great*! I really liked the song, the music, the dan­cing. Wild dances, indeed. And it reminded me of the East­ern European neo-folk at that fest­ival in Lithuania. Plus, she’s gor­geous. Next time anyone says “you don’t look Ukrain­ian” [1] (every­one assumes Ukrain­i­ans should be blond for some reason), I’ll just remind them about her… *grin*

Why am I not sur­prised about the­or­ies that the Nick Berg video was faked? Thanks to patch­workkid for the heads up (lots more links there too). Haven’t watched the video, but if even the simple “there was no blood” and “the audio is not in synch” are true, then I’m highly suspicious.

[1] Yeah, yeah, I’m not *just* Ukrain­ian… see pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions of cul­tural hybridity.